Dragon's Egg (Dark Streets Book 2)

by BR Kingsolver

  “Damn,” Dorina breathed. “That is one fine-looking man.”

  “Yeah.” Cassiel had his shirt off again. I wished he wouldn’t do that.

  He swooped in, flared his wings, and back winged, blowing dust, twigs, and small pebbles at us, then set down. Göndul was far more graceful stepping away from him when he unclipped her than I had been.

  “There’s a bloody convention out there,” she said as she took a swig from her water bottle. “See that big rock on that hilltop?” she pointed to a place above the valley where the meeting place was scheduled. “There’s a guy with a sniper rifle under the overhang. And over there,” she pointed in a different direction, “is a gang of Vampires having a picnic with a cow.”

  “We spotted at least a dozen people,” Cassiel said. “Who knows how many are camouflaged or hiding or covered in some sort of illusion. It’s going to be a trick to get close to the action without everyone stumbling all over each other.”

  Dorina and I shared a glance. “That may be in our favor,” I said. “Can you land in a tree?”

  “You mean land like some kind of bird?” I thought it was a reasonable question, but the tone of his voice made me think I’d insulted him.

  “Maybe he could drop us,” Dorina suggested. “How slow can you fly?”

  He shook his head. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re trying to do, and then maybe I can figure out how to help you.”

  “Did you actually see the meeting place?” I asked.

  “Yes, we dropped to about a hundred feet above the treetops,” Göndul answered. “No one paid any attention to us.”

  “Describe it.”

  She told us the road ended at the beginning of a trail where shepherds took their sheep into the hills for summer pasture. An open space about fifty yards long and twenty yards wide gave plenty of space for trucks to park and turn around. Most of the trees around were evergreens, with a few broadleaf trees that were bare of their leaves.

  “If we can get to the trees around the clearing, then we can cover the entire area,” I said. I had an extra paintball gun, and enough potion balls filled with sleepy gas to take out a hundred people. I had shown the setup to Dorina while we hiked, and she was enthusiastic.

  “But how are you going to hide?” Göndul asked.

  “Probably as squirrels,” Cassiel said.

  Göndul shot him a look, and Dorina laughed. “That will work.”

  “I think we can assume that all the groups involved in this party have watchers and magical trip wires set,” I said. “But if we can get into the trees that ring the site, we’ll have the advantage over all of them.”

  Göndul stared at us for a minute, then I saw some kind of understanding on her face. “Elves,” she said, a trace of disgust mixed with envy in her voice.

  “We’re the ultimate tree huggers,” Dorina said. “Unless there’s a turncoat Elf out there, the forest is ours.”

  I wanted to see the site, so Cassiel clipped me to him and took me up so I could see the area for myself. The situation turned out better than I feared. Dense forest bordered one side of the clearing, and while the tree trunks had space between them, the higher branches intermingled. Travel from tree to tree would be difficult for beings our size, but Dorina and I wouldn’t have any problems.

  When Marta, Roger, and the others caught up with us, we set up our plan. My concern was that someone—anyone—might make it out with the egg. But they would still need to get back to civilization. We agreed that Marta would go back and seal the road. The three half-Elves would support her and track anyone coming out of the area on foot.

  “So, how am I going to carry the two of you?” Cassiel asked.

  “Do you have any pockets?” I asked. “Assuming that you put your shirt on, of course.”

  Dorina giggled. I couldn’t believe it. A full-grown woman giggling like a schoolgirl. On the other hand, I had to stifle the urge to join her. Göndul smirked at us, and I felt my face warm.

  “I don’t have pockets in my shirt,” Cassiel said, “but I can tuck you in under my shirt and clip you to my harness, I think.”

  “Be still my heart,” I heard Dorina mutter and Göndul barked out a laugh.

  We shrank down to our smaller sizes. Cassiel picked us up, wrapped a leather strap around each of us, and clipped us to his harness under his shirt. It was rather warm next to his skin, and if you didn’t mind the smell of a man working hard, a very pleasant way to travel. I controlled my urge to stick my tongue out and taste him. Instead, I just breathed deeply.

