Witch of the Midnight Blade

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  The bumps of this dragon’s crest swirled around each other in a graceful double helix pattern that merged into the ridges on its back.

  It pointed at the sky, then made a gesture that looked very much like a kid imitating a plane. It dropped its head again and peered at us as if trying to figure out if we understood what it wanted to communicate.

  It pointed again, but this time up and over the rubble pile.

  I looked at Nax, who looked at me. Was this dragon trying to tell us a patrol was about to come through?

  It motioned for us to huddle closer together and to recede into the rubble.

  Nax looked as uncertain as I was, but he cooperated.

  The dragon stepped over us—and vanished.

  A hot breeze cascaded down from nothing above us, then shifted toward the copter’s fuselage.

  A brilliant spotlight burst on and illuminated the copter’s exterior. It shimmered as if full of a twinkling rainbow of pixies and danced over the surface as if reading it like the laser on a checkout scanner.

  The light changed and suddenly the interior of the copter filled with a rainbow of colors.

  I saw the bodies. Two ex-humans in the front, both still strapped into their seats, both more mummified by the nasty shit in the air than decaying horror-movie corpses.

  Between them lay a large, dead, also-mummified hellhound.

  The scanning stopped. The light pulsed once, twice, then paused. I twitched, but Nax squeezed my thigh.

  The light pulsed again.

  This time it didn’t scan. This time it lit up the entire rubble pile, the copter, and the valley through which we’d arrived. The haze shifted from the eerie semi-fog yellow to a veil of tiny ash-like snowflakes. Then it, too, returned to normal.

  The heat vanished. The patrol ship must have moved on.

  The dragon stepped away. It slid a little on the lose dust but dug in its massive talons and held on. It sniffed first at me, then at Nax.

  He pushed it away. “Back off,” he said.

  The dragon stepped back. It pointed at his lips, then mine, then turned its weird, six-fingered, platter-sized hand palm up.

  From a distance, their digits looked like ours, but up close, they were clearly structured differently, as if they had joints inside their joints, and when it retracted its talons, the shape of the fingers changed again.

  “It doesn’t understand what we’re saying,” I said. “Even if it had learned some human language, it wouldn’t be English.”

  The blue leaf-like patterns sped up, then suddenly stopped. A magenta mesh-like background pattern appeared under the blue leaves. It coiled around in the substrate of the dragon’s hide before flashing twice. The dragon placed both of its hands on the ground and the magenta vanished.

  “It would help if it would show us pictures.” Nax gripped the rifle. “What are you up to, dragon?”

  “Do you know American Sign Language?” I finger-spelled A, S, and L. “The other dragon used ASL.”

  Nax lowered his rifle. He didn’t swing it to his shoulder, and continued gripping it, but at least he’d stopped pointing it at the dragon. “And here I thought this couldn’t get weirder.”

  I raised my hands. “Hey, dragon,” I said, then signed hello.

  It didn’t respond.

  What had the other dragon signed? Humans start war. I touched my fingers to my chest, then my belly, signing human.

  It still did not respond.

  I tried the sign for captain.

  Nax audibly sucked in his breath.

  The dragon dropped its head and moved closer.

  “I think it understood that.” This dragon’s body language wasn’t the same no-shits-given as the one at home. But there was no reason I should be reading human—or dog, cat, horse, iguana… any Earth creature—emotion into the dragon’s responses. They probably did have emotions as we did, but that didn’t mean they expressed them the same way.

  The head drop and shoulder stance screamed sincerity, though.

  It backed down the rubble and into the valley and its skin changed from the blue leaf pattern to something more swirly and gray as it moved.

  It looked over its shoulder at us and pointed toward a break in the rubble on the other side of the valley.

  “I think it wants us to follow,” I said. Should we? Following a dragon was probably the last thing we should do. Even a dragon who protected us from a patrol.

  The dragon moved closer again. It turned sideways and stretched in a way that flattened out its flank. The symbol from the side of the downed copter appeared over its belly. It shimmered and wavered when the dragon pointed at the break again.

