Let Sleeping Dragons Lie (The Modern Dragon Chronicles Book 1)

by Ty Burson

Granny nodded as she retrieved the phone from it’s place on the wall, “Yes, dear. I’m getting old, and there are limits to what I can still do. If those two come back again, I don’t think I have another round left in me. You all be quiet while I call some people, all right?”

  “Are you going to call Mommy?” Dani asked.

  “Yes, now you children go out on the porch so I can have some quiet. But don’t move from there.”

  “But I want to listen,” Dani whined.

  Joy scooped Dani up, “Come on sweetie, we’ll go outside and be lookouts in case the bad guys come back.”

  Steve closed the door just as Granny got his mother on the phone, “Hello, Jeanie, listen…”

  Steve went over to the railing, away from his friend and little sister. He wasn’t sure what to do. The men wanted him, and it had to do with the dragon, and Justin might be in danger. He understood all that, but not what his options were. He looked at Joy for help.

  Joy seemed to sense what Steve wanted, so she took Dani over to the other end of the porch, grabbing a plastic box of sidewalk chalk along the way. “Dani, did you see the bad guys very well?”

  Dani nodded.

  “Could you draw them, here on the porch? That way, we can show them to anyone who comes to help.”

  Dani smirked and tilted her head, “Sure, but if you and Steve want to talk all you have to do is ask. I’m not stupid!”

  “No, Dani, you are definitely not stupid. I think Steve wants to tell me something, okay?”

  “Okay, hand me a blue one,” Dani instructed. “I think one of them had a black eye.”

  Joy joined Steve at the other end of the porch. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m not sure. I just know that they only gave us an hour, and that was 20 minutes ago. No one could even get up here in time. No one is going to be able help us before they come back,” Steve said.

  “Granny can hold them off,” Joy said, though without a great deal of certainty.

  “Maybe. But what about Justin? I can’t just leave him out there. You know how he gets, and I know Granny wants us to stay here, where it’s safe, but still.”

  Joy hesitated a minute before answering, “Steve, it’s a really bad idea. You don’t know what will happen to you, and Justin wouldn’t want you to go, either. Besides, what about the dragon? I mean, you and Granny can do magic, or your dragon can, or whatever, but those guys are dangerous, and then there’s that demon thing…” Joy gave up trying to list how many things were against them.

  “Joy,” Steve said, “they said they’ll hurt my dad. They might even hurt Mom, or whoever else Granny calls. You have to help me. I need to sneak away without Dani calling for Granny.”

  Joy looked over at the little red-headed girl drawing on the porch and nudged Steve in her direction. “No Steve, you really don’t. Just tell her what you’re going to do.”

  Chapter 27

  Steve held the radio call button, but then thought better of it. Looking back over his shoulder, he realized he was still too close to Granny’s house. Steve lingered within the porch’s bright ring of light and glanced back at Joy, who watched him with her arms folded, scowling. Steve waved and smiled before ducking out into the shadows. He knew she was upset, but he couldn’t think of a better way to make sure that his dad, not to mention Justin, would be all right.

  He nimbly crossed beyond his grandmother’s protective circle and stepped out onto the road, then waited to see if anything was different—he thought about ice cream, but decided he didn’t want it any more than he usually did. He couldn’t hear anything except the buzz of insects and maybe a distant rumble of a big truck on the highway. When he realized nothing was abnormal was happening, he began jogging down the road. A few minutes later, he pressed the button.

  “Uh, hello,” he said.

  Click. No answer.

  “Uh, I left, so you can come and get me, uh, over,” Steve spoke into the radio.

  Click. Click.

  “Hold the radio away from your mouth. Just talk normally,” a voice squawked back.

  “Ah, okay. Oops, forgot to push the button. I’m almost to the Tastee-Freez, come and get me,” Steve announced.

  “Who’s with you?”

  “Just me. Granny doesn’t know yet, so you better hurry,” Steve answered.

