Texas Showdown

by Aaron Crash

  Chazzie let out an anguished scream. She didn’t want to play the game anymore. She didn’t want to risk everything. She didn’t want it all. This was unfair. This was defeat. Without her sister she couldn’t live. It was that simple. If Chazzie were alone, she would die.

  Sabina threw her head back. And then she changed. Goddamn, but if that blind woman didn’t grow three feet in height. She unbuckled the gun belt, and it fell to the dirt. Her jeans split into rags. A tail emerged, wings, and then she stood there as a Homo Draconis.

  Sabina caught Juice’s tusks in her hands, and she used his speed against him. She hurled him up and over her head. He came smashing down.

  Fire, from two dragons, lit up the early morning darkness. Aria and Mouse, using their Inferno Exhalants to clear a path back to the shack.

  Sabina ran to where Chazzie lay trapped, and the Latina Skinling drove a shoulder into a werebear, knocking it loose. That was all it took. Chazzie kicked one off and smacked away another. She was bleeding, but alive.

  Pru ran up to her, and they started limping toward the wall. Sabina retrieved Tessa’s guns.

  “You treacherous whores!” Wyatt howled. He took off, flying low, only a few feet off the ground. He opened his mouth to bite off Chazzie’s and Pru’s heads.

  And then two thousand pounds of pissed-off Zoey leapt onto that dragon and drove him into the ground. She let out a roar that eclipsed all else. The ground shook. God must’ve wondered what in the hell was going on down there on Earth because the sun cracked open the eastern horizon, bathing them all in golden light.

  Wyatt tried to get out from under the huge werebear, but she reared up and slammed down with both paws, snapping his wings. He roared in pain.

  Chazzie and Pru switched into their True Forms, and it took both to drag her off the pulverized Wyatt, who somehow was still alive.

  Still a Homo Draconis, Sabina threw shields into the face of Maria Diablo and any other Morphling trying to get to them.

  Together, the women of Steven Drokharis’s Escort fled through the walls and to the entrance of the shack. They shifted into their partial forms and down the steps they went.

  Once they broke into the Americos Chamber, Sabina turned human and fell over, gasping, “Into the portal. Zoey. Please. It’s our only hope.” The green lights glowing in the brave blind woman’s eyes winked off.

  Tessa sat with her legs crossed in front of the pool, which was full of gleaming blue water that threw light around the room. The woman’s face glowed with sweat, and she was visibly shaking. It seemed liked she was getting thinner with each passing minute. Her skin was graying even as they watched.

  But she’d done it. That Magician had transferred the opening from Denver to Odessa, Texas, 667 miles to the south.

  And where did the other end open? Near Jaisalmer, India, 667 miles north of Mumbai.

  Chazzie fell, her head growing light. She knew what was happening. Loss of blood. She recalled her last date with trauma-induced unconsciousness the day before. Wonderful.

  Mouse and Aria were also beat to shit, as was Pru. Her sister fell flat, breathing hard, blood pooling under her.

  A bomb went off above them. Another one of their booby traps. That would keep those fuckers at bay for a second.

  Zoey, naked and shivering, looked at them with frightened eyes. Then she dove into the water. The second her feet cleared the surface the glowing blue water drained away. The pool was empty, and the portal to India was closed.

  Above them, in the ceiling, were the words:

  This Eye Is Closed.

  Tessa slumped to the side.

  Mouse, whose face was bloodstained, hissed, “For the love of biscuits.”

  Chazzie wearily turned to Aria. “Does she say that a lot?”

  “More than you would think,” the Indian woman answered.

  “What do we do now?” Chazzie was at a loss for ideas. Most of Carlo Bart’s army was still above them. Wyatt, Maria, and Juice were still alive and getting nice healing spells.

  The Slayer Blade in Mouse’s hand blazed up suddenly, the sword bathed in green fire.

  Aria stood, tall and proud. “We fight until we die.”

  “Yeaaaah...” Chazzie elongated the word. “We don’t really do that. But I think I have a plan.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  On the other side of the world, Steven rolled across the Thar Desert. Bullets pounded the dirt, trying to end him. It was only a matter of time before Carlo Bart corrected his aim.

