by E. A. Copen
Foggy patted Ike on the back. “Ash would’ve never let you bring both of us.”
“It doesn’t matter. Healing magic doesn’t work on me.” I winced and lifted my shirt, revealing the magicite scar running across my stomach.
Foggy’s eyes widened. “Stones, when did that happen?”
“Five years ago. About the same time a rift swallowed Ash.” I lowered my shirt. “And then he came back. I didn’t think it was him at first, but there he was. Except he’s not like he was before, and it’s my fault.”
Ike touched my forehead, frowning. “No fever. She could be delirious from blood loss or shock.”
The dwarf shook his head and pressed the cloth back to my bleeding wound. “I don’t think she’s delirious. Think about it. DEMO doesn’t get interested in people for no reason. We both saw Ash close that rift, and we suspected he might’ve also opened it too. That power, it could be because he’s been exposed to the rift more than anyone. He could’ve gone and come back.”
“Nobody comes back,” Ike insisted. “Everybody knows that.”
“Ash did.” I put my hand over the compress on the wound and winced. “I thought it was a second chance. Maybe the universe was on my side for a change. But I was wrong. Ash is infected with magicite too, and now all those people are dead.”
Ike sighed. “Ember, if that’s true… God. No wonder DEMO wanted us to watch him. We can’t tell them the truth, Foggy. They’ll use him, and not for good either. If you think he’s dangerous now, wait until DEMO gets control of him.”
“We’ll worry about the boulders when we’ve dealt with the mountain,” Foggy said and lifted the bandage. He poked and prodded at my wound, drawing a hiss of pain. “Entry and exit wounds. Lucky there, but you’ve got a right hole in you. We need to stop the bleeding and close it up. Lacking needle and thread, fire’s the best option.”
“What about the magicite infection? It will kill her.”
“I’m right here,” I reminded them, and swallowed dry air. “I’ve stayed alive this long with the antigen. And so has Ash.”
Foggy stood. “I’ll get a small fire going.”
Ike eased me from the golem's arms to the ground and ordered the golem to keep watch. It turned around and stood still as a statue.
“You know, you didn’t have to tell us about the magicite infection, or the truth about Ash. Especially after we kept the truth from you,” Ike said.
I looked up at the sky. A golden band had crept up above the horizon. “I should’ve said something sooner. Then Kenny would be alive and Dex might…” I choked on the words, my throat suddenly too thick to speak. “I’m sorry. This is all because of me. Because I wanted to believe Ash was back, that he was alive, and we could be happy. That was stupid.”
“No, Ember. Wanting to be happy doesn’t make you stupid.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “And neither does seeing the best in people, though maybe you could’ve warned the rest of us a little sooner what we were dealing with.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated.
“So am I.” He patted my shoulder gently. “We could all be better than we were on this hunt.”
Foggy returned with a small pile of sticks. He built up a small fire with dry kindling and an old lighter, while Ike did his best to clean my wound with a canteen of water. Foggy drew a knife, cleaned it with the last of the water and held it in the flame.
“What happens now?” I asked, watching the metal change colors.
Ike sighed again, his shoulders heaving with the effort. “Now we go back to Atlanta. We come up with a story to tell DEMO.”
“And you just leave Ash out there?” I shook my head and regretted it because it left me slightly dizzy. “After everything he’s done, you just let him win?”
“The man can open and close rifts at will, Ember,” Ike said. “Even with our limited power, there’s nothing we can do that would stop him from just opening one under our feet the minute he saw us coming. We’d never be able to get close enough. I’m sorry, but this is going to have to fall to someone else.”
“Besides,” added Foggy, turning the knife over, “we don’t even know where he is. We barely know where we are.”
“But we know where he’s going. And I can get close.” I propped myself up on my elbows and whimpered at the sudden pain.
Ike helped me lay flat again. “You’re injured, and I’d be a terrible person if I let you walk back there, knowing you’re going to your death. If they survived the vampire attack, he’ll still have armed guards loyal to his cause.”
