Dances With My Dragon

by William David Ellis

  She told her husband-to-be about her dad. He was quiet a minute and then asked Lizzy an unusual question—were the scars on the front or on the back? She answered they were all on the front. The only scars on his back were lined up with scars on his front.

  Her fiancé had then said, “Never could have told by looking that your dad was in special service.”

  Lizzy looked puzzled. “He teased me many times when I was growing up about being a British secret agent. We saw several of the older James Bond movies. He would put his hand over my eyes when risqué scenes came on; I could still see through the cracks between his fingers but didn’t dare tell him. He would criticize parts of the movie saying that couldn’t happen or not like that, and he really liked the Captain America-Red Skull battles. Anyway, I didn’t believe him, but now that I have seen your scars and remember his, I don’t know.”

  He said, “He worked for the Brits? So it wasn’t OSS; did he ever say, maybe, SOE, or MI5, or…?”

  “Hmm. SOE sounds vaguely familiar. But truthfully all he would ever say was he was one of Sherlock Holmes’s original Baker Street irregulars, and that they were never very gentlemanly.”

  “Oh my God!” Her future husband laughed in awe. “Your dad was a member of Churchill’s secret army, an original operator of the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare! Wait till I see that old man again. I will peel back his head and pry into his brain. They were the original…” Then he got quiet and thoughtful and said, “Well dang.”

  He never got to ask her father about his involvement in any special forces ministries because he deployed the next day and that was the last Lizzy saw of him. She wiped a tear away as she stepped across the threshold and into her lonely old house. She knew better than to allow her heart to wander like it did; now she would just hurt till she finally tossed and turned her way into a fitful sleep. She did not see the glowing red eyes that hid in the shadows across the street and watched her step into her home.

  Chapter Seven

  Belle Rodum watched from the shadows of the hall near Hitler’s Munich apartment. The corridor was dimly lit. Hitler had ordered the light lowered. She wondered if it wasn’t because he didn’t want people recognizing him or, more aptly, he didn’t want enemies finding him. Or it could be as she expected that evil loves the darkness and what he did here was not inclined to the light.

  She had found his place in Munich and had him watched. When it became obvious that he was infatuated with his half niece Geli Raubal to the point of obsession and possibly coercing her to marry him, Belle had to act. She could not allow any woman other than herself close to Hitler. If he had his way, he would blaze like a comet and then be as quickly gone. She needed him stable, able to make good decisions and able to delegate. It had taken her people years to move this melancholy schizophrenic into a position to dominate his country, and now that same pathology combined with his narcissism threatened to sabotage the whole project.

  Hitler was drawn to younger women, and the one who now influenced him, and if shrewd enough could control him, was becoming a problem. Rodum’s surveillance teams had reported that Geli had fallen in love with a musician in Vienna and wanted to leave her uncle’s watch care for her boyfriend. Rodum was fine with that but Hitler was not, and if he could persuade Geli to stay with him, he would control her and have opportunity to destroy his career and Germany with it.

  Belle Rodum had been busy researching spells and devising plans, conjuring demons to advise her. She had bled from a dozen cuts in the process and thought if she continued, her health would surely suffer. She had finally settled on assassination, but not just any type of murder. This killing had to be rightly timed and manifest enough evidence pointing to Hitler’s involvement that when she offered to make any criminal investigations go away, Hitler would jump at the opportunity and grant her more influence over him. Left on his own, the man would never consider ending Raubal. He really loved her. But if Geli were removed violently, and the evidence pointed to Hitler, that would be very helpful.

  As Belle Rodum lurked down the hall hiding in the darkness, a casual observer would not have noticed that she didn’t hide in the shadows so much as the shadows hovered over her. Some of them even radiated from her. They covered her like a dense blanket of darkness. As Rodum hid in the shadow, she spoke to it. “Hover in Raubal’s room. Let me know what you hear and see.”

  A faint hiss answered, “Yesss, I will go. But you need to know something is coming… something that hurts my eyes… lots of light. Great power. It will be here soon. Must hurry now.”

