The Angel and the Dragon

by Pearl Goodfellow

  “Well, something sure has Shields spooked if he intended to kill us all in one go, and before his dragon is born,” Portia concluded. “We’ve all borne witness to the governor’s posturing. I’m positive he’d have liked nothing better than to see the Custodians perish at the mercy of his pet.”

  “Wow, this joker’s really unstable, huh?” Carbon enquired from atop Portia’s table. My fire- seeking kitty’s eyes blazed. “The weapon; that spinny-thing. Was it made from black diamond, then? I mean, is it conclusive?”

  “It looked like it, yes,” David said. “But I’ll have to take a closer look to be sure. I guess it depends on how long we can hold Talisman off before they stick their noses in.” The chief looked at Portia over the rim of his glasses. “I don’t suppose you can call off the dogs, huh?”

  The Witch Fearwyn nodded slowly. “I’ll see what I can do. I might be able to keep them away for forty-eight hours or so, but you’ll have to be quick.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” came David’s humorless response.

  If the gizmo that killed Orville were black diamond, then it would practically pin Shields with the offense. Black diamond came from Cathedral Isle only, and it was the governor who was in control of its mining, distribution, and application. Not one recreational or military device could be crafted from the stone without Gideon Shields personal signature. If I weren’t so shocked at the fact we had just lost our youngest member of the Custodians, I’d have been feeling pretty surprised at the governor’s gall. His blatant and unconcealed intention to kill us all. And in one go, to boot.

  Hopefully, David would be able to determine if the weapon was made from the Cathedral mineral before the suits moved in and confiscated the item for analysis.

  Talisman. The Coven Isles administrative capital. If bureaucracy ever had a home, it was Talisman. Home to the central government and all of its associated branches of cumbersome red-tape organizations, our gray and soulless capital had its ears, eyes, fingers in and on every event that played out within the Coven Isles.

  And, yet, Portia Fearwyn, with her nebulous connections, somehow managed to keep the suits in line for the most part. Not everything came under her jurisdiction, but she’d proved, on more than one occasion, that she was capable of breaking through a forest of red-tape. The witch had sway.

  Fraidy jumped from the table and sat on the floor between all of us. He hung his head. “I’d may as well say goodbye to you all now,” he said looking woefully at his feet. “With Orville gone, there’s no chance now. I’ll never get a helmet that fits my head.” Fraidy looked at each of us, his eyes like black buttons. “I know you think I’m being all dramatic, but this isn’t going to be just a case of singed whiskers, you know? My head is gonna sizzle like bacon.” He flopped on his side and closed his eyes … probably trying out his final resting position.

  Portia nudged the inert Fraidy with the tip of her pointy black shoe. “Oh, stop being such a drama-puss,” she said. “Are you forgetting our friend of the Custodians, Carpathia Alecto? She’s still Golden Chair for the Alchemical Society, so I’ve no doubt Ms. Alecto can work with this dragonsteel.”

  “Carpathia knows metal, sure,” Fraidy said, staring at Portia. “But, she doesn’t know numbers like Orville. She won’t be able to get the measurements exact, so don’t tell me she can stop my face from igniting.”

  “Fraidy,” I said gently. “Carpathia’s all we have right now, sweetie, so you could have a little faith and trust in her capabilities.”

  Portia nodded. “That’s settled, then. I’ll call Ms. Alecto tonight and have her look at your headwear, cat.” The Witch Fearwyn flicked her head toward the chief. “Hattie, you and CPI Trew go and see Maude, find out what she has to say. The rest can wait until tomorrow. Verdantia and Hinrika will go to Mag Mell to see Ankou and his cronies at the Unseelie court, and you and I will head over to Cathedral to see if we can pin down Shields.”

  Nobody answered. Portia rapped the table with her ancient knuckles. “Are we all agreed?”

  We nodded.

  “Good,” she said. “That’s quite enough troublesome adventure for today now, so, please, go about your duties, and let’s stay away from using electronic devices for now. Until we know how the governor tracked us, that is.”

  “Um, lady, how do you propose we stay in touch then?” Midnight asked.

  “Well, I thought we could finally put you lazy cats to good use,” Portia replied, her gaze piercing Midnight. “You can be our go-betweens. I’m sure Shields wouldn’t have thought to have bugged you bozo-kitties, so you lot will be the carrier-pigeons if we need you to pass messages along.”

