“So if they’re here, they’re still here.”
“But where?” Rakell muttered to himself. Their watchers had descended on the cemetery almost immediately, but no signs of activity had been found.
The cemetery itself was old, dating back to the founding of Five Peaks in the early nineteen-hundreds. Out beyond the south-east edge of town, it lay at the base of Mount Valen. It covered a vast area, but no immediate signs of habitation had been noticed. Wherever they were, the Cado were well concealed.
Or this is another trap. Another effort of the Cado to lure us in, and try to eliminate us without facing us directly.
The Cado were notorious for that. They weren’t warriors, just a group of thugs, organized criminals with superhuman powers. They didn’t want to fight the trained clan shifters because they knew that, unless they had overwhelming numbers, they would lose.
So they rigged all their former bases with traps and devices that would maim or kill the clan strike teams when they arrived, hoping that they might pick one off here or there. It had succeeded just recently on a mission Rakell had been a part of. The Cado had succeeded in killing one of his teammates.
Today we avenge Prate as well, he thought, recalling the fallen storm dragon.
“If they’re in there, they aren’t going anywhere,” Blede assured him as Rakell tapped impatiently on the ground. “Not with the team we’ve formed.”
Rakell was forced to agree. In addition to their own team of Blede, Rakell, Kayb, Laura and Vlad, there were representatives from two other clans.
Clan Aterna had sent a team headed by Kal Aterna, and included Braz, Pace, and Asher, the youngest sibling of Logan, the Aterna clan head. They were covering the north side of the cemetery, and were ready to prevent any of the Cado from escaping that way and heading back into Five Peaks.
On the south and east sides was a sizeable contingent of dragons from Clan Valen. The most private of the clans, they kept to themselves. Their home was set apart from the others, and Rakell admitted he didn’t know much about them, having rarely interacted with any.
He did, however, know the leader of the team. Warren, the clan head himself, was heading it up. The discovery that the Cado had holed up at the base of his mountain had incensed the frost dragon, and he had come down himself to purge the Cado scum. He had arrived at the head of nearly a dozen grim-faced warriors. All of whom wanted their land cleansed.
Rakell couldn’t blame them one bit.
“We can’t just sit here all night,” he muttered. “We have to go in there and find them.”
Blede sighed. “I know.”
Rakell suspected that Blede was remembering the last time they’d assaulted a Cado base, which was when Prate had died.
“We won’t forget,” he said, clapping his team leader on the shoulder.
The two weren’t the closest, but Rakell had been the team’s second for several years now, and in the field they operated like a well-oiled machine.
Blede nodded. “Let’s do this.”
Rakell nodded and a tiny flame shot from his index finger, heading up into the night sky. He knew that the other watchers would see it, and know what it meant.
Move in.
The Teres team were up and moving, spread out and searching for traps as they moved through the cemetery. Headstones and crosses dotted the outer areas, the names and dates still visible on them. The closer they got to the center, passing under trees and around large stones, the more faded things became.
“There’s nobody here,” Lara hissed as they slowed, nearing the center.
Here there were some truly ancient graves, along with the stone mausoleums that had been popular in the past. Large hut-like buildings meant to give the dead a final resting place.
“What else could he have meant?” Rakell growled, pushing onward, deeper into the larger monuments, whose occupants were long since crumbled into dust.
The rest of their team milled about as the other dragons emerged as well. All this power in one spot, and for what? Nothing! They’d been outwitted by the Cado again.
“The bastards snuck out from right under our noses,” Warren snarled angrily, smacking a meaty fist into his palm.
Rakell spun, whirling on the Valen leader. “What did you just say?”
Warren, thinking that the upstart Teres dragon was challenging him, glared at Rakell, cool frost rimming his eyes. “You got a problem with me?”
“Under our noses,” Rakell repeated, his eyes darting to the stone mausoleums. “Of course. Warren, you’re a genius!”
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