Jared stiffened. Rapid footsteps carried from the hall into the room, growing louder by the second. He looked back to see Irene peeking out of their hiding place, and he signaled wildly for her to get back and close the door. She ducked back inside, leaving the door partially open.
Jared rushed to a curtain behind the throne and twisted the silky fabric around his body. Through the veil he could see Devin march into the room. His shoes clacked and echoed in the strangely quiet chamber and then stopped dead still.
The armored knight stalked from the doorway to the center of the chamber, picking up mail shirts and letting them clatter back to the floor. He pivoted toward the throne, staring as if he could see Jared wrapped in the purple fabric. With a lunge, he leaped onto the platform and then stood still with his hands on his hips. Jared’s heart thumped so hard he could feel it pulsing in his throat.
Should he fight? Should he run?
Devin suddenly leaned over. When he stood again, he held a sword in his hand—Excalibur. Its residual glow shone brightly, piercing through the veil. Devin, the lone remaining traitor, the self-styled knight, tightened his grip around the hilt, and the sword’s light vanished.
I’m such a coward!
Jared steamed.
If I were still a dragon, I’d—
Devin sheathed the sword and turned away. Jared heard the evil knight’s steps and the cackling of his maniacal laugh as he left the room. “Palin! Bring the stone!” he yelled, his voice fading in the distance.
Chills covered Jared’s skin, goose bumps that chided him, each one calling him a milksop for hiding like a thumb-sucking toddler behind his mother’s skirt. A boiling factory of rage and embarrassment sent pulses of blood toward his eyes, turning his face hot. When he was a dragon he would have sent a tsunami of white-hot fire roaring out of his mouth and nostrils to personally escort “Sir” Devin into a dragon’s version of hell.
Welcome to my inferno you sniveling caitiff!
Yet, Jared had become the sniveler, and cold sweat replaced the fiery blasts.
Do all humans feel this way? Why do I feel so small and sick?
Jared snatched a mail shirt from the ground and threw it angrily across the room, his gaze following it as it slid to a stop in front of Merlin’s chair, his empty chair.
The book!
He scrambled over the armor and frantically searched around the chair, the throne, and then back to the chair. The book was gone!
Jared fumed. It must have been Devin! He was the only person in the room, the only one who could have stolen Merlin’s diary!
I am the worst of invertebrates! I let the man I called a worm steal two of the greatest treasures in all the world!
Jared grabbed a sword from the floor and screamed, “Devin, you son of a leprous jackal! You recreant thief, plucking treasures from dead men’s bones! Come back here and fight like a man!”
Jared’s eyes shot wide open when Devin appeared at the door, his shoulders squared and his jaw firmly set around a vicious smile. A gleaming gem swayed in front of his chest, dangling at the end of a gold necklace and absorbing swirls of sparkling light. It seemed to carry his malevolence as it drew in light as easily as the evil knight drew breath.
For a moment, Jared wanted to run. He had learned some swordplay, but he had little hope of matching blades with a knight, even a self-proclaimed one! His mind battled his body, and he cursed his petrifying fear.
If I run from this serpent, I will be the worst of infidels! It is time to be a man!
He held his ground, raising his sword in a defensive posture. Devin laughed derisively and set the diary on the floor. He lifted the gleaming Excalibur with both hands, marched to meet Jared, and knocked his sword away with one swing of his forearms.
“No time to kill you properly,” Devin said. “The king’s army is closing in on the castle, so I came back here to search for an escape.” He looked past Jared toward the secret door, still ajar. “I cannot allow you to tell the king of my whereabouts, so I shall have to dispose of you without giving you a fair fight.”
Devin raised the sword again. Jared leaped forward, tackling the evil knight and wrestling him to the floor. As they fell, Jared felt Excalibur’s sting, the edge of the blade catching his neck and slicing deeply. Jared rolled on the floor in agony, blood spurting like a scarlet geyser.
Devin grabbed the diary and hustled for the escape door, closing it securely behind him while Jared lay writhing and pressing his palm against the hemorrhaging artery. The last thing Jared remembered was a dozen gauntleted hands lifting him, and then everything went black.
“Jared survived,” Clefspeare continued as the cinders on the wall faded to black, “but he was not the same man. He vowed never to hide from danger again nor fear any weapons of this earth.” Clefspeare relit the torch with a fiery snort, and everyone in his audience rubbed their eyes to adjust to the light. “He learned the ways of men and lived as one for over a thousand years, only to be returned to the draconic state you see before you now. Irene watched the cowardly Devin rush right past her, and she ran to help her adopted brother, carrying him to the physician with the help of the king’s knights who arrived only moments later. She, like Jared, married a normal human over a thousand years later, and she gave birth to a daughter, whom they christened—”
“Bonnie,” the professor finished.
