Nice Dragons Finish Last (Heartstrikers)

by Rachel Aaron

  “What job?”

  It would be more work to put Justin off than to tell him, so Julius quickly explained the situation with Svena and Katya, going to the shaman party, and how he’d come to be standing in front an empty commuter deck in the middle of the night.

  “So let me get this straight,” Justin said when he’d finished. “A human gave you a false address, and you let him get away with it?”

  “It’s not like that,” Julius said quickly. “I don’t think Lark did it on purpose. Katya probably just gave him a dummy address to keep people off her trail. She is on the run.”

  “No excuse,” his brother growled, popping his knuckles. “He lied to us, he has to pay. I say we go back there and squeeze him until something useful pops out.”

  “I’m not doing that!”

  Justin gave him a disgusted look. “Why? Because it’s not nice?”

  “Because it would be pointless,” Julius said. “Look, if Lark was trying to trick me, he’s long gone by now, and if he wasn’t, then he doesn’t know anything more than he’s already said. Either way, hunting him down isn’t going to help. We don’t need violence, we need a professional who knows what they’re doing. There are guys who make their living tracking people who don’t want to be found. I know one, actually.”

  “That’s convenient,” Justin said. “What’s his clan?”

  “He’s not in a clan. He’s human, one of my old gaming buddies.”

  Justin rolled his eyes. “What is it with you and humans?”

  “I like humans,” Julius reminded him. “Anyway, he might be able to get us a lead on Katya using the picture Lark gave me. I just need to get some money together for his fee and—”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Justin said, putting up his hands. “You’re going to pay him?”

  Julius blinked. “Of course. He’s a professional.”

  “He’s a human,” his brother snapped. “Humans serve us. Get that through your skull. You’re a Heartstriker, a dragon, an ancient and fearsome predator. You should be making people fall at your feet for the honor of doing your bidding, not paying them, and definitely not letting them lie to you without repercussions.” He turned away with a huff that sent a thin line of black smoke curling from between his lips. “This is exactly why Mother kicked you out, you know.”

  “Well, what else am I supposed to do?” Julius cried. “Fly around bellowing for Katya to come out and fight me?”

  “You could go back to that party and start shaking down humans,” Justin said. “She’s supposed to be with an alligator shaman, right? Someone there knows him, so stop being a pushover and go make them talk.”

  Julius paused. Going after the alligator shaman wasn’t such a bad idea, actually. Still. “I’m not going to interrogate a bunch of drunk mages,” he growled. “No one’s going to be intimidated by a sealed dragon any—”

  A loud, pained squeal shot through the air, making both brothers jump. Justin recovered immediately, but Julius was still reeling when he whirled around to see Marci standing beside her car. Her right arm was out in front of her, like she’d just finished throwing an underhanded pitch, and the first bracelet on her wrist was glowing like a spotlight in the dark. That was all Julius caught before he started to run.

  He got halfway across the street before he remembered to drop his speed to a believably human rate. He still made it to Marci’s side in seconds, hands up and ready to take on whatever it was they were fighting. But there were no goons waiting in the shadows when he reached her, no armed thugs threatening to attack. Instead, Marci jogged over to the curb and bent down to grab something black, furry, and unmoving out of the storm drain.

  “What is that?”

  The sharp question made him jump, and Julius looked up to see Justin standing right beside him. Naturally, he wasn’t winded at all from the run, though he did look a little disgusted by the thing in Marci’s hand. For once, the brothers were in agreement. From what Julius could make out, it looked like Marci was holding a rat the size of a terrier, but no rat he’d ever seen had fangs like that. Or five beady eyes, all of which were still twitching as Marci hoisted the thing aloft like a prize fish.

  “It’s a crater vole,” she announced proudly. “I’ve never seen one this big!”

  Julius recoiled in horror. “And you’re touching it? I thought they were poisonous.”

