Firedrake - Volume 1

by T. Mike McCurley

  “How am I gonna know this Emilio guy?”

  “Emile,” Hart corrected, adding in a hint of a French accent on the name. She did not wait for the expected sarcastic quip from Drake before she continued. “His cabin is laid out in an octagonal pattern. The center holds a flower garden that I am told is quite impressive. You should be able to see it from the air. Coordinates for where you need to go once you have retrieved him will be sent to your phone, so don’t lose it.”

  “This guy some kinda healer or something?” asked Drake.

  “Don’t concern yourself with who or what this man is, Agent Drake. Just bring him to the facility post haste. You will be met at the entry, where you may or may not be assigned to a guard post, depending on the situation at hand.”

  Drake bit down on the angry questions that he wanted to ask. A part of him felt as though he were being relegated to little more than an errand boy when his abilities allowed for so much more. He should be out hunting for the one who had done this, not playing tour guide. Hart spoke suddenly, her words echoing his doubts.

  “Drake, this is important. I wouldn’t send you if it weren’t. Do this -” She paused as if considering her next words carefully.

  “It’s done,” he said flatly, stopping her before she could try to sweet-talk him into carrying out his mission. He reached out with his free hand, gripping Margaret by the shoulder and dragging the trembling woman close. “I’m going to tell Monster goodbye, Hart. You talk to this Josef Mengele wanna-be bitch, here,” he said. He handed the phone to the nurse and graced her with his most horrifying smile. As he stomped from the room, he could hear the woman agreeing between sobs not to drug his brother any more.

  “Hey, little bro,” he said as he stepped into Monster’s bedroom. From his position on the floor, where he and Sala were playing Boosters with his action figures, Monster looked up at Drake.

  “Hi, Francis. Is Margaret in trouble?” he asked apprehensively. There was a hint of genuine fear in his eyes that was like a blade in Drake’s soul. Not for the first time, he wondered if his sole purpose in life was to bring pain to all those around him.

  “Naw. I just needed to talk to her is all,” Drake assured him, waving a hand as if the incident had been forgotten. “Look, buddy, I’ve got to go again.”

  “But you just got here!”

  “I know. I know. I’ll be back as soon as I can, though. You know that,” Drake said, seeing the tears beginning to form in his brother’s eyes. “If it wasn’t important, I wouldn’t go. Now come here and give me a hug.”

  Drake endured another embrace from his brother, painful on more than the physical level as they always were when the pair separated. Once they had split, he ruffled Monster’s hair with his enormous fingers and the two butted heads yet again.

  “See ya soon,” Drake promised. Outside the house, a horn honked. His ride had arrived.

  “Be careful, Francis,” Monster said. He squared his mountainous shoulders and looked Drake in the eyes. “I’ll be good while you’re gone.”

  Drake threw his head back in laughter. “Don’t go overboard,” he urged with a wink. He looked beyond Monster to where Sala stood in a pose of feigned calm. “Sala, could you walk me out?” he asked, keeping his tone casual.

  “Uh, yeah. Monster, I’ll be right back. And no fair hiding Bonebreaker!” she said with a playful scowl.

  Drake walked ahead of the agent until they reached the front door. He turned to her even as he reached for the knob. “Do not let him see any news,” he warned urgently. “Not ’til I get back. I don’t care if someone’s got to sit with him and watch fifteen hours of cartoons every damned day, he is not to watch anything current. Got me?”

  “Yeah. What’s going on?” she asked, left eyebrow arching into her hairline.

  “Don’t know the details, but somebody hit Patriot pretty bad. The kid sees it, he’ll go apeshit,” he added after the expected gasp of surprise. “That’s Monster’s greatest hero, and I don’t want him hearing about it from anyone but me. I don’t have time to tell him now, so you get to play ’media blackout’ until I get back.”

  Sala nodded, too stunned to reply aloud. Drake clapped a scaly paw onto her shoulder in a gesture of silent encouragement. Then, without further exchange, he walked to the kitchen, retrieved his phone, stepped out of the house and jogged to the waiting panel truck.

