Bwam! Tyler and Mr. Carrillo shouted in terror as something smashed down on top of Mr. Carrillo’s truck, a huge impact as if another car had dropped out of the sky. The windshield spiderwebbed and sagged inward. What was it? Tyler felt as if he couldn’t breathe. Another manticore…?
The male dragon Alamu’s crocodilian face appeared as its long, slender neck dipped down from the top of the car, just outside Lucinda’s window.
First the manticore-now this…? was all Tyler had time to think, then the dragon opened its jaws wide and let out a bellowing screech that made his skull rattle. Lucinda woke up, took one look out her window and started screaming; Mr. Carrillo was shouting words in Spanish that Tyler couldn’t understand.
The dragon leaped off the truck and landed on the ground with enough force to kick up packed earth. The security lights made Alamu’s scaled shine light flecks of gold but he was not posing to be admired, he was coiling to strike. An instant later he spread his wings and launched himself at the manticore.
Alamu hit with the full force of his body, then his wings bellied with air and pulled him up into the air, knocking the surprised manticore away from Ragnar’s motionless body. An instant later Alamu dropped back down again. Even as the manticore reared up, the dragon seized the beast’s head in his long claws and forced his enemy to the ground beneath his greater weight. The manticore thrashed but could not escape, the end of its spiny tail pounding the ground like a mace.
“Why the hell are these things trying to eat us?” screamed Mr. Carrillo. “Where did they come from?”
“Tell you later.” Tyler was so frightened he was afraid he was going to pee himself.
Mr. Carrillo got the truck into gear at last and it leaped forward across the dirt. For a moment Tyler thought they were going to crash through the fence but then the truck spun, dirt flying, and headed back to the spot where the two impossible beasts were locked in a screaming death-struggle. When they reached Ragnar’s motionless body, Mr. Carrillo stood on the brakes. The car slid to a halt, then he opened the door and leaped out.
“Help me get him in!” he called to Tyler.
Every second out of the car felt like death was at Tyler’s shoulder-he was fighting back tears of terror. Ragnar’s body was terribly heavy, but at last he and Mr. Carrillo managed to heave the big man over the tailgate and into the bed of the truck. Ragnar groaned but did not open his eyes.
“Go!” Tyler screamed to Mr. Carrillo as he jumped into the back seat next to his sister. Lucinda looked like she wasn’t certain whether she was awake or having a nightmare. “Go, go, go!”
The truck threw dust as the wheels churned, then it skidded and slalomed around the two creatures’ struggle, which seemed to have suddenly entered a new and less violent stage, the dragon bending over the smaller manticore almost tenderly, sniffing at it as it twitched on the ground.
“I think the electric fence might be off!” Mr. Carrillo shouted. “But don’t touch the doors of the car, just in case-don’t touch anything!”
“What?” How could they avoid touching the seats they were sitting on?
Tyler didn’t have long to wonder: a couple of seconds later the pick-up truck hit the fence and smashed through, collapsing it into a tangle of wire mesh and broken poles. For a second the truck threatened to get stuck, but then it jounced over the wreckage and they were out into the open spaces beyond.
“Head for the main outside gate,” Tyler said as he looked back. To his relief, Alamu was watching them but showed no signs of following. The dragon stretched his head up on his long neck to observe them, then bent once more to the crumpled, motionless form of the manticore.
Chapter 22
His mother watched from the front door as the Mongolian herdsmen went past with wheelbarrows full of manticore parts. The dead creature was too massive to move easily in one piece, but Mr. Walkwell had some kind of superstitious objection to burning it, so they were trundling the body off to bury it somewhere in the hills.
“One of Gideon’s most foolish, dangerous ideas, those animals,” she told Colin. “I told him but he wouldn’t listen. ‘They’ll kill someone,’ I said, and I was quite nearly right. It still may happen.” She shook her head. “Such a pig-headed man.”
Colin Needle had stopped watching the clean-up-the blood made him feel dizzy and sick to his stomach, and of course more than a bit guilty because of his own involvement. This should have been his moment of triumph, now that the Jenkins children and the Viking bully had been thrown off the farm, but for some reason Colin didn’t feel as happy as he thought he should. “How is Gideon doing?” he asked, peering into the parlor. The old man was sleeping, or appeared to be, his mouth wide open and his eyes shut. “Any better?”
Patience Needle’s mouth tightened a little, but she did her best to smile, an effort Colin appreciated because he saw it so seldom. “I think so. I’ll have him up and around soon.”
Colin felt his chest loosen. When she talked about Gideon, it was with real puzzlement and concern in her voice-that proved his illness couldn’t be anything to do with her! He wanted to celebrate this happy state of affairs, somehow, but both he and his mother were going to be very busy today. Already she had made several calls to Gideon’s lawyer, Mr. Dankle. “I am not pleased, Mr. Dankle-not pleased at all,” he heard her tell the lawyer at one point. Dankle was out of town, apparently, and whatever she wanted from him would have to wait. Some legal question that needed answering because of Gideon’s illness. Colin guessed, or some insurance thing. He didn’t really care too much.
And why should he? His enemies had been driven from the field and Colin Needle himself was now the boy with the best toy in the whole wide world.
In fact, Colin knew he had been very lucky. When he heard Tyler Jenkins shouting about the dragon’s nest and Gideon’s precious Continuascope he had been certain that things were going to get bad quickly. He had only used his computer to open the manticore cage to cause a distraction-how was he supposed to have known that Carrillo fellow from next door was waiting outside the inner gate, right in the monsters’ way? It had been sheer dumb luck that only one manticore had got out, and even greater luck that Alamu had been close enough to notice the ruckus and nasty enough to feel challenged. Colin knew that the manticore’s death was a terrible loss-one of only six in the world!-but he also knew that Walkwell and the rest could get rid of a dead manticore. A dead Hector Carrillo would have been a lot more difficult to hide. In fact, it chilled him how close he had come to getting somebody killed.
But I’m fighting a war to save this farm, he reminded himself. In wars, there are casualties. And the prize-the prize is worth it!
Including, of course, the best prize of all, the ability to use the Fault Line, and everything that would come with it-and that ability was now Colin Needle’s.
The Continuascope was still where he had left it in the library the evening before on his way back from the dragon’s nest, stashed unceremoniously beneath one of the dusty chairs. Colin lifted the device up to the morning light that streamed through the high windows. It was a beautiful thing even if you didn’t know what it could do, a complicated but graceful arrangement of golden celestial rings, starry pale crystals, and shiny gears in many sizes, some big as salad plates, others smaller than the tip of Colin’s finger. Everything in him longed to try it out but he knew he wasn’t ready.
In the past year he had managed to hunt down more of Octavio’s journals, scattered in the oddest places in the house: it had taken much persistence, but as he had tracked down piece after piece the search had also given him new insights into Ordinary Farm’s creator. Something had clearly made the old man more than a little paranoid about his discoveries, enough that he seemed to have intentionally hidden his writings in all kinds of places. Either that or he had been senile at the end and had just forgotten where he had left them. But even after close study of all the material he had so proudly managed to assemble, Colin barely began to understand the ideas in Octavio’s work, let alone anything relating to how to use the complex instrument that was the Continuascope.
Patience. It wasn’t just his mother’s name, it was Colin’s word to live by. No point in getting himself lost in the Fault Line by being in a hurry. The Jenkins kids were gone now, after all. He could take his time.
He began by cleaning every inch of the Continuascope gently and thoroughly with a soft cloth, q-tips, and alcohol and, for some of the very hard-to-reach places, a little canister of compressed air that he kept for cleaning
