Chapter One

Dragon Dreams

Inside the dream, I searched the sky in controlled apprehension as my grip tightened on the sword handle. On the horizon to my left, out of blue sunlight, flew a magnificent lizard high in my hallucinated lavender sky, huge brownish-red webbed wings spread wide and flexing. I know I'm nothing but groceries to this soaring beast.

I hid behind a massive black tree. It relocated roots and all, leaving me exposed.

The flying reptile turned its long neck and peered towards me. He and I alone--let the battle commence.

The creature's voice echoed inside my head.

:Mother and father murderer; suffer Hewho Bites revenge!:

"I'm Dale Hern," I called out to the creature. "You use Migolites for food. Your sentence is death...it is so decreed!"

The swoop of its wings stopped and it dove. I understood; it wanted to satisfy its hunger and reap revenge in one fiery blast and inhalation.

Remarkable, when you can cook your dinner and eat it all in the same pass.

Timing would be everything and unless perfect, I would be inside the lizard, cooked and chewed.

:Long remember Mayson and Pillady Bites!: Hewho Bites' thoughts raged into my brain.

"Hey, He-whom," I called at it. "Say goodbye!"

His mind blasting reverberated in my head.

:Hewho! It's He-who!:

He dove at me, big as an airborne locomotive and stinking like cabbage and asparagus cooking in the same pot. I jerked the double-edged sword forward, bent my body and sidestepped, the shooting flame singeing my arm hairs. I felt the steel of my blade slice into Hewho's soft lower-neck and twisted my wrist to follow-through. The crunch of Hewho's dying carcass plowed through the forest. Huge black trees moved, complete with roots, trunk and bushy limbs, away from the centrifugal force death slide. Strange birds filled the sky yakking at me.

"First of all," I screamed at my winged critics, "Dragons aren't real. And they cook and eat Migolites!" Remorse gnawed at my guts. Killing a dragon became one life sacrificed to save scores of victims. Me, a hero to the many, serial killer to the flying fire monsters.

:Brother killer! Howhard Bites revenge!:

This new dragon's charge was announced and upon me before I could ready my weapon. Caught off guard, I ducked and back-swung the blade upward with all the force I possessed in a desperate attempt to save myself. Too late. It had me.

"Nooooooo!" I woke up.

The room laughed at me as I took several deep breaths. My pajamas clung to me from my perspiration. I should be used to this recurring nightmarish visitor.

The alarm clock jangle-buzzed its annoying wake-up. I pushed in the knob on the back, grabbed the clock in both hands and tried to crush it. "I'm awake! Can't you see that?" What would anybody think if they saw me, talking to an alarm clock in my clinging sweat soaked pajamas? I smiled. If married, I'd give my wife an alarm clock of her own to talk to. That would give me enough time to beat her to the bathroom to shower first.

I figured the dragons were symbolic of dead bodies. People killed people and my job required me to identify and establish motive at crime scenes. I'm homicide Detective Dale Hern, Vistatown Kansas Police Department.

I climbed into the shower, turned on the water and froze until it warmed. I smiled. At least I'm the hero in my dreams. The jet stream felt good. The soap lathered as I scrubbed the fear-induced sweat from my body. This airborne dragon dream haunted me because it felt real. My terror was genuine and always the same. Migolites? Who in God's creation were Migolites and why did I give a muffled fart?

Who was being murdered today? You would think a city the size of Vistatown wouldn't have enough murders to have a homicide department. Headlines flashed in my mind. Homicide Detective Dale Hern goes on killing rampage for job security. Killed his victims with a big shiny sword and cremated them with dragon fire.

The realization punched me like a nagging ache having its fun. Today was my birthday, or so my driver's license claimed. Forty. I could account for my last twenty-two years, but the first eighteen remained a blank and all the paperwork attesting to those years faked. Not married...didn't even have a girl. Oh, I'd had my share, if four brief encounters turned out to be my split.

