by S. W. Clarke
A throwing star whistled from the darkness, lodged itself in the back of the couch behind me. Now that was uncalled for.
“You’re in his house,” one of their voices said from the darkness. “You’re one of his associates.”
“Tara, I’m coming in,” Percy said, followed by the sound of rustling from the tree outside the open front door.
“GoneGodDamn it, Perce. I said I’ve got this.” But I already knew it was too late.
Percy is many things. He’s as big as a lion, and even stronger than one. He’s keenly intelligent and perceptive. He can see ten times better than I can in the dark, and he’s got a hide tougher than steel.
But quiet is one thing he is not.
He burst through the doorway with a plume of flames already pouring out of his mouth, throwing one of the ninjas aside and sending the others into hysterical shrieks.
Oh, I forgot to mention Percy’s a dragon.
Chapter 2
The ninjas scattered into the darkness—which I suppose was their best friend. Though there was no such thing as darkness if a dragon didn’t want it.
Meanwhile, I stood with hands on hips, my whips dangling. “Percy, that was very naughty of you. Get back outside.” I yelled at him the same way my mama would, and he winced.
There’s something fierce and wildly wondrous about being reprimanded in a full-on Southern accent. It was like being whipped with a thorn-covered rose branch.
Beautiful and stinging. At least that’s how I saw it.
“You need me, Tara.” Percy’s claws scraped the marble as he fully entered, his clubbed tail swinging against the doorframe with a thud, jarring all the ornaments on the walls. “You’re one against seven.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong.
“I have it handled.” I started shooing him out of the house.
Three throwing stars shot toward me from the hallway to the kitchen. Before I could react, Percy had lifted a wing, enfolding me in it. The stars bounced off his webbed skin without leaving even a scrape.
“What was that you were saying?” His golden eyes stared down at me as his face arched around on his long neck. Even though I could only see him in grayscale at the moment, I knew he could perceive the pores on my nose.
In this light, he could see everything.
“I won’t have you getting hurt,” I whisper-hissed.
“Me? What about you?”
With a groan, I climbed onto his back, jumped over his wing and onto the floor. The moment I did, two of the ninjas rushed us from different directions with squeaking battlecries.
I widened my stance, flicking my whips out. Percy was my charge, and I would protect him if it was my very last act. Though it would be a sorry end to have survived this long only to die to seven truly tiny ninjas.
The first leapt at me, whipping out a pair of nunchucks. He tried to clock me, but I swept Louise up with a sidelong crack and deflected the encroaching nunchuck.
The other one came at me with his flying foot of nose-breaking doom. I’d already lifted Thelma over my head, preparing to bring her down on him, but Percy’s tail swung out. He caught the ninja just as he left the ground, and his little body flew toward the staircase, landing on the tenth step up and thudding down them one by one.
Three of them came at us from the hallway to the kitchen. Each had his own weapon—I caught a glimpse of a pair of chain-scythes, a miniature spear, and a little katana—before I dropped to one knee.
Thelma and Louise left my hands, dropped to the ground. I reached into the lip of my left boot, yanked out a throwing knife from its sheath. If I was lucky, I could get them all in one shot.
I flipped the knife up, caught it by the grip. Just as I raised it to aim, the ninjas came to a halt. The middle one had thrown out his arms to stop the other two like a mom would for her child when they brake suddenly in the car.
I glanced down at the knife, back up at them. Apparently they found this more intimidating than whips. “That’s right,” I said. “Don’t mess with a carnie.”
In the silence that ensued, I realized a low growl had started behind me. And in the absence of motion and sound, that growl grew, deepened.
Behind me, Percy’s mouth was open. A cauldron of flame burned in the back of his throat, waiting to strike.
“Please,” the middle ninja said, flicking back his hood. I recognized him as Ferris. “We surrender. Don’t burn us, small dragon.”
Percy huffed smoke through his nostrils. “Small?”
“Why, yes. I don’t mean any offense,” Ferris said. By now, the other ninjas were beginning to gather around him. “You are but a hatchling. Only a handful of mortal years, are you not?”
My eyes widened. This Ferris character knew something about dragons.
Percy stiffened. “You’ve seen other dragons?”
“Of course,” Ferris said. “The seven of us once served the Unseelie Court. They kept many dragons.”
One of the ninjas slotted his scythes back into his belt. “If the dragon doesn’t intend to burn us, we must carry on.”
Ferris remained where he stood, scrutinizing us. “Not before the human tells us why she’s broken into this home tonight.”
Percy’s wings flared. "We're here to get the damn ex-vamp that killed Tara's parents.”
I elbowed him. “Quiet, Perce.”
“Ah.” Ferris’s fingers stroked his chin. “So you’re here for vengeance. That’s good enough for me; the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
The scythe-wielding ninja huffed. “We must save the gnomelings.”
I lowered my knife. “Gnomelings? Are those like ducklings?”
“They are gnomish children. The last of them,” Ferris said, snapping his fingers for the gnomes to disperse through the house. “And we know this human has information about them in his home.”
I slotted my knife into my boot. So these were gnomish ninjas. “Can gnomes even have kids?”
