Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2)

by Becca Mills

  Nothing bad happened — or nothing worse, anyway.

  Slowly, I gripped the top and pulled up my head.

  Some force hit the back of my head and parted around it, blowing my hair forward. My ponytail rippled against my cheek in slow motion instead of whipping around, as might happen if you stuck your head out a car window.

  I struggled to breathe. The air felt thick and syrupy.

  A craggy, uneven surface stretched away ahead of me.

  As I watched, the surface began to rise. I started peeling away from the wall and pulled my body back in. The dragon was descending. Its new angle showed the whole surface of its back. Beyond that, I could see its great tail lashing in a powerful serpentine pattern.

  It really is swimming like a crocodile, I realized. It had thickened the air to something like a fluid and was swimming through it — a river in the sky.

  A cloud passed just overhead, swirling violently in the eddies of the dragon’s working. Once it cleared the cloud, the dragon began ascending again. Maybe it couldn’t work air that was too wet.

  I lowered my head.

  I couldn’t go up there. Breathing the thickened air was almost impossible, and the force of it hitting my whole body would probably sweep me right off the dragon.

  Carefully, I lowered myself back down the wall.

  I stood for a minute, feeling shaky. Then I headed to the cross passage that seemed most promising. It was about a foot wide when the beast’s back was straight but narrowed to half that as the body flexed. I couldn’t tell exactly how long it was. Seven or eight feet, maybe. I’d have to shuffle through sideways. Really fast.

  I counted. The passage was at its widest for just a couple seconds.

  This is crazy. Who knows what’s on the other end? It could be just as narrow.

  I sat down.

  I thought of Williams lying somewhere, gasping for breath. You’re about to get me killed, he’d said.

  I stood back up.

  I remembered a bad choice I’d made in the not-too-distant past. It had gotten a friend killed and half a little world destroyed. It had almost gotten me killed too.

  Sometimes the smartest thing to do is nothing. Sometimes the best choice is to sit your ass down and wait for help. It’s not heroic. It’s not exciting. It doesn’t make you feel strong and in charge of your destiny. But sucking doesn’t make something wrong.

  What could I do for Williams, anyway? I wasn’t a healer. Would I sit there and hold his hand? He’d probably rather be alone.

  Better to wait for Ghosteater to find me.

  I sat back down.

  Something that felt like an eternity crept past. Then another.

  Damn it. This isn’t right.

  I dug my first-aid kit out of my pack and slung my waterskin over my shoulder. Then I took a couple deep breaths and dove into the passage. I shuffled sideways as fast as I could, realized the gap was closing, panicked, tripped, and fell. I landed halfway out the far end, accompanied by a small avalanche of bottle-cap bugs I’d scraped off the walls on the way down. The first-aid kit landed on my head. The passage reached its minimum, giving my thighs a hard squeeze. Then it opened again, and I jerked my legs out.

  The bugs legged it back to the walls — except for the ones I’d landed on. I moved off the squishy mess and then drew my knees up and rested my aching head on them, waiting for my heart to stop racing.

  I looked around. I was in a gully very much like the one I’d left.

  I explored it end to end and found nothing — just more passageways like the one I’d come through.

  I walked back toward the center, swaying with the slither of the dragon’s body and eyeballing the passages leading tailward. I decided which was widest and lunged through before I had time to worry about it too much. This time I didn’t fall.

  The gully on the other side was empty. I chose another passage and went through.

  I found Williams in the tenth gully. He was lying face down, one shoulder angled awkwardly up against the back wall. He was still wearing his pack.

  At first, I thought he was dead. But once I knelt beside him, I could hear his shallow gasps.

  I used my knife to cut his pack’s shoulder and waist straps. Removing it seemed to ease his breathing a little.

  Gently, I tried to turn him over, but moving a person that large gently was impossible, at least for me. It took a major heave.

  He landed on his back and made a pained sound. His eyes opened slowly, and with a struggle, managed to focus on me. I saw him mouth my name.

