CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Desertscape
The following Saturday, I sat in my car on the shoulder of the old highway, watching the sun rise over the desert. I’d managed to arrive first but only by asking Summer to meet me half an hour later. I told myself it was so I could scope the place out first. In truth, part of that was simply an eagerness to get Octavius and his new siblings out of my condo before they destroyed it. Hadrian was emerald green. Titus, a fiery orange. Nero was amber and Otho a darker brown. Marcus Aurelius was supposed to be yellow but looked more gold in the light of the early morning sun. Despite their young age, they nearly matched Octavius in size and could fly pretty well. Watching them bond had been fascinating. The hatchlings not only accepted Octavius as a littermate, but also seemed to confer him the eldest-sibling authority. He helped keep them in line, admittedly with mixed results. In the past week they’d nearly destroyed my condo.
A familiar and distant rumbling grew louder behind me. Summer coasted past and parked on the shoulder in front of me. There were no doors on the Jeep. Only a seatbelt and her hand on the wheel kept her from falling right out of the vehicle. She was hardcore.
“Hey!” she called.
“Hi there.” I grinned. Her casual confidence gave me a boost. I climbed out of my car and jogged over. “I don’t know if you realize this, but your doors are missing.”
“Doors are for amateurs.” She killed the ignition and reached back to unbuckle Riker, who bounced with excitement.
I patted his head. “Hey, buddy.”
Octavius flew over, landed on the edge of the Jeep, and flicked his tongue out at the pig. All his siblings followed, swooping down on the Jeep’s rail with the eager clumsiness of toddlers. Riker snorted in alarm.
“Are all these yours?” Summer asked.
“Octavius wanted some siblings,” I said. “Meet Nero, Otho, Hadrian, Titus, and . . .” I looked around in a moment of panic. “Marcus Aurelius, get back here!”
The little golden dragon was gliding out toward the saguaros with an air of casual innocence. He dropped his head guiltily when he heard me and turned around. He at least zoomed down to join his fellows, knocking Nero from his perch and onto Riker’s head. The pig snuffled him, to the amber dragon’s obvious alarm. He scrabbled back to find refuge on the spare tire.
“Wow,” Summer said.
“It’s been a long week.”
She laughed. “I’ll bet. So, are you ready?”
“One hundred percent,” I lied.
“Do you think this is a bad idea, going back there?”
“Probably. But I’ve got to do something.” I saw the uncertainty on her face and added, “You don’t have to go, though. This is my fight.”
She snickered. “You wouldn’t last five minutes in the desert without me.”
“Oh, really?”
“Really. Where are we headed?”
I beamed the coordinates to her watch. She oriented herself, and then pointed. “That way. About a mile and a half.”
Riker jumped to the ground and trotted off in the direction she’d pointed. The dragons all took wing and followed, chattering excitedly.
“We’d better take it slow.” I waved to Octavius. “Keep everyone close, buddy.” You might not be the only dragons around.
Summer and I hiked mostly in silence, checking our watches every few minutes to stay on track. The terrain forced us to make occasional sidetracks—around a pile of boulders, or a thick clump of cacti—but I fought to keep heading southeast. There was a constant breeze out of the north, dry and warm and smelling faintly of creosote.
I kept looking ahead, trying to catch a glimpse of the facility. The satellite imagery for this part of the desert was sparse, even in the archives. The scrub-brush obscured our view. Half a mile out, we still couldn’t see much of anything. I was about to step around a tangle of scrub-bushes when Riker gave two sharp grunts.
“Stop!” Summer said.
I froze mid-step. “What?”
“That’s his warning grunt.” She bent to put a reassuring hand on the pig’s back. “What is it, boy?”
Riker gave a little whine and rolled his eyes at the bushes.
I shaded my eyes and peered into them. When I saw the round shadow that hung there, I went cold inside. “It’s a beehive!”
Summer’s face paled. “Shit.” She grabbed Riker’s collar and pulled him back.
I crept after them, all too aware of the humming undercurrent from hundreds of insects. Africanized hybrid bees had colonized the entire southwest, despite numerous government-led campaigns to eradicate them. They were more aggressive and more likely to swarm than regular honeybees. Most people knew them by another name.
Killer bees.
I’d never been this close to a nest before. If they thought we were a threat, hundreds of bees would swarm us in seconds. Blood pounded in my ears. My whole body tensed. The raw, animal survival part of my brain screamed at me to break and run for it. But that might draw them out. We had no viable shelter, no nearby water. We’d be completely exposed.
That dark thought reminded me. Where the hell are the dragons?
I’d lost track of them when Riker grunted. Now I scanned the sky, growing more frantic each second. At last, I spotted them gliding lazily around a boulder.
“Octavius, get over here!” I beckoned him with short, frantic gestures.
He ignored me, or maybe didn’t hear me. His siblings followed him in a lazy circle right toward the hive. Totally unaware.
“Octavius! Scorpio!” That was our code word for emergencies, one of the first things I taught him. And thank God, it worked. He banked over and swooped back toward me. The other dragons chased him, thinking it was a game. That was fine. Octavius landed on my shoulder, and I took Summer’s hand. We backed away one step at a time. It seemed to take forever. Finally, we got far enough that we couldn’t hear the buzzing.
“We’ll, uh, give that area a wide berth,” I said.
Summer hugged Riker tight against her. “Damn right we will.”
I tapped Octavius. “Keep everyone high up, okay? Warn us if you see anything.”
He launched himself from my shoulder and chirped orders to the other dragons. They followed him up higher, maybe thirty or forty yards, and fanned out ahead. It unnerved me a little to have them so visible, but I never wanted to come that close to killer bees again.
The terrain grew rougher, jumped with rocks and razor-sharp cacti. Summer and I had to keep our eyes on the ground. We covered maybe a quarter mile and then I heard a sharp hiss from above. Hadrian, the emerald dragon, hovered in place and ducked his head toward the ground.
“Shit,” I said. “Looks like another beehive.”
We backtracked again. Ten minutes of hiking, and then got another warning from above. Octavius made the spot this time.
“This can’t be a coincidence,” Summer said.
“No.” They were spaced too evenly, and in a straight line. Almost like fence posts. Whether they were placed to keep trespassers out, or the dragons in, I couldn’t be sure.
It was midmorning by then, and the desert was really heating up. We called the dragons in and took a water break. Summer didn’t say it, but I could tell what she was thinking. If things kept going this way, we’d have to quit. Nothing at the desert facility was worth trying to sneak past killer bees.
We moved east again, and the landscape changed. A wide, angular rock formation rose up out of the desert scrub. Two stories tall, but not terribly steep and free of scrub. Most importantly, no apparent beehives. I even sent Octavius up and over, to check it out. He came back humming to himself, undisturbed, which I took for a good sign.
I looked over at Summer. “You ever do any rock climbing?”