The intruders were no longer trying to be unobtrusive. The old house echoed to shouts in a language she did not recognize. Matt started to ask questions. She hushed him, and opened her windows. Despite the racket, Lars did not come. George and Winston did not come. They were on their own. Of course. She should have known she could rely only on herself. The housebreakers shoved harder at the bedroom door and burst into her room. Nicole took dragon before they had gotten past the furniture.
She met them with a searing blast that instantly enveloped them in flames. The first man shrieked and began to beat frantically at his blazing clothes. Nicole didn’t wait to see what the other one would do. As the bedroom rugs and draperies burst into flames, she grabbed her son against her underparts with her front claws, picked up her small bag in her mouth and leaped out over the courtyard.
Two men, dressed head to toe in black, and brandishing semi-automatic guns, guarded the rear doors of the house. George and Winston? Or more intruders? The men did not raise their eyes when she silently spread her huge wings and launched herself out the open bedroom windows. From Matt’s whimpers, Nicole deduced that he wasn’t enjoying the experience of discovering his mother was a dragon shifter. Not that she blamed him. Discovering that your mother was a terrible fire-breathing killer had to be a shattering experience for any child.
Behind her, she heard the roar as the house was engulfed by fire. The hot tailwind pushed her forward with an unexpected jolt. The night was split by the sound of sirens in the distance. Santa Rosa del Pampas might be a dusty, rural backwater, but the village boasted a modern fire department. She hadn’t, however, intended to burn her bridges behind her quite so literally.
The old four-by-four she had bought as backup after Lars had frightened her, was parked out on the pampas where she had left it. Indifferent cattle guarded the clump of thorn bushes that concealed it. There was no one but Matt to see her return to human form behind the vehicle.
“Jeez, Mom,” he groaned, covering his eyes. He now seemed revved up by their nocturnal flight.
Nicole didn’t bother with speech, she crammed arms and legs into her spare jeans and T-shirt, and hunted for her car keys at the bottom of the little bag. She was unprepared for the large hand that snatched them from hers.
“Better let me drive,” Lars’ deep voice said. He picked Matt up under one arm, opened the doors, and thrust him into the back seat. “Let’s get moving,” he ordered.
Nicole had only seconds to make up her mind. But really what choice did she have? There was no way she was going to leave her son behind. Matt was already responding to Lars’ authority by buckling up his seatbelt. She got into the back seat beside her son, and wished with all her heart that she had some kind of a weapon in her bag. But she didn’t. What she had was her passport, and Matt’s birth certificate, and the little money she had been able to scrounge.
Lars didn’t bother to turn on the headlights. He started the vehicle as though he knew all about its tricky steering and dodgy carburetor. The moon was only half full, but there were no clouds in the November sky. The waving grass and bushes were plainly illuminated. Nicole could see that like the intruders who had broken into her home, Lars was dressed entirely in black. His hands and face were also black. He drove across the grassland, avoiding trees and cows as if he was used to going off-road.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded breathlessly.
“I’m your rescue operation,” Lars informed her. “Sorry, I was late. Don’t you think setting the house on fire was a little extreme?” There was no condemnation in his voice.
“It was either that, or wait to be shot – or abducted.” Nicole had the words out before she realized she owed this big dragon no explanations.
“Hmm,” Lars said. “Then let’s hope they were all in the house when it went up.” His arm reached into the back seat holding a pair of binoculars. “See if they are in the air. Or behind us.”
She ignored the binoculars. “Where are we going?”
* * *
“My job is to get you away from the Russians. Yours is to watch the sky and the road behind us,” Lars ordered. Trust Nicole to turn stubborn on him. But at least she finally grabbed the binoculars.
Driving on the pampas in the dark was difficult. Fortunately, he had scouted the area beforehand. He knew where the land dipped, and where the trees grew. And where the giant anteater had been most active and had torn up the ground to get at the underground insects.
