Moon Dragon (9 page)

Chapter Twenty

What I saw shouldn’t have surprised me.

A thick book lay open on the floor, black smoke billowing up from its yellowed pages. My son was shrinking away in fear...and screaming for his mom.

I dashed through the reading room, nearly flying, and swept my son up into my arms and watched in amazement as the swirling, twisting smoke morphed into a monstrous, undulating, amorphous snake. Now it wove throughout the room, just above our heads. It moved and slithered and my son whimpered in my arms, burying his face into my shoulders.

I didn’t blame him. I found myself ducking from the flying, circling serpent, a serpent that seemed to only grow bigger and bigger, expanding exponentially. It also took on mass, shifting from something smoky and ill-defined, to sprouting actual scales and fangs, and two black eyes...and a flicking tongue.

Now I heard it, too. A harsh whisper, a sound that seemed to fill the room, or perhaps just my head.

“Yesss, yesss, yesss...”

Bigger it grew, until, I suspected, it was going to bust out of this very room. I found myself ducking with each passing, with each flicking of its forked tongue. My hair billowed in its slipstream.

Amazingly, Max stepped
through
it. As he did so, its slithering, coiling body exploded, then reformed again in the air above us. The young alchemist raised his hands and whispered words I could not understand—hell, words that I did not want to understand.

The flying serpent circled faster and faster. Its tongue flicked. It undulated and grew. Its black eyes were watching me, watching everything. Now its huge jaws opened wide and it struck at the alchemist’s head. I was ready to spring into action, but he didn’t need me. Indeed, he waved off the attack with a swipe of his hand, and the snake’s head momentarily exploded into smoke, and then reformed itself. Bigger than ever.

“Yesss, yesss, yesss...”

Now, Max was no longer mumbling. Indeed, he spoke loudly and rapidly and with commanding authority. I still couldn’t make out the words. I still didn’t want to make out the words.

But something was happening. The snake was slowing down. It was also shrinking. The wind in the room was decreasing, too.

“Nooo...”
it hissed.
“Nooo...”

A moment later, I watched the rapidly-diminishing creature return to smoke vapor...and reverse back into the book from whence it came. Its anguished cries disappeared with it.

When it was gone, the ancient book slammed shut on its own.

Chapter Twenty-one

It was much later.

Too late for a mom to be talking to her son about demons, black magic and cursed grimoires. But here I was, doing exactly that. Not to mention, my son wouldn’t let me leave his side, which was why I was now lying in bed next to him, running my fingers through his hair. Periodically, he would convulse and shake so violently that his teeth would rattle.

Each time he did so, I hated myself more and more.

We’d been lying like this for the past two hours. I kept waiting for Anthony to drift to sleep, but he hadn’t yet. Every so often, he let out a pitiful, cat-like mew that broke my heart into a thousand pieces. My son had been reduced to a frightened, shivering newborn kitten, and it had been all my fault. Not to mention, he kept apologizing, over and over, which he did again now.

“I’m so sorry, Mommy,” he said into his pillow, and the words came out hoarse and barely discernible.

“It’s not your fault, baby.”

“But I let it out, Mommy. It was all my fault.”

Again, I told him it wasn’t and patted him and quietly wiped tears from my cheeks with my free hand. It was all I could do to not cry in front of my son. I knew that it was important to be strong for him now. He needed to know that his mother could protect him...from anything.

“Mommy,” he asked after a few minutes, “what
was
that thing?”

I knew exactly what it was. The Librarian had filled me in, and now I considered just how much to tell my boy. I decided not too much.

“It was something that can’t hurt you, baby. Not now. Not ever.”

“It asked me for help.”

He had told me this a dozen times before, but I let him get it out again, if he needed to.

“I didn’t know what it was. I know you told me not to touch anything, and not to listen to anything, but I...”

“I know, baby.”

“I guess I wasn’t expecting something to ask me for help...and it was coming from a book.”

“I know—”

“A book, Mom. Do you know how crazy that is?”

“About as crazy as it gets.”

“You were so busy talking to Max, and he was holding your head like you had a headache or something, and all I did was open the book...” His voice trailed off and he whimpered again.

I knew what happened next, of course. The voice had asked him to repeat a word or two. And my son had...and that had been all the demon needed.

At the time, I had been worried that something else might have happened, that somehow, my son had gotten possessed, but the Librarian had waved it off, insisting the demon was back where it belonged, sealed within the book. Still, I had him check out my son, although I wasn’t sure what we were looking for. Max had given my son a clean bill of health—or, rather, a clean bill of
possession-free
health.

Another hour of whimpering and patting and mewing later, my son finally turned to me and said, “I’ll be okay now, Mommy. You can go to bed now. Or go to work. Or whatever it is you do all night.”

I smiled and kissed him on his warm forehead.

Two hours later, after finishing up some work in my office and clearing out my email—I always wondered what people thought about getting emails from me at 3:28 in the morning—I found myself standing in the open doorway of my son’s bedroom, watching him sleep, relieved all over again that all seemed to be well.

That had been close, and scary as hell, even for me.

As I was about to turn away—about to get some shuteye of my own—when my son rolled over onto his side...

And looked directly at me.

Except, he wasn’t looking.

He was staring.

I blinked, sure I was seeing things—and when I opened them again, his eyes were closed and he was sleeping soundly.

