A Dark Inheritance

by Chris D'Lacey

  And on that subject, it was payback time. “Tell me about him. You promised you’d say more when the file was solved.”

  He smiled and pulled his watch from his vest pocket. “When you take the next mission.”

  “You promised me, Klimt. I’m tired of your games!” In a moment of madness, I tried to strike him. But he moved as fast as the rippling sunlight and clamped my wrist in a grip no human could have possessed.

  As I winced in pain, he said, “Do not ever attack me, Michael. I could crush a human arm, including the bone, and terminate you any time I wish. You have already discovered what a telephone call can do, but there are many ways of switching off the quantum trace we planted in your mind. The result, I assure you, would not be pleasant. And please don’t imagine you can change your reality and escape my control. You are mine now. A UNICORNE agent. You will do as I tell you, when I tell you. Under my guidance, your skills will develop. Very soon, we will continue our work to help you control your reality shifts. Trust me, it’s what your father would have wanted.” With that, he let me go. “Take a few days’ rest — to get over your friend. I’ll be in touch. Good-bye, Michael.”

  “Tell me about the painting,” I snapped.

  He hesitated and slowly turned back. “Painting?”

  “The Tree of Life. It’s on the wall in Dad’s room. It was painted by a man called Gustav Klimt.”

  “An odd coincidence,” he mused.

  I gritted my teeth, holding my wrist across the center of my chest. It felt like it had gone two minutes in a microwave. “We don’t believe in coincidence, remember? The albums, too. Mozart. He liked Mozart. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.”

  Klimt smiled and moved a twig across the path with his foot. “Save your imagination for your missions, Michael. I need to —”

  “I’ve been remembering things,” I cut in. “The laboratory. The octopus creatures in the tank. I thought they were dreams. Really bad dreams. But now I know they’re true.”

  I held up the Meztamine tablet I’d spat out in the clinic.

  His face turned seriously dark.

  “I know what you are, Klimt. I’ve worked it out. You always talk about humans as if you’re not one of us. Dad was far smarter than he ever let on. But he forgot about the eyes, and how I might try to read them one day. You’re an android. A machine. He designed you, didn’t he?”

  He stared at me for two or three moments, before tilting his head in the way I’d always considered robotic but without ever realizing how accurate I’d been. He strode forward, until there was barely space for a leaf to fall between us. His strange eyes, one purple, one blue, locked onto mine. “If you believe this … fascinating theory, Michael, then you must accept we have a common bond. For we are no longer looking for your father, but ours.” He gave a curt nod and quickly backed away.

  “Tell me something about him! Anything!” I shouted. “I need to believe he’s out there still.”

  Once again he stopped, this time in the shade of a large oak tree, where another crow had landed on a branch above his head. A fourth, I noticed, was on the strip of grass behind Freya’s grave. “Very well, I will give you something, though it will only confuse you further. The first time we met, you asked me what your father’s last mission was. He did go to New Mexico — to investigate claims of a curious form of DNA.”

  “Alien,” I said. It made me hollow inside, but maybe Eddie was right. What exactly was that craft on the water?

  Klimt grunted in amusement. “Not in the way you are thinking of. The DNA sample had allegedly come from a creature whose roots are embedded deep in the human psyche. There are many strange things in this universe, Michael, and much you have to learn about UNICORNE’s part in it. That is why you will accept the next mission. This is the last thing I know about Thomas Malone: The creature your father went in search of — was a dragon.”

  And with that, he finally walked away.

  I sank onto a fallen gravestone, my heart thumping like a dull bass drum. Was this another of his cruel hoaxes? Or had Dad really crossed a continent in search of a beast that had only ever existed, as far as I knew, in storybooks and tales of mythology?

  I lowered my head into my tired hands. In the last few weeks, I had talked to ghosts, nearly gotten myself killed, reinvented my own reality, and been sucked into a sinister organization that could snuff me out at any moment. When I weighed it up like that, I had every reason to believe what Klimt was saying. But it would take one final leap of weirdness to really convince me anything was possible.

  Anything.

  Another crow landed on the path beside me. Then another came out of the trees and waddled to the edge of Freya’s grave, joining two more that were already there. Moments later, the shadow of another bird came over and landed directly on the mound of earth. I watched it pick up the unicorn cutout and throw it aside. “Hey!” I cried, and got up to shoo them off.

  That’s when a voice said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  I whipped around.

