Old Evil (The Last Dragon Lord Book 2)

by Michael La Ronn

  Jasmine searched the sky and breathed out deeply. “I have no idea.”

  XVI

  The highway sped by in a blur as Miri dialed Jasmine.

  Jasmine’s voicemail sounded again.

  “Crap,” she said, disconnecting.

  The tall buildings and traffic whirred by like a headache that would never leave. She took her glasses off and set them on the console. Running her fingers through her hair, she rested her head against the window and closed her eyes.

  What happened?

  Miri would never forget the fear in Jasmine’s voice. The screaming.

  If anything happened to her, she would never be able to forgive herself.

  And Dark….

  He had lied to her. She should have never trusted the old dragon. She was going to make him regret the lie. She didn’t know how, but she was going to reassert her dominance.

  This was not acceptable.

  This wasn’t the old ages. This wasn’t an elven village on the beach. It wasn’t some game. The world was not fodder he could just stomp all over.

  “What do you think happened, Miss?” Earl asked. His voice had been concerned ever since she told him what happened, and he had been driving as fast as he could toward the city limits.

  “I don’t know,” Miri said. “But we’ve got to get there before it’s too late.”

  He handed her a bottle of water. “You look flushed, and might I say, a little sick.”

  She waved the bottle away. Suddenly her own saliva in her mouth tasted wet and thick. “That’s because I am sick right now.”

  Earl glanced at her in the rearview mirror, then cleared his throat. After a few moments, he said, “Can I say something?”

  “What?” Miri asked, rubbing her forehead.

  “For someone who deals with stress a lot, you don’t do well. You ever thought to get yourself checked out, Miss?”

  She didn’t handle stress well. But going to the doctor was the last thing on her mind.

  “You’re kind, Earl, to mention that. Yes, you’re right—I don’t deal with stress like I should.”

  “You carry it in your shoulders, too,” Earl said, tapping his shoulder with a quick tap. “Miss Celesse is the same way. She goes for a quick jog and that seems to clear it up.”

  “I’ve never had much time to jog.”

  Miri lay on the seat and her head felt a little better. The needling sensation in her temples relented somewhat. “I really should learn how to manage myself better. I guess I’ve been pushing myself hard lately. The university needs this and needs that and I’m the most reliable one to get it done, even if it means teaching from sunup to sundown. My body’s used to it. And now that things are so crazy, I’ve never had the chance to slow down.”

  “There’s a limit that one can take. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” she said.

  Earl took off his chauffeur’s cap to reveal black hair that was thinning at the top. “Stress’ll make a man go bald. Plus, I had a mental breakdown a few years back, Miss.”

  “What?!”

  Earl pursed his lips and his grip on the steering wheel tightened as he wove the sedan between two large trucks. “I was in another profession, of course. I pushed myself too hard. Eighteen hour days, seven days a week. My marriage was in trouble. My employer was too demanding. One evening, I pulled over on the side of the road and just cried like a baby. The police found me, told me I was babbling nonsense. They checked me into the mental ward, and I’ll be honest—I don’t know why my wife and kids just didn’t leave me there.”

  Suddenly Miri’s pain and headache didn’t seem so bad. A softness overcame her.

  “What happened? How did you turn around?”

  “My wife stuck by my side. I prayed every night. Started driving a cab in the Half Eight. Less hours, less pay. One rainy night I picked up two people who were soaked on a corner. One of them was a pretty woman. The other was Lucan.”

  Miri gasped.

  “That was back before anyone knew him, of course. He was still filthy rich, though. The woman was one of his mistresses—he was married then. I won’t go into it, but I drove him where they needed to go and didn’t ask questions. He told me he was looking for a personal driver. He’d come into a lot of money and didn’t want to take cabs anymore. I’ve been driving for him ever since.”

  “Less stressful?”

  “Occasionally,” he said with a sly smile. “But I’ve learned to deal with it.”

  “So what’s the moral of this story, then?”

  “The reason I’ve taken to you, Miss, is because we’re kindred spirits. If I can help you avoid a misstep, then our friendship was worth it.”

  “Earl....”

  Earl put his cap back on and winked at her. “Besides, you got a pretty head of hair. I’d hate to see you lose it.”

  Miri laughed as her phone rang.

  It was Lucan.

  She fumbled for the phone and put the warm screen to her ear. “Lucan, we’ve got a problem.”

  “God, not another one. I was going to tell you the same thing.”

  “You know, then?”

  “Know what?”

  Miri paused. “Are we talking about the same thing?”

  “I was shot, Miri.”

  She nearly dropped the phone. “When?”

  “Last night. Remember that college kid? His dad tried to shoot me. We had a huge standoff at Skyscraper Park.”

  “I knew it,” Miri said. “That explains the commotion. Are you okay?”

  “They just let me out. I’ll be fine. That kid is in deep crap though.”

  “Shouldn’t you be resting?”

  “I’ll rest when this election’s over. How’s the investigation going?”

  Miri sighed. “That’s the problem.”

  She told him about the chests, Jasmine’s frantic phone call, and that she and Earl were headed toward the bogs now to see what happened.

