by Rena Rocford
“What are you doing?” the gryphon asked.
“My blood will heal him,” Beth said.
News to me!
“What are you?” the female gryphon asked.
Beth didn’t answer, but Reggie moaned, drawing everyone’s attention back to him. Almost instantly, color returned to his face. He coughed and tried to sit up, but Beth put a hand on his chest. “Stay put, it’s not a cure all.”
The waitress in her blue dress stared on, eyes wide and hands trembling. “Maybe I shouldn’t have called 911.”
“Can we move him?” the older gryphon asked Beth.
“In about a minute, sure,” she said.
If I were the waitress, I’d have called the cops. Of course, if she called 911, there’d be cops, EMTs, and fire fighters speeding down the highway this very second. How far away were they? Considering my aunt was in the back of a moving van, I doubt she reported the car as missing, but I didn’t have an actual license.
I grabbed Beth’s arm and pulled. “We’ve gotta go.”
She stood up reluctantly, then stopped moving. Woodenly, as if she weren’t in control of her own actions, she reached down to the floor and picked up a flyer. Beth’s indestructible smile beamed up at us from the page. Beneath her face, handwritten in marker, the words ‘Please help us find our daughter’ scrawled across the paper.
I cocked an eyebrow at Beth as she followed me out of the diner. We made it back to the red car, and I slid into the driver’s seat. As I turned over the engine, sirens wailed out on the highway, getting closer. Luckily, we sped away without any hint of the usual bunny-hop start.
Three Days Before
riving down the interstate, a pack of motorcycles came up behind us. I put my hand on Beth’s head, and she hid under the dashboard. The Harley Davidsons with chrome everything roared past us. The main bodies looked like painted teardrops. I knew nothing about bikes except the ones painted in neon went really fast. These were all maroons and blacks. I scanned the crowd for Reggie, but I didn’t see him. After they passed, Beth peeked back up from under the dashboard.
“Well?” Beth asked.
“I can’t tell if they’re Kin just by looking.”
“You’ll learn,” she said. “If we live long enough.”
The gas gauge sat on the empty line, so I pulled off at the very next exit with a gas station. “Why is it that the only interspecies reactions are shooting, stabbing, and kidnapping?” I asked, pulling the car up to a pump.
Beth shrugged. “There’s a lot of reasons. I mean, heck, even old stories about dragons and unicorns said they did nothing but fight with each other.”
“I don’t like it. I didn’t choose to be their enemies.”
Beth snorted. “And you think most Americans chose to be hated by extremists in the Mid East?”
“That’s different,” I said.
“Yeah, how?”
I opened the door and pulled down the gas handle. I didn’t have an answer, but it seemed like there should be one. It just didn’t make sense. We were all hiding from the normal humans. Why not band together in our exile?
“You need to understand, the battles between these people have been going on since before the birth of Christ.” Beth turned her hands up in placation. “Hell, most of these battles predate human civilization. It’s no wonder they hate each other.”
“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to change things.”
She nodded. “You got any brilliant ideas, I’m all ears. I’d love to put this behind us. Don’t forget, I’m a member of a kill-on-site group.”
“That’s racist,” I said.
“Speciesist if you want to get technical.” Beth sighed. “I know you want to do something, but we need to think about survival. I don’t think anything’s going to change just because a couple of girls go and chase down some kidnappers.”
Reggie’s words echoed through my brain. ‘Like when my son disappeared?’ Odd that the reason the gryphons were willing to stand up to, essentially, sword-wielding unicorns, was because of a slight when a child had disappeared. Of course, after seeing what the unicorns had done to Beth, I was willing to bash some unicorn heads with little provocation myself.
I went into the convenience store and searched for something suitable for breakfast. I gave the man thirty bucks for gas and bought Pop Tarts and beef jerky. It wouldn’t quite fill the tank, for the car or for us, but we’d be in Ely by noon. We could have a feast after I picked up my inheritance, or whatever awaited me in Nevada. I dropped my hand into my pocket, and curled my fingers around the key.
