Callisto

The Snake and the Dragon (pt.1)

Time slowed and sped up all at once.

First, she saw panic consume his eyes, and the abject horror that had gripped him finally broke through into a scream, accompanied by the droning percussion of the hovering dragon's iron wings. She felt him bare down on her and push her from the window, and then in the next instant, she felt his body lash out and fall to the side as the blackened spirits in the room disappeared altogether. He smashed through a table and lay there, breathing lightly, and only then did she feel something wet on her forehead.

She drew her shaking fingers across her face. It was blood.

His blood.

"Jespar," she mumbled, her voice lost in the rage of the creature that bellowed from above them outside.

He said nothing. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling. He was lying there, breathing rapidly, tongue lolling out his mouth, legs scraping across the ground lightly as life drained from him.

Her eyes were drawn then to the dark pool of crimson that flowed beside him, streaming from the hole in his chest.

"Jespar!"

She ran to him, her body's instincts overcoming her mind's capacity to understand what was waiting, dark eyes focused on all that she did.

She barely avoided the second bullet. It ricocheted off the table as she threw herself into a roll underneath it, using it for cover.

She knew what that thing was out there. She needed to get them away. Far away.

She crawled forward and took him in her arms.

"Can you walk?" she asked, her eyes begging him for an answer.

His eyes continued to dart around the room, barely focusing on her face. She shook him and tried to stem the bleeding by applying pressure with her hand, but his blood streamed through her fingers. He would not stop shaking.

His tiny eyes settled on her, and he brought his bloody paw up to scratch at her arm.

"G...go," his mouth stuttered.

Another bullet smashed into the wall in front of them. A light beamed through the hole in the window, throwing their blackened silhouettes across the wall behind the bar. Her peripheral vision told her the bullet had cut through the side of the table.

"Go!" he screeched, wincing with pain, a twisted, discolored vein pulsing above his eyes.

She fought between the desire to survive and the need to stay by his side. She knew what she had to do. Without exception, she knew. She had held her sisters in her arms as they expired, the light fading from their eyes. She had done so even when others had begged her to move out of the way of danger. But her values were Hanakh values. All hunters came home. No journey was complete without return.

"I won't leave you," she said.

The dragon's wings buffeted the winds so that her ears were filled with only the sound of its evil fury. His pulsing red eyes begged her now. She sensed an imperious demand contained in his raspy breath. It was getting fainter.

Then she felt fire burst from the gullet of the earth, and the ground collapsed like a crumbling puzzle beneath them.

...

Within the chopper, he watched the building fall.

"Good effect on target," the pilot said from the cockpit.

"Mhm," he nodded. "Take us in closer."

The pilot spun around. "Sir?"

"The girl's alive," he said, steadying his rifle, surveying the rubble, and scanning the broken glass, tables, and chairs. "I want to get that Tribal."