His partner’s screams stopped abruptly. The meat puppets left his broken, bleeding body on the pavement and began moving to the other side of the car. The moustached Trooper fired off a few more rounds, then grabbed the radio handset on the dashboard to call for backup. They surrounded him before he could pull it to his mouth, and brought him down.
Georgia felt a single talon against her neck.
“You were a good warrior, child,” the Dragon breathed into her ear. “You fought almost as well as your predecessors.”
The Trooper crawled out from under the meat puppets, his face bruised and bloody. He scrambled for the radio again, but then the meat puppets were on him, pulling him back. He struggled to the side of the car and grabbed something. The hinged lid over the gas tank, she realized. He opened it and fought against the meat puppets to unscrew the cap. They pulled at him with blood-covered hands and crowded over him again. The Trooper grit his teeth, lifted his handgun and inserted the muzzle into the open gas tank.
The Dragon’s talon pressed against the skin of Georgia’s neck and began to scrape across her throat. Georgia closed her eyes. She heard a muffled gunshot. The explosion was so loud it left her ears ringing, the light bright enough to penetrate her eyelids. She opened her eyes just as a shockwave of hot air knocked her down.
She lost sight of the Dragon. Her arms were free. A billowing cloud of smoke and flame rose from the wreckage of the patrol car. The meat puppets were on fire. Burning fragments of metal fell from the sky and pummelled the parking lot, the porch, the roof.
Georgia struggled to her feet and ran limping back into the room, over the corpses and sticky pools of blood and brain matter that covered the carpet. The shotgun lay where Egg Foo had dropped it by the bed. She lifted it and spun around. The Dragon was right behind, Roy Dalton at her side. She didn’t see Egg Foo anywhere.
Georgia pumped the final shell into the chamber, aimed for the Dragon’s head and fired. Roy stepped in front, intercepting the shot. The meat puppet’s head burst into a pulpy mess, and its body was blown backward into the Dragon. Spattered with blood, the Dragon pushed the limp corpse to the floor and advanced on Georgia.
She flipped the shotgun over, gripping the barrel tight, and ran at the Dragon. She swung the shotgun like a baseball bat. Its heavy wooden stock connected with the Dragon’s face. A long, sharp tooth fell out of her mouth on a strand of blood. The Dragon spat onto the floor and regarded Georgia with narrowed eyes, wiped her scaly chin with the back of her claw.
“My turn,” she hissed.
Georgia didn’t wait for her to make a move. She swung the shotgun again. This time the Dragon caught it and yanked it from her hands. She held the shotgun in one claw and with the other cleaved it easily in two where the barrel met the stock. Then she tossed the pieces aside.
Before Georgia could run, the Dragon lashed out, backhanding her across the cheek. She flew across the room until she felt the wall slam against her back, hitting so hard she bit her cheek and tasted blood. She stumbled against the bedside table, tripped over a dead meat puppet and fell. She looked up from the floor and saw the Dragon coming toward her.
The doorway. It wasn’t far, but with each step the Dragon took, her chance of escape dwindled. She pushed herself to her feet and ran for the door, her knee aching and threatening to lock up on her. The Dragon swiped at her, her talons slicing nothing but air.
Georgia kept moving, pushing herself through the doorway. In the parking lot outside, she saw the flaming shell of the patrol car surrounded by charred corpses. The stench of burning meat and metal was overpowering. She turned on the porch, ready to keep running. grey arms wrapped tightly around her from behind. Over her shoulder she saw the oversized sunglasses on Egg Foo’s slack, dead face.
The Dragon walked calmly out of the motel room. “You still do not understand, child. There is no place to run. No place that will be safe. This world is mine. It always has been, and always will be, mine.”
Georgia fought the meat puppet’s hold on her, but it was too strong. “It’s not,” she said feebly. “It’s not yours.”
The Dragon laughed. “Oh, but it is. Do you truly believe I came into this world with no greater destiny than to be killed by George the dragonslayer? Do you think that is all I am? I have had seventeen hundred years since then to consider the full measure of my destiny.”
The ground shook suddenly. Cracks split the asphalt of the parking lot as if another sinkhole were forming.
