“I’m sure he would want you to think so,” Lamb growled. “It does finally explain why he pilfered that tooth, which was bad enough. This, though . . .” He waved a shaking hand at the site again. “This is unconscionable.”
“You still believe Owen Horner is behind this?” Charlie asked.
“Of course Owen Horner is behind this! His trick with the foot bones didn’t fool anybody, so he had to step up his scheme. The staged bite marks and the false footprints—they’re better this time, since at least he made them look a little more believable—but they’re still so painfully obvious. I don’t even know what nasty trick he managed to pull on my associates, but I’ll see that he answers for that as well.”
“Mr. Horner is a scientist, just like you,” said Charlie. “I can understand why you might suspect him of stealing bones, but why would he vandalize them?”
“To conceal that he has stolen them,” Lamb barked. “The left ulna, the clavicle, and several ribs, from what I’ve been able to inventory so far. I’m sure he was hoping I wouldn’t notice amid all the devastation. I would say he was a fool for thinking he could get away with such a brazen offense, but with a lousy lawman like you patrolling the valley . . .”
“Hey! That’s enough,” I said. Lamb sneered and rolled his eyes.
“Come have a look at these,” said Jackaby. He had wandered off while the scientist was raving, and now he stood over a deep imprint in the soil. Charlie and I joined him. Lamb just shook his head and sighed loudly.
“Waste your time if you like. They’re fakes, just like the last ones,” he grunted.
“They’re not,” my employer said when Charlie and I were close enough to make out the print clearly. It bore the same three wicked talons and single hind toe as the others. Although not quite as long as the fossil’s, each of the front toes in the imprint was easily larger than my employer’s entire foot.
“Sir,” I said, swallowing hard, “do these tracks look even bigger than the last ones to you?”
Jackaby plucked the scale from his pocket and held it out in front of the damaged skeleton. He squinted and turned his head this way and that.
“Well, Mr. Jackaby?” Charlie prompted. “Unlikely as it sounds, this certainly looks like it could have been done by a creature a lot like this one.” He gestured to the scattered dragon bones. “Are you satisfied?”
“Rarely.” Jackaby finally looked up. “But they match too closely. As the saying goes, ‘Here, there be dragons.’ ”
Even as the words left his mouth, the crunch of wood splintering and the terrified bleating of livestock erupted from the farm below. My employer and I exchanged a momentary glance—whether the look in his eyes was alarm or excitement, I could not say—and then we leapt into action.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We had to weave around a tide of free and panicked goats as we made for the source of the clamor. Another terrific crunching sound issued from the direction of the barn, followed by the clatter of wood collapsing. As we reached the bottom of the hill, Horner burst out of the farmhouse and joined us. His hair was a mess, and his eyes were wild with confusion and concern. I could hear Lewis Lamb taking a deep breath to begin his customary accusations, but then we rounded the corner and it all left him in a whoosh. The wall of the barn was carved open as if it had been made of paper. The hole reached nearly to the roof, at least twenty feet high. On the far side of Brisbee’s field, the trees shook as something massive vanished into the forest, leaving a ragged trench across the pasture in its wake.
We stared for several seconds. It was Lewis Lamb who finally broke the silence. His voice had lost all of its bluster and rage, and he might have been a child waking from a nightmare. “Wh-what is that?” I followed his shaking finger to yet another red, wet mess within the debris of the barn. The carnage was of the same sort as the prior sites, although the leftovers were larger.
“If I were to hazard a guess,” Jackaby said, peering in, “I would say cows. Sadly, it seems Mr. Brisbee will need to buy his milk from town in the future.”
“It’s all my fault,” said a voice from the back of the savaged barn, trembling and feeble. Charlie picked his way carefully into the building and Jackaby followed. They returned, supporting Hugo Brisbee between them. He seemed unhurt, but his knees had gone weak and he had trouble keeping himself upright.
“Help me get him up to the house,” said Charlie.
“I made it angry,” Brisbee half mumbled to himself. “I shouldn’t have done it.”
“What did you do?” Jackaby asked.
