Dragon City by James Axler Page B

along his spine.
    There was definitely something off about it. It had an indefinably false quality, the age of the buildings somehow premature, the apparent randomness of the structures not random at all, forming that great dragon shape from overhead. The mind that had planned this settlement knew what it was doing. But the question was, what was it doing?
    Then Rosalia came trotting up to Grant and Domi on swift, silent feet. “There were people in there once,” Rosalia said in an urgent whisper, indicating the house she and the dog had been investigating.
    “You sure?” Grant queried.
    Rosalia glared at him, thrusting her jaw out, hands on hips. “Why would I say so otherwise?” she snapped contemptuously.
    “Yeah, sorry,” Grant muttered. He was on edge, something about these ghost streets at moonrise worrying at him. With a determined effort, Grant put his mind back to the problem at hand. The road they were on was quite closed in, which meant that if they turned back they would need to retrace their steps for a couple of minutes. That was time wasted. “Let’s keep going west,” he decided, and the others agreed.
    Grant reached up to the crest of the wall and pulled himself up with both arms, bumping his torso against the wall as he peered more carefully over it, arms poised vertically to hold himself up. As before, this street was empty, and in a moment Grant had pulled himself over the wall and dropped down to the other side.
    “Come on,” he called, keeping his voice low. “It’s all clear.”
    A moment later Domi came scrabbling over the wall to join Grant, a smile on her lips.
    “Nice street you’ve found,” she teased. “Different.”
    Grant looked up the street, peering into the shadows. It was hard to see now with so little illumination from the moonlight, and he reached for the polymer-lensed glasses he habitually carried in the inside pocket of his coat, propping them on the bridge of his nose. The lenses of the glasses were specially treated with chemical, providing a form of night vision that turned the street in front of Grant’s eyes into a sort of greenish-gray conglomeration of light and shadow. It wasn’t much different from the one they had just left. The buildings continued to stand at odd angles, closing in on them like falling dominoes, blocking out the moonlight so that what little light it gave became just a spear down the center of the street.
    Grant turned back, gazing past Domi at the wall that they had climbed over. “What’s keeping the others?” he muttered.
    * * *
    O N THE OTHER SIDE OF the wall, less than ten feet away, the Tigers of Heaven warriors were working together to get Rosalia’s dog over the wall with as little fuss as possible. The dog grumbled a little but seemed to assent to the treatment, only to shrug the two men away and unleash a sudden bark, affixing its pale eyes on the far end of the street. Kishiro and Kudo held the dog, and Rosalia leaned down to its face, speaking softly to hush it. The dog looked inquisitively at her, then barked again, pulling past her. Again the Tigers of Heaven grabbed the dog as it glared at the end of the street, fighting their grip.
    “Hold him,” Rosalia instructed, feeling her hackles rise. She looked behind her, trying to see what had worried the dog, eyes scanning left and right. The street remained ill lit beneath the moonlight, a smattering of stars adding nothing to its illumination.
    Kudo took the dog while Kishiro reached for the wall, readying himself to climb over it. Suddenly Rosalia stopped them, holding up her hand for quiet as she peered intensely back toward the far end of the street. Something had moved back there, she was sure of it. Something swift, a silver flash in the subtle moonlight, like a knife blade.
    Without a word, Rosalia took three paces along the street, four, placing her feet silently on the cobblestones as she searched the dimly lit surroundings with her eyes.
    There was something