I was enraged. I’d been shot three times tonight, and I was going to make these men pay for that. For what they planned to do to the castle and to my country. For St. Giles and London and the orphanage. Everything.
They imagined themselves the dragon-slayers, but the dragon was going to slay them instead.
The zeppelin in the water had nearly finished its burn. By its dying light I could see the airmen in the second gondola with their guns poking out, more shouting, everyone searching the skies around them for the mythical beast that was no longer visible. I smoked up to them, right up to one of the windows, and examined the face of the man staring straight through the mist of me.
Youngish, square-jawed. Attractive. Navy-blue uniform with loops of brassy braid. White hat. Brows knit with worry.
Yes, do worry, I thought, and boiled up to the top of the balloon.
Same plan, same results—at least at first. I Turned to dragon in the exact center of the fabric field and jabbed my talons deep. The hydrogen surged out; the ship began to descend. I shifted over, ready to do it again, when the zeppelin made an abrupt left turn, throwing me free.
No doubt they’d seen everything I’d done to the first ship. They’d figured out how to counter.
I used my wings, but it hurt where the bullet had pierced me. Hurt like someone was twisting a dagger into my flesh. So I Turned to smoke to find a new place to dig in …
Only I didn’t. I Turned to a girl again instead.
• • •
The Atalanta couldn’t make it all the way to the water. The slope accessing the shore was too steep, and Jesse found himself remotely grateful that Armand had sense enough to pull the brake before they rolled. It left them to slide down the scrub and rocks themselves, which actually meant Jesse sliding and Armand attempting to keep them both upright.
The beach was wet pebbles and seaweed. The pebbles clicked and clacked as Armand dragged Jesse to the breaking surf.
There were things he wanted to say, Jesse realized. Important things. Things that seemed to matter. But it was too difficult to keep them in his head; the black dots in his eyes from before had engorged into tunnels, and all he could see now was a small wavering window directly before him. He might have been in pain. He should have been. But mostly what he felt were the pebbles beneath his body, cool and smooth.
“Leave me,” he was able to say.
Armand’s face filled the narrow window of his vision.
“Not bloody likely.”
He felt it now, Jesse knew. Whether Lord Armand wanted to or not, he felt their bond. Dragon protects star. Nothing to be done about it.
Almost nothing.
“Get back,” Jesse said, making it a command. He had life enough for that. “Get back into the auto, Armand.”
“No—I …”
But it worked, as Jesse had known it would. The other boy’s face left his view. His footsteps ground into the pebbles, halting, retreating.
It filled Jesse with an unexpected warmth. And hope. Things might … things might work out, after all.…
He focused upon the lip of seawater in front of him. He focused on moving his arm. His hand.
• • •
The second airship careened drunkenly from side to side. I bounced off its unbroken skin, into the air, then the skin again. The curve of the balloon was so immense that I slid down its side, trying to Turn to smoke or dragon or anything but a girl who could not hold on to a dirigible.
I managed smoke, but only long enough to find myself back down at the gondola. Then I was me again, a girl again, pressed naked and bloody against the glass, dropping. My right hand hooked the rim of an open window. Pain knifed through my arm, and I screamed.
My fingers released—and then a hand smacked around my wrist. I dangled in place, my legs kicking out to the infinite distance below, and when I looked wildly up I saw the German officer of before, the attractive one, leaning out the gondola window to hold on to me. Staring dumbfounded back at me.
His eyes were brown.
He shouted something, lost to the wind.
I snarled at him and Turned to smoke, flinging myself just high enough to Turn back to dragon and slice a long, vertical slit down the side of the balloon.