Reaping Wind

by Orlando A. Sanchez

  “I’m going to siphon some of his energy and calm him down.”

  “Simon, no!” Monty yelled. “You can’t do that. This isn’t Slif. Roque is a full dragon mage. You siphon too much of his power, you will die.”

  “I’m open to suggestions!” I yelled back. “Can you calm him down before we’re buried alive?”

  I knew the answer before he said a word. I saw the sweat forming on his brow. He might have healed himself, but he was still recovering from our fight with Esti. If I didn’t do something, the sphere would collapse and we would all be crushed.

  “And maintain this shield?” he answered with some strain as another large chunk of stone bounced off the sphere. “No. No, I can’t do both.”

  Sometimes the angry, irrational response doesn’t come because of a lie. Many times, it comes because we’ve been confronted by a truth we don’t want to face. On some level, Roque knew I was right; it didn’t make it any easier to accept, but it was the truth. Tessa was using Roque like a guard dog for the seventh ring—well, in this case, a guard dragon.

  I stepped outside of the sphere. The crashing of stone, along with the roars, made for a deafening combination. I figured Roque was going to be our supply of dragon’s blood. Somehow, asking him didn’t seem like a viable plan at the moment. It’s not like I could say: Hey, Roque, how about a pint? You know, for the road? Then we’ll leave you alone to feed on the inhabitants of the seventh ring.

  I drew Ebonsoul and stepped close to Roque’s body. He was still in full tantrum mode and would collapse the tunnel in on us any second. I took a moment to look back at Monty, who shook his head.

  This was going to hurt on an epic scale. I found a gap between the scales on Roque’s body, took a deep breath, and plunged my blade into the dragon.

  “Time to embrace the suck,” I said as the siphon started flooding my body with energy. “Oh…fuck.”

  The tunnel exploded with violet energy as the rest of the ceiling collapsed.

  THIRTY

  “Is he dead?” a voice said.

  “He should be,” Monty said. “But he has surprised me in the past.”

  “How did he survive that siphon? It should have blasted him to dust.”

  “He’s too dense to die,” Monty said. “You can open your eyes now, Simon. I know you’re conscious.”

  “Are you sure I’m not dead?” I asked. “I feel dead, or at least mostly dead.”

  “Mostly dead means slightly alive,” Monty replied. “Which is the natural state of your brain cells.”

  Monty jabbed a finger into my side—hard.

  “Are you sure you two are friends?” the voice asked. “You realize he just siphoned me out of my dragon form? By all accounts, he should be a blasted pile of dust.”

  “I am aware,” Monty answered, curtly. “I also know he survived the process.”

  Monty poked my side again—harder.

  “Ow,” I said, reflexively moving to the side and getting unsteadily to my feet. “Fine, I’m not dead. But it feels like a truck landed on me—several of them, in fact.”

  “I managed to extend the sphere at the last second,” Monty answered, “with a little help. You were mostly unscathed, at least externally.”

  “Right now, I’m feeling entirely quanked.”

  “Do you even know what that means?”

  “Overpowered by fatigue, and what you get when you place armor on a duck.”

  “The former is impressive, while the latter is just gibberish,” Monty said. “If you’re done lounging, we have things to do.”

  “For the record, I wasn’t lounging. I was contemplating some of my life choices. Like working with a volatile mage.”

  “Introspection is a worthy endeavor—perhaps one best shared with a favorite bondmate?”

  “You’re right,” I said soberly. “We have things to do.”

  “Indeed,” Monty answered with a nod.

  Monty’s words had energized me. We couldn’t lose sight of what we were doing: rescuing Peaches, pounding Esti, finding Chi, and getting out of Japan before Fumiko caught up to us.

  “Who’s that?” I asked, motioning with my chin at the tall, clean-shaven, Liam Neeson look-alike standing next to Monty. He was dressed in a mageiform suit that coruscated from the light of Monty’s orb. When I looked closer, I saw that they were scales: actual miniature scales. “Wait, is that you, Rocky?”

