Dragonslayer Read online

  Dragonslayer

  Emilie Richards

  Preface

  USA Today bestselling author Emilie Richards is the author of seventy-something novels with more than 15 million in print world-wide. She currently writes women's fiction, but she started in the romance genre where she won the Romance Writers of America RITA award as well as a lifetime achievement award from Romantic Times magazine. Her women's fiction went on to receive starred reviews from both Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal.

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  1

  Sometime during the night, gang graffiti bled through the three coats of white paint the Reverend Thomas Stonehill and his ragtag congregation had slathered over the sanctuary walls. Sometime during the night, a homeless man picked the lock and made himself a bed under the unorthodox picture of Jesus that graced the front of the church. Sometime during the night, urban phantoms dumped trash on the steps, dug up the last chrysanthemum plant in the narrow flower bed and left a note in the mail slot complaining about the dessert at the Wednesday night sharing supper.

  “More ice cream. Less talk.” Thomas crumpled the two sentences in his hand and stared somberly at the old man who was gathering his belongings into a utilitarian stack honed by years of living on the street. Once he finished Thomas held out the note. “Did you write this?”

  The old man shook his head.

  “Do you know about our Wednesday night sharing suppers?”

  The old man just stared at him.

  “Every Wednesday night at six we serve a meal here for anybody who’s hungry. You’re always welcome. And next time you need a place to stay, ring the bell. I’ll open the door for you. No need to break in.”

  “Churches ain’t supposed to be locked,” the old man mumbled.

  “And kids aren’t supposed to get their kicks out of spray painting walls and smashing furniture, but sometimes they do.”

  The old man inclined his head toward the picture that had watched over him as he slept. “Person who painted that must have taken a kick to the head.”

  The grim line of Thomas's mouth relaxed a little. “Think so?”

  “Jesus with four different faces.” The old man shrugged. “Who’d think like that?”

  “How do you know it’s Jesus?”

  “That face looks like him.” The old man pointed to one of the four images superimposed over the edges of the others.

  “The white one, you mean? Maybe if you were black, the one beside it would look like Jesus.”

  “What kind of church is this? What call you got to come down here to the Corners and mess with people’s religion?”

  “What call you got to drink yourself blind every night and wake up in a strange place every morning?” Thomas asked the question without a trace of condescension in his voice. He knew he had no right to judge. He was no better than the man in the cast-off clothing, no better than anyone.

  “Ain’t got much pity in your soul for a sick old man, do you? What kind of preacher are you, anyway?”

  “The kind who thinks pity’s a waste of time.”

  Thomas looked at his watch. It was gold, twenty-four carats, with a new imitation leather band that was already cracking. “We’ll be having church here in less than an hour. You’re welcome to stay.”

  “Nah.” The old man scratched himself, starting at his sparsely forested head and progressing steadily downward to places that most men didn’t scratch in public. “I’ll be moving on.”

  Thomas reached for his wallet. He pulled out three dollar bills and handed them over. “Will we see you on Wednesday?”

  The man stuffed the bills in his pocket. “Don’t take charity.”

  “Then think of it as supper with friends.”

  “Don’t want no friends.” The man strapped his belongings together with a belt and lifted the bundle to his shoulder. Without another word, he limped across the room and disappeared out the door.

  The door slammed again a few seconds later behind a young woman herding two sleepy-eyed children in front of her. Her eyes were red, and her dark hair was uncombed. Her thin body seemed to fold in on itself, as if to protect the children with her shadow. Thomas didn’t smile. “You’re early, Ema. I haven’t even set up the chairs yet.”

  “I’ll help.” She attempted a smile. It was hard, since her lip was badly swollen. “I don’t mind.”

  “Have you had breakfast?”

  “Sure.”

  “The kids, too?”

  “They don’t eat this early.”

  “There’s cereal out on the kitchen table upstairs. Milk and juice in the refrigerator.”

  “I couldn’t-”

  “You will.” Thomas hiked his thumb toward the hall and the stairs leading to his apartment. “And there’s ice for your lip.”

  “Oh, my lip’s fine. I just bumped into—”

  “Wrap the ice in a dish towel. Twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off, until church starts.”

  She nodded. In moments she and the children had closed his apartment door behind them.

  And Thomas Stonehill was alone with a painting of Jesus and his own thoughts.

  He was comfortable with neither. The picture was new and disturbing in its intensity. His thoughts were old and tormented him constantly.

  He stared at the picture and filled the silence with the voice that had once held a congregation of thousands of souls enthralled.

  “So, J.C., there go some of your little lambs, starting Sunday morning with the wolf right behind them.”

  He didn’t expect an answer. He had given up believing in answers the same day he resigned from one of the most prestigious Protestant churches in the Midwest.

  He moved closer. The four images seemed to merge, but he hardly saw them anyway. His vision was turned inward. “One homeless lamb, one battered, and two little ones so hungry and scared they don’t know how to laugh. Imagine that, J.C., kids who’ve forgotten how to laugh—if they ever learned how in the first place.”

