Lockhart's Legacy (Vespari Lockhart Book 1) (15 page)

His apprentice laughed to herself. “That, Cory, is another thing that is none of your business.”

“Did you d-d-do something to her?”

Wynonna laughed. “I wish she’d let me, but she was too shy. Besides, like I already told you, what I do in my own time is my own concern. Let’s just go check out this quarry you’re so worried about.”

***

The air was dry, and the sun glared down at them when they got to the quarry. Despite what he expected they’d find within, Lockhart was eager to get inside those chambers and out of the sun. The closer he got to the tunnels, the more obvious became the smell of metal and blood that permeated the air. The storeowner had been right. People had died there, and even after a week, he could still smell it. The miners had abandoned the whole site, and there was no sign that anyone had been there since the killings. Walking into the main chamber, Lockhart soon found a spatter of blood on one of the rocks just inside the entrance. He pointed it out to Wynonna.

She approached the blood, looking closely at it. “So, you know what did this?”

He shook his head. “Not s-s-sure.”

There wasn’t any additional blood to follow either. Seeing no other clues, Lockhart continued forward through the tunnel, held up by planks of wooden rafters. The light outside soon left them, however, and he couldn’t go any further without risking falling into an open shaft. Searching the area, he spotted a torch with a rag wrapped around its tip. Using a box of matches he had in his pocket, he managed to light the rag and illuminate the tunnel. A little further in, they found another torch, and, handing it to Wynonna, he lit it with his own. Now, at least, they could both see where they were going. They continued forward, eventually coming to a crossroads of tunnels. Holding the torch to each one, he could see nothing but more of the manmade cave.

“Which way?” Wynonna asked.

“Hm.” Lockhart sniffed at the air. The smell of dried blood and rotting meat stuck in his nose.

His apprentice tilted her head to the side, watching him. “What?”

He pointed down a chamber. “Something down th-th-there.”

She stepped ahead of him. “Then, let’s go check it out.”

“W-w-w-wait,” he told her.

Wynonna stopped and sighed. “I’m not a child, you know.”

“This could b-b-be dangerous,” he said, moving to the front.

“Aren’t you supposed to be training me?” she asked, following behind once again.

“Don’t know w-w-w-what this is yet.”

Wynonna sighed louder, causing it to echo through the tunnel, but she remained quiet after that. He didn’t mean to stifle her, but he didn’t want to bring any undue harm to her either. For better or worse and despite what she thought, she was his responsibility now. He had to take care of her.

The pair ventured forward for a couple minutes through a long twisting tunnel until the light of his fire caused a bit of metal to glint in the distance. Lockhart stopped immediately, causing Wynonna to do the same.

“See something?” she asked.

Lockhart pointed at the glinting metal, trying to force his eyes to better examine it despite the darkness.

Wynonna squinted. “What is that?”

Lockhart took a few more steps forward to see that it did not pose a threat. The miners had laid a trap - a large clamped shut set of jaws, and in it laid a long tail covered in yellow and green scales on its bottom and similarly colored feathers on its top.

“A d-d-d-dracmoloch’s tail,” he told Wynonna.

“A dracmoloch? Those are real?”

“Very,” he told her, leaning down to examine it closer.

“Wild,” she replied, mostly to herself.

The dracmoloch wasn’t a common inhabitant in the desert. A relic of an age gone past, they were dying out, but those that remained had mostly found a niche in which to survive. They typically fed upon the other desert animals and mostly left humanity alone. This one seemed to be the exception, and it was plain to see why. It’s long, feathered tail was where the dracmoloch stored fat from its meals. When its food supply ran low, the lizard could rely on the fat within to supplement its meals. With that source of energy gone, the dracmoloch had resorted to getting food where it could find it. That seemed to be bad news for the residents of Missoula.

In his time in the desert, he’d encountered them on a few occasions, but had only once put down a single one of the ancient lizards. He could already tell that this was going to be a similar experience. Despite their seclusion from the world of humanity, they weren’t at all afraid of people, and they could be terrifying to face given their size.