“Yes. Bonnie. And she, like my son, has dragon traits. Billy has fiery breath with protective scales in his mouth, while Bonnie has dragon wings and can fly.”
“Wings hidden in her backpack,” the professor said in wonder. “Who could have guessed?” He stared at Billy, as though seeing him for the first time in his life. “Are there any others? Any other dragon children?”
“That is a mystery. In order to maintain secrecy, the remaining dragons rarely communicated with one another. I knew that Irene had a daughter, and I had heard rumors of other children. The slayers have been obsessed with finding any that might exist, and they know such children might not always be easy to identify. There are characteristics of dragons that are not unique to our species. Humans have a portion of them, so these may be magnified when one parent is also a dragon. We are great storytellers, so their gift could be profound eloquence. You might also see unusual strength or deep wisdom. It’s hard to say what these unions might create.”
Walter jumped to his feet. “C’mon!” he said, pulling Billy up and slapping him on the back. “Show us some fire breathing!”
“Walter, be polite,” the professor warned. “Young William may find such a display embarrassing. After all, his talent is not exactly commonplace.”
Billy scratched the cave floor with the toe of one shoe. “No . . . it’s all right. I’ll show you guys.” Actually, the professor was half right. Billy did feel some embarrassment, but at the same time he felt relief, and he wanted to show off for his dad anyway.
He turned toward an empty part of the cave and stepped into the shadows. After taking a deep breath, he opened his mouth in a wide circle. With his chest muscles taut, he began exhaling slowly. A narrow stream of yellow flowed out. It grew rapidly, brightening until it became a blazing river of flames, stretching out over a dozen feet before vaporizing into a column of gray smoke. Billy pushed the fiery jet for ten seconds, his face turning beet red, before he finally closed his mouth and slapped his hand across his chest. “Whew!” A ring of smoke passed through his lips and wafted into the darkness.
“Cool as ice!” Walter shouted.
“Bravo!” the professor added, clapping. “William, that was amazing!”
Clefspeare sighed, letting a few sparks fly into the cave’s flowing air columns. “Yes, Billy, you have developed your gift quite well.” The dragon pushed on his haunches and dragged his body closer to the professor. “Now I believe you know all of the basic facts, Professor Hamilton, and Billy can fill you in on the details, but there are mysteries remaining to be solved.”
Professor Hamilton rubbed the front of Merlin’s diary and opened it to the blank page. “Now we have two of the mysterious treasures restored to us, and it’s clear that the slayers never discovered how to make these pages reveal their secrets.”
Clefspeare’s scaly brow furrowed. “Yet they have used Excalibur in a way I do not yet understand. It gave this son of Devin youthfulness and vigor, though he could not use it to transluminate his victims.”
“Then we must make sure they don’t get it back,” the professor said. “I thought perhaps your son might be able to draw the sword out of the stone.”
Billy’s heart jumped. “Me?”
The professor placed a hand on Billy’s shoulder. “I had suspected that William is in the royal lineage, and your story bears that out. It was an adoption, to be sure, but it was legal and fully binding.”
Clefspeare growled, his eyes shining like a ruby laser. “You are right; the sword must be kept out of evil hands.” His eyes then slowly dimmed, and his voice mellowed. “I believe the evil rock Master Merlin called the candlestone could be housing Devin’s light energy, his mortal essence, within its prism walls. After I recovered my strength, I searched for the cursed thing for days, but I could not find it. I can only guess that his dark henchman returned to collect his remains. If Palin and Dr. Conner are in the slayer’s service, they may have formed an alliance to restore their master. How they would use Bonnie is a mystery, but they are already using her love to deceive her. There is no greater motivation than love . . . and no greater evil than treachery.”
Clefspeare lowered his head to Billy’s eye level. “Your professor may be right about the sword and the stone. Remember Merlin’s prophecy.
A king shall rise of Arthur’s mold
The prophet’s book in hand
He takes the sword from mountain stone
To rescue captive bands
“Try to pull it out,” the dragon continued, “but if you cannot, you may use Merlin’s prayer to call me. I will help you if I can.”
Billy couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Royal lineage? Pull out a sword? Who were they trying to kid?
