Apocalyptic Pirates 6, page 7
She chuckled, and Dia nodded.
“My mom’s into her saints and all that,” the Latina said. “She buys the candles and burns palo santo and was always threatening to send me to a convent school when I was younger.”
“You as a nun?” Ally spluttered with laughter. “I cannot see that happening.”
“And it didn’t,” Dia agreed in triumph. “I told Mom that I’d probably end up driving the nuns to Satanism in order to deal with me.”
“Now that is a thing that I can see happening,” Ally chuckled.
“Guys,” I said in warning tones. “Remember that we’re actually out here to try and find a dragon. We’re on a deadline, and we need to get this done as quickly as possible.”
I knew that they were only chatting to try and settle their nerves, but at the same time, it didn’t hurt to bring everyone’s focus back to the matter at hand.
“Uh, yeah, sorry.” Dia looked sheepish. “I’ll be quiet.”
“Me, too.” Letty nodded. “Sorry, Drew.”
“No problem,” I replied. “Just keep your eyes open. I know we’re kind of old hands at the dragon slaying by now, but it just takes one careless mistake to break our track record.”
They nodded, and we carried on walking in silence.
The ground began to feel soft underfoot. The air took on another scent– something moist and earthy– and there was a sound growing in the distance that I couldn’t quite place. It sounded like white noise, but as we pushed through a clump of ferns and startled a bright green frog from the trunk of a nearby tree, I recognized the sound.
We were near running water.
A bird screamed overhead, but it was muffled under the sound of the water, which was getting louder and louder. The trees thinned a little, and the ground was covered in lush green ferns that reached almost to my waist. I started to see more frogs in the trees around us, and there was a faint, pale haze hanging in the air that clung to my skin, soaked through my clothes, and left misty droplets of moisture hanging from the ends of my hair.
And then we stepped through a gap in the trees and were standing on the edge of a roaring river.
The bank broke away sharply, and the spray from the foaming water coated my boots and left dark spots on my shorts. The water was churning along at a rapid pace. It looked like the kind of place I’d seen advertised as a spot for white water rafting, and I was pretty sure that under normal circumstances, this would be a prime spot for tourists wanting to shoot the rapids.
But these weren’t normal circumstances.
We hadn’t seen a dragon yet in this part of the woods, and we were running out of time.
My assessment of the situation was that we could either wander through the trees on this side of the river some more, or we could try our luck on the other bank.
I looked around at the others. They were sweating, but that was more to do with the humid atmosphere than anything else, and they all looked at me expectantly.
“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “It looks like we’re going to have to cross this river.”
“Ford,” Shannon corrected. “You ford a river.”
“What’s the difference?” Dia asked.
“When you ford a river, you just walk across it where it’s shallow,” Shannon explained. “Rather than crossing it, which you can do in a boat.”
“I’d much rather do it in a boat,” Letty said. “Are we going to have to wade across that thing? The current looks really strong.”
“It looks like there are some stones down there.” Ally pointed. “Maybe we could walk across on them instead of wading through.”
There was a line across the river where the rocks poked through the churning water. The rocks looked slick and dangerous, but Letty was right: the current was very strong here, and I didn’t fancy our chances if we tried to wade across.
We walked down the bank to the line of rocks.
It led in almost a straight line right across the water. And on the opposite side of the bank, right where the rocks ended, was a sight that made my heart sink.
“Oh, shit,” I groaned.
There was a dragon nest on the other side of the river.
Chapter 5
“Okay,” Ally sighed. “Now what?”
“We climb across the deathtrap of slippery rocks while avoiding the raging current inches away from our feet,” Dia chirped. “Then we make it to the opposite bank and hope that the nest isn’t full of baby dragons and that they have deadbeat parents who aren’t likely to come back and rip the heads off of any intruders.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “What Dia said.”
“Seriously?” Letty raised her eyebrows.
“I keep telling you guys that I have great ideas, but you never listen,” Dia said with a grin.
“Can we make it across those rocks?” Ally asked with her light-brown eyebrows pulled together in concern.
“Well, what do you guys think?” I asked. “It’s better to be honest now and say if you can’t make it rather than get halfway across and then realize you can’t finish.”
“We can totally make it!” Dia exclaimed.
“If we’re careful and go slowly, I think I’ll be okay,” Letty said.
“Yep.” Shannon nodded. “After all, we haven’t seen any dragons yet on this side of the river, so at least we know that they’re definitely going to be on that bank.”
“I think I can do it,” Ally said bravely.
“We’ll go slowly,” I promised her.
“Yeah.” Dia nudged Ally’s arm. “Remember what a badass you are. A week ago you were fighting the Coast Guard in the middle of the jungle.”
“Well, we weren’t really fighting them.” But Ally smiled and looked at the river with a new confidence. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s do this.”
“Shannon, you go first,” I directed. “I’ll bring up the rear.”
“Okay.” Shannon carefully stepped onto the rocky ledge.
The water swirled around the gray rock and freckled it black where the spray touched it. Shannon was wearing heavy combat boots, and her long, strong legs moved with a muscled grace as she carefully took another step forward.
