A Crown of Dragons

by Chris D'Lacey

  “Oh, gosh, I’d forgotten about them.” She lowered her voice, but I was hovering near the door and could hear every word. “His father put them up when Michael was little. I’m sure he’s outgrown them by now, but it was thoughtful of you all the same.”

  Through the crack of the door, I saw Dennis stand up. “Do you think he has? Outgrown them, I mean?” He went to the sink and ran his mug under the tap.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Mom sighed. “He’s been so … unpredictable lately. Problems at school. Fighting. Suspensions. Arguing with Josie. Arguing with me. Standard teenage fare, I suppose. Annoying, but I can cope with the rage. It’s the other things that bother me more. Hey, you don’t have to do that.” She took a dish towel off him. “Leave the mug on the drainer, I’ll see to it.”

  “Old naval habit. Tidy your berth or do fifty push-ups.”

  “I don’t think I’m as mean as that,” Mom laughed. “Navy?”

  “Marines. I was decommissioned a few years ago.”

  “Goodness, you’re full of surprises,” she said. There was a noticeable purr in her voice. I didn’t need X-ray vision to be able to sense her admiring his muscles.

  “Other things?” Dennis asked, bringing the subject back to me.

  Mom moved across the kitchen and opened the freezer. “It’s family. I wouldn’t want to bore you with it.”

  “No, I’m interested,” Dennis said. “I was a handful for my parents once. Maybe I can help?”

  “I doubt it. Not with this.” A drawer rattled open. “He’s developed some kind of phobia about crows.”

  I could sense Dennis narrowing his eyes. “Why crows?”

  “He had a friend who liked them. A girl. She died recently. Very tragic. I don’t think he’s over it. He was involved in a bad car accident around the same time. Hit-and-run.”

  “Ouch. Did they find the driver?”

  “No. Michael was in the hospital for a fortnight. I’m worried that he’s suffered some psychological trauma. He’s been checked by specialists, but they didn’t find anything.”

  “In London?”

  “No. Right here, in Holton. At a private clinic where the old coal mine used to be.”

  UNICORNE headquarters. My heart skipped a beat.

  It skipped another when Dennis said, “I didn’t know we had specialist medical facilities in Holton.”

  “Me neither,” Mom said. “I have Thomas — my husband — to thank for that. He was ahead of his time with things like health care.”

  I saw Dennis tug his ear. “Michael must miss his dad terribly.”

  “We all do.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to —”

  “It’s all right. Don’t apologize. We’re used to it. Michael clings to his father’s memory more than any of us. He’s writing this incredible story about how Thomas was a secret agent who found a dragon scale in the deserts of New Mexico.”

  Bang. My chest felt suddenly tight, as though someone had slammed a door on my lungs. But it wasn’t just because of Mom’s revelation; it was the slightly muted way Dennis responded to it. “Wow. That sounds kind of … sinister.” He was thinking about it, turning over in his mind the things I’d let slip about Mulrooney.

  Secret agent.

  He was wondering if it might be true.

  “Coping mechanism,” Mom said, slicing open a bag of frozen fries. “We all have them.”

  I heard movement again, Dennis putting a chair under the table. “Do you mind if I have a quick word with him? Nothing important. Just a follow-up to something we were talking about on Saturday.”

  “Be my guest. Look for an angry swarm of hormones in the study.”

  He laughed. “Shouldn’t be hard to find. Thanks for the tea. I’ll be back to start the skimming in a couple of days.”

  I moved out of the front room, fast. I’d barely made it into Dad’s chair when Dennis came in.

  “Hey, soldier.”

  I lifted my shoulders. “Hey.”

  He looked around the room, staring at the Tree of Life picture for a moment. “Are we cool?”

  I shrugged again. “I guess.”

  He moved a pair of socks and sat down on the sofa. “Nice place.”

  “Hmm. It’s my dad’s study.”

  He pointed to the albums where the DVD was hidden. “His vinyl?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Do you play them?”

  “No.”

