devil 03 - tween hearts fire and devils delight Read Online Free PDF Page A

looking teeth filled the front viewport.
    I shrieked in surprise and threw myself backward, momentarily forgetting that it was still outside the vehicle. The scary looking teeth closed down over the viewport and grabbed on, leaving me to stare in complete disgust at the thing’s curling black tongue and surprisingly pink tonsils.
    I cringed and winced as the dragon drove its teeth through the shiny, red surface of the Viper, realizing finally that I was deep in a piss ocean surrounded by turd sharks. I wasn’t going to escape my predicament unless I donned my magic dance shoes and started doing a really good two-step.
    Closing my eyes and taking a deep, calming breath, I pushed my mind through my options. It didn’t take long, I only had two. Pull out every ounce of magic I had and shoot it at the thing, praying it would take its nasty teeth back and hobble home in unhappy defeat…or let it eat me.
    I didn’t much like option number two.
    As the dragon tightened the grip its wings had on the Viper and started shaking its head in an effort to rip the nose off my beloved air vehicle, I forced myself to breathe deeply and pull my magic forward.
    The magic bubbled up just as the Viper’s nose started to squeal in unhappy submission. A violent wrenching, ripping sound made me lose my focus and my grip on my magic slipped.
    Forcing myself to focus, I managed to grab the thread again, just as the Viper’s nose wrenched loose and I felt the dragon’s hot, citrusy breath against my face. My eyes wanted to open but I forced them to stay closed, knowing that if I looked up into the hole the black dragon had made in my beautiful air vehicle I’d lose focus completely and I’d have no chance at all of surviving.
    Instead I threw out my sensing power and watched the dragon’s fiery aura through that.
    The thing lifted its snout into the air and gave a heart-stopping roar. I tightened my knees against the urge to wet myself and dragged my power out of its hiding place in my brain. In horrified fascination, my senses tracked the flow of fire from the dragon’s lungs, up its long throat and toward the open maw that waited above me. I was suddenly at a bonfire party, facing a pretty orange and blue jolt of skin-melting fire and I was the weenie on the stick.
    Just before the fire emerged from the dragon’s throat I flung out my power in a protective bubble, praying I had enough in me to stop the wall of flame that was coming my way.
    The flames hit my protective bubble with a whoosh and I nearly buckled under the dreadful heat. The Viper’s interior started to crack and melt around me and tears rolled down my cheeks. There was no way both of us would survive the attack.
    In fact, I knew with a heavy heart that the Viper was already gone.
    With this admission I realized I had two problems. First I had to vanquish the dragon and then I had to find a way out of the Viper before it hit the ground. The realization of this, bunched with the certain knowledge that the Viper was toast, nearly undid me.
    The dragon reared back again, taking a deep heated breath that sucked all the air out of the Viper’s mangled cockpit and prepared to fling fire at me again. I opened my eyes and swallowed hard, realizing I had a beat in time to make my move. I quickly dropped power from my protective bubble and redirected it into a power arrow, which I shot through the ugly tear in the Viper’s nose and into the dragon’s convulsing throat.
    The horrendous noise was cut off mid-roar and the dragon squawked painfully as my power ripped a three foot long hole in its throat. Instinctively it unwrapped its wings from the Viper and surged backward, flinging its beautiful black head from side to side in obvious pain.
    I gasped as the Viper plunged downward, powerless and rudderless and torn beyond repair. My mind was quickly assessing my chances of shifting out of the cockpit into a place that was relatively safe and open when the Viper’s downward spiral