by Alan Marble
Yet somehow they passed through unscathed. Still screaming, he glanced up in his rear view mirror to see the van behind them barrel through the same intersection without so much as hesitating, weaving between the stopped and stopping cars, somehow managing to make it through as well. All he could think of was how insane it all was.
“The turn! Don’t miss the turn!”
Rebekah’s voice brought him back to his senses, somewhat, just in time for him to yank on the wheel and turn the car sharply to the right. The wheels skidded against the pavement, seeking traction as the back end threatened to slide away from him, but by some combination of luck and sound engineering the little SUV wound up pointed the correct direction, and again Jonah punched the gas and aimed for the freeway on ramp
The van behind them was not so agile. Older and heavier, it was forced to slow down considerably to make the sharp, sudden turn, buying them several seconds of precious lead. Jonah swallowed down a little gulp of relief as the car spat out onto the highway, easing in the light traffic and heading westward. “Where are we headed?”
“Nowhere, at least not until we lose our tail. Let’s see how fast this thing can go.”
They’d already sped up to 60 miles per hour, but he pushed it to 70, and then to 80. What little traffic there was on the highway at this hour was mostly going slower, so as he began to pass all of the cars, Jonah let his foot come up off the accelerator some, letting the needle come to a stop hovering around 85.
“What are you doing?” Rebekah turned to look at him harshly. “Speed up.”
With a bit of a cry, he protested. “We’re already going pretty damned fast …”
“Not fast enough,” she countered, jerking her head around to look behind them. “I told you, he’s not going to stop till he gets us.”
Peeking into the mirror, he confirmed her statement when he saw the headlights of the van weaving between a pair of slower vehicles, the lead that they had gained rapidly diminishing. “This isn’t safe,” he protested again, but complied by applying more gas, watching the needle creep on past 90, coming into the triple digits.
The van didn’t slow down. The headlights that were in pursuit were no longer closing the gap so quickly, but at the same time they were not receding. Jonah could feel his heart thumping loudly in his chest, feeling himself growing tense and sweaty as the speedometer began to sneak up on 110. “Jesus, this is insane. This is too fast.”
“Oh, come on, mister sportbike rider,” she said, the tease seeming to be a little misplaced given the tension in the air.
Jonah frowned. “That’s different.”
“Maybe. But if he catches us …”
She didn’t have time to finish her statement. A sudden flash of blue and red at their sides along with a loud siren that quickly receded behind them cut her off. Jonah glanced in the mirror in time to see the police car swerve from the shoulder and onto the highway, behind the van now but rather quickly building up to speed. “Shit, now we got the cops to worry about?”
Rebekah was still looking behind them with a scowl on her face. “No, forget the cops. They’re the least of our concerns right now.”
“Forget the cops?” Jonah had seen his fair share of high speed chases on television. Even if that particular police car did not catch up to them, could not convince them to pull over, they’d call for backup. Use some kind of maneuver to push them off the road, use spike strips to disable them, something of the sort. There was no way he was going to escape this one. “I’m gonna wind up in prison over this!”
“No you aren’t. Now, come on, give this thing a little more gas, we gotta get out of here.”
Glancing down at the speedometer, he was surprised to see it had crawled up to nearly 130, the engine racing to keep up with the demands of the driver. In spite of his better judgment he stomped down on the gas but it refused to acknowledge him - it was stuck, hovering there at about the same speed. “It’s not going any quicker,” he protested, keenly aware of how quickly the other cars, the buildings they were passing were flying on by in a blur. He’d heard stories about the infamous car-swallowing potholes of Detroit. If they found one of those doing that kind of speed, he was sure they were doomed.
At the very least the headlights of the van behind him seemed to have trouble picking up speed, as well, creeping up on them only very slowly. The flashing lights of the police car were just behind the van now, undoubtedly calling out on the megaphone for the driver to pull over, but there was no way the van was going to budge.
“Jesus. Maybe you’re right, we’re probably gonna get killed before we go to jail,” he muttered, doing his best to concentrate on the roadway. They came up on the cars too quickly, too fast for his comfort, each time he had to swerve around them he could feel his stomach churn, was certain that they’d lose control and go skidding across into the barrier in the median. It would all end quickly, at the very least.
“You’re doing fine,” she muttered, a little less than reassuringly, before her voice caught in her throat. “Oh, shit.”
Jonah did not have to ask for clarification. A large piece of construction equipment, hidden behind a pylon beneath an overpass, had abruptly started moving right into the roadway. There was not enough time to react, not properly at least. Aware that he was once again screaming - this time accompanied by his passenger - he flicked the wheel to the right. It was just a fraction of a turn, but at the speed they were traveling it was more than enough. The car lurched heavily to the right, and then back to the left as he corrected. For one miserable moment it felt as if the wheels on one side were coming up, losing traction with the surface of the road, and the tail of the car began to skitter unsteadily behind them.
He was certain that they were going to crash. They were going to roll over, spin out of control, wind up in a fiery inferno along the side of the road. Yet again, more by luck than any skill, the car righted itself, having steered clear of the machinery in the road.
