Part-Time Gods

by Rachel Aaron

  “Opal,” he murmured at last. “What are you doing here?”

  “Getting you out,” I replied, sliding my arm under his shoulders. I was still figuring out where to put my hand so I could help him up without digging my fingers into his wounds when he jerked away.

  “You can’t be here,” he said, his voice disjointed and more frightened than I’d ever heard. “You have to go.”

  “We’re both going,” I said firmly.

  “Don’t be stupid,” he hissed, finally sounding a bit more like his old self. “She’ll kill you, too! I didn’t go through all of this so you could die!”

  “No one’s dying,” I told him stubbornly. “Now come—”

  A roar cut me off. Through the hole the truck had left in the house, the wreckage in the lawn across the street began to shudder and shake. Smoke came next, then a flash of flame. I watched it rise through the night, transfixed by mortal terror until my father grabbed my hand.

  “Go!” he ordered, pushing me away. “I’ll hold her off.”

  The ridiculousness of that statement was enough to finally snap me out of my dragon-induced daze. “You can’t even hold yourself up!” I yelled at him, getting right back into position. “But don’t worry, I’ve got this.”

  He looked appalled. “How can you possibly—”

  “You’re not the only one with power,” I said, glaring down at him. “If you want to do something helpful, figure out how to get us across the river. I’ll handle everything from there.”

  My father opened his mouth then stopped, his face faltering as he dropped his eyes. My stomach dropped at the same time. I’d known getting to the DFZ would be an issue, but I’d never actually believed until this moment that he might not be able to do it. My dad was always unbeatably strong, the unmovable object I’d banged my head against my entire life. Right now, though, he looked more mortal than I did, and I had no idea how to handle that. I was still scrambling to think up a Plan B when the wreckage across the street exploded, and the dragon emerged.

  She wasn’t as big as some I’d seen, but all dragons are huge when they’re glaring down at you. True to her name, White Snake was a river of pale-white scales. Her body was long and winding, and her wedge-shaped head was framed by a mane of sky-blue hair fine as silk. Her slitted eyes were the same beautiful mix of sea colors as my father’s, and while she had no wings like the European dragons did, I knew she could still fly faster than the wind. Right now, though, she was hovering over us like a terrifying storm, fire dripping from her bared fangs as she looked around for what had struck her.

  Then her gaze fell on us.

  “You,” she growled in a voice that shook the air. “I’ll eat you alive!”

  I didn’t know if that threat was for me or Yong, but it didn’t matter. White Snake was diving at both of us, her car door–sized claws extended to slice us into pieces. Keeping tight hold of my dad, I reeled back and lobbed a perfect potato’s worth of magic at her face while I held the image of a grenade in my head.

  It was one of the best casts I’d ever done. The magic even looked like a glowing grenade as it flew through the air, but it flashed off White Snake’s nose without leaving so much as a mark. She didn’t even seem to notice as she opened her mouth, and the air around us began to superheat.

  I cringed when I felt it. I’d never been in a dragon’s direct line of fire before, but I knew what was coming, and this close up, I didn’t see any way out. Maybe a better mage could have done something with all the dragon magic shivering in the air around us, but I wasn’t a better mage yet. I was a cobbled-together failure who’d screwed up one too many times. Now it looked like my luck was officially out. I just wished I’d thought to call Nik before the end. Not that I knew what to say, but it felt wrong that my last words to him would be angry ones.

  Oh well. Add it to the pile of regrets. I was wondering if the DFZ was going to make my ghost work off everything I’d promised her or if she’d let me pass on to the afterlife unmolested when my dad grabbed me around the waist and lurched us backwards.

  For a horrible second, I was falling down the riverbank. Then I jerked into the air and up. Way, way up, leaving the ground and the blinding fire-blast behind as I was catapulted into the night sky on the back of a giant blue dragon.

