by Julie Kagawa
“Do you think it’ll take us to a secret underground cave full of dragons and treasure?”
He smirked. “What is this, a Tolkien novel? I very seriously doubt it.”
“You’re no fun at all.”
We followed the straight, narrow passageway for maybe three blocks, until it ended at a flight of stairs with another simple wooden door at the top. Eager and curious, I pushed it open, but there was no looming cavern beyond the frame, no circle of dragons waiting for us, no bustling, underground facility with computer terminals lining the walls.
Through the door sat a clean but very plain-looking garage. It had cracked cement floors, no windows and was wide enough to hold at least two vehicles. The double doors were shut, and the shelves lining the walls were filled with normal garage-y things: tools and hoses and old bike tires and such. Not counting the secret tunnel we’d just come through, it was disappointingly normal in every way. Except, of course, for the pair of black sedans already humming in the center of the carport.
The drivers’ doors opened, and two men stepped out, dressed in identical black suits with dark glasses. As one, they turned and opened each of their passenger doors, then stood beside the cars, hands folded in front of them, waiting.
I eyed the men warily. “I guess we’re supposed to go with you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” one of them answered, staring straight ahead.
I suppressed a wince. I hated being called “ma’am.” “And, there’s two of you because...?”
“We’re to drive you to your destinations, ma’am,” the human answered, as though that was obvious. Though he still didn’t look at me. I blinked.
“Separately?”
“Yes, ma’am. That is correct.”
I frowned. Dante and I never did anything separately. All our classes, schoolwork, activities, events, everything, had been done together. I didn’t like the idea of my brother being taken away in a strange car with a strange human to a place I knew nothing about. “Can’t we drive there together?” I asked.
“I’m afraid that is impossible, ma’am.” The human’s voice was polite but firm. “You are not going to the same place.”
Even more wary now, I crossed my arms, but Dante stepped up behind me, brushing my elbow. “Come on,” he whispered as I glanced at him. “Don’t be stubborn. Talon ordered this—we have to do what they say.”
I sighed. He was right; if Talon had set this up, there was nothing I could do. “Fine,” I muttered, and looked back at the drivers. “Which car is mine?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter, ma’am.”
Before I could reply, Dante stepped around me, walked over to one of the cars and slid into the back. His driver briskly shut the door, walked around to his side and shut his own door behind him.
That left me. Swallowing a growl, I walked to the remaining car, ignoring my driver, and plopped into the backseat. As the garage doors lifted and we backed out into the sunlight, I turned to watch the other car, hoping for a final glimpse of my brother in the backseat. But the windows were tinted, and I couldn’t see him as the sedans pulled onto the road and sped away in opposite directions.
The drive was short and silent. I knew better than to ask where we were going. Resting an elbow on the door, I gazed out the window, watching the town flash by, until we pulled into the parking lot of a plain-looking office building. It was several stories high, with lots of dark glass windows that reflected the cloudless sky.
The driver pulled around the building and came to a stop in front of a loading dock in the back. The metal door was tightly sealed, but an entryway stood open beside it, dark and beckoning. I sighed.
Leaving the car and the driver, who still said nothing to me, I walked into the building and followed the long tile hallway until I came to an open door at the end. Beyond the frame was an office, with a metal stool sitting in front of an enormous wooden desk. A plush leather chair swiveled as I came in, and the blond woman in black Armani smiled at me across the floor.
“Hello, hatchling,” Scary Talon Lady greeted, lacing perfect, red-tinted nails under her chin. “You’re late.”
I swallowed hard and didn’t answer. One did not talk back to one’s elders, especially if one’s elders had a few hundred pounds advantage and the knowledge of several mortal life spans to back them up. The woman’s poisonous green eyes watched me a moment longer, and her lips curled faintly in amusement, before she gestured at the stool. “Sit.”
I did. The metal stool was hard and uncomfortable, probably on purpose. Scary Talon Lady leaned back in her chair and crossed her long legs, still continuing to watch me with the unblinking stare of a predator.
