Jennifer Scales and the Ancient Furnace Read online

  “I’ll go first,” Skip offered.

  “Very chivalrous. But remember Bob Jarkmand?”

  “Hmm. Yeah, okay, I should stop coddling you.”

  Smiling back at him, she took the lighter and carefully stepped onto the first rung. A few steps down, she tried to get a look around—but she could barely see past Geddy, who sat calmly on her shoulder, much less anything about the sewer around them.

  The smell, however, was unavoidable.

  A year ago, the darkness and the stench would have been too much for her. She knew she would have gone running back to her mother (or her father, had he been available). But today, she would endure it. She had to.

  That thought carried her all the way down to the last rung and onto a new level of the sewer system. Now she could hear running water. There appeared to be a narrow stream going through this hall, or room—maybe a utility room? The lighter did not reveal much.

  Then, on the wall in front of her, she saw the third one-word message from her father’s kidnapper, written in the substance it identified:

  Blood.

  The rashness of her pursuit finally hit home. They were expecting her. She looked back up at Skip to tell him to hurry back up. He seemed almost frozen on the rungs above her, staring at her—or behind her?

  Before she could decide, the shadow behind her swung. The blow landed on the back of her neck, and with an oomph she crumpled to the floor. Her last sight was of Geddy scrambling into the safety of a dark corner as the lighter went out and she slipped into nothingness.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Ancient Hearth Relit

  When Jennifer woke up, she found herself in a window-less room with rocky walls and a dirt floor. The only light came from beyond a single door of metal bars. A weight lay upon her shoulders. When she reached up, she felt an iron collar and chain around her neck. It was loose, but she still couldn’t lift it over her chin. Using her fingers, she followed it back to its bolts in the stone wall.

  Waving the faint odor of sewage away from her nose, she caught movement close by. She backed up quickly and called out, “Who is that? What do you want?”

  “Jennifer, you’re awake!” It was her father’s voice.

  In a dimly lit corner, Jonathan Scales was slouched on the floor. A rumpled wool blanket was next to him on the floor. He wore a chain like hers and looked as though he hadn’t had much more than water. His unshaven face was gaunt and his gray eyes were sad. “Jennifer, why did you come? There’s no way this was your mother’s idea!”

  She tried to go to him, but the chain held her back. In her rage and sorrow, the best she could manage was to touch his fingertips with her own. “I’m sorry, Dad, I came here to save you. Skip was with me. Have you seen him?”

  “Honey, Skip . . .”

  Jennifer felt a lump in her throat. “What happened to him? Where is he?”

  “He’s around,” interrupted a familiar voice outside their cell. The tone was friendly and a bit patronizing. Jennifer strained to make out the shape beyond the bars.

  The tall man had long fingers wrapped around the bars. While his face was in shadow, Jennifer could make out long features and dark hair. He worked keys into the lock, and the door swung in.

  As he stepped inside their cell, he flipped a switch, and a naked bulb high above their heads cast a stark light. Jennifer could see him a lot better now.

  Her heart sank. “Mr. Wilson?”

  He gave her a gentle, fatherly smile, as if he were meeting her for coffee. “Actually, you made an incorrect assumption when you met me for dinner last December. Skip uses his mother’s last name. Mine is Saltin—Otto Saltin.”

  Her heart was still dropping. She had heard this name used, in hushed tones by her father, around Christmas.

  Before she could put any more pieces together, another figure slouched into the room. Now her heart hit rock bottom, as her cheeks flushed in confusion and anger.

  “You!” The chain snapped taut as she tried to surge forward. She gurgled curses with enough venom to make Skip sidle back a step. The boy would not look up.

  Otto Saltin chuckled gently. “She’s a real spitfire, Jonathan. No pun intended! If I had a daughter like that, I might be more careful about whom she hung out with.”

  “If I had known that you and Dianna Wilson had a son,” Jonathan croaked, “I would have been more careful about Jennifer’s friends.”

  Skip sniffed the air miserably. “Dad, do you have to keep them down here? This place is rank.”

