Ambush

  Jude hit first, crashing through the glass roof and down into the small plants and trees that were growing around the indoor atrium. Metal brackets and glass rained down in a massive tinkling fashion.

  Malcolm and Paul came in right behind us, screeching as they arrived.

  Alarms sounded immediately, and lights flashed on as orderlies seemed to come out of the woodwork. Instantly there were dozens of beefy men in scrubs. They looked at the dragons and had a quick change of heart. All of them turned and started running away. I had no idea where my father was, but I knew that the lady with the big nose was in charge.

  I only had to think it, and Jude reacted.

  He ran toward a set of locked double doors and charged through them like a multihorned cosmic bull. The doors flew open and off their hinges. Malcolm passed us running on the wall. Kate was holding onto him as tightly as I was holding onto Jude. I tried to think of something else to get Jude’s mind off the poor woman in charge, but it was hard to think of something I wanted Jude to harm instead.

  I kept thinking of produce and bad weather, seeing how I would have no problem with Jude taking on broccoli and a rainstorm, but it didn’t work. Jude stomped down the hall toward the front. The woman with the big nose was cowering behind the desk, frantically trying to call someone for help. Jude opened his massive jaw and screamed. Spit flew everywhere, covering the walls with wet, dark patterns. The black dragon stretched his neck over the desk and looked down at the woman.

  She didn’t sound very professional when she screamed.

  I looked beside me. Kate and Wyatt were still on their dragons, holding on for dear life. Three huge orderlies came running at Jude with some sort of metal sticks. Before they could get anywhere near him, Paul and Malcolm moved into their path and knocked them to the ground. I could see Wyatt and Kate desperately trying to hang on during the scuffle.

  I turned my attention to the woman behind the counter. “Hello,” I yelled.

  Jude pulled back a bit, and the woman poked her head up just enough to see me.

  “I need to talk to my father, Aeron.”

  “He’s not here,” she whimpered. “Is that a . . . ?”

  “Have you never seen a dragon before?” I asked incredulously. “Well, now you have. So where’s my father? You guys had him locked up.”

  “Dragons aren’t real,” she said, crying.

  All three dragons screamed in an effort to help her see reality.

  “Sheriff Pax has him,” she said shaking. “He came yesterday and ordered his release.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said again. “Why would . . . ?”

  I shouldn’t have thought it, but the thought went something like this: Sheriff Pax had gotten my father out of the hospital so that he could take him to the manor, use the elevator, and find the dragons that belonged to me. My dad didn’t care about me; he cared only about the dragons.

  It was just a quick thought, but it was enough to change Jude’s focus again. He spun around and roared. I tried to thank the lady for the information, but Jude was moving so quickly that I’m not sure she heard me.

  Malcolm and Paul got in line behind Jude as he ran back down the hall knocking out ceiling tiles with his head and wings and breaking anything that wasn’t as wide as him. I could hear Kate and Wyatt yelling things, but I couldn’t understand them due to all the tearing and ripping of building materials.

  Jude slammed through the same doors he had busted moments before and then leaped upward. He flew out of the shattered atrium and straight up into the night sky. He flapped his wings and quickly shot east.

  I was fighting my brain, trying to get my thoughts to stay clear. I was scared to think about anything. I knew I was simply postponing the inevitable by not thinking, but someone was going to get seriously hurt unless I got Jude under control.

  “Calm down!” I ordered.

  I could feel him resist and reject those thoughts. Jude wasn’t in the mood for anyone to control him. He was beginning to recognize his position and with each new moment his thoughts became stronger and less of mine and more of his. He could feel the division between me and my father. He also understood that whereas I wanted nothing more than to protect him, my father wanted to take him away.

  It was very cold as we flew over Lake Mend and the old ball bearing factory. And it was even colder as we traveled into the mountains toward the manor. Jude kept blowing fire, and the warm flames washed over us like small blasts from a furnace. I couldn’t tell if he was doing it to keep us warm or because he just wanted to show off.

  “Don’t kill anyone,” I kept saying aloud, hoping the message would sink in. “Don’t kill anyone!”

  The dragons in the past had gone from pets to pillagers quickly and once they had turned, they no longer had any affection or concern for me or anyone else. Jude was different. We both understood that we needed each other for this to continue, for his species to carry on.

  “Still!” I yelled. “Don’t kill anyone!”

  I could feel his thoughts, and they were focused only on finding my father in the cavern.

  One of the best things about traveling by dragon is the speed. We didn’t have to drive slowly up the steep, winding road. We simply had to soar straight up the mountainside and into the forest above Kingsplot. It took us a few minutes to do what it usually took an hour to do in a car.

  I could see the Pillage manor. Not a single light was on. Every floor was dark. Even the lights lining the driveway were off.

