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Chasing Legends

Page 13

by Pippa Amberwine


  Nova looked worn out, more tired than I’d seen him in a long time, and I wondered then if, like I had earlier, he was feeling the effects of not having taken blood for a while. The last thing we needed was him going full-on bloodlust while Jevyn was around, not to mention Derek. I assumed Lynnette would have some kind of magic that might protect her. Thinking about it, I considered maybe Derek would too, given his ability to open rifts.

  That left Jevyn, and while I watched, I couldn’t help but notice Nova’s sideways glances at Jevyn as we walked.

  We had evidently reached our destination because Jevyn stopped by one of the industrial buildings, low, plain, boring looking with nothing to indicate what it was. He opened a gate on the fence surrounding it and then walked up to the building and opened a door set in the side.

  “Right, we need to get to Eastborne, and this is going to be the quickest way. We need to get in and get away as quickly as possible, so you might as well get the open-mouthed staring out of the way as soon as you can.”

  He pulled open the door and stepped inside, and the rest of us followed on quickly behind him.

  Inside was a deserted reception area and another door, which led out into the main body of the building. Jevyn’s prediction about gaping mouths was astonishingly accurate, but not as astonishing as the—well, flying machine I suppose would be an apt description—we were all looking at.

  It certainly didn’t look a thing like an airplane. It looked a bit like a cartoon creation, in all honesty. Half-dragon, half-drone. The body of the craft was covered in tiles that shimmered even in the dim light. Inside the body and open to elements were four rows of double seats, and when I got up close, I realized there were no safety straps either.

  The body swept up into the neck of the ship, which had a small cockpit, evidently for the pilot, which housed what looked like a whole host of knobs, levers, and buttons and not one blinking light for electronics or a single dial. No safety strap here either. I guess there was no chance of doing a loop-the-loop.

  The head of the dragon looked, well, just like a dragon head. Imagine the prow of an old ship sailing the seas with its figure head. A bit like that but more dragon-like.

  The back of the body led over to the tail, which did, from the look of it, seem jointed, maybe to help with turning. On the side of the body, folded into the sides, were a pair of exceptionally large wings. The oddity was the four propellers, like on a drone, mounted horizontally on metal frames that jutted out of the body of the ship. They looked like they could rotate to the vertical, but I couldn’t work out why they might be needed.

  “You want us to fly in that thing?” I asked. I was already trembling and nauseous. I hated flying. Have I mentioned that maybe once or twice?

  “Yes. Why? Is there something wrong with it?”

  “No—well, I don’t know.” I ran my hands over the copper-colored scales. “Does it actually fly?”

  “Of course it does.” Jevyn patted the body of the ship gently. It made a kind of hollow echo ring inside.

  “What powers it?”

  “The wings and the rotors.” Jevyn looked a bit puzzled at my line of questioning.

  “Yes, I see that. I mean what powers the wings and the whatsits?” I pointed at the rotors.

  “Rotors. It’s a small nuclear-compressed, steam-power plant. About the size of a couple of suitcases. It’s over there, look.” He pointed over to one side of the building where two innocuous-looking metal boxes sat connected to the ship and to points in the wall.

  “Those power this?” I pointed along the length of the ship.

  “Well, they charge the batteries that power this.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Inside the body. Why does this all matter?”

  “Just checking,” I said, still doubtful.

  “What does the other one do?” Nova asked, walking over to the generators, looking closely at them.

  “Well, actually they both power the city. We just drain off what we need for the ship and then it all goes back into the grid.”

  Nova spun around quickly. “These two little things power the entire city?” He looked incredulous.

  “I know. It’s a bit over the top, isn’t it? We only used one up until a few months ago. You find this very interesting, Nova?”

  Nova looked at me. If he was imagining what I was imagining, he was picturing the massive power stations we had to use, churning out all sorts of awful by-products and pollution. Then comparing that to two quiet little boxes powering a whole city. That would most certainly be a technology worth having. Game changing, maybe.