  Gloom stomped over to Portia. “Of all the nerve!” She gasped. “You have the chops to call us carrier-pigeons? Lady, you’re crossing into some dangerous territory, and I’ll advise you right now to --”

  Portia picked up a glass from the table and emptied its contents; ice cold water, over my indignant kitty’s head. The old witch slammed the vessel back on the oak surface. “I’ll advise you, fat cat, that you’re not here for salmon treats, belly-rubs, and cat naps. It’s time you all get to work and not just behave like furry obstacles under our feet.” She waved a long and yellow nail at Gloom’s face. Although my kitty was in the throes of shock at having being doused with ice water, Gloom pulled her head back on her neck, crossed her eyes and wrinkled her nose at the Witch Fearwyn.

  Portia addressed the rest of the kitties without taking her eyes from Gloom’s crestfallen face. “A few of you will go to Mag Mell with Hinrika and Verdantia tomorrow. A few of you will go with Hattie and David to Maude’s this evening. A couple of you will accompany Hattie and me to Cathedral tomorrow. I don’t care who goes where; you can speak among yourselves on that, but I’d suggest that the least annoying of you -- if that’s at all possible -- join Hattie and me tomorrow.”

  “Yep, yep, that’s me! Yep!” Jet said, bouncing and raising a volunteering paw. “I don’t annoy anyone, nope, nope.”

  Portia looked at me. “Not that one,” she said. “Definitely not that one.”

  Thankfully Jet didn’t hear. He continued to prance, comfortable in his faith that he was ‘annoyer of none.’

  “Okay, come on guys, let’s get going,” I said, gesturing to my kitties. David grabbed his jacket and helped me nudge the Infiniti to the door. “I’ll have Midnight come to you later with any news we pick up from Maude’s,” I said to Portia.

  The old witch nodded. “Either way, I’ll see you in the morning. Let’s meet at Celestial Cakes at seven-thirty a.m. We can have a little breakfast before we head off,” she said.

  With that, David, the Infiniti and I left Portia and the faeries to deal, in their own way, with the death of our good friend, Orville Nugget.

  David and I would have to deal with our grief later. Because right now, we needed to find out exactly what kind of magic killed the young alchemist.

  Chapter Four

  “Goodness! Hattie, Chief Para Inspector, please, do come in,” Maude Dulgrey said, opening the door to her granite medical building. Ordinarily, the ghoul coroner would have greeted us with a sunny, if a somewhat toothsome smile, but Maude knew of our loss. Maude glanced down at her shuffling feet and turned. Our coroner friend lead us down the near medieval passageway that led to her cutting-edge lab. She looked over her shoulder several times to offer us a warm and gummy grin. Maude’s freshly sewn-on left foot seemed to be fighting with the left foot she was born with, and I noticed our pathologist friend having to push herself off the wall to ‘right’ her course several times. She trotted her lopsided gait down the torch-lit corridor until we reached a set of stainless steel doors. The ghoul coroner pushed through them and cast her gaze to the sheet-covered body of Orville.

  “Just awful,” she said, shaking a head of thin and dusty hair. “Hector couldn’t be more upset, honestly.” Maude tripped her way to the slab where young Nugget’s corpse lay.

  “Where is Hector?” David asked, glancing ove
r the glittering stainless steel surfaces of the room.

  “He’s preparing you a bouquet, dear,” Maude said, shooting up her gerbil-like eyebrows in surprise. The coroner looked as if we should have known her assistant’s intentions. “As I said, he’s very sorry about Orville’s death, and he knows that this tragedy has served a real blow to your little outfit.”

  “Maude, is there any way that Hector could have talked?” I asked. “I know you both know of the Custodians and our work, and I know you’re on our side too,” I said. “But, Gideon Shields knew we were all together this evening. We’re wondering how he knew though.” I realized with a sinking feeling just how desperate the question sounded.

  Maude guffawed. “You’re not suggesting Hector went and blabbed, are you dear?”

  I shook my head. “No, not at all, Maude,” I said. “At least not intentionally. I just wondered if Hector might have shared this information with friends?”

  “Friends, dear?” Maude Dulgrey knitted her flea-bitten brows. “No, you’re mistaken, I’m Hector’s only friend. And, I can attest to the fact that my dear assistant has never gossiped about anything. Ever. He’s very discerning, is Hector.”

