Phoenix Read online

  “Her?” I repeat, partly in hope and surprise, and partly because Nia’s voice is so strained I can’t be certain I heard her correctly—and this is one point in which I cannot endure any uncertainty.

  “Yes. Her. She—she was an ancient dragon, injured long ago in the battles against the dragons. She lived alone, betrayed by her people, unable to fly after she lost an arm and a wing. I found her and I rejoiced that I was no longer alone, but hardly had she told me of her past than the mamluki caught up to me, trained on my scent. I fought—I fought to defend us both. It was not enough. They swarmed us. Killed her. Drove me back to the white witch.”

  Nia looks at us, her eyes imploring. “They are baited by my scent. I will not watch another dragon die because of me.”

  I sense she’s about to leave, but even as I’m wondering what I could possibly do to compel her to stay with us, another eruption pierces the night sky, this time shooting fire straight upward into the night. As we stare at the violent burst, a shockwave reverberates outward. Its concussion trembles through the air. As it moves past us, I feel its force.

  Nia moans. “That came from the cave. I must turn myself over to the white witch again.”

  “No.” Ram uses his tone of voice that no one ever argues with—the tone that seems to carry all the authority of a fire-breathing dragon, even when he’s in human form.

  I’ve never figured out how to get my voice to do that. I explain, “Our family was near there. We’ve got to make sure they’re okay.” To my chagrin, my words are tinged with something like a whimper.

  But neither Ram nor Nia appear to be paying me much attention. Nia moves to step free of us, but Ram takes hold of her arm, restraining her.

  “What would you gain by turning yourself over to her?” Ram asks.

  “Life. Not just mine. If she sends the mamluki—”

  “We will fight them. We are not old and injured.”

  “You cannot win.”

  “We have before. We will again.”

  “But when she sets them after me en masse, there is no fighting them off. It is a danger to all of us the longer I stay here. They may already be on their way.”

  Ram turns to me now. “Felix, go back to the cabin, make sure everyone’s okay, and fetch our weapons. You can catch up to us—”

  “I’m not going with you,” Nia protests. She doesn’t appear to be fighting against Ram’s hold on her wrist—probably because she’s guessed, rightly so, that Ram is stronger than she is. She’ll have to talk her way free.

  Ram ignores her protest and continues addressing me. “We passed an abandoned outpost the other day on our journey to the spy cabin. It’s perhaps forty or fifty miles to the southwest, along the route we traveled.”

  “I remember. I can find it again.”

  “Meet us there.”

  I nod in agreement with Ram’s plan, though everything inside me is protesting the idea. I don’t want Ram flying off with Nia. He’ll woo her and win her before I return with the swords. I’ll lose whatever advantage I had, which wasn’t much.

  But what else is there? If I argue with him, he’ll only bully me into getting his way (he’s done that countless times before) and I’ll look weak in front of Nia. I can’t risk that.

  Even more than that, though, I’m concerned about our family. That explosion was far too close to the cave, the lake, and the cabin. They may need my help.

  I linger, waiting to be sure Nia will go with Ram, that he doesn’t need my support to prevent her from eluding us. Waiting…because there’s a noise, drawing louder, a wailing sort of sound that strikes my bones and threatens to lock them into place.

  Yagi.

  I’ve faced them before. I know their defenses well. Armor-like exoskeletons, venomous barbs, rapier-like antennae, and—most unnerving of all—their paralysis-inducing wails, by which they freeze their prey before they pounce.

  The only way to keep from being frozen in place, bones locked in rigid stiffness, is to keep moving.

  Which means I can’t wait around any longer. “I’ll meet you at the outpost,” I promise my brother as I leap into the air, morphing into dragon form as a horde of yagi swarm to the spot where I stood seconds before. I glimpse Ram and Nia taking off in the other direction, but my eyes are on the yagi.

  I’ve never seen so many yagi in one place before. There must be dozens of them.

  Nia said they were drawn to her, trained on her scent, that Eudora would send them after her if she tried to flee. Not that I didn’t believe her, but seeing them streaming toward her in a swarm like so many man-sized roaches….

