Jennifer Scales and the Messenger of Light Read online

  “You probably stung his tender, magical ears and eyes! He’s just too polite to complain.”

  “Can we get on with it?”

  “Please.”

  Elizabeth raised her sword to her lips, kissed the blade, and let out a long shout. Her daughter watched with amazement—she had never really gotten a good look at how it was done in the dungeon where her mother had interrupted Otto Saltin and rescued her with this very skill.

  The beaststalker’s breath was almost visible as it passed from lips to sword. There, it split on the edge and divided—a fierce cry that swept across the lake and forest nearby, and a piercing light that rivaled the setting sun. Jennifer squinted and wouldn’t have wanted to listen to the yelling all day long, but she found it bearable outside of dragon form.

  When the radiance and noise had both dimmed, her mother let her sword down and nodded. “Your turn.”

  After rubbing and breathing into her hands, Jennifer unsheathed her daggers and raised them in front of her face. She didn’t know which one to kiss, so she crossed them and kissed them both. Then she breathed in deeply and let out the loudest yell she could.

  Giving the battle shout was a new experience. The sound and light were surprisingly low from her point of view, but she could tell from her mother’s immediate grin that she had it right on the first try. It was almost as if the blades were pulling the air from her mouth and then casting it forward with blistering force. After a few seconds, she closed her mouth.

  “Excellent, honey! You’re really learning stuff quickly. I told you this summer would pay off.”

  “Each thing you teach me seems easier than the last,” Jennifer said, thrilled.

  “We can work on some of the finer points now—”

  The sound of the cabin door opening made them both turn. Jonathan came out on the porch holding the phone. His hand was clapped over the receiver.

  “Phew, heard that shout! Glad it’s not quite a crescent moon yet!” He frowned a bit. “Jennifer, it’s Skip’s aunt Tavia. She wants to talk about dinner at their house.”

  “How did she track us down here?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Well, Skip has the number.” Jennifer shrugged. She bristled at her mother’s hard look. “He’s my friend, Mom!”

  “So you’re having a lovely dinner with the sister of the man who tried to kill your father? How quaint.”

  “You know it’s more complicated than that. And I’m as freaked out about this as you are. I’m not sure I want to go. I haven’t been to Skip’s house since his aunt moved in, and I don’t know how many other…I mean, I don’t know how big his family is.”

  “Well, if you don’t want to go, you’d better come up with an excuse fast,” Jonathan suggested. He took his hand off the receiver. “Tavia, she’s right here.” Then he handed the phone to her.

  Thinking quickly, she grabbed the phone and put the best smile she could manage in her voice. “Hi, Ms. Saltin? Yeah, sounds great. Problem is, my family’s taking me out of town for a week or so. Sure, I promise to call you as soon as we get back! Yes, I know, I can hardly wait to go to the dance with Skip! Okay, bye!” Then she turned the phone off with a smug smile.

  “So how are you getting out of this one?” her father asked. “It’s not like you can show up at school Monday like you’re supposed to. Skip will know you lied to his aunt as soon as he sees you.”

  “Who says I’m lying? I could go back to Crescent Valley!”

  Elizabeth cleared her throat. “Jennifer, you made a promise to me. Just like you needed concentrated time last year to come to terms with your dragon side, you need dedicated time to grow as a beaststalker. You should come home with me Sunday.”

  “But you said yourself that I’m really coming along—and I’ll be back in a week!” She felt them both weaken and pressed on. “Plus, it was just my birthday, so you should be nice to me. Plus, Dad owes me for going to that boring fund-raiser last week!”

  She knew she had them then, through sheer quantity (if not quality) of argument. Her mother sighed through tightened lips. “All right, Jennifer. I could use the extra time at the hospital, anyway. We’ve been short-staffed lately.”

  “I need to take a short trip to Jack’s old place before I go,” Jonathan said. He wouldn’t explain further, despite her curious look. “You go ahead tomorrow with the crescent moon, ace. I’ll catch up with you in a day or so. Grandpa’s already there. Mind him, and stay out of trouble.”

