Heart of the Dragon King

by J Boothby

  I really have to… says the female, staggering away from the male’s grip. She trips and catches herself on the wall. I’ve really got to go.

  But the male isn’t giving up that easily. It grabs the female and drags her into the garage. It pushes her down onto the mattress and holds a hand over her mouth. The female tries to scream, but it’s a muffled sound, quickly absorbed into the fog.

  All of which is enough for the wolf which, after all, only has so much patience. It slinks into the room and raises itself up to its full height, topping the height and the girth of the old car.

  It stands between the struggle on the mattress and the open doorway. It lets out a deep, guttural growl, the sound of the old wild, the sound that stops big dogs in their tracks and sends them fleeing headlong in the other direction.

  The male jerks away from the female.

  Holy shit shit shit.

  The female backs away against the wall.

  The male looks around for a tool and picks up a tire iron. It throws it at the wolf. The metal hits the wolf’s shoulder and bounces away into the street.

  The wolf takes a step. Then another. It growls again. It hunkers down low.

  Oh, shit.

  The wolf leaps through the air, fast as thunder. It locks jaws around the spot where the male’s large head meets the thick shoulder.

  It bites deep. Satisfyingly deep.

  The male screams, loud and high pitched.

  The wolf shakes it. Quick and sharp.

  There is a satisfying crack. The male’s screaming stops abruptly.

  The male hangs limp in the wolf’s jaws.

  The wolf bites down harder, to be sure. Muscle and ligament part. Bones crack. Wetness drips from its jaws and starts seeping into the oil-stained concrete of the floor.

  The wolf lowers the body and spins smoothly to the female.

  She’s standing at the doorway, holding her tattered clothes together.

  She doesn’t scream. She looks the wolf in the eye.

  The wolf's nostrils flare. Smells of sweat, oil, rust.

  The smell of blood.

  The wolf is ravenous.

  But the wolf stays put.

  The female human lowers itself so that their faces are at the same level. She stammers Thank…thank you.

  The wolf blows air from its nostrils. It does not growl. It sits down on its back haunches.

  It watches as the female backs slowly away, out into the alley.

  And then the wolf turns and feeds, loud and messily.

  Much better than rats.

  Much, much better.

  6

  The next afternoon I’m setting up at Joe’s for the dinner crowd. Even though it’s owned by grogans, Joe’s Inn is still a neighborhood place, and it attracts all kinds of people. It has a small bar on one side that Mr. Morris lets me run now when I’m there, and ten tables in a second room where you can get breakfast all day and some decent lunches or dinners. I would avoid anything labeled “beef” or “chicken” since the grogans, who lean vegan, are notoriously flexible with their labeling of meat. But if you like cheap beer, great omelets, and hashbrowns to die for, Joe’s is the place.

  Sam is sitting on a barstool playing with the stirring straws, and I’m checking the carbonation on the beer taps when two people come in, a man and a woman. Sam eyes them warily.

  “Sit anywhere you want,” I say. There’s no one else in the place, and won’t be for at least another hour. They look stiff, formal. The guy’s in a shirt and jacket that looks more DC than Richmond, and the woman’s in a professional pair of pants and a beige blouse. They’re both about my age, I think, but they seem older—more put-together or more uptight, depending on how you want to look at it.

  I’m thinking uptight.

  They sit at the bar, a few seats down from Sam.

  “Menus?” I ask.

  The guy shakes his head. “Just a light beer, if you have one.” He’s well-built, has dreadlocks tied back and dark skin. His nose looks like it might have been broken once. He sits up really straight on the stool. Ex-military, maybe?

  His light brown eyes study me so carefully I know something’s up.

  “I’ll have a real beer,” the woman says. “One with some actual beer in it.” She’s a straight-sitter, too, and her arms tell me she works out. Auburn hair cut short, blue eyes, a good figure that’s trim but strong. She has an iPad in a red case that she sets on the bar.

  “Nice,” the guy says.

  “Real beer we got,” I say. “I’ll check on the light one.”

