On the Prowl (Alpha & Omega 0.5)(73)

I glared at him, and my newly acquired tail began whipping back and forth. It hit the side of the shed with a crack, knocking most of it out and sending the door spinning away into the night. Without that support, the rest of the building gave way and, with a groan of splintering wood, caved in around us.

Several large roof beams hit the top of my head and bounced off. They hurt, but not badly, which probably explained why Heidar had burrowed beneath my front paws, using my new, huge belly as shelter. I roared in confusion, pain and sheer disbelief, and set a nearby tree on fire. Beyond it, I saw lights flicker on in what my improved vision told me was a farmhouse. Oh, shit.

The farmer must have been having a sleepover, because within seconds, four or five well-armed figures were running toward us, yelling something that didn't sound friendly. Heidar looked up at me, his eyes serious for once. "You have to fly us out of here."

Even if I'd been able to talk, I would probably have been speechless. After a minute, he nodded, swallowing hard. "Okay, plan B." He started pushing at me, and actually succeeded in making me waddle a few steps back. "The tree line," he panted, "run for it!"

I barely heard him. I'd just caught sight of my toes, which were peeking out from under the giant swell of my belly, their two-inch-long talons ripping up the ground as I moved. For some reason, that small detail suddenly overwhelmed me. I'd been treated like a monster all my life, but I'd never looked the part before, and it filled me with shame, deep and bitter and smothering, to the point that it was a straggle just to breathe.

My head started to pound, a vivid, furious pain behind the temples. I raised a hand to my face, but only succeeded in jabbing myself in the snout with a claw. I felt around more carefully after that, and discovered an arrow that had lodged itself between two of my scales that didn't overlap perfectly. I could feel sticky blood leaking down the side of what had once been my face, and it brought me back to my surroundings.

Two Fey were lying on the ground nearby, their long silver hair bright against the black soil. Heidar was battling another, and seemed to be holding his own, as the remainder were content to hide behind the smoldering remains of the shed, lobbing arrows at me. Heidar looked up after knocking out his opponent, a fierce triumph on his features. But in this form, my height was greater than his and I could see the village guards hotfooting it toward us down the road. There had to be fifty of them, and judging by the amount of weapons they carried, they hadn't come to let bygones be bygones. Heidar saw them a second later, after they rounded the bend leading up to the house, and his face lost its happy glow.

They showed none of the caution they'd used before, but ran right at us. "They're thinking of the podium in the alley. They don't think you're real!" Heidar whispered. "Let them get a little closer, then take them out."

I blinked at him in slow horror. He couldn't be serious. He'd seen the horse  -  did he actually expect me to do that to people? I opened my mouth to tell him off, but instead of words, the air erupted in another cloud of gold and ruby fire. Several arrows incinerated mid-air, and a nearby tree exploded in a hail of burning bark and wet leaves. I snapped my mouth shut, horrified, but none of the Fey had been close enough to get charred. They dove for cover in ditches beside the road, sinking beneath the flood that had almost filled them until only the tops of their heads showed.

"Fight or run," Heidar told me urgently. "There are no other choices!" I stood there, looking back and forth from him to the Fey. "This isn't New York," he said, his hands gripping me hard enough that I could feel it even through the scales. "Understand me, Claire. They will kill us if they can."

Almost as if to underscore his point, we were suddenly inundated with a whole swarm of arrows. It seemed wet ones could still fly. Too bad I couldn't. I might have wings, but I didn't know how to use them. I wasn't even sure which muscles to flex to unfurl them, but I had to try.

I managed to get one wing off my back, mostly by luck, but as soon as I tried to raise it, arrows rained down on me from two directions at once. The archers behind the shed had decided to combine their force with those in the ditches, and every single one of them was aiming for me. Pain tore at me as several projectiles ripped through the thin membrane of the wing. It didn't bleed much, but it also didn't look like it was going to fly full of holes.

Most of the other arrows were bouncing harmlessly off my scales, but a few here and there were finding chinks in my armor. Black blood spattered onto Heidar's face from a wound in my shoulder. He wiped it off with his hand and stared at it, his face furious. I wondered in a detached sort of way how long it would take before the blood loss killed me.

Then things managed to get even worse. An inhuman screech echoed across the forest like thunder. For a moment, I thought that's what it was, but all the Fey suddenly stopped firing and looked up. I did the same, but although the rain had finally slowed, I couldn't see anything but angry dark clouds with a sliver of moon behind them.

Then, out of a cloud bank burst a sight from a fairy tale, with glowing, torchlit eyes, leathery wings and scales that glittered like diamonds in the starlight. It swooped down over us and the next second, the road, the shed and the nearby trees erupted in a rush of sound and strange, crimson flame. The Fey scattered, some on fire, for the shelter of the forest. I stayed put with Heidar crouched beneath me, relieved to find that my scales didn't burn.