by S. W. Clarke
“Now it’s done,” I murmured, eyes lifting to the starry sky. Do you see me, Mom, Dad, Thelma?
No answer. Never an answer.
I climbed into the van and found the other six ninjas all perched around the gnomeling, cooing at him and stroking him as he cried, his fluff of green hair drooping.
Ferris climbed in after me, shut the van door. He crossed to the gnomeling, took the child into his arms in an unexpectedly maternal way as the others gathered around. He whispered, “The gods may be gone, and your parents may be gone, but we’re still here. We’ll be here for you forever, little one.”
My eyes flicked over the other ninjas, who all nodded. These gnomes weren’t his parents. They weren’t even biologically related to the gnomeling.
But that didn’t mean they couldn’t be his family.
Why hadn’t it ever occurred to me you didn’t have to be a parent for a child to imprint on you, or for you to imprint on a child? It should have been as obvious as it felt now: the real link was the minute you knew you’d die for that child.
I had known it in the swamp. Really, I had known it the day Percy burned my hand, but I hadn’t truly understood it then.
I knew now.
Watching them drag Peter out, I was reminded again of how the cops had treated the gnomelings back at the auction. Imprisoning them. That was why Ferris had been so insistent about getting the gnomeling out before any authorities got involved.
And that was why, I realized, I couldn’t get the cops involved with Yaroz and her brood. They would do whatever they could to stop the dragons. Capture them. Imprison them. Even kill them, if need be.
That wasn’t going to happen. Not on my watch.
So I approached Ferris a few minutes later. And when I say “approached,” I mean I crouch-walked over to him. “I need your help,” I said. “Can you help me rescue Percy?”
He handed the gnomeling off to one of the other ninjas, his eyes lighting. He grabbed a small, wrapped box from his workbench as well as what looked like a Kevlar glove, handed both up to me. “Open the box. Then ask your question again.”
↔
One week and a slew of detective work later, the ninjas and I stood on the roof of a six-story abandoned office building at the center of New Orleans, staring out over the twinkling city.
We had thirty minutes until go-time.
“But why New Orleans?” I swept a hand out. “Why not DC or New York?”
Ferris went on jiggering with the deployment mechanism for the netting. “Before Pompeii, there was Siena. In the ancient world, you didn’t begin your assault at the castle gates. You started with everything else.”
My eyes lifted to the sky, bare of clouds. A gibbous moon hung low, shining over the bustling French Quarter as the sounds of partying rang all around. “On a night like this, five dragons are bound to take out more than a few souls.”
“That’s Yaroz’s thinking.” Ferris straightened, nodded for Zanfiz to take up his position. “And New Orleans is the cultural heart of the south. It’s a place of joy and celebration—especially right now.”
She was going to attack the French Quarter during Mardi Gras. Yaroz wants to strike a blow to the spirit before she moves elsewhere.
It made sense, nefarious as it was.
I fingered the whistle at my neck. It was so small, and the few times I’d blown on it, I heard nothing at all. Of course, that was supposed to be the point. “You sure about this?”
“Absolutely.” Ferris crossed the roof toward the second set of netting. “This isn’t my first dragon-shell whistle, Tara.”
“But I can’t hear anything from it.”
He let out a sigh-growl. “If you could, then it wouldn’t work. Quit asking questions you’ve asked twice before and prepare yourself.”
I’d been prepared since this morning. All the same, I patted my hip and back to feel for Thelma and Louise. Touched the lips of each boot to check for my throwing knives. The Kevlar glove was a new—heavy—addition, but I’d managed to affix it to the inner pocket of my new jacket.
And, of course, I had the whistle made of Percy’s egg shell hanging from a leather thong around my neck.
As I watched Ferris and the ninjas work, I came to a conclusion. “Say, Ferris.” I tilted my head. “If we survive this, what say you to being my manager?”
He shot me a glare over his shoulder, struggling to unwind himself from all the steel wiring he’d been messing with. “Your what?”
