“Shoot him, Alex,” said Shelby, still hanging limply in Lloyd’s hands. “Don’t worry about me. Just shoot him.”
“You bi—”
Lloyd’s insult was cut short by Crow, who came screeching through the door with talons extended and feathers fluffed until he looked twice his actual size. He slammed into Lloyd’s arm, slashing with his beak and feline hind claws for an instant before releasing and rocketing toward the rafters overhead, where he proceeded to start shrieking at the gorgon below. The whole thing happened in seconds. Lloyd dropped Shelby back to the bed, screaming and clutching at his bloody arm.
And then, as if that weren’t chaotic enough, a lindworm crashed through the barn wall.
Where there is one lindworm, there is probably another: this is a fact of the natural world, much like “don’t put your hand in the manticore,” and “try not to lick the neurotoxic amphibians.” We’d killed the female lindworm in the forest, and tagged the male back in the swamp. I hadn’t thought to check and see whether he’d come looking for his mate. Apparently, my Church Griffin was smarter than I was.
The lindworm let out an enraged bellow and charged for the most distinctive smell in the room: the smell of blood, which was flowing freely from Lloyd, thanks to Crow. Lloyd shouted. The lindworm roared, which would have been an impressive sound even if we weren’t all stuck in a confined space.
“We’re going to die,” I said, dazed, just as the lindworm crashed into Lloyd.
The gorgon security guard shouted something incomprehensible as he grabbed for the lindworm’s head, trying to force it to meet his eyes. It responded by snarling and snapping at him, driving him farther back against the wall. I stared for another few precious seconds, knowing I was wasting time, and yet unable to tear myself away. This was something no one had ever seen before, so far as I knew; it might be something no one was ever going to see again.
And that didn’t change the fact that Shelby needed me. I made my way quickly around the edge of the barn, trying to avoid doing anything that might catch the lindworm’s attention. I wasn’t nearly as worried about catching Lloyd’s attention, which was a nice change. I made it all the way to the bed where Shelby lay crumpled without being seen.
Shelby made a protesting sound when I touched her arm. I shushed her quickly. She recognized my voice and dared to crack one eye open, sagging into my arms with relief. I smiled as encouragingly as I could, grimacing a little as I realized how much blood had soaked into her clothing. Lloyd’s shaking must have reopened her wound, and given where the damage was located, I couldn’t even throw her into a fireman’s carry, which would have left my gun hand free. Instead, I had to carry her with both arms, and hope that we’d make it out of the barn unchallenged.
The lindworm was still roaring as I made a beeline for the door, and the sound masked my footsteps enough that I actually started to believe that I might get away with it. Then I heard Lloyd shout behind me, sounding offended and enraged all at the same time. I glanced back to see him shoving the lindworm away from himself, that strange, serpentine bend in his torso expanding as fabric shredded and he emulated his mother’s “turn your lower body into a giant snake” trick.
The lindworm might not have been very smart, but it was a predator, and it knew when the odds had shifted. It fell back, snapping and snarling at the transformed Lloyd. As for Lloyd himself, he ignored the lindworm in favor of pursuing a much more appealing target: me.
I ran.
It wasn’t easy with Shelby in my arms and an uncertain terrain beneath me—the lindworm had ripped gouges in the floor, which complicated my escape. I could hear Lloyd slithering after me as I reached the hole in the wall and ducked outside, Shelby dangling heavy and unmoving in my arms.
I had barely stepped onto the flat ground outside the barn when strong hands grabbed me and yanked me roughly to the side, nearly causing me to lose my grip on Shelby. I took a breath to protest, and stopped when I realized that the man who had grabbed me was familiar: it was Walter, Dee’s brother. The current leader of the fringe.
“Give the girl to me,” he said, speaking quickly. “I’ll see her to the doctor.”
“But—”
“Give her!”
I could still hear Lloyd’s scales against the barn floor. He had stopped, for whatever reason, without crossing the threshold. Swallowing hard, I transferred Shelby into Walter’s arms. He nodded curtly, like this was the only sensible thing that I could possibly have done, before he turned his back and walked away into the woods.
Shelby’s blood was hot and sticky on my shirt and hands. I pulled my gun back out of my waistband as I turned to face the barn, ready to challenge Lloyd more openly now that Shelby was out of the line of fire—and stopped as yet another surprise layered itself on top of what was already a surprising afternoon.
Lloyd hadn’t emerged from the barn because his way wasn’t clear. Dee was standing in front of him, the snakes atop her head coiled in full strike position, her mouth open and her fangs extended. I’d never seen my normally mild assistant look so terrifying.
“Dee?”
“This isn’t your fight, Alex,” she said, voice only slightly distorted by her mouthful of fangs. “Run, and don’t look back.”
I wanted to. It had been a long time since I wanted anything as much as I wanted to do exactly as I was told. If I ran, I could catch up with Walter and Shelby, and leave Lloyd to be handled by his own people. And if something happened to Dee?
If something happened to Dee, I would never be able to forgive myself.
“I can’t,” I said, and walked over to stand beside her, bracing my gun against my left wrist as I aimed with my right hand. Lloyd’s outline was clearly visible against the doorway, standing a good nine feet off the ground now that he had a serpent’s tail to lift him up. “Come out, Lloyd. Maybe we can still end this peacefully.”
“Any chance of that ended a long damn time ago.” Lloyd’s head turned. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew from the way that he was angling himself that his attention was on Dee. “Isn’t that right, little sister?” The lindworm lurked in the shadows behind him, clearly steeling itself for another attack.
“It was always going to end badly, but it didn’t have to end like this,” replied Dee. “You chose this when you killed those people—when you endangered us. Why did you do that, Lloyd?” There was a pleading note in her voice that hadn’t been there before, and as she spoke, the impact of Lloyd’s words hit me. He was her brother. His father had left Hannah and gone on to find a mate of his own species, one who could give him children who wouldn’t be outcast like he was. Walter and Dee were Lloyd’s half-siblings. They were his family.
It was unfair on so many levels that I didn’t even know where to begin. There wasn’t time for me to decide. Lloyd slithered forward, emerging from the shadows of the barn. I had just enough time to see the ragged, diseased-looking line where his tail joined with his torso, half-formed scales melting into blotchy skin. There were gaps in the flesh of his tail, places where his legs hadn’t quite merged properly. He hissed, displaying outsized fangs. I adjusted my aim, preparing to take the shot, and Lloyd lunged—
—not at me, but at Dee. She shrieked, backpedaling, and I turned, calculating the shot in the instant before I pulled the trigger. My aim was true. My aim has always been true.
Gunshots are always loud. This one seemed louder than most. It sounded like it should have carried for miles.
Somehow, we still heard Lloyd hit the ground.
Dee ran to Lloyd as soon as he fell, gathering him into her arms and sobbing into the motionless snakes that were his hair. The fact that he’d been preparing to hurt her was forgotten in her sorrow. Crow was already in flight, arrowing toward me. I managed to shove my gun back into my waistband before Crow hit my chest and buried his head under my arm, tail lashing. I wrapped my arms around him and held him, letting him shiver himself back to calm.