The Dragon Heir Read online

  He looked up just as the car exploded into flames.

  He rolled backward to keep from being engulfed. Propping up on his elbows, he stared in disbelief. The car was a blazing inferno, hissing and spitting in the pouring rain.

  Oh, God, he thought. Linda’s going to kill me. His next thought was, I’m out of here.

  As he struggled to his feet, something struck him full in the chest, just beneath the collarbone, hard enough to spin him half around. He clutched at his shirtfront, but could find no wound or missile, only an awful spreading cold and numbness.

  “Damn!” someone said behind him. “I hope that didn’t hit too close to the heart. The idea is to immobilize you. Not kill you.”

  Jason swung around to face the speaker. It couldn’t be.

  The blond, almost translucent hair, the pale blue eyes and colorless lips. The lopsided, arrogant smile he hadn’t seen since the ill-fated conference at Second Sister.

  “Barber!”

  The smile grew wider. “For a minute, I didn’t think you remembered me. But, hey, the friendships we make at school are the ones that last.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I followed you. Of course I didn’t know you’d lead me to the crap hole of the universe.” Barber flipped his hand, indicating their general surroundings.

  “What did you shoot me with?”

  “It’s a wizard graffe. A virtual dagger with an effect very much like spider venom. Renders the victim immobile, but leaves the mind clear and able to perceive pain. Great for interrogations.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To ask you some questions. But first we’ll go someplace quiet where we won’t be interrupted.”

  The paralysis was spreading. Jason’s limbs were growing heavy. It was getting difficult to push air through his lungs. “Questions about what?” he mumbled. Even his lips and tongue weren’t obeying his commands.

  “Questions about what you’re doing down here. About what you stole from Raven’s Ghyll and hid in the church. About the Dragonheart. We can start with what’s in your backpack.” Barber extended his hand. “Hand it over.”

  Backpack. Jason’s body might be sluggish, but his mind was clear. Barber knew Jason had left town. He knew about the church. He knew there was something in his backpack.

  Leesha.

  A cold anger seized Jason. “You want this?” he shouted hoarsely. As he raised the backpack, he thrust his hand inside, closing it around the amulet. Gives strength to the bearer. He muttered a charm calling forth its power and felt welcome strength flood back into his body. Slinging the pack over his shoulder, he reached up with the other hand and gripped the dyrne sefa that hung around his neck. Speaking the familiar unnoticeable charm he’d learned from his mother, he thrust himself sideways.

  He landed rolling in the sodden leaves, but was immediately up and running, slipping and sliding down the hill, the backpack slamming against his shoulder. Barber was a powerful wizard, outclassing Jason on his best day. Unnoticeable or not, it wouldn’t be healthy to stay around.

  Barber was totally pissed. He sent flames roaring down the hillside in Jason’s wake, then charged downhill after him, shouting and swearing. “Idiot! Where the hell do you think you’re going? Give yourself up, or you’re going to lie on your back in the mud until you’re ripped apart and eaten alive by wild animals.”

  It was hard to understand with all the profanity mixed in, but it was something like that.

  Jason staggered on. He had no intention of submitting to an interrogation of Warren Barber’s devising. Being ripped apart by wild animals seemed appealing in comparison. Besides, he’d been played for a fool, and he would not, could not let them win.

  Still, it was more than twenty miles back to town, and he had no idea how long the effects of the amulet would last. He knew Madison’s house must be somewhere nearby, but he didn’t want to lead Barber to her.

  Realistically, he was dead.

  At the bottom of the hill, Jason turned left and followed a wide creek through a ravine. Then he began climbing again. He climbed for a long time, following the stream, scrambling over rocks, splashing in and out of the water. Finally he left the creek and cut over a shoulder of the mountain. By then, he was stumbling, losing strength despite his tight grip on the amulet. He tried speaking the charm again, but this time there was no apparent effect.

  He was completely disoriented. He had no idea which way it was to town, which way Madison’s house might be. His only goal was to keep away from Barber.

