The Dragon Heir (18 page)

It was hard to understand with
all the profanity mixed in, but it was something like that.

Jason staggered on. He had no
intention of submitting to an interrogation of Warren Barber's devising. Being
ripped apart by wild animals seemed appealing in comparison. Besides, he'd been
played for a fool, and he would not, could not let them win.

Still, it was more than twenty
miles back to town, and he had no idea how long the effects of the amulet would
last. He knew Madison's house must be somewhere nearby, but he didn't want to
lead Barber to her.

Realistically, he was dead.

At the bottom of the hill,
Jason turned left and followed a wide creek through a ravine. Then he began
climbing again. He climbed for a long time, following the stream, scrambling
over rocks, splashing in and out of the water. Finally he left the creek and
cut over a shoulder of the mountain. By then, he was stumbling, losing strength
despite his tight grip on the amulet. He tried speaking the charm again, but
this time there was no apparent effect.

He was completely disoriented.
He had no idea which way it was to town, which way Madison's house might be.
His only goal was to keep away from Barber.

That was easier said than
done. Barber seemed to have an uncanny ability to stay with him. When Jason
reached high ground and looked back, Barber was coming. Not following Jason's
trail, exactly, but moving in the right direction, just the same. Sometimes
cutting straight across ravines and streambeds. It was almost as if Jason were
sending off some kind of homing signal.

Idiot.

He shrugged the backpack off
his shoulders and half-sat, half-fell to the ground. Digging through the
pocket, he retrieved the mysterious spider stone.

It must be a lodestone, placed
there on purpose, probably by Leesha outside the church. All Barber had needed
to do was follow the stone to track Jason to Coalton County and through the
woods in the rain.

Shivering, teeth chattering,
resisting the urge to lie down where he was and sink into oblivion, Jason
gripped the low branches of a tree, dragged himself to his feet, and looked
around.

He'd been following a high
ridge. On one side of the ridge the ground fell away into deep forest shrouding
a series of smaller hills. On the other he could see the tracing of a road that
followed the creek bed. Behind him, he could hear Barber crashing violently
through the brush.

Drawing his arm back, Jason
threw the stone as far as he could out into the valley. Then he descended the
ridge on the opposite side, heading for the road. Hopefully, Barber would
follow the stone.

There remained the problem of
the graffe. Jason couldn't go much further.

He could try to attract the
attention of someone in a passing car. A car probably came by every day or two.

As if that would even do any
good. They wouldn't have a clue. All they could do was watch him die.

He worked his way down the
ridge in a kind of stumbling trot. His legs were no longer working reliably.
The rain had slowed to a sprinkle, but rivulets of muddy water still flowed
down the slope, making the footing treacherous.

His breathing was growing
labored again. He was conscious of a creeping cold, an inability to control his
movements. He blinked away a double image of the hillside. Finally, he overshot
a small overhang, tumbled twenty feet, and ended with his feet in the ditch and
his head and shoulders on the berm of the road.

He hurt. Barber was right—his ability to perceive pain was functioning just
fine. He'd slammed his elbow when he landed, and wondered if his arm was
broken. But he lacked the strength to turn his head to check for certain.

He had no idea how long he lay
there before he heard a rumble and felt a faint vibration beneath him. Thunder,
he thought.
Then he realized it must be a car coming.

Idiot. He was unnoticeable. No
one would see him lying by the side of the road, not even when his unnoticeable
sun-bleached bones mingled with the scattered remnants of roadkill skeletons.
He gripped the sefa and disabled the unnoticeable charm with his last
bit of strength. Then he lay on his back, staring up at the sky, unable even to
blink against the relentless drizzle. He had to really focus to remember to
breathe.

He heard the wet, sucking
sound of tires as the car approached. Was he far enough off the road? Would the
car run him over? Was he close enough to be seen?

He felt the air stir as the
car neared, felt the freezing spray as it swept by. Bitter disappointment. He
heard a squeal of brakes and caught a whiff of hot rubber. Wild elation. A car
door slammed, then footsteps crunched on gravel, and then a voice.

“Hey, you okay? What
happened? Someone run you over and drive off?” And then, moments later, “Jason?”

