Talker 25 Read online

  “Yeah, until a squadron of DJs shows up on your ass.”

  He smiles. “Then it’s even better. You’re on that razor’s edge, the world becomes a blur, and you’re living a blink at a time.”

  I laugh. “You’re crazy.”

  “Probably. I don’t know. If you don’t face death every once in a while, how do you know how to live?”

  “Yin-yang, huh?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve had enough death,” I say.

  He sits up, looks at me. “So, what, you shut down, become a robot, push it all away?”

  “Said the pot to the kettle.”

  He darkens, a pot ready to boil over.

  “I don’t know, James. I just don’t want dragons reading my thoughts.”

  “You ever consider maybe it’s not such a bad thing?”

  “Okay, if it’s not such a bad thing, tell me what you’re thinking. Because it certainly seems like you’re trying to keep it all concealed.”

  He looks away. “I am, but I’m not.”

  I wait.

  He picks at a cuticle, his shoulders sag. “Yin-yang,” he mumbles.

  I wait.

  He shakes his head.

  “That’s it?” I ask.

  “Yeah.”

  I give him a playful nudge. “Liar.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Melissa.”

  I inch closer. “Tell me. Please.”

  He’s silent for a long time. Finally he shrugs. “I won’t run from death. I won’t run from pain or fear. Life hurts sometimes, sometimes so much that you think it’s never gonna stop hurting. That’s a beautiful thing.”

  “Beautiful?”

  He looks at me, angry almost. “Better to feel something than nothing.”

  His fierceness makes me smile.

  His brow furrows. “What?”

  I shake my head, my eyes locked on his. “Nothing.”

  Definitely something.

  Later, as the conversation between us comes easier and the looks linger a little longer, he retrieves a book of poetry. I watch him flip through the pages, surprised at the delicacy in his fingers. Long and lean, like a pianist’s. I ask him if he plays, and he says he’s tone deaf. I tell him I’ve been at it since I was six and would kill to have his fingers. He lifts my hand, presses our palms together, and says that his fingers would look funny on me.

  He finds the poem he was after. “Merlin’s Song.” Emerson. He wants me to read it. I try not to skim.

  “‘Live in the sunshine, swim the sea; Drink the wild air’s salubrity,’” I recite as I near the end.

  “Brilliant, right?”

  “That part, minus the salubrity.”

  “Different times,” he says.

  I laugh. “More salubrious, evidently.”

  “You have a wonderful laugh.”

  “This coming from Mr. Tone Deaf?”

  “My mistake. Your laugh’s awful.”

  I give him a playful eye roll. “You probably tell that to every girl you bring to your crate.”

  He grins. “Of course. I am the primary recruiter for Loki’s Grunts, after all.”

  “Oh? Is that why you were at Dragon Hill? Might want to work on your routine.”

  “Hmm. You were off-limits anyway.”

  “Off-limits, huh?”

  “Big time. Keith would kill us if anything happened to you.”

  I lean back on my arms. “And yet you came up that hill anyway, acting all mysterious.”

  He cocks his head, amused. “I didn’t even know you were there until Cartha told me.”

  “Did she happen to tell you who set up those decapitated soldiers?”

  He hesitates. “She didn’t mention it.”

  “Not Preston?”

  “No chance,” he says, and tries to change the subject a little too fast.

  “But you have suspicions?”

  A longer hesitation. “We have a theory.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  He’s about to speak when the distinctive clatter of a dragon landing on stone reaches our ears. James checks his watch. “Keith.”

  I’m out of the crate and running in three steps, desperate for good news. But when I catch sight of Keith’s somber expression, I know this day’s about to get infinitely worse.

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  13

  Paralyzed.

  The word crashes over me, a tidal wave on an endless loop.

  Paralyzed.

  My father, my big, powerful father.

  Paralyzed.

  The man who never asks for anything, never needs anything.

  Paralyzed.

  Keith, holding me tight, talks about surgery and treatment plans and how down the road, with God’s grace, Dad might recover some movement in his extremities.

