by Amy Star
Turning his eyes up to the shattered window of the announcer’s box, Jaxon gritted his teeth. Clyde had Sherry. He had wings. And he had a head start.
Chapter14
Free of the ropes that had bound her hands but held tight in the unbreakable grip of Clyde Jones’s reptile arms as he carried her off down one of the darkened upstairs hallways of the school, Sherry could do only one thing: tear away the handkerchief with which she was gagged and demand, “Put me down, damn you!” And she swatted his collar for emphasis, forgetting that the arms around her were stronger than human arms and could easily snap her like a bunch of twigs if he were so inclined. At the moment, Sherry could not respond to anything but the terror, rage, and helplessness that had consumed her from the moment she awoke tied up in the gym.
“Shut it, you,” the British dragon man ordered her, “or I’ll have to shut you up for good.”
“Your father told you to do that anyway, didn’t he?” said Sherry. “Do you realize you’ve come to another country to be an accomplice in kidnapping and attempted murder? Do you realize what’s going to happen when you get caught, like your father and your brother have just gotten caught? You can stop this and maybe score some points for yourself at your sentencing if you just put me down and turn yourself in.”
The dragon holding her was starting to sound anxious, frantic, and perhaps just a little frightened. “I said shut it, human! Don’t make me tell you again!”
“I will not shut up,” said Sherry, “because either I’m a goner anyway, in which case God help you when you get caught—and you will not get away—or you can come to your senses and not let this insanity go any further. Put. Me. Down.”
“Look,” argued Clyde, “I’m doing what I have to do, all right?”
“Says who?”
“Says my father!”
“And you always do everything he says? Just like that, blindly? Without ever asking a question? Without ever thinking for yourself? Really? What, does your father own you?”
“He’s my father!”
“And that makes him perfect? Listen, he’s not perfect. Not if he expects you to help him break the law—in another country. Not if he expects you to break the law for him. Your father doesn’t own you. You’ve got your own mind. Think for yourself. See how wrong this is.”
“Look,” said Clyde, his voice filled with fear and confusion, “you don’t know anything about it. You haven’t seen my Aunt Fiona sitting in bed like she’s dead with her eyes open. You don’t know; you haven’t seen what it does to my father to see her like that and hold himself responsible. It kills a piece of him every day. And it’s killed a piece of my brother and me every day to see it happen to him. He only wants payback for Fiona.”
“What you tried to do to Jaxon isn’t payback,” said Sherry. “It’s murder. And it’s wrong. And what you’re doing to me is wrong. Your family is going to suffer so much worse because of this. You’re destroying your family, doing this thing. And you know that, don’t you?”
Clyde’s tone turned to a dragon shriek that bounced off the walls of the high-school corridor. “I said SHUT IT, human!”
Her nerves shredded by the piercing sound of Clyde’s cry, her heart pounding with mortal terror at whatever unnamed and horrible thing he was planning to do to her, Sherry responded with an action prompted not by thought but by raw, all-consuming mortal fear. She lashed out and planted her human fist with every bit of her strength right in his dragon eye.
Up to this point, Clyde had been half-flying, half-walking down the hall with Sherry locked up in his arms, giving her a decidedly bumpy ride that had further provoked her to confront him as she did. The utter shock of his captive’s fist slamming hard into his eye sent him reeling back, hurling another ear-splitting shriek to the ceiling. He hit the floor, fell to his knees—and dropped Sherry, spilling her onto the carpet.
Wincing at the bump of her rude landing, rolling away from Clyde, Sherry breathlessly scrambled back to her feet and half-ran, half-stumbled forward down the hall away from her captor, who sat on the floor beating his wings and rubbing at his insulted eye. Glancing fearfully over her shoulder, Sherry saw Clyde take down his hands from his dragon face and fix them balefully right on her. He lunged back to his feet and launched himself forward, his beating wings scraping the walls and ceiling. Terrified all over again, Sherry broke into a faster run that she feared would be futile—until she spotted the door to the custodian’s supply closet and the red cylinder mounted on the wall next to it.
