CHAPTER 17

Lily

I dragged myself across the floor, past Alex and Jake and the other dragon who came in with them.The sound of Mark's bellowing reverberated in my bones: "Sons of bitches!You're dead!YOU'RE DEAD!"His voice was the sound of pure lust for blood.It was the sound of hatred, of rage, of murder.I crouched next to the big stone fireplace and sat there, frozen with fear, staring at the scene of violence about to erupt in front of me — a violence that none of us, not Alex, not Jake, not I, might survive.These might be the last moments of my life.

Time seemed to slow down in my mind.Everything moved slowly, through a haze, as if in a dream.I seemed almost detached from my body, watching myself and everything and everyone around me.The Drake who had dragged me out of the locked room was lying on the floor, hissing in pain; scaly, clawed hands over his eyes.The eyes were one of a Drake's most vulnerable parts.He'd be blinded and helpless until whatever wounds he took sealed themselves up.I was in such a trance from everything that it never even occurred to me to think that it served him right.

In front of me were Jake, Alex, and the other Drake that I didn't recognize.They were all tensing and bracing themselves, wings and tails twitching, at the hulking, looming figure of Mark, who hissed and seethed at them as if sizing up and deciding which one he'd murder first after he battered and clawed them into submission.Watching them, I was hardly even aware of what I was doing.

At the edge of my vision, just a few inches away from me, there was something shiny.I looked from the corners of my eyes at the things that caught the glint of the fading sunlight from the big windows of the living room.

Of course!I was crouching next to a fireplace.A fireplace has a stand next to it — and in the stand were shiny, hard, heavy metal objects, pokers for the burning logs.Yes, the pokers were long things, heavy, made of brass.Heavy — and sharp at one end.

Hardly even conscious of my own actions, I reached over with one hand while transfixed on my two lovers, their friend, and the monster that I once thought I loved, getting ready to unleash bloody mayhem on each other.And time seemed to slow down even more as my hand closed around the metallic rod of one of the pokers.I shifted to crouch on the tips of my toes, feeling the cool metal in my hand.Quietly, as if in a dream, I pulled the poker from the stand.

Suddenly, time sped back up to normal, and movement exploded in my sight.Jake, Alex, and their friend lunged at Mark, while Mark charged at them.There was a blurring of wings and a mad thrashing of tails.A table on that side of the room was flipped into the air and crashed against a wall as if it were caught in a tornado.The room was filled with the deafening sounds of shrieks and roars.Mark lifted Jake up and slammed him down onto the floor with a bone-cracking impact.He grabbed the one who came in with Jake and Alex by one arm and threw him the way an angry child would throw a rag doll.He went flying through one of the big plate glass windows.I flinched at the loud, shattering sound of the window breaking, and then the awful cracking of the wood railing outside.Jake and Alex's friend must have gone right through it.He did not come back in.

Now it was only Alex and Mark standing.My breath sped up, my teeth clenched — and my hand tightened around the handle of the shiny metal poker.

Mark lunged out with one arm.Alex feinted back, dodging him.Mark swung with the other arm.Again, Alex dodged the awful claws.Mark thrust out with one arm — and this time he caught Alex by his neck.With the other claw, he grabbed Alex by the arm.Roaring bestially, he lifted Alex over his head.Alex struggled in his grip.Would Mark slam him to the floor as he did Jake?Would he have them both helpless at his feet that way?

He might have done just that — if Alex did not suddenly whip out with his tail and wrap it around Mark's steroid-thickened neck like a python wrapping himself around a deer.Furiously, Mark raked his claws along Alex's tail.Alex raised a leg and kicked Mark in the snout, staggering him, then shoved his foot into Mark's chest, dropping him onto the hard wood floor.

The crash of Mark and Alex hitting the floor together made my heart jump — and made my fingers flex and coil like that ambushing python around the shaft of the fireplace poker.

Suddenly, Jake was in motion again.He sprung up and pounced on Mark, and now the two of them were pinning him down on the floor together.They had my tormentor on his back, his neck writhing and his dragon jaws snapping, his legs kicking and tail writhing crazily.Together, my two Drakes were far stronger than any human.But by himself, Mark was too strong for both.They couldn't hold him down very long.He would force them off of him and attack them once more, and perhaps this time kill them both.His enraged, furious roaring erupted at the ceiling like a volcano of mad animal noise.It was Mark's promise of a terrible, brutal death.

Outside, coming in from the distance, was the sound of sirens blaring.Was it more squad cars?Police wagons?I couldn't tell.Mixed in with that were voices shouting something about "reinforcements."

And then, somehow, something came over me.It was not the abject terror that should have clutched my heart at this moment.This was something new, something that I'd never felt before.It was not fear.If I had to name what possessed my mind now, I might have called it…clarity.

