Page 34 of Flames and Blood

“If they put me down out there,” he says, working it out, “nobody else knows where you are.”

“Exactly.” I sound calmer than I feel. I’m sending away my only chance of getting out of here. An engine rumbles in the distance. “Go,” I tell him.

He’s already moving out through the door and down onto the road. I can’t see any of it. I hear something hit the side of the transport hard enough to shake it. Somebody tries to shout but doesn’t finish. Boots skid on gravel and a shot rings out but goes wide.

Then he’s back in the doorway with one hand on the frame.

“Crowe,” he says.

I look up at him.

“Crowe?”

“That’s my name.” His eyes are locked on mine. “Gideon Crowe.”

“Gideon Crowe,” I repeat.

“I’m coming back for you.”

He doesn’t say it like a promise. He says it the way you’d state a fact to somebody who’s about to argue. Then he’s gone, and the doorway’s empty, and the noise moves away down the road.

For about a minute, I just sit there, staring at the door.

Go. Go with him. Now!

The voice in my head belongs to the creature I’ve been fighting to hold back through all of it. Scales shimmer down my arms. The runes flare in response. My skin sizzles. My dragon doesn’t care.

Him! Go with him!

“I can’t!” I say out loud, because her voice is so strident it feels like I need to answer it.

The chaos outside grows louder. Orders being shouted. Sounds of confusion. He isn’t out there anymore. I can tell.

A man climbs in. He gets one boot over the sill, and I’m on him.

“Hey!” he yells as he goes down.

Bet you didn’t expect that, fucker!

I take a fistful of his vest and haul him the rest of the way in with me, because I want him closer. Close enough that my dragon can come to the fore. I get my teeth into the side of his hand when he brings it up. He screams. I take his ear off with my other hand, and he screams again and swings. I dive past it and go for his throat.

The chain stops me a foot short of the door.

Three more come in behind him.

They get my right arm. Then my hair. I get an elbow at somebody’s nose and hear the crunch of it. Somebody gets an arm across my chest, and I turn my head and bite down on it through the sleeve until he lets go. They get my left arm. They get my legs. One of them drops his whole weight onto my back, and I come up off the floor anyway, and it takes two more of them to put me back down.

It takes all four. It takes a while.

Nobody hits me. Not once.

When it stops, I’m face-down on the floor with my cheek against the metal and a knee between my shoulders. One of them is standing over me, holding his hand against his chest, blood dripping onto my back.

They bring in a second chain and run it through both cuffs and shorten everything until my hands sit under my chin.

“She’s here,” one of them shouts. “Go, go, go!”

The doors slam. The lock throws. The engine comes up through the floor and the whole convoy grinds through the rest of the turn and away, picking up speed.