by Jada Fisher
Which, of course, led me to wonder, what would happen with her breaking the rules and helping me. Clearly, her one job was to lead me to our version of the afterlife. She hadn’t done that. She also was supposed to be apart from all the worlds, and yet she had directly interacted not only to heal me, but to save me from death yet again. There had to be consequences for that.
“I’m in here!”
The young boy’s voice was muffled, but I still caught the tail end of it. Following the noise, I entered what had to be the garage area of the shop. It was fairly huge considering it was one of those corporate places with locations all across the United States, and sure enough, there were four vans sitting in a row, Krisjian’s backside sticking out from one of them.
“I picked the two with the most gas. I’m almost done with the first now. Can you check the tire pressure for me? They have been sitting here for a long time and the video I watched said they could be flat.”
“What kind of videos were you watching?” I knew one could find anything on the internet, but hotwiring cars along with tire care seemed like a very specific mix.
“Oh many, but this one was about urban survival in case of an apop— Apocali— Poppa—”
“Apocalypse,” I supplied helpfully before turning to Sokhanya. “Come with me. I’ll show you how to test if tires are aired up. If they’re not, they can go flat and that’s very bad for driving.”
She nodded eagerly and we scrounged for one of the pressure readers. It wasn’t hard to find given we were in a mechanic’s shop, and it only took us about ten minutes or so to check the eight tires.
“Looks like only the rear right one here is low, the other vehicle is fine,” I informed Krisjian. He let out a grunt, and then suddenly the engine of the van he was half-in turned and roared to life.
“There we are. One done. And thank you, there is an air pump outside I believe we can use. Time check?”
“Nine-fifty. We have a half-hour before Bronn will make his way to the field.”
“And we will know for sure that they’ve taken the bait because we will see them fly out towards him.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, rehashing part of our plan as a way to reassure myself. Sure, it was half-baked, but half-baked was better than non-baked.
“And most of our intel says that many of the anti-humanists are holed up in the ruins of their palace with the dark-haired elder. They’re the smart ones that fled after the rotted dragon started killing and eating all of their kind, no matter who’s side they were on. With less than a hundred of them at the facility where they’re holding the dwarves, they’ll send a significant number out to catch Bronn.”
“You think the elder will go out too?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I feel like there’s a fifty-percent chance he’ll feel the errand is below him and a fifty-percent chance that he wants to snatch up all the glory for himself.” My short experience with him played through my mind. His charming smile, the warm light to his eyes. How he’d tried to convince me to join them, to become a tool just like Sokhanya had been. Maybe if I hadn’t seen how his kind treated us oracles, I could have been convinced.
Maybe, but probably not. I was stubborn that way.
“Either way, he will be a difficulty.”
“Yeah, most likely.”
“But I do not remember our plan having a part about dealing with him.”
“That’s because it doesn’t.”
He let out another grunt and then the second van came to life. “These things make me nervous.”
“Welcome to the club.” I said, climbing into the first van. “I’m still not sold on letting you drive. Who’s going to be your shotgun? Throw your door open when we bust into the building?”
The teenage boy stood up fully and turned to give me a look. “You ask not what we do about the elder. You ask not what type of car we need or how to get it to run. There are holes in our plan that we could literally drive these vans through, but you worry about me driving?”
“To be fair, the last time we were in a car together, we did crash into a malevolent spirit.”
He leveled me with a reproachful look that could put my sister to shame. “I’m going to drive. Together, we will have room for all the dwarves, even if some are critically injured, and some of our own as well. The prince will not have to worry about ferrying any to safety and can focus on cleanly getting away and drawing their attention to the ambush the other dragons have waiting for him.”
Ah yes, the grand finale of our plan, the part that was supposed to stop the dragons from realizing we’d made off with their prisoners and hopefully make it look like it was just a guerilla strike. I wasn’t sure how well it would work, but hopefully, we could take down a few of our more stubborn foes if they insisted on chasing Bronn into the night.
“Okay, fine. I relent. You can drive. But you bring up the rear, alright? You follow me.”
“You are more familiar with this city than me, so I would not dream otherwise.” He gave me a smile that was entirely teenage snark then closed the van door. I swore that he was gloating as he rolled down the window. “We shall go use the air pump now, yes?”
I narrowed my eyes at him and held my fingers on my one hand in a vee, flicking them towards him in what I was pretty sure was the international sign for I’m watching you, before putting the van into reverse. I didn’t even take my foot off the brake, however, before putting it right back into park with a sigh.
“Something wrong?”
“Yeah,” I said with a sheepish sort of grin. “I don’t think either of us are gonna be able to drive out of here if we don’t open the garage doors.”
Krisjian leaned out the window and looked to the front of the large room where, sure enough, we’d left the heavy metal grates closed and locked up tight.
“Ah. That is embarrassing.”
“Yup.”
“I will go open them now.”
“Good idea.”
