Kerry Schafer - Wakeworld

“I dreamed them,” he said. “Giant penguins with sharpened beaks.”

“The penguins are coming.” He’d repeated the phrase over and over before succumbing to hypothermia and being too cold to speak.

“Through there—a place by the Finger. Thousands of them. All of them taller than me, with human eyes. Behind them—I couldn’t see it, but you know how dreams are—a giant ice field strewn with the dead, all with empty sockets—”

“Deputy!” She spoke firmly, bringing him back. “It was a dream. A nightmare. But you’re not dreaming now. This is a real, flesh-and-blood penguin.” Technically this was a lie—Poe might be flesh and blood, but he had walked straight out of a dream.

Poe wiggled and twisted and she bent and let him slide to the ground, still keeping her body between him and Deputy Flynne. She was going to have to tell part of the truth. The dragon was headed back this way, and she wasn’t going to let this man be killed because he’d been sucked into something by accident.

“Going to sound crazy, Brett. You know the thing that killed the teenagers, that was shooting firebolts around last night? It’s a dragon. It came through the same thin place where you saw penguins.”

“And they call me the crazy one.”

“You need to clear the beach, Deputy.”

“And leave you here, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

This earned her nothing but a look. “It’s my job to protect this town. Which includes you.”

“Actually, protecting her is my job,” Zee said.

Flynne’s weapon was drawn in a heartbeat, but Zee was faster.

“Ezekiel Arbogast, drop your weapon.”

“I don’t think I can do that, Officer. With all due respect.”

“You are under arrest.”

“For what?” Zee was watching the sky and not the gun trained on his heart. “It’s coming,” he said to Vivian.

“I know—how can you tell?”

“Vibration, a change in the wind. I don’t know how. But I know.”

“Excuse me,” Flynne said, “can we get away from discussing the weather and back to the arrest?”

“Right,” Zee said, still watching the sky. “Charges?”

Brett hesitated. “Well, suspected murder. Of Vivian Maylor.”

“Who is standing right here, alive and well. For the moment.” A definite bitterness in Zee’s tone let Vivian know he still wanted her off the beach and away safe somewhere.

“That’s for the judge to decide.” Brett reached for his radio.

“I don’t think you want to do that,” Vivian said. She edged closer to the stone. The dragon would be in sight any minute. She needed to call him to her and away from the others. “You want to explain to dispatch that you’ve found Ezekiel Arbogast, along with a penguin and a dragon?” She gestured with her chin, and he turned to follow her gaze.

Above the river, small yet, but growing rapidly larger, appeared a creature that couldn’t be a bird—four legs; a long, naked tail—winging its way toward them.

“One chance,” Zee said, in a voice she’d never heard him use before. He paced across the sand to the place where two weeks before a giant white bear had lain dead.

Vivian turned to Flynne, allowing a note of pleading to creep into her voice. “Deputy. Brett. This is more dangerous than you can imagine. Please move off the beach.”

He shook his head, stubborn, adjusting his grip on his pistol.

The dragon was close now, occupying all of her senses, and she had little thought to spare for anybody else.

Come. Dance with me. The sky is ours for the taking.

Vivian’s body responded to the call. Her blood ran hot with the memory of flight and power. She fought it down. She was not a dragon, she was Vivian. Still, the voice she used to return the call was full of an untapped power that exhilarated and frightened her all at once.

Not this time, little brother. Come here to me.

She settled herself with her back supported against the stone, letting its power flow through her, and opened the door into the Between.

The dragon flew in low over the river, sunlight striking glints of rainbow color off his scales. He flew a loop, a spiral, shot bright jets of flame from his nostrils.

Vivian called again, dragonmind to dragonmind, Come, little brother. Come here to me .

Wind gusted around her, raising a flurry of sand that scoured her face and hands. There was a thunder of giant wings. For a moment the sun was blotted out and then he landed, so much more lightly than expected, so much more beautiful. Mellisande had been old, her scales dull with age. This beast shone diamond bright. He dipped his head in respect and spoke into her mind.

Greetings, Dreamshifter. Why will you not fly with me?

You must go home, little brother. It is not safe here for you.

I do not choose to go back.

This world is not yours—you do not belong here.

Even so. I have chosen.

Please. I will walk with you a little. The Between is not what it was, now that the Sorceress is dead. There are wide skies on the other side.

He snorted a small puff of bright flame. I will not go.

There is death for you here.

I don’t fear death. But there was a question, a wavering. Vivian took a step toward him.

He stretched his wings and clapped them over his back, raising a wind that pushed Vivian back and to her knees.

A single shot rang out. The bullet struck fire from the scales on the dragon’s side and ricocheted away into the sand.

He opened his jaws wide and unleashed a cry of pain and rage, spreading his wings and shooting off a full jet of flame.

“No!” Vivian shouted, her voice lost in the thunder of wings as the dragon lifted off from the sand. “Please,” she cried, stretching her arms toward the sky.

Another shot, this time from where Zee stood, across the beach.

A spike of agony through her eye. Wings drooping, heart quivering. Blackness pouring in.

And then she was fully back in her own body and the pain was gone. A shout of warning. Something heavy struck the earth with enough force to throw her off her feet. She lay still and futile in the sand, hands pressed against her eyes, the cold and damp insinuating itself through the fabric of her jeans and into her skin.

She pushed herself up onto her knees. Less than two arm lengths away a dark ungainly form lay twisted and motionless, wings splayed wide. The dragon’s right eye was a shattered cavern. Black blood steamed in the cold air.

Zee stood over his kill with the gun still in his hand, his scarred face alight with victory.

Vivian watched him, wordless, fighting to draw breath. Silent tears ran down her cheeks.

He saw her trouble and the light went out of his eyes. Kneeling in the sand beside her, he reached out a hand to touch her face. She flinched away, and he let it fall back. “Vivian. It needed killing. You must see that.” A fresh burn on his cheek, etched there by a splash of dragon blood, emphasized his words.

Not his fault, she told herself. Brett had fired the first shot and made it necessary. The dragon had killed before and would have killed again. She knew that, but it did nothing to ease the pain at her heart.

“He didn’t know better, Zee. He was so young . . .” Young and beautiful and alive beyond imagining.

“Don’t cry, Viv. It was just a dragon.”

She laughed, short and bitter, as his words went home. “Blood of my blood,” she said.

Realization dawned in his eyes, too late. “No, you are not one of them, not really—”

“But I am. And you were made to hunt them. What are we to do about that?”

A low whistle broke the moment. “It really was a dragon,” Brett said in a voice filled with awe. “Thought you guys were kidding.”