by P. N. Elord
A huge boom exploded behind him. He turned around to see Jordan wielding the rifle.
“I can’t get a clear shot,” she shouted.
Most of the blood was gone. They had only a few seconds left. “Toss it here.”
She did. Ryder caught it and charged the Terraphage. The pale tank was barely visible now. It was going down the thing’s throat. He had time for only one shot. He stopped, aimed, and fired.
And missed.
The bullet tore into the soft pallet of the Terraphage’s mouth. It roared in pain. As its mouth opened, the tank fell to the floor, landing in a puddle of saliva.
His plan had failed. Anne was going to die despite his best efforts.
“Get out!” he yelled over his shoulder. “I’ll try to keep it distracted.”
Jordan didn’t ask questions. She sprinted for the kitchen.
Ryder reloaded the rifle, grabbed the propane tank, and propelled himself into the Terraphage’s open jaws.
Jordan raced back through the room with Anne just in time to see Ryder dive into the monster’s mouth. She had no idea what he was doing, but there wasn’t time to stop and figure it out.
All she cared about was that the door was clear, Anne was firmly in her arms, and they were getting the hell out of here.
She hurried outside, barely feeling the cold. She pushed Anne through the open door of the truck, scurried up onto the wet seat, and gunned the engine. It purred like a cat as she slid over the streets, heading out of town as fast as the tires could carry them.
Ryder was dead. All she could do now was make his sacrifice mean something by getting her baby out alive.
The Terraphage’s jaws clamped down hard, crushing Ryder. Something in his leg cracked and pain screamed up his spine, setting his brain on fire. For several precious seconds, all he could do was let the pain wash over him, consume him. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe, which was likely a blessing. The stench of decaying meat clinging between the thing’s teeth was overwhelming.
Finally, he pulled himself together enough to remember his task. He pointed the barrel of the rifle at the propane tank and fired.
He braced himself for the explosion, but none came.
The pressure around him changed, undulating as the Terraphage began to swallow him whole. He tried to hold on to the tank, but it was ripped from his fingers as it slid down the Terraphage’s throat first.
A hissing noise filled his ears. A sulfurous, rotting smell filled his nose. Gas. Either he’d managed to rupture the tank or the Terraphage’s powerful jaws had.
The dark, hot stench grew until Ryder was dizzy from holding his breath. When he could no longer stand it, he tried to pull in some air, only to find that his nose and mouth had been mashed against the Terraphage’s flesh, cutting off any available oxygen. His shoulder and hip joints popped and burned as the pressure around his body increased. Hot, wet muscles shoved him back toward its throat. He tried to fight it, but he was no match for this kind of power. He was along for the ride. The best he could hope for now was to get one quick shot off to ignite the gas in the Terraphage’s belly, killing himself so he didn’t have to burn to death in its stomach acid.
Lights winked behind his eyelids from lack of oxygen. He was running out of time fast. His hand still gripped the rifle. His arm was going numb, and he had no hope of moving it within the muscular confines of the Terraphage’s mouth, but he thought he could move his finger enough to pull the trigger. All he had to do was wait until he was on his way down its gullet before he fired. Anything sooner and the muzzle flash wouldn’t ignite the gas.
Dozens of serrated teeth dug into his leg. Hot, sharp pain streaked up his spine. He felt something crack more than he heard it, and another wave of agony washed over him. An involuntary scream exploded inside him, but he couldn’t pull in enough breath to let it out. The silent scream coursed through his chest, sapping him of what little strength remained.
Dizziness slid over him, threatening to steal his consciousness. His muscles grew weak and began to tremble from lack of oxygen. He wasn’t going to last much longer. He had to do this now.
As the Terraphage swallowed him, his arms slid down its throat first. He tried to pull the trigger, but it was coated with saliva and who knew what else. His finger slipped off. He tried again.
Numbness vibrated through him. Blackness closed down around him until even the twinkling stars in his vision disappeared. His strength faded, making even the small movement of one finger difficult.
