Free The Dragon's Eyes by Rain Oxford Page A

building the faster we drove, but
close examination of my fingers revealed no change at all. I felt no inner
magical claws ready to come out. Still, I doubted that would be the last I saw
of them.
    “Do you think Blood is okay?” I asked Dylan out loud.
    “I’m sure. I don’t really think we are, though.” We
stopped in front of a large house made of stones and got out of the car. “We
really shouldn’t be involving more people. We can just keep driving across
country until I can contact one of the Guardians to help us,” he said.
    Vivian took Sammy out of his seat. “Easier said than
done. Let me call some friends; I don’t want to drive all the way to Texas and
find out they’re still having earthquakes.”
    Sammy started crying as she shut the door and started
up the walkway.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked.
    “He needs a nap,” Vivian said.
    Then direction of the wind changed. The creature was
close; I could smell its unnatural power. Before she could get any further towards
the house, I took Sammy from his mother.
    “Get back in the car! Get in and go!”
    They didn’t hesitate or ask questions. We all got
back in the car and were moving before I could shut my door. Sammy was now
crying very loudly and all I could do was pat his back.
    “This creature takes over bodies?” Vivian asked.
    “It does. I don’t know if it has to kill an adult to
take over or what, I just know that in order for it to take Sammy, he has to be
a child. It wants to take over Sammy permanently and can only do that when he’s
a baby.”
    “What about you and Mordon? How can I know the
creature won’t take over you?”
    “We have traveled from another world, making us
incompatible. That’s why we’re trying to get Sammy off Earth.
    Vivian looked at Dylan before returning her eyes to
the road. “Dylan? I know we had our day and it was great, but this is my baby.
If it even starts to take over me, you kill me immediately, you got that?”
    “Oh, Hell. You just had to give the about-to-die-hero
speech. Shit.”
    “What’s the plan?”
    “Keep driving, don’t die, and call it a plan,” Dylan
said.
    “I love your plans,” I said.
    “Drive where? I’ll run out of gas soon.”
    “I don’t think we’ll make it to that point,” Dylan
said, right before the car started to make a chugging noise and slowed down. The
creature was here. When the car failed, we all got out and I handed Sammy to
Vivian.
    Dylan dug through the flowered bag and pulled out a
plastic baby coat. “Cover Sammy up. Things are going to get wet.” She covered
the thrashing baby before Dylan took him and handed him to me. “Get back in the
car.” We just barely made it into the back seats before it started raining
heavy sheets of water. “Keep Sammy dry, this cold could kill him,” he
told me.
    I left the door open to help if I could, but I
doubted I would be any good with hypothermia. This was Dylan’s rain, not the
demon’s. Whether he made it rain to hide what has happening, or to create
lightning, it still left me useless in the car, holding the baby.
    The creature appeared strolling calmly up the road.
Steam rose where the water hit his body. This time the creature was in the body
of man younger than myself and the body was already nearly burned out.
    “It killed a kid,” Dylan said.
    I knew in that moment we were in trouble. As much as
Dylan wanted to defeat the beast, he would hold back because of the teenager
who was already dead. “The boy is already dead, you can’t do anything for
him now. Sammy and Vivian will be, too, if you don’t fight. More people will
die if you don’t fight.”
    “Step away from me,” Dylan told Vivian.
    There was a crackling in the sky right before a bolt
of lightning shot down and struck the creature. It froze for a second before
continuing to casually walk closer. Dylan struck repeatedly until the creature
was too close. He gasped in pain and I thought he had struck himself somehow,
but he started