Seraph of Sorrow (11 page)

The dragon bawled with an unearthly sound. Wings flailed around her; scales heaved beneath her. She braced herself as best she could against her enemy’s back, pulled the pitchfork out, and jumped clear. Ignoring the bitter stench of the blood spattered on her bare skin, she readied another blow.

It was not necessary. The dragon collapsed and rocked back and forth on the pavement. Glorianna watched with a mixture of hot satisfaction and cool fascination as the thing moved less and less. Then, amazingly, it changed shape.

It lost its wings first, then its sharp teeth and nose horn, then its tail, then its bulk, then its color and texture. Soon, all that was left on the ground was a naked woman, lying on her stomach, gasping in pain. She was a bit overweight, yet smaller than what had been terrorizing the town. The woman’s dark features betrayed shock at her wounds and her change. Her back arched and caved; trickles of blood coursed down her shoulder blades.

The sounds around them—the people’s screams, the dragons’ roars, the smashing of windows, and the chatter of gunfire—died down, until all that was left was the crackling of burning timber in the surrounding shops. Glorianna was mildly aware that all of her neighbors had gathered near, and that at least three or four dragons had perched themselves on rooftops above. Everyone was staring at her, and at the miserable victim at her feet.

Who was still alive. She prodded the woman’s leg with the fork, drawing blood again. The pierced leg did not budge. After a full minute, Glorianna began to realize what everyone else here was surely thinking: The wound was a crippling blow, but not fatal.

“Gn . . . ng . . .”
The woman tried to pull herself up. Neither legs nor arms would cooperate.

Glorianna’s cheeks flushed with the certainty of what she had done. Carefully stepping forward, she stooped to one knee by the woman’s head and whispered in her ear.

“I turned you back.”

Her enemy bent her head up. Glorianna followed her gaze.

“The crescent moon is up. In fact, it’s only one day old. My father told me your change lasts for several days at a time. You know what I think?”

“Gnnnggg . . .”

“I don’t think you’re ever going to be a dragon again.”

The woman’s lips drooled blood and spittle.

“I’ll bet it hurts.” Glorianna placed the shaft of the pitchfork across the back of her victim’s neck, and pressed down. The woman’s head smacked onto the pavement. “I’ll bet it hurts real bad. I’ll bet for the rest of your miserable life, you’ll feel this pitchfork like it’s living in your spinal cord. My father’s pitchfork. Mr. Richard Evan Seabright. Remember the name.”

She stood up and kicked the woman’s face. Then she walked over to the pile of dust that used to be her father.

The sword of the house of Seabright, all lethal silver and sharp edges. Her family’s sword, a weapon older than this town, or this country, or even several of the kingdoms it had visited. There was history to it, Glorianna knew, ages of rich history. She had never listened too carefully to her father when he’d talked about it all. She picked up the weapon and noticed a smudge on the blade. It was ash in fingerprint oil. It was all she had left of him.

As something deep inside her unwound, she kissed the small mark and released her rage in a choking sob, which accelerated into a violent scream.

What happened shocked her. Her voice caught the blade’s steel and increased tenfold. At the same time, her lips shattered the spring gloom. The blinding light washed away the stars and crescent moon. She could clearly see the demons perched above clasp their scaled skulls with batlike wings and grimace in pain. Most of them collapsed backward onto the buildings’ roofs, but two of them lost their balance badly enough to plummet to the street a few steps away.

Glorianna was instantly upon them. Richard Evan Seabright’s sword plunged into each spine, drawing a shriek each time. The one with lilac scales shifted back to a gray-haired slip of an elderly woman, and the one with navy blue scales reverted to one of the boys Glorianna knew from school—one of the football team’s offensive line.
I almost asked him for a date,
she chastised herself in disgust.
He took classes with me! He sat behind me in history!

The spectacular light and sound faded from the intersection, and the deep shadow of night fell over them all again. All were quiet, watching her.

“Who else?” she screamed at the rooftops. Freckles of blood dotted her young face and arms.
“Who else?”

