“Dragon,” Xiao said. “I am Xiao Long—Young Dragon. And this, Mack and Jarrah and Stefan, is the place no human has seen in centuries. Long Xiang: Dragon Home.”
Stefan, his voice a whisper, said, “Dude, I think I’m dying.”
He fell from Mack’s grip and began to roll down the long ramp.
Chapter Twelve
The vast yellow dragon snaked through the sky.
The much smaller turquoise dragon—Xiao—suddenly took flight and soared up toward him.
And Stefan rolled down the ramp. With each revolution he left a small red stain on the stone.
Mack and Jarrah pelted after him, but he had picked up a fair amount of speed and the ramp was steep. It was like trying to catch a ball rolling downhill away from you.
But then, down came both dragons, Xiao and her father. They landed on the ramp in front of Stefan.
Mack felt the earth bounce from the impact of the landing.
Stefan rolled right into the giant dragon’s giant claw. He came to a stop.
Mack and Jarrah arrived breathless in the shadow of the monstrous scaled beast. Its head was as big as an SUV. Its eyes were like beach balls.
Angry beach balls.
“I have asked my father to help this boy,” Xiao said. “He has agreed.”
“However . . . ,” the giant yellow dragon said.
It was a single word, but it was a big word. The sound blast blew Jarrah’s hair back. It made Mack take a step back. It vibrated through his body from the ground up and from the air down and sort of reverberated back and forth so that he was like a Jell-O cube in an earthquake.
“However,” Xiao said, “this does not mean you might not be killed later.”
“If you can help him, do it!” Jarrah said. “We’ll take our chances.”
Xiao’s father nodded his huge head. Then, with a delicateness and care Mack would not have believed possible, he raised one leg and extended one claw and with perfect precision sliced Stefan’s shirt open.
Mack winced when he saw the wound. Jarrah let loose a small cry of dismay. It was worse when you could see it clearly. Mostly because you could see that the hole was very close to Stefan’s heart.
How was he going to live with himself if he’d gotten Stefan killed? That fear wasn’t a phobia; it was something different. Darker, more stomach churning and less panic inducing.
Xiao’s father then stuck the tip of his claw right into the hole.
“You’ll kill him!” Jarrah cried.
The huge dragon’s beach ball eyes, with vertical slits that reminded Mack of a cat’s eye—and into which a full-grown cat could fit quite easily—flicked toward Jarrah.
“Silence, girl,” the dragon said, and again, spoken in that very large voice, it had the effect of making both Jarrah and Mack think they’d better just stand there quietly until called upon.
The dragon’s claw plunged deep into the wound. Blood bubbled around it.
Then the claw was slowly, slowly withdrawn. It came away without a sign of blood. And when it was fully withdrawn, Stefan’s chest was dry and normal except for a small pink scar.
The scar was in the shape of a Chinese character.
Xiao laughed, and the giant dragon made what was possibly a smile, or a grimace of rage—it was hard to tell.
“The character means ‘lucky,’” Xiao explained.