Page 42 of The Dragon's Pet
“They won’t be able to penetrate…”
“Yes, they will. They have bombs capable of tearing through mountains. We will hide in the base like rats and they will tear it open and pull us out.”
“Come. Back to base,” he repeated. “We still have time. They may not know we are here. They may simply be searching.”
They didn’t have time, though. All the time they had was borrowed. They had been out of time from the moment the portal was closed—and Aria knew it, though she had allowed herself to live in denial. But she knew when her time was up, and time was definitely up.
Vyktor didn’t understand that though. Vyktor always thought he could fix everything. It never occurred to him that he could be defeated. He had her by the hand and was urging her up the hill toward one of the hatches. The dragons had worked hard on the rocky island, created a warren inside the hills that would have been inhospitable to your average human—but would be no challenge at all to highly trained marines. He pulled open the hatch and pushed Aria down inside it, then more or less dragged her down to the lower levels of their base, where Eldor and the others were already waiting. Apparently every dragon on the island had detected the problem already.
“So, this is bad,” Aria said, trying for a smile that didn’t work.
“Your military is coming for us,” Eldor said grimly. “There are no fewer than sixteen attack helicopters on their way here.”
“How could they have found us?”
“Satellite? Sonar? Perhaps one of the tourist planes spotted something and reported it? I don’t know. Perhaps we were betrayed.” He looked at her in a very unfriendly fashion and she sank back toward Vyktor.
“Why would I betray you? I helped you escape!”
“Who knows why humans do anything,” Eldor growled. “I don’t care. Fortunately, my machine is operational to some small degree. We are going to open this portal. It’s not stable, but it doesn’t matter anymore. It just needs to open long enough to allow us through. I should have opened it before now but I listened to you, Vyktor, when you said that we would be safe here.” He shot a look of pure poison in Vyktor’s direction, making Aria angry.
“It’s probably your damn portal generator which brought them here,” she said. “I told you, those things suck power. We might have our own generators, but that doesn’t mean the power can’t be detected. This island probably glows on their scanners thanks to all the electromagnetic activity.”
“I had to test it,” Eldor snarled.
“Why?”
“For this very reason,” he growled. “For the day when the humans would come and we would be trapped like rats on this cold rock.”
“You brought them to our door,” Aria told him. “I’m not the one who betrayed us. You are. In your desperation to escape, you have killed us all.”
There was a silence following her words, broken by a growl from Eldor. “Get your pet under control, Vyktor.”
“I don’t think we should open the portal. I think we should stand and we should fight,” Vyktor growled, wrapping his arm around Aria’s shoulders and pulling her away from the increasingly agitated Eldor.
“For what? We could be victorious over these helicopters, but they will send more. They will not let us rest, Vyktor. They will hound us to the very ends of their earth. We must escape. The portal is not stable, but I believe I can power it sufficiently to draw us through.”
“I’m not leaving,” Vyktor declared. “Not without Aria. And I can’t take Aria, so I’m not leaving.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No,” Vyktor said, his expression as intense as Aria had ever seen. “I am not.”
The tension in the room was so thick that Aria almost choked on it. Vyktor and Eldor stared at one another with gazes filled with something close to hate. Eldor’s anger at Vyktor’s insubordination was obvious in every line of his body, and in the clenching of his fists. For his part, Vyktor held his head high and stared the grey-eyed dragon down.
“I will give you one final chance to comply, General,” Eldor insisted. “We do not have any more time to argue, and I do nothave any more time to entertain your fantasies of living a human life.”
“And what will you do to stop…”
Vyktor never finished the sentence. One of the other dragons who had been standing behind him lifted a heavy piece of metal and brought it down on the back of his head. Vyktor dropped like a stone and Aria heard herself screaming as he fell unconscious to the floor.
“What are you doing?”
Nobody answered her. They ignored her completely. She tried to rush forward to see if he was okay, but they blocked her with their bodies and her attempts to break through them were useless. They were moving in a way that suggested that they had planned this. Aria watched, stunned at the betrayal unfolding before her as Eldor’s men picked up the unconscious Vyktor.
“What the hell!” Aria stepped forward, putting her hand on Eldor’s arm. “What is this? What are you doing to him?”
“Sorry,” Eldor said. “But Vyktor is too important to leave here, and we will not allow him to die for the sake of his…” he looked at her with a curling lip, “…curious obsession with a human.”
