Scales and Flames

by Catherine Banks

  But maybe all of it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe she had angered the Skymother by walking away from a sacred duty. Maybe this was her punishment.

  There was still no sign of them, no scent breaking through the mire of exhaust and garbage that pervaded the air. The last she’d detected, they were moving south, out of town.

  Ikran’s voice broke through her concentration. “I’ve got a recent ping on her phone,” he said. “They’re going south.”

  The validation sent a warm thrill into her belly. Perhaps she wasn’t cursed. She sank into the seat and nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Four

  The bumpy motion of the truck finally stopped. Its rumbling engine quieted, followed by the metallic clank of keys against the dashboard.

  Footsteps scraped near her, sending a jolt of adrenaline through her body. Be calm, Allana told herself. What would Dad do?

  Rough hands grabbed her arms and hauled her upright, lifting her clear off the ground. A hinge whined as the back door of the truck was opened. They pushed her forward into a wall of dry heat. Sunlight pierced the tiny holes in the weave of the fabric. She took a deep breath. Even with the thick fabric covering her face, she could smell the dry bite of the desert. Her skin instantly heated as the afternoon sun beat down on her shoulders. It was quiet. No road noise. They were probably way outside of town.

  Putting the clues together made her feel smart for all of three seconds, until her captors dragged her forward. Knowledge was useless if she was still tied up.

  “Get down!” Will bellowed.

  Instinctively, Allana pitched forward, falling to her knees as they tried to catch her arms. There was a whipcrack of thunder, and a deafening crash of something breaking.

  “Son of a bitch,” the female voice muttered. Somewhere ahead of her, her father shouted in rage, and there was a scuffle of feet against gritty desert floor. “Dose him again. Do you need my help, or can you manage a simple task?”

  “He’s fuckin’ huge,” a male voice retorted. “Apparently he needs more than you told us.”

  Was that her signal? No. Dad said he would tell her. He didn’t say go. But what if…

  It was too late. They dragged her along, forcing her to walk or be carried outright. Maybe it was stupid, but walking on her own made her feel like she still had a shred of control.

  The baking heat on her bare shoulders ceased, and the cooler air and echoing of her own footsteps told her she’d gone inside. Someone pushed her into a hard metal chair, then yanked the bag off her face. She yelped in surprise as the clean-shaven man who’d appeared at her window and blown her away from her escape route leaned in close. He was so close she could smell the mint on his breath.

  “Let me be real clear. You try anything, and…” He leaned away and made a fist, then raised it slowly. As if she was on strings, Allana lifted from the ground, still in the chair. She yelped in surprise as the chair rose up fifteen feet. Looking over the edge made the chair tilt precariously. Her stomach lurched as the chair bobbled under her, straightening up with a flick of his hand.

  “Alec…” a mild female voice said. It was the same woman who had hurt her father. She’d pulled her long red hair back into a ponytail, sweeping it away from sharp features. Her eyebrow peaked as she looked up at Allana.

  Up high, Allana had a good view of the open warehouse around her. Sunlight poured in through high windows, beams crossing over the dusty floor. Her gaze flitted about. All of the windows were intact, and they were made of small panes with solid frames within.

  A sliding metal door was raised at one end of the warehouse, with people carrying in bags and cases from outside. Just a few feet from the door was a massive hole with jagged edges. The charred black lines radiating from it told her it was Dad’s handiwork.

  “Put her down,” the woman said. She was in the middle of the room, where two men were wrestling her father onto a strange stone table. It was out of place in the otherwise empty room. Two men in black clothes wrestled her father flat on his back while a third hurried to wrap thick silver chains over his limbs. Dad fought against them, but in his drugged state, the two men managed to keep him pinned down. Another woman hurried toward him with a syringe.

  “No,” she murmured as the woman poked the glinting needle into her father’s neck. Suddenly, gravity seemed to take hold again, and the chair plummeted. She screamed involuntarily, and her father lurched forward, breaking through one of the chains that hadn’t been secured. The two men swore as the chain clattered to the ground.

