Black City Dragon

by Richard A. Knaak

  At first, I thought I hadn’t heard him right. Then, the enormity of it sank in. Claryce hadn’t been just cursed to keep being reborn as part of my foul legacy: she’d already been doing it for centuries before that.

  I had no idea what that meant and decided that I didn’t need to deal with it right at the moment. “Get her back to the right time. Get her back to Cleolinda. Let her forget the earlier ones again.”

  “As you say,” he replied with more than a hint of reluctance. Barnaby leaned close and murmured in her ear.

  Claryce’s expression changed again. It softened, then took on an earnest cast.

  “This should be better. I asked her to focus on Cleolinda if she could. It looks like she has. I’ve instructed her to continue to use Claryce’s language. It should work. Her incarnations are tied together more than most. It’s fascinating, really.”

  “Really.”

  Barnaby frowned. “I’m sorry. Let me continue.”

  I hadn’t been the one stopping him, but I bit back any further comment. He whispered in her ear. Whatever he said earned him a nod.

  “Here we go. Claryce and Cleolinda, one and the same. You both hear me. I want to speak of a visitor. The emperor of Rome. He came to you seeking help. He was dying. Do you recall now? This is what you experienced, Cleolinda. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  Not much makes me shiver, but the short answer did. I heard a slight difference in Claryce’s voice. Right away, sixteen hundred years later, I knew I was actually hearing Cleolinda.

  “You remember,” Barnaby urged. “He came in secret.”

  “Yes, he did. In secret. Very desperate. The disease had already eaten deep into his mind, body, and soul.”

  I pictured Diocles in the last stages of his life. Once the most powerful man in all the world, now reduced to begging for help from quacks, charlatans, and criminals. He must’ve looked at Cleolinda as a godsend, an irony considering what he’d done to me.

  “Did he speak of some of the cures he’d tried?”

  “Yes,” she replied easily. “Nothing worked. The one thing that at first appeared to do so made him much, much worse. It made him even more desperate. He became demanding.”

  I scowled, thinking about the next time I saw Diocles. If he’d thought me obstinate before when it came to forgiveness, he was about to get a really harsh surprise. He’d not mentioned a thing about threatening her.

  Without warning, Claryce gasped. She clutched her throat with both hands as if trying to pry something from there.

  “Master Nicholas . . .” Fetch growled.

  “Not now.”

  “But Master Nicholas! I smell something sinister!”

  He’d barely said that when I, too, noted the odor. It was like some corpse left out for days in a humid place. “Barnaby? Is Joseph up to something?”

  “Nay!” Fetch continued. “’Tis not from up there! It seems to be emanating from around Mistress Claryce, but not from her! It’s just . . . here.”

  Barnaby also smelled the air. “Curious. I wonder . . . there is great latent energy in her. I think . . . I think she is reliving some extraordinary memory and this is how it manifests.”

  The only thing I could think of was that Diocles had been in a lot worse shape than he’d ever let on.

  She started babbling in another ancient tongue. I knew this one, even if after all these centuries I could scarcely even translate it these days.

  “The language of Claryce,” Barnaby reminded her.

  “There is nothing else to give!” Claryce shouted. “I have no reason to lie to you, I swear!”

  “What the hell is he doing to her?”

  “Please, Nick! It is only a memory! She is beyond being hurt!”

  I was finding that hard to believe, but I held back.

  Completely ignoring us, Clarissa added, “The teeth were all I had left! You have one of them now. Is that not enough?”

  The stench filled the room. If we hadn’t been in danger of being heard, I’d have opened wide the windows. Fetch trotted around the room, sniffing. He tested all three of us, then every nook and cranny. I could’ve added the dragon’s sense of smell, but I trusted Fetch’s abilities enough.

  “This isn’t kosher, Master Nicholas! It’s coming from nowhere!”

  I no longer cared about that. More and more, it reminded me of other stenches. I was on the battlefield, after the carnage had finished and the dead had started to decay. I could hear the carrion crows and see the rotting corpses . . .

  Claryce shouted something I couldn’t make out.

