Scorched

Chapter One

SCREECH!

Connor’s eyes flew open. Blinding white lights barreled toward him at breakneck speed. No time to think, he hurled himself to the side, adrenaline igniting the reflexes he’d honed in boot camp. A bright blue metal monstrosity shot past him, wailing an angry protest in its wake.

That was close. Too close. Sucking in a breath, he crawled up onto a nearby platform, trying to gain his bearings. Shiny hunks of metal machinery—like the one that had nearly crushed him—lined the road, dark and silent, while others cruised by, determined white lights chasing brilliant red tails. They reminded him of something he’d once seen on the Surface Lands. Cars, his father had called them. Of course they looked a lot different when living, breathing, and not caked with rust.

But that meant…A smile crept to his lips.

It had worked. It had actually worked.

“Well, what do you know,” he murmured, drawing in a lungful of the freshest air he’d ever breathed in all his seventeen years, with zero smoky aftertaste. It was crisp. Colder than they’d predicted for August in Texas. So cold, in fact, he could see his breath reflected in puffy clouds as he exhaled. Shivering a little—his travel jumper was definitely not made for this kind of weather—he found himself gazing up into an open sky littered with stars and anchored by a bright, full moon. The vastness of the universe unabashedly spread out before him made him a little dizzy.

Maybe I should make a wish, he considered, remembering the old rhyme his mother used to sing. Star light, star bright…

Wish my supplies would arrive all right, the soldier in him finished, reminding him he wasn’t on some pleasant stargazing holiday. His eyes reluctantly left the sky, scanning the ground below, searching for his canister. One couldn’t travel with one’s belongings, they’d told him in the debriefing, except for specially designed clothing. Something about splitting up different types of molecules. The essential items they’d sent to aid his mission would be arriving separately. In a titanium pod. Right about—

A large metal cylinder shot through the sky, almost knocking him out before bouncing harmlessly to the ground.

—now.

“What in God’s good name was that?”

Connor whirled around to find the largest woman he’d ever seen exiting one of the nearby apartment buildings. He tried not to gape at her immense frame, wrapped securely in a black, puffy coat. What rations must these people be allotted in order to gain such girth? As three equally well-fed and well-dressed young boys filed out behind her, his mind flashed to the orphans of Strata-D. Their rail-thin frames, their hollow, hungry eyes…

He set his jaw. Just another reminder of how important this mission truly was.

As he watched, the three boys scrambled past their mother, eagerly circling the titanium capsule, eyes shining with interest. One reached down, daring to touch it…

Connor swept in, neatly scooping up his belongings. As the children squawked in protest, he held up his free hand. “It’s okay,” he tried to assure them. “It’s just my—”

“Get away from my kids, you freak!” Mom was now on the scene, waving one hand threateningly at Connor, the other fumbling at her coat pocket. For a split second, he feared she was reaching for a weapon. Instead, she pulled out a small, black plastic device. Some kind of primitive transcriber?

“See something, say something,” she muttered to her children, waving them behind her, as she frantically started pressing at the screen. “That’s what they say to do. Can’t let the terrorists win.”

“Please,” Connor pleaded, taking a few steps backward, his mind desperately searching for a rational explanation for the canister falling from the sky. Preferably one that didn’t require prior knowledge of quantum physics. He was supposed to be blending in, not making a scene. He wasn’t exactly off to an auspicious start.

His eyes lit upon an open window, two stories up, red-checkered curtains fluttering in the night sky. “My…girlfriend,” he stammered, his mind reaching for the proper terminology as he waved his arm in the direction of the window. “She tossed me out.” He gave the woman his best sheepish smile, then held up the canister. “Told me to take my gear and never come back.” The woman narrowed her eyes, staring at him for a moment, then up at the open window. Connor realized belatedly that she could very well know the girl who lived in the apartment above or know that there was no girl to begin with. This wasn’t like back home; people here knew their neighbors, shared cups of sugar—that sort of thing. Had he just made a huge mistake?

Believe me, he pushed, in a feeble attempt to try to bend her will. Believe me and walk away.

But it was no use. The trip had left him completely depleted. And he had no idea how long it would take to regenerate his spark. He’d be forced to do things the old-fashioned way—at least for the foreseeable future.

“What’s her name?”

Connor startled. “What?”

“Her name,” the woman repeated. “Your girlfriend who threw you out. Does she have a name?” She gave him a pointed stare, as if daring him to answer, her fingers still hovering dangerously close to her transcriber.

“Oh right. Her name is…”

His mind went blank. Completely blank. Come on, Connor. A name! Any name! He could feel her eyes upon him, sharp, assessing, as they took in his strange clothes with growing suspicion. He had to do something—say something—and fast. Before it was too late. “Her name is…”

With one fluid movement, he ripped open the capsule, his fingers diving for his gun. Before the woman could even grasp his intentions, he had the weapon trained on her face. “Her name is get the hell back!” he growled. “And I suggest you do as she says.”

The woman’s eyes bulged and a small squeak escaped her lips. Staggering back, she held up her hands in surrender, her transcriber falling from her meaty grasp and clattering to the pavement below. Her children screamed, latching on to their mother, their innocent little faces mirroring her terror as Connor narrowed his eyes, doing his best to look desperate and dangerous. As if he were the type of guy who shot down mothers and children in cold blood every day before breakfast.

“Please, mister,” the woman begged, fat tears streaming down her cheeks. “You can have everything. Just let us go.” She shrugged her bag off her shoulder, allowing it to fall to the ground. “There’s plenty of cash in there. Take it all. Just don’t hurt my kids.”

Connor sighed, lowering his gun. And…so much for blending in.

“It’s okay,” he tried to assure her, guilt gnawing at his insides. He’d meant to stop her from making her call, not scare her and her family half to death. “I promise I’m not going to hurt you.”

I’m the good guy, he wanted to add. The one they sent to save your world.

But of course he couldn’t tell her that. It would just bring up too many unanswerable questions. And he had to get a move on anyway—catalog his gear, get changed, locate the museum. Do a little preliminary scouting before introducing himself to the girl. He had a lot to accomplish in the next four months—before the Reckoning day—and, as his father would say, there was no time like the present.

Or the past, in this particular case.

He gestured to the woman’s bag with an apologetic look. “Take your stuff. Just walk away and pretend you never saw me, okay?”

Yeah, like that was going to happen. He could tell from the look in her eyes she’d remember this incident till her dying day. Her children too. But it couldn’t be helped, he reminded himself. And they would thank him if they knew the truth. They would get down on their very knees.

The woman’s face crumpled in relief. “Thank you, sir!” she babbled. “Thank you, thank you so much.” She scurried to grab her bag, then collected her cracked transcriber. “Merry Christmas,” she babbled as she gathered up her children and turned to leave. “Merry Christmas to you and yours.”

Connor had started to walk away. But the woman’s words made him pause. “Wait, what? What did you just say?” He turned back to her questioningly.

The woman whimpered, holding her hands in front of her face, as if she was afraid he was going to hit her. “Um, I just said merry Christmas,” she stammered. “Or, you know, whatever holiday you celebrate—Happy Hanukkah? Kwanza?”

“But…” Connor protested, his mind racing with sudden confusion. “It’s August.”

The woman stared at him, as if he’d lost his mind.

“It has to be August,” he repeated, panic welling up inside of him. “They told me it would be August. Four months before the Reckoning.”

“Um, I don’t know what that is,” the woman sputtered. “But it is Christmas. I promise you, it’s Christmas Eve. In fact, I was just about to take the boys over to see the tree. They’ve never seen it lit up and—”

She kept babbling, but Connor was no longer listening. He dug into the capsule again, heart pounding wildly in his chest as he searched for his transcriber. There had to be some mistake. The woman had to be lying. Because there was no way…

His hands closed around the device and he pulled it from the pod with shaking fingers. He flicked it on, waiting anxiously for the screen to illuminate, scarcely able to breathe.

December 24th, the device read. 7 p.m.

“No,” he whispered in horror. “That can’t be right.”

But it was, he realized. The signs had been there from the start. August in Texas—it should have been a hundred degrees out—not cold enough to snow.

Something must have gone wrong back at the base. Someone must have pressed the wrong button, turned the wrong dial.

“I was supposed to have four months!” he cried, looking up at the woman with wild eyes. She gave him a helpless shrug, then turned and fled down the street as fast as her thick legs could carry her, her kids scrambling to catch up. Connor watched them go, suddenly feeling as frightened as they must feel. But for a very different reason.

“I was promised four months,” he whispered to no one.

With four months, he could have secured a strong link with the girl. He could have made sure the egg never fell into her hands. He could have gotten a jump on the government…

…and saved his father’s life.

Now he had exactly fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes to find the museum. Fifteen minutes to retrieve the egg and the girl. Fifteen minutes to figure out a way to make this all turn out right.

Or the apocalypse that ripped apart his world would begin…all over again.

Chapter Two

If I get one more snot-nosed kid asking me if the T. rex used to dine on people, I’m going to close up the museum and become a history teacher. I mean, really! What are they teaching kids in schools these days?”

Sixteen-year-old Trinity Foxx looked up from her laptop in time to see her grandpa come barreling into the museum’s main office, rounding the corner too quickly and slamming into a table of fish fossils by the door. She winced as he scrambled to stop a four-hundred-million-year-old cephalopod from crashing to the floor.

“Hey! Watch the ancient artifacts,” she protested, logging out of the museum’s Facebook page and rising to her feet. “Some of them are even older than you are. And almost as brittle.”

“Thanks.” Grandpa shot her a smirk as he limped over to his desk, rubbing his knee. “Your concern is truly heartwarming, as always.”

She snorted. “Why are you giving tours anyway? What happened to Gene?”

Grandpa dumped a stack of mail onto his desk, then nearly knocked it off as he shrugged out of his suit jacket. Trinity had to dive to save it from landing in a nearby trashcan, which may or may not have been her grandfather’s intention in the first place.

“Quit right after his last paycheck bounced,” he muttered. “But really, it’s for the best. The idiot couldn’t even keep his Triassic and Jurassic time periods straight. How could he be expected to educate and inspire America’s youth?”

“Right.” Trinity sighed as she walked back over to her desk, ripping open the red-marked “Urgent” envelope at the top of the stack. This one was from the electric company, who’d been threatening to shut off power to the museum for the last three months. She didn’t know why companies bothered wasting paper on fourth and fifth notices. Just because they couldn’t afford to pay the first one didn’t mean they needed a new copy. “Well, I hope you charged the group full price, at least.”

Grandpa walked around to sit behind his desk, avoiding her eyes. “They were from a poor district in Stocktown. Mostly migrant farmer kids and illegals.”

“Of course they were.” Her grandpa’s kind heart was one of his best qualities—but it was also going to be the death of them. “And what about that history museum in Kentucky?” she asked. “The one you loaned the Ornithischian dinosaur exhibit to six months ago?” She flipped through the stack of envelopes, praying for something that resembled a check.

Grandpa waved her off. “Next week. They promised to pay me next week.”

Trinity gave up, plopping the stack of bills onto her desk. It was always next week, next month, next year. Except what Grandpa couldn’t seem to grasp was there wouldn’t be a next week, month, or year if they didn’t start finding a way to pay the bills.

Back in the day, Foxx’s Fantastical Fossils had been a famous West Texas attraction, luring tourists off the highway with exhibits that promised to rival all but the most top-tier institutions. Her grandfather’s collection of dinosaur bones from the Jurassic period alone was well worth the trip off the interstate.

But five years ago the main highway had been rerouted and traffic thinned to a crawl, the roadside attraction now too far a detour for all but the most determined of tourists. And though the money stopped flowing, the bills kept piling up, and much of the collection had to be sold off or loaned to wealthier museums just to keep the lights on and the doors open.

To make matters worse, her grandpa had started replacing some of his former exhibits with what some might call…questionable stand-ins, hoping to draw back the crowds. From a mangy Chupacabra corpse to a rack of jackalope horns, Trinity knew it was not for nothing the townspeople had started whispering about “Crazy Old Foxx’s Fossilized Freak Show.” It was only a matter of time, she knew, before they’d be shuttered for good.

And where would that leave her?

“Grandpa…” she started to plead, then closed her mouth. What good would it do? Her guardian, much as she adored him, was the quintessential nutty professor—too wrapped up in his own spectacular inner world to comprehend even the most basic of money matters.

Which left it all up to her.

Since she’d moved in after her mother’s death, she’d done what she could, from taking over the museum’s publicity and custodial duties after school so they could cut back on staff, to cleaning houses and mucking out barns on weekends to earn extra cash. But try as she might, it never seemed like enough. And her carefully constructed world was feeling more and more like a house of cards each day. Every time the phone rang or someone knocked on their door, she’d freeze in panic—convinced it was social services, come to take her away. Her caseworkers had never been truly convinced that her grandpa was capable of taking on the responsibility of an orphaned teenage girl. And they’d be more than happy for an excuse to throw her back into foster care.

But Trin was not going back. Not now that she finally found a family to call her own. And whether that meant hiding their financial situation from neighbors and teachers or begging debt collectors for “just one more extension,” she did what she had to do to keep the two of them together. Last week she’d even pawned her mother’s emerald ring to pay their overdue property taxes.

She involuntarily glanced down at her finger, still sporting a tan line from where the ring had been—before she’d been forced to hand it over to the shady-looking man behind the bulletproof glass. It had been the only treasure she’d been allowed to keep after her mother’s death and her finger felt naked without it.

But it was worth it to see her grandpa’s face, she reminded herself, when she presented him with the stack of bills. Enough money to pay their property tax and even a little left over to celebrate Christmas. Knowing their home was safe and their family intact was worth more than the Crown Jewels.

She sighed. Some days she felt much older than sixteen.

“Hey, hey!” her grandfather protested, catching her face. “Chin up, young girl! It’s Christmas Eve after all! And I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“A surprise?” she repeated, looking up with curiosity despite herself. “Are you actually going to let me open a gift early for once?” Grandpa had strict rules about waiting until after breakfast on Christmas morning for any unwrapping, and usually Trin was cool with that, enjoying the anticipation and all. But this year she already knew what she’d find under the tree—the expansion pack for her favorite RPG video game, Fields of Fantasy—and it was killing her to wait.

Sure, she knew it was a shameful indulgence—and the money it cost would have been better spent on paying their bills. But Grandpa had insisted, saying everyone deserved something frivolous at Christmas, and, for once, she’d been too excited to put up much of a fight. Video games were her kryptonite, after all. Her escape when real life got too tough.

