by Rachel Aaron
Julius was gone before she finished. His true form was sealed and he was woefully out of practice, but it didn’t matter. He was a dragon, they were human, and that was enough. Before the three men at the end of the alley even realized he was gone, Julius was behind them with his hand on the crown of the biggest human’s skull.
With surprise on his side, one push was all it took to slam the thug’s face into the street. The big man went down like a tree, and Julius paused just long enough to kick the gun out of his hand before turning on the remaining two.
He’d fully expected to find them gawking, or maybe fleeing in terror, but these men were clearly professionals. By the time he turned, they’d recovered enough to swing their guns back toward him. But Julius was getting back in the swing of things now himself, and he hadn’t lived this long as the smallest dragon in his clan by being slow.
The men had barely raised their weapons before he was in front of them. He dropped down at once, sweeping the first man’s legs out from under him with a fast kick that sent the large human sprawling backward, slamming the back of his skull against the street with an extremely satisfying crunch. Julius didn’t wait to see if the man would recover. He was already closing in on the lone survivor.
By this point, the last man standing had actually managed to get his gun up and aimed at Julius’s chest, but the shock of Julius’s inhuman speed seemed to have made him forget how to use it. Normally, this sort of fear-induced paralysis would have been enough to make Julius stop. Unlike the rest of his siblings, he didn’t enjoy scaring people. This time, though, stopping didn’t even cross his mind. This man needed to be scared almost as much as Julius needed to be scary. After years of being labeled a failure because he refused to participate in the cruel, cutthroat power games that absorbed the rest of his family, it felt amazingly good, right even, to finally be a dragon in someone’s eyes. Especially since he was doing it to save a friend, rather than crush an enemy.
He approached slowly, giving the long-buried animal part of the man’s brain time understand that he was facing an apex predator. The more the man shook, the slower Julius went, using the steady crunch of his footsteps like a hammer to drive the fear deeper until the thug was trembling so badly he fumbled his weapon. Only then, when the man had lost his gun and looked ready to lose his lunch as well, did Julius finally grab him.
The thug screamed, fighting like a cornered animal. But strong as fear had made him, it still wasn’t strong enough. With a sharp-toothed smile, Julius lifted the frantic man up by his collar and flung him into the wall across the alley. The man bounced from the impact and fell flat on his face, and though he was still breathing, he made no move to get up again. When Julius was sure he’d stay that way, he turned to check on Marci only to find her standing exactly where he’d left her.
That couldn’t be right. He’d ended his fight fast, true, but not that fast. She should have moved at least a little. But then he saw the men he’d left to her at the far end of the alley, and everything became clear.
When he’d last seen them, the two men had been standing with their guns drawn. Now, they were both down on their knees, grabbing at their necks like they were trying to pull something off. Marci, meanwhile, was standing with her arm thrust out, holding something in her outstretched fist that was glowing like a floodlight. As Julius got closer, though, he saw it wasn’t actually in her fist, but on it. The glowing object was one of her bracelets, a chunky, pink plastic ring he hadn’t paid much attention to before. Now it was lit up, though, Julius could clearly see the tight lines of spellwork on the inside of the inch-wide band pulsing like a heartbeat, and every time they flashed, the men at the end of the alley scrambled harder.
By the time he’d made it back to Marci’s side, both men had fallen over, their faces purple from lack of oxygen. Marci’s own face was red with effort, but her expression was triumphant as she finally released the fist she’d been holding.
“What did you do?”
She jumped foot into the air when he spoke, and then jumped again when she turned around and saw the three men he’d defeated sprawled across the alley. “Christ,” she panted, eyes jumping back and forth between the bodies, the cracked wall, and Julius himself. “What did you do?”
“I asked you first,” he said, tilting his head at the men she’d choked unconscious—or maybe to death. He wasn’t close enough to tell for sure. “I thought Thaumaturges didn’t cast spells on the fly?”
