She roared, a screaming tornado that made Peregrine clap his hands over his ears and raised the hairs on his arms. And then she shot straight up the length of the Judge’s Spire and came to rest upon the top, her tail and body twining about the stone. She spouted a great gush of fire then glared down upon the Double L and Peregrine.
Was she looking at him?
As if reading his mind from afar, the Judge’s voice slithered into Peregrine’s head: “Tick-tock, Peregrine Long. I’m hungry.”
“I’m busy being shot at right now, Judge,” Peregrine muttered.
“Oh? If they hit their target, our agreement will be fulfilled.”
“Already grazed my shoulder. You want a taste?”
Her amusement lightened his mood, and he chuckled.
“Who’re you talking to?” The Sheriff was staring at Peregrine, his voice sharpened by pain as he worked the tourniquet around his shattered thigh.
Peregrine jerked his head toward the spire. “The Judge. She’s watching us.”
The Sheriff squinted. “Sam Hill take me, I forgot how big she is.”
Another shot and wood splintered off a tree beside Peregrine.
Wolfberg asked, “Who’s shooting?”
“Can’t tell.” Peregrine risked peering around the trunk. He was rewarded with a volley of gunfire and a glimpse of movement near a wall of straw bales between the barracks and the bright blue shearing shed. “Best I can tell it’s coming from the hay by the shed.”
Peregrine surveyed their spot. “I think there’s enough cover from the trees to get me from here to those boulders.” He jerked his chin toward a rocky outcropping that jutted up among trees closer to the main house. “From there I can draw a bead on the shooter.”
“I’ll do what I can to cover you, but you’d best move fast. Not sure how long I can stay upright.”
“I move fast when properly motivated, Sheriff.”
There was the clack of two guns being cocked. “How’s this for motivation, Long?”
Peregrine turned slowly, his hands up.
Pico had gotten the jump on them.
With one revolver pointing at Peregrine and the other trained on the Sheriff, Peregrine’s former boss said, “Shame that everyone’s gonna hear how you double-crossed the Wolf and tried to pin it on me, you one-eyed bastard.”
Wolfberg growled, “Pico, put your guns down. No one’s gonna believe that cock-and-bull story.”
“Sure they will when there’s no one around to dispute it.”
Peregrine watched Pico’s eyes and said, “Isabeau already has.”
Pico snorted. “And Simone’s disputed her. That leaves my word, and I’m the most upstanding citizen in Bonesteel.”
Sheriff Wolfberg pulled his gun.
Peregrine lunged to the side.
Pico fired.
The Sheriff pitched backward, a gaping hole in his chest.
Pico turned toward Peregrine, both guns aimed at him. His gaze strayed past Peregrine for a moment. “’Bout time you showed up.”
The snap of twigs announced another person coming up behind Peregrine. Then a shotgun barrel appeared over his bleeding shoulder, but it was trained on Pico.
The rancher froze.
“Hands up, Pico, and drop those guns.” Simone nudged Peregrine with her elbow, but her gaze was locked on the armed man. “Move your keister, Long.”
Simone stood behind Peregrine but was siding with him. It was the first time ever that Peregrine had been happy to see her.
Pico raised his hands and snarled, “What the devil are you doing, Simone? He murdered Dom!”
Peregrine took Pico’s revolvers, and Simone replied, “Like you just murdered Sheriff Wolfberg? That was cold-blooded and too easy for you, Pico. And now I’ve doubts about Peregrine’s guilt.”
“Time’s up,” the Judge whispered.
Peregrine looked up.
With another thunderous roar, the dragon launched from her spire. Simone jerked around and aimed her gun at the beast as the Judge folded her wings and plummeted down the length of the stone column. She flattened out her dive at the last moment and streaked up the valley with great sweeps of her iridescent wings.
The wind from her passage knocked them off their feet. Branches were sheared from the treetops and crashed down around them.
Peregrine tasted blood and dirt as he hit the ground. His eye patch was dislodged. He blinked and stared around him, squinting his left eye in the sudden sunlight. What the devil had happened to his vision? He shook his head, disoriented. He could see perfectly with the left eye. How was that possible?
