The Dragon's Tooth (5 page)

Cyrus blinked. Sweat dripped off the man’s nose. His pale face was blotchy, like old dough. “You still look afraid,” Cyrus said. “Your hands are shaking. What’s going on?”

Skelton looked over at his small friend.

“A touch of spunk,” the man said, nodding. “But only a touch. His odds are still terribly low.”

“What does he have to sign?” Skelton asked.

“Him? Nothing.” The small man raised a small selection of the papers. “You’ve signed the appointment already, and I’ve found the paperwork to demonstrate that you have the necessary relationship to do so, though leaving it with me in the first place would have been wiser than hiding all of this in the walls. I can supply the Order notary and testimony of fitness and volition. As a Keeper, I can witness the declaration.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small, heavily creased paper card. Unfolding it, he extended it to Cyrus. “Read that aloud, please.”

Cyrus looked down at the slip, and then back up at the strange scene in his room. “What’s going on? Those papers were in my wall?”

“It was my wall first,” Skelton said. “I gave this place to your parents years ago.”

“Just read it,” said the little man. “They haven’t enforced the original oath in generations, but I’d like to cross all the
i
’s and dot all the
t
’s in this situation.”

“It’s the other way around,” Cyrus said.

“We’ll cross and dot both. Read it, please.”

“No thanks,” said Cyrus, backing toward the door. “I’m gonna go now.” He tossed Skelton’s keys onto the bed and felt for the doorknob behind him. “See ya.”

The keys smacked into Cyrus’s chest; Cyrus caught them at his waist. Skelton smiled and shook his head. “Those keys should have been your father’s. It doesn’t right old wrongs, but they’re your burden now, Cyrus Smith. The race is yours. The world is yours. Run until Death’s your friend, and then set those keys in another’s hand. Not before then, hear me? Once you give them, you can’t get them back. And not a soul should know that I’m setting them in yours. I’ve got more to give, but that’s a start.”

Cyrus looked at the little man on the bed, and then back into the empty eyes of Billy Bones.

“Don’t worry about Horace here,” Skelton said. “His family’s kept more secrets than a dozen graveyards. And as for me, well, dead men tell no tales. At least, not usually.”

Horace scraped the stack of papers off his lap, hopped to his feet, and slid the card into Cyrus’s hand.

Skelton nodded. “Now read, boy. We’re doing what we can to make sure you’ll have the help you need.”

Cyrus swallowed and looked at the keys. His hand closed around them, and for the first time, they felt cold and heavy. The old man was crazy, no question. “I don’t want these.”

“Don’t you?” Skelton asked, creasing his forehead. “I’ve seen enough of you to know you’re no coward. You want to walk away? You want to live a life without knowing what those unlock?”

Cyrus looked around his ruined room. He wanted the men to leave. He wanted his wall back.

Exhaling slowly and ignoring the old man’s eyes, he dropped the keys into his pocket and moved quickly across the room toward the warped mirror door to his closet. He could always give the keys back in the morning. In the right kind of mood, he could even throw them into one of the pasture streams. He pulled out a pile of fresh clothes and turned around.

Antigone, wide-eyed, was standing in the doorway.

“What on Earth,” she said, looking at the wall. She turned to the sweating old man, her eyes taking in the tattoos. “I hope Dan has your credit card.”

“The girl, I assume?” The small man straightened his suit. “If both are present, only one needs to declare; the other can offer assent. Are you sure you want both included? You have the right to name two, but I can see definite benefits in selecting only one.”

“Both,” Skelton said. “They’ll need each other.”

“Who are you?” Antigone asked the little man. “What are we talking about?”

Cyrus slipped back to the door and held up the small card. “It’s in another language,” he said.

Antigone took the card from him and squinted at the printed letters. “No, it’s not. ‘Please declare aloud …’ What is this?”

The little man stepped forward. “Excuse me, miss,” he said. “If you don’t mind, the Latin is actually preferable in the current situation. We’re going above and beyond.”

He plucked the card from Antigone’s hands, flipped it over, and returned it.

“Pronunciation isn’t important. Do your best.”

Stepping back, he tucked his thumbs into his vest and waited.

Antigone stared at the words in front of her. “Are you serious? What is this supposed to be? I’m not saying it.” She handed the card back to Cyrus.

Cyrus looked into the tired eyes of William Skelton.

“You really want us to read this?” he asked. The keys were heavier in his mind than in his pocket. Antigone didn’t need to know that he was keeping them. Not yet.

The old man nodded.

“Okay,” Cyrus said. “I’ll read it if you answer our questions.”

After a moment, the old man nodded again.

Cyrus handed his stack of clothes to Antigone. “How do you know Mrs. Eldridge?”

“We were schoolgirls together.”

“Funny,” Antigone said. “Har, har.”