I watched him go in my sideview mirror, feeling my cheeks color. Saving the world was hard, alright?
7
We Ride at Daw— Er… Ten-Twenty-Seven PM
Airing up the one flat tire and topping off the rest went surprisingly fast, leaving us with a whole lot of idling. I’d never thought that just sitting in a van could be so nerve-wracking, but every sound made me jump, leaving my energy waning and my body utterly exhausted without even actually driving anywhere yet. At about fifteen minutes in with ten left to go, Krisjian turned off his ride and said he was going to root around the shop for gas. That made sense to me and I joined him with Sokhanya watching us curiously.
It was a nice expression to see on her face, however. Especially since her first few weeks were spent asleep, terrorized or uncertain. Maybe I could get her into some sort of official education program when things were settled. A GED program even? Considering all that the dragons had deprived—
Drifting. Again. I shook my head and finished hunting for the gas with Krisjian then showed the deaf oracle how to put it in the tank. It wasn’t enough to get either of us to full, but we didn’t need to be at full. And as it were, we had more than what we should need. Hopefully. But it never hurt to have a little extra, so when we got into our borrowed vans and saw that they were a bit over half, I felt better.
“Time check?”
“Ten-nineteen,” I answered. “One minute until Bronn is supposed to leave.”
Krisjian nodded, starting his van up again. We went one right after the other into the parking lot, facing out into the city toward the path Bronn was supposed to take to the cow field.
The minutes ticked by like their own personal age. I wasn’t sure if time was wonky because I hadn’t been awake for so many consecutive hours in months or if it was just the anticipation, but either way, I was fidgeting, sweating, and otherwise making a mess of myself as we waited. And waited.
“There!”
Surprisingly enough, it was Sokhanya who saw them first, pointing into
the night sky. I squinted, following her finger as best I could, but I couldn’t see anything.
“Do you have eyes on it too?” I called over to Krisjian, who was half out his window already to clamber on top of the van.
“I think I… Yes! I see a red dragon. I’m sure of it.”
I leaned as close to the windshield as I could, wanting to see what my friends saw and trying not to think about whether I permanently needed glasses or not. For another few beats, I was sure I was just going to have to trust them—not that it was a problem—but then I saw it.
A glint of scarlet red, a glint of gold a bit farther from it. Somewhere else, the soft shine of purple. That was dragons, alright. As I lived and breathed.
“Time check?” I asked. Our final one.
“Ten-twenty-seven.”
“Alright then. It took them seven minutes to spot him. Not bad. We’ve got approximately a ten-minute drive to get there, and it’s a fifteen-minute flight to the field Bronn estimated.”
“So, we ride now?”
I nodded, finally throwing the van out of park. “We ride now.”
And just like that, we were pulling out onto the near-empty streets.
It was a strangely quiet and uneventful ride. Sure, there were a few cars that were left in the middle of the street that we had to go around, but otherwise, it was a clear path. The traffic lights were out, but there was no traffic to worry about. I still slowed at the first few stop signs before reminding myself that I didn’t need to pay attention to them.
More dragons began to fill the sky as we drove. I couldn’t keep the most solid count, but it definitely seemed like over fifty of them had headed off in Bronn’s direction. They clearly had no intentions of letting the prince slip through their grip. While he was a commendable fighter, and powerful, fifty versus one was not a fight he would win.
Thankfully, he had his backdoor escape and three dwarves waiting in that tunnel to make sure and cover any tracks before disappearing themselves. With any luck, it would look like he disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Of course, once they figured that out, they were going to immediately double-back and return to their temporary nest. But the plan was that we would be long gone by then and Bronn would be leading them to the ambush that was scraped together through the few dragons he was able to get into contact with.
I didn’t like our chances, but they were what they were.
And also, we had arrived.
We weren’t right at the mansion, that would have been far too obvious, but we were just to the side of the entrance of the gated community, not even a minute from the mansion that was left standing. I could have probably thrown a football at it even in my weakened state, we were that close.
Neither Krisjian nor I dared be loud enough to ask for a time-check. Instead, we killed our lights and waited for the signal. Which, according to our plan, was supposed to go off exactly ten minutes after the dragons sounded the alarm to follow Bronn.
The way we had figured it, there would be at least a minute delay between us seeing the dragons and them actually leaving, so Mal and Mickey were technically supposed to give off the signal as we were driving up. And that definitely hadn’t happened.
My leg started to bounce as we passed the ten-minute mark. Then I was chewing at my lip again as the eleventh came and went. It wasn’t until we were almost about to surpass twelve when the signal finally sounded.
And what a signal it was.
A booming explosion sounded from in front of us, shaking the ground. It wasn’t the biggest explosion I’d been in, or even the most dramatic, but it was enough to light a small chunk of the street in front of the manor. Debris rained down all around us, some even hitting the van, and that was exactly our cue.
“Here we go!” I cried, stepping on the gas and busting right through the gate.