The cars behind did not fare so well. The driver of the van attempted the same correction but the larger, less nimble vehicle failed to make it, the rear corner clipping the edge of the equipment, throwing it around at a wild angle. Unable to skid sideways the van toppled over, bits of glass and debris flying skyward, glittering red and blue against the night sky, all while the van began to roll again and again, careening off to the side of the road. The police car tried to screech to a halt, a cloud of smoke rising from the back wheels before plowing headlong into the construction equipment, coming to an abrupt halt.
Then it was gone. All too quickly the SUV sped along down the highway, out of sight of the incident, leaving Jonah to shiver almost uncontrollably in the driver’s seat. Rebekah, her voice quiet, tried to sound calm and commanding all the same. “Let’s get off the freeway.”
Too shaken to argue or question her decision, he maneuvered the car off the next exit and to a nearby parking lot. In silence they switched positions, Rebekah taking control of the car and plotting a new course, avoiding the highway, disappearing through the suburbs of the city. Neither of them would speak again until they had put the city far behind them.
SEVEN
“So. You had some questions for me.”
It had been some time since they had left Detroit behind. Dawn had come and gone and the day was wearing on in to the afternoon by the time they had pulled in to a truck stop outside of Omaha to gas up and stretch their legs. Jonah had slept fairly well, all things considered; the luxury SUV had surprisingly comfortable seats, and after the adrenaline rush of the night before had worn off he had been left feeling physically drained. Once or twice he had woken up during the trip, when they stopped for gas, but otherwise most of it had been passed with his eyes closed.
Seated on a picnic bench outside of the truck stop, watching the traffic go by on the interstate, Jonah had been fairly caught up in his thoughts, munching quietly on a cheap hamburger, and was a little caught off guard when Rebekah spoke up. Shifting his gaze to wher
e she was sitting, relaxing a bit, he blinked. “What?”
“You said you wanted me to explain some things to you, and I told you I would later. Well, now it’s later. So, shoot,” she said, drumming her fingers on the table.
His mind raced back to the previous night, the unbelievable events that had unfolded, and he could not help but to scowl a little bit. “That’s right. I want to know what this is all about. Everything.”
She had been eating a hamburger as well, finishing off the last of it before wadding the wrapper up into a ball and tossing it into a nearby wastebasket. “Everything? I don’t think we have enough time for that, Jonah. You’re going to have to be a little more specific. I’ll answer what I can, but you’re going to have to help me out a bit.”
“Ok. What about these creeps that are after me, these … what did you call them … bully drakes?”
Rebekah laughed quietly. “Bull drakes. But that works, too.”
Jonah did not really see the humor in his mistake, and frowned all the more. “What do they want with me? Why are they chasing me all around the country, killing people?”
“It’s not you that they want, Jonah. At least not directly. You see, until you’ve had your first change you’re indistinguishable from any random person on the street, they can’t smell the dragon on you. As far as they know or care, you’re just some unlucky sap who happened to get his hands on the Token. That is what they are after,” she said, idly munching on a fry.
“Well, I guess that puts us in the clear, then. I left the damned thing on Abe’s desk last night.”
She smiled at him slightly. “You sure about that?”
“Positive,” he said, reaching into his pocket. Much to his dismay his fingers brushed against something round and metallic, and when he pulled it out, he saw that it was, indeed, the silver coin with the dragon. “What the hell? I left this thing on the table. I didn’t pick it up again, I’d have remembered that.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Like I told you, the thing belongs to you. You’re supposed to have it, and it’s going to do its best to make sure it stays with you.”
“You make it sound alive,” he said, frowning down at the coin.
Again she laughed softly. “No, not exactly. It doesn’t have any free will or power of its own, but it is imbued with a certain power. A way of influencing fate, random chance, little things like that to make sure it winds up in your hands and stays there.”
Something right out of a fairy tale, he thought to himself a bit dismissively. As insane as it was, he had to admit that he could not explain why he still had the thing, how it wound up in his pocket again and again. “So what’s so valuable about it, then? Why do these people want it?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” she muttered, munching on another fry. “I suppose it’s because they think that it has some kind of power over us. Like, if they get their hands on the Tokens, they might be able to use them to influence the dragons that they belong to. Control them. I’m not really sure.”
“So what is it, really? Other than a nuisance,” he murmured, prodding at the coin on the table.
A warm breeze fluttered across the table, ruffling the wrapper that his burger was resting on and causing Rebekah’s bangs to cross in front of her eyes; she brushed them out of the way before continuing. “It’s an insignia of your station, a sort of birth certificate, if you will. It’s a way of proving that you are the Silver Dragon.”
It was not the first time he had heard that. The night before, the bald man with the cigar had said much the same thing. “And what does that mean?
