The lizard head swiveled back, teeth gleaming a mottled yellow in the sunlight. She needed a good dental hygienist. That and tartar-control toothpaste.
{Two. Most excellent. Hunting has been poor lately.}
She glanced at David, tangled and moaning in a hawthorn, and concentrated on Brian. Smart snake: she paid attention to the one who still had teeth. She tossed her head and shot a look behind her, as if something back there disturbed her.
Brian had to get close enough for the spell to work. Close enough, but not inside her belly.
He threw the knife at her right eye, the one towards David. She ducked to the opposite side, and the heavy blade clanged against the scales on her eye-ridge, striking sparks and spinning uselessly away.
He still needed to get closer. She turned away from David and glared at Brian, warily. "Anything that dares attack a dragon deserves caution," her look said.
He circled left, drawing her away from the boy, clearing David's way back to the bow. She slithered after Brian, circling him with her body, her head weaving like a hunting cobra. He caught a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye and jumped. The whip of her tail caught his toes, and he flipped, but the force missed him. He rolled to his feet again, ignoring dagger-sharp pains in his injured shoulder and ribs.
His old wounds might be bad, but they were nothing compared to what those teeth and claws would do. His leg wobbled, on fire, but it held. The dragon slithered closer.
David was moving, clambering to his feet, running.
"Get your bow, dammit! Go for her eyes!"
All Brian saw of him was ass and elbows flickering down the forest trail. Goddamn bug-out.
The dragon feinted, jabbing with her head and then snapping her tail. She acted like she was testing for traps, for poison in her prey. Brian limped closer to her head and she flicked her tongue, smelling for illusions. She didn't believe it could be so easy.
Close enough. Brian triggered the spell. He felt the power flowing through his wrists, his palms, the blackness of the stun-spell leaping from his fingers. It splashed across the dragon's nose.
Nothing happened.
The transparent membrane flicked lazily across her eye, protecting it from any dirt or scratches when she struck. Brian swore she was smiling at him, the malicious smile of little Sean. So that was why she'd looked behind her.
{So kind of you to walk into my mouth. The other one will not get far.}
Brian dove for his kukri and fell, headlong, lucky, as claws brushed past his leg. He scrambled to his knees, and the snout thumped his shoulder with a missed strike and bowled him further across the trail. He shook stars out of his eyes and focused on a single golden eye.
The eye of death.
She blinked again, lazily, a cat with a mouse pinned between her paws. Her sour sharp breath flowed over Brian like a fog.
Mulvaney whispered in his ear, again. You're going to die, Brian Arthur Albion Pendragon. Goddamned guitar player bugged out. Left you to save his ass. Never count on civilians.
Brian's head still rang, and he played dead to gather his wits. The dragon tapped him with one paw, as if he was a warm chocolate candy she was patting back into shape before taking a dainty nibble. The tongue flicked out again, tasting, testing, slithering over him as coarse and rough as wet sandpaper. She still couldn't believe he was real, edible, no trick.
He stared at teeth as long as his hand, pitted and caked and slimy. They carried jagged edges, like the serrated blades of steak knives or the dental arsenal of a shark.
He pulled in his last reserves and tottered to his feet, the kukri back in his hand somehow. "You goddamned worm, go ahead and bite! I'll dive down your throat and carve your heart out from inside your gullet!"
The teeth jerked away, and something like warm jelly splashed across Brian's face. An orange-fletched shaft poked out of a deflating yellow beach-ball overhead. The dragon spun away from him with a screech that shook the ground.
A second arrow skipped off her head. Brian staggered forward, focused on stabbing that other eye. Blind her and they just might have a chance . . . .
The dragon screamed again, and something huge slammed Brian sideways into the air, tumbling, flailing, barely tucking into a roll that carried him to thump against a tree. Another shaft hissed by his head and buried itself in the ground up to its feathers.
He identified it, automatically. Soft orange vinyl fletching. Olive green aluminum shaft.
Real-world archery, not Summer Country.
His own arrows.
The dragon roared and howled, head lifted high, pounding the ground with its tail, shattering trees and throwing dirt. A man darted out of the bushes right underneath her snout, drew bow, and loosed in a single perfect flow of movement. Point-blank range, ten feet or less, he couldn't miss. The shaft drove straight up, through the soft skin under her jaw, and vanished.
Brian thought his head would split with the shriek of the injured dragon. She thrashed and rolled in a fog of blood and dust and splinters, claws gouging furrows in the ground as though she was plowing for some deadly crop. He saw the shadow-man flipping through the air like a discarded doll.
Brian's focus narrowed to a single thought--Away! Just get away. The bloody snake wouldn't die before sunset. One arm and the opposite leg obeyed him and they dragged the rest along behind. Something heavy slammed to the ground close by, and he refused to look. Whatever it was, if it wanted to kill him, he couldn't stop it.
He bumped up against a pile of rocks, slithered into a crevice between two of them, and waited for the factory-whistles of hell to stop their braying. So much for sneaking up on Dougal. If the bastard hadn't been waiting already, they'd just well and truly rung the doorbell.
Dirt showered across him, and
