Rogue (13 page)

The device gave an ominous beep…then stopped. Nothing exploded in a blinding cloud of dragonfire, and my heart started beating again.

Dropping the snips, I ran my hands down my face, everything inside me twisting into knots as the realization of what I’d done—what
they
had done—hit me full force. Maybe the bomb had malfunctioned, maybe there had been a glitch to make the countdown accelerate like that. But I knew better than to think this had been accidental. Talon had never intended for me to come back.

In a daze, I rose from the tile floor and stumbled toward the exit. Fear clawed at me, dark and crippling. Talon was my whole life; my entire existence had been spent serving the organization. I knew what would happen once they figured out I hadn’t died like I was supposed to. I was fully aware of what they did to those who went rogue. But there was no turning back. This had been coming for a while now. I knew it, my trainer knew it…and Talon had known it, too. My days of spy missions, sabotage and blowing up buildings full of innocent humans were over.

That’s it.
I remembered Madison’s face, the way she’d smiled up at me, and my resolve grew.
No more. Do you hear that, Chief? I’m done. This is Agent Cobalt, checking out for the last time.

Crossing the room, I opened the door and melted into the shadows. I still had to get free of St. George, but even if I escaped, the organization would have accomplished at least one thing. A Talon operative had died in this building tonight. As of this moment, Agent Cobalt no longer existed.

Ember

My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

I couldn’t stop them. My heart was racing, and my nerves felt charged with electricity. My trembling fingers were still curled around the smooth handle of the gun in my lap. The gun I’d used to shoot someone.

My stomach heaved, and I closed my eyes, but it didn’t help. I could still see him, the slack face and the sightless, staring eyes. The bullet hole in his skull, oozing blood. I didn’t even remember pulling the trigger. The moment I’d seen him through the attic opening, aiming his gun at Garret, I’d reacted. Without thinking, just as I had in the St. George
compound—quick and lethal, almost instinctive. Now, because of me, a man was dead. I’d become a killer, an assassin, just like Talon wanted.

Lilith would’ve been proud.

“Where are we going?” Garret’s voice echoed beside me, calm and composed. He didn’t sound remotely anxious or freaked out, as if being targeted by snipers, breaking into a house and taking out two fully armed soldiers was a perfectly normal day for him. Business as usual. For a moment, I resented his perfect composure. I’d just killed a man, one of his former brothers in arms; you would think he’d be slightly upset by that.

“Downtown,” Riley answered without looking back. He sat in the front seat, both hands on the wheel, and drove like he rode a motorcycle: fast and with purpose. Beside him, Wes hunched over his laptop, not looking up when Riley took a corner without slowing down, making the wheels screech. “Near the Strip. I have a friend there who can hide us.”

“And the vehicle?” Garret looked out the back window, maybe searching for flashing lights. “I assume the original owner isn’t going to be happy about us hot-wiring his car.”

Wes snickered. “Hot-wire a car,” he scoffed. “Please. Is that how you do things, St. George? How very primitive.” He tapped two fingers against his skull. “Modern cars these days have lovely computerized brains that you can turn on with a phone. Makes them fairly easy to hack into, if you know what you’re doing.”

Great
,
I thought, crossing my arms. The gun dropped onto the seat beside me. I didn’t want to look at it, much less touch it anymore.
So now we’re murderers
and
car thieves.

A soft click made me look up. Garret had reached over and taken the pistol from where it lay between us, then smoothly flicked on the safety. He turned the weapon around and offered it to me again, his gray eyes solemn as they met mine.

“You had no choice,” he said, holding my gaze. “Those soldiers would’ve killed us both if they could. There was no other option, you did what you had to do.”