Hearing Clyde quickly gaining on her, Sherry dashed for the fire extinguisher, grabbed it from the wall, spun around, aimed it, and fired—right into the hissing dragon face of the oncoming Clyde. He wailed out a mad, skirling sound and dropped to the floor, thrashing his head, shaking the foam of the extinguisher in every direction. Sherry poured it on, holding the dragon in place with the cold, frothy onslaught of her hastily grabbed weapon. Knowing that this would hold him only for the moment, Sherry turned and ran, still carrying the extinguisher. At the end of the hall was a stairwell leading to the ground floor, and just perhaps a place to hide.
At the bottom of the stairs, Sherry found the double doors leading into the auditorium. Now, if only her luck could hold out just a little longer. If this small town where she’d grown up was still the place she remembered, more or less, then it was still a place where many people did not lock their doors at night—and it was still a place where the school locked only its outer doors after hours. If luck were still with her, when she reached the doors to the auditorium, she would be able to open it. She tried the handle of one door. The door swung open. Yes! Thank you! she silently exclaimed to whatever good fortune or providence happened to be with her at the moment. And with the fire extinguisher in one hand, she dashed inside the auditorium and carefully, silently pulled the door closed behind her.
Inside the auditorium, there was just enough moonlight coming in from an upper window where the catwalks were to let Sherry see dimly where she was going. She made her way down the center aisle to the middle row of seats, sidled her way halfway down that row, and crouched down to the floor, holding the fire extinguisher against her chest. In the dimness and the silence, Sherry could hear only her breath as she struggled to slow and calm both her breathing and her heartbeat. She needed to be as quiet as she could. All she needed to do now, she hoped, was stay where she was. The Sheriff, the Deputy, and Jaxon should all still be in the building, looking for her. While trying to find her, perhaps they would also find the remaining Jones dragon and get him into custody, ending this nightmare. She needed only sit right where she was and be quiet.
Her eyes widened with sudden fright at the sound of the auditorium door swinging open again. As still as a deer in headlights, Sherry crouched and listened for the sound of footfalls. If she heard the sounds of heels and soles, it would most likely be Jaxon or the lawmen. If she did not… Please, please let it be them.
And then Sherry heard a rasping, clicking sound, like the breathing and slight choking of lungs and a throat that were not human. Accompanying that was a rustling, perhaps the flutter of folding and unfolding, leathery wings.
Oh God no! It’s him!
She heard the wingbeats more strongly now. Though she could see nothing from where she was curled up, Sherry had the sense that he had taken flight again. She dared to peer up, directly overhead. No dragon silhouette or shadow passed over her. Where had Clyde flown? In another second, she heard a thump from down the way, as of something touching down on the stage. What was he going to do now? Did she dare to look?
With infinite care not to let the fire extinguisher fall and give her away, Sherry lifted herself up to let her eyes come just above the level of the seats in front of her and look down to the stage. There she saw Clyde, his back and wings and tail turned to her, walking across the performing area to the backstage space. She had an awful feeling about what he would now do and crouched back down between the seats. Jaxon…please, hurry up and f
ind me. Or find him. Just get here, please…
And then, the house lights came up, brightening the auditorium. Sherry’s heart sank like a torpedoed ship. She was in serious trouble now. She heard footfalls on the stage and knew it was Clyde, having found the lights and given himself a better look at the space. Yes, serious trouble indeed. She heard his wings beating strongly again. He was taking flight, up over the seats. With his dragon eyesight, he would have no trouble spotting a girl trying to hide between the rows. She had better have that fire extinguisher ready again…
As if to damn herself for the thought, she lost her grip on the metal cylinder, and it clanged against the auditorium floor. The terror that the sound struck into her made Sherry wish she could just disappear into the floor where she had dropped her weapon. She had no time to scream when she looked up from between the seats and saw the scaly, winged, horned shape swooping down fast at her.
