Chasing the Dragon

by Nicholas Kaufmann

“What kind of information?”

  “About who we are and what we do.”

  “What do we do?”

  He tapped the picture. “This.”

  “We kill dragons?”

  “Just one,” he answered. “There’s only one. But the Dragon appears in a new incarnation in every age of history. Reborn over and over. No one knows why or how the Dragon comes back, only that the cycle keeps repeating itself. Dragon and dragonslayer. Over and over, throughout time.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, kiddo,” he said. “I don’t think we’re supposed to know. Those names from before, the ones that were hard to pronounce? They were the dragonslayers from long, long ago, and each of them had their own incarnation of the Dragon to fight. They’re as much a part of the cycle as I am. As we are.”

  Georgia frowned, confused. “What does that mean?” It frustrated her that she didn’t get it. She liked spending time with her father, especially since he was gone so often. She didn’t want to ruin it. She didn’t want him to think she was stupid.

  “It means the Dragon is out there now and I have to kill her, like the dragonslayers from long ago did. And if I don’t, someday, when I’m gone, it’ll be up to you. The responsibility usually passes to the oldest son, but we didn’t have a son, we had a daughter. You. The first girl dragonslayer.”

  Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. “Cool!”

  Georgia groaned and rolled over on the bed. She wished she could take that moment back, travel through time, shake her younger self by the shoulders and scream in her face, “It’s not cool! It’s not like a fairy tale!” But still, she remembered that day well, how the excitement had rushed through her when she learned she was different from the other girls at school. Learned she was special.

  In the painting, a woman with flowing auburn hair sat watching on the tall rocks behind George and the Dragon. She wore a crown and her hands were clasped in front of her as though she were praying. Georgia thought she looked pretty. “Who’s that lady? Is she a princess?”

  Her father took a deep breath. “That’s what everyone thinks because that’s how the story usually goes. Heroes are always rescuing princesses from dragons, aren’t they?”

  “She isn’t a princess?”

  “Well, in the legend she’s the princess of Cyrene, somewhere in north Africa back in the Fourth Century. The legend goes that the Dragon was causing a famine by eating everything, their crops, their livestock. A strange illness swept the land. They thought the Dragon was poisoning them. They thought they could appease the Dragon with sacrifices so they would be left alone. The princess was going to be the sacrifice, but George of Cappadocia came to her rescue and killed the Dragon. That’s how the legend goes, anyway.”

  “But that’s not what really happened?”

  “No.”

  “Did he kill the Dragon?”

  He frowned, deep furrows appearing in his forehead. “Something went wrong. The story was supposed to end there, with the dragonslayer killing the Dragon, just like always, but it didn’t. The Dragon survived, escaped, and today, more than a thousand years later, the Dragon is still alive, and the story is still playing out.”

  “That’s stupid. He should’ve killed it when he had the chance!”

  “I agree. It’s not supposed to be this way. As long as the Dragon is still here, whatever the plan is, whatever the reason for all the dragons and dragonslayers, is out of whack. Everywhere the Dragon goes, things crumble to dust, like the glue holding everything together has rotted away. The earth cracks. Sinkholes form in the ground. Entropy spreads.”

  “Enter . . . entra . . .” She stuttered over the word, trying to pronounce it right, but it was already slipping from her mind. “What’s that?”

  “It’s what makes things fall apart. No one knows why, but the longer the Dragon lives, the worse it gets.”

  She fidgeted, annoyed that he hadn’t answered the question she considered the most important of all. “So, Daddy, who’s that woman if she’s not a princess?”

  Georgia’s eyes snapped open. Her shorts and t-shirt were soaked with sweat and stuck to her body. She felt hot, itchy. The windows were still dark. How long had she been nodding off? Minutes? Hours? Time felt bent out of shape. The heroin was still in her veins; she felt it pulling her back down into the void, lulling her to nod off again. Saint George in his black armour was gone from the foot of the bed. In his place stood her father.

  “Dad?” He stood silently watching her. She rolled onto her side, unable to look at him. “Why did you have to go? Why did you have to leave me?” She closed her eyes again and drifted into a blackness spotted with flickering lights that looked like tiny candles . . .

