Chasing the Dragon (52 page)

The dress corset and the diamonds in her necklace were strangling her. She dropped the pen and groped for them and started to rip at the
chain. It cut her skin. She couldn't breathe.

"Darling," her mother cooed gently, coming forwards to help her.

"Liles," Max said with her cool dismissal. "Get a grip."

"I can't do this," Lila gasped. She moved back, feeling with her free
hand for Teazle and finding a monster behind her. He felt hard, scaly,
the scales sharp and slicing, and he was burning hot. She pulled away
in horrified surprise and turned to see him grown in size, a white-andblue dragon, every part of him razored and thorned, his mouth and
nostrils pits of burning heat that seared the air.

"Here, hon," her father said, "look who's coming, your best friend,
she'll help you."

Bewildered, Lila turned. Beside her father stood a grey android
with a sleek body like a dolphin's. Her doll-like features smiled
brightly. It was Sandra Lane.

"Hey, Lila," she said, and bent down to pick up the pen. "Let me get
that for you. Won't take a tick." She made a brushing movement with her
hand. The pen flashed out, the blade screamed. There was a wet thud.

The dragon fell in two pieces, blood and fire streaming like lava.
Her mother and father fell like cut flowers. The house and Max bent
and slid into the broad grey blade, taking the guests with them.

The caterers tiptoed around the body pieces, making the faces of
people who are suffering a terrible social faux pas but heroically not
noticing it.

"There ya go!" Sandra was beaming. In her smile was everything
that was honest, open, and friendly. She held out the pen. "Here,
don'tcha want it?"

Lila's heart was thundering. She couldn't breathe. Her face felt
twice its size and she couldn't speak. She choked for air. Tears blinded
her. She began to back away, but the dress tangled with the shoes and
she stumbled into the burning body of the dragon and felt herself
catch light. Sandra came on, holding the pen forwards.

"Here," she said. "Take it. You still haven't signed."

Lila ripped at the dress, tore it, and then started tearing at her skin
as the flames took hold. She was burning. The misery she had been
feeling turned to helplessness as she saw it wasn't only the dress: her
hands, her arms, her body was burning. She looked around for water
and saw only the drinks on the trays passing her, bubbles rising.

"Help me!" She tried to reach them but they were carried away;
nobody heard her, or if they did they just smiled at her as though she
was the perfect bride and hostess as they moved off. Only Sandra kept
coming.

Lila began to pat and then hit herself with the flat of her hands,
trying to beat the fire out, but wherever she put it out it sprang up
somewhere else. And then it began to hurt, but worse than that was
the panic. She tripped up and fell on her ass. The remains of the
flaming dress ballooned around her, knotting around her legs. The
pain grew intense, white hot. She wanted it to be over. Sandra Lane
bent down towards her. "Are you okay? Aww, it's been a long day, huh?
Here. Have a drink." She held out a long-stemmed glass and poured
the contents over Lila's lap. The pure alcohol went up with an explosive whoosh in a gout of searing heat. Lila felt her face melting, running, but it was nothing compared to the misery she felt inside as she
lay there, worthless, useless, powerless. Even so she struggled and she
didn't understand why she didn't die. Wretched, able to do no more
than twitch, she persisted when she longed for it to end. Finally all she
could do was listen.

She heard Sandra Lane's cheerful golden voice: "No, she just won't
sign it. I don't know why, darling. Maybe it's all been too much for
her? You know, she always was a bit of an attention seeker. Oh, always
was since she was a kid, thought she was better than everyone else.
Boohoo my mom and dad are drinkers, yes they are, didn't you know?
God, talk about lush, you could strip wallpaper with her mother's
breath. And as for her father, his only steady job was AA. Uh-huh. Didn't she tell you? And then there was the job she had that was so
much better than everyone else's she never stopped talking about it. I
suppose you must have met her after that? There was nothing she
couldn't do. Yes, she really did say that. Oh, and you won't believe
this, she used to have this crush on that elf, you know the one, yes him
with the ... yes ahaha! Can you believe it? I know." Peals of laughter
from a sizeable group of people briefly overcame the snap and crackle
of flames. "Soo embarrassing! Talk about teenage crush victim. I know!
Oh, he died in some motorbike accident, blam right into a pylon or
something, yes, bound to happen. Mmn. He probably did deserve it.
No, it doesn't look like she's coming. Probably decided to burn to
death rather than do the decent thing. She would, yes. She's selfish that
way. Oh, spiteful seems a bit strong. Well, I could always sign it, I
suppose?"

he deck of the Temeraire was suddenly alive with activity. The crew
rushed to issue the necromancer's orders though they were not
ready for a battle and all they could do was to bring the ship about so
that she faced her attackers head-on, presenting less of a target. The
harpoon in her mainmast, however, did not release in spite of the
change in angle. The line vibrated with tension and gave off a low note
as aboard the other ship an engine worked to reel it in.

Under the angel's grip Zal struggled. Everything was hard, material, for an instant, and then he thought of fading to darkness and slipping into the shadows. He felt a quickening all over, as if he were electric, and then he was free and the angel was staring at him face-to-face.
He held out his hands towards it and saw how deeply shaded his arms
were, almost opaque, the darkened edges of his clothing the pen marks
of an artist's final inking. Wait! I can stop them. Get me to the other
ship and I'll stop them."

The angel stared at him for a long second. Its body, almost comically like that of a snow angel though much less well defined, was shot
with varicoloured lights dotted with brilliant moving points. It looked
like a living nebula, giving birth to new stars.