The lump in my throat got bigger, and I eyed the weapon like it was a giant venomous spider. But I made myself reach out and take it back, closing my fingers around the now warm metal. “I know,” I whispered, setting the gun carefully on my leg. “But that doesn’t make it all right.” I shot a wary glance at the front, where Riley and Wes were talking in low voices. Wes was pointing to a map on the laptop screen, where a glowing blue dot approached an intersection. Riley swore, gunned the engine and ran an aging yellow light. Neither seemed to be listening to what was happening in the backseat, but I lowered my voice anyway. “I don’t want to be like them,” I murmured. “Either of them. Talon
or
St. George. If I start killing without a thought, if it becomes instinct, why did I leave Talon at all? What makes me any different than the Viper they wanted me to become?”

The blare of a siren made us jerk up. A cop car passed us, going in the opposite direction, lights flashing blue and red, speeding toward the distant column of black smoke curling into the sky. The soldier leaned back, gazing out the window, and didn’t answer my question.

* * *

The sun had set over the distant mountains, leaving only a fading orange splash on the horizon, when we reached the inner city, or the Strip, as Riley called it. My misery was temporarily forgotten as I pressed my nose against the car window, gaping at the wonders looming overhead. I’d never seen so many cars, lights, people. The streets practically glowed; hotels, casinos, massive signs, monuments, all blazing with neon luminance against the darkening sky. An enormous cartoon cowboy waved to us as we drove past, and a miniature sultan’s castle boasted a colorful rainbow of lights across its domed roof. I caught a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, shimmering gold against the night, rising above the streets like a beacon. Not
the
Eiffel Tower, I realized; as far as I knew, the real one was still in Paris, so this was obviously a replica. But it was still huge, and impressive, and blazing with light, like everything around us.

“Close your mouth, Firebrand,” Riley remarked with a smirk in his voice as we cruised down the street, passing buildings and people and an endless string of cars. “You’re fogging up the windows.”

I tore my gaze from the massive buildings surrounding us, sliding back in my seat. “Are we going to stop soon?” I asked, hoping the answer was yes.

Riley snorted. “Not here,” he said, and all traces of amusement fled. He shot a grim look out the window at the glittering structures lining the roads. “Definitely not on the Strip. Vegas is a huge cash flow for the organization. They have their claws in basically every vice you can imagine—
gambling, drugs, strip clubs, you name it.” Riley pulled a disgusted face, curling a lip. “Thankfully, there aren’t many actual dragons in Vegas. Just
one
, really. But he’s a temperamental bastard who makes even Talon nervous, and he owns nearly all the hotels and casinos on the Strip. We step into the wrong building, we might as well be walking around with glowing signs above our heads.”

“Then why are we here?” Garret asked, voicing my own question. “If this city is so heavily influenced by Talon, why are we risking exposure by staying?”

“Because I want to know what Talon is up to,” Riley snapped, glaring back at him. “I want to know why my safe houses keep disappearing, and if Talon is doing anything shady. More shady than normal, anyway. I want to know how the Order knows about me, knows who I am, when they didn’t have a clue in the past. If my entire network is in danger, I want to know why, and what I can do to stop it.” He turned back, gripping the steering wheel, eyes narrowed and hard.

“I have a contact here,” he said at length. “One who keeps tabs on any movement between St. George and the organization for me. Nothing happens in Vegas without him finding out. If anyone knows what’s going on, he will.”

We turned off the Strip, leaving the mega hotels and dazzling lights behind. Several minutes later, Riley pulled the car to the side of the road and killed the engine.

“All right, let’s go. The hotel we want is two blocks down, but we’re ditching the car here. I’m sure it’s been reported as stolen by now.” He turned in his seat to look back at us and glanced at the pistol I still held. “Stash the guns,” he ordered, and Garret immediately turned and pulled the duffel bag from the backseat. “Last thing we need is for someone to call the cops on us. Everyone keep your head down. We do this quick and quiet. Oh, and one more thing. Wes, you got them IDs, right?”

The human mumbled something and held up two plastic cards without taking his gaze from his computer. Riley snatched them from his fingers and held them out to us. “Cover identities for the hotel,” he explained as I took my driver’s license and peered at it curiously. My face smirked back at me, familiar and baffling; I had no idea where he’d gotten the photograph. According to the license, my name was Emily Gates, and I was twenty-one years old.