Back at the car, I tossed a package of pastries to Beth and started the gas pump. She tore into her food while I stood there waiting for the gas to finish. “So, you gonna change the world, Drake?”
“Maybe,” I said, more because I didn’t want to admit she probably had a point.
If everyone hated each other for some slight from two thousand years ago, no wonder they were at each other’s throats now. How do you convince a people to forgive murder?
The short answer? You can’t.
“What about you?” I asked. “I didn’t know your blood could heal people.”
Beth scowled into her Pop Tart. “I can’t just heal anyone, but I can heal gryphons.”
“What about dragons?”
“Maybe.”
“Humans?”
“Only the halves.”
“What happens to humans when you give them your blood?” The words fell from my mouth, and I wished I could take them back. Images of some human frothing in bubbly death washed through my mind. Did troll blood melt normal people?
Beth’s features fell for a minute, confirming my fears. Then a smile broke across her face. “You should see your face, Drake. My blood doesn’t kill humans, it just doesn’t cure them.”
I punched her in the shoulder, but she kept laughing. I finished up with the gas and got in the car. The engine turned over with a hum, and I wished the antique car had a real stereo. The MGB roared onto the road and ate the miles of freeway without complaint. The brown scenery fell away with little change, flat valleys and the occasional mountains. The road to Ely broke from the main freeway, and I turned the car into the desert in earnest. The two-lane road wound through deep valleys along gullies, and signs warned of the imminent threat of cattle. Clearly, this wasn’t the golden brick road.
A cow stood in the center of the road. I stopped the car, and the black-horned devil stared back. I honked, but the cow went back to chewing cud.
“Well,” I said to Beth. “Can’t you do anything?”
“What, like, wrestle it to the ground?”
I snorted. “It would still block the road. Can’t you shoo it or something?”
Beth looked at me over her sunglasses. “I vote for ‘or something.’”
“It’s a cow.”
“Which means you could spit on it and have your own personal barbeque.”
My mouth watered at the thought, and I shut the door on images of grilled steak. “Right, barbeque.” I stepped out of the car. I waved at the cow, but it didn’t budge. “Oh, come on, how many roads do you think are between here and Ely? And you’re blocking one of them.”
The cow stared back, looking even more disinclined to move. I jumped at it in the most predatory fashion I could manage. I could spit fire for crying out loud. “I eat your kind!”
Beth’s laughter bounced off the canyon walls like rolling thunder.
I turned back to her, a haughty retort on my lips, but a cowboy riding down the valley wall caught my attention. For a moment, I couldn’t quite make out the horse and the rider. He flickered in my vision, like an image fading onto another image. A chill swept down my back. The flickering image coalesced into a creature with the torso and head of a man fused to the body of a horse.
I bent my knees, ready to spring into action.
He tipped his cowboy hat at me. “Ma’am.” He trotted closer, and I stood my ground, unsure of what t
o do next. He tilted his head toward the bull in the road. “That boy giving you cause for trouble?”
I stood back up, trying to hide the fact that my heart pounded in my chest. “He’s blocking the road.”
His eyes snapped to the bull. “Geeyup!” He lunged at the cow.
The bovine yelped a plaintive moo and cleared the road.
“What’s going on here?”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Pardon?”
“What are you?” I asked.
The cowboy-horse thing narrowed his eyes at me then at Beth. She slunk down in the car seat. “You ladies ought to be careful when you run into strangers.” He pointed at Beth. “There are many who would kill a dragon on sight. No one wants to give the thief more fuel than he already has.”
“What thief? Why dragons?”
He trotted closer. When he got close enough, he held out his hand to me. He flickered between a horse with rider and the man-horse fusion, but when we shook hands, the flickering stopped at man-horse fusion.
“Name’s Darian, and I am a centaur.”
“Allyson Takata.”
His eyes went wide at my name, then softened with sorrow. “I knew a Takata once. She went missing long before you were born. A pity. She had some fine ideas, but that was a long time ago.” He drew the corners of his mouth down as if forcing the past away. “Someone should have warned you ‘bout the thief.”
