Then the dragon turned his attention to Battle and Cameo/Blockhead, who still stood behind Battle at the room’s entrance. Danny found the cartridge she was searching for and rammed it home as the dragon drew its head back for another blast.
Battle saw death staring him in the eyes. He screamed and dropped his rifle as Danny aimed and the dragon shot two searing tongues of fire as if it had flamethrowers mounted in each nostril. Crypt Kicker staggered forward, arms widespread, palms dripping streams of toxic chemicals just as Danny emptied the cartridge filled with armor-piercing rounds on full automatic.
The fire hit Crypt Kicker’s chemicals and the ace and the animal were enveloped by an explosive fireball that blew Puckett off his feet. The armor-piercing rounds hit the creature’s soft belly, punching through to the flesh and organs underneath. Blood and meat sprayed all over the chamber. The fireball died out precipitously as the dragon suddenly ceased to flame.
Ray stood up slowly. “Holy Christ,” he said.
The air was foul with the stench of burnt chemicals and smoldering flesh. The dragon, lying on its back among the gleaming piles of its treasure trove, had a completely ruptured abdomen. The wound had been cauterized by the fire, but the shotgun rounds and the fire itself had eaten away so much of its internal structure that there was no way the thing could be alive.
Puckett was still smoldering. His uniform had been burned off and most of his skin was blackened. Ray could see why he’d always worn his hood. Most of the right side of his face had been blown away. It didn’t look like a new injury. It was what had probably killed him years ago. He was a truly ugly son of a bitch and he smelled even worse than usual. He just laid there like a T-bone that’d been left on the barbecue for far too long.
“Can we do anything to help him?” Danny asked.
Ray shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Well you can sure as hell help me,” Battle said. He struggled to a sitting position as Ray and Danny approached. He didn’t look too bad, though his eyebrows and mustache were singed. He put his hand to his upper lip, and bits of burned hair flaked away. “That rat bastard,” Battle mumbled. “That son of a bitch Bloat is going to pay.”
“How about Blockhead?” Danny asked. “Where is he?”
“Brian is gone,” a voice said.
It was Cameo, coming out from behind the cover of a large stalagmite that rose from the floor just inside the dragon’s lair.
“What do you mean?” Battle demanded.
Cameo held up her hand. “The ring slipped off my finger when we dove to cover.”
“Where the hell is it?” Battle demanded.
Cameo shook her head. “I’m not sure. I think it flew toward Crypt Kicker and the Dragon.”
“Let’s look for it —” Ray began, but Battle cut him off with a curt shake of his head.
“It’s too late,” he said. “Bloat must know we’re here. The only thing we can do now is keep moving, keep Bloat off-stride and confused.”
“What about Puckett?” Ray asked, looked down at the unmoving ace. “Is he really dead?”
Battle approached his erstwhile bodyguard and nudged him with his toe. Puckett didn’t respond.
“Who knows?” Battle said after a moment. “He can take a lot of damage, but that goddamned dragon really fried him. Maybe he can regenerate.”
“We’ll take him with us” Danny began, but Battle cut her off too.
“No way,” he said curtly. “The only way we’ll get out of this alive is to move fast. We can’t be lugging a body with us. Besides” he nudged Crypt Kicker again like a prospective buyer checking the tires on a used Buick — “he’s probably dead.”
“How” Danny began angrily, but Ray took her arm and stopped her.
“I don’t think there’s anything we can do for him,” Ray said. “If he regenerates it’ll be because of his ace, not because of anything we can do. But we’ll come back for him. If we can. I promise that.”
Danny nodded after a moment, and Cameo did too.
“Well, at last,” Battle said sarcastically. “Shall we move on, or should we just sit here and wait for Bloat’s minions to come get us?”
“Minions,” a choked voice said. Everyone started and looked up at the dragon. It had one eye half open. “Minions. That’s a good one. You’d better all watch your asses from now on. The penguin knows you’re here, and it’s pissed.”
“Penguin?” Ray asked.
But the dragon’s eye closed and it said no more.
The owl battered insistently against the moonlit window of Teddy’s bedroom as he watched from his bed. A thud, a rustling of angry wings, the round, tufted face glaring in at him, and the talons stretched out like grasping hands. It screeched in frustration, backed away, and launched itself at the window once more. Glass rattled in the wood frame.
“Daddy!” Teddy yelled. “Mommy! There’s an owl!”
A muffled answer came from the bedroom across the hall. “Listen to your dreams, son.” His uncle Alan’s voice.
“Where’s my daddy?”
“Listen to them..."
Teddy watched with the covers pulled up to his chin as the owl swooped out and then back once more. This time the glass bowed and shattered, and the creature fluttered into his bedroom, heading straight for him…
Whooooo?
With the query, an image came to Bloat: a squad of military types, the caverns, a recognizable patchwork face.
Jesus, no, don’t shoot —
Silence.
“Hey, fat boy, sounds like company down below.” The penguin was skating placidly in front of him — and he was Bloat.
“Shut up,” he told the penguin wearily. Listening… another voice…
Carnifex? Can’t be…
Silence again. “Kafka!” Bloat hollered, his adolescent wail breaking in mid-syllable.
“Calling for Daddy?” the penguin asked.
“Quiet!” Bloatblack pattered onto the floor; an icy dread settled somewhere deep in his vast body. He had visions of a tactical nuke, some sort of chemical weapon or something else just as nasty, set off below Ellis … Omigod, this is what they’ve been after all along.
Kafka came skittering into the hail. Dylan, bodysnatcher, Shroud, and Travnicek followed the joker. They all glanced at the penguin, who favored them with an elegant bow and doffing of its funnel hat. “Governor?” Kafka asked.
“We have intruders in the caverns,” Bloat told him. “Five of them in one group, maybe more. At least one of them’s an ace — Carnifex.”
“Where in the caverns?” bodysnatcher asked eagerly. He seemed to like Pulse’s body now; he visibly trembled with the thought of more destruction.
“The dragon’s lair,” Bloat admitted. “I don’t know how long they’ve been here. Kafka, they have to be here for a reason. The outside attacks could have been just a huge diversion, so that I — we — wouldn’t be looking underneath the Rox.”
Outside the walls of the castle, the fog was only a thin ghost of itself — another indication of his exhaustion. Through the mist, he thought he saw an owl swoop low over the island. “Send a squad of jokers down after them. I’ll send demons, but I don’t know if they’ll be enough.”
“And you’re just too damn tired to do it yourself, right, fat boy?” the penguin interjected. It spread its flippers wide at Bloat’s glare. “Hey, just an observation, Your Rotundity. Y’know, you’re losing your sense of humor.”
Bloat ignored the penguin. “Tell them to be careful I don’t want anyone from the Rox hurt.”
Travnicek’s flowered, viny torso swiveled toward Bloat. “Send the toaster, then.”
“I sent him to Manhattan,” Bloat admitted. “For fresh weapons.”