Seraph of Sorrow (45 page)
. . . right . . .
. . . out again.
Understanding came too late to Hank. All it did now was press on his temples like an ill-fitting crown. He realized that Edward Blacktooth would not be back at 1600 hours. Nor would he have any trouble finding a doctor at that hospital to stitch up that wound.
How did Wendy and Lizzy learn I knew something about the mayor?
he asked himself. It didn’t matter. Rumors swirled around this town like January wind.
The more pertinent question,
he decided,
is: Why did I believe my son would ever betray his pet dragon-girl?
It was frigid when he met with his small beaststalker army again in the dark, about half a mile from Winoka Bridge. Their numbers were surprisingly high. The twentysomethings, sporting a full array of blades and bows to go with their camo outfits, had brought more of their buddies along, and they numbered nearly fifty. Hank recognized all present as beaststalkers who had passed their rites, and nobody was stupid enough to bring guns or other explosives; but the sudden surge in numbers made him nervous. What if word had spread too easily, beyond even Eddie and the Scaleses? What if Glory knew?
If she knows, she knows,
he finally chastised himself.
Let her show up with a hundred soldiers of her own.
He knew she wouldn’t: With Glory Seabright, it was all about keeping secrets, and acting solo.
No one knew when the meeting might start (in fact, a few of them were still skeptical anything would happen at all), so they had agreed to meet at nine o’clock that evening, when traffic to and from town generally died down. They were at the pregnant woman’s house—her name was Stephanie, Hank overheard someone say—and most stayed inside. Only three or four of them were outside at any time, monitoring the bridge and city hall with binoculars.
The night dragged on. The mayor did not emerge from city hall. Fewer and fewer cars traveled the roads, but the bridge remained open. Eddie’s betrayal, and Hank’s own gullibility, began to weigh on him.
Fool, to think he would ever leave that girl-thing. Fool, to think he could amount to anything. Fool, not to kill him when I had the chance!
Midnight came, and the grumbling began. Hank suspected it started with Jim Sera, who did not serve any of the shifts outside but preferred to pout inside, conspicuously close to the snacks Stephanie had thoughtfully set out on her kitchen table. “Spending an awful lot of time spying on a mayor who’s served this town just fine for sixty years,” the muttering went. “Seems to me if she wants to talk to someone on a bridge, she can do it without our help.”
A few others agreed with Jim, but fortunately most assembled remained drawn to the lure of beaststalking tonight. “I’ll wait all night if that’s what it takes,” one of them interrupted. “Haven’t killed a beast in years. I’d love to do it again, even if I have to push the mayor aside!”
“You be careful with that talk,” Jim replied. Only the reassuring hands of his wife on his shoulders calmed him down.
“We’re all here for Glory,” Sarah assured him.
Finally, the reconnaissance team outside came back with news. “Couple of police have set up barriers down the road from the bridge.”
This is it,
Hank told himself as he jumped up from Stephanie’s dilapidated living room couch. “Everyone outside,” he told the room. “Let’s have ten files of five, bowmen in the middle ranks, blades—”
“Hold two seconds. Who put
you
in charge?”
Hank kept his quivering hands inside his jacket pockets as he turned to face Jim.
The important thing is not to shout.
“Jim, it doesn’t have to be me at all. Sarah can do it; she serves on the council, too. Sarah, would you like to take the reins until we reach Glory?”
He knew without looking at Sarah that he had tightened his control over the group. “No, Hank. That’s fine. Jim, we’re both still upset about Amanda, but this isn’t helping . . .”
“This isn’t about Amanda!” Jim protested, but by then Hank was already out the door, and everyone else was following him. They waited in the alley behind Stephanie’s house for several minutes—long enough to see Glorianna Seabright emerge from city hall, lock the door behind her, and start toward the bridge. The police who had set up the traffic barriers had disappeared. Glory intended solitude.
Disappointed.
Hank recalled the word, and how she had used it the day of his father’s funeral.
Glory’s going to be disappointed again.
He felt giddy.
It wasn’t until she was nearly halfway across the bridge that he noticed the other figure waiting. He didn’t need binoculars to deduce the man in the wheelchair. “She’s with Slider,” he told the others. “Let’s move. In file, quietly. He’s hobbled, but he may have friends.”
