Page 125 of Fortune's Blade

That would have been great except that I’d almost gone up alongside them, since the blast barely missed me and the heat alone had set my jacket on fire.

“C-come the f-fuck on!” I yelled, my teeth still chattering from electricity as I tore off the burning leather before it melted to my skin. The motion jerked out the stake in my side, causing me to gasp and heave, so I ripped the one out of my foot as well, since I was already at maximum pain.

Or maybe not.

“Son of a bitch!” I screamed, attracting Antem’s attention.

“Sorry!” he yelled. “Didn’t see you just lying around there!”

I assumed that was dragon speak for “get off your ass and help us” so I did, although mainly because the fey who’d eluded the dragon fire had just snatched me up. So, I fed him a fist, and then decided that he still looked hungry and fed him a few more, while Louis-Cesare zoomed about, trying to keep the other little vessels from spewing out reinforcements. That didn’t work, the fey having realized that we weren’t as soft a target as they’d initially thought, maybe because we’d just run through two ships’ worth of their warriors in about a minute.

So, they sent three this time, which meant eighteen guys, which meant fuck, I thought, staring at them blankly.

Or make that sixteen, since Louis-Cesare managed to skewer two with a spear that he’d found somewhere as they were jumping down. Or make that fourteen, I thought, getting off a couple of shots from my favorite gun before my attacker knocked it away. And then there were eight, because Louis-Cesare must have figured out the firing mechanism of the small craft he’d commandeered.

And the third little vessel got zapped all to hell as it was bringing up the rear.

But two of its falling, burning fey managed to grab hold of Regin’s back, clinging onto the sides with crazed looks and burning hair, and then heaving themselves up and rolling to put out the flames. That was easy as our ride had started to shake and shimmy, slinging us all over the place in an attempt to avoid the electric blasts targeting him on multiple sides. He largely succeeded, but the two fey stubbornly clung on through the tumult, making the number of our assailants ten again.

The only saving grace was that Regin’s back was ridged and scarred and vaguely mossy, providing at least a few footholds, although not enough. And that the fey I was fighting was a lot taller and sturdier than I was. So, I leapt up, wrapped my legs around him, and continued trying to punch a hole through that hateful expression to remove one problem before I was swamped by the others.

And to keep my mind off the fact that I was basically surfing a giant dragon across Faerie!

Stuff like that tended to freak me out, even when my hair wasn’t crackling from residual electricity, my teeth weren’t chattering uncontrollably, and my side wasn’t bleeding like a stuck pig. Not to mention the wind trying to blow me off my very tenuous perch, who went down the next second, looking shocked that I could hit that hard. And probably suffering from a concussion, only his friends didn’t know that.

They’d stayed focused on Louis-Cesare, expecting the little woman to be no problem for a fey warrior. And now they were enraged that I’d just killed him even though I hadn’t. So, they did it for me, riddling his slumped back with arrows while trying to get one into me, while I cowered behind the now corpse because I am not stupid.

Although considering the shit that I get into, I might need to reevaluate that.

The only good news was that I found my gun, which had ended up tangled in the great mane. And although fey armor managed to stop even a .44 Magnum slug, fey brains did not. I got off a satisfying headshot, sending blood and bone flying and almost slapping me in the face because of the wind and the way that Regin was undulating. I ducked, and when I looked again, the remaining warriors had shielded.

Because yeah.

They had magic, didn’t they?

But magic has its downsides, and so does forgetting about the master vamp circling overhead. Louis-Cesare’s craft had somehow kept pace with us, despite being mostly burnt out from some attack I’d been too busy to see. But it must have been impressive, because he was dangling one handed off the little contraption, putting out flames that had caught on his thigh by slamming the face of a fey into them a couple dozen times.

Until he realized that a bunch of bowling pins had been essentially lined up for him.

He bowled a strike, or threw one, or threw the fey . . . my analogies were suffering at this point, but the basic idea was sound. And the shielded warriors didn’t handle having their buddy chucked at them with vampire strength any better than a bunch of pins. Like, really didn’t.

They scattered, with a few getting knocked off of Regin’s back, the wind stirred up by the two dragon’s wings immediately catching and whipping them away. The rest hit the deck and I got off three more shots in the confusion, and missed both heads I aimed at, because nothing was staying still, damn it! But I hit a knee, dropping a fey who had been about to put an arrow into Louis-Cesare.

Because nobody was shielded anymore, as that required concentration, didn’t it? Something becoming difficult for all of us, including me, as I tried to reload with shaking hands while keeping an eye on electric blasts and burning crafts and leaping fey. And when I finally managed it, I didn’t even get a shot off before four more crazed little vessels joined the fight, breaking off from the attack on Regin to ambush Louis-Cesare.

“Goddamnit!”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

When things go south for me in battle, it’s rarely the threats I see coming that does it, and this proved to be no exception. Because Louis-Cesare spotted the oncoming vessels, too, and snared one of the fey below him with his legs for leverage. Then used it to pull himself down to dragon back, dragging the remains of the small craft along with him, before spinning a few times and sending the wicked little thing flying—

Straight at the closest two vessels, at least one of which must have been carrying explosives. Because they detonated in a fireball that enveloped Antem, who was flying nearby, in a mass of secondary explosions and burning shards. None of which appeared to have done any harm, except to his temper.

“Sorry!” Louis-Cesare called, as he turned on us with a snarl. “I didn’t see you just flying around there!”

Antem did a double take, something that looks extremely weird on a dragon’s face, having not expected his own words to be thrown back at him. Or maybe it was for another reason. Because the remaining two oncoming vessels suddenly sped up and kamikazed Regin, the fey inside pouring out of them as soon as they crashed with wild expressions that I didn’t understand—

Until their ships blew up, too. They detonated in twin fireballs that sent a mass of flames shooting skyward, catching one of their allied ships as it sped by overhead. And riddling the dead body I was using as a shield with burning debris, including gobs of flesh, because some of the fey hadn’t shielded in time.

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