Curiosity and excitement flickered. What could I do with a fake ID in Vegas? I wondered. I could definitely think of a few things.

“Those should hold up to most background checks,” Riley went on, as Garret slid his own license into a pocket then continued stashing the guns. “But we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. So no ordering from the bar or wandering the casino floor. Those IDs are just to get us past the door. Firebrand…” Riley’s gold eyes fixed on me, appraising. “Are you listening to this? We are here to
lie low
, understand? Shall I explain the meaning of the term?”

I wrinkled my nose at him. “I know what it means. Smart-ass.”

His lip quirked. “Just keep that in mind, and try not to get distracted by the shiny.”

I rolled my eyes. Garret finished zipping up the bag, swung it to his shoulder and opened the door. A dry breeze ruffled my hair as I stepped out onto the warm, crowded streets of Las Vegas.

Riley took the lead, striding purposefully down the sidewalk, with Wes, Garret and I trailing behind. And the rogue’s warning was instantly forgotten. I couldn’t stop staring at…well, everything really. Crescent Beach had been a small, sleepy town, with few highways and not many large buildings. Vegas was like another world. I’d never seen rows of buildings so high they were like canyon walls, or so many glowing lights that I couldn’t see the sky through the haze, or an endless river of cars, red brake lights stretching on to the horizon. Unfortunately, navigating bustling sidewalks while trying to look at everything didn’t really go well together. I kept bumping into passersby, muttering apologies and getting annoyed looks in return.

“On your six,” a voice muttered, as I slowed to gaze at a building across the street. Confused, I turned…and someone barely swerved around me with a muffled curse. Blinking, I looked up at Garret, who shot me a half amused, half exasperated look before going back to scanning the crowds.

I offered a weak grin and fell into step beside him. “On your six?” I asked. “Is that soldier talk for ‘pay the hell attention to what you’re doing’?”

“We
are
in enemy territory.” Garret watched a pair of thuggish-­looking guys approach, relaxing only slightly when they passed. “Talon and St. George are both searching for us. They might have agents on the streets right now. A little situational awareness is probably…prudent.”

Feeling chastised, I followed him, trying to stay close. Garret moved through the throngs like a fish through water, metallic-­gray eyes constantly scanning, watching. I remembered his discomfort with crowds in Crescent Beach, that hyper­alertness, as if a ninja could come leaping out at us from a potted plant. Back then, in the lazy little beach town, it had seemed odd. Now, I understood. That paranoia had probably saved his life more than once.

Finally, Riley took us across a huge parking lot and through the doors of a smaller, though still impressive, building. Nero’s Garden Hotel and Casino, the sign read as we approached the front. A pair of marble lions guarded the entrance, though I saw someone had drawn a tiny mustache below one lion’s nose. Then the doors slid back, and we stepped into a brightly lit lobby with green tile, fake marble columns lining the room and statues of half-naked Greek people in alcoves along the wall. A huge check-in desk ran the length of the back wall, and off to the side, through a fake marble arch, the casino floor buzzed, twinkled, chimed and flashed like a sprawling neon circus.

“Well, here we are,” Riley said with false grandeur, and offered a sarcastic grin as he gestured to the glittering casino. “Welcome to Vegas.”

Dante

From the air, the city looked like an island of stars in the center of a black void.

“Can I get you anything before we land, sir?” the flight attendant asked, showing perfect white teeth as she smiled down at us. Or, more accurately, at me. At my side, Mr. Smith didn’t look up from his phone, and across from us, Mr. Roth made a vague gesture with his hand, waving her away. I made a point of returning the smile as I shook my head.

“No. Thank you.”

“Of course, sir.” The human regarded me through lowered lashes. “Please, let me know if you need anything.” She wandered toward the back of the jet, where a second attendant glared at her with stony eyes.

Mr. Roth chuckled.

“Do you see your protégé, Mr. Smith?” the VP said, as my trainer put his phone away and looked up. “You’ll have to keep a closer eye on him. If we’re not careful, we’ll have humans clawing each other’s eyes out for his attention.”

