And Then There Were Dragons

by Alcy Leyva

  The shadow I had been keeping an eye on didn’t disappear when the lights came on. Instead, it just kind of squirmed like a centipede thrashing against the floor. Like me, the nurse hadn’t noticed it either as she backed out of the room and killed the lights.

  I watched as the black silhouette peeled itself away from the wall and grew in size, lengthening from an insect to a fat black, shadowy snake. It slid across the floor, toward a cart with a sleeping baby inside.

  “Oh shit. Wait. No!”

  I knew it was only an image I was seeing—that I was not really there—but I lost myself in the moment. I jumped up and started waving my arms like I was trying to get someone’s attention. But nobody came. I tried kicking and punching this creature, but I slipped right through its body.

  I screamed and screamed.

  Even as the shadow crawled up the bassinet leg.

  Even as it poured itself onto the small child’s body.

  No one came to help. No one saw. No one knew.

  The lights flickered and then everything went silent.

  ****

  The memory spit me out and I collapsed on the ground, understanding what I had just seen. The baby in the bassinet was me.

  CHAPTER 12

  I curled up into a ball and stayed there for … I don’t know how long. The memory projections didn’t go away, either. After each brief darkness, they flickered on and dragged my prone body in for another round. The cycle restarted at least five times with the residual pain afterward doubling and then tripling each time I was spit out.

  When I wasn’t trying to shield myself from having to endure the memories, I couldn’t help but stare intensely at them. Eventually, I figured out the truth of what I was being shown. Yes, they were displaying every botch I’d ever made on my timeline, but this unpleasant trip down Memory Lane was also revealing what was behind my less-than-stellar moments.

  A Shade.

  Every time I saw myself, I could spot a flicker of darkness radiating from me, just on the edges of my body. When I was younger, it was a dark outline over my skin and clothes, but as I got older, the aura had grown larger. Vaguely, I remembered being told by a cultist this aura was how dark things found me—angels and demons alike. I was just never able to see it until through this shadowy lens.

  The only time I’d ever felt the dark powers inside of me was when it was at its strongest and most volatile—when I had intentionally taken the five Shades inside myself to face Barnem. Now, in this memory, I could see the darkness leaping out of me. What was once a faint outline became a raging black fire that surrounded my entire body. Thinking back, I could remember feeling the intensity of this power threatening to tear me apart. I also remembered feeling it corrupting me, slowly eating away at me from the inside. At the time there were only thoughts and far-off whispers, but I felt them reaching out, hungry fingers and mouths. Something inside of me called me to burn the world down.

  And, just when I was done remembering that lovely little stain on my life, the reel started over and it was back to the nursery.

  I couldn’t watch this part. Not anymore.

  I must have cycled through the entire timeline at least a hundred times before I grew numb. My extremities felt as heavy as stone and ached horribly, but I couldn’t feel anything inside of me. Something changed and I blocked everything else out. Whatever Mason was doing to me was supposed to douse every ounce of will I had left. But for some reason, something welled up from my insides that reminded me of the darkness I felt in Saint Patrick’s. A power? A fire?

  Whatever this reserve of energy was, it only made me more focused on what I needed to know. Watching baby Grey inherit a Shade of the apocalypse no longer hurt. It just made me want answers. Where did this Shade come from? What were the Shades, really? I wanted answers—and there was only one guy who could give me what I needed.

  But first, I needed to get out of here.

  Around the two-hundredth cycle or so, something changed. A sound was coming from the darkness. It sounded like breathing—very deep breathing—from somewhere behind my head. The sound would only happen when one of the memories was playing, so at first I thought it was coming from inside the images. Then, when I tried to pinpoint the breathing, I found it didn’t actually sound like a breath at all, but like someone hissing at me, saying, “Hey.”

  I managed to pick my head up and to hear the breath more clearly.

  “Grey?”

  I stood up. “Who’s there?”

