The Dragon Lord

by E. G. Foley

  The bobbies stared at him and realized he wasn’t joking. There was a castle on the lawn, after all, where there ought not to be one. Archie watched it dawn on the group of officers that there were things happening here beyond their ken, magical matters well outside their jurisdiction.

  “Go!” Jake said again, shooing them away with his free hand.

  After exchanging uncertain glances, the bobbies decided to take his advice and began retreating, to Archie’s relief, bringing Flanagan with them.

  At first, the constable balked, but Jake insisted. “Go, sir. You’re losing a lot of blood. Your kids need you; don’t tempt her. Can’t you see what she is?”

  Flanagan looked again at Viola, who smiled sweetly, flashing her fangs.

  “Mother Mary.” The lawman finally glanced down at himself, saw the cuts, and paled. He staggered slightly, feeling the wound at last, Archie presumed.

  He had learned in his medical studies that people didn’t always realize they were injured in the thick of battle.

  Thankfully, the bleeding constable allowed the others to assist him off the field; Jake let out a visible sigh of relief.

  “I told you my son is a natural leader,” Wyvern boasted to his friends. “Even these trifling human authorities obey him.”

  Jake spun to face the Dark Druids, his cheeks reddening with fury. “You think I care one jot for your approval—you monsters?”

  “Oh, calm down, princeling,” Viola started.

  “Don’t tell me to calm down!” With a sudden, angry flick of his hand, Jake used his telekinesis to knock the goggles right off her face.

  They went flying and the Red Queen screamed. Archie’s jaw dropped. Viola Sangray flung her arm across her eyes, blinded by the brilliance of daylight.

  “Quickly! Take her inside,” Wyvern ordered Duradel’s two Drow assistants. “We can’t risk her turning to ashes.”

  The mysterious, black-clad warriors hurried out to assist Viola back into the Black Fortress with Duradel.

  Archie smiled from ear to ear. Well done, coz! One down, three to go.

  Somehow he stifled the urge to clap and cheer his cousin on. This wasn’t a cricket match, after all. Besides, Jake had ordered him to stay hidden. Archie was quite happy to comply. He kept silent, leaning against the granite block.

  “Fionnula, go and fetch our son,” Wyvern ordered the sea-witch. “Bring him inside. Where he’ll be safe. The Horned One is eager to meet him.”

  Fionnula nodded uneasily, then headed toward the doubler.

  As she approached, Jake gave a loud whistle. Red landed on the grass beside him, spread his wings, reared up, and roared in her face.

  The sea-witch shrieked, raising her wand to keep the angry beast at bay.

  “Rein him in, Jake!” she said in a shaky voice. “Make him behave, a-and you’ll be allowed to bring him with you. Lord Wyvern says every b-boy deserves a pet.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you lot, and neither is Red.” Jake nodded toward the Gryphon. “He doesn’t like you very much, you know.”

  Red stalked toward her, snarling; he crouched like a lion, then sprang at the sea-witch. She fended him off with a blast of magic, but stumbled in her high-heeled shoes and landed on her bottom with a girly screech.

  Jake laughed heartily, pointing at her and hamming it up, while Red shook off the wand blast, looking slightly stunned.

  Before the Gryphon could recover, Archie spotted Raige across the square twisting one of the brass attachments on his blunderbuss. Archie drew in his breath as the general took aim at Red.

  “Look out!” Archie yelled, pointing, but as Jake and his pet both turned and scowled at him for revealing his presence, Raige’s strange gun sent a hunter’s net flying out over the Gryphon.

  Red instantly thrashed, caught in the rope netting. Fionnula jumped to her feet and blasted the beast again.

  “Leave him alone!” Jake yelled. He rushed to free his pet as the warrior stalked toward them.

  The infuriated Gryphon had already tangled two of his paws and one wingtip in the net, so Jake had to calm him down before he could cut him free.

  Then Archie’s eyes widened as Raige glanced over at him on his way to help Fionnula capture Jake. Raige sent Archie a look of pure evil.

  He melted back behind the Peel statue, but stayed there only for a moment. He could not resist looking out again from around the granite block.

