Fang and Claw: Nocturne Academy, Book 2

by Anderson, Evangeline

  “Help!” I shouted, my breath tearing in my throat as I ran as hard as I could through the tall grass. “Help!”

  Suddenly Ari was there, his eyes burning gold with protective rage.

  “Kaitlyn?” he asked, making my name a question.

  “After…me,” I panted. “Giant…spider.”

  He seemed to understand the situation at once. His eyes narrowed when he saw the thing chasing me. Just as he had in the Dining Hall back at Nocturne Academy, he opened his mouth and a gout of flame shot out.

  The spider was at once engulfed in fire. It made a hissing, shrieking sound like a tea-kettle gone crazy and danced madly in a circle for a minute before flopping over on its back with its legs curled into a shriveled mass above it.

  After that, it twitched once or twice and was still. The unspeakable smell of roasting hair and flesh rose from it, making me gag and I moved quickly away.

  Sinking back down on the bed of leaves where we had slept that night, I realized I was still holding the shivering little flying seahorse protectively close to my chest.

  “Hey, little guy,” I whispered, daring to stroke the top of his head with a single finger. “Hey, it’s okay now. He’s gone—it’s all right.”

  “Are you all right?” Ari came up to me, a look of concern on his face. “I thought you were just going to wash your face. How in the world did you get mixed up with a hisser?”

  “Is that what you call it?” I gave a shaky laugh that came out sounding kind of croaky. “It looked like a giant spider to me.”

  “Actually, that was normal-sized for us,” he told me. Everything is bigger in the Sky Lands. Things are simply…built on a larger scale here.”

  “Really?” I looked at him, wide-eyed. “Remind me to stay away from the really big spiders like tarantulas, then.” I shivered.

  “Well, what were you doing near it in the first place?” he asked, frowning. “Hissers can be dangerous if they bite you—they have a really potent venom in their fangs.”

  I thought of the finger-long fangs of the now-shriveled spider and felt sick when I remembered the way it had jumped on my back. If I hadn’t brushed it off and Ari hadn’t burned it to a crisp, I had no doubt it would have bitten me to pay me back for robbing it of its prey.

  “I was trying to rescue this little guy,” I said, opening my cupped palms to show the tiny jeweled seahorse. It still had some sticky strands of web on its wings and it was biting at them ineffectually with its sharp little teeth.

  Ari’s eyes grew wide.

  “A chimeling!” he breathed. “And one with golden wings at that. Dios, Kaitlyn, do you know how rare those are?”

  “Well, since we don’t have any at all in my world, no I don’t,” I said distractedly. I was trying to peel the sticky web strands off the little creature’s wings without hurting them. At first he seemed angry and chimed at me in his doorbell voice. He even breathed a tiny tongue of fire and I had to snatch my fingers back quickly to avoid being burned.

  Strangely, his fire didn’t bother me. Maybe because it was so small or maybe because I could tell he was in trouble and I was so intent on helping him, I couldn’t spare any time to be afraid.

  “Look, Mr. Seahorse,” I said sternly, looking into his bright, ink-spot eyes. “I’m just trying to help you. As soon as I get the webs off your wings, I’ll let you go. I promise.”

  The chimeling looked at me for a moment and I felt his tiny, fragile body trembling in my hands as his sharp little clawed feet—very like a bird’s—dug into my knees. Then he nodded his arching neck, almost in a gesture of agreement, and settled down.

  I felt a little thrill—could it be that he had actually understood me? It seemed possible, since he was sitting quietly on my knees now, allowing me to remove the long, sticky strands of web from his lovely golden wings.

  “I think he understands you,” Ari murmured, echoing my thought. There was still awe in his eyes when I looked at him—as though I had done something extraordinary.

  “Well, he’s behaving better now, anyway,” I remarked, as I removed the last piece of sticky webbing. “There you go, Mr. Seahorse,” I told him, taking my hands away and leaving him perched on my lap with no obstructions around him. “You can go now—it’s all right.”

