Endangered Ch. 11

Thanks to Lunarlilith, GCMIVB4, BD88, JB, and Trimtab for editing assistance, as well all the other helpful souls. I couldn't do it without you.

Fair warning, this story contains themes of pseudo-incest.

Enjoy.

***

Previously on Endangered

Chris and the team return from Brazil, and Radek's demonic origins are finally exposed. The brood resolves some internal tensions whilst Reyla councils the young dragon, steeling him for the looming conflict. In Argentina, Radek is confronted by Synod hunters and barely manages to escape with his life after a bloody fight. Michelle rushes to the scene in an attempt to cover up the blatant use of magic, but has to leave without Chris, who is nowhere to be found. Petra and Claire eventually locate the missing dragon, who is off gallivanting around on the Moon with Hailey, causing trouble of their own.

***

Michelle watched the bedraggled refugees whispering together in small groups out on the dusty industrial floor. The huge space was part of an abandoned fertiliser factory just beyond the outskirts of the small city nearest the disastrous spectacle of Radek's ambush. Traces of the acidic-phosphate chemical still lingered on the vast concrete floor, on the corrugated-sheet-metal walls. Despite this inconvenience, it had seemed the perfect place to sequester the traumatised witnesses while the Argentinian government scrambled to make arrangements for their care.

Thinking of these people as refugees seemed distasteful, but they fit the description well enough. Fleeing the indiscriminate use of magic, they even had that defeated look in their tired eyes. Others bore the signs of physical trauma, dried blood still caked on their rumpled, sweat-stained clothing. They were all dirty, scratched, haggard, and traumatised at the very least. Michelle's team had to treat six for shock symptoms.

Her own eyes felt swollen and full of sand, their lids taking any moment of inattention as an invitation to flutter inexorably downward.

"You can go get some rest now, you know," Lillian said incorporeally beside her. "I don't think there will be any more escape attempts."

"No," Michelle stood straighter, using the back of her hands to rub some life back into her face. "No thanks, we're almost out of here."

"How did we do?"

"Good, I think. Our fake was received about as well as could be expected, but it's definitely not over yet. The story has only been out for a few hours. Just one of these people could blow it all sky-high."

"Not so long ago, we would've just killed them all. The memory charm might seem barbaric, but it's saved a lot of human lives over the centuries." The vampire surveyed the small crowd, fifty-seven souls who would be spending the next part of their lives in captivity.

"I know what you mean, but that's exactly why things have to change," Michelle said resolutely.

They both turned as Reyla approached, accompanied and announced by the sound of Pamela's crutches.

"Well, look what wonders a visit from the Defence Minister and a little food can do," the elf remarked sourly down toward the refugees. "For a while there I was worried we were going to have to make a few examples of the savages."

"Never should have kept them in one place like that, not after what they've been through," the lean, freckled markswoman remarked. "It was only natural they mounted an organised escape."

"You're right, Pamela. But it's over now, and we'll try not to make the same mistake again," Michelle sighed. "I'm just glad no one got killed. I honestly thought we had them convinced. We were reasonable, we explained. Didn't we? "

"There's only so much trust in the human heart," Pamela murmured like some crippled sage. "When people like you and I show up in the wake of a crisis, foreigners, especially Americans, they assume they're going to be killed or sent to a bottomless hole somewhere. Add the supernatural, and the myriad crises of faith it drags along with it..."

"Scared people, fighting for their lives," Michelle nodded.

"Well, they weren't wrong, were they?" Lillian looked down on the bedraggled souls. "They're going to a bottomless hole somewhere."

A rumble outside announced the approaching buses. Soon the witnesses of Radek's hard-fought escape would be rolling off to a decommissioned barracks complex several hundred miles away. They were to be housed there, out of contact with their families or the outside world until the Revelation was announced. Representatives of both the Argentine government and the Synod were arranging for their welfare and monitoring. Provided they didn't cause trouble, the refugees were to be compensated handsomely upon their release and returned to their lives.

Michelle's sympathy for them had peaked, troughed abruptly, and now leveled out. They were in a terrible situation, through no fault of their own. Stemari and the Balgruuf hadn't helped, roughly mustering them up like errant cattle in the aftermath of dispatching the mythical bunyip. She should have seen it coming, should have planned, but she hadn't.

