Page 21 of Red Dragon’s Flame

A shiver went down Mikah’s spine. Surely not.

Michelangela said softly, “Do you think—did Shadow do all this?”

Remembering the fire she’d pulled from his dragon, Mikah said slowly, “I guess she must have.”

Michelangela looked over at him. “Not exactly six kids, a dog and a white picket fence, is it?”

He had no answer for that.

Chapter 11

Mikah went over and opened the entrance to the secret tunnel. His heart unclenched a little when he saw Shadowfire was still there, still breathing.

“Brock, you’re the healer,” he said. “Can you check her out before we try to move her? I want to make sure there’s no spinal damage.”

Brock crawled in, put his hands on either side of Shadow’s head and closed his eyes. Mikah knew he was using his white wolf powers to sense what was going on inside her body.

“This is weird,” he said.

“What?”

“It’s like I’m getting two different visions that keep overlapping each other. One says there’s something wrong with her spine, and the other says there isn’t.”

Mikah bit his lip. “Well, can we move her or not?”

He hesitated, but then said, “I think so.”

Brock repositioned himself, then hooked his hands under Shadow’s armpits and pulled her gently out. As her upper body cleared the entrance, Mikah added his hands underneath to support her back and legs.

The scorched shreds of her shirt came apart under his hands, and he caught glimpses of a glittering tattoo that stretched the length of her back—gold and red and orange, like fire.

As he touched it, flames erupted out and wrapped around his hand. Brock almost dropped her.

“Dude. Watch it with the fire, would you? You almost got me,” he said.

“It’s not me.”

Mikah sang a brief spell, letting his own magic trickle down his hand and out across her back, forming a shield over the tattoo so other people could touch her without getting burned. He could feel her magic fighting him, but his dragon won.

“Okay, let’s head for the roof,” he said. “I’ll fly all of us back to Cazbek’s penthouse, and you two can go back to Al-Maddeiri from there. Let’s go.”

That last was directed to Michelangela, who was squatting on her heels by the man who’d had the knife sticking out of his chest. It was no longer there—she must have taken it—and she was holding a tiny comms headset to her ear that she’d gotten off his body.

Now she looked up, her eyes glowing wolf-gold in the dim light from the computer screens. “It’s too late,” she said. “They’re outside the building.”

Mikah cut a glance at the tunnel. The one who’d gone for reinforcements might have seen Shadowfire enter it after the fight. If they went that way and there were enemies at the other end, they were dead.

“Elevator,” Mikah said. “Now.”

He gathered up Shadow and the three of them ran back through the basement to the freight elevator. Mikah slammed the button by the door, hoping that the electricity that was powering the computers ran through the whole building.

Otherwise they were stuck running up the stairs.

The doors opened and they piled inside, and Mikah hit the button for the top floor. The elevator began to rise, but so damn slowly. The enemy might be able to keep up with it by running up the stairs.

Michelangela was still listening on the dead man’s headset. “They’re in the computer room, checking the escape tunnel,” she reported. Mikah had deliberately left it open to give the impression they’d left that way.

The elevator kept rising, kept passing floors.