At least Nicole kept her head – even when she was frightened. She aimed the lenses out the back window and swept the sky. Then she focused on the grassland behind them. The roar of the motorcycles blasted their ears before they appeared. The noise got steadily louder.
“Two,” Nicole’s voice was carefully uninflected.
Lars flipped the switch that turned his high beams on. He drove the four-by-four cautiously down the shallow bank ahead of him and across the sluggish stream. On the other side, he spun the vehicle around, so it faced the wall of rocks someone had piled for some long-forgotten reason at the edge of the water. The motorcyclists drove straight towards the blinding lights.
Lars turned his lights off again, hoping the sudden dark would leave the motorcyclists blind. He spun the steering wheel hard, jammed the gas pedal to the floor, and took off again as the motorcycles came to grief on the rock pile. One of the riders righted his vehicle. The other one tried to restart his and could not. His companion circled back and barely allowed him time enough to climb onto the passenger seat. The chase resumed.
Matteo was breathing hard. He didn’t seem to be afraid of their pursuers. Just excited. Perhaps he was still young enough that he didn’t understand the very real peril they were in. Nicole, however, was scared enough for all three of them. Unfortunately, Lars didn’t have time for reassurance.
Now that they were sharing a single bike, the motorcyclists were moving more slowly. Learning caution a little too late, they had left their headlamp off. Of course, it might have shattered on the rocks. Lars deliberately headed away from the Cessna. He led the motorcycle to where he knew the waist-high, tough grass was pitted by deep, hardbaked scars where tough clawed anteaters had dug out their prey. He slowed, not wanting to risk a broken axle.
Their vehicle lurched as Lars cautiously navigated the rough ground. As soon as he was past the worst of the holes, he put a row of the concrete-hard termites’ nests between their vehicle and the motorcycle. Not for the first time, Lars was thankful for the superiority of dragon vision. Despite the dim light, he could see his route and the obstacles that lay between him and the Cessna. He gunned his engine. Behind him, the motorcyclist responded by giving his bike more gas. There was an ominous shriek and a thunderous crunch. The boy cheered.
Bloodthirsty little fireling.
“Are they getting up?” Lars asked.
“No,” said Nicole. Her voice was shaking.
“They weren’t wearing helmets,” said Matteo censoriously. “One of them isn’t getting up, and the other one is kicking him. I think their motorcycle is broken.”
“Not long now,” Lars said as comfortingly as he could.
“Where are you taking us?” asked Nicole again. She didn’t sound the least bit comforted.
Lars had neither attention nor breath to spare on further soothing. He didn’t know if their pursuers were dragons or not. The four-by-four had a head start, but it would do them very little good if the men following simply took to the air. In dragon, Lars himself was perfectly capable of bringing down a small aircraft. Moreover, the Cessna was an entirely civilian aircraft. It had no weaponry. And he had only one pistol. You couldn’t kill a dragon with a single pistol shot. And he was probably better off not trying.
The fireling was bouncing up and down now. He whooped again. His mother tried to hush him. Lars didn’t know if she was upset by her son’s bloodlust, or if she thought silence would hide them from their pursuers.
“Have they taken to the air, lad?” L
ars asked.
“No, Señor,” Matteo replied. “Did you know my mother was a dragon?”
Directly in front of him, the silvery white cabin and wings of the small plane rose out of the hollow where Lars had stashed it. He braked, popped the hood of the four-by-four, and was out of the vehicle opening the plane before Nicole could speak. The boy hurried his mother, who was picking her slow way through the high grass.
“Come on, Mom,” the boy urged his mother.
“I’m coming,” she said. For the first time, Lars realized that, although the boy had running shoes on, Nicole was barefoot.
“Get aboard,” he ordered.
Lars returned to the SUV and unfastened the distributor cap, and threw it as far away as his powerful arm could manage.
