by Alan Marble
It was something of a confirmation for him, and he could not help but to sigh. “Just a couple of questions. About the training.”
“Okay,” she nodded, seeming to relax slightly. “Shoot.”
He felt a little deflated, suddenly a little disinterested in asking anything at all, but there were one or two things he had been wondering about since they began. “Well, first of all, what are we doing here? I’d have thought that we’d be off somewhere a little more secluded and hidden. Middle of nowhere in Alaska, or something.”
“Why’s that?”
“I realize that we’ve got some privacy here and the lake is big, but it’s also busy. I see boats out there all the time, there’s a lot of people around.” He paused to squint out at the lake, certain he could make out boats at that very moment. “Isn’t it a little risky to be flying out over the lake all the time?”
For some reason she chuckled a little at the question. “Maybe a little, but … well that’s actually kind of tricky. Something about the way the human mind works. If someone does happen to see us from a distance, their brains will pick the first thing that makes sense. Birds, kites, maybe even airplanes. People don’t believe in dragons so they’re not likely to see us for what we are. Probably for the best.”
“What if someone wandered too close? It’d be pretty obvious then.”
“You’ll probably have to ask Carolus about that,” she shrugged. “Some kind of magic ward or something he’s placed over the area. Does something to their perception, or their memories. I’ll be honest, it really kind of goes over my head, some of the things that the older dragons are capable of.”
His next question was something of a natural segue to her response, but he regretted asking it as soon as it left his mouth. “How old are you, anyway?”
He had been rebuked the last time he had asked the question, and he expected much of the same. She had already shifted her gaze back over the lake. While she visibly stiffened at his question she did not turn to look at him, not betraying her true reaction, though when she spoke up again her voice was noticeably darker. “Isn’t that a kind of personal question?”
“I’m sorry,” he muttered.
Again she shrugged. “I’m sixty four, if you must know.”
He tried to mollify her with a friendly suggestion. “Well, that’s pretty young for a dragon then, isn’t it?”
“Not nearly as young as you, whelp,” Rebekah responded, but there was at least a little hint of a playful jab in her response.
It did ease him, if only slightly. “Well, anyway, that wasn’t one of the questions I wanted to ask. There’s another thing I’ve been wondering, something that’s been bothering me quite a bit.”
“What’s that?”
“Where do our clothes go when we, well, turn into dragons? And how come I still have them on when I change back?”
That question, at least, seemed to lighten her own mood quite a bit as she let loose a soft laugh. “You know, that’s a good question.”
Jonah peered curiously in her direction. “You don’t know, then?”
“Not really. Well, sort of.” She laughed again, shaking her head, though she kept her gaze fixed at some point over the lake. “Problem is no one really knows how we take on different forms. We just do it. It’s kind of like how we don’t really understand the inner workings of the brain, we just know it works, you know? I guess no one has ever thought to question the clothes thing, or if they did, they haven’t told me. Maybe you can ask Abe or Carolus.”
If nothing else, she seemed to be feeling a little more at ease. Something about her laugh was disarming, and certainly put him at ease, enough for him to broach the more sensitive question that he had in mind. “Why are you here?”
She turned to look at him again, her brow furrowing a little. “What do you mean?”
“Here, out here, training with me. Why?”
The little way her brow furrowed deepened into something of a more outright scowl before she turned to look away once more. “Carolus asked me to do it. Closer to your age, closer to your size, and I suppose he figured that spending a few days with you on the road meant that I’d gotten to know you, or something.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Jonah said, a little more directly. “I mean, why did you go along with it? You told me yourself that you could say no. That no one gives orders, right? So tell me why.”
“Jonah.” Her voice was quiet and soft but held a certain edge to it. “Don’t.”
He was undeterred. “I just want to know …”
Again Rebekah spoke up, quietly but with a bit more of an edge to her voice. “I mean it, Jonah. Please don’t do this. Not again.”
For a moment he hesitated. She had warmed up to him a little in the last few days, had started smiling and laughing again as if she had forgotten what had happened - or at least forgiven him for it. It might be better if he’d just leave it alone, but he couldn’t help himself. “Please, I just want to know why, I mean, I have to know …”
“Really?” Her bright green eyes seemed to burn little holes right through him as she stared, her voice snapping, the look on her face trending dangerously close to rage. “Fine. If you really have to know, it’s because I just can’t tell Carolus no. Don’t you understand anything about loyalty and commitment? I would do anything, anything for the good of the clan. Anything, you get it? Even put up with your sorry ass,” she spat, stomping away in an angry huff.
Jonah felt his heart sink, and he really didn’t know why. Why he was so attracted to her, why he had such a need to try and get back on her good graces - and why he was so terrible at it. A part of him longed to call after her, or even chase her down before she vanished from sight, but for the moment he felt too miserable to do anything other than watch her head back inside the house.
“What the hell am I even thinking,” he muttered to himself, sprawling out on the deck, closing his eyes and simply letting himself go limp. It had been a week now since he had been dragged out of his comfortable, boring life, and for what? To learn he was a dragon, to somehow fall for a woman he barely knew, and to screw it up not once but twice. Now, he was on the verge of being sent off on some insane mission that, even after the four days of training, he knew nothing substantial about.
