I took a careful breath. “You need to lie down,” I told her gently. She stumbled and fell against the side, and I winced as the van rattled. “Ember, look at me.” I reached out, catching one of her horns again, forcing her attention back to me. “You have to relax,” I said as she looked up, her eyes now bright with pain and fear. Her jaws parted as she panted, showing rows of deadly fangs, and I resisted the urge to yank my hand back. “We’re out in the open, and you can’t be seen right now. Please. Lie down.”
She stared at me a moment, and I forced myself to breathe calmly. This had to be one of the most surreal moments of my life: pleading with a near-delirious dragon to lie still so that we wouldn’t be discovered. With the exception of the flight from the base, I’d never been so close to a live dragon, not for this length of time. Never close enough to feel its breath, smelling of heat and smoke. Or the bony ridges of its horns under my palm. In the past, if a dragon had been near enough to touch, it was either dead or I was fighting for my life, trying to make it so.
A tremor went through the dragon in front of me and, to my relief, she sank down again, her head touching the floor with a muffled groan. Her wings fluttered once and her tail thumped the side of the van, before her eyes closed and she went limp, asleep once more. I let out a short breath, glancing out the side window, and froze.
A boy of maybe five stood a few feet from the van, clutching a fountain drink in both hands, his eyes huge as they stared at me. I gazed back, guessing that he’d seen everything, unsure of what to do, as his parents walked around the car, his mother reaching for his arm.
“Jason, come on. What are you looking at?”
The boy pointed. “The dragon.”
“A dragon?” Her gaze rose, a puzzled look crossing her face as she spotted me. Heart pounding, I offered a feeble smile and a helpless shrug, and the woman frowned.
“Okay, that’s nice, dear. Come on, Daddy’s waiting.” Taking the boy’s wrist, she quickly steered him toward the car, and I started breathing again. As they piled into the car, the little boy’s face peered through the window at me, eyes huge and staring, until the car pulled onto the highway and sped off toward the horizon.
Riley and Wes came out of the store, each carrying a couple plastic bags, and hurried toward the van. I pulled the canvas over Ember again, gently covering her head and body as much as I could, before slipping quietly into the front seat.
A moment later, Wes wrenched open the front door, tossed a couple grocery bags into my lap and moved aside to let Riley in. The other dragon climbed into the back through the front seats, not wanting to open the side door and risk exposing Ember to the world, I guessed. But he paused, his gaze flickering over the sleeping dragon and the obviously disturbed tarp, before shifting to me.
“Problems, St. George?” he asked, his voice suspicious. I shook my head.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
He continued to glare at me, but at that moment, Ember flapped a wing in her sleep, throwing back the canvas again. A line of red spattered the window, making my insides curl. Riley muttered a curse.
“She’s bleeding again,” he growled, kneeling swiftly at her side. “Wes, grab the first-aid kit—she can’t afford to lose any more blood. St. George, get us out of here.”
I waited until Wes slid into the back with Riley, then moved to the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition. “Where am I going?” I asked as the van roared to life.
“Vegas” was the snapped reply. “It’s not far, and I have a place we can hole up for a few days.” Ember twitched, kicking a back leg against the wall, and Wes let out a yelp. Riley cursed. “I’ll give you directions when we get close, but right now, just drive!”
Throwing the van into gear, I pulled onto the highway, passed a dusty sign that read Las Vegas 64 Miles and sped off into the sun.
Dante
“Mr. Hill. Do you have a moment?”
I looked up from my desk. Mist stood in the doorway, manila folder in hand, looking poised and calm and expectant at the same time. Her silver hair was pulled into a ponytail today, and it made her look younger, not quite so severe. It was hard to believe Mist was my age; she acted so composed and mature, I wondered if she’d had a normal upbringing. Or whatever was considered normal for us, anyway.
I sighed and put down my pen, where I’d been scribbling notes on a yellow sheet of paper. “Mist,” I said, smiling as I beckoned her into the office. “How many times have I asked you to call me Dante?”
“Counting today, exactly five times.” As always, there was a subtle note of challenge beneath the polite tone. “And I predict you will ask me at least twice more in the future. But that is irrelevant at this point.” She stepped back into the hall, looking suddenly anxious. “If you would come with me, Mr. Hill, I think you should see this.”
* * *
Back in the operations room, I gazed up at one of the enormous screens, watching a satellite map blip into view, showing a swath of dusty brown, with patches of green interspersed throughout. Mist stood beside me, also watching the screen, while the two human workers sat at their keyboards, typing furiously.
“This,” Mist explained, leaning back against a desk, “is the eastern Mojave Desert, close to the Arizona/Utah line. When you told us to look for the Order’s western chapterhouse, we began directing our satellite feeds to the areas close to and around Crescent Beach.”
“Hold on,” I said, holding up a hand. “We have satellites?”
Mist gave a short nod. “We own one of the largest satellite communication networks in the world,” she said coolly. “It isn’t difficult to put in a few extras.
“Regardless,” she continued, as if that was unimportant, “when we started searching, we found…this.”
The feed zoomed in, focused and showed a bird’s-eye view of a facility smack in the middle of nowhere. Even from this height, it didn’t look very impressive. I could see a fence with two gates, several long rectangular buildings and the road that cut through the vast, empty desert surrounding it.
“That,” Mist announced, as if she could feel my skepticism, “is St. George’s western chapterhouse.”
I frowned. “Are you sure? It doesn’t look like much. Certainly not a heavily armed military base.”
She gave me a look of veiled annoyance. “That’s what they want you to see, Mr. Hill,” she said. “The Order uses a combination of security and complete isolation to hide their chapterhouses. Some of them, like the main headquarters in London, are too heavily armed for us to do anything about. Some of them, like this one, rely on isolation to keep them secure. Talon knows of several large Order facilities around the world, but the smaller chapterhouses are good at concealing themselves and hiding in plain sight. The only reason we found this one was because we were actively searching for St. George movement in the region. At your request, Mr. Hill, and this took us all night.”