Of Dawn and Embers Read online

  Jack shared a look with Kamala, who seemed equally nervous. “So you think he's back?"

  "Maybe," Faye said. “He hasn't contacted me since that day in your old apartment. If he was gonna come after me, now would be the time."

  Kamala licked her lips. “Then shouldn't we be requesting the police to have a stakeout at our place?"

  "No, not your place," Faye said. “I'm gonna rent a hotel room for a few days. One with cameras in the lobby and plenty of security. He'll have to work for it."

  Jack gritted his teeth. “So you want to use yourself as bait?"

  Faye narrowed her eyes at him. “What other choice do I have Jack? It's been nearly a year with almost no leads. I can't just sit around on my ass, waiting for him to show up."

  "God, Houston was right. You really are the Terminator of not listening to reason."

  Faye scowled. “I'm going to give him such a pinch the next time I see him."

  "This is serious, Faye," Kamala said, turning her head enough to glare at her. “You can't take that man on alone. This is foolish."

  "Look, I'm not going to drag the two of you into my mess--"

  "It's not just your mess," Kamala said. “We're in a relationship, Faye. You don't get to just decide that your actions won't affect us, because they will. You are not going to go off on your own to face this man. Winston is a professional. We live in a gated community, so he won't want to risk being seen. Houston and Carmichael will know what to do if they confirm that he is back in Cambridge. Until then, you will lay low and you will not do anything else to endanger your life."

  Faye crossed her arms. “So you just get to make these kind of calls for me, huh? Like you own me?"

  "Faye," Jack said in warning. “This is not about ownership. Kamala's right. Cutting yourself off from help and safety isn't the way to get this done."

  "And what about you two? What about the baby? What if Winston does come for me?"

  "Then we'll face him together," Kamala finished for him. “This baby doesn't make me some kind of invalid, Faye. I am fully capable of protecting my child and the ones I love as well. You're staying with us and that's final."

  She faced forward. Faye swallowed hard. Tears stung in the back of her eyes. She glanced out the window as the city passed by, a welcome distraction from the conflagration of fear, hope, and gratitude that flared through her.

  Jack pulled up to the curb of their house and parked to let the ladies out. Kamala struggled to unbuckle her seatbelt over her tummy and sent her boyfriend a sarcastic smile. “Enjoy furthering your profession simply because there is not a fetus inside of you right now."

  Jack snorted. “Gee, at least you're not bitter about the whole thing, hon."

  Kamala pursed her lips. “Maternity leave is excruciating. Almost as much as the constant headaches, nausea, and frequent trips to the bathroom."

  Jack held up one hand. “I solemnly vow that God-willing my next research project will be how to artificially inseminate men with children."

  Faye scoffed. “Please. Remember how utterly ridiculous men are when they catch the flu? No way should you ever be allowed to carry a child."

  Kamala nodded. “Point taken."

  She leaned in and kissed him. “You still owe me from this morning."

  He just grinned at her and then waggled his eyebrows twice. She giggled and climbed out of the car. “Have a good class, my dragon."

  "Have a good morning, angel."

  Faye leaned over the glove compartment with a sly look. “Have a good class...daddy."

  Jack visibly shuddered. “Oh God, Faye, that is not funny."

  She chuckled and kissed him. “No, it's hilarious."

  Faye shut the rear passenger door and waved as Jack pulled back onto the street and disappeared in the direction of campus. She took out her key and let the two of them in.

  "Need anything?" Faye asked, kicking off her boots by the little area designated for shoes.

  "Not at the moment," Kamala said, sliding out of her flats and into a pair of slippers. “I was going to add some final touches to the baby's room. Care to join me?"

  "Yeah, I could go for that right about now. Sounds relaxing." She followed Kamala around the corner across from the master bedroom.

