by Jess Haines
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Kimberly had spent the first ten or fifteen minutes of her first flight terrified to the core of her being, too scared to move. Viper had her clutched close to his chest, legs tucked tight to his body for flight. What parts of her weren’t pressed to his hot, scaly body were freezing and her eyes kept watering from the wind stream. When she managed to turn her head enough to look over her shoulder, all she caught behind whipping strands of her hair was a body of water that must have been the Long Island Sound and a slice of the western coast of the island far below them.
There was no comfortable position in the wyvern’s claws. Held prone, she had nothing to support her head or neck, and bony ridges around his claws dug into her back, legs, and sides. Cold and terror made her body quake with spasmodic tremors, her blood an icy sludge in her veins. Her arms weren’t pinned, but her fingers had long since gone numb locked around the curve of one of his talons. While the razor points weren’t slicing into her clothes or skin, she could barely breathe for how tightly he held her.
That might have been a good thing considering they were flying at a height and speed that would leave her nothing but a red smear on the ground should he drop her.
It took less than an hour, but to her, time crawled like a snail hurtling headlong through frozen molasses. When he made an abrupt shift in course, tilting at a sickening angle as he turned inland, she nearly spilled her lunch. They cut over a slice of beach and then a harbor. She spotted what looked like hundreds of boats out for a day on the water, white hulls winking in the sun, and some of the tiny figures far below pointing up at them. Then they flew beyond it and over a great deal of greenery spotted with houses. Some of the properties even had pools, which was an extravagance she had heard of but never seen before. Her whole apartment probably could have fit in some of those houses several times over. Any wonder she might have felt at seeing homes that looked like things she’d only seen in magazines and movies before was brutally dampened by the icy wind and her cramped muscles.
Soon there were no more buildings. Just acre upon acre of trees, dotted by the occasional clear patches of fields and ponds.
She’d never seen this part of Long Island before and was totally lost as to where they might be. She’d never ventured any farther than Queens or Brooklyn and hadn’t realized that there was this much untamed wilderness so close to home. Even if she managed to escape once they landed, she had no idea how to get back to the city from wherever it was he was taking her.
Then she noticed he was losing altitude. Fast.
She could have sworn some of those treetops were skimming her dangling feet as he took her over a heavily forested area. Heart lodged in her throat, blocking the building scream straining to escape her lungs, she closed her eyes tight, not wanting to see what came next. Moments later, every bone in her body rattled and she gave a breathless yelp as the wyvern jolted to a hopping, one-legged stop, stirring up great gouts of leaves, pollen, and dandelion fluff in his wake.
Birdsong halted mid-note. Brush rattled as larger animals fled, smaller ones hunkering down in hopes of going overlooked. The world went quiet and still, holding its collective breath as the great serpent in their midst settled to earth.
Kimberly slowly opened one eye to peek and see where they were, then the other, her jaw going slack.
They were somewhere deep in a wooded area. There were no signs of a trail, buildings, people or cars, visible or audible anywhere through the ring of scrubby trees surrounding the small field Viper had chosen for his landing. Not even a whisper of distant cars honking or voices. It was obvious “scream all you want, no one will hear you” territory.
Using the hooked fingers on the wrist joint of his wings, Viper pulled himself forward, keeping his back arched and Kimberly clutched tight to his underbelly with one clawed paw. She could have reached down to brush her fingers over the waist-high huckleberry, catbrier and brambles, and the scent of pitch pine was chokingly thick, even with the wyvern’s musky scent clogging her nostrils.
She sneezed. Then again. Viper paused, lifting his right wing to peer back at her. She tilted her head to stare back at him with watering eyes.
Giving a disgusted snort, he pressed on, slipping between the trees with surprising grace despite his great size and encumbrance.
It wasn’t long before he arrived at a point of ley line convergence so strong, it started her muscles involuntarily twitching and made every hair on her body rise. The trees had grown in strangely here, arching unnaturally to provide cover from any watchers from above. There were deliberately placed stones, stacks of containers of spelling ingredients, and a deep, wyvern-shaped depression off to one side. He dropped her near the outer edge of this strange haven, his claws flexing open so suddenly that she couldn’t catch herself. Her numbed fingers slipped and she came to a painful landing on her ass onto a thin cushion of dead leaves and pine needles over hard-packed, sandy soil.
He slithered around, watching her with narrowed golden eyes as she scrambled back, crab-walking on her hands and feet to get as far from him as she could. Then brained herself on the wall of the circle he had summoned to trap her.
A fresh wave of panic surged through her as she looked down. At her feet was a point of a large pentagram drawn in ashes over a patch of sand that had been cleared of dead leaves, along with several symbols that were all too familiar. The same symbols she had been working on in class with Xander in preparation for drawing her own binding circle. All this one had needed was familiar material to be set in the center. Her.
When he had closed the circle around her, she was effectively trapped until he banished it. She had no way of breaking it from inside. Even if she smudged the carefully drawn symbols, he’d already activated their power. Though she knew some planar beings succeeded at turning the tables on their summoner, she had no clue how they did it and no idea how to reverse the process Viper had set into motion. At this point, the only question was how long she could hold out before his will overtook her own, binding her to him.
