by Eric Asher
Wahya and Angus watched her go as she started up the stairs that led to an ancient carved door. When Vicky pushed through it, daylight threatened to blind her. But the oddest thing happened. When she looked back at the door she’d just passed through, it wasn’t there. Whatever spells were worked upon that building, they were damned powerful. Vicky suspected Morrigan had something to do with it, although it could have been Ward. Whatever the case, she could worry about it later. She had bigger priorities.
“Let’s go,” she said to Jasper, and the dragon didn’t miss his cue. The furball exploded into the massive scaly form of the winged beast.
* * *
Anger boiled in Vicky’s gut as she clung to the spines on Jasper’s back and they climbed higher into the sky. She knew where they were now. She knew all about the basilisk skeleton below them in the courtyards not far from the entrance to the Obsidian Inn. They were in the outskirts, the slums, where the Fae either hadn’t rebuilt, or had fought so regularly that even the most gifted of their engineers couldn’t rebuild before the city would fall again. But that wasn’t what angered her. What irritated her now was the fact she was so far back. She’d been on the front lines, so close to Damian she could practically reach him.
Jasper growled beneath her, and Vicky patted the great beast’s neck. He had grown more adept at detecting her moods, and she was grateful for it. More than once he’d pulled her back from the edge of rage or despair. Her time with Drake had helped calm her somewhat, but the world still enraged her at times, and that could be a deadly thing. She had access to powers that helped bring the Destroyer low, slayed demons, and cut the flesh of monsters not of this world. Losing control put everyone she loved at risk. The danger her friends were in infuriated her, but now maybe there was some faint hope, some wild spark, Damian was still in there.
Vicky clenched her jaw and leaned in closer to Jasper’s scales. He’d taken them higher than she expected, but it was a smart approach. They were high enough now they weren’t going to encounter anything short of an owl knight. And an owl knight didn’t stand a chance against a girl and her dragon.
Shortly after the thought crossed her mind, a winged form glided past far below them. On the broken ground beneath the owl knight, she could see the crater where Damian had surfaced in Falias, not far from the platform where they’d rescued Liam, Lachlan, and Enda. Soon they were gliding over the battlefield where she’d touched the ghost, and as her eyes trailed toward the horizon, the massive form of the colossus was unmistakable.
It was still Damian, of that she was sure. But it was something else too. Something darker, and she didn’t think it was just Hern. Hern was certainly part of whatever that creature was now, but the sheer weight of the gravemakers and the souls tied up inside of that thing was like a black hole, bending the nearby ley lines to its will.
Another of the owl knights crossed her line of sight, and Jasper rose higher, cutting into the edge of a cloud bank. Vicky shivered at the damp cold. She’d be grateful when they were on the ground again. A storm was moving in, and it would soak the land as surely as the blood of the coming war.
Jasper didn’t reach the clouds fast enough. She saw the sharp bank of one of the owl knights. She had a split second to decide to chase the knight, or vanish into the clouds and hope the knight thought it was a trick of the light. But Vicky knew the Fae better than that, knew their cunning, and understood how well they could perceive the world around them.
“Get them,” Vicky snapped.
She didn’t need to say anything more. She didn’t need to guide the dragon. Jasper had seen the knights too, following them with his giant black eyes. But now they were locked on like a hawk with a mouse beneath its talons.
They skirted the cloud bank before Vicky flattened herself against the dragon, rising and falling with the heaving of his wings as Jasper increased their speed into a suicidal descent. The cold wind bit at Vicky’s cheeks. She squinted against the breeze, the air like the edge of a blade. The first drops of precipitation crashed against her forehead a moment before a surprised-looking owl knight crashed against the jaws of the dragon. Jasper crunched twice and belched out a blue fireball. If the bird or its rider had survived the initial impact, there would be nothing left after that hellish blue flame. Vicky caught the spiraling pile of ash out of the corner of her eye as Jasper turned and rocketed toward Damian.
Things below them started to move.
