Chapter 31

The gale-force wind blows the rain nearly horizontal. I wish I had my rain jacket that had been shredded when the dragons forced me to transform into a skaag or half-skaag, whatever. The black hoodie they gave me just isn’t cutting it. I’m soaking wet and shivering cold. Dr. Radcliffe shows no sign of the weather bothering him. But that’s because his human form is a golem, and the rain slices straight through his insubstantial draconic body.

The beach is utterly remote. It’s a narrow strip of sand in between steep cliffs accessible by a harrowing, bushwhacking descent down a bluff. Most of the sand is occupied with massive, bleached logs large enough to crush cars. The tide is coming in, rumbling like a colossal hand dryer, the water grayish with ghostly whitecaps under a blanket of smudgy clouds. Soon, I fear, we’ll be forced to ascend the headland. The oncoming tide will lift the killer logs from the ground, rattle them like giant dice, and send them careening onto the sand with earthshaking thuds or battering against the cliff face. Dr. Radcliffe might survive such an assault, but if I remain here for long, I’ll be crushed or swept out to sea.

I manage to stop my teeth clattering. “Why here? This weather is miserable.”

Dr. Radcliffe glances at me. His spectacles are awash with rainwater. How can he see anything? I remind myself he doesn’t need to see anything from his humanoid eyes. The golem probably doesn’t really see anything. It’s his draconic orbs that count, and I don’t think those miss much. His long, serpentine neck is fully extended to tower over me. The green tendrils hanging from either side of his snout sway as his head swivels, scanning the sky and the headlands.

“The weather and location are perfect for confronting and killing skaags,” Dr. Radcliffe says. “Skaags hate water. They cannot hold their breath.”

“Face the enemy on the ground of your choosing,” I say.

Dr. Radcliffe smiles and nods.

“I can hold my breath,” I say.

“But can you in skaag form?” Dr. Radcliffe says. “I suggest you do not attempt to discover the answer to that question today.”

Dr. Radcliffe scrutinizes the northern headland. His draconic gaze locks on the bluff too, his head no longer so much as twitching.

Scrambling down the cliff, knocking loose rocks, is a man dressed like he just stepped out of an outdoor outfitter’s catalog. I suspect his jacket and pants and boots are waterproof. I wish I had his gear. I’m quivering in my waterlogged sneakers.

The man scampers over the driftwood giants, then drops to the sand. I squint against the rain, my prosthetics easily making out his inhumanly black eyes, like twin pools of glossy oil with only a thin white oval of sclera around the edges, and a deathly pale face that is all sharp angles. He possesses an undeniable feral splendor akin to a wild cat such as a serval. He stops before us about ten feet away. At his sides, his gloved hands clench into fists.

Dr. Radcliffe is unearthly still. His draconic form, while still translucent, no longer flickers in and out of existence. I have the uncanny feeling the beast is ready to explode from the slipstream.

“Frederick,” the man says. “It’s been a long time.”

Over the blast of the wind and the ocean, I can hear the refinement in his resonant voice, a musical quality.

“Mark Cassidy,” Dr. Radcliffe replies.

“Is this Allison Lee?” Mark asks.

“It is,” Dr. Radcliffe says.

“Hand her over,” Mark says. “And you can leave.”

“Tell me about the expeditionary force,” Dr. Radcliffe says. “Then you can have her.”

I gasp and twist to stare at Dr. Radcliffe, a dagger of betrayal stabbing into my chest.

“You’re going to hand me over for information?” I scream, my hands forming fists.

Dr. Radcliffe glances at me, only the man. The dragon’s gaze remains fixed on Mark Cassidy. Behind Radcliffe’s rain-speckled glasses, I swear his eyes are dismissive. The blade slices deeper into my chest.

I lash out with my fists and feet. My fists slam against Dr. Radcliffe’s arm and torso with wet smacks. I kick him in the shin twice before pain sprouts in my toes, and I stop. My hands aren’t hurt, so I continue my assault, a banshee wail of rage splitting my lips.

Dr. Radcliffe snatches me by the wrist, and he shakes me hard enough that I bite my tongue. Pain lances through my mouth, and I taste blood. Overmatched, I go silent and as floppy as an overcooked ramen noodle.

Dr. Radcliffe stops shaking me. Only his strong arm is keeping me from pooling on the sand like a wet rag.

“Are you done?” he asks.

I don’t reply. There is nothing to say. Dr. Radcliffe is going to hand me over to Mark Cassidy, and I am powerless to stop him. The only light in my despair is the hope that my squad and my father are safe. Maybe it’s a false hope, but it’s the only buoy I have.

