Heart of the Dragon King

by J Boothby

  Dr. Echols takes a long knife right in the chest. Her eyes go wide, and she coughs up blood.

  The two smaug soldiers make quick work of the others and then sprint out through the door into the hallway beyond, guns in their hands.

  The other two turn to me. They spin to a stop in front of my stretcher.

  One woman, one man, with long pale hair and a fierce look in their violet eyes.

  And those long, vicious knives in their hands.

  I wait for them to raise one and finish me off. The aether is still off, so I’ve got nothing to call up. I’m still strapped down to the stretcher.

  I guess if you’re going to die, being taken out by dragons is at least a memorable way to go. I catch my breath and close my eyes.

  I hope Sam and Zara will be ok.

  I close my eyes and wait for the knife in my chest.

  But it doesn’t come.

  I open my eyes again, and the smaug have moved to either side of me.

  Another smaug steps through the incursion.

  This one is shorter than the others. Less muscular. He’s dressed in a tight-fitting skin of dark metal that’s carved everywhere with small birds, and he’s wearing a helmet that’s in the shape of a bird’s head.

  A sparrow. Two long knives are at his belt. Over his shoulder is a submachine gun.

  He surveys the carnage in the room and then stops short when he sees me.

  He takes in the stretcher, the restraints, the wires. He draws one of his knives and steps up to me. With deft cuts, he slices through each restraint and all of the wires.

  Then he steps back and hesitates.

  He opens the visor on his helmet.

  “Kylie,” he says. “How the hell did you get yourself into this mess?”

  I know that bright red hair and beard.

  It’s my uncle Uriah.

  27

  I’m speechless.

  It’s only been two years since I’ve seen my uncle in person, and we video-chatted once or twice while Michael and I were in the van, but he looks at least ten years older. There’s a scar running down the right side of his face, from eyebrow to jaw. Deep hollows are carved under his eyes. His bright red hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat from the helmet, and his beard looks patchy and has streaks of gray in it.

  He looks at me, concerned. “Are you OK?”

  “I—” I’m still processing. I can’t believe it’s him. “I will be. Uriah, what the hell? What are you doing in the Elhyra?”

  He frowns and looks around at the bodies. “Trying to save the world. Two of them, actually. Kind of a long story. Probably better saved for another time. Was that incursion you?”

  I nod. I rub my wrists where the restraints had started to chafe. “It’s the Blackstone Institute. They broke into Poe’s and brought me in more than a week ago. They filled the room with aether. A lot of it? And then they pointed me like a trained dog.”

  He whistles long and low and shakes his head. “That was amazing. I never thought you’d be able to do something like that.”

  “I didn’t exactly have a choice.”

  “You’ll learn to control it sooner or later if I know you.”

  I still can’t believe this is him inside that armor. “Did you really just kill all those people?”

  He looks at me seriously. “We did. There’s a war on, Kylie. A lot of the future of our world, and the Elhyra, depends on how it comes out. I know that might be hard to understand. Important question. Do you still have that key I left for you?”

  I shake my head. “When they brought us here, they must have taken it.”

  He frowns. “OK. Blackstone probably doesn’t know what they have yet. Do you?”

  I nod. “Orrex royally suck.”

  He looks surprised. “You can say that again. Look, it’s not safe for you to use it. The Whisperlands can be deadly.”

  Now he tells me. “I totally believe that.”

  “But I do need you to find it and keep it hidden. A lot depends on it. Everything, really.”

  “Uriah,” I say. “Are you the Narrow King?”

  He shakes his head. “He’s the one I’m trying to stop. I’m the Sparrow.”

  Xyr had mentioned the Sparrow. “You’re at war with the Narrow King?” I say, incredulously.

  He nods. “You always were a smart kid. If the Narrow King has his way, both Earth and the Elhyra will fall completely under his control, and that would be a terrible thing right about now.”

  “And you and mom helped open the Elhyra in the first place?”

