The Dragon Lords

by C. J. Hill

  Tori took in the information clinically, noting that if they had to fight outside, their only cover would be the cars.

  Jesse flew Bess over the fence. Tori secured a chain on the gate, then followed them, gliding through the night air. Clouds were seeping across the sky, doing their best to erase the moonlight. Everything was silent except for the faint rustle of wind through the branches behind them and the occasional whoosh of a car on the main road.

  Jesse dropped Bess off at the front door and then headed over the top of the building to position himself at the back. Tori flew to the roof, unhooked Theo’s canister from her belt, and waited for the sign that both exits were covered. Once her watch flashed that the others were ready, she sprayed the contents of the canister into the vents.

  Some of the gas smell wafted back in her direction, and she had to crane her head away to find fresh air. The stuff would undoubtedly linger in her clothes. Hopefully she wouldn’t end up hiding from Overdrake’s men during this mission because they would probably be able to sniff her out.

  After she finished with the canister, she sailed off the roof and joined Bess at the front of the building. They stood at opposite sides of the door, weapons drawn, and waited. It was the first time they’d been together with Jesse out of earshot.

  Bess muted her mic and motioned for Tori to mute hers. She whispered, “So what’s really going on between you and Dirk?”

  Tori hadn’t been expecting the question. “What has Jesse told you?”

  Bess tilted her chin in disapproval. “That isn’t an answer. That’s the sort of thing you say when you want to avoid admitting the whole truth.”

  “Sorry, but this isn’t the best place for a heart-to-heart.”

  Bess put her hand on her hip. It was odd to see her that way—so serious. Usually she was joking around, even during the middle of missions. “I’m here because I believe in you, but so help me, if this is a trap…”

  Bess didn’t finish because the door burst open, and all four of the guards poured out. They wore bulletproof vests and had guns in their holsters but none of their weapons were drawn. They weren’t scanning the area looking for enemies. They were just hurrying to get out of the building. Their mistake.

  As soon as they passed by, Tori aimed at the men’s necks and shot two in quick succession. Bess shot the other two while moving her foot into the doorway to keep the door from shutting.

  The problem with using tranquilizer guns was that they took a minimum of sixty seconds to work. Longer if the victim had a large body mass or remained calm. That left a minute or two in which the guards could shoot back.

  Each of the guards yelled and turned. Almost in unison, they reached for their guns and fired. Flashes of light sparked from the barrels and shots pierced the silence. Tori had expected more caution from the guards. Discharging your firearm in a place you thought had a gas leak wasn’t exactly safe.

  The bullets ricocheted off Bess’s shield, sending the spray of bullets back at the men. If any of them had been hit by ricocheting bullets, they hadn’t been incapacitated. Two turned and ran toward the parking lot and the cover of vehicles. The other two dived to the ground. One army-crawled toward the side of the building. The other stayed where he was, gun pointed at Tori. “Surrender or I’ll shoot!” he yelled.

  Apparently, Overdrake hadn’t explained the concept of a shield to him.

  “You go ahead and try that,” Tori said. “It worked out so well for you last time.” She held her radar sensor to the doorway. No people detected inside. If anyone had been in the metal room before she’d sprayed her canister in the air vent, they hadn’t come within fifty feet of this wall. She didn’t go inside yet. She and Bess were supposed to wait until Jesse was with them.

  Bess unmuted her mic and spoke to him. “All four targets are tranquilized but still armed. It will be safe to join us in about thirty seconds.”

  “See you then,” he said.

  The guy who’d been crawling was halfway to the corner of the building. The man who’d threatened them stood up and darted that direction as well. Running only made the tranquilizer circulate faster in the bloodstream. He wouldn’t last long. The men who’d run to the parking lot were already staggering. In a few seconds, they’d be splayed out on the parking lot.

  One of the Slayers needed to stay outside to verify all the men had been neutralized. Tori held her hand out to Bess. “Give me the explosives. I’ll go to the vault room.”