Viper must have planned to bring her here from the moment he heard she was in the market for an earthbound familiar.
Hyperventilating in panic, she sneezed again, then gasped for air. She knew it was useless, but she rolled to her feet and placed her palms against the wall of the circle, ignoring the burn and ripples of energy as she cast out her Sight in search of any cracks in her prison she might use to escape. Or at the very least slow down the inevitable.
The reality of what she had planned to subject a dragon to was now all too real.
“This will be much easier on you if you simply submit,” purred the deep but familiar voice. He sounded strangely human despite that the words came from the mouth of a giant reptile. “There will only be pain if you resist, ducks.”
“Please, don’t do this! Let me out of here!”
“You may come out when I am done. Be a love and don’t fight it. We’ve a great many things that need doing, and I can’t get them done with you in that circle.”
Kimberly increased her efforts, pressing harder against the wall of energy, hunting for the tiniest chink in its armor that she could pry open. It was like a giant, rock-solid soap bubble, the surface oily and slick with a thousand iridescent colors and stronger than any circle she had ever drawn.
Panting in terror, she yanked her burning hands back and hugged herself, staring at the wyvern curled around the outer edge of her prison. He wasn’t speaking the words of binding aloud, but their power coiled around her will like a snake, constricting her thoughts.
Frantic to save herself, she did the only thing she could think of. She yanked her invisibility spell around her like a shield, praying it would work to hide her from the binding spell the way it had shrugged off his tracking and stunning spells before. She couldn’t be sure since she had never tried to cast inside someone else’s circle.
It took longer than she was used to, and it was harder to maintain than usual, but the invisibili
ty spell snapped into place. The pressure of the binding spell lifted from her thoughts.
Viper hissed in displeasure, the sound making her quiver. His rear talons flexed, digging deep furrows in the dirt as he reared up, wings cupping the circle as though he feared she might somehow escape his trap.
“Stop this foolishness,” he said, his voice deeper than before. “Do you think this little trick of yours will keep you safe? You can’t maintain it forever.”
He was right. But as long as she wasn’t moving, she could cling to it a lot longer than if she was running.
His growl might have made her bones rattle, and the spell might have been taxing, but she stayed where she was, clinging to the thought that this was the only thing keeping her from becoming his puppet. Though she did test a theory by reaching for the edge of the circle. It still singed her fingers and kept her trapped, but at least she could hold him off for a little while.
He slid around to where her fingers had caused a ripple in the surface, head cocked to one side as he peered down with one glowing eye. She sneezed again, then slapped her hand over her mouth and nose. As if things weren’t dire enough already, there must have been something in the air she was allergic to.
Satisfied that she had not slid beyond his circle, the wyvern settled to the ground once more. He folded his wings and sprawled comfortably in the mulch, watching with cold, unblinking eyes. Biding his time with the patience of a skilled carnivore knowing it has only to out-wait its prey for her strength to flag and spell to fail.
“I do not understand,” he said, “why you choose to make this much harder than it has to be. No one knows you are here. No one will come to your aid. You must know the outcome is inevitable.”
Kimberly swiped a hand under her nose and turned her back on the monster, even though he couldn’t see her tears. She knew that as well as he did, but that didn’t mean she was ready to sit back and let him have her without a fight.
With every passing moment, the magic of the circle pried away bits and pieces of her power, slipping past her defenses. Even with her aura disguised, he’d be inside her head again before long. If she wasn’t so stressed and tired, she might have been able to maintain the illusion for hours. Now, between her fear and exhaustion, and the power of the binding spell, she was afraid she only had a matter of minutes before she lost her grip on her invisibility.
She closed her eyes and cleared her head of everything but the need to remain unseen.
Until the ground shuddered under her feet, causing her concentration to fail. Viper reared up, his head whipping to one side even as a gigantic, shadowy blur cut through the trees, smashing them aside with all the power of a freight train. Whatever it was, it was huge and coming right at them.
The wyvern roared and leapt straight up, exploding through the canopy of leaves overhead, his wings snapping out to drive him into the sky as rapidly as possible. The monstrous thing charging toward them with ground-shaking strides—so much bigger than Viper that it was snapping fully grown pitch pines like twigs—darted into the air after the wyvern like a hawk chasing a sparrow.
And Kimberly cried out as her fear overcame her ability to cling to her own senses, the wyvern’s will washing over her in a wave of fierce possession.
The binding snapped into place before she had a chance to muster any defenses against it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Cormac gave chase to the wyvern, his scaly lips peeled back from his clenched fangs so far that they were visible all the way to the gums. As he burst beyond the canopy in a flurry of broken twigs and leaves, the sun shone on his deep blue hide. The base of his scales ranged from a vibrant indigo to a midnight color so dark in places it was nearly black, each scale limned with shining silver. His wing membranes were a paler steel blue, casting heavy shadows on the treetops. Ivory talons, horns and spines were threaded through with the same silver that lined his scales, as if some master metalworker had taken the time to dip each individual scale and claw to ensure some part of him would shine even in the darkest shadows.
