Rogue (Talon 2)

“Wes!” he spat as we braced ourselves to lift the dragon off the ground. “Get over here. You’re going to have to help, too.”

“On three,” I said as the other human dropped beside me, muttering curses the whole time. Over Ember’s back and wings, Riley gave me a last baleful glare, but then his attention shifted to the dragon between us. “One…two…three!”

We lifted. Ember sagged, wings and tail dragging along the ground, her neck dangling awkwardly. She wasn’t as heavy as I’d expected, considering this was a very large, armored reptile who was complete dead weight at the moment. Somehow, the three of us manhandled the dragon over the ground and into the back of the vehicle, grunting as we pushed and pulled her inside. She barely fit; her wings were crumpled against the sides, her neck bent at an awkward angle, and we had to loop her tail over her back. I ended up pressed against the front seat with her neck draped over my lap, curved talons pricking my leg through my jeans. Riley glared at me over Ember’s motionless body, obviously hating how close I was, but there was no room to move. Nor was there room for the both of us to be back here, with an unconscious red dragon sprawled across the floor.

“Riley!” Wes snapped as the other hesitated, reluctant to leave me alone with Ember, I guessed. “St. George is coming! Bloody hell, put some pants on, would you? Let’s go!”

Riley cursed and backed away, reaching out to close the back doors. His eyes glowed yellow in the shadows of the van as he stared at me. “If she dies,” he said softly, “I’m going to kill you.” It was not an idle threat.

The roar of a distant engine, not our own, echoed over the hill behind us, getting steadily closer, and my stomach lurched. St. George was not about to let us go. Wes shrieked at Riley again, and the doors slammed, cutting off my view of the outside world. Ember groaned and stirred, wings fluttering, but she didn’t awaken. I swallowed hard and scooted aside so that the narrow, horned skull was pillowed against my legs. Her breath was shallow and hot against my skin, and I put one tentative hand on her scaly neck, trying to ignore the rows of fangs hovering over my leg, the claws that scraped close to my body.

The blood seeping across the floor, making my insides cold.

The van lurched forward, bounced once and gained speed as it rumbled over the sand. We fled into the desert, the roar of St. George behind us, the head of a dying dragon resting in my lap.

PART II

All That Glitters

Cobalt

Twelve years ago

“Agent Cobalt? They’re ready for you now.”

I stood and rolled my shoulders forward and back, trying to shake out the stiffness, then followed the assistant down the hall toward the room at the very end. I hated meetings like this: sitting in a cold office building, being polite and deferent, while the flat, appraising glare of a senior dragon bored into me from across the table. Normally, Talon didn’t bother with face-to-face conferences, speaking to me directly only when they felt the assignment especially important. I’d rather the organization contact me the usual way: via an envelope or a folder left at a dead drop, where I could read through my assignment in peace. Where I didn’t feel like I was being judged.

Especially now. Especially since I was still furious with the way the last assignment had gone down, the lives lost because of me. Because Talon had lied, and I’d believed them.

I strode into the meeting room, where a trio was seated around a long wooden table in the center of the floor. I recognized Adam Roth, a youngish-looking man in a perfectly tailored gray suit. One of Talon’s junior VPs, though he was still older than me by at least a couple centuries. I held his gaze a split second longer than was probably safe, saw a flicker of something lethal go through that calm expression before I averted my eyes, glancing at the pair seated across from each other a few chairs down.

My stomach dropped. My trainer, the crusty old bastard himself, sat quietly with the tips of his fingers steepled against his lips, ignoring everything around him. Or appearing that he did. I knew better. Nothing in this room would have escaped his notice, not even the pigeons nesting on the sill behind his head. He was older than Roth, one of the oldest trainers in the organization; a tall, thin man with a sharp chin and even sharper black eyes that were never still. His dark hair was streaked with silver, and the jagged scar beneath his left eye only added to his mystique.

Not long ago, the sight of him would have filled me with both anticipation and dread, like a nervous schoolboy handing his report card to his parents. Now the only thing I felt was resentment. Why was he here? As if I needed someone else judging my every move, silently criticizing.

The last person in the room was barely noticeable, his presence overshadowed by the two adult dragons. A human, I realized when I finally studied him. Thin and gangly, with a mess of brown hair and a rumpled collared shirt half tucked into his pants. By human standards, I guessed he was fairly young; maybe eighteen or nineteen. I was surprised. If he was in this room with Roth and one of the oldest trainers in the organization, then he had to know what we were. Who was this human, and what did he do, to warrant such privileges? He didn’t look like anything special to me.

“Ah, Agent Cobalt,” Roth said, rising smoothly from his chair. “Thank you for coming. Please, have a seat.” He gestured to the table, and I sat one chair down from my trainer, leaving the human on the other side by himself.

“Hello, Cobalt,” the Chief Basilisk murmured without looking at me. One corner of his lip curled in that faint, amused smile I hated. It had been more than a year since I saw him last, but he could always make me feel like a bumbling hatchling again with just a look. “I hear you’ve been doing well.”

“I’m sure you have,” I muttered as Roth sat down, smoothing his tie, then folding his hands before him on the table. “I’m sure you’ve heard all kinds of things about me lately.”

This was not smart, antagonizing my trainer in front of the VP. A few years ago, I could have expected a swat upside the head at best and a six-hour training session at worst. But the years of being cowed by him were over. I was a full-fledged Basilisk, and not only that, I was one of their best. This might be a dangerous game I was playing, but it was no more hazardous than the missions they expected me to pull off without a hitch. Let him know I wasn’t happy; I couldn’t do anything about Talon or my assignments, but I didn’t have to be thrilled about them.

My instructor’s thin mouth twitched—impossible to tell if he was angry or amused by my lack of respect—before he turned to the head of the table. The VP was watching us now, dark eyes intense.