Soul of Smoke Read Online Free PDF

blood slammed into the black dragon, knocking it off course. Kavar recovered, twisting in the air like a cat. The crimson dragon swiped at the other with wickedly long claws, but missed and overbalanced.
    Seeing an opening, Kavar darted forward and buried his teeth in the red dragon’s shoulder.
    “No,” Deryn whispered. The fear and pain in that single syllable filled Kai with dread. “Rhys!
No
!”
    Rhys, the crimson dragon, let out a howl of agony. He convulsed and plunged earthward like a dropped stone.
    Deryn screamed.
    Instinct took over. Kai seized Deryn’s arm. With strength born of adrenaline, she hauled the taller, heavier girl out of the way. They made it several yards before an earth-shaking crash sent both of them flying. Kai lost her grip on Deryn and landed on the sword, the hilt driving into her stomach and knocking the wind out of her.
    “Rhys! Rhys!” From the volume of Deryn’s cries,
she
was having no trouble breathing.
    Kai coughed and gasped, seconds ticking away while she tried to catch her breath. The earth shook as the black dragon landed between them and Rhys, the vast nothingness of his inky hide not a dozen feet from where Kai gulped for oxygen like a landed trout. He was so close she could hear the sibilant hiss of scales when he moved.
    Air trickled into Kai’s lungs, dry and slightly musky, a scent that could only be dragon. She scrambled to her feet, dragging the sword with her.
    Deryn hobbled toward Kavar, screaming a war cry. Exasperation warring with paralyzing fear, Kai yanked the sword from its sheath and ran after her, expecting at any second to see Rhys’s red scales on the other side of the black dragon’s bulk.
    She caught up to Deryn and skidded to a stop. There was no red dragon, only Rhys the man, unconscious. His shoulder was a blood-covered mass that looked nauseatingly like raw hamburger. Kavar was curling one clawed foot carefully around him.
    “Rhys, wake up!” Deryn screamed. “Make Kavar go!”
    With a brain-rattling roar, another red dragon swooped from the sky, aiming for Kavar. Kai felt a moment of relief. This dragon would save Rhys; she wouldn’t have to do anything.
    Then an emerald beast with rainbow-feathered wings slammed into their would-be savior in mid-air. Both spun out of control, crashing into the ground a hundred yards away. The red dragon struggled, but the feathered dragon had him pinned.
    Kai’s heartbeat boomed in her ears.
    Thump-thump.
The red wouldn’t get to Rhys in time to stop the black dragon.
    Thump-thump.
Unarmed, Deryn wouldn’t be any help.
    Thump-thump.
None of the other dragons had noticed Rhys, outnumbered and too caught up in their own survival.
    Thump-thump.
    Time slowed; sounds fell to silence. The sword’s jewel-studded hilt was slick in Kai’s sweaty hand. Helpless tears streaked Deryn’s face as Rhys lay motionless on the churned earth, trapped in a constricting cage of two-foot talons.
    Help was not coming. It had to be her.
    Kai charged, leaping through the clinging grass before her brain registered she was moving. She tightened her slippery hands and raised the sword high, praying one of the “good” dragons would notice what was happening and do
something
.
    It occurred to her at the last instant that she didn’t even know if Deryn and the others were “good” at all. Then her blade flashed down, met resistance, and plunged through midnight flesh. It hit bone, and the impact reverberated through Kai’s shoulders. Then the blade slid to one side and sank to the hilt. The tip came out on the underside of the dragon’s clawed hand, gleaming dull and red in the moonlight. Everything around her blurred but the blood-stained blade. She let go and stumbled back.
    Thump-thump.
    Huh.
Dragons bleed red.
    Kavar jerked his injured limb away, wrenching the sword out with his other claw and hurling it away. Sound came rushing back as he let out a grinding, shrieking roar. Kai threw herself to the ground, barely dodging