Including that kid. Madison, the girl I’d met for only a couple minutes, would die. She was human, she was part of St. George, but she wasn’t a soldier. And without even knowing it, she had saved my life.
I raked my hands through my hair. So, what are you going to do, Cobalt? Not complete the mission? Go back to Talon and admit you failed? You know they won’t accept that.
No, they wouldn’t. So that left me with exactly three options. Return to Talon having failed the mission. Accept their punishment, whatever it was, knowing they would never trust me again, knowing they would consider me tainted and incompetent and somehow corrupted. Talon had little use for dragons who failed; my future with the organization was assured only if I continued to be valuable. It was career suicide, but I could kill the bomb, return to Talon and face the consequences of my decision, whatever they might be.
Or, I could finish what I came here to do: leave the bomb and get out, knowing more people would die. Knowing that kid would burn to death like everyone around her, because she had let me go. And I might never sleep again without seeing her face, staring up at me from my dreams.
Then, of course, there was the final option.
My chest felt tight, my stomach twisting into painful knots. Everything, it seemed, had come down to this moment. Run, or stay? Continue with the organization, or take my chances on my own? Hunted. Hated. A traitor to my own kind.
A rogue.
My hands shook, and fear spread through me as I realized the truth. I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t go back to the organization knowing some little kid had died…no, that I’d killed her, and Talon wouldn’t think twice about it. Why should they? She was only human, and human lives meant nothing to dragons. If a few mortals died so that our race was preserved, then the sacrifice was worth it.
But they never had to see the faces of those they destroyed; the sacrifices they spoke of, the consequences of our war, never touched their desks. They had me. I was doing their dirty work for them.
No. No more. That ended right now.
Numbly, I went back into the server room and walked to the place the bomb sat, tiny and ominous, red numbers ticking down. Looking down at it, everything inside me went cold.
2:33
2:32
2:31
Two minutes? What the hell? Even after the conversation with Madison, there was no way that much time had elapsed. Though the reason for it was immediately clear: the timer was moving twice as fast as a normal clock, eating away the seconds at a frightening speed. Even as I stared, they seemed to go faster, until the seconds were nothing but a red blur against the screen. My head spun with the implications. I’d never make it out in time. If I hadn’t come back, I would’ve died with the humans when the building went down.
Horror flooded me. Dropping to my knees, I pulled out my wire cutters and stared at the tangle of wires surrounding the bomb. Red, blue and yellow. My hands shook, and I clamped down on my resolve. If I chose wrong, none of this would matter, except my death would arrive a few seconds earlier than planned.
I clenched my other fist. Without thinking too much about it, I jammed the blades around one of the red wires and, before I could second-guess myself, snapped them shut, severing the line.
The device gave an ominous beep…then stopped. Nothing exploded in a blinding cloud of dragonfire, and my heart started beating again.
Dropping the snips, I ran my hands down my face, everything inside me twisting into knots as the realization of what I’d done—what they had done—hit me full force. Maybe the bomb had malfunctioned, maybe there had been a glitch to make the countdown accelerate like that. But I knew better than to think this had been accidental. Talon had never intended for me to come back.
In a daze, I rose from the tile floor and stumbled toward the exit. Fear clawed at me, dark and crippling. Talon was my whole life; my entire existence had been spent serving the organization. I knew what would happen once they figured out I hadn’t died like I was supposed to. I was fully aware of what they did to those who went rogue. But there was no turning back. This had been coming for a while now. I knew it, my trainer knew it…and Talon had known it, too. My days of spy missions, sabotage and blowing up buildings full of innocent humans were over.
That’s it. I remembered Madison’s face, the way she’d smiled up at me, and my resolve grew. No more. Do you hear that, Chief? I’m done. This is Agent Cobalt, checking out for the last time.
Crossing the room, I opened the door and melted into the shadows. I still had to get free of St. George, but even if I escaped, the organization would have accomplished at least one thing. A Talon operative had died in this building tonight. As of this moment, Agent Cobalt no longer existed.
