Rogue (24 page)

Ember

I jumped, leaping away from Garret, as a tinny melody shattered the quiet, coming from the bed. He let me go, turning toward the sound as well, his expression shutting into that remote blankness. My heart raced, thrilled, relieved, absolutely terrified. I didn’t know what to feel; I didn’t know what I wanted. I only knew that the tangle of confusion, worry and dragony rage inside was threatening to pull me apart.

Later
, I decided, between one muffled ring and the next. I would sort through everything later. I couldn’t think about…what Garret had said right now. First, we had to find our missing dragons.

Faith stirred. Rising groggily from the mattress, she fumbled in her pocket and brought the phone to her ear with a mumbled “Hello?”

Instantly, she bolted upright, eyes going wide. Gazing across the room, she spotted me and swung her legs off the bed, holding out the phone. “It’s Ava!”

I lunged and snatched the device from her hand. “Ava, are you all right?” I asked, putting it to my ear. “Is Riley with you?”

“Ember?” The voice on the end was a gasp, and cold fingers clutched my insides. “We couldn’t…make it back,” Ava panted, sounding frantic and breathless. “St. George followed us from the building and have spread out. They’re not letting us leave the area.” She took two deep, ragged breaths, her next words laced with fear. “You have to come quick.Riley’s been hurt—”

The blood froze in my veins. “Where are you?”

“Some old rail yard a few blocks from the hotel. Please, hurry. We don’t…” She trailed off, and in the distance, I thought I heard the sounds of gunshots.

“Ava?”

“They’re coming,” the other dragon whispered.

The line went dead.

“Ava! Dammit!” I yanked the phone from my ear and stood there, trying to calm the fiery urge to Shift and crash through the window after them. What did I do now? Riley was out there, wounded, maybe dying, and St. George was closing in. Panic raged inside, the dragon flaring up and down my veins, screaming at me to do something.

“What happened?” Faith asked, her eyes bright with terror. “Are they all right?”

“Riley’s been hurt,” I said, clenching the phone so that the edges bit into my palm. My skin felt tight, the air in my lungs simmering with heat. “They’ve been trapped, and can’t get back to the hotel. We have to help them.”

“Where are they?”

Garret’s cool, steady voice broke through the rising panic. My dragon snarled at him, impatient and wanting action, not this sitting around to chat.
Stop it
,
I told her
.
We can’t just charge through the window and wing off to find Riley. We need a plan.
I took a deep breath to calm us both and forced myself to think.

“Ava said something about a rail yard a few blocks from the abandoned hotel,” I told the soldier. “But she didn’t give me any street signs or numbers. And I didn’t see any railroads when we were running from the building, did you?” Frustration reared up again, and I rubbed a hand across my face. “They could be anywhere, and we don’t have time to guess. St. George is almost there.”

“We won’t have to guess. Come on.” And Garret strode purposefully from the room, leaving me and Faith to scramble after him. We crossed the nearly empty hall, not pausing to look for would-be enemies, and Garret banged twice on Wes’s door.

It swung back, and the gangly human glared out at us, looking exhausted. Dark circles crouched under his eyes, and his hair stuck out in every direction. “What do you—”

“Ava contacted us,” Garret interrupted, making the human’s brows shoot up. “St. George has them cornered in a rail yard a few blocks from the building we left. Can you pull up a map of the city?”

“Shite,” Wes muttered, and ducked back into the room, hurrying to his laptop. We followed, crowding around the chair, as his fingers flew across the keyboard and his shoulders hunched in concentration.

“All right,” Wes muttered, his nose very close to the computer screen, making it hard to see around him. “A rail yard, you said? That shouldn’t be terribly hard to find.” He typed a few more things, and the screen flipped to a large map of Las Vegas. “Okay,” Wes mumbled, zooming in until street names appeared on-screen, “this is where we are now. And here—” he scrolled over the map “—is the site of that abandoned hotel. So, now we’re looking for a railroad… Wait, that must be it.” The mouse arrow circled a confusing jumble of lines and squares on the map. “About five blocks east from the hotel site,” he said. “Right on the edge of town. Bollocks, Riley, what were you thinking? You don’t run
away
from the lights and crowds if the Order is chasing you. Certainly not to an isolated warehouse in the middle of nowhere.” Sitting back, he eyed us over the chair back. “If they’re down there, that place will be crawling with dragonslayers. You’ll be walking into a death trap.”

