Dragon Coast

by Greg Van Eekhout

  “One of them is,” Sam said as the dragon lost altitude. It reached out with a talon, tearing loose tons of rock, and kept sinking. The floor pitched, and Sam and Annabel grabbed on to the pilot’s chair for balance.

  “I think your friends might actually manage to put the dragon to sleep. What do you think they have planned for us next? You think they can kill us?”

  The dragon’s wings stopped beating. It fell, crashing against the mountainside. Boulders shattered into shrapnel. The dragon dragged massive parcels of rock and dirt in its wake as it slid down the slope to a precarious rest on a ledge.

  “They’re not going to kill us,” Sam said, trying not to hope too much. “I think they’re going to save us.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. But Daniel will.” Annabel’s life was in as much jeopardy as Sam’s. She had a right to know Daniel’s name. She had a right not to have secrets kept from her.

  Annabel made a skeptical noise. “I don’t think those airships are part of his plan.”

  Sam looked out the dragon’s eye where she was pointing. Three enormous airships cruised in from the west across the desert.

  They weren’t from the Southern realm. They were from the North.

  SEVEN

  Gabriel lived in a windowed perch above the Mulholland Locks. His views spanned the San Gabriel Mountains to the towers of downtown, all the way out to the sea. On clear nights it was as if an entire skyful of stars had fallen and shattered across the Los Angeles basin.

  He came home after an eighteen-hour workday to find Daniel Blackland enjoying the view from his living room couch.

  Gabriel set down his briefcase and hung his coat. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  Daniel lifted a bottle of wine to him. “No need.”

  “Is that the ninety-three Wolfskill cabernet?”

  “I didn’t read the label. It tastes like smog.”

  “The ninety-seven, then. You look beat.” Daniel always looked a little beat: thin, unshaven, hair cropped by a box cutter. One of his hands was bundled with a comically large bandage. “What happened to you?”

  “Where’s your hound?” Daniel said, ignoring the question because he always seemed to get a kick from evading questions put to him by authority figures, and despite the frightening power that resided in his bones, he considered Gabriel an authority figure.

  “By ‘hound’ I think you’re referring to the assistant director of the Department of Water and Power?”

  “Wow, you’re starchy today. Isn’t that what I said?”

  “Not even close. To what do I owe this visit, Daniel?”

  Daniel took a swig of Gabriel’s wine. “I suppose you know where I’ve just come back from.”

  “Well, I know you hired Isaac Slough to grow a new body for Sam. But I’m not actually spying on you. However, your face is pretty chapped, even though we’ve had wet weather the last two weeks. Out to sea? Mountaintop?”

  Daniel raised the bottle at “mountaintop.”

  “Mount Whitney. I found Sam there. Then lost him.”

  “Lost him to whom?”

  “The Northern realm.” Daniel took a swig.

  Gabriel lowered himself into the opposite chair. He relieved Daniel of the bottle and took a long pull. “Tell me what happened on the mountain.”

  Daniel told him about the airships and the Northern soldiers, and how he watched them carry the dragon away. He told him about his visit to Hollywood Cemetery, and how he obtained a small piece of the axis mundi dragon. Gabriel pretended he didn’t know what that was.

  “Basically,” Daniel said, “it’s like a soul magnet. I hoped to use it to draw Sam’s consciousness from the firedrake, store it in the bone, and then put his consciousness inside Slough’s golem.” Daniel let out a small, bitter laugh. “It sounds so straightforward when I say it like that.”

  “Maybe not straightforward in execution, but certainly in concept.” Gabriel liked it. It was neat, with clear objectives and mileposts. “So, the only thing that’s changed is now instead of drawing the firedrake to a mountaintop, you have to find it in the Northern realm.”

  “Right, that’s all there is to it. Oh, except for I lost the axis mundi bone in all the high-altitude fisticuffs, and the only other known fragments are in China and the Northern realm. You have any friends in China?”

  “Where in the Northern realm, exactly?”