  “Yes!” Archie whispered as Jake pulled the shredded net off the Gryphon, then managed to whip a piece of it around Fionnula’s ankles.

  Jake gave the rope a hard yank and sent the sea-witch sprawling on the ground once more. “Don’t ever attack my Gryphon again!”

  Archie’s eyes widened as Jake then used his telekinesis to send Fionnula tumbling and rolling across the lawn, screeching in protest, like she was being blown away by a mighty wind.

  Red roared as if to tell her she deserved it, and even Aunt Ramona gave way to a chuckle.

  Archie grinned. Jolly well done, coz!

  Alas, Jake’s triumph was short-lived.

  When Archeron Raige began stalking toward him, Jake quickly sheathed Risker and lifted both magical hands, ready to block nets, bullets, or whatever else might fly out of the general’s gun at him or his Gryphon.

  “Get behind me, Red. I’ll see to this mumper,” he said.

  Raige snorted. “Wyvern might spoil you, but I won’t, princeling.” He twisted the attachment on his gun again with an ominous click. “You either follow orders and get inside the Black Fortress, or I’ll blow up that stone block where your little friend is hiding. It’d be a shame if the whole thing fell down on him, wouldn’t it?”

  “Archie, run!” Jake yelled.

  “I’m going to count to five, then I shoot. One. Two…” Raige set his sights on the bronze Sir Robert Peel and began stalking toward it. “Three.”

  Archie backed away, cursing himself for stupidly revealing his location. But he refused to leave his best friend to his fate.

  “Four.”

  Across the square, a look of fury darkened Aunt Ramona’s face.

  Before Raige’s count reached five, however, Derek Stone rushed out of nowhere, nearly knocking Archie off his feet as he brushed past him, barreling out onto the green and tackling the general just a few yards away.

  The blunderbuss flew out of Raige’s hands; Archie ducked, afraid the gun might go off when it landed. It didn’t.

  A split-second later, Miss Helena galloped by, shadowing Derek in her elegant black leopard form, ready to assist.

  As the warriors started brawling, the leopardess quickly nudged the weapon farther from Raige’s grasp with her flat feline nose.

  Unfortunately, the moment Thanatos spotted the other big cat, he roared and bolted after her in full attack mode.

  “Helena!” Derek yelled in horror as the manticore charged.

  Leopard-Helena ran for her life. Derek tried to go to her aid, but Raige caught him in a headlock, his bulging biceps flexed against the Guardian’s throat.

  Wyvern laughed at all the mayhem—until Zolond whacked him with a massive crackle of magic.

  Aunt Ramona flung a lightning bolt at the manticore, but missed. The two big cats ran too fast around the square.

  “Get him, Red!” Jake said.

  Red let out a war cry, diverting the manticore’s attention.

  The monster skidded to a halt, scoring the grass with claw marks. Thanatos quit chasing Helena and turned as the Gryphon launched toward him.

  The crowd screamed and Archie held his breath as they clashed: half-lion against half-lion.

  The barbed, venomous scorpion tail of the manticore whipped to and fro as he tried to stab Red. The Gryphon flapped a few feet off the ground, attacking the tail from above. Red locked on to the armored appendage with his vicious beak and razor-sharp claws.

  Strong as he was, Thanatos waved Red around as the two struggled. The Gryphon beat his wings with great determination and slowly beg
an lifting higher off the ground.

  Just then, Dani, Brian, Nixie, and Isabelle nearly gave Archie a heart attack as they all came bumping up behind him.

  “There you are!”

  “Where’s Jake?”

  “Thank goodness we—”

  “Look!” Archie interrupted, pointing toward the square.

  His friends followed his finger, then their jaws dropped as they saw Red lifting Thanatos off the ground by his horrid tail.

  “That’s it! Get him, boy!” Jake cheered. “Throw him in the river!”

  “Lions can’t swim,” Izzy murmured, staring.

  Of course. That was the reason Red had been afraid for so long to fly over water, until Jake had trained him better.

  Roaring furiously, Thanatos used his front claws to try to hold on to the turf, to no avail. The Gryphon carried him higher and higher, dangling his enemy from his beak and slowly moving toward the river.

