Black City Dragon

by Richard A. Knaak

I could’ve just tried to sink the ship by dropping on it, but I knew that wouldn’t be enough to stop Galerius. I had to strip him of the other card. I just didn’t know how yet.

  As I alighted on the deck, I transformed. Once more myself, I thrust the card in a secure pocket and headed down.

  I no longer had Her Lady’s gift to rely on. That was fine. I’d gone through my mortal life without it.

  My gut churned again, but either our combined resistance lessened its effect or I’d simply gotten used to it. I hoped it’d stay inconsequential long enough for me to deal with Galerius.

  The ship continued to rock violently. Water poured over the deck.

  I heard Fetch howl. I quickly leaped down the hole I’d created when I’d transformed.

  A splash accompanied my landing. The interior of the resurrected wreck was half filled with water, the only dry spot around where Gale-rius in all his recreated glory stood. Me, I had water up to my waist. Galerius looked exactly as he had when he’d been the rising power in the empire.

  A growl rose from the water to my side. I whirled, only to find a soggy Fetch pushing his head above water.

  His mouth still spitting out the lake, he had to use his eyes and taut ears to warn me I’d definitely spun in the wrong direction.

  I brought my arm around as something tall, dripping wet, and looking like a nightmarish mix of hound and reptile rose out of the water and tried to take a bite out of me. My reaction was an upward blow to its jaw, slamming its toothy mouth shut.

  The ragged bits of clothes it wore verified what I’d thought had happened. Galerius had made over his two guards into something more useful to him, not to mention as symbols of his ego. He’d created Dacian Dracos, dragon wolves. I could see where Fetch had had some trouble.

  I wasn’t sure if he’d dispatched the other or if I’d just been lucky enough to interrupt the battle at the right moment. All I knew was that I had no time to waste on this thing. I reached into me for the dragon and brought a little of him into play by summoning his claws. A slash across the chest made the creature quickly pull back.

  Fetch let out a muffled sound. I glanced his way just long enough to see that he’d retrieved Her Lady’s gift from wherever Galerius had decided to toss it.

  I hadn’t planned on the sword for anything, but I grabbed it with a once-again human hand, hefted it, and then drove it into the monstrosity. Unlike Galerius, his transformed guard lacked any magical protections. The creature’s corpse fell backward, finally disappearing into the rising water.

  I continued toward Galerius. The other card pulsated on his chest. He might’ve finally rid himself of his hideous deformation, but the card manipulated him far more than he believed. Of course, none of that mattered if he succeeded with everything else.

  I adjusted my grip on the sword . . . then put it back into its pocket world. Her Lady’s gift couldn’t help me here. I could think of only one thing to do, and it’d mean getting really, really close.

  Claryce and the dragon remained with me even as I approached. It should’ve been Cleolinda’s incarnation present, she after all being the one who’d replaced me as slayer of the Gate’s guardian. The fact that she was Claryce was entirely the dragon’s doing. In this bubble of reality fashioned by Galerius, the dragon had been able to manipulate several factors of reality himself. He had managed to salvage Claryce from the shifting histories, I could only assume because he knew that her particular presence would strengthen me in a way no other could.

  I’d underestimated his understanding of humans.

  Nick . . .

  Just hearing her helped push me to Galerius. He gave me a contemptuous look, rightly wondering what I thought I could possibly do. No weapon could separate him from the card and with the card he had secured control over the various forces both radiating from and feeding the Gate.

  Which is why, when I reached into my pocket to draw what he supposed was the sword, he didn’t even flinch. That was fine. I needed every little advantage I had.

  I pulled out the card and held it before me. I knew the affinity the cards supposedly had for one another. Sure enough, I met with no resistance.

  The next second, I had my card above the other one. Aware of the durability of the deck, I dug into Galerius’s flesh right at the upper edge of his card.

  His skin tore . . . and the other card came loose.

