The Key (The Magnificent 12 3)

Xiao looked up, too, and said, “I am a dragon of China! If you threaten or harm me, you’ll break the ancient treaty!”

“Yeah,” Risky said sarcastically, her voice not at all changed by becoming a dragon. “That’s a huge worry for me: your stupid little treaty.”

“Maybe you should worry,” Xiao said with amazing calm. “Maybe you should worry a lot.”

Something about the confidence in her voice made Mack look around, like maybe there was a source of this almost absurd confidence.

And there was.

Three in fact.

They rose from behind the sparkling white dome of the church of Sacré-Coeur. They were like nothing that had been seen in the world since the earliest days of Paris, when it was only a handful of squalid thatched huts, a few bark fishing boats, filthy goats, and a small bistro.

Dragons!

“Did you call them?” Mack asked Xiao.

“No one calls a dragon, a dragon calls you,” Xiao said. “They sense the presence of an interloper—a treaty breaker.”

Risky had done a good job of turning herself into one of them. She was definitely quite dragonesque. But perhaps she had never seen the real thing, or at least didn’t remember what they were like.

Because Risky was the dragon equivalent of, say, a machine gun. While the real ones, the ancient ones who had risen to defend their treaty, they were more like tanks.

Their wings were wider than city blocks.

As they flew, the downdraft alone was knocking cars and buses this way and that. Pedestrians were thrown against walls and down to the ground.

Just from the wind off their wings.

“Huh,” Stefan said. It was an admiring “huh.”

“Huh,” Risky said. Hers was not an admiring “huh.” You can get a lot of different emotions across with

just a “huh.” And Risky’s version was conveying some very real apprehension.

The dragons’ speed was startling.

“You’ve broken the ancient treaty, Ereskigal,” Xiao said. “They are required to punish you or risk war with the dragons of the east.”

“Pfff,” Risky said. “Nobody punishes me!”

She was brave. Give credit where it is due: she was brave. For another three seconds.

But there is just something about three massive, leathery, fire-breathing monsters the size of the largest bombers coming at you at eighty miles an hour that shakes your resolve.

“All right! All right!” Risky cried. Swiftly her scales and sinews, her talons and barbed tail, melted away to become her usual form again.

The dragons saw and swerved at the last minute. They blew past with such tornadic force that the tower itself spun twice before stabilizing.

Two of the dragons headed straight back in the direction of Sacré-Coeur, and Risky breathed a sigh of relief.

Standing on the railing again, she said, “Fine: I’ll do it in a less dramatic fashion!”

She leveled her clenched fist at Mack. She spoke words that might have been Vargran, but might also have been some still more ancient—and more evil—language.

Mack stopped breathing. He wanted desperately to clutch his throat, but if he broke contact with the others …

And yet how long … face turning red … choking …