Dragon Spawn Page 8

  “Someone really meant to take him out.”

  From around the bend behind them came Grandmother’s voice. “Only if they are idiots.” She was speaking Chinese again. The way she kept falling into that language told Lily she was more agitated than she seemed. As she came into view, she went on in English, “The world is full of idiots, so that is possible, but Sun was in no real danger. They did not use nuclear weapons.”

  Lily’s eyebrows lifted. “It takes a nuclear bomb to pose a real danger to Sam? One of those missiles took out the top of the mountain.”

  “It did not harm Sun.” Having disposed of that argument, she looked at Rule. “Your men are not harmed?”

  “They’re fine,” Rule said. “Madame Yu, perhaps we should stay away from the outer chamber. There’s an unexploded missile only thirty feet or so—”

  She snorted and kept going.

  After a pause in which Grandmother disappeared around another bend in the tunnel, Lily said, “I guess we’re safe enough. Sam left Grandmother here, after all.”

  He huffed. It was the wolf’s way of showing amusement. “Meaning he’d gamble with your life and mine, but not hers?”

  Rule’s eyes were too dark. The black wasn’t spreading, so he was in control, but his wolf wanted out. She slid her hand in his. “He’d calculate the odds differently with her than with us.”

  “True.”

  They started walking again, this time together. Lily began, “The thing I don’t understand—”

  “Only one thing?”

  “—is what Grandmother is doing here.”

  “You didn’t ask her?”

  “She was repeating some of what Sam told her. That seemed more urgent.” She told him what little Grandmother had shared, ending with, “I don’t know how much Sam learned before the plane blew up. It was an Air Force plane, by the way.”

  “It almost had to be, didn’t it? That kind of weaponry isn’t available to private individuals.”

  They left the tunnel for the entrance chamber. It looked entirely undamaged. “Do you think we missed an Air Force plant? One of Smith’s followers who decided to act on his own?” She referred to the NSA bureaucrat who’d put together a nice little cabal with big, patriotic plans. Supposedly they were all either dead or jailed, but . . .

  “I suppose it’s possible, but I don’t see how this advances any of that group’s goals.”

  “I don’t see what it accomplishes, period.”

  Grandmother was standing on the landing pad just outside the entrance to the under-earth portion of Sam’s lair. Apparently she’d heard them, for she responded. “It is a distraction. It is also an insult, but I believe the primary motive was to distract us.”

  “A pair of missiles is certainly distracting,” Rule agreed. “Especially the one that hasn’t exploded. I find myself quite distracted by that one.”

  Grandmother sniffed.

  Stepping out into the bright July sunshine had Lily blinking. She looked around. Here at last was evidence of an explosion. Debris was scattered on the formerly pristine sand of Sam’s landing pad—rocks, mostly, but dirt and twigs and leaves, too. Some of the rocks deserved to be called boulders. “I’m going to call this in,” she said, reaching for her phone. “Sam might need help with that general.” She checked the time. Four twenty here meant it was seven twenty in D.C., so she called Croft’s cell phone. That way she’d catch him whether he was working late, on his way home, or already there.

  “What general?” Rule asked.

  “A foolish man,” Grandmother said, “who argued with Sun. He seemed to think it was Sam’s fault the plane exploded. Sam is supplying motivation for him to look into the situation.”

  Lily wasn’t sure she wanted to know what kind of motivation Sam was supplying, but her busy brain supplied some disquieting possibilities anyway while she waited for her boss to pick up.

  Her boss was supposed to be Ruben Brooks. Ruben was a precog with uncannily accurate hunches, and he’d been in charge of Unit 12 the whole time Lily had been an agent. But Ruben had been part of the fallout from the events in and around D.C. two months ago . . . not because he’d done anything wrong, but because he’d been outed as a lupus. Half the women in the country might crush on Rule, but the nation as a whole wasn’t ready to see a werewolf in charge of a critical element of law enforcement. Or so the politicians had concluded—those that weren’t simply screaming that lupi couldn’t be in law enforcement at all. Technically Ruben was still with the Unit, but he wasn’t running it anymore. Martin Croft was.

