The clicking picked up excitedly. Shadows took shape as the dragon emerged from the darkness, its four wings reared back and twitching. It had eight spindly legs ending in dual hairy tarsal claws. They jabbed the barn floor one after the other in halting, inhuman movements as the creature came closer, closer, closer. Its pinchers clicked together in front of its wide, fanged mouth. Its eight eyes blinked independently, never letting Courtney and me out of its sight.
Adrenaline whooshed through my veins, setting my musclesalight. I did not sign up for winged, fire-breathing spiders. The spider dragon took another step forward, long talons crunching bones littering the ground.
“Uh, Court, maybe this was a bad idea.”
All eight of the dragon’s eyes clicked in succession, swiveling toward me.
Courtney flapped the raw steak around. “Here, dragon, dragon, dragon.”
Eight eyes snapped to her.
The dragon struck at a speed I couldn’t track.Zip, zip.Courtney’s jaw dropped as she stared at the quivering, bleeding scrap of meat left in her hand.
The dragon pulverized the steak like an infomercial juicer, pulp flying. My stomach churned. “Run.” The word came out a raspy nightmare whisper.
The dragon snapped its wings wide, stirring up a tornado of dust within the barn. It arched back its head, toothy maw gaping wide. Fire roiled to life in the back of its throat, sending a heat wave blasting over us.
I stumbled away, but Courtney stood frozen, that bag of scraps dangling uselessly at her side.
“Run!” I yelled, but she didn’t move, silhouetted in the blinding light filling the barn as flames churned and licked around the dragon’s razor teeth.
I darted forward, grabbed Courtney’s hand, and yanked her away as the dragon unleashed a stream of flames. I dragged her out the door, fire literally hot on my heels. I risked a peek back. The dragon burst from the barn, its side banging into one of the steel doors and crumpling it like a tin can. It shrieked at the sky, unleashing another stream of blinding flames.
My legs pumped faster, my hand clammy in Courtney’s. “Run,” I said again. “Run, run, run.”
We burst into the tree line, the subwoofer thumps of the dragon’s wings pounding against my eardrums. The trees bent asthe beast lunged into the sky. Waves of air battered against us, forcing us to our knees. Spotting an alcove tucked between massive, gnarled tree trunks, I pointed, urging Courtney forward. We crawled into the space and hunkered low, willing the dragon to move on.
I couldn’t see it through the trees and darkened sky, only heard its pounding wings. They went on and on for what felt like hours but must’ve only been a few minutes. At last, with one final scream, the sound of its wings faded.
The air grew still. I panted, slumping against a tree root.
Courtney slipped her hand from mine, letting out a shaky breath. Then she hopped to her feet, tossing the Disturbing Sack aside. “The mouse must’ve translated the prophecy wrong. Even though I’m not the Chosen One, you were there, too, and it still tried to eat us both. But you should have been able to tame it. The mouse said the Chosen One could tame the dragon.”
“Why are you listening to prophecies from random mice?” I was too busy undergoing acute chest pains to pay much attention to what she was saying.
“It wasn’t a random mouse. It was my sidekick.”
“Right,” I wheezed, “the famous sidekick nobody but you has seen. And look where it landed us.”
“There are worse things.”
“Are there? Are there really? Because I can’t think of much that’s worse than an oversized, flying,fire-breathing spider.”
“We weren’t in any real danger,” she said.
“We weren’t?” Slowly, the vise of fear loosened around my heart.
“Nah. Now, if it had been a flying vending machine, we might’ve been in trouble.”
“You ass.” I scrambled to my feet, my temper flaring, numbing the fear away. Her words weren’t soothing, but, in a way, they did manage to chase off my panic. It was the emotional equivalent of telling someone you had a headache, and them offering tosmash your finger to make your head feel better—drowning out a smaller feeling with a bigger, new one.
“What happens when the dragon starts ravaging the countryside?” I asked. “It won’t take much to figure out who’s to blame.”
Her reaction caught me off guard. It was the same look she had when I told her to start over with her life, the same look she had when Amy said she had to change if she ever hoped to save the world. There was a familiarity to the crack in her expression, like a mug with a handle that had been glued back together in the same spot time and time again. She wasn’t surprised by the fact she’d royally messed up. I guessed that made sense.
Everyone told her she was a screwup; I’d heard the phone conversations with her parents through the thin duplex walls. Her family, Amy, even I had tried to push her to do something different with her life. I hadn’t considered the fact that the constant berating actually got to her, that maybe shedidtry, and it always led to disasters like this one.
“Maybe it will fly away,” she said weakly, and now I caught the edge of panic in her seemingly unconcerned voice. “Maybe it’s happy, free and chilling in the wild. Maybe it’ll never hurt anyone, and no one will ever have to know.”
