Breaking Ties

by Vaughn R. Demont

  “I’m deeply surprised the idea didn’t occur to you sooner. Then again, intelligence strangely has never been a requirement for the Keth. At least not anymore, it would seem.” He looks toward the windows. “It is truly a shame, James. Your struggles with khrazet, your reluctance to be the Ra’keth the world needs, your weak focus, reliance on fragile alliances and the ignorance of the mythics, connections to the dreambloods and…” he visibly shudders, “…Coyotes.”

  “Well, right now, I’m all you’ve got.”

  Nearly ten seconds pass before he answers, a time he spends taking deep, focused breaths. “Respectfully, I decline your response.”

  A flash of light later, the Dragon King has taken his place, his voice low and booming. “I have decided that you are not worthy of the throne, and your blunder has afforded me the opportunity to correct this. As I doubt you will find the new Ra’keth before I do, and your obstinacy has left me no choice, I will assume the throne once more.”

  Oh shit.

  “You can’t do that!”

  But he’s already vanished through the wall, and I’m left here alone.

  “Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity-fuck.” I take a deep breath. “Okay, that son of a bitch has got to die.”

  “My liege?”

  When I turn to face the voice, Coda is standing there looking rather agitated. Ozzie is behind her.

  “This…person wishes an audience. Shall I kill him?”

  “No!” I wave her off. “Let him go, Coda. Come over here, Ozzie.” Ozzie closes the distance between us, and I hug him a couple seconds. “Okay, however you got here? I need you to go back with me.”

  The Dwarf puts his hands on my shoulders. “James, you need to listen to me.”

  “Ozzie, we have to go now. That guy’s going to kill someone who’ll have no idea why.”

  “James. I’m here to give you something. If I don’t give it to you, and you don’t accept it, there’s a good chance that girl will kill me where I stand.” He takes a step back, kneels, unclips a short rod from his belt and bows his head as he offers it up to me. “The House of Bremenschmeid offers this unworthy trinket in the hope it pleases the Lightning Rod.”

  I take the rod, examining it, noticing all the Sigil engravings, the delicately crafted head of the staff, the little nub of a button. I press it, and the rod extends out almost instantly to six feet in length with an audible shick!

  “Ozzie, if I didn’t have to go kill somebody right now I would take the appropriate time to tell you how cool this thing is and…”

  It’s odd how clear my head is while I’m holding this thing. I can feel, actually feel my will coursing through the metal, like it’s an extension of my body. The Sigil glows gently in pulses, in rhythm with my heartbeat.

  “And…this is mine.”

  Ozzie nods. “Well, yeah, I made it for you.” He takes a step back as electricity starts to race along the length of the staff. “James? Are you all right? Your eyes are…black.”

  I gaze at the staff, the runes, etchings and Sigil glowing a bright blue. The words flow so easily, my memory catching them, tongue shaping them with ease. The air reverberates, the sound echoing like thunder. “I name you Sigil, for you are mine.”

  Even Coda steps back at the spectacle, which ends almost as soon as it began. The staff snaps back to rod-size with a thought, and I hold it in my hands, dark veins along my skin receding as the power fades. Ozzie takes a breath, settling himself. “James? You okay?”

  I keep looking at the rod, turning it over and over again in my hands. “I… Yeah. I think I’ve got a new focus.” My previous one is currently in Tartarus where I left it. In the Usurper’s chest. When I look up at the Dwarf, his hands are wringing slowly. “Relax, Ozzie. I love it, thank you.”

  He nods.

  “So, I’m going to have to turn into a dragon so I can go after the Ra’saar. You want a ride?” I give a warning glance to Coda, just in case she has an issue with me hunting down her boss. “This going to be a problem, Coda?”

  “I am your servant, my liege.” It’s not even said through gritted teeth.

  Ozzie, on the other hand, still looks a bit flustered.

  “Oz, c’mon, it’ll be okay.”

  He nods slowly. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m uh…I’m okay.” He meets my eyes for a second then averts his gaze. “Let’s, um, let’s get out of here.”

