Ashley sat heavily on the mat and stared at the floor. For a few seconds, a barrage of words flew from her mind, too many and too fast to register. Finally, she looked up at Lauren. I have to get to her. I’m a healer.
“But how?” Lauren whispered.
The reason I tried to run out the door a few seconds ago wasn’t to escape. It was so Sir Barlow could plant a key in my pocket. He wanted to give me a gun, too, but I pushed it back. We wouldn’t be able to hide it.
So we can leave? Right now?
Sir Barlow told me we’re supposed to wait for the dragon attack. Ashley nodded toward a window above Lauren’s head. The guard who watches through a camera up there would be distracted by the attack, but I think we should try to go now. I need to heal Bonnie.
How are we going to leave without the guard seeing us?
Sir Barlow said you have a phone.
I do.
Ashley nodded toward the privacy curtain separating the cell from the toilet. Go over there and set it down. If you need to use the toilet, now is a good time. Then come back here.
Lauren pulled the curtain and stepped behind it. After using the toilet and laying the phone on the floor, she returned. Still sitting on the mat, Ashley looked at her as if projecting more thoughts. Lauren focused her mind on the pathway between her spine and her ears, but nothing came through. The tingling sensation had stopped. She touched her ear and shook her head, hoping to signal her loss of mental hearing.
“I understand.” Ashley rose and walked behind the partition.
While she waited, Lauren scanned the room. With so little light available, she couldn’t see much, but there wasn’t much to be seen. The cell was a freezing, dismal concrete hole.
After a few minutes, Ashley emerged and strode to the wall, stopping under the window. She reached up and set the phone next to the camera at a point out of the lens’s view.
As she returned to the bed, she stretched her arms and yawned. “We’d better get some sleep.”
Lauren gave the phone and camera a furtive glance. “Okay, but I see only one mat.”
“Bonnie and I sleep together. It’s the only way to stay warm at night.” Ashley took her by the arm. “Come on.”
Lauren followed Ashley’s pull and lay on the mat with her, back to back, her face toward the wall.
“Close your eyes,” Ashley whispered.
Lauren complied. With their backs touching, the closeness fueled a sense of comfort and security. Warmth flooded her skin. It felt good to rest with a friend who understood what was going on.
As the combined body heat radiated up her spine, the tingling returned, and with it, Ashley’s thoughts. So I’m hoping you’ll let me know when you can hear me again. It’s no trouble to ramble on in my head like a mental chatterbox. With all that’s going on, there’s no way I could sleep—
I can hear you, Lauren said in her mind.
Perfect. I’m letting the phone record us lying here. I erased the phone’s video memory, so I’m hoping there’s plenty of room.
Just let me know what to do.
Do you have any acting skills?
Some. I was rehearsing for the lead role in A Christmas Carol.
A girl playing Ebenezer Scrooge? That would take some skills.
Lauren held back a laugh. Esmeralda Scrooge. It’s an all-girl version. The director chose me in the audition, so I guess I can act.
We’ll find out. You’re going to complain about getting too warm lying next to me. You’ll get up, take off your sweatshirt, and throw it over the camera. Then stay near the window. I’ll need a boost.
Will riding my shoulders do?
It should.
Now?
Whenever you’re ready.
Let’s do it. Lauren climbed over her and stood on the floor, staring at Ashley with her hands on her hips. “What are you, a human radiator? You’re too hot.”
“Just deal with it and go to sleep,” Ashley said, yawning. “It’s late.”
Lauren stripped her sweatshirt over her head, exposing her bare arms. It was freezing, but shivering could end their charade. “This dump is worse than a cheap motel. Don’t you have any place to hang your clothes?”
“This isn’t the Hilton, my dear. Just toss it somewhere.”
Lauren threw the sweatshirt over the camera.
“Not there!” Ashley barked as she jumped toward the window. Boost me!
Lauren crouched, and Ashley straddled her neck, one leg over each shoulder. While Lauren straightened, Ashley called out. “Sorry about that, Ms. Guard. Lauren’s new here. I’ll get the camera unblocked in just a second.”
