Battle Bond: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #2) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,4
kobold.
Do you know what did create it?
Sindari didn’t answer right away, instead leading me around bends in the trail, then on toward an opening in the trees ahead. Maybe he didn’t know who had created it.
A faint tingle poked at my senses, like electricity under a high-voltage line. Magic.
Eventually, the trail led us into a large meadow of waist-high grass leading to an old windmill beside a creek. Sindari sat on his haunches and faced it. It was the source of the magic.
That is who created it, Sindari told me.
The windmill? I drew even with him, my instincts itching. The windmill represented a threat, but I also had the feeling that someone was watching us.
No, the being using it for its lair. He isn’t there now, but I can smell dragon.
I gave him a sharp look. Zav?
I didn’t sense his aura, and it was powerful enough that I usually did from a mile away. All I sensed, other than the windmill itself was…
Oh, damn. There were the kobolds again. I’d almost missed their auras since the windmill radiated magic. They were out in the tall grass. All six of them. Had they spotted us yet?
No. I recognize the scent of Lord Zavryd. This is another dragon.
“Another dragon?” I blurted out loud before I caught myself and switched to silent speech. How can we have gone from no dragons on Earth for a thousand years to two in the same month?
I don’t know, but brace yourself. We’re about to be—
All six kobolds rushed toward us, the grasses wavering madly with their passage. As I drew Chopper, the first one came into view. He’d traded his slingshot for a gun.
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I dove to the side, rolling into the grass, a split second before the kobold fired at me.
Sindari pounced as the bullet whizzed past my head. He tackled the kobold with the gun, but the five others burst out of the grass, armed with guns, daggers, and bows and arrows. The weapons were small enough to fit in their diminutive hands—but dangerous enough to be deadly.
I leaped up from my roll in time to greet two rushing kobolds, one male and one female, with Chopper.
The male had a dagger and the female a pistol. Faster than she could take aim, I whipped the blade across to strike the weapon. I’d only intended to knock it from her grip, but Chopper’s magical blade cut through it like butter, leaving a glowing blue streak in the air.
Even though I could have finished her off, Willard’s words came to mind. I spun on my heel and launched a low side kick. My boot slammed into her small chest, and she flew backward into the grass.
Her companion lunged at me with his dagger. His black eyes were glazed, and he didn’t react to his comrade being kicked away. As I skittered back to avoid the sharp blade, he stabbed at me with a combination of robotic movements.
Like many magical beings, he was faster than the typical human, but my elven blood also gave me extra speed, and I was accustomed to quick and agile opponents. When he committed himself to a lunge, stabbing straight ahead with the dagger, I glided to the side and toward him, close enough to bend down and catch his wrist. I twisted it, but to my surprise he didn’t yelp in pain or drop the weapon. He didn’t make a noise at all as he tried to pull his arm away.
I hefted him into the air, knocked his hand against a nearby tree trunk, and finally his dagger fell to the dirt.
A roar came from the grass, and a disarmed and bleeding kobold sailed over my head and into the woods.
“Don’t kill them,” I yelled as I struggled to keep my prisoner subdued, so we could question him later.
They are not yielding to my superior power, Sindari told me, sounding exasperated. Another kobold flew into the woods. It is impossible to stop them without harming them greatly.
The one I held struggled and managed to get a fist past my guard. It clipped me in the chin enough to hurt, and I had to resist the urge to fling him away—or bash him in the head with Chopper.
Even as he battled me, his expression never changed and his eyes remained glazed. Someone was definitely controlling these guys.
I twisted the kobold so that his back was to me and pinned his arms, pulling him against my hip so he couldn’t move.