“Yeah,” Two-Bears said in slow, measured tones. “Let’s get back behind the slab thing.” He waved them toward it as he backed up a step at a time, “Go, go,” always keeping his eyes on the demon. It’s what that thing was, could only be. And if they lost now, it would cover the world with its kin. Will stumbled over a corpse. His blood vessels began to vibrate as if he were touching a live wire. He felt shifty, unsteady. The poison’s after effects? Maybe. The Pompiliad was looking at him. “Dampf!” he shouted and then jumped back behind the stone with the others.
Will huddled next to Loraine and Kiddo. Darwin let out a whine and licked at the base of his tail. Will gave him a pat on the head, more for Kiddo than the dog. He craned his head up over the edge of the stone. The great column of rock from which the dragon had unfolded was still. “Dampf?” he called in a harsh whisper. “The swarm’s gone. Dampf!” Nothing.
“Uh, Will?” George said, and nodded at the rifle in his lap.
“Not yet, Georgie,” he said. “Dampf said she’d take care of this part of it.”
Erica touched George’s forearm. “I don’t think bullets are going to do anything against that.”
The thrumming from those giant insect wings pushed at their eardrums. The Pompiliad hovered in closer, its arms and legs hanging lip as Spanish moss. Erica stole a look at George. If the dragon didn’t come, she’d take his rifle and kill every one of them. Or at least try. Quick shots to the head and then herself. None of them had walked the ghost plane with this thing, or stared down into the abyss. None of them really knew what was coming if they lost. She leaned in and placed a feather-light kiss on his neck. “Love you,” she said.
George looked into her eyes. The great Wasp was very close now; he could feel it as much as hear it swooping in for them. He closed his eyes and waited. The pain in his severed Achilles tendon was there to meet him, flaring up from a dull throb to a respectable cymbal crash. His head was still killing him from T.R.’s first attempt, and on top of all of it he hadn’t had a goddamn drink in days. Days. He kissed her back, just once on the forehead. “S’cuse me a sec’,” he said, got up and walked around the stone slab.
“Hey!” George shouted, “Bug-fuck!”
The Pompiliad froze and hovered in the air twenty feet off the floor. It put its eyes on George and for a moment he wanted very badly to turn around and run. Never mind that there was nowhere to go, his guts and everything attached to them were simply repelled. He stood his ground and sighted down the M16. Back at the quarry he had bulls-eyed soup cans at twice this distance. The Pompiliad’s pallid face was as big as the full moon at the end of his rifle. It smiled as he pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
George’s fingers grew numb as the gun emanated deep cold. He hissed in a breath and yanked his hands away, but instead of clattering to the floor, the rifle hung as if he were still holding it. George backed up a step. The cold intensified and turned the hair in his nose to spikes. His corneas fogged. He blinked to clear them and backed up as fast as he could, throwing himself around the corner of the slab and back next to Erica. His cheekbones and nose were scraped red with frostbite. A weird, keening, shrieking note filled the cabin as the M16 approached absolute zero. The Pompiliad tilted its head to one side, raised a long hand to its lips and blew a kiss. Its breath waved through the air and touched the weapon. It exploded. A triangular piece of iron that might have been a part of the bolt landed at George’s feet with a clang.
The thrumming grew louder and ceased as hobnailed boots clocked down on the top of the slab. None of them turned to look. It was standing right behind and above them, staring down at their unprotected necks. Even Darwin squeezed his eyes shut tight. Their hearts slowed under the weight of all that cold and death.
“You cannot shed another’s blood on the threshold.” Dampf’s jangling, crystal voice floated down on them. “Or, do you wish it closed forever?”
The Pompiliad turned its head, greasy hair whipping from side to side. “Show yourself, dragon.”
The pillar unfolded like a five-story origami tower, wings and tail, claws and scales, eyes telescoping back into forever. The Pompiliad looked up at the great dragon. Its frown burst through with chitin shears as it eyes bloomed into segmented obsidian orbs. The rest of its thin humanity fell away like dead leaves. “Nor can you,” it rasped. “I will fly back into the world and lay a new swarm. It will take longer to do on my own, but time is only time. This world will be devoured, and we will come back for you in unending number.”
