Page 138 of Dragon 7

The vision let me go.

The hallway came back around me.

My feet had kept walking the whole time. That should have scared me more than it did. Deja's back was still ahead of me.

What the fuck? And why does that name Vicky sound familiar.

A headache came. Warm liquid dripped from my nose. I touched it and looked at my fingertips.

Blood.

I wiped under my nose.

I have to stop doing this until I can understand it.

The corridor kept moving past me. My guards kept their rhythm. Deja kept her shoulders tight ahead of me.

We rounded the last corner. Thank God this one was short. Even more, the Silent One waited at the end of the corridor in front of a heavy set of doors.

The hood stayed still as we approached.

Once we got to him, he swung the doors open.

The courtyard stretched wide enough to swallow the corridor's tension whole. Stone walls were on three sides with a sky cracked open above, and moonlight spilled. Weeds had split the paving stones apart in long crooked lines, and the moonlight caught the edges of each break.

The war lived at a distance.

Gunfire popped on the far side of the island in soft clipped bursts that could have been firecrackers if I didn't know better. Men's voices rose somewhere beyond the trees and folded into themselves before they reached us. Smoke drifted across the moon in slow gray ribbons.

The lanterns along the courtyard path burned low and orange under it.

Five Red Silent Ones stood in a ring at the center of the courtyard. Their robes hung still in air that should have moved them. The hoods made their faces dark wells.

The moonlight ran along the curve of each shoulder and lost itself in the folds.

Rin lay on the ground inside the ring.

Oh, fuck!

His body jolted in small hard spasms against the stones. His fingers had curled in on themselves like he was trying to hold a shape only he could see. Thin dark lines of blood ran from the corner of his mouth to his jaw.

Deja made a sound I hadn't heard her make before. “Baby. . .”

Rin's hand twitched against the stones as if he heard Deja and was trying to reach out to her.

Deja rushed forward.

“Stay there.” One Silent One stepped out of the circle and pulled the hood down.

I saw her face.

The Death Guardian.

She stepped out of the ring with a knife in her gloved hand. “Before you come over to him, you will need to make two decisions.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Deja's hand moved to Betty Boop at her hip but didn't pull it out. “And what’s wrong with Rin?”

I got to Deja’s side. “She’s a friend too.”