Ambush. Part 23

My father is the problem, I thought.

Jude seemed almost happy with the new direction. Malcolm and Paul stopped tearing at the door the security guards had run through and flew over to stand on either side of Jude. Jude lowered his head, and I turned back and looked at Kate.

"Do you want to stay here?" I asked. "Or come with?"

"Hey," Wyatt protested. "She's on a date with me."

"Come on," I waved.

As I turned back to Jude, he read my mind perfectly and screeched. Malcolm and Paul lowered their heads. I hopped on Jude, while Kate got on Malcolm and Wyatt leaped on Paul. I wanted to give some sort of command to make it look like I was in charge, but before I could say a word, all three dragons shot off from the stage and up through the hole they had created in the roof.

I breathed a small sigh of relief, knowing that for the moment Kate wasn't the target, she was part of the team.

Chapter 29.

I'll Cry Instead Very stealthlike, we flew through the sky as if we were jets, just without all the noise and pollution. The only sound was that of flapping wings and Wyatt occasionally screaming like a little girl. The dragons swooped and rocked in smooth, easy motions as they piloted their way over Kingsplot and toward the hospital my father was locked in.

I could see the large, lit, gla.s.s atrium that rose from the middle of the hospital like Matterhorn Mountain at Disneyland. I had wanted to save Kate and get the dragons away from Callowbrow, but now I was afraid I was heading into something equally harmful. My dad was not well, and I wasn't sure if him being attacked by dragons was the best thing for his condition. I tried to reason with Jude as we flew, but he had such a one-track mind. He had read the hurt and betrayal I felt, and I knew that until he finished this objective he wouldn't easily move on to the next.

"We could go through the front door!" I yelled to Jude. "If we ring the bell they might just bring him to us!"

Jude wasn't buying it. He wasn't the kind of dragon that stopped to ring bells. He much preferred bringing down the roof. I squeezed his neck, tightly pushing the side of my face into his skin. Jude blew out fire, and the puff of warmth rippled over me.

Malcolm and Kate flew up behind Jude, and Paul and Wyatt maneuvered to a position to their left. Then, like three darts on the same trajectory and traveling at the same speed, all three dragons with us...o...b..ard shot directly toward the gla.s.s mountain in the center of the hospital's roof. I closed my eyes. It was the third gla.s.s structure I would be flying through tonight. And even though Jude's head always seemed to absorb the blow well, it was still not an easy feeling flying directly into gla.s.s.

Jude hit first, crashing through the gla.s.s roof and down into the small plants and trees that were growing around the indoor atrium. Metal brackets and gla.s.s rained down in a ma.s.sive tinkling fashion.

Malcolm and Paul came in right behind us, screeching as they arrived.

Alarms sounded immediately, and lights flashed on as orderlies seemed to come out of the woodwork. Instantly there were dozens of beefy men in scrubs. They looked at the dragons and had a quick change of heart. All of them turned and started running away. I had no idea where my father was, but I knew that the lady with the big nose was in charge.

I only had to think it, and Jude reacted.

He ran toward a set of locked double doors and charged through them like a multihorned cosmic bull. The doors flew open and off their hinges. Malcolm pa.s.sed us running on the wall. Kate was holding onto him as tightly as I was holding onto Jude. I tried to think of something else to get Jude's mind off the poor woman in charge, but it was hard to think of something I wanted Jude to harm instead.

I kept thinking of produce and bad weather, seeing how I would have no problem with Jude taking on broccoli and a rainstorm, but it didn't work. Jude stomped down the hall toward the front. The woman with the big nose was cowering behind the desk, frantically trying to call someone for help. Jude opened his ma.s.sive jaw and screamed. Spit flew everywhere, covering the walls with wet, dark patterns. The black dragon stretched his neck over the desk and looked down at the woman.

She didn't sound very professional when she screamed.

I looked beside me. Kate and Wyatt were still on their dragons, holding on for dear life. Three huge orderlies came running at Jude with some sort of metal sticks. Before they could get anywhere near him, Paul and Malcolm moved into their path and knocked them to the ground. I could see Wyatt and Kate desperately trying to hang on during the scuffle.