It was Madison Moss.

Seconds later, her worried
face appeared in his field of vision. It was bronzed a bit—she'd been out in the sun—and her voluminous hair was
pulled back in a ponytail. She wore jeans and a plain white T-shirt—different
from her bohemian mode of dress in Trinity.

No, he thought dazedly. This
girl is not hanging with the bad guys. I don't believe it.

“It is you! What
are you doing here? What happened? Is Seph with you?” It was a cascade of
questions, erupting too fast for his failing mind to follow.

“Madison,” he tried
to say, but his lips wouldn't form the syllables. He was struggling for breath,
suffocating. Spots swam before his eyes. Barber hadn't meant to kill him, or at least not until
after he'd tortured the truth out of him. He must've messed up.

Kneeling next to him, Madison
touched his chest lightly where the graffe went in. “What the … ? It looks
… it looks like your chest is on fire.” Then she clapped her mouth shut,
eyes wide, seeming to realize that he might not find that reassuring. Madison
had the ability to spot magic in others—
even Barber's deadly graffe, apparently.

“Don't worry, now. Let's
just see.” She pulled aside his jacket and lifted his sweatshirt to
examine the wound.

“Gick,” he managed.
And, then, “Gick!” again, louder. Meaning, We've got to get the
hell out of here!

She ran her cold hands up his
chest until she found the wound and pushed her fingertips into it. He nearly
screamed from the pain of it, but then he felt a kind of sucking, a reverse
pressure, and immediately the hot burn over his heart eased. And again she
pressed her hands against his skin, scrunching up her face as if it was as hard
on her as on him. His body lost some of its creeping cold rigidity and he could
swallow his saliva again. She was drawing the magical venom away.

Madison pulled her hands back,
wiping them vigorously on the weeds at the roadside, shuddering. “Yuck.
This is bad nasty, whatever it is. I'm going to have a devil of a time getting
rid of this. At least it's not…Who did this? Where did you come from?” She
didn't really seem to expect an answer.

Madison stood, hands on hips,
and looked up the slope. She seemed very tall and angular from Jason's position
on the ground. “I thought maybe you dropped out of the sky, but looks like
you rolled down from up there.”

He managed to croak,
“Madison. Warren Barber's here. We've got to go before he sees us.” By now,
Barber might have discovered his ruse and be heading back over the ridge in time
to see what was happening at the side of the road.

“Warren Barber!”
Madison had met Warren Barber before—at
Second Sister—when she'd put him flat on his back in the inn garden.

At least she didn't ask a
million questions. “Hang on, I'm going to put you in the truck. Nothings
broken, is it?”

Dumbly, he shook his head. His
arm was killing him, but broken bones were small change against what Barber
would do if he came over that hill.

Madison disappeared from his
field of view. The truck door slammed, and she was back with a paint-spattered
canvas tarp. Sliding her hands under his arms, she tugged him onto it. Then,
gripping the edge of the canvas, she dragged him along the berm to her ancient
red pickup. The tailgate was down, but the opening seemed a mile away. Jason
couldn't fathom how she was going to get him up into the bed. She propped him
against the truck. Then she climbed into the truckbed, leaned down, wrapped her
arms around his chest, and hauled him backward into the bed. He landed flat on
top of her, but she wriggled out from underneath him.

“Sorry,” she
muttered. She hurriedly arranged his extremities to her liking, then tossed the
tarp over him, covering him completely. “Sorry,” she said again.

The truck jounced on its
failing springs as she jumped down from the bed, then climbed up into the cab.
The door slammed and the engine came to life. Rain pattered on the canvas over
his head. He didn't know where he was going, he didn't know where Warren Barber
was, and he didn't know if he'd survive the day.

Jason didn't remember much
about the next several days. He felt dry and hot one minute, and cold and
sweaty the next. He wrestled with dreams like he hadn't had since the ones
Gregory Leicester had inflicted on him at the Havens.

He dreamed he was back in the
woods and Warren Barber spun out cords from his wrists like Spiderman, wrapping
him into a giant cocoon. He injected poison into him with giant fangs and left
him hanging helpless in his web, saying, “I'll be back, and then you'll
talk.”

