Authors: Julie Kagawa
I shrugged. “Don’t worry about me. Feel sorry for the guy who tried to slap me.”
Garret, stepping out from behind Riley, gave me a faint smile. “I notice you managed to kick him in your favorite spot,” he observed.
“Twice.”
Riley winced, then looked at Garret. The other boy regarded him coolly, and Riley smirked. “See, St. George? We don’t need guns. You’re actually fairly competent at disabling people without them.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Garret said drily, “the next time we face a dozen soldiers with assault rifles.”
Riley shook his head. “Hopefully not tonight,” he muttered, and turned away, observing the room once more. “So now the question is, how do we find two scared runaways in this mess?”
Soft footsteps interrupted us. I glanced over to see a skinny, zombielike figure shambling toward us from the shadows.
Riley
The human edged into the light, shoulders hunched, watching us like a stray dog who wasn’t certain if you would toss it food or kick it. A woman, I saw as she got close. As humans went, she might have been pretty once, maybe even gorgeous. But her blond hair was lank and stringy now, her skin pale and wasted, glassy blue eyes sunk into her face. She looked like a bony marionette as she eased forward and stopped just out of reach, the hollow expression and thousand-yard stare making my dragon stir restlessly.
“Angels,” she whispered.
I frowned. My adrenaline was up; the fight had made me edgy and restless. I was not in the mood for this. “What?”
“The angels,” she murmured again, and I saw she had only a few teeth left in her head. “The ones you want. The one’s you’re looking for. The pretty ones.” One hand rose like a limp fish and pointed behind her. I squinted across the floor. A door sat against the far wall, barely visible in the shadows, looking like the entrance to a stairwell. “Near the sky,” she whispered, as if in a daze. “The angels. They have to be near the sky.”
“Upstairs?” Ember asked, but the human turned and shuffled back into the darkness, muttering to herself. I listened to her footsteps fade away, listened to her babble softly to herself, until the sounds were swallowed by the blackness, leaving us alone.
“Crazy humans,” I muttered, and resisted the urge to brush imaginary loony off my jacket. “Well, at least we know where we’re going.”
Sick-looking, emaciated people gave us blank stares as we crossed the open floor, giggling uncontrollably, or talking to themselves in hushed voices. No one tried to stop or harass us again, except for some crazy old guy who grinned and made a lewd comment to Ember. She whirled on him, bristling. The soldier quickly grabbed her, stopping her midlunge and halting whatever she was planning to do, which was probably kick the old codger in his withered jewels. I snickered, almost sorry he’d stopped her, but by that time, we had reached the other side of the room and I pushed open the door.
A wave of dry, stale heat billowed through the opening, and a rusted metal staircase ascended into utter darkness.
“How far do you think we should go?” Ember asked once we had all stepped through the door, crowding the bottom of the stairs. It was even hotter here than the casino. My hair stuck to my neck, and even though I didn’t mind the heat, I could feel sweat running down my back through my shirt.
“All the way,” I answered, shining the light up the tube. “As far as we can.”
So we climbed. Up several flights in blistering, oven-like temperatures, Ember and the soldier trailing behind me. We met no one else; it was just our footsteps echoing up the shaft. I assumed the heat and utter darkness kept most junkies out of the stairwell at night, though the tube still reeked of piss and garbage and other things.
And then, quite suddenly, we couldn’t go any farther. The stairwell ended at another simple metal door that creaked as I pushed it back, shining the light through the opening.
We’d reached the end of the hotel’s construction. Beyond the door, half walls and rotting wooden frames created a labyrinth of metal and iron. Carefully, we eased inside, brushing aside ragged plastic sheets that hung everywhere, fluttering in the hot wind. I glanced up, and saw that the roof was open to the sky, though it was impossible to see the stars through the haze of the city. I could breathe easier, though, just being this close without the stink of human filth and craziness clogging my nose. If I were two runaway hatchlings, this was where I would go.
“What are we looking for?” St. George asked as we maneuvered our way across the floor. The wood groaned under our feet, and I stepped lightly over beams and rusty metal screws. Hopefully nothing would give way beneath us; the floor looked pretty rotten.
