Talon

The boy across from me smiled and casually helped himself to a cheese stick, oblivious to the heat singing through my veins. “Mind if I sit here?”

I could see the dragon in him, in his near-golden eyes, in the slightly dangerous grin he flashed me over the table, the smile of a predator. I could feel the flames burning within, my own dragon rising up to either challenge or accept, I wasn’t sure which. I did know one thing: talking to the rogue could get me in a lot of trouble, both from my trainer and Talon itself. And I didn’t care one iota.

My dragon snapped and flared, wanting out. I took a deep breath to cool myself off, and smirked back. “Free country.” I shrugged. “Do whatever you like.”

“Interesting choice of words.” The other dragon cocked his head, one corner of his lip twitching. I noticed he had a tattoo half-hidden beneath the collar of his shirt, some sort of Celtic knot or design. “But it’s not entirely free for us, is it?”

I blinked and frowned slightly. “Um, hi, I’m Ember. It’s nice to meet you, weird, cryptic statements aside.” My dragon snorted at me, disgusted. She knew exactly what he was talking about.

He grinned, and it made my skin flush. “You don’t know what I am, do you?”

“You’re a rogue,” I answered, abandoning all pretense of ignorance. Subtlety was never my strong suit. His grin grew wider, showing even white teeth, and I lowered my voice. “I don’t care that you’re a rogue, but why are you here? You could get in a lot of trouble if Talon found out. Aren’t you afraid the Vipers could be looking for you?”

He actually chuckled at that. “I’m sure they are. But what about you, Firebrand? You realize you could get into a lot of trouble just by talking to me, right? If Talon ever found out their vulnerable little hatchling was conversing with a big dangerous rogue, they might pull you back to the nest. Or they might see you as a collaborator, and then the Vipers would come after us both. That doesn’t scare you?”

“I haven’t told you to go away, have I?” I asked, avoiding the question. Though the answer, of course, was yes. No one in their right mind wanted a Viper after them. There were dark rumors surrounding Talon’s most mysterious agents, and all of them were terrifying. I certainly wouldn’t want a Viper on my tail, though I wasn’t about to tell him that.

The rogue raised an eyebrow, appraising me, and I met his stare head-on. Vipers or no Vipers, I was curious. Except for my brother and our trainers, who didn’t count, I hadn’t seen another dragon in years. “Who are you?” I asked, determined to satisfy some of my curiosity. “What’s your name?”

“My name?” He leaned back, still appraising, and gave me a lazy smile. “I don’t know, Firebrand. That seems like an awful lot of faith to put in a complete stranger. How do I know you won’t turn me in? Run back to the organization and tell them you saw a rogue hanging around the Smoothie Hut?” He snatched another cheese stick and waggled it in my face. “That wouldn’t go well for me.”

“I won’t turn you in,” I promised. “I didn’t before, when I first saw you last month.” He ignored me, biting into the cheese stick with a grin, and I frowned. “You were looking for me, weren’t you?” I guessed, remembering the way he’d stared at me, golden eyes piercing even from across the parking lot. “Why?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“And you’re not answering any of them.” I swatted his hand away from the last of the cheese sticks. “Stop playing games. If you were scared I was going to turn you in, you wouldn’t have sat down in the first place. So what do you want?”

He laughed, his deep, low voice sending tendrils of heat curling through me. “All right, you have me there. I’ll stop beating around the bush, then.” Shaking his head, he gave me an appraising look. “Let me ask you a question. How much do you really know about Talon?”

I cast a furtive look at the other tables, making sure no one could hear us. Or that Lexi was not returning from the bathroom. “What kind of question is that?” I said, lowering my voice. “I know as much as the next, um, person. The organization exists to ensure our safety and survival. Every member has a place, and everything they do is to help our race grow stronger.”

The rogue sneered. “Textbook answer, Firebrand. Bravo, you know exactly what they want you to say.”

I bristled. “Says the traitor who ran away from Talon and is living on the run like a criminal. For all I know, everything out of your mouth is a lie.”

“Don’t kid yourself.” The rogue’s voice was suddenly grave, his expression darkening. “I know things about...them...that you don’t. I’ve seen the inside of the organization. I know how they work. And I’m here to warn you, little Firebrand. Be careful. What they show you is barely scratching the surface.”