“Go ahead, kill her,” Mark Cassidy says. “Saves me the trouble.”

“No,” Dr. Radcliffe says. “Tell me what I want to know, then Allison Lee is yours to do with as you please.”

“Gore told you, did he?” Mark Cassidy shakes his head. “I know Gore isn’t bright, but he’s always proven a competent hatchet man. Guess those days are done. What do you want to know about the expeditionary force?”

“Why is the expeditionary force coming and when? Where is the gateway?” Dr. Radcliffe asks.

“Why would I tell you that? So you can collapse the gateway? I can’t give out that information.”

“You will tell me because Allison Lee is Druk’s daughter.”

Mark Cassidy flinches, then snarls. “So you deduced that, did you? The girl must die because she is an impossibility. She must die because General Bale will not tolerate her existence. If she is alive when he arrives, he will execute Druk. He’ll likely have me killed too. That abomination is supposed to have died long ago.” Cassidy gestures at me with a gloved hand.

That word, abomination, disturbs the sleeper. It ripples underneath my skin, angry and afraid, and yearning for something…yearning for acceptance. I want this man, this skaag, to accept me for what I am. His rejection hurts, cuts deeper than when Jason decided to date Leslie. Deep down the sleeper—or the part of me that is the sleeper—desires acceptance and belonging above all else. If Mark Cassidy chooses to kill me, I’ll die happy if he looks me in the eyes just once and tells me I have finally come home to my people, a safe place where I can be me.

I’m doomed to live and die as the reject, the freak with the fake eyes. The sad truth is that Leslie is right, righter than either she or I ever imagined. I am a fake, a phony, a sham. Even now, I don’t know if I’m pretending to be human or feigning at being skaag. I’m like an actor so caught up in her role she can’t separate reality from the script.

“Give me the information. I give you Allison Lee. I collapse the gateway. You kill the girl. We both win.”

A shriek pierces the air, slicing through the roar of the wind and water. Overhead is a shimmering silver dragon, long and lithe, tumbling through the air, wings beating in a manic attempt to stay aloft. Wrapped around the dragon’s torso like an anaconda is a burnished black beast with a blunt head and short, powerful legs. A skaag. Not just a skaag, my mother, the feared Druk, I realize with a chill that sets my entire body trembling. Do I want my mother, the woman who abandoned me sixteen years ago, to win or die? I don’t know. I don’t. It’s hard to imagine the beast enveloping the dragon as anything other than a fiend from the darkest nightmares of the human mind. To think that I came from that monster makes me feel sad and alone. I’m doomed to the life of a lone wolf, never really belonging anywhere or with anyone.

When I saw the picture of my skaag form, I thought I looked like a black Chinese dragon. The monster wrapped around the silver dragon is many times larger than me and looks like a cross between an eel and an alligator. Its maw opens wide to reveal row upon row of yellow fangs. The skaag clamps down on the serpentine neck of the dragon just before the beasts crash to the beach behind the logs with a ground-shaking thump.

“Ion!” Dr. Radcliffe shouts.

“Give me the girl,” Mark Cassidy says, reaching out a hand. “Ion is dead. Druk has her. Neither you nor Tatsuo need to die. We know all about your pitiful ambush. Tatsuo will outflank me? Please. That fat, old wyrm doesn’t remember how to fight. I’ll dispatch you before he arrives. Together Druk and I will kill him. Sometime during the fight, Allison Lee will die. But it doesn’t need to happen that way.”

Behind the logs come shrieks and roars and thuds and something that sounds like the crackle of lightning. Silver and black bodies rise up, writhing above the skeletal tree trunks, then thunder back to the earth hard enough to shimmy the driftwood over the sand.

“Let me kill Allison Lee while Druk is occupied. You can leave,” Mark Cassidy says, taking tentative strides toward us.

Dr. Radcliffe’s gaze shifts between Mark Cassidy and the battle. His draconic gaze never leaves Mark, until a green dragon larger than a jumbo jet swoops over the headland behind the skaag. Dr. Radcliffe releases me, and I crumple to the sand just as electricity arcs through the air, making my skin tingle.

The sleeper roars to life inside me, its energy powering my appendages. My arms and legs whirl. I scramble across the sand toward the driftwood logs. I barely avoid the draconic body parts materializing into solid mountains of scales and muscle.

I throw myself against a log. A bright flash blinds me, and a crack reverberates in my ears. It feels like my brain is colliding against the inside of my skull. After that, all I hear is a buzz. The ground shakes. My vision clears.

