“He's on Fifth towards the corner of Yagua,” I relayed the info into the radio.
“You have a good memory,” Finn's slight Irish accent had an impressed tone to it.
“Thanks. You remember the corner or do you need a lift?” I held out my hand.
“I'll take a ride if you're offering.” He grinned and slapped his hand in mine.
We went invisible and I took us to the corner of Fifth and Yagua.
He's behind a guy in a cowboy hat,Odin reported.Just grab him this time, don't wait.
We weren't waiting before, I muttered back. To everyone else, I added, “He's trailing a man in a cowboy hat.”
This time, I went visible so I wouldn't run into anyone. Or at least they wouldn't run into me. I spotted the men just a block ahead of me; they both had their backs to me. A lone dog barked but he wasn't on our street; this road was quiet except for the hollow steps of cowboy boots and the harder crack of the snake's footsteps. He was making himself heard. By contrast, Finn and I ran up on the balls of our feet like ninjas, but just as we reached them, the man in the hat turned to see who was making all that noise behind him. Before he'd completed the turn, the snake-shifter had transformed into a huge, pale-green snake that resembled Viper in his snake form but wasn't nearly as vivid in color.
The human's eyes went wide as he saw his pursuer and he froze, his hand on the holstered gun on his hip. Yeah, pretty much everyone in Lexington carried a gun; I'd seen ladies pull them out of their handbags. But this guy was too startled to use it. The snake reared back, rising several feet to strike, and I leapt for him. A whole lot of gods leapt with me. I managed to grab the snake just below its head while everyone else got a piece of tail. Sorry, that didn't sound right.
“Run!” I snarled at the man in the hat.
It said a lot about how much he was scared that the guy followed my order and ran instead of finally pulling his gun. I watched him for a few seconds, just to make sure he continued to flee, then focused back on my target. The snake writhed in our hands and managed to draw itself up, above our god pile. His scales turned a putrid green in the light of a nearby streetlamp and his eyes flashed pus yellow. A feeling of revulsion came over me, my hands going clammy.
The snake met my stare and hissed one word, “Godhunter!”
Then he sprang free of us like a wet noodle and slithered into the grass. We ran after him, but he seemed to vanish into thin air. Or thin grass, rather.
“Fred Flintstone!” Re snarled. “He traced.”
“Did he?” I asked as I wandered into the field behind the trailer park.
I sniffed deeply: I had his scent and it rapidly became visible. My dragon always translates smells into colors for me and with the color came a general sense of the person the scent belonged to—their height and build. I don't know why a scent can tell me those things but it does. The physical impression didn't matter since I already knew what the snake-shifter looked like, but his scent lingered, andthathelped immensely. I followed a jagged ribbon of acid-green through the grass and everyone else followed me.
“What happened? Where is he?” Austin asked as he came running up.
“We've got a scent.” Trevor held up his hand to hold Austin back.
“Here,” Kirill lopped ahead of me.
I grimaced at him. “I was getting there.”
Kirill grinned. “Not fast enough.”
“Impatient Intare,” I muttered as I joined my husband.
Kirill kicked down some of the tall grass and revealed a hole in the ground. A large hole. I knelt before it and took a deep whiff.
“This goes deep,” I growled, a little dragon rumbling through my voice. “I can't delve it entirely.”
Trevor crouched beside me and sniffed as well. “I'd say at least twenty feet. I lose the trail a little past that.”
“If you'd both just move aside, I could go in after him,” Viper suggested.
Kirill, Trevor, and I swiveled our heads to stare at Viper, then at each other. We shrugged and stood up.
“Shit, we're gonna have gawkers soon,” Austin said as he looked off toward the mobile home park on our right—a light had come on in one of the trailers.
“Go back to your truck,” I told him. “We'll take care of this and meet you at your house.”
“I'm not leavin' now,” he hissed under his breath.
