Until Jean suppresses a laugh, and I wonder whether there’s another joke being made that I don’t get.Maybe something to do with the unfamiliar name, Stalin.
Before I can ask anything more, Liz raises her voice.“Does anyone have an iPad?Jean’s phone is really small, and I’d like to pull up footage of the dragon attack in Iceland that Axel might be able to actually see.”
It takes a bit of time, but eventually a large man with bright red cheeks and a large hat on his fuzzy head holds up a slightly larger screen.It’s still minuscule, but I can at least make out the figures.
It’s me.
Liz is riding on my back, just as she said, wearing my hide, just as she said.The humans are lined up in nice, easy-to-flame lines.It’s almost like someone read a book on how to prepare troops for war in a way that one flame blessed could most easily destroy.Why would the humans be that dumb when they had fought us before?
Liz said her friend came to Houston and learned about us, and then he betrayed her.He was, ostensibly, advising them, and their military leaders had engaged with us before.Other than the ice spears, their attack makes no sense.Why would they think humans would do anything but die in this scenario?
Unless they wanted them to die.
Was it a lure?
Hyperion flies right down one line, torching an entire row of humans.I fly past next, but Liz is clinging to me in a strange way, and then she slaps my neck.I don’t kill anyone.I simply fly past, roaring in frustration, but not unleashing any flames at all.
Hyperion loops around again, melting a second carefully prepared row of troops.The screams—the screams are loud.I’m sure Liz was distressed, watching and hearing and smelling her people being massacred.
I circle around again, and this time, just before I can attack, Liz leaps from my back and hurtles toward the ground.Even knowing she’s alive today, watching her nearly splatter on the ground, right in the middle of a column of troops who have moved only enough to allow her to die without taking them out too, I feel awful.
My heart’s pounding.
My breaths are coming quicker.
Just before she dies, she stops, suspended in air, and vibrating up and down.
I don’t flame anyone, because I’m too busy watching Liz.They fire on me with ice arrows and spears, but they clatter off my hide like harmless rocks or sticks.
I swoop closer.
The troops, her own people, are pointing their projectile weapons at Liz and firing them.She finally drops to her feet, and then she redirects her efforts outward, creating a shield through which the bullets cannot penetrate.It’s red—she’s pulling that magic from me.
I’mroaring, clearly irate.
I can’t tell whether I’m upset at her or at them until I watch as I swoop in another circle, a tight one, and I blacken the troops firing on her and resume my screaming.When I circle again, flying in a wider arc this time, a soldier’s running toward Liz.At least he stops the others from firing on her.
I lean even closer, my breath clouding up the iPad screen.
“Ah,” the man says, “let me clean that off.”He uses the sleeve of his coat to wipe the screen clean, but when he holds it up again, I’ve missed something.The soldier’s standing near Liz.He’s gesturing for her to lower her shield.He even bangs on it.
She better not do it.
When he orders the troops to lower their weapons, she drops it.
I must have panicked even more then than I am right now, because I spear my way toward them, but I’m too slow.She yanks Gideon beside her, and then she throws my own shield back up to keep me out.Her eyes look almost sad as she stares up at me.
Instead of attacking, instead of doing anything that makes me look less pathetic for being betrayed by my own human bonded, I simply circle overhead like I’m her obedient guard.
Why didn’t I force her to listen to me?
Why couldn’t I manage one little human?
I shouldn’t bond her again—I can’t.She’s too dangerous, if she figured out how to manage me like that.
Then the soldier she invited inside her shield—her friend—stabs Liz in the neck and she collapses beside him, the red shield blinking out.
I should keep watching.I should force myself to watch as the ice spears penetrate my scarlet scales and I plummet to the earth and explode.I should watch it to remind myself what comes from trusting humans—from trusting Liz.
