“Protector against what?”
At that moment, a cry went up among the villagers and they began to scatter in various directions. Nafid’s eyes shot up to the mountains to the north. Below the snow-capped peaks, three white figures had appeared, their wings stroking the night sky in great flaps, long tails shifting side to side. A horrid screech echoed through the valley. Only when I realized how far away the white figures were did I understand their enormous size.
“What are those?”
“Dandonho,” Nafid said, backing away from them. “The white dragons.”
12
“The white dragons?” I repeated.
In a flash, I remembered Pete’s account of the pilot who had been chased by something large and white over the Hindu Kush, something that had torn through his Apache’s plate-metal body like it was tinfoil. I also remembered the giant bullets littering the pasture and the translucent plate I’d lifted from the soil.
A dragon scale?
I had wondered what these people needed anti-aircraft guns for. That would be one explanation. I stared at the approaching creatures, their forms growing ever larger, their screeches more penetrating.
The villagers fled into the compound’s several buildings, some already beginning to reemerge onto rooftops. They bore AK-47s—weapons they must have acquired during the Soviet occupation. A few of the weapons appeared to go back even further, possibly to the Anglo-Waristan wars. But the weapons were few and far between—thanks to Baine, who, judging from the secondary blasts earlier, had destroyed a chunk of their arsenal.
Nafid shouted above the approaching screeches. “You can hurt their eyes if they are unprotected. Otherwise, you must attack their necks. The scales are dense, but pressure can cut off the blood to their heads. Beware their words!”
Before I could press her for more info, she took off running toward the partially-demolished building that housed her great-grandmother’s shrine. Alone in the courtyard, I readied my M4 and crouched behind a corner of a building.
The three creatures had swooped down the south face of the mountains and were flapping over the foothills toward the Wari River. They approached in a V formation: an enormous point flanked by two smaller dragons—smaller, of course, being a very relative term. None of them were less than twenty-five feet in length. Moonlight shone through their leathery wings and glistened from their scales. When they crossed the river, I could see fog pluming from their mouths.
Guns began to crack and thump from the rooftops.
This is crazy, I thought as I sighted the lead dragon. It was a duller white than the other two. Scales covered its head in an ornate mosaic that peaked at a spined crest. Black eyes scanned the landscape, its mouth slanting up on both sides of a hatched-shaped face. Remembering Nafid’s parting words, I took aim at the dragon’s right eye.
This is fucking crazy.
I squeezed off four shots. Sparks glinted from what must have been transparent plating over its eyes.
Squinting, the dragon pinned its wings to its body and dove lower. The other two dragons followed, their slender forms slipping through the air as easily as eels through water. And then they were fifty feet overhead, bellies glistening white as the air chilled by several degrees and a foul, reptilian smell washed over us. The villagers fired another volley of shots. Pieces of scale fell, but they were like flakes of dead skin. The tougher protection lay underneath.
I released three bursts from my own weapon, then ran to a corner of another building for a better angle. Beyond the compound the two smaller dragons split from the lead and coasted over the village’s huts, flying low. Their throats began to convulse like cats gagging up hairballs. A moment later white plumes jetted from their mouths. The plumes swept over the fields and orchards like crop dusters, turning them frosty and brittle.
They’re freezing them, I realized.
Limbs cracked and trees toppled. A piercing laugh—one belonging to a male—emerged from the lead dragon who had turned and was aiming for the compound. With several powerful flaps, he was over us again, this time low enough to reach the tops of the buildings.
Foreign words emerged from his mouth of spine-shaped teeth, the dragon’s tone cruel and taunting. Villagers fired final shots before throwing themselves flat.
The dragon lowered his head and grabbed a man by his legs. I heard the wet crunch of flesh being skewered, but the man fought on. He battered the dragon’s snout with the butt of his rifle as his robes turned crimson and stiffened with ice. I took aim at the dragon’s eye again—a dangerous shot with the man so close to the target, but it was that or nothing.
