Inferno (Talon #5)(79)

After several tense minutes, we turned another corner and came to the end of the hallway. A pair of elevator doors stood in front of us, open and blinking red inside.

Mist balked when she saw what lay at the end of the hall. “I really don’t like the idea of using the elevator,” she remarked, gazing at the metal box with suspicion. “It might not even work, now that the alarms have sounded. Can we find a staircase?”

“Not according to Wes,” Garret told her. “The nearest staircase is on the other side of the laboratory. But this will take us to the lowest floor and will be the closest point to the target room.” Shouts echoed down the hall, making us all jerk up, and Garret’s jaw tightened. “There’s no time for anything else. Let’s move.”

We crowded into the elevator, and Garret slammed his thumb into the button for the last floor. The doors hissed shut, cutting off the alarms and flashing lights, and the elevator started to descend.

I forced myself to breathe, tried to calm my pounding heartbeat. Almost there. Almost to our destination, the room that held Talon’s vessel army, hundreds, maybe thousands, of Adult dragon clones. I felt the weight of my pack on my shoulders, the bag that held a scary amount of explosives, enough to collapse a room by itself. Garret, Tristan, Peter Matthews, they all carried the same in their own packs, but would it be enough? Could we really destroy that massive army, make it so they could never rise to threaten the world? And, if we did, how many more lives would be taken when the lab went down? I thought of the scientists we’d passed on our way here, the humans who would be trapped in this laboratory when everything detonated. They would all be killed, along with any dragon who happened to be here when the explosives went off.

This is war, Ember. The elevator came to a smooth halt at the bottom of the shaft. If we don’t stop Talon now, the fighting will never be over. You know this has to be done.

I set my jaw and took a deep breath, gathering my resolve, as the elevator doors hissed and slid back.

Revealing Dante’s smiling face on the other side. And a dozen armed human vessels behind him, all pointing guns into the elevator.





RILEY




So far, so good.

I spun around for another pass at the base, dodging a purple hatchling as she soared by, and angled myself into a dive that would take me close to the ground. The sky was filled with dragons, swooping from above and breathing jets of flame onto enemy guards. The ground in front of the laboratory smoldered, scattered fires burning across the scorched earth, sending columns of smoke billowing into the air. When the soldiers of St. George had first swarmed the yard, the guards had been so focused on the attacking humans they hadn’t seen the small army of dragons descending from the sky until it was too late and flames had exploded around them. Since then, it had been utter chaos, with bullets and dragons flying through the air, screaming humans and the roar of flames and gunfire, all mixing into a hellish cacophony that pounded my eardrums and vibrated through my teeth.

But it seemed that we were actually winning. I didn’t want to get cocky, but it looked like there were more enemy guards lying on the ground, and hardly any dragons or soldiers of St. George. The remaining guards had taken cover behind whatever obstacles they could find, but we were slowly driving them back toward the lab and the enormous steel doors of the entrance.

“They’re on the retreat!” Lieutenant Ward’s voice crackled through the bud that had been jammed into my ear canal. “All squads, press forward. One last push should finish them—”

With an earsplitting groan, the enormous steel doors of the laboratory creaked open. I paused in midair, beating my wings to keep aloft, as the huge barriers swung slowly back.

Uh-oh. That’s a bad sign…

With a sound like the buzzing of a million locust wings, a swarm of metallic gray dragons flew out of the opening and took to the air. Hissing and snarling, they coiled upward in a glittering cloud, before turning and descending on us like a storm.

“Shit!” I surged into motion again, flapping my wings hard, as the army of clones set upon hatchlings and the soldiers of St. George alike. Now our soldiers were forced back, diving behind cover to avoid gouts of flame, as vessels swooped overhead. They swarmed into the air, slamming into hatchlings and dragonells, and several bodies plummeted to the ground.

Roaring, I dove into the fray, ripping a vessel away from a hatchling and sending it careening into one of its fellows. The vessels tumbled from the air, but another slammed into me from the side and sank its talons into my back. We dropped from the sky in a tangle of wings and tails, snarling and raking at each other. At the last second, I managed to bring my back feet up and kick the thing in the stomach, shoving it off me. Quickly, I opened my wings, enough to turn my freefall into a dive and skim the dusty ground as I regained my aerial balance. The vessel couldn’t react fast enough, however, and crashed full force into the rocks with a thud and a sickening crack of bones.

Climbing into the air, I gazed around in dismay. There seemed to be a lot more metallic gray bodies than my own dragons, and the mood of the battle had become even more frantic. Vessels chased their bright counterparts with predatory skill and latched on to them to bring them to the ground, seeming not to care about their own safety. Lieutenant Ward’s voice barked in my ear, shouting commands to the men on the ground. The soldiers of St. George had regrouped and were doing what they did best, which was kill dragons, but they had their hands full with the sheer amount of vessels swooping out of nowhere.