Seraph of Sorrow (7 page)
Not everyone,
Jonathan reminded himself as he remembered escaping the town across the river with his family on his back. “So they say.”
“You heard about it, then!” Heather straightened up in her bed. “Not too many people here are willing to talk about it. Some got angry when I brought it up at the high school. Did you know I used to teach history there? So as I was saying, other teachers got angry. And parents, too. So I stopped bringing it up—but I know, Jon. I know these things exist.”
“I know, too.”
Although he was lying by omission, her smile made him feel better. “I love my husband, but he doesn’t believe me. Rob moved us here to humor me, because he got tired of my ranting and raving. He still ignores the evidence. Once I was diagnosed and began radiation treatments, he wrote off my claims as hallucinations. I think he’s convinced Susan of that, too.”
“Susan seems like the kind of girl who can make up her own mind.”
“Maybe . . .” Heather bit her lip again. “Jon, I wonder if I could ask you a favor.”
Unsure if he would enjoy it, he still couldn’t bring himself to say no. “Name it.”
“After I’m done. If you could check in on her, from time to time. Make sure she’s okay.”
“I’m not sure what you—”
“Even in this town, she’s in danger,” the sick woman continued. “But you’ll know what to look for. You can warn her. Maybe help her, if she runs into trouble.”
The urgency in her voice made him shift uncomfortably. “Heather, if it’s protection you want for your daughter, this town is full of—”
“There are soldiers in this town, I know. That’s why we moved here. But I don’t know any of them, Jon. Some of them aren’t very friendly. And if she gets hurt, the doctors here can be cold—” She stopped herself too late. “Oh, I don’t mean your wife—”
“She can certainly come across that way,” he agreed with a faint smile. “They all can.”
“I’m trying to say, I trust them . . . but I
don’t
trust them. Ugh, that doesn’t make sense.” She swallowed and gritted her teeth, gaze flitting across the ceiling tiles before settling on him. “I mean, I didn’t grow up with them, like you and I grew up together. I trust
you
.”
He had trouble meeting her intense gaze. “I haven’t done anything to deserve that trust.”
Her hand covered his. “You’ll help me, won’t you?”
He could see the fear in her eyes—not of the death that drew close, but of what might close around her daughter after she was gone. This mother did not want to leave the world not knowing if her child would be safe.
He thought back to the day this woman had been a girl, scared by a foolish boy in a small room. Back then, he had held the door closed. Could he open it and let her leave now?
“Of course,” he answered her. “I’ll keep an eye on Susan for you, Heather.”
What happened to her body was alarming to Jonathan—it appeared as though it deflated, like a balloon letting out air. Yet she was smiling with relief. “My angel. Thank goodness you found me, Jonathan Scales. I didn’t know where to turn.”
“Your husband really doesn’t understand?” Jonathan tried to imagine how a man could move to Winoka and not learn about werachnids, or dragons, or the soldiers who hunted them.
“If you knew Rob . . .” She sighed, not looking at him or anything else in particular. “He’s not one for facing the truth. Not one for facing . . . this.” She gestured to her emaciated shell.
Ah,
Jonathan thought.
He’s hiding. If he doesn’t visit, it’s not really happening.
He also recalled Heather’s own mirrored behavior, in keeping her daughter away. Try as he might, he couldn’t condemn either adult’s behavior. Denial was a natural human instinct, used by people who had little or nothing to do with dragons or werachnids.
“I’d better go and let you rest.” He stood. “It was good to see you again, Heather.”
Her chuckle evolved into a cough, and her face attained an alarming plum color before she got herself under control. “Sweet of you to say so, Jon. Thank you. I’m so happy you . . .” Her voice lilted, as though entering a dream. “Did I say this already?”
Jonathan was backing toward the door. He felt equal parts guilty, foolish, and sorrowful.
“Good-bye, then.”
She was already asleep, and did not hear him speak or leave.
Less than a week later, she was dead.
J Plus Fourteen Years
“Dad, I gotta get going. Crescent’s almost too fat, and I don’t want to walk back.”
“You’ve got time, son.” Crawford took another bite of the sheep they were sharing by the fire pit behind the cabin. There was enough of a blaze to turn away the September drizzle. “Crescent moon’s good for another few hours, at least. I want to talk to you about Niffer.”
