The Dragon Book (8 page)

Jonathan Stroud is one of the most popular and acclaimed authors in young adult fantasy today. He’s best known for his Bartimaeus Trilogy, depicting the adventures and misadventures of a genie, and including
The Amulet of Samarkand, The Golem’s Eye,
and
Ptolemy’s Gate,
but his stand-alone novels include
Heroes of the Valley, The Last Siege, The Leap,
and
Buried Fire.
He’s also written several illustrated puzzle books for young readers, including
The Viking Saga of Harri Bristlebeard
and
The Lost Treasure of Captain Blood,
and one nonfiction title:
Ancient Rome,
in the Sightseers series. He lives in Great Britain.

In the powerful story that follows, he takes us along with a grimly determined dragon hunter out on a dangerous job—one that may turn out to be
more
dangerous than he had ever imagined it could be.

OF the victim’s body, only scorched bones remained, and these had been neatly stacked in the refuse bag for disposal in the trash. The pelvis lay at the bottom, with the leg and arm bones set diagonally across to form a platform for the skull. The ribs, vertebrae, and smaller fragments had been piled around the skull in snug, intersecting layers, but the arrangement had collapsed when Bob Choi opened the bag.

Bob made a sad, dispirited sound behind his teeth. He removed a glove, and, with the tips of his fingers, touched the dome of the skull. Just the faintest trace of heat. So—one hour since the feeding, maybe two. The creature would be soporific in its room.

Bob bent low, so that his long coat sighed and whispered in the alley dirt. The smell upon the bag was fresh and strong: pitchstone, copper sulphate, a subtle mix of other mineral residues. Not a hatchling, then. An old one, subtle and experienced … Bob Choi clicked his tongue against his teeth.

Straightening, he looked up at the apartment block that rose above him in the rain, a slight, stoop-shouldered man with dark, receding hair. Small drips of water beaded his forehead and ran across his face. He did not move to brush them away but held himself still and watchful. His face was doughy, soft and unspectacular, his eyes weary and a little lined.

From a window on the fourth floor of the apartment building, an orange-yellow radiance gleamed. It might be a simple light or lantern; then again, it might not. Bob Choi shook his head, blowing out his cheeks. Why couldn’t they stick with legal meat? They didn’t
have
to kill, and no one would be any the wiser if they just stayed quiet—their cloaks worked all too well. But no, they were beasts, of course; their hunger was ungovernable. They had to screw up every time. Some of them took years to show themselves, but it always ended the same way. With his gloved hand, he patted the pockets of his coat to check the location of the weapons. Always the same way.

He grasped the bag, and, heedless of the rattles and cracking of the shifting bones, dragged it down the alley to a recessed doorway out of the rain. Slinging the bag into the corner, he climbed the step and took up position, watching the apartment block. A few minutes passed. Drizzle dropped from an iron sky. A hundred yards away, the crowd noises on Bryce Street rose and fell. In the silence of the alley, Bob Choi allowed his hand to slip beneath the coat and draw out the silver flask. It was not a good time for it, but the cold and fear needed pushing back a little. No one would know. He set the flask to his lips.

“Mr. Choi.”

Bob Choi coughed, swore, jerked round, right hand darting to his coat. A young man stood beside him, close enough to touch. He looked the same as he had that morning and the night before: trim, blue-eyed, with blond hair slicked back behind his rimless glasses, his suit crisp, uncreased, his face bleached clean of expression. As on the previous occasions, he held a paper packet in his hand.

Bob shoved the flask from view. “How do you
do
that? I should have heard you.”

“That’s not your talent, is it?” the young man said. His brow corrugated above his little nose. “You know you’ve got to keep your gloves
on
, Choi. Regulations. You’re breaking the fifth protocol. Putting me at risk.”

Bob put his glove on. He said, “What have you got for me, Parsons?”

“Szechuan noodles. Beef and ginger. Coffee.” The young man opened the paper packet and took out a polystyrene tray, covered with film.

“Good. I’ve been the only one round here
not
eating.” Bob indicated the bag.

The young man inspected the contents, frowning with distaste. “The estate agent?”

“I should think so. Noodles, please. I’m starved.”

Despite the hand being safely encased in its black leather glove, the young man passed over the tray with ostentatious care, keeping his fingers out of reach and darting them back quickly. Bob said nothing. He bent a little forward to shield the noodles from the rain, picked up the little plastic fork, and began to eat. The young man stood silent, watching how the steam rising from the food veered sharply aside before it reached Bob’s face, how it rounded the contours of his head at speed and continued rising. There was a layer of cold, clear air around Bob’s skin that the steam could not penetrate.

Bob’s mouth was full. He coughed and swallowed: “Coffee too, you said?”

“Yes.”

Bob nodded, twisting noodles savagely, forking them into his mouth. “Okay.”

The young man said: “I’ll come again at nine. Will you be here or back in the street?”

A shake of the head; the last of the food was shoveled in, soy juice drunk, the tray tossed aside. “I’m not waiting any longer,” Bob Choi said. “I know which one it is.”

The young man had bent fastidiously and was picking up the tray. He looked up sharply. “You do? Who?”

“The old man in 4A. He’ll be up there now, fat as a snake from the feast.”

The pale brow furrowed. “Mr. Yang? Did you see him leave the bones here?”

“No. I was round the front. I missed the drop. Give me the coffee, please.”

The young man stared at his feet, moved a slim black shoe. “We don’t want another mistake, Choi.”