  “Sorry, son.” Otto actually seemed to mean it. “I told you from the start, this wasn’t going to be easy for either of us. If you’ve developed feelings for Jennifer, you’ll need to set them aside now.”

  “I’ve . . . developed . . . a feeling!” Jennifer grunted as she clutched at the iron collar. Her eyes bulged and she felt the blood rise in her ears. “Come closer . . . and I’ll . . . express it!” Below the collar, she felt the Moon of Falling Leaves medallion that Skip had given her. She ripped it off of her throat and flung it at him. It smacked the wall by his head and clattered to the floor.

  Suddenly, she felt a familiar twinge in her spine. She panicked as she wondered how long she had been down here—had she been asleep two full days? Would this change help her, or hurt her? And just how tight would this iron collar get?

  There was no time to reflect. With a hiss, she weathered the surprise of hardening scales, unfolding wings, and an erupting nose horn. It happened faster than ever before. Otto Saltin’s expression barely had time to change from wonder to triumph before she was fully morphed.

  “You see, Skip?” He sounded as though he was explaining a football game to his son. “She’s the enemy. She lied to you, but we knew it all along. No time for doubts, son. We’re moments away from winning it all.”

  “She actually told me the truth. Just before we got here.” Skip glanced up, but didn’t dare give her more than a quick look. He seemed both embarrassed to have tricked her, and terrified of what she had just become.

  Jennifer growled at them both. The collar was less loose around her neck but still fit. She supposed this was why they used this on her and her father, instead of hand-cuffs, or . . .

  She stopped cold and looked over at her father.

  He was still in human form. He hasn’t morphed. His expression was difficult, somewhere between astonishment, awe . . . and pride?

  This made no sense. Jennifer looked to her enemies, and back to her father, and then back to her enemies.

  “It’s interesting, isn’t it?” Otto seemed completely un-surprised by what had happened. The friendly wrinkles around his eyes tightened. “You have to wonder—is the problem with you, or your dad?”

  She thought for a moment, then bowed her head. “It’s me, isn’t it? Always me. I’m the freak.”

  “Right. You’re the aberration. The crescent moon’s still thirty-six hours away, but here you are with your pretty scales and wings. Can you explain it?”

  Jennifer did not answer. She looked again at Skip. The traitor was staring right at her now, swallowing hard. What was going on?

  “Perhaps you know about the infatuation most dragons have with the number fifty,” Otto began to explain pleasantly. “Fifty seeds in this or that ceremonial drink, stories of Allucina and her fifty children, and so on. No doubt, your hidden Crescent Valley refuge has fifty written all over it—”

  “You’ll never find Crescent Valley,” she promised through gritted teeth. “I have no idea where it is anyway, so if you’re going to torture me, go ahead and get it over with. Even if I knew, if you think you could make me betray my friends . . . my real friends . . .” She spat this last out at Skip, who looked back down at the floor.

  “Please don’t interrupt.” Otto’s voice turned stern. “You don’t have to tell me a thing. In fact, if I could find a muzzle big enough, I’d use it on you.” Then the affable tone returned. “You see, Jennifer, I don’t need to know where Crescent Valley is.”


  “You do if you want to find the Ancient Furnace!”

  His eyes lit up. “So you know about my plan? Clever girl. You sure do know how to pick ’em, Skip . . . although of course, a good father helps his kid find the right friends.” Otto shot Jonathan a look, but the chained man did not return it. Jennifer sensed surrender and failure in her father’s limp head and shoulders.

  “No doubt you’ve figured that much out because some tortoise or baby alligator was snooping around on your behalf,” their captor continued. “Or maybe your elders finally caught on after Eveningstar burned to the ground. Kind of silly of them, if you think about it, not to see the whole truth.”

  The mention of small lizards made Jennifer think of Geddy. She looked around the cell as subtly as she could, but could not find a trace of her pet.

  “I see whole truth just fine. So does my family. You just want to find the Furnace so you can have more power. Because you’re weak!”

  Suddenly, Jennifer remembered—more power, like breathing fire. Fire-breathing. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? She opened her mouth to unleash an inferno—

  Otto waved his long fingers. “Numb.”

