“I’ve played lots of video games,” Evan said. “Dragons, uh…”
“They aren’t like they are in the video games,” Tiff said. “Generally speaking, you don’t deal with dragons. For one thing, they barely exist anymore, for another…”
The satyr, Green Eyes, and the maenad turned to look in the same direction at once. I didn’t bother to check. I just moved, which meant I reacted only a fraction of a second after they did.
Peter, Tiff, and Roxanne were just turning to look as the rest of us were moving the opposite direction. I put my arms out, touching their shoulders, pushing Tiff and Peter. Roxanne, in front of Peter, was forced to move with.
“Shit!” someone shouted. “Shit!”
The dragon touched ground behind us. The neighborhood rattled like it was a dish-laden table and someone had dropped a weight on it. Windows, wood, cars, all shifting violently in response. Icicles and piles of snow dropped from the overhangs around shops and stores.
I only caught a glimpse of it, as I passed into the alley. I was just behind Tiff and Peter, Green Eyes on my back.
I’d expected something sleek. The silhouette I could make out suggested something like a bear in stature, more like a small building in raw mass. Broad, thick in build, and draped in looser scaly hide, with enough obvious muscle that my initial thoughts about its ability to fly were banished. Its eyes glowed, not like Green Eyes’ eyes did, but as if lit with an intensity of their own. The heat rising off of it pushed away the snowflakes that were frozen in the air.
It was maybe eighty feet away as I passed into the space between two buildings. The space was narrow enough I could have just barely touched both walls with my fingertips, and was riddled with ventilation and general stuff. A broom, a bucket of salt and sand, and garbage cans. The others were ducking under a section of ventilation that had been spewing steam into the alley before it had been frozen in time.
Still running, I only managed to take two steps into the alley before the reptile slammed its bulk against the two buildings, shoving its head into the space. The flesh was squeezed, drawn back by the pressure, teeth exposed and scraping against the brick and concrete on either side.
It reached one claw inside, head tilting to make room for the limb as it lashed out, clawing in my general direction, five or so feet short of actually making contact. I felt Green Eyes clutch me tighter, arms around my chest.
I wondered if the damage to the alleyway could be explained away by saying a large truck had backed into the alley before realizing there wasn’t room.
It screeched once more, a loud sound, before clawing at the pavement and ice of the alley floor, digging deep gouges out of it, as if it could somehow make itself fit with enough raw willpower.
I ducked underneath one jutting piece of ventilation, backing away more than I ran, my movements limited by the speed of the people ahead of me.
The little alleyway was lit by an orange-red light from behind me, and I felt a sinking sensation in my gut.
Like thin tendrils of drool, an ignited fluid, molten metal or magma was escaping the corners of the dragon’s mouth.
It drew its head back, almost until it didn’t have a neck.
“Shit!” Peter shouted.
There was no escape route. No place I could push forward.
Tiff was hopping up a set of stairs at the side of one building, touching a key the length of her forearm to a door. Roxanne hopped up beside her. An escape route, or a makeshift shield. Maybe both. The maenad, faceless woman and satyr were rounding the corner at the far end of the building.
I was too far back to take either option.
I reversed direction.
Not going for the dragon, but for the section of ventilation I’d just ducked under.
I grabbed a tall recycling bin, and swung it around, a makeshift shield, albeit a plastic one. I braced it against the vent, my back to the wall.
Being a bogeyman meant I was immune to some human frailties. My heart didn’t beat, my muscles didn’t ache, my lungs didn’t struggle to pull in air. When we were hit, all the same, I lost my senses. Up, down, left, right, backward, forward, my grip on Green Eyes, her grip on me, my ability to understand where I was, it all disappeared.
Disorientation, damage, my hand going to pieces as it collided with a surface. Fire, as it painted every surface, igniting brick and pools of water. Removing all traces of winter in this dismal, dark alleyway.
There was only the inferno.
I was on fire. One arm, part of my chest. Burning surprisingly well.
Turning over onto my back, aware that I was on fire, I was aware of the dragon’s maw. In my disorientation, it looked like it was looming directly above me, while I was at the bottom of a deep pit, with walls of flame or smoke on all four sides. Liquid flame spilled from its mouth, as if it had ignited itself, and it didn’t even care.
One of the four walls surrounding me was sky, I realized, as smoke cleared, and I struggled to get to my feet, to stagger toward that sky despite the lack of appropriate ground underfoot, the way my leg somehow wasn’t moving fast enough, and the way the overly bright flames seemed to claw everything back in the opposite direction, sections of brick wall, glass…
Like the pull of a star.
Green Eyes was screaming. Others were shouting.
I shook my head, but it did nothing to help.
It was easier to work with my dashed senses than to try to put everything in order.
To get away, I needed to move away from the scaled beast. That meant moving down.
I staggered more than I ran, not familiar with my surroundings. I’d been halfway down the alleyway, and now I was at the end of it, surrounded by long licks of fire that looked more like fluorescent lights than anything I’d ever called flame, they were so bright.
The others were on either side of me. A couple were shouting instructions.
Green Eyes was there. Struggling with the fact that part of her face, hair, and the end of her tail were on fire. I suspected that if she hadn’t been riding on my back, my head would be in that condition too.
Her focus was on me, mine on her. Both of us momentarily more concerned with the fact that the other had been ignited than we were with ourselves.
It felt like such a long distance, to look over my shoulder. Things had broken in the impact, when I’d been thrown by the initial hit, and some of those things were part of my neck. The amount of fire in the dragon’s mouth had increased. A section of wall had broken away, where it had clawed at the surface.
I reached for Green Eyes, only to realize that my right hand had shattered. Still there, but not intact enough to grip anything.
My left hand was okay, but the arm and elbow were blazing. I was careful to hold the fire away from my body.
She reached out to me. I gripped her hand, and tried to pull her along even as I braced my legs under me to jump, to lunge across the most passable stretch of dragon’s fire.
Aflame, my left leg gave up. With melted, burning plastic from the bin I’d tried to use as a shield still caking it, the bone and wood simply gave up, bone breaking like chalk, the wood that braced it now essentially gone.
Green Eyes still holding my arm, unaware that I’d just lost my ability to stand, I was pulled down on top of her.
Green Eyes screamed something, but I couldn’t make it out over the roar of fire.
How eerie, to not be afraid, in the midst of all this. To not be terrified, my face screwed up in panic like Tiff and Roxanne’s were. Like the maenad’s face was, even. I was still disoriented, still trying to deal with the world having been one thing in one moment, and holocaust and ruin in the next.