Page 44 of Miss Bennet's Dragon
Another wave smashed up the bank beside me, flopping a shape onto the grass, and then another.
The roseworm, awkward and uncoordinated, rushed at the monster. My heart leaped, waiting for it to throw flame. Instead, one of the monster’s gleaming legs flashed out, and a point speared through the roseworm and deep into the earth. The draca writhed, crying out, and became still.
Then the monster shrieked. Another dripping draca had caught one of the monster’s legs in powerful jaws.
“We have Denny!” a man shouted. He and another man were carrying Denny toward the carriages. The man whose leg was savaged was also escaping, his arm over the shoulder of an officer.
The monster whistled and twisted in fury, trying to free its leg from the draca’s jaws. The segmented body undulated like a whip, and the tail flashed over its head. A pair of spikes at the end squirted a vile, oily liquid over the attacking draca.
Sour orange and bitter almond. The scent burned, cloying, coating my throat.
The draca thrashed and shook in agony. The spray struck the other attacking draca, which fell as well.
Overhead came a descending call. There was a screeching clang, like an ax swung at an anvil.
The monster reared with a whistling scream. One armored segment of the body was scored and broken open, the clam-pale flesh exposed and twitching.
With a second cry, our firedrake flew between me and the beast, hovering in midair, his wide wings flashing in complex, curved beats that whirled stones and grass across the ground. Scorching heat exploded, and I threw my arm over my face.
The next whistling scream came amid swirling, roasting smoke. Stalks of burning grass floated in the air, sparking and glowing. The cloying odor became a sizzling, noxious reek.
Arms dressed in scarlet grabbed my waist. The colonel. I ran with him but tripped on my skirts. He pulled me to my feet, then half-carried me until he let me fall to the grass.
The officer with the injured leg was beside me, clutching his bloody calf and cursing. He had not noticed the arrival of a lady.
On my other side, Denny lay still on the ground.
“Denny!” I cried, frightened.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he gasped. His head turned to me. “I… I believe I have its attention.”
I laughed, dizzy from fear and running and relief.
Denny coughed, and blood sprayed, running down his chin and soaking his raised, white collar.
I scrambled to him on my knees. The side of his uniform was ripped, the proud, regimental scarlet soaked and dark as dirt. Blood was puddling on the ground beneath him.
“Help!” I cried. The colonel was with the officers across the meadow, chasing the smoking monster into the trees.
There were a dozen guests around us. I saw terror, and blank shock, and revulsion, but I could not distinguish features, as if people I had known my entire life had been erased to staring strangers.
“Denny…” I pulled off my scarf and pushed it against his side, but it was loose crochet, and the blood came through in seconds. I threw the scarf aside and pressed my hands. The blood steamed, stinging my cold skin. The side of his chest was pulp under my hands. Crushed. Splinters of broken bone scratched my palms.
He gasped a choking, wet cough like a man drowning, and hot blood and air sprayed between my fingers.
“Help is coming,” I told him, hearing the panic in my voice. “I promise. It will be fine.”
His arm reached across his body, and his hand caught my wrist then slid to take my hand. Even now, he was stronger than me, and his fingers threaded through mine, slippery with blood.
“Let go,” I said, crying now. “I must hold the wound…” But his eyes stared at the sky. The pained tremors in his body stopped. His grip, so superior to mine, softened and became limp.
I crouched over him, wrenched by sobs, each convulsion tearing my throat. Our fingers were still interlaced, a grasp more intimate than I had ever shared with any man, even my father.
The colonel had to ask several times before I could let go.
18
THE MONSTER OF MERYTON
