Chapter 11 Axel #2
I circle around again, and this time, just before I can attack, Liz leaps from my back and hurtles toward the ground.
Even knowing she’s alive today, watching her nearly splatter on the ground, right in the middle of a column of troops who have moved only enough to allow her to die without taking them out too, I feel awful.
My heart’s pounding.
My breaths are coming quicker.
Just before she dies, she stops, suspended in air, and vibrating up and down.
I don’t flame anyone, because I’m too busy watching Liz. They fire on me with ice arrows and spears, but they clatter off my hide like harmless rocks or sticks.
I swoop closer.
The troops, her own people, are pointing their projectile weapons at Liz and firing them. She finally drops to her feet, and then she redirects her efforts outward, creating a shield through which the bullets cannot penetrate. It’s red—she’s pulling that magic from me.
I’m roaring, clearly irate.
I can’t tell whether I’m upset at her or at them until I watch as I swoop in another circle, a tight one, and I blacken the troops firing on her and resume my screaming.
When I circle again, flying in a wider arc this time, a soldier’s running toward Liz.
At least he stops the others from firing on her.
I lean even closer, my breath clouding up the iPad screen.
“Ah,” the man says, “let me clean that off.” He uses the sleeve of his coat to wipe the screen clean, but when he holds it up again, I’ve missed something. The soldier’s standing near Liz. He’s gesturing for her to lower her shield. He even bangs on it.
She better not do it.
When he orders the troops to lower their weapons, she drops it.
I must have panicked even more then than I am right now, because I spear my way toward them, but I’m too slow. She yanks Gideon beside her, and then she throws my own shield back up to keep me out. Her eyes look almost sad as she stares up at me.
Instead of attacking, instead of doing anything that makes me look less pathetic for being betrayed by my own human bonded, I simply circle overhead like I’m her obedient guard.
Why didn’t I force her to listen to me?
Why couldn’t I manage one little human?
I shouldn’t bond her again—I can’t. She’s too dangerous, if she figured out how to manage me like that.
Then the soldier she invited inside her shield—her friend—stabs Liz in the neck and she collapses beside him, the red shield blinking out.
I should keep watching. I should force myself to watch as the ice spears penetrate my scarlet scales and I plummet to the earth and explode. I should watch it to remind myself what comes from trusting humans—from trusting Liz.
But I can’t do it.
I’m too upset by how I failed her. I flew in little circles while she died. I mean, we’re both alive now. She is. I am. Everything’s fine, only it’s not. . .
She’s not bonded to me anymore, which makes me inexplicably sad, even though I can’t remember any of this. I wish I could truly erase it so it never happened. I would if given the chance.
When Liz walks toward us, she looks nervous. “Are you ready to go? I think we’re done here.”
I don’t answer her. I walk far enough away to make a portal, careful to ensure it’s on the ground for the water blessed and humans who are walking through. When she tries to catch my eyes, I look away.
In New Hampshire, the group we gather’s much smaller. Sixty-four humans, twenty-one of which are bright enough to bond. The last stop of the day is better—we find another hundred and twelve brights, but all told, we have less than three hundred humans willing to save my people.
Hyperion’s going to lose his mind. I doubt Liz will get her third day.
She knows it.
I can tell from the expression on her face.
“What about the Orlando Renaissance festival?” Jean asks. “I know it’s riskier, but think about it. If we can’t convince the other blessed to wait. . .” She shrugs.
She’s right, and Liz knows it too.
“Tell me what you have in mind.”
“Today’s the last day, and since it’s a Sunday, I bet there are lots of people. Nerdy, fantasy-loving people.” Clearly Liz explained that not only do those people seem more likely to support us, but they also seem to have a higher incidence of brights.
Liz thinks that maybe brights are naturally drawn to fantasy. Norm believes it’s because the type of person who is likely to be worthy of bonding a dragon is more likely to be openminded. Either way, there appears to be some sort of correlation.
“And?” Liz asks. “We go and walk around, trying to talk to people?”
“I was thinking of something a little more direct.” Jean turns my way. “How would you feel about summoning anyone who can hear you?”
“He’d have to get close enough first.” Liz spends almost an hour investigating the location before ruling it out. “It just won’t work. It’s right next to an airport, for heaven’s sake.”
“Maybe he can fly over, disguised as a plane,” Jean says.
“Do you hear yourself?” Liz starts pacing. “It’s lunacy.”