I looked at myself in the mirror and patted my paunch. "Guess I'll be going on diet pretty soon." This resolution would only last until lunchtime. At the police academy, I'd been in magnificent shape. I pulled on my light blue dress shirt and tan trousers. My forty-five felt heavy as I slipped it into the holster on my belt. Could I put my gun on a diet when I went on mine? Perhaps take out a few bullets. I never fired it anyway, except at targets on the qualifying range. I'm one hell of a good shot so I would only need a couple of bullets if I ever shot anyone. Two years in college with a major in police science, six months in the police academy, seven and a half years as a beat cop, twelve as a homicide detective, and not once did I shoot at anyone. I watched police shows on television if I needed cop excitement.

Forty and my life consisted of dead bodies and dragon dreams. I did have my house, somehow acquired during those missing years. I should be happy, yet, something in my life seemed wrong, and I didn't have to be the greatest detective in the world to know it had to do with those missing eighteen years.

***

I walked into the office. My partner worked on paperwork at his desk. "Hi Gus." He gave me his customary grunt. Gus Elfsayer taught me everything I knew about being a homicide detective. "Anything going on?"

"Nope."

We passed the morning catching up on reports, under the oversight of Chief Donald Hawthorne. The big Irishman sat in his windowed office behind the department's largest desk. About forty tons of documentation accompanied every murder. Movies and television didn't show the paperwork part of the job. Guess they wanted their audiences to stay awake.

For lunch, Gus pulled out his customary brown bag. Like me, he's not married. He tried it once and she left him for a laundry delivery guy. Poor Gus, short and a bit pudgy, looks like he's standing in a hole; but that wasn't the reason his wife left him. He could look down on the shorter wife-stealing delivery guy. Figure that. Gus, never talked much, and no doubt ran her off because of non-communication. I didn't care to know about such things. Everyone had a life to live, and I tried to keep busy living mine.

I often went home to eat lunch, but the pleasant weather persuaded me to celebrate my fortieth. The sun high and spring warm, I figured it wouldn't hurt to mingle with the lunch crowd in the nearby cafe.

My stomach full, I stepped from the café, and took a deep breath. I thanked the universe for being in Vistatown, Kansas, on such a pleasant day, happy to be alive and feeling gloriously hamburger full. Across the street, I noticed a beautiful brunette. She smiled and motioned me toward her. My heart and mind divided. Part of me wanted to walk across the street and introduce myself while the other part felt married. It made no sense, a confirmed bachelor being loyal to what? A non-existent marriage? It would remain my secret craziness, as the police force might not want a lunatic on their staff. I thought about the diet I planned to go on the next day when my cell phone vibrated.

"Dale Hern. You buzzed?"

Fifteen minutes later, I parked my white Chevy police coupe beside a law enforcement light show. Blue and red rotating beacons arced in the afternoon air celebrating Vistatown's police presence. My basic unmarked police vehicle looked like an orphan among the black and whites. I pressed the glove compartment button, and grabbed a set of plastic shoe and hand covers. As I walked toward the dirty white cottage, curiosity seekers' stares followed my every move.

Stand back, Detective Dale Hern has arrived.

The feeling of importance vanished as the young officer at the door held up his hand. "Whoa there, buddy. This is a police crime scene."

I heard they had a rookie cop on the homicide detail. It took every bit of my training to hold my ego in check.

Gosh, I wondered what all those lights were for. I thought maybe it was a carnival. Perhaps a disco.

"Dale Hern, homicide." I flashed my badge and ID. "It's all right, I kind of snuck up on you." It felt good to let him off the hook. I needed to feel good on my birthday after my dragon slaughter nightmare. I shuffled and hopped as I slipped the plastic covers over my shoes in a little dance. "First homicide?"

"First one!" His energetic voice bounced off the walls.

I remembered my earlier days on the force. I'm sure the same enthusiasm permeated my voice then. A momentary wave of nostalgia washed over me.

Gus stood holding a white handkerchief to his pug nose. He talked to me like I'd never been on a homicide before, in the distorted nasal voice of one breathing through his mouth.

"Don't take a big one, you'll pass out."

