And Then There Were Dragons Read online

  I passed door after door, leapt over one feline after another, but the hallway wouldn’t end. It couldn’t end. It just kept going and going. I was trapped in the impossible. There were no windows, no explanation of the outside world. Just an endless corridor of disembodied voices.

  Then came a sound.

  One above the rest.

  Heavy footsteps.

  Palls was in pursuit.

  One moment I was walking down some freaky hallway, the next I found myself in the worst sort of waking nightmare imaginable. There was no other way to describe it. I was trapped in a slasher movie where no matter how fast the victim ran, the maniac always caught up. Always with little effort. For a second, I considered stopping, standing my ground, and giving Palls another taste of a Queens-bred sucker punch.

  But then, out of nowhere, a bell sounded.

  It was a chime of the small, annoying, tinkling variety—the kind overweight kings used to summon their fools when they needed another piece of food or some entertainment. Or the kind obnoxious posh people used to call for their Botox refills. A bell no bigger than my hand. But, regardless of how teeny the tinkling sounded, it managed to sweep through the hallway like a dark pulse of energy. The floorboards started creaking, the chandeliers flickered. I couldn’t shake the feeling the hotel itself had only been sleeping before and this chime was its wake-up call. I felt dark eyes crawling all over me, hands moving through the shadows. Now this place was ready to bare its teeth.

  Looking behind me, I saw the bell had stopped Palls cold, too. He was dressed differently. On top of his black suit, he now wore a dirty trench coat and matching fedora. He also wore the face of someone scared out of his wits. Terror had crept into his eyes—absolute terror—as Gaffrey Palls stared down the hallway toward the source of the light jingle.

  “We need to go. Now!” he yelled and reached out to grab me, but as he did all the doors in the hallway spontaneously burst open. The entire hallway was flooded with hundreds of people, like a dam of humanity had broken. Twenty people poured out of the room closest to me alone. There was such a large mass of bodies that I quickly found myself overwhelmed and caught in their herded footsteps. Palls reached out to grab me again, but I ducked away from his fingers and went with the flow. While I didn’t like the thought of getting swallowed up by this congregation, I knew I could use it to get some distance between that nut-job and me.

  The army of hotel patrons wore suits and dresses of every shade of red. The men boasted crimson tuxedos, wine-colored three-piece suits with dangling watchstraps and fedoras, and loud candy apple zoot suits. The women sported cocktail dresses with plumes arching off of them like scarlet ostriches, dazzling 20’s era dresses with ruby colored tassels, and dresses with material overlapping even more material until it all exploded outward through the neckline as if attempting the fashion equivalent of an erupting volcano.

  The mass seemed completely unaware that Palls and I were standing there as they pushed into us on their way down the hall. He and I instantly lost sight of each other as they bumped, shoved, and pushed through us. I thought I heard Palls call out to me, but a tall, svelte woman wearing red netting around her face and a raspberry lampshade dress collided with me. I tried shoving her back, but I might as well have tried to push over a parked car. She just gripped a half-lit cig in her ruby lips as she knocked me backward with each forward step.

  The well-dressed horde marched down the hallway, swerving into a large hall with a wooden table that was long enough to seat the hundreds of murmuring souls as its centerpiece. Four massive fireplaces stood on each side of the room, each one sculpted into a howling demon’s face. Between them, and taking up almost every inch of wall space, was a litany of animal heads: bucks, moose, lions, sharks, bulls. It was like someone had gunned down, skinned, and mounted every animal Noah had managed to bum a ride to.

  The hotel patrons stopped pushing and took their seats. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see either end of the table and there was absolutely no sign of Palls. Not knowing what else to do, I took a seat to blend in and buy myself some time.

  Suddenly, and with great zeal, out came a small battalion of marionette waiters— wooden servants without strings. Red and white uniforms were painted directly on their carved skins. They held silver trays raised above their heads on flat hands. Upon reaching the tables, the waiters swooped their platters down in front of the diners, removing the serving domes with ridiculous bravado.

