Dragon Keepers #3: The Dragon in the Library (16 page)

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Chapter 10 CHAPTER TEN THE BEWITCHED HAMBURGER

Jesse and Daisy leaned through the passageway and looked in. Shafts of sunlight shone through a series of squint holes, lighting the way down a set of

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curving stairs. When the wall panel began to swing shut, the cousins jumped into the secret passageway. There was nothing for them to do now but go wherever the stairs led them.

Jesse stopped at a squint hole partway down and peered out. The courtyard below was empty. He had a clear view beyond the walls out to the lilac trees, where their bikes were stashed near the cul-de-sac. A couple of older boys were skateboarding in a lazy circle. Those young men were going about their normal, everyday lives while in the castle, witches and Dragon Keepers were waging a battle to the death. Jesse shivered.
Stop being so dramatic
, he told himself.
It won't help
.

"Come on!" Daisy whispered, tugging at his hand. Jesse nodded and tore himself away from the view.

When they got to the bottom of the stairs, a life-size metal statue of a peacock stood in their path. A sapphire was set in the eye of its center-most tail feather.

Daisy looked to Jesse and raised one eyebrow. He shrugged, so she pushed the blue stone. A second panel swung open before them. The cousins stepped through and found their noses pressed to the back side of a vast, rather dusty tapestry.

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"We're back in the throne room," Jesse whispered in Daisy's ear. She nodded.

They linked hands and edged along the wall behind the tapestry until the toe of Jesse's sneaker stuck out from behind the frayed corner. Jesse knelt down and peered out. Now it was Daisy's chin digging into the crown of Jesse's head.

At least fifty dogs of all shapes and sizes but mostly big--and nearly as many hefty dog-men--milled about in a throng before the receiving platform, growling and panting and sniffing each other's butts. Sadie Huffington sat high on St. George's throne. With one hand, she grasped Emmy by the choke collar. With the other, she whipped her switch in the air to signal silence. Emmy didn't move, even as Ms. Huffington clipped the tip of one of her ears. The dogs below abruptly pointed their muzzles toward the Top Dog and sat on their haunches.

"My dogs, my strays, my curs, my faithful hounds and servants, two-and four-legged slaves, one and all!" Sadie Huffington's voice echoed in the great room. "The time has come for which I have been waiting, lo, these many years! The time for my reunion with my lord and my master, my consort and my lover, my handsome and brave one: St. George the Dragon Slayer!" She raised the switch

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and the crowd sat up and barked with obedient enthusiasm. Emmy, Jesse was pleased to notice, held still and did not join in.

"He is somewhere nearby; I feel him," said Ms. Huffington. "And this craven canine
here,"
she said with a yank on Emmy's collar that made her yelp, "will lead me to him. Once we are joyfully reunited, my prince and I will return in triumph to the castle, mark my words, this very night! But we will not come alone." Her yellowish eyes widened and her voice dropped to a hushed pitch. "We will have in our possession a fresh young dragon with which to celebrate our reunion. And I promise you, there will be a bloodletting as in days of old! Yes, my faithful curs!" she cried out, gesturing toward the silver basin on the table. "The dragon blood will flow, and your faithful services to me will not go unrewarded! You shall have tender dragon bones aplenty to gnaw upon tonight!"

The crowd yipped and yapped and howled with glee. Jesse felt Daisy's fingernails digging into his shoulders. He reached up and held both of her hands in his, worried that she might burst from behind the tapestry and launch a running attack on the queen. Then suddenly, above the din, Jesse heard a sound that was different from all the others. Up on the platform at Sadie Huffington's side,

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Emmy stood, head lifted high, baying in protest. Louder and louder, more and more insistently, she registered her objection to the Huffington plan.

Gradually, the noise of the dogs and dog-men fell away. Now that Emmy had everyone's attention, her baying sharpened to a shriek. The shrieking, in turn, grew in intensity until, for the first time in his life, Jesse knew the meaning of the term "ear-piercing." Dogs and dog-men alike shrank into themselves and protected their ears as best they could. Jesse pressed his own hands over his ears. Then Daisy pulled Jesse's hands away and he felt something blessedly soft muffling the sound. The shrieking, though still audible, now ceased to pain his eardrums. Jesse looked up and gave Daisy a grateful look for remembering Miss Alodie's earmuffs.