He dragged his toe across the dirt again. “I . . . I’ll do my best. Anything for Bonnie.”
Professor Hamilton gasped. With the diary lying open in his hands, he stared at the pages, his mouth agape.
Walter rushed to his side. “I can read it! It’s even got normal words, not that old English stuff or funny looking letters.”
“Yes,” the professor agreed, breathless and excited. “I see it now! The veil is lifted. I know we’re in a hurry, but I must read this to everyone immediately.”
Chapter 6
Heavy snow pelted the windshield as Bonnie’s father drove deeper and deeper into a dense mountain forest. The Explorer bumped along on a narrow, snow-covered hiking path and swerved around sharp, slippery bends. Nail-biting drop-offs fell away on one side and steep slopes rose on the other. The tires slipped through the deepening snow, all four wheels churning to avoid a sideways slide over a precipice.
Bonnie kept one hand in her lap, the other fastened to the armrest as she watched the deteriorating conditions through the frosting window. She was accustomed to heights, but her wings would be of no help should the SUV plunge into one of the gorges. Though she tried to hide her nervousness, she gripped the armrest more tightly with every swerve.
Ashley’s eyes stayed focused on the tree-lined path ahead rather than on the rocky cliffs below. Her folded hands seemed relaxed, her thumbs merely caressing each other through the jolting bounces. Bonnie closed her eyes. Ashley must have traveled this path dozens of times. My father’s probably driven through snow like this before.
Bonnie bit her lip. For some reason Ashley’s familiarity with her father’s new life annoyed her. Was it jealousy that her father had found a replacement daughter of sorts? Or was it distrust that her new friend could be allied with this man whom her bad memories had painted as a demon over the past several months?
The Explorer slowed to a crawl at the crest of a hill in a more open part of the forest. It then turned left onto a side path, a narrow clearing pockmarked with icy potholes. Each divot surrendered its snowy covering as the SUV bucked and bounced through them and finally stopped. Bonnie tried to find a house or a cabin as she peeked through the window’s crystals but saw only a scattering of poorly dressed trees standing around in the snow.
Her father got out, opened the left rear door for Ashley, and motioned for Bonnie to slide over and get out on the same side. Bonnie glanced to her right to see if anything barred the door on her side, but there was nothing there.
Bonnie slipped on her oversized coat and stepped out into the wintry Montana storm. Cold wind blasted her face, and her shoes sank in the snow. While she labored to pull her feet from the wet drift, her father retrieved the cases from the cargo space, handed the larger one to Ashley, and marched farther up the crude driveway. Ashley extended her free hand toward Bonnie and pulled her out to more solid ground. Snow seeped into Bonnie’s socks, weighing down her feet. She hoped their hike wouldn’t be a long one.
With snow pelting their heads and wind blowing icy flakes into miniature white tornadoes, they trudged to a head-high mound of rocks pressed into the steep upslope of the mountainside. A wooden door, no more than five feet high, had been crudely wedged into the rocks, and lumpy mortar filled the gaps between the frame and stone.
The makeshift door was so small, Bonnie thought it might open into a woodshed or a tool storage shack. Her glance fell on a large letter
A
carved in the door at waist level exposing fresh wood grain not yet weathered by Montana’s cruel winter.
Bonnie rubbed her gloved hand on the marred wood. “What’s the
A
for?”
Ashley set down her load and stretched a rubber coil that held a key chain to her belt loop. “It’s a capital alpha,” she explained, “a Greek letter. We had another entrance that we called Omega, but it’s closed now.” Using a long silver key, she unlocked the door and pushed it open on its creaking hinges. “Are you ready for a big surprise? It won’t be long now.”
Ashley’s genuine smile promised a good surprise, so Bonnie kept her hopes up. Maybe her mother really was around somewhere. Maybe this entrance led to the lab Ashley talked about, even though it looked more like the opening to an ancient mountaintop outhouse.
Her father bent over, pushed his head through the doorway, and plucked a flashlight that dangled from a hook on the inside wall. He flicked it on and ducked through the entrance. “Follow me,” he said before disappearing inside.
Bonnie peered in. All she could see in the wide flashlight beam was a downward stairway leading into darkness.
Ashley picked up her case and motioned with her head for Bonnie to follow. They both bent over to pass under the door’s upper frame, moving out of the bitter cold and into quiet stillness. “Should I close the door?” Bonnie asked softly. Even her quiet voice sounded like a trumpet in the narrow stairwell.
“Yes,” Ashley whispered.
