Rise of the Dragon: an Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 5) Read online

  "It's been a long time," Uncle James went on. He looked around the gallery, though there wasn't much to see. "Nothing has changed here."

  "Nothing needs to." Echinacious touched the side of his crooked, gnarly nose. "But I sense that may no longer be the case."

  "The government has the painting of the English countryside," I blurted. "The one where the axe murderer attacks the picnicking family."

  "Massacre at Dour Lake," Echinacious said with a nod. "I remember it well."

  "Does it matter that the government has it? Can they learn anything about us from it?"

  "Oh, no doubt they will be endlessly fascinated by it. And by endlessly, I mean that in the most literal sense. They will never decipher its magick. And so, in that regard, we have little to fear."

  "Who performed the magick that created it?" I asked. "Was it you?"

  "It is indeed my work, Anne. Though I hesitate to claim credit when, as you know from experience, the artwork from the Gallery of Veritatis is heavily influenced by its customers."

  "So just as Vale's memory and my sorcery were needed to create our memory stain, whoever commissions a looped portrait helps create it, too."

  "Precisely."

  I looked at Uncle James, who gave me a somber nod. It was time to lay our cards on the table.

  "We have reason to believe the Oddsmakers commissioned a portrait from you," I said as I watched the gallery proprietor closely for a reaction.

  Echinacious smiled and studied both my uncle and me. Nothing in his bearing suggested he was bothered by what I'd said.

  "Is it true?" I pressed when he didn't answer right away.

  "Are you asking if they are my clients or are you asking if I am your enemy?"

  Sneaky little bugger. I couldn't help taking a second, closer look around the gallery, searching for signs that this place was somehow buffered against my sorcery. It might explain why he didn't appear to fear an attack from my dragon.

  "I guess I'm asking both," I said, because time wasn't exactly on my side.

  "As a goblin with an appreciation for visual demonstrations, let me show you something."

  Echinacious touched the bust of Blackbeard, which activated the opening of a room I'd been in twice before. I was leery about entering any private room in this place, because any space with a door could potentially be locked. But I'd come here for answers and I wouldn't find it by hanging out in the lobby. I made sure Uncle James followed behind me, though, as I entered the portrait room after Echinacious.

  The easel and blank canvas were set up as usual, as was the gazing ball thingy. But new to the room was the steel box mounted into the floor and against one wall.

  "Come take a look," Echinacious invited from where he stood beside the cage.

  I looked through the bars of the cage and saw the capstone seal for the Rift, still embedded in the floor of the gallery. The wards on the cage were powerful enough to make my hair begin to rise, literally. The wards also made me slightly nauseated, enough that I needed to step back a few paces until the feeling eased.

  "Nothing and no one is gaining access to that," Echinacious murmured as he gazed down at the dragon face of the seal. "I made certain of it."

  "Unless you allow them," I pointed out.

  "Yes, I could lift the wards at my discretion. But what would be the point? As you learned, only a dragon can open this seal. A dragon in true form, that is. Try to touch it. Go on."

  I had a bad feeling about it, but I reached out anyway. My fingers hadn't come within four inches of the edge of the cage before a vicious zap flung my hand away, nearly wrenching my arm out of its socket.

  "Ow! That hurt, Echinacious!"

  "Ah, sorry. I should have warned you of how powerful it is." A twinkle sparkled in his beady eyes. "The demonstration proves my point, though, doesn't it? Unless you become your dragon, even you can't open the capstone seal."

  Rubbing my shoulder, I glared at him, but I did feel better about the cage. I watched as Uncle James reached toward the cage, too, though more slowly so he wouldn't be affected as violently as I had been. He stopped with his fingers half a foot away.

  "Yes," he murmured. "It repels even us."

  "To protect you from yourself, or whoever may try to control you," Echinacious informed us.

  "Okay, so that's good," I allowed. "But my question stands about the Oddsmakers. Did they come here after I closed the Rift? Did you help them with a portrait? It's strange to me that they've trusted you with privacy that no one else is given. I want to know why."

