by James Bennet
“Let go, bitch…”
The words rolled in a growl off his tongue – less eloquent, perhaps, in dragon form, but still approximating rough speech. Nevertheless, the wind whipped the insult away, dashing it against the canyon walls, lost, futile echoes. In reply, the Queen wound her tail around his neck, restricting his movements. His wounds sang as her talons sank deeper, the cliffs throwing his agony back at him. A chill that had nothing to do with the Alps pressed in around him, electricity slicking his throat. Unable to breathe, to draw fire, he strained to focus on the ground. It was approaching fast. Needles jagged from the canyon floor, the rock bottom of one ravine a tier of them, marching hundreds of feet down into the Adriatic hinterland, into Italy, Slovenia and Hungary. Just one ravine, except this one would kill him, and here he’d rot, a snow-covered carcass on a high crag.
He had known this was coming. Shock could not erase the understanding. He’d known it since he’d seen the worm-tongue sigil scratched on his door. A conflict. A fight. Rampant combatant. Their coming together was as natural as the confluence of rivers, the outcome of their duel just as certain.
Still…
Ben bunched his muscles and clawed upwards, his wingtips brushing the precipice. Snow swirled, maddened by the storm, which pressed into the narrowing chasm like smoky fingers into a glove. Battle-locked, the two beasts dropped into the depths, the speed of their descent lashing the sky.
Looking down, Ben made out individual stalagmites. They looked hungry. Honed. He had time to wonder how the Queen had found him and time to remember their psychic link, their minds fused by other-worldly energy, sparks trailing from her brow to his. Was her presence the circuit between them, transmitting thoughts and memories? In the British Museum Atiya had told him that she was a huntress, sniffing out his lair, and as her present tempest engulfed him, Ben revelled in senses beyond his own, in the shared touch of divinity. A final, flash-in-the-pan revelation.
I am going to die.
Needles of rock rushed toward his spine. A crazed soprano wailed in his ears, the air whistling past him, forced aside by their tangled bulk. The world blurred, a grey-white sheet come to smother him, and he closed his eyes, bracing for collision.
It wasn’t his life that flashed before him, but his utter failure.
Rose…
Ben gasped. His eyes flew wide. The pressure on his shoulders, bearing a murderous weight, seemed heavier in its absence. The Queen had released him. She shot into the heights, a spear thrown up a smokestack and out of sight, her tail striking scree from the bluff. Ben flung out his plated limbs, his tendons straining as he slowed his fall. Wings scraped the packed snow. Claws gouged granite. A low growl rumbled in his chest. What was her game? She was playing with him! Haunches tensed, he pushed against the boulders on either side of him, his tail sweeping over the jags, sharp teeth deprived of his flesh. He thrust himself up, catching the rising gusts in the crevasse. Pumping hard, he cleared the lip of his would-be grave, letting the wind carry him. In the distance, a darker stain, a slender length of curled horns and sleek scales. Wings of formidable black.
With a roar, Ben went after her. He banked around the shoulders of peaks, slumped pillars that held up the sky. Lightning danced all around him, the crackling wake of the Queen. Blue-white tongues licked at the rock face. Phosphorescence flared under snow. The sweeps boomed with scattering static. He wove with Atiya into the mountains, seeing her appear behind another crag, soar around another summit. The storm pressing down on his back, the clouds torn by outcrops and spurs, Ben followed her, well aware he could be chasing his death. Why let me live in the museum just to kill me now? The thought whispered through his adrenalin. If our link is a two-way street, then she knows that I’m on to her. She just wants to throw me off her tail… Wings beating a muffled drum, he managed to catch up. Grunting, he reached out to grab the tail in question, pull her out of the sky.
“Don’t tell me,” he said, through gritted teeth. “I’m not even worth—”
Her body was a whip, cracking at his touch. She moved like silk through greased hands, spinning around to confront him. Her wings fanned up, her rear legs thrusting out, crunching into his snout. Stunned, he flapped backwards, teeth jarring. She gave him no time to recover and leapt towards him, stealing the advantage. Through his stupor, Ben stretched out his forearms, claws spread, grabbing her foot before it connected. Atiya hissed, squirming in his grip, her wings beating snow from the cliffs, shoving blasts down at him. He swivelled, swinging her around, claws twisting as he went. Her hiss became a shriek as he let go, sending her reeling into the darkness. She flailed in mid-air and Ben drew a breath, summoning his inner gases. Jaws wide, he roared flame in her direction.
