by Sarah Noffke
“Strange things?”
“I didn’t see them,” Trin Currante answered. “I had a scientist working for me who had been with him. His name was Alexander Drake.” She shook her head. “He got away, but before he did, he sort of helped me. Anyway, he told me Mika Lenna had made himself into a super-werewolf or something.”
“What?” Sophia knew from discussing Liv’s cases with her that werewolves were real, but they were specifically made and not the common lore from fantasy books. “How could he make himself into a werewolf?”
“The same way he does with any of his projects,” Trin Currante explained. “He genetically alters things. The man, or whatever he’d be considered, isn’t satisfied with the way any of us have been made. He recreates everything. Men into werewolves. Men into cyborgs. Animals into robots. It’s all a game to him.”
“But why?” Sophia asked, her heart aching.
Trin Currante stopped pacing and gave her a look that bordered on regret. “I truly don’t know the answer to that.”
“So, he took you,” Evan cut in. “He made you into this?”
Trin nodded. “Yes, against our will.”
Suddenly it dawned on Sophia. “He’s back! He’s the one abducting magicians, isn’t he?”
Trin’s nostrils flared when she breathed. “I’m almost certain of it. They’d have to be young. That’s a requirement. They’d have to be magicians. Another requirement. Who knows what else he’s added to the list? With each new version, he tries something different. Make his subjects better, in his opinion, anyway.”
Sophia glanced around the room, wanting to ask her next question but not knowing how.
“You want to know why I’m the only female, don’t you?” Trin Currante guessed, her mechanical eye making a screeching sound like it was working overtime.
Sophia swallowed and nodded. “I mean, it’s just…”
“I was the first,” Trin Currante answered. “And then I was the last woman. I don’t think we took to the experiments well, Mika Lenna concluded. Anyway, that’s what Drake told me. He ruled out that we had a compatible structure to absorb magitech.”
“That’s not the case, though, is it,” Sophia guessed.
A sideways smile lit Trin’s face, making her suddenly more beautiful. “No, I think he just never met me. I’ve always been a rebel. My men are strong, but Mika took their will when he took most of what made them human. It only made me angry. I broke out, using the strength he’d given me when I was remade with magitech. Then I returned and tried to punish him and Saverus, but they got away. All of them except Drake.”
“He told you Mika Lenna had decided not to test on females anymore?” Sophia asked.
“He told me that most of Mika Lenna’s experiments didn’t include women,” Trin Currante said with a morbid laugh. “Is it so hard to believe that a deranged psychopath is also a sexist? I think my spirit sent him over the edge, and he decided females were unfit for testing. I can only imagine what he’s doing with this new generation of cyborgs he’s creating. You say he’s been abducting magicians?”
Sophia nodded. “Someone is, and this all makes sense.”
“It does,” Trin Currante concluded.
“Why did you break into the Gullington and steal our dragon eggs?” Sophia needed to get to the part that would either make her understand Trin better or despise her. Since she and Evan were at her mercy, held captive by the cyborgs, she hoped it wasn’t the latter.
“You’re not going to like the answer.” Trin Currante lowered her chin like a robot that had been powered down.
Sophia stiffened. “It doesn’t matter,” she argued. “I need to know. I need to know everything if I’m going to be able to help you.”
Quickly Trin Currante looked up, surprise on her face, the human aspects of her all of a sudden much more apparent. “You’d still help me? I’ve told you what you wanted to know about Saverus and Mika Lenna.”
“This isn’t just about me,” Sophia argued. “I meant it before. You help me, and we’ll help you. But you have to tell me everything, or I can’t do anything.”
Chapter Sixty-Six
“I almost do not want to believe you’d be willing to help someone who wronged you,” Trin Currante began. “However, I’ve read the entire Complete History of Dragonriders. I knew you before you knew me. I have watched the Dragon Elite, and I know you all are bound by good. I realize I shouldn’t be all that surprised.”
