“Help,” I said, seriously. “You’ve been following me all along. I think you know as well as I do what’s happening in New York.”
“The Timeless Ones are continuing the war that started in the past, or will start in the future,” Drak Bibliophile said. I wondered at his choice of words, and then remembered how funny time acted when different laws of nature collided. “How do you believe that we can help you further than we already have?”
I ignored the clustering Marines, or the chatter of the reporters as they tried to snap photographs of the massive dragon. “I was thinking about the Mounds and what they really are,” I said. “They’re intrusions from another dimension. The Russians attempted to destroy one and failed because they weren’t really attacking the actual Mound, merely its presence in our world.” I paused. “Does that make sense?”
“More than you suspect,” Drak Bibliophile said.
“It’s rather like the tip of an iceberg pointing into our world,” I continued, pushing on. “What would happen if we were able to attack the iceberg itself?”
“You would destroy the intrusion into your world,” Drak Bibliophile said. There was a long pause. “How do you intend to reach the iceberg, knowing that the Timeless Ones will see you coming, will have seen you coming, and will take whatever precautions they need to take to prevent you from reaching them?”
“You could fly us there,” I said. I remembered some of the odder reports of flying dragons and, now, they all made sense. Dragons could move between dimensions on their own, without Mounds or Faerie magic, or even whatever the Forsaken used. “You could help us reach it, couldn’t you?”
“Of course,” Drak Bibliophile agreed. “Now…why should I assist you when dragon society has debated the issue and decided that we will not intervene further?”
I felt a flicker of frustration, staring up at the dragon. “Because if you don’t, the Forsaken will continue their conquest of this world and the rest of the universe,” I said, struggling to push the concepts into words. “What will happen to you when the world changes so much that it can no longer support dragons?”
There was a long pause. “I will assist you,” Drak Bibliophile said, flatly. There was an oddly toneless note to his voice. It was hard, if I closed my eyes, to remember that I was speaking to a dragon, rather than a human. Only the waves of heat emitting from his body reminded me of what he really was. “You will have to destroy the iceberg yourself.”
I nodded. Aylia was less understanding. “Why?”
“Because the simplest things are very hard and the hardest things are very easy,” Drak Bibliophile said, and refused to be drawn on the subject any further. “Climb onto my neck.”
He flexed and lowered his neck to the point where he was almost pushing it against the ground. I stared. Even so low, it was like trying to climb up the side of a bus. I pushed my hand against one of his scales, feeling the heat pushing at me. I’d ridden in tanks and vehicles I would have considered dreadfully unsafe, but the dragon seemed far more dangerous than any of them. I couldn’t escape the feeling that if I climbed onto the dragon, I would be hurting him, somehow…
“On,” Drak Bibliophile ordered. The world twisted around us and suddenly we found ourselves on top of his neck, just behind the crest on his head. The dragon’s mouth opened in a long smile that seemed, somehow, unpleasant. “Hold on as tight as you like. You cannot hurt me.”
The dragon seemed to pounce into the air. I braced myself, expecting a massive gust of wind, but instead it was calm and peaceful. Washington dropped away below us so rapidly that I found myself concentrating on the green-gold scales instead, not quite daring to look down at the city. A handful of plumes of smoke marked the location of fires, either from riots or from people too stupid to check if their technology was working, after hearing the news about New York. I didn’t laugh. If the Forsaken field continued to expand, they might have the last laugh.
“Look,” Aylia said, slowly. I stared as a fighter jet appeared, keeping pace with us before the dragon left him behind. I could see the pilot gaping at us, pushing his aircraft forward in an attempt to match the dragon’s speed, but it was impossible. His aircraft was merely human, after all, while there was so much more to a dragon than anyone ever saw. “What is he saying?”
“Probably something about playing fair,” I guessed. The plane was now a black speck in the distance. I peered down again and saw the coastline of America spread out like a map, something that we could step across in a heartbeat. Armchair generals would have appreciated it; they looked at the map and yet, didn’t see the roads, or rail lines, or rivers, all that would affect the march of an army towards its goal. The Civil War had been fought out over such a small area, in comparison to the United States, or the entire world.
“So,” Drak Bibliophile said. I could somehow hear him perfectly, but the whole flight had an airy dreamlike feel surrounding it, almost as if it wasn’t quite real. It might not have been. The beating of the dragon’s mighty wings wouldn’t provide enough lift to keep him in the air, although since scientists had ‘proved’ that bumblebees couldn’t fly, it might have meant nothing. “Where do you wish your humble servant to take you?”
I ignored the slight mocking tone and concentrated. “Home, first,” I said. “I need to recharge my batteries.”
“Draw on me,” Drak Bibliophile said, dryly. He sounded as if I should have thought of it for myself. “There is enough magic surrounding me to feed an army of magic-users without making us fall out of the sky.”
