N. Wilson - The Dragon's Tooth

The plane had completely turned. It was just off the end of the jetty. The engine shrieked at the wind, and it began to pull away.

One second. Two seconds. Three.

Cyrus planted his left foot on the end of the jetty and threw himself out into the air.

He smacked into the tail and tried to hang on, his hands slipping down the wet metal, peeling open his lightning-blistered palms. And then the plane hit its first wave and shook Cyrus off. Dropping to the water, he grabbed for the pontoon, just managing to hook his left arm around the rear brace.

The plane was picking up speed, bouncing, slamming into each wave, dragging him on his back, nosing him under into the force of a waterfall, skipping him across the top like a stone.

The pontoon smashed into a wave and rose above the water.

Cyrus’s torso rose with it. His waist was free. His legs slapped into the next wave. The force jerked him loose and sent him rolling across the rough surface. Above him, free of the water and accelerating into a climb, the plane burst into flames.

Sputtering but still conscious, Cyrus watched the plane as it dropped, trying to touch back down against the windblown waves.

With a snap, the first whitecap ripped off a pontoon and sent it cartwheeling across the surface. The plane’s nose smashed into the water. Its tail rose and fell forward in a somersault.

Metal creaked and sighed. Flames trickled out onto the water.

Cyrus tried to swim toward the wreckage, but the wind was too strong for his weakened arms, and the chop of the water was too big, driving him back toward the distant shore.

Filling his tired lungs to bursting, he dove, pulling himself below the moving surface.

Ten feet down, he started kicking forward. He could hear the groaning metal of the plane all around him. He had no sense of direction, no energy in his limbs, and no possible chance of reaching the wreckage.

But he couldn’t stop. Not now.

A large shape rose up beneath him. Sandpaper skin against his hands. A vertical fin. He grabbed on, and Lilly the bull — he hoped — surged forward through the darkness.

The popping and creaking grew louder. Before long, the orange dance of fire lit the surface above him.

He patted the shark and let go, kicking up toward the inverted cockpit.

Both doors were open.

The submerged cockpit was empty.

Cyrus slid through a door and pulled himself back toward the rear of the plane and up into an air pocket.

Dan was sitting on the plane’s ceiling, bleeding from his forehead, cradling his mother in his lap. His blond hair had been cropped close to his scalp. His eyes were frantic and confused. He was much bigger.

“Cy!” he yelled. “What are you doing here? What’s going on?”

Antigone watched Cyrus and Nolan run, and her teeth drew blood from her fingers when Cyrus jumped.

She saw the plane drag her brother into darkness. She saw the fire and the tumbling crash. She raced after Greeves as he ran down to the docks, and she jumped into his metal shell of a boat while he jerked the cord on the motor.

Nolan was standing on the end of the jetty, watching the lake’s churning surface burn. Diana climbed up the rocks beside him and sat, covering her mouth in shock.

Antigone grabbed on to the heaving prow, and the boat surged and chopped its way out into the lake. Her mind was numb. Water stung her unblinking face. Wind and rain tore at her hair. Distant lightning and approaching flames seared their brightness on her staring eyes. The burning plane was sinking — the last three people she loved were sinking with it.

Rupert circled the wreckage and circled again, tightening his loops, passing through islands of flame. Finally, cutting the engine, he jerked his shirt over his head and prepared to dive.

Antigone grabbed his arm.

Antigone was the one who heard her brother — her brothers —calling out her name from the oily water. She was the one who spotted the three shapes in the darkness. And when Rupert had lifted her mother’s limp, dripping body from the waves, and a muscled, confused Dan had swallowed her in a hug, and Cyrus had emptied his gut of lake water and lay gasping at her feet, when the boat had finally turned its nose back to Ashtown, she was the one who held her mother’s head in her lap, rocking with the heaving waves, stroking dripping white hair, looking at her battered and bleeding brothers, mixing hot tears with the rain.

A mile to the east of the sinking plane, Lilly the bull found something strange. Two somethings. She could smell them. She could feel their vibrations in the water running down her skin. One of them was a people. He smelled like a people, looked like a people, and moved like a people. She mustn’t eat the people or taste the people or be seen by the people.

But the other was not a people. Parts of it smelled people, but more of it was like dog and monkey and … vile tiger shark. It had gills. She could feel the gills vibrating as it swam. It was not slapping the water like people. It was slithering through it, dragging the people on its back.

She needed to know what this new thing was. And, for a shark, there is only one way to be sure.

After trial, after hardship and horror, even after the darkest night, the Earth still turns. The sun still burns, though its light may discover many changes. When the morning sun rose into blue sky over the freshwater sea that is Lake Michigan, when its light kissed the stone walls and towers and windows of Ashtown, the chapel held twelve bodies in need of graves — eleven members and staff of the Order of Brendan who had not survived the night. One who had been murdered in the office of Cecil Rhodes.

Rupert Greeves stood beside them, his brow furrowed, his hands crossed, studying the faces of those he had lost. Five of his guards. A man and a woman, newly engaged, both cooks. A smiling Keeper. A monk. A wrinkled Sage. A young Acolyte. And Eleanor Elizabeth Eldridge. Alone, Rupert had already uttered blessings over each of them.

Jax had wept over each of those he had not reached in time, and he had paced every corner of Ashtown with his antivenin until Rupert had forced him to bed.

Rupert himself had not slept, and it would be a long time before he did. There were too many things to do, and the list wouldn’t stop scrolling in his head.

Cecil Rhodes was missing. The other captured traitors were in containment, waiting for Rupert’s arrival.

The young Oliver Laughlin was comatose.

Wisconsin authorities were waiting for his call about a reported plane crash.

An elevator needed fixing. The Brendan — soon to resign, no doubt — was probably hungry.

The O of B had lost its cook, but that wouldn’t stop people from wanting breakfast. He hoped everybody liked French toast, because that’s all he knew how to make.

Phoenix had the tooth.

Rupert dragged a heavy hand down his jaw and through his pointed beard. He didn’t even like to think about what that meant — old images, scars on his memory, flickered past, and he was again digging graves for the misshapen and disfigured remains hidden by a younger Phoenix in the walls and floors of Ashtown. His own brother’s body …

Rupert closed his eyes. He was going to need help from the other Estates. And he would have to train up help for himself within Ashtown. He opened his eyes, staring straight ahead. The future was invisibly dark, but to Rupert Greeves, it smelled like war.

He looked down at the row of bodies in their open boxes. Twelve dead in two days.

Sighing, Rupert Greeves turned and left the chapel. Everything else could wait until he’d been to the hospital.

John Horace Lawney was sitting up in his bed when Rupert arrived, carrying a large envelope under his arm. Gunner was snoring in the bed behind his uncle.