by Rhys Ford
Oscar leaped for us as Aisla made her move on Ryder, damning us to a dance I didn’t know the steps to. Killing Oscar would be satisfying, but it felt like murder. Killing Malone would have felt fantastic, and that definitely fell into the murder category.
I could deal with the ainmhi dubh. He needed putting down, and I was certain there was nothing left of the human he’d once been. Not now. Not as I saw his eyes flare with red light and the hideous dead gray patches under his skin begin to spread out, connecting slowly and erasing his pearly hue. Shooting Aisla hadn’t freed Oscar. Nothing would free Oscar. Nothing but a few well-placed bullets and then hopefully death.
No one—human or elfin—deserved to live as a puppet. Not even an asshole like Oscar Bennett.
I went in firing. If Malone double-crossed me, I only needed one shot to take care of him. That left me plenty for Oscar.
Malone headed to Cari, keeping the shotgun up in case Oscar charged, but the ainmhi dubh was focused on me. He lurched as he walked, his half-formed feet flapping and catching on the rocks. A fleshy tendril tore off, caught on a jut, but the ainmhi dubh barely noticed, his injured head low to the ground and his eyes pinned on my every move.
There was chanting, unsidhe words darkening the air, and the sounds of a struggle behind me, but I kept my attention on Aisla’s ill-formed monster. I had to trust Ryder to take care of things. As hard as it was to let go, I felt calm inside, an odd, tingling faith whispering reassurances that he had my back. It was a strange feeling, a stone I could step on to keep myself steady. I watched Malone reach Cari. Then he put the shotgun aside, crouching over her as she sat up.
“Just you and me, dog,” I muttered at the ainmhi dubh. “Let’s send you back to hell.”
My first shot pinged against the floor, a ricochet after Oscar feinted to the left. The shrapnel or something caught him, because his side began to bleed, but he kept coming. Another bullet, then another, hitting his chest then his fat canine jowl, but he’d either caught his second wind or Aisla was pouring all of her juice into his existence, gambling he would get me before I could kill him.
Lunging at me, Oscar hit low, knocking my feet out from under me, and I tucked myself in, hissing at the sear of his blood on my skin. My jacket arm bubbled and cooked where he tried to bite me, and my already torn jeans were little help in keeping his spit off of my legs. Shoved down into the floor, I turned, trying to get a good clean shot, but Oscar twisted about, shaking me like I was a jackalope he’d hunted down on the lava fields.
“Cuireadh tu eagal air nasam hanaich, Ciméara,” Aisla shouted at me, a curse on my life or maybe just telling me something I already knew. She was holding Ryder off, her hands glowing with a putrid yellow light, and he jumped back when she dove at him. “Rach a dhìth.”
Death came.
But it didn’t come for me.
Oscar’s throat lengthened as he snapped his bristling maw, trying for my face with a forceful shove. I responded by twisting my arm, not caring for the pop in my shoulder, but there wasn’t any time for delicacy. Aisla was pouring everything she had into him, strengthening his form until my body creaked with his added muscular weight. Pushing the Glock’s muzzle against the dog’s jaw, I felt it catch on a condyle, and then I squeezed the trigger.
I only had a few bullets left, but I made good use of them. The back of Oscar’s head bulged when the first shot scattered metal shards through his brain and attempted to break through his skull from the inside. The second did the trick, following the path already forged through his crinkled flesh and hitting the sweet spot I’d cracked along the upper ridge, blowing spongy gray matter out of the hole I made in his skull. My final shot went wider, angled by Oscar’s falling body, and the dog’s jaw disintegrated under a rush of gunpowder and metal.
Kicking the ainmhi dubh off of me, I stood up as Aisla slapped Ryder’s face, releasing the magic coating her palms. The room’s air turned sick with a sulfurous fetor, and Ryder went down in a thick cloud of yellow spores.
My ribs ached, and I was coughing up blood, but Ryder’s fall got me to my feet. He was still moving, crawling to get to clean air, but Aisla’s spell lingered over him. Fumbling for the clip in my pocket, I nearly dropped the Glock as Aisla straightened her shoulders, raised her arms with blood pouring out of her wound and down her side, then began to bind me again.
