Americana Fairy Tale (45 page)

The street carnival rides squealed as the metal beams contorted and snapped under the weight. They vanished into the thicket of black thorns. The mundanes ran. Corentin gasped as the mundanes screamed the telltale tortured howl as their minds simultaneously broke with reality.

Ringo and Honeysuckle deposited Corentin on the catwalk of a water tower. He ran the circumference of it, trying to get a better view of the widespread attack of Taylor’s curse. He clapped a hand over his mouth as buildings were crushed and vanished. Cars flipped from the growth and twisted as vines held them like the curl of a python. Ringo and Honeysuckle fluttered around the water tower with him.

Corentin smacked his hand to the railing. “Idi used Taylor as a weapon.” He snarled his disgust. “He anticipated this! It’s like fucking Margate City!”

In the distance, another shockwave boomed, louder and more powerful than before. From the epicenter, from Taylor himself, a thick stalk shot from the ground.

Corentin clung to the water tower railing as the supports rocked like a tree in the breeze. “What’s going on?” Corentin yelled to Ringo. “Can you see?”

Ringo spread his hands, and a spark of magic formed a magnifying piece of air. He stretched the image to the size of a television screen. Inside the trunk, a gigantic pink gem, large enough to encase a body, pulsed with light.

Corentin squinted at the magical picture. “Taylor’s in that thing. We have to get him out. We have to save him before these briars keep spreading.” Corentin looked down again. The briar vines kept rolling onward as far as he could see over the flatness of the surrounding land. It was a small blessing they had slowed down to a creeping crawl.

“You can’t go into this ill prepared,” Honeysuckle said.

Ringo nodded. “You’ll need your tools of the trade.”

Corentin narrowed his eyes as Ringo and Honeysuckle flew at him. They spiraled around his body, sucking him up into a funnel of blue and gold glittering contrails. His tattered clothes winked away stitch by stitch. In their place, gray leather pants clung to his legs, tucked into armored boots. A heavy green tunic gave a comforting weight on his shoulders, and the cotton shirt under it the freedom of movement. Leather bracers laced over his forearms, and gloves slicked over his fingers. On the leather of the tunic, the spirit of his ancestor’s old oak tree rose in an embossed layer.

“Catch,” Ringo said.

A glimmer of gold light caught Corentin’s attention at the right moment, as the falling star dropped into his hands and blossomed into an ornate compound bow. Corentin watched Ringo. “Arrows?”

“Try it,” Ringo said. “Just draw the string.”

Corentin gave it a go. He raised the bow and then pulled the string back. From the bow, a glowing silver arrow pulled with his fingers from out of the ether. Corentin let the arrow fly as a test shot. It sailed away as far as he could follow and winked into nothingness.

Overhead, the sky blackened and crashed with booming thunder. The winds churned around them. From the center, Idi lowered like a sinking cloud of black vapor. He hovered before Corentin, the lower half of his body dissolving into curls of fog.

“You chose him over whom you serve,” Idi said.

“I believe huntsmen can change after all,” Corentin said, standing proud. “I will die in the service of my princess.”

“Excellent,” Idi said with a grin. “Because you will.”

In a twist of fog, Idi vanished. Only the black cloud remained, expanding, rolling, flashing with bolts of lightning.

First Corentin caught the blinking of terrifying mother-of-pearl eyes, then the snort of steam from a giant muzzle. From the fog, the horrific shape of Idi’s true form came to light—the great chaotic dragon of old. Corentin blinked, shaking his head. The flashes of ancient memories within his own heritage raced across his vision.

He was there, in a time so long ago, forgotten by the mundanes. He was there as Snow White gave birth in Midas’s fallen citadel. Snow White’s sister, Princess Zellandine, darted from the crumbling throne room. She halted in the face of what lay before her.

The witches marched in rows as far as the horizon stretched and beyond, like ants with glimmering silver shells. Over them, Idi, the god of dragons, the force of darkness himself, flapped his great wings and soared toward them.

Zellandine clutched her lance in one hand. With the other, she took Corentin’s hand. In the touch, the girl in the elegant, spiny black-and-gold armor became a man. He lifted his visor, and the pink eyes of Taylor intently watched his.

“I’m with you,” Corentin said. He squeezed his hand. “As far as the road takes us.”