Heat rippled across her hide. Rippled, but did not burn. The Queen manoeuvred into a dive, dropping out of danger. Fire washed steam from the mountainside. She spiralled down into the folds, fog closing around her.
Ben swore and raced in pursuit. Down here the terrain was a jigsaw of narrow ridges, a Swiss cheese of chasms and caves, all of them thick with vapour. Warmer air rushed through his gills and he gave up the summits with some regret, reluctant to take his chances between the slopes below them. If Atiya wanted to shake him off, she wouldn’t find it hard. Instead she stayed directly ahead, her wings spread and level, skimming over the gorge. Losing him wasn’t her intention. The Queen had faced him for a reason. If this was a game, she wanted to win.
The clouds boiled above him, sulking on the peaks. The gorge echoed with thunder, lightning flickering as Atiya descended into the mountains, leaving her storm to burn on the heights. The popping in his ears told him that he was sinking lower, his wings puffing snow from buried ledges, flurries floating in the still. Up ahead, the Queen arched her back and dived again, her knife-rack spine vanishing in mist.
Their gradual descent wasn’t lost on Ben. The Alps might seem like the ends of the earth, but for all their remoteness they were far from deserted. The world had long since ventured above the snowline. As he lost altitude, the dangers increased, and worry prickled through his annoyance. Having sprung one trap, he was wary of blundering into another. Where was she leading him? There could be climbers, skiers on the lower slopes. Resorts. Chalets. Towns. He told himself that most people would put him and his quarry down to a hallucination, a vision brought on by thin air and cold, but he couldn’t count on it. With the Lore broken, all bets were off. And Atiya had no respect for the Lore. Her antics in New York and London proved that she didn’t give a shit. She pre-dated the Guild by millennia. What were their edicts to her?
The rising temperature served as a warning. Ben hurried after her, his mind now set on damage limitation, on forcing her back to the heights. He burst from the fog like a depth charge, dropping into a valley. Scarred cliffs rose on either side of him, bordering a broad snowy basin. Outstripping her own shadow, Atiya fleeted across the vale, heading into the sunset. Red and gold lined the horizon, the mountains black against the sky. Land glimmered far below. Rivers cut the hazy green, veins bloody with twilight.
Ben glided in the Queen’s wake, another shadow on the untouched expanse. Panic fluttered in his breast as he made out the structures far below, the squat brown shapes of cabins. A telephone pole beside an ice-black road. Parked coaches with garish logos. The air rushed harder through his gills, pulling him closer to his prey, and he roared at her to stop, to turn back, give up the chase. Atiya paid no attention.
Catch me if you can…
Lungs bursting, Ben propelled himself on, leaving behind a miniature blizzard. He shook himself off, his shadow whisking over a plateau. Atiya looked back at him – barking triumph – and speared downwards, heading for the place where the land ran out, frozen fangs overhanging the escarpment.
A large wooden lodge perched on the cliff. Its wide viewing deck, designed to hold a hundred tourists, was thankfully empty – chairs stacked on tables, umbrellas folded. Ben was too far away to see if people stood behind the tall windows
. Considering the deepening dusk, he thought not, his suspicions confirmed as he sank lower and saw the cable car – probably the last one of the day – embarking from the little station house a few yards distance from the lodge. The car was a bright yellow square, the colour a precaution against the weather. It was no precaution at all against dragons. Twenty-odd people, dressed in puffy jackets and salopettes, dangled in the carriage over the gulf, a drop of several hundred feet. Skis bristled in their midst like cocktail sticks on an East Village bar. Woollen hats bobbed in time with their chatter and laughter. They were having a real blast. And then came a gurgling scream. Some of the passengers whipped off their sunglasses, blinking as they took in the scene outside the carriage windows. More screams sailed to Ben’s ears, and now his eyesight seemed too keen as he saw the terror on their faces, the Queen’s shadow falling over them. But Atiya was looking back at him, taunting him, his inability to catch her. Too late, her snout snapped around as she sensed the obstruction ahead. The cable car creaked and swayed as the people inside it shuffled backwards, packing the furthest limits of the space. Like a virus, the panic spread. Ben felt the crowd staring out at him, shock and disbelief darting over his wings and foot-long fangs.
