by Randi Darren
The third went through her wing and Taylor dropped out of the air, crashing down back into Arandas.
Chapter 33
“Get out of here and back to Thera!” Vince called out as he spun around to face the location where Taylor had gone down. “And tell Leila I want a Dragon Soul Bomb!”
Sprinting down the side of the keep, Vince peeled off to the far side and moved down a small alley.
With any luck, more guards will head for the tower than where Taylor went down.
Right?
Vince ran at full speed, not caring a damn for anyone who might see him.
He had to get to Taylor and try to get her off somewhere safe as quickly as possible.
The sooner he could get there, the better.
Relying on his sense of direction perfected in the Wastes, Vince flew out of the alley and turned down a street.
As his boots pounded the stones, he did all he could to keep his mental orientation on Taylor.
Cornering a bend in the road at full speed, he blasted through a young woman and sent her sprawling to one side.
Not pausing for even a glance, Vince ran on.
He could now faintly hear the sounds of what sounded like fighting, lining up with where he felt Taylor should be.
The sudden ground-rumbling and bone-jarring roar made any concern he had about her immediately pointless.
Pulling his hand gun from its holster, he flipped the safety off with his thumb.
Practically skidding around another corner, Vince laid eyes on the crash site.
Taylor had smashed through one building and blasted into the front of another.
She was standing in her Dragon form in the middle of the road. On all sides of her, what looked like city guard were wielding spears and shields.
Leaning back, Taylor sucked in a deep breath and then let fire loose over several men.
At the same time, the other guards stabbed at her with their weapons.
While Vince didn’t think it likely they’d score a hit, he didn’t plan on risking it.
Raising up the pistol, Vince sighted the closest guard and fired twice. Moving to the next in line, he pulled the trigger twice more.
The cracks of the rounds felt like explosions in the small street with closely packed buildings.
Several guards turned to face him as he came down on them. Vince did his best to line them up quickly and fire, but he’d underestimated the reach of those spears.
One guard got close enough to jab out at him, the spear tip flashing.
Twisting to one side in a shallow dodge, Vince went around Taylor the other way instead.
Having turned her targets into nothing but char, Taylor was now starting to swing around to face more enemies at her side.
Finding two more on this side of Taylor, Vince quickly targeted them and put three rounds in each.
Making his way back around the other way to where Taylor was now facing, he arrived just in time to watch her spit out a chewed-up guard.
“That all of them?” Vince asked, his voice sounding rather hollow to his ears.
“Yes, but what are you doing here?” Taylor asked, her head swiveling around to stare at him.
“Questions later—shift into your human skin. We need to go,” Vince said, unwinding her jacket from his left arm.
“I don’t—”
“Shift now!” Vince shouted at her.
Taylor blinked and then immediately became her humanoid self.
Thrusting the jacket at her, Vince looked down both sides of the street.
Shrugging into the coat, Taylor slipped the buttons into place. Before he could even get her moving, she wobbled.
One hand came up to her brow as she reached out for the wall on her other side. Which was about five feet further than she thought it was.
Moving in under her grasping left arm, Vince pulled it across his shoulders.
“Time to go. They’re more than likely sealing the gates, so we need to hunker down for a bit and convince them we’re already gone,” Vince said.
Holstering his handgun, he glanced at her horns. Frowning, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with them.
They’d stand out no matter what. The scales were a bit easier to hide.
Pulling Taylor to the shattered entryway of the building she’d landed in, Vince looked around.
One of the interior walls of what looked like an apartment had been blown away.
Moving her inside, he sat her down in a chair and then quickly searched the adjoining rooms.
Upending a dresser in a bedroom, he found a shirt he could try to turn into a headwrap of some sort.
Snatching a large peasant cassock, he quickly pulled it down over his head.
Darting past Taylor, Vince went into the street and pressed the shirt into a large pool of blood. Picking it up, he gave it a quick once-over.
“That’ll do, I guess.”
Moving back to Taylor, he wrapped the bloody garment around her horns and pulled it tight.
The massive red splotch on it certainly made it look less questionable as headgear, more like a bandage.
Pulling Taylor up from the bed, he grabbed hold of her arm and dragged it around his shoulder again.
“I’m cold,” Taylor murmured.
“Not much we can do about that right now.
“Now tell me, how bad are you wounded? And are you bleeding, or—” Vince cut his own question short as he hustled her out of the building and back onto the road.
“In human form? It hurts. Like someone pulled off an arm. But it isn’t something that needs tending immediately.
“As to the severity. Looks like I won’t be flying for a while again.
“It’d just healed, too.”
“Uh huh, better than dead,” Vince said as they hobbled up to an intersection.
Would they think we’d head to the gate? Do we head deeper? Back to the keep, maybe?
Moving towards the keep, Vince kept Taylor going as quick as he could.
Faster than he expected, soldiers were running up to him.
Gritting his teeth, Vince turned his head partly into Taylor’s face and started to exaggerate a winded and wounded demeanor.
Pointing back the way he’d come, he tried to avoid making eye contact entirely.
