CHAPTER 26
Jennifer
“Oh, mighty and
benevolent Ancient Furnace—”
“Ah, geez, don’t
start up with that.”
“I, the humblest of
your many subjects—”
“I don’t have
subjects, and you damn well know it,
Goat.”
“—beseech thee to aid
me into confronting mine own blood for the sake of
peace.”
The Ancient Furnace
snorted and banked left. She and Gautierre weren’t scheduled for
patrol tonight, but she’d been restless and had volunteered.
Anything was better than listening for another wailing
alarm.
Then Susan’s
boyfriend had tagged along, jumping off the roof and shifting to
dragon form in midair; within seconds his powerful wings had
brought him abreast of her.
That was when things
started to get weird(er).
“Gautierre, will you
kindly cut the crap? And speak English?”
“Okay.” He turned
serious. “I want to talk sense into my mother.”
“Who doesn’t have mother issues in this
town?”
“I think there’s an
eight-year-old on the edge of town who has two
daddies.”
“Brilliant. Look, I
will gladly help you find and confront Ember Longtail, anytime
you’re available. But only if you never call me the Ancient Furnace
ever again.”
“Agreed, Elderly
Heating System.”
“You and Susan really
deserve each other.”
“Ah! Speaking of the
light of my life—”
“No. Let’s focus on
the purity of your revenge, on how major a smackdown we’re gonna
give your—”
“I love her, and
we’ve been talking about sex.”
Jennifer dropped
thirty feet in about a second and a half, nearly crashing into a
tree. “Yerrrgg,” she managed, spitting oak leaves. She stole a look
behind; the poor tree was still shaking like it’d been hit by a
gale. “What about me, or about any of the talks we’ve had in the
short year we’ve known each other, indicates to you that I have
any interest in talking about this, ya
goob?”
“Oh, come on. Girls
talk about everything. Pretend I’m a girl.”
“Okay. You’re a girl
dating my best friend. Oh, wait—you just made it worse. How about
we pretend you’re a mute instead?”
He laughed, swooped
close, and managed to clumsily brush the large clump of leaves that
had been sticking to one of Jennifer’s wing claws. “Wow, you’re
going to be spitting toothpicks for a week.”
“A small price to pay
on patrol, I s’pose. So let’s focus on what we’re supposed to be
doing—confronting your mom—as opposed to what you’d like to be
doing, which is violating my sweet and innocent best
friend.”
“Violating? There’s
no romance in your soul, Decrepit Blast Kiln.”
“Yeah, my soul’s all
crowded with survival instinct and foraging for food.”
“Do you think if
Susan and I do it, I’d be taking advantage, because I’m bigger and
stronger and faster? And also because she’s really supergrateful I
saved her life?”
“Ah, geez . .
.”
“Maybe she’s not
really in love with me, maybe she’s just happy she isn’t dead, and
that would be how she wants to express it. Isn’t making love the
ultimate expression of the thirst for life? I read that somewhere,
once.”
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to get ambushed more than
right now. Come on, Ember, would you please show up and try to kill
me already?
“Yes, she could love
me as a physical expression of gratitude. Like sending a thank-you
note!” he enthused. “Except naked. What if I do something weird and
dragony while we’re doing it for the first time? If I set her on
fire by accident, that would be so weird and . . . weird. Did your
father ever do that to your mother?”
“My father and my
mother never touched each
other.”
“Oh, how we all wish
that were true.” This new voice was older, more feminine, nastier .
. . and came with an extra surprise.
A hind claw ripped
through Jennifer’s wing as the black, streaking form of Ember
Longtail dropped like a meteor from an incredible height.
A meteor strike, Jennifer realized.
Without the landing or explosion.
Tricky.
Before either
teenager could adjust to the ambush, she was ascending again, the
peach markings under her wings flashing as she pumped harder and
harder, until she had rammed into her son.
“Ooomph!”
“Fool!” she spat.
“You’ve gotten weak. You’ve lost your training. You depend on this
hybrid freak to protect you.”
