Tears of a Dragon (20 page)

Shiloh clapped her hands together, her British accent more pronounced than usual. “That girl is brilliant!”

Karen smiled in spite of the fingers over her mouth. She crowed in a muffled voice, “That’s my sister!”

Marilyn released Karen and laid a hand on Carl’s shoulder. Every line in his face had turned south. “Missing means just that, Carl. Maybe Walter’s hiding somewhere. You know how resourceful he is.”

Carl sighed, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “At least we know where to go now, and Ashley’s sure to help us close in.”

Still leaning over the computer, the professor found the mapping program and brought up Western Maryland on the screen. “This may suit us quite well.” He zoomed in, magnifying the lake, and pointed at its central section. “Here is Ashley’s probable location.” He slid his finger down the screen. “Hartanna told me the dragons would land as soon as they find the lake, so I assume they will congregate at this southwestern cove.” Turning the keyboard toward Karen, he straightened his body. “It would be better if we can draw the Watchers out over the water and use the lake as our battle theatre.”

“Why is that?” Carl asked.

“Two reasons. The dragons are as adept in the water as they are in the air, and staying away from land will minimize the risk of danger to humans. The Watchers will not take care to keep their flaming arrows away from the innocent.”

“We already know that,” Carl said, jangling his keys. “And standing around while they’re holding my family is driving me nuts.”

“Then let’s make haste,” the professor replied. “But we still must be careful. We can’t afford to do anything to call attention to ourselves. Even the authorities may be in the pocket of the enemy.”

Samyaza flew low over the ground. Ashley dangled from his arm, the tips of her shoes scraping the gravelly path below and the demon’s torturous grip crushing her breath away. As her feet brushed the gravel, she stretched her toes, hoping for enough contact with the ground to boost her body just an inch higher and free her lungs. She pushed hard. It didn’t work. She pushed again. Nothing. With her vision turning dark and her head ready to burst, she gave one last lunge. Samyaza’s hands slipped lower.

Ah! Air!
It wasn’t much, but every shallow breath tasted like heaven.

In the distance, moonlight bathed a wooden deck that skirted the upper floor of a two-story structure. A pair of incandescent lamps illuminated a sign on the wall, but with lack of oxygen blurring her vision, Ashley couldn’t make out the words until she was close enough to touch the sign. “Deep Creek Lake Discovery Center.” At the lower level, another Watcher, with a grotesque smile on shiny silver lips, held open a glass door.

After landing at the threshold, Samyaza hustled Ashley through the entry and slung her to the floor. Sprawling across the tiles, she gasped for breath, her chest heaving. Tremors shot through her arms. She pushed herself to her knees to take the pressure off her lungs. As precious oxygen filtered through her body, her mind and vision cleared.

The door slammed. She brushed her hair away from her eyes only to see Samyaza marching toward her. He kicked her in the lower abdomen so hard she nearly lifted off the floor. “Get up!” he roared. “You have work to do!”

Ashley clutched her pelvis and fell back to the floor, pain ripping through her body. At that instant, she knew for sure Samyaza would kill her when this was all over. She stretched out one arm, trying to push up to a sitting position. The other demon laughed, flapping a set of dark red wings and muttering in a strange, guttural language. The tone sounded insulting.

Suddenly, Ashley’s whole body lifted into the air, the pain zipping from her pelvis up to her head. She blinked open her eyes. Samyaza held her over the floor by her hair.

“Stand!” he ordered.

With her scalp burning and her face feeling like it was about to rip off her skull, Ashley extended her legs, groping for the tiles with her shoes. When they touched, he lowered her to the floor.

“Amazing what a little persuasion will do.” He glided along the short hallway. “Now come with me.”

Ashley bent over double and shuffled forward. Nearly toppling at every step, she tried to focus on the winged monster in front of her, tears blurring her vision. Every thought stabbed at the horrible beast. If he so much as bruised a finger on Pebbles . . .

She didn’t know how to finish her threat. She felt powerless and alone. As she slowly took in her surroundings, a fresh dose of sanity seeped into her mind. The signal! She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, adding her coded chattering seconds later.

Samyaza turned left and banged open an inner door. Ashley followed him in, the pain finally subsiding enough to walk more upright. “Sleep here until dawn,” Samyaza growled, “but the dragon must be freed by midday tomorrow.” He left the room and slammed the door.

