Drake

by D M Gilmore

  “Just rest a bit,” he whispered to the little dragon, “I can handle this.”

  Esther didn’t respond, and instead closed her eyes. Asher grinned as he called up his force blast spell and quickly formulated a plan, as the doors to the station finally slammed shut, plunging the room into darkness. If he was assuming things correctly, the room would be filled with desks just like the one he was crouched behind. He quickly rammed the desk with his shoulder, eliciting a loud bang and the sound of metal legs scraping against rotting linoleum floor tiles. Giving away his position hadn’t been much of a concern for him, but he grinned as the desk moved at the slightest of touch. Good, he thought, they weren’t bolted down, which meant he could toss them out of the way if his targets sought cover.

  There was suddenly the sound of a few sharp pops, and a few bolts of glowing green mana punched through the metal desk, leaving smoking holes in the thin sheet of rusted steel. They had barely missed his head by an inch, and he quickly shifted a foot to his right, to put himself a bit further outside the range they were aiming at.

  Asher held his breath as he listened, and heard the telltale clacking of talons against the ground. He counted to five, and started charging the force blast spell, closing his left hand into a fist. He couldn’t see, but he could feel the air condensing around his clenched fingers, forming into a dense bubble of air so thick that it nearly gained the consistency of water. Finally, when he heard the footsteps just around the corner of his desk, could smell the stink of unwashed drake, he aimed his fist around the corner of the desk and let the spell loose.

  The spell exploded outward into a cylinder of rushing air, blasting away from his hand with enough force to crack the floor tiles, sending shards of broken linoleum flying into the air. Through the darkness, Asher could hear the sound of a pair of bodies being thrown backwards, before crashing through several wood and metal objects, desks he assumed, and once again the room was lip up by the light of gunfire.

  “Tell the boss he’s here,” one of the drakes shouted into the darkness, and for a second the room was once again lit up as a door on the other end was pulled open.

  The gunfire ceased while the door closed, and Asher took his chance to jump to his feet, out from behind his cover, and blast the source of the voice with a missile. The shining silver dart flew through the room, but his target, a purple drake, dodged out of the way mere seconds before it struck. The dart embedded itself in the wall, its soft silvery glow backlighting Asher’s target. The drake looked at the missile, stunned for a moment. The empowered spell let off a cold silver light that cast the room in a ghostly halo, and the surprised drake began to take a step towards the missile.

  “Got you,” Asher smirked, readying missiles through the hologram interface in the palms of his hands. Three more silver darts embedded themselves in the wall with a trail of blinding light. Most of the back wall was now glowing with light, revealing the silhouette of the still standing drake as well as a pair of drakes that were pulling themselves out of a pile of broken desks. There was enough light for him to make out their vague shapes and how far away they were, but the light died before it reached his end of the room. They’d still be firing blind, but he’d have clear targets, at least until the spells dissipated. He softly padded into a corner, behind another desk just a few feet away from the first. He was vaguely aware that his holodisplay was alerting him that he had dipped below 35 percent of his maximum mana, but there was nothing he could currently do about it.

  “Where did he go?” one of the slowly rising drakes grunted, wincing in pain.

  “I don’t know, I lost sight of him,” the purple said, “but he hasn’t left the room yet!”

  “Backup is on the way, we’ll get him!” The third said, reaching to pull one of the missiles out of the wall. Before his hand even had a chance to touch the silvery projectile, Asher flicked his wrist, and a silver bolt zoomed through the room. The fresh missile punched through the drake’s neck and embedded itself in the wall, illuminating the splatter of blood that followed the blast. The drake dropped to the floor, into a rapidly growing pool of his own blood.

  “Fuck!” the purple shouted in alarm, levelling his pistol out into the room whipping it around wildly. “Where did that come from? Where is the bastard?”

  The other standing drake levelled his own gun and began to walk forward into the room, and from his vantage point Asher watched his target’s silhouette limp with every step. This one wasn’t very bright, he mused to himself, and began to charge a spell in his left hand. Asher hit him with a quick force blast, knocking him backwards into the wall, where his head cracked against the bricks loudly. This target slumped down the wall, and like the other before him, did not get up.

