Dragon City by James Axler Read Free Book Online Page A

leaf in the wind. As he watched, the older teen began shuddering in place, water streaming from his eyes, his mouth, his nostrils and ears. Water gushed from his hands, spurting from beneath his fingernails and darkening the white walls of the opposite building.
    Panenk walked backward, his eyes fixed on what was happening to Yasseft. Yasseft seemed about to scream, but it came out more like a belch, a hacking blurt of noise as if a wind instrument played through water. Then, incredibly, Yasseft seemed to sink to his knees, but his legs had not bent. Instead, he dropped into the ground, his body sinking into the pool of water that had formed around him, sucking him down like quicksand. If he screamed, the scream was lost in the sound of rushing water that washed over his disappearing form. And then, just like Mahmett, Yasseft was gone, and all that was left was a puddle of cool water reflecting the overhead sun.
    “Leave us alone,” Panenk cried as he backed away. His voice echoed through the empty white streets. Even as he backed away, he felt the first thrum of water in his stomach like a single drumbeat, and he saw the silvery figures approach.

Chapter 5
    Staring into the barrel of the Colt Mark IV in Sela Sinclair’s hands, Farrell took a moment to process what she had just said. She had called him “the nonbeliever” and she looked damn serious about it.
    From nearby, Farrell could hear the approaching footsteps of those robed figures, the troops for the stone god Ullikummis, the people who had sacked Cerberus and put him and Sinclair in this impossible position in the first place.
    “What are you doing?” Farrell asked, mouthing the words more than saying them as he met Sinclair’s dark eyes.
    She fixed him with her stare, and Farrell couldn’t detect so much as a hint of emotion or concern there. If this had been a movie, he knew, she’d smile now or wink or say something coded in such an obvious way that he would know without one iota of doubt that this was a ruse, that any second now she would turn the blaster on their human hunters and they’d get out of here breathless but alive. Come on, Sela, he thought, wishing for that little wink or smile, give me a sign.
    Sinclair continued to stare into his eyes, the pistol never wavering as she aimed it at the spot between them.
    In a few seconds the twin robed figures had joined them, their hoods still pulled down low over their features.
    “Who is he?” the broad-shouldered one said, a man with a basso voice.
    “Cerberus,” Sinclair replied, her eyes still watching Farrell like a hawk as he lay sprawled in the grass in front of her.
    The hooded figures nodded in unison, and the slender one peered closer at the balding man who lay in the grass. “Is that Kane?” she asked, a Southern drawl to her voice.
    “No,” Sinclair said simply. “Guy’s name is Farrell. He’s just a technician.”
    “Overlord Ullikummis wants Kane,” the man explained.
    Shit, Farrell thought. This should be the point where Sinclair pulled the switch, turned the gun on their enemies, got them the heck out of there. But she wasn’t going to do it, was she? She was following the orders of Ullikummis, whether by choice or design, he couldn’t tell.
    Sela Sinclair looked at the pitiful figure of Farrell, with his hollow cheeks and the dark rings around his eyes, and she heard the crescendo of the drums as they beat faster and faster in her head, their rhythm driving to a frenzy.
    “Should I kill him?” she asked.
    “Ullikummis is love,” the robed woman said. “His will is not to kill.”
    As she spoke, the woman pushed down her hood, revealing locks of black hair that reached just past the nape of her neck. Farrell’s eyes were drawn to the woman’s forehead, however, where a bump showed like a spot or a blind boil.
    Beside her, the man had pushed back his hood, revealing the graying remains of his hair and the bearded face of a man in his late fifties. Like the woman, he