  Carbon tapped my shin. “It’s not Hector, Hattie,” he said. “Have you ever seen him chatting with anybody? Like, ever?”

  My fire-loving kitty was right. I’ve never seen the undead man engage in any kind of conversation. He knew only two words, anyway: Moan and Groan. Even when I saw the vegan zombie at the Fingernail Moon, he was invariably alone with his pint of freshly squeezed tomato juice. Maude Dulgrey was probably the only person in the world who understood Hector Muerte. The vegan zombie had worked for the ghoul coroner for years … they knew each other’s ‘ways.’

  I waved my hand in the air. “Nevermind,” I said. “Just clutching at straws.”

  “Find out what killed Orville, Maude?” David said, changing the subject and turning toward the sheet-covered cadaver.

  Maude’s face brightened. “It took all of two minutes, CPI Trew!” She exclaimed, clapping her hands. The coroner grabbed a corner of the sheet and yanked it away with a magician-like flourish. “Tachyon poisoning,” she stated simply.

  I had to put a hand over my mouth to stop the scream that threatened to shatter the windows of the lab. Young Orville’s face was a network of black, thread-like veins, crawling their way across a landscape of sickly green skin. The system of veins looked eerily similar to the ones Millicent Ponds had presented with when the ecologist had died. David, I noticed, seemed unmoved.

  “Tachyon?” He said. “Tachyon from black diamonds? The same tachyon tech that killed Millicent Ponds?”

  “The very ones,” Maude confirmed, tracing the end of a pen from Orville’s temple to his heart. “Here’s the carrying artery,” she said, pointing to a thicker, somewhat blacker vein that stretched from the boy’s head to his life-center. “The tachyon emission went in here.” She tapped the pen to Orville’s temple again. “But, it really did its work here.” She let the tip of her pen hover above the young boy’s heart.

  Tachyons were only theoretically possible. Even in the Mainland scientific communities, the subatomic particle’s existence had yet to be proved. And, yet, these ultra-fast particles, which could carry whatever information or substance you injected the molecules with, had been what finished off the young and promising alchemist.

  I sighed, brushing away relentless tears. “Well, I guess, at least we don’t have to search for the killer this time around,” I said through hitching breath. “It has to be a first, right?” I asked David. “That we actually know who the killer is this time, I mean.”

  David passed a hand through his hair. His white streak looked even more prominent under Maude’s blue-white strip lights. “It doesn’t make it any easier, Hat,” he said, letting out a loud breath.

  “I know.” And I did know too. “I wasn’t saying it was easier, just that … well, we won’t have to run around questioning everyone so much, I mean.” My phone buzzed in my pocket. Pulling it out and glancing at the screen, I announced. “Midnight Hill.”

  “Cressida Dreddock?” David asked.

  I shook my head. “Don’t know. Probably ...I’ll see if they leave a message, but now’s not the time to be paying a social visit to Cressida.”

  Maude cleared her throat and peered at us both over the rim of her wire-framed glasses. “I think you two have had quite enough action for one day, don’t you?” She coaxed. “If I find anything else interesting here, I will be sure to let you know. But right now, I’d suggest you get yourselves home for some good sl--” A shuffling sound came from the back of the room. Hector Muerte shambled into view carrying a bunch of fussily arranged cauliflower and broccoli florets.

  “Ah, here’s my dear boy now,” Maude said, turning toward her veggie-zombie assistant. “Hector, I see you’ve finished your arrangement,” the coroner cooed, walking her zany two-left-feet over to the undead man. Hector gave our ghoul friend a milky stare. He moaned, cranking open his blackened mouth. Muerte awkwardly thrust the cruciferous bouquet under my nose and groaned again. A sole maggot fell from the zombie’s mouth onto the organic arrangement.

  Maude brushed it off with a pale and bony hand. “Just the vegetables, I think, Hector, yes?” She said, using one of her two left feet to shove the wriggling maggot under a stainless steel set of drawers. Hector let out a lengthy monosyllabic groan, to which Maude met with an affectionate pat on her assistant’s arm. “Yes, yes, dear, I know Hattie and the chief are meat-eaters, but maggots aren’t usually featured on human menus.”

  I accepted Hector’s bouquet. It looked like the painstaking work of an eager child. The cauliflower had been cut into perhaps three pieces at most, while the broccoli florets were tinier sprinkles throughout the mainly white-brained mass.