I was seeing things as I'd never seen them before.It wasn't long ago that I had pretended to be a Drake.They took me to a place where they celebrated being what they were.I put on scales and horns, false wings and a false tail, and pranced around as if I were not just a woman anymore, but a woman who could become a dragon.It was almost a liberating kind of feeling, this pretense of casting off my humanity and becoming a winged reptilian creature.It was almost like being free of myself, free of everything I'd ever done and ever dreamed of becoming.I could pretend that there was no longer any such person, any such being, as Lily Turner.There was only Lily the Dragon.

In my heart I became that creature again, but this time not as a lark, not as a game or play-acting, but for real.It was as if some fire inside me had consumed the woman that I was.Lily the Dragon was someone new.She was someone who had once been a terrified, tormented, hurt and helpless woman.And there, raging and thrashing, pinned to the floor by two other dragons, lay the one who had caused my former self so much pain, so much agony, so much terror.There he was.And what was I going to do about it?

Clutched in my hand was a long, hard, shiny, metallic answer.

Lily the Dragon rose to her feet, heavy fireplace poker in hand with its tip, bigger and sharper than a dragon's fang, gleaming at the end.And with her own roar of dragon fury, she lunged forward.

With the poker like a javelin in my grip, I charged forward at the three figures struggling on the floor.All I needed was one fast, hard thrust of the end of that poker into the right sensitive place.I fixed my eyes on the tender spot at the base of Mark's throat, between the collar bones.I would bury the end of the poker right there and drive it deep.I'd puncture his windpipe and sever his spine and that would be the end of him.

I brought up my dragon-slaying weapon…

…and the side of his tail, swishing through the air, caught me across the midsection and sent me flying back.

The blow of his tail sent me spinning down onto the floor, but it did not knock me out or stun me.It might have stopped or stunned me before — but it did not stop Lily the Dragon.As fast as I fell, I leapt back up onto my feet and charged again, once more hefting the poker like a javelin.I leaped over Mark's kicking legs and onto his stomach.I raised the poker over my head.Somewhere in my senses, a voice rang out — "Lily!"Was it Jake's voice?Or Alex's?

It didn't matter.At the same time, I brought down the poker hard, point-first.The sharp, gleaming brass fang that was the business end of the poker struck home, sinking into one side of Mark Reinhardt's chest — the place where his heart was.

With an unholy scream, Mark thrashed out with his arms and legs, throwing me and Jake and Alex off him.Wings twitching spasmodically, he sprang up to a sitting position with the poker embedded in his chest and blood spurting freely from around it.His scream of pain turned to a reverberating rumble of shock.He clutched at the place from which the poker protruded, coughed, emitted a heavy, choking gasp — and then fell backward onto the floor with a heart-stopping thud.

The most dreadful silence fell over the room.I sat a few feet away from where Mark lay, while Jake and Alex picked themselves up and looked at the huge, reptilian body, impaled like a vampire, sprawled before them.They turned their eyes to me with shocked, numb expressions, and the quiet felt as if it would swallow me up.

Dimly, on some level, I became aware of the sounds of voices outside.They shouted things I only partly heard about "ambulances" and "rounding people up."The voices were distant things, even though they were right outside the door.My whole awareness centered on the figure lying still on the floor.Even Jake and Alex, their dragon bodies melting back to human, became blurred shapes at the edges of my vision.

Some nameless impulse made my legs move.In halting, trembling steps, I went forward to where Mark was lying with the poker protruding from his chest and his tank top reddened with blood that pooled on the floor under him.The thought of it made tremors inside me — that metal object ran through his body, his life leaking out of him.As I approached, Mark's body contracted, grew smaller, almost seeming to shrivel.When I was near enough to stand right over him, his morphed, pumped, and spiked reptile body had receded into a bloodied and pale human form.It was the Mark that I'd first met — but not as he was that night, dressed in a suit and looking confident and debonair.It was a blanched, unmoving shell of a man lying in a spreading crimson puddle, staring up towards the ceiling.And then, awareness came into his blank eyes for one last time — when they fixed on me.

Mark's lips parted, and in a tiny voice — so tiny, not seeming at all like the man I'd known, who had first been my lover and then my own personal monster — he spoke my name."Lily."

Wrapping myself up in my own arms, I froze at the sound of him speaking my name in that strange, wispy little voice.

"Lily," he said."You were mine.You belonged…to me…"

And then, the light went out of Mark Reinhardt's eyes and his body grew completely, finally still.

Something cracked wide open inside me, like a crack ripped in the crust of the Earth.I screamed as if to pour out all the breath in my body, screamed as if I'd never stop.With my arms still wrapped tightly around me like a straight-jacket and tears streaming from my eyes, I dropped screaming to my knees.

Jake and Alex were on their knees with me instantly.Their arms wrapped me as tightly as my own, they held me and rocked me as I screamed and cried until it hurt.I was now a convulsing mass of shrieks and sobs, oblivious to everything except Jake and Alex holding me, neither seeing nor hearing the Drake police officers charging into the house to find us there.

Somewhere in the midst of all that, everything went black.