“Why do you stay?”
George squinted out over the field of blonde summer grass. “I’m not entirely sure.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You know I’m a drunk, right? You must’ve caught that already.”
Erica’s father had loved whiskey as much as he’d ever loved her or her mother; she caught it the moment George opened the front door. “Yeah, I figured.” She added before he could reply, “But you’re obviously functional, good at getting by, anyway.” Jesus, the enabler speaks! All hail Princess Enabla! Erica’s mother was the proper Queen, but Erica was still heir apparent. She shook her head. Stupid, poisonous old ways. What was wrong with her? ”Why’d you tell me?”
“It’s going to take you a while to figure out how to get the rest of the Shard holdouts to vacate.” George looked up into the sky as if clocking the time of day by the position of the sun. “That means you’re going to be a resident of The House of Rhodes for a few days. I just wanted you to know I got this problem.”
“You ever get violent?”
George faced her, held her deep brown eyes with his washed-out blues. “Never.” Of course, he wasn’t counting his liver in that equation but he figured she wasn’t asking about inwardly directed violence. “Last time I raised a hand to another human being was in high school. Got in a fight.” He shook his shaggy blonde head and smiled.
Erica saw the handsome man, the clever quick grins and easy confidence under the alcohol-boiled skin. “Over a girl?”
“Ha! No. It was over some dumb injun didn’t have the sense to run from a bunch of even dumber rednecks. Small fry tried to take on half the football team. I tried to play hero like the great jackass I am.” He barked a clean laugh. “God damn, did we ever get our asses kicked. You’ll meet him later—he’s the law around these parts. Hauls my gin-soaked butt into the hoosegow about every other Friday night.” Although, this Friday George had the idea he might be behaving himself.
“He arrests you that often? You must hate him.”
“Will? Hell no, he’s my best friend.” George jerked a thumb down a side street. “C’mon, we’ll mosey over to his office and say ‘howdy’. I’ll tell him you’re my dinner date for this Friday night and we’ll watch his jaw drop.”
They started walking and Erica said, “That was pretty slick.”
“What?”
“Asking me out on a date like that.”
The tips of George’s ears burned so hot, he thought she must be able to hear the blood coursing through them. “Well, I was just kinda thinkin’ that you… If you didn’t have anything you were already—” Erica was smirking, her shoulders hitching up and down. “What?” he demanded.
She belted a laugh. “That’s the first time anyone’s asked me out without showing off their stock portfolio or offering me a six-figure job in as long as I can remember.” She touched his arm. “George, I’d love to have dinner with you on Friday.”
George’s throat parched and his guts screamed. His temples throbbed. His nerves demanded booze. An image of the intricate stained glass on the front door of his mother’s house came to mind—Adam and Eve chased from the garden—and shattered. He looked at Erica and the cacophony muted, the glass settled. “Know what?”
“Hmm?”
“I think you’re going to be here for longer than you bargain for.”
She cocked a razor sharp eyebrow, “Dinner going to be that good?”
“Nope. Well, I mean sure, but that’s not what I mean.” They stopped in front of a block of razed houses, the scorched stone foundations the only remains. The stink of brimstone itched in their noses. “Look at this place. If we were going to leave… No, strike that, if we were able to leave, don’t you think we would have?
Chapter 10
Will couldn’t leave. No matter which way he turned, the strange cavern was as smooth walled as, well, the bowels of the earth. If there was a way to climb out it was behind the enormous, shimmering spider web. There was a declivity behind it that ate the light. He didn’t want to think about what might be back there. He could feel… He wasn’t going back there.
Will might only be a small town Constable, but he’d put his cop radar up against the best big city detective. What he was picking up from the rest of his surroundings was weird. He should have been freaking out in only the most major ways, but instead he felt curious—even a little excited. The fact that he held a handgun renowned for punching holes the size of pie plates didn’t hurt. He took a breath and stepped toward the pulsing emerald heap in the center of the cave. His footfalls threw hollow, metallic echoes as if he walked across a huge tin drumhead. “Curiouser and curiouser,” he muttered.