It looked impressive, sure, even though I knew that part of Mal’s job had been to disable to locking mechanism and the fail-safes before she even went into the manor. But I didn’t have time to enjoy my action movie moment. I turned on a dime and drove straight into the burning opening on the left side of the mansion.
The van burst into what looked like the closest approximation to a ballroom that could exist in a modern home and I slammed on the brakes before I hit the closest wall. There was plenty of smoke around, but most of the fire was in other places, just like it was supposed to be.
After all, there wasn’t a lot that a burning house would do to most dragons, but it did force them all to shift out of their human forms if they wanted to combat the flames. Not to mention, it provided excellent cover for fleeing prisoners.
“Where?” Sokhanya blurted beside me, looking this way and that. I wish I had the time to be impressed with all the words she had learned to articulate, but the situation didn’t allow for that.
“They’ll be here. Just give them a second.” I didn’t know if Sokhanya could see my lips move or not, but I did see Krisjian looking nervously at me through his van’s window.
“Hey, make sure the back doors are unlocked,” I called over. “We want a quick getaway.”
“Where are they?”
“They were two minutes late setting off the pipe bomb. Maybe where they were holding the prisoners is deeper down than we thought.”
“How deep down can a wine cellar be?”
“I don’t know. Do I look like a fancy rich person? Just give them—”
I cut myself off as a set of doors on the side of the ballroom burst open with several figures stumbling through. It didn’t take a pair of glasses to see that they were definitely our targets, some of them supporting each other and most of them looking pretty banged up. Mickey and Mal brought up the rear, both absolutely filthy and helping a taller dwarf hobble along between them.
Relief flooded me, but that only lasted a beat, because then a door opened on the side of the ballroom that our vans were facing, and I saw a dreadfully familiar blond enter.
No.
And everything had been going so well up until that point.
My eyes flicked between the two groups. They saw the elder alright, and they also saw that he was going to intercept them before they ever reached either of our vans. It was check and mate.
Anger, burning hot and volatile, roiled within me. I was so tired of losing. Every step I took forward, they always seemed to push us two steps back. Whenever I thought that maybe, just maybe, those that I loved were safe, our enemies found some new way to hurt them.
“Stay here,” I said loudly, hoping Krisjian would be able to hear me and Sokhanya would understand.
“What?!”
“Stay. Here.”
And then I was undoing my seatbelt and sliding out of the van, singular hand up in surrender.
“Long time, no see,” I said, walking forward and just like that, everyone seemed to freeze. It was like some sort of western standoff, with the escapees looking to get to the vans, the elder looking to get them, and me desperately hoping to keep them away from each other.
“And you are?”
Ow, okay. I knew that I looked different but certainly not that different. “What, you don’t remember me? I gotta admit, after all that sweet talk you gave me before about treating me right, I thought we had something special.”
He gave me a sort of incredulous look and then I saw recognition slowly dawn across his face. Good, all I had at the moment were my wits and my ability to keep talking no matter what was happening. I needed to amuse him, to distract him—anything to give the others a chance to get out of there.
But it wasn’t like they could just make a break for the vans while I was talking to him. I was stalling him at best. There needed to be something…else.
If I had my magic, if my brain was working right, maybe I would have just summoned a shield and bought them time. But whenever I reached inward, I couldn’t feel much of anything. No snapping magic, no wellspring of power. Just a whole lot of hurt and injury. Who knew if I would e
ver fully recover to the point where I could cast a shield over the entire city again?
And then, finally, it clicked with the elder. “No, certainly you must be jesting.”
“Does this look like the face that would jest you? It’s me, in the flesh. Leader of the oracles and perpetual thorn in your side.”
He licked his lips, and if that didn’t just ride the line between gross and intimidating. “You’ve changed.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, making a vague wiggle with the stump of my bandaged arm. “I’ve always looked like this.”
“You know, it’s not too late to join us. Look how terribly they’ve treated you. Putting you on the front lines, letting you get hurt. Things could be so much better for you.”
Really?
It was the apocalypse and the world was in shambles, but the elder still wanted to act like he had the sway to recruit. Unbelievable.
“Look, I don’t think you understand what’s going on here. That rotted dragon you worship so much is only going to use you for food. He doesn’t care about you. You were there when he ate Valeri right in front of you!”
“A worthy sacrifice. We are willing to give all that the dragon needs, and then we will rule this world again, as it was meant to be.”
“News flash, big guy, none of this was as it was meant to be. You, me, the dwarves, we’re all invaders here. Our original home and a lot of homes after that got all torn up by the same guy you’re worshipping. He doesn’t care about you, he doesn’t care about this power you think he’s going to give you. He will ruin this world like he’s done before just so he can be greater, not you!”
I was shouting by the end, my breath running out and my words quick, but I couldn’t believe how stupid the man in front of me was being. With his own people decimated, surely, he could see that the creature he was praising was the one bringing about his own destruction!
Apparently not.