The dogs in the crowd were not so lucky. They were now keening in agony. Even the powerful Sadie Huffington was writhing in pain. Flinging aside her switch and Emmy's collar, she ground the heels of her palms into the sides of her head. A line of bright red blood trickled from one ear.

Finally free, Emmy pawed off the choke collar. She shook herself briskly and then leaped from the platform. Continuing to emit the same intolerable shriek, she ran about among the crowd and, as if

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she were setting into motion a hundred-odd tops, dogs and dog-men began to spin in her wake, the dogs chasing their tails, the men reeling in place in frenzied circles. Around and around they all spun like a troop of whirling dervishes, all in the same direction, faster and faster and faster, a blur of fur and flesh and flesh and fur and, finally, all fur.

Abruptly, the shrieking stopped. After a few moments, Sadie Huffington opened her eyes and dropped her hands from her ears. Her eyes, bloodshot and bewildered, darted about the audience. The dogs and the dog-men had all stopped spinning at once. But something had happened to them during the spinning. Every single one of them, dog-men and dog, had been transformed into an English sheepdog, identical to Emmy! In desperation, Sadie Huffington scanned the fuzzy white mass in search of the one English sheepdog she needed above all else to get what she wanted.

She reached up and tore at her flaming tresses. "There is only one explanation for this kind of trickery!" she screamed. "Dragon magic!"

From behind the tapestry, Jesse and Daisy stared in mute astonishment at the heaving, yelping sea of sheepdogs in the throne room. Then, unseen by the others, one sheepdog broke loose and ran over to the tapestry. She nosed her way underneath

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and pounced upon her Keepers joyfully. Jesse and Daisy hugged Emmy and buried their faces in her fur.

"We're sorry we let you get dognapped," Jesse said to her.

"Let's go show the professor that we got you back," said Daisy.

The cousins and Emmy made their way along the wall behind the tapestry until they found the open passageway. Sidestepping the peacock, they took the stairs at a run. Halfway up, they heard the unmistakable sound of very big dogs snuffling and panting in the stairwell above.

"The mastiffs! They're headed our way!" Daisy said.

The three of them raced back down the stairs and managed to push the sapphire button and close the panel door behind them just as they heard the
thud-thud
of big dogs heaving their bodies against the door. By the time the three of them had wriggled free of the tapestry, the throne room was empty. They ran into the middle of the room and halted.

"If we go to the tower room, Sadie will follow us, and then we'll have her where the professor wants her," Jesse said.

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"Perfect triangulation," Daisy agreed. "To the gallery!"

"To the gallery!" Jesse joined in.

Emmy barked in agreement, and they ran through the throne room and into the gallery. They were halfway across the chessboard floor when they spied Sadie Huffington near the top of the spiral staircase, her hairy horde howling at her heels. Ms. Huffington pulled up short when she saw them and swatted the railing with her switch. "Get them!" she cried as she and her canine troops poured down the spiral stairs.

"Scratch that plan," Daisy said as she frantically scanned her notebook.

"Where to now, Daze? Quick!" Jesse said.

Emmy let out a few anxious yodels to let them know that Ms. Huffington and her mob were nearly upon them.

Daisy flapped one nervous wrist while she tried to make sense of the plans, and then waved toward the back of the gallery. "Go! Go! Go!" she yelled.

They ran across the gallery toward a door sandwiched between two portraits, plunged into a long, dark hallway, and ended up in the scullery, the castle's vast kitchen area.

A pack of hair-netted lunch ladies were carving

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up rare roast beefs and turkeys and unpacking dozens of bags of groceries in preparation for the night's feast. They stopped and looked up with dull curiosity, their tongues hanging out of their mouths.

"Excuse us, dog-ladies," said Daisy as she led the charge down the main aisle.

"Sorry to bother you," Jesse said as he ran past them.

