What are you? The words were no more than a drift at the back of my mind. I didn't have time to consider them. I'd sprang away from the wreck of the fallen oaks and whatever was behind me had followed. Somehow it had leapt from where it was, just out of the epicenter of its crash landing on the precarious tangle of trunks, to the bank where I'd been crouched.

Just covered the distance as if it was nothing.

Not human.

Though the shape had been somewhat right, had been upright, there was no way whatever had taken the light and bent it around itself like a cloak was human.

Not animal.

Definitely not any of the predators I was used to facing in the woods.

Running full out through the trees, dashing branches and brush out of my face with my arms as I went, I knew this was nothing I was familiar with.

This was something else. Something other.

Something more.

Whispers of Seanmháthair's stories in the fire light at night came back to me. Forest gods and fae and other things. I'd never doubted. Never imagined those stories couldn't be real. I'd just never encountered a living, breathing piece of the unseen.

Never been ridden by a god.

Never been chased by a god.

What are you…

And why, I wondered, dipping and weaving around boulders and under boughs. Why had this unnamed something out of the fireside stories chosen me?

But this was as much a passing consideration as what was chasing me.

I could hear it there, in pursuit. No longer concerned with stealth or playing with me, the predator plowed through the underbrush I slapped aside.

The only mercies I had were its size and the fact I knew this ground.

This was my ground. I'd spent my life on this earth. Memorizing its every part. I knew just where to slide through a narrow way, just how to lead the far larger hunter through the worst tangled thorns, while coming out unscathed myself.

I was tiny, I was fleet.

I was going to give this mother fucker the run of its life.

Five.

Ten.

Fifteen.

I counted the minutes in my head and I moved. With each count of five the noise of my pursuer's passage through the woods grew a little less. By the count of twenty the forest was quiet around me and I was resting on my haunches, back and side pressed against a tree. Doing my best not to breathe too heavily.

To be too noisy.

I wasn't ready to believe I'd lost the hunter. Outdistanced it perhaps. But likely not for long.

I'd been running. Taking no care to cover my trail or to make a secret of where I was going. And I was bleeding.

Sitting still a moment I finally had time to examine the state of my ankle. I'd sliced some skin off it. A patch about three fingers width wide and a few inches long had simply been sheared away when I'd yanked my foot out of the trap it'd been caught in, and I was bleeding profusely.

There was no predator alive who wouldn't follow a clear blood trail to injured prey.

Fucked, I'm fucked.

Growling, I dug my fingers into a seam of my hoodie that'd also frayed when I'd wiggled out from under the oaks, and ripped off a swath of cloth. Quick, methodical, I tied it around my ankle.

Then I attempted to stand on shaking legs.

With my adrenaline running low and my energy taxed, I was in poor condition. I wouldn't be sprinting through the woods again, and would just have to make the lead I'd acquired pay off.

Got to think…

The fact what was after me was far larger than I was presented my best chance. The way it had bent the light and reflected the world around it hadn't allowed me to grasp a thorough understanding of its proportions, but my best guess was over seven feet tall. And thick.

A black bear could reach up to six hundred and sixty pounds full grown. If I had to guess, what I'd glimpsed could at least rival that. Four to five hundred pounds would be an average weight.

It could crush me like a fly.

But it couldn't follow me into a narrow place.

Likely that was why it had wrecked the oak fall. It had wanted me out of my hiding place.

I limped when I moved, but refused to allow myself to think of that. Instead, I prowled forward and took stock of where I was. What I had to possibly help myself.

My fingers twitched down to the pocket where I usually kept my phone, my mind already debating if I'd be in service range before I encountered nothing. An emptiness where a weight should have been. I looked down and cursed myself, remembering I'd ditched my phone onto my bed after Kaine called and never picked it up again.

Shit.

It hadn't been likely to help me in this situation, but being out in the woods without my phone only seemed to make things worse.

Not even considering the thing hunting me, there was a serial kill at work in Cutter's Bend and I'd just left my one means of communication back in my apartment.

Where's your brain at, Joel?

I hadn't been using it, clearly.

But… Alright, so no phone. But that didn't mean I could flake out now.

A quick look around showed me I was in Jared's Wash. A piece of basin area that flooded out every spring, along with several other bits and pieces of forest, after the heavy snows melted. The wash was notorious for getting people killed. Come a warm day they would go out for a walk, go a little too far, and get caught in a rush of flood water they hadn't counted on.

About fifty years back, a kid named Jared had gotten stuck in this area of the wash and had been found almost ten miles downstream two days later.

That didn't concern me now, though. It was high summer and dry. My problem now was the wash was wide. It was open. There weren't a lot of tight spaces for me to hide in.

And the one there was, was far from ideal.

But the desperate couldn't be picky.

I wobbled my way through the sparse foliage that'd grown up at the bottom of the basin and part way up the other side. Nuzzled into the ground was a jutting rock the size of a car. And beneath it was a wedge of space I could snuggle into. Wiggle back into like a maggot.

And likely get caught in.

Didn't matter.

I curled myself into the space, nudging my body back as far into the dark under the overhanging rock as I could without becoming a permanent fixture.

And I waited.

Much of me expected the hunter to come.

None of me expected it to merely be there.

Be there as if it had been quietly following me for some while. Silently watching me as I field bandaged my ankle. Soundlessly observing me as I climbed down into the wash.

Letting me think I'd gotten a head start.

Only to shake off its rippling cloak of folded light and stand tall in front of me like the creature out of childhood tales it was.

And watching it appear… seeing the cloak tumble away like shimmers on water, like iridescent scales, I knew what it was.

Dragon.