Dragons of Drupes - 3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

After two hours of Jack running tests at the museum, he concluded whoever stole the jewel did so from within the mineral room—the magic was more concentrated there. To be doubly sure, he asked Sara to identify those who first asked for painkillers.

The first three had come from within that room.

Tired and hungry, we finally made it back, only for Terry and me to have to go out again for some food. Ketchup wasn’t going to cut it.

Terry and I each dragged a bag of shopping up the slight incline toward our home. The scent of fried fish from the corner fish ‘n chip shop wafted through the air.

“You think we have enough for a scoop of fries?” Terry licked his lips, but his eyes were glazed over as if he were really thinking about something else.

Three guesses what.

Counting the change from my pocket, I shook my head. We didn’t even have enough for a pack o’ Tangfastics.

Silently, we walked around the bend and up the path to a four-story house with a rusty red slanted roof and an old round chimney. From the outside, our home could have been any of the brick houses that lined the street, but inside it was the most unique and mysterious place I knew.

My fingers tightened around the plastic bags, cutting into my palms.

I would not let it be destroyed.

This was our castle.

Not that I thought I could do whatever I pleased inside. Having flatmates meant having rules. Not such a bad thing I suppose. When it had been just me living there, I don’t think I cleaned the toilet once. There were some funky looking mushrooms growing in the bathtub when Terry arrived.

Needless to say, he had not been impressed.

As soon as we entered the kitchen in the attic, the shopping was ripped off us. “Hope you got some meat for us non-vegetarians,” Jack said, searching like a starved jackal through the bags.

I jumped up and sat on the marble bench, watching him rummage, my head shaking at his greed. Faye entered the kitchen, quiet as a mouse and slid onto the bench behind the table. She opened her mouth as if to say something but zipped it shut again. Instead she studied the purple polish on her nails.

Purple polish had me thinking of black polish, which had my mind slipping to Chrissy. The way she dug her black nails into her drumsticks as she beat out a rhythm on her kit.

My pulse quickened, as if she’d programmed it into a loop to match. Band practice was tomorrow, I’d see her then. Smoking hot and ready to rock.

It was the last day of being sixteen, the last day of being close to her and not having a chance. When you’re seventeen, she’d said, you can ask me out then. I don’t know why the wait. I suspect it was to torture me. All I could say to that was: Well. Played.

But tomorrow it was my turn, and I damn well was going to make up for the months of unattainability. Her sweet lips would be raw by the time our first date would be over.

“What’s this?” Jack held up a carton of eggs, his voice shattering my daydream.

Terry raised his left eyebrow.

“They’re free-range,” Jack said. “We don’t have the money to buy frivolous eggs!” He rummaged through the food looking for the receipt. Had he just said frivolous eggs? I swallowed a chuckle.

“They were only a few pence more,” I said.

Jack surveyed the receipt. About half-way through his mouth dropped open. “You spent that much on beef?” He pulled out the packet. “That’d barely feed a—“

“Flea? You gotta think up some more original comparisons. It’s organic.”

“Organic? Are you shitting me?”

Did we really have to fight about this again? I met his stony glare. Obviously, we did. He turned to Terry. “How could you let him buy organic?”

“Hey!” Faye said, coming over to my side, life bounding back in her cheeks again. “At least that cow had a life before it died.”

Right on! I flashed her a smile. Things had been so much easier since she’d moved in. I hated being the only vegetarian. Jack never made it easy, bickering about not getting enough iron and serving up stew whenever he had the chance, which meant I’d spend half an hour having to pick out all the meat.

“Look, I understand your concerns about animal cruelty, but we’re broke.” Classic Jack change of approach. Pity it was the same argument as the last time. “We need to get as much as we can for our money.”

Faye shook her head. “At the cost of our ideals and beliefs?”

“Well, yeah,” Jack said bluntly before softening his tone, “Our having food is, you know, more important.”

I continued playing with the safety pin that held together the hole on the knee of my jeans. “If we can’t afford it, eat less of it.” That was my line. I braced myself.

Terry looked between the both of us and shook his head. “Don’t you think we’ve got more important things to worry about?”

Hell yeah.

“On that note,” Faye said, her stomach rumbling audibly, “I’m going to make us something to eat. After, you’re all coming to my computer lab. We have some work to do.”

* * *

While waiting for dinner, I put on The Clash, cranked my speakers up and jumped on my bed. Freaking shit. I wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep it off like a nightmare. It just couldn’t be true. This wasn’t just a house we shared and used to jump from Oxion to Oxion. This was our home.

