Last Dragon Standing (Heartstrikers Book 5)

by Rachel Aaron

  He smiled then. A big, warm, dazzling grin that made Marci’s breath catch in her throat. “I have faith in my brother. I don’t always understand what he’s doing or approve of how he does it, but I don’t believe for a second that Bob moved heaven and earth to bring us together—from China, from eggs that were never supposed to hatch, from death itself—only to drop the ball at the end. Whatever’s coming, Bob has a plan, and we’re part of it. There’s just no other explanation for how we all ended up here. That’s why I think, if we want to survive what’s coming, we need to put aside our anger and help him make it work.”

  Fredrick opened his mouth to argue, but Chelsie raised her hand. “I believe you, Julius,” she said quietly. “I can’t forgive him for all the years he left us to rot, but I believe you when you say that this is Bob’s doing. Even accounting for the Qilin’s fortune, this whole situation is simply too improbable not to have a seer’s fingerprints all over it. Also, if the Nameless End eats everything, Bob will die too, and he’s much too selfish for that. But if this is all part of Bob’s grand plan, what does that mean? What did he bring us here to do?”

  “Work together,” Julius said, looking pointedly at General Jackson. “All of us. The dragon clans, the UN, spirits, Merlins—we’ve all got our backs against the same wall. If we’re going to survive, we have to join forces.”

  “And do what?” Myron asked. “The magic outside might not be deadly, but it’ll still knock any of us out cold before we make it three feet. Maybe dragons would fare better, but I don’t see how we’re supposed to work together when half of us can’t leave the house.”

  “We’d make it more like ten feet, but the general idea still holds,” Amelia agreed. “Magical fallout is no joke. It’ll take you down in a heartbeat, and it’ll burn the entire time. But the good news is I think the magical crash is affecting the Nameless End as well.”

  “How do you know that?” General Jackson demanded.

  “Because, as Marci already pointed out, we’re not dead yet,” Amelia said. “It’s been sixteen hours since Algonquin kamikazed herself into the Leviathan. It takes time to eat your way through five Great Lakes, but not that much time. I bet the Leviathan is just as stuck as we are. That buys us some wiggle room.”

  “How much?” Julius asked.

  “Not enough,” Raven said, hopping off Amelia’s shoulder to perch on the windowsill. “Heavy as it looks, the fallout’s actually been getting lighter for a while now. In my unprofessional and unresearched opinion, I’d say we have an hour, maybe two, before we can safely go outside.”

  “Then we need to get to work,” Marci said, standing up.

  “I thought we just agreed to wait for Bob,” Amelia said.

  Marci rolled her eyes. “We can’t just sit here doing nothing until a dragon seer shows up and tells us what to do.”

  “It worked last time,” Amelia said with a shrug.

  “Only because he told you it would,” Marci pointed out. “Do you have any instructions for this crisis?”

  The dragon spirit shook her head, and Marci spread her hands. “There you go. Maybe Bob will show up with a plan of action to save us all, but until then, I say we listen to Julius and pool our resources to come up with a plan of our own, because we don’t have time to mess around.”

  “I agree,” the Qilin said, rising to his feet and turning to Julius. “You have the full support of the Golden Empire. My dragons are already on their way here. We will help you fight the Nameless End in whatever way we can.”

  Julius blinked. “Um, that’s fantastic, but how do you know they’re coming? I only said we should work together a minute ago.”

  The Qilin shrugged. “Because I want them here, and when I want something, my luck generally makes sure I get it.”

  “Really?” Marci whistled. “Dude, that is a crazy power.”

  The Golden Emperor shrugged again, but Julius was grinning from ear to ear. “I think I see how this is supposed to work,” he said excitedly, turning to Fredrick. “You’ve got Chelsie’s old Fang. That means you can cut to any Heartstriker, which gives our clan a way into the city as well. Between the Heartstrikers and the Golden Empire, we’ll have half the dragons in the world fighting together against a common enemy. That has never happened before!” He smiled even wider. “Don’t you see? This has to be Bob’s plan! This is why he had us jump through all those flaming hoops! It was so we’d all be here at the right place and the right time with the trust and the tools necessary to fight together against the Leviathan!”