My animal heart beat hard and fast in my chest, but the effect was strangely settling. The shot hit dead center, but it only flashed off the dragon’s eye protection, even at close range.
Dammit.
The dragon gave the man a light toss, sending him end over end, before catching him in his mouth and gulping him down. His tail lashed, and the top half of a building crumbled on impact. Something told me that the lead dragon was toying with a village that had just lost its warrior class. He and his junior dragons could level this place in minutes.
What had Nafid said? Attack their necks?
I spotted the tallest standing building and sprinted toward it. Inside, I found the stairs and climbed them in a blur, soon emerging onto a rooftop where four villagers, two men and two women, were crouched with their weapons in firing positions. To the north, the large dragon was circling back, but in a long, lazy arc. To the south, one of the dragons was unleashing more frost over the helpless sheep while the second was cutting back toward the compound, its course about a hundred feet to my left. Shots began popping from the rooftops.
Need to draw the dragon in somehow.
Recognizing one of the old men on the rooftop from our first meeting in the courtyard, I shook his shoulder to get his attention. He looked up at me. “Gurgi Kabud!” he said, his face crinkling into a smile of recognition.
By pointing and miming, I managed to communicate that the villagers on the other rooftops needed to stop shooting and get down while the five of us intensified our attack. The old man, who had never stopped smiling, bobbed his head. With surprisingly powerful lungs, he shouted the instructions to the rest of the compound, then stood and shot at the approaching dragon with gusto.
I unleashed a burst of gunfire that stitched the dragon’s side with sparks. As I’d hoped, it wheeled toward us and pinned its ears back. I signaled for the others on my rooftop to get down, while I climbed onto the raised containment wall and fired another burst.
The dragon lowered its head, its widening mouth a malevolent smile.
I waited until the last moment before jumping. By the time the dragon’s teeth gnashed empty air, I was hooking my claws between the thick ridge of scales that ran down the back of its neck and clamping my legs around its throat: movements guided by an intelligence not my own.
The dragon reared skyward, its wings writhing as it tried to dislodge me. I’d done some bull riding in my teens, but this was taking it to another level.
I worked my arms around the dragon’s neck until all four limbs were squeezing the thick cords that pulsed beneath the scales of its throat. The dragon bucked while a hollow sound built in its chest. The starry sky spiraling above us disappeared as frost plumed from the dragon’s mouth. My hair stiffened into icy bristles. Gritting my teeth to the bone-deep chill, I squeezed harder.
Strange reptilian muscles squirmed beneath my clench as the dragon tried to unclamp the blood flow. It wasn’t going to happen.
The dragon staggered mid flight as its wings missed a beat. We stopped climbing and began to fall in a disorganized spiral. The dragon’s wings missed more beats, speeding our descent. We were north of the compound, almost to the river. I caught glimpses of the large dragon circling back on the compound in his lazy arc and the smaller one still attacking sheep farther south. Not realizing their teammate’s distress, neither dragon was coming
to help.
Maybe realizing this, my dragon tried to steer itself toward them, but it couldn’t summon enough lift. Its belly scraped over boulders, climbed slightly, then fell again. I leapt off and bounded on hands and feet with our momentum as the dragon tumbled and clattered over the boulder-strewn moraine to my left.
It came to a rest on its side, one wing angled skyward, the other crumpled underneath it. I rounded on the unconscious creature. The clear protective plates that covered its eyes were half cocked now, exposing the all-black orbs underneath. I pulled my SIG Sauer and fired twice into each eye at pointblank range. A mucousy substance bubbled and oozed from the entrance wounds as the eyes slowly stove in. Seconds later, the dragon’s chest deflated.
One down, two to go.
I turned back toward the compound as the large dragon flew over it a third time. He bellowed another taunt before seizing several more villagers and leveling another building with his talons and tail. I broke into a sprint, closing the five-hundred-yard distance in half a minute. I climbed the wall, then scrabbled to the top of a building, this time not bothering with the stairs.
