Talon

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Even more wary now, I crossed my arms, but Dante stepped up behind me, brushing my elbow. “Come on,” he whispered as I glanced at him. “Don’t be stubborn. Talon ordered this—we have to do what they say.”

I sighed. He was right; if Talon had set this up, there was nothing I could do. “Fine,” I muttered, and looked back at the drivers. “Which car is mine?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter, ma’am.”

Before I could reply, Dante stepped around me, walked over to one of the cars and slid into the back. His driver briskly shut the door, walked around to his side and shut his own door behind him.

That left me. Swallowing a growl, I walked to the remaining car, ignoring my driver, and plopped into the backseat. As the garage doors lifted and we backed out into the sunlight, I turned to watch the other car, hoping for a final glimpse of my brother in the backseat. But the windows were tinted, and I couldn’t see him as the sedans pulled onto the road and sped away in opposite directions.

The drive was short and silent. I knew better than to ask where we were going. Resting an elbow on the door, I gazed out the window, watching the town flash by, until we pulled into the parking lot of a plain-looking office building. It was several stories high, with lots of dark glass windows that reflected the cloudless sky.

The driver pulled around the building and came to a stop in front of a loading dock in the back. The metal door was tightly sealed, but an entryway stood open beside it, dark and beckoning. I sighed.

Leaving the car and the driver, who still said nothing to me, I walked into the building and followed the long tile hallway until I came to an open door at the end. Beyond the frame was an office, with a metal stool sitting in front of an enormous wooden desk. A plush leather chair swiveled as I came in, and the blond woman in black Armani smiled at me across the floor.

“Hello, hatchling,” Scary Talon Lady greeted, lacing perfect, red-tinted nails under her chin. “You’re late.”

I swallowed hard and didn’t answer. One did not talk back to one’s elders, especially if one’s elders had a few hundred pounds advantage and the knowledge of several mortal life spans to back them up. The woman’s poisonous green eyes watched me a moment longer, and her lips curled faintly in amusement, before she gestured at the stool. “Sit.”

I did. The metal stool was hard and uncomfortable, probably on purpose. Scary Talon Lady leaned back in her chair and crossed her long legs, still continuing to watch me with the unblinking stare of a predator.

“Well, here we are,” she said at last. “And I bet you’re wondering why, aren’t you?” She raised an eyebrow at my continued silence. “Don’t be afraid to talk to me, hatchling. At least, not today. Talon’s senior vice president himself asked me to take over your training, but right now, this is just an introduction. Student to teacher.” The faint smile vanished then, and her voice went hard. “Make no mistake about it—after today, things will become much more difficult. You are going to struggle, and you are going to get hurt. It is not going to be easy for you. So, if you have any questions, hatchling, now is the time to ask them.”

My stomach twisted. “What am I being trained for?” I almost whispered.

“Survival,” Scary Talon Lady answered without hesitation, and elaborated. “To survive a world that, if it knew what you really were, would stop at nothing to see you destroyed.” She paused to let the gravity of that statement sink in, before continuing. “All our kind must learn to defend ourselves, and to be on the lookout for those who would do us harm. Who would drive us to extinction, if they could. They almost succeeded, once. We cannot let that happen again.” She paused again, appraising me over the desktop. “Tell me, hatchling,” she said. “What is the greatest threat to our survival? Why did we nearly go extinct the first time?”

“St. George,” I answered. That was an easy question. From the moment we hatched, we were warned about the terrible Order of St. George. We were taught their entire blood-filled history, from the first dragonslayers, to the fanatical Templar Knights, all the way up to the militaristic order they were now. We were told stories of St. George soldiers murdering hatchlings, shooting them in cold blood, even if they were children. We were warned to always be wary of strangers who asked too many questions, who seemed unnaturally interested in our past. St. George was ruthless and cunning and unmerciful, the enemy of all our kind. Every dragon knew that.

“No. That is incorrect.”