Ember
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
I couldn’t stop them. My heart was racing, and my nerves felt charged with electricity. My trembling fingers were still curled around the smooth handle of the gun in my lap. The gun I’d used to shoot someone.
My stomach heaved, and I closed my eyes, but it didn’t help. I could still see him, the slack face and the sightless, staring eyes. The bullet hole in his skull, oozing blood. I didn’t even remember pulling the trigger. The moment I’d seen him through the attic opening, aiming his gun at Garret, I’d reacted. Without thinking, just as I had in the St. George
compound—quick and lethal, almost instinctive. Now, because of me, a man was dead. I’d become a killer, an assassin, just like Talon wanted.
Lilith would’ve been proud.
“Where are we going?” Garret’s voice echoed beside me, calm and composed. He didn’t sound remotely anxious or freaked out, as if being targeted by snipers, breaking into a house and taking out two fully armed soldiers was a perfectly normal day for him. Business as usual. For a moment, I resented his perfect composure. I’d just killed a man, one of his former brothers in arms; you would think he’d be slightly upset by that.
“Downtown,” Riley answered without looking back. He sat in the front seat, both hands on the wheel, and drove like he rode a motorcycle: fast and with purpose. Beside him, Wes hunched over his laptop, not looking up when Riley took a corner without slowing down, making the wheels screech. “Near the Strip. I have a friend there who can hide us.”
“And the vehicle?” Garret looked out the back window, maybe searching for flashing lights. “I assume the original owner isn’t going to be happy about us hot-wiring his car.”
Wes snickered. “Hot-wire a car,” he scoffed. “Please. Is that how you do things, St. George? How very primitive.” He tapped two fingers against his skull. “Modern cars these days have lovely computerized brains that you can turn on with a phone. Makes them fairly easy to hack into, if you know what you’re doing.”
Great, I thought, crossing my arms. The gun dropped onto the seat beside me. I didn’t want to look at it, much less touch it anymore. So now we’re murderers and car thieves.
A soft click made me look up. Garret had reached over and taken the pistol from where it lay between us, then smoothly flicked on the safety. He turned the weapon around and offered it to me again, his gray eyes solemn as they met mine.
“You had no choice,” he said, holding my gaze. “Those soldiers would’ve killed us both if they could. There was no other option, you did what you had to do.”
The lump in my throat got bigger, and I eyed the weapon like it was a giant venomous spider. But I made myself reach out and take it back, closing my fingers around the now warm metal. “I know,” I whispered, setting the gun carefully on my leg. “But that doesn’t make it all right.” I shot a wary glance at the front, where Riley and Wes were talking in low voices. Wes was pointing to a map on the laptop screen, where a glowing blue dot approached an intersection. Riley swore, gunned the engine and ran an aging yellow light. Neither seemed to be listening to what wa
s happening in the backseat, but I lowered my voice anyway. “I don’t want to be like them,” I murmured. “Either of them. Talon or St. George. If I start killing without a thought, if it becomes instinct, why did I leave Talon at all? What makes me any different than the Viper they wanted me to become?”
The blare of a siren made us jerk up. A cop car passed us, going in the opposite direction, lights flashing blue and red, speeding toward the distant column of black smoke curling into the sky. The soldier leaned back, gazing out the window, and didn’t answer my question.
* * *
The sun had set over the distant mountains, leaving only a fading orange splash on the horizon, when we reached the inner city, or the Strip, as Riley called it. My misery was temporarily forgotten as I pressed my nose against the car window, gaping at the wonders looming overhead. I’d never seen so many cars, lights, people. The streets practically glowed; hotels, casinos, massive signs, monuments, all blazing with neon luminance against the darkening sky. An enormous cartoon cowboy waved to us as we drove past, and a miniature sultan’s castle boasted a colorful rainbow of lights across its domed roof. I caught a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, shimmering gold against the night, rising above the streets like a beacon. Not the Eiffel Tower, I realized; as far as I knew, the real one was still in Paris, so this was obviously a replica. But it was still huge, and impressive, and blazing with light, like everything around us.
