The game turned out to be pretty exciting—with the two teams evenly matched and the score bouncing back and forth in each school’s favor so many times that Trin lost count. They were tied and going into overtime when Connor returned with two mustard-covered hot dogs and an obscenely large Diet Coke. Trin’s mouth watered as she took a bite of her dog, rejoicing in the salty goodness. It’d been quite a while since they’d eaten much of anything beyond Top Ramen.
“Hot dogs, football, a warm spring night—I’ve got to admit, sometimes your world ain’t half-bad,” Connor remarked with his mouth full as he polished off his own dog.
She couldn’t help a small grin. “Thanks for forcing me to come,” she said. “It’s really nice to be out and—”
“OH MY GOD!”
A voice, followed by a scream, suddenly cut through the night air, silencing the steady hum of voices around the stadium. As everyone looked around, trying to identify the source of the cry, Trinity glanced over at Connor in alarm. “What was that?”
He shook his head, his expression tense. “I don’t—”
Panicked voices rang out, drowning the rest of his words. Trinity watched in confusion as everyone started scrambling to their feet at once, the hum of the stadium now rising to an unsteady roar. An icy fear tripped down her back as she climbed onto her seat to get a better look. Connor joined her a moment later and together they craned their necks and stood on tiptoe trying to figure out what the heck was going on.
Then she saw it. Saw exactly what was going on.
Or, more precisely, who.
No.
No, no, no!
The world went silent, like a movie gone into special-effects mode, the scene playing out in slow motion before her eyes. People running, people screaming. Eyes bulging, mouths gaping.
A small green dragon, standing at the fifty-yard line, innocently flapping her wings while scanning the crowd.
See, Trinity? I’m perfectly fine! No big deal!
Emmy, no!
Trinity turned to Connor. “How did she get out?” she demanded, the panic rising inside her, threatening to consume. “Do you think…Caleb…?” But even as she said his name, she doubted he would have been that stupid. And he didn’t have a key to the new padlock either. But what other explanation could there be?
Connor didn’t answer. He didn’t have to, she supposed, seeing as the how made no difference. It didn’t matter how she’d gotten out—just that she had.
And the dragon was officially out of the bag.
Maybe if there had been only one person to see her. Or maybe even just two or three, then she and Connor might have been able to do something. To use their psychic gifts to convince people their eyes were playing tricks on them. But there was no way to convince an entire stadium full of people that they hadn’t seen a real-life medieval monster come in for a landing in the middle of the local high school football field.
Go home, Emmy! she pushed to the dragon. You need to go home now!
But the dragon didn’t answer.
“I’ll get the van,” Connor told her. “You get Emmy.”
She dove from her seat, taking the steps two at a time, dodging the crowds the best she could. As she made her way toward the dragon, the wig flew from her head and her sunglasses were trampled, but she no longer cared. No one would notice her now. Not when there was a freaking dragon to focus on.
Finally she made it to the field where she found Emmy surrounded by a curious crowd, all eyes glued on her. The dragon seemed to be eating up the attention too, prancing around like a circus clown, tossing her head and flipping her tail and doing little barrel rolls to the delight of her attentive audience. It would have been totally cute if the implications weren’t so terrifying.
“Get out of my way!” Trinity cried, trying to fight her way through. “Emmy, stop that! Now!”
They like me! Emmy cried. They really like me! She was beaming from ear to ear.
“Emmy, please! You don’t know what you’re doing!” Trinity cried with a sob.
“Trinity? Oh my God, Trinity, is that you?”
A familiar voice broke through the cacophony. Trinity turned, suddenly finding herself face-to-face with none other than Caitlin herself. Her friend stared at her in disbelief—as if she were seeing a ghost. “What are you doing here?” she cried. “Where have you been?”
Trinity opened her mouth, but before she could speak, Emmy’s cry ripped through the air.
She whirled around, her eyes widening in horror. In the moments she’d been distracted, the once-friendly crowd had turned on the dragon. She couldn’t tell what had happened exactly, only that a small boy was on the ground, screaming bloody murder, and several people were on their knees trying to come to his aid. Had Emmy accidentally hit him with her tail while spinning around? Or maybe stomped on his foot? The dragon’s coordination was iffy at best, especially when she was excited.
Whatever had happened, fascination had now split into fear and fury. And calls of “Get it!” and “Take it down!” now rang through the air. One of the players had grabbed the chain used to mark first down length and was waving it in Emmy’s direction like a lasso, trying to loop it around her neck. Another had thrown a large blanket over her back, which had tangled in Emmy’s wings and prevented her from taking off. Emmy snorted and struggled and Trin could see the terrified whites in her eyes, the foam at her mouth.
“Trinity?” Caitlin said again. “Please talk to me! Everyone’s saying all these things. They think you’re a terrorist. They think you did all this stuff against the government. I told them you wouldn’t. That there was no way you’d be mixed up in any of this but—”
Emmy let out a horrifying cry—drowning out all other noise. Trinity’s gaze darted from the dragon to her best friend, feeling as if she were being torn in two.
“I’m sorry, Caitlin,” she stammered. “I—I’m sorry. I love you. But I—can’t.”