A muffled feminine voice sounded from under the sweatshirt. “Hurry up. All the other guards are occupied, and I’m in no mood to come down there myself.”
“Almost got it.” Ashley pulled two wires from the back of the camera and draped the sweatshirt over her shoulder. “Okay. She can’t hear or see us now. After I plug the audio feed back into the security camera and the video feed into the phone, you can let me down. Make sure the phone camera sees you putting the sweatshirt back on. Then I’ll fix it so that the video recording we made with the phone feeds back to them.”
“Their video wire plugs right into the phone?” Lauren asked.
“My husband smuggled in a universal adapter, and I already installed it on their camera. Sir Barlow made sure the phone he gave you is compatible. We were hoping to do something like this, but he couldn’t get a phone to me until now.” Ashley covered the phone with the sweatshirt and plugged the video wire into the back. Then, after restoring the audio wire to the security camera, she whipped the sweatshirt away. “Got it loose!”
Lauren helped Ashley slide down and began putting the sweatshirt on in plain sight of the phone’s camera. Standing on tiptoes, Ashley reached up and jiggled the phone. “Can you see us all right?”
“The picture is jumpy,” the guard said.
“The sweatshirt probably put its balance out of kilter. Maybe you’d better hit the calibration reset.”
“Good idea.”
“Knock yourself out. We’re going to bed.” Ashley nodded at Lauren. That was literal. The calibration should knock out the transmission for at least five seconds. She punched a few buttons on the phone, pulled out the jail camera’s audio wire, and settled back to her normal height. “If all goes well, she should see a loop of us sleeping peacefully, at least for as long as the battery lasts.”
“I didn’t notice the battery meter.”
“It was fully charged. Sir Barlow knew what he was doing.” Ashley pulled a key from her pocket and skulked to the cell door. After peering out to check the corridor, she reached between two bars, pointed the key toward the cell, and unlocked the door.
As she slid it open, she gestured for Lauren to follow. They tiptoed through the corridor leading to the stairwell. Tell me which way to the place they’re keeping Bonnie.
How about if I go first? I’m beyond being scared of these wannabe Nazis.
Ashley stopped and smiled. Lauren, you’re my kind of girl.
Thanks. You’re pretty cool yourself. She touched her jaw. I have a tooth transmitter, but the reception’s been pretty bad lately. Should I try to contact your husband?
When we’re sure no one can hear us. For now, let’s find Bonnie.
DRAGON WARRIORS
Walter paced back and forth, making a trench in knee-deep snow while wind drove stinging flakes into his cheeks. The dragons were due fifteen minutes earlier. Blizzard conditions must have slowed them down. The new portal from Second Eden lay nearly a hundred miles away in a wilderness area the computers thought undetectable by government monitoring systems. If the storm was this fierce between here and there, who could tell how long it might be before the dragons and their riders arrived?
He stopped and stamped his feet, trying to get circulation back into his toes. Wearing thermal everything under his coat and trous
ers, most of his body stayed warm, but his extremities had gone numb, probably from a combination of the cold and his recent back injury. Regardless of cold or injury, he had to charge in with the dragons and fight like a crazed warrior. Ashley was waiting, and no amount of pain or suffering could keep him away.
Walter set his lips close to his gloves and blew, making the warmth bounce back to his frozen cheeks. It would be great to have Matt’s ability to stay warm. Was that a dragon trait? Could it be that Matt had his father’s gift in a mutated way—heat expelled through his skin instead of his mouth? He shook his head. Ashley would be quick to dismiss that idea. The anatomical passages were too different. Of course, the dragons on Second Eden could generate heat through their scales, but Matt descended from Earth dragons, not Second Eden dragons. Could there be a connection between the two families somehow? Could the gene pool on Second Eden be allowing a recessive trait to flourish, while on Earth the trait stayed dormant until now? If the two families were connected, why did the Second Eden dragons lack the intelligence and verbal abilities of their Earth counterparts?
