“It’s mild,” Jen said—then hiccoughed.
Rigo stepped past Jen. “I’m here as backup. Seems to me that this here situation is one that calls for backup. Let me go. I even know where that palisade is, as the first pair of shamblers I followed went straight to it, and I’ve flown over it a few times.”
Mikhail’s gray face eased a bit, and Joey Hu let out a sigh of relief. He lifted a hand toward Rigo and Jen, clearly too ill to speak if he didn’t have to.
Jen grinned at Rigo. “Come on. Let’s do it. Who knows, maybe being my phoenix will get rid of the morning queasiness.”
Rigo felt the impulse to call Godiva, then reminded himself that she was undercover—and she tended to use her phone with the speakers on. Anyway, she’d be busy for the next few minutes. “Lead the way,” he said.
They walked out. Jen said, low-voiced, “In case we see trouble. My power is a spurt of sunlight in fire form. It burns out fast, so I don’t want to use it if I don’t have to. Other than that my phoenix isn’t a fighter. Not the way I am as a human.”
“I’m a basilisk,” he said. “I can fight.”
Jen gave a single nod. “Then how about I be lookout?”
“Let’s go,” he said.
She didn’t waste any time beyond that. They turned a corner, into a narrow driveway leading to the alley behind the bakery and its adjacent businesses. She swept a look around, then leaped into the air, turning in a golden flash to a phoenix. Rigo shifted into his basilisk and with two beats of his wings caught up with her—then shot past, straight up into the air.
So far his patrol flights had produced nothing whatsoever, so he expected the same as he began sweeping his eyes over the town below.
So he was completely unprepared for Jen’s mental cry, Look out above!
Rigo turned his eye upward, to where a huge red dragon arrowed down from high in the sky, dropping to the attack.
So this was what Cang had been planning, Rigo saw between one heartbeat and the next. All those zombies below, even the super-strength charm—it was all deflection, intended to draw Joey Hu’s army into a defensive desperation while the mythic shifters were prevented from taking their powerful form, so that Cang could pick them off from above while they were suitably weakened.
Cang’s got no backup! Jen’s voice reached Rigo’s inner ear. He’d experienced shifter mind speech once or twice. It was always startling.
He began climbing with powerful strokes of his wings as he carefully formed a thought: Wants the fun of taking everyone out himself. Or maybe he’s too arrogant to let anyone help. I’ll show him how wrong he was—
Cang was on him.
&nbs
p; Was almost on him. Rigo flipped up one wing, whipped his tail, and Cang shot past.
One thing he’d learned early when finding his basilisk in trouble, don’t let the enemy get the drop on you.
He skimmed high over the water, racing out to sea to lure Cang away from Jen, and at the last second, flipped his wing up and did a barrel-roll as Cang tried again to dive-bomb him. Cang’s velocity buffeted him, he was that close. The red dragon whipped around, furious—
And that’s when Rigo landed on his back, claws extended.
One claw ripped into the red dragon’s back, but Cang snapped his tail around in a lethal arc and struck Rigo spinning.
He pulled his wings in tight to let gravity add to his own velocity, then snapped them out, banking hard as the wind screamed past him. Then he pulled them in again as he arrowed at the dragon, hissing through the air, eyes locked on the dragon’s face.
But Cang kept his gaze averted as he whirled in for another try at Rigo. Bank. Flip. The dragon’s own tremendous length worked against him, and this time Rigo snapped beak and claws out. He got in a hard bite behind Cang’s head, and scored deep scratches through the dragon’s scales before the long tail once again came around.
But Rigo knew it was coming.
He eluded the strike, whipping his own much shorter tail around to smash against a loop of dragon, the sharp protrusions slicing before the dragon snapped free.
By now the dragon had lost all his extra speed from his overhead dive. He was still formidable—deadly, if he got his body around Rigo to crush him.
Rigo took a split second to check on Jen, who had flown lower. Rigo saw shapes rising from below. These had to be flying shifters mentally summoned by Cang, but they would have to get past Jen, who flew close to the first, and sent out a beam of light, no more than a glint.
The minion—an eagle—let out a shriek and spiraled down, tail feathers singed. Followed by another, then a third. Rigo banked, wheeling. He trusted Jen to keep the minions off his back.