“Absolutely not!” Grandpa shot back. “You know the rules.” He wagged his finger at her. She sighed. Maybe after he went to bed she could unwrap the box and download the CD onto her computer, then carefully wrap it up again and place it back under the tree. Terrible, she knew. But otherwise, how was she even going to sleep, knowing it was just sitting there under the tree waiting for her?

“Okay, not a present. Did we win the lottery then?” That would be a surprise she could certainly get behind.

Grandpa smiled mysteriously. “In a sense,” he said. “It’s a new exhibit. Arrived this morning when you were at school, from my guys in Antarctica.”

Last year, when times had been a little better, Grandpa had partially sponsored a small eco-archeological study on the effects of global warming on penguins. But for all the data the team had sent back so far, Trinity had been convinced they were just sitting up there, sucking down glacier-made frozen margaritas and running dollar bills through a paper shredder.

“Well, all right,” she said approvingly. “What did they find?”

“An egg,” Grandpa pronounced. “Perfectly preserved too. Evidently the team was out measuring one of the melting glaciers when they came across it, still half embedded in the ice. They believe it’s been just sitting there, frozen, for millions of years.”

Trinity felt her heart beat a little faster. “And what do they think it is?” she asked, trying not to get her hopes up. She had to admit, a new exhibit like this—if it could be verified—could be sold to pay off some bills. To keep the lights on. Maybe even get her mother’s ring back. “Some kind of bird? A dinosaur egg?”

Please let it be a dinosaur egg. They could loan it out to a bigger museum and collect a fee that would pay their electricity bill and—

“Even better.”

Trinity pursed her lips, enthusiasm deflating as she caught the gleam in Grandpa’s eyes. It was a look she knew all too well—the same he’d worn last summer when he’d presented her with fossilized Sasquatch dung he’d purchased off eBay. It had even, to her chagrin, come with a certificate of authenticity.

She sighed. Maybe they could advertise candlelit tours as romantic…

“Come on!” Grandpa urged. “You’re going to love this. I promise!”

She reluctantly followed him out of the office, heading down what had once been a gorgeous marble hallway, a majestic showcase filled with treasures from around the world. Sadly, today that showcase seemed as extinct as the dinosaurs themselves. The marble floors were cracked and stained and the treasures long gone, with only a few dinky exhibits remaining behind—those that no one had wanted to borrow or buy. It made her heart ache to see the halls that had once teemed with life and history reduced to a cavernous graveyard of broken dreams and empty display cases.

“Here we are,” Grandpa announced, stopping in front of the Millennium Chamber. Trinity raised an eyebrow in surprise. The chamber had lain empty for the last two years, with none of the remaining exhibits deemed worthy of Grandpa’s favorite room. For him to put the egg here—well, he must truly believe it to be something special. She bit her lower lip, her heart thudding in anticipation as she watched him unlock the door and gesture for her to enter.

She did, trying to prepare herself for inevitable disappointment and—

She stopped in her tracks, staring in disbelief at the egg perched in a glass case at the center of the room. It was beautiful. No—that wasn’t enough. It was breathtaking—the size of a basketball and the color of pure gold, its surface intricately etched with what looked like feathers. Or maybe scales…?

“Oh my God,” she murmured, approaching slowly. Maybe her grandpa really had stumbled on something big for once. After all, she’d devoured every book in his research library over the last two years and had never come across anything remotely like this. “It has this sheen. Almost—I don’t know—like it’s not even real.”

She found herself reaching out, her hand pressing against the glass. This wasn’t just some fossil. This was a real egg—perfectly preserved as her grandpa had said. Had it really been frozen in a glacier for millions of years?

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Grandpa asked in a reverential whisper. “I’ve spent my entire life searching for something like this. People will come from around the world to see it—once they hear what we’ve found.” He turned to her, his eyes glistening.

“But what is it?” she asked, reluctantly turning away from the egg and back to her guardian, her eyes filled with questions. “What could it possibly be?”

“Why, isn’t it obvious?” He stepped toward the case, a slow smile spreading across his whiskered face. “It’s the world’s last dragon egg.”

Chapter Three

Damn, this helmet itched like a flecking bond’ura flea.

Caleb Jacks forced himself to sit straight and tall on the hard wooden bench, staring directly ahead at the other soldiers in his unit. It had been a bumpy two-hour trip to Old Oak Grove, Texas, with no windows or fresh air in the truck, and by the time they pulled up to the museum, Caleb was about ready to vomit in his helmet. But he couldn’t let his discomfort show, couldn’t afford to stick out in any way—not after he’d spent months securing a spot on this elite, black-ops team.

It hadn’t been easy, especially getting placed on this particular mission. But the Dracken had done an excellent job at forging his paperwork, and his years of experience living on the streets down in Strata-D had made him strong and smart. He just channeled his twin brother Connor—the true soldier in the family—kept his head down, followed orders, and didn’t complain. He was, as his commander complimented, a natural choice for the mission.

Caleb swallowed back a chuckle. If only the old bastard knew how right he was.

Cold air flooded the truck, and he forced back a shiver as the rear door opened. All eyes turned to watch their superior heave himself up onto the truck bed, his heavy frame shaking the vehicle as his boots hit the floor one by one. He was dressed in the same standard-issue bulletproof vests as the rest of them, with only a shiny American flag pin to set him apart as the leader of the team. It still amused Caleb to see these people have so much pride in a country that would soon be accused of burning the entire world to the ground.

Just before the back door closed again, Caleb observed two men standing outside. Dressed in black suits and wearing mirrored sunglasses, they whispered urgently to one another. They were the brains of the operation, he noted grimly. The only ones who had any clue what this mission was really about. The rest of them were simply dumb muscle, obeying orders without question. They couldn’t be blamed for what these two men planned to unleash on the world.

“Okay, ladies,” the leader sneered. “You’ve all been briefed on your mission. Anderson,” he barked at the burly, dark-skinned man at the end of the row, “you work to disable the security system and video surveillance. Burn any tapes you find. I do not want to see any of your ugly mugs on the nightly news.”

“Yessir.”

“The rest of you, seek out the objective and secure it by any means necessary. But please, for the love of Christmas, be careful with it. You scramble this sucker and the Pentagon will have my ass.” He leered at his men. “And then I’ll have yours.”

The men tittered nervously while Caleb resisted the urge to roll his eyes. If only they knew how durable their precious “objective” actually was. Hell, you could take a sledgehammer to the egg and you’d be hard pressed to make even the slightest dent. There was a reason, after all, why it’d survived for millions of years.

The captain kept talking, but Caleb stopped bothering to listen. He had his own mission to think about, after all. One far more important than these duffers could ever imagine. His heart thudded in anticipation just thinking about it as he stared down at his hands.

Two long years he’d been here, waiting for this night. Two long years he’d spent alongside his Dracken brothers and sisters—preparing for the Reckoning. Two long years and now the hour was finally here. He was here. The one Darius had chosen—out of everyone else—to carry out the most important mission the world would ever know. Sure, partially it was because of his age—he blended in with the rest of the operatives better than the older Dracken would. But still, he had been chosen. He had been entrusted with the future of the world. The street rat criminal of Strata-D. The guy everyone had dismissed as worthless. He would change the world forever.

And he would finally meet her.

His heart hammered foolishly at the idea. The legend. The Fire Kissed. The girl who would fly. Was she inside the museum even now, unknowingly waiting for her destiny to unfold? He tried to imagine the look on her face when he told her who she really was, what she would do. Right now, she probably thought herself a normal girl. He used to think he was normal too. She would have no idea of her role in changing the shape of the world.

He couldn’t wait to tell her.

Are you in there, Trinity? he asked silently as the truck door creaked open again. Because, ready or not, here I come.

Chapter Four

A dragon egg?

Trinity let out a slow breath. She could feel her grandpa regarding her with eager eyes, as if anticipating praise for a job well done. She hated to hurt his feelings—on Christmas Eve nonetheless—but she couldn’t risk him going off half-cocked, spilling the ridiculous story to anyone who would listen. Their museum’s reputation was already in too much jeopardy as it was. And if social services caught wind that her grandpa had lost his mind as well as his bank account, they’d be sure to take her away.

Time for some tough love.

“Come on, Grandpa, we’ve been through this,” she tried, as kindly as she could. “A dozen times at least. There are no such things as dragons.”

“Of course there aren’t now,” he came back, in a duh voice that would rival any six-year-old’s. “They’ve been extinct for millions of years. Probably wiped out by an ice age. But somehow, some way, this egg was preserved. The very last of its kind.”

She sighed. “But if dragons had been real,” she tried to rationalize, not sure why she bothered, “we’d have found other remains before now. Fossils. Bones. Just like we have with the dinosaurs and a hundred other extinct species.”

“Perhaps,” Grandpa replied with a shrug. “Or perhaps their bone structure was different from other reptiles of their time. Maybe it wasn’t meant to withstand extreme temperatures. For all we know, maybe their bones completely dissolved, leaving no trace behind. Except…” His eyes gleamed again. “This egg.” He grinned widely. “Thankfully those researchers had no idea how valuable their find really was. Or else I never would have gotten it so cheap.”

She stopped short. “Cheap?” she repeated slowly. “Define cheap.” She’d assumed since Grandpa had partially sponsored the expedition, he’d have some claim on the egg. She should have known better. Those so-called researchers had been nothing but money-grubbers from the very start.

“Well, cheap for the world’s last dragon egg,” he clarified. “But well worth it. Just think, Trin, of the throngs that will come once we announce our legendary find. The media, the scientists, people from around the world.”

“How much?” she repeated, nerves tensing. And where had he gotten the money? She’d cut up his credit cards six months ago, after the whole Nigerian unicorn horn incident. And their bank accounts typically hovered at less than zero status. In fact, the only real cash they’d seen in the last few months was the money she’d given him after selling her mother’s ring…

Oh God.

He couldn’t have. Could he?

“You didn’t. I mean, you didn’t use…” She trailed off, unable to even voice the accusation. But the look on his face told her all she needed to know. And her house of cards officially came crashing down on top of her.

“Oh God,” she whispered. “How could you?”

If they didn’t pay their property tax, their house would be seized. It would go on the auction block and be sold to the highest bidder. They’d end up homeless…

…they’d take her away.

“I had to!” Grandpa sputtered, his face flushed and his eyes flashing. “They were going to sell it to someone else.”

“You mean someone who could afford it?”

“Yes…I mean, no…I mean…” He gave her a tortured look. “You don’t understand. I’ve waited my entire life for this kind of discovery. Something special. Something extraordinary. Something that will shake up the very foundations of paleontology as we know it! How could I let something like that slip through my fingers?”

How indeed? By habit, she reached to twist her mother’s ring around her own finger, only to be reminded it wasn’t there anymore. Because she’d sold it. To keep her family together. Instead, it had paid for some kind of freakish mythical monster spawn. She wondered if the egg was even real. Had even come from a glacier. She imagined the researchers laughing to themselves as they boxed up some arts and crafts project and wrote out the bill. He’ll buy it, they’d probably sniggered. The gullible fool will buy anything.

She glared at the egg, tears welling in her eyes. It was all she could do not to unlock the case and smash the thing to smithereens. She thought about how hard she’d worked. How tired she was. And how none of it mattered in the end. Her grandpa cared more about his precious exhibits than he did about their family.

“Hey, hey!” She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see her grandpa gazing at her with concern in his eyes. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be excited. I mean, a dragon egg, Trinity! We’re going to be famous.”

“We’re going to be homeless.”

“We’ll buy a new house—a hundred houses with the money we make. We’ll go down in history.”

“Not before we go down in flames.”

He stared at her, disappointment clear in his watery blue eyes. “You used to love my discoveries,” he said softly. “You used to get so excited. What happened to you, Trin? When did you stop believing?”

She shrugged her shoulders, the lump in her throat making it impossible to speak. She remembered all the times her grandpa had come home from his many trips overseas with treasures from around the world. Real treasures—the kind scientists and journalists were chomping at the bit to see. But Grandpa would always make them wait—so she could see them first. It had made her feel so special—to spend hours with him, poring over the discoveries, imagining aloud what the creatures must have looked like when they still roamed the earth. Like some kind of magic—shared just between the two of them.

But then she’d grown up and realized magic didn’t pay the bills. Didn’t keep families together. And certainly didn’t guarantee the happily ever after the storybooks claimed. Which made it, in her opinion, pretty darn useless.

“Just go home,” she said in a gruff voice, wrestling to control her upset. “I’ll lock up. We’ll figure out what to do with this…this…thing…on Monday.” Maybe the guys who sold it to him had some kind of return policy…

“Don’t you want me to help—?”

“I think you’ve done enough,” she snapped.

Grandpa’s face crumpled, and her heart broke as she caught the hurt in his eyes. But her anger burned too hot for her to back down now. He had to know that what he’d done wasn’t okay. It wasn’t funny or kooky or cute this time. He was supposed to be the adult, the one who took care of her. And like every other adult in her life, he’d let her down.

“Okay,” he said in a soft, desperate voice. “I’ll pick up the Chinese food on the way home. Extra duck sauce, just as you like it.”

“Sure. Whatever.” As if she could eat. As if it would taste like anything but cardboard.

“And maybe you can open up just one present…”

She scowled, turning away, staring hard at the wall, willing the tears not to fall. She could feel her grandpa’s eyes burning into her back but refused to acknowledge them—refused to let him off the hook that easy.

After what felt like an eternity, she heard his deep sigh followed by fading footsteps. Only after the door clanked shut did she allow herself to cry, sinking to the floor, head in her hands, violent sobs choking from her throat as tears rained down her cheeks. The kind of ugly cry she only allowed herself to have when she was sure no one was around to see.

Trinity…

Her head shot up. Oh God, was someone here?

Don’t cry, Trinity.

Her face flushed crimson. Who had caught her in such a mess? But the room was empty. The door remained closed. Had she simply imagined the voice?

She shook herself, feeling stupid, then rose to her feet, swiping away the tears with her sleeve. She was just stressed. Stressed and exhausted. She needed to lock up and go home and lose herself in a marathon session of Fields of Fantasy—pre-expansion pack. Slay a bunch of virtual dragons and get this real-life nightmare out of her head.

Why would you want to hurt a dragon?

What? She stopped in her tracks. “Who’s there?” she demanded angrily, her voice echoing through the chamber. Was this some kind of joke?

No answer.

“Grandpa? Is that you?” she tried again. But even as she asked, she knew it couldn’t have been her guardian. The voice was too high-pitched, too plaintive—the voice of a young child, not an old man. Maybe one of the kids from the earlier tour? Her eyes darted around the chamber, searching for some kind of corner or crevice where a child could hide. But she came up empty. The only ones here were her…

…and the egg.

