by Julie Kagawa
He frowned. “It doesn’t seem like them,” he answered, though he sounded unsure. “They would have no reason to attack this place unless there was a dragon living here. But even then...” He gazed around the devastated living room. “They wouldn’t take out the entire community. That would raise way too many questions.”
“Yeah, no kidding. Which is why I’m having a really hard time believing that Talon was behind this. They’re just as paranoid about discovery as the Order, if not more so. I mean, that’s their entire freaking philosophy—stay hidden, blend in, don’t let the humans know about dragons.” I stared through the giant hole in the wall to the house across the street. Unlike this home, it had been completely devastated, burned to the ground, only a few twisted frames poking up from the ashes. “Something this huge...it flies in the face of every single thing Talon taught us since the day the organization was founded. Why would they be breaking all their rules now? It makes no sense at all.” I raked a hand through my hair, shaking my head as I groped for an answer. “Maybe this wasn’t Talon or St. George. Maybe this was a random terrorist attack, or something else entirely human.”
“Riley,” Ember said from the living room, her voice urgent. “Take a look at this.”
I walked to where she was crouched beside an overturned coffee table, staring at a patch of cheap carpet. The carpet was gray and thin, but when she moved the table aside, a large brown stain came to light. I winced.
“Yep, that’s blood. Dammit. Well, I’d say we have a pretty good indication of what happened to the people here.”
“No,” Ember said, putting a hand on my arm. “That’s not what I wanted to show you. Look at this.”
She pointed to the coffee table, holding it on its side. It was scorched on one corner, a large black burn mark covering half the surface, but below that, raked across the wood, were four long, straight gashes.
“What do those look like?” Ember whispered, and I closed my eyes.
“Claw marks.”
“Excuse me.”
We turned. Two men were entering the trailer home, frowning at us as they stepped through the door.
“I’m sorry,” the older one said, gazing around at us, “but this is an ongoing investigation. Who are you, and what authorization do you have to be here?”
Before I could stand up or say anything, Jade turned, flashing her badge for both men to see. “Department of Homeland Security,” she said in a firm, no-nonsense voice. “We are here to assess the situation and determine whether or not we need to escalate the current threat level.”
“The DHS?” The older human looked unsure. “No one said you were coming. When did—”
“Do you have evidence to support this was not a terrorist attack made on American soil?” Jade interrupted, stepping forward slightly. The man blinked.
“I...no, not really. We’re still—”
“Then it is possible this was a malicious attack carried out by extremists.”
“I suppose.” The human sighed and looked away, flustered. “Look, we don’t really know what we have yet,” he admitted. “The evidence we’ve gathered so far has been...strange. The inspector has been trying to keep everything under wraps until we figure out what really happened here. If you want, you can check out the evidence tent at the end of the road. See the weirdness for yourself.”
“Thank you,” Jade said, and gave a brittle smile. “We will do that.” She started to turn but paused, staring at the human as if surprised he was still there. “You may go now.”
The two men retreated, practically scrambling over each other to get out of the house. They fled, slamming the door behind them, and strode away down the road without looking back. Jade, standing at the edge of the room with her arms crossed, allowed herself a triumphant smirk.
“Damn,” I said as the Eastern dragon turned back. “That was impressive. I guess I’m not the only one with a master’s in BS.”
She smiled. “The DHS does have a public website,” she said. “They list their mission statement, job offers, history, everything. When Wesley told me how we were getting onto the crash site today, I did my research. But yes.” Her smile widened. “If it is necessary for our survival, I have been known to ‘bullshit’ with the best of them from time to time.”
I snorted a laugh. “Wish you were around a couple years ago. I could’ve used the help. Anyway...” I glanced out the hole in the wall, down the road where the two men had disappeared. “Shall we track down this evidence tent and see if we can uncover what the hell is going on?”