  “Dammit!” the purple shouted, and his shadow raised its wrist to his snout. “Where’s my backup?! He’s in the fucking entrance! I’m pinned down!”

  Asher didn’t wait for the purple to look up. Before he even realized his mistake, a silver missile buried itself into the soft muscle of his upper right-arm. He shouted in pain as he fell to the ground, clutching the injured limb with a sob. He looked around wildly, his gun thrown to the side when he was hit, as his eyes scanned the room in a wild frenzy.

  Asher’s glowing yellow eyes loomed above him, just outside the range of light from the silvery missiles, which were quickly growing dimmer and dimmer. “Is your com still on?” he growled, as Esther’s eyes joined his in the shadows.

  The drake nodded, shaking in fear at the sight of the four glowing orbs.

  “Tell Duncan Smog that I’m coming for Ruth, and if he so much as touches my brother, nobody will leave this place alive.”

  The drake shook in fear as he raised his wrist to his snout again, and paused to consider his words carefully. He had already sent a runner to get backup, and they hadn’t arrived. He could call for help, but it wouldn’t matter. “Tell the boss that he’s here for the prisoner,” he whimpered, his voice weak and dry, shaking with fear and adrenaline, “and if he’s harmed, he’s gonna—”

  Asher didn’t let him finish speaking. Instead, he buried a silver missile of mana deep into the purple’s throat, and let the gurgling sound he made be message enough. When he finally collapsed to the ground, Asher bent down and began to loot the body.

  “I don’t know what you think I’m here to do, but I promise I won’t be gentle,” Asher whispered into the com, undoing the watch around the purple’s wrist and rising to his full height. “Duncan, if you’re listening, I am out for your blood. Nobody else needs to die today. Tell your men if they stand down, they live. If anyone gets in my way, I’ll kill them, just like I killed these thugs you left out here in wait. You think you’re safe, locked up in your little hideout? You’re wrong, Smog.”

  Asher wrapped the watch around his left wrist, and checked his mana reserves. He was down to 28 percent. Dangerously low.

  Esther leapt from Asher’s shoulder and quickly tore chunks out of the corpse at his feet, swallowing a few mouthfuls of meaty thigh before leaping back onto his shoulder, blood dripping down her chin. The colour green flashed in Asher’s mind, and he kicked the door open with his foot.

  Chapter 22

  Ruth limped out of the cell, his thigh flaring in pain with every movement, the bandages moving stiffly from the semi-dried blood caking his wound. Every inch of him hurt to move, but that didn’t stop him from pulling himself into the concrete hallway, holding onto the cell door for support. His good arm, if it could have even been called good after the beating he had received, ached at the joints and begged for a rest. He stumbled to Sangita’s side, desperate for sleep but knew that he would not be able to rest for a long time still. He swayed from side to side, grunting in pain, and the black drake carefully reached out and stabilized him by his arm.

  “Thanks,” he muttered, gaining a bit more control over his wobbling knees. The sensation of pins and needles shot up his legs and danced through his skin, leaving him with a numb feeling from the base
of his thighs to his ankles. “Gimme a bit,” he added, “I’ll be able to walk in a few.”

  “This is a bad idea,” she hissed, draping his arm over her shoulder, “neither of us can fight like this! What use will walking be if you cannot be useful in a fight?”

  “The point’s not to be useful,” Ruth growled, letting Sangita carry his bulk as they slowly made their way down the hallway, “but to get out of the way. Duncan’s using me to threaten Asher, right?”

  “That is his plan, yes,” Sangita admitted, calling up a holodisplay and punching a quick series of numbers into the keypad floating beside her. The door swung open in response with a quiet hiss. She wanted to pull it open, but Ruth’s weight was proving to be more than she had initially anticipated. She had difficulty standing with her own injuries, let alone operating with him using her as a crutch. “I fail to see how you’re going to be useful to Asher in your current state.”