  Galerius shrieked. Once, I’d have savored his scream, but all I could think about was trying to stop him so that I could hopefully return things to a reality where Claryce was safe. I didn’t give a damn about what ultimately happened to me. I just wanted Claryce back in a stable world.

  Galerius naturally resisted. He grabbed my wrists and tried to pull my hands away. In fact, he started to succeed. I didn’t bother to ask for any more help from Claryce or the dragon. They were already providing everything they could under the circumstances.

  And yet . . . without warning, I felt as if other hands also lent their strength. I had an image of a face overlapping another face overlapping a third. Three identical faces belonging not to siblings but the same man.

  The Triple Man.

  If there was any chance I’d been imagining things, that ended when Galerius stared at me . . . and beyond me.

  The second card tore free.

  A torrent of energy erupted from Galerius’s ruined torso. As I pulled back, his face and body twisted and distorted. Sixteen hundred years of disease wracked him. He continued shrieking even as he grabbed for the bloody card.

  The Frank O’Connor listed. The storm that’d been held in check now ran unhindered over the wreck.

  Galerius saw none of this. Instead, he planted his gnarled hands over the gaping wound and seemed to be trying fruitlessly to stem the tide.

  Finally, he glared at me with more venom than I’d seen in anyone I’d ever encountered. “This isn’t—the end between us!” Galerius rasped. “Not—by far!”

  And then, with an odd sigh, his head collapsed in on itself. Sixteen hundred years caught up with him. Galerius became a sack of rapidly deteriorating skin and bones that finally spilled into the rising water.

  At that moment, Fetch shouted, “Master Nicholas! This one’s alive!”

  I looked to see him by Quiet. I’d not known of any of Lon’s hosts to survive possession, but the turbulent actions of the cards had changed a lot of things. “Keep with him!”

  I stuck the card from Holy Name in my pocket but kept the other in my grip. I’d need it to try to finish righting matters. I couldn’t meticulously recreate what’d once been, but I hoped I’d get close.

  Summoning the dragon’s body, I moved over and snatched up Fetch and Quiet even as a huge wave tried to drown them. The ship let out another groan as it started to slip beneath the waves.

  Flapping as hard as I could, I took us aloft. A glance down verified that the Frank O’Connor was returning to a watery grave.

  The increasing strength of the storm told me I was fast losing my chance to make use of the energies of the Gate to return as much as possible to the way it had been. I had to work now.

  Concentrating on the card, I began thinking of things as they had been. I also silently cursed whoever had actually created the blasted Clothos Deck. Bad enough I’d had to deal with one card; I couldn’t risk storing two in the cathedral.

  A sharp pain in my back nearly made me drop Fetch, Quiet, and the card. A second agonizing pain left me fighting to keep aloft. Finally reminded that I still wore the dragon’s form, I craned my neck around to see the cause.

  Head still battered, but the rest of him pretty much back together, the golem stabbed relentlessly at my back with the tooth blade. Blood already dripped from the wounds.

  I didn’t know if somehow all or part of Galerius’s consciousness had managed to escape to the golem and recreate it, or whether the thing had some sort of primitive mind of its own. I only knew that it was causing me real harm. I tried shaking it off, but to no avail. I swiped with my tail
, but the golem evaded it, then stabbed me again.

  And of course, things got worse.

  I heard the rush of water and the gurgling even over the storm. The tentacles shot up a breath later. I doubted that the kraken was still under anyone’s control. At this point, I was pretty sure it just wanted to kill the thing that’d hurt it.

  Me.

  This time, though, it was smarter. It kept its beak just below the surface as an added protection against the flames. All its tentacles reached up to snare me. It wanted me bad.

  I was ready to give it as much fire as I could. Then I thought about how I was now thinking like a dragon instead of a man. I watched for which tentacles were nearest to reaching me and spun away from them at the last moment.

  One missed, but the other one grazed my back, just as I’d calculated.

  Off went the golem—and maybe the last of Galerius, in my mind—and the tooth, both plummeting into the wide open beak. The beak started to reflexively close even as the tentacles continued their pursuit of me.

