“Truth?” Shaw let out a snort. “‘Twas never a word I would use to describe a traitor!”
“Maybe not,” I acknowledged, “but I’ve always trusted my gut in times like this. If I don’t go, that dragon will come up here. I fight him here, I fail, and your lives are then forfeit. But if I go fight him in the throne room…then I can buy you enough time to escape.”
“Sirrahon might not seek to kill you!” Galen argued. “You’ve been identified as a vertice, thus you–”
“Sirrahon’s got an easy way around that problem. Whatever horror he has stored inside that ruby crystal will do the job for him. But here’s what matters. So long as the three of you are alive, there is hope. My death…will just be my death.”
Liam’s voice pleaded with me. “Don’t play his game! Besides, you need my magic, don’t you?”
I shook my head. The time just wasn’t there. “Galen, what are the odds of your weapon penetrating Sirrahon’s magic shield all by itself?”
The centaur looked grim. “I believe that they are very low.”
I let out another breath. I hefted the Demon so that it rested against my shoulder.
“Then it looks like it’s goodbye,” I said sadly. “Thank you for being better friends…better family…than I ever deserved.”
Galen’s eyes were now as wet as his forehead. “Dayna, please. There must be another way.”
Both Liam and Shaw chimed in, urging me to stay. There had to be another way. There must be something someone else could do. Let someone else do it. Let one of us do it.
But they were wrong.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
With a firm grip on the Wizard’s first and only attempt at a firearm, I turned and headed towards the throne room to confront Sirrahon.
Chapter Forty-Three
The Demon’s wooden stock felt warm and smooth in my hand. I grasped it as I would a talisman against evil. Like a crucifix in a vampire movie. Yet my insides still felt queasy as I made my way down the stairs and into one of the palace’s main corridors.
I’d been down these passages dozens of times. But the ruby’s pulse got brighter and brighter as I drew closer. It turned every corner alien and placed a threat in every shadow. It filled my vision, and I sensed it when I closed my eyes.
Way at the end of the hall, I finally spotted the antechamber to the throne room. The pulse emanated from the half-open doors, the reddish glow making it look like the maw of an opened-jawed monster come up from the depths.
Some part of my nerves went ‘snap’ like a little fleshy rubber band. I flung myself behind a nearby stone pillar and leaned up against it, gasping. My breaths sounded like little sobs.
This was really happening. Each step took me closer to my end. I was walking into the lion’s den like a sacrificial victim.
“I can’t do this,” I gasped. “I can’t…there’s nothing I can…”
Part of me, the part that had to be at least partially insane, put its foot down.
Stop it! If you believe that you’re a victim, then put the Demon down. Go on, waltz on in there and let Sirrahon have the skimpiest late-night snack he’s ever eaten.
I firmed up my jaw and shook my head. No, I wasn’t about to do that.
It wasn’t in my nature. And it wasn’t just about poor little old me. Not anymore. My friends were counting on me. King Fitzwilliam and Lord Ivor and Sir Quinton and Shelly and Percival…and those were just the humans in Andeluvia.
If I was a vertice, then I had a unique power. Not one of swordsmanship. Not one of sorcery.
But the part inside me that stood up and demanded: This is not how my story will end.
At the end of everything, when I’d lost all hope, I embraced this idea with all my being.
Something strange happened. A jolt shook my insides. Everything besides what was to come in the next few minutes began to fade away. All the worries and problems I’d been dealing with shrank into insignificance. My detractors on the Royal Court. The repairs to my poor house. The manufacture of honey to pay my debts. My case load at the OME.
It all fell away.
I felt liberated. A white-hot point of light.
All that I wanted in the world was one good shot at Sirrahon. One good shot at the author of most all the evil I’d endured.
A quick search of my pockets, and I pulled out the first of the three cartridges. I tilted the barrel back and let it slide inside as Galen had recommended. It made a sticky-sounding clunk, and when I tilted the weapon in the opposite direction, the round didn’t fall back out.
