The Last Slayer

by Lee, Nadia

  I watched him put it together. “Blood?”

  “Blood.”

  “But there was hardly any.”

  “Don’t need much to key the target.”

  “Enough,” Semangelaf said.

  Andersen and I turned our attention back to the dragonlords. Nathanael in particular seemed dissatisfied, his eyes questing and his mouth grim.

  “We have seen what we need to see.”

  Swain took a step forward, like he wanted to argue, but he stopped when Andersen shook his head. The other hunters on my team were looking at me. We all had recognized the dragonlords’ cold tendrils as seekers, but apparently everyone else was as mystified as I was as to who they were trying to find.

  Something else was weird as well…why had Semangelaf given the blood to Nathanael? The latter hadn’t even planned to show up from what I could tell. There was no apparent reason for Semangelaf to defer a spell that had been his to perform.

  Nathanael had mentioned having done a “favor” for Swain, perhaps referring to eliminating one of Swain’s competitors. Apollyon had said he’d blown up the GenEvo Labs because of a lie. Semangelaf hadn’t made any moves to pulverize us yet, so maybe Swain hadn’t made any stupid promises. But for the dragonlords to go to these lengths, whoever they wanted to find must have been very important.

  The dragonlords turned and left, and the rest of us had little choice but to follow. They talked quietly with Swain as we walked. I strained to hear the conversation ahead of me. Apollyon’s voice suddenly came alive with amusement and joy, while Semangelaf and Nathanael sounded indifferent. I didn’t trust Apollyon’s good humor.

  Finally, Apollyon stopped and said, “If you prove that you can control a mere wyrm, the lowest of the low in our army, I shall lend you a dragon of your choice. A wyvern even, if that’s what you wish.”

  Wow, that offer could sure tempt you if you had a single-digit IQ.

  Swain’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second before he smoothed his face into a mask of pleasantry. “That’s very generous of you.”

  Generous, my ass. Wyrms formed the basic ground troops of a dragon army, but they were not the lowest of the low. What the hell was a “lowest of the low” dragon anyway? Furthermore, the ability to control a wyrm had nothing to do with commanding a wyvern. Wyverns were the proud elite, with a pair of wings and two powerful forelegs. Although better suited for air battle, they could also fight on the ground. In the chain of command in a dragon army, wyverns outrank wyrms. So if you passed Apollyon’s test, you might be more powerful than a wyrm but most likely still far from being able to control a wyvern.

  Apollyon’s lips curved. It was the smile the snake must have given Eve at the moment of temptation. “Then do you accept my proposal?”

  “It depends on what you’d like in return.”

  “I require nothing in return.”

  Oh, bullshit. I took a step forward. Andersen grabbed my arm. “Don’t,” he said. “It’s not your job to interfere.”

  “Do you really think he wants nothing?” I hissed.

  “He said it front of everyone.”

  “He wants to have fun—”

  “We know what we’re doing. We didn’t bring you here to get in the way. Just do your job.”

  Oh. My. God. Why had they hired me if they were planning to do what they wanted regardless of my professional opinion?

  “When would you like me to send someone for this task?” Swain was saying.

  “Now would be fine.”

  “Now?”

  Apollyon glanced around theatrically. “We’re all here, aren’t we?”

  Swain nodded, also looking around. His gaze came to rest briefly on me.

  Ah hell.

  I didn’t care how much Swain was paying us. I was not fighting a wyrm.

  Andersen still had my arm. “Just wait,” he whispered.

  Apollyon smiled politely. “Would you please invite a wyrm of mine? And name your champion.”

  “On the company grounds?”

  “My wyrms are quite well mannered.”

  A frown marred the thin skin on Swain’s forehead. “But there are no wyrms with you.”

  “They’re always with me.” Apollyon waved a hand, the heavy rings on his fingers sparkling in the sunlight. “I shall repair any structural damage, but I can’t guarantee the safety of your man if he fails.”

  Swain looked to one of the executives he’d brought with him. It was the one with the raw magical talent, who I’d thought looked familiar. The man nodded smartly and stepped forward as though he was about to receive a military honor.

