by Dima Zales
I rip off a large chunk of bread, stuff it in my mouth, and think about this as I chew.
Rasputin also said I have some things in common with Lilith. And it must be true because his comments helped me figure out Lilith’s essence and see a vision of her.
So that begs the question: Could I be a murdering psychopath under the right circumstances?
Is that why she was trying to get me to finish those chorts—and the scores of innocents in the alternate history Rasputin prevented?
Is she like Dr. Evil, seeking her Mini-Me?
“I’m sorry,” Lucretia says. “I didn’t mean to make you feel all that. I’m the worst sister and an even worse therapist.”
I swallow a mouthful of noodles so fast I nearly choke on them. “You’re an amazing therapist and an awesome sister,” I say when I can talk. “Speaking of sisters, you said something about more siblings earlier. What did you mean by that? Do I have some other sisters or brothers?”
“Umm.” She looks into her cooling soup bowl. “There’s just one person that I know of. Someone our lovely mother had with yet another man. But that sibling is someone who might not appreciate me telling you their identity just like that. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, come on,” I say, wondering if it’s too soon to take back my “awesome sister” comment from seconds ago. “You’re really not going to tell me anything?”
“How about I talk to our joint sibling?” she says soothingly. “I’m sure they’ll want to discuss this with you once I do.”
“I guess,” I say, and suppress the urge to add, “Or I can ask Lilith instead of you.” Taking a deep breath as Lucretia herself had taught me, I tell her, “I really want to know who it is. My whole life has been full of questions about my biological heritage, and now you’re giving me one more mystery to dwell on.”
“I’ll do my absolute best to make sure this gets resolved quickly,” Lucretia says, then stops talking because the waiter brings out the rest of my food.
As he takes our soup bowls away, Lucretia takes out her phone and sends someone a text.
“I just asked for a meeting,” she says once the waiter is out of earshot. “I’ll keep you posted.”
It takes all my willpower not to snatch the phone from her hands and check whom she just texted.
On second thought, maybe I can ask Felix to track this text along with the calls from Lilith. After all, we know Lucretia’s number and—
“Don’t do whatever you just thought about doing,” Lucretia says. “Please. As a favor to me.”
“Fine,” I snap and attack my plov.
“You’re upset with me,” Lucretia says, watching me clean my plate in sullen silence.
“Wouldn’t you be?” I chase the food with water.
“When you meet this person, I think you’ll understand,” she says.
I freeze, blood draining from my face. “It’s not Nero, is it?”
“No.” She grins knowingly. “You and Nero aren’t related. Given how you both feel, it would be pretty disturbing if you were.”
“You think?” I say sarcastically, not even bothering to address the whole “how you feel” comment.
Of course, Nero and I are not related. She texted this mystery sibling, and Nero isn’t reachable by text right now. Also, Lilith didn’t act like she knew Nero when they fought on her world—and she would hopefully know her son.
“All right,” I say magnanimously. “I’m not upset with you. Not that much, anyway.”
“Good,” Lucretia says. “But the check for this meal is on me.”
“Fine. But you’re also going to tell me things about yourself. Private things you’d only tell a sister.”
“Always looking for an angle.” She smiles like Mona Lisa. “Well, since you insist, there is something exciting going on in my life that I haven’t told anyone. Wasn’t even planning on telling anyone, but it looks like I owe you something of this magnitude.” She pauses, as if hesitant to go on.
“Wow. You do have something juicy to share.” I spear a piece of lamb with my fork. “Out with it. I won’t leave you alone until you tell me.”
“Okay.” She looks around as if she’s about to share the US nuclear codes. “It’s about Yaroslav,” she says conspiratorially, then stops talking again.
Her secret has to do with her relationship with the bannik? I shift to the edge of my seat and chew carefully, worried I’ll spook her.
“He and I, we’re trying,” she finally says. “Please keep this between us.”
Trying?
When I parse her meaning, I nearly choke on a half-chewed piece of lamb. Recovering, I examine her face for any signs of joking but find none. “You’re trying to have a baby?”
“He’s been using his power to find a future where we succeed,” she whispers. “It took a lot of his seer power, to the point that he’s been completely drained for days, but he believes he’s found the right time and place for us to be intimate that will lead to the result we want.”
Drained for days? Okay, then. Seems like oversharing runs in our family.
Still, I’m glad Lucretia told me this. I once suspected she might be my mother and asked her if she had kids. She hinted that she’d had a human lover at some point, and that they never managed to conceive. Reading between the lines, I got the impression that she really wanted to have a child.
On a more selfish note, I’d love to have a little niece or nephew. And given how gorgeous the bannik is—not to mention, Lucretia herself—this baby will probably be super cute.
“I guess this confirms it,” I muse out loud. “A vampire can get preggers. I mean I figured as much since Lilith had me, but—”
“It just makes it less likely,” Lucretia says. “Hence Yaroslav’s hard work.”
I burst out laughing.
“Anyway,” she says, pretending she didn’t understand the double entendre. “Before you ask, any Cognizant type—including a bannik—is compatible in that way.”
