The Dragon Tree (26 page)

             
Billy registered all of these details in no more than a second before the red dragon screeched and dove through the bottom of the cloud. Billy followed. They were far from any population center and the terrain beneath featured nothing but a rolling field of green treetops.

             
Billy saw something strange. The trees were swaying in a gentle breeze but one patch of green was racing through the air beneath the descending red dragon…

             
Hiro!

             
Be quiet Billy!
Hiroki shouted back with his mind.
He can’t see me. He doesn’t know I’m here. Just follow him.

***

              Eva spent the entire drive back to her house convincing her parents that her leg was fine. “It was only a cramp, not an injury. I feel fine. In fact, I feel great!”

             
“That may be, sweetheart,” said Rosa, “but the best thing you can do now is get some rest and start looking forward to next year’s cross-country season.”

             
“You were wonderful for the first half of the race, Eva,” said Salvadore as he pulled into their driveway. “I overheard your teammates saying you would have won if you hadn’t needed to leave with an injury.”

             
“A
cramp
,” Eva insisted.

             
“It makes no difference to the point, does it?” asked Rosa with a sigh.

             
Myra threw open the SUV door and raced up to the porch with Anita right behind her. Eva stepped out, still wearing her track uniform, and gingerly flexed her leg to show her mother it was fine.

             
“I think I ought to jog for a little bit. I’ve still got all this energy that I really need to burn off.”

             
“Enough Eva,” Rosa pleaded. “Just go inside please.”

             
Salvadore came around the front of the SUV jingling his keys. “I don’t know, Rosa. I think I’ve read that you need to cool down after physical exertion or there’s a risk of injury. Might be best of Eva goes for a little—”

             
“Thanks Dad! I’ll just run to Hiro’s house!” Eva yelped.

             
She was halfway down the street before she glanced back to see the frown on her mother’s face. One hand was flat as a paddle as she pumped her arms, but the other was closed over the scrap of cloth Hideo gave her at the race. She hadn’t dared to open it in front of her sisters in the SUV, and she didn’t dare open it now while she was running, but she raised her hand to her nose and drew a deep breath.

             
Whatever was inside the cloth smelled awfully familiar.

             
She doubted that Hiroki would be home. He and Billy would no doubt be driving around the woods near the event grounds, looking for some sign of the creature that had screeched overhead. Still, she didn’t know what else to do so she ran the entire distance to his empty house.

             
Panting in Hiroki’s driveway she finally unfolded the scrap of cloth and looked inside. There were hundreds of coarse black fibers nestled in its depths and fluttering in the breeze. The smell was unmistakable and the texture too. She knew immediately what they were. She knew Hideo wanted her to have them so she could do her ‘duty’. She just wasn’t sure what to do with them.

             
Bottoms up.

             
She placed a single black fiber on her tongue, wrinkled her nose at its bitter taste and gulped it down. She immediately felt the familiar sensation of energy coursing through her veins.

             
She folded the cloth and placed it under Hiroki’s doormat for safekeeping, then jogged around his house to find cover. There were dense woods behind Hiroki’s neighborhood that would have to do.

             
At least it’s nighttime.

             
She felt the change coming. Coming fast.

***

              Hiroki had been tracking the red dragon for miles before it finally descended from the clouds with Billy in pursuit. Not only could he sense the same ripple that Billy had keyed on, he could penetrate more deeply into the creature’s mind. He couldn’t extract a coherent thought from its mind or place a coherent thought of his own, but he could almost
see
the creature’s emotions swirling around its brain.

             
Anger. So much anger.

             
When the red dragon spread its wings and drifted down to the treetops, Hiroki slowed his own flight and hung back. He climbed through the forest canopy and down to the forest floor.

             
Billy descended through the canopy as well, but his bulky body was clumsier than Hiroki’s. He muscled his way through boughs, snapping them clean and raising a ruckus. Even his breathing was heavy as he dropped to the ground beside Hiroki.

             
If the red dragon hadn’t heard that, it was deaf.

             
Hiroki’s night vision immediately resolved the surrounding darkness. He could see every bump of the uneven ground. He could see every gnarled vertical tree trunk. A few nocturnal creatures scurried from one hiding spot to another, aware that there was a predator among them.

             
Hiroki gestured for Billy to move to the left while he moved to the right.

             
Hiroki lifted his feet off the ground and flapped his wings steadily to propel himself forward as silently as possible. The sound of his wingtips nudging branches was no more disruptive than the wind. He sensed himself drawing closer to the red creature and flared his nostrils to sniff him out. There was a vaguely metallic scent in the air.

             
Was the red dragon injured, or did it always smell like blood?

             
He was close enough now to the red dragon that he should have been able to see it, and yet there was nothing but vacant forest on all sides. One cluster of trees looked strange enough that Hiroki lowered himself to the ground and crawled toward it.

             
He was twenty feet away when the inanimate trees… moved…

             
The red areas of the dragon’s body had darkened to a ruddy brown. The black stripes that ran vertically on its flesh served to divide the brown areas and create the appearance of trees standing side-by-side.