He returned to pull the chocks away from the Cessna’s wheels. It went against the grain to put the plane in the air without doing a safety check. Yesterday’s inspection would just have to suffice. He would have to put his trust in Cousin Theo. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Lars jumped up into the pilot’s seat. He brusquely ordered Nicole to close her door. She slammed it. Before the latch fully engaged, the plane was rolling. It bounced and shook as if it were falling apart. Lars began to taxi along the stretch of open ground he and Theo had selected as an airstrip.
The grassland might look like a level plain, but it was just as uneven as any other field that was home to many animals. All around on the undulating grass, sleeping cattle raised curious heads. A few stumbled to their feet and ambled towards the unusual commotion.
They began to surround the empty four-by-four. They poked nosy, damp muzzles into the open doors and into the engine compartment, tasting everything. Cows had rough tongues and plenty of curiosity. They would strip the paint from the body, and eat the seats. By the time the Russians found the vehicle, even if they located the distributor cap, they would be hard-pressed to use the vehicle to return to Santa Rosa del Pampas or anywhere else.
Beside him in the co-pilot’s seat his curvy dragoness was keeping her head and smiling reassuringly at the overexcited fireling. It was all good.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Nicole had never been in such a small plane before. Matt had never been in one at all. She didn’t know whether to be happy or indignant at his wide-eyed enthusiasm. She had to remember how little she really knew about Lars. He might have presented himself as their rescuer, but she had only his bare word for it that the others were the bad guys. On the other hand, those guys who had burst into her room had had semi-automatics aimed at her son.
She thrust away the memory of using fire on another person and buckled herself into the copilot’s seat. She turned to make sure that Matt was doing up his own seatbelt. He had gotten his fastened, and was looking around with shining eyes. Despite having just discovered his mother was a hideous, scaly monster, capable of turning men into bonfires, he was apparently utterly enjoying this escapade.
Nicole kept her eyes on Lars’ huge hands. He held the controls with competent ease, his gaze on the dials. He began to flip switches with his left hand. The plane picked up speed. The jolting got worse. The plane rattled as if it were coming apart. Without warning, they were airborne. A small stand of leafless, spiny trees appeared briefly in the windscreen of the Cessna. Involuntarily she ducked. And then they were over the tops of the trees, flying through the dark and cloudless sky.
“Phew!” said Lars.
Now that they had light, Nicole discovered that what she had taken for smeared dirt or grease on Lars’ face and hands, were a knitted balaclava and black gloves. He pulled off first one glove and then the other, and tossed them behind him into the passenger area. His balaclava went next. His short hair stuck up in damp spikes. His neat beard and mustache were also darkened with sweat. Rumpled, he looked even larger.
“We’re on our way to Buenos Aires. At least I think we are.” He directed his next words to Nicole. “There ought to be a phone in the compartment in front of you.”
Nicole found it without any trouble. “Now what?” She asked.
“Now we find out what happened to your housebreakers.” Lars held out a large hand and she placed the cell phone in it.
He speed-dialed. Whoever it was he was calling was waiting for him. Before Nicole thought the phone could have had time to ring, he was barking questions. She didn’t understand one word of what he said. But he seemed satisfied by whatever he had been told, for he turned the phone off and handed it back to her.
“Put it back, please?”
Nicole did as he had asked. “What language was that?”
“It’s a dialect of Swedish,” he said. “I was speaking to Theo. This line may no longer be secure. If we have eavesdroppers, an obscure dialect should fox them for long enough to make our getaway.”
“What’s going on?” she asked. She knew his cousin Theo was part of the group of shifters guarding her.
“The firefighters are still trying to extinguish the fire at the villa. Theo thinks three of the Russians got away, maybe more. The scene is still too chaotic to be certain. But at least a couple more are still inside. We may have to wait for the fire to go out to figure out exactly what happened.”
Nicole closed her lips around a confession. “I thought you said that you had the Russians under surveillance?” she accused.