“Thank you,” I said, surprised. I hadn’t realised that that was possible, but when I closed my mind and concentrated, I felt the aura of powerful magic surrounding the dragon, just waiting for someone to tap. I should have realised at once, I saw, as I carefully started to drain a little of that power. Dragon skin had so many magical properties that they had to be hugely magical beasts. The danger wasn't that I might accidentally hurt him, but that I might drain too much power and burn myself out. I focused on a tiny stream of power at first, finally drawing enough to make me gasp as new life flooded into my system. “That felt…strange.”
Aylia held out her hand and I took it. “Allow me,” I whispered. Aylia wouldn’t have any experience with power reserves at all. I showed her how to drain a trickle of power and wait, patiently, until she had drained enough power to feel human again. She learned very quickly. She might even have enough training and discipline to become a Guardian already, if she could get the experience. “Are you sure you want to come all the way?”
“Yes,” Aylia said, offended. “Whatever that thing is, I want to get rid of it.”
I followed her gaze. New York lay ahead of us, like a burning jewel, but it didn’t dominate the skyline now. A massive black tower rose out of the city, like a needle pressed firmly into its flesh, and rose upwards to infinity. It looked simple, at first, but the more I looked at it, the more aspects of its reality became apparent to me. It seemed to go off in directions the human mind couldn’t comprehend; right angles, left angles, angles we had no name for…and utterly beyond our comprehension. For the first time, I grasped what some of my grandfather’s explanations had actually meant, and cursed myself under my breath. How could mere humans fight that?
“It isn’t really there,” Drak Bibliophile said, slowly. Even the mighty dragon seemed daunted by the sight. “You’re seeing something that is slowly pushing its way into your reality, growing out of a single moment of pure reality…”
Something clicked in my mind. “Cecelia’s death,” I said. I hadn’t understood until now. It could have been anyone, but no, they’d had to use the baby girl. If she had died in the heart of the Forsaken Mound, it would have been a moment it could use to reshape the laws of reality surrounding it and come back to life. It no longer needed to skulk around the higher planes and interfere with the searchers. It could proceed with its mission without interruption. “That’s why she had to die.”
“Perhaps,” the drago
n said. “So, where now?”
I looked down at the city in the distance and the teeming masses of humanity trying to escape. “Where Cowboy is,” I ordered finally. There were spells I could use to locate him, but they wouldn’t work well against a Guardian. We have protections against finding spells. “Can you locate him?”
The dragon seemed to bank in the air and swooped down towards what looked like an army base. Hundreds of tanks, armoured infantry vehicles and jeeps milled around, while thousands of soldiers and volunteers were organised by military police. The scene looked completely chaotic and I felt a moment of fear, but as we grew I could make out moments of order. The United States Army might not have expected the Forsaken intrusion, but it was responding as well as it could to the new crisis. I could see MLRS trucks being prepared, along with heavy guns and other weapons of war. There were also swords and more primitive weapons, a grim acknowledgment that cold iron could kill supernatural creatures, while shooting them with an M16 would merely annoy them.
“They’re not going to be able to do much, are they?” Aylia said, as the dragon landed on a parade ground that had once held hundreds of soldiers and now could barely hold the dragon. “If the very laws of reality are changing under their feet…”
“You never know,” I said. I looked around and spotted Cowboy’s horse in the midst of a set of command vehicles. Trigger was starting to look astonishingly practical, now that vehicles weren’t working in New York. If I knew Cowboy, he was probably laughing his head off as he raced past the refugees. “Come on.”
We left the dragon behind, leaving him to eye a handful of other horses as if they were lunch, and walked into the command tent. There were dozens of officers running around, shouting at each other, with an air of barely concealed panic. I wasn’t surprised – disasters are always chaotic at first, until clear lines of command are set and a method of response is launched – but several of the army officers looked broken. This wasn't a command post on the front lines, but one assembled at very short notice…and, I realised, commanded by a Major.
“Guardian,” the Major said, with a salute. Technically, Guardians have no military rank – we’re not commissioned officers – but we have priority whenever magic is involved. I’d once barked orders to two generals and they’d accepted them without demur. “Do you need a sit-rep?”
“They’re expanding,” Cowboy said, from his corner. He looked completely different without the hat and the cowboy shirt. He also looked dreadfully tried. “Show him the images?”
The object in Central Park was as enigmatic as ever, but it was now surrounded by a horde of smaller creatures – the scale said that they were about twice the size of a man – that were spreading out throughout the streets. They were just as hard for the cameras to catch as their superior, but there was no doubt about the effects. The handful of people attempting to fight them off seemed to be having absolutely no success at all…and the creatures weren’t even bothering to retaliate. I drew a mental line in my head and swore. They were walking directly towards Virginia. There were rivers, and hills, and even other supernatural creatures in their path and I doubted that they would be slowed down even for a moment.
“What do we do?” The Major asked. “Do we deploy and fight them, or do we get out of their way, or what?”
I smiled. “Use long-range shells and try to disrupt their advance,” I said. Would shells even explode in the field? The only way to find out would be to test it. “Don’t try to fight them directly; just concentrate on keeping the refugees out of their way.”