“Two kids,” I told him. “Hatchlings. Probably no older than either of you.” I brushed aside a sheet and ducked under a low-hanging beam, poking the light into dark corners. “If you find either of them, let me handle it. They’re going to be terrified of strangers, of anyone who could be from Talon. I don’t want them running off before I—”
Something lunged from around the corner, swinging a metal pipe at my face.
I jerked back. The pipe missed crushing my skull by about an inch but hit my arm instead, knocking the flashlight from my grasp. It went spinning across the floor in dizzying circles, as the attacker raised the weapon and came at me again.
“Wait!” I dodged and backed swiftly away, ducking around a beam. The pipe smacked into the wood a microsecond later, raising a hollow thud and a billow of dust. “Wait just a second,” I said as my attacker followed me around the beam, holding the pipe like a baseball bat. It swung at me again, and I dodged out of the way. “Will you relax? I’m not here to hurt you. Just listen to me.”
The others started forward, and I gave them a sharp look. “Don’t move!” I snapped, and thankfully, they froze. “Stay right there, both of you,” I insisted, holding out an arm, the universal gesture of
let’s all calm the fuck down
.
“Everyone relax.”
The person with the pipe hesitated, shooting fearful looks between the three of us. A girl, I realized. Lithe and graceful, even as dirty as she was, with big blue eyes and silver-blond hair to the middle of her back. She wore a ratty T-shirt and baggy cargo jeans, and looked like she had slept in them for a while.
And she was definitely a hatchling, a teenager in human form. A little older than the ones I normally saw, wide-eyed and fresh out of training, but a hatchling nonetheless. The tightness in my chest eased a little, and I let out a furtive breath of relief. We’d found her before the Order did. That was all that mattered.
Panting, the girl backed up, still holding the pipe out in front of her. “Who are you?” she asked in a trembling voice. “What do you want?” Her voice, though it shook with fear, was low and cool, her words clear. Raising the pipe again, she gave us a fierce look. “I swear, I am not going back.”
“Easy.” I edged forward with one hand still outstretched, keeping my movements slow and unthreatening. “Take it easy,” I said again. “You’re safe. We’re not from Talon.”
She eyed me warily but visibly relaxed. The weapon hovered between us, dropping a few inches, but didn’t lower completely. “If you’re not from Talon, who are you?” the girl demanded. “How did you know about this place?”
“My name is Cobalt.” I offered my real name without hesitation. More people knew Cobalt, who he was and what he’d done. And even if this girl didn’t, Cobalt was a dragon name, subtly reminding her that we were alike. “And I’m sort of in the business of finding people like you. People who want out. I can help,” I went on, easing forward again. “I can take you somewhere safe, someplace Talon won’t be able to find you. But you have to trust me.”
This time, the weapon dropped swiftly, and the girl stared at me with wide, stunned eyes. “You’re Cobalt,” she whispered, and all the tension left her, replaced with relief. The pipe fell from her fingers with a clank and rolled across the floor, but she didn’t give it a second glance. “You’re really here,” she whispered, grabbing a beam as if to steady herself. “We heard you might be in the city, but we had no way to contact you.”
I stared at her in surprise. “You were looking for me?”
She nodded. Taking a deep breath, she seemed to regain her composure. “Sorry about before. I’m Ava. A friend and I escaped the organization maybe two weeks ago. There were rumors that you were in Las Vegas, and we heard that you could help those who got out of Talon, so we came here to find you. But we had to hide as soon as we arrived in the city. St. George…”
I nodded. “You mentioned a friend,” I said, hoping the worst had not happened, that St. George had not already found them. “Are they still alive?”
Ava nodded. “Yes, she’s here. One moment.” She walked a few steps to peer around a wall. “It’s okay,” she called into the shadows. “You can come out. They’re not from Talon.” She gave a short, breathless laugh, as if she couldn’t believe what she was saying. “It’s actually
Cobalt
, of all the lucky breaks.”
“Cobalt?”
Another hatchling emerged around the corner, edging shyly into view. She was shorter than Ava by several inches and looked even younger than Ember. Her skin was pale, almost porcelain colored, and a mass of jet-black curls tumbled down her back and shoulders. Enormous dark eyes peered out at us with a mix of curiosity and fear.
