“You’re an ass,” she spat, climbing aboard.
“Speaking of asses, hold yours tight, sis. We’re whompin’ our way there!”
Forrester knew how to keep his distance and stay in the shadows. Whispering fiercely to his little sister to stay close and keep quiet, he peeked out from the alleyway and up the street. When he nodded at Winona, she dared to step in under his reptilian jaw and watch the show.
It was, in a word, sickening. The people huddled at the intersection two blocks north of them may have had a weapon or two—a bow and arrow here, a fireplace poker there—but they were huddling in fear, not executing military maneuvers. Winona’s jaw hung open. Where was the invasion her mother had talked about? Why did the dragons have to set the entire town on fire? Why were they roaring in the darkness above, striking fear into hapless people’s hearts?
Was this fair? Was this justice?
She turned to her brother after watching nearly a minute of this. He was grinning like a fool, baring sharp teeth. They barely noticed a truck come screeching to a halt next to the intersection. “Forrester, I wanna go home.”
He gave her an impatient glance. “We’re not leaving now. This is the fun part. Nearly all the townspeople are in one spot. Soon, we’ll—aw, look at that! Whooo!”
She saw what he was cheering: A flaming police car smashed into the corner hardware store. Some guns went off and the crowd began to scatter. Then one man jumped on top of his truck and began to speak to the crowd. Winona couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the more he talked, the more the crowd listened.
Is this one of them? she wondered. Is this a real warrior? Before she could decide, a dasher—Winona recognized him as Jeffrey Swift, a family friend—swooped down. He’s going to kill that man, Winona realized with a dreadful shock. Nice Mr. Swift, who bought me a lollipop at the general store, is going to—
What happened next stunned both Winona and Forrester.
“Death is on our side tonight!” the man cried over the corpse of lollipop broker Jeffrey Swift, sword raised high.
“Oh, you don’t know death yet . . .” Forrester began to walk out onto the street.
“Forrester, no!” Winona tried to hold her brother back. Their relative shapes and ages made this a fruitless battle. She resorted to clutching his tail as he dragged her into the street.
Suddenly, a massive form slammed into the street next to them. It was their mother. Her nostrils seethed with steam, and her teeth ground as she took in the sight of her two children’s flagrant disobedience.
“Winona Emma Brandfire. You disappoint me.”
“Me?! But Forrester—”
“I told you to stay home tonight. Didn’t I teach you a lick of sense?”
“Ma, I was trying to—”
“Get her out of here. Before she gets hurt.”
Forrester’s scaled head dipped lower than his wings. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Mom, where are you going?” Now Winona was struggling against her brother going in the opposite direction, back toward the safety of the alley.
“I’m going to protect me and mine,” the answer came. Her gigantic head was already turning away. She leapt and landed more than a block away, just short of the intersection. The elder was so angry she flipped a sedan over on its side, knocking out the nearby streetlights and throwing both Winona and Forrester into darkness. Then she let loose with the longest, widest, most horrific blast of fire Winona had ever seen.
They have no chance, she told herself as she watched the man in the intersection and a girl nearby succumb to the fire like waxed sawdust. What kind of fight is this? What kind of people are we? Why are we attacking them?
Why are we laughing? The cackling sound from above was unmistakable.
“Come on, Winona, let’s go.” Forrester was sulking now, making him easier to ignore.
She pushed his snout away. “Nuh-uh. I’m already in trouble, so I wanna see.”
Her mother shut down her throat’s incinerator and stomped through the intersection. That was when Winona noticed the other girl. Like the other two people, she would have been in the sweep of the flame. But her pink skin was unburnt, her black hair cascaded around a stern face, and she stood up with a ferocity that made Winona shiver. She was beautiful and terrible at once, an angel passing through hell’s forges. And the way she looked at Patricia Brandfire . . .
“Forrester! That girl! She’s not hurt! She’s going to—Get off me, Forrester! Mom!”