“They’ve seen us,” Vicky said. She’d hoped they’d been fast enough, but either the knight had already issued a warning, or another of Nudd’s soldiers had seen them. “Hurry. We need to get to Damian now.”
Jasper stretched his neck out until he was a streamlined as possible. Each flap of his wings was nearly perpendicular to his body, and the sensation was something like being shot out of a high-speed roller coaster. Only it didn’t stop; it just increased in speed until the colossus that seemed so far away was suddenly in front of them.
The soulswords weren’t the only one of Damian’s abilities Vicky had inherited. In some ways, they may have been the most useful, but currently Vicky was far more thankful of her ability to see ghosts. A small army of them marched toward the colossus, penetrating the walls and alleys and byways of Falias, all except for one. One lone ghost clung to the back of the colossus, the bark-like flesh trying to draw it in.
Vicky caught a flash like steel, flickering around the ghost, as Jasper spread his wings and slowed before they crashed into Damian’s back. They were close enough now Vicky could see it was Terrence. And in the ghost’s hand was Damian’s backpack. The backpack where he kept everything he thought he needed for a battle. And that’s what she had to get to the innkeeper.
But how in the hell had Terrence gotten it? How could he have climbed onto Damian’s back? Was Damian able to help him? A million questions raced through Vicky’s mind. But those could wait. That vision had been a message, and for now she knew what they needed. Jasper dropped and let his claws dig into the colossus’s back.
The entire mass of gravemaker flesh shifted, and Vicky watched in horror as a blackened bark-like arm stretched toward them. The thing was as tall as a skyscraper, with a hand large enough to crush Aeros in a single blow.
“Come on!” Vicky shouted to Terrence, worried the ghost might not hear her over the distance.
The ghost looked up, wide-eyed. “Hell yes, girl.” Terrence turned his rifle on the gravemaker crawling out of the flesh beside him and fired.
The face disintegrated, but the thunder of the gunshot drew the attention of everything around them. And even if it hadn’t, the sudden roar of the giant, the earth-shaking bellow vibrating the earth, would have told the whole damn state something was there.
“Lower,” Vicky shouted to Jasper, jerking on one of his spines.
The gravemakers forming the flesh of the colossus surged at the dragon, grabbing his claws and reaching for his wings. But Jasper was too strong for the individual hands of the gravemakers. They broke away, only to fall and be reabsorbed farther down the colossus. Jasper worked like that for a few seconds, tearing and rending and breaking free until they were finally close enough to Terrence for him to grab hold of Vicky’s hand.
Vicky swung him up onto the dragon’s back, and with one mighty flame, Jasper burned away the flurry of gravemaker arms reaching out for them. Vicky almost retched as some of the milk-white eyes burst from the intense heat, sending a cascade of viscera and gore down the back of the colossus.
The thing started to turn in earnest. But it wasn’t a thing, it was Damian, and far below them stood Nudd, a shadowed form bearing horns.
“Go now!” Vicky screamed.
Her heart tried to hammer through her rib cage as she realized they were in the core of the enemy’s forces. If Nudd was here, his most powerful allies would be here. He wouldn’t leave himself unprotected. He was too smart for that. But of course he hadn’t left himself unprotected. Damian was here. Damian, who had threatened Nudd for so many
years, who had perhaps been his biggest threat, now stood calmly by the murdering bastard’s side. Well, calmly until Jasper set him on fire.
The thought filled Vicky with a rage that almost matched her fear she wouldn’t get her chance to try to reach him. Terrence unleashed a string of curses behind her and buried his head next to the spines on Jasper’s back as the dragon surged away from the colossus. The massive arm of the giant just missed the end of the dragon’s tail.
But it wasn’t only the colossus they were running from now. More owl knights closed on them, and skeletons riding winged things came from the shadows of a dark cloak billowing out from Damian’s form.
Vicky looked back at the mass of blackened shadows surging along the ground behind them. Even if they couldn’t get to her, get to them, they could follow the dragon back to the Obsidian Inn. They couldn’t go there, they’d lead them straight to their allies’ stronghold.
“Shit.”
