“I don’t know,” I answered, suddenly uncertain myself. Her lips thinned, showing her understandable displeasure; she’d come all the way here, put herself at considerable risk to help me, and the help I’d promised her might not pan out. Especially since the blue dragon had seemed to despise the Eastern dragon on sight; I hadn’t been expecting that. “Why was Riley so hostile to you?” I asked, and her lips tightened even further. “I assume the two of you have never met.”
She let out a huff, rolling her eyes. “Misconceptions and ancient prejudices,” she said, making an exasperated gesture at the building. “The Western dragons accuse us of cowardice and placidity, saying we hide in our temples and mountain retreats to escape the war. They have never understood that it is their own greed, violence and quest for power that brings St. George down upon them.” Her voice hardened. “And now, Talon has brought the war to our very doorsteps, forcing us to respond or to be wiped out. They have set the Order on us, for no other reason than we refuse to be like them. How can we not think our Western cousins are anything but corrupt?”
“Jade...” I moved to get down, but at that moment my shoulder sent a sharp jolt of pain up my arm, making me grit my teeth. The Eastern dragon’s eyes widened.
“You’re injured.” She shook her head. “Why are you standing here talking to me? Go tell the monks to take care of that. I did not come all this way, across two oceans, to watch you die of blood loss.”
“Point taken.” I dropped to the ground, clenching my jaw as my shoulder protested the landing. “What are you going to do?”
She sniffed. “I will need to hide this—oh, what would you Westerners call it?—this giant-ass truck, just in case the Order drives up the road and sees it.” Her gaze flickered over the semi, then went to the winding, narrow path behind us. “I don’t think we were followed, but I will take no chances this time. I will not stand by and watch another temple burn to the ground.”
I nodded, watching as she headed around the front of the vehicle. “Jade,” I said quietly, making her turn back. “Thank you. For what you did today.”
She smiled grimly. “Let us hope it was worth it,” she said. “Oh, and tell that blue dragon, if he hurts any of my monks, he will see how placid an Eastern dragon can be when I am serenely tearing the heart from his chest.”
She turned away, and I started up the path to the building, wondering if the monks had a first-aid kit they could lend me. If they were busy patching up dragons, I could take care of my injuries myself. I’d done it many times before.
Abruptly remembering the phone in my hand, I glanced down at it, the number Riley had given me still displayed across the screen. Wes’s number. I hoped he was all right, because we would need him soon. If we were to pull off the huge, crazy, impossible mission lurking in my head, we would need all the help we could get.
I tapped the call button, then put the phone to my ear and waited.
DANTE
I stared at the bank of screens in front of me, each showing a different portion of the warehouse, and waited for the infiltration to begin.
“The vessels have been released,” Dr. Olsen said behind me. “They’re on their way now.”
I gave a short nod, not taking my eyes from the screens. It had been a few weeks since the incident with the vessels, and since then, Mace had stepped up their training, pushing them hard to see what they could do, making them work as a unit. Now, with Talon’s unofficial deadline nearly upon us, it was time for a field test. The mission today: reach the command team—myself, Dr. Olsen and Ms. Sutton—in the center of the warehouse without being detected. With all the cameras up top and in the aisles, it was impossible for me not to see them coming, but there were also several “guards” roaming the aisles with paintball guns, on the lookout for intruders. The vessels were under strict orders to deal with threats in a nonlethal manner, and Mace had assured me they understood they were not to permanently harm anyone.
Still, the overall mood was tense. We all knew what they were capable of. They understood that they weren’t to kill anyone only because they had been ordered not to. Not because of any sense of right and wrong. Without that command, without them being told specifically not to kill, no one would be safe.
Would that programming hold today, in a live simulation? Guess we’ll find out soon enough.
“There they are,” Dr. Olsen murmured behind me. “Right on schedule.”