“Tell me why you stole the dragon eggs,” Sophia urged.
Trin Currante waved her arm in their direction, making Sophia flinch, worried it would be followed by an attack. The leader of the cyborgs simply said, “Release them.” She quickly added. “Try anything, dragonriders, and you’ll be shown no mercy.”
Evan shook out his hands before running his fingers over the dried blood on his cheek. Thankfully the laceration seemed shallow. The Castle would heal it quickly. “Awesome. Thanks. Can I get something to drink? Maybe a whisky or some rum?”
Sophia cut her eyes at him and gave him an expression that said, “Don’t push it.”
Trin Currante seemed amused. “Get our guests something to drink,” she ordered, looking at one of the men at their back. A moment later, footsteps moved away.
“No poison in mine,” Evan called over his shoulder. “Put it all in Little Bit’s.”
“Thanks, pal,” Sophia said to him.
“Anytime,” he fired back.
Trin Currante seemed amused by this before her expression went back to a stern one. “It was Drake who told me about the dragon eggs. I knew I needed more information, so I broke into the Great Library, which took some time.”
“You killed Trinity,” Sophia guessed.
Trin Currante nodded, remorse evident in her movements. “When the most important part of you has been stolen, it’s easy to take from others. I don’t feel good about it. I understand now that Trinity was an ancient creature, but in my defense, he seemed happy to be relieved of his post. Having a job that’s so isolated and without relief can’t be easy for someone.”
Sophia shivered internally, making a note of that to pass along to Plato, who was supposed to fill the role. Maybe they needed multiple librarians. She didn’t think the role would be right for Ainsley as the lynx had supposed. When the housekeeper could leave the Gullington, she shouldn’t be confined to another place for ages.
“Anyway,” Trin Currante continued, “I did what I had to do to get information on dragon eggs, which happened to be through the Dragon Elite. Drake told me he believed the blood of a dragon was key to returning us cyborgs to normal.”
“So, the operations can’t just be reversed?” Sophia asked.
Trin Currante shook her head as the cyborg who had been holding Sophia handed her a glass of something and another to Evan. Sophia offered him a grateful look before bringing the glass to her nose. It was strong and burned her nostrils.
Even Evan, who was used to drinking strong things like whisky, yanked his head away. “Wow, is that antifreeze?”
“It’s our house blend,” Trin Currante said with a laugh, showing mechanical parts in her mouth Sophia hadn’t seen before.
Deciding to suck it up, Sophia held her breath and tossed back the drink, taking it in one swig. It burned her tongue, throat, and all the way down to her stomach, where she was certain it was eating the lining. She drew in a breath and shook it off, willing herself to focus.
The abrupt action produced a collective muttering from the cyborgs in the room. Even Evan seemed impressed and slightly worried about the gesture. Sophia shook it off and gave the glass back to the cyborg who had served her.
“Go on then,” Sophia encouraged, her gaze on Trin Currante.
“To answer your question,” Trin Currante went on, “no, we can’t easily be turned back into our human form. We are magitech now, and reversing it would kill us. What makes my heart beat isn’t blood. It’s magic. What my lungs breathe isn’t air, it’s magic. To undo that
isn’t easy. We need something more magical than us to replace it.”
Sophia sucked in a breath, both due to shock and also the urge to hiccup after the strong drink. “You need the blood of a dragon.”
“Not just any dragon, though,” Trin Currante stated. “I learned through my research and confirmed much of what I learned from The Complete History of Dragonriders. We need the blood of a newborn dragon.”
Now it all made sense to Sophia.
Evan took his own drink in one swallow, followed by a howl. “Wow, that’s strong. I’ll take two more.”
Sophia shook her head. “Focus,” she urged him.
“Fine,” he said, still smiling.
“So, you were going to have the eggs hatch, and then what…kill the dragons?” Sophia asked, realizing why Trin Currante had said she’d be mad. It was a horrible thing to consider.