I thought of my sadistic trainer, her intense gaze following me around the office building, and shivered. “What do you mean?”

“You want answers?” He rose with a shifting of leather and bike chains, gazing down at me. “Meet me at Lover’s Bluff tomorrow at midnight.” His near-golden eyes danced, and he smiled evilly. “That’s past curfew, so you’ll have to play rogue yourself if you want the truth.”

I crossed my arms. “So, you want me to meet a complete stranger out on a lonely cliff in the middle of the night? Seems like you expect an awful lot of faith from me.”

The rogue smiled. “Touché.” Putting one hand on the table, he leaned in and lowered his voice so that only I could hear him. “My name is Riley,” he said, and his nearness made my insides churn. He smelled of dust and chains and leather, and, beneath that, the faintest hint of wind and sky. Impossible to sense unless you’d actually been there. “That’s my human name, anyway,” the rogue continued. “If you want my real name, I’ll tell you tomorrow...if you decide to show. If you’re too scared, just don’t show up, and I’ll know where we stand. You’ll never see me again.”

“And if I do decide to show?”

He chuckled. “Firebrand,” he murmured, his voice going even softer, “think about it. Two dragons, on an isolated cliff overlooking the ocean, with no humans around for miles and no Talon to stop us. What do you think we’re going to do?”

If my dragon was excited before, she could barely be contained now. My back itched beneath my shirt, wings straining to break free, to unfurl and flap away into the sky right then. The rogue—Riley—grinned, as if he could sense my reaction, and straightened, gazing down at me.

“Tomorrow night,” he whispered, and then he sauntered away without looking back. Deep inside, something in me mourned to see him go.

“Oh. My. God!” Lexi squeaked, dropping onto the bench across from me, her eyes big and round. “Was that Gorgeous Biker Boy that just left? Did he actually talk to you? What did he say? What did he want?”

I shrugged. “Nothing, Lex,” I said, feeling bad for lying, but of course, I couldn’t tell her the truth. What had happened between Riley and me was dragon business; humans had no part in it. She gave me an incredulous look, and I sighed. “Fine, but don’t yell at me for bursting your bubble. He asked if I wanted to take a ride on his power machine.” I paused. “Not the motorcycle.”

“Oh.” Lexi thought about that for a second, then wrinkled her nose. “Ew! So he was just a disgusting perv, after all, huh? That’s too bad, he was really, really hot.”

“Yeah,” I agreed softly, standing up, thinking of the rogue dragon’s last words. His challenge to meet him after curfew, to fly with him, when he knew how dangerous that was, for both of us.

I shouldn’t. I should inform Talon that the rogue was still hanging around. That was what I was supposed to do. Rogue dragons were dangerous; everyone in the organization knew it. They were unstable, unpredictable and put the survival of our race in jeopardy. The rogue could be lying about Talon, just to get me out in the open. My rational, logical side warned me not to even think about sneaking out, breaking curfew and meeting a total stranger on an empty cliff after midnight.

Unfortunately, my dragon had other plans.

Garret

“You still haven’t told me the plan,” I told Tristan as we walked through a pair of sliding glass doors. After we’d left the girls at the beach, he’d driven to the nearest gas station and headed to the hugely advertised “beer cave” at the back. I followed him into the chilly interior, letting the doors shut behind us. “The girl’s party is only a few days from now. What’s the objective for this weekend?”

“Garret.” Tristan looked back at me. “Relax. It’s a party. There is no set objective. You’re just there to hang out, fit in, get them to trust you. Surely you can do that.”

“I have never been to a party,” I said in a flat voice, which was true. The Order saw such things as frivolous, and anything that took time away from training was not only considered wasteful, it was dangerous. “I’m not sure what constitutes ‘hanging out.’”

“I’m sure it’ll come to you.” He headed to the back corner, stacked floor to ceiling with boxes of alcohol. I continued to glare at him, and he sighed. “Look, just think of it as an exercise. Observe and blend in. Try to think like the enemy. You’ve done that before, right?”

“Yes.”

“It’s the same thing. Adapt. Engage in conversation. Smile sometimes.” He grabbed the nearest twelve-pack and tossed it at me. I caught it, and my partner shook his head with a grin. “Poor Garret. He can face down fire-breathing dragons and leap from a helicopter at two hundred feet, but stick him with a bunch of adolescents and he falls apart.”

