The Dragon of Falconer by Taylen Carver (ebook smartphone TXT) 📕

the container and gazed along the row of six, all with a foot of untouched snow on their tops. “Two others have snow pushed away from the doors.”

The container they stood before was the first in the row. Harley moved up the row with Mojag, who tested each door. At the third container with snow pushed away from the door in a sweeping arc, Mojag rattled the padlock, then paused. “It’s not closed.” Even in the dark, she could see the whites of his eyes.

“Open the door, then.”

Mojag removed the padlock and caught the door as it wavered open with a soft squeal of rusty joints.

Harley waved. “Another six inches, or I won’t get through.”

He opened it a little wider and she slipped through. The chill in here was of a different kind. The air was frigid and still. Her fogged breath hung where it emerged, forming a little cloud.

Mojag slipped inside with her.

“Now we need a flashlight,” Harley murmured, trying to peer into the total black of the container. Three tiny windows—more slits than windows—all covered with iron grills, would have illuminated the interior with moonlight, if the moon had been a little larger, but the thin crescent added no light.

“Your phone has a flashlight app,” Mojag pointed out.

“Don’t have a phone,” Harley said shortly.

“Right. Sorry.” He pulled out his own phone, took off a glove and thumbed through the screen, looking for the app. Then the screen went black. Mojag swore softly. “I couldn’t find a power outlet in the station to charge it, earlier,” he said apologetically, putting his phone away.

Behind them, the door of the container closed with a soft metallic gong.

Harley leapt for the door and threw her shoulder against it as she heard the padlock rasp against the bars on the outside and click closed.

She swore heavily and stumbled over to the first tiny window. “Quickly, give me a leg up. Hurry!”

Mojag didn’t ask a hundred and one questions the way Bohdan would have. He laced his hands together and bent for her to step into it. Her head hit the top of the container, forcing her to roll her head back so she could see through the window, which was right at the roofline. She gripped the grillwork of the window and watched the yard, her heart thudding.

A black figure moved swiftly across the snow, heading for the man-sized door on this side of the arena. It was almost a shadow in appearance. Nothing was lit by the moonlight, not even white flesh. The stars didn’t gleam upon a head of hair, either.

“An orc…” Harley breathed. “Wearing all black. Let me down, Mojag.”

He put her back on the floor and brushed off his hands. “We’re locked in here?”

“Seems so.”

“By an orc,” he added.

“Campbell said his night manager was an orc,” Harley said. “David, he called him. And David ‘found’ the body, too.”

Mojag moved over the door and rammed it with his shoulder. “We have to find a way out of here. It’s going to hit thirty below tonight.”

“See if there’s enough charge on your phone for an emergency call,” Harley said, pulling the cloak around her tightly.

He pulled out his phone again and pressed the power-on button. The phone lit up then shut down immediately.

Harley sighed.

Mojag wordlessly put the phone away again.

“I’ll think of something,” she assured him.

•

THEY FUMBLED IN THE DARK, exploring the container. It was completely empty. Even the floor had been swept. Moving helped keep them warm, but once they had finished exploring the container, the cold settled into their bones.

Harley tried calling through the window but the containers were a hundred meters from the arena, and the arena was on the very northern edge of the town—there was nothing beyond the chain-link fence but pine trees and coyotes, which they could hear through the window.

After a while, Mojag crouched down so his short coat covered his legs, crossed his arms and shivered. He didn’t put his back to the wall, which would be even colder than the air in here. She could hear his teeth knocking together, but he said nothing.

They had left the car far down the road and walked a quarter mile to the arena. Even though everyone in town likely knew it was Akicita’s car, they wouldn’t connect it with the arena.

“Is anyone expecting you to come home soon? Someone who might send up an alarm when you don’t?” Harley asked Mojag. Her own teeth were chattering, now.

“I live alone,” he whispered. “Family are all out on the reserve.”

“Okay.” There wasn’t anything else to say.

Harley’s thoughts slowed. Blurred. She knew it was the cold gumming up her thinking but that wouldn’t help them get out of this. She walked in a tight circle, trying to warm herself with movement.

When Mojag stopped shivering and slumped into a bowed shape, sitting on the floor, her heart leapt. “No, no, get up!” she told him, hauling on his arm. He barely stirred. She slapped his face, but that just hurt her hand, for her fingers were freezing inside her gloves.

Harley was out of options. There was only one thing left to do. Deep reluctance making her move even more slowly, she pulled off the cloak and wrapped it around Mojag. “If you tell anyone about this, I will kill you,” she whispered. She settled behind him and put her arms around his shoulders and pressed up against him. Then, with a little flex of her shoulder blades, she snapped out her wings and brought them around in two arcs, to enclose them inside the little circle.

“This could take a moment,” she whispered. “I’ve never done it before. Not by choice.” She thought about the moment in the car that morning. She had been angry. And she had been…not hunched in. Upright. Radiating out from her middle. No, from her heart, which beat furiously…

Her heart thudded now. She felt the pull in her middle, as something gathered there. She sent it out from there, out into the air inside her