  “It does make sense,” Marci admitted. “But weren’t you the one who always said it was foolish to try to guess a seer’s intentions?”

  “What else could it be?” Julius asked. “He got you here too, along with General Jackson, Raven, and Amelia, plus the Mortal Spirits. That gives us the Merlins, the human UN, and both types of spirits. Between all of us, every sentient magical force in the world is represented. We’re even stuck in the same house. If that’s not a seer’s doing, I don’t know what is.”

  “You make a good point,” Fredrick said, frowning down at his Fang. “I suppose I should start bringing in the rest of the clan, then?”

  “Not yet,” Amelia said quickly. “The magic’s better than it was last night, but it’s still waaaaaaay too unstable for teleportation. If you try to cut anywhere, you might end up slicing off your own head.”

  “And we need a better idea of what we’re up against,” Julius added. “The Golden Emperor can command his dragons however he likes, but I’m only one vote on the Heartstriker Council. If I bring Bethesda and Ian into this, and they see the Leviathan as an unwinnable fight, they might decide to take their chances underground instead. We may only get one shot at this, which means we can’t bring anyone else into this fight until we have some kind of idea of how we’re actually going to win.”

  “Assuming we can win,” Myron said glumly.

  “We have to assume that,” Marci said. “Otherwise, what’s the point of fighting?”

  “Thank you, Marci,” Julius said, flashing her a smile. “Our first hurdle is to figure out how to get out there and take a look at the problem. Once we know what we’re actually up against, we can put our heads together and figure out how to beat it, because there has to be a way. Bob wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble of bringing us together if we didn’t have a chance.”

  “Then why doesn’t he just tell us?” Emily said, glaring at him. “Everyone goes on and on about how powerful dragon seers are, but what’s the use of all that power if they never tell you anything?”

  “Because knowing the future changes it,” Amelia snapped. “Seriously, Phoenix, pay attention.”

  “Bob won’t tell us his move until he’s played it,” Julius agreed. “But the fact that we’re on the board he’s set up means that move is already in play, and we’re part of it. The only thing he’s ever told me since the beginning is to be myself, and this is what I think we should do. If I really am the seer lynchpin everyone keeps telling me I am, that should be a pretty good indicator of which way we need to push for success. And even if I am wrong about all of this, how can us working together be a bad idea? The forces sitting around this table represent the combined strength of our plane. If anything we have is capable of beating the Leviathan, it’s this.”

  He placed his hand down on the center of the table with a thunk, and Marci held her breath. She’d seen Julius do his thing enough now to know this was his big push to get everyone on the same side, and it seemed to be working. All around the kitchen, heads were nodding. Even Chelsie looked convinced, and Amelia had been on board from the beginning. The only holdout was General Jackson, who was looking at Julius as though she wasn’t sure what to make of him.

  “You truly are a very strange dragon,” she said at last. “I have no interest in trusting humanity’s survival to one of the enemy’s seers, but I’m in no position to turn down allies. If you can get me the world’s two largest dragon clans and a promise
they won’t eat my soldiers, we’ll work with you. I’ve already put in a call for backup from the UN’s headquarters in New York, as well as our field offices in Chicago and Toronto. The moment the magic clears enough for aircraft, we’ll have helicopters, gunships, battle mages, everything but tanks. I’ll have to warn my people not to shoot at the dragons this time around, but if this is going to be as bad as I fear, I don’t think target confusion will be a problem.”

  “We’ll help too,” Marci said. “I mean, obviously I was going to help, but I’m formally offering my assistance as the First Merlin, which I’m pretty sure means I speak for Myron as well.”

  “I was already in through the UN,” the older mage said stuffily. “But if it makes you feel important, feel free to claim me.”

