Rhiana. Michele Hauf

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СКАЧАТЬ didn’t believe it. No one lived forever.

      The fine hairs at her wrists sprang upright. Sensing the ominous presence before seeing it, she lowered her gaze to search the black void. Crouching, she centered her balance. All power manifested in her belly, her female center. From there she drew up her strength.

      Tilting her head, she listened. The basso heartbeats pulsed out a tormenting tattoo.

      The distinct scent of the beast curled through Rhiana’s nostrils. It tasted bitter and warning at the back of her throat, and spoke on slithering hisses. I am here. You cannot stop me. Attack scent, that. Once before she had scented it, sharp like the sea, innate and feral. And once before she had vanquished the threat.

      Spreading her legs and squaring her hips beneath her shoulders for a firm stance, Rhiana reached behind her back and unlatched the crossbow from the leather baldric slung from shoulder to hip. Specially designed by Paul, and forged completely of steel, the crossbow bore not a sliver of wood that might easily be burned to ash. The string? Fashioned from finely braided dragon’s gut, as well, impervious to flame. A cumbersome windlass was not required to draw taunt the string on this precious bit of weapon. Flexible at rest, the dragon-gut was easily pulled to notch, yet shrank tightly for a forceful release.

      She notched an iron bolt into place. But she would not fire unless the beast proved a threat. It could be wandering in a sleepy daze, have mistakenly scampered out to the cave opening. Despite their deadly nature, Rhiana revered the dragons. Elegant, wondrous creatures of flight and flame, she felt an affinity toward the scaled beasts.

      “Not of hell,” she murmured in awe.

      ’Tis a wicked enchantment, surely, that birthed them. An enchantment that, much against her intuitive calling, lured her to arms.

      The click of curved ebony talons, stealthy, marking its pace upon the stone cave floor, told Rhiana this one did not approach in a somnambulant daze.

      She slid her free hand over the dagger secured at her hip. The handle was fashioned from an ebony dragon talon.

      Emerging into the pale grayness of the pre-dawn, one scaled paw studded with deadly talons rattled out a warning staccato. Indigo scales glinted even in the feeble light. All about, a heavy silence thickened the air. Not so much as a lap of seawater against the stones on the shore below could be heard.

      And then, from out of the dark void, the beast’s head swept forward. The size of two field oxen and rimmed in hard indigo scales and juts of deadly spines was the skull. The horns stabbing out from the temples were small, no longer than Rhiana’s forearm, but weapons she respected. Tusks at the corner of the mouth were but short picks spiking to the sides. ’Twas a rampant, young and wild, many decades of growth still required to reach the elder maxima’s size and docility.

      But no less dangerous to a man’s mortality.

      Thrusting back her shoulders and lifting her chin, Rhiana declared, “I am come! Let us begin this dance of will and strength.”

      The beast tilted its head, for a moment seeming to wonder at her words.

      Rhiana did know they could speak the mortal tongue no more than she could read their beastly thoughts. Yet, Amandine had told her the maxima had such ability.

      Focusing on the pattern of ridged scales between the eyes, shaped like an inverted cross, she readied her aim.

      A hiss of sage-tainted smoke billowed from the nostrils in a creepy fog. So sweet, their breath. Intoxicating, should one lose focus and succumb. Smoke dulled her senses, but she knew it had the same effect on her opponent.

      The beast drew up tall, its head rising as it stretched up its long neck.

      Rhiana anticipated its next move.

      Defiant in her stance, she merely smiled as the creature’s head lunged and the jaws opened wide. Deadly maws targeted her feeble size. A filigree of amber flame danced upon the air. One moment it formed a wisp of steam at the corners of the dragon’s tusk-pointed jaw, the next, it formed a rippling cacophony of heat and fire and evil that encompassed Rhiana’s body.

      Heat, smothering, yet intoxicatingly dreamy, wavered images of the world before her. Amber wall of stone on fire. Distorted crystal sky. A frenzied blotch of scale and fang behind the wall of flame.

      Standing amidst the fire Rhiana could not breathe. Her lungs expanded, then sealed up. Her chest felt bloated, stopped up. Her senses began to shut down. But she did not fear.

      Fire. ’Twas her vitae.

      As the last tendril of flame extinguished, Rhiana confidently raised her crossbow and sighted in her mark. The dragon, its head still lowered as if to attack, held its wide gold eyes at a level to her shoulders. Inverted cross in sight above the top of her bolt—perfect.

      She released the trigger. The heavy steel bolt hissed through the sky and landed the target. There, in the center of the beast’s skull, right between the eyes—the kill spot, a direct entrance to the brain through a fine seam in the skull. Cursed by Heaven for its fall from grace.

      Impact forced the creature up onto its powerful hind legs. The belly of soft, semipermeable violet scales glittered as the first beams of sunlight broke the horizon. Great pellicle wings scooped the air, the force of wind pushing Rhiana back a few steps. She marked her position. Fire did no harm, but a slap from a wildly flailing wing could push her over the edge.

      And then, it tumbled. Over the side of the cliff it soared with little grace. Once an elegant beast of flight, now it crashed upon the stones and boulders below with a bone- and scale-crunching sound that sifted up dust and caused the seabirds to cry out the death of its winged compatriot.

      A quick death, that.

      Rhiana, still standing her ground, waited for the calamity to settle. Breaths huffing, a smile formed.

      Swiping a palm across her face she nodded, and then propped the crossbow against her shoulder. “’Tis not a good day to be a dragon.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      The beast had landed the shore; its upper half, including the neck and skull, had plunged into the sea. No bones or scales to claim this day; the tide would carry away the carcass before nightfall.

      From within the blackness of the cave opening another heartbeat yet pulsed, but she did not sense the second had been wakened by the attack.

      A second? Truly, there was another.

      Was it the mate? The fallen dragon was female, evident in its bright coloring. It was the male that protected the eggs, and which was in need of dull gray scales. Never had Rhiana seen a dragon egg. Or a male, for that matter.

      Topside, after a perilous climb up the cliff face, Rhiana rushed across the open meadow to the forest and retrieved the thick wool cloak she’d secreted behind the twisted trunk of a burned-out oak stump. Swinging the cloak around her shoulders, she then followed the purlieu of the forest a league back to the battlement walls.

      The sun dashed a gold line across the horizon and even from a distance Rhiana heard a rooster crow the morn. Beads of dew danced at grass-tip blades like faery finery. The morning smelled fresh and salted with the slightest tang of sage.

      As she walked, she pulled the СКАЧАТЬ