Chapter 8
Billy looked over at his father in the pilot’s seat. Although the revelation that Palin was his grandfather had sent shivers up and down his spine, his father hardly reacted at all. He just looked straight ahead, nodding slightly without a word.
The propeller’s buzz droned on, the only sound in the cabin. Outside, the tops of clouds whipped by, misty protrusions from the thick bank below. A few clipped the wings and gave them a bump. Nothing serious. Just enough to remind them that their final descent could be a little rough.
Billy looked back at the passengers. Had they heard about Palin? Although Sir Patrick and Shiloh continued their naps, Sir Barlow fixed his gaze on him. With crimson cheeks and bulging eyes, he seemed ready to blurt out a typical Barlowism, but he, too, stayed silent.
Closing Professor Hamilton’s journal with a slap, Billy jerked up the headset and slid it back over his ears. “Do we have any death march music?”
“Death march?” His father dipped his eyebrows. “Just because Palin’s your grandfather?”
“Well, yeah.” Billy glared through the window. How could he explain what he felt? When he first learned he had dragon blood, it took him a long time to figure out it wasn’t so bad, that the dragons were the good guys and the slayers were the bad guys. Now, not long after losing his dragon essence, he discovers that he has slayer blood, and there was probably no way to get rid of that.
“I know how you feel,” his father said. Now staring straight at him, he showed Billy his hand. “What do you see?”
Billy scanned the back of his hand from the tips of his fingers to his wrist, but noticed nothing unusual, just skin covered with reddish brown hair. Yet, a line of lighter skin wrapped one finger near the lowest knuckle, a sign that something had once shielded it from the sun.
“I’m wearing your ring.” Billy touched the pearly white gem mounted in a gold band on his own finger. Since his hands had always been narrower than his father’s, the ring slid up and down easily. “Is that it?”
“My father never gave me a rubellite, so I had to find one for myself.” Pulling his hand back, he looked forward again and pushed the yoke slightly. The airplane dipped into a gentle descent and broke into the blanket of clouds. A wall of white vapor slammed into the windshield, blinding them, and the plane began to shake. “Do you remember who my father was?” he asked, raising his voice slightly to compete with the vibrating airplane.
Billy nodded. He spoke the name Goliath in his mind, but decided to stay quiet for a while. With his father now busy flying only by the instruments, it was better to just sit and think. Although he wasn’t sure what Goliath looked like, an image appeared in his mind, the sketch Palin had used to help him learn to draw a dragon. He knew, of course, that Goliath was the first rebel dragon, the one who started the war between their race and humans and whetted the slayers’ appetite for killing. Because of Goliath, King Arthur listened to shrill cries of fear and allowed the slayers to hunt down and slaughter the supposed evil dragons, but they wouldn’t stop there. And that’s why Merlin had to step in and transform eleven faithful dragons into humans, thus beginning the race of anthrozils.
As thoughts of so many deaths coming at the hands of Devin and Palin flowed through his mind—Bonnie’s father, Ashley’s parents, and Professor Hamilton—Billy gripped the journal on his lap. His fingers tightened around the edge as a new image formed in his mind, the lifeless gray face of his beloved teacher. He lay unconscious after being thrown off Devin, who, while in dragon form, had tried to murder everyone in his path. The professor, riding on the dragon’s back, had pulled the slayer away, a heroic act that eventually cost him his life.
“I see that you understand my point,” his father said.
Billy turned toward him. They had broken through the clouds and were now flying over a landscape of high mountains and plunging valleys. With smooth sailing ahead and a quieter cabin, they could speak without interruption. “If you mean Goliath’s rebellion caused a whole lot of trouble, then, yeah, I understand.”
“Not exactly.” Shaking his head slowly, he pushed Merlin into a steeper descent. “I have lived for centuries with the knowledge that my own father was a murderer, a lying rebel who caused horrendous pain and suffering for untold thousands. If not for him, there would have been no war, no Devin or Palin and their bloodlust, and dragons might still be living freely, even today, in peaceful harmony with mankind. My father was the demonic dragon who ruined everything, and that thought tortured me for centuries.”
