The Deepest Night

An old saying from his childhood popped into his head: In the twinkling of an eye.

That’s how it was. Lora was gone from him in the twinkling of an eye. He might never see her again.

“God will protect her,” said the woman, crossing herself again.

“No, I was supposed to,” Armand replied, but in English, so she wouldn’t understand. He looked back at her now, trying not to hate her, her bony emaciation and her tear-streaked horsey face and the damned sprigs of daisies printed on her dress that might have once been pretty but were now just dirty and brown.

“Where are the villagers?” he asked.

“The men are being kept in the millhouse—”

“No. Everyone else.”

She nodded. “I’ll show you. This way.”

He followed her through the brush, ignoring his racing heart, ignoring how his body felt alien and sluggish. Ignoring, most of all, the constant, itchy whisper in his head that kept repeating, over and over, Shed this skin. Shed this skin. Finish this life in the twinkling of an eye.

They’d set up their artillery at the end of the main road that sliced through the village, not bothering to conceal themselves or move to a safer position because, after all, they didn’t have to worry about retaliation. Half the buildings were already in flames—the source of all the ash—and what was left was a cratered disaster. A scruffy yellow dog picked its way around the pits, tail between its legs.

The soldiers weren’t firing very quickly, taking the time to laugh and chat in between loading and shooting the cannons. There were about twenty men, but only half seemed to be working. The others were standing about and sharing what looked like jugs of wine.

The screams of the children had begun to die out. I hoped it meant Armand had found them, was moving them to a safer place.

One of the drinking soldiers spotted the dog. He pulled out his pistol and took a shot; the bullet struck a wall and sent chips of plaster flying. The dog yelped and tried to run.

I’d had no firm plan. I still didn’t. But when the soldier grinned and raised his rifle this time to aim again, I materialized as a naked girl right beside him.

“Bonjour,” I said, and punched him in the face.

I was smoke before the other men had finished whipping about, guns up. They weren’t laughing now, by God. They were shouting over each other, and the man I’d hit was shouting loudest of all.

I Turned behind them, standing against a stack of wooden crates filled with shells.

“Over here now,” I called in English, and ducked behind the crates when all twenty of them aimed their weapons at me.

“Cochon!” I yelled, which I was almost certain meant swine in French.

“Menj a fenebe!” I shouted next, and I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded insulting.

And just as they were pounding toward the crates—because, even drunk, they weren’t stupid enough to fire at them—I Turned again, stole above them, and became a dragon next to the cannons.

A dragon in daylight. I’d never done it before, but I didn’t have time to celebrate it now. If I’d glimmered by moonlight, by day I was afire, nearly too bright to behold. I lifted my tail (my lovely sharp tail!) and swiped it at the nearest cannon, flipping it over, the wheels of its base broken off, a nice big hole in its side.

I found the eyes of the dog-shooting rotter and sent him my own evil grin.

All the men screamed. About a quarter of them peeled off and pelted away. The rest began to fire.

Smoke, dragon, smoke. Two cannons gone. Three. I was Turning more quickly than I’d ever done, but still the bullets zinged by me, some bouncing off my scales. When they came thick as flies I knew I had to stay as smoke; a lucky shot between my scales could kill me.

I made myself sheer and silent and drifted over the remaining men, a natural part of the smoke-choked sky.

There was still one cannon and fifteen soldiers to go.

The problem was, now they knew what I wanted. Two men were hunched over a tall black box that emitted an unmistakable electric hum; one cranked a handle as the other shrieked into a mouthpiece.

The others had rallied around the cannon, round-eyed, fingers on triggers, scanning the sky.

“Listen to me! Listen to me, all of you!”

The horsey-faced woman was standing in the doorway of what looked to be a decrepit granary that had been long forsaken to the woods, medieval thick-cut stones eaten over with moss and wild ivy. She was holding up both arms, her raspy voice gone strident.

Armand couldn’t discern much beyond her. He had the impression of bodies crammed in the space past the doorway. Of children sniffling, old men with creaking bones, women in kerchiefs, babies squirming. The stench of fear and feces rippled out, engulfing him. He cupped a hand over his nose, then forced himself to lower it.

“We have been saved,” the woman announced, solemn now, and backed up so that Armand could take her place.

He took a step forward, straining to see through the darkness. Why was it so opaque?

Whoever was in there, they were quiet as a tomb. All he heard was breathing, theirs and his own. The rise of nervous heartbeats. An infant suckling. Blood pulsing through veins—

“Who are you?” called a woman, and as if her question had lifted the shadows from his eyes, he could see her now, see all of them, in a clear blue, almost otherworldly illumination. The darkness melted back and he was faced with close to fifty people of all ages and shapes and sizes. All of them filthy. All of them greasy with sweat.

But for one. There was one face that didn’t match any of the others. A girl in the far back, half hidden behind her grandmother, perhaps. She had long reddish gold hair and a face as white and clean as—

“Sweet mercy! His eyes!” cried someone.

“What is it? What is that light?” whimpered someone else.

“Is it witchcraft?”

“The devil!”

“Not the devil, but angels!” claimed the horsey woman at his shoulder. “Do not fear! I told you God would deliver us!”

“No.” Armand was tired and jittery and his skin felt like it’d been crisped with hot coals and he couldn’t think of a single good reason to lie. It was too late to pretend now, and anyway, what these people wouldn’t witness firsthand, they’d hear about over and over. “Not angels, not devils. We’re English. We are dragons.”

“Drakon,” gasped the redheaded girl, and slammed back hard against the wall behind her before she disappeared into thin air.

Disappeared. No smoke. Only gone.

In the twinkling of an eye, he thought absurdly, exactly as the crowd flared into panic.

Here’s the thing about cannons.

They’re worthless without their shells, aren’t they? Without the bombs to fire, they’re just big, bulky, useless contraptions of metal.

I Turned into a girl behind the crates, lifted a pistol one of the deserters had dropped, and began to unload rounds into the wood.

Chapter 22

I found the village men trapped in a large stone building with a waterwheel attached, a river running brown