How to Stop a Witch Read Online Free PDF Page B

axes. Greg felt the ground rise up to slap his backside. A horrifying shriek broke the stillness, and a wyvern shot down from the sky, its claws splayed to capture anything slow enough to remain in its path. Unfortunately, Greg and Kristin were the only two around that met the description.
    “Watch out!” said Greg. He dove into Kristin, who surely would have been cut in half by a talon if one of the spirelings hadn’t diverted the thrust aside with a blow of his axe.
    Kristin cried out too, partly from fear of the wyvern, partly from the way the spireling had just swung an axe at her, but mostly from surprise over being tackled. “I thought you said Ruuan was friendly.”
    “That’s not Ruuan,” Greg cried. “That’s not even a dragon.”
    Kristin stared wide-eyed into the sky. “It sure looked like a dragon to me.”
    Greg decided nothing could be gained from pointing out that dragons were about thirty times as large.
    “He’s coming back around,” warned one of the spirelings. The fern poking through his chain mail helped identify him as Grunt.
    “Watch yourself,” Greg warned Kristin. He wished he had the magic sword Lucky carried with them the other times he’d traveled these woods. But no, here he was with only a walking stick for protection. Then the guards moved in to surround him and Kristin, and Greg felt safer, for he knew the warriors would die to protect them. The spirelings were very respectful of prophecies.
    The wyvern came in low on its second attack, barely clearing the trees with its enormous wings. So close, Greg could see blood dripping from its injured talon. For just an instant he felt sorry for the creature. Sure it wanted to tear Greg’s limbs off, but no doubt for a fair reason. To a wyvern they must have looked quite tasty.
    Again the wyvern was turned aside. More cautious of the spirelings’ blades now, it managed to pass unharmed. Greg was left with a mental image of the beast long after it disappeared through the trees. There was something familiar about its brilliant teal scales and iridescent streaks, and the gold ovals encircling its eyes.
    “I know that wyvern,” he said suddenly.
    “What?” said Kristin.
    “It’s the one that saved us at the base of the Smoky Mountains last month—the same one I saved on the ridge near the Infinite Spire a couple of weeks before that.”
    “You do get around, don’t you?”
    “Here it comes again,” Gnash announced.
    Greg jumped to his feet. “That’s him,” he cried out as the beast soared toward the campsite.
    With a blur of one hand, Grunt pulled him aside. Growl shifted his identifying evergreen branch so he could raise his axe above his head.
    “No!” Greg shouted, and dove into Growl. He would have expected a less jarring impact had he dove into a rock wall, but Growl’s toss was affected just the same. It missed the wyvern by no more than an inch. Greg and Growl were both lucky not to lose their heads.
    “Why did you do that?” Grunt demanded.
    “Yes, why?” said Growl. “You could have got us both killed.”
    “Here it comes again,” said Gnaw. The identifying strand of ivy he’d wrapped about his neck flapped in the wind as he pointed to a tiny patch of sky.
    Greg couldn’t see a thing in the direction Gnaw pointed, but the remaining spirelings unanimously agreed that the wyvern was indeed approaching. And then Greg saw it too, headed straight for them. He was just regretting his earlier decision to interfere, when suddenly the wyvern’s eyes grew, as if it were the one that was terrified. Greg watched in amazement as the creature veered about and retreated in the direction it had come.
    “It’s leaving,” said Kristin.
    Greg breathed a sigh of relief. “I wonder why.” He was still watching the wyvern fade in the distance when from behind he heard another screech, ten times as terrifying as what the wyvern had offered.
    Greg dove to the ground. He couldn’t help himself. Kristin landed beside him.