I pulled the handkerchief from my front pocket and breathed through my mouth. No matter how many times I'd been on a homicide scene, I've never gotten used to the foul air that collects after the first day. Face down on the carpet in front of a cheap, worn couch lay what was once a human being. Female, young and perhaps once attractive, her life had long since seeped into the rug. The body had to be a week old.

"This gal has seen better days," Gus said.

I didn't laugh. Gus wouldn't understand why what he said would be funny. He and humor were like the negative ends of magnets coming together. Breathing through our mouths made our voices sound like cartoon characters, something I found funny, yet not once in all the years I'd known Gus had we talked about the humor aspect of it. He turned to me and squinted as if he felt a momentary pain.

"Well, do your thing."

I crouched, shut my eyes and waited for my mind to go into its trance...into that special place I used to solve crimes. The two cops first called onto the scene knew I wouldn't go through the same routine as Gus. I wouldn't eyeball the position of the corpse, search for fibers and hairs, patterns of blood splatter or for something under the body. Gus and the other Vistatown Police crime scene experts did that. The officers expected what I'd done for the last twelve years, a recitation of what happened and who was involved.

Not a general description, but an exact account of the moment of death and surrounding circumstances, second by second. My matter-of-fact voice would describe my inner movie frame by frame. It was my gift and I used it well. I knew the cops loved it and Gus hated it.

Chapter Two

Repossessed Gift

My concentration slipped from the crime scene into a trance. Gone were the smells, the police personnel and Gus, replaced by a blank screen, my mind's palette. A yellow and gold light flashed, flickered, and the next blank panel came into focus. Out of my control, on automatic, some mysterious psychic force assumed command. The light blinked and the next screen appeared, followed by another. I couldn't believe it. All blank, projector's not running, paint not applied. It didn't work this way!

Maybe forty is my gift's cutoff period.

I felt sick to my stomach. I shook my head, opened my eyes and blinked. For a moment, I felt disoriented. I searched around the room to make sure I wasn't in my bedroom having another dream.

"What's going on, Partner?" Gus quizzed as I stood.

"I'm blank, Gus." I couldn't believe I said the words. Reality jabbed my ego; my psychic gift had decided not to perform a replay of the homicide, my mind devoid of images, an unwanted birthday repossession.

"Let's talk about it," Gus said as he guided me toward the door. "Outside, okay?" A hint of bitterness colored his voice. My world was one of cerebral hurt and his one of unconscious payback. Gus, being a complete jerk, seemed to me symbolic of an attacking dragon. I needed a comeback and searched for my metaphorical sword.

Two technical people arrived, carrying their satchels of scientific tools and chemicals. They pulled plastic coverings over their feet and pushed their hands into surgical gloves. Samples of everything would be collected, put in bags and photos taken from every angle.

I knew the regular cops would have a few choice words about me and the way I solved cases. These judgments would no doubt be mixed with some colorful language to emphasize their feelings. "If the freak cannot do his job, he should hang it up."

Gus controlled his demeanor. His advance in rank experienced a sudden stop because of the arrival of miracle man Dale Hern and that underpinned all he said. The difference: I solved crimes on the spot while Gus had to work long hard hours to accomplish the same result.

"What's going on?" he demanded.

"I don't know." We leaned against my unmarked car as the scene around us swirled in its surrealistic dance. The late afternoon sun hung low in the spring sky. Spectators crowded behind the yellow tape and continued to increase in number.

"I'm telling you, think on it a bit."

"No gift, no value. Right, Gus?" I wouldn't allow him to intimidate me.

"I'm telling you this, Homicide Detective Dale Hern." Gus stretched out my title like something he needed to hold away from his nose. "Best do a repair job on your head." His voice reminded me of the terse cutting tones of Joe Pesci. Gus grabbed my shirtfront between two fingers; his face looked more Pit Bull than Beagle.

"Gee, Gus. Don't hold back." I clamped my hand around his wrist and pried the smaller man's fingers away from my shirt. Gus needed to realize I was stronger and ten years younger than him; he had no business touching me. That temper of his could be why his wife left him.