  She screamed.

  “Snap her out of it, Barnaby!”

  He went to her ear, muttering, I realized, in the same tongue. At the same time, he turned the bracelet this way and that.

  Claryce jerked upright. She continued to spout, but suddenly switched to English.

  “No! No, please not him too! The blood! Let it just be the beast’s!” Her hands thrust out as if she sought to cradle something. I had a bad feeling I knew just what.

  “Claryce!” Barnaby called. “Claryce!”

  “Find the healer! Someone! Help him! He’ll suffocate on the beast’s blood—”

  “Barnaby, do something!”

  He hesitated . . . then snapped his fingers right in front of her face.

  “Wha—?” Claryce shivered. She blinked several times. Gradually, her eyes gained focus.

  Barnaby poured her something I was certain Prohibition had made illegal. “Here! Drink this.”

  She gratefully took it. After downing more than half, she finally calmed . . . that is, until she looked at me.

  “Oh, thank God!” Claryce threw aside the cup, leaped up, and clutched me tightly. “You’re alive! Alive!”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “I saw all the blood! You were drenched in it! I couldn’t tell what was yours and what belonged to—to—him.” She tapped my chest. “Him.”

  The dragon. She meant the dragon.

  He stirred, his anger strong. His death remained fresh enough to him even to this day without her having relived a portion of it for us.

  Forcing him back, I held Claryce. “That was long ago,” I told both of them. “Long in the past.”

  “But it seemed so real!”

  Not long enough, Eye say! Never long enough!

  “Just a memory,” I insisted.

  Claryce at least seemed to take this to heart. I knew the dragon didn’t have one to take it to.

  “You’re right. Just a memory. God! What an awful one, though! I just—oh, no!”

  “Do not follow that thought, Miss Claryce!” Barnaby warned.

  The awful smell returned. Fetch whined and his ears flattened. As that happened, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stiffen. “What’s happening, Barnaby?”

  “Her will is strong! She’s stirring up those latent energies! You are not the only one who swallowed some of the dragon’s blood, it seems!”

  It was worse than that, though. Claryce’s eyes widened yet again. “Dear Lord, Nick! You should see him! It’s awful how he looks! God! Those hands around my throat and that smell of rot around him—”

  “Forget Diocles, damn it! Forget—”

  “Not Diocles! Galerius! He’s the one strangling me! That smile! He said it was like having the pleasure of having you killed again!”

  Things made sense again. Barnaby hadn’t been specific enough when he’d mentioned the emperor visiting. Instead of Diocles, Cle-olinda’s memory had chosen the imperial visit of most significance . . . and what could be more significant than being murdered?

  I wanted to rip out Galerius’s throat, but couldn’t.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I told her. “I warned that you this might be dangerous. I should’ve been adamant. Still, that doesn’t explain how you ended up recalling my fight with the dragon.”

  “I am so sorry, Miss Claryce!” Barnaby interjected. “I am responsible for that. I tried to s
teer you away from her death, but ended up sending you to the aftermath of the struggle between Nick and the beast! Both memories seem to be locked together!”

  “No,” I replied to him. “There’s—Barnaby!”

  We were no longer alone. Out of nowhere, one of those Her Lady had referred to as the Triple Man stood behind Barnaby, a deadly looking dagger with a cylindrical blade raised high. I’d had one of those used on me by a Schreck serving Holmes and lived to regret it. What it would do to Barnaby, I didn’t even want to think.

  Then, something struck our attacker from behind. Joseph, his expression blank, watched as the pale figure fell into Barnaby’s desk. Joseph’s left hand was still in a tight fist.

  I didn’t know what it was about the trio called the Triple Man that seemed to stir Joseph up, but it was clear that he didn’t care for their presence. That was a good thing, because naturally where there was one, there were more.

  My insides abruptly turned. The room shifted. Barnaby’s desk changed into a taller, dark oak affair with a wall of bookshelves atop it. I hoped that was the only shift happening this time.