“Close your mouth, Firebrand,” Riley remarked with a smirk in his voice as we cruised down the street, passing buildings and people and an endless string of cars. “You’re fogging up the windows.”
I tore my gaze from the massive buildings surrounding us, sliding back in my seat. “Are we going to stop soon?” I asked, hoping the answer was yes.
Riley snorted. “Not here,” he said, and all traces of amusement fled. He shot a grim look out the window at the glittering structures lining the roads. “Definitely not on the Strip. Vegas is a huge cash flow for the organization. They have their claws in basically every vice you can imagine—
gambling, drugs, strip clubs, you name it.” Riley pulled a disgusted face, curling a lip. “Thankfully, there aren’t many actual dragons in Vegas. Just one, really. But he’s a temperamental bastard who makes even Talon nervous, and he owns nearly all the hotels and casinos on the Strip. We step into the wrong building, we might as well be walking around with glowing signs above our heads.”
“Then why are we here?” Garret asked, voicing my own question. “If this city is so heavily influenced by Talon, why are we risking exposure by staying?”
“Because I want to know what Talon is up to,” Riley snapped, glaring back at him. “I want to know why my safe houses keep disappearing, and if Talon is doing anything shady. More shady than normal, anyway. I want to know how the Order knows about me, knows who I am, when they didn’t have a clue in the past. If my entire network is in danger, I want to know why, and what I can do to stop it.” He turned back, gripping the steering wheel, eyes narrowed and hard.
“I have a contact here,” he said at length. “One who keeps tabs on any movement between St. George and the organization for me. Nothing happens in Vegas without him finding out. If anyone knows what’s going on, he will.”
We turned off the Strip, leaving the mega hotels and dazzling lights behind. Several minutes later, Riley pulled the car to the side of the road and killed the engine.
“All right, let’s go. The hotel we want is two blocks down, but we’re ditching the car here. I’m sure it’s been reported as stolen by now.” He turned in his seat to look back at us and glanced at the pistol I still held. “Stash the guns,” he ordered, and Garret immediately turned and pulled the duffel bag from the backseat. “Last thing we need is for someone to call the cops on us. Everyone keep your head down. We do this quick and quiet. Oh, and one more thing. Wes, you got them IDs, right?”
The human mumbled something and held up two plastic cards without taking his gaze from his computer. Riley snatched them from his fingers and held them out to us. “Cover identities for the hotel,” he explained as I took my driver’s license and peered at it curiously. My face smirked back at me, familiar and baffling; I had no idea where he’d gotten the photograph. According to the license, my name was Emily Gates, and I was twenty-one years old.
Curiosity and excitement flickered. What could I do with a fake ID in Vegas? I wondered. I could definitely think of a few things.
“Those should hold up to most background checks,” Riley went on, as Garret slid his own license into a pocket then continued stashing the guns. “But we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. So no ordering from the bar or wandering the casino floor. Those IDs are just to get us past the door. Firebrand…” Riley’s gold eyes fixed on me, appraising. “Are you listening to this? We are here to lie low, understand? Shall I explain the meaning of the term?”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “I know what it means. Smart-ass.”
His lip quirked. “Just keep that in mind, and try not to get distracted by the shiny.”
I rolled my eyes. Garret finished zipping up the bag, swung it to his shoulder and opened the door. A dry breeze ruffled my hair as I stepped out onto the warm, crowded streets of Las Vegas.