  Before she could release the fire, Jennifer collapsed in a scaled heap on the floor. Her eyes rolled back, and she felt drool slide out the corner of her mouth.

  He stepped forward, pulled out a handkerchief, and gently wiped the corners of her mouth. Jennifer tried to open her jaws and bite him, but she could not even do that much. “I do want more power,” he agreed, “but I am not weak. You cannot withstand my powers. Don’t you know what stands before you?”

  Jennifer’s words were slurred. She could barely move her tongue, much less her lips. “Beeeasststaaalkerrr . . .”

  Otto actually laughed. The jolly sound echoed off the cell’s walls. “Beaststalker! Did you hear that, Skip? See what these overgrown lizards are afraid of? Centuries and centuries after Bruce and Brigida and Barbara fought, after Eveningstar and everything, they’re worried about beaststalkers. They haven’t really learned yet.”

  Now he snarled viciously. “I’m not a beaststalker, dragon-girl.” Whipping out a syringe, he bent down and jabbed her in the wing. She barely felt the prick. He drew out some blood, and then turned the needle toward himself and plunged it into his arm, emptying the syringe and muttering in a strange language.

  Where’s a raging case of encephalitis when you need one, she yearned silently.

  “And now, to break the chains of the crescent moon,” Otto announced with a step back.

  The morph took Jennifer by surprise. The first thing to change was the man’s head—it got longer, as his body below the neck got shorter and fatter. His jaws opened wide, split all the way back to his ears, and swallowed them. Mandibles sprouted out of the resulting hole.

  His skin went an inky, shiny black and thick hairs grew—black in the front, red and yellow on his abdomen. With a sickening splitting sound, his two arms broke into four, and so did his legs. He crouched down on the eight appendages.

  Finally, the eyes emerged. The two originals blackened and bulged to the size of dinner plates. An additional eye burst out on either side of the main set. And finally, like sentries around the sides and back of the head, four more evenly spaced swells appeared.

  If Jennifer hadn’t been struck down by sorcery, she would have screamed. As it was, she managed a gasp and a mild squirm backward from the man-sized spider.

  Otto’s knife-sized mandibles clicked with every word. The odd, fatherly voice was still there. “Now you can see the face of the enemy you should fear, dragon-girl. With the help of your blood, I can take my form at will, independent of the moon’s cycles. But that’s not all this blood can do for us. Your capture will be the end of your race. I suppose I should thank you. You’ll be so important to me, to Skip, to all of us.”

  His gratitude infuriated Jennifer. She began to feel past the numbness—the sorcery was wearing off, and she could speak with some effort. “You’ll never get the Ancient Furnace!”

  The mandibles vibrated in what could only have been a gentle laugh. “You still don’t get it. None of your kind did. That’s why no one protected you.

  “Find the Ancient Furnace? Get the Ancient Furnace? I have the Ancient Furnace, Jennifer Scales. I have you.”

  It may have been the sorcery reasserting itself, but Jennifer went numb again. “What?”

  “As I was trying to tell you before you rudely interrupted me the first time, you dragons have an infatuation with the number fifty. It isn’t completely unfounded. If dragons spent less time hunting sheep and more time searching into the past, like I have, they would no doubt have learned the full prophecy of the Ancient Furnace. Every fifty generations, the blood of all dragon clans combines within a unifying figure. This blood is the Ancient Furnace. The one with the Ancient Furnace roiling through her veins wields incredible powers, and strengthens all who surround her. Or him.”

  Prophecy. Furnace. Blood. Jennifer recalled the messages that Otto and his son left for her.

  “Powers like fire-breathing,” Jonathan Scales guessed from where he lay. Jennifer could see that his concerned eyes had returned to her. She felt miserable, stupid, and used. Her father had not been the target. He had been the bait. And Skip had lured her right into the trap.

