The Dragon Tree (29 page)

             
“Mom, please—”

             
“If there was ever a time in your life to be quiet, Hiro, this is the time.” Reiko raised one hand to her brow and kneaded it. “Eva, tell Rosa that you fell asleep on the couch watching a movie. We all did. Tell them I’m very sorry and I will make sure I get you home at a more reasonable hour in the future.”

             
“Yes, ma’am,” Eva said.

             
“Goodnight, Eva,” Reiko said.

             
“Goodnight, ma’am.”

             
Eva stepped out of the car and shuffled toward her house. She looked back as Reiko backed out of her driveway and saw Hiroki staring at her. He pressed his palm against his window in a weak wave.

             
She was too exhausted to wave back.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

             
Aidan crawled naked from the belly of the ship. His broken arm caused him considerable pain and his head was throbbing. He struggled to regain his feet and stumbled to the table where he left his clothes hours earlier.

             
As he was dressing, the warehouse’s overhead lights flickered on and flooded the space with blinding fluorescent light.

             
“There were two of them,” Aidan called without turning. “Only one followed me here but there were
two
. One blue and one green.”

             
“Fascinating, truly,” said Douglas Humphries. “Perhaps there are even more than two. Only a fool would assume otherwise and we, son, are no fools.”

             
“No we aren’t,” Aidan echoed weakly.

             
Humphries was dressed in black and gray camouflage and wore a ski mask pulled up to reveal his face. He gripped a long black rifle with a scope affixed to its barrel. “I saw you struggling when you flew in. How badly are you hurt?”

             
Aidan winced as he tried to push his broken arm through the sleeve of his shirt. It was too difficult to do on his own, but Humphries walked over and helped him.

             
“It could have killed me,” Aidan whispered as tears welled up in his eyes. “Why didn’t you shoot it?” Aidan asked.

             
Humphries took him by the shoulders and leaned in close. His eyes were narrow and cold. “Stop your whimpering. I was ready to take it down at any moment. But we have to be sure – somehow – that a dead dragon
stays
a dragon… or I’ll find myself brought up on murder charges.”

             
Aidan looked up into the rafters. “What about the cameras?”

             
Humphries smiled and pulled a remote control out of his pocket. He pressed a button and a quartet of hidden devices near the ceiling pivoted with a mechanical whir. “Oh yes,” said Humphries. “Every one of them.”

             
Aidan nodded. “I hurt it. I
marked
it. We can find out who it is.”

             
“We will,” said Humphries. “But we have to be strong. Unless it’s a fugitive from justice or a homeless wretch, knowing its identity can only weaken our resolve. Make no mistake, the human being buried inside the creature is no longer its true nature. No matter who lives inside that body, the creature is an abomination.”

             
“Then I’m an abomination too,” Aidan whimpered.

             
Humphries gritted his teeth angrily but forced a smile and drew Aidan into his arms. “You’re different. You’re still my son.”

             
“They know who
I
am,” Aidan whispered. “They’ll come looking for the tree.”

              After Humphries left the hospital, he and Aidan had piloted one of his smaller boats out into the bay where the
Alpine Angel
was been beached. Humphries was sure they would find some evidence of a lair in the cliff walls where the dragon took refuge during daylight hours. Instead, they found a crimson stain high on the cliffs, and a broken curtain of a rock, and grooves in the cliff face that made the climb manageable for both of them.

             
Then they found the mysterious tree and a carved warning about its fruit.

             
They waited until cover of darkness and returned with saws. The blades of the saws broke against the hard tree material so they switched to explosives, small enough amounts to loosen the rock around the tree without damaging the tree itself. They used a complex system of ropes and pulleys to extract the tree from the rocks and lowered it to their waiting boat below. The operation took all night, but they finally hoisted the dragon tree onto their boat. They strapped it down, covered it with a tarp and – as the sun rose in the east – they hauled their remarkable cargo inland up the river.

             
They were still on the river when Aidan offered to eat the fruit. He was so eager to please his father.

