Hounded [Wild Hunt Series: 2]

17: Burn

Flames blistered the sky overhead as I lay stunned and gasping for air that wouldn't come. My head spun. At one point I saw as many as five rotted dragons vulturing overhead, screaming for his minion, for anyone, to find me. 

Breath squeezed into the crushed space of my lungs. It was just the wind knocked from me, it was going to pass. More air was coming and this feeling of being a live fish slapped onto a butcher's block would pass. A tear trickled down my cheek and thunked to the ground a tiny crystal as I clutched my stomach and rolled and tried to breathe. 

The Creature sang in giggling fits somewhere in the distance, one detached hand orchestrating the tune as it crooned up toward the raging King....Well, whichever of the dragons was the King. It took several seconds before they merged into one. When they did, I was staggering to my feet in a twinkling haze of dust.

Cairn's coal eyes leered out of the shadows. The craggy texture of his hide glinted with a peculiar light. I staggered forward, not because I wanted to get closer to the gargoyle, but because forward seemed the only direction I could make myself go without falling off balance. For a moment I thought he was frozen, and then I heard the sharp crack of splintering ice along his rocky tail. I veered around the half-frozen animal and decided to go any direction, any direction at all would be alright with me as long as it was away from that tower.

Thoughts passed through my mind, little dancing memories of what I had viewed from the lonely stone window, but the forest from above was reluctant to surrender its secrets. Even the mighty run of a river was lost within the monstrous oaks. The palace lay somewhere on the horizon; I knew that because it had burned. That was a direction, of a kind.

But the tower was a ominous, dark line in the night, and without a soul within there was no way for me to tell where the window was anymore.

The draconic king screeched again, illuminating the stand of trees just to my right. Leaves rattled around me, whipped into a frenzy as the serpentine figure glided through the air, orange eyes livid and wild with the hunt. At once I ducked down against a tree, watched as the bark discolored into hoary greys and whites that twinkled blue under the fading flame.

"Shit," I said, and lifted a shaking hand near my face.

Even my hands were white, covered in a fine, powdery dust.

Dust....

With a sloth's presence of mind I brushed the white coating on my arms. Snow flaked away and melted into the dark earth.

Behind me, Cairn was beginning to move, crooning up towards his master that he had got me.

 Ice and frost and snow stretched in a messy, melting trail from me to him. 

The dragon above went silent. The trees rustled, and then they too went still except for the occasional rustle. I imagined the King high above, tattered wings extended in a slow cruise on the night air, tail a stiff rudder in his wake, claws skimming the treetops as he listened for his pet. I could see his broken fangs pulling into a volcanic grin as he circled, each time growing closer, each time zeroing in on his wayward bride.

And the frost just wouldn't stop. It spread from wherever I touched, growing, radiating outward. I could not hide, I realized.

I had to run. 

The first few steps were tentative, hesitant. But my bare toes flexed against the hardening soil and fear inflated my lungs and suddenly I could run because I was terrified. It wasn't just the King  chasing me, it was the Tower, and all the horrid things that had happened within it. They flashed by like ghouls in a nightmare, every step I ran a different pulse of agony. 

It was dark.  I stumbled into the edge of  some kind of river spring and backed out in a few cold steps to chart a course around. I couldn't see, but even were it sunny I'd have been blinded by memories.

Spongy fingers slipping down my bare spine then sliding back up, back up to the ink on my shoulder, I can't go back. I won't go back. My flesh and the tattoo always reformed by dawn. But every night, when his fun was over and it was time to exchange pleasantries for carnalities, he would gouge out the snow leopard's defiant smile. I can't go back. I won't go back. I need help. I need some goddamn help. blood ran free from my shoulder and, more often than not, between my legs. Oh please someone I can't I can't I can't—

With the roar of an unstoppable, crashing jet engine the dragon slammed into the first line of trees. Branches exploded around the breadth of his wings, and then those were folded tight to his serpentine body and momentum was on his side once again. I glanced over my shoulder in time to glimpse the grey fury smashing through the weaker limbs below the canopy, hurtling forward over the water with his steaming jaws opened.

He looked for all the world as if in that moment he might kill me. Before I could turn away from visions of my hands melting in a blaze of blue fire, my legs lost the race against the dragon. The blunt hammer of a snout knocked hard into my shoulder. The world rushed past in a blur. Before I knew what'd happened I was sagged like a defeated boxer against a tangle of vines and effervescent night blooms. Flowers the color of dark bruises crinkled and shattered as I struggled to lift my head, to drag myself from the freezing shock of it all.

"Enough!" The King screeched, grinding to a halt, tail lashing up tiny waves as he dragged his feathered belly through mud and reed. 

Maybe he didn't know. The thought flashed across my consciousness. Maybe he hadn't heard the Creature. Maybe one of the Witch's  stump water servants hadn't brought him the happy news. 

"Do you know what you could have done?" hissed this monster with a heart too dead even for a demon as I stood battered and bruised and positively dripping with cold fear. 

 "You've got what you wanted," I told him, forcing myself to approach. "You won't touch me anymore. I'm not for you."

  Tick-ridden feathers rose like a dirty ridge along his neck and winding spine. "You are mine!"  

 "I won't ever be." I tapped my shoulder. "Not according to this." 

Like a snake he struck. Talons wrapped around my waist. Steam coiled between us, off his heated scales and my cold, cold skin.

At the last second the claws around my waist fell away, and with it came a stream of curses. It was a small fall to the ground, with the gentility of a child dropping a beloved doll. When my back bumped against the ground I rolled into the spring. He was shaking his paw, shedding icicles from his scales, when he saw me.

But it was too late. I was running. Not in the water, but on it. Splashes frozen, kicked up like little floating icebergs that bobbed in my wake.

The King screeched, whirled in a dizzying spiral of coils, and stopped.

It would't have mattered to a beast that could fly -- but his tail was caught in the rapidly freezing water. He took a great, tremendous breath, and then the distant horizon was awash in blue and I could see across the water the gaping mouth of a cave. 

I didn't stop until I reached it, skidded inside and carried on into the dark unknown, further and further inside until the darkness before me growled.