They kept to the left, out of the streetlights and moving low and fast. Given their numbers, they would be easy to spot soon. Closing the distance was critical to Hank, now that the meeting had started. If he could embarrass Glory into admitting she was weak enough to negotiate with the enemy, who knew what might happen—
He stopped short when he saw the tiny figure of Edmund Slider stand. Calling a quiet halt and whipping the binoculars up to his face, he saw Glory try to kill this man who everyone had thought was hobbled. She failed, and seconds later the beaststalkers got the shock of their lives.
“What the hell is
that
?” wondered Sarah aloud at the blue barrier that shot up into the sky and over their heads. Hank winced at her faltering tone.
“Whatever it is, we’re not going to defeat it by standing here,” he growled, motioning the group forward again. They were still at least ten blocks away from the bridge when Jonathan and Jennifer Scales arrived, landing next to the mayor and demanding her attention. Hank steamed at the sight of them. He had no time to deduce what this interruption could mean, before the town’s air defense sirens began to wail.
“A bit late for that,” he heard one of the twentysomethings mutter. “The arachnid has already pulled his trick, and these dragons are already upon Glory!”
Hank grew uneasy. Glory would not have allowed an alarm to sound for her meeting with Edmund Slider, and the Scaleses were notoriously efficient at evading the eyes of those who kept watch over the town borders.
Something else is coming,
he told himself.
Sarah saw them first. “To the west! Five hundred feet high!”
They all looked, and then they gasped, and even Hank felt his stomach churn. Hundreds of dragons were flying low over Winoka, roaring boldly, puffing fire freely.
Exclamations including
So many!
and
How dare they!
peppered the group. Hank felt the same wonder and outrage as they, but had no time for it. This was an invasion, pure and simple.
Glory has no secret plot. She’s been duped!
“Double-time!” he called out. “Sarah and Jim, take the rear flanks, fan out and knock on doors. We need every stalker in town at the bridge!”
There was no further argument. A small group split off and ran down the streets, hollering and banging on doors. Hank ran the larger portion of the group forward to the bridge. The dragons were headed there, too, and got there much faster. He seethed as he watched them perch upon the beams of the bridge’s superstructure.
They think they can come burn this town. They think they can take their time doing it.
He could no longer tell who was talking to Glory, because the Scaleses and a few other dragons blocked his view. It didn’t matter—soon the fighting began, and Hank accelerated. Seeing an unfamiliar teenaged girl screaming in pain in the midst of it all, he deduced Glory had hobbled her. Plainly, the hobbling had instigated the violence.
So the mayor wants a fight after all. Well, it’s not all for her to win,
he promised himself.
She will not come out of this as the hero. Not when it’s her fault to begin with.
The race to Glory was the longest of Hank’s life. Every time he caught sight of her parrying a blow from the dragon she was dueling, every time he heard the roar of the assembled monsters above, every time he felt the vibrations caused by the thunderbird above as it beat its wings and rolled through the sky over a red dragon, it felt like another year had passed.
As they came to the western edge of the bridge, Hank finally saw something that slowed him down. In the middle of the bridge, not far from where Glory fought her enemy, stood a glowing golden statue, in the shape of a dragon. Its light frayed the edges of Hank’s perception—not so badly that he couldn’t see, but strongly enough for him to feel a suddenly familiar fear.
Smokey Coils!
Memories once thought dead unearthed themselves—the stuffy garage apartment, and the trick this elder had played, and the way sights and sounds and smells had all gone wrong. None of that was happening to him now—he wasn’t the target—but he knew it was only a matter of time before each and every beaststalker fell prey to this device. Already, he could see those behind him pause and wipe their eyes, as if trying to dismiss a blur.
Fortunately, Hank knew how to fight this weapon of illusion.
Take out the source.
“Bows! The statue!” His order steeled the group. The archers among them set arrows to string and aimed at the glowing, golden dragon . . . and then two of them cried out and collapsed, feathered shafts sticking out of their shoulders. The others spun to see where and who this new enemy was, but before they could figure it out two more beaststalkers crashed to the pavement, knocked unconscious by an unseen force.
Camouflage,
Hank recognized. Whatever dragon this was had seen them early and was waiting for them.
This monster has set a trap for us.
“Hank Blacktooth,” the invisible monster hissed. “I will not let you make this situation worse. Tell your fellow fools to stand down.”
