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Ryn’s urgent words penetrated her focus. She gathered her two IEDs and raced further back into the room with Ryn on her heels carrying her pack.
Two more rows back, she skidded to her knees and placed one of the bombs on the ground. She skimmed her fingers over the timer, set the device for ten seconds, did the same on the other, and hovered her finger over the ‘start’ button. With a glance to the vortex, she estimated the distance at least one hundred feet away. She had a good throw, but she’d never been an outfielder.
“Who’s got the best arm?”
Hayden dropped to a knee and over the dragon’s roars said, “I can use a spell to send it in.”
“I’m not sure if magic would cause the explosive to trigger.” Caro hadn’t tested the possibility of magic’s use with the dangerous substance, no matter how stable.
The sorcerer shook her head. “Should’ve thought of that. Never used C-4.”
“I’ll do it.”
The certainty of Ryn’s tone erased her doubts. This had to work. “I’m putting them on a ten-second timer. Don’t miss.”
She punched her thumb on the button to initiate the first timer, then placed the device in Ryn’s hand.Ten, nine…While he wound up and hurled the item, she set the next timer, sure he wouldn’t miss. She gave him the next device and stopped to observe the results. The howling didn’t stop, nor did any more flares blast from within.
Anticipation set her fingers tingling.
…four, three, two, one…
CHAPTER14
The first blast’s shockwave bowled West back from his crouch and onto his ass. He shook his head and scrambled to rise when the second charge went off. The energy’s painful punch sent him backward once more, this time banging his head against a metal support pole with a clang which rang in his ears. Or was the echo a result of the explosion?
Small objects rained down on him, bouncing off his skull. He opened his eyes. Stones lay on the carpet in various sizes. Gravel? He shook his head to clear the cobwebs. The dragon must be in some cave system.
Once he’d pushed to his feet, he met Caro’s gaze. Her lopsided, triumphant smile made him want to kiss her right there.
By the vibrations in the floor, the dragon had entered the room. The beast moved quickly for being the size of an elephant. His iridescent black scales glinted through the smoldering cubicle panels, methodically searching for his attackers. In a mere moment, the dragon spied them. Smoke curled from his nostrils, and his yellow, vertically slitted eyes narrowed evilly. Teeth easily six inches long dripped with saliva as he opened his maw, and the scales at his throat gained an orange glow at the edges.
West grabbed Caro’s hand and pulled her behind a jumble of office furniture, since she seemed more entranced than scared of the dragon. She might not know the Celtic species was the most dangerous and hard to kill. “Move!” He hauled the vampire with him, then let go of her hand as he skidded around another cube wall and shouted, “If you’re going to do anything, do it now, Hayden.”
He’d no sooner said the words when explosions went off behind him. The dragon’s roar-scream knifed through his head. The beast’s tail whooshed through the air from behind the veil of smoke and he ducked.
Caro didn’t move quickly enough. She launched through the air and disappeared into the other half of the room, out of his sight behind billows from the fires.
Fear clutched at his lungs. No. She wasn’t a fragile human. A vampire could withstand such treatment.
More explosions and fireworks came from behind the shifting screen of smoke. The sorcerer shouldn’t have to fight alone. Plus, he couldn’t risk more people being injured like Caro. He had a fae silver knife, the metal being one of the few things which could penetrate dragon hide if you could wedge the blade between the scales. Time to go on the offensive.
He drew his eighteen-inch blade and darted across broken furniture and through dense smoke toward the deadly foe. He crouched behind a desk to survey the scene through the haze. Hayden had turned the beast so its back faced West. The sorcerer tossed spell after spell, none seeming to have any effect on the monstrous creature.
Attacking a vein would be his best bet. Why didn’t his schooling leave him more prepared for this? The neck seemed the only viable option, assuming dragon physiology aligned closely to all animals. His was a simple plan, really a single-minded determination to defeat this hellish fiend. Hopefully, whatever tactics Hayden employed, the sorcerer would see West and not take him down with her efforts.
West waited until her next volley and charged forward, relying on his preternatural speed to give him the advantage. He arrived at the beast’s chest. A blur arrived next to him—Caro.
Instead of waiting to see what she’d planned, he slid the tip of his knife at the juncture of two scales fashioned like roofing shingles. He ran the razor-sharp tip up until it hit the plate overlapping the two. With every ounce of strength, he pushed.
And broke through.
The blade tip embedded into the skin underneath, and West used all of his strength to slide the blade into the hide.
Success made him want to roar every bit as loud as the dragon himself, until the sharp edge of the dragon’s scale threatened to cut off a finger. He backed off a bit, jostled the blade to create the biggest hole he could, then withdrew the weapon. Blood poured from between the overlapping plates, though in case he’d guessed incorrectly, he worked another seam a foot away.
The dragon didn’t have the enhanced speed of a demon. The slower reaction time meant West tried his second attempt when the dragon’s synapses alerted him to the danger. The beast reared before West’s blade found the hide a second time.
West dodged the foot-long, razor sharp claws and the paws which wanted to stamp him out. Then he spied Caro hanging from the knife she had embedded in the dragon’s neck in a similar fashion to West’s own attack. His breath hung in his chest.