But by the time I arrived onto the rooftop, the dragon was beyond the compound and embarking on another lazy arc. I sighted the smaller dragon with my M4 as it continued to blow sheep into icy statues and swallow them whole. I fired several shots at its head. If I could lure it in and take it down like I’d done the last one, we could concentrate our attack on the leader.
With my third shot, my hearing picked up a distinct crack. The dragon whipped its long neck around and glared at the compound. The moonlight glinted over a network of fissures in the plate covering its left eye. My shot had damaged it. Expecting the dragon to flee, I was surprised—and encouraged—by its angry roar. With a series of powerful wing strokes, it stormed toward us.
“Its left eye!” I shouted to the villagers, pointing to my own eye as an example. “Aim for the left eye!”
The villagers may not have understood the words, but they got the message. The translation volleyed around the compound in shouts, and the villagers unloaded at the fast-approaching dragon. Sparks flashed from the left side of its face. I took several more shots with my M4, but from a poor angle.
Beneath the moon, the dragon’s shadow was passing over the outer wall when one of the villager’s shots hit home. The protective plate shattered and spilled from its eye. The dragon unleashed a pained roar as it careened off course. It crashed into a building and tumbled to the courtyard beneath me. Struggling to right itself, the dragon’s wings buffeted the air with foul gusts.
But before it could regain its footing, glowing green threads spread over the dragon, ensnaring it.
I looked around until I saw Nafid crossing the courtyard with a staff that blazed with green light. I had been cursed by a witch, turned into a wolf, and was now battling dragons. Believing that Nafid was manifesting the threads of light no longer required a stretch of the imagination.
She shouted something at the dragon that sounded personal. When the dragon growled back, its lower jaw snagged in the tightening threads and wrenched open.
Nafid appeared to have things under control, but all of the commotion had attracted the large dragon, who was sharpening his turn back toward us and accelerating with strong flaps of his wings.
“Stand clear,” I shouted to Nafid.
She paused in her advance and looked up at me. I pulled a grenade from a vest pouch and held it up. Seeming to understand, she retreated. I flicked off the thumb safety, pulled the pin, and tossed the grenade down into the dragon’s pinned-open mouth. I watched long enough for the grenade to rattle around its gullet before crouching away.
The detonation was loud and wet. When I looked again, the dragon’s head was blood drenched and misshapen, the scales either bulging or blown off. Its body slumped into the webbing, its chest deflating like the other’s had.
I lifted my face to the final dragon. He was over the village now, the gusts from his wings uprooting trees and blowing roofs from huts. White fire burned in the pits of his eyes.
“Can you ensnare him with another web?” I shouted down to Nafid.
With a jerk of her arm, the dead dragon flopped to the courtyard as the threads of light flashed back into her staff. I watched the incoming dragon. Bullets sparked over his eyes as the villagers’ shots found their marks. But his protective plating was more developed than those of the junior dragons and refused to crack. With a roar, the enormous creature swept in.
Nafid shouted something, and another glowing green web shot from the staff and across the dragon’s path. He glided over it deftly. Clear of the web, his throat began to convulse in booming grunts.
Knowing what was coming, I crouched behind the retaining wall as the icy blast from the dragon’s mouth plumed over our rooftop, covering it in crystals. My hair, recently thawed following my ride on the junior dragon, stiffened into icicles again, but my body was unharmed. The old man behind me wasn’t so lucky. He cried out and seized his leg as though he’d been shot.
I ran over to him as the shadow of the dragon passed. Wiping the frost from the man’s ice-stiff ankle, I checked the pulse. Nothing. His entire lower limb was frozen through.
I removed the man’s twine belt and cinched it tightly above his knee to prevent clotted blood in his crystallized vessels from reaching his heart. I then signaled for the other three on the rooftop to take him somewhere warm. He would lose the leg, but he could still be saved.
