taken from you and all you have left was revenge, there wasn’t much you wouldn’t do.
Even take jabs at the so-called rescuer who inserted himself into your problems.
The door clanged open, and we were moving. The hall had more light, which helped.
It also had a very large, very angry looking corpsesnare, who whirled at our presence and stared right at me, salivating.
“Maddox?” I said lightly when he stared the other way.
“Just stay with me.”
“Yes, well, I just wanted to point out that we might have a problem.”
Turning his head, he paused.
The corpsesnare’s jaw was open, showing his row of shiny teeth and letting bits of saliva fall to the stone below.
“Hi, Puppy,” I greeted him. “Who’s a good dog?”
It snarled.
“Kitten?”
“Hmm?”
“What are you doing?”
“Saying hi to the puppy.”
“That is not a puppy.”
Yeah well, I wasn’t a kitten either. But we did what we did with what we had. The corpsesnare began to approach, a low growl rumbling from him like an avalanche of rocks tumbling down the mountainside.
I could seduce a lot of things, but I’d never tried it against something so…impressively oversized and radiating barely suppressed rage.
Maddox turned abruptly. “Stay behind me.”
No problem. If it ate him, I’d use that as a distraction. Maddox gave me heartburn, and I hadn’t even had a bite.
Bracing himself, Maddox seemed to flicker as the corpsesnare continued to approach, his pace deliberate and measured, hackles up and a constant growl rising in volume.
When he was nearly in snapping range, he roared.
Ugh.
Someone needed to give him a breath mint.
Chapter 6
“It simply isn’t an adventure worth telling if there aren’t dragons.” - J.R.R. Tolkien
The corpsesnare’s roar redoubled along the hallway and set most of the hair on my body standing on end, including the wild tangle of curls falling from my head. While I would have loved a blow dryer earlier, this was not what I had in mind. Not even close.
For his part, Maddox hadn’t moved, not so much as rocked in the face of fetid breath, razor sharp teeth, and a salivating tongue. Even with my hand on his belt, Maddox didn’t seem solid, and yet, his presence swelled. The corpsesnare roared again, but he didn’t charge.
That was good.
The only lust he displayed at the moment was bloodlust, and it rolled off of him in stomach-curdling waves along with his rotten breath. All at once, Maddox shifted and the air grew hotter, heavier, and…holy shit.
Yeah, I blew that hold onto his belt promise, dropping it like a hot potato as I backed off from the dragon pushing at the walls around us. The stone began to shred as his wings extended. His size was massive, however, far more than the corpsesnare.
Puppy went for another growl, then retreated a step. He didn’t give up much ground, snarling and snapping with each motion of withdrawal he took.
Me? I didn’t hesitate, I was almost to the stairwell when the corpsesnare lunged and fire flooded the hallway.
I winced at the yelping shriek from the oversized beast. Hands pressed firmly over my ears, I dropped when fire flared down the hallway, and the smell of singed hair burned my nostrils. Oh. That was nasty.
The roar vibrating me to my bones wasn’t coming from the corpsesnare. I almost felt sorry for the oversized beasty, particularly when he yelped and pounded away in the opposite direction. All he’d wanted to do was chow down on some prisoner escapees, not his fault one of them turned out to be a damn dragon.
Seriously? Maddox’s arrival had turned my day upside down, too. So I got it.
The dragon in the hallway—yes, that sentence actually passed through my head—twisted around, eyes glaring to find me.
Amidst the smoke and haze of debris, I really didn’t have time to consider the color of his scales. But those slitted eyes glowing me? I’d know them anywhere. He opened his mouth, displaying an impressive array of teeth. Here was hoping we weren’t going to test his morning breath, because how about no?
Still twisting, he knocked more bricks loose, and a metal door screamed as his tail lashed against it, knocking it open. The explosion of magic lit the hallway up like a Fourth of July bonfire gone wrong.
I had to be honest here, something ran out of that cell he’d just carelessly torn open with his tail as it lashed about. His maneuvering that bulk through a hallway nowhere near big enough for him to spread out, not to mention his wings, kicked up more debris. But that thing