Without wings to fly, the black dragons bounded over smaller objects and darted around larger ones. I held on to Reaver with one hand and the back of her saddle with the other. I shifted my grip again and again while Skrew jabbered nonsense in my ear.
We reached a wider street, and the swarms of people dove for cover. Washing lines, archways, and stretches of electric wiring threatened to tear us from our mounts as we barrelled down the streets.
Beatrix’s dragon slowed so that we could come astride her.
“Where are we going?” Reaver asked the other woman. “Do you have a plan?”
Beatrix looked to me before shrugging. “We will head toward the wall. Hopefully, these things can climb as well as they can run. If—”
The noise of vehicles thundering overhead cut her off, and I looked to see two guards riding hoverbikes racing toward us from behind.
I tossed Ebon from hand to hand and cut through guylines and signposts to keep our pursuers from catching up. The bikes seemed to be courier vehicles—fast but unarmed. The guards, however, had pistols and were giving us hell.
The first went down when I cut a washing line above my head. The other got tangled up, spun around a dozen times like a jump-rope, and drilled himself into the ground in an orange explosion.
Yaltu almost collapsed out of the saddle again, and I realized that we were working on borrowed time. Our mounts were following Yaltu’s directions, but if she passed out, and her pheromones stopped working? Then, the dragons would see us as the vrak riders.
More whines announced the arrival of another squad of hoverbikes.
“We need to find a vehicle!” I called to Beatrix. “We can’t ride these dragons forever!”
“I know where one is,” she yelled above the din of the pursuing enemies. “The city guard’s barracks! Come on, dragon, move!”
Up ahead, some vendors had strung ropes between their stone stalls to create a kind of covered path. Lights hung from the ropes and suggested that there was a feed of electricity running through them. There were dozens of cords, all begging to be cut.
Skrew started to slip off the back of the dragon, obviously distracted by something, and started to pull me down with him. I turned, unsure if I wanted to save him or strangle him myself, but it gave me the opportunity to take another look at the guards who were chasing us. They held halberds, pointed directly at us.
“Skrew is going to dieeeeee!” he screeched almost directly into my ear.
I pulled him back onto the back of the dragon, and the beast staggered in the opposite direction. I was forced to stick my foot out to keep the dragon from crashing into a ramshackle apartment building we were passing. I had expected the shock of the impact to hurt, but it felt no different than falling from three yards and onto my feet.
The hoverbikes continued pursuing us, and they didn’t see the path of the ropes and wires crisscrossing between buildings. The flailing supports snapped into the guards and ripped them out of their vehicles.
I caught sight of Yaltu almost 30 feet ahead of me. She’d partially fallen from the dragon yet again, and Beatrix was holding on to her by one arm. Yaltu’s other arm was tucked close to keep it from scraping against the ground as they rode. Beatrix, the woman who’d been trying to kill me not too long ago, was holding on to someone I cared deeply for. She literally had Yaltu’s life in her hand.
Beatrix looked back at Yaltu, tugged a little, but had to return her attention in front of them so that she could guide her dragon. When she looked back a second time, our eyes met.
She nodded to me, as if to say, “I’ve got her.”
A second later, Beatrix shifted her body weight hard to the side. With one final tug, she pulled Yaltu back into place.
Yaltu sagged against Beatrix, obviously spent, and I wondered if she was still making pheromones. If so, she had to be close to fainting.
We needed to find a vehicle and send the dragons away before she was out of action and the pheromones wore off. We sure as hell couldn’t get out of Brazud on foot.
Wind whistled in one of my ears as Skrew wailed in the other. Yaltu slipped again, but Beatrix had been ready and prevented her from falling more than a few inches.
We surged through a marketplace. Tents, stalls, and the occasional cart gave way as our tiring dragons forged onward. I ducked under an archway as I heard Beatrix urge Yaltu to stay awake.
The tight streets of Brazud led into a central section of the city. A wide steel wall barred our progress, but it was no match for two furious dragons with surgical augmentation. I clamped down on the dragon’s hide as Reaver urged our mount straight over the top of it. The tight streets vanished as we crashed into an abandoned square.
“We’re here,” Beatrix panted.
“Right into the frying pan,” Reaver muttered.
“We go in, we get a ride, we get the hell out,” I said. “Any questions?”
“Skrew has question—”
“Glad to hear it,” I interrupted. “Let’s move.”
We dismounted the dragons. There weren’t any guards visible in the square, but it was likely most of them were dead, fighting the other two dragons, or scouring the city for us. There were no shop stalls or vendors here, nor was there anyone else around. I could hear sirens blaring and see smoke drifting from the path of chaos we’d left behind us, but this area was eerily quiet.
Yaltu turned and touched a black dragon’s chin gently to lift her head. The scaled woman