“Should I stay or should I go now?”

How apt a song. Sit here and weep like a weak sod? Or actually show I give a damn. Solve this mystery already.

I kicked my sheets to the floor, hating the feeling of being forced into doing something – and I didn’t think you could get a clearer form of blackmail. I stamped my feet as they hit the floor, hoping the sound of my irritation echoed upstairs.

“If I go there will be trouble. An’ if I stay it will be double.”

The beat of the music pumped through my veins. I loved how some lyrics were able to reflect the reality of my own personal world. It made me . . . connect. And, of course, here was the prime example: I knew we should do it and that we would. That, in fact, we were doing it.

Solving puzzles was an addiction for me. Another one. (What can I say? I’m easily addicted). I thrived off thrill and mystery. If it weren’t for the blackmail part of Detective Wurz’s case, I’d have snatched it up regardless of the money. But taking on the mystery now meant something different entirely. It wasn’t just fun and games.

If we failed, we’d lose a part of our lives. The only thing any of us could count on.

I glanced at the letters Faye had shown us and ripped them all open. The words on the pages were all gibberish to me, but the content was still there as much as I wished we could ignore or burn them. I tried to imagine the foreign words said something different, less threatening, but it was no use.

Stupid Berlin City Council. What gave them the right? I cussed under my breath, the paper crinkling in my tight palm. I sighed. Of course they had a right—they didn’t know what they were demolishing; that this house was special. As far as they knew, they were removing an uncared-for abandoned house occupied by street squatters.

I growled, the letters scrunching in my hand.

The idea of these people –any people– messing with our house made me . . . so mad there wasn’t a word for it. Destroying part of our home was like destroying a part of me.

I shoved the letters on the desk next to T.T Malley’s Oxion House—How To Travel Between the Oxions and walked over to my records shelf. I flicked through my collection, I wanted—needed—to listen to something with a bit more edge. I pulled out a rare autographed, blue vinyl version of Refused’s The Shape of Punk to Come. Gingerly, I took out the record and placed it on the player. New Noise would get me amped up, it always worked.

This time not so much.

I moved back over to my desk and grabbed the packet of cigarettes. It was only mid-afternoon; according to my plan I only had one left for the day. If I drowned myself in the relief of smoke now, there would be nothing left for later. Would it really matter if I had three today? Tomorrow I could jump back on the wagon, do things correctly. But today . . .

I opened up my bedroom window, lit the cigarette and inhaled. The music blasted left and right past my head, and for a moment all my worries washed away.

* * *

As promised, after dinner Faye squirreled us into her computer lab.

Faye, Terry and I were seated in front of the four screens on a long table that ran the length of the room. Jack paced restlessly behind us, socks scuffing along the carpet.

“Calm down,” I said, flashing him a frown.

He glared at me. How original. I was about to roll my eyes, when he dropped the glare and rubbed a hand over his eyes.

He looked tired.

At Faye’s voice, I refocused on the middle computer screen. “This lady, Beatrice Wymer, I can’t find anywhere. No public or corporate records, no cell phone records, and there are no online pictures of her.”

Jack was now swatting the backs of our chairs with his free hand as he moved.

Faye continued working through the list Detective Wurz had given us, that I was made to hold and read out.

After an hour-and-a-half more hours of searching, we had the list down to ten names. “I’m certain none of them comes from Earth. I double checked with different sites to make sure. Except for Avice Ballard-Cardon, they’re not in the phone directory, in any net investigations, or public record databases. I didn’t find any of them on Yahoo! People search. I also checked to see if anything came up on Facebook. Nada.”

I skimmed the list. “What did you find on this Avice Ballard-Cardon chick?”

“She’s lived in New York City. She tried auditioning for a place at the Julliard School of Performing Arts, in the drama division.”

“You sure she’s not from here?” Terry asked.

Faye looked at him out the corner of her eyes, and Terry gulped.

“I mean . . . you know what? I believe you.”

She nodded. Perhaps it wasn’t enough that he said he believed her though, because she went right on to explain. “All her cell phone records are only six months old, there’s no birth record, and her last name shows up again on our top ten list. I’ve checked out her online social network, but the only thing I found is she’s taking her friends to visit her family this weekend.”

“Daring,” I said. They’d have to be pretty good friends to take them to her home world. Most people had no idea about worlds and Oxions. What kind of girl was so daring?

“Let’s look at her on the video surveillance,” I said and waited as Faye isolated the shot identifying Avice and Walter.

“Clearly they’re related,” Terry said. I agreed. There were obvious facial similarities between the older man and what must have been his granddaughter.

