“Skip?”
Jonathan pulled up next to her and hovered with a sigh. “Skip’s response.”
CHAPTER 11
Jennifer
Jennifer and Jonathan banked lower until they could see greater detail in the swarm that worked its way toward the bridge. It moved slowly but purposefully, seething and clicking.
“They look like drawings,” she observed.
“I agree. I don’t get it . . .” He dipped down farther, until he was under the bridge’s arch. Jennifer looked around nervously for armed patrols, but no one else was near. No sentries? It was as if Hank assumed he could do what he did and suffer no consequence.
Well? Have there been?
She dropped to her father’s altitude. The creatures were on the bridge now. They did not climb the beams of the arch, but rather stayed on the road. There was definitely purpose in their movement.
“They’re plainly sent to do something. Why send creatures with no thickness?” Jonathan mused. “What could they do? How could they attack or do anything useful if they don’t exist in the same space we exist in?”
“Maybe it’s temporary,” Jennifer guessed. “If they can’t attack, they can’t be attacked, either. Putting them in two-dimensional space would make for an effective delivery system.”
“Delivering what? And where?”
They simultaneously looked at city hall, as the creatures marched under them.
“Oh, crap,” she finally said. “We’re going to have to save him, aren’t we?”
“I’m afraid so, ace. And it’s the two of us—no time to get help. One of us disables the guards, the other evacuates the complex.”
“I’ll disable the guards. You want to save Hank Blacktooth, you do it.”
“Good luck.”
“Get bent, Dad. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
It occurred to Jennifer, as she bolted at the tower atop city hall, that those words had an excellent chance of being the last they ever said to each other.
All because we have to pull their asses out of the fire when they caused the problem in the first place.
Perhaps that’s not totally fair,
she argued with herself as she dipped below one sniper’s shot and flashed to the left to avoid the second.
There must be more than beaststalkers working here, just like there are innocents working at the hospital.
She flipped into human form as she entered the tower, knocked out the two snipers with the mahogany hilts of her crafted daggers, and tossed their guns out the window she had accessed.
People who come in to work, want to do a good job, and go home to kiss their kids. Families like the family you thought you had two years ago.
She barely could make out the shape of her father as he approached the tower. He would be counting on her to clear a path, so she got to work.
So for all the janitors and secretaries,
she continued to convince herself as she slipped down the tower stairs,
all the network admins and evidence handlers.
A guard positioned on a landing couldn’t process the sight of the teenaged girl coming at him until he was knocked out by a roundhouse kick.
We’ll do it for them. We’ll evacuate them first, as it should be. Of course, they need a reason to leave . . .
Already back in dragon form, she burst out the stairwell door into the main lobby, a room two stories high, where half a dozen police officers stood guard, three up top and three below. Before they could react, their eyes told them the entire building was beginning to shake and melt. Jennifer added touches to the mass illusion, ones she had picked up from practicing the ancient creeper-dragon skill for the last several months: orange monkeys with elephant ears came shinnying down the grooved columns that dominated the domed chamber, and the stench of sulfur peeled off the elaborately painted plaster walls.
And if Hank Blacktooth manages to get out in all the commotion,
she told herself as her invisible father patted her on the back for her fine work and darted off to the mayor’s office,
well then . . . no plan is perfect.
The officers became the best sales force for their plan, ringing the alarm and calling for a general evacuation of the complex. “Earthquake!” went the cry, and Jennifer supposed that was a more efficient if less accurate description than “Earthquake with elephant-eared monkeys!” Very few municipal systems had a specific siren for that.
She gratefully watched dozens of innocent people—exactly the people she had come to save—come swarming from side hallways and stairwells, into the main lobby and out the front and side doors. Off into the lawn they went, to their designated safe zones. Nobody trained for evacuations with more effectiveness than government workers.
In a matter of a few minutes, she saw them all pass before her. Maintaining the illusion required her standing still, and so she did not move as everyone hustled and bustled, even rubbing up against her. She would be visible to them all, she knew—a shining golden form of a dragon, if any of them took enough time to examine her. She didn’t want to scare them more than they already were.
Fortunately, very few people on their way out were interested in a harmless statuesque form when everything else was apparently coming down around them.
The one exception was Hank Blacktooth.
“What is the meaning of this?” he was shouting, as an unseen force propelled him out of his second- floor office, down the stairs and onto the lobby floor. “What’s happening? Is this an earthquake? This doesn’t seem—what’s that—YOU!”
The moment he spotted Jennifer, she knew the ruse was up. Fortunately, the last of the workers and beaststalker guards were already out of the building—her father, she realized, had timed this purposefully, since bringing Hank out into the lobby too soon would have ruined everything.
“Hank,” she heard him say, “for once in your miserable life, listen to me. We’re trying to save you. Give me sixty more seconds of cooperation. If you don’t believe me after what you see, you can chop my head off yourself.”
“I will do no such—ooof.” Hank Blacktooth doubled over, fell down the entryway stairs, and rolled out of the building.
“That’s it, Jennifer. We’ve got to get out of here.”
As if to emphasize the point, the black swarm from the bridge began to discolor the walls, seeping in through an infinite number of dimensional cracks. They invaded the first-floor surfaces, then the second floor, then the dome interior . . .
“Out, out, out!” he cried, dragging her with him.
