Dragon Spawn

by Eileen Wilks

  “. . . should have seen his face turn red! It was lots funnier than hitting him would have been, but I think he hates me more now than he would have if I’d just gone ahead and hit him. Does that mean I won?”

  “Hmm.” Lily dragged her attention back to what Gan had been saying . . . something about a prank she’d played on one of the Edge councillors. “I guess that depends on what your goal was. If you wanted to make him look stupid, you won. If you wanted to ever work with him again, you lost. Gan.” She knelt so she could look Gan in the eye. “I haven’t thanked you for coming. It means a lot to me that you did. Thank you.”

  A big smile lit that ugly-cute face. “I’m a good friend!”

  “You are an excellent friend. A wonderful friend.” Lily hugged her. Gan’s body was warmer than hers and smaller and much tougher, though the last quality didn’t show. “I’ve been wanting to ask about the medallion.” One of the most potent artifacts ever made in any of the realms, the medallion worn by the Chancellor of Edge kept the small, odd realm inhabitable. “I don’t see it. Did you bring it with you?”

  “Of course! I couldn’t take it off. That would be bad. Really bad. Oh. You’re wondering about what happens to Edge when I’m not there? Don’t worry. I can’t take it off, but also it can’t leave Edge, so even though I’m wearing it, it’s still in Edge.”

  She blinked. “I don’t understand.”

  “Me, neither. I didn’t know it would be like this until I came to your wedding. After a while I realized that it was on me, but it was also back in Edge. Weird, huh? I really liked your wedding. I want to have one, too, except I don’t want to be married. I haven’t figured out how to have a wedding without being married.”

  Lily’s lips twitched. “Maybe an open marriage?”

  “Where you still get to fuck other people?” Gan considered that. “Maybe, but I’d still have to pick someone I wanted to hang out with. If you’re married, you have to hang out together. I like girls better for hanging out, but I like guys better for sex because of their cocks, even though they don’t have enough breasts. I like breasts, especially big ones. If I could find a hermaphrodite . . . but Edge doesn’t seem to have any.” She frowned in disapproval.

  “It’s a dilemma.” Lily stood. “We’d better get back.” Even though she didn’t want to. Going back took her that much closer to the moment when . . . when what? She didn’t know.

  Gan wasn’t scared, but Lily was scared for her and for everyone else . . . and those fears were small and insignificant compared to the terror that kept threatening to swamp her about Rule. Why? Why was this time different? She’d feared for him before. She’d never let it stop her. Dammit, just because she wasn’t in charge didn’t mean she had the luxury of indulging in terror. Every one of the people with her needed her to be focused, at her best. Toby needed that. Ryder did. So did two other kids and a baby even smaller than Ryder.

  She was so damn scared.

  When they returned, Grandmother was lapping water from a depression in the rock. Cynna gave Lily a nod and headed for the improvised latrine. And Benedict was as implacably calm as ever. “Here,” he said, and handed her a piece of jerky.

  Dutifully she took it, clamped her teeth on the tough strip of dried meat, and tore off a bite.

  “It’s not your fault, you know.”

  Her mouth full of jerky, she could only frown at him.

  He bent his head toward hers and spoke in the softest possible voice. “You lost the mate bond. It came back, but the loss was real. I know what that’s like. If a guy’s heart stopped and it took them a few minutes to get it started again, he’d be alive—but he still would’ve been dead for a time. That would affect him. Your loss is affecting you.”

  Everything she’d been trying not to think, to feel, rushed in on her. The jerky in her mouth turned into a wad impossible to swallow. She closed her eyes. She thought about spitting out the jerky. About crying. Wailing. About how hard she’d been not-thinking about those brief, endless moments of loss even as she tried desperately to come up with a reason to contact Rule, to hear his voice in her mind and . . . after a moment she began grimly chewing. Eventually she managed to swallow the horrible mass in her mouth and open her eyes again. “What do I do about it?”

