We did it?
You did.
A strained, pained sound jolted her out of her exhausted exhilaration. Brown eyes bulged with terror as they stared up at her from over the vent mask. Brandon was awake and panicking at finding himself intubated. Even as he gave another strangled cry, she shot a pulse of magic into his brain to put him out again.
The effort hurt far more than it should. She’d used a hell of a lot of power healing him. With a relieved sigh, Cheryl let her head fall back on her aching shoulders. Slowly, a broad grin spread across her face as she enjoyed the best high she’d felt since Adam’s birth. A whole lot of people were going to be really surprised by that EEG.
* * *
Orlan, N.C.
The dark silhouette soared against the star-flecked blackness, moonlight edging huge wings as it flew. Great jaws gaped wide, breathing a thundering jet of flame over the trees, which instantly ignited. In seconds, the ridgeline was on fire.
People cursed. Some of the children screamed in terror, the sound painfully piercing to vampire ears. Ulf’s gloved hand tightened on the hilt of his sword as he stared upward. “Jesu, I hate fighting dragons.”
The other Knights of the Round Table rumbled an assent. Even Arthur Pendragon looked grim, his bearded jaw set, his wide mouth tight.
Pushing past Ulf, Kel gave him a clanking slap on one enchanted pauldron. “Look on the bright side -- fighting this one isn’t your job.” The big knight flashed a carnivore’s grin. “It’s mine.” He raised his voice until it rang across the McDonald’s parking lot. “Give me some room, people.”
The vampires and witches of the Magekind began to urge the crowd into a thin ring around the parking lot. Orlan didn’t have many places where you could assemble evacuees, nestled as it was in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. McDonald’s was basically it.
It was a damn good thing Alys Hawkwood had Seen this half an hour ago, vague though the vision had been. All she’d Seen was the Magekind evacuating the mortals of Orlan, N.C. to this restaurant. There’d been no indication of what the threat was, other than her conviction that people were going to die if they didn’t move fast. Yet after what had happened in Times Square, nobody was inclined to ignore any vision of Alys’s. It was the right call. A Magekind team had barely gotten the first family out before the dragon strafed their house.
As Ulf directed one family to back up a little more, the woman looked up at him. Her brown eyes looked huge, liquid with terror as she clutched a crying toddler. The mother wore a flannel nightgown and a faded pink bathrobe -- none of them had had time to dress. “Is that… is that really a dragon?”
Ulf gave her a practiced smile designed to instill confidence. “Yeah, but Kel will take care of it. We’ll keep you safe.” Which might be a little optimistic, but they were certainly going to give it their best shot.
“Where the fuck did it come from?” a teenager asked in a voice that cracked, probably more from fear than hormones.
“Hell, where did you come from?” demanded a burly, dark-skinned man. “I thought you guys were supposed to be CGI.”
Ulf snorted. “Don’t believe everything you see on the Internet.”
Kel moved into the center of the parking lot. Like the other knights, he wore the new gold armor, a combination of scale and plate. “I need you to crouch down and brace yourself,” he told the crowd. “There’s going to be a strong downdraft, and it’ll knock you down if you’re not careful.”
“Seriously,” a woman demanded, as they all dropped obediently to their knees, “Who are you guys?”
“The Knights of the Round Table,” Kel said absently, as he eyed the building to make sure he had enough room.
Someone laughed in a bark of sarcastic disbelief. “Yeah, right. Be real.”
Sparks burst from the knight’s body to whirl around him, whipping his long blue hair and making his red eyes glow like taillights in the dark. The cloud of magic began to expand, pouring outward, then contracting into a new shape.
The crowd gasped. Anyone who didn’t already have a cell out fumbled for it.
Kel crouched, wings tucked in close to avoid hitting the building. His blue scales shone under the parking lot’s lights, an iridescent shimmer rippling over the powerful muscle of his long, brawny body. He reared, forty feet of dragon spreading one hundred and twenty feet of wings, balanced there a moment, then leaped skyward in a bound that carried him higher than the McDonald’s roof. The downdraft pounded them just as he’d warned, his booming flaps almost drowning out the crowd’s shouts and curses.
