I heard Bianca and Cristian climbing behind me and shouting at each other. More shouts rose from farther below us. I glanced down and saw security at the foot of the scaffolding climbing up as well. Fools. They were going to get hurt. Since they couldn’t see the dragon, they were only coming up just to chase after us, or because they had death wishes and wanted to be hit by falling debris or get a fire shower from Blue.
“Go back down!” I shouted at them, trying to save them from their own idiocy.
“You can’t be on this scaffolding!” The bigger of the two guys yelled, his cheeks red, sweat pouring down his forehead.
I held onto the support pole and pulled out my badge to flash at him.
“We got this under control! Get off the scaffolding!”
Bianca and Cristian reached the platform I was on and waited for me.
“Idiots,” Bianca huffed.
“They’re not going to listen, it seems,” Cristian said.
Bianca sighed. “What can we do? What’s the plan, Dred?”
“We got bigger dragons to fry,” I said, looking back up at the top of the temple. Blue had leapt off the golden statue and flew around it a few times, breathing fire at various sections of the surrounding property. “Once we get to the top platform, we should be at a good distance from her once she lands again. I’ll do the protection spell. You guys do the others.”
“Good call.” Bianca produced an elastic band from a pocket and pulled her long hair into a ponytail. “Right behind you, Dred.”
I moved back to the ladder and began ascending the scaffolding again.
The sun beat down on me, making sweat break out under my clothes. The day was hot and some parts of the scaffolding burned the moment I grabbed hold of them.
Wind from Blue’s wings fluttered up against me and I knew then that she’d spotted us. She began paying extra attention to us, making me feel particularly special. If only I did have that dragon-soul magic going on. I wasn’t sure how it worked, but it might lessen her innate rage for me.
She zipped particularly close, buzzing me and causing my hands to slip. But I’d already reached the top platform of the scaffolding and I threw myself at it before I began to fall backwards.
I finished climbing onto it and stood up, somewhat satisfied that I’d outwitted death. The reality was that every day was full of near-death experiences for me, and this was just another one of those.
I took a breath, glanced over the edge and couldn’t spot Hank down below. Where’d he gone?
I didn’t have long to think about it, because Blue suddenly zipped past me again, her claws skimming my head. Hitting the deck didn’t feel great, but getting carried off or having my eyes ripped out wouldn’t feel great, either.
The fact that she hadn’t doused me in flames was heartening in a way. It was the little things in life that gave it meaning: not being burned alive by an angry fire-breather, nor being shredded by talons the size of two of my own fingers. Things like that.
When I stood up again, Cristian and Bianca had joined me on the platform. Above us, Blue landed on the head of the golden statue again and faced us.
She opened her maw and let out a stream of red hot flames.
Oh hell.
I ducked low, preparing to hit the deck again.
But the flames parted like a river around a boulder when they struck an invisible shield. I glanced to the side and noticed that Bianca was in the midst of a long, drawn out chant. She’d cast the protection.
“Thanks, Bianca. Don’t use up all your Ink, though.”
Blue stopped, and Bianca ended her chant.
“I might be out. That was ferocious—she’s one pissed off mama. You guys are so lucky I was here to catch it. Both of you seemed to be sleeping on the job.” She reached into the crossbody-satchel she kept with her at all times and pulled out a little jar labeled Ink for Witches, yanked the cork out and downed it.
“Then let’s get this show on the road, before she chooses to honor us again with her flames.”
Cristian stood at the ready and withdrew his wand. He claimed it was a sliver from the staff of an ancient wizard known as Gawain. A druid or something. Flecked with silver as though it had been coated in tinfoil and then melted, it danced in the brilliant light of the desert sun.
I breathed in, breathed out, cleared my mind, and was centered. Protection spells were visualized as a shield of light, which is what I saw in my mind. With a forward step, I cast my right hand toward the dragon and saw Blue shiver as though she’d been touched by an icy wind.
