Beastly Bones

by William Ritter

  The dragon righted itself and turned back toward us. I had seen artistic constructions of massive carnivores in the museum, big impressive dinosaurs with jaws stretched wide in predatory growls. They did not come close to the reality of this beautiful, hideous beast. The dragon was a lustrous blue green, but caked in dirt and mottled in pale yellows around its face. It had wide, wet, almost bovine nostrils, and a snout lined with bumps and ridges that grew thicker and sharper as they climbed up and over its brow, continuing down its back, like an alligator. Atop its head was a pair of horns, which curved backward like a ram’s. Its scaly hide was stretched taut around its ribs.

  The creature tilted its head and surveyed the three of us hungrily. Its stomach rumbled loudly, and it cringed, clenching its leathery eyelids shut. “I don’t think a pile of dry bones will be enough to satisfy that thing,” I said.

  The creature’s eyes darted open, golden yellow orbs with jagged black slits for pupils. It took one purposeful step toward us, and then another. I tensed to run, panic flooding my veins. Across the hilltop, dust and fossils shifted with each thudding footstep. Among them I caught sight of another motion. In the dim light, atop the bones, a figure stood. Before I understood what I was seeing, the dig site erupted in a flash of brilliant whiteness. “Smile for the camera, handsome,” sang a familiar voice.

  I blinked and the light was gone. The dragon shook its head and reeled on Nellie Fuller. She dropped the spent flash lamp and whipped the plate out of her camera, leaping aside as the dragon snapped its jaws. The camera and tripod splintered into scraps, and Nellie hit the ground in a hard roll. She was quick to recover, but the creature was quicker. In an instant it was looming over her again, those terrible teeth spreading wide.

  “Peanut! No! Bad dragon!” Hudson’s voice faltered on the last syllable, but he made up for it with the loud blast of a rifle shot. The heavy round glanced off the dragon’s snout, and the creature furrowed its scaly brow.

  “You named it?” Jackaby yelled.

  “Told ya I was gonna,” grunted Hank, and another shot rang out.

  The second round caught the dragon squarely in the center of its neck, just under its chin. Neither blow pierced the scaly hide, but they were enough to draw the creature’s attention from the reporter. Nellie scrambled across the hill and into the long trench that Lamb’s men had dug around the site. The dragon narrowed a pair of angry golden eyes on the trapper.

  Hudson tossed the rifle aside and plucked up his shotgun. He shoved himself up to standing and swayed immediately. The dragon’s jaws spread wide, and the trapper let loose a barrel of buckshot into the soft pink of its throat. The creature bellowed in alarm and whipped its thick head back and forth, staggering away a few paces and pawing at its face with its wings. Hudson collapsed to his knees. The shotgun clattered to the dirt as he caught himself with his one good hand.

  The dragon rose to its full height, rearing up with its wings spread wide. They shrouded half the sky in a blanket of dark emerald. The dragon’s pupils were razor slits, and its nostrils chuffed angrily. It puffed out its chest, and it began to make a guttural grunting noise.

  “Fire!” Jackaby yelled. “Fire! Get down—now!”

  He wrenched me off my feet, and the world spun for a moment as the two of us tumbled into Lamb’s trench. My axe bounced out of my hands, and the cold earth and smell of loose soil filled my senses for several seconds as Jackaby pressed me into the dirt. From above us came a rumbling, belching noise, and then a muffled hacking cough. Jackaby’s hold on my back lightened as he rose to peer over the edge of the deep furrow. I slid up tentatively to join him.

  The monstrous dragon was spluttering and twisting wretchedly. Beneath it, Hank Hudson lay crumpled on the ground. “It can’t ignite,” murmured Jackaby.

  Nellie Fuller crept toward us through the trench with her head ducked low. “You’re welcome,” she said, sliding down to sit with her back against the earthen wall. “But I think you might owe me a new camera.” In her hands was the slim tin case that housed her photographic plates. She clicked it shut and clutched it like a prize trophy.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” said Jackaby, still peering tensely over the edge.

  “I couldn’t leave without my picture,” she said, patting the little box triumphantly.

