California Imperium

by Aaron Crash

  What she did next was more complicated.

  Tessa raised her hands and shouted into the wash of rain and the crash of waves, “Magica Incanto!” That spell could add enchantments to things, but it could also take them away—a classic dispel-magic charm.

  Pink flared out from her hands, but this light had a darker edge to it, if just a shade.

  Aria and Mouse circled around in the sky, and for a moment, Steven gazed at their savage beauty, long tails, wings outstretched, arms and legs tucked in close to their scaled bodies. And then his eyes went to the gunslinging Magician, fists blazing with rose-colored radiance. The tide pools reflected the light, gathering it, spreading it, until Tessa stood on a shining platform, besieged by the sea.

  And then, with a great cracking sound, the land fell away to her left and right, sinking down. The rocks shook beneath Steven’s feet, and plumes of sea-foam exploded into the air. When the earthquake was done, Tessa was on a wall of rock that split the two sunken chambers on either side of her. Ramparts of mussel-encrusted rock towered over the hidden spaces, keeping the water from gushing inside.

  Magic filled the air, and he caught a new scent, cherries, sweet, but with salty overtones. What was that scent?

  From his perch above her, on the rocky arm, Steven took in the scene.

  Tessa stood on a narrow strip between the two hidden caves. Narrow, shallow steps had been cut into the stone, leading down into the chambers. On her left was the basin and the three Homo Draconi statues of a normal Americos Chamber, but this one had the pits and pools of the tideland they’d seen. He even saw some crabs moving across the wet rock. And though it probably should’ve been full of water, the basin was empty black stone.

  On Tessa’s right was something completely new. Like the Americos Chamber, pools and rough rock, mussels and ocean detritus littered the floor. This didn’t have a basin, however, but a table. A round table.

  Standing about the table were twelve statues.

  Waves smashed against the lip of rock at the top. Droplets splashed down onto the weather-beaten faces.

  What was this place?

  In the middle of the round table, there was something—something rusted and metal.

  Steven had to get closer. After adjusting Samael’s Lash, he spread out his wings, shifted into his partial form, and leapt to fly in. He landed at the bottom of the strange room just as another wave smashed into the protective rocks above. Cold saltwater splashed him. He hardly felt it.

  This was place was old, lost, hidden. For a second, he thought of Mathaal’s pit, or the secret library above Mont-Saint-Michel.

  Tessa descended the steep, jagged steps, not even a foot wide, until she was next to Steven, looking pale and ragged compared to his sleek black scales. Another wave and more water splashed down. Aria and Mouse drifted in, growing smaller, until they too were half-dragon, half-human hybrids. Both were good enough flyers to come swooping in. They stood on the other side of the table. Both were speechless, even Mouse, who couldn’t come up with a ready quip. She pulled out the Slayer Blade and held it in a clawed fist. The green fire along the blade lit up the face of the statue closest to her.

  Heavy plate mail armor covered the figure. Medieval. But the face poking from the grand helmet wasn’t human, but the snout of a Homo Draconis. Steven approached and found that wings were carved into the back of the statue.

  Some of the knights held swords, while others gripped axes or spears. They were twelve feet tall, easily.

  A word fluttered through Steven’s mind. Dragonknights. But in America? In Oregon? The stone might’ve been a thousand years old, protected by the magic that Tessa had dispelled with her Magica Incanto charm.

  Mouse must’ve caught his train of thought. “Okay, there’s the round table. Which one is Arthur? Which one is Lancelot? That guy liked to fuck, but then, I think he was French.”

  One of the statues caught Steven’s eye as he tried to remember other famous knights. He’d read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in his literature class at Metro State. That was three. And was Mordred a knight? That name, Mordred, came to him, and his mother’s name, Morgana le Fay. The fairy queen. Was Morgana le Fay Mordred’s mother? He couldn’t remember.

  The friezes that might’ve once decorated the walls had been wiped clean by the elements, and only the most rudimentary features remained. A tree here, what might be the sun there, and no monsters in what might’ve been shadows under the rocky limbs. It was like an Americos Chamber, but so, so different.