I blinked in shock. The woman across from me leaned forward, her eyes intense. “We nearly went extinct,” she said slowly, “because we couldn’t trust one another. We were more concerned about our possessions and defending our territories than our survival as a race. And so, the humans hunted us down, one by one, and nearly destroyed us. Only near the end, when our numbers had dwindled to almost nothing, did one dragon—the Elder Wyrm—gather us all together and force us to cooperate. We learned to become human, to hide in plain sight, to disappear into the throngs of humanity. But most important, we learned that we must work together for our survival. A single dragon, powerful as he or she may be, cannot stand against this human-infested world. If we are to thrive, if we are to have any hope for a future, we must all accept our place in the organization. Alone, we fall. As one, we rise.” Scary Talon Lady narrowed her eyes, her acidic gaze cutting right through me. “Everything we do, everything I teach you, will be for the good of us all. Can you remember that, hatchling?”

I nodded.

“Good.” My trainer sat back once more, her lips curling in a small, evil smile. “Because it’s not going to get any easier from here.”

* * *

She was right. From that day forth, starting at 6:00 a.m. every morning, I’d wake up to the sound of my alarm beeping in my ear. I’d change, stagger downstairs to grab a bagel or a doughnut, and then Dante and I would meet our drivers at the end of the secret tunnel and separate. Once I reached the office building, I’d walk into that same room, and Scary Talon Lady—she never told me her name, ever—would be waiting behind her large wooden desk.

“Report,” she would bark at me, every morning. And I’d have to go over what I’d done the previous day. Who I’d met. Where we’d gone. What we’d done. She’d ask me specific questions about my friends, demanding I explain why they’d said a particular thing, or reacted a particular way. I hated it, but that wasn’t the worst part of the morning.

No, the worst part was after the “debriefing.” She’d order me to the storage room of the building, which was huge and vast and mostly empty, with hard cement floors and iron beams crisscrossing the ceiling. And then the real fun would begin.

“Break down these boxes,” she would snap, pointing to a huge pile of crates, “and stack them in the opposite corner.”

“Drag these pallets to the other end of the room. And when you are done, bring them back. Be quick about it.”

“Carry these buckets of water around the building ten times. When you are finished, go ten times the other way.”

“Stack these tires into pillars of eight, one in every corner of the room, as fast as you can. No, you cannot roll them, you must carry them.”

Every day. For two hours straight. No questions. No talking back or complaining. Just stupid, monotonous, pointless tasks. All the while, Scary Talon Lady would watch my progress, offering no explanation, never saying anything except to snap at me to move faster, to work harder. Nothing I did was good enough, no matter how hard I worked or how quickly I completed the task. I was always too slow, too weak, too lacking in everything, despite her absolute, number-one rule: no Shifting into my true form while I did any of it.

This morning, I’d finally snapped.

“Why?” I snarled, my voice echoing into the vastness of the room, breaking two of her rules at once. No talking back, and no questions. I didn’t care anymore. The brick I’d dropped had landed on my foot, sparking a curse and a flare of temper. And Scary Talon Lady, always there, always watching, had barked some kind of pithy insult before telling me to keep moving, faster this time. I was sore, my arms were burning, sweat was running into my eyes and now my toe was throbbing. I’d had enough.

“This is pointless!” I exclaimed, shouting across the room. “You’re always telling me to go faster, to be stronger, but I’m not allowed to change?” I gestured wildly to the mountains of bricks on both sides of the room, imagining how easy this would be if I could fly. “I could get this done ten times as fast in my real form. Why can’t I do this as me?”

“Because that is not the point of the exercise,” was the cool, infuriating reply. “And you just earned yourself another hour of carting bricks back and forth, only now I want you to count them. I will be keeping track, as well, and if you lose count, you will start all over again from the top. Is that understood?”