  “Trouble?” Jennifer couldn’t stifle a laugh. “How on earth can you get in trouble in Crescent Valley?”

  A corner of his mouth creased. “Get careless, and you’ll find out.”

  “All right!” Elizabeth stood up suddenly and shook off the jerkin that covered her blouse and Windbreaker. “That’s enough discussion of a place I’ve never seen and can’t ever visit. If neither of you are coming home with me, I might as well leave now!”

  She gave Jennifer a quick, almost meaningless hug and stormed off the patio in the direction of the minivan.

  “Hey, Liz!”

  Troubled, Jennifer watched her father chase her mother down. Despite his valiant efforts, the woman wouldn’t engage with her husband…until they were almost at the car, at which point she abruptly turned and hissed what must have been a ferocious monologue, given his expression. Jennifer caught the phrases secret lizard club and time with her mother, at which point she figured this was a conversation best held in private. She went into the cabin and closed the door firmly behind her.

  CHAPTER 4

  Catherine’s First Hunt

  “You’re going again?! That’s so unfair!”

  Catherine Brandfire was a trampler dragon, with olive green skin and crimson eyes that smoked with impatience once she heard her friend was going to the weredragons’ secret refuge. She ripped apart her sheep, the dinner of choice at the farm, as a group of creeper dragons and dasher dragons arrived, circling far overhead. Of course, Jennifer was unusual even for a dragon—as the Ancient Furnace, she carried the skills and shapes of all three dragon breeds in her—but that didn’t make the older weredragon feel any better.

  “My grandmother is eldest among the weredragons, and she won’t even tell me where Crescent Valley is!” Catherine whistled a tongue of flame onto the porch grill, and then set her meat on to cook. “You’re two years younger than me and yet you’ve already gone a bunch of times!”

  “I can’t help how old I am,” shrugged Jennifer, a sour expression on her face as she laid her own slice of sheep meat next to the other. “I don’t even know why I told you I was going. I thought maybe I could find out more about newolves for you, or something. Never mind.”

  Newolves were a breed of elusive, mysterious wolves. Catherine had an infectious interest in them, even though Jennifer wasn’t certain her friend had actually ever seen one. Jennifer saw her first last spring, and it had been a brief but powerful moment.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Jen.” The seventeen-year-old’s scaled face wrinkled. “I shouldn’t have brought up your age like that. I really don’t think of you as that young, most of the time. But even if you were twenty years old, this would annoy me. I mean, what’s the big fuss about Crescent Valley? Why does it have to be so secret? Why do we have to wait? Don’t the elders trust us?”

  Jennifer nodded sympathetically, accepting the apology in silence. She couldn’t blame her friend for feeling this way. Last year, her father and grandfather kept mentioning things like newolves and oreams without explaining what they were.

  She struggled to find the right words without giving away too much. “It’s not about trust, I think. It’s just that it’s…a refuge. The last one we’ve got. The elders put all these rules in place to protect all of us. It makes more sense once you see it—”

  “Which I can’t!”

  “Yeah. Um. That logic made more sense in my head, I guess.”

  Her friend’s vermilion eyes narrowed as she checked over her meat on the grill. “I’ve put you in a
hard spot, Jennifer. I’m sorry. It’s just—”

  “I get it,” Jennifer interrupted congenially. “It annoyed the heck out of me, too. But by next year, you’ll be able to go. We’ll check out the newolf herds together!”

  The student’s expression fell. “But next year will be too late! I won’t get to use newolves for my senior project this year!”

  “Wait a second. You’re going to hand in a school paper on newolves? Um, Catherine, I don’t know if that’s—”

  “It’s okay, my science teacher at Northwater High is a dasher. Hey, you got any steak sauce for this?”

  “Hang on, I’ll go inside and check.” Jennifer flexed herself back into human form—she found it was easier to open the patio and refrigerator doors that way—and got the steak sauce, as well as a bottle of ketchup for herself. As she went back outside, she didn’t catch her friend’s thoughtful expression. “So, are there lots of weredragons at your school besides you and your teacher?”

  “You know, I had you pegged for a brunette.”