  The chimeling opened his tiny mouth and chimed at me again before flapping his wings experimentally. They seemed to be in working order because he rose into the air, fluttering them so quickly they were nothing but a golden blur before he darted away from me.

  But the very next minute he was back with a shiny green beetle clutched in his pointed little mouth. The beetle—which was almost the same size as the bumble-cricket had been—struggled sluggishly in his grip, its legs waving slowly, as though it was swimming in midair.

  “Oh, what’s that you have?” I asked the chimeling. But almost before I could get the question out, he had darted right at me and was trying to shove the slow-moving beetle into my mouth.

  “Hey! No!” I gasped, moving my face away a split second before the green beetle would have gone right between my lips.

  It fell onto my lap instead and I brushed it away with a quick, jerky movement of disgust. It might not be as scary as the spider but it was still a really big bug. Ugh!

  “Why did you do that?” I demanded, looking up at the chimeling who was hovering in mid-air and chiming angrily at me. “I don’t eat bugs!”

  Ari seemed to be trying not to laugh.

  “I think he’s trying to pay you back for saving his life,” he said, smothering a grin with one hand. “They’re supposed to be smart, you know. In fact some legends say they’re related to our Drakes—though the Drakes themselves deny it.”

  “Well, if he really is smart, he’ll stop trying to feed me bugs,” I said, frowning. Looking at the chimeling, I spoke as sternly as I could. “No more of that,” I told him. “You don’t owe me anything—just fly away and live your life and watch out for giant, head-sized spiders in the future.”

  The chimeling chimed in apparent frustration. He flew away again and came back a moment later, this time with a bright pink insect struggling in his tiny jaws.

  “No!” I pointed a finger at him and frowned. “No, I mean it! I don’t eat bugs!”

  The chimeling ignored my stern tone. But this time, instead of trying to feed me the insect, he perched on my outstretched finger and ate the bug himself—after breathing some fire on it, of course.

  I watched in fascination as he gulped it down and then let out a tiny, squeaky belch. Then he flew from my finger to my right shoulder and settled there, as though I was his regular perch.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Ari. “What is he doing?”

  “Apparently he likes you.” He smiled at me. “There are stories in our literature, you know—tales of maidens who can tame the chimelings. It’s supposed to be very good luck. It denotes a female who will be well-matched with a Drake—though no one has actually heard of anyone doing it for as long as I can remember.”

  “Um, okay…” I craned my neck to see the little creature sitting contentedly on my shoulder. “But what do I do with him? How do I feed him?”

  “I think he just proved he can feed himself,” Ari remarked. “Don’t worry, Kaitlyn,” he added, clearly seeing my consternation. “He’ll probably fly away once you get aboard my Drake and we start flying.”

  “Well…all right.” I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to have the little guy sit on my shoulder until we were ready to go. “You hear that, Mr. Seahorse?” I asked him. “We’re about to fly off so enjoy your new seat while you can.”

  Mr. Seahorse chimed at me and then began to groom his wings like a cat licking its whiskers. It seemed I had gained a new companion—for at least a little while.

  71

  Kaitlyn

  Despite Ari’s prediction, the chimeling didn’t fly off once the Drake’s wings began to beat and we rose into the sky. He nestled closer to my neck and chimed a bit anxiously, I thought—I
was beginning to understand the different tones and notes he used—but he stuck close and didn’t try to fly away.

  “You don’t have to hang around if you don’t want to, Mr. Seahorse,” I told him. “If you feel like you’d be better off in your meadow, there’s still time to go back before we get too far away.”

  But Mr. Seahorse only chimed again and rubbed his little head against my cheek, almost like a cat looking for affection.

  My heart melted just a little—he really was the cutest thing. And though I hadn’t been looking for a pet when I rescued him, I found I couldn’t help liking him now that he had apparently adopted me.

