Read Online Hip Deep in Dragons by Christina Westcott - Free Book Online Page A

barrier flowed and distorted like an image seen from the bottom of a murky pool. My lungs burned, as I tried to drag the gelatinous air past his fingers. Robby’s hand slipped from my mouth and eased down to my shoulder. As he pressed me against his chest, I could feel his hands shaking. Fear, fatigue, or both?
    Stretched beyond its breaking point, the temporal flow snapped back to its normal pace with a crack I felt inside my head. The dragon surged toward us, a green and black tsunami. As it reached our side of the pond, the beast slid to a stop, and reared back on its hind legs. It lashed its tail like a wet cat, flattening vegetation and sending up sprays of mud. The long, sinuous neck stretched out, bringing the creature’s snout down to sniff the spot where I had stood mere seconds ago. It huffed out a cloud of greenish vapor. The grasses touched by the venomous mist withered, blackening and turning to ash.
    The beast lifted its muzzle, yellow eyes sweeping in puzzlement, searching for its lost prey. The huge head swung closer, and I tensed, certain it would collide with our invisible shield. Closer still it came, until I could see the texture of the skin on its face, a pebbly mosaic of green and black in a tracery of stripes and whorls. Fleshy black barbels writhed on its snout, disturbing the cloud of flies drawn to the gore-encrusted mouth.
    Shakagwa Dun lifted its head, searched the area again, and roared its anger and frustration. The sound reached me as a vibration against the walls of our invisible shield. The dragon turned and shambled back through the trail of broken grass, stopping to look rearward between the spires of its folded wings several times before returning to its interrupted meal.
    I felt Robby’s breath against my cheek. “Follow my lead, Laura. We are going to ease away from here.” As I took a step, his arms tightened about me. “Slowly—very slowly. The spell is harder to hold while we move. Do not talk, do not even breathe more than necessary.”
    A headache pounded behind my eyes, keeping time with my pulse.
    We inched away with interminable slowness, freezing each time the dragon lifted its head. Once out of its sight, Robby released me and I felt the spell dissipate in a spangle of light. He staggered, leaned over with his hands on his knees and panted. “That really…takes it…out of you,” he gasped between breaths. When he rose to face me, a storm brewed behind his pale eyes.
    “What are you doing here, Laura?”
    I turned his question away with one of my own. “Are you okay, Robby? You look…tired.” I wanted to say awful, but opted for diplomacy. His clothes were torn and covered with mud. Twigs and burrs stuck to his hair. The darkness underneath his eyes was not dirt, but exhaustion. He looked like a man who’d put in a rough and sleepless forty-eight hours and saw no hope of respite in the future.
    “I saw you from the other side of the lake, but I had to race all the way around to get to you. I ran like all the fire spritesin Hell were after me, but I feared I would never make it in time. I threw up that temporal distortion spell to slow the bloody great worm down long enough to come up with a concealing glamor that would stand up to it sniffing around. The Veil of Saint Caraketis is useful for hiding inanimate things, but not living beings who need to breathe. The Veil is impermeable. No oxygen in, no carbon dioxide out. If we were forced to stay in there much longer, we would have been in danger of passing out.”
    He ran his hands over his hair, dislodging a few leaves. “You must have used some kind of vehicle to get out here. Where is it?”
    I gestured. “The Jeep’s back that way a bit, in a stand of trees.”
    With a hand tight around my upper arm, he propelled me along the trail. “We need to put a little distance between us and that beastie. When we get to your Jeep, you are going to drive out of here as fast as you can and wait for me at your house. I