Hydra (25 page)

“How did ye get in the cave?” Ed asks.

“I jumped in the lake and swam through the tunnel.”

Ed’s eyes widen. “The lake was full of water yagi.”

I shudder at the memory. “No kidding.”

“But, yer more afeared of them than anythin’.”

“I thought I was,” I admit. “But it turns out, I’m more afraid of losing you. I—” My throat grows tight, and I look into Ed’s emerald eyes. Dragon eyes are different from human eyes. The color is more vivid. They sort of glow. And sometimes, it’s like we can talk to each other just with our eyes, communicating wordlessly whether we’re in human or dragon form.

And right now, Ed’s eyes are communicating a lot. That he loves me. That he’s going to stand by me no matter what, that he’d swim through a lake thick with yagi and half electrocute himself for me. And that he’s known, for a lot longer than I’ve been willing to admit it to myself, that I love him.

But I still feel like I need to say it out loud, because he said it out loud to me a long time ago, and that was brave of him, and I’d feel cowardly and unworthy of his love if I couldn’t tell him how I feel. “I love you, Ed.”

He grins. “I love you.” And then he kisses me. A real, honest, non-rescue-breathing kiss. Ah, blissful.

“Now I can tell ye,” he whispers part way through the kiss.

“Tell me what?”

“What yer mother and I talked about before we left Scotland.”

It takes my kiss-muddled mind a moment to catch up. “What she told you? Oh, so you couldn’t tell me until—”

“I promised her I wouldn’t let on unless ye said ye loved me. Now that ye have, I can say what I know. Yer the one for me. It’s more than love and feelin’s. From the moment I caught yer scent, I knew ye were the one.”

“But you didn’t even know I was a dragon then. Did you?”

“I didn’t know what I was smellin’ or feelin’ at first. ‘Twas a befuddlement, indeed. Met many a female in my life, but none that drew me like ye. By the time I spoke with yer mother, I knew ye were a dragon, and that I’d wait as long as I had to, go anywhere, do anythin’ to earn yer affection.”

His speech stuns me to silence. I don’t know how to respond. I just know it’s been several long seconds, maybe even minutes, since my lips were on his.

That’s too many minutes too long.

I wrap my arms around him and he pulls me close and kisses me again, and the night is no longer cold and my fears no longer frighten me.

Sure, there’s a bunch of stuff I don’t know, like whatever happened to my brothers when they flew off after that yellow dragon, or where Zilpha went when she and Jala were supposed to be watching the cave (seriously, I don’t think anybody’s seen Zilpha in hours) and where we’re going to go from here and what Eudora’s going to do. But I have a feeling all of that will sort itself out just fine.

I’m with Ed. And he’s with me. Ed destroyed the water yagi machine
and
killed most of the water yagi on earth, which is far more than I’d have thought anyone could do.

For me.

THE END

I hope you enjoyed
Hydra
. It’s the second book in the Dragon Eye series. If you missed the first book,
Dragon
, I encourage you to read it, because it tells the story of how Ram and Ilsa got together, and introduces a bunch of things about dragons that might not be explained as well in later books.

There are four more books in the series. The next book is
Phoenix
, and it follows Felix on his adventures with the fiery yellow dragon. Keep reading for an exclusive sneak peek of the first three chapters of
Phoenix
.

I’ve always been a bit competitive. Perhaps it’s because I’m a dragon, and that’s how we are, especially the males of our species.

Or maybe it’s because I have one brother (and three sisters, not that they figure into this equation so much). My brother Ram is three years older than I am, and practically perfect, so my life to this point has been one long lecture from my parents telling me to be more like Ram.

Maybe it’s my competitive streak showing, but I don’t actually want to be more like Ram.

I want to be
better
than Ram.

Not in everything. Just in something. In
one
thing.

Ever.

Just to be better than my brother in one thing, preferably something that matters to me and to my parents, so for once they can look at Ram and say, “Why can’t you be more like Felix?”

My brother Ram always said since he’s oldest, he’ll get married before I do, and I always shot back, “Not if I find a she-dragon first.”

That’s why I’m at this cave right now, in Siberia, in the deepening darkness as the sun goes down beyond the mountains. Waiting. It’s like a stake-out, like in cop movies, except nobody brought donuts.

And instead of bad guys, I’m hoping to catch a bride.

It’s not just because I want to outdo my brother in the race for a wife. I want to catch a bride for the sake of getting married. It’s something that’s not only important to my parents and my brother. It’s important to me. We’re dragons, and dragons are nearly entirely extinct. We’ve got to find mates, and that’s why I’m here.

It’s finally gotten dark outside—that takes a long while in northern Russia in the late spring. It only gets dark for a few hours at night, it seems. The rest of the “nighttime” hours are dusky semi-darkness.

Taking advantage of the darkness, I’m hunkered down behind a pile of elk bones, waiting, when a blazing golden streak arcs through the sky like a falling star.