  “In the stronghold of one of their most powerful osteomancers. He’s very close to the Northern Hierarch. Or at least he was.”

  Gabriel realized Daniel was setting him up for some bad news. “What happened to him?” Gabriel asked, playing the straight man.

  “I killed him.”

  Daniel reached for the bottle. Gabriel took an extra-long swig before handing it back.

  “Paul Sigilo had the bone. Your golem-brother.”

  “My golem-brother, the osteomancer who built the Pacific firedrake. Who I killed on Catalina.”

  “You don’t make things easy, do you, Blackland?”

  “Nothing’s easy. That’s why I’ve come to you. I can’t do this by myself. Too many moving parts, and none of them close to hand. By myself, I could maybe find the firedrake in the North. By myself, I could maybe find a way to get the axis mundi bone from Paul’s house.”

  These were big, ambitious, conspicuous capers they were talking about.

  “I’m skeptical about even a ‘maybe,’” Gabriel said. “I take it you’re proposing we join forces in this unlikely endeavor?”

  “What could be better, Gabriel? We worked together to off the Hierarch, now we can work together to save my kid.”

  “But you know I’ve been working to do just the opposite. I’ve been working to destroy the Pacific firedrake.”

  Daniel put down the bottle. “I do know that. And now you’re going to stop doing that.”

  Some osteomancers spent magic on letting their power show. Mother Cauldron used hers to grow herself monstrously large and to sprout extra arms. Alex Vermilion used his to glow in the dark. Daniel had never spent one iota of magic to impress. He always let himself look like something left out in the rain. And knowing the power that resided in his bones, Gabriel found him all the more frightening.

  Outside the window, the valley lights twinkled. Billions of gallons of water flowed through city waterworks, as much a part of Gabriel as the blood coursing through his veins. Gabriel’s power was far-reaching and immense, but he had absolutely no desire to test it against Daniel Blackland’s magic.

  “I’m waiting for you to articulate the reason I’m going to help you, Daniel.”

  Daniel stood. “Because otherwise, at long last, after more than ten years of avoidance, you and I will be at war.”

  He went to the door, poised to put a period on this dramatic parting.

  Gabriel hated drama.

  “Show up to my office at eight,” he said. “We’ll start discussing a plan.”

  “Will there be doughnuts?” Daniel asked, hand on the doorknob.

  “Will we be at war if there aren’t?”

  Daniel smiled.

  “I’ll make sure we have doughnuts.”

  * * *

  Jo Alverado threw her arms around Daniel’s neck and planted a wet kiss on his cheek. Daniel didn’t even get to say hello before she tugged him by the arm into her apartment, steered him to a chair in her kitchen, and filled a teacup from a kettle still exhaling the last of a whistle.

  She waved off his attempted apologies at not having looked her up sooner when he came back to Los Angeles, and instead kept him busy fielding questions about how he was doing, about his health, about his bandaged hand, whether he’d looked in on Cassandra, and if he had anyone special in his life right now. And so on.

  Daniel went through two cups of tea before she deemed him sufficiently debriefed and allowed him to get to business.

  He’d just been through two long days of planning with Gabriel Argent. Argent was smart and efficient
, and it was amazing how quickly he’d put things in motion. But there were some things for which he still had to rely on his friends.

  “I need a new face,” he said.

  “I’ve been telling you that for years. What for?”

  “It’s part of trying to get Sam back. I lost him on Catalina Island. ‘Lost’ is maybe not the right word. He—”

  “I know what’s been going on,” she said with gentleness. “You’ve been scarce, but I still hear from Moth.”

  In the old days, Daniel was the glue that held his group of friends together. They were a band of thieves, and he was their mastermind. It startled him to think of Moth being the center now.

  “Whose face do you need?”

  “I just want some alterations to my own. I’ve got some good chimera bone to make me pliable, but I’m not a sculptor like you.”

  “I’ve never changed anyone else’s face but my own.”

  “I know your talents, Jo. There’s nobody else I’d come to for something like this.”

