Jason Hightman: The Saint of Dragons

the Saint

of Dragons

JASON HIGHTMAN

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2004

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Jason Hightman 2004

Jason Hightman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

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Source ISBN: 9780007159079

EBook Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 9780007383429

Version: 2014-10-07

For my mother and father

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE - Simon St George

CHAPTER TWO - The Original Dragonhunter

CHAPTER THREE - The School in the Lighthouse

CHAPTER FOUR - St George, the Elder

CHAPTER FIVE - A Brief History of Dragons

CHAPTER SIX - The Family Business

CHAPTER SEVEN - A Manhattan Dragon

CHAPTER EIGHT - The Woman who Fell in Love with a Dragon

CHAPTER NINE - The Battle with the White Dragon

CHAPTER TEN - Something to Chill your Bones

CHAPTER ELEVEN - A Hidden Evil

CHAPTER TWELVE - A Ship Made for One

CHAPTER THIRTEEN - The Mystery of the Medallion

CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Sunny with a Chance of Hurricanes

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - A Serpent’s House

CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Things that Go Splash in the Dark

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - We Need a Weapon

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - The Dragon of Paris

CHAPTER NINETEEN - Icy Ventures

CHAPTER TWENTY - Secrets

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - A Crash Course in Predators

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - Graveyard of Dragons

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - The Russian Dragon

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - The Fury of Fire

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - Elements of Destruction

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - Two Against the World

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - The Lair of the Peking Beast

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - The Black Dragon

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - A Chinese Dragon’s Sailing Ship

CHAPTER THIRTY - Separate Journeys

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - Friendship with a Dragon

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - Unwelcome Guests

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - Heroes in Need of Heroes

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - The Honour of Dragons

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - The Queen of Serpents

EPILOGUE - The World Needs its Knights

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

You’ve been taught to believe they are dead. Figments of an ancient imagination. But one lonely schoolboy at the Lighthouse School for Boys, who has never known his family and who has never known adventure, is about to have a rude awakening.

Dragons are real.

And they have … evolved.

They exist in the world today and are every bit as evil as they ever were. It is only their appearance that has changed. Their eight-foot bodies now resemble men much more than before. With their reptilian faces hidden in a cloak and hood, you wouldn’t look twice at one crossing the street hunched over, perhaps pretending to be a homeless man pushing a grocery cart before him. But make no mistake: these Dragonmen are highly dangerous.

They still have scales for skin, slithery tongues, lizard tails, sharpened faces – and they are secretly responsible for most of the worst fires you hear about, using their wicked magic for no reason, burning buildings just for sport.

They live hidden away, in luxurious apartments in New York, London or Paris, underground in Beijing or beneath the sands of Egypt, in boats anchored in Venice or Tokyo, or in homes built inside water caves in Africa or South America. They back organised crime, military dictatorships and cruel multinational companies, or they act as lone killers, secluded and hermit-like in mountains or deserts. Their exact number is not known. No two of them are alike. But they are powerful. And it will take all the strength the human world can muster to end their reign.

It is a time of opportunity for them. All the magicians are dead, and people no longer believe in magic. Spirits are low. To make matters worse, the dragons have the ability to cloud people’s minds so that they don’t see them in their true form.

You might see a little old lady or an expensively dressed businessman, but the person standing next to you could be, in reality, a monstrous beast. At certain times, people can see through this magic. For a moment you might glimpse the flash of serpent eyes behind the steam of a coffee cup in a local café – but it’s like a mirage. The next moment, it’s gone. Their trickery is rampant.

They sometimes move among us in ordinary ways. It is impossible for the average person to know for certain where they are. But there are signs, both large and small.

The modern dragon is that person at school or in the workplace who hides his true self, who secretly speaks badly of others, who can’t be trusted, who brings misery to those around him, who delights in the failure of friends. The modern dragon is not content to be rich, but wants others to be poor. Beneath this person’s outward appearance, there is very likely serpent skin. And a vast desire to do harm.

Few people realise these dark forces surround us.

But the numbers of those who know the truth are about to grow.

It was autumn, October. It was the edge of a wicked season and Christmas was a far-off thought. The amber-crimson colours of fall and its pumpkin-spice smells surrounded Simon St George like a vast, bewitching fire. There had never been an October that felt so perfectly suited to Halloween.

There was a chill in the air that was worse than normal for this time of year and a fog hung around the Bay, and the houses in the Bay, with a cruel persistence. The trees seemed to hunch over in sadness and wish for their leaves back to keep them warm. All the pumpkins in Ebony Hollow’s fields seemed rotten, and to ache from their own rottenness. The factory smoke from over the hill swept down into town and the grey daylight seemed to give way after only a few hours to a deep, intense nightfall. No one wanted to be out much. And no one could sleep.

Simon St George had only the faintest sense of all this. The idea that something wasn’t quite right just skittered over his mind between thoughts of tomorrow’s Halloween masquerade and a girl in town whose name he did not know.

For him, Halloween was more than just fun and games. The masquerade was something everyone had to go to at his school, a tradition, and everyone had to be in costume. Simon wasn’t sure why he needed a costume; he seemed to disappear in a crowd easily enough without one.

No matter what he did, no one seemed to notice him or take him very seriously. He was an average kid, a bit smallish, which made him easy to ignore. He had an upturned pug nose and blond, wiry, slept-in hair that made him look even younger. But he often kept his head down, so you never got a really good look at him; to the other boys, if they thought of him at all, he was something of a mystery.