Pico scrambled to his feet and charged toward the shearing shed. Peregrine and Simone gave chase. The rancher reached the door but was brought to a standstill as the Judge set his rambling house ablaze.
The dragon circled the ranch, spouting flames. The straw bales blazed. The chasers’ empty barracks went up in a blast of hellfire.
“Where’s my payment?”
Sheep stampeded across a field, bleating their terror, as the Judge landed in their midst and roared. “Shall I start with these?”
“Simone! Peregrine!”
They turned at the shout. Isabeau, fighting her half-crazed pony, rode to their sides. She dismounted and released the terrified animal to run for his life. Eyes rolling and tail streaking out behind him, the horse charged back the way he’d come.
The Judge’s head whipped around and she locked her gaze on the Hightower sisters. “Or will it be two for the price of one, Peregrine?”
“Run!” Peregrine shoved Isabeau and Simone toward the boulders.
The Judge lunged at him, but he stood his ground as the women reached cover. Black, choking smoke curled around him as the dragon stopped inches from his body. She opened her jaws and exhaled a gout of blistering, fetid heat. But she didn’t burn Peregrine though the acrid stench of his own singed hair stung his nose.
“Where’s the murderer you promised me?”
Peregrine shook his head. “I have suspects, but I need more time to prove guilt. I won’t condemn any man or woman for a crime they didn’t commit.”
Simone shouted, “Give her Pico! He murdered the Sheriff.”
Peregrine looked over his shoulder and his voice was strong as he said, “Not without a fair trial, Simone Hightower. I’m not gonna do to anyone what was done to me.”
“He’s behind the murders, Peregrine,” Isabeau shouted. “Mitchell confessed his part and turned state’s evidence against Pico, Bobby, and Matikai.”
The Judge hissed. “Bring this man to me. I will try him.”
Peregrine shook his head. “We need a complete investigation. Then you can have him.”
The Judge’s head pulled back and up as she reared high above him. “Bring me the man, now, or I’ll destroy Bonesteel and turn the woman you love into a pile of ash and bones.”
He really had made a deal with the devil. Peregrine’s shoulders hunched. He had little love for Bonesteel, but there were innocent people among its citizens. He couldn’t condemn them for a man he knew to be a cold-blooded killer. And he’d never let the beast have Isabeau.
“No.” Peregrine gazed steadily at death’s face. “I believe in the law. We had a bargain it’s true. But Pico Connelly is due a trial by his peers, not you, Judge. So take my life now, and our score will be settled. If you’re meant to have others, they’ll come to you by a court of law.”
The Judge stared at him, black smoke curling from her nostrils.
Peregrine held his breath.
A wooden door banged somewhere on the ranch.
Sheep bleated.
“Fine.” The Judge reached out a clawed forefoot, her dagger talons poised to strike. But instead of tearing Peregrine to pieces, she ripped the roof from the shearing shed and threw it into the trees.
Peregrine stumbled toward the safety of the boulders as wood and debris clattered all around him.
Pico screamed and kicked open the sagging shed door. H
e tried to dodge her, but the Judge’s foot came down once more and pinned the man to the ground.
“No! Please! I’m innocent! It was Bobby and Matikai! I’m begging you!”
“What’s your story, Pico Connelly? Be truthful. I will know if you lie.”
Pico stiffened and stared at the dragon. Tears dampened his face. A stain spread across his trousers as he pissed himself. “I’m innocent,” he sobbed. “I’ve been set up. Matikai and Bobby Mack are the killers. And Peregrine stole that pony. That’s all I know. I swear it. I swear.” But there was another story snaking through Pico’s head, one of betrayal and greed, one that showed his hand manipulating the course.
Isabeau and Simone clung to each other and shrank back from the scene. “What’s happening, Peregrine?” Isabeau asked.
He blinked. They couldn’t hear the Judge. Was it strange that he could? “She’s asking to hear his story. She knows if you’re lying. She gets inside your head and reads your thoughts.”
