Page 2 of Magick and Lead
There was also blood on the cream loveseat, and on the rug.
But if there was one thing Langford and his boys knew how to do, it was to clean up blood.
“Get a bandage on his neck,” Langford commanded, and his spooks obeyed, swooping in with gauze and a cloth.
Kitty was still catching her breath, still licking the blood from her lips, still gyrating her hips with desire as Langford pushed her off Ramos and back against the couch.
He knelt and slid a knife from his boot.
“Focus, Kitty. Remember what the prelate said? We have very little time to turn him,” he said with unnatural calm. “Now hold him still while I cut out his eyes.”
2
ESSA
Like a bolt of lightning dropped from on high, we fell upon our enemies. Othura caught a black-armored Lacuna by the helmet with one of her back talons and slammed him to the ground as we landed. Another charged us on horseback. I ducked the slash of his blade, pivoted in my saddle, and buried my sword in his neck. I sensed motion behind me and turned to see a pair of jaws streaking toward my face—a huge serpent-shaped golena sped toward us. But with a flash of white and a rush of cold, it froze mid-strike, embedded in ice. Razune landed next to it, her breath still wispy white from breathing ice. On her back, Pocha nocked an arrow and fired it through the eye-slit of another Lacuna’s helmet, dropping him. Othura shifted beneath me and smashed the frozen serpent into pieces with a whip of her tail.
Nice work,I told Pocha, using the silent communication—the simnal—which for us dragon riders was as familiar as speech. Pocha nodded back to me, her plump, normally smiling face grim with resolve.
I sensed motion above me and ducked as a purple dragon slammed a birdlike winged golena to the earth. The clay monsterthrashed there, its beak snapping, claws scrabbling to slice the dragon’s tough skin.
A clip, strapped onto my missing right forearm in place of a hand, held me to the saddle. I undid it now, slid off Othura’s back, raised my sword, and hacked at the bird monster’s eyes. Two, three, four chops and the beast’s left eye rolled out of its socket, crimson and sizzling like a burning coal. I stomped it to powder beneath my boot, and the left side of the golena’s body went limp. Lure leapt from the purple dragon’s back and drove a dagger into the monster’s other glowing eye. The light in it went out, and the creature twitched once more, then went still.
Lure stepped back, one hand on their stomach.
You okay?I demanded using the simnal.
Lure pushed back the visor on their helmet and nodded, wincing.
I knew Lure should have stayed back at camp. It was too soon for them to be fighting again after their injury—but they were too stubborn to stay behind. As a person who’d been called stubborn a few times myself, I could relate.
“Take it easy,” I ordered.
Lure flipped me off, smiling.
Oddly enough, it filled me with joy. I might be queen now, but at least I could count on my friends to continue treating me the same as ever.
The sound of hooves drew my attention, and I wheeled, ready to face another Lacuna—or maybe a hooved golena of some kind. But it was another of my Skrathan friends, Dagar, riding on my horse, Sisha. He reigned her in, out of breath.
“Guys, come on! I can’t keep up,” he huffed.
Dragons don’t wait for horses,was a common saying among the Skrathan, but it would have been too cruel to say aloud. Dagar had lost his dragon the day of the assault on Charcain. Theday Issastar fell. The day my mother died. The day everything changed.
Gods, we all lost so much that day…
But Dagar, perhaps, had lost the most. Because a rider without their dragon was like a body without a soul. That was another Skrathan saying...
Dagar kept up a brave face, though, as he dismounted, brandishing his sword and shield.
“Well?” he said. “What are we waiting for?”
We all turned toward the target of our mission: a door, half concealed with bushes, that led into the side of a hill. Local farmers had told us they’d seen Lacuna going in and out.
Was it too much to hope for that my missing friends Rohree and Ollie were being held inside? Or Clua—who had gone to search for Rohree and never returned? It probablywastoo much to hope for. But we had to find out.
Othura took a deep breath, her silvery scales glinting as her belly expanded, then she blew out a gust of wind so powerful it blasted the door off its hinges. It fell inward with a boom, exposing the darkness beyond.
“Geez, Othura. Nobody tried the knob. It might have been unlocked,” Dagar quipped. It felt good to see him joking, but I couldn’t muster a smile or even a laugh. Not when Mother was dead. Not when our kingdom was lost and overrun with monsters. Not when Kit—Charlie…
