Page 58 of Dragon's Code

“Ladies, gentlemen, and freaks. Listen up. Listen good. Today is your day of reckoning. You have precisely the next twelve hours to find, locate, and bring out all the freaks. Bring them out and let us deal with them.”

The man standing on top of the tank is wearing an officer’s uniform with a megaphone. I’m not fluent enough in military garb to know much else about it.

“What does he mean by freaks?” I murmur.

Kash’s hand tightens around mine. “Jerrick,” he breathes.

“Yeah,” he replies.

The man with the megaphone continues. “My name is General Ford. Anyone where a red arm band is under my command. If you’re given an order by them, I suggest you follow it.”

“Is this government sanctioned?” I ask.

Jerrick shakes his head. “The government isn’t ready to call war against an enemy it can’t identify,” he says in hushed tones.

“Your government is too scared to protect you, so we have taken it upon ourselves to do the work. This is happening simultaneously in other cities at the same time. We want those that call themselves dragons. Werewolves. Anything that isn’t human. You bring it to me or one of mine. You will be rewarded by walking away. No one gets out until we have all of them accounted for.”

I scoff, “How the hell are they going to know if they’re all accounted for?”

Jerrick starts to herd us back into the hotel.

General Ford keeps talking. “You have until dawn. If we’re not satisfied, we’re going to level the strip. Then we’ll go house to house. We will not stop until our mission is complete.”

“Back inside. Now.” Jerrick ushers us in and then leads the way into a conference room off the lobby. He shuts the door when there’s a handful of us inside.

“We’ve got a serious problem,” Jerrick says once he has our attention.

“How?” Kash asks. “There’s no way they know the difference between humans and us.”

“Actually, that may not be true anymore,” Darius says in a solemn voice. “This is one of the things I came to share with you all. They’ve found a protein in our blood. There is a way to identify us. It’s been in the works for a long time. Bloodlines of dragon slayers, werewolf hunters, and whoever else knew about our kind even before we were exposed on television. I think they were looking for a way to poison our lines and kill us globally, instead they found a way to identify us.” Darius glances around at all of us. “There was a small contingent that managed to take out a couple of my father’s royal guards. That’s how we learned about it.”

“How?” Jerrick asks.

“How did we not know there was something in our blood–” Jerrick trails off.

“You already have the answer,” I hear myself say before I even make the decision to say it out loud.

I feel all the eyes in the room turn to me. I glance up at Kash and then step forward. “Since I learned about you guys, the repeating factor I’ve heard is that the Elders know more than they’re telling all of you. The Elders know and it’s time they start sharing the information or they need to step down. This isn’t right. Why are Obsidian dragons back if they were once extinct? This can’t be something new. It’s something old.”

The room gets unbearably silent. Their gazes drop to the ground, like they’re considering my words.

Jerrick steps forward. “This isn’t about making it work with the Elders anymore. She’s right. This is something old. The Elders have been keeping their secrets long enough. Because of them, we’re all under siege.”

“Is this hotel secure?” Kashton asks.

Jerrick sighs and nods. “As secure as it can be. The staff is all one of us in one way or another. They’ve been thoroughly vetted. I would lay down my life for anyone who works for me.”

The surety in his voice. I’ve always wanted that kind of family and friends. People I could count on no matter what the situation. Kashton has been the only person for me like that, aside from my mother. But she died early on. There have been times I wondered if my dad had her killed or something because she wanted to leave him and he didn’t want to pay her for the divorce. It doesn’t matter now, I suppose. He has nothing. Kash made sure of it.

“We’re okay here for now, but I can’t imagine those assholes aren’t going to go from hotel to hotel looking for the freaks,” Jerrick continues, saying the last word with sarcasm.

“We should just shift and take them all out,” Declan grumbles.

I don’t know Kash’s siblings very well, but I’m learning about them now. Seven siblings. I can’t even imagine having that much family all the time.

“That’s a good way for some of us to get killed,” Khalid says. “Not to mention make the humans have even more cause to fear and hate us.”

“We’ll call that plan F,” I mutter.

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