Vixen (22 page)

So we fly on past the first of the mountains. Rilla slows her pace the farther we travel, sagging lower in the sky, even lower than some of the clouds, which are growing thicker here, and stormy.

The alpine villages are few and easily avoided. Besides, as the sun sinks toward the horizon, it casts a golden glow across the sparkling snow, creating a dazzling glare.

The odds of our being seen are small. The odds of being photographed are even tinier, since anybody who’s out there is probably not poised with camera in hand, ready to snap our picture.

At the very least, they’d have to take their gloves off.

So we fly low, skirting the mountaintops, swooping between the peaks to check all sides for castles.

Each time we spot something that looks promising, we fly closer. Each time, we’re disappointed. Either it turns out to not be a castle at all, just a tiny village of steep-peaked chateaus, or it’s a populated castle accessible by cars and tour buses and in at least one case, ski lift. Eudora specifically said the Wexler castle was remote, with no roads leading there at all.

Finally, I spot it in the distance. While we’re still far away, it looks like a child’s playhouse, or an illustration in a book of fairy tales. But the closer we get, the larger it looms. It’s deceptively lovely, but also, somehow, menacing. No roads. No sign of life, save for smoke rising into the sky, blending with the clouds that seem somehow darker here, and more threatening. A storm is brewing.

I shudder.

Rilla circles closer. The clouds are low and the mountains are high—the two nearly touch in places. We’re somewhat hidden, but it’s also difficult to see. The sun is sinking deeper, casting its glow through the narrow divide between the mountains and the storms that swirl above. The glare is more pronounced, disguising even Rilla’s natural dragon glow.

She swoops between two tall spires and lands on a ridge of roof.

I don’t see any sign of my dad or Ion or any other dragon, but one entire wing of the castle is a large stretch of building, like a long great hall, though it almost seems as if it belongs in an industrial park instead of a castle. The sloped roof is peppered with skylights, some of them open, venting steam to the sky.

The smell is thick, wafting in waves from the open skylights.

It’s an unmistakable stench.

Yagi.

Rilla cranes her head around and gives me a look that’s clearly asking what I think we should do next, and hinting that the best choice might be to get out of here.

I glance around, taking stock of everything. The sun is nearly gone. There’s no sign of life anywhere around. No villages, no people…and not even a hint my dad and Ion might be anywhere nearby.

From what I can see of it, the castle is huge. Lots of towers, multiple levels, all clinging to a mountainside, and who knows how deep it goes underground? If Wexler is anything like every other dragon I know, there’s a weapons store and a treasure trove somewhere deep in the mountain beneath me. It’s a vast complex, both above and below ground.

There’s no point going in there, not unless we know what we’re doing.

But at the same time, the yagi stench rising from the skylights is a clue I can’t ignore. If this is Hans Wexler’s place (and from the smell, I’d say it certainly is), the yagi operations are somewhere on the other side of those grimy skylights.

I can’t see through them from here.

Scooting higher on Rilla’s shoulders, I get as close as I can to her ears. “I want you to take me to the ridge of that roof.”

Rilla gives me a startled look that accuses me of endangering myself.

“Reconnaissance,” I promise. “I just need to see what’s in there.”

Though Rilla narrows her eyes at me, there isn’t much she can do to argue with me—not unless she wants to turn human so she can speak.

Obviously this isn’t the time or place for that.

Rilla beats her wings, rises just higher than the rooftop, and glides to the ridge. Carved figures adorn the castle peaks, especially here. Crouching griffins, glowering guardsmen…they almost look real. Tall metal poles jut into the sky along the ridge. One, two, three. Lightning rods?

What is this, Frankenstein’s castle?

I slide from Rilla’s back and hand her the backpack before making sure my swords are still secure in the double baldrics at my shoulders.

The touch of cold steel is reassuring. I killed a bear with these swords this morning. Okay, the bear very nearly killed me first, but still. I’m pretty tough.

Rilla tilts her head to ask me what I want her to do.

“Go someplace safe. A nearby mountain ledge? Wherever. I’m going to check things out.” I whisper close to her ear. “If you see me wave my arms at you, come get me.”

Rilla gives me a look that says I owe her.

“Yeah, I know. I’ll do your dishes all next semester.”

She smiles. It’s a dragony smile—mostly sharp, pointed teeth—but it’s also my sister’s smile.

I grin back. “Thank you.”

Rilla lifts off into the darkening sky, her scales now slightly lighter than the darkening twilight.

