Chapter Forty-Seven – Kris

 

My scales were covered in blood, and ragged holes had been torn in my wings. I’d gotten in some good shots, but I knew I wouldn’t last. My only hope was that I could hold out long enough for Hunter to get out of here and get the kid to safety.

Bite, parry, slash. I flipped Cid over, snuck up beneath his belly, and raked him with my back talons as I went flying past.

I roared as his needlelike teeth found my shoulder, bit down hard.

This wasn’t going to end well, and I knew it.

Cid, for his part, was covered in as much of his own blood as mine. My teeth and talons had shredded as many holes in him as his had in me. The only difference, though, was that Cid was three times my size and ten times my age. He’d be able to fight and battle like this for hours after I was dead.

Even if Harrow were to come to my rescue, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Cid was just too strong.

Just as I was bemoaning how hopeless everything was, though, a third roar rent the sky over the temple. Like a flash of black lightning, Harrow shot through the air between me and Cid, splitting us apart as he raked across the feathered serpent’s face and neck.

I spun back, banking and soaring away for a moment’s respite, feeling almost rejuvenated to have Harrow in the thick of things with me.

As I flew back around, though, my heart nearly broke in two as I saw Harrow and Cid locked together, their back claws raking at one another, their wings beating as feverishly as hummingbirds as they tried to stay aloft. They were a blur of claws and teeth as they tore into one another.

“Natalya, Coal, Natalya, Coal. This is for Coal! And for that girl! And for Marquez!” Harrow roared between mouthfuls of Cid, his jaws slathered with red.

“The mask!” Cid bellowed. “Where is it? What did you do with it?”

“This?” Harrow roared. And then he was thrusting up with his back claw, which I was only just realizing he hadn’t been using at all, into Cid’s underbelly.

Cid flailed back, disentangling from Harrow, the white separated from the black. He flailed, bellowed again. “What have you done?” he roared.

“Given you back your mask!” I shouted as soon as I saw the relatively small golden disc embedded in his underside.

Cid clawed at his own flesh, screaming as he tried to dig the thing free. But it was too late. Whatever was happening was already beyond repair, and his scales began to dry and flake off, and his feathers began to molt as the exposed skin began to wrinkle like grapes in the sun.

“No!” he roared. “No!”

I went in for the kill, but Harrow swooped in and cut me off. “Coal, no! It’s too dangerous! It may touch you!”

Cid was already losing altitude like a rock. His wings had slowed their beating, and his eyes had gone wild and crazed as his talons began to yellow and crack. Whatever the mask was doing, it was working quickly.

Down, down, down Cid plummeted, just as I had before. But with one difference: he couldn’t control this freefall. He fell straight back through the giant skylight of the temple. A thunderous crack, like Thor’s hammer itself, resounded as if the earth beneath Cid were smitten by his body, and the stone platform he’d been standing on when I first encountered him cracked.

And still he writhed on the ground, his body contorting and twisting as the mask ate into him.

No, not ate into him.

As it ate him. Pure and simple.

“Harrow!” he called as his snout began to crumble, and his limbs began to wither to nothing but dust. “Coal!”

We didn’t respond. Just stayed perched atop the stone temple, looking in like two curious cats as we watched him desiccate into pure nothingness. No more than dust in the wind in a dusty land.

Harrow and I exchanged nods, and then we were back to our normal forms atop the temple. Naked, baking in the sun, our hands entwined as we lay on our backs.

Hunter, groaning with the effort, rolled onto his stomach and crawled over to me. “How badly are you hurt?” he asked.

I coughed weakly as I looked up at him, my eyes traveling down his cut and bruised body, at the rivulets of blood running down his chest and arms. “Not as bad as you, I imagine.”

“This?” He gestured to his bloody shoulder. “This is nothing. I can still run with an eight-year-old. No problem.”

Then he was over me, and pressing his lips to mine, and I was pressing mine to his as we became entangled in each other’s arms, the Mexican sun beating down on our naked bodies.

“I love you,” he whispered as he pulled back.

“Yeah. Same here,” I said, grinning up at him as I rubbed some of the blood from his face with my thumb. “Don’t lie to me again. Ever.”

“Promise,” he said, and kissed me again.