Nice Dragons Finish Last (Heartstrikers)

by Rachel Aaron

  His first thought was an earthquake, followed by an explosion, and then a foolish hope that it was Bob coming to help them at last. The truth, however, was none of these. It was much worse, because by the time Julius realized the shaking was connected to his brother’s deep, bellowing roar, it was too late to do anything about it.

  Flames burst through the darkness, and the magic eaters screamed, scrambling over each other in their panic. But there was no escape. Fire was everywhere, clearing a ring around them as Justin rose from the ashes that had been a pile of magic eaters.

  He raised the Fang of the Heartstrikers at the same time, bringing the bloody edge of his sword to his mouth and biting down with a bone-chilling clang. The flash that followed was so bright that even Julius, who knew what to expect, had to close his eyes. When he opened them again, the human Justin was gone, and in his place stood an enormous, and enormously pissed off, dragon.

  Something sharp dug into his shoulder, and Julius jumped before he realized it was Marci’s fingers. She’d scrambled to his side during the fire and was now gripping his arm like she meant to rip it off, staring at Justin with eyes so wide, they looked ready to fall out of her head. Julius didn’t blame her. If Justin had been his first dragon, he probably would have had the same reaction.

  The Heartstriker clan was known for its beauty, not its size. Justin, however, was the exception to the rule. Even at twenty-four, he was already nearly forty feet from nose to tail, a heavy, winding snake of a dragon with a viper’s head crowned by a feathered crest. A pair of enormous, gloriously colored wings in blue, green, and gold extended from his feathered back, and his tail was a long whip of trailing plumage. All of this was supported by four thin, scaly, but enormously strong legs that ended in raptor-like feet tipped with curving talons, which were currently digging into the scorched parking lot like the asphalt was freshly turned dirt. But while his claws were definitely not to be messed with, it was his brother’s fangs that made Julius shiver.

  Now that Justin had cast all illusions aside, his sword had followed suit. The Fang of the Heartstriker was a blade no longer, but a bone-like shell encasing Justin’s front fangs. Magic poured off them, filling the empty air with the sharp, biting fury of the Heartstriker’s power. Any wounds Justin inflicted with those teeth would never fully heal, and when the fire spewing out of his mouth passed them, the blaze changed from yellow to the brilliant green flame that had once made their grandfather the most feared dragon in the Americas.

  By this point, the magic coming off Justin was so intense it was almost dizzying. But when he turned that green fire on the magic eaters, they did not feast as they had on Julius’s blood. They fled, surging into the air with a chorus of terrified wails.

  Justin followed with a roar that cracked the blacktop, launching off the ground with a flap that nearly blew Julius over. By the time he’d righted himself again, Justin was high overhead, burning the magic eaters out of the air with gouts of green flame until the ashes fell like snow over the three remaining figures huddled together in the now-empty parking lot.

  “Julius,” Marci whispered, her face lit up by fire and wonder. “He’s a dragon.”

  “Yes,” Justin said, looking down to check on Katya, who was still somehow asleep. “We’ve established this.”

  “A real dragon,” Marci clarified. “With fire.”

  “He’s a dragon flying around and breathing fire inside the Lady of the Lake’s city,” Julius said heatedly, bracing against the pain as he tried and failed to pick Katya up. He tried again anyway, growling in fear and hurt and frustration and a thousand other things. Chelsie was going to kill them all for this. “We have to find some way to wake Katya. There’s no way we can move fast enough with her like this. Can you see if she’s under a spell? That’s the only thing I know of that could keep a dragon unconscious this long.” He paused, listening for a reply. When he heard nothing, he looked over to find her still staring at the sky. “Marci,” he snapped. “This is kind of important.”

  She nodded absently, eyes never leaving Justin. “Do you have feathers like that?”

  Julius sighed. Clearly, she was going to be no help at all until her curiosity was satisfied. “Yes,” he said quickly. “All Heartstrikers have feathers. It’s why we’re called feathered serpents. I look like Justin, but much smaller and with a different coloration and no green fire. Now, can you please check to see what’s making Katya sleep?”