  Paralyzed.

  I hate those surgeons and I hate treatment plans and I hate God. But more than anything, I hate myself. If I hadn’t gotten in that fight with Sam, we wouldn’t have been in that tent and maybe Dad wouldn’t be . . .

  Paralyzed.

  “I need to see him. I need to take care of him,” I say, pushing away. I must be strong for him. For Sam. I cannot afford more tears. I cannot afford weakness. I must be strong like Dad.

  “No, Melissa. I can’t let you do that.”

  “I don’t care if they arrest me,” I say. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “You helped James escape,” he says. “They have video evidence. You were also seen being airlifted from Mason-Kline by a dragon.”

  “Fine, they send me to jail for a few months. I don’t care.”

  “It’s not that easy. They have you listed as a Class One insurgent.”

  I flinch. Class One insurgent. You can be executed for that.

  “We’ll figure it out, Mel. It’ll be all right,” Keith assures me. I wish I were five again and could believe such things. He turns to James. “What’s the word on the children?”

  “Grackel says a handful can stay aloft for a few minutes. The rest remain grounded. None of them have their ice yet. What’s going on?”

  “Any more of those distress calls?”

  James frowns. “Vestia got one yesterday. She ignored it. Cyrex got one a couple hours ago. He answered.”

  “I thought we’d agreed on silence.”

  “You know Cyrex doesn’t believe in democracy, particularly not ours.”

  “He’s put us all in danger.”

  “He’s not stupid, Keith. He’s setting up an ambush.”

  Keith’s eyes narrow. “We need him and the others on surveillance, not playing chicken with the military.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Just contact him and tell him we need him running eyes on Grackel’s perimeter.”

  “What’s going on, Keith?” James repeats, jaw tight.

  Keith sighs. “The army discovered the evac tunnels and—”

  “I should be out there, running point.”

  “Your place is here.”

  “With the wounded? Nobody can fly like Vestia and me.”

  “We’re not talking about this again.” Keith notices me listening, scowls. “Drop Melissa off with Howard, then come meet me and Gretchen in the map room. Contact Cyrex and Grackel and let them know.”

  “Already done,” James mutters as Keith strides away. He looks to me. “What do you say we blow this joint?”

  I’m confused until Vestia says, “Join us, human. We have a flight to make for Myra, and we can roar our grief together.”

  I can’t make sense of her sudden kindness, but I welcome the opportunity to get away.

  While I put on goggles, gloves, and a jacket, James retrieves a double saddle from a supply crate, uses a winch to mount it on Vestia, then collects a ladder and places it beside her. Two minutes later, I’m on the back of a red dragon.
/>   “There’s no seat belt,” I say when James climbs aboard.

  “Hold on to me. We won’t let you fall.”

  Vestia flaps her wings. Once, twice, airborne. With a powerful swoosh, we glide from the cave. Seven Reds trail behind us, two of them carrying Myra by neck and tail.

  It’s an hour after sunset, the moon’s a sliver on the horizon, and in the darkness there’s not much to see except the shadows of the surrounding mountains and the dim outline of the world below. Far below. I clutch James, dig my feet into the stirrups, and pretend I’m riding a horse. The fastest horse ever, and she’s not even pumping her wings anymore.

  We alight at the edge of a frozen tarn. My stomach’s spinning a nightmare and my head’s gone woozy. I wobble down the ladder. Toward the bottom, James grabs me by the waist, guides me to the ground, and gives me a peppermint leaf to chew.

  While I struggle to keep from vomiting, the Reds fan out to form an equidistant perimeter around the tarn. Myra’s pallbearers, hovering above lake center, lower her to the ice, which splinters beneath her weight but does not break.

  Once the two have joined the ring of mourners, Vestia lifts her head and focuses on Myra. “I am Vestia, and I see you.” Her voice resonates in a way I haven’t heard before, and I’m guessing she’s broadcasting.