  “You can’t go there,” Lucan said.

  “Why?”

  “Miri, do you have any grimoires with you?”

  She looked around the limo and then sighed.

  “That’s what I thought,” Lucan said, acknowledging her silence as acceptance. “Whatever was in those chests, it’s too late to contain it. Our problem is that dragon.”

  “Yeah. He lied to me. And I believed him.”

  “Turn around and swing by the hospital on your way in. We’ll go see Old Dark. I’m feeling particularly like an asshole today. We’ll feel him out on what was in the chests. I’ll send Gunther Penrose and his crew to the bog. Don’t worry, everything’s going to be fine.”

  XVII

  Dark twitched as Gus and Orion cleaned his cage. With brooms they swept up hunks of meat. Dark could have crushed them both with a swipe of his tail, but he was helplessly immobile.

  The two men were quiet this time, working quickly. They threw buckets of water and soap across the floor and mopped blood from underneath Dark’s feet. Soon the cage floor was covered in suds that they pushed toward a drain in the corner. The drain gurgled as it accepted the water, and a clean, antiseptic scent filled the room.

  The whole routine had made him numb. The taunts, for the most part, had stopped, and Dark was glad for it. Now they just grumbled as they went about their routine.

  Dark closed his eyes and tried to ignore the binding pain that constricted his scales. He had learned to dull it by thinking positive affirmations.

  They will die.

  I will rip them open and savor every moment of it.

  I will do it slowly.

  They won’t know it’s coming.

  I will strike swiftly.

  I will take back what rightfully belongs to me.

  I will be revered once again.

  “You ready?” Gus asked, setting his broom against the wall outside the cage. “The spell’s almost done, so hurry up.”

  Orion was almost finishe
d mopping up his side of the cage. He tried to get the suds out of one of the corners.

  “Who cares about being a perfectionist?” Gus asked. “Just finish so we can get out of here.”

  And then Dark sensed it.

  He felt it in his scales first. A tingling.

  He knew the sensation. He would have known that feeling anywhere. His body stiffened.

  Something was coming. His body was preparing itself.

  Dark wanted to grin, but his face was still paralyzed.

  Then with a flash the room was covered in bright light.

  “What the?” Orion said.

  Dark breathed in deeply as the shimmering light blinded him.

  The wisps of magic streamed into his chest, flowing through his entire body.

  Magic. From his own personal collection. He had taken it from the aquifer a thousand years ago, already paid the price on it. It was one of many personal caches.

  And Miri had just sent it to him.

  Slowly, his paralysis faded, and Dark regained feeling in his legs as he dropped to the ground.

  The light faded, and when it did, Dark stood upright and felt taller than he’d ever been.

  Orion was on the floor at his feet, looking up in fear.

  Dark rolled his neck side to side, and then he spread his wings as wide as he could.

  The bandages around his wings burst and fluttered down like snowflakes.

  “I am risen,” Dark said.

  He glanced at the electrical box in the distance. He reached deep within himself and sprouted a plasma boomerang from one of his claws. It felt good to use his cache. The smoothness of spell casting made him feel all-powerful again.

  He hurled the boomerang at the electrical box. The box erupted in a fan of sparks, making the room go black.

  Dark grabbed Orion in one claw, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gus running to shut the cage, but he slapped the door with his tail, sending the man flying.

  Gus crashed on a conveyor belt and in the impact knocked the wind out of him.

  Orion wriggled in Dark’s claws, and the dragon laughed.

  But then Orion’s hand flashed.

  A grimoire.

  Pink light projected from Orion’s grimoire and the cage sealed itself shut.

  “You can kill me, but you’re not getting out of here,” Orion said.

  “Oh?” Dark asked. He closed his eyes and imagined the cage exploding. An explosion ripped from his chest and it broke the steel bars. Dark leapt out the cage and landed on the ground with a boom.

  Orion yelled as Dark slammed him on the conveyor belt next to Gus, who was breathing heavily.

  “I should kill you both right now,” Dark said, “But I’ve decided to be generous. You will not die today.”

  The energy bubbled in his body and he could hardly contain it.

  He pointed to Gus. “You are going to deliver a message to Lucan Grimoire.”

  The dragon put the man’s ear to his lips and whispered a message. “Do you understand?”

  Gus nodded.

  “Excellent,” Dark said, waving a claw over the man’s face. Gus breathed in magical spores and he looked he had just been hypnotized. “Deliver my message and then await your punishment.”

  Gus fell off the table, scrambled away on all fours before running out of the room.

  “As for you,” Dark said, grinning at Orion. “You can go.”

  Orion looked at him curiously. “I—I can go?”

  “Yes. I have no need for you.”

  Orion didn’t waste any time, and he ran out of room. But before he exited, Dark called his name.

  “Orion!”

  The man turned around just as a sickle of plasma vaporized his entire body.

  “I said I had no need for you, but I didn’t say you could live,” Dark said.

  He spread his wings and regarded the factory, his prison.

  With three heaves, he vomited up the grimoires and left them in a pile on the ground. That would be his goodbye note.

