by Perrin Briar
The fire rumbled in the dragon’s mouth. It must have heard or seen the net because at the last moment it looked up. It grunted as the net, having unwound to its full width and height, snapped around the dinosaur.
“Yes!” Rosetta said.
The net couldn’t snap the wings together like it did the monster’s legs, but it did hold them in place, freezing them. Aaron and Cassie cheered, arms held up in celebration.
And then Aaron lowered his arms, his smile fading.
Rosetta turned to look at what had dampened his spirit.
Before losing its ability to fly, the dragon had been accelerating fast. Its hefty weight was still carrying it forward, its wings, unable to move, worked as a glider.
It was going to strike the ground, but not before it hit the church tower.
61.
ZOE AND BRYAN pulled hard on their reins, each taking a different direction. They’d been aware the dragon was close, but they were also aware that whatever weapon was atop the church tower, it had to be something Cassie and Aaron were confident would take the dragon down.
Their horses were shot and couldn’t run much farther. The foam on their bodies was thick like frothing shampoo gel. They brought their loyal steeds to a slow stop, and didn’t turn back to look at what the dragon’s fate had been until they heard the cacophonous smash of the dragon as it sailed into the ground.
What gripped both the parents’ hearts was the gentle tinkle of the church bell as it was knocked off its stand and fell to earth.
They rounded the corner, appearing back on the main street. They climbed from their horses and let them go. The horses took off at a canter, not wanting to be part of the adventure any longer.
Bryan and Zoe ran along the street. The dust was still settling and hung thickly over the scene like a shroud. As it began to clear, they made out a long indentation in the road where the dinosaur had fallen, its body tearing up a deep trench.
And then they came to the prostrate dinosaur body, the net tight and making deep furrows in its thick flesh.
There was a large empty space where the church should have been. Where the kids should have been.
The dragon was not dead, and grunted under its heavy restraints, the netting keeping its mouth shut. Its eyes found Bryan and Zoe and focused on them.
There was a real intense hatred in those eyes. It wanted them, wanted them with every fiber of its being. It tried to spit fire, but its lips couldn’t open wide enough. Smoke whispered from its nostrils.
The parents moved around the monster, carefully placing their feet. They didn’t want to come within range of the great reptile. It was still dangerous. A single thrash of its tail could spell the end of them. Just as it had been the end of the kids.
There was nothing but rubble left of the church. The bell had a crack in it, and the ancient stonework had been destroyed.
“We failed,” Zoe said. “We saved the town, but failed to save our kids. We failed them.”
Bryan hugged Zoe close. It was so painful a loss he couldn’t bear to even look at Zoe right then. They hugged one another, tears streaming down their faces. They had lost them. After all this time, there was nothing they could do to keep hold of them, to keep them from death’s jaws.
There was a fluttering sound. It could have been an angel’s wings. Zoe and Bryan spun around to look at the T-Rex. Had it gotten itself free, and was now working on getting itself airborne again? But no. It was still in the sorry state it had been when it had crash landed.
Their attention moved to the sound above their heads. And there it was. The cause. Three of them. They were descending on clouds of white, all three of the surfacers: Aaron, Cassie and Rosetta. They touched down heavily to the rubble. Zoe and Bryan were on hand to help them to their feet.
“I thought I’d lost you… again!” Zoe said.
“I guess that one never wears off, does it?” Aaron said with a smirk.
“One of these days you’ll be gone and I won’t even blink!” Zoe said.
“Till you realize we really are gone that time,” Aaron said.
Zoe laughed, but it turned to tears.
“Mom, I was only joking,” Aaron said.
“I know,” Zoe said. “I just never want to lose you.”
She hugged him to her, running her hands through his hair and clutching him tight. Bryan hugged Cassie. He caught Rosetta’s eye and smiled.
“Thank you,” he said.
“It should be me thanking them,” Rosetta said. “If it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t be here.”
62.
LADY MALTESE watched from the safety of the balcony of her cave apartment, high in the mountain’s wall. She couldn’t believe what she had just seen. Her pet, her beloved monstrosity, the one she had kitted out and turned into an even more dangerous beast, had been swatted from the sky. She had heard it land, thudding heavily into the earth like a fallen comet.
She’d immediately moved for her amulet and began pressing buttons, but there was no response, no reply. Nothing. She no longer had control.
She let out a scream that echoed through the catacombs. She took off her amulet and smashed it on the floor. She leapt upon it, crushing it beneath her boots, screaming and crying in the same breath.
Everything she had worked for, everything she had done, had all been destroyed. But she wasn’t finished yet. She was in her cave. She would use the resources she had to create more weapons. There was more than one way to destroy a town. She would revert to ancient methods, like poisoning the wells, if she had to.
She turned back to the cavern and began sorting through the piles of metal toys she’d fashioned. They had razor-sharp blades around the bottom and helicopter propellers on the top.
Let’s see how they deal with my little hellion copters, Lady Maltese thought with a smile.
