Dragonsapien Read Online Free Page B

losing.
    It was
terrified.
    It was trying to
get away.
    Strangely, Jake
felt sorry for it.
    ‘Celly! Celly!’
he yelled. ‘Let it go! You’ve won! Let it go!’
    The pummelling,
shredding talons continued to rain down.
    Threaded flesh
and bloody muscle was scattered around the combatants.
    At last, with an
effortless flap of her sparkling wings, Celly rose away from the
fight.
    Jake gasped at
her incredible beauty.
    She could have
been a warring angel, St Michael himself, hovering over the
defeated Beast.
    The boar,
exhausted and with tattered curtains of flesh hanging down its
sides, briefly appeared relieved.
    It stumbled.
Snorted in agony. Fell.
    Its eyes were
now sad, pained. Oddly pleading.
    Instantly
forgetting the danger he had been in, Jake whirled on
Celly.
    ‘Why’d you kill
it?’
    Still hovering
in the air, Celly glared back at him.
    ‘Because it was
going to kill you , remember?’
    ‘But…but you
didn’t have to do it so horribly !’
    As Celly
gracefully dropped back to the ground, her wings rapidly retracted,
her bloodied talons slid back into her hands, the metallic glow of
her skin faded. She would have looked innocently human again if it
hadn’t been for the blood covering her hands, her badly torn
shorts, and now almost non-existent t-shirt.
    ‘Horribly ? It put up a bit of a fight, Jake! Or hadn’t
you noticed?’
    ‘But you’d
beaten it! You didn’t need to finish it off so…so…’
    ‘Go on! Say it
Jake! Brutally, right? Like I’m an animal, you mean?’
    ‘No, no…I
didn’t…’
    ‘Yes you did!
I’ve watched you all week, Jake! Your face creased in disgust every
time you saw Hincheley or Mary killing and skinning an animal! Like
we’re animals and you’re some superior being!’
    She strode past
him, storming off back into the undergrowth.
    ‘Wait! What
about the boar?’
    Jake pointed
back towards the now lifeless boar.
    ‘What about it?’
she cried back over her shoulder.
    ‘Well, we can’t
just leave it here, can we? The other animals, they’ll–’
    Celly spun
around.
    ‘They’ll eat it, you mean?’
    Jake shrugged,
embarrassed.
    ‘Now it’s dead,
it seems such a waste–’
    ‘A waste of food
you mean? That’s a bit brutal , isn’t it? Eating the
poor thing?’
    ‘It’s dead
anyway–’
    Celly furiously
strode back towards him.
    ‘Yes, it’s dead Jake! And do you know what would have happened if it wasn’t dead, Jake? We’d have a wounded boar running about
the island, dangerous and looking for trouble. That’s why I
killed it!’
    Still…’ Jake
said weakly.
    ‘Still what,
Jake? We’d have killed it anyway, wouldn’t we? For the meat we
need, right?’
    He
nodded.
    ‘So…what should
we do?’ he asked. ‘It’s too big for us to cut up or drag back,
unless you...’
    ‘Unless I cut it
up? You’d like that would you? To see me butchering it?
While you can go on pretending you’re back at home, getting all
your meat from the supermarket, kidding yourself you’re not really
an animal too?’
    ‘I’m not
supposed to be here , remember?’ Jake spat back. ‘I’m
supposed to be at home! But you and your family kidnapped me
after killing a whole bloody station of coppers!’
    ‘Because we were
about to be discovered! What choice did mum and dad have? Everyone
would just think we were monsters, like you do!’
    ‘Oh, whereas
killing a few coppers shows you’re all perfectly human,
right?’
    ‘So humans don’t kill policemen; that’s what you’re
saying?’
    ‘They don’t slaughter them!’
    Celly spun
around and started heading off through the jungle once
more.
    ‘Where’re you
going?’ Jake cried out after her.
    ‘To the beach,
to wash this blood off – or did you think I enjoyed being covered
like this?
     
     
    *
     
     
    ‘The boar! What
about the boar?’
    Jake yelled out
urgently to Celly as he ran after her, following the path she’d
angrily and carelessly carved out of the undergrowth.
    He didn’t want
to see the