Scorched

“Relax, I’m not here for you, fang-boy.” She coughed, trying to stifle the noise. “Sonofabitch, that stinks.”

“Get out of here. I’m willing to bet that’s some kind of noxious gas, and I don’t know what it’ll do to living lung tissue.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t need to breathe.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not poisonous to you.”

As the dragging sound started again, he saw her body curl into itself, a spring coiling for action.

“What the hell is that?” She drifted closer again.

This time, he let her, slowly lowering the sword. It wasn’t that he trusted her, but right then there were other threats—and more interesting game for her to hunt. She coughed again, burying her face in the crook of her elbow.

Then, there was light in all that darkness, a flash of orange bleeding to crimson. It was so vivid, Alessandro felt it like a blow. It disappeared, the afterimage burning in his mind.

“Was that fire?” Ashe whispered.

Before he could answer, another glow appeared, dark like smoldering embers. Two smoldering embers, about shoulder height. And then the dragging sound again, like shells or scales hitting the stone floor. Maybe a tail? Claws?

Eyes.

Scales against stone.

Long and low, like a big lizard.

Flame.

Merda! Instincts screamed a warning.

Ashe grabbed his arm in a panicked death-grip. “Oh, fuck!” she croaked, the words robbed of air. She’d drawn the same conclusion.

Dragon.

The collapse of the Castle was bringing the creatures from its deepest levels.

“Run,” he said, sounding weirdly calm despite a jitter of panic. “A mortal won’t stand a chance in this fight.”

He half expected the creature to rush them, but it stayed put, eyes lit with an inconstant, shifting, bloody light. It had to be a good hundred feet away, but he could feel the heat radiating off its body. Dragons lived in fire. Lived with it inside them. He’d heard even their skin burned bare flesh.

“I’m the only backup you’ve got. Live with it.” Ashe released his arm and raised the light machine gun slung across her body. “What do you think? Underbelly?”

Alessandro shrugged. She was right. There was no one else to help, and Ashe Carver was a fighter. “Throat or eyes usually works with anything.”

Ashe squared her shoulders. “We’ll have those kids out of here by lunchtime.”

The dragon’s eyes shifted, the scraping sound matching the movement. It was scales making that noise, the swish of its tail on the stone.

It was inching forward. If Alessandro had to guess, he would have said it was curious. He backed away, dragging Ashe with him. This was his first dragon. He wanted a moment to plan.

“We have to separate. Find cover. We’re too good a target standing together.” Fire loomed large in his mind. Vampires burned all too well, and toast didn’t rise to walk the night. “Find a recessed hiding place. Stone shelters from the heat.”

“Got it.” Ashe pulled away from him and slid into the shadows, her form melting into the dark on the other side of the corridor.

Alessandro felt grudgingly glad to have her there. A family that slays together stays together? He slid back along the corridor until he found the entrance to a side passage where he could let it pass. They weren’t going to win by strength, so he wanted to attack from the dragon’s blind side, away from its flame.

As it closed in, the creature’s outline became visible, lit by the radiance of its eyes. No one Alessandro knew had ever seen one of the great beasts, though legends were plentiful. Unlike the weres or the vampires, dragons were truly wild creatures. They killed, ate, and laid their eggs as they had since the age of their dinosaur cousins. Human settlements were a convenient snack bar. This was the type of creature the Castle had to be meant for— one for which there was no suitable place in the outside world.

The creature’s savage beauty struck him first: the delicate bones of the head, the almost feline face surrounded by a flaring fan of skin and bone. The hide was smooth, brick-red with points of cream.

As it came closer, Alessandro could see the short legs were covered in hard, opalescent scales, the claws curved hooks of solid black. It was shorter than a man, but the body was a good twenty feet long.

Just beyond his hiding place, it stopped, round eyes blinking like the flash of rubies, the blast of heat from its flesh like a furnace door opening. Alessandro had willed his lungs to stop, protecting himself from the dragon’s breath, but he could hear Ashe coughing convulsively.

The noise was why the beast had stopped. It sniffed, its nostrils flaring to reveal the hot, steaming red of its inner flesh. It looked far too interested in what it smelled. Alessandro had to act fast.

How smart were dragons? Smarter than Holly’s cat? He pulled some loose change from his pocket and tossed it as hard as he could down the corridor in front of the creature. The coin landed with a clatter.

It jerked its head around with eerie speed, glowering down the Castle hallway, ready to pounce. Silent as the dead, Alessandro threw a second coin. The dragon took off with a strange side-to-side shuffle, its long body weaving as it ran, the belly scraping over the hard stone floor.

Ashe sprang from her hiding place. Alessandro followed barely a beat later. They raced after it, lagging behind almost at once. For a big creature, the dragon moved like lightning, the lashing, muscular tail ready to crush everything in its wake. Alessandro had to leap more than once to avoid its whip.

It reached the point where the coins had fallen, sniffing the ground like a hound searching for scent. Disappointed, it snorted out a gust of steam and smoke that curled over its head like a question mark. It hunted a moment more, the big head swinging from side to side.

Alessandro felt a glimmer of hope. They were behind the dragon, safe from its flames, and it had stopped. So far everything was going according to Alessandro’s hastily sketched plan. The next step was to attack it from both flanks at once.

He communicated the plan with a gesture while they ran. Ashe seemed to understand.

But the dragon started forward again, catching a stray scent. Not good. If it reached the end of the corridor, the hellhound families were as good as dead.

Alessandro leaped into the air, using flight to close the gap before the dragon could take aim with its jaws or its fire. He slashed with his sword, trying to catch its throat, but it twisted away. Alessandro dodged, and it snapped the air where he had been a second before.

Ashe fired into the creature’s side, making it flinch. The short hail of bullets didn’t penetrate its scales, but they must have hurt. The dragon, with a sinuous, writhing movement, turned, jaws open like a trapful of knives. It loosed a blast of flame, fire flowing over the stonework with lascivious tongues.

Ashe!

She hit the ground as the flame roared over her head, the gun clattering as it hit the stone.

Alessandro dropped from the air, his sword driving into the side of the creature’s neck in a two-handed thrust. He wanted to aim for a more vulnerable spot, but there had been no time for strategy. Immediately, the flame stopped, scraps of it breaking loose and flying into the air before vanishing to nothing. In its place, a roar ripped the dark passageway, jagged with fury and pain.

A jerk on the sword told Alessandro it was stuck fast. In his desperate attempt to save Ashe, he had pierced the scales, bit into muscle, but had done no real harm. He’d just made it mad. Merda!

The dragon convulsed, a shudder passing over its snakelike body down to its thrashing tail. The force of it threw Alessandro off, leaving the sword stuck fast in the beast’s neck.

He hit the ground hard, feeling as if his spine connected with his back teeth. A wave of shock short-circuited