Page 81 of Robb

Tahnee blinked again.

Okay. Well, I suppose a castle would have a dragon…

What she didn’t understand though, was why the castle had a car park. Which was currently about a third filled with cars.

Or why there was a castle in the middle of semi-rural Victoria at all.

Maybe it was some bizarre whim of a bored millionaire, Tahnee thought dizzily. Or maybe the dragon itself had built this, long ago, and then fallen asleep somewhere inside the walls? Or maybe –

She glanced at Robb before her imagination could run too far away with her, expecting to see the same expression of bafflement on his face, but instead, he just looked grim.

She didn’t blame him for that, but he didn’t exactly seem surprised to be staring at a medieval castle either, which she did think she could blame him for.

Was it possible that the Agency already knew about this dragon, and that it was apparently asleep inside a proper castle? But then, why the car park? Why the cars? None of this was making any sense to her.

“Lyle Castle,” Robb muttered a moment later, shaking his head. “I should have known. It’s too cliché not to be true.”

Tahnee frowned. It seemed Robb knew exactly what this place was.

“Well, I’m glad you’re familiar with this, uh, place,” she said, staring at him. “But I’m not. Care to explain all this? Even a little bit? Is that actually a castle?”

“It’s not a real castle,” Robb said, turning to look at her. “It was built in the 1970s as a theme park – you know, a family day out kind of thing. There’s a hedge maze in there, playgrounds that look like fairytale castles, fake jousting competitions, comedy shows, waxwork museums to teach kids about what life was like back then. It used to be pretty popular.” He grimaced. “I didn’t realize the fake castle came with a real dragon, though.”

“Oh. Uh. Yeah. A theme park makes a lot more sense than any of the things I was thinking,” Tahnee admitted, feeling a little silly. But really, who could blame her?

“The man who designed and built it, Gregor Lyle, was quite the eccentric millionaire,” Anne broke in musingly. “Of course, he knew about the dragon – it had been his family’s sacred charge to watch over it as it slept in a cavern, deep beneath the ground upon which this castle is built. I suppose that as long as he felt he couldn’t get out of his family’s obligations, he might as well have some fun with it.”

Tahnee wasn’t entirely unsympathetic to that. If she had to watch over a sleeping dragon, she’d probably feel tempted to build a huge fake castle over the top of it too. Just for consistency’s sake.

She wasn’t sure about the whole turning it into a theme park idea – but then, she supposed it was one way to avoid awkward questions about why this Gregor Lyle was building a castle in the middle of an open paddock.

“It seems his son wasn’t quite as dedicated to his family’s mission as his ancestors were, though,” Anne continued. “He was all too happy to wash his hands of the place – I won’t say his asking price wasn’t high, but given all that Hargreaves stood to gain from purchasing the castle and the land it stands on, I felt we could afford it.”

No shit, Tahnee thought. If there really was a dragon here, then Hargreaves would have control over the only known actual non-shifter dragon still living. There were potentially others out there somewhere, but if so they were all probably sleeping, hidden away from the world, just like this one was.

And if Hargreaves gets its hands on a dragon…

She shuddered to think of it. Stories of dragons had long ago passed into legend, since they did their best to keep a low profile these days. But a dragon’s fire burned hotter than anything else known to humanity, and an ancient dragon had the potential to level a city in minutes. Combined with whatever tech Hargreaves already had at its disposal, a dragon could be a lethal addition, just for the awe factor alone.

“You can’t seriously be planning on waking the dragon right now,” Robb said, his voice harsh. “There are families here. Kids. Don’t you care at all about hurting them? Or even if you don’t give a shit about people’s lives, are you really willing to reveal that dragons exist to the whole world? That shifters exist?”

“Well, yes, of course I am,” Anne said, giving Robb a chillingly placid smile. “What’s the point of having a dragon if no one knows about it? Once it’s under our control, I don’t think anyone’s main concern is going to be hiding the fact that shifters exist. That will be the old world – and I plan on ushering in the new. Shifters were always meant to rule over humans. That’s a simple fact. The dragon is just the first step. A revelation, if you will. What better way to introduce ourselves?”

Beneath the professional exterior, she really is just kind of crazy, Tahnee thought, staring at Anne, as the thug at Tahnee’s back shoved her roughly forward, obviously telling her to get moving.

Tahnee wondered how they were planning on not attracting attention, given that she and Robb still had their hands cuffed behind their backs, but that turned out not to be an issue – instead of leading them to the massive front stone steps and through the metal-studded wooden doorways, Anne took them off to a side entrance, more sensibly sized, and even somewhat discreetly placed behind two tall pine trees.

The door still creaked like Tahnee imagined a medieval door might as Anne’s henchmen opened it, and it led to a dark, dank stone stairwell too. Tahnee followed Anne and her goons as they ascended, Robb right behind her – until, to her surprise, a door at the top of the stairwell opened, and she found herself stepping into a luxuriously appointed room.

It seemed Anne had spared no expense in kitting the place out as her own private getaway, Tahnee thought cynically as she glanced around. There was a plush, creamy carpet on the floor, a dark red velvet set of chairs and two sofas, an oxblood leather chair behind a desk that was clearly mahogany, and golden light fittings on the walls. Huge windows had been cut out of the walls, which, Tahnee realized a little belatedly, curved slightly.

With a jolt, she suddenly understood they were inside one of the huge, round turrets she’d seen, rising high above the stone walls – which must have meant there was a lot to be seen through those huge windows.

Ignoring one of the goons’ warning grunt, Tahnee shoved her way past them and strode across the room to look out. And she gasped at what she saw.

From the window, she could see out over the full grounds of the theme park: the playgrounds, the hedge maze in the distance, the sculpture garden, the café area with brightly colored awnings with little pennants fluttering from them, shading long, rough-hewn benches and tables.

And weaving their way amongst all of them, with no thought in mind other than having a nice day out together, were hundreds of families. Parents, grandparents, children. All of them smiling, eating, running between the various attractions. Groups of them stood laughing and clapping at the costumed actors dressed as court jesters, princesses, knights and kings, putting on performances in the laneways that wended their way through the faux-medieval brick buildings and on the small wooden stages that were dotted throughout the park.