A voice buzzed in his jaw. “Any sign of them?”
“Not yet.” Walter stared through the veil of blowing snow. Far in the distance over the flat terrain, a light blinked—Jared’s helicopter waiting on the ground. “I can still see you. You might want to shut your lights off.”
“I have to keep everything running. If anything ices over, we’ll be in trouble. But don’t worry. We’re in the middle of nowhere. They’ll be watching more obvious places to gather.”
“Like a ski lodge?”
Jared laughed. “Something like that. I could use a fireplace and a mug of hot cocoa right about now.”
“I know what you mean. When the dragons show up, I’m going to get one to toast my toes.”
“How much longer are you going to wait? Marilyn’s worried about your injury.”
Walter kicked at the snow. “Jared Bannister, if Marilyn were locked up in that jail, how long would you wait?”
“Until I was a statue of ice.”
“Exactly. So please tell your lovely wife that I—” A gust of wind sent him staggering forward. As he regained his balance, he stared at the sky. The gust was warm, not cold.
A growling voice sounded from behind him. “Turn around, dragon rider.”
Walter spun in place. Makaidos sat on his haunches, blowing snuffs of orange-tinged smoke. Red beams shot from his eyes, and his ears twitched in the wind.
“Makaidos!” Walter reached out and stroked the dragon’s neck three times, the usual protocol for greeting a dragon warrior. “Where are the others?”
“I found a sheltered refuge in a nearby forest,” Makaidos said. “The dragons are warming the humans in preparation for attack. I will take you there and prepare you as well.”
“Sounds great.” Walter touched his jaw. “Jared, I’m going with Makaidos. I’ll let you know when we have someone for you to transport.”
Makaidos lowered his head to the ground, making his neck a staircase. After hopping over the shorter spines and dodging the longer ones, Walter settled at the base of Makaidos’s neck. “I’m ready!”
With a beat of his wings, Makaidos leaped into the air. A gust pushed him down and to the side, but the mighty dragon battled back, flapping again and again until darkness and the shield of flakes blocked any further view of the ground below.
As the bumpy ride continued, Walter talked in spite of his chattering teeth. “Larry and Lois, have you heard from Lauren or Matt lately?”
“We are monitoring Lauren,” Larry said. “It seems that a signal-blocking mechanism has been put in place at the prison facility. We are able to hear some of her transmissions, but she does not seem to hear us. Carly thinks she heard Sir Barlow’s voice, but I am unable to verify any samples with his voiceprint.”
Walter had to shout to hear himself. “If she’s with Sir Barlow, that’s great news.”
“Unless they are both prisoners,” Lois said.
Walter scowled. “Who installed a pessimism chip in you?”
“It is not pessimism. I calculated the probability of Sir Barlow’s discovery and capture at sixty-three percent, so it is a reasonable assumption. The confidence interval is—”
“Don’t give me statistics. I’ve beaten the odds too many times to think we’re living by chance. Have some faith.”
“Carly was working on a faith component in our estimate algorithm, but she abandoned the idea. She said something about a deity moving in mysterious ways that could not be measured.”
“Exactly. That’s the way it should be.”
“I asked Lauren to report to me if she relocated,” Lois continued, “and she has not done so. We should assume that she is still at the roof-access shelter.”
Blinking at the icy crystals, Walter let out a sigh. “Thank you both. Let me know if you hear anything else important.”
After a few minutes, Makaidos’s eyebeams flicked on and pierced the nearly horizontal sheets of snow. His ruby lasers ran across a field of treetops before stopping at a gap in the foliage. Flying in a ragged circle, Makaidos descended toward the gap, again battling the gusts assaulting his body, first from one side, then from another as he continued orbiting.
Finally, he dropped below the treetop level and landed in a clearing, sliding on a thick blanket of snow. As soon as Walter jumped to the ground, a small blaze appeared at the entrance to a cave.
“Come and get warm!” Sapphira shouted from within the fire. Although covered in orange flames, her bright blue eyes and white hair shone as clear as ever. “Since we were late, I assume we have to launch the attack as soon as possible.”