  "I think you already know the answer to that, Anne. But come along, and I'll provide you what you're seeking."

  Echinacious led us back to the lobby and this time he touched the Medusa bust, the one he hadn't touched while in my presence. A new door opened this time, past the door that I knew led to the gallery where shapeshifter portraits were made and kept. I peered through the doorway of this new room first and was unnerved to find it dark, with magickal spotlights highlighting at least two dozen portraits hanging on the wall.

  Some were covered with black cloths, concealing their images. Others showed scenes that appeared to be similar in nature, if not in theme, to the English picnic massacre. Echinacious strolled along the walls, leading Uncle James and me along a tour of manic happiness, sentimentality, and just plain strangeness.

  "Some of these I understand," I said as I motioned at a portrait of a family surrounding a dinner table where a young girl repeatedly blew out the candles on a birthday cake. The girl blew, the candles extinguished, and her family members erupted into soundless cheers that brought a wide smile of delight and pride to her face. The scene repeated every twenty seconds. "Whoever commissioned this wanted to relive a happy memory."

  "Correct."

  "But if that's the case," I went on as I passed a scene of a college-aged man standing on the edge of a high diving platform who leaped off the board and performed a complicated but flawless diving routine before piercing the pool below with a splash-less entry, "why aren't these portraits with their owners? Isn't the point of them so they can watch the scenes over and over again?"

  "No, Anne." Echinacious stopped at the end of the row and turned back to me with a patient smile on his droopy face. "You were correct the first time. The point is to relive these moments. And so these clients are doing just that."

  I came to a halt. Uncle James, whose attention had been fully absorbed by the portraits, ran into me from behind. I pointed at the diving portrait.

  "What are you saying? That this guy is somehow experiencing what—the feeling of this moment—in real time? The thrill, the excitement, the pride? Or maybe he's literally feeling tumbling through the air and landing in water?"

  "No again, Anne. I'm saying the client is inside this painting, reliving the scene that you are watching."

  I sucked in my breath, unable to believe it. How was such a thing possible?

  But what reason did Echinacious have to lie?

  I whirled to look at the other paintings, studying their scenes with a keener eye. Ten to twenty seconds of memories that undoubtedly gave their owners a reason to smile with fondness. But these clients were doing more than smiling at memories. They'd given up their lives to be their memories.

  "Can they come back?" I asked, aghast despite all the smiling faces in the portraits.

  "Some have paid for that option, yes. But not all. Not…many."

  I murmured with shock and no little amount of sadness. These paintings were refuges for the mentally ill, I realized. Or for those who were terminally sad or regretful, unable to move on with their lives. With that darker turn of thought I noticed the other paintings, the ones that were similar in tone to the Massacre at Dour Lake.

  No happy birthday parties or marriage engagement scenes on tropical beaches. These scenes made my skin crawl. They showed scenes of assault, abuse, murder, and other criminal activities, some which I didn't completely understand but sensed were unlawful or borderline evil.
Most I couldn't bear to watch after a single loop. To know that people were inside these, mentally and emotionally experiencing these scenes again and again because they brought pleasure…it was truly frightening.

  "Are the scenes real?" I asked with great reluctance. "These things—" I swallowed down bile, "—did they occur in real life?"

  "Not necessarily," Echinacious replied, and I sensed relief from him, as well. "The majority of these darker ones—the violent ones—are only fantasies dreamed up by those who commissioned them. The law and morality prevent them from enacting these scenes in real life, but there are no limits within these walls."

  So my assumption that a sicko had commissioned the picnic massacre painting so he could enjoy watching it from the comfort of his living room or den was wrong. The guy was actually inside it, wielding the axe, except the attack hadn't happened in real life. Only in his warped mind, again and again, thanks to Echinacious' twisted art.

  "You brought us here because the Oddsmakers commissioned a portrait." Uncle James' tone was stern, something I hadn't heard in years. Its sharpness broke through my growing disgust and pulled me back from the edge. "Show us which one it is, Echinacious. We're not here for these abominations."