He placed the voice and felt his face twist. “Daddy Scales. I’m unsurprised to find out you’re behind all this.” Two more archers went down with shafts in their shoulders. Now he knew who was firing from the shadows above. “Wendy, you traitorous bitch! You and Lizzy have damned yourselves to exile! And Edward, I know you’re up there, too—
I’ll kill you!
”
“Charming” came Jonathan’s voice as three more of Hank’s comrades fell, kneecaps smashed. “But Eddie’s on the other end, and I don’t think you can cross that barrier.”
Glancing at the shimmering blue wall, Hank could make out only a few figures beyond it. One of them—a teenaged brunette with coffee-colored skin—was writhing on the ground.
Andi, I presume
. Had Glory hobbled her, in addition to the girl-thing on this side of the barrier? Hank didn’t see how that was possible. Yet both seemed to be experiencing similar pain . . .
Stephanie, the pregnant beaststalker, kissed her sword and began to shout, but before she could generate any light or noise, something ripped the blade from her grip and tossed it over the railing. “This is no place for an unborn child,” the air hissed next to her. “Go home.”
Hank Blacktooth raised his axe. “I hope you’ll have the guts to show yourself soon, Jon, so I can carve out your heart and force-feed it to that pathetic excuse you call a wife.” Feeling wind near his left shoulder, Hank ducked and avoided an invisible blow.
This is a fight I can’t win. And I’ll never make it to the golden dragon with Wendy and Lizzy over my head.
Happily, he found he was not far from a perfectly acceptable target. Bringing his axe over his head, he sprinted the thirty or forty yards that separated him from Glory and the massive trampler she was fighting. Both were disoriented and vulnerable. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure which of them he would swing at, until the axe came down—in the throat of the dragon, who crumpled to the ground and died with the blade still buried in its flesh.
CHAPTER 20
Ruined
“What the hell,” Mayor Glory Seabright spat, “do you think you’re doing?”
“Saving you.” Hank smirked over the bleeding corpse of the trampler.
“This is
my
battle.
My
fight.
My
victory!”
“I can tell from the way you’re losing. And to the very enemies you thought you could negotiate with! You’ve got a lot to answer for—”
They were interrupted by a bellow from above, and a swooping shadow. Hank threw himself to the ground, and Glory pressed herself against the bridge railing. A slim, black dragon with peach markings and a double tail darted past, its rear claws missing Hank’s scalp by inches, and its tail shaking the roadbed with a shower of sparks.
Behind them, several more dragons had dropped to the pavement and were fighting the beaststalkers Hank had led here. The swinging, snarling, and parrying was punctuated with genuinely violent attempts at breathing fire or shouting light—only to have the sources interrupted by new blows from a nearby enemy. Blood was spilling, slick and crimson.
Looking around, Hank was surprised at how few combatants were close. Beyond him and Glory, there was that lump of crippled girl-thing still writhing on the pavement, a dead dragon at his feet with his axe stuck in it, a dead teacher in a wheelchair on the other side of the translucent wall, a woman clinging to the dead teacher, a couple of teenagers beyond the dead teacher . . . and right here, on this side of the wall, was Jennifer Scales. She glared at him from under platinum locks and held out two daggers. As for the golden dragon-shaped statue . . .
Gone!
It took him a moment to realize the truth.
Jennifer Scales was the golden dragon!
“You’re a menace beyond words,” he told her as he reached down and yanked his axe out of the dead dragon’s throat. “It’s time you died.”
He felt a sting in his back. Twisting his head, he spotted a feathered shaft sticking from the flesh by his right shoulder blade.
“Wendy, is that you and your poor aim?” He turned his whole body and called out to the unseen archers. “Or is it Lizzy and her inability to make a shot that counts?”
The next shot answered his question.
“I guess the first one was Wendy,” Glory mused as Hank howled, grasping at the arrow stuck in his groin. She cast an eye above. “Libby, if you put one through his heart, I’ll have tea tomorrow with the dragon of your choice.”
Before anyone could take the mayor up on her offer, her cobalt bird rushed the western edge of the bridge and screamed. The sound wave hit the bridge’s superstructure, scattering those dragons still perched there and dropping two lithe figures forty feet to the pavement.
“Mom!” Jennifer ran past Hank and toward one of the women who had fallen. There was no need for concern. Both Wendy and Lizzy, Hank saw through the tears in his eyes, had rolled out of their falls and had suffered only scrapes and bruises. Collapsing to the curb, Hank bit his lip and broke the shaft of the arrow. He tossed the long, feathered piece aside. The pain in his groin was still intense.