  Bess hesitated then shook her head. “Let Jesse set them up.”

  Tori felt a prickle of indignation. “Are you saying that because you don’t trust me?”

  “I trust you.” Another hesitation. “I just trust Jesse more.”

  Ouch. “Okay,” Tori whispered, “so I spent some time with Dirk. That doesn’t mean my loyalties have switched.”

  Bess cocked her head. “I wasn’t talking about trusting your loyalties. I was talking about trusting you with explosives. Jesse has years of practice and you’ve had one summer.”

  “Oh,” Tori said, immediately feeling stupid. “Sorry.”

  One of the running men had begun stumbling around in drunken circles. The second stopped, swayed, and then toppled onto the ground.

  Bess flipped off her mic. “What did you do with Dirk that would make you assume I was questioning your loyalties?”

  “Nothing.” Tori couldn’t see Bess’s expression through her helmet but still felt her stare.

  “You made out with him, didn’t you?”

  Was she so transparent? “Um, it’s complicated.”

  Bess huffed. “You totally did.”

  Tori was saved from having to answer further by Jesse’s arrival. He flew over the top of the building and landed beside them. “T-bird, you’re with me.” To Bess, he said, “Make sure the men stay down, then follow us.” Her shield would protect her if any of the men made any last shooting attempts.

  When they were all motionless, she would hit them with a second dose and wait another sixty seconds to make sure none of them were faking unconsciousness. The Slayers didn’t want any armed men following them into the building.

  Although really, if the third man was faking it, he probably wouldn’t have chosen to fall face first into the pavement.

  Jesse checked his radar sensor. “It’s clear.”

  At least what they could see of it. The device couldn’t work through the metal of the innermost room.

  Tori followed Jesse, gun raised, and glided across the sparse lobby. The stink of the methanethiol still saturated the room.

  Except for a large desk that stood sentry, the place was bare of any decorations or furniture. Fluorescent lighting showed the way to a hallway in the back. Cameras perched accusingly on the ceiling. They shouldn’t be recording, but even if Theo missed one, helmets and jackets hid the group’s identity. Although Overdrake would still know the Slayers were responsible. Who else had the motive?

  What would Dirk’s reaction be when he found out what Tori had done to the eggs?

  She didn’t want to think about it, couldn’t. The thought of facing him after this made her stomach feel like it had filled with sand. She pulled her rifle from its sling and made quick work of the cameras anyway. The less evidence of their time here, the better.

  She and Jesse went down a hallway to their left, approaching every doorway and corner cautiously. They used the radar and kept their guns ready. If someone popped out and started shooting, hallways and doorways were the most dangerous places to be caught. The fatal funnel. Not much room to maneuver.

  Jesse went into the room at the end of the hallway. An office. He swept the room then gestured for Tori to come inside. Theo’s blueprints had shown the entryway to the eggs’ location was through an entryway at the back of the room, but no door was visible. The wall appeared to be solid wooden paneling.

  “Must be a hidden door,” Jesse said.

  While he held his radar to the paneling, Tori used hers to scan behind them, looking for
any incoming men. She saw one figure approaching them fast through the hallway.

  “Beta, what’s your location?” Tori asked into her mic.

  “I’m almost to you,” Bess answered.

  No one else was around. The thought should have reassured Tori, but her anxiety kept growing. What if she’d been wrong to bring her friends here? What if something horrible happened? Everything would be her fault.

  Jesse slid his radar sensor over the wall. “There’s metal behind the paneling.” He took out his Dremel saw and put two holes in the wood.

  Bess came into the room, gun at the ready. “Don’t start without me.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Jesse used the holes he’d just drilled as handholds and ripped sections of the paneling off. It cracked and splintered, turning to kindling beneath his fingers. Behind the broken paneling, a steel wall and door appeared.