“We did. But the road from Santa Rosa to Santa Rosa del Pampas is a long one. We seem to have missed a vehicle. And the fire has made the Villa Mendoza too dangerous to enter. But if the attackers were dragons.” He shrugged. “Dragons are hard to kill with fire.”
Nicole swallowed hard. She didn’t see how those men could have survived her fire. “Where are we going?”
“We are going to rendezvous in Mar del Plata with the cultural adjunct to the Swedish ambassador. Matteo needs a passport.”
“I hardly see how he can get one in Mar del Plata,” she snapped.
“I think that’s how the Russians traced you,” Lars’ voice was absentminded. “When you applied for passports for you and Matteo, I think you triggered a tripwire somewhere. And we know that while a US passport was recently issued to you, the US authorities demanded further proof that your son was entitled to one.”
“I don’t understand. What tripwire?” Nicole didn’t even try to conceal her complete bafflement. “And how could anyone find out about my passport application? They’re supposed to be confidential.”
He shook his head. “Nothing online is that secure anymore. I think Felipe set up cyber surveillance to keep track of you. The Russians probably know that when he died he hadn’t been anywhere near you in eight years, but they probably started to hunt for you on the off chance that you knew where he had stashed his loot.”
“Dear god.”
“Yeah, they’re a tough bunch. But don’t worry, we’ve got your back.”
“Who’s Felipe?” demanded Matt sleepily.
* * *
Lars had not really managed to answer Nicole and Matteo’s questions before the lad finally exhausted his curiosity about dragons and fell asleep. His mother withdrew into troubled silence. After a while, although she still stank of fear, Nicole also drifted off. Theo had told him that they would be met at the airport in Mar del Plata. He didn’t know what the Eldest expected Cousin Wilfred to do, but Lars had obediently altered his flight plans, and was heading there rather than to Buenos Aires.
To get out of Argentina, they required either a jet, or a commercial aircraft. Without a passport, it would be almost impossible to spirit the child away to Europe. Or most other places. But Wilfred had a couple of hours to think up a plan. He was a resourceful dragon, and fiercely loyal to the Eldest of their House. Besides, there was nothing that Lars could do about the situation other than obey orders and make sure the plane landed safely. He evaluated the hazards facing them, and decided he was enjoying himself. Better keep that to himself.
They touched down just after 4:00 a.m. local time. The sky was still full of star
s. The loss of altitude had awakened both his passengers. Nicole looked alarmed, as if she had not realized she had lowered her guard and dropped off. The boy woke on a surge of energy that Lars felt like a physical gale. He made Lars feel very old. But surely once he must have been just such an eager fireling, thrilled by danger and brimming over with energy?
“We have to stay on board, until we are met,” Lars said softly to Nicole. Her dirty feet were still bare. “Don’t you have any shoes?”
“Yes.” She began to rummage in the little bag she had brought aboard. She found a pair of ballet flats and slipped them on.
“Mom,” called the boy. “I’m hungry.”
“Have patience,” she said in Spanish.
Matt flung himself back against his seat but he stopped complaining.
“We’ll see about breakfast, when we know what’s happening,” Lars said with a calmness he was far from feeling.
The runway was too full of vehicles. There were two long black limousines, a couple of vans, and a fire truck. Which was altogether too much of a welcome. Nothing to do now but wait.
The first of the limousines opened, and elegant gray-haired Cousin Wilfred Lindorm got out. He held out a gracious hand to the tall blonde woman who got out after him. Why on earth had Wilfred brought his wife? The second limousine came to a halt. A uniformed chauffeur got out of that one and opened the rear door for a short, thin man dressed in a dark suit. The thin man shook hands briskly with both Cousin Wilfred and his wife. Cousin Wilfred bowed and handed the thin man his attaché case he was carrying. The thin man removed papers from the case and began to try to read them. The chauffeur produced a penlight.
Cousin Wilfred beckoned to Lars. Nicole was now looking even more white and frightened. He didn’t know what he could say to her that wouldn’t be a lie, so he said nothing.
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