She found herself glancing fearfully at the glass case, heart racing in her chest. But the golden sphere only gleamed back at her, still and silent as the grave. She grimaced. What was she thinking? That the exhibits were coming to life and crying out her name? God, that was the kind of fantasy her mother would have concocted near the end. She reached for her missing ring again, then gave up and started back toward the exit.

Don’t go, Trinity. Don’t leave me here alone.

“Stop it—it isn’t funny!” she cried, fear throttling her now. “Seriously, show yourself or I’m going to call the cops.” But no mysterious child stepped forward to claim the voice. It was almost as if it had come from thin air…

Or from her own head.

Like mother like daughter, something inside of her jeered. She pushed it angrily away.

It’s just this damned place, she tried to assure herself as she stalked out of the room, grabbing her jacket from the office and heading toward the exit, her steps reverberating through the cavernous hall. A glorified graveyard of fossilized ghosts—it would have anyone hearing things. Hell, maybe she could transform it into a haunted house next Halloween. That would be one way to bring in some cash at least.

Because the alternative explanation…

I’m nothing like Mom. Nothing like Mom.

A squeal outside caused her to pause at the front door. It was a welcoming sound—a real sound, existing outside her head. She peered out the front window and, to her surprise, saw a large, black truck idling just beyond the front parking lot, the rear door rolled open. She watched, curious, as a group of men dressed in black and armed with heavy artillery started spilling out the back, heading straight across the parking lot and toward the museum.

“What the…?” she whispered.

On impulse, she clicked the deadbolt into place. As if that was going to stop some kind of impending invasion. The place had never exactly been Fort Knox when it came to security, even when it was holding treasures that might be worth stealing. She glanced out the window again, panic raging through her. Were they really planning to break into the museum?

Well, they’re probably not here for the guided tour.

She decided not to wait to find out. Turning on her heel, she bolted from the door, back into the museum, her mind racing and her pulse pounding out her fear. Should she call Grandpa? The police? Should she try to escape out the back door or would they have the place surrounded? And what would she be escaping from anyway? Who were they? What did they want? And why would they be here in the first place? It wasn’t like they had anything left worth—

The egg.

She stopped short. What if it was valuable after all? What if someone had gotten wind of its arrival and had come to steal it? Or what if it was stolen to begin with—if the researchers hadn’t found it in a glacier after all? The authorities could have tracked it down here and come to take it back to its rightful owners. It seemed crazy, but it was the only explanation that made any sense.

She looked around, realizing she’d stopped directly in front of the Millennium Chamber. She also realized that the door, which she was sure she’d left open, was now securely closed. Was there someone inside? Were they taking back the egg? She imagined her grandpa’s face when she was forced to tell him his golden treasure had been ripped away before he’d ever gotten a chance to share it with the world. It would kill him. Absolutely kill him. And any hope she had to recoup what he’d spent would be gone forever.

She hesitated at the door. Maybe she could reason with them. Or at least let them know it wasn’t her grandpa’s fault. He’d never willingly purchase stolen property. He might be gullible. He might deluded. But he wasn’t a criminal. She drew in a breath and approached slowly, apprehension coursing through her. Wrapping her hand around the doorknob, she gingerly pushed it open, peering inside.

The Millennium Chamber was no longer empty.

The boy inside was tall and broad shouldered, around her age, and dressed in a strange jumpsuit of shimmering metallic material—very unlike the men in black she’d seen outside. He had a sharp-angled face, messy brown hair, and serious blue eyes. But what was truly startling was his skin. So pale it was almost translucent.

Closing in on the display case, the boy reached into his bag. With one fluid movement, he pulled out what appeared to be a small pistol, though unlike any Trin had ever seen. She gasped as he raised the weapon and smashed it down on the glass with surprising force.

What the hell was he trying to do?

Chapter Five

“Damn you, blasted thing,” Connor swore under his breath as he slammed his laser pistol against the case a second time. But it was no use; the glass remained intact and the egg inside only gleamed back at him, as if mocking his efforts. He needed something heavier—a bat maybe or some kind of crowbar. The kinds of tools he could have easily acquired had he been given the four months he’d been promised.

He raised the gun again, started to swing—

“Get the hell away from that!”

Startled, he lost his grip. The pistol bounced harmlessly off the case and skittered across the floor to the opposite side of the room. He spun around, his jaw dropping as his eyes fell upon none other than Trinity Foxx herself, standing in the doorway.

Holy shiny dragon scales.

She was younger, of course, than any of the grainy photos or videos he’d seen on his reader. They’d all been taken years later. She was smaller than he’d pictured her too. In the photos, she’d always seemed larger than life. Her hair was darker and longer, tumbling down her back in untamed waves, and her skin was freckled and tanned from a life spent on the Surface Lands.

And yet, he realized, for all those differences, her eyes were exactly the same—midnight black, almost too large for her face, framed with a sweeping curtain of lash. He swallowed hard, heart racing. How many nights had he spent at the academy, under a blanket, reader in hand, studying that face? Wondering how a girl with eyes like that could bring about the end of the world?

Now he finally had a chance to find out. And, more importantly, a chance to stop her.

He bit his lower lip as he turned back to the display. His plan had called for getting her as far away from the egg as possible before the Reckoning took place. That way she’d never be close enough to hear the fiend’s call. But it was too late for that now. And maybe she could help him. With the government agents running through the halls, he didn’t have much time left.

“Look, do you have a key or something?” he asked, gesturing to the case. It felt strange to be addressing someone so notorious, and he wondered if she could hear the slight tremble in his voice. “We need to get this egg out of here. Now!”

She stared at him, disbelief clear on her face. Then her brows furrowed and her frown deepened. Not surprising, he supposed. She had no idea he was the only person who could save the world. And he had no time to explain.

“Are you kidding me? Look, I’ve called the cops. They’re on their way. So I suggest you get out of here now, before it’s too late.” He could hear the thread of hysteria winding through her bold-faced lie as she worked overtime to keep her terror masked from his view. He found himself admiring her tenacity even though it was at odds with his mission.

“You don’t understand,” he tried, his mind whirling, trying to figure out the best way to explain the situation in the shortest amount of time. If only he’d had those four months! “My name is Connor. I’m here to help you. The men breaking into the museum—they’ll do whatever it takes to get this egg. We have to get it out of here before they find it.”

“We?” she repeated, her dark eyes impaling him. “There is no we. Now get the hell away from there.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a strange metal canister from her purse. He squinted at it; was it some kind of weapon? A grenade of some sort? He was really getting sick of all these surprises.

Holding up his hands in surrender, he stepped back from the case, glancing longingly at his pistol, still out of reach on the other side of the room. But maybe it was best this way. Let her unlock the case, then jump in and grab the egg before she could put her hands on it.

“Just don’t touch it,” he warned, as she fumbled with a set of brass keys. He realized her hands were shaking furiously, at odds with her defiant expression. “I’m serious.”

“What, is it going to bite me?” she retorted, finding the proper key and sliding it into the lock. The case popped open. Connor’s eyes zeroed in on the egg.

Now! He made his move, lunging toward the prize. But Trinity was too quick, turning on him and blasting him in the face with a hot stream of liquid from her canister. Connor staggered, blinded, his eyes burning as if on fire. He rubbed them with his fists, trying to clear them, but only managed to increase the sting.

“Please!” he begged. “Whatever you do, don’t touch the egg!”

She didn’t answer. And when his vision finally cleared, she was gone.

And so was the egg.

“Damn it!” he cried, grabbing his pistol and bag, and running out of the room. He couldn’t lose her or the egg. The future of the world depended on it. He raced down the hallway, following the sounds of her footsteps slapping against the marble floors some distance ahead. He glanced behind him, half expecting the operatives to be hot on his heels. But thankfully the corridor was empty.

I could have saved her, he thought wildly, as he cut through the dinosaur exhibit. I could have gotten her out of this whole mess unharmed. She could have lived a normal life, had a happily ever after.

But now it was too late.

A scream echoed through the hallway. Her scream—coming from right around the corner. He skittered to a stop, swinging a hard right into the sea-life installation. Ducking behind a giant turtle fossil, he located Trinity, in the grip of a burly man dressed in black. She was still clutching the egg with white-knuckled fingers as the man pressed a pistol to her temple.

“Let me go!” she screamed, fighting him with all her might. But the man outweighed her by at least a hundred pounds and, by the looks of it, had a killer grip.

“I’ve got some girl,” he reported into a black metal device attached to his shoulder. “She was trying to escape with the egg.”

“Don’t let her go,” a voice crackled over the airwaves. “I’ll be right there.”

Connor froze, his heart in his throat. That voice. He’d recognize it anywhere. As if it were his own. But that was impossible. There was no way he could be here. Unless…

Oh God. Had the Dracken come after the egg too?

He’d have to figure it out later. Right now, all that mattered was freeing Trinity and retrieving the egg—before either the government or the Dracken showed up. Forcing his hands to stay steady, he attempted to line up his target. But Trinity was in the way—a human shield—and he couldn’t find a clear shot. And if he cried out to her, he’d give his position away.

Could he send to her? While he couldn’t direct her thoughts thanks to his current lack of spark, he could probably muster up a helpful suggestion or two and pray she thought it was a good idea.

He squared his shoulders. It was a weak plan, at best. But he had no other options. And he was running out of time. Squeezing his eyes shut, he lobbed a command as hard as he could in her general direction, praying she’d hear and obey.

Duck! Now!

He opened his eyes and focused back on her. Her gaze darted around the room, as if trying to locate something. Someone. Had she heard him? Would she understand what he needed her to do? Would she obey his order even if she did?

Trust me, he tried. It’s the only way to save you now.

She heard him that time—he saw it in her eyes—giving him an almost imperceptible nod before purposely shifting her weight, slumping to the ground, and catching her captor off guard. As the man struggled to retain his grip, Connor made his shot. The laser from his pistol sang true and a moment later the man’s head exploded in a burst of green plasma. The egg fell from Trinity’s grasp and started rolling across the room.

Good girl, he sent with a grin. It was the first thing that had gone right all day.

Diving for the egg, Connor locked it into his arms before turning to Trinity, who was staring at the now-headless man, mouth gaping. “Come on,” he commanded, shifting the egg and offering his free hand to help her to her feet. “We have to go. Now!”

She hesitated at first, then reached up, her fingers brushing his, connecting the two of them for the first time and sending a shock straight to his core.

For a moment, time stopped—simply stopped—and all he could feel was her. Pure, unbridled emotion. White hot fury warring with icy cold fear. It was all he could do not to jerk his hand away.

“It really is you,” he whispered, fascination mixing with horror.

She was as powerful as the legends had said. Maybe even more so. All that raw energy, that spark burning inside of her. To bind that to a dragon…Connor shuddered.

Thank fleck he’d gotten to her first.

Chapter Six

Outside the museum, Trinity turned to her rescuer, adrenaline pumping wildly through her veins. “Thank you,” she whispered, her fingers fluttering involuntarily to her neck, where she could still feel the burning of her captor’s rough hand. She had been so sure she was dead—that he’d pull the trigger and it would all be over in a flash of light. Until this stranger had charged in and saved the day—like a caped crusader with a Star Trek gun. “I’m sorry I Maced you,” she added guiltily. “I just thought—”

“Come on,” Connor interrupted, glancing at the door they’d exited from. Under the glow of the streetlights, she caught a ghost of fear flicker across his otherwise impassive face. “We need to keep moving.”

She hesitated, her feet feeling glued to the pavement. Should she follow him? He’d saved her life. But could she trust him? Or was he just another one of the thieves after the egg? Of course, he already had the egg. If that was all he was after, he would have already left her to fend for herself.

“Come on!” he repeated, his voice rasping with urgency. “I can’t fight them all at once!”

And she couldn’t let him just take off with her grandpa’s egg. “Okay,” she declared, making up her mind. “Let’s get out of here.”

Connor turned and ran, the egg cradled under his arm like a football, gun holstered to his side. As she followed, sprinting down the street alongside the museum, she could hear the emergency door bang open again, men’s voices cutting into the night air.

“Don’t let her get away!”

Dashing down the street, dodging trashcans and debris, Connor was quick and nimble as he spun a quick left, then right, passing the local Arby’s before turning into an empty parking lot. Trin did her best to follow, trying to ignore the shouting and banging behind her—the sounds of their pursuers gaining ground. Her heart sped up, spiking her adrenaline as her feet pounded the pavement—one by one by one. As she turned the corner, she nearly plowed into her rescuer, who had, for some reason, stopped short. She opened her mouth to beg him to keep going, then realized he couldn’t.

The parking lot dead-ended at a tall, barbed-wire fence.

Trin looked up at the chain links, nerves tensing. Long ropes of barbed wire gleamed back with sharp-toothed smiles. She glanced around the parking lot, desperate for an alternate escape route, but came up blank. There was no alternative.

Gesturing to Connor, she dove toward the fence, ripping off her jacket on approach.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

She gave him a grim look. “Up and over. It’s the only way.” She shoved a toe into the chain link and prepared to throw her jacket over the top while trying to ignore her rising fear. She hated heights. But she hated the idea of being shot in the back even more.

“Wait.”

Frustrated, she turned back around. “We don’t have time to—” she started, but trailed off as she caught Connor pulling a small silver disc from his bag and placing it on the ground. Once it was secure, he looked up at her.

“Use the Bouncer,” he instructed.

She stared down at the device, perplexed. “Wait, what—?”

“Just step on it!”

“Um, okay…” Confused, she tentatively pressed a foot against the disc—the Bouncer—whatever it was—no idea what it was supposed to do. No sooner did her foot connect than she literally bounced—impossibly high into the air—clearing the top of the fence by at least a foot. It was like something out of Fields of Fantasy—impossible in real life.

For a split second, she seemed to hang, motionless in thin air. Then gravity wrestled back control, sending her crashing down onto the ground, unfortunately still on the wrong side of the fence. She stared down at the Bouncer, then up at Connor. The voices in the alley grew louder. They were running out of time.

Connor yanked her to her feet. “When you’re in the air, jump forward,” he instructed. “So you’ll land on the other side.”

She nodded, forcing her gazillion questions back while clenching her jaw and stepping hard on the disc. Once again her body shot upward, this time giving her at least a two-foot clearance.

“Now!” Connor cried.

She threw herself forward, clearing the fence and tumbling to the ground, a hard shock rocking her core as her tennis shoes connected with pavement. Not a perfect ten landing, by any means, but it did the trick. Scrambling to her feet, she turned to watch Connor step on the disc himself, shooting into the air as she had, though not half as high. In fact, he barely cleared the barbed wire, skimming his knee along the razor’s edge before crashing back to Earth.

“Go! Now!” he cried.

