The dragon released another roar and cocked his head to the scene below. Tributes had begun to flee, many trying to scramble or scale their way up the steep rock walls. Even members of the Military Federation of the Dragon were looking at one another worriedly.
But not Brian. Though he was bound and muzzled, his face shone with a kind of messianic joy. Something told me he wasn’t seeing the same thing the rest of us were. His fanatical mind was spinning visions of majestic gold scales and heavenly choirs.
For her part, the efreet watched the dragon with a neutral face.
I aimed my armored fist at Drage until a thin resonance, mediated by the gauntlet’s enchantment, took up between me and the creature. Though the gauntlet was potent, someone like Cameo wouldn’t have been able to compel Drage to blink, much less take control of him. Even with my ability to channel and shape energy, I was struggling just to hold the connection.
Images cascaded through my mind of ruthless rule, death, a world engulfed in black fire. I needed to bend his will to mine, but the energy coming off him! It was like trying to land a hurricane with a fishing rod.
Drage dipped down and scooped several tributes into his mouth.
Through our connection, I experienced the horrible sensation of bones crunching between his teeth, of blood and bodies sliding down his gullet. But the meal only seemed to stoke Drage’s maddening hunger.
He cut around and sighted on a pack of tributes running up an earthen ramp.
C’mon, dammit, I thought as I tried to urge more power through me. I reached toward the currents of ley energy circling the quarry, willed them toward me until new energy was storming through the gauntlet, strengthening my connection to Drage. When I felt myself gain a fingerhold in the dragon’s mind, I drew my fist back—hard.
Feet from the tributes, the dragon reared up as if he’d been lassoed.
Got you, you son of a bitch, I thought in triumph. But what to do with you?
I had an idea, but it was going to be the ballsiest thing I’d ever attempted.
Straining to hold onto the connection to Drage, I brought my fist around. Drage roared in protest and tried to climb away, but I managed to break up the timing of his wing flaps. He crashed into a rock wall and fell to the ground a safe distance from us. As he thrashed to get up, I ran toward him and shouted a force invocation.
The pulse from my cane launched me like a mortar. As I plummeted toward his batting wings, I summoned a shield invocation that funneled me, knocking back and forth, toward the crest running down the back of his neck. I came to a jarring rest between a pair of broken spines. More invocations all but duct-taped me to the massive being.
Can’t believe I’m doing this, I thought, choking on his putrid stench.
As Drage rose into flight, I focused into the gauntlet again. It was easier to reestablish the connection this time—the proximity and contact no doubt helped—but it took everything I had. Not just to maintain the connection, but to reform the shaky invocations holding me in place. The dragon’s aura was having a disrupting effect on my magic, which was only going to get worse as he gained strength.
Drage veered back toward the tributes, his entire body shuddering with hunger. He dipped his head toward Brian, but seeming to recognize him as the one responsible for bringing him into the world, he changed course.
My heart resuming after the close call, I seized one of his spines in my gauntlet and pulled back. Drage bucked several times before going skyward. In two powerful wing thrusts, he cleared the berm. Through the snow that had begun falling again, I could see the parking lot behind the large building where we’d made our initial approach. Dozens of police vehicles were amassed there, the helicopters parked farther back.
I squinted but couldn’t tell whether Vega and my teammates were among the personnel.
I refocused on the ley lines, steering Drage toward one running in the direction I wanted to go. The dragon fought with everything he had, but for now, the energy I channeled through the gauntlet was doing its job.
When we hit the ley line, that energy jumped.
I ducked my head to the frigid wind as we picked up speed.
Before long, I could see the Hudson River where it widened to lake-like proportions. My target was a power station on the west bank, farther north. I didn’t have the capacity to disperse a being as large and powerful as Drage, but a million-odd watts of electricity might. I only knew about the Hudson power station because our class had toured it when I was a kid, and it had been in the news recently in a story about increasing its capacity to avoid the rolling blackouts that had plagued the city that summer.
There!
I spotted the power station with its large cooling units and complex arrangement of transformers and cables. Getting there meant separating from the main ley line and using a network of smaller ones, but I didn’t have a choice.
I pulled on the dragon’s spine, banking us hard left. As we broke from the line, the power through the gauntlet faltered. Below, suburban neighborhoods scrolled past, one of them arranged around a sprawling golf course.
Drage dove toward it.
No! I yanked back on the spine.
But Drage didn’t change course this time. With a bellow, he spewed a long, noxious jet of vapor over the golf community. Trees withered and toppled, while rooftops burst into corrosive black flames that imploded entire homes. The dragon dipped lower until his lashing tail was knocking over vehicles parked in driveways and smashing through garages and plate-glass windows.
“Stop it!” I shouted futilely against the blasting wind.
Like any summoned creature, Drage’s first job was to build his energy, and something his size was going to need a lot of fuel. Though he couldn’t see them, his hungry mind sensed humans nearby. His head pivoted from side to side, black flames roaring in the pits of his eyes. I tried to regain control, this time channeling as many currents of ley energy as I could. When I drew back on his spine, he reared up.
I had him again, but barely.