I straightened and looked around. Steam rose from the frost-streaked compound like smoke. I spotted several villagers who had suffered direct hits, their crouching bodies statues of ice. Two more buildings lay in ruins.
Another few passes like that, and we’re all dead.
The thought had hardly formed when the dragon turned sharply.
“Be ready,” Nafid called to me from the courtyard.
I looked down in time to see her dart behind a building. As the dragon approached, green starbursts exploded in front of him. The dragon evaded each one, but I realized Nafid wasn’t trying to hit him. She was steering him toward me.
The dragon pinned his wings as he ducked beneath an especially bright burst, talons dragging furrows through the courtyard, before surging up again—right beneath me.
I jumped down and landed hard, tumbling partway down the dragon’s back before thrusting my claws into an arrangement of scales above his left shoulder blade. Head lowered to the freezing wind, I began scaling his neck toward the leathery section where the angle of his lower jaw met his throat.
With his dense layers of crusty scales, the dragon didn’t seem to notice me. Clear of the green bursts now, his throat began to convulse. Villagers scattered from his path.
In anticipation of another ice blast, I sped up, the talons on my hands and feet knifing into the crevices between his scales, my muscles bulging against the relentless forces of wind and motion. I was almost to the dragon’s upper throat when he stopped and cocked his head to one side.
Must have felt me.
I held on tight, but instead of trying to buck me off, the dragon climbed from the compound. Head still cocked, he said something that sounded like a question.
“Sorry, pal, don’t speak your language,” I grunted.
“Ah, an American,” he said in a thick Asian accent. “And judging from your voice, I would guess from somewhere in the south? Texas?” He laughed. “What is a Texan doing among these beasts?”
I ignored him and shimmied higher.
“I admire your warrior spirit, but you have no idea what you are mixed up in. I know our attack must appear brutal and unprovoked, but they are the invaders, Texan. They seized our land, murdered our kin. We are only claiming what is rightfully ours.” My thoughts began to blur pleasantly, like I’d just polished off a six pack. The dragon glided around the village in a smooth arc. “Here, let me set you down so I can finish my—glarg!”
Remembering Nafid’s warning about his words, I had
dropped to the underside of his neck and sunk my teeth high in his throat. A foul reptilian taste filled my mouth, but I had him where I wanted him. And now the dragon did thrash, neck whipping side to side, his short arms pounding my back. I bit down harder, the muscles over the hinges of my jaw bunching into small fists.
I wasn’t penetrating the scales, but that didn’t matter. The crushing pressure was pinching off the arteries that pumped blood to his brain. Eventually, he’d go down like the other one.
The dragon launched into a tight series of rolls. The muscles in my arms screamed as the forces tried to peel me from the dragon’s neck. My arms held, but the same couldn’t be said for my legs, which were suddenly dangling beneath me.
Before I could kick them up again, the dragon righted himself, and I plowed through something. Adobe bricks burst around me. Wrenched from the dragon, I slammed against the ground, scattering chickens as I tumbled for several yards and came to a dizzying stop.
A roaring inhalation of breath sounded, like wind through an encrusted flue, and the recovering dragon climbed with leathery slaps of his wings. Behind me, the hut that had broken my grip lay in ruins. I couldn’t smell anyone inside, which was a relief. Most of the adults were fighting at the compound, and I’d caught scents of the children in a below-ground bunker.
I stood and checked myself. Nothing broken, and the pain was already receding from my healing contusions. But I had lost both my pistol and rifle, and the dragon was circling back.
His feral black eyes narrowed in on me as his grin steepened.
“Now I understand, Texan,” he said, seeing me for the first time. “You’ve become the embodiment of their Guardian. Transformed by that crazy woman, no doubt.” Hungry fascination gleamed in his eyes.
I waited until the last second before diving behind another hut. The dragon’s wing broke through the roof, and his lashing tail destroyed two of the walls, but I had already darted behind a third hut.
Blue Curse (Blue Wolf Book 1) Page 9