Elf Saga: Bloodlines (Part 1: Curse of the Jaguar) (5 page)

Smooth, Gen.

“In my nightmare, I was buried in meat and I
was drowning and I kept trying to eat my way out but I couldn’t and
it was crushing me and I was swelling up from eating and eating and
I couldn’t move and I thought I was going to burst,” she babbles
out so fast I can barely understand her.

There are tears running down her cheeks, but
she’s trying to smile.

“Well.” I clear my throat. “You’re okay
now.”

I punch her lightly on the shoulder.

She slams against me in a full-body hug.
“Thank you for saving me. You’re like some sort of dark, brooding
angel with kitty-cat spots!”

I pull free of her and keep moving. “Yeah,
I’m going to pretend that sentence never happened.”

I take a few more steps away from her and
away from the light of her amber rod. When I look up, the torn and
tortured features of my own over-muscled face lunge out of the
darkness.

“Agh!” I jerk back and shove my hatchet
toward the face, just as Rajani steps closer and her amber light
reveals nothing more than a bumpy rock wall beyond my blade.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” she asks.

I put my hatchet away and wipe the sweat from
my palm. “Nothing.”

“We can head back if you want,” she offers
hopefully.

“No. We’re getting the ship.”

“Can we head back if I want?”

“Sure you can. Alone.”

“Poo on that.”

The path continues downward, and the air
grows stale and cold. The ground is more broken here, and we often
have to jump or climb down from one stone ledge to another. The
ravine widens and the floor gets more uneven, but there are no
roots down here, no beetles, nothing alive at all except for us,
and that has to be a good thing.

Our light falls on an old, splintered wooden
plank. A few paces farther on, we find more old boards, some of
them still hanging together on a few rusty nails.

“Random trash?” I ask.

We continue forward and find an entire wall
panel of boards still nailed together, though the whole thing looks
ready to collapse under its own weight.

“Seriously, what is this?”

Rajani shakes her head and we keep going. But
then she stops short and points her light up at a pair of heavy
beams joined by a massive wooden peg at perfect right angles. The
beams are all broken, but the joint is still here.

Rajani gasps. “This is the old windmill!”

A third windmill sighting? Damn it.

“This must be it,” she says softly. “It blew
down in a storm years ago, back before I was born, and I guess it
fell down here. They built the new windmill in the same spot, which
seems like a really bad idea now that I think about it. But yeah,
this is it.”

I nod. I have no clever insights about an old
windmill. I just really hope this isn’t going to be a running
theme… “Or is it a metaphor?”

“Metaphor?” she asks. “For what?”

Crap, I didn’t mean to say that out loud.
“Uhm. I just… A few weeks ago, I saw some windmills being built,
and then the one you live in, which works, and now this one, all
busted up. You know, circle of life. Birth, life, death. Nothing.
Shut up. Let’s keep going.”

Rajani pats me on the arm, and then leads on.
“Well, hopefully there won’t be any more metaphorical surprises
down here.”

A growl echoes up from the darkness
ahead.

“That’s no metaphor.” I sigh and shake my
head. “Screw me sideways.”

“Excuse me?” Rajani giggles. “I mean, I’m
flattered, and you’re really pretty, don’t get me wrong, we could
get drunk and make out sometime, but I like boys.”

“What?” I glance at her, and then peer into
the darkness ahead. “You didn’t hear that?”

“Hear what?”

A second growl ripples up through the
air.

“Oh, that.” She nods. “Dragon?”

“Dragon.”

“Okay.” She nods again. “Time to go
back?”

“Nope.” I grip my hatchet tighter, stretch my
shoulders, and follow the path onward. If Mother can do it, I can
do it. “You’re sure the ship is down here, right?”

“Oh, it’s definitely down here,” she says. “I
barely had time to jump clear as it crashed down into the ravine. I
watched it fall in. We’re probably pretty close now.”

“Good.”

She stays close behind me. “So, if you don’t
mind me asking, what’s so important that you need a crystal ship? I
feel like I should have asked that before we came down here.”

“I need it to find my mother,” I tell her.
“She ran off in a crystal ship, and now the only way to track her
down is with another crystal ship.”