  Tessa circled the table, walking slowly around, splashing through puddles and pools. She didn’t care. Her eyes never left the stone faces of the Dragonknights. Steven had to admit, they were stunning, ten feet tall, towering over the massive round table, which showed a crude map of the world. Maybe it hadn’t been crude a thousand years ago, but now it certainly was. On the table was some dragon script, but the letters were indistinct, worn away by time. He had no idea what might’ve been written there.

  Sitting in the middle of the table, a rusted torch sat where the English isles were. There were four prongs in the metal, each at a cardinal point, rising from the grips of the handle, which was wrapped in leather.

  “The torch,” Tessa whispered. “And we will open one eye.”

  Steven didn’t know what that meant, but this felt right, and unlike the last wild goose chase they’d been on—the one that had taken them to Odessa, Texas—this prophecy had come directly out of the Drokharis Grimoire.

  With how big the table was, Tessa would have to climb onto the seaweed-strewn table to collect the torch.

  “Should I get it?” Aria asked in a gruff voice.

  Steven nodded.

  Aria backed up, ran, and launched herself into the air, a winged lizard woman, turning her body to squeeze between two of the giant Dragonknights. The minute she seized the torch, it exploded in her hand, and she shrieked in pain. She was sent spinning into a statue, which she struck with a sickening crunch.

  A wave gushed over the edge, throwing water onto them.

  The torch floated over the table, but fire didn’t burn between the four prongs, no, nothing so prosaic. Blue ice creaked and cracked up from the handle, blasting out a wave of cold that immediately stole away Steven’s breath.

  They’d triggered something... and that something didn’t seem good.

  Chapter Seven

  ABNER SAVEDRA HEARD his cell phone tweet. He was among the humans, on Venice Beach, at the Muscle Beach gym, one of the only outdoor weight rooms around. He lay on the beach, doing bench presses, on his third rep of 495 pounds. That was five forty-five-pound plates on each side of a forty-five-pound bar. It was enough to draw attention and appreciative stares, but not enough to betray the fact that he wasn’t human.

  He was five five, short, stocky, built like a stump. That was good—low balance, good for fighting, and he had a big cock, good for fucking. He kept his scalp shaved so everyone could see the scars ripping through his skin. He kept his beard long, for the same reason. He’d been hacked apart in a scrap when he’d owned the Tasoguay Primacy in South America. Taso meant worm in the native tongue, while guay was river. Yes, in other words, it was the Worm River Primacy, which included most of central South America. Or that was until that Argentinian, Brazzos Reich, had sent Abner packing. It had been a bad blow to his ego, but it had given Abner some perspective. He’d carved the SoCal Primacy out himself, gathering his Willbreakers, getting wives, until Jem Osprey couldn’t stop him from a little American empire building.

  That had been around the time of the San Francisco Earthquake back in 1906. Some humans died. Who cared? It was only people.

  Savedra had his kingdom now, and this time, he wasn’t going to let it go, no matter if someone took machetes to him again.

  His Willbreakers, his royal guard, stood around him, arms crossed, scowling. There were six of them: two Morphlings, two Warlings, and two Magicians, though you wouldn’t know which was which by the look of them. They
were squat, muscular, and a mixture of colors and ethnicities. And they were his elite. They’d kept him alive for over a century, each aging slowly, due to the amount of Animus they collected. Abner ran a brothel in South Central for them and them alone. They had a wide collection of slutty brats they threw money at. Fine.

  Keeping Abner Savedra alive was a full-time job with Jeremy “Jem” Osprey always trying to take over the entire California empire, and now Roy Right was around, fluttering about, throwing around threats covered in a fine coat of glitzy flexing and shit-talk. Roy wanted all of Nevada and not just his Sin Cities. Well, take a ticket and stand in line. Since Jem Osprey and Savedra couldn’t gain headway against each other, they were going to go east, and that meant Nevada.

  Savedra thought about going against Javier Jones, but that dragon was spooky, smart, and mysterious. And he kept on the move. He had wives and Aeries across Mexico and the southern U.S., but you never knew where he’d be. That pissant Wyatt Gunn found that out the hard way. He’d gotten his head hacked off while he couldn’t shift. Some kind of magic item Javier had created. That scared the shit out of the Dragonsouls who knew about it.