He dreamed of Leesha and
Barber, laughing together at Jason's stupidity and the deft way she'd played
him. Jason had never been a magical powerhouse, but he'd always considered
himself street-smart, at least. Right. Everyone had warned him about Leesha,
and he'd ignored them. His only hope was that no one would ever find out what
an idiot he'd been.

He burned with fever,
embarrassment, and hot anger.

He'd wake, startled by the
sound of his own voice reverberating in his ears, and he wondered what he'd
said, how much he had revealed.

Madison was there, a lot of
the time. She didn't suck out any more poison. Instead, she forced liquids and
cups of soup into him.

He gripped her hands, in a
rare moment of lucidity. “Maddie. Don't tell anyone about this. Not Seph.
Not anybody. Please.”

“You are crazy, you know
that?” She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead, feeling for
fever. “He needs to know what happened. I'm going to go to town and call
him soon as I can leave you on your own.”

He struggled to sit up,
flailing wildly under the quilt. “You call him, I'm out of here. Right
now.”

She lifted an eyebrow.
“You gonna hitchhike, or what? Now lay down before I club you for a fool.
You need somebody who knows about magic to treat you.”

“I'm much better.
Really.”

Madison snorted.

Jason groped for an argument.
“Look, Maddie, if you call him, he'll blame me for messing up and putting
you in danger. One little thing he asked me to do, and I blew it. He'll never
trust me to do anything again. I'd rather you just shot me in the head.”
He pressed his fingertips against his forehead for emphasis.

She frowned. He could tell she
was wavering.

“Besides, if you call
him, nothing will keep him from coming down here. Meanwhile, everything falls apart
up there.”

“Well,” she
muttered, looking troubled, “we'll see. If you take a turn for the worse…”

He'd gotten to her. Jason
smiled and closed his eyes and gave himself up to sleep.

The next time, he awoke to
find two huge yellow dogs crowded in bed with him, one on either side.
“Hey,” he said weakly, shoving at the one with its head on the pillow
breathing dog breath in his face. The dog opened its eyes and licked Jason's
face with an impossibly long black-and-pink tongue, then went back to sleep.

Some time later, a
solemn-faced little girl with straight brown hair set a tray on the floor next
to him and sat down with a bump.

“Where's Madison?”
he asked, drawing the sheet up over his bare, bandaged chest, squinting his
eyes against the light that snuck between battered rafters overhead.

“She had to go meet with
her art teacher,” she said.

This didn't really process.
What art teacher? “Who are you?”

“I'm Grace Minerva
Moss,” she said. “Maddie's sister. I made you lunch. Grilled cheese
and tomato soup,” she added, rather proudly. And, there, on the tray, was
a paper plate with a slightly charred grilled cheese sandwich cut into two
triangles, some saltine crackers, a mug of soup, a paper towel, and a can of
root beer.

He was lying on a mattress on
the floor, surrounded by paintings on easels, some unfinished. He recognized
them as Madison's work. Heaving a pile of quilts aside, he tried to prop on his
elbows but found his left arm was in a sling. So he rolled to his good side and
sat up, raking his free hand through his hair. “Where am I?” he
asked, when his head stopped spinning.

“You're in the barn. In
the loft. Maddie's studio. I had to
help  Maddie  carry you  up  here.
You're  real  heavy, you know?” she added, accusingly.

He groped at his neck, and his
hand closed on the dyrne sefa, still on its chain. “Where's my
stuff? My clothes, I mean, and I had a backpack …”

Grace Minerva Moss pointed. He
twisted round. His backpack was hanging on a peg on the wall. His clothes were
folded in a little pile underneath. It was clean and tidy, for a barn, he
guessed. His eyes traveled over the ranks of paintings.

“Madison paints up
here?”

“Some. Plus everywhere
else.”

Grace snatched up the paper
towel and dropped it on his lap. A hint. He picked up the grilled cheese
sandwich and bit into it. It was gritty with carbon, but had that deliciously
greasy processed-cheese taste. He was suddenly ravenous. “This is
great,” he mumbled, his mouth full of bread and melted cheese. “Is
anyone else home?”