“Oh, I see. Clever.” Rajani pauses. “Why did
your mom run off?”

“She has issues.”

“Ah.” She pauses again. “And why are you
trying to find her now?”

“I have issues, too.”

She nods. “I’m starting to pick up on that,
yes.”

We take another dozen steps or so and a pale
golden light blossoms out of the shadows above us, a huge gleaming
jewel hanging above our heads in the darkness. I squint up at the
thing, and then I smile. “Found it.”

The crystal ship is much smaller than the
Pride of Garabad. More of a big crystal boat, if you ask me. But
it’s got a hull and a deck, and lots of sharp little spokes and
fins and sails sticking out of it, all wedged against the ravine
walls, and it’s all made of one seamless piece of bright, glassy
crystal. It’s reflecting the light of Rajani’s amber rod, and we
take a moment to walk under it, inspecting it.

It’s pretty in its own way, but not as
elegant as one of my canoes, and much too angular for my taste. And
the more I stare at it, the more it feels like something that
wasn’t made by elves, something that doesn’t quite belong in the
real world.

“Well, the good news is that it can still
fly, I think,” Rajani says. “Most of the fins are still there. So
with enough light, it should be good to go.”

“Light?”

“It sails on light, not wind.”

“Oh.”

I shrug and grab a couple of handholds on the
rock wall. “Well, let’s go check it out.”

As soon as I lift my feet off the ground, we
hear a third growl from the darkness out beyond the crystal
ship.

“That was louder than before,” Rajani
whispers.

“Yep.” I lower myself back down to the
ground.

“Time to run?” she whispers.

“Nope.” I crack my knuckles. We’re too close
to the finish line now. “You stay here while I deal with our
growling friend.”

“Can and will do.” She nods emphatically, her
wide eyes fixed on the shadows. “Please don’t get killed.”

“I won’t get killed,” I tell her. “Didn’t you
know? I’m the hero, and the hero always lives. So don’t worry about
me.”

“Yeah. Okay. I’m going to worry anyway,
especially since I’m not a hero. But you go be a hero. I believe in
you, Gen. Good luck!”

I stalk silently toward the shadows,
muttering, “Hear that, Mother? I’m a big damn hero now, just like
you. Aren’t you proud?”

Beyond the light of Rajani’s amber rod, my
jaguar eyes can still see the faint outlines of the rock walls. The
ravine is wide enough for a half dozen bears to wander through
shoulder to shoulder, so it’s large enough for a pretty big dragon.
Too big for me, actually. But it can’t be that big because there’s
nothing down here to feed a beast that big. Right?

The shadows move, and growl, and move
again.

Damn. It is that big.

I freeze for a moment, watching the shadows
shift and slide, trying to gauge the head and neck, the wings and
tail. I don’t know if it can see me, but it can definitely smell
me. I can hear it sniffing and snorting. It growls a long,
gravelly, rumbling growl. And then it comes.

I feel the hot breath on my face an instant
before the head strikes, and I roll across the ground. The dragon’s
skull crashes against the rock wall, and the monster shrieks and
thrashes the walls with its tail. I grab my hatchet and leap into
the air, and a moment later I crash down on the dragon’s neck and I
smash the steel blade into the small soft scales on the side of the
throat.

Blood spills out over my hand, but not much.
Not enough.

I wrench the hatchet out, but I’m too slow.
The dragon is already whipping its head to the side to throw me
off, and my back slams into the rock wall so hard that my lungs
deflate and my ears fill with a high-pitched whine. I fall to the
ground, blind and stumbling, gasping for air. Something as big and
hard as a boulder smashes me in the chest, crushing me back against
the wall. The dragon’s head is covered in sharp ridges like saw
blades, and as it yanks away, the scales shred my hands raw and
tear my shirt open.

I hit the ground, still struggling to
breathe, still blinking stupidly in the darkness.

Need to get up.

Need to run.

And then the pain comes, roaring out of
nowhere to set my skull on fire from the inside. The pain lances
through my head right behind my eyes and the shadows start to swim.
My brain pounds on my skull, my ears fill with watery noise, and
the entire universe begins to turn and shake and shiver around
me.

No, not now!

