Shana Abe - The Deepest Night

Whoever was in there, they were quiet as a tomb. All he heard was breathing, theirs and his own. The rise of nervous heartbeats. An infant suckling. Blood pulsing through veins—

“Who are you?” called a woman, and as if her question had lifted the shadows from his eyes, he could see her now, see all of them, in a clear blue, almost otherworldly illumination. The darkness melted back and he was faced with close to fifty people of all ages and shapes and sizes. All of them filthy. All of them greasy with sweat.

But for one. There was one face that didn’t match any of the others. A girl in the far back, half hidden behind her grandmother, perhaps. She had long reddish gold hair and a face as white and clean as—

“Sweet mercy! His eyes!” cried someone.

“What is it? What is that light?” whimpered someone else.

“Is it witchcraft?”

“The devil!”

“Not the devil, but angels!” claimed the horsey woman at his shoulder. “Do not fear! I told you God would deliver us!”

“No.” Armand was tired and jittery and his skin felt like it’d been crisped with hot coals and he couldn’t think of a single good reason to lie. It was too late to pretend now, and anyway, what these people wouldn’t witness firsthand, they’d hear about over and over. “Not angels, not devils. We’re English. We are dragons.”

“Drákon,” gasped the redheaded girl, and slammed back hard against the wall behind her before she disappeared into thin air.

Disappeared. No smoke. Only gone.

In the twinkling of an eye, he thought absurdly, exactly as the crowd flared into panic.

Here’s the thing about cannons.

They’re worthless without their shells, aren’t they? Without the bombs to fire, they’re just big, bulky, useless contraptions of metal.

I Turned into a girl behind the crates, lifted a pistol one of the deserters had dropped, and began to unload rounds into the wood.

I found the village men trapped in a large stone building with a waterwheel attached, a river running brown and stagnant beside it. It was a mill, about a mile from where I’d just taken care of the rest of their company, and the dozen Huns guarding it had obviously heard the commotion. All those shells exploding at once—it might have been heard all the way to Prussia. Even as smoke, it felt like my ears were still ringing.

They were armed to the teeth, these blokes, rifles pointing in every direction, bayonets flashing. I became a dragon in front of them, plain as you please, and whacked my tail against the ground.

It was almost as earthshaking as the shells going off.

Only one of them thought to charge me. The others, happily, simply scattered. A couple actually jumped into the river.

As soon as the lone soldier noticed he had been abandoned, he skidded to a halt, halfway between me and the potential shelter of the mill.

I stalked toward him, twitching my tail. He was stocky and short, a patch of blond whiskers on his chin. I opened my wings and reared up, and he was too dumbfounded to even fire; he only stood there with his mouth hanging open, gawking up at me.

So I flicked him with a claw. It knocked him back to the dirt in a stir of dust, his rifle jarred free. His helmet rolled away down the lane, hollow as a tin can.

He was out. I Turned to girl, ran to the millhouse door, and strained to hoist free the heavy slab of wood that sealed it shut.

“Bonjour,” I called breathlessly through the door. At that point it was the only French my scrambled brain could remember. “Bonjour, bonjour!”

As the first of the village men began to edge past the doorway, some small, shamed remnant of Iverson flushed through me; I was young, I was nude, they were all males, and I was supposed to be a lady.

I Turned to smoke.

Their fields were burned, their village was rubble, and even behind those stone walls I had no doubt they’d heard all the ruckus. Surely they’d figure out for themselves that it was time to flee.

Besides, I had a strong and uneasy feeling it was time for me to return to Armand.

I followed the fragrance of his blood.

In my smoke form, I didn’t have what I’d term an actual sense of smell, yet I could recognize certain aromas. Like everyone, Armand had his own unique scent (sea salt, pine woods, lemon and clouds and spice) … yet what I chased now wasn’t that. It was him but not him, more an essence than a scent.

It had a heat to it, a coppery tang, which felt to me like urgency.

I flew first to the last place I’d seen him, that anonymous spot in the woods where we’d run into the women, but of course he wasn’t there. So I floated around until I felt him again: a dull tugging to the west. That ominous sensation that I needed to hurry.

