by S. W. Clarke
Percy did as I asked, swinging us around and down toward the city, still taking evasive maneuvers as plumes of green fire rained down on us.
When Erik picked up, he’d already lost all his composure. “Tara? You sound like you’re in a wind tunnel. Tell me you’re all right.”
“No time. Plan Holy Guacamole is in effect!”
“Not Guacamole ...”
“Yep, and she’s chasing us. I’m coming in hot with a bat-scorpion in tow.”
“GoneGods, Tara. Fine.”
I ended the call as Percy flew so close to a building I actually gasped. In the moonlight, we reflected off the endless panes of glass, green blossoming behind us as Lust followed.
We came onto a main thoroughfare, and Percy flew hard and fast straight down it toward Brooklyn. Block after block swept by, the cars moving slow enough to be in non-motion compared to how fast Percy was taking us.
He had never flown this fast. Not for as long as I’d known him.
It was all I could do to cling to his spine, my head close to his neck as I relied on him to do all the maneuvering.
I supposed this was what it was like to be a mother. More and more, I would have to recognize that he had better judgment in certain things. He was more capable. At times, he would be able to handle a situation better than I could.
Like right now.
Percy was saving us both.
It was humbling, and it filled my adrenaline-laced chest with pride. Through those months in captivity, he hadn’t lost any of his goodness. Any of his strength. Any of his bravery.
He was, more than ever, the dragon I was grateful to call my son.
“Almost there,” he called back. “Just a minute more.”
I ventured a peek behind us. Lust was swinging back and forth, anger throwing off her precision. She left buildings burning behind her, crashed through the corners of some and blasted out windows of others.
Her bloodlust was so potent, she couldn’t even fly straight.
All at once, Percy’s wings tented, and we descended toward the street. My stomach flipped over, nausea rising—GoneGods, was I rusty at this—as we slowed almost to a stop.
When we reached the street, we were directly in front of the Singing Angel. The bar was brimming with people, lights and noise spilling out onto the street. Streamers and New Year’s detritus littered the ground, and I realized it had passed midnight.
The new year had arrived while Percy and I were in the sky, evading an enormous bat-scorpion.
Outside the bar stood Grunt, who’d defaced city property once again. He slapped the stop sign he’d uprooted in one enormous hand like a club, staring behind us. “About time.”
Behind Grunt stood a motley group of Others he’d recruited from the bar. They included the three minotaur brothers whose furry behinds I’d kicked a few months back, a satyr couple and a woman whose bottom half was only composed of tentacles. And she slid like an upright octopus across the ground. As a result, all her appendages were in a constant state of wiggling.
I gestured to the lot of them. “How did you get them out here?” I asked Grunt.
“I told them a very evil Other was coming to kill the singing angel.” He shrugged one massive shoulder. “They love that singing angel.”
Percy made a noise I recognized as dismay. “This is everyone?”
“For now.” I jumped off his back, unholstering Thelma and Louise as I spun around on the street in the direction we’d come from. “Get ready, Perce.”
His golden eyes followed me. “But Tara, you’re safer on my back.”
“She doesn’t want to kill you, Perce.” In the distance, I spotted Lust’s dark wings flapping as she approached. “She wants me. And as your mother, I forbid you from getting too close to me in this battle.”
“Tara—”
“Don’t argue with me, Percival.” I snapped Thelma on the street as punctuation.
Percy did as I said. He took off into the air, hovering some twenty feet above me.
I turned to Grunt and the other Others. “We’re about to take down the mortal sin known as Lust. Think about what and who you love. It’s the only way to resist her.”
They all lined up around me, Grunt on my right side. “You may find this strange, human, but the only person I ever loved at all was the one who led me for years. Valdis. And now he’s dead.”
And Lust had been the one who’d killed him. That would certainly make Grunt impervious to her.
“Hey,” one of the minotaurs said, “aren’t you that chick …”
“No. I’m not the chick who kicked your drunk asses in the alley behind this bar.” I nodded directly ahead. “See that bat-scorpion flying at us? She did it.”