  Steven had a dilemma. He couldn’t kill the Texarkana Prime, not until he knew Zoey was safe. However, Steven could hurt him.

  His sword, though, was out of reach, stuck in the sand between him and Carlo Bart.

  Mid-roll, Steven shifted into his True Form using SerpentGrace, speeding up the process in a relatively painful way. Scales ripped out of his skin, his bones popped out of their joints, and his wings exploded out of his back. The Animus inside him burned.

  On his feet, whirling, he let the burn loose in a wave of flames.

  Melted bullets dripped into the gray dirt. Then Steven hit Carlo Bart with ShadowStrength. The big Texan went down on a knee, his strength sapped for a second. Under all that armor, he needed every muscle to keep on his feet.

  Carlo barked laughter. “Nice trick. But I don’t need to move all that much to shoot you.”

  He launched a shell from his six-shot cannon. Steven used his massive legs to launch himself forward, and then he turned into his partial form to roll forward as the ground behind him exploded, throwing debris. Bits of ground and cactus pinged off his scales. He ignored it and grabbed his sword.

  “Magica Divinatio!” Steven called out.

  Again, Carlo blocked him with an Incanto spell.

  The divination magic wasn’t cheap, and Steven’s Animus was dropping. He sped forward, sword raised, and used his wings to lift him into the air. He hammered Samael’s Lash down onto the pauldron covering Carlo’s shoulder. He expected the razor-sharp edge to slice through the black metal easily, like it had with the Morphlings during the Grand Lake battle.

  That wasn’t the case. His sword bounced off, jarring Steven’s arms. He’d been full of ShadowStrength, and it was like he’d smacked the Empire State Building with a length of rebar.

  The Texarkana Prime drove his big gun into Steven’s body, flinging him away. And then the big beast wheeled and fired both his revolver and the machine gun on his left arm.

  “Magica Defensio!” Steven coughed out. Just in time. Bullets ricocheted off the force field. But the cannon blast flung him back in a wave of destructive energy and debris.

  Steven’s vision narrowed. His ears rang. And he couldn’t get his thoughts in order. He had to shake it off. He had to.

  Staggering up, he dropped Samael’s Lash, and then he raced forward, returning to his True Form and triggering IonClaws. His talons lit up the darkening landscape. People in Jaipur could probably see it. Jaisalmer shopkeepers definitely could.

  Carlo went to pistol whip him. Steven dodged the swing, which was clumsy, as weighed down as Carlo was, and then Steven struck at his chest plate. Surely his IonClaws, fueled with ShadowStrength, would rip through the armor. But no, Steven’s hands folded. He deactivated the Pugna ability before he cut off his own fingers. He’d already lost one in the fight.

  Carlo shoved him back. Then the armored dragon exhaled a chilling blast of cold wind. The force of the blizzard drove Steven back, pushing his claws through the dirt. The ice coated his chest, glued his arms to his body, froze his wings, and sealed his mouth shut. He was blown over, and he landed on the ground. He shifted into his Homo Draconis form, thinking he would still have some of his scales to protect him, but he had escaped the ice covering him. It worked in a way—his mouth, arms, and wings were free, but the cold weakened him, and the ShadowStrength spell failed. He continued to take cold damage as his body fought the icy attack.

  The armored dark blue dragon strode forward, his armor creaking. �
�What’s wrong, Stevie? Thought you could run with the big dogs? Thought you could beat me mano y mano? Shit, you never had a chance. Take me to India, drop me in Africa, it don’t matter. I’ll still beat you, Texas style.”

  Carlo clicked the hammer back on the cannon revolver. “Spider Finger said you’d be hard to beat. That was why he got me set up with the Enchantrix shit. I must say, it was probably why the Wayne twins got so out of hand. I found myself a bit distracted. Well, all that work paid off in spades. Goodbye, dickhead.”

  The Texarkana Prime pulled the trigger. But not before Steven got his shield spell between him and the gun. That explosion would hurt Steven, sure, but it would also put Carlo Bart Baxter on his ass.

  Steven’s entire world became deafening thunder, blinding light, and pain, so much pain. Cold, blown to pieces, hurt beyond endurance.

