I had to act fast.
“Hey, Ugly! Eyes on me.” I moved sideways across the ice, and the dragon whirled to follow, its mammoth tail taking out the side of the rink. Debris scattered like shrapnel, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Skylar backing away and prayed that Bethany had the sense to do the same.
“That’s right, Godzilla. I’m the threat here. Me.”
My target reared up on its back legs, and I prepared myself for the aftershock when it slammed back down onto the ice. Smoke poured from its nostrils, and I filed that information away as calmly and rationally as I could. There were several subspecies of dragons. Some were harmless. Some ate people. Some breathed fire.
None of them were native to the area.
Based on the smoke, I was going to go out on a limb and guess this was a fire-breather. Not ideal, but on the bright side, at least I didn’t have to worry about being eaten alive.
“Don’t worry—I called Preternatural Control!” The boy who’d given us our skates was either very brave or very stupid. Given that he didn’t seem to have armed himself with so much as a fire extinguisher, I was guessing the latter. “They should be here any sec—”
Without warning, the dragon turned its pursuit from me, and its gleaming teeth closed around the boy’s middle. One second the boy was there, and the next, he was splatter.
I flinched—and hated myself for flinching, almost as much as I hated myself for not saving the boy.
It looks like we’re dealing with Draco carnus, I thought, desperately clinging to the cold, hard facts and trying so hard not to care. A man-eater.
Dully, I told myself that at least I didn’t have to worry about it breathing fire. Dragons were one or the other, not both.
Or so modern science would have had me believe.
I heard the flames before I saw them, and for a split second, I lost control of my body. I couldn’t feel my arms, couldn’t feel my legs, could only feel a hand on the small of my back and rage bubbling inside of me, like a long-dormant volcano getting ready to spew.
Not my hand.
Not my rage.
But somehow, my body dove out of the line of fire, just as a wall of flame sliced through the ice that had been directly under my feet.
The sensation lasted a second, maybe two, and then I was in control of my body again. I climbed unsteadily to my feet and tightened my grip on the ice skates in my hand, angling the blades outward.
Here goes nothing. I took aim and fired.
I knew it wouldn’t make a dent in the dragon’s armor, knew that I didn’t have the aim or the power or the fearlessness I needed to take down an opponent twenty times my size, but as the skate flew through the air, the dragon tore its gleaming onyx eyes from mine and followed the blade’s trajectory.
Dragons liked shiny things.
While it was distracted, I wracked my brain for a way out. Unless I could get close enough to reach the soft spot under its breastplate, I didn’t stand a chance of inflicting any kind of lasting damage, and Bethany was still there, her back pressed against the side of the rink, her eyes following the dragon’s every move.
I jerked my head to the side, motioning for her to go. She jerked her head, motioning for me to do the same.
If we got out of this alive, I was going to kill her.
Think, Kali, I told myself. There had to be a way out. There had to be. I didn’t want to die like this, scared and weak and unable to even remember what it felt like to be anything else.
Fifteen hours and twenty-four minutes.
Like that did me a hell of a lot of good.
I told you to run. Don’t make me tell you again.
The voice was implacable and fierce, and the fact that my enemy—who shouldn’t have even been able to talk—was ordering me around swung the pendulum of my emotions from scared to angry and from angry to pissed. Before I could make use of that, however, Bethany snapped. One second she was cowering behind the dragon, and the next, she was on her feet, poised on top of the remaining exterior wall of the rink. She didn’t say anything. She barely even moved. She just swayed—first her hips, then her arms.
I tried to process. The two of us were on the verge of death, and she was belly dancing?
Go. Now. Must—lights.
I watched as the dragon turned its head to the side, absorbing Bethany’s movement whole. I could have streaked across the ice, yodeling the national anthem, and it wouldn’t have mattered.
The beast had marked its prey. For the moment, it seemed content just watching her, but I knew that wouldn’t last. I had a minute at most, maybe less, and I did the only thing I could think of—
I ran.
Not away.
Not for safety.
To the control booth, where I found a pair of employees huddled on the floor.
“Dim the lights,” I told them, out of breath and running out of time, my mind echoing with the broken instructions Zev had tried to impart.
Must—lights.
Neither of the employees moved. I glanced out at the rink. The dragon, its eyes still locked on Bethany’s, began to cross the ice. Soon, it would be close enough that she would be able to smell the blood and smoke on its breath, close enough that I didn’t have even a second to spare.
“Turn the lights off. Now! And if you have any kind of special effects—a light show, disco ball, whatever—turn those on, too.”
One of the employees pointed a single, shaky finger to the control panel, and I scanned it, looking for the switch. Out on the ice, Bethany continued her impromptu belly dance. She swayed. The dragon swayed. She blinked. It blinked. Any moment, any second, it could snap out of it, go in for the kill—
I flipped the switch. The rink went dark. And then, a second later, a smattering of lights appeared on the ceiling, swirling steadily.
That’s right, I told the dragon silently. Swirly, shiny lights.
Slowly, the beast stopped swaying. It tore its eyes from Bethany’s, and it lay down on its front paws in the middle of the ravaged rink. Its scales—the exact color of the ice— glistened in the uneven lighting. Even from a distance, I could make out the crystalline texture of its skin.
Slowly, painfully, the dragon’s breathing became even, its mammoth chest rising and falling, its eyes fixed on the ceiling above. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the creature was gone, its body melding into the ice underneath.
Unnatural, the voice in my head whispered, disturbingly clear. Even though I agreed with the sentiment, I tried to shut out the voice and did everything in my power not to think about the fact that if it hadn’t been for his suggestion, I might not have thought to go for the lights.