N. Wilson - The Dragon's Tooth

Four men, each with four barrels, filled the air with swirling magnesium and sulfur. Flaming spheres, infant meteors, exploded against the doorjamb, the wall, the window, and poured through the door into 111. White fire erupted into sizzling rings. The walls shook. The window in front of Cyrus warped and wobbled as pale rivers of flame raced across its surface.

Cyrus couldn’t look away. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe in the sudden heat. He didn’t feel Antigone’s hands. He didn’t hear her screaming at him to get down. Not until she threw an arm around his neck and slammed him onto his back.

Blinking, he watched his sister sprawl across him, covering her head with her arms, trying to cover him with her body.

He watched the ceiling boil and crack. The walls surged and split, and Antigone’s shelves avalanched to the ground. The first flames crept into the room.

A high-pitched whine was building somewhere — piercing, painful. Cyrus pushed his sister off, grabbed her wrist, and tried to crawl toward the bathroom. The bathtub. They needed water. His sister’s books were burning. Her photo albums.

Boom .

The noise was simple enough, big enough, fundamental enough that all the other noises became part of it.

Cyrus felt his bones ripple like rubber as he fell. His gut twisted and flipped. The closet mirror ran down into the carpet. The glass in the big picture window liquefied and collapsed, splashing on the sill.

A moment’s slice later, the sound was gone and the window had refrozen, paralyzed in its fountain before hitting the floor.

Cyrus lay gasping, gripping his sister’s tense arms, watching fire dance on the wall, listening to distant sirens.

No more shouting. No more belching guns. He pulled, crawling for water.

Antigone pulled back.

“No!” she yelled. “Up, Cy! Out!” Reaching her feet, she dragged him toward the door.

“Your stuff,” Cyrus said. He tore his hands free and stood, hunching in the smoke. “Get your stuff.”

“I will, I will,” she said. The top third of the wall was in flames. “We have to get Skelton out!”

Cyrus forced his sister away from the room’s door and pressed his eye against the peephole. The glass had dripped out.

“Are they gone?” Antigone whispered.

“Maybe,” Cyrus said.

“Just go,” Antigone said. “Go!”

Wrapping his hand in the hem of his shirt, Cyrus jerked quickly on the sizzling doorknob, and the two of them staggered into charred air. The blind man — limbs impossibly bent — lay motionless beneath the truck’s bumper. A second rag-dolled body drooped off the edge of the camper. A third was facedown behind the rear wheel.

Flames surrounded the doorway to 111 and were roaring on the walkway above. Inside 111, Cyrus’s bed was on fire, the walls were scorched and flickering, and huge pieces of the ceiling had collapsed. Beneath one cracked slab of blackened drywall, they could see the bottoms of two cowboy boots.

Without saying anything, Cyrus and Antigone jumped through the doorway, kicked through the smoldering pile, and each grabbed a leg. The shins bent easily.

Billy Bones groaned in pain. “No,” he said. “Don’t pull.”

Cyrus dropped the boot.

“Tigs, let go,” he said. “His legs are broken.”

“Not broken,” Billy said. “Not—”

Both kids tore into the pile, quickly clearing the old man’s body. He was wearing a burnt and smoking blue jumpsuit, and his face was soot-covered around a pair of flight goggles. The glass lenses had melted and were hanging from the bottom rims like icicles. Two canisters were strapped on his shoulders and pinned beneath him. A cracked silver tube laced with copper wire stuck out from under his arm like the barrel of a leaf blower. Oil oozed out of its mouth.

The old man licked his charcoal lips and smiled. His teeth were gone. “Killed Pug,” he said. “The others? Maxi? Where’s Maxi? He won’t die.”

The ceiling was crackling like pinecones. Antigone coughed and pulled her shirt collar up over her mouth and nose.

Billy Bones looked at her, and then at Cyrus. “Didn’t break—” He paused to breathe, and his eyes shut. “Not every promise. Your father—”

Antigone slid her hands under the old man’s shoulder. “We have to get you out of here. Cy, try gripping under his arms.”

“No,” the old man said. “No! Listen! I have no secrets.” His voice was fading, drowned out by the popping of burning shelves, the loud breathing of flames. “Cyrus, my hands. To my neck. Hurry.” Cyrus looked at his sister. Antigone nodded. Cyrus grabbed Skelton’s wrists in the rubble. His arms were soft, boneless, like socks full of mud. As Cyrus lifted, the old man groaned, and then sobbed. Cyrus hesitated.

“Don’t stop. Don’t.” With a final motion, Cyrus forced Skelton’s hands to his throat. The old man’s fingers moved, and in the darkness, Cyrus saw a thick necklace come free. It was glowing silver. “Yours now,” Skelton said.

Cyrus blinked, confused. Antigone leaned in and took over.

She raised the old man’s hands to her brother’s neck. The necklace — the thing — suddenly moved, twisting between Skelton’s hands. “Use her,” Skelton said. “She was your father’s once.”

Heat seared against Cyrus’s skin and slithered tight around his neck. Yelping, gasping, he reached for it.

“No!” Skelton yelled. “No! Defend what I give you. With your souls.” His voice died. The thing around Cyrus’s neck was only warm now, metallic but soft, scaled, as thick as a small rope.

“Cyrus,” Antigone said, leaning close to the old man’s face. “Cyrus.”

William Skelton’s voice sank below a whisper. “Smiths. Beekeepers. Trust. Nolan.”

“Brother Bones. So dramatic in life, so he should be in death, yes?”

A man, slight, dressed in close-fitting black, stepped through the charred doorway. His accented voice was smooth despite the smoke. A four-barreled gun dangled in his left hand. Flames from the wall licked his shoulder, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“What does the dying man give to the little ones, eh?” he asked cheerfully. “William, what should their sweet souls be defending?” He cocked his head, listening. “Has he met with friend Death already?”

Grabbing Antigone, Cyrus slid away on his knees. The man moved toward them through the rubble as Cyrus scrambled to his feet. A bright smile full of very tiny teeth sparkled in the man’s soot-covered face. His eyes were ringed with a pair of empty goggles. His hair, an ashen tangle, stood out around his small head.

“Children, please remain,” he said. “I cannot find what I need. Can it be that the famous Billy Bones no longer holds it?” He pointed his gun at Skelton’s body. “If he was still keeping his charm, I would not expect to see him in such condition.”

A slab of ceiling collapsed onto Cyrus’s bed, and flaming shards sprayed around the room. Smoke swallowed everything. Coughing, Cyrus tucked his face into his arms. His eyes were blinking acid.

The man hadn’t moved. “What did old Skelton give the ducklings?” He raised his gun. “Tell your uncle Maxi.”

Cyrus couldn’t think in the smoke, without air. His brain was on fire. His lungs were bursting. Antigone squeezed his arm tight.

“Cy! Tigs! Where are you?” Dan, barefoot, wearing only a pair of sweatpants, appeared beside the truck.

Without looking, the man swung his gun over his shoulder and sent a pair of twisting fireballs spiraling through the smoke above the truck and into the trees across the road.

Spitting into his shirt, Cyrus pulled his sister. The gun didn’t matter. Smoke mattered. Fire mattered. The two of them staggered toward the man, toward the crumbling doorway. Cyrus was ready for an impact. For a struggle. For a fireball in his stomach.