  “Aww, it’s okay,” I told him, reaching up to stroke his delicate nose very gently with one finger. He chimed happily and nuzzled me some more, so I continued to pet him as Ari’s Drake took us higher and higher into the pale blue sky.

  It occurred to me that I had been in mortal fear of meeting the fire-breathing dragon who lived inside Ari not even twenty-four hours ago. And now I had not one but two fire-breathing creatures in my life and I felt perfectly happy about it.

  What was happening to me? Was I changing in some way? Or was I simply becoming more comfortable with the strange new world I found myself in?

  Whatever the case, I felt more ready than I would have thought to meet Ari’s parents. I was absolutely certain they weren’t going to want me for their son but that almost made me feel calmer about the situation.

  Of course I would be on my best behavior, but I didn’t have to worry about ingratiating myself with them or making them like me because I knew in advance they wouldn’t. So, other than being as pleasant as possible, all I could do was just grin and bear it while they told Ari off for daring to love a scarred Made Nocturne instead of the perfect Drake girl they no doubt had picked out for him.

  Crap—I wished I hadn’t thought of it quite that way. It made me feel worried all over again about how I looked. But before I could go down the spiral of self-loathing and doubt, I seemed to hear Megan’s voice in my head.

  “Nobody can make you feel inferior unless you let them. So don’t let them, Kaitlyn!”

  I lifted my chin and straightened my shoulders.

  I won’t let them, I told myself. No matter how high and mighty they are, I won’t let these people make me feel bad about myself. I’m a good, kind person and I have people who love me.

  That one of those people just happened to be Ari, wasn’t my fault. So the Alpha Drake and his Queen were going to just have to deal with the fact that their son loved someone as completely inappropriate as me.

  “They’ll have to deal with it, Mr. Seahorse,” I told my new little friend defiantly. “And I’m not going to let them make me feel bad about myself, no matter what.”

  I just hoped I could keep my own resolution. But as a huge, white marble palace came into sight and began to grow larger in the distance, I was already beginning to doubt myself.

  72

  Kaitlyn

  At first I thought the white marble palace—which looked a little like the pictures you always see of the Taj Majal—was really close. But as we kept flying and flying and not getting to it, I realized that it wasn’t close at all—it was actually pretty far away.

  What made it appear closer was that it was really big.

  After we had flown a little longer, I amended the word big to huge. A little while after that, I was thinking it was immense.

  By the time we actually landed on the vast natural plateau it was built on, I had no words. It was like looking at a palace made for giants.

  This is how a mouse must feel entering a human house, I thought, as I looked up at the enormous white marble archway that rose at least a hundred feet above my head.

  Of course, riding on the Drake’s back made me much taller but even his head didn’t come close to brushing the top of the arching entryway. But he walked with certainty, as though he knew exactly what he was doing. Despite being so big, he had the smooth, loping stride of a cat and I barely swayed at all on his back as he moved on all fours through the entryway and down a vast marble hallway.

  The hallway’s walls were set up as a kind of portrait gallery. But there were no people pictured here—only dragons. Or Drakes, I supposed.

  The pictures themselves weren’t painted but woven on elaborate tapestries which all looked to be at least thirty meters wide and thirty meters tall. These enormous portraits portrayed dragons of all colors—scarlet, green, royal blue and even some royal purple like Ari’s Drake.

  But they weren’t just one color—they all had a metallic sheen to their scales, the way Ari’s Drake was purple with an emerald luster. It reminded me of that fabric you see prom dresses made out of sometimes—that looks one color when you look at it a certain way and another color when you look at it another.

  The other thing that struck me about the dragons, was that they all had intelligent, almost human expressions on their faces. You could tell these weren’t just dumb beasts—they were thinking and feeling sentient beings with intelligence and wit.

  The vast marble hall had room for many more tapestry portraits but they ended when we were only three-fourths of the way down. The last two portraits struck me as special—maybe because they looked newer and fresher than the others.