  The dragon to the left looks up. “I am Syren, and I see you.”

  “I am Marrick, and I see you.”

  On and on this goes, sometimes with long pauses between proclamations. When I ask James about that, he tells me other Reds are speaking, ones who don’t know me and thus do not include me.

  Later, my nausea down to a dull ache, I hear the unintelligible but familiar mewl of the Silver, who remained at the cave at Vestia’s order. After her cries fade, the Reds who stayed behind with her add their names to the roll call.

  Next comes James. “I am James Everett, and I see you,” he says aloud, I assume for my benefit. Vestia broadcasts his words for everybody to hear.

  “Myra would not like this,” Vestia says to the group. “She had little respect for tradition, and even less for normalcy. But she is not here to argue, so she gets no choice.”

  A guttural rumble echoes through my head. Laughter, I think. Surreal.

  “A long while back, during a storm of great wrath,” Vestia says, “she got it in her mind to fly the wrong way. As we sane dragons took flight with nature, she worked against it. Quickly she disappeared into the maelstrom. We did not have time to worry. The storm chased us into a valley. We were getting beaten upon with hail when I received her view in my head. The sun, bright and large, shone on a forest of great splendor. ‘I won,’ she told me. ‘I defeated the wind.’”

  “She always fought the wind,” Syren says without missing a beat. “I remember when she proposed the idea of mating with the Blues. We called her many names. You cannot talk with your enemy, silly dragon. As for mating, hah! And that’s when she introduced us to Cartha and the others. Said she’d known them for years.”

  “Yes, but she had some standards,” another dragon continues. “You remember the time she tricked that dullwit Green . . .”

  The moon’s near its peak before the story chain arrives at James. “I met Myra four years ago. I was her first talker,” he says, his words repeated by Vestia. “Normally, it’s a dangerous moment with you guys.”

  More of that rumbling laughter.

  “It didn’t help that most of her group had just been killed by the invisible monsters. I had nobody to vouch for me,” he says. “Yet she didn’t put on a fright fest. Or threaten to eat me.”

  This time, only Vestia laughs.

  “She asked . . . asked me to twirl around.” His voice cracks. “Definitely the strangest request I’ve ever had. But there was something about her . . . so I twirled.” He demonstrates. Arms out, chin tilted up. When he finishes his revolution, he’s smiling in that way he does when he looks at the Silver.

  “I felt like a fool. Then she asked me to close my eyes. ‘No peeking.’ I was getting dizzy when her glow entered my vision. I figured she was gonna end me, so I peeked. And there she was, dancing.” He twirls again and laughs. “Clumsy and awkward and beautiful.”

  “That she was,” Vestia says. The Reds around the lake lift their heads skyward at some unspoken signal.

  They roar. The sound, a bass-driven orchestra playing a melancholy tune, reverberates through the night. From the distance in every direction, smaller orchestras echo back.

  “What did you think?” James whispers in my ear.

  “It was nice.” I see a flash of disappointment cross his face. I imagine he hoped this memorial service would open my eyes to the humanity of dragons. I can’t deny that Myra seemed like a wonderful creature, but even criminals receive kind words at their funerals. How many people did she kill between defeating the wind and dancing with James?

  “Fifty or sixty that she knows of, and she cried for them all,” Vestia says, her voice ripping through my thoughts as her roar goes quiet. I glance over my shoulder, but her glow remains calm, her focus directed toward the stars. “Have you once cried for a dragon, human?”

  Do you think her victims or their relatives care whether she cried for them? And what of you, dragon? Have you ever shed a tear for a human?

  “No, but I do not hate you. Like you, we want to be happy. And we cannot be happy with hatred in our hearts. Live in your dark silence if you want, Melissa Callahan, or let go and roar with us. Roar about us dragons, roar about your god, roar at yourself if you must, roar as loud and long as you can until there is nothing left to roar about. Send all the badness away.”

  It’s a quaint idea, but even if I believed such a thing were possible, there’s no way I’d do it with James around.