“This is Faith,” Ava introduced, holding out her hand to the other girl. Faith blinked as she came forward, pressing close to the other hatchling. Ava put a protective arm around her, though she still spoke to me. “The day before she completed assimilation, she discovered that Talon was going to send her to ‘the facility,’ because she was unsuitable to be a Chameleon, which is what they had originally planned for her.”
I clenched my jaw, trying not to let the rage show. “The facility” was Talon’s term for the place they sent dragonells to become breeder females, whose only job was to produce eggs for the rest of their life. Talon liked to start their breeder females young, because, like everything else in a dragon’s life, producing offspring took a long time. Nearly two years to lay the egg after the dragonell had been mated, and another year for the egg to hatch. When I’d still been part of Talon, there had been dark rumors circling the organization that the number of fertile eggs was in sharp decline. An alarming one in three eggs simply never hatched, and no one could figure out why. What happened to the “dud” eggs was also a mystery; they disappeared, sent off to places unknown. I didn’t know what the real story was, or where the eggs vanished to, but one of my bigger goals was to find the facility, free all the dragonells there and burn the place to the ground.
Later
,
I told myself, as rage heated my lungs, making the air taste like smoke.
Someday, you’ll be able to save them all, but not tonight. Don’t get distracted.
“How did you know about me?” I asked the hatchlings.
“Everyone in the organization knows about you,” Ava said. “The executives try to deny it, but we’ve all heard rumors of a rogue dragon who helps those wanting to leave Talon. You just have to find him—or hope that he finds you—
before the Vipers catch up.”
Ember blinked. “Wow, look at that,” she said, grinning at me. “You’re famous, or at least infamous. A real-life Robin Hood.”
I stifled the urge to rub my eyes. My defiant little Firebrand might think it was great news, sticking it to the organization, but I did not want that much attention from Talon. That they talked about me meant they were thinking about me, which was never a good thing. I’d always been careful to lie low, especially after getting a hatchling out. We’d survived this long because I knew how to disappear, to vanish into obscurity without a trace. Talon was far too big to challenge head-on. As much as I hated them and would love to see them brought down, I knew that my tiny, ragtag underground could never stand against the massive force that was Talon. Right now, I was an annoyance at best. I did not want to reach the point where the organization brought its full might against me and my network, because we likely would not survive.
Faith’s dark gaze abruptly shifted to my companions. “Who are they?” she whispered.
“I’m Ember.” Ember stepped forward before I could say anything. “I just got out of Talon, too. You can trust Riley, uh…Cobalt. He knows what he’s doing. He’ll keep you away from them.”
Faith blinked. “What about him?” she asked, glancing at the soldier standing a little behind us. “He’s not a dragon. Why is he here?”
Ember stiffened, and I quickly jumped in. “He’s all right,” I said smoothly, and ignored Ember’s raised eyebrow. “You can trust him. He’s here to help.” I nearly choked on the words, but getting the hatchlings to trust us was more important than the truth now. I couldn’t have them freaking out if they discovered what he really was. The soldier’s expression remained neutral in the face of such blatant lies, and Faith finally seemed to relax.
I turned to Ava. “Are you two ready to go?” I asked. The night was fading quickly, and I was uncomfortable standing out in the open like this. Once we got back to the safety of the hotel, I’d figure out what we were going to do. “You’ll have to stay with us for a bit, until we can leave the city. But after that, I’ll find a safe place for you both.”
She nodded tiredly. “Yes, please. Anywhere is better than here, waiting for Talon or St. George to catch up.”
“No arguments there.”
The phone buzzed in my jeans pocket, making me jump, then whisper a curse. There was only one person would call me now. For one reason.
No. Not now.
With dread blooming through my stomach, I put the phone to my ear and snapped, “Wes. Tell me you’re not going to say what I think you’re—”
His hissed words interrupted me. I listened to the frantic voice on the other end, lowered the phone and turned to Ember and the soldier.
“They’re here.”
Garret
“The Order?”
The rogue glared at me, anger and loathing crossing his face, as if I had summoned my former brothers here with my presence alone. “What do you think?” he spat. “Of course it’s the Order. They always seem to appear these days, like magic, wherever we are.” He shoved the phone in his jacket and raked both hands through his hair. “Dammit, of all the crappy timing. How the hell do they keep finding us?”
