by Alex Rivers
“I think he heard that,” Harutaka whispered.
We stood in the narrow space, our bodies inches from each other. I felt Kane’s heavy breathing on my skin and realized I was clutching his left hand. Was I doing it to quiet him, or to calm myself? I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t let go. Very carefully, I turned my head and peered through the tiny crack in the door. I could spot slow, careful movement. The guard, as he crept toward us.
I couldn’t really see his face; the crack was too narrow. Was he curious? Suspicious? Wary? Impossible to tell. But he was definitely coming our way. He had heard the door shut, and was investigating.
“He has his gun raised,” Harutaka whispered.
Would I be able to disarm him with my chain before he shot? No chance. And even if I miraculously managed to, he could shout for help.
Very carefully, I lifted my left leg, leaning it against the opposite wall. Kane stared at me in confusion, his body wedged between my thighs, my leg touching his waist. I put a finger to my lips, and then gently leaned forward, my head brushing against his chin, and eased the Glock from my ankle holster.
Understanding blossomed on his face, mingled with worry. Needless to say, using a gun right now would alert everyone to our presence. I wasn’t thrilled about it either. I peered through the crack and saw the guard almost at the door. My hands became hot, the fire threatening to burst free again.
The lights outside the bathroom suddenly flickered strangely. The guard paused. Another flicker. The light was turning on and off sporadically in a different room, somewhere behind the guard. I could glimpse movement as he turned around, saw his hand holding the submachine gun, fingers tensing at the grip.
The light kept flickering. On. Off. On. Off.
The guard moved away from the door, toward the light.
“I don’t know how long I can distract him like this,” Harutaka whispered in my ear. “Better get out now.”
I signaled Kane, and he gently opened the door. He slid out the doorway, and I followed close behind. The guard was only ten feet away, creeping in the direction of the flickering light. It looked like someone was playing with the light switch. Which, in a sense, was exactly what was going on. Except the person toggling the light was almost a mile away, sitting by a computer.
Isabel materialized by my side. She had been hiding in the shadows, not far from the stairway. We crept downstairs, reached the lobby, and half ran to the hallway that led to the northern part of the mansion.
“That was fucking close,” Kane whispered.
We found the stairway to the basement without any trouble. At the bottom waited a solid metal door, runes etched above it, a metal keypad by its side. It was the door to the vault.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I watched the door for a long moment, mentally cataloging the security measures I knew would be there. The keycard slot was to its right, and easy enough to deal with. Below the slot was a 10-digit pad for the combination. Several runes were inscribed above the door, intended to kill any intruder who opened the door. “Okay. The door is locked with a combination lock and a keycard. I have the keycard that Sinead took from Maximillian, but we have only half the combination. Isabel will figure the other half.”
“How?” Kane asked.
“Lou thinks I can read it in the tea leaves,” Isabel said.
Kane looked incredulous. “Can you?”
She hesitated. “Maybe. I have to be close to it. And I’ve never done something like this before.”
“We have three tries,” I pointed out. “And we just need two digits.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Lou. The psychic signs—”
I raised one finger. “Less talky-talky, more drinky-drinky.”
Isabel rolled her eyes and unslung her backpack. She retrieved from it a metal cup, a thermos, and a bag of tea leaves.
“I don’t believe this,” Kane muttered.
“If you can counter the runes protecting the door while you’re complaining, that would be great,” I said. “Harutaka? Anything we should know about?”
“The patrol is on the third floor.” Harutaka’s voice was tense and excited. “The guard in the security room looks drunk. And they just rolled the desserts into the banquet.”
“They’re good desserts, too,” I said, recalling the menu. My stomach rumbled.
Kane approached the door and examined the runes above the door. He traced his finger over them slowly, deep in thought. Isabel had put some tea leaves in the cup and added hot water. While she waited for the leaves to settle, she drew her tarot pack from her bag, and began to shuffle the cards.
“You think the cards will help?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I’ll take any help I can get.”