“Seeing him like that,” Jean says. “It would be a bigger draw than summoning the brights.”
“How far away can you be and still talk to humans?” Liz is eyeing me strangely. “Let’s test it.”
Far, it turns out, but not far enough for me to call them from the wilderness on the east side of Orlando, and Liz throws her hands up in the air. “I just need more time.”
We don’t have it, I say. I’m sorry.
When she starts crying, for some reason it makes me want to melt something.
I hate how much I hate it. If we’re going to return to Selfoss with less than three hundred brights, you know how Hyperion will react.
There’s no way we can find a human to voluntarily bond each blessed in a week or ten days, not at this pace.
“I know,” she explodes, her hands clenched, her eyes wild. “I’m well aware, and I can’t even disagree with you. This method’s just too slow.”
“You have to gamble,” Jean says.
I’ll portal into the space beside the festival. There. I point at the map with my nose. You’ll be with me. We’ll call whoever we can, and then we’ll portal back out.
“How many humans would we need to convince him?”
At least a thousand, I say.
“A thousand?” She kicks a rock. “If we could do five hundred today, and then—”
“It’s only a matter of time until someone tells a government agency and they look into it,” Jean says. “We should really try and frontload, or they’ll ambush you.”
“Fine,” Liz says. “Fine. We try it. I’ll go with Calista.” She waves to the delicate strike-blessed. “She has a loud voice.”
Absolutely not. You will go only with me.
“We can’t risk you.” She sets her feet and glares.
It’s so cute that I almost miss the obvious revelation in what she just said. She’s been insisting that we hide that Azar’s alive as a part of our battle strategy. I thought she was simply mis-valuing the human’s chances against us.
Her words—can’t risk me—make it clear that was a lie. She wasn’t worried about us losing to the humans. She’s not that dumb. She worries about me, too.
It shouldn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter.
But for some reason, it makes me feel all tingly and strange. I want to smile and lie down on my back and roll around in the dirt and then race through the sky at mach speed. I want to give Liz a ride so fast that she whoops and slaps my neck.
All of that is entirely insane, so instead, I settle for refusing her little demand. We’ll just return to Selfoss now if you won’t let me accompany you.
She stomps her foot and screams like a small human child. It makes me laugh. When I stop, all the other blessed are staring at me strangely.
“Fine.” She lunges at me, and then backs off, like she’s going to. . .hit me? “FINE.” She stomps off, flinging her hand out in front of her and pointing into the woods. I’m terribly worried that she believes she can order me to follow her.
My fear is confirmed when she turns back toward me impatiently. “We won’t be gone long.” She huffs. “Or maybe we’ll both die and the water blessed will get wings and have to bond whales. Who knows?”
I’m laughing again, even more loudly, when I open the portal.
When we step through—a winged human and a golden dragon—in broad daylight, I brace myself for spears, bullets, and lots of shouting.
I am not expecting to step onto a small field on which a man with a beard is shouting while holding a tiny skull.
He’s wearing a weird, woven hat with a large brim that comes to a point at the top.
He drops the skull and screams, but then, instead of running, he drops to his knees. “A real dragon!” He has the frenzied look on his face that I’ve come to recognize as the look of a blessed-lover.
Liz whacks my side. “Say it. Now!”
The blessed aren’t your enemies.
“Not the blessed,” she says. “Say dragons, lummox.”
Lummox? I frown. Now I know what that means. You shouldn’t be insulting me.
Liz’s eyes widen, and she splutters. “Focus, dummy.”
I know that’s an insult, but she’s right. There are a lot of people staring at us and a few more, screaming. I project the message as far as I possibly can. The dragons are not your enemies. In fact, we need your help. Since coming to Earth, we need to bond humans, or we can’t. . .
I stop, unsure we really want to broadcast that we can’t eat without being bonded. Is this wise?
“For the love—” she climbs up on my back. “You’re terrible at this. No wonder the humans attacked you instead of listening. Just repeat what I say.” She sighs. “The government has been lying to you. We came to Earth to recover something we left here thousands of years ago.”
She jabs me, and I repeat it.
“And now, we need your help. We don’t want to harm anyone, but your bloodthirsty military keeps attacking us. If you’ve ever dreamed of life with a dragon, or of sailing through the sky with one, now you can do it.”
Is she kidding? It sounds like she’s advertising us as some kind of vacation or something.
“Say it,” she hisses. “Now.”
I hate it, but I do repeat her message, more or less.