  That was easier said than done. Barber seemed to have an uncanny ability to stay with him. When Jason reached high ground and looked back, Barber was coming. Not following Jason’s trail, exactly, but moving in the right direction, just the same. Sometimes cutting straight across ravines and streambeds. It was almost as if Jason were sending off some kind of homing signal.

  Idiot.

  He shrugged the backpack off his shoulders and half-sat, half-fell to the ground. Digging through the pocket, he retrieved the mysterious spider stone.

  It must be a lodestone, placed there on purpose, probably by Leesha outside the church. All Barber had needed to do was follow the stone to track Jason to Coalton County and through the woods in the rain.

  Shivering, teeth chattering, resisting the urge to lie down where he was and sink into oblivion, Jason gripped the low branches of a tree, dragged himself to his feet, and looked around.

  He’d been following a high ridge. On one side of the ridge the ground fell away into deep forest shrouding a series of smaller hills. On the other he could see the tracing of a road that followed the creek bed. Behind him, he could hear Barber crashing violently through the brush.

  Drawing his arm back, Jason threw the stone as far as he could out into the valley. Then he descended the ridge on the opposite side, heading for the road. Hopefully, Barber would follow the stone.

  There remained the problem of the graffe. Jason couldn’t go much further.

  He could try to attract the attention of someone in a passing car. A car probably came by every day or two.

  As if that would even do any good. They wouldn’t have a clue. All they could do was watch him die.

  He worked his way down the ridge in a kind of stumbling trot. His legs were no longer working reliably. The rain had slowed to a sprinkle, but rivulets of muddy water still flowed down the slope, making the footing treacherous.

  His breathing was growing labored again. He was conscious of a creeping cold, an inability to control his movements. He blinked away a double image of the hillside. Finally, he overshot a small overhang, tumbled twenty feet, and ended with his feet in the ditch and his head and shoulders on the berm of the road.

  He hurt. Barber was right—his ability to perceive pain was functioning just fine. He’d slammed his elbow when he landed, and wondered if his arm was broken. But he lacked the strength to turn his head to check for certain.

  He had no idea how long he lay there before he heard a rumble and felt a faint vibration beneath him. Thunder, he thought. Then he realized it must be a car coming.

  Idiot. He was unnoticeable. No one would see him lying by the side of the road, not even when his unnoticeable sun-bleached bones mingled with the scattered remnants of roadkill skeletons. He gripped the sefa and disabled the unnoticeable charm with his last bit of strength. Then he lay on his back, staring up at the sky, unable even to blink against the relentless drizzle. He had to really focus to remember to breathe.

  He heard the wet, sucking sound of tires as the car approached. Was he far enough off the road? Would the car run him over? Was he close enough to be seen?

  He felt the air stir as the car neared, felt the freezing spray as it swept by. Bitter disappointment. He heard a squeal of brakes and caught a whiff of hot rubber. Wild elation. A car door slammed, then footsteps crunched on gravel, and then a voice.

  “Hey, you okay? What happened? Someone run you over and drive off?” And then, moment
s later, “Jason?”

  It was Madison Moss.

  Seconds later, her worried face appeared in his field of vision. It was bronzed a bit—she’d been out in the sun—and her voluminous hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She wore jeans and a plain white T-shirt—different from her bohemian mode of dress in Trinity.

  No, he thought dazedly. This girl is not hanging with the bad guys. I don’t believe it.

  “It is you! What are you doing here? What happened? Is Seph with you?” It was a cascade of questions, erupting too fast for his failing mind to follow.

  “Madison,” he tried to say, but his lips wouldn’t form the syllables. He was struggling for breath, suffocating. Spots swam before his eyes. Barber hadn’t meant to kill him, or at least not until after he’d tortured the truth out of him. He must’ve messed up.

  Kneeling next to him, Madison touched his chest lightly where the graffe went in. “What the ...? It looks ...it looks like your chest is on fire.” Then she clapped her mouth shut, eyes wide, seeming to realize that he might not find that reassuring. Madison had the ability to spot magic in others— even Barber’s deadly graffe, apparently.

