Page 91 of Catastrophe

That was until Fafnir announced something with a flurried hand motion to the sky, and I watched the jaws of the hunters hit the ground.

“What the fuck is happening?” I asked Baelen. There weren’t cameras in the sky.

“Dragon,” came Baelen’s whispered and horrified reply.

Shit. I contacted Arabella. “Stop whatever you are doing. Stop and hit the ground. Don’t engage the witches. A dragon is flying in and might spot you.” I checked the cameras and I couldn’t see the team, but the witches were still on guard. Some of them waved to the dragon as it flew overhead.

“We see him. We didn’t make a move because we heard the roar after we told you we were moving in. Fafnir’s entering,” Arabella replied dryly.

“It’s not Fafnir. Fafnir is currently making a speech.” I said, in shock because as a dragon landed at his side, the weight of it shaking the platform, I was staring at two separate beings. Two dragons? Other than me?

Dralie hissed. “Monster. Abomination.”

“Then who is it?” Arabella asked, distracting me from the disgust of my dragon.

“That’s what I want to find out, too.” I absentmindedly told her, “He’s landed. You’re safe to go take down the witches and wards. Get in and get out.”

My mind was on the puzzle in front of me as I stared at the dragon and Fafnir tried to calm the crowd. Who is the dragon? One of the witches? Has he actually turned one of them into a dragon? Is that why they are so devoted?

I turned back to the cameras at the front of the compound and I scanned the members of the defected family, but I couldn’t tell from the backs of them who they were. However, I got the joy of seeing them fall flat on their faces when balls of gas rolled out toward them and the task team moved in. The team split in two, the shifter group, tying them up and hauling them over their shoulders to cart back to the cars.

“Wait, Arabella,” I called before the other half of the task team could enter the compound, “Roll call. Who are the members of the defected witches knocked out right now?”

“You think it might be a witch turned dragon?” She asked and then named the witches. I ticked them off in my mind and no one was missing other than Mary.

But Mary was dead. Wasn’t she?

I tuned back into the courtyard to see Fafnir saying something about another hunter. “Dralie, how is this possible? It looks just like him in dragon form.”

“It is. He is … wrong.” Dralie tried to explain, but Arabella cut him off.

“We are in the cells. We are getting them out, but Charlie, we won’t have enough cars to get everyone back to the base.”

“Get everyone outside, take the most infirm in the cars, everyone else can portal out with Baelen,” I told her, although now I had to think of a way to make that happen.

I should have been a spy. I was wasting my talents on legal hacking.

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair, and tuned into Baelen’s frequency. “Clawdia will need to portal you guys to outside the compound once you’ve got Zaide. Then you’ll need to portal everyone, and some witches that can’t fit in the cars, back here.”

“I understand,” he replied quickly, “but we have a situation.”

His tone made me nervous, and I scanned the screens to see what he meant, but all I could see was Fafnir waxing lyric, spinning tales and trying to calm down the nervous hunters.

What is this? Adopt a dragon drive? It was ludicrous, but so was my life.

“I can’t see you. What’s happening?” I asked.

“If you can see the hunter they are all staring at, you can see us,” Baelen replied.

In the courtyard's corner, two hunters stood like stones just a meter from the wall, like something invisible was behind them, and everyone’s eyes seemed to dart their way. Some confusion, some anger, sadness. Whatever story Fafnir was spinning, it caused so many emotions I could almost see the divide in the crowd.

“We need to do something,” I heard Clawdia’s panicked voice through Baelen’s earpiece, and my heart almost launched through my ear to get to her.

“Our mate?” Dralie asked. It was the first time he’d heard her voice and the power of a damsel in distress seemed to work just as well on him because he exclaimed, “she is upset. We must help her.”

“Working on it, buddy.”

“We need the dragon to die so he doesn’t eat, my friend.” Another voice growled.

---