“I’ll see what I can find on them when I check the databases from their home world. Soon as we figure that out. Jack, I’ll need a list of all Oxions using sound-based magic. Might be a bit of work to tune into their network protocols, but I think I can do it.”

A warm breeze tickled my neck and I turned to find Jack bent over my shoulder. “Keep the list still,” he complained.

* * *

“Never seen anything like it,” I said, handing a piece of paper to Terry with the name of the Oxion our criminal came from. “You won’t ever get me doubting you,” I said to Faye and Terry whacked my arm.

It was one in the morning, London time, and we all stood outside Terry’s garage on the ground floor. I could smell the addictive scent of petrol drifting under the door.

Faye flushed, proud of herself. “T’was just a bit of research. No big deal.”

And while I might have been playing nice to keep in her good books, I knew none of us could’ve done it that fast. If at all.

Terry opened the door and we all filed into his pristine garage (as garages go). Nails, bolts, screwdrivers, wrenches, and clamps had their appropriate homes in a cabinet, neatly labeled. The only resemblance this room had to my mental image of a mechanic’s garage was its smell. And my bet is, it wasn’t out of not trying to make it go away.

“So, Dowrl, eh?” Jack said, passing Terry to get to the windows. “What Oxion ring is that?”

The best way to picture the Oxions is to imagine an onion with the world in the epicenter. Each layer was an Oxion, a copy of Earth’s surface geographically, and there were hundreds of layers, the further out you got, the bigger the version of country. Giants and trolls usually dominated the end Oxions. More space probably.

“Three,” I said. “Not too far.” Dropping a few books on a small side table, I jumped on a large desk chair on the left side of the room.

Jack tilted open a window. “It stinks in here. Almost as bad as when Drake smokes.”

This time I did roll my eyes and looked through the gap in the window to the orange glow of the city evening filtering in.

“Oh wow, Terry, you’re almost done.” Faye was looking at a large table in the centre of the room that held a bicycle. Each wheel had been replaced by black discs.

I glanced at Terry. “Thought you only started a couple of days ago.”

“Yeah, it didn’t take long at all to install the photovoltaic panels and connect it to the motor.”

“Fuck that’s awesome.”

“Watch the language,” Faye said, a smile quirking her cheek. “But frock. That is awesome.”

Faye had spent over a month convincing Terry to use eco-friendly power to run the engine instead of gas and Terry had finally given in. Pretty sure he only gave in because it was something he’d never built before. He loved a challenge.

But hey, whatever worked.

Terry yawned. “Guys, I’d say we go through the suspect list before I topple over.”

Faye nodded and told him to at least sit down. “Cross referencing with sound as the magical base, we are down to four suspects,” Faye said, “Jack, you have the list.”

Peering at the piece of paper, Jack read aloud, “Avice and Walter Ballard-Cardon, Beatrice Wymer and Rohesia Auber.”

Terry perked up—the tiredness vanishing from his face—rubbing his hands together, eyes hungry. Like mine I was sure.

“I can confirm the Ballard’s are in fact grandfather and daughter, he’s 71 and she’s 18,” Faye looked at each of us before continuing, “Beatrice is 28 and Rohesia’s 23.” She turned to Terry. “Can you flick on the projector?”

“Got it, gorgeous.”

I think he might have been sucking up to get back into her good books.

The lights dimmed and the surveillance recordings started playing.

“Here,” Faye pointed to an old man with a receding hairline facing a young girl. “At the time the jewel disappeared the Ballards are talking.”

“Or arguing?” Terry said, pointing to the girl’s fist rolled up in a ball at her side.

“Can we find out what they’re saying?” I asked.

“Start working on it tomorrow,” Faye said. “Might need a few days, there’s no sound attached to the recordings. I’ll need to use a lip reading program.” She sighed. “They take forever to compute.” Faye was back to pointing out the suspects on screen. “This is Beatrice Wymer, looking in the exact opposite direction to the Red Eye.”

The woman was wearing a large thick coat buttoned at the middle. Rather odd considering how warm it had been in that room. She was facing the temple-shaped cabinet displaying semi-precious stones.

“And lastly, here is Rohesia Auber.” On the screen, standing a few inches taller than the guard, I saw a woman; behind her two children had their hands pressed on the glass wall display a few meters from where Beatrice stood. “I matched her line of sight to the Ballards'. Rohesia was looking directly at them.”

“Gives a reason those two were fighting?” Terry suggested. “A couple of others in the room seem to be looking toward them, too.”

