Riding My Dragons (The Dragons Of Tellus #1)

CHAPTER 20

Cade

My instructions for the handoff of the box were to go to a certain rooftop in Reptos and wait there.I had to get up there on foot, of course, because I couldn’t be spotted flying.It was the roof of an inn, tucked into a picturesque looking neighborhood, where the clients—I might as well call them the Gorgonites now—had arranged for me to get access.The Gorgonites’ representatives would join me, and we’d finish the deal.

Naturally, after learning exactly who it was that I was looking for, the place I was supposed to go was right across the tree-lined street from the roof of a church.

A church, for stars’ sake.A church, when what we were up against, after all, was a bunch of religious mad-dragons.Talk about your dangerous irony.

Now I’d never been the religious type.I never saw much use for believing in things I couldn’t see and couldn’t touch, that I was supposed to believe in without questioning because somebody else told me to.Listening to somebody else tell me what to believe and what to think and having them use that to tell me how to live didn’t strike me as being really the thing to do with my life.And it sure didn’t sound like the way to enjoy just living.

Right now, though, I had to wonder if it was really any worse than the way I had been living up until now.Being in the church and doing what the guy in the pulpit told me, I wouldn’t have had my wings twisted into becoming a thief, and it wouldn’t have gotten me wanted by the law.It might have cramped my wings in the here and now, but it wouldn’t have put me at risk of screwing up my entire future.And what was more, it wouldn’t have made me potentially responsible for helping to start up the Old Wars again in a way that could turn the whole damn world into smoking ruins.

I had lived the life of a member of the Taisce family, and now I and millions of people might have to pay for it—unless a plan that we’d put into action after meeting Jenna’s uncle paid off.

Jenna’s Uncle Neal seemed like a decent enough human.My buddies and I definitely had the feeling there were things he wasn’t saying to us when we met, and he first sized us up.He was a mature guy and there didn’t seem to be anything about him that you’d call naive.He had to know, or have some idea, of how it was between his niece and the three of us.But it probably didn’t seem like the time and place for Neal Callaway to ask, so which one of you three is screwing Jenna?Or, which one of you took Jenna’s cherry?Or even, so you mean to tell me the three of you have been humping my niece?With the fate of the world on the line, questions like that didn’t seem to be on point.But from just the looks of us, Neal had to guess that something was going on.

It wasn’t as if humans didn’t have a healthy interest in sex themselves.The only difference between your basic healthy, good-looking young human guy and a guy like Elliot, Byron, and me, aside from our being both men and dragons, was that we could do it twice as much as the human.And I knew human guys sometimes bedded women in twos and threes.Working with them and serving them in the family’s gambling places, I’d heard them talking about it.But still, what we’d started doing with Jenna had nothing to do with getting her out of the trouble that she was now in because of the Gorgonites.Needing to help her swept away everything else.

And we needed to help her.She’d come to us as an innocent.Being with us had brought her to things in herself that were waiting to be woken up.She’d trusted us with that.And she had become important, not just for what happened in bed with her, but because she was Jenna.And Jenna had come to matter to all of us more than anything else.

No sooner had I thought about how important she really was than the sound of wingbeats coming in from the distance caught my attention.I looked to the west, and over the sights and sounds of people celebrating “Reaffirmation” came two male Scalers, wearing black suits with sleeveless tops that fastened around the neck and at the lower back.One of them had a leather pouch strapped to his waist.I backed up a few steps on the roof of the inn and let them come in for a landing near me.“Cade Taisce,” said one of them as they morphed to human.

”That’s me,” I said.

”You’ve got the thing?” said the other Scaler.

”Yeah, I’ve got it,” I said.

”Let’s see it,” the first one said.

I reached around behind me to a pocket on one side of the slit where my tail would come out when I morphed.I took out the old, faded box with the Scaler Legion engraving on it.“Here it is.”

”Hand it over,” said the first guy.

”Catch,” I said, and tossed it.The box spun through the air between the two Gorgonites and me, and the first one caught it.They both gave me a look as if I were a bird that they wanted to snatch out of the air.Then the one who had caught the box handed it to his friend, the one with the pouch on the strap.I expected him to slip the box into the pouch, and that would be the end of this little exchange.