"God, you're beautiful," Zal said, not realising he was speaking
aloud, but it was such a magnificent sight he couldn't help it. The angel's eyes blazed in a turning storm of brilliance. Their light shone
onto him, and through him. He felt himself dancing around that
light, unharmed but interrogated by it. A strange joy filled him as the
angel knew him, although it gave no sign of change in itself. Looking
at it made a channel open in his chest, through his heart, as though
they had been harpooned together by a magnificent spear. His mind
and body lit up and he felt that in spite of all he had lost he knew himself and was himself more truly than he had ever been. All this passed
in an instant and then he had to look up.

Around and behind the angel in the rigging Zal could see regions of
darkness massing and forming; in fact, he felt more than saw them. They
had a deadly cold about them as they poured themselves together, massing
substance from infinitesimally small holes that were foaming open around
the ship's masts and sails as the Void opened onto Thanatopia. Even the
sailors cowered in fear as they drifted down from above, coalescing with
languorous delicacy into shadows as dark as Zal and darker. They were
pure and uncomplicated hungers, spilling at the necromancer's command,
their will mastered by his infinitely more powerful one.

Zal watched them over the angel's shoulder and saw them whirl
and spin towards the demon's upraised arms. They were dreadful only
because he could feel their power, their lack of any restraint. Only the
fact that their will was subjugated by Xavien's prevented them from
falling instantly on everything that could have been sucked and scavenged from the beings around them. The angel over him flared across
the region of what Zal thought of as its wings with a flash of light that
he fancied was repulsion. He glanced at its face, to see, and looked into
its eyes. His mouth, ever ahead of the rest of him, asked in puzzlement. "Why are you protecting him?"

There was a shudder in the angel and it reached out with both
arms. A blinding flash of dark enveloped him and then Zal found himself standing on the rear of the other ship's ghost-glowing deck, banks
of instruments flashing lights before him, the thunder of her engines vibrating through his feet and two startled crew-elf and demonstaring at him as if he were a living incarnation of evil itself. But
beyond them he saw the helm. A ghost was there, her face dismayed
and surprised as she looked over her shoulder and saw him. He saw her
recognise him as he began to run towards her. Her mouth dropped
open. Beside her, turning, was a faery, his orange eyes vivid against the
black of his skin as they flared wider. His white teeth were shocking as
his lips parted in a half smile of amazement and disbelief. Zal didn't
know them but he felt good about them so he didn't bother himself.
He ran harder, feet sure on the deck's slippery surface as she shook and
groaned with the effort of dragging herself to the other vessel.

The elf ghost at her station reached out with her claws but Zal
dodged her, not knowing if she could catch him or not. The demon
leapt. His fingers passed through Zal's leg.

"Stop!" Zal shouted as he ran, everything in his way. He passed
the line winch and tried to hit the controls, but he was too light and
the ship ground on, quickly closing with the Temeraire's forward
guns. The dark swirling around the masts was visible against the pale
sailcloth bank of her rig as she dipped, nose down, towards their
onslaught. Zal could see Xavien at the rail, the angels on either side
of him in the air forming into shapes like arrows pointed directly at
them. "Stop. Please! Stop! They'll kill you!"

Then it was his turn to falter openmouthed as the figure on the
other side of the captain turned around. His pale hair floated out in the
ship's weak gravity; his elongated classic high-blood features caught
the hoarfrost light and stood out in white planes. The eyes, which had
once been blue, were black, but Zal would have known him anywhere.
It was the first face he had recognised in an age, and in the split second
between knowing it and finding the name that fit he felt all that was
between the two of them and it was such a powerful flood of emotion,
so dense that he slid to a halt in his tracks, grabbing at his chest for a
second, sure now if he wasn't before that he did still have a heart.

"Ilya," he said as the ghost captain snarled at him, her face twisted
with hate, and yelled, "we cannot stop! It will bring chaos!"

The faery was staring at him. Zal glanced at his face, and realised
it was expecting recognition. He had none, so he looked back at Ilya,
almost unable to understand the vibrations that were emanating from
him. Unmistakably it was power, much greater than Zal's own. For an
instant he was thrown by the lack of contact between them-every elf
joined aetheric bodies on meeting-then remembered that here they
were their aetheric bodies and had no other, him literally. "Ilya! Listen
to me. Those things on that ship are-"

"Angels. We have met." He was so calm, but that meant nothing.
There was a time when both Zal and Ilya would have been calm in a
battle and died calm without a trace of feeling in their faces and little
of it within themselves. A smile was almost forming on Ilya's face. "I
thought you were finished." The smile suddenly shone. "But you never
appeared where I was, so I knew it was not so."

"Fire!" screamed the captain, ignoring their exchange.

"Don't fire!" Zal screamed at her.

"Zal?" the faery asked, his tones suggesting he didn't understand,
that they were supposed to be on the same side and that side was
fighting. Zal wasn't sure, but he saw the darkness hanging over the
Temeraire suddenly deepen and he knew what it meant.

"Stop!" He hung on the faery's arm and pushed at the captain
though she shook him off and tried to hit him. "It's not worth you
dying. They'll carry on anyway. Please. I'm begging you. Stop."

The harpoon gun sounded its blast and a bolt went screaming over
their heads, trailing a fine line. One of the angels flared and it flicked
down at the last moment, slamming into the forward bulkhead of the
Temeraire.

"There is more to this than meets the eye," Zal babbled, unsure of
what he was going to say but only knowing he didn't want them to
die and it was nearly upon them. "Give me a chance! If you knew me, if you know me, if you care, then just wait. Wait. You can commit suicide later. There's always later. A few more minutes of an interesting
life. Come on." It was then he realised that he was addressing the only
truly living person on the vessel, apart from himself. He looked back
at Ilya, surprise deepening his curiosity even as his spirit plunged.
"What happened to you?"