Dr. Radcliffe, now a dragon, is laid out on the sand, unmoving. Black smoke rises from his golden scales near the base of his neck. I smell his burned flesh. His golem stands stiff as a statue in front of him.

Mark Cassidy the man is gone. In his place, is a gargantuan alligator eel with yellow electrical arcs crackling along its body. It swims through the air like a shark cutting through the water. Dr. Radcliffe is about to die. I understand this with an animalistic certainty that doesn’t come from the human part of me.

Then I remember Tatsuo lumbering through the sky. Surely, he will rescue Dr. Radcliffe, and maybe he will save me. I don’t know why he would, but he might, and I know I don’t want to die. I look skyward, finding the scarred green beast with its raven black wings bearing down on Mark Cassidy. Tatsuo is so slow, too slow to prevent the skaag from slaying the draconic leader. I know, with excruciating detail, just how the skaag will do it. He will dig his hooked talons underneath the scales damaged by the electric pulse. With great effort, for a dragon’s hide is the best armor known in the multiverse, it will pry back the golden scales, tearing them away from the vulnerable flesh underneath. Then…

A shriek and a roar penetrate the buzz in my ears. Tatsuo and Druk somersault through the sky, locked in deadly battle. Electricity arcs and a gout of flame lances from the dragon’s mouth, so hot my skin warms even though I am hundreds of feet away.

On the ground, Mark Cassidy is over Dr. Radcliffe, finishing the laborious process of slaying a dragon. Should I do something? No, let him die. What could I do anyway? Throw sand in Mark Cassidy’s oily eyes? Let Dr. Radcliffe and Tatsuo die, just like Ion who must already be dead. What have the dragons done for me, other than threaten my life and the lives of my loved ones? That’s all they’ve done. They are getting what they deserve.

Thoughts of my loved ones stick in my mind, like a shard of potato chip stuck in your throat. Ever present, an annoyance, sometimes sharp and painful. Where is my squad? Where did Tanis take them? Dr. Radcliffe and Tatsuo know. Ion knew. Everyone who can tell me where they are will soon be dead. More than that, Mark Cassidy and Druk won’t be happy with finishing off these dragons, will they? They will hunt down Tanis and Mauve next. They will hunt down my friends as a result. Watching Mark Cassidy pry up Dr. Radcliffe’s scales, and Druk struggle through the sky, clawing Tatsuo and being clawed, I know they won’t give a damn about Dalia and Haji or anyone else.

Mark Cassidy is not a skaag to leave a job half done. After he kills me and the dragons and my squad, he’ll eliminate my father. Maybe he won’t do it himself. Perhaps he’ll send Gore or some other heroin-addicted assassin beholden to him, but he’ll see it done.

I surge to my feet and charge across the sand toward Mark Cassidy and Dr. Radcliffe. A bestial shriek tears from my lungs. I don’t have a plan. I expect to die. But I’m not going to sit by without putting up a fight. I’m not trying to protect Dr. Radcliffe. I’m out to protect Dalia with her pink hair and Haji with his long, graceful fingers and loving eyes, and my dad with his goofy smile and soccer obsession. I’m fighting to save my people.

Mark Cassidy’s black eye locks on to me. His blunt head swivels to face me. Yellow electricity arcs over his body. A bolt shoots toward me. I’m blinded, and something burning hotter than a furnace lances into my chest. My clothing bursts aflame. I’m incinerating, facing the oblivion of death, but then the sleeper explodes from inside me, rending my flesh and rearranging my organs in an agonizing instant as long as an eternity. With the emergence of the sleeper, my flesh no longer burns. I don’t sprint across the sand. I fly. I’m literally flying!

I slam into Mark Cassidy’s face with a loud squelch. It’s like I just ran full tilt into a brick wall. My body aches from the impact. But I’ve moved him. I’ve knock him off Dr. Radcliffe into the surf of the oncoming tide. He’s panicking, at least I think he is, so I keep pushing against him, willing myself to shove him out into the ocean.

If Mark Cassidy chose to fight back, I think he’d quickly kill me, but he doesn’t fight. He squirms, and his claws scramble over the sand and rock, and he struggles to keep his head out of the water. I try to keep my body above him, hoping to weigh him down so he can’t take to the air, and I keep pushing, straining against his bulk until finally the hand of the tide grabs us and pulls us out into the deep water.

I paddle my four stubby legs, but I sink beneath the waves, and salty water fills my mouth, rushing down my throat to my lungs.