Paint Your Dragon (27 page)

True, David reflected, we nearly did. We only missed that car by an inch or so. ‘Sorry,' he said. ‘But I'm really curious.' He paused; a thought had struck him. ‘You do know, don't you?'

Kurt avoided his eye. ‘Of course I frigging well know,' he snapped.

‘And?'

‘Read the damn map.'

They drove on in silence, if you could call it that, because Kurt was convinced that the sound of cogs turning in his brain was probably audible in Connecticut.

It had been a good question.

Just who
was
he working for?

 

George stopped running, ducked down behind a dustbin and froze.

Debits and credits time. On the negative side, he was lost, confused, penniless, naked, in an unfamiliar and distinctly economy-class body and on the run from a livid sculptress and a fire-breathing dragon. On the positive side, he was alive. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to relax. On balance, he was further up the ladders than down the snakes, by something in the order of a thousand per cent.

About four minutes later, he solved the clothing and money problem by jumping out on an unsuspecting passerby, knocking him silly with a broken bicycle pump he'd found in the dustbin and helping himself to his victim's personal effects. Fortunately, he and his unwitting benefactor were more or less the same size, although personally George wouldn't have chosen a lilac shirt to go with a navy blue jacket. But there; muggers can't be choosers. The shoes hurt his feet, but not nearly as much as the pavement would have done.

An appropriate moment, he told himself as he sauntered down the alleyway into New Street, to draw up an agenda. It went as follows:

The basic principle, however, was surely a good one: get the dragon to drink something that'd disagree with him. The recipe ought not to be a problem. The ancient proverb stuck in his mind: you can lead a dragon to water, but you can't make him drink. How did you go about conning a dragon into slaking its thirst from your specially prepared homebrew; leave a big bowl with DRAGON on the side lying about in a public place? Unlikely to work.

Hold that thought. Since he was now wearing a whole new body, the dragon wouldn't know who he was. All he had to do, given the element of disguise, was walk up to the dragon in a bar and offer to buy him a drink.

The ugly snout of practicality intruded into his plans. As far as he could tell, this was a liberal century, uninhibited, where anything went (so long as you weren't fussy about it coming back again afterwards), but even so, you'd probably be pushing your luck sidling up to strangers in bars asking if they were a dragon and wanted a drink. On the right lines, he decided, but could do with a little bit more fine tuning.

Still, at least he had a plan now, which was something. Next step, food. It had been a long time since breakfast and the body that had eaten the breakfast was now cinders and ashes. He pulled out his victim's wallet and opened it up; a nice thick wad of notes reassured him. Grinning, he crossed New Street, heading for the big McDonald's.

‘Wotcher, Mike.' A hand clumped down between his shoulder-blades, momentarily depriving him of breath. Before his instincts - well, they weren't his instincts of course - had time to send the kill message down to his arms, he cancelled the instruction. Whoever this body was, it had friends. And dragon hunters need friends, the way fishermen need maggots.

‘Hello yourself,' he replied, and turned to face whoever it was. ‘How's things?'

‘Not so bad.' His friend, a tall, gangling bloke with round bottle-end glasses, was giving him a funny look. ‘Heard you were, um, dead,' he said. ‘Like, blown up or something.'

‘Not as such,' George replied. ‘What you probably heard was that I was slowly dying of hunger and thirst, which is true. Of course, you can help me do something about that.'

The stranger laughed. What had he called him? Mike? Good old Mike, always cracking jokes.

‘Good idea,' the stranger went on. ‘We could have a couple of pints, then maybe go for a Balti. Suit you?'

‘Sure.' Mike's friend started to walk, presumably knew where he was going. George fell into step beside him.

‘Haven't seen you about for a while now,' said Mike's friend.

‘You know how it is.'

‘So what's it like, working with the great Bianca Wilson?'

George put two and two together, and got a mental picture of a fast-swinging lump hammer narrowly shaving his ear. ‘Eventful,' he said. ‘Quite an education, in fact.'

‘I'll bet.'

In front of them, a pub doorway. Oh good, we seem to be going in here. I could just do with a—

He stopped dead. Ah
shit
!

Sitting at the bar, staring at him, were Bianca and—‘Christ, Bianca, there's my body. Hey, grab him, someone. That's the bastard who stole my body!'

It's mortifying enough to be loudly accused of theft in a public place. To be accused by
yourself ...
George, as always in such circumstances, gave serious thought to running away, but his erstwhile friend was standing between him and the door, giving him ever such a funny look.

‘You bastard!' Bianca was yelling at him too. ‘Don't just stand there, Peter, grab the swine!'

Who the hell was Peter? Oh, him. The treacherous bugger who'd brought him here. Stronger than he looks, our Peter. George's arm was now twisted up behind his back and there was very little he could do about it. Behind the bar, an unsympathetic-looking girl was muttering something about ringing the police.

‘Let go of me,' he grunted. ‘I'm a saint.'

Peter tightened his grip. ‘You're a
what?'

‘A saint. You deaf or something?'

‘That's right,' said Bianca, grimly, ‘he is. If he tries to make a run for it, break his sodding arm.'

‘Hang on,' Peter was saying. ‘If he really is a saint—'

‘That does it,' said the barmaid. She picked up the phone and started pressing buttons.

George struggled, painfully. ‘You realise this is blasphemy,' he gasped - breath is at a premium when you're being half-nelsoned over a bar. ‘You'll fry in Hell for this!'

