Nice Dragons Finish Last (Heartstrikers)

by Rachel Aaron

  “Gotta hand it to your human,” he said as Julius crept over. “She sure knows how to stir up the hornet’s nest.”

  Julius could only nod, staring down in horror at massive crowd of humans standing in the dusty basketball court below.

  “I don’t believe it,” he whispered. “I mean, I knew he’d have a bigger force than the one he sent to the house, but that’s just ridiculous. There must a hundred guys down there!”

  “Eighty-one,” Justin corrected, breathing deep through his nose. “No mages, and no heavy ordinance.” He sniffed again. “Mostly smells like assault weapons and semi-automatic side arms—Glocks, Desert Eagles, Beretta Twenty-Fifties—that sort of thing. Someone down there definitely has a taser, though, so watch out for that. Getting electrocuted sucks.”

  By the time he finished, Julius was staring at his brother with his mouth hanging open. “How is your nose that good?”

  Justin gave him a haughty look. “If it’s important, I’m good at it.”

  “So if you’re not good at it, it’s not important?”

  “Exactly,” Justin said, leaning down. “You see Katya?”

  Julius didn’t, and that was a problem. He could smell her—a sharp, ancient, icy scent that rose over the haze of gunmetal, human sweat, and cheap cologne—so he knew she was here, but even though he could see the whole of the dust-covered basketball court and most of the fold out wooden bleachers beside it, he didn’t see a single person in the crowd of heavily augmented muscle who could possibly be their dragoness. He did, however, see Bixby.

  Marci had never actually described him, but there was no one else the man standing under the portable floodlights clipped to the remains of the home basketball goal could be. If the flashy suit and slicked-back mobster hair hadn’t been a big enough tip-off, the way he was ordering the battalion of hired guns around, despite being the only non-augmented person in the building, was a dead giveaway.

  “There’s one at least,” he whispered, inching closer to the torn, rusted edge of the hole. “But we have to find Katya. If we can’t get a bead on her, this won’t work.”

  Justin shrugged. “Fine with me. If your overly complicated scheme falls through, we’ll just go back to my original plan of ‘beat up humans, take dragon.’”

  “I don’t think even you can beat up that many humans.”

  “Then you clearly haven’t seen me fight in a while,” Justin said, shifting his weight as he scowled up at the dark. Something he’d been doing a lot since they’d gotten up here, Julius realized with a start.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “I don’t know,” Justin said. “That’s the problem. I’m normally great in the dark, but I can’t see a thing.” He shifted his weight again. “I don’t like it.”

  That was the closest Julius had ever heard his brother come to admitting he was nervous. Then again, this place would make anyone uneasy. The creepy, depressing magic wasn’t actually as bad up here on the roof, but thanks to the light coming up from below them, the rest of the Pit was darker than ever. Even trying to see across the street to where Bob had parked felt uncomfortably like staring into the abyss, and Julius grimaced, returning his gaze to the gym full of hired murderers, which suddenly seemed like a much safer thing to look at.

  “I wish Bob would stop being so cryptic and just help us for real,” he grumbled. “He’s older than all of us put together and multiplied by ten. He could take that whole room without breaking a sweat.”

  “Then it’s better that he’s waiting in the car. He’s got enough glory already, we don’t need him here hogging ours. Besides, we still don’t know why Estella’s actually doing all of this. It could be this whole setup is just a ploy to lure Bob out and assassinate him.”

  Julius froze. He hadn’t even thought of that angle, and he was even more surprised that his brother had. Of course, Justin was a knight of the Heartstriker. It was a knight’s job to think about things like assassinations. When he turned to ask what else his brother thought might be important, though, Justin was no longer beside him. He was standing several feet away, glaring up into the dark like he was trying to clear the air with the force of his disapproval.

  “Justin!” he hissed. “Stop that! It’s almost—”

  His phone buzzed in his pocket, and Julius ground his teeth. “There’s the signal,” he whispered, waving his hand. “Get over here, we’re about to start!”