I stayed quiet, not knowing if this was praise or a reprimand. Mr. Smith gave a small laugh that could have meant anything, but he didn’t comment. I took a furtive breath and settled back in the plush leather seat, trying to calm my nerves. Normally by this time, my trainer would be going over Talon rules and protocol, grilling me on etiquette, making sure I knew what I was doing. But he couldn’t now, or he wouldn’t, not in front of Mr. Roth. There were no other passengers on Talon’s elite private jet; it was just the three of us. My trainer, one of Talon’s senior VPs and me. A sixteen-year-old hatchling who was keeping company with some of the most powerful dragons in the organization. A hatchling who, just yesterday, had been standing outside the door of an office in Los Angeles, waiting to be acknowledged.

* * *

“I believe we found them, sir,” I’d announced, when Mr. Roth finally waved me into the room. I stepped through the frame, closing the door behind me. “We think they’re in Vegas.”

The VP arched one slim, elegant eyebrow at me over his desk. “Vegas, you say,” he repeated. “That’s…unexpected. One of our biggest operations is in Vegas. That Cobalt would flee there is unusual.” His gaze sharpened, brows drawing together. “How did you come to this conclusion, Mr. Hill?”

I handed him the folder Mist had given me; her report and the satellite pictures of the Order chapterhouse sat inside. “We’ve been monitoring St. George ever since Ember and the rogue broke into their western chapterhouse, sir,” I said, as Mr. Roth flipped it open. “We believe St. George is looking for them as well, and recently, we’ve seen a lot of Order activity in and around Las Vegas. They appear to be converging on the city. We think Ember and the rogue are hiding somewhere close, maybe near the Strip.”

“I see.” Mr. Roth closed the folder and laced his hands under his chin. “Reign’s territory. Of course, they would have to make this complicated.”

My heart beat faster. Ember was in Las Vegas, I could feel it. Just a few hours’ drive away, in the middle of a huge, dangerous city with St. George closing in on all sides. “Sir,” I began, “if Ember
is
in Vegas, I believe I should be the one to bring her back. If we can find her, I would like to go. She’ll listen to me. I just need to talk to her.”

And if I can bring her back, Talon will know how valuable I am to the organization.

“Of course, Mr. Hill.” Roth glanced up at me and smiled. “Of course you are going to retrieve your sister, that was never a question. However, there are protocols that we must observe, if we want the best chance of finding Ms. Hill and Cobalt. Before we do anything in Las Vegas, there is someone we must speak to first. I’ll arrange the meeting.”

* * *

Mr. Roth hadn’t wasted any time. I’d been driven back to my apartment with orders to pack for a few days’ trip, and this morning I’d been taken to a small airport, where Mr. Smith, Mr. Roth and a private jet awaited me. Everything had happened so quickly, I hadn’t had time to reflect or feel nervous, until now.

Crossing my legs, I leaned back, affecting a pose of professional nonchalance. This anxiety wasn’t like me, but everything, it seemed, hinged on bringing Ember back.
Everyone is watching you, Dante
,
I reminded myself.
Talon is watching you, even closer than they did in Crescent Beach. This is your chance to prove yourself. To start building a future in the organization, to do great things for Talon. You have to impress them. You have to do better than anyone expects.

“Sir,” I ventured, making Mr. Roth glance up and raise an eyebrow at me. “Our contact in Las Vegas—his name is Reign?”

“That is correct,” Mr. Roth replied.

“Is there anything I should know about him?” I went on, careful to keep my tone deferent. “Anything special I should be aware of before the meeting?”

“Ah yes, our good friend Reign.” Roth smiled, though his tone was brittle. “Only know that he is one of the oldest dragons in the organization,” he said, making my stomach drop to my toes. “He was around when the Elder Wyrm rose to power, so that should give you an idea of who you’re dealing with. He is also very, shall we say…old-fashioned? He prefers things a certain way, and the Elder Wyrm allows him his small idiosyncrasies. He is crucial to the organization, as most of Talon’s assets in Las Vegas come through his casinos, but Reign himself can be…challenging to deal with.” Mr. Roth gave me a scrutinizing look and leaned back in the seat. “My advice to you, Mr. Hill? Be polite. Reign is loyal to the organization and will not risk the Elder Wyrm’s wrath, but he is not fond of having other dragons in what he considers his territory. It is always good to be cautious when dealing with self-proclaimed kings.”

