by Romi Hart
He blazed high into the sky. When she followed his path, she saw ten more dragons engaged in a pitched battle against the jets. They dove and whizzed and corkscrewed in and out of each other. The dragons spat fire and lightning and brimstone at the planes. The planes answered with rockets and gunfire. They burned the dragons with their afterburn.
A crackle sounded in Riley’s ear and she distinctly heard Bishop’s voice. “Pull up! Pull up! He’s right on top of you.”
Riley’s heart skipped a beat at that familiar note of alarm. Then she remembered. She was a dragon. She was on the wrong side.
An unfamiliar voice answered him. “I’ve got nothing left! I’m empty.”
Riley knew those words only too well. In front of her shocked eyes, one of the dragons wheeled around and closed on the plane. Her guts churned when she realized that dragon was Cameron. He must have heard the same words. He knew the pilot was defenseless.
He narrowed his eyes on the jet and pumped his massive wings. He closed in no matter where the unknown pilot tried to flee. The plane rocked, but the dragon attacked too fast.
With one almighty chomp, Cameron bit the fuselage in half. He crunched through the cockpit and the engines exploded next to his cheeks. He flinched his eyes closed, and the plane crumbled into so much debris.
Screams echoed to the ends of the Earth and then fell silent. All the broken scraps of metal showered into vapor and drifted toward the ground.
While she stared in horror, Victor whizzed across her line of sight. He plowed into the battle spraying fire everywhere. The moment he showed himself, four planes broke off their assault to concentrate on him. They converged targeting him with every rocket in their arsenal.
They hemmed him in a square and pummeled him from every direction. He pivoted one way to blast somebody, only to suffer a flank attack from somewhere else. He writhed under the barrage. When he tried to fire on them, they whooshed aside and avoided his flames.
Silent calm blanketed Riley’s mind and soul and being. No. Just no. No one would harm Victor. Not her Victor. Without thinking, her body took over. She didn’t have to decide anything. Her instincts revolted against this.
She rocketed straight up, but she didn’t get there in time. Another all-too familiar voice broke inside her head. “Get behind him. If he turns, aim for his wings. Target the shoulder joints. It’s the only place he’s vulnerable.”
It was Rover. Riley’s brain might have hesitated. She might have second-guessed attacking him, but the rest of her just didn’t care anymore. She was a dragon. Victor was a dragon—her dragon. She couldn’t let these machines hurt him.
She narrowed her eyes at Rover’s plane. Her laser reptilian eyes saw straight through the fuselage. She saw him depress the firing mechanism. Three rockets unlocked from the wings. Their fuel ignited and they launched at Victor.
No. She wouldn’t allow this, not as long as she could do something to stop it. Her wings didn’t seem to strain at all. She became one with the wind. She hurtled between Victor and the rockets and took the full brunt of the explosion right in the stomach. The impact sent her careening backward.
Rover’s radio blared in her ear. “Move in! Move in! Hit him now.”
Before she could recover, the other three planes burned in. They hammered Victor with their missiles. She heard him scream in pain and the sound electrified her. She braced her wings and veered around to find him.
What she saw made her heart stand still. His enormous green body plunged out of sight with one wing dangling at a sickening angle. They crippled him. He couldn’t fly.
She didn’t stop to think twice. She drew in her wings and pointed her nose downward. She experienced once again that vertigo of gravity catching hold of her. The next thing she knew, she was falling like a stone.
She aimed her head toward Victor and erased everything else from her awareness. He came after her countless times. She couldn’t let him die now. She plummeted at him chewing up the miles. He floundered in mid-air, but he never extended that wing again.
She collided with him with catastrophic force, but she didn’t check her fall. She concentrated all her power on wrapping her coils around him. In a flat second, their combined weight tumbled over and over, falling, falling, always falling.
Trees and rivers rushed before her sight. In a panic, she extended her wings. The sheering force sent explosions of pain through her, but she hauled him level with the ground and started climbing.
Planes and dragons crisscrossed the sky above, but she turned her attention toward the east. She had to get Victor to safety before she could consider anything else.
She strained every muscle carrying him, but she never gave up. He groaned in her grasp. That subtle movement stroked his scales across hers. In an instant, she felt it. His presence sparked the old reaction of blood and bone. He was right here, body against body.
In a second, he slithered through her coils to caress her. She ought to ignore it, to block it out, but she didn’t. She enjoyed it. She wanted it. She wanted that delirious rush of desire to press herself against him. She wanted him inside her. She wanted that eruption of emotion in all its torrential heat.
At that moment, a devastating detonation smashed into her head. Her brain fizzed with fireworks. Her grip on Victor loosened. She couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t drop him, not now.
That voice out of her past sounded in her ears. “I’ve got this one. I’ll bring her down in a minute.”
Rover again. He thundered over her head. His afterburn hit her scales. It burned in a way those rockets never could. That fucker fought too many dragons. He knew what worked and what didn’t.
He banked and came blazing back on her. She eyed him, but she couldn’t do anything holding Victor like this. She could barely keep them both aloft. She couldn’t keep up with Rover without dropping him.
