The Last Dragon Chronicles: Dark Fire (34 page)

“She won’t be fully active right away,” Hannah said. “She’ll need time to spread her spark throughout her body. By then we’ll be out of here.”

“She?” said Lucy. “You mean it’s a
 
female
?”

“According to the legends, it’s a queen. Is that a problem?”

“Did you
 
know
 
this?” Lucy threw a glance at Tam.

He shook his head. “Only that a female existed. It’s in the article. I didn’t know

we’d find her here.”

“Sing, Lucy,” Hannah encouraged her.

Her fingers scraped along the tunnel wall.

Lucy wiped a hand across her mouth. Her skin was puckered and tasted of mud. Never had she felt less like singing. Andthe acoustics in this warren were hardlygood. Every footstep sounded like thethump of an iron on an ironing board. Even so, she parted her lips and let herthroat do the work of producing a sound. Out came a sweet, comforting tune,somewhere just below the pitch ofbirdsong. It was what her mother called ‘The Song of Guinevere’. Lucy had fallenasleep to it many times, always dreamingof dragons when she did so. Long ago,their red-haired ancestor had wooed

Gawain with it, easing the shedding of hisfire tear. Now its melody swept throughthe darkness, almost moving the air like a

sail.

“That’s beautiful,” said Tam. “I never knew you could do that. Listen, it’s going everywhere. It’s like the tendrils of a plant.”

“Remarkable,” said Hannah, looking suitably impressed. She came to a halt and turned towards them. “Don’t stop, girl. Your moment has arrived.” She flipped her torch sideways.

Less than ten metres ahead the tunnel

ended in a hollowed-out chamber, where it was clear that a huge  amount of excavation work had taken place. Tam approached the entrance and explored it with his torch. “After you,” he said to Hannah.

Her spectral features recorded a smile.

With Lucy’s dragonsong still weaving itsspell, she dipped her head and steppedinside, holding her torch at shoulder heightlike a javelin. “There,” she said, as Tamcame to join her.

Tam doubled the beam and saw, to hisamazement, a run of what appeared to beoverlapping scales. They were dark green,just as Hannah had described, and set inthe wall like a row of large tiles. Hetraced the colour sideways and notedthere were other contiguous patchesstanding out here and there from thechamber wall. If this was a dragon’s tail,it was curving, not straight.

By now, Lucy had seen it as well. Tamcaught his breath as he watched her stretchon tiptoes and fix her fingers round one of

the scales. The volume of her song increased. He noticed Hannah put her torch down so she could press her hands together in prayer. He thought he could hear her asking for
forgiveness
 
but the chance to ask her what she meant by that was overtaken by a sudden thump from deep within the hill.

He aimed his light towards the ceiling. A few grains of earth rained down from a fissure.

Lucy stopped singing. The thump cameagain.

“That’s a heartbeat,” she said. “It
 
is
 
adragon. I can feel her auma.”

Hannah’s hands went up to her mouth. “Then  it’s…
 
true
,”  she  gasped.   Shestaggered back and fell against the

chamber   entrance.   “You’ve   actually

woken her.”

“Wasn’t that the intention?” said Tam.

He moved towards Lucy as more earthfell. “OK. Job done. Time to get out ofhere.”

Grabbing the girl’s arm, he dragged heraway and pushed her into the tunnelsagain. He trained his torch back onto Hannah, who hadn’t moved. “Hannah,come on. What are you waiting for?” Hereyes were filled with awe, her browbeaded with sweat.

“She’s alive,” she breathed.

“Apparently so. Now lead us out.”

Hannah took a deep breath and looked at him blankly. “My torch. I left it on the floor of the chamber.”

Tam panned his light back in. Hecouldn’t see it. “All right, go to Lucy. I’llfind it. Hurry.”

Hannah stepped out into Lucy’s torchbeam.

“What’s happening? Where’s Tam?” the girl demanded.

Hannah merely shook her head.