  “I invite a wyrm for the test,” Swain said. “Mr. Patterson will command it.”

  Finally I remembered him. The name and that step forward had done it. Ed Patterson, a fellow alumnus from Stanford, who’d majored in necromancy. Long on ego and drive, but short on intelligence and magical talent. He’d failed to get his mage’s license and—as far as I’d heard through the grapevine—knew nothing about dragons. What was he doing here?

  Swain and his executives merely smiled, as if the entire event had been scripted the night before. The bodyguards moved forward to protect the overpaid suits.

  I pointed at Patterson. “Does he know what he’s doing too?” My voice was low, but I wasn’t whispering anymore.

  Andersen nodded. “He’s an expert. Just watch.”

  “Are you ready, Mr. Patterson?” Apollyon said.

  “Yes, sir.” Patterson cracked his knuckles. What did he think this was? A street fight? He looked like he worked out—his suit was tight across the shoulders and biceps—but controlling a dragon is different from picking up an unresponsive forty-five-pound iron plate. Or raising the dead.

  Apollyon stepped back until he stood with the other dragonlords. The small patch of forest we were in began shaking, tree branches and leaves rustling alarmingly. Ancient power traveled underground, coming closer to where Patterson stood. Cracks formed in the packed dirt beneath his feet and snaked out.

  He jumped away just as the earth exploded. A wyrm surged from the ground, thick as a thousand-year-old oak and long as a nine-car train. Wet black scales glistened as it moved, and an odor of death and old magic sent the birds and small animals around us into flight. A fine tremor ran through me. I’d known dragons were large. Textbooks had diagrams and dimensions. But it was one thing to read about such creatures, quite another to see one in real life. I had serious doubts about my effectiveness going against something this enormous and powerful.

  The wyrm’s slitted yellow eyes opened, translucent nictitating membranes moving across them like theater curtains, and scanned the area.

  Patterson had landed in an athletic crouch. “Come hither,” he said in the standard dialect taught to the dragon specialists. It was actually somewhat impressive. Not a skill I’d expected from a necromancer flunky.

  The wyrm’s head turned to him. Hissing, it slithered slowly over the grass. Patterson stood up. He looked smug and glanced at his boss like a sea lion waiting for a fish for a job well done. He still wore the expression when the wyrm threw itself at him and plunged its garage-sized head over where he stood.

  A female executive screamed.

  There was a horrible crunching sound and the wyrm reared back, fresh blood gushing from its mouth. Patterson’s torsoless legs collapsed, knees hitting the ground first. Crimson pooled around them. The coppery smell of fresh death turned my stomach, but I managed to keep my face expressionless. Nobody was paying me to panic. A bodyguard caught the female executive as she fainted.

  Apollyon didn’t look all that concerned. Nathanael and Semangelaf were discussing something and didn’t even glance up.

  “This…this is an outrage.” Swain’s voice shook despite his best effort to look on top of the situation. It’s hard to be in command when one of your men has just had his upper body gobbled by a dragon.

  Apollyon shrugged. “I did warn you.”

  The wyrm didn’t retrea
t as I’d expected. It coiled itself around Patterson’s fallen legs possessively, neck scales rippling in peristalsis as it moved Patterson’s torso down its gullet. The TriMedica people scrambled backward. Only the hunters from the firm, Valerie, Andersen and I maintained our positions. The dragonlords did nothing to put the wyrm back underground. Its tongue flickered out, testing the air. I realized that Patterson had just been an appetizer.

  A very small one.

  The dragonlords had promised not to hurt anyone, but the wyrm hadn’t. Swain had been a fool to invite one in. Now it began to move slowly toward one of my team.

  Enough was enough. I might not be able to kill the wyrm, but I could maybe buy enough time to evacuate everyone.

