Voices of Dragons (7 page)

The sun was low, marking afternoon. It was much, much later than Kay had thought. She expected, or rather hoped, that her parents were so busy with the plane crash that they wouldn't have made it home yet to notice she wasn't there. She didn't want to look at her cell phone for missed calls, but she did and found a dozen, with messages from just about everyone: Mom, Dad, Tam. Three from Jon. Helicopters circled overhead. She wondered if the pilot had made it to the river okay.

The tower of smoke was still visible, though thin now, an echo of what had burned earlier. To the north, within Dragon, a dozen bodies swooped and circled in the sky, closer than usual. Maybe they were too far away to see that
the smoke was on their side of the border. Then she remembered what Artegal said about their eyesight. They'd see it, and they'd know.

Maybe they'd understand. Maybe they wouldn't think the humans had broken the treaty intentionally, but realize that the crash had been an accident. She didn't want to think about what they'd do if they decided the treaty had been broken and decided to attack. They'd come to Silver River before anywhere else.

She was driving too fast because she needed to get home. With the plane crash and all the chaos around it, she didn't think any cops would be out looking for speeders. But when she passed an SUV mounted with police lights, it did a U-turn, flashed its lights, and turned on its siren. Busted. Groaning, she pulled over.

Glancing in the rearview mirror as the police car pulled to the shoulder behind her, she felt nauseous. It wasn't just any cop car. It was her father's, and sure enough, he climbed out and strolled on over, looking smug. If it had been one of his deputies, she may have been able to talk her way out of it. She didn't know what she was going to say now. She slumped in her seat, as if she could shrink down and disappear through the floorboards.

When her father—Sheriff Wyatt, now—stood by her window, looking down at her under the brim of his cowboy hat, she considered not opening the window. She could just sit here looking at him. The thing was, her father could
wait her out. He wouldn't even say anything or knock on the window. He'd just wait until she couldn't stand it anymore.

She rolled down the window. “Hi.” If she acted innocent enough, maybe he wouldn't suspect her of anything.

Her father wore a crooked “gotcha” smile. Kay's hopes sank.

“You were going pretty fast there,” he said, like it was a joke.

He'd caught her. Okay. She could deal. Just get it over with as quickly as possible. Surely he had better things to do than go after her. “I guess. Sorry.”

He didn't say anything. The first—and only, until now—time he had pulled her over, he had written out the entire ticket, showed her how fast she'd been going and how big the fine was. Then he'd torn it up. A warning, he'd said, with the clear indication that next time it would be for real.

But he didn't have his ticket book with him. He just stood there, not saying anything, not doing anything. Dad was the strong and silent type. Kay wanted to scream.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“You know this road's been closed?” he said.

He hadn't pulled her over because she was speeding. He'd pulled her over because she wasn't supposed to be here at all. She hadn't even thought about that, that they would quarantine this whole area until they found the pilot and figured out what the dragons were going to do. She had no
possible excuse to get out of this.

She shook her head and hoped she looked innocent. “No, I didn't know.”

“That means you were out here before the roadblock went up.”

“I was hiking,” she said, playing as dumb as she could. She'd almost said she was hiking with Jon, but her father would have no problem calling Jon to check on her. Jon could only cover for her if he knew he was supposed to. She hadn't returned his calls yet, and if he heard from Dad first, he might assume the worst.

She could feel her father studying her, and she wondered what she looked like. Her hair was windblown, tangled, even though it had been in a ponytail. A sunburn was prickling on her nose, but that only backed up the hiking story.

“Did you see the crash?” her father said. Fishing for some kind of answer. If only she knew what he was looking for so she could avoid it.

“Yeah, I did. Mostly the smoke afterward. Is everything okay? Did anyone get hurt?” Maybe he'd let drop whether the pilot had made it.

“You saw it and didn't think to call anyone?”

“I couldn't get reception.” She winced, because that really was lame. It was getting pretty hard to find anyplace that didn't have coverage. On the main road there was no excuse.

“Kay, what are you doing out here?”