  “We’ll be lucky to leave with our lives,” I said.

  “That didn’t keep you away. I knew you weren’t the safe and happy type, Abbie.” She gave me a wink. “So, what’s our plan?”

  “We need something more substantial than bullets and buckshot,” Jackaby said. “There. Hudson’s harpoon.” The weapon lay beside the trapper, glinting in the soft light of the campfire. “I think that may be our best chance, but we’ll need something to draw its attention before we can get—oh hell.”

  The dragon had regained its focus. It hunched over Hudson and bared its fangs with a deep, echoing growl. My stomach lurched with a primal dread. “We have to do something!” I whispered frantically. “It’s going to kill him!”

  “Keep this safe for me, would ya?” Nellie passed the tin photo case to Jackaby and pushed herself up. She slid a silver canister out of the pocket of her dress. The stubby tube of flash powder was capped with a simple cork. She stood and peered over the ledge.

  Jackaby grabbed her jacket. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m in the newspaper business, sweetheart.” She pulled away and hopped out of the trench. “Drawing attention is what we do.” The little cork dropped to the ground as Nellie launched into a run.

  The dragon regarded her as she approached. Its lips pulled back in a terrible toothy grin, as though her charge amused it. She barreled forward undeterred and let the canister fly. It hit the campfire dead-on, and she threw an arm over her eyes as the whole world went white.

  The brilliant burst remained painted across my eyes even when the flash had died away, and I strained to see through the afterimage. The blast had sent charred, glowing logs rolling along across the dirt, and gradually the outline of the hulking beast gained definition above them. Its head was turning this way and that as it tried to shake off its own blindness. It took me another moment to find Nellie. She was at Hudson’s side, straightening with the harpoon gun in her grasp. The weapon’s stock was broad, its barrel like a bulky cannon, but she held it firmly and spun toward the colossus.

  Nellie Fuller was the very picture of greatness, brave and unstoppable—until the beast’s jaws closed around her.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I watched in horror and disbelief. The creature’s long, wicked fangs sank deep into Nellie’s torso, and the harpoon gun dropped to the ground. With a toss of its head, the dragon whipped Nellie high into the air. She landed atop the fossils with a sickening thump, as lifeless as a rag doll.

  I felt numb. The world was spinning. I was going to be sick.

  The dragon did not pause for a moment, turning back to its prey almost before the woman’s body was still. Hudson, who had seemed so massive and hardy, looked like a field mouse at the feet of a mountain lion. A vivid ruby stain spread from the dragon’s lips and down its scaly chin. It spread its jaws wide, and the air was pierced by a screech. The beast raised its head, and the shrill screech grew louder. It took me several seconds to realize that the sound was not coming from the dragon, but from somewhere far above us. I blinked into the amber sky, my mind still reeling. The grating shriek intensified, and before the creature could react, a red-bronze streak exploded out of the clouds.

  “Rosie?” I breathed. The bird hammered into the dragon’s head at full speed, spinning the colossus off balance and sending it tumbling sideways. Its leathery wings flapped once as it tried to steady itself, but before it could regain its senses, Rosie drove another blow into its chest, leading with her razor-sharp beak. By the time a handful of shimmering emerald scales had clattered to the rocky ground beneath the dragon, Rosie was already circling a hundred feet above, positioning herself for another dive. She could not possibl
y outmuscle the tremendous dragon, but still she cried out and struck at the beast, like a finch harassing a hawk. More scales dropped away from the beast’s chest.

  The dragon was catching on, ducking away from the worst of her attacks, and making lunges to snap the bird from the air when she flew in close. It was far too slow, though, and she wove around the beast, peppering it with aggravating jabs and screeching into the back of its head. Rosie baited it and dodged the monstrous jaws again and again, and the two gradually began to move away from the trapper.

  From beside me came a voice, which at first swept past my senses like a muffled echo. Jackaby shook my shoulder. “Now!” he was saying. “Quickly, Miss Rook!” He climbed out of the furrow, keeping his head low and his eyes on the battling beasts. I followed, scrambling to catch my footing as we hurried over to Hudson’s motionless form.

