“Hunted by what?”
“It’s probably paranoia,” she hastened to add. “That’s what Rob keeps telling me, anyway. Susan, too. I tell them I know better. Ever since I found out you moved in down the street, I’ve thought of coming to you with this, but I’ve been so afraid. Oh, Jonathan, I hope you believe me. Can you believe me?”
He shrugged, pretty sure of where this was going. “Try me.”
“The first time I saw one, Susan was about six months old. We lived in Duluth. We were out for a walk by the lakeside, when I saw . . . I mean, I could have sworn I saw . . .”
“What?”
She bit her lip and wiped her forehead. “You have to understand, I haven’t told anyone outside of my family about this. I’m going to die anyway, and I need to tell someone. Someone I trust.” She looked at him with all of the trust and devotion he would have killed for at fifteen years old. “I think you and I were meant to see each other one last time, Jonathan.”
“Hey, Heather. It’s okay.” He tightened his grip on her brittle hands. “You can trust me. What did you see?”
Her small frame relaxed into the cream-colored hospital sheets. “I saw a spider, Jon.”
When she didn’t continue, he realized he would have to prod her. “I’m guessing we’re not talking about a conventionally sized—”
“Not at all. And if you’re asking that, Jon, I’m going to guess you’ve seen one, too.”
For the first time in months, he thought back to Dianna Wilson and her glorious, glowing shape. They had often revealed themselves to each other under the crescent moon, both before and after their short-lived marriage. Before meeting her, he had never understood scientists on nature shows who would call the bulbous, eight-legged arachnid form “beautiful.” Dianna Wilson had been, in every sense of the word, a beautiful creature.
“I have,” he finally answered.
Fortunately, she mistook his pause for the same fear she obviously felt herself. “They’re everywhere, Jon. I saw several more in Duluth before I finally convinced Rob to move down here to Winoka. And not long ago, I heard some people around town talking about a place named Eveningstar. They said spiders had attacked it. An army of them, Jon. Each one the size of a person! They destroyed the town, and everyone in it.”
Not everyone, Jonathan reminded himself as he remembered escaping the town across the river with his family on his back. “So they say.”
“You heard about it, then!” Heather straightened up in her bed. “Not too many people here are willing to talk about it. Some got angry when I brought it up at the high school. Did you know I used to teach history there? So as I was saying, other teachers got angry. And parents, too. So I stopped bringing it up—but I know, Jon. I know these things exist.”
“I know, too.”
Although he was lying by omission, her smile made him feel better. “I love my husband, but he doesn’t believe me. Rob moved us here to humor me, because he got tired of my ranting and raving. He still ignores the evidence. Once I was diagnosed and began radiation treatments, he wrote off my claims as hallucinations. I think he’s convinced Susan of that, too.”
“Susan seems like the kind of girl who can make up her own mind.”
“Maybe . . .” Heather bit her lip again. “Jon, I wonder if I could ask you a favor.”
Unsure if he would enjoy it, he still couldn’t bring himself to say no. “Name it.”
“After I’m done. If you could check in on her, from time to time. Make sure she’s okay.”
“I’m not sure what you—”
“Even in this town, she’s in danger,” the sick woman continued. “But you’ll know what to look for. You can warn her. Maybe help her, if she runs into trouble.”
The urgency in her voice made him shift uncomfortably. “Heather, if it’s protection you want for your daughter, this town is full of—”
“There are soldiers in this town, I know. That’s why we moved here. But I don’t know any of them, Jon. Some of them aren’t very friendly. And if she gets hurt, the doctors here can be cold—” She stopped herself too late. “Oh, I don’t mean your wife—”
“She can certainly come across that way,” he agreed with a faint smile. “They all can.”
“I’m trying to say, I trust them . . . but I don’t trust them. Ugh, that doesn’t make sense.” She swallowed and gritted her teeth, gaze flitting across the ceiling tiles before settling on him. “I mean, I didn’t grow up with them, like you and I grew up together. I trust you.”
