“He showed me what it meant to be human,” Gus said, smiling. “My Lord has redeemed me. He has unburdened me from my sins. You too can bow down and let Lord Dark redeem you. It’s not too late.”
He grabbed Lucan’s arm but Lucan swatted him back. “What’s wrong with you?”
Gus dropped to his knees. He raised his hands to the sky.
“Smile for me, old dragon lord, for the world will soon stop spinning. Shadow’s flame is you, old lord, and this dead world needs your kindling!”
And instantly, Gus erupted into flames. He screamed both in rapture and agony, and then he keeled over as the flames ravaged him.
Earl ran for a fire extinguisher and doused the body in white foam. As the flames subsided, Miri looked away when she saw that the man’s body had been charred beyond recognition in just a few seconds. His body crumbled into ash and char, and the smell of rotten flesh swarmed the room.
In the concrete, in the place where Gus’s body had been, a message smoldered in dying flames.
Lucan is next.
Lucan went pale. “You think we should still spare him now?” he asked quietly, throwing himself into the chair and closing his eyes.
Miri shook her head, speechless. Her legs were going to give out and it was a miracle she was still standing.
She heard a whirring sound behind her, and she turned around just in time to see a white orb flying through the skylight, into the starry sky, and away.
XXII
“We’ve been followed,” Miri said. She patrolled the factory floor, looking in every dark area for any more signs of followers. The white orb had freaked her out and she wasn’t taking any chances.
“You’re not going to find anything,” Lucan said. He was still slumped in the chair, a hand over his face.
“Making sure,” Miri said. “That was a dragon, and whoever it was, it didn’t want to be seen.”
“It’s my uncle’s dragon.”
“Governor Grimoire?”
“You heard the rumors about how he secretly made a deal with a dragon for protection, right? That was it.”
“That was just a rumor,” Miri said. “I thought it was something your camp spread to attack the governor.”
“Negative,” Lucan said. He stomped the floor and said “Fuck! I’m so fucking fucked it’s not even fucking funny. Goddamn it!”
He picked up the chair and threw it at the cage. It splintered into pieces upon hitting the metal bars and he slid to his knees, panting. “Fuck!”
“Lucan, stop cursing!” Miri shouted.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “That dragon is working with my uncle. He’s white, with blue eyes. Old.”
“Surely you aren’t talking about Norwyn?” Miri asked. “He hasn’t been seen in over five hundred years.”
“Norwyn the White from the northern continent? Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was him.”
“Oh, god,” Miri said. “What’s his Abstraction?”
“Beats me. But knowing my uncle, it’s probably justice. Norwyn doesn’t leave the Hall much, so he sent his little drone orb to spy on us.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t think it was important. It was between me and my uncle. Besides, you said you didn’t want anything to do with the politics.”
Miri pulled out her strategy sheet. She crossed everything out.
“Hey, I thought we had a plan!” Lucan cried.
“Norwyn changes everything.”
“Don’t think so,” Lucan said, climbing to his feet. He rubbed his elbow through his sling. “I think very little is going to change the fact that we’re all screwed.”
“A few hours ago, you were the one telling me it was all going to be okay,” Miri said. “What happened?”
Lucan gestured to the broken cage. “This is what happened.”
“We held him for several days. We can capture him again,” Miri said. “I just hope he doesn’t do anything terrible by then.”
“Earl, call Celesse,” Lucan said. “I haven’t been able to reach her.”
“What’s Celesse going to do?” Miri asked.
“There’s a last resort, though I don’t know what a difference it will make,” Lucan said.
Lucan grabbed her pen from her hand and began to doodle on her notebook. He made a big circle in wispy loops and then he wrote PLAN Z inside. “In the off chance that the dragon got out, we inserted a geolocation chip under his scales.”
“Then why don’t we go get him?” Miri asked.
“That’s the catch. It’s magicked and it has a cost. The moment we start tracking the chip, it’ll start glowing and he’ll know.”
“But he’s never seen a chip before.”
“Still too risky. We need to wait for the right time.”
Lucan adjusted his cuff links and cursed again. “Shit’s about to get even more fucked up, Miri. We have some loose ends to tie up. I’ll find Celesse and we’ll work on the election. Pre-emptive damage control. Now that my uncle knows something’s up, I’m going to go after him hard. Your investigation—sounds like we have a problem there, too, right?”
Miri remembered Laner’s call. She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ll find out.”
“We’ll shore up our liabilities and meet tomorrow. The old dragon should bungle his hiding by then. I mean, how long can Old Dark hide in a major metropolitan city? He’s never known anything so big. He’s bound to screw something up.”
Miri picked up her purse. “I’ll call you.”
“Meet me here at five p.m.” Lucan saluted Earl. “Looks like you’re not gonna see your family for a while.”
“Quite alright, sir,” Earl said.
“We might all be spending more time with our families when this is over,” Lucan said. “Because it’s going to take a miracle to get out of this.”