  “You should. Vinyl. Best sound ever. I collect old records. Mind if I look?”

  “Yes,” I said, before he could move. “Mom … doesn’t like anything disturbed in here.”

  He stared at the stack for a moment, running a knuckle across his lips. “Fair enough. You spoke to Adam on Saturday.”

  “Adam?” The name meant nothing to me.

  “Mulrooney. His first name’s Adam, not Agent. You heard from him since?”

  I shook my head nervously. So he had picked up on the “agent” thing.

  “Only … his phone’s been dead for twenty-six hours.”

  I swallowed hard and was sure Dennis saw it. Where was he going with this?

  He looked down at his left hand, bending back the tip of each finger as he spoke. “I know he was looking after you, Michael. That’s what he does: looks after people. Puts his life on the line for others. Listen, whatever you’re involved in is none of my business. I just want to know Adam’s okay, that’s all.”

  His eyes came up. But what could I tell him that wouldn’t land me in trouble with Klimt?

  A never-ending second ticked by.

  The hint of a smile touched Dennis’s lips. Without another word, he slapped his hands against his thighs as if a bell had rung to end the contest. “No worries. I expect he’s switched the phone off and forgotten.” He stood up and opened the door. “Your mom tells me you’re going to a soccer match tomorrow?”

  So it was on. Harvey must have persuaded her at work.

  “Hmm.”

  He glanced at The Tree of Life and nodded. “Well, try not to fall asleep. See you Wednesday for a match report, yeah?”

  “Wednesday?”

  He pointed upward. “Ceiling. Plaster. Not finished.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Right. See you.”

  And out he went.

  Dennis Handiman, ex-Marine.

  A fly in a now very sticky ointment.

  Harvey arrived on time the next evening, wearing a blue-and-white fan’s scarf. “Holton Rovers,” he said. “Thought I’d get us in the mood.” He handed a similar scarf to me.

  “I’m not wearing that,” I said.

  “Yes, you are,” said Mom. “It’ll be freezing in that stadium.”

  “Stadium?” Holton was a lower league team. The team’s field hadn’t been upgraded in centuries. It held less than five thousand and its main stand was like a converted chicken coop.

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s open to the cold,” Mom said. “I don’t want you getting a chill.” She proceeded to tie the scarf around my neck. Honestly, it was a wonder I’d ever grown up; she’d be tying my shoelaces for me next. She tucked the loose ends of the scarf into my jacket and zipped it up tight. “There. Now you look the part. Will he do?”

  “Absolutely. Go, Rovers,” said Harvey.

  “Soccer: It’s a mystery to me,” Mom said with a sigh. “Well, gentlemen, enjoy yourselves.”

  Harvey smiled and guided me out of the house. “Don’t worry. We’ll have a fantastic time, won’t we?”

  “If you say so,” I muttered.

  He smiled again at Mom. “I’ll have him home right after the game.”

  The joking ended the moment we were in the car. “You’ve spoken to them, haven’t you?”

  I curled my fingers into a ball.

  “Don’t waste energy trying to hide it, Michael. I can read them at the front of your mind. Something to do with a black unicorn.”

  I immediately thought about the tattoo on my ankle and was terrified to see him glance in the
direction of my feet.

  “Relax,” he said. “I expected you to talk to them. Your head’s a mess of fuzzy contradictions. Basically, you don’t know who to trust. What have they ordered you to do?”

  “If you’re so smart, why don’t you read me?”

  He sighed and dropped his shoulders. Even though the temperature was just above freezing, he was still in his academic jacket. As fashion statements went, the soccer scarf and the leather elbow patches didn’t really cut it. He said, “I’m going to a lot of trouble here, Michael. Please don’t disappoint me. Bitterness will only impede our progress. If we’re going to be a team, you have to bury your cynicism.”

  “Who says we’re a team?”

  “They do. Your … unicorn masters. They want you to shadow me while they work out their plan of attack, am I right?”

