Chapter 14

Early morning sunlight was just starting to glow through the window as Daniel buttoned his pants and shrugged on his shirt. He moved to the window, next to where he had left the saddle, and looked out at the sky. Yellow and gold tendrils were just beginning to creep overhead.

He picked up the saddle and carried it toward the front door. The buckles jingled quietly in the still morning air.

Kelly shifted and moaned softly. "Daniel?" she mumbled, opening one eye. "What're you doing?"

"Just going for a morning ride," he said, leaning the saddle against the wall as he fumbled the door open. He met her questioning gaze, and smiled slightly. "I just need some time to think."

She nodded slightly. He set the saddle down outside the door, then came back and knelt next to her and kissed her, gently and unhurriedly. She slipped an arm around his neck, while he traced the curve of her side and thigh. She shivered.

"How long will you be gone?" she asked quietly.

"I don't know," he said. "A few hours, maybe."

There was a question in her eyes, but she left it unspoken. "Be careful," she said.

"I will," he lied.


The key scraped in the lock, and the door swung quietly open. He looked silently around before entering.

The note was still in the entryway where he had left it. He knelt to pick it up, and re-read it, then idly flipped it over to look at the back. It was exactly as he had left it. A small part of him had been hoping it would be otherwise, and that part of him clenched the paper tightly before he smoothed it out and set it back down.

He stood stiffly and walked slowly through the apartment. The bedroom gave him pause, but after a moment he stepped inside and walked around the bed, running his fingers along the sheets and touching Anna's pillow. He stood there for a long time, his fingers tracing invisible patterns along the pillow as he stared out the window at the lightening sky.

Finally he stood and took a notebook from the bookshelf next to the bed, fished around the shelf for a pen, and sat with the notebook propped against his knee, flipping to find an empty page. He jotted a name, then a few others. Adding a crude sketch of the metro area, he began plotting points.

After five minutes, the list had grown to fifteen names, scattered far and wide, of friends and hangouts. Places where he might find Anna.

Might. If.

The words crowded into his head, and he pushed them aside.

He tapped the pen idly against the page and turned to look outside the window, just as a large black shape soared past in the distance.

He swallowed hard and put the pen back to the paper. He held it like that for a long moment, then started to write a word he didn't want to see.

With a cry, he ripped the page out of the notebook, tore it in half, and crumpled the pieces. He rose silently, and a tear dripped from his face as he tossed the ball of paper aside and strode back to Goewyn.


The gate was still open. He left Goewyn tethered outside the fence. The eggshells crunched under his feet as he prowled around the enclosure.

A number of the eggs near the entrance had been smashed already. There were hoofprints near some. Off to another side was a discarded segment of two-by-four.

But many of the other eggs looked like they had already hatched. He looked up, wondering where all of the hatchlings could be. There must be dozens or hundreds of eggs already hatched.

Further into the substation, more of the eggs were unhatched and intact. He wiped the sweat off his hands and took a firm grip on the sword, stalked toward the nearest pile, and swung. Three eggs splintered and splashed open as two others rolled away.

He took another swing, and more eggs shattered. A crackle of electricity sang through his fingers, and he swung again. And again.

More eggs rolled away as he decimated the pile, and he began to wade through a sea of eggs, smashing all of them he could see. His fingers began to burn, that stinging sensation that feels like fire and ice, but he kept going. He idly wondered if he were getting frostbite. The thought almost made him laugh out loud; the sun was already beginning to warm the air, and he was dripping sweat.

He heard a distinctive crackle off to his side, and spun around to see a baby raptor just emerging from its shell. Without hesitation, he stabbed his sword through its torso and the two eggs behind it. A chill fire ran down Daniel's arm, and he shuddered violently as a shadow seemed to twine around his arm. The raptor let out a hoarse squeak and was still.

Full-grown raptors had begun to circle overhead, calling out to each other, but they did not descend. One, dark gray in color, was circling nearly within distance of the sword's swing, but was wary enough to come no closer, and he was too absorbed to pay it any heed. The world began to take on a blue cast as the ice spread through him. Time lost its meaning. There were only eggs and broken shells, whispering cold spreading in his veins, and the stinging blaze of the sword.

There was an egg on top of one of the transformers, just above his head. He swung his sword, smashing the egg and striking the transformer.

The world erupted in an explosion of light, sound, and an agony of heat.

He slammed into the fence and slumped to the ground.

The gray raptor screeched and wheeled into a dive, extending its claws. He raised his arm in front of his face. There was a searing pain, a deafening cry, and the raptor crashed into the fence beside him, then took back to the air with a quavering hiss.

The sword was no longer in his hand. He looked frantically around through the red haze, then caught sight of a black raptor diving toward him, with another close behind.

