Aldamar nodded. “Love does strange things to people, Eric. Apparently, even to mages.”
“That’s why Seyekrad tortured Slavandria in the woods,” David said, “because she chose someone else over him. I had no idea it was him. That’s the guy that came to see Lily in the library. That’s who I thought was going to take me away.” David sat back, his hands in his hair. “Wow. Nuts. I guess some people hold grudges forever. In this case, he really needs to let it go.”
The room shook with thunder. Black and silver strings of electricity crawled along the ceiling. Aldamar’s eyes grew big, his face panicked.
“Forgive me. I must go.” He vanished in a flick of bright, white light.
“He left!” Charlotte said. “Why did he leave? We need him!”
The table lifted from the ground and sailed through the air, smashing into pieces in the corner. A man spoke, and the sound of it charged through Eric like a bolt of lightning.
“Is that what you think, Davey boy?”
And there he was, tall, thin, regal, dressed entirely in black, his silver hair glimmering like moonlight upon his shoulders.
“Seyekrad!” David yelled.
Eric leapt from his chair and spun around, his sword drawn. David jumped to his feet, his bow drawn.
Seyekrad moved closer, his smile twisted in smug satisfaction. “Might I suggest you put your weapons down.” His deep tone vibrated along Eric’s spine.
A tendril of black mist spiraled down from the ceiling and enveloped David.
Above him, pinned to the ceiling, Mr. Stine struggled against black, sparking constraints, his arms stretched out to his sides, his legs crossed together at the ankles. Angry heat lay in his eyes, not fear. Another human with determination, strength, and a selfless spine.
If only the magic could disappear.
“Daddy!” Charlotte cried out.
Eric whipped his head to his left. His breath hitched. Bainesworth von Stuegler, in all his blond, wretched, healed form, held Charlotte in his clutches, a venomous snake ready to strike and kill.
Energy sparked from her fingertips and danced across his arms, but she might as well be showering him with flower petals for all the good it was doing.
If only she knew how to use her residual magic. He’d give every gallion he owned to watch her ignite his body and cast him to the center of Hell in flames.
Anger shook his very core. He raised his sword, the tip pointed at Bainesworth’s throat. “Let her go or I’ll cut you from navel to nose.”
Seyekrad flicked a finger and Eric’s blade sailed across the room into a glass cabinet. Shards of glass rained through the air.
“I don’t think so, pup.” Seyekrad pinned his ice eyes to Eric, a pale hand pressed to his chest. “Your friends’ agonizing deaths will bring me great pleasure. Making you watch will bring me even more.”
A web of black energy pulsed around Eric, holding him to his spot.
Eric ripped at the cocoon. Ahhh! Of all that is good in heaven, let me kill him!
Charlotte struggled and kicked. “Leave him alone, you monster!” Her fingertips fell silent as her nails dug into the constricting arms.
Seyekrad waved his hand.
A silver spark ignited between Bainesworth and Charlotte, the flash almost blinding.
The knight wailed. “Watch it, fool.” He shook out one arm at a time while managing to hold onto a struggling Charlotte. “Next time aim for her, not me.”
Seyekrad cocked his head in Charlotte’s direction. “I did aim it at the girl.” He sashayed toward her, his brow furrowed. His gaze traveled over her body from head to toe. “Well, well. This is quite a turn of events.” He grasped her jaw. “How did you do it?”
She ground her teeth, the tendons in her neck pulled taut.
He shifted his hand and dug his fingers into her cheeks. “I asked you a question and you will answer me.”
She spit in his face. “Drop dead.”
Seyekrad laughed. The sound filled the room. “Oh, I like you. What spirit you have.” He cupped her chin. “Yes, Bainesworth, I think the Dragon King will be quite pleased with this gift.” He turned around and aligned his gaze with David’s. “That is, unless you wish to hand over the Eye of Kedge.”
“Don’t you dare, David,” Charlotte shouted.
The Eye! The rutseer! Eric scoured the floor for it. A smile threatened to bloom on his face as he spotted the necklace beneath the bookcase.
