Джули Кагава – Legion (страница 3)
The enormous wooden doors to the CEO’s office loomed above me, brass handles glimmering in the light. I didn’t knock or wait for the Elder Wyrm to call me in. I simply opened the doors and entered.
The Elder Wyrm was sitting at her desk, manicured nails clicking over the keyboard as her eyes scanned the computer screen. Her presence still filled the office, massive and terrifying, even though she wasn’t looking at me. I walked quietly across the room and stood at the front of the desk with my hands clasped behind my back. Having an open invitation into the Elder Wyrm’s office was one thing. Interrupting the Elder Wyrm, without waiting for her to acknowledge your presence, was another. I was heir to one of the largest empires in the corporate world, but she was still the CEO of Talon and the most powerful dragon in existence. Not even the son of the Elder Wyrm was exempt from protocol.
The Elder Wyrm didn’t say anything or look up from her task, and I waited silently for her to finish. Finally, she clicked the mouse button, pushed the keyboard tray beneath the desktop and looked up at me. Her green-eyed gaze, identical to Ember’s and my own, pierced the space between us.
“Dante.” She smiled and, unlike that of many other dragons who could only imitate a smile, hers seemed genuine. Of course, that was what made her so dangerous; you never knew if what she was showing you was real or not. “Good to see you again. How was your trip back?”
“It was fine, ma’am. Thank you.”
She nodded and rose, gesturing to the duo of chairs in front of the desk. I sank into one obediently and crossed my legs as the Elder Wyrm came around the desk to pin me with her stare. The weight of her gaze was suffocating, but I settled back with a calm yet expectant expression, careful not to show any fear.
“Plans are in motion,” the Elder Wyrm said, and her low voice sent a shiver down my spine. “Everything is nearly in place. There is just one thing missing now. One last thing we must take care of.”
My heart beat faster. I could guess what that final piece was. Of course it would be her. Even now, she didn’t realize her importance.
“Ember Hill must be retrieved,” the Elder Wyrm went on, her tone becoming frighteningly intense. The hairs on my arms rose, and something inside me shrank down in terror as the Elder Wyrm speared me with that terrible gaze. “It is imperative that she return to Talon. No more mistakes. This is what we are going to do...”
He’s gone.
I knelt in the salt, holding Garret’s motionless body in my lap as the sun climbed slowly over the flats and tinged the desolate landscape the color of blood. The soldier’s face was slack and pale, his skin still warm as he bled out in my arms. Around me, there were flurries of frantic movement, voices shouting, questions that might’ve been directed at me. But nothing seemed real. Garret was gone. I had lost him.
“Shit, he’s bleeding out fast.” This from Riley, kneeling on the opposite side of the soldier, holding a bloody cloth to his side. “We can’t wait for an ambulance—he’ll be dead in two minutes if we don’t do something now.”
“Here,” gasped another voice behind me. Tristan St. Anthony, Garret’s former partner and a soldier of St. George, dropped to his knees beside Riley. He carried a large plastic box and yanked the lid back, revealing an array of bandages, gauze and medical supplies. “I can do a transfusion right here,” Tristan said, pulling a long, clear tube from the bottom of the container, “but I don’t have the correct blood type. His body will reject it if it’s not a match.”
“What does he need?” Riley growled.
“O positive.”
“Shit.” Reaching into the box, Riley pulled out something that glittered metallically in the cold light. For just a second, he stared at it, as if trying to come to a decision. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he muttered, and sliced the scalpel blade across his arm, right above the bend of his elbow. Blood welled and ran down his skin, and my stomach lurched.
Tristan’s eyes widened. “Are you—”
“Shut up and stick that tube in his arm before I regret this even more.”
Tristan scrambled to comply. Riley stood, holding the other end of the clear plastic, shaking his head. “I fucking can’t believe I’m doing this,” he growled again, and shoved the end of the tube into his bicep.
A dark stream of red ran from his arm, twisting lazily through the plastic, inching toward the dying soldier. Fascinated, I stared at the crimson stream, heart pounding, until Riley’s voice snapped me out of my numb daze.
“Don’t just sit there, Firebrand! How about you start patching him up before he starts leaking my blood all over the ground?”