  “Don’t worry, now. Let’s just see.” She pulled aside his jacket and lifted his sweatshirt to examine the wound.

  “Gick,” he managed. And, then, “Gick!” again, louder. Meaning, We’ve got to get the hell out of here!

  She ran her cold hands up his chest until she found the wound and pushed her fingertips into it. He nearly screamed from the pain of it, but then he felt a kind of sucking, a reverse pressure, and immediately the hot burn over his heart eased. And again she pressed her hands against his skin, scrunching up her face as if it was as hard on her as on him. His body lost some of its creeping cold rigidity and he could swallow his saliva again. She was drawing the magical venom away.

  Madison pulled her hands back, wiping them vigorously on the weeds at the roadside, shuddering. “Yuck. This is bad nasty, whatever it is. I’m going to have a devil of a time getting rid of this. At least it’s not ... Who did this? Where did you come from?” She didn’t really seem to expect an answer.

  Madison stood, hands on hips, and looked up the slope. She seemed very tall and angular from Jason’s position on the ground. “I thought maybe you dropped out of the sky, but looks like you rolled down from up there.”

  He managed to croak, “Madison. Warren Barber’s here.

  We’ve got to go before he sees us.” By now, Barber might have discovered his ruse and be heading back over the ridge in time to see what was happening at the side of the road.

  “Warren Barber!” Madison had met Warren Barber before—at Second Sister—when she’d put him flat on his back in the inn garden.

  At least she didn’t ask a million questions. “Hang on, I’m going to put you in the truck. Nothing’s broken, is it?”

  Dumbly, he shook his head. His arm was killing him, but broken bones were small change against what Barber would do if he came over that hill.

  Madison disappeared from his field of view. The truck door slammed, and she was back with a paint-spattered canvas tarp. Sliding her hands under his arms, she tugged him onto it. Then, gripping the edge of the canvas, she dragged him along the berm to her ancient red pickup. The tailgate was down, but the opening seemed a mile away. Jason couldn’t fathom how she was going to get him up into the bed. She propped him against the truck. Then she climbed into the truckbed, leaned down, wrapped her arms around his chest, and hauled him backward into the bed. He landed flat on top of her, but she wriggled out from underneath him.

  “Sorry,” she muttered. She hurriedly arranged his extremities to her liking, then tossed the tarp over him, covering him completely. “Sorry,” she said again.

  The truck jounced on its failing springs as she jumped down from the bed, then climbed up into the cab. The door slammed and the engine came to life. Rain pattered on the canvas over his head. He didn’t know where he was going, he didn’t know where Warren Barber was, and he didn’t know if he’d survive the day.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Along Came a Spider

  Jason didn’t remember much about the next several days. He felt dry and hot one minute, and cold and sweaty the next. He wrestled with dreams like he hadn’t had since the ones Gregory Leicester had inflicted on him at the Havens.

  He dreamed he was back in the woods and Warren Barber spun out cords from his wrists like Spiderman, wrapping him into a giant cocoon. He injected poison into him with giant fangs and left him hanging helpless in his web, saying, “I’ll be back, and then you’ll talk.”

  He dreamed of Leesha and Barber, laughing together at Jason’s stupidity and the deft way she’d played him. Jason had never been a magical powerhouse, but he’d always considered himself street-smart, at least. Right. Everyone had warned him about Leesha, and he’d ignored them. His only hope was that no one would ever find out what an idiot he’d been.

  He burned with fever, embarrassment, and hot anger.

  He’d wake, startled by the sound of his own voice reverberating in his ears, and he wondered what he’d said, how much he had revealed.

  Madison was there, a lot of the time. She didn’t suck out any more poison. Instead, she forced liquids and cups of soup into him.

  He gripped her hands, in a rare moment of lucidity. “Maddie. Don’t tell anyone about this. Not Seph. Not anybody. Please.”

  “You are crazy, you know that?” She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead, feeling for fever. “He needs to know what happened. I’m going to go to town and call him soon as I can leave you on your own.”