“What will you give us in exchange?” David asked, one eye on Charlotte, the other on her father.
Seyekrad laughed again. “Give you? Oh, no, dear boy, I think you misunderstand. There is no exchange involved. See, you’re the paladin, and you must die. That is a given. How ludicrous would it be for me to allow you to live while the heir to the throne of Hirth still breathes? Or does he?” He strolled toward David. “I think it’s time I found out. Maybe if I rip your brain apart, I’ll find him. Then you can die a hero’s death.”
Moisture evaporated from Eric’s lips. His eyes darted from right to left to right again. Stop him! Roll! Trip him! Do something!
Seyekrad flicked a finger.
Eric sailed across the room and slammed into the wall. Pain shot like a hot arrow across his chest. His vision skewed. Stars appeared. He struggled to his elbows and knees.
Seyekrad laughed. “Your thoughts give you away, runt. Perhaps I should root around in your brain first.”
David lunged, but the mist swirling around him closed in, wrapping tighter to his form.
Seyekrad walked toward Eric. “What will I find inside that gelatinous mess? The identity of the heir? You are, after all, the squire of the most revered knight of Hirth. The great and powerful Trog knows all, which means, his runt would know everything, as well.”
Charlotte shouted, “Leave him alone!”
Seyekrad’s eyes clouded and turned a milky shade of purple.
Eric’s body stiffened. Fingers, hundreds of them, entered his brain, searching, shoving, hurting. He squeezed his eyes tight. One of Magister Timan’s lectures sprang alive in his mind. To block a mind sweep, think of one thing. Replicate it. Make a wall of it. Eric thought of a donkey he once had. He repeated the image and put it in every dark space in his head he could find.
Seyekrad’s voice grew in frustration. “Why do you not want me inside your head? What are you hiding?”
Eric wailed, his hands pressed to the sides of his head. Tendrils of fire unwound in his mind, searching.
“Stop! Stop it!” Charlotte cried out.
Numbness swept through Eric’s body. Memories elongated, thinned so much he couldn’t tell one from the next. Only names remained. Connections faded.
Donkey!
Donkey!
Seyekrad’s face twisted in fury. “What is this trickery? Open your mind to me!”
More magic burned into Eric. His blood caught fire.
“Leave him be.” David shoved the sorcerer in the chest. “It’s me you want.”
Seyekrad spun around, his face twisted in rage and disbelief, his mouth open. “How did you—”
Charlotte’s father crashed to the floor.
“Daddy!”
David guffawed. “What’s the matter? Having concentration issues?”
Seyekrad lunged and caught David’s head between his palms. “Die, you impertinent pest!”
David’s body twitched. His eyes rolled in the back of his head.
Eric groaned. Using a stool for support, he pushed himself up. “No. Get. Away. From him.”
“Stop it!” Charlotte screamed.
Green and purple threads of electricity sizzled and cracked across the room, striking Seyekrad in the chest. Air rushed from his lungs and he hunched over, gasping for air.
David fell away with a yell, and careened into the bookshelf, knocking it over. He groaned.
“Seyekrad!” Bainesworth said. “The girl. The strike came from her.”
Charlotte kicked and squirmed. “It did not! You did it! You’re the one who wants him dead. You want his power, his title, everything that black beast promised him.”
“Why, you lying witch! I’ll kill you here and now!” Bainesworth’s arm wrapped around Charlotte’s neck. Her eyes widened. Her feet lifted from the ground.
Eric’s gaze flicked to David. His hands moved beneath the books like a leviathan through the sea. Hunting. Searching. He tucked something in his pocket.
Eric expelled a breath of air. He knew what David retrieved. Now to block the observation. Tuck it where Seyekrad couldn’t find it. He collected a few more donkeys.
Seyekrad straightened, his hand clutching his heart. “No,” he said, wheezing. “Take her to Einar. Let him do with her what he will.”
He pointed his finger and circled it in the air. A portal emerged out of nowhere. Its silver fabric pulsed and swirled. Bainesworth and Charlotte fell through.