No one could hear her at this distance, with all of the burning and screaming and roaring. All Winona could do was watch from behind her brother’s wing as the vengeful angel picked up a pitchfork, ran at her mother, and jammed the sharp end into the dragon’s spine. Her mother reared, trying to dislodge the strange brunette, but that only helped the girl twist the pitchfork.
The sound Patricia Brandfire made stuck with her daughter. It was the sound of a thousand nightmares gathering, each one displaying its unique and horrifying features to the other nine hundred ninety-nine. Winona clutched her head as her sanity threw off its mask and showed her a wild animal: deadly, feral, livid.
Still straining at her brother’s wing, Winona watched her mother’s dragon features deteriorate. The wings, then the horn, then the tail, and then everything else shriveled until her mother was naked, shivering, and bleeding on the pavement.
“Forrester, we’ve got to help her! Look at—”
“I can see, Win.” His voice, more than anything else, convinced Winona to stay put. She had never heard him so scared. “I can see.”
“Dragons heal, right? We heal real fast. Ma said so. Right?”
He didn’t answer. The brunette jammed the pitchfork into her mother’s leg. Something churned like a greasy tapeworm in Winona’s gut. Can’t you see she’s helpless? she almost screamed. What stopped her was the fact her mother had just killed two people this girl probably knew. In fact, the burning man had been old enough to be her—
“Gnn . . . nngg . . .” Patricia tried to pull herself up. Neither legs nor arms would cooperate.
“How do we get her out of there?” Winona asked Forrester. “We can’t leave her to—”
“Hold tight,” he told her, trying to convince himself as much as anyone else. “She’s talking to Ma. I think she’ll let her live.”
The young warrior, who had been whispering, finally stood up and spat in their mother’s face. Then she walked over to where the man had been.
“Let me up there, Forrester! I’m not a dragon. I could talk to that girl, and I could tell her That’s my Ma and I want to take her home, and maybe she would—”
“Hang on, Win! Why can’t you do what you’re told, and—”
His rant was interrupted by a flattening blast of light and noise. To Winona’s ears, it was sudden and frightening. To Forrester and the dragons perched on the rooftops around them, it was devastating. A couple of them fell forward into the intersection, their wings useless. The brunette flew into a rage and paralyzed them. As she finished, the sound and light faded away.
“Who else?” the girl screamed. “Who else?”
Winona was about to turn around and agree with Forrester that he was right after all and there was no way in hell she could walk up to this berserker and ask for her mother back, when she saw the girl level her gaze directly at them.
She can see us, Winona told herself as she felt the sweat trickle down her trembling body. She can see right through us.
“Take them,” the girl told her and her brother. “If I see any of you again, you’ll end up just like them.” And with that, the brunette warrior walked away.
Forrester and Winona waited a few more minutes for the mob to clear the intersection. Most of them followed the girl when she drove away. The emergency workers who finally dared enter the area scurried to put out the building fires. They paid no attention to the bleeding, paralyzed people on the street. Winona wondered if they knew what these people used to be. Why should they get any
help? a part of her told herself. They started the fires in the first place!
Nevertheless, she went alone to pull her mother’s body out of the intersection and into darkness. Then it took a few minutes for Winona to get the limp woman resting securely over her brother’s spiny back. There wasn’t room for two to ride.
“You head straight home now, Win. You got money for a taxi?” Forrester waited until Winona nodded blankly before he turned and disappeared into the night.
Winona stood in the street for some time. Water from fire hoses sprayed a nearby building, sending a soft shower her way. Her jeans and sweatshirt began to cling, but she didn’t budge. The water was washing something away, and she wanted it gone before she moved.
It wasn’t until an EMT came up behind her and put a concerned hand on her shoulder that she stirred. “Miss? You okay?” His clean-shaven, earnest face smelled like good earth.
“I’m okay,” she assured him. “Did you see what happened here?”
