Dragon Sword: Chapter 9
Blunt the sharpness; untangle the knots; soften the glare; let your wheels move only along old paths.
A new chapter is available every Wednesday at Noon, CST. Begin with Chapter 1
The limo pulled through the gates that I’d left behind only an hour or so. My stomach scrunched into a knot. I wasn’t hungry any more. If Daiyu was still in there I might never eat again.
“Is this your house? I want to see it!” Poppy chirped.
“Shut up,” I said. She’d talked pretty much non-stop since we’d been thrown in the back of the car. My two captors ignored her. I tried to do the same but mostly failed.
“Will we get something to eat? Do you have any toys?”
“Shut up,” I said hopelessly. I looked down at the tiny hand still gripped on my arm. It looked welded there. Could she disassemble her molecules too? Surely not.
Daiyu’s house had a grand entrance that I’d never seen anyone use. It was still nicely shut. The side door I generally used to get into the house had been blown off its hinges. It lay in shattered splinters in the hallway that led to the meditation hall.
Humvee dragged me and Poppy out of the back of the car and through that door without a glance at the mayhem. The sight of that shattered door didn’t help the knots in my stomach any.
The meditation room was intact except for a couple of little gold Buddhas that had been knocked over. One of them was missing. I wished I knew if that meant anything.
“The kitchen!” Poppy exclaimed. “Take me to the kitchen. I want more of those crunchy wafers! Please, please, please!”
“Crackers,” I said. “They’re called crackers. And I don’t think they’re going to let us go to the kitchen.” Mr. Humvee was dragging me to the stairs and I was dragging Poppy. Hatchet face was on the other side of the little girl and staying out of reach. He had his hand inside his coat. I knew there was a gun and I was glad he didn’t show it to me. Knowing it was enough.
“Crackers, crackers, crackers!” Poppy chirped over and over in her little voice.
“Look,” I said to Mr. Humvee, mostly out of despair, “Can you pull her off me? She’s driving me crazy!”
Mr. Humvee didn’t even look at Poppy or me. “No,” he said. The single word didn’t leave much room for negotiation. Poppy grabbed for the tail of his jacket and he shied out of her reach, dodging like a prize fighter. He didn’t let go of my wrist, which would have been a step in the right direction, but he obviously wasn’t going to let Poppy touch him.
Oh, really? That was interesting. I filed that away for further examination.
If Daiyu was right, Poppy had been dead for about eighty years. For torpedoes like Mr. Humvee their stock in trade was making dead people. That meant they didn’t have any power over ghosts. I wondered if that gave her power over him?
“Cracker, cracker, cracker!” She’d set it up as an annoying chant. She’d learned a new word and had fastened onto it as tightly as she’d fastened on to me.
“You afraid of a little girl?” I asked. You shouldn’t needle someone who is probably dragging you to your doom, but you know me.
He responded by digging his thumb into a pressure point on my wrist. I shrieked and kept my mouth shut after that.
When we got to Daiyu’s big reception room the ambassador was there, sitting at a huge table I’d never seen before, covered with food. Poppy laughed and jumped up and down when she saw it.
Beside the ambassador stood the Prime Minister looking smug. The ambassador grinned like a giant Cheshire cat. The entire thing had a Mad Hatter’s tea party feel.
Blessedly, Poppy released my wrist and dove for the food. Unblessedly, she tore the skin off my wrist where her fingers had literally been welded on. I began bleeding something fierce, probably because my heart was pounding like a piston. I grabbed a napkin and pressed it to the little finger holes. The ambassador laughed hugely as if all this was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.
Poppy dived at the food, stuffing a handful of dumplings in her mouth. Then she grabbed a skewer of barbecued chicken and that went into her mouth after the dumplings, skewer and all. Then she grabbed a bowl of noodles and sat next to a big simmering pot of soup stuffing the stringy things into her mouth. The ambassador, still laughing picked up a fat fistful of grapes and threw them at her. Poppy caught them in her mouth, which had noodles dripping down.
I was beginning to feel crazy. There was nothing in front of me that wasn’t utterly insane.
“What have you done with Daiyu?” I said. I had to break up the party with a little bit of sanity. Had to.
“Who?”
“The person who owns this house,” I said.
“Oh!” a big grin slit his enormous face. “The vermin who infested this place! She will soon be dead.” He said it like it was supposed to make me laugh. Vermin? It just made me feel like I was deeper in Crazy Town.