“And the dragon. Don’t forget about the dragon,” Foggy added. He lifted the knife, studied it, and grunted. “Best give her something to bite down on. This’ll be a real kick to the ovaries for you, lass.”
Ike looked around and eventually picked up a stick. He turned it over in his hand, shrugged, and offered it to me.
“Are you two idiots really going to make her put that in her mouth?” said a voice in the darkness.
Ike dropped the stick and rose to his feet, hammer in hand.
Foggy joined him, gripping the red-hot knife. He held the blade out to the darkness. “Show yourself!”
Dex slowly limped out of the darkness, gripping his side. His hat was misshapen, his clothes bloodied and torn, but it was him. I could scarcely believe my own eyes! If I’d been able to get up without bleeding everywhere and falling right back over, I would’ve jumped up and run to hug him.
“Dex!” Ike stammered. “I thought…”
“Ash said…” I still couldn’t finish the thought.
“What? That I was dead? Takes more than a little tumble off a cliff to kill me.” He limped closer to the fire and offered Foggy a toothy grin. “Man, you should see your face! You look like you swallowed a whole boulder! Now give me that before you poke your eye out.” He pried the dagger out of Foggy’s hand and limped over to me.
“Ash threw you off a cliff?” Ike shifted to make room.
“Well, no. He threw my hat off the cliff. Bastard stabbed me in the gut and left me to bleed out. Lucky for me I know how to cauterize a wound, no fancy knife tricks required.” He tossed the knife in the air and caught it before offering it back to Foggy. “Course, I had to go get my hat. Otherwise, I’d have been here sooner. Sorry I’m late.” He tugged on the torn brim of his hat.
“Show off,” Ike muttered.
Dex ignored him and knelt in front of me. He clicked his tongue once and shook his head. “I leave you alone with Ash for a couple hours and come back to find you with some fresh injury. I’m starting to think he’s a little bad for you, Ember.”
“You think?”
“Hmm.” He cracked his knuckles. “Well, I lost my fancy gloves, but there’s plenty of magicite in the air. I think I can manage a little fire spell.”
Ike halted Dex by grabbing his shoulder. “Dex, she’s infected. You hit her with magic, and it’ll spread like crazy.”
Dex’s face fell. “Oh. Since when?”
“Since five years ago. Ash is apparently infected too,” Foggy said.
“What? How?”
I rolled my eyes. “Hello? Bleeding here. Can we please not do this song and dance?”
“Well then, here.” Dex removed his belt, dusted a little dirt from it and offered it to me to bite down on. “You know, somehow, knowing Ash is infected makes a strange amount of sense.”
They cleaned the knife again and heated it back up. This time, the responsibility of cauterizing fell to Dex, since he was the only one with any actual healing experience. That amounted to a first aid course once a year, but it was better than either Foggy or Ike had.
The cauterizing hurt almost as bad as taking a bullet did, but at least it stopped the bleeding.
Dex whistled when I gave him the belt back and held it up. The leather was sporting a brand-new permanent bite mark. “This’ll make for interesting bar chatter,” he said, putting it back on. He stopped halfway through to lift his shirt with a big grin. “Hey, look! We h
ave matching burn scars!”
Foggy smacked him in the back of the head. “Flirt later, elf boy.”
“Half. I’m only half a pompous elf. The good half, too,” Dex muttered and finished putting on his belt.
I sat up. Ike objected, but I wouldn’t have it. Pain or no, I wouldn’t lie on the ground while the rest of them sat around worrying about me. I let him help me up, though.
I took a few shaky breaths, working through the pain. “Okay, now that I’m not bleeding everywhere, we need a plan.”
Foggy crossed his arms firmly over his chest. “We told you the plan, lass. Get out of here and back to safety before Ash decides to hunt us instead of the dragon.”
I shook my head. “If you think running back to Atlanta will somehow save you, then you don’t know Ash. If he thinks you’re a threat, he’ll hunt you down no matter where you go, and probably take out half the city to do it.”
