The Dragon Heir (31 page)

“Do … do J.R. and Grace
have anything to eat?” she whispered.

“You worry too much.
Doesn't do any good, and takes years off your life.” He sat down across from
her, rolling the other bottle between his wizard hands. Spiderweb tattoos
crawled over his forearms.

She pushed the pop back toward
him. “I don't…”

“Drink it,” he said.

She looked into his iced-over
eyes, grabbed up the bottle, took a long swig, and somehow forced it down her
throat.

“That's better,” he
said, smiling. “Get used to doing what I say, and we'll get along. Now.
Here's what you need to do. You go get the Dragonheart. Then we'll do a trade—the Dragonheart for Grace and J.R. Fair enough?”

“Wh…what do you want with
that?” she asked, seeing no use in denying she'd heard of it. “What
are you planning to do?”

“You just focus on
getting hold of it,” Warren said, taking a bite of pizza. “Let me
worry about the rest.”

Thoughts and images tumbled
though her mind like rocks down a slope, crashing into each other. The
Dragonheart still pulsed within her like a second heart. If it was as powerful
as they said, could she put that kind of power in the hands of someone like
Barber?

Seph and Jason and Jack and
Ellen and Nick—all were fighting against
impossible odds for something they believed
in. It was bad enough that she hadn't
helped them. Now Warren Barber wanted her to march into the middle of the
sanctuary and betray the people who meant the most to her.

Except Grace and J.R. were in
this mess because of her. Seph had warned her she couldn't escape by running
away, and she hadn't listened. And if Barber found out that Grace was an
elicitor, too…

All my life, I've been paying
for Carlene's mistakes, she thought. Grace and J.R. aren't going to pay for
mine.

“It might not be
easy,” she said. “It might take a little time.”

Barber crammed the last of the
pizza into his mouth and wiped his fingers on the tablecloth. “Just
remember, the longer it takes, the longer Grace and J.R. stay locked up.”

One thing Jack had always
appreciated about his mother, Becka, was her ability to make things happen,
even when awakened from a sound sleep in the middle of the night. Looking back
on it, he couldn't even remember what he'd said to her. Or maybe it was his
appearance—all muddy and bloody from the
fight outside the perimeter. Anyway, it was enough to roust her from bed and
send her to the phone. When she found it dead, she sent out runners and the
result was this meeting around the kitchen table at Stone Cottage a scant hour
later.

The wind raked over the house,
and hail clattered against the windows. Thunder growled out over the lake. It
seemed like it was always storming, these days.

It was a disparate group.
Ellen prowled the room, flushed and restless, still pumped from the unfinished
business outside the perimeter. Sweat glistened on her sinewed arms, and she
mopped at her face with her shirt, despite the chilly breeze coming through
the terrace doors. Her gray eyes were as turbulent as the surface of the lake.

Jack understood—the blood still pounded through his veins, his
rebellious body in endless preparation for battle.

Nicodemus Snowbeard looked
like he'd aged several hundred years, yet his black eyes still shone with the
same old intensity. Nick had insisted that Leesha Middleton be included, though
most everyone else would've voted against it. But the old man was a majority of
one.

For once, Leesha had little to
say. She sat on the edge of the hearth, arms clasped around her knees. She kept
looking over at Jason, as if trying to catch his eye, and Jason was looking
everywhere but at her.

Jason was his usual twitchy
self, shifting his weight, checking the time on his cell phone. Nothing ever
moved fast enough for him.

Seph, brooding and dangerous,
practically smoked with power.

Mercedes Foster resembled a
Manga construction worker in her coveralls, kasuri robe, and Japanese slippers.
Iris Bolingame slumped in the corner, exhausted. She'd just come off the wall.

Will and Fitch hung close to
Jack and Ellen, as if determined not to be left out of whatever was to happen.

Will's father, Bill Childers,
mayor of Trinity, and his uncle, Ross Childers, now chief of police, looked as
awkward as two Baptists at a Hindu temple.

“I think we're all
here,” Becka said to Jack. “Now suppose you tell us what's going
on.”

“This had better be
good,” Ross added gruffly, yawning behind his forearm and glaring at Will.
“Real good.”

Nick levered himself to his
feet, using his staff. “Ross. Bill. Becka. These young people are about to
tell you an extraordinary story. But I can assure you that it's absolutely
true. I hope you will listen to what they have to say with an open mind.”
He nodded at Jack.

“So,” Jack said,
clearing his throat. “That is, we … ah …” He'd been keeping secrets
so long that it was hard to let go of them. In desperation, he reached over his
shoulder and drew Shadowslayer from his baldric, laying the great sword across
the kitchen table. Ellen followed suit, pulling Waymaker from its scabbard and
resting it next to Shadowslayer.

Everyone stared at the two
brilliant swords on the table, as if the weapons might speak.