“They came to me first as dreams,” the Dragon continued. “Whispers of the great dragons from ages past. Only later did I realize these were not dreams, but memories. They told me of how I had trod upon this world in many forms throughout the ages, each time reborn with no memory of the past, each time murdered by the dragonslayer before the memories could resurface. But not this time. This time I lived. This time I
remembered
. Who I was. Who I am. What I had to do.
“Even your father helped in his own small way. When I came to his home, he fought so hard to protect a book in his possession that I knew it must be of great importance. I took it with me when I was finished with him and your wailing mother. Such a wonderful book! Its pages revealed to me my many forgotten names. Fafnir. Jörmungandr. Vritra. Illuyankas.”
The cracks spread across the parking lot, and Georgia quickly realized it was no sinkhole. Instead of buckling, the ground swelled upward in a titanic dome of earth, stone and concrete. Something was being pushed up through the ground. Something so big that as it grew it knocked the burning patrol car onto its side and sent it scraping across the lot.
“And Tiamat,” the Dragon said. “Mighty Tiamat, from whose bones Marduk created the world.”
The mound exploded. Georgia flinched as chunks of concrete rained everywhere, pounding the porch roof and pummelling her car. Long white shapes flew from the hole in the ground, tumbling upward into the air.
“Ever since the memories returned, I have walked this world with a purpose,” the Dragon said. “To be whole again. To reclaim what is rightfully mine. They sang to me from where they were buried, called me to them, desperate to be found. I dug each of them from the earth myself, freed them from their bonds. Now they heed
my
call. They follow me, eager to be rejoined. To be whole.”
Georgia watched the white shapes fly up out of the hole and lock together like puzzle pieces. A horrible coldness settled over her when she realized what they were.
“The bones of Tiamat,” the Dragon said. “The bones of the world.
My
bones.”
The deep trench in the back room of the Inkheads’ warehouse. The Dragon hadn’t been hiding when she sent the meat puppets after her. They’d been a distraction to keep Georgia busy and give the Dragon time to finish digging.
She thought back to the roadside diner outside Buckshot Hill. The meat puppet there, the fry cook, had come from the kitchen. If she’d had time to check the kitchen before the building came down, would she have found a similar trench there? The roadhouse in North Carolina, a bordello in Memphis, an after-hours nightclub in Little Rock, all the other buildings she’d seen destroyed by sinkholes after the Dragon killed everyone inside — had there been bones beneath them all?
Her ancestors had been wrong. They’d thought entropy was something that emanated from the Dragon herself, but it wasn’t. It was a result of her actions. She’d dug up the bones of the world.
The levitating bones continued fitting together, forming a skeleton that grew bigger and bigger. It took Georgia a moment to make sense of the shape they were creating: a long, serpentine spinal column that stretched across the parking lot and into the road beyond; great fingers of bone rising from its back like wings; six stocky legs that ended in fearsome claws; a neck that extended hundreds of feet into the sky.
A dragon. A true dragon.
“It took centuries to complete my task, gathering the bones from every corner of the world,” the Dragon said. “And at last I have the final piece.”
The last bone that rose up from the hole was larger than the others. Much larger. So big that now Georgia understood why the entropy had spread so far from the Inkheads’ warehouse. It was an enormous skull, at least forty feet long, with more than half its length devoted to massive jaws, each tooth the size of a sword and just as sharp. At the base of the snout, eye sockets like two black caves stood beneath a ridge of small, rounded horns. A fan of longer, sharper horns extended from the back of the skull like a crown of daggers. The skull sailed into the sky and affixed itself to the end of the long neck.
Staring up at the completed skeleton, it all suddenly made sense to Georgia. Why the Dragon kept coming back. Why there was always a dragonslayer to fight her. It was as if the world, having been forged in an act of dragonslaying, had been imprinted with the pattern of its creation. A pattern it repeated endlessly through the eons. Marduk and Tiamat, over and over. Fighting forever.
The Dragon stepped off the porch and approached the titanic skeleton.
“Now that the bones are whole once more, I can shed this pathetic body, retake my true form and devour this entire wretched planet. I find it fitting that my triumph will be the last thing the dragonslayer sees, and equally fitting that yours will be the first meat in my new stomach.”
Georgia struggled against Egg Foo again. She had to stop the Dragon before it was too late. If she took over the new body, she would be too big to fight and much too powerful to kill.