  I grabbed on with a gasp, fisting my hands in the long, silken hair of his enormous green, gold, and crimson mane. For a blissful moment, fear was overcome by nostalgia. I’d ridden on my father’s back many times when I was little, and for a heartbeat, I was back in Korea, flying over the mountains on a dragon who never tired and would never let me fall. Then I felt the wetness seeping under my fingers, and reality came crashing back.

  “Shit!”

  My dad was bleeding like a faucet. His mane and back were slick with blood. It rolled off his snaking body in bucket-sized waterfalls, falling in streams to the river below. Behind us, White Snake roared and launched into the sky as well, bolting after us.

  Under any other circumstance, that wouldn’t have frightened me. Now that they were both dragons, the power difference between Yong and his little sister was painfully obvious. White Snake had the same long body and curving claws, but she was less than half his size, a literal pale shadow of my father’s magnificence. No wonder she’d had to wait until he was so weak he couldn’t leave his house. She’d never have had a chance otherwise.

  For all her cowardice, though, White Snake had planned her strike well. It wasn’t just my father’s wounds that were holding him down. Even in this shape, his body was shrunken and frail. Ribs stood out clearly beneath his scales, and he wasn’t floating effortlessly through the sky like he normally did. It was more like he was crawling, clawing the air for every inch. Even worse, he was going the wrong way.

  “No!” I shouted, struggling to raise my voice over the wind. “Don’t follow the river! Over the river! Fly into the DFZ!”

  “Impossible,” my father gasped, his voice rumbling through the blood beneath my fingers. “That’s the Peacemaker’s territory. I’m not running to him!”

  This hardly seemed like the time to worry about that, but I knew better than to challenge a wounded dragon’s pride. “You won’t be!” I yelled instead. “I’ve already got it all arranged! Just get across the water, and I’ll take it from there. Trust me!”

  The huge dragon heaved a pained sigh, and I gritted my teeth. But then, just when I was sure he was about to tell me to stop being a silly mortal, he changed course, turning on a dime to fly straight at the DFZ’s skyline.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he rumbled.

  So did I, but there was no turning back now. White Snake was gaining fast, her claws extended to finish the job before we reached the Peacemaker’s territory and her brilliant coup d’état became plain old murder. But then, just when I could feel the first heat of her fire on my back, we flew over the wall of buildings facing the water, and everything changed.

  I’d lived in the DFZ for a long time at this point. I’d thought I was used to seeing her move, but I’d never seen anything like this. The moment we passed the border of her domain, the city came to meet us, the buildings rising up from the ground like fingers to snatch us out of the air. I could actually see the people freaking out inside the windows, grabbing on to their sliding desks as their building bent sideways to circle around us.

  My father tried to dodge—I tried to dodge, because it was terrifying—but he was bloody and exhausted and miles too slow. In the end, all he managed was to curl himself into a protective ball with me at the center as the fist of skyscrapers clenched down around us. The last thing I saw through the cracks was a second hand rising up to smack White Snake down into the river like a gnat before the twisting knot of buildings pulled tight, and the light vanished.

  ***

  I woke up on the floor of my empty apartment.

  I was in my living room, lying on my back on the hardwood my mom had installed, blinking up at the only light bulb that had su
rvived Nik and my purge of valuables. When I finally managed to sit up, I saw that my dad was lying beside me. He was back in human form and unconscious, his whole body soaked in blood. He was also very naked.

  I covered my eyes at once. Draconic perfection notwithstanding, there were some things no one wanted to see, and your dad naked was one of them. I was trying to figure out how we’d gotten here when something soft brushed my hand.

  “Here.”

  I jumped and uncovered my eyes to see the DFZ standing over me. Once again, she looked different from the last time I’d seen her. Her face was young and feminine this time, like a teen girl’s, and she was holding out a blanket.

  “Sorry it took me so long,” she said, biting her lip. “I couldn’t reach over the water.”

  “You did fantastic,” I told her, taking the blanket and spreading it over my dad as best I could without looking. “You saved us, thank you. And great slap on White Snake, by the way.”