  Nova reached over to touch one of the black boxes when Jevyn yelled at the top of his voice. “Don’t touch that!”

  Nova stopped his fingers a couple of inches away. “Why?”

  Jevyn glared. “Because it’s not yours.” I assumed he must have had a reason for his possessiveness, but he sounded like a kid not wanting another kid to play with his toys. “And we need to go.”

  “Yes,” Lynnette said. “Let’s go to this Eastborne and see what else we can find, eh, Derek?” She nudged poor Derek in the ribs and gently shook her bag of glee.

  Jevyn glared at her.

  “Come on, everyone, grab a seat,” she chattered giddily, climbing up the provided steps and taking a seat up front. “This looks like great fun. Nova? Come sit next to me?” She held out her hand as he clambered to the top of the steps.

  “No thanks, Lynnette. I’ll go up the back.”

  Lynnette’s eyes followed him as he went past. She leaned right around to watch Nova as he walked to the back, pouting shamelessly. Her gaze slipped down to his backside, and she gave a little smile.

  “Give it a rest, Lynnette,” I said as I climbed in and took a free seat. Finally, Derek slouched over, complaining about carrying twice as much as Lynnette. She shot him a sharp look. He silently sat behind her.

  Jevyn stood poised to step up into the cockpit. “Right. This should all go off okay. Just a couple of warnings. Keep your hands inside the cockpit. Duck when I shout duck. Don’t try and get out when we’re flying. That can get messy. Or at least it did the last time someone tried it.”

  Jevyn climbed up the neck and dropped himself into the pilot’s seat. I gripped the edge of my chair with one hand and the back of the seat in front of me with the other, gulped, and waited for the death-trap to start up.

  “Everybody set?” Jevyn called out.

  Three people mumbled words of readiness while Lynnette stood up in her seat, whooped and hollered, and then yelled, “Let’s get this bird in the air!”

  She was acting like this was a ride at the fairground instead of some kind of mental torture for those of us with a delicate stomachs and an obsession with keeping our feet firmly on terra firma, otherwise known as anyone who wasn’t a complete lunatic.

  A huge door on one end of the building began to rise, and very suddenly the rotors started to whirl. Surprisingly quiet, I noticed. Then they tipped back, and we started to roll toward the doors.

  We gathered speed suddenly, and I got the idea this contraption we were in might have no brakes because we were approaching faster than the door was rising, and from what I could see, there was no way we were getting out.

  Jevyn yelled, “Duck now.”

  I ducked. Lynnette sat down with a squeak and ducked. Derek slouched, and I couldn’t see Nova with my head between my knees. I knew we were out when the noise around me changed. The wind began to rush over my head as I slowly sat back upright. I quickly checked around to make sure I wasn’t sitting in front of a headless Nova. He was leaning back in his chair, looking very nonchalant.

  Jevyn changed the angle of the rotors to level and boosted the power. Then he must have pressed something because the wings began to unfurl. They looked decidedly flimsy to me, but they were enormous. As we rumbled across the rough ground, Jevyn must have activated another control as the wings began to flap while at the same time, the rotors lifted us into the
air.

  My stomach flipped, and I had an overwhelming desire to hurl all over Derek in front of me. I swallowed hard and tried to brace myself to look around. It only took me a minute or two to open one eye and briefly glance over the side. Once I saw how high we were, I shut both eyes tight, buried my face in my hands, and spent the rest of the trip—and yes, it seemed to take forever—in darkness, trying to stop my stomach from jolting up and down with the beat of the wings, which I could hear but not see.

  Eventually, a whole lifetime later, I heard Nova say we were descending. Then I heard Jevyn suggesting we might want to hold tight for the landing. By this time, I was desperate for it all just to end. Despite the cool air, I was sweating, and my heart was pounding.

  At long last, we landed, very gently as it happened, the rumbling of the wheels underneath replacing the whisk of the breeze as we slowed down and eventually rolled to a complete stop.

