The Dragon's Tooth (8 page)

“I don’t know what that means,” Antigone said. “And I’m not sure I care right now.”

Horace raised his left hand. “It means that—should you appear and accept the appointment—you will be initiate members in the Order with the opportunity for advancement. That was Skelton’s entire purpose in coming here. He has made you eligible to inherit the entirety of his estate, which, contrary to his personal appearance and style of life, is uniquely … valuable. In addition, the cost of your memberships, as well as the cost of all food, board, training, placement, and material supplies, will be paid by Mr. Skelton’s estate, of which, of course, I am the executor.” He raised his eyebrows. “This is a terrific opportunity for a pair of underprivileged siblings, one which will never come to you again. If you accept the appointment, your woes—your homelessness, your motel-lessness, your malnutrition, and your poverty—will all be over.”

Cyrus opened his mouth, but Horace raised his hand and barged on. “Of course, of course, you don’t care about money at the moment. Daniel’s situation is your highest priority. The police are on their way. You have a photo and a nickname—Maxi—to provide as leads. But I can swear to you as solemnly as a judge—they will not find him. And if you run into police custody, then what does tomorrow bring you? Foster care? An orphanage? Of course, such care won’t last long. Your brother is missing, taken by men you cannot begin to comprehend, and you two will be their next targets. You’ve got something they will kill for as soon as smile. Unlike the police, the Order knows these enemies of yours and has the tools to hunt them. They have real strength, real power, and they will go to the ends of the earth to protect their members.

“Accepting this appointment won’t simply bring money. It’s the best chance you have at keeping blood in your veins and in your brother’s. It won’t be easy. The Order has high standards for their members and, quite honestly, I’m not sure you can meet them. I do not know of a time when children of your station and education have ever been named as Acolytes. Of course, I am a lawyer—the best the Order’s got—and it’ll be my job to help you succeed, and short of that, to help the right people think that you have. In the end, it’s often the same thing.”

Cyrus picked up a knife and rapped it on the table. “Excuse me?”

“Finally,” Horace said, ignoring Cyrus and inflating his lungs, “here is my last morsel of information to contribute: Your father was a member.”

Cyrus stopped. “What?”

Horace nodded. “For a while.”

“Our mother?” Antigone asked.

“No,” Horace said. “She was not.” He pursed his lips.

Cyrus shifted in his seat. “I don’t care who was a member.”

“Mr. Cyrus, I’m not sure you understand—” Horace began.

“I get it,” said Cyrus. “The bad guys are going to come for us. When they do, I’ll give them these.” He tapped invisible keys. “And they’ll give us Dan. We’re not going anywhere until we get Dan. Talk to us then.”

John Horace Lawney sighed. “Mr. Cyrus, you present yourselves as Skelton’s successors now, today, and receive the help and protection and assets available to you, or not at all. Ever.” Leaning forward, Horace groped for the keys with a thick finger. “The keys,” he said quietly, “are valuable enough.” He paused, having found what he wanted. “But this—” With the click of a small hinge, the black tooth appeared in the air, impervious to the snake’s charm. It was darker than a shard of midnight, and its edge swallowed light. “Mr. Cyrus, how many ways can a living man be changed by someone with knives and drugs and the secret sorceries of flesh mixing—the words and chants that make ape ape and dog dog and man man? Do you know? How much vandalism can a victim withstand before Death finally frees him from his captor?” Horace paused, eyes sharpening, lips tight. Cyrus swallowed, unable to look away. The lawyer’s voice sank into a whisper. “How many ways can a man be changed when death is no obstacle? No release. No escape. Cyrus Smith, this tooth can raise and rule the dead. And while you possess it, you cannot die. When Skelton placed it in your hand, he stepped into his grave. Better that you step into yours than trade it away—even for your brother.” Horace straightened, sighed, sipped his carrot juice, and looked down the length of the diner. “Ah, breakfast,” he said. “Pat comes bearing the wealth of plow and pasture.”

Cyrus stared at the tooth. He didn’t want to touch it, and he didn’t want the sheath open. Antigone reached out and snapped it shut, locking eyes with Cyrus. The sheath, and with it the tooth, vanished.

The little lawyer leaned back in the booth. His attention was entirely focused on the large waitress with platter-lined arms.