Trinity didn’t need a second invitation. She dashed down the alleyway. From behind, she heard a strange whirring sound. She glanced back just in time to see the Bouncer fly through the air and land in Connor’s hand. He stuffed the amazing device into his bag and hurried to join her, just as three men in black swarmed the empty lot behind him. The men screamed furiously as they all tried to scale the enclosure at once, succeeding only in knocking one another down.

“That should buy us a little time,” Connor told her, running up alongside her. She noticed the barbed wire had torn his jumpsuit at the knee, the blood soaking through the silver fabric. She considered suggesting a tetanus shot, but realized future infection was probably the least of his worries right about now. “But we have to keep moving. Find someplace safe to hide so we can regroup and figure out a plan. Come on.” He picked up the pace.

“Wait!” Trinity called after him, leaning over, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. “We have to find my grandpa first.”

Connor stopped, turning around, an impatient look on his face. “What?”

“My grandpa,” she repeated, rising to full height. “He’s expecting me to come straight home. He’ll worry if I don’t show up.”

“He’ll have more reason to worry if you do,” her rescuer shot back. “Those men? They’ll figure out where you live. They’ll come for you there. And if they find you with the egg—well, let’s just say they’re not in the habit of asking questions first.” He frowned. “You can call him from the road. Let him know you’re okay.” His voice left no room for argument.

But Trinity stood her ground, crossing her arms over her chest. “No,” she said. “If what you say is true, that means he’s in danger too. And there’s no way I’m going to let him risk his life over some stupid museum exhibit.”

Connor squeezed his eyes shut, looking exasperated. Then he sighed, dropping his shoulders. “You’re right,” he said. “Let’s go grab him. But then we have to get out of there. Find someplace safe. Okay, Trinity?”

She nodded, relieved, then started racing home, tearing down Main Street, lungs burning as if on fire. If only she hadn’t been forced to give up track last year to work at the museum—she might have been in better shape for a quick getaway. Connor barely seemed winded, still clutching the egg protectively against his chest. The golden shell seemed to catch the moonlight, gleaming teasingly at Trinity, and she found herself itching to touch it again—to see if it would still feel like it had back in the museum.

She’d expected it to be cold; it’d been locked in ice for millions of years, after all. But to her surprise, the egg had been warm to the touch, as if it had been simmering on a stove. For a split second she actually wondered if her grandpa had created some kind of special heating device to incubate his rare find, believing he could actually hatch a baby dragon. But in her heart she knew even he wasn’t that deluded.

You probably imagined it, she scolded herself. Like the voices you thought you heard. It’s just an egg. A very old egg. Nothing else.

Though, she had to admit, there had to be something special about this egg. Otherwise, all these people wouldn’t be after it. She stole a glance at Connor. Once they’d collected her grandpa, she would have to demand some answers from this mysterious stranger. Like—who were those men? Why were they after the egg? How had he gotten there in the nick of time? And—

She stopped short as she turned onto her street, her heart lurching.

How did he know my name?

Chapter Seven

“Grandpa! Grandpa! Are you here?”

Trinity burst into the house, scanning the cozy living room the two of them shared. Her eyes darted from the threadbare couch pushed up against one wall to the ancient rabbit-eared TV propped against the other. Their cracked IKEA coffee table still sat in the center of the room, littered with dinosaur-shaped coasters. And the old bookshelf in the corner remained overflowing with dog-eared paleontology journals and video game guide books.

She breathed a sigh of relief. It was all there. Nothing out of place, no sign of a struggle. After Connor’s warning, she’d pictured the place ransacked and destroyed. But no, their Charlie Brown special of a Christmas tree still stood tall and gangly by the couch, strangled by multicolored lights and video-game-themed ornaments. And the pile of newspaper-wrapped presents still waited patiently under her grandpa’s scrawled cardboard sign: Do not open before Christmas…Or else.

But her grandfather was nowhere to be found.

Just to make sure, she checked the two bedrooms and bathrooms, while Connor paced the living room, his steps eating up the narrow distance between walls. But the rooms were all vacant. No sign he’d been here at all.

Until she reached the kitchen.

“What the…?” She trailed off. “Connor! Get in here.”

He was at her side in an instant, gun locked and loaded. She pointed a shaky finger at the boxes of Chinese food, overturned on the counter, noodles spilling out onto the floor.

“He was here,” she whispered, trying to stop her brain from jumping to a million conclusions. None of which she wanted to face. “He brought home the takeout, just like he said. But where did he go?”

Connor didn’t answer. He walked purposely to the side door, checking the deadbolt. Then he started examining the windows one by one. They were all closed. They were all locked. Just as the front door had been. That had to be a good sign, right? But then…?

“Maybe he just went back for duck sauce,” Trin found herself rationalizing. “They’re always forgetting to throw it in the bag and he knows it’s my favorite. And…and the cat probably knocked over the food. She does it all the time, no matter how we much we scold her for jumping on counters.” She nodded her head vigorously, as if agreeing with herself. “Yeah, that’s got to be it. Makes total sense.” She grabbed a roll of paper towels off the table and dropped to her knees, busying herself with the mess, trying to reset her sanity to a workable level—to push the nagging doubts far from her mind.

“Trinity…”

“In fact, I’m sure he’ll be back any second now,” she assured Connor, refusing to look up. She knew what he was going to say and she didn’t want to hear it. They couldn’t leave. Not now. Not when Grandpa was probably right around the corner. “We just have to hang here a few more minutes. No big deal.”

“Trinity, you have to look at this.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them, forcing herself back to her feet, turning to Connor questioningly. With a grim face, he pointed to the counter.

Or, more precisely, the pocket knife that lay on the counter, speckled with what could only be blood.

“Oh God,” she whispered, her world spinning out from under her. “Oh God, no.”

She staggered back, stumbling against the stove, her knees buckling, her lungs refusing to take in air. For a moment she couldn’t move—couldn’t take her eyes off the knife. Ghosts from a Christmas past swam through her head and her stomach lurched.

Please God. Not again. He’s all I have left.

Strong hands grabbed her forearms, jolting her back to reality. She looked up to find Connor, staring down at her with a hard look in his eyes, as if willing her not to fall apart. She swallowed hard, trying to regain her composure, as she waited for the comforting rationalizations to spill from his lips. That it was all a mistake. It probably wasn’t his blood. That everything would be okay.

“I told you we shouldn’t have come here,” he ground out instead.

She stared at him for a moment, unable to move, unable to speak. Then the rage came—a volcano erupting inside of her and setting her ablaze. She reached up, her fist finding his face with all the force she could muster. Then she shoved him away.

“Are you kidding me?” she cried. “That’s all you have to say?” It was all she could do not to reach out and strangle him. To punish him somehow for dragging her into this mess to begin with.

He told you not to touch the egg, something inside her nagged. Maybe you should have listened.

Connor’s face darkened, his cheek branded crimson from where she’d struck him. “Look, I don’t think you understand the seriousness of what’s going on here. The egg cannot fall into enemy hands. The future of the world depends on it.”

Trinity stared at him in disbelief. He was crazy. She’d dragged a crazy person into her house. She scowled at him. “You want the egg so badly, just take it,” she spit out. “Take it and get out and leave us alone.” She no longer cared that it might be valuable. They could find another way to save their house. One that didn’t involve crazy boys and men with machine guns and near-death escapes over barbed-wire fences. She glared at the egg out in the living room, sitting innocently on the coffee table, where Connor had left it. Once again she had the nearly overwhelming urge to grab it and smash it to smithereens. The stupid thing was nothing but trouble.

Don’t let him, Trinity. Don’t let him take me away.

She froze, fear throttling her and rendering her immobile. That voice. The same one from back in the museum. The one she’d convinced herself was all in her head. Had it really just addressed her again—from inside her own living room?

I’m nothing like Mom. Nothing like—

“What’s wrong?” Connor demanded, peering at her with alarm on his face. “You’re pale as a ghost.”

She waved him off, not wanting him to recognize her fear; he already had too much advantage over her already. “I’m fine,” she informed him with as much scorn as she could muster. Anyway, he was the one who was crazy. Not her. “Now, weren’t you leaving?”

“I’m not leaving without you.”

“Well, I’m not leaving without my grandpa.”

Their eyes met, Connor’s gaze bearing down on her—dark blue irises shimmering with fire. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if they would glow in the dark, then berated herself for the ridiculous notion. Who gave a crap if he had beautiful eyes? He had an ugly, uncaring soul underneath. One that cared more about expensive relics than real-life people.

She matched his eyes with her own, wrestling him into a stalemate, daring him to look away first.

And then…he did.

“Fine,” he muttered, turning his back on her. “Have it your way.” He started out into the living room and toward the front door. She stared after him, a gnawing uneasiness tugging at her insides as he extended the distance between them. He was leaving. Just like she’d told him to. Just like she’d thought she’d wanted.

And in a moment, she’d be totally alone.

She stood there, shifting from foot to foot as she fought the urge to stop him. She hated how much she didn’t want him to leave and tried to tell herself it was for the best. She didn’t need him. She didn’t need the egg. The sooner he left, the better for everyone. Right?

She heard a deadbolt click into place.

“Wait, what are you doing?” she asked, following him into the living room, surprise and relief washing over her as she realized he was still on the same side of the front door. The now securely locked front door.

He gave her a weary look before heading over to the big, front picture window and studying it with critical eyes. “If we’re going to be waiting here, I’d like to reinforce things a bit. Is that all right with you?”

Her heart stuttered. He was staying? He was choosing to wait? Even though he said it could be dangerous? Even though he needed to protect the egg? That was, as he said, his number-one priority. His so-called mission to save the world. So why on Earth would he choose to stay? To keep himself and the egg in danger?

She bit her lower lip. There was only one explanation. For her.

Guilt writhed through her as she watched him attempt to shove the bookshelf in front of the window, straining with the effort. Maybe she’d judged him too quickly. Maybe he was being cautious, not coldhearted. And maybe her stubbornness was stupid, not strong. After all, what would she have wanted her grandpa to do if he were in this situation, waiting for her instead? Certainly nothing that would put him in danger.

Still, she couldn’t just take off…

Mind racing, she glanced out the window, her eyes settling on the dark silhouette of the ramshackle barn behind her best friend Caitlin’s house. Her heart clenched as she gazed longingly at the familiar haven. How many times had the two of them escaped there, late at night, while everyone else was fast asleep? They’d curl up in the hay-filled loft, streaming gory horror movies on Caitlin’s iPad or gagging down cheap whiskey, pilfered from Grandpa’s stash, while drunk texting cute boys from school. For the past two years, the barn had been Trin’s sanctuary when times got tough.

And things didn’t get much tougher than this.

“Wait,” she told Connor, making up her mind.

He stopped and turned to her, wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow. “What?”

“See that barn?” she asked, pointing out the back window. “My neighbors left two days ago—they were going to Disney World for Christmas. The barn will be empty—they only use it to store bikes and stuff anyway. We could hide out there and watch the house to see if he comes back. You can see everything perfectly from there.”

Connor’s eyes swept the barn’s exterior, assessing it quickly. Then he nodded in agreement. “Good idea,” he said in a clipped voice. But she caught a flicker of relief cross his face and was glad she’d decided to speak up. “Let’s go.”

They burst out the back door, sprinting toward the barn. No sooner had they reached its entrance than a pair of headlights turned in, illuminating the dead-end street. Hurrying, they dove through the front doors, just as the all-too-familiar black truck screeched to a halt outside Trinity’s house. As they watched, the team of armed men spilled out once again, surrounding the cottage in seconds. There were a few indecipherable shouts followed by a loud crash as they kicked in the front door—the same door Trinity had been standing behind only moments prior.

“Oh God,” she whispered, horrified but unable to turn away. If they had been there. If they had just waited one minute longer to leave…

A strong hand clasped her shoulder and she turned in surprise. Connor stood behind her, tall and straight, his jaw tense and his gaze never faltering from the window. The moonlight gave his pale skin an almost unearthly pallor and his eyes did indeed seem to glow with faint luminescence. She drew in a breath, waiting for another “I told you so”—one in this case she totally deserved—but it didn’t come, and she was grateful for that.

They stood for a moment. Silent and watchful. Alone yet together. Trinity hyperaware of Connor standing strong and steady behind her, his hand still securely clamped on her shoulder as they waited to see what the men would do.

They didn’t have to wait long. Soon the sounds of crashing and banging and breaking glass assaulted their ears, soundtracking the search-and-destroy going on inside. Trin cringed, glad that she couldn’t see through the walls, couldn’t watch her beloved home being torn apart. She imagined the invaders shredding couch cushions, knocking over the TV, ripping her precious books from their shelves and tossing them away like rubbish. She pictured her Christmas tree toppling over, ornaments shattering, candy canes splitting in two, presents being stomped on and torn to shreds—one present in particular.

“Great. Now I’m never going to get to play the Fields of Fantasy expansion pack,” she muttered. When Connor gave her a questioning look, she sighed. “Yeah, priorities, I know. But still…”

Her only relief was catching sight of her cat fleeing the house unharmed. Baby Puss was a resourceful one. She’d been a stray, just like Trin—one of the reasons they’d bonded from the start. She could rest assured the cat, at least, could take care of herself.

Her grandpa, however, was another story. Where could he be? If only he wasn’t so stubborn about cell phones. She glanced fearfully down the street, half expecting him to be strolling down the lane, straight into their clutches. Would she be able to intercept him before he reached the front door?

But her grandpa didn’t appear. And eventually the soldiers streamed out her broken-down front door and loaded back into the truck. Trinity let out a sigh of relief while Connor continued to watch, eagle-eyed, until they pulled away, disappearing into the night.

“They left one guard inside,” he informed her, and she was grateful he had thought to count them. “We’ll wait here a little longer,” he added. “In case your grandpa comes back, we can grab him before he tries to go inside.”

He said it casually, as if he truly believed that at any moment the elderly man could waltz up the street, oblivious and unaffected by all that had transpired. She appreciated the sentiment, even though she knew he probably didn’t believe it. She was beginning to have her own doubts as well.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice a little choked. “I’m sorry I was being stupid before.”

He cleared his throat. “Not a problem. And understandable under the circumstances.”

“And I’m—I’m sorry I hit you,” she added, hoping he couldn’t catch the blush spreading across her cheeks as she turned to him.

Connor threw her a half smile. “You hit pretty good,” he remarked, reaching up to touch his cheek, which still glowed a faint red in the moonlight. “I’m glad you’re on my side.”

He said it casually, a joke maybe. But the words sent a shiver tripping up her spine all the same. His side. That sounded good somehow—even though she had no idea what side he was really on. She wanted to believe it was with the good guys. But how could she be sure?