“Okay,” Kane said. “This spell is a bit tricky and, uh… I need blood from a maid with a pure heart. Which one of you has a purer heart?”
“Isabel,” I said, just as she said, “I do.”
“Well, no arguments there, apparently.” Kane grinned. He withdrew his pin. “Give me your palm.”
She held out her hand and he took it gently. I glanced away, annoyed at myself for being annoyed. I checked my Glock. “Harutaka, what about Sinead?”
“I’m here,” Sinead’s voice interrupted. “Still in the greenhouse. I’ll be happy to get out of this place.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Like someone drank two pints of my blood.”
“You’re a champ,” I muttered distractedly, looking back at Kane and Isabel. She sipped from her cup while frowning at her cards. Kane dabbed at the runes with Isabel’s blood.
“Kane,” Harutaka said. “That rune is the Eihwaz. You need more blood on it.”
“I knew that,” Kane grumbled.
Isabel upended the cup on the floor and studied the messy tea leaves.
“That one looks a bit like a three,” I said.
“Lou, be quiet.” She stared at the cup in concentration. “Maybe… seven. I need more tea.” She began to prepare another cup.
I wanted to do something. To pick a lock, to creep through a room, to climb a wall. Waiting like this felt useless, and wrong.
Time went by. My stomach rumbled again. Kane chanted and the runes pulsed in an orange light. Isabel upended another cup, and studied the tea leaves for a long time.
“Guys?” Harutaka said. “I don’t want to rush you, but the banquet is ending. People are starting to leave.”
“Already?” I felt a wave of anxiety. “Don’t these people know how to party?”
“These people definitely do not know how to party,” Harutaka answered. “Once they leave, Ddraig Goch will probably go to sleep.”
I swallowed, saying nothing. Ddraig Goch’s bed was inside the vault, just beyond the door.
“There’s so much here.” Isabel’s voice was faraway, her eyes half glazed as if in a trance. “Darkness, and misery. It’s hard to see the numbers within this cloud of torment.”
“The first two numbers are six and three,” I said, quoting Maximillian’s words.
“I know that, Lou. Try… six, three, seven, one.”
I keyed in the four digits. A red LED blinked.
“Nope.”
Isabel began to put more leaves into the cup.
“Isabel, there’s no time.”
“I need another reading. It’s too vague. And the darkness is too strong. Where does it all come from?”
“The dragon, probably,” I muttered. “Torment and misery sounds like what will happen to us once he catches us here.”
The runes above the door flashed with a bright light, and then dimmed.
“Done,” Kane said.
Isabel sipped her tea patiently, as we both stared at her.
“Can you… gulp faster?” Kane asked.
“It’s very hot,” Isabel said. “And if you rush the drink, you get a rushed future.”
Kane looked at the door. “Maybe we can try six, three, one, seven?” he suggested. “She might’ve g
otten the digits right, and the order wrong.”
I folded my arms. “We have only two tries left.”
Isabel stared into the three piles of tea slush with concentration. “Try six, three, seven, five.”
I keyed in the combination, and the red LED blinked again.
“The dragon is leaving the dining hall,” Harutaka warned. “I think you should pull out.”
“Not yet,” I answered, feeling as if my heart was about to burst. “Isabel? Please?”
“Six three five five,” she said, uncertainty in her voice.
“Are you sure?”
“Try it.”
I keyed in the combination.
A green LED blinked. I let out a shaky sigh and swiped the magnetic card. The door clicked open.
I gaped at Kane and Isabel in disbelief. “We did it. We’re in the vault.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Isabel.”
She gazed at the tea leaves’ slush piles, her forehead creased.
“Isabel!”
She glanced up. “What?”
“You need to go,” I said. “Join Sinead and go to the car. We’ll meet you in the offices of HHT.”
“Yes… yes, of course.”
She took one last look at the leaves, and rose to her feet.
“The patrol is back in the security room,” Harutaka said. “Your way up is clear, Isabel.”
“Do you have eyes on the dragon?” I asked.
“He’s watching his guests leaving from the balcony upstairs. Hurry, Lou.”
