Dark Heart

by Margaret Weis;David Baldwin

  “If he was the mind that helped lead to revolution, she was the backbone that kept him straight. And she was also his weakness. If she had asked him to give up his writing for her, he would have done it in an instant. But she would never ask him to give up his dreams and convictions. She was brave, and she believed that since they were right, they would be invincible.

  “I struggled for days, hidden in their barn, trying to resist my call to be the reaper of this beautiful life. You…,” he gasped as new agonies roared through him, “…cannot imagine the pain of resisting my master. I could only resist for three days, and then I murdered her. I made it look as if her dismemberment was carried out by czarist aristocrats. I lingered long enough to see her husband find the body. Young Iosif’s heart broke before my eyes.

  “From that moment forward, nothing else mattered to Iosif but his work. He threw himself into it. Before long he was discovered, arrested, and sent to Siberia. Later he escaped and returned to the struggle where he caught Lenin’s eye. By then Lenin did not see an intellectual, in love with words and ideas, dedicated to a higher purpose. Lenin saw a man of action who wanted to fight and to kill.

  “I watched these events from a distance, watched as Stalin climbed to power. The millions of deaths he inflicted on his enemies, his own people, even those he called his friends, were torture to me. For I knew that I had begun it all with a single act of violence. I was appalled at the way Stalin turned his old friends against one another, the way he exiled Trotsky and later had him killed, the way he seized complete power when Lenin died. He was the worst tyrant I had ever seen. He drove peasants off their land, starved his people to death, killed anyone who opposed him. I could not believe that I had made such a man. I could not believe it…

  “Until I saw a man who was worse.

  “I detached myself from my master after Yekaterina’s death. I avoided him, I hid from him. I could not believe in him any longer, not after what he’d made me do.

  “But when I walked through the frozen streets of Stalingrad after the Russians captured the ‘indestructible’ German Sixth Army, turning the tide on Nazi Germany forever, I knew that the Dragon’s long view had out-reached me again. Whatever Stalin was, he was not Hitler.

  “Stalin was a cruel and bloody leader, completely ruthless. It took a man like Stalin to defeat Hitler.

  “That day I reconciled with my master. He saw the understanding within me, and he bestowed a new gift upon me. In those frozen streets, I first assumed my dragonling form, with all the strength and power that accompanies it. That day I became an Elder disciple. I flew across the countryside, viewing the carnage. Millions died in the six-month battle for Stalingrad, but it was not the Dragon’s fault. He was trying to guide them away from war. As he puts it, monsters that destroy need monsters to combat them. That is his philosophy. You cannot stop a sword’s blow without steel of equal quality. As harsh as the Dragon’s methods may seem sometimes, he is our only hope of reaching past this bloody nature of ours. He is our only hope of reaching true civilization….”

  When Justin finished his story and looked up, he realized that Sandra was sitting next to him. Her eyes were red rimmed, full of sorrow, wet with tears. The back of the pew in front of him had disintegrated under his clenched hands.

  Her light touch trailed across his tensed jaw. He jumped at her touch, delicate as it was.

  “Join me…,” he said in a hoarse voice.

  “I was you,” she whispered. “I was just like you. Look at what you endure for him.” She never wavered in her gaze. “My dragon’s name was Chuck, and every time he struck me, I told myself that he didn’t mean it. Every time I stared in the mirror for hours at a time, watching the bruises darken on my face, I told myself that he really loved me. He was just frustrated, and needed me to help him get past this tough time in his life. I needed to help him achieve his dreams. I told myself he hit me because I had to learn. I believed it for so long. But Justin…” She paused long enough to draw a deep breath. Both her hands reached up to touch his face. “He lied.”

  “What?” He peered through the agony, focusing on her face, concentrating on her words. “No….” Heshook his head.

  “Yes. Don’t you see?” she urged. “We believe their lies because we want to. We make them our own and call them truths. Because we let our fear have us. Because we won’t face the devil we don’t know, as opposed to the devil we do. And we hate ourselves for it.”