“Well, here we are,” she said at last. “And I bet you’re wondering why, aren’t you?” She raised an eyebrow at my continued silence. “Don’t be afraid to talk to me, hatchling. At least, not today. Talon’s senior vice president himself asked me to take over your training, but right now, this is just an introduction. Student to teacher.” The faint smile vanished then, and her voice went hard. “Make no mistake about it—after today, things will become much more difficult. You are going to struggle, and you are going to get hurt. It is not going to be easy for you. So, if you have any questions, hatchling, now is the time to ask them.”
My stomach twisted. “What am I being trained for?” I almost whispered.
“Survival,” Scary Talon Lady answered without hesitation, and elaborated. “To survive a world that, if it knew what you really were, would stop at nothing to see you destroyed.” She paused to let the gravity of that statement sink in, before continuing. “All our kind must learn to defend ourselves, and to be on the lookout for those who would do us harm. Who would drive us to extinction, if they could. They almost succeeded, once. We cannot let that happen again.” She paused again, appraising me over the desktop. “Tell me, hatchling,” she said. “What is the greatest threat to our survival? Why did we nearly go extinct the first time?”
“St. George,” I answered. That was an easy question. From the moment we hatched, we were warned about the terrible Order of St. George. We were taught their entire blood-filled history, from the first dragonslayers, to the fanatical Templar Knights, all the way up to the militaristic order they were now. We were told stories of St. George soldiers murdering hatchlings, shooting them in cold blood, even if they were children. We were warned to always be wary of strangers who asked too many questions, who seemed unnaturally interested in our past. St. George was ruthless and cunning and unmerciful, the enemy of all our kind. Every dragon knew that.
“No. That is incorrect.”
I blinked in shock. The woman across from me leaned forward, her eyes intense. “We nearly went extinct,” she said slowly, “because we couldn’t trust one another. We were more concerned about our possessions and defending our territories than our survival as a race. And so, the humans hunted us down, one by one, and nearly destroyed us. Only near the end, when our numbers had dwindled to almost nothing, did one dragon—the Elder Wyrm—gather us all together and force us to cooperate. We learned to become human, to hide in plain sight, to disappear into the throngs of humanity. But most important, we learned that we must work together for our survival. A single dragon, powerful as he or she may be, cannot stand against this human-infested world. If we are to thrive, if we are to have any hope for a future, we must all accept our place in the organization. Alone, we fall. As one, we rise.” Scary Talon Lady narrowed her eyes, her acidic gaze cutting right through me. “Everything we do, everything I teach you, will be for the good of us all. Can you remember that, hatchling?”
I nodded.
“Good.” My trainer sat back once more, her lips curling in a small, evil smile. “Because it’s not going to get any easier from here.”
* * *
She was right. From that day forth, starting at 6:00 a.m. ever
y morning, I’d wake up to the sound of my alarm beeping in my ear. I’d change, stagger downstairs to grab a bagel or a doughnut, and then Dante and I would meet our drivers at the end of the secret tunnel and separate. Once I reached the office building, I’d walk into that same room, and Scary Talon Lady—she never told me her name, ever—would be waiting behind her large wooden desk.
“Report,” she would bark at me, every morning. And I’d have to go over what I’d done the previous day. Who I’d met. Where we’d gone. What we’d done. She’d ask me specific questions about my friends, demanding I explain why they’d said a particular thing, or reacted a particular way. I hated it, but that wasn’t the worst part of the morning.
No, the worst part was after the “debriefing.” She’d order me to the storage room of the building, which was huge and vast and mostly empty, with hard cement floors and iron beams crisscrossing the ceiling. And then the real fun would begin.
“Break down these boxes,” she would snap, pointing to a huge pile of crates, “and stack them in the opposite corner.”
“Drag these pallets to the other end of the room. And when you are done, bring them back. Be quick about it.”
“Carry these buckets of water around the building ten times. When you are finished, go ten times the other way.”