  “Indeed,” Otto agreed. “Breathing fire is a skill we have sought for a long time. Six years ago at Eveningstar, suspecting Jennifer’s powers and how you might use them against us someday, we tried to find and kill her. As a chieftain among our kind, I could work enough sorcery to arm our troops with fire for a short while. The effort nearly destroyed me. After that, I decided I was going about it wrong. Instead of knocking myself out to kill her, I decided to lure her in and use her.

  “I needed to be patient, since her blood would do me no good until she had her first morph. Fortunately, Skip and I moved into town just in time.

  “Our first plan was to invite her over for dinner and just take her there, alone. But Skip began to think he was on an actual date, it seems, and so moved the location from our house to the mall.” The hiss the massive spider directed at Skip betrayed a fury that had not entirely passed since last November.

  “You didn’t tell me what you had planned until after then!” Skip protested. He pointed at the syringe lying on the floor. “And you never said anything about blood, or hurting her!”

  “In any case,” the arachnid continued, “it would not have been advisable, to attempt to kidnap a young woman in front of several hundred witnesses. So the opportunity passed. Soon after that, you were gone for extended periods, in all phases of the moon. So I had to set up a slightly more provocative trap. I didn’t mind. Spiders love traps, you see.

  “And the trap worked. Anytime I need it, the power of the Ancient Furnace will be a mere injection away. Not just fire-breathing—I’m interested to see what beasts I can call to my service, or how easy it will be to hide in plain sight. How delightful your daughter’s so talented. And a shame, I suppose, that she’ll never get to use those talents again.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?” Jennifer saw the outrage on her father’s face—and the alarm on Skip’s. How much had Otto really told Skip before getting him to lure Jennifer into the sewer?

  “Don’t panic, Jonathan. If you’d been listening, you’d know I have no intention of killing her.” Otto was clearly enjoying this, rubbing his four forelegs together. “The boost her blood gives me is temporary. I need a continual supply.”

  “You come near my daughter with that syringe again, and she’ll cram it up your bulbous ass,” Jonathan promised.

  The beast’s posture betrayed a loss of good humor. “I don’t doubt it. That’s why I’ll have to poison her into a permanent coma. I’ll take what I need, when I need it. She’ll never feel a thing. And she’ll never see you die for what you did to our family.”

  Skip’s thin voice rose. “Wait a sec. A coma? Forever? And you’ll kill this guy? Why, becau
se of Mom? Dad, you didn’t . . . this is—”

  “SILENCE!” The enormous spider shuffled its legs with lightning speed to face its human son. “I told you she would survive without pain. That’s all you needed to know, son.” The voice through the mandibles softened. “I don’t expect you to understand anything else, Skip. Not until your first change.”

  Jennifer remained silent. Conflict between bad guys was good. Plus, she was pretty sure the sorcery was almost completely spent. She twitched her tail and curled her wing claws. Otto either didn’t see this or didn’t care. He kept his focus on his stubborn son.

  “Dad, whatever this guy did, it’s not worth murder!”

  “He’s right,” Jonathan chimed in. Jennifer silently congratulated her father on not sounding at all desperate. “You can’t expect to leave no trail behind. Both my daughter and I will be missed. And I imagine if my daughter knew where to find you, my wife will, too. You can expect authorities here at any moment.”

  The thought encouraged Jennifer. Her dad was right—maybe Susan had gone for help, too!

  “You’re quite a ways away from where Skip led your daughter,” Otto informed them, “in a section of the sewer system virtually no one knows about but my own construction company. No one followed you here. No one will look for you here. You’ll die here, Jonathan Scales, and your daughter will live out her days in this cell. Sleeping comfortably.” He finished with a soft gurgle.

  “I know where they are,” Skip said steadily. To his credit, he stared all eight of his father’s eyes down. “And I know this isn’t what Mom would have wanted.”

  “You’re a child,” Otto sneered. “What do you know about what your mother wanted?”

  “I know she didn’t want you.”

  Otto’s left foreleg jabbed up and pinned Skip to the wall. He did not sound fatherly at all anymore. “You ungrateful twit. You’ll stay silent. And you’ll come to appreciate what I’ve done for our family, and all our kind. You’ll watch our destiny unfold, and you’ll show respect.”