“I thought I was doing right by my Maddie. I thought . . . I thought maybe they would write about it all across the world. That maybe I could get her name in all the papers. She only ever wanted to get out of this valley . . .” He glanced around nervously. “It was me. I took the foot bones. I set them up, pressed them down with my boot. I—I thought it would make a bit of a mystery, get folks out, the way that first article brought you all out here. I put them back afterward . . . but it was too late.” He shivered, turning his pale face apologetically toward Lamb, who had not taken his eyes off the forest. “It’s all my fault. I woke the thing up, and it took my sweet Madeleine. N-now it’s out to get me. It came and . . . and then the cows . . .” The farmer stopped speaking and began to whimper.
“Yes, I imagine that was a rather unpleasant spectacle,” said Jackaby, glancing back over the sticky mess. “But I need to ask you a few questions, so please try to remain calm. If you do not remain calm, we may all be devoured in a horrifically violent manner by that very same medieval monster that consumed your cows–or possibly by one of the two similar monsters also presently at large. Are you calm? Mr. Brisbee?”
“He’s fainted,” said Charlie.
“Well that’s not helpful in the least.”
“Help me get him up the steps.” They carried him up to the farmhouse and set him down on the sofa.
Nellie Fuller was racing down the stairs as we returned to the hallway, nearly tripping over her tripod in her haste. “I heard a noise,” she said. “Have I already missed all of the excitement?”
“Nothing of consequence,” answered Jackaby. “Stay indoors, however, unless you’re enthusiastic about the prospect of being eviscerated. Now then, Miss Rook, Mr. Barker, we need to get to Hudson’s.”
“What?” I said.
“You want me to stay put?” Nellie asked, cocking an eyebrow at my employer. “Darling, have you met me?”
“You’re both mad!” I said. “You really think it’s safe to go out in the open right now? Remember the bit about being eviscerated?”
Jackaby shook his head. “Miss Fowler . . .”
“Fuller.”
“Miss Fuller, the first eyewitness to this beast who hasn’t been cut to ribbons is currently unconscious in the drawing room. You can go wherever you like, but your story lies with him.” He turned to me. “As for us, we have two options at present. We can seek out the help of the one man we know who has experience hunting in these hills, pursuing big game, and containing dangerous supernatural creatures, or we can leave Mr. Hudson out of it and fend off a dragon on our own. It isn’t that I don’t think we’re capable—I’m rather scrappy in a pinch—but I don’t want to explain to the trapper that we went dragon hunting without him, do you? That just sounds like a poor choice. Come on, then.”
We reached Hank Hudson’s hut by midmorning, and my heart sank. The building didn’t look like it had been especially robust to begin with, but now the western wall had been reduced to scrap, heavy oaken beams torn in half and bricks scattered into the yard. A thin trail of smoke crept from the crumbled remains of a fireplace, and the floor was dark with blood.
“Hudson?” Jackaby crossed the threshold carefully. The roof sagged as he did, and half a dozen wooden shingles slid off it, clattering into the rubble. He knelt and inspected the pool. “It’s human,” he said somberly.
Charlie nudged a brick aside with his foot and stooped to retr
ieve a blue-green disc from underneath. It was a match in tone to the one in Jackaby’s pocket, but as wide as his entire outstretched hand.
“There’s another in here,” said Jackaby, moving deeper into the crumbling house. “And another. Varying sizes. And what’s this?” He had reached a tight corner of the wreckage, where an upended table was the only thing keeping a heavy section of wall from collapsing farther into the room.
“Do be careful, sir,” I called. He braced himself on the table leg and reached in to pluck something from the crevice beyond. As he straightened, the table slid and the wall groaned angrily. He was half a step ahead of the structure as the room folded in on itself like a house of cards. The back end of the roof slammed into the floor where he had just been standing, sending a cascade of tiles down into the blood and bricks. From somewhere deeper inside the cabin came a panicked screech.
“That wasn’t the trapper,” Charlie said.
“Rosie,” I said. “That’s his bird. She’s still inside. Maybe Hudson is with her?”
Charlie did not meet my eyes. He was looking at the blood on the ground. There was an awful lot of it.