  He struggled to sit up, flailing wildly under the quilt. “You call him, I’m out of here. Right now.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “You gonna hitchhike, or what? Now lay down before I club you for a fool. You need somebody who knows about magic to treat you.”

  “I’m much better. Really.”

  Madison snorted.

  Jason groped for an argument. “Look, Maddie, if you call him, he’ll blame me for messing up and putting you in danger. One little thing he asked me to do, and I blew it. He’ll never trust me to do anything again. I’d rather you just shot me in the head.” He pressed his fingertips against his forehead for emphasis.

  She frowned. He could tell she was wavering.

  “Besides, if you call him, nothing will keep him from coming down here. Meanwhile, everything falls apart up there.”

  “Well,” she muttered, looking troubled, “we’ll see. If you take a turn for the worse . . .”

  He’d gotten to her. Jason smiled and closed his eyes and gave himself up to sleep.

  The next time, he awoke to find two huge yellow dogs crowded in bed with him, one on either side. “Hey,” he said weakly, shoving at the one with its head on the pillow breathing dog breath in his face. The dog opened its eyes and licked Jason’s face with an impossibly long black-and-pink tongue, then went back to sleep.

  Some time later, a solemn-faced little girl with straight brown hair set a tray on the floor next to him and sat down with a bump.

  “Where’s Madison?” he asked, drawing the sheet up over his bare, bandaged chest, squinting his eyes against the light that snuck between battered rafters overhead.

  “She had to go meet with her art teacher,” she said.

  This didn’t really process. What art teacher? “Who are you?”

  “I’m Grace Minerva Moss,” she said. “Maddie’s sister. I made you lunch. Grilled cheese and tomato soup,” she added, rather proudly. And, there, on the tray, was a paper plate with a slightly charred grilled cheese sandwich cut into two triangles, some saltine crackers, a mug of soup, a paper towel, and a can of root beer.

  He was lying on a mattress on the floor, surrounded by paintings on easels, some unfinished. He recognized them as Madison’s work. Heaving a pile of quilts aside, he tried to prop on his elbows but found his left arm was in a sling. So he rolled to his good side and sat up, raking his free h
and through his hair. “Where am I?” he asked, when his head stopped spinning.

  “You’re in the barn. In the loft. Maddie’s studio. I had to help Maddie carry you up here. You’re real heavy, you know?” she added, accusingly.

  He groped at his neck, and his hand closed on the dyrne sefa, still on its chain. “Where’s my stuff? My clothes, I mean, and I had a backpack ....”

  Grace Minerva Moss pointed. He twisted round. His backpack was hanging on a peg on the wall. His clothes were folded in a little pile underneath. It was clean and tidy, for a barn, he guessed. His eyes traveled over the ranks of paintings.

  “Madison paints up here?”

  “Some. Plus everywhere else.”

  Grace snatched up the paper towel and dropped it on his lap. A hint. He picked up the grilled cheese sandwich and bit into it. It was gritty with carbon, but had that deliciously greasy processed-cheese taste. He was suddenly ravenous. “This is great,” he mumbled, his mouth full of bread and melted cheese. “Is anyone else home?”

  “Just my brother, J.R. And my mother. She’s still asleep.” Grace leaned closer and whispered conspiratorially, “She doesn’t know you’re here.”

  Jason sucked down some soup, the comforting orangy canned stuff familiar from when he was a kid. Grace studied him, then extended her hand toward him, stopping a few inches away. “You’re all sparkly,” she said, looking puzzled. “Like Brice Roper.”

  Before he could respond, there was a scuffling below, then the sound of wood creaking. Jason stiffened, once again reaching for the dyrne sefa. A blond head poked up, as if through the floor.

  Grace tried to put herself between Jason and the intruder.

  “John Robert Moss! I told you to stay in the sandbox.”

  It was a little boy—Jason wasn’t good with kids’ ages— apparently the brother, J.R. The boy hauled himself up through the floor and turned and sat with his legs dangling through the hole. His face was smudged and dirty, and he wore blue jeans rolled to fit. “What are you doing up here? Who’s that man?” he asked, pointing at Jason.