XXIII
Dark woke to the tittering of birds and car horns. His bones popped as he rolled his head from side to side.
He hadn’t gotten a good look at the rooftop where he slept, but now it was daylight and the sun shone behind a hazy cloud in the azure morning sky. The roof was covered with grass, with a small pool in the center. A tall wire tower rose into the air, with a needle-like spire blinking at the top. It was shaped like a Crafter dragon with its mouth open in mid-roar, looking down on Dark with a ferocious face.
The building was at least fifty stories in the air. It gave a panoramic view of the city, and in the daylight he could see the gray waters of the ocean in the distance.
It was good know that he was in fact on the western continent.
Home. At least, what should have been home.
He yawned and stretched, became aware of his aching eye socket. A dull pain in his wing reminded him of last night.
He flapped several times. He would be able to fly. But he had exerted himself too much. He would have to be more careful.
He sniffed the humid air and tried to think about what to do next. The air was slightly smoky.
Then he sensed someone behind him, turned his head just in time to see another dragon baring its teeth at him, and a claw swiping through the air.
Dark jumped out of the way and the dragon snapped at him.
It was a Crafter. Purple scales. Young. Slender. She looked like a serpent of the sea. She growled at him and said “You think you can invade my home?”
“What?” Dark asked. “I was sleeping.”
“In my home!”
He looked around. Aside from the grass and pool, there was nothing else to indicate that a dragon lived here. He hadn’t even smelled her scent last night.
“How did you hide from me?” Dark asked.
“You really are a fool!”
The dragon leaped at him, her teeth aimed for his neck. He sidestepped a hare slower than he would have liked, landing on the grass with a thud. His joints tingled as he pushed through the pain, rising to his feet.
She flew at him again and he lashed her with his ta
il, knocking her thousand-pound weight away from him.
He roared at her and she roared back.
She coiled up and her claws glowed.
Dark’s eyes widened and he recalled the magical cache within him. He felt it radiating inside of his body as light swirled over the rooftop.
Upon seeing Dark’s magic, the dragon looked fearful and she stopped her spell.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Will you stop your attack or will I have to kill you?” Dark asked.
“You’re the criminal, not me.”
Dark stopped the resurgence of magic within him, and the glowing light in his body stopped. “Good,” he said. “You spared yourself a terrible death.”
The color was fading from Dark’s scales. His body was blinking from gray to black. The color change spell he had used last night was wearing off.
He imagined his scales changing back to gray, reached deep within himself into the cache of magic. And he stopped blinking. The silvery gray color in his scales was restored.
The dragon’s voice was calmer.
“Are you confused? Why did you decide to sleep in my home?”
He scrutinized her.
“I watched you all night,” she said. “You slept like you owned this place.”
So she had watched him. She had probably waited for just the right moment to strike.
But she did not know who he was.
“How old are you, my dear?”
“One thousand two hundred years old.”
She would have been born after his reign, after his curse.
“You look half dead,” she said. “Abstraction would do you some good.”
“What is this Abstraction?”
Light surrounded the dragon’s body and she disappeared. Staticky images of her eyes floated in the grass.
Dark looked around frantically as her eyes danced across the floor. “Why, this is Abstraction. The building you stand on provides cell phone service.”
The eyes drifted toward the metal tower and merged with it. The tower hummed and its spire blinked as it attenuated itself to a frequency.
Suddenly Dark heard voices—hundreds of them, all speaking at once in a jumble.
He glanced around and saw no one.
“Over here, old dragon!” the dragon yelled.
The tower was vibrating now, and the dragon’s mouth was grinning at Dark.
“Who are you?” Dark asked.
The metal dragon tower spoke, but in the voice of other people. Her voice changed frequencies every few seconds, from male to female, dragon to elf, elf to human—a patchwork of glitching voices.
“I am the guardian of communication,” she said. “I am reimagined in the tradition of the ancients, but my tributes are far sweeter.”
“I see no tributes here,” Dark said, snarling.
She was blaspheming the ancestors, and he would not stand for it. But his body ached and he knew he would not be able to fight her, not in her current state.
“I am the embodiment of communication, old dragon. How do you receive your tribute? You don’t. The citizens of this city pay tribute to me in the form of monthly payments, and with my blessing, they receive the ability to communicate. Entire teams of humans and elves work under me, and while sometimes the arrangement is unfortunate, there is never any misunderstanding as to my power.”
Dark didn’t understand a word she said. But something about her tone troubled him.
“Are you a mountain dragon? Everyone knows about Abstraction.” Her tone was condescending now.
Dark thought it was strange to continue the conversation even though her body wasn’t directly in front of him.
“Ah...well yes, I am not from here, my dear. I have chosen the natural world as my home.” He faked a cough. “Far better for this old dragon’s health.”
“I would take you inside to the floors below but you’re not abstract, so you wouldn’t fit.”
“That’s quite a shame,” Dark said.
He was glad for it.