In the distance, the enemy dragon roared.
“Don’t panic!” Arthur barked over the crowd’s screams. “Stay where you are. You’re safe. We’ll protect you.”
Everyone froze, staring at him, their terror no match for the raw authority he projected. Arthur had been honing his battlefield roar for fifteen centuries, and by now it held its own sort of magic. Though to be fair, he’d been just as riveting when he’d been a mortal king during the fall of Rome.
A delicate blonde woman moved into the space Kel had occupied, her armor glinting in the security lights.
“Shit, are you all dragons?” someone muttered.
“Nope,” Nineva said, “Just Kel. But Morgana and I can fake it.” She lifted her arms, her face set with effort.
While Kel was a dragon who could shift to human, his wife was a Sidhe sorceress who could shift into a dragon. Magic whirled around her, and when it passed, yet another dragon crouched where she’d stood. At thirty feet in length, she was dainty compared to her draconic husband, and her scales gleamed gold rather than blue. Her huge eyes looked like enormous opals with sparks of magic dancing in her irises. Gathering herself, Nineva took off, golden wings beating a downdraft like a lifting helicopter.
“Shiiiiiit,” someone said, lengthening it into a four-syllable word as the mortals stared after her in wonder.
Morgana le Fay started toward the makeshift launch pad. A tall blond knight grabbed her by one wrist and dragged her into a hard kiss. A couple of teens snickered, but the pair ignored them as Morgana cupped Percival’s cheek. Her smile was surprisingly tender for a woman as ruthless as a Medici prince.
Less than a minute later, she was a lean black dragon, headed skyward on powerful wings.
Every member of the crowd had a cell phone out and shooting now, probably live streaming to Facebook or some damn thing. Ulf’s fingers twitched with his instinct to confiscate every phone there.
In the old days, he’d have done it. Unfortunately, that horse had pranced out of the barn two months ago. Humanity knew about the Magekind now, and there wasn’t a fucking thing anyone could do about it. Arthur’s new strategy was to conduct rescues without bespelling mortals into believing some cover story about their miraculous escape. Once humanity got used to seeing the Magekind saving people, they’d calm the hell down.
Or not.
So far, mostly not.
Fat sparks began flashing around the parking lot, instantly expanding into wavering ovals that looked like holes in the air. Small groups of men, women, and children stepped through the dimensional gates, shepherded along by armored Magekind couples.
This was the final wave of evacuees, the ones who lived in the mountains surrounding the town. The mortals looked dazed, probably an effect of the spells the Majae had cast to convince them to evacuate. They wore pajamas, jeans, shorts, T-shirts -- whatever they’d had on when the agents showed up. By the time the last gate closed, three thousand people milled around, shivering and bewildered.
“Hey, Dad!” a familiar voice called.
Ulf looked around as Adam Parker walked up, accompanied by his witch partner, Opal. Ulf smiled in genuine pleasure. “Hello, son. How’d it go?”
“Sucked. Mortals are idiots.”
“You were a mortal just last month,” Opal reminded him.
“Yeah, but I got over it.” Adam grinned, a big, powerfully built vampire with shoulder-length blond
hair and a thick beard. His expression was pure Cheryl Parker after a hard day at the hospital -- irritation at human stupidity leavened by amusement and compassion. Sometimes just looking at him made Ulf’s chest ache in longing for Cheryl. He should have told Arthur to go fuck himself all those years ago. Instead, he’d obeyed his Liege -- and sacrificed nearly three decades with the two people he loved most.
Now he might have lost her for good.
Ulf managed a smile despite the stab of pain. “Let me guess. Your assignments didn’t want to be rescued.”
Opal Cassidy sighed. “They panicked.” She was a lean redhead whose ethereal beauty was belied by the strength of her build and the cool cynicism of her gray eyes. “Had to put them under a compulsion.”
“Now I see why you cast that spell on my ass,” Adam told her. “I’m surprised you didn’t just let the Fomos have me.”
Opal snorted. “Don’t think I wasn’t tempted.”
An ear-shattering blast of sound made every head snap back to stare at the sky -- mortals, witches, and vampires united in an instant of gut-clenching fear.
