“Armed Services equals soldiers. Arms. He has a position to definitely sell that stuff big time to our own government and, frankly, to know who to contact to get it out there to other governments and black markets. If a senator with that much pull is behind the auction, wherever it freaking is, then we are in deep shit.”
Nehemaiah cursed, an old litany against the gods, and banged his fist down on the desk before him. “And the best we know is that he could be anywhere in the country?”
“He has a loft in downtown D.C. and a gated home in Georgetown, but for an auction, he might have rented out a more discreet place,” Minerva said. Then, she snapped her attention back to Yuffy as the dragon cried out in pain.
Saffyranae could hear no more. Rushing to Yuffy’s side, she eased herself into place alongside Minerva. “I can take care of her now.” She bit her tongue before mentioning anything about holding Yuffy during the end. “Clay’s been resting, but perhaps you can get more information from him Minerva. We don’t have the time or the forces to find what we need. We have to narrow it down.”
Minerva stood but hesitated an instant. “Are you sure?”
I will be fine. We have the mission.
Even as Saff said that, she was touched that her friend wanted to stay near her during this time of need. She hadn’t treated Minerva very well in the last twenty-four hours. She had shut her out, but her the human was still in the fray and offering to do whatever Saff needed to ease her own pain.
Minerva pulled out her phone and checked the time. “Okay, great. We have so much less time than we thought if this is on the east coast ‘cause it’s already seven o’clock there. I’m motoring.” She broke into a run and bolted out of the door.
Saff turned her focus to Yuffy. Slipping off the jacket she’d worn, Saff put it to Yuffy’s brow. It came back soaked in crimson. “You’re okay… It’s going to be alright.”
Yuffy shook her head. “You didn’t see it. Magic like that? Gods, Rara! It took Rara!” She howled loudly, anguish that pierced Saffyranae’s soul. The temperature dropped around them, but she managed to keep it from dipping toward freezing by sheer determination.
“Shh, we’ll take care of you.”
She was about to reach down and start healing whatever she could of Yaffy’s injuries when a loud claxon blared and the phone on the desk rang to life. Nehemaiah held up a hand and silenced all of them. Yuffy still screamed, and Saff felt like the coldest traitor in the world as she clamped a hand over Yuffy’s mouth to keep her keening wail from echoing through the room.
“Yes,” Nehemaiah answered. His voice was gruff and official as always. Nerv hadn’t been wrong about him being able to pose seamlessly as a guard. “This is outpost.” Saff raised an eyebrow toward him at that, and he merely shrugged. “Senator, yes, there was a contingent of those foul dragons, but the system you set up worked perfectly. Their forces are dead.” He paused. “Yes, the package is safe. I mean, both your brother and that gem are intact. Yes sir. I…” Maiah paused, a shudder coming over him, although his voice never wavered. “…indeed, that was a brilliant plan, a well-placed trap. We’ll have a damage report later tonight to you. Yes, sir.”
Nehemaiah didn’t so much hang up the phone as slam it into the receiver and watch it crunch with satisfaction etched on his face.
“Bastard. I’ve never heard someone so smug. ‘His idea,’ he says and ‘hope those dragons fried’ he says. By the gods, I will see that man destroyed.”
The temperature in the room skyrocketed and Saff’s head spun from the disorientation of it all. “We will, Nehemaiah. I promise you, that this ends tonight.”
“Lianeesa and Goralula can walk. We need to find a safe conveyance for the egg, and we can work from there,” he said. “It shouldn’t take long.”
She nodded but understood what he was doing. Nehemaiah was giving her a few minutes of privacy to try and heal Yuffy, privacy she sorely needed to try and collect her magic, especially after helping Clay earlier. The others shuffled out, and it soon left her cradling Yuffy alone.
Saff put her hand on Yuffy’s forehead and her other hand over her friend’s chest. The heart beat was so slow, like the fractured rhythm of a tide that refused to come in. “Stay with me.”
