Page 48 of Time's Fool

He heard the beginnings of a warning coming from the crow, but it was too late. Vampire speed was like lightning, and while he was still learning to use it along with the rest of his new abilities, this didn’t take a great deal of know-how. He ducked under the fist that one of the supposed sailors was throwing, dodged past the reaching arms of the other, and then leapt over the flying lunge that the man with the missing ear was making.

He did not dodge the knife that the young woman threw, because he hadn’t noticed it until it was sticking out of his chest. But it was metal, which meant that the flesh closed up almost immediately after he jerked it out, and Kit sidestepped her other knife, which whistled past his ear.

Then he stuck the weapon into the doorframe heading into the back of the ale house and stepped over the threshold—

And into another world.

Chapter Fourteen

Kit’s back foot was still on the scarred boards of the alehouse as his other stepped down . . . onto soft, green grass. His face and body followed, with the strangest feeling, as if he was surfacing from a pool of cold water. He gasped in surprise, dizziness taking hold of him for a brief moment, and confusing him as to which way was up.

And before he could figure it out, his momentum had him falling and then rolling down a short incline to the edge of a stream. One that his right hand splashed into when he caught himself, disturbing a small silver fish. The fish took off, darting behind some flooded stones, and Kit looked up—

Into an eyeball as large as his head.

He froze. The pupil of the eye, which was a crimson flame in the midst of a sunburst of gold, contracted. For a moment, that was the only movement anywhere, as it felt like even the world held its breath.

Then Kit found out exactly how fast a vampire can move, when a taloned hand almost as large as his body slammed down onto the place where he’d been lying a split second before. It made a huge divot from the force of the blow, and sent a cascade of water flying. Kit saw the droplets as a sparkling rainbow over a scene flooded with sun, and received a vague impression of blue skies, rolling green hills, and scattered trees, before having to move again.

And again, and again, exerting all his ability, all his power, to marginally stay ahead of his pursuer. Yet he wasn’t fast enough to get away before more claws hit down, cutting him off in every direction, and sending rich black soil into his face. It joined the water to coat him in mud as he slipped and slid and dove and jumped, while the beast didn’t even appear to be trying.

Only that was wrong, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a beast. It was a—

“Dragon!” Kit heard somebody screech.

It might have been him.

He didn’t know anymore, and didn’t have time to think about it, as his every ounce of skill was being used to keep him alive. And then he made a mistake. In his desperation to get out of there, to find a way back to the door that led to the alehouse, he skidded on some mud, went down, and one of his flailing arms encountered something soft and squishy as he tried to catch himself.

Something that turned out to be a huge, golden orb.

Kit had an instant to absorb the fact that he had just punched a dragon in the eye, when the creature reared back with a mind splitting screech. It all but paralyzed him from the sheer noise of it, like a thousand off-tune trumpets sounding all at once and all in his face. It rattled through his body like a saber blow, flattening his lungs, coiling in his belly, and causing his flesh to feel as though it was about to shudder off his bones—

And then he was flying.

It took him another instant to realize that he’d just been hit by that great tail, and then he was all but flattened by the speed and force with which he hit a tree.

A broken branch erupted from his chest, blessedly on the other side from his heart, and another skewered his thigh, but he didn’t have time to worry about them. Because the dragon, a huge, pewter colored variety if they had varieties which he didn’t know and didn’t care, was coming. And it was no longer playing.

Kit ripped himself off of the tree, leaving a good bit of blood and tissue behind, just as the huge tail sent the entire thing sailing toward the horizon.

Wood splintered and flew everywhere, including into Kit in a hundred small slivers; water rained down in more prismatic droplets, because the dragon’s tail had dragged through the stream on its way to obliterate the tree; and leaves swirled everywhere as if caught in a gale. Which was probably just the force of the blow combined with the dragon’s scorching breath, which Kit felt sear over top of him as he hit the ground, hard enough to have turned a human’s organs into mush. But Kit wasn’t one.

And although he might be little more than a baby in vamp terms, the Push that his Lady had given him had determined that he was not so in power.

And he was suddenly furious.

Which was why, in the midst of the storm of ash and steam, which was what had become of the twigs and leaves and water when met by dragon breath, Kit rolled over. And jumped back to his feet. And when the great beast came flying at him, slicing through the air like a speeding arrow, this time it was met by something other than stunned inaction.

This time, it was met by his fist.

Kit hadn’t figured out most of his new abilities yet, including the special talents that master level vampires developed if they lived long enough or were Pushed hard enough, but he had been able to learn one. A very important one. And since he had always been a brawler, both as a human and a vampire, it made sense that his gift had manifested as a powerful, unseen fist.

One that hit as hard as a cannon.

A large one.

It was enough to stun his oncoming doom, and to send it off course and into the dirt. Where it plowed up a small mountain’s worth of soil before coming to a halt, screeching again. And spun about, holding its crumpled snout, where Kit’s blow had fallen, and . . .

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