Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #15 June 2015 | Page 82

The Last Slayer
By Dustin Coffman
Part 2
Daniel knew he should use this time to attack and
finish his target off before he changed, but his body
wasn’t back to speed yet. His arms and legs felt like
pins and needles as they continued to wake back up.
Plus, he was worn out from his fire blast. Controlling
fire was a hard trick—he had to focus a lot of energy
to do it. Daniel didn’t have a choice; he was forced
to wait and watch. At least it’s one on one again, he
thought. Ivan’s hands turned back into claws as he
ripped off his own clothes and flesh, a naked, bloody
corpse before he began to grow. At first it was only a
few extra inches here and there, and then he doubled
in size, then tripled. Where his skin once used to be,
were now dark black scales. Daniel had seen more
than a dozen dragons in his time, and each one looked
different. He was really glad this one didn’t have
wings—the flying ones were the worst of all to kill—
but still, at full-size this dragon was the size of a large
SUV. Add on the long tail with a bowling ball on the
end and you had a pretty large beast, not to mention
the spikes that were about two feet tall and stood up
along its back. Of course, Daniel had faced bigger and
scarier dragons before, but he had never faced a lizard
from Mother Russia.
There was a blur of movement and Daniel was hit by
a wrecking ball. The impact sent him flying through
the air to crush into the back wall of the hallway. The
breath was knocked out of him, and judging by the
pain, it seemed he broke a couple of ribs.
“Note to self: avoid the tail,” Daniel said through
clenched teeth.

Ivan barreled through the door like a bulldozer, tearing
down a large selection of the wall. Daniel bit down
on his pain and reached over for his sword. He could
already feel his ribs healing, but it still hurt like a sonof-a-bitch. One of the perks to being a half-breed is
super-fast healing, just like a dragon. Daniel couldn’t
help but to think about the old commercials of the
Kool-Aid guy busting through a wall, Oh Yeah! He
fought through the pain, stood up, wobbled a moment,
and then took off running as fast as he could. The
dragon was huge and fast. Daniel knew he couldn’t
outrun it for long so he had to outsmart it. He learned
long ago that big creatures don’t turn well, so Daniel
slid around corner after corner, keeping a good distance between him and the beast that wanted to eat
him. Flames soared passed him as he ran. Old habits
die hard, Daniel thought as he ignored the fire. Up
ahead was a maze of cubicles, filled with lots of busy
worker bees. This is not going to end well.
A pretty young woman came out of her cubicle, with
a cup of steaming coffee in one hand and papers in the
other. Her mind was on her work, and she didn’t see
Daniel or the fire breathing demon coming towards
her. Daniel tried to miss her, but he ended up bumping
into her as he sprinted passed. She spilled coffee all
over herself and her paperwork.
“Hey!” the girl yelled, and then froze when she noticed the man who had bumped into her was naked.
“Oh, my.”
“Run!” Daniel called back.

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