The van lurched forward, bounced once and gained speed as it rumbled over the sand. We fled into the desert, the roar of St. George behind us, the head of a dying dragon resting in my lap.

Part II

PART II

All That Glitters

Cobalt

Cobalt

Twelve years ago

“Agent Cobalt? They’re ready for you now.”

I stood and rolled my shoulders forward and back, trying to shake out the stiffness, then followed the assistant down the hall toward the room at the very end. I hated meetings like this: sitting in a cold office building, being polite and deferent, while the flat, appraising glare of a senior dragon bored into me from across the table. Normally, Talon didn’t bother with face-to-face conferences, speaking to me directly only when they felt the assignment especially important. I’d rather the organization contact me the usual way: via an envelope or a folder left at a dead drop, where I could read through my assignment in peace. Where I didn’t feel like I was being judged.

Especially now. Especially since I was still furious with the way the last assignment had gone down, the lives lost because of me. Because Talon had lied, and I’d believed them.

I strode into the meeting room, where a trio was seated around a long wooden table in the center of the floor. I recognized Adam Roth, a youngish-looking man in a perfectly tailored gray suit. One of Talon’s junior VPs, though he was still older than me by at least a couple centuries. I held his gaze a split second longer than was probably safe, saw a flicker of something lethal go through that calm expression before I averted my eyes, glancing at the pair seated across from each other a few chairs down.

My stomach dropped. My trainer, the crusty old bastard himself, sat quietly with the tips of his fingers steepled against his lips, ignoring everything around him. Or appearing that he did. I knew better. Nothing in this room would have escaped his notice, not even the pigeons nesting on the sill behind his head. He was older than Roth, one of the oldest trainers in the organization; a tall, thin man with a sharp chin and even sharper black eyes that were never still. His dark hair was streaked with silver, and the jagged scar beneath his left eye only added to his mystique.

Not long ago, the sight of him would have filled me with both anticipation and dread, like a nervous schoolboy handing his report card to his parents. Now the only thing I felt was resentment. Why was he here? As if I needed someone else judging my every move, silently criticizing.