Talker 25 (8 page)

Icy
Pegasi flap through my dreams, the cold cutting into me with insistent sharpness until I wake. When I open my eyes, there’s a silver dragon at the foot of my cot, its head crammed halfway into the crate. Crystalline blue eyes regard me with eagerness. Ice drips from the thing’s snout onto the blanket.

Squinting against its brightness, shivering against its chill, and praying it doesn’t think I’m breakfast, I scramble to the rear wall of the crate. I shoo it verbally and mentally, but either it doesn’t understand or doesn’t care. It just sniffs the air, perhaps trying to decide whether I’m edible.

“She wanted to see you,” James says. With the quickest glance, I see that he’s crouched in the crate corner.

“Call it off,” I plead.

“You can’t be scared of them, Melissa.”

Perhaps emboldened by his words, the Silver stretches its neck forward until it’s but a foot from me. Frost collects on my arms.

“Get away!”

The Silver retreats with a tremendous lurch, bursting through the crate. Fragments of wood fountain everywhere. I cover my head. James throws himself over me. As I grimace against the pain in my shoulder, I hear him give a couple of muffled grunts. I think he’s hurt, maybe stabbed by a big splinter, but then I realize the lunatic’s laughing.

I shove him away. Half of the crate’s obliterated. The Silver, looking quite proud of itself, has withdrawn to a spot between two slumbering reds on the other side of the cave. People hurry toward us, concern shifting to amusement when they see we’re all right. They disperse, several of them clapping; somebody requests an encore.

James flourishes a bow I might find endearing if my shoulder weren’t throbbing—never mind the fact that I’m sprinkled in glitter made of sawdust and ice. He turns to me with a sheepish smile. “That didn’t go as expected. You okay?”

Breathing warmth into my fingers, I stare at him like he’s a few neurons short. “What exactly did you expect? Who the hell wakes somebody up with a dragon?”

“She really wanted to see you.” He surveys the destruction
with pursed lips and gives a mock sigh of disappointment. “Children.”

“The thing needs to be on a leash.”

“You’ll hurt her feelings,” James says.

“Good. Maybe she’ll learn boundaries.”

“She doesn’t understand stuff like that yet. You should be thrilled, Melissa. She likes you.”

“You and I have far different definitions for thrilled. I’m thrilled she didn’t eat me, if that counts for anything.”

“You’ve got to stop looking at them like that,” James says. “They’re as foreign as foreign can be, and at first glance, terrifying. I understand.”

“If you understand, maybe you should have eased me into it.”

“I believe in the deep-end approach.”

“Throw me in, see if I can swim? Seriously?”

He waves a hand at what used to be the crate wall. “Think about it. After this, flying one won’t seem so bad.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Asshole.”

“On my good days.” He gives me a once-over that reminds me I’m in a flimsy hospital gown. “As much as I like the ensemble, I think we might want to get you into something a little warmer for your first flight.”

“My shoulder’s too stiff,” I say as he clears debris from a footlocker bolted to the floor.

“Good thing we’re flying tandem then.” He props open the lid to reveal a miniature thrift store of worn clothes, musty books, and random baubles. He retrieves a pair of jeans and tosses them to me.

“I still don’t see how this is necessary,” I say. “What’s flying have to do with talking to them?”

“Nothing and everything.” He chucks a basketball toward the Silver. The dragon bounds after it. The floor trembles. I’m monitoring the stalactites overhead when James says, “Cartha told me that you think I’m cute.”

Heat flushes my cheeks. I fold my arms over my chest and glare at him. “Who the heck is Cartha?”

“The dragon you called Old Man Blue.” He holds up a hand. “I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable. Strike that, I am, but not because I care whether you think that. Not that I don’t care.”

Frowning, he returns his attention to the footlocker. “We’re kind of like antennae, you and I. If the dragons know our frequency, they can talk to us. That’s baseline. But if we’re in a state of upheaval—scared, angry, that sort of thing—the signal’s amplified and your thoughts become visible. Dragons become a lot more interested in you.”

I think of Dragon Hill. “The watching sensation.”

He nods. “Ghost eyes.”

“So you give me a dragon wake-up call and want me to
go fly around the block a few times to get over my fear?”

