Jennifer Scales and the Messenger of Light

by MaryJanice Davidson

  Evangelina turned from father to daughter, and back to father again.

  You deserve to die.

  His silver eyes were wet. “If I could have gone there in your place, I would have. For any of Dianna’s children.”

  Not just her children! Your children!

  The shadow deepened.

  We were pushed away into a place of death! I was alone! And instead of coming to find me, you went on with your life! You forgot me! And you had HER!

  A stray claw waved back vaguely toward Jennifer, who felt her cheeks redden.

  “I never forgot you,” Jonathan promised quietly. “I just couldn’t imagine how you would have survived. Even if I had known Dianna still had hope, I would have thought her search fruitless.”

  At least Mother tried. Would you try for this one?

  Another motion toward Jennifer.

  He bowed his head. “You know you’re asking an impossible question. I can’t travel like your mother can. Like you can. Besides, I told you: I thought you were dead.”

  Evangelina was so swift, Jennifer didn’t realize what was happening until she was within the shadow, with legs and claws wrapped around her throat.

  This one’s dead, as far as you’re concerned. Will you still try to save her?

  Jennifer could not see her father through the darkness, but she could hear him. His voice was full of shock, rage, and helpless desperation. “Let her go!”

  No daughter, Father. No daughter!

  “You let her go or I’ll kill you!”

  Ah. So I thought.

  The claws pushed Jennifer away, out of the darkness and onto the ground. Her two daggers followed behind her as Evangelina discarded them in disgust. Jennifer’s lips and teeth struck the pavement, and the copper tang of blood ran down inside her cheeks.

  You made your choice, Father. Long ago, and again today.

  Then something remarkable happened: Evangelina withdrew. The shadow receded, and the dark scales swirled, and the head that Jennifer had recognized as so similar to her own bowed down and away from them. The voices in their head went silent, and Jennifer knew, as sure as she was of anything, that Evangelina could not tell what either of them was thinking. She was blind and deaf to them both, turned inward, for just one moment.

  It may have been the boldness that comes with seeing an opportunity, or the lingering taste of her own blood. It may have been the way her sister forced her into helplessness, or the rage she had heard in her father’s voice, or all of these things. She darted forward, scooped up a dagger, and jumped, bloody teeth bared.

  “No, Jennifer!”

  At her father’s words, Evangelina extended her awareness immediately, sensed her sister’s approach, and spun around with dark corona in full bloom. The burst of defensive thought, however, was not nearly enough to slow the attack. Jennifer was going to deal a crippling blow upon landing. Even through the shadow, she knew now where the throat was. There would be no missing it. She felt the exultation of victory. Is this what a successful hunt is like? Is this how she felt, in that other world, right before the kill?

  Before she could land, her father rammed into Jennifer’s side and knocked her back, sending her dagger flying. As she hit the ground and grunted, a deep chill—something colder than November—settled in over them all. Jennifer couldn’t place it, but it was unnatural…and familiar.

  Jonathan ignored it. His wings fluttered in frustration. “Not like that, Jennifer! That’s not what we’re going to do!”

  “She wants to kill you, Da—” She choked on her own words, because she saw just how right she was. Her other dagger was still close to Evangelina. A claw reached out for it, snatched it into the darkness, and then reemerged—twice as long, with a sharp black edge and deadly point. It hovered behind the spikes on Jonathan Scales’s head.

  Jennifer was on the ground, looking over his left wing as he looked down at her. He was unaware of the death dangling behind him, and she couldn’t find the words to speak. Nor could she possibly move fast enough to do anything.

  He’s dead.

  All she could do was scream as the scythe came down upon him.

  The chill worsened and dipped deep into her flesh. Clouds of vapor covered the ground. The scythe wavered in midair, and Jennifer felt Evangelina recognize the change around them.

  Yes, it was familiar—Jennifer could place it now. The feel of a winter chill upon the lake by the cabin.

