On The Prowl Page 0,94

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.

The person who seemed to be in charge of the guards regrouped them after a few moments, but before they could do more than release a few arrows, there was an ear-shattering boom and a flash of painfully bright light, and a fireball barreled right for them. It was beautiful, red and orange, with little tongues of green flame lapping at the edges. But the Fey didn't seem to appreciate the sight. There was a lot of screaming and running and what little cohesion they'd had broke apart. Then the dragon landed and went on a rampage, devouring the closest guards in a few gulps before beginning to pursue the ones that darted in and out and up the trees in a vain attempt to escape. A few got away, haring back down the road, running past the burning hole in the ground where the fireball had