Core (11 page)

Cale reached out and touched her shoulder. He did it often. A red dragon thing.

“Ava, I’ll only ask this once. And whatever you answer, I won’t question it.” He took a deep breath. “Do you want to report that guy?

He waited, watching her face as she thought. She’d never reported anything before, not even when things with Jim were at their worst. She remembered when he’d broken her arm. Her second grade teacher had asked what happened more than once, and Ava could tell she suspected something was amiss. Ava lied, perfecting her mistruth every time. She recalled how fast her heart began to beat when her teacher pursed her lips, studying the bruises that accompanied the sky blue cast. It had terrified Ava. The idea that she’d be found out, that she’d be taken away, that Miriam would have to live all alone. That scared Ava more than Jim ever did.

“I’m not afraid of him,” she said. She needed to say it out loud. She didn’t need the police’s help.
 
If I had to, I could handle it myself.

“Neither am I,” Cale said. “Trust
me, I could kill him without trying. But someone else might be too afraid to do anything about it.” Cale tugged at one of her curls. “Not every girl is as brave as you, Ava.”

Ava fidgeted in her seat.
“Anonymously. And we don’t tell anyone.”

Cale’s smile was cautious
. “Agreed.”

Cars whizzed by them on the interstate as they made the call, and both Ava and Cale ignored them. There was enough going on inside the cab. When it was over, Ava smiled, just a little.

“That wasn’t so bad.”

Cale reached over and flicked her ear. “Apparently, I’m always right,” he said.

“Sure.”

Cale grinned. “Wow, you must be really tired. I can’t believe you agreed with me.”

Ava leaned her head against the truck door and closed her eyes. She felt the sleep coming on almost instantly. “Just drive me home, dragon man.” And she was gone.

Eight

Landing

Cale slouched into his seat, his knees bumping against the chair in front of him. He tried twisting, stretching his feet out as far as he could. Nothing was comfortable. Ava elbowed him out of her space, pushing his large frame off her arm rest.

“Sit still,” she said as she shoved her palms against his side. “You’re driving me crazy."

He leaned forward so his head rested on the back of the chair in front of him. “But I’m losing my mind,” he groaned. “I can’t sit still this long.”

The flight attendant had put on a movie about a boy and girl whose dog crossed a magical bridge. Ava couldn’t decide whether it was worse to endure Cale's whining or to wait to find out if Maggie an
d Ted could muster the courage to take their first step on their fantastical bridge journey.

Ava sighed, turning away from Maggie, who was sobbing into her mother’s apron be
cause she didn’t have the balls to follow Ted.

“Let’s play a game or something,” Ava said.

Cale sat up quickly, his face alight. “Football?”

Ava scowled.
“Yes, Cale.” She motioned to the cabin. “Let’s play football in the crowded airplane as it struggles to defy gravity and keep us suspended in the air.”

Cale groaned again, burying his face in his hands. “
There’s only so many times I can ask for apple juice.” He grabbed her wrist and shook until her hand went floppy. “Save me, Ava.”

 
She sighed and pushed him off of her. “Fine. Tell me about flying.”

Cale rolled his eyes. “That’s not going to work again. How gullible do you think I am?”

Ava leaned over him and opened the window. Cale couldn’t help but stare as the clouds billowed along. The blue of the sky was so close. He imagined how cold it would be, how dangerous, but how free he would feel, how close he’d be to Ava.

“I’ve been dreaming about it since before I could talk,” he said, still gazing out the window. “We’re going to love it.”

“I don’t think I’ll be as excited about it as you, Cale. I haven’t been dreaming about flying a dragon my whole life. In fact, I was pretty sure dragons didn’t exist up until a few days ago.” She chewed on the last of the ice cubes that remained from Cale’s apple juice. He didn’t even drink the stuff. Ava had no idea why he was ordering it in such large quantities. “Besides, I don’t think I even like flying. This is its own sort of impossible.”

Cale scoffed. “Our plane falling out of the sky is less likely than us getting struck by lightning.”

“That happens to people,” she argued. They lived in Florida. It happened more often there than anywhere else in the United States.

“Well, it won’t happen to us.” He looked out the window again, dreams in his eyes.

Cale fell asleep eventually. His head bobbed as he tried to balance it on his own shoulder until Ava gave in, lifted her armrest and let him spread out over her lap. A soft, low growl escaped him as he snuggled closer to her, burying his face in the blanket she had over her legs. The passenger sitting next to Ava glanced over disapprovingly, but Ava just stared the chubby man down until he turned away and put his headphone buds into his ears.