He had trouble meeting her intense gaze. “I haven’t done anything to deserve that trust.”
Her hand covered his. “You’ll help me, won’t you?”
He could see the fear in her eyes—not of the death that drew close, but of what might close around her daughter after she was gone. This mother did not want to leave the world not knowing if her child would be safe.
He thought back to the day this woman had been a girl, scared by a foolish boy in a small room. Back then, he had held the door closed. Could he open it and let her leave now?
“Of course,” he answered her. “I’ll keep an eye on Susan for you, Heather.”
What happened to her body was alarming to Jonathan—it appeared as though it deflated, like a balloon letting out air. Yet she was smiling with relief. “My angel. Thank goodness you found me, Jonathan Scales. I didn’t know where to turn.”
“Your husband really doesn’t understand?” Jonathan tried to imagine how a man could move to Winoka and not learn about werachnids, or dragons, or the soldiers who hunted them.
“If you knew Rob . . .” She sighed, not looking at him or anything else in particular. “He’s not one for facing the truth. Not one for facing . . . this.” She gestured to her emaciated shell.
Ah, Jonathan thought. He’s hiding. If he doesn’t visit, it’s not really happening. He also recalled Heather’s own mirrored behavior, in keeping her daughter away. Try as he might, he couldn’t condemn either adult’s behavior. Denial was a natural human instinct, used by people who had little or nothing to do with dragons or werachnids.
“I’d better go and let you rest.” He stood. “It was good to see you again, Heather.”
Her chuckle evolved into a cough, and her face attained an alarming plum color before she got herself under control. “Sweet of you to say so, Jon. Thank you. I’m so happy you . . .” Her voice lilted, as though entering a dream. “Did I say this already?”
Jonathan was backing toward the door. He felt equal parts guilty, foolish, and sorrowful.
“Good-bye, then.”
She was already asleep, and did not hear him speak or leave.
Less than a week later, she was dead.
J Plus Fourteen Years
“Dad, I gotta get going. Crescent’s almost too fat, and I don’t want to walk back.”
“You’ve got time, son.” Crawford took another bite of the sheep they were sharing by the fire pit behind the cabin. There was enough of a blaze to turn away the September drizzle. “Crescent moon’s good for another few hours, at least. I want to talk to you about Niffer.”
“Ugh.” Jonathan rolled his silver eyes and twitched his tail. “That’s why you called me up here for a mutton dinner in the rain? I was perfectly comfortable in Winoka.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
Jonathan spat out a glob of fat. “Fine, let’s talk about my daughter. She scored an amazing goal in the Community Junior League Soccer Championship. Won them the game. Even from a distance, it was incredible to watch. She—”
“Have you told her anything about what she can expect?”
“Dad, we don’t know what to expect! She’s half dragon, half beaststalker—not an everyday occurrence! She could be one; she could be the other; she could be both or neither!”
“She’ll show dragon. Count on it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Crawford reached into the fire with a wing claw, picked up a flami
ng ember, and crushed it. “I don’t have records, but I figure it’s been about fifty generations. She could—”
“Aw, Dad, don’t give me this ‘fifty generations’ crap. This isn’t about dragon lore or the thousand-year-old legends you and Ned Brownfoot like to prattle on about. Nobody believes in that anymore. This is about you resenting my wife.”
“I don’t resent Lizzard. Not so much, anymore.”
“Yeah, your love for your daughter-in-law shines through every time she comes to visit. That’s why I can only drag her up here once or twice a year.”
The older man struggled with his next words. “She brings nice horse blankets,” he finally managed. “And I appreciate the fact that she visits at all. I imagine a lot of her kind would try to keep a daughter as far from this farm as—”
“Her kind? Do you hear yourself?”
“Son, I’m protecting the woman from the Blaze. I’m protecting you from the Blaze. I put up with the fact that she can’t cook worth a damn. And I’m patiently waiting for the day when I can walk back into my mother’s house and call it my own again.”
