CHAPTER 4
Jennifer
Jennifer woke up in a
hospital bed with bandages wrapped around her throat. Catherine,
Susan, and Gautierre surrounded her in sea-green-cushioned visitor
chairs.
Her thoughts went
immediately to the dragons’ fire, the explosions, and the scream.
“Who died?”
“Mark,” Catherine
answered. Her dark- skinned face was covered in dried tears. “I
tried to cover him after they punched through the shelter wall, but
they kept pulling me off. There were seven of them, Jennifer! I
couldn’t fight them all.”
Gautierre put a
comforting arm around her.
“Anyone
else?”
“No.” But Jennifer
could hear it in Gautierre’s tone: Mark was enough. He was one of
their sharpest eyes, and a brilliant lab tech to boot. It had been
the eager, just-out-of-college Mark who had hit upon a critical
countermeasure to enemy creepers in camouflage: converting digital
infrared thermal-imaging machines that the hospital used for
diagnostics, to portable equipment for recon sweeps. Dragons showed
up beautifully on infrared. Because of Mark, Ember had no creepers
left in her gang. His was a powerful loss.
“We get any of
them?”
“Jack,” he
replied.
“Jack?”
“You
know—Jack-o’-Lantern? The orange trampler, roly-poly fellow,
blasted the front lobby doors last spring? He managed to keep his
feet after your mother’s shout, and he tried to take her
down.”
“Oh.” Jennifer’s
heart fell—not for the trampler, who deserved to die for daring to
attack her mother. But Dr. Elizabeth Georges-Scales had not killed
a dragon since she was forced into a rite of passage on her
fifteenth birthday. Jennifer knew the woman would be wracked with
guilt, no matter how justified she was.
“It wasn’t your
mother,” Susan interjected, reading Jennifer’s thoughts. “Gautierre
defended your mom. He was fantastic. Heroic. His tail moved so fast
and cut the asshole’s throat right before he crashed into your
mom.” The girl turned to the boy. “I’m so proud of
you.”
“Please, Susan. I
didn’t want to kill him. But something inside me . . .” Gautierre
was a mix of embarrassed and horrified. Plainly, he was still
coming to terms with the kill. Before today, he was one of the
dwindling number of innocents among them. Now he, like the rest of
them, knew what it felt like to take a life. Jennifer felt bad for
him, and grateful.
“Thanks.”
“The urge is so hard
to control,” he continued. He wasn’t talking to any of them. “In
that shape. Hearing Mark scream, watching that trampler go after
Dr. Georges-Scales . . . I don’t feel like I’m defending a single
person. I feel like I’m defending family. My own. I—geez! Every
attack feels so personal.” Jennifer
could feel herself nodding with him. “There’s no room for thinking.
Just acting.”
Susan rubbed his arm.
“It saved Jenn’s mom. Maybe yours, too.”
“How did Ember get
away?”
“Your mother’s shout
hurt most of them,” Catherine explained, “but based on Jack’s
autopsy, we think they purposely plugged their ears with tree sap.
Only the light would have affected them, so they could scramble. If
Jack had been smarter, he’d have escaped, too—but he couldn’t
resist the idea of taking out the great Dr.
Georges-Scales.”
“Sap in their ears.”
Jennifer lay back in bed. “That’s why they were so bold. They’ve
never landed on the rooftop before. Never risked groups of more
than three. Now they’ll try again.”
“Maybe not. They must
be down to—what, now? Twelve? And Jack was one of their most
experienced. Everyone else in Ember’s gang is a juvenile, some
young dumb-ass who came along for the destruction when Winona led
the Blaze here. The older dragons still alive under this dome are
either allies or loners in the woods by now.”
“You are suggesting
that attrition can win this conflict.” Elizabeth stood in the
doorway now, hands on hips; the gaunt form of Jonathan Scales
loomed behind her. Jennifer saw relief and irritation in her
mother’s tired expression; worry and pride in her father’s. As
wretched as things were beneath the dome, Jennifer never forgot how
lucky she was: her family, at least,
was together under Big Blue.