“I was,” Trin Currante began slowly. “I don’t think we’d need too much, now that I’ve done more research, although it’s useless without Mika Lenna’s notes, I think very little blood could be the antidote.”
“You wouldn’t have to kill dragons, then?” Sophia thought for a moment, trying to remember what else she needed to know.
“It was never my hope to kill to make us whole again, but the magitech makes it hard to think,” Trin Currante explained. “We aren’t human anymore, but we have emotions. I think that makes it worse. Less rational.”
Sophia swallowed, hardly able to fathom such a reality. Now she understood Trin Currante’s words from Medford: “I just want to be like you.”
She had meant she wanted to be human. She wanted to have blood pumping in her veins and appear normal and feel like she had been before Mika Lenna made her into a cyborg.
“Why did you come back for more eggs?” Sophia asked, the question suddenly occurring to her. “You had one. Did you realize that wasn’t enough?”
Trin Currante shook her head. “No. I learned it wasn’t easy enough to have a newborn dragon. From The Complete History of Dragonriders, I learned what you might not know. Out of every batch of eggs, the angels dictate that one is born good and the other is born—”
“Evil,” Sophia cut in. “Yes, I’m aware.”
“Well, to repair us, to make our hearts beat again and to replace the magitech, we would need both the blood of a good newborn dragon and an evil one.” Trin Currante let out a breath, although Sophia now understood that she didn’t breathe, not anymore. “Making us what we once were is nearly impossible, I realize now. I knew it was a long shot, but it felt like there was a way to undo what Mika Lenna and the Saverus Corporation did to us.”
Sophia nodded. “It does seem farfetched.”
Trin Currante took her seat once more on her strange throne, seeming more defeated than ever.
“But that was before,” Sophia went on. “Before you spared us. Before you explained what we now know about Mika Lenna and the disappearance of the magicians. Before you told us that all we had to do is give you a little of our newborn dragons’ blood to fix you.”
The leader of the cyborg pirates looked up suddenly, something flashing in her human eye. Surprise, maybe. “You’re going to help me? Us?”
“We’re going to help each other,” Sophia amended. “It sounds like it’s going to involve a lot more than just dragon eggs, which we have. You tell me what you need and I’m going to tell you what I need, and we’re going to figure out how to get what we both want.”
Chapter Sixty-Seven
“Tell me why I’m supposed to help that cyborg,” Hiker Wallace demanded when Sophia and Evan debriefed him after returning from San Diego.
“Because it’s not their fault they were turned into machines,” Sophia argued. She’d assumed the Viking would resist her plan but was adamant he’d come around.
Mama Jamba was staying quiet on the couch as she ran a hand over NO10JO, who was curled up at her feet. The cyborg dog had no interest in staying with the pirates, and they didn’t seem to want him around either. Apparently, he had never been one of them, just another of Mika’s “projects” that had found refuge with them. It was a natural solution that he’d come back to the Gullington with Sophia and Evan and that after the mission, he’d freely entered the Barrier. That meant his loyalty was to the Dragon Elite.
“It’s not my problem that they were made into machines,” Hiker stated.
“No, you’re right,” Sophia agreed with confidence. “It’s everyone’s problem. Because it could have been me who was abducted. It could have been any of us since Mika Lenna only goes after magicians. What he makes them into might scar the world. It is our job as adjudicators to uphold justice, and he’s defying it by taking people’s freedom. Their humanity.”
Hiker let out a long sigh. “I want to help, but I—”
“She doesn’t need much,” Sophia continued, cutting him off. “Trin just needs a little blood from a good dragon and an evil one. But they have to be newborns.”
“Well, that’s where I can’t help,” Hiker groaned. “We only have evil newborns, creating havoc all over the Cave, according to Bell.”
“We might have a newborn that’s good soon,” Sophia reasoned.
He laughed, but it was devoid of humor. “Or it might be another century.”
“Thankfully, a cyborg has that longevity,” Sophia insisted.