  “I may not be as smart as my brother, but even I can tell that I won’t be good in a fight,” Ruth agreed, as the door finally opened enough for them to step through, “I’m a liability. I don’t know what my brother’s got planned, but I’m just going to get in the way or slow him down. I gotta get outta here so Asher can finish whatever it is he’s gotta do.”

  The moment they were out of the door, they were suddenly faced with a pair of drake guards. The guards blinked in surprise, but quickly raised the rifles in their hands and levelled them at Ruth and Sangita. The weapons were already glowing a bright blue in both their opened barrels and the exhaust vents on the sides, and were humming with the familiar sound of a manabolt firing system. Sangita silently cursed herself for thinking Smog would have left his prisoner unguarded, especially since he had locked her in with him.

  “Back up,” the first guard, a green fuldrake with a crown of seven horns, hissed while aiming his rifle directly at Sangita’s head. “Hands in the air, turn around slowly, no sudden movements and nobody gets blasted to hell.”

  Ruth immediately obeyed, to the best of his ability. He kept his broken arm in the sling, but raised his good arm into the air, letting go of Sangita, who raised her own hands in a similar pose. Slowly, the pair turned around to face the opposite direction.

  “Boss said you might try to escape,” the green continued, taking a few steps towards the pair while alternating between aiming at Sangita and Ruth, “told us to hurt you if you did. Hope you like gun wounds, Sangita, coz as soon as you’re back in that cell, I’m pumping you full of them.”

  “Well done, brute,” Sangita hissed, as the second guard, a female copper with ear fins rather than horns, rammed the barrel of her rifle into the small of the black drake’s back, “this is precisely where we needed to be.”

  “Hey, I already admitted to being kind of dumb, but you can at least hold back on the sarcasm,” Ruth hissed back, as he felt the barrel of the green’s rifle press into his own back. He risked glancing down at Sangita with his one good eye, and nearly recoiled at what he saw. Her lips were parted in a sinister grimace, revealing rows of razor sharp teeth that slotted together perfectly.

  “It wasn’t sarcasm,” she whispered, winking up at the bigger drake.

  The next few seconds passed in a blur. Sangita lashed out with her tail, surprising both guards with quick strikes to their wrists from her whip-like appendage. Her tail cracked loudly as the impact snapped bone and cleaved skin, leaving a thin trail of blood as it returned to a resting position. Both guards dropped their weapons to the floor as they cried out in pain, and Sangita quickly drew her baton and spun around, striking the copper in the throat with the same motion. The copper staggered backwards, clutching her neck and gagging for air, while the green bent down to retrieve his rifle.

  This mistake proved fatal, as Sangita reached out with her free hand and slashed at the drake’s throat with her claws. The green gasped in shock as his windpipe and jugular were both effortlessly torn open, and collapsed to the floor, gasping for air. He fell silent in a matter of seconds, his body remaining motionless as his blood pooled around him. The copper, meanwhile, had finally gotten her breath back, and raised her wrist to her snout to begin speaking into her watch. Sangita didn’t even give her a chance to open her mouth, reaching out with her baton and jabbing it into the copper’s sternum, which dug in with a sickening crack. The copper once more proceeded to gag for air, hobbling back another few steps, desperately trying to put distance between herself and the unstoppable monster with the vantablack scales.

  “Idiot,” Sangita hissed, taking limping step forward. Her own thigh still flared with pain from the gunshot she had received from Smog, but she did her best to ignore it as she darted forward. She quickly closed the distance to the copper, before the other drake had a chance to react again. Ruth turned around just in time to watch Sangita brutally strike the copper in the knees, shoulder, and skull, before finally the other female drake dropped to the floor unconscious. “You would think these idiots would know better than to pick a fight with me. I supposed Duncan would have been open with his subordinates about what his former associates are capable of, but I see that I am proven wrong.”