It was immature and vindictive, but I couldn’t help it. “
Now
do we need guns?”
“St. George?” The dark-haired girl, Faith, shrank back, her eyes huge and terrified. “The Order is here?” Her gaze darted to the entrance of the stairwell, as if armed soldiers could burst through at any time, then flickered to the edge of the building. “We have to fly,” she whispered, edging away from the other girl, toward the sudden sheer drop at the end of the floor. “They’ll kill us if we don’t—”
“No!” Riley whirled around. “No flying. We don’t know where St. George is, or what they have out there. They could be watching the building right now, waiting for us.”
“I’ll risk it.” The girl stopped, but looked on the verge of panic. “It’s the Order! We have to fly. It’s better than dying.”
“Faith, stop.” I didn’t dare step forward, lest I scare her into plunging off the roof right then. “Listen to me. That’s what they want. This is one of their tactics, send in the ground team to force the targets into the air. Like hunting quail.” She blinked at me, glassy-eyed with fear. I wondered if any of this was getting through to her. “There’s probably a team of snipers scanning the roof right now,” I continued, gesturing to the buildings around us. “If you fly, they’ll shoot you down—”
The whirl of helicopter blades interrupted me, a guttural whine in the silence. Faith flinched, her gaze going to the sky, but Ember darted forward, grabbed her around the waist and yanked her back…just as a spotlight beam sliced over the floor, passing inches from where they’d been standing. The rest of us ducked down and pressed against the walls, melting into shadow, as an unmarked black chopper circled the building once, then wheeled lazily away.
Ember glared after the helicopter, eyes flashing, as Faith whimpered and huddled close to her. “Well, there are the snipers,” she said. “What now, Riley?”
Shoved against a wall with Ava, Riley growled a curse and looked at me. “Any brilliant thoughts on getting out of this?”
“Back through the building,” I said. “It’s a big hotel. They’ll probably have more than one unit sweeping the floors, coming in from different angles. If we can get past the ground teams, we’ll have a chance of making it out unnoticed.”
“And if we can’t?”
“Then we go through them.”
Riley swore again. “All right,” he growled. “Go, then. We’ll be right behind you.”
The helicopter swung around again, and we held our breath as it went by, spotlight crawling over the walls and floor. I waited until it passed, watched it glide around a corner, then darted for the stairwell entrance. I heard the others scramble after me, and hit the door handle without slowing down, bursting through the frame into the building.
We quickly descended the stairs, myself in the lead, Ember close behind me. Ava and Faith followed, and Riley brought up the rear, watching our backs. Our footsteps echoed throughout the stairwell, unnaturally loud in the stillness. Each time we passed the entrances to other floors, my nerves jangled, wondering if this time the door would burst open and a squad of soldiers would step in to kill us.
A body suddenly rounded the corner and lunged up the stairs, making Faith shriek. Not a soldier, but a civilian in a white tank top, a baseball cap perched sideways on his head. He stumbled, nearly running into me, and I barely stopped myself from driving a fist into his throat.
“Shit, man!” The civilian glared at me wide-eyed, then shoved past, lurching up the steps. “Move, a-holes! Fucking SWAT team is everywhere.” He scrambled past Riley, who gave him a disgusted look, then continued up the stairs, his footsteps fading into the darkness.
Ember took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “They’re in the building,” she breathed as we started down the steps again. “How close do you think they are, Garret?”
Two floors beneath us, a door opened.
I jerked to a stop and whirled around as flashlight beams pierced the darkness below. “Go back!” I ordered, hearing booted feet ascending the steps behind me. “Everyone, get back! They’re here.”
Shots rang out, sparking off the walls and railing, and Faith screamed. We fled back up the steps, hearing the soldiers give chase, spatters of gunfire echoing up the stairwell.
“This way!” Ahead of us, Riley paused at the entrance to the twelfth floor and wrenched the door back. “We’re sitting ducks in here. Everyone get out. Go, go!” Ava and Faith quickly ducked through the open door, and the rest of us followed, emerging into a narrow, unfinished corridor with empty rooms lining the walls. A maze of hallways, dark and empty, stretched out to either side.