It was still difficult for me to hold the Demon steady in one hand for any length of time. I cocked the J-shaped firing pin, taking care to grip the weapon in both hands. Then I quietly walked up the rest of the corridor, my ears alert for the slightest sound, and made my way up to the antechamber.
I crept around one of the chamber’s support pillars. I’d learned that there was a hidden nook to one side where someone had hung a little round mirror on the wall. I snuck in a quick peek at myself.
Yes, I looked awful. I hadn’t been expecting much. Between my messed-up hair and an extra-thick coating of dust, I looked like someone who’d just walked away from a plane crash.
But it did make me think of something.
Using one hand, I lifted the mirror off its fastener. Then I put my back to the wall and began to slide-walk to one side. The cool, slick feel of the stone against my shoulder blades gave way to rougher wood as I moved across the half-closed door.
When I got to where I could use the mirror, I silently counted the seconds between each beat of ruby illumination. I held it out with the tips of my fingers and angled it so that I could see inside. I gasped. The van-sized chunk of ruby sat off to one side, emitting its pulse like a giant’s disembodied heart.
And Sirrahon…
Sirrahon lay stretched out alongside the far side of the room, fast asleep.
I pulled the mirror back. My mind raced furiously. What the heck was going on here?
Yes, I’d gone so far as to say that the dragon was arrogant. Overconfident, because he thought he’d won. But this was stretching it.
I used the mirror to peek inside again. No, my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Sirrahon lay on his side, in the shadow of the now-empty hearths that kept the throne room warm in the winter. It didn’t look like he’d disturbed any of the furniture, either. The only sign of damage was where he’d smashed his way in through the boarded-up skylight.
As for the dragon himself, I knew that I wasn’t seeing an illusion spell. Galen had established that Sirrahon was blocking things like that. And this time, I could hear something in the room.
The unmistakable sound of a dragon snoring.
No doubt about it; this was some kind of trap. But I hadn’t come all this way to waste a chance at taking my shot. I gave it some thought, because I had to figure out the dragon’s angle here.
Sirrahon had said that he wanted to look me in the eye when settling the score. That meant he had to get me inside the throne room. Taking up a position on the far side of the room would guarantee that.
As for the ‘sleeping’, that was something I’d seen Shaw do. The griffin was good at hiding his alertness by pretending to catnap. He could still pounce in an instant.
Maybe I could turn that reflex to my advantage.
I dug around in one of my pockets for Shelly’s spare cell phone and switched it on. Even though it wouldn’t pick up calls in this world (unless Sirrahon used his enchantment again), it did have another function I could use.
With a few swipes and clicks on the screen, I set the phone’s alarm clock function to go off in one minute. I turned the volume up to maximum. Then I got in position behind the doors, phone in one hand and Demon in the other.
I waited.
Shelly’s phone had a setting to count down the seconds. I waited until it got down to the last three. Then, I hurled the device through the doors and into the throne room. As
it skittered across the floor it began blaring its alarm, a tinny thing that echoed off the high ceiling. I didn’t wait to see if the dragon took the bait. I didn’t have time.
Thoughts flashed through my mind as I moved, as if in a dream, as if in slow motion.
This was the creature that plucked out Cohen’s eyeballs. That set Bonecarver loose. That poisoned the Hakseeka. That ordered Isabel Vega’s murder. That seduced Destry into turning traitor. That put Nagura into a coma. That turned the Noctua against Thea and Perrin. That lured Hollyhock to her destruction.
I wanted this shot.
My hands were rock-steady now. I gave the nearest door a kick as I hefted the Demon’s barrel in both hands. The heavy door creaked open. That was just enough for me to take a few steps into the throne room, kneel, and bring the weapon to bear.
I heard Sirrahon let out a snarl. But he didn’t leap at me, or the phone decoy. That was fine. I got his chest perfectly in line with the sights as I squeezed the Demon’s stock.
The J-piece made a little sproink as it flipped around and hit home. The weapon sparked and bucked against my shoulder like a weak pop-gun.
My breath caught.