“No!” Sherry cried, somehow getting her hands on the extinguisher again and coming up on one knee to meet the diving dragon with his taloned hands outstretched to grab her. She lifted the nozzle of the cylinder and prepared to give him another cold, frothy blast. At the instant she did so, Clyde pivoted in mid-air, coming down for her feet first, and brought his tail into play. With one cruel swipe, the massively muscular tail whipped through the air and caught Sherry’s wrist. The force of the blow knocked her hands to one side and viciously loosened her grip on the extinguisher. It flew from her grasp and arced and spun onto the seats a few rows up from where she sat, leaving her defenseless.
Sherry had no hope now but to get up and run again. She tried to dash away, down the space between the seats on either side of her, fast enough to reach the side aisle where she could run faster. She made it only a few steps when she felt the rough and surly grasp of leathery, scaly hands on her arms and felt herself being lifted from the floor. Sherry pumped her legs as if she could run on the air, and higher above the seats she went, borne over the rows of seating by Clyde. Her struggles were as unavailing now as they had been upstairs before she stuck him. She was not going to take him by surprise again. He had her now. All she could do was sob, captured and doomed.
The air whooshed in her face as Clyde carried her down to the front of the auditorium. Reaching the front row of seats, he pulled her into his grasp and held her against the leathery plates of his chest. Still struggling in his grip, Sherry futilely pleaded, “Don’t… Just put me down. Don’t…”
“For the last time, shut up,” Clyde said, then turned his dragon head upward to where they were going: the windows up by the catwalk. Thrashing his tail and beating his wings, he went into a climb. And as they rose higher towards the catwalk and ceiling, from down below came the sound of the double doors swinging open.
Sherry glanced down from Clyde’s arms and saw the three figures running madly down the center aisle, and she screamed: “Jaxon!”
No sooner had Sherry’s voice exploded into the air than another explosion followed it: the loud and violent, resounding burst of a gunshot. At that sound, something happened. Clyde lurched in mid-air and began to swerve, partly out of control. His flying became more labored. He shrieked a sound of pain and protest. Sherry closed her eyes and clenched her teeth. The dreadful, loud pop of another gunshot tore through the air. Clyde lurched again, and Sherry felt him spinning and reeling. She also had the sudden, awful sensation of losing height. Her stomach fell inside her as she felt Clyde falling—and carrying her with him.
The next thing she felt and heard was a sudden, hard, crashing, thunderous stop. It made her scream, even as she heard the heavy flopping of wings, and heard and felt things snapping and cracking. Then, there was nothing but blackness.
The feeling of a hand—soft and human, not leathery and scaly—lightly tapping her cheek made Sherry open her eyes again. She was not in Clyde’s arms any more. There was carpeted floor beneath her, which she realized was the floor of the center aisle of the auditorium. She blinked, and into her slowly focusing sight came a face above her: the handsomest, kindest—sexiest—face she had ever seen.
“Hey,” said Jaxon, welcoming Sherry back to consciousness.
At first, she didn’t know what to do. She was afraid she had broken every bone in her body—which made it all the sweeter when it did not hurt to be pulled up from the floor and into Jaxon’s strong, warm arms.
Jaxon held her tightly against himself in a way that was so much more welcome than being clutched by a desperate weredragon. He was wearing nothing but his trousers. And at the moment, he was the most wonderful thing that Sherry had ever felt in her life.
Sherry kept her head buried against Jaxon’s shoulder, which Jaxon did not mind at all, until she heard voices. She looked up from his shoulder back into the auditorium seating and saw dragon wings splayed wide across two rows and dragon limbs bent and jutting upwards. It gave her a moment of vicarious pain. Standing near the crumpled and sprawled form of Clyde Jones were Sheriff Glen Bradley and Deputy Denny Slade. The Sheriff was speaking into his phone while the Deputy talked to Clyde, who seemed to be stirring where he lay. Sherry caught snatches of what they were saying. The Sheriff was calling 911 and asking for an ambulance, while Denny was apparently trying to make Clyde morph back to human and start knitting his injuries, which Sherry, recovering her thoughts as well as her senses, knew must include both broken bones and gunshot wounds.
