Another sniff. Closer this time. “Come out, female. I know you’re in here.”
Crap!
I look around, but there is nowhere to go.
He laughs; it’s low and ugly.
“Why are you hiding from me?”
I press myself against the wall. I close my eyes like a child. Maybe if I can’t see him, he can’t see me. Footsteps stop on the other side of the scanner. The biggest machine in the room, but it isn’t enough.
He sniffs once more, right above my head, making a groaning sound. “You smell so good.”
A clawed hand comes around the edge of the machine, pulling it away.
I whimper.
He’s standing over me, grinning.
“Leave me alone.”
“I can’t.” He reaches down and grabs my upper arm, hauling me up. I scream and twist. Then I kick at his shins and his thighs, and anywhere I can reach, but it’s like kicking a wall. I beat myfists against his arm. I claw at the hand around my bicep, my nails skidding off his scales. He just lifts me higher, until my shoes are dangling above the floor, and he tilts his head and smiles at me with all those teeth.
“Pretty,” he says.
“Let go of me!” I hit at his face.
He blinks.
“Stop that.”
Then he flips me, fast, and tucks me under his arm like a rolled-up rug. The breath punches out of me. I’m hanging there with my legs kicking at nothing, my hair in my eyes, his arm locked across my back.
He smells like an animal that’s been out in the rain. He carries me out of the diagnostic bay at a jog. Down through the corridor and past Flint’s body.
“Flint!” I scream. “Please…help me!” I yell.
Flint doesn’t move. I can’t tell if he’s breathing. The sirens are still going. There’s smoke now, drifting down from where the roof is open. Two more dragons are tangling above the hospital, somewhere up there in the gray light.
He walks impossibly fast, headed toward the far end of the hangar. I dangle under his arm, trying to think of a way out of this.
Please let there be a way out of this.
I open my mouth to scream for help, and a clawed hand clamps over my mouth before any sound comes out.
I whimper.
The half-shifted dragon drags me into the wide opening where the roof used to be. He lifts his face to the sky. He drops me just long enough to change, and his body explodes outward into a dragon with red-marked scales.
I scream when a huge claw closes around me. It snatches me off the floor before I can take two steps. Then we’re going up.The world drops away in a sickening lurch. The opening in the roof flashes past. The hospital shrinks, and cold air slams into my face and pulls my hair straight back. Below me, the loading bay, the parking lot, the lights of the hospital. Above me, the underside of a Red Dragon, and the curve of his claw caging me in.
“Heeeeelp!” I scream it, but the wind eats the word as soon as it leaves my mouth. Another dragon comes at us from the side. I see it for half a second, and then the Red Dragon banks hard. I am thrown against the inside of his claw. My head clips something. The other dragon snaps at his wing and misses by a foot. I see into the thing’s mouth, and it’s all teeth.
The Red Dragon climbs. He flips, then he twists in the air like a fighter jet, and I almost pass out. My stomach comes up into my throat, or, at least, it feels like it. For a few seconds, I am sure I’m going to vomit. I gag, but thank god the feeling soon passes. He banks again. Another dragon snaps at us from below, his teeth gnashing together.
I’m sure I’m screaming, but I don’t hear a thing. There’s only the rush of the wind and my heart beating in my ears.
My captor swings me out of the way at the last second, and the claw squeezes tight on the upswing. My ribs grind together. I can’t get a full breath. Then he’s away, pumping his great wings fast. Way faster than I knew anything could fly.