She chewed on her lower lip for a moment, as if considering her answer before speaking up. “Well, I’m sure you went over some of this with Abe last night so I’m just going to give you the Cliffs Notes version. A long time ago, thousands of years ago, there were a lot of dragon clans. Thirteen, as a matter of fact. The Syndicate went about wiping them out as efficiently as they could. When it started to get real bad, the two or three remaining clans, along with the scattered members of the others who were in hiding, banded together and created a single clan.
“The clan picked thirteen of its members to serve as surrogate representatives of the lost clans. Mostly symbolic, but still. These thirteen served as a sort of council to rule on important decisions that would affect the entire clan. The first thirteen imbued a small fragment of their souls into thirteen Tokens that were crafted for them. In the event of their deaths, that little fragment of their souls would seek out a spiritual successor to take on the mantle.”
Jonah took a deep breath and then frowned. “You realize how ridiculous all of this sounds. Tell me, is there some novel you all have picked this stuff up from? Somewhere I can read it and memorize it, too?”
Rebekah frowned, as well, though her expression was considerably more annoyed than his own. “You asked for an explanation.”
“Sorry, sorry. Go on.”
“Right,” she said, shaking her head. “Anyway. That’s pretty much the point I was getting to, that being the Silver Dragon means you have inherited that position on the council. That the Token has sought you out and come to your possession is proof of this.”
Suddenly he remembered that Abe wore a trinket around his neck that resembled his coin in more than a passing manner, albeit in gold. “So, was that Abe back there, the Gold Dragon? Looked like he had a token, too.”
“You’ve got it,” she said, the frown on her face fading and once more she was wearing a slight grin.
“So, does that make him some kind of leader? And does that make me …”
She laughed. “Second in command? Please. No, it does not work that way. We don’t really have a leader in that sense, of someone who can command us or tell us what to do. Abe is one of the eldest of the clan, one of the eldest on the council, and as a result his word carries a lot of weight. We listen to his council not because of his title but because of his wisdom.”
Jonah nodded a little blankly. “So you’ve got a seniority thing going on.”
“Yes and no. Like I said, we don’t really have anyone who rules, it’s not a chain of command. We do have an elder, the oldest among us, who holds a special position of respect. He does have a few added duties and responsibilities as the eldest, and we all have a sort of special connection to him. He can feel us, and we can feel him, even from afar. You can too, even if you don’t understand it yet,” she said, with a slightly playful smirk.
“You don’t have a chain of command but you’ve still got some kind of ruling council?”
“We don’t rule, not in that sense. We convene from time to time in meetings called Convocations. No one forces the others to abide by what we say, but pretty much everyone respects the decisions that come from a Convocation,” she replied.
Poking idly at the remains of his burger, Jonah did his best to mentally digest everything that he was being told. It took more than a little self-control not to deride the story as ridiculous once again, and he was certain that he’d heard of far more convincing sounding tales in various works of fiction. Still, there was a certain compulsion he felt about it all, a sort of curiosity to see where she was going with it all. “You say we. You a part of this, ah, council, too?”
She nodded. “I am.”
“So, you the Bronze Dragon or something?”
“No,” she replied, shaking her head, reaching beneath the collar of her shirt to pull out an ornately carved pendant made of some kind of polished wood. It was well worn and smoothed but he could still clearly make out the shape of a dragon. “Wood Dragon.”
“Wood? What are the rest?”
She paused again, as if she had to think to remember them all. “Gold, Silver, Wood, Ivory, Stone, Bronze, Iron, Tin, Copper, Lead, Bone, Flint, and Obsidian. Three of the Tokens are missing, perhaps still seeking out the dragons to take their place, the Bronze, Iron and Flint dragons. The last ones have been gone for as long as I can remember,” she said, her tone slightly downcast. “It’s been almo
st fifty years since the Silver Dragon sat on the council, just so you know.”
Jonah frowned a little, uncomfortable at the thought, as if it somehow was meant to make him feel a sense of reverence or purpose. “Why does it take so long?”
“I’m not sure. Things are not the same as they used to be, Jonah. Once upon a time there were thousands of dragons. Even when we were reduced to a single clan there were probably three hundred left in all. Now, I think we’re down to maybe fifty. Maybe it just takes that long to find a successor, maybe it just takes that long for a replacement to be born.”
Her tone continued to darken, the smile on her face having faded, and Jonah could not help but to feel a little guilty for it. “So how often are new dragons born, then?”
“Rarely,” she replied with a slightly annoyed grunt. “There are only two that we know of younger than yourself, so, every five to ten years or so. There’s just not many of us left to keep things going. A single dragon can lay an egg only once every twelve years, so, you can do the math.”
The mention of laying eggs and the implication that it carried - that he was hatched from one rather than being born in a hospital somewhere - was simply beyond absurd, preposterous. He was about to say so when Rebekah spoke up again. “Before you ask, no, I haven’t done so yet. Eventually, but I’m in no hurry. I’m not that worried about the clan, yet,” she added, with a smirk.
“I wasn’t going to ask,” he replied honestly enough, feeling embarrassed all the same and jamming some of his now cold hamburger into his mouth. “Besides. Abe back there told me something about all dragons being born in human form for centuries.”