The Dragon Heir

Barber stopped smiling when he saw the gun.

“I said—tell me where my brother and sister are.”

Barber went very still for a long moment, then said, “I'm losing patience, Madison. Now put that down before someone gets hurt.” He took a step toward her.

“I'm warning you,” Madison said. “I'm a deadeye shot.” Which was true. Her daddy had taught her to shoot. Only she was a failure as a hunter because she'd never been able to shoot anything living. Barber might be the first.

Barber's eyes, with their pale centers and fringe of white lashes, were cold and unblinking as any snake's. “All right. You're all business, huh? I have something to show you.” He patted his jacket pocket. “May I?”

Grudgingly, Madison nodded.

He thrust his fingers into his pocket, came up with something glittering. He extended it toward Madison.

She gestured with the gun. “Toss it on the table,” she said.

Barber tossed, underhand. Two objects clunked onto the battered formica. Madison put the table between her and the wizard and looked down.

It was like somebody had reached into her chest, grabbed hold of her heart, and squeezed.

One of the objects was a beat-up Swiss Army knife with the initials JR carved crudely into the cover. The other was a gold locket engraved with roses on a lightweight gold chain.

The knife had belonged to their father. John Robert carried it with him everywhere and slept with it under his pillow. Min had left the locket to Grace. Madison had fastened the clasp a thousand times when Grace couldn't manage, had carefully removed it and set it on the dresser when Grace fell asleep with a book. She wore it every day of her life.

Madison looked up at Barber. It took a couple of tries to get her voice going.

“Where are they?” This time, she couldn't keep the quaver out of her voice.

“No one will ever find them if you shoot me.”

She braced herself, aimed lower. “I don't need to shoot you in the head,” she said.

“And if I bleed to death?” He raised an eyebrow. “Come on, Madison, you're not a killer. Besides, I can probably block the shot. Put down the gun, and we'll talk.”

“If you've hurt them, I'll…”

“You're the only one who can prevent that. Cooperate, and I'll let them go. If not…” He shrugged. “That'd be a shame.”

“How do I know they're still alive?”

Barber waved away her question impatiently. “They're my leverage. It'd be stupid to kill them. Unless you disappoint me. When our business is done, I'll let them go. See? Nobody gets hurt. Now put down the gun before I lose patience.”

Grace and John Robert. Defiant, strong-willed Grace and innocent John Robert in the hands of this monster. What did he want from her that he'd gone after them?

Carefully, she set the gun on the table, took a step back, and stood, arms at her side, staring daggers at Warren Barber.

“Good,” Barber said. He nodded toward the kitchen table. “Please. Sit down.”

Madison walked woodenly to the table and sat. She tried to look everywhere but at Brice's body and the blood splattered over the floor. Barber was right. She wasn't a killer.

Barber crossed to the refrigerator and rummaged inside. “You hungry?”

“No.” Madison's stomach lurched, threatening to reject what little it had inside it.

Barber pulled out two bottles of pop and a plate of cold pizza and carried them back to the table.

“Conflict always makes me hungry, know what I mean?” He set a bottle of pop in front of her.

“Do … do J.R. and Grace have anything to eat?” she whispered.

“You worry too much. Doesn't do any good, and takes years off your life.” He sat down across from her, rolling the other bottle between his wizard hands. Spiderweb tattoos crawled over his forearms.

She pushed the pop back toward him. “I don't…”

“Drink it,” he said.

She looked into his iced-over eyes, grabbed up the bottle, took a long swig, and somehow forced it down her throat.

“That's better,” he said, smiling. “Get used to doing what I say, and we'll get along. Now. Here's what you need to do. You go get the Dragonheart. Then we'll do a trade—the Dragonheart for Grace and J.R. Fair enough?”

“Wh…what do you want with that?” she asked, seeing no use in denying she'd heard of it. “What are you planning to do?”

“You just focus on getting hold of it,” Warren said, taking a bite of pizza. “Let me worry about the rest.”

Thoughts and images tumbled though her mind like rocks down a slope, crashing into each other. The Dragonheart still pulsed within her like a second heart. If it was as powerful as they said, could she put that kind of power in the hands of someone like Barber?

Seph and Jason and Jack and Ellen and Nick—all were fighting against impossible odds for something they believed in. It was bad enough that she hadn't helped them. Now Warren Barber wanted her to march into the middle of the sanctuary and betray the people who meant the most to her.