  I tugged my seat belt. “I don’t care about them, or you, or the scale. I just want my dad to come home.”

  “And I told you, we’ll find him.”

  “How?”

  He flicked the wipers on to wash the windshield. Road conditions were damp, but there was no rain in the air. “Galan aug scieth. Where did it come from, really?”

  I shivered and thought about the DVD. “Dad. They were doing an experiment with him. The agent you nearly killed gave me a film of it.”

  “What kind of experiment?”

  “They hypnotized him and asked him to remember a previous life.”

  The car swung a corner. “And?”

  “Dad started talking in a really weird voice. He used those words. He sounded like a boy at first and then … he was different. His skin sort of changed.”

  Harvey was suddenly hungry for more. “You saw him transform?”

  “Just one part of his arm. Then he went a bit crazy and the film stopped. I don’t know what happened after that. The agent you attacked told me Dad’s mind had disappeared.” I covered my eyes. It was making me emotional to talk about it.

  The car eased over a humpbacked bridge. The Holton Rovers soccer field bobbed into view. Harvey tapped the center of the steering wheel. “The scientists running the experiment, did they use the scale to boost the effect?”

  “I-I think so, yes.”

  “Then your father’s not lost. His mind isn’t wandering the multiverse in search of a home. It’s found a new one — with them.”

  “With them? With dragons?”

  “It’s called transference,” he said. He glanced at my startled face and smiled. “In some of the ancient texts I’ve read, the most powerful dragons were able to enter another being’s mind. They could not only know that being’s thoughts, they could commingle with the host’s entire consciousness and effectively take control of the body. The dragon could withdraw whenever it wished. But if the process was reversed, if a lesser being, in this case a human, somehow opened a pathway to a dragon, then the human might not be strong enough to return. The dragon mind would simply overwhelm it. The scale could easily be a channel for that. It’s my guess that your father’s jumped bodies, Michael, and is living among the beasts, alive in their time frame, experiencing their universe.”

  “He was a boy,” I repeated.

  Harvey nodded. “That’s what makes it doubly interesting. A boy who speaks their tongue and transforms. A human-dragon hybrid. So it can be done. Thank you, Thomas Malone. That’s perfect.”

  Thank you? For what? I had no idea what he was talking about, but at that moment, the car wheeled left and stopped. We were in the parking lot of Churston Vale, the home of the Holton Rovers soccer club. The main stand and turnstile entrances were in front of us. I understood now why the soccer fans at school gave the stadium the nickname the Brewery: On the sign, the V was missing from Vale.

  “Where are all the cars?” I said, looking around. “Where is everyone?”

  Ours was the only car there.

  Harvey switched off the engine. “I told you, we’re not here to watch a game. There is no match tonight.”

  I panicked then and tried the door. It was locked.

  “Michael, what are you doing?” He sighed.

  “Let me out! Why have you brought me here?”

  “I told you, to test your powers.”

  “How?!”

  He unclipped his seat belt. “What are they planning to do with you?”

  “Who?”

  “Michael, don’t make me angry,” he said. He turned on me sharply, his eyes a blaze of purple. I felt a pinch in my head as his mind touched mine. “Your controllers. What are they planning to do?”

  “The experiment,” I said, squirming away from him.

  “The hypnosis?”

  “Yes. They call it TMP, The Mexico Phenomenon.”

  “Mexico?”

  “New Mexico.”

  He grunted as if to say amateurs. “They think they can bring you back from it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He took off his glasses and polished them quickly. “Okay. Get out.” He was about to release the locks, when someone tapped on his window and flashed a light inside the car.

  Harvey slid the window down.

  “Hello. Can I help you, gents?”

  It was a man, quite elderly, with puffy sideburns and eyes like sticky hard candies. I wasn’t sure if he was a security guard or just someone who worked at the soccer club. He sounded more puzzled than threatening.

  Harvey said, “Yes, I believe you can. We’d like to go into the stadium, please.”