He misunderstood the question. “You may be going into shock.” Taking her hand, he led her out of the spray and toward an ambulance. The vehicle’s lights flared with silent warning. “Come take a seat over here, miss . . .”
“Oh, I’ll be fine.” She slipped out of his grip but didn’t try to run—that would only alarm him. She wiped moisture off her face. “I guess I looked silly, standing there like that. I’m fine.”
“You live near here?”
She nodded, lying again. “Just down the road. I came out to see what was happening.”
“I should get you home. Why don’t—”
“I’ll walk back.” She managed a grin and motioned to her sneakers. “I went through all the trouble of buying running shoes, so I might as well use ’em.”
Winona wasn’t sure if he was going to let her go, until he surveyed the mess around him. Clearly, there were higher priorities. “All right. You promise me you’ll head straight home. Those monsters may or may not have left for good. I’d hate to find your body in the morgue tomorrow morning. Sometimes, the bodies are burnt so bad, even dental records don’t help.”
“Okay. Good night, sir.” She gave him a shy smile and walked away.
Once she was sure he wasn’t watching, she doubled back and found a few stragglers watching the firefighters. From them, she learned the name of the man her mother had killed—Richard Evan Seabright. She also learned his daughter’s name and the location of their farm.
It was not far to walk—certainly closer than home. The early spring air was cool but not uncomfortable. Winona lingered on the gravel road by the Seabright farm. There was nothing remarkable about this building. A few dozen people clustered around it, and several trucks and cars filled the long driveway loop. These visitors looked like they planned to stay awhile.
“Looks like you’d like to stay here with them,” a voice behind her said.
She whipped around and froze at the sight of a dragon she had never met. It was a maroon creeper, thinner and longer than most, his stringy coils laid out lazily across the gravel road. Violet quills cascaded down his back, and his head bore five horns, laid asymmetrically in a curve from the back of his head down his left temple to his quilled chin.
“Are you crazy?” Winona asked the newcomer in a harsh whisper. They were at least a hundred yards away from anyone who could hear, but she wasn’t taking any chances. “Didn’t you see what happened earlier? Didn’t you see who was responsible? Who are you, anyway?”
He spread out two translucent crimson wings in greeting. “I’ll answer your questions from last to first. My name is Tasawwur, but you’ll just want to call me Tasa. I did see the occupant of this house earlier tonight, and I did see what she did. And I suppose yes, I am a bit crazy. Otherwise, why would I be here tonight?” His silver-blue eyes gleamed. “Come to think of it, Winona Brandfire, why are you here tonight? Wouldn’t you be safer at home?”
“I’m here because . . .” Winona trailed off. Why was she here? Did she expect to meet this young warrior? What would she say to her? What would she do?
After tapping his hindclaw a dozen times, Tasa folded his wings again. “Yes. Well. As long as you have a good reason.”
“What’s yours?” she shot back.
“I’m obviously here to talk some sense into you—and failing that, to protect you.”
She squinted. “I’ve never met you before. Ma doesn’t let me talk to strange dragons.”
“Correct me if I’m mistaken, but your ma’s home, and I’m trying to get you there.”
Winona sighed. She had assured her brother, and the EMT, that she was going straight home. It was almost dawn. With no clear reason to stay, why wouldn’t she—
Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden bright light. Reminded of the girl’s blinding scream in the town, she froze, but then relaxed when she heard the sound of an approaching engine. Headlights had crept over the nearby hill.
Winona turned to Tasa, but he was already gone. Camouflage, she realized. She had seen a creeper or two do this, though not with the speed and effectiveness Tasa had. Not even she could tell where the dragon had gone. By the time the truck pulled up next to her, there was no reason for the driver to think there was anyone with this teenaged girl.
“Honey, what are you doing out here all by yourself?” The woman stepped out of the car and jogged around the idling engine. “Are you okay?”
The woman was so sincere, Winona checked herself. Her arms were smooth, unbroken cocoa under her sweatshirt sleeves. Her face was slick with sweat, but that was it. “I guess so.”