“You know you can visit us whenever you like in Winoka.”
“Stop calling it Winoka!”
Jonathan felt his face flush with guilt. Dad’s right. I’ve spent too long in that town, and I’ve practically forgotten what happened there.
“Pinegrove,” he agreed. “You can come visit us anytime in Pinegrove, Dad.”
“Tell you what. If you talk to Niffer before Thanksgiving about what’s coming for her, I’ll come down to your and Lizzard’s place for Christmas.”
“Deal.”
“Oh, and Jonathan?”
“Yeah?”
“You might want to consider getting the kid a pet gecko.”
J Plus Fourteen Years and About One Month
“I can’t believe she took off!” Elizabeth said. “And now we have to drive around searching for her, street by street. We’ve got to take down that trellis outside her window.”
“If what’s happening to Jennifer is what I think is happening,” Jonathan replied through gritted teeth, “the trellis is now irrelevant.”
She reached over and patted his knee. “You feeling pressure to change?”
“Yeah, I should get out of the car. Pull over?”
“Sure.” The minivan swerved gently to the curb, and he climbed out. He didn’t feel like taking his clothes off on Pine Street, twilight or no. He let the fabrics disappear into his new shape. They were old jeans and a sweatshirt—nothing he minded getting dragon odor on.
“It’ll be soon,” he told his wife as he held the passenger door open with a wing claw. “You’re right—we’ll never find her like this. We should split up. We’ll cover more territory.”
“Oh no, you don’t. Separating got us into this mess.”
“All right.” He accepted the illogic from his wife, feeling a bit irrational himself. He shut the car door and shifted his skin. The side facing the minivan took on the texture and color of the hedge on the side of the road; the other side became as dark and shiny as the minivan and its window. He glided over the curb as his wife accelerated. “We’ll find her, Liz.”
The wind through his ears was gentle, and he could hear his wife muttering. “What?”
“I said, it’s just like a dragon to go darting off without any consideration or explanation.”
“She’s going to be all right.” He was irritated, too—what was Jennifer thinking? Why would their teenaged daughter run away like this tonight? Didn’t he explain what was going to happen? Hadn’t he taken the time to explain to her how traumatic the first change would be? Didn’t they go through the transformation in painstaking, meticulous, terrifying detail—
Oh.
His wife’s voice woke him from his reverie. “What’s that, honey?”
“Is it as painful as you’ve said?”
More so, he recalled. Aloud, he said, “It depends on the dragon. Jennifer’s strong. She’ll be okay until we find her.”
“After we find her,” Elizabeth said with teeth gritted and knuckles white on the steering wheel, “she may not be so okay.”
Jonathan snorted. “Tell you what. We’ll take her to Crescent Valley, tie her down, and make her listen to Dad’s endless lectures about how to be a good dragon.”
“Those lectures never really took with you, dear.”
Despite his concern for Jennifer, Jonathan had to laugh.
CHAPTER 4
Skills
What a way to spend the weekend, Jonathan thought while streaking through the snow-filled nighttime sky.
He thought wistfully of cold Minnesotan weekends far past, before Jennifer was born, when he and Elizabeth would enjoy wine, cheese, and lingerie by the fireplace.
Elizabeth was not up here with him—just two other dragons, trailing him in a half-V formation. Closer was Xavier Longtail, a large, black dasher with gold markings under his wings. Xavier was an elder like Jonathan, but unlike Jonathan was beyond middle age—nearly seventy years old. Seventy was not that impressive when measuring the natural life span of a dragon; then again, most dragons did not die a natural death. As it was, Jonathan was pretty sure Xavier was one of the three or four oldest living dragons.
Behind Xavier and to his right was a much younger specimen—Gautierre Longtail, his great-nephew. Gautierre’s scales were a generous shade of cobalt, though Jonathan’s daughter, Jennifer, preferred to call the color “dreamy velvet blue.” The underside of the youth’s wings sported lavender swirls, and like his great-uncle he had a triple-pronged tail. For dashers, the tail was a critical feature—it delivered a stinging, electric attack.