  She was right to warn us—right in ways I couldn’t appreciate until I saw the swarm myself.

  I fly swiftly back to the cabin. We’re going to need weapons.

  Lots of weapons.

  It’s a short flight to the hideaway. I return to human form as I land, bounding up the front steps and inside, explaining myself as I rush past everyone toward the room where we’ve stashed the weapons. “The yellow dragon is a girl. Nia. Eudora enslaved her and trained the yagi on her scent. They’re hunting her in hordes. We need weapons to fight them off.”

  My parents follow me into the room, where I’m looping baldrics over my shoulders and strapping scabbards to my thighs triple thick—I need weapons for myself, as well as Ram and Nia. I need to arm us all. Based on the number of yagi I saw, I estimate I’m going to need every weapon I can carry.

  “Do you want us to come help you fight?” My father offers.

  “No. Nia is afraid of what might happen to anyone who comes near her. She doesn’t even want me and Ram to help her, but of course we’ve got to. We caused the explosions—didn’t we?”

  “Ed caused it. He destroyed Eudora’s water-yagi operation.” Mom explains.

  “Is everyone all right?” I’m relieved to hear it. That much, at least, is good news.

  Not that it’s going to help Nia any.

  “We’re fine. We got away before the final explosion.” Mom stuffs cloaks and a few other supplies in a backpack, then helps hoist it and some extra swords onto my back over the swords I’m already wearing. “So this girl-dragon, Nia?”

  “She’s beautiful, Mom.” A pause, trying to think how to describe her without going into too much detail and wasting time, but words fail me.

  My mother knows me well, however. She gives me a knowing smile. “She’s single?”

  “Yes. She said something about being alone all her life.” I realize my mother might be able to help me with something after all. “I want to woo her—tell me how.”

  My parents hurry with me back through the cabin toward the front door, while Mom makes a face that says she’s thinking.

  When we reach the porch, she offers, “Find out what she likes. Learn about her. Make her laugh.”

  “Do what I did when I wooed your mother,” Dad suggests. “Put her feelings ahead of yours.”

  Aware that every moment I spend at the cabin is another moment Ram can use to woo Nia away from me—and another moment closer to the yagi catching up to them again at the outpost—I thank my parents and wave goodbye as I leap back into dragon form, flying swiftly to the southwest.

  I don’t recall the precise location of the abandoned outpost. In fact, we passed more than one of these remote clusters of buildings on our flight through Siberia. My father suggested perhaps they were abandoned prisoner of war camps from the world wars.

  I retrace the approximate path we followed on our way to the spy cabin, and I slow a bit once I’ve gone more than thirty miles, scanning the landscape below for any sign of the settlement.

  Nights are short in Siberia in the summer. The crepuscular pre-dawn phase has already begun, lighting the woods with a foggy gleam. I haven’t seen the yagi, either, but they tend to creep stealthily, like the cockroaches they were bred from. If Nia’s fears are well-founded—and I have no doubt they are—the yagi are down there somewhere, headed toward Ram and Nia even more surely than I am, streamin
g through the woods, hidden from my sight by tree branches and darkness.

  It’s the wood smoke that draws my attention first. I catch a faint whiff of it on the crisp pre-morning air (we dragons have acute senses, especially when we’re in dragon form). I hone in on the scent and sure enough, spot a trail of smoke rising to the sky with an abandoned settlement beneath it. The tiny town appears to have been constructed of wood hewn from the nearby forests, mostly large barracks-style buildings with a few cozier dwellings between. Tall fences rise from the June landscape, cordoning off the buildings from the woods beyond.

  I fly toward the scent, circle once to check for any sign of yagi or humans, then land in human form next to the building with the smoke rising from its chimney. I take the front steps in two strides and am about to knock on the door when Ram opens it from inside.

  Relief crosses his face. “Any sign of the yagi?”