  He landed in the woods a couple of hundred yards from the clearing, then went back to pick up Göndul. If we had to run, she would be waiting for us with her illusions ready to hide us. Cassiel would take up a station on top of the rock where the sniper lay hidden. I gave him a couple of sleepy-gas paintballs that he could drop under the rock overhang to disable the marksman.

  Dorina and I crept forward until we were in sight of the clearing, then grew back to our normal sizes and climbed the largest tree in the area. When we got high enough that the limbs began to bend under our weight, we shrank down again and moved along the branches from one tree to another. By late afternoon, we sat fifty feet up in a tree overlooking the clearing, wearing glamours that disguised us as squirrels. We could see a couple of dozen people hiding around the area.

  “So, what do we do now? Pretend to eat nuts?” Dorina asked.

  “Your magic can construct highlines, can’t it?” I asked in return.

  “Sure, if you have the raw ingredients.”

  “I have about five hundred yards of nylon parachute cord in my bag,” I said. “I figured that after dark, I can tie it to an arrow and shoot one of those big trees across the way. If we can crisscross several highlines, then we can snoop on just about any place we want.”

  She grinned. “Sounds good to me. It’s been ages since I ran a highline, but in this size, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  In the tree cities of Midgard, people didn’t go down to the ground to get around. Highlines were essentially frozen ropes strung between trees at different levels. An engineer, such as Dorina, spelled them to be stiff and unbreakable, yet flexible enough to accommodate the wind blowing the trees about.

  From the time children were old enough to walk, they ran the highlines—running, pushing, jumping, and generally acting like kids. It was extremely rare for anyone to fall. We didn’t even think about it.

  When the sun set behind the mountains, I grew to my full size, changing my glamour to blend into the tree, and pulled my bow, arrows, and the cord from my bag. Dorina spelled the cord, attaching it to my arrow, and I shot the arrow into a large tree across the way. The thunk of the arrow seemed loud to me, but we didn’t see any of the other watchers stir. I cut the cord and placed the end against the trunk of the tree we sat in. She then drew a rune and spoke a Word, spelling the cord to stiffen. The tree incorporated the cord as part of itself.

  I watched as Dorina scampered across the highline to the tree on the other side. She anchored that end, and our first bridge was complete. When she brought my arrow back, we did the same thing using other trees and soon had a small network of six footpaths crisscrossing the clearing about fifty feet off the ground. We sat up on the highlines and waited, about thirty yards from each other, hanging in the air and disguised as the sky by our glamours.

  Chapter 20

  An hour after sundown, a car drove slowly into the clearing and turned off its lights. I felt a set of wards spring into existence surrounding the area, then Orlando Gonçalves got out of the car carrying a briefcase. Three other men, all Vampires, also got out of the car. I immediately triggered my own shield and felt Dorina do the same.

  A man that I assumed was Conkling and a woman emerged from the forest at the other end of the clearing. Between them, they carried a basket covered with a blanket. I was about a hundred feet from them, but I could feel the magic. That cleared up the question of whether I would be able to feel a Dragon�
��s egg. It was like a beacon of chaos.

  Gonçalves and the two people with the egg advanced toward each other, walking almost directly beneath Dorina and me. When they got about ten feet apart, Gonçalves held out the briefcase in front of him.

  “I’ll set the briefcase down and open it,” Gonçalves said in English. “Please show me the egg.”

  He proceeded to do as he said. The woman turned on a flashlight and aimed the beam at the briefcase. It looked like a whole lot of euros to me, but of course that meant nothing. We were dealing with mages, and it could all be illusion.

  The man and woman set down the basket, and took a step back from it, pulling the blanket with them. There wasn’t any need for a light. The egg glowed from within, its surface rippling with colors from gold to white to red, with jagged forks of lightning like cracks playing across its surface. No question, the egg was alive, and I had the uneasy feeling it was fairly close to hatching. A shudder ran through me.