  Jude circled the manor and then swooped into the same fifth-story window he had broken out of. He settled in the foyer as Malcolm and Paul entered behind him. I looked over at Kate. Her hair had blown free of the pins holding it in place, but she looked wonderful, although a little ticked off. Wyatt was holding onto Paul’s neck so tightly that the poor dragon began to choke and shake. Wyatt let go and slipped off the dragon like a fried egg out of a Teflon pan. I climbed off Jude and ran to Kate. When I reached out to help her, she refused to take my hand.

  Apparently she was still holding a grudge. I tried not to think poorly of her for fear of Jude reacting to it.

  It was dark in the manor, but our eyes adjusted. Kate’s once-beautiful dress was torn and blackened all over. It was obvious that Malcolm had blown a little fire in flight as well. Wyatt stood up. He didn’t look right in a tux. In fact, it looked more absurd to see him dressed up that way than to see him standing next to a dragon.

  The last time I had been in this room, Thomas and Wane were there. Now it was completely silent. There was destruction everywhere, and I could see through the giant holes in all the walls. It made the fifth floor feel much more open.

  “What now?” Wyatt asked.

  I couldn’t answer Wyatt yet because I was focusing on singing another song in my head to keep my thoughts from thinking anything that might prompt Jude to leave or kill someone. I kept singing the theme song to iCarly over and over.

  Jude looked mad about my taste in music.

  “Are you humming something?” Kate asked.

  Jude turned and began to run toward the bathroom. Malcolm and Paul surprised no one by following suit.

  “Go downstairs!” I yelled at Wyatt and Kate. “Find Thomas and Wane.”

  “Okay,” Wyatt said.

  “No way,” Kate disagreed.

  “You don’t understand,” I pleaded. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “That’s your best attribute,” Kate said. “I’m not going downstairs.”

  Apparently Wyatt didn’t appreciate that part of my personality. He took off for the stairs while Kate followed me into the bathroom. The whole fifth floor was so torn up that there were no doors or completely intact structures anywhere.

  “Those dragons can’t fit in the elevator,” Kate commented as we ran, showing she had a pretty good grasp of spatial relations.

  “There’s no elevator anymore,” I said, jumping over a big chunk of hallway wall. “They climbed up the shaft.” br />
  “That shaft has to be half a mile long,” Kate said, baffled.

  “They’re dragons,” I reminded her.

  When we got to the bathroom, I could barely see the tail end of Paul slipping down into the shaft.

  “Is your father down there?” Kate asked.

  “I can’t imagine how he would have gone down,” I said, “but he’s with Sheriff Pax.”

  The closet where the elevator used to be was nothing but a huge, torn-apart hole. There was no door frame, and almost all the wall was ripped out from between the two windows. The large iron boiler was still lying sideways on the floor a few feet away from the shaft, making the place look like a war zone.

  “What happens when they get down there and find nothing?” Kate asked.

  “They’ll probably climb back up and demand I think of something.”

  “So what are you thinking?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said defensively. “But I’m not killing them.”

  “Do you know how?” Kate asked, knowing that for every dragon it was different.

  I told Kate how I had figured out that by putting the first letter of each chapter of The Grim Knot together it had spelled out the answer. “They have to be killed with the same single blow.”

  “How do you do that?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said firmly. “I’m not going to kill them. I’ll run away. I’ll hide them in the forest for the rest of my life if I have to.”

  “This is why I broke up with you,” she said. “You’re going to end up like your dad.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?” a dark, new voice asked.

  Kate and I spun to the left to see where the voice had come from. There in the corner of the bathroom was my father.

  It scared me so badly that I fell backward against the iron boiler. I stood back up as quickly as I could. Kate grabbed my hand, and I could feel her shivering.

  “Dad,” I said quietly, wishing I could see better in the dark.

  “‘Dad,’” he mocked. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  The honesty in his voice scared me more than his surprise. It sounded like he completely believed he wasn’t my father.

  “We’ve been waiting,” he whispered.

  “We?” I questioned tentatively as I reached into the bathtub and pulled out one of the two remaining flashlights. I flicked it on. On my short list of wishes, near the top would be that I wished I had never done that.

  Kate and I were suddenly surrounded by hundreds of plants. Ivy was stretching in through the windows and hung from the roof, bushes snarled in the corners, and long, willowy ferns covered the walls like a jungle. As scary as the plants were, what they were doing made them that much worse. This may sound like a medicine-induced dream, but all of them were wielding weapons. Some were jabbing forks and sticks while most had small kitchen knives and blades in their palms and leaves. I saw one plant shift a sharp knife from one of its branches to another as if preparing to slash me. It looked like my father and half the forest had been waiting in ambush.

