A Crown of Dragons Read online

  “This doesn’t look like a monster,” said Dad. “Superhuman, perhaps, but not wild. What about the dragon?”

  “That was the part we didn’t understand — until we found the cairn.”

  Dad shuffled the photographs again, bringing into the frame a picture of a mound built from hundreds of individual stones. A female archaeologist was standing beside it. The cairn was pyramid-shaped, a little taller than the woman. It didn’t look like anything special, and Lynton seemed to agree at first. “You see a lot of those in desert territories. They’re mostly markers — navigational aids through snow and the like. But an isolated one usually indicates a burial place.”

  “And this is where you found the artifact?”

  The eyecam settled on Lynton again. He ignored the question and said, “That’s the camp up ahead.”

  It was nothing much. A couple of tents in the distance.

  “Listen,” Lynton went on, “I need to tell you something. I know nothing about the people you work for or the chain of information that brought you here. I shared the news of this find with no one except Montgomery Humbel, my old professor at NMU. I’d trust Monty with my life. He’s the one who arranged for you to come and investigate, but not everyone on the team is happy about having an outsider here. My principal colleague, Enrico Rodriguez, is suspicious of your motives. Rico has Mogollon ancestry. This find has left him pretty shaken. He wants the scale put back. He believes it was buried to protect the Mogollon. He thinks the figure in the petroglyph is a warning of what might come if we don’t return the scale to its resting-place.”

  Dad glanced at the dragon petroglyph again. “And what do you think?”

  Lynton gave a nervous laugh. “What I think doesn’t matter. What I know is, we need to resolve this before we all dissolve into lunacy. I believe in dragons and ten-foot monsters as much as I believe the world is flat or that aliens regularly visit these parts, but there’s something undeniably odd about this find. Since coming into contact with the scale, we’ve all been having vivid dreams or hallucinatory experiences.”

  Dad allowed him a pause.

  “I thought I saw my mother yesterday,” said Lynton, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “She was standing in the desert, a few feet from the tents, like she’d just grown out of the ground. She stared right at me, the hem of her dress flapping around her knees, white hair flowing freely in the wind.” The jeep bounced. Lynton swallowed hard. “She’s been dead for six years, Steve.”

  “Your father was working undercover,” Klimt explained, “using the name Stephen Dexter.”

  The eyecam bobbed. Dad brought a photograph of the scale to the top of the pile. “You’ve all handled it?”

  “Minimally.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Boxed, in the main tent.”

  Dad nodded. “Not everyone will share the opinion of Rodriguez. Surely you’d like to see the site fully excavated and the scale in a museum?”

  Lynton drew a breath. “If this … thing is what the Mogollon drawings suggest, it will blow the earth’s natural history apart, and the theory of human evolution with it. I’d share a find like that with anyone who wants to see it. But this is New Mexico. Roswell territory. You’ve got Zone 16 just two states west. Every spook you’ve ever heard of has passed through here. If the wrong kind of people get hold of the scale, it will never see a museum, you can be certain of that.”

  The jeep pulled up in an arc of dust.

  “That’s Marie,” said Lynton. Dad’s eyecam settled on a youngish woman with straw-colored hair tied up in a knot. She was wearing jeans and a battered green jacket, thick socks bunching out of her boots. She seemed disoriented, as if she’d had a knock on the head. She staggered toward the jeep.

  “Something’s wrong,” Lynton muttered. He jumped out and ran to meet her, leaving his door wide-open.

  Dad picked up a dog-eared safari hat, put it on, and stepped out of the jeep. He looked at Marie as she sank against Lynton. Fear had made dark hollows of her eyes.

  Lynton lifted her face into the light. “Marie? What’s happened?”

  “Rico,” she panted. “Taken the scale. Gone into the desert.”

  The eyecam panned the scene beyond the tents. There was no sign of anyone who might have been Rodriguez, just more parched plants and dead patches of ground.

  “Where’s Jacob?” said Lynton.

  “Jacob Hartland is the fourth member of their team,” said Klimt.