  Two of Gonçalves’s Vampires stepped forward and picked up the briefcase, holding it open as they advanced toward the egg. They set the briefcase down next to the basket, then picked the basket up and slowly backed away. The woman rushed toward the briefcase, passing her hands over it while muttering an incantation, then cast her spell. She plunged her hands into the piles of paper, quickly riffling through the stacks, then turned to the man with her.

  “It’s good,” she said in English.

  “A pleasure doing business with you,” Conkling said to Gonçalves as his companion closed the briefcase.

  Lightning flashed and bounced off Gonçalves’s shield even as a fireball flew from the trees and hit the two Vampires carrying the egg. The next thing I knew, the clearing erupted into a killing field of magic.

  A fireball set Goncalves’s car and the Vampire driver, on fire. The other Vampire cut loose with a submachinegun as he backed toward the trees. Conkling and the woman with him gave as good as they got, sending white-hot streams of plasma toward their attacker from the woods and at Gonçalves. More gunfire erupted from the forest.

  The magical attacks from the unknown source had several different flavors about them, but the Elven magic stood out. As I feared would happen, Mondranar had crashed the party.

  A group of Vampires dashed out of the trees and grabbled the basket with the egg. I fired an arrow that hit the Vampire nearest to me. He stumbled and fell, tangling his buddies, and they all went down in a heap. The egg rolled free across the dirt.

  With all their power, mages rarely dabbled with witchcraft and potions. Although all the mages were shielded, I knew that their shields were tuned toward fending off magical attacks and bullets. But mages still had to breathe, and I was betting that their shields were permeable. That left them vulnerable to my sleepy gas. I pulled out my paintball gun and began firing into the air, letting the paintballs fall out of the sky around the combatants.

  Dorina followed my lead, and soon a pink mist began to spread throughout the clearing.

  Without warning, a Dragon fell from the sky, breathing flame all around. It landed straddling the egg, and the Vampires scrambled to get away from it. The mages’ attacks redirected toward the Dragon. Every person that I could see had a panicked expression on their faces. Of course, their attacks didn’t faze the Dragon even a little.

  I used the distraction to fire a volley of potion balls into the woods where I thought Mondranar and his mages were hiding. From the corner of my eye, I saw Gonçalves stumble, surrounded by a pink haze. Firing another volley at Conkling and his friend, I shrank to my smaller size and ran along the highline in their direction, passing over the Dragon. I was tempted to drop to the ground there but chickened out. I could do a fifty-foot drop, but it would hurt, and if I sprained or broke something, I’d probably end up dead.

  Instead, I stayed in my smaller form, followed the highline to the tree it was anchored to, and dropped from branch to branch until I reached the ground. Only a couple of the mages were still trying to fight the Dragon. There were a lot of bodies lying around, and I had to pick my way between areas stained pink. If I wasn’t careful, the gas would down me just like it had the others.

  The egg’s weight worried me. The Human mages acted as if it were very heavy, and even the Vampires seemed to have issues carrying the basket. I didn’t want to get into a fight while carrying a heavy burden.

  One problem I didn’t have to deal with was Göndul’s Dragon. In all the chaos, no one appeared to have figured out that it wasn’t real. I did admit it gave me a fright when it first appeared, but when it sank through the highlines instead of bouncing off them, I knew it was an illusion. A pretty damned good illusion.

  I reached the egg and put a hand on it. Luckily, I was shielded, plus I was wearing the charm Antonio and Marta had spelled. It still gave me a bit of a jolt, but after the initial buzz, it wasn’t too bad. I grew to my normal size and picked the egg up without too much discomfort. It weighed about fifty pounds and tucked easily under my arm. I took off running toward the trees away from where I thought Mondranar was hiding.

  I glanced back as I reached the trees and saw that Dorina had laid down a cloud of pink sleepy gas behind me. I smiled, then tripped and went flying, the egg jostled out of my grasp.

  My shield kept me from plowing face-first into the ground, but it still hurt when my full weight landed on my shoulder. I scrambled to my feet, frantically looking about for the egg.