“Just my brother, J.R.
And my mother. She's still asleep.” Grace leaned closer and whispered
conspiratorially, “She doesn't know you're here.”

Jason sucked down some soup,
the comforting orangy canned stuff familiar from when he was a kid. Grace
studied him, then extended her hand toward him, stopping a few inches away.
“You're all sparkly,” she said, looking puzzled. “Like Brice
Roper.”

Before he could respond, there
was a scuffling below, then the sound of wood creaking. Jason stiffened, once
again reaching for the dyrne sefa. A blond head poked up, as if through
the floor.

Grace tried to put herself
between Jason and the intruder. “John Robert Moss! I told you to stay in the
sandbox.”

It was a little boy—Jason wasn't good with kids' ages— apparently the
brother, J.R. The boy hauled himself up through the floor and turned and sat
with his legs dangling through the hole. His face was smudged and dirty, and he
wore blue jeans rolled to fit. “What are you doing up here? Who's that
man?” he asked, pointing at Jason.

“Nobody,” she said
furiously. “You shouldn't be in the barn at all. You know the hay gives
you welts. Go away!” Jason thought for a moment she might poke him right
back down the hole like a gopher in a cartoon.

“I want a grill-cheese
sandwich,” J.R. howled, seeing the last of Jason's disappear. J.R. did,
indeed, seem to be breaking out in red blotches all over his face, whether from
hay or rage, Jason didn't know.

“You already had lunch,
and I …” Grace began, but stopped, frowning, head tilted. Then Jason heard
it, too, the crunch of gravel as someone drove into the yard.

“Maybe Maddie's
back,” she said doubtfully. “But she said it wouldn't be until real
late.” She stood and carefully circled around the trapdoor to the window
on the far end. She peered out, then looked back at Jason. “It's a
blond-haired man, all sparkly, like you.”

Jason didn't need to look to
know it was Warren Barber. And he didn't need to think about it to know that a
magical duel would be no contest at all, considering the shape he was in. He
wished he had the Dragonheart. A machine gun. Something.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Grace was still watching
through the window. “He's on the porch, pounding on the door. He looks
like he's mad.”

Jason staggered to his feet
and nearly fell. He gripped the wall for support, and wondered how he would
manage the stairs. “Is there a back door? Can we get out of here without
being seen from the house?”

Grace shook her head.
“There's a ravine. It drops to Booker Creek behind here. The barn door
faces the porch.” She squinted through the glass. “Mama's come out on
the porch. She won't be happy to be woke up.” She watched a minute longer,
then said, “They went in the house, him and Mama.”

Just let him look around and
leave, Jason prayed. Just let Mama keep her mouth shut and not mention Madison.
Can't I be lucky, for once?

“You two go on, get out
of here,” Jason said to the kids. “Just run as far as you can out
into the woods and stay there until someone comes to get you.”

“Is that man after
you?” Grace asked. “Is he the one that hurt you?”

“Yes. Now, go on.”
Jason slumped back down onto the mattress and put his head between his knees,
trying hard not to barf the grilled cheese and soup. He was going nowhere.
“I'll hide up here. It'll be easier if it's just me.”

Grace folded her arms and
tapped her foot in a familiar, stubborn way. Just like Maddie. “He'll look
in here for sure.”

“Will you go, already? If
you stay here, you'll give me away,” Jason said.

“I promised Madison I'd
take care of you,” Grace said. She looked out of the window again.
“He's coming.”

Jason swore under his breath.
Even if he made himself unnoticeable, there was convalescent crap all over the
place. It was very obviously a sick room, just what Warren Barber'd would be
looking for. Barber'd be expecting an unnoticeable charm after what had
happened in the woods. Maybe he'd even brought glitter powder along to ferret
Jason out.

Jason slid himself back into a
corner, gripping the sefa. “Come here,” he said to Grace and
J.R. “Squeeze in next to me. I can hide all of us with magic.” He
tried to sound confident, but who even knew if it would work, sick as he was?

“Magic?” Grace
rolled her eyes. “There's no such thing. I'm not stupid.” She
looked from Jason to J.R., her brow furrowing in thought. “I know!” A
smile broke, the first he'd seen on her. She turned to her brother. “J.R.!
Get in that bed. Pretend you're asleep.”