  “Not near here. I circled once. Didn’t see or smell them, but no doubt they’re on their way.” I pull two swords, together with their baldrics, from my back as I speak, handing them to him as I cross the room to where Nia stands by the fireplace, hands outstretched toward the flickering flames. The cabin, though smaller than the spy cabin, is made up of essentially just one room on this first floor, with a kitchen area off to one side, a loft above the back half, and a vaulted beamed ceiling above in the front portion of the room.

  “Weapons?” I offer, pulling the blades from my back.

  Nia looks at the swords with uncertainty. “I’m not familiar…”

  “You said you’d fought the mamluki?” I use her term for yagi.

  “With pole arms. Halberds?” She makes a face as she tries to communicate what she’s referring to. “Shafts tipped with blades.”

  “Spears?” Ram clarifies.

  “Ah.” I’d recognized what she meant an instant before Ram said it. Rather than let this round fall to my brother, I try to do as my father said—to put her feelings ahead of mine. So, while I’ve only ever used swords and daggers against yagi, I nonetheless admit, “Pole arms would be useful at keeping the enemy at bay.”

  “Mamluki are one enemy you don’t want to get close to,” Ram agrees, stealing my approach. “Unfortunately, we don’t have any spears.”

  Nia takes one of the swords I’ve been holding out to her. “We don’t have time to procure any, either. Show me how to slay mamluki with this.”

  Ram and I begin by demonstrating how to wear the weapons. We sling the baldrics across our shoulders, forming an X across our backs with the twin sheaths, which allows us to reach back and pull out both blades simultaneously, one in each hand. Thus armed, as long as we move swiftly and don’t lose a weapon, we can decapitate yagi before they get close enough to hurt us.

  Besides the long swords on our backs, we wear a belt with sabers at either hip, and daggers strapped to our thighs. I’ve been known to keep smaller blades at my ankles, but I didn’t take the time for that this evening. Besides, yagi are far too dangerous to attempt to kill at knifepoint.

  As Ram demonstrates for Nia, using me as a reluctant dummy, there’s only one effective way to kill yagi—decapitation (Ram doesn’t bring the blade within six inches of my neck—we’ve sparred countless times over the years, and I trust him). Unlike me, Yagi have hardly any neck at all, just a sliver of a joint between their armored bodies and heads. You have to hit the seam at a specific angle or your blade will glance off.

  While Ram’s still swinging his blade past my neck, demonstrating proper follow-through, I step behind Nia and place my hand next to hers on the hilt of the sword. “You’ve got to get the angle just right,” I explain, turning her hand so that the blade tips in precisely the right way.

  Ram spins around and flashes me a look that says he wishes he hadn’t purposely missed me moments before.

  Oblivious to Ram’s scowl, Nia practices the move with my hand holding the hilt alongside hers, slashing the air repeatedly as I explain the technique.

  Not to be outdone, my brother comes around behind Nia on her other side. “Your form looks good. Now you need to strap your weapons in place so they’ll be at hand when you need them.”

  I open my mouth to protest, to inform Ram we have time for Nia to practice, we’re in no hurry, the yagi have never covered so many miles so quickly before, but a distant wailing noise cuts my words short.

  “Mamluki.” Nia identifies the noise first, and rushes to arm herself with Ram’s help.

  I tighten her baldric straps into place as the door bursts open and yagi begin pouring in.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  True to our promise to defend her, and knowing she’s not nearly ready to use her swords against the enemy (and, admittedly, hoping to show off our yagi-slaying prowess), my brother and I rush to meet the onslaught of yagi. We’ve fought together many times over the years (yes, even against common foe) and have learned to protect each other’s backs without accidentally decapitating one another.

  We swing our long swords in syncopation, the blades slicing through the narrow joint between the bodies and heads of the first of the yagi. Their noxious blood squirts from the stumps as we kick over the first of the dead bodies, trying to push back the incoming horde. In an ideal situation, we’d be wearing protective clothing. Or any clothing.

  Fighting barefoot in boxer shorts in far from ideal, but the yagi haven’t given us a choice.