Jaxon said, “We’re lucky as hell Denny is such a good shot and didn’t hit you. And lucky you landed on top of him when he hit. He broke your fall.”
“I…I think h-he was going to…,” Sherry stammered.
“He was gonna fly you to someplace he could drop you from. He might have dropped you right in here if we hadn’t got here. He probably would have flown you out the window to someplace we’d never get to in time.” Jaxon held Sherry’s face in one hand and gave her the most sincere and heartfelt look she had ever seen from anyone. “That would have totally killed me. I would have never gotten over that. Ever.”
Sherry flung herself at Jaxon into the biggest, hardest hug she had ever given anyone in her entire life.
At length, they broke the hug, and Sherry asked, “The Sheriff, the Deputy—how did they know we were in the gym?”
“They didn’t, actually,” Jaxon explained. “There was some trouble here with vandals a while back, see. And the school put in a second alarm, a silent one. Norris and the brothers knew enough to disable the main alarm when they broke in, but they didn’t know anything about the silent alarm. Glen and Denny came to check out what tripped the silent alarm, and first they investigated the tampering with the main alarm. When they didn’t find anybody, they did some nosing around and found what was going on in the gym.”
Sherry sighed, not wanting to think her next thought, let alone voice it. “If they hadn’t found us… Oh, Jaxon, if they hadn’t come…”
“But they did. And we’re okay. And we’re gonna stay okay.” He tenderly stroked her cheek and passed his fingers through Sherry’s hair. “I only wonder, though…”
“What?” she asked. What more could they possibly have to face?
Jaxon said, “After everything we’ve just been through, do you think everybody will be really pissed if we put off the wedding a couple of days?”
Sherry was absolutely dumbfounded at the question. She stared mutely at Jaxon—right into his gentle, reassuring smile.
The kiss that followed was as epic as the hug that preceded it.
Epilogue
Jaxon made a video call to Anna Jones in England and explained to her everything that happened with her father and her brothers. It pained Jaxon to see how anguished and heartbroken she was and to hear how she had pleaded with her father not to go through with his cruel and grotesque plan to punish Jaxon for the fate of her Aunt Fiona. For Jaxon, it was as awful to know how the Jones family would now suffer with Norris and his sons in an American prison for shape-shifting lawbreakers as it had been to go through the ordeal of their reveng
e attempt. It was all so mean senseless. In the end, it had changed nothing for Fiona. It had only brought more sorrow on Norris’s family, sorrow that in his grief and anger and guilt he had been too blind to see. Now, it would be up to Anna and her other relatives to care for Fiona and somehow hold their family together. It saddened Jaxon to the bottom of his heart to know how difficult things would be for them, and he asked his grandfather for help. To his credit, Humbert agreed to amend his will one more time and set aside a generous sum of money to help them.
Under the circumstances, no one minded delaying the wedding for a week after the nightmare that had thus unfolded at the high school. A lot of plans had to be shuffled, and a lot of people’s schedules had to be changed, but it spoke volumes for the generous hearts of the McCabe and Michaels family and their friends that everyone agreed to meet a week later to share in and celebrate the wedding of Sherry and Jaxon, which took place in a glow of love with the warmest glow being that of the bride and her groom at its center.
Humbert, decked out in his tuxedo and seated in his scooter chair, sat right up front and was nothing but smiles, watching the fulfillment of the promises of their two families. He knew well enough that there was talk of an annulment by the end of the summer. The old Ursan had not reached his advanced age with the naivete of a cub, after all. He knew the law and knew the kids would be well within their rights to annul, and there was nothing he could do about it.