  Justin ignored him entirely, holding up his hand for silence before cupping it to his ear like he was listening.

  Julius was about to get up and drag the stupid dragon back into position when a crash echoed through the Pit’s eerie silence. Forgetting about his brother, he whirled back to the hole, almost falling in as he leaned down to see the gym’s double doors slam open, and then Marci strode into the room.

  Even though they’d planned her entrance together, actually seeing it happen sent a surge of pride all the way to Julius’s toes. She marched out into the gym like she owned it, stopping at old basketball court’s free throw line to stare down the wall of guns that had immediately locked onto her with all the self-possession of a queen. Not a flicker of fear showed on her face as she eyed the army that had been hired to trap her, and when she spoke, her voice was so calm and confident, Julius didn’t even catch the illusion she’d woven to hide her nervousness until he realized Marci sounded almost nothing like herself.

  “I’m here,” she announced. “Alone, as requested.”

  Not wanting to be outdone, Bixby pushed out of his circle of guards and stepped forward. Unlike Marci, though, he had no magic to hide behind, and he couldn’t keep the telltale quiver out of his voice. “All alone?”

  “As you see,” she said, gesturing back through the doors at the empty dark behind her.

  Bixby didn’t look convinced. “And the Kosmolabe?”

  Marci reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out the glistening golden ball that had started this whole mess. “Right here,” she said, holding it up for all to see. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Fine by me,” Bixby replied, jerking his head.

  At the signal, one of the goons walked behind the ancient bleachers and picked up a long, wrapped bundle tucked against the wall that Julius had initially dismissed as trash. Now, though, he saw that thing inside the black plastic tarp moved and slumped like a body. Sure enough, when the goon reached his boss, Bixby reached over and yanked the dusty plastic away to reveal Katya’s unconscious face.

  “No funny business,” he warned, pulling a big, old-fashioned revolver out of his jacket pocket and aiming it at Svena’s little sister. He pointed his other hand at a folding card table that had been set up on the old basketball court’s center line. “Put the Kosmolabe there and step back. Once I’m sure you’re not cheating us, we’ll bring the girl over.”

  Marci shook her head. “You first.”

  Bixby cocked his gun and pressed the barrel to Katya’s temple. “You’re in no position to make demands. I’ve told you what to do, now do it, or kiss Blondie the Magic Dragon goodbye.”

  Julius winced at the casual mention of Katya’s true nature. What was Estella thinking, playing so loose with their identities in the DFZ? Still, so far, Bixby was acting exactly as predicted. Likewise, Marci was playing her part to the hilt, putting on an almost too dramatic show of thinking it over before slumping her shoulders in apparent defeat and starting toward the table.

  She placed the sparkling Kosmolabe on the square of blue jeweler’s velvet Bixby had provided and stepped back again, raising her hands as she went. At the same time, a pair of men stepped in to shut the gym doors behind her, blocking her escape. Only then, when the trap was seemingly closed, did Bixby re-holster his gun and walk to the table, leaving Katya in the care of the giant human who’d picked her up.

  “Julius,” Justin said.

  Julius waved for his brother to shut up. It was almost their cue.

  “Julius.”

  “What?”

>   “You know how the Underground is supposed to have all sorts of nasty creatures since it’s super magical spirit land or whatever?”

  “Yes,” Julius said, keeping his eyes locked on Bixby as he approached the Kosmolabe. Just a few more steps. “What about it?”

  “Can any of them fly?”

  That question was just odd enough to make Julius risk a look. He tilted his head back, staring up into the dark, but he didn’t see a thing. He couldn’t even see the bottom of the skyways he knew must be above them, just blackness. But as he turned to ask Justin what on earth he was talking about, something enormous, heavy, and full of jagged teeth fell out of the dark right onto his head, knocking Julius straight through the rusting roof and into the gym below.