  Kamala opened the door to a large bedroom the color of the inner petals of a daffodil--a pale yellow with white trim around the windows and at the baseboards. The carpet was a shade of green that emanated fresh grass, but only more muted to match the soft tone of the walls. The crib was against the far left wall, done in white as well, and already had the proper cushions and folded blankets waiting for its occupant. The diaper table sat next to it, and there were two tall, wooden dressers lining the opposite wall, already full of baby clothes. The closet had enough diaper bundles for the next six months, if not more. Kamala's mother Sahana had gone overboard, stocking up on them when they went shopping together a couple weeks prior.

  "We decided to compromise with the decorations," Kamala said, gesturing to the framed photos lying carefully atop bubble wrap. Some were 18 x 24 and others were regular 8 x 10 or 3 x 5 photos of friends, family, events, and even a couple candid shots of the dragons they had cloned. “Two walls per person, and then you fill in whatever you like with the remaining space. That was the only way we could feel like it was fair."

  Faye glanced at the nearest 18 x 24 framed poster. “Gee, I wonder who the Pacific Rim poster came from out of the two of you."

  Kamala rolled her eyes. “I fell in love with a complete dork, didn't I?"

  "You really did." Faye picked up the yardstick. “So did I, God help me. So how's this going to work? You want me to make them all level, right?"

  "Yes," Kamala said. “I figure we put the large ones up all spaced out equally and then fill in the gaps with smaller photos until the space is full."

  "Will do." Faye started measuring up from the floor and marking the spots with pencil while Kamala instructed her how far apart to space the larger frames. Then Faye took the nails and knocked them in one at a time. Kamala took her place in front of each one while Faye handed her the frames, since poor Kamala couldn't really bend down to pick anything up in her state.

  "So," Kamala said. “Do you want to talk to me about what's going on with you?"

  "Such as?"

  "You've been to work less and less. Almost to the point of being part time."

  Faye shrugged. “My programming isn't really holding my attention as much as it used to."

  "Are you thinking of changing careers?"

  "Not sure yet."

  "What would you want to do if you did change careers?"

  Faye narrowed her cornflower blue eyes. “Don't say modeling."

  Kamala laughed. “I'd never. You get up on that runway and pants someone."

  "Damn right I would. I don't know. Everything's just sort of shifted perspective for me ever since..." She winced, not wanting to finish the sentence. Kamala watched her obliquely as she balanced the photo of them at Clearwater Beach.

  "Ever since Winston?"

  Faye licked her lips. “Yeah."

  Kamala walked over and sank into the black bean bag chair near her. “Talk to me. How has it been going in your therapy sessions?"

  "Kam, come on--"

  Kamala lifted the slipper off her right foot in warning. “Don't make me use this."

  "I haven't been going, alright?"

  Kamala blinked at her. “What? Why?"

  "Because I don't feel the same way that I did when I first went in. I was..." She ran a hand through her hair, searching for the words. “Scared. Hurt. Confused. I'm not that anymore."

  "What are you now?"

  "Angry," she said, her eyes flashing. “Because after all this time, that murdering bastard is still walking around a free man."

  "You know the police are doing all they can."

  "I kno
w. It's not Carmichael and Houston's fault that they're bound to a system that doesn't always work. But, I can't stop thinking about how many contracts he's taken since he left Cambridge. How many people are dead because he's not in jail or six feet under. And I can't help wonder if I made that all possible by not killing him when I had the chance."

  "You are asking too much of yourself, Faye. It's not your responsibility to put him away, to hold yourself accountable for the lives he's taken."

  Faye just shrugged. Kamala sat back slightly, thinking it over. “Jack and I watched this animated film some time ago when the baby was keeping me up at night, Batman: Under the Red Hood. Towards the end, the Red Hood challenged Batman to kill the Joker, saying that he didn't understand why he couldn't do it. Batman explained that it wasn't that he couldn't do it. He wouldn't do it. Batman admitted he thought about killing the Joker every single day. However, he wouldn't stop there if he did. The dominoes would begin to fall and his values would change, until he became the very thing he first set out to stop."

