Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2) (58 page)

“Wait,” Ghosteater said.

He did the same thing he’d done before — flopped over and presented his throat and belly.

The dragon advanced, coming to a halt a hundred feet away. Slowly, it lowered its head and swung it to the side, training an eye on us. It studied us for a good minute.

Without warning, the air closed around me like a fist. I couldn’t move. Terror engulfed me.

Ghosteater rolled to his feet, shaking himself and snarling.

The dragon crouched, hissing.

The wolf’s strange coat stiffened into a pattern of spikes and armor. His feet appeared, each toe a metallic, scythelike claw as long as my hand. He snapped teeth that looked longer and sharper.

Williams drew on me, pulling out a huge chunk of power, and slid an atom-thin barrier around us. The barrier expanded explosively, bursting the dragon’s working. He hauled me to my feet, and we ran. Twenty strides, forty, sixty. Then Williams looked over his shoulder, gave my hand a hard jerk, and let go. I stumbled and fell. My head hit something, and I lost my grip on consciousness.

I remember flashes — the roar of the dragon’s tail swinging through the air above me; its rear foot, the size of a school bus and flat like a bear’s, pummeling the ground; the vertical slit of pupil in its dark gold eye.

Slowly, I regained my senses. I was lying on my stomach. My head hurt, but it wasn’t bleeding. Maybe it’d just hit the parched ground.

Williams wasn’t there. I couldn’t see Ghosteater either.

The dragon was circling, towering over me, practically on top of me. It was behaving strangely. I watched, head still swimming, as it went bipedal, blocking out the sun, and then lunged around and tried to bite itself.

Its tail swung over me as it spun, blasting the ground with air.

Through the clouds of dust, on the back of its left hind leg, just above the foot, I saw white.

Ghosteater.

The wolf was gripping the dragon’s flesh with his front claws and teeth and ripping away with his hind claws, like a cat disemboweling a rabbit.

The dragon roared and snapped, but it wasn’t limber enough to reach its tormentor.

It crouched, trying to scrape the wolf off on the ground. Ghosteater winked out of existence at the last moment, then reappeared, still digging away.

The dragon spun again, and the ground shook. It was only a matter of time before it stepped on me.

I struggled to my hands and knees and looked again for Williams. This time, I saw him. He was far away — well up the hill we’d been heading for.

How’d he get up there?

He was down. Not moving.

The dragon’s tail thundered overhead again, low enough to make me dive flat.

A horrible, sick feeling came over me, and I headed up the hill as fast as I could.

When I reached Williams, he was alive, but unconscious. He didn’t look good — pale and sweaty.

The ground shook around us, sending boulders bounding down the hill. The dragon had rolled onto its back. It began kicking violently, trying to fling Ghosteater off. I forced myself to look away. I couldn’t help the wolf.

“Williams?”

I felt his head. There was a wound at the back — his hair was all bloody. I couldn’t tell how bad it was. I put my ear to his chest. I could hear his heart beating fast. His breathing sounded awful — wet and raspy, with a faint grinding noise on each breath.

Not good
.

“Williams? Hey, wake up.”

I touched his face, smearing red on it.

“Hey.”

He stirred a little.

Hardened air seized me, and I was jerked away, high into the air.

For a confused second, I thought Williams was doing it. Then I remembered the dragon.

Before I could form the thought that the thing was about to eat me, I’d flown past its head and neck and been dropped on its back.

I came down hard. For several long moments, I lay there gasping, trying to get my lungs to inflate. Then I struggled out of my backpack and rifle and pushed myself up on trembling arms.

I was in a gully between rough, reddish walls dusted with green moss. Above them, there was only sky.

I panicked and started clawing my way up the wall to my left. It was twice my height and cold, hard — more like rock than skin. Weird flat bugs the size of bottle caps skittered away from my hands. I only got a couple feet off the ground before everything tilted. I fell, hitting the floor of the gully and tumbling to the far wall. Then the lurch of sudden acceleration pressed me down, and the clouds over head began flowing by, first slowly, then faster. They started getting closer, too.

