didn’t move for several seconds, until a shadow loomed over her torso.
Moving slowly into the cone of light from the helicopter, the head of the dragon, at the end of its long twisted neck, swung into view. Mara quickly turned around to look above her shoulders and realized that she was no longer on the overpass, nor was she on the ground. Muscles and scales rippled beneath her, not pavement or shingles. She had landed on the back of the dragon.
Wide-eyed, she pushed herself up from its back and looked around. She lay to the left of the raised spines that erupted from the dragon’s backbone and ran from its head to its tail. The creature undulated beneath her. The massive wings rose up from the darkness just a few feet from Mara’s head. Wind crashed down on her, pressing her down, against the armored hide.
Above her, the dragon swiveled its head over its own back and screamed into the sky, blowing a burst of flame at the helicopter, which moved away and ascended, its pilot clearly determining that it wasn’t safe to hover around a fire-breathing serpent.
The dragon swung its torso in one swift turn, trotted for several paces and leaped into the air. Mara flopped along its upper flanks, flailing for a way to hold on, but the whipping wind and angle of ascent pushed her backward. She wedged her fingers between scales and held on for a few seconds, but they sliced into her skin, and she let go. Rolling sideways, she tumbled into the dragon’s spine—the tall, flat quills that bisected its back. There she got a handhold, grabbing one of the bony protrusions with both hands. Digging her heels into a thick patch of scales, she ducked her head and pressed herself against the dragon’s back. Once she felt stable, she let the muscles in her arms and legs relax a little, took a deep, ragged breath and looked up.
Facing backward, she looked down the slope of the dragon’s back toward the ground. The pile of debris that was the overpass on McLaughlin Boulevard had already sunk into obscurity and was now simply a void in the otherwise teeming sea of city lights and traffic that surrounded it. Warehouses and expansive lit parking lots boxed in the immediate area. Farther afield, to the north, the blazing cityscape of downtown Portland glowed beneath a heavy bank of clouds.
Mara wondered if the dragon purposefully had selected this spot to attack her mother. While still in the middle of urban sprawl, it was isolated enough for the dragon to do its business. On second thought, she doubted the dragon cared about being discrete.
A muffled roar and a sudden tautness along the dragon’s torso caught Mara’s attention. She slowly twisted around to see they were flying directly at the white helicopter, emblazoned with a bold stylized 12. She gasped as the dragon screeched again and emitted a blast of flame that licked at the bottom of the helicopter. The vehicle wobbled for a second, smoothly dipped into a shallow U and disappeared into the clouds.
The dragon arched to the right but stayed below the cloud layer. Mara sensed it stalking its prey. She suspected the helicopter had doused its spotlight, because there was no hint of light in the sky. Nor could she hear it, but that could simply be the wind masking the beat of the rotors. They circled below the clouds like a shark.
Mara silently prayed that the helicopter had somehow slipped away above the clouds. That would leave her with just one worry: how to get down from here. The last time she went on a dragon ride, it was, for lack of a better way of putting it, at the behest of the beast—and through the influence of Ping, shortly after he had merged with it. Now it seemed the dragon was calling the shots.
Ahead and to the right, a wisp of vapor separated from the dark clouds. Mara could see a faint red light winking in the distance. The dragon’s head twitched that way, and it made whatever adjustments its wings needed to alter course. As they approached, the helicopter broke through the clouds, descending quickly, swinging below the dragon’s body, where Mara could not see it. The dragon growled, sending a tremor through its body. Swinging left, it dove into a corkscrew.
Mara’s stomach felt like it was coming up through her throat. She could not inhale and felt light-headed when they leveled off.