by S. W. Clarke
We crested the building, and there she was, hovering, eyes searching the rooftop for us.
We had to get higher than her. Only thirty more feet.
“I’m going to go for it,” Percy called. “Get ready.”
“Ready."
With a hard flap of his wings, Percy shot us up above the matriarch. As we came directly above her, he stretched his head up, tenting his wings out. And, just like we had practiced, his body made a graceful arc, legs turning skyward as his back faced the ground.
As he turned upside down, I allowed my legs to let go first, until I was only hanging from his back by the spine.
I glanced down. We were maybe six feet above her. This would be an uncomfortable drop, but it wouldn’t break anything.
When Percy was at the exact center of his arc, I let go.
I passed through warm air for a bracing second, and then I thudded onto her back. It felt like I’d landed on pure metal; the scales beneath me were unforgiving, sharp as daggers at the ends. I reached for the enormous spine at the base of her neck with both hands but managed to catch it with only one.
That was enough. I yelled, pulling myself with my remaining strength toward the spine until I could slap my other hand around it, too.
Percy and I had done it. We’d done the trick, and it was perfect.
If only we’d had a proper audience for that one and not a brood of angry, vengeful dragons.
The second I landed on Yaroz’s back, she tensed, her head rising. “You fool,” she murmured, her voice silky with death. “You mortal fool.”
I didn’t have time for a snappy comeback; I sensed she wasn’t going to bother with conventional methods of trying to dismount me.
Yaroz didn’t have the patience for that. Not right now.
One hand went into my jacket, yanked out the glove. I slid it onto my left hand, crouching with my feet under me. In a dizzying moment, I slipped my knife from my boot with my other hand.
I had to be ready. It was coming. I knew it was coming.
“Tara,” Ferris yelled from the roof; he’d appeared at one side, waving both arms. “She’s going to—”
I felt it coming before it happened. Her whole body tensed, the scales pulling in against her hide. This was the moment.
In a wave, the scales slatted upward, clinking like coins from the base of her spine up toward me. If my feet remained where they were, they’d be sliced in two. Empty Hell, her scales were so large, she’d probably split me straight up to the waist with all the sharpness of a Japanese steak knife.
Not yet, I thought, listening. I set my gloved hand to the edge of a scale. Not yet.
Now.
Chapter 23
Just before the scale beneath my feet flipped up, I pressed all my weight into my gloved hand, threw my legs in the air. My gloved hand gripped the edge of the scale, and by some miracle—actually, Ferris’s genius—it didn’t pierce through the glove.
For a single, breathless moment I rose into a one-handed handstand above New Orleans, gripping the edge of a dragon matriarch’s scale.
And then, as gravity pulled me back down, I thrust down with my other hand, sending the edge of the dagger into the exposed hide.
Her reaction was instant.
The scales slotted back down at once, nearly clipping my thumb before I could slide it away. They tucked protectively against Yaroz’s back as she let out a screech.
Around her, her brood shrieked as though they shared in her pain. They swooped and circled in obvious confusion.
I spotted Percy amongst them, treading air at a distance. He was safe.
Come on, I thought, staring at the matriarch’s head. Land. You know you want to.
Her wings stopped moving, and she lowered toward the rooftop. She landed with thunder, and I leapt off her back the moment she did.
The rooftop raced toward me, and I met the cement in a somersault, driving all my energy out through the forward movement and coming up to my feet.
I spun, dropping the dagger and glove to yank Thelma and Louise from my belt.
What I hadn’t expected was for Yaroz to be staring straight at me. Her head had already jerked around, pinpointing me in an instant.
“You,” she bellowed. “The pest who thinks herself a dragon rider dares challenge Yaroz, Keeper of the Flame. I shall show you a slow death. You shall feel the fire before you finally perish.”
I threw myself sidelong the moment her mouth opened, superhot flame already broiling at the back of her throat.
She’d been lying about doing it slow. Those weren’t slow-burning flames.
They roared out of her mouth, an orange jet shooting straight at me—
And were met by Percy’s own fire.
I rolled over my shoulder, landed in a crouch to find Percy hovering in the air before the matriarch. Flames poured from his mouth with riotous anger, more fire than I knew he was capable of producing.
The two jets of fire rushed toward each other, and though Percy wasn’t big enough to fully rebuff Yaroz, he was able to deflect her fire off me long enough for me to escape.
Yaroz let off, her flames flaring into a puff of smoke. Her mouth closed, and Percy swooped around to land between me and her.
He stared up at the matriarch, all the scales rising along his body, his wings flared.
And his tail was curled. Percy had curled his tail against his own mother to defend me.
“You won’t hurt her,” he growled. “You’ll never touch her again.”
Chills ran up my arms, up my legs, converged at my spine. I had never heard Percy sound like that—so full of command, of confidence. He knew what he wanted, and he brooked no argument.
He wasn’t the same dragon I’d brought to New Orleans just a few weeks ago. Back then, we’d been struggling with the same trick for weeks. We’d been bickering. We’d been getting along only by intervals, which was a strange new place for us.
And now, everything had changed. We had changed.