Raise the dead? Cyrus didn’t believe it. No way. But ice still crawled beneath his skin, and his feet felt cold and lifeless. What kind of dead? Fresh, unrotten dead? Lost at sea, swallowed by the salt water and all its creatures dead? His father dead?

“Pat, you are angelic.” Horace grinned as plates of steaming food slid onto the table, followed by a pot of coffee and a chipped pitcher of orange juice.

“Enjoy, now,” said Pat, drifting away. “Hoot and holler if you need anything else.”

Cyrus reached for his neck, and his fingers found the tooth’s cool sheath. Raise the dead? Not just record players and lightbulbs and neon signs. The dead.

Smiling, Mr. Lawney folded a stack of bacon into his cheek and pointed greasy fingers at Cyrus. “According to the laws likely to be applied in this situation, you have fourteen hours and forty-four minutes from the administration of the oath to present yourselves and be acknowledged as Acolytes and initiate members. And that,” he added, “doesn’t leave you much time.” He tugged his fat silver watch out of his vest, slapped it onto the tabletop, and began to count, bobbing his head and chewing loudly as he did. “Boiling things down to the bone, that now leaves two hours and fifty-three minutes to present yourselves at Ashtown—the Order’s nearest Estate.”

Cyrus looked at his sister. He wanted her to say something. His stomach banged out a muffled drumroll, and he stared at the sausages.

Breathing deeply, Antigone looked up, tucking back her hair. “Cy, as soon as we talk to the police, we should go. More help won’t hurt. Money won’t hurt, either. I don’t know if that tooth does anything, but money does a lot.” She turned to Horace. “How far is this place?”

“With my driver,” Horace said, “we can be there in two hours.”

Cyrus shook his head. “Tigs, I don’t care about money. I care about Dan and Mom and … us.”

“We don’t have anything, Cyrus,” Antigone said. “Nowhere to live, no way to pay Mom’s bills. If Dan’s hurt …”

“No,” Cyrus said. “He’s coming back.”

Antigone bit her lip. “If Dan’s hurt when he comes back, how are we going to take care of him? And Mom? And find a place to live? If they want a ransom for Dan, how will we pay it? If this Order means money and a place to stay and people to help find Dan, then we should go. It’s not that far. Staying here, just waiting, trying to survive in the Archer, that would be selfish. It’s time for
us
to do something, Cy. There’s no one else.”

Cyrus leaned his elbows onto the table, grinding his eyes against the heels of his hands. This wasn’t happening. None of it. “Antigone, I can’t. It’s home.” He looked up. “You go. You get the money and the help. I’ll stay at the motel in case Dan comes back.”

Antigone shook her head. “The cops would put you in a home.”

“They wouldn’t find me. Do you really think they could? There’s an old camper in the woods just a couple miles from the motel. I could keep an eye on things from there. I could stay in barns.”

“Cyrus,” Antigone said quietly. “You’re my brother. For now, we’re it. The whole family. I’m not leaving you. We should go, but I won’t unless you do. Now decide. If you stay, I’ll stay. I’ll camp in barns with you or sleep in the swimming pool with the tires. If the cops catch us and put us in a home, oh well. If we go to this place, Ashville, we go together.”

“Ashtown,” Horace said.

Antigone shrugged and finally took her first bite, turning slowly away from Cyrus. “Why fourteen hours and forty-four minutes?” she asked.

Horace smiled, scooping eggs onto his plate. “Because, on the Feast of St. Brendan the Navigator, that is exactly how long daylight falls on the spire of the Ashtown Galleria, from sunup to sundown. Less importantly, but significant nonetheless, 1444 is also the year the Order decided not to prevent new European exploration of the Americas.”

Cyrus wasn’t listening. He couldn’t even see the table in front of him. When he was nine, he’d fallen off a cliff and dropped twenty feet into a tide pool. Now, again, he could feel the ground sliding away beneath him, rock that he’d trusted pulling free and dropping with him. Familiar fear surged through him, throbbing in his teeth. Then, he’d known where he would land. Now, he had no idea. He only knew that he was falling and that grabbing at the cliff wasn’t going to help.

“Okay.” His own voice sounded distant. “Okay. We can go.” He blinked, and Antigone swam into view. “We should get the money. And whatever help we can.”