Oh my God! The damn thing didn’t work, I’m going to have to–
Then the barrel erupted with a flare of white sparks and an earth-shaking KA-THOOM.
Chapter Forty-Four
It took a few blinks before I could see something besides the flash reflected off my retinas. A cloud of sour tasting dust settled around me.
I didn’t understand what I was seeing at first glance.
Sirrahon hadn’t moved. My shot had hit home, tearing his chest apart, but there wasn’t any blood. His insides were a mass of gray and brown flecks. The snoring had stopped, though.
They’d been replaced with a harsh cough I’d last heard when Nagura had let out the Hakseeka version of a laugh. The sound came from above me. From behind me.
Heart whamming in my chest, I whirled about.
Sirrahon clambered down from where he’d hung against the ceiling like a gigantic scaly bat. That was a trick I’d only associated with wyverns, but apparently Dragonkind could do it as well. He’d shrunk himself down to roughly Nagura’s size to pull the trick off.
“I always knew that my etchings were lifelike,” Sirrahon said, as his rasp of a voice sounded inside my head. “My mother didn’t approve.”
In spite of myself, I had to look again. Sure enough, Sirrahon had done a damned good self-portrait, scaled up to the size of a wall-length mural. He’d used his talons to gouge out the equivalent of a pencil sketch in stone. The gray-brown ‘innards’ were simply the inside of the stone wall I’d blasted.
Of course dragons could do artwork like that, I thought disgustedly. They were cousins to the wyverns, after all. I’d seen the Hakseeka’s breathtaking subterranean mosaics. And I’d watched Nagura’s dexterous touch in manipulating a pen.
I’d fallen for the decoy, just as I’d tried my own decoy and failed.
Sirrahon muttered a magical phrase and his body expanded to full size once more. The sight jangled my nerves more than I cared to admit. It made him a bigger target, which would’ve been a plus if my Demon was still loaded.
“The only surprise you saved for me was your weapon,” Sirrahon went on. “What did you bring to your death-place?”
“Why don’t you take a closer look?” I suggested. I held Galen’s invention up in one hand as if to make it easier for the huge reptile to see.
Meanwhile, my other hand frantically searched for a second cartridge to reload. I finally found the last two rounds in a pocket. My fingers scrabbled around inside until they closed around one.
The dragon let out a snort. “Ah, I see. A copy of Archer’s little toy. Impressive. Without my magic shields, that could have actually hurt me. All the more reason for bringing this to a close.”
With that, Sirrahon lunged for me.
I dove to one side as his neck pistoned forward. His head was a blur of jagged teeth. I had no time to load my weapon.
Reflexively, I threw the cartridge at him. The little peppermint-scented object bounced off the dragon’s snout and spun in midair before his eyes. The impact made it release a little puff of dust.
Then it went off with a FA-THAMM that practically blew my eardrums out. The world went topsy-turvy as I got tossed head over heels. My ankle sent out a jolt of raw pain. I saw stars as my head cracked against one of the throne room’s walls.
Head aching, ears throbbing, I struggled just to sit up. Everything sounded as if it were at a distance, and under water. My vision swam, and I swiped my sleeve across my eyes, trying to clear away the dust and tears. Finally, both sight and sound got turned back on as my brain got the interior switchboard working again.
Sirrahon thrashed about on the opposite side of the room like a demented thing. He rolled over Shelly’s spare phone in his convulsions, leaving nothing but a black and silver smear. Roars and other raw cries came from his mouth. Part of me expected to see his face covered in black soot, like a cartoon character who’d just witnessed a bomb go off up close.
Once he finally stopped howling, I got a good look. His scales, from the top of his muzzle to above his eyes, had been pitted ever so slightly. But then the same blue nimbus I’d seen envelop Wyeth winked on, blazing bright blue against the dim red light that illuminated the room.
“That hurt,” he snarled.
I let out a cough. That made my lungs ache. My voice was choked with grit.
“It wasn’t supposed to tickle.”