Ryder gritted his teeth and focused all his concentration on that one little digit. His finger twitched. The rifle bucked in his grip.
He didn’t hear the explosion, but he felt it. Pressure slammed into him like a giant fist. The heat seared his hands and face. He became weightless for a brief instant before he hit something hard. Pain engulfed him, and he could no longer fight its pull. He let go and let the numbing blackness swallow him whole.
Ryder woke up to the feel of a little hand squeezing his. He cracked one eye open and hissed at the brightness of the light surrounding him.
“He’s awake, Mama.”
Anne. That was Anne talking. He’d know that sweet voice anywhere.
“Careful, honey. Don’t hurt him,” said Jordan.
As if that were possible. He already hurt about as much as a body could. Every joint ached, and the pain in his leg was enough to tell him that it was either broken or missing completely. He wasn’t yet ready to see which.
He forced his eyes open and saw Anne’s pretty face beaming down at him. Her blue eyes were glowing with happiness. “You killed the monster,” she told him, smiling.
“I did?”
“Yeah. Big-time. You’re a hero.”
Ryder nearly snorted. Only the thought of how it would make his ribs ache held him back. “You think so, huh?”
“Yep. You even killed the monster in my dreams. They’re all gone now.”
“That’s enough, Anne,” said Jordan. “Let him rest.”
Ryder squeezed her precious hand before letting her go.
He’d saved her. He’d killed the Terraphage. Not only that, but that low pulse of sound that had once beat in time with her heart was gone. Anne was no longer a Beacon. She was safe—a normal little girl with her whole life ahead of her.
Knowing he had played a part in that felt pretty damn good.
Jordan sat on the side of the bed, taking up the spot left open by Anne’s departure. Her fingers were soft but strong as they moved over his palm. “You’re going to be okay. Your leg is broken in two places and you have a ton of stitches and a few burns, but the doctors say you’ll survive.”
“That’s good to hear.” It would be even better once he got some pain medication, but that could wait for a few more minutes. He didn’t want to look weak in front of her, not when she was staring at him as though he’d handed her the world.
“You’re a hero,” she whispered. Tears shimmered in her blue eyes. “You saved my baby.”
The gratitude made him uncomfortable, so he tried to shrug it off. The pain in his joints stopped him from pulling off the whole nonchalant act. “No big deal.”
“It is to me. Thank you.”
Ryder swallowed down an awkward lump of emotion. “Sure. Whatever.”
“So, what now?”
Three months later, Ryder followed the call of the Beacon to a small, sandy Nevada town no one would really miss.
The low, nearly inaudible pulse of the Beacon’s heart thrummed nearby, coming from the town’s only grocery store. He wasn’t sure who the Beacon would be this time—man, woman, old, young—but it hardly mattered to him. Not anymore.
His grandfather’s dented plate mail rattled as he walked into the store. He knew he looked ridiculous, but that was okay by him. Lying in a hospital bed again wasn’t. This time, he’d come prepared to do battle. Another one of the Terraphages was going to die tonight. The rifle strapped to his back would help. The explosives would help ev
en more.
There were ten grenades dangling from his waist, and he was going to need every one of them. And then some.
Shannon K. Butcher once spent a summer chasing tornadoes with the National Severe Storms Lab in Oklahoma on an undergraduate research project. A former engineer, she now writes full-time. She lives with her husband and their son. Vist her at www.ShannonKButcher.com.
EVEN A RABBIT WILL BITE
by RACHEL CAINE
I got a letter from the Pope in the morning mail. Handwritten. I was inclined to shred it, along with the credit card offers and the pleas from charities, but I felt a little guilty. Not because of the sender, but because of the quality of the envelope. They sure don’t buy the Holy Father the cheap stuff at Wal-Mart; this was crisp, beautiful linen paper, probably made by hand by some revered, tottering artisan, and there was an embossed crossed-keys seal on the flap. Too nice to shred.
He probably knew that. Which was why he’d sent it and not some officious underling with a cheaper stationery budget.
