The dragon wasn’t impressed. It flexed its claw forward, bending its head toward her to bite away the unwelcome passenger. As it opened its jaws, Infidel swung her body back and forth, dangling from the claw. The creature’s mouth glowed with the fading remnants of its flame. I saw a flash of light as the well-honed blade of my bone-handled knife was revealed in Infidel’s free hand. She swung forward, leaping into the beast’s open jaws, clearing its teeth. The creature’s mouth clamped shut.
Suddenly, I was alive again. Not ghost alive; I was physically whole once more, popping into existence inches above the dragon’s snout. Unlike my previous manifestations, this time the laws of gravity applied. I slammed into the dragon’s scales, sliding down its snout, scraping my restored flesh on its raspy hide. I cut my hands trying to grab hold. The scales were like flakes of razor-sharp volcanic glass. I screamed as I left a trail of blood down its snout, but caught myself at last, my foot coming to rest on the ridge of its nostrils.
My stomach twisted as the beast lurched through the air. The ground seemed impossibly distant. I felt certain I’d been restored to life only to face a second death. But… why? How had this happened?
Suddenly, Infidel’s fist burst through the skin only a few feet down the snout from the dragon’s eyes, my bone-handled knife firmly in her grasp. The dragon’s blood bubbled on the surface of the blade, quickly boiling off now that it was exposed to air. Infidel’s whole arm tore through the skin, followed by a shoulder, then her bloodied head burst through. The blood boiled on her skin as well as the knife. The creature shuddered, then went limp in the air; whatever Infidel had done to it had apparently been too much to withstand. The beast’s snout tilted down. I could see water far below; at some point, we’d come back out over the bay. I was thrown free of the beast’s nose, my naked, bleeding body tumbling in the air. As I spun, I looked back toward Infidel, who was gawking at me, her eyes wide.
“Infidel!” I shouted, straining my hand toward her.
“Stagger?” she whispered.
Then, the last of the fresh blood vaporized from the knife, leaving only a crust of black gore. The wind once more passed straight through me. I was suspended in mid-air, no longer in the grip of gravity. Light passed through my vaporous fingers.
“Stagger!” Infidel cried, her eyes frantic as they searched the air where she’d last seen me.
Then the dragon hit the water, and I plunged beneath as well, my ghost still tethered to the knife. The sea was black as ink, full of the stirred-up silt from the tidal wave. My vision was all but useless, unable to make sense of the images that flashed past me. The dragon’s hide seemed to be crumbling, breaking apart into bits of black and red gravel. For half a second, I saw a flash of Infidel’s torso. There was something long and rope-like wrapped around it, covered with cup-sized suckers. The water roiled, and a giant eye flashed past me, the size of a dinner plate, glowing with a golden phosphorescence.
Then, suddenly, Infidel and my knife were back above the surface of the water. She was wrapped in the tentacle of an enormous squid, at least sixty feet long. A second tentacle held the soggy, sputtering form of Reeker.
Infidel raised her knife to stab at the tentacle that held her, but stopped herself before she thrust the blade down. The dragon blood had been washed off by her plunge into the bay. As the last bit of pink water ran down the handle, I faded once more, invisible even to myself.
The squid’s tentacles gingerly placed Infidel onto the wrecked roof of the Black Swan. She was, yet again, buck naked save for a ring of ruined leather that had once been the too-short skirt. Aurora rushed to her side, snatching up the half-charred flag of the barge and draping it over Infidel’s bare shoulders before Reeker had recovered enough to ogle her.
“That was really damn impressive,” Aurora said. “But… who was up there with you?”
“What?” asked Infidel, running her fingers through what was left of her hair. The longest bits were only a few inches long.
“For a second, I thought I saw someone else clamped onto the dragon’s snout with you. Were my eyes playing tricks?”
Infidel turned pale. “I thought I saw… I thought…” her voice trailed off. “It was just some poor sailor. He… he fell.”
Menagerie dragged himself up onto the roof, human once more. The squid tattoo that had once been dark black upon his neck had faded to a barely visible gray-blue outline.
He collapsed against what was left of the mast, staring up toward the still bubbling volcano. “I guess the king’s dragon hunt has been cancelled.”
Infidel shook her head as she, too, looked at the raging mountain. “I don’t think so. Greatshadow has just been suckered. Those ships were decoys; I’ll stake my life on it.”
“You’re probably right,” said Reeker, wringing water from his hair. He looked at Menagerie. “So, anyway, I quit. I’m done with dragons. Infidel can be the third Goon.”
“You aren’t quitting,” said Menagerie. “You signed the contract.” He tapped at a section of cursive text on the left cheek of his buttocks. “Didn’t you read all the terms? You’re in this until Greatshadow’s dead, or you are.”
Reeker sighed, then muttered something underneath his breath.
“Hur hur hur,” said No-Face.
Infidel laughed as she contemplated Menagerie’s skinny ass. “I guess that’s one way of discouraging people from studying the fine print.”
CHAPTER SIX
My old sailboat had come to rest in the tangled branches of a mangrove thicket half a mile away. The gaping holes in the hull would never allow it to return to the bay, but as a tree house it possessed a certain charm. Menagerie had spotted it in the aftermath of the dragon strike, as he’d flitted over the area in his vulture form, surveying the damage. He’d quickly singled out the most likely places to look for survivors, then he and the other Goons had set forth to help who they could.
Infidel was never afraid to lend a hand to anyone in need, but she declined to take part in the rescue mission. I couldn’t blame her; she looked completely wiped out after her fight with the dragon. She found Relic’s gnarled staff among the shattered planks of the Black Swan and used it for support as she limped across the rubble in search of my boat. She was sweating, her face pale and feverish. Her invulnerable skin didn’t burn, but, like anyone, when she got overheated, she could feel sick. It didn’t help that the sun had come out with a fury, its tropical rays turning the humid atmosphere over the churned up bay into a pressure cooker.
At midday, while Infidel still searched through the mangroves, I noticed the Wanderer ships returning. They sailed back into the bay in droves, once again forming a boat city, held together by ropes and ladders instead of docks and gangplanks. River-pygmies were now thick in the bay as well, an entire flotilla of canoes searching among the shattered ships and buildings.
The eruption of the volcano had finally subsided. The once verdant southern slope of the mountain was black now, cloaked with smoke and steam. A shower of fine charcoal ash rained down on the bay, coating every surface.
Infidel was grimy as a miner by the time she found my boat. The once white flag she was wrapped in was now mostly gray. She was all alone as she climbed into the branches. I wondered if Relic had possibly survived. No one had seen the hunchback since she’d tossed him from the crow’s nest.
My place was even more of a trash heap than usual. The piles of books had all toppled. The towers of bottles and jugs had turned into a carpet of broken glass. Infidel dug through the rubble until she’d found the thin cotton mat that served as my bed. She yanked it free of the debris and tossed it onto the deck outside. She located a few stained blankets and draped them in the branches, forming an umbrella to provide shade and shield her from the drifting ash.