Rover’s engines popped when he punched the throttle. The plane shot forward aiming straight for Riley’s head. If he hit her with his afterburn again, he could kill her. She narrowed her eyes at him. She had to come up with a way to fight him.
Her brain didn’t function the same way in dragon form. If she faced Rover as a woman, she might have come up with some devious strategy to outwit him. The dragon didn’t think like that. This lizard mind of hers could only think of wreaking havoc on her enemies.
Riley forced herself to retreat into a quiet pocket of calm inside herself. She measured the distance down to the inch. Rover dipped one wing to race over her head. He yanked his stick back to angle the afterburn down.
At the last possible second, Riley released her hold on Victor. Freed of his weight, she whipped her body over and lashed her long tail at the plane. She slapped it aside like so much flotsam.
The engine screeched in alarm. The plane skidded through the air and came to a halt a hundred yards away. Victor plummeted toward the ground on another deathly freefall.
Riley paid no attention to him. She focused all her awareness on that plane. A creeping realization came over her all in a minute. She had a choice to make. She could shoot Rover down and save Victor or she could fly away and save herself.
If she shot Rover out of the sky right now, she could never go back. He didn’t know the dragon was his old comrade Pocahontas, but she would know. If she destroyed him right here and now, she would cross a line. She would align herself with the New Breed. She could never return to the military or to any other part of humanity.
This had nothing to do with what the military would do when they found out she changed into a dragon. This transformation took place in her heart and nowhere else. She had to choose. She couldn’t keep living with one foot in each camp.
How fitting that she should face this momentous decision confronting Rover. She couldn’t imagine any other pilot who could bring her to this unassailable departure. He of all her fellow pilots always commanded her respect. He alone could have called her back from the brink.
If she couldn’t shoot him
down, she didn’t belong to the New Breed and she never would. She would continue to dither. She would always dream of the day she returned to her old life and her career.
She had to choose: Rover or Victor. One of them would die because of her choice. One way or the other, she would never be the same.
He hit the throttle. The plane punched forward with its nose aimed at her head. She didn’t move. She hovered silent and still in the searing knowledge at last of who and what she really was.
The jet came shrieking at her. She just didn’t even care anymore. Rover ceased to exist. She waited until the plane’s nose brushed its air wash over her eyelids. With blinding speed, she dove up and over the cockpit. Rover’s head whipped up in surprise.
She rotated her neck around and bit. She chomped into the cockpit and let her mighty dragon body cartwheel over the jet. She cracked her neck like a whip and snapped the fuselage in half. The tail and one wing careened away from her in a graceful arc before it started falling.
She reveled in the satisfying crunch of her jaws smashing the rest to powder. She ground it to dust. Every trailing crumb falling from her mouth filled her to overflowing with primordial, unadulterated bliss.
She spat out the remnant and turned her gaze toward the ground. She spotted Victor, but this time, her heart didn’t lurch into her mouth when she dove to catch him. Nothing could disturb her glacial calm.
She got to him, but she was too low to carry him all the way up again. She wrapped him in her coils and lowered him to the ground. They alighted on a soggy patch of marsh somewhere north of Lake Bigeaux. She didn’t bother to figure out where. It no longer mattered.
She eased Victor onto the sodden grass. His long body flopped in the ooze and he shifted. His arms and legs slapped the water and his head flopped sideways. He didn’t open his eyes.
She stared down at him, but she didn’t shift back into a woman. Just for a second, she wanted to feel this dragon longing for him. This primitive consciousness experienced a tumultuous whirlwind of emotions for this creature. He was a man. He was a dragon. He was mighty and yet helpless.
Whatever he was, she sensed her destiny tangled up in his. Maybe the New Breed’s rules would draw them apart. Maybe they would lose interest in each other and go off with other people. For now, something beyond the rational locked them together.
She didn’t want that to end. It infused her life with strange intensity she never experienced before. She wanted to dwell in it as long as it lasted. She couldn’t understand what made him so fascinating to her, but she threw her lot in with him. She wouldn’t go back on that now.
A distant thunderclap woke her from her thoughts. He needed her help. He saved her life in the Quag. Now it was her turn. She imploded to her normal human form—at least, it used to be normal. How could she know what would be normal to her from now on? She was a dragon. She was New Breed. She belonged with the New Breed.
She knelt down next to him, but he didn’t respond to her touch. His body felt cold and dead to her. It didn’t sizzle with that hidden energy that attracted her to him whether she liked it or not.
She took hold of his shoulders and flipped him over. When she did, a ragged, bloody hole in his back gaped up at her. Blood seeped from the tattered, destroyed skin. She swallowed hard. He might not have wings, but those rockets still did their damage.
She got a hold on herself and went to work. She surveyed the bayou all around her. She didn’t have so much as a band-aid to deal with this. Never mind. She ripped his shirt open and cupped water over the wound.
Once she washed the blood away, she could see it better. All the flesh appeared to be intact except for a deep, brutal laceration cutting to the bone underneath. She dried the surrounding skin with his shirt. She had to find a way to seal it.
She cast one last desperate glance around her and made up her mind. She climbed a nearby tree and pulled down a large cobweb hanging between the branches. She stuck it to her own shirt to take it back to Victor.
