Patterns in the Dark (Dragon Blood Book 4) (34 page)

It’s not that bright. Not like me. Just a tool made for poking holes through dragon scales, back when battles were frequent and dragons carried people into flight.

I’ll stick to my flier.
Cas climbed out and scrambled after Zirkander.

So long as you’re not leaving it here. That’s a famous relic, and it would be a crime to abandon it in this dismal jungle.

Cas didn’t mention that her only thought in collecting it was to make sure her father couldn’t come back and grab it, not easily, anyway. Also, when they returned home, maybe they could find a record of who owned the artifact and thus figure out who had hired her father.

Before she reached the lab, Cas came across Sardelle, kneeling in the rocks at the edge of the pile, one of her hands splayed on what had once been a piece of the wall.

Zirkander had stopped next to her. “Do you need help with anything?”

Sardelle shook her head. “Go inside, please. It’s going to be dangerous out here again.”

“Retrieving Jaxi?”

“Among other things.”

Cas passed them, barely noticing the conversation. She had her eyes on Tolemek. He knelt beside his sister, his hand on her forehead, a deep frown on his face. Duck stood behind them, his hands in his pockets, his eyes lowered. She hadn’t died, had she?

Cas blinked back tears as she picked her way toward Tolemek. She had barely met the girl, but she knew how much Tylie meant to him, how long he had been trying to find a way to help her. She wasn’t bleeding, the way everyone else who had been buried in the rubble had been, but her eyes were closed, her skin pale.

Duck looked up first at her approach.

“Is she alive?” Cas mouthed, not wanting to interrupt Tolemek’s moment. His head hung, his ropes of hair dangling about his face, and she couldn’t see his eyes.

Duck shrugged. “Breathing. But he can’t wake her up. She doesn’t have any big bumps on the head, so we’re not sure how or where she was injured. Dug her out from under a desk that was still standing, so it didn’t seem like she should be that hurt.”

Tolemek lifted his gaze, and Cas’s heart ached at the distress in his eyes.

She leaned the sword against a pile of broken furniture, walked around to his side, then knelt and put an arm around his shoulders. He slumped against her.

“She said she’s linked to the dragon somehow,” Tolemek said. “I’m afraid… I don’t understand it, but I’m afraid if the dragon dies, she might…”

“Didn’t you hear Jaxi?” Cas searched his face. She had assumed that communication had been to all of them. “It sounds like the dragon’s still alive.”

His brows rose, and he looked toward the mound of rocks. The very large mountain-sized mound of rocks.

“You said they’re tough,” Cas said.

“I said they have tough blood. He was already almost dead. Did he—”

Out on the pile, rocks shivered, shifting and falling. Cas couldn’t tell if Sardelle was responsible—she was still kneeling out there—or if the dragon stirred, trying to unbury himself. Or maybe Jaxi could move the boulders to free herself.

Zirkander shuffled into the lab. He was still holding his pistol, and the way he glanced over his shoulder made Cas wonder if he was expecting her father to return to shoot him at any moment. He could barely walk. He sat in the hollow between two rubble piles, and leaned his head back and closed his eyes, as if he didn’t have the strength to keep them open any longer.

Cas bit her lip and stared at the rock mountain, hoping the dragon lived, that Jaxi had helped it enough that it might now have the strength to help others. She wished she understood more of the disease and what exactly the soulblade had been doing out there.

The rocks went from trembling to rolling down the mound in droves. Sardelle lurched to her feet and skittered backward. Cas would have kept staring at it, but she still had her arm around Tolemek, and he shifted.

“Tylie?” he asked.

The girl’s eyes fluttered open. “Phelistoth,” she blurted. She rolled away from them and scrambled to her feet.

“Tylie,” Tolemek said again, stretching out a hand toward her.

But she was already running and stumbling across the mounds of debris.

* * *

“Phelistoth?” Duck asked. “Is that a curse or a name?”

“The dragon’s name.” Tolemek pushed himself to his feet and jogged after Tylie.

For a moment, his sister looked like she would charge up the mound of rocks—a dangerous risk the way they were tumbling away from the pile, some larger than a human being. But she stopped next to Sardelle.

