"How old are you?" she asked suddenly, turning back to Salvatore.
"I am fourteen, Senora Helen," he said softly, glad he'd been able to remember her name. He tried to stand taller and held his shoulders back, but he was not tall for his age, and he was very thin. He didn't really know her, but he suddenly wanted this woman, this woman who so clearly loved his new friend Jake, to like him.
"And your name is Sally?" Helen asked.
"Salvatore," he said softly. "I am Salvatore Domingo Sanchez."
She took this in, then slid reluctantly away from Jake and walked over and laid her hand on his shoulder. She looked him up and down, then scanned the small, shabby shack he called home, and shook her head in amazement.
"Well, Salvatore Domingo Sanchez," she said. 'That," she pointed at Jake's Jacket, but didn't look away from his eyes, "is fucking amazing. I don't mean amazing like some kid with a can of spray paint who decorates the walls of buildings, or like some guy who drew the picture in the magazine and got the mail-order artist course. I mean…I've been to museums. I've seen things that are so incredible you can only stand and stare at them and wonder what kind of person could create them. Do you understand the kind of art that I mean?"
Salvatore nodded. He'd seen books, and the few times he'd been privileged to visit schools he'd learned about men with names like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. He had loved those paintings.
"This dragon," Helen went on, "is that kind of art. This dragon is very likely the finest…" her voice broke then, and she shook her head angrily, fighting for control. "…the finest single work of art that I have ever seen."
"We are still talking about the jacket, right?" Jake asked softly.
She spun on him, and Salvatore thought she might take a swing, she was so angry. Then, when she saw his face, the anger broke like waves on a beach and she burst into almost hysterical laughter.
Jake stepped forward then and squatted down so that he and Salvatore were eye to eye.
"I don't say things like this very often," he said, "so listen up, and don't forget. Right?"
Salvatore nodded again. He wished he could get his voice to obey him, but he found that the moment sucked the air from his lungs. His heart pounded, and he sensed that something important was about to happen. Something that would change his life.
"There is no way I can pay this back," he said. "There is nothing that I have or expect to have that could make this — gift — square. You need something, anything, any time, you call me. This is as serious as it gets. This is the magic. When you grow up, when you meet guys like I've met — a woman like Helen, you'll know. You'll feel it, and you'll know. Until then, little bro, you've got me."
Salvatore felt a huge lump in his throat and he pinched back the tears that threatened to pour down his cheeks. Helen saw it and knelt beside him, wrapping both Salvatore and Jake in a hug.
Very suddenly, Jake started laughing again.
"This," he said, "is just getting freaking weird." He stood and held out his hand. Salvatore took it in his own smaller hand. Jake's grip was firm, but not painfully so. There was a warmth in it — and a charge of energy.
"I got to go," Jake said. "I have to show this to Snake, and the others. There are things coming — bad things — that I have to be a part of. There may be others who will come to you. You do right by them — they'll be behind you forever. You understand? Any of them gives you any crap, you tell them Jake has your back. If that doesn't work, you come get me and I'll tell them myself."
Salvatore nodded. Jake turned to the door, and Helen followed. She smiled back over her shoulder at Salvatore, who watched them go in silence. When the door had closed, and their footsteps had died away in the distance, he finally allowed himself to breathe.
Sunlight poured in through the battered slats of his window, and he stepped out onto the sidewalk, letting the warm rays wash down over him. It was a glorious day to be alive, and he thought, in just a bit, that he would draw. Already his mind was filled with another image — another dragon. Soon, he would set it free.
Chapter Sixteen
Salvatore sat on the sidewalk, about half a block from his home, drawing. He was surrounded by bits of brightly colored chalk. The spot he'd chosen fronted a vacant lot. The builder had begun the walkway up toward a home that had never been built. Salvatore had chosen this spot so that he could work just off of the main thoroughfare. He didn't mind that people would walk on his creations — he did, after all, draw on sidewalks — but he didn't want to be disturbed while he worked, and after the events of the night before, something had changed. There was an urgency to the drawings. Almost the moment Jake left him, another dragon had invaded his mind, as if filling a suddenly vacated void.
