Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 74932 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74932 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
TWENTY-SEVEN
Isla had never felt so helpless in her whole life! Not even on her wedding night, the first time Baslik had stripped her naked and done horrible things to her to try and make her glow.
Her husband was going to kill her now—she was quite sure of it. The strange change that had overtaken him had driven him mad and he was going to murder her in cold blood. The only question was if he would do it quickly with a blow to her heart or by slicing her throat…or slowly by carving her to bits.
Isla prayed for the former but feared it would be the latter. And it wasn’t like anyone would stop him—no one ever stopped him. He was too rich, too powerful. He could do anything he liked to anyone he liked, and everyone would always just look the other way. They—
Suddenly, she caught a flash of movement from the corner of her eye. Her head was frozen in place but she still had control of her eyes, so she was able to look as far to the left as she could.
It was Sark, she saw, with surprise. He was trembling all over, a sneer of effort on his face as though he was fighting to be free of the nerve-immobilization band. Then he went perfectly still for a moment. Had he given up? But no, because now he began changing.
Isla watched in amazement as Sark’s limbs lengthened and thickened. Then his neck became long, and his face grew up and outward—his mouth becoming the massive jaws of a predator. The big Kindred burst out of his clothes—his trousers and boots falling away in shreds as he somehow shifted forms.
Oh my Goddess of Mercy! she thought, watching numbly. I wouldn’t believe this if I wasn’t seeing it with my own eyes!
In fact, she still wasn’t sure she believed what was happening—it seemed like some kind of surreal dream. And the big Kindred wasn’t finished changing yet.
Pale blue scales flowed over his body, which was growing along with the rest of him—scales which showed an icy, silver glow between their edges. Giant wings burst from his back, vast and black as they stirred a chilly gale that swept through the glade, making the Fenushians gasp and shiver. Finally, a long, lashing tail sprouted, whipping through the air angrily.
Isla stared at this transformation, as dumbfounded as the gathered Fenushians.
A dragon—he turned into a dragon! But…but he told me he was a Hybrid! He said he had no Drake inside him, she thought numbly.
But no matter what Sark had told her, the evidence was irrefutable—he certainly had a Drake and the creature was with them, here and now. It was as big as a house and icy flames danced in its pale, deadly eyes.
The Fenushians were backing warily away by now, led by Feed’lix who was whispering hoarsely,
“Run, my children—run!”
Isla, of course, was still frozen to the spot, on her hands and knees on the table, unable to move. Would Sark’s Drake eat her, she wondered numbly? Would it hurt very much? Would it be better than being stabbed to death by her husband…or worse?
Speaking of Baslik, he was standing there, staring openmouthed at the enormous scaly predator that Sark had suddenly turned into. But when the Drake turned to fix him with its icy stare, he began backing away from it.
“What…who…?” he began in a shaky voice.
Suddenly the Drake opened its mouth and blew a blast of icy-cold directly at Baslik. But maybe “blast” was the wrong word—it was more like a finely collimated beam. Isla could see the ice crystals in it and could feel it rushing past her—it raised goose bumps on her bare skin.
She knew instinctively that if she had been the focus of that beam of freezing cold, she would have been frozen on the spot. As it was, she only felt like she was standing next to the open door of a blast freezer. Clearly, she wasn’t the Drake’s target.
Baslik was.
As the beam reached him, it was clear what the Drake had been aiming at. The strange, double tentacle, which had grown out of his short, stubby shaft, was suddenly covered in white frost.
Baslik looked down at himself and shrieked.
“My shaft!” he cried, grabbing for it.
But at his touch, first the right tentacle and then the left developed cracks, and then crumbled abruptly to dust.
Baslik Le’rank had been completely and permanently unmanned.
At first it seemed he couldn’t believe what had happened.
“Where is it? Where is it!” he gasped, groping between his legs for what wasn’t there anymore.
Earlier, he had been infuriated to find his shaft turned into a double tentacle. But apparently he considered that the double tentacle was better than no shaft at all, Isla thought. At least if the way he shrieked and screamed was any indication.