Yuffy’s eyes fluttered open. “Rara, he… I never told him.”
“I’m sure he knew. You two were inseparable, how could he have not?”
Yuffy shuddered. “Save the children, Saff. You have to do that.”
“Save the eggs and save the world, right?” she said, trying to force her voice to take on a hint of levity.
She’d heard Minerva mutter that before, and now she hoped it brought Yuffy any comfort it conceivably could.
“Save everyone you can, Saffyranae. Use that big heart of yours as you always have.”
“And in a few minutes, you’ll be able to help.” She closed her eyes and drew her energies to her. The room grew frigid then, snow fell in soft drops into her hair and onto her face. The little splashes of cold a reminder of how much power she was drawing on. “Just hang on.”
Saff pushed the healing energy of her magic over Yuffy’s body, hoping it would coalesce and sync with Yaffy’s aura. The process was like mixing liquids. If someone were too sick, too far gone, the blending could never happen, would be as oil trickling into water. As Saff focused the energy, it seeped into her and met resistance, like trying to swim through the thickest bog or marsh. No. Not today, not with Rara already lost. Saff took a deep breath and pushed harder, pushed until hail fell from the sky above her, pelting her heavily and leaving bruises on her shoulders, she was sure. The resistance pushed back and became as a brick wall between her and Yuffy.
“I can’t. I just want to be with Rara.”
“And I’m sure Rara wants you to go on annoying old, crusty Nehemaiah for years to come,” Saff urged, her voice breaking.
She opened her eyes. When had her friend gone so gray and ashen?
Yuffy shuddered in a breath and gripped Saff’s hand, the one splayed out on Yaffy’s chest. “Get this bastard, please, Saff.”
With that, a great and violent shaking seized over Yuffy. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and her heart was still now and forevermore.
Dragons could not cry as humans did, even in their human forms, so Saff let the storm swirl around her, let it grow so cold in the room that even her own fingertips started to turn blue with chill.
It was the only way she could mourn.
41
Minerva
She’d seen people die before. Minerva had sat up in the hospital with her abuela the night she passed from this world. She’d lived on the streets in Texas before she’d cobbled enough money together to get a place and known people she’d squatted with who’d expired of fucking heat stroke. She knew death when she saw it coming. Clearly, it was coming for Yuffy. The dragon, well in human form, had been so pale, so gray from all that blood loss.
She’d given her friend the space she could to mourn Yuffy’s loss.
Nerv knew, felt in her bones the same way the eggs called to her, that the dragon warrior was too far gone to save. She bet everything she owned, which wasn’t very much, that the crazy bad odds hadn’t stopped Saff from trying, though. It was just what Saff did. Who she was. Saff kept pushing even if everything else was against her, which was good, because right now there was no cavalry coming, and they were in a total shit show.
Minerva hurried back to the study where they’d found the egg. Clay would know where his brother was holding everything, and he’d know how to get at the files they needed. She was done playing, and she was done being led around and into traps. Senator Jorgenson might think he was above the law, and he was probably right. At least the way she understood how the law worked. Rich assholes walked; everyone else got hammered. But this was justice, and those eggs wouldn’t die, the dragons they’d lost weren’t for nothing, and everyone in L.A. and D.C. wasn’t going to mile into a fucking pile of goo.
; She pushed the doors open and smirked as they hit at least one still unconscious guard on the head. Then, she squared her chin and coughed until Clay startled from his sleep. He bolted upright in his chair, and, although he looked around in disorientation from whatever dream he’d slipped into, there was a clarity in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
Good.
She needed all the information she could get.
“Clayster, what’s up? We need to talk.”
He ran a hand through the streaks of white in his hair. That part unnerved Minerva. He wasn’t her age, but there was no way he was more than early thirties, but something had drained him, and it was more than one baby egg. He seemed older in so many ways. Though, he had made a crack about the wriggly things by her face. Granted, he hadn’t been calling her worm-face, but again, rude much?
“Have you talked with your dragon friend? With Saffyranae?”