  Marie shook her head. She looked as if she might pass out at any moment. “They got into an argument. Rico and Jacob. Rico went wild, shouting stuff about the Mogollon. He cut Jacob, here.” She ran a finger behind her right ear.

  “Is he okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look after her,” Lynton said. He handed her to Dad and sprinted to the tents.

  Dad held Marie by the shoulders. “Marie?” He shook her gently to make her look up. “My name’s Stephen Dexter. I’m here to help. How long ago did this happen?”

  “Minutes,” she said, tears streaming down her face.

  “Have you called anyone?”

  She shook her head as she spoke. “Wasn’t him,” she muttered. “Wasn’t Rico. His eyes. It wasn’t him.”

  “Marie, look at me,” said Dad. “Who was it? What did you see?”

  “Monster,” she said, and collapsed into his arms.

  Klimt stopped the film there. “So, Michael, have you seen enough?”

  Enough? What was he talking about? He’d only gone and left me on the worst cliff-hanger EVER. I jumped up and touched my fingers to the screen. “Of course I haven’t seen ENOUGH! What happened next?”

  “Hartland survived. He …”

  “Not Hartland — well, I’m glad he was okay — but what happened to Dad? Did he go after Enrico or what?”

  There was a silent beat. The room lights came up. Klimt put the dragon scale back into darkness. “Read the file.”

  He tapped a brown folder lying on the desk. Inside it was a top secret file on my father, given to me by the UNICORNE director, a scary character often referred to as the Bulldog. “Why can’t you just show me?”

  “There is nothing more to show. Lynton called for medical assistance. While it was arriving, your father tracked Rodriguez into the desert, following directions to the cairn. It was dark by the time he found him. By then, the eyecam had failed.”

  “Failed?”

  “Completely. Preeve was extremely disappointed.”

  He wasn’t the only one. “But Dad got the scale and you got him out, right? You told me you flew him home.”

  “It is all in the file,” he said. “You will find some interesting parallels with your own experiences. Now you will go. Your debriefing is over. Your mother is expecting you home tonight. We will contact you when Preeve is ready to begin your neural acceleration trials. It may be several days. A period at home will be good for you after the exertions of your last mission. We have, of course, arranged a diversionary story to explain your absence during the past two days.”

  That made me snort. Combining the role of secret agent with regular schoolboy required a lot of “diversionary stories.” “What have you told her?”

  “That you have been on an orienteering challenge.”

  “What?”

  “Agent Mulrooney’s idea,” he said. “He thought a mountain hike would be stimulating for you, after the recent difficulties you have had.”

  Trust an ex-Marine to come up with that. I’d had a bad car accident and a couple of school suspensions. Slogging over rain-swept hills with my head in a map was supposed to put me right, was it? “And Mom believed you?”

  “I am your doctor,” he said. “Why wouldn’t she believe me?”

  Hmph. Easy for him to say. Hoodwinking Mom was a dangerous game. One of these days, we were going to trip up. And when we did … well, it didn’t bear thinking about. I clutched the file doublehanded to my chest.

  Klimt spo
ke a command, and a computer somewhere clicked the door open. Agent Mulrooney was outside, waiting.

  “Mulrooney will drive you home,” said Klimt. “Enjoy the rest, Michael. Happy reading.”

  Mom was her usual breezy self. “Aha, the wanderer returns,” she said the moment I stepped into the kitchen at home.

  “Um,” I grunted.

  She shook her head and sighed in her that’s my boy way. I’d been in the house for less than two seconds and already I’d gone from special agent to clueless boy-child. For once, I didn’t mind. A normal family life was still the best antidote to my UNICORNE exploits, and often a source of comfort. My grunt was a timely reminder that I still wished to be Mom’s beloved son, though I knew the response it would draw.

  “So good to have you back,” she said. “We miss his sparkling conversation, don’t we, Josie?”

  “Um?” said my sister. She had her head bent over her phone, texting.

  “Never mind,” sighed Mom. “Well, how was it?”

  “How was what?”