“Stack these tires into pillars of eight, one in every corner of the room, as fast as you can. No, you cannot roll them, you must carry them.”
Every day. For two hours straight. No questions. No talking back or complaining. Just stupid, monotonous, pointless tasks. All the while, Scary Talon Lady would watch my progress, offering no explanation, never saying anything except to snap at me to move faster, to work harder. Nothing I did was good enough, no matter how hard I worked or how quickly I completed the task. I was always too slow, too weak, too lacking in everything, despite her absolute, number-one rule: no Shifting into my true form while I did any of it.
This morning, I’d finally snapped.
“Why?” I snarled, my voice echoing into the vastness of the room, breaking two of her rules at once. No talking back, and no questions. I didn’t care anymore. The brick I’d dropped had landed on my foot, sparking a curse and a flare of temper. And Scary Talon Lady, always there, always watching, had barked some kind of pithy insult before telling me to keep moving, faster this time. I was sore, my arms were burning, sweat was running into my eyes and now my toe was throbbing. I’d had enough.
“This is pointless!” I exclaimed, shouting across the room. “You’re always telling me to go faster, to be stronger, but I’m not allowed to change?” I gestured wildly to the mountains of bricks on both sides of the room, imagining how easy this would be if I could fly. “I could get this done ten times as fast in my real form. Why can’t I do this as me?”
“Because that is not the point of the exercise,” was the cool, infuriating reply. “And you just earned yourself another hour of carting bricks back and forth, only now I want you to count them. I will be keeping track, as well, and if you lose count, you will start all over again from the top. Is that understood?”
I seethed, wishing I could Shift into my real form and blast through one of the skylights in the ceiling. Leave my sadistic trainer and her pointless exercises behind for good. Of course, I could never get away with something so crazy, especially in broad daylight. If even one human saw me, there would be chaos and panic and bedlam and doom. Even if no one believed what they’d seen, Talon would have to step in and try to mitigate the damage, which was generally expensive and something they didn’t care to do. The Order of St. George might show up, as they always seemed to appear when the unexplainable occurred, and then someone would have to be called in to deal with that mess. Bottom line, I’d be in a world of trouble.
Setting my jaw, I bent down and grabbed the brick, then hefted it to my shoulder as I’d been ordered. One more hour. One more hour of this torture, and then the day was mine.
“I don’t hear you counting,” Scary Talon Lady sang from across the room. I gritted my teeth, swallowing the flames that wanted to burst free, and snarled back.
“One!”
* * *
I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. When the torture finally ended and I came out of the secret tunnel, I raced to my room, grabbed my board and instantly headed down to the water. I needed something to clear my head, and riding the waves was the perfect distraction.
Only, the ocean was being obnoxious today, too. It was a conspiracy.
The surfboard bobbed gently on the water as I continued to stare at the sky. A lone cloud, a tiny cotton ball far overhead, hung in the endless blue, far, far away. Closing one eye, I raised my hand and imagined cupping my claws around it as I soared by on the wind. I remembered the sun warming my back and wings, the rush that filled me when I dove and swooped and soared on the currents. Surfing was the closest I’d come to that thrill, and it was a pale comparison. I wanted to fly.
I bet that rogue dragon can go flying whenever he wants.
I folded my hands on my stomach, thinking of him. It had been nearly a month since that brief glance in the parking lot, and since then, I’d seen neither hide nor hair of the rogue dragon or his motorcycle. Not that I hadn’t looked for him. I’d kept my eyes open, scanning the beach crowds, the parking lots, even the dark corners of the Crescent Beach mall. Nothing. Dante never spoke about the incident, either, becoming evasive and busy when I asked about it. He wouldn’t tell me what he’d done, or if he’d even done anything, and it annoyed me that he was being so secretive. If it wasn’t for Lexi’s confirmation that G double B had, in fact, existed, I might have thought the whole incident some kind of lucid dream.