“We don’t,” Marci said, sticking out her arm to display her line of thick plastic bracelets, all of which, Julius could now see, had inner bands that were absolutely covered in spellwork. “This one’s my own variation on the force choke. An oldie but a goodie, and very effective.”
He gave her pink bracelet an appreciative smile before looking back at the men she’d downed. “Are they dead?”
She shook her head. “Murder is illegal even in the DFZ, and I try not to rack up too many felony charges my first week in a new town.”
Julius couldn’t help it. He started to laugh. Marci laughed too, leaning on him for support in a familiar way he found both comforting and startling. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched him with trust or affection. She didn’t seem to realize she was doing it, either, because she jumped off him again just as suddenly a few seconds later, cheeks flushing.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m, um…” She looked around at the body-strewn alley as though seeing it for the first time, and the flush of color drained from her face. “Wow,” she whispered, running her hands through her choppy hair. “I am really sorry about all this. Thank you very much for helping me.”
“Any time,” Julius said, and then stopped in surprise at how much he meant it. “It was nice to help someone,” he added when the silence had stretched too long. “Though, of course, I would like to know why a group of armed men attacked you.”
“They’re from Vegas,” she said. “But I never thought they’d chase me all the way up here, and I especially didn’t think they’d find me.” Her expression turned bleak, and she started wringing her hands together so hard he worried she’d wring them off. “Again, I’m really sorry about this. Like, really, really sorry. I guess you’ll want out of our contract now?”
“Why would I want that?” he asked, looking around. “Though we should probably get out of here.”
She nodded. “Fleeing the scene is definitely the smart criminal thing to do.”
The words were clearly meant to be a joke, but Marci’s delivery was oddly flat. Everything about her right now seemed off, actually, though whether it was from the shock of the fight or the backlash or some combination thereof, Julius wasn’t sure. Whatever the reason, she was wobbling so badly he had to step in, sliding his arm under her shoulders to keep her from going down.
“Thank you,” she whispered, leaning tentatively on him as he helped her to the car.
“You’re welcome,” Julius said. “Though I really wish you hadn’t backlashed yourself. I’m no magical expert, but isn’t that how mages kill themselves?”
Marci snorted as he lowered her into her seat. “It’d take a much bigger spell than that to kill me. Though I will admit I hit myself a bit harder than I anticipated. It’s been a while since I lost control of my magic enough to get backlashed flat out like that. I’d forgotten how much it sucks. But I didn’t exactly have time to be picky since that bastard had a gun in your face. Of course, if I’d known you were secretly a ninja, I wouldn’t have been so worried.” She looked back at the men he’d taken out. “How did you do that, anyway? I’ve never seen anyone move that fast.”
Julius thought back to the years of training every Heartstriker underwent before being allowed out into the world at seventeen, not to mention his overwhelming biological advantage. Neither of those explanations would work for Marci, though, so all he said was, “My brother’s into martial arts and extremely competitive. I picked up a few things during my time as his punching bag.”
&n
bsp; That wasn’t exactly a lie, but Julius shut the door before Marci could ask any more questions. Fortunately, her car was behaving itself. It started the first try, and Marci grabbed the wheel straight out, skipping the autonav in favor of getting them out of the alley and away from the downed thugs as fast as possible.
When they’d put several blocks between themselves and the scene of the crime, she slowed to a more reasonable speed and slumped over the dash with a long sigh. “I’ll waive the fee for today, of course. I know it’s no proper thanks for saving my bacon, but it’s all I can afford right now.”
Julius thought of her horrid basement apartment and shook his head. “I can’t let you do that. You did the job I hired you for. I’m happy to pay.” Her full rate, he decided, just as soon as Ian paid him.
Instead of being happy, though, Marci’s jaw tightened. “Let me buy you dinner, at least. I know a good place.”
“It’s really okay.”
She turned to him with a cutting look. “Julius, you saved my life. You have to let me do something.”