She leapt away from the statue, catching an upward draft and letting out a bellow that melted my bones.
I cursed. “You guys get your spells out before she left?”
The air around me settled as the magic they’d been conjuring faded.
Bianca sighed. “No.”
“Barely got a swirl out of my wand,” Cristian admitted.
“I think she’ll be back—but she felt my spell and it startled her.”
Blue was a wheeling and banking bolt of blue in the desert sky. She went further away this time, disappeared behind the towering office buildings, the mountains her backdrop. For a while I took a moment to look for Hank again and caught sight of him on top of the visitor’s center to the south of us. He waved, his summoned gun bright gold in his hand. I waved back.
The summoned Glock had more power than a normal gun. That Hank summoned it and waited to use it, made me more resolved to curtail Blue’s destruction before he had a chance to send her to the Netherworld.
I hadn’t stopped looking at him, standing down there leaning against the waist high barrier surrounding the rooftop. He suddenly took aim and I glanced above me. Blue was above us, beating her wings back as she hovered in an upright position directly in front of us.
“Oh shit,” I said, aware of Bianca and Cristian also letting a string of curses fly.
Blue unleashed a roar, like she was chewing us out. The force of the sound bowled me over. I scrambled to grab hold of something before I was thrown from the scaffolding. My fingers clawed at the platform until they found a seam where two pieces of wood connected.
When the bellow ended, my ears rang. I hurried to my feet, searching for cover. Of course there was no cover—it wasn’t like scaffolding came with shelter and furniture.
Looking for cover was an instinct, but I squashed it, remembering that my job took me to the edge of survival, where it collided with insanity and the face of death, nearly all the time.
Bianca rose beside me and that’s when I saw that Cristian had been pushed over the edge and dangled from the platform.
“Guys!” he shouted. “A bit of help here!”
I hurried to the edge and grabbed his forearm. “Bee, get your spell going. Quick! Before she chars us alive! I got Cristian.”
Bianca took her fighting stance and began chanting. A hot breeze whipped around my face as the air became pregnant with magic. I felt it hum in my bones as my fingers became slippery with sweat on the skin of Cristian’s forearm. He was kind of ripped, and my fingers didn’t even touch my thumb around his arms as his muscles bulged.
God, why hadn’t Orrin taught me more spells yet?
“Pull yourself up, Cristian!” I growled. Tall and muscular, he probably weighed two hundred pounds. Me helping him was almost laughable, but I wasn’t going to just give up.
“I’m trying!”
I had one hand around the top bar above me. This wasn’t working. I let go of his slick arm and grabbed the back of his collared shirt and yanked. Maybe that would help.
In addition to pulling his shirt off and over his head, I helped get him halfway onto the platform. He kicked his leg up and used it to leverage himself onto the platform. Soon he was standing up and ripping his shirt the rest of the way off his arms. He tossed it aside, and began muttering the incantation while his wand flashed in his fingers.
Blue opened her mouth to either roar again or unleash a stream of flame
s at us. I hoped for the former.
She was so close, still hanging in the air above us. Her pink tongue was marbled with black. Teeth like sword tips flashed in the brilliant sun. As I watched, my heart pounded. Strands of saliva that connected her upper jaw with her bottom jaw suddenly vanished. The air around us pulsed with a strange concussion of heat and my gut turned in on itself, tying into knots.
Everything happened in slow motion. Cristian’s spell was nearly done. I sensed that Hank was watching, at the ready with his summoned gun. We were so close to saving her, to having this done, without bloodshed.
I cast the protection spell again at Blue. I hardly knew it was happening, the moment slipped through my hands so quickly, so instinctively.
Bianca’s spell flew, then Cristian’s. Blue froze suddenly, her luminescent blue eyes registering what seemed to me to be terror. She began to sink like a meteor crashing to the earth.
Oh crap.
