by Aaron Crash
Sabina, sitting in a chair near them, was motionless. “Aria is worried I won’t be able to handle myself in battle. As a Dragonskin, I would have access to powers I don’t have now. I want to help Steven. He took me in even though I’m broken. I want to return the favor. And I’m strong, Liam. I had to be.”
“What does it entail?” Tessa asked.
Liam let out a long breath. “Her life will not be her own. She will have to follow a strict diet, a strict schedule of meditation, and practice self-denial. And in the end, every part of her skin will have to be burned off. And she will have to heal the flesh and transform herself from the inside out. Not one in a thousand can do it.”
“No coffee?” Tessa asked, trying to make a joke.
Liam shook his head. “I know the spells. I can help. But I would rather not. Please, Sabina, you won’t be able to serve Steven’s Primacy if you are either dead or insane.”
“¡No manches!” Sabina snapped. “I understand the risks. I’m not a kid. And I’m not a scaredy-cat.” She touched the scabs on her right arm from when Gideon Scaramanga had stabbed her. The wounds were finally healing. “I’ve been dead once. I can do it again.”
Liam closed his eyes. “We can start now. We will need groceries. Rice. A lot of vegetables. Very little meat and very little fruit. No sugar. You will eat only the barest minimum. The Shaolin monks in China took their cue from the Dragonskin rituals to increase their inner power.”
“Sounds like the ultimate diet,” Tessa said. “And not the beach-body sexy kind.”
No one said anything.
Steven wanted to ask Sabina one more time if she knew what she was doing. But obviously, she’d thought a lot about this. “Maybe we should wait until after we defeat Rahaab. We have enough on our plate as it is.”
“No,” Sabina said. “I’ll start today. I know a little of what I need to do.” She got up and sat down near the stream in some grass. She got in the meditation position, legs crossed, hands in her lap, with her thumbs almost touching, but not quite.
“It’s meditation, it’s a strict diet, and it’s the burning,” Liam said.
“I was burned,” Steven said. “Remember, Tessa? In the sacred pools of the Lookout Mountain Aerie?”
Tessa nodded. “Yeah, you couldn’t change into your True Form until you went through that. It’s going to be far harder on Sabina. But we can be there for her.”
“We can,” Steven agreed.
He turned back to the book. He showed Liam the sketch of the Path of the Mirror-Souled Dragon before turning to the last encrypted pages. He wasn’t sure whose thoughts they were, but the ink swirled, and he was given more.
Rahaab is old and afraid. I don’t know why. If we spent less time fighting among ourselves, we could someday battle the Zothoric. We’d finally be free. But I get the idea that Rahaab doesn’t want to be free. He’s come to enjoy his fear. Or maybe it’s not his fear he likes, but everyone else’s. It does give him power. Those in power are loath to give it up. That’s a lesson for the ages.
Steven read it over. “Who do you think this is?” he asked.
“I could be Icharaam,” Liam said. “If Mathaal is hidden from me, maybe the third brother is as well. Maybe he’s not dead. Or we are reading his thoughts from fifty thousand years ago.”
Steven didn’t know.
He accessed the skill tree again to look it over.
He’d cast his first Magica Incanto spell! And it had worked wonders; the spell knocked away Rahaab’s magic and busted his lock. Of course, he’d had help from the other spellcasters in his group. He’d progressed far down the Pugna tail of the dragon and had mastered ShadowStrength. But what about IonClaws? Should he attempt to use them? Or should he try the Toxicity Exhalant? Probably not. He needed to get better at lightning before he tried the poison gas cloud. That side of the skill tree had always been difficult for him. It had taken him forever to breathe fire.
Well, forever wasn’t the right word. He was learning Dragonsoul skills faster than anyone Liam or Aria had ever met. That made him feel good. But he was still frustrated. He needed to be at his best if he was ever going to face Rahaab.
Though he hadn’t levelled again, all the fighting and the sex had topped off his Animus.
“So, Liam,” Steven started, “should I try IonClaws? One of Rahaab’s wives used it against us during the library fight. It’s a powerful weapon.”