“For our show, you know. Tara and her Dragon.”
His eyes narrowed. “And what does a manager do?”
“Send along cool gadgets he’s crafted, book gigs for us. Pretend he hates to hear from me when he secretly loves it.”
Ferris snorted, continued messing with the wiring.
“I won’t make you answer now,” I went on. “Just think about it. It’d be a sweet deal.”
“For whom?” he shot back.
“Everyone involved. Don’t pretend Percy hasn’t grown on you, Ferris wheel.”
His back went rigid. Then he shook his head. “GoneGods.” Pointed at me. “Now I definitely refuse. You’d be nothing but trouble.”
I wasn’t positive, but I suspected Ferris liked having a nickname. If he pretended to hate something, I was getting the sense he actually liked it. Which meant, despite his protest, the odds were good of him being my manager.
“So—” I began.
“Silence,” Dordri, the expert tracker, announced with a raised hand. “Do you hear that?”
We all went quiet. Two of the ninjas raced to the edge of the roof, stood on the raised wall to listen.
A moment later, a crack echoed through the sky.
There was no noise in the world quite like that—the sound of a dragon flapping its wings.
“They’re early,” I whispered. “They’re GoneGodDamn early.”
Ferris whistled between his teeth. “Everyone, in position. We’ve only got one chance at this.”
All the ninjas scattered to their positions, two at each of the deployment mechanisms. They all pulled on their fire-retardant gear and slotted their weapons into place.
Ferris stood at the center like a conductor, one hand going up into the air as he stared out into the night.
I came to stand beside him, lifting my whistle. I tried to ignore the trembling of my fingers.
Remember your training.
Part of being a good carnie was holding up under pressure. And if it didn’t come naturally, you better damn well learn it. Nothing was worse than ruining the show. Nothing.
Ferris listened with a cocked ear as the wingbeats drew closer. “Thirty seconds.” His voice was hoarse.
Behind us, the ninjas began winding up the machinery.
“Fifteen seconds,” Ferris said. “Tara, be ready with the whistle.”
I lifted it to my lips, my breath coming fast now.
We waited in a tense silence. These were the longest seconds of my life—it was incredible how long they could be when all you wanted was to see the face of your child one more time.
I couldn’t let him die. I wouldn’t.
All at once, Yaroz burst into my peripheral vision, moving faster than I could have predicted. She flapped hard and fast, a black streak in the night with five small clones flying behind her.
“Now, Tara!” Ferris yelled.
I sucked in a breath and pressed the whistle between my lips. When I blew into it, I poured out every bit of air in my lungs. I whistled, whistled, whistled, producing no audible noise, half disbelieving I was actually accomplishing anything.
But after five seconds, one of the smaller dragons—was it Percy?—slowed from the rest of the flight. Turned toward us, pausing to tread air.
“Blow it again, Tara,” Ferris said.
I did. And like magic, the dragon started toward us. Soon his features came into relief—the blue scales, the slender tail.
It was Percy.
“It’s him,” I b
reathed. “Ferris, he’s coming.”
“I see, I see.” Ferris’s hand remained in the air. “Ninjas, prepare to loose the netting on my mark. Set your aim now.”
Behind us, a scuffling sounded as the ninjas aimed the machinery to match Percy’s angle.
I blew on the whistle again, and my dragon kept on coming. Meanwhile, Yaroz and the others were still moving across the sky; they hadn’t noticed yet.
When I could see his golden eyes, Ferris’s hand dropped. “Now!”
With a clank and a zinging, two sets of steel netting flew into the air at Percy. One missed, blooming into nothing and dropping toward the ground.
The other, however, caught him dead-on, half pinning his wings to his body so he could only flap enough to keep himself aloft.
He was going to be pissed.
Chapter 22
“Retract!” Ferris yelled. “Bring him over quick.”