  All manner of food came spilling out: baked turkeys with vegetables, diced lamb chunks, succulent steaks over diced potatoes. There was more food than the trays themselves could fit, and most of the dishes rolled out onto the gold tablecloth with very little disregard for presentation.

  The people immediately stopped talking and started eating. They stabbed at the meats with forks and piled slabs of meat onto their dinner plates. Still unsatisfied, they grabbed at fruits and vegetables and donuts and diced ham chunks with their bare hands.

  With everyone focused entirely on their meals, I pushed back in my chair and looked both ways, like a hesitant pedestrian about to cross a raging highway. With Palls a no-show, I slipped out of my chair and started looking for an exit, pushing my way deeper into the room and hoping to find another door. No one tried to stop me. No one even seemed to notice me.

  Creeping further and further backward, I began to notice the sound of people eating— lips smacking, full guttural swallows—was extremely loud and growing louder. What had started as a buzz was swelling into a panic. I wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light, but as I stared at the feasting souls I got the impression their hands and mouths had begun to move faster, to blur and smear across their faces so that their moving mouths looked less like mouths and more like angry red blurs. The sounds of their hunger echoed throughout the room as they stuffed more and more food into their face-holes.

  Within minutes it was a full-on frenzy. Patrons kicked over chairs. Some climbed onto the table and began grabbing lobsters and cakes and omelets with their hands and biting into them, sending shells and crumbs and bits—and possibly teeth—sprinkling everywhere.

  What had started off as a dinner had evolved into a full-blown riot and I sure as hell didn’t feel like sticking around. Breaking into a run, I vaulted over two men fighting over steamed sea bass and hockey-checked an older woman salting a turkey leg (not because she was in my way, but because I was in the mood).

  As I fought my way through the crowd, something came over me. A sensation. A warmth. I wanted to stop. I wanted to sit and eat. I was hungry—starving, as a matter of fact.

  I wanted to have a meal.

  I needed to.

  My sprint turned into a trot—and then without deciding to, I came up short.

  Just one bite of savory turkey leg, I thought to myself, and my hand reached out at the last one on a serving tray. Luckily, I was moving sluggishly enough to see the fork aimed at my hand and avoid it. A man in a ruby tuxedo and a red horned half-mask swiveled to face me. His mouth opened and spittle flew from his lips as he hissed like a rabid animal. In one hand, he held a silver serving tray, in the other, a bent fork. Just before he lunged at me, his neighbor—a woman in a fitted skirt that looked as if it was made from the husk of a grapefruit—stabbed him in the side of the head with her carving knife. The force sent his lifeless body sprawling into the center of the table, the pointy end of the knife pinning his corpse directly to the wood.

  That’s when the real madness of the dinner party spread. No longer content with the bounty in front of them, the hotel guests turned on each other. With knives and teeth and nails, the meal turned into a slaughter. They started eating each other.

  One woman, steak knives in hand, stood on her seat and leapt at me. Her eyes were crazed, her mouth drooling in buckets.

  I picked up the silver serving tray the dead guy had dropped and swung it upward at her head. With the l
oud sound of a gong, the blow shattered her mask and sent her body spiraling into a small group of people huddled over the bloody remains of what used to be a man who was himself too into his potpie to realize he was being eaten.

  Without a second to breathe, a second man leapt onto my back. Before I could toss him off, Palls’ fist came out of nowhere and plowed into the man’s body with a sick crunch that sent him flying into the starving masses. Palls grabbed me by the wrist and—because there was nothing more important than getting the hell out of there at the moment—I let him and we ran.

  I’m not sure how we managed to get out of that horror, but when we finally jumped through the door, we stumbled into the thin hallway and collapsed onto the floor.

  Shaking and emotionally exhausted, I felt like my body wouldn’t let me move an inch. We were back out onto the infinite hallway, but everything was different. The lights on the chandeliers were red, tinging everything in the dark stain of blood red. The walls of the hallway even looked tighter, more cramped. It didn’t help that the army of cats that had previously been running around the place now seemed scared shitless too, mewing pitifully as they scattered in all directions.

