Very suddenly, Jake started laughing again.
'This,' he said, 'is just getting freaking weird.' He stood and held out his hand. Salvatore took it in his own smaller hand. Jake's grip was firm, but not painfully so. There was a warmth in it — and a charge of energy.
'I got to go,' Jake said. 'I have to show this to Snake, and the others. There are things coming — bad things — that I have to be a part of. There may be others who will come to you. You do right by them — they'll be behind you forever. You understand? Any of them gives you any crap, you tell them Jake has your back. If that doesn't work, you come get me and I'll tell them myself.'
Salvatore nodded. Jake turned to the door, and Helen followed. She smiled back over her shoulder at Salvatore, who watched them go in silence. When the door had closed, and their footsteps had died away in the distance, he finally allowed himself to breathe.
Sunlight poured in through the battered slats of his window, and he stepped out onto the sidewalk, letting the warm rays wash down over him. It was a glorious day to be alive, and he thought, in just a bit, that he would draw. Already his mind was filled with another image — another dragon. Soon, he would set it free.
Chapter Sixteen
Salvatore sat on the sidewalk, about half a block from his home, drawing. He was surrounded by bits of brightly colored chalk. The spot he'd chosen fronted a vacant lot. The builder had begun the walkway up toward a home that had never been built. Salvatore had chosen this spot so that he could work just off of the main thoroughfare. He didn't mind that people would walk on his creations — he did, after all, draw on sidewalks — but he didn't want to be disturbed while he worked, and after the events of the night before, something had changed. There was an urgency to the drawings. Almost the moment Jake left him, another dragon had invaded his mind, as if filling a suddenly vacated void.
This time the serpent was a bright, ice blue. Salvatore had worn his large chunk of white chalk down to a nub filling in highlights. The blue was subtle, and there were only hints of shadows and lines for the legs, arms and scales. It was like drawing a creature of glass, or ice — much more difficult than the solid gold and green of Jake's dragon. Salvatore found himself itching for the paints and the brushes, for the simplicity of mixing colors on the palette. He still caught the scent of salt spray, but it was faint. The Barrio intruded, and he wanted to brush it aside like a veil and step through to the threshold of that dark city.
Several people passed him as he worked, but he paid them no attention. He was lost in the dragon's world — in its power and color. When one set of footsteps didn't pass by, but stopped a few feet away, it took a while for Salvatore to notice. Finally, when something cut off the sunlight on a portion of sidewalk he was about to draw on, he glanced up and stopped.
A tall Hispanic man stood over him, watching intently. He was dressed almost identically to Jake, but the two could not have been more different. Where Jake was large and powerful like a truck driver, this man was slender. He gave the impression of speed and agility, no less powerful, but more distant. Salvatore had seen him many times.
'Salvatore?' the man said. 'Sally?'
Salvatore nodded. He found that he did not have the strength to rise, and despite the intrusion, and the sudden rushing of his heartbeat, the dragon was not yet complete. He didn't want to move until it had been completed.
'I'm Enrique,' the man said. 'I saw Jake's dragon this morning. It was…amazing.'
His words trailed off, and Salvatore saw he was mesmerized by the picture on the sidewalk. Enrique squatted down beside Salvatore, not crowding him, and studied the drawing. His face was a mask of wonder and concentration.
'It's mine,' he said at last, turning to Salvatore. Enrique's eyes were a bright, ice blue, and there was no room for question, or denial in his expression. He had seen what Salvatore already knew. 'You have to paint it,' he said. 'You have to paint my dragon.'
'I would be honored,' Salvatore said. 'When…'
'Now,' Enrique said. He stood and turned in one fluid motion, unwinding like a coiled snake and moving before Salvatore could utter a sound. 'I know your place. I'll be there in twenty minutes with my leather. Get your paint ready.'
Salvatore knew that he should speak with Martinez first. He knew that he should resent this man walking up out of nowhere and ordering him to paint. He did not. He felt an exhilaration like nothing he'd ever experienced, and a rush of energy — and strength. He rose, his chalk and the dragon on the sidewalk forgotten. He would finish it — but he would do it right — with the paints. He would join this man, Enrique, with his dragon, and he would set it free.
~* ~
Enrique arrived as he said he would, closer to fifteen minutes after leaving Salvatore than twenty. He carried his leather jacket over one arm, and when he entered Salvatore's home, he handed it over almost reverently. Some of the confidence had left him now, and his new attitude nearly unnerved Salvatore. It was as if he, Salvatore, was held in reverence, as if something holy was imminent, a miracle, or a visitation. Salvatore had liked it better when the man ordered him about.
'You can do this?' Enrique asked.
Salvatore took the jacket and draped it over the back of the chair, as Jake's had been. He zipped it up on the far side and tucked the arms around out of the way. Enrique's back was not quite as broad. The leather on his jacket was not as aged, and presented a smoother, more uniform black surface. Salvatore ran his fingers over it lightly, and then he turned.
'I will paint your dragon,' he said. 'I will show you what I have seen. It is all I can do.'
'Paint then,' Enrique said. 'I will be outside. I will not watch you work, because I don't want to distract you, but I will make certain that no other disturbs you until you have finished.'
Salvatore didn't know what to say. He could have told Enrique that no one had interrupted his life for fourteen years until the last two days. He was grateful that he would be alone with the work — with the dragon — but he thought, in this case, it would not matter. If someone else entered, that might be bad, but if this man — if Enrique — was to be a part of this creation it would disturb nothing. He would, after all, wear it when it was complete. Like a second skin. Like a second identity.
Without another word, Enrique stepped back out onto the front steps, and Salvatore turned to the table. He'd already laid out the paints, carefully squeezing some of the blue onto the palette. He had been forced to dig into his own meager supplies for an old, cracked tube of white paint that he'd found in the trash out in back of the local high school. He'd been saving it, hoping he'd be able to add other colors in time. He left the red and the yellow paints Martinez had mixed for him carefully wrapped.
He didn't hesitate. He dipped into the blue paint and began the outline. The blue that he'd used the night before to mix his greens had seemed brighter. Tonight, the paint had somehow left the tube in exactly the hue he needed for the darkest of the outline, for the shadows within the ice. It was much deeper, much closer to black, then he remembered. Salvatore did not think about it. He turned to the jacket, and he painted.
Somehow the experience was more intense than it had been the night before. The fact that Enrique stood just beyond the door might have been responsible. Salvatore thought, perhaps, that it was because this dragon was so different. It didn't matter. Somewhere after the first mix of white and blue to create the sheen of ice, the leather faded. He heard an unearthly cry, and before that other place even came into focus, the dragon dropped from the sky and soared directly over him. It flew so low that the wind from its passing nearly knocked Salvatore from his feet.
He dropped to his knees and held on, gripping wet, slimy stone. He was very close to the city now. A short walk would take him to the walls. As he gazed upward he saw that they seemed to rise forever, so far into the sky that, from his vantage point, he could not see where they ended in the lower limits of the clouds.
He rose and scrambled over the last rocky outcropping. The wall was smooth and black, and it stretched off to the right, and to the left, winding out of sight without a weakness or a break. He glanced to his left. That way lay the sea, and he thought it was unlikely there would be a gate so close to the water. He turned to his right, and