None of them moved. Glorianna’s cold gaze settled farther down the street, at two more dark shapes. They were a couple of blocks away, far enough from the fires that she could not make out their features. One of them had wings, she was pretty sure. Perhaps it also had a nose horn that could overturn Volkswagens. She didn’t care.

“Take them,” she called out. “If I see any of you again, you’ll end up just like them.”

She walked back to the truck, every step feeling heavier than the last. More sirens emerged from the distance—ambulances, she guessed, or more fire trucks.
How will they clean Dad and Andrea up?
she wondered.
Will they try to shovel the remains into a body bag, or will fire hoses wash everything in the intersection down the sewer first?

A hand caught her elbow. “Glorianna. Ri.”

It was Andrea’s mother. Her honey-framed face was streaked with tears and sweat. Cement scrapes marred her right cheek, arm, and hip.

“Mrs. Georges.” Glorianna stumbled. She gestured vaguely to where her best friend had been. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t get to her in—”

The hand on her elbow squeezed tighter. “It’s all right, Ri. I’m sorry, too. For your father. But I’m glad you’re okay.”

They watched the dragon-people writhe in pain. Nobody else around them moved.

“How did you survive that thing’s fire?”

Glorianna shrugged.
I’ve been tested,
she decided.
And I passed, like no one else can.

Mrs. Georges motioned to the crippled woman. “Do you know how you did
that
?”

Glorianna examined her father’s sword. “I’m not sure. But I’m going to do it again soon.”

There was another pause, and then the older woman sighed. “You should come with me. For a day or so, at least. Your father wouldn’t want you to be alone tonight.”

“I’ll take the truck and meet you at your place.” Glorianna broke away with the most agreeable smile she could manage. She had no intention of going anywhere but home. Home was where her father would want her to be. His house, his legacy—it was hers now. She would sleep and eat there, for as long as it took her to sort things out.

And then she would begin to fight again.

Her footfalls became uneven, and her shoulders began to slump. She thought she would surely break.
I won’t,
she ordered herself.
These people—and those dragons—need to see strength. Don’t think of them; don’t look at the piles of ashes; don’t say another word.

Still naked, she walked over to her father’s truck, threw the weapons in the bed, and found her father’s keys in the ignition. She cranked them and crushed the accelerator, leaving behind the dozen or so townspeople who watched her with awe, and the seeds of devotion.

The air split with another shout. Glorianna squinted through the bright light with satisfaction as a straw target with multiple weapon punctures actually trembled and collapsed. The dozen or so students nearby began to cheer.

Since that awful night three months ago, she had never been alone. There were always people around the Seabright farm: cooking, cleaning, tending, training. Some had lost their homes in the attack. Others sought her out after the stories they heard. These people, numbering thirty or so, with one or two more coming each day, wanted to learn.

Victoria Georges was a frequent visitor, and Glorianna was glad of it. Beyond their kinship through being neighbors and losing family that fateful night, Glorianna found this woman to be one of the few who wasn’t awestruck or uncomfortable around her.

“Times like now,” Victoria observed, watching the training from Glorianna’s front porch, “I wish there were more children.”

“No need. One per family will do.”

“Why do you say that?”

“My father told me.” Glorianna had spent the last few months thinking about all the things her father had tried to teach her. Many of them she had ignored at the time. But the more she worked with these warriors who followed her, the more she realized he had been right about a great many things. “Children in our families are single children, or siblings spaced many years apart. I was an only child. So was Andrea.” Though the name made the older woman wince, Glorianna found she had no trouble saying it anymore. Why flinch? Andrea had been a hero.

Victoria gestured to the others, whose swords clunked together in practice swings and mock duels. “Everyone here is like you and her?”

“There are exceptions, but the most promising recruits don’t have any brothers or sisters within ten years of their own birthdates. My father said he and Mom were thinking of a second child after I turned ten.” She forced herself to finish. “Then she died.”

Victoria whispered as she rubbed her own stomach. “Alex and I always planned a second child to keep Andrea company, but the years passed so quickly.”