She turned her back on her best friend, diving into the crowd, kicking and pushing her way through in a desperate attempt to reach her dragon. From behind her, she could still hear Caitlin’s protests and pleading, but she pushed them out of her mind. Caitlin was part of the past she left behind, as much as it broke her heart to think it. She had to concentrate now on the future.
Caitlin loved her. But Emmy needed her.
She burst from the crowd just as Mike Brukowski looped the chain around Emmy’s neck. He was trying to drag her forward, like a dog on a leash, as the crowd cheered him on. Almost everyone had their phones held up, taking pictures and video with unabashed excitement as Emmy writhed and yanked against the chain, screeching mournfully.
“No!” Trin cried. “Stop it! Leave her alone!”
But they didn’t stop. And Trin knew what would come next. Emmy would only be trying to protect herself—but that wouldn’t matter in the end. The flames would burst from her mouth. Someone would be in the way. That someone would die. And things would suddenly get a lot, lot worse.
She dove at Mike, slamming her fist into his face as hard as she could. He screamed, caught off guard and knocked off balance by the force of the blow, falling to the ground and thankfully letting go of the chain.
But Trin’s relief was short-lived as Emmy realized she now had the advantage. The chain that had once held her down had now become her weapon and she whipped it at the crowd, sending them sprawling backward. The metal slapped against another child, knocking him over, and he screamed in agony.
“Emmy, stop! It’s okay! Please stop!” Trin begged, tears running down her cheeks. “Please, please stop!”
But Emmy couldn’t hear her now. And the flames were rumbling in her throat. Her jaws started to creak open…
Trinity dove for the dragon—knowing even as she did it that it might be too late. That Emmy, in her panic, wouldn’t recognize her and would aim her deadl
y breath on Trin herself. But she had to take the risk. There was no other way.
She reached the dragon, grabbing the blanket and throwing it to the ground. Then she jumped onto the beast’s back, wrapping her arms around Emmy’s neck. She squeezed her as tightly as she could then gave the command.
“Fly, Emmy!” she screamed. “Fly now!”
And so the dragon did.
Chapter Ten
If you were to close your eyes and imagine someone riding on the back of a dragon, you might conjure up images that could be described as “majestic” and “beautiful” and “regal.” Maybe even “graceful” and “elegant” might come to mind. Sadly this was not the case for Trinity as she desperately tried to hang on to Emmy’s neck as the dragon took flight.
Emmy might have grown a lot since she’d hatched the size of a baby bird—but she still wasn’t near the size of something ride-able, like, say, a horse. She had no space between her wings and neck for Trin to wrap her legs around, and so she was forced to kick them out behind her and let them dangle in thin air, her belly chafing painfully against the dragon’s back as together they tumbled through the skies.
The phrase “flying by the seat of your pants” might have come to mind, if anything had been able to come to Trinity’s mind beyond the fact that she was quite possibly about to die.
“Don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down,” she chanted to herself as her arm muscles burned in protest. She’d been afraid of heights pretty much as long as she could remember, and though she trusted the young dragon with her life in a purely esoteric sense, it wouldn’t be Emmy’s fault if she were to, say, not be able to hold on.
As they tore through the skies, the implications of what had happened hit her hard and fast. Their cover had been blown wide open. There would be no hiding now. They’d have to find a way to slip out of town, maybe out of the state. Find another squat to hole up in before the authorities descended.
If she survived this flight at all.
And even then…She thought back to all the cameras flashing, the video rolling. Emmy swinging the chain and knocking out that poor little boy. By the end of the night, they would be the top news story on every channel. On the front page of every paper. Blowing up Facebook, Instagram. Dragons trending on Twitter.
I thought they liked me! Emmy’s voice suddenly burst through her thoughts, sounding confused and upset and scared. Why did they try to hurt me?
Trinity closed her eyes. This was not the time to say I told you so. “I’m sorry, Emmy. People are weird sometimes. Especially about stuff they don’t understand.”
But I didn’t do anything wrong. I was just…dancing. So the little ones would laugh.
“I know, Em. I know…” Trin squeezed her neck, feeling the tears slip down her cheeks. “It doesn’t make sense. But now you know. And from now on we can’t—”
Whizz!
What was that? Horrified, she dared look down at the crowd below, her eyes falling upon the distinct outline of a rifle, pointed in their direction. Were they actually shooting at them? There were strict laws against packing heat on school grounds, but that didn’t mean everyone followed them. And each one of them probably felt more than justified in their God-given right to shoot down the creature that had invaded their Friday night lights.
Not that their bullets would do much good. Emmy’s scales were stronger than titanium and only special bullets—made in the future—could pierce her single soft scale to have a prayer of bringing her down. That was one of the reasons it was so easy for dragons to take over the world the first time around. They were practically immune to traditional weaponry.
Trinity, on the other hand, was not. And with her and Emmy’s life force intertwined, a bullet meant for the dragon that ended up hitting her instead could do them both in.