  I heard a struggle on the voice’s end, like it was trying to pass a stone the size of a bowling ball. Then, out of the blackness, a hand surrounded in pure fire appeared out of thin air. It pulled and pushed the darkness aside, and then, sliding slowly against the shadow, Gaffrey Palls entered the black space and landed—terribly I must add—flat on his face. Straightening himself out, he tossed me a thumbs-up.

  “I’m in.”

  I crossed my arms. “Congrats. Now get me out.”

  Palls took one look at me and then another look around the room. Shaking his head, he started swatting at the air like a cat.

  “Uh, Palls?”

  “Yeah.” Pawing, pawing, pawing.

  “Did you hit your head too hard? Should I be worried?”

  “Shut up for a second.” Palls continued swiping at the air, spinning in place as if he needed to touch it all. But when his hand struck something, I realized he’d been looking for an object in the blank space. Sighing, he stood up straight and flicked at it with a fat, sausage finger.

  The sudden shock of sight nearly bowled me over. We were standing in the center of a rather plush apartment of all white: furniture, walls, ceiling, artwork, vases. It was easily one of the poshest spaces I had ever seen, and the complete opposite of the dark world I had just been trapped in.

  Palls dropped his hand from the light switch. “Let me get you a drink.”

  “Wait, stop! No freaking fair! Where did this come from?”

  Walking over to a stainless steel fridge, Palls pulled open the door and plucked a beer from the shelf. He tossed it over and grabbed one for himself, cracked it open, and then, after chugging a few deep swallows, wiped his mouth with his sleeve and asked, “Tell me you found the light switch?”

  I pointed behind me. “I didn’t … I wasn’t …” I stuttered before settling settled with “I found a chair” as if this was better than nothing.

  Not amused, Palls pulled a chair from the glass table and took a seat.

  I considered my beer. “If these aren’t our real bodies, and we don’t eat or drink, can we get drunk?”

  “Nope. Other beings can, but not us.” Palls took another swig from his bottle. “Doesn’t even taste like anything, really. But it’s one helluva thing to savor.”

  I popped my lid and downed the entire thing in one gulp. He was right. Being stuck in a corporeal body meant I might have had sensations of liquid going down my throat and maybe a strain of taste behind it, but it was nowhere near the kind of alcoholic experience I was hoping for. What Palls was actually savoring was the action of drinking—the normalcy of the practice. It was amazing. Just feeling the liquid against my lips, flushing through my teeth, was met with a glorious feeling of the familiar.

  I realized this was what people referred to as “longing for the departed.”

  I also realized I was the “departed.”

  Finished savoring, Palls pushed aside his empty can with two fingers and then interlocked them. “We need to get you out of here.”

  “Obviously, Palls. Mason has been trying to mess with my brain this entire time, so I’m looking for some payback.”

  But Palls only sighed. “This isn’t the Third Circle, Grey. Turns out you fell all the way down to a city on the outskirts of the Fourth Circle. We are in Mischief—the Under Dweller City—and it’s … not the best of places. Right now, you’re
being held as a prisoner, but I’m not sure why. Haven’t been able to find any word on the Warden of the Fourth, either.”

  “Your Warden babysitter buddy? Can she get us out of here?” I gulped down the last of my beer. After crushing the can with one hand, I shot it at a nearby trashcan and missed by about ten feet. I left it there.

  Palls looked at the crumpled can on the floor and back at me. “If I can find her. But before we break out of here, we got something we need to talk about first.”

  I stretched. “Yeah, well. I have quite a bit to talk to you about, too. This can’t wait until we’re out of here.” I paused long enough to see that, by his body language alone, whatever Palls had to tell me was eating away at him something fierce. I sighed. “All right. Out with it, then.”

  Palls pointed at the can on the floor as if this was his most pressing concern, but I just kept staring at him. When he saw I still wasn’t budging, Palls got up and threw the can in the trash himself. In a partial grumble, he told me, “I guess there’s no way around this now, so I might as well and come right out and tell you. You’re a Warden of Hell, Grey, just like me.”

