Burn(61)

He made one further promise, probably the hardest to accomplish, but he would. He would.

The man stood, still holding the gun. “Well, I didn’t see any dragon,” he said, “and I won’t sit here listening to any more of this nonsense. Darlene, if you feel safe enough to stay with these people, I’ll take my leave, but I strongly suggest you let me escort them from your home.”

Whatever the woman was going to say was interrupted by a knock on the door so hard and loud every single one of them jumped. An impatient second knock came as the woman went to the door.

A man in a police uniform stood there when she opened it. Malcolm wasn’t sure who he was but hated him in an instant.

“Sheriff Kelby,” the woman said, sounding both angry and frightened.

Sarah looked horrified. “Sheriff Kelby?”

“Well, now,” the man in the uniform said, too loud, too false-friendly. “This is a regular camp meeting, isn’t it?” He looked around, taking in the room, pausing on Malcolm and Kazimir and then his eyes widening at Sarah, who had gone quite ashen. His face turned sour. Or rather, more sour.

“Want to tell me what’s going on here, Darlene?” he demanded.

Sarah made to answer, but the woman spoke over her. “My niece. I don’t have to explain what happens in the privacy of my own home, Sheriff.”

“Wouldn’t be too sure about that, Darlene,” the man sneered. “Not when I see ol’ Hisao there with a shotgun ready to go.” The man pronounced the name differently than anyone else had, making it ugly.

“What do you want, Sheriff?” the woman said, clearly nervous but also clearly resentful of this man’s presence.

The sheriff didn’t like this at all. “What I want, Darlene, is for someone to explain to me why the hell I keep getting reports of some sort of animal flying outta your farm and up into the mountains.”

“We don’t know what it is either, Kelby,” the man said, still holding his shotgun. “That’s what we’re here discussing.”

“I’d also like to know right now, Darlene,” the sheriff said, purposely ignoring the man with the shotgun, “who these strangers are.” He started to remove an ugly-looking billy club from his belt. “And I will get answers,” he said, “believe you me.”





Eighteen


SHE WAS HUNGRY, though the word barely seemed adequate. In addition to the literal heat blazing away in her belly and a number of eggs that were rapidly—alarmingly rapidly—nearing maturity, she also had a very empty stomach.

She knew what dragons ate: almost anything. For creatures of such incredible majesty, they weren’t too fussy about what they took down their gullets. Up in the Canadian Wastes, she’d seen them eat live moose, trees, even once a standing stone. She considered that such petty concerns must be below such exalted beings, but now she was wondering if they were just so hungry all the time that they stopped caring. The Canadian Wastes hadn’t always been wastes, after all.

She had eaten enough snow to no longer be thirsty—dragons needed excessive water for obvious reasons—but her unfamiliar mouth was salivating at the thought of, well, almost anything. She sniffed. There were deer out there, and elk. Nothing especially close by, but she was on the top of a mountain. Closer were the muskier scents of mountain goats, not exactly appealing, but she found herself not minding the choice as much as she might have thought.

She took off again, still feeling the thrill of being able to leave the ground, even at this unlikely size and weight. She flew above the clouds once more, twisting and turning, testing out her wings, neither of which ached any longer. The broken foreleg was still sore, but she was mending at a mind-boggling rate, which might explain the hunger.

She headed back down through the clouds, her nose guiding her to the cliffs and caves the mountain goats used. Her eyes were sharper, too, she realized. From three thousand feet away—over half a mile—she could see a mountain goat on a rock, blinking against the wind, its white fur bluffing and huffing. Did they have predators? There were bears here, she thought, and mountain lions, if western Washington was anything like western Canada.

But a mountain goat would never be on the lookout for an eagle.

It was a big male, its horns a pretty prize if a hunter found them, and it didn’t look up until the very last second. One frightened bleat and it was in her jaws, her teeth cutting all the way through its body, her mouth filling with its blood as she swooped back into the air, swallowing it whole.

Well, now. That was interesting.

It was more than the taste, for it had only been on her tongue briefly, though the blood still lingered, and it had been still alive, just, when she swallowed, but it hit her stomach like a rush, obliterated in the furnace that was her body.

Oh, yes. More.

She could smell other mountain goats, but wherever they had been, they had fled from this new peril in the skies. No matter. There was a whole forest below.

She went hunting.

The deer were easy. Like the mountain goats, they had no reason to expect a threat from the air, and she picked up a doe in her mouth with laughable ease as it scavenged grass at the edge of the forest. The rest of the herd immediately bolted for the trees, but she merely flew above them, scouted where an opening might be, and dashed down to snatch up a young buck and another doe as they ran this way and that.