Emma and the Dragon Tooth Sword

Emma and the Dragon Tooth Sword

All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2017 Gabriel F.W. Koch

v2.0

This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4787-5804-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016919851

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Prologue

Emma cried out and threw her arms up as the harness slammed her into the seat back. Noise, louder than the scream that tore from her throat, ripped apart her family’s car. Fractured light exploded through glass spider-webbed on impact, raining sparkling diamond shards of light that burned her eyes. Unwilling to close them completely, afraid that if she did she might never open them again, she squinted against the glare.

The car spun three times as it flipped and twisted into a ball of warped metal, glass, and plastic, finally landing on it wheels. Silence, except for the dull ticking of the dying engine, abruptly replaced the sound of the collision.

Emma listened to her exhale. She smelled crushed bananas and spaghetti sauce from ruined groceries and the sharp, acrid sting of leaking gasoline.

Her fingers grasped the harness buckle yanking desperately as she discovered the latch had jammed. Raising her head to see her father, she thumped the crushed roof. Blood trickled down her brow, mingled with the tears on her cheeks, which was when ten-year-old Emma Walker decided, Oh my God, I’m going to die.

Orange flames thrashed the front of the wreckage, reinforcing her fear. Nothing but fire moved until she heard an eerie deep-throated roar, the shriek of metal ripped apart to expose a narrow patch of night sky and a vision that filled her with both awe and terror.

When she heard a calm, unaccented male voice, Emma answered with a meek Yes, sir, and watched a huge indescribable creature fly into the black smoke billowing overhead as she felt herself lifted, and then passed out.

She awoke surrounded by blue-green curtains in a noise-filled room. The curtains moved when someone walked past the other side. She had an IV plugged into her arm. She heard her mother crying softly and a man speaking kindly as if trying hard to make her mother feel better when he knew the effort would prove unsuccessful.

I’m so sorry, Mrs. Walker. I can’t explain it. Somehow, the roof tore open, directly above your daughter, but only wide enough that a passerby could reach inside and remove her before the tank exploded.

Emma could not understand her mother’s tearfully mumbled words.

No, ma’am. We’ve not yet been able to determine if your husband died on impact or in the explosion. Personally, from what I saw of the car, I suspect the impact took him. No, ma’am. Either way, death was instantaneous. He . . . He didn’t suffer. Yes, ma’am. Your daughter is a very lucky girl. We don’t know who saved her. Someone placed her on the grass alongside the road at a safe distance from the accident. Whoever that was left before the EMS arrived.

Emma shook her head and tried to force out unwanted memories but could not escape the strongest one. The sudden appearance of a huge mouth with teeth she had thought might be as long as her arms, and the quiet but strong voice that had filled her mind and told her, Stay calm. I am here, Emma. You are safe now.

Who are you? she had wanted to ask, but did not think she would receive an answer. Then, she saw several dragonflies flying in spirals above her. Their wings, backlit by flames, glittered metallically, making her believe they were not real.

The next thing she remembered was a hand holding a strange-looking knife as it sliced through her harness. Lifted free of the carnage, Emma felt herself gently carried by someone she thought was a tall, thin boy with really weird long ears. He had jogged away from the car. Then a tremendous blast of heat had enveloped the wreckage. A ball of writhing flames exploded straight overhead but disappeared almost so fast that she had thought maybe the moon had swallowed their fury.

Later, at the hospital, everyone, including her mother, had told her only dinosaurs have teeth like those that she described, and all dinosaurs were extinct, which she knew.

It was your imagination, Emma . . . just your imagination, dear, her mother said softly as she brushed sweat-dampened hair off Emma’s forehead.

Chapter 1

Four years later, Emma Walker kicked off the covers with an energy she wished would also drive away her nightmares. All night, she sweated the way she did while defending her soccer team’s goal line. Her hands had knotted into fists that left moons in her palms from her nails. She rubbed her hands together, walked to the small window over her dresser, tilted her head, and stared at the star-riddled sky.

If you’re real, where are you now? she asked, but knew, as always, that she would get no reply.

Maybe the doctors were right. What I saw that night was imaginary. I hit my head hard. No T-rex suddenly appeared and ripped the roof right off the car to save me.

The idea that she might be crazy made her shudder, and she wrapped her arms across her chest, clutching herself.

Clouds moved lazily, uncovered constellations, and a half-moon which radiated its mysterious silver light illuminated her neighborhood and silhouetted spidery tree limbs raised high in the backyard.