  “What’s the word?” he asked as he slammed shut the door. The van was already in motion.

  “Unsure,” answered the driver. He kept his eyes on the road as he pushed the accelerator down to the floor. “It’s all rumors and conjecture right now. Possible terrorist hit, maybe a random thing.”

  He switched on the dash radio, filling the van with the excited sound of a news announcer. The man was chattering on in an endless stream of information that effectively boiled down to, “We don’t have anything yet, but at least we’re the first to bring you that nothing.”

  Shrugging after a short time, the driver snapped off the sound and glanced up into the mirror for a fraction of a second before returning his attention to his driving. The look in those eyes was one of helpless desperation, and Drake knew it was an expression mirrored by his own.

  “Nobody knows yet," the man said.

  The remainder of the ride was spent in relative silence, and Drake soon found himself boarding a military transport bound for Wyoming. The airmen on the flight were huddled against the wall nearest the cockpit, watching him from the corners of their eyes and avoiding all attempts to communicate beyond what was absolutely necessary. Whether it was from fear or simply that they had been told not to talk to him, Drake did not know. At this point in the trip, he scarcely cared. He wondered what kind of man Hart was sending him to meet, and privately hoped that it was indeed a healer of some sort.

  A gruff order to stand in the door surprised him and Drake’s head jerked as he realized he had drifted off. Why was it, he wondered, that flight in a plane always seemed to put him to sleep? He nodded to the crew chief and took his position near the rear of the plane as the aft ramp opened and began to slowly descend. His claws hooked into the grate of the floor, holding himself in place as the wind battered him savagely for a moment, then he threw himself through the opening and began his freefall. He allowed himself to relax for the first minute, then eased out his wings and started to glide, letting the air cut past his wings with an eerie whistle.

  Though the images of the earth below him were hazy at best, seen as they were through the membranes that protected his yellow eyes, he was able to make out the shape of Emile’s cabin. Octagonal, as Hart had described, it was an easy target for the airborne booster. He aimed for a point near what looked like it was the front. A concrete sidewalk led to the edge of the cabin from a small driveway where a long white pickup rested. Where the sidewalk ended, he reasoned, the door would be.

  He flared his wings wide, catching the air like an emerald parachute, and his descent slowed to a crawl. His vision cleared as his body decided there was no longer a risk to his eyes and the membranes covering them retracted. A minute later, and his feet touched the ground with a solid thump. He went to his knees and slammed his hands into the soft earth to break his fall, talons spiking into the dirt to hold him in place. As he folded his wings back into position against his spine, he stood and surveyed the area.

  Though it was still some miles distant, the massive image of Devil’s Tower was visible above the cabin, rising majestically into the sky. The cabin wall that Drake was facing was easily ten feet in height, running fifty feet in length before it cornered and began new walls of the same distance. He tried in vain to imagine how large that made the actual living space. Mathematics had never been his strongest point, and the best he could conceive was that it would be spacious indeed. The walls were made of peeled logs, each chinked into place with a grayish-white substance that filled the gaps with razor-sharp precision. Two enormous windows split the space of the wall, and the roof was covered with simulated
cedar shingles. Even the door which Drake now approached looked to have been hewn from real wood, though the security-conscious part of his mind guessed at a wood veneer over steel.

  The door opened just as he was reaching to knock. Framed in the portal was a man Drake guessed to be in his mid- to late- fifties, his hair and beard once jet black but now shot through with threads of gray. He was dressed in a set of coveralls, the light blue fabric stained with grass and dirt. Similarly discolored gloves of grey cowhide covered his hands, in which he carried a tray filled with small plants. Shining eyes of the same green hue as the scales of the booster that now stood on his front step looked up at Drake and widened in surprise.

