CHAPTER
ONE

THE SECRET IN THE CRATER

There wasn’t supposed to be a moon.

It was just a sliver, barely a crescent. Still, it cast more light than she would have liked. Even in her black clothes, her face smeared with soot, she stood out against the rocks that spilled down the sides of the giant crater.

Pausing in the shadow of a boulder, she pulled her night-vision goggles off her head—she wouldn’t be needing them after all—and considered how best to move forward. In a few moments, she would reach the top of the ridge. And she had no idea what or whom she would find waiting for her. Rather, she had several ideas, none of them cause for optimism.

If only she’d gotten there two days earlier, she would have been making her ascent in perfect darkness, as planned. The problem was that instead of the anticipated four days to cross the Kalahari on foot, it had taken six. Or six nights, to be more precise. Traveling by night was cooler. Also safer.

Supposedly.

Of course, she’d met with her fair share of mishaps anyway, hadn’t she? The scorpion that fell out of her hat. The herd of Cape buffalo that forced her to walk three miles out of her way. The “water hole” that was really a mud hole. (Luckily, she’d spent a good portion of her childhood reading about quicksand.)

And then there were the humans—nomadic San people. They couldn’t believe she was traveling alone. No guide. No camel. No cell phone. Her cover story about being an ultra-marathoner did not convince them. Running a hundred miles in the hot desert just because? So instead she told them she was a student from the university, studying the effects of drought on local animal populations. This they could believe. Although they still had a big laugh over her experimental sweat-conserving jumpsuit. They were right about the jumpsuit; it made her so hot that she sweated out more water than she saved. (Her experiments with urine were another story. A story better left untold.*) In the end, she’d spent an entire evening listening to their observations about the Namib Desert beetle—a fascinating creature, to be sure, but she lost precious time.*

Never mind. Survivalist rule number one: Don’t dwell on what can’t be fixed.

She felt around in a side pocket of her backpack, where she kept her energy bars—she’d packed a few as a special treat, despite the excessive sugar and nonbiodegradable packaging. There was only a half bar left.

“Well, you wanted to travel light,” she muttered to herself, breaking the half in half.

She popped one piece into her mouth and then stowed the rest for later.

Hoisting her backpack onto her back, she resumed her climb.

She would just have to summit as fast as she could and hope to find cover on the other side.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she got to the top. There were no sentries pointing guns at her, just a narrow plateau surrounded by jagged rocks. She was exposed for only a moment before she was able to crouch behind a ledge and look around. No sign of cameras or motion detectors, she noted. Maybe they assumed that nobody would be foolhardy enough to come up there.

Below her was the crater proper, a three-mile-wide bowl protected on all sides by walls of rock and miles of desert. An impressive sight, even in the dim light of the moon. What bribes or tricks the enemy had employed to lay hold of this vast natural fortress in the middle of nowhere she did not care to know. What concerned her was why they wanted it in the first place. They claimed in public documents to be building a “nature preserve and resort hotel,” but there was very little nature to preserve. All life at this location had been destroyed by a meteorite thousands of years ago. As for a hotel, the crater would be nearly impossible for most tourists to reach.

Why, then, were they there? What nefarious activity required such an enormous and remote location?

She’d been trying to answer that question for months when she heard a rumor about a secret and very technologically advanced breeding program. The rumor sounded far-fetched, yes. But when it came to them, nothing was truly far-fetched. Her colleagues had urged caution, but she felt there was no choice: She had to investigate.

She put a scope to her eye and peered down into the distance. The satellite photos that she’d studied before her trip must have been older than she thought. Or else construction was proceeding very fast. Twinkling lights revealed at least three more buildings than she remembered. And she was nearly certain that the lake hadn’t been there before. Not to mention all those trees. Tens of thousands of them, it looked like. Where are they getting the water? she wondered. Talk about environmental irresponsibility. It was as though they were trying to create their own tropical ecosystem in the middle of a desert.

She glanced at her watch. She had to get down there, survey the site, plant the hidden cameras and chemical-emissions sensors, and then climb out—all before daybreak. Less than three hours…

EEEYAHYRR! A terrible screech pierced the silence.