Liam let out a grunt. “You youngsters are going to be the death of me. Sabina wants to torture herself to become a Dragonskin. And now you want to become a Dragonsoul Master of the Pugna arts after what? Three months as a dragon?”
Steven grinned. “You heard what Rahaab called me. I’m a child, but I’m fate-blessed. What are the risks of using IonClaws?”
“If you don’t get it right, you will melt your hands off with the Animus. It’s why I never attempted that ability. My claws are sharp enough.”
Steven winced. “Oh, ouch. Okay. So how can I improve my ElectroArc exhalant?”
Liam stood. “Practice, meditation, channeling the Animus, breathing in life and exhaling death. Always the same. Perhaps you should get on the same regimen as Sabina.”
Tessa ran out into the middle of the dirt road. “Come on, Steven. Let’s practice. I’ll cast a shield spell and you can try and hit me with your lightning.”
Steven stripped out of his clothes, became a dragon, and hurled himself into the air. Flying about in the sunshine felt great. He practiced his lightning breath. At first, only one finger of electricity left his mouth to strike the air in front of Tessa. Her force field glowed pink.
He zoomed over her, wheeling in the sky, loving the wind under his wings. He did another pass. Again, only one long bolt struck her shields.
Half an hour later, though, when he breathed, twin lengths of lightning crashed into her shield. Yes!
They both then meditated next to Sabina while Liam took care of cleaning up the dishes and getting the trailer ready for another trip.
Billings was in their future, and hopefully, they’d find Mathaal somewhere near.
Mouse returned from her flying. They all piled into the truck and took off. They got back onto Highway 89 and headed for I-90.
At Livingston, they had a late lunch at an old greasy drive-in place. Burgers, fries, and everything deep-fried. They ordered at a window and sat down at plastic tables with a view of the highway.
Sabina had a hamburger—hold everything that wasn’t cheap meat and limp vegetables. Steven ate three bacon cheeseburgers as well as a basket of onion rings. He topped that off with enough fries to keep Idaho in business for another decade.
Aria sat in sunglasses, not eating. “I’m never drinking again.”
Mouse laughed at that. “If you say that enough, you magically end up at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. There will be a guy named Ed there. He will hit on you. It won’t be pretty. Because Ed isn’t pretty.”
“Funny,” Tessa said. “I thought I was the funny one.”
“You’re the sweet one.” Mouse touched her arm. “I’m the funny, emotionally damaged one. Aria is our resident drunk. And Sabina is rising up in the ranks as our wise mamacita.”
“I’ll take it,” the blind woman said. “But I’m not even thirty. I should be older.”
“That’s why you’re the cita and not just the mama,” Mouse clarified.
Steven found himself staring at the blonde.
“What?” she asked.
He smiled at her.
She knew why. “I’m happy, okay? I mean, we’re back together, on another road trip, doing the things we do.”
“I’m not the drunk,” Aria complained. “Not like Rani from Queen, who insisted she was better than the other ‘short skirt’ girls and that she deserved someone better than Vijay.”
Tessa laughed. “Indian pop culture references! That’s so awesome!”
Steven enjoyed the love and comradery. He was glad Mouse was feeling like she fit in.
&n
bsp; After lunch, they were back on the road, racing a thunderstorm east. Mouse had volunteered to fly above them, to keep watch.
I-90 was a dark strip of asphalt parting the greenery of gorgeous fields under a cloud-heavy sky. Mountains rose to their right, the Beartooths, while the meadows and villages raced by on their left. Mostly, big rigs filled the road, but it was summertime and tourists and RVs were about as well. But not very many.
The clouds thickened until Steven had to turn on his headlights. It was so dark, it almost felt like it was night.
Night. Their next battle would be at night. Or was it in the darkness of a thunderstorm? Had Sabina gotten it wrong?
He raced past a semi. In front of him were dozens of motorcycles, driven by a collection of rough, beaded men in leathers. There might have been close to fifty of the guys. What the hell? Did Montana have its own motorcycle gang? One of the men wore a priest’s collar. That was different.
Tessa was riding shotgun. Aria slept with her cheek on Sabina in the back seat along with Liam. Mouse was in the sky above, hidden from human eyes.
