Heart of the Dragon King

by J Boothby

  “Maybe they didn't, exactly. But maybe they just didn't keep Max hidden. Maybe they didn't realize it was actually happening.”

  Zara nods. “I could see that.”

  “So Max grows up under the thrall of the Narrow King—”

  “And he gets Max to find stuff for him. Like a stone.”

  “The heart.” I agree. “And then Max needs a way to get from the crypt to the Elhyra, but there's no path to the Whisperlands from there, so he needs Sam...”

  “…to open the incursion!”

  Holy crap. There's no time to waste.

  I stand up and spill my coffee all over Max's floor. “There's only one way we're going to know for sure.”

  “How?”

  “We're going to the Elhyra.”

  Zara looks startled. “How are we going to do that?”

  “This way.” I take out my phone, and I look through my pictures.

  When I find the one I'm looking for, I dial the number that's on it.

  It starts to ring.

  34

  An alarm goes off behind him, and Devon spins around in his chair to look at his monitor. The agent sitting behind him sees it too.

  “Another one!” she yells. “Near Kansas City! It’s a big one.”

  She pushes a button that puts the alert up onto the giant globe that’s displayed on the big screen in the front of the room.

  The animated globe up there spins and zooms in on the center of the US.

  A red light flashes in the suburbs on the Kansas side of the city, right where Interstates 635 and 670 come together. The timer at the bottom of the display shows it’s been less than a week since the last one.

  The last incursion.

  Two days, three hours, and twenty-seven minutes ago, to be exact.

  They’re all sitting in rows, about twenty agents, and each of them is monitoring different feeds on their screens. Satellites are monitoring for large scale incursions, like this one, as well as high-atmosphere drones. There are also ground-based aether detection systems in every major city.

  Pretty much all of that tech is supplied by Blackstone.

  Someone at the Institute is making a shit-ton of money, Devon realizes. It’s definitely not him.

  All of the detectors around Kansas City are blaring. A surveillance satellite takes over another screen in the front of the room, and its cameras zoom in.

  There’s the incursion, and it’s a massive one.

  It’s open across the whole highway, and smaug soldiers are spilling out of it.

  They’re stopping cars, pulling people out of them.

  They’re dragging them back through the incursion.

  “Holy shit,” says someone up front. “That’s the biggest one we’ve seen yet.”

  The analyst sitting next to Devon shakes her head. She looks scared.

  “What’s happening?” she says. “It’s like they’re all coming all the time now!”

  Two months ago, people used to take classes in this room, Devon thinks. It’s a school. This was someone’s lecture hall.

  Not anymore. Now they’re using it to get ready for war.

  No one is saying that yet. Right now, the war is just between the smaug, officially.

  But with Mason’s death, and the disaster at the research lab, they have him off of fieldwork for a while. He’s back on analysis since this morning, and even in that very short amount of time, he can see it.

  The time between one incursion and the next is getting shorter.

  The size of each incursion is getting larger.

  Every time, more people are taken back by the smaug, and then they’re never heard from again.

  What was happening over there? Why were they being taken?

  The Narrow King is fighting the Sparrow for reasons no one seems to want to share. When he’d asked the Director this morning, she’d told him that was classified.

  “But in the end, it really doesn’t matter, Devon.” She studied him from behind her desk. She had long fingernails painted bright blue, and she tapped out a staccato rhythm on her desk that Devon realized was the beat of a current pop song. “Stay focused—we need to know about every incursion, no matter when or where it happens. We need to defend our own as best we can.”

  She was all of twenty-five and a rising star at the Institute. She looked at him sadly.

  Everyone was looking at him sadly today.

  Mason. The wolf. The carnage at the lab they thought he’d been a witness to.

  He probably should be sadder. Less conflicted about what happened to Mason, and to the lab.

  But something about all of this still didn’t feel right.

  The way they treated Kylie like a test rat. The relentless focus at the lab at getting an incursion open, above and beyond anything else.

  The men they sent through. He knew more than one of them.

  They weren’t reconnaissance. They were assassins.

  Devon was always quick in the field to know when something wasn’t right—it saved his life once. He’d thought there was something suspicious about the highway ahead—they way the ground had risen up enough to block their view ahead. The way the rough terrain closed in on them from either side. He’d figured it out just in time.

  It saved the lives of his troops, too. Six men who wouldn’t be alive today still walked around, drank beer, watched TV, played with their kids.

  Something isn’t right here. He’s not sure what yet. But he’ll figure it out soon.

  And when he does, he’s going to need to do something about it.

  He leans forward in his chair to get a better view of the video screens. The satellite zooms in closer. A huge, bulbous thing pushes its way through the incursion. It’s long and twisted, with a lot of eyes and a lot of tentacles, like something out of Lovecraft mixed with a jellyfish and left to rot.

  They’ve seen these before. They didn’t have a name yet, but some of the agents had started calling them hydras.

  Their eyes glow with an inner fire. The nearby drones’ aether detectors are going off the charts.

