Hidden Rage: Kindred Tales

The Saurian Mob boss looked down at himself, a shocked look on his flat face.

“What…” he burbled, a trail of oily green blood leaking from the corner of his lipless mouth.

Then the dragon’s tail whipped him high into the air and flung him into a corner of the room like a rag doll. He landed with a thump and was still.

Zerlix and Rep. Yariz both turned, weapons in hand, but they didn’t have time to use them.

“Holy shit!” the Saurian Advisor gasped. He started to run but the dragon curled one huge, clawed hand around his waist and lifted him off the floor. Its jaws, filled with knife-like teeth, opened wide, showing a throat seething with golden flames. Before Rep. Yariz could scream, the dragon casually bit off his head, much like a child might bite the top off a lollypop. It flung the body into the corner with the Komendant’s and turned its flaming eyes on Zerlix.

“What the fuck?” the Saurian breathed, his slitted yellow-green eyes growing so large they almost swallowed his face. He seemed frozen to the spot, the bloody knife still gripped in his fist. It still had Dragon’s blood dripping from its blade and he couldn’t seem to understand what was happening.

The dragon curled a clawed hand around him too, examining him from all angles, as Zerlix flailed and shouted,

“Hey, let me down, you freak! What the hell are you doing? Let go of me!”

The dragon pursed its thin lips in a strangely delicate motion and blew a gout of golden flames at him. They stuck to Zerlix like some kind of glue, Bobbi saw numbly. Stuck and spread, climbing up and down his body hungrily to engulf him completely.

Zerlix shrieked and writhed in the dragon’s grip as it reared over him, watching and still holding him tight. Bobbi reflected numbly that if the room hadn’t been so large, the enormous beast never would have fit in here. It already had to duck its head to keep from hitting the ceiling.

“Oh my gods and goddesses, Bobbi,” Keelah’s voice whispered in her ear. “Is this really happening right now? I think I breathed in too much dream weed smoke! It seems like Rep. Dragon turned into…into a dragon. Like from all the old legends!”

“He did,” Bobbi whispered back. “I…I saw it happen.”

She reflected that she wouldn’t have believed her eyes and would probably have attributed the crazy transformation to the dream weed smoke too, if she hadn’t already known about the other being living inside Dragon.

I just didn’t know it was an actual dragon, she thought, staring at it as she plugged her ears to keep from hearing the awful, hoarse screams coming from Zerlix’s tortured throat.

But alas, the smell wasn’t so easy to block out. She could put her fingers in her ears, but the smell of roasting and burning meat pervaded the entire room, making her stomach roll and she wanted to gag.

“What is the meaning of this?” a new voice asked. It was Rep. Wheezler, coming down the stairs. “What in the world—?”

He stopped short, his eyes growing wide as he took in the scene in his front room. Slowly and carefully, he began backing up the staircase he had come down just moments before.

But it was too late—clearly the huge creature Dragon had become had already heard him.

It whipped its head around and dropped the screaming Zerlix in a burning lump on the tiled floor. With a motion too quick to be seen, its enormous head was suddenly level with the Saurian pimp’s, even though he was halfway up the staircase. It stared at him with flaming eyes.

“This…this can’t be real.” Rep. Wheezler’s voice was thin and choked, no longer the cool, urbane drawl Bobbi had heard him use earlier. “Too…too much dream weed gas—” he began.

And then the dragon grabbed him off the staircase with one clawed hand and bit him in two.

It didn’t seem to like the taste of him, though, Bobbi thought faintly. For it spit out the top half of the Saurian pimp at once and dropped the bottom half beside it, still twitching.

Bobbi was reminded of the way the thing had torn the Diamond Death enforcer into two pieces in the alley, like someone tearing a paper doll. The dragon was so huge—so horribly strong! And it breathed fire—what chance had any of the Saurian males who faced it have against it?

And then it turned its flaming eyes on her.

63

“Oh gods and goddess, Bobbi!” Keelah moaned in her ear as the enormous dragon—which filled the entire front room of the Pleasure House—started moving towards them. “What are we going to do?”

“I think…think we’re going to die,” Bobbi whispered back, her throat so dry she nearly choked on the words.

She couldn’t help wondering which would be more painful—being burned or being torn in two or maybe just having her head bitten clean off her neck. That last might be the quickest and cleanest death, she decided numbly. It would certainly be better than being burned alive like Zerlix.