  This time yesterday, Marci wouldn’t have claimed Sir Myron Rollins if he’d been the last mage on earth. But his words to the DFZ last night and his steadfast efforts to protect the world from magical disaster had raised him a great deal in her opinion, enough that she met his grumbling with a smile. Julius was smiling too, beaming at her with a happiness that lit him up from the inside out, and no wonder. He’d brought everyone together, which was all Julius ever wanted to do. To pull it off so quickly now, when so much was at stake, he had to be feeling on top of the world. Maybe it had only worked because they were stuck on the rails of Bob’s plan, but Marci was proud of him anyway. She was proud of all of them, because they were finally going to fight back.

  After so long spent scrabbling in the dirt, so many defeats, they were finally going to end this. She still owed Algonquin for what had happened in Reclamation Land, and for Vann Jeger. Now, though, everything was coming up aces. They were going to finish Algonquin and end her stupid, reckless idea of a super-weapon Leviathan once and for all. Marci was already imagining armies of dragons backed up by fighter jets soaring through the sky when something hit her ward so hard it nearly knocked her over.

  She grabbed the table, fighting to stay upright as the wrongness rolled through her. It was gone a second later, leaving her blinking in pain and surprise. Amelia looked equally shocked, her amber eyes wide as she jumped to her feet.

  “Anyone else feel that?”

  “Feel what?” Julius asked, looking at Chelsie, who shook her head.

  “I felt it,” Myron said, putting a shaking hand to his forehead. “Someone just did something awful to the magic we wrapped around the house.”

  “They tied it in a knot,” Amelia snarled, stomping out of the kitchen. “A very good knot at the end of a very good spell.”

  “But that’s insane,” Marci said, scrambling after her. “Good or not, casting a spell in magic this thick is like throwing a lit match into a sea of gasoline. Who in the world would be stupid enough to risk—”

  She didn’t get to finish, because at that moment, a giant sphere of ice materialized in their living room, landing with a thud on the hardwood floor. Cold rolled off it in waves, dropping the temperature of the house ten degrees in an instant. Marci was still gaping in surprise when the outside of the sphere exploded into ice dust, releasing the winter cyclone of fury that was Svena the White Witch.

  Chapter 2

  “Where is she?”

  Julius darted behind Amelia. Or at least, he tried to. His sister had been right in front of him a second ago, but now she was nowhere to be seen, leaving him standing face-to-face with a deadly-angry Svena, her blue eyes glowing like radioactive cobalt through the icy mist of her arrival.

  As the frost began to settle, Julius realized the new clan head of the former Daughters of the Three Sisters looked… odd. She was still horrifically terrifying, but the effect was mitigated by the ridiculously fluffy white shawl she wore over her shoulders. It was so big, he didn’t even see Katya until the other dragoness moved, looking both embarrassed and determined as she stepped up to stand beside her sister. Even that was strange, though, because though Julius could only see two new dragons in his home, he smelled a lot more. His brain had already identified fourteen unique scents, and the fact that he only knew the location of two of them was sending him into a panic. Where were the others? Was this an ambush?

  But as his eyes darted frantically around the room in search of the hidden dragons, Svena’s giant white shawl began to twitch. It moved again when he snapped his attention back to her, and Julius suddenly realized the fluffy white wrap draped over Svena’s shoulders wasn’t actually a wrap at all. They were dragons. Tiny ones.

  Little serpents the size of dachshunds were clinging to Svena’s body with their tiny claws. Each one was covered in an identical coat of fluffy, snow-white down, which was why they’d looked like a solid mass at first. Once they started moving, though, Julius counted a dozen at least, and every one of them was staring at him, their suspicious eyes as large and inhumanly blue as Svena’s.

  “Oh my god,” Marci said beside him, pressing her hands over her mouth. “Are those… Are you covered in baby dragons?”

  As always, Svena ignored her. “Where is the Planeswalker?” she yelled in Julius’s face.

  “I-I don’t know,” he stammered. “She was right here a second ago, but—”

  Svena whirled on her heel and stomped to the nearest door, blasting it off its hinges without even pausing to try the knob. When that turned out to be the bathroom, she turned and blasted the door to the broom closet. The little dragons squeaked in alarm as wood went flying, and Katya jumped forward to catch them as they fled from their furious mother.

