The Mark of the Dragonfly (18 page)

As darkness closed in, Piper thought she heard a distant whooshing sound, like the beating of massive wings.…

“Look out!” screamed one of the slavers, and Doloman’s hand at Piper’s throat was suddenly gone.

Piper dropped to the ground, coughing and sucking in air. At the same time a dark, winged shape landed in their midst, sending Doloman and the slavers scattering. Piper looked up; the creature’s massive body blotted out the moonlight. It towered over her, green eyes shining with a strange, hypnotic light. A clawed hand reached out for her. And that was when Piper squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the beast to tear into her.

She waited, but in the silence she heard the whirring
sound of bolas and Doloman’s harsh voice barking orders to the slavers. Piper opened her eyes in time to see the creature turning toward the men. It let out a loud, deep roar that had Piper covering her ears and curling into a ball.

That was all the slavers could take. They dropped their weapons and ran, sprinting across the field toward the city. But Doloman didn’t run. With his good arm, he grabbed one of the slavers’ discarded bolas. He whipped it around once and released it right into the creature’s face.

The bag exploded against the beast’s chest and released a thick cloud of dust. Flapping its wings wildly, the creature took flight. Piper rolled away, both from the dust and the enormous beating wings.

But instead of lifting up into the sky, the creature let out a choked roar and crashed back to the earth, its wings caught underneath its body. Piper watched the thing try to get up, but it couldn’t breathe. Instead of being stupefied by the dust, the beast was choking on it.

With the creature no longer a threat, Doloman turned on Piper. She tried to scramble to her feet, but she knew she couldn’t outrun him. She barely had her breath back, and she was so weak that her vision was starting to blur again.

Piper reached into her pocket for the one weapon she had left. She pulled out the sack she’d taken from the bolas and hurled it at Doloman.

The dust bag exploded, and Piper watched as Doloman inhaled the greenish-yellow cloud. His eyes immediately glazed over, and he sank down on the ground, twitching feebly as he fought the effects of the poison. In less than a minute, he lay still, staring blankly up at the sky.

Piper crawled to her feet and staggered over to his still form. She stood, watching him for a moment to make sure he wasn’t going to get up, but it looked as if the dust had him completely. His lips moved, but the sound that came out was barely above a whisper. Piper leaned down so she could hear what he was trying to say.

“Anna … you must … come home … to me.… You must …” He sounded desperate.

“She’s not coming home,” Piper said bitterly. “She’s dead.
You killed her
.” But Doloman’s glassy expression remained fixed on the sky.

Piper didn’t know how long the dust would keep him helpless. She had to get as far away as she could before it wore off. She turned from Doloman and saw the creature on the ground, still choking on the dust, its wings beating weakly. It was clearly suffering.

Good
, Piper thought, rage burning inside her. Let it suffer the way Anna had suffered. Piper’s hand went to her knife. She drew the blade from its sheath and stalked over to the creature. As if it sensed her presence, the beast rolled onto its back and stared up at her with those strange glowing eyes.

“She was smaller than all of us,” Piper said. She didn’t know whether the creature understood her or not, and she didn’t care. “Why did you have to take her? I was trying to keep her safe!” Her voice broke, and tears blinded her. “To take her home.”

Piper raised the knife in both hands, fighting to hold it steady. Let the beast suffer for a few seconds more, and then she would put it out of its misery. She met its eyes again. Their glow had diminished, and she was startled by what she saw—was that compassion in its expression?

Suddenly the creature’s skin rippled. Its body went rigid, wingtips pointing toward the sky. Then the appendages began to shrink. First the wings, and then its arms and legs began to draw in toward its body. The dark green skin faded to an olive tone, and the bones of the creature’s face shrank and reshaped right before Piper’s eyes. Dark hair sprouted from the creature’s head, falling across a face that was now unmistakably human.

Gee’s face.