“Our goddess could, before she left.” Ferris’s eyes seemed to stay on Percy as he spoke; I sensed he was either curious or felt some affinity with the dragon. “It’s complicated.”
“I’d imagine so.” I stood. “I found a folder in the office. It may be what you’re looking for.”
Ferris made straight for the office, and I followed to observe him from the doorway. “You’re welcome.”
He ignored me. “Where is it?”
“Desk drawer. It has a false bottom.” I leaned against the doorframe as the sounds of the ninjas ransacking the house echoed around us. “Now why does this guy have photos of gnomish children?”
Ferris ignored me again. He yanked out the drawer and the false bottom. When he lifted out the files and opened them, he sighed, his shoulders heaving forward. “This is them.” I could hear the emotion in his voice. “Thank you, human. You’ve done the gnomish world a great service.”
I waved around the house. “Did you or your associates happen to find any information about the Scarred in this formerly lovely mansion?”
The folders disappeared into Ferris’s robe. Now he gazed at me. “Scarred, you said?”
“That’s right.” Percy’s face pushed past my side. “Scarred. We hunt them.”
“I hunt them,” I clarified, patting Percy’s head. “Percy here’s my charge.”
Percy huffed. “I saved you. Again.”
Ferris eyed the dragon. “Maybe.”
Headlights flooded through the office curtains, and all three of us froze. Those were car lights.
Ferris and I met eyes. Our time was up.
“Let’s skedaddle,” I said. “Out back.”
He nodded, whistled for the others. We all filed out the back door onto the patio, and I fully expected those gnomish ninjas to disappear in puffs of smoke. Instead, they jogged off on those little legs as a huddle, like seven escaped preschoolers.
“Perce,” I said as we made for the next street over, “you were absolutely right: I’ll be GoneGodDamned if those gnome
s didn’t look exactly like ninjalinos. Except those ninjas on TV are way cooler than these guys.”
↔
The next morning, I’d promised Percy a tour of the Audubon Zoo. He was, after all, only twelve in human years. And part of our agreement was that we would visit at least two “cool” spots in each city we traveled to.
Percy decided what was cool.
“You’re not going to like it, Perce.” I set a tile into the crevice of a building as we passed down the street toward the zoo. “You hate seeing creatures in captivity.”
“This is a different zoo. I can’t know until I see it for myself.” He’d watched me place the tile, and he glanced over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Spreading my little birds.” I tapped the cellphone tucked into my jacket pocket. “You never know when we’ll need to track something—or someone—down.”
Percy hadn’t noticed before, but I’d been dropping tracking tiles all over New Orleans since we’d arrived five days ago. By my count, I’d spread about two dozen of them between here and the Ninth Ward.
They were a cute little innovation meant for tracking down your belongings if you lost them, sort of like homing beacons for your cellphone. Except the signal for these could piggyback off one another up to two hundred meters. If I opened up my phone right now, I could use the tile I’d just planted to help me track down all two dozen of them.
They often came in handy when you were a vigilante hunting killers.
We came into the zoo through the mostly empty turnstiles, the sun just now cresting the horizon. Percy loved the sunrise. I, on the other hand? I bought an overpriced, undersized coffee at the cafe and nursed it as we began our walk down a beautiful pathway toward a massive elephant statue.
It was a good thing we’d come so early, when the park was dead—otherwise all the kiddos would be bouncing over Percy, screaming and laughing and turning a two-hour visit into four hours.
That happened a lot.
“So,” I gestured wide, “what do you want to see first? The Audubon Aviary? The World of Primates? This zoo’s your oyster, Perce.”
Percy flashed me a mischievous look. “I want to see the Louisiana Swamp.”
“Oh.” I clutched my coffee like pearls to my chest. “The far side of the zoo, where the predators reside.”
“That’s right.” As we walked, his tail swept happily over the ground. “Like me.”
I took a long sip of coffee, trying to forget the charred and eviscerated goat he’d once brought me as a present. And when I’d gasped, he’d given me a perfectly wide-eyed, surprised look. As though nothing at all was out of order by bringing a dead, gutted animal to my doorstep.
On our way to the swamp we passed by the African savanna, and we paused to watch a herd of zebras graze.
After a time, Percy said, “Tara, did you name me Percival because he’s the hero who went after the Holy Grail?”
I snorted. “Now where did you read about that?”
“On the internet.”
“Of course you did.”
“Well, did you?”
I shook my head; he’d been asking this question since he could talk. “I’ve told you, I’m not telling you where you got your name.”
“Did you name me for Sir Percival, the Knight of the Round Table?”
When I glanced down at him, his eyes were bright and undaunted. I started walking down the path. “I told you, Percy. I’m not saying.”
Thankfully he got distracted by the wildebeests, and then he started reading facts about them aloud from the plaque set up in front of its habitat. Meanwhile, I thought I sensed someone watching us.
But when I glanced over my shoulder, we were the only ones around. Except I could have sworn I saw a tiny shadow disappear around the bend …
I suppose once you’ve seen seven gnomish ninjas, they stick in your head. And in your imagination.
