Blood inside the Bellmother did not feel like blood until Jiang opened his beak by mistake.
Warm metal flooded his tongue. He shut his mouth, drove his good foot downward, and felt the bite in his tongue begin leaking into the larger taste around him.
There was no clean water beneath the wakehound. The dark fluid carried grease from the white harness, torn threads of living tissue, and the sharp oil that had once taught the animal what to hunt.
Jiang's own coat supplied the freshest trail.
In answer, the wakehound folded around it.
Its head vanished behind a pale shoulder. Six gills opened along its throat, drawing Jiang's scent through the slits. Then the long body snapped straight and came at him without needing room to turn.
He threw himself beneath the old cradle rail.
Teeth closed above his back. Their wake rolled him against copper, and his injured shoulder struck first. For an instant his right wing would not move.
Current spoke through the rest of him.