  ***

  Marci was ninety percent sure she was going to mess something up. She’d played it off to Julius back at the house, but now that she was actually here, wrapped in so many wards and illusions her hands were shaking from the effort of keeping them all up, she knew, just knew she was going to blow it.

  If she’d been alone in the gym, there wouldn’t have been a problem. She’d held down this many spells plenty of times before, but those had always been in practice rooms back at the university, usually to win bets against her fellow doctoral candidates. Field experience, she was learning, was a completely different animal.

  Even with her anti-bullet ward roaring around her like a furnace thanks to the enormous bank of power she’d siphoned off of Justin, she’d underestimated just how terrifying it would be to have an entire room full of guns pointed at you. But even that might have been tolerable if it wasn’t for the toxic ambient magic of the Pit itself.

  Any mage with even a year of formal training had heard of the Pit. It was one of the most famous magical fall-out zones in the world. Everyone studied it whether they were going to be working with magical ecosystems or not. Again, though, academic knowledge was letting her down. Reading about the magical pollution left by so much death was one thing, but actually being in the middle of all that cold, empty, stagnant power was quickly becoming more than she could take. Even loaded up on Justin’s clean, high-grade magic, just standing in the filth made her feel dirty from the inside out. Add in the Bixby situation, and all Marci wanted to do was run away as fast as she could. But while her instincts were in complete agreement that fleeing was the best course of action, she didn’t move, because Julius’s plan was working perfectly.

  So far, everything had gone exactly as he’d predicted: Bixby’s over-the-top setup, the army of hired thugs, his demand to inspect the Kosmolabe himself, everything. The only detail he’d gotten wrong was his assumption that Bixby would have a mage. But, unless he was keeping someone in reserve, Marci didn’t even feel the presence of another ward. A suicidally stupid oversight on their enemy’s part, and a very lucky break for her.

  With no mage to worry about, all she had to do was hold on until Bixby reached the golden ball on the table, the illusionary Kosmolabe she’d spent twenty minutes putting together in the safe house with all that wonderful dragon magic. When Bixby’s fingers touched the false surface, Marci would backlash the spell right in his face. With so much power behind it, the shock would kill him instantly, at which point Justin and Julius would drop down and grab Katya while Bixby’s men wasted their bullets on Marci’s ward.

  She’d been a bit skeptical about that last part, but Julius had reasoned that Bixby’s hired guns would be much more interested in protecting the man who paid them than the thing they’d been paid to protect. His hope was that by the time the goons realized their shots weren’t doing the job, the two Heartstrikers would be out the door with Katya. Once they were clear, Marci would dump the rest of her hoarded magic into her microwave spell for one final heat blast, opening a window for her to GTFO with the real Kosmolabe, which was safely hidden at the bottom of her bag.

  That was the detail she’d argued with Julius about the most, actually. She would have felt much safer leaving the actual Kosmolabe in the car with Ghost and Bob where there was no chance if it being damaged in the chaos, but Julius had refused to back down. The Kosmolabe was the highest value target, he’d said, which meant Marci should have it on her to ransom for her own life if something went wrong.

  Given her own misgivings about her ability to pull off the operation, she had to admit it was nice to have a backup. But they were nearly halfway through now, and everything was running smoothly. Bixby was almost to the table already, and she hadn’t messed up yet.

  She wouldn’t, either. Even though the cut on her neck stung like crazy and the stress was making her sweat so badly she was worried the spellwork she’d painted around her body would start to smudge, Marci just clutched her illusion of perfect calm tighter and waited for her chance. Bixby was almost in position. Six more steps and she would finally be able to pay him back for all he’d done. All she had to do was hold on. Just five more steps and it was done. Four more. Three—

  A crash exploded trough the room, followed by an animal roar that turned her blood to ice.