No wonder then that they'd tried to make a break for freedom at two a.m. that morning. Michelle understood now that they'd had no reason to trust her assurances. Even without the blatant and terrifying use of magic they'd witnessed, she and her team must seem the stereotypical intelligence agency bad guys. The exact character they'd seen depicted in so many movies.

But they'd so very nearly gotten away and blown her cobbled-together plan out of the water that she no longer saw them just as victims.

The young mother, Claudia, was limping down there. Her eye socket was just starting to properly darken up. She and her son picked through the remains of breakfast laid out on the improvised pallet-table, perhaps looking for a morsel or two to take with them on the road.

The memory of running those two down was still vivid and frightening. The pain of her injuries, throbbing and fresh.

Michelle's heart began to thump louder as she recalled that headlong chase through the dark field of soybeans and down into a dry, stony waterway. The woman rounding on her in the light of the Moon, fighting tooth and nail, like her offspring's life depended on it. Michelle had been caught off guard, and eventually forced to lay her out. Then she'd raced after the boy and spent ten agonizing minutes trying to find him in the dark before the huge wolf showed up and sniffed out his hiding place.

Nearby words drew her exhausted mind sharply to the present.

"Stemari's furious," Reyla said seriously, flicking silvery hair behind a dark ear. She'd dropped her disguise for the healing she'd grudgingly stayed up all night to work. It had actually seemed to calm some of the distraught humans to see some evidence of their claims about Beings and magic. "Magdalen's taking her off the chase, and there's going to be a full inquiry."

"Well, there goes our best chance of catching Radek." Lillian's disgust was evident. "Those two working together are something to behold, and Balgruuf has the demon's scent now. I've never heard of anything more idiotic."

"Lord Guthrie argued against it, but last night, they voted to back off on Radek until after the Revelation," Reyla explained. "I just got the minutes through on Maginet. They think it's too dangerous to confront him openly again."

"Maybe it is," Pamela mused. "But after what I saw in that church, I'm thinking it's too dangerous not to. You don't win this sort of engagement by sitting idly by and hoping things work out in your favour."

"Well said," Reyla eyed the human speculatively. "Come work for me if Michelle doesn't treat you right."

The warehouse's big corrugated iron door banged and began rolling open. Uniformed soldiers were already assembling outside, armed but reasonably relaxed. A couple of army medics strode in and began triage, helping the most battered refugees out to the waiting transports. There were a few who were put on stretchers, Balgruuf and Stemari had recaptured most of them, and weren't gentle about it.

"Huh, you can't have her. Ouch!" Michelle winced; her right thigh screaming where Claudia had managed to connect with a large rock in the midst of their nighttime scuffle. "Jesus that hurts. Let's start packing up."

"We depart already?" Reyla seemed confused, a slight frown on her dark brow. "Who will keep this rabble in line? Who will clean up that mess out on the highway?"

"Reyla, we need to get back to the States and start selling the shit out of our cover story," Michelle explained tiredly. "The locals assure me they've got it under control now. Despite the Synod running scared, Balgruuf and Stemari will stay around for a few days and help one of their higher-ups investigate. They don't need us any more. Besides, Chris, the adorable oaf, has managed to light another fire under our asses while we were busy."

***

"Daddy, I'm terrified," Hailey buried her face against her father's plaid work-shirt, hugging him desperately.

"Shh, pumpkin. How many times have you told me you wanted to work for NASA one day?" Stephen chuckled deeply, squeezing his daughter right back. He ruffled her fine blonde hair, winking at Chris over her diminutive height. "Think of this as an interview opportunity. Go over there and wow them. You wouldn't want Chris to go face them alone, would you?"

"No," she admitted, looking back at her boyfriend. He seemed too untroubled by this though. They were supposedly going to see the President, and he'd hardly even bothered getting dressed up! If anything, the dark hoodie he had over his crisp shirt at the moment made him seem more casual than usual.

"You'll be fine, sweety," her mother came to her side and hugged her briefly. "I've got to go to work. Make me proud, okay?"