She made sure the skin was nice and dry. Then she pinched the cut together and laid the cobweb over it. It clung to the tiny hairs of his back and she tapped it onto the skin. It stuck, but it didn’t hold the cut together.
She went back and forth, further and further into the Quag. Now she started thinking of it in New Breed terms. It existed in a dimension apart from ordinary reality—the human world. She understood that now with an acute sense of belonging.
She ferried dozens of cobwebs back to Victor. She succeeded in forming a thick, dense mate of tight fibers over the wound. It held the edges down and protected the cut from the outside air.
She squatted back on her heels and studied her work. It wasn’t the most advanced medical procedure that ever took place, but it would have to do. Now she faced the secondary problem of getting him to safety.
She left him where he was lying face down in the saturated marsh. She hiked a long way into the Quag in search of some shelter. She could build a lean-to or something, but that would mean slinging Victor over her shoulder and carrying him there. She didn’t want to do that for fear of reopening his wound.
She tightened her belt against mounting hunger. She should have eaten those crawfish when she had the chance. She wouldn’t get a meal like that again anytime soon. She didn’t hesitate to drink clean water when she found it. That kept her going.
Toward late afternoon, she stumbled upon a run-down cabin. The door sagged on rusty hinges. One glimpse inside showed her the floor rotted out. She could see puddles of water through the holes. She wouldn’t risk Victor’s life bringing him here.
She turned away and spotted something around the corner. When she went to investigate, she discovered an old skiff hauled up behind the house. It looked solid enough. She tapped the hull and it echoed with that hollow thunk of sound wood.
She stood gazing at it for a long time. This could work. It would mean a lot more effort, but she didn’t trust herself to do anything else. She didn’t want to fly Victor to the village, either. One bump could kill him.
She took hold of the boat and flipped it over. It rocked on its keel. A long two-bladed paddle nestled in the grass underneath it. Without further ado, she picked up the paddle and dragged the boat to the water’s edge.
She paddled back and parked the boat as close to Victor as she could get. She made a dozen more trips into the Quag and lined the prow with branches, grass, and debris. Then she crouched over Victor and somehow fitted what was left of his shirt over the wound. She put it on backward so what used to be the front covered his back. Now she was ready.
She took a few steps back, inhaled a deep breath, and ruptured into her dragon form. She bobbed her head a few times to examine Victor. How tiny and frail he looked like this. He was nowhere near as attractive to her as his dragon was.
She raised one claw, picked him up, and deposited him face up on the bed. He groaned in his sleep and settled. She shifted back and climbed in. She took up her paddle and set off.
16
Riley poked sticks into her fire and stirred a pot of soup on the flames. She salvaged a few necessities from that cabin, but she would give her right arm for a decent pocketknife.
She sniffed the soup. It was nothing to write home about, but she was beyond caring. She dipped in a wooden spoon she fashioned herself by scraping a rock against a piece of wood.
She sipped the scalding liquid. It burned a fiery path to her insides. Damn, it tasted good. A groan started her alert. She jumped to her feet only to find Victor trying his hardest to raise his head.
He cracked his eyes open and squinted at the flames. “What the….?”
She knelt down next to him. “Take it easy. Don’t try to move. You got injured. Just lie still. You’re all right.”
She got her bowl and filled it with water from the river. She returned to him and held it to his lips. “Here. Drink this.”
He let her pick up his head and steady the bowl. He collapsed growling under his breath. “I f
eel like shit. What the hell happened?”
She tipped out the bowl and crossed to the pot. “You got shot. You won’t be flying for a while. I can tell you that.”
He looked out into the dark. His neck strained holding his head up, but he didn’t move any other part of himself. She couldn’t tell how much pain he might be in. “Where are we?”
“We’re on the Atchafalaya. We’re about a mile north of the confluence with the Whiskey Bay Channel. We’ll be home soon, but it’s kinda hard to paddle against the current. That’s why it’s taking so long.
She ladled soup into the bowl, but when she held it out to him, he scowled up at her. He put his head on one side. “Now tell me what really happened. I remember…..You were holding me. That plane…..”
She waited, but he didn’t finish. She pushed the bowl forward. “Eat this. You haven’t eaten for days. You need your strength.”
His nostrils flared and he glanced at it. “What is it?”
“It’s catfish and onion soup.” She blushed. “It’s not much, but it’s the best I could do on short notice. It doesn’t taste so hot, but it’s spicy. That kind of makes up for the lack of any seasonings.”
His eyebrows bounced up. She couldn’t help but smile at him. She couldn’t disguise her pleasure that he was alive and awake and talking to her after almost forty-eight hours in a coma.
“That plane…. that pilot…. You dropped me.”
“Don’t worry about the pilot,” she told him. “He’s dead.”
Victor whipped around to stare at her. “What did you do?”
“I killed him. What do you think? Are you gonna eat this or not, ‘cuz if you’re not, I will.”
She tipped up the bowl and downed the whole thing. When she straightened up, she gave an exaggerated gasp of satisfaction. Then she laughed at herself. She saw herself clowning, but somehow it didn’t matter anymore.
“You killed…..” He blinked. “You killed your own man?”