This time the serpent was a bright, ice blue. Salvatore had worn his large chunk of white chalk down to a nub filling in highlights. The blue was subtle, and there were only hints of shadows and lines for the legs, arms and scales. It was like drawing a creature of glass, or ice — much more difficult than the solid gold and green of Jake's dragon. Salvatore found himself itching for the paints and the brushes, for the simplicity of mixing colors on the palette. He still caught the scent of salt spray, but it was faint. The Barrio intruded, and he wanted to brush it aside like a veil and step through to the threshold of that dark city.
Several people passed him as he worked, but he paid them no attention. He was lost in the dragon's world — in its power and color. When one set of footsteps didn't pass by, but stopped a few feet away, it took a while for Salvatore to notice. Finally, when something cut off the sunlight on a portion of sidewalk he was about to draw on, he glanced up and stopped.
A tall Hispanic man stood over him, watching intently. He was dressed almost identically to Jake, but the two could not have been more different. Where Jake was large and powerful like a truck driver, this man was slender. He gave the impression of speed and agility, no less powerful, but more distant. Salvatore had seen him many times.
"Salvatore?" the man said. "Sally?"
Salvatore nodded. He found that he did not have the strength to rise, and despite the intrusion, and the sudden rushing of his heartbeat, the dragon was not yet complete. He didn't want to move until it had been completed.
"I'm Enrique," the man said. "I saw Jake's dragon this morning. It was…amazing."
His words trailed off, and Salvatore saw he was mesmerized by the picture on the sidewalk. Enrique squatted down beside Salvatore, not crowding him, and studied the drawing. His face was a mask of wonder and concentration.
"It's mine," he said at last, turning to Salvatore. Enrique's eyes were a bright, ice blue, and there was no room for question, or denial in his expression. He had seen what Salvatore already knew. "You have to paint it," he said. "You have to paint my dragon."
"I would be honored," Salvatore said. "When…"
"Now," Enrique said. He stood and turned in one fluid motion, unwinding like a coiled snake and moving before Salvatore could utter a sound. "I know your place. I'll be there in twenty minutes with my leather. Get your paint ready."
Salvatore knew that he should speak with Martinez first. He knew that he should resent this man walking up out of nowhere and ordering him to paint. He did not. He felt an exhilaration like nothing he'd ever experienced, and a rush of energy — and strength. He rose, his chalk and the dragon on the sidewalk forgotten. He would finish it — but he would do it right — with the paints. He would join this man, Enrique, with his dragon, and he would set it free.
~* ~
Enrique arrived as he said he would, closer to fifteen minutes after leaving Salvatore than twenty. He carried his leather jacket over one arm, and when he entered Salvatore's home, he handed it over almost reverently. Some of the confidence had left him now, and his new attitude nearly unnerved Salvatore. It was as if he, Salvatore, was held in reverence, as if something holy was imminent, a miracle, or a visitation. Salvatore had liked it better when the man ordered him about.
> "You can do this?" Enrique asked.
Salvatore took the jacket and draped it over the back of the chair, as Jake's had been. He zipped it up on the far side and tucked the arms around out of the way. Enrique's back was not quite as broad. The leather on his jacket was not as aged, and presented a smoother, more uniform black surface. Salvatore ran his fingers over it lightly, and then he turned.
"I will paint your dragon," he said. "I will show you what I have seen. It is all I can do."
"Paint then," Enrique said. "I will be outside. I will not watch you work, because I don't want to distract you, but I will make certain that no other disturbs you until you have finished."
Salvatore didn't know what to say. He could have told Enrique that no one had interrupted his life for fourteen years until the last two days. He was grateful that he would be alone with the work — with the dragon — but he thought, in this case, it would not matter. If someone else entered, that might be bad, but if this man — if Enrique — was to be a part of this creation it would disturb nothing. He would, after all, wear it when it was complete. Like a second skin. Like a second identity.