“I’ve never even heard of the thief. We’re trying to find a kidnapper.”
“The thief is worse than a kidnapper. He steals the powers of dragons, turns them. Makes them dark.” He took his hat off, and fanned himself despite the chill in the air. “Your kind tried to wipe him out, but all it did was fuel the fire. Now, folks is so scared y’all’ll join over that I heard some idiots in Cheyenne went and skinned a boy thinking he was dragon.”
My breath failed me, and my heart beat so hard it hurt my chest. “Was he?”
“Does it matter to the boy? Anyhow, you’ll need to be careful. I saw a van full of trolls not more than an hour ago.”
“How come you’re not scared of me?”
He chuckled. “I got hit by a falling tree once, that don’t mean the trees are out to get me.” He snugged his hat back onto his head and squinted at the rest of his herd. “Ole Fern’s at it again. Good luck ladies.”
And without any other warning, he cantered off after a cow half way up the far side of the valley wall. I stood there watching, hoping he’d come back, but the centaur rounded his cattle up and disappeared over the ridge.
“I don’t think he’s coming back.”
I slammed the door. “I wanted to ask him more questions. Have you ever heard of this thief?”
Beth shook her head.
We drove on in silence, winding through the steep valleys. I kept my eyes peeled for any more cowboy-centaurs, but there were none. Despite the brooding sun, the temperature did not range above damned cold, and I was more thankful than ever for my ridiculous hat and mismatched jacket. The hazy sky kept it from seeming like a real desert, but the vegetation was sparse. We rounded some grey rocks, and Ely, Nevada lay in the distance. I’d never been more excited about finding a tiny town in the middle of the desert. I almost let out a yelp of joy at the sight of it.
On the outskirts, we passed the hotel-casino combinations found in most of Nevada. Despite the chill air, one of them had a rushing waterfall out front, an odd decoration for the desert. When we stopped at a red light next to the water fountain, the clean scent of water drifted through the air, a welcome contrast to the salty dust of the desert. I pulled out my scrap of paper while we waited for the light to change.
“What’s that?”
“I need to make a stop.”
“Are you kidding? We have to catch that van. I told Targyne the kidnappers were going to Ely.”
“What? You told them where we’d be going?”
Beth held up her hands. “How else are we going to get their help if they don’t know where the truck is going to be?”
I sighed. “So they know where we are, and the trolls might be expecting us too. Great.”
“Well,” Beth blushed, “only one troll.”
“What?”
“John said they usually stop for lunch at some hotel here.”
“When did he say that?”
Beth held up her troll poetry.
I pursed my lips, and instantly an image of my mother pursing her lips took over my mind. I smoothed out my facial features. “Fine, we’ll find this hotel, or whatever, and you can grab a bite to eat with the kidnappers.” The light turned green, but there was no one behind me. I didn’t drive on.
“Hey, it’s not his fault John got mixed up with these guys,” she said.
“Then whose fault is it that he kidnaps people?”
“It’s not like you even have a clue what you’re talking about. You’ve only known anything for, like, what, four days? What the hell do you know?”
I stared back at Beth. “Right, so where is this place you want to check for your boyfriend?”
Beth scowled. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Whatever, lead on.”
Beth pointed, and I turned into the intersection.
Ely consisted of one lawn–brown from the winter–in front of the city hall, one library, and a row of dilapidated bars. At the end of Bar Row, the only multistory building sat waiting for the rest of the town to grow up around it. It had been waiting for a long time. A cowboy in vintage neon lights and chaps hung on the corner. It looked like it might have once actually moved, but had since fallen into complete disrepair.
I parked in a paved lot off the main road and kept an eye out for the moving van, but I didn’t see it. Still, I watched for any sign of kidnappers. If this was a usual stop, maybe they had a better place for stashing the van while they gambled and drank margaritas. I grabbed my book bag, just in case this place had a bathroom or someplace I could freshen up a bit. I stuffed a T-shirt and some underwear into the bag. Two days of road grime and no shower had done nothing for my complexion, not to mention my aroma. Brass numbers clung to the sides of brick buildings. I checked them as we walked past, whipping out the piece of paper with the address on it. They matched.