I turned my attention to the woman behind the counter. "h.e.l.lo," I yelled.

Jude pulled back a bit, and the woman poked her head up just enough to see me.

"I need to talk to my father, Aeron."

"He's not here," she whimpered. "Is that a . . . ?"

"Have you never seen a dragon before?" I asked incredulously. "Well, now you have. So where's my father? You guys had him locked up."

"Dragons aren't real," she said, crying.

All three dragons screamed in an effort to help her see reality.

"Sheriff Pax has him," she said shaking. "He came yesterday and ordered his release."

"That's impossible," I said again. "Why would . . . ?"

I shouldn't have thought it, but the thought went something like this: Sheriff Pax had gotten my father out of the hospital so that he could take him to the manor, use the elevator, and find the dragons that belonged to me. My dad didn't care about me; he cared only about the dragons.

It was just a quick thought, but it was enough to change Jude's focus again. He spun around and roared. I tried to thank the lady for the information, but Jude was moving so quickly that I'm not sure she heard me.

Malcolm and Paul got in line behind Jude as he ran back down the hall knocking out ceiling tiles with his head and wings and breaking anything that wasn't as wide as him. I could hear Kate and Wyatt yelling things, but I couldn't understand them due to all the tearing and ripping of building materials.

Jude slammed through the same doors he had busted moments before and then leaped upward. He flew out of the shattered atrium and straight up into the night sky. He flapped his wings and quickly shot east.

I was fighting my brain, trying to get my thoughts to stay clear. I was scared to think about anything. I knew I was simply postponing the inevitable by not thinking, but someone was going to get seriously hurt unless I got Jude under control.

"Calm down!" I ordered.

I could feel him resist and reject those thoughts. Jude wasn't in the mood for anyone to control him. He was beginning to recognize his position and with each new moment his thoughts became stronger and less of mine and more of his. He could feel the division between me and my father. He also understood that whereas I wanted nothing more than to protect him, my father wanted to take him away.

It was very cold as we flew over Lake Mend and the old ball bearing factory. And it was even colder as we traveled into the mountains toward the manor. Jude kept blowing fire, and the warm flames washed over us like small blasts from a furnace. I couldn't tell if he was doing it to keep us warm or because he just wanted to show off.

"Don't kill anyone," I kept saying aloud, hoping the message would sink in. "Don't kill anyone!"

The dragons in the past had gone from pets to pillagers quickly and once they had turned, they no longer had any affection or concern for me or anyone else. Jude was different. We both understood that we needed each other for this to continue, for his species to carry on.

"Still!" I yelled. "Don't kill anyone!"

I could feel his thoughts, and they were focused only on finding my father in the cavern.

One of the best things about traveling by dragon is the speed. We didn't have to drive slowly up the steep, winding road. We simply had to soar straight up the mountainside and into the forest above Kingsplot. It took us a few minutes to do what it usually took an hour to do in a car.

I could see the Pillage manor. Not a single light was on. Every floor was dark. Even the lights lining the driveway were off.

Jude circled the manor and then swooped into the same fifth-story window he had broken out of. He settled in the foyer as Malcolm and Paul entered behind him. I looked over at Kate. Her hair had blown free of the pins holding it in place, but she looked wonderful, although a little ticked off. Wyatt was holding onto Paul's neck so tightly that the poor dragon began to choke and shake. Wyatt let go and slipped off the dragon like a fried egg out of a Teflon pan. I climbed off Jude and ran to Kate. When I reached out to help her, she refused to take my hand.

Apparently she was still holding a grudge. I tried not to think poorly of her for fear of Jude reacting to it.

It was dark in the manor, but our eyes adjusted. Kate's once-beautiful dress was torn and blackened all over. It was obvious that Malcolm had blown a little fire in flight as well. Wyatt stood up. He didn't look right in a tux. In fact, it looked more absurd to see him dressed up that way than to see him standing next to a dragon.

The last time I had been in this room, Thomas and Wane were there. Now it was completely silent. There was destruction everywhere, and I could see through the giant holes in all the walls. It made the fifth floor feel much more open.

"What now?" Wyatt asked.