             
The optical illusion was amazing.

             
Hiroki saw two deep-set eyes staring at him through the darkness. He saw mighty jaws hanging open and a black tongue throbbing in the bottom of a cavernous throat. The red dragon was lying in wait, ready to strike.

             
So it
did
sense my presence.

             
A mighty roar to Hiroki’s left shattered the tenuous silence in the forest. It was Billy, mouth gaping, as he thundered through a gap in the trees. His blue flesh lit up in thin shafts of moonlight as he charged toward the hidden body of the red dragon.

             
The red dragon rose up to its full height and held its ground. It turned its open mouth on Billy and vomited a wild geyser of liquid fire. The trees surrounding Billy ignited like they were soaked in gasoline. Thick black smoke clogged the air and masked the location of the red dragon once again.

             
Billy raced toward the red dragon, hacking as he passed through the smoke. By the time he emerged on the other side of the acrid cloud the red dragon was already gone.

             
Hiroki scrambled toward the flaming trees. Thinking fast, he dragged his thick claws through the ground to loose a huge amount of dirt then used his tail to fling it toward the fire. It took several such passes, but the flames were soon extinguished.

             
Can you sense its mind, Hiro?! Can you tell which direction it’s going?!

             
In answer, Hiroki leapt off the ground and punched back through the forest canopy. He could hear the red dragon crashing through foliage and heading south. He could smell the metallic odor trailing it. And he could feel the mind of the creature silently screaming.

              Billy and Hiroki followed the red dragon on a dangerous flight due south, just above the forest. They split up and took position on either of the red dragon’s flanks, rising and falling with their target, swinging left and right to match its every move. The red dragon flew more erratically, swinging its tail into treetops and knocking chunks of timber in the air.

             
Billy took his eyes off their quarry and looked to the ground a mile ahead. He was amazed to see a bare patch of ground in the otherwise endless sea of green.

             
Look Hiro! The timber site!

             
The red dragon’s crazed flight had led them all the way to the tree clearing operation where Billy had spent a week in hard labor. The slope was entirely clear now – even the stumps ripped loose – and most of the heavy machinery had been cleared from the hilltop. All that remained was a pair of rusty bulldozers, a thresher and the metal storage container.

             
That’s where we take him down!

             
Billy pumped his wings furiously and hurled himself onto the red dragon’s back. It screeched angrily and tried to throw Billy off, but Billy latched on to the creature’s crimson wings to prevent it from flying. Their momentum sent them tumbling toward the barren lumber slope like a blue and red meteor.

             
Billy, no!

             
Hiroki watched the tangled dragons rocket toward the ground and pulled up to brace himself for the grisly impact. Billy let go of the red dragon at the last possible instant and spread his wings like parachutes. The red dragon had no chance to slow its fall. It struck the dirt at full speed and left a massive crater in the ground. Billy slid down the hill directly toward the red dragon, kicking up great geysers of dirt.

             
The red dragon was writhing on its back, in obvious pain from its crash landing and struggling to roll over onto its feet. It thrashed its head back and forth, desperately watching as Billy drew closer.

             
Hiroki circled overhead, unsure what Billy was planning and unsure if he should join the fray. He didn’t want to fight the red dragon.

             
They didn’t even know that it meant them harm. Everything this new dragon had done so far could easily be seen as attempts at defending itself.
They
had followed the red dragon into the sky.
They
had chased the red dragon into the forest.
They
had stalked the red dragon through the shadows.

             
And now Billy had tackled it out of the sky and thrown it down violently.

             
Don’t harm him, Billy!

             
‘He’
. How did Hiroki know the red dragon was a male? It was nearly as large as Billy, but there was something else. Something in the nature of the red dragon’s emotions. He wasn’t sure how he knew, and yet… he knew.

             
Just as Billy reached the red dragon, it flipped over with surprising ease and lashed out, slashing Billy across the chest with four black talons.             

             
He was playing possum!

             
The red dragon charged up the hill and continued raking at Billy’s chest. It was all Billy could do to dodge the blows as he stumbled backward. He flapped his wings to speed his ascent but going backwards was much more difficult than flying forward and the red dragon was aiming for his throat.

             
Hiroki finally swooped into action. He dove straight for the striped side of the red dragon as if to tackle him bodily, but he pulled up at the last second and swiped the red dragon’s head with his tail. The sudden impact knocked the red dragon off balance and he lost his grip on the hill. He tumbled backwards, end-over-end, and slid to a halt at the bottom of the slope.

             
As Hiroki swung around for another pass, he saw Billy collect himself and begin his climb down to the red dragon. The way Billy held his wings high and his head low made it look to Hiroki that he planned to end the fight.

              Billy wanted to rip out the red dragon’s throat for what he had just done to him. The sensations in his chest were like nothing he had ever felt before. The pain from the lacerations themselves was nothing compared to the wretchedness that followed. It felt as though daggers made of ice were stuck between his ribs. An otherworldly cold began in his wounds and burrowed inward as if searching for his beating heart.