I drew my gun and, immediately, Mist did the same, pulling a pistol from the small of her back and slipping around behind me. She made no sound as she did, moving like the trained operative she was. I jerked my head toward the staircase, and together we crept down the hall, guns held before us, careful not to make a sound.
At the top of the stairs, I gazed down into the living room. Everything was dark and shadowy, only a faint bit of moonlight coming in through the curtained windows. Carefully, I eased down the steps, keeping my pistol trained on the room, ready to shoot anything that popped out of the darkness and lunged at me. I could feel Mist behind me, doing the same, and weirdly enough, I was glad she was there to back me up.
At the back of the couch, a ripple of movement caught my attention, a shadow moving across the room. Quickly, I pointed the muzzle of my gun at it, feeling Mist do the same. “Hold it right there,” I growled, and the shadow instantly stopped moving. Its features were blurred by shadow, but I was positive this wasn’t a hatchling, trying to sneak back to their room. And it wasn’t Ember or the soldier, so... “You have exactly three seconds to tell me who you are,” I warned in a steely voice. “So if you don’t want a bunch of lead between the eyes, I would start talking now.”
“Barbaric and paranoid as usual, I see,” said a soft, instantly familiar voice, and a lamp clicked on, illuminating the room. I relaxed, exhaling in both surprise and relief as a slender Asian woman met my gaze across the floor. “I am relieved that some things never change.”
“Dammit, Jade.” I sighed, lowering the gun. The Eastern dragon regarded me calmly. “What the hell are you doing here? How did you even find us?”
She blinked. “I received a message earlier from the soldier,” was the cool reply. “He told me where you were and implied that you might need my help very soon. As I had already returned to the States, I came here as quickly as I could.”
I holstered the pistol, never so happy to see another dragon, even this dragon. Prejudice toward our Eastern cousins aside, Jade was a powerful Adult dragon who could more than take out her share of enemies if pressed. The trick was getting her to agree to fight; she would still rather meditate on a problem than blast it to cinders with flame.
“Did St. George tell you what happened?” I asked, and Jade nodded.
“He explained the...oh, what is the word? The gist of it. That you had been captured by Talon but managed to escape. That the organization has created an army of mindless clone dragons. That they are getting ready to...sic?...them on the rest of the world.” Jade’s voice grew even more grave. “It seemed a good idea to return and offer assistance before Talon wipes us all off the map.”
“What about your council? That seemed important, enough for you to drop everything and go back to China. What happened?”
Her smile became tight. “That is a story for another time, I’m afraid.” At my annoyed look, she raised a hand. “I will explain everything soon. It is a tale that needs telling. But now is not the time. There are other issues to discuss.”
“I take it you two know each other,” Mist said, and I couldn’t be certain, but there might’ve been the faintest thread of awe in her voice as she stared at the Eastern dragon.
“Yeah,” I answered, stepping aside a little. “Mist, this is Jade. She’s a friend of the soldier.”
Mist offered the Eastern dragon a respectful bow, shocking me, and Jade inclined her head in return. “Speaking of which, where is the soldier?” she asked, sweeping her gaze up the stairs behind me, as if hoping to find him on the steps. “Last I heard from him, he was impatient that we speak again.”
“He’s gone,” I said, and she looked back sharply, eyes narrowing. “But he should be back anytime now. He and Ember left this afternoon to attend a meeting with the Order.”
Jade blinked. “I’m sorry, what?” she said serenely. “Did you just say he and the girl left to attend a meeting with St. George?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Why?”
“Because the Order needs our help,” Ember said. We all jerked around to find her standing in the doorway, her eyes shining with a subtle green light as she gazed at us. “Because the Night of Fang and Fire is going to hit any night now, and I promised Garret I would return to St. George and help him fight Talon. With or without you.”
GARRET
I’m home.
Angrily, I shoved that thought from my mind as the jeep pulled through the gates of the Western chapterhouse, the guard saluting briskly as we went by. The Order was not home to me any longer, I reminded myself, feeling an ache of recognition as the familiar rows of buildings came into view over the sand. The chapel, the barracks, the mess hall. Places I knew by heart, where I had sat with my brothers and talked about killing dragons.
They aren’t your brothers, and this isn’t your place. You don’t belong here anymore.
No, I did not. But I would still fight to defend it. Regardless of the enmity between us, the fact that I was a traitor to my Order and my former brothers despised me, I would still stand with them against the slaughter I knew was coming. Because Talon could not win. Because if they truly shattered the Order of St. George, there would be no one left to stop the Elder Wyrm and Talon from sweeping over the rest of the world.
And because, despite everything, the Order still had good people within it. Tristan, Gabriel Martin, a few others I had trained with and fought beside. They were misguided—they had been indoctrinated like every other soldier—but they were not evil. They were just like I had been, before I’d met a fiery red dragon in Crescent Beach. If I could change, if I could see dragons for what they really were, surely there were others who would do the same. They just needed to be shown the truth.
The sun was a faint red smear on the horizon, the chapterhouse quiet and dark, as Martin pulled up to the assembly hall and killed the engine. He paused, hands on the steering wheel, then turned to fix me with a somber glare.
“I’ve called ahead and told my officers to gather the soldiers,” he stated. “They’re waiting in the assembly hall now. Are you ready for this, Sebastian?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know what they’re going to say to you, how they’re going to react. No one will shoot you on my watch, but it’s not going to be pretty. Everyone in St. George knows you’ve sided with the dragons, but you are from this chapterhouse, and these are the men you’ve personally betrayed. Think about what that means, Sebastian.”
“I know, sir. And I don’t expect any understanding or sympathy, but this has to be done.”
He nodded briskly and stepped out of the jeep. I followed him around the building to the assembly hall, thankful when we stepped through a side door instead of through the main entrance. A soldier I recognized, one of the squad leaders by the name of Williams, waited for Martin beside the door to the main hall.