Pushing through the snow, Walter ran to the cave. As he drew closer, the silhouettes of other dragons and humans appeared just inside. Although cold wind knifed through his coat, the thought of blessed heat brushed the pain away.
The moment he arrived, he stripped off his coat and held it aloft. “If one of you kind dragons will dry this for me, I’ll stay close to Sapphira and get warm.”
“I’ll hold it in front of Thigocia,” a man said as the coat slipped away from Walter’s hand.
Sapphira’s flames cast light over the man’s face—Elam, King of Second Eden.
Walter embraced him and added a pat on the back of his thick woolen cloak. “It’s been a long time,” Walter said.
“Too long, my friend.”
Walter gazed at Sapphira. As stunning as ever with her bright blue eyes, white hair, and glowing face, he longed to embrace her as well, but her flames allowed only a close bow and a heartfelt, “It’s good to see you again.”
She smiled and curtsied. “To fight again alongside a warrior such as yourself is a blessing indeed.”
“Are we ready?” Walter asked.
“We’d better be.” Elam brushed ice crystals from his bushy hair with a gloved hand. “We have been training for a Code Red attack for a month, so when we heard about Lauren’s gift, we were able to launch immediately. We are four dragons strong with a seasoned warrior for each back. We had hoped to include Karrick as a fifth dragon, but he was injured in training.”
Sapphira slowly shifted a flaming hand from one dragon to the next, moving a flickering circle of light.
When Makaidos flew in and settled, Walter bowed and spoke to each of the other dragons in turn. “Thigocia, it will be an honor to go into battle with the queen of all dragons. Roxil, the fire in your eyes kindles my warrior’s heart. And Legossi, it will be a pleasure to once again witness your aerial acrobatics.” Walter raised a finger. “By the way, I spoke to Sir Barlow earlier today. He told me to ask you if you ever installed Velcro.”
Legossi rumbled within, sounding like a purring tiger. “I hope to see that stellar dragon rider when we invade the prison, but if not, tell him that warriors who wear slippery shorts should not ride on shiny scales.”
“I’ll tell him.” Walter counted the fou
r dragons and three humans. “Who is our fourth rider? Valiant? Candle?”
In the light of Sapphira’s flames, Elam shook his head. “Although those two wanted to come, birth residents of Second Eden must stay in Second Eden until we’re sure we have an untraceable portal. Of course, since Tamara has been missing all these months, Listener begged to join us.”
Walter nodded. Listener loved her Earth mother dearly and hoped for a chance to sneak into the Earth realm to find her. “She would’ve been a great choice. I hear she’s a fully trained warrior now.”
“She is brilliant,” Elam said. “If the new portal proves to be secure, I’ll let her come. But we have an excellent fourth warrior who has gone to the prison as a scout to see what kind of defenses they have.”
“On foot? In this weather?”
“By wings, though I think the weather will hinder him while in the air more than it would if he were walking. . . .”
“Ah! Gabriel. Perfect.” As Walter imagined his dragon-winged brother-in-law flying through the snow, a picture of Ashley shivering in her cell came to mind. Only Gabriel’s passion to help her escape rivaled his own, and his willingness to leave his wife, Shiloh, and their children behind in Second Eden during such dangerous times proved his passion. “Which dragon do I have the privilege of riding?”
“That will be my honor.” Thigocia lowered her head to the ground. “Go ahead and mount. When Gabriel returns with his report, we will make haste.”
After putting on his coat, now dry and toasty, Walter climbed Thigocia’s neck stairway while Elam did the same on Makaidos. When both had settled on the dragons’ backs, Sapphira lowered her flame, leaving only a white ball of sparks in her palm to guide her way. As she walked up Roxil’s neck, a dragon symbol emblazoned on her tunic shimmered. With her ability to call fire to her body to stay warm, she needed only her old battle uniform, the same togs she wore during the victory over the evil armies that tried to break through the portal to Heaven.