Instead, the guy took something out of the pouch.The new object was a shallow, rectangular-shaped thing with what looked like old-style buttons and lights on it, and a nook on the front of it that was just large enough for a data box to slip into.

Suddenly anxious, I asked, “What’s that?”

The guy with the new gadget said, “A data box reader.We had to go to a lot of trouble, look in a lot of places, to find one of these and get it working.This will let us read what’s on this box, check the inventory of data.We won’t be able to decrypt it here; we’ll have other people waiting to do that so we can read it.We’re just verifying the item.”

I felt as if I wouldn’t just morph into a dragon, but a thousand little dragons would come crawling out of my skin.I hadn’t expected them to do this here, now.My breathing turned shallow from not wanting to breathe too heavily and give away how my nerves were tangling up inside.Calm, I told myself.Just keep it calm.Let this play out the way we planned it, and maybe I might live through the next few minutes…

Holding up the data box reader, my new friend fitted it into the nook and hit one of the series of buttons at the top.The lights over the buttons lit up.The gadget made some electronic noises that I’d never heard before.From out of the lights came a flickering holographic-type screen.The reader made some whirring sounds as unfamiliar as the last ones.And then, inside the hologram, some words flashed.They were in reverse from where I was standing, but I could make them out.

NO CONTENT.ZERO SCANNABLE DATA.

My two friends looked closely at the hologram readout, then at me.I just cocked my eyebrows in a shrugging expression at them.

”What is this?” demanded the first Gorgonite.

”How am I supposed to know?” I answered.“I’m just the courier.I’m not a tech guy; I don’t know anything about these things.”

The one holding the reader tapped a few more buttons.The words in the hologram said, DEVICE NOT READABLE.

I rolled my eyes, still hiding my nerves, as the Gorgonite trying to scan the box took it out of the nook and looked more closely at it, turning it around and back and forth in his hand.Then, in a shocked voice, he growled, “This thing isn’t even for real!This isn’t any data box!It’s not even that old!Someone made a fake and doctored it up to look like an antique!”They both glared evilly at me.“What do you think you’re doing, kid?Where did you get this fake?Where’s the real data box?”

My scales started to break out and I could feel my horns, tail, and wings sprouting.Holding up my hands, which were starting to become claws, I took nervous steps back from the two black-suited Scalers.“Listen, guys,” I said, “like I said, I’m just the courier.”

The one without the scanner pulled a gun from the waist of his suit bottom and aimed it at me.“Tell us where the real data box is.Tell us now.What did you do with it?”

Forcing a smile and faking a laugh, I answered, “What makes you think I did something with it?This is the thing they told me to get and bring you.Is it my fault the thing is defective?”

“You little worm!” shouted the Gorgonite with the gun.“Give us the real box or you’re as good as skinned!”

Both of them went full dragon and the armed one charged forward.Forgetting everything else but the danger running right at me with gun aimed and fangs glinting in his open jaws, I let go of my own human shape, facing him as a dragon and baring my own fangs.

And that was when it all broke loose.Before the dragon attacking me could fire a shot, bursting energy bullets rained down onto the roof.My attacker whipped his neck upward and caught sight of Fergus, Jade, and another Scaler belonging to the Intercross, all of them in dragon bodies, all of them with guns of their own.They had leaped out of the trees where they’d been hiding, waiting for my two Gorgonite contacts to find out the scam we’d just pulled on them.They came in screeching and shooting, and the fight was on.

I took advantage of the distraction from my Intercross friends attacking and whipped my tail around and forward.It slashed and stung against the gun-holding hand of my attacker.He gave a furious hiss and lost his grip on the weapon, which clattered onto the rooftop.He roared at me, I answered his roar with a hiss of my own, and we both dove down to fight for the gun.Meanwhile, the other Gorgonite took out his own gun with his free hand and started firing at the Intercross guys as they came swooping in.He missed them, and they fired back, hitting the data box reader and shattering it.Before he could squeeze off another shot, Fergus and another Intercross guy were on him.Fergus grabbed him by the arm with the gun and the two of them started to struggle over it, while the other guy tackled him across his chest and the two of them slammed down hard onto the rooftop.