"Listen, Buddy, hear me," he said. "Clear your head. We've been partners a bunch of years and I never saw anything like I saw in there tonight."

I pushed my face into his. "Don't badger."

The squat man set his jaw.

My face felt hot and my mind raced. "I'll figure it out." I needed to ease the sour numbness grabbing at my insides as I tried to determine why everything made me feel like a forty-year-old man clawing out of a deep pit of quicksand.

***

The low sun extended my shadow toward the front of my older two-story building. Sky-blue paint, white trim with a narrow warm brown border inside the white setting it off. Shade from the porch overhang flowed across the gray painted veranda, eating my shadow as I approached.

I tried to fight off the brain numbness induced by dejection as I stepped onto my porch. Was it possible I'd no longer be the wonder boy of the Vistatown Police Department? Never realized it before, but I liked the title. The media invented the label and it stuck. At first, the guys joked about it and that was okay with me. I possessed a defense against the fun-makers; I joked back. I never understood why, but humor collected in my mind like a dry sponge soaking up creative bubbles.

I pushed the door buzzer. My private little joke; no one was home...I lived alone. I inserted my key and unlocked the solid door. This door could stop a charging bull...maybe even Gus. My cheeks pushed up as my smile became wider; I mentally watched Gus run at the door and bounce off.

Inside, I crossed the multi-colored Oriental rug and headed for my custom recreation area next to the living room. This space, originally designed as a dining room, had served as my art studio for years. The one place in the world I left my worries behind, dove into the color marvels of imagination and became the wonder boy of brush and pallet knife.

I stood in front of my easel-mounted canvas, opened my acrylic incandescent gold and lifted my favorite pallet knife from its jar.

Still, Gus's tone of voice bounced around inside my head, looking for fresh spots to irritate. Gus, the serious little man and myself, the comedian circulating jokes around the station; my little mirth creating gems. Last week's Dumb Crook joke: Getaway driver to his partner, "Are the police lights blinking?" Dumb crook to driver, "Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes." Chief Donald Hawthorne had laughed so hard he looked like a red balloon filled with too much air.

Once the teacher always the teacher, no matter how advanced the student becomes. A part of Gus would always linger in my mind like my tongue going to a sore tooth I didn't want to touch.

I pushed him out of my mind, and thought of myself as a fine arts painter. My place in the real art world established by my basic creative drive: color-splatter a small state from a helicopter. I applied a glob of gold, careful to let the non-luminous colors below peek through. I stepped side-to-side marveling at the incandescent color changing hue and shimmer.

An hour later, after clean up, I went into the living room and lowered myself into my overstuffed chair. I looked toward the blank television screen and decided to leave it vacant. I wanted to remember the first moment I arrived at this house, before the paintings and the Vistatown Police Department.

A vivid memory played through my mind.

***

Dazed, I awoke on the raw attic boards. I jumped to my feet and looked around to see if anyone witnessed my fall. I hugged myself against the chill in the air. Why would I be lying naked on the floor of an attic? Through the small window at the far end of the narrow room, tree branches moved to gusts of wind while rain pelted the roof like fingers tapping out a coded message. I must've fallen and hit my head, blanking my mind, although I didn't have a headache. An ancient full-length mirror stood to my left and an antique trunk to my right. I wondered what was in the trunk, but curiosity gave in to the cold.

I hurried down the slender staircase and located the thermostat on the main floor, on the living room wall next to the kitchen. Set at fifty degrees. That made about as much sense as sitting in a refrigerator. I reset the dial to seventy and heard the furnace come on in the basement. I found clothes and dressed. Curious, each garment in the closet fit me as if tailor-made.

I searched all the rooms in the house. In the ground floor's main bathroom, I studied my reflection in the mirror. Young, taut skin, thick brown hair parted on the left. I had the body of an athlete. A mischievous smile reflected back to me.

"Hello. I'm..." I didn't know. I remembered a catalog of everything in life in a mind flash, except for myself...I was missing.