  “No idea. But you’ll do okay.” He patted her shoulder. “You might feel like shit, but you’ll do what’s needed. And I need to go piss.” He gave her a nod. “You’re my second. You’ve got it while I’m gone.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  IT took Rule and Mason together to move the last boulder. They could have used another set of hands, but there wasn’t room. Sweat ran down Rule’s back and chest, stinging fiercely where it hit unhealed gouges. They didn’t have to move it far, thank the Lady and all the gods. Another couple inches . . . and done. Rule inhaled deeply, wiped his forehead, and slipped sideways through the opening they’d made.

  The tunnel ahead was empty. Of life anyway. There were plenty of rocks, debris from the fallen ceiling, but nothing they couldn’t clamber over easily. “Hydrate,” Rule said, and unsnapped his canteen. “Drink it all.”

  Only five of them now: him, Cullen, Max, Jude, and Mason. They’d left Carlos behind a couple tunnels back.

  Carlos’s leg hadn’t finished healing from the wound dealt by the crablike demons when they were attacked again. His head might have still been bothering him, too, though he’d insisted he was fine. Whatever the reason, he’d been slow to react when the spider-things dropped on them from a crack in the ceiling. By the time the rest of them had killed the nasty creatures, he’d taken too many bites. Jude and Cullen had been bitten, too, but only once apiece. They’d both been sick and dizzy for several minutes. Carlos had been comatose.

  They couldn’t take him with them. They were already too few. Nor could Rule leave him there, unconscious and probably dying, to make an easy meal for any demons who happened by. He’d steeled himself to do what he must, and had already drawn his knife when Carlos stirred.

  Rule had gotten him to drink some water, and his wits had returned enough to make the decision himself: a quick death at Rule’s hands or the gift of Max’s last grenade. Worst case, Rule had told him, was that he’d pass out again and get swarmed by demons before he could use either his gun or the grenade. A bad way to die, that. Best case, though, he wouldn’t need the grenade. He’d recover enough to make it out of the tunnels and back to where Daniel waited by the bikes.

  To Rule’s relief, he’d chosen the grenade.

  Carlos was still so weak when they left that he could barely sit up, even leaning against the tunnel wall. Rule doubted he could use his weapon, which was why he’d given him the grenade. Even a sick man could pull out the pin. But Carlos’s healing was slowly clearing out the venom. They didn’t know how long that would take, but if the demons left Carlos alone long enough, his healing would clear the venom from his system. Making it back to the bikes—where Daniel might or might not still be alive—might be a long shot, but he had a chance.

  Rule hooked his empty canteen back on his belt. If they lived, there was more water back at the bikes. Their jerky was gone, unfortunately. They were hungry. Healing burned calories like crazy, and they’d all been injured at some point. More than once, for most of them. Rule’s side still oozed from the deepest gouge the last batch of nasties had inflicted. “Jude. How’s the arm?”

  “Not usable yet, but the bleeding’s stopped.”

  “Good. Everyone, how much ammo do you have?”

  As they checked and reported, he consulted his inner map again. It had proved accurate. Even the blockage they’d just finished digging through had been marked. Unfortunately, Rule hadn’t been able to decipher the marking until they saw the rocks blocking them.

  Automatically he checked on Lily’s location, too. Close now . . . and jerked his mind away. He couldn’t think about her. Couldn’t let himself wonder about her
. He was too frightened for her. Too easily distracted by his need to see her, touch her, hear her voice . . . “All right,” he said, his voice as crisp as ever. He was good at sounding competent, no matter how he felt. “We’re close. Ten minutes away or less, if we don’t encounter more opposition. Cullen, is there anything you need to do to get your bomb ready?”

  “Not until I’m about to throw it.”

  “All right. Max, we’ll probably need your skills to get through the door, if it’s intact. There were fifty-nine demons in that room when Sam mapped it. That’s too many. Let’s keep Cullen in one piece so he can set off that bomb of his.” In an enclosed space it would have a blast radius of about a hundred feet. It might not kill every demon in that radius, but it should reduce the odds against them substantially.

