Dragon Sleeping (The Dragon Circle Trilogy Book 1) Read Free Page A

peered over Nunn’s shoulder. “So Obar got to them before you?” The creature made a clicking noise with its tongue. “Such a generous soul.”
    Nunn spun about to look back at the glowing image. “Not for long,” he replied after a moment’s pause. “It’s time for you to get to work.”
    The creature ambled over to the edge of the image and smiled. “No killing,” Nunn added quickly.
    The monkey’s smile vanished. Its eyes seemed to glow with disappointment.
    “You’ll have plenty of opportunity for that later,” Nunn continued. “I’m sure that most of them are quite expendable. But we have to test them first.”
    The monkey’s smile returned.
    “Nunn,” the creature said. “You’re so good to me.” The thing vanished to do its work.

Two
    “M y lawn! What have they done to my lawn?”
    The voice woke Nick up, but he didn’t open his eyes until the pounding began.
    “Joan!” another man’s voice called. “I think you and Nick should come on out here!”
    At first, Nick thought the second voice belonged to his father. The thought brought him fully awake.
    He forced himself to sit up. Why would it be his father? What did his father care about them anymore?
    “Joan! Nick! Are you in there?”
    No, certainly not his father. By the end of the second sentence, he knew that the voice belonged to Mr. Mills. He heard other voices, shouting somewhere down the street. It was quite a commotion for first thing in the morning.
    If it was first thing in the morning. Nick noticed his clock radio still wasn’t working; the dial seemed permanently stuck at 6:07. That meant the city hadn’t gotten around to fixing the electricity. He glanced over at the bookshelf by the bed to that spot where he usually left his watch. There it was, and it was still ticking. Good old, cheap, wind-up watches; except that the face of this watch read 3:14. Either the sun was up awfully early or he had slept awfully late. Nick shook his head. Maybe his good old, cheap, wind-up watch had stopped for a while during the storm.
    He heard the, door open downstairs, and his mother’s voice, speaking words he couldn’t quite catch. He climbed out of bed and pulled on a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, and sneakers. He checked himself out in the full-length mirror on the back of his closet door. Not bad for a scrawny seventeen-year-old, he supposed; no new zits, and he hadn’t sprouted fangs in his sleep.
    He frowned. His hair looked different; even redder than usual this morning, almost like it was on fire. It must have something to do with the light. The sun lit the still-closed shade in such a way that the pale paper seemed to glow with a pinkish tinge. He glanced back at his reflection. The only time he’d ever seen his hair look like this was in those old snapshots his father used to take. It was like the mirror was showing his hair in Kodachrome.
    “Nick!” That was his mother’s voice. “Come on down here, honey!”
    Nick sighed. He’d regard his flaming locks some other time. He wanted to know what was going on. He swung his door open, crossed the upstairs hall, and took the stairs two at a time.
    His mother waited at the bottom. She had her arms folded in front of her, a position that made her look short and imposing at the same time. He could tell from her expression that whatever was happening, it wasn’t going to be fun.
    “Hi, Nick,” Mr. Mills said quietly when Nick reached his mother. Mills stood on the front walkway, just beyond the open door. He wasn’t smiling the way he usually did when he visited. And his straight, almost gym-teacher-like posture looked definitely rigid.
    Nick forgot to say hello back when he saw what was outside, past the vice-principal.
    First off, the sky was green; well, more of an aqua. But definitely not blue. And all the colors beneath the sky were wrong, too. Nick thought again about his hair in those snapshots. The entire world looked like that now; like one of those pictures that