This time, things go wrong. The American Dragon's mentor takes him hostage. Puts him in a cage. Jake has no way of contacting Rose; they'd known this was a risk and had agreed not to carry any sort of communication device. He knows where she is, where she's taken the American Dragon, and that's what they want. They want her back. He has no intention of giving it up, giving them up, and with them, his only hope of getting information.
He also has no intention of letting them know what he knows. Of letting them realize what he is. If they are somehow responsible for his condition, this horrible transformation he can do, he's going to wait for them to slip up. He's not going to give them any inkling that he's the one who's been cursed in case they don't already know.
He doesn't think they do. He and Rose had picked their ambush point strategically, far away from known hotspots of magical activity, and Rose had blacked out the relevant cameras. They hadn't seen him transform. No one should have seen him transform.
And, despite his brief exposure to sphinx hair, he'd put up a good fight.
He hadn't given them any reason to suspect that he'd been fighting compromised.
They'd managed to drug him in the end. While he'd been busy fighting off the older dragon, the mongrel had found something in his rolls of fur and fat. He'd thrown it, and the glass vial had shattered on impact. While the elder dragon had flown high, Jake had been caught up in the fumes.
He never saw where they took him. He doesn't remember anything between the choking purple smoke and opening his eyes to the bars of a cage. He's crammed into some back room, that's easy enough to see, but he doesn't know where. Too cramped to be a warehouse, to narrow to be a typical storage room, at least the sort he's used to, and they wouldn't be foolish enough to take him into someone's home. It might be a shop, though he hasn't heard the distinctive ding or chimes of a bell above a door.
Wherever it is, it's musty. The taste of stale magic sits at the back of his tongue, reminding him of the experimental classroom where they brew up concoctions to use against dragons. He can't see anything distinct, anything that would hint at his location, but the shelves are full of magical artefacts he might be able to sneak back and steal if he can figure out a way out of here.
The bars of his cage are electrified. Not strongly, but enough that he can hear a steady, telltale hum; he suspects it wouldn't hurt dragon hide, but he's not willing to try it. Even if they aren't in the room with him, he's sure there are cameras or some sort of magic spell that lets them know what he's doing. Whatever he does gives them more information about the Huntsclan, information it's too dangerous for them to have.
He doesn't know how long he sits in silence, memorizing the layout of the room and its contents. He doesn't recognize half the golden titles on the spines of the largest books, and he's sure most of the innocuous-looking objects are far from it. He isn't sure how he can get this information to the Huntsclan in the end—he has no desire to explain what he was doing when he was captured if he can avoid it; even Rose's experience hasn't been enough to grant her a solo mission like this, let alone one with him as her only aid—or if he'll even survive to give it, but it's the only upside he can see. The more he learns about his enemy, the better.
He doesn't expect the woman to walk into the room, coming from the door at the far end of the room rather than through the hanging beads. He's heard whispered conversations beyond, nothing he could make out without using the dragon's ear, and even with his mask still in place, he didn't dare risk it. He assumes they called her, that she came from elsewhere rather than around from the front, but they could just be trying to throw him off. Whatever the truth of it, he didn't get more than a glimpse of dull brick and a brief rush of distant traffic noise on damp air before the door shut behind her. He still doesn't know where he is.
She's their representative, he figures. Not a dragon—that would be far too foolish of them, allowing him to see one of them in their human mask—but someone who's associated with them. Dangerous, to be sure, but not a fatal position. He has no reason to kill someone who isn't a magical creature in disguise and far more reason to try to turn the tables on them, to capture her and attempt to get information in return.
He's in no such position to do that now, though, and he knows it. As they do.
"You could tell me your name," the woman says mildly. "I don't wish to call you by a number."
He wonders who she is, how she found out the dragons' secrets or what she could have done to make them trust her. She looks frustratingly average, a middle-aged East Asian woman he could pass on the street without blinking an eye. Forgettable. Maybe that is her most redeeming quality.
Jake sneers at her, though she can't see his true expression beneath his mask. He thinks that foolish of them, too, not trying to unmask him, but perhaps they believe it a gesture of trust. As if he could trust a dragon or anyone associated with one.
He keeps his silence. The woman keeps talking. Says he can call her Susan. Careful questions, trying to get him to talk, to see what he knows about the new dragon, to get him to give up Rose or the location of the American Dragon or the Huntsclan headquarters themselves. Quietly, idly, mildly probing, no demands. Little pauses to see if he'll volunteer information, tiny digs to see if she can get a rise out of him, to get him to speak without thinking. As if he'd admit anything to her. He has training to endure torture. This? This is nothing. It is easy to stay silent. To stare and never react.
They haven't even tried to give him a truth serum.
He knows they must have one.
The Huntsclan does.
Are they really foolish enough to believe they can break him without it?
Time passes, maybe hours, before she switches topics. Begins talking about herself. Not much, not enough for him to find her, not with such vague details, but—
There's a waver in her voice he can't quite understand.
A determination she can't hide.
A hope.
He begins to suspect this isn't only an interrogation, that it's not just about the captured American Dragon or the trap they'd set.