  “Okay, keep walking up to the main road. We’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

  Steve continued to walk between the slender pines that crowded up to the road. The sky above had exploded with bright stars, which should have made him feel better. Instead, it made the woods seem even darker. The worst was over; or that’s what he told himself. At least he had made a choice, right or wrong. He wished he had some kind of crazy, clever plan that would save the day and protect everyone, including the dragon, but he didn’t. He thought about all kinds of plots, anything from comics he’d read to adventure books; somehow, nothing he had ever read told him how to save his best friend and his father, not to mention destroy a demon. Steve was tired, so he stopped walking just beyond where the road curved and waited for a pair of headlights to round the bend.

  “Steeeve.”

  Uh oh, Steve thought to himself, was this the dragon? Or another demon trick?

  “Don’t be afraid. Trust me. Go back.”

  “I can’t,” he answered in his own head. “They’ll hurt my dad. They’ll hurt Justin. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I will protect you. You have my power, the power to call for help. Don’t be afraid.”

  Sure, Steve thought, should be super easy, no problem. Yeah, right. But before the dragon could tell him how to do any of that, a car was coming. It slowed to a crawl and edged toward the shoulder of the road.

  Before the car came to a complete stop, Steve heard, “Open your mind. See what is around you.”

  Steve struggled to do what the dragon wanted. How was he supposed to open his mind? He imagined taking a can opener to his forehead, then decided if it was going to feel like that, then he maybe he ought to just keep his mind nice and closed. “Trust me,” he heard again. So, with a sigh, Steve closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and went for something different: popping the lid off a Tupperware container. Suddenly, everything changed, so much so that it was hard to describe.

  He heard himself talking; he saw the car stop and the doors open; he saw himself, arms at his sides; he could see the dragonflies and mosquitoes darting about in the night air, the bats that hunted them floating on almost visible currents of air; he felt the doe in the bushes as she shied back from the road, disturbed by the men and the bright lights; there was a smell, too, a dog on Mrs. Matthews’ back porch; and noise, two black bears snooping at the side of the road for trash, a hundred feet away. He heard them stop and sniff the air, and his thought became their action. He called them, and they came.

  The brothers were out of the car, telling him to get in. Without looking directly at them, he could sense that they were confused. He saw himself through their eyes, heard himself through their ears. He was talking, talking in stutters, in a trance, like his father. He saw, but did not feel, the older brother grab his arm. Like mirrors in front of mirrors, he saw the older brother and himself, again and again. It should have been overwhelming, but it wasn’t.

  The first bear struck the brother who held Steve hard enough to knock him off his feet. The other one lunged at John, who tripped and fell all on his own. The bear then stood over him growling. The pair weren’t huge, maybe a few hundred pounds apiece, like most of the black bears Steve had seen. But they had sharp teeth, powerful jaws and claws, and they still outweighed both men. John pretended to play dead while his brother scrambled backwards to avoid the swiping paws of the advancing black bear. The older brother began yelling for help. And then, with his greater awareness, Steve felt the demon coming.

  It appeared from a long way off as a tiny sliver of spiraling smoke, but it grew larger by the second, moving very fast. Steve knew he wouldn’t have time to
get back to Granny’s place, so he turned his attention to the approaching demon, the one the older brother had called Mammon. Steve was finally able to see it clearly, as a dragon would and not as a human.

  Within its camouflage of smoke, a face appeared—or something like a face. It seemed to shift constantly, reforming itself, the mouth widening, then shrinking, the skin of its face bloated, then pulled taught over nothing but bone. Its eyes, however, were constant. They were headlights in the fog, glaringly bright. Steve knew instinctively to avoid looking at them.

  “Look,” his dragon said. Steve’s consciousness pulled back and he was observing the whole scene as a giant might, from above. He saw that his body, his real body, was glowing, a golden hue that he knew only he could see. From him, that glow extended to each of the bears, who themselves glowed, just not as brightly. He also saw that a very fine golden thread stretched off into the distance. Without having to ask, he knew it was his connection to the dragon.