  “Whoa,” Ruth grumbled, picking up a rifle with his tail and lobbing it into his good hand. He tested out his grip with the weapon, and found that if he tucked it into the crook of his bad arm, he could handle the weapon without much issue. There was no way in hell he’d be able to aim, but Sangita proved there wouldn’t be much of a need. “Glad you’re on my side now.”

  “Do not fool yourself, brute,” Sangita scoffed, spitting on the crumpled body of the copper drake, “I am on the side of the dragons, and right now the dragon I am fighting for just so happens to be bound to your brother.”

  “I still don’t know what that means,” Ruth grumbled, limping past the collapsed green. He had gotten enough balance back that he felt confident in standing on his own, and felt that Sangita would appreciate not having to deal with being his crutch. “Honestly, the less I know, the more I’m just going to assume you’re on my side.”

  “Honestly, the less you know, the longer you’ll get to live,” Sangita grumbled, pressing her ear against the crumbling brick wall and holding her breath. She counted to ten in her head, listening through the hollow bricks, feeling the vibrations of the building around her. She could hear people on the other side of the building, feel the vibrations in the floor as they moved around, but none of them were particularly close enough to concern her. “I can hear nobody coming, I think we are safe, for now at least.”

  Suddenly, the watch on the copper’s wrist flared to life, and a frantic voice echoed over the com. “Dammit! Where’s my backup?! He’s in the fucking entrance! I’m pinned down!”

  Sangita’s lips split into a grin as she bent down over the body and undid the watch from the copper’s wrist. “It would seem your brother is here. Shall we meet up with him?” she asked, rising again to her feet and wrapping the watch around her own wrist, adjusting the straps so that it fit her more toned build.

  “No!” Ruth shouted, before Sangita even had a chance to finish her question. “If I’m here, Duncan’ll just use me to get to Asher!”

  Sangita considered what Ruth was saying, pausing just long enough for the coms to crackle again, this time with the speaker reciting a message from Asher to Duncan. The pair listened intently as Asher killed the speaker in the middle of his message, before taking the com for himself and speaking directly to Smog.

  There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Asher had the intent to kill. Smog had kidnapped and threatened Ruth’s life. Ruth didn’t understand why it would set his brother off so much, but Asher was on a rampage and wouldn’t stop until he achieved his goals, and he wasn’t about to get in his way.

  Sangita looked into Ruth’s eyes with an expression he had yet to see on her face: true fear. “Being bound to a dragon, especially one so young and without control of their emotions, can have adverse effects on a personality. I do not scare easily, but I am terrifi
ed of your brother.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “It is not just his own anger in his head, but his dragon’s as well,” Sangita said, making her way slowly down the brick hallway, so Ruth could keep pace with her. At the end of the hallway, it turned at a ninety-degree angle to the left, while the hallway continued on to a steel door with a glowing red exit sign hanging overhead. “He may not be thinking straight; the dragon may be exerting her influence over him. For all we know, she could be in complete control of his mind. There are rules in place to prevent this sort of thing, and Asher has inadvertently broken every single one of them.”

  “That sounds bad,” Ruth limped after her, doing his best to pretend he had understood anything she had just said.

  “It’s an unfortunate side effect, one of the reasons most bindings are only done with mature dragons who have had decades to acclimate to human emotions,” Sangita muttered, pulling up to the door and ramming it with her shoulder. The door popped open into an alleyway filled with trash, and a single guard who had been hit in the back by the swinging door. She made quick work of the guard, jabbing him the back of the head with her baton, knocking him unconscious almost immediately, before slashing his jugular with a single claw, opening the vein down the length of his neck.

  For the second time in five minutes, Ruth watched a drake bleed out, unable to protect themselves from Sangita’s ruthlessness. On the one hand, he felt sorry for them. They didn’t deserve to die like this, they were just trying to survive in this world, just like he was. On the other, though, he knew that this was a kill-or-be-killed scenario. If Sangita hadn’t killed them, they would have certainly tried to kill her, and Ruth wouldn’t have been far behind. The ends, he supposed, had to justify the means.