Page 18 of Deadly Maiden (Dragons and Darkthings #1)
Wyntre
To my left, the blood hawk flops about near the road. One wing is shorter than the other and blood, or some sort of red fluid, has splashed and spotted the vegetation it’s caught on.
To my right, Rorsyd wobbles onto one knee and retches. His head is down, and he is bloody.
I whip from one to the other, my hand clenching on the butt of the gheist pistol, before I sigh, grind my teeth, and sprint to the blood hawk. It’s magical, so I stand over it, hesitating. Will this work? I circle it and aim. I think I’ve set this thing right. It is supposed to kill but this creature is magik. Will this do anything? Dragon fire is not the same as shooting a lump of metal into it.
That is blood on the earth and the leaves. I can smell it.
The crystal is primed with gheist.
I edge my finger to the lever that fires the gun and jerk it. The mechanism inside revolves and clicks. The gun thumps back into my palm, stinging my fingers, and ethereal blue belches from the barrel. I stare at the creature. The bullet went in. The earth kicked up below it.
Nothing?
If I cannot kill this, it will report back to whoever sent it. The queen, perhaps.
“Rorsyd?” I scream and spin to see if he’s recovered enough, though I know, I just know he won’t be blasting it with dragon fire anytime soon.
He’s vomiting again, coughing up lungs from the terrible noises he makes.
Shit. Crap. Fuck.
What can I do?
An idea barrels in.
Darkthings. They kill dragons. This hawk is far lesser, far weaker than a dragon.
I need Anathema. Even as I think that, I feel him drifting through the shrubbery. He slinks out, catlike, tail swishing—he must love this shape.
“May I? Please?”
He reads my thoughts as I do his. Sort of. This is such an iffy, immoral, maybe evil proposition. He is, as far as I can tell, sentient. I don’t want all of him, though. Surely that’s a good point?
He approaches me, winds about my feet, then seats himself before me, angles up his head, locks eyes. “Those are overly blue eyes,” I whisper to him.
He blerts at me. A yes, I’m sure of this.
“Where?” I blink away a tear as he shows me his butt. No, his tail. I kneel and offer the second bullet, encourage the very end of his tail to migrate over. It squeezes in, narrowing, then plopping off as a separate blobby piece.
Impatient at its slow wriggling journey. I place the bullet next to it and command it to wrap the metal.
And so I rise to my feet with a new chunk of bullet metal, black and shiny. It gleams.
This was the end of Anathema’s tail. Frowning, I stuff it into the gun in the place Landos loads the weapon. Though slippery, it fits. I think? I snap it shut and stalk back to the hawk. Rorsyd is on all fours. He’s not watching this, thank the gods.
The blood hawk flaps, noisily, splattering blood in smaller spots. It doesn’t need to fly. It just needs to exist to reveal our whereabouts.
After one last, long and shaky breath, I raise the gun again. I aim and fire.
As with Anathema, I can feel the presence of this dark stuff. It spins through the air, that short flight distance expanded into an impossible length of time. Air washes aside. It plunges in, wrenching apart the substance of the hawk, flings pieces, shreds it, and explodes into a thousand bits of blackness.
The blood hawk smokes with red, the shape of it fuzzes and blurs, then it sizzles and vanishes like mist.
It’s done. The hawk is dead. Relief floods me, weakening my knees.
“Thank you, Anathema.”
My strange cat purrs then sneaks away and into the forest.
There is no doubt in me now. Anathema is a darkthing, but…a nice one?