I seethed, wishing I could Shift into my real form and blast through one of the skylights in the ceiling. Leave my sadistic trainer and her pointless exercises behind for good. Of course, I could never get away with something so crazy, especially in broad daylight. If even one human saw me, there would be chaos and panic and bedlam and doom. Even if no one believed what they’d seen, Talon would have to step in and try to mitigate the damage, which was generally expensive and something they didn’t care to do. The Order of St. George might show up, as they always seemed to appear when the unexplainable occurred, and then someone would have to be called in to deal with that mess. Bottom line, I’d be in a world of trouble.

Setting my jaw, I bent down and grabbed the brick, then hefted it to my shoulder as I’d been ordered. One more hour. One more hour of this torture, and then the day was mine.

“I don’t hear you counting,” Scary Talon Lady sang from across the room. I gritted my teeth, swallowing the flames that wanted to burst free, and snarled back.

“One!”

* * *

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. When the torture finally ended and I came out of the secret tunnel, I raced to my room, grabbed my board and instantly headed down to the water. I needed something to clear my head, and riding the waves was the perfect distraction.

Only, the ocean was being obnoxious today, too. It was a conspiracy.

The surfboard bobbed gently on the water as I continued to stare at the sky. A lone cloud, a tiny cotton ball far overhead, hung in the endless blue, far, far away. Closing one eye, I raised my hand and imagined cupping my claws around it as I soared by on the wind. I remembered the sun warming my back and wings, the rush that filled me when I dove and swooped and soared on the currents. Surfing was the closest I’d come to that thrill, and it was a pale comparison. I wanted to fly.

I bet that rogue dragon can go flying whenever he wants.

I folded my hands on my stomach, thinking of him. It had been nearly a month since that brief glance in the parking lot, and since then, I’d seen neither hide nor hair of the rogue dragon or his motorcycle. Not that I hadn’t looked for him. I’d kept my eyes open, scanning the beach crowds, the parking lots, even the dark corners of the Crescent Beach mall. Nothing. Dante never spoke about the incident, either, becoming evasive and busy when I asked about it. He wouldn’t tell me what he’d done, or if he’d even done anything, and it annoyed me that he was being so secretive. If it wasn’t for Lexi’s confirmation that G double B had, in fact, existed, I might have thought the whole incident some kind of lucid dream.

I frowned. Dante was being cagey about a lot of things, lately. Not only with the rogue dragon, but he didn’t like talking about his own training sessions, either. I’d asked him, several times, what he and his trainer did all morning, and his answers were pretty vague. Politics and Human Sciences, learning the different governments and names of world leaders and such. I suspected he was keeping his answers deliberately boring so I would lose interest and not want to discuss it. I didn’t know why; I’d told him everything Scary Talon Lady made me do, and he was appropriately sympathetic, but he rarely spoke of his own sessions.

Something moved past me in the water, and I sat up, my nerves prickling for a different reason. The sea was calm, nothing had changed, but I could have sworn I’d felt movement off to the right....

A dark, triangular fin broke the surface about a hundred yards away, and my heart gave a violent lurch. Quickly, I pulled my legs out of the water and kneeled on the surfboard. The fin vanished for a moment, then reappeared, closer than before. Definitely stalking, circling. I could see the long, sleek shadow below the water, the dark torpedo-shaped body coming right at me.

I smiled. Not that I’d be scared any other time, but this morning, I was keyed up and ready for a fight. As it neared, I planted my palms on the board, lowered my head and gave a low growl.

Abruptly, the shadow veered away, the tail slapping a fine spray of mist into the air in its haste to turn around. I watched the fin slice through the water, growing rapidly smaller before it vanished into the depths again, and grinned triumphantly.

Ha. Bet you’ve never run into an even nastier predator floating on a surfboard before, have you?