The evidence tent wasn’t hard to find, being a large white structure at the edge of the road and the only building that wasn’t charred, scorched or burned to the ground. Humans in suits and white coats were swarming in and out of it, but other than flashing my badge at the entrance, we didn’t really get a second glance. Inside, metal shelves ran the length of one canvas wall, each of them holding boxes marked with labels in clear plastic bags. Immediately, Ember headed to the wall, her innate curiosity no doubt driving her forward, while St. George hovered at our backs, watching the crowd. Grateful that the soldier was keeping an eye out, I walked up and peeked into one box.
It held an assortment of clothing in more plastic bags. But as I looked closer, I saw that most of the garments had large brown stains soaking the fabric. Blood. And a lot of it, judging from the mangled clothes. I looked at the next box in line and saw more of the same; only this time, I could make out several long, straight tears in some of the clothes, as if made by the edge of a knife.
Or the claws of a very large reptile.
“It seems the evidence against Talon is becoming more and more damning,” Jade remarked, also peering into the containers. “Between the fires, general destruction and the Talon agent on the news, it certainly seems like the organization is at least partially involved.”
“I still can’t believe they’d be this sloppy,” I said. “They had to have known that something this big would cause a huge investigation, with everyone scrambling to figure out what the hell happened.” I snorted. “Plane crash, my ass. I bet it’s not even Talon that’s trying to cover this up—the government has no idea what they’re dealing with, so they invented a cover story to keep things quiet until they can figure it out. And since Talon has agents seeded throughout all the government agencies, they’re only too happy to help.”
“That might be true, but it is not the question that needs answering,” Jade mused. “If the organization is involved, then the real question becomes why. What could they possibly hope to gain here?”
“Riley,” Ember murmured in a warning voice. She pulled a bag out of a nearby crate. I looked up, and my stomach flipped.
Resting in the bag was a small, flat oval, pointed on one end and glittering a dull iron gray. Even though the color was strange, one I’d never seen before, I knew what it was instantly. We all did.
A dragon scale.
EMBER
“Give me that, Firebrand,” Riley muttered, quickly stepping forward and taking the bag from my hands. It vanished into his suit pocket as he glanced around warily. “No point in giving the humans any more hints that dragons are real. Or at least that something very unnatural went down.” He eyed a human wandering by who looked like a scientist, then lowered his voice again. “Regardless, I think we’ve seen all we need to see here.”
“I agree,” Jade said, nodding. “From the evidence, it is safe to assume that dragons attacked this town in their true form, and that Talon is at least partially responsible. Unfortunately, that theory creates more questions than it answers. Why would they attack this community? Especially since, as Riley pointed out, the entire point of the organization is to hide the existence of dragons from the human population. Why risk that now?”
Riley shook his head. “I have no clue, but I get the feeling we’re not g
oing to like the answer.”
Abruptly, Garret stalked back, his gaze intense as he swept between us. “The woman you described is approaching this location,” he said in a low voice, making Riley jerk up.
“Hell. Miranda is coming? Come on, we can’t be seen by her.”
We fast-walked toward the end of the room, passing more humans and looking for a way out as we went deeper into the tent. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be a back exit, and the open room offered very few hiding spots.
“There,” Riley said, nodding toward a corner of the tent that had been sectioned off. Plastic flaps hung to the floor, and the area beyond was dark. With Riley leading and Garret watching our backs, we hurried across the room and ducked through the plastic walls.
My stomach recoiled. The room beyond the flaps was dim and cold, and the sickly smell of death lingered on the air, masked by chemicals and disinfectant. A pair of stainless-steel tables stood in the center of the room, and atop the farthest counter was something long and suspiciously body shaped, covered with a sheet.
I drew in a slow breath to quiet my heartbeat and nudged Garret, who was still peering through the flaps to watch for the Chameleon. He glanced at me with a puzzled frown, but it quickly faded when he realized what I was staring at.