Something moved behind her. She spun around, withdrawing the knife she kept up her sleeve.
“I know you’re there,” Lady Maltese said. “You don’t spend a lifetime in the shadows without knowing when someone is in them.”
There was a pause, and then something began to move. A figure emerged into the light, on the edge of darkness. It was a cowled figure. The one who referred to himself as the Cursed One.
Lady Maltese lowered her knife, her eyes wide and fearful.
“I… I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know it was you.”
“Clearly,” the Cursed One said. “Judging by the events taking place outside, you have a great deal on your plate.”
“I do,” Lady Maltese said. “But nothing I can’t handle.”
“No?” the Cursed One said. “It looks like you’ve lost control of the situation to us.”
“No,” Lady Maltese said. “I can get it back. I can always get it back.”
The Cursed One extended his gloved hands in an apologetic gesture.
“But what business is it of ours?” he said. “You may conduct your business any which way you like. What may be seen as a failure to us may be seen as a supreme success to others.”
“It’s not failure,” Lady Maltese said vehemently. “It’s a setback.”
“Of course,” the Cursed One said.
Lady Maltese could practically taste the bitterness in his voice.
“But your… setback has put a wrinkle in our plans,” the Cursed One said. “You were meant to join us. We have been recruiting from all known worlds. You alone were entrusted with our pods, but one was stolen and destroyed. And so your spot is gone.”
“I don’t want a spot,” Lady Maltese said. “I want to stay here and rule.”
The Cursed One paced up and down the modest cave apartment, furnished with some of the finest items from the castle.
“Some time ago we came to you with a proposition,” he said. “You required a problem, and we provided you with one. It was up to you to make the most of it. You were told that later, one day, you would pay us back. And we returned.”
Lady Maltese remembere
d the night.
It had felt colder than usual, the dark full of more fear than she was used to. The darkness had moved and the Cursed One presented himself. He had come to call in the favor she owed him. Lady Maltese had braced herself, ready for it to be something she did not want to give.
Then he surprised her.
“I want a submersible built,” he’d said. “Twenty-five to be exact. They will travel underwater at great depth. They will be fitted with a weapon capable of anti-grav capacity.”
Lady Maltese took a moment to comport herself. It had been a while since she had needed to use the creative part of her brain.
“Although the submersible could be built, the weapon would be impossible,” she’d said. “Anti-gravity technology will not have reached that level of sophistication yet, and I would never be able to reproduce it.”
The Cursed One’s face was covered, but Lady Maltese could hear the smile in his voice.
“All necessary materials will be provided,” he’d said. “You need only design the craft blueprints and build the weapons once we have provided you with the requisite material.”
Lady Maltese agreed, and got to work designing the pods immediately. She drafted and redrafted until they were perfect. Once she was done, she went over them again until she could not see a single flaw with them. She did not want to fail the Cursed One.
The Cursed One was evidently in no great hurry. It was then Lady Maltese realized she had been given no deadline to create the design. It made no difference. She always worked on designs immediately. Always had done. It was her process. Then she realized with mounting dread that perhaps that was the reason for why the Cursed One had left her alone. He knew how she worked.
One day, perhaps six months after the Cursed One had made his demands, he returned. He came with a material he described as ‘Gravitas’. He left her with it and took the designs away with him. He left her to experiment with the material by herself.
It was extraordinary.
Lady Maltese had placed the material on a table and watched as every other object in the room rolled toward it, gaining in speed until they attached themselves to the rock. Lady Maltese was flabbergasted.
This was not possible, and yet here it was before her, working. She had never encountered a material like this her whole life, had never even dreamed such a thing might exist. But yet here it was.
Shaping it had been simple. It was rock, and any mason could have done it. Lady Maltese had the best mason in their world work on it under the pretense it was for her husband’s fortieth birthday.
The real difficulty came with controlling the power, either by enhancing it, or reducing it when required. She stumbled upon the rock’s greatest ability by accident, almost knocking her unconscious in the process.
She had managed to reverse the polarization. Not only could she use the rock to draw objects toward herself, but also repel objects away. It was a breakthrough that would help control the pods the weapons were attached to.
In a single stroke, it would not only operate as a weapon, but as a defence too—by repelling and pushing away any objects or weapons hurled at it. It would allow the driver to operate the pod more efficiently and with greater control.
What the Cursed One wanted these pods for, Lady Maltese didn’t know. She refused to even speculate. She kept her head down and focused on the job in hand. She couldn’t wait for their dealings to be over. The Cursed One gave Lady Maltese goosebumps.
The second part of their deal was for her to store the pods in the caves while she attached the weapons.
“We had an agreement,” the Cursed One said.
“I have carried out my side of the bargain to the best of my abilities,” Lady Maltese said.
“Then you have not carried them out adequately,” the Cursed One said. “You were to store the pods for safe keeping until we needed them. And for your failure to comply, you must be punished.”
Lady Maltese lashed out with the knife. It was a fast and vicious blow. The Cursed One clutched his throat, blood pulsing out over his black gloves.
