Page 49 of Dragon Unleashed

“Helikesyou, and he normally hates everyone.” The woman narrows her eyes. “Not that there’s many left to hate now.”

“Uh, what…what happened?” I ask.

“Unexpected illness. Death. Disability. Supes, like me, disabled. Unheard of in my day. Some folks say we’re cursed. Most people left.” She heaves out a long sigh, wheeling her chair across a few feet of dirt to the large, roughly hewn stone beside us. “My man, he died before we could leave.”

It’s a bloody tombstone. We’re standing on her husband’s grave. I scramble backward.

She pats the stone and I focus on the grime caked under her nails.

“Me and Mr. Mammon, we’ll finish our days here. Keep the old man company. Don’t rightly know how long we’ll survive if the family down the street goes.”

“It’s dreadful here,” Professor Allegra squeals and buries her face in Zephyr’s shirt. “So dirty and depressing. Can we go, baby? I can’t stand it.”

The old woman frowns, her face now gray and drawn. She starts to jerk her wheelchair back to the ruined house.

“Done talking to you fancy folks now.”

We all stand in silence as she wheels herself painfully slowly inside.

There goes our lead. Bloody Allegra.

Chano runs a hand over his buzz cut and turns back toward the square, muttering curses under his breath. He’s desperate to get answers for his mom, hismami.

We traipse back up the road, following his tense back. A whole town, emptied. Diseased. Something here is very, very wrong.

“Wait, she said there was another family,” I say.

“Can’t we just go?” Professor Allegra whines.

“We’re here now, baby. We may as well stick it out,” Zephyr says, his voice firm.

“I swore I’d never go back to this. I hate the dirt, the squalor. I mean…just look at that grimy child. Playing in a puddle.” She gives an exaggerated shiver. “All thatdirt.”

I swivel, peering down the side street. A toddler happily splashes in a puddle in the middle of the road. The kid won’t be alone; he must have family here somewhere. I head toward the child.

“You don’t love me, Zephy,” Prof Allegra pouts.

Zephyr speeds past me, muttering under his breath, “No, I bloodywell don’t.”

I can’t help it—I snigger, looking up just in time to catch Allegra glaring, hands on her hips. I guess she heard himandsaw my reaction. Awesome.

Except I really don’t care. I offer her a shrug and keep walking. I guess you can drag yourself out of the slums, make something of yourself, and still be an awful person.

Never meet your childhood heroes. Fucking disappointment.

Chapter Twenty-two: Lorelei

Naeve scoops up the toddler, ignoring Professor Allegra’s disapproval, and cradles the baby to her chest.

Zephyr ruffles the kid’s straggly blond hair. “You’re a natural, either that or she’s one placid little girl. Try that with my sisters and they’d have screamed the place down. Even if they knew you.”

Naeve hitches the child closer. “I want kids. Lots of them!”

“Does Beck know that?” I can’t help teasing her.

Naeve just gives me a silly little grin and jerks her head toward the only vaguely inhabitable-looking house on the street.

The front door is completely boarded up, but a well-worn path trails around the side of the house. Chano toes open the back gate and we shuffle into an overgrown yard. Silas and Professor Allegra take up the rear, Allegra trailing her feet looking grumpy and Silas on high alert, peering around like a damn attack dog. Scrap metal litters the ground, interspersed with sickly-looking plants. What’s left of a curtain twitches in the window.

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