I went back to the attic, raised the antique trunk lid and found papers and bankbooks. I studied the first official looking document, a deed to the house made out in the name of a Dale Hern. I could've been a burglar in Dale Hern's house. Next, I picked up a wallet, new and stiff to open. The fresh scent of leather lingered in the air. Inside, I found a driver's license with my picture. Dale Hern--Eighteen years old--eyes blue--HT 5-11--WT 165--HAIR brn--5356 Silver Drive, Vistatown, Kansas. My attention riveted on a bankbook and checkbook. $23,000.00
in savings, $1,700.00 in checking. A plain white parchment filled with a fancy black ink scroll lay on the bottom of the trunk.

***

I awoke from the memory with a start. The journey in my mind's time machine took me back twenty-two years.

I felt the thickness of my belly and compared it to the athletic young man I first saw in the bathroom mirror--time the shape maker and hair taker.

A muffled thump from the attic startled me. I jumped to my feet and pulled my forty-five. I sprinted down the hall, up the carpeted stairs to the second floor and up the attic stairway. Someone in my house? Couldn't help but smile--did he know I'm a cop? Surprise, surprise!

"Freeze!" I yelled at the trunk and mirror, the stored paintings and pieces of furniture. Arms extended, my strong hands gripped a stinger most dangerous; a chrome plated forty-five, which could blow a man right off his feet. What did Dirty Harry say? Something about blowing a head clean off, tacking on punk the same way Gus pronounced my title and name back at today's crime scene. "Stop it! Get out of my head, Gus!"

I aimed at every object in the room before shoving the weapon back into its holster. "Never mind." My eyes searched for what could possibly be going bump in my attic. The trunk and mirror were the same ones from when I first found myself lying on the bare boards over two decades ago. Now sky blue linoleum, the same color as the outer house, covered the planks. I glanced at the shiny backside of insulation running between the roof rafters. Gus and I had installed both the linoleum and insulation. Neatly stored around the narrow interior, numerous boxes, tables, chairs and paintings became a community of eventual garage sale items. No cobwebs, thanks to a bug bomb I set off twice a year.

Intuitively I sensed something felt weird--like the first time my crime scene visions came to me without advance warning.

I turned toward the mirror and saw my reflection stick out its tongue. My fingertips explored my closed mouth. No tongue protruding beyond my lips. The mirror image's tongue darted in and out, like a snake sampling the air. I never realized the old mirror could produce an image on its own.

I reached and touched my reflection. From inside the mirror a yellow and-gold spark of brilliance blinded me, wrapped around my body and yanked me inside.

Chapter Three

UKOO

Brilliant lights flashed around me in prismatic bursts of fireworks while I spun inside the eye of a rainbow tornado. Laughter swirled, echoed and faded into the distance. Giggles mixed with bursts of laughter fused with animal howls. I closed my eyes to fight dizziness. My breath came in short gasps of wonder and trepidation. I fell through space until my butt walloped hard against the ground. Confused and disoriented, as if hit by a heavyweight boxer's punch, I remained seated until I became alert. If I'd been in a pugilistic contest, I'd lost.

A quick scan told me I was no longer in Kansas. High drifting wisps of purple clouds ornamented a lavender sky. Twin blue suns, one close, the other above and farther off, hung in the sky resembling Christmas tree ornaments. The pleasant temperature mimicked the spring day afternoon I left in Vistatown. I relied on my police training to not panic as I escaped my spaced-out sensation. The unfamiliar would become familiar with a little mind control. A distant city nested between a mountain to my right and an enormous crimson hill to my left. A road paved with a substance I didn't recognize stretched from the city; its color matched the gigantic hill.

A young boy sat on a large rock beside the road under a bent, twisted shade tree of every color I've ever seen, plus a few new to me. The boy's shiny green shirt and dark orange tights seemed from an earlier time. Next to the shade tree grew a miniature pine-redwood, burnt yellow, with blue-green branches.

