Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace

by MaryJanice Davidson

  With that, he let his dazed son go and spat on the ground. A puddle of venom sizzled upon the cement floor. He brought his right foreleg down, and dipped the claw in the venom until it shone with a light green coating.

  “Now stay still, Jennifer, or this will do worse than knock you unconscious.” Otto’s spider shape positioned itself so that he looked directly at Jennifer.

  As she stared back into the front four eyes, she found herself mesmerized with fear. She thought back to the butterfly that had put her into a trance, that day in Ms. Graf’s science class. From there, her life did not flash before her eyes as much as unravel backward . . . the soccer championship . . . seventh grade, then sixth . . . elementary school graduation . . . the burning of Eveningstar . . .

  Before her mind could go any further, Otto rushed forward and brought his foreleg down.

  “NO!” With equal speed, Skip pushed off the cell wall and leapt forward. The distraction was all Jennifer needed—she scrambled back, and Skip rushed into her place.

  With a cry, Otto altered his strike to avoid poisoning his son, but the stroke was already nearly complete, and the claw grazed Skip’s chest.

  Nobody moved. They all watched Skip grab at his chest, feel the bubbling wound, and open his mouth. Then he staggered back into Jennifer and collapsed.

  Otto saw this and was quick to anger.

  But Jennifer was angrier, and quicker.

  A blast of flame streamed across the room and engulfed the spider. He squealed like a monstrous pig, and forgetting about his own son’s safety, he opened his mandibles and breathed his own salvo of fire.

  She didn’t have to think at all—it came as instinct to protect the unconscious boy in her arms. Her wings wrapped around Skip, and she turned her head down so that the heat bounced harmlessly off her armored back and wings.

  “Fire may not hurt you, vermin, when you’re in dragon form . . . but your father won’t be so lucky . . .”

  Letting Skip fall to the ground, Jennifer moved toward her father to protect him—but she had forgotten about the collar and wall chain! There was nothing she could do as Otto reared back to prepare a new volley of fire. With a cry of frustration, she sought her father’s eyes one last time. But he was not looking back at her.

  He was looking at something scuttling beneath the arachnid’s spindly legs.

  Jennifer squinted at it. It was Geddy.

  Had Geddy followed them? If so, what—?

  Before she could piece it all together, something moved into the doorway behind Otto and an intense light flooded the room. She shut her eyes against the pain it caused. Jennifer heard Otto scream, and then another sound filled her ears. It was a battle cry—deep, horrible, and petrifying. She slammed her wing claws to her ear-holes and began screaming herself.

  A tiny corner of her mind recalled something Grandpa Crawford had said: Walking weapons, using light and sound . . . their very voice can paralyze their foes . . .

  A beaststalker! Eddie had snuck away from his parents to help after all!

  The light and the noise persisted. Even with eyes and ears closed, the assault on her senses was devastating. “Eddie, please stop that!” She couldn’t even hear her own words.

  The noise stopped. The light dimmed a bit beyond her eyelids. She dared to open them and gaped at what she saw.

  The beaststalker was larger than life. Jennifer knew that the Blacktooths were tall, but seen from the floor of a cement cell in a sewer, this one was a tower. A full helm with no visor—how could he see? she wondered—glowed with a pure light. A drawn sword fed off the helm’s light.

  The rough leather armor may once have been white, but was browned with dirt and blood and time. Over this was a cape of black, thick, flowing fabric.

  “Hurry!” The voice was high and clear, even through the helm. “I wounded him, but he will be back.”

  Jennifer finally noticed that Otto was no longer in the room. The dark sword swung through the air, making her flinch—but it cut the wall chain, not her, and with a loud chink she was free.

  Another stroke and Jonathan was also free. He struggled to get to his legs. The beaststalker helped him up and supported him as they left the room.

  “Wait a sec, Eddie!” Jennifer looked over at Skip. He was lying faceup, shirt torn and chest wound still simmering with venom. “We can’t leave him here. He’ll die, or worse.”