They squinted at me. Then, the tallest one said, “But I thought she was the one who wanted to kill the singing angel.”
“And she wants to kill the singing angel.” I gestured with Thelma. “What a bitch, right?”
I didn’t expect them to buy it. But they all three exchanged a glance, and then they all hoof-bumped. “Let’s get her,” one lowed.
When Lust arrived, she didn’t swoop down on us raining green gas. She didn’t even swoop.
She landed in a crouch, her body glowing as it reformed itself into something resembling a human. As I looked on, Lust burned time. The wings slid out to form arms and hands, the bat’s feet elongating into pretty toes. At the end of it, she had become humanlike. But she didn’t look like the husk she’d left behind; this was a strange simulation of a human, like what she could recall from pictures and memory.
But none of that mattered, because she was completely naked and still way better looking than me on my best day. This sin so didn’t play fair.
I touched the nearest minotaur’s shoulder. “Don’t be lured in by the boobs.”
He nodded, though his Adam’s apple did bob. And his eyes did wander. Well, all three minotaurs were guilty of that. And Grunt. And …
I glanced up into the sky. Percy swung back and forth, golden eyes heated with anger. He’d probably seen Lust naked more times than he could count on his talons while he’d been in captivity.
She no longer held any sway over him. Not after what she’d done, and after I’d broken her spell.
And now we had Grunt and the minotaurs and the satyrs and the tentacle woman, too.
When Lust rose, she split-second surveyed the group. Her chest moved fast, her eyes undercast with a gray, tired hue. She was weak. Weaker than she’d ever been.
But she was still Lust.
One of her hands lifted like a ballet dancer, the fingers oh so delicate, and she flicked them. “Those of you who aren’t the blonde with the whips, leave. I shall find you later, and give you pleasure you’ve never felt.”
I snorted. “Like that’s going to—”
All at once, everyone but Grunt dispersed. Some ran back into the Singing Angel, and the tentacle woman tentacled into an alley.
“Oh, come on, guys!” I called after them.
Grunt growled, tapping his stop sign against his hand, and in the middle of the street, Lust shot me a grim smile.
Her power was still incredible.
She started forward, one foot in front of the other, straight down the yellow line. “Patience Schweinsteiger,” she purred. I hated my real name when it came from her. “You have achieved something not one human in a thousand years has done.”
“What, gotten you naked?” I trailed Thelma along the asphalt, ready. “My bad. You take off your clothes when the wind blows.”
“Don’t step any closer to my mom,” Percy said, swooping in circles above Lust. “I’ll burn you to the ground.”
Lust didn’t stop. She approached me with hypnotic grace, eyes never leaving mine. “In a thousand years, no human has ever brought me to true anger. Except for you. And do you know what I will gift you for your transgressions?”
I stood my ground. “A box of chocolates.”
True to his word, Percy rushed
Lust from behind, flying low and shooting a jet of fire at her back.
One of her hands went out, the fingers separated, the palm raised to the exact angle of Percy’s fire. An iridescent shimmering began around Lust’s body, and the fire was repelled by her strange, invisible shield. She was burning time—tons of it. How much more could she possibly have?
All the while, she didn’t stop walking. Or staring at me.
When Percy’s fire had finished, her eyes narrowed on me. Then, in a voice so low only I could hear it, she whispered, “I shall give you death, Patience. But not in the way you hope.”
From down the street, Yaroz’s call resounded off the buildings.
Finally. She and the ninjas had arrived.
As Yaroz and her brood swept along the street toward us, Lust’s arms went up to the sky. She spoke words I didn’t understand—an ancient language.
But Grunt did. With a bellowing howl worthy of Aragorn himself, Grunt yelled, “Stop her!” and rushed forward, stop sign swinging. He came at her full bore, and as the sign swung around to take her head off, he hit Lust’s iridescent shield. The sign was repulsed, and instead of bowling her over with his massive body, Grunt was thrown back onto the street.