“Atiya, no!”
His cry was a smoky roar. The passengers answered in a unified howl. Both warnings were useless. The Queen’s momentum, swooping down from the peaks, her wings held close to her flanks, prevented any chance of slowing. Nevertheless, she made the attempt, her wings fanning out to lift her bulk upwards, a black comet shooting over the track cable. Ben held his breath as she cleared the car – but then sparks showered off the end of her tail as its bladed length scored across steel. Reverberations travelled from the wheel truck and down the attached metal strut. Some of the passengers in the car lost their footing and fell over. Others cracked heads and there was blood, bright in the jostling crush. Now the screams became warbles and sobs, punctuated by the silence of dread. The land see-sawed far below, a green and white blur.
Sparks snapped and jumped. Atiya spun awkwardly away, her momentum carrying her onwards, her tail leaving a spiral of smoke. The cable car tilted further to one side as the thick strands of wire uncoiled, twirling and twanging apart.
Gravity hurled Ben after Atiya. The Queen, finally slowing, looked up to meet the collision, the impact spinning them out into space, debris showering around them. Ben grabbed her and she squirmed in his grip, her hind legs scrabbling for his belly, for the softer parts of him. Sucking in to avoid evisceration, he made a fist of his claws, clouting her across her elegant snout. He clutched at her horns, determined to saddle her, bring her down. She bucked under him, a wild thing, and veered for the cliff face, snarling. Rubble scattered, their combined weight crashing into rock. Ben wheezed in the churned-up dust. The wind went out of him, forcing him to release the Queen, and she flung herself clear, wings unfolding like a last-minute parachute. Lightning crackled. Atiya crackled. She put some distance between them and glided around in a circle, waiting for his next move.
A hollow twang resounded in the gulf, making the decision for him. The track cable split in two, its frayed ends snickering into the dusk. Flailing metal lashed the precipice, the cliff face barking echoes. Broken parts drizzled down, clattering on the roof of the carriage, the wheel truck bouncing off into the gulf. The cable car lurched, hung for a moment on a winding thread, and then followed, a one-way elevator to destruction. Screams trailed through the chill.
Blood pounding in his ears, Ben went after the car, wings tucked in, tail straight, snout aimed earthward. He let gravity claim him, wrenching him down. The ground opened up below, a snowy patchwork of doom.
The cable car fell, spinning in the updraughts, a yellow streak against the towering cliffs. Death’s piss. Time shrieked between his clenched teeth. If the carriage hit the ground, he would watch, helpless, as it burst into a thousand pieces, spilling glass, wire and metal. Spilling crimson across the snow.
People were already gathering down there, tourists running out of their cabins to stare at the marvels the night blew in. He felt their horror wash over him, a curdled wall that encompassed the cable car and the giant beast behind it. In that moment the foot of the mountain held them all, breathless and frozen, their rational world caving in. Fear – sweaty, rank and all too human – assailed Ben’s nostrils. The people below saw him. Through their shock, he felt their belief.
Someone managed to shake off the spell. Pointed and shouted.
To hell with them.
Ben shot downward, stretching out his claws. Closing the distance, he grabbed loose wires, the mangled mess of the cable car strut. Sharp edges bit into his flesh, hot with spewed electricity. His wings snapped out, catching the air, punched by the sudden pressure. The weight threatened to pull his limbs from their sockets, but he held on tight, his rear legs curling in, his tail winding around the windows to stop the cable car’s spin.
The ground lurched, leaping for its prey. Wings fanned snow across the gawping crowd. People wailed and threw up their arms, simultaneously blinded and stung. Just before the carriage hit the ground, its descent gradually slowed. It skimmed inches over a knoll, dislodging sheets of ice and stone, and then came rattling and bumping to earth, skidding down a churned-up furrow of slush, coming to a halt in the drifts, a shipwreck on a bone-white shore.
