—might be able to turn into. That was what he’d been ready to say.
He was interrupted by an inferno.
Flames streaked down from the sky, tracing a circle that surrounded their car. Cooper’s heightened senses let him hear the paint blistering on the hood, boiling and popping: that was how close the fire was. It was lapping up against them like the tide against the beach.
Gretchen slammed on the brakes, throwing them to a halt so quickly that they snapped forward against their seatbelts. Her face had gone dead-white. “We have to get out.”
He knew what she was thinking. If the gas tank blew, they were dead. But if they got out, they’d roast anyway.
They couldn’t stay in a burning car. And they couldn’t get out in the middle of a fire.
They couldn’t go forward, they couldn’t go backwards, and they couldn’t stay where they were.
Cooper could only think of one thing to do.
He unbuckled his seatbelt.
“Hold onto me,” he said. “We’re going up.”
18
First, they had to get out of the car, and they had to do it in the middle of a vortex of flames. Unfortunately, Gretchen couldn’t help with that. She just had to sit there while Cooper shifted and tore through the mental frame of the car like it was nothing more than soft cheese.
Even in the midst of all her terror and panic, even with the temperature in the car climbing so high that sweat was starting to break out all over her, some part of Gretchen could still admire the sheer majesty of Cooper’s transformation.
He really was magnificent. The glossy white feathers on his head smoothed out almost imperceptibly into the mahogany brown wings and golden fur. She’d never seen a griffin before him, and she had always more or less imagined that they would look awkward, like two entirely different animals smashed together. She could almost have pictured a visible seam between the lion half and the eagle half.
But the real Cooper was nothing like that. He wasn’t half-lion and half-eagle. He was a griffin, a complete whole in and of himself.
And it was incredible to watch him in action. The same talons that had carefully cradled her and carried her to safety at Ford’s motel now sheared through the car roof, tearing their way to freedom. His enormous wings ruffled slightly, brushing against her, and then he turned his immense head to look at her with his liquid golden eyes.
Somehow, they were still recognizably his eyes. She would have known him anywhere.
And she knew what he was asking her. Ready?
She nodded. When it came to getting out of a burning car, she’d been born ready.
There was no room to climb on his back while they were still in the car, so she had to settle for locking her arms around his neck and holding on as tightly as she could. She squeezed him hard.
Ready.
They took flight.
There was so little space getting out that Gretchen felt the bur
ning slice of the torn metal against her skin, raking her arm raw, and she bit back a cry, not wanting Cooper to worry about her. She knew he’d probably gotten cut too.
As soon as she could, she fought through the pain enough to swing up onto his back, feeling like the move justified every chin-up she’d ever struggled through in her entire life. Hot blood was racing down her arm, steaming in the cold, and the pain was dizzying.
But none of that mattered. They were free.
Not that she had any time to enjoy it. They might have been free, but they weren’t safe. Another rippling jet of fire was shooting towards them now, and for the first time, she saw that it was coming from a huge, crimson-colored dragon with thick, leathery, bat-like wings.
Phil? She didn’t know who else it could be, unless some dragon back in Ambergris had decided they posed some kind of threat.
Either way, she could save the identification process for later. Right now, all that mattered was that this dragon was fast.
Gretchen didn’t need another sign from Cooper to know to hold on. She clung to him as they raced and spun through the sky, plunging and dodging the fire. It was coming close enough to leave behind the smell of singed hair, and neither of them had much of that to spare.