“I wasn’t going to ask that. I’m more interested in these visions Yaroslav must be having over and over. Must indeed be such ‘hard work.’” I wiggle my eyebrows. “No wonder he ran out of his seer juice. No, wait, seer juice sounds dirty in this context. Seer mojo? Nope, still dirty.”
I learn yet another fact about vampire physiology.
They can totally blush.
“You’re just using humor to change an uncomfortable subject,” Lucretia says and gives me a meaningful look. “Let me repeat my earlier point: any Cognizant, even Nero’s type, can—”
“I think I want dessert,” I say loudly enough for the waiter to hear.
The waiter walks over, and Lucretia rolls her eyes at me behind his back.
Does she actually know what Nero is? It seems like she does.
Though I’m already full to the point of bursting, I order a green tea and one piece of baklava.
“Do you have any idea when your efforts will bear fruit?” I ask Lucretia when the waiter leaves.
“Changing the subject again.” She cocks her head. “You know, I could tell you skipped something important when you told me about your most recent adventures. Something that happened in a hotel perhaps?”
Damn her shrink/empath abilities. She must’ve picked up on my earlier omission. Unless—
“Did Nero say something to you?” I ask, leaning forward.
“If he did, it would be protected by doctor-patient confidentiality,” she says. Then a grin appears on her face. “And now you’ve pretty much confirmed my suspicions.”
The waiter brings the dessert, and I debate if I want to tell her what happened.
“Fine,” I say when he leaves. “Here goes.”
I tell her how Nero and I kissed, repeatedly, and how on that day, he did more to me but didn’t risk me doing anything for him.
“I think it’s not just about his fear of losing control and hurting you—which is a valid concern,” she says thoughtfully, further confirming that she knows abou
t his dragon nature. “But I can’t discuss this with you in any more detail because he’s a patient.”
“He’s talked to you about this?” I grip my scalding-hot teacup.
“I’m sorry. I can’t confirm or deny.”
“Oh, come on. What did he say? Remember, you owe me after the sibling mystery.”
Lucretia’s phone dings.
“Oh, shoot,” she says, looking down at it. “I have a patient emergency I have to run to.”
“Sure. And I’m a ballerina.”
“I swear I have to go.” Lucretia rummages through her purse, takes out her wallet, and puts a hundred-dollar bill on the table. “Please don’t be mad.”
“You make that difficult,” I say, stuffing the baklava into my mouth.
“I’ll make it up to you, I promise,” she says, then kisses me on the bulging-from-the-dessert cheek and sprints for the door.
Maybe there really is an emergency?
I finish chewing, and as I sip my tea, I realize that all this sibling stuff has distracted me from something pretty urgent that also has to do with Nero—the future battle at Godiva.
Well, no time like the present to find out about the future.
I put down my cup and focus on getting into Headspace.
Once I’m floating among vision-shapes, I debate if I should utilize my new ability to target a specific timeframe or not. If I do, I could target two days into the future—one because my last vision was already a day from today, and one more day because Nero said that’s when they will be at Godiva… though he meant a day for him, which might not equate to a day for me thanks to seer relativity.
No, given that I’m liable to screw it up, and since Nostradamus said targeting takes up too much power, I’d rather save the practice for later. I’ve been using so much juice today I’m bound to run out soon.
In any case, if a non-targeted vision doesn’t get me what I want, I can always expend the power at that point.
I prepare to envision Nero’s essence, but some intuition tells me to target Kit instead.
She did get hurt in the last battle, so it would be a good idea to check on her anyway, my intuition aside.
When I bring Kit to mind, a number of shapes show up.
Dire-looking shapes.
Crap.
I reach out to one of them and hope with all my being that I’m not about to see Kit die.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Similar to how my previous vision began, Nero is standing in a tent surrounded by his generals. Colton, Vlad, Isis, and other Cognizant from Earth are here as well, along with two groups of people I’ve never seen before.
One group is dressed just like the humans who switched sides during the last two battles. I assume they’re the commanding officers in charge of those troops. The second group is the more interesting one.
They all have limbal rings that behave like Nero’s—which makes me strongly suspect that they’re dragons.
“This is it,” Nero says to the dragon group. “If you want to withdraw your support, this is your last chance. Once you’re seen in the sky wing to wing with me, your fate becomes my fate.”
“I’ll stand with you, the true heir of the Gorinych dynasty,” says a tall man with a hawkish nose. “And I doubt anyone else here made their decision so lightly as to quit at the last moment.”
“Indeed,” says a strikingly beautiful blond female dragon. “You’ve seen the state of the empire with your own eyes. You’ve seen the mismanagement that is Yudo’s so-called rule.”
“Call him only ‘the usurper’ in my presence,” Nero growls. “And yes, I have seen the poverty and degradation of dragon and human alike. My father is no doubt choking on his own fire in the afterlife.”
The dragons nod grimly.
“Even before your arrival, whispers about the usurper’s right to power turned into outright conspiracies,” a thin dragon with ocean-green eyes says. “He probably thinks he can add legitimacy to his reign by marrying Claudia, but for the oldest of us, it just makes him look weak and insecure.”
Nero’s face is so angry I half-expect him to turn into a dragon and breathe fire. All the non-dragons in the tent—even the giants—take a step back.