Funny,
he thought,
how you can get rid of eighty percent of the arrow in your crotch, and still have a major problem.
“I’m glad to see you girls are both okay,” Glory told the women. “Of course, I would have been happier if you hadn’t shown up at all.” She stuck her shoulder out. “Libby, if you’re done complicating things, could you do me the favor of removing the arrow you shot into me?”
“Stow it, Mother. You’ve hurt a girl here tonight. A
girl
!”
Glory looked down the street at the twisted form. “Well, the little brat interfered. I could have killed it, you know. I thought you’d appreciate the mercy—”
“Her name is Catherine Brandfire!”
Jennifer screamed. Hank couldn’t decide what bothered him more—the arrow-point embedded in his scrotum, or this brat’s piercing whine.
“Control yourself,” the mayor scolded. “Have your parents taught you nothing? Comrades fall in battle.”
“There didn’t have to be a battle here at all,” Elizabeth argued. “Mother, why did you have Hank come here with those beaststalkers? Bad enough the Blaze is here, but at least we had a chance to limit the damage when it was just you and their Eldest squaring off. Now . . .”
“Now we have a proper fight,” Hank wheezed.
Wow. Difficult to talk.
“Having Hank show up was not my idea.” The mayor sounded offended. “Neither was having
you
show up, or your daughter, or all these demons who just landed on my bridge. That said, I’m glad my people came, since I would have had a heck of a time killing every one of these dragons with your daughter flashing knives in my face and you and Wendy firing missiles at me.” She paused. “Please tell me I don’t have to fight
you
on top of all this, Libby.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mother. I’m not going to fight you. With Jennifer’s help, I can make the dragons stop. But
you
need to stop your own people. You don’t have much time.”
Hank tried to argue further from his spot on the curb, but he couldn’t. Something was wrong. Something besides the blade scraping the insides of his testicles. He felt tired, too. When he saw the mayor take a lurching step, he understood.
They’ve drugged the arrowtips. How disgustingly pacifist of them.
“Libby. Did you—” The mayor stumbled again.
“You’ll be fine,” Elizabeth assured her. She kept babbling on about how important it was to get everyone talking instead of fighting, and Hank was sure she would go on to propose gathering around a campfire and singing songs, but he suddenly wasn’t listening.
He caught sight again of the teenagers beyond the barrier, near the east end of the bridge. First he recognized Skip Wilson, the boy who had hurt his son, who regularly threw off the yoke of authority, who’d conspired with that ghastly Scales girl to destroy the Blacktooth Blade. Next to Skip on the pavement was his girlfriend. Unlike the hobbled girl-thing on this side of the barrier, who had slipped into unconsciousness, this one was still rolling on the pavement.
Sick?
Unlikely.
Hurt?
It didn’t appear so.
Under sorcery? Hmmm.
She had been in this state ever since the fight began.
Ever since Glory hurt that beast,
Hank recalled. What the sorcery was precisely doing to this body, he did not know. But despite his increasing drowsiness, he was beginning to see how this might all end.
Little Andeana Corona Marsabio,
he mused.
Who was your father? What universe did he live in? Did he send you all this way to finish what he couldn’t in that other place?
The girl stood up. She looked exactly as he remembered her from the glimpse at Edmund Slider’s house.
Dark hair, intense brown eyes, the muscled frame of a warrior . . . the father must have had darker skin, but everything else this girl has comes from the mother.
Her face held a deadly, distant aura. She revealed a knife in each hand.
I could warn her,
Hank thought as he turned toward the target.
But then, I already tried.
Eyelids falling, he observed Lizzy trying to get the mayor to sit on the pavement before the old woman fell asleep, as Hank was about to. Wendy and Jennifer were backing up to give them room.
Will any of them see this coming? Doubtful.
By the time he swung his head back, the girl everyone knew as Andi had already run and leapt through the air, blades pointing down. She penetrated the barrier twenty feet above the pavement, her trajectory leading to the back of Glorianna Seabright.
The mayor stiffened, a mysterious sense warning her and injecting adrenaline just in time. She pushed Lizzy away and turned into the assassin’s descent. Her sword flung up and blocked the first blade; her free hand shot up and swept aside the other.
A masterful reflex,
Hank observed with reluctant admiration, and it stopped both strokes cold.