“Dragon! Isa big black’un!” he squealed.
Not waiting to check him one way or another, the soldiers went off the way Vince had indicated.
Not tempting that one again.
Pulling Taylor by the elbow, Vince gave up on trying to get to the keep.
The slums were closest, and that would have to do for the time being.
A large tenement building was on their right—one that looked as if it hadn’t just seen better days, but better decades.
Trying the handle, Vince found it locked.
And in his attempt to check it, he’d literally sheared the rusty knob from its plate.
Putting his shoulder to the door, Vince gave it a small shove. With a sharp pop, the door jamb cracked and folded partly inward.
Pulling at Taylor, he shoved her inside.
Grabbing hold of the door, Vince pushed it back into place. Wedging the whole thing into the frame, he gave the corner a smack with his palm.
He took a step back and watched it, waiting.
Nothing fell, broke, or shifted.
It’ll do.
Spinning back to Taylor, he found her crumpled to the ground. She lay still on the shattered tiles, breathing shallowly.
“Fuck, were you lying to me, you overgrown Lizard?” Vince asked, picking her up and tossing her over his shoulders. “You more wounded than you said?”
“Not-a-Lizard,” she said between breaths.
“Uh huh. Lizards would have more sense,” Vince grumbled.
Making a quick sweep of the entry hall, he found stairs that went up as well as down.
“Up is a dead end, but so is down…” Vince said.
“Smells-like-shit,
” Taylor grumbled.
“Shit?”
Vince tested the air.
He could smell it too, now that she’d mentioned it. He’d simply dismissed it as part of the squalor.
The ambiance.
“We’re pretty damn close to the wall. Maybe it’s a sealed culvert?”
“Culvert?”
“Drainage. Might have been a small river that they built on. If you just seal the culvert up, it’s not something a besieging army can use against you.
“I bet we could snap the bars or melt them, though,” Vince said.
“You’re-taking-me-into-a-sewer?”
“Yeah… I am.”
Shifting Taylor around on his shoulders, Vince took a deep breath and then let it out.
Then he took the stairs down into the basement to find a stream of piss and shit that’d been growing for the gods only knew how long.
Wandering down the stairs and into the darker recesses of the building, he found what he was looking for.
An entryway into the culvert. Long since disused, until some enterprising individual opened a wall and broke into it.
It didn’t take long to find the end of the road, so to speak.
Staring at the thick bars, he really didn’t know what to do next. The hole itself was large enough to crawl through, if the bars weren’t there.
Judging from the way the stones were set, Vince would bet the bars continued for several feet.
Both above and below the hole.
Reinforced in a silly way.
They weren’t just ordinary bars, either, but tempered and treated steel. Put here specifically to keep people in, or out.
“At-least-it’s-dry,” Taylor said from his shoulder.
Glancing down, Vince couldn’t help but appreciate her statement.
The culvert had long since gone dry as a drainage way. The stink had been from a much newer culvert that looked like it would be much less likely to get clogged.
This older sewer pipe seemed to have been cleaned with intention to repurpose.
Then forgotten.
“Yeah, real lucky. Trapped in a literal shit hole,” Vince muttered.
“No-shit-though,” Taylor gasped.
Can’t really argue that.
To one side of the grate was a small stone ledge, clear of debris and wide enough to set Taylor down on.
Pushing her up on it, he pulled the headwrap off her and flicked it to one side.
“So? How bad is it, you lying Lizard?”
Taylor’s eyes glinted as she gave him a feral smile.
“I’ll-show-you-Lizard-bastard. Broken-ribs. Hard-to-breathe.”
“How’d you manage to put out that breath of fire then?” Vince asked, turning back to the steel bars.
“Was-only-cracked-before-that.”
“Ah.”
Wrapping his knuckle against the bar, Vince frowned. Grabbing hold of a bar with both hands, he yanked on it with his full might.
Nothing moved.
Not a single stone even shifted.
Grunting, Vince let go and put his hands on his hips.
“Stuck?” Taylor asked.
“Very stuck. Then again… Dragons, right? Seems like everything in this damned place was built with the idea of defending against Dragons.”
“Reds-territorial.”
“So you’ve said.”
Scratching at his cheek, Vince pulled his blade from his sheath.
Pressing the glowing edge to the bar, he started to saw back and forth.
Ten seconds in, he pulled the blade back to inspect the work and see if he’d managed anything.
There was a small, shallow groove in the bar.
“Ha, alright. This’ll suck and take some time, but it works. I guess.”
“I could-probably-melt-them,” Taylor said.
“If you weren’t a bellows with a hole in it, maybe,” Vince said as he furiously sawed back and forth.
“I can-still-breathe-fire.”
“Yeah, and probably pierce a lung when that broken rib curves inward on you.
“Just… shut up, sit there, and be a pretty Dragon.”
Taylor fell silent after that, and Vince got into his work.
After what felt like an age, a single bar fell away with a clang at Vince’s boots.
“Shit. Only… seven more to go,” Vince said.