“You sure, Cy?” Antigone’s eyes were wide, her face serious.

Cyrus nodded.

“Bravo,” said Horace. “In that case, I recommend that you eat what you can. A long day awaits you. We’ll be off in the next twenty minutes.”

Cyrus ran his hand around his neck, tracing soft, invisible scales. His feet were bouncing. His fall had turned into a leap. He was diving toward who knew what, away from what he knew well. Fear wasn’t fading.

“Who’s Maxi?” he asked, and he could hear the waver in his own voice. “I want to know who’s after us.”

Footsteps rattled down the diner, and Cyrus looked up. A small man was approaching in an extremely baggy police uniform. Even without the soot and the goggles and the darkness, Cyrus recognized the small man’s sharp face and his wide, smiling mouth.

His thick hair had been pushed straight back. High on his throat, against tight, pale skin, a thick scar completely encircled his neck. His tiny teeth were bleached white, but gapped and worn to nubs. The corners of his eyes were jaundiced, muddy with yellow around faded brown irises.

“My name is Maximilien Robespierre.” His accented voice was smooth, childish. He winked at Antigone and bowed. “But we are all friends and comrades. Please to call me Maxi.”

six

HAIL

H
ORACE WASN’T BREATHING
. Antigone pushed herself into Cyrus, sliding him down the bench beneath the window.

Maxi smiled and sat down in the booth next to Horace. He commandeered Horace’s cup of coffee and carefully picked out a single slice of bacon.

“So,” Maxi said, chewing. “You ask about me. I am honored. But is now the time for stories? A brother has vanished. Perhaps can I assist you?”

“You can give him back,” Antigone snarled. “You shouldn’t have taken him in the first place.”

“Shouldn’t?” The small man picked up a piece of toast from Antigone’s plate. “Little sweetness,
shouldn’t, oughtn’t, can’t
—these are words I cannot be understanding. What do they mean? I have burned cities and killed kings while others were studying
shouldn’t. Ma chérie
, if Maxi can, then Maxi should.” He leaned his small, grinning face toward Antigone. “And Maxi always can.”

Antigone slid back in the booth, and her hand dug into Cyrus’s leg.

Cyrus picked up a table knife. “Where’s Dan? What did you do to him?”

Maxi’s gapped smile widened. “Can you cut me with that? I am not butter.”

Horace managed to stand, sputtering anger. “Mr. Robespierre, you are a dog, a murderer, a demon, a poison. But know this, you will be struck down in the end. The Order will see your flesh rot in the soil like the rest of us.”

Maxi gripped Horace’s sleeve and tugged him back down. “The Order? The gaggling Brendan geese? Fat lawyer, I outlived all your wise men, your explorers, and I will be outliving you. Be silent.” He turned to Cyrus. “Boy, what I need, you have, do you not? Give it to me. I will take you to your brother, and you shall never be separated again until the land is swallowed by the sea. You hear me swear it.” Maxi wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “The tooth, the keys. What are they to you if your brother dies? Give them to me. What else can you be doing? You cannot leave. You cannot escape.” He grinned. “Or … when Daniel is dead, I can cut you, too, so that you beg to give them to me. Can you stop me?” He pulled out a pair of long, slender knives. Both had smooth wooden handles black with age and needle blades worn with sharpening, glassy at the edge. He let them rest on the table. They looked like they’d been made for gutting fish. Or bigger things.

Cyrus felt Antigone’s grip tighten on his leg. Pat was gone. The farmers were drinking their coffee. Horace was rigid with fear.

Cyrus breathed slowly, but his mind was racing. The keys didn’t matter. But he wouldn’t give Maxi the tooth. Not if it … He couldn’t. And without the tooth, the keys would never be enough.

Cyrus set his hands on the table across from the knives and looked into Maxi’s jaundiced eyes. They had to get out of the diner. He slid his legs back, tensing, bracing to launch.

“Well?” Maxi raised his eyebrows. “Choose your path, young Cyrus Smith. Will I love you, or will I be angry?”

