Because it looked like baby was all grown up.
The fat little haunches were currently sleek and gleaming with a river of pewter scales. The wings were huge and thick and heavily veined, blocking out much of the sky. And bisected by a ridge of amethyst that had been just a smear of color up the spine last time, but was now a line of crystalline structures, like they were literally carved out of semiprecious stones. And the ridiculous tuft of hair was now a full-on mane, falling between two massive, translucent, curled horns.
She was beautiful, if a twenty-foot embodiment of death can be described that way. Or, rather, twenty feet if you didn’t count the tail, which was long and spiked and thrashing around, digging out great swaths of grass and telegraphing her mood all at the same time. A mood that could obviously be summed up as face-eating furious.
I didn’t want to see her eat the troll’s face, despite not caring for it much.
Because I did care for Claire, and I didn’t know how she would take that once this was over.
Scratch that. I knew exactly how she’d take it, considering that she planted freaking marigolds around her garden to ward off pests, so she didn’t have to kill them. So, yeah. Time to save the asshole troll.
Only problem was, how?
I glanced at Olga, but she wasn’t much help. She was just standing there, blinking slowly. Because yeah. She hadn’t been there before, had she? And while she’d known what Claire was, knowing and seeing are two different things.
Very different.
So it was up to me.
Only I was unarmed—seemed to be a theme, lately—and even if I hadn’t been, I didn’t want to hurt Claire. Not that that was likely. Because the talons at the ends of those huge, scale-covered paws—the ones that had previously been the size of my handy penknife—were now somewhere between butcher and machete range, and razor-sharp. The one pinning the troll down had a slight scritch-scritch motion going on, hardly anything really, barely enough to notice.
Except for the line of green-black blood dripping down his rock-hard chest and side, the ones that the fey swords hadn’t even managed to dent.
I swallowed, and licked my lips.
“Uh, Claire?” It was soft, tentative, almost a whisper. Yet a split second later, the huge, finely tapered snout was in my face, and I was staring into a pair of eyes that had once been pansy colored and kind of silly, but weren’t so much right now.
Now the nictitating membrane that had freaked me out last time slid across irises of fiery orange, burning yellow, and, at the very edge, a ring of pale purple. That would have been intimidating enough all on its own, but for today’s serving of extra crazy, the striations . . . weren’t static. The little lines that radiate out from the pupil in a human’s eye just sort of stay there. I’d thought the same had been true of Claire’s, even in her transformed state, although I admit to being slightly freaked out and not nearly this close last time, so maybe I just hadn’t noticed. But I was noticing now, and these . . . were not.
These spread outward in an ever-moving kaleidoscope of light and color. Orange lines pierced the yellow; yellow radiated back into the orange; the purple flared and blurred with barely contained elemental fire; the whole a hypnotic dance of color and movement and . . . and . . .
And shit, I thought, shaking my head, feeling dizzy. And warm and happy and kind of sleepy, because she’d almost had me. Without even trying, she’d almost had me, a gal who had thrown off vampire suggestions all her life, like water off a duck’s back. But I had almost been hypnotized just standing there, swaying lightly on my feet until I made myself stop, and shook my head again before looking back up at her defiantly.
Because not today, Claire.
Not fucking today.
“You need to stop this and go back inside,” I told her, my voice a lot stronger this time. “Right now.”
Only that swishy tail didn’t think so. It casually destroyed a stone garden bench, reducing it to rubble without apparently noticing, and scattered the pieces far and wide. Meanwhile, the talon continued to press into the troll, a little harder now, judging by the size of that trickle. And the vertical pupils, like the fucking eyes of Sauron, met mine with what I swear was a challenge in them.
I got a sudden flash on Mrs. Nedermeyer’s cats, and the snake that one of them had found in her yard one day. Just a little thing, a bright green grass snake, harmless and kind of cute. But that hadn’t mattered to the cat. Who had stayed on its haunches, its tail swaying side to side, right in front of the little creature. And every time it had raised up its snaky head, thinking maybe it would make a slither for it, the cat would put out a paw.
And bop it back down.
Because cats like to play with their dinner, don’t they?
Just like dragons.
“Stop it, and go in the house!” I said, more forcefully.
The sunburst eyes narrowed. She didn’t like that. Like I didn’t like the snout suddenly thrust the rest of the way into my face, to the point of literally touching my nose. It was a dominance move, and a pretty damned good one, with the great chest heaving, and the huge jaw cracking, and the tornado of breath billowing through a really impressive collection of teeth and feeling like it was about to set my hair on fire.
For the record, staring a dragon in the face is . . . intimidating. It makes you feel small and vulnerable in ways that short-circuit the brain, and send your mind on odd flights of fancy, like wondering if you taste good. It also makes you forget what, exactly, you had to say that was so damned important, but that your brain can’t seem to remember right now because it’s kind of busy gibbering in a corner.
“Uh,” I said, trying to look intimidating and having a really good idea how badly I was failing at it.
But I still didn’t move.
Not even when the great snout started sniffing around me, with huge wheezing breaths that ruffled my hair and felt like they might be giving me a sunburn. Or a dragon burn, I thought, my brain snapping out of it for a sec to decide that our final thought would be flippant, because sometimes my brain is an ass. But I didn’t lose it and run screaming across the yard, although I don’t get any points for that considering that my knees had just locked and I couldn’t seem to move.
I don’t know what would have happened next, whether Claire would have remembered me or whether I’d have ended up as an appetizer. Because the main course took that moment to show up. I heard the old fence gate squeak its way open; saw someone in a bright red ball cap come in carrying a tower of pizza boxes; smelled meaty, cheesy goodness spreading across the lawn.
And screamed: “Claire, no!”
But it was too late. I hadn’t even gotten the words out when the huge body turned in a flowing motion, elegant yet quick as lightning, like a striking snake. Only she didn’t need the advantage. Because the poor delivery boy didn’t even see her, thanks to the huge pile of boxes.
Not that it would have helped if he had, because a second from now he was going to be a memory, and there wasn’t a single thing I could do—
About it, I thought, my brain not keeping up with the action, but fortunately, someone else’s was.
Namely, Olga’s was, because she’d moved—I didn’t know when, since I’d been kind of busy. But she’d used the distraction I’d unwittingly provided to do something, since the rest of us were just standing about, hoping not to get eaten. Only what she could do, I wasn’t sure.
Until I saw Aiden.