“Okay, Dia?” I said.
Dia was clearly about to jump onto the ledge, but at the last minute, she checked herself and took a careful step instead.
Letty took a deep breath and followed her.
Ally gave a firm nod, as though she was psyching herself up for it, and then she stepped onto the rocky ledge.
“Good job,” I praised.
And then I followed her.
The first part of the ridge wasn’t as slippery as I expected it to be, and I was able to keep my footing pretty easily. The current roared past inches from my boots, and the sound of the water filled my ears as we carefully shuffled across the ridge. A fly buzzed past my ear, but I was focusing too intensely to brush it away.
I couldn’t look up in case it broke my concentration, and I did not want to stare into the swirling water that was just waiting to drag me down and break me against the rocky bottom.
I kept my gaze locked on the rocks below me and picked out each step carefully. In my peripheral vision I could see Ally’s red hair as she stepped carefully across the ridge, and a glimpse of Shannon’s dark head as she led the way across.
And before I knew it, we were stumbling onto the other side of the river.
My feet found the muddy earth and stone of the bank, and my shoulders sagged in relief.
“Oh, my god.” Dia’s eyes were gleaming. “That was such an adrenaline rush.”
“I never want to do that again,” Letty declared.
“You are going to have to when we go back,” Ally pointed out, and Letty sighed in defeated recognition.
The dragon nest was only a few feet away, and Shannon was already standing over it with her gun drawn and ready.
“All clear?” I called and hurried over to look down into the nest.
“Well, kind of,” Shannon said and moved aside to let me see.
The nest was empty. Apart from one single egg laying at the bottom. And it was moving.
“Oh, shit,” I exclaimed.
The others hurried over, and we all stared down at the egg, which was rocking back and forth on its long side like a kid on a playground ride. Then a tiny chip of dull, bronze-colored shell broke free.
“It’s fucking hatching!” Dia blurted out.
“Get the bottles ready,” I directed.
Dia took off her rucksack, and while the others took out the water bottles and Tupperware, she drew the knife from her belt.
“I can do it,” she said.
“That’s better.” I nodded. “We want to avoid a gunshot if we can help it.”
“Are you sure you can do that, Dia?” Letty’s brow was furrowed in concern. “Just cut its throat the second it’s born?”
“Yeah,” Dia scoffed. “It’s a fucking dragon, isn’t it?”
“Don’t discourage her,” I said urgently. “We need to get this done.”
“I’m not discouraging her,” Letty retorted. “I just mean, it ain’t an easy thing to do.”
“I’m fine,” Dia snapped, and she hefted the knife in her hand.
The egg had stopped moving.
A faint glimmer of movement behind the little chip in the shell was the only sign that anything was still happening.
And then we heard the tiniest squeak.
“That’s it,” Ally whispered. “It’s in there.”
“That’s how eggs work,” Dia hissed.
A tiny crack spread out from the chip. Then it spread. Another triangle of shell broke off and fell away.
I was conscious of the trees pressing in all around us, and I really wanted to just grab the egg and smash it against the ground to hurry the fucking thing along. But I had no idea how this thing worked, and I didn’t want to accidentally kill it before it came into the world naturally– I had no idea what the rules were here. What if only a dragon that hatched by itself possessed the healing properties? That sounded too random to be true, but I remembered reading something before Sammy was born about how human babies that were born by Cesarean section sometimes lacked the antibodies that other babies got when they were born via the birth canal.
This was uncharted territory, anything was possible, and I didn’t want to take any chances when there was a little girl’s life on the line.
So we waited, and finally, eventually, after what felt like an eternity of staring at the damn thing, the cracks in the eggshell spread and more segments of it broke away.
Then it broke in half, and a baby dragon kicked and writhed its way out of the shell.
Its scales were green, and its eyes were light blue. I’d never seen a baby dragon as young as this one before, and I was surprised by how comically large its feet seemed in proportion to the rest of its body. It sneezed and blinked, and then it stared up at us with its huge, light-blue eyes and let out a little high-pitched squeak.
“Dia,” I hissed.
The baby sniffed the air curiously and then attempted to get to its feet. It stumbled and then managed to right itself. Its wings had been hanging down like shreds of wet paper, but then it shook itself like a dog, and its wings began to slowly change color and become a darker green as the blood started to pump its way around the dragon’s body. It shook itself again and carefully extended its wings to their full span. The sunlight shone through the thin leathery skin and highlighted the fine, black veins on the creature’s wings.
Dia was staring at it. Her mouth was pressed into a firm line. Her eyes were locked onto the baby. But she didn’t move a muscle. She was frozen.
“Dia,” I hissed again, and this time I touched her arm.
The movement seemed to break whatever spell she was under, and her head snapped up to look at me.
For a second, she looked as though she was about to burst into tears.
Then the trees rustled, and another dragon emerged from the forest.
We instantly scrambled away from the nest, and Letty quickly shoved the bottles back into the rucksack.
This wasn’t a parent coming back to protect its young, this dragon was about the size of a Great Dane, a teenager in dragon years. Its scales were a dull gray color, and it looked around at us with fierce, lime-green eyes as it assessed the situation.
