Free Hydra by Finley Aaron Page B

my mom is the one who changed Eudora from being a dragon, to only human. Which you would think, given how much she hates dragons, would make Eudora happy, except that Eudora has always said the best weapon against a dragon is another dragon, and now that she’s no longer a dragon, she’s lost some of her skills, but none of her ruthlessness on her quest for dragon blood.
    So the big thing about the trip will be staying out of sight, both out of human sight and away from the yagi. We’ll fly at night, even though that’s when the yagi are most active. We have no choice. If we flew in the daytime, we could be easily seen by anyone. Even at night, we have to keep our glow to a minimum, avoid flying over populated areas, and stay low enough to avoid radar detection.
    And in case you’re wondering, there’s a zillion reasons why we don’t want humans to see us. For one thing, humans don’t realize we exist, so seeing us would freak them out and maybe, considering how many people carry phones with cameras and even video capability these days, cause a sensation and mass hysteria, besides giving Eudora a huge clue to our whereabouts.
    But more than mass hysteria, which would be ugly but not necessarily fatal, we can’t let the humans know we exist because traditionally, humans have been dragons’ greatest enemies. They’re afraid of us, so their first instinct is to kill us. Even if they let us live, they’d probably round us up and study us in a lab somewhere, or dissect us slowly to figure out what makes us different. And if they realized we had treasure hoards hidden away, they’d for sure confiscate those.
    The only humans who are allowed to know who we are, are the members of the dragon world—the trusted few who love and support us, and rely on us for protection. That’s how it worked for untold millennia, you know. Every village used to have their own dragon. The dragons kept the peace, watched over their people, and generally made life pleasant for human beings.
    But then land-hungry, power-hungry, war-hungry people began to realize that to conquer their neighbors, all they had to do was defeat their dragons. The great conquerors recognized that killing dragons was hard work, but they discovered that if they could turn people against their own dragons, the people would all but defeat themselves, slaying their own dragons and thereby clearing the way for invaders to conquer them.
    That’s where all the bad stories about dragons started. You’ve probably heard them—myths that claim dragons are horrible, cattle-stealing, land-scorching, maiden-sacrificing beasts.
    We’re not. As far as I know, none of us have ever done any of those things. Even if it happened once or twice, it was always the exception, and probably for some good reason, like stealing a cow to feed a hungry village, or something.
    But whatever. With rumors like that saturating human consciousness, we simply can’t let ourselves be seen, so I’ll be flying low, by night, with Ed on my back, all the way to Azerbaijan.
    “You have to check in with your father before you go to the sea,” my mom insists as we’re uploading maps to my tablet (which I charged) so that I can check it if I need to, even if there’s no Wi-Fi signal. “Ever since your attack, he’s been looking into what you may have encountered in the sea.”
    This is news to me. “I thought you guys had written it off as seaweed.”
    My mom sighs. “I would like for it to just be seaweed. Wouldn’t that be so much easier for everyone if it was something innocent, and not an unknown enemy hunting us from beneath the water?”
    “Except that if it’s not seaweed, we need to know so we can defend ourselves.”
    “That’s why I’m letting you go, even though it scares me so much,” my mom’s voice hitches up a tiny, emotional notch. “You will talk to your father first, won’t you?”
    “Of course I will.” Crap, she’s not going to cry on me, is she? My mom likes to