A Crown of Dragons Read online

  From the mezzanine, Reynard shouted, “Preeve, I’ve got zero response on the door seals!”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” the scientist muttered. He dropped into a chair and slid sideways toward a bank of equipment winking with all sorts of warning lights. He tried button after button. “Dead, dead, dead. Can’t even get a wireless link.”

  “What about the scale? Where does that come into it?”

  He rubbed his eyes, wearied by the constant buzz of questions. “This has never been about the scale. What we call the artifact is dried-out matter we can’t identify. Some kind of toughened skin, certainly. But dragon? You might as well call it dodo rind. We let you go on believing it was dragon because it suited us to. We’ve never been able to conclusively prove that human proximity to the scale yields any consistent or reproducible effects, though it does seem to adapt to some subjects more than to others.”

  “Like me, you mean. It works in me.”

  “To some extent, yes, but we’ve never established a coherent mechanism. The Mleptra on the other hand can be readily observed, engineered, and measured. The scale has some influence, certainly, but in my opinion, the Mleptra are the primary source of your powers. You heard what Klimt said. They get inside a host’s cellular network and attempt to ‘improve’ the genetic model. Much of what they do is benign and helpful, but the symbiosis with humans is vague and unpredictable — your reality shifts being a case in point. Hence the need to control the creatures with a cognitive system based on logic.” He slid the chair back my way. “Might be able to bypass the auxiliary grid if …”

  “Why did you put the scale on dad’s chest?”

  He dipped under the console and ripped out a wire. “To keep Hartland in the game.”

  “You knew he was inside me?”

  “Does a bee make honey? Of course we knew. We have a database full of your behavioral patterns. The blips in your temperament were plainly caused by a secondary stimulus and not your usual tedious hormonal outbursts. Reynard confirmed it on the journey here. He reads flecks, like you.”

  More wires came out.

  “Why did he throw the scale away?”

  “Ow! What?” He banged his head on the desk as he emerged.

  “You said the scale adapts to some people more than others. Did it reject Hartland? Why didn’t it have any power for him?”

  Preeve sighed and pressed his fingers to his eyelids. “Your average roof shingle has more power than the piece of debris Hartland disposed of. What you saw on Thomas was a replica of the scale. We did it to mislead Hartland. It was a ruse, Michael. Do you know about ruses?”

  Oh, I knew about ruses all right. I’d lived with them since the day I’d joined UNICORNE. Mention of roof shingles made me think about the scene at home. I was pretty sure Harvey hadn’t killed Mom or Josie, and Dennis had been moving when he’d hit the grass, but I needed to get back to them as soon as I could. What’s more, I knew a way out of the bunker, one that Preeve hadn’t even considered. When the moment came, I could alter my reality and get us to safety, but not before I had the answers I wanted. “Tell me about the film. If the scale is useless, why did Dad regress into dragon times? He wasn’t faking. I know he wasn’t. I heard him speak their language. Galan aug scieth.”

  “Oh, fol-de-rol-de-rol,” Preeve snorted. “There, I’ve sung a song in the language of unicorns! I didn’t say the scale was useless, just erratic. And testimonies taken under hypnosis are notoriously unreliable. What that idiot, Nolan, captured on camera was your father’s decline into Wonderland. There was never any proof he’d connected with the past.”

  “But his skin changed. He started to transform.”

  Preeve scratched his forehead. Pearls of sweat were beginning to gather. He fumbled his glasses back on. “I agree, that was an interesting moment. But we could find no trace of transmutation, despite rigorous testing of your father’s blood and dermal tissues. Conclusion: It was a stress reaction, just like the one I’m having now.”

  “No,” I said, “the change was real. Harvey talked about dragons being able to transform and I’ve already done it with the crows. And what about that time at Three Rivers? Dad had barely touched the scale before it allowed him to escape from the helicopters. That means he had a strong connection to it. What if me and Dad are related to someone in the past who had real dragon auma and that’s why the scale works better for us?”