“It’s close enough to the truth,” said Skelton. “Met as kids. Hated each other since.”

Cyrus swallowed. For some reason, his throat was tightening. He didn’t really care about Mrs. Eldridge. “How did you know our parents?”

William Skelton sighed. “For a while, I was their teacher. For a while, I was their friend. I met them before they married. Helped them through some tough times. Made some tough times tougher.” His eyes dropped to the carpet.

“And?” Antigone asked. “What happened?”

The little man coughed loudly.

Skelton nodded. “It’s late,” he said. “You can hear the whole story tomorrow.” He pointed a tattooed finger at the card. “Do an old man a favor and read the paper. Soon enough, I won’t be keeping any secrets.”

Cyrus and Antigone looked at each other. Antigone nodded. Cyrus cleared his throat, raised his eyebrows, and began to read:
“Obsecro ut sequentia recites …”

Pausing, he glanced up. William Skelton was staring at the ceiling.

Horace, the little man, was pursing his lips expectantly. “Go on.”

At first, Cyrus read slowly, stumbling and tripping as his tongue attempted to string the odd syllables together. But after two lines, his voice found a rhythm, and he could almost believe that he understood his own strange chanting. He smeared words, blended, missed, and guessed at words, but he got through it, and when he did, he held the card out to the little suited man.

“Keep it with you,” the man said. “Miss Smith, do you offer assent?”

“Um, sure,” said Antigone. “I guess.”

Hunching over the bed, the man checked his watch and made a note of the time on a large piece of paper. Then he signed the bottom with a flourish. “Billy Bones, that’s all I need. Know that I am risking a great deal for you.” He scraped all the papers into a pile, and then he shoveled the pile into an enormous leather folder. When he had finished, he shook hands with Billy, shook hands with Cyrus, bowed to Antigone, then picked a bowler hat up off the wreckage of Cyrus’s shelves and popped it on his head. “Good luck and good night to you all,” he said. And leaning to one side, he lugged the enormous folder out into the night.

Billy Bones slumped onto the end of the bed and put his head in his hands.

“Go now,” he said quietly.

Cyrus and Antigone backed slowly through the doorway.

The old man looked up suddenly, and his face was gray and bloodless. “Wait. Music. Your record player. I couldn’t get it to work.”

“It’s broken,” Cyrus said. “Always has been.”

“No, it’s not,” Skelton said. “Not for you. Not anymore. Turn it on for me.”

Antigone’s hand closed around her brother’s wrist. Cyrus stared. The old man was getting stranger. Sleeping next door could be too close.

“Please,” Skelton said. “Just flip the switch.”

Cyrus walked to his dresser, glancing back at the man on the bed. He’d already put a record on. John Coltrane. Cyrus had never listened to it. He’d never had a record player that worked. Flexing his fingers, he reached down and slid the power switch with his thumb. A spark tickled its way up into his hand, and the vinyl disk began to spin slowly. The mechanical arm lifted off its rest and swung into place.

The voice of a smooth sax filled the room.

When the door to 111 had closed safely behind them, Cyrus turned to his sister. Antigone widened her eyes. “Can this get weirder?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” Cyrus said. “I bet it can.”

four

THE BEREAVED

C
YRUS OPENED HIS
eyes—there was no point in having them shut—and rolled up onto his side, clawing at his forearm. But that meant he couldn’t scratch his calf. Splaying his toes, he put them to work, too.

The lights were off, and his sister’s breathing was even. The curtains were glowing, backlit by the Golden Lady—he wondered if Dan even knew how to turn her off. The air-conditioning was humming, and the bed squealed every time he moved. He had kicked all his blankets onto the floor at least two hours ago.

They had only watched Antigone’s movie four times, but he hadn’t been able to stop replaying it in his head. His sister’s movies were always odd. The clicking, flashing images made new things seem old and forgotten. They made his dark, smooth-skinned mother seem painted and imagined. Her sleeping face had somehow steadied the camera in Antigone’s hands, and the picture had stopped bouncing and shifting and had become still. His mother’s hair, almost invisibly white, had grown since their last visit, and Antigone had made an exception to her rule, as she always did on Mom days. She’d let Dan take the camera and had entered the frame herself, holding her mother’s hand, brushing her mother’s hair.

Cyrus should have been there, sitting on the other side of the bed.

And then the movie had cut to the car, to the flooding windshield, to Dan’s stress, to the yellow truck, to Cyrus in the parking lot, to the rocking bolts of lightning.

Cyrus clawed at his calf and then sat up in bed, switching on the lamp between the beds. An old boxy phone with a tangled cord sat beside the lamp. The lightning bug glass stood on its side in front of it, catching the light. For a moment, Cyrus stared at his sister, breathing beneath a mound of blankets.

His dirty clothes were in a pile by the door. He stood up as quietly as the bed would let him and went over to fish in the pockets of his shorts. Out came the key ring. Out came the small paper card.