  The reply was impatient. “If you want him, carry him.” And with that, the beaststalker dragged her father out of the room. Geddy bolted after them.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Beaststalker

  It was lucky for Skip, Jennifer decided as she rolled him onto the wool blanket her father had used in the cell, that she was a forgiving soul. His wound looked nasty and they were his best hope for quick medical help. Her wing claw cramped as she dragged Skip out of the room by pulling on the corner of the cloth, but somehow she managed to stumble out and follow the others.

  Otto’s lair was different from a typical sewer. For one, there were lightbulbs hanging every few yards throughout the network of rough-hewn tunnels. Second, the dimensions of the hallways were large—at least ten feet from side to side, and floor to ceiling. Third, there were other cells. Some were empty, and some housed unseen things that skittered and hissed in an unfriendly fashion.

  Now was not the time for investigation, Jennifer decided. She kept her horned head down and her hind claws moving. They went on for at least a mile, slightly uphill, with Geddy slipping around the feet of those in front. Jennifer became more and more grateful to the gecko—they passed through several intersections, and took at least three different turns. Without the tiny lizard’s memory and sense of direction, she realized, they would never have been found.

  Skip became heavier and heavier as she dragged him on the blanket. “Eddie, how much farther?” she called out.

  “The main junction is up ahead. After that, a few hundred yards to the ladder shaft.”

  “Okay, I can walk now.” Her father’s breath sounded ragged but stronger, and Jennifer began to feel they might actually make it out.

  Until they heard the sounds of hundreds of clicking mandibles in the darkness ahead.

  “He’s summoned help,” Jonathan guessed. “Except I’ll bet it’s not lizards he’s calling.”

  “Dragon!” The voice through the helmet had a power that compelled her forward. “Drop the traitor! You should be up here with me!”

  “I’ll take Skip,” her father volunteered. Jennifer let her burden slide to the ground and stepped up to the front of the group. Geddy quickly ran up her hind leg and found a comfortable perch on her back between her wings.

  She winced as that awful noise and light began to fill the room. “No, Eddie! Let me take care of this.”

  The clicking got closer and closer. Up ahead and a few yards around a corner, the last of the ceiling bulbs cast a shaky light on a widening of the hall and a large opening where a barricade of boards and stones had recently been knocked down. Beyond this opening was wide-open darkness—the sewer junction Eddie had mentioned, Jennifer guessed. There was movement on the floor, but it was difficult to tell what it was, or how many.

  “Now! Breathe your fire!”

  “All right already!” she hissed back. Clearing her throat, she opened her jaws and let loose with the largest inferno she could muster. The flames flooded the cement floor and broke through the barricade opening, where it roasted about a dozen brown recluse spiders the size of lobsters. Their legs seized and curled, their eyes popped out, and their burnt bodies rolled onto their backs.

  As the heat and light retreated, Jennifer made out the shadows of at least a hundred more recluses scrambling to take their place.

  “Did it work?” Jonathan shouted out from behind them.

  “Um, kind of . . .”

  “Keep the fire going!” A swirl of black cape and a smoldering sword leapt forward to meet the onslaught.

  “But I don’t want to burn . . .”r />
  “Breathe!” urged her father. “Beaststalkers can withstand your fire. Working together is our only chance!”

  “Fine, if you insist,” she shrugged. As her partner brought down the sword’s point into the cement floor, she let loose with another sheet of flame.

  This washed past the beaststalker’s ankles and over the crack where the sword tip pierced the floor. Suddenly, the flames took on a bluish hue and accelerated forward. The new wave of spiders coming into the hall had no chance to react—the blue nova blasted through and carried their ashes back on top of those behind them. For a moment, the clicking echoes subsided, as if those left were uncertain what to do about this combined threat.

  Unfortunately, they did not hesitate for long. Jennifer could see them collect themselves and surge forward once again. Otto’s new army seemed endless.

  “If he got my powers,” she complained out loud, “then why doesn’t his summoning suck as much as mine?!”

