Page 19 of Rook
“Shot me,” Janice gasped. Sasha hooked her arms under Janice’s and dragged her behind a toppled recycling bin, gritting her teeth against the weight. She pressed a hand to the wound, her fingers coming away slick with blood and fear.
“Stay with me,” she whispered.
A slaver stalked past their hiding spot, his weapon held loosely, his eyes scanning the campsites. Was he looking for her? Or was she just unlucky? In the end, it didn’t matter.
There was no running from this. Not anymore. She could hide, or she could fight.
If she was going to survive, she had to fight.
11
Rook tracked the energy signature through a tangle of blackened trees. His boots snapped twigs and kicked up ash that stuck to his sweaty face. When he emerged at the edge of the forest, he found a world unraveling in fire.
Night had barely fallen, but the sky rippled with unnatural red light. Sparks leaped ten feet from burning tents, and flames writhed in angry rings through the campsites. People's screams mixed with the undercurrent of slaver voices barking in a clipped, sharp-edged tongue.
Explosions erupted between the vehicles, rocking the rows of battered campers and sending shrapnel into the weeds. The air reeked of burning fuel and something sweeter that made his stomach turn. Burned flesh had a smell you didn't forget.
He caught their shapes through the flickering light. A cluster of terrified humans huddled with their hands raised, herded by two slavers in armor. Their eyes glowed like lanterns in the smoky dark.
A fifteen-foot wall of living fire flickered between the hostages and the forest, penning them in a circle of pure terror. Every time one of them tried to cross that boundary, the flames licked higher with a warning hiss. The cries of the trapped pushed against his skull. Someone shouted a name. Someone else sobbed, their lungs scorched raw. The slavers didn't care. Their attention was fixed outward, scanning for new victims.
He should have known this was coming.
The silence of the last two days had been too thick. He'd crashed through ravines, snagging his pants on thorns and nearly twisting his ankle three times while chasing erratic bursts of energy on his battered tracker. Every trail ended at a blank telepad or a deliberately set fire.
Now, with grim clarity, he saw the truth. The slavers had been running him in circles like an idiot, laying a false trail while they plotted to gather their prey.
He wanted to burn this whole rotten place down to the roots. Rook dropped to a half-crouch, letting the scent of burning pine fill his nose and the heat soak into his skin. He spotted the telltale black of a slaver's uniform up the main road, striding toward two cowering children pressed against the bumper of a rusted-out trailer.
There was no time to think.
He lunged. Fire rolled from his hand, a ribbon of molten orange that tore through the sagging underbrush. The slaver didn't even see him coming, didn't see him for what he was: a dragon lord, not some Earth stray. The fire hit center mass and folded the slaver's armor like cheap fabric, toppling him into the dirt. The force of it shook the ground, a tremor that sent one of the human children sliding backward.
Too close. The boy screamed, his hair singed where the flame had shot past. Shit. Fury slammed through Rook. If his focus slipped, if his fire was a degree off, these people would die just as surely as by slaver hands.
He closed his fist, squeezing the fire back into his veins until it snarled and bucked inside him.
Gods, he hated this planet.
He hated that his fire was the only thing he had, and sometimes it was too much. He couldn't arm himself with the weapons the humans used, primitive, reckless things that were loud and unpredictable. A blaster might have been practical, but he was a dragon. This was a matter of pride, of blood. The ancient Vemion code settled heavy in his bones. His fire was his honor, his birthright, and, right now, his curse.
He surged forward, pushing past the fallen slaver. The child and his sister broke free, running flat-out down a gap between two vans.
He pressed deeper into the heart of the camp. The slavers were everywhere, but for all their strength, they were distracted. The humans had finally begun to fight back. In a clearing, a trio of men crouched behind an overturned picnic table, wielding hunting rifles and garden tools. Someone swung a cast-iron skillet at a slaver, the clang cutting through the air. The slavers had their attention split, and it was costing them.
He nearly tripped on a cooler as he looped around a grove of pines, heat beating at his face from a tent that was completely engulfed in flames. That was when he saw her.
Tucked behind a battered brown van, a model so familiar it made his stomach drop, a woman fought like the world wouldn't wait for her to figure things out: Sasha.
She was surrounded by a half-dozen humans: an older woman clutching a bloody rag to her leg, a whip-thin boy wielding a hedge trimmer with shaking hands, a man in a plaid shirt bleeding from a scalp wound that had matted half his hair. They'd dragged recycling bins and broken chairs into a rough barricade that wouldn't have stopped a determined raccoon, let alone alien slavers.
Sasha held a huge red canister in her hands. She hefted it like a weapon, her shoulders straining under the weight. As a slaver raised his palm, Sasha pointed the black tube coming out of the top of the canister and squeezed. White, choking foam blasted out, smothering the flames as they leaped from the slaver's hand. The jet soaked his boots and knocked him off-balance.
Pride rushed through him. Sasha's eyes blazed with determination. She shouted instructions to her little band, telling the boy when to duck and when to reload her pistol. Every time a slaver drew near, Sasha stood in front, brave and stupid all at once.
She was going to get herself killed.
He absorbed every detail in a single heartbeat. They barely knew each other. She should mean nothing to him. Yet he felt branded by the sight of her, shouting, sweating, reckless, stubborn, and so utterly alive.