  She tutted. “The great outdoors.”

  Oh. Yeah. The orienteering.

  “You did go walking?” she said.

  “I was hoping they were going to tie him to a rock and see if he got struck by lightning,” said Josie.

  I started with a hand gesture and thought better of it. “It was good. Bit windy. No rain. The views of Holcombe Valley were exceptional.” (Mulrooney’s words. He’d coached me on the drive home.)

  “Oh, Holcombe Valley,” said Mom, drifting off. “Me and your dad spent many a …”

  She trailed off, as she usually did when her fondest memories of Dad bubbled up.

  “What’s that?” she said, changing the subject. She nodded at the file. It felt like a ticking bomb under my arm. Given UNICORNE’s top secret status, it seemed odd they should entrust me with something so profoundly nondigital. One stumble and …

  “Homework,” I said.

  Mom’s nose immediately wrinkled. “I wasn’t aware the school was involved in this venture?”

  “It’s not school stuff, the Bull — Klimt gave it to me. Dr. K gave it to me.” That was how she knew Klimt, as Dr. K. “Some geographical stuff he thought I might find interesting.”

  “Well, don’t let it get in the way of your schoolwork. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do, young man, after … the word we do not mention.”

  That word being suspension.

  “Put any washing you have in the basket. You can tell us about your geographical adventures over tea.”

  With a heading like CHIHUAHUAN DESERT, NEW MEXICO on the top sheet? No way.

  For a full ten minutes, I sat on my bed with the folder closed beside me. It was as if I’d gotten a crucial exam result but was too nervous to open the envelope. I kept thinking back to my interview with Klimt, remembering things he’d said about the scale — and things he hadn’t. If it was the source of my power to change reality, how had they used it on me? I’d always thought I’d inherited my abilities from Dad. Take the eye flecking thing, for instance. Klimt had told me I was able to do it because years ago I’d had leukemia and Dad had saved my life by donating some of his bone marrow to me, passing on the flecking gift in his cells. But scanning flecks of color was one thing; altering reality was in a whole different league.

  I opened the file and turned the top sheet. It contained a detailed mission report, plus a transcript taken from a Dictaphone. It looked like a scientific journal, lots of tightly spaced lines of text. I desperately wanted to read it but was just too tired right then. So I put it aside and went downstairs, into the room that used to be Dad’s study. Opposite the door was an alcove. In the alcove was a large oak desk. On the wall above the desk was a painting called The Tree of Life, by an artist named Gustav Klimt. Dad had been involved in the design and building of Klimt, the UNICORNE android version, and I was sure there was something about this picture that had influenced the project and caused Dad to name the android after the artist.

  But what?

  I let my gaze settle on the branches. They looked like you might imagine nerves to look, like the veins in my hand when I’d been connected to the dragon scale. As I held my focus, the picture seemed to change. The tree grew smaller, merging into a brain, then a forehead, then a face without eyes — the face of the Mogollon monster on the petroglyph.

  “No,” I said, stepping away from it.

  The monster widened its circular mouth.

  “NO!” I screamed, falling with a thud against the door.

  Somewhere just within earshot, I heard Mom saying, “Michael?”

  My heels dug into the carpet, my fingernails into the door.

  A hollow sound came out of the monster’s mouth, and with it just one word.

  Hartland.

  Thud. Thud. Mom pushed against the door, trying to open it against my weight.

  “Michael, what’s going on?”

  There was panic in her voice. A tiny fear that was always present, that she kept wrapped up in her constant guise of brave, single parent.

  “Nothing,” I said, rolling away. I bundled myself onto the edge of Dad’s chair, laying my arms in an X across my chest. I was shaking. Frightened. Sick to my stomach. Wondering what the heck had just happened.

  Mom rushed in and put a hand on my forehead. “You’re freezing.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “You’re not all right,” she said.

  Josie appeared at the door. “What’s up?”

  “Michael’s got a chill.”

  “Mom, I haven’t.”

  “Go and make him a hot water bottle, please.”

  “For bed? It’s only ten past five,” Josie said.

