Julie Kagawa - Talon

“I’m afraid that is impossible, ma’am.” The human’s voice was polite but firm. “You are not going to the same place.”

Even more wary now, I crossed my arms, but Dante stepped up behind me, brushing my elbow. “Come on,” he whispered as I glanced at him. “Don’t be stubborn. Talon ordered this—we have to do what they say.”

I sighed. He was right; if Talon had set this up, there was nothing I could do. “Fine,” I muttered, and looked back at the drivers. “Which car is mine?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter, ma’am.”

Before I could reply, Dante stepped around me, walked over to one of the cars and slid into the back. His driver briskly shut the door, walked around to his side and shut his own door behind him.

That left me. Swallowing a growl, I walked to the remaining car, ignoring my driver, and plopped into the backseat. As the garage doors lifted and we backed out into the sunlight, I turned to watch the other car, hoping for a final glimpse of my brother in the backseat. But the windows were tinted, and I couldn’t see him as the sedans pulled onto the road and sped away in opposite directions.

The drive was short and silent. I knew better than to ask where we were going. Resting an elbow on the door, I gazed out the window, watching the town flash by, until we pulled into the parking lot of a plain-looking office building. It was several stories high, with lots of dark glass windows that reflected the cloudless sky.

The driver pulled around the building and came to a stop in front of a loading dock in the back. The metal door was tightly sealed, but an entryway stood open beside it, dark and beckoning. I sighed.

Leaving the car and the driver, who still said nothing to me, I walked into the building and followed the long tile hallway until I came to an open door at the end. Beyond the frame was an office, with a metal stool sitting in front of an enormous wooden desk. A plush leather chair swiveled as I came in, and the blond woman in black Armani smiled at me across the floor.

“Hello, hatchling,” Scary Talon Lady greeted, lacing perfect, red-tinted nails under her chin. “You’re late.”

I swallowed hard and didn’t answer. One did not talk back to one’s elders, especially if one’s elders had a few hundred pounds advantage and the knowledge of several mortal life spans to back them up. The woman’s poisonous green eyes watched me a moment longer, and her lips curled faintly in amusement, before she gestured at the stool. “Sit.”

I did. The metal stool was hard and uncomfortable, probably on purpose. Scary Talon Lady leaned back in her chair and crossed her long legs, still continuing to watch me with the unblinking stare of a predator.

“Well, here we are,” she said at last. “And I bet you’re wondering why, aren’t you?” She raised an eyebrow at my continued silence. “Don’t be afraid to talk to me, hatchling. At least, not today. Talon’s senior vice president himself asked me to take over your training, but right now, this is just an introduction. Student to teacher.” The faint smile vanished then, and her voice went hard. “Make no mistake about it—after today, things will become much more difficult. You are going to struggle, and you are going to get hurt. It is not going to be easy for you. So, if you have any questions, hatchling, now is the time to ask them.”

My stomach twisted. “What am I being trained for?” I almost whispered.

“Survival,” Scary Talon Lady answered without hesitation, and elaborated. “To survive a world that, if it knew what you really were, would stop at nothing to see you destroyed.” She paused to let the gravity of that statement sink in, before continuing. “All our kind must learn to defend ourselves, and to be on the lookout for those who would do us harm. Who would drive us to extinction, if they could. They almost succeeded, once. We cannot let that happen again.” She paused again, appraising me over the desktop. “Tell me, hatchling,” she said. “What is the greatest threat to our survival? Why did we nearly go extinct the first time?”

“St. George,” I answered. That was an easy question. From the moment we hatched, we were warned about the terrible Order of St. George. We were taught their entire blood-filled history, from the first dragonslayers, to the fanatical Templar Knights, all the way up to the militaristic order they were now. We were told stories of St. George soldiers murdering hatchlings, shooting them in cold blood, even if they were children. We were warned to always be wary of strangers who asked too many questions, who seemed unnaturally interested in our past. St. George was ruthless and cunning and unmerciful, the enemy of all our kind. Every dragon knew that.

“No. That is incorrect.”

I blinked in shock. The woman across from me leaned forward, her eyes intense. “We nearly went extinct,” she said slowly, “because we couldn’t trust one another. We were more concerned about our possessions and defending our territories than our survival as a race. And so, the humans hunted us down, one by one, and nearly destroyed us. Only near the end, when our numbers had dwindled to almost nothing, did one dragon—the Elder Wyrm—gather us all together and force us to cooperate. We learned to become human, to hide in plain sight, to disappear into the throngs of humanity. But most important, we learned that we must work together for our survival. A single dragon, powerful as he or she may be, cannot stand against this human-infested world. If we are to thrive, if we are to have any hope for a future, we must all accept our place in the organization. Alone, we fall. As one, we rise.” Scary Talon Lady narrowed her eyes, her acidic gaze cutting right through me. “Everything we do, everything I teach you, will be for the good of us all. Can you remember that, hatchling?”

I nodded.

“Good.” My trainer sat back once more, her lips curling in a small, evil smile. “Because it’s not going to get any easier from here.”

* * *

She was right. From that day forth, starting at 6:00 a.m. every morning, I’d wake up to the sound of my alarm beeping in my ear. I’d change, stagger downstairs to grab a bagel or a doughnut, and then Dante and I would meet our drivers at the end of the secret tunnel and separate. Once I reached the office building, I’d walk into that same room, and Scary Talon Lady—she never told me her name, ever—would be waiting behind her large wooden desk.

“Report,” she would bark at me, every morning. And I’d have to go over what I’d done the previous day. Who I’d met. Where we’d gone. What we’d done. She’d ask me specific questions about my friends, demanding I explain why they’d said a particular thing, or reacted a particular way. I hated it, but that wasn’t the worst part of the morning.

No, the worst part was after the “debriefing.” She’d order me to the storage room of the building, which was huge and vast and mostly empty, with hard cement floors and iron beams crisscrossing the ceiling. And then the real fun would begin.

“Break down these boxes,” she would snap, pointing to a huge pile of crates, “and stack them in the opposite corner.”

“Drag these pallets to the other end of the room. And when you are done, bring them back. Be quick about it.”

“Carry these buckets of water around the building ten times. When you are finished, go ten times the other way.”

“Stack these tires into pillars of eight, one in every corner of the room, as fast as you can. No, you cannot roll them, you must carry them.”

Every day. For two hours straight. No questions. No talking back or complaining. Just stupid, monotonous, pointless tasks. All the while, Scary Talon Lady would watch my progress, offering no explanation, never saying anything except to snap at me to move faster, to work harder. Nothing I did was good enough, no matter how hard I worked or how quickly I completed the task. I was always too slow, too weak, too lacking in everything, despite her absolute, number-one rule: no Shifting into my true form while I did any of it.