  “Sorry,” Katya said as she frantically gathered all the wiggling whelps into her arms. “She’s been like this ever since we saw the news. We left as soon as the magic stabilized enough to allow teleportation. I tried to make her wait, but…” She trailed off with a helpless shrug, backing into the living room to make room for the crowd that was now pouring out of the kitchen into the hall.

  “What is she doing?” Chelsie snapped, shoving her way to the front just in time to see Svena blast the door off the stairs to the basement.

  “Looking for Amelia,” Julius said frantically, watching in dismay as yet another part of his house was pulverized into splinters. “I don’t know what happened! Amelia was right here just a second ago!”

  “Oh, for the love of—” Chelsie handed her own daughter to Fredrick and stepped forward, lifting her voice in a roar. “Amelia! Stop hiding, you coward! Get out here and face the consequences of your actions like a dragon while there’s still something left of Julius’s house!”

  The words echoed through the building. Even Svena paused her campaign of destruction, her delicate ears twitching as she listened. She was about to head upstairs when Julius felt something sigh deep inside his fire, then the air in front of him flickered like a mirage as Amelia reappeared.

  “Svena!” she said in a bright, false voice. “How nice of you to… um… drop by.”

  The words rang hollow in the silence that followed. Then, slow as a glacier, Svena turned to face her. The cold moved with her, making Julius shiver. Even Katya scrambled out of the way, taking the pile of baby dragons with her as she fled into the hallway to take shelter behind Julius and Marci, leaving Amelia and Svena facing off alone in the empty living room.

  “You,” Svena whispered, the word leaving her lips in a puff of frozen smoke. “You were dead. I saw it. Brohomir killed you!”

  “He did,” Amelia said. “But I can explain—”

  “Explain?” Svena roared, sending a wave of frost across the floor. “We nearly went to war over you! How did you just come back?”

  With every angry word, the freezing magic in the room grew sharper. Even Amelia flinched, and one of the white whelps on Katya’s shoulder bailed entirely, jumping off to land on Marci’s back. Julius’s heart froze as the tiny dragon made contact, but though she stumbled when it hit her, Marci didn’t fall. She didn’t even look scared. Quite the opposite. Her eyes were sparkling when she looked over her shoulder at the little dragon climbing up the back of her sweatshirt. “Jul
ius…” she whispered, running her palm gently over its downy head. “It’s so fluffy.”

  Julius’s response was to bolt for the kitchen, returning moments later with a pair of oven mitts. “Here,” he said, thrusting them onto Marci’s hands. “You’re going to need these. And try to keep away from its mouth.”

  Marci nodded, but she still hadn’t torn her mesmerized gaze away from the tiny dragon clinging to the back of her shoulders. “Sooooooo fluffy.”

  He sighed and pulled the oven mitts down more tightly. When he was satisfied she wouldn’t lose a finger, he turned back to the standoff going down just a few feet away.

  “What are you?” Svena demanded, the frost at her feet rippling as she took a step toward Amelia. “You don’t even smell like a dragon anymore. You smell like him.” She pointed at Raven, who’d flown up to perch on the stairwell banister, where he’d have a better view. “What did you do to her, creature? Where is the Planeswalker?”

  Amelia rolled her eyes. “For fire’s sake. It is me, ice queen. If you want proof, I can tell the story of that night back in the twelve hundreds when I got you so drunk off fortified wine casks that you ran off and saved the capital of Slovenia. Or if that story’s too well-known, I could tell everyone about the time you got a crush on a human fisherman and asked me to cover for you to your sisters while you two ran off behind his boat to—”

  “Okay, shut up, I believe you,” Svena said frantically, her pale cheeks flushing a very slight pink. “But that still doesn’t explain how you’re here.”

  “Come on,” Amelia said with a chuckle. “Surely you don’t think a minor inconvenience like death could stop someone as amazing as me?”

  “A minor inconvenience?” Svena repeated, clutching her fists. “You were ash, Amelia! I saw it happen! The human we put your fire into was dead as well. Your flames were gone. Dragons don’t come back from that.”