I can't kill that thing. It's going to slaughter me as easily as the others. And then take Iliana.
It didn't matter. She had to try.
"Put the girl down," she said. She kept her half-and-half shape to say it. Maybe she could startle it by changing suddenly when she sprang.
"I don't think so," the dragon said with Jaime's mouth. It had Jaime's voice down perfectly. But then it opened the mouth, and basso profundo laughter came out, so deep and startling that Keller felt ice down her spine.
"Come on," Keller said. "Neither of us wants her hurt." While she was talking, she was moving slowly, trying to circle behind it. But it turned with her, keeping its back to the Jeep.
"You may not," the dragon said. "But I really don't care. She's already hurt; I don't know if she'll make it anyway." Its grin spread wider.
"Put her down," Keller said again. She knew that it wouldn't. But she wanted to keep talking, keep it off guard.
She also knew it wasn't going to let her get behind it. Panthers naturally attack from behind. It wasn't going to be an option.
Keller's eyes shifted to the huge and ancient pine tree the Jeep was parked under. Or they didn't actually shift, because that would have given the dragon a clue. She expanded her awareness to take it in.
It was her chance.
"We haven't even properly introduced ourselves-" she began.
And then, in mid-sentence, she leaped.
Chapter 17
Not for the dragon. She jumped for the tree.
It was a good, tall loblolly pine, whose drooping lower branches didn't look as if they could support a kitten. But Keller didn't need support. As she leaped, she changed, pushing it as fast as she could. She reached the tree with four paws full of lethal claws extended.
And she ran straight up the vertical surface. Her claws sank into the clean, cinnamon trunk, and she shot up like a rocket. When she got high enough to be obscured by the dull-green needles on the droopy branches, she launched herself into the air again.
It was a desperate move, betting everything on one blind spring. But it was all she could think of. She could never take the dragon in a fair fight.
She was betting on her claws.
In the wild, a panther could shear the head off a deer with a single swipe.
Keller was going for the horns.
She came down right on target. The dragon made the mistake of looking up at her, maybe thinking that she was trying to get behind it, to land on its back again and kill it. Or maybe thinking that she might see the pale face of an innocent girl and hesitate.
Whatever it thought, it was a mistake.
Keller was already slashing as she landed. A single deadly swipe with all her power behind it. Her claws peeled the forehead off the creature in a spray of blood and flesh.
The screaming roar almost burst her eardrums.
It was the sound she'd heard before in the mall, a sound so deep in pitch that she felt it as much as heard it. It shook her bones, and it reverberated in every tree and in the red clay of the ground.
And that was another mistake, although Keller didn't know it at once.
At the same instant as she heard the roar, she felt the pain. The dark power crackled through her like a whiplash and tore her own involuntary scream from her. It was worse than the first time she'd felt it, ten times worse, maybe more. The dragon was much stronger.
And it followed her.
Like a real whip, it flashed across the clearing after her. It hit her again as she hit the ground, and Keller screamed again.
It hurt.
She tried to scrabble away, but the pain made her weak, and she fell over on her side. And then the black energy hit her right shoulder-exactly where it had hit the first time in the mall.
Keller saw white light.
And then she was falling in darkness.
Her last thought was, I didn't get it. I couldn't have. It still has power.
Diana, I'm sorry...
She stopped feeling anything.
She opened her eyes slowly.
Hurts...
She was looking up at the dragon.
It had dropped Iliana; Keller couldn't see where. And it was staring down at her in malevolent fury, obviously waiting for her to wake up so she could feel it when it killed her.
When he killed her. He'd taken on the shape he'd been wearing in the beginning. A young man with clean, handsome features and a nicely muscled if compact body. Black hair that shed rainbow colors under the moonlight and looked as fine and soft as her own fur. And those obsidian eyes.
It was hard to look away from those eyes. They seemed to capture her gaze and suck her in. They were so much more like stones than eyes, silver-black, shiny stones that seemed to reflect all light out again.
But when she managed to drag her gaze upward, she felt a thrill of hope. His forehead was a bleeding ruin.
She had gotten him. Her slash had carved a nice hamburger-sized piece out of his scalp. Somewhere on the ground in the clearing were two little stubby horns.
But only two; there were three left on his head. He must have turned at the last instant. Keller would have cursed if she had a human throat.
"How're you feeling?" the dragon said, and leered at her form under the gory mess of his scalp.
Keller tried to snarl at him and realized that she did have a human throat. She must have collapsed back into her half-and-half form, and she was too weak to change back again.
"Having trouble?" the dragon asked.
Keller croaked, "You should never have come back."
"Wrong," the dragon said. "I like the modern world."
"You should have stayed asleep. Who woke you up?" She was buying time, of course, to try and regain some strength. But she also truly wanted to know.
The dragon laughed. "Someone," he said. "Someone you'll never know. A witch who isn't a witch. We made our own alliance."