  “Now it’s time to figure out how to get out of here,” he said.

  Intermezzo

  They called her Rain.

  According to the elven oral histories, she lived in the mountains on the eastern continent, in a village where the bluffs were rocky and the ocean shores were choppy and difficult to sail.

  Rain was the daughter of an elder.

  In the afternoon when the fishermen came home from the stormy seas, she would stand on the beach with a bond fire to her back and she would sharpen her knives.

  Her job was to fillet the fish, and she was so good at it she could debone a tilapia without thinking. No one who ever ate her fish suffered from a bone in the throat, and she was prosperous in her role.

  But Rain longed for the sea. For an elven girl who grew up in her village and had never left, the world held untold wonders for her. She wanted to travel.

  The village elders warned of dragons in the mountains and so they traveled in groups. There were stories of dragons accosting parties and stealing their supplies.

  But despite it all, she still wanted to see the world outside of her village.

  One morning she asked her father if she could join the fishing expedition.

  “For years I have cleaned and prepared fish for the village,” she said. “I have mastered this skill. I want to sail the ocean and catch them now.”

  Her father laughed. “You are not ready for the sea.”

  There were female fisherman, but only a few, and they were much older than Rain. But the truth was that her father knew the girl’s wandering spirit and was scared for her.

  “If you think the sea will hold you some day, why don’t you learn how to cook? You understand deboning a fish but that is only half of the respect you owe it.”

  And so Rain learned to cook fish. She roasted them with vegetables, learned how to make savory stews with tomatoes she grew on vines next to her hut. At their annual celebration the village elves commended her on her cooking, and the other elders were impressed. Even Rain’s father could not deny his daughter’s talent.

  As they cleaned up from the celebration and elves lay drunk on the sand she asked her father to be a fisherwoman.

  “You have shown your utmost respect for the lifeblood of the sea. But daughter, you are still not ready, for you cannot command a boat. To understand the intricacies of wood and its ways, you should learn to build first.”

  He assigned Rain to hut builder and repairer. When a new family required a hit, she helped build it. Any time the typhoons caused damage, she was chopping wood and on the roofs repairing the thatches.

  When it was time for her to marry, she built her own hut and lived alone. She could build and repair just as well as the male elves, and so again she earned their respect.

  But still her father would not let her onto the high seas.

  He cycled her into every role the village offered; medicine woman, seer, blacksmith, boat repairer, goat slaughterer. And she excelled at every role, blessing the village with more prosperity than it had had before. No one could deny the girl’s talent.

  And after four long years, her father agreed to let her go fishing. He gave her his boat and a spear and told her to return with ten fresh fish. He pushed her out onto the sea, and as the waves took her she rejoiced, for it was the moment she had been waiting for her entire life. She paddled as fast as she could until she could no longer see the village on the horizon.

  She cast a net into the sea and waited. The hot sun beat down on her boat, and tossing and turning on the rough gray waves, she wondered if she could succeed at fishing as well as she’d succeeded at everything else.

  Something tugged on her net and almost pulled her into the water. She tried to pull up the net but it started dragging the boat. She paddled in the opposite direction but she could not overcome it.

  Surely this must have been a large fish, one that would make her father and the village proud. This was her chance to prove h
erself.

  The force dragged her toward the shore and she battled the tug with her own strength, succeeding every now and again in pulling it in her direction.

  Then, a massive storm moved in from the deep sea. The skies grew dark, the lightning and thunder started immediately, and sheets and sheets of rain poured into the boat.

  Rain lost her grip and could only watch as the boat was dragged toward the shore.

  But the shore was not familiar. In battling the fish she realized that the currents had taken her several miles away from the village, and she could see where a great brown stream emptied into the sea.

  At that moment, her net snapped and she saw a long shadow rise, creating a tidal wave.

  Suddenly her boat was in the air and she was holding on tight. As the boat raced down the face of the wave, she saw a scaly mass rise from the sea—sparkling aquamarine with a mane so white it looked like sea foam.

  A Crafter dragon.

  It rose high into the sky, hitting Rain’s boat and breaking it to pieces.

  As she was falling through the air, she grabbed at the Crafter dragon’s mane and caught the last tuft on its tail.

  She held on as it flew over the shore and toward the mountains that sat atop her village.

  When it reached the base of the highest mountain, Rain let go and landed on a patch of rocks, and she watched as the dragon entered a giant maw on the side of the mountain.

  From the maw came a pinkish glow. It was shockingly beautiful.

  But she was afraid. She hid in the mountains until the thunderstorm passed. She built herself a shelter, and she killed a goat for food using the skills she had learned in the village. From a tree branch she fashioned a pointed spear.

  In the middle of the night, the dragon emerged from the cave and flew back into the sea, submerging itself in its depths.

  When she was sure it was gone, Rain couldn’t help herself and she snuck into the dragon’s cave.

  The pink color glowed on the walls, and she heard a distant roaring. At first she ran from the cave, thinking it was another dragon, but she listened closer and realized it sounded like rushing water. She ventured deeper into the cave for what seemed like miles. The ground slanted downward and she walked until she was below sea level.