StoneDragon

by Adrian Cross

  He sucked in a ragged breath and pushed up on his toes, taking some weight off his impaled shoulder. The pain receded so he could at least think.

  The outlook wasn’t good. Horan had promised Clay that only death would end his stay with the Earth gods. And they might not be all-powerful deities, but they definitely had something more than human about them. Clay hadn’t been able to overcome all three when he was healthy, and he was far from that at this point.

  Bern. Horan had implied she was still free. Clan members were good underground. If she’d made it into the mine, she had a chance. Certainly a better one than Clay did, nailed to a wall.

  He steeled himself and looked at his shoulder.

  Also not good. The stake punched all the way through skin and muscle. Some blood leaked out, and the fingers of his left hand were numb. When he tried to move them, his shoulder shifted and pain spiked through his body. The flow of blood thickened. He groaned.

  He needed to get off the wall. The biggest problem, in the short run, was how the spikes spread out from the shaft, poking through his skin in places. If he tried to push off the wall, sliding his body off the wood, they would tear at him even more. It didn’t take much foresight to guess it would hurt like nothing he’d ever experienced. He wondered which was more likely, the stake dragging through his body or coming loose from the wooden wall behind him. He wasn’t sure. Horan had driven the stake in deep. And the burning of Grok’s eyes as he’d grown those spines…

  Clay shook his head. His thoughts were wandering and getting fuzzy. He couldn’t slip under again. If he didn’t make it back to StoneDragon, JP would be alone. Karen would die. Clay had no choice but to try.

  He drew several quick breaths, his heart pounding. Succeed or fail, this likely wasn’t something he could sustain for long. He had to push fast and hard and hope he could endure it.

  Dear God.

  Clay let his head loll back, drinking in the stars, sucked in a breath—

  And lurched forward.

  He screamed.

  The world went black.

  A shudder brought him back to awareness. He tasted blood in his mouth. His head hung down. It must have been only seconds. He steadied his trembling legs and spat blood.

  The first time he’d seen JP, the teenager had been imprisoned as well, strapped to an iron pole, ivory bags surrounding him and skin pale as death. His arms had been mottled with bruises. But a fire had burned in his eyes. JP might have been a tool of the general who had cloned him, a weapon in the Last Great War, but it hadn’t extinguished the fire in his soul. As Clay carried the teenager out of the space/time tunnel, defying Rhino’s orders, JP had nodded slowly. “Thank you,” he’d whispered.

  “I’ll take care of you,” Clay had said.

  But he hadn’t. Without Clay, someone in StoneDragon would eventually realize what JP was and make him a tool again.

  Clay heaved. Pain flared white.

  “Aaagh!”

  He clung to consciousness. Tears slid down his cheeks.

  Who else would look for Karen? For Bern?

  He threw himself forward.

  Again.

  His body went cold, as if it were shutting down. His pulse hammered like the hooves of a stampede. He wondered if he was going to kill himself before Horan could. Clay bared his teeth. Wouldn’t that be too bad?

  He drew in a shaking breath. He wanted to move, to push again, but his muscles wouldn’t answer, as if his body had drawn a line and rebelled against triggering any more pain.

  His head sagged. He knew the night was cold, but heat raged in him. It was hot as the desert he’d walked into the day Sarah had died. A sob racked his body. The day Sarah had died. The day she’d been murdered. The day he couldn’t protect her.

  He screamed and threw himself against the stake.

  Again.

  Not this time.

  AGAIN.

  “Aaaargh!” His shoulder tore free in a red trail of pain. The floor rushed up to slam into him. Cold stone cradled his cheek. Clay panted, grit puffing away from his nose, blood strong in his mouth. For long seconds, he couldn’t do anything but lie there.

  He’d done it. He’d escaped the wall.

  He reached out a trembling hand and pushed with his boots, sliding across the floor. The stone was wet with his blood. He had to get out of the building. He had to get away before the Earth gods returned.

  Footsteps crunched in the silence.