“But you’re nothing like him. You’re …” Billy let his voice fade. He wasn’t sure how to put it into words.
“That’s exactly my point. The sins of a father are the father’s alone. What the sons do is their own choice. It took me a long time to learn this, but now I understand that I didn’t inherit guilt from my father, only the mess he left behind.”
Billy settled back in his seat. His father was right. If he could live with being the son of the dragon who caused all this grief, surely it wasn’t so bad being the grandson of a slayer.
“Ahem.”
Billy turned. With his brow arched high, Sir Barlow seemed anxious to speak. “Yes, Sir Barlow?”
“May I interject something into your conversation?”
“Absolutely.” And Billy meant it. What man living today could possibly know more about both Goliath and Palin than the captain of King Arthur’s guard?
Sir Barlow leaned in between the two seats and set a hand on Billy’s shoulder. “Your father is correct. Goliath was the cruelest beast I have ever encountered, but I will avoid dwelling on that; my battle with him is little more than a high-flying tale. Yet Palin was quite different. He was the most dedicated squire you can imagine. His lust for killing dragons was troubling, to be sure, but he was zealous for what he believed to be right. He was a gentleman with ladies and children and a superior swordsman. His dedication to Sir Devin, though misguided, exemplified loyalty more perfectly than any storybook legend. May I suggest that your grief should be limited to the loss of his soul, that you should not allow the punishment he is likely suffering now to punish you as well? Let his life be a lesson, not a cruel whip for your own back.”
As the knight’s thick fingers slid away, Billy grabbed his wrist. “That was beautiful, Sir Barlow. Thank you.”
Barlow’s eyes gleamed. “Well, I had a fair amount of time to put the words together. I hope they helped.”
“Everyone buckle up,” Billy’s father said as he surveyed the ground. “Apparently, the GPS coordinates weren’t as precise as I had hoped, but we should be close. Look for a mountain with a grassy dome and a big hole at the top.”
“A big hole?” Billy asked.
“Walter told me the story over the phone. After the giants climbed up out of Hades, the ground collapsed and made a deep crater all the way down to something called the mobility room. But I didn’t understand it all. Walter gave me the details so fast I couldn’t keep up.”
“Yeah. I know what you mean. Talking on the phone with him is an adventure in itself.” As the plane skimmed over the mountaintops, Billy searched each one. Trees covered most of the lower hills, and jutting rocks topped several of the taller mountains. So far, only one grass dome, but it had a two-story brick house and no crater.
A female voice piped up. “Could that be it?”
Billy lurched around in his seat. Shiloh and Sir Patrick were both looking out the window. “I didn’t know you were awake,” Billy said.
Still clutching her father’s hand, she smiled. “Ever since that first big bump.” She pressed her finger on the window. “See that mountain just past the one with the rock formation that looks sort of like a face? I think it has a grass top.”
Billy swung back around and looked out his own window. “Yeah. I got it marked. And that dot in the middle could be a hole.”
His father turned the yoke. “We’re on our way.”
After a few minutes, they arrived at the mountaintop and circled a couple of hundred feet over its cap of brown grass. A deep pit scarred the middle, taking up over half of the dome.
Billy whistled. “That crater’s going to make it tough to land, Dad. Not much room for an airstrip.”
“Remember when I landed on our street back in Castlewood? I had to dodge power lines, trash cans, and two dogs. I can handle this.” He pushed the plane into a steep dive. “Hang on.”
Billy clutched his armrest. His heart thumped. This risky landing would be another shot of adrenaline, a great rush, but exhausting all the same.
Like a stone flying toward their faces, the ground hurtled in their direction. Billy instinctively reached for his own yoke, but drew back. He had landed Merlin several times before, but not like this. Dad was in control.
The plane suddenly jerked upward. Billy’s back pressed against his seat. The landing gear bounced heavily, and their momentum pushed them forward, but with the plane’s body angling up, they couldn’t see the pit. His heart pounded faster. Sweat dampened his shirt. They had to be getting close. There just wasn’t that much room.
Finally, they slowed and turned sharply. As Billy’s window shifted to face the chasm, he looked straight down into its depths. They had missed a plunge by mere inches.