What on earth—?

She stood still for a moment, then heard it again. EEEYAHYRR! It was not a human cry; nor was it like any animal cry she’d ever heard. Nevertheless, it was a cry of distress—of that she was certain.

It sounded quite close, but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

Cautiously, she made a circle, looking above and below and in the surrounding rocks. She saw no signs of life, not even a weed. Perhaps the creature was farther away than she thought.

She was on the verge of giving up the search when a new sound caught her attention. It was a softer, hissing sound this time. And it was coming from directly beneath her.

Suddenly very nervous, she turned on her flashlight.

And then she saw it. About four feet down. Stuck in a crevice. Its yellow eyes staring, unblinking, into the flashlight’s beam.

It was about the size of a small dog or maybe a very large owl. And its wings and tail were twisted together so that it looked like nothing so much as a bat being attacked by a snake.

And yet there was no mistaking it for anything other than what it was.

She studied the creature in mute astonishment.

So the rumors were true; she had suspected as much, but it was another matter entirely to see the evidence in real life.

How could anything be at once so fierce and so fragile, so earthly and so unearthly?

EEEYAHYRR!

It screeched again, its mouth opening to reveal several rows of sharp teeth. She took a step backward. She couldn’t tell whether the screech was an angry warning or a desperate plea, but either way, the creature was likely very dangerous.

Moving slowly, she leaned in again. One of its wings was torn. There were almost certainly some broken bones.

It couldn’t have been very old. It looked like it was still a baby.

Without assistance, it would probably die where it was. But how to help?

She had a first-aid kit, of course, but she wasn’t sure whether human medical supplies would work on fairy-tale animals. Or even whether she could pull the creature out of the crevice without it scratching her eyes out.

She had to earn its trust. But there was hardly time for that.

“Are you hungry? No nut allergies, I hope,” she whispered, reaching around to her backpack and pulling out the remaining bit of energy bar. “Normally, I wouldn’t feed machine-made food to a wild animal, but this isn’t really a normal situ—”

Her words were interrupted by a decidedly machine-made roar. She looked up to see a helicopter heading straight toward her.

She swore under her breath.

How could she have been so careless? In her concern for the injured creature, she’d forgotten to stay out of sight.

By now the helicopter was hovering low in front of her. It looked slick and new, like a helicopter one would expect to see ferrying executives to an office tower rather than patrolling a desert. Except, that is, for the extensive weaponry jutting out from either side. If it was a helicopter for executives, they were executives in a war zone.

She hesitated. The ledge where she’d taken cover before would hardly protect her from cannons like those. Maybe she should jump over the side of the crater and scramble down the rocks, hoping she could lose her pursuers. In her mind, she went over the supplies in her backpack. She had ropes and grappling hooks. Flares that might provide a moment’s diversion…

No, it was too late. Only a magician could disappear fast enough. She had many skills; vanishing into thin air was not one of them.

Besides, if they shot at her and accidentally hit the baby dragon, she would never forgive herself.

The helicopter’s floodlight hit her eyes, temporarily blinding her. The pilot’s voice boomed over the sound of the spinning blades:

“Put your hands over your head and don’t move.”

Cornered, she did as ordered.

She thought about the various cover stories she’d used before. None seemed to explain why she was infiltrating their half-constructed nature preserve in the middle of the night, dressed like a ninja.

As her eyes adjusted to the light, the helicopter landed in front of her on the small plateau, blowing sand in all directions.

A woman leaned out of the passenger side, her platinum hair gleaming in the darkness.

“Mon dieu. Is that who I think it is?”

Her pale face registered only the slightest surprise.

“It’s been ages, darling, but I would know those pointy ears anywhere. How kind of you to visit, Cassandra.…”

Cass’s pointy ears tingled in alarm at the sound of her name. It had been well over a decade since she last heard that chilling voice; and yet suddenly she felt as if she were a young girl again, forever caught in the clutches of Ms. Mauvais.