  Somewhere down that break, a beast roared. A horrifying roar too, like a movie sound effect. Something screamed and screeched in response. Something that sounded Earthly. A blast of color followed and danced along the edges of the break’s rubble.

  I knew what had happened. I recognized the scream. Hellhounds had found a dog. The dead guys in the helicopter were one thing, but a dying dog in all this? I couldn’t.

  “I say we follow,” I said.

  Nax rubbed his eyes. “Daniel could have warned us,” he grumbled.

  Yes. Maybe. Perhaps Daniel hadn’t thought to ask his seers about us running into a helpful dragon. Or perhaps he wanted to keep the existence of a helpful dragon from Janus.

  “Don’t get yourself twisted around the what-ifs with future-seers,” Nax said. “That twisting is half their game. It’s how Fates stun their prey.”

  Out in the mist, the tip of the maybe-friendly dragon’s tail pulsed like a fog light. Or the bioluminescent bait light those fish that are all teeth and jaw use to catch the sweet little creatures of the sea.

  The need to sit down again hit hard and seemingly out of nowhere. I just wanted to cry and curl into a ball and cry some more. No more walking in the hell-haze. No more promises to get to the shore because honestly, that was more about smoothing over Leif’s feelings than it was for me.

  Nothing here felt real and my ability to tolerate real and fake had stayed behind in Denver.

  I closed my eyes and backed against the rubble. “I hate myself,” I said.

  Nax looked between me and the dragon. “What the hell am I supposed to say to that, Del?”

  All the fighting, all the dealings with the Fates and Shifters, all the trying to figure out where we fit into the grand scheme—because I was damned sure there was a grand scheme here—and this was the most indignant I’d seen Nax.

  I waited a moment for him to vocalize the Seriously, kid? of his expression.

  He did not. I knew I should be thankful. I should understand that my place in the universe was not at its center. But sometimes it was hard.

  I nodded and pushed off the rubble and made my way toward the dragon. “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

  The dragon pointed again, this time with its tail. I followed.

  As did Nax. “This dragon reminds me of the Great Lady.” He shifted the t-shirt over his nose and mouth. “Though you’re almost twice her size.”

  The Great Lady must be one of the Dracae.

  “Leif’s father and aunt each live with a dragon.” He seemed excited to be able to explain something clearly for once. “They’re known among the Fates and Shifters as the Great Sir and the Great Lady.”

  “Oh,” I said. I still could not wrap my head around two dragons living on Earth since Roman times.

  “She needs a name.” Nax pointed at our guide.

  “She?” I said. “That’s presumptuous.”

  He shrugged. “The Great Sir and the Great Lady never seemed to care. Or understand.”

  “I’m sure the dragons have a way to pigeon-hole each other.” Probably had to do with overall body size or background color patterns. Even if they didn’t, humans would be categorizing them that way soon enough, anyway. “BlueLeaf,” I said. “Because of her squiggles.”

  Nax sniffed. “BlueLeaf it is,” he said.

  We wa
lked behind BlueLeaf the Helpful Dragon into what I hoped wasn’t a trap. Even if it was, I wasn’t sure I cared.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  BlueLeaf hid us from two more dragon patrols and a pack of collared, thickly-muscled hellhounds. Pulses of red and yellow light moved from one’s collar down its sides, off to the hound next to it, then back up that one’s sides to its controls.

  They might have been the beasts that murdered the dog. Or not. I didn’t want to get close enough to check for blood on their muzzles.

  The twenty-foot dragon standing between them and us shrank back when the pulses sped up. She understood what the lights meant. Part of me was thankful I didn’t.

  “War dogs,” Nax mumbled. War dogs horrifying enough to frighten a twenty-foot dragon.

  “Which is better, war puppies or war babies?” Because the Babies were just as disgusting.

  Nax found my obnoxious comment a lot funnier than it actually was.