“Anyway, I’m the one who should be apologizing,” he added, dropping his hand and giving her a rueful look. “If things had gone to plan, you and your grandpa would be miles away by now. Living happily ever after, the egg all but forgotten.”

The egg. Her eyes traveled back to the object in question, still cradled under Connor’s arm. Even now she could feel its strange pull, gnawing at her insides, and she had to fight the urge not to reach out and touch it. To take it into her arms, run her hands across its intricate surface. To feel its unearthly warmth under her fingertips.

“So what’s the deal with the egg, anyway?” she asked, shoving her hands into her pockets instead. “Why is everyone after it?”

He looked at her curiously. “Didn’t your grandpa tell you?”

She dropped her gaze, her cheeks burning now as she remembered what her grandpa had claimed.

“He told you, didn’t he?” Connor pressed. “He told you something about the egg.”

She paused, her mind racing with lies. But in the end, the truth spilled from her lips. “He said…” she whispered. “He said it was a dragon egg.”

She waited for the snorts of laughter, the rolling of eyes, the snide comments, and maybe an offer of a bridge in Brooklyn up for sale.

Instead, Connor gave her a regretful smile. “It’s a dragon egg, all right,” he confirmed. “Trust me, they’re pretty distinctive. No other creature on Earth—now or ever—lays this kind of egg.”

“Come on,” she protested, hardly believing she was going to have to have this argument for the second time in one day. “Let’s be real. We all know there’s no such thing as dragons outside of movies and video games.”

“Not anymore,” Connor agreed, “seeing as they all died out in the Ice Age. And since their skeletal structure was made up of a mixture of silica and gelatin, their bones decomposed into sand. That’s why you never find any dragon bones—any proof they ever existed at all.”

He said it so matter-of-factly. Like he was giving a science lecture. And while one part of her wanted to protest that it was impossible, another part, deep inside, was starting to wonder. Strange things had been uncovered over the years. And she admittedly had never come across anything as strange as this egg. Could her grandpa really have finally stumbled upon something real after all these years? Only to have it ripped away? Guilt gnawed at her insides as she remembered how quickly she’d dismissed his claims without even giving him the benefit of the doubt. When she found him again, she realized, she might just owe him an apology.

“Those men,” she tried, unable to keep the tremble from her voice as she thought back to the man gripping her by the neck, gun pressed to her temple. “From the museum. Do they think it’s a dragon egg too?”

Connor shrugged. “From what we understand, someone from Customs tipped off your government, letting them know an unidentified object had crossed the border. But whether they know exactly what it is at this point…” He made a helpless gesture.

She mulled this over, her brain snagging on the fact he’d used the word “your” when mentioning the government. Was he from another country? That would, at least, explain the strange lilting accent and odd clothing. And possibly the paleness of his skin. But what country? And how had he known about the egg?

“In any case, they’re the least of our worries,” Connor added in an uncomfortable voice, “now that I know the Dracken are here too. They’re a much greater threat than your government could ever be.”

“The Dracken?” The term sounded familiar for some reason, though she had no idea why.

“A group of dragon sympathizers,” he replied, without missing a beat, “like an animal rights group, but for dragons.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you for real?”

“Absolutely,” he shot back, giving her a grim look. “And, unfortunately, so are they. I’m not sure why they’re here. I guess they must have caught wind of my mission somehow—and sent my twin brother, Caleb, to stop me.” He scowled. “Unlike your government, Caleb knows exactly what the egg is. And what it can do.”

Trinity had no response. Absolutely no response. Dragon animal rights groups, evil twins. She felt as if she had been dropped into the middle of some game without being taught how to play. Half of her wanted to tell Connor to get out all over again, to take his crazy stories and never come back. But at the same time, he’d been right about the men invading her house. And if she hadn’t listened to him…

“I’m sorry, Trinity,” he added, giving her an apologetic look. “You were never supposed to be involved in any of this. If all had gone to plan, I would have gotten you and your grandpa away from here months ago. Instead, I barely had enough time to get you out of the museum.”

Trinity finally found her voice. “Connor, you’re not making any sense,” she protested. “No one even knew this egg existed until a few days ago—when researchers dug it from the ice. And according to my grandpa, they shipped it straight to the museum.” She peered at him. “So how could you or the Dracken people know it would be here? Or that the government would try to break in and take it?”

Connor suddenly looked nervous, as if he’d said too much.

“Tell me,” she pressed. “What are you leaving out? How did you learn about the egg?”

He leaned against the wall, staring out the window. At first she thought he wasn’t going to answer. But finally, he opened his mouth to speak.

“Where I come from, everyone knows the story of the first egg.”

“Where you come from?” Trinity repeated, a clamminess washing over her. As if somehow, some way, she knew his next words would change her life forever. “And where is it, may I ask, that you come from?”

He gave her a hard look. “About two hundred years in the future.”

Chapter Eight

At first, Trinity wasn’t sure she heard him right. Two hundred years in the future? Was this some sort of joke? “That’s not funny,” she said hoarsely.

He blinked. “Do you see me laughing?”

She took a step back, trying to will her brain to think, to cling to some sort of rationality in a conversation gone mad. And to think she almost believed him about the dragon egg. Even though that was completely ridiculous as well. Everyone knew there was no such thing as dragons. And as far as time travel…

Her confusion veered sharply to anger. How dare he try to play her like this? She needed to get away, call the cops, find out what was really going on. And, most importantly, locate her grandpa and make sure he was okay.

“I’ve got to go,” she stammered, realizing too late Connor had effectively barricaded the barn’s front door. Would he try to stop her if she pushed past him? And what about the egg? Was she willing to leave it behind?

What an idiot she’d been! Hiding away from the government agents, allowing them to ransack her house. Maybe they had a good reason to be after the egg. Maybe it was a matter of national security. Or that the thing was contaminated—or carried some nasty disease. Maybe she should have turned it over from the start, instead of aiding and abetting a crazy person to steal it away.

Connor stepped forward, his expression anguished, beseeching. “Please, Trin,” he begged. “I know it sounds crazy. But I can explain.”

“Explain?” she sputtered. “Explain what? That you’ve come back from the future to steal a freaking dragon egg?”

“That’s oversimplifying things a bit. But yes, that’s the idea.”

“And you’d do that, why?”

He gave her a sheepish look. “To stop the dragon apocalypse?”

She narrowed her eyes, fury winding up inside her. She was right to have punched him—she only wished now that she’d hit him harder. Instead, she’d somehow gone and convinced herself that he was some kind of self-sacrificing hero with her best interests at heart. When all along, he’d been playing her like a fool.

At the end of the day, she was as a gullible as Grandpa.

What could she do? She could try to scream, to alert the last guard in the house to her presence. But Connor had a gun. He could shoot her before help could arrive and he’d still have the egg. She bit her lower lip, mind racing. There was no way she could overpower him on her own. And the barn wasn’t exactly a stocked arsenal.

Then she remembered her cell phone, stuffed in her pocket. Could she reach in and dial 911 without him seeing her? Maybe if she kept him talking…

“Prove it to me,” she blurted, forcing her voice to stay strong as she slowly inched her hand down to her side.

Connor nodded tersely, though he looked slightly relieved. He dropped to his knees, ripping open his black bag and rummaging through. She took her opportunity, slipping her hand into her pocket and gripping her phone, seeking the three buttons she needed for help to arrive. Once she’d pressed them, she let out a small sigh of relief. Now she just had to keep him occupied until the cavalry came.

“You already saw my laser pistol,” he reminded her, looking up from his bag. “Not exactly your everyday handgun.”

She frowned, thinking back to her captor’s head, exploding in a mass of green goo. Growing up in Texas, she’d seen a lot of guns—but never anything like that. Still, she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of admitting it.

“Sorry. I let my Weird Weapons Monthly subscription expire last year,” she retorted, willing herself not to glance down at her jeans. She could hear the tinny “911, what’s your emergency?” coming from the receiver and took a step back, to make sure Connor was out of hearing range. Hopefully when they didn’t receive a reply, they’d track her by GPS and send help.

“What about the Bouncer, then?” Connor asked, pulling out the strange disc they’d used earlier to escape over the fence. As he held it in his hand, the sphere twisted and turned, hovering an inch above his palm. She turned away, ignoring the niggling at the back of her brain. He really did have a lot of strange stuff. But still!

“I’m sure they sell those by the dozen at sci-fi cons across the country,” she managed to say, though her voice had definitely lost some of its confidence.

“Right.” Connor pressed his lips together, then went back into his bag of tricks, this time pulling out a shiny, egg-shaped object, encased in silver. He set the bag aside and rose to his feet, pushing it into her hands. “What about my transcriber then?” he asked, his voice starting to take on a desperate tone. “Tell me this technology exists here.”

Against her better judgment, she closed her hands around the object, studying it with careful eyes. Her fingers brushed against a small button on one side and, to her surprise, a three-dimensional hologram popped up in her palm. A woman, who looked to be in her late forties, seemed to stare up at her.

“Connor, on your way home could you pick up—”

She shrieked, the device tumbling from her hand. Connor caught it midair, running his thumb across the smooth side. The image vanished.

“My mom’s holomail,” he explained, looking a little wistful. “It’s all I have left of her now.”

Trinity knew she was gawking, but found she couldn’t help it. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Connor was right; that thing definitely didn’t belong in her world. In fact, none of it did. Nor did Connor himself, with his strange accent and strange timing, appearing at the exact moment she needed him to help save the egg. She let out a frustrated breath. Why was the most impossible explanation suddenly the one making the most sense?

“There’s one more thing,” Connor said. “This one I think you’ll recognize.”

He reached into his bag and, to Trinity’s surprise, pulled out a small, red velvet box. A ring box, she realized.

“Um, don’t you think you should at least buy me dinner first?”

Connor sighed, then pulled open the lid. Trinity gasped, her eyes bulging from their sockets as she realized what was nestled inside.

Her mom’s ring. The one she’d pawned to pay the taxes. The one that inadvertently brought the egg into her life to begin with. She looked at Connor in amazement. He pushed the box in her direction. With trembling fingers, she somehow managed to pull it out and hold it in unsteady hands.

“How did you get this?” she stammered as she examined the all-too-familiar piece of jewelry, cataloging its beloved imperfections: the scratch on the left side, the missing pave diamond on the top right. It was exactly the same—and yet somehow different too. Older looking, more worn. As if it had been antiqued.

Like two hundred years antiqued.

With shaky breath, she turned it over, her eyes searching for the inscription she knew she’d find inside.

To Emberlyn, my love.

“Your father gave this ring to your mother,” Connor stated quietly. “He told her to never take it off her finger. After she died, you vowed to do the same. At night, you would twist it around your finger exactly five times while staring up at the ceiling, praying for courage to face the next day.”

She looked up from the ring, feeling the color drain from her face. “I never told anyone that,” she whispered.

“Not yet,” he replied smoothly, his blue eyes piercing her own. “But you will.”

She didn’t know what to say.

“According to our histories, you wore this ring until the day you died,” Connor continued. “It became a symbol to many people. After your death, the Dracken took it and claimed it as their own. It took a lot of work for us to get it back. Many men died in the effort. But the Council knew they could never convince you to help us unless I could prove I was telling the truth.”

Trin stared down at the ring. Then she slowly slid it onto her finger. It fit perfectly, of course, and for the first time all week, her hand felt whole again. Oh, Mom. She blinked back the tears, looking up at Connor, a million questions whirling through her brain, each warring to be asked first.

But before she could speak, car headlights flashed through the window, freezing the words in her throat. She cringed. The cavalry had finally arrived—just in time for her to realize they may not be the men in white hats she’d assumed they’d be.

Connor caught her guilty face, then glanced out the window. The car had pulled up just outside the barn’s front door and the driver’s side door popped open.

“Oh, fleck,” he whispered. “Trinity, what have you done?”

Chapter Nine

What had she done? Only what she thought was the right thing at the time. But now she wasn’t so sure. She stared down at the ring, her stomach churning. What if Connor was telling the truth? What if he really was from the future—sent to stop the government from stealing the world’s last dragon egg and thus sparking a worldwide apocalypse? Had her 911 call led the bad guys directly to the prize?

“Trinity? Honey? Where are you? Can you hear me?”

She let out a sigh of relief as she recognized the voice outside. Not the scary men in black she’d feared—or even Connor’s so-called evil twin. Just good old Sheriff Bob, the portly, senior law man who spent more time out fishing with her grandpa than preventing any crimes. Trinity had known the old sheriff her entire life, and he’d always had a kind word to say and a piece of mint gum to share. There was no way he’d be mixed up in some dragon conspiracy.

She started for the door. Connor grabbed her arm, yanking her back. “Don’t go out there!” he hissed.

“It’s okay,” she assured him. “It’s just Sheriff Bob. He’s responding to my call—he probably recognized the cell number. I’ll tell him I’m looking for my grandpa. For all I know maybe he’s been at the police station the whole time, reporting the break-in or something.” Even as she said the words, hope stirred within her. If only it could be true! Everything could still turn out okay.

The barn door groaned as Sheriff Bob attempted to pry it open. “Trinity? Are you in there?”

She opened her mouth to reply. But Connor was too quick, grabbing her hands and yanking her hard against him. His eyes found her own, piercing her with their intensity.

You can’t trust anyone. Even people you think you know.

She gasped as his words blazed through her brain, followed by a jolt of terror and urgency. His terror and urgency, she realized with shock.

Please believe me, Trinity. Everything depends on it.

She stumbled back, breaking their connection, shaken to the core. She stared at him wildly, finding it impossible to still her erratic pulse. How had he done that? Connected their minds with a simple touch. Magic? Some kind of psychic link? A weird futuristic technology?

However he’d done it, the effect remained the same. And she knew now, without a shadow of a doubt, that he believed everything he’d told her. The time travel, the dragons, the apocalypse—it was all real. All true. And his fear was now hers as well.

“What do we do?” she whispered, her voice hoarse. “He’s not going to leave until he knows I’m okay. And there’s no back door to sneak out of.”

Connor considered this. “I’ll hide in the loft,” he told her. “With the egg. You try to get rid of him as quickly as possible. If you run into trouble, I’ll back you up.” He patted the gun he’d holstered to his side.

Trinity bit her lower lip, wanting to argue. Sheriff Bob was her grandpa’s best friend. She couldn’t let Connor hurt him, no matter what. But there was no time to come up with another plan.

“Okay.” She drew in a breath. “But keep your finger off the trigger unless this becomes an epic fail. Upping the body count is not exactly going to help our cause at this point.”