I kick and claw at the dusty ground, leaning
drunkenly as I get to my feet, but in the darkness there’s nothing
to see, nothing to focus on, no way to tell my screaming brain
which way is up and which is down, so I topple and fall, even as my
legs try to outrun my dizziness. I fall on my side as bright
flowers of color blossom across my field of vision and an unsteady
whine fills my ears.

This is a bad one. Worse than when I fell out
of the saddle. Much worse.

The shadows move again and I can’t even begin
to stand up, let alone run or fight. Through the bright blurs in my
eyes, I don’t see so much as feel the dragon’s open maw plunging
down toward me. So I kick, and I kick some more, and I get
lucky.

I kick my legs up and somehow my boots catch
on the dragon’s mouth, my right foot braced against its upper lip,
my left boot on its jaw, and I scream every shred of jaguar
strength I have left into my legs, pushing them apart with every
burning thread of my soul as my brain peels itself apart like an
onion on fire and the acrid taste of vomit fills my mouth.

The sound that follows is horrific. Cracking,
popping, tearing, splattering. For a second I think it’s me, my
body tearing apart, but it’s not. Suddenly the resistance on my
feet collapses. The dragon’s jaw snaps and breaks. The monster
pulls back, wailing and gurgling and wheezing. As it thrashes and
flails, I feel the ground under me shudder and groan, and I wait
for the creature to stomp on me in its panic, but it doesn’t.

The monster screams and the ground shakes,
but all I care about is the pain in my head. I wish I could just
make myself black out and get it over with, but I’m still awake,
still moaning and shaking, still clawing at the sides of my head,
still shivering…

I see the fire swirl in the dragon’s throat,
behind its broken jaw full of white daggers and a tongue forked
like a tree shattered by lightning. The fire swirls, turning lazily
in the darkness, and then it comes at me, flies at me, roars at me,
and darkness becomes light, and the pain in my head becomes a new
pain in my skin, just for a second, and then the pain is gone.

The fire is gone.

Everything is dark and still.

I’m still. Numb and hard and empty.

I can hear the dragon thundering and smashing
its way back down into the darkness of the deeper ravine, and a
moment later it’s gone and I’m alone.

I shiver. And shiver. I can’t stop
shivering.

My vision begins to fade into a white haze as
the whine in my ears grows louder, and I inhale slowly and scream
with dry, papery lungs, “Rajani!”

It takes a minute, but she comes running and
she brings her light, so as she kneels beside me I get a brief
glimpse of my scorched clothes and something that is red and black
where brown skin used to be.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no!” She’s crying and
shaking.

I claw at her with a hand that doesn’t look
like my hand. “Healing now… please.”

She covers her mouth. “I’ve never… never this
bad… never like this… I don’t know…”

I grab her wrist and squeeze it as tight as I
can. “You. Can. Do. This.”

“I can heal, I can, I can heal, but this it
just… so much blood…”

“Rajani! Now!” I’m fading. I can feel myself
slipping away, sliding down into the darkness.

“I’m sorry, it’s just that this is my first
time healing something this bad.”

“Just get it right,” I bark at her as my
vision goes.

And she wails back, “No one gets it right the
first time!”

And I’m gone.

And…

And…?

And I’m back. I open my eyes, not sure what
sort of dream I was just having.

I see my hands on my belly, and I move them,
and touch them. They’re both fine. Skin brown and smooth, spotted
like a jaguar. So maybe I just dreamed that I…

I see the blood on the ground.

No. It was real.

I prop myself up on one elbow and frown at
the shirt draped over my chest. It’s Rajani’s shirt. I see my own
shirt balled up nearby, blackened and shredded. The borrowed shirt
lying on my chest slips down as I sit up, and I see the scars, the
twisted and bubbled white flesh on my left shoulder and arm and
breast and belly. I touch it gingerly, but it feels firm and
strong, and strangely smooth.

My fingers travel up my neck, feeling the
smooth scar tissue, up to my cheek…

Wait. Something’s… I close my right eye and
everything goes black.

Oh shit.

My left eye is blind. It’s still there,
rolling around behind my eyelids, but it’s completely blind.

Oh shit.

I’m half blind.

But I’m alive. Still alive. I shouldn’t be.
Because I’m an idiot. But I am, and that’s something.