Piper’s hands dropped to her sides. She bit her lip to keep from sobbing aloud in relief. Gee was a chamelin. Piper had heard stories from her father about such shape-shifters, but she’d never seen one before. She’d just assumed the creature that had attacked the carriage was a wild beast, a monster, but chamelins didn’t hunt humans. Her father had told her that too. In fact, they often lived among them in their human forms—like Gee must have been doing.

Now that Piper knew the creature’s identity, everything else began to fall into place. Somehow, Gee must have seen the slavers take them and followed from the air. Once they were outside the city, he’d attacked the carriage driver and given them a chance to escape. A monster hadn’t taken Anna. Gee had saved her; he’d probably flown her all the way to the 401. Then he’d come back for Piper.

And now he’d returned to his human form—and he was naked.

Piper’s face got very warm. Quickly, she averted her eyes and slipped off her dad’s coat. She knelt beside Gee and covered him. Gee tried to sit up, but another fit of racking coughs overtook him, and he fell back, spitting a mouthful of green bile onto the dirt.

The dust must affect chamelins differently, Piper guessed. It seemed like Gee had inhaled a ton of the stuff, but it hadn’t stupefied him. Piper helped him to a sitting position and wrapped an arm around his chest, supporting him as best she could while he coughed up more of the dust. Finally, he drew in a shuddering breath and wiped his mouth.

“Thanks,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “I’d hoped for”—he coughed again—“a cleaner rescue. I didn’t see the other slaver coming—put the dust right down my throat. What about you? You all right?”

The sound of voices pulled Piper’s attention away from Gee, and she looked up to see a trio of figures running
across the field in their direction. They carried lanterns with fire in them, not night eye flowers.

“There they are!” one of them shouted. “Piper!”

It was Anna. Piper still half supported Gee, but when she heard the girl’s voice, her strength gave out. She rested her head against Gee’s back and started to cry again.

“It’s all right,” Gee murmured. “She’s safe. I promise. You’re both safe.”

The next few minutes were a blur. Piper managed to get herself under control before Anna came running at her, throwing her arms around her and squeezing all the breath out of her again.

“I thought they were going to take you away,” Anna sobbed. Her tears made tracks down Piper’s neck. “I told Gee to hurry.”

“He had incredible timing,” Piper said, smiling. Gently, she loosened Anna’s grip. The two people who’d followed Anna across the field were helping Gee to his feet. Piper had never seen either of them before. One was a man wearing gray overalls eaten up with so many black singe marks she wondered how the fabric held together. His spiky hair stuck out all over his head, and his face, smooth and white as an egg where it wasn’t obscured by soot, looked friendly. He wore a wide belt affixed with
dozens of leather loops. Each of the loops held a small glass vial with a rubber stopper. Liquids of various colors floated inside the vials.

The woman standing next to him was dressed in similar gray overalls—minus the singe marks—and was much older. What drew Piper’s attention was the woman’s right arm. From the elbow down, it was made of not flesh but steel and brass. Piper had seen the prosthetics that healers used, but those had been made of wood or simple metal shapes like hooks. This woman’s limb had a wrist joint and five hinged metal fingers. Piper watched her use the limb to steady Gee on his feet. Then the woman turned to Piper.

“So, you’re the two troublemakers I’ve been hearing so much about,” the woman said. Her voice was gruff, but Piper detected no anger in it. “You can call me Jeyne. I’m the 401’s engineer. You already know Gee, and that’s my fireman, Trimble.”

“We call her Jeyne Steel,” Trimble said, grinning warmly. “She loves that.”

Jeyne ignored him. “I talked to the authorities in town after Gee dropped off that carriage driver. They’re coming to round up the rest of the slavers. They seemed surprised when I told them where you were. According to their information, the slave market was supposed to be on the other side of town. Guess this bunch got lost.”

“Bad luck for us,” Piper said, as if that were all there was to it. She didn’t mention or look at Doloman, hoping
that maybe Jeyne wouldn’t ask too many questions about their ordeal.

