A bitter taste flooded my mouth, as I scrambled to my feet. But I kept it closed, staring at the smoking remains in disbelief. Blood was pounding in my ears, my heart was beating far too quickly and I was fast reaching a whole new level of horror. I raised my eyes to meet Heidar's shining blue ones. He was peering over the remains of the wall, his tousled hair sticking out wildly in every direction.
"Well, that didn't go so badly," he said, his voice unsteady.
I stared at him, wanting to tell him to run, to get as far away as possible from whatever was happening to me. But I didn't dare open my mouth, and he slowly climbed into the room, past charred bricks and falling timbers.
He picked up the bucket carefully, letting me see every move as he made it as if I was a wild animal he didn't want to spook. He held the reflective surface in front of me, at eye level. For a moment, all I could see was the reflection of the flames, then I realized what else I was looking at.
My vision was surprisingly clear, but my mind was uncomprehending. The reflection showed me a short gray snout studded with gleaming teeth. Above it rose eyes with evil-looking, slitted pupils, but of a ridiculous pale lavender color. My eyes filled with tears, and so did those staring at me from the side of the bucket. The horrible realization hit home, and I batted the thing away with a hand that had sprouted inch-long talons.
The bucket ricocheted off the wall and landed back at Heidar's feet. He bent to pick it up, and a hiss, low and menacing, issued from between my tightly clenched teeth. Once was enough. I didn't need to see it again.
He let it go, but straightened with a frown on his face. "I think I would like some answers," he announced.
He would like some answers?
He moved forward and I tried to shuffle back, but something stopped me. I looked behind me to see huge, scale-covered haunches and a fat tail, wedged in between the remaining shed walls. Grayish-black wings, like a bat's if they were blown up about a hundred times in size, moved with me, and the sound of them scraping over the scales made me shudder.
"Claire." I whipped around at Heidar's voice and found him within a few feet of me. Had he somehow missed the charred body of the horse? It was slowly crumbling to dust under the driving pressure of the rain, but was still recognizable. Did he want to join it? "This is... a little unexpected," he said, putting out a hand to take hold of my clawed paw. He patted it gently. "But we'll get through it."
Get through it? I stared at him, completely at a loss. He was crazier than I was.
"I know it's likely difficult to concentrate right now," he said, then stopped. His face contorted, and he began making a low, strangled sound. After a minute, I realized that he was trying not to laugh. He finally swallowed it back down. "But you need to, ah, try to visualize your old form."
I glared at him, and my newly acquired tail began whipping back and forth. It hit the side of the shed with a crack, knocking most of it out and sending the door spinning away into the night. Without that support, the rest of the building gave way and, with a groan of splintering wood, caved in around us.
Several large roof beams hit the top of my head and bounced off. They hurt, but not badly, which probably explained why Heidar had burrowed beneath my front paws, using my new, huge belly as shelter. I roared in confusion, pain and sheer disbelief, and set a nearby tree on fire. Beyond it, I saw lights flicker on in what my improved vision told me was a farmhouse. Oh, shit.
The farmer must have been having a sleepover, because within seconds, four or five well-armed figures were running toward us, yelling something that didn't sound friendly. Heidar looked up at me, his eyes serious for once. "You have to fly us out of here."
Even if I'd been able to talk, I would probably have been speechless. After a minute, he nodded, swallowing hard. "Okay, plan B." He started pushing at me, and actually succeeded in making me waddle a few steps back. "The tree line," he panted, "run for it!"
I barely heard him. I'd just caught sight of my toes, which were peeking out from under the giant swell of my belly, their two-inch-long talons ripping up the ground as I moved. For some reason, that small detail suddenly overwhelmed me. I'd been treated like a monster all my life, but I'd never looked the part before, and it filled me with shame, deep and bitter and smothering, to the point that it was a straggle just to breathe.
My head started to pound, a vivid, furious pain behind the temples. I raised a hand to my face, but only succeeded in jabbing myself in the snout with a claw. I felt around more carefully after that, and discovered an arrow that had lodged itself between two of my scales that didn't overlap perfectly. I could feel sticky blood leaking down the side of what had once been my face, and it brought me back to my surroundings.
Two Fey were lying on the ground nearby, their long silver hair bright against the black soil. Heidar was battling another, and seemed to be holding his own, as the remainder were content to hide behind the smoldering remains of the shed, lobbing arrows at me. Heidar looked up after knocking out his opponent, a fierce triumph on his features. But in this form, my height was greater than his and I could see the village guards hotfooting it toward us down 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."