Seraph of Sorrow (10 page)
He shook his head and tried to focus, but Jonathan couldn’t see what she was pointing out. All he saw were the coins, sliding and flipping over each other—
zeep, zeep, zeep, plick.
Despite his own inability to see, her description must have hit the mark, because Smokey didn’t attack. Instead, the coins continued their glimmering dance, and his voice rasped:
The Ancient Furnace.
They say she grows to see all
Under crescent moon.
In a flash, Jennifer shifted out of dragon form. Flipping her platinum hair, she put her hands on her hips, chewed her tongue, and squinted in a way that made Jonathan smile—Liz gave the same look when exasperated. “Do you
have
to do that? I hate poetry.”
The switch to human form didn’t seem to sit well with Smokey. The vines behind the coins shifted, and the old creeper betrayed a few stumbling steps. For half an instant, Jonathan thought he spotted a shadow where a dragon might have been.
In Crescent Valley,
Dragons should be dragons, girl.
But you insult me.
Yeah, well, get used to it,
Jonathan thought. Aloud, he said, “Maybe you should change back, Jennifer.”
“Thanks, Dad. I’m fine as is. If Mr. Coils here knows about the Ancient Furnace, then I’m sure he knows I can change as I like. And if he’s heard from Winona Brandfire recently, I’m guessing he knows about the silver moon elm and how it can grant any dragon the same chance to change shape at will. Right, Mr. Coils?”
Jonathan took the silence for accord. So did Jennifer.
“So if we can stop with the beatings and false offenses and get to the point, here it is: My dad and I need to learn what you know. It’s you, or nobody. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”
Zeep, plick. Zeep, zeep, plick, zeep, plick.
The coins disappeared, and then reappeared, and disappeared again.
Jennifer stomped her foot. “Yes, that’s a lovely magic trick, Las Vegas. Perhaps you could put the coins down and help out the next generation.”
Zeeeep. Zeeeep. Plick.
“Charming. Hey, Dad, I think I know what the elder creeper skill is: acting like an ass.”
“I already know that one,” he quipped.
A shift in light caught Jonathan’s peripheral vision. It was not Smokey or the coins, he was sure. By the time he spun to his right, it was gone.
So you want to learn
What no other dragon knows.
Only old Smokey.
“Well, duh.”
“Jennifer!”
She shrugged at him. “Did he
not
repeat what I already said?”
“The guy lives alone on a glowing island. Cut him some slack.”
“Fine. So, Las Vegas, will you please put down your magic trick and teach us?”
Absolutely not.
What you want me to teach you,
You’d use against us.
“That’s not true!” Jennifer protested. “I would never hurt another dragon! And neither would my dad. Anymore,” she finished lamely.
Jonathan stepped forward. “Elder Coils, what good does it do dragonkind to let this skill die with you? This is a gift that generations have passed down for thousands of years. You’re bound by duty and tradition to help us.”
The jungle hissed, and Jonathan thought he felt the gaze not of Smokey Coils but of the entire Blaze upon him. Though Jonathan knew those dragons were not here, the weight of their collective stare—of his guilt—was incredible.
You’re beyond my help.
You’ve murdered two dragons, and
You’ll just murder more.
Jennifer raised her voice impatiently. “So because you’re afraid of Dad, you’ll punish everyone else? That makes no sense. Your secret will die with you.”
The risk is too high.
Better it died here than died
With the last dragon.
“I know a little something about being the last dragon,” Jennifer pointed out. “Do you think I would let my father abuse whatever power you gave him?”
Zeep. Zeep.
“Unbelievable. Go screw yourself, Las Vegas.” Jennifer shook her head at Jonathan. “Dad, there’s no point in talking with this guy anymore. We might as well go home.”
He didn’t answer. He found himself staring at her, feeling a cacophony of emotions. First was the same frustration she felt. They had come so far and would fly away with nothing.
Second, and much greater, was the feeling of loss. He had lost the opportunity to help his daughter, lost it before she was even born, when he killed to defend the life of the girl who would become his wife. He never had a choice; he would have lost either way. He lost then; he lost now. He lost when Dianna gave birth to Evangelina, and both of them disappeared. He lost when Evangelina reappeared and laid out his failings, for all to see. He lost his father to that selfish secret, as he lost his mother to his irrepressible desire to tell her all about Liz. He lost friends, from Heather Snow to Winona Brandfire, to his character flaws and their consequences. Worst of all, he was now causing his daughter loss—in friends like Catherine, opportunities like Smokey’s skills, and even family like the other children he and Liz could have had together, had he been strong enough.