  “Jennifer!” Jonathan was standing at the corner, looking back down the hallway they had used. His voice had a twinge of panic in it. “They’re behind us!”

  “Hold the front, Eddie!” Jennifer wheeled around and raced back down the passageway toward her father and Skip. It was true—Otto must have left a small army of recluses behind to close ranks and overwhelm his enemies. They covered the hallway floor, walls, and ceiling only fifty yards distant. As their legs and bodies ran over the lightbulbs, they cast frightening shadows forward.

  “You’ll need to summon help,” Jonathan told her.

  “I can’t!” she pleaded. “Every time my wing claw comes down, another pathetic lizard the size of a coin comes out! I’ve never called anything capable of stopping that!”

  “Think of something!” He smiled at her desperately. “You can’t give up now, ace. We need you.”

  Their rescuer’s voice shared her father’s desperation. “They are multiplying! Even with sound and light, I cannot hold them all back for long!”

  An idea struck Jennifer. She hissed vapor onto the floor, pushing it as far toward the oncoming spiders as she could. Then she spread her wings, which grazed the wall on either side, and gently sailed toward the new enemies.

  Then, as she flew, she kicked the ground with her right hind leg as hard as she could.

  Although she nearly hit her head on the ceiling from the rebound, she didn’t have to look behind her to know that something had risen up—something large—through the summoning smoke.

  “That’s it, Jennifer! Keep going!”

  She was only a few yards from the spiders now. Greeting them with a volley of flame carefully mixed with smoke, she sailed into their midst with another whomp on the ground. Again, something sprouted—but she didn’t have time to look back and see.

  Her next breath sprayed the walls and ceiling, as well as the floor. She looked ahead for an end to the army, but did not see one. Turning back seemed like a good idea now.

  She folded her wings and planted a foot down amid the smoke of her last breath. Now she could see her product. A spray of legless bodies had exploded out of the point of impact—black mambas, at least twenty of them. The brownish-gray snakes were twice their natural size and entered the fray immediately, lashing out at any foes that survived Jennifer’s fire.

  Wait until Catherine hears about this! She couldn’t help but grin. She should have known when she first noticed her smaller wing claw that she’d have to do things differently from a normal trampler dragon.

  As she looked back down the hall where she had already stomped twice, she saw dozens of other mambas spread out in battle. They were larger and faster than the spiders. They reared up with their black jaws open wide, struck to sever the recluse’s head and legs from its abdomen, then slithered down the hall in search of more targets.

  “Jennifer!” Jonathan’s voice echoed down the hall. “We need you back here!”

  Even though the corner was far away, she could easily make out a flash of brilliant light and heard a short beaststalker shout. It hurt, but it wasn’t enough to stun her. Trusting her new army to guard this front, she glided over them and rejoined the others.

  Otto had been busy in the junction room. Despite the eight-legged bodies strewn all over the hallway entrance, it seemed that there were more alive than ever. Beaststalker tactics were failing—Jennifer guessed that they were better at mighty duels with singular beasts than holding off swarms of mindless intruders.

  “Get down!” Jennifer ordered. She sped through the air behind a stream of smoke and fire. Her father ducked just in time to avoid getting burnt and clobbered. In the space between him and the retreating beaststalker, Jennifer slammed both hind legs into the smoke-covered floor. She felt snakes lift off in her wake as she vaulted over the beaststalker and landed on the other side, pounding the ground with both feet again.

  Eighty-odd new serpentine soldiers slithered by her side and went right into battle.

  There were even larger spiders now—none nearly as huge as Otto had been, but certainly sergeants in the field. They were gray wolf spiders with black stripes, and unlike the recluses, they leapt instead of crawled.

  Jennifer focused her attention on these as they popped out of the junction room. She swung around and zapped each with her tail as they entered the hall, knocking their fiery corpses back into the junction room. One or two of them were caught in midair, mandibles poised to strike. The snakes shattered the ranks of smaller spiders, and soon the others were able to join and help her. The beaststalker’s sword swirled through the air, bolstering the serpent line where it weakened and grappling with those wolf spiders that kept away from Jennifer.