CHAPTER NINE
“Where the hell do we go now?” Vicky shouted into the wind, eyeing the city below her, and hoping a solution to their predicament would reveal itself.
“Take us back to the Inn!” Terrence shouted back.
Vicky shook her head. Going back there now would lead their enemy straight to the Obsidian Inn. “I can’t do that.”
She glanced back at the ghost, and followed his line of sight toward Damian.
“He’s not chasing us …”
“I think some part of him is fighting it,” Terrence said. “Whatever’s happened to him, there’s still some part of him inside that thing.”
Vicky looked down at the black sack Terrence hung over one of Jasper’s spikes. “What the hell do you have his backpack for?” She turned to the horizon in front of them.
“It’s for you. You’re supposed to take it to the innkeeper.”
Vicky frowned. That wasn’t something Terrence would know about, unless Dirge had told him about the innkeeper. But even then, why would Dirge think Damian’s backpack should make it back to the innkeeper?
Damian was still in there, and while the fact she was still alive hadn’t been enough to calm the fear in her chest, this told her perhaps more of him was left than she thought. More than just the magicks that kept her and Sam alive.
“Can this thing go any faster?” Terrence said, his voice panicked.
Jasper tilted his head back and chuffed. Smoke curled out from the sides of the dragon’s jaws.
Vicky had a sarcastic barb ready on the tip of her tongue, but as she turned to shout at Terrence, the words died on her lips. They weren’t alone in the skies anymore. The winged army of Gwynn Ap Nudd was in quick pursuit.
“Jasper,” Vicky started.
The dragon tilted his head back, and Vicky could’ve sworn she saw the massive black orbs dilate when he saw what was chasing them. Owl knights were the least of their problems. Out in front of the dark cloud of Nudd’s forces flew two dragons. One of them was clearly bigger than Jasper, with great horns lining the beast’s neck, and a silver knight perched on its back. But it wasn’t just a single fairy knight. As she looked closer, she could see there were two riders on the back of the beast, one garbed in silver armor, and the other in obsidian black. Even as she watched, the looming shadows of the dragons grew. It wasn’t that the beasts themselves were increasing in size. No, they were closing the distance more rapidly than Vicky had feared.
She cursed again and leaned against Jasper. “As fast as you can!”
Instead of a sudden increase in the speed of his wing motions, Jasper folded into what amounted to a torpedo, and fell. The force of the wind threatened to peel Vicky’s fingers from his spines. She hugged the dragon as best she could. It was difficult, as it was, to hold on in the battering breeze, and it was about to get a hell of a lot bumpier. She watched the buildings rush up around them, until she could almost make out the details of the stone street beneath them before Jasper’s wings unfurled and the snap of air against his sinewy flesh was like a gunshot as it pulled taut. A mighty heave threw them forward into an alley barely wide enough for the beast. Scales scraped stone, and Jasper growled as something smashed into the wall above them.
Vicky glanced back in time to see what looked like a bolt of green lightning carving its way through the alley. She could follow the beam back to the dragon above them with the two riders, until the other dragon skipped out of Vicky’s line of sight.
Jasper hurtled out of the end of the alley, crouched, then launched himself back into the air. While Vicky’s main thought had been to escape the other dragons, she knew Jasper had seen far more battles than her. He’d probably faced many dragons before, far more than just Drake’s dragon. Instead of running, he moved to flank them.
The riders hadn’t expected it. One moment Jasper had been on the ground, and the next he was above them, his neck curling back, his jaw unhinging, and a hellish fireball tearing down the side of their mount. The knight in black squealed as the fires hit them. Vicky didn’t take satisfaction in seeing the rider suffer. He flailed and tried to scrape the fires away, finally summoning a magick to dispel the flames. But it was far too late. He slumped over in the saddle, leaving only the silver rider.
But losing a rider didn’t stall the dragon. It twisted about and unleashed a fireball of its own. Jasper pulled back and absorbed the brunt of it on the scales of his belly. But even from her perch between Jasper’s spikes, Vicky could feel the heat. Terrence shouted in pain as if the flames had burned the ghost. Jasper whined, a sound Vicky had never heard come from the dragon, and it took a second for her to register the fact that he’d been hurt.