  Palls was staring at something coming at us from down the hallway. He staggered to his feet and quickly pulled me to mine.

  “Well, we’re screwed,” he groaned. “The Warden’s here.”

  “Who?”

  A round ball of rippling black shadow too big for the tight space rolled toward us like a dark marble down a hungry throat. Unable to fit properly, it scraped against the walls, crushing doors and frames and trampling a few cats as its mass heaved in our direction. The darkness of its shadow swallowed everything up as it drew near.

  Palls didn’t move. Neither did I. We stood our ground

  From out of the darkness, a thin tear formed at the center of the shadow. Greasy black blood splashed onto the carpeting like an invisible claw had ruptured some sort of dank, rotten artery. In its wake, a figure spilled into the hallway. It was a tall creature with a long black beak, swathed in dark robes. With one gloved hand on a cane sporting a crow’s head and the other tucked behind its back, the figure stood with what could only be described as an absolute dick-ish posture. Pulling on the black beak, the figure moved his mask away to expose a man’s smirking mouth.

  “Now-now, Grey,” Mason Scarborough called in his usual snobbish drawl, “one mustn’t leave before dessert. That would be rude.”

  CHAPTER 3

  I didn’t need to think too hard to recall the shitload of grief Mason Scarborough (aka Captain Cross) had given me back when the two of us were still alive.

  He was much taller than the last time I had seen him, longer and lankier-looking, too. Mason’s robe swelled and settled into a slim, European-cut suit as he took a step toward us: black blazer, purple shirt, black tie—dude looked like a bruised eggplant. His white hair was tied back into a tight man-bun, which only worked to promote his overwhelming douchery.

  Palls attempted to grab my wrist again but I backhanded him squarely in his throat and stepped forward. Smoothing down my dress, I turned to our newest arrival and feigned a hearty, “Masonnnnn! I almost didn’t recognize you. Oh, right. Maybe it’s because the last time we saw each other you were being impaled by a giant demon parrot. Ah, the good ‘ol days!”

  He scowled so hard I thought his face had turned to stone. Mason always looked like it was personally draining to have to deal with other human beings, a habit he hadn’t lost being dead. In many ways, I could relate.

  “I see you still have that mouth of yours, Grey. It means so much to me that, even in Hell, you still seem to serve as the epicenter to my waking misery.”

  “Compliment,” I said, batting my eyelashes.

  Mason turned his attention to Palls. “Never took you as one for charity, Gaffrey.”

  Rising to his full height, Palls loomed over both of us, and yet didn’t seem to have a violent bone in his corporeal body. “We’re leaving, Mason,” he said, flexing his neck around the painful lump where my hand had landed.

  “Leaving?” Mason stamped his cane on the ground for emphasis. “Don’t act as if you have any jurisdiction down here, Gaffrey. And besides, we’re just catching up. Birds of a feather and at all that. I hope you don’t forget who has the true authority in this hotel.” Turning to me, Mason continued, “You know, when I first saw the name ‘Grey’ written in for a reservation, I will admit I became quite giddy. Just the thought of having you here to dismember, decapitate, and disembowel, night after night until the end of time, well, I saw it as a valuable ‘pick-me-up’ during my dark days.” Mason laughed and it was just as horrible as you would think—it sounded like someone had lashed three cats together by their tails using barbed wire and launched them down a flight of stairs.

  After the bizarre screeching, his face grew serious. “Imagine my disappointment when it was Petunia Grey standing before me and not her dear older sister.”

  Hearing Petty’s name was a trigger, but the fear overtaking me at that moment was unlike anything I had ever felt before. Honestly, I couldn’t get a handle on anything I was feeling. It was as if I was being bombarded by every color and sound in the spectrum, each of them fighting for screen time in my mind until they blended together in a chaotic swirl of noise and static. There were all there, but nothing made sense.