“Possibly,” I said. But you could never take anything for granted. Picking up the books from the side table, I started doling them out.

“Anyway, as Drake said before,” Faye said, “all four are from the Oxion Dowrl.”

“Not only that,” I added, irritated when Jack whipped the last book from my hands. “They’re living in Drupes, a parallel of London.”

“All of them from the same city?” Jack raised a brow.

I pressed my lips together. That’d been my reaction exactly. “Yeah,” I said, “Just as well we like our mysteries with a side of . . . mystery.”

Faye, flickering through her book, said, “On a scale of pretty-similar to mind-bogglingly-different, how crazy is this Dowrl?’

“Get the lights and let’s have a look.” I picked up one of the books and Terry, Faye and Jack crowded around with theirs.

I opened to a folded page in the middle of a thick red-leather book. On it, under the heading ‘Energy sources still used in Drupes’, was a diagram of a dragon attached to a roof.

The model dragon was bright green and blue, perched on a slanted roof. Lines extended from the feet and hands with the label ‘declawed’. Another label informed us its wings were clipped, making flight impossible. Most disturbing was the building, sketched so we could see into the house. The green dragon tail was pulled taut through the floors, its tip ending in a fire-grate. Blue and red flames flicked in the fireplace and two kids sat playing happily in front.

I shuddered. “Expect to see dragons, Faye. But not happy ones.” Also dragons that blew fire from their tails, not their mouths. That’ll take some getting used to.

I scanned the information below, wanting to slam the book shut in horror at the words sentient beings. What were they doing chained to housetops?

The fundamental and [only] difference between Dragons and Dorwlians is physiological. . . . are able to communicate intelligibly and rationally, and possess and retain knowledge with both short and long-term memories.

I hurriedly turned the page and cleared my throat. “This parallel world branched off our own history around the fourteenth century. Before the first major medieval witch trials. In this world, witches were protected.”

“Why?” A warm breeze tickled my neck and I turned to find Jack bent over my shoulder. “Keep the list still,” he complained.

I skimmed the page before answering. “Because of the Plague. Only witches knew how to breed and raise dragons.” I skimmed further and read anything interesting aloud. “. . . It was discovered where witches and dragons lived, almost no one died of the Plague . . . Witches were protected in return for producing dragons . . . Now, on average, there’s one dragon to every household.”

“Why dragons?” Faye said, moving closer to Terry.

“. . . The association was at first thought to be something magical . . . It wasn’t until 1810 that scientists discovered the connection . . . the heat dragons produced killed off the fleas.”

Behind me Jack grunted. “Makes sense I suppose.”

“After they discovered this,” I continued, “dragons were farmed on massive scale to be used as energy sources. They were and still are slaves to the state and family.”

“Sucks,” Terry said, one hand holding a book, the other spinning the front disc on his bike.

“This is interesting.” Faye’s tongue briefly licked her bottom lip. “Drupes used to be known as Londinium—the ancient Roman name. The city changed its name after the Botanical Revolution—”

“The what?” Jack asked.

I grinned. Felt good when Jack didn’t have an answer for everything.

“I’ve got info on that,” Terry said, now using both hands to support the book. “During the Botanical Revolution, the state invested in parks, forests and gardens. They did it first in an effort to lift the fog over Drupes, then Londinium, caused by Dragon smoke. Also at this time pollution taxes were introduced and dragons had to be fed special food that cleaned their smoke output. Now their smoke is almost entirely pollution-free.”

Faye continued. “They renamed the city to Drupes after a public orchard with peaches, apricots and nectarines was planted in the centre of the city. Drupes meaning ‘stone fruit’.”

Just then my stomach rumbled. Apricots sounded good right now. “Do we have any fruit around?”

“I’ve some apples in my room,” Terry offered, “but they’ve been sitting there a few weeks.” He raised a brow as if to say, should I grab ‘em. I shook my head. Guess I wasn’t that hungry.

Jack laughed out loud, starting out deep and ending up almost an octave higher. It was the sort of laugh that made everyone around him laugh too. “Listen to this,” he said, “since 1886 it has been illegal to let cats, dogs and rabbits roam the street without a leash. A cat on a leash? Weird.”

That was the thing with Jack. The randomest things set him off.

And he didn’t think using dragon fire for heating was weirder?

“Happens ’round here, too. Sometimes,” Terry said.

Jack looked up, face blank. “You’re kidding.”

Faye and I shook our heads.

“Huh,” Jack frowned and continued, ‘They are only to use a litter bin or a designated public animal loo. According to latest info it costs 50 pence every time, too. Considered a loo tax.”