“We don’t have a choice,” I said. “Riley’s in there, and he’s hurt. Besides,” I went on, glaring at him, “I thought this was what you wanted. It’s my fault he’s in trouble, isn’t that what you implied?”

“That doesn’t bloody mean I want you to rush into a trap and get your stupid head blown off,” Wes snarled back. His eyes flashed, staring me down, before he sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “What do you think Riley will do if you get yourself killed?” he went on in a softer voice. “He nearly lost his mind the last time you were hurt. If anything happens to you now, he’ll never be the same. Riley is the beating heart of this underground, but if you die, the resistance might very well die with you. Because he might not have the will to care anymore.”

I blinked in shock. Wes sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose, his face taut with pain. “I just want you to
think
, hatchling.” He sighed. “To come up with some sort of plan, otherwise you’ll
all
be killed.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Garret broke in, and Wes turned to eye him wearily. “I know St. George,” he added. “I know their tactics, and what they’ll be doing. We’re not going in blind. I’ll get them out.”

“I’m coming, too,” Faith said.

Surprised, I looked at her. She stood a little ways behind us, pale and terrified but resolved. “Ava saved me,” she insisted. “I wouldn’t have gotten out of Talon if it wasn’t for her. I want to help, however I can.”

Garret shook his head. “You’re not trained for this,” he stated. “I can’t effectively search for the others if I’m worried about protecting you, Faith. It’s better if you stay here.”

“Please,” Faith whispered, and turned to me. “Don’t leave me here,” she pleaded. “I can’t stay behind, doing nothing, not knowing if you’ll come back. I swear I won’t get in your way or slow you down. And I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.” Her eyes went glassy, even as she took a deep breath, composing herself. “Ava is like a sister to me,” she said, making my stomach knot. “I won’t abandon her. I might not be trained for this, but two dragons stand a better chance against St. George than one. Please, I have to come.”

I looked helplessly at Garret, who nodded. “All right,” he agreed, sounding reluctant. “Just stay close, and try to hide if things get dangerous.” He turned to Wes, his voice cool. “They’ll need weapons,” he said. “Both of them. If St. George is down there, we can’t take any chances.”

Wes nodded, rising from the chair. “I suppose there’s really no other way to do this,” he said, pulling a duffel bag from the corner and setting it on the bed. Unzipping it, he stepped back as Garret rummaged inside and pulled out a handgun. Turning, he offered it to me. I took it without hesitation this time, checking the chamber for rounds before shoving it into the waistband of my jeans and pulling my shirt over it, as I’d seen Garret do. No being squeamish now. I was a soldier, and this was a war. If we were going to save Riley and Ava, I had to accept that.

Faith paled when Garret held a pistol out to her, but she took it without hesitation. Wes watched the soldier with hooded eyes, his expression torn between dislike and cautious hope. “Get Riley out,” he told him, as Garret checked his own gun for rounds, then snapped the cartridge back into place. “Nothing else matters. You’re not just saving him, you’re saving everyone in his underground. I can’t do what Riley does. If he dies, all the dragons and humans he rescued from Talon are as good as dead.”

“We’ll bring him back,” I told Wes, feeling a fiery determination spread through me. There was no way I was going to let him die. He was my other half; without him, I felt incomplete. I wasn’t sure if this was my dragon talking or me, but I couldn’t imagine a world without Riley. I looked to Garret, meeting those solemn gray eyes, and took a deep breath. “Ready?”

He nodded once. Together, we walked through the casino, out the doors and into the hot Vegas streets.

Back into the war zone.

Garret

This place was a tactical nightmare.

The rail yard was separated from the rest of the city by a rusty chain-link fence and a strip of industrial desert that marked the end of civilization. Tracks stretched across the open, dusty ground, and aisles of freight containers created a labyrinth of cover and tight quarters. If I were to stage an ambush, this would be the perfect spot.