The sense of failure was nearly overwhelming. The only thing that prevented it from sending him into a spiral was his last emotion—love. Watching Jennifer stand there, tall and confident in the face of an unknown and primal force, set Jonathan’s will in steel.
Here, it ends.
He stepped forward and gently pulled Jennifer back. “Smokey Coils. Show yourself. I have an offer for you, and I want to look you in the eye when I give it.”
“Dad, what’re you—”
“One moment, ace.” Jonathan let out a deep breath as the form of Smokey Coils appeared. His scales didn’t relax into any one shade, instead shifting between jewel colors in a continual ripple. As Jennifer had described him, his spine and tail were covered in melon-sized lumps, ending with a club at the end of his tail.
Smokey’s wings were folded in, and they might have been torn or shortened—it was difficult to tell. The wing claws looked torn by arthritis; one closed over the two coins he had been rubbing together. He had two horns, each above his deep eye sockets. The left socket was lined with clusters of warts and tumors. A deep, scarred canyon ran through this marked terrain, from the scales on the bridge of his snout to the height of his left cheekbone. The right socket held a blue-gray eye. It also held a green-gold eye and a red-violet eye. The three orbs pushed and rubbed against each other, one vying for position over the other two.
“Dad, what’s with—”
“I don’t know,” Jonathan interrupted her before she could say something truly undiplomatic. “Xavier said nothing about the appearance of Smokey Coils.”
Smokey spoke, and yellow spittle stretched from tooth to forked tongue.
Here an eye can lie.
I grew two more, and now each
Can check the others.
As if to underline his point, several moongrove branches around them began to sway with no wind. Their gnarled branches flexed.
Say your piece, Jonny.
That ghost and I will listen—
Jonathan spun to look where Smokey’s head had gestured, and he thought he saw something long and slender in the shifting tree limbs. It disappeared quickly. “Is someone else here?” he asked.
Smokey’s bizarre head tilted to one side, as if he were weighing something, or perhaps listening to a voice no one else could hear. Finally, he finished:
Sorry. My mistake.
The oddness of this dragon’s appearance lessened for Jonathan, and he found his resolve again. “Smokey, I asked you to show yourself so I could honestly say what I need to say. Here it is: I know you hate me. I know most dragons out there do.” He gestured vaguely with a wing. “They have nothing to fear from me, but I guess they hate me anyway.
“It can’t be about me anymore. It has to be about my daughter. So I’m going to help you and everyone else focus on what’s important. I’m going to take myself out of the equation. I renounce my ties to our kind and banish myself from Crescent Valley. Jennifer will—”
“Dad!” She interposed herself between her father and Smokey. “What the hell are—”
He shoved her aside. “Jennifer will take my place on the Blaze. As the Ancient Furnace, she should receive some measure of goodwill from the others. If she has your blessing, in the form of your teachings, she’ll receive more.”
“Dad, this is—”
His wing claw over her mouth was firm. “I get why you’re out here, Smokey Coils. Like Roman Candlelight, you’re searching for something you’ll never find. In your case, it’s immortality. I can’t give you that, not after what I’ve done. But I can get you close. I can give you her, for a few days, to train.” He motioned to Jennifer. “One thousand years from now, nobody is going to know the name of Smokey Coils. Or Jonathan Scales. But her—her they’ll remember. We’ve got one chance, you and I, to make her legacy as strong as it can be. This is it. Right—owww . . .”
He rubbed his wing where she had slammed her fist upon the bone.
“You can’t do this! What, you’re not going to be a
dragon
anymore? You sound ridiculous saying it!”
“Jennifer, stop arguing with me. Of course I’ll still be a dragon. I just won’t have to go to all those boring Blazes.”
“And you’ll stay out of Crescent Valley? What, forever? What about when you die—I can’t bury you at the plateau?”
He chewed his tongue. Her expression simultaneously darkened and widened.
“
You can’t be a venerable?!
No, Dad. I won’t allow it.”
A chuckle escaped him, despite himself. “Excuse me, ace. You won’t
allow
. . . ?”
“
I won’t allow it!
I’m the fucking Ancient Furnace and I’m telling you:
No way!