Another shot rang out. Trinity jerked as blood burst from her arm. She screamed, losing her grip on Emmy’s neck as white-hot pain cannonballed through her entire body. For a moment she thought she would let go altogether, that she would tumble off the dragon and fall screaming to her death below. But somehow she managed to hold on, gritting her teeth and pulling herself back into a semi-stable position. But the trail of blood streaming in the wind told her she wouldn’t last long.
“Emmy! You have to land. Now!” she told the dragon. “I can’t hold on!”
The dragon turned her head to regard her mistress once again, her blue eyes now locking onto Trinity’s arm. She gave a loud, angry snarl then changed direction, picking up speed and heading for a copse of trees up ahead. Trinity squeezed her eyes shut, trying to focus on anything but the pain piercing her skin. But visions of tumbling to her death from hundreds of feet up honestly didn’t serve to make her feel much better.
She won’t let me fall. She won’t let me fall.
Emmy dove down, trading altitude for the protection of the trees, and Trin felt the branches scrape her face and claw at her arms and legs as they dropped into the forest. One particularly gnarly limb slapped hard against her wounded arm, and for a moment she almost lost her balance completely. But somehow she managed to keep a fragile grip on the dragon until Emmy came in for a semi-graceful landing in the middle of a small clearing.
Trin rolled off, crashing down onto the ground with a loud oomph. A rock dug into her back and her ankle jarred. But the pain barely registered, she was so happy to be on solid ground again.
“Emmy…” she tried, wanting to express her gratitude. She tried to turn her head to acknowledge the dragon. But it felt so heavy. So, so heavy.
And a moment later, she fell into blackness.
Chapter Eleven
Scarlet walked her bike down the side of the road on her way back to the football stadium, confusion and concern weighing her every step. From time to time, she glanced up into the sky—half hoping to see the emerald green dragon, Emmy, swimming among the glittering stars. But save for a few bats diving for mosquitos, the sky remained empty.
As if the whole night’s adventure had been nothing more than a dream.
Or a nightmare as the case might be. The boy had been so furious at her—she was half-convinced he’d shoot her with his strange-looking gun and end things then and there. Instead, he’d taken off, running through the fields, screaming after the dragon, leaving Scarlet behind to wonder what it was she’d just done. She’d tried to ask the boy questions—like why had they locked the dragon in Mrs. McCormick’s old barn in the first place—but he’d only given her a disgusted look before turning away.
And so there had been nothing left to do but to gather her things and head back to Vista Memorial High, where her mother was supposed to pick her up after the football game. If she hurried, maybe she could even catch the end of the game, she told herself, desperate to cling to a shred of normalcy in a night gone wild. The Vultures were playing their biggest rivals, the Mighty Oaks, and it was bound to be an exciting game.
It wasn’t until she got closer to the stadium and found it strangled by police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances that she realized just how exciting it must have been.
“What the…?” she whispered, picking up her pace, the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles lighting her way as the sirens wailed in her ears. Had something happened? Had there been a school shooting or some kind of bomb threat? She’d seen plenty of those on the news in the last couple of years—but nothing like that had ever happened in Vista.
As she drew closer, she started to recognize people she knew. It was a small town and everyone would have come out to support the home team. But no one was tailgating now. Instead, fellow students huddled in close circles, girls sobbing, boys curling their hands into fists, while full-grown men and women staggered past, looking dazed and shell-shocked under the parking lot lights. Reporters were arriving too, leaping from their news vans to lay siege on the emergency teams, waving their microphone flags and demanding
answers. What could have happened? Scarlet’s pulse kicked up in growing alarm.
She stopped a girl heading in the opposite direction. Her hair was mussed and black mascara ran down her cheeks. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Why’s everyone freaking out?”
“Didn’t you see?” the girl cried in an incredulous voice, wobbling on pencil-thin legs that didn’t seem strong enough to support her thin frame.
Scarlet shook her head. “See what?”
But the girl just shrugged helplessly, as if the what in question were too scary to even speak aloud. She muttered a few half-intelligible excuses then bolted in the other direction. Scarlet watched her go, terror rising inside of her. This had to be a coincidence, right? It couldn’t be related to the dragon. Emmy was such a tiny thing—no bigger than a large dog. Surely she couldn’t have caused this amount of chaos in the short time she’d been free.
Could she?
You put her in danger. Not only her but the rest of the world.
“Scarlet! Is that you?”
She whirled around in time to see Rebekah running toward her. Her friend’s face was stark white and stained with tears. She threw her arms around Scarlet, almost knocking her backward with the force of the hug, and squeezed her so tight Scarlet was half-convinced she’d pass out from asphyxiation before her friend released her.
“You’re okay!” Rebekah was babbling into her ear. “I thought…Oh God, I thought…”
Scarlet struggled to free herself from her friend’s death grip. “You thought what?” she demanded. “What the heck is going on here, Bek?”
Rebekah stared at her, an incredulous look on her face. “The dragon, of course!” she cried, her voice choked with tears. “The one from the barn. It swooped down out of nowhere and started attacking people for no reason!”
“What?” Scarlet whispered hoarsely. “But that’s impossible.” She thought back to Emmy. Sweet, gentle Emmy. Why would she do something like that? It made no sense.