“Agreed.” Connor saluted her, tucking the egg under his arm and starting his climb. Once he disappeared from view, she approached the front door, pulling it open with shaky hands.

“Hey, Bob,” she greeted in her most cheerful, unbothered voice. “What are you doing working Christmas Eve—?”

Her words died in her throat as two men wielding powerful flashlights stepped out from the backseat of the sheriff’s car, where they’d evidently been waiting, purposely out of view. They were dressed identically, in sharp, custom-fitted black suits, their eyes shaded by mirrored sunglasses, even though the sun had set long ago. Trinity’s eyes darted from one to the other, apprehension coursing through her veins. This did not seem good.

The two men didn’t wait for an invitation to enter. They pushed into the barn as if they owned the place, overturning bikes and opening storage chests. Trinity turned to Sheriff Bob, begging for an explanation, but the small-town sheriff just gave her a helpless shrug. He would be no help, she realized. It was all up to her.

“What are you doing?” she demanded of the men. “This is my neighbor’s barn.”

“Homeland Security, ma’am,” one of the men interrupted. He flashed her a badge so quickly she had no idea whether it was legit or had come from a Cracker Jack box. “Perhaps a better question would be what are you doing here?”

Her mind raced to come up with a reasonable explanation on short notice. Then she realized honesty might be the best policy—at least partial honesty. “There were men,” she said at last. “They barged into my house. I freaked out and ran here to hide before calling 911. I think one of them might still be in the house.”

The men looked unsurprised. “No need to be afraid,” the first one said in a voice that told her otherwise. “Those were government agents. We have reason to believe your grandfather may have come into possession of some stolen property. Do you know anything about that?” He gave her a pointed stare.

His insinuation infuriated her. She met his gaze, her eyes fierce. “My grandpa would never take anything that didn’t belong to him,” she retorted. Then she shot a look over at Sheriff Bob. “Tell him,” she demanded. “Tell him he’d never do something like that.”

“Well, yes, the girl’s right about that,” Sheriff Bob blustered, looking nervous and unsure. “I’ve known Charlie Foxx for fifty years. He’s good people. He’d never intentionally—”

“Search the barn,” the first agent interrupted, evidently bored by the glowing tribute for the man he’d been sent to hunt down. He pointed to the ladder. “You check the loft. I’ll finish up here.”

Trinity sucked in a breath, watching the suited man start toward the ladder. In a moment, he’d be up there and Connor had nowhere to hide. He had his gun, but if he shot it, he’d give his position away to agent #2. The barn would erupt into a war zone, with she, most likely, the first civilian casualty.

She had to do something and fast.

Her eyes fell to the sheriff’s revolver, dangling from its holster. Her grandpa was always teasing him about forgetting to secure it. “Someday you’ll shoot yourself in the foot,” he’d say. And suddenly she knew exactly what she had to do.

She started to stagger, waving her arms wildly around her. “Oh God,” she moaned in an overloud voice, attracting the attention of the agents. “I feel dizzy! I think I’m going to—ohhh!”

She threw herself backward, with as much drama as she could muster. As predicted, the chivalrous Sheriff Bob dove to catch her. Not an easy move for a man of sixty-five, clocking in at more than three hundred pounds, but the sheriff, to his credit, gave the rescue his all.

Sorry, Bob, she thought, as she allowed herself to collapse into his meaty grip, letting her arms flop to the side like limp spaghetti.

“Never mind her,” the first agent instructed. “Get moving.”

But Trinity’s fingers had already wrapped around the sheriff’s gun, yanking it from its holster. She leapt to her feet, flicking off the safety, aiming the firearm at the two men.

“Drop your weapons. Now!” she cried.

The agents froze, looking at one another doubtfully. Trinity waved the gun, hoping they couldn’t detect the fact that her hands were shaking like crazy.

“Do you even know how to use one of those?” the first agent asked, evidently not quite buying her “I’m a crazy killer and you should be scared of me” routine. Which wasn’t all that surprising, she supposed, seeing as she’d never actually shot at anything but the zombies in her video games.

“She certainly does.”

Trin looked up in surprise as Connor dropped down off the ladder with an easy grace.

He trained his own gun on the agents and gave them a cocky grin. “In fact, you might have seen her handiwork, back at the museum. Man in black? Head blown to smithereens?” He snorted. “The girl’s completely cracked. If I were you, I’d do as she says.”

The agents exchanged unhappy glances but reluctantly obeyed, gingerly lowering their weapons to the floor before straightening up again. Trin shot Connor a grateful look, a rush of adrenaline surging through her. He gave her a curt nod as he deftly kicked the surrendered guns across the barn and out of reach.

Now get the sheriff’s handcuffs, she heard his voice in her head. She still didn’t know how he was doing that, but now wasn’t the time to ask.

“Bob, I need your handcuffs,” she said in a terse voice, turning to the white-faced sheriff. She held out her hand.

“You don’t want to do this, Trinity,” Bob blurted, sounding as if he were still in shock. Not surprising, she supposed. After all, the last two minutes had probably contained more action than the poor guy had seen since taking office forty years ago. “Please. For your grandpa’s sake, just put down the gun.”

“Handcuffs, Bob,” she repeated apologetically. She felt bad to freak him out like this, but what choice did she have at this point? “And then turn around and walk out the door. Get back in your car and drive back to the station. Pretend you never saw us.”

She could feel Connor’s hard stare at her back—he obviously disapproved of letting the sheriff just walk away. But for Trin, this was nonnegotiable. She looked at Bob with beseeching eyes. “Please. Just go,” she begged. “Find my grandpa. Make sure he’s okay.”

Please believe me, she begged silently. I don’t want you to get hurt.

For a moment the sheriff didn’t move. Then, with a heaving sigh, he handed over the cuffs and walked out the door. A moment later, she heard the engine roar to life and the car pull away. She knew he could be calling for backup, that they had to act fast. She approached the agents, cuffs in hand.

“You’re going to be in a lot of trouble,” the first agent said.

“Really? And here I thought you were going to give me a medal,” she muttered as she worked to cuff him to a nearby post. Connor followed suit, commandeering some old rope from the back of the barn to secure his buddy to the ladder. Trin had to admit, his knots looked good. Futuristic Boy Scout, perhaps?

Once both men were secure, she turned to her partner-in-crime, drawing in a breath. “Now let’s get out of here.”

Chapter Ten

“Walk slowly,” Connor instructed. “As if nothing’s wrong.”

Trinity forced her steps to slow, trying to still her racing heart as they walked down Old Oak Grove’s Main Street as if on a casual Christmas Eve stroll. She even managed to force out a “Merry Christmas” to Mr. Jenkins as he hurried home to meet his wife and daughter. She imagined her neighbor stepping into his warm, cozy house, probably with a fire in the fireplace and a hot meal on the stove. Baby Ava crying “Dada!” and holding up her little arms for him to scoop her up and give her a welcome home hug. A normal, family Christmas that Trinity had always wanted so badly—and seemed destined never to have.

A lump formed in her throat.

Walk, she scolded herself. As if nothing’s wrong.

But everything was wrong, and the enormity of what she’d just done hit her hard and fast. Had she really just stolen a policeman’s gun, then turned it on two Homeland Security agents before taking off with stolen property? How many laws had she broken in just that five-minute stretch alone? How much jail time would she face for those crimes if caught? She imagined herself on trial, up on the stand, telling the jury a wild story about a boy from the future, trying to stop the dragon apocalypse. At least she’d probably end up in Shady Brook rather than prison given that story, along with her mom’s history. Though the thought didn’t make her feel much better.

“So what now?” she demanded, turning to Connor and allowing the anger to well up inside her, displacing her fear. It was the only thing she could do to force herself to keep moving, to not curl up into a ball and pray the nightmare would just go away.

“We have to find someplace safe,” he told her, shifting the pack he wore to keep the egg from plain view. “So we can regroup and figure out a plan.”

A plan. Right. “You didn’t think to make one of those already?” she replied bitterly. “You know, before you decided to travel two hundred years into the past to save the world?”

He cringed, and she regretted her words immediately. It wasn’t his fault things had gotten so out of control. She had been the one who insisted they go to her house, the one who’d called 911. In fact, the majority of the mess they were in now was directly her fault. Not Connor’s. All he’d done was save her life and protect the egg. She should probably be a little more grateful.

She opened her mouth to apologize, but he cut her off. “You’re right,” he said slowly. “You’re completely right. A true soldier is prepared for all possibilities. I wasn’t and I’ve put you in danger because of it. I’m sorry.” He gave her a rueful smile. “Is it too much to ask for a second chance? I’d like to make things right.”

A chance. In other words, he was asking her to trust him. After all they’d been through, that was a pretty tall order. But what were the alternatives? She could walk away, a fugitive from the law. Turn herself in to the authorities and hope for the best. Or take her chances with this boy from the future—and at the very least have a partner in crime.

“I suppose I can do that,” she said with a sigh. “And I know where we can go too. A safe place where we can regroup.” After all, if she was going to join forces with him, he had to know she was an equal partner, not just along for the ride.

He gave her a grateful look. “Where’s that?”

“My mother’s old house,” she told him. “It was foreclosed on about a year ago, but with all the other bank-owned houses in the neighborhood, they haven’t gotten around to putting it back up for sale. There’s no electricity or running water, but I’m sure we could dig up some candles and flashlights. We’d be safe there—at least for tonight. Until we figured out what to do next.”

Connor seemed to consider this for a moment. Then he pulled out his transcriber, pressing at the screen. “What’s the address?” he asked.

“Twenty-three Elm Street,” she replied automatically, trying to ignore the sudden pang as she recited the address she had once proudly called home. She didn’t want to go back there. In fact, she’d promised herself a thousand times she’d never go back there. But what other choice did they have? As Connor said, they couldn’t trust anyone. And there was nowhere else to go.

Connor looked up from his transcriber. “There’s no record of that address in your personal file,” he told her. “Which means my brother Caleb likely won’t know it exists. Should be safe enough to spend the night at least. Regroup and figure out what to do next.” He gave her a curt nod, soldierlike again. “Lead the way.”

So she did, leading him out of town, cutting through an old, abandoned ranch, down an unpaved street, across the Old Town bridge until they reached the former interstate, very much a road less traveled. It wasn’t the most direct route to her mother’s house by any means, but it seemed safer to stay off the main roads.

As they stepped onto the old highway, now cracked and overgrown with weeds, Trinity couldn’t help but remember what it had once been—a bustling thoroughfare of cars and trucks, rushing past as fast as they could in an effort to get someplace better than here. How many times had she stared longingly down this road, wishing she could leave her stressful life behind? And yet now, she found herself looking longingly back instead.

From here, she could just make out the sparkling Christmas tree illuminated in the center of town. Had it been just last week she and Caitlin had gone down there to watch the lighting ceremony? Scarfing down slices of pizza from Caitlin’s dad’s shop while checking out the cute guys stringing up the lights?

A choking sob escaped her.

“Are you okay?” A warm hand slipped into her own and she realized that while she’d been lost in her thoughts, Connor had upped his pace, falling to her side. He squeezed her freezing hand, a comforting gesture that somehow managed to soothe her raging fear. At least she wasn’t alone in this. At least she had someone on her team.

“I’m fine,” she replied quickly, trying to downplay her fear. Still, she couldn’t help a nervous glance around her, half expecting to come face-to-face with the machine-gun wielding soldier from the museum. Or maybe the two men in black, escaped from their bindings and ready for revenge. But the highway was empty. Silent as the grave. “I’ll feel better when we’re not so exposed.”

“So will I,” Connor agreed. “Being aboveground like this, with all this open sky—well, it winds me up.” He glanced uneasily at the starscape spread above them like a glittery portrait. “I keep expecting…well, you know.” He shuffled his pack to one shoulder.

“Are you saying you live underground in the future?” she asked.

He nodded. “Only a few of the elite Dracken live on the Surface Lands in specially made sky houses. The rest of us are simply moles, scrounging in the dirt.” He snorted bitterly. “Though I suppose it’s better than the alternative.”

“Which is…?”

He gave her a steely look. “Being eaten by a dragon.”

Oh. Right. She paused, not sure what to say. It still seemed so unreal, like something out of a movie. Her eyes traveled to the pack on his back, containing the egg. Could something so small and fragile-looking really spark a worldwide apocalypse?

“It was called the Scorch,” Connor told her, as if overhearing her thoughts. “The year the dragons decimated the surface of our world. They burned through every forest and every field. From the smallest town to the largest city. Homes, businesses, theme parks—it didn’t matter. Nothing could withstand the dragons’ fire.”

Trinity shivered, trying to imagine a world like that—where monsters ruled the skies and flames fell like rain. Where there were no football stadiums, no movie theaters, no Disney World even. What would it be like to live in such a place? To be forced underground, never seeing the sun. No wonder Connor was so pale. “When does this happen?” she asked curiously, though she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know. “This…Scorch?”

“About ten years from now.”

She stopped in her tracks. “Wait, what?” she cried. “But that’s so soon!” For some reason, she’d had it in her mind that this terrible holocaust was a far off event—two hundred years in the future, like her new friend. But ten years? Could this nightmare really be right around the corner? She found herself looking fearfully at the trees dancing in the breeze. The twinkling lights of Old Oak Grove shining in the distance. Could her entire world really be taken down by dragons within the next decade?

“It didn’t take long,” Connor replied. “Once your government managed to hatch this one egg and realized what they’d stumbled upon, it was only a matter of time before they figured out how to extract its DNA and start the cloning process.” He grimaced. “They probably thought they were doing great work, bringing extinct creatures back to life.” His voice betrayed his disapproval. “Little did they know. It wasn’t long before the creatures had broken free and started flying wild.”

She shuddered. “Couldn’t anyone stop them?”

“No one knew how. Dragons are pretty much immune to traditional weaponry. Guns, missiles—everything your government tried to throw at them. And by the time people did start figuring out other methods to bring them down, the world was overrun.”

“That’s awful,” she murmured, trying to grasp the implications of his words. Suddenly her earlier money concerns seemed pretty weak. She had been so worried about them losing their house. Yet in ten years, there would be no houses left to lose. Kind of put things in perspective. “I can’t even imagine…” A chill wound through her and she found herself unable to continue.

Connor stopped short, taking her other hand and pulling her around to face him. Even in the darkness, his eyes seemed to glow as they found hers, locking on and refusing to let go. As he clung to her, she could feel the passion and strength streaming from his fingertips, electrifying her entire being as his emotions tangled with her own. The sensation was both exhilarating…and terrifying.

“That’s not going to happen this time around,” he told her in a thick voice, squeezing her hands so tightly she was half afraid he’d break her bones. “I may have gotten off to a rough start. I may have arrived late. But I have the egg. And I have you. And I promise you, Trinity, I will stop the dragon apocalypse. I will stop the Dracken.” He paused, then added, “No matter what I have to do.”