I pushed open the door. It was heavy and thick, hard to move, a metal door built to withstand crowbars and even explosives. When the crack was wide enough, I slid through it. Kane followed in my wake.
I stopped two steps into the vault, my jaw going slack.
All the valuables upstairs had been only a fraction of the dragon’s possessions. And the rest were here. Piles of glittering coins, jewels, works of art, ancient weapons—all were scattered in the vast hall. It looked like one of Scrooge McDuck’s vaults—enough treasures to swim in. Here, the dragon gave up on the pretense of order altogether. The treasures were littered around as if someone had taken fistfuls of them and just tossed them inside the vault, letting them land where they would.
But as my eyes ran across the room, I began seeing a strange pattern. The piles of treasure were lower in the center, their tops flat. In the corners they grew high, toppling on each other. This created a sort of crater in the center of the vault. And as my perception adjusted, I saw what this really was. It was a bed. The treasure was the bedsheets, crumpled and tossed to the corner, like I would do on a summer night. This was where the dragon slept. And once I understood that, another fact sunk in.
The dragon was huge.
I had been thinking of Ddraig Goch as the man I had seen in the banquet. Scary-looking, powerful, dangerous—sure. But a man. The thing that slept here was not a man. It was an enormous beast, its body spanning ten yards, maybe even more.
“How much treasure does one dragon need?” Kane asked in a hushed voice, and his words echoed in the vast vault.
“All the treasure,” I said.
I tore my eyes from the glittering piles, and stared across the vault. There was a steel door, about two feet high, set into the wall. It was the dragon’s safe. I touched Kane’s arm, pointing. “There it is. Let’s open it before the dragon returns.”
As I crossed the room, I retrieved a small vial from the hidden pocket in my sleeve. I uncorked it and drank the contents, grimacing. It tasted like I imagined dirty socks would taste, if anyone was inclined to try.
I then reduced the volume of my earphone to the bare minimum. The concoction I’d just consumed would make my hearing sharp and sensitive. Harutaka’s voice in my ear would sound like a roar once it kicked in.
Kane was already by the safe, muttering arcane whispers. The safe door was covered in runes. I wouldn’t be able to touch it until he countered them. He rummaged in his pocket and retrieved a yellow parchment, placing it against the safe door. The parchment’s surface had a strange, swirly pattern on it, and as Kane spoke it began to shift and move in a mesmerizing spiral. After a while, the pattern began crawling off the page, intertwining itself between the runes on the safe, like an inky snake. Each rune it coiled around seemed to dim somehow, as if broken.
Kane’s voice rose, almost to a shout. But no—I was just hearing it louder. My ears were a stethoscope now, the sound of the world enhanced. My earphone constantly emitted a faint annoying static crackle that I hadn’t noticed before. From far beyond the room, I heard people speaking—the guests, bidding goodbye to each other. In the vault, there were thumping noises. Our hearts, beating almost in unison.
The chanting had stopped. The ink pattern had crawled through each and every one of the runes now, rendering them inert. Kane moved aside.
“You’re up,” he said, and the words pierced my skull like blades. I winced, and placed a finger on my lips, my eyes pleading for silence. He nodded in understanding.
I crouched by the safe, and gave the dial a few quick turns to reset it. Then I put my right ear to the safe door and began to turn the wheel slowly. The sounds of the rest of the world were distracting—Kane’s breathing, the rustle of his coat as he moved, a lady with a sharp voice summoning her driver somewhere above me. I put my left hand on my left ear, blocking everything as much as I could, and kept turning the dial.
To crack a safe, one must find the contact area—a point between two numbers where there’s a small click. I turned the dial slowly, one number at a time, and suddenly there it was, as loud as someone kicking a metal bucket. Clank. The contact area was between thirty-four and thirty-five. I turned the dial again, just to be sure. There it was. I was right.
Kane cleared his throat, a rumble, like a volcano. I glanced back at him, furious. He raised his palms apologetically.
