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CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Dark Wings


I refused to acknowledge the men with rifles who stood over me and Summer. We’d been ordered to sit on the ground. Fulton stood off to the side, talking on his phone. To Greaves, almost certainly. It was midday and blisteringly hot. I could feel the heat of the sand through my clothes. Summer clutched Riker against her chest. Octavius and his mates wheeled overhead, chasing one another, completely oblivious. They still thought this a game. There was no sign of the Condor I’d set loose. A few Rovers were milling around the metal tracks, probably waiting for the big food-delivering robot to return.

Fulton hung up his phone and marched over. “It’s not looking good for you, Parker.”

Of course, it wasn’t. If that was Greaves on the other end, my plans were well and truly borked. “How did you find us?”

“I saw you tagging the dragon wranglers’ vehicles in the parking garage,” Fulton said. “Thought I might find out why.”

Well, shit. I’d forgotten his surveillance obsession. “It’s Saturday. Do you work seven days a week or something?”

“When someone trips an alarm on a secure facility, yeah.” Fulton frowned at me. “This is private property, son.”

“We didn’t know,” I said flatly.

Fulton gestured up at the small cloud of dragons circling overhead. “You want to tell me where you got those?”

“Right after you tell me where you got yours,” I answered.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. If I had an unlicensed dragon, I sure wouldn’t be stupid enough to bring it onto someone’s private property in front of witnesses.”

I shook my head wordlessly. There was nothing for me to say.

“Call them down to you,” Fulton said.

“What are you going to do to them?”

“Well, it just so happens we have some vacancies at this desert facility.”

No. He didn’t just mean the dragonets, either. He meant Octavius. Keeping my smart little dragon in a steel-barred prison cell would be worse than torture.

“Don’t make me ask again,” Fulton said.

I met his eyes, pleading. “Come on, man.”

“It’s better than the alternative, Parker. Trust me.”

Behind him, and out of his view, the two gun-toting psychos both made a strange gesture, putting two fingers to their right ear. Who’s talking to them? I didn’t know what that was about, but a heavy sense of dread pooled in my gut.

“I understand.” I climbed to my feet. “Octavius! Gemini!”

Octavius wheeled and chirped at his fellows. I closed my eyes and prayed he’d remember what to do. I felt Summer’s hand slip into mine. I squeezed it and closed my eyes.

It took Fulton a second to realize what I’d done. “Oh, hell.”

Octavius and the other dragons had scattered, bolting for cover. Gemini meant go to ground. I only prayed they’d reach shelter and stay hidden.

His men cocked their rifles. The harsh, metallic sound echoed among the boulders.

Fulton waved at them. “Stand down. Those little dragons won’t get far.”

The guard on the left, the one with the square jaw who’d shot my Condor at the field trials, shook his head. “Orders, sir.”

Fulton rounded on him. “You get your orders from me, and I said stand down.”

“Sorry, sir. This comes from the top.”

They lifted their rifles and began firing. The noise was deafening. Summer screamed. I did, too. My mind started to go. Apparitions swept across the pale desert sand behind Fulton and his men. Sleek reptiles crested the ridge on clawed feet, their tongues flicking in and out. Dark shapes rose into the sky behind them, gliding over the ridge and down on silent wings.

I’m hallucinating. I knew it when I saw my own Condor with them. Not the one I’d freed, but the one from the field trials. Twice as large, twice as majestic as I remembered. If only that were possible. Visions, then. These were the dragons of my past. All my failures had come back to haunt me. They were beautiful, though. I didn’t regret having made them. The ground trembled as they charged at us. My Condor passed in front of the sun, casting us in shadow.

Fulton glanced back over his shoulder. His eyebrows shot up. He opened his mouth, closed it, and took two slow steps away from the ridge. Was he hallucinating, too? I still doubted what I saw, until the wind from the Condor’s wings rose to a tempest and on my face. Oh, shit! I dove on Summer and Riker, carrying them to the ground.

His men spun around. The sun went dark. Then light bloomed again, and a man screamed.

The square-jawed mercenary squirmed on the ground, clutching his face with bloody hands. The Condor swept around to make another pass. But the element of surprise was gone, and the remaining mercenary trained his rifle on it. The crack-crack-crack of the rifle made the Condor fold its wings and drop behind rocks for cover. More dragons were pouring over the ridge, but they scattered when they heard the gunfire. The Condor swept back into view, flying almost straight up into the sky. My heart sank. The mercenary spun and tracked it with his rifle.