It’s flying.

A strange, heavy silence descended, sort of like being underwater.

Calm down. Calm down. Calm down
.

There was no getting off, now. Panic wasn’t going to help.

Once the dragon reached a steady speed, I peeled myself away from the wall.

The vast body beneath me had a subtle side-to-side undulation.

Where’s it taking me? What should I do?

Unsurprisingly, the universe provided no answer.

Williams. Ghosteater.

I needed to find them.

If they’re here.

I thought of Ghosteater being launched off the dragon’s back leg like a bug flicked off someone’s arm.

But no, I hadn’t seen that. Last I saw, he’d been dug in like a tick, half-buried in its flesh.

What about Williams? Was he still back there, dying on that ancient hillside?

No, surely the dragon hadn’t grabbed only me. They must be here. Both of them. I had to find them.

I stood and promptly lost my balance. I grabbed for the wall and put my hand squarely on one of the bottle-cap bugs, which squished with a loud pop.

Yuck
.

I wiped my hand on my pants and started walking slowly, trying to adjust to the dragon’s movement.

The gully was fairly straight and intersected regularly by smaller passages. It ran level for about thirty feet and then began sloping downwards — gently, at first, and then more sharply. My foot slipped, and I realized I was close to sliding down the dragon’s side.

I backtracked, examining the cross passages. They were about a foot wide and full of bottle-cap bugs. They widened and narrowed with the dragon’s movement.

There was no sign of my companions.

Damn.

I’d need to climb. Hopefully the dragon would stay level.

I waved my hands over the wall, making the bottle-cap bugs scatter, and started up.

Five minutes later, I stuck my hand over the top of the wall. Something thick grabbed at it, and I jerked back.

Heart pounding, I clutched the wall. Then I looked up.

Nothing.

Cautiously, I stuck up just my fingertips. The feeling was there again — more of a pushing than a grabbing, really.

Nothing bad happened — or nothing worse, anyway.

Slowly, I gripped the top and pulled up my head.

Some force hit the back of my head and parted around it, blowing my hair forward. My ponytail rippled against my cheek in slow motion instead of whipping around, as might happen if you stuck your head out a car window.

I struggled to breathe. The air felt thick and syrupy.

A craggy, uneven surface stretched away ahead of me.

As I watched, the surface began to rise. I started peeling away from the wall and pulled my body back in. The dragon was descending. Its new angle showed the whole surface of its back. Beyond that, I could see its great tail lashing in a powerful serpentine pattern.

It really is swimming like a crocodile
, I realized. It had thickened the air to something like a fluid and was swimming through it — a river in the sky.

A cloud passed just overhead, swirling violently in the eddies of the dragon’s working. Once it cleared the cloud, the dragon began ascending again. Maybe it couldn’t work air that was too wet.

I lowered my head.

I couldn’t go up there. Breathing the thickened air was almost impossible, and the force of it hitting my whole body would probably sweep me right off the dragon.

Carefully, I lowered myself back down the wall.

I stood for a minute, feeling shaky. Then I headed to the cross passage that seemed most promising. It was about a foot wide when the beast’s back was straight but narrowed to half that as the body flexed. I couldn’t tell exactly how long it was. Seven or eight feet, maybe. I’d have to shuffle through sideways. Really fast.

I counted. The passage was at its widest for just a couple seconds.

This is crazy. Who knows what’s on the other end? It could be just as narrow.

I sat down.

I thought of Williams lying somewhere, gasping for breath.
You’re about to get me killed
, he’d said.

I stood back up.

I remembered a bad choice I’d made in the not-too-distant past. It had gotten a friend killed and half a little world destroyed. It had almost gotten me killed too.

Sometimes the smartest thing to do is nothing. Sometimes the best choice is to sit your ass down and wait for help. It’s not heroic. It’s not exciting. It doesn’t make you feel strong and in charge of your destiny. But sucking doesn’t make something wrong.

What could I do for Williams, anyway? I wasn’t a healer. Would I sit there and hold his hand? He’d probably rather be alone.