  Gaffrey Palls might as well have punched me in the face.

  For what it’s worth, I took it very well.

  “You’re fucking kidding me! I swear to God, you’d better be fucking kidding, Palls or we’re about to have a major problem.”

  But Palls only blinked at me.

  I got up and started pacing. “I-I can’t be a Warden of Hell, Palls. I’m from Queens.”

  The tall man shook his head. “I don’t see how that—”

  “You didn’t think of sharing this tiny detail with me sooner? Like, a lot fucking sooner? How the hell did this happen?”

  Taking his seat again, Palls explained, “Like I told you. Shades infest the soul, corrupt it, and paint it black. Not only do folks possessed by Shades get a one-way ticket to hell, but you also get a job to do when you get down here.”

  “Fan-freaking-tastic.” I closed my eyes and let out a long, deep sign. “Do you have any idea which Circle I’m in charge of?”

  “Not sure. Somewhere down where I’ve never been. Now, I’ll be honest. I don’t know much about what goes on below this city in the Fourth Circle. I just know things will start making less and less sense once we get closer to the bottom. Look, I’m only telling you this because it’s bound to come up sooner or later. Our priority is to keep this under wraps for as long as we can. That means until we find the missing Warden and skip out of town as quiet as we came in. First order of business is getting you out of here.”

  “And how do we—?”

  Before I could spit the rest of my question out, we were interrupted by another round of memories. Another dose of “Screw-Up Roulette” was about to start, but this time there were two images: one for each of us.

  Palls looked caught off-guard. I watched him snap his fingers and manifest two floating tongues of black flame, but before he could use them, one of the memories began to suck me in. I saw a large, smoking field and heard the rattle of gunfire, but this wasn’t my memory. It was Palls’.

  Palls reached out to grab me, but it was too late. Another image popped up behind him—a memory that was mine—and the two forces pulled us apart and into each other’s own respective, personal Hells. As soon as he vanished into my memory, I tumbled into his.

  ****

  I landed in a burning field where there were trees torn from the ground and smoke rising from the scars of artillery fire. A tank battalion rattled in the background and invisible planes boomed overhead. In front of me, a soldier limped into view and then fell face-first into the war-scorched earth.

  When I came to Hell, I had expected a fight for my soul.

  I didn’t expect to watch the last will and testament of Gaffrey Palls.

  CHAPTER 13

  I stood observing as Palls rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky. The clouds were gray and lifeless as if painted into place. With his body wrecked, his left arm filled with shrapnel, and his entire uniform soaked with blood (some, he assumed, his own and some from others), Palls felt he could’ve stayed planted in that dirt for years, but it’s crazy how quick you’ll get to your feet when the sound of unfriendly tank treads roll nearby.

  Private Palls held his arm in place and forced himself to his feet. He was bleeding from the forehead and ears, but it’s not like this meant much. His entire squad had been blown to bits around him as they helped usher a convoy across the countryside. Everything had been quiet during the ride, a mission that was supposed to be as exciting as watching paint dry.

  Then the bombings started.

  Bent metal. Burning bodies.

  Now the enemy was coming back in with cleanup crews and Palls knew if he didn’t want to end up on the business end of a tank shell, he was going to need to move—and move fast. He tried to do so but quickly found breathing impossible. Stripping himself of his field gear, Palls found he could wring blood and sweat from his fatigues, which was in no way a good sign. He must have caught more shrapnel than he first thought. Sure enough, reaching up, he felt a warm, wet spot right below his ribs.

  His fingers came out coated with red and he collapsed to his knees.

  There wasn’t any way he was coming out of this. Not alive, at least.

  Nearby, the enemy infantry’s shouts could be heard. They were close.

  Palls smiled. As a kid growing up in the Bronx, he was familiar with the numbers game. Bullies always rolled in packs in his neighborhood, and this had given Palls an understanding of how things worked. They may have had the numbers, but with the right plan, one Average Joe could be as strong as any army.