Overhead, Kel dove at the black dragon, who winged aside. The two whipped around each other, darting in to rip with claws and snapping teeth. More roars sounded, so loud Ulf’s breastbone vibrated. “Damn,” he muttered uneasily, “that bastard’s bigger than Kel.”
“And Kel’s not exactly a talking lizard,” Adam agreed.
Opal frowned. “Wish we’d known we were facing a dragon to start with. We’d have gated these people farther away.”
As the combatants wheeled and darted in flashing attacks, the two female “dragons” flew low over burning ridgeline, breathing torrents of magic. The whirling gold sparks snuffed out the fires like candle flames.
At least for the moment. If their foe decided to strafe the parking lot…
“Gwen, we need to get these people out of here,” Arthur shouted, before Ulf could suggest as much.
“On it.” Arthur’s wife made a sweeping, elegant gesture, sending a stream of magic rolling over the pavement like fog. A heartbeat later, it formed a wavering oval big enough to admit an eighteen-wheeler. Judging by the view on the other side, Guinevere had chosen a football stadium for the gate’s destination.
Arthur clapped his gauntleted hands. “Come on, folks, let’s take a walk through this nice gate.”
“Where are we going?” a woman asked, her voice anxious.
“Somewhere you won’t end up reptile kibble. You got a problem with that?”
Overhead, a blast of fire roared like a jet engine, accompanied by a high-pitched cry of draconic pain. As one, the mortals lurched toward the gate.
Ulf stole another wary glance skyward. The two dragons circled each other, moonlight gleaming over great wings and darting, sinuous bodies. Kel dragged in a breath and blasted his larger foe with a thundering plume of magic. The black dragon didn’t even flinch. He opened his huge jaws -- for fuck’s sake, he really was the biggest dragon Ulf had ever seen -- and breathed.
Instead of flame, a roiling black cloud surged from the dragon’s jaws, crackling with multicolored sparks like the dance of static electricity in the dark. That much power should have made Ulf’s magical senses ring, but he sensed nothing at all. It was as if the blast was CGI. Yet as the cloud rolled over Kel, his body ignited like a torch. The dragon knight shrieked, his beating wings losing rhythm. Surrounded by a corona of black flame, he fell like a stone.
Nineva screamed, obviously sharing her mate’s pain through their Truebond psychic link. She broke off her firefighting and shot toward the tumbling dragon, every frantic wing beat shouting of desperation.
“No!” Ulf yelled, in chorus with a dozen other Magekind voices. There was no way in hell Nineva could survive a fight with the enemy…
Instead, Ulf felt the wave of magic as she conjured an enormous gate beneath her plummeting husband. Kel dropped into it, and Nineva darted after him, the tip of her tail vanishing a heartbeat before the gate closed.
With a victorious roar, the black dragon wheeled and arrowed toward Morgana le Fey.
“Morgana!” Percival shouted as she turned and fled.
Ulf winced, imagining how he’d feel watching Cheryl fight that thing while he was trapped on the ground.
A gate opened ahead of Morgana, and she disappeared into it. It snapped shut a split second before her enemy reached it. The creature keened in frustration…
A new gate opened behind him. Morgana blasted out of it like a cruise missile, raked her foe with her claws, and shot skyward.
The black dragon roared and powered after her, climbing with incredible speed. Fuck, he was fast. But even as he gained on her, she tucked her wings and dove, dropping past him like a brick.
“Through the gate, people!” Arthur snapped. “Go! Go, gogogo!”
As the last of the mortals streamed through Gwen’s portal, Adam turned to Ulf, his face dead white in the parking lot lights. “That looked like Mom’s magic.”
Ulf stared at him in horror. There was no way in hell Cheryl would have anything to do with this. But Adam was right. The magic she’d used on the Fomorians last month had looked exactly like the blast that had felled Kel.
“It’s not Mom,” Adam insisted fiercely.
“Cheryl would never do anything like this,” Ulf agreed, even as a ball of ice filled his belly. He’d never seen anyone else use that kind of magic. Not in fifteen hundred years. Cheryl would never do this. But what if Cheryl’s not Cheryl anymore?
