Blue Dragon

about six months before you arrived.’
    ‘So Leo was guarding her,’ I said. ‘She never sustained any minor injuries. They never took a sample off her.’
    John’s face said it all.
    I put my head in my hands. ‘No.’ I looked back up at John. ‘Did she remember?’
    ‘No,’ he said, his face rigid. His eyes unfocused. ‘Your parents are outside the door. They’ve gone into the kitchen.’
    ‘Anything else?’ I said.
    ‘We need to discuss the new Disciples,’ Gold said.
    ‘Let me go and say good morning and I’ll be right back.’
    ‘I can handle it. Go with your parents,’ John said.
    ‘No. I need to know what’s happening. Don’t do anything without me.’ I rose to leave.
    ‘You know?’ Gold said.
    I stopped dead, halfway out of my chair. I sat back down. They saw my face.
    ‘Sorry, my Lord,’ Gold said.
    ‘For a creature with no mouth, Gold, you have an extremely big one,’ John said, then he sighed and his shoulders sagged. ‘While you were out with your parents yesterday, I had a visit from the Lady. She confirmed what I already knew.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Two more.’
    ‘The Dark Lord is rather like a rechargeable battery,’ Gold said.
    ‘Winding down,’ I said. ‘Won’t hold the charge.’
    Neither of them said anything.
    ‘I’ll get the school calendar and we’ll work something out,’ I said.
    ‘Not now,’ John said. ‘We need to discuss the new Disciples, and you need to spend time with your parents. We’ll organise something later.’
    ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But I need to be involved in every single meeting from now on.’
    ‘Especially the ones with the Generals,’ John said.
    ‘Oh, damn .’
    ‘Can’t avoid them any longer, my Lady,’ Gold said with grim humour. ‘You don’t have any excuses left. Your thesis is finished, you attained your degree. Time to start taking part in the running of the Northern Heavens.’
    I ran my hands through my hair. ‘ Damn !’
    ‘Go and have something to eat,’ John said. ‘Then come back and we’ll talk about the Disciples. We won’t get very far without you anyway.’
    I threw myself out of my chair and left the office without saying a word. Halfway down the hallway I stopped still. Then I turned and went back into the office without knocking.
    John and Gold watched silently as I sat down.
    They waited for me. I didn’t say anything.
    Eventually Gold said, ‘You too?’
    I nodded.
    ‘Do you remember how many times they took samples from you?’ John said.
    ‘I worked at her kindergarten for about a year. I must have used two boxes of Band-Aids,’ I said. ‘At the time I never remembered using a single one of them. I wasn’t even worried about not remembering using them.’
    ‘Sore arms?’ John said.
    I nodded. ‘I went to the doctor for iron tablets because I was slightly anaemic. I wondered why he looked at my arms so strangely, but he didn’t say anything. Probably thought I was an addict.’ I ran my hands through my hair again. ‘I had needle tracks ! I saw them! But I just didn’t worry about it. That bitch messed with my head!’
    ‘You noticed very few of the unusual things here for the first few months you worked full-time,’ John said. ‘While you were here part-time you didn’t seem to notice anything. You had an astonishing lack of curiosity.’
    ‘I never even saw your sword on the wall. It took me months to notice Dark Heavens in its clips, and even then only when Simone pointed it out to me,’ I said. ‘Oh God . How much did I miss when I was working at the kindergarten?’
    ‘The samples are in the hands of the police now,’ Gold said.
    ‘It’s too late to be concerned,’ John said. ‘Go and talk to your parents.’
    ‘What if they used me the other way around?’ I said. ‘Put the demon stuff into me, instead of just taking the samples out?’
    ‘Then they failed, because they have given me a powerful ally,’ John said. ‘Go and talk to your parents.’
    ‘If the demons know about this then the odds on me being a hybrid have just become much shorter,’ I said.
    ‘Probably not worth putting money on,’ Gold said.
    ‘Go,’ John said.
    ‘And talk to my parents. Yes, I know.’ I rose and went.
    The scrabbling of one of the eggs woke me and I pulled myself up on my black coils. Yep; one of the eggs had cracked. It was the oldest nestling, the first one I’d laid.
    I put my skinless hands on the shell and felt the vibration, a tingle of anticipation moving through