Chapter Eleven

“Here we are. Home sweet home,” Trinity announced as she pulled the torn screen door open. The bank had changed the locks when they’d foreclosed on her former home, but they evidently hadn’t bothered to check all the windows. She wasn’t surprised, not really. After all, there was nothing inside worth stealing. Just dusty furniture and even dustier memories.

She drew in a breath. The last time she’d stepped inside this house, she’d stumbled upon a nightmare, her worst fears coming true. This time things were decidedly less dramatic. The house felt more like an ancient crypt than a fresh grave. Caked with dust and draped with intricate spider webs, it was an empty husk of what had once been a home.

She could feel its emptiness hammering at her bones. But Connor said he wanted to make sure. He cased the house, first and second floor, gun raised and ready, as she waited by the back door for his okay. After determining that it was, indeed, as abandoned and vacant as she promised, he set down his gun and allowed his shoulders to relax. Trinity rummaged about to find a few candles and matches, and even scored an industrial-strength flashlight from the garage that amazingly still held some battery power. She spread the candles around the living room and removed the plastic covering from the faded flowery couch.

Connor watched her at her tasks, still looking a little uneasy. He’d changed out of his strange silver jumpsuit and now wore slouchy dark-rinse jeans, riding low on his narrow hips, and a tight navy T-shirt, stretching across his broad chest and bringing out the blue in his ever-glowing eyes. Trin had to admit, for a guy from the future, he was pretty hot. If only she could snap a quick pic and text it to Caitlin. Of course, explaining how she met him might prove a bit difficult.

She shook her head. Get your mind out of the gutter, girl, she scolded herself. After all, he was here on a mission to save the world—not hook up with the locals.

That said, the guy from Terminator did manage to find the time…

“So you used to live here?” Connor asked, completely oblivious to her ridiculous thoughts, thank God. “It’s strange we have no record of that.”

“I wasn’t here long,” she admitted, sobered by the question. “My mom bought the place to convince the judge I’d have a quote—” she made rabbit ears with her fingers “—stable home environment.” She screwed up her face. “What a joke that was. Didn’t last long enough for the first mortgage check to cash.”

Connor regarded her solemnly. “Is that when she died?”

“When she blew her head off, you mean?”

He winced. “I’m sorry.”

She waved him off, not wanting to deal with the pity she knew she’d find in his eyes. It was bad enough to be back here in the first place. Everywhere she looked—everything she saw—a bitter reminder of that other Christmas Eve two years ago today. That fateful afternoon when she’d danced home from school with light steps and a happy heart. Eager to get the party started. To celebrate her first real Christmas in her first real home.

From now on, things are going to be different, her mother had promised. From now on, we’ll be a family.

But that, it had turned out, had been just another one of Mom’s fantasies.

“It’s amazing they managed to get all the brains out of the carpet,” she muttered, kicking the obviously bleached-out rug with her toe. The shotgun had made quite a mess—in fact, if it wasn’t for her mother’s bloodstained bunny slippers still stuffed on her feet and the emerald ring on her finger, she probably wouldn’t have even recognized the corpse sprawled out on the living room floor.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Connor’s cringe and immediately wished she could take back the vulgar words. After all, it had been her idea to come here—not his. And there was no reason to lash out and punish him for what her mother had done to her. Over the last two years, she’d tried to forget it altogether, to block out the memories and move forward with her life best she could. But being back here, at the scene of the unforgivable crime, was proving too much, especially with her nerves already stretched so tight.

“She was sick,” she found herself saying, surprising herself as the words spilled from her lips. She never talked about what had happened with her mother. Not to Caitlin. Not even to her grandpa. He’d tried to get her to talk about it, of course, even sent her to shrinks they couldn’t afford to help her release what she’d bottled up inside. But it had been no use. She’d never been able to voice the betrayal and hurt she’d experienced on that devastating day—the day she’d realized that all the promises in the world meant nothing and the only person she could truly trust was herself.

“Not physically sick,” she continued in a rush, twisting the ring on her finger forcefully. “I mean, she heard…voices…in her head. Sometimes they were so loud she couldn’t hear anything else.” She pressed her palm against the wall, hanging her head as she remembered. “They told her to do things. Things she never would have done otherwise.”

Like abandon her only daughter without even saying good-bye.

She trailed off, uncomfortably reminded of her own voices—the ones she’d heard back in the museum and at her grandpa’s house. Was it just a coincidence? Her mind playing tricks? Or had her mother’s illness been lurking inside of her all along? Waiting for just the right moment to dig its sharp talons into her consciousness and rip out her sense of reality?

I’m nothing like Mom. I’m nothing like Mom. I’m NOTHING like Mom.

She shoved off the wall, plopping down on the couch and scrubbing her face with her hands. “Anyway, that’s when my grandpa took me in. He didn’t have to. But he knew how miserable I’d been in foster care over the years when my mom was in and out of hospitals, and so he somehow convinced the judge to award him custody.” She gave Connor a sad smile. “And we became a family. Just the two of us.”

And then I yelled at him, she added to herself. I basically called him a fool for wasting our money on some useless artifact.

But it wasn’t useless. And she was the one who’d been a fool.

She glanced out the window, unease knotting her stomach. Where was he? Why hadn’t he called? Had the blood on the knife been his? The fact that the agents were looking for him meant, at least, they didn’t have him. But what about these Dracken people? Could they have captured him somehow? And if so, what would they do to him? Would they hold him captive until she agreed to turn over the egg?

“I just hope he’s okay,” she said quietly. “I can’t stand thinking about him out there somewhere, all alone, maybe in trouble. It just makes me feel so helpless.” Her voice cracked on the last part as she fought back a sob.

For a moment she just sat there, staring out the window, not knowing what to do, what to say. Then, to her surprise, she felt a hand on her shoulder. Connor reaching out, without a word, gathering her into his arms.

Her first instinct was to resist, to pull away. To put distance between herself and this stranger. After all, she wasn’t the type of girl who just fell into a guy’s arms at a moment’s notice, no matter how hot they might be.

Yet she was so stressed, so frayed, so at her wits’ end. And his arms were so warm. So gentle and comforting. An embrace for her tired soul to melt into. She found herself relaxing, resting her head against his chest, breathing in his warm, rich scent. As he stroked her head with careful fingers, she could feel his heartbeat, strong and steady against her ear.

“I’m sorry, Trinity,” he said so softly she could barely make out the words. “No one should have to go through something like that.”

She gave a choking laugh and pushed herself off the couch, out of Connor’s reach, stalking to the other side of the room, trying to ignore her pounding heart. Seriously, what was wrong with her? She paced the room, her nervous steps eating up the distance between walls, feeling embarrassed and awkward and not knowing what to say. Here Connor was, trying to save the world from a dragon apocalypse, and all she could do was babble on and on about her pitiful life story. As if it would matter to him in the least. So her mother died. Big deal. His whole freaking world had died. Hell, he probably only hugged her in an effort to get her to shut up for three seconds, so he could get back to the mission at hand.

She turned back to him, crossing her arms over her chest, trying to pull herself together. To appear strong and in control. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to unload on you like that. Trust me, it’s not something I normally do. Even with people I know.” She scanned the room, her nose wrinkling in distaste. “I guess it’s just this place—filled with empty promises and broken dreams.”

Connor was silent for a moment, regarding her with serious eyes. At last he spoke. “The Surface Lands can be like that for me.”

“The Surface Lands?” she repeated, cocking her head in question, more than grateful for the sudden subject change. “What are the Surface Lands?”

“That’s what we call the world aboveground where I come from,” he clarified, waving an arm around the room. “You know, where the dragons rule. Every time I head up there—on mission or whatever—I feel like I’m stepping into a graveyard.”

“You mean because of all the people who died in the apocalypse?”

“Because of my father.”

His voice was gruff. Brittle. As if it hurt to say the words out loud. And they sent a startling revelation straight to her core. He’d lost someone too. Someone he loved. His family had shattered, just like her own. Suddenly she didn’t feel quite so pathetic for spilling her secrets, for accepting his comforting hug. Because, she realized, he wasn’t looking at her with pitying eyes like the rest of them did. He was looking at her with understanding.

“Was he…?” she started to ask, then trailed off, not knowing how to voice the question.

“Burned alive by dragon fire?” Connor finished for her. Bitterness flashed across his face. “Yes. It’s a common way to go in my world.”

She waited for him to continue, but he fell silent instead, probably as uncomfortable as she’d been sharing such intimate details with a practical stranger. She wanted to tell him that it was okay, that she’d never betray his secrets or mock his pain. But she stayed silent, thinking perhaps it was too much, too soon. The near-death experience and mad escape for their lives had stretched her emotions taut as piano wires. But that didn’t mean he felt the same.

“He was a Hunter,” Connor said at last. “A Dragon Hunter, just like me. He was good too. Maybe the best ever. Until…” He trailed off again, silent for a moment, then shook himself. “In any case, that’s the kind of senseless death I’ve come back to prevent. If I succeed in my mission—and I don’t intend to fail,” he added, giving her a fierce look, “the Scorch will never take place. And dragons will be gone for good.”

The fire in his eyes and the fervor in his voice sent a chill down to her bones. He was so passionate, so determined—especially for someone so young. Completely unlike any of the boys she knew from school. They were all too wrapped up in sports or video games or the latest viral something-or-other to hit the interwebs to concern themselves with the atrocities of the world. Never mind muster up the energy to do something about them.

But Connor was different. The travesties he’d witnessed had made him strong, not scared. Determined, not demoralized.

“Tell me about this Scorch,” she requested, wanting to hear him talk more, to unravel the secrets of his strange, futuristic world—and maybe a few about himself. “What was it like? I’m trying to picture it, but all I can think of was this really bad movie I saw once.”

Connor seemed to consider this for a moment. “If you want, I can show you,” he said at last.

“Show me?” She squinted at him, confused. “What do you mean?”

At first he didn’t answer. Outside she could hear the wind whistling through the trees, announcing the encroaching storm. A coyote howled mournfully across the plain, echoed by a few neighborhood dogs. But inside the house, the silence was thick and suffocating as she waited, on the edge of her seat, for what he was going to say.

Finally, he nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I think it’s the only way to do this. Otherwise, it’ll be just words. You’ll never truly understand what it was like. Why this is all so important.” He gazed at her, his eyes darkening with emotion. “But I warn you, it’s not an easy thing to see.”

She squared her shoulders, not sure what she was agreeing to. But she’d come this far already—and she wanted him to know that she could be brave too.

“Nothing has been easy since I met you,” she declared, drawing on all her remaining bravado. “Why start now?”

“Right.” Connor gave her a wry look. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He reached out, taking her hands in his own. She felt something hard and cold between them and realized he’d placed a sapphire-colored gem into her palm. She stared down at it, wondering what it was for. Before she could ask, Connor closed his eyes, his face glowing with concentration as he squeezed her hands tightly in his.

A moment later the gem began to heat in her hand, hotter and hotter, until she was sure it would catch fire and singe her skin. Panicked, she glanced up at Connor, but his eyes remained closed and lips pressed firmly together—as if nothing was wrong. And so she forced herself to ignore the burn, closing her eyes and readying herself for anything.

But nothing could prepare her for what she saw next.

Chapter Twelve

The world was on fire.

At least that was Trinity’s first thought as she opened her eyes. No longer safe and sound in her mother’s old house, she found herself standing in the center of Old Oak Grove’s town square, an inferno raging all around her, as far as her eyes could see. White-hot flames licked at shops and restaurants while bright orange fire devoured the trees. Smoke, thick as pea soup, flooded the streets, as desperate, human-shaped shadows flew past her, stumbling in a frantic attempt to reach safe ground. Sobs echoed through the air, competing with children’s screams, and the marble fountain in the center of the square violently boiled over.

“Connor?” she cried, trying to peer through the smoke. “Are you there?” Her voice was raw and hoarse, and her lungs burned in protest as she waited for his reply.

But there was no reply. No answer to her calls. No sign of the time traveler who’d sent her to this hell on earth.

She was alone.

How could he do this to her? Just dump her here at the end of the world—with no explanation as to what she was supposed to do? Where she was supposed to go? Was this simply a vision of an event that had already taken place? Or had he actually sent her forward in time? Was she safe and sound in her former home, still gripping Connor’s hands? Or was she really here, her life in danger?

An inhuman screech ripped through the air, shattering her questions and rendering her immobile. At the same moment, the smoke seemed to sweep away in a gust of sudden wind. Gathering all her courage, she dared to look up, just in time to see the shadow of a giant serpent swimming through the sky, its wingspan so vast that, for a moment, it blotted out the sun.

A dragon. A giant dragon. Whirling above her, beating the skies with its leathery wings, its tail snapping back and forth behind it. From where she stood, she could just make out the thick red scales, the impossibly long claws, the razor-sharp teeth, the black, vacant eyes. It was both impossibly beautiful and exquisitely terrifying, and Trinity found she couldn’t look away.

The beast turned on a dime—shockingly graceful for its gigantean size—and landed on a nearby church steeple. As Trin watched, breath in her throat, it slowly pulled back its massive head, opening its mouth with a long, loud hiss. A blast of fire shot out and she leapt back, just in time, as it rained down onto the town square, only inches from where she’d stood. Heat slashed at her skin, drenching her in sweat.

Get out of there, Trinity! Now!

She started to run—down the street, through the alley, over the bridge. Screams assaulted her ears as she leapt over charred lumps she didn’t want to identify as human and her nose was assaulted by the smell of burnt flesh. It was all she could do not to stop and puke her guts out. But to stop was to die. So she kept moving.

Bursting into a vacant lot, she heard a cracking sound above. She looked up, her eyes locking on a burning roof, reaching the point of collapse. She leapt back, but found she couldn’t dodge the fiery chunk of wood flying at her face. Instinctively she put up her arm as a shield. As the wood hit her hand, she shrieked as the flames seared her skin.

Cradling her burnt hand, she bit back the pain, reassessing her surroundings. The collapsed roof prevented her from going any further forward. And the way she came was no longer an option. As she desperately tried a few doors—all of them locked—her eyes fell upon a small hole—a drainage ditch, large enough to crawl into. It looked dark and dank, the kind of place filled with rats and snakes, but she dove in anyway, splashing through the murky water, ignoring the putrid smell, thankful to be out of the fire’s path.

As she pushed on, literally seeking the light at the end of the tunnel, the space tightened, stealing her breath. Sweat dripped down her neck and her legs cramped as panic rose inside of her. What if she got stuck in there?

