He looked at the ball as though it had betrayed him. He heard the screams of delight from the third base side of the field, the Panthers’ side of the field.
Kaplan howled. Still the world seemed to turn in slow motion. LC’s gaze went over his shoulder, to his teammates, to the coach with big teeth, down the line to the stands behind first base. He wanted his father, but something was wrong. He couldn’t even pick out the man, for all the fans, the fathers and mothers, the little sisters, even, seemed to change. They got hairy in the face, like Kaplan, blond hair becoming black.
And their jaws, every one! Square and huge, opening to show those monstrous teeth, unleashing those feral howls. LC stood openmouthed as they came down from the stands in a pack, swirling like flowing water as they came through the fence gate just down the line from the Mariners’ dugout. Only then did LC glance back to the field, to his teammates and two coaches, all looking like Kaplan, all charging his way!
The terrified boy turned to run. He started right, but then realized that the center fielder had cut him off that way. Back to the left went LC, screaming and crying, his legs seeming to move impossibly slow, the howls growing closer, closer. He slammed into the four-foot fence and threw his chest over, scrambling to get his legs up.
Billy Socks got there first, clawing at LC, tearing the boy’s Mariners shirt with two-inch fingernails. Other hands joined in, grabbing and pinching, clawing viciously. LC hung on for all his life, screaming denials, and tried to kick out. But he was pulled back into the mob, taken down on the grass, thrown on his back right beside the settled baseball.
Despite their frenzy, they took their time in tearing him apart. A hundred scratches, a hundred trickles of blood. LC tried to grab onto something, and blindly latched his fingers through Tony Boomboom’s catcher’s mask. Then he screamed, more loudly than he ever had before, for Tony Boomboom promptly bit off one of his fingers. LC looked at the large boy, the mask on crooked, no longer fitting the now-elongated jawline. Blood spurted from the stub onto Tony’s face, but it only seemed to excite the vicious boy-creature more.
LC looked back up just in time to see Kaplan’s—the real Kaplan’s—face descending, mouth opened impossibly wide, wide enough to cover LC’s entire face. And then the hands were back, beating him, clawing him, ripping him.
Nearly blinded by agony, LC turned his head and somehow looked back down the line, to the fence entrance, to the one Mariners’ fan who hadn’t transformed, who hadn’t come after him.
His father, standing with hands in pockets.
The man walked away.
The coach with big teeth tore out LC’s heart.
I learned to draw by making my own comic books. Throughout my childhood I wrote as well—in my mind I saw movies or TV shows. Love of story compelled me to become an artist, but it was a choice that left half of my desire unfulfilled.
In 2005, I began work on a book of dragons. At first I imagined a coffee-table book of art, but soon she who inspires the written word stirred. She’s a demanding muse, but has such a comely form…
Before I knew it, the book of art inspired a cast of characters, a history, a landscape. A story demanded to be told. I spent most of the following years studying and bettering my craft. Shawn had opportunity to read my manuscript before I sold it to a publisher—we’d already combined forces on other projects. When he invited me to submit a story to Unfettered, I leapt on the chance to reveal a bit of backstory, a snippet of ancient history from my world.
— Todd Lockwood
KEEPER OF MEMORY
Todd Lockwood
Daen screamed until the monster’s teeth crushed ribs against ribs. Blood poured from his lungs, a bright flower unfurling on the pavestones.
He bolted upright. A tree root scraped his back as he tried to crab backward, but his feet were entangled in his blanket. He sat still, surprised to feel moss and short grass under the heels of his hands. A soft hush surrounded him, the landscape shrouded in fog that deadened sound and confused distance, rendering trees and stones into ghostly shadows of themselves. Panting, he rubbed his face with pale fingers and blinked away the blur in his eyes. His sweat grew cold in the damp air.
Gods, what a dream! It wasn’t the first time he’d died in his dreams. Not the first time by a long stretch. The details were familiar: towers of acrid smoke and blinding flame, a tumult of screams, clashing metal, and bellowing rage. But he’d never before faced the Dahak itself, the monstrous, sentient dragon whose armies terrorized his city of Cinvat. Many priests insisted that the Dahak was a High Dragon—something far greater than the beasts Cinvat’s warriors rode into combat. True or not, the beast in this dream was bigger and more terrifying than any dragon he’d ever seen.