Jazz, Monster Collector in: The Lizard Wears Black (Season 1, Episodes 10 & 11)
Page 7
his bandaged tail twitched in anticipation.
“No!” Pulling on the chain still attached to my wrist and bending at the waist, I swung both feet at the lizard’s head, but too late.
“Ahhhh!” I screeched in pain as the sword met my wrist and separated it from my hand. My kick still had enough momentum to slam him off his big, scaly feet.
“Ahhhh!” I rolled to the floor and tucked the stump of my right arm under my left. Searing pain shot up my arm and drove spikes into my brain. Somehow, through eyes bleary with tears, I looked over at the writhing brown mass off to my side. As if sensing my stare, Mickey settled down enough to meet my eyes and I again saw that look of empathy that so unnerved me—monsters just shouldn’t care.
Then I heard a gleeful hiss and the drag of steel over stone. “So it seems I have to thank you, Monster Collector. You have, despite all your feeble attempts, managed to help us sustain Granuffla, ancient among the old ones, the blackest of all blacks, albeit by his own worshipers, but sustenance just the same. And for that assistance you must now die.”
I saw Mickey attempt to stand, but he collapsed back to the dirt with a shout and a face racked with pain.
The Draconian raised the sword, now cooled by our blood, high overhead. “Besides, you shot my tail.”
As the sword began its down stroke something huge shuffled out of the shadow. The drac looked up just as the zombie-dragon’s massive skull rushed down and scooped the surprised lizard into its mouth, raised its head and swallowed. The lizard’s chain mail covered body rattled and tumbled down the zombie dragon’s mostly exposed throat, dropped out of its open stomach, bounced off a stalagmite, and piled in a heap on the ground. I would have wondered how the creature was sustaining itself if it couldn’t hold in food, but, as I’d figured this was my end, I’d given up on wondering. I eased myself up standing. I was still in the blood covered ceremonial gown that clashed badly with the black boots and pants of my working clothes. I took my arm out from under the other and gave my ugly wound a glance. There was no blood; apparently the sword had cauterized the cut. No matter, I was over.
Pushing though the pain, I took several slow steps toward the writhing mass of rotting dragon flesh. “Come on there beastie, get it over with.”
But the earless thing ignored me and instead turned its attention to Geeter’s sasquatch. Mickey caught the zombie-dragon’s empty eye socket gaze. His big brown eyes opened wider, releasing a fresh flood of tears. With terror etched in his ape-like face he wormed away on his back through the dirt.
The zombie-dragon opened its mouth and struck at the bleeding big foot.
I’d seen a lot of death in my long lives. I’d seen a lot of good people die. I held people I loved and felt them slip away. Mickey was just another monster, just like the hundreds of creatures I’d killed over the decades. This was just one abomination destroying another and I had no reason to care about him let alone about myself. And then something changed inside me; like the Jazzest part of me woke up and assumed control.
Without thinking and without plan, I charged forward, leapt onto the stone altar and then onto the skull of the lunging beast. The thing was big, but weak with decay. As I impacted the elephant-sized skull it was shoved sideways away from Mickey. I used my still intact hand to grip the edge of its eye socket, and my boots found support at the hinge of its jaw bone. Despite its state of decay, it managed to thrash its head side to side with some real vigor. I was barely hanging on. Its dangling dried out eye swayed back and forth, smacking me in the side and upsetting my already queasy stomach worse.
Just as I attempted to better my grip, the beast changed tactics and flipped its head up unexpectedly. I was sent flying, nearly contacting the cavern’s stone ceiling before beginning my decent into the waiting, open jaws beneath me.
This thing had no ability to digest me, but it still had fangs the size of mailboxes. I pressed my legs together and tucked in my arms in a feet first dive.
My head just cleared the teeth as its jaw snapped closed. Immediately I stretched out my feet and good hand and stopped myself in what would have been the entrance to its throat. I was way too high up to survive the fall, and, as welcome as that would have been, Mickey had inadvertently reminded me that I still had people counting on me, people that mattered.
I clung on tight as the beast writhed its neck and smacked its jaws like a dog eating peanut butter. I struggled to hang on, but I was hurt, beyond tired, and down a hand. The creature managed to jar me loose, but, on the way down, my foot caught in something, a working tendon or muscle, and hung me upside down inside the rotting beast’s neck.