I swallowed hard. “Well, we can’t just leave her. She’s dangerous, but she doesn’t deserve to be crushed and buried alive—and there’s no telling when the dragons might return. By the look of all the scales around here, there may be more than three. Sir? Sir?”
Jackaby was staring at something in his open palm, a small handful of fluffy orange hairs. “One,” he said. “There’s only one. It isn’t different dragons at all . . . It’s one, and it’s growing. Rapidly.”
Rosie let out another screech, and my employer snapped into action. “You’re absolutely right, Miss Rook. You should attend to the bird—it’s the decent thing to do. I’ll see if I can locate any of Mr. Hudson’s more useful hunting supplies. We’re going to need every possible advantage we can find. Charlie, I need you to return to Brisbee’s farmhouse and tell everyone to run—to get as far away as possible. Then ride to every farm you can reach and tell them the same. We need to evacuate Gad’s Valley. Go! Go!”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
From around the back of the trapper’s cabin, I spotted a slim window I could just squeeze through into the back of the house. It was dark, but the light from behind me caught a bronze beak and glinted in Rosie’s wide eyes. She hopped anxiously from one foot to another. The wall behind her cage had buckled, and the rafters were collapsing. One wide timber had landed against the cage, bending the cork-coated bars. I could see deep cuts along the beam where Rosie had sliced at it in vain.
“All right, girl,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I’m going to pull you out of here, but nip even one of my fingers off, and I’ll leave you to rot, understood?”
The rust-red head cocked to one side.
“I guess that will have to do.” I took hold of the cage and pulled as hard as I could, but it did not budge. The heavy timber had pinned it in place, and the metal was only bending farther as I tugged. Rosie’s eyes bore into mine, but she made no move to strike at my hands.
I took hold of the golden pin in the cage door and pulled. “This is a terrible idea,” I said. It stuck, but I could feel it shifting very slightly. “This is a terrible, terrible idea.” I tried again. Rosie’s head began to bob, and when the pin slid free at last, she exploded past me, screeching deafeningly. With the door unlatched, the cage bars crumpled under the weight of the girder. The whole room shook and then shrank with a loud, crackling roar. The bird and I both pressed back, away from the falling wood and masonry, into the far corner. When the rumbling stopped, I found myself in a dusty, oblong space no larger than a broom cupboard with an agitated wild animal who was, I realized in hindsight, too large to have fit easily through the window anyway, and far too excited to sit calmly while I figured things out.
Rosie screeched and flapped, and a metallic golden feather the size of a carving knife thudded into the wall beside my head. I caught a talon across my forearm, and another sharp blade grazed my cheek. I winced from the pain, shrinking away as far as I could, but there was nowhere to retreat. As the bird thrashed, a small hole opened in the roof above us. We both looked up at the sunlight in surprise, and then Rosie burst upward. Two quick strikes with her razor-sharp beak, and she was out, screeching into the cloudy sky. I stepped forward to climb after her before the whole place came down on my head, but something pulled me backward. I turned. The hem of my dress was pinned between the confounded timbers. I pulled and tugged, but the fabric was thick and sturdy, and the woodwork unyielding.
The ceiling above me creaked ominously, and my head swam. I tried to breathe slowly and not panic, but I was finding it hard to think. The air was clogged with dust, which spun like a dervish down the beam of sunlight, and the sting of the cut across my cheek throbbed. The ungrateful bird had left me with nothing but a painful reminder of just how dangerous a wild thing can be, which did not bode well for my upcoming dealing with a genuine dragon. I shook my head. With a sudden clarity I realized the bird had not left me with nothing. I reached behind me and felt the feather lodged in the wall. It was stuck deep, but with a little wiggling I had it free. In moments I had trimmed a rough edge off my skirt and clambered out onto the collapsed rooftop.
My eyes adjusted to the light, and I breathed clean air in gulps and gasps for several moments before making my way along sliding tiles back down to solid ground.
Jackaby poked his head out from a ramshackle shed and cocked an eyebrow up at me. “Where’s the bird?”
I sighed heavily and pointed up at the sky. Rosie had long since vanished.
