29. Addie

29

ADDIE

" W ell, has Sheelash taken your youth yet?" the familiar voice of Ls Prissa rang out. "Have you— ahhh!" The last words ended in a startled gasp.

Turning her head, Addie saw that the Aged One was standing in the doorway of the Room of Sighs with guards on either side of her and Lx Sambla trailing behind. Her eyes were wide with shock and her mouth was hanging open as she surveyed the scene before her.

"What is this creature?" she demanded at last, glaring at the Drake. "And where is Sheelash—what have you done to the Goddess of the Web?"

Addie wasn't sure how to answer…but it turned out she didn't have to. Because Ls Prissa's eyes had tracked the enormous room and found the greasy black spot and the charred, oversized skull and crumpled legs which were all that remained of the Spider Goddess.

"No!" she breathed in a low, horrified voice. "Oh, no! Sheelash!" She glared at Addie. " What have you done?"

Heedless of the threat the Drake posed and apparently half-crazy with angry grief, she rushed at Addie with surprising speed for someone so old.

"You killed her!" she screeched, reaching with both hands for Addie's throat. " You killed the Goddess!"

"Mother, no!" Lx Sambla ran forward, trying to catch his mother before she got too close to the Drake. But he was too late.

The Drake lifted his head and reached out with one huge forepaw. Addie gasped as she found herself suddenly nestled in his broad palm, which was the size of a twin-sized mattress, and lifted rapidly into the air.

She watched from ten stories up as the enormous flame-filled eyes narrowed and puffs of black smoke came from the Drake's flaring nostrils.

"Watch out!" she called down to the screaming, raging Ls Prissa. "You're making him angry! He's going to?—"

But the rest of her warning was useless because the Drake lowered his head and blew a gout of flame which immediately engulfed both Ls Prissa and Lx Sambla.

Their shrieks of pain were terrible—almost as awful as watching them writhe in agony. Addie shuddered and put her hands over her eyes—she didn't want to watch! Even though the two Vargans had conspired to steal her youth and had tried to kill her with their crazy rituals, she didn't feel like they deserved to be burned to death—what a horrible way to go.

Sheelash was a different story—she didn't feel bad that the Drake had fried the monstrous spider at all. For untold centuries the evil creature had been living on borrowed time—sucking away the youth of scores of young women. It was no wonder that Ls Prissa had been bitter—she had literally given the best years of her life to a mindless monster. It was both sad and sickening.

Then, to Addie's horror, a whole battalion of guards rushed in. They must have heard the shrieking, she thought. She could see the Drake getting ready to fry them all, but she didn't want that to happen. She couldn't let anyone else get burned alive!

Rising on shaky feet, she stood in the Drake's hard palm and wrapped an arm around one of his vast, curving claws. Then she waved her other hand as hard as she could to get his attention.

"Wait— stop!" she shouted at the Drake.

To her surprise, he actually did. Turning his massive head to one side, he leaned down to look at her.

His expression reminded Addie so much of a good dog trying really hard to understand what his owner was asking of him, that she felt a flash of affection for the huge beast.

"Don't do it," she said, shaking her head in an exaggerated way. "Don't burn them—okay?"

The Drake snorted softly. He shot out a tiny finger of flame from his right nostril and then mimicked her, shaking his giant head from side to side. The message was clear —"fire bad."

"Yes! You get it!" Addie exclaimed excitedly. "That's right, no fire—no burning. Good—good boy!"

The Drake snorted again but then he made a rumbling sound of pain.

Looking down, Addie saw that some of the Vargan guards had actually been stupid enough to start attacking the giant beast. They were shooting the Drake with their blasters and even though the beams were mostly bouncing off his scaly hide, a few were hitting his softer underbelly and causing him pain.

"Hey you, down there!" she shouted at them, cupping her hand around her mouth. "Don't be idiots! He can burn you to a crisp—just run away!"

But the guards wouldn't listen. They kept shooting until Addie was sure the Drake was going to open his mouth and shoot out a gout of flame to fry them all. If so, they would be getting what they deserved, she thought. Who ever heard of attacking a beast the size of a Brontosaurus with the teeth of a Tyrannosaurs and the wingspan of a 747 that could also breathe fire?

To her surprise, though, the Drake didn't burn the stupid guards to a crisp. Instead, the curving claws of its forepaw closed around her gently but firmly like the bars of a cage. Then he flapped his vast, bat-like wings, causing a wind so strong it blew most of the guards over like bowling pins when someone makes a strike.

The wings flapped a few more times and then, suddenly, they were rising into the air. Addie gasped and fell back against the mattress-sized palm. Looking up, she could see the vast frame of the skylight set in the stone ceiling above getting closer at an alarming rate.

But what about the glass? she thought. What about ? —

Her thoughts were interrupted as the top of the Drake's head broke through the red and blue glass that covered the skylight. Suddenly multicolored shards were raining down on her. The Drake's claws blocked the bigger pieces but the smaller ones were like daggers falling on her from above.

Addie was able to get her hands up to cover her face but she could feel her arms and the rest of her body—which was mostly naked since the wind had blown her black cloak open—getting cut and sliced all over.

She gasped and cried out in pain but she couldn't move—the Drake was flying upward so fast now that gravity pinned her to his palm, making her unable to do anything but try to shield her face with her hands.

Then they were past the skylight and out into the twilight sky of Crimson Moon. But still the Drake flew upward.

Addie began to feel faint and cold. The world was so far away now and the air was getting thinner. The g-forces caused by their upward ascent made her dizzy. Then the freezing wind ripped the black cloak right off her body, whirling it away into the purple sky.

"Please, Drake!" she heard herself moaning, not even knowing if the huge creature could hear her. "Please, just take me to the ship and put me down! Put me… down."

The last sentence started as a shout…and faded to a whisper. The wind pressure and cold were too much for her. Though she tried to stay conscious to see where they were going, Addie couldn't manage it. Black flowers began to bloom in her field of vision. They spread and spread until they filled the entire sky.

Then everything was gone and Addie knew no more.