The dragon who’d held the data box screeched and roared and pounded his tail while he thrashed with Fergus and his buddy, who had him pinned.He snapped his jaws at them, and they hissed back.He wasn’t going anywhere; they had him good.At the same time, I rolled around with my own attacker, the two of us raking claws against each other’s scales.Jade lunged down and grabbed my opponent’s gun.“Stop!Don’t move!” she shouted, pointing the weapon at the two of us.

Reacting to Jade’s shout, my opponent reared up while pinning me to the roof.He showed Jade his fangs and curled his tail at her, but she stood her ground and kept his gun pointed at him.He should have given up then and there, but he took her by surprise and slashed out at her with his tail the way I’d done, aiming not for her hand but catching her legs and knocking her off her feet and down onto her wings.Jade fired a shot that made a trail of light in the air, hitting nothing—while the dragon who had me pinned whirled back around, grabbed me around the shoulders and the waist, and launched himself with me in his grip off the roof.

The bastard thought he was clever, grabbing me and flying off with me, thinking no one would fire at him because they might hit me.But he couldn’t fly straight with me squirming in his grip, hitting at him with my tail and raking my claws along his neck.What was he going to do about it?Drop me and give me a chance to tackle him in mid-air and crash both of us?He quickly realized his poor planning when we both went careening over the street and the treetops, flying wildly, filling the air with the sound of our roars and shrieks.With every swoop and crazy turn, we ran the risk of slamming into a house or crashing into a tree.And in the middle of it all came the loud, throbbing sounds of Constable horns, closing in from the far end of the street.

He started swatting against my snout, trying to knock me off him.But I answered that by playing even dirtier.I opened my jaws wide, lunged forward, and buried the daggers of my teeth right in his throat.He let out a dragon scream that must have been heard up and down the street and onto the next block.Now everything became a blur as we spun and plummeted downward, thrashing every bit of the way, until we hit hard into the boughs of a tree, cracking the limbs and sending big branches flying everywhere in a storm of falling leaves.We dropped from the tree boughs right onto someone’s lawn.Dragon folks watched out the front window of a house as the Gorgonite and I lay stunned in the litter of fallen, broken tree limbs—and two Constable cars came sliding over the street and came to a hovering stop.

Four officers charged out of the vehicles with long guns drawn and cuffs ready to bind us.The Intercross’s plan to stop the Gorgonites from getting the data box had worked.But I was caught.

Fergus, Jade, and their friend brought the other Gorgonite down from the roof of the inn and let the Constables have him.The law enforcers got my two playmates and me back into human form, and the Intercross guys also went human while the Gorgonites and I were cuffed and read our rights.Meanwhile, up and down the street, dragons came out of houses and stared at the drama unfolding in their neighborhood.

Someone else who’d seen the whole thing also came swooping in for a landing.Byron, more of a diplomat and a lover than a fighter, had been watching from another tree.When my opponent tried to fly off with me, Byron had taken off, ready to separate us and give me a chance to get away, but I’d made my move before he could make his.Now Byron landed where the Constables had me cuffed near one of their hovering cars.He went human and showed them his mirror with his ID displayed.“Byron Ledger,” he introduced himself.“I represent the Ledger family.I’d like to ride along with Mr. Taisce to booking and make arrangements for legal representation.”

Byron being who he was and his family having that kind of influence, the Constables agreed, but they were going to want all of us to go with them for questioning.While they got on their own mirrors and called in a preliminary report, Byron stayed close to me.“Well,” he said, “this part of the plan worked.”

”Yeah,” I said.“This part.But Elliot went off with Mr. Callaway and some others to find Jenna.What’s happening with them?”

”Keep good thoughts,” Byron said.

And he was right.Keeping good thoughts was the best either of us could do right now until we heard something from Elliot.But it would take more than good thoughts to get Jenna back.