“Merciful gods,” Simone muttered.
The Judge lifted her foot off Pico. “Rise to face my judgment.”
Pico blinked, a weak smile on his face. He stood on shaking legs. “You see? You see my innocence, Judge?”
The dragon’s snout came down until it was right in front of Pico. He coughed, and then reached out as if to touch her. But just before his fingers reached her shimmering scales she arched her head up and over him so that she was gazing straight down her snout at him.
“No. I find you guilty.”
Pico screamed as the Judge exhaled a plume of fire and set the man ablaze.
Peregrine’s guts twisted. “Don’t watch,” he said as the sisters shrieked.
Pico staggered forward, his arms flailing.
The Judge’s snout shot downward and she snapped her front teeth around his flaming skull. She jerked her head up and back, tossing his headless body in the air like a cat toying with a mouse. Then the Judge caught Pico’s corpse in her jaws and swallowed him.
A rumbling purr vibrated the ground, and the Judge said, “Very satisfying.” She eyed Peregrine and added, “Our agreement is complete. Justice has been served. But there are others, Peregrine Long. The woman named Matikai and the man called Bobby Mack. They took two lives.”
He nodded. “So I heard.”
The dragon cocked her head. “Did you?”
“Yep. Every word.”
She lowered her head to take him in. “How unusual. And did you see his thoughts? The truth behind his lies?”
Peregrine’s jaw dropped. He nodded again, slowly, and whispered, “I did, Judge.” He glanced at Isabeau and Simone then turned back to the great purple dragon. “What does that mean?”
“You are a dragonsage.”
“I am?”
“Yes. I have gone many decades without one.”
Simone touched Peregrine’s shoulder. Her hair had come loose of its braids and her face was tear-stained. “I want to face judgment, Peregrine.”
Isabeau grabbed her sister’s arm. “What? No!”
But Simone shook her off and stepped toward the Judge. “I done Peregrine wrong, Judge. I was one of the group who strung him up in your hollow.” She crossed one arm over her chest and added, “Truthfully, I was the most insistent on his guilt.”
Once again, the Judge’s snout came down until it nearly touched Simone’s body, and the woman stiffened and stared. “Indeed, you are guilty. But you speak honestly, Simone Hightower.”
Isabeau trembled as she clutched Peregrine’s arm. She opened her mouth, but remained silent when he shook his head.
“I’ll accept your punishment, Judge,” Simone said.
The dragon nodded. “Turn away.”
Simone faced away from death. She chewed her lower lip, but kept her head high, accepting her fate.
The Judge slashed two curving talons across Simone’s back, and the woman shrieked and fell to her knees. Her duster and shirt were bloody tatters. Great gashes revealed muscle and bone, diagonal wounds from shoulder to hip that would heal but leave terrible scars.
“You will wear your guilt upon your body until the day you die, Simone Hightower.” The Judge studied the fallen woman and Isabeau, who’d gone to her sister’s aid. “But you have been spared by your honesty.” The dragon crouched and considered Peregrine for a long moment. “Dragonsage, you will find the others who wronged you and committed these crimes. Bring them to me, so that they may be judged.”
“Why do you care about the feuds of my kind, Judge?”
“Because unchecked feuds become war, and war feeds the Shadowns’ beast. Five dragons exist—five powers—and only we hold back the monster that seethes and plots against your kind and mine.” She tipped her snout toward Simone and added, “You will take Simone Hightower when she is well enough to travel. She will assist you in your search.” Then the Judge coiled her muscles, unfurled her wings, and sprang into the air.
Isabeau and Peregrine covered Simone as dust and debris engulfed them with each powerful down-stroke of the Judge’s pinions. The dragon cleared the tree line and swooped over the terrorized herd of sheep. She seized one in each claw, and then winged up to her promontory, snapped her wings tight to her body, and plunged into the darkness of her lair.
“I’ll hitch a team,” Isabeau said and ran to the only standing building on the property, the carriage house.
Simone gasped as Peregrine lifted her into his arms.
“I think I still hate you, Long,” she said through gritted teeth.
