reflexively curl up, shivering. But the surface is hard, as if I’ve rolled off the bed furs and onto the dirt floor.
My eyes fly open.
This is not my house. This isn’t a house at all.
I’m lying on the bare ground, and the trees all around are different from those surrounding the village.
Sitting up, I squint and shade my eyes. The sun is rising, and it’s too bright.
Definitely different trees.
I clench my eyes shut. My brain is sluggish, and I have a headache. But gradually I remember flashes of things that happened. The battle, with the cavemen fighting desperately in the darkness. My house being shaken apart. Seeing the dark jungle from above.
The dragon.
I open one eye, very slowly.
There he is. Blue and striped, standing there with his back to me, a seven-foot-tall dragon in human form, looking out at the woods.
Scales and spikes, deadly danger radiating from his every movement like light radiates from the sun.
I gasp. Heidi! He was holding her in his arms! And she was...
No, I don’t want to think that thought to its end.
Is it possible that all the girls are dead? All the cavemen? If the dragons attacked us in force, all at the same time, they might have won.
I’m here with a dragon. And if my memory of flight is right, this is a dragon who can still change to his dragon form, with the wings and the breathing fire and everything.
He might be the only dragon on the planet who can. Or maybe now they all can, and that’s why they attacked.
I silently get up on all fours. It’s a small clearing, and the edge of the woods is twenty feet away. If I’m really quiet, I can crawl backwards and get away from here.
“To use your own words: stay where you are.” His voice is deep and smooth, and it stops me cold.
He’s still looking the other way. Is he talking to me?
Inching backwards another foot, I stare at the back of his head, covered in an anarchy of long, metallic-blonde curls like the angels in old-fashioned paintings. Except those usually didn’t have dense, black stubble like this guy.
“You really should obey your superiors, female,” he growls, half-turning his head.
I consider bouncing up and running for it. But I’m still groggy and I don’t know if I can trust my knees to not buckle under me. So I keep going, slowly crawling backwards.
The dragon sighs deeply, then spins around, walks over to me with long steps, and grabs my arm, pulling me up to a standing position.
I whimper with pain and fear, then find myself staring up into the weirdest eyes I’ve ever seen. One is deep blue and the other is a bright yellow. One has a star-shaped pupil and the other is triangular. It’s so alien it stuns me.
He stares me down. “You have a lot to answer for, little human.”
So do you, I think. But it seems unwise to say it out loud.
The dragon lets go of me, and I drop back to the ground.
Looking up, I notice that his broad, unreasonably muscular chest has a dark spot where a golden liquid is seeping out. That has to be the famous ichor the dragons have instead of blood.
A spark of satisfaction flashes through my mind. At least I injured him with my gunshot, not just knocking myself out.
But of course that probably got him mad, and if there’s something I’d prefer to avoid in this world, it’s to make a dragon mad.
“I can treat that wound,” I finally croak, getting back to my feet while the world rotates around me. “It might fester.”
I support myself with hands on my knees, taking a break before I straighten up and have to see those eyes again. My head pounds, and I’m feeling the effects of drinking too much only a few hours ago. I’m nauseous and dizzy and scared out of my mind. I want to cry, but I doubt it would do much good, and it certainly won’t improve the headache.
“It’s festering right now,” the dragon informs me. “You shot me with something really nasty. Be assured that my revenge will be more cruel than that.”
What did I shoot at him? Just a handful of metal scrap and gravel from the ground, the way we usually load the primitive black powder guns. Their barrels aren’t smooth enough to shoot actual bullets — we have to treat them as shotguns with a really short range.