  Mammon must have seen it too, because the demon visibly avoided any contact with the light surrounding Steve and the animals. It was almost as if Mammon was afraid, Steve realized. He quickly willed himself back into his body, then, still mentally in touch with his dragon, swung at Mammon as he flew by. Steve was not fast enough to catch the demon’s head, but where his golden coated arm hit the smoky tail, there was a flash and a tiny explosion of ashes. The demon screamed, and Steve yelled in triumph. Then pain.

  Apparently, the demon didn’t do his dragon much good either. Steve clutched at his arm, which felt like it did when it fell asleep—pins and needles poking at his flesh. The golden threads that connected him to the bears blinked and then disappeared. Steve could still sense his connection to the dragon, but it was weaker now, and he couldn’t see everything the way he had before. He watched the bears run away and two very angry men drag themselves off the ground with his own eyes. Mammon, the coward, was hightailing it away.

  “Y-y-yeah, c-c-come on back and I’ll give you a great b-b-big hug, you creep,” Steve said aloud, “w-w-we’ll see if I can’t turn all of you to ash.” Even as he said it, the demon spun back, locking in on him with its eyes. Steve clamped his mouth shut, afraid it might actually turn around. He realized that, without his dragon’s connection, he had nothing to fight back with, and that thought scared him. Mammon smiled, as if sensing Steve’s fear, before continuing on his way.

  One of the brothers snatched his arm, which no longer felt as painful, and dragged him along until he was in the back of the Mercedes. The brothers climbed into the front, and, without saying a word, started up the car and turned around. Frightened and alone, Steve looked out the back window toward his Granny’s place. The dirt from the spinning tires clouded his view. He definitely wasn’t crying, or at least that’s what he told himself.

  “Sit down, kid,” John, the fatter brother, said. Steve was about to do as he was told when he thought he saw a faint golden glow receding into the distance. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but suddenly he did not feel quite so alone.

  “And buckle up. What if we get in an accident?”

  Chapter 28

  Granny opened the front door poked her head out, “Okay children, listen…Where’s Steve?” Granny asked. But before Joy could even answer, “Oh no, he didn’t, did he? Joy, why didn’t you stop him?”

  Joy wished she could explain, but nothing she could think of sounded any good. “I…I’m sorry, Granny,” she said, with a small, guilty sob.

  Granny sighed and pulled Joy over to her. She wrapped her arms around her and reached up to smooth her long blond hair. “It’s okay, child. It’s not your fault. I should have known Steve would do something like this.” Suddenly she stiffened, “Where’s Dani? Dani!” she called.

  “Here, Granny. I’m over here,” Dani announced.

  “Oh, thank God. I thought something might have happened to you, too.

  “Steve said I couldn’t come,” Dani admitted, pouting a little. “He said it was too dangerous.”

  “Well, he was right about that, at least. Get in the house, you two.”

  Granny told them to sit and stay out of the way and then she got back on the phone. Joy listened as she called Steve’s mom back and told her what happened. She felt guilty for not talking Steve out of going off by himself, but she knew she couldn’t have. She might have told Granny on him; maybe she should have, she thought, as she half-listened to Granny’s pacifying responses to Jeanie, who seemed more than a little upset.

  Granny finished making a few more calls. “That’s all we can do for now. I don’t have car, so we can’t go after them. We have to wait.”

  “I’m sorry, Granny,” Joy said. “I should have told you, or stopped him.”

  “You should have told me, yes. But you wouldn’t have been able to stop him. No sweetheart, I don’t blame you,” Granny explained. “I’m not even really mad at Steve; I probably would have done the same thing myself.”

  Dani wrapped her arms around Granny’s waist. For once, she didn’t have anything to say. Granny played with her curls and hummed softly to herself. Joy didn’t want to interrupt, so she got up softly to peer out the window.

  “Granny,” Joy asked, “I tried my folks on my phone, but I don’t get signal here. Did you?”

  “I did. I didn’t get anyone, but I left a message. Jeanie said she would keep trying herself.”

  “And Justin’s parents?”

  “Same thing. I don’t know if there is something funny going on.”

  “But you reached Steve’s mom, right?”

  “True. Why don’t you get yourself a sandwich or a glass of tea, dear?”