  The god flashed me a wicked grin. “No one messes with what’s mine.”

  I froze, waiting for those words to grate, but all my anger must have drained out with my dad’s blood, because I just felt tired. Tired and confused. “How did we end up in my apartment?”

  “It seemed like the safest place,” the DFZ said, nodding toward my curtained window. “But we’re still in transit, so I wouldn’t advise looking outside. Mortal minds don’t do well with how I run my mazes.”

  Seemed like prudent advice to me. “Can you help me move him?” I asked, nodding down at my dad.

  That was a bold ask since, technically, I worked for her now. But the DFZ just shrugged and helped me bundle Yong up and carry him to my mattress, the only thing left in my bedroom.

  “So what happens now?” I asked when we’d made him as comfortable as we could. My dad had been very firm about not asking the Peacemaker for help, but he still looked awful. I didn’t know if he needed a dragon doctor or if such a thing even existed. So far as I knew, dragons were fine or they were dead, nothing in between.

  “I don’t know,” my new god said, shaking her head. “My experience is with living dragons, not…whatever he is.” She waved her hand at my dad. “Honestly, if I hadn’t just seen him flying around, I wouldn’t be able to tell he was a dragon. I can’t feel his magic at all. He’s just…nothing.”

  I swallowed. Nothing did not sound good.

  “Anyway, it’ll take a while before your apartment settles back into the city,” she said, patting my hand. “I’ve got to go clean up the mess I made saving you. People get so mad when you turn their buildings into a fist! It’s nothing you’re prepared to handle on your first day, so you just stay here and rest. We’ll start your employment tomorrow, okay?”

  “Thank you,” I said quietly.

  The DFZ beamed at me and vanished. Just disappeared without a trace as if she was a light that had been turned off, leaving me alone. I slumped over the moment she was gone, sliding down the wall to land hard on my butt beside my father. My dad didn’t even twitch at the sound. He just lay there, cold and still. If he hadn’t been breathing, he could have been one of those marble statues they put on top of tombs.

  “Come on, Dad,” I whispered, reaching out to poke his shoulder. “Wake up. Yell at me. Do something.”

  Nothing.

  Pulling back my shaking hand, I tucked my legs against my chest and rested my chin on my knees, determined not to cry. I couldn’t afford to be weak. Until I heard from Mom, I was the only household the Great Yong had left. I might not worship him like the others did, but I’d be damned if I let him slip away after all that work. So long as he was here, I’d be here, so I forced myself to stay awake, keeping vigil at his side as we sailed together through a void inside a god toward whatever future my employment had bought.

  Thank you for reading!

  Thank you for reading Part-Time Gods! If you enjoyed the story, I hope you’ll consider leaving a review. Reviews, good and bad, are vital to every author’s career, and I would be very grateful if you’d consider writing one for me.

  If you want to be the first to know when the next DFZ book comes out, sign up for my New Release Mailing List! List members are always first in line for everything I do, and they get exclusive bonus content like the list-only Heartstriker short story, Mother of the Year. The list is free, and I promise never to spam you, so come join us!

  Need more books right now? Click ahead to read sample chapters of the first book in my Heartstrikers dragon series, Nice Dragons Finish Last. I’ve also included the first two chapters of my other new release, Forever Fantasy Online, the first in an epic Fantasy gamer series written with my husband, Travis Bach. (I know that sounds weird, but it’s actually super awesome! Even if you’re not a former MMO addict like us, I hope you’ll give it a try!)

  To see a full list of all my books, visit www.rachelaaron.net or click “Want More Books?” in your eReader’s table of contents. If social media is more your thing, you can follow me on Twitter @Rachel_Aaron or like my Facebook page at facebook.com/RachelAaronAuthor for writing updates, blog posts, and appearances. Again, thank you so so much for reading. I couldn’t do any of this without you!