I suppose that’s how childhood happens: slowly, and then all at once. One moment they’re crawling, and the next you’re riding on their back as they shoot fire at their biological mothers.
Or something like that.
From this moment on, I knew Percy and I had one another’s back. We might argue, we might disagree, but we were family.
Not born family, but made family.
Yaroz stared down at him a moment, as though evaluating his commitment to this line. When Percy didn’t move, she let out a low, rumbling laugh. “You will never be a true dragon.”
I gripped my whips harder. “Me and you, Perce, we can take this bitch down.”
“Don’t call my mom a bitch,” Percy said. “But you’re right, we’re gonna take her down.”
↔
How do you defeat a full-grown matriarch?
There’s only one way I know of—to start, you’ve got to keep her from using her talons, her wings and her fire. Tall order, but I had seven gnomish ninjas on my side.
Yaroz shrieked, and her four remaining progeny swooped down, raining fire over the roof in lines.
Percy swept a wing over me, shielding me from one of them. The second his wing lifted away, I spotted a gnome through the smoke.
“Ferris,” I yelled across the roof. “You all right?”
“Fine!” he called back, kneeling in one corner as he retracted the steel netting. “We’re on it.”
At other spots on the roof, a few of the other ninjas were doing the same. When I scanned to the far corner, I spied one of the machines still unmanned. “Perce, cover me!”
He took to the air, clashing with another dragon coming toward us as I fell into a run toward the far corner. Above me, the sounds of their talons scraping against each other’s scales was like nails on a chalkboard.
Meanwhile, the golden one flew at me, bottom talons extended like he would scoop me straight off the roof—or maybe eviscerate me from midair.
Either way, I wasn�
�t interested.
I skidded to a stop, timing his approach. He was the smallest of the dragons, about the same size Percy was a year ago, and if I was guessing his weight right, I could pull this off.
As he neared, I raised Louise, extended her tenterhooks and gave her an overhead swing. She wrapped around his bottom left leg and held. With a yell, I threw myself forward, yanking as hard as I could, all my weight—plus gravity’s pull—pulling on the dragon’s leg.
He gave a scream. When I glanced over my shoulder, I found him panicked and swinging off course. Before he could yank my arm off, I retracted Louise’s tenterhooks, and she dropped from his leg.
By then, Percy had noticed. He swept in, headbutting Goldie in the side and throwing him a dozen feet through the air. Percy flew after, not letting up.
That’s my boy.
In a flash, I came to a hard truth about my dragon.
He could see in the dark. You couldn't surprise him with sunlight because a thick, protective film covered his eyes. He could smell a dead deer from ten miles off. He’d gotten baby, toddler and adolescent teeth—pull one out and three came in harder and tougher than the last one. Even his ankles were spiked, designed to kill.
He was born to fight, not to be coddled and protected.
He wasn’t just my child—he was a hunter.
I glanced back at Yaroz. Her mouth had opened, and flames roared in the back of it. But she was still on the roof. If the matriarch took to the air again, we were in a bad spot. We had to keep her grounded.
Fortunately, she was really, really mad at me.
With a great bellow, she shot out her plume of fire in my direction. It roared through the air in my wake, and I had to throw myself the last few feet to reach the machine.
I slid over the cement, bumped into the raised edge of the roof. Smoke obscured my vision of the matriarch, but I could see Ferris ahead of me, preparing his netting.
I dropped my whips and slid up to the gnomish invention in front of me, a square black box with a chute at one end. Ferris had shown me briefly how to man this—“It’s simple; just aim and pull the lever”—but simple in the back of a van and simple on a rooftop with a full-grown, pissed-off dragon are different things entirely.
I turned the box toward Yaroz. As I did, one of the other ninjas shot off their own steel netting at her.
It flew through the air toward her, but she yanked it down with one foot before it could enclose her.
“Dordri,” Ferris called. “Now!”
He shot off his own netting from the side. At nearly the same moment, Zanfiz’s netting flew through the air from the opposite side.
The two sets of steel webbing caught her on each side before her wings could extend. They cocooned her like a bird as the magnetic edges on the webbing drew together.
Only her head remained free. And on a dragon, that was the most dangerous part of all.
Fire erupted from her head, which swung left and right, spraying across the rooftop indiscriminately. Percy, who’d swooped down in front of me with wings extended, was the only thing that saved me from that fury.
On and on she went, roaring with flame, dousing everything in front of her. I could only hope the ninjas had managed to do their ninja things before they’d been sprayed.
When she burned herself out, the screaming paused, smoke so thick in the air I had to cover my face with the sleeve of my jacket. “Perce?” I coughed.
“I’m here.” His blue head appeared amidst the smoke. “She’s angry. Angrier than I’ve ever seen her. She’ll call for her other children to attack us, too.”
“No kidding.” I needed a good view of her if I was going to deploy this webbing. “Perce, can you clear the air? I need a clear shot.”
Just as I said it, Yaroz’s yell pierced the the sky, and all four of her children responded to it at once with cries of their own.
Percy turned back to me, raising his wings to blow the smoke away. “You don’t have much time. She’s calling them to free her.”
“Not if I can help it.” As the smoke cleared and Yaroz came into view, I aimed the chute for her head.