He sighed deeply. “That’s not all they need, is it?”
Sophia shook her head. She was about to explain the harder part of the equation when Evan cut in. “They need our help. Maybe the scientist who assisted us with the LiDAR can be of use.”
Sophia nodded, happy to have her friend’s help to convince Hiker. “Yeah, I need Alicia.”
“They need Mika Lenna’s research, which he took with him when Trin Currante invaded the Saverus Corporation.” Evan gave Sophia an expression that seemed to be searching for confidence.
“That’s right,” Sophia said, giving him an encouraging expression.
“How are we going to get that?” Hiker questioned.
“We have to find Mika Lenna and his new headquarters,” Sophia explained. “That’s the only way to stop him from taking magicians.”
“Once we do,” Evan said excitedly, picking up the next bit, “we find the research.”
“Once we have a newborn good dragon,” Sophia continued, piggybacking off the other dragonrider, “we create the antidote.”
Evan clapped his hands triumphantly. “And just like that, we stop an evil man, save magicians, resolve things between the House of Fourteen and mortals and repair a bunch of cyborgs. Then we coast off for a holiday in Bora Bora to celebrate a job well done.”
Sophia smiled at him, grateful Evan had gone on the mission with her. She wasn’t going to tell him that, but she thought he knew.
He returned the fond expression before looking at their leader for approval.
Hiker sighed, thinking it over. His eyes flicked to Mama Jamba, who was still petting the now-snoozing NO10JO. “Thoughts?” he asked her.
“My thoughts are that I elected you as the leader of the Dragon Elite so I could lie on my butt and relax,” Mother Nature said, not taking her blue eyes off the cyborg dog. “I suspect you have all the information you need to make an informed decision, and you better do it without my input, or you’ll need to find yourself a new job.”
He shook his head at the old woman but smiled. Finally, he brought his gaze down to Sophia. “Okay, work with Trin Currante to find Mika Lenna. Start on an antidote. We’ll help the cyborgs, but if they ever cross us again, I will crush each and every one of them on my very own.”
Sophia watched as he wrapped his fingers into a fist. She had no doubt that as a very powerful magician with an anger management problem, he’d deliver on the promise.
She looked at the clock on the far wall and realized she needed to rush off if she was to get ready in time.
“Now, go rest and get straight to work first thing,” Hiker ordered.
Sophia
stood, rushing for the door. “I do have to go, but I’m going to have to take tomorrow off.”
Hiker’s mouth popped open. “Say what? Why?”
Sophia smiled. “Because it’s not every day your sister gets married.”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Style had never been Liv Beaufont’s thing. Her sister had known that about her since she was little, when Liv showed up at their family residence, needing help with her wardrobe for a mission.
Sophia, who had been a master of disguises since she was very young, was happy to remake her sister. However, whoever was in charge of the decorations for the wedding was a master of style and décor.
Having left Wilder at the Gullington with the directions and time for the wedding, Sophia had left the Castle early, intent on helping Liv get ready. She was grateful to see she wasn’t going to need to do much with the decorations.
As she approached the understated cottage on the outskirts of West Hollywood, Sophia appreciated that everything was beautiful in the usually bare yard, although understated—just like Liv.
The lawn was sparkling, and on closer inspection, Sophia realized it was because pixies were flying around, throwing dust into the air as they giggled.
On the front porch, a large gray cat by the name of June Bug was swatting at mice, but it appeared he wasn’t trying to hunt them. Rather, it seemed he was trying to encourage them to finish putting up the garland over the front of the house.
Flowers bloomed in large pots, and brownies were scrubbing the windows with fervor. This was only the front of the house where guests would be welcomed. Sophia simply couldn’t wait to see what the inside of the giant’s house looked like.
“Before you go in,” a familiar voice said behind her, making her freeze.
Sophia turned and looked down, knowing she was about to come face to face with the great lynx Plato.
“Hey there,” she said, smiling at the black and white cat. “Where’s your tux?”