  Monty winced at my pronunciation.

  Roque gave me a tight smile. “Close enough.”

  I looked at Monty. “He pulled a Slif?” I asked. “Talk about wearing dragonscale. That’s really next level.”

  “Actually, all dragons can morph their forms from human to dragon,” Monty said, using his wikimage voice. “Roque was trapped in his dragon form.”

  “Let me guess. Tessa?”

  Roque nodded. “She had placed a temporal trap on my dragon form, locking it in place. When you siphoned my life force, the trap didn’t have enough energy to keep me in dragon form. The structural runic integrity of the stasis collapsed, freeing me.”

  “So magespeak is a real thing—got it,” I said. “It wouldn’t have been easier to say, ‘The siphon freed me by sucking out my energy like a vacuum’?”

  “Probably,” Roque said, moving around the rubble. “I still don’t know how you survived. You should be dead several times over.”

  I glanced at Monty, who gave me the ‘we don’t need to go into that detail’ look.

  “I’m wearing Daystrider armor,” I said quickly, “and I’ve been practicing my runic defense. I’m sure a combination of the two combined to construct a lattice of nullification energy that funneled the siphoned energy into an ethereal repository to be drawn upon at a later date. Or something like that.”

  Roque looked at Monty, who just stared at me.

  “I have to say,” Roque started, “that happens to be the most extensive bullshit answer I’ve ever heard. Is that how mages sound to you?”

  “Pretty much all the time, yes,” I said, glancing at Monty. “At least when I can understand the language being spoken.”

  Monty almost smiled and looked away.

  “We’d prefer not to say how he survived the collapse and the siphon,” Monty said after a few seconds. “It’s something Simon would rather not share.”

  Roque nodded and looked at me. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to say, ‘I’d rather not say’?”

  “Point taken,” I said. “I don’t mean to offend, but Monty mentioned something about you being out of your mind?”

  “I was, initially. It was one of the reasons I ended up here. In one of my more lucid moments, I was searching for a way to control the effects of the drake’s blood.”

  “That kind of makes sense. If any place was going to have a way to help you, it would be the Moving Market.”

  “The rage and resentment I held for the Golden Circle, for my erasure, drove me to do things I’m not proud of,” Roque said, looking at Monty. “Your father and uncle saved me, even if I didn’t see it at the time.”

  “The erasure saved you?” I asked, confused. “How would stripping your powers save you?”

  “I had gone dark, way past dark, and had gotten a taste for killing,” Roque answered, his voice grim. “After the erasure, when I drank the drake’s blood, I was planning to go back and lay waste to the Golden Circle and everyone in it, starting with Connor and Dex.”

  “Drake’s blood? I thought you drank dragon’s blood?”

  “No, they stopped me before I could get that far. I did the next best—or worst thing.”

  “What did you do that’s worse than drinking drake’s blood?”

  “I cast Alder’s Permutation on myself.”

  “Holy sh—”

  “Yes. I was mad with regret, rage, and a desire for vengeance,” Roque said, looking away as if reliving the moment in his memory. “They could have easily torn me to pieces. Have you met them? I don’t know what I was thinking.”

 
“I’m familiar with them, yes,” I said, looking at Monty.

  “Even in my drake form, I was no match for their combined power,” Roque continued. “So, I did what I thought necessary. I crossed over into full dragon.”

  “Crossed over?”

  “There is a variation to the permutation that allows for a radical transformation. Using the drake blood, I accelerated the process and transformed into a full dragon.”

  “That sounds like suicide,” I said. “Doesn’t Alder’s kill the target once it’s run its course?”

  “What did I care about my life? I wanted vengeance, and they stood in my way. Even after all that, Connor and Dex saved me.”

  “What did they do?” I asked, curious as to how two mages could stand against a full dragon. “What did they use?”

