The mayor began to lose patience. “That is not my granddaughter. Even if we were related by blood, you cannot think I would ever accept her as family. At least not as she is now.”
“Well, if you think I give a damn if you accept her, you’re one fucking mistaken bitch. Get the hell out of my room!”
“I’m not leaving here empty-handed. The child cannot remain as she is.” The storm seemed to worsen. She stood up and reached for the baby, doing her best not to look at the angelic shape inside. “I must hobble her. I was hoping to avoid this, but her true nature is clear now. Once I am sure your child cannot become a beast, you and the father can raise—”
“Get away from me!” Libby tried to push away, but she was tightly wrapped under the bedsheets and didn’t want to spill the infant. The room was shaking badly; Glorianna was having trouble standing straight. She was so intent on the child and mother, she did not stop to think about why that might be.
“Libby, this doesn’t have to be a fight. I’ve talked with Dr. Jarkmand. Together, he and I are confident we can do this as a medical procedure. No blood drawn. No danger. No pain—I’ll have them give her an epidural.”
The stubborn new mother would not listen. Typical Libby Georges. A wave of irritation washed over Glorianna as she gripped the patient by the shoulders. “Libby, you’re tired. You’re sore. You’re under the influence of drugs. All of these things are interfering with your judgment. And they’re also going to make it impossible for you to resist—”
She stopped, suddenly aware something was horribly wrong. First, the floor was still trembling. Glorianna would have thought it an earthquake, had the rest of the room not been unraveling around her. The pastel tones on the walls to her right flexed, and what seemed like a long piece of the linoleum floor began to twist and slip around her feet. Most disturbingly, the ceiling began to hiss . . .
Before she could piece it together, something shoved her hard. With her ankles suddenly squeezed together, she fell flat on her face and smashed her nose on the hard floor. An unseen claw gripped her by the hair, pulled her head up . . . and then smashed it against the floor again. Blood sprayed over her lips, and her mind reeled.
She was flipped over like a doll, and then through the fog of pain she saw the outline of the cleverly camouflaged beast. A dragon-shaped puzzle piece falling out of the room’s surfaces, it maintained the soft tones of its surroundings, as its movements finally betrayed its presence.
She cursed her inattentiveness as a cream-colored claw with violet floral patterns grabbed her by the throat, dragged her to her feet, and pinned her against the wall by Libby’s head. How could I let this happen? Then a long, tapered skull with three horns the color and texture of the water-stained ceiling panels rammed her abdomen, breaking ribs with sickening force.
After taking eight or nine such blows, she began to cut herself some slack. While she knew some dragons could color their scales like chameleons, she had never in her life seen one completely disappear into manmade surroundings like this one had. And how crazy did a dragon have to be to hide in a hospital full of beaststalkers, anyway?
He’s not crazy, she reminded herself as she felt her left lung collapse. He’s the father.
“Jonathan!” Libby’s plaintive voice was a blessing. Call him off, Libby. Call off your pet. Please. “Jonathan, you’ll kill her!”
“Did we have a problem with that?” Glorianna couldn’t see the animal’s jaws move.
“Jonathan, please. It won’t solve anything.”
The same snakelike thing that had tripped her slid up her spine to her neck. Tail, she guessed. It squeezed her throat with the force of a python, while the dragon’s claws clamped her limp wrists against the wall. The shadowy head stopped ramming her and whispered in her ear.
“My wife tells me you’re fireproof.” A forked tongue flicked her bloodstained cheek. “Imagine my disappointment.”
Mine, too, Glorianna thought grimly with bulging eyes. At this point, she would have given anything to get roasted alive, to end this pain and humiliation.
“But I wonder if you can breathe without a windpipe. That would be impressive.”
“Jonathan, stop!”
The thing ignored Libby. “For violating my wife, Your Honor, you are going to die. Then I am going to take my child and her mother away from here and put them someplace safe. And then, I am going to come back and turn this house of horrors into a very large pile of embers. Winoka doesn’t deserve a hospital.”