Ashley spun and grabbed the knob, but the lock had already been set. She leaned against the door and ran her fingers through her hair. She had to collect herself, get her bearings, and check out the room. First, she scanned the walls for possible escape routes. Two glass doors and two windows lined the wall to her left, but Venetian blinds made it impossible to see through them. She hobbled over to one of the doors and tugged the drawstring, rotating the horizontal slats to their open position. Peering through, she could see the rear of the visitor center and the path over which Samyaza had carried her.

Ashley grasped the door handle, but it wouldn’t turn. Of course her captors weren’t that stupid, but it was worth a try. She set a hand on her hip, eyeing the other sets of blinds. Why not open all of them? If anyone happened to be looking for her, it made sense for her to give a potential rescuer as much help as she could.

After snapping open each set, she turned her attention to the rest of the room. A collection of broken or mangled equipment, some of which she recognized, filled three tables in this makeshift laboratory.

Her eyes locked on the middle table. The lamp from the restoration dome lay at its center, jagged pieces of glass lining its inner rim. Immediately to the right of the lamp, a leaden box sat on a pedestal. She reached for it and slowly opened the hinged lid, her scorched hand still pulsing with heat. Streams of light swirled toward the inside, dimming the room but lighting up a glowing gem that sat on a tiny bed of purple velvet. She picked up the candlestone and laid it in her palm, wishing she could smash it and get this all over with.

She clenched her fist around it. Maybe she should. How many lives might she save if she just threw the stone on the floor and ground it into dust? Sure, they’d kill her, but she didn’t care. She would just—

The inner door banged open. Carrying Pebbles in his massive arms, Samyaza stepped inside. “As soon as the job is done,” he said, hoisting the little girl higher, “you’ll get your reward.”

Ashley shuffled toward them. “Pebbles!” she cried. “Are you all right?”

Samyaza raised his hand. “Stop!”

The force of the command seemed to stiffen Ashley’s joints. She halted, stretching her arms, but she couldn’t quite reach Pebbles.

Samyaza crooned in the little girl’s ear. “Ashley has some work to do, so I’ll take you back to Mrs. Foley now. As soon as Ashley’s done, you can be with her.” Pebbles cried, her tiny face puckering. As the demon turned, he glanced back at Ashley, flashing a set of claws at the ends of his fingers, more like eagle talons than human fingernails. The door closed behind him with a dull thud.

Ashley clenched her fist so tightly, the edges of the candlestone inside bit into her skin. She walked back to the worktable, slowly opening her palm. As light swept toward the gem, she imagined the creature inside, a dragon with the mind of the devil. Should she bring it out? Could it really do much harm to nine other dragons?

As she returned the gem to its velvet bed, the image of Pebbles’s tear-streaked face flashed across her mind. She snapped the lid shut. She had to let the dragons take care of themselves. For now, her job was to save an innocent little girl.

She surveyed the equipment on the three tables. The one on the left held a tangled pile of metallic debris, the pieces of equipment the demons had salvaged from the earthquake in Montana. The middle table held the restoration lamp with the broken lens and a rectangular piece of lead that looked like a gray brick with two thick wires coming out of one end.

On the table to the right, piles of circular pieces of glass covered the surface, some of them finished lenses, some coarse hunks of thick glass representing a variety of colors. Against the back wall, a huge machine of some sort stood on the floor, a confusing array of meters and dials surrounding a central monitor. It resembled a lens grinder she had used back at her own laboratory, but with all the extra controls, it seemed more advanced.

Glancing around the room, Ashley spotted three video cameras attached to the wall near the ceiling. Could the room also be bugged for sound? With Pebbles in the clutches of that maniac demon, she didn’t want to risk speaking to Larry directly. She wrapped her arms around herself, pretending to shiver. Time to get clicking again. Remembering a sign she saw outside the building, she began tapping out “Deep Creek Lake Discovery Center” with her teeth. After three repetitions, she quit, knowing it would be nearly impossible to concentrate on her coding and the monumental task of fixing the restoration engine.