The ninjas worked to pull Percy toward us, who floated lower and lower as he struggled to fly. A minute later, he landed on the rooftop, screeching things I couldn’t understand. And some things I could. The one word he repeated again and again was, “Help.”
It about broke my heart. And it filled me with new urgency; no chance Yaroz had missed that racket. And I doubted she would let one of her five precious children go free.
I ran over, knelt beside him. He was plated in armor from talons to tail. “Perce,” I said. “It’s me. It’s Tara.”
When he caught a glimpse of me, his flailing slowed. “Tara? What are you doing here?”
I reached through the netting, set a hand under his chin. “I’m here to bring you home, Perce.”
“You shouldn’t be here, Tara,” he said. “Bad things are about to happen. Yaroz, she won’t let me go.”
“You let me take care of Yaroz. I’m not afraid of her.”
“But you should be,” Percy breathed, still frantic, his head jerking left and right. He struggled to get free of the webbing, and I gestured to the ninjas.
“Release him,” I said. “He won’t fly away.”
Two of the ninjas did so, releasing the net. I helped them pull the whole thing off Percy, who trembled with clenched wings, hunkering down with his tail tucked like a scared cat.
The size of the explosives strapped to him gave him a strange bulkiness; his real chest and torso appeared frail beneath. He was, after all, just a child still.
The sight infuriated me. It terrified me.
I came to a crouch in front of him. “We’re going to get all this off you, Percy.”
“But Tara—” he began, and I could tell from the tone of his voice he was still confused. Part of him still longed to rejoin Yaroz. Part of him was still bought into the idea that he had to die for her. That he had to perish for dragonkind.
“Now hold on. Just give me a chance to say my piece.” I took a deep breath. This was my chance—my only chance. I had to get these words out, and I had to say them in the right way. The way I’d practiced in my head.
“Perce, I never did tell you how much you mean to me. I was stupid and thoughtless, and I thought we’d have forever together. I thought I’d have time to tell you all the things you deserve to hear.”
His big eyes slowed their frantic tracking, and he managed to focus them on me. “What things?”
“Back when you asked me what I’d wish for from the genie, I told you I didn’t know. Remember that?”
“I remember,” he said in a small voice.
“The matriarch’ll be coming back around soon,” Ferris announced to the ninjas. “Ready the PlayDoh.”
Movement sounded around me, the ninjas getting into position.
I kept my focus on Percy. “That wasn’t true, what I said about not knowing. I knew then, and I know now exactly what I’d wish for.” I set a hand on either side of his face. “If I had two wishes, my first wish would be to have one more hour with my mother, father and sister. It’s the truth, and I can’t deny how badly I miss them. I would give anything to see them again. Anything.” He lowered his gaze, and I gently pushed his chin up so he could meet my eyes. “But do you know what my second wish would be, Perce?”
“What would it be?”
A screech sounded in the sky. The matriarch had noticed Percy’s absence. She was coming, and fast.
Our time was drawing short, my window of opportunity closing.
I scooted closer to him. “My second wish would be for you to find yourself—that you don’t make the mistakes I made growing up. That would be my second wish, for you to find out who you are and who you need to be in this GoneGod World. And do you know why I wish those things?”
A tear touched my hand. It had slid all the way down from Percy’s eye as I spoke. “Why?”
The wingbeats grew closer—the matriarch’s and her brood’s.
“Prepare to deploy the PlayDoh,” Ferris called. The PlayDoh was his plan to gum up the dragons’ armor. He’d modified it to seep into the joins and make it harder for them to fly nimbly. “I want at least two shots per dragon.”
I kept my voice firm, confident. “I wish those things because I love you, Percy. I’ve loved you since the moment I hatched you from your shell and said your name out loud.”
Percy didn’t take his eyes off me. His nostrils grew large as he sucked air into his trembling chest. “I’m so sorry, Tara. I’m sorry for everything. I thought I needed to be a true dragon.”