Or at least she tried.
Because the room went dark with the arrival of one cold-fire-breathing, angry lizard.
There is nothing louder than an angry dragon, especially one missing an egg.
She landed hard and fierce, her wings stretched out from her body. About the size of a transport bus, the dragon filled the broken room, her sleek body easily folding into the space with her long tail slashing at the air above my head. Thick, long spikes bristled down her back, undulating in ripples as she hunched over the dead ainmhi dubh, tearing at Oscar’s flesh with her sharp curved talons. The lizard’s scales whispered as she moved, a powdery dusting of sound under the whoosh of her wings mantling. Roaring, she breathed, shooting out tendrils of ice-azure flames. Her screaming rage poured from her open mouth, the length of her throat working hard while she buffeted us with the storm of her cries.
Aisla kept chanting as if there wasn’t an enormous raging lizard between us, her hateful words skulking through me and wrapping around my spine. I was ready for her this time, stronger inside even as my body longed to collapse to the hard ground. Pain was key—her pain, not mine—and I reached for the only weapons I had available to me, the reloaded Glock and a prayer I could aim straight, because the pain of my strained joints and flesh was making my eyes water.
“You are nothing, Ciméara.” Aisla’s hands began to glow again, sparks arcing between her fingers. “And I will remind you of that.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Blah, blah, blah,” I shot back.
The dragon turned and cocked her head, one of Oscar’s legs dangling from her mouth. She stared down at me, probably seeing me for the first time, and her eyes narrowed, slitting into metallic slivers under her heavy ridged brow.
“Oh shit.”
Oscar’s limb fell to the ground with a wet splat, and the dragon took a cautious step toward me. I went from being nose to ass to catching the lizard’s full attention, and Oscar didn’t seem to be doing it for her.
Having to choose between killing Aisla and ducking the dragon, I’d go for dragon avoidance every time. Unfortunately for me, there really wasn’t any place to hide. Most of the rubble was easily brushed away for a massive lizard, and I didn’t want to draw her attention toward any of the others. Ryder was in the archway, out of range of Aisla’s smite, while Malone and Cari were tucked behind a large pile of debris by the stone shelf.
The dragon’s head loomed, her serpentine neck twisting about until her breath ruffled my hair. The fiery wisps ghosting from her nostrils gave off enough heat to slightly scald my face, but she held back, her enormous copper-shot eyes whirling as she studied me. A huff of air blew from her muzzle, feathering the frills around her mouth, and I got a lungful of dragon breath for my troubles.
I could hear Aisla droning, but oddly enough, I didn’t care. The black-pearl dragon simply stood there, coiling around herself so she could breathe me in. For all I knew she was contemplating what part of me to start with, a nibble of an elbow as an appetizer or perhaps a hand. Who didn’t love munching on a crispy hock? Aisla was a distant, murmuring nuisance, especially while I was staring up at a mouth full of long white teeth.
There was a tug, a familiar hateful tug, and my stomach clenched at the feel of Aisla digging in. I grunted, unwilling to take my eyes off of the pearl lizard, but I needed to break the unsidhe’s hold on me. Severing contact with the dragon was going to be a risk. Most predators stalled their attack for as long as their prey stared them down, but Aisla’s threads were beginning to thicken, tightening to strangle my thoughts, and I didn’t have much time left before I’d fall to her will.
“D
on’t eat me, dragon,” I muttered. “Just… don’t.”
I dropped my eyes from the lizard and found Aisla among the fallen walls. She looked worse for wear and determined. Bloodied and covered with dust, she stared through me, her mouth moving around a sibilance of arcane meant to bring me to my knees. I lifted the Glock, forcing my leaden arm to respond. My fingers were numb, and I fought to pull on the trigger when the dragon blocked my view of Aisla.
There wasn’t much time to complain about being knocked on my ass by a dragon’s tail. My feet seemed to find air at the same time my finger locked down on the Glock’s trigger, and the gun recoiled in my hand as I shot a bullet up into the cavern’s ceiling. The rocks gouged into me, bruising my already battered flesh, and I was wedged in against the dragon’s tail and a plastered slab, more helpless than a fat kappa rolled over onto its back.