A voice from the door startled them all. “Hey, Lizzy, I stopped by to—Lizzy! Mother!”
Glorianna saw the brunette locks of Wendy Blacktooth poking through the doorway. The woman’s belly was bulging almost as far out as her crystal blue eyes.
“Wendy!” The dragon jumped back and loosened its grip around Glorianna’s neck. The mayor took this chance to collapse against Libby’s bed, coughing and sucking air. She considered the bedpan by her elbow as a weapon, but it was empty, and thus not very deadly.
“What is—are you—Jonathan?” Wendy Blacktooth stammered.
Get out, Glorianna tried to say. Save yourself and your unborn child! But she couldn’t.
“Wendy. Yes, it’s Jonathan. Liz had our baby. I’m protecting her from the mayor.”
The dragon’s scales were starting to shift into what Glorianna presumed was their natural color—a deep indigo with black markings across the back and lighter blue across the belly. So he finally shows himself, the treacherous snake. I . . . I think I will use this bedpan after all. She grabbed the container and brought it up just in time to vomit blood.
“Lizzy?!” Wendy stared at her best friend. “How can this . . . How could you . . . ?”
Libby strained to sit up. “Wendy, I couldn’t tell you. Not with Hank the way he is. Please understand.”
The brunette turned back to the dragon, then the mayor, then her friend again. “Lizzy, if you don’t want Hank to know about this, you’d better get him out of here.” She nodded at the beast. “And you’d better let the mayor live, Jonathan.”
“We’ll all leave,” Libby decided. Glorianna snorted in derision—how was this woman going to move around so soon after an operation?—but once again, her protégée surprised her. In a flash, mother and child were on the dragon’s back, and she was whispering in his ear.
It was plain he did not like what he heard. Despite that, he obeyed his wife and turned to Wendy. “Apparently, I’m not coming back to raze this place. But this is not over. Tell the butcher who runs surgery that he will stop practicing medicine and keep his mouth shut about this day if he wants to live.
“You.” He was looking straight at Glory now, and she felt his heavy breath on her. “Remember this day of mercy. Hurt my wife or threaten my daughter again, and I’ll rip that fireproof skin right off you and roast whatever soulless heap falls out.”
Then he turned to the window, let out a jet of flame, and blasted an escape route into the cold September rain.
From the Winoka Herald the following day, toward the bottom of page two:
INCIDENT AT LOCAL HOSPITAL
By Doug Mere Local News
Police responded yesterday to a report of vandalism at Winoka Hospital. The vandals, unidentified and at large, disturbed the furnishings in a second-floor maternity ward room and shattered the window. Hospital officials would neither divulge whether any patients were in the room at the time, nor confirm the involvement of Mayor Glorianna Seabright. The mayor was admitted into the hospital later in the day.
“Here at Winoka Hospital, we respect the confidentiality of our patients,” said Dr. Frank Jarkmand, Chief of Surgery for the hospital. “We certainly have no further comment on either the vandalism or the minor injuries the mayor sustained.”
Glorianna Seabright herself was not available for comment, but one possible eyewitness to the incident expressed confidence that the mayor would be well soon.
“[She] is fine,” claimed Gwendolyn Blacktooth, a local
housewife with close ties to the mayor. “She was a real hero today. She asked me to let everyone know she’ll be up and around soon. There’s nothing to worry about.”
In the same issue, under birth announcements on page twelve:JENNIFER GEORGES
Elizabeth Anne Georges, 25, and her husband, Jonathan, are pleased to announce the birth of their first child, Jennifer Caroline Georges, yesterday at Winoka Hospital. Jennifer was nine pounds and eleven ounces and is in good health.
Dr. Georges, daughter of Charles Andrew Georges and Jennifer Marilyn Georges, both deceased, is currently a medical intern at Twin Cities General Hospital, after graduate and undergraduate studies at the University of Minnesota. Prior to that, she enjoyed the private tutelage of Mayor Glorianna Seabright herself.