  The shadow’s warning was startling. She had not expected resistance, much less for it to be of the light. As the shadows moved off, she wondered what could come. Why was it coming? Geli Raubal was not a saint. She doubted if the woman had ever had a spiritual thought in her life. She was a spoiled, egocentric narcissist. Just like Hitler. Only younger and female. So why would any creature that could carry the light defend her?

  Belle Rodum’s questions were soon answered. Several things happened at once. First yelling came from Raubal’s apartment. Hitler was screaming at the girl, threatening her and cursing. Belle could hear him through the walls and down the hall. The girl shrieked at Hitler. Then there was silence. The door opened and Hitler stomped into the hall, cursing under his breath. He looked up and down the corridor. Belle thought for a second that he could see her through the shadows. He stared intently, scowled, and then turned and marched away. The shadow raced back to Belle Rodum, saying, “Now is a good time. I caused them to argue and Hitler left his handgun in his apartment. I can show you where it is.”

  Rodum smiled and hurried toward the door. She had her glove on the knob, ready to turn it, when a hand touched her shoulder and a distinctive male voice slowly drawled, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  Rodum jumped back, quickly turning, shocked that anyone could get that close without her sensing them. There before her was a man dressed in strange bronze armor. He was young, attractive, of medium height, and serious. For an instant they stared at each other; he actually attempted a grin. Then she attacked. Usually her lightning blows landed and the battles were short-lived. But this was an unusual opponent. He was as fast as she was. He predicted her movements and dodged them with uncanny consistency. Blocking her at every strike—until she landed a blow to his abdomen. The pain that ran up her arm shocked her.

  “That hurt, didn’t it?” the stranger said with a dry grin.

  Infuriated, she dove into the man with angry determination. She was a witch! A chosen one. Her people were the elite and descendants of the Nephilim and no mere mortal could beat her. Her blows grew quicker, a furious violence. They landed and the man’s grin vanished. A trickle of blood ran down his lip.

  Yet he had not attempted to fight back. Finally, she stumbled and staggered back. His grin returned. “Are you done?”

  Enraged, she drew on the deepest darkness she had; she felt the outpouring of her personal demon’s power surge through her and knew she could kill this enemy now. Her eyes narrowed. She drew back her fist to strike a killing blow only to run into a steel grip that grabbed her hand and held the blow at bay.

  “Is that all you got, or are you holding back because I’m just a man?”

  She snarled and launched herself at him. With one calm hand, he reached back and slapped her right across her angry face. She saw stars. Her head spun; she tried desperately to shake off the blow. She screamed like a tired child throwing a tantrum. She raged and struck only to have every blow blocked. Finally, with a grab and a twist, the stranger held both her arms tightly behind her back and whispered in her ear, “You know, we are really going to have to quit meeting like this or people are gonna talk.”

  “Let them,” she snarled back. Then took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, “Who are you? Why are you here? What do you want?”

  “My name is Harry, ma’am. I am or at least I was told that I am a dragon rider. I don’t think our kind are friends,
but that doesn’t mean I can’t be polite. And what I want is my business.” He was about to say more when, racing down the hall, a jörmungandr blindsided him, hammering him into the wall. Even with armor on, the blow staggered him. The beast had the advantage for a few seconds. It rammed Harry with its head, opened its mouth, and bit down trying to crush him. With one hand, it pointed desperately at the door. Belle Rodum blinked, realizing the jörmungandr was telling her to finish the job they came to do. She quickly turned the knob and entered the room.

  Harry was too busy trying not to get crushed to notice that Belle Rodum had slipped into the apartment. The armor he wore, designed to stand the weight of the ocean at two miles, groaned as the serpent’s jaws clamped down on him. The beast had him by the waist, leaving his arms free. It was its last mistake. With a quick flick of his wrist, the sword came out from its sheath. Harry cried, “Gloria ignis mea pater,” and the sword burned with a blue flame and cut through the beast. Rolls of steam and a hiss were followed by an agonizing scream. The serpent’s wound cauterized, so only a small pool of blood spilled from it, but the sword had done its work and the jörmungandr fell in two. Cut apart by the living sword.