  He stared at the picture, but in his mind he saw the front of another church. He saw an altar spread with snow-white linen, a starkly simple golden cross and polished silver cornucopias overflowing with chrysanthemums, dahlias and the fruits of the autumn harvest. All the blessings of God’s good earth on God’s good table. For God’s good people.

  “One homeless, one battered, two hungry and scared,” he said softly. “And one who talks to a God he doesn’t even believe in anymore. That’s what passes for God’s kingdom around here, J.C. Welcome to the Corners. Welcome to the Church of the Samaritan.”

  The silence stretched into an eternity Thomas didn’t believe in, either. Then, from St. Michael’s Catholic church, three blocks away, bells chimed a Sunday morning welcome.

  “Sorry, J.C, but nothing doing,” Thomas said, turning away. “You can’t fool me. I know you too well by now. If you had a voice, it would sound like tears.”

  Garnet Anthony was awakened by church bells in the distance. The bells blended into the symphony of car engines, rap from somebody's stereo, and the screams of a neighbor’s child.

  She opened one eye and saw that it was later than it should have been. She opened the other and saw that in stumbling to bed in the dark last night she had paired a magenta satin sleep shirt with chartreuse boxer shorts.

  It was the best rationale for sleeping nude that she could think of. She was just glad she didn’t have company in her bed this morning to witness the mismatch.

  Not that she’d had company there for a long, long time.

  Garnet slowly sat up and shook the scramble of dark hair that was constant visual proof the stereotypes people held about nurses were simply
that. Her hair was long, thick and insolent—and she liked it that way. Even when it was tied back from her face, tendrils found their way into her eyes and ears, and curls bounced against her neck.

  As she scrubbed sleep from her eyes, the mirror beside her bed reminded her that nothing about her called forth images of soothing voices or healing hands. She owed her outrageous face to generations of immigrant ancestors who had made the Corners their first stop in the U.S. of A. Some—the luckiest—had moved on to other, healthier places, but not before they had flooded the Corners’ gene pool with a splash of this and a shower of that.

  She had wide Slavic cheekbones and tilted almond eyes that she owed to a mystery country in the east—of a color green that brought to mind the hills of Ireland. Her tawny skin had been a gift from her father, who was half Egyptian, and her mother, who claimed Comanche blood. An infusion of Puerto Rican sunshine and Nordic frost had given her both a generous smile and enough caution not to use it very often. On the rare occasions when teachers had praised her during her school years, they had told her she was “striking” or “interesting.” “Pretty” had been reserved for girls from more conventional backgrounds.

  Garnet fought her way out of bed and crossed to the refrigerator for a long drink of milk straight out of the carton. She drank milk on waking and coffee at bedtime. She ate pasta for breakfast and pancakes at supper, and indulged in desserts any time the law allowed. She had never lived her life the way the world expected, and most of the time she didn’t give the world’s opinion more than a passing thought.

  Except that today, considering what lay ahead of her, the world was probably right, and she was probably loco.

  A quick shower later, and nearly dressed, Garnet noted that the child in the tiny apartment next door was still screaming.

  Thirteen-month-old Chantelle probably wanted her breakfast. Her mother, Serena, no different from most sixteen-year-old girls, liked to sleep late. Of all the young mothers Garnet knew, Serena was the finest. But that didn’t mean she had magically matured during childbirth into a woman who could willingly sacrifice all her own pleasures and desires for the sake of the bawling six-pound bundle of trouble that, in one supremely painful moment, had become her lifetime commitment.

  In the hallway, Garnet buttoned the sleeve of her white blouse with one hand and knocked on Serena’s door with the other.

  “Hey, Serena, your kid’s hungry. Either get up and open the door so I can feed her or get up and feed her yourself.”

  “Go ‘way.”

  Garnet switched hands to button her other sleeve and continued to pound. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “Open up.”

  The door gave way under her fist. On the other side of the doorway Serena pulled her T-shirt down so that it almost covered her panties. “You know, you oughta be somebody’s mother.”

  “What? And be so busy with my own kids I’d miss chances to order you around?” Garnet squatted and held out her arms. Chantelle, tears dripping down her chin, came into them and wiped her face on Garnet’s blouse.

  Garnet rose, clutching Chantelle against her. “Thanks, runny nose,” Garnet said wryly. “I probably have another clean blouse.”

  Serena yawned. “If you’d left us alone...”

  “This was the best of two alternatives. If she’d kept on crying, I would have come over here and murdered you in your bed.”

  “At least I wouldn’t have to get up.”

  “You are one lazy woman.” Garnet reached out to rumple Serena’s curls to take any sting out of her words. “Want me to feed her while you take a shower?”

  “Nah. You feed her junk.”

  “Peanut butter and pancake sandwiches are not junk.”

  “I bought her favorite cereal yesterday.” Serena held up her hands to stave off Garnet’s next words. “And juice. I bought juice, too.”

  “You’ve been listening to my lectures.”

  “I just got a talent for self-preservation.” Serena dragged Chantelle from Garnet’s arms. “It’s Sunday. Why are you dressed like a nurse? Don’t you get a day off?”