  Jesse took a ribbon charge of C4 from his pack. With calm, steady movements he molded it around the doorframe, pushing it into every crevice. He taped what wouldn’t stick, then jammed a shock tube into the blasting cap. Tori and Bess went back into the hallway, making sure it stayed clear. Jesse followed them, trailing det cord. They went all the way back outside.

  Despite the assurance of Bess’s shield, the further away they were from the blast, the better. When the three were out of the building, Jesse pulled the detonator pin to disable the safety. “Tell me when your shield is in place.”

  “It’s up,” Bess said.

  Jesse nodded, the signal that the blast was coming, then yanked the ring from the top of the detonator. It made a small pop. A deceptively mild noise considering what it ushered in.

  Tori shut her eyes and braced herself. The sound of the explosion was like a drum coming down on her head—so loud it seemed to vibrate all the way through her body. It had come at her from two different directions—the building and inside her own mind, the part of her brain that connected to dragons.

  When she opened her eyes, she half expected to see that the roof had blown off the building and bits of shingles were falling like confetti. But the roof still held. No confetti in sight.

  Tori spoke into her mic to include Dr. B. “I heard the blast through dragon’s ears too. At least one of the eggs is in there.”

  “Good.” Jesse put on his dust mask, tucking it beneath his helmet. “I’ve just changed my mind about Aaron’s spying abilities.”

  Bess put on her mask as well. “And I take back all the things I said about this being an ill-thought-out suicide mission.”

  “When did you say that?” Tori asked, securing her mask.

  “I didn’t say it to you, just to everyone else.”

  Well, that was nice to know.

  Jesse opened the door and smoke billowed out, a gray cloud that spilled around them and obscured everything. The place smelled of dust and destruction.

  He turned on his flashlight and flew in. Tori picked up Bess, and shadowed him, making her way through the dark haze. All the electric lighting was gone. Debris plunked down like the patter of belated rain after a storm.

  As they went through the hallway, a loose door fell backward as if fainting.

  “Report?” Dr. B asked over the earpiece.

  “Everything is fine,” Jesse called from up ahead. “I’m almost to the room.” A moment later he added, “Detonation successful.”

  Most of the hallway wall was gone. Inside the room, the vault door dangled lopsided from its hinges. No men with rocket launchers. Nothing that looked like a trap. Now it was time to do what they’d come for. Two eggs apiece. This shouldn’t take long.

  Gun drawn, Tori followed Jesse and Bess into the vault room.

  Six sofa-sized eggs lay in cushioned bedding. All of them seemed to be made of dark gray rock, the exact color of the inside of the room. Dragons were the size of lions when they hatched, and there was no way to tell how developed the embryos inside these eggs were.

  Jesse took a leaping step, landed onto the closest egg, and unhooked his jackhammer. Bess jumped onto the next, her jackhammer already out.

  A spike of dread ran through Tori, a warning that this was wrong. “Wait,” she called to the others. “Stop!”

  Both paused and turned to her.

  She wasn’t sure how to explain her sudden fear. “What if only one egg is real and the others have explosives in them?” Overdrake knew that the Slayers had tried to destroy eggs with jackhammers in the past. What if he’d expected them to find this place?

  Jesse motioned to her to come over. “Then you’d better tell us which one is the real egg.”

  Tori crossed to the closest egg, not sure how to make herself connect with it. She put her hands on the shell. It felt like a boulder warmed by the sunshine. She shut her eyes and forced her mind to go inside the egg until she heard the heartbeat. “This one is real,” she said, then moved to the next.

  It was easier to connect the second egg. As soon as her hands touched it, she felt the heartbeat, a thumping rhythm that was faster than its neighbor. “This one’s real too.”

  And if two were, then they most likely were all real. Why bait a trap with more than one egg? But it was better to be certain. Tori went to the next egg to test it.

  Real. The next one as well. She probably didn’t need to check the last two but found herself doing it. She wanted to delay the sound of the jackhammers until she was sure. “They’re all dragons,” she said. Instead of feeling relieved by this fact, she felt sick.