  No. Despair washed over him, hammering him like a rock slide. It was too unfair. He was too late. They were back. He closed his eyes. He had no energy to resist, no reserves to fight with, even if he’d had a weapon.

  The steps stopped. Someone lifted his arm, and the room seemed to spin upside down as he was slung over a shoulder. An iron axe head gleamed beside his head.

  “I’ll take care of you,” Bern said quietly.

  It felt like something he should answer, but darkness dragged him down again.

  At one point, Clay’s head jostled and blood pounded in his ears. He swam into consciousness. It was dark but not completely black. Bern had stopped moving. He hung from her shoulder, feet dragging and head down. He twisted his head but couldn’t see what she was looking at.

  Pain closed around him again, hot and nauseating.

  Bern moved forward. As she did, the object of her attention came into sight: a dead hound. Something had killed and chewed it. Something big.

  Dread swirled with pain until unconsciousness claimed Clay again.

  9

  Facing the Dark

  The tunnel Bern followed sloped downward, growing colder and darker. Bern’s spine tingled uneasily, and she looked back. But all she saw was darkness behind her, as if the path ceased to exist once she left it.

  Her movement jostled Clay. He groaned. Her shoulder was wet from his blood, and his tightly muscled chest and neck were hot, as if fever had taken him.

  She started walking again, his feet scraping the dirt floor behind her. She couldn’t help it, not with their size difference.

  “Sarah,” he muttered.

  A twinge of jealousy plucked at Bern. She quickly shoved it away. What was the matter with her? Not that it mattered anyway. He practically fell over himself when he got close to Karen. But who was Sarah?

  He moaned again.

  Bern’s teeth clenched. He’d lost a lot of blood. She had to get him back to StoneDragon. Someone would help him there. Mama would know what to do. Plus, maybe the Wall would protect them from the Earth gods.

  Something heavy scraped behind her. She turned. The path behind them was no longer empty. She lowered Clay to the ground and drew her axe.

  The thing that had eaten the hound had found them.

  10

  Out of the Water

  Clay dreamed he was on horseback. Sarah’s father rode behind Clay, the old man’s head bent forward. The sun was hot overhead. Clay swayed with the horse’s stride, a great weariness dragging at him.

  A shot boomed out from behind, and something hit Clay in the back, hard, like a wicked punch. He landed on rock. The pain was distant, but his body moved awkwardly. His fingers dug into dry sand.

  The sound of hooves clicked closer. He managed to look up, to see Sarah’s father gazing down sadly.

  “I’m sorry,” the old man said.

  Clay struggled to clear his head. That betrayal was in the past. This time, it was Clay’s shoulder that hurt, not his back. And he was trying to save Karen, not Sarah. But where was he?

  Memory came rushing back. The attack of the Earth gods. Bern carrying him away. Entering the mine.

  Why was he on the ground? Where was Bern?

  His instincts screamed that something was wrong. He clamped his lips together, smothering the instinct to call out, and slowly turned his head. A slender shadow stood not far away. The steel of her axe glimmered faintly. Bern faced the darkness.

  “You can’t have him.”

  Above her head, a set of eyes appeared. The
n two more above the first set, then another pair, until eight green-tinted eyes shone balefully in the darkness. Clay heard a rasp as the creature’s head brushed the roof of the tunnel. He remembered the mine entrance and the fire-scarred buildings. They’d been trying to burn this thing out, he realized.

  “I will not run.” Bern stepped toward the cluster of eyes, her shape fading into the darkness.

  Clay struggled to get up, to get his hands beneath him and help Bern. His right arm responded sluggishly, as did a knee, only to give out again, banging his cheek into rock.

  He couldn’t see, but he could hear. The crack of steel, whoosh of breath, something slamming into a wall, and a clunk.

  Fever swelled in his chest. His head seemed too big. He couldn’t feel his feet. He fought to cling to consciousness.

  A horrible tearing sound washed over him, then a high-pitched scream. Something had won. Someone had died. He just didn’t know who.

  His grip slipped, and he dropped into blackness.