”
We accept losses
Every day, young Scales. Someday,
So will you, I fear.
Elder Scales, think well.
I will hold you to your vow.
Do you commit this?
“He doesn’t commit a damn thing, Las Vegas.” Desperation wrinkled her cheeks and brow. “Dad, Mom will be
so
pissed at you if you do this!”
He looked at her. It might have been the island playing tricks again, but he was sure he saw Liz instead. The jungle and Smokey Coils disappeared, replaced by the city hall of Winoka and its fierce leader. Mayor Seabright had once refused an offer to give up the dragon inside.
Because she spared me years ago, I can make this sacrifice today.
“Your mother,” he said softly to the tearful vision in front of him, “will understand perfectly. I’ll go tell her myself.”
He nodded at Smokey Coils. The recluse nodded back.
It would have been nice,
he mused,
to be the hero of this story. I’ll settle for Jennifer.
He kissed his daughter on her trembling forehead, told her he’d see her back home, ignored her pleas, and kicked off into the twilit sky for one last flight through Crescent Valley.
PART 2
Glorianna Seabright
I’m not a person who thinks the world would be entirely different if it was run by women. If you think that, you’ve forgotten what high school was like.
—MADELEINE ALBRIGHT
CHAPTER 5
Tested by Fire
At the age of fifteen, Glorianna Seabright was grounded for the first time.
That evening, the idea that she would someday be mayor of a town named Winoka would have made her laugh nervously and twirl a finger in the shiny, straight dark locks draped over her neck and shoulders. She did not live in Winoka, which was called Pinegrove at the time. The farm where she lived and raised ewes and lambs with her father was outside a sleepy town in the Red River Valley, far in the northwest corner of Minnesota. In a couple of years, when she finished high school, Glorianna planned to go to a community college in-state—or maybe across the border in North Dakota—and become a cosmetologist.
That was a long time from tonight. Tonight, she was preoccupied with plans to run away.
It wasn’t a serious thought, she had to admit to herself as she lay in the dark with nothing but an oversized nightshirt protecting her from the early spring chill. But it was persistent, keeping her up for the last couple of hours since she had gotten home—late. She had run through the plan over and over, restlessly. It was easy: Get up, jump through the open window, and dart off across the farm.
Theirs was a close-knit town, and her family was popular here. She would have no trouble finding someone to take her in for a few days. Heck, her friend Andrea was a mile or so down the road, at a neighboring farm. No doubt she was in trouble, too, since the two girls had been out together in the woods until after midnight splitting a forty-ounce bottle of Midnight Dragon malt liquor. They had traded stories and laughs about how ridiculous their parents were, with their tales of imaginary monsters and the absurd “training routines” they both had to do, as if anyone would ever have to use them.
Even if Andrea was also in trouble, her parents were always kind to Glorianna, and maybe they would understand. At least going there would give her time to come up with a longer-term plan.
Ultimately, the reason she wouldn’t go had nothing to do with Andrea’s parents, Glorianna thought as she caught the faint scent of cow manure through the window. The reason had to do with her father.
As if on cue, there was a knock on her door.
At four in the morning?
Without waiting for an answer, Richard Evan Seabright opened the door.
“Get up,” he told her.
“Wha—”
“Put on pants.” Off in the distance, she could hear the sound of screaming fire engines.
It can’t be,
she told herself as she rummaged through her dark wardrobe and finally managed to find a pair of flowered stretch pants. While she had faithfully listened to her father’s stories of demonlike things, and played along with routines like sword practice, she could not bring herself to believe the delusions of a bereaved man.
When he came back to her room with sword in hand, she realized she could be wrong.
“They’re here?”
He nodded. In his other hand, he held a pitchfork. “You’ll need this.”
Stammering, she held her hands up in protest. She noticed her own fingernails, where she had painted tiny blossom patterns that had caused Andrea to proclaim Glorianna the Next Great Salon Worker of the Great Plains. “B-but I c-can’t—”
“You’ve practiced. In the barn.”
“On straw bales! Don’t
real
targets
move
?”
“We don’t have time to discuss this. Take it.” He thrust the pitchfork into her hand, breaking a nail. “And get in the truck.”
As they scrambled into the pickup truck with cold dew and dirt on their bare feet, she squinted at the crescent moon among the fading stars. The truck tore out of the driveway and left their quaint, white farmhouse obscured by billowing dust.