  “What’s that? Oh, my hair.” Suddenly, Jennifer felt self-conscious. Catherine and she had known each other for a year, and they’d never seen each other as anything but dragons. “Sorry, this is weird, I’ll change back…”

  “No, don’t do it on my account! Hey, what’re those for?” Her wing claw pointed to the daggers that Jennifer had sheathed on each thigh, outside her jeans.

  Her beaststalker weapons. Jennifer went cold. Of course, no dragon here could know about her mother, and her own beaststalker heritage! “Oh. Those. Um, well, I’m taking a self-defense class, and I guess I forgot to leave them at home…”

  “They’re beautiful! Can I see?” Catherine’s wing claws wriggled with excitement.

  Still wary of discovery, but relieved that the impromptu cover story worked, Jennifer unsheathed both blades and handed them over.

  “Wow! Look at the hilt workmanship! So clever, too—one girl, one dragon, it’s so perfect for you!”

  “Thanks. Here, I’ll take ’em back.”

  “I didn’t think you were the type to be so serious about self-defense! Grammie Winona says my mom was like that, but I guess I was always more into hunting, and animals.”

  “Hunting, eh?” Jennifer smiled mysteriously as she flipped the knives back and forth. “Yeah, you’ll get along with newolves. Oh, no, my dinner!”

  Her portion of sheep on the grill was burning merrily, absorbing flame and giving off a charred scent. She forgot about the blades in her hands and morphed back into dragon form so that she could handle the fire and meat without burning herself.

  “Sorry, Jen. I guess since I always like mine well-done, everybody else—whoa!”

  Jennifer looked over herself with similar surprise. While much of her was the same as it always was, there were noticeable differences. First, each claw at the tip of her wings was at least eight inches long now, tapered to a dangerously pointed tip. Second, her nose horn was much larger and sharper and gleamed silver, instead of ivory. Finally, her tail…

  “It looks like I pooped a giant pitchfork,” she observed. “Must be because I morphed with my weapons in hand.” Flexing her deadly claws, she sighed wistfully. “Yet another brilliantly flowered float in the freak parade that is my life.”

  The trampler’s eyes were wide, but then she shut them quickly. “I’m sorry, Jennifer. I don’t mean to stare. I know you felt awkward last year because you’re different. It’s insensitive of me.”

  “No, it’s okay…” Now Jennifer felt guilty for seeing her friend react like this. It wasn’t just the dragon in her, of course—it was the beaststalker. But she couldn’t say that, at least not yet. She reminded herself how horrible it had been, lying to Susan, Skip, and Eddie for so long.

  Last year, she and Catherine had often traded secrets they told no one else—about newolves, or the visions Jennifer had. But here was something Jennifer couldn’t share. For a moment she was tempted to let everything out. But then she thought of the danger it posed to her mother.

  She quickly changed back into human form, sheathed both daggers, and flipped her hair as nonchalantly as she could. “It’s no big deal, Catherine. Part of being the Ancient Furnace. I’m used to it.”

  “I guess your grandpa Crawford’s stories about the legend of the Ancient Furnace left out a detail or two, huh?”

  Jennifer chuckled. “I guess. So anyway, you didn’t answer my question. Are there lots of other weredragons at your high school?”

  “Not too many. Three or four. Of course, there are some weredragons nobody knows about. So many went into hiding after Eveningstar, and Pinegrove before that.”

  Jennifer knew firsthand about the destruction of Eveningstar by werachnids—she had turned five the day her family had to leave her hometown—but the other name was unfamiliar to her. “Pinegrove? My parents never told me about a place with that name.”

  “I think it was before their time. About sixty years ago. Grandma told me she was almost thirty, so your grandfather should know about it. What werachnids did to Eveningstar, beaststalkers did to Pinegrove. In many ways it was worse. Instead of destroying the homes after driving out the dragons, the beaststalkers moved into them and lived there, as if the past owners had never existed.

  “Grandma says some weredragon families couldn’t get out of the town in time and had to hide in the shadows of Pinegrove, scraping out an existence while staying out of sight. Many of them starved to death.”