“Get us out here,” Vicky said. “As far as you can, underground if we have to.”
Jasper moved, but he felt slow, and the other dragon wheeled around, closing for the kill.
The boom of a gunshot echoed behind Vicky. She glanced back to see Terrence with his rifle leveled at the dragon. Small explosions of electric blue burst along the dragon where the bullet struck. She didn’t know what he was firing out of that thing, but it didn’t seem to be hurting the beast.
The dragon paused to inspect its scales where it had been hit. The delay only lasted a moment, but a moment was all the second dragon needed to come crashing out of the cloud bank above. Despair and betrayal like Vicky had not felt in years washed over her when she saw the claws of Drake’s dragon extended toward her, jaws opening as Drake held his sword out to them from atop his mount.
But that despair turned to something else as the head of Drake’s mount snapped to the side and a torrent of fire bathed the horned dragon in superheated flame. The second rider didn’t have enough time to scream before Drake wheeled his dragon around and snatched the saddle from the back of the horned beast.
“Get out of here, kid!” Drake shouted. “You don’t have a chance.”
“Why are you with them?” Vicky shouted back.
Drake didn’t smile, didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow. “Never show your hand.”
“Go!” Terrence yelled.
Vicky hesitated and watched the horned dragon spiral out of the air. But the beast shook itself, the wind catching beneath its wings before it hit the earth, propelling its massive form back toward Drake.
She maneuvered Jasper and they soared right over Drake’s head. She wasn’t sure if she’d regret it, but she said one word. “Innkeeper.”
CHAPTER TEN
They were nearly out of the city when Vicky saw the figures. She glanced back at the distant shadows embroiled in flame. Drake could stop their pursuit, but Vicky didn’t know if he could survive it. It was mad, to stand alone against those forces. For a time, she came close to turning around, worried about Drake and his insane intervention. But he’d told her to go. He knew how to handle himself.
She turned back to the figures below them and patted Jasper on the neck, indicating a small field where two furry forms had barreled through the city and flagged them down.
As soon as the dragon land
ed, Jasper snapped back into his furball form. Vicky and Terrence fell several feet, but Vicky had been expecting it. Terrence landed flat on his face with a grunt, cursing at volume.
“Shh,” Vicky whispered, choking back a small laugh as the ghost rubbed at his face.
Caroline paced back and forth in her bulky wolf form. When they ran on all fours, they could almost be mistaken for a wolf. But the effect was startling when the werewolves strode around on their rear legs. Vicky could clearly see how much thicker their hind legs were than their long muscled arms.
“Was that Drake?” Caroline’s voice held a more wolfish growl than normal. “I feared we couldn’t trust him.”
Vicky grimaced and looked back the way they’d come. They were out of sight here, and nothing would catch them for a time.
“We wouldn’t have gotten away without him,” Vicky said. “I still… I still trust him.” Drake had been there for her more than once. Even though she’d stuck her neck out for Drake and his dragon, perhaps no more so than when she flew Jasper through the Arch, hadn’t he done the same for her? Especially now. He’d told her stories of that dragon. The horned devil of Gorias, they called it. And it was an apt name.
“You need to go,” Terrence said.
Wahya’s eyebrows rose slightly as he eyed the ghost. “And what hurry is there?”
Terrence frowned at the werewolf. A small crease formed in his brow and he looked like he was struggling not to talk.
“He has that effect on people,” Vicky said. “You can trust him.”
“Vicky needs to get to the innkeeper.” Terrence held up the backpack, and Vicky took it from him.
“Rivercene?” Wahya said, making no effort to hide the surprise on his face. The wolf dragged a claw carefully through the fur on his chin. It was an odd gesture on the half-man half-beast, but somehow it fit the stoic old wolf.
“Damian’s still in there,” Vicky said, her jaw set. “He asked us to do this. It has to be important.”