“You shouldn’t be out here. Your family will be worried sick.” The woman brushed a lock of honey blonde hair out of her own face, revealing deep green eyes. “Won’t they?”
Winona motioned vaguely in the direction where her own town lay. “My family . . . my ma . . . she . . . they . . .”
Understanding washed over the woman’s face. “Oh, honey. You lost someone tonight?” She stepped forward and wrapped her long arms around Winona. “It’s going to be okay. I promise. What happened tonight . . .” She choked back a sob. “It’s going to be okay.”
When the woman finally let go, Winona gave her a small smile. “I have to get home.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to stay here tonight? There’s lots of company for us both. I swung back home to pick up some extra tents, sleeping bags, food . . . There’s plenty for you.”
A murmur—was it the wind, or Tasa?—distracted Winona. “They need me back home.”
“Do you need a ride?”
“It’s not far.”
“I wish you’d let me drive you.”
“Really, ma’am. No thanks.”
The woman sighed. “Bless these girls who grow up so fast. I couldn’t get Richard’s girl to do what I told her, either. Now I’ve got to stay at her place, if I’m going to keep an eye on her. I suppose I’m doing it for myself, as much as for her . . .” The woman stared back down the road, toward the town. Only a faint red glow suggested the chaos that had overwhelmed them both. She shook her head and focused again on Winona. “You take care of yourself, honey, all right? If you need anything, you come right back here and ask for me. My name’s Victoria.”
“Winona.” They shook hands. “I’ll remember. Thanks.”
After the woman had gotten back in her truck and pulled into the Seabrights’ driveway, Tasa reappeared. “We’re leaving now!”
She rode on the creeper’s back. The ride was a haze of jumbled roads and lurching forests, and at times she felt Tasa had no more sense of direction than she did. A few times she jumped off his back and jogged a few steps in another direction. He would beg her to climb back on, agreeing to go any direction she wanted as long as it wasn’t heading back where they had been. Despite all this, she did eventually get home, mumbled thanks to Tasa for his help before he vanished into the backyard woods, and stumbled through the side door.
Forrester was in their mother’s room—she was resting;
he was awake in a chair by the bed. He looked up, acknowledged Winona with a nod, and then turned back to their mother. Without a word, Winona went to her own bedroom and rolled under her sheets.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Out, Ma.”
“Oh no, you’re not.”
“Ma, Winona’s here. She’ll look after you tonight. I’m going out with the guys.”
“No, you’re not! You’ll get in trouble, like you did last crescent moon. Remember?”
“I remember.” Forrester’s large jaw clenched, pushing a sharp lower canine into the scales of his upper lip. “I remember Joey and Laura, and Andy from the crescent moon before that, and Brian and Mike and Paul from the crescent moon before that, and . . .”
“Forrester Astin Brandfire,” Patricia told him. “You stay home with your ma!” From the confines of her bed, her voice still carried some authority. But not to this boy.
“We get ours, and they get theirs,” he muttered, his scaly form slipping down the stairs.
“Forrester! You get back here!” But he was already gone.
Winona stood out in the hallway, her toes squirming in the carpet, not daring to breathe, until she heard her mother’s voice again.
“Daughter, don’t stand out there like you wish you could disappear. Come in and help me out of bed. I want to go downstairs.”
“Okay, Ma.” Winona repressed a sigh. While Patricia Brandfire had lost weight since the events of a few months ago, she was still not small, and it was no easy matter for her teenaged daughter to pull her into a fireman’s carry. After a miserable spring and summer, the children had suggested to their mother that she take up residence in the downstairs guest room, so that carting her up and down the stairs wouldn’t be necessary. She had rejected this notion. I carried you for nine months; now you can carry me.
Once they were downstairs, Winona set her mother in the wheelchair, which had a control lever that reached the woman’s mouth. Using this, Patricia steered herself into the living room. “I want to watch my programs,” she ordered. “With dinner.”
Seraph of Sorrow Page 25