“Luck, huh? I guess we’ll see.” Jeyne nodded to the fireman. “Trimble, you take the girls on back to the train. Gee and I will be along shortly, and then we’re going to have a nice long chat about what happened out here tonight.” She gave Piper a piercing look. “Does that suit you?”

Clearly, a cryptic story about being on a secret mission wasn’t going to work this time—Jeyne had seen through her, and Piper knew it was time to confess. The engineer didn’t strike her as the kind of person she could fool with a lie. Besides, Gee had just pulled their butts out of the fire and hurt himself in the process. They owed him and his friends some trust.

Piper looked Jeyne in the eye and nodded slowly. “That’s fair,” she said.

“Good.” The older woman’s severe expression softened a bit. “Go on, then. You must be exhausted after all you’ve been through.”

Trimble led the way back to the train while Piper and Anna trailed behind. Anna refused to let go of Piper’s hand the whole way, but Piper didn’t complain. She was too tired and too relieved that they were safe. For her part, Anna didn’t seem nearly as affected by their ordeal. Even after she’d been kidnapped by slavers, banged around in a carriage, and carried off by a beast, Anna was back to her normal self, chattering away at full speed.

“… one minute my feet were running on the ground, and the next they were running through the air. That’s not logical at all, I thought. I’m not a bird, but then I looked up and realized I’d grown wings! Of course, that’s not logical either, I told myself. Spontaneous hybridization from human to bird isn’t possible, not by any science we know. Then
that
got me thinking about the chamelins—and at the same time how high we were in the air—and somehow I knew it was Gee carrying me. I don’t know how I knew. Maybe it’s because his eyes are green when he’s a boy and when he’s a beast. Anyway, then I wasn’t scared at all. Piper, were you scared of Gee in his other form?”

“Not for a second,” Piper said. She’d die before she admitted that her heart threatened to pound right out of her chest when she saw that creature land in the middle of the field.

“You’re a brave one,” Trimble said, shooting Piper a knowing grin. “Gee looks fierce in his beastie form, and he grumbles enough when he’s human to make you want to push him off the train at full steam, but he’s all right. He’s protective of the train, and thank the goddess for it, I say. We might not be running if it weren’t for Gee.”

His tone was jovial, but Piper heard the feeling underlying the fireman’s words. “I thought the chamelins all lived in the west with the archivists,” she said. “What’s Gee doing here so far from his own kind?”

“He has his reasons. You’d have to ask him about that, though. It’s his own story to tell,” Trimble said.

Trimble’s answer made Piper even more curious about Gee. She opened her mouth to ask another question, but suddenly she stumbled on the uneven ground and almost fell. Her feet felt like they were weighted down with rocks, and her throat ached where Doloman had grabbed her. Jeyne was right. Piper was so exhausted she didn’t know how much farther she could walk.

Thankfully, they were almost to the train. Piper never thought she’d be so relieved to see the big steam engine again. Inside, her bed was waiting for her, soft and warm and, most importantly, safe. A few minutes ago, Piper had thought the only bed she’d be sleeping in was the dirty wood floor of a slaver’s wagon. Instead, she almost felt like she was coming home, back when her father was there. Those days she’d always felt safe when she slept. Tears stung her eyes at the thought, and Piper wiped them away impatiently. She was crying entirely too often these days. She was sure it was Anna’s fault, somehow.

As much as Piper wanted to sleep, she knew she had a lot of explaining to do first. Trimble led them toward the front of the train to a car that contained a small office with a cluttered desk, an upper and lower berth near the windows, and a tiny washroom.

“Jeyne and I sleep here,” Trimble said, “so we can be near the engine in case there’s trouble.” He pointed
to the lower berth. “That’s my place. Take a seat, and Jeyne’ll be here in a minute.” He left the car and closed the door behind him.

Piper sank down on the bed, and Anna settled in next to her. In the glow of the gaslights, Piper noticed dark circles under Anna’s eyes. She was more tired than Piper had realized.