Dragonsapien by Jon Jacks Page B

skyscrapers, then the
burnt out husks of trains, trucks and cars. Finally, there came the
warped liquorice sticks of cooked bodies, the soured cream of bared
skeletons.
    No, no, Celly
really couldn’t be responsible for this.
    No, not his Celly.
    It must all be a
mistake, a lie.
    With an
unclasping of its talons, the dragon let Jake fall the final foot
or two towards the rubble strewn floor. He landed painfully,
striking then sliding across sharp-edged stone and
brick.
    He landed almost
at the feet of another dragon, a dragon with its legs casually and
confidently splayed, its wings spread out fully as if serving as a
demonstration of its power, its undeniable superiority.
    Even though the
only light came from distant fires, its skin shimmered with the
translucent sparkle of emeralds.
    Slowly,
agonisingly, Jake raised his head.
    ‘Hello Jake,’
Leon said.
     
     
    *

Chapter 23
     
    Suddenly, Jake
was roughly hauled up off the ground from behind.
    One of the
dragons began to swiftly search him, ripping apart his clothes here
and there with the deft slash of a talon if it seemed
necessary.
    The dragon seem
to think it was necessary far more than Jake did.
    ‘I haven’t got
any weapons.’
    The searching
dragon ignored him.
    Leon ignored
him.
    ‘So, they sent you to try and make peace?’ he sneered.
    Jake bristled.
He held himself back from saying anything about Leon’s betrayal
that had led to the death of his own mother.
    ‘I thought
dragons were peaceful,’ he said instead. ‘Celly told me you’d never
fought in any of our wars; you’d always had the influence and
wealth to remain out of it without it looking too
obvious.’
    ‘He’s clear;
there are no tracking devices.’
    The dragon who
had been searching him stepped back and away. Leon nodded towards a
dragon who had landed nearby as Jake had been searched.
    ‘Clear,’ the
third dragon said, speaking into a small microphone strapped to a
pair of headphones.
    ‘Could you
imagine what your wars would have been like if we had got
involved?’ Leon asked Jake proudly. ‘But we were simply staying out
of them for more selfish reasons; how could we remain hidden
amongst you when any wound would have revealed our
differences?’
    ‘So that’s it?
Dragons aren’t morally superior to us after all?’
    ‘Morally ,
we are now equal, I grant you that. But in every other way,
we are clearly superior!’
    With an
elaborate wave of his arms, he indicated the surrounding
chaos.
    ‘But I don’t
understand,’ Jake admitted. ‘You accepted, once discovered, that
the humans would be terrified of you. There wasn’t even the
slightest protest when you were asked to set up a separate life in
Hong Kong–’
    ‘Life? Is that
what you call it? Life!’
    ‘Obviously,
you’d had to leave behind so much, it was never going to be exactly
the same–’
    ‘Have you
absolutely no idea what it was like for us in Hong
Kong?’
    ‘ I
saw the films, the documentaries–’
    ‘I can’t believe
this! You’re sent here to make peace, but no one’s bothered, even
now, to tell you the truth about Hong Kong?’
    ‘Truth? You were
happy there, we were told.’
    ‘Our backs were
strapped in cages, to stop us from transforming!’
    ‘What? That
can’t be right; otherwise you’d still be there, not here flying
around.’
    ‘My father and
the Volances were the ones who worked out how to unlock the cages
without the inspection patrols noticing. We had to wait, of course,
until everyone had been unlocked. By that time, my father and
Celly’s parents were dead.’
    ‘Erdwin and
Perisa?’ Jake was horrified. ‘And your father, Dr Frobisher too.
I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’
    It seemed a
strange thing to say, with so many dead lying about them. But Jake
was genuinely shocked by the news of the death of Celly’s parents.
He had known them, liked them, enjoyed visiting and staying in
their apartment. He had often wished that his own parents could
have been a little bit more