  If it worked. “Same order, but at a lope now,” he ordered. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  ALL of the windows they’d checked had been roughly four feet wide. None of them started right at the floor; there was a “sill” of about a foot that you had to step over, and a second sill a foot down from the ceiling. But the ceiling height varied a lot in this tunnel, so the height of the windows varied.

  This window was nearly nine feet high. On the other side of the barrier that was no barrier at all were red-eyes. Four of them, backed up to what they thought was a solid wall, blocking her view. Red-eyes were built like huge hyenas with a touch of centaur, except a lot uglier. Their skin was thick, rubbery, and varied from black to a tawny gray. They were hard to kill, and some of them carried a particularly nasty venom. Lily couldn’t see the faces of these four, but she had a great view of their butts. Demons didn’t use toilet paper.

  Beyond them was the small audience hall, which wasn’t small at all—probably ninety feet long, according to Gan, and shaped like an L, with the short leg of the L at the far end of the room. Lily couldn’t see that portion, and not much of the long part of the L directly in front of her, either. The damn red-eyes blocked her view. She saw one of the pillars Gan had mentioned—black and carved into a fantastical, vaguely obscene shape. She caught glimpses of another type of demon moving around the room. These were about eight feet tall and bipedal. Red or pink skin. Too many eyes. Huge claws at the end of four of their limbs, and a slicing weapon on the end of their muscular tails.

  Lily had part of that description from Gan, who called them Claws. She’d shivered when she spoke of them. They’d been some of the deadliest of Xitil’s foot soldiers.

  There was a buzz of conversation in the room, or Lily supposed it was conversation. Noise anyway. One of the red-eyes growled something. None of the four moved.

  The window closed. The wall was a wall again.

  Lily let out her breath. “I guess the rest of you understood what it said?” The rules were supposed to translate, but the rules used magic. Lily had just heard growls and squeals and mutters.

  “It was complaining about the food,” Gan said.

  “Why did those bastards have to pick this wall to hang out at? They don’t know about the window or they wouldn’t keep their backs to it.” Three times now they’d opened the window for a few seconds, taking quick peeks because they didn’t want to risk some small sound or scent alerting the demons standing so close. Every time the damn red-eyes had been there, blocking their view.

  “Luck of the draw,” Benedict said. “Cynna?”

  She shook her head, every inch of her taut. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter if the window’s open or shut, my Finds don’t work. That has to be one hell of a strong ward around the kids.”

  Benedict nodded. “Wards can be set with fire, can’t they?”

  “Sure. If you’re fire-Gifted, it’s the quickest way. Not so quick for others, but possible if your Gift isn’t unfriendly to Fire. Why?”

  “Pretty sure I glimpsed flame near the center of the room this time.”

  Lily frowned. She hadn’t seen that, but her attention was divided. Part of it stayed with Rule. That was orders, not self-indulgence. “Will we have to take the ward down to get to the kids? Can you do that, Cynna?”

  “Probably not. Not safely, at least. Best if we leave that to Cullen. I’m thinking—”

  Grandmother butted Lily, who sent a quick probe . . . “Grandmother says she’s good with wards.”

  “All right,” Cynna said curtly. “Madame Yu or Cullen can deal with the ward. Benedict, there are a hell of a lot of demons in that room. Maybe that’s because this is supposed to be a trap, so our enemies gathered some of the toughest demons in one spot to kill us when we show up. But maybe it also means that Ginger’s there. She’d want her avatar protected, wouldn’t she? By a shitload of demons and by that ward.”

  “Good point. Not proven, but possible. Timing, Lily?”

  “Rule’s still not moving.” He’d moved quickly for a while, then stopped. Hiding maybe? Avoiding a patrol? Not injured. She had no reason to think he was badly injured, unable to move. “If Ginger is there, do we have an obligation to try to take her out? It wouldn’t kill the Great Bitch, but it would damn sure—oh, wait. Shit, that was stupid. The last thing we want to do is kill Ginger Harris. Ka-boom.”

  Benedict was silent a moment. “Gunfire was problematical anyway until we located the children, but we’d better locate Ginger Harris as well before opening fire. Or determine that she isn’t present. If we—”

  “Rule’s running again,” Lily said suddenly. “Fast. He’ll be at the entry in a couple minutes at this pace.”