  The flattery touched her, and Daniel felt ashamed of himself. He could no longer justify telling someone just what she needed to hear as anything other than manipulation.

  “Whatever I can do to help, D. You know that, right? Anything, any time?”

  She touched his good hand, and he wrapped his fingers around hers and felt even more ashamed. “Thank you. You really are the best.”

  Jo took him into her bathroom. She had a whole Hollywood makeup thing going, complete with lightbulbs rimming the mirror. She was still a professional thief, posing as people who had a right to walk into places and wouldn’t be suspected of walking out with a few Rolexes in their pockets. She used to be an actress. Still was, actually, just on different stages.

  She sat Daniel in front of the mirror and adjusted the height of his chair. “Okay, so what kind of effect are we trying to achieve here?”

  “Let’s start with my nose. Can you make it look like it hasn’t been broken five times?”

  “How long ago did you take that chimera?”

  “About an hour.”

  “Then you should be good and squishy. Okay, let’s have a go.”

  She pressed down on the prominent bump rising from the bridge of Daniel’s nose.

  “That … hey, that hurts. A lot.”

  “Pobrecito. Changing your shape hurts, sweetie.”

  “But you do it all the time.”

  “And I’m a badass so I don’t complain.”

  “Well, I’m not a badass. Can you be more gentle?”

  “Yes. But it’s still going to hurt.”

  She pressed her fingertips to Daniel’s nose and straightened it. He yelped, but when she was done, his nose looked right.

  “That’s perfect, Jo.”

  “I liked it better before. Next?”

  “This scar through my eyebrow … can you shift stuff around to fix it?”

  “It’s going to hurt.”

  “I’m getting that.”

  Daniel flinched and carried on like a baby as Jo worked over his face.

  The pain was worth it. After fifteen minutes, Daniel stared in the mirror and the face of his golem-brother, Paul, looked back at him. It was a good face, a less broken face. Or maybe just broken in different ways.

  “I look better this way. I should have done this a long time ago.”

  “Then you wouldn’t be Daniel, and that would be a loss.”

  “That’s funny to hear, coming from you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, you’re a shape-shifter. I’d think you’d be telling me that what you are, who you are, doesn’t change just because your outer form is different.”

  “That may be true of some people,” Jo said. “Maybe it’s even true of me. But not you. You are your scars. You remember them, and you lug them around like chains. You without your scars? Not Daniel.”

  “That’s okay, I guess. I need to not be me for a while.”

  She started trying to tame his tousled hair with a comb. She wasn’t gentle, but he let her, because Paul was better groomed than he was.

  “I know who you’re trying to be,” she said, working a tangle, “and I don’t like it. There’s no reason to go North as Paul that isn’t incredibly dangerous, and I wish you wouldn’t.”

  He looked at her reflection in the mirror, then turned to look at her properly. “I don’t have much choice, Jo.”

  “I know. You’re doing it for Sam. But still.”

  “How much do you know?”

  “As much as Moth knows. He keeps in touch with his friends, unlike you.” She hit his head with the comb.

  “Any professional acting advice for me?”

  She resumed the tug-of-war between Daniel’s hair and her comb. “You can’t be Paul. But you have to get as close to being him as you can. The new look will help. Actors rely on costume and makeup all the time. But to convince anyone, you’ll have to really get inside his head.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that. Paul was a weird guy.”

  “You’re a weird guy.”

  “I mean different weird.”

  “How so?”

  Daniel thought back to Catalina, to the single hour he’d spent with Paul before he killed him. Paul had a slow, distracted manner of speaking, as if he had to concentrate on being in the same room as others because the most important part of him was somewhere else. It reminded Daniel so much of his father.

  And with that realization, he knew how to play his brother.

  It wouldn’t even be the hardest part of this job.

  The hardest part would be Daniel’s mother.

  * * *

  Daniel looked around the bleak, ten-by-twelve storage unit and felt like a heel. He put on a sunny smile anyway. “Okay, so, you’ve got a fridge stocked with goodies and a microwave.”