  “Well, well. Bon jour, monsieur lezard,” the man said with a wide grin and a soft chuckling sound He set aside the tray he had been carrying, slipped off the gloves, and extended a hand. When he continued to speak, there was still an accent recognizable as French, though it was not overpowering. “Please tell me you have come to see my flowers and not to sell me a subscription to Reptiles Monthly.”

  “Not quite, slick,” Drake replied, taking the hand in his and gently shaking it. “Name’s Drake. I’m with the Justice Department.”

  “Office of Metahuman Interference, eh?”

  “Something like that. Looking for Emile DuChamp. You him?”

  “Maybe. What is it you wish to discuss with this Emile?” the man asked, cocking his head to the side.

  “Where I come from, that means yes,” Drake said with a sour expression. “HeartBreak sent me. I’m supposed -”

  “I am not interested,” Emile snapped, the smile vanishing in an instant. “You may leave now.”

  He bent to retrieve the tray of flowers. Casually, as if it was commonplace for him to do so, Drake reached out with a foot and placed his yellowed talons across the edge of the tray, effectively pinning it into place.

  “I don’t like being interrupted,” he explained with a grin as Emile looked up at him. “Now, as I was saying -”

  “Step aside,” hissed Emile in a voice that promised imminent violence. The entire area seemed to grow darker, and Drake looked up to see thick clouds boiling in the sky above him. Flashes of light played within the clouds, and a sun-brilliant streak of lightning lanced down from them to the earth near Devil’s Tower. The thunder that followed was a bass rumble of raw power. As he returned his gaze to the man he was here to pick up, Drake’s eyes grew wide with sudden recognition. He swallowed deeply and lifted his foot, allowing the smaller man to pick up his flowers.

  “You’re him, aren’t you?” Drake asked softly. There was a hint of awe in his voice, a nearly religious reverence. “You’re Elementaire.“

  Emile looked at him for a moment, then slowly nodded. “You did not know?”

  “Just got the name,” Drake said, his head shaking from side to side as he spoke. Above him, the clouds began to disperse, letting through more sunlight.

  “She remains ever the same. She sent you here without learning the true nature of your target. Go back to her and tell her that I will not be so easily brought in.” His tone was hostile and bitter. He turned as if preparing to leave.

  “It’s not her,” Drake assured him, holding out one hand and gently touching the man’s shoulder. He withdrew the offending claws in response to the angry look the gesture prompted. “It’s Patriot. Patriot needs your help.”

  “He would call if he needed my help. We have telephones,” laughed the man, jerking his head toward the cabin.

  “He can’t call. He’s in a coma.”

  The flat delivery of the words made Emile take a step back in shock. His teeth gritted and he once more lowered the flowers to the ground. Folding his arms across his chest, he glared at Drake.

  “You lie.”

  “Yeah. Quite often. But not about this,” Drake said. “Somebody took him down probably late yesterday. He’s in a government hospital. Hart sent me to get you and take you there.”

  Suddenly, the assignment no longer seemed to be a misuse of his time. He had initially felt slighted by being sent on what appeared to be a simple retrieval suited more to a crew of drivers. Now, though, Drake stood face-to-face with a legend. Though he might look small and harmless, Emile DuChamp was a battery of pure elemental force that had fought alongside Patriot and Lady Justice. Here was a man, Drake reminded himself, who had seen the worst of the worst and still lived to grow flowers in a mountainside cabin. Of course, it was little surprise that his plants fared so well, considering his ability to manipulate the weather to his wishes.

  “Let me... let me change my clothes, then,” said Emile as acceptance washed over his features. He looked suddenly tired and haggard. A small sniff sounded and he rubbed at his nose with the tips of his thumb and index finger. Forcing himself to stand proudly, he nodded to Drake and turned back into the cabin.

  While he waited, Drake checked his cell phone. The coordinates for the facility were there, as Hart had promised. He ran a quick calculation in his head. It would be a long drive - ten hours or more, depending on traffic. He chewed thoughtfully on his lip for a minute, then laughed aloud as an image struck him.