  “Is he . . . ?” I began.

  “He’s alive,” Jackaby confirmed. “But only just. He should be dead, by all accounts, but he’s stubborn like that. Help me lift him.”

  Jackaby stripped the trapper of his heavy bandolier and the belt of nasty hooks, and we pulled him onto his back. With Jackaby at the man’s feet and me tugging at his arms, we managed to drag Hudson to the edge of the trench.

  “In you go,” my employer instructed. I slipped back into the furrow and tried in vain to get a good handle on the trapper’s bulky shoulders from beneath.

  “What now?” I called up.

  “Catch!” Jackaby gave the body a shove, and I found myself suddenly buried under an enormous pile of Hank Hudson. I pushed and dragged my way out from under him, trying as hard as I could not to abuse the injured man any more than we already had. As I pulled myself free, I found the little climbing axe I had dropped lodged in the dirt beside me. I plucked it up and peeked over the edge of the embankment.

  “Jackaby?” I called. “What are you doing?”

  “We’ve been given our chance, at great cost,” he said. “Slim though it may be, I intend to take it before it is too late.” He was making his way toward what was left of the little campfire and the pile of Hudson’s weapons. “I hope my aim has improved since the last time I fired a harpoon. That was quite the soiree.”

  “Have you got a backup plan in case you miss?” I whispered urgently.

  “Have you been paying attention?” he called back to me. “This is our backup plan—or perhaps it is the backup to our backup plan. That harpoon is still our best shot. If I can’t land it, then I’m down to hoping I give the brute indigestion.”

  I swallowed, turning my attention back to the clashing creatures. The dragon was enraged and battered, with scoring along its rough hide and multiple patches of broken scales. Rosie had left several tattered rips in the giant’s leathery wings as well. She was still circling and diving, but was not moving as nimbly as she had when the skirmish began.

  As she swooped for another blow to the beast’s head, the dragon lunged suddenly and viciously. Rosie ducked beneath the gnashing teeth, but the motion forced her into a shallow arc. The dragon’s long, jagged tail whipped up and caught her as she passed. She was powerless to avoid it, pinwheeling out of control to land in a cloud of dust.

  The dragon roared, deep and thundering, but its triumphant victory call was cut short. I did not hear the weapon discharge over the din of the creature’s bellowing, but I saw, as if in slow motion, the harpoon sailing through the air. It struck the dragon solidly in the chest. A foot higher and it might have slipped through the broken scales to do some damage, but instead our best shot clanked off the dense hide and thudded into the dirt below.

  The dragon swallowed its roar in surprise and turned its golden eyes to my employer. Jackaby tossed the spent harpoon gun aside and drew the dull machete from his belt. Silhouetted against the firelight, it was almost possible to imagine that he was some brave knight from the storybooks. My desperate mind could turn his ragged coat into a cape and the rusty blade into a sword—although it refused to let the atrocious knit cap become a shining helmet. Even delusions have their limits.

  Jackaby stood alone against the looming dragon. “Well, Peanut?” he called out. “Shall we finish this?”

  The dragon licked its chops. It stretched its sinewy muscles and advanced. The creature was fifty feet long, four stories tall, with teeth like longswords and talons that could tear through heavy timbers like toothpicks. Jackaby stood unwavering as it approached.

  It was fifty yards away, then thirty, then ten, its limbs pumping rhythmically like massive pistons. Its wings scraped deep troughs in the dirt to either side as it came at him. Jackaby did not flinch. His eyes were focused on the few gaps in the towering monster’s armor that Rosie had afforded us. He might as well have been gauging where to throw a pebble at an oncoming train. The dragon’s golden eyes flashed with fury and hunger, and even from across the site I could hear its stomach rumbling in anticipation of its next meal.

  A thought sparked in my brain. I took a deep breath as it built, held tightly to my axe, and vaulted out of the trench. The dragon’s head reared back as it prepared to lunge at Jackaby, the scales along its muscular neck glistening blue green in the last of the flickering firelight.