“So they’re real,” Wynonna said. “Fine. But they’re reclusive, yeah? Why would it kill a bunch of miners?”

Lockhart pointed to the severed tail. “They s-s-store fat in the tail. It’s h-h-hungry. It made the m-miners into its meal.”

“That’s… a disturbing thought.”

“C-c-c-come on,” he said, standing up. “We should--”

Lockhart stopped mid-sentence, dropping his torch to the ground. His head faded like he’d stood too fast, and he lost his balance. The vespari fell to the side, only catching himself on the rocky walls.

“What’s wrong with you?” Wynonna asked, grabbing his arm.

“Curse,” he replied, his vision fading. “G-g-get us out of here.”

Wynonna ducked down, grabbing his arm and throwing it over her shoulder. He leaned his weight on her, as he needed, and she started to backtrack through the tunnel. The beldams, and their wicked curse distorted Lockhart’s sense of time, but he managed to stay conscious until they were back outside the mineshafts and in the bright light of day. Only then, did he allow himself to fade into the coven’s nightmare once more.

***

After Wynonna carried Lockhart from the tunnel, his body finally went limp and pulled her down with him. She fell to the ground, scraping her knuckles against a rock as she landed, causing her to drop the torch, and Lockhart hit his head on a plank of wood left out in the sun. Gritting her teeth and examining her wound, she decided it wasn’t too bad. It stung, but she’d be fine. When she checked Lockhart, she saw that he wasn’t bleeding, and the wood was fairly soft. He’d be alright when he woke up - if he woke up. She really didn’t understand the rules of this curse of his, and he hadn’t been overeager to share the details on it. Regardless, she got up and dragged him over to an unused tent the miners had set up.

When she’d finished, she paused to catch her breath and to wipe the sweat from her brow. Wynonna sat there, wondering what she should do next. There was no telling how long the curse would leave him unconscious. And what about the dracmoloch? If it was still around, she didn’t want it sneaking up on her while she waited for Lockhart to recuperate. She had to act. She had to kill the lizard herself.

Wynonna leaned down and took Lockhart’s revolver from his waist, believing that his rune-etched bullets would prove more useful against the dracmoloch than her rifle’s ordinary ones. Besides, Lockhart wouldn’t need his gun in his current state. Despite this, it only seemed fair that she not leave him defenseless should he wake, so she dropped her rifle beside his body, thinking it a fair trade.

Standing up, Wynonna checked the revolver’s ammunition. There was one bullet missing from the chamber. Lockhart had given her two bullets previously to learn the runes though. She hadn’t quite finished carving her blank bullet, but she had the other one still. Wanting to have a full chamber, she loaded the runed bullet, jerked the revolver down, and then up, closing its top break with a metal click.

At least somewhat prepared, Wynonna left the tent and returned to where she’d dropped her torch. Finding it still burning, she grabbed it and once more ventured to the mine entrance. She stood there a moment, breathing heavy and staring into the darkness.

“I got this,” she told herself, quickly swiping the underside of her nose.

It was enough of a pep talk to get her to press on, into the mine. With each step, Wynonna could feel her heart beating louder in her chest. She could feel the blood flow out to her extremities in pounding pulses. Sweat poured down her brow. It collected in her palm and made it difficult to grip the gun. All the same, the corner of her lip curled up. She never felt so exhilarated. All the adrenaline pumping through her body took precedence over the fear. The sting of her skin on the back of her hand faded, and the anger she felt about her family’s death subsided. She felt free of it all.

In all her time in that vast desert wasteland, Wynonna had never hunted anything like this. True, her father had taken her and her brothers out to teach them how to track and shoot, but the dracmoloch was not something she had ever hunted, let alone seen in person. She had always doubted the lizards’ existence given how few people had seen them. But here she was, trying to kill one and without Lockhart or anyone else to help her.