The lizard stretched herself lean, wings tucked up against her back. Then her triangular head shot out and she snapped Aisla’s head off with a delicate snip of her long snout.
I could have sworn I heard Aisla’s casting continue all the way down the dragon’s throat until her decapitated head hit the lizard’s belly.
The unsidhe’s body didn’t seem to notice it’d lost its head, and the dragon went after its flailing torso. Rolling over, I searched the shadows under the counter, cursing the broken-off sections and praying what I was looking for was safe and sound. If not, we were all going to die, because none of us were in any condition to run anywhere, and there wasn’t much we could do about the dragon.
What I was looking for shone dully in the blue-speckled black.
“Malone!”
His head shot up from behind an upright tile, and I pointed to the egg lying a few feet away from his right arm.
“Throw me the egg!”
“Hold on!” he shouted back, fumbling to reach the orb. His fingers caught on one of the swirls, and he scrambled on his knees to catch it before it rolled farther away. Malone grabbed it and cradled it to his belly. “I can’t throw!”
“Give it to me.” Cari pushed herself up, her face dark with bruising. One of her eyes was swollen shut, and a slender piece of her scalp flapped by her ear, the torn spot already scabbing over. Taking the egg from Malone, she hissed, then clutched at her side when she turned, but Cari was already hefting the ovoid into an underhanded throw. “Catch!”
The dragon egg arced in the air, aimed straight for me. I was rising up to catch it when it struck me in the stomach. Heavier than it looked, its shell was surprisingly soft, flexible, and warm to the touch. Something moved inside of it—a hatchling, obviously—but I hadn’t expected it to have so much life. The egg was small compared to its mother, but I’d seen newly hatched dragons that were barely the size of a raven birthed by behemoths so large it was amazing they could walk, much less fly. The spiraled surface squeaked against my fingers, and whatever fascination Aisla’s dying body had for the dragon, it was soon lost at the sound of the egg hitting my flesh.
She turned slowly… magnificently… and I finally understood the reverence the elfin placed on their draconian cousins. Silhouetted by the soft blue glow around her, she was an elegant curl of death and maternal instincts. The flare of anger never left her eyes, but she was cautious, slithering over the floor as she eyed me up, probably wondering how she could eat me and not harm the egg she’d come for.
The dragon was on me before I could place it on the floor, one nostril up against my cheek, and she shoved me into a standing wall, trapping me against its hard, flat surface. Then she did nothing, one plate-sized eye churning with colors as I held my breath and prepared to die.
She… preened against me. Rubbed the side of her jaw on my cheek and down my neck, her scales pricking at my skin, and I felt a bit of drool or something smear over my throat.
“Kai, don’t move,” Ryder advised.
“Like I haven’t noticed there’s a huge damned dragon giving me a hickey?” The egg pulsed against my chest, and I pushed it at the lizard. “Just take it. And please, by Buddha’s belly, don’t… eat… me.”
It felt odd begging a dragon for my life. I’d killed a few in my time. If anyone deserved to be slurped up like a slushie on a hot day, it was me. Karma had parked its fat ass on my shoulder and was laughing so hard, tears were coming out of its skin, but there I was, hoping the lizard would grab the egg and go.
Something hard pierced my skin, and I winced, gritting my teeth, and took what I thought was going to be my last breath, but after the first prick, the dragon withdrew, pulling back to tower over me. My neck was bleeding, a trickle at least, but I didn’t care. So long as it wasn’t a gush and my artery wasn’t spurting out my life, I didn’t care. Carefully placing the egg on the ground, I backed up, blindly feeling my way around the rocks until I was a good ten feet away and could risk letting go of the dank, reptilian scent in my lungs.
She was gone in a powerful rush of air and mass. Plucking the egg between her front claws, the black pearl slapped her wings out and thrust herself up toward the rocky ceiling. The coiled strength in her body carried her up, impossibly high, and it seemed like forever before she pumped her wings again. Then the black took her in and she slipped away into the far reaches of the mountain’s belly.
Ryder caught me before I landed on my face, and I sagged into him, exhausted and worn down past my marrow. Malone hovered at the edges of the room, Cari having shaken off his help then approached me with a limping walk.