  “Oh, very,” Marci said. “Why do you think I roasted it first? Well, microwaved, to be precise.” She nodded to the first bracelet on her wrist, a blue plastic ring which was still steaming slightly. “The Thaumaturgical code of safety and ethics forbids the use of magical combustion in urban environments, which eliminates most combat fire spells. So I created a variation on the college staple ‘No-Microwave Microwave’ spell that does basically the same thing, only without the actual fire part.”

  Julius gaped at her. “Why?”

  “Because the microwave spell is horribly underutilized as a mere cooking charm,” she replied authoritatively. “As you see, the weaponization possibilities of a spell that instantly boils water particles inside organic matter are potentially—”

  “No, no, I understand that part,” he said. “I meant, why did you randomly kill a crater vole?”

  Marci blinked at him. “For the bounty, of course. Crater voles are an invasive, non-native species. DFZ Animal Control pays three dollars for every one you bring in.”

  “Hold up,” Justin said, stabbing his finger at the smoking mutant rat in her hands. “You killed that thing for three dollars?”

  “Hey, three dollars is three dollars,” Marci said, hefting the heavy carcass as she walked back to her car.

  Justin stomped after her. “But three dollars isn’t even worth the drive to turn it in. Why not go after the bigger bounties?”

  “Because I don’t want to die,” she answered, grabbing a trash bag out of her trunk and shoving the dead vole inside. “And maybe three dollars isn’t worth it to you, but when you’re broke, you can’t afford to leave money just waddling around on the side of the road.”

  Julius heard the rumble of his brother’s reply, but he wasn’t actually paying attention to the argument anymore. He was too distracted by the storm drain Marci had yanked the crater vole out of. Specifically, he was staring at the deep cuts in pavement around the drain’s metal grate.

  From across the street, you couldn’t see them at all. Standing directly over the storm drain, however, the grooves were impossible to miss, and obviously man-made. This was no natural cracking. Someone had deliberately cut a thin line around the edge of the drainage grate with a cement saw. It wasn’t until he’d squatted down for a better look, though, that Julius understood why.

  “Marci,” he called. “Can you come over here, please?”

  He heard a trunk slam, and then the loud slap of Marci’s boots as she stomped over. “I can’t believe that jerk is related to you. And where does he get off wearing a sword? What century does he think this is?”

  Julius wasn’t touching that question with a ten foot pole, so he changed the subject instead, pointing down at the cut in the pavement and the thin copper strip covered with etched markings he’d spotted at the bottom. “Is that a ward?”

  Tirade forgotten, Marci squatted down beside him, squinting through what Julius suddenly realized was probably very bad light for a human. “I think it is,” she said. “But it’s a really weird one.”

  “A shaman ward?” he prompted, holding his breath.

  She nodded. “Without question. No Thaumaturge would be caught dead putting down notation that sloppy.”

  He could have hugged her. “This is it!”

  She gave him a strange look. “This is what?”

  “Lark didn’t give me the wrong address,” he said, pointing at the storm drain, which was located directly in front of the parking deck, right where Lark’s address said it would be. “They’re not in the Underground, they’re underground. The shamans we’re looking for are in the sewers! Right here!
”

  Now that he said it, it all made perfect sense. Where else would an alligator shaman live in a city like this? Lark had even said they were living in the pipes. If that was right, then maybe Katya was here. Maybe he wasn’t dead after all!

  “Why are we staring at a drain?”

  Julius jumped at the sound of Justin’s voice, but even that couldn’t bring down his newfound good mood. “Justin, look!” he said, hopping to his feet. “We found them!”

  Justin gave the old grate a distasteful look. “The crater voles?”

  “No, the shamans. The people we’re looking for.” He moved closer, dropping his voice to a whisper only dragon ears could hear. “The ones Katya’s hiding with.”

  Justin’s eyebrows shot up. “That was easy,” he said, breaking into a grin. “How do you want to do this?”

  Something about the way he said that made Julius decidedly nervous. “What do you mean?”