  “Connor was nearly an Archmage and Dexter is a temporal master. Together they isolated the permutation, but by then it was too late. The damage had been done. My mind had been seared by the casting.”

  “Yet they didn’t kill you,” I said. “They must have thought there was a solution. A way to reverse it.”

  “Connor did,” Roque said. “Dex thought it was best to keep me forcibly restrained. Connor disagreed. They argued, along with the Golden Circle elders. It became violent. Some of the elders wanted to use me as a weapon. Both Connor and Dex opposed them. Things escalated, and in the chaos that followed, I escaped. Turns out Dex was right—it wasn’t too long before I started having the seizures.”

  “Seizures? From the permutation?”

  “He started transforming,” Monty said. “Attacking mages while in dragon form.”

  “The seizures didn’t last long at first; but, each time I had an episode, they lasted a little longer, until I was in dragon form most of the time. That’s when I came here.”

  “Why here of all places?” I asked. “The seventh ring doesn’t exactly scream ‘safe dragon habitat.’”

  “All of the sects were looking for me,” Roque said. “The Dark Council wanted me captured or dead. I needed to get away. Someone told me they had a way to stop the seizures in the Moving Market. It was my last chance.”

  “Judging from your earlier performance, someone lied to you.”

  “When I discovered the treatment was a lie, I fled to the outer rings. No one dared to follow, and everyone left me alone. It wasn’t too long after that I met Tessa.”

  “Well, shit,” I said. “Hearing all that is going to make this request even harder.”

  “Request? What do you need?”

  “We’re here for blood,” I said. “Specifically—dragon’s blood.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  “Are you insane?” Roque asked, raising his voice. “Did you not hear one word I just said!”

  The last thing I wanted was an agitated dragon. Somehow, I didn’t think mentioning how low the sun was getting was going to help in this case.

  “Of course we heard you, but this isn’t just about you,” I said, turning to Monty. “Monty, is there a chance Dex can help him?”

  Monty narrowed his eyes at Roque.

  “In his current state, the permutation is dormant,” Monty said. “I don’t know how you did it, or how long it will last, but Uncle Dex can at the very least increase the duration of the suppression, if you go to him.”

  “Dex wanted to contain me,” Roque said. “What about Connor? Where is he?’

  Monty looked away as his features darkened. It was a moment that made me realize we all deal with loss in our own way; he may not have been overly close to Connor, but he was still his father.

  “Connor…Connor passed away,” I said when Monty didn’t answer. “There was a situation at the Golden Circle. Some mages wanted to take over, and Monty’s dad managed to stop them.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Roque said. “Connor was a good man and a gifted mage.”

  “Thank you,” Monty said when he had gathered himself. “The blood is urgent to our current mission.”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking,” Roque said, shaking his head. “A small dose will drive you insane; a large dose—will kill you. Even if you survived the siphon, you won’t survive this.”

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  I took a deep breath, explained the situation to Roque and told him everything.

  “Bloody hell,” he said under his breath. “You’re immortal?”

  “More like cursed alive, but yes.”

  “And bonded to a hellhound and to this vampire Michiko you need to find?”

  “Yes,” I said. “If I don’t act fast, they’ll starve him and unleash him on Japan.”

  “What about the vampire? You’re going to save a vampire?”

  “Yes. If they kill her—I don’t know what happens to me and this blade, but I can tell you what will happen to the Dark Council in New York.”

  “War,” Monty said. “It will be the start of a second Supernatural War.”

  “Who are you?” Roque asked, looking at me in disbelief. “I thought my life was difficult.”

  “It’s complicated,” I said, setting my jaw and staring into Roque’s eyes. “I’d rather you gave me the blood willingly. Would it help if I said please?”

  “Let me see your blade,” Roque said, extending a hand. “Two drops will imbue you with power to rival any low-level mage.”

  “What happens after two drops?”

  “Three drops can magnify those powers considerably—and put you close to an Archmage in ability,” Roque said. “But, there are conditions.”