Grinning, he unbuckled his belt and tossed it to the side. “What were you so worried about, Dad? That was a piece of cake!”
“Me? Worried?” He shot a grin back at Billy. “Just keeping you on your toes.”
After they stopped, Billy hustled back, pushed down the rear passenger door on the plane’s right side, and extended the airstair. A bitter wind swept in, biting through his clothes. “Everyone bundle up!” He grabbed a pair of gloves from the nearest seat along with his sweatshirt, slid them on, then hustled down the stairs.
Breathing white puffs into the crisp air, he surveyed the land. With a huge hole in the center of the snow-speckled brown grass, the domed top looked more like a volcano cone than a typical peak in the Montana highlands. The scarred meadow stretched out a few hundred feet in diameter, bordered by trees all around, some evergreen and some void of leaves.
He leaned back against the fuselage, waiting while everyone else put on their cold-weather gear. A few birds flitted about, and the tops of trees swayed, but no other movement caught his eye.
Sir Patrick stepped off the plane next, followed by Shiloh, both wearing coats. “A rather desolate place, isn’t it?” Patrick asked.
Billy nodded. “Do you see Gabriel or Sapphira anywhere?”
“They should be quite easy to identify. A boy with wings and a girl with white hair are not exactly commonplace.”
“Especially wandering around out in the middle of nowhere.” Billy pushed his hands into his sweatshirt pouch and shivered. Even his gloves weren’t enough to ward off the frosty air. Walter had warned him about the mountains of Montana, but he had said they were as cold as Morgan’s heart. Now he would have to tell Walter that Morgan’s heart would put earmuffs on if she came out in this weather. He grinned as he imagined Walter’s response. That’s very heartwarming, Billy, very heartwarming.
Her hands deep in her pockets, Shiloh marched toward the pit. “I wonder if there’s a way to get down there?”
“It seemed empty when I looked into it,” Billy said, “but I guess it won’t hurt to get a closer look.”
Sir Barlow lumbered down the stairs, rocking the airplane before landing with a thump on the ground. He fastened his jacket, a downy-lined leather one with a coat of arms embroidered on the front. “It is as cold as …” He touched a finger to his chin. “Let’s see, what is an appropriate idiom?”
“Cold as Morgan’s heart?” Billy asked.
“I was thinking ‘as cold as a lonely night,’ but, yes, your idiom works quite well.”
“Speaking of Morgan …” Billy turned back to the plane. His father had just stepped out and was coming down the stairs. “Dad. Any cell service here? We’d better call Mom and ask her about Palin.”
He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and looked at the display. “No. Nothing.”
Sir Patrick withdrew his phone. “Use mine. It’s charged now, and I have international service via satellite.”
As Billy punched in the phone number, he watched Shiloh peeking over the edge of the hole. The phone trilled in his ear twice before his mother picked up.
“Hello?”
“Mom, it’s me. Listen. We made it to Montana, and we’re waiting for Sapphira and Gabriel to show up, but on the way I was reading some stuff in Prof’s journals, and it made Dad and me think.”
“Thinking is good.” A hint of laughter flavored her voice.
He grinned at his father. “Yeah. We’re men of action, but we got kind of bored and decided to think for a while. Anyway, when was the last time you heard from your father?”
“My father? Why do you bring him up?”
“Please just hang with me for a minute, and I’ll explain.”
After a few seconds of silence, she spoke with a hesitant tone. “Well, he visited us back when you were little, but I never heard from him after that, at least, not directly. We did get word that he had died.”
“Was there a will? Did he leave you anything? Is there a last known address?”
“Slow down, Billy. One question at a time.”
“Okay.” Keeping his eyes on Shiloh as she walked around the hole’s perimeter, he tried to formulate a good question. “If someone contacted you about his death, then there must be a way to trace him. Do you have any letters from him?”
“Billy, my father left my mother when I was little. I barely knew him at all. He never called, never wrote, didn’t leave a forwarding address, and I threw away the telegram that announced his death.”
“So one day he just showed up at our house out of the blue?”
“Exactly. Your father wasn’t home, but I let him in anyway. I didn’t think he meant us any harm, and I didn’t want to try to kick him out, at least not by myself.”