  “This is ridiculous,” Preeve said, flapping his hands like a frightened bird. “I don’t have time for your poppycock theories. In fact, I don’t have time for —”

  “Got him!”

  We turned our heads and saw Reynard come clattering down the mezzanine steps. He burst into the control room. “Hartland’s still here.” He zoomed an image on the tablet. The Mogollon creature that had once been my father was standing on the pebble beach, facing the sea. “He’s playing something. Looks like a flute.”

  “Sounding our death tune,” Preeve muttered glumly.

  “He’s calling me,” I said. “The flute’s a kind of in-joke. I need to go out there. Preeve, where’s the scale?”

  He threw aside the wires he’d removed from the console. “We’re finished, boy. Accept it.”

  I whizzed his chair around, making his glasses skew across his face. “No. I can alter my reality and keep us alive. But I can do much more if I have the scale.”

  “More?” said Reynard.

  I checked the countdown. One minute forty-eight seconds remaining. “I’m going out to face Hartland, to finish this — for good.”

  Reynard nodded. “Okay, but take me with you.”

  “No. No way.”

  “Michael, he’s strong. You can’t do this alone.”

  “I can,” I said, looking into his eyes. “I’ll form a reality in which you’re safe, but I have to deal with Hartland myself. He’s hurt or killed nearly everyone close to me. This is personal, Will. And you don’t have time to argue.”

  He pressed his lips into a thin straight line. “All right. Preeve, do as he says.”

  Preeve had put his glasses into their case and was neatly folding the lens cloth that cleaned them. It made me think that if he’d had a coffin, he would have been closing the lid on himself. “You expect me to unravel ten years of research in less time than it would take to boil an egg?”

  Reynard grabbed his lapels again. “I’ll crack your head like an egg if you don’t start talking. Where’s the scale?”

  Preeve batted him off. “There’s a segment in the clone, but it’s hardwired into the cranium. You’d never get it out in time.”

  “A segment?” I asked.

  “A piece much larger than your micro implants. If you’re right about your dragon ancestors, you’d have been quite the superstar.”

  Reynard looked through the shattered window at the pod, where the clone still lay completely motionless. “If we can’t get it out, can we get Michael in?”

  “In?” said Preeve.

  “The consciousness switch? Can it be done without the technology?”

  “Are you serious?” Preeve blustered.

  “I have fifty-three seconds of air,” said Reynard. “I’d say that makes me pretty darned serious. Can it be done?”

  Preeve checked his readouts. “Technically, yes. The pathways to the clone are on a different loop from the rest of the equipment. We could use the tone to separate Michael’s consciousness, then reverse the neuromagnetic transmitters to encourage his connection to the android. But it’s ludicrous to try. There are so many imponderables. It would be like walking a tightrope in ice skates. Any hint of uncertainty could leave him literally lost in the ether. And coming back …”

  His words tailed off. I took that to mean there would be no coming back.

  “Do it,” I said.

  Reynard nodded at Preeve.

  “Reynard, think about this,” Preeve hissed. “If the clone is separated from our control, the fate of the universe will be in his hands. Even if he de
feats Hartland, we’re literally at his mercy.”

  “Then I guess we just have to trust him, don’t we?”

  Preeve gulped and handed me a set of headphones. “You’d better sit down.”

  “One thing,” said Reynard.

  The clock was ticking. Nineteen seconds. “What?”

  “Freya. She was flapping at a grille on the mezzanine wall. I sprang it for her. She’s in the air ducts somewhere.”

  Trying to get out. Trying to get to Hartland. She just would not give up.

  “Thanks for the tip-off.” I put the headphones on.

  “This will happen very fast,” said Preeve, flicking switches quicker than Josie could text. “Even in the ghost state, you’ll have little time to think. Keep your mind focused on the clone or you’ll be vapor.”

  “He’ll make it,” said Reynard, clamping my shoulder. “Last words of advice, kid: Be strong, be definite, and be kind.”

  He nodded at Preeve to play the tone.