  “You know, Hart said you would be driving,” he called through the open door. “but I’m thinking time is of the essence here. You like flying?”

  “I cannot fly,” Emile admitted, shouting his response from somewhere inside the cabin.

  “Yeah? Too bad. It’s a lot of fun. I can do pretty good, but I get tired easy. Gotta fight against the wind all the time, you know? Sure would be a lot easier if I had some way of making the wind work for me. Hell, I could probably fly all the way to the hospital with a grown man on my back if that was the case.”

  Emile stepped into the doorway, having quickly changed into a pair of worn jeans and a black silk shirt that clung to his still-impressive physique. He looked questioningly toward where Drake stood in the bed of the pickup, wings spread wide to soak up the sun.

  “You believe this can work?”

  “Beats me, slick,” confessed Drake with a shrug. “But it’s the best plan I’ve got. I can rustle us up a plane through the Department, but it’ll take an hour or more to get it ready. Seems to me we can better use that time getting somewhere.”

  Emile agreed that it was worth a try. He locked the door to his cabin and climbed into the truck. Drake squatted down and Emile wrapped himself around the reptilian booster as if he were a child getting a piggyback ride. He looked down as a coil of scale-covered tail wrapped around his waist.

  “Seat belt,” Drake explained with a laugh. He pushed off hard from the truck bed, flaring his wings and beating them with all his might. From his position, Emile raised his eyes to the sky and felt his own power flow. A powerful wind blew in, filling the sails that were Drake’s wings and boosting them into the air. He kept up the lift effect until they had reached a considerable height. Drake lowered his head into the oncoming wind and began to fly them toward the East. Emile changed the wind so that it came from below and behind. No matter how Drake flew, the weather-manipulating booster could modify the flow of the wind so that they had a perpetual thrust and enough lift to maintain a steady altitude.

  “This is fantastic!” Drake shouted after a couple of hours of flight. He scanned the blur of ground beneath them, then turned to look behind him at his passenger. “At this rate, we’ll beat my estimate by more than half!”

  “Do you wish more speed?” asked Emile. Beads of sweat had formed on his brow from the effort of concentration.

  “Do it,” Drake said. He clenched his teeth as the wind picked up and they accelerated to a velocity he had previously only managed during a power dive. He wondered how much longer the smaller booster could maintain their current level of power, but for the moment, he was content to slice through the air. They continued their trek, edging onward at breakneck speeds, for another two hours. Drake turned once again to see Emile. There was a stream of blood running from both of the man’s nostrils. Droplets slipped away fro
m his face and were carried away by the winds.

  “Hey, we’re almost there,” Drake said, pointing ahead of them. The outskirts of a city were visible as a blurry outline on the horizon. “Cut it back, slick. Don’t kill yourself. You’re pushing yourself too hard.”

  Emile relaxed slightly, though his eyes remained closed. He leaned forward a bit, bracing himself against the dragon’s powerful shoulders. Their speed slowed somewhat, and Drake angled them a bit more to the North as the city hove into view in its fullness.

  “It’s smooth sailing from here,” Drake promised.

  Without warning, a jagged streak of golden energy pulsed through the air and struck Drake in the chest. He screamed as the flight suddenly became a nightmarish tumble through the air. Smoke and blood drifted from a blackened patch on his chest as he struggled to right himself and his burden. The cotton bandage that had protected his torso after the fight with Broadsword blazed and tore free in a shower of smoky sparks. On his back, Emile clutched tightly to the points at which Drake’s wings joined his body. A steady stream of curses in a mix of English and French erupted from him.

  “That’s for Aqautica, you bastard!” shouted a voice. Drake twisted his head to see a raven-haired woman in a black leather bodysuit diving through the air to come at him from behind. Her hands, extended before her as though they were an accusing finger, were surrounded by a nimbus of golden light, and her eyes blazed with a hate as intense as the bolt that suddenly shot from those hands. The look of sadistic triumph on her face left no doubt as to how painful the impact was going to be.