Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace (20 page)

“So?”

“Well, there’s no one around for miles,” he explained slowly. “Nobody’s built anything on it, or near it. And during the winter, Eddie and I went down there a few times for snowball fights. There’s a huge entrance to the town sewer system right there. If I wanted to hide something, or someone…”

“Skip, you’re a genius! Come on!” She left her malt half finished on the table and pulled him out of his seat. They had only gone a few steps when they ran into Susan.

“Hey, guys! What’s up?”

Ten minutes later, as Jennifer finished telling her everything she had told Skip—it felt so good again!—Susan looked as though she wished she had never asked.

“Wow.” This was all she said for a while.

“Susan, I’m so sorry I told you I was sick. You, too, Skip. But we have to find my father. Will you please help? Three is better than two. Mr. Blacktooth may not be alone, and Dad may not be in any condition to—”

“Jennifer, hold on!” Susan stopped cold.

She turned impatiently, guessing what her friend was going to say. “What?”

“Listen, I’m just a little freaked out, and that’s okay, I believe you. And I forgive you for… for pretending you were sick, like my mom. But we can’t just go running into a sewer to face this … whatever you call it.”

“Beaststalker.”

“Yeah. I mean, it sounds way too scary, for me. Jennifer, I’m sure you don’t want to hear this, but I don’t think I can go with you.”

Instead of getting angry, Jennifer took a deep breath. “Susan, I’ve given you a lot to take in. I can see you’re really worried about doing this. That’s cool.”

Susan exhaled.

“So you go home. Please… just don’t tell anyone about this.” After a quick hug, she and Skip left their astonished friend behind.

Winoka’s southeast side was primarily an industrial park. A few family farms pressed up against a strip of dingy wetlands that separated them from the park. It was to this strip, and alongside a steep hill, that Skip led her to the sewer entrance.

The culvert was large enough that they could nearly stand straight up inside. Before they went in, Skip clutched her arm. He was visibly shaking.

“Jennifer. This is for real. You could get hurt. Are you sure you want to do this?”

Jennifer turned her face up to the sky. Two eagles were circling far above. The scent of lilacs was thick in the air. “All I can think about is my father, and how much he loved flying.” She looked back at Skip. “You’re a great friend, Skip, but I have to set that aside if you’re not with me. I’m doing this for my dad. This is no time for cold feet.”

“Right.” He didn’t look happy at the thought, but her resolve was apparently contagious. “Let’s go, then.”

The culvert led deep into the hillside and they faced their first problem—the darkness. Fortunately, Skip had a solution.

“Dad smokes cigars,” he explained as he flicked a lighter. “He’s always looking for a light.”

It flickered faintly, but it let them see an opening directly in front of their feet that they might have fallen into otherwise. Ladder rungs were built into the concrete, all the way down into blackness.

“I’ll go first,” Skip offered.

“Very chivalrous. But remember Bob Jarkmand?”

“Hmm. Yeah, okay, I should stop coddling you.”

Smiling back at him, she took the lighter and carefully stepped onto the first rung. A few steps down, she tried to get a look around—but she could barely see past Geddy, who sat calmly on her shoulder, much less anything about the sewer around them.

The smell, however, was unavoidable.

A year ago, the darkness and the stench would have been too much for her. She knew she would have gone running back to her mother (or her father, had he been available). But today, she would endure it. She had to.

That thought carried her all the way down to the last rung and onto a new level of the sewer system. Now she could hear running water. There appeared to be a narrow stream going through this hall, or room—maybe a utility room? The lighter did not reveal much.

Then, on the wall in front of her, she saw the third one-word message from her father’s kidnapper, written in the substance it identified:

Blood
.

The rashness of her pursuit finally hit home.
They were expecting her
. She looked back up at Skip to tell him to hurry back up. He seemed almost frozen on the rungs above her, staring at her—or behind her?

Before she could decide, the shadow behind her swung. The blow landed on the back of her neck, and with an
oomph
she crumpled to the floor. Her last sight was of Geddy scrambling into the safety of a dark corner as the lighter went out and she slipped into nothingness.