  “Got nothing to lose,” Palls muttered to himself as he drew his field knife. His carbine was gone, but with a little guts and some dumb luck, Gaffrey Palls was going to make sure the dance ticket he was about to punch included a few more bodies.

  Palls wriggled to position himself behind a fallen tree outcrop next to a hard bend in the road. He planned to catch the search squad from behind, the nature of the up-close-and-personal fight, taking the tank right out of the equation.

  Lying in the mud made Pall’s wounds worse. Blood was pooling around his shoulders and exhaustion was overtaking him. He felt as if he could have put all his gear down and sleep for 100 years—more, probably, because he’d very likely never wake up again.

  He forced himself not to give in to the lull of sleep, and as soon as the tank rolled by, Palls pulled himself into a squat. When the truck flanking the tank was clear, Palls sprung out and let his knife greet the soldiers bringing up the rear on foot.

  In two movements, he drove the point once through an enemy’s neck and—while he was still gurgling to death—turned it backward in a swift slice across the fallen soldier’s neighbor’s eyes, blinding him.

  This wasn’t the first time Palls had killed an opposing soldier. Nor was it the first time he’d witnessed a man gasp his last breath and fold over. Not by a long shot. It’s just the others had been at a distance, bodies dropping out of existence and sent to God through the sights of his rifle. This was the first time he’d taken a life up close—the first time that last breath came with bloody mist he could taste in the air.

  To Palls’ surprise—and he guessed to the surprise of the enemy—they weren’t expecting one man to charge headfirst into them like he did. In fact, from the looks of it, they weren’t a search party at all. Not battle-hardened infantry soldiers, the small platoon had been escorting a supply truck.

  Before the second man’s body dropped, Palls hopped aboard the truck, adrenaline keeping his movements sharp and deadly. There were four soldiers left and while they weren’t caught completely off-guard, they hadn’t heard the first kill over the tank treads. Their half a second of reaction time was enough for Palls to kill one more soldier before any of the others ever made t
heir move.

  Palls had each of the remaining three men by an entire foot of height and maybe fifty pounds of muscle, but that damn numbers game kept its advantage. A shot rang out, but it either missed or his blood was boiling so hot he didn’t feel the bullet sink into his body. One carefully executed head-butt flattened a third soldier, but barely before the other two tackled him.

  The fight raged on as one storage box after the next tumbled with them over the side of the truck. Palls landed on his neck—damn near broke it, too. One soldier’s entire head was pinned under one of the crates and it made a clop sound as his body went limp beneath it. The second crate burst open right at the feet of Pall’s final enemy, and three sharp knives spilled out blade side up onto the caked ground.

  Palls’ body was falling apart, his side ready to split open, so he couldn’t get to the weapons in time—but his enemy did.

  Grabbing one of the blades, a short-hilt dagger, the soldier kicked Palls’ body onto his back. Flipping the blade in his hand, the soldier’s lip curled into a smile. Then he drove the knife right through Pall’s chest.

  Gaffrey Palls died on the spot—

  —at least that’s how everything should have gone down. Instead, as soon as his heart stopped beating, Palls opened his eyes.

  On a tree branch somewhere above his head, Palls spotted a large bird, perched on a branch. The world around him was mute as he watched the creature spread its wings and descend in slow motion. Landing on the hilt of his dagger, the large crow stared down at Palls.

  With the beak an inch from his mouth, Palls could see that, aside from a white stripe of feathers on its head, the bird had red eyes, each with a number 5 sitting at the center.

  Fleshy. Weak.

  The voice crawled around inside Palls’ head.

  Another dying meatbag. Shame, really. Real shame. This cute little war you’re having has been entertaining. The Romans knew warfare, though. Up close and personal. Guts and intestines dangling from swords. So much blood soaking in the fields there would be lakes.