  He thought of Sabina, holding her while Mouse burned her. He’d marveled at Sabina: that need to be strong, that desire to overcome her physical limitations, that obsession to follow her vision no matter the cost. He realized that Sabina had chosen to go through the Dragonskin rituals because she’d seen into the future, and she knew that it was necessary.

  Like winning this fight. If he let Carlo Bart kill him, nothing would change. Even worse, he’d lose his Escort to this coward hiding behind assassins and magic armor.

  Steven would not let that happen.

  He got to his feet and grew into a huge black dragon thirty feet long. Parts of him were frostbitten, he bled from a dozen wounds, and he was having trouble seeing out of his left eye. He wasn’t sure why. It didn’t matter. He could see well enough.

  Carlo Bart slithered around until he was back on his feet. He fired the cannon, rattled his Ma Deuce, and then breathed lightning.

  Steven cast another shield spell. Using his left hand, he caught the ElectroArc Exhalant while he continued to take the barrage of bullets with his right. He started moving forward, grinding his feet into the sandy ground, pushing ever forward.

  Carlo Bart roared.

  Steven’s force fields were about to fail. He could feel it, but he kept walking, pushing against the raw power.

  The barrel of the machine gun was red hot, about to melt. The scent of hot metal and gunpowder filled the air.

  Still Steven struggled forward.

  He could only imagine what the scene looked like: a big dark blue dragon encased in black armor glowing with magic runes firing bullets and breathing lightning into the shields of a black dragon, just as big.

  And Steven wouldn’t quit or fall back.

  If he got close to Carlo Bart again, how could he pierce that damn armor? He could only cast one more Magica Divinatio spell. If he got close, he could try the HeartStrike maneuver; he had enough Animus to do both. However, if that magical armor stopped that attack, Steven would be dead meat. Whoever this Spider Finger was, he’d given Carlo Bart the Enchantrix spell. And he might’ve included charms to stop HeartStrike.

  Steven’s melee shield flickered off. Carlo Bart’s machine gun glowed red, but it was still firing. However, the belt of ammo dangling was growing shorter. Not short enough.

  A roar erupted. A huge, wet, golden-brown bear rammed into Carlo Bart’s side.

  Zoey! What in the hell?

  The Morphling shoved the Texarkana Prime down and jumped on top of him. Every swipe of claw made the runes flash. Her talons weren’t going to pierce the armor. Zoey reached out with her mouth and bit at Carlo’s Bart’s jaw, but he ducked his helmeted head and shoved her off.

  This was Steven’s chance.

  “Magica Divinatio!” Steven’s vision was blocked out by the shadows rising out of his eyes. He couldn’t see, not a thing. No, this had to work, he couldn’t be blinded. He needed to see how to overcome Carlo Bart’s enchanted armor.

  Instead, he was given darkness.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The black mist dissipated, and Steven could see again. Only, what he was looking at didn’t make sense.

  Time had slowed almost to a stop.

  Carlo Bart had gotten to his feet. He was in the act of backhanding Zoey, his spiked knuckles ripping through the fur on her face, slashing up her snout.

  She was in the middle of shifting. Her arms and legs were hairless and shrinking even as her face threw blood into the air. She’d tried to adjust her size, but Carlo Bart had battered her before she could fully transform.

  It was all happening at a snail’s pace.

  Steven could feel the seconds stretching out into an infinity of milliseconds. Past, present, future.

  He’d never felt more in control of his divination powers. He flicked back in time, to the Rahaab battle. He was taken back to the forest fire, the destroyed mansion in the mountains, and all the death and destruction. He heard Rahaab scream, “Excrucior!” and Samael’s Lash came apart into the chain-whip with sections of scales connected to the cable at the center.

  And to restore the blade? “Pax aeternam!”

  Steven grinned. The he was plucked out of the past, the Montana firestorm was gone, and he was sent spiraling into the present. But not the immediate present. He was swimming through the portal Tessa had moved. He was kicking his feet through dark water. He opened his eyes.

  The water was dark around him. It was like he was swimming through a submerged tunnel with sparkling diamonds in the walls, but those weren’t jewels. They were stars, and he’d remembered his trips to the center of the universe.

