Claire Visits The Dragon, Part 1
Hi, folks. Got any Halloween candy left? I missed out on
trick-or-treat this year. My son is fourteen and has outgrown the activity.
(I mean really outgrown. He stands
about 6’1” and scares the bejeesus out of me sometimes, even without a
costume.)
I miss taking him out like I did when he was
little. And I miss eating all the candy rejects, the stuff he didn’t
particularly care for. This year he went to a party, dressed as a banana.
I wasn’t invited.
Anyway…
I’m moving into some uncharted territory on the
blog the next few weeks. I’m going to continue to share the background story of
Clifford and Claire, since folks started asking about it even before the first
Red Wolf novel was finished. But so far, I’ve been telling it in excerpts from
the upcoming Red Wolf Rising (projected
for Spring, 2014 publication). The next little part of the story is still being
written. It’s the first draft, and I’m not even sure it’ll end up in the book.
Readers of my blog may be the only ones to ever know.
But first…
What I’m Currently
Reading…
…was a hard choice after just finishing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, by Seth
Grahame-Smith. I loved his writing and the whole conspiracy-theory premise
behind the book (which will resurface as part of a future blog post, I’m sure).
I mentally prepared myself for a letdown while perusing my TBR list. After all,
not every book is such a gem.
Then the first book in Skye Callahan’s new
Darkness Bound series popped up free on Amazon, so I snatched it up. A sister
team of paranormal investigators? The pace seems pretty good. I read the first
few pages after I downloaded it onto my Kindle and almost got sucked in, but I
was running late for a meeting and had to put it down. I’ll let you know what I
think later.
Okay, now…
A little background to
the background…
An important element in the saga of the rise of
the Red Wolf of Prophecy – one of the contributions to Clifford Crane’s
resistance to his destiny – is discovering that his former lover knew of the
prophecy all along. In fact, Claire Deerfoot was the very one to receive the
prophecy from The Dragon five hundred years before. Yet, in all the time she
and Clifford were together not once did she mention it to him, and she took the
knowledge with her to her grave. Why?
Well, it turns out that just before she brought
out his wolf she paid another visit to The Dragon. Here’s what happened…
Claire Visits The
Dragon, Part 1…
December,
2003
Claire Deerfoot
stood alone on the outcrop of rock. She was panting from the exertion of the climb.
Foggy clouds rose from her snout like steam from a locomotive that had just rolled
into the station.
She wasn’t sure
this was the place. It looked much different than it had five hundred years before.
It had been virgin forest then. And the deer path she’d followed way back when
was now a recreational hiking trail.
She lowered her
nose to the ground and inhaled the faint scent of scorched rock. It could just
be from an old forest fire. Or, it could be dragon’s breath. No matter. She’d find
out soon enough. In a few minutes the moon would rise over the trees. If this
was the place, and the magic was still around, moonlight would reveal the path
to the eyes of her wolf.
She sat on her
haunches. She took in the scents and sounds of the forest at night. Her mind
wandered, as it often did lately, to Clifford Crane.
She’d been
spending a lot of time with him, almost every day since she’d revealed her dual
nature. She’d let him know from the beginning he had a standing invitation to become
a werewolf, but she’d tried not to appear too eager and had not mentioned it
since.
In fact, she’d
become conflicted about the whole idea, questioning her motivations. Cliff was
a nice guy, he had enough problems already, and she didn’t want to be
responsible for making things worse for him. She’d been unable to make a
decision, and time was running out. Desperation had driven her here, to The
Dragon, for answers.
Which is a mistake, most likely, she sighed.
She’d left his lair last time with few answers and many more questions.
The first rays
of moonlight peeked over the tops of the trees behind her, and a faint luminous
mist was revealed, marking a hidden trail on the far side of the clearing. This is the spot, alright. She raised
herself to all fours, trotted across the rock, and followed the mist into the
underbrush.
The trail
descended for a ways before she encountered a fork, the glowing mist leading off
in two directions. She nodded to herself, remembering the lair had a number of
entrances. After only a brief hesitation, she took the right fork from memory.
The track began to ascend gradually at first before taking a sharp uphill turn.
