Slayers (2 page)
Authors: C. J. Hill
Shirley groaned and turned over on her side, pulling a pillow over her head.
The man on the phone went on. “My wife thinks she saw a dragon. Or at least she dreamed of one, but she woke up with foot-long welts running down her back. She said that’s where it grabbed her.”
And then Alastair was completely awake. His glance fell on Shirley and the still healing slash that striped across her swollen belly. “Is your wife pregnant?”
“Yes,” the man said, surprised. “How did you know that?”
“Do you live in D.C.?”
“Fairfax,” the man said, his voice wary now.
It wasn’t far away. “Give me your address,” Alastair said, already out of bed and heading toward his closet. “I need to talk to your wife in person.”
Alastair reached the Davises’ home a little after 3:00 a.m. It was a small house but in an upscale neighborhood, the type where every bush and tree had been trimmed by a team of landscapers.
Alastair had thrown on some clothes but hadn’t brushed his hair, and now he smoothed it down with one hand. His hair was prematurely graying and already more gray than brown at his bangs and temples, but he didn’t mind. It counterbalanced a face that otherwise looked perpetually young. His university peers failed to take him seriously more often than not, and he wanted every appearance of age and experience he could get.
He knocked at the door, then stood impatiently, staring at the swirling woodgrain lines in front of him.
After a minute, Allen Davis opened the door. He was young, probably in his mid-twenties, with short black hair and rumpled clothes.
“Thanks for coming,” Allen said, but his voice betrayed his doubt. He probably already regretted calling. He eyed Alastair uncertainly and motioned for him to come inside. “Harriet is looking at pictures on the Internet. She’s trying to find a dragon like the one she saw.”
They walked the short distance to the kitchen, where a blonde woman sat at the table, her laptop in front of her and a bottle of antacids opened next to it. She had a blanket wrapped around her even though it wasn’t cold. From the size of her stomach, she was probably eight or nine months along.
Alastair smiled and shook her hand. “I’m glad you called. It’s important that we talk.” He pulled up the chair next to her and smiled again, keeping his voice casual. “My wife is pregnant, too. We’re having a girl. How about you?”
She laid her hand across her belly. “A boy.”
Allen sat down on a third chair. “So it’s normal for women to have crazy dreams when they’re pregnant, right? What I can’t figure out is the claw marks. How did those get there?”
Harriet ignored her husband and clicked on an image on her laptop. “I haven’t seen anything like the dragon I saw. The Chinese dragons are too skinny, but they have the whiskers right. It had wings like a bat.” She closed one image and opened another: an elaborately colored dragon whose neck should have belonged to a swan instead of something that breathed fire.
Alastair nodded at Harriet. “Did the dragon you saw have golden eyes and a diamond on its forehead?”
She turned back to him. “Yes, how did you know?”
He noticed, as though he were a foreigner coming to America, all the electric appliances in the kitchen. The fridge, dishwasher, oven, stove, lights, cordless phone, ceiling fan, and computer. How dependant they were on it. What a long way civilization had come from the Dark Ages when monsters lived.
Alastair dragged his attention back to Harriet. “Because they’re real. I’ve spent years studying them.” He hesitated, wondering whether he should add that he’d seen some himself. Most people labeled him as crazy when he made that claim, and once somebody thought you were insane, it didn’t matter what you said to them. But Harriet might believe the truth.
Allen let out a disbelieving grunt. “You studied them? How? By reading fairy tales? You can’t be serious.”
Which was the usual response. Just once Alastair wanted to say, “Look, I’m not an idiot. I wouldn’t have spent half my life researching dragons if I didn’t have proof.” But now wasn’t the time to snap. Patiently, he said, “Stories of dragons are found in nearly every culture—from Europe to China to South America to Hawaii. Even the Bible mentions dragons.”
Allen’s eyebrows dipped. “The Bible doesn’t talk about dragons.”
Alastair picked up Harriet’s laptop and handed it to him. “Check. Run a search.”
While he did, Alastair turned his attention back to Harriet. “I became a professor of medieval civilizations specifically so I would have access to early documents about dragons. Trust me when I say I’m an expert. The reason you dreamed of a dragon, the reason your body was so sure one wounded you that your skin blistered in response, is that your mind already knows dragons exist. It’s genetic memory.” Alastair tapped one finger against his temple. “Your subconscious is warning you that dragons are near, that you need to prepare for when they come back.”
Harriet grew pale. She pulled the blanket tighter around her. “Come back from where? How?”
Alastair leaned forward, going automatically into professor mode. “Medieval records report that dragons can choose one of two gestation times for their eggs: a short span—which lasts between fifteen to twenty years, or a long span—approximately one hundred and fifty years. It’s their way of escaping predators.” He kept his eyes trained on hers. “Unfortunately, viable dragon eggs are somewhere in the D.C. area.”
“You’re sure?” Harriet’s voice came out low, like a stone dropped into the silence of a pool. “Where do we go to escape from them? How do we get away?”
“We don’t escape,” Alastair said. “We fight.”
Harriet gripped her blanket. “It picked up a van like it was a toy. It breathed fire. We can’t fight it. You’d need missiles or military jets—”
He shook his head. “Dragons can outmaneuver planes and missiles. Their skin is radar absorbing, which means that they can’t be tracked. They also have another advantage. When they roar, they send out an electromagnetic pulse that fries all electric components in the area.” He went on shaking his head. “It’s almost as if they were preparing, even back then, to fight us in the future.”