Antigone hadn’t moved. “What are you doing?” she asked suddenly.

Cyrus sat back down on his bed. “You awake?”

“Take a guess.”

“We never read the English,” Cyrus said. “Do you want to hear it?”

Antigone didn’t answer.

Cyrus fingered the key ring in the lamplight. He flipped open the silver sheath and rubbed his tingling thumb across the sharp, chilly tip of the tooth. The key ring had been in Skelton’s pocket when the Lady had become golden. It had been in his own pocket when he’d touched the record player.

Antigone sighed loudly. “Tell me I’m not hearing keys. No. Don’t tell me. Just turn off the light.”

“Fine,” Cyrus said. He dropped the keys on the bed. “But I’m reading the card first. Listen.”

Antigone filled the room with a fake snore.

“ ‘Please declare aloud: I hereby undertake to tread the world, to garden the wild, and to saddle the seas, as did my brother Brendan. I will not turn away from shades in fear, nor avert my eyes from light. I shall do as my Keeper requires, and keep no secret from a Sage. May the stars guide me and my strength preserve me. And I will not smoke in the library.’ ” Cyrus looked up. “ ‘Translation approved, 1946.’ ”

Antigone flopped onto her face. “Now you’ve done it. No more smoking in the library.” She pulled her blankets over her head. “Turn off the light.”

Cyrus set down the card with the lightning bug, clicked the lamp off, and sat bouncing his knees in the dark.

“How can you sleep right now?” he asked.

“I can’t,” Antigone muttered.

Sighing, Cyrus rocked back onto his bed and stared at the dimly golden ceiling.

“Whatever it is you’re tapping,” Antigone said, “feel free to stop.”

“What?” Cyrus asked. “I’m not tapping anything.”

He held his breath and listened. Someone, something,
was
tapping. Faintly, beyond the window. Three taps. Scrape. Three more. Scrape.

Antigone sat up. “That’s really not you?”

Cyrus shook his head. Both of them slipped out of their beds and crept toward the window. When they were on their knees, with noses above the sill, Cyrus hooked one finger in the curtain and peeled it back.

A large, dark shape was moving slowly through the parking lot, sweeping the white cane of a blind man in front of him. He reached the yellow truck, felt it with his hand, and then kept coming, finally stopping six feet from the pair of motel room doors. He was wearing an enormous coat and a heavy stocking cap pulled down snug around his scalp. Two large ears stuck out from the sides of his head like a pair of skin satellite dishes. His eyes weren’t covered, but they were closed. He tapped the ground and turned his head from side to side, listening. Then he sniffed at the air with a flattened and crooked nose. His jaw was broad but uneven, visibly scarred even in the dim golden light. His long, slender cane was in his left hand, tip down, and he began bouncing it slowly beneath the weight of his arm.

“What’s he doing?” Antigone whispered. “He’s not really blind, is he?”

Cyrus put his finger to his lips.

“He can’t be,” Antigone said. “He walked right to Skelton’s room.” She nudged her brother. “Open the door. See what he wants.”

Cyrus looked at her. “Yeah, right,” he whispered. “You’re crazy.”

“He’s blind. He might need help.” Antigone tried to stand, but Cyrus grabbed on to her wrist. The blind man had pulled something out of his coat.

“Gun,” Cyrus said. “Gun!” He forced Antigone back onto her knees. Four short, gaping barrels—two on top of two—all big enough to fire golf balls. Pistol-gripped. Black. Ruthless. An extra handle stuck out to the side of the bundle of barrels. A small cylindrical tank was screwed into the back of the gun above the man’s grip.

Cyrus’s mind was frozen. His nails were digging into his sister’s arm. Should he yell? Should he warn Skelton?

The man tapped his rod on the ground three times. Six inches from Cyrus’s face, a shape slid past the window toward room 111. And another.

Antigone was trying to shake her arm free. Cyrus let go. He wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t blinking.

The blind man stepped forward, raised a heavy arm, and cracked the butt of his gun against the door to 111.

“Bones!” the man yelled. “Friend Billy! Give it up. The good doctor doesn’t take kindly to thieves.”

Cyrus gasped, finally breathing. He pushed his sister away from the window. “Call the cops. Go!”

Antigone dropped to the carpet and crawled away.

Skelton’s voice drifted through the wall. “That you, Pug? Maxi’s letting you do the talking now? Come on in. I’ll get the door.”

The floor under Cyrus’s knees shivered, a high-pitched whine vibrated the glass in front of him, and the door to 111 exploded off its hinges. The big man slammed into the nose of the truck before spinning up onto the roof of the wooden camper.

Smoke snaked out into the golden parking lot. For a moment, the world was still. The blind man’s legs kicked slowly on the asphalt. His arms were draped on the old truck’s bumper and his head lolled against its grille, blood dripping from his nose and lips. His hat was gone. His cane was shattered.