  My father smiled and I could tell by the crazy glint of his eyes that his mind was completely under the influence of darkness.

  “The dragons are mine,” he said sternly.

  Kate slipped behind me.

  “No way,” I argued. “I raised them, and they know my mind.”

  “Your death will change that,” my father insisted.

  “You’re forgetting something very important,” I said, trying to remain calm.

  “What’s that?” my father humored me.

  “These plants respond to my wishes also,” I said boldly. “I can just as easily turn them on you.”

  My father let out a deep, guttural laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked as the plants stretched their limbs and shook.

  “They might listen to you on occasion,” he said, “but it is my word that controls them completely. Like the king dragon who listens first to you, the soil always takes my side. Who do you think has been controlling them all this time?”

  “Wait,” I whispered. “The plant that attacked me at the hospital months ago?”

  “I needed you to be motivated to plant that stone.”

  “The mushrooms?”

  “I needed that stone as well.”

  “The cactus?”

  “Fear is a great motivator.”

  “What about the tree ambush?”

  “I wanted the dragons to myself,” he whispered sinisterly.

  “I’m your son,” I said sadly, feeling the sickness of our blood swirling and boiling beneath my skin.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” my father said for the second time.

  Kate and I tried to back up, but plants began to fill the space behind us.

  I was beginning to fear for my life, which just so happened to be the perfect thing to do. I could feel Jude down below in the glass cavern with Malcolm and Paul. I could feel him sense the danger I was in, and I could feel him begin the long scramble back up the shaft.

  “Don’t be too disappointed,” my father said. “The sickness would have killed you soon anyway. I’m just speeding things along. Pillages have never had the strength to think beyond themselves.”

  Kate held my hand as we backed away from my father. I looked at her, and she looked at me. I saw the fear and sadness in her eyes. I also saw an idea forming in her mind. It was as if I could see inside her head.

  The idea was impossible.

  She glanced at me and nodded slightly. Her body was trembling with fear, but her shoulders were squared. She looked like she had been through one heck of a prom. She had the answer in her head, but I couldn’t do it.

  Kate squeezed my hand.

  My mind was pushing out, trying to make my head explode. I’m not sure why, but I started to cry and sob. My shoulders shook, and I knew what I had to do.

  I could feel Jude as he climbed up the shaft recognize what I was thinking. There was a sudden crippling panic in my chest.

  “What’s the matter?” my father barked.

  Kate squeezed my hand one last time, and I knew there would be no other opportunity. With a like mind we turned and took two steps, slamming into the iron boiler. It was extremely heavy, but it rolled toward the large hole where the closet door used to be. I could feel Jude screaming and clawing up the tunnel with Malcolm and Paul behind him. His shock at my betrayal made me sob harder.

  “Stop!” my father yelled. “Attack!” he screamed, ordering every living thing to tear into Kate and me.

  It was too late; the heavy iron boiler gathered enough momentum to roll over the floor edge and into the shaft. Strings of ivy pulled Kate and me back as the boiler dropped down the shaft, heading straight for Jude. My brain screamed, and I begged Jude to forgive me.

  We could hear the boiler crash madly down into the shaft.

  I fell to the floor crying as plants sliced me up. The pain they were inflicting wasn’t half as horrible as the searing hurt in my head. Jude was screaming, and his fear felt like a hot poker against my naked eye.

  “You fool!” my father screamed, diving toward me. Just as he fell on top of me, an earth-shattering explosion shook the entire manor. I rolled across the floor and into Kate, and we turned to see a fireball of flame burst up out of the shaft. The boiler had not only crushed the dragons, but it had set off an explosion that must have blown the glass cavern to smithereens.

  My father seethed and lay still on the floor as the plants in the room withered and retreated. Kate was leaning up against the tub, looking like she hadn’t really enjoyed her prom like she thought she would. I slid down and leaned into her. I then cried until every ounce of water in my body was used up.

  The king was dead.

  Chapter 30

  Let It Be

  Everything hurt for a little while. I’d really love to say that from that moment on it was all great, and, of course, I’d also like to say that
I’m better than Kobe at basketball. Some things just aren’t true, and the truth is, it took me weeks to smile again—I just felt so awful about what I had had to do.

  Thankfully, after a few weeks, things cleared up inside my head, and I began to feel happier than I ever had. It seemed the boiler had not only killed the king, it had destroyed all the darkness in my head.

  After the explosion, my dad was rushed back to the hospital where he remained in a coma for three days before he woke up crying. I was there when he woke up and did a little more crying of my own. I’m not really a big fan of guys weeping, but we both finally realized that even though the dragons were gone, we were going to be all right. It also kind of felt like we were finally meeting each other for the first time.