  I glance behind me to make sure Nia is okay (and yes, to see if she’s impressed with my sword work). She’s fiddling with the latch on the window, oblivious to my sword-wielding prowess, though I’m more concerned about what she’s up to than whether she’s impressed with me at the moment.

  “What are you doing?” I ask as I decapitate another yagi and kick the headless body into the influx of mutant dragon-slaying beasts.

  She gives me a guilty look and drops her hands, but says nothing.

  What is that about? The yagi are forcing their way in, past the rolling heads of their comrades. I can’t waste my breath questioning Nia further. Ram and I both have a sword in each hand, so we’ve got four blades swooping in circles at neck height as we try to fell the yagi as quickly as they enter.

  But we’re not keeping up. Normally we’d be done by now. I don’t know that I’ve ever been attacked by even as many as a dozen yagi at one time—but we’ve killed that many already, and they’re still rushing into the cabin, pushing us back.

  “To the stairs!” Ram grunts as he heaves two more headless yagi into the incoming swarm.

  To my relief, Nia moves away from the window (I can see yagi outside the window—they appear to have surrounded the cabin). Nia reaches the open staircase that leads to the loft above, bounding up the steps just as the throng of yagi push into the room far enough to sidestep our swinging swords.

  They’re after Nia.

  They don’t even seem to care about me or Ram, so much—just about getting to Nia.

  The stairway is about three feet wide, open to the room, with balusters on one side and a wall on the other. Nia has one sword out, defending herself over the railing with her right hand while she struggles to pull a saber from the scabbard at her hip.

  She’s not familiar with these weapons.

  Much as I’d love to try to fight back the yagi that are pouring into the room, they’ve already breached the doorway, and Nia needs my help.

  Now.

  I leap over a rolling yagi head that’s spewing yagi blood (it’s not real blood, but an odorous liquid whose vapors sting the eyes), and decapitate two yagi on my way to the stairs, kicking their bodies with one bare foot, taking care to avoid the venomous barbs on their legs.

  With Nia fighting over the railing, I’m able to keep the yagi from climbing the stairs. I behead them as quickly as they come at me. Their bodies fall in a heap, but just as fast, those behind climb over their fallen comrades.

  Yagi bodies deflate once they’re killed, spewing out first their evil vapors, and then dissolving completely into a cloud
of noxious gasses. They’re unnatural creatures, unstable, unable to retain their form once their heads are lopped off.

  The yagi have pushed Ram back from the door. He’s fighting his way toward the stairs as the room fills with advancing yagi and the vapors of the fallen.

  It’s getting difficult to see, and I realize that I’ve only ever fought yagi in open spaces before, usually the woods, the mountains, or the seashore. Places with good cross-breezes and plenty of ventilation.

  “Get Nia out of here,” Ram shouts over the wail of the yagi and the clatter of our swords against their exoskeletons.

  I glance at the front door, unreachable beyond a sea of swarming yagi.

  Though it was still only early pre-dawn morning when I approached the cabin, I saw enough of the structure then to note two gabled dormer windows blinking out the back side of the cabin roof, like a pair of eyes staring into the woods. If we can exit through those windows, we can climb out onto the roof, change into dragons, and fly away.

  “Upstairs! We can escape through the windows!”

  Nia pulls her sword from the neck joint of a yagi that had climbed the banister to attack her. Its corpse falls back into the others as she runs up the stairs.

  I’m right behind her.

  “Where to?” she asks as we approach two closed doors.

  “Either one.”

  Nia opens the first door to reveal yagi climbing in the window.

  She slams the door shut, and I’m struck with a pang of fear.

  The yagi are on the roof. They’re climbing in the windows.

  We’re completely surrounded.

  “Other door,” I step around her as she holds the door closed against the yagi pushing on the other side. I open the other door, prepared to shove it closed again, but there are no yagi in the room.

  Yet.

  I can see them outside the window, trying to get in.

  Below us, Ram is fighting his way up the stairs, making steady progress in spite of the yagi that threaten to bar his way.