  “Sweet Hecate,” Nixie mumbled, glancing around at the various battles in progress.

  Derek and the general were trading punches like battering rams. Fionnula had sorted herself out and headed back to try to get control of Jake after Raige had also failed, but Aunt Ramona blocked her, while Zolond and the Nephilim walloped each other with orbs of magical energy.

  “Is that a real, live dragon standing on the lawn or did they slip us something funny in our food?” Brian asked, staring wide-eyed at the creature.

  “He’s real,” Archie said.

  Then Miss Helena loped over to the kids. Even in her leopard form, Archie could see she looked shaken.

  “Reer!” Golden-green cat eyes gleaming, their shapeshifting governess nudged them back toward the trees with her fuzzy, feline head. She hissed at them to stay back, but her attention was divided between minding them and keeping an eye on her beau in case he needed help.

  Derek and the general were surprisingly well matched.

  “Jake! Get over here!” Dani insisted. Her face was frantic as she beckoned to him.

  She should’ve known better.

  Still standing out on the green, he scowled to see her and the others. “Go back to the palace!”

  “No!” Dani retorted.

  He waved her off and kept watching Red, who had managed to carry Thanatos up, up, and southward, moving steadily toward the river.

  Unfortunately, somewhere over the Houses of Parliament, the Gryphon lost his hold on the monster. The manticore dropped onto a flat section of roof, where their fight continued out of view.

  The bloodcurdling sounds of it were awful enough.

  Hearing the two half-lions’ battle made the kids exchange stunned glances.

  “And I thought hearing two housecats fighting was bad,” Archie said.

  Helena hissed, as though offended.

  The strangest of all the battles by far, however, was the one raging between the half-demon earl and the sorcerer-king.

  Things were escalating between the Dark Master and the would-be usurper. The spells they were using on each other were growing scary and downright weird, Archie thought. The kids started clumping together instinctively, much like they’d done last night under Nixie’s invisible umbrella.

  None of them had ever seen anything like the warlocks’ duel. Indeed, in all its two-thousand-year history dating back to the Roman occupation, London itself had never witnessed such a contest.

  Zolond uttered a spell that created nine copies of himself, then they shuffled around in a sort of human shell game.

  Archie lost track of which Zolond was the real one. But all ten copies of the old man moved in unison, lifting their right hands, in which a glowing orb of energy now appeared, swirling with orange and blue flame. Then all of the Zolonds launched their fiery spheres at Wyvern at once.

  Most of them hit, and Wyvern roared, but his rugged Nephilim constitution kept him on his feet beyond what any normal man could have withstood.

  Wyvern quickly conjured a long metal shield, like knights used to carry into battle, and fought back with his wand from behind it. The Zolonds merely laughed as Wyvern kept zapping the different copies of him with jagged bolts of magic from his wand.

  The ones the earl destroyed merely vanished; none of them turned out to be the real sorcerer-king.

  The whole firing-squad of Zolonds kept striking Wyvern again and again with more energy spheres until, finally, the glowing balls all converged into one huge sphere that slammed into the earl. The direct hit knocked the usurper off his feet.

  “Nathan!” Fionnula cried as Wyvern went rolling across the grass, leaving a smoking tear through the smooth green turf.

  He landed flat on his stomach, arms splayed out before him, while all the extra Zolonds reconvened into one. Wyvern looked across the dueling field at the real Dark Master in volcanic wrath.

  “All of you, stay out of this!” he yelled to his allies. “This is between the old man and me!” Then he lifted his right hand toward his mouth and whispered something into his sleeve.

  From out of his starchy white shirt sleeve crawled a large insect. A centipede, as it turned out, for Wyvern then spoke some foul enchantment to the creature that made it grow and swell into a massive beast—a gigantic version of itself, some ten feet long, bristling with disgusting hairs.

  The people all around the square screamed at the sight, and Archie shuddered. He was not squeamish about insects—or, rather, arthropods in this case—but that thing was big enough to eat a man. He happened to know, also, that centipedes were frightfully fast…and carnivorous.

  Dani and Isabelle made noises of utter revulsion and stepped backward, grimacing.

