Touch

by Rose Wulf

  “Did you find a wall?” Stefan whispered.

  “Isn’t this cute?”

  Audra froze, her mother’s death scream ringing in her ears. He was there. They were caught. No! She dug her fingers into the rock. Ignore him. Keep moving. Don’t die. This time her father resisted her movement.

  “Audra—”

  “Move!” she hissed, doing what she could to tug him forward as she followed her own hand along the wall. She was keeping her hand in front of her, making sure she didn’t veer from the wall, but she was taking larger steps than she probably should considering she couldn’t see worth a damn. It was a small risk compared to hoping the murderous dragon would suddenly choose to spare them.

  A burst of orange and red light, accompanied by a surge of heat, shot out and rushed past her shoulder. Close enough to singe her clothes. She shouted and instinctively jumped aside, bumping into her father and sending both of them into the cave wall. The flame burned long enough for her to glimpse her surroundings. Long enough for her to see what she’d been afraid of.

  There was no exit in sight.

  “I wanted to save you for later,” the dragon said from behind them. “But if you insist on running, I’ll have to overindulge today.”

  “Overindulge?” She repeated the word with numbed lips. Using the wall behind her as a brace, Audra pulled herself to her feet and shouted in the direction of his eerily glowing green eyes, “That was my mom, you monster!”

  “A-Audra, don’t!” Her father reached for her, finding the side of her shirt, and tugged. As if that would stop her, or knock some sense into her.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t know better. It was that her emotions were all over the place. To her, it had only been a matter of minutes since she’d been irritated with her mother, and now somehow she was stranded in an inescapable cavern with a man-eating dragon and her panicking father. For all she knew, the only way out was on the other side of the dragon. She might be running deeper into the cave, making her own situation worse. She was terrified. She didn’t want to die. She wasn’t ready to lose her parents when she felt like she’d only just gotten them back. But if she was going to die, then what was the harm in speaking her mind?

  The dragon chuckled, the sound carrying through the cave on invisible waves. “I really don’t care,” he said. “To me, that waif was merely lunch.” A flicker of fire broke the darkness, falling to the ground before being snuffed out, but it was long enough that Audra caught sight of his outline.

  Human…? She couldn’t claim to know anything about dragons, she’d never put a lot of effort into learning about them. They’d existed in the ancient past—that was the common belief. Some, including her aunts, believed that a few were still scattered throughout the world. She’d dismissed the claims as flights of fantasy, outgrown the child’s obligatory fascination with dragons, and not given them another thought. She wasn’t prepared to see they could take human form.

  “P-please,” her father stammered, rising to his feet beside her. She couldn’t see him, but he was standing so close she could feel his movement. “My daughter … let my daughter go!”

  “I don’t have any patience for begging,” the dragon said. “It’s irksome. I’m not a cat, I don’t play catch and release. It’s not a matter of if I’ll kill you. It’s a matter of when.”

  “There’s no way,” Audra heard herself say. “There’s no way you’ll get away with this!”

  His green eyes, practically all she could see about him, narrowed. “Funny. What makes you think I haven’t done it before? I much prefer human to beast.”

  Her lunch soured in her stomach. She very much believed him.

  Suddenly, her father jerked his hand from hers and sprinted away—toward the dragon. “Run, Audra! Escape!”

  Audra’s mouth fell open as she stumbled again into the wall at her back. “D-Dad, stop!”

  She lost sight of him and the dragon’s glowing eyes for an instant. The sound of bodies hitting solid ground reverberated through her and her father cried out in pain before repeating his order to run.

  “Learn your place, meat!” the dragon snarled as another lick of flame lit the space.

  Her father was on the ground, between them, holding his arm.

  She took a step away from the wall as tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “Audra!”

  Run. He wanted her to run. She needed to run.

  “Audra, is it?” the dragon said. The sound of her name on his tongue made her skin crawl. “I was going to save you for last, but now I think I want your father to suffer.” Fire curled out of his mouth, lighting first his face, then his torso, then the portion of the cave surrounding him. He stepped over her father as casually as one might step over a stick. “Go ahead and run,” he said as the fire continued to fall from his lips. “The tunnel is straight. My fire will still catch you.”

  “No,” her father said with a strained groan.

  The dragon opened his mouth wider.

  Instinct kicked in and Audra turned, running in the flickering, fire-lit cavern tunnel. Running away from the dragon, away from her father, away from the nightmare. Possibly away from her sanity.

  The light from the fire got brighter, casting eerie shadows ahead of her. She could feel the heat pushing at her back.

  “Run!” she told herself, her skin covered in a strange kind of cold sweat. It was hot, and she was terrified. She could barely see.

  “Keep running, Audra!” her father shouted somewhere behind her a moment before almost all of the semi-helpful fire snuffed out.

  She heard another thudding sound and she turned her head as if to look over her shoulder, but the fire was almost out and she knew she couldn’t afford to lose her chance. If she could just get outside, maybe she could find help.

  Another bright flash of fire suddenly illuminated the cavern. Immediately followed by her father’s agonized scream and the stench of burning flesh.

  Audra clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from puking as she stumbled to a stop and turned, eyes wide with horror. There was a body, on the ground now, writhing in the crackling flames. Her jaw trembled. “Dad…”

  Another shadowed figure, upright, passed by the fire. “Looks like I overcooked dinner. You’ll have to do.”

  This can’t be happening… Audra fought to breathe through her panic and the thick, repulsive smoke as she stepped backward, turned, and ran. She ran, for all she was worth. Tears streaming down her face. Stomach churning, throat constricting, vision blurring. She thought she heard the dragon call out to her again but she ignored it. The firelight was shrinking the further away she ran, making it harder and harder to see. She had no way of knowing if she was running toward salvation or the last dead end of her life. But she ran.

  As the darkness overtook the flicker of the fire ahead of her, she thought she saw something strange. It looked like the reflection of fire off of … metal?

  What?

  She saw it again, not quite at the same height, and closer. Was that because she was moving, or was the metal object also moving?

  A word in a language she didn’t speak, in an angry tone behind her, reminded Audra of her bigger problem. Right before another burst of flame lit up the cavern and she finally saw the mysterious metallic object.

  It was a shield, wielded by a man. As she watched, he broke into a run, aimed straight at her.

  End of sample chapter

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