Page 27 of Draco's Fire

She shimmied back down far enough to stand up without silhouetting herself against the sky and then moved as quickly as she could silently move back to where she had left the tracks. He was leading her on a merry chase, around in a large circle. She ducked behind a tree as another shot skimmed the bark of a tree near her head.That was too close.She saw a glint of reflected light and took a shot of her own. The gleam disappeared and she heard running footsteps. She charged after him until the noise stopped. She stopped also, trying not to give her own position away any worse than she already had, and shifted back down into stealth mode.

She came across his tracks again and resumed following them. She checked her watch again. Five minutes to backup. He was maintaining his lead, but he was definitely working his way towards the house. Where Tyson was. She had to catch this guy fast.

Seventeen

Tyson

Tyson was almost sure the bullet wound wouldn't kill him, but the pain was intense. Shayla had done an excellent job with a field-dressing before she ran off. He breathed through the pain. But more, he breathed through the anger.

It started to boil inside him, a fury he'd worked so hard to control. To destroy by drowning it out with good deeds. But it was still there, waiting to rise to the surface. He hadn't felt it in so long that he'd started to convince himself he'd defeated it.

But for all his efforts, he couldn't completely extinguish that fire. All he'd done was bury it, and now it was on its way up to the surface. Guilt welled up in him as he thought of how easy it would be for him to end this fight.

He saw it in his mind, flying through the air and raining down fire to quickly end the life of whoever it was that had shot him.

The killing was the easy part, especially for a creature as mighty as a dragon. It was the living with it part, that was the challenge for someone like Tyson. Even just the thought of unleashing his full power was enough to start sending him spiraling back.

Dragons have long lives and long memories. He had a thousand years of life experience, and some of it had been bloody—very bloody. He could already feel his past coming to the surface, a wave overtaking him. He'd ended lives before.

The distant memories overwhelmed him. He saw again the villages in the jungles that he burned so quickly. In Vietnam, he thought he was doing the right thing. End it quickly. End the war and, in doing so, save more lives in the long run. It didn't end up working out like that.

Instead, the war just went on and on. For a decade, Tyson killed hundreds if not more, just with his dragon breath alone. He was unstoppable. Flying so high up above everything, one might think that he couldn't have heard the screams.

But that would be thinking in terms of human senses. He was a dragon. He heard every single one in that terrible moment before someone's throat seared and they could no longer scream. He heard the cries of every child he left an orphan.

Each time it ate at him more and more. But by then, he couldn't stop. Giving up meant everything he'd done, all the deaths he'd caused would have been for nothing. Everything he'd done would be pointless.

Each death made that price steeper and steeper, so he couldn't give up. It was an endless cycle. The ends not only justified the means but made it so he couldn't stop unless he'd reached those ends.

And so, he spent a decade burning villages. But when the US withdrew from Vietnam, it had been for nothing. And he returned home, like so many others, scarred in ways few understood with nothing to show for it. No feeling like it had meant something.

He'd sold his soul for nothing.

Since then, he'd dedicated himself to pacifism because he could no longer see that cost paying for anything but more suffering. And he thought it was over. He thought his new life meant leaving old wounds behind.

He swore to himself that he would never again be flaming death brought on by white wings. He'd come to enjoy the freedom of flight without the fire.

But now, Shayla was in danger. He couldn't let her die.

Did the ends justify the means? For her, he'd break every vow. For Shayla, he'd give up the last parts of himself because she held his heart. She was a good and pure thing in his life that nothing else could touch.

He pulled himself across the floor. The wound in his shoulder was screaming.

He just had to get outside. He didn't know how sturdy a place Gil had built. He thought he might be able to burst through it as he grew, but it wasn't a theory he wanted to test.

At full size, anything but the strongest building materials the house could be made of would be no match for his strength. But he didn't know if the middle ground between man and dragon would be enough to burst through.

Shayla was more important to him than Gil's ranch house, but there'd be no saving Shayla if he shattered his wings being reckless.

As strong as they were, the wing bones were some of the weakest on a dragon, the most delicate. He couldn't risk it.

So, he crawled across the floor, staying low. Not all his time in Vietnam had been in dragon form. It was an easy lesson to learn being in the army. Don't stand up when a sniper is trying to shoot you in the head.

While the shooting had stopped, that didn't mean someone wasn't waiting for him to show his face so they could put a new hole in it. Getting up and running would be quicker and would mean using the wounded shoulder less, but speed meant nothing if he died.

Then who would save Shayla?

So, he bit back the pain and crawled low on the floor to the front door. Then came his next problem. He still needed space to transform. Empty space. Open space with no cover.

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