Allen broke into the conversation. “This is what the Book of Revelations says about dragons: ‘And she being with child cried, travailing in
birth and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon.’” He looked up at his wife and some of the color drained from his face. He skimmed the verses on the screen. “‘And the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man child …’”
birth and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon.’” He looked up at his wife and some of the color drained from his face. He skimmed the verses on the screen. “‘And the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man child …’”
Allen turned to Alastair, his eyes wide. “This isn’t literally describing something that will happen, is it?”
“Those verses are probably symbolic of the Christ child. But the point is that even the Bible referenced dragons, so—”
Allen waved a hand at the computer. “I don’t remember ever seeing a dragon at the Christmas nativity scene. One did show up in my wife’s dream, though, and it tried to kill her and our baby son.”
“Let me explain some more,” Alastair said soothingly. “Do you remember back in the Middle Ages, how the alchemists tried to find a way to create gold? History got that wrong. They sought to create liquid gold—a substance that would give people the powers needed to conquer dragons. Luckily, they found it. Those superenhanced knights would have destroyed dragons altogether if some of the dragons hadn’t used their long gestation periods to outlive them.”
Allen wiped his palms on his jeans. “You know how to make this liquid gold stuff?”
Alastair realized he hadn’t explained that part. “I don’t need to. Once the knights drank the liquid gold, it changed their DNA. They passed that DNA down to future generations. When a dragon is close to hatching, its heartbeat emits a pulse that turns on the DNA of any of the dragon knights’ descendants who are within a mile radius.” He leaned over and put his hand on top of Harriet’s arm. “You had the dream because you’re a descendant of a dragon knight. At some point, you went near a dragon egg in the D.C. area.”
She yanked her arm away and let out a half-strangled gasp. “That’s why the dragon was searching for me? It knew I was a descendant?”
“Yes.”
She stood up so quickly her blanket fell away and her chair toppled to the floor with a sharp crack. She didn’t bother to right it. “I’m not fighting that thing. I don’t have any special powers.”
“You don’t,” Alastair agreed. “But your son does. The pulse can only turn on the DNA of babies.” He gestured to her stomach. “Those who are still in the womb.”
Allen stood up, joining his wife. “Our baby is not going anywhere near a dragon.”
“Not when he’s a baby,” Alastair said. “We could have a decade or two before the eggs hatch—but not longer than that. Otherwise the dragon embryo wouldn’t have been developed enough to trigger your son’s DNA and your genetic awareness of it. But when your child is old enough, I’ll need to train him to use his powers. The new generation of slayers are our only hope for defeating the dragons when they come.”
Allen stepped in front of his wife, making a protective barrier between her and Alastair. “Wait. We’re not agreeing to any of this.” His hands clenched and unclenched at his side. “You can’t walk in here and tell us you’re taking our son.”
This was the problem of getting ahead of yourself while trying to explain things. Alastair took a step back, to appear as nonthreatening as possible. “I’m not taking your son. He’ll still live with you. I’ll teach him when he’s older—during the summers so he won’t miss school. He won’t be alone. There are other descendants. I’m not sure how many, but I know of one—my daughter. My wife had the dream, too.”
Harriet’s head shook so quickly she looked like she was having a standing seizure. “If there are other children, then you don’t need our son.”
“Of course he’s needed.” Especially since Alastair didn’t know where any of the other children were. After Shirley’s dream, he had gone on the radio show hoping for a flurry of calls from pregnant women who had dreamed of dragon attacks. So far, Harriet was the only one.
“No,” Harriet said. “Absolutely not. We’ll leave. We’ll go someplace where it won’t find us.”
Allen’s lips thinned into a tight line. “You can’t seriously ask our son to fight—”
Alastair took a step toward Harriet. “You’ve seen a dragon. You understand what it will do to the city if we don’t stop it.”
She winced and took hold of her side. Pain, maybe labor pain, flashed across her face. Allen put his arm around her shoulder. “Go lie down,” he told her. To Alastair, he said, “It’s time for you to go.”
Alastair opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t know what to say. His own wife had been so much more understanding. But then, his wife had known dragons were real before she got pregnant. She’d realized having a slayer for a child was a possibility. “We’re all tired,” Alastair finally said. “You need time to process this.”
Allen stared. Harriet pressed her hand to her lips while tears pooled in her eyes.
I’m asking a difficult thing of her,
Alastair realized.
She’s just in shock.
But now she knew lives were at stake. She would eventually do the right thing.
Alastair realized.
She’s just in shock.
But now she knew lives were at stake. She would eventually do the right thing.
“You have my phone number,” Alastair said. “Call me when you want to talk again.”
Harriet didn’t call. After two days, Alastair drove to their house. He would address their worries. He would appeal to their sense of duty. He would beg, if necessary.
A FOR SALE
sign stood in the middle of their yard.
sign stood in the middle of their yard.
Well, that was a bit drastic, wasn’t it?
He strode to the door, noticing a lock box already on the handle. He rang the doorbell. No one answered. He peered into the front window, his frustration growing. The furniture was gone. The whole place had been cleared out except for miscellaneous papers and books, things scattered on the floor that Harriet and Allen hadn’t bothered packing.
The disappointment felt like a puncture wound in his chest. They were running away from the dragon instead of staying to help to fight it—instead of helping his daughter fight it.
I’ve failed,
he thought.
I knew where another child was, and now he’s gone.
How could Alastair possibly find this boy when it was time to train him? And what’s more, how could he find any other children without producing the same results from their parents? Going on the radio again might turn up more pregnant women with dragon dreams. But when he told them the truth, what would keep the rest of them from bolting?
he thought.
I knew where another child was, and now he’s gone.
How could Alastair possibly find this boy when it was time to train him? And what’s more, how could he find any other children without producing the same results from their parents? Going on the radio again might turn up more pregnant women with dragon dreams. But when he told them the truth, what would keep the rest of them from bolting?
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