by Mel Odom
“Rachel, you need to get out of here. Join the others and get to Flicker.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Yes, you are. I can’t fly. You can. Get gone.”
She didn’t say anything, but a moment later she spread her wings and took to the air as if she’d been doing it all her life.
Staying behind cover, Hawke kept up bursts of suppressive fire until his rifle ran dry for the last time, thinking that at least they’d saved Rachel’s life, even if she could never go back to the innocence she’d once had.
Above him, Rachel wheeled and glided back down. Before he knew what she was doing, she closed her talons around his shoulders and lifted him from the ground.
“I’ve got you. Just be still.”
Although he felt certain Rachel was being stupid about the whole situation, Hawke wanted to live. So maybe he was stupid, too. He held his pistol in one hand and reached up with the other, grabbing one of the talons gripping him.
Rachel struggled to get the altitude she needed, but—after veering around a couple times—she folded her wings and just barely flew into the hole in the bottom of the passage.
Inside, she dropped Hawke to the floor and crashed to the ground next to him.
Rolling to his feet, Hawke noted the NeoNET drones speeding toward them. “Paredes, block that hole!”
The combat mage turned and gestured at the hole. An instant later, a shimmery surface spread over the opening. The drones smashed into the barrier and shattered, falling back to the ground in pieces.
Hawke crossed to where the bloody dragon lay on the stone floor. He dropped down beside the large head and peered into one of her eyes.
“Rachel, can you . . . can you turn back?” he asked.
She flopped her wings helplessly. Then her body started shrinking and she became human, naked and vulnerable, still bleeding from a few wounds that had become much smaller as well. Her eyes rolled back up in her head as she lost consciousness.
Hawke picked her up in his arms and ran. The others followed as drones beat against Paredes’s shimmering shield like hungry insects.
Long minutes later, winding through a series of passages, with Flicker’s drones mapping the way, Hawke reached the harbor area where the Helldiver was anchored.
Flicker popped the hatch and Hawke carried Rachel into the submersible. He put her in one of the seats, took the blanket Nighthorse got out of a supply locker, draped it over her, and strapped the safety belts on.
Returning to human form had undone or healed some of the injuries Rachel had received. Hawke wasn’t sure which it was. Nighthorse sat beside her and started singing, healing the wounds that were left.
Hawke glanced at Flicker. “Can you get us out of here?”
The rigger nodded. “Dolphin and I have been working on it. She hacked the other subs, crawled into their commlink arrays, and loaded a virus that will keep their engines offline for a few hours.” The screwdrive engaged, propelling them out into deeper water.
Hawke strapped himself into his seat and watched the trideos Flicker put up, knowing she’d done that for him. Schools of fish swirled around the dark water in front of them. Tentacled things crawled along the seabed, then vanished as the bottom dropped away, rendering them too far away to be seen.
Making himself breathe, Hawke waited and watched as they sped back through the passage toward the open sea.
Epilogue
Hawke walked along the beach with his hands in his shorts pockets. Along with the cargo shorts, he wore a Hawaiian shirt Rolla had picked out for him. He’d gone along with the selection because it helped him blend into the tourist crowd. Maybe the look wouldn’t have worked in daylight, but it worked well enough at night, because the darkness blunted his features and disguised some of the bruises that were still fading.
Moonlight kissed the white rollers coming into the beach. In a few places, partiers had bonfires going. They were young and innocent, and there weren’t nearly enough of them these days. Other vacationers would be in the resort hotels, planning their next headhunting coup or insider trading, anything to claw just a little closer to the top of the heap.
Hawke was walking to think because thinking by himself in his hotel room was scary.
Soft footsteps fell in behind his. Sand crunched underfoot, then the steps quickened a little, closing the distance to him. He didn’t reach for the pistol holstered at his back—he wasn’t completely touristy, and the Hawaiian shirt concealed the weapon quite well.
“Are you just gonna follow me all night?” he asked.
“Do you mind some company?”
“No, I suppose I don’t.” He paused and turned around, allowing Flicker to catch up to him.
“Good.” Dressed in a black and white patterned bikini and wrap that accentuated her dark skin, the elven rigger pulled off touristy with ease. She smiled at him. “I figured I’d find you out here.” She took his arm, leaned into him, and pulled him back into a stroll.
Hawke didn’t say anything, knowing she’d get to it soon enough.
“So . . . Rachel’s a dragon. That’s something you don’t see every day.”