"At least…." There's a hitch in her voice. "I don't know how you got him on your side, but please, if you are working with this dragon— Please tell me he isn't your prisoner. Please tell me you're treating him well."
Jake knows he shouldn't reply, knows he shouldn't give in, but the word is out of his mouth before he can stop it. "He?"
She shouldn't know anything about him. As a dragon, he'd never spoken where they could have heard him. The American Dragon's guardian wouldn't have caught more than a fleeting glimpse of him, and everything he has read says that colouration has nothing to do with gender.
"He," she repeats, volunteering no more information even though he lets the silence stretch.
This may be the proof of the ploy that he's been looking for. Perhaps the curse had been targeted after all? Or perhaps they'd managed to observe the initiates from a distance when they'd set the curse or the potion or whatever had caused this and had managed to deduce his gender from his form? Practices aren't always segregated, but most of the girls simply tie their hair back instead of tucking it away. Assuming the dragon is male is not unexpected if that's the case.
But she'd spoken with such certainty….
He speaks carefully now, making sure to choose words that neither confirm nor deny her allegations. He needs to keep her in the dark as much as he can. "Why care about a foreign dragon?"
"I suspect," she whispers, "that he isn't a foreign dragon at all." There are tears in her eyes now, glistening but not falling. He's afraid she'll stop again, but she continues. "I think…. I think know who he is. Who his mother is. The family he was stolen from. That's what the Huntsclan does, you know. Those who are not recruited are stolen at birth and raised into the life. If they realized what he was, perhaps they believed they could raise a weapon, and maybe that's why he wasn't simply killed before his powers developed. They are cruel enough for it."
Jake stares at her. She has to be lying. It can't be true. The Huntsclan wouldn't—!
But she wouldn't know that the Huntsclan was the only family he had ever known, that he hadn't been recruited later. He touches the latch on his mask, knowing how tricky his is to take off and secure again—it has been giving him trouble for months and he simply hasn't found the time to fix it—and assures himself once again that they never saw his face. His mark.
He has always known that, despite both bearing Marks of the Huntsclan, despite being raised together, he is not remotely related to Rose.
He has always known that, aside from a few others older and younger than him, none of the other initiates bear the Mark.
And he has always known that the Huntsnursery is much larger than it needs to be, given the low number of babies who have occupied it in the past.
The truth of that has never bothered him until now.
They have no other families. They have always known that. He and Rose had never played the game they'd caught the youngest Mark-bearer at once, trying to pick his parents out of those who had or still served in the ranks of the Huntsclan. They know their parents don't—didn't—number among the elders.
The truth is simple, if hard to hear at a young age. The families of Mark-bearers who hadn't been killed by the dragons or their ilk had rejected them, cast them out, for fear that they were the ones who had caused the travesty. They were feared for bearing their Mark. They were unwanted. The Huntsclan had saved them. As far as he had ever been concerned, the Huntsclan was their only family.
But what she is saying….
Stolen at birth.
He wants to make the accusation, to let her know that he doesn't believe her lies, but the words seize in his throat.
Killed before his powers developed.
He understands now why she had been chosen to talk to him.
She doesn't even know that he bears the Mark, though perhaps she suspects it based on what she thinks was his mission. She is merely trying to dig at his defences, find chinks in his armour that shouldn't exist. She wields her words with deadly ease, cutting deep. Her show of vulnerability was nothing more than that: a show. And her earlier friendliness was more than to just prod at his defenses; she had been trying to lull him, to catch him off his guard.
She doesn't even know he is the one with these powers; she thinks he's just acquainted with the one who is and is trying to win sympathy for her side. Her claims must be wild ones. He had not been born with these powers. They are not a part of him, written into his DNA. He is not an abomination, a monster. He isn't one of them. The Huntsclan never stole him; they saved him—from the dragons or, if not, a living family that didn't even want him.
But the Huntsclan doesn't know he has these powers. They haven't approached him, spoken to him about how he might use these very powers against their enemies, against the dragons. He and Rose have done so much research, but no one has questioned it. No one has wondered why. They are merely being diligent students. That is expected of Huntsgirl. And they all know he is her friend, as much as any of them have friends.
Would they have killed him, if they'd known?
He still fears as much now.
But if it's not a curse, if it's a birthright, how can he ever be accepted among them?
He must be. He is Marked. He was born to slay dragons; he cannot have been born one.
Her silvered tongue speaks words of honey tainted with poison.
They are trying to destroy his resolve by introducing doubt, an attack that won't end even when she leaves—and as much as he wants to refute her words, he can't help but wonder if there's any truth in them.
He thought he could defend against her words.
He was wrong.
Her poison has taken, the treacherous thought flitting across his mind even as he fights to silence it.
What if she's right?
A/N: I don't have a planned scene for how this situation gets resolved—the next scene I wrote on tumblr takes place afterwards, since the in-between part wasn't covered with the titles I was given that prompted this story in the first place—so my question to you is: does anyone want me to write how this gets sorted out or would you rather I skipped ahead to the next planned bit?