  He was clearly in bad shape.

  I had no idea what to say, so I just said, “Hey,” and then, “Yeah, it’s me,” and then, “How are you?”

  Way to be an idiot.

  I opened my first-aid kit. Tourniquet, airway tube, rubbing alcohol, bandages, sutures, scissors, tape, antibiotics … I had nothing for him.

  Why couldn’t I have been gifted in healing?

  I raised my head and found him watching me.

  His left hand twitched, so I took it. What else could I do?

  His lips moved, and I bent down. It took several tries, but finally I understood.

  “Weapons.”

  “You want me to get your guns?”

  His eyes said, Yes.

  I unsnapped the restraining strap and pulled his sidearm. It was the Glock 34 he always carried.

  I sat there holding it. A suspicion grew.

  “You’re not going to ask me to shoot you, are you?”

  The answer was plain from his expression — that wasn’t what he wanted.

  I looked down at the hard red flesh beneath us. “I really don’t think a few rounds in the back are going to do much to this thing.”

  An even-on-my-deathbed-I’m-afflicted-with-idiocy look passed over his face.

  Then he lost consciousness.

  I looked at the gun in my hands. It was small and boxy and inert. It didn’t radiate evil, or hunger, or power. It didn’t radiate anything at all.

  Dragons look like death. Dinos too. And Ghosteater. Even a minor power like Chasca had death-bringer tattooed all over her. In comparison, the Glock looked like a toy.

  It wasn’t, of course. It had taken centuries for the human powers of the S-Em to figure out that human technology was as dangerous as anything they could muster, but they’d gotten there eventually.

  Had the dragons gotten there with them, or were they out of the loop?

  I undid Williams’s belt, removed the Glock’s holster, and added it to my own.

  As carefully as I could, I unbuckled his shotgun holster and eased it out from under him.

  Why hadn’t I done that before turning him over? Dumb.

  I use my knife to poke some new holes in the holster’s straps and put it on. I wasn’t going back for the rifle, at this point. The shotgun would have to do.

  True to form, Williams had made himself a walking ammunition depot. I found six full magazines for the Glock in his pants pockets and a bandolier loaded with fifty shotgun slugs in the top of his pack. I poked through the rest, hoping he’d inherited a grenade from Terry, but was disappointed.

  I set the pack down, and it slid slowly toward the headward wall.

  After a second, the situation registered. We were descending.

  Chapter 21

  I was falling.

  Winds buffeted me, twirling me around. I lost my grip on Williams. Seconds later, I hit the ground hard.

  I lay there, trying to breathe — my lungs wouldn’t work at all.

  Finally, I got some air in. Stench engulfed me, and I gagged. Wherever I was, it reeked of death.

  I rolled over and pushed myself up into a crouch, sore but functional.

  It was pitch black. I could hear the dragon moving, off to my left. Its skin rubbing against itself sounded like a hundred trees being sawed down at once. It was also making noises — short, breathy hisses and gurgles.

  Maybe Ghosteater had really hurt it.

  Whe
re’s Williams?

  Pointlessly, I looked around.

  I’d been hanging onto him when the dragon’s working plucked us off its back. I’d only lost him in the last few seconds. He must be close by.

  The dragon made a short, rough coughing sound and began moving away. I listened as the sounds faded. After a minute, I couldn’t hear it anymore.

  “Williams?” I whispered.

  I heard something off to my right.

  Might be him. Might not.

  I was scared to move.

  That’s silly. I’m as vulnerable right here as over there.

  I drew the Glock and started moving, feeling my way before putting my weight down.

  Ten steps. Twenty.

  I stepped on something that made a metallic ting, and I froze. Nothing happened, so I bent and picked it up. It was Williams’s trowel.

  I set it back down and continued on.

  Ten more steps.

  I heard something.

  Two more steps.

  It was Williams, laboring for air. I was sure.

  I took a deep breath and forced myself not to rush the rest of the way.

