Wyvern and Company by Connie Suttle

logical that my
ass, as you so inappropriately put it, is also blue."
    How often does this happen? I sent mindspeech to Dad.
    With frightening regularity , he replied.
    Can we go out to eat tonight? I think Mack's gonna cave in.
    We can, if we can pull your mother away from the Larentii .
    "I'm hungry," I announced, interrupting the
argument. Mom had stood and started shaking a finger while yelling at Pheligar,
and that didn't look safe to me.
    "Look," Mom said, "If you want to continue this
argument, you can make yourself look human and go out to eat with us. Mack and
Justin are starving."
    "I did not start this," Pheligar huffed.
    "Then either come with or take a hike," Mom flung
out a hand.
    Without blinking, Pheligar caught her hand, patted it and put
it at her side. "I will accompany you," he said. Mack and I gasped as
he transformed himself. He looked like someone who could be your neighbor, with
glasses and everything. I clapped a hand over my mouth—I'd seen this guy before—right
after Mack's life was saved.
    "Holy cow," I mumbled between my fingers.
    Please do not let your werewolf friend know his life almost
ended. He has enough worries , a strange voice—Pheligar's voice—sounded in
my head.
    Sure thing , I sent back. Oddly enough, he didn't seem
surprised that I had mindspeech. My curiosity about the Larentii reached an
all-time high at that moment, and I was determined to learn all I could about
him and his race.
    We didn't go to Giorgio's, which disappointed me, but it was
just as well—Pheligar, Mom and the others wanted to talk business. We ended up
in a private room at our favorite Japanese restaurant instead.
    If Mack had turned to werewolf, he'd have wagged his tail
because he loves sushi.
    "The young ones are curious, and as little information
was given them earlier," Pheligar began.
    Mack and I learned about the Saa Thalarr that night. We
discovered that Saa Thalarr meant Hope and Vengeance in a long-dead
language. We heard how they were a race created specifically to combat spawn
and those that made spawn—the Ra'Ak. I hadn't heard that word before and wanted
to ask questions immediately.
    "Here." Joey held out a hand, where a tablet
appeared. The thing was, I'd never seen a tablet like that one before.
    "It's a comp-vid," Dad said. "You'll learn more
about that later. Joey has images of Ra'Ak. Understand those are difficult to
come by," he added.
    Holding the comp-vid so Mack could see, too, I studied the
giant serpent depicted on the screen. "How big?" I asked.
    "Average size runs twenty to forty feet, with younger
ones smaller and older ones longer—they grow all their lives," Mom said. "Three
to four feet thick at their widest. If you meet one of the longer ones, then
you know he's one of their strongest and most cunning fighters to have survived
so many centuries. When they're not fighting us, they fight each other."
    "You fight those things?" Mack shook his head.
    "Everything about them is poisonous," Joey said. "Scales,
teeth, spikes, all of it."
    "That takes the term snake to a whole new level,"
I breathed.
    "It's part of our job to heal scale poison—that's the
least harmful," Joey explained. "Teeth or spike injuries can be fatal
if they're not treated immediately after the Ra'Ak dies."
    "Why does the Ra'Ak have to die first?" Mack asked.
I hadn't realized how valid that question might be, and felt a chill seep
through me when Mom answered.
    "Every challenge we make against the Ra'Ak is to the
death," she said. "Worlds depend on the outcome of a challenge. If we
win, the planet lives. If the Ra'Ak win, they devour and destroy it. They haven't
won a fight in more than fourteen thousand years. They'd love to take one of us
down because of that."
    "How many of you died before that?" I asked. I had
to know—I was beginning to realize that my parents had a dangerous vocation.
    "Many," Pheligar answered.
    "Too many," Dragon amended the Larentii's statement.
"When Kiarra became First, things