  The chair stopped, bouncing like it had sunk into a springy cushion. Alec held his fist up, then slowly lowered it. As he did, the chair settled on the ground. “Stay put, or I don’t break the fall next time. Got it?”

  She set her jaw. She wanted to fight back, not sit here like a meek little prisoner. What would Dad do? He’d told her exactly what to do. Wait for the signal. Change. Fly away. He’d even made her an exit. It wouldn’t be big enough for a full-blooded dragon, but it was plenty big for her. And if she messed it up by pissing these guys off, she’d get tied down and wouldn’t be able to get away. You don’t always have to get the last word, Dad used to tell her when she argued with her mother. Winning and being right aren’t always the same thing.

  “I got it,” she said as softly as she could, hoping she sounded obedient.

  Alec moved behind her, large hands resting lightly on her shoulders. “Your dad is a bad man,” he murmured. “Did you know that?”

  “He’s not,” she replied.

  Alec’s fingers tightened on her shoulders. “Oh, the stories we could tell you.”

  “I don’t want to hear them,” she said, turning to scowl at him.

  “Leave her alone.” The woman stepped toward Dad and leaned over him. His chest rose rapidly, but he’d quit fighting so much. There was a quiet clanking as he shifted within the bonds, but he was only managing to move them back and forth, not escape. “I’m not one for theatrics, Mr. Macias,” she said. “I don’t want to play games with you. I want to know where the map is.”

  “What map?”

  She nodded, and one of the men flanking her put his hand on Dad’s chest. White sparks danced between his fingers. Dad arched up painfully and groaned. The inflection in her voice didn’t change. “Where is the map?”

  “I don’t know about a map,” he replied, voice strained.

  The woman nodded again, and her partner shocked Dad again. A clipped shout escaped his throat this time. “Where is the map? I can do this all day. You can’t. Your heart can’t handle it.”

  “I don’t know about a map,” he said again.

  The woman sighed. With silent calm, she extended her right hand. Like before, a thick pillar of ice appeared in her hand, like a sharpened stake. Its razor-sharp point glinted in the sunlight. She pushed it down slowly toward her father’s chest until the point was resting just in the hollow of his shoulder. “The map?”

  “I don’t—" His words trailed into an awful groan, filled with pain even as it was muffled behind his clenched jaws.

  The woman leaned in, slowly pushing the thick blade into him. “Now?” Her father growled. The woman gave the blade a sharp twist. “How about now?”

  “I told you the Silent Tempest wouldn’t crack easily,” Alec said.

  Silent Tempest? What the hell? Allana frowned at him, but he was watching them work on her father with a creepy, soft smile on his expression.

  Anguish turned her insides to hot lava. Why were they hurting Dad? Her parents were quiet about the past. She knew Dad was in the human military, in a special unit that had a number of people like him, who were part dragon and had power that went with it. Now he mostly did training.

  Despite looking no older than forty, Mom was over two hundred years old, which led to a lot of gross jokes about cradle-robbing that made Allana want to crawl into a hole and die. Her parents thought they were subtle, but she’d picked up on enough of their vague hints and strange glances to know that ther
e were things in the past—maybe not-so-nice things—they preferred to keep secret. But those things had to be bad for someone to do this to her father. And that just didn’t make sense.

  When the woman drove a third blade low into his stomach, Allana shouted. She couldn’t take it anymore. She wasn’t going to sit here and watch him die. “Tell them where it is!” she wailed.

  His breathing was ragged, but he didn’t speak.

  “You know how this works,” the woman said. “Your kind have perfected this. I don’t want to hurt her, but I will. I’ve barely touched you. How will she fare when I start slicing into her?”