“Phelistoth?” she called.

Several boulders flew into the air, and the dragon’s head—now more dust-colored than silver—emerged from the pile. He tilted his fang-filled maw toward the sky and roared, a great reverberating roar that would have made a lion turn meek.

Tolemek’s reaction was to step back—far back—but Tylie ran closer, as if she meant to climb up the rock pile to the dragon’s head. Even if they had some connection, all those sharp teeth worried him, along with the fact that she could be pummeled by one of those boulders. He scrambled after her, but Sardelle surprised him by stretching out an arm to stop him.

He could have charged through her, but the dragon had stopped moving and was staring down at them with baleful eyes. Somehow Tylie didn’t find this alarming. She had reached the top of the rocks—the dragon was still mostly encased, aside from his head and long sinewy neck—and balanced on a boulder to reach out and touch those dusty scales.

Sardelle is explaining the situation,
Jaxi announced.
Apparently, she believes she’s more tactful than I.

Tolemek watched Tylie, ready to catch her if she tumbled—or if the dragon’s humorless yellow eyes turned toward her.
She’s explaining the part of the situation where the dragon should make sure not to crush my sister?

Actually, the part where I need his help healing all of you.

Remembering Zirkander’s situation, Tolemek felt selfish. It surprised him to realize that he didn’t want to see Zirkander die, not anymore. Seeing him humiliated or his ego battered, that would likely remain a pleasurable experience, but he agreed with the others that it wouldn’t be fitting for him to meet his end out here.

Charitable of you
, Jaxi thought dryly,
but there’s still a chance you’ll become infected. From what the dragon has observed, one in two people who come within five miles of him become infected. The suits those geniuses are wearing don’t matter one way or another. Also, if you
eat
something that was infected, you could also be hanging from your toenails over a lake of lava. Most of the villagers with symptoms probably hunted animals that came down off the mountain.

“Oh.”
Tolemek should have guessed that when they started seeing the carcasses. “Any way we’ll be able to heal the rest of the people on the island?” He probably should have asked the question in his head, since nobody else knew he had been chatting with Jaxi, but Sardelle nodded, as if she had already been thinking about that.

“I’m asking, letting him know it’s a problem for miles in all directions and seeing if there’s anything he can do. It’s actually because he’s a dragon that he’s so virulent. The same power that lets him telepathically communicate with a girl on the other side of the world gives anything infesting him a boost. Humans probably need to be in very close contact with each other to transmit the disease, so I’m hoping it will die out eventually with him no longer infectious.”

“And us,” Zirkander said.

“And us.”

“Colonel Zirkander?” Tylie called from her spot beside the dragon.

Tolemek blinked. He hadn’t told her Zirkander’s name, had he? Certainly not his Iskandian rank.

A dragon’s telepathy skills make mine look small and quaint
, Jaxi thought.
They don’t speak or hear, not like humans, but they know what everyone around them is thinking, person, animal, or soulblade.

Zirkander pushed himself to his feet. “Is it time to sacrifice me to the dragon?”

“He’s going to attempt to destroy the virus in your brain,” Sardelle said. “He says he can see it now that he knows what he’s looking for, and that he can target only the virus, not the rest of your body.”

“He can
see
it?” Tolemek hadn’t even seen it with his microscope.

Jealous?
Jaxi sounded amused.

Maybe.

Me too. He’s kind of smug about it, really. And arrogant. He’s talking about how he could have cured all of the dragons who had been afflicted with this virus if he’d simply known about this. As if he’s even done anything yet. I’m the one who healed him, and what does he say? He offered advice on improving my technique.

Does this virus have anything to do with why there aren’t any dragons left around today?
Tolemek asked, trying to ignore Jaxi’s little tirade.
Did others die before being put in a stasis chamber?

I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Ridge’s history-loving lieutenant, but I don’t think there’s anything in the books about a great disease or plague that humans suffered at the same time. They should have been affected too if it was the same disease. Also, if the dragons saw their ends coming, they could have used more stasis chambers. I don’t think there have been fossils found that implied a massive dragon die-off. I was always told that they simply left this world.