Hailey wasn't sure this was the reaction she'd wanted from her parents. Maybe she'd been hoping they would forbid her from going with Chris, save her somehow. They seemed to have suddenly decided she was an adult and should be taking full responsibility for herself. Of course, they had to do it in the most maddeningly supportive way possible.

"What are you scared of?" Stephen teased his daughter goodnaturedly. "Look at the size of him, no one's going to mess with you or anything. You wouldn't let anything happen to my baby girl, would you Chris?"

"Ahh, no. Absolutely not, Stephen." Chris stood straighter, ignoring the nagging voice in his head that pointed out the several times they'd almost come to a messy end on their trip to the Moon. "You'll be fine, Hailey. I guarantee the science types are going to adore you. I'll be the one they're calling a reckless idiot, and I can make sure it stays that way if I have to. We really need to leave though, I don't know how long it takes me to get to DC."

"Go on, Hailey," her father rumbled.

"But, Daaaad."

"Ah ah ah. Young lady, you lost the right to play that card when you got a dragon for a boyfriend and told me you were moving out. What do you expect me to do, huh?"

"I don't know," she shrugged pathetically. Her heart was pounding. She might have put a few cracks in her shell to pursue Chris, but inside, she was still a timid person. The very thought of being confronted by the world's space experts, the president. She shuddered. Humans who no doubt thought she was a freak of nature and...

"Alright, I'll go instead," Stephen sighed heavily.

"What?" she scowled up at her father.

"Chris, take me up to the Capitol so I can explain how you two did this fusi-what-chu-ma-call-it."

"Dad!"

"Absolutely," Chris laughed. "But Stephen, I've got to point out, it was actually an advanced fusi-thingy-ma-jiggy. Big difference."

"Really?" The werebison nodded thoughtfully, scratching his chin. "Well, I'm clearly not going to be much use. If only there was..."

"Alright!" Hailey punched her father's broad chest and spun away from him. "You're both fucking insufferable dorks, I swear to God."

"Love you too, pumpkin," Stephen called after his daughter as she stormed through the door into their backyard.

"Nice one," Chris grinned. "Sorry I'm ditching you and the terrible trio today. I'll be there as much as I can for the next few weeks."

"You're fine, Chris, we're getting close now. Take care of her for me."

Stephen couldn't help feeling that this was some sort of pivotal moment. His heart began fluttering as watched his daughter with the young dragon he'd grown to call a friend. Hailey looked so beautiful, so grown up. Bundled against the turning weather in her blue long-coat, a grey sweater-dress, two pairs of black nylons, and her calf-high boots, he realised she wasn't just his little girl anymore.

The dragon took a knee on the concrete path. Stephen watched the young man take her hand, listened to his calm words of reassurance and encouragement. Hailey could be a willful little thing when she didn't want to do something though, and she had always been terribly skittish about strangers. She turned her face away from him, curling inward.

He knew for sure then, by the tenderness, the reverence with which Chris put his thumb against her chin and gently forced her to face the world, that this was the right man for his precious, scary-smart daughter.

***

Dark, frigid water frothed and churned beneath, savage forces of wind and water fighting a pitched battle that left both enraged. Enormous arctic waves loomed in the darkness, buffeted by the same freezing squalls that threatened to bat her out of the sky like some errant insect. She hadn't done flying like this for centuries, millennia. It felt good to truly test herself once more, to fly like her life depended on it. It had been so long, trapped in that lifeless routine of base survival.

Nyx thought of the dragon, counting on his fingers like a child as he tried to explain the year in that ugly new tongue they used. She knew now that it was the twenty-first century after the death of some bearded, sandal-wearing, martyr. If memory served, that's how many fingers he'd counted off on those enormous hands of his, too. That made this her thirty-ninth century and her twenty-eighth in survival-imposed exile.

It took only a few days to abandon her island prison, saying her goodbyes to the few merfolk she sometimes traded with for fish. Flying east across the sea, she'd tolerated a brief delay to gather information in her old homeland. The state of dilapidation was too depressing to bear for long.

Nyx wept for a day, perched amongst the dry vegetation on a low slope overlooking the site of ancient Elis. Once, she'd captained the night garrison there. It had changed rulers, and she'd moved on long before her exile, of course. To see it wiped off the face of the earth though? For some reason, she'd assumed time would not have been so cruel to her family's ancient home. Dusty memory was all that remained now.

