The person at the other end of the stretcher chuckles. I don’t recognize him. “You’ll have to excuse Preston. He’s very concerned about his balls right now,” he says.
“Trish didn’t threaten to castrate you,” Preston says.
“With a butter knife, I believe she said. What was it? ‘If you don’t get Melissa out in one piece, I’m gonna—’”
“Trish?” I interrupt.
“Diva Trish,” Preston says. “Acts like she did all the hard work. Biotracer was my idea, thank you very much. Don’t let anybody else tell you otherwise.”
My head swims. “She’s one of you?”
“An honorary Grunt now.”
“Need to get her to do a Loki run,” the other guy says.
“For sure. First thing when we get back.”
“We really need to recruit more chicks. . . .”
They continue their chatter. At some point I notice that Allie’s no longer at my side. The smoke that clouds the sky has thickened, but it’s now somehow brighter, too.
We pass through a jagged opening into a building. I hear footsteps and conversations. Becoming louder. Somebody kisses my forehead, murmurs my name, says he’ll be back. I glimpse the sword tattoos on his neck, and then he’s hurrying away, shouting orders.
“Where are—” I start.
The room brightens, illuminating winches and cranes overhead. The power’s out, but it’s getting brighter. Doesn’t make sense. We’re headed toward the slaughter slab.
It keeps getting brighter. So bright.
“She’s got her light saber up for you,” Preston says. I can hear the smile in his voice.
Hope sneaks in. “Baby?”
Melissa?
She has the voice of an angel.
“Let me see her.”
“You need to stay immobilized until we can fully evaluate you,” Preston says.
“If you don’t let me out of this thing, I’ll castrate you the first chance I get, and I promise you, you’ll be wishing I’d used a butter knife.”
The moment I’m loose, I stumble from the stretcher. She’s strapped to the slab, cameras and green screens still around her, her wings so broken. But she’s licking Allie into hysterical giggles, looking at me with those beautiful blue eyes. And glowing. Glowing so bright.
I laugh and I cry and my body almost gives out. Preston tries to help me, but I shrug him off and run. And it hurts. Everything hurts. So fucking much. But she’s alive and she’s glowing and she’s fucking alive.
So fucking alive.
At least two dozen insurgents surround her, some taking pictures, others tending her wounds and removing her bindings. I’m pushing through the crowd, am almost to her when I see two All-Blacks huddled together at the other end of the slab, backs to me, heads bowed together. The shorter one looks my way.
For a second, I don’t recognize her. She seems too haunted. Too human.
Evelyn.
We stare at each other—different strangers than before. Then she turns back around.
“He’ll get better, Melissa,” Allie says from beside me. It’s the first time she’s ever used my name. Sounds odd.
“Who—”
A chain saw revs up. I flinch. So does that soldier next to Evelyn. He turns his head halfway to glare at something I can’t see.
I stop breathing.
I thought I’d killed him.
For the briefest moment, he focuses on me, and I’d swear his scowl softens and his eyes brighten. In that glance I recognize the boy from Shadow Mountain Lookout. Then he looks away.
“Arabelle has some silly ideas for the island,” Allie says. She sounds excited.
An ice cave is not silly, Baby says. Based on Allie’s snort, I assume Baby’s in broadcast mode. And don’t forget the snowfield where we can play ball.
“Snow will melt.”
Not if it’s cold.
“It’s cold here. I don’t like the cold, no, no.”
Somewhere else, where it’s a nice cold.
“Tell her she’s silly, Melissa.”
The chain saw goes quiet. Nobody else seems to notice.
Real? Not real?
What about him?
I just don’t know anymore.
I’m not sure I ever did.
I turn back to Allie and Baby. “Wonderfully silly.”
I grab Allie’s hand, press my forehead to Baby, and find something happy to hold on to, something I know is real.
So very real.
About the Author
Joshua McCune was born on a Navy base in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He grew up in London and Washington, D.C., went to college in Texas, and got married in New Zealand. He worked as a telemarketer, an SAT instructor, and a robotics engineer before becoming an author. He currently lives in San Antonio, Texas, with his wife and two dogs, writing stories of people and places just beyond the reach of planes, trains, and automobiles (but not dragons).
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Credits
Cover art © 2014 by Sammy Yuen
Cover design by Sammy Yuen and Paul Zakris
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Talker 25
Copyright © 2014 by Joshua McCune
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McCune, Joshua.
Talker 25 / Joshua McCune.
pages cm
“Greenwillow Books.”
Summary: The fifteen-year-long war between man and dragons seems nearly over until Melissa becomes an unwilling pawn of the government after she—and those driving the beasts to extinction—discover that she can communicate with dragons.
ISBN 978-0-06-212191-2 (hardback)
EPUB Edition MARCH 2014 ISBN 9780062121929
[1. Dragons—Fiction. 2. Human-animal communication—Fiction. 3. Telepathy—Fiction. 4. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 5. War—Fiction. 6. Science fiction.]
I. Title. II. Title: Talker twenty-five.
PZ7.M4784157Tal 2014
[Fic]—dc23 2013046186
14 15 16 17 18 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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