  “Form up,” Benedict said crisply.

  * * *

  LILY waited, barely breathing. Benedict stood up front with Grandmother, who’d opened the window with a puff of breath. Those two were by far the best suited to clear a path—and to survive doing it. Lily stood right behind Grandmother; Cynna was beside her. Gan sat on a narrow ledge several feet away, looking unhappy. She wouldn’t be going in with them.

  Lily’s shortest, orangest friend wasn’t upset at being left out. She had no intention of charging into a room full of Claws and khahlikka—her word for the demons Lily called red-eyes. But it had finally occurred to her that her friends might be killed. She didn’t like the idea.

  The red-eyes were exactly where they had been the last time they checked. If they’d moved at all, she couldn’t tell. The others, the Claws, continued to move around the room. Lily still couldn’t see the fire Benedict had glimpsed, but surely it was there, hidden by the way-too-fucking-many demons, and the children were behind it.

  Lily didn’t believe in God, but she didn’t exactly disbelieve, either. Mostly she tried not to think about it. Life after death was real. She knew that much, having died once. Some kind of Deity might exist, too, however unlikely it seemed. With every carefully silent breath she prayed to Whoever or Whatever might be out there that the children were here and okay—and that Cullen’s demon bomb worked.

  Couldn’t hurt. Might help.

  The explosion wasn’t all that loud as explosions go. Not much louder than the whomp that followed. Something large, hard, and heavy had hit the floor on the other side of the room.

  All four red-eyes took off at a run. They were as fast as Lily remembered. Every other demon in the place seemed to have the same idea, to get to the place where the noise had come from.

  Benedict didn’t move. Didn’t let them move. Lily did not have a great view of what happened next, but she caught a glimpse of a single figure sailing through the air over the heads of the charging demons. A flash of memory: Cullen sailing through the air just like that, hurled there during one of the battle dances the lupi practiced over and over. At the crest of his flight, he threw something—then fell right into the massed demons below.

  Red light flashed, blanketing the chamber for an instant. Demons began collapsing.

  Benedict charged out into the room. Grandmother followed in a sinuous orange-and-black leap. Then C
ynna and Lily.

  She had a confused impression of bodies, demon bodies, everywhere. And magic. Her face tingled with the constant brush of sorcéri. The bodies were thickest on the other side of the room, where Cullen had gone down. Benedict and Grandmother raced that way—and yes, there was a circle of fire, higher than her head, in the middle of the room, centered on one of the black pillars. And Rule. She saw him just inside the huge, arched entry on that side of the room, his shirt bloody and tattered. And Jude and Mason and Max. And two red-eyes racing toward them.

  Movement at the edge of her peripheral vision. She spun, weapon ready. A very-much-alive Claw raced toward her. She squeezed the trigger.

  It took an ungodly amount of time for the thing to stop. It—he—didn’t collapse until he was nearly on top of her. She jumped to one side to avoid his toppling body.

  “Jude, we’ve got it,” Rule called out. “Go to Cullen.” Which was just stupid—two lupi and a half-gnome weren’t enough to kill a pair of red-eyes, not when they were in man-form and couldn’t shoot because of the children—but someone should see about Cullen, who must be buried beneath the largest pile of dead demons.

  Grandmother had stopped at the fire circle. She wasn’t doing anything visible, just staring at it. Benedict hadn’t made it that far, being stopped by an enormous Claw, easily nine feet tall, who stood between him and the burning ward. As she watched, Benedict danced away from a slash from one of the creature’s long arms and drew his machete. He and the blade looked small next to that Claw.

  Where was Cynna? She didn’t see—oh, there she was, running past the fire circle. Headed for the pile of demon bodies? Yes, looking for Cullen, Lily realized, as Cynna started tugging one of the bodies off. As she did, a Claw rose out of that unholy pile, shook its head as if dazed, saw Cynna, and grinned. Jude was approaching at a run, but one of his arms was in a sling.