Gautierre stretched
out his hands and stared at his fingertips; Jennifer thought of
Lady Macbeth in a ninth-grade English class an eternity ago, with
the Midwestern twist her teach spun on it. Out
out, ya dang spot! Geez, now, out!
“I don’t want to see
anyone else die, Dr. Georges-Scales.” He sighed. “And it doesn’t
make up for Mark. But I’m still glad there are fewer of them. They
can’t keep this up for much longer. Wherever their hideout is,
winter’s going to be awful for them.”
“It’s going to be
awful for all of us. You are a brave soul, Gautierre Longtail. And
I’m grateful you had my back up there on the roof.”
“Me, too,” Jonathan
Scales said quietly, his long, pale fingers grasping his wife’s
shoulder.
“But dragons are
notoriously bad planners, and you are no exception.”
“Feted and slammed,”
Catherine teased, and got the ghost of a grin as a
reward.
“Your theory of
attrition only works with two assumptions: first, that the
unfriendly beaststalkers in this town do not decide to resume
hostilities, with us or anyone else. Second, that we can get out of
this dome someday soon. Knowing what I do about this dome and Hank
Blacktooth, neither assumption seems realistic.”
“Oh, that weiner,” Susan muttered darkly.
“You think Hank
Blacktooth will attack again? He hasn’t since spring.”
“He hasn’t attacked
us since spring. If Ember’s on the move
again, he and his so-called police force will be looking for her or
someone else to kill. If killing doesn’t work, then he’ll be
looking for someone to blame, which will get his people fired up,
and they’ll go looking to kill. Us, Ember, innocent people—it
really won’t matter. We’re all starting to look the same to each
other.” She didn’t say it out loud, and didn’t have to: they were
all thinking the same thing.
We look like prey.
“All the more reason
for Ember and her gang to die now,” Jennifer snapped. “We’ve got to
patrol more aggressively. Try the sewer system. Ember stank like no
one’s business. Way worse than usual.” Blurgh.
“Try not to talk,
ace,” her father advised. “You’ll undo all your mother’s hard
work.”
Elizabeth seemed less
nurturing. “Aggressive patrols, Jennifer? Would that be anything
like Hank’s aggressive patrols from the spring? Or the ones
Glorianna used to send to other towns, at their
‘request’?”
“You know it’s
nothing like that, Mom.” She widened her eyes at her father, a
full-blooded dragon in his prime, hoping he would back her up.
“Just because it’s an idea someone else had, and used against us,
doesn’t make it a bad one, you know?”
“I know no such
thing.”
“Again, ace: no
talking. And your mother’s right.”
Dammit! He’s sucking up to her. He’s clearly a traitor. Or
a seriously whipped husband.
“Dragons ambush,
beaststalkers patrol, somewhere out there a few arachnids are
doubtless laying traps,” her mother continued in the cool,
informative tone she used to teach med students how to pull an
infected appendix. “It’s all perfectly well-intentioned, you
see—they’re fighting back, or exacting a justifiable price, or
ridding the world of an imminent threat, or bringing an
unreasonable group into line, or making more room for whatever
master race is the flavor of the day. Meanwhile, we celebrate the
fact that the older ones are dying, and all that’s left to fight
each other is children . . .”
Jennifer couldn’t
help it; she rolled her eyes, knowing her mother hated it, but
completely unable to resist the reflex. Besides, her mom had it
wrong. “Not what I’m saying, and c’mon, you know that . .
.”
“Still using your
voice against medical advice,” Jonathan reminded her.
“Fine,” Elizabeth
snapped, ignoring her husband’s gesture to end the conversation.
“Whatever you’re saying, I’m saying that it’s children fighting children.
I’m sick of it. Let’s not worry about more patrols, people. Let’s
focus on our mission: healing, protecting, living in peace.”
Elizabeth stripped off her surgical gloves and stuffed them into
the red biohazard box by the door. These weren’t for waste removal:
a former cafeteria worker or janitor would come by every evening,
collect the boxes, carefully sterilize the contents, and return
them for reuse. “I’m glad you’re okay, honey. Feel better
soon.”
She brushed past her
husband and out of sight.