“Of course. She’s trying to clean up the mess your explosion crap made, with a friend who’s not going to make it.”
He flinched and wrung his hands. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
“You set the trigger. You activated it.”
“I was scared, and the look on Saffyranae’s face… I didn’t realize dragons felt as we do.”
“They do. Saff’s got the biggest heart of anyone I know, like I said. You screwed with that and killed them so if you’re ‘sorry,’ then you have to make it right. You have to tell me where this big auction actually is.”
“I can’t go against Topher.” His voice grew small again. “He my big brother.”
“You’re either going to help us or you’re just as bad as those goons over there your weird shadow friends just ate. You can’t say you’re sorry, but not help,” Minerva said, stalking up to his chair and leaning over him. “Life doesn’t work that way. You have to choose.”
“He’s helped me! No one else ever has, not after I got sick. I can’t… The things I see, you can’t possibly understand.” Then, he quirked his head to the side and narrowed his lined eyes at her. “Though maybe you can.”
“I don’t see worm guys and shadow creatures. I’m actually sane, thank you very much.”
Clay flinched his shoulders but his eyes kept her gaze. “You’re different, but you don’t know that yet, do you? Do you think Saffyranae just hasn’t told you yet? Maybe she knew and has been relying on it this whole time.”
“I’m not different. Trust me, I know some hacking tricks and am a damn good pickpocket, but I’m not…”
His lips curled up in a smirk. “A ‘freak’ like me?”
Minerva’s throat went dry. She couldn’t swallow because, truth was, she’d been running from feeling like a freak her whole damn life. Well, at least since her family had realized who she was and who she wanted to love. It wasn’t wrong, and she’d spent six years trying to tell herself that, trying to relax from all the pressure and looks of her parents. Truth was, in the Reyes household with her staunchly conservative parents, she had been the odd person out.
The freak.
She wasn’t going back to that now she was free and on her own, and there wasn’t some mystical mumbo jumbo working through her mind. But maybe her heart. Maybe… The way she just synched to all the dragons she met, the way she could sense things even old Nehemaiah couldn’t…
No, that’s just Clay trying to play with me.
It had to be.
“But you sense things. Don’t you? You’re lucky they aren’t scary and don’t eat people.”
She swallowed and looked at the guards splayed out across the room, the ones with black liquid still oozing from the wounds in their necks. “No, I’m nothing like you.”
Clay shrugged. “You’re Touched, and you can tell. I’m so Touched I can barely think. Soon, it’ll get hazy again, what Saffyranae did can’t last. Nothing ever does.”
“I’m sorry.” Minerva said, surprising herself. “I’m sorry something awful made you sick once. I know most of the people the plague touches didn’t ask for it either. That’s why I’m here, begging you to help us. People are going to melt—fucking melt—you can’t let that happen. If your brother sells those eggs to the highest bidder, then it could be the end of everything and everyone. Please.”
“I don’t want anyone to hurt him. He only got into magic to protect me.”
“Is selling it to anyone who wants a super weapon part of helping?” she demanded, gesturing to the crumpled forms all around them. “Please, where is he? We don’t have any time left.”
Clay shook his head and pulled out his cell phone. “Look. Don’t say anything. Just let me talk to him. Maybe I can get him to call it off before it happens.”
Minerva rolled her eyes. “Sure, the power hungry senator is totally going to call off a billion dollar deal because his little brother asked. That’ll happen.”
“You don’t know him like I do.” Clay punched in the numbers.
“I don’t want to,” she muttered, but even Minerva had the sense to stay dead silent while the line rung through on speaker.
Clay? Look, buddy, this is not a good time. You know that everything is going on tonight. Are the guys there taking care of you? I know Nate couldn’t come and we’re scrambling without Rog…
“I’m fine. I only see the worm faces right now. The shadows got fed.”
The senator sighed on the other end. Buddy, then I have to go. Everything’s really getting started and in a few hours, when it’s all done, we’ll be safer. You’ll be safer, and we can really study how to cure you.