As the snow settled, sobs and groans rose under the sky. The crowd held its position, no one daring to come any closer, to rush and search for survivors.
Ben unwound his tail from the cable car. He glanced inside it, a great golden eye peering through the tines of shattered glass. He saw injured and comatose people, but no obvious deaths. Shock, not grief, suffused the scene.
Above him on the cliff, a black speck, darker than the settling night, sat watching him. It was impossible to tell what the Queen was feeling, but he didn’t think it was remorse. There was only one way to find out. He bounded across the snow and once more took to the air, zeroing in on the ice-bound heights.
SEVENTEEN
The Queen was waiting for him. She perched on an outcrop, a turret-sized spit of rock that looked like a pebble under her claws. She was a hole punched in the night, a doorway to a deeper darkness, a numinous corridor leading down years. Her flanks rippled and steamed. Tail swishing back and forth, she waited for Ben to rejoin the fight.
They met with a sound that shook the mountain. Velocity threw them into the air, bloodstained confetti swirling around them. Ben’s tail skimmed the station house, the roof exploding in glass and wood. The Queen sailed under him through the debris, her body yielding to the collision, letting gravity pull them down. The grappling beasts swept over the summit and crashed down a steep slope, smashing the piste into flurries. Flags splintered, scattering like toothpicks. The drifts melted under their heat, an avalanche of slush taking them down and over and over in a thundering embrace.
Ben laced his claws around the Queen’s neck, her weight wrenching him into the torrent. The world spun. Sky, rock, snow. Sky, rock, snow. Atiya snapped at his snout and neck, his roars buried in the landslide. Locking her legs in his, her tail snaked around him in cold, vicious intimacy. Steam shrouded the sky. The scene was a blur diffused with sparks. And Atiya was changing as she rolled, casting off her bestial form like summer clothes shed by a lake, her black mass melting in his clutches. Mind chained to her transformation, Ben felt himself changing too, his flesh a reluctant mirror to her will. His wings crumpled inwards, his haunches and tail shrinking. Their tangled claws gave way to tangled arms and legs, slender and human-shaped. In a violent clinch, they tumbled over another cliff, fell a hundred feet or so on to a flat, icy ledge.
Mud and snow gushed over the precipice, dripping off gigantic icicles and splattering the ledge like dirty tears. Atiya straddled Ben in the slop, her bare breasts pressed against his suit, which, just as Von Hart had promised, had changed fluidly with him, providing a sleek barrier between them.
There was no such barrier be
tween their lips. She sealed her face to his, her tongue working between his teeth, cold and sure and sensual. Electricity shot through his body, tingling in his cheeks, his fingers, his balls. The wind knocked out of him, skull jangling, he found himself responding, drawing on her like a diver for breath, his hands sliding up her muscled thighs, instinct and longing usurping his caution. The Queen was purring deep in her throat, a pleasurable drone vibrating in his bones. Vibrating in the flesh between his legs, summoning blood and betraying him with hardness.
Her purr deepened, becoming staccato, coins falling on glass. It took Ben a moment to realise that she was laughing. Cheeks burning, he pushed her off him. Or she let herself be pushed.
She didn’t so much walk as drift across the snow, her feet hovering inches off the ground. He tried to ignore the ache that travelled with her, his flesh mourning the loss of contact even as it recoiled in shame. She turned and looked down at him, a shapely figure cut from the night, her eyes sparkling with amusement.
“Ah yes, your woman,” she said. “Your poor mortal dhillo.”
Ben didn’t recognise the word. The meaning, however, was clear, a jibe carried on sepulchral tones.
“Fuck, are you nuts?” He climbed to his feet, brushing slop from his chest. “You could have killed those people!”
The storm above them was passing, he saw, the clouds dispersing in dusky rags, giving up the fight. Moonlight painted their shadows on the cliff face, illuminating her sharp-boned face, the way her lips twisted in what Ben guessed was dismissive regret.
“Unfortunate.” Her shrug brought home the fact that he was dealing with a creature who was utterly inhuman. “Yet you managed to save them.”