She stepped up to the table on the left and picked through bent metal boxes and broken plastic casings. She found most of the pieces of her engine, at least all the parts she needed to make it work. Though warped and dented, everything fit together. The wires were also sound, and the hard drive and CPU in the main box seemed intact.

Ashley pieced together the first unit, sort of a huge metallic shoebox. A glass cylinder, about the diameter of a toilet paper tube, projected from one side. In her mind, she drew the diagram of the restoration process. This tube was the energy collection channel. The light energy would gather in one end of the tube, pass through data collectors, and emerge at the other end after the computer decoded it. Of course, without a dome to cover the emerging light, she would have to assemble a separate unit for the restoration ray, maybe a gun-like device to aim at the energy as soon as it came out. Otherwise, it might just disperse.

The main unit’s lid had obviously been ripped away from the hinges, so she just left the box open and moved it to the center table. It didn’t really matter how pretty it looked. It only needed to work one more time. Finding an outlet, she plugged in the power source. Tiny bulbs on the circuit board flashed to life, blinking at her as if waking to a new day.

Ashley straightened and rubbed at the sore spot from Samyaza’s kick. At least the computer still functioned. As long as she had the brains behind the decoding engine she could probably make this work.

Finding another metal casing, a small one that fit well in her hands, she laid it on the table and placed the leaden brick, the nuclear core of the restoration ray, inside. She found the cap that had originally been on top of the glass cylinder of the restoration dome and pulled out its laser gun and tubular extension. Both gun and extension fit nicely next to the nuclear core. She then fastened the wires from the core to the gun’s energy input. With a quick twist and click, she attached the broken lens to the end of the laser’s protruding tube.

After closing her eyes for a moment and breathing a quick prayer, she flipped a rocker switch on the laser. The engine hummed. A white energy beam shot out of the tube, brighter and brighter as the hum grew louder. The beam struck a wall, slowly burning a hole through the beige plasterboard.

Ashley flipped the switch off. Okay, it worked, but it wouldn’t restore a dragonfly, much less a dragon, unless she made the lens filters just right.

Moving to the last table, she picked up a blue lens. Too dark. Too thick. And who could guess what the refraction would be?

She carried the glass to the lens machine and flipped through the pages of a spiral-bound operator’s manual, comparing the illustrations to the dials on the control board. After reading the last page and closing the book, she rested a hand on her hip and gazed at the panel. This would do just fine. She set the glass inside the machine. It wouldn’t hurt to mess up a few lenses to see what the contraption could do.

As Ashley worked, moonlight reflected off the lake and shone through the glass doors. She glanced at the cove nearest the building. Walter was out there somewhere. Was he alive? And if he survived, was he hurt, lost?

She wagged her head, trying to shake the morbid thoughts away. She had to get this lens exactly right. When it was finally time to use it, she wouldn’t have the luxury of trial and error. This candlestone probably didn’t have an inner crack that would allow Devin to escape to the exit channel, so she would have to break the stone and catch his light energy.

She took out the blue lens and laid it near the corner of the table, mentally calling it her rejection pile. Setting her hands on her hips again, she gazed at the dozens of glass disks that lay in regimented order. Her shoulders slumped. There were so many, and she had such a short time to find just the right one.

Pain stabbed her abdomen as though Samyaza were still there, savagely kicking her again and again. With tears welling in her eyes and a hand massaging her stomach, she picked up another lens, this one clearer than the first and wearing a tinge of orange instead of blue. Carrying it shakily back to the machine, she set it in place and flipped open the manual again. Using a corner of her shirt, she dried her eyes. Keep working. No time to stop now.

Dizzy and disoriented, she stumbled back to the worktable again. She stretched into a wide yawn, then rocked back and forth from heel to toe. Forcing her eyes open, she picked up the broken lens and stared at it. There was so much to do! It might take all night to get it all working again. How could she possibly risk going to sleep?

With her lips trembling, she set the lens back down. She folded her arms on the table and rested her head on them, whispering, “I’m not going to cry . . . I’m not going to cry.” She sniffed again. A tear moistened her arm. Then, like a river ripping through a dam, Ashley sobbed, her body heaving in great convulsions. As her whole world turned dark, she gritted her teeth, chiding herself for ever dreaming her silly Morse code idea could work. She was stupid to think she could do this alone. Nobody would come to rescue her. Nobody.