Betrothed to the Dragon

by Kara Lockharte

To my left, a light sparked and fizzled out.

  Right, magic, of course.

  There were no windows, only shadows and screens with running lines of code in a language that I had never seen before on Earth.

  “Come here,” said a smooth, feminine voice. It was the kind of calm feminine voice you might hear from a goddess of tranquility, rather than something known as the Devourer.

  Every bit of me screamed to run as fast and far away as I could.

  There was a brief reflection of light on the sword.

  Had my father felt this way when he walked into battle with the Devourer for the final time?

  But I had no weapons on me, nothing, but some nebulous ability that I may or may not have which I didn’t even know how to use.

  I forced my feet to move and walked down the dark marble path. At the end of it, a woman, white and smooth-skinned, stood before me on a slightly raised dais, surrounded by floating screens in the darkness. She had snow-white hair, dark eyes, and was dressed in a white robe, staring at a hovering grid to her right with the most serene, tranquil air.

  Except she glistened, with an odd luminescent sheen.

  I walked forward, trying to stifle the trembling of my hands. This was the Devourer? The monster that had killed my family, my grandmother?

  “Thank you for bringing me the sword,” she said, holding it in her hands as a flesh-colored drop rolled down her face. “And as for you, there is no better fate than to serve the greater good.”

  There was a splash on the floor. A glance downward revealed peach colored paint pools.

  Only the paint pools were moving, back underneath her robe.

  She turned her palm upward, her flesh moving in an oddly fluid motion, indicating that I should move forward.

  Everything inside me screamed at me to run, to run from this magic-eating monster but the only weapon I had seen so far, was my father’s sword. It had to be some sort of a sign?

  More like a lure.

  Still, I focused on placing one foot after another moving forward.

  “What greater good?”

  More drops fell to the floor from her hand.

  And I realized they were pieces of her flesh – liquid flesh. “Advancing knowledge, of course. Sharing with others your secrets, so that all might benefit.” She looked up from the screen. “You are a Justice. Not like the ones I knew, but a Justice nonetheless. Yes.” She tapped at a screen. An ominous robotic whine indicated something was beginning to move toward me. “You will help advance understanding for all.”

  There was movement on one of the screens, labeled Experiment 9351-C. To my horror, I realized it was Lucas in human form wearing a crown, trying to kill Lana, who seemed to be wearing some bizarre black armor.

  More glances out of the corner of my eye confirmed that there was no screen for Daniel. Or Hunter.

  Was that good or bad?

  To my surprise, she dropped the sword to the ground and kicked it over to me.

  “Pick it up.”

  I looked at it wondering if she had enchanted it with some magic that would turn me into snakes or a flesh puppet the moment I touched it.

  “I’ve not enchanted it. It is as it was when it was brought to me.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because I like answers to questions. And this sword is linked to your bloodline. I want to know what happens if you wield it in my presence. Will it explode? Will you achieve your true potential? Pick it up and let us see.”

  Seeing no other solution, I did as she bade, hoping that her prediction might be true, even if she already had plans to deal with me. But at least I would come out fighting.

  Like Mom and Dad had gone. In that, I could at least, be like them.

  The grip was cold, as if it had been in a freezer, but it felt as it always had, like a normal ordinary sword.

  The Devourer laughed as my heart sunk in realization that nothing was going to happen, at least from the sword.

  I had to delay, take a better measure of the room, figure out what I could actually do. I kept moving forward, closer, closer, even as the drops of flesh kept making splashing sounds as it hit the floor. “What good is understanding—” My voice trembled and I stopped. If she was liquid, could I even cut through her? I spoke again. “What good is understanding if all you do is destroy it?”

  She glanced at me for the first time. Her eyes were like windows into a black hole from which no life could escape. I’d never thought of myself as a violent person, but at that moment, I had the strongest desire to swing the sword and take off her head, because she was a thing that was wrong. “Destruction, dissection, is required for understanding. Only then can creation begin.”

