The Last Dragon Chronicles: Dark Fire (18 page)

ponytail brought her hands together in prayer. Tears were rolling down her chubby, red face. Her fingers crumpled inwards as she spoke. “She insisted on going back into her hut. I told her it was stupid but she wouldn’t listen.” The woman sobbed and pressed her hands to her head. “Please, someone tell me. What

was
 
that monster?” She looked around in

vacant distress. “Am I going
 
crazy
? We all saw it, didn’t we?”

David stood up intending to explain. But as he reached out to take the woman’s

arm, she let out a squeal of fright and stepped back, pointing at the body on the earth. A small green dragon with fragile ears had appeared as if from nowhere on Sophie’s chest. Pieter gasped and drew back his hand to strike it.

“No,” said David, clamping his wrist. The two men exchanged sharp looks. “That’s what she went back for, Pieter. She wouldn’t thank you for harming it. Look carefully. You know this dragon, don’t you?”

“Grace,” he muttered. “She called it Grace.” His gaze fell again on Sophie. “But how did it get here?”

By now, the beautiful listening dragon was on Sophie’s shoulder, close to her chin. She had abandoned all the rules and

was moving freely. Only David could really see her stroking Sophie’s cheek and whimpering in dragontongue into Sophie’s ear, but the shocked woman said, “It looks upset. And its eyes have changed colour. Is it…
 
alive
?”

David knelt down again. “Grace,” hesaid, in soft dragontongue, running a fingerdown her spine. The dragon would nottake its gaze off Sophie. By now the firsthint of moisture was present in the scaleneduct in the corner of its eyes.

“I want everyone to leave here,” Davidsaid.   “There  may  be  great  danger

present.”

“There is.” The clack of a rifle bolt

brought a slice of cold reality to David’s words. The African man had a gun at his

waist. He was tilting the barrel upwards a

little.

“Mutu, what are you doing?” Pieter followed the black man’s hardened gaze. On the stripped, scorched walls of the hospital building sat a dark and ugly shape. For a moment, it appeared to be nothing more than a hideous artefact of the blaze. But with a nauseating crack of bones, it unlatched its wings and turned its grisly head towards the humans.

One of the women screamed. The rest

of the crowd backed away in fear.

Not Mutu. “I saw this beast begin the fire,” he said, his words thickened by thirty years of dust. “It is a spirit of darkness.”

“Don’t try to shoot it,” David warned.

But Mutu, with slow and calculatedmalice, raised the gun to his shoulder andfired.

There was a thud as the bullet struck

home. The creature’s chest muscles

buckled inwards and it was slammed back

against a blackened timber. The lids which protected its blueberry eyes closed for a second then half-opened. Its beak parted and it shook its neck as though about to choke on a knot of mucus. From

its throat came a hostile gurgling sound and a substance, as thick and black as molasses, pooled around its swollen, retracted tongue.

Mutu lowered his gun.

But the bird was far from dead. Lifting a foot, it steered a demonic claw into the

hole the bullet had made. Someone was

sick behind David as the tip of the claw was heard scraping the base of the shell. Then, in one movement, the muscles around the wound contracted and the

bullet appeared to be sucked further in. The bird withdrew the claw, leaving a trail of grotesque  fluid stringing between its tip and the hole. Its eyelids opened fully.

“What in Our Lord’s name
 
is
 
that?”

said Mutu. He cocked the rifle again.

“Stop,” hissed David. “You can’t kill it with lead. You’ll only make it stronger. Get back, all of you.”

“I’m not leaving Sophie to that thing,” said Pieter.

But as he tried to push forward, David

rapped an arm across the middle of his chest. “It’s not Sophie it wants,” he growled. He glanced at Grace. She was going through the motions of final closure, about to shed her fire tear. And just like the birds on North Walk, the black creature was beginning to mimic her shape, cruelly elongating its ears.

“If that fiend began the fire, it killed my fiancée,” Pieter insisted. “And it can take me as well, but not before it’s tasted this.” From his belt, he produced a hunting knife. Forcing David aside, he stepped forward, shouting at the thing to come on.

The half-darkling flared its teeth. In one peculiar grinding movement, it raised itself up and rippled its chest in a vertical flow of muscle. Its wings went out to their

maximum extent and it brought them down with a single rapid beat, creating a thrust of air in its windpipe.

With a cry of pain, Pieter was knocked forcefully onto  his back. His hand went to a wound in his chest. A red stain was

spreading through the cotton of his vest.

“It’s shot him,” someone gasped.

With the same bullet Mutu had used, spat out of the mouth at speed.

Once more, the dark wings lifted. With a cry that lay somewhere between triumph and death, the creature turned its gaze on the only other quarry between itself and Grace.

David calmly put a hand into his pocketand drew out the piece of obsidian. Heheld it aloft for the bird to see. The black

spiders   of  light   inside   it   dashed

themselves against the outer walls.

The creature let out a vile snarl. Its

eyes swivelled greedily between the obsidian and Grace. A tear glittered on the young dragon’s eye and slowly tipped over onto her snout.

“Come   on-nn,”   whispered   David, “make your decision.” The darkling was swaying in angry confusion. Dark fire or undefiled tear?

With a roar it launched itself at the

obsidian.

David stood his ground. When the birdwas just an arm’s length in front of hisface, he raised an almost preternaturalhand and took the creature by the throat. The speed of the catch made everyone

gasp. The  darkling raven flashed its claws and struggled to discharge whatever bile it could muster. A bubble of foul-smelling vitriolic filth popped at the hinge of its cracking beak and dribbled pathetically down its neck. David’s grip, as strong as a bear’s, deadened any chance of it spewing further.