None of it made any sense at all. A part of him longed to wake up suddenly, finding it had all been a long and twisted dream. “Hell,” he thought out loud, rolling to his back so that he could regard the stars winking into existence overhead as the day gave way to night. “I’d be better off if it were all some kind of mental episode. If I’m lucky I’ll wake up in the loony bin.”
He knew it wasn’t the case, he knew that was not going to happen. He would wake up in the morning and have Carolus or Abe or someone else drag him out of his comfortable rest and into some new flavor of insanity, as if all that had preceded it were not enough.
There was no one to hear his complaints, no one to console him now. He wondered if anyone back home in Florida, his coworkers or one of his few friends, had bothered to notice he was missing. He wondered if the police were looking for him, now convinced that he was guilty of the murder of Sam. He wondered if any of it made any difference, at all.
The stars overhead went on twinkling, of course, oblivious to his plight. As the night deepened and the air took on a sharp chill, more and more of them winked into existence out of the darkness. Before long he could make out the wispy swath of the Milky Way cutting across the black curtain of the sky, the rapid flit of satellites as they zipped their way around the planet, and more stars than he could count in a lifetime.
It all went on, spinning and moving and unchanging. No matter how bad his life got, the world still turned as it always had and always would. Billions of other people with their billions of problems knew nothing of his own, and they, too, went along their way. The thought had a way of chilling him to the core as he stared out into the vastness of space; Jonah could not be sure whether it was
comforting or damning.
“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”
He hadn’t heard anyone approach, so when he heard Carolus’ scratchy voice at his side he nearly jumped. At some point he had slipped back into his more comfortable form, without even realizing it, and he pushed himself up to his feet rather abruptly. “Yes, they are,” he muttered a little weakly. “Never seen anything like it.”
“We’re a ways away from the city here, so less light to drown them out. I do enjoy coming out here and just gazing at them as they float overhead, move on by, gazing into the vastness of space. Has a way of making one feel small, yet somehow important,” the old man mused, his hands stuffed into the pockets of a coat that he was wearing. “The air is thinner here, too, so there’s less of it to get in the way of the light.”
Jonah didn’t really know what Carolus wanted, or if the old man wanted anything at all, but something about his presence made him feel slightly uncomfortable. “I’m not in the way, am I?”
The old man turned to look at him, his watery blue eyes indistinct in the darkness, though a crooked smile could be made out on his face. “In the way? No, not at all. So long as you don’t mind an old dragon reminiscing on the days when the skies were this dark just about anywhere you went on the planet. When we didn’t understand things like the thickness of the atmosphere, when there were no satellites infringing on the stars.”
“Mind if I ask you how old you are?”
“Not at all,” Carolus said, still smiling crookedly. “912 years old. Born in the great city of Constantinople. The Crusaders had just captured Jerusalem and were crawling all over the empire at the time, the Syndicate along with them. It was a dangerous time and a dangerous place for a dragon.”
Inwardly Jonah wondered why the old man had apparently decided it would be good to come and divulge all of this information to him, and again it made him feel slightly uncomfortable. He didn’t know how to respond; he half wanted to retreated back to his quarters for the night, but felt compelled to remain. “Sounds like the Syndicate has been after you your whole life.”
The old man laughed softly at that, hugging his arms around himself. “More true than you know, boy. To be sure, many of the clan can make the same claim, but after nearly a thousand years of moving, staying one step ahead of the Crusaders or the Inquisition or some other handy guise for the Syndicate to root us out … it’s easy to get a little worn down.”
“I don’t think you came out here to talk about ancient history,” Jonah muttered, shrugging his shoulders.
“Ah, you’ve a point there my boy. No, it is not the reason I came out here to speak to you, but there is something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about,” he said, stepping a little closer, a bit too close for comfort. “Regarding your comments at the Convocation.”
Jonah flinched backward involuntarily, shuffling. “Look, I’m sorry if I ruffled a few feathers … I guess I just don’t really know the situation, don’t really know what I am talking about.”
Carolus waved a hand and shook his head. “Nonsense. You are new to the clan, new to the council, and you bring a fresh viewpoint that many of us would not have considered. You may have ruffled a few feathers, as you put it, but you also brought up a valid point. I must confess that your suggestion does speak to a certain part of my soul, Jonah.”
“But it was like the complete opposite of your own suggestion,” he said, still muttering a little.
“And so it is. I stand by my belief that our first and foremost priority should be the rescue of our elder. Whatever else happens, we cannot leave him at the mercy of the Syndicate, and we cannot sit and wait for them to make the first move.
“That said,” the old man continued, shifting on his feet a bit, “some of us are indeed growing weary of the long and endless battle. As you pointed out the Syndicate has been nipping at my heels for the better part of a millennium. It has a way of wearing down one’s resolve. Your suggestion speaks to that part of my soul, the part that desires rest, the part that desires peace.”
Once again Jonah shrugged. “Yeah. I can see why it would.”