  He’s in luck, there’s a bottle in the back of the walk-in. I set them both up.

  They watch me more than most people do while I do it. “Visiting?”

  The woman nods and takes out a badge. She lays it open on top of the bar. “We’re looking for the owner of the place across the street. Uriah Walker? Have you seen him?”

  It’s a strange badge: it looks like a police one but isn’t. The top reads Blackstone Institute, and the bottom says Border Protection Services. In the center is a big, patriotic-looking star.

  The woman’s name on it: Mason Turner.

  The guy takes his out too. Devon Parker.

  Zara was right—it didn’t take them long to find me.

  “What did he do?” I ask nervously. I can feel my palms start to sweat. “And what’s the Blackstone Institute, anyway?”

  “We’re a private security company,” the woman says. “We work closely with Federal law enforcement. We just had a few questions for him.”

  Her expression is carefully neutral, though the guy looks sympathetic.

  “Do you guys always say that? ‘Just a few questions?’ “

  It comes out a little ruder than I thought it would, but they don’t seem bothered by it.

  “Yeah,” the woman shrugs. “Usually.” She opens up her iPad and sets it up so she can type.

  Once the Elhyra was opened, borders could be almost anywhere. That resulted in an explosion of police and government agencies and private contractors set on patrolling them. Everywhere.

  And all of that continued into my present.

  I’ve heard of the Blackstone Institute. Just rumors.

  But enough to scare me. Other people told their kids stories about monsters. My uncle told me stories about agencies like this. Since my abilities probably came from the Elhyra, we thought it was someone like them who would come for me if I wasn’t careful.

  And here they are.

  I brush my hair back from my eyes. “I haven’t seen him for a couple of years. Poe’s has been closed for a while now.”

  Mason nods. She notes something down on her iPad. She takes in my tattoos, my black jeans, the gently-stained black t-shirt that I practically live in. “And what’s your name?”

  “Kylie Walker. I’m Uriah’s niece,” I say.

  “And this little guy?” She tilts her head to indicate Sam at the end of the bar. “He yours?”

  Sam startles and spills the container of stirrers.

  I shake my head and think quickly. “He, um, lives nearby. I’m watching him until his mom gets out of work.”

  “Hey, kid,” Devon says, not unkindly. “Sorry about that. It’s OK.”

  Sam’s crouches down a little on the stool.

  “It’s OK,” Devon says again. “We’re the good guys.” He smiles awkwardly.

  The good guys for who, I wonder? “He’s shy,” I say.

  “Do you want to see some magic?” Devon says, reaching into his pocket.

  “I think we should stick to the—” Mason says.

  “It’s OK,” he says. “It will just take a minute.”

  Mason rolls her eyes. Devon takes out a shiny new quarter and holds it out in his palm so Sam can see it. Sam doesn’t want to be interested, but he can’t quite help himself. He looks at the quarter and looks at Devon’s face carefully.

  Devon closes his hand around the quarter, raises it to his mouth and blows. He opens his hand ag
ain, and the quarter is gone.

  Sam’s eyes go big, and he looks at Devon’s hand, at the table, and on the floor. Then he looks at me. I shrug. No quarter.

  Devon says. “Do you know where it is?”

  Sam shakes his head.

  “You sure?”

  Sam shakes his head again. Devon reaches over to Sam’s left ear and produces the quarter.

  Sam looks startled, and then amazed.

  Devon lets out a laugh. “I love kids,” Devon says. “What’s your name?”

  Sam shakes his head. Devon looks at me.

  “He doesn’t talk much right now,” I say. “He’s Sam.”

  “Hey, Sam,” Devon says. He holds out his hand for a fist-bump, and reluctantly Sam gives him one with his tiny fingers clenched tight.

  I’m not exactly sure what to say: I didn’t actually expect a Border Patrol agent to be kind to kids. It’s a little startling.

  “Sorry,” Devon says. “He reminds me of my nephew.”