I shut the door to my small apartment against the fierce Phoenix heat and shuffled over to the kitchen table, next to the window. I moved aside the Dragon’s Eye and sorted through things until I found my reading glasses, perched them on the end of my nose, and then ripped open the envelope with a dagger that had once belonged to some king or other. The fat, homicidal one? Well, that described most of them.
Inside, the folded sheet of paper matched the envelope. Another embossed seal on the page and somewhat messy writing that I worked out bit by bit. My eyes aren’t what they used to be, and I don’t get to use my Italian much.
Most honored Lisel, it read. Forgive me for not paying you the courtesy of a visit, but it isn’t as easy to slip away and pass anonymously these days as it used to be, in the days before television and the Internet.
Actually, I was just glad he hadn’t tried it. The last thing I needed was an ineptly disguised pontiff trailing a mile-wide caravan of paparazzi to the doorstep of my little retirement community.
I have been informed that you are shortly to step down from your post as Dragonslayer, after so many centuries of service. I, and the entire world, remain in your debt. You have been a good and faithful servant of the Church and God, and I offer you my personal blessing and thanks as you lay down your glorious burden and pass this mighty responsibility to a new generation.
There were several things wrong with this. First, I wasn’t retiring, I was being made redundant—and thanks, God, or whoever was running the machinery out there, for making me feel even more useless than I already did. Second, it was hardly a “mighty responsibility.” Maybe it had been when I’d taken the job seven hundred and forty-two years ago; in those days, there had been many dragons alive, all of them deadly and cunning and determined to exterminate as many humans as they could, with whatever means they could find.
Today, there was one dragon left. One. And he lurked out in the sands of the Egyptian desert, comforted by the heat in his bones for the same reason I’d retired to Phoenix. He was old and tired, and he had outstayed his welcome in the world.
Glorious, it was not. It never had been.
I sneered at the Holy Paper and crumpled it into a ball, then threw it at the kitchen trash can. It bounced off the side and skipped across the faded linoleum floor, where it startled my old gray cat, Fidget, into opening both eyes. Fidget batted the papal bullshit around for a few seconds, then yawned and went back to sleep.
I felt exactly the same.
I drained the rest of my first pot of coffee and pulled the Dragon’s Eye back to the center of the table. It was a red-tinted crystal ball on a plain wooden stand. It looked like something you could buy in any new age shop, but take my word for it, there’s not another like it in the world. I didn’t know the origin of it, and I didn’t want to know; there was something that deep in my still-superstitious soul I mistrusted.
It knew too much, this orb. It saw too much. I sometimes wondered if there was something on the other end, looking back—if it exposed me as much as the thing I observed.
With a quick, practiced gesture, I put my hand on top of the smooth, warm crystal and felt a hum rise up inside. The crystal clouded, then showed me a flickering confusion of images—vivid ocher sand, hot blue sky, the glitter of crystals in shadow, a burst of flame. Always the sand, blowing, whispering in dunes. Nothing to be seen except the sand, as if he stared at it for hours, mesmerized in much the same way that modern feeble humans stared at their television sets.
So, that duty was completed. Karathrax was still in the desert, as he had been for the past hundred and twelve years and handful of months. I checked every day, but it was pro forma, the work of thirty seconds, and then I went on with my life, such as it was. There’d be no last great epic battle between the two of us. We were old, cranky, and tired, and it was a fucking long trip to Egypt. Or to Phoenix, for that matter. I couldn’t see either one of us summoning the will to make it happen.
I started the morning rituals—made more coffee, drank more coffee, sat on the toilet for a while (what? like you don’t?), read the morning paper in all its stunning sameness. I don’t know why they call it “news.” There’s nothing new about what happens in this world on a daily basis—I’m not talking about scientific discoveries; those are moderately interesting and a constant source of amazement. No, I’m talking about human nature. As a species, we seem to be unable to learn the lesson of history. When a dog bites us, it’s still a shock that dogs bite. Or that man will murder his brother. Or that greed and self-interest and blind hatred are built into our very souls.