  Grandpa Crawford’s cabin.

  What she saw behind the shadow of Evangelina made Jennifer scream again. It was pale lavender in color, dragonlike in shape—but nothing less than a vision of death. The Venerable Crawford Thomas Scales was terrible to behold, moving in silent and relentless fury, reaching out with deadly violet smoke supported by a skeleton of cool and shining stone. He passed through Evangelina entirely, sending the black-scaled body into a seizure, and leaving a cascade of shadow in his wake. The venerable spirit swam swiftly over Jonathan and Jennifer, careful not to touch either of them, and then faded behind them.

  The wail of Evangelina shattered any thoughts Jennifer had about her grandfather, where he came from, or where he went. The four dark twists that had come together in the mall parking lot fell from the center like rotting flesh, and where one voice had once been on the air, there were now five.

  Kill Father!

  No, enough! I’ll stop you!

  Do as she says or die!

  We’re done fighting them!

  They are the enemy!

  Loosed upon each other, the shapes were soon at each other’s throats. Some of them began to shift into human form: Jennifer thought she could see Gerry wrestling the largest shadow, which gave the general shape of Angus Cheron. Elsewhere, the shadow of Rune Whisper was struggling toward the center of the fray—was Delores in there?—in an attempt to darken it, while the elderly features of Martin Stowe clung to its backside.

  “No, please!” Jonathan waded into the midst of the turmoil, heedless to his own safety. “Stop! Please! You’ll kill each other! Jennifer, help me! Help them!”

  “Dad, no!” But Jennifer had no choice, she had to go in to help him. And he was right: They were her brothers, and her sister. She picked up the dagger that Evangelina hadn’t claimed and tried to separate the fighters.

  It was like grabbing slippery snakes. Neither of them could get a true hold on anything happening around them, and half the time they couldn’t see a darn thing—but they could still feel the sting of an occasional stray (or intentional) blow. Jennifer felt a great disturbance toward the center. It was her sister, she knew. She wasn’t fighting.

  She was crying.

  No! Stop! Please!

  The same voice that had ordered the death of her father was now using his very words.

  You’ll kill each other!

  Her brothers, Jennifer realized, had spun out of control. They slashed harder at each other, tasting each other’s blood, thrilling in the hunt and battle. She had to stop them. Before her father could stop her, she waded into the melee.

  “Jennifer!” He clutched at her and followed her into the swirling shadows.

  No!

  They fought harder, tearing at each other and Jennifer, pushing aside Jonathan as though he were an afterthought. Rune Whisper dissembled into darkness again, casting a shroud over them all. Jennifer hardened into dragon skin and flailed away with her wings and feet, stomping snakes into existence and trying anything at all to organize the chaos. Someone landed on her already twisted ankle, then something jabbed into her side, and then someone else was pulling at her horns—her father, she was reasonably sure, since the effect was removing her from the worst of the fighting. Then she was out again.

  The struggle went on for some time, as Jennifer and her father looked vainly into the warring gloom. At one point she got up to try to separate them again, but he stopped her.

  “Don’t.” His voice was ragged with tired desperation. “Listen to them. This isn’t about us anymore.”r />
  Ingrate!

  Predator!

  Weakling!

  Murderer!

  “We can’t stop what they’ll do,” he told her as the voices raged on. “Any more than you or I could have reached into that dimension and plucked them out to safety.”

  Jennifer lay down and let her father hold her close. A horrible vision rose in her mind—the shapes of warriors, dragons, and spiders fighting to the death. Was this what it was like? She asked herself. Centuries ago, when the first ones fought each other? Will it still be like this, centuries from now?

  The sounds of fighting were now interspersed with exclamations of anguish. The thumps slowed down, but were more forceful—killing blows, Jennifer guessed. Finally, there was the sound of two such blows landing at once. Slowly, like a last breath fading away, the darkness dissipated.

  Four bodies lay dead on the ground. Among them, the veiled form of Delores Cheron—the last part of Evangelina—was sobbing uncontrollably.