  “It’s OK,” I say. And honestly, it’s cool to see Sam excited about something.

  “Kylie,” Mason says, serious again. “Were you at Burning Man last week? Maybe, say, driving your uncle’s truck?”

  “The one with the expired registration,” Devon adds. “The one that’s parked across the street?”

  Mason turns the iPad around. There’s a picture of Russell, driving across the desert sand. It looks like it was taken from a satellite or a drone or something.

  “You mean, was I at that incursion?” I say. “That’s really what you’re asking about, right?”

  “That’s what we mean,” Devon says.

  I nod toward the iPad. “That’s Russell.”

  “Russell.”

  “The truck. Russell. My uncle gave him to me, so he’s mine now. I guess I need to get to that registration.”

  The two of them look at each other. “So, you were at the incursion?”

  “Yes. Do you guys say ‘We need to ask you some more questions’ now?”

  “We need to ask you some more questions,” Mason says, seriously. “Now would be good.”

  “It’s OK,” I say.

  We go through the drill you’ve seen on most police shows: they ask, I answer. What was I doing there. How long was I there for. Who was I with. What did I do. What did I remember happening.

  A shower, some food, and some sleep have brought it all back to me. I fill them in, even more than what I’d told Zara.

  I tell them about Claire and Alex and Ella, about the explosion when the incursion opened, about the smaug soldiers running, grabbing people. Dragging them back in through the great, glowing crack in the world.

  I get a little choked up when I’m talking. But I don’t mention Sam at all. And I definitely don’t say what I needed to do to help him.

  “You’re sure they were smaug soldiers?” Devon asks.

  I grab a tissue and blow my nose. “As sure as I can be. They looked like smaug I’ve seen on TV. They moved differently. Their shadows were…what, angled? Sharp?”

  “They had shadows at night?”

  I have to think for a minute. “The incursion was really bright? It was like a break in the world, really—like something you’d see on Dr. Who. All bright and shimmery.”

  Devon nods. “That’s as good a description as any.”

  “The soldiers moved fast. Precisely. It didn’t take long.”

  They look at each other. Mason makes notes.

  “Did you notice anything distinctive about their uniforms?”

  “Distinctive?”

  “Colors, insignia.”

  I shake my head. “I was too busy hiding and hoping my friends were doing the same thing. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to what they were wearing.”

  “You seem like you’re pretty familiar with smaug,” Mason says.

  I shake my head. “Not really. I mean, you see them on TV, right?”

  Mason frowns. “What do you think of the smaug, Kylie?”

  “What do you mean? Mostly I don’t think of them at all.”

  “Have you ever seen any other incursions?”

  “No,” I lie.

  Mason pauses, watching me, and waits for me to say something more. I don’t, but I do feel like I should be doing something with my hands, so I pour myself a glass of water.

  “Why do you think the smaug left you behind?” Devon asks.

  “You, out of everyone else?” Mason says. “Thousands of people?”

  “I don’t think they left me behind. I think they just missed me. I was half-buried in sand, under what was left of our tent. Hiding, like I said.”

  “And yet, they got absolutely everyone else,” Mason says. She’s giving me a hard look.

  I can’t help but glance over at Sam. Sam is staring back at me, and he looks pretty worried.

  “What,” I say. “You think I’m some sort of smaug spy they left behind?” I shrug. “Here I am, spying real hard at an old grogan bar in Richmond, Virgnia. Maybe if I give you another beer, I’ll learn some super-secret secrets.”

  “She’s not saying that,” Devon says, with a tone like he was maybe thinking that very exact thing. “We’re just, you know, curious. Everyone else was taken, except you. And we have information that tells us there was a second instance of aether there, after the first one.”

  “Aether?”

  “The stuff that runs in lei lines. The stuff that powers incursions.”

  Mason isn’t saying anything. She just sits, watching me.

  She’s smart. And suspicious.

  “Look,” I say. “I lost a lot of friends a few days ago. Back off a little bit, will you? I don’t know anything about aether or smaug stuff.”