I nodded to Cowboy and we slipped over to a nearby tent. Brother Andrew sat on a small couch, rubbing his ears as blood dripped down, only to vanish before it struck the floor. His hands, I noticed with a shiver, seemed to be bleeding themselves. I didn’t want to know if his legs were bleeding as well.
“All right,” Cowboy said, angrily. “What the hell is going on?”
“One moment,” I said. I pulled out my cell phone, checked that we were still outside the field, and made a quick phone call. I wanted a very special item prepared for me. “Listen carefully.”
I filled them both in on what had happened to New York. “She’s not dead,” Brother Andrew said when I had finished. His voice was weak, but there was no trace of doubt or despondency in his tone. “I would have felt her die.”
For a moment, I felt a wave of sympathy. The Sensitive felt every death that occurred in New York, every flicker of magic, every moment of domestic violence…his life was a living hell. I don’t know why his superiors didn’t send him to an isolated monastery somewhere up a mountain, miles away from civilisation, but they should have done. Perhaps the Bishop, wherever he was now, had had something to do with it. He didn’t strike me as a man who had much empathy for others.
“But…” I shook my head. It didn’t matter at the moment. “I need you to help us defeat that thing. Are you willing to come with us?”
“It’s too…oppressive in my mind,” Brother Andrew said. His voice was starting to drift. “I can feel it’s great slow thoughts pounding away as it prepares…and it’s cold anticipation of a job well done, and its fear that it has fallen too far from its kind, and the voices it has gathered to itself…”
He stopped suddenly. “It’s strange,” he said. “I don’t think it even recognises our existence, yet you say it spoke to you. I can’t help you here, Guardian. I was helpless in the chapel until the other Guardian arrived to take me out of the city.”
“And I left the city in the hands of scum to save you,” Cowboy said, harshly. Whatever else could be said about him, he wasn't a quitter. Abandoning the streets of New York to the enemy, and the rioters, hadn’t sat well with him. “Glass, some of the sorcerers from the Magical Mile attempted to fight it, but their spells just vanished into the darkness. Some tried to walk in and just vanished. How can we fight that thing?”
“Through knowledge,” I said, slowly. I had wondered about something, but Brother Andrew had just confirmed it, perhaps. What if Cecelia wasn't dead after all? I’d seen her swallowed up by the darkness, but what did that prove, really? I’d been in the darkness, hadn’t I? “I need to take Brother Andrew with us, if he’s willing to come…”
“The darkness will destroy us all if we allow it,” Brother Andrew said. He sounded stronger now, more determined. “I can feel it ripping and tearing away at God’s creation, unaware of what it’s actually doing, or maybe uncaring. It has lived so long for war that war is all it knows. We have to stop it.”
Cowboy looked up. “And can you see a way to stop it?”
“I can,” I said. I wasn't going to elaborate. If the Forsaken had absorbed Faerie traits, it might hear if we spoke about it…and that would be disastrous. It was already moving ahead with its plan and wouldn’t allow us to interfere. Our only hope was to catch it by surprise. “Cowboy, will you come with us too?”
I don’t know why I made that offer, or why I was relieved when Cowboy shook his head. “No,” he said, flatly. “My duty is here. Major Mulligan is the only senior officer who has arrived so far and he’s a logistics punk. There was a conference in New York for the top brass and…want to bet that that was a coincidence?”
I shivered. Was the Forsaken Fragment somehow rearranging events to suit it already, or was I merely being paranoid? I didn’t even want to think about the possible implications. How could one fight an enemy like that?
“Come on,” I said, to Brother Andrew. “Let’s go.”
Drak Bibliophile was waiting for us when we emerged, surrounded by a handful of curious people, mainly frightened refugee children. None of them had ever seen a dragon before and I saw them wondering at the creature, embracing some of the wonder in the new world. I hoped that they would survive the coming weeks and months, but I feared that they would not.
“Sometimes the dragon wins,” Drak Bibliophile said, when Brother Andrew asked him why he was there. The dragon’s wings beat once and we were in the air. “That’s why
there are still dragons around.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
What does it profit a man if he should gain the whole world, yet lose his soul?
-The Bible
“What is…that?”
I shook my head at Aylia. The object in question was a small silver box, marred only by the removal of one item and its replacement with a jury-rigged control pad. The technician had sworn blind that it should work, but I wasn't so sure. If it failed at the wrong time, or detonated earlier, we would be in serious trouble…or dead.
“Never mind,” I said, tapping my ears significantly. I suspected that the Forsaken Fragment wouldn’t care if it overheard us, but I wasn't going to take chances with something as powerful and dangerous as it had already proven itself to be. Aylia got the message and shut up. “Just let me sign for this…ah, thing and then we can be off.”
The guards at the small base were unhappy, to say the least, but my authorisation and a quick phone call to Washington confirmed my permission to take the object with me. The dragon had aroused more excitement than anyone was comfortable with, but the base was far away from more populated areas and hopefully its visit had passed unnoticed. If not…well, it wouldn’t be the first time a top secret military base had been discovered by the media. I doubted that it would matter. If the Forsaken Fragment continued to expand, we were dead anyway in the long run.
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