The jet landed at another private airport on the edge of town, and a limo stood waiting to drive us into the city. Once inside I leaned back against the cold leather seat and crossed my legs, deliberately not looking out the tinted windows. I was resolved to appear as cool as possible, and not like a gawking, starstruck tourist who had never seen the glamour of Las Vegas.

I nearly broke that resolve when the limo pulled up in front of the biggest hotel I’d ever seen in my life. It soared above us, blazing with millions of lights, so bright you could barely see the sky overhead. Inside, it was even more difficult not to gape at the enormous foyer tiled in gold and black, ringed with silver-threaded onyx columns, a marble fountain in the center of the opulence. A retinue of well-dressed humans greeted us in the glittering foyer, with instructions that “Mr. R.” was waiting for us, and to please follow them.

We did, trailing the escorts across a crowded casino full of flashing lights, bells and, of course, people. The place was enormous. The gold tile we walked on reflected the millions of lights, and the whole casino had an air of fantasy and surrealism, where time didn’t exist and you could lose hours, or even days, without knowing it. Humans sat at tables with columns of colored chips, or fed bills into the rows of flashing machines that lined every aisle. Everything screamed wealth, riches, luxury, and for a moment, I felt a glimmer of envy through the fascination.

I wanted this.

The humans led us to the elevator bay, escorted us into a box and bowed as the doors slid shut. They did not, I noticed, press any buttons, and neither did Mr. Roth or Mr. Smith. But, after a moment, the elevator shuddered and started to move. Down.

It continued down for a long, long time. No one spoke, and I concentrated on remaining still and keeping the calm, serene expression on my face. When the elevator finally stopped and the doors opened, I saw a short cement corridor, a lone florescent light and a single door at the end of the hall.

I caught Mr. Smith’s eye as we stepped out of the elevator. His gaze was a warning, cold and ominous. This was it, I realized. The moment where all my training, everything I’d learned about Talon and its inner circle, came together. It was either sink or swim, impress or disappoint. Through that door, my future with Talon hung in the balance.

I met my trainer’s stare and gave a short nod. I was ready. Today was the day I started making a name for myself. Mr. Smith watched me a moment longer, then turned away, following Mr. Roth toward the end of the hall.

We stepped through the door into a massive, dimly lit cavern. A huge, yawning chamber that soared up into the darkness, hiding the ceiling from view. The floor was cement, but the walls, as far as I could see, were of natural rock and stone. The air in the cave was unnaturally warm, surprising for being so far underground, and smelled faintly of smoke, though I couldn’t see any fires. There were also no overhead lights, no florescent bulbs or lamps, or even candles. In fact, the only light came from a group of enormous flat screens near the back wall. Over two dozen televisions, bolted to a network of steel frames, formed an immense, flickering semicircle of noise and images. Each huge screen showed something different: sports, world events, news stations in several different languages. A few of them appeared to be casino security, cycling through different areas of the hotel. More than one screen showed nothing but the Dow, tracking the rise and fall of stocks. Horses sped down a track, police sirens wailed and an attractive Asian reporter babbled at me in Japanese.

It was a chaotic flood of imagery, a hundred different things happening all at once. So I didn’t immediately notice what lay beneath the circle of screens. Then Mr. Smith put a warning hand on my shoulder, stopping me from advancing any farther into the room, and I dropped my gaze from the televisions.

My mouth nearly fell open, and I bit my cheek to keep from gasping in shock. An enormous pile of gold lay sprawled on the floor beneath the screens, the light glimmering off the metallic surface. In the darkness and shadows, it was difficult to see how big it really was, but I guessed it was at least forty feet long and fifteen feet high, a virtual mountain of gold in the middle of the cavern. So
this
was why Reign was so touchy about other dragons being in his territory. He was sitting on a literal treasure hoard. Old-fashioned indeed.