  Chapter 24

  Overdrake was sitting in his den, on the phone with a Colombian general when Hancock, his deputy in Lock Haven called. Overdrake ignored Hancock until his phone chimed, the signal that the call was urgent, then he grudgingly put the general on hold.

  “What is it?” Overdrake asked, and didn’t keep the irritation from his voice.

  “Something is wrong at the Energize building. I got a message from the security head a couple of minutes ago. He said there was a gas leak in the building.”

  “That’s impossible,” Overdrake said, still irritated. “Everything there is electric.”

  “I know. I called them back for clarification. No one is answering their phones.”

  Overdrake’s irritation was instantly replaced by fury. Someone was either trying to steal or destroy the eggs. Who was behind it? The government? The Slayers? Could anyone else have learned of the dragons?

  Overdrake stood up, nearly tipping his chair to the ground in the process. Even if he flew fast, he was a good twenty minutes away. “I hope you’re calling from your car,” he said, “because you and every man you have should be on your way to the building right now.”

  “Yes, of course,” Hancock replied, almost certainly lying. “We’re on our way. I’ll call you when I have more news.”

  “Do that. And then you can show me the prisoners in person. I’m on my way too.”

  Chapter 25

  With helmets off and earmuffs on, Jesse and Bess started up their jackhammers, digging them into the hard shells. The jackhammers vibrated, danced almost, sending dark splinters fountaining to the floor.

  Standing atop one of the eggs, Tori turned on her jackhammer. These deaths meant lives saved later. Six fewer weapons of destruction. She put the chisel to the egg, using the jackhammer’s weight to hold it in place. She only had to kill two dragons. Jesse and Bess would take care of the others.

  She shouldn’t have been able to hear the sound of the dragon’s heartbeat over the noise of the jackhammers. And she couldn’t. Not really. But somehow, she could still feel it. An insistent thump, proof of life.

  The jackhammer spat pieces of shell around her feet and would soon hit the dragon. She didn’t want to see that, so she glanced over at Jesse. He’d made a large hole in his egg and was plunging the jackhammer inside, using the machine like a sword.

  A wave of nausea gripped Tori. Did he need to do that? Wasn’t it enough to break the shells and let the dragons die naturally?

  But the
n, sometimes premature babies lived, didn’t they? One of her mother’s friends had given birth ten weeks premature and Tori had gone with her mother to the hospital to visit. The little girl had been so tiny, so fragile in her bassinet, but she’d grown up healthy.

  Perhaps Tori shouldn’t have thought of babies while she was killing dragons. Her hands were shaking so much it was hard to hold onto the jackhammer. Dragons weren’t babies. They were dangerous beasts. Animals. Some had scales that shone like a starry night and some had Corvette-red scales.

  She’d stopped pressing her jackhammer downward. It was just vibrating inside the hole, widening it.

  This was wrong. She felt like she was strangling a puppy.

  Tori had thought her dread about this room was a fear of the place being a trap. But that wasn’t it. The feeling had always been a dread of this—of killing dragons. She glanced at Bess to see if she was having a hard time carrying out the assignment. Bess’s expression was intent concentration. Her body language showed no regret. She was leaning hard on the jackhammer, driving it all the way through the shell.

  Jesse moved to his second egg and bits of shell spit from the tip of his jackhammer. He would kill a second dragon soon.

  Regret pulsed through Tori, sadness. It’s only because I’m part dragon lord, she thought. My genetics are making it hard to think straight.

  She still couldn’t look down at the egg she was destroying. This would take forever. She would be trapped in this room of death and never get out.

  The egg’s surface beneath her feet gave way, making her stumble. She instinctively took to the air, hovering while she peered down to see what happened. The egg had cracked all the way through, revealing a pale, wet dragon who thrashed against the sides of the shell.

  Tori had expected the dragon to be half-formed—more of a blob than a creature. But it was whole—too thin, too small, and with scales that looked more like wrinkles than armor, but it was still whole. The dragon blinked at her and stretched out its wobbling neck.