Roy Davis
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An extract from Scales
A bright light came on, throwing Gabe’s shadow across the backyard. Great, he thought, his parents were coming to yell at him for letting the rabbit get loose. But the circle of light was too intense to be coming from the kitchen door. It was bright as a camera flash and big around as a swimming pool. And it moved. The light slid silently off of him and glided across the backyard. At the edge of the yard it illuminated the bamboo stand and one frightened rabbit, then slipped over the back fence and lit up the bonsai trees and topiary animals in his neighbor’s backyard.
Another circle of light appeared on a roof three houses down, then another on the yard next door. Gabe didn’t freak out—he knew what was happening. In Southern California high-speed car chases were as regular as Mondays. He looked up and tried to find the news helicopters.
City lights reflected back from LA’s smog layer, making the sky glow a dull orange even at night. Four sleek, black helicopters hovered in slow circles overhead. They weren’t like anything he’d seen before. They ran almost silently, with just a hushed purr from their rotors. And now that he was paying attention, he realized even the crickets in the backyard had gone quiet.
Then the porch light went out.
“C-come on, Marshmallow,” he called. “Time to go in.” He took a step towards the bamboo stand. The rabbit was just a little spot of white in the dark. Gabe rubbed his eyes and tried to blink away the after-image of the searchlights.
A great cracking, crunching noise, like branches snapping, sounded from down the block. He hopped over to his fence—his foot still hurt—and peered through the iron bars. But it was too dark to see anything. All the porch lights had gone out in that part of the neighborhood, too.
Closer, he heard a tremendous splash, like a huge creature hitting the water. That had to be the swimming pool three houses down.
Even closer there was an eruption of squeaking and squawking. The aviary next door! The squawking quit just as suddenly as it started, and again he was wrapped in silence.
He backed away from the fence. Maybe whatever was making all the noise had changed directions. Or maybe it had stopped to snack on the poor birds.
He took another couple steps back and slipped in the patch of burnt, wet grass. He landed painfully on his butt, his teeth snapping together. A large, sinuous shape leapt smoothly over his fence. For a moment it was silhouetted against the orange smog. The creature was big as a horse, but wider across the shoulders. It had bat-like wings and a long, spiked tail. Gabe saw a flash of blue and silver scales—scales?—and then it was towering over him.
Gabe’s palms went all sweaty and his heart pounded. It didn’t matter that the creature, the dragon, standing over him couldn’t exist. His body had decided he was scared before his brain did. It was like the old, caveman part of him realized he was being hunted.
I should scream now, he thought. But when he opened his mouth the only thing that came out was a whispery “Eeee…”
He pushed himself backwards across the grass. The dragon kept pace with him, watching him curiously; its horned head cocked to the side. It looked like a cat playing with a mouse.
Gabe reached into his pocket, hoping to find something to distract the monster, but there was no more flash paper left. At the bottom of his pocket he felt a capsule shaped like an over-sized vitamin. A smoke bomb! He’d ordered a bunch from a magic store in Arizona, but he’d never used one before. He hadn’t even read the directions.
He threw it at the dragon. The pellet bounced off its scales and landed in the wet grass. The dragon made a surprised clicking noise with its mouth. It hopped backwards and crouched down, eyeing the smoke bomb warily.