“Ugh.” Jonathan rolled his silver eyes and twitched his tail. “
That’s
why you called me up here for a mutton dinner in the rain? I was perfectly comfortable in Winoka.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
Jonathan spat out a glob of fat. “Fine, let’s talk about my daughter. She scored an amazing goal in the Community Junior League Soccer Championship. Won them the game. Even from a distance, it was incredible to watch. She—”
“Have you told her anything about what she can expect?”
“Dad,
we
don’t know what to expect! She’s half dragon, half beaststalker—not an everyday occurrence! She could be one; she could be the other; she could be both or neither!”
“She’ll show dragon. Count on it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Crawford reached into the fire with a wing claw, picked up a flaming ember, and crushed it. “I don’t have records, but I figure it’s been about fifty generations. She could—”
“Aw, Dad, don’t give me this ‘fifty generations’ crap. This isn’t about dragon lore or the thousand-year-old legends you and Ned Brownfoot like to prattle on about. Nobody believes in that anymore. This is about you resenting my wife.”
“I don’t resent Lizzard. Not so much, anymore.”
“Yeah, your love for your daughter-in-law shines through every time she comes to visit. That’s why I can only drag her up here once or twice a year.”
The older man struggled with his next words. “She brings nice horse blankets,” he finally managed. “And I appreciate the fact that she visits at all. I imagine a lot of her kind would try to keep a daughter as far from this farm as—”
“
Her kind?
Do you hear yourself?”
“Son, I’m protecting the woman from the Blaze. I’m protecting
you
from the Blaze. I put up with the fact that she can’t cook worth a damn. And I’m patiently waiting for the day when I can walk back into my mother’s house and call it my own again.”
“You know you can visit us whenever you like in Winoka.”
“
Stop
calling it Winoka!”
Jonathan felt his face flush with guilt.
Dad’s right. I’ve spent too long in that town, and I’ve practically forgotten what happened there.
“Pinegrove,” he agreed. “You can come visit us anytime in Pinegrove, Dad.”
“Tell you what. If you talk to Niffer before Thanksgiving about what’s coming for her, I’ll come down to your and Lizzard’s place for Christmas.”
“Deal.”
“Oh, and Jonathan?”
“Yeah?”
“You might want to consider getting the kid a pet gecko.”
J Plus Fourteen Years and About One Month
“I can’t believe she took off!” Elizabeth said. “And now we have to drive around searching for her, street by street. We’ve
got
to take down that trellis outside her window.”
“If what’s happening to Jennifer is what I think is happening,” Jonathan replied through gritted teeth, “the trellis is now irrelevant.”
She reached over and patted his knee. “You feeling pressure to change?”
“Yeah, I should get out of the car. Pull over?”
“Sure.” The minivan swerved gently to the curb, and he climbed out. He didn’t feel like taking his clothes off on Pine Street, twilight or no. He let the fabrics disappear into his new shape. They were old jeans and a sweatshirt—nothing he minded getting dragon odor on.
“It’ll be soon,” he told his wife as he held the passenger door open with a wing claw. “You’re right—we’ll never find her like this. We should split up. We’ll cover more territory.”
“Oh no, you don’t. Separating got us into this mess.”
“All right.” He accepted the illogic from his wife, feeling a bit irrational himself. He shut the car door and shifted his skin. The side facing the minivan took on the texture and color of the hedge on the side of the road; the other side became as dark and shiny as the minivan and its window. He glided over the curb as his wife accelerated. “We’ll find her, Liz.”
The wind through his ears was gentle, and he could hear his wife muttering. “What?”
“I
said
, it’s just like a dragon to go darting off without any consideration or explanation.”
“She’s going to be all right.” He was irritated, too—what was Jennifer thinking? Why would their teenaged daughter run away like this tonight? Didn’t he explain what was going to happen? Hadn’t he taken the time to explain to her how traumatic the first change would be? Didn’t they go through the transformation in painstaking, meticulous, terrifying detail—
Oh.
His wife’s voice woke him from his reverie. “What’s that, honey?”
“Is it as painful as you’ve said?”
More so,
he recalled. Aloud, he said, “It depends on the dragon. Jennifer’s strong. She’ll be okay until we find her.”
“After we find her,” Elizabeth said with teeth gritted and knuckles white on the steering wheel, “she may not be so okay.”