“How close do I have to get?” Zirkander had walked to the edge of the rubble heap. He seemed to find those big yellow eyes baleful, as well, because he wasn’t hurrying to get closer.

Tylie patted the dragon on the neck, then scrambled back down the rocks. She joined Tolemek, clasping his hand and smiling up at him. “He can help us. All of us.”

“Good.” Tolemek didn’t see the confusion in her eyes that had been there when the dragon had been unconscious.

Step back
, a voice much deeper and stronger than Jaxi’s announced in his head. In everybody’s head, judging by the way the entire group hustled backward.

The dragon pushed himself to his feet, sloughing more rocks away. His head and upper body disappeared from Tolemek’s view, above the lab’s ceiling. He stretched like a cat waking from a nap. Boulders rolled away from him, as if they weighed less than drops of water. Since he had been barely conscious before, this seemed a vast improvement, but Tolemek didn’t know if he was fully healed or not.

Of course he is.
Jaxi sniffed—an impressive sound for a sword.
I do excellent work.

Jaxi was visible now, too, the hilt of the blade poking out from under a rock. Sardelle retrieved her, wiped her off, and sheathed her. Tolemek knew from experience that this wouldn’t silence Jaxi.

Of course not. It would be tragic if it did.

The dragon’s head lowered into view and turned toward Zirkander.
You.

Chatty, isn’t he?
Tolemek thought.

A single dragon eye flickered toward him, and he decided to keep his thoughts silent, insofar as he could.

Zirkander took a few uncertain steps forward and placed his foot on a boulder. “Do I—”

Something invisible smashed into him. His arms flew out, his head fell back, and his entire body stiffened, as if he had been struck by lightning. He toppled backward, landing hard on the stone floor.

“Ridge!” Sardelle blurted.

Tolemek’s first thought was that Cas’s father had shown up again with some new attack. Indeed, Cas had taken a step forward, her rifle raised. Zirkander’s eyes were open, but they didn’t move.
He
didn’t move. Sardelle raced to his side. Tolemek stared at the dragon. Had he done this? Instead of curing Zirkander, had the dragon killed him? Why? Because he was Iskandian? Hadn’t anyone explained that the Cofah had been the ones keeping him subdued? Using him?

“Tylie,” Tolemek whispered, squeezing her hand. “What just happened? Does the dragon know we’re on his side?”

Tylie only smiled.

Zirkander gasped and blinked.

“Ridge?” Sardelle whispered, laying her hand on his shoulder.

He blinked a few more times and focused on her. “I… what happened?”

“You were dead,” she said, “for a moment. Your heart wasn’t beating.”

He suspended the animation of the entire body so he could more easily target the offending invaders
. Jaxi sounded smug, as if this had been her idea.

“That’s alarming.” Zirkander smiled and lifted a hand to her face. “I’m glad you were here to hold my hand. Big sword and all.”

She leaned down and kissed him.

“That’s even better,” he murmured.

“Do we all have to do that?” Cas asked, lowering her rifle.

“Kiss each other?” Tolemek wrapped an arm around her. “I recommend it.”

“I meant get hurled to our asses.”

“Ah. I don’t—”

A wave of power slammed into Tolemek and his heart stopped. Terror clutched his mind, all rational thought gone, and then he lost consciousness.

He didn’t dream or remember anything else until he woke up, lying flat on his back, staring at the broken remains of the ceiling panels above him. He gulped in air, having the sense that he hadn’t been breathing before then. Confusion encased him, and for a moment, he didn’t know who he was or where he was. It was those dangling ceiling panels that brought him back to the world, back to the ziggurat.

“Cas?” he croaked, rolling onto his side. He almost rolled into her knee.

“Right here,” Cas said, dropping her hand to his chest. Her short hair stuck out in a hundred directions and the way she slumped to one side suggested her ribs hurt. “We were all knocked out, except for the colonel. He got to stand guard—sit guard.”

“Sit guard,” Zirkander grumped from a few meters away. “Let’s not tell the general about that one, all right?”

Duck and Sardelle still lay on their backs, their eyes open but blinking with confusion. Zirkander sat next to Sardelle, cradling her head in his lap.

“Duck,” he said, “you all right?”