Rise of the Poison Moon (11 page)

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Authors: MaryJanice Davidson

Tags: #Magic, #Fantasy fiction, #Dragons, #General, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Spiders, #Shapeshifting, #Epic, #Good and evil

BOOK: Rise of the Poison Moon
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To her, she supposed, Jennifer and her family were heroes. Maybe they were even responsible for her own bravery, in places like Hank Blacktooth’s office—because she thought about what they might do in such situations.
What if they didn’t do anything?
What if it all became too much, and they gave up?
What if the heroes . . . just stopped?
CHAPTER 15
Jennifer
It had been a long time, Jennifer realized, since she had last seen Eddie Blacktooth. She didn’t know what was worse—not seeing him or seeing him and being unable to touch him.
Casualty #21 of being in Domeland . . . zero hands-on time with my would-be boyfriend.
He was no more than six feet away, but it might as well have been six million. The blue barrier shimmered between them, casting each of them in an unearthly glow to the other’s eyes.
They were not even alone, she grumbled to herself as she imagined holding and kissing him. Her father was here on her side, and on Eddie’s side was an even rarer sight: the seraph that had arisen from the dying body of Wendy Blacktooth, Eddie’s mother. The enormous angel-warrior burned with a silent white fire, had only showed up at erratic intervals over the past few months, and never talked even when it did.
It reminded Jennifer of a huge and annoying conscience, which reminded them of all the death that had led them to this point.
Major mood-killer.
Still, perhaps it could be useful now.
“You have to find Skip,” she was telling Eddie, yet looking hopefully at the seraph.
“I find him all the time,” Eddie snapped. He was in a mood, which only made Jennifer more anxious. They never had more than a few moments together; why he acted this way was inexplicable. Boys: as much a puzzle to the Ancient Furnace as were hieroglyphics.
Well, okay, maybe it was a little bit explicable. He was soaking wet and shivering, probably as a result of fording the Mississippi River to their meeting point on the north end of town without benefit of a bridge. Normally, a boat would have sufficed; but during the crossing a dragon outside the barrier sympathetic to Ember Longtail had taken a potshot at him, and he had been forced to leap into the icy river. The seraph had come to his side shortly afterward to shoo away the intruder, but apparently it didn’t have a clothes dryer handy.
“I’m sorry about that dragon,” she told him again.
He wrung out a sleeve, shivering and drippy and crabby. “I thought Xavier had things under control out here. If he has rogue dragons running around, I don’t know how close I can get to Skip.” He sneezed.
Jennifer put a hand to her mouth and nodded grimly, thinking:
don’t smile. Don’t smile.
“I’m sure it’s just the one. Please, Eddie. Won’t you help? If Skip’s done this once, he’ll almost certainly do it again.”
“Especially since he didn’t kill anyone the first time,” Jonathan added.
“We don’t know what he’ll go for next,” Jennifer explained. She could see that Eddie was trying to hide his irritation and fear, and possibly the beginnings of a head cold, and she loved him for it. “It could be the hospital, or someone’s house, or anywhere . . .”
“Or any
one
.”
Jonathan’s eyes were fixed beyond Eddie and the seraph, to the northeast and the river. Jennifer followed his gaze, and her heart twisted.
This stream of creatures was thinner and denser than the first. It spilled down the opposite cliffs and over the treetops like a rocket’s shadow, moving in an unerring straight line.
For them.
“Eddie,” Jennifer whispered, as she heard him gasp, “Jennifer!”
“We’ve got to get both of you out of here,” Jonathan agreed. The seraph turned to him, its cold fire raging, and he spoke directly to it. “Protect him.”
“But, Dad, how can it protect him against—”
“Argue another time! Eddie, get moving. To the west. Jennifer, to the east. Make that thing choose. I’ll follow the target and do what I can.”
Both did as he instructed, but after fifty yards Jennifer stopped.
The seraph wasn’t following its ward. Instead, it stomped its foot and cracked the ground.
Jonathan waved it on. “Follow Eddie! Do as I say! If this stays outside the dome, you’re the only one who can help him!”
Jennifer looked beyond them, at Eddie. He had stopped as well, and was looking at the oncoming swarm with quizzical panic. It was crossing over the flat current of the Mississippi, too far away yet to be sure which of them it would chase.
Dad’s right. I have to get moving. We both have to get moving.
“Eddie, run!” she called out, and turned to do so herself.
She had made it only another thirty yards when a shock wave knocked her off her feet. Scrambling to get up, she realized it had come from the seraph, who had unsheathed its brilliant blue blade.
Not helpful,
she steamed. She checked the swarm to see where it was flowing. Only when she saw how close it was—spitting distance from the seraph—did she begin to understand.
It took longer for her father to catch on. “Dammit, you angelic freak, help those kids before—”
It was too late for anyone to do anything, now. The river of death passed over and under the seraph as if it were nothing more than a dead pine trunk. The creatures within splashed through the barrier and pooled around the feet of Jonathan Scales. Before he could think to change form and take to the air, the cloud scrambled up his legs, invaded his face, and darkened his features.
His astonished gray eyes looked at Jennifer for an instant before the entire mass breathed in, and out, and in . . .
. . . and disintegrated, taking his ashes with it.
CHAPTER 16
Jennifer
The funeral of Jonathan Scales did not take place in a cemetery. There were none close enough to the barrier, and Elizabeth decided it would be best to have guests from both inside and outside. The most suitable destination was a potato field northwest of town, which gave everyone involved an excellent view of possible invasion.
Mercifully, there was none. Not that Jennifer would have cared if there had been one. What exactly were they accomplishing, anyway?