12
That should have been something we took into consideration—that throwing her into stasis would mean she’d no longer be able to fly.
Thankfully the spell of protection would prevent her from being hurt as she crashed into the trees, shrubs, sidewalks, and grassy hills below us.
Unfortunately, that also meant a path of destruction followed her massive hunk of dragon-muscle across the ground until she came to rest in a debris and dirt-filled scar.
“That’s gonna be a mess to clean up,” Bianca said, pursing her lips.
“Yeah, sucks we don’t have a levitation spell. But at least she didn’t roast us alive,” I said, hurrying to the ladder and beginning to climb down. I paused, and looked between Bianca and Cristian. Their hair was mussed, streaks of dirt covered their clothes, and Cristian was shaking out his button-down, preparing to put it back on. “Nice work, guys. That was a freaking close one. My life flashed before my eyes for a moment—I’m too young to die.”
I laughed. I heard it clearly in the sound—relief and that high-pitched tone of holy hell that was close and how do I live a normal life again?
I swept my gaze down below me. Hank was no longer on the roof of the visitor center. There was no sign of him, which meant he was likely rushing to the side of the dragon.
“Cristian, can you get Dorothy on the phone? Have her send the chopper to move the beast. And sorry about your shirt,” I said, glancing at him. “You don’t need to put it back on though. I like that look.” I wolf-whistled and winked.
“I’m reporting that, Dred. Sexual harassment. Taking it off might be considered sexual harassment as well, you know. I might be looking at a big fat settlement.”
Bianca slapped him in the stomach with the back of her hand, producing a satisfying sound and a telling flinch from Cristian.
“You loved it. Sexual harassment, my ass.”
He pulled the button-down over his head and smirked at me, fishing his phone out of his slacks. He dressed up for work, totally refusing to wear anything with the Flameheart insignia on it. Black slacks, dress shoes, collared shirts. Looked good, but one hundred percent impractical when we were chasing across the city and battling fire-breathing dragons.
I laughed and climbed down.
When I got to the bottom, chaos didn’t even begin to describe the scene. As far as the onlookers were concerned—those who hadn’t run screaming for safety as stationary objects around them had inexplicably burst into flames—the earth where Blue had landed had, without cause, suddenly been gouged as though with a backhoe. I had to work to imagine it myself, because I could see the dragon better than I could see the nose on my face.
I jogged over to Blue, who was still as could be, almost like she’d fallen asleep mid-flight and crashed to the ground looking for a bed.
But her eyes were open and alert. I walked up to her snout and found her eye. She rested on her back, her wings spread wide, like they’d been when the spell hit her.
The pupil followed me as I approached. Her iris was an unbelievable iridescent blue.
“Hi,” I said to her, as I got closer. I didn’t like to tempt fate, but I had a feeling Blue and I were fated to be friends, even though I didn’t try to tame her. “You’ll be alright, little miss. You got a baby and nest you’re protecting. Is that right?”
Of course, she said nothing. Even if she could understand me, her body was frozen.
“Well, I don’t know what I expected you to say. But look, mama, don’t worry. We take care of expectant mothers better than anyone.”
“You going to take her out for lunch later?” Hank asked from behind me.
I turned. “That was my plan. You jealous? Don’t be. I’ll take you out soon for your performance review. First I’ll ream you, then I’ll dine you. It’s how I work—it’s a technique I call ‘Creating Stockholm syndrome in the workplace.’ I invented it.”
“Sounds about as healthy as I’d expect,” he said.
“That sarcasm’s going in your review.”
Sweat poured down his temples. He didn’t even try to fan himself, but the heat was a bitch and I knew he was thinking about it, from the tilt of his head.
“Cristian’s getting Dorothy to send the chopper. We’ll get this girl back home,” I said, nodding at Blue and then turning to look at her.
“Already called her.”
“Well, now she’ll have the joy of hearing from two of her favorite men.”