I stopped on the sidewalk.
“What is it?” Beth asked.
“This is too easy. The only place you want to stop in this town in the middle of nowhere is where I needed to stop too. Don’t you think that’s weird?”
Beth looked up and down the street. “Usually, I’d agree, but there ain’t nothing else here. This is where it’s at.”
I gave the street a broad look and had to agree. The old hotel seemed to be the only place open for business, let alone of actual importance. But now that I stood feet from my destination, I hesitated. Could this really be it? And what was it? This was something from my aunt, right? This key had to unlock something really important; otherwise, why the secrecy?
Or maybe she’d just been in a hurry. Had she known she was going to be kidnapped?
For a moment, my visions of treasure melted into secret messages and conspiracy theories. But what sort of secret would my aunt want to tell me, and why in such a roundabout way?
No, this had to be some sort of inheritance, something from my father. Maybe he had it delivered for my birthday. This had to be his gift to me for my birthday, right? Maybe fifteen was a big deal with dragons.
We walked in through the doors, and the wave of stale cigarette smoke rolled over us. An empty row of slot machines rang their little bells at us, hoping we’d play. Under the stench of smoke and vomit, there was a pulse in the air, a desperation. People came here with their dreams and left with worries.
I scanned the early afternoon crowd but didn’t see anything–kidnappers or monohorns. The key practically burned in my pocket. Somewhere in this building was the lock it would open. My whole destiny, behind one locked door.
Strolling through the wild place, a waitress dressed in a
corset and puffed up skirt stopped in front of us. Under the makeup, she could have been as young as fifty.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Yeah, I … uh, do you guys have, like, a front desk or something?”
She pursed her lips. “Aren’t you a bit young to be getting a room with your girlfriend?”
My eyes bulged, and I blushed. I turned to Beth, prepared to smooth ruffled feathers.
Beth stood straight, peering down at the waitress. “And what’s it to you where we spend our money?”
The waitress backed up. “Don’t get your drawers in a twist with me, missy. If you wanna room, the front desk is through there to your right. And don’t get lost. I can’t have kids on my floor.”
We followed her sparse directions through the casino to the front desk–which wasn’t actually at the front. A statue of John Wayne stood to one side. A man with more grease than hair stood behind the desk. He wore an old style shirt and vest, like a card dealer in the Old West.
Of course, this place had the stuck-in-time thing going for it, so why not a card dealer from a saloon?
“May I help you ladies?” he drawled.
Beth and I just stood in front of him, deer caught in the headlights. Beth gave me a firm shove in the center of my back, and I stumbled forward. “Well, get on with it. I’ll see if I can find John.”
The card-dealing front desk attendant pointed at the mannequin and favored Beth with a nod. “Mr. Wayne’s right there, ma’am.” The effigy of John Wayne stood poised to wink.
I slapped my key down on the front desk.
Upon seeing the key, he drew his head back, as if the scrap of metal might bite him. “Oh,” he said, then nodded solemnly. “Come with me.”
He flipped up a false counter piece and pulled the façade inwards, making a door through the seemingly solid front desk. He pulled open another hidden door within the mailboxes in the wall, and we walked into a room with an actual vault door.
My heart kicked up a notch. It was really going to be this easy. After all, who knew I was even coming? And it wasn’t like there was ever going to be an army trying to stop me. I was just one kid. Who would even care?
The card dealer shut and locked the door behind me before turning to the vault. A spiked wheel handle and a dark grey metal door completed the ancient bank’s Old West feel. The lacquer on the door stank of age and oil, but there was no mistaking the smell of steel, and lots of it. Standing next to the wheel, the dealer looked more the part of a bank teller than a card dealer. He stood between the door and me and turned the knobbed handle.