  Jennifer didn’t say much. She figured Grandpa Crawford very likely knew about this. If he had survived a slaughter like Pinegrove, the rocky relationship between him and her mother made more sense. That a beaststalker should then marry his only son…

  She felt a twinge of irritation that her parents had never told her about Pinegrove. Why not? And were there other things they were keeping from her?

  Pinegrove. Crescent Valley. Her being a beaststalker. Her being a weredragon. She was getting sick of all the secrets.

  Before she knew it, she had blurted it out. “Do you want to go to Crescent Valley with me?”

  Catherine, who had been tearing into her dinner, stopped short with half a flank hanging out of her mouth. “Whad yoo fey?”

  “There’s a hunt every night,” Jennifer explained. “And it’s not like the way we play with sheep around here. If you like hunting, you’ll love oreams!”

  “I’ve heard that,” whispered Catherine, looking furtively about the yard and sky between Grandpa Crawford’s cabin and the nearby lake. “But Jennifer, we’ll get into trouble! You’ll get into trouble!”

  “Not if we’re careful. And it’s stupid that it’s a secret, just like you said. You’ll have plenty of places to hide. Crescent Valley is a big place. Really, it’s a whole…well, you’ve got to see it!”

  Her friend wavered. “I don’t know…”

  “Dad says he once saw ten packs of newolves within a day’s flight.”

  “Let’s go.”

  She told Catherine they would have to wait another half hour—the autumn sun had barely set, and the crescent moon was barely high enough to cast any light on the water.

  “What the heck does that mean?” Catherine asked.

  “What the heck does that mean?” Jennifer asked.

  “Look down there,” her father told her. The large lake beyond Grandpa Crawford’s cabin was shimmering.

  “Okay, so there’s moonlight on the water. Big deal.”

  “Not just moonlight. Crescent moonlight.”

  “Yeah, okay…?”

  “So that means the gateway is open.”

  “Gateway? What gateway?”

  He sighed. “I guess there’s only one way to tell you, and that’s to show you.” And then he dove, headfirst.

  They were at least as high as they had been the first dayhe had taught her to fly and fish. She wondered what he was up to, and began to follow in a cautious slope.

  In a split second she realized this wouldn’t do. She was lo
sing the shape of her father against the play of light and shadow below. Best she could tell, he was gathering speed—he was going to hit the lake too hard!

  “You’re going to hit the lake too hard!” Catherine shouted this out from far above, but Jennifer could barely hear her over the whistling of the wind. Her wings were folded in tightly to her body, and her eyes were nearly closed. Even knowing what was coming, she was nervous. Like a gleaming, moonlit bullet, she pierced the surface of the water and was gone.

  He was gone! She couldn’t see him in the depths below. It was like swimming through cold ink—all the light was behind them, and even her thick hide was beginning to feel a bit numb as she blew the last of her air out and kept sinking. It was terrifying—and thrilling.

  Not only couldn’t she see him, she couldn’t see anything like a fish or plant or the bottom. There was nothing at all, and she was just about to give up on this game and turn back…

  …when she saw the faint light ahead.

  Yes, the water was getting lighter now, not darker. Had she flipped over somehow? She knew she hadn’t.

  After a few moments, she could make out her father’s slim shape against whatever light source was ahead. His wings propelled him as he relaxed and tensed, forcing water over his body. Jennifer decided to try it, too.

  It was a great deal faster, she mused, than the claw paddle she had used the first time last spring. And it certainly helped propel her faster through the disorienting swirl of current that greeted her once again. Gravity shifted along her spine until the bottom of the lake was behind her. Neither she nor Catherine had turned at all, but there it was ahead of them—the surface, and the promise of air.

  She glanced back briefly to make sure her friend was still following, and then squeezed her wings one final time. The force propelled her up out of the water and right into the moonlight of a different world.

  That much was obvious right away. For a start, the moon was the same shape, but was far closer than would ever be possible back home. It was so large and immediate to Jennifer, she was sure she could reach out and touch the lower point of the crescent. The sharp edge slid through the twilit sky, piercing the first bright nighttime stars with a gentle clockwise motion.