  “No….” Justin’s memories pulled at him, and the Dragon’s pain threatened to rip him apart. Gwendolyne’s face hovered in his memory, pleading for her life. “No, it’s not like that…she was just afraid. She was…she couldn’t face…it was what she wanted. I didn’t…I didn’t force her. She was just afraid. It wasn’t me. It was the plague, not me…the plague that killed her. She didn’t choose in time, and….”

  Sandra’s hands came away from Justin’s face. He opened his eyes, which he’d closed in a desperate bid to block the pain. He looked up into Sandra’s eyes.

  She had risen and was backing away from him. Her face was a mask of terrible surprise, as if she were seeing him for the first time.

  “I’ve been a fool,” she said.

  “Sandra.” His voice was the dragonling’s voice. Dear God, he was changing…he resisted the change with everything in him. He concentrated on making his voice sound human. “Don’t back away. Please don’t leave me. She left me alone. All alone….”

  “You killed her,” Sandra said, staring at him with terrified eyes. “You said she died of the plague, but you lied. You lied to yourself. You lied to me. All of it…lies. You killed her, didn’t you?”

  “Sandra! I…no…I couldn’t have…”

  “You did. You’re lying. You lie about everything. The ends justify the means. That applies to everything for you, doesn’t it? You’ve lived it so long, you’ve lost touch with everything else, haven’t you?”

  There was a wet crackling deep in Justin’s bones. Skin crinkled and hardened, becoming scales. The scales flowed down his arm like a disease.

  “Sandra, please!” Justin’s voice was an animal howl buried in a man’s words. He clutched his scaled arm to his side. “Join me. Quickly!” He held out a hand to her. His fingers were slowly disappearing, curling and hardening into thick, scaled talons. His thumb twisted around his hand, opposite the hooked claws.

  “You’re just like Chuck. What is it with me…every man I ever love is always just like him….” Sandrabumped back against a fluted column, trapped between two pews that ended there.

  “Quickly!” he roared. “We need a mirror.” He grabbed her wrist and dragged her toward the altar, where he could see a gleaming silver urn.

  Sandra screamed as a bone in her wrist snapped. “Please…let me go…I can’t do this,” she begged.

  “No! Quickly!” He grabbed the urn and shoved its reflective surface at her face. “Give yourself to him!”

  She turned her face away from it, looked at the wreck of the man she loved with sorrow in her eyes, pain in her heart.

  “I will be…myself.” She reached into her coat and drew out her gun.

  Justin’s claw lashed out, ripping her open from armpit to wrist. Sandra screamed. The gun clattered to the floor. Blood sprayed across the altar, across the steps, soaked the dark red carpet.

  Sandra slumped against him, staring at her ruined arm, staring at the blood that pumped out of her in steady spurts. “Please, Sandra,” Justin pleaded, holding her gently in arms desperate to crush her, “all the pain will go away. You’ll live forever. We’ll be together forever! You will live! Choose to live!” His muscles sang to him. He had to restrain them from crushing her into a pulp, from bashing her head into the flagstone steps. “For the love of God, look into the mirror!”

  “The love…of God…” Sandra’s body shook. “Yes…that is the answer…” She looked up at him. “Justin…you will…have to live with yourself again. You cannot have me. You go…with your God. I will go w
ith mine. May he have mercy upon you…upon your soul.”

  Her words blasted into his brain like shrapnel. He staggered back from her as if she’d hit him. Her words were Gwendolyne’s words. Gwendolyne had spoken those exact words to him before her death. She had prayed for his soul, damned him for his decision to join the Dragon.

  Justin lost control.

  With a powerful surge, he leapt forward and snatched Sandra by the neck. Her scream was cut off in a gurgle and a wet snap. His taloned fist drew back and he plunged it into her heart…

  …into his heart.

  twenty-seven

  Sandra’s body slid down the length of his arm, her red blood staining his skin. She fell on the altar, then tumbled to the stone floor in a crumpled heap.