Aria woke up long enough to see the bikers. “Those guys look like the men in the bar last night. No, not the same. Look at that symbol on their leather jackets.”
Steven saw them at once—red crosses in white circles. It was the same design the Dragonskins at the library had worn on their sashes.
The biker with the priest’s collar began to change.
NINETEEN
Thunder boomed like the world was ending. A second later, lightning flashed from the sky, only it wasn’t from the clouds, it was from Mouse.
She came soaring down. She blistered two bikers near the back of the pack. She sizzled their scales, but their flesh was unmarked. They kept their bikes upright and continued to transform. Wings unfurled. Hands became thick talons. Tails sprouted from spines. All on the leather seats of a variety of Harley Davidson, BMW, and Honda motorcycles.
Steven blinked. He found his truck and trailer surrounded by dragon men in tattered clothes on big hogs roaring down the freeway. Their headlights cut through the dark day. No wonder Sabina had thought their next fight would be at night.
Rain slashed down.
Steven hit the windshield wipers. They thwacked. “Dragonskins! And they seem to take lightning really well. So we should hit them with fire.”
Tessa grinned. “I got bullets for them.” She slid the window down. She stuck a Peacekeeper out and fired. A Dragonskin’s head exploded, and his bike went crashing down the highway. The semi, a blue-and-white North American big rig, swerved to avoid the wreck. The big trailer wobbled dangerously but didn’t jackknife.
The priest, the white plastic collar still around his throat, stood on his Harley, waving a familiar three-balled flail over his head. He swung it, and it crashed against the truck on the back-passenger side, where Aria was. It broke through the glass and fingers of electricity arced around the door. Aria let out a scream of pain. The whole truck shuddered. The priest struck with the flail again. This time the spikes on the balls sank into the side of the door with such force that they stayed there. The priest then jerked back on his weapon. The door was ripped open and hung on its hinges for a second, before he yanked on the flail again. He freed his weapon and completely removed the door, sending it sliding down the wet asphalt streaking under them.
Tessa reached back and fired at the priest, but her pink-tinged bullet struck a red force field.
On Steven’s left, two bikes thundered up, racing down the narrow strip of road between the truck and the cement divider. Steven was in the left lane of I-90 heading east. Both the bikers had machine guns. Rounds pounded into the side of the Chevy Silverado. The bright red magically enhanced bullets pinged and panged. Liam let out a grunt. He’d been hit.
Steven cranked the wheel to the left and bashed the bikes into the divider. The two machine-gun Dragonskins left their crushed motorcycles and scrambled onto the top of the Jayco trailer. They weren’t there for long. An amber-colored flash swept over them, and Mouse clawed them off, sending them into other bikers, who smashed against the road in a collection of metal, skin, blood, and gasoline.
“I’m having a very Mad Max moment!” Tessa screamed and fired three more shots.
“Magica Divinatio!” Sabina crawled into the front, her eyes glowing green. “I will drive, Steven. You need to get out and fight!” She finished with a “Magica Defensio!” creating a shield on the passenger side of the Chevy.
Steven morphed into his Homo Draconis form. He triggered DragonStrength and drove his left foot into the driver’s-side door, sending it crashing against the divider and then under the Jayco. The trailer bounced over it.
More machine-gun fire struck Sabina’s green shield in bright flashes of emerald blotches.
Steven swung out of the truck, and Sabina took over driving.
Tessa was reloading when Steven took to the skies, going True Form.
The priest with the lighting flail flew over and spiked Steven in his arm. He smacked the priest away with a slash of his tail. Then Steven soared off, trying to get his bearings, hurtling down the freeway in a thunderstorm, the I-90 full of motorcycles, dragon men, and that big North American big rig. The semi could provide Steven with a bit of cover for a second. He turned his wings, and the wind sent him careening over. He landed on top of the big rig’s trailer.
He unleashed a spray of fire from his mouth at the Dragonskins in front of the semi. Flames engulfed a Fat Boy Harley. The gas tank exploded, killing the dragon man and the fucker next to him.
Good. Bullets strafed Steven. These were from normal guns, and they struck him hard, but didn’t break the skin. They still hurt, dammit. Like being stung by a bee.