  In an instant, I was out of my body. Preeve was right about the speed of transition. I barely had time to look at the pod before I felt myself speeding toward it.

  Bang. Everything went dark for a moment. When I opened my eyes, I was in the pod, immersed in fluid.

  Systems active, my brain seemed to say.

  And Michael Malone was reborn.

  An android.

  The pod drained of fluid and the lid sprang open. I thought I would splutter and gasp for air, but my artificial circuits simply noted the change in the oxygen levels and adjusted my breathing accordingly. I stepped out semi-naked, wet from the fluid but drying fast. On the far side of the bunker, in the control room, I saw Will Reynard holding his throat. At that point, my memory banks kicked in and I remembered why I’d jumped. Instantly, like a car slipping out of a bend and engaging traction control, the threat of danger triggered a whole new sense of what my body was capable of. The opportunity to shift reality and escape the hazard was no longer a wild card but simply the most presentable and sensible option. Unlike previous danger moments when I might have panicked and anything could have happened, my logic filters assessed the situation and I calmly imagined an alternative reality in which the air vents were open but the door locks closed. In a jolt it was done. The warning lights stopped flashing. The alarms cut off. I saw Reynard and Preeve taking gulps of air. As Reynard looked up, I closed my eyes again and pictured myself on the wasteland outside, fully clothed and fifty feet from Hartland.

  The flute playing stopped. He stretched out his hand, the gray arm floating like the tail of a kite. The flute changed into a barren twig. He dropped it and turned around.

  “What took you so long?” His voice was harsh and alien, shaped by the perfect O of his mouth.

  “Stuff to do. Major refit.”

  He tilted his pear-shaped head.

  “Isn’t this just typical?” I said. “You wait a few millennia for the perfect android and then two come along at once. Only this one’s stronger than the one you ‘terminated.’”

  “You sound threatening, Michael. I thought we were allies?”

  A cold wind skittered across the pebbles.

  “That was before you wiped out my father and tried to tear Freya apart.”

  “The crow lives? You saved her?”

  “Reynard did. Any moment now, she’ll find her way out of the bunker’s air vents. She’ll want to claw your freaking eyes out, but this is strictly between you and me.”

  I blinked. In the space beside us, a life-size tree grew out of the pebbles, the image of the one in the Tree of Life painting. On the branch where the single black bird would have sat, I had pictured Freya with a white-tipped tail.

  Aaar-raark?! she cried, appearing there. Michael, what’s happening? Why can’t I fly?

  Her feet were firmly attached to the branch, exactly the way I’d imagined it.

  “This is folly,” said Hartland. “Why do you protect her? I control the hive. You cannot defeat me.”

  Stipples of light began to fall on the pebbles. Hartland glanced at the tree to see dozens of glinting crowns, sprouting like blossoms in the patchwork swirl of branches.

  “Take your pick,” I said. “Each of them represents a different way to die.”

  The taunt angered him. “You think you’re the only one capable of tricks?”

  He sucked in through his mouth and a gale ripped through the Tree of Life, scattering the crowns in a blizzard far across the pebbles. Strands of loose algae left by the tide rose up and dragged them down under the rocks.

  But when it was done and the wind had dropped, one crown clinked gently across the stones and came to rest halfway between us. Purple-colored dragons ran around its rim. A black crow feather skirted the breeze and landed within the circle.

  “Good choice,” I said.

  I looked up into the barren sky.

  The cry of a lone crow grazed the wilderness.

  “A crow?” said Hartland.

  “The flock,” I said. Dozens were appearing, from all directions.

  Ark! screamed Freya, beating her ever-restless wings.

  But I would not let her leave the tree.

  “What are crows against me?” said Hartland. And he raised his hand and sent a bolt of energy through the air, making it fork and fork again to catch every approaching bird.

  They lit blue and silver, silver and blue. But I was shifting their reality at quantum speed and they kept on coming, a rain of black.

  “Listen to their call,” I said calmly.

  Arrk-ark-raark! Galan aug scieth.

  I am you and you are me.

  Two birds collided in midair.