  With Jonathan shouting the all-clear in back, and seeing the resistance collapse before them, Jennifer finally surged into the junction room.

  It was a shallow dome, perhaps thirty yards in diameter and ten yards high. A paved stream of rainwater cut the floor in half from left to right, and another stream came from directly in front of them to form a T in the center of the room.

  There was a large pillar of stone jutting out of the water at the joint of the T. A ceiling shaft above it led high above, letting a tiny bit of daylight through. Other than that, the chamber was dingy and dark. The construction felt different from Otto’s hidden lair; it was probably built by the town decades ago.

  The mambas slithered over the floor and over the streams, mopping up the last few spiders. Before long, all they could see or hear was dripping and rushing water. But they could not truly see the far side of the room, and this worried Jennifer.

  “Do you think he stayed behind to fight?” she panted.

  “I don’t know,” Jonathan grunted as he lay Skip down for a moment. “He may have felt the army he left behind was enough.”

  “It almost was. Eddie, do you see anything?”

  “Stop calling me Eddie,” the voice behind the helm snapped. “No, I don’t see him. But that means nothing.”

  Jennifer realized the voice sounded like a young woman’s—not a young man’s. How stupid of her! She should have noticed from the start.

  “Susan?!”

  The beaststalker turned, but then a couple of things happened at once.

  First, a blazing salvo erupted from the top of the stone pillar. Streaks of fire coursed through the entire chamber, roasting the snakes they hit and lighting up the surprise on Jennifer’s face. She heard her father shout in pain behind her.

  At the same time, the top of the pillar bent a bit, so that it arched over the surprised beaststalker. A spindly, hairy leg whipped out and struck its target in a shower of sparks. The warrior crumbled to the ground.

  “Susan!”

  Jennifer launched into the air and straight at the top of the pillar. It was obvious who was there, hidden behind an aged-brick camoflauge pattern. Another talent he had inherited from the Ancient Furnace! Jennifer was incensed at herself for not considering the possibility.

  Her aim was true. Unprepared for her physical assault,
Otto took her full force in the mandibles and cried out as she toppled him from his perch. In a clutter of wings and legs, they fell off the pillar together and into the murky stream below.

  The dirty water was deeper than it looked. Jennifer could barely see the arachnid body that pushed against her, but she did not care. This thing had kidnapped and hurt her father, stolen her blood, tried to put her in a coma, nearly killed the son who had tried to save her, and now was taking shots at her best friend. Enough was enough.

  With her wings and claws occupied with his eight squirming appendages, she used the only weapon left—her mouth. Her jaws snapped out once, twice, three times. On the third try, her teeth closed on the spider’s head. She could feel her fangs sink into a gelatinous mass—an eye?—and heard Otto’s gurgled scream. Knowing his mandibles were open inside of her jaws, she let loose with the fiercest underwater whistle she could manage.

  Ten rings of fire raged through the water, boiling it as they passed through Otto’s mandibles and into his tortured head. He wasn’t pushing anymore—he was panicking.

  She felt his body lift up out of the water in a mighty jump and hung on. They burst out of the water together and vaulted high into the air before landing squarely on the slippery stones in a heap, side by side, with a grunt.

  Before Jennifer could even gather herself, there was a silver flash, a soft ploonk, and the clink of metal against stone.

  She looked up. The beaststalker had been waiting. Her sword pierced Otto’s abdomen about two inches from Jennifer’s own gray belly. The blade had come down with such force, the point was stuck into the stone beneath the gigantic body. Once again, Jennifer thought of the pinned butterflies in science class.

  Getting up, she saw the armored shape slump with exhaustion against the fallen enemy. “Susan, you okay?”

  Otto’s croaking voice caught their attention. He spat his words through torn and burnt mandibles. Dark blood pooled under the junction between his reddish yellow abdomen and black head.

  “You fools,” he grated. “You’ve got no idea what’s coming. This is not over.”