  Savedra kept right on pushing up the iron, on his ninth, tenth, eleventh rep. Savedra had to admit, not being able to shift would be disconcerting. He liked his dragon form: long and muddy brown. He also enjoyed that he smelled like burning autumn leaves. The scent reminded him of home, the Pyrenees, in Spain. His homeland had changed, however, in the last one hundred and fifty years. The whole planet had.

  His phone tweeted again. Savedra wasn’t going to stop pushing the bar up and down. He wanted to hit thirty. Yeah, if any of the apes around him were counting, they would know he wasn’t human. They would say something. He would murder them. Problem solved.

  Savedra knew who was calling him, and he knew what it was about. Bad news. The end of the world maybe, or maybe a new world.

  His Willbreakers also knew who the caller was. Boyd, Christopher, Daniel, Eckles, George, and Henry stood motionless, watching as Savedra finished his thirtieth rep.

  By that time, his phone was quiet. He sat up, and Boyd threw him a towel. Savedra dried his face, stood, and walked over and picked up the infernal device.

  A missed call from Roy Right. That was surprising. He hadn’t seen that coming. And how in the fuck did that Sin Cities snake get his personal cell phone number?

  Henry got on the bench and started his turn doing reps. Henry, a Warling, pumped the bar up and down like it was nothing. Definitely using DragonStrength, if not ShadowStrength.

  Savedra’s phone lit up again. The name was there: Liang Pope. This was the dragon he’d been expecting.

  The SoCal Prime answered. “Yeah, Liang. He’s there, isn’t he?”

  “He is. The brat called me, offering to negotiate a peace. I told him he was an upstart, a usurper, a danger to us all. He thinks I can’t find him, but Spider Finger told me where he’ll be.”

  So, the mysterious Spider Finger had talked to Liang. Surprising. The next part was even more so.

  “Savedra, I talked with Roy. He gave me a knife. I just need some blood.” The PNW Dragonlord’s voice was rushed, hurried, and there was static.

  “You need Steven Drokharis’s blood. Why?” Savedra asked. This was strange, and it smelled terrible, like betrayal and deception. He remembered the letter he’d gotten from his wife over a hundred years ago, on another continent, luring him in to help her. He’d found her in the jungle with her throat cut. That was only minutes before the machetes descended. Before Brazzos Reich found him alone.

  The pain of being hacked to pieces wasn’t so bad after seeing Francesca’s staring eyes. Dead. His first love. Dead. Even a hundred years later, tears came to Savedra’s eyes when he remembered her. Something about your first love hit you like nothing else. It was a powerful, powerful thing.

  Savedra knew he shouldn’t care about a single female dragon. He was a Prime, and Dragonlords dealt in harems, and even back in South America, he’d had an Escort. Nevertheless, Francesca had meant everything to him. Those other women went to be with Brazzos Reich, probably because Savedra’d never shown them the attention that he should’ve.

  Liang Pope was speaking, but the reception on his end was terrible. Only a few words came out, clipped. “Portland...Bruno Illick. Roy Right is on his way, at the Astoria airport... you... an alliance... end the new threat.”

  Then two words. “Drokharis. Dead.”

  Liang Pope’s already iffy connection was gone, and Savedra’s phone cut off the call. He tried to call back, but nope, the humans and their technology failed them all.

  Boyd, a Magician from the Congo, and the smartest of the Willbreakers, came up to him. “Mr. Savedra, is everything all right?”

  Savedra scratched his beard, which was split by thick scars. He grinned like a wolf. “I think Liang Pope is running a suicide mission for Roy Right.”

  Boyd frowned. “There goes your alliance with Pope.”

  Liang was hungry for help against the Asian boogey dragon that supposedly owned most of the world’s islands, including all of Indonesia. Uh huh. That was a nice story, almost nice as the myth of Rahaab, Mathaal, and Icharaam. Total bullshit, no matter what the gossip mongers thought.

  Savedra had been in talks with Liang, because if he could get the PNW on his side, they could squeeze out Jem Osprey, and then Abner would rule, without contest, the California Primacy. Roy Right could get all the dust and wasteland he wanted if that happened.

  Savedra turned on his Magician. “Yeah, Liang Pope will not survive a straight-up fight against Drokharis. Yet, he mentioned Bruno Illick. That might change everything.”