“There she is,” Riley growled softly, not taking his eyes from the room beyond. “Hello, Miranda. What are you doing here? Covering up for the organization again?”
I tore my eyes from what was obviously a dead body and peeked through the plastic flaps again, seeing a dark-haired, smartly dressed woman enter the tent, followed by what looked like an assistant of some kind. The woman, or dragon, really, wasn’t tall or intimidating—not like Lilith, who could walk into a room and freeze you in place with a glare. But everything about this woman radiated charisma, charm and confidence, much like another Chameleon I used to know.
As a certain traitorous brother entered my thoughts, I swallowed the brief pang and forced myself to concentrate on the Talon agent at the end of the other room. She spoke briskly to the assistant and pointed to several boxes along the wall. The human bobbed his head in mute agreement, and the Chameleon smiled, then spun and exited the tent as suddenly as she had appeared.
“All right,” Riley mused, straightening and drawing back from the flap. “So Talon sent an agent to help with the cover-up, but also to make sure certain evidence just...disappears. Sounds like them.” He nodded. “I think we’re going to have to pay a visit to a certain hotel room in town.”
I frowned at him. “How did you get all that? They were clear across the room.”
He smirked down at me. “I was a Basilisk, Firebrand. Among my many enviable talents are picking locks, hiding in plain sight...and reading lips.” His grin widened at my surprised look before he sobered and glanced through the flaps again. “Seems that our lovely Talon agent is staying at a hotel not far from here,” he muttered, watching the human gather up a couple crates and leave the tent. “Those boxes of evidence are likely headed there now. If anyone knows what Talon was doing here, it will be Miranda. And if they’re planning anything else like this, I’d kinda like to know when and why.”
“I agree,” came Garret’s grave voice from behind us. I turned to find him standing next to the counter I’d pointed to earlier, only he had pulled back a corner of the sheet, revealing a truly hideous sight. The corpse lying on the table was barely recognizable as human, as shriveled and burned as it was. It looked more like a piece of charred wood than anything that had once been alive. My stomach heaved, and I had to look away, feeling bile rise to my throat. Was that what my victims looked like, after I’d blasted them with dragonfire? I’d killed both Talon servants and soldiers of St. George in battle. Had they all ended up like that withered corpse? Blackened skeletons of what had once been human?
“If Talon is planning another attack,” Garret continued in that same somber voice, though his steely eyes glinted in the darkness, “we need to stop it before this happens again.”
* * *
We followed the Chameleon from the “crash site,” tailing her white sedan until it pulled into a normal, innocuous-looking hotel, not the Ritz but not a Motel 6, either. From across the lot, we watched the Chameleon walk briskly into the hotel followed by two large men I assumed were bodyguards. Left behind, her poor assistant hauled several boxes out of the trunk and staggered after them.
I looked at Riley as the human vanished through the hotel doors. “So, how are we going to do this?” I asked. “Wait to sneak in tonight?”
He shook his head. “No time for that, Firebrand. She could be leaving today and taking all the evidence with her. If we want to see what Talon is up to, we need to get in there now.” He frowned and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Problem is, I can take care of Miranda and get us into the room, but if she leaves any of her guards behind, that’s going to make things difficult. If she comes back and finds an unconscious human lying on her floor, she’s going to guess someone was there and warn the organization.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Jade said, surprising us all. “You just concentrate on getting the Talon woman away from the vicinity and finding her room. I will take care of the guards.”
He eyed her, raising a brow. “And how are you going to do that exactly? Eat them?”
“Please. I would very likely get food poisoning.” She wrinkled her nose and sniffed in clear disgust. “Do not worry. As I once told our soldier friend, a shen-lung has her ways. You get the Talon agent out of the building and find where her room is located. Leave any guards to me.”