  Lily liked Croft. He was canny and capable. But he wasn’t Ruben.

  He also wasn’t answering. When his phone went to voice mail, she frowned and left a terse message. She had an emergency number, but it was more for mobilizing resources than for letting her boss know that the black dragon was busy motivating an Air Force general.

  Rule was on the phone, too, pacing along the landing pad as he spoke—to his father, she realized after a moment. He looked like he wanted to do his pacing on four legs instead of two. Grandmother just looked annoyed. Not by Rule, probably, but who knew?

  “What were the missiles supposed to distract us from?” Lily asked.

  “Quiet. I am thinking.”

  Rule told his father “t’eius ven” and slid his phone back in his pocket. “You didn’t reach Martin?”

  She shook her head. “If he doesn’t call back pretty quick, I’ll—”

  “I have decided,” Grandmother announced, “to finish Sun’s explanation.”

  “And answer our questions?” Lily asked.

  “That will depend on what you ask. Sun had almost finished when those missiles interrupted him. He will be busy for a time, perhaps up until he needs to leave—if he still wishes to leave. That, I do not know.”

  “Leave?” Rule repeated, startled. “Where?”

  “Hush. Sun has told you of the past. I will speak of recent events. The dragons were unaware of the Great Enemy’s hand in the assault on Mika’s lair because the presence of a dragon spawn hid . . . I will say, hid her fingerprints. This failure concerned Sun and the other dragons, so they arranged to study the traces left by Tom Weng’s magic. This was a lengthy proceeding. They could not enter Mika’s territory, so they had to borrow other eyes, and the traces were very faint. They . . . tcha! It is difficult to explain, but there is a nothingness about the spawn. A void. They are identified in the patterns and in their magic by what is missing, not by what is present. Lily, did you touch Tom Weng?”

  She shook her head. “If you mean did I touch his magic, then no. He was barefoot when he kicked me in the head, but my hair kept our skin from touching.”

  “Had you touched him, your Gift would have registered this void. I do not know what it would feel like to you.”

  “Well . . . I couldn’t sense him with my mindsense. It wasn’t as if he was shielded, either. He just wasn’t there.”

  “Perhaps that is similar to what Sun and the others found. Something which was not there. This examination is how they assured themselves that Tom Weng is, indeed, a dragon spawn. Having confirmed this, Sun decided he would speak with you, then leave Earth to investigate the odd fact of Tom Weng’s existence. He may still do so. I do not know.”

  “Leave?” Rule’s eyebrows shot up. “Where—and how? There’s only one gate on the planet, and it isn’t big enough for a dragon.”

  “I will not speak of his destination or his means of crossing the realms. If he wishes you to know these things, he will tell you later.”

  “That’s why you’re here!” Lily felt an absurd degree of relief to have at least one question answered. “He wants you to monitor his territory, right? Not that I know what that means, but you did it for him before. But why leave Earth? What does he expect to learn?”

  “If it is impossible that any dragon spawn have
been born in this realm for over seven hundred years, then either Tom Weng is over seven hundred years old or he was not born here.”

  “Then there are more dragons elsewhere?”

  “I do not speak of this.”

  Lily knew it was pointless to argue when Grandmother spoke that firmly. She did it anyway. “But if there are more dragons elsewhere, then there could be more of these spawn. Dragons lay several eggs at a time, right? So we need to know if—dammit.” Her phone had broken out into the “Stars and Stripes,” which meant someone had called her official number and the call had been routed to her cell. It wouldn’t be Croft, dammit, who she needed to talk to. He’d call her cell directly.

  But it was still official, so she answered. “Special Agent Yu.”

  “This is Ackleford,” said a hard, familiar voice. “I need you here, stat.”

  Derwin Ackleford was the SAC—the Special Agent in Charge—for the Bureau’s San Diego office. He was a pain in the ass and a first-class law enforcement officer. He was not Lily’s boss. “Can’t. I’ve got a situation here that—”

  “Yeah? Well, we’ve got a situation, too. The FBI Headquarters in D.C. has been bombed.”