“Also, he talks too
much about sex.” Jennifer was relieved to see Gautierre looked
okay—Ember was not trying to kill him. Yet.
For Jennifer,
however, she would show no such restraint. Nor would the half dozen
others who abruptly rose from the treetops to surround
them.
Flying too low, Jennifer chastised herself.
Classic mistake. She banked high,
avoiding a cascade of sparks as three different dashers tried to
pin her with their tails.
“Your gang’s getting
slow, Stumpy.”
They were chasing
each other up the river, from south to north along the east edge of
town. Jennifer could see the downtown area in the distance—the fire
department, the post office, the western abutment of the bridge,
the remains of city hall. Beaststalkers would have spotters in all
of those locations, and more.
As she was trying to
gauge the distance and likelihood of a rifle shot, she heard five
or six gunshots.
One of Ember’s
gang—an indigo dasher who didn’t look all that different from
Jennifer’s father—took a bullet in the throat and fell hundreds of
feet to the ground.
“Snipers!” Ember
called out. “Spread out, ascend, and find them!”
It was good advice—at
least the first two parts—and both Jennifer and Gautierre took it.
From a much higher holding pattern, they could be reasonably
certain no rifle could touch them.
That’s why the
surface-to-air missiles were such a surprise.
Four of them streaked
from nondescript buildings on the south end of downtown.
Portables, Jennifer guessed.
More surprises from the armory Hank inherited
from Mayor Glory Seabright.
Two missiles
converged on a careless sea-green dasher who had been flying too
low. What was left of her splattered over a fifty-yard radius of
streetscape.
The third missile
came for Ember, and the fourth for Gautierre.
They both tried
banking out of the way, but the missiles changed
course.
Infrared homing, Jennifer realized. Awesome.
Up and up the two
Longtails went, the guided rockets in pursuit.
Someone’s got to take out those rockets, before they fire
again.
She descended to a
height of a few hundred feet until she could make out some of the
figures on the rooftops. There were a dozen of them—four pairs of
portable SAM operators, who were in the process of reloading; and
three snipers; and Hank Blacktooth.
“Hank!” she called
out. “Call off your brownshirt brigade! We’re trying a diplomatic
solution with these dragons.”
Seeing him motion to
his snipers, she camouflaged herself to cloudy sky and dumped the
air from her wings. Their shots were way off.
Hank raised a black,
wicked-looking rifle to his shoulder. Jennifer wasn’t a gun expert;
she had no idea what that thing would shoot—armor-piercing rounds,
or rattle-snakes, or hydrogen bombs.
She started to
scramble back, only to be clipped by the racing form of Gautierre.
The bump cost her in altitude, but ended up saving her life, since
the heat-seeking missile was still tracking him only thirty or
forty yards behind. Both soared overhead, followed closely by Ember
and her own dedicated missile.
It was immediately
clear that they were returning the missiles to sender, by finishing
a large circle and flying low over the rooftops. Inevitably, the
missile’s guidance system would try to keep up with a sharp bank
downward—and hit whatever was closest.
Clever. Suicidal, but clever.
Hank, seeing the dual
threat approach, aimed and fired at the near dasher.
The powerful rifle
blasted a hole in the young dasher’s wing.
“Gautierre!” Jennifer
and Ember both cried out. His trajectory suffered immediately, and
he crashed through a third-story window of the four- story building
Hank and the others were standing on. The missile followed shortly
afterward, exploding on impact with the brick side of the building.
Beaststalkers stumbled and rolled on the roof.
Ember accelerated,
hissing. She passed over them, roaring an inferno that bathed the
entire rooftop. Then she dropped, leading the missile to do the
same right behind her—on top of the beaststalkers’ burning
heads.
Shaken by the sudden
violence and loss, Jennifer fled. The last she saw of Hank
Blacktooth, the self-proclaimed mayor of Winoka was screaming in
midair, limbs withering and flaming, as he tumbled from the rooftop
and came to an end on the pavement below.