Without another word, Enrique stepped back out onto the front steps, and Salvatore turned to the table. He'd already laid out the paints, carefully squeezing some of the blue onto the palette. He had been forced to dig into his own meager supplies for an old, cracked tube of white paint that he'd found in the trash out in back of the local high school. He'd been saving it, hoping he'd be able to add other colors in time. He left the red and the yellow paints Martinez had mixed for him carefully wrapped.
He didn't hesitate. He dipped into the blue paint and began the outline. The blue that he'd used the night before to mix his greens had seemed brighter. Tonight, the paint had somehow left the tube in exactly the hue he needed for the darkest of the outline, for the shadows within the ice. It was much deeper, much closer to black, then he remembered. Salvatore did not think about it. He turned to the jacket, and he painted.
Somehow the experience was more intense than it had been the night before. The fact that Enrique stood just beyond the door might have been responsible. Salvatore thought, perhaps, that it was because this dragon was so different. It didn't matter. Somewhere after the first mix of white and blue to create the sheen of ice, the leather faded. He heard an unearthly cry, and before that other place even came into focus, the dragon dropped from the sky and soared directly over him. It flew so low that the wind from its passing nearly knocked Salvatore from his feet.
He dropped to his knees and held on, gripping wet, slimy stone. He was very close to the city now. A short walk would take him to the walls. As he gazed upward he saw that they seemed to rise forever, so far into the sky that, from his vantage point, he could not see where they ended in the lower limits of the clouds.
He rose and scrambled over the last rocky outcropping. The wall was smooth and black, and it stretched off to the right, and to the left, winding out of sight without a weakness or a break. He glanced to his left. That way lay the sea, and he thought it was unlikely there would be a gate so close to the water. He turned to his right, and began walking. He scanned the skies, but after that one, brilliant flash of sound and motion, the dragon had fallen silent. In the distance, lightning struck. Salvatore shivered.
The air was damp; a light drizzle fell from the cloudy sky. Thunder rumbled several moments after the lightning strike, out over the ocean. As he walked, Salvatore brushed the tips of his fingers over the dark stone of the immense wall. He tried to sense those who could have created such a thing — to connect with that place — but he felt nothing.
He walked for what seemed a very long time, and there was no change in the wall. He knew there could not be such an immense city without gates, but considering the height of the wall — the monstrous scale of the structure — it could be miles away. Days. He kept on walking.
He heard the flap of gigantic wings before the shadow fell over him, but it was not as it had been when Jake's dragon descended. It was fast — so fast that he had no time to turn, or cry out. There was nothing, and then there was wind, and sound. He was grasped in huge talons, gripped gently, but firmly and yanked from the ground so swiftly all breath left his lungs. He rose, but even as the ground fell away and the dragon screamed, stunning him with the power of its voice, the walls of the city came into view.
They were as immense. The city glittered and glowed with light — a prismatic, multi-colored shimmer — the first illumination Salvatore had seen in that place beyond the moon and the odd glow of the froth on the waves.
Then it was gone. The dragon rose with wild abandon, cut through the clouds, and rolled. Salvatore found himself facing and endless, starless sky. He closed his eyes, and they dropped. It was the last thing that he remembered.
~* ~
When Salvatore woke he was in his bed. Martinez sat on the edge of the mattress, watching him. The old man looked concerned. Salvatore smiled, though his head pounded and his throat was dry and parched. He blinked away the fog and concentrated, trying to get his bearings.
"Take it easy," Martinez said. "You have lost a lot of strength. It was too soon, Salvatore. You should have waited."
"I…I could not," Salvatore said. "This dragon, it came to me the moment Senor Jake's departed. Then…"
"Yes, I know," Martinez said. "I should have expected it. What you have done is remarkable."
Salvatore raised himself up on his elbows, and Martinez snaked a hand around his back, supporting him as he rose to a sitting position. When Salvatore was upright, he stared in confusion. Enrique knelt on the floor across from him, facing the jacket. Salvatore could not see the dragon, but he felt it. Enrique's head was bent. After a moment's time, Salvatore realized that the man was praying.
