Chapter Fifteen
“Vyktor, I must speak with you,” Eldor said. He came to Vyktor’s room one afternoon while Aria was out fetching food and other supplies for them. She alone knew how to pilot the motor vehicles the humans delighted in sending about their cities at hectic paces, much to Vyktor’s horror. So much of the world of man was done at a whim, vast numbers of people rushing here and there, many of them paying little attention to anything around them.
His realm was of a more sedate, considered pace. Dragons rarely gathered in groups of more than a few hundred, certainly not in the tens of thousands as they did in the great human cities. In the midst of New York, he felt himself an insignificant speck. It was a strange feeling to have, to be surrounded by the enemy and not to be noticed by them at all.
The dragon attacks! The television blared the words and showed images of a huge dragon the size of a city blasting blue fire from its nostrils. Vyktor snorted to himself and shook his head. The actual invasion had been less dramatic.
The headline was not for any real event. It was for a movie that was soon to come out. The humans were already fictionalizing the events, telling the story over and over, distorting it each and every time. The hero of the story was always some brave human man, who came to the dragon’s lair and rescued the women the dragons were inevitably holding. That was a better story than the reality: that he had taken a human woman for his own and not a single male had come within miles of their base.
“Vyktor?”
“Sorry, I was just watching the human stories,” he said. “Wouldn’t you like to look like that in dragon form?” He gestured toward the television where the creature they said was a dragon had its claws in a great golden tower and was busy ripping it apart.
“I have something important to talk about,” Eldor said. “Maybe you could turn the television off.”
Vyktor slid his gaze over to Eldor. He seemed… tense, Vyktor noticed. More tense than usual, anyway. They were all tense at the moment. Being hunted did that to you.
Though they were not easily noticed in the streets, all the remaining dragons were reluctant to expose themselves unnecessarily. Plans were underway to move to more remote areas of the world, certainly out of the continent. There was still far too much scrutiny there. Every day, the papers and television shows were full of conspiracy theories about dragons. The escape of some dragons at the final stand was being written off by the officials, but Vyktor was almost certain they knew very well that some had escaped. The roost had been raided just days after the ambush, strongly suggesting that the humans were aware there were still some loose. It was impossible to tell what the humans really knew, and what they were really up to, so the best defense in the meantime was to simply lay low and look for an opportunity to find somewhere to live where they would not be disturbed.
“What’s wrong, Eldor?”
“Your human,” Eldor said. “Has she secured the papers to our new home yet?”
“Aria tells me it is not as simple as going to the 7-Eleven and buying an island,” Vyktor said. “But I have no reason to believe it will be all that much longer. She also needs to charter flights. We will have to use human transportation rather than draw attention to ourselves with…”
“When we move, you need to leave the human behind,” Eldor interrupted him bluntly. “She will only bring trouble.”
Vyktor was shocked. What was Eldor saying? Of all the dragons, he was the one who had benefited most from Aria’s assistance, and here he was talking about getting rid of her the moment she had served her purpose?
“What?”
“You heard me,” Eldor said. “We cannot have a human with us.”
“I would say the opposite. We absolutely need a human with us. And it should be Aria.”
Eldor’s expression grew darker still. “She cannot be trusted.”
“She’s the only one we can trust. She’s the only reason we’re not dead. She’s a huge part of the reason you’re not dead,” he said. He was starting to lose his temper with Eldor. Instead of being grateful for all Aria did, he was speaking about her in a tone that Vyktor found outright disrespectful. “When you were wounded, she made sure you recovered. She tended you while your wounds healed. She tended the others too. And she was the one who got us out of there. The one who told us where to fly after dark, who stole a car for us! I don’t care for human law, but she does, occasionally at least, and that was a big one to break. If she had been caught, they would have locked her up for several years in a small cage. I could not have done this all on my own. I certainly could never have gotten us into this place and found us this clothing. We have passed among these humans as if we were the same as they. That alone has kept us alive. You owe Aria your life as much as you owe it to me.”
“I owe her nothing,” Eldor said, his upper lip curling in disdain at the very idea. “She is a human. They committed this heinous act. They are base little creatures, devoid of sense or morality. We will use our resources, build another portal, and be done with this place. Now that we know what mistake they made, it should not be difficult to replicate it.”
Vyktor felt a rage rising in him, a protective anger that did not bode well for Eldor if they continued their conversation. Had he learned nothing during his experiences on Earth? Or was it the betrayal of the attempted retreat that he could not stomach and was taking out on Aria?
“She was the one human who stood by us. You cannot say all humans are the same, Eldor. They are not.”
“You trained your human,” Eldor pointed out in turn. “You took her and you thrashed her and fucked her until she had some semblance of domestication. She is your pet. But she is still human and she is still like the rest of them beneath that veneer you have instilled in her. They are a primitive species who can manipulate matter in the slowest of ways to create huge tragedy. I do not like them, and I do not like her.”
Vyktor nodded coolly. There was nothing to be gained from drawing out this conversation. Eldor had made up his mind, and hearing Aria be the brunt of his slurs after all she had done and all she had been through made him angrier than he cared to express.
“Build your portal,” Vyktor said. “But do not say another word against Aria. Or it will be among the last you ever utter. She is my pet, and she will be by my side as long as I draw breath. If you do not like that, feel free to go your own way and see how long it is before the humans find you out. What do you think they will do to a lone dragon? You have seen what they do to one another in the course of their wars—and they are of the same blood. What do you think they will do to a creature they loathe?”
There was a long pause, in which Vyktor knew the argument was over. Eldor had developed a healthy fear of humans and though he might not like Aria, he wasn’t so stupid as to not realize that she was essential.
“You will be coming with us when we return to our realm,” Eldor said. “You will come to your senses.”
“I will not leave Aria, and I will not leave this planet. What you do is up to you.”