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“Tha’s right—figth me!” he lisped. “Try to figth! I love it when they figth.”
“You nasty-ass son of a bitch! Get off me! Get off!” Iyanna shouted in his face, but he wasn’t deterred a bit. She could feel him fumbling between her legs and in another moment it was going to be too late…
And then a deafening roar sounded behind her. The claxon call of a huge, angry beast on the hunt for prey.
Iyanna gasped and jerked her head back—she had heard that roar before, in the scanning room. But as she was flat on her back, she couldn’t see much.
Sin’estor looked up as well and she could see his bright orange eyes widen in surprise.
“No!” he breathed. “It canth be…”
A jet of golden flame shot over their heads and hit the row of plants on the table at the back of the stage. At once the recently healed dreaming tendrils burst into flames, leaves curling and stems crisping—orange pods popping and spraying juice everywhere.
Sin’estor’s eyes went even wider with shock.
“No!” he screeched through his broken teeth. “Not my planth! Not my prithz planth!”
Jumping off Iyanna, he rushed to the rows of dreaming tendrils. Flapping the long sleeves of his robes at them, he tried to put out the rapidly spreading fire.
It didn’t work—the flames were spreading too fast. Sin’estor couldn’t stop them all, though he ran back and forth, trying to smother the fire without hurting the delicate plants, he couldn’t save them. Mostly because new jets of fire kept hitting other plants on various parts of the stage.
“No! No!” Iyanna heard him moaning. She had managed to get to her knees by now and when she finally turned around, she saw a sight that she knew would be burned in her memory forever.
Dra’vik was alive! There was a shiny patch of red skin with no scales on it where he had been hit by the bolt of energy but he was whole and alive. Not only that, the big Drake was on his feet and towering over her. As Iyanna watched him, he drew in a breath and breathed out fire—an impossibly long jet of it, as though he had a flame thrower in his throat!
“Sweet Jesus,” she whispered, ducking low. She’d been intending to get up and try to run away, but she made the split-second decision to stay where she was—it was safer that way.
It soon became apparent that the big Drake was playing with Baronet Sin’estor. As soon as the Baronet managed to put out the fire in one section of plants, Dra’vik blew another jet of flame onto another section at the opposite end of the stage, making him scamper over to them to try and put it out.
“No! No, stop! My planths!” the Baronet was howling.
It was almost funny, Iyanna thought. Until you considered the fact that this bastard had tried to kill Dra’vik and tried to rape her, not to mention the fact that it felt like he’d broken her face!
“Kill him.” She heard the words coming out of her mouth before she knew she was going to say them.
Dra’vik looked down at her and his eyes were glowing so brightly she could barely meet them. Clouds of smoke swirled around his curving horns and his scales were bright, each golden scale outlined in scarlet from the light of the fire that burned within him. He looked like an ancient god of war, Iyanna thought—a killing machine meant only for death and destruction.
“Kill him,” she said again, her voice steady and sure. “I want him dead—he killed you and tried to rape me. He was going to use those plants to make enough drugs to kill a bunch of other people too. He fucking deserves it.”
Dra’vik opened his mouth and she could see the fire glowing inside his throat.
“Agreed. He dies.” His voice was a deep bass rumble filled with menace, several registers lower than any human voice could speak. “Baronet Sin’estor!” he roared. “Turn and face me!”
“Ah-ha! I did it! I thaved them!” Sin’estor, who had been beating out the flames on the last still-living plants turned, a look of triumph on his skeletal face. “I thaved them! You canth have them!” he shrieked at Dra’vik. “Enough—I thaved enough! I can—”
“You can burn,” Dra’vik rumbled.
He inhaled, his broad shoulders flexing, as though spreading invisible wings and Iyanna saw his immense chest swell with the volume of air he was taking in.
Then it all came out in a flaming rush—a gout of golden fire so huge she felt its deadly heat, even crouched as she was on the ground, many feet below it.
The fire hit Sin’estor right in the middle of his skinny chest and rushed outward. In seconds it had engulfed his body, the flame licking all over him like a living thing—a hungry beast that wanted to consume him.
