Dragonfire Read online

  “Kill me…?” Perce managed eventually, wiping daintily at her lips with the sleeve of her own dress as she rose shakily to her feet. “Why would he want to kill me? Why would he say that…?”

  “How the hell would I know…?” New shrugged, still mulling over how little shock or fear she was feeling and completely misinterpreting what Percy had said as a result. “True, but…” she added, those two words a simple statement in itself. “Heard the creepy voice order him to kill us both just before the horse appeared. ‘Kill the dark one’, he said… ‘she serves no purpose’…” she mimicked, not making any effort to be complimentary. “Something like that, anyway…”

  “How rude…” Percy decided primly, fighting to regain some of her usual demeanour as her own initial shock began to wear off.

  “Mmmm… I thought so, too…”

  “Keeping secrets… and after all this effort…”

  She must not escape.

  “Oh, hello: it’s the ‘Creep Whisperer’ again…!” Nev added, struggling to hide the sudden fear that rippled through her as she again whirled around, trying to locate the source of that bodiless voice. All too late, part of her sub-conscious decided that maybe the numbness of going into shock wasn’t so bad after all.

  All may be forgiven… the fair one: kill her and bring the weapon to me.

  “Ummm, I think we need to leave now, Perce,” Nev began with a quaver in her voice, her thoughts struggling to catch up with everything that had transpired. “That voice is… wait, what…?” She added, suddenly fixing Percy with an accusing glare as a mental penny the size of a small planet finally dropped. “What can be forgiven…?”

  “Oh, sure… leave me out of the important bits of the conversation – like ‘kill the dark one’ – but it’s all praise and happiness now…!” Percy spat bitterly, apparently speaking to the air itself as she turned on the spot, staring up at the drizzling clouds with the flash of anger in her eyes. “What happened to ‘she serves no purpose…’…?”

  It was only in that moment, as Percy turned toward her, that Nev noticed the pendant she was wearing seemed to be flashing brightly, something that should’ve been impossible without direct sunlight. The only other explanation she could think of was that it was glowing faintly of its own accord, as unlikely as that seemed, and Nev had seen and read enough sci-fi and fantasy to know that things glowing when they shouldn’t was never a good sign.

  What has passed is of no consequence. All that matters is what is now, and right now, I again offer you reward and power in exchange for the weapon and the life of the girl.

  Nev noted for the first time that the bluish glow emanating from that brooch pulsed in sync with every silent world that was ‘spoken’.

  Definitely not a good sign.

  “Persephone Koutroulis, you need to tell me what the hell’s going on… right now…” Nev snarled, hands on hips as anger took over from fear. “You definitely did not just talk about making deals with this… thing…”

  “Just like you promised?” Perce continued, still talking to the heavens and making a great show of ignoring Nev, even though she was quite clearly inching across to where the shotgun still lay a few metres to her left. “No tricks, now…?”

  The bargain will be honoured. You will be a queen of The Shard, with power beyond imagining.

  “Oh, you are so unfriended!” Nev blurted angrily over her shoulder, not fooled for a moment and already legging it down the track toward the main road as fast as her feet could carry her. As she ran, she mapped out her escape plan: get back to the bikes, then head for town at full speed and straight to the police station to report her clearly-insane and totally ex-friend. She didn’t know what that crazy voice in her own head had been, but that was something to discuss with a school counsellor at a later date, if necessary. Escape from the immediate danger was a far greater priority… Nev was no doctor, but she was fairly certain psychotherapy wasn’t all that effective in the treatment of gunshot wounds.

  Nev knew she was in better physical condition than Percy, and adrenalin would give her even more speed once she started (literally!) pedalling for her life. She was also fairly confident she could make an emergency phone call while riding one-handed, whereas it was unlikely someone could reload or fire a shotgun while keeping up on a pushbike. The whole thing came completely unstuck, of course, in the moment she burst out into the larger clearing where the bikes had been left and found – of course – that they were gone.

  “Ahhhhhh…!” She howled in desperation, and was then struck by the thought that there might be some accomplice hiding nearby – another sword-swinging weirdo responsible for the disappearance of the bikes.

  The renewed fear of that possibility pushed her on, chest heaving as her lungs drew desperately-needed air and she pounded down the main track heading back toward Chisholm Road. Without the benefit of a warm-up, she could tell that her body wasn’t happy over the sudden exertion, and her muscles were now screaming at her in protest as she pushed herself harder than she ever had in training.

  Lightning cracked for the first time overhead, a ground-shaking clap of rolling thunder following close on its heels, and the mist began to solidify into regular rain, soaking her clothes and chilling her to the bone as she ran doggedly on.

  Just a little further… just a little further… She kept telling herself, fighting to keep the terror from her mind now as tears began to stream down her cheeks. Onto the road and then a downhill run back to town… maybe get a ride…maybe someone heard the shot…

  “Come back, Nev!” Percy’s voice cut through the grumble of the wind and rain from somewhere behind. “Don’t run off… we’re not going to hurt you!” It never occurred to her that it probably shouldn’t have been possible for a human voice to carry so far through such background noise.