  “There’s one more present,” her father said, sliding a giftwrapped box across the kitchen table to her, past the remnants of her birthday cake.

  Georgia eyed it suspiciously. “It’s not another cardigan like Mom gave me, is it?”

  Next to her father, her mother feigned shocked indignation, then said, “If you don’t like it, we can exchange it later. I still have receipt.”

  “Whatever, it’s fine,” Georgia said, even though there was no way in hell she was going to wear it to school now that she was in Eighth Grade. Not unless she wanted to be completely boy-proof.

  She eagerly tore open the present her father had given her. Inside was the Book of Ascalon.

  “It’s time,” her father said. “I told you it would be yours when you got older. You’re thirteen now. You’re old enough to study it on your own.”

  “Oh my God!” Georgia’s face lit up. “I almost forgot about this!”

  Her mother’s smile faded from her face. She turned to her husband with an angry glare, then stood up. “Goddamn you, George.” He reached for her hand, but she pulled away.

  “It’s not like we have any choice in the matter,” he said softly, but she walked out of the kitchen without another word.

  “Is she okay?” Georgia asked.

  Her father nodded. “Give her time.” He tapped at the book. “I want you to study it until you know it all by heart, the way I do, okay? It’s important.”

  She stayed up late that night and read it cover to cover, taking in the true story of George of Cappadocia. It wasn’t an illness that plagued Cyrene, not exactly. It was the living dead, bodies rising from their graves to serve the Dragon. In the end, the king of Cyrene presented George with a lance with which to kill the Dragon, a lance coated with an oil milked from the seedpods of an indigenous wildflower. The flower, unnamed in the book, was the only thing in all the kingdom that the Dragon wouldn’t devour, and they believed its oil could kill the creature. But the plan failed and George was killed in the battle. The Dragon fled into the countryside with George’s firstborn son in pursuit.

  She read on and discovered pages that logged the movements of the Dragon over the centuries. In the back were chapters that spoke of a spiritual link between the Dragon and dragonslayer that caused visions whenever she killed, and how to use those visions to track her. The last page contained a list of seven warnings about the Dragon that had been written so long ago no one knew which of Saint George’s descendants had included them.

  SHE SPEAKS THROUGH THE DEAD

  SHE TAKES EVERYTHING YOU LOVE

  SHE BREATHES PESTILENCE

  SHE HIDES IN PLAIN SIGHT

  SHE IS RULED BY HER APPETITE

  THE EARTH CRUMBLES WHERE SHE TREADS

  SHE WILL DEVOUR THE WORLD

  The words swirled around her like a vapour in the motel room. She breathes pestilence. Georgia thought of the plague of walking dead in Cyrene, and she thought about the gash in her hip, how the grey skin spread out every night from where the Dragon’s claws had mauled her. Pestilence. Infection . . .

  Her father held up a broom by the handle, its bristles sweeping in the air. “You can’t let her claws cut you,” he said. “She gets inside you that way. It’s like an infection. It’ll kill you, and if
she’s inside you she’ll control your body even after you’re dead.” He shook the broom. “This is her claw. Don’t let it touch you.”

  He chased her around the living room, Georgia nimbly dodging the broom’s touch. Her mother sat at the coffee table, pulling a new porcelain angel for her collection from its shipping box. Georgia accidentally knocked the table, and her mother yelled at them to take it outside before they broke something.

  They resumed the chase in the back yard. Georgia couldn’t help laughing and shrieking as her father tried to hit her with the broom. Each squeal made her father angrier. His face grew beet red. He yelled at her to stop horsing around. He ran faster, smacked the broom across her back, hard enough to hurt, and knocked her onto grass. She lay there, stunned and frightened while he bent over her and pinned her to the ground. “Goddamn it, this isn’t a game!” he yelled. “She will kill you! Do you get that, Georgia? She will kill you!”

  Georgia stuttered awake in her motel room. Her father stood over her, bending until his face was close to hers.

  “Dad, don’t go.”

  “She’s killing again,” her dead father said.