Two impacts. Pain lanced through his arm and his stomach.

Then fire burst forth, and the raptors fell to the ground ten feet away and did not move again.

The remaining raptors, half a dozen of them, cried out and flew away.

He looked around in wonder. The transformer his sword had struck had... exploded, was the only word that came to mind. Ragged splinters of twisted metal stuck out in all directions from the concrete, some of them still glowing red from the heat. A fine spray of copper dust had settled on the other transformers nearby. The air was heavy with the smell of copper, hot steel, and something else he could not identify.

He looked at his arms where the raptors' claws had connected. His blood was already beginning to dry on his arms, but there were no visible cuts. He touched the shredded fabric over his stomach, flinching at the pain he half-expected to feel, but again, there was blood, but no cuts, not even a scar.

But the cold was already beginning to seep back down his arms and across his vision. His hand began to shake as he looked around for the sword. He finally spotted it thirty feet away, in the middle of a pile of eggs, and started toward it.

Crack! Crack! Two more eggs splintered, directly in front of him. Two pairs of black, beady eyes fixed on him. The thought passed through his mind that they were hatching much more quickly than any of them he had seen before, and he slowed. Indecision waged a battle within him; his hands itched to be back on the hilt of the sword, cutting a path through the black things that had torn his life apart, but still caution held him back. He was still alive despite the attacks he had been through, but he didn't trust that luck to hold.

Neither of the hatchlings made a move toward him. The nearer one, scarcely more than ten feet away, spread its wings and tried to take to the air, then tumbled back to the ground with a hiss.

Daniel stepped forward, and the raptor stumbled backward, on legs that were never designed for walking, and hissing more loudly as he approached.

The farther raptor leapt into the air and, with a few mighty beats of its still-tiny wings, made its way away and skyward. The nearer one, still earthbound, tried to flap its wings to follow, but succeeded only in losing its footing entirely and falling to the ground.

Spotting his chance at a clear path, Daniel darted forward. The raptor hissed as he approached, but fell silent as he passed less than five feet away and ran on toward the sword.

The hilt was freezing cold, and a thought started to pass through his mind, but then his fingers were closing around the hilt, and the thought slipped away. The oranges in the sky suddenly fell away to gray, the greens of trees outside the fence shivered to black, and the blue overhead turned distant and cold. Fresh sweat broke out on his forehead as the cold spread through him, penetrating to his bones.

A thin smile played across his lips as he turned back to the raptor, sword held at the ready. The black figure stumbled and tumbled away, ducking behind a large pile of eggs.

His eyes fell on the eggs. The swing was fluid and natural, strength flowing from the chill in his bones, and a chill seemed to pass through the air around him as the blade connected, smashing six eggs in one slice, fragments flying, egg innards spattering across the ground. The rest of the pile collapsed in the avalanche, and the blade sang again.

The hatchling raptor had made it about twenty feet away, and once again tried to take to wing. This time it stayed aloft for a few seconds, landing again a few feet farther on. Daniel caught the flash of motion and stopped, his eyes picking out the clearest path toward the raptor.

Several more cracks broke out in the far side of the enclosure, and his eyes darted over briefly, then focused again on the raptor on the ground. He began to run, and the raptor squawked and took to the air again, stronger this time.

But as he covered the distance, it faltered again, and dipped down in front of a transformer --

Once more, his sword went through its mark and connected with a transformer. Once again, the blast of heat sent him sprawling.

His head was spinning, and patterns of yellow and red danced in front of his eyes. Somewhere in the distance, he heard a horse whinnying in alarm, but he couldn't collect his thoughts. Something was crunching under his arm as he moved, and something crackled and flapped in the distance. A coppery smell drifted through the air, mixed with something darker, green-smelling.

There was something next to his hand. His fingers slipped around it, and the warmth slid liquidly down his arm. His vision began to clear, and he blinked through a haze of stars, wondering why he was lying on the ground, in a sea of giant broken eggshells, with a rapidly cooling sword in his hand.

He moved his head, and the warmth from the transformer struck his face. Realization struck him, even as the chill began to return and the shadow began to pass through him again.

He swung to his feet, staggered forward a few steps, and swung at another transformer. Warmth bathed him. Light sang through him. His next few steps were steadier. Another swing; another transformer; another explosion.

Followed by an explosion from behind him, as dozens of raptors burst forth from their eggs and took to the air.

He turned to see them go. "God damn," he whispered.

Then the cold was seeping back into his legs, and he swung at another transformer. There was another flash of copper and light and life-giving warmth and burning heat.

Too hot. Going right through him. Pain. Shining right through him.

Then Goewyn was there, and he hung onto the stirrup and struggled to keep up. Somehow, then, he was in the saddle, and knew nothing more.


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