And the feel of the earth above her was almost crushing.
She kept going.
Please let her be alive. He doesn't need to kill her. He should try to make her join him first Please, please, don't let him have killed her.
After what seemed like forever, she realized that the angle of the tunnel was changing. She was heading up. Then a current of air swirled to her, barely sniffable under the thick dragon smell, and it was fresh.
Night air. Somewhere ahead. The end of the tunnel.
A new panic invaded her.
Please don't let them have gotten away.
She threw aside all caution and sprinted.
Up, up-and she could smell it clearly now. Cold air, unfouled. Up, up-and she could hear sounds. A yell that suddenly broke off. The voice sounded like-
Galen! she thought, and her heart tore.
Then she saw light Moonlight. She gathered her muscles and jumped.
She scrambled out of the mouth of the tunnel.
And there, in moonlight that hurt her eyes, she saw everything.
A car, a black Jeep, parked under a tree. The engine running but the seats empty. And in front of it, what looked like a battlefield.
There were bodies everywhere. Several were vampires in black-dark ninjas. But also on the ground were the bodies of Nissa and Winnie and Galen.
So they followed, a distant part of Keller's mind said, not interfering in the slightest with the part that was getting ready for the fight. They followed the dragon-which must have done something to Winnie to get Iliana away from her. That was why I couldn't smell anybody; they all went into the tunnel while I was upstairs with brother Brett.
She couldn't tell if they were dead. They were all tying very still, and there was blood on Winnie's head and on Nissa's right arm and back. Blood and daw marks.
And Galen... he was sprawled out full-length, with no signs of breathing. He wasn't even a warrior. He'd never had a chance.
Then Keller saw something that drove the others out of her head.
The dragon.
It was standing near the Jeep, but frozen, as if it had just wheeled to face her. It was holding a limp figure in silvery-white casually, almost tucked under its arm.
And it still looked like Jaime Ashton-Hughes.
It was wearing Jaime's pretty blue dress. Its soft brown hair blew gently about its face, and Keller could feel its dark blue eyes fixed on her.
But there were differences, too. Its skin was deadly pale, and something yellowish was oozing from a cut on its cheekbone. Its lips were drawn back from its teeth in a grinning snarl that Jaime never could have managed. And when the wind blew the soft hair off its forehead, Keller could see horns.
There they were. Stubby and soft-looking-or at least soft on the outside, like downy skin over bone. They were so obviously real and yet so grotesque that Keller felt her stomach turn.
And there were five of them.
Five.
The book said one to three! Keller thought indignantly. And in rare cases four. But this thing has five! Five seats of shapeshifting power, not to mention the black energy, mind control, and whatever else it's been keeping up its sleeve just for me.
I'm dead.
Well, she had known that from the beginning, of course. She'd known it six days ago when she first leaped for the dragon's back in the mall. But now the realization was more bitter, because not only was she dead, so was all hope.
I can't kill that thing. It's going to slaughter me as easily as the others. And then take Iliana.
It didn't matter. She had to try.
"Put the girl down," she said. She kept her half-and-half shape to say it. Maybe she could startle it by changing suddenly when she sprang.
"I don't think so," the dragon said with Jaime's mouth. It had Jaime's voice down perfectly. But then it opened the mouth, and basso profundo laughter came out, so deep and startling that Keller felt ice down her spine.
"Come on," Keller said. "Neither of us wants her hurt." While she was talking, she was moving slowly, trying to circle behind it. But it turned with her, keeping its back to the Jeep.
"You may not," the dragon said. "But I really don't care. She's already hurt; I don't know if she'll make it anyway." Its grin spread wider.
"Put her down," Keller said again. She knew that it wouldn't. But she wanted to keep talking, keep it off guard.
She also knew it wasn't going to let her get behind it. Panthers naturally attack from behind. It wasn't going to be an option.
Keller's eyes shifted to the huge and ancient pine tree the Jeep was parked under. Or they didn't actually shift, because that would have given the dragon a clue. She expanded her awareness to take it in.
It was her chance.
"We haven't even properly introduced ourselves-" she began.
And then, in mid-sentence, she leaped.
Chapter 17
Not for the dragon. She jumped for the tree.
It was a good, tall loblolly pine, whose drooping lower branches didn't look as if they could support a kitten. But Keller didn't need support. As she leaped, she changed, pushing it as fast as she could. She reached the tree with four paws full of lethal claws extended.
And she ran straight up the vertical surface. Her claws sank into the clean, cinnamon trunk, and she shot up like a rocket. When she got high enough to be obscured by the dull-green needles on the droopy branches, she launched herself into the air again.
It was a desperate move, betting everything on one blind spring. But it was all she could think of. She could never take the dragon in a fair fight.
She was betting on her claws.
In the wild, a panther could shear the head off a deer with a single swipe.
Keller was going for the horns.
She came down right on target. The dragon made the mistake of looking up at her, maybe thinking that she was trying to get behind it, to land on its back again and kill it. Or maybe thinking that she might see the pale face of an innocent girl and hesitate.
Whatever it thought, it was a mistake.
Keller was already slashing as she landed. A single deadly swipe with all her power behind it. Her claws peeled the forehead off the creature in a spray of blood and flesh.
The screaming roar almost burst her eardrums.
It was the sound she'd heard before in the mall, a sound so deep in pitch that she felt it as much as heard it. It shook her bones, and it reverberated in every tree and in the red clay of the ground.
And that was another mistake, although Keller didn't know it at once.