  The vision slammed through her without warning, knocking her back and turning the room red. She convulsed on the bed, her arms flailing, her legs kicking. She saw the screaming faces of men in black bandanas. She saw bodies torn apart by long, sharp claws, and blood, so much blood. She caught a glimpse of a bare concrete wall with the word Inkhedz spray-painted across it in choppy, angular letters. She saw an ocean of red flowing across the floor and pooling around the base of a big wooden box, the words Bristleman Corp., Buckshot Hill, N.M. stencilled across its slats.

  Georgia thrashed on the bed with the needle still half-stuck in her hip. From the corner of her eye, through the blood-soaked vision, she saw her father shake his head and turn away in shame.

  4.

  SHE HIDES IN PLAIN SIGHT

  If the high felt like cotton, coming down was like crashing into the sidewalk after a long fall off a skyscraper. She felt groggy, sore, half dead. The bedspread under her was rumpled and stained with sweat. The sunlight streaming through the translucent motel curtains hurt her eyes. It felt like someone was working a jackhammer against the inside of her skull. She rolled onto her side and sucked in a breath as the needle twisted and popped out of her skin. She looked down at her hip. The flesh had returned to its normal shade of pink, only slightly red around the edges where the needle had stayed stuck in her all night. The grey, infected skin was gone.

  She sat up slowly. As she put the needle back in the leather pack, her heart jumped. The small plastic baggie was missing. She crawled to the edge of the bed. Below, the bag sat open where it had fallen, the last of her heroin scattered in a brown powder on the threadbare carpet. She must have knocked it off the bed while in the throes of the vision.

  “No, no, no . . .” She tumbled off the bed and tried to scoop it up into the baggie, but all she managed to do was rub it deeper into the filthy fibres of the carpet. She grabbed a tissue from the bathroom and managed to pick up most of the powder with it, but when she looked at what little she’d collected, her heart sank. It was so contaminated with hairs, dust, dirt and bug droppings she’d never be able to separate out anything usable. Cursing, she brought the tissue and its contents into the bathroom and lifted the toilet cover. But as she stood over the bowl, her fingers stubbornly refused to drop it in. Was there enough heroin in the mess for one more high? Trembling, she stared at the filthy powder in the tissue. Brought it closer to her face. Sniffed at it. It didn’t have a scent beyond the bitter hint of dust. What if she couldn’t find anymore? What if this was it? The thought terrified her. She couldn’t let it go to waste. She brought the tissue under her nose. Closed her eyes.

  She thought of her father, struck by a vague memory that she’d seen him last night. He’d only been a dream image from her dosed-up mind, but his disappointment had felt so real. What would he think if he were still alive, if he saw her now, standing over the toilet with a tissue full of heroin scooped off the filthy motel carpet? It shamed her, but her body didn’t care. Her body buzzed in ecstatic anticipation, urging her onward.

  She tentatively put her nose into the tissue and tried to snort it. She wasn’t used to snorting. The gritty powder burned her nostrils and triggered a sneezing fit. She managed just enough of a taste to give her a fleeting moment of warmth, followed by an instant craving for more. She wiped her nose, dropped the tissue in the toilet and flushed it.

  She watched it swirl and disappear down the drain. She would have to score more, and soon.

  Georgia dressed and left the motel room. She brought her works along in her purse. The Buckshot Motor Inn didn’t look like the kind of place to have housekeeping service, but just in case, she didn’t want anyone to find the needle in her room. Outside, it was already hot and sticky in the morning sun. The parking spot in front of Marcus’s room was empty. She remembered him mentioning something about taking his son to a rodeo and breathed a sigh of relief. He’d seen her at her worst last night, jonesing like a fiend. The embarrassment of facing him again would be too much.

  She started walking to her car when someone called, “Good morning, miss!” Shading her eyes against the sun, she saw a squat, overweight man with a mess of greying hair on the porch. He was moving a broom back and forth noncommittally in dungarees and a Brooks & Dunn t-shirt that had long sweat stains under the armpits. He leaned the broom against the wall and walked toward her. The rubber soles of his sneakers squeaked annoyingly with each step.