  “OK, sorry,” Devon says, like he actually does mean it. “Did you see anyone else there? After the incursion?”

  I look at Sam again despite myself. “No one,” I say. “No one at all. I pulled myself together. I got in the truck. I came back here as fast as I could.”

  “Sam wasn’t with you, was he?”

  Damn, Mason is watching me like a hawk. My hands start to shake a little.

  I realize that if they have pictures of the truck from a satellite, they could just as easily have pictures of Sam and me.

  “No,” I lie again. “Sam lives around the corner.”

  “Why didn’t you call anyone, Kylie? After everything happened.”

  I make a phone shape with my hand, thumb and pinkie out, and I hold it up to my ear and mouth. “Hello, Border Patrol. I’m calling to report a break-in to our reality?”

  “Something like that.”

  I’m annoyed. “Maybe you need billboards with your number on it. Like 1-800-SMAUG.”

  “We actually do have billboards,” she says. “Probably all along the roads you took to get back here.”

  Shit, she’s right. I can remember them, blearily. They looked like something the Nazis would have used to get people to report on their neighbors.

  “I guess I was just pretty out of it. Wouldn’t you be? And then once the whole thing started showing up online, I thought you guys had it under control.”

  Devon looks at Mason. “I think we’ve got what we need,” he says. “Let’s give her a break.”

  “Do you mind if I take your picture?” Mason says. She lifts up the iPad and takes it before I can answer.

  “I guess not,” I say.

  “Are you going to be here in Richmond for a while, Kylie? If we have more questions?”

  I nod. “Here, or over at Poe’s. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Here’s my card,” she says.

  “Thanks,” I say. “Thanks ever so much.”

  7

  It's the next day and I'm on my way back from the health food store with a lot of weird vegetables, while Zara is watching Sam. It's a long walk from the store back to Poe's and the apartment, but I like it. It's a cool neighborhood, with a lot of the Victorian row houses that this part of Richmond, called the Fan, is kno
wn for. Everyone does something different with the small patch of yard they have out in front. Gardens. Fountains. Buddhas. A tiny Japanese garden. There's even a large velociraptor statue named Alan, who gets dressed up seasonally; rabbit ears and a basket of eggs for Easter, a Santa hat and wrapped gifts for Christmas.

  I'm still annoyed about that interrogation from yesterday. Plus, I'm annoyed at myself. Why did I even talk to them? I didn't have to—it's not like they were actual law enforcement. And why were they so focused on me, when they should have been focused on finding my friends? And everyone else who'd been taken? And trying to figure out why the incursions are happening in the first place?

  That's when I see her.

  A smaug.

  An actual smaug.

  She's walking the same way I am, down Grove Avenue, just a little ahead of me and on the other side of the street.

  I've seen smaug in pictures online, but I don't remember ever seeing one in person.

  I'm not sure how I know she's an older smaug, but I do. She's eerily beautiful. Tall and angular, like a figure drawn with quick straight lines. Her face stretches forward into that elongated jaw and is faintly patterned with feather-thin scales that shimmer with iridescence. Her long, pointed ears drape backward, almost like a fae's, and they're elaborately pierced—tiny chains run to her nose and back, almost like a web covering the side of her face. Dark hair reaches her waist in a braid and is patterned with streaks of gray accents in a way that looks deliberate. Her eyes are large, like someone out of an anime, and pale violet overall with bright, slit pupils that flash as her gaze darts around, taking in everything on the street.

  Despite the city's heat, she's wrapped in colorful scarves and a cloak that hangs from her shoulders.

  The cloak drifts about in the air as she walks, even though there's no breeze. It's like it has a mind of its own.

  She walks with a cane that's thin and willowy though she clearly doesn't need it. She has that strange smaug walk you've probably read about that's more like sliding: she takes steps, but the amount of ground she covers seems like more than what just the steps themselves would take care of.

  I try not to stare. I'm probably not successful.

  She's not that far ahead of me. She doesn't look anything like the soldiers I saw in the desert.