What it did not stop were the four additional limbs that sprouted from the assassin’s torso. Each planted a new blade in the mayor’s chest.
Perfect,
he told himself as he watched the girl land on two sure feet. Her extra limbs vanished. Lizzy, Wendy, and Jennifer all backed up, mouths agape. The mayor staggered back and then forward in half-steps, staring at the pincushion full of daggers her own torso had become. “Who . . .” she tried to say, before a backhand across the face sent her spinning to the pavement.
“Queen to g3,”
the girl spat, but with a man’s voice.
“You’re tested. You’ve failed.”
Then the sorcery broke, and the teenaged brunette fell to her knees and began to cry.
PART 6
Everybody Else
Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained.
—DUKE OF WELLINGTON
CHAPTER 21
Rebirth, Afterlife, and Everything in Between
When Andeana Corona Marsabio was fifteen years old, she had one childhood memory .
It was of a man named Esteban, whom some called The Crown, weaving her newborn body into a cocoon of silk.
You are too young for this universe,
he told her as he spun the lovely material over her face.
And I cannot raise you now. When enough time has passed, you will be free. Sing your father a song, little Andeana.
She had sung a melody, one far beyond her infant years, so beautiful that even her father had paused to listen. Then he had filled her mouth with silk, and she had gone to sleep.
Who knows how long later, she had awoken singing again, still an infant. Her song was a mournful tune in the universe that did not yet exist. There was only perpetual, starlit darkness, and a woman named Dianna Wilson. Within the confines of their dark world, Dianna raised Andi. There were lessons on astronomy, and geometry, and arithmetic—and briefly music, until Dianna realized no one had to teach Andi anything about that.
After years had passed and Andi had mastered the full curriculum of the Quadrivium, she began to learn other arts—how to hold a blade and use it, and how to heal the wounds they caused. Dianna was not a skilled fighter or healer, but knew enough for Andi to excel and eventually surpass her mentor. Dianna then turned to strategy and tactics. Andi continued to practice the arts of the blade, and healing—on herself. Cutting herself became a cleansing ritual, something she needed to keep going in this dark world with only one other. Why was she alone? What was she here for? Where was her father? Where was her mother? Didn’t anyone love her? Didn’t anyone need her? The answers to these chaotic questions were in the straight, measured cuts she made on her own arms—and in the careful manner she healed each one. If Dianna noticed this behavior in her pupil, she said nothing.
One day after lessons, fifteen years after her awakening, Dianna told Andi about a wider universe—one they would create together. That was when Andi learned about a girl named Evangelina, and a boy named Skip, and a girl named Jennifer Scales. She also learned the name of her own mother, Glorianna Seabright, a woman who had been pregnant with Andi in a completely different universe, and who never even reached adulthood in this one.
When Esteban de la Corona was fifteen years old, he existed in two universes at once. In one universe, he had a vision of love with a girl with long, dark hair and brown eyes. The vision, like most of his visions, came true. Even at fifteen, he knew this girl Glorianna would betray him someday. That came true as well. He held to his hopes for peace, and gave her the gift she desired. The only price he exacted was the removal of their child.
In the other universe, Glorianna was already dead, the teenaged victim of a plot hatched by an Esteban de la Corona who couldn’t be bothered to fall in love, much less negotiate peace. When his counterpart sent him this girl, Andeana, from a completely different world, he cocooned the infant and set her aside, so that he could accomplish all he wanted.
He knew he was neither infallible nor immortal. He knew the same of his disciples. He knew this special universe, dominated by arachnids, might not hold. And even if that happened, if everything here failed, he would be all right with that. As long as one person still died.
So he wove one secret spell into his daughter’s cocoon. Similar to the sorcery that caused Glorianna’s miscarriage, it would trigger when little Andeana saw her mother kill or hobble. His daughter would need to know how to wield a blade. In fact, she would have to
want
to wield a blade. So he embedded in her a fascination with knives, and a need to use them. Then he handed the cocoon over to his greatest disciple.
When Dianna Wilson was fi fteen, she was falling in love with Jonathan Scales. But like Esteban de la Corona, Dianna Wilson existed in two places at once. A different fifteen-year-old Dianna Wilson, in the universe the Quadrivium had created, was receiving a mysterious cocoon from her mentor, The Crown. He told her who was inside and gave her three essential instructions.
