BLOODSHOT . . . piper mclean

10.

EDEN FLIPPED THROUGH the sky, screaming as if she was in some horror movie, which essentially she was. Far below she saw city lights glimmering in the early dawn, and several hundred yards away the body of the bronze dragon spinning out of control, its wings limp, fire flickering in its mouth like a badly wired lightbulb.

A body shot past her — Leo, screaming and frantically grabbing at the clouds. "Not coooooool!"

She fell faster and faster down until she was right next to Leo.

"Can you fucking shut the fuck up?" She screamed.

"Says the one who's swearing and screaming like a fucking maniac!"

"Are you fucking kidding me? Zeus'll knock me outta the sky any min—"

And then, thump! They slammed into warm bodies — Perfect Jason and Kaleidoscope.

"Stop fighting!" Jason said. "It's me! And, Eden, stop screaming!"

"I hate heights!" Eden screamed, ignoring him and continuing on with her opera concert.

"My dragon!" Leo yelled. "You gotta save Festus!"

Perfect Jason was already struggling to keep the three of them aloft, and Eden knew there was no way he could help a fifty-ton metal dragon, even if he was perfect. She heard an explosion below them and screamed louder. A fireball rolled into the sky from behind a warehouse complex, and Leo sobbed, "Festus!"

Perfect Jason's face reddened with strain as he tried to maintain an air cushion beneath them, but intermittent slow-downs were the best he could manage. Rather than free-falling, it felt like they were bouncing down a giant staircase, a hundred feet at a time, which wasn't doing Eden's stomach any favors. She was holding in the sandwich and samples in her stomach.

As they wobbled and zigzagged, Eden could barely make out details of the factory complex below — warehouses, smokestacks, barbed-wire fences, and parking lots lined with snow-covered vehicles. They were still high enough so that hitting the ground would flatten them into roadkill — or skykill — when Perfect Jason groaned, "I can't—"

And they dropped like stones.

They hit the roof of the largest warehouse and crashed through into darkness.

She landed on both Perfect Jason and Leo and stopped screaming, rolling off of them and shooting up, taking out a gun and glancing all around her, but the only life around her were Perfect Jason and Leo groaning. Nerds.

Perfect Jason said something, the sound echoing through the building scarily. "Piper! Where's Piper?"

"Ow, bro!" Leo groaned. "That's my back! I'm not a sofa! Piper, where'd you go?"

"Here," Kaleidoscope whimpered from above. God, what a loser.

Eden snorted as Perfect Jason and Leo were shuffling and grunting, then their footsteps pounding on metal steps as they ran up.

Eden, Perfect Jason, and Leo reached Kaleidoscope's side.

Leo started to ask, "You okay . . . ?" Then he saw her foot. Her toes weren't pointing the right way. Ouch. "Oh no, you're not."

"Thanks for the reassurance," Kaleidoscope groaned.

Eden looked up. The hole they'd made in the roof was a ragged starburst twenty feet above. How they'd even survived that drop, she had no idea. Hanging from the ceiling, a few electric bulbs flickered dimly, but they didn't do much to light the enormous space. Next to her, the corrugated metal wall was emblazoned with a company logo, but it was almost completely spray-painted over with graffiti. Down in the shadowy warehouse, she could make out huge machines, robotic arms, half-finished trucks on an assembly line. The place looked like it had been abandoned for years.