I sighed. Well, unexpected visitor aside, nothing much was happening on this side of the ocean today. And I’d promised to meet Lexi at the Smoothie Hut. She, more intelligently, had heeded her brother’s advice and decided to spend the afternoon sunbathing and checking out boys with Kristin. Never mind that Kristin had a boyfriend back home in New York. She liked to “window-shop” while on vacation, and Lexi was more than happy to join in. The testosterone-ridden part of our group, Dante included, had gone to check out a truck-pulling event or something, so it was just us girls tonight. And though I thought sunbathing and gossiping about human boys the epitome of boring, it was better than sitting out here doing nothing, with no company except gulls and curious sharks.

Lying on my stomach, I paddled back to shore, catching a pathetic little four-footer close to the beach and gliding the rest of the way in. There was a good crowd of people splashing in the too-calm water today, some of them families with toddlers. I thought back to my unexpected meeting in the deep ocean, and though I thought my visitor was probably long gone, I didn’t want to take the chance that it could still be hanging around. Not with fat little kids scampering through the shallows, happily oblivious.

“Shark!” I yelled as my feet hit the wet sand. “There’s a shark out there! Everyone get out of the water!”

Man, you want to see humans move fast? Scream that on a crowded beach and watch what happens. It’s amazing the fear people have for a scaly, sharp-toothed predator. I watched the water empty in seconds, parents scooping up their children and fleeing to shore, desperate to get out of the ocean, and found it a little ironic. They were so terrified of the big nasty monster out in the water, when there was a bigger, nastier, deadlier one right there on the beach.

* * *

After talking to a pair of lifeguards, and explaining that, yes, I did see a shark out in the water, and no, I wasn’t causing a panic just for fun, I found Lexi and Kristin farther up the shore, at the edge of the parking lot. They were standing next to a yellow Jeep and talking to a trio of shirtless guys in swim trunks, none of whom I’d seen before. As I approached, that strange prickle teased the back of my neck, and I gazed around, searching for dark hair and a motorcycle. Nothing. I must be getting paranoid.

“There you are!” Lexi grabbed my arm like she was afraid I would fly away. “We were just about to go look for you. People are saying there’s a shark in the water!”

“Oh,” I said. “Um. Yeah, there is. I mean, that’s why I came out. It’s probably nothing, though.” I glanced at the three strange guys. They were a little older than us, college age, maybe, and not from around here. Except for their tanned arms, their skin was pale and pasty, as if this was the first time they’d taken off their shirts. One of them caught me looking at him and winked. I bristled, but decided not to comment.

“Lexi,” I said, turning away from Winky-guy. “Your new friends. Are you going to introduce me or what?”

“Oh, yeah. This is Ember, the one I was telling you about.” Lexi waved at me like a game show attendant showing off the day’s prize. “Ember, this is Drew, Travis and Colin. They just got here from Colorado State, so Kristin and I were going to show them around the beach.”

“Ah.” I glanced at Kristin, sitting casually against the hood of the Jeep, one long tan leg resting on the bumper. Two of the three guys couldn’t stop staring; you could almost see the drool hanging down their chins. “Well, I don’t think you’ll want to go anywhere near the water today,” I said. “You know, with Jaws hanging around out there.”

She pouted, but I was relieved. I didn’t like the way these three were staring at us, or the way that Travis casually put an arm around Lexi’s shoulders. My dragon growled uneasily, recognizing another predator, as Colin’s gaze lingered on me.

“That’s okay,” Travis said as Lexi blushed. “There are other places we can go. I heard there was this supersecret spot you locals go to hang out, am I right? Pirate’s Cove, Dead Man’s Cove...something like that?”

“You mean Lone Rock Cove?” Lexi asked, smiling up at him. I wanted to kick her. Lone Rock was a little-known inlet several miles down the beach. You had to take a dirt path from the road to get there, so it was pretty isolated. It was also where “questionable things” happened, according to Liam. Dante and I had been cautioned not to go there alone, and never after dusk.

The boys’ grins widened. “Yeah, that’s the one,” Colin chimed in. “Would you ladies care to show us where it is? We have beer and Doritos. It could be a picnic.”

