Cooper Isabel: Legend Of The Highland Dragon

Oh God.

The shadow-man paused for a second. Its head turned toward the cook’s still form. Then it seemed to shrug, and the tentacle withdrew. As if Mrs. Hennings had never been there, the figure and its companion continued their advance—this time toward Mina alone.

Oh God.

The shadows were between her and the door to the outside. The windows were too small and too high to crawl through. Mina fumbled behind her, found the doorknob, and yanked open the door that led to the rest of MacAlasdair’s house.

She ran, darting around tables and through doors and not really knowing where she was headed, holding on to enough self-possession not to flee upstairs but to try and find a way out of the house, hoping that the spirits wouldn’t follow her even then.

This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.

One of the shadows had gotten close enough, a room or twelve back, that the tip of its “arm” had brushed Mina’s ankle as she fled. Pain and numbness had run up from the spot almost instantly, as if she’d fallen hard on the leg. She tried to ignore it now.

She wondered if Mrs. Hennings was dead. If so, she suspected it was a better fate than Mina would have. Whatever the shadows intended, a broken skull would probably be kind in comparison. Moore had been beaten, the papers had said, with a large object. Maybe the shadows didn’t need an object; maybe they just needed to touch a human body for long enough.

She had no strength left for either panic or sorrow at that thought. It just was, like one more table to veer around.

Another room. This one had light coming from under the door. Not normal light: a strange, wavering reddish glow, as if someone inside was messing about with Chinese lanterns. Was there someone inside?

She sprinted for the door anyhow. Maybe anything that strange would be able to take care of the shadows chasing her. If not, it was still a door, and it was still ahead of her. She reached out and grabbed the doorknob.

It didn’t turn. Mina twisted frantically at it, with one hand and then two, and nothing happened.

Locked.

And there was nowhere else to go, no side passage to flee down, and the dark shapes were coming onward.

“Go away !” she screamed at them, knowing it wouldn’t work, still not wanting to die doing nothing. “Begone! A—avaunt! In the name of God!”

No wavering. No change. Only oncoming, expressionless shadow.

A roar came from the room behind her.

It was a bit leonine; it was a bit like a train whistle; and it was loud enough to make Mina’s ears ring. Hearing it, the shadows froze. If they’d had eyes, Mina thought they would have been looking at each other. She sensed some sort of uncertain communication between them anyhow.

Then a claw half the size of her body smashed through the door behind her, carving through the wood as if it were wet paper. Mina ducked away, flattening herself against the wall, just in time to see an immense dark shape charge out and into the first of the shadows.

A shrill scream went up from the monster. Mina thought that it was likely a dying wail—she hoped so, with a hot vengeance born of fright—but she couldn’t see the shadows clearly any longer.

She could see their attacker.

She saw a scaled body as tall as the hallway ceiling and almost as wide as the hall itself. She saw great leathery wings folded against the beast’s sides. She saw a long snaky neck that ended in a great wedge of a head, the same deep red as the rest of the creature. It had blazing gold eyes, that head, and a mouthful of teeth like railroad spikes.

Even her mind, which felt like so much jelly by that point, could grasp the meaning of those attributes.

Dragon .

The shadow lashed out at it with its arms. There was a hissing noise as it struck the dragon’s flesh, but Mina didn’t stay to see the rest of the battle. The shadow was distracted. The dragon was distracted. She took a deep breath and bolted forward, away from the locked door.

As she’d hoped she would, she passed under the dragon’s neck as it flinched backward from the shadow. The beast snarled, terrifyingly close to Mina’s ears. The sound gave new energy to her exhausted frame, and she scrambled onward past the folded wings and the scaled bulk of the dragon’s body, past the lashing tail, and into the empty hallway beyond.

She didn’t have time for relief. She ran again. Behind her, she heard movement, then footsteps, if something so loud could be called that.

Another door lay ahead. This one was unlocked. Mina felt the dragon’s presence behind her as she ran through. Did they breathe fire? She was dead if they did—unless this one simply didn’t want to burn the house down.

Why would it care?

Why would a dragon be in a house at all?

She wanted to wake up. She wanted to slap whoever was responsible for this final insult. Her week hadn’t been enough. Running from shadow monsters and being pinned against a room with—something unnatural—in it hadn’t been enough. No, there had to be dragons, too. If guardian angels existed, hers was due a kick in the shins.

The next door opened easily enough, at least, and deposited her in what must have been a drawing room. The curtains were mostly closed, but Mina could see a little bit of night sky through them. The stars would be out any moment. So would she, in all likelihood.

But there were windows and the street and—yes—a poker by the fireplace. She grabbed it just as the dragon burst through the door.

It shouldn’t have fit through the door at all. Not the beast she’d seen at first.

It was smaller now.

There was a blurriness about it too. Mina couldn’t make out its features, or even its form, particularly well. Terror might do that, but she’d been terrified before, and the dragon had seemed vivid enough then.

It didn’t matter. She lunged for the window. The poker smashed through a pane of glass.

Then the dragon was in front of her, between her and her escape route. Mina shrieked again, this time in frustration as much as fear. It had to be fast , too?

She couldn’t even look at it properly. It kept twisting, or being twisted. She could tell that it was rearing up now on two legs, which there shouldn’t have been enough space to do. Otherwise it was as if she couldn’t focus her eyes, or as if some prism hung between her and the dragon, splintering its image into many angles.

Well. Fine . She’d at least make it have a bad night.

Mina drew her arm back, tightened her grip on the poker—

A hand grasped her arm. A human hand, by the feel of it, since her bones were in one piece and there were no claws piercing her skin. But when Mina looked down, the skin on the hand was deep red and scaly.

That shape lasted for a moment, long enough to burn itself into Mina’s mind. Then the scales vanished, the skin turned pale again, and she was looking at a hand that might have belonged to any gentleman.

Her own hand dropped to her side, the poker in her grasp suddenly very heavy. Mina looked up at golden-brown eyes, deep red-black hair, a square chin, and a thin mouth.

“Cerberus,” said a familiar deep voice, heavy with irony and resignation. “Might I ask what you’re doing in my house?”

The best laid schemes of mice and men, as another Scotsman had observed, often went awry. Stephen had heard as much quite a few times in the century since Burns had written his poem, but the phrase had rarely seemed as true as at that moment. Granted that his plans hadn’t been that well-laid; still, at no point had they featured either a battle with manes or further conversation with Miss Seymour.