  Sitting on a bench just along the path, holding my rose to her breast, was Freya. She was dressed entirely in black, in a kind of one-piece wrap that shone like the feathers of the birds around her. And though her face was as pale as death, her once brown eyes were as dark as coals. Her hair was wilder than ever, strands fizzing out at the strangest angles, as if she’d had a really bad hair-spray day. Sitting on either side of her were two more crows. “Don’t mind these guys,” she said, a croak like the crunch of glass in her voice. “You’re going to see a lot of my favorite birds now.”

  I counted ten. And I was only half looking. “You can’t be here. You’re dead,” I gasped.

  “I think the correct term is undead,” she said. “Love the rose, by the way. Very gothic. So who’s the geek with the accent? Didn’t really like his attitude much. Interesting conversation you were having. We’ve got a lot to talk about, haven’t we?”

  “No,” I said, “this can’t be happening.” Yet another bird swooped down onto the path. I turned full circle. There were crows everywhere. “What do they want?”

  “They want me,” said Freya, the words almost freezing on her breath. “They follow me, Michael. Don’t be frightened. You have nothing to fear. You’re my maker. I can’t ever hurt you and nor will they.”

  I shook my head. “Maker? I don’t understand.”

  “Oh, I think you do,” she said. A cold light entered her opaque eyes. “Welcome to your dark inheritance, Malone.”

  And she morphed into a crow and took off with the rest of them, into a blaze of golden sunlight, along the same path as Amadeus Klimt.

  I’d like to thank my editorial team of Lisa Sandell in the USA, and Barry Cunningham & Rachel Leyshon in the UK, for the time and effort they put into making this story the best it could possibly be — it’s one thing to be “organic,” quite another to be vague. I’d also like to thank Dave Martin for reading the script and making his usual incisive comments, and his son, Jonathan, whose DNA question I never did answer, but hope to get to the bottom of by the end of the series. Every author needs an expert or two, so I’m grateful to Dr. Andrew Sharp for keeping me straight on the medical issues, and the lovely Maddiemoiselle Bradshaw for correcting my schoolboy French (très bon or what?). Also, Maddie’s mum, Terri, for finding me a book on Gustav Klimt from her school’s art department. Go Radcliffe! Ed Wilson, if he had any hair to pull out, would surely have lost the lot sorting out the contracts — forget the percentages, what you need, folks, is an agent with stamina. And finally, I can’t leave out Jay, who never quite gets the recognition she deserves — except in our house. Wom!

  CHRIS D’LACEY is the author of several highly acclaimed books, including the New York Times bestselling Last Dragon Chronicles: The Fire Within, Icefire, Fire Star, The Fire Eternal, Dark Fire, Fire World, and The Fire Ascending, as well as the companion Rain & Fire, which he cowrote with Jay d’Lacey. Additionally, he is the author of The Dragons of Wayward Crescent se
ries. He lives in Devon, England, with his wife, where he is at work on his next book.

  ALSO BY

  CHRIS D’LACEY

  THE LAST DRAGON CHRONICLES

  THE FIRE WITHIN

  ICEFIRE

  FIRE STAR

  THE FIRE ETERNAL

  DARK FIRE

  FIRE WORLD

  THE FIRE ASCENDING

  RAIN & FIRE (WRITTEN WITH JAY D’LACEY)

  THE DRAGONS OF WAYWARD CRESCENT

  GRUFFEN

  GAUGE

  Copyright © 2014 by Chris d’Lacey and Jay d’Lacey

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  d’Lacey, Chris, author.

  A dark inheritance / Chris d’Lacey. — First edition.

  pages cm. — (UNICORNE files ; book one)

  Summary: When Michael Malone saves a dog, he discovers that he has paranormal abilities, which bring him to the attention of a secret organization, UNICORNE — but he plans to use the ability to find out what happened to his father, who mysteriously vanished three years earlier, and save his new friend, Freya.

  ISBN 978-0-545-60876-3 (jacketed hardcover) 1. Missing persons — Juvenile fiction. 2. Secret societies — Juvenile fiction. 3. Mothers and sons — Juvenile fiction. 4. Friendship — Juvenile fiction. 5. Paranormal fiction. 6. Adventure stories. [1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Missing persons — Fiction. 3. Secret societies — Fiction. 4. Mothers and sons — Fiction. 5. Friendship — Fiction. 6. Supernatural — Fiction 7. Adventure and adventurers — Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.D6475Db 2014

  813.6 — dc23

  2013027397

  First edition, June 2014

  COVER ART © 2014 BY CHRISTOPHER STENGEL

  COVER DESIGN BY CHRISTOPHER STENGEL

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-60879-4

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