I’ve never seen a light as pretty . . . or as haunting.

Then she shuddered when she heard the same voice she’d heard immediately after the accident, but this time, it sounded as though the speaker stood directly behind her, close enough to touch her shoulder.

Be patient, Emma. The time for answers will soon be at hand. She did not feel breath on her neck but thought she should have.

Emma spun around so hard she nearly fell and threw out her hands to catch her balance. Heart pounding painfully, she ran to the bedroom door and yanked it open. Cautiously peering into the pitch-black hallway, she stepped from her room and listened to her mother’s quiet snoring. She did not feel reassured. Instead, she felt creeped out.

Emma quickly returned to her bed, jumped in, yanked her covers to her chin, and glared at the window.

Time for answers? she demanded in a low voice so she did not wake her mother, feeling angry now. Answers to what questions? Who are you? Where did you go?

Stop it, she scolded herself, it’s your stupid imagination! Remember what they said about being crazy?

Chapter 2

Finished with choir practice the following afternoon, Emma walked to her town’s library and entered the brick building’s small foyer. Every coat hook held one or more of a rainbow assortment of jackets.

She found an empty bottom spot under a man’s heavy black woolen overcoat and wedged her jacket onto the hook.

Inside the main lobby, she felt calm determination. Her eyes narrowed as she surveyed distant rows of shelves with only one destination in mind: a place where no one would walk up on her, where she could be alone to think, something she felt uncomfortable doing anywhere else.

She knew the library was not a place to be alone, but for her, the shelved books created a space unlike any other. She never could explain it and stopped trying after the last time she told her mother.

Her father had owned a bookstore in town before his death. As a child, Emma spent hours surrounded by piles of books. She loved their smell, the feel of the pages, and colorful covers. However, her mother closed the shop two years after the accident. They had been unable to compete with chain stores. Now, library books provided her with solace instead.

Her thoughts focused on her main problem . . . the voice in her mind that began haunting her again.

She needed to decide if she might really be crazy, if the voice she kept hearing at night and yesterday morning was truly her imagination or just a twisted hallucination.

Part of her wanted the voice to fit a third possibility, one that she struggled against accepting. Reality.

If I heard the voice, she thought, then what about that monster I thought I saw? Did I see it too? Yeah, right, Emma.

Playing with the idea, she progressed to, If something that unlikely happened to keep me from dying, why did it? I’m nobody special. I’m a C student. I do not have a boyfriend; I hate my hair, have bony knees and skinny legs, and a nasty zit on my chin again.

She rubbed her chin gently and shook her head. That’s enough, Emma. Maybe you really are nuts, and maybe that’s okay . . . for now. Nobody else knows.

She glanced at the shelf to her left and discovered she stood in a poorly lit section of the stacks.

History? She touched an old blue spine age faded into dull gray. She pulled the book out, opened it, and read the first page: Medieval Women, Their Lives and Loves.

Oh boy, she said to herself. Didn’t know they had time in their horrible lives for love. She replaced the book and dropped her purse on the floor. The rainbow colored-cloth bag sagged as if exhausted by the task of holding her few important possessions.

Emma squatted to move her purse closer to the shelf. Directly before her, gold lettering shimmered on the spine of an old brown leather-bound book.

Something in her mind winked like an unexpected spark of electricity in a dark corner. She felt an odd tingle of excitement and forgot for the moment about hallucinations.

Emma sat cross-legged on the floor and read the gold letters on the spine: The Menace of Piracy.

That sounds kinda weird, she thought. But what pirate wouldn’t be kinda weird? I mean, come on now.

Her right eyebrow lifted, a sign of curiosity, as she slid the book off the shelf. Its smell reminded Emma of her father’s storeroom. The book slipped from her fingers and landed heavily on her lap. Her palm pressed the silky cool leather of the cover. Its gold embossed lettering felt bumpy and rough.

She lifted the front cover and read the flyleaf. The Menace of Piracy, Or Tales of the Templar Pirates. Published in London, 1634.

She reread the title and wondered, What the heck are Templar pirates? Sounds pretty mysterious. I thought those guys were all knights.

Flipping a few pages, she located a drawing of a pirate and felt unable to look away. He wore a red beard tied into hundreds of tiny braids similar to an upside down Medusa. Thick golden hair jutted from his scalp as if he had used gel.

His eyes were piercing blue. Emma shivered under the intensity of his stare. It felt as if he looked directly into her mind, as if he knew something she needed to learn. She felt captivated and dizzy.

