Horror had flooded me. “Oh, God,” I’d whispered. “That’s what Dante was talking about. His plan...when he said we wouldn’t survive what was coming.” I’d remembered the genuine fear in his eyes when I refused to cooperate with the Elder Wyrm, his desperate insistence that I give in, and my rage had boiled. He’d known. He’d known what would happen that whole time. And, sickening as it was, he was probably in charge of it. “What are we going to do?” I’d asked.
“I told you,” Riley had said gravely. “We’re getting the hell out of the way. We’re calling the underground back, making sure everyone is accounted for, and then we’re going to hide as deep and hard as we can while we wait for this hurricane to blow over.”
“What about the Order?” Garret had asked.
“What about the Order?” Riley had snapped in return. “They know how to kill dragons, they’ll be fine. Let them deal with it themselves.”
“If Talon takes them by surprise, when they’re outnumbered and they don’t know what’s coming, they won’t stand a chance,” Garret had insisted. “They’ve lost their Patriarch. The leadership is probably fractured and the council is scrambling for control. The Order is in chaos—no one will be ready to deal with an army of dragon clones. We have to contact them, let them know what Talon is planning.”
“What?” Riley had glared at him in the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry, are we talking about the same Order? The one whose leader shot you in the back a few weeks ago? Who threatened they would see our kind extinct, even after everything we did to break them away from Talon? Who would kill us all as soon as they see us, because they still haven’t learned there is a difference between rogues and Talon? No.” He’d shaken his head. “I’m done with the Order. They wouldn’t listen to us, anyway. My responsibility is to my underground and my hatchlings, nothing else. I won’t put them in danger, and I’m not going to lose them to Talon. The dragonslayers will have to get by without us.” Garret had started to protest, and Riley’s voice had become a snarl. “We are not contacting the Order, St. George. End of story.”
The soldier had backed off, falling silent, but his set jaw and the dark look in his eyes had told me that that wasn’t going to be the end of it.
We’d driven on through the night. Exhausted, I’d dozed on Garret’s shoulder, and he’d leaned back, drawing me into his arms. The mood of the car had been somber; everyone had seemed a bit shell-shocked. We’d known we had to talk, discuss what we had learned and plan what we were going to do next. But my brain had been fried, overloaded with the barrage of what we’d been through. I’d felt numb, and that apathy had been comforting. As had been the feel of Garret’s arms around me, reminding me that I was safe. That I wasn’t strapped to a table with a bunch of blank-eyed scientists poking and prodding me like I was a lab rat. I hadn’t wanted to remember the terror and helplessness I’d felt when the Elder Wyrm had told me I was simply a vessel, a body grown in a lab for the purpose of extending her life. I hadn’t wanted to think of the scientists messing around in my brain, or what memories they had taken before Garret and Riley showed up. Right then, I hadn’t wanted to remember anything.
When the car finally had shuddered to a halt in the early hours of dawn, I’d looked up, surprised. In front of us had sat a large but rather run-down-looking farmhouse, with a sagging wraparound porch and a blue tiled roof. An old barn had squatted off to the side, all color leeched from the boards until they were a dull, uniform gray. Hills and fields had surrounded us and had done so for the past thirty minutes as the car had rattled and bounced its way down a narrow dirt road that had finally run out at the steps of this place.
“Where are we?” Mist had asked from the passenger seat.
“My last safe house,” Riley had muttered, turning off the headlights. Gazing up at the sagging building, he’d sighed. “No one knows about it—I’ve never used it before. In case the worst happened and my network was exposed, I wanted a safe place to hide everyone. This is my last-ditch, shit-has-hit-the-fan fallback point. There’s a couple hundred acres of nothing in every direction. No one is going to find us here.”
He’d opened the door and stepped out, and the rest of us had followed, our feet raising tiny dust clouds as we’d stepped onto the driveway. It had been quiet out here; there’d been no horns, no sounds of traffic, no people hurrying down sidewalks. Nothing but the cicadas and a lone bird could be heard for miles.
Footsteps had echoed from the house, and a woman had walked onto the porch, squinting over the railings as she’d peered down at us. She’d been lanky and rawboned, her brown-gray hair pulled tightly behind her, and she’d looked like she’d spent most of her time out in the sun. She’d stepped to the edge of the porch and crossed her bony arms, shaking her head at Riley.
“Well, well. Never thought I’d see you again, lizard. It’s been a while.”
Riley had given her a tired grin. “Hey, Jess. Yeah, it has. What’s it been, six, seven years since I was here last?”
“Try eleven.”
“Ah. Well, you haven’t aged a bit.”
“Insufferable lizard.” The woman had dropped her arms and beckoned us inside. “Come on in, everyone. There’s plenty of rooms, and I’ll see if I can find some bedding for y’all.” She’d paused as we’d started forward, her gaze seeking Riley again. “Can I assume, since you and your friends have shown up out of nowhere, that it has finally happened?”
“It?” I’d looked at Riley, confused. He’d grimaced.
“Yeah. Sorry, Jess.” He’d offered the woman a grim, apologetic smile. “Wes has already given the signal for the safe houses to clear out. The first of the hatchlings should be arriving soon.”
“How many dragons are we talking about?”
“If everyone gets here?” Riley had scratched the back of his head. “Seventeen.”
She’d sighed. “Then I’m going to need a lot more bedding.”
*
I didn’t remember much after that, just accepting an armful of clothes and sheets from the lanky woman and being directed upstairs to a small, cozy room with two twin beds. I’d paused long enough to strip out of the thin white hospital gown I’d still been wearing from the lab and pull on the oversize T-shirt before collapsing onto one of the mattresses. I’d been out almost before my head hit the pillow, but being unconscious hadn’t stopped the dreams. Dreams of Dante, and the Elder Wyrm, and Talon looming over us all, ready to strike. And myself, strapped to a table, waiting for the Elder Wyrm to move into my body.
Shivering now, I pulled the covers around myself and sat there for a moment, waiting for the fear to die down, for the faint, nagging sense of horror and despair to fade away. I was the Elder Wyrm’s vessel. A thing, created in a lab, just like the clones. And those memories the scientists had taken—had I lost anything important? I didn’t think I had—I still remembered Garret, Riley, Dante, Crescent Beach, the rogues, Talon and St. George—but if I had lost anything, I wouldn’t even know what it was.