“Indeed, Alice… Welcome.”
For a moment the voice felt as if it originated from inside his skull and radiated out. Will shook his head like a sneezing dog. He listened. Nothing. That feeling of being fucked with was coming back strong now.
“Hello?” He pulled the hammer on Smaug, the clicks distinct. “I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t know who you are, but I’d suggest you cut the shit—like yesterday, man!” Kentucky dripped over his words, stretching the vowels and clipping the corners off the consonants. His accent was always stronger when he was emotional; he hated that. If anyone knew better he did, but like many people Will associated a heavy southern accent with ignorance, not authority. He calmed himself and took another step forward. “Now, why don’t you come on out and we’ll talk.”
The mound of emeralds flashed as if charged. Will froze in his tracks as the emerald heap began to unfold. Sharp angles rearranged and climbed over each other. A tower of green stone fell upward and took familiar, terrible shape. Wings flared, the size of frigate sails. A spiked tail stretched away like a road. Talons long as Will was tall flexed and gouged the steel ground. A huge black pearl, old and deep, blinked open and fixed the little Constable where he stood.
Will’s vision swam and sparked on the edges. He was going to faint. He shook himself again and refused to let it happen. The great (don’t think it, don’t think it or it’ll mean you’re crazy) dragon looked at him. It felt like being stared down by a mountain, a planet—no, a star that’s gone out and spins dark in the heavens.
“I am older than some stars, Constable, but your thought was lovely.”
Will’s throat clicked. The dragon was talking to him, its voice like passing weather fronts.
“You’re afraid, but there is no danger.” Its head, an emerald-chip spear point the size of a small car tipped to one side. “You know this.”
Will concentrated on breathing. His head felt like it had detached and floated above reality on a balloon string. Breathing was solid. One breath after another. Cool air in, warm air out. Jesus, he could smell the fucking thing—hot glass and ozone. He wasn’t seeing this. He wasn’t here.
“You will believe what you see or not. Either way, you must decide.”
It was right. He didn’t feel like he was in trouble, just a little nutty. A giddy smile bubbled up from his guts. “I named my gun after you.” He held out Smaug like a kid looking to have his favorite baseball glove autographed.
The dragon flared its mouth slightly and treated Will to a chilling display of teeth. It was like a giant chunk of emerald had exploded into a thousand jagged shards and the dragon had caught them in its jaws. “Not after me, little Constable. I came before the Englishman’s fiction.”
And suddenly, they were having a conversation. “You’ve ruh-read Tolkien?” Will stammered. “You read?”
“I know every tale that has ever seen paper and every story yet to be scribed as if the ink were my blood.”
Will realized he was still holding out his .357. With a deft thumb and spin he made it safe and holstered the weapon. “Sorry about that. Kind of rude of me, I guess.”
“Do you trust yourself, William?”
The sound of his name was a firm hand around his mind, turning his face to the light of reason. It substantiated him. Will’s shoulders dropped, his hand
s unclenched. “I don’t get this. I should be so scared right now, but I’m not.”
“You do not fear because you understand truth. If there was something to fear, you would know it.”
Will jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the massive net of spider web. “Yeah, well,” he half-laughed, “that’s totally creeping me out.”
“Well,” the dragon chuckled, an avalanche of temple stones, “in that your senses do you justice. Yïn means neither evil nor good. She achieves both.”
“Huh? What’s a Yïn?”
“Turn around, Constable.”
The back of Will’s neck stiffened with goose bumps and his shoulders rose. He turned, his hand dropping to the butt of his gun. His father sprawled in the center of the web as easily as he would recline on a couch. He winked and Will sucked in a breath as Jack McFarlan’s torso began to bulge and darken. Four tips of rib bone punched through his shirt on either side. They stretched into a quartet of spikey legs and found balletic purchase in the web. Jack McFarlan’s eyes divided like cell nuclei and became eight drops of emotionless blood. His hair pulled in as his features smoothed and tinted obsidian. His teeth pushed from gums of tallow, the canines elongating into chitinous garden shears. A sinister drop of clear fluid bloomed at the end of one mandible. Will’s father had become a spider the size of a pony.