  Sandra’s eyes, always so full of passion and pain, were glassy now. They stared past his left shoulder at nothing. Her last breath gurgled through the blood pouring from her nose and mouth. Her arms were broken, as was her neck, and her body lay on the blood red carpet of the church aisle, all unnatural angles and bruised and torn flesh.

  Justin stared at what he’d done, horrified. Sandra’s last agonized look was engraved on his memory, merging there with Gwendolyne’s dying agony. Both…he had killed them both…both of the women he had truly loved…

  “Well done, my servant.”

  Justin looked at the silver urn. The Dragon was there, all smoldering eyes and long teeth.

  “You have served me well this day, Lord Sterling.”

  Justin roared. Grabbing the urn, he threw it the length of the cathedral. The urn flew across the building to the front of the church, where it clanged against the double doors and fell to the floor.

  Justin launched himself into the air. His powerful wings carried him toward the stained glass rose window over the altar.

  Glass exploded into the air. Sparkling shards fell. Pedestrians in the street screamed. Brakes squealed and cars slammed into each other.

  His wings pumped furiously, carrying Justin instantly away from the scene. People had seen him, watched him fly away. He didn’t care. Let them scream. He could harness the light rays, bend them around his body to make himself invisible, but what did he care if they saw him? What did he care if they screamed? They should scream.

  Justin roared. The concrete canyons of the city echoed with his rage.

  His wing clipped a building. Its brick facing ripped into his shoulder and sent him spinning downward. Chunks of brick came with him. He smashed into an awning.

  Again he roared. He launched himself back into the sky. His muscles roared with pleasure, wanting more, wanting to fly into the crowds of the city and unleash carnage. But he curbed the desire. He flew straight to Gwendolyne’s Flight.

  It was nine in the morning. Chairs were neatly upended on the tops of the tables, waiting for the new day.

  He smashed through the plate glass window, landed on the wide dance floor, cracking its paneled wood surface. As soon as he looked up, he saw the Dragon’s reflection gazing at him from the huge mirror behind the bar.

  “Listen to me, Lord Sterling…”

  “No!” Justin snarled, grabbing a bar stool and pitching it at the glass. The Dragon’s image shattered and fell to the floor in a rain of silvered glass fragments. Two pillars at either side of the bar were also mirrors, and the Dragon’s face began to appear there. Before the master could speak, Justin smashed them. Methodically he found every mirror in the room and smashed them all before the Dragon could speak another word.

  At the end of his rounds, Justin collapsed to the floor, exhausted.

  “Sandra…,” he wept. His fists crushed the floor into dust. “Gwendolyne…both of you…how could I have killed you both?”

  Clenching his long, spiked teeth, he willed himself back to human form. Slowly the dragonling body collapsed. His wings rumpled in upon themselves and his muscles slithered back, away, underneath the scaled skin that pulled away from him.

  Ripping his way out of the skin, he stood, naked and wet in his deserted club.

  A chair scuffing the floor caught his attention and he turned. He had not heard the door open, but Kalzar sat calmly at the end of the bar, swirling bourbon in a cut crystal glass.

  “Terrible service in this place,” he said. “Must be bad management.”

  Justin said nothing. His hands curled around a tall, thin statue at his end of the bar. It was an Art Deco piece—two elongated lovers intertwined in a kiss.

  “You know, I’ve often tried to imagine the quickest way to put you in the master’s disfavor, but you outdid anything I could imagine today.” Kalzar chuckled, “You really lost it this time, Justin. I suspect I’ll be dreaming about you tonight.”

  “You won’t be dreaming about anything tonight,” Justin vowed.

  Grabbing the statue in two hands, he lifted it and smashed it on the bar, revealing the thing he had hidden there. Hidden from everybody, from the Dragon, even in a way from himself. The other artifact he’d taken from the museum.

  Justin brushed the chalky debris off the steel edge and lifted the broadsword from the statue’s wreckage. It gleamed with rivulets of fire in the light from the shattered window.

  Kalzar’s grin faded. His thin lips tightened.

  “What is that?” he asked, taking a step back.

