that would have killed a horse. He’d died almost instantly. Several Strikers were down, a few were struggling to get back up, some would never rise again.
“Call for a healer,” Abigail commanded.
One of the Strikers nodded and raced off.
“We have to get you out of here, Lady Abigail,” Sava said.
“I’m not leaving him,” she said, kneeling next to Anatoly and cradling his head in her lap. She felt the knot in her stomach tighten when she saw the bright red blood on his lips. He was hurt … badly. Then she heard another roar, and though not as fearsome as a dragon’s, it had a similar quality. She looked up and saw a dozen or more creatures descending into the room.
They were a mixture of man and dragon, each standing eight feet tall with pale blue scales like those of a snake covering their entire bodies. They had bright golden eyes, horns that swept back from their dragon-like heads, and a ridge of spikes running down their backs. They were thin and sinewy, but looked inhumanly strong. Blue batlike wings, a long bone-bladed tail, sharply clawed hands and feet completed the nightmare.
One landed on the table in front of Abigail, its claws gouging into the wood. Captain Sava stabbed at it, but his blade was turned aside by the hardness of its scales. It backhanded Sava, sending him tumbling to the floor, then grabbed Abigail by the arm and started to launch into the air.
She grasped the hilt of the Thinblade just as the creature thrust with its wings, slipping the blade free of its scabbard and slashing up toward the monster. The Thinblade cut cleanly through the beast’s arm and wing, sending them crashing to the ground amidst an inhuman shriek of pain from the half-dragon, half-man.
Abigail rolled to her feet as Sava and two of his men converged on her, forming a cordon of protection with their dragon-plate shields raised high against the threat descending on them.
Another beast landed in the center of the shattered table. It reared back and breathed a cone of icy air at Magda, coating her shield with frost. She seemed to be chilled by the attack, but her shield protected her from the brunt of it. Her spell came quickly, sudden anger flashing in her eyes … a blue pinwheel of force materialized in front of her, then moved quickly toward the dragon-man, catching it in the midsection and cleaving it cleanly in half. Three of its brethren shrieked in fury at the loss of one of their own.
Another flew over Torin and Conner, breathing a gout of frost on them, chilling them to the bone and sending them to the ground, shivering. They were both still alive, but completely incapacitated by the numbing cold. Corina released a light-lance spell at the beast, burning a hole through its chest. It crashed to the ground and never moved again.
Sark caught two of the creatures in a whirling vortex of wind and carried them up and out of the chamber into the dark of night.
Another of the beasts grabbed hold of one of the Strikers with its taloned feet and carried him several dozen feet into the air before dropping him to the ground. He crashed into the stone floor and fell still as death.
Mage Dax was feeding power into a ball of lightning that was forming between his outstretched hands. It was growing in size and intensity when a blue dragon landed on the edge of the hole in the ceiling. It was beautiful and terrible all at once. Abigail saw similarities between this one and Ixabrax. Its rider looked down into the room with calm, almost detached calculation.
Zuhl.
“Take the girl,” he commanded as Dax released the ball of lightning at him. Zuhl directed his staff toward the streaking, crackling ball of electrical power and instantly formed a half-shell protective shield in front of him. The lightning struck it with thunderous force, shattering the shield and hitting the dragon square in the chest. The dragon reared back and looked like he was preparing to breathe frost into the room, certain doom for them all, but Zuhl commanded him to stop and they launched into the darkness.
Three of the dragon-men landed around Abigail. All three breathed frost at her and her cordon of Strikers. They all fell in a shivering mass. Abigail had never been so cold. It penetrated into her bones, paralyzing her with numbness. The nearest dragon-man grabbed her and launched into the