Sirrahon let out a draconic growl that was a symphony of all sorts of mayhem. He turned, displaying his body in all its sinuous, scaly glory, and oriented on me again. I tried to stand, but the hurt ankle gave out on me. I looked around in desperation for cover, but I was out of luck there too.
I’d fetched up on the side of the room opposite where the Royal Court met. There weren’t any tables or pillars I could hide under or behind. No doors or vents to dash or crawl through. The dragon-headed hearths were ten yards to my right. The doors to the antechamber, which now hung loose and broken, were even further away to my left. No escape there.
And yet I heard something come from those doors. The dragon heard it too. He paused before leaping upon me to listen.
A clack-clack of hooves, along with a metallic jingle. To my weary, pain-addled mind, it sounded like a reindeer pulling a sleigh. But my heart sank as I realized who was coming.
Even then, my breath whistled out as Liam trotted through the remains of the entryway. His head was raised in proud defiance, his hooves gleamed, and he wore Galen’s leaf-shaped pendant around his neck. He looked at once noble and adorable; strong, and yet completely outmatched by the dragon before him.
Why hadn’t my friends listened to me? I thought despairingly.
“Greetings, Protector,” Sirrahon said smoothly. “I have a spell ready for one of the fey. Now I can reunite you with your sire, Quinval.”
Liam lowered his antlers and charged.
The dragon spat a trio of words. “Vathes tani dreri!”
A crackle of blue lightning hit Liam in mid-stride. He collapsed, gasping. I screamed his name and tried to limp over to him, but time and distance stretched out before me like a bad dream.
Liam’s skinny deer legs splayed out across the floor. Sirrahon repeated his words, hitting the fayleene again and again. Each bolt drove him into the hard marble of the floor, making his limbs quiver.
Finally, silence returned. Sirrahon looked on curiously as the Protector lay prone. Smoke rose from singed fur.
The Protector’s eyes opened, glinting golden fire. He let out one of his cute little deer snorts as he got back up. A shake of the head, and he charged once more.
“Impossible!” Sirrahon breathed. “My magic…this is impossible!”
The dragon chanted the phrase once more. Twice. Three times.
Liam shrugged off each hit and came on. I finally got to my one good foot
and hunted in the same pocket for the last cartridge. It fell into my palm, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off the scene before me.
The Protector of the Forest skidded to a halt and murmured a phrase of his own. A beam of emerald light cleaved the red-tinged darkness. It enveloped the dragon and made him thrash in pain. He half-collapsed, panting.
I let the final round slide home with a clunk as he got up.
“So be it, Protector,” Sirrahon grunted. “You have stripped me of my magic. But I am still a dragon.”
He reared up, roaring. I brought the Demon to my shoulder. Sirrahon’s body was right in my sights, and I aimed for his heart. A squeeze, and the J-piece made its little sproink.
This time, I didn’t get the spark. Let alone the pop-gun buck. The split-second delay between ignition and explosion passed. Nothing happened.
Misfire.
Galen had promised a seven-in-ten chance of the thing working each time.
Just my rotten effing luck.
And then Sirrahon turned towards me and began his lumbering freight train of a charge.
That perfect confidence I’d had when I first entered the throne room evaporated like so much smoke. My hands shook as they rewound the J-piece. I squeezed again, and the J-piece whipped around on its spring once more.
This time, the cartridge popped out of the barrel with a ploof! and landed on the floor six feet in front of me. I staggered forward, groping for the thing. I had no choice. There literally wasn’t anything left that I could use on Sirrahon.
The rumble of the dragon’s approach grew louder in my ears. So did the slighter sound of cloven hoofbeats. I fell to one knee, sending a jolt up my leg as I grabbed for the cartridge.
Sirrahon stopped in mid-charge and pivoted around. He whipped his razor-sharp tail around and thrust it at me. The tip was a blur of three-foot long spikes.
Liam came in from my side. The Protector raised his antlers as he knocked me out of the way with his furry chest. The cartridge went skittering away across the floor as I rolled, ankle twinging, ribs burning, until I came to a stop.
Dragon with a Deadly Weapon Page 22
