Dragonsapien (3 page)

‘And as
I
said, doctor, my questions won’t be difficult or upsetting; I’m
simply trying to ascertain the whereabouts of a poor woman who has
unaccountably gone missing.’ Having turned to talk the doctor, he
looked back to Celly once more. ‘Surely you’d like to help us find
her, Celly?’

‘Of course we’d
like to do everything we can to help you find this unfortunate
woman, officer,’ Celly’s father said. ‘But as Dr Frobisher has
already patiently explained, we would hope that your questioning of
Celly is kept as brief as possible.’

‘My questioning,
Mr Volance, will be
incredibly
brief. We already know that
Mrs Crendal’s mysterious disappearance took place within L’Orange.
Her husband had only just left her outside the shop as she prepared
to go in. He left to visit another shop nearby. When he returned to
find her, she was not only not there, but the shop was strangely
closed.’

‘How
odd.’

‘Odd, yes, Mrs
Volance. Very odd. So if I may continue to ask your daughter just a
few,
simple
questions?’

If the detective
had noticed the wary glances between Perisa and Erdwin, he didn’t
show it.

‘Now Celly, the
assistant remembers that, after you
and
Mrs Crendal both
went into the changing rooms, your chauffeur Hincheley followed her
in there–’

‘Surely you’re
not suspecting Hincheley of–’

Erdwin was
interrupted as the door guarded by the police officer opened. Two
more police officers entered, holding the taller Hincheley between
them.

Despite being
handcuffed, Hincheley remained proud, calmly defiant, as if the
police officers weren’t his imprisoners but royal guards. Of the
three of them, he appeared the superior in dress, demeanour and
elegance.

‘We have
forensics there now, Mr Volance,’ the detective sternly asserted.
‘There are definite signs of blood, a splatter pattern associated
wi–’

Perisa slashed
his throat with a swiftly extended talon.

Erdwin similarly
dispatched one of the officers standing alongside Hincheley. Even
though still handcuffed, Hincheley swung his arms up and around,
the extended talons effortlessly penetrating the chest of the other
officer standing alongside him.

Dr Frobisher
lithely yet unhurriedly moved across the floor towards the
policeman guarding the door. Wide-eyed with terror, the officer
turned to flee through the door.

But Mary was
there, blocking his way.

The talons of
her abruptly outthrust hands sunk deeply into his upper body, the
bloodied tips coming out through his back.

He gurgled,
blood bubbling at his mouth as he died.

‘Oh my
God!’

Hearing the
frantic cry behind her, Celly whirled around.

It was
Jake.

Jake had entered
the room.

*

‘The
boy.’

Dr Frobisher
said it in such a calm, noncommittal way that it could have been
taken to mean anything.

‘The
boy’s there.’

‘What should we do with the boy?’

‘The
boy’s seen everything; we have to kill him.’

‘No, no! You
can’t kill him!’ Celly cried out anxiously.

She ran towards
Jake, intending to throw her arms around him
protectively.

Jake backed away
from her, horrified, disgusted.

‘What…what
are
you?’ he hissed.

Despite backing
away from Celly, Jake stood his ground. He didn’t run.

If he had run,
Celly realised, he might well be dead by now.

In the frenzy of
the sudden killing spree, his panicked actions might well have been
instinctively interpreted as endangering their safety. He would
have been dead before that instinct had been brought under
control.

Perhaps Jake had
himself innately realised that fleeing would have been useless.
Perhaps he’d been simply frozen to the spot with fear.

A heavy rain was
now battering on the windows, emphasising the silence filling the
apartment.

‘We’re not much
that much different from you, Jake,’ Erdwin said, answering Jake’s
question. ‘As you’ve seen over the months you’ve been visiting
us.’

‘Where we
are
different,’ Perisa added, looking about the room at
everyone, speaking firmly as if reminding everyone of this, ‘is
that we don’t harm children.’

‘But he’s seen
too much.’

Lowering his
arms, giving them a shake, Hincheley let the officer’s bloodied
body slide off his talons and crumple to the floor. Behind him,
Mary casually did the same.

Jake
winced.

Celly worriedly
moved towards him once more, only to be disgustedly rebuffed yet
again.

With a flexing
of his wrists, a pneumatic pumping of gasses into his flesh so that
it became as hard as steel, Hincheley shattered the chain running
between the handcuff’s bracelets.

‘You’ll have to
take him with you.’ Dr Frobisher stated flatly. He was moving from
body to body, checking that each of the officers was
dead.

What would he
do, Celly wondered, if he found that one of them was still
alive?

‘You’ll be
staying I take it, Harry?

The doctor
nodded in reply to Erdwin’s question.

‘Staying?’
Jake’s head whirled. ‘You’re all leaving? Not me; I’m not going
anywhere!’

‘You have to
Jake; sorry.’ Perisa spoke kindly, sadly.

‘If we stay,
we’ll be discovered,’ Erdwin said. ‘And we
cannot
be
discovered. For the good of us all.’

‘All? There are
more
of you?’ Jake gulped nervously.

‘All living
peacefully amongst you.’

Jake smirked
sickly, looking across at the bodies strewn around the
apartment.

‘You call
this
peacefully?’

‘We were
endangered; not just us, but our entire species. Wouldn’t you
protect your people?’

Jake seemed as
if he were about to answer but, catching Celly’s disapproving
glare, said nothing.

How many times
had he said he would do anything to protect his own kind while
playing the games?