A sigh slipped over Will’s teeth as he fell into a deep, merciful faint.
* * *
Under velvet black, floated the lilt of a young girl heavy with Appalachian molasses. “You revealed yourself too soon for our little Constable, Yahn.”
No, not “yahn”. It was the accent, even stronger than Will’s. Yïn, she’d said. Yïn was that thing his father had turned into. A giant spider. Fucking Shelob for the love of God. Will’s eyes fluttered open and the great cavern swam into focus. A dull throb warmed the back of his head where it had hit the metallic ground. He sat up blinking, hands splayed out behind him.
A girl of no more than seven or eight was standing a few feet away from him. She was dressed in a clean but worn gingham blouse that looked like it had been handed down over at least two generations. Her jeans were dark and tough, patched at the knees. She wore emerald green Chuck Taylor Converse All Stars just like Will’s black ones. Blonde pigtails sprouted from either side of her freckled face, clipped in place with plastic dragons. A black Labrador (maybe with a little Irish Setter thrown in) sat next to her, favoring Will with a dopey doggy grin. The pair could have come from any of the surrounding mountain hamlets that still dotted this part of the Appalachians. Made sense—Will had been shooing kids like this away from the abandoned mine since he first strapped on the gun.
She tipped her head to one side, pigtails flopping. Her jade eyes squinted. “You okay, Mister Will?”
Will shook his head. “Do I know your family, honey? How’d you get down here?” He looked around the cavern. “I must have knocked the hell—,” he checked himself as her eyes widened, “heck outta’ my head when I fell.”
“Nah,” she smiled. “Y’all just fainted.” She scratched the lab behind the ears and set its tail to thumping. “Yïn (Yahn) just went and showed her little old self a little too soon. What with me being my big old impressive self and then her pretending to be your Daddy an’ everything, it was just too much for you. Kinda overloaded your mind is all.”
Will stood up. “What are you talking about, kid? What’s your name? You know you’re not supposed to be running around down here. You could get hurt.” He chuckled and rubbed the back of his head. “Kinda like me, I guess.”
The girl sighed. “William,” she said. “Stop trying not to believe, okay? It’s counterproductive.” She gave the dog a gentle flick to the ear. Will’s lips pressed tight as its fur lengthened and the black bled away. An instant later the black lab/setter mix was a great Arctic Wolf. It still favored him with an affable doggy grin, but Will now found its teeth somewhat more disconcerting. “You understand now, William.” It wasn’t a question.
Will’s gun hand itched but he kept it away from Smaug. “I, uh… Shit, I’m still here. You’re still here. Still real.”
She smiled an almost full smile. It looked like the tooth fairy had come for a visit. Nice touch. Will sucked in a breath as she changed. Her transformation was more graceful than Yïn’s, less visceral. It was as if she were a cloud of vapor in the shape of a girl, and with a breeze of will, she dispersed and reformed. Will exhaled like he’d been gut punched. He was standing before a woman so beautiful that tears pricked his eyes. Her head was hairless and exquisitely shaped. Her skin luminesced with a bluish-white glow that Will associated with a backlit diamond. Her naked body flowed with a dancer’s musculature and was at least seven feet tall. What really caught his attention, though, was the spread of ash-colored wings feathering out behind her.
“An angel,” he whispered. “That works.”
“Sometimes, William,” she chimed in a voice that was a chorus of several voices masculine and feminine. Will noticed the speaker was neither. Its legs joined in a smooth V of flesh below its belly. “I have worn this guise many times.”
Will’s face was bathed in the light cold-burning off the angel. “What is this?” he asked. “Oh, shit! Have I died?”
The angel tipped its head to the side, a characterization Will recognized carried over from one form to another. “You live, William.”
“I—”
“Hush now, and your questions will be answered.”
“Just your name, then,” Will blurted.
Frustration bent its brow for only a moment—a cloud-shadow over a field—but Will’s blood chilled. At its feet, the wolf’s tail ceased its lazy wag and it looked up at its master.
“You may call me Dampf.”