  Marci blinked like she was hearing him for the first time, and then, to his relief, she dropped down to examine Katya. A few seconds later, she pulled up the dragoness’s sleeve to reveal a silver chain wrapped around her bicep. “Here, there’s a spell on this.”

  Julius wanted to slap himself. Of course Estella would know about the chain. For all Julius knew, this was the reason Svena had given it to him in the first place. The only question was what kind of a moron was he for not figuring it out earlier? When he grabbed the chain to yank it off, however, a wave of drowsiness swept over him, nearly taking him under as well before he snatched his fingers back. Apparently, the spell was now activated. He was about to ask Marci to give it a try when he heard the squeal of tires in the distance.

  He froze, listening. Considering the show Justin was putting on, his guesses were evenly split between bounty hunters, a news crew, or, if they were really unlucky, one of Algonquin’s anti-dragon task forces. When he didn’t hear any shots, sirens, or excited screaming, however, Julius dragged himself up on his knees to try and see what was actually coming, and was subsequently nearly run over when Bob power-slid his Crown Victoria around the corner and into the parking lot.

  “Bob!” Julius cried, clutching his chest, which felt in danger of collapsing under the combined weight of injury and shock. “What are you doing?”

  “Helping,” Bob said cheerfully, hopping out of his car. “Or didn’t you want help? Because I can go.”

  That was enough to nip Julius’s anger in the bud. “I’m always happy to receive any help,” he said humbly. “Yours most of all. Thank you.”

  Bob sighed. “So beautifully said, but why isn’t Katya awake yet? She’s supposed to be awake. We’re on a tight schedule.”

  “Working on it,” Marci grumbled, ripping off the duct tape Bixby had used to secure the chain to Katya’s arm.

  “We need to get the vest off her, too,” Julius said, showing Bob the detonator he was still clutching in his hand. He’d been holding it so tight for so long now, his fingers had started cramping. Before he could explain the bomb to his oldest brother, though, Bob leaned down and yanked out one of the wires seemingly at random.

  Julius felt like he was having a heart attack. “What did you just do?” he cried. “That could have—you would have—how did you know that was the right one?!”

  “I don’t know!” Bob cried back, slapping his hands to his face in an exaggerated expression of horror. “It’s almost as though I can see the future!”

  “Oh,” Julius said quietly, shoulders slumping as he looking down at the detonator in his hand. “Right. So I guess I can let go of this, then?”

  “Only if you want to,” Bob said, scooping Katya up and stripping off the bomb vest before tossing her into the Crown Vic’s back seat like a sack of potatoes. “Right, then! Let’s get going, because between you and me, this place is about to get very crowded.”

  He looked pointedly at Justin, still flaming in the sky, but Julius didn’t need the hint. He was already turning to tell Marci to get into the car…and found only empty space.

  At this point, Julius would have thought it impossible to panic any more than he already was, but the sudden lack of Marci sent his brain into overdrive. “Marci!” he shouted, whirling around. “Marci!”

  “Just a second.”

  Her voice was like a balm, sending relief running through his body. The feeling was short-lived, though, because when he finally spotted her, she was crouching on her hands and knees all the way back at the edge of the blackened circle
where Justin had first shifted.

  “What are you doing?” he yelled, running over to grab her by the shoulders. “Come on! We have to go.”

  “But it’s gone!” she said frantically, yanking out of his hold. “It was in my bag back in the gym, and now it’s gone.”

  He stared down at her, uncomprehending. “What’s gone?”

  “My Kosmolabe!” she cried, pressing her cheek against the ground so she could look along the asphalt at foot level. “It must have fallen out when the magic eaters jumped us. Just give me thirty seconds to find it and—”

  She cut off as Julius pulled her up, spinning her around to face him. “We don’t have thirty seconds.” he said, forcing his voice to be calm. “We’ll come back later and look together, I promise, but we’re going to be up to our necks in serious trouble if we don’t leave right now. So please, Marci, please let it go. For me. Because I’m not going to leave you here, and if you stay, we’re all in danger.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, her whole body shaking with urgency, and then she went limp under his hands. “Okay,” she whispered, sliding her bag back onto her shoulder. “Okay.”