“Was he mean? Aggressive?”
“Not really aggressive, just kind of strange, sort of a wide-eyed fanaticism about him. He kept talking about dragons, cracking jokes about them that weren’t funny at all, and asking me if I had seen any lately. He even pulled out a drawing of one.”
“A drawing?” He raised his eyebrows at his father. “Sort of an example? To help you know what he was looking for?”
“I suppose, but you saw it and asked him to show you how to draw one. So while the two of you were in the kitchen, I called Walter’s dad. A few minutes later, when I saw Carl walking up, I sent you to your room, and Carl showed my father to the door.”
Billy stared into space, murmuring. “Palin was checking us out. He and Devin were already suspicious of Dad.”
“Palin? Devin?” Her voice grew so loud, Billy pulled the earpiece back. “What are you talking about?”
Sir Patrick reached out his hand. “May I?”
“Mom, I’ll let Sir Patrick explain.” Billy gave him the phone and strolled toward Shiloh. As he walked, he listened to Patrick’s voice fade behind him.
“Marilyn, it is essential that you tell me all you remember about your father’s situation in England. My people can research …”
When he arrived at the pit, Shiloh was leaning over the edge, too far in Billy’s estimation. The urge to take her hand was almost overwhelming, but he held back. She was experienced enough to know what she was doing.
Her coat, flat against her back as she bent forward, seemed so strange. After getting accustomed to seeing Bonnie with wings, either outstretched or hidden in a backpack, this mirror image of her with a different profile was hard to get used to.
The last time he had seen Bonnie, she had asked him if he wanted to know the color of the rubellite in her ring. Red would have signaled that she still had her wings, while white would have proven that she had given them up. He had decided that it didn’t matter, and he never had a chance to find out.
Now, several days after she and her mother left to “get to know each other again,” he wanted the answer. With all that was going on, they might need a girl with dragon wings, so maybe keeping them would have been the right choice. Still, with all the media hounds searching for her, he couldn’t blame her for wanting to get rid of them. Ever since she left, she hadn’t answered her phone or returned any messages. Obviously, she had intentionally dropped off the face of the Earth.
“What’s so interesting down there?” he asked.
Shiloh straightened, her hand stroking her chin as she walked around the perimeter. “Let me show you.”
As Billy followed, Shiloh pointed at the grass. “There are quite a few human prints here and there, but wait until you see this.” She halted and stepped inside an impression in the dried mud, a print twice the size of a normal foot. “They start at the very edge and lead to the forest, but I can’t see any way for someone to get into or out of the hole.”
Billy peered into the pit. “Tough to scale sheer walls.”
“A dragon probably has prints this big, but these are human.”
He reached for her hand. “C’mon. Let’s report to the others.”
When they arrived back at the plane, his father broke off a conversation with Sir Patrick and turned toward him. “Find anything?”
Billy set his hands two feet apart. “Only footprints this big.”
“The Nephilim,” Sir Patrick said. “Ashley mentioned them.”
Shiloh hugged herself and shivered. “If what she said is true, knowing they might be around somewhere gives me the creeps.”
“Billy,” Jared said, “Patrick made a call to England. One of his knights will investigate your grandfather and report to your mother. Larry will help by searching electronic databases and analyzing a recording that one of Ashley’s computers picked up when Palin was in her underground laboratory. Maybe Larry can match the voiceprint with something online to help us track down Palin’s former home. Then maybe clues we find there will lead us to the identity and whereabouts of this new slayer.”
“If he is new.” Billy couldn’t resist flashing a grin. “After all the years you had to run from him, now we have the technology to turn the tables.”
“That’s true. And now it seems clear that he had tracked me to West Virginia much earlier than I had thought.”
“Yeah. I wonder why they gave up until recently.” Billy had his suspicions, but he didn’t want to voice them. Not yet. Maybe they looked elsewhere because he hadn’t acquired any dragon traits when Palin visited. Not only that, Dad was gone, so Palin couldn’t make a positive ID. He probably had seen Dad back when he and Devin fought in the throne room centuries ago, and since Mom knew better than to have photos of Dad sitting around the house, Palin had to go away without proof. Still, Devin did come back later, so his clues must have kept leading to Castlewood, West Virginia, and the Bannister name.