No, I thought. We wouldn’t. “Let’s go to the Smoothie Hut instead,” I offered. Where there will be lots of other people around. “I’m starving, and I’ve been craving curly fries since lunch.”

“Oh, Ember, where’s your spirit of adventure?” Kristin sighed, sliding lazily off the hood, making sure to rub her smooth thigh muscles down the metal. If the Jeep were a boy, it would’ve spontaneously combusted. Flipping her hair back, she gave the guys a sultry smile. “We can take you there,” she purred as Lexi bobbed her head in agreement, “if you agree to buy us something later tonight.”

The boys grinned at one another like they’d won the lottery. “Well, you drive a hard bargain, gorgeous,” Colin said. “But I think we can accept those terms.”

I stifled a groan. I didn’t want to go; I didn’t like these three for some reason. I’d seen how males acted around girls; they often got very stupid and possessive. I still wasn’t an expert on the nuances of human behavior, especially when it came to their mating rituals. Maybe this was normal?

I really should’ve listened to my dragon.

Garret

I wasn’t terribly fond of these clothes.

When fighting creatures with fangs that could sever ligaments, claws that could rip you open like a paper sack and breath that could melt the skin from your bones, armor was essential. A good flak jacket could take a lot of heat and damage and was better protection than a Kevlar vest when dealing with a dragon’s natural weapons. Over the years, however, our enemies started to realize that firearms were just as efficient, and now were just as likely to shoot us as blast us with flame. Still, when forced into their natural forms, dragons always fell back to their deadliest weapons. Our black-and-gray combat uniforms were made of flame-retardant fabric and lined with steel plates; they couldn’t protect us from everything, especially a direct blast of dragonfire, but it was better than going into battle with nothing.

The point was, I was comfortable in armor. The more padding and steel between me and my enemy, the better. I’d been through missions where my armor had been ripped to shreds, burned and cut to pieces, and if I hadn’t had it on, I would have been dead. I didn’t like feeling vulnerable or exposed. And there were few things flimsier than shorts and the loose black tank top I was wearing at the moment. I might as well have walked around this beach stark naked.

“You’re sulking again,” Tristan remarked from the driver’s seat, not looking up from the window. Like me, he wore shorts and a tank top, the picture of a fist with the thumb and pinkie held out gracing the front. Unlike me, it didn’t seem to bother him.

“I’m not sulking.”

“Right. Brooding, then.” He fell silent as a young couple walked by the Jeep, close enough to touch his arm dangling out the window, but he didn’t even glance their way. His gaze hadn’t left the group at the edge of the parking lot. “We’ve been here over three weeks, partner,” he informed me, as if I’d lost track. “You’re going to have to get used to it sometime. This is where that whole adapting-and-blending-in thing applies. Can’t walk around the beach in full combat armor, even if there is a dragon nearby.”

I knew that. I also knew the Order required us to finish this mission, regardless of my personal feelings. Guns and dragons and fighting and death: that was what I was good at. Long stakeouts in a cheerful town surrounded by civilians, less so. “Do you still have the targets in sight?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

He snorted, again without looking back. “Garret, I can hold the crosshairs on a target for two hours without moving it or dropping the scope,” he said irritably. “I think I can keep an eye on a bunch of teenage girls.”

I let the jab slide. It had been a frustrating three weeks. Three weeks of research, of watching the beach 24/7, observing the different groups, weeding out tourists, family units, the poor, the employed. From the intelligence we’d received, we knew that the sleeper dragon was young, well-off and it would be drawn to the popular, pretty crowd in order to fit in. The clique that “owned” the beach, so to speak. After countless hours of investigation, we’d finally narrowed it down to a group of teens who were out here nearly every day, and usually together. Any one of them could be our target.

Phase one, complete. Now, we were almost ready for phase two, the part I’d been dreading. The part where I’d have to infiltrate the group, get them to trust me and discover which of them was a fire-breathing monster of legend.