Bonnie pushed the door until she heard the latch click in place. The waving flashlight beam bobbed down the corridor, her father’s breaths passing through it in rhythmic puffs of white. Their footsteps clopped and echoed, making their furtive march sound like a small army stomping down the stairs.
“Stay close,” Ashley warned, raising her voice. “It’s pretty far, and it gets steep in places, but it levels out in a few minutes.”
Bonnie didn’t count the number of stair steps exactly, but she guessed it was getting close to two hundred, with each wooden plank becoming shorter and narrower than the one before. As Ashley had said, the descent eventually leveled out, the stairwell smoothing into a narrow tunnel they had to negotiate single file. Loud drips echoed from somewhere up ahead as if big water drops plunged into static pools, and they played a rhythmic harmony to their crunching steps. The floor felt like crumbling asphalt, but at least it was dry.
They marched on in silence. The darkness of the corridor seemed to seep into Bonnie’s mind. How difficult would it be to climb back to the surface when they returned . . . if they returned? A feeling of dread crawled across her body, like roaches skittering across a dirty kitchen floor. Something was wrong, desperately wrong.
Professor Hamilton cleared his throat and squinted at the page, speaking slowly as he read.
The veil once pierced is split for good
By truth’s sharp sword it’s torn
Take care that all can bear it well
That all may be reborn
Without the sword the war is lost
Excalibur’s edge must fight
Yet not with foes of shield and sword
But those who veil the light
Bring here the sword of Camelot
To read of wisdom’s page
Without its words, instruction blurs
He stopped and pulled the book close to his face. Billy dared not breathe.
“What’s up, Prof?” Walter blurted out. “What’s the next line?”
The professor reached for the corner of the page. “Perhaps the next page will tell—”
“No!” Billy shouted, jumping toward his teacher. “Don’t turn the page! Remember the warning!”
The professor stopped and put his hand on his chest. “Yes, William.” He took a deep breath. “Of course. This page must be completed first.”
Billy looked over the professor’s shoulder, the shadow of his head bobbing on the page as he studied the mysterious script. “It sounds like we have to get Excalibur if we’re going to read the rest of it.”
Billy’s mother clenched her hand into a fist. “Then let’s get moving! There’s no telling what Bonnie might be going through while we just stand around here.” She grabbed Billy’s upper arm. “Let’s yank that sword and head west! I know a pharmacy professor who’s in for a big surprise when we show up there. We’ll give him some medicine he’ll never forget!”
Billy pumped his fist and grinned. “Mom, I love it when you’re ready to bash a few heads together!”
“Yeah, Mrs. B!” Walter agreed. “Let’s go kick some gluteus maximus!”
Ashley turned a knob and pushed open a door. Bonnie followed, stepping out of the cool corridor and into a balmy cavern. She felt the gentle caress of warm air seeping in from unseen vents. The room was dark except for a bright crack of light streaming from under a door to her left and her father’s flashlight beam meandering up the wall.
“Hit the lights, Ashley.”
Ashley’s hand appeared in the beam, reaching for a series of switches on the wall. Then, in concert with four clicks, rows of ceiling lights flashed to life, incandescent flood lamps and banks of fluorescent panels illuminating an enormous underground chamber.
Bonnie’s eyes took a few seconds to adjust. A circular laboratory about a hundred feet in diameter had been erected in the center of the cavern and elevated on a low platform. A thousand tangled cables snaked underneath like thick, black spaghetti.
The lab was a technological maze, a dizzying collection of instrument panels and glass enclosures. Everything was oriented around a point at the center where a flat marble pedestal stood, sort of a stunted ionic column about four feet high and maybe a foot in diameter.
Three instrument panels formed an arc around an inner circle, each one spaced evenly apart and about twenty feet from the center. The panels were a techno-geek’s dream come true—at least a dozen rows of dials, sliding bars, diodes, and who-knows-whatsits covering the black acrylic front.
Three tall glass cylinders, like life-sized china doll display cases, stood between the panels and the center pedestal. The panel nearest the door, covered with twice as many buttons and meters as the other two, faced the cylinder on the opposite side.
A drop ceiling, a matrix of suspended tiles and fluorescent lights set in plastic frames, floated over the raised lab area—a hovering bank of spotlights in the midst of a canopy of darkness.