I came in with Thelma and Louise burning through the air, slashing them one and then two at Lust’s pearl-white chest. They hit the edges of her shield, and even when I dropped to one knee, sliding the crystalline dagger from my boot, I knew it was too late.
She wasn’t talking anymore. Whatever incantation she had performed was finished, and at the end of it, a red, glowing arrow whistled straight down from the heavens and into Lust’s open mouth. It infused her body, streaking down her limbs, coloring them ruby.
Yeah, probably isn’t a good sign when a mortal sin turns bright red.
Chapter 16
When Lust’s face lowered, her eyes glowed a horrific blood red. Her lips parted, pulling away from her teeth until I could see every single one of them. And then (if I lived through tonight, I would have nightmares about this part) she gnashed them until a few of her pearly whites broke off against one another.
This wasn’t Lust anymore. Well, it wasn’t just Lust.
But I didn’t know who shared her body. I didn’t want to know.
I started running at her just as Yaroz swooped in from behind, massive talons ready to eviscerate a red-eyed Lust.
That didn’t happen.
The dragon got close, but as soon as she did, Lust’s fingers snapped and her iridescent shield expanded, tendrils of jagged red infusing it.
It pressed away Grunt and Yaroz and her brood, repelling them like a magnetic field. But as it hit me, it sizzled across my skin like a thousand electric shocks, sending me skidding to my knees before Lust.
The world obtained a strange, fuzzy quality, like I was standing in the center of a broken TV. Most all I could hear was white noise, with Percy’s faint cries like an out-of-tune station. And a wild, manic sort of anger filled me, like adrenaline laced every part of my body.
When I lifted my eyes, white flashes dotted my vision. Through them, I spotted him behind Lust, flying with the kind of frantic uncertainty I knew to be his state of absolute panic.
And he was inside the field with me.
This was beyond any power I had ever known. This was otherworldly, of the gods. I knew that whoever—whatever—had arrowed down from the sky eclipsed my little whips and throwing knives a hundred times over.
Box of frogs, it was all I could do not to scream with the constant shocks across my skin.
Lust gazed down at me, lips still pulled wide. She formed strange, lipless words, her chest moving fast. “Oh, sister. I come with such anger, and yet you bring me one morsel of a human, already half-dead on her knees.”
That wasn’t me Lust was talking to. Maybe it wasn’t even Lust speaking; she sounded possessed by a masculine energy.
I wanted to ask who he was, but I couldn’t make my jaws or lips comply. The shocks rendered me incapable of using my own muscles.
Lust’s mouth widened, snapping at the air. Then she dropped forward, hunching, eyes meeting me with fingers curled to claws. “I see it in your pathetic eyes—you do not know me. You will, as I consume you. Your soul will join with my teeth, and you will know the true meaning of rage.”
Rage. Anger.
Avarice.
Lust had called the deadly sin Avarice—her brother—to possess her body. Who knew they were in touch? Box of frogs, would we have to deal with all seven sins pulling stunts like this? I didn’t have time to think about that. Now I needed to deal with Lust and Avarice and their shield of sin.
I caught glimpses of Yaroz and Grunt trying to break through, but their combined efforts couldn’t penetrate this shield. Fire erupted from Yaroz’s mouth, was rebuffed by the magic surrounding us.
No, it was just me and Percy in here.
I swallowed, trying to tighten my grip on my whips. But I realized I couldn’t even bend my fingers; they jerked without my consent as pain lanced every part of my body.
That was when Avarice dropped to all fours. Began bounding toward me like a feral creature, jaws parting to place all those broken teeth on display.
This. This was how it would end.
I was all out of tricks, and I couldn’t even control my own body. And in a strange moment, I missed Mariana. I wished she was here with me now.
But I kept my eyes open through the pain. I would see the last moments of my life.