  Harry had just managed to pry himself free from the old worm’s mouth when he heard a shot. The sound quickened his pace. His feet hit the floor, and he crashed through the door and into the apartment. He knew he would be too late, and he was. The window was open, and the witch had fled. At his feet with a hole in her chest was Geli Raubal. “Mercy, Lord,” Harry whispered, neither praying nor cursing, and then the wails of sirens split the air, and he knew it was time to go.

  Chapter Eight

  Harry’s first mission had been rushed, and almost ended in disaster. When he got back to his London base, his training picked up speed and blew by like a paper cup in an Oklahoma tornado. Most of the time he would go through a training he had apparently never taken, only to discover an hour into it his muscles or his subconscious had remembered things they never told the rest of him until that moment. John Timothy and his other trainers had expected this and prepared for it. The moment Harry manifested behaviors they knew he had previously known, his trainers either picked up the pace, moving into the advanced parts of that training, or stopped and transitioned into other things he needed to know. They progressed at frantic speed, sometimes pushing through half a dozen courses in a day.

  One afternoon Harry had sweated through his clothes and was leaning against the concrete wall of the underground gym. John Timothy was panting right alongside of him. Harry looked at him and frowned. “Why are we moving so fast, why pushing so hard? How do you expect me to keep all this training when it’s not complete and then when I start to catch on, we move to something else?”

  John Timothy replied, “We are not training you; we are reminding you. You are the one who taught us.”

  Harry blanched at the statement. “What? John Timothy, that… that’s…” And having no word to describe it, he just stopped and shrugged, staring back at his trainer.

  “This is not the first time you have lost your memories and been swept back into a time stream and had to start over. You have paid an awful price for what you are doing. I will not go into that. Sometimes memory is not a blessing, and forgetfulness not a curse. So be patient with us and yourself. Hold steady, trust us, and stay the course; it will work out. It always does.”

  Harry started to respond, hesitated, and then just asked, “How many times have we done this? How many times have you reminded me, John Timothy? And by the way, just what are you? I say what because you move as fast as I do, know as much as I know and a lot more, and unlike me you never seem to tire.”

  John Timothy shook his head and chuckled. “You always ask me that, Harry. No matter how many times I dodge the question or even answer it. You always ask.” He sighed as he peeled off his sweaty T-shirt. “You’re like a broken record, the vinyl ones they have in this era. You get stuck and go round and round, repeating the same questions. Well, that’s not always true, but it’s true enough. And I always answer the same way.”

  “Which is?”

  John Timothy chuckled. “I was waiting for you to ask that, too. Some of us travel through time differently than others. You are one of those unique human beings that can move through the time streams. I am also a created being, just in case you were wondering. And I also move through time. My task has always been to equip and serve the riders. At times that task has required me to take different… how shall I say this? To take different forms, I guess is the best answer, to become different people. In the course of time I have been many men. I can manifest in many forms. I am always male, although others like me are female.”

  “So you are an angel?” Harry asked, squinting curiously as if he expected the man to sprout wings at any moment. It wouldn’t be the strangest part of his day.

  “Not so much. There are hosts of sentient creatures under heaven and in the earth, Harry. We were all created for certain tasks; we are, if you will, workmanship. His workmanship. And my work is to equip the riders of the dragons who traverse time repairing and restoring it. Is that good enough for you?”

  “No…” Harry watched as John Timothy shrugged a well-that-is-all-I-am-going-to-tell-you shrug. “But I suppose it will have to be.”

  With a smirk, John Timothy stood up and reached out to pull Harry up. “Now, since you seem to have caught your breath, let’s move on to another training. I think you will enjoy this one. I seem to recall that while the sword was searching your mind for memories, he left you a few gifts, like the ability to communicate with animals.”

  “Yep, I am a real live John Dolittle.”