Cyrus exploded forward onto the table, sweeping a storm of plates and sausage and eggs into Maxi’s face. The two knives skittered to the floor, and Cyrus swung for Maxi’s jaw. He didn’t connect. Maxi slid to the side and a fist slammed into Cyrus’s neck. Gasping, he rolled into the hash browns in front of Horace.

“Go!” Cyrus yelled, but there was nowhere to go. Maxi was on his feet, holding his knives. A huge, round man with a beard and apron came hurrying out of the kitchen, but stopped when he saw the uniform.

Maxi stepped forward, eyes on fire and tiny teeth grinding, knives held low. Orange juice and egg ran down his uniform. Cyrus slid back beneath the window, knocking over waters. Horace was standing. Antigone was crouching on her seat.

“Enough,” the lawyer said. “Enough. Let the children go. I’ll get you everything you need.”

Maximilien laughed. The scar around his pale neck flushed red. “No,” he said. “No. You cannot. The keys, Smith boy. Give them to me. Now. Before you die.”

Cyrus felt a shadow move above him, and the window exploded with a roar.

Maxi staggered backward and fell. Glass rained down on Cyrus’s face and neck and chest, bouncing like crystal hail on the table. Above him, Cyrus saw a long gun barrel fire again and again, spitting wide flame, but he heard nothing.

And then Horace dove over him and out the window. Antigone pulled him up and drove him out the gaping window hole. His knee caught the sill, singing with pain, and the two of them were falling together, tumbling onto an old bicycle, through tall grass, and onto gravel.

Cyrus climbed to his feet and staggered after his sister, around the building, toward the big black car. Horace was in front of them, diving into the backseat. The lean driver was holding the door for them, tall in his black suit, his big gun trained at the diner. There was a police car and two other men ducking behind it. The driver fired again. And again. Leaving the rear door open, he jumped in behind the wheel. Antigone dove inside, and then Cyrus followed, landing facedown on the car’s strangely soft carpet. The car showered half an acre with gravel as it roared forward onto the road. The rear door slammed with the acceleration.

The heavy car rose and fell smoothly, gliding and shifting in time with the curves and dips of the road. It was an old car—Cyrus had known that at first glance—but it wasn’t moving like one.

“I feel sick,” Antigone muttered. “We should be dead right now. I could throw up.”

Cyrus exhaled slowly. “Me too.” He was holding the keys at his neck, clenching them too hard, digging metal teeth deep into his palm. Any harder and he would bleed, but he couldn’t let go.

Antigone’s leg was kangarooing in place. She had her eyes shut and was twisting her hair. Cyrus looked around the car and up at the glass divider. He wanted to see the driver. He wanted a good look at his face. The man with the big gun.

John Horace Lawney sat with his back to the driver and his head down, massaging his temples.

Outside the windows, bushes and pastures and signs and road reflectors snapped and flickered past like frames in one of Antigone’s home movies.

Antigone looked up. “Maxi’s dead, right?” She nudged Horace with her toe, and the little lawyer looked up. “Please tell me he’s dead.”

Horace sighed, and the car bounced gently and banked hard around a curve.

He shook his head. “That … man … was born Sebastián de Benalcázar in Córdoba, Spain, more than five hundred years ago. As a conquistador, he traveled with Ponce de León into Florida—until Ponce had him shot. He escaped into South America and tried to set himself up as a governor, slaughtering Incas and his fellow Spaniards along the way. He was hung, stabbed, poisoned, and even keelhauled. But to no effect. The Order finally captured him when he tried to return to Europe. He was held without food or water for more than two centuries before some weak-minded fools released him. He reemerged in France under the name of Maximilien Robespierre. There, his taste for destruction reached revolutionary heights. More than thirty thousand French men and women were sent to the guillotine, including King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and several of the Order’s most notable French members. The Order did not capture him again until the mobs turned against him and he himself was beheaded—you saw the scar on his neck, did you not? It was a simpler matter when his head was in a basket and his body was in a cart. He was imprisoned again but escaped the Order’s French Estate when it was destroyed during the Second World War.”

Horace looked up at Cyrus, and then into Antigone’s eyes. His brow was furrowed. “Unfortunately, the answer to your question is no.
Dead
is one thing that he certainly is not.”

Cyrus swallowed. His throat had tightened and his serpent necklace felt suddenly heavy. He had nothing to say. He wanted to disbelieve, but he couldn’t—not with everything he had already seen. He looked at his sister, and her dark eyes were worried.