Sure, that
was
just a game – but wasn’t there some truth behind his
statement?

‘If I stay, I
can try and explain what happened here,’ Dr Frobisher said.
‘Something along the lines of you panicking, striking out at them
with a murder weapon you took with you.’

‘What murder
weapon would that be, Harry?’ Perisa asked, drawing his attention
to the unusual puncture marks in the officers’ bodies.

‘An ornamental
trident, perhaps?’

The doctor
smiled, as if aware of and amused by the inadequacy of his
explanation.

*

Stepping out
into the apartment block’s hallway, they bypassed the
lift.

They took the
stairs. And they headed upwards, towards the roof.

Hincheley had
informed them that, as he had been led upstairs from the basement
where the police had found and arrested him, they had passed other
officers in the foyer. On hearing this, everyone had agreed that
more officers were probably guarding the block’s other exits; the
police had obviously come here with the intention of making an
arrest.

It was the
powerful Hincheley who had taken charge of Jake.

No matter how
much Jake squirmed in an attempt to break free of Hincheley’s firm
grip on his arm, it was useless. Even if he tried to drag his feet
as they ascended the stairs, Hincheley lifted and pulled him along
effortlessly. After a few painful experiences of the inevitable
tightening and twisting of Hincheley’s hand on his arm, Jake
eventually stopped trying to hang back.

When they opened
the door leading out onto the rain swept roof, however, he
hesitated.

‘Where…where are
we going?’ he asked fearfully. ‘You’re not going
to…to…?’

‘To throw you
off the roof?’ Hincheley grinned sourly. ‘No; though if you keep on
struggling to break free of my grip, you might find you end up
falling anyway.’

‘What’s that
supposed to mean? That you’re going to make out it’s an
accident?’

Hincheley didn’t
bother replying. They were now out on the roof, where the heavy
rain was drowning out any normal level of conversation.

No one was
talking anyway. They were all stripping off their jackets, shirts
and blouses.

Hincheley
swiftly changed the hand gripping Jake’s hand as he shrugged off
his own jacket. He simply ripped off his shirt.

Neither Perisa
nor Mary seemed perturbed or embarrassed about revealing their
breasts. But Celly hung her head, hiding her blushes, her
shame.

Jake, despite
the horror and disgust he had felt earlier, thought she looked
beautiful. He tried not to stare, yet couldn’t avert his
eyes.

Celly’s skin was
changing, glistening. It sparkled, as if made of finely spun gold
and silver threads, graced with whirling patterns. A ruby glow
spread throughout it, a sign, though Jake didn’t know it, of
Celly’s embarrassment.

Even through the
heavy rain, Jake could see that everyone around him was going
through a similar transformation. Their skins shone like expertly
burnished metal, like jewels that had been crushed and turned into
elaborate mosaics, like the aurora borealis, captured and only
slightly tamed.

The light
reflected from them created a multitude of rainbows in the falling
droplets of rain.

With a sound
like the abrupt snap of a flag in the wind, wings appeared from
each of their backs. The nearest equivalent, Jake supposed, would
be like colossal bat wings, but here the membrane stretched between
the thicker framework was of the same gloriously sparkling
skin.

He looked back
towards Celly.

With her
outstretched wings of patterned gold and silver, she was terrible,
frightening – and the most entrancingly gorgeous thing he had ever
seen.

With the merest
flap of her powerful wings, she began to effortlessly rise into the
air.

He suddenly felt
strong arms wrap around his waist from behind; then he was rising
up alongside her.

They were flying
through the pounding rain.

Glancing down at
the city streets passing far below, Jake immediately realised the
meaning behind Hincheley’s warning not to struggle.

If he broke free
now, he would plummet to his death.

*

1
week later

Both Celly and
Jake had rapidly learned how to move through the jungle swiftly and
silently.

They didn’t want
to warn off any animals that, even now, might be about to
innocently wander into their carefully set traps.

One of the prime
spots for their traps was the large pool lying beneath a small
waterfall, which itself stemmed from an offshoot of one of the many
streams flowing down from the surrounding hills.

That’s where
they were heading for now, hoping that they’d trapped one of the
animals that used the pool for drinking.

As they
approached through the thick undergrowth, Celly and Jake could hear
angry shuffling, frustrated grunting.

‘We’ve caught
something,’ Jake exclaimed excitedly. ‘Sounds quite large
too.’

‘Sounds like
it’s still alive too,’ Celly added more doubtfully. ‘Perhaps we’d
better leave it for Hincheley or Mary to take care of.’

Celly was aware
that, no matter the size of the trapped animal, she’d be more than
capable of ‘taking care of’ it. But even now, even though Jake knew
she wasn’t human, she’d didn’t like undergoing even the smallest
transformation in front of him.

She preferred to
try and maintain the fallacy that she was still the Celly he had
always known.

Even when the
trapped animal was small enough for either of them to quickly
dispatch with the twist of a neck, or the swift slicing of a blade
across the throat, they both originally insisted on leaving it for
Hincheley to ‘take care of’. It was only when they realised this
was prolonging the animal’s suffering that they decided they would
take turns in dispatching the poor creature.

Celly would
always use a knife, never a talon. Even the neck wringing seemed to
her to be too much of a sign of her being ‘monstrous’.

They broke
through the thick curtain of large, rubbery leaves surrounding the
clearing containing the watering hole.

Jake halted,
Celly almost colliding into his back.