  “Lying bitch…!” She screamed angrily in reply, knowing it was foolish to react but unable to help herself. The faint howl of indignant rage that floated back to her in response made her feel a little better at least, and she allowed herself a moment of relief as she rounded the last bend and picked up speed in a race to main road.

  Lightning again flashed overhead with a suitable level of melodrama, and Nev released one long, lost wail of despair as she finally burst out onto what should’ve been Chisholm Road and discovered the utterly impossible: that like the bikes and that afternoon’s good weather, the road had also completely disappeared. With only hard earth beneath her feet, she stood in the middle of an open expanse of knee-high grass with thick scrub beyond… the road that should have been there was most definitely not.

  Remembering for the first time in some minutes that she indeed still carried a phone clamped in her right fist, she desperately lifted it and swiped open to make a call for help, only to feel an even greater stab of fear in her heart as she read the pop-up message already waiting for her in the middle of the screen:

  No network available.

  Please try again when you are connected to a network.

  She whirled about in desperation, vainly hoping that she’d simply got her bearings wrong: that some passing car would suddenly appear, its headlights leading the way back toward civilisation and safety. Yet part of her mind already knew that where she was standing should have been the centre of Chisolm Road, and that as she turned to the north, the distant lights of the town she’d grown up in should have been clearly visible through the gathering dusk.

  No network. No network! It just wasn’t possible. Her mind was teetering on the very edge of rationality now. She was with the premier carrier in the country – the one that charged half as much again as everyone else and always bleated on the TV ads about covering ‘ninety-five per cent of the population’. How could a country town just two hours’ drive from the state capital so suddenly and inexplicably fall into that other five per cent? Maybe one of the cell towers in the area might have gone down coincidentally, leaving her without coverage, but if that were the case, why couldn’t she see the
bloody town…?

  Less than half an hour earlier, she’s stood in that the exact same spot and seen familiar rooftops in the distance, not realising at the time how comforting that was. But where she stood now had no road, no phone coverage (not even lousy 3G), and the bright lights of home, which should’ve been clearly visible in the darkness, were nowhere to be seen. There wasn’t even the faint glow they always left in the sky above on cloudy nights, confirming her fear that it wasn’t just a matter of her not being able to see them… they simply weren’t there at all.

  There was a shout of warning from somewhere behind her, and it hadn’t come from Percy. It had clearly been a male voice and it was answered by another shout from somewhere off to the south. Another flash of lighting lit up the sky, again followed quickly by thunder, and the faint whimper of nervous horses came soon after, galvanising her mind and body and forcing her to take some kind of action.

  Whatever had happened to the town… wherever she actually was right now… the most important fact was that she desperately needed to be somewhere else, and needed to be there ASAP. If she was no longer where she should’ve been for whatever reason, then it followed by the same twisted logic that it didn’t really matter which way she ran, so long as it was away from danger.

  Another flash of lightning, and her decision was made in its fading afterglow. Past the open patch of grass and the line of scrub beyond, she caught sight of thicker bushland that might make it difficult for men on horseback to follow her in the dark. Stuffing her phone back into her pocket, she turned and caught sight of the flicker of burning torches moving back and forth in the distance, above the long grass. Without further hesitation, Nev Anderson sprinted across the open clearing and pushed through the tall grass on the other side, making for those distant trees with as much speed as she could muster.

  She’d run blindly on, forcing her way through thick scrub and clumped walls of tall, rough-edged grass that snatched at her clothing, caught her hair and raked her face and her bare hands. Lightning continued to flash overhead, thunder deafening in its wake as she pushed herself desperately onward, sometimes careening from tree to tree with a staggering gait as if she were a human pinball in some hideous arcade game. After ten more minutes of solid running, she halted again to catch her breath, once more checked her phone, and this time something else occurred to her.

  “Restart…!” She declared to nobody at all, fumbling for the power button on her phone and holding it long enough to prompt the device for the power-down slider. “If I restart, maybe it’ll pick up the network again…” she reasoned with herself, not needing to verbalise but feeling more positive hearing it out loud. It was true that reception around the outskirts of town was occasionally sketchy, and amid all the drama she’d forgotten that restarting the phone could sometimes rectify any connection issues.

  She waited impatiently for the cycle to complete, watching as the device powered down and then jamming her finger on the button once more to fire it up again, the beloved Apple logo flashing up onto the screen. Another few seconds’ wait, her breath rasping in her lungs, and the home screen flickered into colourful life.

  No network available.

  Please try again when you are connected to a network.

  She fell to her knees then as her remaining strength failed her, and she began to sob quietly beneath the darkened forest canopy. She could hear more hoof beats now, distant but closing fast enough, and it was clear there were at least three or four horses approaching from different directions across a broad arc behind her. She didn’t know why that disembodied voice had wanted her dead, or why Percy had betrayed her. She didn’t even know where she was anymore, and there seemed no point in fighting it… easier just to give up and surrender to whatever terrible fate whoever they were almost certainly had planned.

  “Do you want to live, girl…?”