As we meandered along, I considered the connection between the ex-vamp I was searching for and the ninjas I’d fought last night.
The break-in had been a bust. I’d found out there was an Other trafficking ring in New Orleans, but I hadn’t gotten any closer to my family’s murderer—Peter.
But now I wondered if Peter was involved in this trafficking ring, too. He and Mr. Trafficker were best buddies, after all. Maybe the gnomelings those ninjas were after would help me find my way to the ex-vamp I was looking for.
Except I didn’t know where to find the ninjas or the gnomelings. I was, once again, without a lead. That was, more often than not, the state of my life.
It was only when we got to the Louisiana Swamp that Percy started to feel a bit queasy about the whole zoo thing.
We reached the alligators, who sunned on their rocks, and he stared for a long while. Finally, he turned his face up to me. “They have tails and spines and jaws just like me.”
I refocused on the present. “Thats right.”
“So why are they stuck in there, and I’m free out here?”
I sucked in air between my teeth. Kids asked the toughest questions. “That’s not an easy one, Perce.”
“Is it because I can talk and they can’t?”
“I suppose that’s part of it.” I set a hand on his head. “You also have greater than human intelligence. We can’t very well put you in captivity when you’re smarter than all of us, can we?”
He ruffled his blue scales, went back to contemplating the alligators. “Humans are afraid of everything they can’t control. Doesn’t matter if I’m smarter or not—they’ll still cage me if I pose a threat, won’t they?”
I threw my empty cup into the recycling bin. He was growing up so fast—too fast. “This zoo’s a bit depressing, isn’t it?” I nudged him. “What do you say we go practice our new trick for the show?”
“OK.” He turned away from the alligators. “Tara, if I’m ever put in captivity, you’ll free me, won’t you?”
I set a hand over my chest as we walked. “Nothing would keep me from freeing you, Perce. Nothing.”
Chapter 3
Now here’s something you need to understand in the context of my life: the phrase “hit the hay.” When I say I hit the hay for the thirtieth time the next morning, I do not mean in the laying-down-to-sleep way.
No, ma’am. Far from it.
When I hit the hay, it was during practice for our show.
That afternoon I hit the hay for the thirtieth time and I lay there with a dragon’s face above me, my arms spread and runnels of pain making their way up and down my back. Hay may be soft, but when you fall on it as many times as I did in that barn, you don’t see it that way.
Back in the circus, we’d always had nets. Big blocks of foam. The kind of cushioning you needed on the trapeze, say, or when you’re learning to springboard off a horse’s back.
But nowadays, the best I could do was a barn outside New Orleans the owner was renting to me for $20 a day, not including meals for Percy. And when we practiced our tricks, I’d hope falling off his back meant I hit the spread of hay the farmer had allowed us to pull apart and make into a floor for our practice.
I’d lost count of how many barns we’d stayed in over the years. When you travel the country with a pre-adolescent dragon, you don’t exactly stay in motels or even Airbnbs.
Not when that little dragon has night terrors and needs to be held. Not when he raises his head at every strange sound in the darkness—no matter that he can see better and farther into that darkness than I ever could.
Or maybe that was what frightened him most. That he could see what was out there.
A child’s a child. Dragons have imaginations just like humans. And I’d argue that Percy had a better imagination than any child I’d met.
Standing over me in the barn, he blinked. “You OK, Tara?”
I groaned my way up to a seat. “That loop-the-loop trick just isn’t coming, is it?”
“Not when you keep sliding off my back.”
I stood, brus
hing straw off me. “Well, you know the best way to make a trick work.”
His face craned around on his long neck as he snorted a puff of smoke and gazed toward the open barn door as if he’d like to fly away. “Try and try again.”
“That’s right. It’s how we got every other trick, isn’t it?”
“We’ve tried this one way more than usual.” He shook himself out, his scales lifting. “Maybe we should do another.”
“This one’s going to be the best of all, Perce.” I gripped the spine at the base of his neck, swung myself on. “We’ll be staying in high-class barns once we’ve got this one down.”
I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew he was rolling them. “There is no such thing as a ‘high-class barn.’”
“Oh really?” I patted his neck. “I’ve seen some real pretty ones. Cherry-red paint, two stories, surrounded by sprawling fields on every side.”
“Where?”
“Let’s try again, and afterward I’ll tell you.”
Bribery. It had the effect I’d wanted; he started moving, claws digging through the soft ground.
Another similarity between a human child and a dragon: they weren’t immune to promises of treats. And one of Percy’s favorite treats was the stories I’d tell him about all the places I’d been, and all the things I would show him.
Not just here in this country, but in every country. I would show him the world one day.
When he’d picked up enough speed, his blue wings extended, snapping as they reached their width and he caught the air.
I leaned close. “Now remember, get me close to the apple.”
“I remember.” He flapped once, and we were airborne. His neck stretched at a steep upward angle, and so did the rest of him. For this trick, we needed to get height and speed quick. You never knew what kind of space you’d have in a crowd, and you didn’t want to clip anybody’s head as you took off.
Problem was, we hadn’t ever gotten close to the apple, which I’d set on a box in the back of the barn.