  “Well, capability is one thing; doing it is quite another. And you will see what I mean in a moment. I am going to introduce you to one of our most experienced animals. A brilliant fellow for his species.”

  As Harry watched, the gym doors opened and in walked with regal manner the most beautiful dog Harry had ever laid eyes on. It was an incredible beast. Large brown eyes peering from an intelligent face. Full-bodied with a well-groomed coat almost solid white. Harry looked up at John Timothy as if to say, Now what?

  John Timothy answered by saying, “This is not the right place, give me a minute.” He waved his hands in the air, forming a large square that not surprisingly was outlined in sparkles like a Fourth of July firework. He reached in the box he had formed and suddenly he, Harry, and the dog were standing in the backyard of Harry’s East Texas home. “Now this is more like it.”

  “Wow!” Harry gasped. “What are we doing here?”

  “Well, Raleigh here needs a bath. You have a house with a backyard and a water hose. So I thought we would visit your house where you could gather all the things you need to give Sir Walter Raleigh his bath.”

  “Ah, that will be a little awkward. I mean, he is a big dog. A very, very big dog. Kinda pony-like actually,” Harry said soberly, looking at the large teeth and huge girth of the splendid beast.

  “Yes, he is.”

  “I mean, do I ask him or what?”

  “I think ‘or what’ will suffice,” John Timothy said.

  “John Timothy, I know you are a smart aleck” (he really said “smart ass,” but Lizzy was telling this tale to children, so she used the word “aleck”) “and think this is just hilarious. But what you do not know, sir, regardless of your exalted status as my trainer and mentor, is that—” Harry reached for the water hose he had bent down to turn on and with cobra speed whipped it toward John Timothy, who had disappeared. The water intended for the mentor splashed over the large white dog.

  Harry was startled at John Timothy’s disappearance but even more so at the dog’s reaction.

  “Oh! Hurrah, hurrah! Man want play with Raleigh. Raleigh like water.” The dog jumped, licking at the water hose, playfully snapping at it, and splashing it all over himself and Harry. And if that wasn’t wild enough, as soon as Harry turned off the hose to attempt to respond to the animal, he sniffed the a
ir, turned his head, and ran toward the mulch pile in the back of Harry’s yard.

  The pile was a product of grass clippings and chicken and goat droppings that had been thoroughly activated by the summer heat. Harry kept the mulch pile in the very back of his yard because it stank. He would turn it occasionally, helping diminish the odor, but it smelled exactly like what it was: rotted grass and nasty poop. To Harry the smell was awful; to Raleigh it was a beckoning call to pleasure, a scented caress that appealed to his primordial instinct to eat dead things and then roll in them. Harry ran after the great beast, grabbed for him, and slipped in the mud his water hose had made. The dog, happy to continue playing with him, ran for the chicken poop pile, jumping in it like a little kid does a swimming pool.

  “Oh my gosh,” Harry groaned. “Dog, you stink like you have been rolling in dead stuff.”

  Harry heard the animal’s reply; he couldn’t tell if it was telepathic or verbal and wasn’t in the mood to figure it out. “Yeah, me smell really doggy. Me like rich, warm smell much like the woods, like nature. Hides me scent from big dogs.”

  Startled by the dog’s statement, Harry asked, “What big dogs, boy? You are the biggest thing in the woods, and you are going to get a bath!”

  As the great animal rolled, the stink rose out of the ground and seemed to increase in fervency and intensity. “You smell like sheeeit, dog!” Harry grabbed for the dog but the animal was too quick, and Harry wound up slipping in the foul-smelling mud.

  “Oh boy, man chase me with big green snake that has water coming from mouth.”

  “Be still, you filthy animal! Quit your running and ducking.”

  Finally, after Harry cornered Raleigh and wrestled him to the ground, they were both soaking wet and covered in grass. He began to hose the dog off, grumbling through the whole process.

  “Man be mean, him squirt Raleigh with water. Make sweet smell of woods go ’way.”