Sir Barlow stepped ahead of Billy and pointed at the tree line. “I see movement in the bushes near that stand of oaks.”
“I see it, too.” Billy ran that way, keeping his eye on the spot. A boy emerged from behind the trees, followed by a girl.
As the breeze whipped the girl’s white hair, she smiled and ran to meet him. “Billy!”
When they met, she wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head against his chest. “I’m so glad to see you again!”
Billy touched her lightly on the back. This girl was much more affectionate than he had expected. “Again?” he asked.
She pulled away, her cheeks turning red. “Oh! That’s right. You couldn’t see me before.”
As the boy approached, a pair of wings spread out behind him. “She means inside the Great Key,” he said, extending his hand. “She and I were there and set up the covenant veil for the dragons.”
Billy shook the boy’s hand. “Billy Bannister.”
“Gabriel. My last name changed so many times, I’m not sure which one to say. But I watched you as an invisible energy field for long enough, I feel like I know you.”
“An energy field?” Eyeing Gabriel’s wings, Billy let out a whistle. “I think I need to get up to speed on a lot of stuff.”
Sapphira took Billy’s hand, smiling up at him as if she were his little sister. He squinted at a red spot on her forehead. Was it blood?
“There won’t be much time for getting up to speed,” she said. “We have to open a portal to the Bridgelands. According to Yereq, we’re supposed to transport all the former dragons up there.”
“Yereq?” Billy asked.
“Yes, he’s—”
“Well, what do we have here?” Sir Patrick called as he approached. “A boy with wings and a girl with white hair?”
Gabriel ran to meet him. “Patrick!” While the two hugged, Billy’s father and Sir Barlow joined the group.
“Ah, yes!” Barlow said. “Reunions are always such a pleasant sight.”
Sapphira stepped around Billy and looked at the airplane. “Where’s Bonnie? Didn’t she come with you?”
He stuffed his gloved hands back into his sweatshirt pouch. “She and her mom went into hiding. We got a note about a slayer chasing them, so we might not be able to get in touch with them for months.”
“Oh.” Sapphira’s brow creased. “That’s terrible!”
Gabriel nodded toward the woods. “Well, we can’t replace Bonnie, but we do have a giant-size surprise for you.” He set a hand on Barlow’s sword hilt. “But don’t be too surprised when you see him. He’s a friend.”
Sapphira grinned and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Come on out!”
A man, nearly as tall as one of the smaller oaks, walked out from behind the tree line.
Sir Barlow gasped. “By all that is holy!”
“This is Yereq,” Sapphira said. “He’s going with us to the Bridgelands, the same place Walter and Ashley and her mother and sister went.”
Gabriel reached as high as he could and patted Yereq on his shoulder. “Yep. The bad guys have giants, so the good guys need one, too.”
“If such a man can handle a blade,” Barlow said, “then he will be a great asset indeed!”
Yereq drew a long sword from the scabbard on his back and held it out in front of him. “During frightful days of darkness, I have been practicing on demons who are both fast and clever. I’m looking forward to using it in the light.”
Billy surveyed all the travelers—himself, his dad, two knights, two girls, a boy with wings, and a giant. “So how do you propose to get all of us to this Bridgelands place?”
“With our solar-powered portal maker,” Gabriel said, nodding at Sapphira. “She just whips up a firestorm and off we go.”
Sapphira smiled demurely. “I’ve never transported this many people. I might have to take two or three at a time.”
“That’s a lot of back and forth,” Gabriel said. “Are you sure you have enough firepower?”
“I won’t know until I try.” She raised a finger and spun it in the air. A tiny flame encircled the tip, like an adhesive bandage made out of fire. “I feel pretty strong.”
“I have an idea,” Patrick said, signaling for everyone to gather around. When they had made a tight huddle, he spoke in a solemn tone. “My idea is a very dangerous one. If it works, we will have a great advantage in the other realm. If it doesn’t work, then we will be, as the idiom says … toast.”