  Mason brandished his crow-headed cane and a black ball of sludge shot from its tip, slamming into Palls and me and pinning us against the wall. The goo was as strong as cement, but it felt like something alive as it undulated and churned like a thousand hands pressing against my body.

  “It feels like centuries since I’ve seen your face, Grey,” Mason growled, drawing so close I could taste his hatred where his breath hit my skin. “And all of this time, I’ve fantasized about the moment you would be in front of me again. Seeing your sister show up instead was more than just a buzz kill—but I do remember her. Oh, I do. And torturing her, teaching her some respect, was something I was anticipating.”

  Struggling against the goo holding me captive, I shouted, “Leave her alone, Mason. She doesn’t belong here. She didn’t do anything to you. She’s innocent!”

  Mason Scarborough’s eyes drained of anything that resembled life and when he spoke again his voice was flat, each word sparking as it lit from his tongue.

  “She shot me in the head.”

  I stopped struggling as the memory came to back to me.

  “Oh, right…well, I think we can all agree two out of three isn’t bad. I think that’s fair.”

  “Your mouth won’t get you out of this, Grey.”

  “No, but this will,” Palls shouted as one of his fists burst out of the black shadow and decked Mason in the chest. The fist itself was bound in a shadowy bonfire of black fire. The force from the blow blasted Mason down the hallway, where he vanished into thin air.

  I didn’t have time to dwell on the freakish nature of what I had just seen as Palls tore my restraints away. The remaining goo wriggled like a black tongue when it hit the floor, sliding down the hall after the mouth it belonged to.

  Gross.

  “We need to go. That won’t keep him down for long.” Palls had barely gotten the sentence out when Mason reappeared, stepping out of a black tear and this time accompanied by four masked figures in red tuxedos.

  “I was going to ask you to stay for dinner,” he said, now speaking as if all the fun had gone out of the whole situation. “That was me being considerate. But now, I’m just going to lop off your limbs and use your skin as drapes in my private study. For this task, I have chosen my most trusted and vicious concierge—a being whose thirst for blood and carnage has even given me pause from time to time. It will not stop pursuing you until you have been mashed into paste—until you are crushed and maimed beyond comprehension. Until your warm guts fill up into your mouth like…”

 
As Mason monologued the more gruesome details of our certain dismemberment, one of the masked men—one who looked like a fiery red parrot—leaned over and whispered something into his ear.

  “What do you mean Steve has the day off?” Mason snapped.

  The masked man leaned back into his ear and whispered again.

  The Warden gnashed his teeth. “I know what it means to have a day off, you idiot.” Mason ran a gloved hand over his face. “Fine, fine. Who’s left?”

  Another masked man produced a clipboard and presented it to his boss. Mason turned to page two, and then page three. Four. “Okay, next manager’s meeting, we’ll be discussing this coverage issue. Everyone wants to take off before a long weekend. And I don’t care if he has a century of personal days saved up. Now I have to send the new girl from the temp agency. It’s downright unprofessional.”

  A ball of fire blossomed between us as a being emerged from the flames. It wore a black hooded robe with small skulls lining its belt, which managed to look unimpressively goth around here. The black mask covering its face sported a long, sharp snout, resembling some sort of canine. Its slender fingers outstretched and an enormous silver hammer appeared in its hand. Most of the metal was painted in sporadic blood splatter. Not a great welcome sight, but decidedly effective.

  Palls grabbed my wrist again. “We need to get out of here, Grey. We can’t win this fight.”

  I flicked his grasp away. “First of all, you need to stop grabbing me. Second…” I stepped up to the being with the gruesome hammer and cracked my neck. This figure stood over six feet tall, but I made sure not to back down. “Look at what I’m wearing, Palls. There’s no way I’m dying in a dress.”

  Two more masked figures joined ranks with the hooded torturer. Behind me, Palls followed suit, standing at my back like we were sorting ourselves into teams for a schoolyard game.