Magic Triumphs

by Ilona Andrews

  “He called himself that because he wanted people to think he was holy.” Jenn sneered. “Neig of the skies. Neig the unkillable. Neig the mighty.”

  Drest snorted. “He conquers Ireland and moves on to Scotland.”

  “That’s not how the legend goes,” I said.

  “Legends are often wrong. This isn’t legend,” Alpin said softly. “It’s our history.”

  “He steals babies and turns them into his army,” Drest continued. “The Picts fight him, until he pushes them all the way to the eastern edge of Scotland. There is nowhere to go but the sea and the Scottish cliffs. So, they outsmart him. They build the standing stones. There are many kinds. Some warp the magic around them; they are the curving kind. Others sound an alarm; they are the warning kind. And so on.”

  He pointed to the carvings on the surface of the stone. “The curving stones hide the villages. Neig’s troops can’t find the settlements so he can’t find the settlements, and if he does, the shielding stones give people protection long enough to escape.”

  “What do the symbols mean?” I asked.

  “Disc and rectangle,” Alpin said. “The settlement has a warning stone that will let others know when Neig is coming. The crescent and V-rod means the shield is holding over the settlement. Don’t fire arrows at it even if Neig is coming because they won’t pierce it. Disc and rectangle means the settlement has the sun disc to signal for help.”

  They were explanatory signs. Like traffic signals. So bloody simple.

  “Double disc and Z-rod?” I asked. “He signed the box with it.”

  Alpin grimaced. “He picked that symbol for himself. His troops would mark things with it to remind you of what happens when you disobey him.”

  “What is it?”

  “Shackles,” Jenn said. “Neig doesn’t have servants. Only slaves.”

  Alpin traced the outline of the symbol on the stone. “When you see it with the broken arrow, it means here Neig can’t see you. Here you are free.”

  “What about this one?” Roman asked, pointing at another symbol, which looked vaguely like a flower.

  “Bagpipes,” Drest said.

  “What do bagpipes have to do with anything?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Bagpipes were battle music.”

  “He would’ve killed everyone eventually,” Jenn told us. “But then the Fomorians invaded and kept him busy. They killed his wife. His children he either killed himself or ran off.”

  “He doesn’t like competition.” Drest grimaced. “His brother tried to fight him, lost, and sailed off with his own portion of the army. They got their asses kicked somewhere in Europe. Only one ship came back.”

  “What about the Tuatha Dé Danann?” I asked.

  “They made a bargain with Neig,” Drest said. “Gave him tribute. By that point he’d moved on to Scotland, anyway. Bigger place. More land. He had both islands before he was done.”

  “How did your ancestors beat him?” Roman asked.

  “They didn’t.” Drest’s face was grim. “They outlasted him. Eventually the magic fell, and one day he disappeared. He’d clawed himself a lair outside our world and took his hoard and army with him. Occasionally, he’d raid while the magic held. You never knew when or where he’d pop out. Our people were so scared of him, they kept building curving stones centuries after he went dormant.”

  “In all that time, nobody managed to get close enough to hurt him?” I asked. “I understand he has fire magic, but I fought Morfran and I met Morrighan. You’re telling me nobody could get to this guy?”

  “You don’t get it,” Drest said.

  “Show her,” Jenn told him.

  Drest touched the kudzu. It rolled back, creeping up and over. The stone lay bare. I looked at the carving in the top of it. My insides went cold.

  “Neig isn’t a man,” Alpin said softly.

  “He is a dragon,” I whispered.

  A colossal dragon reared up on the battlefield, the figures of fighters tiny next to him. A cone of churning flame tore out of his mouth, disintegrating the palisade.

  That was whom I’d felt in the clouds above me. That was why he’d tried to kill Yu Fong. Goose bumps ran up my arms.

  “But his magic is blue,” I said. “Like a human.”

  “All dragon magic is blue,” Alpin said.

  “Everyone knows that,” Jenn said.