“You could have seen the myriad ways society pays tribute to me. This entire building is an altar, old one. I have three shopping malls within me, floors upon floors of offices, a cafeteria with the city’s finest chefs. Thousands gather within me every day to pay me tribute in the form of money, time, and work. And my building stands on the city skyline, immortalized forever in photographs. Some things never change, even after a thousand years.…”
“Perhaps.”
Dark was amazed at what the dragon told her. Was it all really true? He didn’t think she had a reason to lie. But this society still eluded him, and its strange ways made him wish for simpler days.
“Does this convince you to reconsider your antiquarian ways, old one? There are many Abstractions that could suit one like you.”
Dark didn’t know what to say as the dragon eye stared at him. “I am trying to find an old friend,” he said. “Perhaps you can help me? I mistakenly thought that this place was his home.”
The dragon tower flashed and the purple Crafter appeared above him in her dragon form.
“Stubborn,” she said. “It’s the mark of an early death, believe me. Who are you looking for?”
“His name is Frog.”
“You must be going senile, then. Why didn’t you say so? You’re in the wrong place.”
She pointed to a tall, glistening skyscraper in the distance. Its glass was green, and the sunlight sparkled on it like sequins on the surface of a pond. On the top of the building was a white logo of a frog on a lily pad, with the words The Frog Channel.
XXIV
Celesse stood underneath a willow tree in the Bogville town square. The morning was hot and dusty, and the dust formed a thin layer over the sun, giving the light a sepia tone.
She wore her baseball cap, white button-up shirt, jeans, and her hair tied into a ponytail.
The cool shade of the willow gave her some privacy. The long strands of the willow wavered, releasing a mossy smell, but through them she had a clear view of the tea parlor with apartments above.
It was an afternoon lull, and most of the seats were empty save a large group of elders having tea in the back. The baristas were cleaning the equipment, probably in preparation for the afternoon rush. The windows were aglow with the byproduct of cleaning grimoires. Even from several hundred feet away Celesse smelled an aromatic mixture of dark roasted grounds and lemon tea.
She surveyed the building. It was a two-story masonry building with cornices fashioned into fish. It looked human-constructed, but Celesse knew from experience that the inside had to have magical construction. The apartment windows above were tinted—the telltale sign of privacy grimoires.
She spotted a side glass door with a stairwell. It was propped open with a brick.
The area was quiet and there was no one in sight.
She crossed the street, avoiding a crack in the asphalt as she made her way toward the building.
She entered the side alley and tried the glass door, pulling a rusted metal handle.
It was opened quietly and she slipped inside into a narrow stairwell. The chatter of the coffee shop was to her right, separated by another glass door. The walls needed paint and the stairs were cracked here and there.
A coffee machine hummed loudly, and she used the opportunity to dash up the stairs.
She entered a hallway with several doors on each side. A pentagram glowed on each of the doors.
She figured as much.
She stopped in front of Tony’s door and knocked softly.
No sound.
She put her ear to the door.
She thought she heard footsteps. And then a window opening. She ran downstairs and burst out of the door, into the hot and humid afternoon. The blast of heat made her sweat.
She ran around the corner of the building just in time to see Tony jumping off a fire escape and into the alley. Even though he had a sling on, he ran as fast as he could.
Cele
sse tucked her cap over her head and took off after him.
She could chase. She ran track in high school and college. No one could outrun her. She was still fit and in shape.
The kid was fast. He reached the end of the alley and she picked up her pace, breathing in and out, blading her hands to give herself extra speed.
They flew out the alley and into a park.
A park.
The kid was smart, fleeing into a semi-public place.
They ran through a field of withering trees. The sun beat down on them. Beads of sweat erupted on her forehead. Her shirt was going to be drenched after this. But she kept going, paced her breathing as she gained on him slowly.
“You can’t escape,” Celesse said.
Tony reached a parking lot. He slid on the gravel road and looked around. Then he dashed to a red convertible on the far end of the lot where there were no cars.
He stopped and then turned around, panting.
Celesse caught up with him.
“You’re coming with me,” Celesse said.
Tony scowled at her and then looked into the convertible.
The door opened, and Celesse cursed as Amal Shalewood stepped out, recording the entire encounter on her phone.
“Miss Cullis, do you want to tell me what’s going on here?”
XXV
Frog picked up several chairs and set them upright. The studio was almost restored to its normal self, and it gave him some peace to know that things were back to balance again. Unless some new CEO came along again and put him into a rage.
He had cast a painting spell to give the broken but now restored equipment a fresh coat of paint that quick-dried upon casting, and the studio smelled brand new.
He slid on his red tie, clipped his lapel microphone to it, and he sat in his chair again and practiced his upcoming broadcast.
It shouldn’t have been weird to talk to a camera screen and know that the entire city was watching. But with an empty studio, his voice echoed throughout the place and reminded him how empty it was.
Old Evil (The Last Dragon Lord Book 2) Page 13