“She does seem to have a thing for me.” Hank said. “But look, Dred. You think that just sending this dragon back to its home is going to solve whatever caused this?”
“What caused it?” Bianca asked as she came striding up to stand with us.
“We don’t know. That’s my point.” Hank sighed loudly and began to take off his bomber jacket.
I held my hand out to Hank like I was showing off a brand new car and grinned. “Finally.” I turned to Bianca. “You and Cristian both owe me margaritas at Red Iguana.”
Her eyes flicked to Hank to see what I was referencing. A faint smile touched her lips. “Finally happened.”
Hank froze as his face melted off in the heat. “What?”
“We had a bet. I won,” I said.
“What was it?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, “just finish taking off your jacket.”
“Don’t take it off, Hank,” Bianca said.
“Where’d Cristian get off to, anyway?” I asked, hoping to distract both of them from the jacket so that Hank finished removing it.
“He’s talking to security and the firefighters, directing people on what ‘really’ happened till the Torchkeepers get here. The cover story, you know. He’s got that covered.”
A sound rose from the dragon and I shifted my attention back to her.
“What was that?” Bianca asked.
I studied Blue, wondering what it was myself. I put my hand on her snout and felt a deep anguish creep into my body.
“What the—” I drew my hand back.
“You OK?” Hank asked, stepping closer to me. “I was going to ask—touching a dragon: good idea or bad idea?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just felt something, when I touched her.”
“What’d you feel, Dred?” Bianca asked.
“I don’t know. Sadness. Something like that.”
I turned away from the dragon and caught Hank and Bianca staring at me, then exchanging glances with each other.
“I know,” I said, nipping their little exchange in the bud. “Something weird is going on. And I don’t just mean that I felt her emotions. For all I know, I was imagining that.”
“Agreed, Dred. That’s why my question is—is it a great idea to just haul her back to where she was living before? She came down here for a reason. Maybe she was looking for something,” Hank speculated, finally taking his jacket all the way off.
I breathed a sigh of relief—he took the jacket off! I exulted—and turned my gaze back to Blue where I looked deep into her eye, which still watched me carefully. There was
intelligence behind that pupil. I could feel it, like electricity just before lightning struck.
“Or even,” I began, “running from something? The guy in the Hawaiian shirt.”
“Guy in a Hawaiian shirt?” Bianca repeated. “Say no more. He should be shot.”
“My thoughts exactly,” I murmured. “But where the hell do we store a one point five ton dragon?”
Before I could expound, I heard the sound of a chopper approaching. The decision I needed to make was, did I send Blue back to Hidden Peak, or did I intervene in some way till I knew more?
This was the moment to decide, before James arrived with the chopper and began hauling Blue off. I could let him take her back up to Hidden Peak, where she might be in danger from whatever was going on with the weirdo in the Hawaiian shirt. I knew nothing about him, except that I’d seen him twice where trouble was brewing. He was an instigator… of what, I didn’t know.
Or. Or… I could take her somewhere else.
It occurred to me again that Blue was a pregnant dragon which might mean I had other options.
What would Fua tell me to do? I thought about it for a bit. Bianca had been studying the dragon, and now she looked at me, concern in her eyes. Hank strode up to stand beside me. He reached out and put his hand on Blue’s snout. I expected him to flinch, but he gazed into her eye, his face a picture of serenity.
“What’ll it be, Dred? Take her back to her home, or stash her somewhere we know she’ll be safe till her baby arrives?”
“I thought you didn’t care about the rules, Hank? The ridiculous rules we have around here and the ‘backwards’ way we have of doing things that’s nothing like how it’s done back in the paradise of New York City.”
Hank blinked, then laughed. “That’s more sarcasm than I know what to do with, Dred. Besides, I’m just worried about this little lady.” He patted her nose.
“Dragon-tamer, Hank,” I teased. “You might have a future in it.”
Flames to Free (Dred Dixon Chronicles Book 1) Page 7