Island of Dragons (Unwanteds #7)(66)

“Heart attack!” she cried, flinging them. They hit their mark, sending the pirate tumbling down the hill.

Lani lunged for the shield, but she’d lost concentration for a split second, and a burly pirate scooped her up from behind, then flung her over his shoulder. She kicked with all her might into the pirate’s stomach and slammed her sword into the back of his leg. He spun around, roaring.

Lani wiggled a scatterclip from her vest pocket, and as he started pulling her off his shoulder, she shoved the clip deep into his ear and shouted, “Die a thousand deaths!”

The man went limp. He dropped Lani hard to the rocky hillside and fell on top of her. She was trapped.

“Get! Off! Me!” Lani yelled, struggling with all her might to push the pirate off, but one of her arms was trapped. She took a second to look out at her team, trying to see how many of them still stood, and counted fewer than half. She struggled again, and then realized the other pirates were ignoring her because she was on the ground. She eased her free hand under the pirate’s smelly armpit and reached into her vest pocket, grabbing as many scatterclips as she could get her fingers around, and then laid them out on the dead pirate’s back.

Whenever a pirate got close enough, Lani fired. She managed to take down eleven pirates over the course of her lengthy entrapment. But things were only getting worse instead of better, as a seemingly endless stream of pirates rushed ashore. Soon Lani was the only living member of her team who hadn’t taken to the trees in hiding or run into Quill for safety. The remaining band of pirates rushed toward the mansion.

“You stupid brute!” Lani yelled, pounding on the dead man’s back. She pushed with all her might, but with only one hand free, she wasn’t nearly strong enough. Finally she fell back, exhausted. Her trapped arm had lost feeling by now, and the rocks dug into her back. She closed her eyes, furious, and breathed heavily, trying to build strength. And then, out of immense frustration, Lani tried a spell she’d never done before.

She put her hand on the dead pirate’s back, took a few calming breaths, and concentrated on an image in her mind of Queen Eagala’s stupid face. When she felt good and calm and ready, Lani whispered, “Transport.”

An instant later Lani was free, and almost simultaneously a hideous scream rose up from a nearby ship. Lani grinned. That voice was one of the very few sounds she’d heard when she and Samheed had been captive on Warbler Island—it was the unmistakable scream of Queen Eagala.

Lani eased up off the rocks and got to her feet. She shoved a sword in her belt, grabbed a shield, and shook out the prickling arm that had fallen asleep. “Yowch!” she muttered, half laughing and half crying as it came back to life. “Now that really hurts.”

A moment later a stampede of pirates rushed along the shore below, coming from where Samheed had been fighting and heading toward the mansion. Lani knew that could mean only one thing . . . everybody on Samheed’s team was down or gone.

“Oh no. Sam,” Lani whispered. She peered to the west, then shouted for him. “Sam!” She started running toward his station like a mad person, searching the fallen bodies on the rocks.

“Where are you?” she said, her voice pitching higher with fear. “Sam!”

She scrambled up the rocky bank to the trees that lined the road. “Samheed!”

A body dropped out of a tree next to Lani, startling her. She reached for a component, ready to attack. And then she saw his face.

“Hi,” whispered Samheed. “Are they gone?”

Lani blew out a breath of relief and nodded. “They’re headed to the mansion.”

Samheed whistled like a bird. “The coast is clear, everybody. Let’s go help out Alex.”

Seven or eight Artiméans dropped from the trees and gathered around Samheed, and they all began jogging toward Artimé, picking up a few of Lani’s hiding teammates along the way. Samheed slipped his arm around Lani’s neck as they fell in step. He wore a mischievous smile on his face and said, “Did you hear Eagala’s deathly scream? I’d know that horrible sound anywhere. I wonder what that was all about.”

“Hmm,” said Lani with a grin. “I wonder.”





Aaron Fights His Battles


On the west side of Quill, not far from the base of the new lighthouse where the palace used to stand, Aaron watched and waited with his mishmash team of Necessaries, displaced Wanteds, and a handful of Artiméan spell casters. Those with makeshift weapons stood at the top of the steep rise of rocky land, finding they had better footing there to stop the pirates from getting past them, and a better chance of knocking them off balance on the rocks.

The squirrelicorns had been by to deliver the news about the protective workings of the shields, so the spell casters set themselves up in trees and in the windows of the lighthouse in hopes of staying out of range of the swords and perhaps having a better angle at which to fire their spells.

Seeing the pirate ship stationed in the water with the smaller tenders full of pirates coming toward them gave Aaron a particular sense of dread, for he’d witnessed this scene before—on the way out of the palace before the pirates had thrown him face-first into the smaller boat.

Aaron cringed, remembering the pain. He didn’t want revenge. The truth was that he wanted to hide. It didn’t matter that Aaron was immortal now—he could still feel pain. And with the number of pirates coming toward shore, Aaron assumed the worst.