Lupi 08 - Death Magic

mindspeech . . . oh. A whiff of chagrin. You did not yet know that part. Not-now is very confusing.
    “You—you’re how Ruben and his Shadow Unit communicate? You and the other dragons?” Of course. Dragons were the most undetectable communication device possible.
    It is time for you to go.
    “Mika—”
    When a dragon says it’s time to go, he can make it so whether you agree or not. Mika scooped Lily up in his front talons and hurled himself skyward. His wings snapped up and out. The jolt from their first massive buffeting of the air was huge. So was the second. And the third.
    The jolt of terror and memory was pretty huge, too. Lily had been carried this way across the plains of hell, sundered from everything, even her name, hurt and lost and terrified, unable to do anything but endure . . .
    You are loud!
    “Put me down!” she screamed with mind and voice together.
    He did. He landed about twenty yards from a teeming horde of fourth- or fifth-graders and the outnumbered adults trying desperately to corral them, set her on her feet, and leaped skyward again.
    The shriek level was ear-numbing. She could not let her wobbly legs give out on her. She had to go calm down the miniature civilians and . . . oh, shit. Not all of the screaming was from fear, and here came . . .
    “Tawny!” screamed one of the adults. “You come back here right now!”
    The pigtailed sprinter had long legs for her age and a head start on the heavyset woman in pursuit. Lily could see how that was going to work out and started toward the girl, calling out, “It’s okay. I’m, ah, a friend of Mika’s. He didn’t hurt me. It’s okay, everyone.”
    The kid jolted to a halt in front of Lily. Her skin was dark. Her eyes were lit with urgent joy. “I want to meet him! Tell him to come back. I want to talk to him, to—to—he’s your friend? You could introduce me. My name’s Tawny. I need to meet the dragon!”
    “Um, well, I don’t think I can arrange that, but you got to see him from pretty close up. That’s something, isn’t it? I . . . uh-oh.” Tawny’s escape or her teacher’s pursuit had stampeded the herd. Fifty or so kids were racing straight for her.
    The teacher got there first. She was a tall woman, gray-haired and out of breath. “Tawny, you will go back to the class right now, you hear me?”
    “The class is here, Miss Pearson.” Tawny’s eyes were limpid with innocence. “Mostly here, anyways.”
    Miss Pearson’s skin flushed to a really deep chocolate. She glared at Lily. “I have no idea what you thought you were doing, flying that dragon so close to these children—”
    “I didn’t fly him. He flew me.”
    “But for every one like Tawny here who is overly fascinated by dragons, there’s another child who was scared to death when it flew over us like that! It was shockingly irresponsible for you to—”
    “Ma’am, a dragon is not a horse. I was not steering Mika.”
    The herd arrived. Everyone was shouting, wanting to know how to get a ride and if it had hurt and what if the dragon had dropped her and what did dragons eat and did his claws hurt and I don’t see any blood and where did he go . . . although one voice, belonging to a young blond woman, did ask Lily if she was all right.
    “I’m fine,” she assured her sole well-wisher. “I’m sorry Mika scared some of you. He’s not always very considerate. Oh. Sorry. I have to get that.”
    Lily had seldom been so glad to hear her phone buzz. She pulled it from her inside pocket. “Excuse me, I have to answer this, and I need to step away . . . no, ma’ am, I realize that. Yes—” One of the teachers or aides had recognized her. “I’m Special Agent Yu. Move, please. Excuse me.” She finally broke free of the horde and thumbed her phone on. “Lily Yu here.”
    It was Martin Croft, his smooth tenor voice utterly uninflected. “I need to know where you were from 8:30 until 12:30 today.”
    Her brain went blank. This was one hundred percent not what she’d expected. “Well. Okay. I arrived at headquarters at 8:00 and remained there until 11:05, when I left for Rock Creek Park to see Mika. I reached the park at approximately 11:15—the guard at the gate should be able to confirm—and was with Mika until”—she glanced at her watch; it was 1:00—“12:45 or 12:50.”
    “Mika.” There was an odd note in Croft’s voice. “I suppose that works, though I’d prefer not to be the one to depose him, should it be