Ava didn’t know what to do with her hands once Cale was on her lap. One of her armrests was gone and the other was being monopolized by
Chubster. Tired of hovering, she surrendered and rested her hands on Cale’s back. He was warm, his body rising and falling slowly beneath her palms. She reached up and touched the hair at the base of his neck as lightly as she could. He shivered and readjusted, pulling the blanket closer to his face. Ava ran her hands over his hair with less restraint and Cale growled again, a little smile playing on his lips as he slept.

As time passed, Ava leaned over onto his back. He didn’t seem to mind when she folded her arms and laid them on top of him. She closed her eyes, feeling the constant lift and drop of his breathing, the heat his blood gave off through his clothes. She knew she was about to fall asleep when doubts began to creep in.
 
Too close, Ava. Way too close
. But she refused to open her eyes. 
No,
 she thought, silencing them all. 
This is perfect.

Hours later, the plane jerked in the sky. Cale sat up and nearly smacked into Ava, who was still curled on top of him. She rubbed her face, pulling herself out of the best, deepest sleep of her life. But Cale was wide awake, sitting up straight, his mouth puckered into a frown.

“What is it?” Ava asked. “Bad dream?”

Cale didn’t answer. Instead, his eyes darted around the cabin, trying to see the faces of the people around them. He looked serious. That was never a good sign.

“Cale, what’s the matter with you?”

He snorted, almost like a sneeze, and a puff of smoke drifted into the air. Ava fanned it away, her heartbeat picking up. “You’re going to get us in trouble,” she hissed at him. “Calm down.”

People didn’t like seeing smoke on airplanes. Ava hadn’t flown before, but she’d seen enough on the news. 
How would we explain to hundreds of panicked passengers that he’s a harmless dragon and not a terrorist?

“It’s probably nothing,” Cale said. But his voice sounded dry. “I’m just going to go to the bathroom.” And he had every intention of doing that once he took a good, slow walk through the cabin.

Ava grabbed his shirt and pulled him back down to his seat. “Tell me what’s up first.”

Cale’s eyes were still roving over the people on the plane. Some were sleeping, others listening to music or flipping through magazines. They looked like normal passengers to Ava.

“I just got that feeling.”

Feeling?
Like the feeling he got the night sirens attacked? 
“How can we be in trouble in an airplane? You think a siren followed us up here?”

“I can’t tell yet. L
et me walk around and I’ll see.”

He stepped over Ava and
Chubster, who glowered his way, his flappy jowls sagging in irritation. Cale got his backpack down and handed it to Ava. He didn’t have to say why. Ava opened it and stuck her hand in, running her fingers across the stitching in the lining where they’d sewn in the dragonblades. Since the weapons weren’t iron or steel, they didn’t draw attention from the metal detectors in the airport. Ava was glad they’d decided to break the rules and bring them along, though when Cale had thought of it, she deemed him paranoid.

Cale was making his way d
own the aisle when the turbulence hit, causing the entire vessel to shudder. He almost lost his footing, grabbing onto one of the seats for balance. The flight attendant got onto his intercom system and told all of the passengers to buckle up and stay seated. One of the other attendants tried to get Cale to sit back down.

“The seat belt sign has been turned on, sir,” she said, trying to usher him backwards. Her hair was so stiff with spray that it distracted Cale for just a moment. It looked like a geographical structure had formed on top of her scalp.

But Cale was insistent, snapping himself out of it. “I need to use the bathroom. It’s an emergency.”

Another jolt and Ava gripped the arm rest with her free hand.
 
I officially do not like flying. 
She swallowed as half a dozen passengers rang their “assistance needed” buttons. The frazzled attendants spoke with each traveler, ensuring them that everything would be fine if they only remained seated.

At that point, the lady with cement hair threatened to get the air marshal, wherever he was, if Cale didn’t follow orders and sit down.

“I will force my way, lady, if you don’t let me through,” Cale snapped.

Ava decided she needed to go reason with him before he got himself handcuffed to the bathroom door. And that’s when the screeching of metal made the cabin scream.

It sounded like the plane was being torn apart, like the bolts holding the steel in place couldn’t keep together any longer. Oxygen masks dropped, and passengers shrieked as they tried to recall the safety video they’d all ignored before the plane took off. Cale rushed back to their row just as the plane began to descend.

“You don’t need it,” he said, batting the oxygen mask out of Ava’s reach. “We’re descending fast enough. The oxygen is already thickening.”