“You released a Stymphalian bird in the middle of Gad’s Valley?”
“Technically,” I said, “I released a Stymphalian bird in the middle of a collapsing hovel.”
“Well.” Jackaby nodded. “That would not have been my first choice, but good work not being dead, I suppose. See if you can keep it up. This whole ordeal is about to get quite a bit harder.”
“Oh,” I said, doing my best not to sway visibly. “That sounds grand.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Hudson’s horses had to be the most steadfast animals I have ever met. Jackaby fastened their harnesses to the trapper’s cart, and the muscular animals only tossed their manes patiently in the breeze while they waited. Neither the dragon attack nor Rosie’s screeching had spooked them. They were tall, healthy beasts, and the trapper clearly cared for them well. A hard lump caught in my throat as I wondered who would look after them now.
“The man he bought them from told Hudson they were descended from the battle stallions of the Trojan War,” Jackaby said as he finished buckling the reins and patted the flank of one of the noble animals. “Even hinted at some local legend that their ancestry could be traced back to the mares of Diomedes, which would’ve made them the second addition to his menagerie with a Herculean history. A salesman’s fib, I’m afraid, but I never had the heart to tell Mr. Hudson the truth.”
“They certainly seem to be something special,” I said, allowing Jackaby to help me up the step into the driver’s box.
“Well, of course they are.” Jackaby climbed in after me. “He expected nothing less of them, and treated them accordingly. They were never given the option to be anything but exceptional.” His mouth turned up in a smile, and he gave me a meaningful glance, then clicked the reins and set the horses trotting off down the drive, leaving the remnants of their master’s house behind.
Jackaby had tossed into the cart a motley assortment of sharp instruments and sturdy nets, but the collection did not look up to the challenge of subduing a twenty-foot dragon. “Is this everything you could find?” I said, peering back into the cart.
“I’m afraid so. Mr. Hudson’s usual arsenal appears to be somewhat depleted. He must have moved some of his finer tools in anticipation of the hunt before he became the prey. We may never know, unfortunately. We will make do with what we have.”
Jackaby had not y
et expressed any sadness for the loss of his friend, but I could tell that it was weighing heavily on him. He had taken off his silly knit cap, and dark wisps of hair hung across his brow and framed his storm-gray eyes. Peculiar and harmless though he often seemed, there was an intensity to my employer that I never wanted to find myself up against. As I watched the shadows settle over his expression, I was silently glad that I was not the rogue dragon.
The cart rumbled up to the farmhouse by noon, and Jackaby pulled it into the shade of three broad pines. “What makes you believe the beast will return here?” I asked. “So far it’s chosen a separate target for every attack.”
“Because it must. This is where the bones were exhumed.”
“Was Brisbee right, then? Is this some sort of spiritual revenge for disturbing the remains—like a curse or something?”
“Nothing like that.” He stepped down from the cart.
“Then what?” I glanced at the thickly forested hills to the left and right before climbing down after him. Even with the sun high in the sky, the landscape seemed to afford far too many shadows in which a massive monster could hide.
“Shh.” Jackaby put a finger to his lips, peering up toward the hillside. “Do you hear something?”
I strained my ears. “Voices,” I said.
Jackaby nodded. He turned away from the hill and stalked up to the farmhouse, instead. Inside, he found Charlie Barker facing off against Lewis Lamb, Owen Horner, and Hugo Brisbee. Charlie turned as the detective approached. “Please, Mr. Jackaby, perhaps you can talk sense into them.”
“What on earth are you still doing here?” Jackaby demanded. “There is an impossible predator of monumental proportions bound to descend upon this property at any moment!”
“I told them as much.” Charlie sighed. “Mr. Horner refuses to leave. He says that the bones were his big discovery.”
“You two can’t possibly still be arguing about professional clout!” I said.
“It’s not like that,” Horner said. “I was here from the start, and I’ll see it through to the end. Bones like those are the reason I got into this business, and you and I both know we’ll never find anything like that specimen again, not if we dig till the day we die. I’ve already put up with this ornery bastard for the past week.” He jabbed a thumb at Lamb. “A new monster should be a change of pace, at least.”
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