“The thing is, most dragons won’t violate your thoughts if they respect you.” He digs out a sweatshirt, a jacket, and a pair of thick-rimmed goggles. “Show them you can handle yourself in the sky, it gives you some street cred. Or cloud cred, I guess.”

I change in another crate, which belongs to Gretchen and a dark-haired woman sedated on a cot. Hooked up to machines, she’s recovering from her own gunshot wound. While I slip into my new clothes, Gretchen offers advice. Hold on tight, recognize storm clouds, stay within the perimeter, listen to James, don’t disrespect your dragon, hold on tight (I get this one—quite unnecessarily—at least three more times) . . .

Dressed, I meet James outside the crate. The Silver’s with him, frozen basketball between her lips. She drops it at my feet, looks at me expectantly.

I squat down slowly, my gaze never leaving the Silver. She tracks me with growing impatience. I grab the ball and hurl it. Off she goes. Wings pulled tight to her body, she barrels around insurgents and dragons with no concern in the world but retrieving that ball. On the list of things I thought I’d never do, playing fetch with a dragon ranks right near the top.

“It’s really a child, isn’t it?” I say.

“A baby, a beautiful baby,” James says as the Silver returns with the ball.

“What about the others?”

“We saved some of them, but she’s the only one big enough to fly yet.”

He steers me toward a group of insurgents eating breakfast around a fire. As we walk, James plays tour guide. The crates that line the back of the cave are for the medics, those with serious injuries, and guests. He points out one in the middle. “That’s mine.”

“You’re a medic?”

“No. I’m kind of grounded. Keith has gotten particularly paternal with me.”

Over there, supply crates—food, water, drugs. We take a detour past a clothesline, a washbasin, and a couple of bathtubs to an alcove ringed with porta potties. We pass dragon-riding equipment and a couple medics tending the reds’ injuries.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I say, “but the reds don’t seem to like people.”

“Most dragons aren’t fond of humans.”

“So why exactly do you help them?”

James regards me with a fierce expression. “Everyone thinks they’re giant cockroaches who need to be exterminated.” He taps his temple. “But they hurt and suffer as
much as we do.”

“They’re the ones that showed up out of nowhere and attacked us,” I remind him.

“You condemn an entire species for the actions of a few.”

“A few?”

He waves his hands at the reds. “Once the war started, were they supposed to just sit back and hope the military knew who the good ones were?”

“I don’t know, James.” I gesture toward a nearby pallet of weapons: machine guns, rocket launchers, and several objects I don’t recognize. “I’m just tired of all this.”

“It’s not war for them. It’s survival.”

“Protect the children,” I whisper. Old Man Blue and her army were trying to stop the military from murdering the children. But how many people did they kill in the process? I shake my head. “You can’t do it this way, James.”

“We have no choice.”

I bite my lip before I say something I’ll regret, which happened all too often in my arguments with Mom. She believed there were no bad guys, only victims. I believed she was crazy, told her so more than once. Then she died, and I didn’t care about being right anymore.

We finally reach the campfire. After a whirlwind of introductions, James grabs MREs from a storage container and we sit on folding chairs beside a heavy guy with a friendly
face who’s busy examining a long, narrow bullet. I think his name’s Howard.

“Tracker?” James asks.

“New model.” He points at a microscopic hole in the casing. “They put the tracer in there. Pulled it out of Myra. We found two dozen more in the others.”

“Deactivated?” James asks.

“For sure,” Howard says. He grins. “We sent some out with the morning crew.”

“We run sentry shifts to secure our perimeter,” James says to me.

“Except this time they’re going to go a bit farther,” Howard says. “Activate these suckers and drop some false trails. Enough shop talk. We have more important matters to discuss.”

“No, Howard. We talked about this,” James says.

“You talked. I did not listen.” Howard raises his voice. “Grunts, may I please have your attention.” Everybody quiets. “As you know, we have a newbie in our ranks. And all newb Grunts must play our game.”

“Loki run! Loki run!” the crowd chants.

“She’s a guest, not a recruit,” James says.

Ignoring him, Howard holds up three fingers. “It’s simple, Melissa. You must tell us three things about yourself. Two must be the truth, and the third must be a lie.” He waves
an arm at the others gathered about the fire. “If we choose correctly, you make a lap around the cave in your skivvies.”

“She’s not doing this,” James says. “She’s injured.”