              Now, in the warehouse, Humphries released Aidan and shook his head slowly, a hint of a smile rising. “They’ll never find the tree. And if they get too close…” He lifted his rifle and squeezed off a shot. A four-inch bullet rocketed past Aidan and punched a hole through the warehouse wall.

             
“The tree is ours now, son.”

EPILOGUE

             
It was two weeks after Billy’s confrontation with the red dragon when the three friends finally came together again on the cliffs. They had all eaten the black powder. As they sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the rocks and watched the sun fall into the sea, none of them made the change.

             
“The only way to convince my mother I was telling the truth,” said Hiroki, “was to tell her something
almost as bad
as the truth. ‘There we were Mom, on the side of the road. Billy was showing off with the chainsaw when that truck came flying around the corner and smashed into the Buick… Billy lost his balance and fell right on top of the saw…’”

             
Hiroki glanced back at the Buick parked behind them. It was drivable again thanks to a loan from his mother, but most of the damage was still apparent. It broke his heart a little bit every time he looked at the car.

             
Billy shook his head, amazed. “Lucky I never returned the saw to the timber site. If you didn’t have it sitting in the trunk of the Buick to show your mom what a reckless idiot I am—”

             
“Why did your father believe the story?” Eva asked. She was squeezed between the two boys and absorbing their body heat, but the season had turned and the air blowing in off the sea was very cold. “He knows what the wounds from a chainsaw accident should look like.”

             
Billy shrugged. “He only seemed to care I was all right. He even covered for me. Told the foreman that
he
borrowed the saw from the site to carve up stumps so I wouldn’t get in trouble for stealing it.”

             
They sat in silence for a few minutes as the last of the sun disappeared. It left behind a layer of brilliant colors at the far edge of the water.

             
“Let’s walk through it one more time,” said Hiroki. “Eat the fruit from the tree and the dragon blood enters your body. From then on, every time the sun goes down you will turn and
stay
turned until dawn.”

             
Billy nodded. “To prevent the change, you have to eat the black leaves from the tree. Of course, that only works if you stay… calm. If you get angry—”

             
“It could be any strong emotion,” Hiroki interjected. “We don’t know for sure.”

             
“That’s right,” Billy agreed. “But we do know that anger is a powerful trigger, powerful enough to counteract the leaves.”

             
“And so are the black fibers. The husk of the fruit,” Eva concluded. “Even though I ate the powder earlier that day, when I ate one of those disgusting fibers I changed immediately.”

             
Billy drew a deep breath and winced. He raised his hand to his chest and gently massaged the wounds that were still healing. “In the ship, after Aidan turned back into his human form… I didn’t see any fruit or leaves. I didn’t see anything that could explain how he turned human again before the sun set.”

             
“That’s a mystery we still need to solve,” Hiroki agreed.

             
Eva lowered her eyes, suddenly melancholy. “We have each other, but Aidan is all alone. Think how scary that must be. I know he attacked you Billy, and I know he’s dangerous to all of us. But I still feel bad for him.”

             
“You have to keep a lid on your sympathy,” said Hiroki. “He still doesn’t know our identities. And we have to keep it that way.”

             
Eva swallowed hard and nodded.

             
“We have enough powder to prevent changing for a few months, but we only have a few dozen of those black fibers from Hiro’s grandpa. With the tree gone, we can’t get more of either. So if any of us feel the change coming on because of anger or any other strong emotion…” Billy trailed off. He stood up and stomped his feet to warm them.

             
“And with the tree in Aidan’s hands…” Eva trailed off, the full weight of her comment settling over her like a lead blanket.

             
“All that matters now is finding the tree,” Hiroki concluded.

              They remained on the cliff for another twenty minutes, until all of the brilliant sunset colors faded and disappeared. The night turned much colder as they piled back into the crippled Buick.

             
They drove back in silence.

             
They drove back afraid.

TO BE CONTINUED…

[Fluffer Nutter]

AUTHOR’S NOTE

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AC

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