  A soft lapping sound brought Clay back to consciousness. His head felt swollen and stuffed with straw. He hurt less—but not in a good way. His body seemed distant, barely a part of him. That probably wasn’t good.

  Above him, a stone ceiling was dappled with blue-green luminescence, colors playing back and forth in soft waves. His thoughts moved sluggishly. Where was the light coming from? He turned his head.

  Beside him was a pool of softly glowing water, which filled more than half of the large cave he was in. Clay lay against the other wall. He couldn’t tell what moss or strange reflection caused the glow, but it lit the walls of the cave with a hypnotizing light.

  At the edge of the water was a pile of crumpled clothing and a blood-smeared axe. Bern’s.

  Clay was staring at the pile stupidly, trying to figure out what it meant, when a disturbance in the water caught his attention.

  A pale shape rose from the pool, water streaming over soft, graceful curves. Dark hair and eyes and lighter skin beneath. An image of dappled beauty, lit blue and tan in the cave’s light. Like a glimmering angel rising from the sea, but with a shape to put temptation into any man’s mind.

  Bern was not ordinary or shapeless under the layers of clothing and armor after all.

  Her eyes widened. She stared at Clay.

  A thick, ropy tentacle rose out of the water behind her.

  “No!” Clay croaked.

  Color flooded Bern’s cheeks. Her hands whipped around her body, and she stumbled back, straight into the dripping coils.

  She was jerked under. Bubbles trailed to the surface.

  Clay forced his wooden limbs to move, clawing at the stone. Pain raged over him in hot waves, but he dragged himself forward. White fire kindled in his shoulder and made his vision swim. He focused on the axe. A weapon. He had to rescue Bern.

  The waters stilled.

  His hand wrapped around the shaft of the axe.

  A tentacle shot out of the water and whipped around his wrist. Another snagged his leg and dragged him sideways toward the pool.

  The axe slipped out of his grip. He teetered for a moment at the pool’s edge, as he looked down into blue-green darkness. Then it closed over him.

  Cold. Wet. The tentacles dragged him deeper and deeper, until his lungs burned. He held his breath as long as he could.

  Not long enough. Water rushed into his nose and mouth, and the darkness became absolute.

  11

  The Black Pistol

  “Aah.”

  JP yanked his hand away from the small translucent ball and hissed, sucking his burned finger. The drop of acid stung.

  His lean frame was hunched over a chipped wooden workbench, lit only by a small candle beside him and the red light of the Wall, leaking through the bars of the window. He rubbed his eyes. He was almost done.

  He placed the metal knife back onto the acid ball and rolled it gently.

  How he wished for a lightbulb, or better yet, a row of clean burning MassGen cells, but he might as well wish for the sun to spin backward. Technology didn’t work in StoneDragon. At least not advanced technology. That’s why Clay’s pistol interested JP so much.

  He blew gently on the acid ball. It was close to spherical. Close enough. He set down the knife and pulled open a drawer full of clear plastic bags with handwritten labels.

  When Clay had carried JP out of the time tunnel, he hadn’t thought of anything other than how sweet freedom tasted. The night air was like ambrosia. Being alive was nice too, but for JP, freedom mattered more. He’d been born—or made, depending on your interpretation of cloning—a slave. He’d been brought into what the people of StoneDragon called the Last Great War. JP’s predecessor had once been a great inventor, so JP was created to make new weapons for the army. He’d been a tool and had been treated that way.

  JP pulled out a small bag of pectin and sprinkled the powder over the ball. The compound hardened the material into a thin translucent shell with a small hissing sound. The acid would be contained until it found its target. JP set the ball gently into a half-oval of crystal, in which five acid balls already rested. Then he set another half-oval overtop, sealing the acid balls inside. Finished, he stretched gratefully, the motion making his leather jacket creak.

