feet of me.
You didn’t sense him in the wyvern cave, did you?
Not at first, but I felt him coming before he sprang at me.
That was good to know before we faced off against another dragon. I’ll wait until I see if there’s a battle.
Zav nodded and continued on. He’d surprised me by speaking gently into my mind, not the booming headache-inducing demonstration of power I’d gotten from previous mental communications with dragons.
After a few steps, he paused, lifting his nose in the air. He turned down a walkway between two big tanks. The sound of rushing water reached my ears, and we walked over grating in the floor with a channel of water running through ten feet below. To me, the air smelled faintly of chlorine, but Zav must have detected something else.
He turned down another walkway, following it to the end where the only choice was to climb a ladder up the side of a tank or go back. He crouched and scraped at something on the textured flooring. My night vision wasn’t good enough to see what it was.
Straightening again, he looked up, not at the tank but at something hanging from the high ceiling.
I swallowed and followed his gaze. Four bodies dangled down from ropes tied to beams.
23
“They’re the missing goblins,” Zav said.
I nodded numbly as I stared upward. At first, I’d thought they were children—my night-vision charm couldn’t distinguish skin color well—but the ragged clothing was similar to what the other goblins had worn. Only it was more torn and dark with bloodstains. The victims’ faces were mutilated, gouged by talons, and their throats had been slit open.
I managed not to react with horror—I’d seen enough death to be somewhat inured to it—but I did spin a slow circle, searching the shadows above as I thumbed Chopper’s worn grip. All those towering tanks would make excellent perches for a predator—and what was a dragon but a massive predator?—to spring down from.
Zav turned, brushed past me, and headed back to the main walkway. I will attempt to lead us to the people who are still living but in pain.
Good.
Be wary. I suspect they were only kept alive because Dobsaurin was laying a trap.
As he had been doing with the children in the windmill. Had Zav been in the area a week ago, he might have walked into Dob’s trap then.
I’m always wary, trust me. I followed him past more computer equipment as we paralleled the water streaming through the canal under the floor. Any chance he left a trap but isn’t here himself?
Possibly, but I hope he is here. Better to face him here than in the middle of a populated area.
I wasn’t sure I agreed, but I kept scanning the shadows and eyed the top of every tank we passed.
Zav hopped over the railing and off the walkway. He strode toward the grate above the canal, but it wasn’t until he crouched down that I saw anything unusual.
Pieces of rope were looped through the grate from below, attached to something out of sight. I came up beside Zav and tried to pick out what was in the dark shadows down there, mostly obscured by the grate. Something hung above the water. No, I realized as one of the shadows stirred. Someone.
Three humans dangled from the ropes, which were tied around their wrists to hang them from the grate, their feet dragging in the current. Their heads were bent forward, and I couldn’t tell if their faces had been mutilated by dragon talons. If not for the movement one had made, I would have been certain they were dead. Were these the missing joggers?
Zav touched the grate but jerked his hand back. He put a protective ward on it, no doubt to delay me. Keep an eye out.
I will.
I stepped back a few feet so I could see up and down the walkway, and I alternated checking that and peering at the tanks all around and the catwalks high above. Even though I couldn’t sense the other dragon, my instincts told me there was a threat here. Instincts that even humans had, the ancient genes that warned when something inimical was watching you.
While I waited, I pulled out a fresh magazine for Fezzik. I fished out the three cartridges that Willard had given me, the ones laden with transmitters, and replaced three of the magical ones with them. Then I loaded my gun with the new magazine. I still didn’t think it would work, that those cartridges