  Her father gasped. “I’ll tell you,” he said weakly, his voice barely a whisper. The woman leaned over, still resting her hand on the blade buried in his stomach. Suddenly, she shouted in pain and lurched backward with one hand pressed to her face. Her father’s voice rang out, clear and commanding. “Go!”

  Allana lurched out of the chair, transforming as she ran. From the moment she’d started to change two years ago, Mom would drive her out to the desert at least once a week and make her do it until she was pouring sweat and starving. She’d complained endlessly then, but right now she would give anything to thank Mom.

  She only ran four steps on human feet before the change broke down her spine, rippling through her like an explosion. The tiny spark in her chest erupted, sending a blooming firework of pain through her as her body reshaped itself. She wriggled through it, still moving, and the plastic zip tie fell from her wrists. The tank top she’d worn stretched, then split as her wings broke through. She staggered slightly as her head elongated, compressing her brain for a split second and blotting out her senses.

  Then all was crystal clear, and the world took on a new depth as previously undetected scents and sights came to her. The sharp smell of blood filled the air. Her father’s blood. For a split second, she wanted to go back for him. But she had her orders. Go. Fly. She couldn’t fight them off, but she could go find Mom.

  She lifted from the ground and shot toward the jagged hole in the wall, beating her small wings to carry her through and into freedom on the other side. Behind her, voices shouted and clamored to action. She had to move as fast as she could.

  Speed and a good head start were her only advantages. Mama had sat her down to explain that Dad being partially human meant Allana was also partially human. With a full-blooded Kadirai mother, Allana had inherited the ability to change into a small dragon form, about the size of a German shepherd with an eight-foot wingspan. She didn’t have Dad’s elemental power, nor the psychic ability that Mama had. But this was something.

  With the wind under her wings and her heart racing so fast it was just a hum instead of a distinct beat, Allana flew like she’d never flown. The sharp skyline rose from the organic expanse of the desert, and she barreled for it, thinking find Mama find Mama over and over.

  A terrible roar broke through the mantra in her mind, and she dared to look back. Gaining on her, with wings that blotted out the sun, was an enormous gray dragon. It didn’t seem to care about being seen.

  Fear lanced through her, awakening a primal instinct and a reserve of strength she didn’t know she had. Her wings burned with exertion as they drove her away from that terrible sound. The desert was flat and open, giving her no cover. She’d get into the city, drop and change, then find somewhere to hide. Unless they wanted to risk getting seen, they’d have to change, too, giving her a chance to call Mama somehow.

  She stole another look over her shoulder, and the dragon was gone from sight. What the…

  Sharp claws scraped across her back, clacking against the layered scales. She let out a tiny roar, tumbling end over end to get away from it. The dragon had disappeared, but she could see the shimmering outline of it up close, like a mirage. She dove to get away, but a heavy tail slammed into her. The impact of it jarred her bones. Her right wing snapped, folding in tight to her side. It wouldn’t respond when she tried to extend it. In a haze of pain and terror, she plummeted, with the ground rushing up to meet her.

  A male voice bellowed, “Don’t kill her!” She screamed instinctively as the rocks rushed toward her, but a few feet before the ground, she plunged into an invisible cushion, like a feather mattress of the air. The impact was still enough to knock the wind out of her, but no worse.

  The mirage-like shimmer evaporated, revealing the gray dragon looming over her. Alec slid from its back and approached. She tried to wriggle away from him, but the cushion of air turned into a cage with a flick of his hand, a shimmering dome over her that penned her in. “Now this is very interesting,” he said. “This changes everything. Let’s get you back to Vienna and see what she wants to do with you now.”

  Five

  “So, have you been here long?” Ikran asked. The traffic on the interstate had slowed to a crawl. An endless stream of red brake lights stretched ahead of them.

  “I should just get out and fly,” she muttered.

  His amber eyes widened. “Please, Ma’am, don’t.”

  “Yes, I’ve been here a while,” she said, still watching out the window. She craned her neck, trying to see how far the snarled traffic went, as if pinpointing the source would magically move them past it.