  There’s a shift in the wind coming through the incursion, and a loud rumbling sound like thunder.

  The edges of the incursion shift from violet to red, and it begins to waver.

  “Yes, that too.” Uriah curses. “But that—” he nods at the incursion—”means I’m out of time.” The two smaug who ran out into the hallway sprint back in through the door. They say something to Uriah in a language I don’t understand.

  They’re followed by a whole group of smaug, who look beaten down and disheveled. I recognize a few of them as the refugees from the houses on the Hill.

  I see one of them is actually Xyr’s son. He looks pretty bruised, and there’s a bandage on the side of his head. He looks around at the bodies on the floor with a grim look of satisfaction on his face.

  “Good work,” Uriah says to two soldiers. “Get them home.”

  The two smaug lead the other group to the incursion. The refugees start passing through it a few at a time.

  Xyr’s son seems surprised to see me and stares at me curiously for a minute as he approaches. Then he gives Uriah a solemn nod.

  “Xandro,” Uriah says. “It’s good to see you.” He gestures in the air with his left hand, chest level, opening all of his fingers from a closed fist.

  Xyr’s son makes the same gesture. Then he studies me intently again before he steps into the portal.

  “Look,” Uriah says to me. “I’ve got to get these people somewhere safe. I would bring you, but there are reasons I can’t talk about that make the Elhyra a dangerous place for you, Kylie. I don’t know where we are exactly,” Uriah says, gesturing around us. “But I don’t think there’s much of Blackstone left, so you should at least be able to leave. Are you going to be able to get home OK?”

  “I’ll figure something out.”

  “Kylie.” He steps back and looks at me. “Have I told you lately that you’re incredible?”

  “You have not,” I say.

  “You’re incredible.” He gives me an awkward metal hug. “I am so proud of you. Find the key. Get somewhere safe and stay there. I’ll come find you when I can.”

  28

  My uncle wasn’t kidding—there’s no Blackstone person left alive in the hallways, the conference rooms, and the wing of tiny apartments that make up this whole building. Fortunately, there aren’t a lot of bodies either, so I’m guessing the facility wasn’t very heavily staffed.

  There’s aether out here, too. Nothing like what they were throwing at me in the room, but it’s a decent-sized lei line and much more than I need. I call some of it up to burn away my exhaustion.

  I find Sam curled on his bunk in a cell similar to mine, wearing the same kind of hospital gown. When I open the door, he grudgingly rolls over, sees that it’s me, and then almost flies through the air to tackle me with a hug.

  “Kylie!” he says into my leg.

  “Are you OK?” I ask. He nods, but I kneel down and check him over anyway. Thoroughly.

  He’s dirty, and his face is streaked with the dried tracks of tears. He still has strings of white goop around his neck and down his arms. He has bruises on the sides of his face and neck, too, and it looks like those go down his chest, from where he was hit by the Blackstone weapon. But he’s not cut or bleeding. He seems steady on his feet.

  “You poor kid,” I say. “You must be super tough.” What was in that thing the woman shot us with?

  Whatever i
t is, I’m going to make sure we don’t get shot again.

  He grins for the first time and stands up a little straighter. I hug him again gently, and then I ruffle his dirty hair. “You ready to get out of this place?”

  He nods. I’m right there with him.

  “OK, look,” I say. “You’re going to see things that most kids shouldn’t see, and I’m sorry about that. If it gets too scary, just close your eyes, OK?”

  He nods solemnly.

  “Let’s find our stuff and go find Zara too.”

  Most of our things are locked in a room along the same hallway. I have to use a fire extinguisher to break open the door, but when I do, we find my clothes are crumpled into a cardboard box on a shelf, and Sam’s are in a box right next to it. They’re a disaster, though, covered with a hardened white goop—we’re stuck with the hospital gowns for now, I guess. At least the shoes will help.

  The key and the Whisperlands knife aren’t with the rest of our things.

