Releasing the Dragon Read online

  “Oh, no,” he said in a steady voice. “You ruined my fun last time—you won’t ruin it again.”

  “Dru, watch out!” Annie screamed, finding her voice at last. “He’s got a gu—”

  Before she could finish the sentence, Christian raised his hand and the hoarse barking blast of the gun cut her off. She watched in agony as a bloody red flower suddenly blossomed on the left side of the big Kindred’s chest.

  “No,” she whispered as Dru looked down at the wound…and then sank to his knees. “Oh, no…no please!”

  “Well—I think that takes care of your boyfriend.” Christian turned back to her, tucking the gun into the waistband of his slacks. “Now…where were we?”

  But Annie’s gaze was still trained on Dru. Though the big Kindred had fallen to his knees and blood was running down his bare chest, he hadn’t actually fallen over. His head was sagging low, as though he was looking down at the ground and any moment she expected him to topple over—but somehow he didn’t.

  And then something strange began to happen to him.

  Lines of reddish-golden light began to appear—first in his hands and forearms—then spreading upwards to the rest of his body. Annie thought they looked like jagged bolts of gold-red lightning breaking out all over his skin. Or maybe like his veins had suddenly filled with molten lava. Then he lifted his head.

  His eyes, she thought wildly. His eyes are burning!

  Flames shot from the big Kindred’s eyes—actual flames, not just light, Annie saw in sick fascination. He threw back his head and opened his mouth as though to roar at the sky and a gout of flame shot upward from between his lips, roasting the damp green leaves above his head and turning the twigs and branches a withered black.

  Christian must have been watching the look on her face because he spun around, his jaw dropping with amazement.

  “Son of a bitch,” he whispered hoarsely. “How…what…?”

  A roar like nothing Annie had ever heard before broke from Dru’s throat, cutting off the question.

  And then the big Kindred began to change.

  His limbs lengthened and thickened, his neck became long, and his face pressed up and outward—his mouth becoming the massive jaws of a predator. He burst out of his clothes—his trousers and boots incinerating to ashes as he shifted forms. Fiery red scales flowed over his body, which was growing along with the rest of him—scales which showed the golden glow of flames between their edges. Giant wings burst from his back, vast and black as they stirred the hot wind that was, by now, so familiar. Finally, a long, lashing tail sprouted, whipping through the vines and underbrush angrily.

  “His Drake,” Annie breathed, her eyes wide with wonder and fear. “That’s it—his Drake!”

  “His what?” Christian shook his head and pulled out his gun again. “I don’t care what the fuck it is, I’m going to kill it,” he announced.

  “I don’t think—” Annie began and then Christian squeezed the trigger.

  The gun went off with a flat bang and the Drake roared. It turned its flaming golden eyes balefully on its attacker and opened its mouth wide, showing teeth like knives. Shimmering waves of heat came from its gullet, nearly invisible heralds of the flame to come.

  Christian was standing to one side of the tree but he wasn’t really very far from her. Annie was horribly afraid that she was going to be burned to a crisp along with her attacker. But she needn’t have worried.

  A gout of liquid flame shot out, as viscous as glue or slime, and coated Christian from head to foot. He screamed and flailed in agony, dropping the knife and shooting the gun uselessly into the sky. He fell on the ground and writhed like a worm—clearly in unimaginable pain. But though he rolled and writhed all over the plants and underbrush, none of them caught fire—and none put the fire out, either. It was as though the sticky, liquid flames had a mind of their own and were determined to devour Annie’s old flame whole.

  Oh my God—get it? Old flame? And now he’s literally in flames, whispered a crazy little voice in her head. Annie opened her lips and a horrible sound—half laugh/half sob—came out. Quickly she closed her mouth again, not wanting to give in to the hysteria that threatened.

  It’ll be over soon, she told herself. I have to be strong—have to survive. Over soon. Over soon.

  At last Christian lay still, only twitching from time to time as the sickening smell of roasting meat and burnt flesh rose, making Annie feel sick to her stomach.

  “Oh God…oh God…oh God…” she heard herself chanting in a low, uneven voice over and over again. “Oh God, he’s dead…he’s really dead…”

  The Drake seemed to agree with her. It bent its long, snaky neck and nudged at the smoldering lump that had been her high school crush—and her would-be murderer—with its sharply pointed snout. Then it turned one huge, golden eye on Annie.

  “Oh please…” Annie whispered. She tugged uselessly at the tape that encircled her wrists and looped around the back of the tree trunk to hold her in place. “Oh please no…”

  The Drake opened its mouth again and Annie was certain she was about to be engulfed in a gout of liquid flame, just as Christian had been. But the massive beast pursed its lips in a strangely human gesture and blew only the tiniest blob of fire. It landed on the tape nearest her right wrist and ate through the sticky stuff immediately.

  At first Annie could hardly believe it but when she realized her wrist was free to move and she wasn’t being consumed in a ball of liquid fire, she pulled her hand away from the rough tree bark and held it out in front of her.

  “You freed me,” she whispered wonderingly to the huge beast.

  The Drake dipped its scaly head, as though nodding in agreement, and then raised again to look her in the eye.

  “So…you don’t want to…to burn me? To hurt me?”

  The huge head shook from side to side—a firm negative. Annie began to feel more comfortable with it.

  “Thank you. Thank you so much for saving me.” Not quite sure if she was doing the right thing, she held out a hand—her right one, since the left was still taped to the tree.

  The Drake seemed to understand what she wanted. It leaned closer and nudged it scaly head under her trembling palm.

  “Oh!” Annie whispered in surprise. She’d been tensed to draw back, expecting that touching the Drake’s armored hide might be like touching a hot stove or the door to a furnace. Instead, it was pleasantly warm and surprisingly soft—almost like touching feathers. As they came into contact, the tension and horror that had gathered like a hard knot in her stomach instantly began to melt.

  “You look so big and hard and scaly,” Annie told it, as she scratched lightly over the Drake’s eye ridges. “But you’re actually a big softie, aren’t you?”

  The golden eyes closed in pleasure and a humming, rumbling purr came from the enormous beast. It traveled up the long throat and vibrated her entire arm until she felt like she was petting a high-performance muscle car with its engine running.

  “You like that, don’t you?” Annie still couldn’t believe she was petting a dragon—because that was basically what the Drake was. She felt, as she had several times since meeting Dru, that she was inside one of her own virtual reality games, playing the part of a character on an adventure. But she had never written anything as wild as the things she had seen and done in the past few days.

  Truth is stranger than fiction, I guess, she thought wonderingly, scratching behind the Drake’s other eye-ridge and feeling its rumbling purr of approval. Clearly the big beast was really enjoying her touch.

  “You know, I was scared of you at first but you’re okay,” she told the Drake. “Do you like me too?”

  The Drake opened one golden eye and regarded her again.

  “Mine,” a deep, rumbling voice said inside her head.

  Annie was so surprised she jerked her hand away.

  “Oh my God—did you say that?” she blurted.

  The Drake nudged her hand, very gently, w