“Stay alert,” I told Ember as we crouched behind a metal container on the edge of the yard. The place looked deserted, but that meant nothing. St. George knew how to stay hidden. “Watch the aisles, they’ll be the most dangerous. If you see anyone, don’t try to take them out. The Order never does single patrols. If there’s one, there’ll be more nearby. Just get out of sight.”

She nodded, eyes determined. “I’ll follow your lead,” she whispered, raising the gun. “Tell me when to go.”

Behind her, Faith trembled and pressed close, her gaze darting around the yard like a trapped deer. I felt a stab of apprehension; Ember could take care of herself. Or at least, she had faced St. George before, and she wasn’t afraid to fight. Faith, despite her insistence on coming along, was not prepared for this. If we ran into the Order and had to fight our way free, I hoped I could protect us all.

I motioned us forward, and together we darted across the open yard, staying low and keeping to the shadows, until we reached the first train sitting idle on the tracks. Hugging the walls, I edged toward the front, peeking between cars for any hints of movement on the other side. Ember stayed close; I could feel her heat at my back, her steady breathing whenever we paused. For a moment, I had a distracting sense of how surreal this situation was. Again. Here I was, a former soldier of St. George, on the other side of the war with two dragons at my back, trying to rescue one of their own from the Order. It was a fleeting thought; I couldn’t let myself be distracted now. I had to stay focused on the mission and our surroundings, the tactics that would keep us alive. But it crept in all the same, dark and taunting. Would this ever feel normal? And who was I? I didn’t even recognize myself anymore.

“Where are they?” Ember whispered as we crept into an open boxcar after making certain it was empty. “This place feels completely deserted. Where could they be hiding?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured, peering out the other side of the car. The space between the narrow aisles was dark and still. Too still. No bullet holes, no footprints, no signs of a fight or struggle. I hadn’t seen any telltale spatters on the ground, either, which made me both relieved and nervous. The Order was trained to strike hard and fast and to vanish without a trace when the job was done, but they would at least leave
some
signs of passing. There was nothing here. Ember was right; this place felt completely deserted.

“What about that building?” Faith said, pointing to a large rectangular structure beyond the maze of tracks and containers. From this angle, it looked like the freight warehouse. “Do you think they could’ve gone in there, to hide at least?”

I shook my head. “That would be one of the first places the Order would search. If they are in there, they’re either trapped, or…” I didn’t voice what I was thinking, but Ember went rigid at my back, drawing in a short breath. She knew what I was going to say.

“We have to check it out,” Ember said, her voice tight with anger and fear. Not fear for herself; I recognized that steely look on her face, and knew nothing would frighten her away now. It was for Ava and Riley, and what would happen if we didn’t find them. Or worse, if we
did
.
I remembered the aftermath of a successful raid; the smoldering ruins, the charred, blackened husks that were once people, the lifeless dragons lying in pools of blood. My stomach turned. I didn’t want Ember to see that, to really see what St. George did to her kind. What I used to do.

“Let’s go,” Ember told me, rising swiftly. “If St. George is here, we have to help them. They could still be alive. And if they’re not, if the Order killed him…” Her eyes flashed, and I caught a split-second glimpse of an angry red dragon below her skin. Her lip curled, and the air around her shimmered with heat. “If St. George wants to fight a dragon, I’ll give them one.”

“Ember, wait.” I caught her arm, felt the faint outline of scales rising to the surface before they vanished. She turned on me, and I met the furious glare of the dragon. “Stay calm,” I murmured. “Don’t go charging off by yourself, not with St. George. This is
not
a good place to fight the Order.” I nodded toward the warehouse. “There’ll be a lot of narrow aisles and tight quarters, places where it’s easy to become cornered or trapped or lost, and St. George is trained to take full advantage of that confusion. If we’re separated, they’ll pick us off one by one. We can’t help Riley if we become hunted ourselves.” She stubbornly set her jaw, and I raised my other hand, pressing it to her cheek. “Do you trust me?” I asked.

“Yes,” she whispered. No hesitation. Not even a heartbeat of silence. It made my heart turn over, that blind faith in a former dragonslayer, but I shoved it down. We had to stay focused.