Apparently satisfied, it searched for fresh prey. Even if I were armed, I had no idea how on Mirth to destroy a zombie of that size. A dragon, as dangerous as they were, at least that was something I could kill. I was stuck, helpless, with few resources, upside-down, injured, and week.
Then I remembered the stone.
Using my thumb, my only thumb, I pushed the Not Now Stone from the little skin pocket I’d had grafted to my left thigh. I managed to catch it before it fell and squeezed the narrow, yellow rock in my hand. I had absolutely no idea what would happen here. I knew very little about the thing to begin with. What were its limitations? Even if it did work, and I lived, I’d still have a zombie dragon to deal with—only one way to find out.
I tightened my grip on the rock, closed my eyes and concentrated. Then I spoke, “Not now. Not now. Not now,” and swallowed the stone. One can swallow upside-down, though it isn’t easy with something as heavy as the Not Now Stone, especially when one is surrounded by some of the most wretched, vile gunk that ever had been, but I managed.
The stone went down hard, crawling its way up to my stomach. On the way I felt it warming. The heat seeped though me, then began to tingle, setting every one of my cells vibrating with energy.
The beast must have sensed something because it stopped hunting and sat.
The tingle spread, then began to burn. I sucked in air through my teeth, and then let out a scream just as the zombie dragon tipped its head back, opened its rotted jaw, and did the same. I felt like I was burning up from the inside out. I’d used the stone many times before, but it had never felt like this, like I was being pulled apart cell by cell.
The stone was backlashing.
The stone, as powerful a healing tool as it was, had one condition and one very nasty side effect. The condition was that after use, said user had twenty-four hours to spit it up into a jar of Soulution, a scrubbing compound, and said stone must soak there for twenty-four hours before it could be used again. The side effect is called backlash, a random circumstance where, when the stone had reached some unknown limit of uses, said user will experience the pain of every injury the stone had ever healed, and I had no idea how old the thing was.
Looked like the stone had reached its limit and I was about to make a very painful death.
I don’t know if it was me, the stone’s effects on me, or something more, but the zombie-dragon howled a gurgling wail and started to thrash around, banging into the cavern’s rock walls. Inside the beast, I was shielded enough from the blows, but it felt like the stone was burning its way through my gut.
Then it very suddenly cooled down to the warmth I was familiar with. Said warmth began to flow up my spine, down my arms and legs, and up and over the top of my head. I felt as if a trillion little knitting needles were looming my skin back together. Then I opened my eyes and everything went dark.
Instinctively I sucked in a lungful of air a moment before I felt warm, moist tissue folding in around me.
The zombie dragon was no longer a zombie and I was still inside it.
Plans flashed through my mind at a panicked pace, I needed out and I needed out fast. The beast opened its mouth and roared a very clear, very crisp, very loud roar. The light from the torches flooded in and I witnessed up close its vibrating vocal cords. But if it decided to test its acid breath I’d be dissolved
and I was fresh out of Not Now Stones.
I watched the light from its mouth begin to narrow, driving me into a frenzy of kicks and thrashes inside it. Somehow I activated the switch on my boot heal and, with my next kick, sent a tazer shock directly into the beast’s throat. Normally my little tazer shock wouldn’t even phase an armor clad black dragon, but I’d hit it directly in the soft tissue. The beast yelped and spit me out.
Fortunately it jammed its head at the ground to augment the spitting act, so I didn’t fall far, but was sent tumbling across the cave floor. I landed on my back, shoulder to shoulder with Mickey, though our feet were pointing in opposite directions.
He was clutching the wound in his gut and took rapid, shallow breathes. He managed to turn his head and look at me.
“Hey,” I said for no reason at all.
“Hey,” he said in a week, pain soaked voice that got my adrenalin really pumping.
“Hold on, I’m going to get you out of here.”
He coughed out a little laugh and a little blood. “Is that so?”
“Yeah,” I said nodding my head. “That’s so.” I sprang to my feet and saw a glimmer of surprise in the sasquatch’s eyes. I took a deep breath and stock of my opponent. This was a black dragon, an old one. Roughly the size of a humpback whale on legs, covered from head to toe in virtually