  I have to figure that watching a sorcerer claim an early Christmas gift as his magical focus can be a little rattling, so I let it go and take the Snow Dragon’s form. I lower my head, hoping he’ll get the idea, as my voice is remarkably loud in this form. A minute later I feel a weight on my neck and hear, “I’m on.”

  My left foreleg feels a bit off, and when I lift it for inspection, I find it encased in a Fae-steel vambrace covered in Sigil. My focus auto-adapts to my form—excellent. I’ll have to show the dreamblood, er, Ozzie, my appreciation later.

  I summon my will, the vambrace sparking as I breathe a blast of cold air at the wall, thick wintry clouds obscuring the barrier. With a flap of my wings, I leap through the clouds, the wall not even there anymore, only a tingle as I cross the border between realms to return home.

  I may not know where the new Ra’keth is, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to follow after Tyras, wherever he’s going. After that? I stop him, somehow, and figure out what to do with the new Sorcerer King.

  And if I’m lucky, I can get out of this without any more blood on my hands.

  Somehow.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Spencer

  December 20, 7:41 pm

  “So what happens now?”

  We’ve been on the parkway, driving around the City, almost into our second lap. Mostly we haven’t been talking. I should be concerned that we’re in a stolen car because, whether the owner’s dead or not, it’s still stolen. TV, at least the grittier TV, would have us taking the car to a chop shop and finding something less conspicuous or buying something used, no questions asked. But we’ve just been driving, the satellite radio tuned to a comedy station. I wish I could say we’re bonding over the risqué material, but it’s mostly filling dead air for us.

  “I don’t know, son.” He shrugs. “Maybe I’ll drive back to New Mexico, lay low, see the few members of my family I haven’t pissed off yet. Maybe Dad will make me spin out somewhere in Texas for getting us involved with the Fae.” He glances at me, then points at the backseat. “Lifted that off some Dwarf. It’s yours, isn’t it?”

  I look into the back, see a familiar bag, strain to reach for it and pick it up. The shotgun’s still inside, the diamonds still loaded. I figure that Dad must’ve not checked it. “Yeah.”

  “Thought you didn’t kill people.”

  “I don’t, Dad.”

  “So you’re carrying a double-barreled sawed-off because…”

  I grin in spite of myself, looking down at the inscribed metal. “It shoots lightning bolts. Or, well, it would if it had any juice left.”

  He deadpans, “You’re telling me you have a shotgun that shoots lightning bolts.”

  “Yep. Even getting shirts made.” I put it back in the bag. “I think James made it for me. I should probably give it a name or…” Dad’s now glaring at me. “What?”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because he’s my friend. And he wasn’t expecting to give it to me for a while, but he’s in trouble and I need to help him, okay?”

  He sighs, shaking his head at the road. “But why? Unless you’re really going the extra mile to pull an Emerald, I can’t understand why you’re still chasing after that guy. He’s a sorcerer, son. Us and them don’t mix. Just look at your grandfather, if you don’t take my word for it. There’s always a price for running around with them. Always. And he’s already got a Dwarf willing to lay down his life out of romantically induced insanity. I doubt he
needs one more.”

  “Dad, I love him.” Any other time I’d be proud of myself that it’s getting easier to say that out loud.

  “No. You don’t. Coyotes don’t love, okay? We can try our damnedest, even trick ourselves into believing it for a while, but we don’t love. We charm, we tease, we trick, we get them better than anyone. But that’s not because we love them, it’s because we’re the tricksters and they’re the marks.” He sighs, closing his eyes a second. “No matter how much we don’t want them to be.”

  “So, what, you don’t love me?”

  That breaks him out of it. “You’re my son. Take that how you will. I’ve got three children, and you’re the only one I can stand, how’s that? Hank’s an idiot and Thornton…” He shakes his head, turns down the radio. “He’s too much like me.”

  “And I’m not?”

  “You think like…like they do. Foxes, Dogs, Spiders, you watch what they do, how they work, and you make your own tricks from it. You stole a Fox’s tail, a Dog’s ear, and danced on a Spider’s web without getting caught.”

  “Danced on a what?”