  “Morning,” she said. She hoped that whatever he wanted, the conversation would be quick. She didn’t have time for this.

  “Roy Dalton’s the name,” he said when he reached her. He sounded out of breath and something rattled in the back of his throat. “Owner and operator of this fine establishment.” His giant, meaty hand engulfed hers as he shook it. His palm was sweaty and callused. “Just wanted to make sure everything’s all right with your room. My boy, Wilbur, he’s been working the office for a while now, but he’s still young; he forgets things.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “He doesn’t have that attention to detail you need in the hospitality industry.”

  “Everything’s fine, thanks.” She opened the car door.

  “Good, good,” Roy Dalton said. He cleared his throat again. It was obvious he had more to say. Georgia waited by the open car door. She wished she could just ignore him, get in and take off, but it wasn’t a good idea. That kind of rudeness would be remembered. It was better, she knew, to be pleasant and forgettable. “We don’t get many visitors in Buckshot Hill, especially single gals like yourself,” he continued. “Anyways, with the missus away visiting friends up in Santa Fe, I’ve got a lot of free time on my hands, so if you need anything, anything at all, you just let ol’ Roy know, okay? I aim to please.” He smiled, and she saw several of his upper teeth were gone on one side of his mouth, the bottom teeth mashing up against the empty gums.

  The missing teeth made her think uncomfortably of entropy. She forced a quick, thin smile, lowered herself into the driver’s seat and closed the door. Roy Dalton leaned into the open window on his elbow. A fat droplet of sweat rolled down his arm. She could sense him trying to peek down the neck of her t-shirt. “Hold up a moment,” he said.

  Georgia sighed, her key halfway to the ignition. Now what?

  He wiped his forehead. “You got a look about you, miss, if you don’t mind me saying. One I’ve seen enough to recognize by now. Bags under the eyes, jitters. You looking to score?”

  Shit.

  Rattled, Georgia feigned righteous indignation. “Excuse me?”

  Pathetic. Everything about her voice sounded like a lie.

  “It’s all right if you are. I ain’t judging. I’m just saying I can help you out.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She put her key in the ignition.

  “Got a brother who likes a taste of the hard stuff now an
d then,” Roy said. “He wears that same look you got now when the jones comes over him. I know where he gets it, if you’re interested.”

  Georgia didn’t say anything, didn’t look at him, but she didn’t turn the key either.

  “Thought as much. See now, what’d I say? Customer service is all about attention to detail. You got nothing to fear from me. I ain’t gonna turn you in. I’ll tell you where to go, who to ask for, even. I’ll make it easy as pie, and all you gotta do in return is give ol’ Roy some attention. Show him some gratitude. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?” He grinned and licked his lips.

  Georgia felt sick. For a moment she thought of sweet, shy Wilbur, so awkward around girls. The boy would grow up to be just like his father, she realized, and that made her angry. She revved the engine. Roy backed away from the window and waved with a big, fake smile like he wasn’t some scumbag looking for a little junkie tail while his wife was away.

  She pulled her car out of the parking space, hoping she might accidentally run over his foot, then left the motel lot and drove back into town.

  Without Roy’s help, though, she didn’t know where to go, so she drove through Buckshot Hill with her eyes peeled. She’d been scoring long enough to know what to look for. Cornerboys with shifty glances, cars parked together in groups for no discernable reason, lone musclemen standing guard outside unmarked doors. But after half an hour she still didn’t see any of the telltale signs and began to wonder if the town was dry.

  No, it couldn’t be. Roy had said his brother scored in Buckshot Hill. She just had to look harder. But time was running out. The Dragon could already be on the move. If she lost the Dragon now, there was no telling how long it would be before she picked up the trail again. She didn’t have time to wander aimlessly.

  She thought of the vision, her dream-father’s words — She’s killing again — and the sight of all those screaming faces. The Dragon had struck again sooner than expected. The crate she’d seen in her vision had been from a company called Bristleman Corp. in Buckshot Hill. But that didn’t make sense. The Dragon never struck twice in the same place. It was how she stayed off the radar. Why change that now?