I ignored the jab, holding up the twelve-pack of beer. “What’s this for?”

“Forget torture and interrogation. You want someone to spill their guts, share a secret or reveal they’re actually a twenty-foot winged lizard that can breathe fire?” Tristan smiled wickedly and picked up another case. “This is the quickest way. Besides, most parties nowadays are BYOB.”

“What?”

“Bring your own booze.” Tristan rolled his eyes. “Seriously, partner. We do have a television in the bunkhouse. Sometimes, too much training is a bad thing.”

“I don’t drink.” Not that the Order didn’t allow it; in a profession as dangerous as ours, they recognized the soldiers’ need to unwind, as long as it didn’t devolve into drunken stupidity. But alcohol muted the senses and made people do silly, incomprehensible things. I wanted to be fully in control of myself, always.

“Everyone at this party does, I guarantee it,” Tristan said. “And you, my friend, are going to, as well, if you want to blend in.” He shouldered the case and turned toward the exit. I followed, grabbing a two-liter of Coke for the drive home.

Back at the apartment, I put the beer in the refrigerator and sat down at the laptop on the kitchen table. Opening a secure link to Order Intelligence, I paused a moment, then typed, Requesting subject analysis into the subject line at the top. Continuing to the body of the email, I wrote, Garret Xavier Sebastian, ID 870012. Requesting detailed background information on potential targets: Alexis Thompson, Kristin Duff and Ember Hill. Location: Crescent Beach, CA. Importance: high. Response: immediate.

Clicking the send button, I closed the laptop and leaned back in the chair, thinking of the encounter this afternoon. My mind kept drifting back to the red-haired girl, Ember. The other two girls I’d nearly forgotten, though I knew I shouldn’t write them off so quickly. But Ember was the one that mattered. When she’d first looked at me on the beach, my entire body had seized up for a moment, something I’d never experienced before. I couldn’t catch my breath; I couldn’t do anything except stare at her. And for a split second, I’d wondered if she knew who I was, why I was there.

Fortunately, Tristan had appeared, and the fight with the college students had cleared my head, though I was still fairly annoyed with myself for losing focus. I was a soldier. What had happened between me and the girl, whatever that was...it was a fluke, something that wouldn’t happen again. I knew my mission. I was here to find and kill a dragon. Nothing else mattered.

I had to stay focused. I would not let myself be distracted by thoughts of a red-haired girl with bright green eyes, even though she’d surprised me today and made me laugh. Even though I admired her fierceness in standing up for herself and her friend.

Even though, hours later, I could not seem to get her out of my head.

Ember

“Hey, Dante, do you ever miss flying?”

My twin looked up from his desk and open laptop. We were hanging out in his room with me sprawled on the bed, flipping through a surfing magazine while he streamed videos on his laptop. The window was open, and a cool breeze filtered through the curtains, smelling of sand and seawater. The digital clock on his dresser read 11:22 p.m. Late, but I was too nervous and excited to sleep, despite the somewhat exhausting day I’d had. Determined to make up for yesterday’s dud waves, I’d dragged Lexi out past the reef this afternoon, and we’d surfed until the sun went down. Of course, this was after my training session with the dragon from hell, hauling bags of compost around the building for two hours straight. It took a thirty-minute shower and three scrubbings of shampoo to wash the stench from my hair, and I was positive my instructor got the extrarank bags just to spite me.

Dante gave me a strange look. “Yeah,” he answered, swiveling in his chair to face me. “Occasionally. Why? Do you?”

“All the time,” I admitted, closing the magazine. “I mean, that’s why I love surfing—it’s the closest thing I can get to flying, but it’s not the same.”

“Oh? I thought it was because you loved getting pounded by waves and bashed against reefs and nearly drowning.” Dante grinned and shook his head at me. “Typically, you’re supposed to start with tiny waves and work up to the monsters. You’re not supposed to go charging into eighteen-foot surf on your first lesson.”

“Calvin said I was a natural.”

“Calvin nearly got his ear chewed off by Aunt Sarah when she heard what happened.” My twin’s expression darkened. “This was after he nearly got his head bitten off by your furious brother when they dragged you out of the water that day.”