  Relief flooded into Julius so fast, he almost fell into Marci in his rush to hug her. He didn’t think it was possible to properly process all the emotions stomping through him like a herd of elephants, so he didn’t take the time to try. He simply squeezed Marci tight before tugging her back toward Bob’s car, almost yanking her over in his rush to get them both inside and out of danger. But then, just when he was starting to believe they might actually all make it out of this alive, Justin’s flaring green fire that had been illuminating the Pit from above suddenly snuffed out.

  Julius stumbled, his head snapping up, but he couldn’t see a thing. The Pit was once again as black as its namesake, and there was no sign of his brother at all. Not a flame, not a roar, not a flap of his wings, not even the squeals of the magic eaters as they died. Nothing. It was like he’d just vanished.

  He was still staring up at the silent void where Justin had been when something whooshed by in the blackness—something enormous and incredibly fast. The only reason he spotted it at all was because he was already looking up, and even then, he didn’t catch more than an impression of power and speed before the thing was gone, vanishing into the dark like a hunting owl. He was still staring after it when his phone began to ring.

  He answered it without really thinking. By this point, the pain and repeated shocks had rendered his brain nearly useless. He barely noticed when Marci grabbed his arm and pulled him into Bob’s back seat between herself and the now-stirring Katya. As luck would have it, the call picked up just as Bob hit the gas, knocking them all backwards and sending Julius’s phone clattering to the floor. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because the roar that came through the cell phone’s speaker would have deafened Julius otherwise.

  “Do you idiots listen to nothing I tell you?”

  The feminine voice was so furious, he almost thought it was his mother, but that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t high-pitched enough, and there was a brutal edge on the words that Bethesda could never manage. It wasn’t until Bob drew a C in the air, though, that Julius was able to put a name to it. Not that that made things any better.

  He scooped the phone off the floor with a sinking heart, leaning back into the Crown Vic’s padded cushions for strength as he raised it to his ear. “Hello, Chelsie.”

  “I specifically warned you not to do anything that would bring the Lady down on us,” his sister snarled, making him wince. “That includes letting your moron of a brother run rampant breathing fire over a city like some throwback from the dark ages!”

  Julius swallowed. “I can’t exactly control what Justin—”

  “I know that!” Chelsie shouted. “And it’s the only reason you’re still alive. Justin might not be so lucky.”

  Her voice had turned into a growl by the end, and Julius began to sweat. “Is, um, is he okay?”

  “At the moment, yes, because I snatched him out of the air before he could get himself killed. But I can’t vouch for his wellbeing from this point forward. I have very little patience for idiots”—there was a sharp crash over the phone, followed by a pained bellow that sounded a lot like Justin’s—“who lose their tempers”— another crash—“and use the power they were given for the defense of the family”— another bellow of pain—“to make a spectacle of themselves in the Algonquin’s front yard!”

  Justin’s pained cries went through Julius like spears. “Please don’t be hard on him,” he begged. “It’s my fault. I asked him to help. He would never have—”

  “Justin doesn’t need your permission to be a fool,” Chelsie said, her voice wavering back toward human, but only just. “He has been warned numerous times, but his head is like a rock. Now, he’s going to learn the hard way why we do not break the rules, and you are going to keep your snout out of it. The only reason I’m even calling you is to make sure you’re running. The Lady of the Lakes would have to be deaf, dumb, blind, and asleep to miss a display like that, so if you don’t want the family to disavow all knowledge of your existence, you will get your lousy carcass out of the Pit this instant.”

  “We’re running,” Julius assured her.

  “Good,” Chelsie said, slightly calmer. “Let me talk to Bob.”