  I shook Andersen’s hand off my arm and quietly recited the incantation for draco perditio. Magic filled my mouth, tingled my lips, prickled my skin like an electric current. A heady sensation of fogginess and power expanded within me as the magic began to sing inside my body. In an instant the intensity seemed ready to rip me in half, and still it built. I’d performed powerful spells before, but nothing like this.

  Apollyon glanced at me, his teeth bared in a sneer. The wyrm turned its head toward me and in the same motion began accelerating in my direction. I had a split second before I’d end up like Patterson.

  “Draco perditio,” I whispered.

  The spell shot out like a cannonball, the earth crumbling in a line beneath the bolt as it traveled, and exploded into the wyrm. It screeched like a metal shutter being ripped in half, writhing even as it began to shrivel.

  The spell tore every bit of magic from me, and I gasped, falling to my knees. My heart pumped hard, as if it would explode from the exertion, and I couldn’t get enough air. Dimly I saw that all the mortals were standing with their hands over their ears.

  The wyrm was rapidly shrinking into a hard lump of rough blackened leather, but its momentum carried it forward until it stopped just short of where I knelt. I reached out weakly and touched the charred baseball-sized carcass…if it could be called that. It was freezing cold and prickly, like dry ice.

  Oh god, I did it. The spell worked.

  Something in my peripheral vision caught my attention, and I looked up. Nathanael stood before me, the tip of a nine-foot-long sword pointed at my throat.

  The blade shone in the light. His hand was tight and rock steady around the jewel-encrusted hilt as he regarded me. Suddenly he didn’t look bored anymore.

  “Where did you learn the forbidden spell?” he demanded, his voice like a silken whip.

  An invisible vise clamped down on my chest, squeezing all the air out of my lungs. I gasped and collapsed on my side. My vision blurred and darkened.

  Nathanael eased the pressure slightly. “Speak.”

  “From…a book.”

  His eyes narrowed. I followed the movement of his sword as its tip descended and rested lightly on the hollow of my neck. “Give it to me.”

  “Don’t…have it…with me.”

  “Then you’ll fetch it. I vowed to not harm any mortals on this visit, but I regard those who can use draco perditio not as mortals, but as my enemies.”

  Had I thought he had no feelings? His eyes held a hint of fear and grief. Fear of me and…grief for the dead wyrm?

  Somehow I doubted that. And it scared me shitless that I’d managed to break his control.

  He stepped back and lowered his sword in one fluid motion. The pressure around my chest vanished. “Go.”

  It was an effort to get to my feet. Everyone—well, every mortal—looked horrified. Whether they were horrified at the dead wyrm or the sword or the spell I’d used, I couldn’t tell. The dragonlords merely stared at me, all of them now somehow holding long swords. Surely they weren’t afraid of me? I couldn’t even have managed a lighting spell after what I’d just done.

  Now I was on the dragonlords’ shit list. I guess it came under the heading of “work hazard,” but I was pretty sure the firm’s insurance wouldn’t cover this particular item.

  Five

  I walked toward the parking lot. Every muscle in my body hurt like hell, but I went with as much dignity as possible, managing not to double over and moan. That would have been humiliating. Valerie stayed behind for damage control, and Andersen escorted me to my car.

  “Are you going to be all right?”

  “I guess.” Even if I weren’t, what could he do? Heal me?

  “Here. Valerie told me to give this to you.”

  A bottle of Sex. I drained the midsize vial, not wasting a drop, and felt slightly less crippled. Too bad she’d sent only one. I could’ve used at least five more, disgusting or not.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Andersen said.

  “Right. I should have just let the thing devour me.”

  Andersen’s mouth thinned. “You could have immobilized it. Killing it ruined our strategy.”

  “Strategy? To get Patterson killed?”

  “He knew what he was doing.”

  “He knew what he was doing. Swain knows what he’s doing.” I wanted to bang my head against the side of my Audi, but I didn’t have the energy. “Why don’t you find out what Patterson’s concentration was?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “In college. His major. He was a failed necromancer. What did he know about dragons?” I got into my car like an eighty-year-old. “I’m going to go get the book, since that’s what they want. Keep your eye on them and don’t let Swain invite any more wyrms.”