“Something against pollution?’ Faye’s eyes widened with interest.

I shrugged. “Guess so.” This was getting off topic. I got we were all tired, but the faster we worked, the sooner we could hit the sack.

As if Jack read my thoughts he said, “What I want to know is how we are going to go about this . . . investigation.”

Terry clapped his hands together. “We have four suspects. I say we interview them all and look out for inconsistencies. Little like last time.”

“Just like last time,” I said.

“We were lucky last time,” Jack said, “I think we ought to be more prepared.”

Memories of our last mystery streamed to mind. I shuddered.

I opened my mouth to affirmatively reply, when a bird flew in through the window, landing right on the armchair.

In a flash I jumped up. My breathing quickened until I was hyperventilating.

I tried calling out to Terry, but the words caught in my throat. I took a couple of steps back. My hands were trembling. Swallowing the built up saliva in my mouth, I regained control of my voice box. “Get it away. Quick!” I squealed.

I couldn’t lift my eyes away from the chair, where the bird sat, perched on the arm. I tried to will the darn thing away. Fly, damn it. Fly.

It picked something out from under its wing and chirped. I backed up further into the corner of the room. Why in here? I gave Terry a fleeting look, hating to take my gaze off the thing only a few feet away.

Terry understood. He moved to the bird with his hand cupped in front of him, whistling gently. The bird cocked its head to the side, staring at him. Such a cold calculating move. I shivered.

As Terry drew nearer, the bird flew closer to me.

I pressed myself harder up against the wall, palms sweating against the wall. It was night time; the darn thing should be sleeping, not flying into homes uninvited.

Jack started laughing, “It’s only a bird. It’s not gonna bite your head off!”

Had he not seen Hitchcock’s The Birds? I wanted to tell him to shut up, but probably would’ve let out another soprano-plus squeak. Sure it was ridiculous to be scared, but my body always reacted like this when they came too close.

That’s why it was a phobia.

Ornithophobia.

Faye went over and flung the windows wide open to my right. I eyed them up as an escape plan. If the bird were to lunge any closer, I would make a jump for it.

Jack stopped laughing and I saw him raise a brow. “Seriously?” Then he nodded and grabbed an old newspaper, walking toward the bird.

“Birds are to Drake what spiders are to you,” Faye said, “And don’t deny it, Jack, I heard you squealing like a girl when that black house spider found its way into your bathroom.”

Jack reddened, continuing toward the bird. “Okay, but come on. Birds are . . . and well, spiders are, you know, ugh.” Jack shuddered, then swiped the air with the newspaper in front of the bird, sending it fluttering in fright. It chirped at Jack. Then, deciding perhaps he wasn’t worth it, flew out the window.

Cautiously, I moved back to my chair. I cleared my throat. “Let’s get back to work then.” But I couldn’t properly settle on my seat, flashes of that thing staring at me with its beady evil eyes made me squirm.

Freaking birds.

“I still don’t get how can you be more freaked out by a bird than by some crazy guy holding a gun to your head,” Jack muttered behind me.

I thought back to our last case and shrugged. “Their beaks, they’re so . . . pointy. They just scare the living daylights out of me, okay.” Not that I needed to give him a justification.

Terry went back to reading. Jack looked over his shoulder. “What’s that?” he asked. On the page was a diagram of a round ball attached to a strap, fluffy on one side and smooth on the other.

Turning the book on its side, Terry let him get a better look. “The chapter is on technology, so I guess it’s… some kind of… technology?” He smiled faintly. “Here it says it’s called a Soundimer.”

“That’s their wand,” I said, jumping up to check it out, bird issues behind me. For now.

“Wand?” Jack said. “You’ve got to be kidding. It looks like a ping-pong ball gone wrong.”

“Can’t wait to see that in action,” Terry said.

“Speaking of action,” Faye said, “do you think it will be dangerous? Like, you know, the last time?”

I clenched my teeth together. “Hope not.” I shook the dark thought away. “At any rate, we had better be prepared.”

“How so?” Jack asked.

“Well . . . we are three pretty sturdy guys—”

Faye shook her head. “Look, I’m not going to go all feminist on you, don’t take it that way, but none of you hold any beef to a dragon, or even a goblin as it turns out, so . . . I just don’t think you three sturdy guys will be enough.”

I glanced at Terry. “One of us does karate.”

“Yeah, since our last case. He’s yellow belt. I’m sorry, but Faye’s right.” Jack held my gaze before continuing, “How can we keep ourselves, say, out from gun-point?”