When Jennifer woke up, she found herself in a window-less room with rocky walls and a dirt floor. The only light came from beyond a single door of metal bars. A weight lay upon her shoulders. When she reached up, she felt an iron collar and chain around her neck. It was loose, but she still couldn’t lift it over her chin. Using her fingers, she followed it back to its bolts in the stone wall.

Waving the faint odor of sewage away from her nose, she caught movement close by. She backed up quickly and called out, “Who is that? What do you want?”

“Jennifer, you’re awake!” It was her father’s voice.

In a dimly lit corner, Jonathan Scales was slouched on the floor. A rumpled wool blanket was next to him on the floor. He wore a chain like hers and looked as though he hadn’t had much more than water. His unshaven face was gaunt and his gray eyes were sad. “Jennifer, why did you come? There’s no way this was your mother’s idea!”

She tried to go to him, but the chain held her back. In her rage and sorrow, the best she could manage was to touch his fingertips with her own. “I’m sorry, Dad, I came here to save you. Skip was with me. Have you seen him?”

“Honey, Skip…”

Jennifer felt a lump in her throat. “What happened to him? Where is he?”

“He’s around,” interrupted a familiar voice outside their cell. The tone was friendly and a bit patronizing. Jennifer strained to make out the shape beyond the bars.

The tall man had long fingers wrapped around the bars. While his face was in shadow, Jennifer could make out long features and dark hair. He worked keys into the lock, and the door swung in.

As he stepped inside their cell, he flipped a switch, and a naked bulb high above their heads cast a stark light. Jennifer could see him a lot better now.

Her heart sank. “Mr. Wilson?”

He gave her a gentle, fatherly smile, as if he were meeting her for coffee. “Actually, you made an incorrect assumption when you met me for dinner last December. Skip uses his mother’s last name. Mine is Saltin—Otto Saltin.”

Her heart was still dropping. She had heard this name used, in hushed tones by her father, around Christmas.

Before she could put any more pieces together, another figure slouched into the room. Now her heart hit rock bottom, as her cheeks flushed in confusion and anger.

“
You
!” The chain snapped taut as she tried to surge forward. She gurgled curses with enough venom to make Skip sidle back a step. The boy would not look up.

Otto Saltin chuckled gently. “She’s a real spitfire, Jonathan. No pun intended! If I had a daughter like that, I might be more careful about whom she hung out with.”

“If I had known that you and Dianna Wilson had a son,” Jonathan croaked, “I would have been more careful about Jennifer’s friends.”

Skip sniffed the air miserably. “Dad, do you have to keep them down here? This place is rank.”

“Sorry, son.” Otto actually seemed to mean it. “I told you from the start, this wasn’t going to be easy for either of us. If you’ve developed feelings for Jennifer, you’ll need to set them aside now.”

“I’ve … developed … a feeling!” Jennifer grunted as she clutched at the iron collar. Her eyes bulged and she felt the blood rise in her ears. “Come closer… and I’ll… express it!” Below the collar, she felt the Moon of Falling Leaves medallion that Skip had given her. She ripped it off of her throat and flung it at him. It smacked the wall by his head and clattered to the floor.

Suddenly, she felt a familiar twinge in her spine. She panicked as she wondered how long she had been down here—had she been asleep two full days? Would this change help her, or hurt her? And just how tight would this iron collar get?

There was no time to reflect. With a hiss, she weathered the surprise of hardening scales, unfolding wings, and an erupting nose horn. It happened faster than ever before. Otto Saltin’s expression barely had time to change from wonder to triumph before she was fully morphed.

“You see, Skip?” He sounded as though he was explaining a football game to his son. “She’s the enemy. She lied to you, but we knew it all along. No time for doubts, son. We’re moments away from winning it all.”

“She actually told me the truth. Just before we got here.” Skip glanced up, but didn’t dare give her more than a quick look. He seemed both embarrassed to have tricked her, and terrified of what she had just become.

Jennifer growled at them both. The collar was less loose around her neck but still fit. She supposed this was why they used this on her and her father, instead of handcuffs, or…

She stopped cold and looked over at her father.

He was still in human form.
He hasn’t morphed
. His expression was difficult, somewhere between astonishment, awe … and pride?