How does he know that?
 Ava took the hand that Cale offered her, jumping over Chubster, who was sweating profusely, his eyes closed, his round fingers squeezing the arm rest he had been hogging all day.

“Oh my god,” Ava whispered. Her voice grew with her panic.
“Oh my god, oh my god.” She wanted to close her eyes to the crying, screaming passengers, mostly because she knew she’d be one of them in just a few moments. Her calm was quickly slipping out of her grasp. “Oh my god!” She grabbed onto the back of a seat, her heartbeat choking her as she got a look out of the window. “We’re falling out of the sky! I’m going to die on this stupid plane!”

Cale bounced up and down on his toes. He wanted to concentrate on the obvious problem and he wanted to keep Ava calm. But he
couldn’t shake the feeling…. It hadn’t arrived yet. The plane crashing wasn’t what had woken him up. It was something else. 
Something worse.

The sound of metal tearing filled the cabin once more. Ava ducked and, out of instinct, Cale covered her with his body. Light fixtures shattered and overhead compartments spit out their luggage. People scrambled for flotation devices, shoving each other out of the way even though there was more than enough for everyone to have one.

Finally, one last screech, one last wrench, and the ceiling was gone, creating a wind tunnel that scooped half a dozen mortified passengers up and out of the vessel. The rest scrambled to hold tight to a seat, to anything that would keep them tethered to the floor. The plane nosedived, and Ava watched in horror as Chubster slipped and landed at the front of the cabin, carts and loose seats crushing him against the bathroom wall.

The hole in the ceiling was blocked by what looked like a cluster of night. The black beast contracted its chest so that it could fit through the gap. It
landed, and its talons sunk into the floor of the vessel, anchoring it. Its skin gleamed black, its eyes nothing but dark spheres. On its back sat a gray-skinned monster with arms, legs and a face that might have been human or siren or dragon. The thing on the beast's back pulled out a whip and cracked it into the air. He opened its mouth and spoke in a strange whisper. It sounded like a hundred squealing mice.

Cale cried out, cupping his hands over his ears. He fell to his knees, wedged in between a row of seats that hadn’t flown out of the
hole in the plane’s ceiling. Ava tugged at him, begging him to tell her if he was hurt. But Cale couldn’t hear her. All that filled his core was a thundering, crackling voice. It boomed, took up all the space in his chest, pushing its words into his head so that he had to press his temples to keep his brain from exploding.

“
Cale of Anders Nest
.”

He screamed, blood oozing from his ears and through his fingers. Tears squeezed out from the corners of his eyes. “Stop,” he begged. A whisper was all he could manage.

Ava screamed too. Because she was afraid. Because she didn’t know how it was hurting him. Because it was killing him.

Do something, Ava, do something now!
 She stood to her feet, her legs hardly working, locked with the fear that had brought her to her knees in the first place. She felt her way across the cabin, clutching the seats until she found the backpack wedged underneath her chair. She hoisted it out and ripped a hole in the lining, pulling out a weapon. Her heart almost stopped in her throat as she fumbled with the dragonblade. But she caught it and stuffed the other one into the backpack,  zipped it up and put her arms through the straps. Then she pressed the small rock on the handle so that the dark blade sprung to life. Cale had spent some time showing her how to use it, but already her nerves were winning the war against her memory.

She held the blade underhanded and made her way back to the aisle. Cale’s shouts
of pain pushed her forward. 
I can do this. I can do this for him.
 She needed to get to the creature as fast as possible, so Ava lay down on her back. Then she slid down the aisle, kicking debris out of the way as gravity did its work. She knew that the closer she got to the wind tunnel’s opening, the higher she’d be lifted into the air. She didn’t care. Her body moved so fast that the beast barely noticed her until she was underneath it. Ava lifted the dragonblade and plunged it into the underbelly of the creature.

The beast didn’t shriek in pain like she’d heard the sirens do. So she lifted the knife and buried it again. The enormous creature’s arms couldn’t reach her underneath it, though it thrashed its talons in an effort to remove her. Finally, Ava stabbed it one last time. It spread its leathery midnight wings and hovered, just high enough so that it could lunge for her, talons spread wide.

She rolled out of harm’s way, though one of its claws tore into her back. She hardly noticed, ignoring the pain. Instead she lifted her legs and kicked as hard as she could into the wounds she’d made. The creature exhaled a plume of thick, black smoke. Then it pushed off, forcing its body through the hole and disappearing into the blue sky above.