With two older sisters, it
seemed J.R. was used to taking orders. He slid obediently under the quilts. By
now his eyes were swollen to slits and he was scratching himself vigorously.

“Hide,” Grace said
to Jason.

Great. She thinks we're
playing hide-and-seek. “Hand me that backpack,” he whispered.
“Then keep still and maybe he won't come up.”

She handed him the backpack
and sat down on the mattress next to J.R., waiting. Jason fumbled the zipper
open and groped inside until he found the dagger he'd brought from Trinity,
seemingly a century ago. Sliding the blade from its sheath, Jason gripped the
knife in his good hand, crouched back in his corner, and murmured the
unnoticeable charm. Maybe he'd be lucky, for once.

“Hey,” J.R. said in
a stage whisper, peeking out from under the blanket. “Where'd he go?”

Grace clapped her hand over
his mouth. “Hush!”

Hinges  screeched  as  the 
barn  door  opened  beneath them. He could hear Barber walking back and forth
below, cursing violently, kicking stuff out of the way. Jason held his breath.
Then he heard the stairs creak as they took Barber s weight.

No. He couldn't be lucky, not
even once. He gathered his legs under him. Maybe the kids would distract Barber
long enough to give him a chance. It was a magical dagger, after all. Maybe a
scratch would do the trick.

Grace gestured frantically at
Jason. “You have to hide better than that! He's going to see you.”

Jason's overtaxed brain
struggled to make sense of it. He was unnoticeable, he was sure of it. Unless,
in his debilitated state…

Barber's head and shoulders
appeared through the opening in the floor. He was trying to look everywhere at
once, obviously anticipating an attack.

“Hi,” Grace said
promptly. “Are you Howie? I didn't think you were coming.”

Startled, Barber raised his
hands to throw a charm, almost losing his balance and falling backward down the
steps. Which would've been great. But he caught himself and said, “What
the … who the hell is Howie?”

“The new sitter. He was
supposed to come today. I told Mama I could baby-sit my brother all by
myself.” She pointed at J.R. “He's sick. We're playing hospital. Want
to play?”

“No, I don't want to
play,” Barber growled. His clothes were dirty and torn, and he was
scratched and scraped up, like he'd been searching through the woods for
several days. “I'm going to have a look around.” He heaved himself to
his feet. “You seen any strangers around here?”

“You mean, besides you?”

Jeez, Jason thought, don't
antagonize him.

Barber glared at her for a
minute, then kind of relaxed, as if he figured she was too young to be an
actual smart-ass. “Yeah, besides me. I'm looking for a guy about my age,
about my height, too, but thinner. Dark hair streaked blonde. He wears an
earring.” Barber touched his earlobe, in case she couldn't figure it out.

“Why are you looking for
him?” Grace asked.

“I think he might be
hurt. That's why I'm looking for him. To help him.” Barber bared his teeth
in his blood-curdling smile, pale eyes glittering with malice. He apparently
took Grace Minerva for an idiot. He didn't seem to notice Jason in his corner.

“I haven't seen anybody.
We haven't been allowed to go anywhere since my brother got sick, 'cause it's catching.”
Grace pretended to spoon soup into the pretending-to-sleep John Robert. Her
hand shook a little.

Barber stomped around the
room, peering into the rafters, shoving aside farm equipment, and inspecting
spaces too small for Jason to fit in. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a
pouch, and dumped something into his palm. Glitter powder.

Barber suddenly flung the
powder into the wrong corner, and it floated down, shimmering in the shafts of
sunlight. Revealing no one.

“Hey,” Grace said
uncertainly, glancing at the corner Jason was hiding in. “What's that
stuff?”

Barber ignored her, continuing
to stalk around the room, flinging powder. Just a little closer, Jason thought,
and I'll have you before you have me. Maybe.

Barber paused before one of
the paintings, studying it, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. Uh-oh, Jason thought. It
was the inn at Second Sister, silhouetted against the dying sun, perched on the
rocks overlooking Lake Erie. Site of the ill-fated conference. Barber frowned,
as if trying to remember where he'd seen it before. “Who's the
painter?” he asked.