While the family owns property in Winoka, they currently live in Eveningstar, Minnesota. Mayor Seabright has assured this paper on numerous occasions that despite the rumors about that town, the Georges family enjoys the highest reputation.
CHAPTER 8
Tested by Faith
What to make of this, Glorianna wondered after she slapped the latest issue of the Winoka Herald onto her mahogany desk. The headline and content of the article—NEFARIOUS SPIDER PLOT HATCHED!—matched the warnings in the letter she had received from Elizabeth herself, a bit more than a week ago.
The news was eye-catching. Libby’s daughter, Jennifer, now fifteen years old, had foiled a werachnid plot to twist the universe. Four werachnids, a so-called “Quadrivium,” had changed the course of history, starting with the murder of Glorianna Seabright herself. Jennifer had gotten caught up in the sorcery somehow and had managed to set things straight. Details were sketchy. How had she succeeded? Were there any residual effects? And who were the four?
The newspaper and Libby’s letter identified two—the late Otto Saltin, and Winoka High’s most recent addition, Edmund Slider. The other two were unnamed. The idea that reality hung on such a fragile thread, and that the persons responsible, known and unknown, were still possibly at large . . . It all had Winoka in an uproar.
Was it true? Had such a thing happened?
Probably, for at least three reasons. First, it was the sort of things werachnids would do. Glorianna thought back ruefully to Esteban and his letter. These monsters thought ahead, it was true. They were excellent plotters, if mediocre warriors.
Second, the plot made sense, because it focused on her. Who else would they target? Not only was she the leader of beaststalker nation; she was also Esteban’s murderer. He had been powerful, and no doubt had friends or disciples who would take years to plot revenge.
Third, all of this had happened on the heels of two unusual arrivals—first, the half-dragon, half-arachnid spawn of Jonathan Scales (“Evangelina,” Libby called the thing in her letter); and second, her old acquaintance Edmund Slider. This could not be coincidence.
If it was true, and young Jennifer had stopped it, then the girl would be a more impressive warrior than her mother. Or she’s a co-conspirator.
Glorianna shook away the paranoid thought. Libby was a pacifist fool, but she was no traitor. She would not raise a daughter to plot Glorianna’s murder—and accept the annihilation of all dragonkind, which had also happened in that universe. It made no sense.
No, without clear contrary evidence, she had no reason to think either Libby or Jennifer was lying. So the age-long war continued its course—dragons still set against arachnids, and beaststalkers hunting them both. The alliances and creatures the Scales family bred were anomalies, nothing more . . . but what anomalies!
Thank heavens for Libby’s hysterectomy, she told herself with a hard heart. More like Jennifer Caroline Scales we could not take.
Anyway, all of this—the Quadrivium, the plot, the role Jennifer Scales played in foiling it—were all moot. None of this had Glorianna upset today. After all, Libby had told her about it.
What upset Glorianna today was seeing it on page one of the local paper.
She had tried hard to avoid this. Certainly, she took Libby’s warning seriously. After informing a small circle of trusted agents to watch Edmund Slider and Tavia Saltin closely, Glorianna threw a blanket of silence over the whole matter. What good would it do to tell the public their entire world may get obliterated? There was no point. Protection was a job for those who knew the dangers and had the strength to do something about them.
Now the whole town would be in a useless panic. The city would demand “action,” as if its mayor hadn’t been taking action for decades to shield them from the monsters of the world. They would demand reassurances and platitudes, as if words could hold enemies at bay. Worst of all, they would demand intervention from outside—the governor or the National Guard.
Glorianna had respect for these institutions, but she was a realist. Their involvement would mean open acknowledgment, in the media and everywhere else, of dragons and arachnids who walked among people. These monsters’ true shapes would be frightening—but their human faces would mean others would start demanding rights for them. Activist groups would arise, and before long there would be lobbyists lurking through state and national capitals with wings or eight legs, and talk of “mainstreaming” in schools and workplaces. Beaststalkers like her would be looked upon as dangerous throwbacks—or worse, laughed at as irrelevant.