What could you possibly know about me?

Emma chuckled dryly and examined his clothing. She saw a gold embroidered black jacket over a bare chest dotted with red hairs like twisted wires, pantaloons that matched his jacket, and shiny black boots that ended below his knees. The boots had gold buckles. A long knife jutted from the top of one. The right breast of his jacket bore an embroidered red Celtic cross.

She concluded that his outfit was about what she had expected to find on a pirate except for the cross.

However, an object clutched in his left hand made her heart race.

She read the caption. The pirate Dragon Sanglant ruled the seas for a dozen years. He claimed that his sword was magic, crafted from the tooth of a dragon. The tooth gave him the power to control the fearsome animal. Thus, no man could ever defeat him while the dragon fought by his side.

The hilt was, she read, carved from a dragon’s scale taken from the center of the creature’s breast. Its color was a luminescent bloodred. Purportedly, the sword’s silver-black blade was sculpted from the dragon’s incisor.

Examining the sword, Emma felt certain she would never want to face a dragon whose incisor could be three or more feet long. For him, I’d be a Debbie’s Snack Cake.

Her fingers covered her neck as a worm of fear slithered through her stomach.

Teeth, she thought and tried to push the frightening memories from her mind.

As she started to close the book and return it to its shelf, several lines handwritten in ink in a neat masculine script near the bottom of the page caught her eye.

She read, The blade was last seen in Dragon Sanglant’s possession as he began a voyage that became his final trip across the ocean to the New World. The ship was lost off the southern coast of America. Dragon Sanglant was never seen again.

The New World? Oh my God, she thought. I wonder if that means his sword’s still somewhere here in America. If it is, I’ve got to find it.

Then the pirate shimmered as if he planned to step off the page and challenge her to a duel for the possession of his sword.

Emma shivered and closed her eyes. When she looked again, the drawing remained unchanged from the way she’d seen it when she first opened the book.

For a minute—that felt like an hour—Emma could not move. Then she struggled to her feet still clutching the book. She tried to jam it back where she found it, but was baffled to discover that there was no room for the book on the tightly packed shelf. She could not leave it on top of the eight-foot-tall shelf, and then decided that she really did not want to leave the book. She wanted to read about the pirate and his sword despite what occurred.

After waiting several minutes, she handed the book to a frenzied librarian at the checkout desk. The woman shook her head and frowned. This isn’t one of our books, dear. She flipped open the front and back covers and showed Emma. There’s no bar code, no card pocket, not even a stamping with our name. She handed it back to Emma.

Before Emma could ask if she could take it, the woman helped another person, as if Emma had already departed.

Chapter 3

Back in the lobby, Emma discovered that the black overcoat was gone. Her blue jacket dangled off the hook, but appeared moved. She snatched it and shrugged her coat on while she balanced the heavy book first under one arm, then the other.

Emma heard a rumble of thunder, saw a distant flash of lightning, and recalled, belatedly, her mother’s shouted warning, It’s gonna rain, Emma. Take an umbrella.

Her softly mumbled response had been, Yeah, right. As if I’d be caught dead carrying an umbrella.

Now, as rain threw itself against the glass, Emma knew her mother had been right, but she was not about to voice her confession aloud.

She pushed open the door, listened to rain slapping the sidewalk, and saw water quickly forming puddles along the edges of the walkway.

Emma loved spring, but did not care for the idea of walking home in a rainstorm. Wish I’d brought my backpack at least. The book’ll get soaked.

A large black car slowly drove up the circular driveway. Its windows were tinted enough to obscure the driver, which unexpectedly alarmed her. Without thinking, she stepped back, released the door, watched it close, and stayed inside. The quiver in her stomach made her think that the driver was the man who wore the black overcoat.

She stared at his car wondering if he watched her.

It isn’t possible for him to see me if I can’t see him. Or is it? She cleared a small circular spot in the condensation with her fist. The car crept ahead.

What’s with this guy?

The Lincoln Town Car stopped directly in front of the door where she stood. When the window lowered and slowly revealed the driver, her heart skipped. He wore a hat. Not a baseball cap, but what she knew her grandfather had called a fedora.

Drops of rain jeweled his overcoat. He wore a crimson tie knotted tight enough, she thought, to strangle him. His face was a pale shadow with light brown eyes. Both hands rested on the steering wheel. On his left hand, she saw a gigantic gold signet ring.

Who are you?

The car did not make any noise.

He turned his