“Smells like dragon… but also smells like iron. Another abomination!”
“It was just a spell,” Penny says.
“Whose magic?” Margaret yanks at the ropes, heaving Simon back.
“M-mine,” he stammers. “I was a magician. I cast the spell.”
“Why!”
“I wanted wings,” he says. “I wanted to fly.”
“Why tail?”
“I wanted to be free!”
She steps away from Simon, and he falls back to the ground. She watches him try to sit up.“Yessss. Am free,”she says in our heads.“Is better than this. Is best.”
She walks back to the fire.
“Do you believe us?” Bunce asks.
Margaret shrugs. “Believe you are malformed outcast tourist trash.”
She’s not wrong there. “So,” I say carefully, “we can go?”
“You will go to the Next Blood? Fight them?”
“Yes!” Simon yells.
“Go,” she says. “Tell the Next Blood they will never be top. Are the top!Am.Next Blood will burn, up when we wake. Up when we wake at the top.”
The woman—thedragon?—takes the Normal’s hand. “Take them away, Shepard. Don’t let them hurt you. Let them hurt bloodeaters.” She squeezes his hand, then walks away from us and the fire.
“Wait!” Bunce calls out. “My ring. I need my ring.”
The woman turns abruptly, as if Penny has attacked her, and holds up a clenched fist. She must be wearing thirty rings anda dozen gold bracelets.“Is mine now!”she thunders in our heads.
Penny sounds tearful. “Please. I can’t do magic without it. I can’t help my friend. Or hurt bloodeaters.”
The dragon—shemustbe—walks back to Penny and glares down at her. She brings her heavy hand to her mouth and closes her teeth around Penny’s ring. Then she spits something—the purple stone from its centre—into the dirt.
And then she leaves.
We’re still alive. And she’s gone.
36
SIMON
Shepard unties me first, then I free Baz. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve felt better, to be honest,” he says. Which makes me think he must be nearly dead.
I help him stand. “We’ll get you out of here and get you something to drink. More cats. A cow. Something.”
My wings are flapping around, half out of control. It hurt so badly to have them tied down—I think I might have sprained something. I hope it isn’t a break. It’s not like I can pop in to a veterinary clinic and have it set.
Penny doesn’t wait to be untied before she starts hammering Shepard with questions: “Where are these vampires? How do we find them? Where’s our car?”