  “Aren’t there always?” I asked. “This is the part where you say I implode in a spectacular fashion or agonizingly disintegrate into a pile of molten ash.”

  “Close,” Roque said. “Two or three drops will give you access to phenomenal power. The power is temporary…but the effects can be permanent.”

  “Temporary? Do you know how long it will last?”

  “That will depend on you and your capacity to deal with the blood,” Roque answered. “I don’t know anyone who has taken three drops and survived, and most of those who took two became insane—right before suffering a fatal cardiac event.”

  “What happened to those who took one drop?”

  “It’s an interesting process,” Roque answered. “Apparently, one drop isn’t enough to catalyze a runic energy change in the subject. With one drop, the blood is rapidly poisoned, resulting in a catastrophic failure of all major biological functions. Essentially, your poisoned blood shuts down every organ it infuses, resulting in—”

  “Death,” I finished. “I’m sensing a trend.”

  “I know you are different, and claim to be immortal, but my blood can kill you,” Roque said. “I think this is a bad idea.”

  “Right now, it’s the only idea. Two drops, please.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  “Your blade is adequate, but there’s one more complication,” Roque said. “You’ll need a special receptacle to contain the drops and cast a purification ritual. Tristan?”

  “That is going to be more than a complication,” Monty said. “I only know one person who may possess that kind of receptacle on short notice.”

  “Who? Aria?” I asked, sheathing Ebonsoul. “Tessa? Why do I need a receptacle?”

  “Dragon blood can be absorbed through the skin,” Monty said. “Without a proper receptacle, you can accidentally get too much.”

  “That sounds like a bad thing.”

  “The blood needs to be treated without removing its potency. You’re not a dragon. Your body will attempt to reject it without the ritual.”

  “And the ritual?” Roque asked. “Can you do it?”

  “I know it,” Monty answered. “It’s complicated, but not overly taxing.”

  “Just to be clear,” Roque said, “the receptacle needs to be a runic nullifier that will not alter the integrity of the blood.”

  “Aria wouldn’t possess something like that, and Tessa…” Monty started.

  “Tessa t
ried to blow us up,” I said. “She wouldn’t give it to us, even if we asked.”

  “Correct,” Monty said. “The only place we can locate something like that, within the timeframe we need, is Fordey Boutique.”

  “Oh, shit,” I said. “She would never set foot in here—unless she were laying waste to the Market, ring by ring.”

  “Who are you referring to?” Roque asked. “She sounds incredibly dangerous.”

  “I’d rather face you, in your dragon form, than an angry TK,” I said with a shudder. “If Monty asks her to come here, it won’t be pretty. Are you sure that’s the only option?”

  “I’m certain,” Monty said. “We need to get back to Japan—now. There’s only one problem.”

  “What? Is Tessa shutting down the casting?”

  “No,” Monty said. “I may have overextended myself by casting the protection sphere.”

  “You broke your magic?” I asked, cocking my head to one side. “Eat one of your mage power bars. You know, the ones with new and improved, extra-dirt flavor—with a hint of moldy grass.”

  “Droll, as usual. My injuries have proven to be more extensive than I initially thought,” Monty said. “The fact that the Market is in constant flux between spacetimes adds another layer of complication. I don’t currently possess the necessary energy to effect a precise circle from inside the Moving Market.”

  “Basically what you’re saying is…you broke your magic.”

  “Mages don’t break their magic,” Monty snapped. “It’s just not possible.”

  “Sounds like yours is temporarily out of order. That sounds broken.”

  “I can cast,” Roque said, interrupting us. “I’ve been to Japan. If you give me the exact coordinates, I can create a circle to where we need to go.”

  “If that’s the case,” I said, having a brilliant idea, “why not have Roque create a circle directly to Fordey?”

  “No, for the simple reason that I enjoy the process of breathing,” Monty answered with a glare. “If we teleport a dragon into Fordey Boutique, what do you think the outcome will be?”