Free Hydra by Finley Aaron Page A

lunch.” I call out.
    “Fine,” Ed’s voice carries back over the wall.
    So I use Ed’s sword and the pitchfork utensil to cut myself a heaping portion, though it’s not as easy as Ed made it look last evening, and I sit down and eat, every minute expecting them to return through the door in the wall, but they’re taking their time over there and don’t return to the courtyard until I’m halfway through my second helping of steak.
    “What did you guys talk about?” I ask when they finally return.
    Ed looks chastened and doesn’t answer.
    “If we’d wanted you to know, we’d have included you in the conversation.” Mom grabs a plate and waits for Ed to cut her some meat.
    “Mom. Secrets?” I’m calling her out on breaking her own rule. My mom hates secrets on account of her dad didn’t tell her she was a dragon until she was eighteen years old. Even though it was for her own protection, she was still offended that he kept something so important from her for so long, so now she has a policy against keeping secrets unless it’s absolutely necessary.
    But she carries her plate over to the table and sits beside me, shaking her head vigorously. “We just had a talk.”
    “Then why can’t you tell me what it was about?”
    “You’ll know when you need to know, dear.” She tears into her meat with the kind of total absorption that says our conversation is over.
    Ed carries a plate over and sits opposite us, again at the far corner. But this time, I got smart and sat in the middle of the table. My mom is on the other side of me, furthest from Ed.
    So maybe it’s not so much that he doesn’t want to sit by me, as that he’s done talking to my mom, at least for now.
    Respecting that, I eat in silence, consumed with chewing and swallowing (if I’m going to build my strength up for a long flight carrying someone as heavy as Ed, I need to eat). When I look over at Ed a few moments later, he’s looking at me, a half smile on his lips even though he’s chewing, and a gleam in his eyes I can see even through the dusky contacts.
    When he sees me looking back at him, he smiles bigger.
    I can’t help smiling back. I mean, how many people can say they’ve eaten a steak dinner with the Loch Ness Monster? Even if he’s not a monster.
    *
    The rest of the day is consumed with preparations. I study maps with my mom, making sure I know exactly where the safe resting spot is in Romania, a little over halfway to home. I don’t have any swords with me on account of we flew here in an airplane, and can you imagine trying to get those past security? Even if we packed them in our checked luggage, it’s not worth it to draw attention to ourselves.
    But that means we’ll only have Ed’s broadsword and some knives with us for the journey. Normally, I know, most people don’t worry about bringing swords and knives with them when they travel, not even through Romania, but we’re not most people.
    As I may have mentioned before, dragons are nearly extinct, and the reason for that is because we’ve been hunted down and killed so that we’re almost all gone. Plenty of predators have contributed to our demise over the centuries, but our biggest enemy is currently a woman named Eudora, the very same person who lured my grandmother Faye to Siberia, which ultimately led to her death.
    Eudora is not technically the one who killed my grandmother. She was behind her death, but the final blow was dealt by the yagi, which are these creepy soulless creatures Eudora created in a lab during World War Two. The yagi are a crossbreed between mercenary soldiers, and cockroaches. I know, I know, those two things don’t seem remotely compatible, and normally they wouldn’t be, but Eudora used dark magic to meld their DNA. The yagi are dragon hunters. They exist for one purpose: to hunt down and kill dragons.
    The other thing about Eudora is, besides trying kill off all the dragons in the world, she’s also furious at my mom, on account of