  It swims through the air, low and slow over the highway. Armored smaug soldiers drop down on ropes off of it, with those nets that seem to have a life of their own. The smaug throw them, and they grab and hold people. They’re still connected back to the floating creature. When that thing lifts back into the air, they’re all dragged along with it.

  He wishes he understood more of what was really going on, instead of just what he was being told.

  He wishes he could do something about it, instead of being stuck behind a desk.

  Devon’s phone rings. He picks it up without looking at it. “Parker.”

  “Devon? It’s Kylie. I need your help.”

  He’s so focused on the video screens up front that it takes him a minute to react. “Kylie! Shit, hang on. Give me a sec.”

  He looks around, but no one is paying any attention to him. They’re all watching the screen. He works his way to the back of the room and out into the hall. He cups his hand around the phone while he talks so his voice doesn’t echo around the old school’s tiled hallways.

  “Kylie,” he says. “Where are you?” Then he thinks the better of that. “Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Are you ok?”

  “We’re ok. Look, Devon,” Kylie says. “I need to get back in. To that laboratory of yours.”

  He shakes his head. He’s not sure he’s heard her correctly. “Say that again? I thought you said you wanted to—”

  “Get back in. I do.”

  “Why would you want—”

  “I know it’s going to sound crazy, but I need to open up a way to get to the Elhyra.”

  He leans back against the wall and takes a deep breath. “What’s going on?” he says.

  She tells him. Someone has taken the kid. Sam. What the hell?

  He has to think for a second. Would it be even possible?

  “You’re right, that it sounds crazy,” he says. “In
sane, actually. You know there’s a war on over there, right?”

  “I know. If we can get there, I might be able to get us some help.”

  “Where, there? I mean, where in the Elhyra? It’s probably a pretty big place.”

  “I’m just going to have to figure that out. Look, Devon: can you help me or not?”

  He looks through the window in the door. On the big screen, the hydra surges back through the incursion, dragging nets full of people kicking and screaming behind it.

  He has to do something.

  Even if it’s something small.

  “You’re nuts,” he says. “I’m in.”

  35

  It’s dark when we meet Devon off the highway. It’s the same rest stop where Max had picked us up. Ironically, the car that we stole from Devon is still there in the parking lot.

  Devon puts several black duffle bags of things into the back of the truck. He and Zara eye each other warily.

  “You’re not going to—” he says.

  “Not if you behave yourself,” Zara says, sternly. She slides into the center of the truck and pats the seat next to her. He climbs in slowly, keeping an eye on her. She growls once when he snaps the seatbelt in, and he jumps.

  “God damn,” he says.

  “Sorry,” she says, grinning. “Habit.”

  He directs us off onto the back roads, and then up into the mountains. I’m sure we drove these roads when we were getting out of the lab in Devon’s car, but I have to admit that I wasn’t paying a ton of attention to the details when we were driving away.

  Was that only a day ago? It’s hard to believe.

  We’re driving for ten minutes when the earthquake hits.

  It’s a bad one. First, I think something’s gone wrong with Russell’s steering because of the way the wheel is jerking in my hand. Then the truck starts to vibrate like I’m driving over potholes at high speed.

  I pull over, kill the engine, and roll down my window. In the light of the moon, we can see trees swaying all around us. Russell shakes and bounces on his suspension. An electrical tower in the distance sends a cascade of sparks into the air. A tree limb slams down onto the road behind us.

  There’s something weird going on with the lei lines, too.

  Usually, I don’t notice them.

  It’s like listening to your own breathing: you can hear the sound of the air going in and out of your body all the time. Most of the time, you tune it out.

  Unless it stops.

  I can usually feel lei lines in the background, like a steady hum of static energy.

  But something’s wrong with them here. Instead of a steady, even flow, the aether comes in jumps and starts. It fluctuates in intensity, dropping really low, and then surging.

  And there’s a strange feel to it, too. It’s hard to explain.

  The aether seems darker.

  I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense.

  The quake goes on for at least a minute, which feels a lot longer when you’re in the middle of it. Trees pop and crack, and the sound of it is like a train shooting by us at high speed.

  Afterward, everything is hushed.

  Somewhere a crow squawks.

  “Coincidence or omen?” Zara says.

  Devon is frowning. “Coincidence, I hope?”

  “Do incursions generate earthquakes?”

  “No,” Devon and I say, at the same time.

  “Not that I know of,” I add. “But…”

  “But what?”

  I tell them about how the aether feels.

  “Maybe you should drive faster,” Devon says. “A lot faster.”

  I pull back onto the road and keep going.

  “Will it be hard to get inside?” Zara asks. “When we get there?”

  “You waited to ask me that now?” Devon shakes his head and checks his watch. “I don’t think so. It’s a crime scene now, but Blackstone will want it kept quiet. They won’t call in police or anyone. They will have had people out there today, but there shouldn’t be anyone left tonight.”

  “You say ‘Blackstone’ like you’re not part of them,” I say. “I’ve seen your badge, you know.”