Her parents—especially her mother and the bureau—were not primarily concerned with protecting the border from the dragons. If the dragons decided to cross, the local law enforcement agencies couldn't do much about it. That would be classified as an invasion, and Malmstrom Air Force Base, with its missiles and fighters, would take over.

Mostly, local law enforcement worked to keep people—the overly curious on the one hand, and the malicious on the other—from crossing into Dragon. Just last year, before she got her driver's license, her father had been driving her home from school when one of his deputies called him out to an arrest. Kay had lingered by the car, watching while Dad and two deputies struggled to put handcuffs on a hysterical young couple. They'd looked like hippies, a white guy and girl with long hair partly done in tangled dreadlocks. She wore a peasant skirt, combat boots, and a torn sweater. He wore what looked like army surplus fatigues. They both had huge frame backpacks with sleeping bags and mess kits slung on them. They'd hitchhiked from Ohio and had planned on sneaking across the border. They wanted to find a dragon and “partake of its ancient wisdom.” They screamed at the sheriff and deputies about how they didn't have the right to keep people from crossing the border, calling them fascists.

Her father had joked that at least they could prosecute them for resisting arrest, if nothing else. Kay had thought they were weird and maybe a little crazy. They obviously didn't come from a place where you could sometimes see
dragons flying on the northern horizon and where they practiced dragon-raid drills more than once a year.

People like that would be insanely jealous of Kay and her conversations with Artegal.

But more, her parents would be mortified if they knew what she'd been doing. If her parents found out, they'd report it. They would have to. She knew that. She just hadn't realized how that would feel. They'd never look at her the same way again. They'd never trust her again. She couldn't ever get caught—and there was no way the pilot would keep his mouth shut.

She waited too long to answer. Nothing was going to sound reasonable now. “Really, Dad, I was just hiking. I didn't know there was a roadblock or I would have called. I'm sorry.”

They'd had enough arguments to recognize the standoff. She wasn't going to say anything else, and nothing he said would change that.

“You know the plane crashed on the other side of the border? In Dragon?” he said finally.

The tower of smoke was close enough to the river; from a different angle it may have looked like it hadn't invaded Dragon. She let him think the hesitation was shocked silence.

“What's going to happen? Do you think there'll be a fight?”

Her father leaned on the car, looked north, and shook his head. “We're doing everything we can to prevent that.
We have to assume they're doing to the same on their side.” She pressed her lips and nodded. He sounded sure, and that was encouraging. “Now, Kay, I want you to get home. And call your mother.”

“Okay, I will.” She didn't have to fake sounding nervous and scared. Her stomach was knotted.

“I love you,” he said, pursing his lips in a thin smile.

“I love you, too.” She watched him return to his SUV in her rearview mirror. He didn't drive away until she did.

She spent the rest of the way home sitting at the edge of her seat, gripping the steering wheel hard.

 

As soon as she got home, she called Jon.

“Kay,” he answered. “Oh my God, are you okay? Where are you? Do you know what's happening? Do your folks have any idea?”

She knew way more about the situation than she wanted to. Trouble was, she couldn't tell anyone. “I just talked to my dad. He didn't say much. Everyone's worked up.”

“Where have you been? I've been trying to call you.” He sounded tense, like he'd been really worried about her.

She winced, guilty. “I'm sorry. I had my phone off.”

“At a time like this? FOX News is talking invasion, Kay.”

She sat on the couch in the living room and rubbed her hair. She was exhausted and was starting to feel the aches and bruises where she'd been knocked around on Artegal's
back. Even with gloves, she had blisters on both hands. She needed a shower.

“Who's invading?” she said tiredly. “Them or us?”

Jon was silent for a long moment. She was about to apologize again because she knew she was sounding irrational. Then he said, “The plane crash was an accident, wasn't it?”

That made her straighten. “What do you mean?”

“It was a malfunction. The plane crashed; the pilot bailed out. It just happened to be on the wrong side of the border. The air force didn't do it on purpose, did they?”

