But my suggestion is entirely ignored. Griffin walks closer to the edge, and the Drake’s nostrils flares.
A fucking dragon! It makes sense, considering all the myths and legends that exist surrounding a giant winged lizard. We didn’t invent the concept. She has been existing in our world for a very long time.
“She’s known to be extremely territorial,” says Beet. “We must have woken her up with the explosions. We knew it might happen.”
Now I know where some of Griffin’s traits come from.
My eyes are glued to him as he offers himself on a platter for the Drake. She might decide to take a chunk of him at any moment. And with the size of those teeth, I’m pretty sure that achunkwould mean his entire body.
Griffin lowers his eyes and half bows toward her in a sign of respect and submission. There is no way that can work. We’re not in a Harry Potter book, and she’s not a hippogriff!
The drake comes closer and smells him. Billowing smoke escapes her giant nostrils. I hold my breath, terrified of what might happen next. She pushes him with her snout, but he holds his ground. Her red scales turn a darker shade around her eyes. And her eyes… so similar to Griffin’s. She’s the most beautiful old god I’ve ever seen.
Her giant head slowly turns toward me, and I’m about to piss myself. But Griffin raises an arm in front of me, as if telling her that I’m his. The drake offers him one last heavy look before backing out. The walls of the bunker shake as her massive talons scrape the mountainside. She takes flight, and I have to hold on to the wall not to get blown away.
Moments later, there is a terrible noise as she lands somewhere else, and the screaming starts. She must have found the escape route that the survivors are taking to leave Bunkertown. It looks like Oliver’s dream of an underground city has come to an end. He’s lying in a pool of blood, dead or soon to be.
Griffin gathers his swords, then gets a hold of my hand and says, “Let’s go.”
I nod. I know that as soon as we’re safe enough to relax, the adrenaline rush will come crashing down, and I’ll be exhausted.
He leads me to the edge of the large window, just as more impacts echo in the ground under our feet. Undiluted fear explodes in my chest again, thinking that the Drake must be coming back. But my eyes catch the faint shimmer in the air. TheBeetleis climbing the mountainside, following in the drake’s footsteps.
“Jump,” says Beet through the bracelet.
I brace myself as Griffin pulls me into his arms and jumps into the air. Our landing comes sooner than I expected. We must be on theBeetle’s roof.
“Don’t let her see you,” Griffin says, talking about the dragon.
“I know,” Beet says.
I have no doubt that the Drake would see her as an invader in her territory. I don’t want to be in the middle of an old god versus AI-controlled machine battle.
Griffin opens the hatch on the roof and lets me enter theBeetlefirst. The familiar smell ofhomehits me like a truck. All I want to do now is curl up on the couch with a book, Griffin by my side.
As soon as we’re settled inside, theBeetlestarts moving again, taking us away from Bunkertown and the Drake. Far away from Oliver and his cruelty. I just hope that he dies quickly before Drake finds him.
Half an hour later, we stand on another mountain, a safe distance away from Bunkertown. The Drake is still circling in the sky, looking for humans to hunt. Smoke rises from the ruins of Bunkertown. If anyone survived inside, they must have been burned to a crisp when she breathed fire in the tunnels. I hope Jude made it out alive.
“Once she has ensured that all the rats are gone from her mountain, she’ll go back to sleep,” Griffin says.
He sounds pleased. I am, too. Many people died, but at least the slave trade has been stopped. Oliver has been stopped…
“Do you think they would have thrived without our interference?” I ask, talking about the underground city.
Griffin shakes his head. “The Drake sleeps for months at a time, but she would have noticed them eventually. Especially if they kept on digging.”
“She knew you,” I say, changing the subject.
“She recognized a part of her in me. I smell like her.”
“Is she the reason why your family is dead?” I ask.
I feel that after all we’ve been through together, he might finally trust me with the secrets of his life.
He shakes his head again. “No. My family was killed by another god, who wrecked the laboratory where I was born when theBeetlewas almost finished. I survived, barely, because I’m tougher than normal humans.” He turns to the invisible, six-legged machine behind us. “We used the god’s scales to build theBeetle’s camouflage setting. He came back to exact revenge.”
I cringe. There is only one god that I know with such scales. A god that can disappear under the sun by merging with the light in the water. The Leviathan. Their laboratory must have been on the coast.