She slammed her fist on the paper. At the same time, a knock came at the office door.
“Come in.”
Henry “Hank” Blacktooth, member of the city council and husband to Wendy Williamson Blacktooth, entered her office.
What was it about Hank Blacktooth that irritated Glorianna? Over the years, she had devised a list—his temper, his lack of subtlety, his naked ambition, the way he patronized and dominated his wife, the lack of skill he had shown in training his awkward son, Edward . . .
In the years since she’d first met him, Glorianna hadn’t gained much more than a grudging respect for Henry Blacktooth. He was skilled, no doubt. But he was as irritating as an ugly groin rash, and much more dangerous.
“Mayor Seabright,” the rash was saying now. He dipped his head in the barest of deferential nods. “You called for me.”
She pointed at the newspaper. “Explain this.”
“Nothing I can’t imagine you don’t already know, Your Honor. It says some spiders—”
“I don’t mean the story. I mean why it’s plastered on page one of the Herald!”
He glanced at the paper. “I would assume someone talked to a reporter.”
“Obviously. Who?”
“Most likely Lizzy Georges-Scales.” A brief scowl crossed his face.
“Libby isn’t the leaking sort. She sent me a private letter—that was the end of the issue, for her. If she wanted to go around me to the media, she would have done that in the first place. No, the source here was someone more secretive. Secrecy suggests a goal. A goal suggests ambition.” She bit her tongue before she made the direct accusation.
Hank blinked. “I don’t see where you’re—”
“If you’re going to tell me you don’t know the source, then I see no point in arguing with you. Perhaps we should change the subject. Have you heard from your wife or son lately?”
She knew immediately from his pause he was about to lie. “Not since I threw them out.”
“Yes, you threw her out while she was still in the hospital,” Glorianna recalled. “A true class act you are, little Henry.”
He wrinkled his nose at the name, but she wasn’t going to offer an apology. The decline of Wendy Williamson Blacktooth since her marriage to this man would be the biggest travesty of Glorianna’s life were it not for the more severe example of Elizabeth Georges-Scales.
“Do you have any idea where they are?”
“They’re both staying at Lizzy’s house. They were all recently out of town. No one knows where. Lizzy, Wendy, and Eddie returned last night.”
“So Libby and Wendy are becoming best friends again.” The thought warmed her hear
t, even though she knew what it meant. It recalled a happier time, when the girls leaned on each other, and on the woman they both called Mother. “I assume their children are also getting along.”
“I have seen Eddie and the Scales girl-thing together,” he admitted through tightening lips. “Holding hands.”
“Romantic. Wasn’t she the one you told him to kill, for his coming-of-age ritual?”
He didn’t answer.
“That was incredibly stupid. I wouldn’t send my best student against a dragon of Jennifer’s caliber. Not to mention the fact she’s Libby’s daughter.”
“That girl-freak is a danger to us all!”
“Yes, she did quite a number on your family heirloom. Though I suppose we should be fair to her point of view: Young Eddie tried to stab her with it three times first.” She whistled. “Are you sure his future is in swordplay? Perhaps he’s better suited to the bow, like his mother.”
“I don’t need you to tell me how to raise my son.”
She waved her hand in mock agreement. “So as we were saying, you have no idea where your son is. Probably off somewhere with the girl you fear the most, along with the wife you’ve estranged. I think that wraps up the topic of family in a tidy package. Say, on your way out the door to receive your Father of the Year Award, will you do me a small favor? Stop leaking stories to the press in an effort to undermine my authority. Instead, spend some effort finding out who the other two members of the Quadrivium are!”
He stepped back, as if she had dealt him a physical blow. There was still a sneer that would not come off his face. “Why the urgency? Need new friends?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He ignored her question. “I’ve already attempted to find out what I can about the Quadrivium. I can’t find many people willing to talk to me about it.”
“Oh, little Henry. You used to be so good at this sort of research! I suppose I’ll have to go out and do it myself. I’ll start with some of the students in Eddie’s class.”
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