“Are you sure it’s them?” she asked him. “Maybe it’s a fire, or some emergency response exercise.”
“It’s them.” His pale stare fixed on the red glow over the road far ahead.
She shook her head and then realized that she hadn’t had time to brush her hair. “You’re just a farmer. How can you know stuff like this?”
“Just a farmer.” He licked his lips in distaste.
She felt the chill air through the heating vents and rubbed her knees. It was unlikely the cab would have time to warm up before they would be downtown.
“Why are you bringing me with you? I’ve never seen one of these things before.”
“Always a first time,” he muttered at the dirt road. “They never get less dangerous.”
“If they’re half as dangerous as you say, won’t I be killed?”
“You’ll be tested.”
“Tested.” She chewed her tongue. “Was that what happened to Mom? She was tested? Did she fail?”
“Glory!” She could not tell if the look he gave her was determination, or despair.
“Sorry, sir.”
They spent the last few minutes in silence, until they reached the town center—a single intersection of crumbling streets that ran past two bars, a liquor store, and a few struggling retail shops. The liquor store was already ablaze, and a few of the nearest residents had already gathered to the south of the intersection, not far from where the fire engines had stopped.
Before anyone could do anything to douse the flames, they would have to do something about the winged monsters that circled in the dark above. As she got out of the truck, it was hard for Glorianna to make out exactly how many there were—four? Six? A dozen?
How can we possibly fight them?
she wondered in awe, flinching at a bellow from far above.
Nevertheless, she pulled the pitchfork out of the truck bed. If pointy sticks were all they had, then pointy sticks it was.
“Ri!” She spun around toward the voice. Andrea was in a nightgown and bathrobe, holding an ash-laced poker in her hands. The girl’s honey-blonde hair and bright green eyes were wild with fear and excitement.
At least she was smart enough to bring slippers,
Glorianna thought as she shifted her weight on the cold pavement.
“Where are the police?” she asked Andrea.
As if in answer, a patrol car careened through the intersection. It was impossible to tell who was driving it, because the interior was full of the same fire that seeped out from under the hood, and which burst from the liquor store windows, and which was consuming several other buildings and parked vehicles. The police car veered, nearly hit the small crowd of scattering townspeople, and smashed into the corner hardware store.
The beasts above roared with sadistic laughter, and one of them let loose with a new jet of flame. It was too high to do much more than wash the rooftops of the buildings on the northeast corner, but already some of the townspeople were running away. A few of them fired handguns into the gloom. Glorianna could not tell in the chaos if the bullets missed completely, or glanced off thick hides.
“Stay fast.”
Richard Evan Seabright used a voice his daughter had never heard before—not a dull farmer’s baritone at all, but something sharper and clearer. It stopped the crowd in their tracks and compelled them to face him as he jumped onto the flatbed and lifted his sword high. The blade glistened crimson from the surrounding firelight.
“You can’t run from these things! They’ll follow you to the next house you live in, the next town we build together. The only way to stop them is fighting. Right here. Tonight!”
“We’ll die!” Glorianna could not see the man who said this.
Her father gave a small smile. “Let the test come. Death is on
our
side tonight.”
With that, he climbed onto the cab of his truck, turned to the twilit sky, and raised his sword at the swooping shapes.
“Ready yourselves, or ready your souls!”
A hollow shriek answered. Something swooped down toward him from behind.
“Dad!”
Before she could finish screaming, he had leapt from the truck, spun in midair, and flung his blade with a yell. As Richard Seabright landed, a bright blue dragon with violet markings under its wings gave a gurgle of surprise and pain, lost control of its predatory trajectory, and crashed into the burning street.
Glorianna cheered with everyone else as her father walked back past his truck, approached the reptilian carcass, and yanked his weapon out of the monster’s throat. The corpse lifted with the pull, and then collapsed again.
“Death is on our side tonight!”
he repeated, bloody sword pointing at the crescent moon.
A larger dragon descended—with black scales and a spiked crest—right over the thickest part of the crowd, breathing heat. The cheers reverted to screams, and Glorianna saw the woman who owned the bakery down the street crumple into a writhing twist of fire. The man next to her staggered backward with his entire upper body aflame, and his pistol exploded in his hand. The shrapnel flew into the faces of a pair of teenaged boys who had been picking up rocks to throw.
As the dragon passed low over the street, someone leapt from a second-story rooftop onto the dragon’s back. It buckled with the added weight and roared in indignation.