  I threw myself forward into a frantic dash over the uneven terrain. Ahead of me, a flaming, soot-black log had rolled from the little campfire. Without breaking stride, I skewered it on the point of my axe and leapt the last few feet to my employer’s side. With a graceless heave, I lobbed the firewood, axe and all, into the dragon’s mouth and slammed into Jackaby, allowing my momentum to knock us both beyond the path of the creature’s snapping jaws.

  Almost as soon as we had hit the ground, Jackaby was back on his feet, pulling me to mine. His urgent tug threw me back the way I had come. I careened forward, half stumbling, half racing, until I was close enough to dive back into the trench. I landed hard in the furrow and spun around. Jackaby was not far behind. Above him, the dragon seemed not to have noticed what had happened at first—but then the smoldering log slid down its gullet. I watched the creature’s face contort. It craned its emerald neck and stared at its own distended belly. Jackaby leapt. He looked as though he might fall short—right up to the moment the dragon exploded.

  It is odd to think back on it now, but in my memory there is no boom or bang to accompany the eruption—rather the sudden, deafening absence of sound. The blast knocked me flat against the ground and sent Jackaby flying over my head to slam into the opposite wall of the trench. He nearly tumbled beyond it, but managed to half fall, half pull himself down into the furrow beside Hank Hudson. Several seconds after the initial blast, in the deadened silence of the aftershock, we began to feel the heat.

  I have never before, nor ever since, seen a fire like that dragon’s flame. When I was young, I used to clamber into bed while the maid was laying out the linens. She would hold the ends of a bedsheet and toss it high in the air, letting it slowly drift down on top of me. The fire hung in the air like that sheet, rippling and billowing, and then settling gradually downward with surreal gentleness to blanket the landscape. It moved constantly, hypnotically, folding together ruby reds and brilliant oranges. Flickering white wisps shot past eddies of fluid gold as the undulating sheet descended.

  I lay in the dust, stupefied as the bright, spreading expanse draped toward us. Whether from the pressing heat or the blinding light, my eyes snapped shut. I held my arms out in front of my face instinctively, waiting for the searing wave of flames to land. The heat intensified for what felt like an eternity, but then abated, easing into a dull warmth without the sting of a burn. I opened my eyes.

  For a moment I could not understand what I was seeing. Above me hung a young woman with a golden complexion. Her long brown hair had slipped free from a loose bun, hanging disheveled about her temples. Her face was smudged with dirt, and a dark gash ran along one cheek. The image repeated in scores of long mirrors, like a shattered-looking glass. I blinked, realizing that the face was my own, and refocused my eyes
. Rosie’s golden wing stretched over me, sparkling in the dancing light of the flames.

  To either side of us, the trench had become a wicked channel of fire, but already the flames were beginning to ebb. Whatever supernaturally volatile compound had fed the explosion, it was not eternal, and the licking tongues of flame found little purchase on the dusty earth. When they had died down to a shallow burn, Rosie pushed herself up and cocked her head at the crumpled body of Hank Hudson. He had been half buried in a cascade of dirt from the side of the furrow, but a faint wheeze escaped the trapper’s lips.

  Satisfied, the golden bird lifted herself up and shook a spray of sparkling embers from her back. She hobbled unsteadily as she stepped away. Her foot had been injured in the fight, but with two great sweeping wing strokes, she launched herself gracefully into the darkness. I could not see well enough to tell if the sun was still setting or if the stars had come out. A dark curtain of smoke hung heavily above the dig site, and in just a few moments Rosie had vanished into the black as well.

  Jackaby was the next to recover. “That,” he said sitting up, “was remarkably effective. Are you all right, Miss Rook?”

  I nodded. “I think so, sir.” I pulled one leg free of the loose dirt that had slid over it and quickly patted down the hem of my dress where an ember was threatening to scorch its way to my legs.

  “Did you anticipate the full combustive potential of that maneuver?” he asked.

  “Maybe not on that scale,” I admitted, brushing off the dust and soot that had settled over my shirtwaist. “You said it was all dragon on the inside, but it didn’t have any of the instincts . . . which means it didn’t know about the flint. With all that natural fuel inside it, I figured it was like the flash powder—explosives just waiting for a spark.”