CHAPTER 15
Jennifer
It had been a long
time, Jennifer realized, since she had last seen Eddie Blacktooth.
She didn’t know what was worse—not seeing him or seeing him and
being unable to touch him.
Casualty #21 of being in Domeland . . . zero hands-on time
with my would-be boyfriend.
He was no more than
six feet away, but it might as well have been six million. The blue
barrier shimmered between them, casting each of them in an
unearthly glow to the other’s eyes.
They were not even
alone, she grumbled to herself as she imagined holding and kissing
him. Her father was here on her side, and on Eddie’s side was an
even rarer sight: the seraph that had arisen from the dying body of
Wendy Blacktooth, Eddie’s mother. The enormous angel-warrior burned
with a silent white fire, had only showed up at erratic intervals
over the past few months, and never talked even when it
did.
It reminded Jennifer
of a huge and annoying conscience, which reminded them of all the
death that had led them to this point.
Major
mood-killer.
Still, perhaps it
could be useful now.
“You have to find
Skip,” she was telling Eddie, yet looking hopefully at the
seraph.
“I find him all the
time,” Eddie snapped. He was in a mood, which only made Jennifer
more anxious. They never had more than a few moments together; why
he acted this way was inexplicable. Boys: as much a puzzle to the
Ancient Furnace as were hieroglyphics.
Well, okay, maybe it
was a little bit explicable. He was soaking wet and shivering,
probably as a result of fording the Mississippi River to their
meeting point on the north end of town without benefit of a bridge.
Normally, a boat would have sufficed; but during the crossing a
dragon outside the barrier sympathetic to Ember Longtail had taken
a potshot at him, and he had been forced to leap into the icy
river. The seraph had come to his side shortly afterward to shoo
away the intruder, but apparently it didn’t have a clothes dryer
handy.
“I’m sorry about that
dragon,” she told him again.
He wrung out a
sleeve, shivering and drippy and crabby. “I thought Xavier had
things under control out here. If he has rogue dragons running
around, I don’t know how close I can get to Skip.” He
sneezed.
Jennifer put a hand
to her mouth and nodded grimly, thinking: don’t smile. Don’t smile.
“I’m sure it’s just
the one. Please, Eddie. Won’t you help? If Skip’s done this once,
he’ll almost certainly do it again.”
“Especially since he
didn’t kill anyone the first time,” Jonathan added.
“We don’t know what
he’ll go for next,” Jennifer explained. She could see that Eddie
was trying to hide his irritation and fear, and possibly the
beginnings of a head cold, and she loved him for it. “It could be
the hospital, or someone’s house, or anywhere . . .”
“Or anyone.”
Jonathan’s eyes were
fixed beyond Eddie and the seraph, to the northeast and the river.
Jennifer followed his gaze, and her heart twisted.
This stream of
creatures was thinner and denser than the first. It spilled down
the opposite cliffs and over the treetops like a rocket’s shadow,
moving in an unerring straight line.
For
them.
“Eddie,” Jennifer
whispered, as she heard him gasp, “Jennifer!”
“We’ve got to get
both of you out of here,” Jonathan agreed. The seraph turned to
him, its cold fire raging, and he spoke directly to it. “Protect
him.”
“But, Dad, how can it
protect him against—”
“Argue another time!
Eddie, get moving. To the west. Jennifer, to the east. Make that
thing choose. I’ll follow the target and do what I
can.”
Both did as he
instructed, but after fifty yards Jennifer stopped.
The seraph wasn’t
following its ward. Instead, it stomped its foot and cracked the
ground.
Jonathan waved it on.
“Follow Eddie! Do as I say! If this stays outside the dome, you’re
the only one who can help him!”
Jennifer looked
beyond them, at Eddie. He had stopped as well, and was looking at
the oncoming swarm with quizzical panic. It was crossing over the
flat current of the Mississippi, too far away yet to be sure which
of them it would chase.
Dad’s right. I have to get moving. We both have to get
moving.
“Eddie, run!” she
called out, and turned to do so herself.
She had made it only
another thirty yards when a shock wave knocked her off her feet.
Scrambling to get up, she realized it had come from the seraph, who
had unsheathed its brilliant blue blade.
Not helpful, she steamed. She checked the swarm to
see where it was flowing. Only when she saw how close it
was—spitting distance from the seraph—did she begin to
understand.
It took longer for
her father to catch on. “Dammit, you angelic freak, help those kids
before—”
It was too late for
anyone to do anything, now. The river of death passed over and
under the seraph as if it were nothing more than a dead pine trunk.
The creatures within splashed through the barrier and pooled around
the feet of Jonathan Scales. Before he could think to change form
and take to the air, the cloud scrambled up his legs, invaded his
face, and darkened his features.
His astonished gray
eyes looked at Jennifer for an instant before the entire mass
breathed in, and out, and in . . .
. . . and
disintegrated, taking his ashes with it.