Every other day(23)

“When I move,” I said softly, my voice nearly lost under the sound of the dragon’s equine snorts, “back away slowly. Don’t look it in the eye. Don’t draw its attention. You just get outside, and then you run.”

Skylar nodded almost imperceptibly, but it was enough that the dragon’s liquid gaze switched from my form to hers.

I had to act fast.

“Hey, Ugly! Eyes on me.” I moved sideways across the ice, and the dragon whirled to follow, its mammoth tail taking out the side of the rink. Debris scattered like shrapnel, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Skylar backing away and prayed that Bethany had the sense to do the same.

“That’s right, Godzilla. I’m the threat here. Me.”

My target reared up on its back legs, and I prepared myself for the aftershock when it slammed back down onto the ice. Smoke poured from its nostrils, and I filed that information away as calmly and rationally as I could. There were several subspecies of dragons. Some were harmless. Some ate people. Some breathed fire.

None of them were native to the area.

Based on the smoke, I was going to go out on a limb and guess this was a fire-breather. Not ideal, but on the bright side, at least I didn’t have to worry about being eaten alive.

“Don’t worry—I called Preternatural Control!” The boy who’d given us our skates was either very brave or very stupid. Given that he didn’t seem to have armed himself with so much as a fire extinguisher, I was guessing the latter. “They should be here any sec—”

Without warning, the dragon turned its pursuit from me, and its gleaming teeth closed around the boy’s middle. One second the boy was there, and the next, he was splatter.

I flinched—and hated myself for flinching, almost as much as I hated myself for not saving the boy.

It looks like we’re dealing with Draco carnus, I thought, desperately clinging to the cold, hard facts and trying so hard not to care. A man-eater.

Dully, I told myself that at least I didn’t have to worry about it breathing fire. Dragons were one or the other, not both.

Or so modern science would have had me believe.

I heard the flames before I saw them, and for a split second, I lost control of my body. I couldn’t feel my arms, couldn’t feel my legs, could only feel a hand on the small of my back and rage bubbling inside of me, like a long-dormant volcano getting ready to spew.

Not my hand.

Not my rage.

But somehow, my body dove out of the line of fire, just as a wall of flame sliced through the ice that had been directly under my feet.

The sensation lasted a second, maybe two, and then I was in control of my body again. I climbed unsteadily to my feet and tightened my grip on the ice skates in my hand, angling the blades outward.

Here goes nothing. I took aim and fired.

I knew it wouldn’t make a dent in the dragon’s armor, knew that I didn’t have the aim or the power or the fearlessness I needed to take down an opponent twenty times my size, but as the skate flew through the air, the dragon tore its gleaming onyx eyes from mine and followed the blade’s trajectory.

Dragons liked shiny things.

While it was distracted, I wracked my brain for a way out. Unless I could get close enough to reach the soft spot under its breastplate, I didn’t stand a chance of inflicting any kind of lasting damage, and Bethany was still there, her back pressed against the side of the rink, her eyes following the dragon’s every move.

I jerked my head to the side, motioning for her to go. She jerked her head, motioning for me to do the same.

If we got out of this alive, I was going to kill her.

Think, Kali, I told myself. There had to be a way out. There had to be. I didn’t want to die like this, scared and weak and unable to even remember what it felt like to be anything else.

Fifteen hours and twenty-four minutes.

Like that did me a hell of a lot of good.

I told you to run. Don’t make me tell you again.

The voice was implacable and fierce, and the fact that my enemy—who shouldn’t have even been able to talk—was ordering me around swung the pendulum of my emotions from scared to angry and from angry to pissed. Before I could make use of that, however, Bethany snapped. One second she was cowering behind the dragon, and the next, she was on her feet, poised on top of the remaining exterior wall of the rink. She didn’t say anything. She barely even moved. She just swayed—first her hips, then her arms.

I tried to process. The two of us were on the verge of death, and she was belly dancing?

Go. Now. Must—lights.

I watched as the dragon turned its head to the side, absorbing Bethany’s movement whole. I could have streaked across the ice, yodeling the national anthem, and it wouldn’t have mattered.