Page 64 of Deadly Maiden

Profusions of tiny purple flowers hang from stems in clumps of clover. The grass here is sparse but we’re in the shade, shielded from others who ride by, and the horses love it. They’re already cropping at the grass.

The quiet shadows encourage peace, and Wyntre lies down after we finish eating, puts her head in my lap. I tussle her hair a little until she protests, then comb out the tangles.

This soothes her, and her eyes drift closed. With my back against a tree, I’m tempted to go to sleep for a while. I shouldn’t but…

Psst!

The noise startles me, and I’m jarred fully awake.

To see a blood hawk resting on a branch of a higher tree.

There is only one answer I have to this spying magik. Kill it quick or we will be discovered. I place Wyntre aside, hissing at her, “Wake! Alarm! Blood hawk. I must shift!” Then I sprint to the road.

Here, it must happen, though it may disrupt the trees. Wyntre has already fled further, dragging the horses as far as she can. The blood hawk has launched and flies above me, scanning me for life. If the mage that made it is aware, we are already undone.

With a roar, I reach inside for that other me, and I…

SHIFT.

Before I’m halfway through the change I feel the crack in this shifting, the errors, the failings.

Discarding the despair, the anger that I may be losing this again, discarding that sheer terror, I force myself through, feel my body draw on the etharum, the swell of my flesh.

The power surges, and my cells are roiling and extending, rippling, bursting to claw, to wing to the endless ravening, to the lash of tail, to myself as the beast that rules the heavens.

Ponderously, I raise my weighty neck and run my forked tongue across the seething air, feel the long line of vicious fangs in my jaw. I have erupted into the majesty of dragon, despite the dark flaw propagating within, and pray I will have time to fry that bastard blood hawk.

It circles me and then, as if sensing my deadliness, makes for a new direction, angling across my vision as I spring skyward. I spew flames that cross the gulf between us, torching treetops,singeing one blood-colored wing. And the flaw inside me fails with a fatal and unseemly crunching that deafens and blinds me for an instant.

Even as I fall, spinning, I’m shriveling into man shape, fae shape, rolling, screaming.

I whip past the upper trees.

Going down, fast.

The earth jumps up to meet me, though smoke clouds the last few yards.

When I hit…

A blackness sweeps in.

Through the last shreds of consciousness, through the ringing, I see a blur, and I blink to resolve it into my warrior girl. She runs from the forest with the weapon from the box in her hand.

Chapter 18

Wyntre

To my left, the blood hawk flops about near the road. One wing is shorter than the other and blood, or some sort of red fluid, has splashed and spotted the vegetation it’s caught on.

To my right, Rorsyd wobbles onto one knee and retches. His head is down, and he is bloody.

I whip from one to the other, my hand clenching on the butt of the gheist pistol, before I sigh, grind my teeth, and sprint to the blood hawk. It’s magical, so I stand over it, hesitating. Will this work? I circle it and aim. I think I’ve set this thing right. It is supposed to kill but this creature is magik. Will this do anything? Dragon fire is not the same as shooting a lump of metal into it.

Thatisblood on the earth and the leaves. I can smell it.

The crystal is primed with gheist.

I edge my finger to the lever that fires the gun and jerk it. The mechanism inside revolves and clicks. The gun thumps back into my palm, stinging my fingers, and ethereal blue belches from the barrel. I stare at the creature. The bullet went in. The earth kicked up below it.

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