Burn(88)

If this went wrong, there was genuinely no way to save his precious Grace. He would not have that happen to her alone and frightened. She would be in his arms, knowing at least someone was trying to protect her.

He would just have to do everything in his power to ensure it didn’t go wrong.

“Will she come here to the barn?” Grace said, and he noticed how they all had slipped into the she of Kazimir and the girl.

“She’ll be stopped by what they’ve got planned. If she’s not, that’s what the army is for. Trust me, sweetheart, everyone here is very motivated to stop that dragon.”

“Or Russian contraption,” Gareth Dewhurst grumbled. “I still can’t believe it’s an actual dragon.”

“You wouldn’t believe God Himself if He came to our front door handing out loaves and fishes,” Darlene grumbled back.

“What would God Himself be doing in Frome?” Hisao added. “I wouldn’t believe Him either.”

Agent Dernovich could see how close the Dewhursts were standing together, how Gareth’s left arm draped across Darlene, how she leaned ever closer to his side.

“Is everything going to be okay?” Grace asked. He saw she had tucked her book into her little waistband. Somewhere along the way, it had become the security blanket he’d made her give up when she was five. If they got out of this, she could carry that book for the rest of her life, for all he minded now.

He lifted his binoculars again. “Absolutely, sweetheart.”

He hoped he was right. With all his being, he hoped he was right.

Malcolm raced down the middle of the road on foot, between the logjam of oncoming traffic on either side. Cars honked at one another, at him, at their sheer frustration at not moving. A woman leaned her head out of her passenger window. “Where you going, kid?” she shouted as he ran past. “We gotta evacuate!”

He ignored her, as he had the previous five people who’d shouted, as he’d ignored the police officer who’d actually tried to block his way. Malcolm was sorry for it, but that police officer was currently nursing a broken elbow for his efforts.

What had happened in Seattle was unthinkable. It was the greatest fear in his own world, the outcome both sides had spent their entire histories trying to avoid, and she had done it in an afternoon. One dragon, an entire city, maybe a million dead, and that would be only the beginning. He had to get back.

Which had proved exceedingly difficult. There was no longer a freeway south, because several major bridges of it had been taken out by a dragon. This left the other roads packed with cars fleeing the area around the city. Hardly anyone had wanted to go toward it, and he’d had a devil of a time getting around it, finally stealing a running car from a lady who only that morning had bought him breakfast out of the kindness of her heart.

Again, he was sorry, he was sorry for so very, very much, but he had to get back. If he did, maybe he could help set things right, maybe he could start making up for everything he had done.

“The Russians are coming!” a man yelled out his window.

“They really aren’t,” Malcolm said, under his breath.

He wasn’t going to get there, not on foot. He’d had to abandon the car he’d stolen miles out of town as both lanes of every road he found were crowded with people fleeing. He stopped in the middle of the tarmac, eyeing the cars around him. He’d have to steal one again, drive it on the embankment or over fields or something. A frightened family looked out the windows of a station wagon on one side of him; another frightened family looked out of a prewar Ford on the other.

Could he strand an entire family?

“I’m sorry,” he said, turning to the family in the station wagon.

“Assassin guy?” he heard.

He spun around. Three cars down on the left, Jason Inagawa leaned out the driver’s side window of his dad’s truck, waving frantically. Malcolm ran toward him.

“What are you doing here?” Jason asked as he arrived.

“I need your truck,” Malcolm said.

“Well, hop in,” Jason said, unlocking the passenger door.

“No,” Malcolm said, still standing on the driver’s side. “It’s too dangerous. I have to go alone.”

“And stick me on the roadside? I don’t think so.”

“I’m sorry but—”

“Do you know the backroads well enough to get further than half a mile?”

Malcolm hesitated. Perhaps there was Providence after all, even if it didn’t come from the Mitera Thea.

He ran around, got in the truck, and said, “We have to hurry.”

Jason started the tortuous process of getting out of the gridlock and up onto the embankment. “Why so fast?” he asked, spinning the wheel.

“She’s coming,” Malcolm said. “I can feel it.”

Malcolm looked out the back window, as if he could see her.

He paused.

“What do you have in the back of your truck?”

“Kazimir,” Sarah said, her wide eyes looking at the Spur in his hand.

It was glowing brighter. And brighter.

“She’s coming,” Kazimir said.

She flew toward the scent of dragon blood. She had smelled it before, smelled the weakness in it, the blue was truly inferior, but this time there was a scent of something else, something in the air like a living razor. The clouds were still thick heading north, away from her brood, but the twin smells rang like a clarion bell.