“I’m not criticizing,” Glorianna hastened to add. “Quality over quantity. Compare to these dragons who have plagued us for centuries—from what we know, they seem to spawn at least once every few years. And if the rumors of giant spiders are true, they probably lay many eggs at a time, like their smaller cousins. We can’t hope to keep pace. Victory must come through skill, not numbers. If we’re going to succeed, each warrior must receive the full attention of his or her parents, during the critical years of development.”

“You seem to have thought about this. Unusual for a teenager.” Victoria gently smiled. Glorianna didn’t smile in return.

“I don’t have the luxury of youth anymore. These people are depending on me. Dad was right: We’ve been giving ground and giving ground to these things. It’s time for it to stop.”

Victoria reached over and caressed the girl’s cheek. “You take on so much, Ri. Your father would worry about you. I worry about you.”

“You don’t have to worry, Ms. Georges. We’re going to make things different. Better.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been reading Dad’s papers.” She lifted a heavy folder from the wicker table next to her rocking chair. “He’s got a study full of this stuff. Teachings passed from one generation to the next. Some of it he tried to show me after Mom died. I thought it was fancy myths.”

“What do the papers say?”

“Have a look.” She pried a few from the folder with close-cropped fingernails and handed them to Victoria. “That stuff goes back to the nineteenth century. Remember the tale of the treacherous dragon, the one who chased a woman for two full days to catch her and eat her, only to have her turn at the end and slay him? That’s in here. It’s not a fable. None of it is.

“What’s in the study goes back further—to the time of Europe’s colonization of America, and the Magna Carta days in England, and the Roman Empire. There’s something that must have come straight from an ancient Egyptian temple, and a page or two written in what I figure is Chinese. I can’t read the oldest stuff, and Dad kept it in plastic since the pages are so frail.”

“What’s this here?” Victoria held up a yellowed, fractured page separated from the others. It was covered with faded ink, depicting a shining body with brilliant eyes but no other facial features, and broad wings. It held a sword sheathed in flame. A smaller, unidentifiable body lay at its feet.

“The artist called it a seraph. There’s an inscription beneath. There it is; you can just make it out:
Its mother is death, its father an enemy’s tears.
That’s the only picture with wings, and the only one where it’s called a seraph. Usually, these warriors went by another name.”

Victoria began to flip through the other pages. “This stuff lists battle after battle . . .”

Glorianna stood up, and for the first time noticed that she was a bit taller than the other woman. “Yes, and town after town burned to the ground, and child after child was murdered, as well as the few soldiers who were able to make a difference. They had a word for these warriors, Ms. Georges. They were called
beaststalkers
.”

She was surprised by the skepticism that crossed Victoria’s face. “Your father used that word from time to time,” she admitted, “but I never thought of myself as anything special. I was just someone your father trained to fight. Like you’re training these people.”

“We’re more than that,” Glorianna insisted. “We can do things normal people can’t. Look at me—I stood in that dragon’s fire, and I was fine.”

“No one else could do that! Not even your father—”

Victoria went pale as she cut herself off, but Glorianna did not react to the slip. “Maybe I’m unique when it comes to fire,” she admitted. “But things you’ve done, and things my father did, are extraordinary.
We’re
extraordinary. It all goes back to a figure named Barbara the Protector. She was the first, thousands of years ago.” She lifted a book from the wicker table. “This monastic text says she single-handedly defended a town, where her mother lived, against an invasion of fifty dragons and fifty giant spiders. Only one dragon survived, and one spider. Together, the two of them managed to kill Barbara’s mother before they fled like cowards, but Barbara survived. Her descendants, to this day, seek vengeance against the murderers’ brood.”

“And that’s us? How can we all be descended from one woman? That makes no sense.”

“Up until the night Dad died, I didn’t think dragons made much sense, either. It doesn’t matter if the monks exaggerated the legend—the point is, beaststalkers are real.
We’re
real.”

“Then how come we’re never heard about any of us in the news?”

Glorianna did not hide how angry the question made her. “Because the average person denies it all. They can’t cope with reality. Most people have already forgotten the dragons from the night Dad died. They call it the ‘Downtown Fire’ now, as if some cow kicked over an oil lamp and things got a little out of hand before the fire truck showed up!”