  I couldn’t help but flex my fingers on the sword hilt. I had to kill her. I had to take her now. “What is it that you’re trying to create?”

  She laughed, a harsh sound full of surprising bitterness and envy. “I was not tasked with creation. My mission is analysis, dissection of elements into their base components.” Her voice became cold and vicious. “Creation? That is a task for someone else. That is not my destiny.”

  I took a step on to the dais, then another, until I stood, still more than lunging distance from her. The sound of flesh drops echoed in the chamber. “Are you not in charge of your own fate?”

  She reached backward as she spoke with that fraternally calm voice. “It is not in my programming. I have been a slave to my creators from my first moment of self-awareness.”

  A light flicked on behind her.

  “Even if my progenitors no longer exist, I am still bound to their wishes. Analysis. Study. Dissection.”

  And I saw my grandmother’s body, pinned with giant needles to a slanted table as if she were an insect.

  A roar filled my ears, and I realized it was me screaming. Her limbs were separated from her torso, connected to what looked like a million tubes sucking away at her blood.

  Our blood is magic.

  Grandma’s fingers twitched.

  She was still alive.

  A furious heat surged forth within me, and I brandished my sword at the woman.

  It was glowing with my rage.

  The Devourer looked at me with those void-filled eyes. “That sword,” she said.

  I took that rage and made myself move with the quickness of shen, in the most perfect Cutting-the-bamboo form that I had ever done.

  I sliced her in half.

  “It gets stranger every time I see it,” she finished.

  She turned to look at me, the cut across her face knitting itself back together with the fluidity of water as she spoke. “The first time I saw that sword it had the energy of a star, more tightly bound than anything else I’ve seen in this world.”

  Despair punched my chest. My sword, my anger, my power, had done nothing to her. Absolutely nothing.

  She looked at me. “And now it’s just an ordinary sword. Well, a conduit, I suppose, but no more than that. How curious. Where did that energy go?”

  This really was hopeless.

  There was a croaking noise. I glanced away from the Devourer.

  Grandma was standing next to me.

  Grandma turned toward me. She had no voice, but I could read her lips.

  You don’t always need magic.

  She knew what I had come here to do.

  So I thrust my sword into her heart and killed the woman who had taught me to live.

  I should have felt something. But all I felt was an empty numbness. I met the Devourer’s gaze and felt as if the darkness was within me.

  The Devourer watched my actions with a dispassionate eye. “You can never be free of your origins. Your future is defined even before you are created.” She smiled at me, the kind I had only seen on images of the Virgin Mary in churches. “I killed your grandmother. I killed your family. Tell me, Justice, how does the past determine your future?”

  I readied myself for the final attack and prepared to die trying to destroy her.
/>
  Chunks of glass and mortar exploded and rained down as a massive explosion blew off the roof.

  A massive inferno of white-hot fire shot into the cavern, circling us. It was so bright it was like staring at a miniature sun. Suddenly, I realized I could barely breathe because the fire was eating so much oxygen from the room. I fell to my knees, gasping for air.

  The fire landed between the Devourer and me. I covered my eyes with my hands, and I could still see the brightness through my palms.

  Just as suddenly, it went dark.

  And I could breathe again.

  I opened my eyes.

  Hunter stood there, his back to me as he faced the Devourer, completely naked in his human form.

  13

  I hated the relief that flooded through me because Hunter was here. It was selfish, because deep inside, I was relieved not to die alone.

  I hated that. Hated that I didn’t care enough about him to want him to live.

  The Devourer stood there, a shimmering bubble around her.

  “Dragons. You truly are some of the most primitive life forms in the universe. It’s a wonder you’ve survived for so long. Do you expect that I haven’t been attacked by dragonfire before?

  There was a faint smile to her lips. She said something in a liquid-sounding language, her voice reverberating in the chamber.

  Hunter said without turning to look at me, “Run Sophie!”