  David nudged my side with his elbow. I got the point straight away. “Why, thank you, Hector, this is so very kind of you, I …. well … I don’t really know what to say.” I tried for a smile, but it felt plastered and plastic on my face. Hector looked at me with his filmy eyes, bobbed his head a few times, groaned and shambled away. A lump of cauliflower fell to the floor, and Maude gave it the maggot treatment with her other left foot.

  “I think Maude’s right, Hat,” the chief said, taking my elbow in his hand.

  Zap! There it was again. That strange electrical discharge that my friend had emitted on more than one occasion just lately. Shields work, undoubtedly. I could only hope that the governor wasn’t ‘possessing’ the love of my life with that tachyon magic. Admittedly, David didn’t look as quite as unwell as Orville did right now, but he certainly didn’t look the picture of health either.

  I flinched at David’s electric touch, but said nothing, and followed his lead out the door.

  “I’ll call you if I find anything else,” Maude called to us before we departed. “Get some rest, dearies.”

  Rest. Just hearing the word brought on crashing fatigue. I felt my shoulders fall in a downward motion as the weight of what had just happened pressed down on me. David and I walked the medieval hallway to the front door in silence, until we were both standing in the drizzly, wintry night air.

  “I’m walking you back to the Angel,” David said, already leading the way to the apothecary where I worked and lived.

  I turned my face toward the falling drizzle. The crisp, damp splashes felt good on my tired eyes.

  The chief steered me with his hand at my elbow. “What’re you thinking?” He asked.

  I laughed bitterly and turned to face him. “I'm thinking that less than a year ago, I lived a relatively happy, if somewhat mundane life. A life where I never needed to think of Unseelie hostility or Warlock atrocities.” My hot tears joined the cool drizzle on my face. “Why has this happened, David? Why?” I begged of my friend.

  “We could never come to an answer if we pondered the ‘why’ of it, Hat,” he said. “All we can do right now is work from the present. And the present is cur
rently a threatening place for everyone. We need to suss out the how of it now. Like, how are we going to stop Gideon Shields?”

  “Well, Gloom thinks killing him is the way to go,” I said, giving my friend a grave look.

  David bit his lower lip. His eyes, though sunken and tired, recaptured some of their former vitality. I could see a sparkle there. His lips curled upward, and the twinkle in his eyes grew brighter. The chief was trying to suppress a laugh. Which made me snort into a gale of laughter. David let go too then, and a low resonant chuckle left his lips, which made me laugh harder.

  This burst of mirth just made Gloom furious. “Are you making fun of me?” My grumpy cat stormed ahead of us, jutting her tail skyward. I could see her ears flatten as she walked. She cast a baleful stare over her shoulder. “You can laugh all you like, suckers,” she hissed. “But, mark my words; the governor’s not going to stop unless someone stops him. But, hey, if you want to live in a world ruled by a demented Warlock, be my guest.”

  “Oh, dear, oh dear,” Onyx said shaking his head. He tiptoed after his sister in an effort to placate her.

  David leaned in and whispered in my ear. “Don’t tell your kitty, but she’s probably right.” He winked at me.

  “I’m not about that eye-for-an-eye philosophy, Chief Para Inspector,” I said nudging my friend with my shoulder. “If we followed Gloom’s advice then we’d be no better than the Warlock we’re trying to defeat.”

  “I was joking, of course,” he said. But my friend looked at his feet and added in a barely audible mutter, “But, I admit, I’m wondering what could actually stop the man other than....”

  “David, what were you and Portia talking about this evening back at Custodian HQ?” I asked, looking at the chief. “When I was with Orville and the cats, you and Portia were having some kind of heated discussion. That’s what it looked like, anyway.”

  “Oh,” David said. “Yeah, it seems the Witch Fearwyn thinks she has hold of my reigns. She said she didn’t want me going to Cathedral until we knew for sure that the Wyrmrig was heading there for its activation.” He kicked a stone, narrowly missing the back of Gloom’s legs. Thank, Goddess it missed because I didn’t think I could stand another hissy fit from my grumpy feline. “And just how close do you think we are to finding this fire-breathing entity?” He kicked the stone again. “We’ve got nothing so far, Hat. I mean, I have Spinefield compiling a list of names of newcomers to town. That drifter … what’s his name again ….”