This made no sense. Jennifer looked to her enemies, and back to her father, and then back to her enemies.

“It’s interesting, isn’t it?” Otto seemed completely unsurprised by what had happened. The friendly wrinkles around his eyes tightened. “You have to wonder—is the problem with you, or your dad?”

She thought for a moment, then bowed her head. “It’s me, isn’t it? Always me. I’m the freak.”

“Right.
You’re
the aberration. The crescent moon’s still thirty-six hours away, but here you are with your pretty scales and wings. Can you explain it?”

Jennifer did not answer. She looked again at Skip. The traitor was staring right at her now, swallowing hard. What was going on?

“Perhaps you know about the infatuation most dragons have with the number fifty,” Otto began to explain pleasantly. “Fifty seeds in this or that ceremonial drink, stories of Allucina and her fifty children, and so on. No doubt, your hidden Crescent Valley refuge has fifty written all over it—”

“You’ll never find Crescent Valley,” she promised through gritted teeth. “I have no idea where it is anyway, so if you’re going to torture me, go ahead and get it over with. Even if I knew, if you think you could make me betray my friends … my
real
friends…” She spat this last out at Skip, who looked back down at the floor.

“Please don’t interrupt.” Otto’s voice turned stern. “You don’t have to tell me a thing. In fact, if I could find a muzzle big enough, I’d use it on you.” Then the affable tone returned. “You see, Jennifer, I don’t need to know where Crescent Valley is.”

“You do if you want to find the Ancient Furnace!”

His eyes lit up. “So you know about my plan? Clever girl. You sure do know how to pick ‘em, Skip… although of course, a
good
father helps his kid find the
right
friends.” Otto shot Jonathan a look, but the chained man did not return it. Jennifer sensed surrender and failure in her father’s limp head and shoulders.

“No doubt you’ve figured that much out because some tortoise or baby alligator was snooping around on your behalf,” their captor continued. “Or maybe your elders finally caught on after Eveningstar burned to the ground. Kind of silly of them, if you think about it, not to see the whole truth.”

The mention of small lizards made Jennifer think of Geddy. She looked around the cell as subtly as she could, but could not find a trace of her pet.

“I see whole truth just fine. So does my family. You just want to find the Furnace so you can have more power. Because you’re weak!”

Suddenly, Jennifer remembered—more power, like breathing fire.
Fire-breathing
. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? She opened her mouth to unleash an inferno—

Otto waved his long fingers. “Numb.”

Before she could release the fire, Jennifer collapsed in a scaled heap on the floor. Her eyes rolled back, and she felt drool slide out the corner of her mouth.

He stepped forward, pulled out a handkerchief, and gently wiped the corners of her mouth. Jennifer tried to open her jaws and bite him, but she could not even do that much. “I do want more power,” he agreed, “but I am not weak. You cannot withstand my powers. Don’t you know what stands before you?”

Jennifer’s words were slurred. She could barely move her tongue, much less her lips. “Beeeasststaaalkerrr…”

Otto actually laughed. The jolly sound echoed off the cell’s walls. “Beaststalker! Did you hear that, Skip? See what these overgrown lizards are afraid of? Centuries and centuries after Bruce and Brigida and Barbara fought, after Eveningstar and everything, they’re worried about beaststalkers. They haven’t really learned yet.”

Now he snarled viciously. “I’m not a beaststalker, dragon-girl.” Whipping out a syringe, he bent down and jabbed her in the wing. She barely felt the prick. He drew out some blood, and then turned the needle toward himself and plunged it into his arm, emptying the syringe and muttering in a strange-language.

Where’s a raging case of encephalitis when you need one
, she yearned silently.

“And now, to break the chains of the crescent moon,” Otto announced with a step back.

The morph took Jennifer by surprise. The first thing to change was the man’s head—it got longer, as his body below the neck got shorter and fatter. His jaws opened wide, split all the way back to his ears, and swallowed them. Mandibles sprouted out of the resulting hole.

His skin went an inky, shiny black and thick hairs grew—black in the front, red and yellow on his abdomen. With a sickening splitting sound, his two arms broke into four, and so did his legs. He crouched down on the eight appendages.