But bigger.

With wings.

In less time than it takes me to tell it, a fiery yellow-orange dragon has shot through the sky and landed about twenty feet from me, near the entrance to the cave. It’s got a billowy mass of cloth wadded up in its taloned claws, and it kicks this off at the opening of the cave and shoves it in the hole. Then it pauses and sniffs the air.

I freeze. Can it smell me? Can it tell someone has been here?

Though I fear getting caught, I can’t move. Moving might give away my position, and anyway, I’m fascinated by this new dragon. Granted, yes, I saw video footage of the creature earlier. I was expecting a dragon of this description to arrive.

But up close, in real life, it’s stunning. Like all dragons I know, this dragon’s scales give off a faint glow. Since the dragon is yellow-orange, the glow makes it look almost as though it’s on fire, it’s every movement flickering like burning flames.

I don’t believe I have ever seen anything so gorgeous in all my life.

The dragon spreads its wings—long, thin-skinned bat-shaped wings. It stretches as if stiff from a long flight. Then it gives its head one sharp shake, beats its wings, and rises into the sky.

If the video footage of the dragon’s previous visits to this spot on recent nights are any indication, the dragon has only gone a short distance to hunt up a meal—probably elk, hence the pile of bones I’m hiding behind—and then return to this spot to eat it. So I have every reason to believe the dragon will be back again soon, but at the same time, I’m tempted to fly after it just to make sure.

But no, if I fly after it, I’ll only give away my presence and probably scare the dragon. I must remember: this dragon is working for my enemy. It may try to fight me or run away if it sees me.

So I wait as patiently as I can, knowing my future, and the future existence of dragons, might well hinge on what happens in the next minutes and hours.

It may seem like I’m exaggerating when I say dragons are nearly extinct, but it’s true. Until my parents got married, there were only five dragons in the whole world, that we know of: my mom and dad, my mom’s dad (my grandfather, Elmir) and their arch-enemies, the evil mad scientist Eudora, who bred dragon killers in a lab to destroy us, and Ion, the other evil dragon, who sometimes helps her.

That was it. Five dragons in the whole world.

Then my parents married and had five kids. My brother Ram is the oldest. Then come my three sisters, who are sort of like triplets or litter mates or whatever you want to call them. Rilla, Wren, and Zilpha. And then me, Felix, the youngest, the only other boy.

So that would make ten dragons in all the world, except that Eudora is no longer a dragon because my mom changed her into being only human (long story). You’d think now that she’s no longer a dragon, that Eudora wouldn’t be a viable enemy anymore, except that becoming only human made Eudora even more angry than usual, and even more determined to destroy us. The only thing worse than a mad scientist bent on destruction, is a
mad
mad scientist bent on destruction.

So if we want dragons to continue to exist on this earth, we’ve got to stay clear of Eudora’s destructive plans, and we’ve got to find other dragons. It’s our only hope for keeping dragons alive for another generation. Even though there are only ten dragons that we know of in all the world (technically nine if you don’t count Eudora, although it’s up to ten again because my sister Wren met a water dragon named Ed—another long story), we’ve always held out hope there might be more, hidden away in the most remote places on earth, surviving in spite of Eudora and all the dragon hunters who’ve ever come before her.

Until this morning, that hope was just a hope. And my brother’s claim that he’d marry first was an empty boast, because there wasn’t anyone for either of us to marry. But this morning, everything changed.

We’ve got these spies, you see, watching Eudora and Ion to make sure they’re not up to anything particularly bad. The spies warn us when danger is imminent. And this morning, when we arrived at their spy cabin in the Siberian mountains, they showed us some video footage they’d taken in the dark of night near this cave, of a dragon flying over the nearby lake on a mission to help Eudora.

The spies had assumed the dragon was our old arch-enemy Ion, since Ion is the only other dragon on the planet that we knew of, and he has a history of working with Eudora.

It made sense for the spies to assume the dragon was Ion. I even thought it was Ion, until my mother, who knows Ion about as well as anyone (another long story) looked at the footage and informed us the dragon in question was most certainly
not
Ion. And my dad (the only other dragon among us who’s ever even seen Ion) assured us it wasn’t Ion, either.

Which means, if you’ve been keeping track and haven’t gone out yet for donuts,
there is another dragon on this planet.
A dragon none of us knows, who we’ve never met before, unless you count just moments ago when it landed in front of my face and flew off again.

It’s impossible to tell whether that dragon is male or female, but statistically speaking, there’s a fifty-fifty shot it’s a girl, which means a potential bride for either me or my brother Ram, whichever one of us gets to her first, which is why I’m in this cave waiting for the golden mystery dragon to show up again.

There’s also a fifty-fifty chance the dragon is male, in which case one of my sisters could marry him, which would fulfil their dreams and be helpful to our species, so I’m more than happy to be part of the stakeout even if the dragon is not a she-dragon, although of course I’m really hoping it’s female.