The dragon’s mouth yawned and a furnace glowed orange from back in its throat. Dampf roared a ball of roiling fire. It speared through the air and stopped just shy of The Pompiliad, filling its empty eyes with a hundred little fires. The Pompiliad held its ground. The fire boiled and spat, a miniature sun but the wasp was untouched. After a time the flames retreated back into the dragon’s mouth.
The Pompiliad loosed a sound that made Childe Howard think of garbage cans knocking together. Loraine imagined a pile of bodies—like those from the grainy films of the deathcamps at Buchenwald—being bulldozed. George heard his mother breaking every glass in the house as she threw them on the kitchen floor. Erica heard a storm of papers rushing against each other in a high wind. Will heard his father coughing. Darwin heard coyotes. It was laughter.
“You can’t kill me! You can’t shed another’s blood on the threshold!” It laughed and laughed. “For me the door will close and for you it will open!”
A shudder passed through the dragon. Its wings pulled in as it diminished. A moment later, a young girl stood at the base of the rock altar. She was dressed in overalls and had blonde pigtails. Her cheeks were round and dirty, her feet bare. She squinted up at the giant wasp through one eye. “No,” she said in a pure hills accent. “I don’t think this stalemate’s gonna hold. You’re right on that one.” She turned and eyed the hole at the top of cavern. “That’s gotta’ go first.” She pulled in breath, her chest swelling, swelling and then let it out in a great scream. The humans covered their ears and cowered even lower behind the rock. On the heels of the sound a tongue of blue-white flame licked across the air and filled the hole. It danced there like propane caught in a bottleneck. The little girl turned back, but the hole stayed alight with werefire. “Try flyin’ through that, buddy.”
“We can stay here forever,” The Pompiliad said. “But your pets will die in time. Even if they eat one another. Their blood will spill on the threshold and my kind will come through.”
The girl considered. “I could kill you myself and then re-seal the doorway.”
“Once a blood law is broken there is no magic great enough.”
“There is one magic. New blood for old. Innocence for sin.” She nodded to herself and hopped up on the slab. Now she stood toe to claw with the giant insect. “It’s long past time you died, filth. Long past.”
The Pompiliad flexed its stinger but did not strike. If the dragon shed its blood, all the rest of its kind would flow through the broken portal. If it shed the dragon’s, then the portal would seal forever. As it thought, the little girl reached out and grabbed the thin stalk connecting the wasp’s abdomen to its thorax in her chubby hand. She twisted then, just once, hard. The Pompiliad’s broken body fell, its legs beating against the slab, gouging deep furrows in the stone. The girl lifted her foot and brought it down on the wasp’s head. She crushed its eye and ichor splashed out onto the stone.
Dampf smiled down on the little humans. She blew a warm, gentle breath out over them. Will and others began to stir as the paralyzing cold evaporated. They found the strength to stand and move. George tripped over the jagged blade of metal from the M16 that had landed in front of him and managed to get to his feet again. The humans clustered to one side, clutching each other.
Dampf hopped down and stuck her hands in her pockets. The remains of the demon-wasp were little more than a pile of sharp angles and seeping wreckage behind her. Will looked at it and shook his head
. “It was so easy for you.”
Dampf rocked back on her bare feet, “Yep. Killin’ the Pompiliad was never gonna be the hard part. I was more worried for y’all with the swarm and everything. I couldn’t risk sheddin’ blood in here, but you could. No rules broken there.”
“But you did,” George said, staring hard at the little girl. His eyes scanning below her face for something. Where was it, damnit? They all had one. “You got its blood all over the place.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Kinda had to, though, right? Y’all were gonna die eventually anyway and that woulda’ counted as me shedding your blood too.”
Loraine pointed at the diamonds. “Look,” she frowned. “They’re getting thin.”
“Yeah,” Dampf said. “I gone and shed its blood, so now the rest of ‘em are gonna come through.”
“You said you could re-seal it!” Childe said. “Something about new blood for old, right?”
George moved over a step or two and stood next to Kiddo. “Quit helping,” he said.