“You have to stop. The shadows told me that they’ll come for you if you don’t, that so many people will die.”
Clay, that’s just… We talked about this. The shadows aren’t actually there.
“The shadows skitter and try to suck blood. They promise they’ll eat your too if you do this. Toph, please. The magic isn’t for us. It will kill so many more than it can possibly save. I’m not worth that. We can find another way.”
Minerva watched this all with shock. Clay’s eyes were still bright and lucid, but his voice was mewling, that same, disoriented tone he’d had earlier. He could slip so easily back into that part. Then again, if he was right, then Saff’s magic might fade soon enough, and he’d be out of it again.
Damn it, Clay. Put one of your sitters on the phone. I do not have time for this bullshit. Tomorrow, sure, we’ll talk, but I can’t deal with you right now.
“Toph---”
The phone clicked off, and Clay dropped it from his hands. His eyes were still clear but there was a fresh sheen on them, as if he were trying not to cry. “I’m always a burden. That’s what he said at the lake that day before I wandered off. I just… He never listens.”
Minerva knelt down and put one hand over his on his knee. “But you can still fix it. Just tell me where it is, Clay, tell me what I need to know.”
He looked off into the distance, his voice growing fuzzy. “It was July, back when I was six. July 4, 1996… A fun day at the lake, but something awful was in it… Something wrong.”
She grabbed his chin between her fingers and forced him to look at her. “Don’t fade out on me, now. Where is it?”
“H-he has an office downtown, one he leases ‘cause he doesn’t want it in the Senate offices. It’s the fifth floor, 801 K Street under ‘Thomas Bond.’”
“He told you that?”
Clay smiled sadly. “I know like you know things, Minerva. But you do more than know, and soon you’ll see that too.”
She pushed any worry away, any thoughts along those lines. He was fading and any assertions that she was different, special, were the rants of a sick man. “Okay, great. And the auction?”
“Georgetown. He moved it there after having so much trouble in L.A. That’s why I’m so far from it.” Clay quirked his head and looked at the eaves of the room, at something only he could see. “The shadows are full. They won’t come back tonight, but I don’t like the wormy things either. They skitter
and scrabble and keep me up.” He clutched her hand tighter. “I just want to sleep.”
Minerva nodded and stood. “I can’t help you there, Clay, but I hope you can get some rest tonight. Maybe we all can soon.”
42
Saffyranae
There was so much to mourn, but there was no time. The auction was going forward as they scrambled to prepare their small force to go retrieve the eggs.
With most of their warriors dead, they were in a tight spot. The shamans could not cast another teleportation spell so soon after bringing over the first force of warriors, and many of the Searchers had traveled overseas to track down plague carriers who had left the country. Their company heading to Georgetown boasted of a meager seven: Saff, Minerva, Nehemaiah, Lianeesa, Goralula, Aerynthaeora, and Korourun.
It would have to serve.
Their second biggest problem was getting to the D.C. area from L.A. in time to stop Topher from handing the eggs over to the highest bidder. Saff led their group onto the lawn and slipped out of the gown she’d planned for the showdown here. They were going to have to risk being seen. There was no other way. Minerva stared with wide eyes as four dragons transformed in front of her.
“God damn,” she murmured as Nehemaiah shook into his full enormity.
He made himself smaller, even to sit around the Council’s table, but he was truly a monstrous warrior. Irritating, condescending, and self-important, but he was definitely a dragon Saffyranae wanted on her side.
Minerva pulled on the extra sweaters that she’d stolen from the room set aside for Topher’s wife. It was going to get cold up there. Then, she climbed up on Saff’s back, and they were off. Halfway there, Aerynth and Koro met them in the skies, and they mentally traded notes on the way.
They don’t know me, Aerynth said, her sleek length whipping through the air behind her. Long whiskers trailed from the shining scales on her face. Koro and I can enter by the front.
No. They will be expecting us to make an attack, Nehemaiah interrupted.
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