“Not and live,” Hawke agreed.
“Nighthorse and Snakechaser are working with her, getting her used to the idea of not being exactly what she thought she would be. They think she’s going to be okay.”
“That’s good.”
“It’s going to take some time. They don’t want to leave her right now.”
Hawke had already gotten that feeling about them. Nighthorse and Snakechaser liked taking care of people.
Flicker stopped him and turned to face him head on, because that’s what she was all about. “What I want to know is how you’re doing.”
Uncomfortable, Hawke shrugged. “I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be? We’re alive. NeoNET and Aztechnology are satisfied that we don’t matter, and they got what they were after. Rachel’s ‘father’ has his virus probably installed in their systems by now, and hasn’t killed us either. On top of that, we got a fortune from him for pulling this off.”
“But even with all that, you’re still not satisfied.”
Hawke just blinked and didn’t say anything.
“I know you, Hawke. You wanted to save the girl . . . and you didn’t get to.”
He smiled wryly. “Turns out she isn’t exactly a girl.”
“No, she isn’t, but you—and we—saved her. She’s still got an opportunity for a good life. An amazing life, in fact. After all, her father is filthy rich.”
“Her father,” Hawke said with some disgust, “may not care all that much for her. He used her as bait in a scheme that could have gotten her killed.”
“Maybe that was part of what she had to go through to finish becoming who she truly is. He told us that.”
“He also lied about a lot of things before he got to that part.”
“He got us out of the sunken city.” Flicker stared at him with those aquamarine eyes. “He didn’t have to do that.”
“As I recall, we made our own way out.”
Flicker raised her shoulders and dropped them. “That’s because we’re that good.” She looked at him. “Are you hearing me? We’re that good. We’ve got a good team here, Hawke. These are good people. They know what they’re doing, and they trust each other. Especially after all this. You should trust them, too.”
That was what Hawke was dreading. It wasn’t Rachel’s adjustment to being a dragon that bothered him the most. It wasn’t that her father was probably Lofwyr, as Dolphin suspected, and that her heritage carried an immeasurable amount of trouble and grief, if it didn’t get them killed outright.
He sucked in a breath and let it out. “I do trust them. It’s just that if we try to stay together in the shadows, we’re gonna be a big target. We can’t hide as well. We can’t move as fast.”
“They—we—want to stay together, Hawke. And we want you to be a part of that.”
A cool wind pushed in from the se
a. Hawke stood there and let it roll over him, still trying to figure out things.
“We can’t go back to the way it was,” Flicker said. “This run got too big. If we try to stay on our own, we’ll be even more vulnerable alone than we are together. If one of us is found out, the others will be at risk, and they’ll take us all, one by one. We all believe that.”
Hawke had been thinking about that, too.
“Do you want to know what I think really drove you to help Rachel?” Flicker asked, taking him by the arm and starting along the beach again.
“Not really.”
“I think you wanted to help her because you believed she was going to have a good life, and have a family. Be a happy citizen. But that’s not going to happen because she’s a dragon. The rarest of the rare. So if you want Rachel to have any chance at a family, you’re going to have to help make one for her.”
When it came down to it, Flicker was right. And Hawke knew she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“It’s going to be hard to make it work,” he finally said.
“So there are some risks. That’s nothing new in the shadows.”
“I know.”
“But it’ll be worth it.” Flicker tugged on his arm and smiled up at him. “Say it like you mean it, Hawke.”
Knowing she wouldn’t give up, he said, “But it’ll be worth it.”
And Hawke thought it might—it just might at that. They lived in the shadows, after all, where every day hinged on the roll of the dice.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mel Odom is the bestselling author of several novels, including Preying for Keeps, Headhunters, and Run Hard, Die Fast in the Shadowrun series. He’s also working on the Makaum War trilogy, which includes Master Sergeant and Guerilla, and several other projects. He currently lives in Oklahoma.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-one
Chapter Sixty-two
Chapter Sixty-three
Chapter Sixty-four
Chapter Sixty-five
Chapter Sixty-six
Chapter Sixty-seven
Chapter Sixty-eight
Chapter Sixty-nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-one
Chapter Seventy-two
Chapter Seventy-three
Chapter Seventy-four
Chapter Seventy-five
Chapter Seventy-six
Chapter Seventy-seven
Chapter Seventy-eight
Chapter Seventy-nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty-one
Chapter Eighty-two
Chapter Eighty-three
Epilogue
About the Author
Legal