And I suppose, if you want to get right down to it, there’s a chance this dragon might already be married, but that’s not entirely a bad thing, because then there might be another generation of dragons somewhere, which could mean more than one spouse for the rest of us. Age doesn’t matter. Once a dragon reaches maturity at around eighteen years of age, they don’t get any older. Dragons live forever, unless you kill them, and we don’t look any older at eight hundred than we did at eighteen.

So it doesn’t matter how old this dragon is, or even if it’s male or female. Another dragon means hope for the next generation.

But there’s a catch, of course, and you’ve probably already wondered about it. According to the video footage our spies showed us, this mystery dragon is working for our arch-enemy, the evil mad scientist Eudora. This poses a problem for a number of reasons, mostly in that the dragon is going to be more likely to want to
fight
us than
marry
us.

I don’t want to minimize that issue or overlook the threat it presents in the short term. But arch-enemies aside, and any painful battles we may have to wage in between, this is the biggest news of my life, right up there with the moment when my sister discovered Ed is a water dragon. It’s even better news for the dragon world than my own birth, because of course, I contribute almost nothing to the dragon world, not unless I can find a mate. I’m superfluous. My parents already had four children, and we can’t marry each other.

But this dragon? This dragon represents everything we’ve hoped for, searched for, fought for. This dragon is so close, we can smell the lingering scent of the smoke from the dragon-fire he or she used to roast his or her supper.

So I’ll wait as long as I have to wait for this dragon to show up again. And then I’m going to do everything in my power to befriend this creature, to bring it over to our side (I hate referring to a dragon as
it
, which implies something less than human, but that whole
he or she
bit was getting obnoxiously wordy).

So I wait. And before long the dragon returns with a freshly-killed elk, sets down, and starts eating.

Now here’s something interesting: I eat as a human. Not necessarily all the time—I’ve been known to snack on fish while floating in a lake as a dragon, using my wings like a personal boat (think of a turtle on its back and you get the idea) but this dragon is eating
while in dragon form
.

Why?

Is it a personal preference? A cultural thing? Or does this dragon suspect that someone’s around, so it’s staying in dragon form in order to defend itself or make a quick getaway should the need arise?

If so, the dragon is on to me. Maybe it smells me or saw footprints or just senses someone may be watching.

The dragon staying in dragon form is making things difficult for two reasons. One, I don’t want it to be able to make a quick getaway. I don’t want it to get away from me at all, and since I’m in human form right now, if this dragon bolts, I’ll have to change into a dragon quickly in order to fly after it before it disappears from my sight completely.

And two, as long as the dragon stays in dragon form, I don’t have any way of telling whether it’s male or female. Not only do I have to continue thinking of the dragon as an “it,” which is so dehumanizing, but I’m stuck in the sheer agony of not knowing whether I’ve found a potential mate or not—which is particularly awkward because I think this dragon is stunning, and I’m going to feel bad if later it turns out I’ve been ogling my future brother-in-law.

One thing I can say for sure—eating goes faster when you stay in dragon form. Not only are dragons bigger than people (we expand when we change into dragon form) but their mouths are bigger, too, which means each mouthful of food can be bigger. And dragons have much sharper teeth for ripping meat free from the bones. The dragon in front of me is downing the elk in a fraction of the time it would take a human to eat as much.

And a real human could never eat so much.

As I’m watching the dragon, I take a few cautious steps toward the creature, moving so slowly it takes me full minutes to take a single step, careful not to make any noise or give away my presence. I just want to get close enough to try to have a conversation with the creature. I’m still in human form, so hopefully the dragon won’t feel threatened by me.

It may seem risky, but what choice do I have? If I stand back and watch the dragon but never let on that I’m here, Ram could come along and get the jump on wooing the creature, and I’ll have lost all the advantage of my stakeout. Sooner or later, I’ve got to make a move.

I pick sooner.

After all, I’m never going to beat my brother to the wedding bower if I don’t stop hiding behind elk bones. And I’m not the only one out here.

My sister Zilpha was on the stakeout with me. I say
was
because I’m pretty sure she’s not here anymore. There was a human girl, Jala, one of the spies from the spy cabin who showed us the dragon footage. She was with us here, too, but I haven’t seen either Zilpha or Jala in a while. At first I just assumed Zilpha had found a stellar hiding spot for staking out the cave, but I’ve neither seen nor heard any sign of her. I’m starting to think Zilpha isn’t here anymore.

Which is weird, and maybe even a little troubling. Part of me is worried about where Zilpha might have gone and why, especially considering that we’re deep in enemy territory. But Zilpha is not only smart, but she’s also got a history of hatching plans, so perhaps she’s up to something. At least she has Jala with her, and she’s old enough to take care of herself (my sisters are almost twenty years old, whereas I’ve only just turned eighteen).