Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 4567 | Page 122

“They put us in cages like pets for their entertainment, and kept us there until we lost our wings.”
“They killed and skinned my brother and made him into a watch.”
Kayr let the angry voices reach a crescendo before he held out a paw. Instantly, it was silent.
“The foreigners never cared that we had minds, that we were even more intelligent than them. They just took it
everything we had without a thought. Now we have a chance to turn the tables on them. We can take
something back.” This time, when he searched the clans’ faces, their met his gazes squarely with a blazing eyes
and set jaws.
With a predatory smile, Kayr beckoned to the alley’s mouth. He growled, “Let’s go.”
Completely oblivious to the danger he was in, Charlie Thompson sauntered through the pavements. Charlie
wasn’t worried. He knew the area well enough, he had these lovely chemicals dulling his senses, and he felt
confident in the empty streets. Nobody here would dare screw with me, he thought to himself, I’m a powerful
man. He had a wad of cash in his pocket fat enough for most problems, and he’d bought a brand new automatic
pistol for the others. He chuckled to himself. So Charlie didn’t notice making 3 wrong turns in a row, and he
certainly didn’t notice the shadows silently creeping up behind him.
A sharp crunch under foot finally cut into his stupor, sending him stumbling to a stop. “Where am I?” he
wondered aloud. The acrid smell of urine and rotting garbage rose from the concrete ground and stung his nose
and throat. Broken glass and trash littered the floor. As he realised the graffitied walls trapped him on 3 sides, a
twinge of fear began to sprout in his stomach. Then Charlie noticed the eyes. Dozens of slitted eyes watched him
from every side. A muffled voice in his head told him to run now, to get away from all this, but his legs didn’t
seem to be working. He couldn’t even reach for his gun.
Then, to his horror, the eyes began to move. His vision still hadn’t completely adjusted to the dark yet, but with
the movement he could see them. They were dragons. Their strange, snake-ish, cat-ish bodies couldn’t be
anything else. He was so confused; dragons were supposed to be nice, they were supposed to be pretty and
harmless. These things looked terrifying. A soft echoed around the narrow alley as the dragons clinging to the
walls began to drop to the ground. At that Charlie’s fight or flight instincts kicked in and he started to run for the
mouth of the alleyway, stumbling in his rush. Just a few feet into his escape, multiple pairs of fangs pierced his
calves and ankles and he fell face forward onto the sticky concrete.
He thrashed about on the floor desperately, kicking his legs and twisting around as more and more dragons piled
on top of him, stabbing their claws deep into his flesh. Finally, he managed to pull the gun out of his trousers,
and fired blindly into the mass of bodies. He heard something shriek and a collective roar filled the alley.
Suddenly his hand exploded into pain as jaws tore through flesh and severed bone. His vision clouded as he
screamed into the night, feral and uncontrolled. The last thing he saw was a flash of teeth, the murderous smile of
a dragon. Then jaws clamped down on his throat and blood poured into his lungs, silencing him forever.
Kayr lay limp beside the dead man’s body. The bullet had burned a hole through his ribs and into his mid section.
He was dying and he knew it. At least, he thought to himself, he’ll have a something nice to look at as he dies.
From his position on the ground he had a perfect view of the carnage his clan was wreaking on the body. The
thought of dying didn’t bother him too much. Really it’s a good thing for the clan. One less mouth to feed, and
now that they had taken down one foreigner, they might do it again. As his breathing became more laboured and
he began to cough out blood, he smiled. The clan would survive, and the dragons would have their revenge.