Eric staggered. “No!”
David yelled her name, but the hole between universes closed.
“Nooooo!” Charlotte’s father yelled.
Eric, stumbled, bent over, and retched.
David
“Bring her back, damn you!” Mr. Stine screamed, scrambling to his feet.
Spools of black sizzling magic unraveled from Seyekrad’s fingertips and caught Mr. Stine in the chest, lifting him from the floor and slamming him into the china cabinet. With a thrust of his other hand, Eric jettisoned through the air and careened into what was left of the smashed dining room table.
Seyekrad jerked David around and held him by the throat. “Tell me where the heir is! I know you know. Tell me and I’ll make sure your friends live.”
Faint threads of magic slipped inside David’s head, but there was no pull, no fire, just feathers meandering about on a slight breeze. David shook his head and laughed. “Looks like your magic’s a little screwed up there.”
He didn’t know which came first—the smack or the excruciating pain from being backhanded across the face. They both seemed synonymous. Despite the pain, he couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled out of him.
Seyekrad hit him again. “You’re an insolent bug and I intend to see you squashed once I find the Eye.”
David’s chest squeezed and his stomach filled with bees as Seyekrad held him by the collar of his shirt and patted him down. The sorcerer snorted. “There it is.”
David’s nerves scattered.
Seyekrad reached into David’s pocket and pulled out …
A jar of caviar?
David laughed until every inch of him hurt.
“What is this!” Seyekrad demanded. “Tell me!”
“Fish eggs. You should try them. Quite good actually.”
Seyekrad hurled them across the room.
David laughed as the container hit the wall. He didn’t know why. There was something funny about fish eggs flying across a room. “You know, you should really control your temper.”
Seyekrad shook him. “Where is it! Where is the Eye of Kedge? Where is the heir?”
“Where are the crystals? Where is Charlotte?”
“Why you … ” Seyekrad’s fingers closed around David’s throat, the sorcerer’s nails digging into his flesh like barbed hooks.
David gasped for breath. His body dangled in the air like a caught fish. Can’t die. Save Charlotte. He reached for Seyekrad’s face. Get. The. Eyes.
But his airway squeezed shut, and he heard himself whimper.
Air. He needed air.
But there was none. He was falling into space. Time. Darkness.
Death.
The end of all things.
His body jolted. He fell to the ground gasping.
Seyekrad landed next to him, writhing.
David wheezed and coughed, his throat raw and tender.
“Get him up, Eric,” Mr. Stine shouted.
David took Eric’s outstretched arm and grappled to his feet. “Thank you.” He rubbed his throat and looked at Charlotte’s father who stood over Seyekrad, the back of a dining room chair in his hand.
“Nice,” David said.
The sorcerer groaned, moved. Magic sizzled at his fingertips.
Eric stumbled toward the glass cabinet and collected his sword. He found his scabbard a few feet away and strapped them to his hip. “Here,” Eric said to David, “I thought you might like to have this back.”
David held up his hand and caught the Eye of Kedge. His caviar. He slipped it around his neck.
“I don’t know how you did it,” Eric said, “but I take back everything I said about you being a wannabe magician. That was probably the best trick I’ve ever seen.”
David smiled. “Thanks, but I think that one was all Finn.”
Seyekrad clambered to his hands and knees. “I knew you had it. Give it to me.”
His eyes locked onto David’s. He lifted a hand and pointed a finger at David’s face. Black threads began to unwind.
Mr. Stine kicked him in the gut.
Seyekrad’s body flipped in the air once and crashed to the floor. He cradled his arm. “Raise it again and I’ll rip it from your body,” Mr. Stine shouted. His face and hands were cut. He walked with a limp, but that didn’t stop him. He was a fighter and he wasn’t going to let Seyekrad get away with what he’d done, even if it meant dying in the process.
David gathered his quiver and bow, collected the arrows pitched about on the floor, and he and Eric took their places on either side of Mr. Stine, who glanced at them, then back at Seyekrad. “Where’s my daughter, you sonofabitch?”
