CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Clipping Wings
I drove home on a cloud, exhilarated at both the bonus and having kept Octavius a secret. For the moment, at least. Other hurdles loomed ahead—like keeping an unlicensed dragon in my condo within city limits—but I’d dodged the main bullet.
Of course, all this assumed that he’d remained in my condo in the nine-odd hours since I’d left this morning. I hurried upstairs to my door, fumbled it open, and shut it quickly behind me. My condo waited in injured silence.
“Octavius?” I crept toward the kitchen. The bowls of food lay empty on the wooden table, both of them licked clean. “Anybody home?”
A smattering of spilled cereal pieces on the floor provided the first clue that something was amiss. They formed a messy trail to the pantry, where the cereal box and three others had been ripped apart. It looked like a trashcan after a raccoon’s gotten into it.
Okay, so he was a little hungrier than I thought.
I’d reasoned that with all the reductions to physical traits, he might not have the same appetite as our prototypes typically did. Swing and a miss on that logic. He was an omnivore like most of our dragons, but he must have been starving to resort to processed grains. It wasn’t the mess that really bothered me, but the silence. If he’d given up on the cereal and gone looking for better food, where was he? Half-chewed cereal pieces formed a trail that led around the counter, out of the kitchen, and straight at the balcony.
Did I lock the balcony door? My heart plummeted even as I stalked across the living room and fumbled it open.
I stepped out into warm Phoenix sunset, scanning the horizon for a little flying form. At the same moment, it occurred to me that I’d had to lift the latch to open the door, which meant it couldn’t have been closed from the outside. So there really wasn’t a way he could have been out here. Which meant the cereal-breadcrumbs were a red herring.
Or a trap.
I spun around at the door, which I’d left half-open. Dark green wings spread wide as Octavius shot through the gap toward me.
“No!” I jumped and caught his legs. He came down thrashing, battering me with his wings. I cursed and clung to him long enough to charge back inside. I tossed him at the couch. He caught wing and tried a U-turn on me. I kicked the door shut in time for him to slam into it. He screeched in indignation, flung himself at it again, and collapsed in a heap on the floor.
“No, Octavius,” I said. “You’d die out there!”
I collapsed on the couch to catch my breath.
That had been a close one. If he’d gotten out and flown off, I doubt I’d have found him again. Nor did I think he’d be able to pick out my balcony from the hundreds of others like it in my condominium complex. I could hardly go posting “missing: Illegal Dragon” notices around the neighborhood. Not unless I wanted Fulton to show up at my door.
Once the panic subsided, I dug the last of the frozen pork out of my microfridge and sliced it into dragonet-bite-size pieces. Octavius played dead on the floor, but his tongue betrayed him, flicking in and out at the smell of the raw meat.
“Come on, I know you’re hungry.” I set the bowl on the floor and backed off three paces, so he wouldn’t feel threatened.
After another minute, he revived miraculously, and scampered into the kitchen to devour the still-frozen meat. I wanted him to stay so badly, but not because I forcibly kept him prisoner. Here he was a day out of the shell and had already manipulated me into nearly letting him escape. Something that clever wouldn’t be foiled for long, especially since I had to leave every day to go to work. I needed him to want to stay.
I cleaned up the cereal mess while he ate. We kept looking at one another without being obvious about it. The weird sudden tension between us made my shoulders ache. I retreated to the couch and started drawing up the plan to better secure my condo. Octavius wolfed down the rest of the meat and waddled in from the kitchen. He didn’t try to climb up on the couch this time, but circled and stretched out on the floor, just out of arm’s reach.
“Feeling a little gun-shy, huh?” I asked.
Not that I could blame him. Being manhandled and thrown bodily back into my condo undoubtedly represented the most traumatic thing he’d gone through in his short life. That’s assuming the destruction of half my pantry hadn’t traumatized him. I’m guessing it hadn’t.
He seemed so morose that I felt like I should offer something, anything, to give him a glimpse of freedom. “Tell you what. If you promise not to try and escape, we can watch the sunset out on the balcony.”
He perked up and trilled an affirmative with the carefree enthusiasm of youth. I slid the glass door open and went first. Then I had to use all the self-restraint I could muster as he crept out after me and looked up at the open sky. He hopped up onto the other plastic deck chair so suddenly that I almost grabbed him.
I forced myself to breathe as he settled down to watch the big orange heat-lamp drop below the horizon. The deep longing on his face was a powerful thing to behold. Freedom and blue skies pulled at him in some primal way.
I watched him out of the corner of my eye, weighing his too-short claws and too-small teeth against the harsh environment of the Arizona desert. He wouldn’t last a week out there. No matter how clever he might be.
“Listen, buddy.” I made my voice as soft as I could, like I was trying to talk Jane down from one of her episodes. “I know that you’d love to go out there and fly free. But you never find your way back to my condo.”
He lifted his head and chirped three syllables at me; they sounded eerily like yes, I would.
“It’s not safe out there. Especially for a little guy like you.”
He cocked his head while I said that. Either he didn’t understand the words, or he thought I was a total moron.
“This is Arizona. Everything out there is dangerous, and you barely have teeth or claws.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I was the one who’d reduced all his normal dragon features, basically to prove a point.
He crooned a soft, plaintive note and laid down again. Which only made me feel worse. He’d probably never be able to do much outside, certainly not without me watching over him.
I sighed. “Sorry, buddy. Looks like you’re stuck with me.”
His gaze wandered away from me and to the glass door, which glowed with the ruddy haze of approaching sunset.