  BlueLeaf ignored our chatter and took us on a diagonal toward the ocean. A few structures still stood along the shore, mostly warehouses and dock buildings. The air cleared out the closer we got, and the weird-ass flat glow from the spike dialed back. For the first time, I was able to tell what time of day it was.

  Early evening. But how many hours had we walked? I had no idea. I wasn’t as hungry as I should have been, but I was thirsty. And the air was a bit warm for early January.

  BlueLeaf settled back onto her hind legs. She lifted one of her front limbs and pointed first at Nax, then at his rifle. Then she pointed at the dark warehouse about fifty yards away.

  Only the roof was visible over a barricade. But the roof was still there, and when I squinted, I was pretty sure I could make out solar panels.

  Shipping containers had been tumbled into a barrier along the open dock side. I shifted and peered around Nax. Japanese characters had been painted in white over the scorch marks on the closest one.

  “It’s instructions,” Nax said. “This is Waystation one-nine-four along the Western Coastal Evacuation Route. We’re supposed to enter three shipping containers down.” He pointed.

  “Maybe there’s communication equipment inside,” I said.

  BlueLeaf pointed at the building, then made a little shooing motion with her hand.

  “All right,” Nax said. He shouldered his gun, raised his hands, and stepped out into the open.

  “You coming?” I asked the dragon. “We’ll put in a good word.” I nodded toward the waystation.

  BlueLeaf dropped her head level with my face and blinked her big cat eye. Blues and greens raced down her crest to her back ridges and I swear the dragon smiled.

  “Thank you,” I said. I signed it, too.

  She vanished. I felt something soft and warm like fine hairs brush against my face. Then she was gone.

  I didn’t move. “The dragon’s gone,” I said.

  “I…” Nax pointed at the scar on the side of the building. “I think we moved in more than space, Del.” He exhaled as if he was just coming to terms with what he’d said.

  He was right. I knew he was right. The warmer-than-January air. The lack of people and animals. The mummified corpses. The consistency of the destruction. The setup of evacuation routes and waystations. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d figured it out and had decided to ignore the obvious without even realizing I’d figured and decided.

  “How long?” I asked. Years? A decade? Was I like Leif? Did I have a dead family?

  Haze burned into my throat even though I still covered my face with the t-shirt. We’d moved in time. We’d jumped forward in time.

  “Daniel knew,” I said. He had to have known. He’d said a whole lot of nothing.

  “BlueLeaf!” I yelled. Why was I screaming for the dragon?

  I turned around again.

  Nax gripped my shoulders. “You’re having a panic attack.”

  Finally, I thought. I was finally having the panic attack I should have had when The Incursion opened. The one I should have had when the hellhounds were on the roof of Paradise Homes. And the one I should have had when the Seraphim first showed up.

  The relief of finally letting go was as weird and spinny and sharp as the panic itself and I couldn’t breathe. Not that I could breathe in this haze anyway, but now I couldn’t breathe at all.

  Nax helped me toward the warehouse. “There might be food,” he said.

  We stumbled between the shipping containers in a passage too narrow for dragons and too confusing for hellhounds. Someone had painted instructions on the metal, stuff like “turn left at the next break” in Japanese, English, French, and several other languages. No arrows or anything pointing, but a lot of words only humans would understand.

  We popped out about thirty feet from the building proper.

  “Waystation one-nine-four” blazed in safety orange on the wall next to the door. Someone had glued several posters along the wall as well, at least twenty, all with huge titles at the top in the language in which they were written.

  I leaned against the English one. “The waystation number is the code to unlock the door,” I said.

  Nax nodded.

  “It says the waystation is resupplied as often as feasible. The next one is thirty-nine kilometers north along the coast. There are two smaller hidden rest areas along the way. There are maps inside.”

  “All the signs say the same thing.” Nax touched the sign written in French. “This one says that if you can write instructions in a language not represented on the posters, you are to paint information here and add info inside.” He glanced down the wall. “I see at least six examples of people complying.”

