A flare streaked across my vision, cutting a bright orange path across the sky.
I leaped to my feet, watching as another followed, then another, arcing through the sky and leaving trails of smoke behind them.
Damn, that’s the retreat signal. They did it!
Shifting immediately, I launched myself off the cliff and flew as fast as I could toward the laboratory. As I drew close, I saw that most everyone was in full retreat, falling back to the front gate. I saw soldiers helping the wounded across the field, while hatchlings and dragonells covered their escape, engaging or intercepting the vessels that still pursued. Lieutenant Ward staggered toward the gate with a half-burned soldier leaning on him, still shouting orders to his men. And overhead, a very bloody, angry Eastern dragon swirled back and forth, keeping the rest of the clones busy while our forces escaped.
“Jade!” I swooped to meet her, dodging the end of a long thrashing tail. She coiled around to face me, dropping the carcass of a vessel as she did. Her scales were streaked with red, deep puncture wounds covering her body, and she held one foreleg tight against her stomach. “St. George and the others,” I panted, rearing back and beating my wings to hover in front of her. “Do you know if they got out?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t seen them. But we cannot look for them now. Our job is to make sure everyone else gets away safely.”
“Dammit, I know that! I just…” I gritted my teeth, glancing toward the laboratory, where several men and women in white coats were fleeing through the front doors. “I hope they got out in time,” I muttered.
Another flare streaked across the sky, leaving trails of smoke behind and making us both look up. “That’s the final signal,” I growled. “And we’ve saved all that can be saved. Let’s get out of here.”
Turning, we fled across the barren yard, and not a moment too soon. With a flash and a rumble that shook the ground, the entrance behind us exploded in a howl of flame, rock and debris. Fiery bits pelted my scales as I soared away, dodging falling rocks as best I could, feeling the immense heat of the explosion behind me. The energy blast nearly knocked me out of the air, but I stayed aloft with a few desperate flaps and soared toward the edge of the yard.
A raucous cheer went up as Jade and I joined the others in front of the gate. Soldiers and dragons alike stood side by side, giddy with triumph and relief. Our numbers were smaller, I noticed; a quick head count revealed that twelve dragons had survived, with only a handful of St. George soldiers still on their feet. Better than I had hoped for, really, and given what we’d just been through I was happy that anyone made it out.
But every loss hurt. Especially as I gazed around and realized several key players were still missing.
“Dragon!”
Lieutenant Ward stepped forward, pushing his way between a soldier and a hatchling, to face me. “Have you heard from Martin?” he asked brusquely. “Or Sebastian’s team?”
I swallowed hard. “Martin is dead,” I said gravely, and his expression darkened. “He died…saving my life from a Viper. And I haven’t heard from any of the others.”
Ward sighed, gazing back toward the lab entrance, which was now impossible to see beyond the billowing cloud of smoke rising into the air. “Your hacker friend says he lost contact with them while they were still in the lab,” he said, making my heart plummet. “Given that, we can only assume that they didn’t make it out.” His jaw tightened, his next words spoken with grudging respect. “They knew going in that it was a suicide mission. They died bravely, saving the world from Talon.”
Numb, I backed away from him. It didn’t seem possible that Ember, St. George and the rest of them were gone. I knew the odds had been against us, but hell, they always were. Somehow, no matter how hopeless the circumstances, Ember would always pull out of it; she was just too damn stubborn to die. If obstinacy failed, St. George usually had something up his sleeve that could turn the tables. And Mist was too slippery to let Death catch up to her.
You weren’t supposed to die, I thought furiously. Damn every one of you, we were supposed to come out of this together, or not at all. I can’t be the only one who survived.
“Riley,” said Jade, raising her head. Her voice was full of wary hope as she gazed back toward the lab. “Look.”
I spun. Two dark shapes were winging their way out of the smoke, gliding toward the ground. They wobbled in the air, and they were so covered in soot and ash it was almost impossible to tell their color, but I thought I saw a glint of crimson, of silver-white scales, as they half soared, half fell toward the rocks.
Forgetting everything else, I sprang forward, hearing the rest of the hatchlings and soldiers follow. Trailing smoke and ash, the two dragons glided toward us, but were either too hurt or exhausted to make a landing and collapsed as they hit the ground, rolling several feet in a tangle of limbs and wings. The humans were thrown off and went tumbling over the earth, as well, until they, too, came to a painful stop.
“Ember! Mist!” Skidding to a halt, I nudged one of the bodies anxiously, heart pounding wildly in my ears. The white dragon lay on her stomach, sides heaving, her scales covered with soot. With a groan, she shifted her weight, and then two crystal blue eyes cracked open, blearily gazing up at me.
“Cobalt,” she murmured, blinking as if she couldn’t quite trust herself. “You…you’re still alive.”
I exhaled a gust of air, nearly collapsing in relief beside her. “Surprised?” I choked out. She smiled.
“A little. I was certain at least one of us wasn’t going to be able to keep our promise.” Grimacing, she pushed herself to a sitting position. A few feet away, Ember groaned as she raised her head, and the two soldiers of St. George began to stir, helped upright by a few of the other men. A huge weight seemed to lift from my shoulders, taking the fear and pain with it, and suddenly everything was fine. “I really expected it to be you,” Mist went on, “but I keep forgetting you have the devil’s own luck.”
“Speaking of luck.” I glanced at Ember, who shook herself with a flap of her wings, scattering soot everywhere, then looked around for her human. “How did you guys get out?”
“We flew up the elevator shaft.”
I blinked. “With the soldiers?”
“Well, they certainly couldn’t fly out.” She gave me her patented disdainful look, then glanced at Ember, who had stumbled over to make sure St. George was all right. “It was her idea,” she said quietly. “She was bound and determined to get us out, even though our chances of making it in time were virtually zero. We nearly suffocated when the explosion went off, and barely beat the flames out while we were fleeing the shaft, but we made it, after all.”
“Yeah.” I let out my breath in a rush and pressed my forehead to hers, closing my eyes. “We made it,” I breathed as she trembled and leaned against me, lowering her walls for just a moment. “We actually won.”
And then, a tremor went through the earth under my claws, and a hollow boom echoed in the direction of the lab.
I froze, as did everyone else. Slowly, we turned to stare at the billowing cave mouth as a chill I’d never felt before slithered up my back. The boom came again, followed by another, and then the ear-piercing groan of metal being twisted and wrenched out of the way.
Inside, something was screaming at me to move, run, but I was rooted to the ground, paralyzed with everyone else. The ground shook, and rocks crumbled from the cave mouth, falling away and bouncing off each other, as something emerged from the smoke.
A massive talon smashed to the ground in front of us, and a wall of dark red scales pushed through the billowing smoke and rose to an impossible height. Shaking, I craned my neck up as a head emerged, bristling with horns, towering several stories overhead. Blazing green eyes glared down at us, wings unfurling to block out the sun, as a lesser god opened her jaws and made the whole earth tremble with her roar.
The Elder Wyrm had arrived. And we were going to die.