I clung to the words “will soon be,” taking that as a sign that she wasn’t already dead. “Where have you got her?”
He picked up a dumpling with a pair of chopsticks and tossed it at Poppy who caught it in her mouth like a dog. Then he expertly picked up two dumplings at once and dropped them into his maw.
Then he nodded at Humvee who pushed a screen aside and revealed Daiyu, in human form, slumped against a wall.
I suppressed a shriek when I saw her. I wanted to jump up and run to her and I was half way out of my chair when Mr. Humvee, who stood behind the ambassador, put his hand in his coat meaningfully. I sat back down.
I studied her hoping for some signs of life. She was curled on her side, but I could see her eyes were closed. I think I saw her breathe. I wasn’t sure. She was tied up. I reassured myself they don’t tie up dead people. It’s also usually pointless to tie up a dragon but I had a feeling demons knew how to do it effectively.
“Yes,” the Prime Minister said. “She is neutralized and will be dead soon. They all will be and we’ll be free of them.” It was a sort of supervillain gloating speech. He didn’t quite carry it off. He was pale and his hands were shaking. I could see at bottom he was terrified. He had a tiger by the tail and had to know, in his heart of hearts, that eventually it would turn and eat him.
I couldn’t worry about that. I studied the demon who was now stuffing chunks of brown meaty stuff into his maw. I had the sword hanging off my back and I had never had a stronger urge to chop somebody up with it. He was disgusting. No, I reminded myself. That thing wasn’t a he. It was a demon from hell. I wondered if the ambassador had ever been a man or if he was always a demon. If there was a spark of humanity in there, I couldn’t see it. I would have been perfectly happy to cut him up into five hundred pounds of sushi.
I’d never killed anyone before … well, no, I’d once beheaded Mr. Long-ju. I know that sounds horrible … but I didn’t really mean to and obviously it didn’t have any severe consequences so it didn’t count. I’ll explain it all sometime.
Meanwhile I needed to deal with this fathead. “Why am I here?” I asked. It was a question that had been nagging at me. Why me? I’m nobody.
“You are their pet,” the PM injected.
“The dragons have a serious weakness that has always left them vulnerable,” said the ambassador. He expertly wrapped a piece of salted duck in a lettuce leaf and shoved the entire thing in his mouth. Poppy was noisily plowing through a tray of fried baby octopus. One of them dangled from the corner of her mouth like a spider.
“And what weakness would that be?” I didn’t think I’d ever be hungry again. Never. I was never going to look at baby octopus again in the same way, for sure. I hadn’t seen the Prime Minister eat anything. He may have eaten his last meal.
“Humans,” the ambassador said. “They involve themselves in the affairs of humans.”
“And how is that a weakness?” My mind was now running fast.
“They will try to stop me from killing you.” He picked up a fried octopus that Poppy had dropped. She was shoving fistfuls of almond cookies in her mouth. He nibbled on the spidery thing. The Prime Minister watched Poppy out of the corner of his eye as if looking at her full on would be an acknowledgement that she actually existed.
“I will kill you anyway,” the ambassador continued. “But they will feel compelled to try to stop me and therefore will bring themselves to me.”
Gulp. I had a fair amount of confidence that he was right that they’d come to my rescue. But… this wasn’t good.
“They will kill you,” I said with a lot more confidence than I felt. “In fact, I may do it myself.”
The Prime Minister gasped and looked sick. The ambassador threw his head back and roared with laughter. I should do it now, I thought. I should pull out the sword and slice his throat. His big fat throat shook like a half gallon of lard.
I was reaching back for the sword hilt but before I more than touched it, I froze.
A pair of eyes emerged from the stone wall of the room. The ambassador was still wrapped up in his own amusement. Mr. Humvee and Hatchet face had their back to it. The eyes were transparent, golden brown and the size of car tires. The ghostly face emerging behind the eyes was silver. Long-ju. One of the eyes closed slowly, reopened and then sank back into the stones.
I’d just witnessed a gigantic wink. I scratched the back of my neck to cover why my hand was back there.
“You are very amusing,” the ambassador said. “I can see why the dragons are fond of you.”
“Gosh, thanks.” Yes, I said it sarcastically.
“So what do they make of your infestation?”
“My what?”