  “Wow,” I said. Japanese refugees set up evacuation routes to funnel humans along the coast to waystations where they could call for help.

  Nax entered the code, and the door opened into a shipping container that had turned into a tunnel—probably set up to funnel hellbeasts into an interior maze of other shipping containers, all squeezed into claustrophobic, winding hallways so close Nax had to turn sideways to fit through a few.

  We popped out into a cleared area in the middle of the warehouse filled with makeshift tables and stacks of crates. Circles of light dotted the floor and the stacks, each a small bit of the outside let through the building’s shielding. And in one circle, in the center of the open area, a rotted, dried up apple waited like some sort of video game icon.

  Nax held out his hand. “Stay away from it.”

  I nodded. Obvious bait like that was how soldiers set traps.

  The building had some sort of air filtration system. We’d walked into less eye stinging, and clearer visibility. Nax and I pulled down our t-shirts and breathed in clean air for the first time since manifesting in Tokyo.

  Every interior wall surface had been covered with writing. All of it. Some was instructions. Some was stories. One wall was covered with photos. One was illustrations of dragons and hellhounds.

  “My God,” Nax breathed. “It’s been at least six months.” He pointed at one chunk of text. “That’s a list of names of everyone in one group.” He pointed at more text. “That’s another. It has the latest date. June twenty-four of this year.”

  June? The panic suddenly pushed up into my throat like a snake trying to escape my stomach.

  “Hey.” Nax rubbed my back. “This means they got everyone out, Del. They set up a system to get the people out.”

  I nodded. I just… It was too much.

  “We’re supposed to move to the next waystation. The next one up is supposed to have functioning communications equipment. It says we’re too close to the spike here.”

  I nodded again.

  “If no one answers, we’re to continue up the coast. Ultimately, we’re to cross over to the north island.”

  “Okay,” I breathed.

  “There are bikes.”

  I looked up.

  Nax glanced around. “There are supposed to be mountain bikes here somewhere.”

 
“They left mountain bikes?”

  “Food, water, masks, clothes, and mountain bikes.” He pointed at a different block of text.

  There was always someone around who thought of everything.

  He pointed at the wall of illustrations. “It’s BlueLeaf.”

  It was. Her ridges were distinctly hers and the squiggles along her side were correct. Whoever had drawn it was a damned good artist.

  “It says to mark down interactions.” Nax touched the instructions next to the illustration. “These other six dragons, as well.”

  BlueLeaf wasn’t the only one helping humans.

  “This says only these dragons interact with evacuating humans. It says that at least here in Tokyo, there were very few violent dragon-human events.” He peered at the wall. “Hellhounds are a different story.”

  The dragons didn’t do the murdering. They sent their literal attack dogs to do it for them. “I wonder if they’ve figured out how violent humans are.”

  Nax sniffed like a man who’d fought many wars. “I suspect so.” He walked toward a crate and popped off the lid. “Look here.” He pulled out a yellowish-blue patterned uniform that could only be described as haze-camo, plus boots, a hood-like facemask, and goggles.

  The third mask was child-sized.

  I brushed dust off the top of another crate, uncovering two icons: one of fish on a platter, and a second of a glass with a wavy line, meaning water. Under that were the words “Food and Water” in at least thirty languages.

  I opened the crate. Dried food. Water in pouches meant to be carried in backpacks.

  The next crate had an icon of a bullet on the outside.

  “Ammunition,” I said.

  Whoever set up the building had been here long enough to get supply drops. But they were all gone now, hopefully evacuated.

  “This one says ‘Animal Feed’ with pictures of a dog, a cat, and a bird,” Nax said. “There are collapsible cages in here. It says ‘Bring all animals to evacuation points.’”

  The panic came back.

  Each new distraction gave me a window to breathe, a point to look at and to not think about the end of the world. I couldn’t freak out when I was thinking about what the writing said. But this made me drop to the floor.