I couldn't answer Wyatt yet because I was focusing on singing another song in my head to keep my thoughts from thinking anything that might prompt Jude to leave or kill someone. I kept singing the theme song to iCarly over and over.

Jude looked mad about my taste in music.

"Are you humming something?" Kate asked.

Jude turned and began to run toward the bathroom. Malcolm and Paul surprised no one by following suit.

"Go downstairs!" I yelled at Wyatt and Kate. "Find Thomas and Wane."

"Okay," Wyatt said.

"No way," Kate disagreed.

"You don't understand," I pleaded. "I don't know what's going to happen."

"That's your best attribute," Kate said. "I'm not going downstairs."

Apparently Wyatt didn't appreciate that part of my personality. He took off for the stairs while Kate followed me into the bathroom. The whole fifth floor was so torn up that there were no doors or completely intact structures anywhere.

"Those dragons can't fit in the elevator," Kate commented as we ran, showing she had a pretty good grasp of spatial relations.

"There's no elevator anymore," I said, jumping over a big chunk of hallway wall. "They climbed up the shaft."

"That shaft has to be half a mile long," Kate said, baffled.

"They're dragons," I reminded her.

When we got to the bathroom, I could barely see the tail end of Paul slipping down into the shaft.

"Is your father down there?" Kate asked.

"I can't imagine how he would have gone down," I said, "but he's with Sheriff Pax."

The closet where the elevator used to be was nothing but a huge, torn-apart hole. There was no door frame, and almost all the wall was ripped out from between the two windows. The large iron boiler was still lying sideways on the floor a few feet away from the shaft, making the place look like a war zone.

"What happens when they get down there and find nothing?" Kate asked.

"They'll probably climb back up and demand I think of something."

"So what are you thinking?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said defensively. "But I'm not killing them."

"Do you know how?" Kate asked, knowing that for every dragon it was different.

I told Kate how I had figured out that by putting the first letter of each chapter of The Grim Knot together it had spelled out the answer. "They have to be killed with the same single blow."

"How do you do that?" she asked.

"It doesn't matter," I said firmly. "I'm not going to kill them. I'll run away. I'll hide them in the forest for the rest of my life if I have to."

"This is why I broke up with you," she said. "You're going to end up like your dad."

"And what's wrong with that?" a dark, new voice asked.

Kate and I spun to the left to see where the voice had come from. There in the corner of the bathroom was my father.

It scared me so badly that I fell backward against the iron boiler. I stood back up as quickly as I could. Kate grabbed my hand, and I could feel her shivering.

"Dad," I said quietly, wishing I could see better in the dark.

"'Dad,'" he mocked. "I don't know who you're talking about."

The honesty in his voice scared me more than his surprise. It sounded like he completely believed he wasn't my father.

"We've been waiting," he whispered.

"We?" I questioned tentatively as I reached into the bathtub and pulled out one of the two remaining flashlights. I flicked it on. On my short list of wishes, near the top would be that I wished I had never done that.

Kate and I were suddenly surrounded by hundreds of plants. Ivy was stretching in through the windows and hung from the roof, bushes snarled in the corners, and long, willowy ferns covered the walls like a jungle. As scary as the plants were, what they were doing made them that much worse. This may sound like a medicine-induced dream, but all of them were wielding weapons. Some were jabbing forks and sticks while most had small kitchen knives and blades in their palms and leaves. I saw one plant shift a sharp knife from one of its branches to another as if preparing to slash me. It looked like my father and half the forest had been waiting in ambush.

My father smiled and I could tell by the crazy glint of his eyes that his mind was completely under the influence of darkness.

"The dragons are mine," he said sternly.

Kate slipped behind me.

"No way," I argued. "I raised them, and they know my mind."

"Your death will change that," my father insisted.

"You're forgetting something very important," I said, trying to remain calm.

"What's that?" my father humored me.

"These plants respond to my wishes also," I said boldly. "I can just as easily turn them on you."

My father let out a deep, guttural laugh.

"What's so funny?" I asked as the plants stretched their limbs and shook.

"They might listen to you on occasion," he said, "but it is my word that controls them completely. Like the king dragon who listens first to you, the soil always takes my side. Who do you think has been controlling them all this time?"