“I’m a dead man walking thanks to that bastard, and so are half the people back at camp,” Dex said, his voice serious for once.
“There likely isn’t anyone back there.” Ike stared blankly into the fire.
“Vampire attack,” I whispered. “Ash ordered his people to kill everyone that might be infected and if I know Ash…”
“Shit.” Dex removed his hat.
“Yeah.”
There was a long silence until Dex clicked his tongue and put his hat back on. “Well, I know this sickness is fatal, but I don’t have to let it kill me. I’d rather go out taking that bastard with me, and I’ve been saving a spell for just such an occasion.” He rose.
I grabbed his arm. “Before you go turning yourself into a walking bomb, Dex, there’s something you should know.”
He straightened his hat without looking at me. “If you’re about to confess your undying love and offer me a night of passion, then I accept.”
“What? No!” I kicked him in the shin. “I was going to tell you why Ash wants the dragon’s heart!”
“Oh.” He plopped back down, winced, and rubbed his side. “Why?”
“Ash is on some insane quest to unite all twelve kingdoms. He believes eating the dragon’s heart will give him some sort of power that will help him achieve a godlike status.”
Ike and Foggy exchanged a look.
Dex made a face. “And I thought I had bad eating habits.”
“Ash also told me there were ancient elvish writings at the Institute that detailed how to make an alchemical healing concoction, one that would heal any ailment. Including yours, Dex.”
His face lit up. “If we got the dragon’s heart instead of Ash, we could take it back to Leseran, maybe convince him to help us.”
Foggy leaned in to whisper to Ike. “Who’s Leseran?”
Ike shrugged.
Dex’s face fell. “But what about you, Ember? If it will cure anything, won’t it cure your magicite infection?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve survived this long.”
“But Ember, that infection is fatal.”
“So is yours, and what you have will kill you a lot faster than this will kill me.” I patted the scar through my shirt. “Who knows? Maybe we can make more than one potion out of it. That’s what I was trying to convince Ash to do instead, to help all the sick people at camp, but he didn’t want to waste it on lesser people.”
“Sick bastard.” Foggy spat into the fire.
“You’re forgetting something important,” Ike pointed out. “To get that heart, we’d have to slay the dragon ourselves, and we’d have to do it before Ash. It might already be too late.”
I shook my head. “Ash’s plan was to wait until mid-day, after the dragon had fed and bedded down. We’re not that far from Black Mountain. With a little help from your golems, and some luck, we might make it before he does.”
Ike frowned and looked around the small circle. I could see the wheels turning in his head, calculating the odds of success. “Maybe…”
“Maybe?” Foggy coughed and stood, gripping his hammer with both hands. “Lad, we’ve seen less favorable odds. Do you remember the reverse centaurs?”
Ike shuddered. “How could I forget? I hate fusion magic.”
“Then why are we standing around here clutching our gems? Let’s go slay us a dragon!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Black Mountain was quiet. There was no sign of Ash or anyone else. Our path up the mountain didn’t give us a prime view of the camp—or whatever might’ve been left of it—but I imagined there wasn’t much left of that either. I had seen firsthand the sort of destruction a vampire could cause. The survivors would pick through the rubble, searching and cataloging their provisions. That would give us an hour head start, maybe two. We’d need every minute we could get.
Our plan was reckless. We all knew it, and yet no one dared voice it. Dex and I were injured; Ike and Foggy hadn’t slept in days. It showed in their sluggish movements, the dark circles under their eyes. Determination and desperation would have to make up the difference.
Without a map of the caverns, we didn’t know what we were walking into. The dragon could be just a few yards in, or sleeping miles deep in the mountain. The one thing we knew was that she wasn’t alone. Her dragonlings were in there with her, and we would have to fight our way through them to get to her.
After a long hike, we found the ledge below the dragon’s cave where Zia, Foggy, and I had been attacked by the dragonlings the night before. The cave entrance was just a few hundred yards above us, straight up a sheer cliff. While the dragonlings and vampires had climbed up and down the space using their sharp claws, the four of us didn’t have that advantage.
