“Yeah, let’s not wait to see if it holds,” I say with a chuckle. Suddenly, I remember something rather important. “Jude! We need to get to the cells and rescue Jude!”
“The cells are all empty. When I got there, hoping to find you, I found the guards dead. Someone had cut their throats.”
I bet Jude did. It means he’s out.
“Good, then let’s—”
But the rest of my sentence is swallowed up by a great boom echoing all around us. The ground shakes under our feet, and Griffin gets a hold of me to keep me from falling on my ass.
“Please tell me that was one of your explosives,” I say.
He shakes his head slowly.
The large window explodes with the second shock. Griffin pulls me into his arms as broken glass rains on us.
When I come to my senses, a giant red eye is watching us through the gaping hole in the mountainside. An eye with a vertical-slit pupil, widening as it focuses on us.
17
The Drake.
“The Drake has been the hardest one to track and get a DNA sample from. We followed rumors of a wrecked convoy deep in the mountains; that’s where the president was killed. Once we got there, we did find the wrecks, but we had no idea where to start our search. We spent weeks in those mountains. Until finally, she flew at night. She has been sleeping off her days in a large cave that is extremely hard to reach. We managed to get a few samples before she smelled us. We lost Edward and Rodrigo that day. I hope we didn’t do all this for nothing. I hope they create something great with our sacrifices.”
Video transcription of a video log by Colonel James Stanford, 2041.
Griffin pushes me behind him gently just as Beet says, “Helios. Slowly walk to the wall. Don’t make a sudden move.”
I do as she says. But I can’t help the gasp that escapes my mouth when the old god pulls back, revealing first a mouth filled with giant teeth, then a massive head with spikes and…horns. Black horns as long as a car.
“Is that a fucking dragon?” I whisper.
“Yes. It’s the drake,” Beet just says as a matter of fact.
“You know him?”
My back hits the walls, and I slide into the shadows in the corner.
“Her,” she corrects. “And yes. Sort of. We knew that she lived in those mountains.She’s Griffin’s god.”
It makes terrible sense. The same red scales cover the drake’s entire body. And the horns… So Griffin isn’t a devil. He’s a fucking dragon.
“How come I’ve never heard of her?” I ask.
A fucking dragon isn’t exactly easy to hide.
The tanks… Some of them were charred. I thought it was because they exploded. But what if a dragon burned them to a crisp?
“She likes to stay underground. Faithful to the legends, she sleeps over her trove. She attacked a few convoys back in the days, but so few survived that the word barely got out. That’s how the scientists tracked her for her DNA. Many died trying. Then they created Griffin, only for the Revival Project to be abandoned three years later.”
Griffin stands in the middle of the room, facing the dragon who gave him his genes.
“Are we screwed?” I whisper.
If the fancy takes her to breathe fire into the room, we’re dead. Flames lick her teeth.
“I’m not sure. Let’s see what she makes of Griffin.”
“How about we don’t wait to see and just run like hell?” I whisper with a temper.
