had drawn blood. It hadn't, though it had torn away a fair-sized chunk of Jandra's pants and long-johns. The silver thigh that shone through danced with reflected flame.
She looked up in time to see Gabriel's sword coming straight for her neck. She ducked as the blade passed overhead, trailing an arc of fire. Shay grunted loudly and fought to maintain his balance after the missed blow. The way Shay held the blade revealed that he wasn't terribly experienced with sword-fighting. The way he was standing so out of balance hinted he wasn't experienced at any sort of fighting, period.
Jazz straightened up before he could attack again with a backstroke. She raised her leg with all the power that her newly-youthful muscles could summon, planting the boniest part of her knee right into Shay's testicles. The young man's eyes bulged and the sword flew from his fingers. He dropped to his knees before her, unable to breathe.
She grabbed him by the hair. He had a skinny neck. Would Jandra's body be sufficient to break it? She grabbed his chin and the back of his skull and decided to give it a test.
Shay spoiled the moment by vomiting. A pale, fishy soup splashed all over Jazz's belly. Jazz jumped backward, wrinkling her nose. 'Ewwww!'
She stared down at her ruined clothes and snapped her fingers, willing the fibers to disintegrate. Jandra's clothes fluttered away into dust. Except for black leather boots, Jazz was now wearing only the nanite shell. It flattered her. She looked at herself in the mirror of her inner arm. She would have been the heartthrob of any teenage sci-fi geek, if they all hadn't died off a thousand years ago.
She glanced up at Shay, who crawled across the ground toward the fallen sword.
'What, you aren't even going to gawk at me?' Jazz asked. 'I'm practically naked and you're more interested in the sword? What's wrong with you?'
Shay's fingers closed around the hilt. 'I've seen Jandra naked. She was beautiful. You're an abomination!'
Jazz snickered. 'This sweet talk is doing nothing to delay your violent death.'
Jazz stepped toward him. He pulled himself to his knees. A shadow fell across his face, a trick of the light that made it seem as if he knew death was approaching.
Except the shadow wasn't a trick of the light. There was a sound like a flag snapping in the wind and a powerful downdraft sent black ash swirling in all directions. Jazz looked up and found a familiar sun-dragon swooping toward her, his wings spread into parachutes, his long jaws open wide with twin rows of teeth aimed straight at her head.
'You again?' she said, or started to say as the jaws snapped down. She clenched her teeth and concentrated on her nanite shell to resist the impact and pressure of the bite. The teeth slammed into her ribs with a force greater than the shotgun pellets. Her face flattened up against the dragon's broad, hot tongue. His thick saliva smooshed through a gap in her lips, gagging her with the taste of some long dead mammal that still haunted his breath.
She turned her head and spat. 'Gross!' She electrified her nanite shell. The stench of frying tongue was added to the unpleasant mix washing into her nostrils. Unfortunately, the sun-dragon proved a tougher opponent than Lizard. The brute refused to open his jaws. Instead, he jerked Jazz from her feet with a growl that nearly deafened her, given her proximity to his vocal chords. She was swung through the air until an abrupt collision with the hard- packed ground numbed her from the waist down.
He lifted her up to slam her down again. She was certain the points of several of his teeth had punched through the nanite shell and were now slipping between her ribs. She wanted to scream, but she couldn't even breathe.
She grabbed the longest tooth in his bottom jaw with both hands. It was time to test Jandra's strength. She grimaced until veins bulged in her forehead as she tried to push the tooth away from her ribs. All she accomplished was to drive the teeth at her back further in.
Fighting her urge to gag, and breaking her ten-century long commitment against taking a bite of meat, she opened her mouth as wide as she could and sank her teeth into the dragon's tongue. The dragon flinched. Blood spilled into her mouth.
She commanded a stream of nanites to swim into the open wound.
