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o“It’s got cold out here,” one of them said. Simon fell in behind them, hiking his jacket collar up against the weirdly icy breeze. He thought he heard the bats shuffling in the distance. He didn’t have the nerve to look back.
He was just about to ask the others if they’d seen the bats, but it was a rare thing for him to be part of a group and the boys shot him unfriendly glances before he could even speak. Feeling unwelcome, he trailed back, letting them go on without him.
They were stuck-up kids, the richest of the rich, and they tended to torture Simon with constant questions about the St George family. Simon never had any answers.
At the Lighthouse School, the children knew every branch of their entire family tree, going back to their great-grandfathers, and great-great-grandfathers, and before that. These were boys from families with histories to be proud of and futures all mapped out for them. If your dad was a doctor, you’d be a doctor; if he was a banker, that was your lot. There was a sureness to this that made the boys feel strong and at ease. There were not many of them who questioned what was laid out for them.
Simon had no past and no certain future. There was a blankness all around him. At his age, you were supposed to have some idea of what you want to do in life. Supposedly.
He finally glanced back at the strange white bats, but the town clock was nearly buried in the pearly air.
He followed the boys down a familiar sloping street, a street that sank down a hill to an old streetcar stop. The boys stomped through the gloomy day, slapping the poles, kicking down dustbins and doing anything they could to keep from thinking about how creepy the weather had become.
Simon stood apart from them, waiting in the cold for the streetcar. Even though the boys knew it was coming, when they heard it deep in the fog, approaching with a clang and a rattle, everyone jumped. It was that kind of day.
Simon started to join them at the streetcar stop, but something stopped him.
The boys. They were staring, the looks on their faces changing from curiosity to a kind of horror. For an instant, Simon thought it might be a stupid trick, but then he saw they were looking at his feet. Looking down, Simon saw beetles flooding the street in the pale light, flowing down the hill, swarming around them!
Behind him the streetcar tore out of the fog with a clang.
The first boy stepped back in surprise. All over the metal car, more beetles were swarming. Hundreds and hundreds of tiny white beetles. There were so many they were tumbling off the roof and scattering about their shoes. The boys were so stunned all they could do was stare.
“Get inside!” someone shouted. They rushed aboard the streetcar, pushing through the rain of beetles, and the door closed behind them.
They were safe. The car was warm, very warm. It was like stepping into a greenhouse on a June day. The lights inside flickered strangely. The boys noticed that lights in the nearby buildings were flickering on and off as well.
Simon was the last to board the streetcar. As he got on, he could swear he heard the roar of some tremendous animal far off in the gloom.
It was the strangest thing.
It sounded familiar.
CHAPTER TWO (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
The Original Dragonhunter (#ue4ec1da9-e120-5c5b-9e61-70a624b54646)
Days before this, in an old suburban town near Chicago, Illinois, far from the Lighthouse School for Boys, five men rode their horses down a street frosted with autumn leaves. The sight would have been a strange one had anyone bothered to look out of their window. No one did. It was a quiet part of town. Quiet folks lived there, mostly old people, and they minded their own business. It was as if a spell kept them half asleep most of the time.
But if anyone had bothered to look out, they would have seen that it wasn’t just the arrival of horses that was strange. The riders were dressed in dull, iron-coloured armour with ornate writing carved into the metal, a runic writing so old and so secret no one would have recognised it.
The man in the middle was tall and strong, though not as stocky as the others. He had the beginnings of a beard that would have been grey if he’d let it go further. His hair was black and grey, and long and greasy, and he kept it swept back, out of his way. His face was handsomely chiselled, if you could see it under the dirt and the occasional scars. He had not washed for days. He had been on the road a long time.
“This is it,” he said to the other men. “The time is now.” His voice was deep and painted with an English accent.
He looked to a taller Englishman, who nodded. The tall one gave the others a grave smile and said, “Aldric is right. Let’s not give the wretch time to think.”
The men put on their helmets. They were now covered head to toe in armour.
Each helmet was an angular box with tiny slits for the eyes, in the crusader style. They were marked with a small symbol looking like a cross mixed with the fleur-de-lis; every warrior’s symbol was a different colour.
The horses were in an awful state of agitation. They fidgeted backwards and side to side, preparing themselves for the fight ahead.
Ahead of them lay a stone wall and a wrought-iron gate, and a stone house taller than the others nearby. The place looked haunted. It had two round turrets with long windows, though the curtains were always pulled shut. Rarely did sunlight enter this home.