Ash settled upon the crowns of the trees twitched upward as I passed, an acrid dry flurry. I dropped down lower, into the heart of the forest, weaving swiftly around trunks and boughs, because he was down there somewhere and I was getting closer, closer—

I found him. He was slumped against a log, head down, along with a pair of girls with messy braids and patterned skirts. One was holding his face. The other rifled through the knapsack, half its contents strewn along the ground.

Blood stained his forehead, his cheek. Blood made a scarlet river down his neck.

The sight of it did something to me—and that scent, that dreadful scent, so copper-hot. Rational Eleanore vanished; animal Eleanore swelled with rage.

He was hurt. He was bleeding. They were hurting him—

I became a person at his side and backhanded the girl nearest me, the one holding him. She sprawled flat, red palms to the sky.

“Stay away from him,” I hissed, and lunged for the second girl.

She squealed and dropped the knapsack, clambering backward on her hands and heels like a stranded crab, but before I could reach her my ankle was caught.

“Lora! No! They’re helping!”

I was snared, hopping in place. When his hand fell away I stumbled forward to my knees, catching myself with both hands. I glanced back at him with my hair in eyes; he’d collapsed against the log again. He was breathing hard, watching me. The blood was flowing from a gash above his left eyebrow.

“They’re helping,” he repeated, making certain I understood.

I got up, pushed the hair from my face. I brushed the leaves from my body, then walked over to the girl I’d hit and pulled her to her feet. She was younger than Armand and I. Both of them were. I’d guess they were around twelve or thirteen, bony thin and fragile like the pleading woman had been.

Her cheek was pink. I hadn’t struck her as hard as I could have, but I’d still meant it. She stared up at me with her lips compressed and something that might have been hatred in her eyes. Or terror. Or awe.

“Sorry,” I tried. “Er … je m’excuse.”

“Pardon,” she answered, short, and pushed by me to return to Armand.

“What happened?” I asked Armand, following her. The second girl slunk cautiously closer, picking up the knapsack again. “Who did this?”

“Do you remember, once upon a time, telling me never to let anyone see me as a dragon?”

I stopped probing at the gash, shocked. “You Turned?”

Without me? Without me being there or knowing it or feeling it—

“No. But I told them what we are.” His lips smiled; it looked ghastly. “They didn’t appreciate it much. Bit of a riot ensued. Somebody has rather good aim with a rock.”

“You told them we’re dragons. Come to help. And they stoned you.”

“Dragon,” sighed the red-palmed girl, as deeply and irrevocably besotted as only a twelve-year-old could be. She stroked her hand down his cheek and smudged the blood to his chin. “Un prince de dragons.”

“Well, my prince, it looks like you made at least one friend. Good thing you haven’t lost your touch with the ladies.” My voice sounded harsh even to me. The skin around his wound was shiny hard and swollen. Beneath all that gore, it was turning a nasty shade of beet.

If he lost too much blood, if the blow had injured his brain—

I kept talking so my fear wouldn’t show.

“Why’d they even believe you?”

“My eyes.”

“Oh. And then you … what? You fought them off?”

“Then,” he said dryly, “I ran.”

“You still have the pistol. Why didn’t you shoot them?”

He gave me an incredulous look. “Because I’m not like those soldiers. I am a nobleman. I don’t shoot unarmed people.”

I rolled my eyes. “Right gallant of you, your grand magnificence! Do be sure next time to remind them of how principled you are as they beat you to death—”

“Ici,” interrupted the girl with the knapsack. She lifted up the cotton wool, along with a roll of bandage, and trotted over. I took them from her with blood-sticky fingers and realized a few things at once: that I was the eldest and presumably most responsible person here unharmed; that despite my exasperation with Armand, my body was sapped and my reason gone to mush; that I had no clue what to do next.

Bind the wound, my mind instructed. That’s what I’d seen Deirdre do over and over, wasn’t it? Bind the wound, stop the bleeding.

I pressed the pad of cotton in place, seized the besotted girl’s hand, and made her hold it there while I wrapped the linen bandage tight around his head.

As I worked I felt something soft settle over my own shoulders and back. Jesse’s shirt, the one I’d slept in. The knapsack girl had crept up and draped it over me. I’d completely forgotten I was nude.