  Joy turned around, “Huh, oh, no thanks Granny. So, what are we going to do? Is someone coming to help?”

  Granny continued to twirl Dani’s hair, “Jeanie is on her way. She called some friends and family, and I called a few more. Some of them will go after the men who took Steve right away.”

  Dani perked up and asked, “How will they find them?”

  “Oh, we know what they’re after, dear,” Granny replied.

  “So, you know where,” Joy hesitated, “where the dragon is?”

  “Mostly. Never been there myself, but between Jeanie and I, we have a pretty good idea where to start looking. We’ll have a lot of other people to help us too. And Jeanie won’t be long.”

  “I want to see the dragon, Granny!” Danny exclaimed.

  “Baby, if you see the dragon—if any of us sees the dragon—it will be too late,” Granny mumbled, but she didn’t explain further.

  Dani pouted, “That’s not fair! How come Daddy and Steve get to see the dragon?”

  “They don’t, dear. Not really. The dragon sleeps, baby, and it talks to those it chooses. Sometimes it shows your daddy things, like dreams. But if the dragon wakes up, it would be terrible. That’s what I’m afraid of, that those men, or whoever is controlling those men, want to wake the dragon up.” Granny got up, “Come on girls, there are a few things we need to get around before Jeanie gets here. Dani, get the flashlights back out of the closet. No, don’t run…Oh, never mind.”

  Chapter 29

  “Hey, Frank, you think the kid’s still awake?” John asked his brother’s silhouette.

  Frank didn’t bother turning to look at his brother; the dark, twisting road commanded all his attention. “How should I know? Why don’t you ask him?”

  “Hey, kid, you up?” John inquired.

  Steve lay back into the plush rear seat. He was awake, wide awake, in fact. He’d tried closing his eyes and talking in his head to his dragon, but despite their newfound connection, nothing. He waited a little while before answering John, however, “Yeah, I’m awake.”

  John tapped his brother and inclined his head to the back seat. Frank groused, “Knock it off, John. Can’t you see this fog? I can’t see where the hell I’m going in this crud.”

  Steve looked up over the backseat and out the front windshield. The older brother, Frank, was right; heavy
fog had formed seemingly out of nowhere, common enough in Northern California, but for someone who wasn’t used to half their world disappearing beneath a fog bank, like Frank, it must be bizarre, even frightening. Steve figured driving in it had to be scary.

  Suddenly, the car swerved into the other lane. “Holy Crap, did you see that?! A rock, it was a stupid rock the size of a couch!” Frank yelled.

  “Dang, where’d it come from?” John asked.

  “From the cliff! The mountain’s raining down on us!” Frank replied. “There are rocks everywhere, and with this fog, I can’t see anything.” He jerked the car to the left and back again.

  “Maybe you should slow down,” John said before looking back at Steve and winking.

  “Ya think?” Frank shot back. “I’m already creeping along at 15 miles per hour.”

  “Where are we going?” Steve heard himself ask.

  “Don’t play dumb kid,” Frank replied. “We’re going to find that dragon of yours.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” Steve answered truthfully.

  Frank dodged another chair-sized boulder and brought the Mercedes back to his side of the road. “Fortunately for you, kid, your dad practically showed us where the dragon is, days ago.”

  “So, how come you need me? Why don’t you and your brother just go yourselves?”

  John looked quizzically at his brother, “Good question.”

  “That is the million-dollar question,” Frank said.

  The car crept down the mountain road. Steve had ridden along this road a hundred times, but never this late, and never covered in this kind of fog. And never had he seen so many falling rocks and boulders. He wondered if his dragon had anything to do with it. He decided that it probably did, and he felt better.

  From the backseat, he could study the thugs up front. They were a pair of big guys, and kind of fat, especially the younger brother. Steve should have been afraid of them, but he really wasn’t. Maybe it was some kind of sixth sense thing, but he didn’t think they wanted to be bad guys, deep down. Still, he didn’t like them; they had threatened his father and kidnapped his friend. Oh wow, Justin! He’d almost forgotten about him.