Still no sign of my dad and Ion.

It’s cold up here on the roof in the blasting wind and pelting snow, but I’m wearing my leather gloves and jacket—even leather pants. So I’m not just reasonably warm. I’m practically armored. If I’d worn this outfit to seduce Ion, the yagi would not have pierced my skin.

With the heel of my boots on one side of the ridge, and the toe on the other, I’m effectively tightrope walking by my instep, all-but-anchored to the roof by my footwear. Silently, I shuffle down the roof toward the closest open skylight.

The stench is thick. It’s enough to make my eyes sting, but I blink back tears and peer through the open vent.

The opening is at least six feet across; the room below, bigger than a football field. The vast space is mostly dark, except for the glow that comes from—whoa, what are those things, anyway? There’s a huge glowing greenish murky tank at one end of the room, its glass peppered with dark oblong shapes that are moving.

Cockroaches? Yagi are a crossbreed of cockroaches and mercenary soldiers. So it would make sense those are cockroaches.

It’s gross and creepy, but it makes sense. Still, that is by far not the grossest, creepiest thing.

Filling most of the room, row upon row of glowing red—what are those?

They’re about the size and shape of coffins.

But they’re tanks, either open at the top or with clear lids or something, because I can see inside. Row upon row of reddish, glowing tanks, each with a dark, human-like figure floating face down inside.

I kind of need to puke.

Instead I blink away the stinging yagi vapor and peer down. Dragon vision or not, the pungent steam makes it difficult to see. It looks like the top row of figures is more human. Their skin is pale, their shape, more distinctly human, with necks and thighs and real skin, not an exoskeleton.

The next row of tanks holds creatures with slightly darker, more exoskeleton-like skin, more yagi-like in shape.

And so it goes. Row on row of tanks, each of them holding a couple dozen bodies, each row less human and more roach-like, until the last row appears to hold, not bodies, but yagi.

This is it, then, hmm? This is where they make the yagi. I guess I always figured they hatched from eggs like the cockroaches they’re bred from. But obviously not. It looks like Wexler actually uses the corpses of real mercenary soldiers. He must have an enormous storage room of their cryogenically frozen bodies somewhere. By the looks of the tubes and pipes running from the greenish tank to the red tanks, the bodies get marinated in cockroach DNA.

Is that all?

A whirring noise draws my attention, and I look to one corner of the room. A huge metal disk has been spinning almost silently, but now it slows until I can see the globe-like bulge in the middle and the individual rivets that dot its sides. A centrifuge?

I follow the tubes and pipes more carefully from station to station.

DNA extracted in the tank, isolated in the centrifuge, pumped into the bodies via marinating holding tanks.

This Wexler guy scares me.

While we’re on the subject of things that freak me out, the wind is starting to howl. A gust of it nearly knocks me off my perch, and I have to cling to the frame of the skylight to keep my footing. Snow swirls down from the flickering clouds, and a distant rumble speaks eerily of impending danger.

The storm is building. Probably on lower elevations, it’s a thunderstorm. Up here, where precipitation falls as snow, not rain, it’s still a thunderstorm, albeit an unnatural one. I’ve heard of thunder snow. I’ve just never experienced it before, certainly not while clinging to a rooftop alongside a bunch of gargoyle figures and lightning rods.

I peer through the swirling white toward the nearest mountains and locate Rilla, a shimmer of robin’s egg blue on a ledge of the nearest peak. Though I fully expect her to be giving me a look that says
let’s get out of here
, her attention is focused to the south.

What’s so interesting over there?

I look. At first I only see swirling snow. But then a shadow moves, flying toward the castle, growing more distinct the closer it gets.

It’s Ion, in silvery-green dragon form, with Eudora on his back.

My heart does a sort of flipping thing when I see him—a cross between excitement and fear. Does he have any idea what he’s flying into?

Like so many dragon castles, this one has broad balconies perfect for taking off and landing. Eudora points Ion toward one in particular, and he lands there, changing into human form.

He looks so cold.

I shuffle closer to a gargoyle figure and peer over the carved creature’s shoulder. I’m mostly hidden here, not that anyone’s looking my way. Ion and Eudora are not more than fifty feet from me, but the way this wing juts out from the side of the main building, I’m back a ways from them, tucked almost out of sight.

As promised, Ion didn’t bring my dad with him. I scan the mountains for a glimpse of my father’s sapphire-blue eyes or scales, but I can’t see him anywhere in the swirling snow. Is he out there? Is he safe?