Seconds later, the beast's bite slackened. Jazz dropped from his saliva coated jaws, slipping in the pool of drool beneath her as the sun-dragon staggered away. He shook his head violently, banging it on the ground, as if he were trying smash to death a hive of bees that had somehow found its way into his skull.
She sat up, feeling woozy as she gasped in air. Several of her ribs were broken. A three-inch gash near her belly button bled profusely. Her old body would have already fixed this injury. Of course, her old body had more nanites in it than actual biological molecules. Jandra's blood was still mostly blood. She would have to fix that.
Before she could command the nanite shell to cover the wound, she went down again as the young earth- dragon tackled her, sinking his claws into her silvery hair, snarling as he bit at her right ear. 'Bad boss! Bad boss!'
She grabbed the little dragon with both hands and jerked him free. Lizard wriggled in her grasp, kicking and scratching like a rabid animal, his eyes red with fury, his sharp beak snapping empty air.
'You are just so cute,' Jazz said. She grabbed Lizard's beak with one hand, and his shoulder with the other. She gave a sharp twist, and the little creature went limp in her hands. 'I really don't do cute.'
She tossed Lizard's corpse aside as she tried to stand, but her legs wouldn't obey. Without warning, her left hand flew up and punched her in the eye.
'Kill you!' her lips snarled.
'Calm down!' Jazz shouted.
'Kill you!' the voice shouted again. The fingers of the left hand began to grow long, silver knives that slashed at Jazz's face. She grabbed her left hand with her right and pushed it away. Her breath came in panicked, sobbing gasps.
'Calm down!' she commanded again.
'Die!' a voice shouted. Only this time, it wasn't from her mouth. Shay ran toward her with the sword brandished in both hands. He lunged, chopping the sword down with a grunt. Jazz rolled to the side, but something fought her and kept her from moving as far as she could have. The sword cut a deep gash into her left shoulder. At least he'd hit the side she was having trouble controlling. She eyed the gaping wound in disbelief as blood spilled down her silver skin. A chill ran through her. This dumb slave boy might actually kill her. If Jandra's brain was burned to ash, she didn't have another back-up.
Shay raised the sword once more.
Jazz clenched her jaw and raised her right hand, willing the nanite shell to full strength. She caught the sword against her shielded palm with a satisfying CLANG. She closed her fingers and jerked the blade from Shay's grasp, tossing it as far into the forest as she could manage. He looked forlorn as the flaming sword flew away.
He never saw her foot flying toward his crotch again. She hated repeating herself, but this did seem to be his Achilles' heel. Shay staggered backward, doubled over, until he tripped over the tail of the still thrashing sun- dragon. She was surprised the sun-dragon hadn't died yet. Of course, sun-dragons had the largest brains of any sentient organism on earth, and she hadn't exactly been concentrating on guiding her nanites to the important bits of his gray matter. If she stayed around to guide the attack she could finish him off in less than a minute, but sticking around felt like a bad idea. She was having enough trouble fighting the unwelcome ghost inside her without having to worry about external enemies as well.
Jazz reached out and traced an arch in the air. Her finger trailed a thread of pale white light that blossomed into a rainbow. A black crack of nothingness yawned between the bands of light. She crawled forward and fell, tumbling into darkness.
HEX ROLLED OVER onto his belly as the rainbow fizzled away. The bees buzzing in his brain slowly quieted. He was too weak to stand. His mind felt full of holes. He tried counting to ten. The numbers were still there, he hoped. If he was forgetting one, how would he know? What if there was some number between six and seven that was now absent from his brain?
Down near his tail, a human wept.
With a great deal of effort, Hex lifted his head and craned his neck around to better see the red-haired man who crawled across the dust toward the body of a small earth-dragon.
'Do I know you?' Hex asked. 'I feel as if we've met. Why can't I recall where?'
The man didn't look back. He reached the small dragon and tentatively touched its shoulder. It lay perfectly motionless. The man dropped his head to the earth-dragon's chest. He kept his ear against the dragon's breast for