I nodded. My throat had tightened. “I understand. I’m certainly no dragon, unless we’re trying to learn a new trick.”
“She didn’t treat me like you did, even when we couldn’t get a trick down,” he said. “She hurt me for no good reason. She yelled at me. I hated it, but I thought that was part of being a dragon, too. And she started talking about the glory of the dragons. All her other children adored her, believed in her. Everything happened so fast after that first night …”
“It’s all right,” I said, my words coming fast now. We were running out of time. “It’s all forgiven. We’re together again, and I’m here to protect you. I’ll never let her hurt you again. Do you know why?”
His head slung over my shoulder. “Why?”
“Because you’re my son,” I said, and I knew it was true.
He was my son, and I was his mother.
“Really?”
“Really. I may not be your biological mother, but if you’ll have me, I’ll be your parent from now until the day I die. I’ll never leave your side again.”
“I want that,” he said. “I want it, Tara.”
I threw my arms around his neck, squeezing him tight, even as the ninjas shot off the PlayDoh into the air. Even as my braid was blown aside by the wind generated by the dragons’ wingbeats.
They were here.
↔
“Scatter, maggots,” Yaroz boomed from on high, followed by the telltale sound of air being sucked into a dragon’s lungs.
I leaned back, staring up into the sight of the enormous black matriarch; she was flanked by her four children hovering twenty feet above us.
“Evade,” Ferris yelled. “Take cover!”
All the ninjas scattered in the same moment Percy yelled to me, “Climb on.”
I didn’t hesitate. I threw myself onto his back, landing overtop the armor still strapped to him.
With a growl, he crouched low, then leapt into the air, his wings extending wide. A moment later we were airborne, pulling away from the roof.
Behind us, the screeching sound of five dragons pouring fire descended on the rooftop. I glanced over my shoulder, the heat practically blistering my face. “The ninjas,” I murmured. They were fast—and prepared—but the dragonfire from five separate dragons was all-encompassing.
“Get this armor off me, Tara.” Percy began descending. “It’s slowing me down.”
I reached into my boot, pulled out one of my knives and got to work on cutting the straps. First the ones behind his neck, then the ones around his arms. Finally, as we f
lew over an empty street, the ones around his abdomen.
The armor fell away, dropping toward the city below, hitting the ground with a clang.
“I should just keep flying, Tara,” Percy said. “Let’s just leave.”
“No. We have to protect the ninjas. They saved you as much as I did, Perce.”
“But—”
“Trust me,” I cut in. “I’ve got a plan.”
Ferris’s words kept replaying in my brain: Dragons have one major vulnerability: the hide beneath their scales. If you can get a dagger in under the scale, you’re in business.
A pause. Then he said, “I trust you.”
I slid the knife back into my boot as we swung back around toward the building, rising for the roof. A great plume of smoke emanated from above us, the dragons beginning to circle the rooftop.
I still couldn’t see the ninjas. All I could see were Yaroz’s beating wings at the edge of the building, swirling smoke around her like a creature of the shadows.
“Head toward Yaroz,” I told Percy. “Get me above her. I need to drop onto her back.”
“Tara, that’s insane.”
“I thought you trusted me.”
“I do, but she’s a matriarch. She’ll throw you off like a mosquito. And if she can’t throw you off, she’ll just ruffle her scales and cut you to pieces.”
I set a hand on his neck. “Percy, that’s exactly the idea.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If everything goes to plan, you will.” Then, as we drew closer to the building, “You know, if I could have one wish from that genie right now, I would wish for us to pull off the loop-the-loop.”
At that, Percy started flying higher, quickly angling us toward vertical. He was attempting the trick. Which meant I was attempting it, too.
As we flew up the side of the building, I clutched the spine on his back with both hands, squeezing my thighs around his ribcage.
This time, I wouldn’t fall off. I refused.
Up we went, pulling higher and higher, my arms and legs fatiguing with the effort to keep myself on his back despite gravity’s pull.