  Yours always,

  Rachel Aaron

  Need more dragons in your life? Try the book that started it all!

  As the smallest dragon in the Heartstriker clan, Julius survives by a simple code: stay quiet, don't cause trouble, and keep out of the way of bigger dragons. But this meek behavior doesn't cut it in a family of ambitious predators, and his mother, Bethesda the Heartstriker, has finally reached the end of her patience.

  Now, sealed in human form and banished to the DFZ—a vertical metropolis built on the ruins of Old Detroit—Julius has one month to prove to his mother that he can be a ruthless dragon or lose his true shape forever. But in a city of modern mages and vengeful spirits where dragons are seen as monsters to be exterminated, he's going to need some serious help to survive this test.

  He just hopes humans are more trustworthy than dragons.

  Keep reading for the free sample!

  Chapter 1

  “Get up.”

  Julius woke with a jump, toppling off the slick modern couch. He landed face down on hard white carpet, smacking his knee painfully on the corner of his sister’s abstract coffee table in the process. When he reached down to clutch his smarting joint, his sister kicked his hand away again with the pointed toe of her black leather flats.

  “I have to be at the hospital in thirty minutes,” she continued as she marched across the room to yank open the hanging blinds. “That means you need to be out of here in ten. Now get moving.”

  Julius rolled over and sat up, squinting against the bright ray of sunlight she’d sent stabbing across her ultra-fashionable, ultra-expensive apartment. “Good morning to you, too,” he said, furtively rubbing his injured knee, which was still throbbing.

  “Try afternoon,” Jessica snapped. “Honestly, Julius, it’s nearly five. Is this when you got up at home?” She turned with a huff, walking over to the marble breakfast bar that separated her immaculately white kitchen from the other immaculately white parts of her apartment’s open floorplan. “No wonder Mother kicked you out.”

  Mother had kicked him out for a whole host of reasons, but Julius didn’t feel like giving his sister any more ammunition, so he spent the energy he would have used explaining himself on standing up instead. “Where’s your bathroom?”

  She stabbed one perfectly manicured nail at the hall, and he shuffled as directed, though it still took him three tries before he found the right door. The others led into beautifully furnished bedrooms, none of which looked to be in use.

  Julius sighed. Two guest bedrooms, and she’d still made him sleep on the couch. But then, Jessica had always been very conscious of where she stood in the pecking order, which was usually directly on top of Julius’s head. The only reason she’d let him sleep here at all was because he was her brother, and the consequences for not hel
ping family were dire. In any case, it wasn’t like he was in a position to complain. When you found yourself shoved off a private plane into a strange airport at dawn with nothing but the clothes on your back, you took what you could get.

  He found the bathroom and showered as fast as he could only to get right back into the same faded T-shirt and jeans he’d slept in, because what else was there to wear? He didn’t even have a toothbrush, and he wasn’t about to risk Jessica’s wrath by using hers. In the end, he had to settle for mostly clean, raking his shaggy black hair into some semblance of order with his fingers and wishing he’d had a chance to get it trimmed before his life had gone down the drain. Of course, if he’d had any advanced warning of last night’s personal armageddon, he wouldn’t have wasted it on a haircut.

  By the time he emerged into the living room again, Jessica was dressed for work in a pants suit, her long, blond-dyed hair pulled back in a tight French twist. She sat in the kitchen, perched on a silver barstool like a model in an interior design magazine as she sipped coffee from a minimalist white mug. Naturally, she hadn’t made any for him.

  “Here,” she said when she saw him, shoving a sleek, black metal rectangle across the marble countertop. “This is for you.”

  Julius’s breath caught in amazement. “You got me a phone?”

  Jessica rolled her brilliant green eyes, the only family feature they shared. “Of course not. Unlike you, I know how to be a dragon, which means I don’t give out freebies just to be nice.” She hissed the last word through sharpening teeth, letting a bit of her true nature show before resuming her human mask. “It’s from Bob.”