  Clay had brought JP to this room that night, the upper section of an office building Clay had recently purchased. JP guessed Clay had been planning a break from Rhino even before they’d met, but their encounter solidified the decision. JP spent the following weeks in the building, careful not to show himself in the window. He couldn’t convince himself that someone wouldn’t recognize him and force him to become a tool again. But slowly, over time, he’d relaxed.

  That was when he’d started to fully appreciate StoneDragon’s strangeness, even from what he could see through the barred windows of his new home.

  The office only had a clear sight line west, but JP could see the Wall on that side, over the tops of neighboring buildings. He could see its flame ripple and brighten every seven days and feel the weather change. Sometimes it was subtle, the grey haze over the city brightening or darkening or the wind gaining a new taste. Other times, a storm would smash down on them like a hammer, full of rain, wind, or snow.

  JP pulled a black metal box closer, his fingers touching the combination lock on its spine. He paused, frowning. Had that been a noise outside the window? After a few seconds of silence, he shook his head and spun the box’s tumblers.

  Not only did StoneDragon Shift through time and space, but it also seemed to nullify complicated chemical and mechanical reactions. A crossbow would work but not a gun. A torch would burn but not a bomb. A gutter was fine but a toilet… JP grimaced.

  He placed the crystal oval in an empty silk-lined depression in the box. All the other depressions were filled. In the other half of the box nestled a dark pistol. He closed the box, lock clicking, and slid it back into the drawer. Done.

  Advanced technology might not work, but JP had been created for his genius and ingenuity. Sometimes simple technology was all that was needed.

  He stared out the dark window. He still had to decide when he was going to tell Clay about the gun, if at all, even though the dark pistol was an improvement on the one Clay already had, inspired by many of the same principles.

  JP hadn’t planned on making more weapons, not once he was free, and he felt a certain hollowness in his stomach from doing it, but he hadn’t been able to resist the compulsion. He didn’t know if it was gratitude for Clay’s help that drove him or the fear of being captured again, the thought that the General might appear out of the shadows. JP still had nightmares.

  He noticed a ripple of movement in the shadows beyond the window, as if something swept past. His blood froze.

  It might be Clay. But he knew better than to alarm JP. Was it a pigeon? A burglar?

  He slid a metal baseball bat out of a bucket beside the work bench. The bat sizzled as it touched air, and static electricity buzzed along it.

&nbs
p; The house was silent. Cool air drifted past, smelling of damp earth and leaves. JP moved toward the window. Through red-rimmed bars, he could see a narrow sliver of the city. Crumbled stone, moss-covered siding, and beyond that, the Wall. Nothing new. His stomach churned. Had someone seen him through the bars, someone who recognized him from the war?

  Nothing. He forced himself to relax. Surely it was his imagination.

  The floor creaked behind him.

  He spun, lashing out with the bat.

  A hand seized his throat, lifted him, and threw him back into the bars of the window. JP dropped to his knees.

  A shadow loomed. The bat was still in JP’s hand. He jabbed.

  It sizzled. His attacker yelped and stumbled back. JP lunged, trying to get past. Behind him, he heard metal clang.

  Something swept his feet out from under him.

  He slammed to the ground, chin bouncing off the floor. His breath deserted him. He twisted his head, only to see a shining blade rest gently against his neck. It was part of a long scythe held by a cloaked man whose eyes were dark with the same callous curiosity as a child about to rip off a butterfly’s wings.

  Behind the figure, the bars had been sliced out of the window in a neat square.

  The other attacker rose to his feet, a charred circle on the front of his denim shirt. He was big and heavy, and the third eye in his forehead trembled. Snakes whipped around his skull. “I ought to—”

  “Remember why we are here, Snake,” the cloaked man said.

  The big man glared but then stalked to the workbench. He trailed a hand along the surface. The snakes settled slowly back around his head, like tangled dreadlocks.

  They had to be Fists, JP guessed, some of Clay’s old comrades. Rhino’s elite. A cold prickle danced down JP’s spine. Rhino was from the Last Great War as well. Clay had hinted he’d been ordered to kill everyone in the time tunnel, with only his disobedience saving JP. Had Rhino figured out who JP was?