Along the red road I focused on dazzling trees and bushes, each different from the next. A rainbow bush withdrew its roots and scuttled like a crab behind a tree whose leaves sparkled with an inner light. The tree pushed its roots back into the ground and shrank to the rainbow bush's size. It glowed and brushed up against the multi-colored shrub, and grew back into its original height. Over the purple grass meadow, flower blossoms squirted perfume.

Airborne oddities flew by as if on stage for my perusal. Green feathered turkeys with butterfly wings, bat-like creatures wove amongst the larger turkeys; these long eared, web winged creatures changed colors with each appearance in a shameless display of magic. Yakking birds identical to those in my dreams flew in, yakked and flew off before I could answer.

My attention shifted to twenty feet beyond the rock. A creature watched the lad. Each of its four feet ended with three downward turned claws. Its yellow-red scaly body armor ran down its long neck and wrapped around its body and tail. Tucked into its torso, two huge glossy wings extended from its flanks, red-tips evolving into blue at the bottom edges. A dark violet flesh-like mane with five pointed shafts cascaded down its neck behind its head. Teeth protruded from long jaws in its cylindrical head. The great mouth smiled a devilish grin--an animal about to ambush its next meal.

Didn't I kill this creature in my dream just this morning?

I tried to wake up. It dawned on me that I was awake.

My cop mind rocketed from awe of the unfamiliar to the menace confronting the young man. Too preoccupied to realize his danger, the boy stared into the distance.

To call out a warning would draw the creature's attention. I crouched and moved with caution, hoping the beast wouldn't see me. The sword in my dreams came to mind and wished I had it. As I held my breath to stay silent, I reached behind me and touched my forty-five. Its dense, metallic feel gave me comfort. I crept behind the twisted tree trunk. Still the boy gazed off into the distance, while a few feet away the creature emitted smoke from its nostrils. Unless the animal had weak eyesight, it must've seen me. I reached out, grabbed the boy's shirt collar and yanked him from his rock. The beast snorted but didn't move toward us.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" the boy shouted. He shook his shoulders and wrenched loose from my grasp. Jumping to his feet, he put his fists on his hips and glared at me. I judged him to be a foot shorter and at least ninety pounds lighter than myself.

"Kid, I'm trying to save your butt. Look, I'm reasonably sure that's a dragon. Guess you don't want any part of a dragon, right?" It reminded me of the time I saved a suicidal woman, who repaid me with a kick. Maybe I should've shot her.

"Burney?" the boy said in a bored tone.

I didn't understand. "I'm sorry?"

"That's Burney, the last of his kind, dummy! You have to be Dale Hern. Hero Dale Hern, right? Wizard Tae sent me to bring you to the castle."

"Hero? How so, kid?" Could it be that my dreams might be more remembrance than representative of dead bodies. Sometimes a dragon is just a dragon.

"You don't know you're the great hero of the United Kingdom of Otheroff?" The kid smirked, as if he addressed the dumbest human in existence. "I can't believe it! Hero of UKOO doesn't even know he's the hero of UKOO." The boy shook his head in a mocking show of disbelief. "You don't recall killing thirty-seven dragons? Almost all of them big ones?" The boy paused as my mind tripped through a minefield of old dream images. "So, Hero Hern, where'd you disappear to after that? You left all those dragons for us to bury. Kind of inconsiderate if you ask me. 'Course I was only a baby at the time, but they told me all about it."

His tone matched Gus'. Maybe the kid's Gus and this a dream. I shut my eyes, smiled as I told myself it would all be gone when I chose to raise my eyelids. I opened my eyes. Damn!

"I hate to interrupt your fun, kid." I pointed to Burney. "You sure that isn't...dangerous?"

The lad turned toward the beast seven times the young man's size and five times mine.

"Burney, come over here and breathe a little fire on Hero Hern."

I took a deep breath. "Wait a minute, kid!" I retreated a step as Burney spread its long wide wings, glided forward near the ground, landed next to the obnoxious boy, emitted a belch of smoke and a grunt mimicking a hog's snort. The huge beast dwarfed the boy and looked at home beside him. Behind us, the blue suns twinkled as if to laugh at the scene. Despite the fear I corralled, the thought tiptoed through my mind that Burney and I could have some wicked fun in Vistatown.

