Which I wasn’t.
The Dragons passed beneath us, the clouds swirling away beneath their wings. And just when I thought it would never happen—fire lanced through the air.
It splashed uselessly against the lead Dragon’s scales—a Firethrower was no weapon against Dragons.
The next beam hit not the Dragon, but its rider. Bellatis were mighty warriors, but they had no defense against fire. The rider screamed as he erupted in flames.
Kiko didn’t wait to see if her firebomb worked, she selected another target, and scored with one shot. Vapor swirled as Marcus’s Gryphon swept by me. That was my cue—I plummeted from the clouds.
The pinion below me was a veteran, and saw me at the last moment. He rolled, slashing with teeth and talons.
I smashed into him, and sliced him to pieces. Drank from his life essence. My monster sucked it in so greedily that it almost got me killed, as the other riderless Dragon hammered into me from the side.
I rolled with it, twisting and sinking my teeth into his neck. He thrashed and tore at me, his talons striking deep. But I closed my jaws, and drank again. Dropped the body, and ducked another Dragon—he had scorch marks where his rider had been.
Blood ran down my shoulder where the talons had scored—and it was slow to stop. The pain was absorbed by the anguish of being eaten alive—I barely avoided the Dragon’s snapping jaws. He was smaller than me, but in this state I was next to useless.
But not completely. So long as Kiko kept most of the parasite darts at bay—I curled my hind legs up, buried their talons into the Dragon’s gut, and ripped him open.
The deaths pumped energy to where I needed it most—healing my internal organs as the parasites chewed paths through them. I slashed my way to more power through another Dragon and felt new strength course through me.
Wings beat the clouds to ribbons of vapor as Dragons pursued a fleet, feathered form. Kiko’s firebolts lit the sky and pinions alike as she fired on them—it only slowed the Dragons, but three more had already lost their riders.
A blur of bright color—Vali, diving from above with a shriek, slicing her talons along an exposed flank before twisting away from grasping forelimbs to vanish once more in the clouds.
A dart buried itself in my shoulder. I knocked it free, but not before it had delivered its payload. With a snarl, I lunged at the shooter—his Dragon mount veered away, but I fastened my foretalons around his tail, opened my wings wide—and swung him in an arc around me. The momentum slung the Bellati rider right off to vanish with a thin scream toward the forest below. I released the Dragon, and he slammed into the nearest cliff. I followed, grabbing its head in my hands and twisting—
And the Deranger fed for the fifth time.
Four to go, two with riders and dart guns. And then there was Brock.
I flapped hard, feeling the strain through my entire body as I climbed into the clouds. Once I leveled off, I listened hard. I needed to get this right. My vision blurred as I stared through breaks in the clouds, searching—
And finding.
I closed my wings and dove straight down, counting on them to break my fall. If I overshot, the cliffs were too close for me to stop in time. The only answer to that was not to miss.
As I flashed past, I caught a glimpse of a swirl of purple feathers as Marcus and Kiko appeared and then vanished into a cloud. And then I slammed into the Dragon immediately behind them.
Another dart hit me point-blank, but I shredded my way through the Dragon and took the Bellati’s arm clean off, dart gun and all. Before knocking him from his perch and finishing the dying Dragon by sinking my talons in its throat and tearing it to shreds.
The pulse of essence counteracted the extra dose of parasites. Almost. I swung around—and a green scaled missile hit me hard, almost knocking me from the sky.
Life dissolved in a maelstrom of slashing talons and snapping teeth. I sank mine into a throat, and out of the corner of my eye, saw a big bronze Dragon bank toward us.
Brock.
Talons sliced into my shoulder, and as I closed my jaws, ending the seventh Dragon, a purple-feathered bomb dropped from directly over Brock’s head.
He didn’t see it until it dug foreclaws into his shoulders, and ripped its vicious hinds through his wings.
It was a hit only another winged creature could have accomplished—and it all but eliminated Brock’s ability to fly.
As he tumbled from the sky, Marcus followed him down.
35
Rafael