“I said I was sorry about that.” We were getting off topic, and I held up my hands. “Anyway, the point is, I miss flying. A lot. Do you...” I fiddled with the edge of the blanket. “Do you ever think about...breaking the rules?”

Dante frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well...sneaking out. Finding some lonely corner of the beach, where no human could possibly see us, and...Shifting. Just for a few minutes, just enough to go flying around—”

“No.”

Dante’s voice was sharp. I blinked in surprise, looking up at him. His face was grave, worried, his brows drawn together in a serious frown. “We can’t do that, Ember. Ever. Tell me you’re not thinking about it.”

My stomach twisted, but I shrugged. “Sure, I think about it sometimes,” I said, keeping my voice light, uncaring. “But that doesn’t mean I’d actually do it.”

“Good.” Dante relaxed. “Because if we ever did something like that and Talon found out?” He shivered. “At best, they’d call us back for reeducation. At worst, they might think we went rogue. Like that dragon we saw on our first day here. You don’t see him around anymore, do you?”

I studied a loose thread on the blanket. “No.”

Guilt prickled. I hated lying to my brother, but there was certainly no way I was telling him about the rogue. The first time we’d seen him, Riley had disappeared and, coincidentally, our trainers had arrived the very next day. Dante never spoke of the incident in the parking lot, evading the question or ignoring it completely when I asked. I strongly suspected he had done something, informed Talon about the rogue dragon, and Riley’d had to get out of town before the Vipers came for him.

Now, not only was he back, he had challenged me to come flying with him, defying Talon and all their rules, daring me to do the same. And, though my dragon practically jumped out of my skin at the chance, the situation with Dante made me a little sad. I’d always told my brother everything before, but there was no way I was letting him in on this little secret. Riley could vanish, for good this time. I wasn’t going to let him get away again.

Maybe sensing my mood, Dante rose, walked over and dropped beside me, putting a hand on my back. “I know it’s hard sometimes,” he said as I picked morosely at the string. “But it won’t be forever. We should just enjoy this while we can. I don’t want to risk losing what we have here. And...I don’t want to risk us getting separated. So, we have to follow the rules for now, okay, sis?”

“Easy for you to say,” I muttered. “You don’t have to go to class with the sadistic dragon from hell. I bet you’ve never had to haul bricks or tires or bags of dung around the room while your trainer yells at you to go faster. And you’re always home before me, it seems.” I glared up at him, almost a challenge. “What do you do every morning, anyway?”

Dante shrugged. “I told you,” he answered, his voice way too casual. “Boring stuff. Politics and Human Sciences. Learning the names of world leaders and their laws and what they had for breakfast. Nothing nearly as exciting as your mornings.”

He ruffled my hair, knowing how much I hated that, and I swatted his arm away. It ended in a short scuffle on the mattress, with his arm wrapped around my head, mussing my hair, while I snarled and yelled at him to get off.

“Ember. Dante.” There was a short tap on the door, and Uncle Liam peered in, eyes narrowed. “We’re going to bed,” he stated, which meant it was now 11:30 p.m., on the dot. “Keep it down if you’re going to be awake much longer.”

“Yes, Uncle,” we answered together, and Liam looked at me.

“Also, Ember. Your instructor called. She wants you at your session earlier than normal tomorrow, so set your alarm back an hour.”

“What? That means I’ll have to get up at five!”

“Then you’d best go to bed soon,” Liam replied briskly, and shut the door.

I shoved Dante off, stood and ran my fingers through my hair, fuming but still afraid he would hear my sudden, rapid heartbeat.

“Guess I’ll turn in, too,” I muttered, frowning at my twin to hide my unease. “Since I have to get up at the butt crack of dawn. And don’t give me that look. I don’t see your trainer dragging you out of bed at ungodly o’clock.” He just grinned unsympathetically and watched me from the nest of rumpled blankets. I sighed. “What about you? When are you going to bed?”

Dante snorted. “I don’t know, Aunt Sarah. But I’ll be sure to tell you when I’m getting sleepy so you can read me a story.”

“Oh, shut up.” I turned and opened the door. “Smart-ass. Good night, Tweedledum.” A stupid nickname I’d latched on to when we’d first watched Alice in Wonderland as kids. I remembered being fascinated by the fat, bumbling cartoon twins, and started calling my brother by that name, just to annoy him. It had stuck ever since.