“First,” he told her, “keep her in your observatory, and guard her with your life. Second, release her after I die, but take the time to pass on all you know, and make her the last member of the Quadrivium. Third,” and he delivered this last with a nasty smile, “make sure she always carries enough knives with her.”
When Edmund Slider was fifteen, he made the first jump that changed the universe. The Crown told him it didn’t matter when it happened, as long as Slider chose a point where he would be alive in both universes. Since no one could possibly know when they would be alive or dead in another universe, Slider’s teenaged leap involved no small measure of faith.
Fortunately for him, he chose well. The year he arrived the power of the Quadrivium was rising, though they did not yet have their fourth. The Crown told them:
She is coming.
In any case, once Slider was anchored in both universes, the job of weaving became much simpler. He found the right point to shift fate: just before Glorianna Seabright hobbled her first dragon.
Edmund’s work was about discovery and creation: discovering that tipping point, forging a path for Andeana Corona Marsabio to get from one universe to the other, generating a place for Dianna Wilson to raise the girl. Slider was, above all, a problem solver. Whether figuring out how to find the shortest distance between two universes, or uncovering new ways to make the students in his geometry class pay attention, or making his lover, Tavia, happier, he would consume himself with details and possibilities, using logic to sort it all out.
Long before the night he died, it had become clear to Slider that Glorianna Seabright remained the ultimate problem he had to solve. Sure, dragons were obnoxious, but their new champion, Jennifer Scales, was a bright young girl he couldn’t help but like, not least because she didn’t go around hobbling and massacring people. She had the promise of youth. Glory was calcified into bitter hate. Had he known that Andi was Glory’s daughter and that the girl was a ticking bomb set to kill her mother, he might have lived a long life with his lover, Tavia Saltin. But The Crown had kept that secret; and without that knowledge, Edmund had to take action.
He never considered himself a particularly violent man, unlike Tavia’s brother. While he knew his actions could lead to violence, he also knew he was giving Winoka a choice when he isolated the town under a shimmering blue dome. He hoped they made the right one.
When Tavia Saltin was fifteen, her true love, Edmund Slider, was still in her future. The only men she knew, her father and brothers, were hard and impatient. Nothing she did—not school, not sports, not even her music—was as good as what her siblings could produce. Or so they said, over and over, until her shoulders slouched with the weight of her accumulated failures. Otto, her twin brother, had to live up to similarly hard standards. He found solace in detachment, cynicism, and eventually viciousness. Tavia’s mistake (as Otto once put it) was that she continued to love her family and care what they thought of her.
Ten years later, when Otto introduced his sister to the teenaged Edmund Slider, she was struck by the young man’s maturity. In addition to his potent magic, Edmund possessed a sureness of spirit that showed in his smile—a secure, friendly smile, not the thin and mean sort her father spared. His youth and her career pulled them apart, but she never forgot the smile.
Twenty years afterward, she moved to Winoka to raise her nephew, met an older Edmund Slider, and fell in love with that smile all over again. It was the one he used when he told her how wonderful her music was, and when he told her that arachnids could survive in a world dominated by fear, and when he held her and slew the insecurities planted inside her.
It was the smile that told her he loved her back, unconditionally and forever.
The night he died, she couldn’t tell for sure but she imagined he was wearing it now, in glorious spider form, resting in the wheelchair, all eight eyes closed against a world that raged on without him. Part of Tavia wanted to open those eyes again so she could tell him how much he meant to her. It wouldn’t have been anything he didn’t already know. In fact, she had repeated it multiple times earlier that night, knowing what he was planning. She wanted it all the same.
Instead of touching him, she decided to sing. She taught many of her clients, most of them blind, to sing when their hearts broke. Not only did the music heal, but it also revealed shapes in the world around them, like emotional sonar. Shapes like love, and trust, and hope.
The fighting went on, dragon against warrior, a few feet away. She could sing without fear, because of the barrier her lover had raised to protect her. Even after his death, she didn’t have to be afraid anymore. Her breath caught on a note when she saw a shape lift out of his body. What it was, she couldn’t describe. A spirit? A trick of light? A vision of what may come to pass? Whatever it was, it beckoned her.
She followed it, still singing, off the eastern end of the bridge, and into the nearby forest. Skip called out to her, but she knew he didn’t need her anymore tonight.
Tonight is for us, dear Edmund. I will stay with you one last night.
No one else noticed her or heard her song. The arachnid body of Edmund Slider remained in its chair, spent and lifeless.