I’d shot things before. I had great aim, perfect vision.
But never had shooting something been so consequential.
A memory floated to my mind as I closed one eye, my hand going to the lever at the side of Ferris’s machine. “Don’t miss,” my little sister used to tease from my side as I held a throwing knife, poised to toss at a target. She was like that—competitive, mischievous. And when she watched me, I never missed.
She was my sister. She’d always looked up to me.
I hadn’t thought about that in years. But with Percy’s eyes on me, I felt it again. I couldn’t miss. Not in front of him.
“Hey, Yaroz!” I yelled in my loudest show woman’s voice.
When she looked in my direction—because who wouldn’t?—I pulled the lever.
Chapter 24
The webbing shot out toward her, spreading in a perfect arc. It swept over her head, clamping tight as the magnets found the edges of the nets covering her back.
“Ninjas,” I called out. “Finish it.”
One by one, the ninjas activated the steel wires at their belts, shooting them overtop the matriarch’s long neck. The spikes at the end of their wires embedded themselves in the rooftop, each one adding to the hold.
Yaroz shrieked, thrashing her head as the wires tightened. The ninjas were pinning her down with Ferris’s “unbreakable” steel netting.
Above us, her children went wild. They flew erratically—until she shrieked again. Then, they all swept around toward me.
“Tara,” Percy said, “she’s sending her children on you. I can’t protect you from all of them while you’re not on my back.”
He didn’t need to tell me twice. If the young dragons were focused on us, that meant the ninjas weren’t in danger. They would be free to deal with Yaroz.
I stood, fell into a run toward Percy in the same motion. I leapt onto his back from behind, grabbed his spine.
As soon as I had, he pushed backward, wings already flapping. He barely dodged the green dragon’s fire, which shot in a line right where he’d been standing.
Percy spun, flew us up and away from the rooftop.
When I glanced over my shoulder, all four dragons were in pursuit—and gaining on us.
“Perce,” I said over the wind, “my weight is slowing you down.”
“I’m not dropping you, Tara.”
“Box of frogs, I sure hope not.” Then, “Guess what they don’t have on us?”
He knew.
A moment later, he cleaved downward, taking us amongst the buildings in the French Quarter. We flew straight down a street while Goldie pursued close enough to nip at Percy’s tail.
Just as we reached the end of a block, Percy’s head lifted and he jerked upward, spun through a sidelong barrel roll and took us down the cross-street.
When I looked back, Goldie had stopped hard to make the turn. Greenie had crashed right into him, the two of them screeching.
Red and Ebony made wide arcs around them and kept on our tail. They quickly closed the distance between us and them.
“Two of them still hot on us, Perce.” I pointed straight ahead. “See the alley?”
“Yeah, ages ago.” He swooped down at the last second, angling his body to a diagonal to coast through the narrow alley. I had to lean all my weight to one side, gritting through with my head low to his neck.
Behind us, I heard a thundering crash. When Percy had corrected and flown up out of the alley, I spotted Red grounded, dust and bricks all around him.
Ebony hadn’t taken the bait; he’d kept above the alley and was still on our behinds.
“Just one left,” I said. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“You think we can pull it off twice in one day?”
“I’m game if you are.”
He picked up speed. “Hold on.”
We shot through the sky, Ebony closing in as we passed over the Mississippi. If I didn’t hold on, I’d end up in the dunk—that is, after I broke every bone in my body crashing into the river.
When Percy’s wings went straight out, his head rising, I clung hard to his back. Hands around his spine, thighs pressed tight, feet hooked along the scales at his sides.
He rose straight up, shooting feet-over-head in a perfect arc in front of the moon, so fast I hardly felt the moment of weightlessness before we were right side up again. And now we were behind Ebony.
Before the other dragon could react, Percy surged forward with a stretched neck, bit down on the dragon’s tail. Percy clamped his wings tight to his own body and sent us into a dive-bomb toward the river, Ebony shrieking and clawing ineffectually the whole way.
Just before we hit the water, Percy’s wings went out, and he jerked his head around, slapping the other dragon into the water with a tidal wave of force.
We hovered above the water as Ebony was caught in the current, began struggling his way toward the bank.
“I think I threw him too hard,” Percy said as we watched.
I patted his back. “Nah, he’s a dragon. That probably felt like a hard spank.”
“What if he can’t make it to the shore?”
I pointed as Ebony managed to paddle his wings over to the far bank. “There he goes. He’ll just be flightless for a little while, like a newly hatched butterfly.”
Sirens whirred up in the distance. The police had finally caught on, which meant we only had so much time left.
From the city, Yaroz let out another shriek.
Now on the shore, Ebony raised his head, cried back to her. Started trying to fly, without any real success.
When I looked in Yaroz’s direction, I spotted the other three young dragons making their way toward their mother on the rooftop.
Percy let out a long breath. “She’s still calling for them to free her.”
“We’d better help out Ferris and the crew, huh? If she gets free …”
“It’s over, Tara.” Percy began carrying us toward the rooftop. “She wasn’t asking them to free her as a rallying call. She asked them to save her—to help her escape.”