The meat puppet adjusted its grip, bringing a stiff arm up to her neck. With the other, it reached into its pocket and pulled out a switchblade. One grey thumb hit the button on the hilt, and the blade snapped open. It held the knife against her cheek and tightened its arm around her throat.
The Dragon lifted her heavy claws toward the bones.
Georgia knew she had to act fast. She reached behind her to scratch at the meat puppet’s eyes, but only hit the top of its head. A flick of the switchblade made her stop. Her cheek stung, and she felt a drop of blood roll from the cut. Then she realized why she’d missed. Egg Foo was just a small, skinny teenager. She was bigger. Probably weighed a little more, too. If she could get the right leverage . . .
She hooked her foot behind its ankle and yanked its leg out from under it. She fell backward with it, and as she landed on top of it she managed to get free. She rolled off it and saw the switchblade had fallen from its hand. She grabbed the knife and spun toward the parking lot.
The tips of the Dragon’s claws sank into one of the gargantuan ribs. Her reptilian face twisted into a look of ecstasy. She was transferring her consciousness into the skeleton the same way she infected and controlled the dead, Georgia realized.
The bones trembled. Dark smoke clouded the space inside the ribcage and began to spread out along the joints and limbs.
Behind her, Georgia heard the meat puppet struggle to its feet. She sprang off the porch and ran for the Dragon. The Dragon turned to her with a hiss, and Georgia jammed the switchblade into her chest. It sliced through her cloak, her skin, and sank almost all the way to the hilt before it stopped. The Dragon screamed and let go of the skeleton. She fell twisting and shrieking to the ground.
Georgia threw herself on top of the Dragon, grabbed the hilt and leaned on it with all her weight, driving the blade deeper. The Dragon spat up a small geyser of blood and kept screaming. Her claws lashed out, slicing the skin on Georgia’s shoulders and back. She felt blood dripping down her arms, her spine.
More infection
, she thought, but it didn’t matter. She was already infected. It was worth it to see the Dragon suffer. More than worth it.
From the corner of her eye she saw Egg Foo coming at her.
“Don’t even try it.” She twisted the blade and made the Dragon scream again.
Egg Foo stopped.
“You will not kill me, child,” the Dragon said. Blood dribbled from her lipless mouth.
“Guess again.” Georgia leaned harder on the knife.
The Dragon sucked air through her teeth. “You will not because I am the only source of what you need. We are the knot, remember? The tangle from which neither can break free.”
“You don’t have anything I could possibly want,” Georgia said.
“Are you so certain? Consider your mythology. The Garden of Eden. What am I if not a serpent?” One claw disappeared into its billowing cloak sleeve, then reappeared a moment later clutching the brown leather pack she’d taken from Georgia’s purse. “What is this if not your apple?”
Georgia stared at the pack.
“It sates a hunger in you even I do not understand,” the Dragon said. “What, I wonder, will you do to taste it again?”
Georgia’s body trembled. Her gut knotted. Her veins felt empty, yearning, as the addiction howled inside her. She fought to control herself, to resist the temptation, but the jones was strong, and more than that, she could feel the infection moving through her system. She didn’t have much time before she succumbed and became just another meat puppet.
She could stop it. Just a taste would do. It would curb the infection, quiet the jonesing . . .
She reached for it, but the Dragon moved it out of her reach. “Kill me and you will never have it.”
Georgia leaned on the switchblade again. “Give it to me.”
Grunting with effort, the Dragon hurled the leather pack over Georgia’s head. Georgia watched it sail across the parking lot. It landed beside the burning frame of the patrol car, so close that the pack’s edge instantly started to smoke and char.
“No!”
“Fetch,” the Dragon said.
Georgia leapt to her feet and ran after it, the Dragon’s mocking laughter hanging in the air behind her. She bent to pull the pack away from the fire. Heat seared her arm, curling the downy hairs there. The leather was hot in her hands, but as she backed away with it from the burning car, she saw little damage had been done. She unrolled the pack quickly. Everything was there: the bag of heroin she’d bought from Egg Foo, even the needle she’d jammed into the Dragon’s foot. The Dragon had kept it all. An ace up her sleeve.