  With the alteration came the other two parts of the Triple Man. This time, in even more cramped quarters than Joseph’s place at Dunning, I could see that they definitely weren’t identical siblings, but actually the same man in slight variations. They clearly had some tie to the Clothos Deck that went beyond anything I’d ever seen.

  Curiously, as soon as the other two arrived, all three looked around as if something they had expected to see was missing.

  “Is he not?” asked one.

  “Was he not s-supposed to be?” grunted the one Joseph had hit. He fumbled around for the dagger.

  “No . . .” the third stared angrily at me, then glanced at Claryce. “No . . . he is not . . . again.”

  I didn’t like the way he eyed Claryce. I seized him by the shoulder and spun him back to face me.

  Apparently that was the wrong move. My gut churned again. The room shifted.

  “So many ways to go, so many probabilities,” Joseph remarked.

  The chair turned into a short wooden one. Several of the books on the shelves changed size and binding.

  The Triple Man—all of him—briefly went transparent.

  “Turn the card?” asked the first.

  “Too soon?” asked the second as he secured the dagger.

  I suspected I knew where this was leading. I tightened my grip on the third one.

  “We must . . .” he responded, staring at me. “Too soon, but we must.”

  “No—you—don’t!” I shouted as I took hold with my other hand as well.

  He shimmered and started to fade. The other two did the same.

  But that was as far as they got for the moment. The one in my grip stared wide-eyed, as if I’d done something he’d never experienced before.

  “Is—it—him?” the first rasped.

  “Could—it—be—him?” added the second.

  “Yes.” The third’s eyes went from wide and stunned to narrowed and calculating. “It is them.”

  He threw his head back and let out a guttural cry. I felt power surge through the room, a power as old and as unique as the dragon’s. I’d only felt that power when I’d had to hold the one card from the deck.

  All three contorted in pain. I might’ve had more sympathy if they also hadn’t finally vanished in the next breath. Despite letting the dragon’s power flow through me, I still ended up with empty air in my hands.

  “One, two, three, all the same to me,” Joseph commented.

  “Yeah. Me too.” I turned to Claryce. “Are you all right? Do you feel any different?”

  She understood exactly what I meant. “No . . . I mean, I’m all right. I feel the same. Do I look the same?”

  “You do. What about me?”

  “I doubt it can affect you, Nick, but, yes, you look exactly the same.”

  I wasn’t so sure about my invulnerability to the power of the cards as she was, but, then again, I wasn’t sure if the Triple Man was actually utilizing whatever card they—I decided to stick with they even if it was the same person—were supposed to have. I certainly hadn’t been expecting them to scream and writhe in agony. That didn’t sound like controlling the card . . . that sounded more like being partly enslaved by it.

  “You okay, Fetch?”

  He turned in a circle, which looked an awful lot like chasing his tail. “Ab-so-lute-ly, Master Nicholas.”

  Barnaby had been silent all this time, which made me fear the worst. At first glance, he looked like he was supposed to, but I wondered if anything had changed inside. “How’re you doing, Barnaby? Tell me truthfully. Do you feel any different?”

  “My taste in furniture is not what it used to be,” he answered as he stared at the new but old pieces. “There appears to be one benefit. My sight is sharper in my left eye. It was worsening, not that you knew that.”

  I wasn’t planning to thank the Triple Man for that, but I was glad nothing else had apparently altered. Joseph, too, looked pretty much the way he always had—

  No. There was something on his neck. I went over to him. He made no sign he even knew I was next to him. All he did was stare at his father.

  Claryce stepped up next to me. “What did you find? Has he changed?”

  “Joseph?” A nervous Barnaby peered up at his son. “Tell me it’s nothing significant, Nick!”

  It took me a moment to decide how to answer. “Well, it is . . . and it isn’t. Joseph’s sporting a tattoo.”

  “A tattoo?” Barnaby came around to see. “What sort?”

  “It’s not that awful symbol of Galerius’s, is it?” Claryce asked as she bent to see it.

  “That actually might’ve made me happier.” I shifted so that they could both see it.

  “It’s a goblet,” Joseph’s father commented.