At the back of the scullery, they came to a plain set of wooden servants' stairs, which they scrambled up, Emmy now in the lead. Behind them, Daisy heard a commotion in the scullery as their pursuers came crashing through.

The stairs led to one of the two smaller towers. The tower had two doors. One was locked. Emmy pounced upon the second one and it banged open onto a wooden rampart. They ran out onto the rampart.

"Look!" Jesse shouted, pointing down through one of the murder holes. "Emmy's spell is wearing off."

In the courtyard below, some of the sheepdogs were in the process of turning back into their true breeds, shaking themselves briskly. Still others were turning back into dog-men, climbing up from all fours. When they came to their senses, they took up the nearest garden tools--rakes,

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trowels, axes, and spades--and, brandishing them, turned around and headed back into the castle.

"Quick!" said Daisy to Jesse. "Get the thermos!"

Jesse pulled the thermos out of the pack.

"Pour the tea down through the murder hole!" Daisy shouted.

"Cool!" said Jesse.

"Great plan!" Emmy said, for now that she was outdoors, she was once again in dragon form. Far from being frightened, she was enjoying herself.

While Jesse unscrewed the lid of the thermos, Emmy said to her Keepers, "Did you see the trick I did back there in the throne room? Wasn't it beautiful?"

"Yes," Daisy said, "but I wish it had lasted longer. We need to find a way to keep these guys off our tails. Any ideas?"

"Watch this," Jesse said as he tipped the thermos into the murder hole. As the heads of the dog-men passed beneath it, Jesse dribbled a bit of the valerian tea onto the backs of their necks. One after another, they keeled over onto the ground.

"Still has a good kick to it!" Jesse said.

But their victory was short-lived, for the next minute, Ms. Huffington called out from the tower room they had just left behind. "We've got them now!"

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The cousins and Emmy ran along the rampart toward the second small tower. But before they reached it, a band of angry armed dog-men burst through the door. Emmy, Daisy, and Jesse ran the other way but scooted to a halt when they saw that they were surrounded on both sides.

"Quick!" said Emmy. "Get on my back!"

Jesse and Daisy clambered onto Emmy's back just as her wings exploded open with a neat
pop-pop
. The purple-green wings unfurled as Emmy leaped into the air and glided off over the ramparts, well over the heads of their pursuers.

"This is preposterous!" Sadie Huffington shrieked, shaking her fist as Emmy swooped overhead. "Hatchlings can't fly!"

"Can, too!" Emmy called down to her.

"Cannot!" Sadie Huffington countered.

"Says who?" Emmy taunted.

"Says I!" said Ms. Huffington.

"What do
you
know?" said Emmy. "You're just a cranky old hag who's in love with the tanner's boy."

That last dig found its mark. Sadie Huffington sputtered in fury.

Daisy tapped Emmy on the neck. "Stop being such a tease and fly us over to the big tower!" she said.

"Wait!" said Jesse. "First do a couple of turns

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around the courtyard! There are some majorly big dogs down there." He pulled the tin of biscuits out of the backpack. There were at least a dozen large dogs milling around below, looking up at them with hunger in their eyes.

"You guys want a snack?" Jesse shouted down at them. "Well, help yourselves! Bombs away!" He threw a fistful of biscuit halves down. The big dogs leaped into the air like trained dolphins and caught them in their teeth. Almost instantly, they dropped to the earth and rolled over onto their backs, motionless except for their lolling tongues.

"Save some of those for the Tibetan mastiffs," Daisy reminded him.

"Don't worry, I will," said Jesse.

Emmy flew over the ramparts toward the big tower. The two mastiffs burst out of the tower room and howled up at them, shaking their enormous shaggy heads as if already tearing their prey to shreds. Emmy hovered just over their upturned jaws while Jesse emptied the rest of the tin. The mastiffs immediately fell into a big black heap of snoring fur.

Just outside the door to the tower room, Emmy touched down on the ramparts. Jesse and Daisy scrambled off Emmy's back and ran inside.

Even with her wings collapsed, Emmy was too