The power station wobbled back into view ahead. In my wizard’s senses, I could see its buzzing, crackling dome of energy.
Drage lurched this way and that, trying to break from my control. Teeth gritting with effort, I drove him on, aiming him toward the football field-sized array of transformers. The steel and coil configurations seemed to rush up on us. I waited until the last moment before dispersing the invocations that bound me to Drage. With a force blast, I shot myself from his neck. I sailed back, just clearing the dragon’s thrashing tail.
But even as I fell, I continued to will my control through the gauntlet, driving Drage down, down toward the massive reservoir of energy. It wasn’t until he hit the first transformer in an eruption of sparks that I looked groundward.
I was plummeting toward a clump of trees, and there was no time to activate the feather potion I was carrying. Dammit. Pivoting my cane down, I shouted an invocation. The force blasted through leaves and split open a trunk with a loud crack. Though my descent stalled, branches whacked my shielded body, and I rag-dolled the rest of the way down. I discharged a second invocation, managing to land on my feet.
Meanwhile, great booms were sounding. I limp-ran from the trees and into view of the station.
Drage had come to a crashing stop in the middle of the field of transformers, his body entangled in a mess of thick conductor cables. Thudding explosions went off around him while streams of sparks whipped from severed wires. Through our connection, I could feel Drage straining to hold himself together against the thousands upon thousands of watts coursing through him, threatening to undo his form.
C’mon, baby, I thought toward the station. Take that fucker apart.
The thuds began to peter out. The wires stopped hosing electricity. The power station was going dark—and along with it, my hopes.
Aside from some dislodged scales and missing chunks of flesh, Drage was still intact. He rose to his thick legs, wings batting, until he was free of
the cables. Smoking black lines seared his body. Rearing his head back, he released a roar that must have resounded for miles. I shrank from the deafening sound and covered my ears.
Drage bit off his roar and angled his head toward me. The black flames of his eyes flashed with malevolent recognition.
Here we go, I thought.
34
A gulping sounded from deep in Drage’s chest, and in the next moment a jet of corrosive vapors spewed toward me. I threw up a shield invocation and braced against it with everything I had. The poison slammed into it, disintegrating the grass around me. Behind me, trees groaned and toppled. Miraculously, my shield held. The wattage had taken its toll, I realized. The dragon wasn’t nearly as powerful.
“Respingere!” I shouted.
Energy pulsed from my shield, blowing the poison aside. When the dragon gulped again, I bound his jaws in an invocation. Definitely easier. Drage struggled against it, then gave a hard flap of his wings to clear the power station’s outer fencing. The earth shook when he landed, the momentum carrying the aircraft carrier-sized dragon into a run toward me. Yeah, just a little intimidating.
But I’d locked onto a healthy ley line, and I still wore the dragon gauntlet.
I thrust the gauntlet toward him, palm out. The dragon heaved to a sudden stop. The tail that had been whipping toward me fell, pushing up a mound of earth that was almost my height by the time it stopped a few feet away.
I rotated my palm down until it was parallel with the ground. Drage responded by flattening his neck. Beneath the electrical burns that seared his rotting flesh, I could feel his hatred at being commanded.
I could also feel his strength returning in popping flares.
The power station might not have destroyed him, but I knew what would.
Climbing back onto Drage’s neck, I strapped myself in with invocations and willed the dragon into flight. In his weakened state, it took him longer to gain altitude, and for the first mile, his tail hung like a dowsing rod, smashing through trees and the occasional rooftop. Once I accessed the ley line running back to the quarry, I pushed Drage higher. His wings responded with great, heaving strokes.
I was too focused on the objective—destroying Drage—to appreciate the fact I was riding and commanding a frigging dragon, even if it was one that smelled like a Dumpster full of meat in midsummer.
Before long, we were bearing down on the quarry. A line of police vans was jouncing their way back out, probably after having picked up the scattered tributes. A couple of helicopters lifted out as well.
Good, I thought. The fewer innocents to navigate, the better.
When the bottom of the quarry came into view, my heart leapt into my throat. Claudius was still down there, fussing over the phylactery, but Vega must not have gotten my message, because she and the rest of my teammates had gone down to the pool. Vega and Bree-Yark were watching over Brian and the efreet, weapons drawn in case demons turned up. Not a bad idea, considering Claudius’s current state of distraction, but they were in my flight path. Mae was down there too—no doubt because she’d insisted. She was holding Buster’s carrier in one hand and Tabitha’s leash in the other.
I tried the radio. “Vega, can you hear me? I need you to clear out!”
Silence in response. Dammit.
Beyond the quarry, I made Drage bank around, but he was getting harder to control. I didn’t know how long I’d be able to keep him in a holding pattern. I was about to try Vega again when static burst through my headset.
I caught a snatch of her voice: “…son.”
“Vega, can you hear me?”
“Barely … go ahead.”
“Get everyone back but Brian and the efreet.”
“Copy that,” she said, her voice coming in clearer. “Where are you?”
“Look up,” I answered.
When I saw her cock her head, I waved.
“Holy … Is that you?”