Rattled—and apparently still shaken from the night’s events—I headed off to bed.

Chapter Twenty-two

I couldn’t sleep.

And since dawn was still a few hours away, I stripped down in the shadows of my backyard orange tree, and transformed into something giant and alien and most definitely out of this world.

For those unlucky few, they would have seen a giant, hulking creature leap from the shadows of my back yard...and straight up into the sky, flapping its huge, leathery wings hard.

Now, I followed the coastline, which was always my favorite route. The cresting waves foamed and glowed under the quarter moon. The full moon was just under a week or so away.

When the werewolves play.

Well, some of them, at least. According to Kingsley, most werewolves tended to stay indoors and locked down, which made sense, since there really weren’t a lot of “vicious wild animal attacks” reported in Southern California.

There were, of course, dozens and dozens of missing persons in California...and just about everywhere else, too.

Kingsley
called tonight and, in much coded language, had let me know that little was known about Gunther Kessler in the werewolf community. Kingsley suggested, in even more coded language (he never liked talking about this stuff over the phone),
that many of his wolfie friends had been somewhat guarded when he approached them about Gunther. This confused Kingsley. He’d never known his friends to be guarded. He didn’t know what to make of it, and neither did I, although he told me again, for the umpteenth time, to be careful.

I flapped lazily, continuously.

I could have been a giant manta ray, sailing through the heavens. What I was, exactly, was not clear. I knew a creature from another world was summoned to be exchanged with my own body. A sort of parallel universe swap. I knew that my own body would be resting comfortably—and, hopefully, safely—in this other world. Presently, I did not have access to my human body, wherever it was. At least, I hadn’t figured out how to have access to it yet. Talos, on the other hand,
did
have access to his body here on Earth, a body he permitted me to take over completely.

Could I die in his world? I didn’t know. Could Talos die in our world? It was hard to say. I knew Talos could kill in our world, as we had done together on that remote Washington island, years ago.

It was, of course, enough to make my head spin.

We are together, and we are separate, Samantha Moon,
came a deep voice inside me. And not just inside my head. It seemed to surround me, fill me.
Your world is not used to the concept of duality. Or, rather unwilling to accept it.

Well, hello, Talos,
I thought.
Fancy meeting you here.

An earth idiom, I assume.

You assume correctly,
I thought.

Your inability to understand duality is expected.

Because of the physical world we live in,
I thought.

Indeed. Time and space render such concepts difficult to comprehend.

I thought:
Well, few of us—outside of our most advanced mystics—will ever fully wrap our brains around the idea that we can be in two places at once.

And yet you are, in fact, in two places at once, Samantha Moon. I would even argue three.

You’re referring to my higher self,
I thought.

Indeed, Sam. The higher self or soul or the spark of the divine or whatever you choose to call it, that which is truly you exists elsewhere.

Where?

Beyond the physical, in what some would call the energetic realms.

Is that where you’re from?

Close, Sam. My world is a hybrid world.

And what the devil does that mean?

Both physical and spiritual exist side by side. We have long since mastered how to be in two places at once, and sometimes three or four places.

Now my head really hurts.

Careful,
thought Talos,
it’s my head, too. The truth is, your world is a hybrid world, too, although your kind is slanted primarily toward the physical. But at any time, humanity could make the leap to embrace the spiritual.

Well, don’t expect that any time soon.

You might be surprised, Sam. There is greater good going on in your earth than is presently being reported.

You would think,
I thought,
from the news we see that war is just around every corner.

And is it? Is that your experience?

No,
I thought.
But it’s the experience of others—

Not the vast majority of others, Sam. The truth is, a slight shift is occurring in your world as we speak. A shift toward peace.

Not if the thing within me has any say in it.

Oh, there will be a few who will fight the shift to their last breath...but their days are numbered. But do not think of this as a war, Sam. Remember what you were once told: defeat the enemy with love.

And how do you know what I was once told?

Because I am you, too, Sam. We are one in this moment.

And you have access to my memories?

In a way, yes.

And I have access to yours?

If you so choose.

I’m not sure I can handle your memories,
I thought.
I kinda have a lot to juggle on my end.

So it seems.

What is a demon?
I suddenly asked.

A lost entity, one that has been lost for so long that it chooses to never, ever find itself.

Were they good once?

It’s hard to say, Sam. They are from God, so, of course they were once good.

Because we’re all one and all that jazz?

Exactly. But not all entities evolve. Some choose to do the opposite.

To devolve?

Something like that. But if you ask me, I secretly suspect such entities are fulfilling a role for God.

So, they were created on purpose?

Perhaps, perhaps not. I do not know. I am only postulating an hypothesis.

And since when did giant flying vampire bats postulate hypotheses?

I might be the first.

I laughed, then thought:
Perhaps they were created to be a foil?

Or to show us darkness.

Because without darkness...

You cannot see the light,
finished Talos.
But make no mistake, Samantha. Demons are real. They are powerful. And they are everywhere.

Gee, thanks for that pick-me-up.

There was a long silence as I continued up the coast, now flying high above Santa Barbara. I would have to circle back soon, but not yet. In the far, far distance, I caught sight of something else. A shadow moving through the heavens. A shadow in the shape of a...

No,
I thought.
That can’t be.

But it was, I certain of it.

It was a dragon.