  The goblin inclined his head but didn't move. "You know that I've been requested not to do any such thing, Mr. Song. I was paid handsomely to maintain their privacy."

  "Look, pal, I saved the world," I said hotly. "I think you kinda owe me."

  He studied me for a long moment and then nodded again. "You speak the truth, Anne." He looked down at his wart-covered, stubby fingers as he picked at a button on his suit. "I have existed for quite some time. I have made alliances that facilitated that." He raised his beady gaze to me. "Perhaps it's time for a new alliance, and a new existence. Please follow me."

  On the other side of a standalone wall which held more portraits that I refused to look at even if they were scenes of joy, stood a cabinet that reached only as high as my waist. Echinacious pulled out a wand and used it to open the doors. Inside, the space appeared to be empty. This was only an optical illusion, though.

  Echinacious put away his wand before reaching into the empty space and sweeping aside what I could only call an invisible curtain since I hadn't known it was there. With the obfuscation pulled aside, the interior proved to hold a rotating conveyor. From it hung what appeared to be hundreds of framed paintings. It reminded me of the garment conveyor at a dry cleaner, except this one seemed to stretch back into dark eternity.

  The conveyor buzzed into motion. The frames rotated forward from their endless depth within the cabinet. I couldn't see clearly in the murkiness, but some of the paintings seemed to be of landmarks familiar to me: the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay, the interior of Christian's living room, a winding freeway between the mountains…

  After nearly ten minutes, the conveyor stopped. Echinacious unhooked a framed portrait from it and slid the invisible curtains shut once more, presenting the illusion of an empty cabinet.

  "Here you are," he said brightly as he turned around and held out the painting. "I suggest you don't touch the surface of it, or else they'll know that you've looked at it."

  I was afraid to touch the thing. What if it was a trap? What if I got sucked into it? As if reading my mind, Uncle James reached out and carefully accepted the frame from Echinacious.

  "Uncle James!" I hissed. "Be careful!"

  "Better me than you," he murmured. He tilted the frame so I could see the canvas, too.

  I had expected some kind of nightmare scene, like Cthulhu rising from the sea or piles of dead bodies and maybe a demon picking over them. The Oddsmakers were kind of grim like that.

  But that had been a dumb assumption to make. The Oddsmakers hadn't commissioned this portrait for the fun of it. In here was painted their plans for the future.

  Chapter 7

  "What are the odds that they'll succeed?" I asked once the three of us had gathered in the lobby again where creepy portraits of celebration and suffering no longer surrounded us.

  "They commissioned the painting to practice, so one would assume that if they practice long enough…"

  "They'll perfect it," I finished for Echinacious. "Damn. That wasn't what I wanted to hear." I began to pace, still shaken by what I'd seen in the portrait. "That painting isn't like the other looping paintings, you said. The Oddsmakers aren't inside it like those other people are."

  "At times they are. They access the paintings remotely, so I am never aware of when they're inside."

  "So they pop in, practice that scene over and over again, and then pop out." I scrubbed my face, frustrated. "Can we destroy it? If we somehow figured out their routine, we could catch them while they're inside it."

  "You can't destroy it without using sorcery the likes of which I've never encountered," he told me mildly. "And I have lived a long time."

  "I would like to know why they trust you with this," Uncle James said quietly. Unlike me, he'd taken the scene in the painting in stride. He was a much cooler customer than I was. "What makes you their ally, Echinacious?"

  The goblin smiled slightly. "I'm not their ally. I'm a business person. I provide a service to any who have means to pay."

  "Regarding that." I stopped pacing to face him. "How are those people in those portraits repaying you? You said most of them signed up for a one-way ticket. They're never leaving those paintings."

  "That is correct. And their payment is why I'm granted a degree of freedom by the Oddsmakers." Echinacious averted his gaze and for the first time, I sensed shame from him. "You must understand that the people who commission these portraits seek to escape from their lives. They've given up, essentially, but choose to end their lives in a pleasant manner. There's no coming back for them, and they're fine with this." He lifted his gaze to mine. "What they barter with me is their souls, which I in turn surrender to the Oddsmakers."