Turning his back to the window, Cyrus slid down beneath the sill.

“Yes,” Antigone said. Her eyes were on him, peering up between the beds. “An explosion. And guns. That’s what I said. The Archer Motel, room one-eleven. No, I won’t hold.”

She hung up. For a moment, Cyrus, breathless, stared into his sister’s frightened eyes, and then William Skelton’s voice roared through the wall.

“Come kill the killer!” he shouted. Something heavy crashed to the floor. “Betray the traitor. Rob the thief! Who wants to die with Billy Bones?”

Antigone dropped to the carpet beside Cyrus and lifted the curtain.

“Is he dead?” she asked. “Did Skelton kill him?” Her voice was low, but her body was shaking.

Cyrus swallowed. “I don’t know,” he said. His sister was hanging on to his leg. He could barely feel it. “I don’t know,” he said again. “Don’t know.” Stop it. He blinked, trying to clear his head. He couldn’t be like this. This was how animals became roadkill. He had to do something. Wake up. Should they get under the beds? Should they run?

“Come on now, lads!” Skelton bellowed. “I know you can take more than that. Or can’t the doctor’s puppets kill an old man?”

Cyrus pulled himself back up to the windowsill. The blind man was on the ground beneath the yellow truck’s bumper. He wasn’t dead. His left arm still held a piece of his broken cane. His right hand still gripped his gun. He raised it slowly.

There was no sound of gunfire, no exploding black powder. Each of his barrels belched a burning white sphere, corkscrewing forward, braiding flame, tracing spirals in the air like racing sparklers.

Two tall shapes leapt into view, moving quickly, smoothly, more like animals than people. One vaulted easily over the truck. The other jumped onto the top of the camper, landing in a crouch. Both were wearing tinted goggles, both were hip-firing searing white flame. Another, shorter shape stepped out from behind the truck.

Four men, each with four barrels, filled the air with swirling magnesium and sulfur. Flaming spheres, infant meteors, exploded against the doorjamb, the wall, the window, and poured through the door into 111. White fire erupted into sizzling rings. The walls shook. The window in front of Cyrus warped and wobbled as pale rivers of flame raced across its surface.

Cyrus couldn’t look away. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe in the sudden heat. He didn’t feel Antigone’s hands. He didn’t hear her screaming at him to get down. Not until she threw an arm around his neck and slammed him onto his back.

Blinking, he watched his sister sprawl across him, covering her head with her arms, trying to cover him with her body.

He watched the ceiling boil and crack. The walls surged and split, and Antigone’s shelves avalanched to the ground. The first flames crept into the room.

A high-pitched whine was building somewhere—piercing, painful. Cyrus pushed his sister off, grabbed her wrist, and tried to crawl toward the bathroom. The bathtub. They needed water. His sister’s books were burning. Her photo albums.

Boom
.

The noise was simple enough, big enough, fundamental enough that all the other noises became part of it.

Cyrus felt his bones ripple like rubber as he fell. His gut twisted and flipped. The closet mirror ran down into the carpet. The glass in the big picture window liquefied and collapsed, splashing on the sill.

A moment’s slice later, the sound was gone and the window had refrozen, paralyzed in its fountain before hitting the floor.

Cyrus lay gasping, gripping his sister’s tense arms, watching fire dance on the wall, listening to distant sirens.

No more shouting. No more belching guns. He pulled, crawling for water.

Antigone pulled back.

“No!” she yelled. “Up, Cy! Out!” Reaching her feet, she dragged him toward the door.

“Your stuff,” Cyrus said. He tore his hands free and stood, hunching in the smoke. “Get your stuff.”

“I will, I will,” she said. The top third of the wall was in flames. “We have to get Skelton out!”

Cyrus forced his sister away from the room’s door and pressed his eye against the peephole. The glass had dripped out.

“Are they gone?” Antigone whispered.

“Maybe,” Cyrus said.

“Just go,” Antigone said. “Go!”

Wrapping his hand in the hem of his shirt, Cyrus jerked quickly on the sizzling doorknob, and the two of them staggered into charred air. The blind man—limbs impossibly bent—lay motionless beneath the truck’s bumper. A second rag-dolled body drooped off the edge of the camper. A third was facedown behind the rear wheel.

Flames surrounded the doorway to 111 and were roaring on the walkway above. Inside 111, Cyrus’s bed was on fire, the walls were scorched and flickering, and huge pieces of the ceiling had collapsed. Beneath one cracked slab of blackened drywall, they could see the bottoms of two cowboy boots.

Without saying anything, Cyrus and Antigone jumped through the doorway, kicked through the smoldering pile, and each grabbed a leg. The shins bent easily.

Billy Bones groaned in pain. “No,” he said. “Don’t pull.”