How could she help Rigo? She glanced skyward, peering against the bright sun behind the madly writhing dragon, and Rigo’s silver form darting, swooping, slashing.
What to do? What to do? She looked around, agonized. Some stared upward, fascinated by the duel in the sky. These had to be shifters, if they were able to see Rigo and that evil red dragon. Some watched the opposite group as they readied fists and some hastily snatched up sticks and other weapons.
Cang.
Godiva peered upward again, her eyes tearing from the sunlight. Whoa. Rigo’s gorgeous basilisk, and the evil red dragon, were a whole lot closer—almost overhead, maybe two hundred feet up. She couldn’t take her eyes away fro
m Rigo, whose claws, beak, and tail slashed at the incredibly long dragon, his wings kiting him this way, that, keeping him out of the dragon’s reach.
The two drifted closer and closer. Godiva could see dark splatters on Rigo’s scales. Was that blood? She froze, head tipped back as the battle raged a hundred feet overhead, then fifty. The dragon’s head moved back and forth over the two groups below, as if he was searching for something, besides avoiding Rigo’s eyes.
Suddenly everything in the world stopped. Between one blink and another the red dragon disappeared, and a tall man in a long black duster appeared right in front of Godiva.
His long curly hair stuck damply to his forehead as he gave her a nasty grin. “And here’s the mate,” he growled—as overhead, Rigo dove down.
Instinct prompted Godiva to run. But the man was faster. He got an arm around her ribs, pinning one arm painfully to her side. He squeezed hard, and the next thing she knew, her feet left the ground.
As she stared in disbelief, her shoulder bag slid off her free arm, and tumbled down, spilling on the sand. Godiva blinked, realizing that the arm around her waist was now thick, scaled in crimson. Her sandaled feet dangled in the air as the ground shrank below her.
Godiva’s frantic mind worked rapidly. How did Cang find out that she and Rigo were mates. . .
No. Right now that didn’t matter.
She gritted her teeth. She’d written enough mysteries to know how this was supposed to go—surely Rule Two in the Villains’ Playbook was to use your enemy’s loved ones against you.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she snarled as the wind whipped her words away.
The enormous dragon head had been watching Rigo, but at the sound of her ex-waitress parrot squawk of a voice, Cang turned toward her, long whiskers rippling in the wind. The huge eyes fixed on her—and her free hand brought up the only weapon she had, the spritzer bottle.
She let him have it right in the eye.
Cang recoiled, flinging her away so hard her head snapped back. For a couple seconds her body sailed upward, as Cang’s head whipped the other way—and Rigo was right there.
Eyes met eyes.
Green glowed.
And as Godiva reached the top of her parabola, she saw Cang flash from red to smoking dark stone, and begin to fall.
As she began to fall.
She sucked in a breath. But before she could let out a cry, a silvery wing flashed below her, and she found herself plopping onto that wing. She lay splayed out on it, her mind trying to catch up as her heart thumped frantically.
Impressions streamed through her mind as Rigo labored to keep her steady. Move to his body. The thought seemed to come from deep within her, no, it came with so much desperate love that she knew it was Rigo.
She inch-wormed herself sideways, catching hold of one of the protrusions that made up his crest. Holding onto that, she eased her shaking legs up onto Rigo’s body and clamped herself hard against him as the wing, freed at last, beat once, twice.
Rigo coasted downward in a slow, gentle spiral, as a quarter-mile or so out to sea Cang hit the water.
KA-TOOSH!
And turned to ash with a whoosh of steam.
Then Godiva’s mind caught up with her body. She was actually flying! She let out a whoop, as Rigo glided toward the shore. A few seconds later Rigo touched down on the deserted bit of palisade not far from the dispersing crowd. There was that whispery sound and he was a man again. He threw his arms around her. “Godiva, are you all right? It nearly killed me when I saw him—”
At the same time, she squawked, “Rigo! You’re hurt!”
She was still vibrating from the exhilaration of flight and lingering terror from her almost-fall, and most of all, fury at Cang daring to try using her against Rigo. What a horrible choice . . .