  I was so shocked I forgot to breathe.

  "You're selling their souls to the Oddsmakers?" Uncle James no longer sounded calm. He sounded furious. "How dare you?"

  Echinacious held up his small, knobby-fingered hands. "They no longer need their souls where they are, Mr. Song. They are nothing but ghosts now."

  "What are the Oddsmakers doing with their souls?" I finally choked out.

  Echinacious adjusted his tie. "I suspect they are hoarding them to offer up to whatever demons or spirits they manage to bring to this Earth."

  "Holy shit. And you're helping them?" I couldn't believe it. "You're just as evil as they are!"

  "They don't need their souls any longer, Anne."

  "I thought you were one of the good guys! But it turns out you're just a greedy opportunist. Did you sell your own soul, Echinacious? You being soulless would explain a hell of a lot."

  He drew his shoulders back crisply. "I have not."

  "You just haven't received a good enough offer yet," I spat, sickened. "Ignoring the selling souls part, doesn't it bother you that the Oddsmakers want to bring something horrible to this world? You live here, too."

  "I have lived through a great many tragedies and dark ages," he said, avoiding my gaze. "I have learned not to resist."

  "So despite being incredibly powerful you're spineless," I said, unable to stop myself. "A coward who won't stand up to them."

  He flinched but then squared his shoulders and tugged down his vest. "Maybe so."

  I had to leave. I imagined slime pouring off Echinacious, and I didn't want to be mired in it.

  "Please take what you have learned here today, Anne, and put it to good use," he said to me as I opened the door of the gallery to escape. "No one else knows what you know. No one else has a chance of preventing it."

  I said nothing as I stormed out, though I did pause in the street to make sure that my uncle followed me out.

  "I don't know who's good and who's evil anymore," I told him bitterly. My chest ached as though I had swallowed too large a pill and it had gotten stuck in my esophagus. The
pill was reality, and I wasn’t sure that I would ever be able to get it down.

  "That's because there are no purely good people, Anne."

  "But there are purely evil people."

  "Only, because they're inhuman. But among regular people, no. Even those who commit evil have done good in their lives or wished to." Uncle James looked back at the Gallery of Veritatis with a heavy sigh. "What's happening in there is unfortunate, but Echinacious is only attempting to survive in a world that has been ruled for too long by the Oddsmakers. Men and goblins alike make the choices they must in order to get along."

  "He's got the power to fight them," I insisted. "He possesses too many magicks. No way can I believe he's a victim of circumstance."

  "I couldn't say. Echinacious' power is indescribable and inscrutable, but possibly it is also limited. But he is trying to help in his way, Anne. He's provided us with valuable information."

  Grudgingly, I agreed, though I wouldn't say so aloud, just in case the goblin had supersonic hearing or something. I grimaced as I once again pictured what we had seen in the Oddsmakers' commissioned portrait.

  "I can't wait to tell the others," I grumbled.

  "The more minds working at this struggle, the better."

  I was beginning to doubt that Uncle James was my biological uncle. He was more optimistic than I had ever been in my life.

  ~~~~~

  Everyone was chilling in Celestina's shop, and let me tell you, it was weird seeing Orlaton there like the kid that had tagged along when no one was looking. I mean, I was glad that he was there. Really glad. I felt more and more like his big sister. But it was still strange seeing him outside of Tomes. I think for a while I had begun to believe he was an organic extension of the building and couldn't walk past its front door or else drop dead.

  While he was a new addition, we were missing two people: Vale and Lev. Vale would have to be filled in after the sun set, but Lev's continued absence worried me. The last time I had seen the wolf shifters in Las Vegas, they had been turned into demonic beasts that attacked Rift seals at the behest of Vagasso and the Oddsmakers. Where had they all gone? Where was Lev? I was surprised that it wasn't the first thing Celestina brought up when I'd showed up in her shop after the government kidnapped me. But as I looked at her now, I noticed how haunted her eyes were. She was taking his absence about as well as one would expect, she just wasn't sharing her pain with anyone.