  “A Spider’s web. You’re actually friends with one of them. I didn’t even know they did that.”

  “What, Bank? He’s a cool guy and he thinks it’s easier to have friends than enemies, that’s all.”

  “Well, whatever. The point is, maybe I don’t love you, I don’t know, but I know I’m proud of you.”

  It takes me a while to come up with an answer for that. A lot’s happened in the past few hours. It’s not like all those memories of him just get canceled out, life’s never that easy. Mostly it’s just feeling the words in your head and trying to push them out your mouth, knowing that whether you say anything or keep quiet will matter.

  “Thanks, Dad.” And I mean it, not through some tiny voice in the back of my mind, a vestige of me as a kid that only wants his approval, but me, all of me. “So uh…what’s the difference between a chorus line of blondes and a magician?”

  He blinks, and we drive on for nearly a minute. “Don’t think I’ve heard that one.” He gets onto an off-ramp leading down into the Benedict. “You hungry? I know a place outside town.” Dad exhales, working through the joke, starting a few times with likely answers and then stopping with a quick, “No. Maybe…”

  “You want the answer?”

  Dad glowers mildly. “No. I can get it. There’s nothing on the line for this, right?”

  “Nope, maybe if you can’t get it then you buy the meal since I’m pretty broke.”

  He tsks at that. “Free food is an easy scam, son.”

  “Dine-and-dash isn’t a scam, Dad, and I’ve worked with waitresses. It comes out of their pay, so just cough up the ten bucks for a change? And you’d better tip.” He grumps, but I catch a nod. “You give up yet?”

  “I can get it.” That’s practically growled. Ten awkward minutes go by before we pass the city limits. Ever sat for ten minutes in silence? Try it, see just how long it really is.

  “There’s really nothing on the line, Dad. Think of it as picking up a new joke, okay?”

  “I’m the one who taught you all of those.”

  “I think we’ve been over how inappropriate that parental decision was.”

  He slaps the steering wheel in frustration and grips it tightly. “Fine. How is a chorus line of blondes different from a magician?”

  “A magician has a cunning array of stunts.”

  “A cunning array…”

  I nod. “Of stunts. Just…think about it.”

  I won’t say the actual punchline. Fate is three women who would gladly smite my ass for saying that out loud.

  The seat belt digs into my chest and waist as the brakes are slammed, rubber screeching on the asphalt as the car swerves, starts to fishtail, but he regains control soon enough for the car to stop, the bumper, well, bumping a giant leg. A giant scaly leg. A giant golden scaly leg.

  The dragon isn’t looking at us, thankfully, but instead at a roadside diner full of people that likely just saw a high-end luxury car ever-so-gently tap a jackknifed semi.

  But I’ve managed to get a dragon’s attention for the second time in as many days, and not in the way I’d like.

  “Okay, Fate, I’m deeply sorry about the stereotype-based joke with the unspoken gender-offensive punch line.” I look to Dad. “We’ve got to get that thing away from the diner, people are in there.”

  “Coyotes aren’t the hero type, son.”

  “Well, dragons are gullible.” I unbuckle the seat belt, open the door to get out, taking the shotgun out of the bag to carry it with me. “Let’s trick him into thinking we are.”

  “Granny probably would love to bag a dragon.” I hear him exhale forcefully. “Fuck it.” He undoes his seat belt. “But you’re scamming lunch afterward.”

  Jesus, that thing’s big, and let’s face it, we’re just a couple Coyotes, combat’s not really our style. This is the kind of job I’d want Shiko on speed-dial for, considering Kitsune have the sort of skill in swordplay you normally only see in Japanese animation.

  “Dad? Please tell me you’ve got a deck of cards on you.”

  He rolls his eyes and tosses one across the hood. “I doubt he’ll go for Follow the Lady, son.”

  I crack it open while the dragon sniffs loudly at the diner’s windows. Everyone inside appears to have backed away from the windows, a few people on cell phones. Chances are we’ll have an official audience in however long it takes the cops to get out here. It’s a new deck, so the card I need is right on top.