The trees in the yard were dead and rotting. Beetles swarmed around their exposed roots. The twisted branches were home to the skeletal remains of many birds that had died in them as soon as they landed. The house itself smelt rancid and whoever did the gardening, such as it was, constantly replanted perennials to cover the stink, but these flowers always died.
The riders moved forward and the lead man pulled at his horse so that it reared up and smashed open the gate with its huge front legs. There was no point in being silent. A surprise attack was virtually impossible. The thing at the heart of the house would have known they were coming no matter what. Its teeth would have started to ache the moment the men came within a hundred yards. It could sense them closing in.
The horses clomped across the dead yellow grass. It was getting hot now. The men were sweating in their armour. Each carried a long metal lance, which they raised into position.
The lead horseman pushed open the front door with his lance and urged his horse forward. The others followed close behind.
The house had a long entryway and then a set of stairs. Little could be seen in the dim light. The smell was almost overpowering. The thing had not moved from this place in years.
“It’s not coming out,” said one of the horsemen. He was Irish. “We’ll have to ferret him out.”
“He’s coming,” said the leader.
“Indeed I am,” said a chilling voice. It seemed to come from their right, and then their left, and even behind them, offering no clues to the beast’s whereabouts.
“Come out, worm,” said the leader. “This waiting is pointless.”
“On the contrary,” said the voice, and again it was as if the walls themselves were talking. “I can smell the fear on you. It is growing minute by minute. You never really lose that fear, do you? Just a hazard of the job, I suppose …”
The lead man, Aldric, rode his horse deeper into the house. Now the light from the doorway no longer helped him to see.
“Do I seem fearful to you?” he said to the darkness.
“Oh, do be brave,” whispered the thing, mockingly. “Do come in closer. And by all means, do rush forward valiantly.”
The lead horseman hit a trigger on his lance and an iron cylinder shot into the room. It was a kind of white flare and it lit up with more intensity than any ordinary light could ever manage. But there was nothing to be seen. The voice was coming from nowhere.
“I’m not here, brave warrior,” said the voice. “I am sending you my voice from far away and your search has been in vain. I have already fled to the caves of a South American country and you have come all this way for nothing. You will have to begin again.”
Inside their helmets, the horsemen looked crestfallen. If this was true, untold hours had been wasted tracking and hunting this disgusting beast. Starting over would not be easy. Their hearts sank.
The lead man held his nervous horse. “You are a perfect liar,” he said.
“Yes, I am,” said the voice, and from out of nowhere a rush of heat knocked into the horse, which squealed terribly – and the man was nearly knocked from his mount. A claw had torn into his arm, right through his armour. The thing would not materialise, but the men could feel its heat and could see smoky, wavy lines like that of a mirage where the creature’s invisibility magic was wearing thin.
“Oh, but our games are fun,” said the creature.
The man was thinking they were anything but fun. Through his helmet, he could see waves of smoky heat ahead of him, marking the creature’s trail. His boots jabbed at his horse and, as they rushed down the hall, his lance slashed into the space just ahead of the smoky heat marks. Whatever was there made a splunking noise, as if the lance had struck against some kind of flesh, and the wall behind it collapsed. The sound that came out of that space was horrible, like a set of furious, squealing hogs, joined together with the cry of an eagle and the roar of a lion.
To the man it was beautiful, the sound of a wretched and terrible thing dying.
The man on the horse could not believe his luck. It had never been this easy before. His enemy must be an old one. Older than he thought, and frail.
“Be careful, Aldric,” said the tall man behind him. “Let me handle this.”
The knight growled back, “No, Ormand, the thing is mine.”
But Ormand went past him, rushing on foot into the wall’s broken space.
Aldric followed behind him, trotting his horse forward into the hole in the wall. He was now in the kitchen.
He could hear the wheezing breath of the wounded creature. Still, its magic was strong enough to keep it largely invisible. That might not wear off until hours after its death. It was not easy to be sure where the dead ones were. Sometimes the smell was the only thing you had to go by.
The kitchen was filled with the stink of rotting meat. The creature liked to let the meat go bad for weeks before it ate any of it. The man could smell pungent spices and sickly odours best left undescribed.
Above the kitchen counter, ironwork held pots and pans and dozens of sharp, sharp knives and cleavers and meat forks. They rattled and scraped as if trying to get loose. Then they did get loose. Six knives flew at the tall man and another four hit the man on the horse. The blades clanged off the armour, falling to the floor.
This was the last of the thing’s magic.
The engravings on the knightly armour glowed dimly, as if fighting to regain its magical strength. Each battle wore down the strength of the steel.