Ashley gazed at the magnificent laboratory and then at Bonnie, her eyebrows raised. Bonnie wanted to make Ashley happy, so she tried to think of something nice to say, but she hadn’t come here to be impressed by a technological assemblage of gadgets from the Bat Cave. She couldn’t begin to appreciate what it was all for. For all she knew it could be a garage sale in comic book land. She wanted to find her mother, and all this gawking at gadgetry wasn’t getting her anywhere.
Bonnie took a step forward and nodded. “This is . . . amazing. Um . . . What is it?”
Ashley pulled off her coat and hung it on a wall hook. “It’s our lab. It’s the most advanced mechanical photosynthetic lab in the world.”
“Photosynthetic? You mean like what plants do to make food?”
“Very close. Plants change light energy into food. We’re trying to create physical matter from light energy in a very different way.”
Bonnie glanced to the side to check on her father. He was at a table by the wall unloading and examining the cases they had brought. She took another step toward the platform. “How does photosynthesis have anything to do with pharmacy? I didn’t know my father was into stuff like this.”
“He’s not, or at least he wasn’t. That’s why he needs me.” Ashley scooted toward the array of instruments and gestured for Bonnie to follow. “This research combines physics with chemistry, and it will take a while to explain, but it’s the most exciting project I could ever imagine. We’ve come a long, long way in a very short time.”
Ashley seated herself at the master control panel. “This panel,” she said, flipping on a switch, “controls that photo tube right in front of me.” A low hum sounded from the seven-foot-high cylinder on the opposite side of the circle, and a bright light flashed on from its smoothly curved cap, making it look like a futuristic transporter tube. The bass drone reverberated throughout the cavern, and gentle vibrations radiated from the floor and into Bonnie’s legs.
Ashley pointed to a slider bar on the panel. “If I were to move this up, the beam inside the dome would activate, becoming more and more agitated the higher I slid it.”
Bonnie’s pulse quickened as the quivering floor sent a buzzing sensation into her teeth, and tiny beads of sweat popped up on her forehead. She took off her outer coat and laid it neatly on a chair. “What does the beam do?”
Ashley flicked off the cylinder’s light, and the tremors faded along with the drone. She walked back to Bonnie and spoke softly, almost in a whisper. “It mimics Excalibur’s beam, the light energy you used to transluminate Devin.”
Bonnie bit her bottom lip until it hurt.
Excalibur’s beam? Transluminate Devin? How could Ashley know about Excalibur and Devin? And what did she mean by transluminate?
Ashley clutched one of Bonnie’s forearms and drew her close. “I know about you,” she whispered. Then with a quick look at Bonnie’s back, she added, “And your wings.”
Bonnie let out a low gasp and stepped back, but Ashley held on. “Shhhh! Don’t worry. Your father knows that I know about you, but I’ve learned a lot more than he thinks I know.”
Ashley put a hand on Bonnie’s pack. “Shall I help you take this off so you can get more comfortable? I really want to see your wings, and, besides, everyone here knows about them.”
Bonnie shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and her ears turned warm. Ever since she was little, her wings had been a secret, even an embarrassment, worse than an ugly zit or a bad haircut. But Ashley seemed gentle and sincere, so when she reached over and loosened the straps on the backpack, Bonnie didn’t pull away.
“You said, ‘everyone,’” Bonnie noted as Ashley slid a strap down her shoulder. “Is there anyone else here besides you and your grandfather and my father?”
Ashley’s hands stopped moving, but her voice didn’t flinch. “Actually . . . yes. But I’d better let Dr. Conner tell you about them.”
“Them? More than one?”
Ashley pulled the backpack away, letting it fall to the floor, and Bonnie unfurled her wings, stretching them straight back and then out.
Ashley’s eyes widened until they looked ready to pop out. “Wow! I knew they had to be big to carry your body weight, but . . . Wow!”
Bonnie’s whole face grew hot. Ashley’s gawking made her feel more freakish than ever. She bowed her head, hoping her face wouldn’t give away her thoughts.
Ashley cleared her throat, and her jaw and chin relaxed. She leaned over and whispered, “I think I know how you feel. It’s not as obvious in me, but I’m different, too.”
She spread her arms out toward the center of the lab. “Look around, Bonnie. I designed all this, and I helped build it. My brain is a freak; it works so fast, it’s like a supercomputer on nuclear steroids. The kids at school think I can even read their minds. I can analyze and deduce so well, I’m usually saying what they’re thinking as soon as they realize they’re thinking it themselves. That’s no way to make friends. Do you think any of the girls want to be around me, believing I can read their minds? No way! And the guys? Forget it! When I come around, I’ve seen them put their hands over their ears.”