  “And a cot,” Em said. “And a strip of canvas stretched between some aluminum rods, which I suspect is some kind of chair. I’ve got magazines. Books. Plus a radio and a chemical toilet. I’m all set.”

  “We’re aiming to be back from the North in six days, but if something goes wrong…”

  “It could be longer. It could be never. I know, Daniel. I was at the meetings.”

  A mechanical hum and the soft gurgle of osteomantic fluid bled through the wooden crate that filled most of the space. Inside the crate was a gleaming steel tank, and inside the tank was the gestating golem Isaac Slough had grown from a single strand of Sam’s hair.

  “I hate to leave you here by yourself. It’s just that—”

  “You don’t trust anyone enough but me to guard Sam’s new body,” Em said. “Neither do I. I’ll be here when you get back, no matter how long it takes. I’ll keep him safe.”

  “There could be hounds. Thieves. Other osteomancers. Even without a consciousness, the body contains Sam’s osteomantic essence. The golem is probably the richest trove of osteomancy in the realm.”

  Em sank into the camp chair and rested her rifle across her lap. Nearby, she’d placed ammo boxes full of explosive ruhk eggs. She cracked open a paperback.

  “Bring me a beer when you get back,” she said.

  “You don’t drink beer.”

  “I know, but it’s the kind of thing you and Moth say to each other. I thought you’d know it means go away, do your job, and let me do mine.”

  “Okay, Em.” He lifted the roll gate, letting in the last sunshine Em would see for quite some time. “Seriously, tell me what I can bring you back.”

  She set down her book and looked thoughtful. “You’re going to San Francisco. They make chocolate there. Better than ours. You’re a cook with an osteomancer’s nose, so you should know what good chocolate is. Bring it to me. Bring me the best.”

  She returned to her book, this young Emma with a gun on her lap, guarding a crate containing half the key to the job’s success.

  “The best ever,” Daniel said, shutting her in.

  * * *

  Cassandra registered
no surprise when she found Daniel on the front porch of her Mar Vista stucco cottage. She gave him a tired smile, a quick hug, and let him inside.

  “You changed your face.”

  “How’d you know it was me?”

  “Give me a break.”

  He stood in the middle of her living room, taking in her mismatched but harmonious thrift-shop furniture and her small selection of perfectly chosen vases and candlesticks and knickknacks. Cassandra almost never stayed anywhere more than a few months, but she’d developed the art of making a temporary place look like a home she’d lived in for years.

  “Sorry to drop in on you like this, Cass. I was hoping you might help me with some—”

  “You need papers.” She handed him a file folder. “It’s all there.”

  There were Northern California internal travel passes, identification, and work licenses for the team. Everything Daniel had come here planning to ask her for. And everything looked authentic. Cassandra had been supporting herself by smuggling bone from Northern California, and she knew how to get Northern papers.

  “Moth told you?”

  She brought Daniel into the kitchen and poured him a cup of coffee. “He figured to save us a long, awkward conversation in which you’d ask me for something while trying not to ask me.”

  “I liked it better when I was the mastermind and he was the muscle.”

  Cassandra touched her mug against his and they sat at her kitchen table. “I think you actually like it this way more than you realize.”

  “I guess it is nice to have a second brain, even if it’s Moth’s.” He flexed his bandaged hand. It was almost healed, a few days’ treatment with hydra regenerative knitting bones and tendons and muscle tissue back together.

  “So, elephant in the room,” he said.

  “Which one? We have so many.”

  “I’m talking about Otis. I’m still not comfortable with you keeping him captive. He’s a disease. He’s poison. And as long as you’re holding him, you’ve got a target on your back.”

  Cassandra dropped a couple of sugar cubes in her coffee and stirred. There was something she didn’t want to tell him, and she was stalling for time. She clinked her spoon sharply on the edge of her cup. “Otis is dead. I shot him and buried him outside Riverside.”