  When my foot finally touched him, I knelt and ran my hands over him. I couldn’t find any new injuries, but that didn’t mean much. What was broken in him was on the inside.

  He moved a bit and tried to speak. I offered him water, and he drank a little.

  Then he said, “Run.”

  I looked around. “Run where? I can’t see a thing.”

  His head turned to the side. At first I thought he’d passed out, but when I touched his face, his eyes were open.

  I realized he was looking in the direction I was supposed to go.

  I leaned way down, getting my face on his level, and stared into the darkness. And stared. And stared. Weird black-on-black shapes started dancing in front of my eyes.

  “I can’t see anything that way.”

  He took a gasping breath. “Go.”

  I sat up on my heels.

  For a few minutes, my mind was weirdly blank. I thought, I have to think about this, but no thoughts came.

  Williams became restless. I knew he wanted me to go.

  “Hush,” I said. “I’m thinking.”

  To make it not a lie, I imagined myself standing up and walking in the direction he’d looked. In my mind, I walked and walked, and eventually I found the far wall of the cave, because that’s what this place must be — a cavern or a burrow or something like that, deep underground. I walked along it until I found an opening — a tunnel leading up — and began to climb. I climbed and climbed, a hundred feet, a thousand, more, pulled on by a faint light from above. Finally, I emerged on the surface. I stood next to the dragon’s den. In a barren valley, perhaps, or on a mountainside. Alone. Lost. With no food, no guide, no map, no idea where to find water, much less the ligature. Dragons circled overhead. They were all the wrong dragons.

  I lowered myself back down next to Williams and took his hand.

  He tried to say something, gasped, and tried again. When he finally got it out, it was “coward.”

  “Realist,” I corrected. “Now shut up. You’re not going to goad me into leaving.”

  I settled in next to him and listened to him struggling for breath. I wished I had it in me to just shoot him. No one should have to die like that.

  I remembered when we were running, and he’d looked back. My guess was that he’d seen the dragon’s tail coming in low. If he hadn’t made me stumble, it’d have hit me too.

  I played it over in my mind. I couldn’t think of another way he’d end up hundreds of feet away, crushed.

  Well, I’d misjudged the man. Be it loyalty or stricture or something else, he’d stuck to the task Cordus had given him, protecting me to the end.

  I shouldn’t have brought him here.

  But he chose to come. Not bringing him would’ve meant not coming myself, and oddly, I didn’t regret that choice. Whatever Limu was planning, it mattered. An entity like Eye of the Heavens wouldn’t have gotten involved in the situation if it weren’t important. Trying to get the lost pieces of her back … that had been worth it. Worth the sacrifice.

  I’m lying to myself. I could’ve come and left him behind.

  Ghosteater let him come because I wanted it. No word from me, and Williams would be on his way back to Free with Mizzy and Ida.

  And I’d be dead already — killed in the rhino-pig stampede, if not sooner.

  But I was going to be dead soon, anyway. No place that smelled like this one was for keeping prisoners alive. His being here was pointless.

  The depth of guilt that washed over me was astonishing.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t respond. Maybe he was unconscious.

  I closed my eyes and tried to block out that truth-telling voice in my head.

  Williams shifted under my arm.

  I sat up, groggy, with no sense of how long I’d been dozing.

  I put my hand on his forehead. “Are you —”

  He gasped and jerked, then shot out from under my hand. I felt his body brush past my feet.

  For a moment, I just sat there, confused.

  Then I jammed the Glock in my waistband and scrambled after him on my hands and knees, groping left and right.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  Then my fingertips brushed cloth.

  I threw myself in that direction and landed on his arm just as whatever had him pulled him away. I hung onto him and got dragged a few feet.

  He made a small but very unhappy sound.

  From the direction of his feet, something hissed. It was loud, low to the ground, and very close.

  I lunged forward, fumbled out the Glock, and emptied the magazine in that direction. The hissing turned into a series of yawping cries, and I heard something moving away. Dragging itself away, barely alive, hopefully.

