Page 103 of Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 29)

“You would try; remember I helped train you.”

“I hate you for what you did.”

“I understand.”

“Enough,” Jean-Claude said. “We do not need to understand how the Mother of All Darkness put a piece of herself inside the three of you since no vampire alive today can duplicate it. Just tell us what happened.”

“Seven of us were sent to kill him,” Ru said.

“I knew of only four, why were three not listed with them?” Jake asked.

“We did many things off the books, as they say,” Rodina said.

Jean-Claude said, “No more interruptions, please, Jake; I want at least the beginnings of a plan before dawn.”

Jake just nodded, not bothering with any reply. Smart, I’d at least have apologized.

“The four were sent to approach him from the front of his cave, but we came over the hill at his back,” Rodina said.

“We were in half-human form,” Ru added.

“We could not see the battle, but we heard him make the noise that was always a precursor to him spewing his deadly fire. The four in front were outfitted with hardened leather to drape over them. We know that they hid under them, because Drakon spit fire, then bragged that their puny shelters would not save them from his wrath. We leapt on him while he watched them burn, I to the right, Rodrigo to the left, and Ru at the monster’s back.”

“Forgive me, but I must ask if the placement was important to the spell?” Jake said.

“It was,” Ru said.

Rodina continued, “We needed to surround him as much as safely possible so that his larger form was enveloped in the magic. The four in front threw off the burning leather sheets and scattered, because he thought they had used up their shield against his greatest weapon and that his next spout would destroy them, but our claws scored his flesh from three sides simultaneously and for that night they were her claws, filled with her power and magic. He screamed and whirled toward me as I landed on the ground at his feet. I heard the rumble as his body formed the Greek fire, but I was not there when we heard the click and he spewed the fire. It burned and melted the small trees on that side of the cave mouth, but I was safely behind him with Ru.”

“He turned around toward us,” Ru said. “If he’d looked to the other side first he might have caught a glimpse of us running into the forest on the other side.”

“If he didn’t have his fire we could have had him chasing his tail,” Rodina said, “but he was too dangerous to play such games with.”

“The others were shooting arrows into him, to cover our escape,” Ru said.

Rodina added, “If it were possible to fill him full of enough arrows all at once it might kill him, but the number of archers needed to do that when they had to shoot one arrow at a time...” She shook her head. “The first archers would hit their mark, but he would use his fire on the rest, those not horribly injured or dead would run, and no one would blame them.”

“I can still hear the sound he made just before he breathed fire as we ran through the trees. I thought he would burn us before we could race clear of him,” Ru said.

“We would have lost one, or all of us, but one of the other Harlequin must have moved and drawn his attention. If it was done to save us, I wish I knew whose name to praise, but I think it was carelessness, or simple bad luck that turned his attention to them and away from us. It gave us enough time to be out of the range for his fire,” Rodina said.

Edward said, “So you could tell us how far away we need to be for safety?”

“Not down to the inch, but yes,” she said.

“Sorry, Jean-Claude, but that was important to ask,” Edward.

“Questions that help us plan are fine,” Jean-Claude said, with no nicknames, no French, just a bare sentence. It almost didn’t sound like him, but Edward was my friend, not his, I guess.

“Before we circled around to the planned vantage point we heard the screaming,” Ru said.

“When we turned, there was a burning figure on the ground at Drakon’s haunches,” Rodina said.

“We saw no other movement even with leopard eyes, so we assumed the others were in hiding, or had run, like we had, far enough to be out of range,” Ru said.

“He bellowed for us to come out and face him, called us cowards and worse,” Rodina said. “I admit to a moment of doubt, and then we saw him shudder from the top of his head, down that snakelike neck, to the heaviness of his body. It made his tail shake among the leaves and small trees with a great, dry sound like some enormous rattlesnake.”

I wanted to ask when she’d seen rattlesnakes since they were a New World snake, but I let it go. It was an idle question and wouldn’t help us defeat Deimos.

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