The flight took several hours. I thought I would have to spend the time carefully trolling my guide for intel, but was surprised when Stefan talked incessantly, if about what seemed to be all the wrong subjects; evidently determined to remedy a lifetime of barbaric ignorance within the short span that we had. At first, I paid him scant attention as my beloved skies whirled about me, but then I began to listen hard as I realized that Stefan was unreeling roughly one hundred millennia of draconic history to me.
Not really much in the way of excitement at first, it wasn't until relatively recently in their history that the long-lived dragons were distracted from their slow maneuverings over territory and prestige by an increasingly pestiferous species of simian that had somehow figured out a way to use its clever little forepaws to fashion weapons beyond simple fang and claw.
Wait a minute. 'Fairly recently?' A strange feeling of premonition filled me. "Forgive my incredible ignorance, Stefan, but just how long do we live?"
Stefan blinked bemusedly, as if the question had never occurred to him. Finally, he gave a curiously human shrug. "How long do you wish to live, my lord?"
As I struggled to digest that little bombshell, Stefan plowed on. Relatively solitary by nature, the dragons were shocked by how easily they could be pulled down by the little humans when they banded together into packs, then mobs, then armies. After a few bloody encounters so ancient that the humans remember them only in their vaguest legends, the dragons began to retreat in confusion in the face of this spreading plague.
It did indeed spread, and with mind-numbing swiftness in the eyes of the ancient dragons as they quietly ceded one land after another to the incredibly prolific and aggressive creatures. Eventually, starved of territory and never numerous to begin with, the dragons began to slowly die out.
Stefan sighed and studied the thousands of manmade lights far below that stained the undersides of the clouds pink with their radiance. "As your Americans would say, we have our 'backs against the wall,' my lord. Most of our females are old and barren, and children are rare. You and I are among the few dragons born in these past several hundred years. So few that not all that long ago all of us together would have barely made up a single clutch. Soon, we as well will be gone. And the humans will not even remember us."
He lifted his head and turned to gaze at me, and damn me if he didn't have that Look again. "Then you appeared, my lord. After we had given up all hope and had resigned ourselves to oblivion, you came. And I know when I look upon you that soon, very soon, we will own this world once again."
I suppressed a shudder as I looked away from what I saw in his eyes, and frantically tried to figure out just what in the hell I'd gotten myself into.
Thankfully, Stefan chose then to launch into an excruciatingly detailed crash course in dragon social etiquette that had my head swimming within moments and lasted throughout the remainder of our journey. Finally, we angled downwards and descended into a range of low mountains somewhere in western Virginia, eventually alighting upon a parking lot nestled into the side of one of the larger peaks.
Puzzled, I looked about the deserted slab of asphalt as Stefan, still plugging doggedly on about the finer points of draconic body language, drifted away to fumble at a small grey panel set into the concrete wall shoring up the hillside. How strange. A parking lot in the middle of nowhere?
I looked up from the ubiquitous pavement markings to gaze at the sky for a moment, then was suddenly struck by how carefully the surrounding trees had been cut back from the edges of the lot. I studied the lines again. No, not a parking lot; a helipad carefully done up to look like a parking lot. But why?
Stefan muttered a curse. "My lord, could I beg your assistance?" I turned and went over to where he stood next to that panel. Its door was now open, and within it a numeric keypad glowed a dim green in the subdued light. Stefan rattled off a long string of digits, and at his request I carefully tapped them into the keypad. There was a loud click, followed by a deep humming.
The black and green dragon tipped his head in thanks, then looked down at his own much coarser forepaws with a sigh of envy. "Ah, to have hands like yours, my lord. What wouldn't I be able to do?"
Turning, we watched as a large part of the retaining wall began to ponderously move to one side, revealing a dark opening leading deep into the mountain. What in the world?
"After you, my lord."
I really wished he would stop calling me that. With more than a little trepidation I entered the opening, followed by Stefan. A few seconds later the massive door began rolling shut behind us. There was another loud click as it settled into place, then the chamber I found ourselves in was flooded with light.
The room was a sizeable one, constructed of large slabs of steel-reinforced concrete and illuminated at regular intervals by explosion-proof lights. There was a loading dock off to one side, and large square corridors lined with pipes and conduits and marked with cryptic lettering branched off in various directions, plunging deep into the heart of the mountain.
I eyed the wall markings, studied the disguised blast door we had entered through. Crazily enough, I knew this place. Rumors of an emergency retreat for members of Congress and various key federal posts had been drifting around Intelligence circles for decades. Recently its cover had been blown; its existence shouted to the world by a certain cretin of a journalist more interested in making a buck than in the welfare of a nation.
Now it was the last place anyone would go if things got bad; doubtlessly now the target of several hundred nuclear warheads. Bereft of its mission, the complex had gone dormant while Washington pondered its eventual fate.
Stefan led me off into one of the larger tunnels and we padded our way down its interminable length, the walls broken at regular intervals by entrance ways into huge darkened storage chambers piled high with various supplies. Twice we came upon what appeared to be barracks, and once an actual motor pool.
We turned down another corridor and traveled it for a while, then turned again. I kept a careful eye on the intersection markings in case I needed to get out of there in a hurry. Stefan was becoming increasingly nervous as we went, his tail lashing with agitation as he hissed instructions into my ear. Suddenly I ground to a halt as something he'd just said finally sank in. "I kowtow to no one, Stefan."
Stefan stared at me, nonplussed. Then his eyes narrowed. "My lord, it is not what you know as a 'kowtow,' I assure you. What I am asking you to do is nothing more than a simple courtesy among us. I am about to present you to the eldest and most revered of our kind, my lord, and I think that they are worthy of a simple gesture of respect."
I stared coldly at the smaller dragon. "I do not trust you, Stefan." I deliberately goaded him.
Stefan's tailtip lashed once, then he stilled it. For several long moments an icy tension settled over the corridor as we stared at each other. Then he tilted his head in the dracon equivalent of a cool smile, some of the professional agent resurfacing. "My lord, I would have been amazed if you did at this point. But I hope that we will be able to change that, soon."
I studied him for a moment more, then nodded. I may have just given away a small advantage, but I felt more comfortable with him this way than when he had that damnable look in his eye. "We shall see. Have we arrived?"
"Yes, my lord. The next door on the right."
Stefan hooked his claws around the edge of the heavy fire door and pulled it to one side, revealing yet another storage area. Unlike the others, though, this one was brightly lit and mostly empty; the few remaining crates and pallets piled up against the far wall, out of the way.
In one corner of the vast expanse of concrete they waited; five dragons of intimidating size, coiled comfortably on the floor until Stefan and I entered. Then their heads turned and they looked at us, their gaze intensifying as five pairs of eyes of varying shades of grey, green, and gold locked onto my form.