white-hot hatred…
The helicopter, Lucinda thought. It’s just like Carmen and Alma said. That must be where Colin’s going-but why?
The death-dealing urge throbbed through Meseret like a single, high-pitched note of song. Her wings creaked as she accelerated, the increased wind almost yanking Lucinda up off the creature’s back.
No! Lucinda did her best to find that feeling again, the feeling the dragon herself felt. Don’t-you’ll kill them all, and your egg too! Let me help you!
What? It came to her as an eddy of startled thought, curling and curious. Someone else was in Meseret’s thoughts, and even through her storm of fury it caught the dragon by surprise. Who?
Lucinda. The… rat-monkey. I’m on your back, don’t you know that? I got tangled in the straps when you got out of the Sick Barn. Little of this seemed to be getting through, so she tried to summon up the memories as pictures in her mind, like a movie-the struggle, the dragon’s escape, herself clinging for dear life.
You… talk? Talk dragon?
I don’t know-sort of… But you have to stop. I’ll help you, but you can’t attack that… big insect thing. She pictured the helicopter as Meseret saw it and tried to show it to her as she saw it, so that for a moment it was both things at the same time, alive and not alive, dragonfly and craft full of passengers. You’ll kill everyone, and we’ll never get your egg back.
No matter. The thought was bleak and ragged, but final. Egg too long gone. Not quickened. Dead like others. The thoughts didn’t quite make sense, but the refusal was crystal clear. Egg thief dies. Flying insect house dies. We die. Doesn’t matter. No eggs, ever. Nothing matters. Nothing.
The dragon’s drugged despair brought tears to Lucinda’s eyes but there was no time to sympathize. Meseret was flying more erratically even as she drew closer to the waiting helicopter, the sedative Haneb had given her now becoming a smothering fog across her thoughts.
Please! Lucinda thought, trying to reach her again. Please let me help! I don’t want to die-my mother will miss me! I’m someone’s egg too!
For a moment the remorseless beating of Mesert’s wings slowed. A bit of clear light broke through the cloudiness of her thoughts like a shaft of sun. She banked and began a long descent toward the ground.
She heard me-she understood! Lucinda let out the breath she had been holding so long she couldn’t remember when she’d taken it. Then the helicopter engines boomed and roared and it began to rise into the air.
NO! The thought itself was like a jet of Meseret’s flame, leaping out, burning everything else to flaking ash. NO NO NO NO! The ground heaved up beneath them just as the dragon drove her wings down, caught the wind, and banked upward, rocketing toward the rising copter.
“Don’t do it!” Lucinda screamed, but communication was finished. The dragon, muddled and despairing, was no longer listening. Meseret skimmed the pinnacle of a copse of trees, then sped forward. Lucinda could see nothing on her own, but she could still sense something of the dragon’s thought, see something of what Meseret saw. The horizon, the growing, glowing shadow of the insectoid helicopter, all tilted as a wave of dizziness went through her, and at the last moment the dragon veered-but too late. She did not hit the helicopter head-on, but still bounced off its side with a crash like a bomb going off. One of the blades struck Meseret’s wing in a bolt of red agony that seemed to light up Lucinda’s own brain like fire, then dragon and helicopter both teetered in the air, struggling to regain balance, swung apart, and dropped out of the sky.
Chapter 29
“W hy are we running?” asked Steve Carrillo, struggling for breath. “I’m tired of running. I’ve been running and hiding for days.”
Tyler stopped to let them all catch their breath. “Because you really need to get off this property. Just… trust me on that.”
Carmen straightened up and pushed her hair out of her face. “Running and hiding? You spent the whole day yesterday lying on your back playing Coils of the Man-Serpent. You fell asleep with the controller in your hands!”
“I’m not talking about that yesterday. I was in that mirror for days,” Steve said. “It just didn’t seem like it to you.”
“We’re going to be hearing this for years,” Carmen said. “ ‘Steve, is your room clean?’ ‘Couldn’t do it, Mom, I fell into a mirror and I was gone for, like, a month.’ ”
Little Alma patted her brother’s arm. “I believe you, Stevie.”
Tyler snorted. “Yeah, this is all great, but I really suggest we get moving again. Before something a lot worse than the mirror happens to us.” Like getting caught by guys with a helicopter, and probably with guns this time. He’d have to get the Carrillos going their own way before they reached the edge of the property where the copter had been. What did that Stillman guy want, anyway? And how had he found out there was anything unusual about Ordinary Farm?
They were out well beyond the last buildings, moving across the open hillsides on the far side of the valley, scuttling in and out among the cottonwoods and the stunted oak trees. Steve was still complaining, but not so often or so loudly-he didn’t have the breath. Tyler was just trying to decide if it was time to send the Carrillos off on their own when a massive dark shape loomed up out of the shadows, spreading its arms wide.
Carmen, who was ahead of the others, almost ran right into it. She shrieked and lost her balance, then fell and began to roll down the steep hillside. The thing leaped after her, bulky but quick as a hungry bear, and pinned her to the ground before she’d rolled more than a dozen yards. Tyler was frozen with fear until he saw the shadow bend over the panting, terrified girl. Tyler grabbed the first thing that came to hand, a piece of fallen branch not much bigger than his flashlight, and sprang down the slope.
“Leave her alone!” he shouted.
“Shut your mouth!” the shadowy figure growled at him. “And if you swing that at me, boy, I will beat your skin off.”
“Ragnar?” Tyler scrambled down the hill. “Is that you?”
“Yes, me.” He lifted Carmen up as though she was no heavier than a rag doll. “The question is, what are the rest of you doing here?”
Back at the top of the hill, Ragnar set Carmen on her feet, not particularly gently, and stared down at them all. “I am not playing a child’s game. Tell me quick why you are here. If you are the ones who fooled me with that glove you have bought more than a handful of trouble.”
“What glove?” Tyler asked, but when he saw the cold, angry expression on Ragnar’s bearded face he decided maybe he would do better answering instead of asking.
“And you swear this is the truth?” Ragnar said when Tyler had finished.
“It’s true,” said Alma. Her voice was small but surprisingly firm. “We wouldn’t lie to you, Ragnar.”
He stared at her, then at her sister and brother, and turned at last to Tyler. “I don’t think they would lie, but I know you have kept back truth before that you did not want to share. Is that so now?”
Tyler stared at him. He had kept back the story of the woman in the mirror-the one he thought was Grace. He didn’t know why, but he still felt there were things going on that he needed to figure out before he could completely trust anyone, even Ragnar. “I’ve told you all I can,” he said at last, and did his best to hold Ragnar’s eye. “So now you have to decide whether you’re going to trust me.”
Ragnar leaned toward him, lowering his voice to a whisper so that the Carrillos couldn’t hear. “Do not get above yourself, Tyler Jenkins. You learned much this summer, but the dangers here are greater than you have even guessed.” After a moment he straightened up. “A glove was left on the fence to lure Simos and me away from the Junction Road side of the farm. Someone has played a trick on us. If it was not any of you, it was likely one of our enemies. Tyler, take these children back to their house. You three, swear to me you will tell no one-not your parents or other friends, no one! -what you’ve seen and heard here. Swear.”