“Crap, you’re too damaged to return for a full refund,” I teased. “Guess I’m going to have to keep you.”
“Yeah, screw you, Gracen,” she shot back, resting on a part of the fallen counter. “You’ve got something on your neck. Looks like you were attacked by a very hungry rabbit or maybe a sidhe lord without any common sense.”
“Don’t bring me into this,” Ryder replied with a chuckle.
He put his fingers under my chin, probably intending to push my head up so he could see my wound, but I shoved at his wrist.
“We’re back to this, then? You fighting me?”
“When have I stopped?”
He gently shoved at me again, and this time I let him look. His curious frown and sidhe murmur was troubling, especially since I couldn’t see what was going on.
“What is it? It’s stopped bleeding.”
“You’ve got a scale. Under your skin. Right under your jaw,” he said, poking at the spot.
I felt nothing but his finger stabbing into my neck. Hissing, I jerked away, but Ryder stroked my skin.
“You can’t feel the difference. It’s soft. And you’ve already healed over the spot.”
“Great, that’s just what I need,” I grumbled, rubbing at my neck. “She’s marked me.”
“Only fair,” Ryder countered. “You wear ink for your kills. You should carry her mark in exchange for your life. We’ll have a healer take it—”
“No thanks.” I shook my head. “I’m done with healers and flesh-shapers. If I want it out, I’m using a hot knife and a bottle of whiskey. Now how about if we get what we came for and get the hell out of here? I want to put some distance between me and this damned mountain before that dragon changes her mind about having second dinners.”
Epilogue
“YOU SURE you want to do this?” I eyed the pile of rubble we’d dragged back with us to San Diego. From five stories up, the broken-up slab seemed like an insignificant and poorly designed garden decoration tossed into a corner of the elegant courtyard below. “There’s no going back with it. Do this, it’s lost, because I’m not going to go knocking on Tanic’s door to ask to borrow a cup of blood magic.”
Ryder’s conflicting emotions played out over his face with such intensity, I felt I was watching him go through an alleyway of half-priced hookers with his pockets holding only a few specks of lint. He crossed his arms over his chest, assuming what I’d come to think of as his bossy sidhe lord stance, and stared out at the city below.
We’d limped
back to San Diego in a bruised, battered, and bloodied mess. Ryder’d talked me out of handcuffing Malone to a rail for the entire trip, but it’d been close. He spent about five minutes begging for absolution before going silent when I shoved a Glock’s muzzle up his nostril and threatened to pull the trigger. His aunt Sarah was waiting for us when we pulled up in front of the main entrance to Balboa Park, a staunch maternal presence I’d looked up to since before I got my own Stalker license.
I disliked what Malone did to us, but I hated that Sarah hadn’t been able to look me in the eye.
“You could have shot him. The family was never in danger. Ever. Hell, Bennett took advantage of Robbie because he’s gullible and as dumb as a piece of straw, but that doesn’t excuse things,” she’d said in a crumbled, breaking voice.
My anger flared, more because Malone brought his aunt to this—a scraping, open raw fear in her words and eyes when she finally looked me in the face. “By all rights, no one would have blinked twice if you’d shot him dead right then and there, Gracen. And no one would have called it murder.”
“Yeah, I do a lot of things—not all of them good—but murdering children isn’t one of them,” I replied. “Next time he crosses me—”
“He crosses you again….” Sarah’s rage flared, and I smiled at the fire in her eyes. “Robbie so much as looks at you wrong and I’ll shoot the little bastard myself. You have my word on that, Kai. My word.”
With a kiss on her cheek and a murmur reassuring her I held her in the highest regard, I’d done everything I could. The rest of it would be up to Malone, but Sarah understood, giving me a curt nod and a bone-breaking squeeze before she dragged her stupid but alive nephew out of my sight.
I should have shot him. Crickets Malone.
It was pretty standing at the top of a growing sidhe tower, its ivory base cradled by a lush forest and knitted stone bridges, and watching the city light glisten around us. Sitting in the middle of reclaimed sidhe territory, the Southern Rise Court rose up on the edge of the upper level’s downtown, a young, living city reaching for the stars amid glistening steel skyscrapers.