  I raise my boomstick, level it on the giant broadside-of-a-barn-sized ass of the beast, and lay the card on the barrels. Just giving the trick a bit of direction, is all.

  “Yo! Thunder-thighs!”

  The dragon doesn’t hear me or doesn’t care. I pull the trigger as I murmur, “Kaze.”

  Twin bolts leap from the barrels, the Ace of Spades burns to a crisp as the lightning forks straight into the scaly posterior of the dragon.

  Suffice it to say, I have his full and undivided attention. I tic my head at the field behind us. “Let’s go.”

  And I am especially proud that I don’t pee myself right then. Seriously, you have no idea.

  Dad comes around to my side as we both back away from the dragon that’s turning to face us. “Went with the Bruce Campbell, I see.”

  I hurry up my retreat. “Well, you know, you gotta respect the classics.”

  Dad matches my pace, goes a little faster, as the dragon’s turned around and starting to advance. “Trying to set up a ‘Good, bad, I’m the guy with the gun’ thing?”

  I grumble as I speed up even more and notice the dragon’s moving quicker than we are. “Well I can’t now since you’ve said it.”

  “What do you expect? I’m not a Bard. I just took you to see those movies.” We’re pretty much jogging backwards now.

  “Yeah, thanks for contributing to my fear of zombies.”

  “Deadites, not zombies. And don’t mention it, wasn’t like I could show you a real one. Did you know I originally wanted to base my Justin Crain cloak on Bruce Campbell?” He grits his teeth, as the dragon’s only thirty feet away now. “I’m thinking you shoot him in the face with that thing, and then we run like hell. Your thoughts?”

  I cock back the hammers, the King of Spades already in my hand.

  “Groovy.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  James

  December 20, 7:42 pm

  “James, I know you’ve got to concentrate on flying, but…”

  He’s only half-right, or maybe closer to forty percent. My attention’s pretty split right now. Obviously keeping aloft is an issue, considering I fly “like a dropped egg” and a race isn’t really practice. It’s hard enough trying to track someone by scent when you’ve never had to do it
before.

  The rest of my attention is focused on squelching the instincts of Slartibartfast. I know he could do this a hell of a lot better than me, but I might end up forgetting who I am in the first place. Largely I’ve been keeping my mind occupied with things that a dragon would likely have no interest in, like song lyrics that aren’t from AC/DC and which edition of Dungeons & Dragons has the best spell mechanics for the sorcerer class.

  The D&D topic was done in five seconds, as I’m a bit biased, and apparently both dragons and humans don’t like giving thought to counterarguments.

  So I’ve been singing.

  I might’ve covered before in my observations of Dave that dragons can only aspire to one day be merely tone-deaf.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, James, but you’ve actually ruined Fleetwood Mac for me.”

  Ozzie’s been conversant, I asked him to be because a part of me isn’t all that wild about having a Dwarf sitting on my neck. I’m sure Spencer would have a witty remark about that. I can always count on him to say something risqué, and for advice too; he’s pretty trustworthy when you think about—

  “Ozzie, I’m starting to slip again.” What I’m slipping from I’m not really aware. We’re chasing after the Dragon King because…reasons, I guess?

  “You’re James Black, the Lightning Rod, not a dragon, and all Coyotes are liars and thieves. Dirty, dirty thieves.”

  Oh, right.

  “Thanks.” The booming takes some getting used to. Dragons don’t really do indoor voices. If I’m slipping this easily, I don’t want to think about what state Tyras’s mind is in. No matter which way it’s leaning, it won’t go well for the new Ra’keth.

  Damn, would it be nice if I could just turn back to human and let some other schmuck take the job for a while. If I ever bring the world to an end again, I’m definitely putting in a decree about sabbaticals from sorcery, but currently I’m a bit screwed out of that idea by my own decree. Have to appreciate irony.

  “Are you okay up there?”

  “Freezin’ my ass off! You’re mighty cold.” Being a Snow Dragon, or at least in the form of one, will probably do that. “I’m certain the name of magic is still Sigil, so at least the new king isn’t aware of his or her crown yet. Any idea where the Golden went?”