“Mom!”
Glorianna held her alarmed friend back from following the woman and her unwilling steed, nearly dropping her pitchfork. “No, Andrea! She knows what she’s doing!”
She knows what she’s doing.
A thrill went through her at the thought.
Andrea’s mom. My dad. How many are there? How good are they? Can we win this?
“Let me go, Ri!” Andrea shook free and ran into the intersection. “Mom!” Both Glorianna and her father gave chase.
The dragon was too fast for those on the ground—but the woman riding it hung on, drew a butcher’s knife from inside her coat, and drove it between the wing blades of the beast she rode.
The fiend thrashed as it rolled onto the pavement, spilling the warrior onto the sidewalk. She somersaulted several times and finally came to rest, facedown and motionless.
“Mom! Mom, get up!” Andrea wailed as she sped through the intersection.
“Get up!”
She was heedless to everything around her—the small explosions coming out of the liquor store close by, the outraged bellows of the dragons above, or the Seabrights as they tried to keep up.
They were all so focused on Andrea’s mother and the squirming thing that kept trying to remove the weapon from its heaving back, they did not see what was coming from their right.
This specimen was even larger than the black-crested one—nearly twice the size of a grown man—with deep green scales and burning eyes. Its wings did not appear strong, but its limbs were heavily muscled, and its jaws were like an open truck hood.
It threw aside a Volkswagen sedan with a massive nose horn, smashing a telephone pole and darkening the surrounding streetlights. Then it made the most horrifying sound through its clenched teeth—a whistle from hell’s train.
The flame came out as a ruinous blanket that unfurled over the entire intersection. Richard Seabright had no time to do anything before the cascade overtook him.
Glorianna did not shout after him. She couldn’t. All she could do was stand and let a hot wind whip past her as she watched her father die. Her own father, who had cared for her in her mother’s absence and swore nothing would happen to them, who had taught her how to hold a sword in a simple barn with pride in his eyes, whom she had begun to cook for and take care of as she grew stronger and he grew ever slightly more frail—what could she possibly say to him, if she could make a sound?
He faced her and burned. And about that time, she realized something. It was not a hot wind that surrounded her. It was the dragon’s fire.
She could not see the beast anymore, only the blast it generated. It washed over her feet and legs, passed over her hips and shoulders, and coursed through her billowing hair. The heat was uncomfortable—but there was no pain.
Why was there no pain?
The burning body of Richard Evan Seabright stood tall within the sheath of fire and watched her. She looked down. Her clothes had disintegrated; her flesh was untouched.
Finally, the dragon’s breath was exhausted. It snarled through steaming nostrils and surveyed the damage. Richard’s body was charred. Glorianna’s soft brown eyes watered as she watched him struggle to keep upright. His lips and tongue were flayed, but they formed one last word she could hear over the chaos above.
Tested.
Then his limbs lost the last of their muscle, and he collapsed with his sword beneath him. Something forced itself up Glorianna’s throat, and she spat bile onto cracked pavement.
With a satisfied roar, the dragon thundered into the intersection. The warrior was dead. It did not notice this crumpled mess of a teenager. It turned its back on them both and faced down Andrea’s mother, who had recovered from her fall and staggered to her feet. The woman did nothing to defend herself.
Why isn’t she looking up?
Glorianna wondered.
Doesn’t she see it?
She was about to call out, but then she followed the woman’s lost gaze to another point of the intersection. There was a second shriveling carcass out here, only a few feet away from Richard Seabright’s.
There were only two clues to its identity—her friend’s pale brown slippers and the poker glowing on the pavement. Everything else was burning or had been reduced to crusted ash.
Andrea’s mother abruptly turned to Glorianna, completely lost.
She can’t help herself,
the thought came.
None of these people can help themselves. They are not so strong, after all. Their leader is gone. Dad is gone.
But I am tested.
She willed herself to stand. One set of knuckles tightened around the handle of her pitchfork, and the other wiped away a useless tear.
Death is on our side.
The awkward tool she held took a smooth and graceful course, blazing a trail for its owner. Glorianna followed the triple-pronged end as it rushed toward the horned beast, danced up the spiked back, and thrust itself into the base of the scaly neck. Since the dragon had reared up when it sensed the first footstep on its hindquarters, the tines forced themselves nearly straight down the spine. She held on to the fork’s handle as she began to slip, and twisted the shaft.