Light Dragons 03 - Sparks Fly

their sharp little claws had struck home.
    He helped us heave the stone tomb across the opening, all of us slumping on it when it clicked into place.
    “Is there any way to open it from the tunnel?” I asked Maura.
    She shook her head and blew on a bit of Savian’s hair that was still smoking. “Not that I’ve ever found, and Thala had us make a comprehensive examination of it.”
    We looked from the tomb to the stairs to the chapel.
    “Which means we’re trapped in the castillo ,” I said, closing my eyes for a moment and wishing I were a thousand miles away.
    Brom’s eyes lit up. “Cool! I’ll go make some bombs. I wonder if there’s any gas around. I heard about this thing called a Moscow cocktail, and I bet I could make some of them, too.”
    “Molotov cocktail,” I corrected him wearily, rubbing my temples where a headache blossomed. It was shaping up to be a very long day.

Chapter Eight
    “F ire in the hole!”
    The cry forced some of the negrets swarming the metal gate at the entrance of the castillo to look upward. Savian leaned out through a murder hole cut into the stone curtain that surrounded the inner keep buildings.
    “Take that, you murderous little bastards,” he added, lighting the piece of cloth that was wedged into the top of a glass beer bottle.
    “Niiice,” Maura drawled, trying to peer over his shoulder.
    “You’d say the same thing if they tried to eat your face, too,” he snapped.
    “Hrmph.”
    “I can’t see,” Brom complained. I stood on tiptoe to peer over the edge of the curtain wall, watching as the explosive shattered on the rocks behind the main group of negrets, immediately turning into a wave of fire. A few screams and metallic clangs followed.
    “You don’t need to see. It’s enough I let you make bombs, which is probably something that will keep me from ever being on any Mother of the Year list, but this is an emergency.”
    “You said the negrets don’t burn up. You said they don’t have guts coming out or anything like that. Why can’t I watch them turn into metal?”
    “Because you’re only nine years old, and even I have some limits.” I gave him a gimlet eye, which effectively shut up his complaints. At least for the moment.
    “Yippie ki-yay, mothersuckers,” Savian yelled down to the negrets, a third of which were now directly under the murder hole, trying to climb the stone wall. He lit another Molotov cocktail and tossed it out the opening.
    “Savian!” I gasped at the same time Maura whomped him on the arm.
    “I said suckers, not ... er ... I made it PG,” he told me with a cock of his head toward Brom.
    “It’s a very fine line, nonetheless.”
    “Some people,” Maura muttered.
    “I could do without comments from the peanut gallery,” he told her before turning to me. “Sorry, Ysolde. Will be more careful. How’s my aim?”
    “You’re out about ten feet too far,” Maura answered as I tried to look. “No, to the left. Lordisa, man, your other left.”
    “It’s not easy doing this handcuffed,” he snarled, giving her a glare.
    “Then take them off!” she retorted.
    “I will when Baltic says we’re done with you.” The words emerged as if he were grinding them through his teeth.
    “I swear, if you two make me pull this fortress over, you’ll be sorry,” I said, giving them both a mom-look that should have scared ten years off their lives.
    “Sorry,” Savian said immediately.
    “He started it by handcuffing me to him,” Maura said, but subsided when I leveled another look at her.
    “You’re still a little outside the main group, Savian. If you can drop one right at the foot of the gate, I bet it would get at least half of them.”
    “I can’t lean out that far,” he said, on his knees before the murder hole, his body twisted to the side as he stuck his head out of it. “The hole isn’t big enough. I have to do this at an angle as is, and even then, only one shoulder will fit through it. I think I can stretch a little bit farther, but-Christ!”
    “What’s wrong?” I asked as he pulled himself back onto the walkway that ran the length of the curtain wall.
    “The negrets. They’re making a pyramid right beneath the murder hole.”
    I clutched the stones and stuck my head out to see for myself. About six feet below me, the topmost negret grimaced as another one climbed to stand on his shoulders. “Sins of the saints!”
    The negret leaped at me, its claws narrowly missing my face as Savian jerked