“There won’t
be
another mistake. It’s Yang. I watched him on Bryce this morning, shuffling along in his little slippers, all white-haired and frail. Ahh! This is hot.” Bob wiped coffee from his mouth. “It’s in the way he
walks
, Parsons.”

“
I’ve
seen him walk,” the young man said. “I didn’t notice anything.”

“It’s in the way he walks,” Bob Choi said again. “It’s in the jerky way the shoulders swing, the way the skinny neck cranes out as the head moves side to side. You’ve seen crocodiles at the zoo, Parsons? Seen tortoises? Watch how they move. You can get glimpses even through the cloak, if you look hard enough. If you know what you’re looking for.”

Parsons said: “I don’t like this. There are others it might be just as easily. Zhou on the fifth floor fits the pattern: he’s a loner too—solitary occupation, background hard to trace. All fits. And the woman, Lau, on the fourth floor opposite to Yang. Records say she was in Shanghai during the last hunt there. Lived in the same suburb as the victims. Now she’s here. No record of her travelling with the airlines.”

Bob Choi shrugged; he stared at his cup. “Maybe she took a boat. Or walked.”

“Or,” Parsons said, “she flew.” He folded the paper packet neatly with pale fingers, placed it in the empty tray. “If you wait till tomorrow, Burns can be here. They’re bringing him in from Hanoi.”

“I’m not waiting for Burns. This is a fresh feed. Yang’ll be slow and torpid now.”

“He’ll still be torpid when Burns gets here,” the young man said. “
If
it’s him.”

“I’ve seen him walk,” Bob said, stubbornly. “There won’t be two of them.”

The young man’s glasses flashed as he glanced toward the apartment block. His voice was bored. “Well, I won’t try to dissuade you, Choi. If it’s Yang, go kill him. But don’t run to me for help if you mess it up.”

Bob had his head back, draining the last of the coffee. He held the cup out. “Here. Seeing as how you hate a mess.”

He looked across. The alley was empty. The young man and the bag of bones were gone.

IN the broad, lit canyon of Bryce Street, umbrellas were up against the rain. A hundred gold and scarlet disks spun and bobbed above the pavement and across the thoroughfare, reflected to infinity in the mirrored glass of the cafes and pleasure-bars. There was a swish of skirts and a pattering of canes. Laughter tumbled over Bob Choi as he slowly climbed the seven steps to the entrance of the apartment block, a hunched figure in a long black coat, hatless, with weary pouches beneath his eyes.

A gloved hand pushed gently at the door. No luck: locked fast, opened electronically by switches in each apartment. On the wall hung a rank of buzzers, each with its room and name tag, some typed neatly, others scrawled. The lettering for
4A: Yang
, was written in blue ink—an ornately cursive script, sinuous and flexible. Bob stared at it briefly, then dropped his gaze to the lowest label.
1C: Murray, Caretaker.

The noise of the buzzer was ugly and indelicate. While he waited, Bob Choi stared up at the rain and the wall of the building: big brownstone blocks, rough-hewn, easy enough to climb if necessary. A voice sounded in the intercom. “Yes?”

Bob bent close. “Parcel delivery, sir.”

“Who for?”

“You, sir.”

“I haven’t ordered anything.” The voice was curt. “Oh, hell—wait there.”

Bob Choi waited on the step. From an inside pocket, he took a pen and a small slip of yellow paper. Then he removed the glove from his right hand.

The door opened. A man in a crumpled brown suit stood there. He had fair hair, red cheeks, and bloodshot, raddled eyes. He regarded Bob Choi with blank hostility.

“Where’s the parcel?”

“In the van, sir. If you could just sign this.” Bob Choi proffered the pen and paper. Behind the man’s curtain of alcohol, he smelt faint traces of bitumen and sulphur—the usual chemical tang—drifting down through the darkness of the hall. He glimpsed the stairwell at the far end.

“Where’s the van? I don’t see a van.” But the man took the paper, then the pen, his hand brushing against Bob Choi’s fingertips as he did so. He frowned, first at the blankness of the paper, then at the onrushing chill coursing through his blood, the numb cold enveloping his brain. Bob Choi was already stepping through the doorway as the man fell; he caught him, swung the door shut, lowered the body to the floor, all in one fluid movement, and stood motionless in the hallway, listening to the noises of the house.

Water gurgled in pipes, floorboards shifted, rats moved behind plaster; men and women breathed, moved, talked to each other in soft whispers and with voices raised in anger. Alone in the squalor of the hall, Bob Choi listened.

High in the building he heard the slow, slow rasp of shifting scales as the creature settled itself for slumber.

He stood still a moment, remembering the reptile walk of the old man in the street. He remembered the fight at Fukuoka, when the one cloaked like a little girl had risen from the pile of bones and speared Sam Johnson through the chest.

He remembered the flask in his breast pocket.

Bob Choi made a soft, sad sound. Patting the weapons beneath his coat, he stepped past the body on the floor and proceeded up the stairs.

The stairwell was empty, worn and desolate, with aged linoleum underfoot, yellowed wallpaper, light fittings made of oval glass at intervals on the walls. Each landing had a short lobby, four closed doors, a window at the end. Bob went slowly, carefully, listening to noises from the rooms, smelling the air. With each step, the rustling grew more obvious, the mineral taint hung heavier on his palate.

As he approached the third landing, he took a small black canister from his coat and sprayed its contents back and forth on the stairs, the floor, and the walls about him. A thin mist settled and vanished. Bob Choi continued climbing, past the landing and up the next flight, spraying the mist every few paces.