  “Neig will never find us,” Drest told me. “We have curving stones. But you, you’re fucked.”

  * * *

  • • •

  ROMAN AND I didn’t talk until we reached the city.

  “It could be metaphorical,” he finally said.

  “It’s not.” I told him about Yu Fong. “Everything we ever read about dragons suggests they are highly territorial. He felt Yu Fong and tried to take out the competition.”

  “But he was in human shape when you saw him. So, what, he can shapeshift?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Aspid can’t shapeshift,” Roman said. “It’s a blessing too, or he would follow me everywhere, licking me. That would be weird.”

  Aspid, an enormous black serpent-dragon who belonged to Chernobog, had a deep, all-encompassing puppy love for Roman, which he expressed by wrapping his tongue around the black volhv.

  “We need to call an emergency Conclave,” I said.

  The Conclave had started as a way to avoid conflicts between the Pack and the People, but in an emergency, every magical faction in the city came to it. It would take everyone to fight something like this off.

  Roman raised his black eyebrows. “And tell them that we’re about to get invaded by a dragon?”

  “Yes.”

  “We don’t have any evidence,” Roman said.

  He was right. Yu Fong was still in a coma, Beau Clayton and his deputies only saw Neig as a human, and the Druids wouldn’t back me up in public. They barely even came to the Conclave. I would need evidence. Something more than visions of fire and carved rocks.

  At the very least I had to warn the Pack and the People. With those two, my word would be sufficient. I had to call Nick, too.

  “Let me out here,” Roman said.

  I pulled over.

  “I’ll talk to the volhvs and the witches,” Roman said. “But talk is cheap. We need evidence. Witnesses.”

  “I know. Do you believe me that it’s a dragon?”

  “Yes,” Roman said. “I believe you. But not because of the Picts and rocks. I believe you because you’re you. I don’t need to see it. It’s enough for me that you believe it’s a dragon. But it won’t be enough for others.”

  “I know.”

  “It will be okay.”

  I doubted that, but nodded anyway.

  “Don’t kill yourself.”

  Oh, for the love of . . . “Will you stop with that?”

  He shook his finger at me. “Don’t do it. I’m watching you.”

  “Get out of my car.”

  I drove straight to Cutting Edge. Neig was right about one thing: he was legend. Over the years, legends became warped. They grew and evolved as they were passed from one generation to the next. Everyone “knew” that dragons hoarded treasure, lived in mountain caves, breathed fire, and killed their rivals. But how much of that was true was anybody’s guess.

  Was there even a point in trying to research? Most of what Drest had told us was considered to be myth. And it was distorted by Christianity. As Christianity had crept across the Middle East and Europe, the priests had realized that fighting old pagan ideas would doom the new religion. They were too deeply ingrained. So instead, Christianity adopted them, incorporating them into their rites, borrowing everything from Christmas and Easter to the idea of the immortal soul that separated from the physical body at death. Christianity tied the timeline of ancient Ireland to Noah�
�s descendants and the flood. None of it would be helpful in figuring out Neig.

  I drove into our parking lot and maneuvered the Jeep into the parking space. Mine was the only car. The kids and Curran were gone.

  I unlocked the door and stepped inside. Over the years, Cutting Edge had become my fortress. Like my house, it was a place where I could take my sword off my back. I unbuckled the sheath and dropped it on my desk. I opened the fridge, took a pitcher of iced tea out, and poured myself a glass. I’d done this hundreds of times before. There was comfort in the ritual and I needed comfort today, because the dragon had knocked me off my stride.

  How the hell do you fight a dragon? How large was he, exactly? If the carving on the stone was to scale, we were in deep shit. I could just imagine the conversation around the Conclave table. So what evidence do you have of this dragon? Well, there is this overgrown rock in the magic druid camp. You can’t see this rock or find this druid camp, but take my word for it. Ugh.

  Someone knocked on my door.

  “Come in,” I called.

  The door swung open. Knight-abettor Norwood stepped through, followed by the two other knights. Just what I needed.