  Justin heaved an enormous sigh and wrapped his arm around Julius’s neck, dragging him away from Marci. Normally, Julius would have been grateful for his brother’s unusual thoughtfulness in not blurting things out where she could hear. Right now, though, he was too busy trying not to choke to pay proper attention.

  “What are you doing?” he gasped when his brother finally released him.

  “Keeping you from screwing up,” Justin snapped. “You can’t go in the front door. That’s where all the traps are.”

  Julius stared at his brother in astonishment. “You’re worried about traps?”

  “No, but I’m not the one who’s sealed, am I?” He crossed his massive arms, looking Julius up and down. “This isn’t some mortal you’re chasing, idiot. You can’t just show up at a dragon’s stronghold and expect to negotiate like equals. She’s not going to listen to a thing you say while she’s in her lair, surrounded by her troops.”

  If this had been a dragoness like Svena, or any of their own sisters, that would have been a good point, but Julius didn’t think his brother had the right of it this time. “I don’t think it’s like that,” he said. “We’re not assaulting the Three Sister’s ice palace. The humans down there probably don’t even know Katya’s a dragon.”

  “That doesn’t mean she’s not going to act like one,” Justin said, glaring over his shoulder at Marci, who’d been steadily edging closer to them in a not-so-subtle attempt to eavesdrop. When she got the hint and backed off again, he continued. “Look, it’s very simple. All we have to do is sneak in and take out her humans before she knows what’s up. Then, while she’s reeling, we take her down. Once we’ve got our boots on her neck, she’ll do whatever we want.”

  Julius suddenly felt queasy. It wasn’t that he thought Justin’s plan wouldn’t work, but taking out a commune full of the sort of mages who hung out with Lark felt…wrong. And then there was Katya herself, who was on the run from her clan, which was to say, ruthless hunters who thought like Justin. Two dragons busting into her safe haven to put their boots on her neck would terrify her, and no one fought harder than a cornered, terrified dragon. That would be a real shame, too, because given the humans she’d chosen to hang out with, Julius had the feeling Katya wasn’t a fighter. He had no idea how to explain all that to Justin in a way his brother would understand, though, so he tried another approach.

  “I don’t think we need to do that,” he said, keeping his voice reasonable, rational, and completely without challenge. “The whole reason Ian picked me for this job was precisely because I wasn’t someone Katya would consider a threat. If we go in guns blazing—”

  “We don’t have guns.”

  Julius sighed. “Fine, if we go in like dragons, she’s just going to bolt, and then we’ll have to hunt her down all over again. But if we go in nicely and give her the chance to see us as allies instead of enemies, we might not have to fight at all.”

  Justin stared at him. “Really? That’s your plan? Talking?”

  Not knowing how else to answer, Julius nodded, and his brother threw back his head with a hiss.

  “You know, Julius, this is your entire problem. You waste all your time thinking up ways not to fight instead of ways to win. Let’s say Katya does agree to chit-chat. It isn’t like she’s going to just change her mind and go back to her family because you ask. What were you going to do then, genius? Knock her on the head and wave goodbye to her mages on your way out?”

  Julius had to fold his fingers in a fist to keep them from going to the chain in his pocket. That had been the plan, more or less, but hearing Justin spell it out like that, especially after his own arguments for negotiation, made him feel like a big fat hypocrite. His brother must have seen it, too, because Justin went straight for the kill.

  “I didn’t come all the way over here to help you play nice,” he growled. “If this job was actually about getting the Three Sisters’ runaway back, they would have sent someone competent. But they didn’t, because it isn’t. It’s a test. A challenge to see if there’s actually a dragon under that scrawny frame of yours, and I’m here to make sure you don’t screw it up.”

  Julius swallowed. “I know that. But I’m supposed to do what Ian—”

  “Screw Ian,” Justin snapped. “He’s using you. So forget him, and forget his stupid plan. You don’t show Mother how great a dragon you can be by exploiting the fact that no one thinks you’re a threat. You need to be a threat, so here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to walk down the street to the next storm drain over and go in from there. We’ll find a way into Katya’s hiding place from the side, where her defenses aren’t as strong. Once we’re in, we’ll smash her humans before they know what’s up and force her to submit. When it’s over, Ian will have his lost dragon back, the Three Sisters will be reminded that Heartstrikers are not tools, and you’ll come out looking like a dragon to be feared at last. Trust me, Mother will love it.”

