The Painted Boy (14 page)

He didn’t fight it. Instead, he let that enormous
something
he always felt shifting inside him grow, rising up to fill not only himself, but the entire hall. No—it was more like
he
was filling the hall, because as the secret behemoth grew inside him, he merged with it. He could feel the weight of enormous wings on his shoulders pushing against the roof high above. His lungs were hot with raging coals and fire. There was a roaring in his ears, like a long continuous rumble of immediate thunder.

The fire, when it burst from his mouth, could have erupted from a flamethrower: an awful, blistering tongue of heat that enveloped the gangbanger. Jay stomped his enormous hind foot—ten times the size of an elephant’s—and the ground shook, the building trembled. He stomped again, claiming his victory over his foe and marking his territory. Cracks streaked up the walls. Dust and plaster flaked and fell. A second blast of flame and the gangbanger was briefly outlined before he was entirely consumed and collapsed into ash.

Jubilant with the death of his enemy, the monster that held Jay stomped its hind foot a third time. More dust and plaster fell. The cracks widened. The roof supports began to groan.

But then the part of the behemoth that was Jay realized what he had done.

The building was collapsing.

A building full of people.

The band, his friends, the staff, the members of the audience that hadn’t left yet—

A panicked fear for their safety gave him the strength of will he might not otherwise have been able to muster. Using all those years of training, he focused and fought to contain the beast until he finally had it under control.

Barely.

“Out!”
he cried. To his ears, his voice was the thunderous roar of the dragon.
“Everybody out!”

He let his wings expand until they pressed up against every portion of the roof. He held the structure up, straining under its massive weight, as the people fled. The giant shape he held was starting to falter—the dragon returning to its slumber in his chest—and he didn’t know how long he could keep the building from collapsing.

But he couldn’t let them die.

He wouldn’t.

Not Rosalie and Anna.

Not any of them.

He didn’t care about the gangbanger, but Margarita was already one too many.

 

 

Rosalie was up on the stage, coiling guitar and microphone cords with Anna, when the commotion began at the merch table. She looked over just in time to see Margarita rise to her feet, yelling something at a guy that she recognized as one of the local gangbangers, a guy they called Alambra. She didn’t actually see Margarita get stabbed, but she immediately knew something bad was happening when Alambra pulled back from the table and the front of Margarita’s T-shirt went red. Anna shouted something from beside her and the two of them ran for the end of the stage.

And that’s when things got really weird.

She saw Jay raise his arms, all his attention focused on Margarita’s assailant, and felt a sudden pressure in the air as though a thunderstorm had come up out of nowhere. The small hairs on her arms rose up and her skin prickled. Jay opened his mouth—impossibly wide, it seemed—and Alambra twitched as though something had struck him. She knew he was considered a real tough guy—so she was surprised when his eyes went wide with shock and fear.

What was going on?

Jay stamped his foot on the floor and Rosalie could swear she felt reverberations shake the stage where she was standing. A second stomp on the floor and Rosalie saw cracks running across the floor and up the walls. Plaster dust floated down from the ceiling. And then . . . and then . . .

Alambra was briefly outlined as though he stood in the middle of a blazing inferno before he went black, then gray, then . . . the only way to describe it was that he seemed to disintegrate. He turned to ashes.

Rosalie’s heart pumped far too fast. What she’d just seen was impossible.

“What the f—?” she heard Anna start to say.

But a rumbling roar shook the hall. Rosalie could see the cracks expanding on the walls, reaching up and crisscrossing the ceiling. More dust and plaster fell down on the crowd.

“Out!”
a voice that was like a deep roar cried.
“Everybody out!”

It took Rosalie a moment to realize that it had come from Jay.

Move, she told herself.

The building was going to come down around them.

“Come on!” she yelled at Anna.

But Anna was already heading back to where the band had left their gear.

“Anna!” she called after her. “We need to get out of here.”

The exits were choked with people pushing and shoving in a panic to get out. She hoped no one would get hurt in the press.

“Screw that!” Anna said. “I’m not leaving without my guitars.”