It was time now for the tall man to lay his hands upon the beast and call out the spell that would destroy it. This was the tricky part. He would have to get in close to the thing. First the man on the horse slammed his lance down into the invisible reptilian skin once more.
The thing gave out a painful howl.
If you had known all the evil things that this creature had brought about in this world, you would have been happy to know its life was at an end.
The creature’s shape began to show under layers of billowing grey smoke.
“Its strength is passing away,” said the horseman.
The tall man nodded and moved closer to the smoky shape.
“It should be mine,” said the horseman. “I should be the one to end this.”
But the tall man frowned back at him. “A child could do this one, Aldric.”
The other horsemen, alert in the doorway, relaxed.
Until the wheezing voice of the unnatural beast came scraping through the house. “I’m not …” said the voice, “finished …”
A light began to glow in the smoky shape in the centre of the kitchen. This was the heart of the creature.
Aldric pulled at his reins to halt his frightened horse.
Ormand moved in fearlessly over the light. “It’s over,” he said. “Your deceit is at an end.” And he put his hand on the glowing space, whispering with a touch of awe, “The heart of a dragon. The heart of evil …”
“Careful,” said the horseman in the glowlight. “I’ve never seen that before.”
“His life force, I’d wager,” said the tall warrior, “draining out of him.”
With that, the tall knight began to recite words that would have sounded bizarre to anyone except those gathered in the house. They were words that brought death to these creatures. Words of great magic. The light beneath his naked hand burned, but the tall warrior did not flinch.
The horseman who watched above him did not know anything was wrong. But his horse was thrown into terror. With a squealing neigh, the horse pranced backwards but could not get through the hole he’d come in.
“Whoa!” shouted Aldric, but any control over his horse was gone. In panic, it launched forward and jumped over the downed beast.
As man and horse leapt over the glowlight, it suddenly burned more intensely.
The light grew hotter and fiercer, and the nearly invisible dragon rose up with its last strength and began a fierce rush towards his attacker. The creature was old, wounded and could not see well, but it was full of wild rage and energy, and it blew Ormand backwards, carrying him towards the other horsemen in a giant growing wave of flame. The tall man flew backwards helplessly.
Meanwhile, Aldric threw his wild horse on its side as the heat rushed over and past him, sprawling outward. It was a fire like no other. The only way to describe the explosion is to say that it screamed.
The rumble of that explosion was heard for miles. Mirrors cracked. Pictures fell from the walls. Dogs yelped and hid themselves away under furniture. In all the homes around the blast for sixteen miles, milk curdled into a disgusting cream.
At the centre of the blast, much of the house was left in rubble.
The lead horseman was the only one left.
The fire had risen high and spared him.
He woke up and nudged his horse. It was knocked out. Leaving it behind for the moment, the man got up and walked towards the destroyed front of the house.
What he saw outside shocked him.
The fire from the dying creature had lasted only a second, but it had demolished the huge stones that made up the front of the house, it had burned away the yellowed flowers in the garden, it had knocked down the iron fence. It had even burned foliage down the street.
In the scorched trees above him, his fellow horsemen were spread out, draped in the ugly branches. Their armour had been burned to black and still smouldered, sending smoke into the air. Their lances were twisted corkscrew-like, or splayed in two, and hung loosely in the bony trees. The horses were gone; they had no armour, so they had vanished instantly in the blast. The man took some comfort in knowing they had felt no pain.
It was the only comfort the man had left to him. The other knights were dead. His friends, the closest people to him in the world, were gone for ever. They had been through so much together. It would not be easy without them.
The man stepped through a trail of red ash to find the skull of the terrible beast. As its spirit died, he heard its insufferable voice.
“Ssshame the boy won’t carry on your work,” taunted the voice. Aldric was stunned and leaned closer. “Oh, we know about the boy … Sweet little child … not long for this world …”
And then it was dead.
At first, Aldric’s mind rejected what he’d heard. How could anyone know about his boy?
But he felt fear rising inside him, a growing sense that the serpent’s words were true.
Angrily, he lifted the skull. It broke apart in his hand, turning to crimson ash.
There was a sound behind him. The snort of an animal. He turned in alarm – only to find his horse in the smashed doorway.
The next moment, Aldric was riding away from the scene with all possible speed. Police would be coming soon, and emergency services. He couldn’t wait around answering questions.
How did the thing know he had a child?
The thought tore at him. Fighting emotion, he galloped through the quiet town in a rush, down an alley filled with old cars, avoiding the wailing sirens on the streets. Autumn leaves floated past him.
His mind was racing even faster than the horse.