The ambassador again picked up a dumpling in his chopsticks and flung it at Poppy who again snapped it neatly out of the air. She giggled at him as she chewed it. “This is a ghost,” he said. “It has attached itself to you for some reason.” He chuckled benignly when Poppy started fishing bits of stuff out of the boiling hotpot with her bare fingers. Gosh these two were merry. I wish I could be in a good mood like they were. But one was dead and the other wanted me dead. I didn’t see a lot to chuckle about.
“How do I get rid of her?” I asked. I didn’t expect he would help me out, but you never know.
“I couldn’t say,” said the ambassador. “Ghosts generally don’t attach themselves to people because they are especially virtuous. You have some kind of amends to make.” He shrugged. “But that is no concern of yours. You will not live long enough to rid yourself of her.”
My throat was too dry for the wherewithal to gulp again.
“However, there is something you can do to save your miserable life,” he said casually.
“Oh? And that would be?” I thought about the paint brush I’d stolen. It had to be valuable otherwise why would Daiyu ask me to steal it? But the answer to my question returned to a familiar theme.
“Bring me the White Dragon.”
“Sure thing. Let me go and I’ll bring him right back to you.”
He laughed uproariously again. “Do you know where he is?” It wasn’t a serious question. He knew I didn’t.
“White Mountain, where else?”
“No one has inhabited White Mountain for more than a century,” he said dismissively.
“How do you know? He might just be a lousy housekeeper.”
“Enough,” said the ambassador, suddenly not amused by me.
“Seriously, how can I bring you a dragon of any color?” I said.
He picked up a sardine. Its tiny eye seemed to look at me plaintively before it slid down the ambassador’s copious throat. “You can be the bait,” he said.
“Houng” he said to Mr. Humvee. So the torpedo had a name. It was almost a surprise. “Take our guest up to the tower.”
All dragon houses had a big room like the one I was currently in. These big rooms all have wide open archways. Dragons fly. The big room is used for all kinds of purposes and one of those purposes is a hangar. Also all dragon houses have a sort of landing platform that stuck up high in the air.
Mr. Humvee virtually materialized at my side and took hold of my arm again. Poppy practically went ballistic.
“No! No! No!” she shrieked. I’m not exactly sure what Banshees sound like but I’d guess it was something like that. She launched herself at me.
“Poppy! No! Stay!” I couldn’t let her get hold of me again. The places on my arm where she’d torn off the little patches of skin had stopped bleeding, but they hadn’t stopped hurting. I couldn’t let her get her hooks into me again. To my relief she stopped short of grabbing me and just stared with enormous sad eyes.
“Stay here with the nice man,” I said. What could he do to her? She was dead. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” A whopping lie. I figured I wasn’t going to survive that bait thing no matter what the ambassador said. Poppy looked doubtful but picked up a big rice ball and stuffed the whole thing in her mouth. Her cheeks pooched out. A real kid would have choked herself on that much food all at once.
Mr. Humvee half dragged, half led me to the narrow winding stairs up to the tower. I think Poppy was following us. I don’t know how I knew that, but it was like I could feel her. I also knew, just like I wouldn’t leave the sword, she probably wouldn’t leave the vicinity of the book which was miraculously still in the waistband of my pants.
I wished pretty hard that I’d gone ahead and cut the ambassador’s throat when I had the chance. I knew I couldn’t do it then and still couldn’t do it, but it gave me something to think about while I was hauled up the stairs.
Mr. Hatchet Face didn’t follow along on this trip. Maybe he was babysitting. Maybe he was off somewhere pulling the wings off flies.
The platform had the last thing on planet earth I thought I ever was going to see. A gibbet. A noose, a platform. All of it was right out of a medieval woodcut.
I wanted to scream but my throat had closed too tight for that. Wildly, I tried to shake loose of Humvee and grab my sword. Okay, running him through wouldn’t be a cold blooded killing. Self defense, right? He misunderstood my intention and just grabbed both my wrists with the greatest of ease. We wrestled but he ended up holding both my wrists with one hand that felt like cast iron. He pulled a roll of duct tape out of his pocket.
When I saw the duct tape, I did scream. Suddenly the idea of killing him was an absolutely lovely idea. I fought him with everything I had. I don’t have much, but I do have something. For an instant I thought I was going to get loose when I stomped on his instep and butted my head against his nose. I’d like to think I broke it, but probably not.
And then, almost as if he was merely fed up with my nonsense, he pushed me to the ground and held me with one foot on my diaphragm. He caught my wrists and taped them together with quick efficiency. Then he took the rope, tied it around my ankles and hauled me up on the gibbet until I was swinging, head down like … well, like bait.
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