A living, breathing jewel, he was both terrifying and magnificent in his raw, primal beauty, arching across the sky in pursuit of the wyvern like a shooting star.
The only reason he had not laid waste to the area with a swath of fire was because of Kimberly. Even in the deepest throes of bestial rage, he knew better than to risk her life like that.
Now that they were clear of the trees, he had free rein. The wyvern may have been a large and formidable foe to anyone else, but Viper was dwarfed by the massive dragon on every physical and magical level.
Pulling on the nearby ley line, he hurled a ball of compressed white-hot energy as big as the wyvern’s head straight at the golden serpent’s torso. With a dip of his wings, Viper narrowly avoided the magic missile, swirling into an aerial spin to throw a similar projectile, his threaded with and trailing black sparks, back at his assailant.
Almost contemptuously, Cormac snapped it out of the air with his jaws, ignoring the sting to his throat and forked tongue.
And then Viper disappeared.
One moment he was there, dead ahead and as panicked as Cormac had ever seen him, and the next—gone. Even to his Sight.
His wing beats faltered. That could only mean one thing. He had failed. Kimberly was bound, and now Viper was using her powers to augment his own abilities.
Claws scraped along his back in an attempt to tear the base of his wing membranes or disable the thick shoulder muscles that controlled his flight. He twisted and snapped at the golden claws before they could dig in too deep, but Viper blinked out of sight before he could land a blow and latch on.
He slowed down, struggling to maintain a glide to listen or detect the slightest change in air pressure that might give him a hint as to where his adversary had gone. Though his senses were acute, he couldn’t hear or feel or smell a damned thing to tell him where Viper was hiding.
Then a powerful blow struck his side, the illusion hiding Viper from his senses faltering as the smaller Other used fang and claw to rip at his throat and belly scales. Cormac’s thick hide protected him from the worst of the attack, but red-hot blood was spilling down his long, thick neck from where several fangs had pierced his scales, and the poisonous bite was so painful he couldn’t help but voice a thunderous roar of protest.
Before he could reach out a claw to snag Viper and return the favor, the smaller serpent was gone.
Whirling with a snarl, he opened his jaw wide and breathed a swath of flame that singed nearby treetops, head whipping in every direction in hopes of catching the little coward before he could slip too far away. He maintained just enough presence of mind to aim the flames no higher than the treetops, wanting to avoid starting a forest fire or catching Kimberly in the conflagration. Though he was momentarily satisfied at the shriek of pain and locked onto the hint of the wyvern’s outline in the smoke and fire, diving forward, he was distracted by the very human cry of pain and terror coming from the trees below him.
Kimberly. Viper must have been drawing from the ley line through her to heal himself. Of course she’d be in pain, seeing as she had no experience in using that kind of power. If he didn’t end this quick, Viper could burn out her spark, destroying her ability to use magic forever.
Viper took advantage of his momentary hesitation to swing around and latch onto his throat again, his smaller wings beating furiously to keep himself out of range of the flailing claws of the dragon.
He wasn’t counting on Cormac twisting his entire body, snake-like, to coil around him, wings clapping inward to trap the wyvern and yank him close. He sank every one of the five splayed talons tipping each of his four paws deep into Viper’s ribs, stomach and thighs. They tumbled together toward the ground, the wyvern shrieking in high counterpoint to Cormac’s earth-shattering roar.
At the last possible moment, Cormac shoved Viper away from him, adding momentum to his fall into the trees below. Though the dragon’s wing beats staggered from a
deep tear one of the wyvern’s spines had made in the membrane between his third and fourth finger, he was able to gain a little height, hovering above long enough to ensure that Viper would remain where he had fallen.
His scales had given him a modicum of protection, but Viper’s wings had been shredded in the fall and by Cormac’s claws. A few boughs had punctured his hide, golden scales splashed with crimson, and several bones had been broken. He lay gasping on the ground, hind legs weakly clawing for purchase in the dirt and broken branches.
Cormac spread his wings wide and tilted them back to let the air spill free so he could control his landing, extending his hind legs to settle lightly in the underbrush. He took such care that the ground barely shuddered under his weight as he came to rest upon it.
He set his forepaws on either side of the fallen wyvern, looming over him. Though Viper made an attempt to arch his neck up to snap at Cormac, the dragon voiced a deep, threatening growl that set small stones and shattered trees to shiver in response. The defeated wyvern subsided.
“Release her,” Cormac rumbled, “and live. Do it now or I will kill you.”
“Tired words, old friend,” wheezed the wyvern.
It struggled to lift its head; failed. Golden eyes drifted shut.
Cormac growled again, his head dipping down to sink his fangs into the scruff of the wyvern’s neck, lifting the much smaller Other like a mother cat transporting a kitten. Viper hissed a soft protest, but he was too hurt and weak to fight back.
Cormac dragged him like that nearly half a mile, returning to the place where they had originally taken off. It didn’t take very long, but every precious moment counted. Every time Viper resumed his struggles, a slight shake was enough to make him stop. Once they reached the small clearing, the dragon couldn’t fit his great bulk between the trees without risking sending several of them toppling down onto Kimberly’s prone form.