“Wait.” Dante looked up with a fake pleading expression. “Before you go, could you turn on my night-light and bring me a glass of water?”

I shut the door.

The house was quiet, cloaked in shadow. Normally, a pale, silvery light shone through the large bay windows from the moon outside, but tonight, the rooms seemed darker, more foreboding. I tiptoed across the hall to my room, making sure the light to Aunt Sarah and Uncle Liam’s bedroom was turned off. Dante’s light remained on, of course, but Dante wouldn’t barge into my room in the middle of the night.

Shutting my door, I flipped off the light and leaned against the wall for a second, my heart still pounding wildly. Up until this moment, I hadn’t really known if I was going to do this. Sneak out, break curfew, meet with a dangerous rogue dragon on a lonely bluff. Now, it wasn’t a question. Riley said there were things about Talon that I didn’t know, and I was suddenly very curious what those things were, but that wasn’t the only reason I was doing this. I was tired of Talon, my instructor, my training and their endless rules. I needed to fly, to feel the wind under my wings, or I was going to snap.

Climbing over the sill, I dangled for a moment, then dropped, landing with a soft thump in the cool sand. Straightening, I hugged the side of the house, making my way around to where my bike lay slumped against the corner of the fence. I couldn’t take the car, of course, and the spot I was headed was only about five miles away. Not too far. I just had to get home before sunrise.

As I pushed my bike to the brightly lit sidewalk, I paused to look back at the house. Dante’s light was still on, but if I knew him, he would be glued to the computer screen. The guardians were both in bed, lights off, curtains drawn. No one would see me creep down the road and disappear into the night, to go flying with a complete stranger after midnight.

You know you’re breaking about a dozen sacred rules here, Ember.

I shook off my fear. No, no second guesses. I’d followed their rules long enough. Tonight, I was going to fly.

Taking a deep breath, I swung my leg over the bike and pushed off down the street, feeling my doubts get smaller and smaller with every cycle. By the time I’d reached the corner, and my house had been swallowed up by the darkness, they were gone entirely.

Garret

“Come on,” Tristan muttered from the edge of the roof. “Put some clothes on, man.”

I paused in the doorway that led to the roof of our apartment complex, wondering if I shouldn’t turn around and go back inside. Every night from the time we arrived, we’d take turns on the roof of this building, scanning the sky, watching for glimpses of scales or wings. A long shot, to be certain, but better than sitting around doing nothing.

Sighing, I closed the door and walked up behind him. He stood at the corner, peering through a pair of binoculars, gazing at the darkening horizon. “Anything?”

“Other than a guy grilling on the balcony in his birthday suit, no.” Tristan didn’t lower the binoculars, didn’t even move as he said this. “Did you get a chance to read the report that came back?”

“Yes,” I answered, having just come from the kitchen and the open email file on the laptop. Re: Requesting subject analysis, the subject line read. The body of the email contained the names of the subjects I’d designated and a little information about each of them: age, parents, addresses, where they were born. Everything looked pretty ordinary...except for one thing.

Ember Hill: Age 16. Mother: Kate Hill, deceased. Father: Joseph Hill, deceased.

Both parents, dead. In a fatal car accident, apparently. Everything below that was fairly normal. Ember and her brother, Dante, were born at St. Mary’s Hospital in Pierre, South Dakota. Their birth certificates listed them as twins, with Dante being born three minutes ahead of his sister, making him the eldest. They appeared to have had a normal childhood, though there was little information beyond where and when they were born and how their parents had died. Though that might mean any number of things, most Talon sleepers had one thing in common. They were all “orphans,” living with relatives or guardians, or adopted into another family. Their human records meant nothing; all Talon operatives had birth certificates, records of where they were born, social security numbers, everything. Talon was nothing if not thorough, but the orphan thing always stood out.

“So,” Tristan went on as I picked up the second pair of binoculars and joined him at the edge. “I’ve been thinking. Of those three girls we met yesterday, did any of them scream ‘dragon’ to you?”

“No,” I replied, raising the binoculars. “They all seemed perfectly normal.”

“Yes,” Tristan agreed. “And Talon has taught them to blend in. But of those three, who would be the one you would pick for the sleeper?”