I frowned. Dante was being cagey about a lot of things, lately. Not only with the rogue dragon, but he didn’t like talking about his own training sessions, either. I’d asked him, several times, what he and his trainer did all morning, and his answers were pretty vague. Politics and Human Sciences, learning the different governments and names of world leaders and such. I suspected he was keeping his answers deliberately boring so I would lose interest and not want to discuss it. I didn’t know why; I’d told him everything Scary Talon Lady made me do, and he was appropriately sympathetic, but he rarely spoke of his own sessions.
Something moved past me in the water, and I sat up, my nerves prickling for a different reason. The sea was calm, nothing had changed, but I could have sworn I’d felt movement off to the right....
A dark, triangular fin broke the surface about a hundred yards away, and my heart gave a violent lurch. Quickly, I pulled my legs out of the water and kneeled on the surfboard. The fin vanished for a moment, then reappeared, closer than before. Definitely stalking, circling. I could see the long, sleek shadow below the water, the dark torpedo-shaped body coming right at me.
I smiled. Not that I’d be scared any other time, but this morning, I was keyed up and ready for a fight. As it neared, I planted my palms on the board, lowered my head and gave a low growl.
Abruptly, the shadow veered away, the tail slapping a fine spray of mist into the air in its haste to turn around. I watched the fin slice through the water, growing rapidly smaller before it vanished into the depths again, and grinned triumphantly.
Ha. Bet you’ve never run into an even nastier predator floating on a surfboard before, have you?
I sighed. Well, unexpected visitor aside, nothing much was happening on this side of the ocean today. And I’d promised to meet Lexi at the Smoothie Hut. She, more intelligently, had heeded her brother’s advice and decided to spend the afternoon sunbathing and checking out boys with Kristin. Never mind that Kristin had a boyfriend back home in New York. She liked to “window-shop” while on vacation, and Lexi was more than happy to join in. The testosterone-ridden part of our group, Dante included, had gone to check out a truck-pulling event or something, so it was just us girls ton
ight. And though I thought sunbathing and gossiping about human boys the epitome of boring, it was better than sitting out here doing nothing, with no company except gulls and curious sharks.
Lying on my stomach, I paddled back to shore, catching a pathetic little four-footer close to the beach and gliding the rest of the way in. There was a good crowd of people splashing in the too-calm water today, some of them families with toddlers. I thought back to my unexpected meeting in the deep ocean, and though I thought my visitor was probably long gone, I didn’t want to take the chance that it could still be hanging around. Not with fat little kids scampering through the shallows, happily oblivious.
“Shark!” I yelled as my feet hit the wet sand. “There’s a shark out there! Everyone get out of the water!”
Man, you want to see humans move fast? Scream that on a crowded beach and watch what happens. It’s amazing the fear people have for a scaly, sharp-toothed predator. I watched the water empty in seconds, parents scooping up their children and fleeing to shore, desperate to get out of the ocean, and found it a little ironic. They were so terrified of the big nasty monster out in the water, when there was a bigger, nastier, deadlier one right there on the beach.
* * *
After talking to a pair of lifeguards, and explaining that, yes, I did see a shark out in the water, and no, I wasn’t causing a panic just for fun, I found Lexi and Kristin farther up the shore, at the edge of the parking lot. They were standing next to a yellow Jeep and talking to a trio of shirtless guys in swim trunks, none of whom I’d seen before. As I approached, that strange prickle teased the back of my neck, and I gazed around, searching for dark hair and a motorcycle. Nothing. I must be getting paranoid.
“There you are!” Lexi grabbed my arm like she was afraid I would fly away. “We were just about to go look for you. People are saying there’s a shark in the water!”
“Oh,” I said. “Um. Yeah, there is. I mean, that’s why I came out. It’s probably nothing, though.” I glanced at the three strange guys. They were a little older than us, college age, maybe, and not from around here. Except for their tanned arms, their skin was pale and pasty, as if this was the first time they’d taken off their shirts. One of them caught me looking at him and winked. I bristled, but decided not to comment.