  Julius had no doubt that Bethesda would, in fact, adore such a blatant show of ruthless force. There was a reason Justin was one of her favorites. Julius, on the other hand, didn’t like it at all. “I don’t think—”

  “I don’t care,” Justin said. “It was your stupid way of thinking that got you into this mess in the first place. My way is going to get you out. Do you want your wings back or not?”

  Julius closed his eyes with a silent curse. This whole thing felt like it was spinning out of control. Much as he hated to admit it, though, Justin did have a point, and it wasn’t like Svena’s plan to trick and chain her sister was any better. Seeing that, why not trade a distasteful plan that used him like a tool for one that least made him look fearsome and ruthless in his mother’s eyes? Other than the part where he didn’t particularly want to be fearsome or ruthless, or kill a bunch of human mages who probably had no idea that the woman they were protecting was actually a dragon, or—

  “You’re taking way too long to think about this,” Justin said, slapping him on the back hard enough to bruise. “Come on, let’s go.”

  He walked away before Julius could protest, marching back to the car where Marci, who’d apparently given up trying to overhear, was attempting to stuff a few more things into her already massively over-packed shoulder bag. Julius followed a second later, doing his best to reason away his rapidly ballooning sense of impending doom.

  So Justin had bulled him into doing something he didn’t want to do. What else was new? His brother meant well, and he really did seem to be genuinely trying to help, which was more than Julius could say for the rest of his family. The fact that his plan didn’t feel right didn’t mean a thing. Nothing properly draconic ever felt right to Julius. But however bad Justin’s plan to make him look like a ruthless dragon seemed, it couldn’t possibly be worse than getting eaten by your mother for not being one, right?

  That logic sounded solid in his head, but Julius still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was about to do something he’d regret. A feeling that only got worse when Justin started jogging down the street toward the next closest storm drain,
yelling over his shoulder for them to get a move on.

  ***

  “I want it stated,” Marci said, grasping her bag tight as she stared down the gaping hole beneath the storm drain’s cover, “just for the record, that this is a terrible idea.”

  “Duly noted,” Julius muttered, peering into the dark in an attempt to see the water he could hear rushing below them.

  “I mean it,” she went on. “I don’t care what your idiot brother says. Going into the DFZ sewers is a stupid, reckless, horribly dangerous thing to do under any circumstances, but going down at night is just suicidal. Haven’t you ever watched Sewer Hunters: DFZ?”

  Julius hadn’t, but he could guess well enough. “Let’s just get this over with quickly.”

  “Why’d you let him talk you into this, anyway? This is your job, not his.”

  Julius didn’t know how to reply to that in a way Marci could understand. He’s bigger than me, or he’s what I’m supposed to be weren’t explanations that would fly with a human. In the end, he settled for a half truth. “It’s just easier to go along when he gets like this. Justin’s very stubborn.”

  “I’m stubborn,” Marci said with a snort. “He’s a runaway freight train.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Julius insisted, albeit with more confidence than he felt. “You’re a great mage, and Justin’s tougher than he looks. Also, we’re not going into the sewers. We’re going into the storm water system, which should be pretty clean thanks to all of Algonquin’s water regulations. And anyway, it’s not like we have to go far.” He nodded back toward the warded storm drain, only half a block away. “Surely we can survive walking a hundred feet underground.”

  “Well, I still think it’s a stupid risk,” Marci said. “There’s a reason all the DFZ’s sewer work is done by automated drones. Magic rises from the ground, and thanks to Algonquin, Detroit’s ground has more of it any other city on the planet. Not all of that power is friendly. Why else do you think everyone who can afford to lives up on the skyways?”