“Yes. You’re right, Nisha.” I heard regret in his voice now, and told myself I had no reason to feel guilty for that. “But there are those among my kind who believe that, in time, there will be peace.”
I exhaled a humourless laugh. “That’s why you’re sitting in a crate in shackles, about to be shipped off to who knows where and for what purpose.”
“I know what lies ahead for me,” he replied, that velvety deep voice as calm as I’d heard it so far. “I won’t be enslaved. That’s not why they took me. My capture will have only one outcome.”
“Death,” I whispered, ignoring the twinge in my chest. I wanted to see his face in that moment — whether or not it was Strangely hideous — to determine if the thought of dying scared him even a little. It didn’t seem to and I held my ground, fisting my hands at my sides instead of reaching out to move aside the tarp that hid him. “You know you will be killed.”
“Eventually, yes,” he said, without a trace of fear or sorrow. “I feel my death might serve a higher purpose.”
I shook my head, unsure if he could see me or not. For some reason, despite everything I knew and felt about his kind, his resignation bothered me. More than bothered me, it pissed me off. “You’re just giving up. Don’t try to pretend it has anything to do with honour.”
“Sometimes, Nisha the Heartless, there is a greater good to be gained in dying than there is in living. For me, certainly. I go to my fate willingly.”
I barked sharply. “Well, then, I guess that makes you either very courageous or very stupid.”
I reminded myself that he wasn’t my problem. His fate — whether or not he welcomed it with open arms — sure as hell was not my concern. I walked over and picked up my empty soymeal tin, my movements tight with aggravation.
“I’ve had enough thought-provoking conversation for one night,” I told him, more than ready to spend the rest of the wait up front in the cab by myself. “Get some rest. Your other ride should be here soon.”
I jumped out of the back of the truck and closed the doors, sealing him inside.
I fell asleep in the cab.
The dream woke me, as it always does. Not the violent nightmare I’d had since my parents’ deaths, but the dream that started soon afterwards and visited me more often than I liked. This time, everything seemed more vivid — so real I felt as though I could sweep my hand out before me and touch it.
Sunlit skies. Glittering azure ocean. And me, soaring high above it all, twisting and gliding on a gentle wind towards an infinite horizon.
I jolted awake, trembling and breathless.
It was the usual reaction. Just the thought of flying terrified me. The act itself was unnatural, whether achieved in the thunderous, now obsolete, metal machines of decades past, or as performed by those rarest of the Strange who’d needed none of man’s inventions to aid them. Flying was nothing I’d ever done, or ever wanted to know anything about.
Desperate to purge the troubling sensations, I pushed myself up in the driver’s seat of the cab and fumbled for the wristwatch I kept fastened to the steering wheel. It was an ancient wind-up type, the only time-keeping devices that still functioned in the post-technology age. I checked the gloved hands on the smiling black-and-white mouse.
“Shit.” I’d been asleep for more than two hours.
The truck was quiet. No movement at all in the warehouse and no sign of my client’s people coming to take the Strange cargo off my hands yet.
“How much longer before I can collect my pay and get out of here?” I grumbled, climbing out of my rig to go and check on things around back.
I heard the dry, choking rasp as soon as I opened the doors.
“Are you all right?” I asked, climbing in and stepping cautiously towards the covered crate. There was no reply, only a further round of coughing and a terrible-sounding wheeze. “Are you hurt in there?”
I realized I didn’t even know his name, not that I needed to. Nor did I need to run for my water canteen when he started to dry heave, but that’s precisely what I did. I told myself it was only reasonable to make sure Mr Honour-and-Higher-Purpose stayed alive long enough for my client to kill him, since that’s what he’d claimed he wanted so badly.
I returned and jumped into the back of the truck. He was gasping now, sucking in air, each breath sounding deathly parched. Canteen in one hand, I hurried to the crate and tugged loose a corner of the tarp. “I have water. You need to dr—”
My voice fled as I lifted the plastic sheet from the front of the wooden container. A liquid gold gaze peered at me through a slim crack between the nailed planks of the box. It startled me, penetrating and intense, sending a swift, unbidden heat into the core of my being. Just as quickly, the golden eyes were shuttered as they turned back into the darkness of the cell and the prisoner’s wheeze grew more violent.
“Stay away,” he rasped from deep within the shadows. His throat scraped with every syllable, sounding as dry as cinders. “Leave me. This will pass.”
I muttered a curse, low under my breath, knowing he was in far worse shape than he wanted me to think. I walked around the crate, pulling off the tarp as I went. The few gaps that separated the wooden planks were so tight not even my little finger would be able to slip through them. No way could I get the canteen to him without breaking open the box. And that was out of the question.
“Hold on,” I said. “I have an idea.”
Slinging the canteen strap over my shoulder, I hoisted myself up on to the side of the crate and clambered to the top of it. I brought the canteen around and took out the stopper. Beneath me, his bright citrine eyes followed my every movement through the narrow breaks in the wood. Every nerve ending in my body tingled, warning me that something Strange and powerful lurked just beneath me.
“Come closer, bring your mouth up to me,” I told him, more a command than request. “Stop being noble, and take a drink.”
“Nisha.” My name was barely a whisper in the shadows below. “You know the rules.”
I swallowed, recalling very well the instructions I’d been given for this job. Instructions that all my logic and experience told me to follow. But then he coughed again — a deep, shredding heave of his lungs — and neither logic nor experience had prepared me for the concern I had for him in that moment.
I leaned down and brought the mouth of the open canteen to the largest gap in the top of the crate. “Drink.”
I thought he might refuse again, but then I heard him moving — sensed him drawing nearer to where I waited. His eyes locked on mine. I felt a warm rush of breath puff through the crack and skate across my hand. White teeth gleamed as he parted his lips near the break in the wood and waited for me to pour the water into his mouth.
I gave him only a trickle, not wanting to rush him before he was ready. His lips closed on a deep growl that vibrated through the crate and into my bones. And then the growl became louder. The crate rumbled beneath me, shuddering and shaking.
I leapt off — just in time to watch the whole thing explode before me, wood planks splintering in all directions like nothing more than toothpicks.
The Strange being within the container erupted out of the wrecked crate in a blur of gleaming, iridescent blue-and-black scales and immense, talon-tipped wings. The great head of the dragon swung toward me, massive jaws agape, those golden eyes looking far fiercer in the light of my rig than they had in the dark confines of the box.
Terrified, I scrambled backwards, then pushed to my feet and fumbled for the pistol holstered on my belt. Hands shaking, I chambered a round and lifted the gun up in front of me to take aim on the beast.