Read The Dragon's Tooth for Free Online Page B

You stop being afraid. You stop running.” He dropped the stub of his cigarette onto Cyrus’s carpet. “Tonight,” he said, grinding the butt out with his bare foot, “I stop running. Someone else is gonna start.”
    Cyrus blinked. Sweat dripped off the man’s nose. His pale face was blotchy, like old dough. “You still look afraid,” Cyrus said. “Your hands are shaking. What’s going on?”
    Skelton looked over at his small friend.
    “A touch of spunk,” the man said, nodding. “But only a touch. His odds are still terribly low.”
    “What does he have to sign?” Skelton asked.
    “Him? Nothing.” The small man raised a small selection of the papers. “You’ve signed the appointment already, and I’ve found the paperwork to demonstrate that you have the necessary relationship to do so, though leaving it with me in the first place would have been wiser than hiding all of this in the walls. I can supply the Order notary and testimony of fitness and volition. As a Keeper, I can witness the declaration.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small, heavily creased paper card. Unfolding it, he extended it to Cyrus. “Read that aloud, please.”
    Cyrus looked down at the slip, and then back up at the strange scene in his room. “What’s going on? Those papers were in my wall?”
    “It was my wall first,” Skelton said. “I gave this place to your parents years ago.”
    “Just read it,” said the little man. “They haven’t enforced the original oath in generations, but I’d like to cross all the i ’s and dot all the t ’s in this situation.”
    “It’s the other way around,” Cyrus said.
    “We’ll cross and dot both. Read it, please.”
    “No thanks,” said Cyrus, backing toward the door. “I’m gonna go now.” He tossed Skelton’s keys onto the bed and felt for the doorknob behind him. “See ya.”
    The keys smacked into Cyrus’s chest; Cyrus caught them at his waist. Skelton smiled and shook his head. “Those keys should have been your father’s. It doesn’t right old wrongs, but they’re your burden now, Cyrus Smith. The race is yours. The world is yours. Run until Death’s your friend, and then set those keys in another’s hand. Not before then, hear me? Once you give them, you can’t get them back. And not a soul should know that I’m setting them in yours. I’ve got more to give, but that’s a start.”
    Cyrus looked at the little man on the bed, and then back into the empty eyes of Billy Bones.
    “Don’t worry about Horace here,” Skelton said. “His family’s kept more secrets than a dozen graveyards. And as for me, well, dead men tell no tales. At least, not usually.”
    Horace scraped the stack of papers off his lap, hopped to his feet, and slid the card into Cyrus’s hand.
    Skelton nodded. “Now read, boy. We’re doing what we can to make sure you’ll have the help you need.”
    Cyrus swallowed and looked at the keys. His hand closed around them, and for the first time, they felt cold and heavy. The old man was crazy, no question. “I don’t want these.”
    “Don’t you?” Skelton asked, creasing his forehead. “I’ve seen enough of you to know you’re no coward. You want to walk away? You want to live a life without knowing what those unlock?”
    Cyrus looked around his ruined room. He wanted the men to leave. He wanted his wall back.
    Exhaling slowly and ignoring the old man’s eyes, he dropped the keys into his pocket and moved quickly across the room toward the warped mirror door to his closet. He could always give the keys back in the morning. In the right kind of mood, he could even throw them into one of the pasture streams. He pulled out a pile of fresh clothes and turned around.
    Antigone, wide-eyed, was standing in the doorway.
    “What on Earth,” she said, looking at the wall. She turned to the sweating old man, her eyes taking in the tattoos. “I hope Dan has your credit card.”
    “The girl, I assume?” The small