  Faye stared at her in amazement. Kamala just shrugged. “Not much of a comic book fan, but the movie struck a chord with me. My point is that killing is a choice that changes you forever. Even if you had done it for the right reasons, there would come a time where you would find that killing became easier, seeming more rational and less horrifying to you if you ever found yourself in danger again. Taking a life is a weight you can never get rid of. I wouldn't want that for you."

  Faye smiled faintly at her girlfriend's wording. “I wear the chain I forged in life."

  Kamala matched her smile as she finished the quote. “I made it link by link. You are stronger than Winston, Faye. Don't become that which you fight. That is all that I ask."

  The blonde sighed in resignation. “You're too smart for your own good."

  "No such thing. Now, help me out of this ridiculous chair. I have to pee."

  Faye headed into the kitchen to make herself some coffee—Kamala some more tea, as hers had gone cold when they went to bail her out—when her phone rang. Something near her navel instinctively jerked whenever she heard her phone ring with an unknown number. The important people in her life all had personalized ringtones, so she always knew who was calling. She hated the paranoia her kidnapping had injected into her brain.

  Faye exhaled through her nose and answered. “Hello?”

  Silence… Then a growling male voice with a Boston accent spoke. “So I hear you’re looking for Winston.”

  Of all the multitudinous things in Jack’s life that required his attention, teaching was surprisingly the easiest one.

  He’d been doing guest lectures ever since he first submitted his project and research for the dragon restoration grant and his teaching opportunities only grew more numerous over time. Jack didn’t get nervous in front of crowds for reasons unknown to him. He didn’t even try to question it any longer. Put him in a room with close friends and he’d sweat bullets. In front of a class of a hundred students. Not a drop. He chocked it up to the idea that maybe he didn’t care about random students’ opinions of him and he cared deeply about what his friends and family thought of him. Though, the latter part had been tearing him up for months now. He hadn’t spoken to his mother since their epic fight at the house six months ago.

  Jack didn’t even have to pay attention to setting up the powerpoint presentation by now. He could hear the students chit-chatting as he worked and kept an eye on his watch until the clock struck eight o’clock on the dot.

  “Morning, class,” Jack said, giving a quick sweeping look over the auditorium and a smile. “Hope you guys all had a good weekend. We’re going to dive right back in where we left off in the anatomy section of the varanus lacerto, so flip on over to page fourteen of your packets and we’ll get started.”

  He hit the remote and the power point switched to a detailed hand drawn diagram of the head and neck of the dragon with the outer edges filled in with scales, then the lower layers of the epidermis, down through the muscles, veins and arteries, nervous system, and finally the bones.

  He aimed a laser pointer at the soft palate of the dragon’s head. “Recently, it’s been discovered that this species’ scent capabilities are in tune with that of bloodhounds, except amplified to a ridiculous extent. Varanus lacerto are pack hunters, and while they mainly feast on bugs, fish, and leftover kills from larger predators, when food is scarce, they band together and track down live animals using their superior sense of smell. They corner the target and attack together.

  A single bite alone isn’t enough to take down anything larger than perhaps a possum, but when combined among maybe four or five dragons, they can kill prey as large as a human being. They can strip a corpse down to the bones.”

  Jack switched to a slide that showed more of the dragon’s skull, including its jaws. “Varanus lacerto consume meat like any other reptile, for the most part, tearing out chunks and swallowing them whole. The shape of the fangs is similar to your average snake, to hook into the skin and pull the meat down into the throat. If you’ve ever seen anyone get bitten by a python or an anaconda, that’s why it’s so brutal—the teeth are designed to catch and hold, so pulling away will rip entire chunks of flesh out if done incorrectly.”

  He saw a few students wince and grinned toothily. “Hey, want me to look up some Youtube videos on the subject?”

  A resounding “NO!” came from the students and he chuckled good-naturedly. “Anyway, let’s get a little deeper into the feeding processes.”