Jonathan was cloaked in the color of moonlit flurries. As good at camouflage as he was, he was certain he could fly over the hood of a police car at eighty miles an hour and never get a speeding ticket. Xavier and Gautierre, burdened with monochromatic scales, would be visible to anyone on the ground who bothered to look up.
Which presented a problem . . .
“How do you expect all of us to get there without being seen?” Gautierre called out over the wintry winds. “This snowstorm is useful, but it can’t hide us completely.”
“We don’t all have to be invisible,” Jonathan pointed out. “Just me.”
“So what are Uncle Xavier and I supposed to do?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Xavier sneered. “We’re the diversion. Mr. Scales here is the hero.”
Not for the first time, Jonathan found himself worrying about the Scales family’s newest ally. Elizabeth had slain Xavier’s brother, Charles, long ago, and Charles’s daughter, Ember, still sought revenge. Xavier, presumably, was more practical. What his niece thought of her little Gautierre flying around with the husband of her father’s killer, Jonathan had no idea.
“I’m not trying to be a hero,” he told Xavier. Or maybe he was saying that for Gautierre to hear. “I’m playing to our strengths.”
An updraft of warm air scattered the flurries and lifted their wings; they adjusted course to compensate. The edge of the Scaleses’ property was approaching.
“How many?” Gautierre asked.
“Four.”
“What weapons do they have?”
Jonathan cleared his throat. “Paintball guns.”
If Xavier could have slammed brakes in midair, he would have. “Guns!”
“Paintball guns.”
“Why?” Gautierre asked.
“Because they don’t make paintball arrows, or paintball swords—”
“No, I mean, why the paint?”
“It hurts less than a real bullet,” the boy’s uncle snarled sardonically. “Unless, of course, they decide to use real bullets after all. A nice hollow point will rip our wings or throats open.”
“I can’t tell you how much I enjoy your optimistic world-view, Elder Longtail.”
“You aren’t arguing my point.”
“No one in their right mind would try to take down a drago
n with a handheld explosive device. They’ll be using paint.”
“You’ve seen these weapons?”
“No. My wife ordered them. She assured me that paintball guns are the best and safest approximation we can make of beaststalkers’ ranged weaponry.”
Frustrated by their silence, Jonathan tried to remind them of their goal. “We have to accept that during any diplomatic missions we run to Winoka, there may be people who wish to stop us. We have to anticipate that threat and come up with ways to reach our destinations.”
“So your lakeside cabin is the destination this time,” Gautierre reasoned. “And only one of us has to make it there?”
Jonathan nodded. “And there are four beaststalkers who are going to try to stop us. Each has a gun. You get hit with paint, you’re dead—I mean, you’re ‘out.’ ”
“And if all three of us get hit with paint?”
“Then we try again.”
“In the real world, we wouldn’t just get up and clean off paint,” Xavier commented.
“Thus the exercise.”
“How good a shot are these guys?” Gautierre asked.
Jonathan chewed his tongue, weighing the most diplomatic response. Xavier’s brother was dead because of Elizabeth’s prowess. “My wife and her friend Wendy Blacktooth are both highly trained beaststalkers. Wendy’s son, Eddie, appears to have some aptitude with a bow, and he’s been on hunting trips with his parents. Jennifer has had little training with ranged weapons.”
“She seems to enjoy throwing knives about,” Xavier grunted.
Jonathan ignored him and kept talking to Gautierre as the snowy wind whistled past their horns. “She’s not bad, but you’ll be able to avoid her if you’re fast enough. We’re only a couple of miles away. Time to split up. You know—”
“Yes, we know what to do,” Xavier snapped. “We’ll see you at the cabin shortly, painted in whatever fresh and fashionable colors your wife has picked out for us this season.”
The two dashers peeled off formation, the younger following the elder, and Jonathan veered the other direction so that he could approach the cabin from the north.
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