“Huh?”
The dragon-girl smiled and showed off a grin of meshing fangs. “S’right. I can re-seal her nice and tight. All’s I need is some virgin blood. Just like all them old stories.”
Loraine’s eyes opened wide. “Wait, what?”
Now the little girl’s fingernails sharpened and slid from her finger tips. Her pupils blossomed and filled her eyes. “Dragons and virgins,” she said, her voice lowering, scraping over itself. She beckoned to Childe. “C’mon over here, boy.”
Loraine moved in front of her son. “No!”
The little girl’s skin darkened and split like the glaze on an old vase as it textured with scales. Her pigtails straightened and angled up into horns. Her pug nose pushed forward into a long snout. “No use,” she said. “They’re coming.”
“Mom?” Childe said.
She reached behind her with both arms and grabbed him, keeping her face to the horror sprouting in front of her. Even as she protected him she understood the futility. “Not him,” she said, her voice flat. “No.”
A gruesome hybrid of girl and dragon stood next to the altar. It reached over and shoved the mess of broken wasp over the side. “Climb up here, child.” It turned its gaze to each of the adults in turn. “It’s the boy, or it’s your world.” It pointed a hooked claw at the diamond pile. They had become gray, wispy. Behind them, a black mass, like a cloud of metal filings, boiled and whirled. “You see,” Dampf said. “The swarm. A million Pompiliads instead of just one.”
George moved over and stood next to Will. Erica said, “What are you doing?” George ignored her and whispered into Will’s ear. Two-Bears jerked back and stared at his friend like he’d gone mad. “It’s what we have to do, Will,” he said. “It’s the right thing.” Will looked from Loraine and Childe to the dragon and back to George.
“Choose little Constable,” the dragon growled. “Choose now.”
Will looked deep into George’s eyes. “You sure?”
George nodded. “Positive.”
Erica’s hands flexed open and closed at her sides. Her shoulders bunched. “I can’t—I can’t see this.” She turned away, tears streaming down her face.
Will took a step toward Loraine. “Don’t you fucking touch him!” she spat. Will lunged and grabbed her. He was trained and she wasn’t. He had her in an arm lock in less than two seconds. Loraine’s throat caught, closed. The strength ran out of her legs and Will guided her to the ground, whispering “Shhh, shhh. It’ll be okay.” She made muttering, mewling sounds behind closed eyes and felt like a bag of angry snakes under his hands.
George moved in and snatched Childe by the wrist. Kiddo yanked his hand away, surprising the hell out of the big man. “I can walk just fine, Mr. Rhodes.” Tears, hot and angry flowed down his cheeks. “I know what I need to do.” Together they walked over to the altar. Childe Howard threw a leg over and boosted himself up. He shot a look at Will, “Don’t you hurt my mom. Don’t you hurt her.”
Will choked back a sob. “I won’t, Kiddo.”
Childe lay down and closed his eyes.
“You save your world, boy,” the dragon-girl said.
George moved in close, his eyes searching, searching. His hand crept up under his shirt. There! Right there! Plain as day! His voice shook, “You said there was another way to seal the door, dragon.” Dampf turned as George struck, stabbing with the shard of broken rifle. It plunged into the weak spot on Dampf’s left breast and pierced the dragon's heart. “Your blood must be shed.”
Dampf reared up and back. It knocked George to the side and clawed at its chest, but the metal shard was buried deep. The ancient magic of iron poured into every cell and filled the great dragon with endings. It staggered back and slumped against the wall. Its head roved back and forth and one claw hand caressed the emerald wall. A moment passed and the dark light went out of its fathomless eyes. Dampf slowly faded, its wings and tail, talons and head, teeth and horns changed shape one last time and only a pile of coal was left.
Will let go of Loraine and stood up. She ran over to Childe and pulled him to her. He cried quietly into her chest while she rocked him and hummed. Erica walked over to George who stood staring at the pile of coal, rubbing a sore shoulder from where he’d fallen. “You knew the whole time?” she said. George craned his neck to look at the diamond pile. It had solidified again. “I didn’t know if I could kill it,” he said. “But I remembered what it said, and I remembered my myths. They always have a weak spot.” He took her hands. “Besides, if I’d been wrong it still would have killed Childe.”