“Ok,” Taylor said.
“How ya doing over there?”
“Better. My ribs feel like they’re sticking together.
“Otherwise, just… sitting here being a pretty Dragon, I guess.”
Chuckling, Vince dragged his wrist across his brow.
“You’re not mad about that comment, are you?”
“No. Just… confused, really.”
“Uh huh. Anything you want to talk about?”
“Maybe. First though, take a step back and let me see if I can melt those?” Taylor said, getting herself to a partially seated position.
“Eh… fine. Whatever. Just stop if it feels like you’re going to break something. I could use a break,” Vince said. “I’m curious how you’re going to manage to breathe fire in your human form, though.”
“Oh. That’s… yes. That’s a good point,” Taylor said, staring at him. “I forgot.”
Vince looked at her, surprised, before he started laughing.
“You forgot?” he asked. “How and what did you forget? That you’re in your human skin right now?”
“Yes, well. Yes,” Taylor said, her nose wrinkling as she glared at him. “I forgot. I do not consider myself human. My thoughts are draconic.”
Nodding a bit, Vince couldn’t help but agree.
“But you’re such a lovely human,” Vince said with a sigh. “Alright. Let’s see about the rest of these bars.”
“Do you mean that?”
“What, the bars? Or the human thing?”
“The human thing.”
“Yeah, you’re an attractive human lady. I’ve complimented you before. Don’t go all blushing maiden on me,” Vince said, starting to saw at the next bar again.
“You have, but I took it as flattery. You actually mean it.”
Vince paused to blow out a breath and flick sweat off his nose.
“Yeah, I do. Going to work on this now,” Vince said, starting up again.
***
“It’s a woodsman’s cot,” Taylor said, peering at the small straw-thatched home amongst the trees.
“So it seems,” Vince said.
It’d taken them the better part of what felt like the morning and early afternoon to cut through all the bars.
The sword had been well on its descent when they’d stumbled out of the culvert and fled as quickly as possible.
Two hours of fleeing in a straight line away from the city and they’d stopped here just as the sun hit the horizon.
“And it even has a hand pump,” Vince said, pointing to the cast-iron device. “And as far as I can tell, no one’s there.”
“But there might be,” Taylor said.
“Don’t care right now even if there is.”
Putting action to his statement, Vince stumbled forward toward the water pump.
Yanking over the old wooden trough next to the pump when he got to it, Vince began to immediately work the handle.
Fearing the worst after having given it six pulls, he finally heard the sound of gurgling water.
As soon as the water started flowing, he immediately cupped it in his hands and splashed it onto his face.
“Fuck it,” Vince said, and started stripping out of his clothes.
There was no way he was going to get the stink out completely, but he could try.
Taylor walked past him and into the building, apparently wanting to make sure no one else was home.
Dismissing her as quickly as she went by, Vince focused his entire mind, body, and soul on getting rid of the filth from himself.
When he finally finished, full night had settled in a
nd a chill had dropped over everything.
Picking up his sopping clothes and armor, Vince dragged it all inside and stopped.
Taylor had been busy.
She’d lit a fire in the hearth, cleaned up a space, and strung a line for him to hang his clothes. She’d even attempted what someone might possibly mistake for dinner.
“Ah… just put it on the line. I saw many of those human women doing such a thing with wet clothes when I would fly over,” Taylor said, pointing with one hand. She was seated at a table near the back wall. Seemingly content to wait there after having finished what she’d set out to do.
“Uh, right. Yes.”
Vince moved over and started to pin his clothes up.
“I found a pair of pants that might fit and a shirt that’s far too large, but they’ll do,” Taylor said. “They’re on your left. I also attempted to make you a human meal.
“I’m not foolish enough to think I did well, but it’s the best you’ll get unless you want to try yourself.”
“Better than I’d ever manage,” Vince said. “I tend to do the trail-ration type of thing.”
“I tend to eat things still alive. Though I did find some smoked meats. I’m sorry, but I devoured them all by myself.
“I needed the meal. Desperately so.”
“Don’t worry about it—because yes, you do need the meat more than I do. I imagine Dragons are living stomachs, to a degree. Since healing magic doesn’t work on you, there isn’t much else we can do, is there?”
“No. My ribs are quite well healed though. My wing will take much longer,” Taylor admitted. “The magic in them makes then harder to heal.”
Vince picked up the shirt and pants and put them on. Once he’d finished, he moved over to the food Taylor had mentioned.
It looked burnt and undercooked at the same time.
Shrugging, Vince sank in with the fork that was next to it and ate as quickly as he could. Doing his best not to taste it or think about it, he mechanically put it down.
“Vince. I want to talk about the wing.”
“What about it?”
“You do realize what it’s for, yes? We’ve never spoken about it. Up to now, I’ve just assumed you knew,” Taylor said.
“What it’s for? Yeah. I’m no babe in the woods. I may not have realized what it meant before you started bringing in young reds, but I’m not daft.
“You’re just making a Dragon version of my Dryad grove, yeah?”