  The next-to-last portrait showed an absolutely enormous Drake who had scarlet scales with a golden sheen. And the last tapestry portrait of all showed a royal purple Drake whose scales had an emerald luster. His large, golden eyes looked out of the portrait right at me and I realized that it was the Drake I was riding on now—Ari’s Drake.

  “I am your Drake too, now,” the Drake informed me as he moved steadily down the hallway. “Do not forget it, L’lorna.”

  “I won’t,” I said in a low voice and stroked his soft hide as I felt a surge of protective devotion come from him. What had I done to earn the love of such an amazing creature, I couldn’t help wondering? Why had he picked me out of all the possible choices in the world? In two worlds, really, since the Sky Lands were a completely different realm.

  The Drake didn’t answer my question, he only sent me a sense of love and protectiveness and four more words.

  “You have my heart.”

  Then we were at the end of the hallway at last and I saw an immense set of wooden doors bound in brass slowly swinging open.

  Crap. It was time to meet the parents.

  73

  Kaitlyn

  The immense doors swung open slowly but if anyone was working the immense wooden panels manually, I couldn’t see them. Maybe they were hidden or maybe the doors were automatic. But would they have automatic doors in a place like this? Somehow the Sky Lands felt like a place where magic would work better than science or technology.

  Or maybe I only got that feeling because we were in the middle of a freaking palace.

  As the doors opened, they revealed a throne room bigger than a football field.

  And it was full of dragons.

  Though it hadn’t clicked before, I finally understood why this palace appeared to be built for giants—because it was. The Drakes gathered at the far end of the room were all massive—though only one was bigger than Ari’s Drake, I noticed.

  The strange thing was, most of these Drakes didn’t seem to have the two-tone skin which all of the portraits in the hallway had shown. They were strictly monochrome—I saw sky-blue, brick-red, bottle-green, and lemon-yellow dragons, but their scales were dull without the metallic sheen I saw on my own Drake.

  Oh dear, should I think of him as my Drake, though? Was I about to lose him when Ari’s parents no doubt told him I wasn’t in any way a suitable person for him to date?

  I felt a rumble from the Drake under me and he sent a sense of certainty and protectiveness. I was his and he was mine, he assured me. No one could change that.

  Feeling a bit reassured, I watched as he slowly crossed the vast, black marble floor which was polished to a high, mirror-like gloss. It was so shiny I coul
d see his reflection in it—as well as the reflections of all the other Drakes.

  There were a few humans in the room as well—dwarfed by the vastness of the immense chamber—but none of them seemed to be people of importance. In fact, I got the impression that they must be servants, waiting on the Drakes’ needs by the way they bustled and scurried about, tending to the huge creatures by bringing them vast ewers of water to drink from or sometimes big round platters of steaming, fresh meat.

  As we got closer to the Drakes, who were all congregated at one end of the massive space, I decided that it must be a kind of throne room. The biggest clue to this was the way all the other dragons were clustered around one central Drake who stood on a slightly raised dais which appeared to be made of solid gold.

  It was the Drake from the next-to-last portrait out in the entry hall, I realized. The one with scarlet scales with a golden sheen. Out of all of them, he alone was bigger than Ari’s Drake—than my Drake, I reminded myself. His head was several feet higher and he looked down at us with golden, inscrutable eyes that conveyed no emotion—at least, none that I could read.

  Ari’s Drake came to a stop and the two of them stared at each other for a long moment. I had a feeling they were having a silent conversation, though I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  Then the scarlet Drake spread his wings—scarlet with a brilliant gold lining like vast golden sails, lifted his head and breathed fire—a huge, burning jet of white-hot flame. It made the blow-torch display Ari had put on in the Nocturne Academy Dining Hall look as small as Mr. Seahorse’s little fire when he toasted an insect for lunch and it scared the crap out of me.

  I put my hand to my mouth to stop a scream and ducked instinctively. Though the massive gout of flame was high over my head, I could feel its heat like the breath of wind from a blast furnace radiating against my skin. It made my hair feel dry as straw and all the scars on my body seemed to tighten and ache at once.