Jonathan snorted. “Tell you what. We’ll take her to Crescent Valley, tie her down, and make her listen to Dad’s endless lectures about how to be a good dragon.”
“Those lectures never really took with you, dear.”
Despite his concern for Jennifer, Jonathan had to laugh.
CHAPTER 4
Skills
What a way to spend the weekend,
Jonathan thought while streaking through the snow-filled nighttime sky.
He thought wistfully of cold Minnesotan weekends far past, before Jennifer was born, when he and Elizabeth would enjoy wine, cheese, and lingerie by the fireplace.
Elizabeth was not up here with him—just two other dragons, trailing him in a half-V formation. Closer was Xavier Longtail, a large, black dasher with gold markings under his wings. Xavier was an elder like Jonathan, but unlike Jonathan was beyond middle age—nearly seventy years old. Seventy was not that impressive when measuring the natural life span of a dragon; then again, most dragons did not die a natural death. As it was, Jonathan was pretty sure Xavier was one of the three or four oldest living dragons.
Behind Xavier and to his right was a much younger specimen—Gautierre Longtail, his great-nephew. Gautierre’s scales were a generous shade of cobalt, though Jonathan’s daughter, Jennifer, preferred to call the color “dreamy velvet blue.” The underside of the youth’s wings sported lavender swirls, and like his great-uncle he had a triple-pronged tail. For dashers, the tail was a critical feature—it delivered a stinging, electric attack.
Jonathan was cloaked in the color of moonlit flurries. As good at camouflage as he was, he was certain he could fly over the hood of a police car at eighty miles an hour and never get a speeding ticket. Xavier and Gautierre, burdened with monochromatic scales, would be visible to anyone on the ground who bothered to look up.
Which presented a problem . . .
“How do you expect all of us to get there without being seen?” Gautierre called out over the wintry winds. “This snowstorm is useful, but it can’t hide us completely.”
“We don’t all have to be invisible,” Jonathan pointed out. “Just me.”
“So what are Uncle Xavier and I supposed to do?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Xavier sneered. “We’re the
diversion
. Mr. Scales here is the
hero
.”
Not for the first time, Jonathan found himself worrying about the Scales family’s newest ally. Elizabeth had slain Xavier’s brother, Charles, long ago, and Charles’s daughter, Ember, still sought revenge. Xavier, presumably, was more practical. What his niece thought of her little Gautierre flying around with the husband of her father’s killer, Jonathan had no idea.
“I’m not trying to be a hero,” he told Xavier. Or maybe he was saying that for Gautierre to hear. “I’m playing to our strengths.”
An updraft of warm air scattered the flurries and lifted their wings; they adjusted course to compensate. The edge of the Scaleses’ property was approaching.
“How many?” Gautierre asked.
“Four.”
“What weapons do they have?”
Jonathan cleared his throat. “Paintball guns.”
If Xavier could have slammed brakes in midair, he would have. “Guns!”
“
Paintball
guns.”
“Why?” Gautierre asked.
“Because they don’t make paintball arrows, or paintball swords—”
“No, I mean, why the paint?”
“It hurts less than a real bullet,” the boy’s uncle snarled sardonically. “Unless, of course, they decide to use real bullets after all. A nice hollow point will rip our wings or throats open.”
“I can’t tell you how much I enjoy your optimistic world-view, Elder Longtail.”
“You aren’t arguing my point.”
“No one in their right mind would try to take down a dragon with a handheld explosive device. They’ll be using paint.”
“You’ve seen these weapons?”
“No. My wife ordered them. She assured me that paintball guns are the best and safest approximation we can make of beaststalkers’ ranged weaponry.”
Frustrated by their silence, Jonathan tried to remind them of their goal. “We have to accept that during any diplomatic missions we run to Winoka, there may be people who wish to stop us. We have to anticipate that threat and come up with ways to reach our destinations.”
“So your lakeside cabin is the destination this time,” Gautierre reasoned. “And only one of us has to make it there?”
Jonathan nodded. “And there are four beaststalkers who are going to try to stop us. Each has a gun. You get hit with paint, you’re dead—I mean, you’re ‘out.’ ”
“And if all three of us get hit with paint?”
“Then we try again.”
“In the real world, we wouldn’t just get up and clean off paint,” Xavier commented.