At that moment, a wind raced along the tunnel  with  the same kind of swirling intensity Lucy had experienced when waiting for a tube train to arrive. She whipped around and stared into the darkness. One by one, the bulkhead lights came on. The figure of Ms Gee appeared between them almost floating along the path.

“Tam!” Lucy screamed. But by then Ms

Gee had raised her hand and uttered a

spell. The Tor rumbled and a great mass of earth crashed down from the chamber

roof, plugging it completely.

Tam. Lucy screamed his name again and ran to the mud face, clawing at it with her cold, bare hands. “What have you done?” she yelled, already thick with tears. “Get him out! Get him out!”

“Save your breath, child. He’s already dead,” said Ms Gee.

“You!” Lucy snarled. “You made him go back into the chamber!” She threw herself at the traitorous Hannah, looking to squeeze her scrawny neck to half its size. A bolt of energy from Ms Gee made her fall away, breathless. As she slumped against the mound of earth burying Tam,

something briefly eclipsed one of the lowlevel bulkhead lights. It was the cat, Bella.

Now it was Hannah’s turn to question the sibyl. “You’ve killed him,” she panted,   traumatised   into   instant repentance. “That wasn’t the arrangement. You  told me he’d only be imprisoned, not murdered!”

Ms Gee snorted. “He was a threat.

Besides, do you think the dragon wouldhave spared him? In my opinion, I did thefool a favour. And now it is time to be rid

of you.”

The Tor beat again. Hannah felt the earth quake. She stumbled away, her eyes darting at the fine cracks appearing in the ceiling. The wooden support she was clinging to creaked. In places along the

rumbling walls, rivulets of water were spurting through the mud and turning to steam. “I pray the queen doesn’t spare

you
, witch… ” She dipped into her pocket and pulled out the skeleton of a tiny hand. She threw it at Ms Gee who caught it, gave a repugnant sneer and crushed it instantly to dust.

“That belonged to my ancestor, Mary Cauldwell,”   Hannah   said,   stumbling backwards away from the sibyl. “Anyone who touches it is cursed. Welcome to a

nasty death, Ms Gee. I hope you get the chance to look into Gawaine’s eyes before she sears the flesh off your bones.”

“Curses?” scoffed the sibyl, dusting her hands off. “I’d be more concerned about a

stone in my shoe.” With that, she lifted her

hand again and another bolt of energy took Hannah off her feet and sent her flying down the tunnel.

Ms Gee raised her chin, expecting tohear the  satisfying crunch of disintegratingribs as Hannah’s body struck a solid wallof earth. Instead, there was a sicklymulching noise. A death moan escapedfrom Hannah’s throat. A thick ribbon of

blood accompanied it, gushing over her lip and down her chin. Ms Gee frowned, looking puzzled. To her surprise, Hannah was pinned to the wall and not in a crumpled heap on the floor. The sibyl, bizarrely,  put  on  her  glasses.   Her confusion quickly cleared along with her myopia. Hannah’s body was skewered in three neat places, buttoned from her breast

to her groin by talons. Her corpse squelched as the talons expanded further into three fully extended claws, pushing her internal organs out. Ms Gee stepped back. For once in her life she almost

vomited as she watched the claws contract

into a fist, pulping the remains of Hannah

like a lemon.

Dry mouthed she said, “Girl, get up.”

There was no response from the tunnelfloor.

“Get up, I say!” Ms Gee whipped

around.

But Lucy – and the smoky grey Bella –

had gone.

Terror on the road

“Mum, where are we going?” Melanie

Cartwright said.

Rachel’s mouth curled into a secretive

smile. “On a little detour.”

Melanie   glanced   at  the   satellite

navigation  screen,   which  had   been ‘recalculating’ their route for the last half hour. “Not more relatives?” She crossed

her arms and sighed. How many cups of tea and hair-lipped kisses could a young girl take?

“Be patient. It’s not far now,” said her mum. “In fact, we really ought to see it soon.”

Melanie looked through the window.