In this snow, he could be fairly close by and I still wouldn’t be able to see him.

A man steps out of the castle onto the balcony to meet Ion and Eudora. He’s wearing a dark cape which billows in the wind. I can’t see his face from this angle, but his hair is dark brown and thick, tufting where the wind grasps it.

“What is this?” The man’s voice is loud, and the wind carries his words my way.

“A peace offering.” Eudora’s voice is softer, but I think I heard her correctly. Is this her ruse to get inside? Pretend to come in peace?

“He’s a male. What am I going to do with a male?”

Eudora says something in response. I can’t quite catch it all, but I’m pretty sure I hear the words, “the females will follow.”

Whatever she said, Ion gives her a look that’s distinctly…betrayed.

I shiver, partly because it’s cold, and partly because I wonder what kind of ruse this is, or who Eudora is really tricking here. Whose side is she on? Were we foolish to trust her as much as we did?

Does Hans Wexler want female dragons?

Is this a trap?

I glance back in Rilla’s direction. She’s watching the scene unfold on the balcony, but there’s no way she can hear Hans and Eudora from where she’s perched. Is she in danger?

Even if she is, I have no way of warning her—not without further endangering both of us.

“He’d like to see the nursery,” Eudora’s words are whipped by the wind. I’m nearly certain she said more than what I heard, but I couldn’t make it out. I don’t even know if I heard the part I heard correctly.

Nursery? What kind of nursery? Is that why he needs females?

Wexler leads Ion and Eudora inside.

Now’s my chance to escape, to wave Rilla over so we can both fly away to safety, while Hans and everybody else are inside where they can’t see us.

Except now is the absolute worst time to leave, because I have no idea what’s going on.

Is Eudora lying to Hans to get inside? Or is Eudora working with Hans? I wouldn’t be too surprised if everything she said at the dinner table the other day was one long, twisted lie, knitted to just enough truth to get us to believe it.

But it raises another question, and this one hits me like a punch in the gut.

Is Ion working with Eudora…and Hans?

My mother’s doubt works its way up from wherever I’d buried it. Can Ion be trusted?

Did Ion conspire with Hans and Eudora to lure me here?

I shake off the questions. Of course not. Ion specifically tried to keep me from following him. He tried to leave me at home.

The females will follow.

Did I even hear Eudora correctly? What are they doing inside?

Noises echo up from below my feet. I shuffle back toward the skylight and crouch down to see inside, just as a door closes beneath me with a creaking boom. Lights flicker on, highlighting the creepiness of the room below.

“This is the nursery.” That’s Hans Wexler speaking, for sure, though his voice echoes differently in the enclosed space, without the wind. “At standard output, we produce two dozen soldiers every eighteen hours.”

Soldiers. Right. An army of undead mutant cyborg dragon killers. But if you call them soldiers, they sound heroic.

Raised in a nursery, no less. How cuddly.

So much more appealing than the Frankenstein laboratory below me.

And these “soldiers” (quotes because I’m using it ironically, in case you weren’t sure) are the same creatures who took away my ability to assume dragon form. They nearly killed me.

If I knew how to do it, I’d have destroyed them already.

“How does the operation work?” Ion asks, his voice crisp and clear, not even shaking.

Wexler launches into this detailed explanation with a bunch of technical jargon I don’t really understand, and various German and French phrases, probably to make him sound smart. It’s rather tricky to follow, but basically, if I’m correctly catching the gist of it, the whole thing works much like I thought it did. Tank of roaches, centrifuge to isolate the desired DNA strands, which are then injected into the corpses in the tanks.

Injected.

When Hans explains this part, he flips big switches on a panel, and metal arms spring up from the sides of the tanks, needle-tipped syringes poised for injection.

“We are close enough to the time for the next dose. Watch.” Hans pulls a big lever, and the hands swing down, plunging their needles into the corpses in the tanks, which lurch and twitch in response.

Remember how I said I thought I was going to puke earlier?

Now I really think I’m going to puke. Except I can’t, or it will land in the room below me and give away that I’m here.

I swallow back the acid that rose in my throat.

So gross.

The metal arms retract and the corpses stop twitching.

“Very impressive.” Ion speaks again. “So, the centrifuge is the heart of the operation?”

“You could call it that.” Hans launches into another techno-jargon filled description of the tubes and pipes and the role they play, and how long it all took to build, and which parts are the most difficult to replace. The pipes and tubes are important. The tanks are important. The centrifuge, however?