“You’re going to keep working for me, right? That’s something.” Potentially a big something, because they still had to chase down Lark’s lead on Katya and her alligator shaman. Marci, however, did not look appeased.
“That doesn’t count!” she cried. “You can’t let me pay you back by doing work I was going to do anyway!”
Julius shifted uncomfortably. Honestly, he didn’t want Marci paying him back at all. Trading debts was what dragons did, but Julius had helped her because he’d wanted to, and it had felt like freedom. Given the chance, he’d do it all over again for that feeling alone. But that wasn’t a line of logic a human would understand, so Julius decided to give in. Just a little.
“I’ll accept dinner,” he said. “But only if you tell me what that was about.”
Marci suddenly looked much less eager. “You’re sure you want to know?”
Julius shrugged. “I don’t mean to pry into your business, but believe it or not, I don’t normally get into back-alley brawls with strange men.”
“Well, if anyone deserved breaking your ‘no slamming people into walls’ streak over, it would be Bixby’s idiots.”
“I only got half of them,” he reminded her. “You did the other. Credit where credit is due.”
Marci laughed. “If by ‘credit’ you mean ‘assault and battery charges,’ then I guess you’re right.” She shook her head and turned to flash him a warm smile. “You know, we make a pretty good team.”
Julius felt that smile all the way to his toes. By the time he’d recovered, she’d turned away to fiddle with her car’s GPS, muttering under her breath about skyways and satellite uplinks and idiots who built cities on top of other, perfectly good cities.
In the end, she gave up and drew the route by hand, laying down a path that took them into the city’s industrial south west. Julius had no idea what she was trying to get to down there, and he didn’t ask. He was too busy enjoying the novelty of the words we and team to care about anything else as they sped away from the grim alley, following the river south as the moon began to rise.
***
Considering they were driving away from the lake and Algonquin’s tower and everything that was generally considered the heart of the DFZ, Julius had fully expected the city to get scarier, but it actually did just the opposite. The further they drove south along the river, the more corporate and uniform everything became. Instead of old buildings renovated into massive shopping centers, the Underground in this part of the city was filled with parking decks and massive housing units that, while nicer than the ones they’d just left by the casinos, were still bleak, utilitarian bricks of poured cement broken up only by railed walkways and tiny glass windows.
If you looked past that, though, the area actually reminded Julius far more of traditional suburbs than the DFZ Underground you saw in the movies. There were chain restaurants and coffee shops and shopping centers with parking decks full of mid-range cars and corporate buses shuttling people up to the massive offices on the skyways overhead. If it wasn’t for the fact that the whole place was basically a cement brick built under a giant bridge, it could have passed for anywhere in America once you overlooked the camera drones and armed private security patrols.
Since she’d driven them down here, Julius expected Marci to turn them into one of the huge chain restaurants, but she didn’t even look at them. She just kept driving until, eventually, they drove right out of the Underground and into the dense factory district that butted right up against it.
Before, when they’d driven out of the city, it had been all open space and plants and strange magic. This time, it was a very different landscape. In a deal that had brought dozens of multinational corporations to the DFZ, Algonquin had ceded the entire south western corner of her city to the new technology of magical fabrication. Even now, fifty years and two monetary overhauls later, the vast majority of the world’s magically integrated consumables—five sense projectors, the mana contacts on phones that made AR possible, even enchanted paper like the stuff Marci’s contract had been printed on—was still made in the massive factory complexes that had transformed what used to be the city of Dearborn, Michigan into a bleak landscape of monolithic, windowless buildings and canyon-like roads.
Huge at it all was, though, the factory park definitely didn’t seem like the sort of place you’d find a restaurant, and the longer Marci drove, the more uncomfortable Julius got. “Um,” he said at last. “Are you sure this is the right way?”
“Positive,” Marci replied. “I looked this place up on my way over before I had to chuck my phone. Best rating in the city.”