I brought up my gun slowly so as not to spook it.
The edges of the nest were too high for the baby to make out what was happening in the outside world. So it decided to make a leap for the top. It flapped frantically in its first attempts at flight, and its claws dug into the compacted earth that formed the mound of the nest.
The gray dragon’s head swiveled around, and its bright eyes locked onto the movement.
In one quick rush forward, it had reached the nest. Its head snaked out, and it grabbed the hatchling in its jaws.
The baby managed to let out one pitiful squeal before the other dragon’s jaws crunched down and silenced it forever. It threw its head back and gulped, and the hatchling disappeared down the dragon’s throat.
“Shit,” I gritted out.
A hatchling would have been the perfect size for us to manage. But this new arrival was better than nothing, and I pressed the rifle into my shoulder and took careful aim. I was aware of Shannon at my side doing the same thing.
The same second we fired, the gray dragon lunged for us.
It was still young enough that it was able to fly better than an adult, and our bullets whizzed under it as it leaped through the air. We scattered, and Shannon pivoted expertly to send a fresh bullet into the dragon’s body.
It yelped in pain as Shannon’s shot found its mark. But the dragon had overshot the distance, and it landed on the very edge of the bank.
The ground gave way. The dragon clawed frantically at the wet earth, but it was no match for the current, and it fell back into the raging water with a scream of fury.
The water carried it away down the river. Its head broke the surface of the water once, and then it swirled around and crashed into a huge rock that was jutting out of the water.
“Fuck!” Shannon shouted. “We almost had it! Twice!”
“There’s got to be more nearby.” Letty whirled around and pointed her gun at the trees. “It’s crazy there’s a nest so close to the water, though. What do you think it is, like territory wars or something?”
But no one had the chance to answer her because at that moment, two more dragons barreled out of the trees.
“Son of a bitch,” I groaned as I readjusted my stance.
The first was a lean, wiry thing with black scales and red eyes that glowed like lit coals. The second it saw us, it opened its jaws and screeched a challenge so ferocious that spit flew from its scarlet mouth and left dark spots on the gray rocks.
The second dragon was bigger, but much less confident than its partner. Its dark-blue body was covered in the lines of old scars, and one of its green eyes was swollen and almost shut, with milky lines of pus dribbling like tears down its face.
My gun was up against my shoulder before I had time to think, and I unleashed a bullet at the black dragon’s head.
But the monster was too quick, and it half-leaped, half-flapped out of the way, and almost repeated the same mistake as the younger dragon as it landed on the very edge of the bank. But it regained its footing almost immediately and threw itself back into the air as Shannon’s bullets plowed into the ground where its feet had been only seconds before.
My gun cracked again, and the dragon roared as hot, red blood spurted from its shoulder. It stumbled as it landed and almost did a full face plant into the ground.
I looked around frantically for the second dragon in case it was going to take this opportunity to attack, but then I realized that it was still standing at the edge of the treeline. It kept making little darts forward and then retreating backward, but it wasn’t making any attempts to attack us. It seemed as though it was scared by us, more than anything.
Ally threw her spear at it, but it dodged out of the way.
Dia fired at it, and its whole body went rigid at the sound.
She fired again, and the bullets smacked into the tree trunk by its head. The dragon hissed, but instead of charging, it backed up into the trees and let out a high-pitched, bugling cry that echoed around the riverbank.
“Shit,” Dia cursed.
She and Letty both opened fire on it.
The black dragon had recovered by now, and it whipped around with a vicious snarl. But Shannon and I were ready for it.
The dragon leaped for us, and we filled its body full of lead.
Blood burst from the bullet holes we opened in its throat and neck, and the dragon stumbled and crashed to the ground. But its momentum carried it forward, and Shannon and I had to throw ourselves out of its path to avoid getting crushed by its dying body. Even as the light faded from its eyes, the dragon’s body skidded across the ground and careened toward the water.
“Don’t let it fall in the river!” I shouted and waved wildly to Dia and Letty. “Keep that other fucker pinned down!”
They obeyed, and they unleashed another round of bullets at the scarred dragon and kept it lurking in the treeline.
The black dragon’s body had finally come to a halt and was lying half-in and half-out of the water. The current was already tugging at it, and I reached it just in time to grab hold of its ugly foreleg and hold on for dear life as the rushing water threatened to carry it away.
Shannon followed me, and she grabbed the dragon’s other leg. Then Ally was there, and she wrapped her arms around Shannon’s waist to support her.
Together the three of us managed to drag the dragon out of the water and back onto the bank.
More shots cracked out.
My head whipped around just in time to see Dia running into the trees with her gun up.
“Dia!” I hollered.
“It’s running away!” she yelled back.
“Then let it go!” I shouted. “We’re on a deadline here, remember? If it’s leaving, then let it!”
Dia hesitated for a moment, and then she turned and came running back.
She and Letty both dropped to their knees by the black dragon’s body, and Letty opened the rucksack and pulled out the bottles and Tupperware.