  That was my chance. I raised the card high—and a searing pain in my chest made me pause. As that happened, the card flared a bright gold.

  I didn’t know what new trick the Clothos Deck was trying to pull, so I threw the card before anything worse could happen. Still blazing gold, it dropped toward the kraken’s beak, which had just begun to open again.

  The card’s glow magnified as it neared the beak.

  The area surrounding the kraken rippled. What seemed a vast dark hole opened up underneath the beast.

  Even as the card performed my last command, the kraken swallowed it.

  The hole then swallowed the kraken, tentacles and all.

  And then both were swallowed by the Clothos card’s power and ceased to be a part of our reality.

  Exhaustion finally got the best of me. Still holding Fetch and Quiet, I spiraled to the choppy waters. A part of me thought that at least the storm finally appeared to be fading, but another part that sounded an awful lot like the dragon asked how much that would matter once we drowned.

  Just before we hit, I felt myself change. I found no consolation in discovering I was about to die as a man. I only hoped that somehow I’d done something to safely bring back Claryce to this reality.

  CHAPTER 28

  I don’t know how long I had been in the water when I heard the motorboat. Not long, I supposed, since otherwise I wouldn’t have heard it. I’d have been dead. The last time I’d been in the lake, the dragon’s power had kept me alive despite me being deep underwater, but I couldn’t even feel his presence. For all I knew, he’d been ripped apart by all those forces that he’d struggled to hold together.

  A babble of voices filled my ears once the motor quieted. I heard a cultured voice I should’ve recognized give commands.

  “Make certain you have them all, including the hound. That’s four, yes?”

  “I will take care of her,” a young female voice murmured. “See to—”

  She was interrupted by shouts and an oath in another tongue from the male. Immediately after, he shouted, “He is not yours today, Feir’hr Sein! I was told that! In his voice I reveal your name! Lon! In his voice I command you to go, Lon! Go!”

  I felt a discomforting wind, but only briefly.

  “Well. That worked. He actually did give that thing a true name! It must obey him!”

  “And you through that?” the woman asked skeptically.

  “I am amazed as you it worked. Mind you, he looked out of sorts.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “Because he didn’t kill me at first sight. I would be at the top of her list.” There was a moment of silence, then, “We’ll have to trust that this is all of them. The call said four and here are four. We head back, but to the northern docks. The police may still be rounding up his men.”

  I tried to keep listening, but it became a strain to stay awake. Still, I managed to keep conscious just long enough to hear something that gave me hope.

  A single word. From a different female voice.

  “Nick?”

  I had a brief moment of wakefulness after that. I was in a room I didn’t recognize, a lamp on a table illuminating it for me. A very nice room.

  I wasn’t alone. Hovering over me was Kravayik. He looked as if he had just finished praying. When he noticed me looking at him, he nodded.

  “I came as soon as I was informed,” he said quietly. One hand held out my coat to me. “If you could . . . I know you must have it here.”

  He didn’t have to tell me what he wanted. My hand shook a little, but I reached inside the coat. As I did, I felt the sword stir. It had evidently recovered from what had happened to it on the ship. Pushing that revelation aside, I pulled the Clothos card from the magical space.

  Only, it wasn’t the same one. It was the deuce.

  Kravayik and I shared a look. I recalled the brief burning sensation. I also remembered how it seemed the Triple Man had earlier reached out to help rip this very card from Galerius. I had a suspicion that the Triple Man had wanted to make certain that no one would ever take his—their—precious card away ever again.

  “We will discuss this when you are well,” Kravayik remarked as he put away the new card. “Rest now. I will pray for you, and the others, of course.”

  I nodded . . . and then nodded off.

  When I awoke again, it was to no surprise to discover that the place we were in was actually another suite owned by Ladykiller Leighton. This time, it was a pretty nice setup in some hotel in downtown Chicago near the Loop. I’d generally not gotten to live so nice no matter what the century.