When Ember Longtail was fifteen, her father, Charles, had been dead for seven years, and she was already a coil of rage. Her uncle Xavier had nursed this wrath in Crescent Valley and honed her fighting skills, to the point where she was a deadly weapon, easily provoked, with no love for anything in the world beyond dragons . . . and a deep hatred of the town of beaststalkers.
Now, in her thirties with a teenaged son of her own, Ember saw her uncle Xavier as old, tired, possibly senile. He would not come with the Blaze that night, to burn down Winoka and restore the legendary Pinegrove. He would not avenge the murder of his brother, Charles. Worst of all, her boy, Gautierre, would not do these things either. Ember had left them both in disgust.
Flying over Winoka Bridge, spotting targets to burn, she had never been happier. She had already killed one of Glory’s footsoldiers, and narrowly missed taking out the foul man who had murdered the newly reborn Eldest, Winona Brandfire.
We will avenge you, Eldest!
A sharp sound from the west end of the bridge caught her attention—the massive thunderbird that the mayor of this town had summoned was creating a shock wave. A dozen dragons who had been passively sitting on the bridge were forced into action—good!
And then Ember spotted the two beaststalkers who spilled out of the girders and onto the pavement. Electricity coursed through her long, twin tail prongs as she recognized the blonde locks of the woman who had admitted to murdering her father.
When Elizabeth Georges was fifteen, she made a tragic mistake. She let her devotion to the woman she called Mother overrule her growing doubts, and so she committed murder.
After that, she could only turn to her best friend, Wendy Williamson. While Wendy tried to console her, Elizabeth knew there was no way to undo what had been done. The only thing she could do from that point forward was devote her life to healing.
Nearly twenty-five years later, Dr. Elizabeth Georges-Scales still saw the fierce, thoughtful gaze of Charles Longtail in the face of every patient she treated. No matter how many lives she saved, she found the ghostly stare too piercing to bear. The only thing that kept her sane was the love she had for her husband, Jonathan, and then their daughter, Jennifer.
Reconciling with Xavier Longtail about his brother’s death gave her some measure of peace, but not enough. She knew that eventually she would pay for her horrific crime.
Tonight,
she thought as she felt for Mother’s pulse,
it could happen on this bridge.
Andeana was still crying a few feet away. Jennifer was frozen in place with shock, Jonathan was still in a melee cloud on the west end of the bridge, Catherine was maimed and bleeding, and Hank had keeled over from the drugs in the arrowhead that had pierced him. Only Wendy dared approach the fallen body of Glorianna Seabright.
“Is she . . . ?”
“She’s dead,” Elizabeth confirmed.
“Lizzy. Do you think the drugs in the arrow . . .”
“Slowed her down, yes. But I don’t think it mattered, given what came at her.” She turned to Andeana. “Who are you?”
The girl kept crying.
“You talked to her like you knew her.” Getting no reply but sobs, Elizabeth heard her voice harden. “How did you know her? Tell me who you are, and why you did this!”
Andeana got up, hands still covering her face, and ran away. She passed through the blue barrier as easily as she had come in, making it impossible to follow. Somewhere in the distance, a thunderbird gave a cry and plunged into the icy river, purposeless without its mistress. Elizabeth moved her fingers from the old woman’s throat to the white eyes, and closed them.
Good-bye, Mother.
“What do we do now?” Wendy asked, saying exactly what Elizabeth was thinking. There were still dragons and beaststalkers fighting, but one or two had taken notice of the events closer to the barrier. What would the reaction to Glorianna Seabright’s death be? Had anyone even seen Winona Brandfire die? Without these leaders, who would be in charge?
As she tried to fight through this tangle of questions, she didn’t hear the sudden warning cry from her friend. It wasn’t until the lithe, shadowy form of Ember Longtail was upon her that Elizabeth understood her peril. By then, someone else had knocked her to the ground and taken the blow meant for her—one of the long, sharp prongs of a split tail, still sizzling with electricity, had driven through the woman’s upper vertebrae and out the front of the throat.
“Wendy!”
When Wendy Williamson was fifteen, she fell in love with a girl named Lizzy Georges. It had begun as friendship, years earlier—braiding each other’s hair, sharing songs, practicing archery. She didn’t know when exactly it changed, but it didn’t matter. She knew Lizzy would never return that love, in that way.