Free Immortal by Gene Doucette

quickness, but he was stronger and much better protected. So, while none of his fierce attacks connected, none of her furious counterattacks had any effect either.
    “Are you going to fight?” she shouted at me, ducking a vicious swing and wondering where the hell her backup was.
    “You’re doing fine,” I said.
    Were I to insert myself into the battle, the best I could do was offer him something else to swing and miss at—or not miss, which would be infinitely worse—and my sword would fare little better than her nails, teeth and fists. I stood my ground.
    I had a game plan. I really did. But there was no point to explaining it to Eloise since she was a critical element in that plan.
    As they continued their furious skirmish, I took note that the dragon’s fighting style was almost all offense. It worked out well for him. Eloise was getting more and more frustrated as her every blow, cut, and slash glanced harmlessly off his hide.
    “I thought you faced one of these before!” she yelled.
    “Me? No. I’ve seen them. Never fought one.”
    “This would be a good time to start!”
    I was completely in awe of what I was witnessing. In my lifetime I had seen some extraordinary life-or-death struggles between countless manner of beasts, some quite fearsome. This battle between vampire and dragon topped them all.
    In a telling sequence, I watched Eloise bring her palm up into the dragon’s long chin, a powerful blow that unbalanced him temporarily and sent him tumbling backward. Seizing the opportunity she dove hard at him.
    Then I saw what I was looking for.
    The dragon brought his right forearm up in front of his chin to ward off her attack and swung hard with his left arm. It was his first defensive maneuver.
    Everyone has a weakness. The trick is figuring out what it is in enough time to take advantage of it.
    But before I could do anything about my newfound knowledge, Eloise made a mistake. Ducking under his left arm, she sprang forward, leaving herself open for a shot with his right arm. He swatted at her head, connecting with a devastating impact that sent her tumbling backward and exposing her belly. He followed it up quickly with a coup de grâce , a deep slash across her stomach, that would have been mortal had she been human.
    Bleeding badly, she fell to her knees. The dragon stood over her, looking eager to finally eat something and probably feeling pretty good about having won the battle, too. But before he got around to doing something more permanent to her, I fired my crossbow bolt. It struck him in the shoulder, penetrating just far enough to get his attention. I drew my sword and slid off Archimedes’ back. The dragon looked up at me, apparently having forgotten I was even there.
    “Now you face me!” I shouted, not so much to be heard as to inspire a little belligerence on his part. I wanted him to forget about Eloise and focus on me. It worked.
    The dragon roared. Terrible sound, that. Made my testicles shrink. I pointed my sword at him defiantly.
    “You killed a human, lumpy. That’s against the rules. Now I have to kill you.”
    And then the most curious thing happened. The dragon spoke. “Kill . . . me . . . ?” he grunted. Dragons don’t really have the right equipment—brains, vocal chords—to hold a conversation, so it was a guttural rasp at best. But I understood it all right.
    “Yes, kill you,” I said defiantly. “Come on, let’s get it over with.”
    I walked away from Archimedes—he was just about ready to panic—and staked a spot of nice open space, standing tall, in profile, sword in my right hand, behind me and partly obscured.
    “K ILL  . . . ME  . . . ?” he repeated. Maybe it was the only thing he knew how to say.
    With a bloodcurdling bellow he charged, arms outstretched, leading with his claws. I was expecting just that kind of attack, as it was the one he’d opened with when he first closed the distance between himself and Eloise.
    Then it was all a