Better to wait for Ghosteater to find me.

I sat back down.

Something that felt like an eternity crept past. Then another.

Damn it. This isn’t right.

I dug my first-aid kit out of my pack and slung my waterskin over my shoulder. Then I took a couple deep breaths and dove into the passage. I shuffled sideways as fast as I could, realized the gap was closing, panicked, tripped, and fell. I landed halfway out the far end, accompanied by a small avalanche of bottle-cap bugs I’d scraped off the walls on the way down. The first-aid kit landed on my head. The passage reached its minimum, giving my thighs a hard squeeze. Then it opened again, and I jerked my legs out.

The bugs legged it back to the walls — except for the ones I’d landed on. I moved off the squishy mess and then drew my knees up and rested my aching head on them, waiting for my heart to stop racing.

I looked around. I was in a gully very much like the one I’d left.

I explored it end to end and found nothing — just more passageways like the one I’d come through.

I walked back toward the center, swaying with the slither of the dragon’s body and eyeballing the passages leading tailward. I decided which was widest and lunged through before I had time to worry about it too much. This time I didn’t fall.

The gully on the other side was empty. I chose another passage and went through.

I found Williams in the tenth gully. He was lying face down, one shoulder angled awkwardly up against the back wall. He was still wearing his pack.

At first, I thought he was dead. But once I knelt beside him, I could hear his shallow gasps.

I used my knife to cut his pack’s shoulder and waist straps. Removing it seemed to ease his breathing a little.

Gently, I tried to turn him over, but moving a person that large gently was impossible, at least for me. It took a major heave.

He landed on his back and made a pained sound. His eyes opened slowly, and with a struggle, managed to focus on me. I saw him mouth my name.

He was clearly in bad shape.

I had no idea what to say, so I just said, “Hey,” and then, “Yeah, it’s me,” and then, “How are you?”

Way to be an idiot.

I opened my first-aid kit. Tourniquet, airway tube, rubbing alcohol, bandages, sutures, scissors, tape, antibiotics … I had nothing for him.

Why couldn’t I have been gifted in healing?

I raised my head and found him watching me.

His left hand twitched, so I took it. What else could I do?

His lips moved, and I bent down. It took several tries, but finally I understood.

“Weapons.”

“You want me to get your guns?”

His eyes said,
Yes
.

I unsnapped the restraining strap and pulled his sidearm. It was the Glock 34 he always carried.

I sat there holding it. A suspicion grew.

“You’re not going to ask me to shoot you, are you?”

The answer was plain from his expression — that wasn’t what he wanted.

I looked down at the hard red flesh beneath us. “I really don’t think a few rounds in the back are going to do much to this thing.”

An even-on-my-deathbed-I’m-afflicted-with-idiocy look passed over his face.

Then he lost consciousness.

I looked at the gun in my hands. It was small and boxy and inert. It didn’t radiate evil, or hunger, or power. It didn’t radiate anything at all.

Dragons look like death. Dinos too. And Ghosteater. Even a minor power like Chasca had
death-bringer
tattooed all over her. In comparison, the Glock looked like a toy.

It wasn’t, of course. It had taken centuries for the human powers of the S-Em to figure out that human technology was as dangerous as anything they could muster, but they’d gotten there eventually.

Had the dragons gotten there with them, or were they out of the loop?

I undid Williams’s belt, removed the Glock’s holster, and added it to my own.

As carefully as I could, I unbuckled his shotgun holster and eased it out from under him.

Why hadn’t I done that before turning him over? Dumb.

I use my knife to poke some new holes in the holster’s straps and put it on. I wasn’t going back for the rifle, at this point. The shotgun would have to do.

True to form, Williams had made himself a walking ammunition depot. I found six full magazines for the Glock in his pants pockets and a bandolier loaded with fifty shotgun slugs in the top of his pack. I poked through the rest, hoping he’d inherited a grenade from Terry, but was disappointed.

I set the pack down, and it slid slowly toward the headward wall.

After a second, the situation registered. We were descending.