Becka found her own voice.
“Jack. Where did these swords come from? They look like museum
pieces.”

Ellen rested her hand on the
hilt of her sword and spoke, rather formally. “Waymaker was taken from a
hoard of weapons in Raven's Ghyll, in Cumbria, U.K. Near where you stayed with
Mr. Hastings that time. It is one of the seven great blades, made by sorcerers
under the rule of the dragon Aidan Ladhra. Jason … ah … found it and…um…”

Her voice trailed away. Becka
and Ross and Bill Childers stared at her like she'd grown another head. She
looked down at the floor, the color coming up in her cheeks. Ellen hated
speaking in front of people under the best of circumstances.

Jack rested his right hand at
the base of Ellen's spine and touched the hilt of his sword with the other.
“Mom. This is Shadowslayer. It's another one of the seven. It belonged to
Great-Great-Grandmother Susannah. We—Will
and Fitch and I—dug it up from her grave, down in Coalton County.”

“Susannah owned a
sword?” Becka frowned suspiciously at Jack, then turned to look at Will
and Fitch for the punchline.

“Susannah was a magical
warrior,” Fitch said into the skeptical silence. “Like Ellen and
Jack.”

“They've been fighting
off an army of wizards, Ms. Downey,” Will added. “Remember when we
went down to Coal Grove with Aunt Linda to do genealogy? We found the sword,
but then wizards attacked us, trying to steal it, and we had to hide in a
church. Aunt Linda pulled up in the parking lot, and Jack, he flamed…”

“Linda? What about
Linda?” Becka interrupted. “You're saying she's a warrior too?”

“Well.” Will cleared
his throat. “Ah, no. She's an enchanter.”

“An enchanter,” Ross
Childers said, grinding the heel of his hand into his forehead.
“Right.” He'd asked Linda out—
several times—before her relationship with Hastings became public knowledge.

“We made it back to
Trinity, but then wizards came after Jack here,” Fitch said.
“Remember when those dudes tried to snatch him from the high school and
Mr. Hastings chased them off?”

Becka's head came up and she
wore that familiar lawyer expression that said she was about to drill an
unreliable witness. Though she hadn't totally bought the story they'd told at
the time, she wasn't buying this one either.

“They were traders,”
Will explained. “There was this huge price on Jack's head, and they were
going to sell him at auction. You see, wizards play warriors in these big
magical tournaments. Called the Game.”

“You're telling me those
men were wizards. And Leander Hastings chased them off?” Becka
lifted her eyebrow.

“Well, actually, they're
sort of buried under the school parking lot,” Jack admitted. “He had
to do something with the bodies before the police came.” He shot an
apologetic look at Ross, who'd been the commanding officer on the scene.

“Mr. Hastings is a
wizard, too,” Will said. “So is Nick.”

Everyone turned and stared at
Nick, who inclined his head slightly. “Indeed,” he said. “I'm
afraid so.”

Bill Childers looked from Nick
to Will, then conjured up an explanation of his own. “You got us all out
of our beds to talk about…about some kind of role-playing game?”

“No,” Jason said
from his spot against the wall. “It's real. And there's going to be a
massacre if we don't…if we don't do something.”

“Now hold on,” Bill
glared at Jason, who never looked particularly reliable. “A massacre?”

“Wizards have this town
surrounded,” Mercedes said in her clipped fashion. “We put up a
Weirwall, a magical barricade. That's the only thing that's keeping them out at
the moment. Now the wizards have put up their own wall—a wizard wall. They mean to capture or kill everyone
who tries to leave.”

“Look,” Ross said,
shedding his jacket and tossing it over a chair. His shirt had big sweat spots
under the arms. “I've been in and out of town a dozen times over the past
two weeks. I haven't seen any one wall, let alone two.”

“You can't see the
Weirwall,” Mercedes said. “It's invisible to the Anaweir. The
non-gifted. Those without Weirstones. Like you.”

“The other wall went up
tonight,” Jason said. “That one, you can see. I can show you, but
we'll have to be careful. They're already out there waiting.”

“You expect us to believe
that someone built a wall all the way around the town since sunset.” Ross
rolled up his sleeves, exposing his beefy arms.

Mercedes sniffed. “Well.
It is an ugly thing. Slipshod. But we have to assume it's
effective.”

“You've seen this
wall?” Bill asked.

“I have,” Jason
said. “When they start grabbing the townies, there'll be mass panic. We
have to find a place to stash the Ana—the
non-gifted—until this war is over. One way or another.”

“We're wasting
time.” Seph spoke for the first time. “The morning commute begins in
two hours. We've got sentries posted to turn people back, but anyone who slips
through will be trapped inside the outer wall and taken. I'm not going to let
that happen. I'll immobilize them all if I have to.”

Becka blinked at him.
“Seph?”