Carolus seemed to be moving in a way to make sure Jonah did not get too far away, making him feel a little trapped in spite of the friendly look on the old man’s face. “As I am sure you could guess, I am not the only one with such feelings. Ibrahim does not desire a confrontation. There are others too, no doubt, and whether or not they are a part of the council does not mean their voices should not be heard. In a way, your voice at Convocation is their voice, Jonah.”
Cringing, Jonah shied away from the old man, turning his gaze outward toward the lake, a dark expanse beneath the night sky. “Yeah, sure. I’m not sure what you mean, though. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
“Well, then, allow me to get straight to my point. A time may come in the future when we are faced with a decision that may not appeal to the others, a time when we may have to choose between peace as you have suggested and continuing to fight in vain.” The old man stepped closer, close enough that he could almost feel him looming behind him, setting his nerves on edge. “I need to know where you stand, should the issue come up again.”
“I’m sorry,” Jonah sputtered. “I’m not really sure I follow you … I’m not really into all of this political stuff.”
“Please forgive me if I’m giving you the wrong impression,” Carolus offered, taking a step back to give him a bit more breathing space. “I am not seeking to sway you in one way or another, Jonah. I simply desire to know, that when the time comes to make a decision, will your voice still be one seeking to make peace with the Syndicate?”
The space that he had been offered helped, but he was beginning to feel genuinely uncomfortable around the old man. He could not help but feel that he was still being manipulated, in a way, especially weird since he was essentially being asked if he would support his own suggestion again in the future. “Yeah, I suppose I would.”
The old man nodded, seeming to shrink back further. “You must understand that to do so would mean to accept the rule of the Syndicate over us. It is the only way we could sue for peace, the only way they would accept our offer. You truly see this as a better way? That to accept their rule and ‘work for them’, as you put it, is better than our fight?”
“Look. I’m not really qualified to answer. I don’t know much about you or them or your fight,” he responded, a little sharply. He felt as if the question were some kind of trap, as if he were being tricked into providing an answer, as if the wrong answer might make things somehow … difficult for him. “To be totally honest, I’m not sure I really care. Maybe someday I will, but for now it’s still all kind of strange and confusing to me. But I’ll just put it the way I put it before. It sounds better than dying, to me.”
Carolus only responded with a slow nod, not making a sound for several long seconds. Wrapping his arms around himself, he offered another crooked smile. “I believe I agree with that sentiment, Jonah. Perhaps in time we shall indeed be able to find a way to make peace with the Syndicate. To work with them, as you have suggested.”
The old man seemed quite sincere in that sentiment, and Jonah could sense no guile in his reaction, but somehow he was still a bit put off by the whole encounter, and eager for it to end. “Yeah. Sounds good.”
“I fear that time is not now, however. The decision to rescue our elder has been made, and it is one that I hope I can count on you to support, as well. Please, Jonah, I urge you to get some rest. We will be meeting tomorrow, at daybreak.” With that, the old man turned to head back into the house, calling out behind him. “Goodnight.”
He watched as the old man crossed the deck and made his way back into the house, the sound of the door latching shut behind him sharp in the clear night air. Jonah breathed a soft sigh of relief when he was alone. He couldn’t decide why Carolus made him feel on edge like that; for the past few days the old man had been watching over him, albeit in dragon form, and had never se
emed anything other than benign.
No, Jonah could not decide why the encounter made him feel so awkward and unsettled. His skin prickled as a chill ran down his spine, but it was not from the cold. Hugging his arms around himself, he waited for several minutes to pass before following suit, making his way into the mansion and toward his quarters for the night.
#
The meeting the next morning had been called with little fanfare and conducted in a straightforward manner. Jonah had been roused just before sunrise by Abe, allowed a few moments to get dressed and freshen himself up before he was escorted back into the same room they had met in previously. In addition to those who had been present at the Convocation there were four others seated around the table, dragons not on the council who had presumably been drafted into the effort.
Carolus briefly explained that, according to the intelligence that he had gathered, their elder was being held in a small Syndicate compound a few hundred miles to the south, tucked away among the mountains that straddled the California-Nevada border. The security there would be relatively light, the Syndicate relying more on the facility’s remoteness and obscurity to guard their prisoner.
Still, as there was only a single road leading to it, they would have to make an aerial assault to avoid detection and ensure the elder’s safety; it would have to be a night raid. The dragons would be transported by van to a secure site fifteen miles away and cover the rest of the trip on wing and under the cover of darkness.
The actual plan when they arrived was relatively simple. The guards outside of the compound would have to be dealt with swiftly, in a coordinated manner to ensure that the alarm was not sounded. This task was to fall to a team composed of the older, larger dragons while the rest held back. When signaled, the others would come in and enter the compound in three teams at three known access points.
Somehow Carolus or his operatives had delivered a sketch of the interior of the compound, indicating a few potential locations where the elder was being held. The three teams would sweep through each spot and regroup at a predetermined location, whichever group having encountered the elder would take him there. One group was to be led by Carolus himself, another by Abe, and the last by the Jenna, the woman who continued to scowl at him.