  I failed them. Again. Now they are all gone.

  Jennifer and her father remained on the ground, protecting each other with their wings. They felt her senses extend across this strange world, and then retreat in fear.

  I’m alone.

  “Not alone,” Jonathan corrected her. He got up and took a tentative step forward, reaching out with a wing claw.

  Father. So much pain. So much death.

  He took her under his wing. Jennifer felt a chill again and shivered.

  I’m sorry. So sorry for what I’ve done to you.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

  You won’t leave me alone again?

  “You won’t be alone, child.” Jonathan was looking over Jennifer’s shoulder. “Ever again.”

  The cold crept down Jennifer’s spine: She knew who was behind her without turning around. The voice in her mind was no longer Evangelina, but a warped echo from her own past, distant but still kindly.

  Step aside, Niffer. Step aside, son.

  She relaxed back to human form and stumbled out of the way. Jonathan backed off, drawing Evangelina to her feet before separating. The shrouded face turned to the deathly presence that approached, and her right hand came up to pull back the veil.

  Jennifer drew in a quick, cold breath. The hair was dark, there were ten more years at least in the high cheekbones, and this woman was definitely shorter…but there were the gray eyes, the pale skin, and the same curve of the mouth Jennifer saw when she looked in the mirror each morning. For the first time, she heard nothing of this woman but a shared heartbeat.

  Evangelina stood tall under Crawford’s pale shadow. She glanced over to Jennifer for the briefest moment.

  Sister.

  Then the wraith descended, and she collapsed. Her grandfather’s phantom pulled her clear spirit upward and out. Jennifer saw it strain momentarily, unsure of its destination—then it reached out itself, to the four bodies around them, and plucked out four companions to tow behind her.

  Her grandfather’s spirit paused and turned slightly.

  I’ll take care of them, son.

  She watched her father nod, unable to speak. His claw grabbed her hand.

  “They’ll be all right with him, ace. Come on, let’s go check on your friends.”

  The spirits ascended into the starlight, and the largest one in the lead sent one thought back to Jennifer as delicate as a whisper:

  Your mom’s waiting, Niffer.

  CHAPTER 17

  The Return to Crescent Valley

  Grandpa Crawford was true to his word. After carrying her friends’ unconscious or woozy bodies to Eddie’s car, cautiously driving them back to Winoka alongside her father’s flying shape, and leaving them at the emergency entrance, Jennifer limped straight to the intensive care ward…in time to see her mother open her eyes.

  “Mom!” Jennifer flung herself on the bed, heedless of the resulting oomph from the patient and her father’s surprised warning. She knew her mother would be all right, now. Grandpa had said so.

  “Jennifer! Oh, Jennifer. You’re hurt!”

  She looked down at herself. “Er, right. Well, some of this blood isn’t mine…”

  “Jonathan, you’ve got to make her go down to the emergency ward!” Elizabeth turned to him. “You’re not hurt, too, are you?”

  “Just a scratch here and there.” His face glowed to see his wife awake. “Liz, if you think you can make our daughter do a damn thing, you haven’t been paying attention lately.”

  “Well, I can’t do a thing from this bed! Somebody’s got to…Susan? What happened to you?”

  They all looked at Susan, who was framed in the doorway with a bandaged nose and the beginning of a glorious black eye. She waved weakly. “Hey, Bissus…I bean, Dr. Georges-Scales. You would not eben believe the day I’be had. The bedics downstairs gabe be dis gwick bandage, but I wanted to bake sure you were okay.”

  “Susan…” Jonathan wrapped the girl in his wings. “How can we thank you?”

  “By not bentioning any of this to by dad. Eber. Helb be think ub a really good lie for what habbened to the car. And by nose. You’re, uh, looging good, Dr. Georges-Scales.”

  This was a rather large lie, Jennifer thought. Her mom looked terrible. Worse than she felt herself. And older. Much older. It was the silver in her hair…and the new wrinkles by the eyes.