“And you,” she said.
“And me.”
She laid her forehead against his chest. “Jesus, what is this life?”
“Yeah.”
Will walked up, “I totally should have figured that out first.”
George smiled, “Oh, yeah?”
“Have you ever even picked up copy of The Hobbit? Do you know how many times I’ve read that?”
“Actually,” George said. “I never read it. I was thinking about all the Norse shit I read in high school. Fafnir and the Dragon, that kind of thing. It’s always iron and it’s always in the weak spot. Just couldn’t see it until I got in close.”
Tears filled Wills’ eyes. He threw his arms around his friend and they crushed each other. “You’re such a bad-ass,” Will said, pounding him on the back.
“Constable.”
Will let George go and turned around. He was already squinting when Loraine’s fist connected with his nose. He blinked and backed up. It didn’t hurt much but the message was more than conveyed. She was looking at the gun in his holster. “I should kill you.” George opened his mouth to speak, but she held up a hand. “Both of you. I know what you were doing now and I know I should forgive you, but I can’t. Not for a while, so don’t you ask me.” She glared at Will. “Get me and my son out of this filthy goddamn hole.”
Will turned to look at the opening in the ceiling. The blue-white fire had gone out.
* * *
Will made the initial accent. He expected it to be hell after the grueling physical trial they’d all just endured, but the climb was easy, fast even. He put it down to hysterical strength, like the little old lady lifting up the Cadillac. He must just still have been flying on endorphins or whatever. In another minute or so, he would crash and crash hard. Probably sleep for a couple of days, getting up only every now and again to drink water, eat handfuls of potato chips and pee. Getting the rest of them up was just a matter of tying a rope sling at the bottom end and securing the knot tied to the jeep’s bumper. All he had to do was back it up nice and easy and they had their own little elevator.
They all rode in silence as the jeep jounced over the forest floor. Soon enough it found the twin ruts of the old mining road and the going became easier. The sun was coming up now and filled the woods with gray light. Sentinel trees slid by the windows, past five staring faces all replaying their own private horror shows.
Will dropped Loraine and Kiddo off first. She didn’t say a word as she trudged—looking about a hundred years old—up the walk to her house. Tomorrow she and Kiddo would leave and never look back. There was a lighthouse in New England with their names on it. Kiddo hopped out and held the door open for Darwin. He trotted right after Loraine, broken tail crooked at a painful angle. The boy looked at his mother and then leaned into the car. “Constable Will? Mr. Rhodes?”
Will turned around from the driver’s seat. George said, “Yeah, buddy?”
“I forgive you guys even if mom can’t yet. I mean, I get it. I was scared but I get it.”
Erica leaned over quick as a fox and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re an amazing guy, Childe Howard.”
Kiddo blushed so hard George thought his hair would go from blonde to red, but still he had deep circles under his eyes. “Go on in, buddy.” George nodded up at the house. Loraine was glowering down at them, but something in her face had already changed, loosened.
A few minutes later, it was Erica standing in the door of George’s house looking back at the jeep as the two men talked. George stood next to the driver’s side door and Will half leaned out the open window. The sun was just clearing the tree line and it felt like Shard was in for a little Indian summer. They could have been just a couple of guys talking about the weather instead of… What were they all now? Survivors? Something more than that.
“You got enough first aid stuff to take care of that ankle?” Will asked.
“Enough to get me through a few hours of sleep before we go. We’ll hit an ER on the way.”
“On the way?”
“We’re leaving. I’m getting out of Dodge with the lady over there. Think I’ll like Manhattan?”
“It’ll like you, Georgie.”
George put a hand on Will’s arm. “You should leave, too, man. This place’s well and truly dead.”
Will stared through the windshield. It was going to be a fine day on this old street. The Victorians stood proud in the long morning shadows and there wasn’t much sulfur on the air. “I ‘spose your right,” he said. “But not before I get a long, long nap.” He turned back to George. “Just come by the house before you go, right?”
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