Except Grace and J.R. were in this mess because of her. Seph had warned her she couldn't escape by running away, and she hadn't listened. And if Barber found out that Grace was an elicitor, too…

All my life, I've been paying for Carlene's mistakes, she thought. Grace and J.R. aren't going to pay for mine.

“It might not be easy,” she said. “It might take a little time.”

Barber crammed the last of the pizza into his mouth and wiped his fingers on the tablecloth. “Just remember, the longer it takes, the longer Grace and J.R. stay locked up.”

Chapter Twenty-eight To the Salt Mines

One thing Jack had always appreciated about his mother, Becka, was her ability to make things happen, even when awakened from a sound sleep in the middle of the night. Looking back on it, he couldn't even remember what he'd said to her. Or maybe it was his appearance—all muddy and bloody from the fight outside the perimeter. Anyway, it was enough to roust her from bed and send her to the phone. When she found it dead, she sent out runners and the result was this meeting around the kitchen table at Stone Cottage a scant hour later.

The wind raked over the house, and hail clattered against the windows. Thunder growled out over the lake. It seemed like it was always storming, these days.

It was a disparate group. Ellen prowled the room, flushed and restless, still pumped from the unfinished business outside the perimeter. Sweat glistened on her sinewed arms, and she mopped at her face with her shirt, despite the chilly breeze coming through the terrace doors. Her gray eyes were as turbulent as the surface of the lake.

Jack understood—the blood still pounded through his veins, his rebellious body in endless preparation for battle.

Nicodemus Snowbeard looked like he'd aged several hundred years, yet his black eyes still shone with the same old intensity. Nick had insisted that Leesha Middleton be included, though most everyone else would've voted against it. But the old man was a majority of one.

For once, Leesha had little to say. She sat on the edge of the hearth, arms clasped around her knees. She kept looking over at Jason, as if trying to catch his eye, and Jason was looking everywhere but at her.

Jason was his usual twitchy self, shifting his weight, checking the time on his cell phone. Nothing ever moved fast enough for him.

Seph, brooding and dangerous, practically smoked with power.

Mercedes Foster resembled a Manga construction worker in her coveralls, kasuri robe, and Japanese slippers. Iris Bolingame slumped in the corner, exhausted. She'd just come off the wall.

Will and Fitch hung close to Jack and Ellen, as if determined not to be left out of whatever was to happen.

Will's father, Bill Childers, mayor of Trinity, and his uncle, Ross Childers, now chief of police, looked as awkward as two Baptists at a Hindu temple.

“I think we're all here,” Becka said to Jack. “Now suppose you tell us what's going on.”

“This had better be good,” Ross added gruffly, yawning behind his forearm and glaring at Will. “Real good.”

Nick levered himself to his feet, using his staff. “Ross. Bill. Becka. These young people are about to tell you an extraordinary story. But I can assure you that it's absolutely true. I hope you will listen to what they have to say with an open mind.” He nodded at Jack.

“So,” Jack said, clearing his throat. “That is, we … ah …” He'd been keeping secrets so long that it was hard to let go of them. In desperation, he reached over his shoulder and drew Shadowslayer from his baldric, laying the great sword across the kitchen table. Ellen followed suit, pulling Waymaker from its scabbard and resting it next to Shadowslayer.

Everyone stared at the two brilliant swords on the table, as if the weapons might speak.

Becka found her own voice. “Jack. Where did these swords come from? They look like museum pieces.”

Ellen rested her hand on the hilt of her sword and spoke, rather formally. “Waymaker was taken from a hoard of weapons in Raven's Ghyll, in Cumbria, U.K. Near where you stayed with Mr. Hastings that time. It is one of the seven great blades, made by sorcerers under the rule of the dragon Aidan Ladhra. Jason … ah … found it and…um…”

Her voice trailed away. Becka and Ross and Bill Childers stared at her like she'd grown another head. She looked down at the floor, the color coming up in her cheeks. Ellen hated speaking in front of people under the best of circumstances.

Jack rested his right hand at the base of Ellen's spine and touched the hilt of his sword with the other. “Mom. This is Shadowslayer. It's another one of the seven. It belonged to Great-Great-Grandmother Susannah. We—Will and Fitch and I—dug it up from her grave, down in Coalton County.”

“Susannah owned a sword?” Becka frowned suspiciously at Jack, then turned to look at Will and Fitch for the punchline.