“You’d better get over that, Hightower. The Judge has tasked you and me with bringing Matikai and Bobby to face judgment.”
Simone groaned. “Where’s a chair when I need to kick one?”
Peregrine took in the obliterated rancho. “Not even a stool for as far as my eyes can see.”
He returned Simone’s weak smile as Isabeau led a team of black draft horses from the stable, hitched to a cart.
Peregrine gazed up at the blue sky. The sun was well past zenith, and soon he’d be leaving Bonesteel. Again. He moved toward the approaching cart.
It was a fine day to be alive.
A Word from Monica Enderle Pierce
The first dragon book I read was Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight. Gawd, that woman was a genius. It was both fantasy (telepathic dragons!) and science fiction (killer Thread from space!). McCaffrey seamlessly mixed genres in a way that made her books unique and exciting and, man, did I want to write like her. But I was eleven, impatient, and fickle. So I daydreamed about being a dragonrider (and a Jedi, and an elf, and a…), and I grew up. I moved on to American and English classics, Shakespeare, Brontë, Milton, and non-fiction. Then, after graduating from UCLA with an English degree, I joined the workforce, and I stopped reading—for more than a decade.
But when I was thirty-nine and mother to a toddler, the writing urge kicked into gear. I remembered the power and appeal of McCaffrey’s mixed genres, so I tried my hand at combining post-apocalyptic fiction and space opera and produced my first self-published novel, Girl Under Glass. Wanting to try something different, I then wrote and published my second book, Famine, a blend of dark fantasy and historical fantasy about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
But I hadn’t returned to dragons…until I was offered the chance to contribute to The Dragon Chronicles. I dipped my hand into the genre pool and gave it a good swirl, hoping for an idea that would challenge me. Immediately the notion of a spaghetti western with dragons bubbled out of my brain. Ohhh, yeahhh.
But why mix cowboys and dragons? Because looking at North America’s jagged saw tooth mountains, the eerie stone buttes, and the broad prairie expanses, it’s easy to imagine something wild, magical, and more than a little dangerous soaring above the cowboys and their herds. Maybe it’s just me, but cowboys and dragons don’t seem that far-fetched a combination; both are iconic symbols of strength, freedom, and determination. Yet they’re rarely depicted together. I wanted to change that.
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sp; “Judgment”, and the rest of The Bonesteel Saga, is an intimate story in a setting that’s both familiar and strange, just like Sergio Leone would’ve done. It features iconic characters—Peregrine, my hat-tip to Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name, and the Judge, an archetype often seen in westerns but, in this case, embodied in a massive telepathic dragon.
Yep, give me a genre and I’ll mix it with another to give you something unique and unexpected. Want to see what I mean? Come crawl inside my mind and experience the magical, wild, and dangerous ideas lurking in its shadowy corners. You’ll find a list of my work at www.stalkingfiction.com, and I invite you to sign up for my mailing list at www.eepurl.com/SUYon
A Note to Readers
Thank you so much for reading The Dragon Chronicles. If you enjoyed these stories, please keep an eye out for other titles in the Future Chronicles collection, a series of short story anthologies in speculative fiction. Currently available titles in the Chronicles include:
The Dragon Chronicles
The A.I. Chronicles
The Alien Chronicles
The Telepath Chronicles
The Robot Chronicles
Available later this year will be The Z Chronicles, The Immortality Chronicles, and The Time Travel Chronicles.
And, before you go, we’d like to ask you a very small favor, if you please: Would you write a short review at the site where you purchased this book?
Reviews are make-or-break for authors. A book with no reviews is, simply put, a book with no future sales. This is because a review is more than just a message to other potential buyers: it’s also a key factor driving the book’s visibility in the first place.
More reviews (and more positive reviews) make a book more likely to be featured in bookseller lists (such as Amazon’s also-viewed and also-bought lists) and more likely to be featured in bookseller promotions. Reviews don’t need to be long or eloquent; a single sentence is all it takes. In today’s publishing world, the success (or failure) of a book is truly in the reader’s hands.
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