  We leave the hallway with the cells in it and check several more rooms. There are a few bodies here—men and women in lab coats, others who look like guards. Sam observes them solemnly, but he doesn’t close his eyes. I’m proud of him for being brave about it, but I can’t help worrying about what this would do to any kid.

  It can’t be helped.

  We find the key and the knife in another laboratory down a separate hallway. The knife is unsheathed and hooked up to wires. The key is just laying on a desk.

  I take them both. With the Doc Maartens on my feet, the key around my neck, a knife in my makeshift belt and my hospital nightgown on, I suspect I look just great. Here comes Kylie, your crazy neighborhood whacko.

  My phone is here too. There’s a little bit of battery left, which seems like a miracle, and also several worried texts and a voicemail from Max, which are sweet.

  It takes us longer to find Zara. We wander from hallway to hallway with no luck. We pass a few more bodies of guards that we try not to look at too closely. At the end of one hall is a set of double doors that lead out to a fenced courtyard, where it seems like most of the smaug refugees were being kept.

  Along one end of that courtyard is an old dog run.

  Zara’s inside.

  “Hey, strangers,” she says as we approach.

  “Oh my god,” I say. “Are you OK?”

  She looks pretty bad. She’s wearing someone else’s mismatched clothes that are ripped and stained, her arms and legs are covered with scratches, and she looks like she hasn’t eaten or slept for a long time.

  Her appearance is all the more shocking because she’s Zara, my perfectly put-together roommate. I’ve never seen her with so much as a hair out of place.

  “I’m better now that I’m seeing you guys. Better still if you can get those chains off the gate.” She points. “Also, I really have to pee.”

  Heavy chains are wrapped around the poles, but they’re no match for the Whisperlands knife.

  There’s a restroom back inside, which we all decide is a good idea.

  Then we make our way toward what I’m guessing is the main entrance. I don’t have a plan beyond ‘find everyone’ and ‘get outside,’ but it’s a start.

  We’re past the slumped-over guard at security and headed out the front door when I hear the sound of a car outside. “Quick,” I say. “Hide!”

  We duck behind the metal detectors. A black BMW pulls up in front of the building. A guy in a jacket gets out and walks in through the front door.

  The guy in the jacket is Devon. He stops short when he sees the slumped-over guard, looks around, and draws his gun.

  I don’t have time for this. I call up a ball of fire in my hand and step out in front of him. I pull the knife out of its sheath, too, with a crack of thunder.

  “You can stop right there,” I say. “And you can give me your gun and your car keys while you’re at it.” Zara steps out behind me, too, and growls deep and menacingly low in her throat.

  His eyes go wide, and he takes a step backward. He points the gun up into the air, away from me.

  “Now,” I say.

  He nods quickly and makes placating motions with his hands. “You’re OK?” he says. “Thank god.” He throws his gun on the ground and sticks his arms in the air.

  “You should probably get down on the floor,” I say.

  “You got it,” Devon says. He lays face down on the ground with his arms spread out away from him. “Keys are in my jacket pocket. They’re yours. Spare ammo there too. You’re not going to believe this, but I came back here to get you out.”

  “You’re right,” I say. “I’m not believing you.” I keep him covered, while Zara gets his ammo and the keys. She grabs the gun off the floor, too, and inspects it in a way that says she knows what she’s doing.

  He turns his head up awkwardly to look at me. “It’s the truth. I am so sorry for what Blackstone has done to you,” he says. He sees Sam next to me. “To all of you. Even if you are working for the smaug, which I doubt, none of you deserved to be treated like that. I signed up to be a cop, not a Nazi.”

  “There’s a difference?” Zara says.

  Devon nods. “Yes,” he says. “I still believe there can be.”

  “I’m still not really believing you,” I say.

  “Then believe that you need to get out of here now,” Devon says. “Whatever happened here won’t be a secret, and the main offices in DC are only two hours away. I don’t know what you needed to do to get this far, but you can be pretty sure someone there knows about it. It won’t take long for them to send someone.”