I jumped, but Tristan was already moving, pulling out disinfectant, bandages and a needle and thread with grim determination. He glanced up, dark blue eyes meeting mine, and I saw the raw emotion behind his careful soldier’s mask. A lump caught in my throat, and I gently lowered Garret to the ground, then accepted the supplies thrust into my hands. For the next few minutes, we worked to keep the soldier we loved from dying on the barren flats outside Salt Lake City, while Riley loomed over us both, connected to Garret by a thin stream of red, his expression like a thundercloud.
Whoa, getting light-headed here.
I swayed, gritting my teeth, as a wave of dizziness washed over me, making me stagger back a step. Thankfully, Ember and St. Anthony, still bent over the soldier, didn’t seem to notice. They’d patched up his many wounds, either by wrapping them in gauze or sewing them shut, and he now lay between them on the salt flats, still as death and nearly as white as the ground beneath him. I looked at Ember, at the tear tracks staining her cheeks, and wondered if she would cry for me if I ever bit the dust.
“He still alive?” I asked gruffly.
The other soldier of St. George felt his wrist, then nodded once and sat back on his heels with a sigh. “Yeah,” he answered in an equally brusque voice. “For now.”
“Well, that’s good. I’d hate to be getting this nauseous for nothing.” I watched him carefully remove the tube from the soldier’s arm and tape the final wound shut. The end of the tube dropped to the ground and leaked my blood all over the salt.
“You should go,” St. Anthony said in a low voice, not looking at me. “Get him out of here. Before the rest of the Order shows up.”
I nodded wearily. “I’ll call Wes,” I told Ember. My human hacker friend waited on standby, ready to speed to our side if anything went wrong. I’d say this classified as very, very wrong. “He should be here in a few minutes.”
She nodded without looking up, her attention riveted to the soldier, and I stifled the growl rumbling in my throat. Instead, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and pressed a familiar button.
“Tell me you’re not dead, Riley,” said the terse English voice on the other end.
I sighed. “No, Wes, I got my head blown off, and this is just my ghost speaking to you from the afterlife. What the hell do you think?”
“Well, since you’re calling me, I take it things did not go as planned. Did St. George manage to get himself killed?”
I looked down at Ember and the soldier. “Maybe.”
“Maybe? What kind of bloody answer is that? Either he’s dead or he isn’t.”
“It’s complicated.” I explained the situation, and what led up to it, as briefly as I could. Wes already knew that Garret had been challenged by the Patriarch, the leader of St. George, to a duel to the death. The soldier had defeated the man, barely, and forced him to yield, ending the fight. But then he made a mistake. He’d spared his life. And while the soldier was walking away, the Patriarch had pulled a gun and shot him in the back. That move had ended his life, as one of his own seconds responded immediately by putting several bullets through his former Patriarch, but it came too late to help the soldier, who now lay like the dead on the salt flats outside the city.
“So much for the famed honor of St. George,” I muttered into the shocked silence on the other end. “So now we need to get him, and us, out of here pronto. Think you can manage that?”
“Bloody hell, Riley.” Wes sighed. “Can you not, just once, go into a situation without one of you nearly dying?” There was a pause, and I heard the growl of an engine as it rumbled to life. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Try not to let anyone else get shot, okay?”
“One more thing,” I said, lowering my voice to a near whisper and turning my back on the trio kneeling in the salt. “I’m initiating Emergency Go to Ground protocol now. Send the signal through the network, to all the safe houses.”
“Shit, Riley,” Wes breathed. “Is it that bad?”
“The leader of St. George, their Grand Poobah himself, was just killed. Even if they don’t blame us—which they will, you can be sure of that—things are going to get crazy from here on. I don’t want any of us out in the open when the shit starts to hit the fan. No one moves or pokes a scale out the door until I say otherwise.”
“Bugger all,” Wes muttered, and the faint tapping of keys drifted through the phone. Even when he was on standby, Wes’s laptop never left his side. “Initiating protocol...now.” He sighed again, sounding weary. “Right, that’s done. So now I suppose we’re heading to the bugout spot to wait for the Order to flip the hell out when they hear the news.”