  The words jolted her back reality, and she snapped her head in the direction of that new voice, eyes wide and fearful as she realised that it had been a real one rather than something imagined inside her own head. She immediately spotted a dark figure standing just a few metres away, and as she lifted her phone screen for light, she saw a young man with mud-streaked features above a scruffy moustache and ‘almost-beard’, both doing their best to cover rough-hewn, youthful features.

  “Douse your faerie light, witch…!” He growled sharply, lifting an arm across his face in reaction to the pale glow of the phone. “Save your spells for the Black Watch, if you’ve majik to spare…”

  “Wh – what…?”

  “My question stands…” he hissed with anger born of impatience, taking a few steps forward until his entire body was clear in the faint lighting. “They’ll be on us in a handful, and nothing will save us when that happens…” he pointed out, almost pleading now as he extended a questing hand. “Do… you… want… to… live…?”

  Nev had only a fraction of a second to make her decision but there wasn’t really one to make, truth be told. Working in league with persons – or things – unknown, her former best friend (bitch!) had just betrayed her, conspired to kill her into the bargain, and was most definitely still trying to accomplish part or all of the above. Even a complete stranger (a cute one at that, so far as she could tell in the dim light) was already well ahead in the ‘trustworthy’ stakes, and anything seemed like a better idea than hanging about right now, waiting to be captured by Percy and whatever other henchmen she may have conjured out of thin air.

  All of that flashed through Nev’s mind in the space of a heartbeat and she was back on her feet in another, courage and strength renewed by a suddenly-growing hope that all might not actually be lost.

  “Who are you…?” She demanded as she took a step forward, raising her voice just enough to be heard over the increasingly heavy rain. As she spoke, she slipped the bag from her shoulder and slid her hand inside, forcing aside Honda’s wrapped gift as she reached for the hilt of the bokken she’d used at training.

  “Name’s Godfrey…” the young man answered after a moment’s consideration, eyes continually flicking about in search of danger. “I’m a ranger of the Southern Oster, sent to keep you safe…”

  “Oh, the army…” Nev exclaimed with a little more relief, thinking she’d recognised a military rank and completely missing the distasteful tone he’d used regarding the purpose of his mission.

  “The Southern Oster follows no king,” Godfrey snapped quickly in return, almost sniffing with disdain at the very thought, “…and I’ll be a dead ranger and you a tortured witch if we’re not away from here!”

  “Who’re you calling a ‘witch’…?” She asked indignantly, the irrelevance of the question not occurring to her in that moment as what he’d been saying finally began to sink in.

  “Dragonfall take me, this is no time for talk! Come… come now…! Questions later, when we’re safe…”

  As if on cue, the whinny of a horse again split the air, this time far nearer than the galloping she’d heard earlier, and she needed no further urging.

  “And we’re still here because why…?” Nev asked nervously, giving an excellent impression of someone who thought the idea of a speedy departure had been hers right from the start as she dragged the bokken free and brandished it in one hand while slipping the bag back over her shoulders,.

  “They warned me you’d be a strange one…” Godfrey observed cryptically, staring at her for a moment with a confused mixture of exasperation and laughter in his expression. “Stranger still for an enchantress! Away… let’s get out of here…!” He added hurriedly, extending a hand and grasping hers firmly as he dragged her into the reedy grass beyond. “Answers later… if we survive…!”

  He was off and running then, darting in and out between the bushes and gnarled tea-trees and avoiding each and every one as if they were running in broad daylight. Behind him, he dragged a cold, tired and completely bewildered Nev Anderson, the pair slowly but steadily opening an ever-increasing distance between th
em and their pursuers.

  III

  Unanswered Questions

  They reached the treeline at the other end of the wood after a few more minutes of breathless running and as lightning cracked overhead, Nev caught a glimpse of open pasture spreading away before them beneath the blackness of a leaden sky. There were two horses waiting nervously, their reins tied together around a thick, low-hanging branch near the very edge of the fields, and they whinnied and stamped their feet in fear as Nev and Godfrey approached.

  “We can’t go out there…!” She howled, her own terror mounting as she turned back to see the faint light of torches still behind them, flickering eerily between the trees. “They’ll be able to see us as soon as we break cover!”

  “Smart thinking, witch,” he nodded in agreement, the hint of a smirk suggesting there was more to it than that as he carefully inched his way forward, reaching out for the reins where they wrapped about the branch. “And what’ll they be looking for…?”

  “What the hell do you think?” She barked, her natural talent for sarcasm managing to break through for a moment. “Riders on horseback, escaping across the field!”

  “Aye, girl… and that’s exactly what we’ll give ‘em!” He grinned widely as another flash from above lit the area and she braced herself for the thunderclap that followed close in its heels.

  Releasing the reins, he threw them free, raised his arms high and released a bellowed “Yah…!” with the intent of frightening the horses.

  It was made redundant by a monumental roar of thunder above that completely drowned it out, but the end result was the same. The terrified beasts immediately turned tail and bolted at full speed across the open fields, heading directly away from the trees in a tight group. It was only during the next streak of blue-white brilliance across the dark clouds that Nev realised there were packs of something strapped to each horse’s back, and that even at a short distance, in that limited light it looked very much like riders leaning low over their necks at the gallop.