  Garnet was the administrator of Mother and Child, a unique maternal health project that struggled to provide both health care and social services to the women and children of the Corners. Garnet had carved the program and the job out of nothing, bantering and begging and threatening her way to obtaining grants from private charities and public programs so that no one in the community would have to suffer the way she once had.

  She was administrator and nurse practitioner, secretary and janitor. She loved the variety, the constant challenge, the smiles on the faces of children who might not be alive if Mother and Child didn’t exist.

  And she despised everything and everybody who interfered with helping those children.

  “I’ve got to go see somebody,” she said.

  Serena bounced her daughter on her hip, and Chantelle quieted. “Where?”

  Garnet looked past Serena to the one-room apartment that was probably the nicest home the young woman had ever known. It was almost painfully clean, but Chantelle’s toys cluttered the floor in colorful disarray. Garnet approved of the combination. “Wilford Heights.”

  “Uh-uh. That’s Coroner territory.”

  “People territory.”

  “You’re crazy, girl.”

  “Just doing my job.” Garnet crossed her arms and prepared for battle. It would be good practice for the day to come. “And I’m not going to let a bunch of punk-ass kids keep me from doing it just because they think the dirt outside some housing project is worth dying for.”

  “You’d be the one dying.”

  “Better not be. These kids know me. I’ve delivered their girlfriends’ babies, held their mamas’ hands while they tried to come down off drugs. They aren’t going to shoot me.”

  “It’s Candy you’re going to see, isn’t it?”

  Garnet turned her gaze to Serena. “She’s been having cramps and she’s afraid to come to the clinic tomorrow.”

  “It’s not the Coroners you’ll have to worry about, then. It’s the Knights who’ll shoot you. They see you going over there, they’ll guess who you’re going to visit.”

  “Let them.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “No. Sane. Somebody’s got to be sane in this place. Otherwise those kids aren’t going to know there’s a better way to live than shooting each other over street signs and hand signs and colors.”

  “Candy knew what she was doing when she started kicking with Francis and his friends. She knew Demon wouldn’t let her get away with it.” Serena poked Garnet’s chest with an index finger to make her point.

  “Francis is a good man.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with it.”

  Garnet was glad to see Serena was worried about her. It was always a good sign when a kid like Serena, who already had the world on her shoulders, could still worry about somebody else. “I’ll be careful,” she promised.

  “Listen, if Hell has a zip code, it's the same as ours. You can’t change that, Garnet. The Corners has been here for a hundred years, and it’ll be here another hundred. Everything'll be exactly the same when Chantelle’s grandkids are out playing on the sidewalk.”

  “If Chantelle’s grandkids are able to play on the sidewalks, then it won’t be the same Corners. It’ll be a better place.”

  “I still don’t think you should go.”

  “It could be you over there, needing me.”

  Serena’s response wasn’t fit for the baby’s ears.

  “You’d better hope that’s not Chantelle’s first word,” Garnet said.

  “Let me know when you get home.”

  “Just don’t go back to bed. I don’t want to have to wake you up again.” Garnet leaned over and kissed Chantelle’s cheek.

  Half an hour later Serena’s door was cracked when Garnet strode down the hall—in a fresh white blouse. As she passed she heard the clang and screech of cartoons. She wondered if C
hantelle was watching them, too.

  Thomas had to set up chairs and install the pulpit under the picture. With three chairs under each arm, he made his way to the front of the church. The graffiti gleamed at him as he unfolded the chairs.

  There was nothing to be done about the graffiti this morning. Another coat of paint might subdue it. Then again, it might not. The MidKnights had wanted their message to last through eternity. It had been painted a deep royal blue and outlined in black enamel. The artist had talent. Their symbol, a sword, had been rendered in loving detail. The profane, mysterious message accompanying it had been carefully stroked, layer upon layer, until it seemed to leap off the wall—right through three coats of white paint.

  The victorious graffiti seemed to point out the futility of everything Thomas was trying to do. But over the past year he had grown to accept the feeling that little he was doing would make a difference, anyway. He had spent two years doing nothing at all before he moved to the Corners to start the Church of the Samaritan. That had been far worse. Here, at least, he was struggling, not drifting. If he and the people of the Corners were going to drown, they were going to go down fighting. Together.

  A woman’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

  “You could get the boy who did that, you know, get him and his friends and tell them to paint you a mural over that mess. Jesus at Gethsemane or the Last Supper. Only way it’s ever gonna get covered up.”

  Thomas turned. For the first time that morning he smiled. “You’re early, Dorothy. Did you come to give me advice or help set up the chairs?”

  “I’m on my way to Mass at St. Michael’s.” Dorothy Brown joined him in front of the graffiti. She was a tiny woman of indeterminate age, dark-skinned and silver-haired. This morning she was dressed in a perfectly preserved green rayon suit with padded shoulders and a pillbox hat with a short green veil. Dorothy had lived in the Corners as long as anyone could remember. She had taught in the Corners’ schools, served in local government and chaired any board worth chairing. Her ruling passion was to create a community in this place that some people called a ghetto.