They flew through the darkening doors, over Hank’s groaning form, and into the open air as the building behind them began to hum. The creatures covered the exterior as well as the interior. They found every inch of brick, every pane of glass, every bit of wood and plaster, and dug in their appendages. Then the hum turned into a sizzle, and the creatures inflated into thickness. Bodies fattening, their sizzle turned into a whine, then a roar . . .
. . . and then the entire building was consumed by a billion tiny explosions, each one carrying away a small piece of Hank Blacktooth’s impregnable fortress, until there was nothing left except a hole in the ground.
CHAPTER 12
Andi
Andi watched Skip, who watched Winoka’s city hall disintegrate from the safety of the river cliffs.
“I hope you’re happy,” she muttered, trying hard not to look at the devastation.
He shook his head and pointed. “They evacuated.”
“Whatever. The building’s gone. That’s what you wanted.” She yawned. “You have your revenge.”
And it’s all . . . so . . . tiresome.
“I wanted to kill Hank Blacktooth, and the rest of the scum that surrounded my aunt and tortured her.”
“Well then, you shouldn’t have told the bugs to attack city hall.” The moment the comment was out of her mouth, she wished she could stuff it back in.
Skip pretended he didn’t hear even though they both knew he did. “How did they know it was coming? There were no guards on the bridge. No one to warn them. I don’t understand—”
“Maybe the snipers in the tower—”
He narrowed his eyes and stood up suddenly. “Her. HER. HER!”
Andi knew whom he was pointing at before she even looked. There was only one Her.
“We have more work to do,” he hissed, dragging her by the arm back into the woods.
CHAPTER 13
Susan
Susan Elmsmith, would-be roving reporter and (hopefully) future television journalist, sighed and leaned back.
Gautierre’s head appeared directly over hers, blocking the autumn sunlight, and he opened his fingers, letting the delightful tidbits drop into her mouth.
“Mmmm. Pez.”
“It’s not the same as feeding you peeled grapes, I s’pose,” he admitted, while Susan crunched. “Grapes being really hard to come by.”
“I hate grapes. The seeds get stuck in my teeth.”
“Eat seedless ones.”
“That’s the sinister aspect of all grapes, you foolish boy.”
“This ought to be good.”
“Even the seedless ones have seeds lurking within. There you are, trying to enjoy romantic fresh fruit, then the next thing you know there’s seeds and all kinds of gunk jammed between your wisdom teeth.”
“Wisdom teeth.” Gautierre flopped down beside her on the blanket, handing her a pack of Grape Pez. “Huh.”
Susan busily shredded the wrapper and popped more candy in her mouth. They were over the border of the town on the south end, taking advantage of the unseasonably warm autumn day.
Eventually, Gautierre had come to see her side of their recent argument. After a face-saving interval of a few days, he had suggested a picnic, and given the limitations of Domeland, she thought he’d done well: Pez, and chocolate chips, and a box of Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls, and canned apple pie filling, a bag of mini marshmallows, and room-temperature ginger ale.
Now they were lounging on a pair of sleeping bags zipped together, keeping an eye on the tree line. Gautierre had chosen the spot: the town was at their back, the site of the strange invasion was as far away as anyone could possibly get, they could see an ambush from a mile away, and he had flown over the area first to make sure no one had any nasty surprises planned.
She loved watching him fly, and she had to smile when she remembered his reaction to
her
reaction the first time she’d seen him in dragon form:
Don’t let the lavender wings fool you. I’m all man! All weredragon, I mean . . .
“Wisdom teeth,” he now repeated, back to his other body, which was merely that of a ferociously handsome guy. Not many teenagers could pull off long, charcoal black hair woven into three braids, though Gautierre managed handily.
“Uh.” She paused in midcrunch. “What?”
“Trying to remember if we’ve got a dentist anywhere in that hospital.”
“Not that I know of. The one me and my dad use knows Hank Blacktooth pretty well. I think he’s living pretty close to city hall.”
He didn’t respond, but she could sense the question:
so what happens if someone needs serious work done? Yet another medical situation we haven’t experienced so far but probably will soon. Wisdom teeth, teeth chipped in accidents, root canals . . . it’s only a matter of time. So what will we do?
The answer came, strangely enough, in the voice of Dr. Georges-Scales:
the same thing we do when a pregnant woman has to give birth, or someone gets the flu, or appendicitis. We will make do.
“Dental stuff isn’t supposed to be any big deal,” he finally managed. “Growing up in Crescent Valley, it was easy. Dragon physiology is pretty rigorous.”
She could see him starting to worry about her again. “I have a perfect dental record,” she reminded him. “Teeth like rocks. I’ve been hoarding floss.”
“Hmmm.” He didn’t smile. “What about other routine stuff? Like having an appendix out.”
Ah, that’s where this is coming from.
He was thinking about a certain poor Mr. Simmons, late of the United States Post Office, former commander of the local American Legion post, and Susan’s mailman for the last seven years. Mr. Simmons had been the latest person to die under Big Blue. Jenn’s mother couldn’t save him in time; his appendix ruptured, and he died of peritonitis.
Death was always scary. Unlike in movies or television, how Mr. Simmons had died was depressingly mundane. It hadn’t been sexy or cool or scary—was death ever really that way?—and he hadn’t been burned or stabbed; he hadn’t died trying to save children or fight for his life. He’d . . . he’d just gotten sick. Didn’t feel right standing up. Sat down. Maybe lay down, after a while. Told a friend to take him to the hospital.
And
died
, before he ever got to sit up or stand up or do anything else, ever again.