Riley stared at her a moment longer, then shrugged. “You’re awfully certain about that,” he muttered, pulling his phone out of his jacket pocket. “But as we’re a little short on time, I guess I’ll have to trust you know what you’re doing. Hang on a second.” He pressed a button on his phone, then put it to his ear. “Wes. We’re at the Wingate Hotel, about ten miles from the crash site. I need you to find which room Miranda’s staying in.” A pause, and he rolled his eyes. “Of course we’re going to sneak in, what do you think?... I don’t know, the Eastern dragon thinks she can get past the guards.” He sighed. “Don’t argue, Wes. Just do it.”
A couple minutes passed, and he nodded. “Three-eighteen. Got it. I’ll call you if there’s trouble.” He frowned. “Thank you, Wesley, your votes of confidence are always so inspiring.”
“Okay,” I said as Riley lowered his arm. “One problem down—we know what room she’s in. How are we going to get her to leave long enough to search it?”
“Don’t worry, Firebrand.” Riley gave a wicked smile. “King of BS right here, remember? Watch and learn.”
Pressing in a number, he held the phone to his ear and waited a few moments as it rang. “Hello, front desk?... Yes, could you please connect me to Miranda Kent’s room? I believe she’s staying there tonight.” A pause, and he grinned. “Thank you.”
I held my breath, watching Riley and counting the number of imaginary rings in my head. At three rings, he raised his head. “Ms. Kent? This is Director Smith, from the crash site? Sorry to bother you, but we recently found something of an anomaly near one of the victims, and thought you might want to see it.”
As he spoke, his other hand reached into his suit pocket and pulled out the plastic bag, holding it up with narrowed eyes. “Well, we’re not entirely sure. We’ve never seen such a thing before—it looks like some kind of reptile scale. But far bigger than any species in known existence—” He stopped, as if the voice on the other end had cut him off, and the gleam in his eyes grew brighter. “All right, then. We won’t do anything until you get here. Thank you.”
“Clever,” Jade remarked as he lowered the phone. Riley snorted.
“I just know how Talon works, is all.” He stuffed the phone and the scale into his pocket again and leaned back in smug satisfa
ction. “If Miranda’s job is to cover this up and make all evidence of dragons disappear, something like this is going to light a fire under her tail like nothing else. She’ll be desperate to get to that evidence before Talon hears about it. We should see her anytime now. Like a bat out of hell.”
Less than two minutes later, the hotel doors opened and the Chameleon and a single guard strode across the lot, setting an even brisker pace toward the car, the assistant scrambling along in their wake. The woman’s normally smiling face was taut as she entered the passenger side and slammed the door shut. As the guard opened the driver’s side, the assistant nearly tripped over himself getting into the car. The sedan backed hastily out of the parking spot, barely missing the hood of a truck as it did, and peeled out of the lot.
Riley snickered and straightened in his seat again. “And that,” he remarked, watching the sedan turn onto the road, cutting off a van as it merged into traffic, “is how you freak out a Chameleon. But we do need to hurry, before she realizes ‘Mr. Smith’ is no longer at the crash site.”
“One of her guards wasn’t with her,” Garret observed. Riley nodded.
“Yep. Which means he’ll be in her room, just like I thought.” He turned to Jade, who seemed perfectly calm and serene, even as my heart was pounding with nerves and anticipation. “All right, O great and mysterious shen-lung,” he stated, and waved his hand at the hotel. “It’s all yours.”
Jade nodded. Taking off the suit jacket, she laid it over the back of her seat. Her heels followed, and then her earrings, being placed carefully in the cup holders as we looked on in bewilderment. “How long will you need to be in the room?” she asked, unbuttoning the cuffs of her white shirt. Riley blinked.
“Uh, not long,” he said, watching her finish with the sleeves and unbutton the top. “Five minutes, at most.”
The Eastern dragon nodded. “Give me ten minutes,” she said, and left the car. We watched her walk barefooted across the parking lot, pulling the tie from her bun as she did, and enter the hotel through the front doors. Riley shook his head and glanced back at Garret.
