"Holly Lisle - Secret Texts 2 - Vengeance Of Dragons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

She heard running, and shouts, and animal howls. The smells andsounds and the terror hit her like
a blow to the skull; her bodyresponded before her mind could. Her blood began to boil and
herskin and muscles flowed like liquid, and the human part of her,which had been hunting for
edible plants in the forest, Shifted toembrace the monster that lived inside of her; she became the
thingshe both hated and needed. With the woman burned away, whatremained was beast, furred,
fanged, four-legged, hungry for thehunt. Karnee now, blood-mad, she raced toward trouble.

She came over the ridge at a dead run, and skidded to a stop atthe sight laid out before her. The
attackers had her people backedinto a narrow crevice in the cliff that formed the north wall
oftheir camp. Turben was down and bleeding heavily. The other threeused the plentiful shale
scree as their weapon; they were takingturns throwing volleys against the enemy with makeshift
slings,timing their fire in such a way that a constant rain of theknifelike stone shards filled the air.

She couldn’t see her attackers, but she knew where theywere from the sound of them; they were
using the ruin as theirshield. They were better armed than the humans. She could hear thetwang
of bowstrings, the hiss of heavy arrows flying through theair, the rattle and clatter as the arrows
rebounded off the cliffface and knocked loose more scree. Better armed and with their
preycornered, they couldn’t help but win.

Unless she found a way to shift the odds in her favor.

She scrambled down the cliff, kicking loose scree as she did.But neither her friends nor her
enemies would pay attention to her— four-legged, she moved differently than a human, and
gavethe impression she was moving away from the trouble.

Once into the valley and downwind of the attackers, she came inbehind them, running through
the underbrush with her belly to theground. She was fast and quiet enough that they had no
warning whenshe burst out of the brush to attack them.

She got her first clear look at them as she charged toward thenearest. They were taller than any
man and gaunt as specters, andgray fur hung from their frames in ragged, moss-festooned
hanks.She guessed they massed twenty to twenty-five stone — morethan four times the weight
and bulk of the average human. They ranon four legs but stood clumsily on two to fling rocks or
shoottheir arrows, and they called to each other in rough syllables thatwere not far removed from
wordless grunts. Yet they did speak, andthey did make weapons, and their faces, arranged in
human fashionthough larger and more heavily boned, bespoke their Wizards’War origins. They
were Scarred — monsters whose ancestors athousand years earlier had been men.

She was terrified. All her life, she’d heard horriblestories about Scarred monsters and what they
were capable of —and she knew what she was capable of, which made her givethe stories
credence — but in the end it didn’t matter.Her friends needed her.
She lunged in, keeping low to the ground and aiming straight forthe rear leg of the nearest
attacker, and before any of the fourbeasts could react to her, she’d sunk her fangs into thetendons
of the monster’s right leg and ripped throughthem.

The monster screamed, and blood gushed in her mouth. She boundedaway, feeling the surge of
the Karnee battle-lust boiling in herveins, fed by the raging river of her fear and determination.

The beast she’d hamstrung was on three legs, turning toface her as quickly as he could. She could