‘You
bastard!'
His body - Saint George's body - had a hand round his, Mike‘s, windpipe. ‘Give me back my body
now,
or I'll bloody well throttle you. It.' The significance of his own words struck him and he relaxed his hold slightly. ‘Here, Bee, is there any way of getting him out of it?'

‘We could try death,' Bianca replied icily. ‘Seems to work okay.'

The other occupants of the pub, though interested, seemed to regard saint-bashing as primarily a spectator sport. Wagers were being exchanged, theories aired. The barmaid had got through to the police and was giving what George felt was a rather one-sided account of the proceedings. It was time, he reflected, for a brilliant idea.

Available options; not an inspiring selection. Be mutilated by Peter, strangled by - who
was
that guy? Mike, presumably, whoever the hell he was, surgically dissected by the snotty sculptress or arrested by the cops. None of them, George admitted, felt intuitively right.

‘Help,' he croaked.

The prayers of saints seldom go unheard. Just as Mike was saying that maybe Bianca's suggestion had something going for it, and the distant sirens were coming closer, there was a refreshing sound of splintering glass, the thump of an unconscious body hitting the deck and a familiar voice at his side.

Father Kelly. And about bloody time, too.

‘Of course he's a friggin' saint,' the priest was yelling. ‘Can't ye see his friggin' halo, ye dumb bastards?'

‘Keep out of this, vicar,' Mike said angrily. Fortunately, Father Kelly took no notice, or perhaps he was just enraged at being confused with an Anglican. More broken glass noises, Father Kelly proving he knew the uses of empty Guinness bottles. He'd apparently used one on Peter, because George could now move his arms. He straightened up, to see Bianca swinging a bar stool at him. Fortunately, he had just enough time to thrust Father Kelly into the path of the blow—loud thunk, priest drops like stone, never mind. Leaving Bianca holding a broken stool and looking bemused, he jumped nimbly over the dormant Peter, shoved open the door, kicked an advancing copper squarely in the nuts and legged it.

God, he couldn't help thinking, looks after his own.

‘I
t's not on the map,' Slitgrind protested.

The van stood on the hard shoulder of the M6. In the front, Prodsnap and Slitgrind were poring over the vintage road atlas they'd found in the glove compartment.

‘There it is, look,' said Prodsnap, pointing.

‘No, you fool, that's Hull.'

‘Maybe that's just lousy spelling.'

Slitgrind closed the atlas with a snap. ‘Stands to reason,' he said. ‘They don't put it on mortal maps, 'cos otherwise we'd have hundreds of bloody tourists blocking up the front drive all the time.'

It occurred to Prodsnap that maybe his colleague was being a trifle alarmist, but he didn't say anything. It was true, Hell wasn't on the map. He tried hard to remember the route the coach-driver had taken, but it had all been homogeneous motorway, with no landmarks whatsoever.

‘We'll have to ask someone, then,' he said:

Slitgrind scowled. ‘Don't be thick,' he replied.

‘Someone who knows, obviously,' Prodsnap said. ‘Shouldn't be too hard.'

‘But ...' Slitgrind was about to protest, but the penny dropped. ‘Do we have to?' he objected. ‘Those people always give me the shivers.'

‘Me too.' Prodsnap suited the action to the word. ‘But they'll know the way and we don't. Looks like we don't have much choice.'

His colleague grimaced, acknowledging the logic. ‘Well,' he sighed, ‘s'pose they're on our side. In a way.'

‘Better the colleague you know, huh?'

Slitgrind shrugged and turned the ignition key.

‘Give me the deep blue sea any time,' he muttered, and indicated right.

 

‘I conjure you by Asmoday and Beelzebub, Sytray and Satan, eloi, elohim and Miss Frobisher, do please be careful, you nearly made me spill the Black Host
... '

Barbed whips of wind flicked cruelly through the slighted walls of the ruins of Castle Roche. The moon had long since hidden her face behind the clouds and the only light was the livid orange glow from the foul-smelling fire. In the shattered keep of the castle, five white-clad figures, hooded and barefoot, huddled inside the arbitrary confines of a chalked ring. Around them lay the horrible impedimenta of the Black Rite: pantangles, tetragrammata, a sword, a mutilated Bible, a goat's skull, a frozen chicken, slowly defrosting ...

‘Are you lot going to be much longer?' demanded a querulous voice from outside the ring of firelight. ‘It's
freezing.'

The Great Goat sighed petulantly. ‘These things can't be rushed, Miss - ah—'

‘Filkins,' hissed the Lesser Goat. ‘Sonia Filkins. She's Mrs Brownlow's niece, from the Post Office.'

‘Can't I at least have a blanket or something?' whined Miss Filkins. ‘I'm getting all goosepimply. And it's damp. Auntie Edie didn't say anything about sitting in the damp.'

The Lesser Goat simpered slightly. ‘I'm sorry,' she whispered. ‘But Brenda's babysitting up at the vicarage, and now Yvonne's started college ...'

‘I know,' sighed the Great Goat. ‘Maybe next time, Miss Frobisher. I can't really see any point in continuing under these conditions.'

Mournful silence. The Lesser Goat started to pack away the horrible impedimenta.

‘If you've finished with the chicken,' said Miss Filkins, ‘do you mind if I take it on with me? There's a really nice recipe in my magazine for chicken.'

‘Please,' grunted the Great Goat, carefully snuggling the skull in cotton wool. ‘Help yourself. Such a pity to let good food go to—'

He fell silent. Although he was right next to the fire, his legs were suddenly icy cold. He didn't look round.

‘Miss Frobisher,' he croaked.