“Struggle and you choke,” he told it. Wisely,   the  creature   calmed.   Then, drawing it so close to his face that its wild eyes bulged as it read the power inherent in his, David continued, “I ought to turn you to dust for what you’ve done.” He looked down at Sophie’s body and shuddered. Grace, head lowered, wings folded, was still. “But I won’t be responsible for giving the Ix more grief to

chew on. So listen to me, bird, and I’ll let you live. Go back to your masters and tell them to halt the raven inversion or the

Fain will wipe the mutation out. Mydragon will be following your auma trail. Don’t fly away thinking you’ve escapedme. Oh, and one last thing.” He tightenedhis fist again, forcing another squawkhigher up the register and turning thedarkling’s head pure white. “Tell themthey’ll get nothing from the Pennykettledragons.”

With that, he attempted to throw thebird into the sky. But at the moment hereleased his grip, Pieter leapt up anddrove his knife deep into the darkling’sbelly. The  creature screamed and twistedagainst the blade, oozing hot black juice

down Pieter’s arm. Enraged beyond all hope of redemption, it razored its claws against his chest. It had torn his skin into hanging shreds before David, with one swift blow, could turn the bird to exploding ice.

Pieter dropped to the ground. His colleagues, dedicated co-workers and friends, rushed to his aid. His final act was to raise an arm and let it fall against Sophie’s body. He was dead before he could whisper goodbye.

Half an hour after the cleanup had started, Mutu came to seek David out. David was

sitting in the shade of a spreading acacia tree, staring across the great green flood plain. The dragon known as Grace was

between his feet.

“What should I tell them?” Mutu asked.

“The newspapers and the police are here. They are asking what happened. They wish to know if Pieter was mauled by a lion. No one is willing to talk about the wonders or the horrors they saw.”

David flicked a piece of grass aside. “Let the police believe what they will. Right now, they won’t believe anything else.”

The crack of a handgun filled the air.

David and Mutu  looked back to see

Kanga, lying dead. A red hole in thecentre of his forehead.

“It seems they have made their choice,”

said Mutu.

David lowered his head.

Mutu crouched down and picked up apiece of broken acacia. “I need to showyou something.” He started scratching inthe dust. “Just after the blaze began Ithought I saw a spirit, dancing in the heat. She was flowing, like this.”

“She?” said David. Mutu had drawn a

snake.

“It might have been a woman,” the

African said.

A fly landed on David’s knee. Hewatched it change position three timesbefore he swatted it away. “Can you tellme anything more about her? Was she old? Long-haired perhaps?”

“Someone called out to me,” Mutucontinued. “I looked away and lookedback and the figure was gone. I’m sorry I

cannot help you further.” He wiped his scratchings out, then gestured a tender brown hand towards Grace. “What will

you do with this object, David Rain?”

David turned his head to look at the

African. “How do you know my name?”

Mutu gave a buck-toothed smile. Rocking back and forth on his haunches hesaid, “Sophie spoke of you  fondly. Shetold me once that this… creation reminded

her of England. Of a loving family. Of a garden. Of you. Will you weep for her, David?”

David turned his face to the sky. Thatwas the one thing he couldn’t do: weep. Right now, that thought was breaking hisheart.

Mutu tossed the branch aside and stood

up, dusting his palms. He placed a warm hand on the white man’s shoulder, then started on the short walk back to the

centre.

“Mutu, wait.”

The African turned.

“I didn’t tell you what I would do with the dragon.”

Somewhere in the distance an egret called. Mutu looked towards the sound, pulling a piece of thatching grass through his fingers. “And what
 
will
 
you do with the dragon?”

“Give her this.” A few centimetres

above David’s open palm, something tiny,

like a flashing star, hovered.

“What is it?”

“Life, Mutu.”

A slightly high-pitched hum escapedfrom the gap between Mutu’s lips. “Thegreatest gift of all,” he said. “Goodbye, David Rain.” And this time, when heturned  towards the ruined buildings, hisjourney was not interrupted.

When Mutu was out of sight, Davidsaid quietly in dragontongue, “Show.”

Groyne materialised on his palm. Hewas holding Grace’s sparkling fire tear.

“You did well,” said David. “Did shesense you beside her?”

Groyne shook his head.
 
What now?
 
hehurred, looking at the wondrous treasurehe had caught.

David pulled the obsidian from hispocket. He spiralled it close to the tear,watching the dark fire splash against its

walls like an angry wave. “We take Grace back to the Crescent,” he said, “and we see what we can do about this… ”

Home

David came in to find Liz and Alexa at the

kitchen  table,  busy  with  clay  and modelling paints. Alexa ran to her father at once, wearing a smock that Liz had made for her. She clamped her arms around him in a misshapen hug, leaving clay smears clinging to the sides of his jacket.

“Hello, baby,” he said, mussing her shining wavy black hair.

“Naunty Liz is going to let me make a dragon, Daddy.”

“Is that right?”

Alexa grinned like a fish. “Shall I make a listener – like yours?” She pointed at Grace. “She’s very pretty.”

“She’s not mine,” he said quietly. “You should make what you see in here.” He tapped the crown of Alexa’s head. “Isn’t that right, ‘Naunty’?”

“Yes,” Liz muttered, alarmed to see Grace, quite lifeless, in his hands. “Why is Grace with you? Lucy said you went to Africa. Is everything all right?”

David put Grace down on the table. Her bright green scales were beginning to fade to the same washed-out grey as Gwillan’s. Her wonderful ears, normally so upright and alert, were bent and fixed forward.   Gruffen  flew down from his

perch on the windowsill and landed beside her. He tapped her snout. There