Taylor clapped his visor down again, with only his mouth visible. He adjusted his fearsome lance in his grip. “We will travel the road together again someday,” he said. “Don’t stop until you find me.”

Corentin readied his bow. “I will bring you home.”

Corentin snapped back to the present, his head pounding with a new clarity. He had been there. All along. He was there. Taylor was his from the start. From a time so long ago, their souls wandered aimlessly, alone, through the centuries, only to face the battle once again.

“I will bring you home,” Corentin growled with determination. He readied his bow, drawing back a silver arrow. He let it fly at Idi’s snout as he poured from his foggy cover.

Idi shook his head with the sting. He pulled left and drifted around the water tower. His titanic wings remained flat along his body as he coasted through the air.

“Come on!” Corentin called to Ringo and Honeysuckle. Corentin gave chase around the limited expanse of the water tower. He unleashed a flurry of arrows along Idi’s side and hurried to his head. Idi roared, and his skin trembled with the shocks of magic. Ringo and Honeysuckle flew to Idi’s muzzle and threw bursts of their pixie magic into his face. The balls of energy broke apart across the bridge of his muzzle, and he shook his head. Corentin caught up to him and launched another series of arrows. One caught his eye in a direct hit, and milky iridescence poured from the wound.

Idi roared his agony. He flapped his wings once in defense, and the shearing gale blew Corentin from the water tower. Corentin fell, and he flipped in midair to face the ground and the slithering briars. The thorns anticipated his blood. Idi swooped under him. The fin of his tail swished through the breeze. By the sheer refusal to die, Corentin grappled the fin, and Idi took to the skies.

Corentin gritted his teeth as he clung to the fin. Idi flew higher, twisting and twirling in the air. He beat his wings in a great clap of thunder and headed for Taylor’s jeweled protection in the briar trunk. Corentin wished he had something to steady his grip on Idi. His bow flickered with brilliance and then formed into a pair of short swords in his hands. Corentin laughed through his heavy breaths. He stabbed one blade between Idi’s black scales and pulled himself up. He stabbed again and kept pulling. Slowly, he made his journey for Idi’s head.

Idi reached Taylor’s protective shell. He coasted around in a circle, as if contemplating what to do. He reared back, sucking in a prismatic spark of breath. He spewed the brilliant fire onto the pink barrier.

The jeweled barrier remained. It pulsed like a heartbeat, glowing with two strobes of light.

Idi wailed in an earsplitting shriek of indignation. He coasted around in another circle as he seemed to once again consider how to break through.

Corentin had made it between Idi’s shoulder blades. He stabbed in just the right spot, and Idi snapped his head back in pain. Corentin grimaced, preparing for a rough ride.

Idi leaped upward, flapping his wings as he shot straight into the sky and through the dark clouds of his own power. They burst through the clouds, and Corentin was momentarily blinded by the brilliant warmth of the sun. He tried to breathe the thin air but gagged instead. Idi spun into a sharp roll, twisting once and then twice. Already light-headed, Corentin fell away into nothing.

The pressure in Corentin’s diaphragm wouldn’t let him draw breath to scream. He fell fast. He reached out, and his bow materialized in his hand. He flipped to his back as Idi dived after him. As Corentin fell from the sky, he let the magical arrows sail through the air, bursting against Idi’s snout. He roared, and two hit the roof of his mouth in a pleasing plume of silver fire.

Corentin fell through the clouds, and the darkness of Cawker City spread out below him. Idi flapped his wings twice, and the black clouds rippled, peeling away into a series of tornadoes. The thin funnel clouds scratched over the distant sprawl and then faded into nothing. Idi slipped under him. Corentin thanked his lucky stars he’d have something to grip on to again.

Only Idi turned his snout upward.

Corentin gasped as Idi opened his jaws, flying to meet Corentin like a tossed treat.

The bow in Corentin’s hand became a long sword. He pointed it down as Idi rose up.

Corentin stilled the panic in his thoughts. His grip on the blade tightened. “
Come find me
,” he said, sending his wish to Taylor that he would one day see him again.

Idi’s teeth surrounded him, and he fell into the wet darkness.