For a moment, just a moment, it made sense. If you
wanted
to start a fight, you'd provoke the other side somehow. Just to see what they'd do. But she was tired and not thinking clearly, so she shook her head. “Is that what the conspiracy websites are saying?” She tried to make it sound like a joke.

“I guess that's crazy, isn't it?”

“Yeah.”

“But no one knows what the dragons are going to do,” he said.

“No.” She wondered what Artegal was telling his people right now, if anything. If he were having to lie like she was. “The police have the highway closed down. They're worried.”

“Can I come over?”

It would take him a little longer, but he could get here via
back roads. She almost said no. The more time she spent around people, the more likely she would be to finally let it all out and tell someone about Artegal, especially with all this going on. Anything she said would be talking around the dragon. Her secret was starting to eat at her.

At the same time, the idea of hugging Jon as hard as she could made her feel warm, made her finally start to relax. “Yeah, okay. My parents are out working. It'll be good to have company.”

“Okay. I'll be right over.” He clicked off.

She'd have to hurry if she wanted to take that shower.

As soon as she hung up, her phone beeped another missed call from her mother. Kay didn't want to talk to her, afraid of what she would ask about the crash and how much Kay would have to lie about it, but the calls would keep coming until they connected. She called back.

“Kay, are you home now? Please tell me you're home.”

Mom and Dad had probably been conferring back and forth about what she was really doing. She couldn't change her story.

“I'm home, Mom.” Her mother sighed with obvious relief. Before her mother could ask more questions that she'd have to dodge, Kay launched in with her own. “Is everything okay? Do you know what's happening?”

“Oh, it's a mad house here.” She must have been at the FBBE main office. Kay could hear voices, telephones, and activity in the background. “I think every newspaper and
TV station in the country has been calling us for a statement. We don't have enough people to take care of the PR and assess the situation at the same time. They've got me handling the press, and I can't keep up with it.”

“What is the situation?”

Her mother sighed again, and Kay imagined her—brown hair with its scattering of gray strands coming loose from its ponytail, suit jacket looking rumpled, face lined with stress as she dashed around the office from one phone, desk, or computer to another.

“Waiting, unfortunately. We can't do much until we see what they're going to do. The biggest problem is we have no way to get in touch with the dragons to try to prevent a misunderstanding.”

Kay could say,
But Mom, Artegal will talk to them. They'll know what happened because of him
. But then she'd have to explain Artegal, and she couldn't do that. She was hoping the pilot wouldn't tell anyone—or maybe no one would believe him. Maybe they'd think he hit his head on the way down or something.

Mom said, “Kay, I'm probably going to be here all night. Can you get yourself dinner? Will you be okay?”

“Yeah, Mom. Don't worry. I'll be fine.” Now that she wasn't flying around on the back of a dragon….

“Stay inside. I'll call you if anything else happens. Or Dad will, but he's going to be working all night, too.”

“Okay.”

“I love you.”

Again, like she had with her father, Kay said, “I love you, too.”

If nothing else, all that love told her how worried her parents were.

 

Jon arrived ten minutes after she finished her shower. She baked a frozen pizza for dinner, and they camped out in front of the TV watching news channels, even though no one had any new information. The pundits spouted predictions over video footage of the territory north of Silver River, the endless forest, distant peaks, and dragons wheeling above them. This far away, they were like insects fluttering, like dragonflies—maybe that was how the insect got that name. It was almost as if the cameras were waiting for the dragons to get closer. Wouldn't the networks love it if there were an attack?

Her mother was interviewed at one point. She looked harried, no makeup, her hair quickly pulled back. Even on TV, Kay could see the shadows under her eyes. The caption under her image read, A
LICE
W
YATT
, A
SSISTANT
D
IRECTOR FOR THE
FBBE
IN
S
ILVER
R
IVER
. She gave the camera a thin-lipped frown and said, “Other than some increased flight activity, we haven't detected anything suspicious on the dragon side of the border, but we're going to continue to monitor the situation closely.”