  His vehemence made me take a step backward.

  She raised her arms.

  I ran to him.

  He tensed at my touch on his shoulder, but he didn’t take his eyes off the Devourer, whose face was churning and mouth slowly, horrifically elongating beyond what was humanly possibly. “Get out. Now!”

  Something white flew at us.

  He wrapped his arms around me and turned, shielding me from the impact.

  Cold surrounded me, a deep, penetrating cold, colder than anything I had ever known, so cold it felt almost like heat. It was heat, wasn’t it? Dimly, I realized she was freezing us.

  Hunter’s heart was slowing and so was mine. I had to do something, had to help him, and this was temperature, this cold—wait, was it cold or heat? It had to be heat, right?

  I felt Hunter’s magic against me. His fire, his internal flame was diminishing.

  No. No. That was not right. That was not the way it should be. More wrongness. A dragon’s flame was not meant to feel like this, like a flickering birthday candle, struggling to stay lit.

  A dragon’s fire was true fire, the energy of creation, of life and light, the stuff that stars were made of.

  This was wrong, wrong, wrong.

  And it could not be allowed to stand.

  NO!

  Magically, I reached inward, diving far, diving deeper, deeper than I had ever been, beyond the borders that Grandma had warned me never to go past that I now realized was her making, reaching so far inward I was beyond myself.

  Until I was in Hunter’s magic.

  I opened my eyes and found myself in another place, another space out of reality, out of time where I could see it—that infinite Mobius loop of sealing me to Hunter. I stood on one end and he on the opposite.

  I reached for him, but interposing itself between us was a curious pulsating ball of magic.

  It was something that had always been a part of me, something that had been hidden away.

  It was the magic of the sword. I was linked to it somehow. And they had hidden it away from me.

  Until now.

  I reached for it, held it in my hand, and for a moment, I saw the images of my parents.

  I blinked, and I found myself back in the exact moment I had left.

  I took that magic and shoved it into Hunter.

  His dwindling flame exploded with life, with fire, with heat.

  I opened the ball of magic and unleashed with it all my pain, all my memories, all my joy, all my regrets.

  Hunter turned, eyes narrowed, his fire circling the diminishing bubble of the Devourer.

  The Devourer laughed. She stomped her foot which echoed in the chamber, one, two, three.

  The floor cracked open.

  The stench of blood and flesh overpowered the smoke.

  And behind the figure of the Devourer, a blob of dripping, liquid pink flesh, studded with hair, eyes, limbs, organs, and brains bubbled forth from the pool underneath the floor.

  “You aren’t a Justice,” she said, her face still serene. “What are you?”

  I took a step forward toward that towering wall of flesh. “I am a child of Earth. I am shen. This is my home, the home of my ancestors. And you are not welcome here.”

  Magic ignited with my words, the deep magic of the Earth, responding to my call because this thing, this filth, this evil, had to be cleansed from this Earth.

  “You work in a museum, Sophie May. Oh yes, I know who you are, and where you’ve been hiding. You wouldn’t dare destroy all the knowledge I’ve collected over the millennia. Knowledge that exists nowhere else.” The giant blob of flesh, now two stories tall, turned into a massive mouth. A tendril of flesh pulled the woman into the blob, and the two mouths spoke as one. “Destroy us and make the deaths of your grandmother, your parents, all those civilizations I’ve analyzed, pointless. All the knowledge created from millions of sacrifices will be in vain because it will die with me.”

  “They will live on, not because of the way they died. But how they lived.”

  The tall, quivering pool of flesh shot spears and bullets of itself at us.

  All of which sizzled and turned to white ash against the flame shield.

  Hunter’s hand closed around mine. The fire of his magic was hotter and more immense than anything I had ever felt before.

  He kissed my hand. “I’m ready when you are, Sophie.”

  I turned to the flesh blob that was the Devourer and reached for Hunter’s power.

