Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 77293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
“You little asshole!” Juan roared, his brown eyes flashing orange—no doubt the color of his Drake’s eyes. “I’m gonna fry your balls for that!” And he started to climb higher, puffing big clouds of black smoke at me as he came.
Well, Juan might be much bigger and stronger than me, but his immense size didn’t exactly make him agile. As he climbed closer to me—and my soon-to-be-deep-fried testicles—I let go of the rope and took hold of the metal cross bar at the top of the ceiling which it was suspended from instead.
This turned out to be not a great idea for several reasons. First, the smooth metal was a lot more slick than the rough rope and my hands were sweaty, which made it even slicker. Secondly, going hand-over-hand down the metal bar took me away from the large pile of mats on the floor under the rope, which were meant to cushion the fall of anyone unlucky enough to lose their grip. And I couldn’t afford to lose my grip now, since Juan was right behind me.
“Come back here, you little shit!” he snarled and I felt the metal bar vibrate and knew he had reached the top of the rope and transferred over to the bar too.
“So you can fry my testicles? I’ll pass,” I panted, continuing my hand-over-hand journey along the metal bar. Then I felt it start to vibrate and I knew that Juan was following me.
Great, we were in a monkey-bar race fifteen to twenty feet—or five to six meters, if you’re metrically minded—above the gym floor. (Which, by the way, was solid flagstone, since Nocturne Academy is located in an ancient castle which was shipped to Florida stone by stone and then reassembled.)
If I fell from this height, I was going to be toast. Or, more likely, jelly, splattered on the flagstones below. But I had to keep going because the angry Drake was right behind me. Juan was still shouting at me to hold still—like I was inconveniencing him by not freezing in place so he could fry me at his leisure.
I didn’t have any breath to answer him. Any minute I was sure he was going to begin breathing fire at me or maybe at the bar I was holding, which would make it so hot I wouldn’t be able to hold on anymore. Either way you looked at it, I need to get down—fast.
But how, when the rope was behind me and Juan was blocking my path?
Desperate, I called on the only magic I could do without a lot of time, trouble, and ingredients. I called on my magic needle.
There was nothing to embroider, of course, but I concentrated instead on making a long, thin, but very strong rope that was tied around the metal bar I was hanging onto for dear life. As I moved towards the end of the bar, pulling myself hand-over-hand, I saw it in my mind, weaving itself around the metal crosspiece and descending to the ground like Rapunzel’s hair.
Doing magic while you’re stressed out isn’t easy—doing magic while your very life is at stake is even harder. But my magic needle has never let me down and it didn’t this time either. As I moved down the pipe with Juan growling and snarling and hot on my heels (literally!) I saw the rope I had imagined beginning to grow. It was made of black and red threads, twisted and braided together. To be honest, they looked like embroidery floss. But extremely strong embroidery floss I told myself firmly, trying to reinforce the magic. Floss so strong it wouldn’t break, even when I put my whole weight on it.
Just as I reached for it and swung down from the beam to hold onto the magic rope, I felt burning heat. Looking up, I saw a gout of fire going over my head. Goddess, Juan really did want to kill me if he was breathing fire at me! Also, he was an even stronger Drake than I’d imagined if he could manage a partial shift and breathe fire when his dragon wasn’t completely out. I hadn’t thought that anyone but Ari could do that!
“Little shit!” I heard him growling behind me in his Drake’s voice. “I’m coming for you, faggot, and when I catch you, you’re going to burn!”
Okay, there was no time left to dilly-dally as my Mom would have said. I would have liked to lower myself slowly down the strong but extremely slender rope my magic needle had made for me. But Juan was after me and up here, he definitely had the advantage. I needed to get down to the floor of the gymnasium where I could hopefully outrun him and his Drake bully buddies.
I thought—not for the first time—what a shame it was that most magic took so long to do. It would have been great to lay a freeze spell on all of them or make it so everything they sat down on felt like red-hot iron or cause them to spit toads and snakes out of their mouths whenever they said something homophobic—the possibilities would be endless if only it didn’t require gathering all the ingredients and implements together and calling the corners before I could cast a spell.