Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
🍪 — 008. isa is a good healer.
PIPER THUMBLED THROUGH THE SKY. Far below she saw city lights glimmering in the early dawn, and several hundred yards away the body of the bronze dragon spinning out of control, its wings limp, fire flickering in its mouth like a badly wired lightbulb.
A body shot past her ─ Leo, screaming and frantically grabbing at the clouds. "Not coooooool!"
She tried to call to him, but he was already too far below.
Somewhere above her, Jason yelled, "Piper, level out! Extend your arms and legs!"
It was hard to control her fear, but she did what he said and regained some balance. She fell spread-eagle like a skydiver, the wind underneath her like a solid block of ice. Then Jason, and Isa, who was clinging onto Jason like a koala, were there, wrapping his arm around her waist.
"We have to get Leo!" she shouted.
Their fall slowed as Jason controlled the winds, but they still lurched up and down like the winds didn't want to cooperate.
"Gonna get rough," Jason warned. "Hold on!"
Piper grabbed Isa, the two holding each other tightly, and Jason shot toward the ground. Piper probably screamed, but the sound was ripped from her mouth. Her vision blurred. And then, thump! They slammed into another warm body ─ Leo, still wriggling and cursing.
"Stop fighting!" Jason said. "It's me!"
"My dragon!" Leo yelled. "You gotta save Festus!"
Jason was already struggling to keep the four of them aloft, and Piper knew there was no way he could help a fifty-ton metal dragon. But before she could try to reason with Leo, she heard an explosion below them. A fireball rolled into the sky from behind a warehouse complex, and Leo sobbed, "Festus!"
Jason's face reddened with strain as he tried to maintain an air cushion beneath them, but intermittent slow-downs were the best he could manage. Rather than free-falling, it felt like they were bouncing down a giant staircase, a hundred feet at a time, which wasn't doing Piper's stomach any favors.
As they wobbled and zigzagged, Piper could make out details of the factory complex below ─ warehouses, smokestacks, barbed-wire fences, and parking lots lined with snow-covered vehicles. They were still high enough so that hitting the ground would flatten them into roadkill ─ or sky kill ─ when Jason groaned, "I can't ─ "
And they dropped like stones.
"Fuck!" Isa yelled, and Piper saw a small head of the cat appearing from Isa's bag. The girl swears it kind of smirked. . . ?