Riley took the lead, striding purposefully down the sidewalk, with Wes, Garret and I trailing behind. And the rogue’s warning was instantly forgotten. I couldn’t stop staring at…well, everything really. Crescent Beach had been a small, sleepy town, with few highways and not many large buildings. Vegas was like another world. I’d never seen rows of buildings so high they were like canyon walls, or so many glowing lights that I couldn’t see the sky through the haze, or an endless river of cars, red brake lights stretching on to the horizon. Unfortunately, navigating bustling sidewalks while trying to look at everything didn’t really go well together. I kept bumping into passersby, muttering apologies and getting annoyed looks in return.
“On your six,” a voice muttered, as I slowed to gaze at a building across the street. Confused, I turned…and someone barely swerved around me with a muffled curse. Blinking, I looked up at Garret, who shot me a half amused, half exasperated look before going back to scanning the crowds.
I offered a weak grin and fell into step beside him. “On your six?” I asked. “Is that soldier talk for ‘pay the hell attention to what you’re doing’?”
“We are in enemy territory.” Garret watched a pair of thuggish-looking guys approach, relaxing only slightly when they passed. “Talon and St. George are both searching for us. They might have agents on the streets right now. A little situational awareness is probably…prudent.”
Feeling chastised, I followed him, trying to stay close. Garret moved through the throngs like a fish through water, metallic-gray eyes constantly scanning, watching. I remembered his discomfort with crowds in Crescent Beach, that hyperalertness, as if a ninja could come leaping out at us from a potted plant. Back then, in the lazy little beach town, it had seemed odd. Now, I understood. That paranoia had probably saved his life more than once.
Finally, Riley took us across a huge parking lot and through the doors of a smaller, though still impressive, building. Nero’s Garden Hotel and Casino, the sign read as we approached the front. A pair of marble lions guarded the entrance, though I saw someone had drawn a tiny mustache below one lion’s nose. Then the doors slid back, and we stepped into a brightly lit lobby with green tile, fake marble columns lining the room and statues of half-naked Greek people in alcoves along the wall. A huge check-in desk ran the length of the back wall, and off to the side, through a fake marble arch, the casino floor buzzed, twinkled, chimed and flashed like a sprawling neon circus.
“Well, here we are,” Riley said with false grandeur, and offered a sarcastic grin as he gestured to the glittering casino. “Welcome to Vegas.”
Dante
From the air, the cit
y looked like an island of stars in the center of a black void.
“Can I get you anything before we land, sir?” the flight attendant asked, showing perfect white teeth as she smiled down at us. Or, more accurately, at me. At my side, Mr. Smith didn’t look up from his phone, and across from us, Mr. Roth made a vague gesture with his hand, waving her away. I made a point of returning the smile as I shook my head.
“No. Thank you.”
“Of course, sir.” The human regarded me through lowered lashes. “Please, let me know if you need anything.” She wandered toward the back of the jet, where a second attendant glared at her with stony eyes.
Mr. Roth chuckled.
“Do you see your protégé, Mr. Smith?” the VP said, as my trainer put his phone away and looked up. “You’ll have to keep a closer eye on him. If we’re not careful, we’ll have humans clawing each other’s eyes out for his attention.”
I stayed quiet, not knowing if this was praise or a reprimand. Mr. Smith gave a small laugh that could have meant anything, but he didn’t comment. I took a furtive breath and settled back in the plush leather seat, trying to calm my nerves. Normally by this time, my trainer would be going over Talon rules and protocol, grilling me on etiquette, making sure I knew what I was doing. But he couldn’t now, or he wouldn’t, not in front of Mr. Roth. There were no other passengers on Talon’s elite private jet; it was just the three of us. My trainer, one of Talon’s senior VPs and me. A sixteen-year-old hatchling who was keeping company with some of the most powerful dragons in the organization. A hatchling who, just yesterday, had been standing outside the door of an office in Los Angeles, waiting to be acknowledged.
* * *
“I believe we found them, sir,” I’d announced, when Mr. Roth finally waved me into the room. I stepped through the frame, closing the door behind me. “We think they’re in Vegas.”