  I saw two men bending over and wrapping a blanket around the egg. Then something crashed into the back of my head, and I went down again. If I hadn’t been shielded, whatever hit me might have crushed my skull. Stars and comets and other flashing lights filled my vision as I tried to roll over and away from my attacker. I managed to focus just in time to see a man standing over me, swinging a tree branch at my head with both of his hands. I dodged that and only took a glancing blow to my shoulder.

  Lashing out, I managed to kick him in the leg and heard an ugly sound very much like that of the tree branch breaking on the ground next to my head. My assailant cried out, stumbled backward, and fell. I leaped on him and crushed his throat with my forearm. His eyes bulged, his face turned red, and he flopped around violently, throwing me off.

  I rolled to my feet, and after a glance at the dying man, looked for his companions. They and the egg were nowhere in sight, though when I calmed down and thoroughly looked around, I could see their trail. I found my paintball gun and tucked it away, then drew my sword with my left hand. My right shoulder might have been broken if I hadn’t been protected by my shield, but my arm still felt numb and wasn’t responding properly.

  I took off running to try to catch the thieves. Even in the dark, I didn’t expect it to take me very long to catch them. Their trail took a sharp left, then a while later a sharp right along a shallow ravine. The trees started to thin, then I heard the helicopter. It lifted off the ground as I reached a small clearing. When I was almost under it, I leaped, but my outstretched hand was several feet short of grasping anything.

  All I could do was pull out my phone and try to call Cassiel. The phone responded by telling me that I was in a dead zone with no reception.

  The helicopter was almost out of sight when I saw Cassiel fly over me chasing after it. I didn’t know how fast he could fly, but I wasn’t betting on him catching the machine. Figuring that our next move was to rendezvous and get the hell out of there, I started hiking toward where we’d left the cars.

  I had to stop and sit down several times, and twice I threw up. By the time I found Marta and the cars, I wasn’t feeling very good, and my vision was occasionally going double. Classic concussion symptoms. In addition, I couldn’t raise my right hand above my chest.

  “Are you all right?” Marta asked.

  I slumped and sat down, leaning against the car. “Not really. Has anyone else made it back yet?”

  “No. What happened? I saw the light show, so I knew something blew up.”

  “Yeah. Someone had a helicopte
r, and now they have the egg.”

  Cassiel winged in about five minutes later, and after a brief conversation with Marta, squatted down in front of me.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Got hit in the head.”

  He put his hand on my forehead and shined a small flashlight in my eyes.

  “Concussion,” he said.

  “Yeah, I kind of figured.”

  He put both hands on the sides of my head. Nothing happened, and his brow wrinkled as he frowned.

  “Oh,” I said, reaching up and pulling the anti-magic charm over my head. “Try now.”

  A rush of power flowed from his hands, and everything cleared up. My headache went away, and I felt surprisingly normal.

  “Wow. Thanks.” I tried to loop the charm’s cord back over my head and winced.

  “Where?” Cassiel asked.

  “Shoulder.”

  After he healed that, I felt a whole lot better, and for the first time was able to feel some anger about losing the egg.

  We told Marta about the battle at the clearing, and about the helicopter getting away.

  “It curved around and headed north,” Cassiel said, “but whether it was going to Campina, Sinaia, or Brasov, I have no idea. They could land in any of those places and transfer to a car.”

  Dorina and Göndul showed up about an hour later with the briefcase. Dorina opened it and showed us the money.

  “We found two ATVs,” Göndul said. “That’s how Conkling and his lady friend came in. We punctured the gas tanks. And Gonçalves’s SUV is toast.”

  “Both Gonçalves and Conkling are going to be upset,” Dorina said with a laugh. “They’ll wake up and have nothing but each other and a long walk out.”

  “What about Mondranar?” I asked.

  Dorina shook her head. “We found him. Your potion balls worked just like you hoped they would. But even unconscious, his shield still held. I wish I could have killed him, but I couldn’t figure out how.”