No sign of the priest. Another Dragonskin on the wing came storming in with a long, hooked spear. He caught Steven in his leg with the hook and held on. Another hooked spear caught his arm. He was caught between two winged lizard men gripping polearms and beating powerful wings imbued with DragonStrength.
“Magica Impetim!” Steven’s black throwing stars spun into the dragon man to his left, blowing out his chest. Steven inhaled his Animus.
Aria swept down and bit off the head of the second Dragonskin. The headless corpse struck the pavement in a spray of blood. The head rolled like a kicked ball. And she was given a good healthy dose of the mystical energy.
A red arrow struck Aria in the chest. A Dragonskin archer flashed overhead. A scarlet light illuminated the string of his bow.
The hurt Aria came smashing down onto the North American trailer’s roof. She about rolled off, but Steven grabbed her with his tail. Holding her, he unhooked the spear from his leg and hurled it into the chest of the flying archer. Impaled, the Dragonskin went smashing down into sagebrush, and Steven felt the heat of Animus fill his chest.
The trucker in the cab underneath finally lost his nerve and hit his air brakes. With a whine and a whoosh, he brought the rig to a stop.
Steve tore the arrow out of Aria. She cried out in agony, but then he roared, “Magica Cura,” and healed her wounds.
Both took to the air again, leaving the big rig to land on the Jayco trailer. The roof crumpled under their weight but held. Sabina wasn’t about to slow down. In fact, she sped up, so much so, Mouse trailed them. Six Dragonskins, wings tucked, chased after her.
More Dragonskins on wheels bashed at the trailer and the truck with maces, flails, and battle-axes. Others had AK-47s. They hit Steven and Aria with a barrage of lead. Aria cast a shield to protect them from normal weapons, while Steven’s shield took care of any magical bolts or imbued bullets.
Six bikers had raced ahead of them, but now the Dragonskins turned around, racing the wrong way on the freeway toward the savaged Chevy Silverado with Sabina behind the wheel and Tessa riding shotgun.
The six scaly bastards in front of them raised machine guns, and a couple raised spears. There were going to be coming in hot.
Tessa and Sabina slammed their shield
s down in front of the dragon bikers. Four of those motorcycles and their riders hit the invisible barriers going eighty miles an hour. Tires crumbled as did steel frames and dragon bones. It was like Steven had a window into a car masher. Skulls were flattened as flesh and engine crunched into the shield spells. Blood, oil, and gasoline gushed against the barriers and splattered the street.
Tessa and Sabina swept away their shields to let the Silverado and the Jayco bounce over the debris and bloody muck.
The two remaining Dragonskins out front dropped their rifles and spread their wings. They then gripped their Harleys to hurl them at the oncoming vehicle.
Steven and Aria unleashed their Inferno Exhalants at the same time. The fan of flames enveloped both. The gas tanks on the Harleys exploded, and the Chevy truck drove through the destruction.
The two Dragonskins, bikeless now, dodged the fire and shrapnel and darted in. Wrong move. Aria lifted a claw and ripped the torso out of one of the dragon men, and Steven ended the other with his spinning black stars.
Mouse latched onto the back of the trailer and heaved herself onto it. She scrambled forward, but with both Steven and Aria on the Jayco, there wasn’t a lot of room. Mouse turned human and whirled around with the Slayer Blade out. Green flames coated the sword.
One of the Dragonskins attacking from the air lashed out with a whip. It struck Mouse and flayed her skin. He then hurled a dagger from a belt around his middle. Aria’s shield took care of that. Another Dragonskin flew in close, and Aria cooked him with a spray of flame.
Steven ducked a flail. It was from the priest, back again and ready to party. He wheeled back down onto a Harley, driven by one of his cronies, who handed him a shotgun. The priest fired round after round of magical shot at Steven, who blocked the gunfire with his shields.
Machine-gun fire came from the other side of the trailer. The bullets sparkled off Aria’s crimson shield.
They’d taken out a bunch of the Dragonskins, but there was still a fuckton of the enemies left. And they were battering and bashing the truck with gunfire and medieval weapons.