Lady Maltese was panting, not with exertion, but shock and surprise. She had never thought she could vanquish the Cursed One so easily. She smiled, a mad maniacal grin that stretched from one ear to the other. She had won! She had killed him! She let out a girlish squeal of glee and wrapped her hands around her mouth.
The Cursed One was not as unassailable as she had thought. He was just a man. And all the nightmares she had had about him over the years, him as a dark and evil spirit—clearly some of their world and its superstitions had rubbed off on her—had all been for nought. He was just a man. Nothing but a piddling nothing of a man.
Lady Maltese gasped, a sharp intake of breath. She reached behind herself, for what she felt—a painful pinch just under her ribs. She’d backed herself right onto it, whatever it was.
She found something was protruding from her body, something alien that did not belong there. She reached back and pulled it out. She felt the pain and ejection of her warm blood. She let out a cry and raised the blade to her face.
It was her own blade.
No, she thought. It can’t be. I dropped it. I dropped it right there…
She looked at the floor, at the spot her blade should have been and found… nothing. Nothing protruded from the shadows on the floor. Her blade had been taken and then held at her back so she might impale herself onto it. Which meant someone must have held it for her to impale herself on in the first place.
She spun, her hands coming around to form fists. She screamed when she saw the one who had stabbed her. It was the Cursed One.
“No,” Lady Maltese said. “You’re dead. I slashed open your throat. Your drops of blood are still on the flagstone floor.”
“You cannot kill what is everlasting,” the Cursed One said. “When we carry weapons to protect ourselves, we are actually carrying the very tools that condemn us.”
Lady Maltese dropped her dagger. The Cursed One moved fast, like a striking snake, caught the knife before it hit the ground, and tossed it at Lady Maltese. But it was a bad throw, and it missed her.
Lady Maltese took a moment to comport herself. If the Cursed One could make mistakes, perhaps there was a way out of this for her.
“We can make a new agreement,” Lady Maltese said. “One of mutual benefit to us both.”
“We do not renegotiate,” the Cursed One said.
He stepped into the light. Lady Maltese instinctively stepped back, matching his forward momentum. She flinched again. This time she did not need to look back at what she had walked into.
She stepped forward and spun around, and in doing so, the knife—her knife—that had punctured her body on the other side, was removed. It dripped dark red with her blood.
Another figure stepped from the shadows, another Cursed One. Identical to the first two.
“You cannot kill what does not exist in a single body,” the third Cursed One said.
Lady Maltese was beginning to feel weak with loss of blood. She was bleeding badly from the two wounds to her person. Her dress was becoming heavy. She turned to run for the door. Anything was better than where she was and what was going to happen to her if she didn’t escape.
She caught sight of a glint of light off her blade as it spun through the air and disappeared into the shadow in front of her. She skidded to a halt, but not fast enough, as her own blade was caught and protruded from the darkness. Her body slid slowly and painfully onto it, like a hot knife into butter.
Another Cursed One stepped forward.
“You cannot kill what cannot be killed,” he said.
It was over. She was not going to survive.
“This is impossible,” Lady Maltese said.
“Everything is impossible until you know how to make it possible,” the Cursed One said.
The Cursed One took the blade and sliced it across the palm of his hand. His blood mingled with hers on the edge of the knife.
; “As you have taken one of our number from us, I’m afraid you must take his place,” the Cursed One said. “A pity—for you. You could have avoided this with death. Instead, you will become one of us.”
He sliced open one of Lady Maltese’s cheeks. The wound burned red raw. At first the pain went unnoticed by Lady Maltese in comparison with her other wounds, but as she lay there, and the seconds ticked by, the wound festered and turned her skin black. It raced across her skin like a flood across a great plain.
“What… did you do… to me?” Lady Maltese said. “What did… you do?”
Her skin turned coal black and reached her lips. She could no longer speak. Her eyes rolled back, her vision turning dark. All was black.
63.
AFTER BURYING the dead, it took the whole town five days to search every tunnel of the cave. Their search found nothing, besides the weird twisted machine the dragon had used to skin his victims, a device the butchers of the town found very useful to prepare their own meat products.
Everything else, if there had been anything else, was gone. Even the pods that had stood in a long row were gone. Most important of all, despite searching every inch of the caves, there was no Passage to be found.
Roland, after taking up his father’s mantle, promised to search them again once they had rebuilt the town. Bryan suspected it was going to be a waste of time, but he didn’t say anything.
Lord Maltese never fully recovered from the shock of his wife’s misdemeanors. He was a shell of the man he had been, mumbling under his breath and constantly lost in a daze.
The metal of Lady Maltese’s other machines was repurposed and reforged into a giant muzzle that kept the T-Rex’s jaws restrained. Bryan was able to build a new antennae and remote control device. The T-Rex became more sedate after that. The locals still needed to be persuaded the dragon wasn’t some kind of mystical being.
There was one discovery the family did not overlook.