Finally Enrique raised his head, and turned. He saw that Salvatore was awake, and he nodded. He didn't smile — every line on the man's face was taut, as though his skin had been stretched too tightly over his face. He rose, and he came to Salvatore slowly, holding out his hand. For the second time that day, Salvatore relinquished his hand to a grip he was certain could crush it. For the second time he felt a flash of electricity — a power and a bond.
"Thank you," Enrique said. "I…"
He shook his head. He could not speak, and he didn't try again. He turned and went to the chair. Very gently, he lifted the jacket free.
"It is okay," Salvatore said, his voice shaky. "The paint…it dries very quickly."
Enrique nodded. He slipped his arm into one sleeve, and then the other. As he turned, the jacket molded itself to his back. He closed his eyes, just for a moment, and then, when he turned, his face was alive with energy. His expression shifted dramatically from the intense, frowning concentration Salvatore had seen from the moment they'd met to an almost feral smile. His eyes flashed like chips of blue ice. He turned once, showing off the jacket, and then he laughed out loud.
"I feel incredible," he said. "I can't explain it. I…"
"It is a powerful dragon," Martinez said, rising. "And you wear it well. I have a message for you, though. You must go, and quickly. Snake has called for all of the Dragons to meet. There is something happening tonight, in the old junkyard. Anya Cabrera and Los Escorpiones are involved. I was asked to spread the word to any I saw."
Enrique stood quietly and took this in. He nodded, then he turned and squatted down so that he met Salvatore's gaze.
"I will not call you Sally," he said. "You are Salvatore, and from this moment on, you are my brother. If you need me, you will know how to find me. Somehow — I know this. Call, and I will come. I have nothing else I can offer."
Salvatore nodded gravely.
"Take care of the dragon, senor Enrique," he said. "I believe it will protect you, as well."
Enrique held that gaze a moment longer, and then laughed again.
"You know, Salvatore, I believe you are right. I have never felt this way. Never. I have to go."
He turned, a
nd he was gone.
Martinez glanced at Salvatore.
"I must go too. I have offered to do what I can in this conflict, and they will be expecting me. There will be food, and drink. I will have it brought to you. You must rest. No drawing. No painting. Eat, drink, and sleep. I will see you soon. There is more work for you and I before this is finished. There are a great number of others counting on you. Do you understand."
"No," Salvatore said quickly, "but I will do as you ask. This day has been… amazing. When you need me, I will be ready."
Martinez nodded, rose, and a moment later he was gone. Salvatore sat for a moment, staring after him, and then he glanced at the empty chair. The paints had already been stored, and he knew that Martinez must have done it. After a few moments his eyelids grew heavy, and he lay back on his cot. He pulled the old sheet up around his chin, closed his eyes, and willed himself to dream. This time he found only darkness.
Chapter Seventeen
Night had fallen over the Barrio. Flickering lights dotted the junkyard, marking the trail in from the outside world, and outlining the inner courtyard where Anya Cabrera and her followers waited. It was nearly time to begin the ceremony. Everything was in place, and the only participants missing were Los Escorpiones themselves.
The inner circle was complete except for a small opening by the front entrance to the room Kim had stocked earlier. There Anya Cabrera sat, flanked by two of her tall, ebon-skinned guardians. There was an equally narrow break in the circle across from her where the passageway opened onto the labyrinthine trail leading back out to the street. Torches flickered and trailed off into that shadowy tunnel.
There was a small cage near the fire pit. It was divided in two by a screen. On either side of that screen, a rooster strutted. One was white, dappled with black spots. The other was dark red with a brown mask. They scratched at the rough earth and circled their tiny prisons, heads bobbing and darting and eyes fierce. On either side of the cage daggers were imbedded in the earth. Only the hilts showed, one white, and the other black. Both bore small symbols etched into their frames.
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