“Thus the exercise.”
“How good a shot are these guys?” Gautierre asked.
Jonathan chewed his tongue, weighing the most diplomatic response. Xavier’s brother was dead because of Elizabeth’s prowess. “My wife and her friend Wendy Blacktooth are both highly trained beaststalkers. Wendy’s son, Eddie, appears to have some aptitude with a bow, and he’s been on hunting trips with his parents. Jennifer has had little training with ranged weapons.”
“She seems to enjoy throwing knives about,” Xavier grunted.
Jonathan ignored him and kept talking to Gautierre as the snowy wind whistled past their horns. “She’s not bad, but you’ll be able to avoid her if you’re fast enough. We’re only a couple of miles away. Time to split up. You know—”
“Yes, we know what to do,” Xavier snapped. “We’ll see you at the cabin shortly, painted in whatever fresh and fashionable colors your wife has picked out for us this season.”
The two dashers peeled off formation, the younger following the elder, and Jonathan veered the other direction so that he could approach the cabin from the north.
Their plan was simple: Xavier and his great-nephew would come at the farm from the south. Xavier would use the most powerful skill an elder dasher could muster, throwing himself at the ground like a meteor. It didn’t hurt the dragon, but it could cause a commotion and distract the beaststalkers.
Naturally, Jonathan didn’t think his wife was stupid enough to be fooled by a single distraction. So he suggested Gautierre come in from the southeast, moving fast and looking exactly like a young dragon trying to stay hidden but not quite succeeding. His shape would be the first the beaststalkers would spot, and they would concentrate fire there. Gautierre would get covered in paint—something that actually made the boy smile when Jonathan told him that. The kid had spirit.
Jonathan would come in from the north, over the water. Yes, the beaststalkers would think of this. But between Xavier’s open distraction and Gautierre’s “secret” approach, the chances were at least two or three of the guards would head south, leaving a sole sentry to watch out for this tactic. It would be impossible to post this sentry closer than the shore, which would give the best shooter they had—Elizabeth—only a few seconds to spot Jonathan, even in perfect daylight weather. Which it decidedly was not.
He shifted his scales to a midnight black, and let streaks of snowflake white trickle randomly over his skin. His body sank until he was a mere foot above the restless lake waves.
An explosion to the south, beyond the cabin, made him smile. Xavier’s meteor falls were spectacular. This one went off like a dozen firework displays at once.
Immediately afterward, a great howl went up in the forest. This was Jonathan’s fail-safe—a dozen newolves he had asked to serve as an additional distraction. Newolves were a breed of mysterious, elusive wolves. They could spend the next half-hour shooting paintballs into the woods, and not hit all of the animals he was sending their way.
Good luck, honey. By the time you sort all this out, I’ll be coming out of the cabin to offer you a thermos of coffee.
He increased speed to a good sixty miles per hour. It would take military radar to track his shape this far off the surface. Last he checked, his wife hadn’t ordered any military radar.
Through the distance, he could make out the darkness of the shoreline trees. There was no sign of any human form anywhere on the shore, which meant he had a clear path to—
A splash distracted him, and then a startling spray of gunfire.
RATATATARATATATARATATATARATAT . . .
A hot streak of pain ran down his belly, causing him to flinch and lose control of his flight trajectory. His left wing tip slid into the water, forcing him into a disastrous roll that brought him skipping off the water and onto the wintry shore. He ended up on his back in the north yard of the cabin, six feet from the well-lit porch, clutching his belly. Since his wing claws felt a sticky substance all over, he assumed he was bleeding out. He raised his head.
Neon green. Dammit, it’s paint. Why couldn’t it be blood?
His crested head hit the ground again in despair. “Unnnnnh . . .” He lay there for some time, until he heard splashing from the lake and a victorious scream from the water’s edge.
“WOOOT!”
Unusually emotive for Liz, but she deserves it. She got me good. Cripes, she waited in the ice-cold water for me! What was she wearing, scuba gear?
“WOOOOOOOT!”
He turned his head and saw the beaststalker in wet street clothes run at him, paint gun raised above her head, silly grin plastered on her face.
Not his wife, the best shot in the Great Lakes region. His daughter, the novice.
