Burn(44)

But if Nelson was a part of it now? The hour was drawing close. What could possibly be the harm? He took a deep breath and began to explain.

“Tonight, the Russians will launch a satellite—”

There was a loud thump on the driver’s side window. Both Malcolm and Nelson jumped. Malcolm turned to look. A teenage boy of Asian descent thumped it again and angrily said, “Who the hell are you?”

Without even thinking about it, Malcolm slid the blade from his sleeve to his hand.





Thirteen


“IT IS TODAY,” Kazimir said.

“Yes,” Sarah answered. “You’ve told me. Do you mind? I’m trying to feed the chickens.”

Not a single one of the idiotic birds would leave the coop if the dragon was near. Well, maybe it wasn’t idiotic, now that she thought about it.

“I do not know exactly when he will come for you.”

“Or what he’s going to do. Or what I’m supposed to do. Or my dad—”

She hesitated there. She hadn’t told Kazimir about her father or the letters or even his plans for the day. He’d told Sarah she wouldn’t go to school but they should both go about their farm duties like normal, in case the people who wrote the letters were watching. Then he would wait in the house with his shotgun. For what? No one seemed to know exactly, not even the dragon.

“You’d have stopped me, anyway, I’ll bet,” she said. “If I’d tried to run.”

“You would not have run,” Kazimir said.

“I might have.”

“It was foretold that you would not.”

“Because you would have stopped me.”

“You begin to understand the madness of prophecy.” He suddenly raised his head, looking firmly out toward the road hidden by the barn, his ear cocked. “I think,” he said, starting to beat his wings to climb into the air, “it has begun.”

“Don’t,” Nelson said. “Please, don’t.”

Malcolm looked at him, but kept the blade in his hand and rolled down the driver’s side window.

“You were here this morning,” the boy said. “I saw you parked. Who are you?”

“We’re lost,” Malcolm said, brightly. “Could you please direct us to—”

“If you hurt her,” the boy said. “If you so much as touch a hair on her head—”

“I don’t know what you mean—”

The boy pulled around the bag he carried over one shoulder and took out what Malcolm could not know was the gun of the late, unlamented Deputy Kelby.

Agent Woolf—for she still thought of herself that way, it was snappier than “the Mitera Thea” all the time—nearly broke her steering wheel in frustration. The sky had cleared, the roads had been plowed, and still some idiot driving a truck full of what seemed to be toilet tissue had overturned, blocking nearly the entire freeway.

The sun was getting close to setting.

It would happen. It would happen soon.

And she was going to miss it.

She honked her horn again, but as everyone who honked a horn knew, it did no good other than as a channel for her anger. Which, she supposed, was some small good after all. Her anger, when properly riled, was quite a thing to behold.

Dernovich was dead. She was sorry for that, genuinely. He acted stupider than he was. She had diverted his attention numerous times—the drugstore for one, the campsite in a manner that allowed the boys to escape—but he had doggedly kept up his pursuit. Which was why she had shadowed him so closely. What better way to keep close enough on Malcolm’s trail to see when he needed assistance, while also feeding his strongest pursuers just enough information to stay one step ahead? She had no doubt Dernovich would have eventually found Malcolm on his own, and the information he had unknowingly provided in return had proved most fruitful.

But the mission had to continue. It must.

She honked again and uttered an expletive. Then she took a long, long breath, uttering a low chant as she exhaled, clearing her mind, clearing her thoughts. She’d always felt a duality within her. It gave her strength.

Instead of honking again, she turned the wheel sharply to the right. There wasn’t enough room, so she bumped the car in front of her, reversed, bumped it again, and broke free just as the owner of the bumped car was getting out with a shocked look.

She drove down the shoulder of the freeway, skidding some on the ice, but increasing her speed toward a policeman waving his arms, trying to stop her. There was barely enough room. She thought she might have knocked the policeman down as she roared past.

But she didn’t look back.

Sarah ran up the long drive from the farmhouse to the road.

“What’s going on?” she heard her father shout from the front steps. “Sarah? You’re not to leave!”

But she couldn’t stop.

She’d come around and seen the dragon flying toward the parked car.

She’d seen Jason standing beside it.

She’d seen Jason holding the gun.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Malcolm said, getting out of the car, slowly. “But I will if I have to.”

“He’s not kidding!” Nelson shouted. “Get out of here! Call the police!”

“Don’t call the police,” Malcolm said, still calm, taking a step toward Jason, who took a step back. “The police would only make things worse.”