Seyekrad lay on his back and laughed. “You humans amuse me so.”
Mr. Stine pressed his foot to Seyekrad’s chest. “Where is she?”
David’s jaw tensed. As much as he wanted to see Seyekrad suffer, he and Eric needed to get to Fallhollow and for reasons unknown to him, he could no longer ferry. He grasped Mr. Stine’s arm and whispered, “Sir, can I talk to you for a moment, please?” He motioned to Eric. “Keep an eye on that scum for a minute.”
Eric nodded, pulled his sword, and pressed the tip to Seyekrad’s throat. “Happy to.”
David edged Mr. Stine toward the hallway. “Sir, let me start by saying how much I appreciate you saving my life. I can’t thank you enough. I also agree with this whole interrogation thing you’ve got going on. Trust me, I want to see him on his knees, begging for forgiveness, but I can’t let you hurt him.”
“He’s got my daughter!”
“I know, and Eric and I will get her back, but we have to get to Fallhollow to do it.”
“Then I’ll come with you.”
David shook his head. “You can’t. We need you here.”
“What good am I doing here? You can’t expect me to sit and wait.”
“You’re right. I need you to do something else. Something just as important, something Eric and I can’t do.”
“And what is that?” He wore an irritated, annoyed expression, as if he’d eaten something sour and rotten.
“Prepare for war. We’re going to need fighter jets, as many as you can get, Raptors if you can, because I’ve got a feeling that by the time all of this plays out, Einar will have one foot in Havendale, and we’re going to need all the fire-power we can get to make sure the foot is blown off.”
“You’re asking for the impossible, David. I don’t have that kind of authority and in case you don’t remember, F-22s are no longer being made. They’re caput.”
“I know we have stocks of them and don’t tell me we don’t. The government doesn’t destroy the best fighter planes ever made. Find them.”
Mr. Stine stammered. “David, I can’t just walk into Central Command with this story and expect them to turn over billions of dollars’ worth of aircraft to me. I have no proof of a coming war, and if I tell them it will be with a dragon, they’ll put me in a straightjacket and put me away where no one will ever
find me.”
“Mr. Stine, please. You’ve got to try. You still have friends at the munitions facility here in Kingsport, right? Surely you have someone you can trust, someone that will believe you?”
The man rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know, David.”
“Please, sir. I beg you. This is important. You have to make them believe you. I promise to bring your daughter home, but I need to know that you’re on top of this. Can you get it done?”
Charlotte’s father rubbed his forehead, his eyes squeezed shut as if the thoughts in his mind hurt. He threw up a hand in defeat and nodded. “I’ll see what I can do, but you better bring her home in one piece, hear me?”
David patted him on the shoulder. “Deal.” He shifted his bow and quiver. “Work your own magic, sir, and I’ll work mine. I have faith in you. Oh, and by the way, your father is a Numí. That’s a very good thing.” He turned to Eric. “You ready to kick some butt?”
His friend remained stoic, unmoving. David waved a hand in front of his face. Peered in his eyes. Black wriggles swirled in his pupils, snakes writhing, sucking out life.
WTF?
Rage swarmed through David as Seyekrad crawled away, cackling.
“Oh no you don’t, you sonofabitch.”
He kicked the sorcerer in the face.
Seyekrad gasped.
David unleashed his fury.
“This one’s for Charlotte.
Kick.
“This one’s for getting inside my brain.”
Kick.
This one is for torturing my friends.”
Kick.
“This is for every evil act you’ve ever done.”
Blood gushed from Seyekrad’s nose. Black and purple colors bloomed on his face. The cracking sound of bones breaking, the splatters of blood on his foot sent a jolt through David. He inhaled. His heart pounded. Never had he felt so much hatred, so much anger. What was wrong with him? Why did he want to keep beating him until there was nothing left? Firm hands gripped David’s arms.
“Stop,” Mr. Stine said, his voice soothing in the ears. “You’re better than this. Besides, you just told me how much you need him.”
Rage of the Dragon King Page 19