  There were no guards visible, but I was certain Laertes had a few “working” at the hotel. The suite had two bedrooms, each as large as the safe house apartment, I thought, and an even vaster living space in between. Laertes wasn’t just doing this out of benevolence, though. I was certain that somewhere along the way, he’d ask for something in return. At that moment, I didn’t care. All I knew was that Claryce was here. Claryce and Fetch.

  And Quiet, too, at least for a moment. He had no memory of Lon’s possession—definitely a good thing—but was obviously a little resentful that he hadn’t been able to take part as he would’ve seen fit. He also wasn’t all that happy that his brother hadn’t been aboard the ghost ship, but he appeared to be relieved at the same time. Considering all that’d taken place there, that made a lot of good sense.

  He’d taken his leave after thanking Claryce and checking in on me. He wasn’t done with his searching—I had a feeling he was looking for a lot more than just his brother—and was more than eager to move on. With Quiet’s acceptance of his experience with Feirie, Laertes had offered him a job in his organization, but Quiet had turned him down. He didn’t strike me as someone comfortable anywhere but on his own.

  It’d of course been Laertes I’d heard on the boat, the same boat Michael had left behind. That’d been no coincidence. Laertes had received a call from an informant who’d alerted him to our being out in the lake. The informant had given him very precise information I knew only could’ve come from Michael. I thanked Laertes for following through and silently cursed Michael in general.

  Louise Crying Wolf came with him to check on us. When she’d caught wind of what Laertes had learned from the informant, she’d insisted on coming along. It’d been her sharp eye that’d first spotted us.

  “It was a little tight getting to you,” Laertes commented as he sipped a cup of the coffee one of his men had brought to my bedroom. “That detective, Cortez, had a horde of men scouring over the area. They’d gathered quite a few servants of Galerius, I later heard. The detective’s surely in line for a promotion from the catch.”

  “I doubt it,” I returned. “Cortez is on nobody’s promotion list.”

  The elf’s brow arched. “He that bad?”

  “No. He’s that good.”

  “Ah.” Laertes took another sip. “You are welcome to stay here as long as you l
ike. I’ve ordered food available for you, Miss Claryce, and Fetch. The hotel doesn’t normally welcome pets, but they make exceptions for penthouse suite occupants, especially those who have perpetual reservations like Mr. Lawrence Faust.”

  “So, am I supposed to be Mr. Faust?”

  “No, just a dear friend. I trust we are friends, Nick Medea.”

  I took a sip of coffee. It was good. Not like the stuff I usually drank, but good. “I’ve no complaints about you.”

  “That’ll do for now, I suppose.” He hesitated, then added, “I would really be interested in finding out what happened out there sometime. I sensed . . . something disturbing. Very disturbing.”

  “Maybe sometime.”

  “Hmm.” Laertes nodded. Setting his cup down on an elegant stand, the elf gestured to Louise Crying Wolf. “It is time to leave them alone.”

  She bowed her head to me. “Saint George.”

  I wanted to remind her not to call me that, but decided better of it for now.

  Laertes paused at the door. “Oh. That cross you were clutching when we found you? It’s on the nightstand next to you. I couldn’t touch it, but she could, so we made sure to bring it with us. I gather it is something of value?”

  I couldn’t remember pulling out the cross while I was in the water. Of course not. Nothing involving Michael was ever straightforward. “Yeah. It is. Thanks.”

  “Not at all.”

  The moment they were gone, I had two more visitors. While I certainly was pleased about seeing Fetch fit, I hardly paid any attention to him now that Claryce was here.

  She came over and kissed me. Fetch kindly decided to focus on lapping out the rest of Laertes’s coffee while we finished.

  “I thought—” she began. “Nick. Did everything I imagined happening actually happen?”

  “Probably more. What matters is we’re all here. Try not to think about it. It’ll only give you nightmares.”

  “But . . . he’s gone, right? Galerius?”

  “Like he never existed.” I looked deep into her eyes. “What about . . . the past?”