  EIGHT

  THEIR suite’s sitting room wasn’t large, but it was pretty with bright colors. Amanda liked bright colors. She liked hotels, too. Until the last year—well, it had only been a couple months here, but it had been a year for her. She didn’t understand that, so she didn’t think about it. But until the Mistress saved her from the dragon’s fire, the only hotels she’d stayed in had been cheap and no fun at all, plus she’d usually been with Sharon. Sharon had had way too many rules: Stay quiet. Don’t call room service. Eat oatmeal or eggs for breakfast, not pizza. Bedtime at nine o’clock.

  Sharon was dead. Amanda had felt a little squish of sorry about that later on, when she thought about it. At the time she’d been too glad she hadn’t burned up in the helicopter to think about Sharon, who had. So had Adrian, Susan, and Bethany, although Amanda was the only one who knew it had been Bethany’s body the FBI found in the wreckage, not hers. Mr. Weng had changed the records to fool them. But once she did think about Sharon burning up, she was sorry. That surprised her. Sharon had been such a bossy old prig. But Sharon hadn’t disliked Amanda the way most people did—at least, not all the time. She’d been a little afraid of Amanda, but everyone was who knew what she could do.

  With one exception. Maybe. “This is a nice room,” she said, snuggled comfortably against the man who thought he was in charge of her now.

  “Very pleasant,” he agreed. “Now hush, my dear, and let me listen.” He stroked her hair.

  Amanda listened to the first part of the news bulletin, but they were saying the same things as all the others. Apparent terrorist attack, blah blah, FBI Headquarters, blah blah blah. She thought about the man with her. He touched her a lot. People mostly didn’t touch Amanda. She’d decided she liked it, as long as he didn’t start wanting sex or something. She was never going to do sex. She’d told him so, and he’d nodded as if he accepted that, which he ought to. They had the same Mistress. But the Mistress had told Amanda not to be upset if he did do sex sometimes—with other people, that is. Grown-up women. He was just a man, and men were simple creatures. It wasn’t really his fault if he couldn’t attain true purity.

  But she couldn’t tell for sure what he wanted, which was weird and kind of fascinating. She couldn’t read Robert Friar’s thoughts at all because of the shields the Mistress had given him. “You could pet my hair some more,” she suggested.

  “I have your permission, do I?” He sounded amused. Mr. Friar sounded amused a lot, mostly for reasons she couldn’t figure out. “Go get your brush and I’ll brush it for you. You like that, I think.”

  She bounced to her feet, but before she got halfway to the door of her bedroom, she stopped as a thrill went through her. She was here.

  Slowly she turned. “You’ve done well, Robert.” The voice was hers. The words, the very intention to speak, were not.

  He bowed. “Thank you. Amanda has been most helpful.”

  “She’s a good girl.”

  Deep inside, Amanda wriggled with happiness. The Mistress approved of her.

  She spoke some more with Amanda’s mouth. Amanda stopped listening. It was like there were two parts to her brain—one that heard the Mistress’s words and repeated them and another, the part where she lived, that could listen in or not. Vaguely she knew the Mistress was talking about “contingencies” and a lot more she didn’t understand.

  She didn’t have to. The Mistress had Mr. Friar for the grown-up stuff. She needed Amanda for the things only Amanda could do . . . well, Amanda didn’t do them all by herself, but the Mistress couldn’t do them without her. Telepaths were rare. Hard to find and hard to make, even for the Mistress, because human minds usually burned out when Gifted with telepathy, and Amanda was a telepath-plus. She could do stuff regular telepaths couldn’t. And she hadn’t burned out.

  The process of awakening and deepening her Gift had affected her, though. The Mistress had explained about that. Amanda’s body would grow up, but inside she’d remain a child. Her little girl. How cool was that? She got to be big like a grown-up without having to become one.

  She was special. The Mistress needed her. She couldn’t be here in person because of some ancient rules she had to obey . . . though not for much longer. Right now, though, the Mistress needed Amanda to give Mr. Friar his orders, and to put orders in the minds of others. Orders they wouldn’t remember.