  “We can tie him up and leave him, or there’s a trunk in that car,” Zara says. “We can take him back and he can tell us everything he knows or I can eat small pieces of him very slowly.”

  “Um,” Devon says. “Maybe just tie me up? Or maybe just run for it,” he says. “I’ll think of something to tell them when they get here.”

  Zara and I look at each other.

  I shrug. She nods.

  We run.

  29

  “Meatballs,” I say. “Bring us meatballs.”

  “On it,” Max says, handing me an open bottle of wine and some glasses.

  “A hundred meatballs. A thousand meatballs. Meatballs enough to feed an army for a month.”

  “I hear and obey,” he says.

  I pour three glasses of the cheap red. I hand Zara hers as she's coming out of Max's shower, her dark hair all wet, and she gives me a look of eternal gratitude. I set Max's next to the cutting board that's already full of garlic.

  A cleaned-up Sam is humming over the legos, wearing some of Max's clothes—a pair of shorts belted in tight with some twine and a NASA t-shirt that comes down to his knees. Max sets to work in the kitchen.

  I take my turn in the shower and let the water run hot until my skin is bright pink.

  I am covered in new birds.

  There are ravens on my lower legs, hawks and herons wrapping around my hips. A bird with a long tail that I don't recognize spreads its wings on the back of my right hand. A murmuration of sparrows explodes across my stomach and across my ribcage. They stretch around toward the small of my back, though I can't see exactly how far they go.

  There are probably others back there I can't see too.

  None of them touch or overlap, but someday there will be no room on my skin left. What will happen then?

  I try not to overthink things, but I can't avoid it. What do we do now? Blackstone will be back. What are all the things my uncle isn't telling me?

  When I come out, I can smell the tomato sauce cooking. “Thanks again for the ride,” I say.

  “It's your truck,” Max says. He runs a hand through his beard, leaving streaks of tomato sauce behind. “But of course.”

  “Seriously,” Zara says. “And the clothes.”

  We're wearing his t-shirts too, and pairs of sweatpants. My shirt advertises Ardbeg, a scotch I've never actually had but that I know my uncle liked. Hers has a p
icture of Bob Ross on it, the old big-haired painter from public TV, standing in front of a painting of trees.

  Zara's nurses her wine from one of the old metal stools. Moose sniffs her warily, and she leans down to pat him on the head. Moose rolls over submissively and shows her his belly. “We really appreciate it.”

  “It's a cool truck.”

  “Damn straight,” I say.

  Max raises his glass in a toast. “To, um, adventures?”

  “How about to meatballs?”

  “To meatballs,” Zara agrees. We tap our glasses together.

  I called Max from the road with my last bit of phone battery, and he met us at a rest stop just outside of Fredericksburg. We ditched Devon's car there, and all piled into Russell. Sam got the seatbelt. Moose rode in the back, head hanging over the side, tongue flapping in the wind.

  I wasn't sure how much to tell Max. He didn't press, and Zara didn't either. So that, of course, meant I ended up telling them both pretty much everything, first about the Whisperlands and the dome, then about the mirror under Poe's, and then about being hooked up to the aether at Blackstone. I left out the parts about Zara being a shifter—that's her secret to tell.

  It was good to let it out, though I feel self-conscious now.

  Are they worried I'm going to rip open reality right here, right now?

  It doesn't look like it. It looks like they're just hungry.

  “I'm glad you guys are ok,” Max says. He pulls the meatballs out of the toaster oven and adds them to the sauce. “What will you do now?”

  “Drink wine. Eat pasta.” I say. “Save the world.”

  Zara snorts. Max grins. “I can help with the first two, at least,” he says.

  “The saving part will probably require a lot more effort,” I admit.

  “Good food makes everything else possible,” Zara says. “Though sometimes I wonder if this world is worth saving.” She pours herself more wine. Moose gives her one last sniff, licks her hand, and then goes over and lays down by Sam.

  “I just wish I understood more of what was going on,” I say.