  No, she thought frantically. Not yet. It was too soon. But Bixby had stopped in his tracks a good three feet away from the fake Kosmolabe to look for the sound, and he wasn’t alone. Everyone’s heads were jerking toward the roof, and Marci knew with crushing certainty that it was all ruined. There was no way she could draw the room’s fire now. All she could do was look up with the rest as Julius hurtled down from the roof to land on the dusty gym floor…

  With an enormous creature right on top of him.

  The sight drove all thoughts of ruined plans from Marci’s head, replacing them with pure, frozen panic. Julius had hit the ground so hard, part of her mind couldn’t accept that he was still alive even after he rolled over and started fighting the thing on chest. The thing Marci couldn’t actually put a name to.

  Even with the glaring floodlights Bixby’s people had set up, the monster on top of Julius was unrecognizable. The best she could make out was a roughly eight-foot-long mass of black leathery wings, hooked claws, and teeth that seemed to be getting brighter every time they snapped. Whatever it was, Julius didn’t seem to be able to get out from under it, and the fear on his face was what finally broke Marci out of her shock and into action.

  In the space of a heartbeat, she dropped every illusion she had, pulling the magic back into her like she was sucking in a breath. The power burned as it returned, a pointed reminder of why you were always supposed to release and redraw magic instead of reusing, but even in her scramble, she wasn’t about to touch the awful stuff in the Pit. She only had to bear the pain for a second, anyway, just long enough to bring up her arm and shove the power through the circle of her bracelet, sending a scorching spear of super-heated air straight at the creature that was currently trying to bite out Julius’s throat.

  And that was when things got weird.

  Generally speaking, when Marci cast a spell, that was it. She’d been holding Justin’s magic for a long time at this point, though, and her connection to it lingered longer than it should have. As a result, part of her went along with the magic as it slammed into the monster’s side. But just as she felt the heat begin to scorch the creature’s hide, the spell vanished.

  The loss was so sudden, she actually stumbled. Her body rebalanced itself instinctively, which was good, because her brain was no help at all. It was too busy trying to comprehend what had just happened.

  Any way she approached it, it made no sense. She’d felt the spell work, felt it hit, and then the magic was just gone. But that was impossible. Magic obeyed the same laws as energy. It changed forms and lost quality, but it didn’t vanish. Apparently, though, no one had told the spell that. She’d thrown enough power at that monster to boil it alive from the inside out, but it didn’t even seem to notice her in its frenzy to dig its talons into Julius’s ribs.

  After that, Marci forgot about impossibilities. She reached out desperately, swallowing her revulsion as she yanked in the cold, heavy
magic of the Pit. Before she could gather enough to start on a movement spell to save him, though, a second shape plummeted through the hole in the ceiling like a shot.

  Justin must have done something more than simply jump down, because the gym’s ancient rubberized floor cracked when he hit. The resulting wave of dust and debris sent the men, who until this moment had been standing around like gaping statues, scrambling to cover their faces. Justin ignored them completely, turning instead to Julius, his unsheathed sword flying at the winged creature’s head.

  By the time the monster realized it had a new opponent, it was too late. Justin lopped its head off in one clean stroke, sending an arc of blue-black blood flying all the way to the back of the broken bleachers. For a shocked second, the wet splatter was the only sound, then Bixby shouted something unintelligible, and all hell broke loose.

  The air filled with the pop of gunshots as the entire room full of hired thugs turned and fired on Justin. He grunted when the first shots hit, but though Marci could see the impact of the bullets rippling over Justin’s body, not a drop of blood appeared on his white shirt as he took up a defensive position over Julius, who was still on the floor. It was such an astonishing sight, Marci didn’t realize the thugs were also shooting at her until her ward, which she’d drained nearly dry in her attempt to save Julius, started to buckle.

  She shored it up as best she could, pulling in more of the heavy, repulsive power of the Pit and forcing it through the spellwork she’d written in casting marker on her skin under her clothes. But the magic here wasn’t just disgusting to touch, it also wasn’t nearly as concentrated as the power she’d siphoned off Justin, and she simply couldn’t keep up.