  I leaned on my elbow. “The Holy Trinity. Come in, don’t be shy. Grab a chair.”

  “You’re disrespectful,” the Hispanic woman told me.

  “I’m so sorry, I should’ve used your names. So rude of me. You take the chair on the right, Larry, and Moe and Curly can sit over there.”

  The Hispanic woman opened her mouth. Knight-abettor Norwood glanced at her and she clamped her jaws shut.

  Right. So, there was a script. They weren’t sure what I was capable of and they wanted to find out, so they picked her to bait me. Bad idea.

  The knights sat.

  “Please let me introduce my colleagues. Knight-diviner Younger and Knight-striker Cabrera.”

  My guardian, Greg Feldman, was a knight-diviner during his life. They didn’t always practice divination. They served as a cross between psychiatrists and priests and possessed a unique ability to “read” people. They were the Order’s confessors and the advocates for the individual knights. A knight-striker was the Order’s equivalent of a bazooka. Nice. Diplomacy and force, the knight-abettor had both sides covered.

  “Kate Lennart.”

  “I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” Norwood said.

  “How?”

  “The Order is interested in ascertaining the state of things in Atlanta.”

  “What does that have to do with me?”

  “You are a power in Atlanta.”

  “The.”

  He blinked.

  “I’m the power in Atlanta,” I told him. “I claimed the city as my own.”

  “Wow,” Cabrera said. “Humble, aren’t you?”

  “You came here looking for clarity. I’m clearing things up for you.”

  “What does that mean?” Norwood leaned forward, focusing on me.

  “It means that when something sufficiently large and dangerous threatens the city, like my father trying to invade, I will use Atlanta’s magic to protect it.”

  “So Atlanta has personal magic?” Cabrera snorted.

  I ignored her.

  “Well, does it? Is Atlanta a person?” she pressed.

  “I don’t have the time or the inclination to educate you,” I told her. “The Mage College is up the street and over the bridge. If you go by there, I’m sure they’ll bring you up to speed.”

  “Do you rule Atlanta?” the blond diviner asked.

  “No.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Atlanta is doing fine on its own without my leadership. We have a democratically elected government, and I have no intention of interfering with it.”

  “If you claimed Atlanta, why don’t you stop the crime here?” Cabrera asked. Her eyes were calculating. She was asking leading questions they already knew the answers to. They wanted confirmation that I wasn’t omnipotent and omniscient.

  “Because it’s not my responsibility to stop crime. We have a well-funded police department, GBI headquarters, and local sheriff departments, not including a number of private organizations, like the Guild, the Red Guard, and, of course, the Order.”

  “But could you stop all crime?” Younger asked.

  “Nobody can stop all crime, knight-diviner. You, of all people, should know that.”

  Norwood studied me. “The Order is interested in forging a relationship of cooperation and mutual understanding.”

  “I already have a relationship of mutual understanding with the Order.”

  “Really?” Norwood asked.

  “Yes. Nick thinks I’m fruit from the poisoned tree and hates my family, and I tolerate his assholeness because occasionally I need the Order’s help. Nick and I understand each other very well.”

  “We find that people tend to be more productive in a less hostile environment,” Norwood said.

  I sighed. “Okay, so the Order would like to be friendlier. Great. What do you know about dragons?”

  “What?” Cabrera asked.

  “Dragons. Weaknesses, habits, how one might possibly go about killing one?”

  “That information is classified,” Norwood said.

  “And here we are. When it comes down to it, there isn’t much you can do because you have regulations that bind you. You divide your world into humans and nonhumans, and your definition of human is so circumscribed, your influence is collapsing. I sympathize. It’s hard to fight with your arms tied behind your back, but it’s not my problem. You are not my problem, unless you make yourself into one.”

  Cabrera opened her mouth.

  I didn’t wait for her. “Go back to Wolf Trap. Nick and I have a working relationship. It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t have to be. I don’t need him to be my friend. I need him to put manpower on the field when it counts.”