Meet my pet dragon. Care for a singe?

I drew my forty-five with a quick jerk, held it at arms' length and aimed between the animal's eyes. "Freeze!" I ordered, wondering if a dragon could understand my command.

:Hurt me not.:

The sound reverberated through my mind, a whisper, a part of the air around me--in me. The dragon talked to me the same way in my dreams. White-gray smoke puffed from open nostrils and drifted into the air with each of the creature's breaths. Through two slits, its eyes glowed like molten lava, glaring at me. A forty-five slug might not penetrate the two protective red horny growths protecting its eyes.

Burney moved forward. I started to squeeze the trigger. A lightning bright flash of yellow and gold light beamed from the city, washed over my weapon, as a ball of flame covered my body--a long snort and the crackle of a campfire hugged me in a bright red and yellow blaze of glowing energy. The trigger on my forty-five jammed. I attempted to pull back my arms, but they refused to obey. The fire's smell made me want to stop breathing and felt cold. Cold fire? How could fire be cold? How could a flash of light stop me from firing my forty-five? Have I ever been in a stranger place or situation? No way.

"Let's understand something, kid," I said through a police educated calm voice. "You don't sic your dragon on me and I won't kill him."

"You understand something, Hero Hern," the boy snapped back. "I'm King Malcolm Reinhold. My father who used to be king is dead. My mother the queen has been kidnapped." Malcolm paused, obvious in his attempt to let the information sink into a lesser being's brain. "You will show me the respect of your leader, Hero Hern. I'm of royal blood and you're a commoner. Burney is my pet and you best not kill him like you did all the others. Figure you can understand that, or should I write it down for you?"

"You can write?" I joked, feeling the need to defend myself.

"You're a hero?"

The lad was quick; I had to give him that. "You came close to losing a pet, Malcolm!" I shouted. I waved my weapon above my head, holding it high so it couldn't be mistaken for anything less than a lethal assembly with a deadly cargo clipped into its handle.

"What's that thing?" the boy asked.

I realized at once this lad didn't have knowledge of forty-fives or perhaps of firearms in general and that could be dangerous...no awareness no fear.

"It's a forty-five and could blow Burney's head clean off!" I smiled at my fine imitation of Dirty Harry.

"That's not how you kill dragons! You have to stab them in the neck just below their head with a sword. Don't you know anything?"

"Must know something if I killed all those dragons you said I did, kid." I visualized all the targets I had blown away winning shooting honors for the Vistatown Police Department. I wondered if they would be enough to impress the boy king. Anyway, why would I want to impress this unlikable boy? Strange, Dale. Strange.

"You don't have your sword, Hero Hern. How did you think you were going to slay my pet?"

"I have no real memory of being a hero. I've had some dreams. What can you tell me?"

Malcolm didn't hurry to answer my questions.

"What was that yellow flash, anyway?" I asked. "And how come your pet has fire that doesn't burn? Kind of freezing cold as a matter of fact. Fire is not freezing cold."

The boy king's face became even more defiant. "It is if Wizard Tae says it is."

"I thought it was because I hollered 'freeze'." My joke radar realized the boy king didn't pick up on this humor any more than Gus did. "You're not about to tell me anything, are you kid?"

"Why should I tell you anything? Wizard Tae sent for you, not me. I will be the hero at this present time, Hero Hern. That is my right as successor to the throne now that the king is dead and the queen is missing."

"You're repeating yourself. And the name's Dale."

"Try to keep up, hero man."

"The king is dead? Your mother's gone? What's going on, Malcolm?"

"Wizard Tae will tell you. Come along now, like a good hero, Hero Hern."

I followed. I began to understand why people murder other people. Malcolm was other people in this case. King Malcolm Reinhold would be perfect all ground up as dragon food and fed to his pet.

We watched a bright yellow rectangle hurtle toward us.