  I took my hands away slowly. The wings had already folded in, and the rotors were slowly coming to a halt. Then I was off. The craft was parked next to a concrete platform that rose four feet above the grounds, a bit like a railway platform but for battery powered, dragon-like, flying machines.

  I jumped out as quick as I could onto the platform and headed toward the building.

  “Wait, Katie. Don’t go that way,” Jevyn yelled.

  I stopped and turned toward him, running my fingers through the rat’s nest that had formed on my head due to the whipping air of flight. I might have accepted that there was no hope for me and Jevyn, but I didn’t want to look like a mess.

  “Why not?”

  “Because we need to go the other way.” He looked confused at the question, and his answer came in an almost staccato style.

  Okay, I needed to pull myself together. He worked his way down and queued up behind the others until we were all out. My heart rate was slowly starting to come into the manic range by that time.

  “You all right?” Nova asked as he came to stand next to me.

  “Flying. Scared,” I said.

  “Oh. Didn’t know,” he said.

  “We never had any reason to fly anywhere,” I said.

  “No, I know,” Nova said wistfully.

  Life back home had certainly changed in ways I’d never really thought of. It sounded like he was missing the ability to jump on a plane and be anywhere in the U.S. within a few hours. He still looked pretty strained to me with dark circles under his eyes.

  “How are you doing. Bloodlust wise?” I whispered to him.

  Nova looked around to make sure nobody was listening in.

  “I’m feeling it a little, but so far I’m okay. I think maybe I’m going to need blood tomorrow though. Do we have enough left?”

  “We have enough to do that, but after that, we’re back on human blood unless we can sort something out with this friend of Jevyn’s.”

  “Okay, well, keep things quiet. We don’t want anyone getting worked up about it.”

  “Will do,” I said, nodding.

  “This way.” Jevyn had set off walking again. It didn’t appear the advances in nuclear power and powered flight extended to ground transport, so we all set off after him on foot.

  Eastborne was a very strange place, I decided as I walked along, and certainly very different from Pathya. For a start, everything was firmly fixed to the ground, no floating palaces anywhere to be seen. No floating anything. The sky was empty. No birds or the Dracos equivalent of birds, and nothing else flying around either. Not even any insects, which in Pathya were patently present, rising in clouds from the piles of rotting stuff in the gutters.

  The place looked immaculate. Every blade of grass was trimmed to the same length, so much so that I had to check it wasn’t artificial turf. It wasn’t. Every building was a uniform height with an absolute minimum of signage and decoration. It was impossible to tell what each structure was for. The air smelled entirely fresh, as though the whole place was air-conditioned.

  It was quiet too. No noise from any of the buildings, no noisy vehicles, no nothing.

  It was a ghost town. A super-organized ghost town almost, with everything obsessively trimmed to within an inch of its life. I had to say it seemed like the most soulless place I’d ever been to in my life.

  “What is this place, Jevyn?” I asked.

  “Eastborne.”

  “Yeah, I know that. I mean, what happens here?”

  “People work. People live.”

  He didn’t seem interested in expanding on the subject, but I thought I’d give it one more go.

  “What goes on in the buildings?”

  “You’ll see soon. We’re here. He marched up to one of the many almost indistinguishable buildings and pulled open the door.

  Inside was as spotless as outside. Hermetically sealed so nothing could get in from outside. All the light was artificial and bright, so bright it was making my eyes ache almost as soon as we got inside.

  As I squinted and tried to walk without bumping into a wall or the back of anybody else, I could just about make out Jevyn striding ahead as ever. Eventually, after pushing through several sets of doors, we went into a large, brightly-lit room full of workbenches.

  Jevyn held his hand out to tell us to wait while he approached a young woman who was sitting at one of the benches. All I could make out was a head of dark hair and her white lab coat.

  As soon as he put his hand between her shoulder blades and leaned over her shoulder to talk to her, that same feeling I had before, only worse, came rushing to the surface. Jevyn had said she was his friend, and I had no right to his affections in any case, but that jealous little kick came back to me once more.