And then, the mountain moved.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach, and my mouth did fall open this time, as the entire hoard shifted, unfurled two colossal leathery wings and sat up. A head rose on a long, snaking neck, and a tail uncurled to double the length, as an eighty-foot golden dragon turned with a scraping of claws and scales and fixed us with a massive yellow eye.

My legs were frozen. I couldn’t move. I could only stare at the creature before me, torn between awe and utter panic. Besides my sister, I’d only ever seen one other of my kind in its real form, an adult who wasn’t even half the size of this dragon. He had to be a Wyrm, one of three dragons in the world who had passed the thousand-year mark, who had survived so long that they were the size of buildings. Everyone in Talon knew of the Elder Wyrm, the oldest and most powerful of us all, but the identities and locations of the other two were a jealously guarded secret. Reign was ancient, a lesser god gazing down at three tiny insects scurrying around his feet.

I suddenly realized why Talon allowed him his…idiosyncrasies, as Mr. Roth put it. Who would dare to tell him no?

“Well.” The deep voice reverberated through the cavern like thunder, making the walls tremble. “Here you are, then.” Reign pulled himself to his full impressive height, dwarfing everything in the cavern as he stretched, before sinking back and curling his tail around himself. His scales, like antique coins, glittered as he lowered his head to regard me with a blood-chilling smile. “Welcome to my casino,” he continued, giving me a clear, terrifying view of his fangs. “I trust the accommodations are acceptable?”

He was talking to me, I realized, not my trainer or Mr. Roth. Which struck me as very odd. Why would one of the most powerful dragons in Talon take the time to address me and not my superiors?

Be polite
, Mr. Roth had said. Always a good plan when staring down an eighty-foot dragon who could swallow you in one bite. “Yes, sir,” I managed, grateful that my voice didn’t shake. “You’ve been more than accommodating. Thank you for seeing us on such short notice. Your hotel is very impressive.”

Reign sniffed, but he seemed pleased. “I see they’ve trained you well,” he rumbled, and raised his head to observe the other dragons, standing patiently to either side. “Though I wouldn’t have expected anything else. But I have little time for pleasantries. Let us talk business.”

His eyes glittered, and he folded his front claws before him like a cat, the curved talons lightly raking the floor. “So the other little hatchling has run away,” he said, sounding amused and impatient at the same time. “And now, you think she is somewhere in my city.” He snorted, sending a billow of smoke into the air. “I find that highly unlikely. Nothing happens here without my knowledge. No one comes or goes unless I know about it. I have eyes in almost every casino, every hotel on and off the Strip.” He angled a horn at the bank of screens surrounding him. “If this girl has entered my territory, what makes you think she can hide from me?”

“She’s not alone, Reign.” Mr. Roth’s voice was cool as he stepped forward, though I noted he didn’t stare directly at the other dragon but kept his gaze off to the side. “We believe she is with a former Basilisk operative who went rogue several years ago. He knows about you. He would know which hotels to avoid, and in which areas you might not have as large a presence.” Reign’s gold eyes narrowed dangerously, showing his obvious displeasure with the contradiction, though Mr. Roth did not relent. “He’ll know how to stay hidden and out of sight, even from you.”

Reign growled, not loudly, but I felt the vibrations through the cement. “A rogue Basilisk,” the dragon king mused, tapping his claws against the floor. “I’ve heard of this upstart, Cobalt.” His voice took on an annoyed edge. “I suppose he is also the reason St. George has suddenly appeared in my city?”

“Yes. We believe the Order is searching for them, as well.”

Reign’s nostrils flared. “So why should I risk exposure when the Order is swarming around out there, thanks to your wayward agent?” he asked. “Helping you with your rogue problem could expose my operations to St. George. I’ve avoided the Order for a very, very long time. I intend to keep it that way.”