Rosalie ran over to where the rest of the band was frantically grabbing what gear they could. She picked up a couple of trumpets, then herded Anna and the others to the exit at the back of the stage. Before she went down the stairs, she looked back to see Jay standing alone, arms still raised, back bent as though he thought he was supporting the whole weight of the building.

“Rosalie!” Ramon called.

She turned away. “But Jay—”

She wanted to drag him out, but she had the uneasy feeling that maybe it was true. Maybe he
was
all that was keeping the building up. She knew Ramon wouldn’t leave without her, so finally she ran down the stairs.

The air was cleaner outside, away from the falling dust and grit. People were milling around everywhere and she could hear sirens in the distance.

Come on, Jay, she thought. Everybody else is out. You don’t need to stay any longer.

She put the trumpets down on the ground and was about to start back for the building, when Ramon stopped her.

The building collapsed.

It fell in on itself with a thunderous roar, sending up plumes of dust and dirt. All that was left in the silence that followed was a heap of rubble inside of what remained of the walls.

Rosalie stared in horror.

Oh, Jay . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jay hadn’t thought he could hold out as long as he already had. It seemed impossible that he could even be doing it—some kid supporting this whole freaking building all on his own—but even as it was dropping back into its slumber, the dragon lent him strength, and to keep the beast under control he’d found reserves of willpower he didn’t think he had. He supposed he could thank Paupau now for the years of intense training designed to keep him strong and focus his will. Things like standing on one leg for hours, or hanging from the chin-up bar until he thought his arms would fall off. “It’s good to build up stamina,” she’d say when he complained, “for a human as well as a dragon.”

But nothing could have prepared him for this, because the dragon was almost asleep again, the building was taking forever to clear, and it was all he could do to stop the roof from crashing down.

He was trembling from head to foot by the time everybody was out, but finally they were all safe and he didn’t have to bear the enormous weight anymore. Except then the realization suddenly hit him. He was so screwed.

How was
he
supposed to get out?

Who was going to hold up the building until he made it to safety?

No, scratch that. Never mind getting out. Who was going to hold the building up
right now
? Because he was losing his grip on it.

He tried to wake the dragon again, but the rage that had come from seeing Margarita die was gone. There was only fear left, and that didn’t seem to be enough. His brain was blank. Anything that might have helped—from what he’d learned having the dragon waken, to his studies with Paupau—was gone. There was only the crack of the rafters overhead. The thunder of the building collapsing.

He stared up, stunned, until he remembered the other thing he’d learned today.

Just before the roof crashed into the floor, he shifted to Lupita’s in-between place.

The silence was absolute after the roar of the collapsing building. He stared up and drank in a dark desert sky, rich with stars. And free of falling debris.

He let out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding and slowly walked in the direction of where the parking lot would be in the world he’d just left behind. When he judged he’d gone far enough, he shifted back. The quiet of the desert was immediately swallowed by pandemonium. People shouting and talking. Sirens approaching.

Jay stared at the wreckage of what had once been a music hall. Part of him was numb. Part was horrified. He’d just killed one of the gangbangers, fried him to a crisp with hardly a thought. He’d just pulled down this enormous building, almost killing everyone inside. But another part of him thought that making the gangbanger pay for killing Margarita was the coolest thing ever. And he’d come through in the end, hadn’t he? He’d saved everyone. He really
was
some kind of kick-ass superhero.

He heard someone behind him, footsteps crunching in the dirt, and turned to see Anna, her face streaked with grime and tears. He thought she’d be freaked by what had happened, but she only looked angry.

“You did this,” she said.

It was a statement, not a question.

“I guess I did.”

She slammed her palms against his chest and he staggered back.

“You did this,” she repeated. “But you couldn’t do it before Margarita got killed?”

“It’s not like that. Before tonight, I didn’t know I could really—”

She cut him off. “Bullshit. You told us all about the dragons and crap.”

“But I had no idea how to—”

“You could have gone and shut them down—all those goddamn posing
bandas
—but no, you had to wait to make some big statement with it, didn’t you?”

“What are you talking ab—”

She slammed her palms into his chest again, hard enough to make him stagger back.