  Then he was pushed backward in time, before he took the swim. He sat with Tessa, at the bottom of the Americos Chamber as she fought back tears. Her face had been so pale. She hadn’t been able to shake her doubts. “What if I can’t do it?”

  He’d held her hand. “You can. Remember at the Coffee Clutch, when we both thought we were special though we had zero evidence? Well, guess what? I’m a dragon, and you’re one of the most powerful Magicians anyone has ever seen. You can do the portal magic.”

  She’d let a little smile shine through her doubt. Then she’d frowned. “What if I draw the Zothoric to us?”

  “Then they better take a ticket and stand in line. We’re going to kick Carlo Bart’s ass first, and then we’ll deal with the shadows of teeth and talons.” Steven’s words had echoed in the cavern.

  Tessa had stood and cast the Magica Porta spell. The pool had filled with dark water, and at first, Steven thought they’d made a terrible mistake. It was like his dream, where he’d been standing in black ichor in a similar cavern. No, this was water that sloshed up from out of nowhere to fill the basin. And then it became a blinding blue light show.

  Above them, in the ceiling, new words in dragon script had formed:

  This Eye Is Open. Do Not Let Yourself Be Seen.

  Tessa had done it. She’d moved the portal from Denver to Odessa and connected the other end to a well in India. There were no Americos Chambers outside of the North American continent. Why was that? He didn’t know, and the question remained unanswered.

  Steven was then thrown forward in time. Good, he needed to find the chink in Rahaab’s armor.

  Two pink Homo Draconi were stuffing Carlo Bart’s inert body into the pool and then swimming it through to the other side. That would be Chazzie and Pru, making their delivery. They’d come back and then drive to the La Sombra Aerie to rescue Zoey.

  Steven wanted desperately to see if his Escort was okay, to make sure their defenses had held. Watching Pru plan and scheme had been a rare pleasure. That woman was brilliant as well as beautiful. And they’d all jumped in to make the fortress. They created the defense in record time, almost as fast as Steven had decorated his mother’s house for Christmas.

  Steven tried to force the spell to give him something about Carlo Bart’s armor. Didn’t work. He went screaming into the future.

  He was walking across a blasted landscape. This was the Great Plains but not like he’d ever seen it. Above him, the sky bled, the blue gone, replaced with the red of an open wound. The sagebrush around him
shivered, coated in black dust.

  He stood on cracked asphalt. It might’ve started out as a six-lane highway, but it had been eaten away down to four. The rest of it was thick yellow weeds.

  This was I-70. Denver was in the distance. He could recognize the Wells Fargo Building… what was left of it. Denver looked like metal-eating termites had attacked the buildings. Every pane of glass was gone. A terrible smell—death, rot, raw sewage—filled the air.

  Steven put his hand to his nose to stop the stink. And on the wind, a faint chittering, the gibbering laughter of something completely insane. It set his teeth on edge. And for some reason, he was reminded of the word Tessa had said in the Americos Chamber near Sloan’s Lake.

  The Rocky Mountains rose in the distance, but something was off about them. Then he saw it. No trees. Only bruised purple rock showed below what should’ve been the green of the tree line.

  Seeing the dead mountains hurt. He glanced down to the ground. Something red and white lay half-buried in the dust. He walked over to it, expecting to see a Coke can.

  No, not a Coke can. It was an old can of something called Nozzza-Cola. Three z’s.

  There was garbage everywhere, like a big trash heap, but most of it was covered in blowing sand or that black dust.

  Steven put his situation together. He wasn’t on his version of Earth, or his version of Denver. The bleeding sky and destroyed city? The black dust on the sage? The terrible smell? The insane gibbering in the air? This was a world decimated by the Zothoric.

  His father appeared on the highway in front of him. The foul wind blew Stefan Drokharis’s hair back from his face. White salted his black beard. He was dressed in a suit, shirt, and tie, all black. He looked both cool and impossibly wise.

  “Dad!” Steven found himself yelling. He wasn’t worried about demons finding him. He wasn’t really there.

  But he would be. Somehow, he knew this world of woe was in his future.