The Gulfstream had started to move now, rolling toward the runway, cutting a path through the snow that lay on this unplowed section of tarmac. I dodged under the flailing Bastian as he ripped his head out the side of the building with a screech of metal being shredded. I pumped my legs as I ran for the Gulfstream Jet. The ramp was already starting to lift, the hydraulics pulling it shut. I cursed and hurried on, trying to catch up with it.
“GET BACK HERE!” The shout was world-ending, as if a lion had roared it but crossed with the subtle hiss of a snake. I looked back in time to see Bastian dive at me jaws first and I leapt aside, just not quite fast enough. He snagged my arm in his mouth as he went, and I felt it. He didn’t bury but one or two teeth in my right forearm, but it was enough to make me scream. I felt something flood through me and the pain subsided; I hoped it was adrenaline but I had no idea. Bastian was speeding up now and my arm was trapped in his jaws, dragging the rest of me along for the ride. I had the presence of mind with the pain blotted out to try something, though, and I grabbed hold of one of the long feathers that stuck out of the sides of his head where the gills would be on a fish, and I ripped hard on it. I wasn’t trying to pluck it, however, I was trying to use it to pull myself up.
It worked, and I propelled my body up onto the top of his head. I tried to grab hold there, but there was no obvious place to grasp, so I contented myself with pushing my fingers into a neat cleft in his skin where I presumed scales met. I tightened my grip and tried to wrench loose of the biting hold he had my other arm in, but I couldn’t really feel it all that well presently. This was not a huge, surprise, though, considering he had a six-inch long tooth squarely through the middle of my arm.
I held on as he took me a little higher. He lifted us about twenty feet into the air, above the Gulfstream, which was taxiing down a snow-covered runway away from where it had been parked. I could see, far in the distance, where the runway they were on turned onto the one that the snowplow had been diligently working to clear. Dimly, I knew that if I didn’t somehow reach Winter’s plane by the time they made the turn, I would have failed because they’d take off as soon as they hit the clear tarmac, and I’d lose him, possibly forever.
I gripped Bastian tighter as he started to take a turn to my left. He really did remind me of a Chinese dragon. His body fluttered lazily through the air in a way that defied the laws of physics, like no bird I had ever seen was capable of. He curled upright, straightening as though he were turning to spiral up, but I felt his wings falter with the next flap. The Gulfstream was ahead of us, and he had seemed to be going for it, but the next flap was weaker still, and I heard Bastian exhale in pain.
I realized, just barely, that I felt a surge of something through my hand where I gripped his skull. It was my power at work, again, and I felt the tingle through me, the sweet surge of something like endorphins as I felt my fingers start to draw him out. “Looks like you’re not as thick-skinned as Clary, Roberto,” I breathed as Bastian began to sink back toward the ground, each subsequent flap of his wings doing less and less to hold him aloft. The sound of the wind was mingled with the howling noise of his consciousness being absorbed into mine. He didn’t scream, at least not at first, but when he did, it was a fearsome bellow that shook the world around me.
Bastian sank, closer and closer to the ground, his body beginning to shrink as we came down. My feet hit the snow-covered tarmac with a soft squish, and the snowflakes that were falling made me blink every few seconds and keep my head down. His body was returning to human, a bizarre, slow transformation that was punctuated with pained grunts from him that grew in intensity as the seconds wore on. He tried to batter me away but I held tight as his scales turned back to skin, and the place where I had gripped him turned back into his forehead. He had my arm in his mouth but let it go as it became too much for him and with a last surge I felt him go limp and I dropped his body to the ground as the pleasant swirl in my head took over.
I left his naked corpse behind as I started to run, the natural high of my powers blotting out the pain in my right arm where he’d impaled it. I didn’t even look at it as I took off through the snow. The Gulfstream was ahead, I could see it, and all I needed to do was break a window and I’d officially put a serious damper on their travel plans. I wasn’t surprised the charter pilot had kept going after what was happening on the runway, but I doubted he’d be dumb enough to attempt to fly away with a depressurized cabin.