N. Wilson - The Dragon's Tooth

Instead, they shot through the doorway, careened into the truck, and tripped over the dead man’s legs. Dan’s arms wrapped around them and they were surrounded by cool, moving air. There were stars again. Lights were flashing. The world was full of sirens.

Bigger arms than Dan’s picked Cyrus up and tore him free of his sister. He could hear her yelling. She wanted to go back in. But even louder voices were shouting orders and diesel engines were throbbing and red lights were whirling and someone was wrapping something cool and wet around Cyrus’s face, pressing a mask over his mouth.

A fireman set Cyrus down on the hood of a police car. “Stay here! The paramedics will check you.” And the man was gone.

Cyrus tore his mask off. A skyscraper of smoke was rising from the Archer. The rooftop was an angry mob of bonfires. He slid down to unsteady feet, but the oxygen had cleared his head. Where was Tigs? Where was Dan?

Men with masks were carrying a body out of 111. Cyrus slapped at his pocket. No keys. Did he care? He tore off the thing around his neck, but it twisted in his hand, winding itself tight around his wrist. It didn’t matter. The door to 110 was still open, and his sister’s pictures were worth more than a dead old man’s keys or charms. They were all going to burn — his father, his mother, every trace of another lifetime, another home in another world.

Cyrus was suddenly moving, tripping on hoses, pinballing through big men in helmets and yellow suits, running toward the roar of growing flames and a fading past.

Earth turned, twisting its shadowed back out of darkness, dragging a continent into dawn. The Archer Motel had changed. The potholes in the parking lot were brimming with water and skimmed with ash. In places, polyester curtains had melted into the asphalt. The second-story walkway had collapsed, and half of the second story had collapsed with it. Rooms were open to the morning air, missing their exterior walls like compartments in a scorched dollhouse, revealing burnt mattresses, blackened dressers, and the occasional melted television. Webs of yellow tape surrounded it all.

The Golden Lady, dim in the daylight, still glowed.

The sun was ready with summer heat, and the sky was clear. As the sun climbed, the motel’s soaked ruin and the puddled parking lot began to steam, releasing the stink of burnt paint and carpet and curtains into the morning.

In the courtyard, a door was cracked open. Behind it, sprawling sideways across a queen bed, Cyrus and Antigone were sleeping.

Cyrus’s hair was singed in places, and his skin glistened with a mixture of soot and sweat. A patterned ring of tiny blisters stood out around his neck.

Antigone slept with her filthy arms around a small mound of film tins and photo albums. Two cameras, both minus their glass lenses, were perched on top. Her projector, now little better than a pile of melted black plastic, sat on the floor beside the bed.

The door swung open. A little man with tired eyes, half-moon glasses, and a rumpled gray suit stepped into the room. He coughed loudly. “Excuse me. Pardon. Become wakeful!” He thumped his fist on the wall.

Cyrus stretched slowly, groaning. His eyes fluttered open and rested on the little man in the doorway. He blinked, slowly processing what he was seeing, and then he sat up quickly. He shouldn’t have. Someone had inflated his head and filled his lungs with ashtrays. His eyebrows were going to explode, his eyes felt like they’d been replaced with steel wool, and his mouth was overflowing with the taste of burnt tire.

“Sorry,” the little man said. “My condolences on the motel. You were insured?”

Cyrus shoved his knuckles into his eyes and then grabbed on to his eyebrows to keep his forehead on. He snorted, he hacked, he roared, scraping at the smoked phlegm inside him. Dropping his hands, he spat on the carpet and opened his eyes. The walls bent and wobbled. Why was he in Dan’s room? He shouldn’t have spat. Not on the floor. Dan would yell. He looked around for a tissue. No tissue. No Dan. Just the little man from last night and Antigone curled up like a snail shell.

Last night.

The firemen had been angry with him. Dan had been angry. He couldn’t remember how it had ended, but Antigone’s arms were full of pictures. He must have made it into her room. Or she had. He dug his hand into his pockets. Key ring in one. A thick, misshapen square of glass in the other. The glass sent a buzz into his fingertips. Lightning bug. The paper card was gone.

Squinting, Cyrus looked up. “Where’s Dan?”

“Ah,” said the little man. “I couldn’t say. I’m here in my official capacity. In fact …” He tugged at his sleeves, adjusted his glasses, and pulled a sheet of paper out of his jacket. “I regret to inform you that a guest of this motel, one William Skelton, died early this morning, a fatality resulting from the conflagration.”

Cyrus blinked. “Confla—? The fire? Yeah,” he said. “I know. I was there.”

“Mr. Skelton was pronounced dead shortly after his arrival at the hospital, may his soul find peace.” He glanced at Cyrus over his glasses. “Though I wouldn’t wager any large sums on that happening.” Lowering his paper, the little man suddenly bent at the waist to examine Antigone’s sleeping face. “Miss Antigone. Excuse me. It would be more ideal if you joined us.”

Cyrus stood up, wobbling. Antigone opened her eyes and yawned.

“We spoke but were not formally introduced last night. I am John Horace Lawney the seventh, Mr. Skelton’s solicitor,” the little man said. He looked into Cyrus’s eyes. “His lawyer.”

“Yeah,” said Cyrus. “I know.”

“And what I have to say concerns you both.”

“Oh, sick.” Half coughing, half gagging, Antigone sat up and scratched at her matted black hair. “I feel like I ate a box of burnt crayons.” She looked at the little lawyer and licked her teeth. “You’re back? What are you doing here? Where’s Dan?”

“Allow me to continue,” the lawyer said. He straightened, sniffed, and looked back down at the paper in his hand. “Mr. William Skelton, Keeper in the Order of Brendan, is survived only by his goddaughter and godson, both recently declared as his chosen Acolytes, and, thereby, heirs to whatsoever of his estate and property may be deeded through said Order.” He folded his paper, tucked it into his jacket, and sighed. “There. We’ve all had an eventful night, and I, for one, am glad to have survived it. I should, of course, be wearing black to deliver such news, but I haven’t been out of this suit since we last met. And have I offered you, the bereaved, official condolences on the death of your godfather?”

Cyrus looked at his sister. She was blinking slowly, her mouth half-open.

“Heirs?” Antigone asked. “That’s what that little card was about?”

Cyrus coughed up another shot of char. The skin around his neck felt badly sunburned. He touched it tenderly, tracing a band of tiny blisters all the way around, remembering the burning necklace from the night before.

John Horace Lawney VII pulled off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. “Could I interest the two of you in breakfast? We have much to discuss and not much time for discussing.”

Cyrus shook his head. “Thanks, but no. We have breakfast stuff here.”

Antigone laughed. “Who wants waffles?” She turned to the little man. “Breakfast, like restaurant breakfast?”

“There’s a little diner not far from here, if I understand correctly.” The man raised his eyebrows. “I’ve heard it recommended by several discerning truckers.”

“Dan!” Antigone yelled, and she limped toward the door. Cyrus followed her out into the puddled and ashen courtyard. Together, barefoot, they walked into the parking lot and stopped.