Shotguns at the ready the officers advanced to the rescue.
By this time Moira had gained partial control and Fluffy lay panting on the pavement.
Jerry held his breath. If they could just get the situation calmed down, then maybe… An odd corner of his brain wondered what it would cost to bail out a dragon.
He never had the chance to find out.
The cops were understandably nervous. Even lying down, a dragon looks dangerous and there were a lot of civilians around to protect. When Moira suddenly heaved the dragons body back on his feet the logical conclusion was that it was getting ready to attack, especially since the dragon’s open mouth was treating the cops to a spectacular display of fangs.
One of the cops with a clear shot pumped a load of buckshot into Fluffy at close range.
This was a spectacularly bad idea. The shot was #6, enough to drop a deer or a man in their tracks, but only enough to sting the scaled hide of a dragon.
The results were equally spectacular. With another steamwhistle roar, Fluffy went berserk, charging directly at the police officers closing in. Two more rounds of buckshot did nothing to stop him. A lash of the scaled tail and the policemen went flying like tenpins. A few of the spectators applauded, it being that kind of neighborhood.
“Get animal control. We need a tranquilizer gun,” one of the officers yelled into his microphone.
“Tranquilizer, hell!” one of the other cops shouted. “We need a goddamn tank.”
One of the officers, with more courage than tactical sense pulled her police cruiser into the parking lot to block the dragon’s escape. Fluffy stopped, hissed in breath, drew back his head and for the first time in his life, breathed flames.
It wasn’t much of a blast by dragon standards, weak and low temperature, but the gout of yellow fire did quite a nice job of igniting the police car. The officer bailed out the driver’s door as the opposite side of the car erupted in fire.
“Act inconspicuous,” Jerry hissed “Us they can arrest.”
Bal-Simba leaned nonchalantly against the side of the building. The effect wasn’t exactly inconspicuous, but it wasn’t that out of place either.
The best thing Moira could think of was to get out of there. Since that accorded perfectly with the dragon’s instincts, she had no trouble commanding the body to run. Moira put her head down and galloped straight at the crowd.
One spectator decided this was the Las Vegas version of the running of the bulls and stepped in front of her waving a jacket with a red lining like a bullfighter’s cape. For his pains he got thrown nearly ten feet by a quick toss of the dragon’s head. No one else seemed disposed to follow, not even the police.
Jerry nodded to Bal-Simba and the two of them drifted off around the other side of the building. Once they were out of sight they ran after the disappearing dragon.
They found Moira in an alley a block and a half away, leaning against a fence, her sides heaving.
“Are you all right?” Jerry asked.
With an effort Moira raised the dragon’s drooping head”I am sorry, My Lord I could not control this body.”
Jerry looked back at the glow from the burning police car. “Well, thank God no one was killed. Now come on.”
They made their way down the alley and paused in the shadows at the next cross street until there were no cars coming. Then the two men and the dragon sprinted across the street and into the next alley. They did it twice more before they ran out of alley at the blank rear wall of an apartment building.
“I take it we are not yet out of danger,” Bal-Simba said as they made their way back to the mouth of the alley.
“They’ll be searching the whole city for us and we’re not exactly going to be hard to spot. We can’t keep walking around, not with the cops looking for Moira.”
“Is there someplace we can hide?”
“Well, we could stash her among the life-size animated dinosaurs in the Las Vegas Museum of Natural History, but we’d have to get her there first.” Jerry frowned. Then his frown cleared and he looked past Bal-Simba out of the mouth of the alley.