Dragon Blood by Eileen Wilks

Author:Eileen Wilks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

TWENTY

RULE shoved to his feet.

Madame continued to frown absently into the west. “He may be only curious. So far he’s only . . . no.” All at once she was on her feet, too, shouting in Chinese, which his charm rendered as, “Dragon! Take cover! Dragon!”

Rule’s night vision was better than a human’s, but it didn’t do him much good now. The dragon was coming at them from the west, where the sky was bright with sunset, preventing his eyes from adapting. Then all at once it was visible, a dark blur hurtling down at them, neck outstretched and wings folded as he dove with shattering speed.

Rue’s mind clicked over into certa, the battle state. Even as he saw clearly how impossible it was for a single man, lupus or not, to stand against a dragon, his body was in motion. As the great beast’s wings shot out, breaking his fall and the air in a small explosion, Rule crouched. And leaped.

The boat father hadn’t been quick enough to react to Madame’s shouted warning. He’d risen, but still stood atop the cabin’s flat roof as the dragon’s talons reached for him. Talons a bright, improbable blue, as were the rest of the dragon’s scales that gleamed in the mage lights. Talons that part of Rule’s mind noted were much smaller than Sam’s.

In certa, observation, calculation, decision, and action flow in a single kinetic stream, so as Rule landed on the cabin’s roof and drew the long knife he’d acquired in Bolilu, he knew many things. He knew the heat of that great body overhead and the shock of impact on his damaged leg. He knew the overwhelming smell of dragon—meat and spice, metal and musk. He knew the boat father was about to hurl himself off the cabin’s roof, and that he wouldn’t make it. And as he twisted his torso so his swing would carry all the strength of legs, back, and shoulders, he knew he struck at a dragon perhaps half of Sam’s size. Which meant that if he were very fast and very clever, the dragon might not kill him right away.

The boat father leaped.

One talon closed around the man’s arm, stopping his flight with a jerk. The other reached for a leg.

Dragon scales are hard. According to Cullen, some of that hardness was magical. Those on the belly a few feet above Rule’s head were the size of dinner plates and would have bounced his blade back at him. Those on the feet were the size of quarters and correspondingly thin. But he could reach only one foot, the one wrapped around the boat father. So he aimed above it, where the scales were smaller and thinner than on the belly, but not as small as those on the foot.

Rule’s knife connected. The blade sank deep, jarring him as it lodged in bone.

Blood stinging with heat splattered his face and chest.

The dragon screamed, a sound like a pipe organ exploding, every chord played at once with impossible volume.

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