I frowned up at the yawning black hole in the mountain's side. “How are we getting up there?”
“You might want to step back.” Ike brandished his hammer.
The rest of us moved away as he approached the side of the mountain. Eyes closed, Ike lifted his hammer and touched two fingers to the hammer. A brilliant blue glyph appeared on the flat surface of the hammer. When he touched those fingers to the stone again, the glyph copied from the hammer to the rock face, bathing us all in electric blue. In one quick downward motion, Ike struck the hammer to the side of the mountain with a loud metallic tink.
The stone rumbled, but bowed to Ike’s will. Cracks formed in the stone all the way to the ledge above us, and then the space exploded in a shower of fine pebbles, revealing a carved stone staircase.
“Now who’s the show off?” Dex grumbled and limped up the stairs.
Foggy patted Ike’s back. “Well done.”
I glanced back the way we’d come. “That was loud. Do you think they heard?”
“Probably,” Ike said. “But if you wanted this to be a clandestine operation, you should’ve said so. You could’ve sent the elf to braid some ropes, maybe.”
“Half elf,” Dex called back. He paused at the top of the stairs. “Though it might’ve been faster considering how long it’s taking you to get up here, old man. Hurry up.”
We trudged up the stairs.
“I won’t be so useful once we get inside the dragon’s lair,” Ike said. “My expertise is rock, and my spells take careful time and consideration. I could craft a few golems before we go in, but we may be walking through narrow spaces. They’re more likely to get stuck than provide any cover if that’s the case.”
I nodded. “You and your hammer will hang back. If all else fails, I’m relying on you to bring the rock down and seal off the cave. Ash can’t get the dragon’s heart, Ike. Even if it means sealing us inside.”
“Buried alive with a dragon. I could think of worse ways to go.” Foggy shook his head.
We reached the top of the stairs and paused.
“If the dragonlings are anything to judge by, that thing probably breathes fire,” I said.
Dex held up his right hand. “Good. I’ve got both fire and ice covered.”
“Do you think you can redirect dragon fire?”
He shrugged.
“Never tried, but fire’s fire, right?”
I hope so, I thought. “You’ll provide cover fire so Foggy and I can get close. Hit it hard, hit it fast. Use ice to freeze its feet in place if you can. The last thing we want is for it to get airborne. And if it spits fire at us, you do what you can to keep it off us.” I turned to Foggy. “Foggy, your job is to get me close.”
“You ever kill a dragon before?” the dwarf asked, shifting his grip on his large hammer.
I shook my head. “But I imagine it’s the same as almost any other big beast. Destroy the brain, or bleed it out, and it’s dead. If it’s anything like the dragonlings, the scales will be thinner on the underbelly.”
“Getting that close means being close to claws and fangs, lass.”
“Can you do it?”
The dwarf nodded. “Aye, I can.”
Dex smirked and flexed his fingers. “I bet Leseran’s never killed a dragon. Imagine his face…” He conjured a small flame between his thumb and first two fingers, holding it up to illuminate the entrance to the cave. “Hey, Ike. You know what the entrance to this cave looks like?”
“Grow up.” Ike shook his head and gave Dex a light shove.
In another life, the two of them could’ve been brothers.
We entered the cave, our footsteps going before us in echoes. Pebbles and larger rocks had been cleared from the entrance, though a few clung to the sides. The cave floor sloped upward at first, smooth as polished marble. Broken stalagmites and stalactites of magicite divided the passage in two. It was just wide enough for a dragon to slip through. Ike’s golems might’ve fit, but not without breaking some of the magicite. They wouldn’t have had the dragon’s grace.
Ike frowned and leaned in to study a thick sparkling vein in the rock. “This is… What is this? I’ve seen nothing like it.”
Dex ran a hand over the sparkling black vein. It responded to his touch, turning viridian green and then a lighter, more yellowish shade. “It’s almost as if the rift has changed the structure of the rock, but rather than infecting it and changing it into magicite, it’s become something new. I can feel the magic coming off it. It feels like standing under the rift.”