Page 77 of Red Dragon’s Heart

Larkin swore. “That’s going to be a problem. I need access to the creature so I can complete the transformation. I want to do it right away.”

Zak saw Maddie glance uneasily at him. He didn’t like the sound of that either—especially the part about there being more to this ‘transformation.’

“Well, take the damn thing off,” Chisholm snapped.

Larkin said, “It’s not that easy, without the key. I need to research it a bit. He may have to be given a chemical inhibitor.”

That sounded even worse.

Finally, Chisholm and Larkin left, taking the security guards with them. Through the small observation window in the door, they could see a guard had been left outside.

As soon as their captors were gone, Troy demanded, “What the hell is going on here? Mads, who—what—is this guy? Why didn’t the fire burn him? What the hell did he mean, dragon? And how did that other guy even make fire, out of thin air?”

Zak looked at Maddie. “Do you want to explain it, or should I?”

“I better.” Maddie sat Troy down and explained as briefly as possible about shapeshifters, magic, dragons, the monster, and the collar.

While she did that, Zak was checking the room for surveillance.

“There don’t seem to be any cameras,” he said. “Or bugs. That’s weird.”

“I think there’s something that interferes with them,” Troy said. “Some kind of energy field produced by the security system?”

“The wards,” Zak said. At Troy’s questioning look, he said, “Part of the security system is magical.”

Troy just shook his head. “If it wasn’t my sister telling me this shit, I wouldn’t believe it. Of all the people in the world who might believe in magic, Maddie is the least likely.”

“Tell me about it,” Zak said. “She was not easy to convince.”

“Can we focus, here?” Maddie said. “We need to talk about what we’re going to do.”

“Yeah,” Troy said. “I guess the exchange didn’t exactly go the way we expected.”

Zak said, “Nah, it pretty much went exactly the way we expected.”

Maddie said, “I didn’t expect that car bomb thing!”

“True,” Zak conceded. “That was pretty sweet.”

“Are you kidding?” Troy said. “That guy driving was probably killed.”

“Mikah?” Zak said. “No way. He’s a dragon too. A little thing like being crushed inside a flying vehicle shouldn’t faze him.” He considered. “He’s probably not going to volunteer for any more rescue missions, though. Last time he got shot in the head.”

“Fuuuck,” Troy said.

“Oh, he was fine.”

Troy looked dubiously at Maddie, and she made a ‘Don’t ask me’ gesture. Troy said, “Well, since you expected this, is there any chance you have some kind of plan to get us out of here?” He looked at Maddie. “I hope it doesn’t involve leaving them with those hard drives you brought. I don’t approve of giving the bad guys their stuff back.”

“Oh, I’m leaving the data, all right,” Maddie said. “I hope very much they upload it to their system.” She’d doctored it so that the second time any of the main files were opened, they’d upload a virus into Chisholm’s computers and destroy the whole system.

“Well, I hope they don’t do it until after we’re gone,” Zak said. “I did not like the way he looked at you when he said there better not be anything wrong with the data.”

“Me either,” Troy said.

Maddie changed the subject. “We don’t have a lot of time. Zak, can you reach Kira? Or Emon?”

Zak reached out with his mind, but he couldn’t reach any of the dragons, even Caz or Mikah, who he knew best. It was like listening to dead air. “I can’t hear anyone. The wards must be blocking that too.”