Chapter 16
She understood, first and foremost, that they were being attacked. Someone was coming after them. No—someone was attacking them, right on them. She tasted dirt as her face slammed into the ground without the warning to protect herself. She tasted blood next from where her teeth had slammed into her cheek and popped the skin. She’d check later to see if any of them had been knocked loose.
For now, all she focused on were the vital parts of her body. Her head and her neck and her stomach. These were all the places that instinctively she tried to cover as she curled up in on herself, hearing shouting and pounding feet all around her. In a single instant, their quiet hideaway in the woods had turned into a battlefield. She had no idea how many people were assailing them but she suddenly felt heat. She opened her eyes.
A fire roared around them. She watched more flames pour out a dragon’s moth like water from a hose. It joined the licks of flames already sinking its teeth into the dry grass and trees. This was a wildfire that would spread instantly, and dangerously. Alessia found herself hoping they weren’t near any civilization. She didn’t want to be the reason some little kid in the rural parts of California lost their home.
“We need to move,” Erik shouted over the roar of the flame. The heavy heat pushed down on her, keeping her flush to the ground as if trying to press her right in.
Erik was right. She had to get up. That was the first step in making any of this right. She needed to get on her feet. She needed to stand. But fuck if everything didn’t hurt. The heat rose. It was fascinating how painful and real something so invisible could be. She pushed up, using every ounce of muscle strength she hoped hid in her arms and shoulders, and then in her legs when they touched the ground. She stood. Then she moved to pull Diego up; he was worse off than she was and completely confused.
“Get him out of here,” Erik called, looking around wildly.
The dragons in the sky circled them like vultures. She wasn’t sure what they planned to do to all of them, but she knew that they were here, first and foremost, for Diego. She needed to get him to safety.
“Come on,” she whispered to Diego, squeezing his arm and trying to inject some type of inspiration into his movements. They had to get out of the flames before the circle the dragons above created, completely closed them in.
Ultimately, Alessia settled for just throwing Diego and herself out into the air, and across the heat. She felt a sting as her ankle was touched, just briefly, by the lick of a flame. She’d been burned before on ovens and hot food. But it didn’t feel like the fire. This wasn’t just a burn, this was a melting pain. Tears were in her eyes before she could stop them. She was afraid to look at the damage; she was sure all she would see would be painful, awful clawing and scaring. A bite mark from the fire itself would be forever imprinted on her skin.
But she needed to keep moving, they needed to get Diego to safety.
But then it occurred to her. Erik wasn’t with her. She turned around. He ran around in the circle of fire, trying to draw the attention of the dragons overhead. He tried to keep them watching him while they got away. She knew how this went in movies. She was supposed to run away because the person creating the diversion was sacrificing themselves for you. You needed to not waste that sacrifice. That was the point of things like this.
But Alessia didn’t want to leave him there. She didn’t want to leave him to be hurt, to be killed. She would have no way of surviving in the woods without him and, more than anything. He was her friend. She didn’t want to lose him. Especially not like this. She couldn’t handle losing someone else and she wouldn’t be guilty the rest of her life because of it.
But she also didn’t know what to do about it. She felt completely powerless and understood, just for a second, why people were so scared of shifters. She was an ant on the ground; the dragons circling for the kill above might as well be gods waiting to strike.
But that strike never came because another dragon joined the fight. It didn’t take long to figure out exactly who it was when they slammed into the other dragons, full force, head on, trying to do as much damage as possible.
Lana.
She dove on the other dragons, knocking them to the ground. She was a beautiful creature of shimmering gold and pure rage. Alessia found her eyes locked in on the image as she knocked her fellows to the ground and engaged them in a brawl. It was like watching something on the Discovery Channel, beasts of immense power looking to destroy each other.
I was captivated by the image, drawn in, not realizing I made the same mistake again, ruining her ability to save me if I didn’t help myself as well.
“Alessia, we need to go!” Erik yelled, coughing through the smoke.
His face was covered in sweat and it dripped in places, showing through the soot from the smoke. He was bleeding above his eyebrow in one spot and the sight of it seemed to knock me out of my trance. They needed to move. They needed to run. So we did.
She let Erik take her hand and pull and they ran. Diego was latched onto her, perhaps the last bit of adrenaline he had left pushed his legs forward. As they moved, there was a swooping sound overhead. Lana flew over them, running interference as the dragons behind them let out anguished cries and painful howls. Lana had wounded them enough to give them a chance to run and Alessia didn’t have time to wonder if it would be because she was leading them into a worse trap. Her instinct said run so she did.
***
They found shelter in the form of a mouth of a cave. Alessia thought it was only in movies that people hid out in caves but there they were, hoping a bear wasn’t hiding in the deeper parts of the cave. No one elected to travel farther in and look. They all wanted to be at the mouth, a place where they had a good vantage point and an easy escape if they needed it.
“How did they find us?” Erik asked Lana, in human form once again, with barely disguised accusation in his voice.
“I heard them,” she said. “We have ways of communicating that humans can understand. I could hear them. They followed your scent and the blood that Diego dropped with every step you took.”
“It’s not his fault,” Alessia defended quickly and Lana rolled her eyes.
“They were looking for him but I don’t doubt they wouldn’t love to do you two in just to prove a point,” she said. “You’re boring old humans, incredibly weak, no skills to speak of, and yet you managed to evade James.”
“With your help,” Alessia said with a frown.
“Yeah well, it pissed them off all the same,” she said. “Where’s the professor?”
“He went to find help,” Erik said. “He hadn’t come back yet.”
“The chances that they have him are pretty high,” Lana said. “James is trying to rally together some fractured groups of shifters. I got that much from dumb and dumb out there. There’s a bounty for all of you, courtesy of Damien Orlando and James wants to use you as leverage against him. We’ve got a very difficult road ahead, especially with that little show back there. Are you ready for some serious running?”
“I’m getting tired of running,” Alessia said.
“Well, sometimes you’ve got to run before you can stand,” Lana said. “We get to safety and then you can decide if you want to join this fight against Orlando. I won’t hold it against you or force anything on you. The decision is yours to make. But first, we have to run.”
Alessia had spent so long running, so long protected. She didn’t want to be that person anymore. If she did this, if she ran away, it would be the last time she ever did it. Because when they got to the safe house or wherever it was they were going, she would take a stand. She would put an end to the running and the helplessness and the fear.
So she nodded. She’d be ready the next time she faced James and try to show no fear the day she inevitably faced Damien Orlando.