That night, she scented out and ambushed a young satyr as he walked a dark path down out of the dry hills. The lights and noise of an unknown town drew him, presumably, for a night of frolic. It was comforting that at least that hadn't changed. All evening she'd seen scantily clad young men and women entering strange temples adorned with flashing lights and absurd, thumping music. It seemed a good playground for a lusty satyr.

He'd screamed girlishly and tried to flee when she swooped out of the darkness. Bleating cries to the Old Gods went unanswered, unable to save him from the winged apparition.

A light sweep of her dory and a pounce later, she sat on his chest as he sprawled in the dust. The interrogation lasted nearly until dawn, growling questions down at the wide-eyed youngster under threat of claw and blade. She'd learned much once they began to understand more of each other's speech. He would surely have a story to tell his family up in the hills.

Most treasured of her new knowledge were a few more words of the confounding language the dragon had spoken. The satyr also had an ingenious tablet-map device that somehow seemed to contain the entire world. It was incredible, so bright, holding so much knowledge. She'd stolen it, of course, and soon realised that her journey must take her east, into the fabled orient. Too much ocean lay between her destination to west.

That was indeed a powerful magic, though a short-lived one. The spell had stopped working after a day and a night, the once bright surface dark and unresponsive to her impatient touch. The dragon's minions had carried such devices, so he could no doubt teach her the secret of it. Finally, after a few hopeful taps against her shield and a probing of her magic, she'd dropped the frustrating thing into the Aegean. The rough location of the strange city called Denver was already memorised, as well as a few landmarks that would tell her when to turn inland once she reached the distant continent. She flew on, ever eastward.

The lack of a notable Being presence disturbed her deeply. None of her kind challenged her slinking passage through their territory by night. No call of alarm was raised as a winged embodiment of war swished low over the sleeping lands. She only ever caught a whiff of vampire in the larger cities as she settled in to watch and rest for the day. That was hardly surprising, given their proclivities, but the great magical races were nowhere to be seen. Magic was dying.

Not so the humans. When she'd finally made it over the sky-conquering mountains and into the heart of the Orient, she couldn't believe the sheer number of scuttling little people below. Their cities lit the sky for miles around, belching out clouds of foul-smelling, acrid haze.

When she was small, a plague of locusts had beset the crops of the village in the valley below the cliff where her family roosted. It had been a wet spring, and the hopping, ravenous creatures swarmed out of the ground to gorge themselves on the green wheat stalks that thrived out on the river delta. She couldn't help drawing a comparison to the humans who now seemed to crawl over every piece of even slightly hospitable land.

Even their roads were enormous, like pulsing arteries, and full of those confounding powered carts. What was wrong with a horse, or a good pair of sandals? Cars, yes, that's what Chris had called them.

She growled at the very thought of him. Clutched tight against her chest, her aspis creaked in protest. The bronze and wood of the rounded shield crying their innocence as she vented her anger in a harsh squeeze. Oh, how she wanted to thrash that adorable whelp. Treacherous muscles deep in her tummy began to quiver excitedly at the prospect, and what would surely follow. How dare he leave her behind? Didn't he know the courage it had taken to come out of that tree, to approach a stranger after all those years? And that smirking vampire, she would be lucky if she didn't get the blade of her spear through that smug, harlot's smile!

Nyx held tight to that anger because it helped keep the terrible, slithering doubt at bay. She had only been curious to begin with, fascinated by the trespassers because she so rarely encountered magical kind on that island. Like a moth, she'd been drawn closer and closer, tantalised by delicious trickles of leaked magic and the faint scent of cinnamon on the wind. Was it possible that he didn't wish to mate? In their halting attempts at conversation, he'd seemed gentle, even receptive. But he'd abandoned her, vanishing through the Ether in a godlike display of power.

Freezing, salty mist splashed through the eye slits of her plumed helmet, startling her wandering focus to the present. The gargoyle cursed, flapping her mighty wings valiantly as a colossal swell rose up out of the night to swallow her. As she'd been pining pathetically, the wind had driven her far too close to the water. Nyx screamed wordlessly at the storm, the sea, and her impetuous decision to fly the straight that night. She fought the air for her very life now.