Julius didn’t see how a restaurant could survive out here, let alone be good, but he was even more curious about why she’d had to chuck her phone. He was dying to ask about a lot of things, actually, but he forced himself to wait. This job was already much more complicated than he’d anticipated, and as much as he wanted to push his lead on Katya, he wasn’t ready to charge recklessly forward without solving Marci’s puzzle first. Besides, he hadn’t eaten anything since he’d gotten off the plane this morning, and now that she’d reminded him about food, eating suddenly seemed much more important than following a tip that might well be the start of a wild goose chase. Or wild dragon chase, in this case.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait much longer. Despite the seemingly endless wall of identical industrial complexes, there were actually several smaller business squeezed in between the factories wherever there was room. Marci’s restaurant was one of these, a squat wooden shack built right up against the wall of a factory that made enchanted glass for AR displays. According to the back-lit sign, it was a BBQ joint. According to Julius’s nose, however, this place served greasy, sauce-covered heaven.
“We’re lucky it’s between shifts,” Marci said as they got out of the car. “I tried to come here yesterday, but the factories had just let out, and the line was around the block.”
Julius could see why. Despite the delectable smell drifting out its screen door, the inside of the restaurant was barely big enough to hold twenty people. It was empty now, though, and he took advantage of that to get them a prime booth in the corner that put his back to the wall and gave him a good view of the front door.
“Order whatever you want,” Marci said as she plopped down across from him. “Everything here is fantastic”
Julius bit back a grin as he picked up the one page laminated menu. Marci had no idea the trouble she was inviting, telling a dragon to order whatever he wanted. Hungry as he was, though, he was determined not to use more of her clearly limited funds than was absolutely necessary to make her feel better. So when the waitress came out of the tiny kitchen to take their order, Julius kept it small, just two plates of pork, three sides, a half order of cheese fries, a basket of cornbread, and a banana pudding.
Marci’s eyebrows were nearly up to her chopped-off hairline by the time he finished, but she didn�
��t comment as she ordered her own dinner of a pulled-pork sandwich and a beer. When the waitress asked her what kind of beer, Marci shrugged and told the girl to surprise her.
“Honestly, I don’t even like beer,” she confessed as the waitress vanished back into the tiny kitchen. “But a day like today demands a drink.”
Julius couldn’t argue with that. “So,” he said, resting his elbows on the red checkered tablecloth. “Do you want to start, or should I?”
Marci waved her hand. “Fire away.”
“Who is Bixby?”
“One of my dad’s old clients.”
The anger in her voice was all the hint Julius needed. “Bixby was involved in your father’s death?”
Marci sighed, but the waitress returned with their drinks before she could answer. “It’s more complicated than that,” she said when they were alone again. “Dad was one of the first wave of mages born after the comet. He never had a formal magical education because there wasn’t any such thing back then, but he taught himself how to break curses, which was a booming market in Vegas at the time. Business was good when I was younger, but my dad was very bad with money, and soon we were in a lot of trouble.”
She took a long swig of her beer, then made a face and set the bottle aside. “I didn’t actually know how much trouble until I was thirteen. That was when my mom got fed up and left us, and I learned that Dad was up to eyeballs in debt thanks to his moocher family and terrible money skills. I’d also tested positive as a mage by this point and enrolled in the best private magic school in the area, so there was that to pay as well.” She heaved an enormous sigh. “My dad was so proud of me. He would have cut off his right arm before he took me out of class. He was desperate, and Bixby knew it.”
Julius rolled his water glass between his palms. “I’m guessing Mr. Bixby isn’t exactly a legal sort of person?”
“I’m sure some parts of his business are legal,” Marci said. “But he definitely leaned more to the shady side. He knew my dad needed money, so he proposed a racket. Bixby’s mages would curse someone, and then my dad would use the good name he’d built up over the years to come in and break it for an exorbitant fee.”