  Amanda liked that part of her job. Mr. Friar teased her sometimes, but in a friendly way, saying she sure liked telling people what to do. She just giggled. She did like it. Once in a while the Mistress let her play with the ordered people and have them do silly things. Not often, but once in a while, just for fun. That was a reward for being a good girl and working hard. The work was hard, too, even with the Mistress helping. Amanda could put orders in the head of anyone who’d taken one of Mr. Weng’s pills, but she couldn’t do it the right way. She couldn’t remember everything, but she didn’t have to. The Mistress always told her what to do, step by step.

  But Amanda knew the play wasn’t the important part. The important part was stopping the Mistress’s enemies, people who wanted to keep her from fixing things here on Earth.

  That boggled Amanda’s brain. How could anyone who’d had even the tiniest taste of the Mistress’s sweetness want to keep her away from Earth? It made no sense. Even bad people ought to want her.

  They haven’t the advantage you have, little one, said a Voice deep inside.

  The moment Amanda heard that Voice, she stopped hearing the outside conversation. Everything in her stilled, hoping desperately for more.

  Sweet child, the Voice said lovingly. Try to understand. They don’t know My thoughts. They don’t know Me. In truth, some of them don’t wish to, and for them . . . A sigh, as vast and sad as the ocean. Death is the only mercy I can offer those who refuse Me. But for others, there is hope. Hope for so many in this troubled and suffering world. You are important in bringing that hope into the world, Amanda.

  Joy bloomed inside her.

  Be a good girl.

  I will.

  Do as Mr. Friar tells you.

  I will. She didn’t even mind—not much anyway. Mr. Friar treated her okay.

  The Voice was silent then, but the Mistress was still with her. Still close.

  Mr. Friar was talking. “. . . long for that. For the moment you enter your rightful domain.” He didn’t sound amused now. His voice throbbed in a way that made the pit of her stomach feel funny, kind of like it did when she went in a real fast elevator.

  “It won’t be long now, Robert,” she heard her mouth say. “My allies will open the path for me once we have some of those troublesome lupi out of the way. And her, of course.”

  Mr. Fri
ar’s mouth turned up in a way that didn’t seem like a smile, though it should have. “Lily Yu.”

  “Yes. She really can’t be allowed to interfere with Me anymore. I will enjoy destroying her a little more than perhaps I ought to.”

  Then she giggled, or maybe Amanda did that herself. The Mistress’s happiness made her feel so good.

  NINE

  5:07 p.m. PDT

  “STAND by? What the hell does that mean?” Lily glared at the rumpled man sitting at a messy desk in a cluttered office in the FBI’s San Diego office.

  “You need your ears cleaned, Special Agent?” Ackleford snarled back.

  There was a reason Ackleford’s subordinates called him The Big A, and the “A” had nothing to do with his surname. On his best days, the man was difficult and foul-mouthed. This was not one of his good days. “‘Stand by’ means park your ass here and wait. Maybe you’ll find out what the hell it’s for, maybe you won’t. I sure as hell don’t know.”

  “I’ve got a pissed-off dragon whose lair was attacked by an Air Force pilot flying an Air Force plane shooting Air Force munitions at—”

  “If the fucking director of the FBI says that you and every other fucking Unit 12 agent are to stand by at the nearest field office, that’s what you fucking do.”

  Lily stared. Gathering all Unit 12 agents into the field offices made sense—if you wanted to be sure the bad guys could locate their targets. “I know the director’s new. I didn’t know he was an idiot.”

  Ackleford snorted. “Maybe it’s not all about you.”

  Maybe not. They didn’t know that magic had been used in the explosion. They didn’t know much of anything yet, not even who’d been in the building when it went boom. Rumors abounded—including one that the bomb had been planted in the sub-basement that housed Unit 12.

  Croft hadn’t answered his phone. Ida hadn’t, either—Lily had tried calling her on the way here. She didn’t have a private number for the others she might have called, like Jenny in Files, or Amos Baxter, or . . . Lily swallowed and locked it down again. “Hard to see how they got a bomb into the building without using magic.”