  The old man switched off his flashlight. “I’m sorry, sir, but you’ve come on the wrong night. There isn’t even a training session. The next game isn’t until —”

  “No, this is the right night,” said Harvey. He reached out and grabbed the man’s coat, pulling him face-to-face with him. “We need to go into the stadium,” he said calmly.

  The man’s eyes flickered. The sagging skin around them twitched.

  “Open the gate,” Harvey said, glamouring him like Chantelle might have done.

  “G-gate,” the man jabbered.

  “Now,” said Harvey, and pushed him clear of the car.

  The old man staggered toward the main gate, fishing a bundle of keys from his pocket.

  “This is crazy; you’ll get us into trouble,” I said. “There’ll be cameras and everything. We’ll never —”

  “Do you want your father back or not?!” he snapped. For the first time, I began to see a trace of Klimt’s dark warning, a hint of something inhuman coming through. This was Hartland touched by the monster, the dragon slipping out of control. He said, “Tonight is the first step in that process. I can do it without you if I have to. I can break your people, just like I broke them in Zone 16. One way or another, I will have the scale. But if I’m forced to retrieve it alone, you and your father become my enemy. Do you understand me? We do this together or we fight to the death. Which do you want, Michael? Which do you want?”

  “I want my dad back,” I said tamely, scared.

  “Good. Then shut up and do as I say. This is where it begins: Get out of the car.”

  It was the eeriest thing, walking onto an empty soccer field with no reaction from the stands. Although it was dark, the skies were clear. With the help of the moon, I could see from one end of the field to the other, the white lines, the goalposts stripped of their nets, the tunnel between the dugouts that led to the locker rooms, the “chicken coop” looming like a faceless hoodie.

  “What are we doing?” I said, stumbling after Harvey.

  He was making straight for the center circle. In one hand, he was carrying a large leather gym bag that he’d taken off the backseat of the car. One buckle was straining to hold it closed. Whatever was inside the bag had pretty sharp corners. I could see points where the leather was stretched.

  In the circle, he stopped and raised his head. “We’ve got company.”

  I followed his gaze. Freya’s crows were perched along the roof of the chicken coop.

  “This thing with the crows, tell
me how it started.”

  “There was a girl,” I gulped, wishing more than anything she hadn’t followed me. Why didn’t Freya ever listen? “People at school used to call her Crow. She died during one of my reality shifts.”

  “Died?”

  “She changed.”

  He put the gym bag on the ground. “You brought her back — as a bird?”

  “It wasn’t deliberate.”

  He was impressed all the same. “A secondary change,” he muttered, scanning the crows. “That’s quite a feat. What have your masters done to you, Michael?”

  “I don’t want any birds hurt,” I said. And I shouted at the stand, “Freya, stay back!”

  A couple of quiet arks! pierced the night. None of the birds moved.

  “What are we doing here?” I clamped my arms. Mom was right. It was freezing tonight.

  “Pick a compass point.”

  “What?”

  He nodded at the four sides of the field. “North, south, east, west.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it, Michael.”

  I sighed and pointed at the steps of the small north terrace, away behind the goal to my right.

  “Good. I want you to go there.”

  “But we only just —?”

  “I don’t mean walk there,” he said.

  My toes were still inside the center circle.

  “Think back to the day you caught the dog. Did UNICORNE explain to you how you’d moved across the cliffs so quickly?”

  “Yeah, kind of.” Klimt had met me on the headland the very next morning. He’d filled my head with a lot of quantum physics, stuff I couldn’t really grasp.

  “It’s called phasing,” said Harvey. “It’s one of the most powerful tools in a dragon’s skill set. During the search for your father, you’ll need to be able to do it at will.”

  I looked at the stand, some fifty yards away. “I can’t; it just happens.”

  “You can,” said Harvey. I jumped as he appeared in front of me suddenly. A few crow calls accompanied the move. One crow fluttered across the sky and landed on a floodlight pole. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like Raik.

  Harvey said, “First, you have to let go of the idea that everything around you is entirely physical. What do you know about atoms?”