Wynonna knew that he would be upset with her for leaving him behind and going in search of the lizard herself though. She could still hear his sad, quiet voice stuttering in her head, as she ventured further into the darkness of the tunnels. She heard him tell her to be more cautious, to stay by his side, to not be so eager. Regardless, doing what people told her was never her strong suit. In fact, if there was one sure fire way of getting her to do something stupid, it was to tell her not to. She enjoyed defying. People, odds, whatever. If there was a line someone expected her not to cross, she was going to leap over it, and she would enjoy every second.

That was the case in that moment too. A smile stretched across her face as she started her search for the dracmoloch. Moving down the mineshaft, Wynonna stopped at the intersection. Lockhart apparently had more attuned senses. She couldn’t smell anything like he had. What she knew though was that the tail wasn’t where she would find the dracmoloch. The lizard had abandoned it, so she’d have to check one of the other tunnels.

Picking one at random, Wynonna navigated it slowly. She held the torch out in front of her to light the way, and she gripped Lockhart’s silver and pearl revolver in the other, holding it near her gut. Creeping ever forward, Wynonna heard rocks shuffle behind her. She swung around, flailing the torch at whatever was behind her.

Nothing. She saw nothing.

“Getting a bit jumpy,” she said to herself, turning back around.

Wynonna continued forward, resolving herself to not be so easily frightened. But, then, there was the shifting of rocks behind her once again. She stopped and grimaced, not turning around yet. She just waited and listened. The sound repeated. A little closer this time. Still, she waited. The rocks shifted again - this time even closer and with less time in between. Again. The dracmoloch was behind her. She was certain of it now, but it meant to stalk her and take her down without her ever seeing it. Wynonna meant to make sure that didn’t happen.

The vespari apprentice swiveled around and ran toward the sounds. Rocks shifted once again, but this time, they did so louder and more suddenly. She’d startled the dracmoloch. Locating the origin of the sound, Wynonna tossed her torch toward it, illuminating the form of the giant lizard.

The dracmoloch stood on two feet, teetering forward due to a long neck. The reptile’s neck was so long, in fact, that it nearly matched the length of that tail it left back in the trap. Along the reptile’s neck and down its backs were a series of quills, which laid flat at first. With her torch revealing it, however, the beast squawked through its overlapping bird-like beak and caused all those previously flat quills to stand erect on its back, making it look similar to a porcupine.

Off balance by her sudden reversal, the dracmoloch bent forward, scratching the sharp talons of its hands against the dirt and rocks of the tunnel to keep from falling forward. Feathers similar to those on its severed tail appeared on its forearms, covered in the dried blood of the dead miners. The lizard scratched its feet on the ground as well, which consisted of three, thin, wide-splayed toes that curled up in the dirt and nearly managed to grasp the rocks.

The lizard’s head twisted and shook at the end of its long neck, continuing to squawk at Wynonna. The dracmoloch had a hard, domed skull surrounded by small horns, and below this dome, black, sunken eyes peered out from its sockets, while the bird like beak snapped open and shut.

No part of this lizard looked friendly, and its body appeared riddled with ways of hurting her. That it was so reclusive was a good thing, as it certainly wouldn’t have had a problem killing humans if it wanted. Wynonna, however, told herself she would manage. She wouldn’t die there - not when she had yet to get the revenge she so desperately deserved.

Wynonna raised the revolver and fired at the dracmoloch. Her aim was true, but the lizard’s scales were harder than she’d expected. The bullet ricocheted off them and took several more bounces through the cave, luckily not rebounding back at her. The beast roared again and charged her with that hard-domed head. Wynonna took another shot, but this one bounced off the very skull that was coming straight for her. Having time for one last shot, she aimed lower, hitting the dracmoloch’s leg.

This final bullet proved enough to penetrate the smaller scales on its leg, and the shot wounded the lizard. The beast diverted somewhat in its trajectory toward her, and Wynonna managed to sidestep out of its skull’s path. The neck, however, still swiped into her, knocking her into the wall of the cave and pricking her with those raised quills. The dracmoloch, meanwhile, plummeted forward and fell, losing its balance.