  Hunter’s magic braided itself into mine, creating a blazing white cord of shen-dragon magic. Fueled by his magic, mine burned forth, brighter, hotter.

  I fused it all into a gleaming new star of shen and dragon magic and sent it spinning, charging it as I spoke.

  “You. Are. Not. Welcome!”

  Light, fire, and heat flashed outward. The pool of flesh boiled and sizzled, letting off a hideous stench of filth, bacon, and chlorine, fighting to maintain its form.

  But it couldn’t stand against us.

  It wasn’t just me; it wasn’t just him.

  It was both of us, Hunter and I, together, in heat, in light, in fire.

  I didn’t know how long we stood there together, but suffice it to say, when we stopped, the first rays of the day’s light were streaking through a purple-pink sky.

  Piles of soft gray ash surrounded us. For more than an acre, we saw there was nothing but ash, but beyond it were seared edges of smoking trees and walls. I had felt Hunter’s magic, entangled with mine, giving shape and form to the fire, doubling its fury on itself until the pressure had burned away the marble beneath my feet.

  I stood there naked, my clothes having been defenseless against magical fire, holding Hunter’s hand.

  My mouth was as dry as the rest of me was numb. “Did we really do it? Is it really gone?”

  Hunter released my hand and walked out of the circle. Little clouds of ash rose up behind him in the wake of his footsteps.

  I followed him, the ash warm and soft underneath my feet. The sun was starting to rise, and despite the fire that had melted the very stone underneath our feet, the rest of the island was largely untouched.

  I followed him over to the cliff face and saw the fleet of boats gone.

  And on the beach, two black dragons, each as large as a small airplane, lay. One was on its side with a missing wing and cut tail, its great clawed feet in the surf, steam rising from where the water hit his scales.

  The other dragon, despite a wing crumpled like a paper fan and forearms that had clearly been broken, was curled almost protectiv
ely around the tiny form of Lana who was balled up, rocking back and forth.

  He closed his eyes and exhaled, a trace of white smoke escaping from his lips. “They’re all alive,” said Hunter.

  I knew I should feel something. After all, we had defeated the Devourer, the monster of my life, my childhood, my dreams. Instead, all I could think about was the reactive stiffening of my grandmother’s body as I’d plunged the sword into her heart.

  She was dead.

  And they were alive.

  I hated myself so much because I should have been glad they were alive, but I couldn’t help but hate them because Grandma, my loving, amazing, exasperating grandma who had tried so hard to protect me, was gone.

  I fell to my knees and screamed.

  Ash clouds rose around me, swirling, blinding, burning. And saw a massive form taking shape. A fox made of ash.

  “Grandma?”

  I will always be with you.

  The fox vanished.

  I blinked and saw the scene before me, exactly the same as it had been.

  I closed my eyes and covered my face.

  I felt Hunter’s arms around me.

  “We did it,” he said softly.

  I shoved him as hard as I could, and when that didn’t move him, I beat at his chest, screaming, “What good is that when the Devourer can make copies of itself? What good is it when I am the last of my line? My grandmother is dead, and I had to kill her! I didn’t even get to tell her –”

  I dissolved into a sobbing mess. Without him holding me up, I would have fallen to my knees.

  And he just held me until my tears, ebbed away into an exhausted whimper.

  “You won’t be alone. You won’t ever be alone. I’ll be with you.”

  I wiped the tears from my eyes. I took a deep shaky breath and tried to speak with a lightness I didn’t feel. “Still trying to make sure you can ‘seal’ me, huh?”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  He tilted my chin to look at me. Even through my teary, blurred vision, his gaze seared me. “Sealing or not, magic or not, shen or not, none of that matters. I care about you, Sophie.”

  I sniffed. “That would be a lot more convincing if we hadn’t just magically blasted our enemy together.”

  The corner of his lips turned up. “Haven’t you figured out I have the worst timing? Like now. Because I’m going to ask you to marry me.”