Fields and hedges. “Please tell me we’re

not going to another garden centre?” She slumped into her seat. What was it with people when they hit their forties? Why did shops that sell plant pots suddenly become so attractive?

Overwhelmed   by   her   daughter’smounting apathy, Rachel finally caved in. “All right, I’ll tell you – as we’re slightlylost and I think I’ll have to tap the nameinto the sat nav anyway.” She pulled overand brought up the keyboard screen. “Where would you most like to have beentoday?”

“At home, watching the telly,” Melaniesaid drily.  “We’re missing all the dragonstuff.”

Her mother grinned, looking youthfuland pretty. “What if we weren’t – missing

the ‘dragon stuff’, I mean?” She turned the

screen.

Melanie  gave   out  a   loud  gasp.

“Scuffenbury?!”

Rachel hit ‘search’ and set the car in

motion. “I realised yesterday that your Aunt Jane only lived about sixty miles from the site. I thought it would be a treat for you. A sweet way to end our ‘tour’. You never know, we might bump into Lucy.”

The voice of the sat nav crackled.

Melanie pointed threateningly at it.

“Do NOT break now.”

Rachel leaned forward and tapped it. “Strange. It’s always been pretty reliablebefore – apart from that time it led us ontoa building site instead of a multistorey car

park.” She followed the arrow and took a right turn. “You’ll like Scuffenbury. It has a wonderful atmosphere.”

“Can we climb the Tor?”

“Oh, I think that’s obligatory.”

Melanie rustled in a shopping bag by her feet. She resurfaced holding Glade. “Can she come with us?”

“As long as you don’t drop her. She’ll be in several pieces at the bottom if you do. I – oh, what’s that?”

The sound of the small car’s engine thickened and it slowed to a quarter of its speed.

A large black bird was standing in the road ahead.

Rachel hooted the horn. “Shoo, silly

thing.”

“Just drive at it,” Melanie said. “It’ll fly off when you get too close. I’ll scare it away with Glade.” She brought the mood dragon up to the window and made one of her customary ‘grrrs’.

Right   away,   Glade’s   ivy  turned completely black and she seemed to fly out of Melanie’s hands. Melanie saw a

blur of motion and whipped round to face the rear of the car. Her coat, which she’d thrown onto the back seat, appeared to be hiding a trembling bump.

“Mum, w-what just happened?” she said.

Rachel was staring at the sat navscreen. On it was an image of a snarlingraven. She slammed her foot down hard

on the gas.

A split second later something darkimpacted   with   a
 
whump!
  
on   thewindscreen. Both women screamed as the

glass cracked into a many-pointed star. With a screech of tyres the car slewed off the road and onto a dirt track between the

hedges, where it collided with the post of a gate before coming to a halt, nose down and steaming.

“Mel?” gasped her mother, fumbling for her seat belt  and reaching across to free Melanie from hers. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

Before   Melanie   could   respond, something struck at the windscreen again, breaking a hole the size of a tennis ball in it. The head of a bird punched through the gap. It was the ugliest thing Melanie had

ever seen. She screamed and drew her

hands and feet into her body, ducking as the raven spat. It left a glob of phlegm on the headrest behind her, which quickly began to dissolve away the cloth. With a snort, it whipped its head towards Rachel. It bared a set of miniature fangs, filling the car with the hideous odour of raw, undigested meat. Rachel wasn’t slow to react. Snatching the sat nav off the screen she struck the bird twice with as much

sideways force as she could muster. Its eye was almost punctured on a spike of glass; the same spike skewered its cheek instead. The creature skriked and thrashed

its wings, its hooked claws squealing on the bonnet of the car. Then, in a movement which must have caused enduring pain, it

sawed its head back and forth against the jags, gashing its mouth as it freed itself. A pencil line of black blood ran down the inner surface of the screen and dripped into the air vent at the bottom. And yet, despite its appalling wounds, the bird was able to flog the glass again with even greater force. Suddenly, the entire  screen disintegrated.   The   bird’s   evil   eyes glowered at its two adversaries. Wings spread, it was now as wide as the car.