He did not see the shadow ghosting toward him on the ground. It had a lean, muscular body and flowed over the rocks with a serpent’s grace. An attack dragon. The gunman got off two shots at the Condor. Then he must have sensed the danger. He tried to bring the gun down. The dragon slid in like an assassin’s knife. Its jaws closed on the man’s thigh. Then it wrenched its whole body in a violent gesture. Blood fountained across the sand. The man bellowed and went down beneath a blur of teeth and claws. His bellow became a scream. A high, terrible scream. I had to look away. A wave of nausea swept over me and made my knees week.

I felt Summer’s arm around my chest. She pulled me back and away. Something snapped with a wet crunch. The man no longer moved. The attack dragon coiled itself over him and looked around. Its catlike eyes fixed on us. All of us froze.

Fulton looked down at the ground beside him. One of the rifles had fallen there, almost at his feet. Fulton flexed his hands.

“Don’t!” I whispered.

“Stay where you are,” Fulton said. Whether he meant me or the dragon, I couldn’t be sure.

“That’s an attack dragon. If it sees you as a threat . . .”

He glanced at the gun again but straightened and backed toward us.

The dragon looked from Fulton to me. I met its gaze. Not challenging but acknowledging.

It flicked its tongue in and out, smelling me. Smelling us.

“We’re friends,” I whispered.

The dragon cocked its head, as if it heard my fervent prayer. Then it hissed and advanced on us.

Small energetic wings flapped in my ear. A familiar weight settled on my shoulder. Octavius curled his tail around Summer’s neck and crooned two short, high notes.

The attack dragon halted in its tracks. Then, almost in slow motion, it turned its eyes to Fulton, who stood apart. Who didn’t have his little dragon friend to vouch for him. I knew what would happen next, but there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Fulton dove for the gun. The attack dragon reached him before he could fire. It pivoted and lashed out with its back leg. A three-inch killing claw slashed Ben Fulton’s throat. He groaned and sagged to the ground.

The attack dragon gave Summer and me one last look, then bounded off.

I ran forward and crouched by Fulton. Blood stained the front of his shirt. I ripped off the bottom half of mine to try to staunch it, but there was just so much. He was still alive. He looked at me and tried to say something, but only a gurgle came out.

“Hold on, man. Just hold on.”

He gurgled again. Two syllables. My house.

“Your house?” What did he want? My brain wasn’t working. Neither were my efforts to stop him from bleeding. It was pointless.

Fulton looked at Octavius, who still clung to my shoulder. Then I understood.

“He’s at your house?” I asked.

Fulton gave a nod, and then coughed blood.

“I’ll look after him.”

He stiffened, then went completely still.


I don’t know how long I stayed there, kneeling in the sand beside Fulton. Summer had come up and put her arm around me. A shadow fell across us both, and we looked up. An old man with a shock of white hair and a beard to match stood before us.

It can’t be. Maybe I was having heatstroke. Or the psychotic break had finally come.

“Looks like you were right about this place,” he said.

I stared up at him. “Thought you were dead.”

“Son of a bitch,” Summer blurted out. “Are you Simon Redwood?”

“Who’s asking?”

I scrambled to my feet. “This is Summer Bryn. She’s a friend.”

Redwood looked from me to her. “Yeah, I’m him. Or I was, at least.”

“Your house burned to ashes,” Summer said.

It was a nonsensical thing to say, because obviously the man knew it. Then again, I’d been just as eloquent the first time I met him.

“Yeah, how in the hell are you still alive?” I asked.

“I was warned a minute before the arsonists set fire to my place.” He raised an eyebrow at me. By the dragons, he seemed to be saying.

“That was lucky,” I said.

“Got out just in time.”

I had the sudden and completely irrational urge to ask him if he’d escaped with the jetpack. Because it would be such a Simon Redwood thing to do. Before I could, he looked down at Fulton.

“What happened?”

“It was an attack dragon.”

“A custom?”

“Yeah.” One of mine.

“I’m sorry. We didn’t always see eye to eye, but I liked him.”

“Me, too,” I said.

A pack of small flying dragons—Laptop models and Couriers, as best I could tell—arrived and began circling overhead, chattering excitedly. Octavius and his mates had flown up to perch on the roof of the facility in a row. They watched the new arrivals with rapt admiration.

Redwood cocked his head. “My friends tell me that there’s something inside the facility that we need to see.”



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