They were gathered around a small handful of dirt, within which must have been some of the only ashes Jennifer could recall scooping up in the aftermath of Skip’s attack.
She had begged Eddie to help her, senseless to the barrier and everything around it. Beyond that, her memory was shredded by grief. She might have asked for her mother; she might have screamed at Skip to come out of the fucking woods and fight like a man; she might have rubbed some of the dirt cupped in her hand into her face.
She might.
She might have.
She . . .
She had an easier time remembering her grandfather’s funeral last year, when several dragons, including her father, had brought the elder’s body to the cremation plateau in Crescent Valley. From there, his spirit had traveled to the eternal crescent moon, where it flew in an eternal host. All dead elders received this honor.
But not Dad. He doesn’t get that.
It wasn’t only because they were trapped here. It was his sacrifice to his daughter, a price of birthright he had paid so that dragons who disliked him would still accept her as the Ancient Furnace. About half a dozen of those dragons were even assembled here today—a pitiful fraction of the total available. No beaststalkers from within the town came to comfort his family, not even the ones his wife and daughter (and he) had worked with every day for the last year.
She chewed her tongue and seethed at the proceedings. Eddie was there, bless him—but he could not even look at her, much less touch her. Ned Brownfoot was saying something, as if it mattered. Susan and Gautierre were here of course, and Catherine. It was good of them to come, she supposed with a sullen internal shrug. For all the good all this would do her father, they could be burying pebbles among the potatoes.
Her mother’s arm sought her far shoulder. Jennifer allowed it.
And where were these dragons,
she fumed,
when my father died? Xavier and the others—where were they while Skip created that swarm? Warm and cozy in Crescent Valley, a place I’ve protected even though they didn’t want me there to begin with?
WHERE WERE THEY? WHY HAVEN’T THEY FOUND SKIP? WHY AREN’T THEY HUNTING THAT LITTLE SHIT NOW?
Her mother’s hand felt the tension and began to rub her shoulder. Jennifer shook it off.
I should stop this, right now. End this so-called funeral. I should demand Ned Brownfoot take his fucking Missour-eh accent and sell it somewhere else. I should order Stumpy’s uncle over there to gather the Blaze and burn the forests down, until Skip comes screaming out with his eyeballs on fire. I should order Hank Blacktooth and his psychotic legions to focus their rage on the real enemy.
I should lead! So what if some of them die? At least they’ll be dying doing something worthwhile, instead of rotting away in this town.
This . . . fucking . . . prison . . . town.
She was stepping forward to say everything she was thinking when she felt her mother seize her shoulder with new urgency.
The burning shape of the seraph approached, the chilled sunrise framing its flames.
She glared at the useless thing. “What’s
that
doing here?”
“I don’t know, honey.”
She wanted no part of it, this thing that had not stopped Skip’s swarm from killing her father. It was useless. No, worse than useless: it had inspired a false sense of protection. If it couldn’t (or wouldn’t) stop anything from hurting her father, how could it stop anything from reaching Eddie? Or her mother? Or herself?
Potatoes under the seraph’s footsteps popped, and it trailed azure steam. The dragons on the far side parted and let it come through the barrier.
“Sweetheart, no.” Her mother sensed the revolt inside Jennifer and slipped in front of her. “Let it come.”
Her mother’s face, an oval of stoic despair, was the only one she didn’t despise in that moment. It was the only one she could not deny. Jennifer exhaled and watched the seraph step forward. The air filled with the scent of burning lavender, and all other sound vanished.
It reached a burning hand toward the soil containing her father’s remains.
“What is it—”
“Sshh. Wait.” Jennifer could see her mother didn’t know, either.
“Mom, that’s all we’ve got left of him!”
“Jennifer. Honey. Let it happen.” Elizabeth’s slender hand came up, and with a surgeon’s skill she closed the tears and exclamations of Jennifer’s face with soft fingers. “Let him go.”
The air around them began to vibrate. They both had to stand back from the resulting heat, and soon so did the others farther away. The seraph wailed, and the crescent moon above trembled. Feeling the soil beneath her harden, Jennifer looked down. It was turning into ice—or was it glass?
The wind changed and began to pull inward, toward the seraph. The vacuum was mild where Jennifer stood—only enough to tug at the ends of her platinum hair. For the seraph, however, it was a deeper force. The angelic figure began to shrink into itself. Its steaming robes, its fiery wings, its sapphire eyes all slowly disappeared into a colorless singularity.
Once the seraph was gone, a shock wave knocked them all flat. By the time they recovered, all that was left of the seraph and the potato field around them was an indigo rain. It took them a few seconds to realize that it wasn’t rain after all—each colored speck was a minute dragon, and they filled the nearby atmosphere.
Neither Jennifer nor Elizabeth could say a word as the indigo spirits ascended, rising like a tide of algae pulled by the inscrutable sliver of moon far above.
CHAPTER 17
Susan
“Good afternoon. It’s Day 306, and we have another special edition of
Under Big Blue
—”
“Susan! You can’t be serious! Give me that!”
Grunting, she fought to keep the tiny video camera she had hidden from Gautierre. She knew he would act like this—that’s why she had slipped the smaller, ultraportable model into her jacket pocket. She could have used a smart-phone, but the resolution and memory sucked.
“Gautierre, I swear if you don’t let me do this, we are
done
.”
He paused, gauging her seriousness. “There’s no way my mother will tolerate this. I knew I shouldn’t have let you come here.”
“You knew what I would do. I’m a reporter, Gautierre.”
“You’re a teenager!”
“So are you—and you’re six months younger than me! What difference does that make? If I can live with the debilitating shame of robbing the cradle, you can let me do this.”

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