“WOOOOOOOOOOOT! Check it out, Dad!” She showed him the weapon, which resembled something out of a science fiction movie. The nozzle took up half the length of the gun. “The Angel LCD, .68-caliber, electro-pneumatic goodness! It has twenty-four different modes of fire, with up to twelve shots per second!
Twelve shots per second, Dad!
I think I got you with about two full seconds’ worth.”
“Maybe three,” he groaned. “Where the hell did you get that?”
“You can only get these from England—I had it on the fully automatic setting, which Mom tells me isn’t completely legal in this country . . .”
“You shot me in the groin.”
She shrugged. “You were moving fast, and I had to hit what you gave me. You and Mom keep saying you’re done having kids, anyway. What’s the big deal?”
“How the hell did you stay in the water that long?”
“Dragon form kept me insulated. I balanced this on my nose until I saw you coming.”
“You saw me . . . ?”
“Not you, exactly. The trail of turbulent water you kicked up behind you.”
Jonathan groaned at his arrogance. He thought he was so clever, flying so low so fast!
“Fire in the hole!”
Jennifer’s eyes went wide at her mother’s voice, and she darted away. Jonathan looked up just in time for the grenade to go off.
SPLAT!
The explosion occurred two feet above him, spraying hot pink paint over an area twenty feet in diameter, with him in the center.
“They call that the ‘Poltergeist,’” Elizabeth’s voice explained from the darkness above the cabin roof. “Sneaks up on you like a ghost, doesn’t it?”
He spat. “You had no practical use for those!”
“True, I only ordered one for a victory dance. I wouldn’t have done it on one of the Longtails. I had to hope it was you coming from the north. Of course, I knew it would be.”
“Of course.” He lifted his head again, looked over his hot pink and neon green body, and slammed his head back down on the earth. Snowflakes landed in the pools of paint on and around him, shimmering softly in the strange colors like stars in an alien sky. “I assume you found Xavier and Gautierre?”
“Wendy took care of both of them. We figured you’d use them for distractions, so she gallantly offered to cover the south.”
“What about Eddie?”
“With Jennifer in the water and me up here, I could spare Eddie to use your newolves for target practice. He still flinches slightly when he shoots, whether it’s a gun or a bow and arrow. Once he steadies his hand, he’ll be an amazing shot. Good training opportunity.”
“He’d better watch himself around them.”
“I’m not worried. Since you recruited them on a volunteer basis, I’m sure they’ll behave.”
“Could you have the good grace to pretend this was difficult for you?”
“Difficult for Jennifer, maybe. Dragon skin or not, I’m sure the lake was cold. And if she had missed you, I would have had to put some effort into my shot.”
“What, you don’t have an electro-angel-pneumatic thingie?”
“Sniper model. Only three rounds a second. Though the way you were coming in, one would have been enough. Were you
trying
to do a speedboat impersonation out there?”
“Leave me alone.”
“Very well. Jennifer, get a bucket of soapy water for your father, and a sponge. He’s not coming in the house until he cleans himself off. Same goes for the Longtails, though I expect it’ll be easier for them.” She pretended to sound severe toward her daughter. “Wendy was a more efficient shot.”
It was more than an hour later before Jonathan came into the living room, clean but shivering inside his robe. A silver moon elm leaf, strung around his neck on a light chain, tickled his chest. The leaf, and the tree that bore it, was a gift from his daughter to all dragonkind. The touch of these leaves allowed (Xavier might say
forced
) dragons to take human form under the crescent moon, and dragon shape under all other phases. It was a remarkable blessing for Jonathan, who could now pursue his career and family life on his own terms.
Normally, he would be grateful to his daughter for making this possible. Not tonight.
He sat down in his comfortable leather chair, which used to be his father’s, and glared at her as she relaxed on the couch. Her friend Susan sat on one side of her, covered head to toe in flour from making bread earlier, and her mother sat on the other. “You cheated.”
Jennifer grinned back as her long fingers scratched behind the ears of Phoebe, their black shepherd collie mix. “Cheated? That’s a sore loser talking.”
“You took dragon form waiting in the lake. A real beaststalker couldn’t do that. You ruined the simulation.”
“Real beaststalkers improvise, Dad. They’ll come up with stuff we wouldn’t think of normally. That’s what I was simulating.”
He turned to Elizabeth, who was comfortably seated next to her daughter with a thermos of coffee. “You told her to say that.”