  “Josie, do as I say.”

  “O-kaaay.”

  Mom crouched in front of me, my hands in hers. “Look at me.”

  That was hard. I never could when she asked me to.

  “Talk to me, Michael. What’s the matter? I know something isn’t right with you. I’ve known it for a long time.” She shook my hands. “Why were you in here? Who were you shouting at?”

  “That picture,” I said. “I hate that picture.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at The Tree of Life. “Not crows again?” A reference to the solitary crowlike bird perched in the branches of the tree. My last mission had begun with Freya and crows. Freya. What I wouldn’t have given to have her here now.

  “No, it just … freaks me out.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Okay, I get that — but why were you shouting?”

  It’s amazing how interesting carpets can be when you really don’t want to talk to your mother. “I thought I saw something.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “A face. I don’t know.”

  She drew in her lips. “Was it your dad?”

  “What? No-oo.”

  “Who, then?”

  I glanced at The Tree of Life again, thinking back to what Lynton had said about the dragon scale causing hallucinations. Was that why Klimt had exposed me to it, to see what effect it would have on me?

  “You’re tired,” Mom said, giving up on the questioning. “And I don’t mean hill-tired. All this business at school lately, I think it’s been more stressful than any of us have imagined.”

  “Maybe.” It was a feeble answer, but agreeing to something was easier than trying to avoid the truth.

  She put her hand on my knee and rubbed it. “Just tell me one thing. Why did you choose to come in here and look at the picture if you don’t even like it?”

  “ ’Cause … he liked it,” I whispered, making it up as I went along. “It makes me think about Dad.”

  Her eyes began to look like dewy green grass. She picked up my hands again and kissed them, just as Josie walked in with the hot water bottle. “Shall I put this in his bed, as you two are having a ‘moment’?”

  “No, I’ll do it,” Mom said, breaking free. She dabbed the cusp of her eye with a tissue. “The bed ne
eds making, anyway.”

  Josie held out the bottle as though it had suddenly turned radioactive.

  Mom took it and left the room. To my surprise, Josie came and sat on the sofa. She started filing her nails. “So what’s bugging you this time, Freya or Dad?”

  “Neither. It’s that picture; it freaks me out.”

  “It’s just a picture,” she said.

  I looked at the loudly patterned branches again. “Really? It doesn’t … mean anything to you?”

  “Um … no?”

  That was a relief. Literally days ago, this very picture had gotten Josie drawn into my last mission by mistake. UNICORNE had dealt with it by using an agent called Chantelle Perdot to selectively wipe out Josie’s memories. Thankfully, it appeared to be working.

  “Sorry, I’m being dumb.” I quickly changed the subject. “Why’re you doing that with your nails? Mom’ll never let you paint them, you know.”

  Josie examined one nail up close. She’d been paying more attention to her appearance lately; ten going on twenty-one, Mom said. “I’m only filing them. What’s it to you?”

  Filing them.

  Filing.

  File.

  DAD’S FILE!

  Oh, my hairy aunt! I’d left it on my BED! And Mom was up there, sorting sheets!

  I exploded from the chair and hammered up the stairs, crashing the bedroom door wide-open.

  Mom was there, a pillow under one arm, the UNICORNE file in her hands.

  She was reading it.

  “Mom, please give me that.” I held out a shaky hand.

  She closed the file and put the pillow on the bed. She came to the door, all the secrets of Dad’s New Mexico mission, there, in her grasp. “Get into bed,” she said quietly.

  “Mom, please give me the file,” I begged.

  “No, I want to read it. All of it.”

  I tried to snatch it from her.

  “No,” she said firmly, holding it away. Her eyes drilled into mine. “I’m going to read this, Michael. Now, get into bed.”

  I didn’t, of course. I didn’t get into bed. I paced the room like someone had wound a spring in my back. What to do? In the end, there was only one option. I texted Chantelle, my first point of contact with UNICORNE. Cover blown. Mom has info file on Dad. You need to get here NOW. You need to make her forget!!!!!