I had no idea how I was going to do that.

“Well, well,” Tristan muttered, causing me to glance across the lot again. “Looks like they’re about to take off with a bunch of frat boys. That could be problematic.”

I followed his gaze to where a Jeep similar to our black one was pulling out of its parking space. Two of the girls, the blond and the brunette, sat wedged between a pair of strange guys in the back. All four were laughing and talking, and had beer bottles in their hands. The other, the small redhead, sat up front, her eyes trained out the window like she really didn’t want to be there. Her surfboard stuck precariously out of the back as they squealed off down the road.

I glanced at my partner. “What now?”

He put the Jeep in Reverse and backed out of the lot. “Easy. We follow them.”

Ember

It was late afternoon when we got to the cove, which was flanked on two sides by a wall of windswept cliffs that sheltered it from waves and casual tourists. The small white beach leading down to the water was completely empty, though if we waited a few hours for the sun to set, that would change. Lone Rock Cove was not a place normally visited during the day, as the broken bottles, trash and other things lying in the sand indicated. A single large boulder sat in the center of the beach halfway between the cliff walls and the ocean, giving the alcove its name.

I made a face. I didn’t want to be here. The three guys had been drinking most of the way, ignoring the fact that this was very illegal, and had encouraged Lexi and Kristin to do the same. They’d tried to get me to drink, too, and under normal circumstances I would’ve joined in. But they still made me nervous, and I didn’t think getting tipsy around them was a good idea. One of the guys, Colin, kept trying to put his hands on me, and I kept squirming out of his grip, my temper fraying thinner with every attempt. If he only knew the true face of the girl he was feeling up so intently...he’d probably wet himself.

Keep it together, Ember. You do not want to cook this idiot like a marshmallow s’more, even if he is asking for it.

“Hey,” Drew said, shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun and squinting at the far cliffs. “Is that...a cave?”

“Oh, yeah.” Kristin shrugged. “Not much of a cave, really. Just a big hole that fills up with water when the tide comes in.”

“Let’s go check it out.”

“Uh, let’s not,” I said firmly. No way was I letting my two friends go marching into a dark, lonely cave with these guys. My mind was made up; I definitely didn’t like them. Pulling back from Colin, I grabbed Kristin’s arm and steered her away from Drew, who scowled. “Thanks, but we really should get home now. I promised my aunt I’d be back by six.” A lie, but I wanted to get out of here. “Come on, Lex.”

Kristin pulled out of my grasp and rubbed her arm, frowning. “I want to stay,” she said. “You two can go on. I want to show Drew the cave.”

So not going to happen. I glared at Kristin, wondering what she would do if I dragged her out by that pretty but empty head of hair. “We came here in one car, genius. You’re looking to hitchhike home if you stay.”

“Hey, now.” Thick arms wrapped around me from behind, and Colin pulled me back to his chest. “Relax,” he breathed in my ear. “You’re so uptight. Let them see the cave—what’s going to happen? You can wait here with me.”

I stiffened, arching away from him. He chuckled, and his grip tightened. “Come on. Don’t be like that.”

“Get off me,” I growled, pushing at his chest. Don’t Shift, Ember. If you Shift and eat this troll, Talon will lock you away for the rest of your life. Plus, you’d probably get food poisoning.

“Let her go, dickwad,” Lexi snapped, finally sensing the danger. A little late, I thought, trying to keep his lips away from my face and his hands off my butt. “She said she doesn’t want to, so leave her alone. Kristin, come on. Let’s get out of here.”

The other boys protested. Colin ignored them all and clutched me tighter. “Just relax, beautiful,” he murmured, nuzzling along my neck. “We’ll have more fun if you relax.” Raising his head, he pressed thick, sloppy lips to mine.

My temper and disgust flared. Planting my feet, I shoved him. Hard.