up on, but he managed it. I just blinked my eyes and there he was, crouched low with claws out and hot spit dribbling down his chin.
“Boy,” he said, nostrils flaring, and at that the smell of sulphur rose up around me. “You were at the bar, yes? Town sent you?”
I nodded, keeping my hands out in the open. I weren’t armed with much, just my Da’s knife, and it seemed to calm the dragon. He knelt down, sniffed me, then sighed a stream of smoke into the air. “Ah,” he said. “You have gifts.”
“A bit,” I said. “Not much, not really.”
He sniffed again, breathing deep. I recognized the trick from when Da used to do it, knew about the clues you could pick up with the right kind of training. The third eye does big things, its own special kind of magic, but Da always said there were other senses to fill in what the third eye can’t see. The dragon smiled at me. “Trained, then? Your father?”
I shrugged the question away. “I work for the doc,” I said. “He runs things; wanted you followed.”
The dragon cocked his head, smiling. “Dangerous work, yes?”
I said nothing, just crouched there on my rock and waiting for what would come. I had enough of my Da in me to know I weren’t going to die there, but that didn’t mean I weren’t going to pay hard for daring to follow him out there. I waited for the dragon to lash out, making use of his claws.
It ain’t often I’m surprised, but he surprised me then. “I make tea, yes?”
“Oh.” I blinked, and he watched me carefully. I forced myself to nod. “Yes. Please, yes.”
I squirmed. The dragon turned his attention to the fire, hocked a sharp gob of spit into a pile of kindling to get things going. He unearthed an iron pot and loose tea from his pack, crouched down by the flames to set it boiling. There was something fascinating about the muscles moving under his scales, about the way sunlight gleamed on the dark ridges across his hands. He sat, dignified, and waited.
“You’re after someone,” I said. “I saw that much, back in the saloon. Can’t see who, or why, but it’s going to end messy.”
The dragon kept his eyes on the tea. “Yes.”
“I’m thinking it’s the doc,” I said. “He got plenty nervous when you showed up, hurried off to his lab right fast. That ain’t like him, really. Doc Cameron likes his body parts, having new bits to play with.”
That earned me a reaction, a snort of smoke and a twitch in the folded wings. “Yes.”
“So what’s going to happen, when you front up again?”
The dragon settled back on his haunches, stirring the pot. He lifted the pan and poured spiced tea into a pair of metal mugs, both of them bearing scorch marks on the rim. He handed one to me and I saw flecks of Sloan’s blood drying on the dragon’s claws. “You have the sight,” he said. “You tell me.”
My forehead tingled, all prescience and instinct, but turned up nothing new. “I haven’t seen yet; the future’s nothing but smoke and gunfire.” I took a long sip of the tea, felt the chilli powder burning the back of my throat as it went down. The dragon watched me drink, red eyes narrowed to slits. I figured I knew what he was waiting for. “Ask,” I said. “I ain’t going lie.”
“You have the sight, yet you work for your doctor?”
I guessed what he was asking and short-cut to the answer. “He did some bad stuff when he arrived,” I said. “But good stuff, too. Helped people, gave ’em back stuff they’d lost. Relics of the war, sure, but they had arms and legs again. They could work, and we needed workers.”
The dragon’s laughter sent hot spit across the campfire. He put his cup down, tilting forward, and when he straightened up one of those ancient Lugers sat neat and easy in his hand. He pointed the narrow barrel in my direction, eyes narrowed down to stare at me. “You know, then,” he said. “You’ve seen what your doctor has done?”
“Bits and pieces. Glimpses, really, but I got plenty of after what he’s done since coming to town.” I watched the cold fire in the dragon’s eyes.
The dragon breathed deep. “He killed your father?”
I nodded again.
“And you work for him, still?”
“Sure enough.”
“Why?”
“Needs to be done.” I sipped my tea, staying calm; he wasn’t going to shoot me, I could see that much. I don’t have all my Da’s gifts, not even half, but I was sure enough of that. “Not much good tellin’ folk ’round these parts he’s the devil; they need the doc too much to care and it ain’t like anyone’s goin’ to be surprised by revelations of shady dealin’s. And my Da didn’t hold with revenge, really; he cared about keepin’ folks safe. He woulda done the same as me, most likely, if he ain’t ended up dead. These are nasty times; it takes a nasty man or a brave man to keep a town safe.”
“Your father was brave.”
“And look where it got him.” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, to avoid the flashes of history that rolled in if I let myself dwell on feeling. Hindsight can be a curse, Da said, and he weren’t half wrong about that. “We’re out of brave men, now he’s dead. All we’ve got left is the nasty folk and the followers. Way I see it, I can have the doc dead or everyone else can live.”
The dragon’s expression didn’t change and the Luger didn’t waver, but the tattered wings rippled as he adjusted his stance. The crooked line of his broken horn caught the firelight. “What you have seen,” he said. “You cannot save him.”
I shook my head. “I wasn’t lying,” I said. “Haze, smoke, and gunfire, that’s all I got; one of you will die, but I don’t know who.” I paused, drinking the last of the tea. “I got a fair guess about what happens next, though, after he’s dead. It ain’t pretty, not by a long stretch. Out here with nothing but Coody to keep things safe, it’ll go downhill fast.”
The dragon nodded, holstering the Luger and picking up his tea. “You should go.”
I lingered for a moment, wondering what to do with my cup. The dragon rose, staring down at me. “Go! Tell your doctor I am coming.”
I went, slinking back towards town with the tin cup still in my hand.
Coody’s clones were manning the walls, so there was no real chance to sneak into town without anyone noticing. Two of them came down to the front gate to greet me, clamped down on my shoulder with heavy hands, and started guiding me down Main Street. Four others stood on the palisade, dull eyes scanning the horizon while another one swept the landscape with the town spotlights. All of them tall, slack-jawed, armed; they looked the part, despite their daft expressions, hands on the holsters and eyes following the point of light that raked the landscape. The two walking me in said nothing, just held my shoulder and marched. I coulda given them the slip— Coody’s clones aren’t as bright as him, and he ain’t exactly sharp as knives to begin with—but a trip to the sheriff’s office gave me a good excuse to stay clear of the doc’s lab and delay my report by a few minutes.
The original Coody was sitting on the porch of his office, whispering orders into a radio and making a big show of checking the action on the shotgun across his lap. He didn’t even look when his clones threw me against the step, just pumped his gun with a satisfied grin and cradled it ’cross his lap.
“Sent you to go fetch the doc, Paul,” he said. His good eye squinted as he drew a pistol and checked its load, the other glowing big and red beneath the doc’s metalwork. “Cost us bad, you not doin’ what I told ya. Sloan was dead ’fore the doc could get to him, nothin’ left but parts.”
Da tried training Coody, just like he trained me, but the sheriff ain’t got none of the natural talent Da had for prescience or reading people. It made lying to him dangerous; he had to grind the answer out of you if he wanted to be sure of something.
“Called the doc and got no answer,” I said. “He left me orders, ’fore he left for his lab, and I followed ’em when he didn’t come to the door. You sayin’ I done the wrong thing? That I shoulda leant on his doorbell instead of doin’ what he asked?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Coody’s eyes scanned the town in a long, slow arc. “Doc Cameron’s the brains behind this town, but I’m the law, kid. I’m the one who has to keep people safe now…” He cut himself off before he mentioned Da, took a deep breath to clear the thought out of his head.
I shook my head. “You really believe that, Sam?”