  After he spoke low in her ear, their heads bent together until they almost touched, he stepped back and walked toward us.

  I was still reeling a little from the flight, but as she approached, buttoning up her coat, even through my dizziness I could see she was gorgeous. Her face was delicate, oval-shaped with a cute little point of a chin. Her larger round eyes perfectly framed with long lashes, her hair glossy and thick.

  “Famil. This is Lynnette, Derek, and Nova.” Jevyn pointed to each in turn. Nova put his hand up to say hi, but Lynnette and Derek were too distracted by looking at some of the lab equipment to be paying attention.

  “And this is Katie. Katie, this is my friend, Famil.”

  “Hello, Katie.” The vision of loveliness spoke, showing flawless white teeth. “Jevyn tells me you need my help.”

  I wanted to dislike her, but she seemed genuine and warm. Berating myself for being petty, I forced a smile and began to speak, explaining what we needed.

  Famil’s beautiful face clouded as I spoke, and I could feel my hopes withering.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Katie

  Famil’s laboratory

  Pathya, Dracos

  FOUR OF US were sitting around a table in the laboratory. Nova, Famil, Jevyn, and me. Lynnette and Derek were standing at a nearby lab bench, digging through their bags. Like everything else I’d seen in this cold place, the table was plain, serviceable, and devoid of any kind of decorative merit. It had a purpose, which it fulfilled and no more.

  “So, Katie,” Famil said. “Let me make sure I understand. You want to me to help you find a cure for the virus that has infected your people so you can go back and use it to cure your friends?”

  I nodded. “And as many more people as we can use it on. It isn’t just for us.”

  Jevyn glanced over to me, and I could see in his face that he appreciated that sentiment. I wasn’t here just for me or even just for my friends. I wanted to right a terrible wrong that had been wrought on the people of Earth and then set about defeating the forces that caused such an event.

  I told them both as much with my face set in a grimace that hopefully conveyed exactly how serious I was about this.

  Famil looked slightly taken aback at the forcefulness of what I said and turned to speak to Jevyn. They spoke in a language I didn
’t understand. I held up my hand to ask what they were saying.

  “Famil asked me who was actually asking. You, me, or the Queen,” Jevyn said.

  “Well, all three, as far as I’m concerned.” I couldn’t see what difference it made.

  Famil turned to Jevyn, and they exchanged a look.

  “Can’t it be all three?” I asked.

  “Is it? You know if an order comes from the Queen herself, then I cannot ignore it without bringing danger down on my family. On the other hand,” Famil turned to me, “there is no great incentive for me to do it just for Katie as she has nothing to offer me. If it is from you though, Jevyn, and you are asking me as a long-time friend, then I wouldn’t be obliged to help you, but I would be inclined to. So, who is asking?”

  Just then, I remembered what Jevyn told me about the way things worked in Dracos. Favors. If Jevyn said he was asking, he would owe her some kind of favor. I didn’t know what their history was, but by the look on her face, I could imagine what that favor might be. By the look on Jevyn’s face, that was as much of a surprise to him as it was to me.

  “The Queen instructed me to ask you, Famil, so it comes from her.” His face softened slightly. “But if it means it would happen more quickly, then I am asking you, as an old friend, if you will help these people.”

  As soon as he said that, I realized a couple of things. Firstly, how poor a position I was in to actually get anything done on Dracos. I had nothing to trade with, no favor I could bestow on anyone to get them to do something for me. Secondly, just how powerful Jevyn’s position was. His ability to offer favors from the royal family would outweigh the favor almost anyone else on his planet could offer. He could, I was sure, get anything done he wanted.

  All this time I’d been looking at him as little more than someone who might help us get the dragon blood we needed to feel well again for a few days. When in reality, he could be the source of so much more than that. Untold wealth, if that was what I was looking for—which it wasn’t.

 

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