Jeers answer him. Three quarters of the people around the fire are wounded. Across the way, a guy with a prosthetic left leg hobbles to his feet, strips off his shirt, and makes a loop around the fire. He plops back onto his rock to vivacious applause.

Everyone turns to me. Take away the dragons, the crazy outfits, the slings and bandages, and we could be off at summer camp somewhere. Or at one of Trish’s parties.

It’s normal wrapped in ridiculous, or maybe ridiculous wrapped in normal. Maybe that’s the way of it, the way to stay sane in this insane world. Or maybe it’s just a way to get a girl to take off her clothes.

“You don’t have to do this,” James says as the silence intensifies.

I look around the cave, at the unfamiliar faces of these riders—many of them my age—at the dozen Reds who sure as hell seem like monsters, and at the Silver hunkered behind us, who seems nothing like a monster at all.

Whether I like it or not, this could be home for a while.

“What do I get if I win?” I ask. The crowd cheers.

“You get to make one of us do a Loki run,” Howard says.

“I don’t think so. If I win, everybody has to.”

After a discussion, they grudgingly agree.

Before I give my answers, Howard has me write them down on a piece of paper, indicating which is the lie. He tucks it in his pocket and opens the floor to me.

“Truth number one: when I was ten, I won the Northern Virginia tae kwon do championship for my age division.” I demonstrate a side kick.

“Sign her up!” somebody says.

“That’s a big region. She’d have to be cream of the cream to win. Lie!” someone else calls.

I grin. “Number two: I have a tattoo of Canis Major on my left hip.” I point at my gunshot wound. “Only thing that hurt worse was this.”

“Let’s have a look-see.”

“She doesn’t look like that kind of girl.”

“Truth number three: my father was the lead scientist on the research team that discovered dragons can’t see black.”

“Truth!” I hear from the other end of the fire. “It was all over the news.”

“Yes,” I say.
ARMY OFFICIALS DISCOVER DRAGONS
’
ACHILLES
’
HEEL
. “But are you sure he was the lead?”

“She’s got you there,” James says.

Unfortunately, an older guy remembers Dad’s interview on
60 Minutes
.

They debate, but end up split on the other two. Six think
I’m not good enough to win the NoVa tae kwon do tournament. Six think I look too wholesome for a tattoo.

“Everett, you’ve got to break the tie,” Howard says to James, who has stayed silent during the discussion.

“No clue,” he says. “I abstain.”

“Come on, man,” says one of the tae kwon do disbelievers. “You must know whether she’s tatted up. Don’t make us go wake Preston.”

“What’s he talking about?” I whisper.

“You were bleeding pretty badly back in Mason-Kline. We had to get your shirt off to apply a compress,” he whispers back. As I feign indifference, hoping the shadows obscure my embarrassment, he speaks up. “I didn’t get a good look. She did mention that she used to do tae kwon do.”

Howard switches his vote, then retrieves the paper from his pocket and unfolds it. He scowls at James. “Lying bastard.”

“Perhaps he’s not. Perhaps she’s lying,” somebody says. Calls for proof ring out.

I lift my jacket and shirt halfway up my ribs. Sirius, the top star in the constellation, and a couple of connecting lines peek out over my jeans. I grin. “Your turn.”

They strip, a few meekly, but most with farmboy merriment. Taunts and brags fly every which way.

“You too, Everett,” Howard says. “Take off the armor,
and show the damsel the bird-man’s chest.”

“I don’t think so,” James says.

“The knight’s gone chicken,” Howard says. The others turn their taunts on James until he relents.

“Thank you,” I say as he slips out of his jacket.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I glance up from the fire, but his face is blocked by the sweater pulled over his head. Fading bruises yellow his stomach and an old scar runs at an angle from his clavicle into the furrow between his pecs. He’s got a tattoo of his own. Curled around his left bicep, it resembles one of those tacky barbwire things, but when he turns from me to strip out of his pants, the firelight catches it better.

Letters, jagged and overlapping, circle around to form a phrase.
Drink the . . .
The last part’s out of sight.

Then he’s off, falling in line with the other half-naked insurgents on a loop around the cave. Others step from their crates to watch. The men stationed at the cave entrance with binoculars and rocket launchers urge them on. The Reds ignore them.