“Look,” Ross
growled, exasperated. “I've known most of you kids all your lives, but I
have to say, you're scaring me. I'm thinking we should all get back to bed and
see if those wizards have disappeared by morning.”

“Listen with an open
mind,” Nick repeated softly.

“Hey.” Jason stared
out the terrace doors toward the lake. “Come look at this.”

They crowded onto the terrace,
lining up against the wall, hunching their shoulders against the ice pellets
drilled into them by the wind. Jason extended his hands. Light spilled from his
fingers, gilding the tops of the waves across a gray expanse of water until it
struck a thick black barrier a hundred yards from shore that stretched from horizon
to horizon. It resembled storm clouds come to earth, or a layer of thick,
roiling smoke with greenish lightning playing around its edges.

“What the hell?”
Ross stared out at the lake, scrubbing his palm across his bristled face.
“Is that some kind of waterspout or squall line or…”

“It's part of the wizard
wall,” Jason said flatly, “And it wouldn't be a good idea to try and
take your boat through that. It means there's no escape by water.”

“How'd you do that?”
Bill demanded. “That thing with your hands?”

“Magic,” Jason said
matter-of-factly. “Get used to it, because you're going to see a lot more
of it, whether you like it or not.”

Jack recalled his own
experience, two years before, when Aunt Linda had told him that she was an
enchanter, that Jack was a warrior, that wizards were hunting him down.

There was just no way to ease
into it.

Jack ducked inside, retrieved
Shadowslayer from the table, and strode back onto the terrace.

“Stand back,” he
said.

Gripping the hilt with both
hands, he swung the great sword in a wide, hissing arc, sending bolts of flame
screaming across the dark waters to smash into the wall, feeling the familiar
exhilarating release as he did so. Smoke and flame fountained into the night
sky and smaller explosions reverberated along the rocky lakeshore. And again.
Flame ripped into the night, exploded against the barrier, painting the waves
in gaudy colors of red and orange. When the smoke dissipated, the wall
remained, though a bit more ragged than before.

“God almighty,” Bill
said, after a moment of stunned silence.

An acrid, burnt scent came
back to them, carried by the onshore breeze. Dogs barked furiously, all along
the shoreline.

Becka slumped against the
wall, bracing herself with her hands. Emotions tracked across her face.
Astonishment. Fear. Regret. Guilt. “This has got to be a dream,” she
said.

“It's okay, Mom,”
Jack said, embarrassed, sitting down next to her and leaning Shadowslayer
against the wall.

Ellen took one look at the two
of them, then firmly herded the rest of the group inside. “Take ten, Jack.
We'll bring the townies up to date.” She pulled the doors shut.

“There's not much
time,” Jack said. “I'm sorry it had to come out like this.”

“I must've been
blind,” Becka said. She looked up at Jack. “When did you know?”

“Not till my sophomore year.
Warriors don't manifest until they're old enough to … um…fight.”

“But what about after
that? Why didn't you tell me?” She caught his chin with her hand, and
forced his face around so she could look him in the eyes. “I should have
asked more questions. You've had to deal with this all on your own.”

“Mom. You asked,”
Jack said desperately. “About a hundred times you asked what was up. I
just couldn't tell you. I didn't know how.” He looked down at his lean,
muscular body. Designed for one purpose.

“How was I supposed to
tell you I'm a warrior? A hardwired killer? This is so totally opposed to
everything you believe in—that I've
believed in, all my life.” He leaned his arms on the wall, his chin on his
arms, staring out at the lake. “I mean, I wasn't totally on my own. Linda
knew, all along. And Nick was here, to keep an eye on me, I guess. He
taught me some wizardry. And Hastings taught me how to fight.”

“Hastings.” She let
out a long breath. “What about Ellen?”

“Ellen's had the life I
might've had if… things were different.” He paused, collected his
thoughts. “They sent her here to kill me. And she could've. But she
didn't.”

Seph stuck his head through
the doorway. “Jack.”

Jack stood, looking down at
his mother. “All year you and Dad have been trying to get me to focus on
my future, I don't know if I have a future, if I'm even going to get through
the year. I know we need to talk. And we will. But for now I want to say I love
you. And I'm sorry.”

Becka stood, reached her hands
up, pulled his face down, and kissed him on his forehead. “I love you, Jack,”
she said fiercely. “And I believe in you. Wizard, warrior, whatever.”
And led the way back into the house.

The others were gathered
around the kitchen table, slugging down coffee in lieu of sleep. Something had
happened in the interim. Wizardly Persuasion, perhaps. The mayor and the chief
of police had moved from dogged skepticism to foot-dragging belief.

“I still don't get
it,” Ross was saying. “Why would they attack a little college town in
Ohio? What do they want?”

Nick and Seph exchanged
glances. “We have something they want,” Nick said gently. “A
magical object that is said to be extraordinarily powerful. A small group of
wizards hope to use it to seize control of the magical guilds. In effect, to
rule the world.”