  Before he could say a word I turned the key and stepped on the accelerator, letting the momentum slam my door shut for me. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to why I should’ve restrained myself. My job description didn’t include “dragon fodder.”

  Traffic was congested and I revived a bit as I drove. Along my side of the road, mobs of people were waving various signs declaring their devotion to the dragonlords and screaming inanely. The cops keeping them back scowled at everyone. They were probably sick of dealing with idiots.

  On the other side, clots of religious fanatics called the groupies devil worshippers and other lovely things. They were so loud I could hear them over the radio, which I had blasting my favorite boy band.

  Freedom of religion. Had the founding fathers thought of this when they decided that it was a dandy idea for our great nation?

  A uniformed officer stopped me as I slowly made my way out of downtown. He tapped on my windshield, and I lowered my window and turned down the radio.

  “ID and pass, ma’am?” he yelled. I could barely hear him.

  “Here.” I flipped my wallet open and showed him my driver’s license and the pass Valerie had given me. Nobody could get in or out without a special permit, not today anyway.

  He nodded and gestured at me to go. The traffic was lighter after the checkpoint, and I raised the window and drove off. I-66 was clear, at least the westbound lanes were. I put on sunglasses to avoid the glare of a thousand windshields going nowhere on the other side. A futile attempt to see a dragonlord. Their desperation made me cringe. Dragonlords aren’t fairytale godmothers who make dreams come true.

  And speaking of dragonlords, how was I supposed to bring the book back to Nathanael? Using a helicopter? Because that seemed to be the only way into Arlington at the moment.

  The steering wheel began to vibrate. I looked at it, puzzled. The radio wasn’t that loud. Then the entire Audi was trembling. I realized that it wasn’t my car, it was the ground underneath.

  Just like what had happened at TriMedica.

  I looked at the speedometer. 45 mph. Had Nathanael sent a wyrm after me? Stupidly enough, I hadn’t gotten their promise that they wouldn’t kill me while I went for the book. Now, if they wanted to kill me, they could have terminated their visit the second I left.

  Shit.

  The shaking grew so intense that it became difficult stay in control. I stomped on the brake, got out and ran to the shoulder. My Audi remained in the middle lane with the doo
r open. A convertible whipped by me, its driver’s eyes wide.

  The ground exploded, the force sending my car flying. An enormous wyrm, three times the size of the one I’d killed, surged out and snapped its jaws shut on my poor Audi while the car was still spinning in the air. It crumpled like an aluminum can with a huge crunching metal noise. I’d had that gorgeous piece of German engineering for less than a month. The insurance company was going to be pissed.

  The wyrm spat bits of steel from its mouth, saliva dripping in pools. This one had iridescent mother-of-pearl scales. The white sun turned them into a sparkling luster that would have blinded me if it hadn’t been for my sunglasses. Pupiless murky brown eyes stared at the carcass of my car as if looking for signs of life. I stayed low, hoping it wouldn’t notice me and go away.

  Several automobiles screeched to a stop, their drivers staring out the windshields. Goddamn it. If these people stayed, they could get hurt. My valiant and courageous plan to remain hidden wasn’t going to work.

  “Go! Get out!” I swung my arms, gesturing at them to continue driving. “Danger, danger!”

  Apparently, in addition to reducing their IQ by about half, the presence of a wyrm turned everyone deaf. Nobody even glanced my way. Several people took out their cell phones and began to snap photos.

  What kind of idiot takes pictures of a deadly predator on the loose instead of running away? “Get out!” This was the last time I was going to waste my breath on the crowd. I waved at the wyrm. “Hey, I’m the one you want!”

  The wyrm turned. It was completely out of the ground now, hissing like an overheated steam valve. Its tail swiped the ground, and people and cars smashed against the concrete divider between the west and eastbound lanes. On the other side, drivers began to climb out of their cars to gawk. Northern Virginia Rubberneck Syndrome. Some were on the phone, most likely to regale their friends and families with the terror and excitement of seeing a real wyrm up close and personal.