As Avarice neared, I spotted Percy following, wings tight to his sides as he rushed toward us. Static sparks ricocheted off his hard scales, and his eyes were narrowed to slits.
Don’t, I thought. Just fly, little egg. Just fly.
But I couldn’t even say that.
Avarice leapt, fingers curved like claws, poised to land atop me. But as he passed through the air, Percy’s talons dug into Avarice’s back. He latched on, and with a massive flap of his wings, threw the sin so hard he bounced off the static field and hit the asphalt.
I stared up at my dragon, mouth open, as he swung around with a roar so deep I wondered if he was even my dragon at all.
That wasn’t Percy’s roar. It was a dragon’s roar.
It was the sound of nature’s ultimate predator.
He jerked forward, mouth opening. Before the sin could find his feet, Percy’s fire surged through the air down at him, such a precision strike I felt certain it could split molecules.
Avarice managed to get one hand up, and a red glow emanated around him as the fire poured forth like lava erupting. So much fire, I didn’t know how one set of lungs could contain it all.
This was the dragon I had hatched from an egg. I had watched his golden eyes, small as marbles, open for the first time. I had witnessed his first puff of smoke. I had seen him so angry he’d burned me.
Or at least, I thought I’d seen him angry.
I realized now—as he let off the flame and rushed Avarice with an open maw—he’d only been irritated with me. We’d been in tiffs. He’d felt the kind of anger a child feels toward their parent when they’re denied ice cream, or when they want to stay up past their bedtime.
Impulsive anger. Fleeting anger.
But this?
This was bloodlust.
This was a creature of legend.
And for as much pride as it brought me to see him defending me, it terrified me, too. No human could stop that kind of deep-seated, ferocious anger.
But maybe a sin could.
Avarice had found his feet, eyes on Percy. As my dragon neared, a red glow emanated around Avarice’s body—he was burning time—and his chin lowered, feet widening to meet Percy’s attack.
When they met, Percy’s foreclaws lashed at his bare chest, even as the dragon’s jaws snapped to take off Avarice’s face.
He ducked Percy’s teeth, one glowing fist rising and catching him in the neck before his talons could rend the sin’s skin. The power of a sin burning time gave him enough
force to thrust Percy aside, but not for long.
“You think that’ll stop me?” Percy bellowed. With a flap of his wings, he was back at the sin, snapping and clawing as Avarice ducked and strafed and kicked. “I’m a dragon, and you want to kill my mom. Nothing you can do will stop me.”
The two of them fought their way around the interior of the static field, a bloodied and injured Avarice fighting from the ground, Percy swooping up and around, back down, launching attack after attack.
His talons whistled through the air, sharp as knives. They tore off Avarice’s hair as he threw himself out of the way. His incisors snapped at Avarice’s hands when he hit the ground, and the only thing that saved them from being ripped off entirely was the same red glow—all that time he was burning to keep himself intact.
But it wasn’t enough. He was wearing Avarice down, bit by bit. His claws, teeth and fire were a terrible threesome.
He was relentless. He was brave. Courageous. Unstoppable.
Stinging tears came to my eyes as I remained on my knees, watching the fight, unable to join in. For five years, I had been the one calling the shots. Taking the lead. Telling him to stay or go.
But after all these years, Percival had come into his own.
He didn’t need me. If I died here, I knew he would be safe—he could survive against a mortal sin.
And then, young dragon that he was, Percy made a critical error …
My dragon flew in too close, and Avarice caught him by the neck. He uttered a war cry in a language I didn’t understand, and with a rush of burnt time, thrust Percy head-first into the asphalt.
His head hit the street so hard, the street broke.
I caught a glimpse of Percy’s wide, golden eyes the moment before the asphalt cracked beneath him. He was surprised and angry, yes, but most of all, he was scared.
He was scared of what would come next.
Then I didn’t see his face at all. I only saw Avarice kneeling over him as his body went limp, hitting the ground with a rumbling thud. His wings hit the ground like drapes, and all at once he was just an inert pile of bones and scales.
