Free The Curse of the Dragon God by Geoffrey Knight Page B

stomachs.
    Tomas said, “You were looking for someone. And it wasn’t me.”
    Luca propped himself up on one elbow and said, “No, but I’m glad I found you.” He kissed Tomas on the lips, and when he was done he lay back down again, staring at the ceiling of Tomas’s modest little trailer. “I’m looking for a particular person. Someone from long ago—he used to be a clown named Valentino.”
    This time it was Tomas who propped himself up on one elbow. He had a curious look on his face. “The name, it’s familiar. But I can’t say there’s anyone working here now called that. But there is someone who might know.”
    “Who?”
    “A woman. She has worked with the circus for many years.” Tomas lowered himself back onto the bed. “I don’t know much about her, she doesn’t talk much. She sells roses and keeps to herself. Her name is Elena.”
    “You think she knows him? You think she knows who Valentino is, where I might find him?”
    Tomas shook his head and yawned, exhausted. His encounter with Luca had made his eyelids heavy. “I don’t know. But she’s seen a lot of faces come and go. She’s certainly the first…person…I’d…go…to.” Tomas’s voice trailed away, as his eyelids closed and his head slid down one side of the pillow.
    Luca looked at him, smiled sweetly, then kissed him once more on the lips. Tomas didn’t stir.
    Carefully, Luca climbed over him and out of the tiny bed. Quietly he pulled up his jeans and slipped his shirt back on. Before he left he glanced back once more at Tomas sound asleep. Silently Luca opened the door and stepped outside the trailer.
    It was dark.
    He quietly closed the door behind him. From a short distance away he heard the cheers of the audience packed inside the big top—
    —and from somewhere much closer, he heard the panicked, clip-clop of shoes against cobblestone, of someone scurrying away in a mad dash.
    Luca saw a shadow disappear through the maze of trailers.
    He raced after it, turned a corner, and heard the footsteps stop.
    He saw a figure a short distance ahead, looking back at him. A small, lean shadow in a cloak.
    He called out to it. “Wait! Who are you!”
    But the figure only turned and scurried away.
    Luca put on the speed, trying frantically to follow the figure as it disappeared behind trailers, weaving in and out between circus carts and stacks of wooden crates and boxes.
    “Hey! Wait a minute! I want to talk to you!” But the figure didn’t stop.
    Luca lost track of it for a moment behind a mountain of burlap sacks, then he rounded a trailer and the bright sight of the big top filled his senses.
    He spotted the figure again, at the foot of the big top, lifting the bottom of the tent high enough to vanish inside. Luca charged forward and grabbed the canvas where the figure had disappeared, hoisted it up and ducked underneath.
    Inside, the noise was deafening and visibility was almost nonexistent. Luca realized he was under a huge grandstand. Above him he could hear the sounds of the crowd, feet stomping excitedly on floorboards in time with drummers somewhere in the middle of the arena. The drumbeat was getting faster and faster, and with it the thunderous stomping.
    Suddenly it stopped. The crowd fell silent, and Luca heard a man’s voice over a megaphone. It was the circus ringmaster.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present, all the way from the fair city of Dublin, the Flying Fitzpatricks! Performing with no safety harnesses—and no safety net!”
    The crowd cheered.
    By this time, Luca’s eyes had adjusted to the dark enough to see the shadowy figure scurrying along the perimeter of the tent underneath the grandstand. It reached a steel ladder that ran all the way up the side of the big top and began climbing. Luca sprinted straight for the ladder.
    The figure was already halfway up, ascending toward a massive lighting rig in the ceiling of the tent. Luca started climbing, his hands and feet tearing up the rungs. He