  “Why don’t you tell me?” Justin said, moving toward him. Kalzar backed up another pace. “You can feel the power just the same as I can. Beowulf used this sword to kill Gyzalanitha. Saint George killed countless others of our kind with it. Using this blade, he chased our master into a lake in Libya. That was where the priests trapped the Dragon. The king drained the water away and thus ended the Dragon’s ability to return to this world.” Justin smiled a terrible smile. “What’s the matter, Kalzar? Haven’t you read up on this? I am surprised at you. Such a powerful artifact, and you didn’t think to look for it? Well, I did. Until I found it by accident. Or perhaps it wasn’t an accident.”

  “The master will have your head if you—”

  “Fuck the master,” Justin yelled, stepping forward and swinging. The blade caught Kalzar in the ribs, ripping into his expensive suit, his muscular chest, trailing blood in its path.

  Justin pulled the blade back for a second blow. “Can you feel it? It howls for our blood. Even as I hold it, I can feel it wanting to turn on me, as well. It was made to kill our kind. Much as it wants me, it wants you more, Kalzar. I am honored to aid it in its quest.”

  Bleeding from his terrible wound, Kalzar bolted for the men’s room. Justin cut him off with a swipe of the sword.

  “So that was how you came in? The mirrors in the bathroom. I thought I’d gotten all the mirrors in the place,” Justin said. “Now they’re your only escape. The doors are all locked. You’d never get through one before I cleaved you in half. All of the other mirrors are shattered. Now, which way will you run, Kalzar?” Justin stalked his old enemy, sword point first, making sure to stay between him and the bathroom door.

  Kalzar’s eyes flicked from Justin to the blade, then back to Justin. “Calm yourself, Justin. This is not what you want. The master will forgive you if you repent. You know he will. His Elders are valuable to him.”

  “Begging now, Kalzar? How very unlike you.”

  They crossed the floor slowly, Justin waiting for Kalzar to make a move, Kalzar biding his time. Then he heard it. The telltale bone-cracking sound that preceded the transformation.

  Justin leapt forward, but Kalzar was a split-second faster. He launched himself into the air. The sword caught his foot, slicing through two of his clawed toes. Kalzar howled, but while he was in the air, his transformation completed itself. Wings broke through his back and unfurled, spraying blood. His snout grew long and fanged. His suit ripped along the seams and tan scales bubbled all over his body. His howl of pain became a roar of fury. His wings flapped. His burning eyes turned to look back at Justin.

  “I will rip the flesh from your bones,” he growled.

  Just
in’s urge to metamorphose into his own dragonling form was almost overwhelming. A mortal’s chances against a dragonling were low. Even a lesser disciple could not fight an Elder, as he had shown Omar. But Justin refused to transform. To do so would be to enter the Dragon’s realm again. That body was a gift from the Dragon, susceptible to the Dragon’s manipulations.

  Kalzar dove. Justin swung the sword. The blade slashed Kalzar’s chest. He howled again and backed off. That wound would not heal, the toes would not grow back, and his side still bled from where Justin had slashed him while he was still in human form.

  For most of his immortal life, Justin had felt nothing but contempt for Saint George, the man who had driven his master from the world. But Justin had only faced the Dragon’s reflection in the mirror. Saint George had fought the Dragon flesh-to-flesh. He had sent Justin’s master fleeing, using only this slender span of metal.

  For the first time in many years Justin felt fear. The Dragon’s powers had kept him safe from harm. But he had spurned the Dragon, and now he fought one of the Elder disciples with nothing but a sliver of sharp metal and the power of a faith he’d forsaken for centuries. If Justin failed, Kalzar would carve him up with Justin’s own weapon, and that would be the end of it.

  “Give it up, Justin!” Kalzar cried. He scooped up handfuls of shattered mirror and began throwing the glass at Justin.

  The tiny shards ripped into Justin and he gasped. Glass rained down on him with hurricane force, and he fell back, bleeding from a dozen wounds.

  Justin jumped inside the DJ’s booth and slammed the door. Kalzar attacked the booth, shattering the glass.