B
EAUTY
A
WAKES

The World’s Largest Ball of Twine, Cawker City, Kansas

June 14

T
AYLOR
’
S
HEART
slammed once in his chest. He startled with the shock to his body. The wind raged in his ears. The screeching scratches along the encasement of his chrysalis were sharp in his mind.

Corentin’s voice was a clear, tranquil whisper. “
Come find me
.”

They were the last words he spoke before he fell to his curse and left Taylor after they had first made love. Taylor would always find him. Taylor would never give up the hunt.

Taylor would always hunt his wandering huntsman.

He would bring him home.

Taylor’s eyes fluttered open to the vision of the draconic Idi trying to gnaw away Taylor’s chrysalis. His teeth scraped along the shell, and Taylor glared down his throat. There was a flash of green at the back of Idi’s mouth. And then a face.

Corentin’s face.

Idi swallowed.

“Enough,” Taylor said in a whisper. The power of the dragon that had slept in his own soul stirred with his master’s wish.

Idi circled around once. His one mother-of-pearl eye watched Taylor with a quiet threat. Idi reared back and then thrust his claws forward. He was determined to scratch out the jeweled chrysalis from the briar trunk.

“Enough,” Taylor whispered again. Reaching out, he didn’t pay attention to the elaborate black-and-gold gauntlets over his hands and arms. He didn’t notice the spiny, beastly armor glinting on his body, the shiny black plates accented with brilliant gold inlay. Decorative golden briar vines engraved themselves across the visor of his helm and over his breastplate.

Idi pulled away again, readying himself for another attack.

Taylor punched at the interior of the shell, and the shards scattered into the torrent. Idi dived for Taylor, snap-snapping his jaws in anticipation. Taylor leaped out, his spiked boots sticking deep into Idi’s snout. Idi shook his head in an attempt to toss Taylor off, but Taylor held on.

He crouched upon Idi’s snout as easily as shifting to a small child’s level. He gripped the brow ridge of Idi’s one good eye and stared into it. He flipped up his visor so Idi could make no mistake of the rage burning in his heart. “I will bring Corentin home,” Taylor said as Idi’s only warning.

He pulled back a gauntleted fist and punched straight into Idi’s eye. Idi flailed with the immediate blindness. Taylor wouldn’t let go.

Not yet. Not now. Not ever.

He channeled the power within him, and Taylor’s draconic soul growled with the wrath of Corentin being taken from him, the only soul who could keep Taylor’s own calm and protected. The briar vines crawled from Taylor’s fist and rushed into Idi’s milky, weeping eye socket.

Taylor held steady. The vines from his arm crawling into Idi’s skull anchored him. Idi flailed and beat his wings. He snapped his head, but Taylor wouldn’t fall. The vines filled Idi’s skull, and the bones cracked from the pressure. The thorns skewered his reptilian brain.

Idi panted, and his tongue drooped from his mouth. His wings gave one final halfhearted beat, and he went still. Idi’s great mass stayed aloft for only the smallest of moments, slowly rolling once. With the magic of his flight gone, the reality of gravity clamped onto him and pulled him down to earth.

Taylor leaped off Idi as the dragon fell from the heavens. Taylor fell like a meteorite from the sky, fast, bright, brilliant, burning. He hit the street in a steady crouch, and the shockwave flooded out from his body. In the passing of the force, all of the surrounding briar vines blew away, as insignificant as ash.

All that remained was the widespread devastation of a destroyed city and a populace driven to madness.

Taylor had done this.

His hand flattened to his breastplate. He closed his eyes and whispered the first thing that came to mind. “Shake the dreamland tree. Let the healing dreams fall on thee,” he said, and the words flowed like warmth from his lips.

He opened his eyes and was stunned when all of the mundanes became still. They stared blindly into nothing. In rolling waves, they yawned, stretched, and curled into peaceful slumber wherever they stood.

Ringo and Honeysuckle fluttered to Taylor’s side, and he jerked in surprise. Ringo whistled. “Holy shit, really?” he asked and gestured wildly to Taylor’s armor.

“We can’t talk about that now,” Taylor said and waved him off. “Atticus is out here somewhere.” Taylor shifted his weight and flexed his fingers. A shimmer of pink magic swirled through his right palm, forming into a shaft and then sparking into being. The old familiar heaviness of his ancestor’s dragoon lance solidified in his hand. The revered artifact hailed from a time that had since been written into mere children’s stories.