  “It does help some,” he says a few seconds later. Vestia must have been in his head, too. I don’t know why she cares. Anyway, if it helps so much, why isn’t he doing it?

  “I’ll do it if you do,” I say, figuring that’ll end the discussion. It does, but not in the way I’d hoped. Without hesitation, James cranes his neck and howls, loud and forlorn.

  On the list of things, I never thought I’d do . . . At first, I manage nothing beyond a self-conscious squeak. But then I stop thinking about how ridiculous I must sound and start thinking about these past few days. I clench my body, tense up onto my tiptoes, gather everything into my lungs, and open my mouth once more.

  The terrible noise that bursts forth is more shriek than roar. James threads his fingers through mine. We hold on tight, squeezing harder and harder as our cries escalate in a painful duet.

  It’s ridiculous really, roaring your grief away, but there’s something about just letting go completely. There’s something even better when there’s somebody howling at your side. It comes nowhere close to making me happy, but it helps me feel less alone, keeps me from sinking into the depths, which is probably about the best I can hope for right now.

  We quiet. Our hands slips free; we exchange embarrassed smiles, then look elsewhere.

  The dragons lower their heads to Myra. Eight gouts of flame swallow her. They cut off abruptly, and for the briefest moment, the dead Red is bright again, brighter than them all. Then her body dissolves to fiery ash. Steam from the melted ice carries her embers skyward. Winking in and out like fireflies, they swirl higher and higher.

  It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

  “May she fly forever into the next tomorrow,” Vestia intones as Myra disappears into the heavens.

  When we return to the cave, Keith and Preston are waiting for us, the latter with a bandage wrapped around his head, the former with a sharp scowl, which he directs at James.

  “I asked him to take me,” I say before Keith can explode, but my lie only makes him angrier.

  He glowers at James. “You can’t go running off whenever you want. You are too valuable.”

  “I didn’t go running off, Keith. The dragons had a funeral. It’s not like I’m doing anythin
g useful here.”

  Preston pulls at my arm. “Let’s go grab some grub and, uh, you can tell me how your crate got blasted in half.”

  I follow him toward the supply crates but am in no mood for food or storytelling. “James mentioned that you guys have a theory about who set me up at Dragon Hill.”

  “We’re probably wrong,” Preston says, but it’s obvious he doesn’t believe that. I wait. He chews at a fingernail. “I don’t want to freak you out.”

  The Silver bounds over, drops a frozen basketball at my feet. I kick it. “My father’s paralyzed. My brother’s hurt. My home’s destroyed. My best friend’s mother is probably dead. And I’m stuck here playing fetch with a dragon. I’d like to know why.”

  With reluctance, Preston admits he and James were part of a surveillance group that had taken up residence in Mason-Kline. Preston was sent into the school to befriend Konrad Kline in order to hack his father’s hard drive for intel.

  “About a year ago, the army recollared the Blues—”

  “They said it was for comfort or something,” I say. Dad applied many of the restrictors himself. “Never believed that.”

  “Yeah, according to schematics we found, the new collars incorporate telepathy monitoring and control.”

  It takes me a few seconds to put the puzzle together. “So you think the government was listening in on Old Man Blue?”

  “It’s just a theory,” he says.

  And there’s more to it, I realize as I recall the BoDA agents who came to arrest me. Those D-men arrived only an hour after the doctored pic appeared in the army system.

  “You think the D-men did it,” I say.

  “Them or the army. If they were monitoring Cartha, they could have coordinated her communication to the time stamp on the photo Trish took. Add in some decapitated toys, remove everybody else, and there you go. You’re a ‘person of interest’ who needs to be brought in.”

  Last time. My hands are getting cold, I say to the Silver, and toss the ball. I look to Preston with an apprehensive snort. “Then what? They make me disappear?”

  Preston, ever-smiling Preston, gives me a frown. “You hear about that ‘quarry massacre’ in Wyoming a few months ago? That one along the drone zone they blamed on insurgents?”