  Boyd’s eyebrows went up. “The assassin?” The African Magician snorted. “Liang does like his stories. He believes in both Santa Claus and Paanga Komang.”

  “I don’t believe in Santa Claus, but I do believe in Bruno.” Savedra thought for a moment. “If Bruno can take care of the upstart, well, a world without Steven Drokharis is a world we can understand. Isn’t that right, Boyd?”

  The black man shrugged. “I thought we’d kill Jem Osprey and Roy Right and then keep going east. You’d need wives, my Prime, real wives.”

  That was a point of contention between the two. Savedra had his women, a couple dozen, but they weren’t wives in any real sense. Having an Escort, since losing Francesca, had been hard. The Willbreakers were all the Escort he needed, without the sex of course. For that, he had a brothel and the two dozen dragon bitches he kept around, though when it came to fucking, Savedra preferred prostitutes. It was easier. A business arrangement. Like Charlie Sheen said, he didn’t pay them for sex, he paid them to go away.

  The dragon bitches gazed on him with love in their eyes. They wanted to help him expand his Primacy, serve him, start a family. He couldn’t imagine doing that now.

  Francesca had died pregnant. With a son.

  Savedra felt the tears come. He didn’t care.

  Boyd saw them too. Savedra still didn’t care.

  “You have to let her go, Mr. Savedra,” Boyd said carefully. Oh so carefully.

  That brought a roar of laughter from Savedra. “Never, Boyd! She keeps me cautious. She keeps me angry. And she keeps me hungry!”

  He had to call Roy Right. Things were moving now, and Savedra knew if he wasn’t careful, he’d find himself under machetes again.

  BRUNO ILLICK SAT CROSS-legged in the middle of the dismantled Econo Lodge room near the Portland Airport. His dragon flight had brought him to the PNW Primacy too late to kill Steven Drokharis before the child faced Liang Pope. If Pope killed Steven, Bruno would not get paid. That was unlikely, however. Liang Pope was the sacrificial lamb. Let the PNW Prime die. Bruno wasn’t working for him.

  Roy Right was going to give Bruno gold for the kill, more gold than Bruno would need in a lifetime, because Bruno Illick didn’t need anything except for the kill, the food, and the smoke.

  The sacred smoke. Life was in the leaves, filling his
lungs. The nicotine was in his bloodstream, clearing his mind. Any damage he could heal, because Bruno Illick was old and knew forbidden magic.

  For magic, he would need the kill. There was Animus in the kill.

  Bruno followed a ritual in hotel rooms: He took the bed apart, used the mattress to block the window, and used the box springs to block the door. He stacked any other furniture behind them. To keep the world out. To keep the smoke in.

  He would then put his bag of tricks and his white bow in the bathroom, next to the bathtub. He loved his baths. He would sleep in them, letting the boiling water cool around him. He would sleep, and he loved his beautiful dreams.

  He loved his bag of tricks, so he wanted it close when he bathed and when he slept. It was a big leather suitcase he’d had since the turn of the century, from when 1899 became 1900 even.

  He loved the Hellstring. The bow had been crafted from a giant white ash, and then enchanted by one of the most powerful Magicians the world had ever seen. No, he’d been the most powerful and the most bloodthirsty. Bruno carved arrows—nock, shaft, and barbed head—for the Hellstring from the thigh bones of Dragonsouls. These he fletched himself and magicked to fly straight and cruel. He also used the arrows for torture, sweet torture. The quiver could be strapped to his bag of tricks.

  He didn’t like to think of the bowstring itself. It made him nervous in a strange way. Like a closet door, left open a crack, in the middle of the night.

  After creating his barricade in the main room, he would sniff at the grime in the carpet, finger through the used condoms, the needles, any other filth he could find. The Econo Lodge was far cleaner than most of the motels where he stayed. After that, he would sit in the middle of the room with food around him; it didn’t matter what it was. Fried chicken. Pizza. Cheeseburgers. Onion rings. Foie gras on saltines. Chitterlings. Fried pork skins. Or half-rotten vegetables. Didn’t matter. What did matter was the way the food was divided. He would need four portions, exactly four portions, each containing five items. Because after every five cigarettes he would eat. He always had to buy two packs of cigarettes because there only twenty in a pack. He needed twenty-five. Silly humans.