The soldiers were still coming. Without hesitation, we ran, rounding a corner just as the door behind us opened and our pursuers followed us into the labyrinth. I heard a soldier calling for backup, informing the rest of the squads where we were, and knew the entire strike force would be swarming the floor in a matter of minutes. The rest of them would be sent to guard doors, exits, stairwells; anywhere we might try to escape, they would be waiting for us. A cold lump settled in my stomach. Getting out of here was going to be difficult, if not impossible.
After a minute or two of running, when it appeared the soldiers weren’t right on our tail, Riley ducked into an open room, and the rest of us followed. “Okay,” he panted, leaning against a wall, “this whole thing has gone completely FUBAR. We need a new strategy, quick.” He looked at me. “Suggestions, St. George? What are they doing out there?”
“Right now, all squads will be converging on this floor,” I answered, peering into the hall to make sure the soldiers were not close by. My mind raced, trying to think of a plan, to counter whatever they were going to do. “They’re going to try to cover all the exits,” I went on, ducking back inside, “but if we find another stairwell before they have a chance to get here, we could possibly slip past them and get to another floor. It’ll buy us some time while they’re searching for us up here. The challenge will be finding an exit that isn’t guarded.”
“One problem at a time,” Riley muttered tiredly, and pushed himself off the wall. “First thing, let’s try to get off this floor before the rest of the bastards arrive. Any ideas?”
“There’s another stairwell at the west end of the building,” Ava said, surprising us. She stood beside Faith, looking pale but calm in the face of approaching death. Unlike the other hatchling, who was frozen in absolute terror, her eyes huge and staring. “I saw it when we first came here. We could try to reach it before St. George does.”
A hollow boom echoed from an adjacent hallway, followed by a gruff “Clear!” The soldiers behind us were kicking in doors, systematically checking each room before moving on. Riley winced.
“Stairwell it is,” he whispered, beckoning Ava to the front with him. “Let’s go.”
We raced for the end of the hall, Riley and Ava leading this time, me bringing up the rear. I didn’t know if the soldiers heard us and were giving chase, and I didn’t pause to look back. We fled down narrow concrete hallways, ducking beams and scrambling over rubble, praying we wouldn’t turn a corner and find the way blocked by soldiers and guns.
As we approached an intersection where two hallways crossed, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Four armored, masked men rounded the corner at the far end of the corridor we’d been moving down. Hissing a warning to Riley, I grabbed the two closest bodies—Ember and Faith—and yanked them into the cross section of hall, just as the scream of M-4s filled the corridor.
Faith wailed, hands flying up to cover her ears, as the roar of gunfire tore through the air and bullets ripped chunks of wood and plaster from the walls. Pulling her back from the edge, I looked up to see Ava and Riley on the other side of the corridor of death, streams of bullets zipping between us. The soldiers were advancing, firing short, continuous bursts as they marched forward in unison. From the sound of the guns, they would reach our position in a few seconds.
I met Riley’s gaze, and he gestured at us frantically. “Split up!” he shouted over the howl of carbines. “Take them and get out of here, St. George. We’ll meet back at the hotel. Go!”
I nodded and turned to the girls. “Come on,” I said, and Ember stepped toward Faith, still huddled against the wall.
“Faith.” She pried the girl’s arms away from her head. “Hey, we have to go.”
“No!” Faith looked up, gaze frantically searching for the other hatchling. “What about Ava? We can’t leave them.”
“We can’t help them now!” Ember growled and pulled the other girl off the wall. The chatter of gunfire was getting closer, as were the footsteps of the squad. “She’s with Riley, she’ll be fine. But we have to get out of here, right now.” Faith took a breath to argue, and Ember snarled at her with the fury of a fire-breathing dragon. “Move!”
Faith gave a desperate sob and stumbled past me down the hall. I started after her but Ember paused, shooting one final glance at Riley and Ava, who were already sprinting in the opposite direction.
“Be careful, Riley,” she whispered, before spinning and catching up to me and Faith. We rounded a corner just as the squad reached the intersection, sending a storm of bullets after us, and whatever feelings I had about Ember and the rogue were quickly replaced by thoughts of survival.