  He looks at me and then looks back at the road lit up by Russell’s headlights. “I know,” he says simply. “And I used to think I was doing the right thing. Now…” He trails off.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “I need to do something,” he says. “Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Are you sure this is the right thing to do.”

  “She’s sure,” Zara says.

  “I’m sure,” I say. “At least I’m sure it’s a right thing.”

  “Got it,” he says. “Let’s just see how it goes.

  We pull up to the building. Lights are still on in the lobby and in most of the windows higher up in the building, but it doesn’t look like there’s anyone around. There’s yellow tape across the doors and a chain with a heavy padlock on it holding them shut.

  We climb out, and Devon hands us each a duffle bag.

  “Heavy,” I say. “What’s in all of them?”

  “Things we’ll need on the other side.”

  I stop short on the way to the door. I turn and look at him. “Things we’ll need?” I say.

  “Starting with this.” Devon pulls out a heavy bolt cutter and cuts the lock on the door. “You think I’m letting you two go to the Elhyra all by yourselves?”

  “You can be a little more patronizing if you work hard at it,” I say. I look over at Zara.

  “She throws fire,” Zara says. “I wolf-out and eat things. It’s not like we’re damsels in distress, you know.”

  “OK, fair,” he says. “And, sorry. But I’m still coming along.”

  “How do I know we can really trust you?”

  “You called me, right? I get that you may not have had many options, but hey…” He nods toward the lobby. “I feel like shit for what they were doing to you in there. That’s just not right. If I can help make up for that by opening an interdimensional portal to another world where we’re all probably going to die, well—” he shrugs. “I’ll take what I can get. Just don’t eat me,” he says to Zara.

  “Don’t give me a reason,” Zara says. “Any reason. Not even a little one.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Devon says.

  I study his face for a minute.

  I decide I do believe him. “OK, let’s go,” I say.

  Inside, the lobby is just the way we left it, except the body of the guard has been removed. All of the bodies that were in the hallway are gone too, though the bloodstains are still there.

  We make our way back through to one of the labs without encountering anyone.

  The room gives me the shivers. My stretcher is still there, and the restraints my uncle cut away.

  There’s a lot of dried blood all over the floor, too.

  In the room behind the broken window, the board of dials and monitors is pretty complex and has a lot of notations on it that make no sense to me. “Can you work these controls?”

  “I think so,” Devon says. “First, though...” he opens his duffel bag and pulls out what looks like a tight black wetsuit. “You might want to put these on. They’re impact resistant, and they will keep us hidden from things like infrared. They’re a little strange, but just unfold it on the ground, undress and stand on it, and just let it do its thing.

  We duck into nearby rooms to change. The suit is definitely weird—there’s no way to unzip it and get into it and it feels clammy, like wet paint, only it doesn’t leave any trace of itself behind. I lay it out on the ground in a puddle, but it just sits there. I strip down to my underwear and stand on it, and after a second it oozes up around my feet and starts to climb up my legs.

  “Holy crap,” I hear Zara shout.

  “It’s OK,” Devon calls back. “The first time’s the worst.”

  It’s like sliding into warm mud. The suit crawls up over my thighs, around
my abdomen, and up my back. It covers my shoulders and pours out to cover my arms and hands.

  It stops at my chin, though, and for that I’m thankful. A tight-fitting hood shapes itself at the back of my neck.

  They’re the same black suits I saw the mercenaries wearing when they went through the incursion. The material is thin, extremely form-fitting, and I’m immediately warm. I hope that it will keep me from being seen, though, because the suit is so tight it isn’t hiding anything at the moment.

  I also hope I don’t need to go to the bathroom any time soon.

  I pull the hood up over my head, clip on a belt, and fasten the sheath of the Whisperlands knife to the belt. There are infrared goggles that I put around my neck, and a headset that wraps around my ear. A thin microphone winds around on a wire and sticks to my throat.

  There’s also a submachine gun in the duffel bag.

  “I’m going to skip the gun—I’m worried I might do more harm than good with it,” I say, over the mic.

  “No worries,” Devon says.

  “Everyone decent?” I say. “Coming back in.”

  “Define ‘decent,’” Zara says. “Cause these suits are anything but.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” Devon says. “They weren’t made with modesty in mind.”

  “I’m sure you are,” I say, coming back into the lab.

  Zara’s not kidding—we each look like we stepped out of the Matrix and into some teenage gamer boy’s fantasy. I can see the fact isn’t lost on Devon. He’s trying not to stare.

  He’s almost succeeding.

  I realize I actually don’t mind. His suit is just as form-fitting as ours are. I know I shouldn’t let my eyes wander, but I do, just a little.

  Let’s just say he clearly works out.

  I note Zara has one of the guns slung over her shoulder. “My mom used to take me shooting,” she says.

  “Glad to hear it,” Devon says. “Can I ask a personal question?” he says to Zara.

  “Depends on how personal.”

  “What happens to your clothes when you shift?”

  Zara rolls her eyes. “Everyone always asks that question. Usually, the clothes just don’t make it.”

  “That must be awkward when you shift back?”