“Yeah, I’ll explain later. Just get yourselves safely back. Not sure how much longer I can control this thing.”
Vega gestured to the others, and they began to climb towards the mounds of earth I’d landed behind earlier. I really had to grit my teeth to bring Drage around this time. When I had him in position, I forced him into a stomach-plunging dive. My target was Brian. In his broken mind, he believed this rotting dragon was the second coming, that Drage would bring on another Golden Age.
I had about five seconds to convince him otherwise.
As we plummeted, I tried to will Drage’s jaws apart. I could feel the dragon resisting, something in his makeup reluctant to threaten his creator. But I finally overcame him, even managing to squeeze a roar from his throat.
Below, I watched Brian’s face go from rapturous to horrified.
His mouth was moving as he tried to wriggle himself back behind the efreet, evidence his self-preservation instinct was overriding his crazy. With a Word, I dispersed the invocation that muzzled him.
“H-help me!” he cried. “Protect me!”
Hot damn! That was my cue. As fast as I could shout invocations, I released myself from Drage’s neck and blasted myself clear. A moment later, the efreet’s fire slammed into the dragon, enveloping him.
I covered my teammates with a shield and threw a spherical one around myself. Flames blasted around me as I splashed into the pool.
When my body stopped bouncing, I squinted into the supernova overhead. In its center, Drage screamed and batted wings that were being reduced to skeletal appendages. Scales plummeted, erupting into geysers of steam around me.
I followed the fire back to the efreet. It streamed from her arms in a relentless storm. The light that glistened over her smooth, serene face was almost too much to look at, so I switched my gaze back to Drage.
It was hard to believe that something so colossal could be overcome so quickly, but it was happening. Drage released a final scream as the elemental heat that had given him life overwhelmed the final bonds holding him together, and he erupted in dust. The efreet lowered her arms. As suddenly as the spectacle had begun, it ended.
I bobbed in my sphere for several moments, Drage’s black ashes mingling with the snow that fell around me.
My radio crackled.
“Are you all right?”
I turned to find Vega and the others emerging from behind the mounds.
I let out a relieved laugh. “I’m fine,” I said and used a small invocation to push myself to shore. “Just exhausted. How about everyone up there?”
“We’re good,” she said. “So that takes care of the dragon?”
“Amazingly, yes.” I’d only been about fifty percent sure my second plan would work. “But there’s still the efreet,” I said. “And Brian.”
As I arrived on solid ground, I invoked to cover Brian’s mouth again. I wasn’t sure I needed to, though. He had curled onto his side and was sobbing—in fear, disappointment, shame? Probably some combination of the three.
As my teammates came down to meet me, I scanned the berm.
Bree-Yark clapped my low back. “That was some kick-ass dragon riding.”
Mae arrived beside me. “Yes,” she said sternly. “You and I are going to need to have a talk about that.”
“Well, it’s not something I plan to do very often. How’s the unbonding going?” I asked Claudius. He had shuffled down behind the others but become preoccupied with the phylactery in his hand and was now wandering toward a random corner of the quarry.
“Hey, Claudius? Over here.”
He blinked up, looked around, and jogged toward us. “Oh, ah, yes,” he said. “It’s proving to be rather tricky. With so many owners, there are a riot of bonds to untangle to reach the root connection.”
“Then we need to get everyone out of here,” I said. We’d been there much longer than I’d intended, and my magic was talking to me, telling me we were going to have company—and lots of it—if we didn’t make tracks.
“I requested a helo,” Vega said.
/>
“Good.”
“Um, Everson,” Tabitha said.
When I looked down, she was pointing a paw at the berm. I followed it above and to our left. A silhouette had appeared, and it wasn’t alone. Everywhere I looked along the berm now, another one seemed to take form.
“Demons?” I asked, even though they looked like normal men and women.
As though a starting gun had sounded, they began scrambling down the sides of the quarry.
“Demons, darling,” Tabitha confirmed.
Well, crap, I thought, my heart pounding the back of my sternum. As de facto team leader, my priority was getting us out of there. Now. But until that happened, we needed to keep the demons from the efreet and Brian, and after my dragon-flying stunt, I was low on power. I gauged the progress of the lead demons. The helicopter, which I couldn’t even hear yet, wasn’t going to reach us before they did.
“Claudius!” I shouted.
He had gone back to working on the phylactery, and he looked up distractedly.
“We’ve got demons incoming. You translocated yourself down here, right? Can you carry eight of us out?”
He looked from us to the descending demons, then gnawed at the end of a finger in thought. He paused to spit out a piece of nail.
“Well?” I shouted.
“Yes, yes, I think so. Just trying to remember the right incantation. It’s a little different when you’re not going solo. One wrong word, and you’ll end up where you want, but with someone else’s arm or head.”
I swore inwardly. “All right, keep working on it. Let us know when you have something. Vega?”
She anticipated my question and already had an answer. “We’ll do better up there,” she said, pointing to a plateau of earth and stone with a sheer wall above. There were also a couple of mounds to use as cover.
“Agreed,” Bree-Yark barked.
Power Game Page 26