She paused, willing her pulse to steady as she watched the frantic feet of those still running for their lives outside. She didn’t know what was worse—hearing the screams of terror or hearing those screams fall silent. When this was over, there would be nothing left. No one left.

A thundering outside the tunnel made her draw in a breath. A moment later, the circle of light eclipsed and she found herself engulfed in darkness. It wasn’t until her eyes adjusted that she caught movement in the blackness. A single eye, peering back at her—large, blue, with a gold-crescent pupil.

A dragon’s eye.

She squeezed her own eyes shut, trying to prevent her body from shaking with terror and giving her position away. The dragon was too large to enter the tunnel and eat her raw, but it could always choose to serve her up as flambé. Neither scenario sounded like a good way to go.

Open your eyes, Trinity.

She startled. That voice again! From back at the museum. And at her grandpa’s house. Could it be…?

Can you hear me, Trinity? Open your eyes.

She found herself obeying, reluctantly opening one eye, then another. Sudden bright light forced her to squint and she realized the dragon had stepped away from the entrance and was now standing a few feet away. Calm, fireless, observing her with a curious expression on its face.

Come on out. I won’t let them hurt you.

What else could she do? With effort, she began to crawl again, squeezing her way through the tunnel until she was able to emerge on the other side. Relief flooded her as she scrambled to her feet, stretching her cramped muscles. For a moment she was so happy to be free of the confined space, she forgot she was still face-to-face with a dragon. A talking dragon, nonetheless.

“Who are you? And how do you know my name?” she found herself blurting out, probably the most ridiculous, insignificant questions possible at a time like this. But what else did one say to a dragon? Eat any good people lately?

The dragon seemed to chuckle, as if she could hear Trinity’s thoughts. Maybe she could. My name is Emberlyn, the voice in her head informed her.

Trinity’s heart stuttered.

“That’s my mother’s name,” she rasped.

The dragon nodded her massive head, not looking surprised. You named me after her, she explained. To honor your mother’s memory. But you usually call me Emmy.

“But that doesn’t make any sense.” Why would she name a world-destroying monster after her mother? For that matter, why would she name a world-destroying monster at all?

Because you’re the Fire Kissed, Emmy replied, once again reading her mind. And we are destined…

Chapter Thirteen

“NO!” Trinity leapt to her feet, screaming at the top of her lungs. Connor grabbed her, locking her into a protective embrace, his hands gripping her back until she stopped fighting him, realizing where she was. No longer in the midst of a raging inferno. No longer face-to-face with a dragon that had her mother’s name. She was back at her old home, safe and sound, with Connor by her side. Had it all been some kind of dream? But no, a searing pain shot up her arm. She looked down to find blackened skin, blistering from where the wood had hit it.

She jerked away from Connor, staring down at her burnt hand, then up at him, fury and fear surging through her. “How could you do that?” she cried. “How could you send me there without even warning me first?”

It had been real. All of it. She could have died! She could have been burnt alive. How could he just stand there, knowing he’d put her life in danger like that?

Connor looked down at her hand, his face awash with confusion. “Wha—how did you get that?” he stammered.

“You tell me. You’re the one who sent me smack dab into the middle of Armageddon world,” she retorted, trying not to focus on her throbbing hand. If a little burn hurt this badly, what would it have been like to be engulfed in a sea of flames like the others? She held her stomach, this close to throwing up as her hand continued to pulse in pain.

“But it was just a vision,” Connor protested. “A recording of a past event. Not even first hand—it came from my history reader. It shouldn’t have been able to hurt you…”

“Tell that to my hand.”

Connor regarded her burn, looking confused and frightened. Then he squared his jaw, seeming to recover his inner soldier. “Hang on,” he said at last. “I have something that will help.”

Trinity watched as he reached into his bag and pulled out a small tin, prying open the top and scooping out a glob of grease. She obediently held out her hand and he smeared the stuff over her burn. The heat cooled immediately and she found herself able to breathe normally again.

“What is that stuff?” she asked.

“Burn salve,” he replied. “It’s a big seller where I’m from, as you can imagine. It’ll knock out your pain and prevent infection. Unfortunately, it may also make you a bit sleepy.”

Connor scooped out more goop and continued to apply it to her wound. His touch was warm, gentle. His strokes even and clean. Against her better judgment, Trinity felt herself start to relax, the apocalyptic nightmare fading from her consciousness. She was exhausted, she realized suddenly, and her head was pounding. Side effects from her trip through time and space?

Once he had finished, he led her back over to the couch. She collapsed in relief, leaning her head against a pillow, trying to will away the creeping nausea. “Tell me everything you saw,” he instructed, his voice filled with concern. “I need to figure out what’s going on here. Something’s got to be wrong. There’s no way you should have gotten hurt from a memory.”

And so she told him, starting with the burning town and the dying people, and ending with the small green dragon coming in for a landing.

“She said her name was Emberlyn—Emmy, just like my mother—and that I was the one to name her that. Which is ridiculous, right? I mean why on Earth would I be going around naming dragons? Naming dragons after my dead mother, I might add? And then she said something else weird. She said I was…” She trailed off, catching Connor’s grim expression. “What?”

“This is worse than I thought,” he declared. “The dragon is gaining strength and reaching out to you through your bond. She must have yanked you out of the vision I sent you—and dragged you into the Nether so she could talk to you.”

“The Nether?”

Connor bit his lower lip. “It’s a place beyond space and time, existing in the collective unconsciousness of all dragons.” He raked a frustrated hand through his hair. “This is all my fault—I should have never opened you up like that to receive my send. But I never imagined she would already be powerful enough to intervene.”

Trinity stared at him, more confused than ever. “So wait,” she said. “You’re saying that this dragon here, inside this egg, somehow hijacked your vision and dragged me into some magical dragon world so she and I could have a little meet and greet?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s the idea.”

“But why would she do that? What does she want with me?” She thought back to Emmy’s words and shivered.

We are destined…

“Most dragon eggs can hatch on their own without the aid of humans,” Connor explained. “But certain dragons—queen dragons, often—attempt to bond with a selected human before they’re born. It gives them an added level of protection from Hunters like me.” He looked down at his hands. “Your bond with Emmy began back at the museum, when you first pulled her from the exhibit case.”

She stared at him, unease crawling across her skin. “So that’s why you told me not to touch the egg.”

“I thought maybe I could save you from it all. Let you live a normal life. But now it’s too late. Emmy has touched you and the bond between you will only grow. She’ll use that bond to convince you to help her. To save her life.”

Trinity stared at the bag containing the egg, remembering how tempted she’d been to touch it. To hold it in her arms. To trace it with her fingertips. Had the dragon been silently luring her under its spell all along, hoping to convince her to help it hatch and destroy the world? The thought was revolting.

“Well, don’t worry,” she declared. “I’m not about to play mother to a dragon. Not after I saw what the beasts are capable of.” Her mind flashed to the town square, engulfed in flames. The children’s screams. The burning flesh. So much senseless death. The end of the world itself—all sparked by this one egg. There was absolutely no bond on Earth that was going to convince her to save this disgusting thing.

She turned to Connor. “I want to help,” she declared. “Whatever needs to be done to keep dragons extinct—I’m your girl.”

Connor didn’t answer, pulling the egg from his bag and turning it in his hands. Trin flexed her fingers uneasily, the compulsion to touch it once again burning through her like a fever. She wondered if she should mention the urge to Connor but decided against it. He might decide she was too far gone to help him and she didn’t want to be left out.

“Judging from its transparency, I’d say we have about a week before it hatches,” he told her. “We’ll need to find a way to destroy it by then. The sooner the better.”

She gave the egg a dubious look. “Couldn’t we just…I don’t know…smash it?”

“It’s not that simple. Dragon eggs are pretty much unbreakable,” he informed her. “Harder than diamonds. But we can try to burn it.” He looked up at her hopefully. “I don’t suppose you have any spare plutonium?”

“Um, no. Sorry. Not exactly something they stock at the local Wal-Mart.”

“Right.” He pressed his lips together. “Well, then we’re going to have to go with the alternative.”

“Which is?”

He seemed to consider this. “A volcano perhaps. If we can drop the egg into an active volcano, the lava should be hot enough to destroy it.”

“Oh-kay.” She considered this for a moment. “But wait,” she said, a thought coming to her.

Connor looked at her questioningly.

“If we destroy the egg,” she said, “won’t that…I don’t know… cancel out your own world? I mean I saw Back to the Future. If we succeed, will you start to disappear?”

She meant the question as a kind of half joke and was surprised at the uneasiness she felt after she voiced it. What if he did just disappear? Vanished into thin air, never to be seen again? The thought disturbed her more than she wanted to admit.

Thankfully, Connor shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that. My timeline has already been established. There’s no way to alter that. But by destroying the egg, we can set your world on an alternate timeline. One that doesn’t end in apocalypse.”

She furrowed her brow. The quantum mechanics were making her head hurt. “So you can’t go back then,” she realized aloud, “because in the new alternate future, you wouldn’t exist.”

He nodded.

“Dude, that’s rough,” she blurted out before she could stop herself.

He chuckled. “Don’t worry. I knew what I was getting myself into when I accepted the mission,” he assured her. “We have to do whatever we can to save the human race. Even if it means sacrificing ourselves.” He paused, then added in a whisper, “Sacrifice one to save the world,” as if it were some kind of mantra.

Trinity opened her mouth to reply but was interrupted by her phone. She jerked, glancing at Connor. Pulling the phone from her pocket, her eyes widened as she read the unfamiliar telephone number on the caller ID.

“Hello?” she answered hesitantly after putting the phone to her ear. After all, it could be anyone. The government agents. Sheriff Bob…

“Trinity! Where are you?”

“Grandpa!” She leapt from her seat, gripping the receiver tightly in her hand. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he assured her. “I was worried about you. I only left the house for a short time—I was opening up a package with my pocket knife when your damn cat jumped out at me, knocking over the Chinese food. I managed to slice up my hand pretty good and decided to head over to the clinic to make sure I didn’t need stitches. I’m sorry I didn’t leave a note. I figured I’d still beat you home.”

Trinity swallowed hard, remembering the bloody knife. What she’d imagined…

“Unfortunately they took forever—evidently Christmas Eve is one of their busiest nights. When I finally got out, I swung back to the museum to see if you needed a ride, but the whole place was barricaded by police tape. They told me there was a break-in and someone had been shot and killed.” His voice trembled. “My first thought was it had been you.”

Trinity closed her eyes. It certainly could have been, had it not been for Connor. “Where are you now?” she asked.

“I’m still at the Denny’s across the street. The police told me to stay put so they could send someone over. Evidently there are some government agents in town who want to question me about the break-in. The police are trying to get a hold of them now but they’re not answering their phones.”

No. They were a little tied up at the moment, Trinity thought grimly. “Listen to me, Grandpa,” she said in a tight voice. “Something’s happened. I can’t explain over the phone, but I need you to get out of there. Use the back door if you have to. Pretend you’re going to the bathroom or something. Whatever you have to do—just leave.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. “Trinity…you’re scaring me. What’s going on? Where are you? Why shouldn’t I wait for the agents?”

“Just trust me, okay?” she begged. “I’ll meet you by exit 13 off the old interstate. When you get there, I’ll explain everything.”

There was another pause. She could almost hear his objecting thoughts over the phone and waited impatiently for him to voice them. But instead, he said at last, “Okay, fine. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

She let out a sigh of relief, then hung up the phone, turning back to Connor. “He’s okay,” she breathed, relating her grandpa’s story. “But we have to go meet him.”

“I’ll go,” he said, scrambling up from the couch and grabbing his coat. “You stay here.”

“I should come too,” she protested. But as she attempted to rise to her feet, a strange weakness overtook her and she found herself falling back onto the couch, her head spinning and her stomach churning all over again. She looked up at Connor in confusion.

“The Nether,” he explained grimly. “It’ll kick the fleck out of you every time. You’ll need a couple hours to feel like yourself again.” He paused, then added, “It’s probably better if you wait here anyway. We can’t afford for you to be recognized, and someone needs to stay here and guard the egg. It’ll be quicker and safer for me to go grab him and bring him back here. No one knows who I am.”

“But—” she protested weakly. “I should—”

“Listen to me, Trinity,” he commanded, cutting off her protests. “This is the kind of thing I’ve trained for. What I was sent here to do. I promise you I will take care of your grandpa. I won’t let anything happen to him.” He patted the gun to his side. “No matter what.”

She chewed her lower lip, wanting to argue. But in her heart she knew he was right. He was the soldier, the professional. He’d proven himself an ally and she had to trust him now.

“Okay,” she relented. “But be careful. I don’t want anything to happen to…” she drew in a breath, “…either of you.”

Their eyes met, his steady and glowing, hers anxious, hesitant, but full of sudden longing. As her heart hammered in her ears, he leaned down, closing the gap between them.

His kiss was soft, gentle—a wisp of a butterfly’s wings against her lips. And yet it left a trail of blazing fire in its wake. And, more importantly, a promise.

“I’ll bring him back,” he declared as he pulled away, piercing her with his glowing eyes. “I swear to you I’ll bring him back safe and sound. No matter what.”

“Please do,” she murmured, as she watched him walk out the door. “He’s all I have left.”

Not anymore, corrected the now all-too-familiar voice, tripping across her consciousness like a whisper. I’m here now. And we are destined…

Chapter Fourteen

Connor headed out the front door, preparing for the trip back to the interstate. As he plodded down the front steps, he found himself glancing back at the house, a pleasant ache settling in his stomach as he thought of Trin, waiting inside. He could still feel the ghost of her lips against his own and it made him smile like a first-year academy student.

Then he frowned. What the hell was he doing? Only jeopardizing his entire mission. After all, what was the one thing the Council had warned him about—above everything else?

Do not get attached.

Of course, that order had seemed much simpler when given back in the sterile, cold debriefing room, deep underground, two hundred years in the future. After all, why would anyone want to get attached to her—the girl destined to bring dragons back into the world? The one who had set in motion the Scorch that had led to the deaths of millions of innocent people? People like his father. He should want Trinity Foxx dead.

And yet, somehow, at that moment, all he could think of was running his hands through her glossy black hair, fingering each and every strand. Pulling her into his arms, breathing in her baby powder scent…

What is wrong with you? You’re a Dragon Hunter. Get a grip!

He shook his head, firming his resolve. She was a weakness. And he couldn’t afford weaknesses. His mission was too important. The entire world was depending on him to succeed. Not to mention his father.

He’d let his father down once. He wasn’t about to do it again. When the time came, he would do what he had come here to do. No excuses, end of story. They were his orders after all. And Connor always followed orders.