“Until the marriage announcement, we didn’t even know she was alive,” says the oldest-looking dragon. “Now many of us elders wonder why he kept her all this time. Why not kill her or marry her long ago? Why not—”
“The coward kept her as a hostage,” Nero growls. “He knew I might return one day, and she’d be the only thing stopping me from leveling Godiva outright.”
“That, or he might’ve foreseen the need to mix his blood with that of the royal line one day,” says the hawk-nosed guy. “He’s always been rather good at figuring out ways to save his hide.”
“No matter what his reason for keeping her, this marriage looks like an act of desperation to us,” says the female. “He’s even less worthy of power now, as far as I’m concerned.”
“My concern is for Claudia once Yudo’s—I mean the usurper’s—back is against the wall,” says an athletic-looking dragon who hasn’t spoken until now. “Unless you think he’s going to trade her life for his?”
“The usurper will not live until tomorrow.” Nero’s limbal rings expand to fill his eyes. “Let me worry about Claudia. Your job is on the battlefield outside this tent.”
The dragons nod solemnly, their limbal rings in varying levels of excitement.
“Listen to me, everyone,” Nero says, his deep voice carrying through the tent. “We’ve seen the usurper’s crimes. We’ve defeated his lackeys. We’ve grown stronger and made alliances.” He looks meaningfully at his new human and dragon friends. “Today we finish this. Legends will be told about the battle at Godiva.” His gaze shifts to the strongmen. “Songs will be sung about each and every one of you.” To the cockatrice delegation, he says, “It doesn’t get any bigger or grander than this,” and then looks up at the giants.
He continues his moving speech for a few more minutes until everyone in the tent looks ready to rip the enemies apart with their teeth.
Nodding in satisfaction at the ferocity on every face, Nero strides out of the tent, and his properly motivated allies stampede after him.
Outside the tent, I see another silver mountain ridge, this one in the shape of a half-moon.
The mountains are not just tall, they seem to leap into outer space. I bet even the smallest one is higher than Mount Everest on Earth, or maybe even Olympus Mons on Mars. Though the sky is cloudless, there’s no sign of the mountain peaks. It’s as though the tectonic plates of this world conspired to create a landscape that would make even creatures as large as dragons feel small and insignificant as they gaze up at it.
Inside the half-moon stands a castle—though at first glance, it also looks like a mountain. It’s both tall and wide enough to be one. Made from chrome-tinted obsidian, the structure looks like it was melted out of the tallest mountain by a million dragons breathing fire together—and, for all I know, maybe that’s how it was originally formed.
The castle is the perfect place for a seat of imperial power—with those astronomical mountains around, the mouth of the half-moon is the only place one can enter Godiva by ground or air, making a sneak attack all but impossible.
And Nero is clearly expected here. Every inch of the rocky ground around the castle is filled with enemy troops.
Archers, cavalry, and foot soldiers are all armed to the teeth and wear armor of much better quality than that of the prior armies Nero fought.
More importantly, these people look very determined to fight to the last man. I doubt the surrender trick will work on them.
Crap.
What makes this worse is that Rasputin didn’t tell Nero how this particular battle will end. It’s possible that the odds against Nero’s guys are proportional to the disparity in the army headcounts—fifty to one or something along those lines.
The sky above the troops looks even
more intimidating, with every cubic foot teeming with enemy dragons of different colors, shapes, and sizes.
There’s no way Nero’s army can handle so many dragons—even with the help of the dragons from the tent.
“No parley this time?” Councilor Albina asks as she looks up worriedly at the sky.
Nero’s nostrils flare. “The usurper isn’t even on the battlefield. It was too much to hope he’d face me alone.”
“What about that one?” Albina points at a dragon who looks twice as big as the rest.
“Zmey is strong but not very intelligent,” Nero says, looking up with a narrowed stare. “I doubt the usurper ordered him to parley.”
“Okay. Then when do we start?” Albina says and arcs white energy between her palms.
“On my signal,” Nero says and strides over to where a few squadrons of soldiers are mingling with the dragons from the tent. All but two of the dragons—the athletic and the hawk-nosed one—are naked, and most of the troops behind them are in their birthday suits as well.
Interesting.
These troops are either nudists or dragons in human form who don’t want to ruin their armor when they turn—and if it’s the latter, the disparity between the armies won’t be as bad as I feared.
“Turn,” Nero says to one naked group, and they transform into particularly large dragons, then crouch as close to the ground as they can.
Yep.
Definitely dragons.
That evens things out a bit—that is, if thirty enemy dragons to one of Nero’s can be considered better odds.
Nero then gestures at nearby giants, who are carrying Itzel’s steam-powered harpoon weapons. They lumber over and place the devices on the dragons’ backs, then use thick ropes to secure them.
A bunch of cockatrices in human form climb up onto the dragons and perch behind each of the weapons, grabbing onto the rope triggers.
“Now you all,” Nero says to the naked peeps standing behind the female dragon from the tent. Despite the tense situation, I’m glad to see that Nero’s gaze slides past her perfectly shaped body, seemingly oblivious to its charms.