  “That thing better not come over here,” his sister mumbled.

  Dani tugged on the witch’s sleeve. “Nixie, can you fend it off if it does?”

  “I don’t know! Shh!” Nixie exclaimed. “This is fascinating.”

  Archie raised a brow at his sweetheart. No doubt she was taking mental notes, he mused as she stood riveted, marveling at each volley the warlocks exchanged.

  Wyvern pointed at Zolond, uttering some command. At once, the monstrous centipede began scuttling toward the Dark Master, jaws snapping.

  An arctic smile curved Wyvern’s lips as he waited to see what the old sorcerer would do.

  Zolond smiled back with a look that sent gooseflesh down Archie’s arms.

  Then the Dark Master cracked open his mouth and stuck out his tongue—which turned into a large, black, writhing king cobra.

  The whole crowd gasped at this nauseating feat; the kids jolted with low cries of disgust. Even Aunt Ramona grimaced.

  “Oh, blech!” said Dani. “Dark magic is gross.”

  Nixie nodded with a wince.

  The black snake coming out of Zolond’s mouth waved about in midair, its hood unfurled, as though it were dancing for a snake charmer. But as the giant centipede sped toward it, the cobra began spitting what must’ve been a fiery and painful poison at the hundred-legged monster, for it squealed and changed course, confused.

  It zoomed around and tried another angle of attack, but the snake kept spitting its venom, splattering the centipede until the hideous thing reared up with a piercing screech.

  The poison clearly affected the arthropod’s nervous system, Archie thought, because the centipede went wonky after it had been hit enough times. It curved its long, segmented body into a ring and raced around in tight circles about a dozen times, then died. Whereupon it shriveled back down to normal size and disappeared.

  Zolond duly ended his distasteful snake spell.

  Aunt Ramona shook her head at him with chiding amusement as he drew his tongue back into his mouth, a normal human organ once more.

  “Yuck,” Izzy muttered.

  With Zolond distracted by the centipede, Wyvern had had a chance to gather his strength. He now struck back, shouting a curse over his wand.

  At once, the Dark Master dropped his walking stick.

  The kids gasped as his left arm began to wither,
becoming thin and bony, with discolored skin, until that, too, disappeared, and he was left with no more than the bare bones of his arm and hand.

  “What’s happening to him?” Brian asked.

  “He’s turning into a skeleton!” Dani said.

  “Sort of,” Nixie said, staring. “Wyvern hit him with a wasting curse.”

  The ring Zolond was wearing dropped off his fleshless phalanges and bounced across the grass.

  Wyvern extended his hand and summoned the ring toward himself.

  It began rolling in the direction of the Nephilim, as if with a mind of its own.

  Archie could see that Zolond was in trouble. The wasting curse was taking hold of him, the skeleton effect spreading across his chest and creeping up his neck.

  “Geoffrey!” Aunt Ramona yelled. “Use a healing spell!”

  But Zolond had dropped his walking stick/wand.

  “Oh, botheration,” the Elder witch muttered, then whooshed over to her old friend’s side in a puff of white, sparkling smoke.

  “I didn’t know she could do that!” Isabelle and Nixie said in unison, then exchanged a glance of surprise.

  In the twinkling of an eye, the dowager baroness arrived by Zolond’s side.

  Wyvern smiled and strode toward the ring still rolling across the grass. Archie tensed, worried that it might somehow give the earl the power to finish them both off.

  “Hey, Wyvern!” Jake suddenly yelled. True to his promise to help the Dark Master for their aunt’s sake, he used his telekinesis to knock the warlock off balance.

  Wyvern tripped and stumbled sideways a step before quickly regaining his balance. “How dare you?”

  The shove must’ve broken his focus, because Zolond’s ring stopped rolling toward him as he turned angrily to his chosen son.

  Jake was ready, already striding toward him.

  Archie’s heart pounded.

  The moment the earl presented a wider target, pivoting to scowl at him, Jake drew Risker and, in one swift motion, hurled his blade at the Nephilim.

  The kids gasped in unison; time seemed to slow.

  Archie watched the magical dagger fly across the empty space between his cousin and the warlock, and then pierce Wyvern’s chest.