  “What’s it like there?”

  “You’ve never been home?”

  “This is home for me,” Ikran said. “I was born here, as were my parents. Third generation.”

  “It’s…different,” she said.

  “I can imagine. My parents said they prefer it here. Things are more civilized.”

  Her heart thumped as a warm ember of anger ignited in her belly. “Civilized? Have they ever been?”

  “A few times.”

  “It’s just different,” she said. “Our people are prone to war. They want power, and they will fight each other for it. But our people also don’t allow each other to starve. Our kind are not left to beg on the street for food. Big families live together, many generations in one home. We are close in a way that people here are not.” She shook her head and repeated, “It’s different. Not better or worse.”

  “I’m sorry. I keep sticking my foot in my mouth,” he said. His brow furrowed, and she didn’t need supernatural senses to detect the tension between them.

  “You know what is better here? Peanut butter,” she said, trying to ease the discomfort.

  “Huh?”

  “Peanut butter,” she repeated. “There is nothing even close to peanuts in Ascavar. And therefore, no peanut butter. The first time I tried it here, I ate the entire jar with a spoon. I had the stomachache of a lifetime, but it was worth it. If I ever go back, I would take a truckload of peanut butter and corner the market.”

  He laughed. “I’ll remember that.”

  She sighed. Sometimes she missed the simplicity of life in Ascavar. Her entire lifetime until she came here had been filled with war and strife. First, her people were at war with a neighboring dragon clan, battling over some scrap of land for a decade. Then began the Great War, and the large dragonflights and the smaller clans were all united against a common enemy. It was not lost on her that she fought alongside some of the same dragons who had been the sworn enemy of her clan five years earlier.

  It wasn’t easy then. It was a time of blood and heartbreak and devastation. Every day was a struggle. But things were simple and clear. Goals were straightforward. There were battles to be won, enemies to be defeated. Now, things were complicated. What was her purpose? She’d found new joy in life through her family, but even that was a challenge to navigate.

  Though she wished it were a dream she would wake from, this situation was the most straightforward thing she’d dealt with in years. Every cell in her body, every thought in her head was focused on finding Allana and Will.

  “Hey, finally moving,” he said. “Our exit is a little farther down.”

  A few minutes later, they found the source of the slow-moving traffic. Two banged-up cars sat in the left lane, flanked on eit
her end by police cars with their flashers on. Both cars were empty, with three civilians talking to the police officers, so it didn’t seem serious. One of the cars was turned, with its rear end scraping the concrete barrier and its nose turned into the next lane, forcing the middle lane to merge over for just a few feet to get past it.

  A hundred yards past the fender-bender, the traffic resumed its normal quick speed. Relief washed over her as Ikran accelerated. The engine rumbled through the car, and it felt like they finally had some momentum toward finding her family.

  A few minutes later, Ikran pulled off at the right-hand exit. As he was slowing to take a left turn, his phone rang. She followed his gaze down to the screen, catching the text just before he flipped it over. V. Tamar was calling. She didn’t recognize the name. “Let me pull off up here and see if there’s an update on Allana’s location,” he said. “I’ve got to use the restroom anyway if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure,” she said. He didn’t seem terribly urgent, which she didn’t care for. Maybe he really needed to go to the bathroom, but why wouldn’t he answer the phone in the car? Maybe she was being a hyper-sensitive paranoiac.

  Maybe not.

  Just past the exit ramp, Ikran pulled into a large truck stop advertising clean showers, hot pizza, and lotto tickets. She watched him saunter across the parking lot and into the store.

  Once he was inside, Dyadra slipped out. After glancing around, she called on the wind, cloaking herself in the concealing breeze. She’d been nicknamed the Silent Tempest for good reason. Her element was air, which she’d learned to use for stealth. Even as a massive dragon, she could move virtually undetected. It was child’s play to hide herself in plain sight in a tiny human form.