  “A cup,” I corrected. “Filled with a black liquid.”

  Claryce took hold of my free hand. “Isn’t that—”

  “Yeah. It’s the same kind of cup. Just one instead of three.” I could feel the dragon sharing my concern over what this might mean. “The same exact cup as the one on the card in Holy Name.”

  CHAPTER 19

  That Joseph now had a more direct link to Galerius didn’t surprise me too much, but it did leave open the question of what else Barnaby’s son might’ve done for the former emperor in this new variation of events. Barnaby pored over his son’s notes while we waited, but in the end he couldn’t locate any change.

  Claryce wanted to return to her apartment, at least long enough to change. I reminded her of the Clothos symbol on her building, but she insisted. Leaving Barnaby to deal with both Joseph’s papers and Joseph himself, we drove with Fetch to Claryce’s place.

  “It’s still there,” I commented as we parked.

  “I didn’t expect that to change. It would’ve been nice, but I didn’t expect it.”

  As we entered, I took a peek around the vicinity to see if “Quiet” was nearby. I knew we hadn’t seen the end of him, especially with his brother’s death a factor.

  Claryce turned to her bedroom the moment the three of us entered. “I promise I won’t be long.”

  I sat down and stared at the wall. Sensing my mood, Fetch beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen. Between the magical markings on her building and what’d taken place at Barnaby’s, nowhere felt safe to me anymore.

  So naturally the phone had to ring.

  It could’ve been just a call from one of her former coworkers at Delke Industries. Claryce remained in touch with a few of them. I’d carefully and surreptitiously checked most of them out to make sure none of them had had strong connection with Oberon. I knew I took up a lot of Claryce’s life and was determined not to take the rest. She needed the outside contact, especially since she still planned to open some small business now that she was no longer part of a major company. The payoff they’d given her wouldn’t last forever. There’d been no question of me as
sisting her financially. Claryce was determined to make her own way.

  The telephone rang again. I waited for her to say something, but when she didn’t I had a sudden compulsion to answer.

  “Hello?”

  “This would be Nick Medea?”

  I knew that voice. Scowling at the receiver, I replied, “What are you doing calling here, Laertes?”

  He didn’t even bother to apologize. “I’ve been trying to call you since late last night. You have a situation brewing, my friend.”

  “Another one? What is it this time?”

  “Hymie Weiss has been asking around about a person that sounds a lot like you. He’s gone to several establishments and contacted those like me who have our ears to the ground about other things already.”

  “Why this sudden increase in interest by him?”

  “Someone has linked a person of your rather unique profession— the ghost hunting business, I mean—to the disappearance of the gang’s benefactor, one William Delke. Weiss seems to be taking it even harder than Moran, who isn’t exactly quiet on the subject, either.”

  I’d wondered if Oberon’s connections to the North Side gang would come back to haunt me and naturally they had. Still, bootleggers were the least of my concerns right now.

  “Thanks for the warning,” I told him. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

  “There’s more.”

  Of course. There had to be.

  “Word is also out through more—shall we say, different—sources that there’s a sour and quite unsettling enforcer going around. I’d not have bothered to mention this one, but he sounded a bit like he was . . . well, from my old neighborhood.”

  He had more of my attention now. “Oh? You’re sure he’s not just some goon?”

  “So he sounded at first, but he’s been said to have taken out a couple Wyld.”

  Things came together. “Ah. Word of warning. Don’t even let him know you exist.”

  “I wasn’t planning to. You know him?”

  “Yes, and you don’t want to give him the slightest clue you’re here, Laertes. He belongs to Her. One of the worst. Feir’hr Sein.”

  I heard a sharp intake of breath. “One of those?”

  “One of those. Where was he last seen?” I memorized the address he gave me. It was near where I’d found Fetch shielding a small Wyld weeks back. I didn’t have to guess who it was. Lon. It looked like he still had use of the body of Lysander, one of Oberon’s loyalists. Lysander had been working with Holmes until he’d gotten himself killed through his own arrogance. Lon had claimed his body behind my back, using the shell so that he could move around among humans.