The going got
tough. A deadfall covered the trail, and she had to scramble and wriggle among
the tangled branches and underbrush. There was no scent to follow, just the
glowing mist. But it lit the way well enough, until she spent a good five
minutes digging out a space under the trunk of a huge downed oak only to bump
her snout against a rock wall.
Damn. The trail ended here, which meant that
one of the lair’s entrances should be very nearby. Probably at the top of this cliff. But how to get there? And did
this mean the entrance had been covered or damaged and was no longer used? Had
the Dragon moved his lair? After all, it had been five hundred years.
She backed out
from under the tree trunk and surveyed the area. Moonlight barely filtered
through the tangle of branches, but she thought she could make out a ledge on
the rock about thirty or forty feet above, and a faint glowing mist.
Crap. Tree climbing was not a werewolf’s
forte. She’d have to change, which would mean she could no longer see the
magical mist that illuminated the way. There was no other choice.
When the change
was complete, she stood naked and shivering and immediately cursed herself for
not taking more time to map out a route with her wolf vision through the tangle
of branches. Jeez, she could barely see her hands in front of her face now.
Oh, well. She felt for a hand hold, then a
foothold, and began to climb. An unseen branch wacked her in the head. Ouch. A seemingly sturdy limb gave way
under foot, and suddenly she was swinging by one hand in the dark, her shin
burning where the skin had been scraped away. Damn.
She wriggled
back against the tree trunk, found another foothold, and managed to work her
way upwards a few more feet, where she emerged from a tangle of growth into the
moonlight. This is much better.
The going got a
little easier by the light of the moon, and she kept the scrapes and bruises to
a minimum as she made her way steadily upward. She began to perspire. Great. If I don’t keep moving it’s gonna get
cold as shit. Wish I’d brought a jacket with me.
Whatever storm
had brought these trees down had happened a few years back. Some had re-rooted already.
There was new growth all over the deadfall. It added credence to her growing
suspicion that this entrance to The Dragon’s lair might no longer be in use. If
so, what then? Go back the way she had come and take the other fork? After all
this work?
Eventually she’d
climbed as far as she could go. She found herself standing on a bare limb
jutting from a large pine that leaned at a sharp angle above the tangled vegetation.
She had to wrap one arm around the trunk to keep from falling. The rock ledge
loomed at least ten feet above her. Tantalizingly close, but too great a leap
for her human legs.
“Oh, give me a
break,” she muttered. It was a phrase she’d picked up from Clifford, and she
giggled briefly at the memory of the first time she’d heard him use it. She
shook herself. What now? Change back and try the jump in wolf form?
A chill wind set
the pine to swaying and her teeth to chattering. Her perch wouldn’t serve as a
stable launch pad for her much heavier wolf. But maybe there was enough play in
the top of her little tree to get her close enough to the cliff wall to jump,
grab a hold, and climb to the ledge.
She began to
rock back and forth. The tree swayed in an ever-widening arc, each swing
bringing her closer to the wall. This
might work.
Then, at the
height of her backswing, there was a loud crack as the trunk broke in half. She
threw both arms around it and held on. For a split second, she and the tree
hung motionless in the air before dropping like a stone. She watched wide-eyed as
the mass of vegetation below rushed upwards toward her. She prepared herself
for impalement on one of the sharp, broken branches. Oh, shit. This is gonna hurt.
But her descent
was halted abruptly as the trunk of the pine snarled in the fork of one of its
neighbors, and she found herself again dangling in the air. When the trunk
settled securely into its new location, she pulled herself up slowly and sat
straddling it. She looked up at the ledge.
It was
impossibly far away now. She was tired from the climb, cold, scraped and
bruised, and there was pine bark in her butt crack. She raised her face to the
moon and howled.
It wasn’t a
proper howl, since she was in human form, but it served its purpose. It vented
her frustration, and she felt better immediately. She took a deep breath and
let out another. Then one more, for good measure.
She was startled
by a voice from above. “Ho, there!”
She turned
towards the sound. A huge man, sporting green hair and a blacksmith’s apron,
stood on the ledge above.
“Well, I’ll be
damned,” he said. “Claws-On-The-Foot! Is that you?”
More to come next week in part 2. Until then…
Happy Reading!
----------------
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