  “Will you forgive me if I leave now?” her father asked her mother.

  “Only if it’s to take our daughter downstairs.”

  “Dad, where are you going?”

  “I should let Winona Brandfire and the others in Crescent Valley know what’s happened. I can drop Susan off at home on the way. Jennifer could stay here with you.”

  Jennifer began to argue, but the floor suddenly rocked beneath her feet. She reeled. “I really want a nap.” Is this what a concussion feels like? Or is it the blood loss?

  “Jonathan! Our daughter! Emergency room! Now!”

  Her father leaned up against her, as Susan took her by the elbow. “Okay, ace. Easy now. Susan, let’s take her downstairs. I think they’ll just want to fix her up quick and observe you for a few hours.”

  “And once you’ve got her settled,” her mother’s voice carried down the hallway after them, “you will drag your scaly butt back here and spend the night. Your friends can wait! For heaven’s sake, Jonathan. You and your secret lizard club. Susan, mark my words: Boys are sad…”

  Things were almost getting back to normal the next afternoon, when Jennifer came back from Susan’s house and ran into her mother at the newly repainted, resanded, and now crimson front door of their house.

  “What are you doing home? Where’s Dad?”

  “I don’t need to be at the hospital. I told your dad he could go to Crescent Valley, since the crescent moon’s almost over with.”

  “Hmmph. And what are you doing leaving home?”

  “I’m heading out,” Elizabeth told her with a nod to the interior. Jennifer spotted—and heard—at least six construction workers within, all refurbishing the walls and floors from the scars of battle. “All the hammering’s driving me nuts. Come with me?”

  She examined her mother suspiciously. “The doctors told you it was okay?”

  “Honey, I’m a doctor. I say it’s okay.”

  “The doctor who treats herself has a fool for a patient.”

  “That’s lawyers, dear. The lawyer who represents herself has a fool for a client.”

  “Hmmph. I’ll bet it works for doctors, too. I’d better come along.”

  “Yes, I’m hoping you will!”

  The minivan was moving at a fair clip out of town before Jennifer finally asked, “Um, where are we going, exactly?”

  Elizabeth would only shrug.

  “More secrets, eh?”

  “This one can be between you and me, for a while.”

  It didn’t take long for Jennifer to figure out they were headed for the Scales family farm. A couple of hours later, they were drivin
g up gravel road past the beehives. The swarms of unusual insects braved the November chill to investigate the minivan’s arrival. Recognizing the occupants, they dissipated quickly.

  They parked well past the right edge of the driveway, rolling for a bit on pine needles and shriveled leaves before stopping. There were dragons on and about the farm. Jennifer could make out Joseph Skinner’s beastly shape trying to soothe a pair of her grandfather’s stallions to the west. Some tramplers were chasing sheep in the wildflower fields southeast of the house, and a few dashers were laughing out over the surface of the lake. She soon realized they were playing tag with a pair of golden eagles, under the barest sliver of a crescent moon.

  “Help me get this out of the back, will you? It’s heavy.”

  Her mother wasn’t kidding. Whatever it was, wrapped in heavy burlap, it nearly dragged Jennifer’s shoulders out of their sockets.

  “Over here, nice and quick.” Holding the other end, Elizabeth shuffled hastily around the minivan and toward the denser foliage close to the lake. Not having much choice, Jennifer kept up with her own end. “All right, set it down, honey. And get the shovel from the barn, please? I need to go inside and check on something. Thanks.”

  Jennifer came back in time to see her mother sticking an envelope in her jacket pocket and wiping away a tear. She didn’t ask about it, and they set to work.

  The ground had not frozen yet. It only took a few minutes to dig a hole deep enough to hold up what her mother had brought with them—a gravestone.

  “I commissioned this a few weeks ago,” Elizabeth explained. “So there would be a marker of him in this world. For us. Me, I guess.”