I despair.
I was clucking my tongue over the lurid, breathless accounts of crime when the doorbell rang. Son of a bitch. The kid was early. I should have gotten my ass in gear instead of moping around the house like a bitter old woman.
Even though, of course, that was accurate enough.
I looked down at myself—sloppy, fuzzy zip-front robe, flannel pajamas underneath even in the heat of summer, bony feet in grubby fleece house shoes. I’d been planning to dress up a bit, maybe put on something formal for the occasion. The impressive red silk robes given to me by one of the long-dead emperors of China, perhaps. Or something from the papal treasure chest.
Oh, screw it. Who was I trying to impress, anyway?
I shuffled to the front door, checked the peephole, and saw a fish-eye view of a medium-tall young girl. Ridiculously young, it seemed to me, and fashionable. She was smiling nervously, shifting around as if she were thinking of leaving at any second. Sadly, she did not.
I fumbled back the six or seven locks, one after another, forgot the chain, banged the door hard at the full stretch of it, closed it and slipped it off, and finally opened the door fully to gaze upon the new Dragonslayer.
She looked like a goddamn cheerleader. Maybe twenty, if that—fresh out of the petty rigors of high school, glowing with youth and vitality and health and smart-ass attitude. She was wearing a hipster t-shirt with some ironic logo, tight blue jeans, and some kind of cheap-looking sneakers that had probably cost more than my monthly rent. “Mrs. Martin?” she said. She sounded bright and chipper and nervous.
“Get your ass inside,” I said. I was still wishing I’d put on the formal robes or something, but the whipcrack of command in my voice was effective without them. The girl scurried over the doorstep, and I slammed and locked it behind her. “What’s your name?”
“Ellen,” she said. “Ellen Cameron.”
“I’m going to call you Ellie. Coffee?”
She looked relieved to have something so normal to agree to, so I tottered off to the kitchen to put on a fresh pot. While it brewed, Ellen stood politely where I’d left her, looking around but not touching. Good. I couldn’t stand people who fondled my things uninvited. Not that I’d had any of that sort of behavior in the last hundred years.
God, I hated being old. Looking at Ellie, with her fresh, summery youth, made that burn inside me like a b
lowtorch. When I was her age, I’d had dragon’s blood forced down my throat, fresh from a dying beast. It had been a foul custom, but it had rendered me almost as immortal as the dragons. Impossible to get more now, though. The girl would just have to do without.
I brought back the cups and sat the girl at the table. She was a neat, strong child. If not a cheerleader, she’d be a gymnast or a soccer enthusiast. Soccer, I decided. She had an outdoor glow, and gymnasts tended to spend their time inside.
“Right,” I said. “My name is Lisel von Haffenburg-Martin, and I have killed four dragons in my time, which is more than any Dragonslayer before or since. Most would-be Dragonslayers die before they feel the breath on their neck from the dragon who’s been stalking them. Lucky me, I have survived to retire. Now, I get to train you to take my place.”
Ellie folded her hands in her lap and did her best to look like a good student. It was a poor attempt, but then the child was hardly out of school. At least she had better manners than most of her contemporaries, I’d give her that. “Do you mind if I ask—” She swallowed hard. “Ask if you ever—if the dragons . . .” She burst out into laughter all of a sudden, and the painfully polite girl disappeared. “Oh, man, this is crazy. You’re an old lady, and we’re talking about fighting dragons.”
“No,” I said. “We’re talking about killing dragons. Not fighting them. This is something else altogether. We’re not knights, Ellie. We’re not heroes. We’re exterminators. Think of dragons as enormous, eternal roaches, and you get a better idea of what it is we do.”
“Ugh.” Her pert little nose—quite different from my prominent beak—wrinkled in disgust. “But I get to use a sword, right?”
“You must read a great many stupid books,” I snapped back. “Of course you don’t. Why in the world would you go up against something as fierce as a dragon with a sword? Honestly, it takes a man to think of something that idiotic. You kill a dragon with only one weapon.”