The car surged forward and swooped around an RV. The Archer was visible in the distance. Cyrus leaned against his window. The Golden Lady was on her pole. But she wasn’t golden. She was pale. Dead.

As the car approached, she began to glimmer. The tooth was returning.

“Who are they?” Antigone pointed at the motel. Three men were picking through the rubble. A fourth hopped out of Skelton’s camper.

All four looked up as the big car screamed past. Two of them were tall and identical, pale green in the daylight. The other two were bare-shouldered. Tattooed. One bearded, one bald.

The driver ignored a double yellow line and passed two cars at once. Two minutes later, they were nearing town. And traffic lights. The first one was red.

“Um …” Cyrus sat up.

They shot through it.

Antigone looked around the interior of the car. They slowed slightly for traffic and ran the next light. She grabbed her brother and tugged him back in his seat. “Buckle, Cy. We’re in trouble.”

There weren’t any seat belts.

The car accelerated and skimmed past a police car, nearly clipping its side mirror. Cyrus and Antigone wheeled around, watching the patrol car flick on its lights and then quickly miniaturize behind them. They were already through the small town. Fields and highway stretched ahead.

Horace cleared his throat. “Please don’t worry yourselves. This car is a thing of beauty. She came off the line in 1938 and track-tested above three hundred feet per second. They won’t catch up to us. Gunner up there isn’t even pushing her yet, are you, Gunn?”

Cyrus turned back around, watching the tall driver’s hands on the wheel. Something slammed into the roof above him.

A hole appeared in the leather ceiling and tiny feathers snowed down from the upholstery. Another. And another. Like hammer blows. Like piercing hail. Lead hail.

The car swerved. Glass shattered. Bullets rained down.

John Horace Lawney jerked and fell to his side.

The car jumped off the road, roared down a bank, and sent a wire fence sprouting into the sky. Cyrus bounced against the ceiling and grabbed at the door. Antigone rattled on the floor with Horace.

“Hang on!” Gunner yelled, and he cranked the wheel. The car twisted sideways, sailing at airplane speeds through a pasture of sun-browned grass. Seed heads lashed and whistled at the doors, and a cloud of dust and chaff and splattered plant rose up around them.

On his knees, Cyrus stared out his window. Bellowing cows were running, cows that hadn’t been meant to run, two-ton milk jugs, spotted black and white. One of them froze, panicked, unable to choose a route.

Cyrus braced himself, but the car swung in time, slamming his face against the glass. Antigone and a bleeding Horace tumbled up beside him.

Another fence flipped up the hood and off the roof, and they were heading downhill, past a barn, sliding by a farmhouse, through someone’s garden and beneath a tree, thumping an ancient tire swing into orbit, jumping a ditch, and fishtailing onto a gravel road.

“Everyone okay?” Gunner glanced in his mirror. “We all alive?”

“No!” Antigone was stretching the lawyer onto his back between the seats. “Stop! Horace got hit in the shoulder, right by his neck.”

“Can’t stop.” Gunner shook his head. “He breathing?”

“I think so!” Antigone yelled. She leaned her ear down to Horace’s mouth as he coughed, misting her cheek with blood.

“Get some pressure on the wound!” Gunner yelled. “Cyrus, get your window down and squeeze on out. I need your eyes on the sky the next couple miles. And hang on! I don’t want to lose you!”

Cyrus cranked his window down and immediately went deaf with the roar and rattle of gravel and wind. The driver lobbed back a pair of goggles.

“Pull ’em tight!” he yelled. “Tight!”

Antigone, white-faced, was crouched on the floor, pressing a wadded-up suit coat against the little man’s shoulder. Looking into his sister’s terrified eyes, Cyrus took a breath, pulled down his goggles, and fished himself out the window and into a hurricane.

Gripping the inside of the car, Cyrus eased his rear up onto the door, and his chin rose above the roof. The goggles shook, and his nose felt like it might disappear. The roof of the car was pocked with holes, and dust tornadoed on the road behind them. Gradually, gently, Cyrus looked up. At first, with his head shaking in the wind, he could only make out two contrails. And birds. Three of them. Maybe hawks or crows. High and circling.