Read Online The Dragon Tree by AC Kavich - Free Book Online Page A

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                  Hiroki couldn’t figure out where to look.
                  On the one hand, that was Eva climbing down the cliff. Eva! She was athletic and coordinated and graceful and… he could go on all day. But he’d never seen her do anything like this before. Not only was she blowing his mind with her bravery and determination, she was also scaring the hell out of him. The farther she got from the plateau where he was kneeling, the closer she seemed to get to certain doom. He was concerned for Billy when Billy made the perilous descent, and that was just Billy. If that jerk had taken a fall, at least it wouldn’t have been any great loss for humanity. But if Eva fell? Hiroki wasn’t sure he could survive something that awful.
                  You did survive something that awful. Dad never came home.
                  He pushed both painful thoughts out of his mind and spun around to look at the other impossible-not-to-watch phenomenon currently underway: As the sun continued to slip below the horizon, Billy’s condition was deteriorating.
                  The pain in his back was so great that he could no longer sit up. Lying on his side, he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He clawed at his lower back with one hand while the other clawed at the rocks. Hiroki was stunned to see that Billy’s fingernails were strong enough to carve grooves into the stone. He kicked out his legs again and again like he was riding a bicycle. Each time one of his feet struck the rock it made a thud like a hammer on concrete and raised a cloud of dust.
                  Hiroki took a quick glance over the cliff edge – he still couldn’t see Eva. So he gulped down his fear and crawled closer to Billy. “You’re freaking me out, Billy. I don’t understand what’s happening. What do I do? What do I do to help you?”
                  “Get away from me, Hiro,” Billy groaned.
                  Hiroki looked Billy up and down. Even in the dim light, he could see that Billy’s exposed skin – his face, neck and hands – was displaying a strange pattern. It looked as though he had slept pressed against a chain link fence and his skin had shallow depressions from the grid. The color of his skin was changing, too. Billy usually had pale skin to match his blond hair and blue eyes. But now, even in the twilight, his skin was noticeably darker.
                  “I think you need a doctor, Billy. As soon as Eva gets back up here, I’m taking you to a doctor.”
                  “Shut up!” Billy cried, his contortions growing more exotic.
                  Hiroki’s eyes followed the thuds and landed again on Billy’s shoes. The material was straining as if his feet were trying to escape. The seam between the rubber sole of one shoe and the toe stretched until the tight threads holding it together started snapping and Billy’s toes poked through. They had already torn through his sock, and it was obvious why: his black toenails were pointed at the end.
                  “Billy—”
                  “Get away from me!” screamed Billy. But the voice that erupted from his throat was a bizarre perversion of Billy’s voice. It was several octaves deeper and full of rumbling reverberation, like a bellow from the depths of a cave. The veins in his throat were pulsing rapidly and the pattern on his skin was growing more pronounced. “I don’t want to hurt you, Hiro! Get away!”
                  Hiroki was frozen in place, unable to look away from Billy. Both of his shoes were torn open. The rest of his clothes were straining against internal pressure as well. One pant leg had already torn along its length and exposed Billy’s dark leg. His muscles were throbbing under his scaly skin. No, not throbbing. They were growing , right before Hiroki’s eyes. Billy