  Julius looked up to see Bob frantically shaking his head. “Uh…he’s not—”

  “I know he’s there,” Chelsie growled. “Put him on now.”

  Bob’s shoulders slumped in defeat, and he reached back for Julius to give him the phone. When he got it, he pressed it between his shoulder and his ear, answering in a voice so falsely cheerful, it put Julius’s teeth on edge. “What a delight! A call from my favorite sister. How are you, Chelsie love?”

  Julius couldn’t make out Chelsie’s answer from the back seat, but her tone didn’t sound nearly as pissed as he would have expected given Bob’s greeting. Then again, Chelsie had known Bob much longer than he had. Maybe she was too used to his antics to care? He was wondering if he shouldn’t take a page from her playbook when he felt Katya stir beside him.

  He turned just in time to see her sit up in a rush. Her blue eyes popped open, looking around the car in frightened confusion, and then in horror when she spotted Bob in the front seat. “What is going on?” she whispered, turning to Julius. “Why are we in a car with the Great Seer of the Heartstrikers?” Her eyes dropped as she spoke, and she recoiled, pressing her back against the door. “What happened to you?”

  Between the dark and the constant panic, Julius hadn’t actually had a chance to look at his wounds properly. He did so now, tilting his head down to study the shredded bloody mess that, this morning, had been a brand new shirt. The longer he looked, though, the more he realized that wasn’t quite right. Most of his shirt had been ripped away during the fighting, which meant the torn-up, far-too-bloody thing he was looking down at was actually his chest.

  With that awful realization, the world officially became too much. After all the shocks, attacks, and blood loss of the last hour, he simply had nothing left to pull on, and Julius passed out on the spot, slumping back into the seat with Marci’s frightened shout ringing in his ears.

  Chapter 18

  Estella the Northern Star, Seer of the Three Sisters, stood behind a rusted-out dumpster at the end of what had once been a high school parking lot, waiting. Above her, the magic eaters she’d lured with her sister’s blood were still swarming, but they gave her a wide berth. Estella paid them no mind in any case. She simply stood, waiting patiently until, at last, she heard the beautiful clink clink of antique glass rolling over decaying asphalt.

  She leaned down, pressing her fingers to the broken ground just in time to catch the golden ball rolling across it. The priceless treasure the human mage had lost in the chaos. The Kosmolabe. Estella stroked the smooth, cool glass with her fingers. Her Kosmolabe, at last.

  Tucking the beautiful orb caref
ully into the warded box she’d brought along just for this purpose, Estella hurried back to her car. This whole operation had been a mess. Thanks to the young Heartstriker’s antics, there wasn’t even the remotest possibility the Lady of the Lakes wouldn’t notice what had happened here, which meant Estella needed to leave. The idea irked her—she did not run from anyone—but her mothers had taught her early that it was best to give Algonquin a wide berth, and Estella always listened to her mothers.

  Fortunately, her limo was waiting just around the corner. She slid into the back seat, commanding the autodrive to take her back to her hotel. She’d barely made it a block before her ears caught the muted blare of sirens approaching at top speed, and the thundering hooves of a horse.

  A minute later, she passed a convoy of DFZ heavy weapons teams going the opposite direction, led by an enormous man riding a horse made of crashing waves and carrying a spear the size of a telephone pole. His magic was so potent, Estella caught the scent of him even inside her car: ocean spray and blood, dragon’s blood to be precise. But then, whom else would you send to a situation like this but a dragon slayer? She was only sad the overgrown Heartstriker whelp had vanished before Algonquin’s hunter could spear him.

  In an ironic twist, the wasteland created by the Lady of the Lakes’ emergence was located directly below the DFZ’s Financial District. This meant it was barely a five-minute drive from her hotel, yet another reason why she’d chosen it as the stage for Bixby’s final act. She had hoped he’d beat the odds and survive since he was the only human she had in Vegas, but then, that was why she’d made him give her all his information before sending him in. Estella never bet on long odds.