“I promise,” I began, even as a part of me cringed inside. I never made promises to anyone; it was impossible to know if you could keep them. But the way Ember was looking at me, I wanted to give her some kind of assurance. “We’ll get Riley out,” I continued. “And Ava. I’ll do everything I can to keep them safe, but I also know what can happen if we’re not careful. The Order has us at a disadvantage. This is their ideal location for a strike, and if they surprise us we don’t stand a chance.”

“You seem to have forgotten that I’ve done this before.”

“I know.” I almost smiled at her indignant look. As if I could forget what she really was, what she had done. “But this is still the Order, and they’ll still do their best to kill us. I can’t help Riley and be worried about you and Faith at the same time.”

Ember was stiff for a moment, then nodded. “All right,” she said quietly. “I trust you, Garret. What do you need me to do?”

“Just follow my lead,” I replied. “We stay together at all times. And don’t Shift unless it’s a matter of life and death. Faith?” I glanced over my shoulder at the other girl. “Are you all right? Can you do this?”

“I’m…good,” Faith whispered, though a tremor went through her voice at the end. She took a deep breath and straightened grimly. “I’m okay. Lead on. We’re right behind you.”

We crept silently across the deserted train yard, weaving between cars and hugging the shadows, always on guard for the Order. I kept my eyes trained for movement, footprints in the dust, spent bullet casings or drops of blood. Nothing.

“Are you sure Ava said they were here?” I asked, glancing at Ember as we crouched behind a row of shipping containers a few yards from the warehouse. She nodded vigorously.

“I’m sure. Old rail yard a few blocks from the abandoned hotel.” Ember scanned the open space between the tracks and the warehouse, frowning. “She said Riley was hurt and they had to hide because the Order was coming.”

Unease gnawed at me. It didn’t make sense. If I wasn’t sure that this was the only rail yard this side of the city, I would think we were in the wrong place. Still, we couldn’t go back, not until we were certain. If Ava and Riley were here, we had to find them.

There was no movement or sound as we approached the warehouse and sidled along the outer wall, looking for a way in. Several windowpanes were out, the glass shattered and broken, but they were filthy and covered in grime and cobwebs. Nothing had gone through them in a while. Beyond the filmy glass, the interior of the warehouse was dark, with aisles of freight stacked nearly to the ceiling. Again, my soldier’s instincts recoiled. Another maze of narrow halls and tight quarters; I was liking this situation less and less. The large metal doors, where freight was presumably taken and dropped off, were closed and locked tight, and nothing short of a blowtorch or a pack of C-4 was going to force them open. My hope that Ava and Riley were here was fading fast, when Faith gave a sudden gasp and surged forward.

“Ava!” she cried, making me jerk up. “Wait!”

Before I could stop her, she sprinted forward, toward an open door I hadn’t noticed, and vanished through the frame.

“Dammit,” Ember growled, and started forward, as well. “Come on, Garret, before she gets herself killed.”

I gave a silent curse and hurried after her, ducking through the opening into the enormous shipping room. The shadows of the warehouse closed around us, smelling of dust, wood and iron, and the maze of crates and shipping containers loomed overhead. Faith was nowhere to be seen.

Grimly, I raised my weapon and motioned Ember behind me. Hugging the walls, we edged around the stacks of crates, searching for the girl while staying on high alert. Light footsteps pattered across the floor, fading into the darkness, but it was impossible to tell which direction they were coming from.

“Dammit, where did she go?” Ember muttered.

A scream cut through the darkness, turning my blood cold. It was followed by a crash and the sound of a scuffle somewhere in the maze. Ember snarled something in Draconic and rushed past me, her eyes flaring green in the darkness. Gripping my weapon, I followed. The aisles of freight abruptly ended in a large open area, cement floor bare but for a few stacked pallets and a forklift.

“Faith!” Ember hissed, creeping forward with the gun raised. “Where are…”

A figure melted out of the shadows, dragging something into the light, and my stomach dropped. Faith met my gaze, her eyes huge with fear, as a man in a black suit yanked her forward, one arm around her neck, the other pressing a gun to her temple.

The lights came on, driving away the shadows, and a half dozen armed men stepped into view, muzzles of their M-16s pointed right at us.