  Class flew by at light-speed once he delved into the digestive tract and paused every so often to let them ask questions. He shut down the equipment as the students began filing out of the auditorium. One small comfort he’d found was that the MIT students weren’t nearly as hard on him for the project as the rest of the world seemed to be. He still got the occasional hate mail in his Inbox or a rude comment from a passerby here or there because of the Baba Yaga, Tokyo attack, but over time he came to accept the consequences his actions inadvertently caused.

  “Dr. Jackson?”

  Jack turned to see a tall black man in his thirties standing there. He had a neatly trimmed goatee and wore a black dress shirt and slacks, no jacket, with a cobalt tie. There was a manila folder tucked under his elbow, his other arm extended. “Hi, I’m Bruce Calloway.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Calloway,” Jack said, shaking his hand, before slinging his briefcase over one shoulder. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m here on behalf of the U.S. government. We’d like to hire you to help us break up a dragon fighting ring.”

  “…a what?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  REFUGE IN AUDACITY

  "Okay," Jack said, once he and Calloway were safely shut inside a smaller classroom with no occupants. “Let's start with the first and most important question. What the actual fuck?"

  Calloway nodded sagely. “That is the most important question. I'm afraid I can only give you the abbreviated version. I'm under orders not to spill the beans unless you agree to help, as this is a matter of national security."

  Jack ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “Can I just have a normal Monday for once in my life?"

  "I'm pretty sure that's no longer an option for you, Dr. Jackson."

  He sighed. “Yeah, you're probably right. Okay, so what can you tell me?"

  Calloway offered him the manila folder. “Remember this morning when Agent Shannon and Professor Whitmore showed up on your doorstep to get the dragon back?"

  Jack scowled as he flipped the folder open. “Vaguely."

  "Well, that was their cover story. Pete didn't escape. She was released."

  Jack frowned. “Why?"

  "It was a test to see if she could track a scent over an extremely long distance. Check the file."

  Jack read the report for a moment or two and abruptly paled. “You're telling me she was all the
way in Washington D.C. when she was released?"

  Calloway nodded. “That's right, Dr. Jackson. The girl has mad skills."

  "No shit. But, why would they have let her go? She's a valuable asset. She could have gone off course or been sighted or tried to hurt someone."

  "This was a controlled experiment. Shannon and Whitmore were trailing her closely the entire time to see if she stayed on course to find you and Dr. Anjali. She was never out of their sight and thus wasn't in any immediate danger."

  "Look, the data on this discovery is phenomenal, but why were they doing it in the first place?"

  "Long story short, they want to use Pete to help track down the other dragons that have been smuggled into the United States for these dragon fighting rings. So far, the organizations responsible have flown so far under the radar not even the FBI and the CIA can catch their scent."

  Calloway paused. “Sorry, no pun intended. Both agencies have only caught glimpses of these fights in the carnage they've left behind. The dragons' remains are then sold for millions on the black market, and when the agencies tried tracking it back to the source, they couldn't get anything. All they know is that someone is out there is forcing these animals to tear each other to pieces for profit. You know as well as I do, the risk we run if even one of them gets loose."

  Jack swallowed hard. “Please tell me these whack jobs didn't clone another Baba Yaga."

  "No, not as far as we can tell. Whoever cloned her had access to technology that these people can't replicate."

  The scientist let out a hissing breath of relief. “Thank God. So why the hell is the government knocking on my door? Last time I checked, they barricaded the damn thing and electrified the doorknob."

  "Times change. The original plan was to use Pete to track the dragons, not the criminals. However, she won't cooperate with any of our handlers despite numerous attempts to placate her. She reacts violently in anyone's presence but you and Dr. Anjali's, as far as we know. That's why she flew straight to you, no delays, no attempts to hunt for food, nothing. To her, you're the next best thing to her pack and she'll protect you or obey you without question."