  But they did not fall or break a wing; they merged into one bird. One bigger crow.

  Again and again it happened. And those that had merged, merged again with others, until the few that remained came screaming their terrible vengeance on Hartland — and finally merged with me.

  By then, I was already transforming. I had called upon the ultimate power of the scale, naming one intention only. Into that intention I poured all the love I had for my father, all the sorrow I felt for my mother, all my commitment to do what was right by Freya and Raik and their flock. And so, with unflinching conviction, it happened. I made myself turn beyond the shape of a bird and into the body of a fearful dragon.

  Hartland backed away, his transparent thoughts reaching into the multiverse, seeking a corner where he might hide. But he was mine to hold, to bind to the stones. Amadeus Klimt had been right about one thing: I was forty times more powerful than Hartland to begin with, forty thousand times more powerful now. With the strength of my mind alone, I reached into the monster’s body and called out the Mleptra. They spilled from its mouth and ears and eyes, and appeared as blooms all over its skin. I called a tide of water from the distant sea and sent the Mleptra into the ocean, to do good among the sentient creatures there. And as Hartland turned to run from me, I reclaimed the dragon auma from him. I opened my jaws and blew a ravaging fire, a fire that turned his bones to ash but his skin to stone, leaving him a statue, hollow in the wilderness, looking forever at the gray horizon, looking for something he would never see.

  And when it was done, I released the crows and set myself for one more shift of reality. One final act of strength and kindness that would exhaust every scrap of power I possessed, but bring closure to all concerned.

  I called upon the scale and transformed again.

  And when this was done, the world was still, the Tree of Life gone, the gray skies calm.

  Freya was in flight and I was with her.

  But this was just a small part of the change.

  The rest was at home, still waiting to be seen.

  Ark! I cried and we circled inland.

  North again.

  To Holton.

  We landed together on the roof of the garage, disturbing no one in the garden below. The sun was out, the kitchen door open. Lavender flourished tall in the borders, pansies fluttered i
n the window boxes. Josie and Melody were playing on the lawn, blowing soap bubbles at each other. Chantelle came out of the kitchen, carrying a tray of soft drinks in tall glasses, pigtail straws curling out of each one. She was wearing blue jeans that ended in a cutaway V at her calves and a plain white blouse that looked too big but was somehow right.

  She climbed two steps to the patio area and put the tray down on a table shaded by a wide green umbrella. Adam Mulrooney was sitting beneath it, relaxing in a pale blue T-shirt and shorts. He was talking to Will Reynard, who was wearing a beige linen suit, a folded newspaper on his lap.

  “Girls, your lemonade,” Chantelle said.

  Melody turned toward the table. “Uncle Adam, look at this one!” She wafted a giant bubble his way.

  “Whoa, that’s a monster,” Reynard laughed.

  Mulrooney pulled a straw from a glass. He sucked it dry, then used it to blow the bubble even higher.

  It floated toward the garage, a fragile sphere of purples and greens. It popped in front of Freya. She shook a droplet of soap off her beak.

  Melody clapped for joy. “The birdie popped it, Uncle Adam.”

  “Much to its surprise, by the look of it,” he said.

  Reynard smiled. “You get many of those? Crows?”

  Mulrooney took a sip of his lemonade and nodded. “They nest in the trees all along the lane.”

  “Interesting birds. I always think there’s more to them than meets the eye.”

  “I like them,” said Josie. She cupped a hand above her eyes and turned our way. She was wearing a summer dress and looked so pretty. Her freckled arms were tanned, her hair a little longer than usual.

  Mulrooney pulled a ringing cell phone from his pocket.

  “Is that them?” Josie gasped.

  Mulrooney put the phone to his ear and nodded. “Hi, where are you? Okay, cool. I’ll meet you in the drive. No, we’re in the garden, guzzling your lemonade. Yeah, Will’s here. His flight leaves at five. Yep. Sure thing. See you soon, buddy.” He cut the call and stood up. “They’re at Poolhaven crossroads.”