William was a child of the mine. A “damp” or “fire-damp” was a build-up of combustible gases. The official investigations were never conclusive, but the Shard Fire was always supposed to have been started by an explosive damp. The word “damp” comes from the German for “vapor”—Dampf. Will nodded and kept his mouth shut.
“Before rock was solid and water knew to flow down hill, beings of mutable substance danced over the skin of the world. Neither angels nor demons, they existed in a swirling balance of will and intent, light and dark. All was chaos and all was balance. The world existed as a single note. I would sing it for you, William, but your mind would not survive the experience.”
The angel paused and nodded at the wolf. Yïn’s fur drew inward and coarsened. Her legs extended and her tail whipped into a long, fine spray of black. Her paws fused into hard, dark hooves. A grand Arabian mare, slick with a blue-white sheen on her black flanks, tossed her mane and whinnied. Will shook his head and resisted the urge to put his hands on his hips and say “Hoo-wee!” It would have been a little too Kentucky even for him. That and he had never been more afraid to speak in his life.
Dampf, too, commenced a change. Again, it was as if a puff of wind blew it away and another reformed it. A second later it stood defiant. Dampf’s skin was forge red, lines of keloid scar striped its cheekbones and banded its huge biceps. It stood with heavy arms crossed over prodigious breasts, veins pulsing in its forearms. A mane as black as Yïn’s streamed from its heavy brow and down its back. Horns—more blades of black glass than bone—sprouted from its hair. A thick tail snaked around its thigh and spiraled down its leg, ending in an arrowhead. It raised hands tipped with blackened triangular chips to the ceiling and stretched. It lowered its arms and caressed its body, purring in a voice that was all shadow.
“The skin of the world hardened and rose like a tide to envelope the First Ones. Beings of flesh then dragged themselves from the mother pools and walked. The First Ones were content to stay beneath and maintain the balance.” Its eyes glowed orange. “But one formed who destroyed the balance. A Wasp coalesced in an eddy of dark will, wrapped itself tight in malice and began to sting. The sting infected others and the darkness grew. Here,” It stamped a cl
oven hoof into the floor and a blue spark shot. “Under this mountain a hive swelled and the Pompiliad grew strong.” Great leathery wings spread behind it, wafting Will’s hair over his shoulders. “The Pompiliad and its young dug and chewed and tore a rent in the skin of the world. They gathered, curious, from the inside of this cunt under the mountain, sniffing the air and the smell of flesh beyond.”
Will was so transfixed by this apparition and the imagery its story called forth in him, that he didn’t notice Yïn’s final transformation. When Dampf paused, Will glanced over and caught the spider staring at him, mandibles scissoring. He yelped and jumped back a step, hand snapping to his pistol. He calmed himself. Now was not the time to lose it. It hadn’t eaten him before and he didn’t sense it would now. Not that he believed for a second that it didn’t want to, just that it wouldn’t. Dampf didn’t want that. Out of the corner of his eye, Will caught the disintegration and reformation of the great emerald dragon. Dampf had once again found its first and truest form.
The dragon stared down at him, quiet for a moment. “I set The Fire.”
It was like a slap. Before he could stop himself, Will shouted, “What?”
Dampf tilted its massive head. “Had I not, you and your kind would all be rotting in the bowels of Wasps, or playing host to their larvae. The skin of the world would have sloughed off and a great war would have ensued.” The dragon snapped its jaws shut with a sound like a hundred chandeliers spontaneously shattering. “I sealed the rent with fire, the wasps still below. As long as it burns they will stay where they belong.
“Yïn and I stand as guard and watch over the burning portal, to tend the smolder.”
Little William Two-Bears McFarlan glared up at the demon responsible for the death of his town and ultimately his whole world. He was the guard and the watch over a smoking trash midden because of this nightmare and its hideous pet. He had been lured from the light with a cruel yank on his emotions and then tumbled headlong into temporary insanity. In short, he had been royally, royally fucked with. It was all a big sell, a great big preamble to something, a flashy movie with tons of CGI, but it all came down to priming his mind for one thing.
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