Now I had to count the wheels. I parked the wheel opposite to the contact area and began turning the dial. Every time it went past the contact area I heard it again. Clank—clank—clank. I counted the clicks, praying for a small number. Three would be a dream come true. Four would be great. Five would mean we’d be here for at least half an hour. Six or more would be… terrible.
The dial went through the contact area without clicking. That was it. Four clicks. I breathed in relief. That meant it was a combination of four numbers.
Now it was time to find the four numbers. I began turning the dial again listening for the clicks, my mind noting the results. It was slow process, and I had to be sure I had it right. If I made a mistake here, we would waste a very long time. Finally, I had them all. Four numbers.
Five, twenty-five, forty-two, eighty-three.
“The dragon is moving,” Harutaka said. Even at the low volume I tensed in pain as his voice tore through my ear canal.
“Just a few more minutes,” I whispered. “Kane, get the circle.”
I had the numbers, but I didn’t know their order. It could be twenty-five, eighty-three, forty-two, five. Or it could be eighty-three, five, twenty-five, forty-two. Or any other combination. Four numbers gave me twenty-four possible combinations, and I would have to try them all. If it was a five-numbers safe, there would be one hundred and twenty combinations. Six numbers would mean seven hundred twenty combinations, and trying them would take all night.
Behind me, I heard loud scratching. Kane, drawing the teleportation circle on the floor.
I began trying the combinations one by one. Kane chanted, his voice loud and pounding, and I gritted my teeth. I was sure he was chanting as quietly as he could. By the eighth combination I was a bundle of nerves. What if I’d gotten it wrong? I wouldn’t have time to start over. Thank god there were only four numbers.
Were there only four numbers? I began to doubt myself. Wasn’t there a fifth click? That would change everything. That would…
Another click, much louder. It was my twelfth attempt. The safe was open. I backed
away from it, amazed that it had worked. That it had all worked.
I pulled the safe door open and peered in. There were two items inside: a small, worn-looking leather pouch, and a black box, the size of my palm, its surface smooth. The box had a tiny lock, with an intricate key inserted in it. Kane and I just stared, frozen.
Once we touched either of them, the dragon would know.
“Is the circle ready?” I asked in a whisper.
“Yeah.” He did his best to lower his voice.
“We move on the count of three. One…” I tensed, could hear Kane hold his breath. “Two…” Our heartbeats were racing, a cacophony of beating drums. “Three!”
I snatched the box. Kane took the pouch.
I could almost feel the heaviness of the gaze suddenly upon me. Somewhere above, Ddraig Goch paused, realizing there were intruders in his vault. That they were touching his most valuable possessions.
Almost instantly, the vault door clanged shut. I heard the mechanical clunking as it locked, shutting us inside. Trapped. The dragon must have moved it with his mind.
Something roared above us. I cried in pain, falling to my knees, hands on my ears, trying to mute the sounds. It was impossible. There was nothing beyond that roar. I couldn’t think, couldn’t talk, couldn’t move.
And then the roar slowly dissipated.
Harutaka said something, but it was hard to hear him over the throb of my skull. “Dragon… moving… tore a gate… get out!”
I looked at Kane. He already stood in the circle. The pouch was in his left hand, and one huge, blue, gleaming scale lay atop his right palm. His lips were moving as he muttered incantations, tapping into the power in the dragon scale.
Another roar shook the mansion, and suddenly the world ruptured. A black, pulsing void appeared in the air just a few yards away from us, growing larger. A tear in space. The dragon was ripping apart dimensions to get to us.
The circle of charcoal began to glow with a blue light. It grew brighter as Kane kept chanting.
“Get into that circle!” Harutaka roared into my ear.
I stumbled to the circle, but it seemed small, almost too small. I stared at Kane standing in it, wondering if I was about to be abandoned here, stuck, as the dragon appeared. Was Kane going to leave me behind? Memories hit me full blast as I gazed at him, my head pounding and dizzy. Of a job years ago. Of the man I’d loved, who ran away without me. Of the handcuffs latching onto my wrists…