* * *
Valac roared in exhilaration as he pursued the fleeing armored one, now in dragon form. This was indeed a fine hunt! He had confirmed their power had no effect on him, though they could do damage with claws and teeth. His magic, however, could do far worse to them. He would amuse himself killing them before he gave this planet to Hivemother. She would be so pleased, he might even be permitted a mating --
Magic! Though distant, it rang in the silence of this magicless world. And it was not the armored ones’ pitiful power. Worse, Valac recognized it. Errul magic.
In his shock and fear, he almost shifted out of his dragon form and tumbled from the sky. His head whipped around as he stared toward the horizon, senses straining. How is this possible? We exterminated all life on that planet. There was nothing left but bare rock. How could one of them be here?
And yet he knew that magic. There was no mistake. It had the same energy currents and psychic taste as the Erruls’, unmistakable as Hivemother’s scent. Not the magic of the Hive’s universe, but close. Far too close.
The armored ones were no threat -- he could kill them any time he chose. But this new creature… If the being was Errul, it was a danger he didn’t dare ignore. He must find it. Kill it. Now.
Valac wheeled and raced toward the source of the magic.
* * *
I’ve got to lead it away from the Magekind… Morgana le Fay glanced back at her pursuer, only to see the black dragon fleeing as if all hell’s demons were on its tail. Where in Merlin’s name is it going? She wheeled after the creature, wings beating furiously.
Morgana, what the fuck are you doing? Percival demanded through their Truebond link.
Following it.
You’re out of your mind! her lover exploded. That thing damn near killed Kel, and none of your attacks have worked on it!
We need to find out where it’s going. It isn’t a dragon -- or not just a dragon. And its magic is far too much like Cheryl Parker’s for my taste.
What good will that do if it kills you?
If she died, the psychic shock would kill Percival. The thought wrung Morgana’s heart like a rag, but she couldn’t let it stop her. Too much was at stake.
She chased the enemy dragon for the next half hour, pushing herself hard while hanging back just enough to avoid its notice. She thought more than once she’d lost the scaly whoreson in the dark. Normally, Morgana would be able to track it by its magic, but she got nothing from the creature at all. Ju
st as she’d sensed no magic from Cheryl, though the mortal had killed that Fomorian general with a lightning bolt.
Is Cheryl the dragon? Merlin’s Cup, I hope not. That would wreck Ulf.
Ahead, the lights of a city glowed against the night sky. The dragon made straight for it.
Oh, this is bad. Unless she was mistaken, that was the city of Charlotte ahead of them. Cheryl lives in Charlotte.
* * *
Furious, Valac scanned his surroundings, but there was no sign of the Errul. He had shifted into the form of a hawk, that he might fly faster between the city’s buildings. In the process, he’d finally lost the armored guardian who had been trailing him since Orlan. Though, of course, that scarcely mattered. All he cared about was the Errul. The taste of her magic lingered in the air, but it faded rapidly as he flew. Still, he opened his beak, drinking it in, parsing it.
His alarm only increased. It wasn’t just an Errul. It was the Errul.
Vengeance.
Impossible! We killed her countless orbits ago! He had to be mistaken. And yet… he knew that magic. He’d barely survived his last battle with her. If Hivemother had not intervened by calling the other warriors…
For a moment he considered fleeing. But how much longer would it take to find suitable prey on another planet? This world was perfect, with its billions of utterly defenseless humans. And there was only one Errul.
Earth and all its hapless prey would belong to the Hive, if he must call all his brother warriors to help slay her. And this time she would stay dead.
Chapter Two
The following night, Charlotte, NC
Cheryl drove home well past midnight, feeling battered after her shift. It wasn’t just working twelve hours. She hadn’t slept worth a damn the night before.
First Adam had called just as she’d gotten home. When she told him about saving Brandon, all but babbling in her excitement, he’d seemed happy for her. Yet there’d been something… off about his voice. She’d been the mother of a war correspondent long enough to know when there was something her kid wasn’t telling her.
Master of Honor (Merlin's Legacy 5) Page 2