  I reloaded and crouched over Williams, waiting.

  The attack came from my right — something huge and fast bashed into my shoulder and sent me sliding across the ground. I heard the Glock clatter away into the darkness. I couldn’t feel my right arm. I groped for Williams’s shotgun with my left hand, but the thing was on me. Teeth sank into my shoulder. Claws tangled in my hair and raked across my stomach.

  Something inside me broke open and poured out.

  The beast dropped me and backed away, yawping. It fell. I could hear the rasp of its hide on the ground as it writhed. Its yawps came faster and faster, becoming almost a scream. Then it burst into flames.

  Or rather, the radiative heat I’d created inside it burned its way to the surface.

  Shakily, I sat up. I had to shield my eyes for several seconds — after all that time in the dark, even the deep reddish flames of burning flesh were too bright.

  I looked around.

  The beast was on its side. The fire had consumed its belly and was working outwards. Its legs were still twitching. Its jaws opened and closed spasmodically. It was a dragon, but clearly a baby — maybe eight feet long.

  The wrong dragon had brought us home to feed her young.

  The one I’d shot was nowhere to be seen, but a wide, dark smear led off into the darkness.

  Williams was about ten feet away.

  Crawling back to him took ages. My right arm wouldn’t work at all. A deep, grinding pain was starting up just below my shoulder. The dragon’s teeth had punctured me in a dozen places. I was bleeding.

  When I got there, he wasn’t conscious. He was barely breathing, long seconds going by between each gasping inhale.

  I sat there next to him. I couldn’t really think of anything else to do.

  Minutes ticked by.

  The light from the burning dragon faded and then surged as the flames reached the tail. At the very edge of the pool of light, I made out the one I’d shot. It was lying motionless. I felt a surge of pride at having killed two of the things.

  From far above, a roar. The ground began to hu
m, then tremble.

  I heard the wrong dragon burst into the chamber, felt it thundering across the floor. Then it stopped. Slowly, its head penetrated the circle of light. I could only see the lower jaw — all the rest was above in the thick darkness. There was a moment of stillness, marked only by the soft crackle of flames.

  Then it yawped, a single, slow sound, oddly soft.

  A huge chunk of the rock above us vanished in a gale of wind, and a thing too monstrous to comprehend seized the dragon and jerked it up and away.

  I sat there, looking up stupidly into the sunshine.

  For a long minute, nothing happened.

  Then a huge wind began high above us. I could see it swirling up there, like a tornado. It descended toward us, pulverizing the remainder of the rock as it went.

  No, I realized, not rock. Air.

  The wrong dragon had tunneled its lair down into a mountain-sized block of hardened air, and now it was dissolving — just blowing away.

  The last of the walls vanished around us. We were left exposed on a broad, bluish-white mound of air thickened to the density of rock.

  Over us stood a dragon of unbelievable size. The wrong dragon was longer than a football field. This one could’ve curled up around Michigan Stadium. Twice. We were hundreds of feet above the plain where it stood, but we were still only at the level of its lower forelimb.

  Slowly, it moved in and started lowering itself. I couldn’t tell what part of it I was seeing. Thirty seconds of greenish-gray, house-sized scales swept by. Then a golden eye forty feet wide. Then more scales — smaller, flatter, and studded with Frisbee-sized pores. Then, finally, a line of stupefying teeth, freshly washed in blood.

  I heard a soft chuff and looked up.

  There, standing on a random protuberance on the dragon’s face, was Ghosteater.

  He jumped down gracefully.

  “Pup,” he said, tail waving, “this is the right dragon.”

  “This your blood?”

  I turned. Williams was holding my discarded shirt, frowning.

  I shrugged and turned back to my pack.

  Looking at him made me uncomfortable.

  He was fine — the right dragon had healed us both. But I’d still as good as gotten him killed. Last minute salvation via dragon god isn’t exactly something you can count on, after all. Talk about a deus ex machina.