  “Nikolas Feldman will be replaced,” Norwood said.

  “That’s the Order I know. Always putting appearances above the welfare of their knights.”

  “What actions will you take if Feldman is removed?” the knight-diviner asked.

  “I will bar the Order from having a chapter in Atlanta.”

  “You can’t do that,” Cabrera said.

  “I can, and I will. I’m tired of your turnover problems. I prefer to work with Nick. After everything Moynohan put him through, he deserves to have his own chapter. His performance is exemplary. You want to get rid of him because he’s politically inconvenient, go ahead. But don’t put lipstick on a pig and pretend it’s on my account. If you take him out, I promise you, the new chapter of the Order won’t be welcome in Atlanta.”

  “You’re a nobody,” Cabrera said, biting off words. “You’re all talk. I can feel your magic. It’s nothing.”

  The phone rang. I held up my hand and picked it up. “Kate Lennart.”

  “Conlan escaped,” Curran said.

  “What?”

  “He shifted and ran away from Martha. They are chasing him now, but they’re too far behind. He’s coming toward you.”

  Our son was out in the open, with sahanu all around the city.

  I focused on the magic around me, stretching through the arcane power drenching the city. Where are you, baby? Where . . .

  A bright spark moved through the magic. Conlan! He wasn’t far.

  I grabbed my sword and dashed out the door. The three knights sprinted after me.

  I ran like I’ve never run before in my life. Streets flew by. I turned, guided by magic, focused on the brilliant glowing drop of magic. I was almost on top of him. A deserted street lay in front of me. On the left, the shell of a building waited, its first floor all empty brick arches. The entire building lay exposed, its roof gone long ago, the arches at the far end dark and shadowy.
>
  Conlan was in there.

  Someone had cleared most of the debris, pushing it into a large pile at the far end and a smaller one to the right, outside the building. Not a lot of places to hide.

  I walked to the building. Behind me the knights rounded the corner.

  “Conlan?” I called. “It’s Mommy.”

  A small creature exploded out of the pile and jumped into my arms, shifting in midleap into a human baby. I hugged him to me. My heart was beating so fast, it was about to jump out of my chest.

  “Mama!”

  “What were you thinking, you little idiot?” I squeezed him to me.

  Big gray eyes looked at me, wet with tears. “Bad.” He sniffed. “Bad.”

  Oh no. “Where? Where is the bad thing, Conlan? Show me.”

  He buried his face in my chest.

  Something moved within the building, deep in the shadowy arches on the other side.

  The sahanu had stalked my son. They’d found him and scared him, and he ran across the city to me.

  They’d scared my son in my domain. Never again.

  A splash of magic landed within the arches and died. I see you.

  A vampire landed next to me, smeared in grape-purple sunblock. “We found the sahanu,” it said in Javier’s voice. “In-Shinar, do you require assistance?”

  A second vamp dropped on my other side.

  “Yes.” I thrust Conlan into Javier’s vamp’s arms. “Protect my child.”

  The vampire took my son.

  I grasped the second vamp’s mind. The navigator let go.

  I unsheathed Sarrat, dropped the sheath on the ground, and marched into the building, the undead at my heels. The sahanu waited for me in the arches. I felt them. The damn building had too many holes.

  “I see you.” My voice spread through the building. Fury boiled inside me, blotting out everything else. “I see all of you.”

  I yanked the magic to me. Words of power burst from my lips, the pain barely registering. I’d had a lot of practice.

  “Ranar kair.” Come to me.

  Magic ripped from me like a tidal wave. The arches rained sahanu, my power tearing them out of their hidey-holes and throwing them to the ground. I saw familiar faces in that split second: Gust, pale, green hair, air magic, twin swords; Carolina, seven feet tall, brown-skinned, chain mail, hammer, muscles like a champion weightlifter; Arsenic, bright red hair, wrapped in diaphanous cloth like a mummy, poisonous to the touch. Fourteen sahanu. They had all come for my son. All except Razer.