A Dragon of a Different Color

by Rachel Aaron

“Really?” Marci turned around with an excited smile. “You have to let me study how you smell magic sometime!”

  The demand was so like her, it made his heart clench. It still didn’t feel real that Marci was back, alive and smiling and asking to study him. It really was a miracle, and perversely, that bothered him. As happy as he was, she was too important for him to just accept all of this on faith. The whole idea of mortality was that no one came back from death, and while he was used to Marci doing the impossible, it never came without a cost, which begged the question, what had Marci paid? What had she suffered or promised or given up to return, and how could he help her? He was working up the courage to ask when she went still.

  “What?” he asked, instantly alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she said, scowling. “Ghost was just in the middle of telling me something, and then he stopped.”

  “Do you think something happened?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. He didn’t sound alarmed, but it’s not like him to just drop out in the middle of a conversa—”

  Marci cut off with a gasp. From deep inside the slimy column of trash she’d been poking, two arms had shot out. They were long and slender, like a thin woman’s, but they grabbed Marci like a steel trap, wrapping around her neck and waist before snatching her backward into the trash.

  “Marci!”

  Julius threw himself after her, crashing into the wall of random objects, but he wasn’t fast enough to snatch her back. The last thing he saw was her eyes wide with surprise as the trash ate her, opening like a mouth before snapping shut again in his face.

  “No!” he roared, clawing at the wall. No, no, no.

  He’d lost her. He’d had her and he’d lost her again. He’d lost—

  Julius roared, shaking the Pit to the Skyways as he slammed his full weight into the slimy wall of random debris. The tower shook like a tree, sending bits of trash splashing into the water around him. He was about to hit it again when a croaking voice called out.

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  Julius’s head snapped up. Even with his excellent night vision, though, it took several seconds to spot the enormous black bird perched in a shadowy nook beneath the broken Skyway ramps, much as the magic eaters had the last time Julius had been here. That wasn’t a pleasant connection, and Julius growled low in his throat as the giant bird spread his wings and hopped off, coasting down through the dark to land on the broken antenna of the car the dragon was standing on.

  “Hello again, Julius Heartstriker,” Raven said. “You remember me, I’m sure.”

  “How could I forget?” Julius replied, baring his teeth. “Your human killed Marci.”

  “Now, now, let’s not bring poor Emily into this,” the spirit said. “You already took your chunk out of her, and you should be delighted to see me.”

  “Why?” he growled, because he couldn’t think of a single reason.

  Raven turned his head to peer at him with one bright black eye. “Because I’m the one who brought your beloved Marci back from the dead.”

  Julius’s growling grew louder. “Why should I believe a famous trickster?”

  “Because I’m also famous for bringing souls back from the dead,” Raven croaked cheerfully. “Look it up sometime, but not right now. We have to go after our Merlin.”

  Julius lifted his head. “Merlin?” he said, smiling despite himself. “Marci’s a Merlin?”

  “The greatest one we have,” Raven assured him. “Also the only one we have, which is why we’re in a hurry. I carried Marci’s soul back to her body as part of a rather brilliant plan, the details of which I don’t have time to go into and, quite frankly, you lack the expertise to understand. Marci’s actually still on track to hold up her end, but I’m worried because things have gone a little strange.”

  “Strange how?” Julius demanded. “And what is Marci supposed to be doing in there?”

  Raven looked pained. “The answer to both is the DFZ. Again, I don’t have time for a proper explanation, but the quick-and-dirty version is the city’s gone mad with power. Marci’s supposed to be talking her down, but only after she starts to run out of power. That should have happened several minutes ago, but as I’m sure you’ve noticed, her fight against Algonquin hasn’t exactly washed out.” He chuckled. “That’s a pun.”

  Julius growled, and the spirit quickly moved on.

  “Anyway, since the DFZ’s still going strong, I can only conclude she’s found another way to keep her magic flowing, and I don’t like that. She and Algonquin are holding toe to toe right now, but if the battle starts to turn and Algonquin gets desperate, things will get very bad very quickly.”

  “Wait, Algonquin?” Julius sputtered. “You’re worried about Algonquin?”

  “I’m worried about a lot of things,” Raven said. “Including a certain human girl who’s almost guaranteed to be in over her head right now. I can help you go in there after her, but you have to do exactly as I say.”

  To get Marci back? “Anything.”

  The spirit chuckled. “That’s what I thought.” He hopped off the antenna to land on the bend of Julius’s wing, glaring at the wall of trash. “The creature in that pile has taken something precious from both of us. Neither of us is enough on our own, and I’m not sure if we’ll be enough together, either. But if my hunch is correct, we won’t be too much longer.”

  Julius had no idea what any of that meant, and he didn’t care. He just wanted to get to Marci. “Just tell me what to do.”

  The spirit’s black eyes glittered. “Burn it down.”

  Julius blinked. “What?”

  “You breathe fire, don’t you?” Raven said, bobbing his head at the slimy trash. “Use it. Burn it down.”

  “But Marci’s inside!” he cried. “I can’t just—”

  “If she was close enough to get hurt by your flames, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” the spirit said. “Like I told you, things have gone a bit strange. But that can work to our advantage, too. Just give it a try.”

  Breathing fire was the last thing Julius wanted to do. He’d never been good at it, and he couldn’t get over the idea that Marci was on the other side of that wall. If he went too hot, he might cook her before he knew it. But fear of losing Marci again made a dragon do crazy things, so he breathed in deep, reaching down into the fire that burned inside him until his skin heated and his throat tingled.

  Not including his attack on General Jackson, which he barely remembered and thus didn’t count, Julius hadn’t breathed fire in a very long time. As a result, his first try came out both too fast and too wide. His second attempt was much better, a blast of flame that turned from orange to yellow to white as he pushed harder and harder.

  He melted the wall Marci had vanished through in seconds, then the car waiting behind that. Next came a large stretch of drywall that he turned into a blackened hunk, then a washing machine and a dumpster, but still there was more. The column of trash was only twenty feet across, and yet the more he burned, the more there was. Soon enough, he’d made a tunnel of slag he could walk inside, folding his wings tight against his body to avoid the glowing edges of the hole he’d cut.

  He was now far deeper into the pillar than it was wide, but there was no end in sight. Every time he tried to stop, though, the Raven on his shoulder cawed for him to keep going, keep pushing.

  He was in serious danger of overheating when the spirit suddenly flew up to perch on top of his head, his black eyes shining in the light of Julius’s flames as he leaned toward them to whisper, “Ready?”

  The word went through him like a knife. He could actually feel it traveling down his fire, and then, deep inside, deep down in the parts Julius didn’t touch easily or often, something clenched. It was like teeth had bitten down on the source of his flames, but not to yank them out. Instead, a strange breath breathed him hotter, filling his fire with new color and heat as a familiar female voice spoke through the flames.

&nb
sp; Ready.

  The word was still dancing when Julius’s fire leaped out of his mouth. Literally jumped, the flames moving with a life of their own as they twisted and roared together into the shape of a dragon. An enormous red one with wide, flaming wings and sharp, sharp teeth that ripped into the endless wall of trash like flaming swords, but didn’t harm it. This flame didn’t touch the physical world Julius had been slowly burning his way through. It burned the slimy magic itself, cutting through the muck like a blowtorch through paper until the pillar of trash was completely consumed, and in the ashes, a new world appeared.

  Julius stumbled back in surprise, coughing as the smoke filled his lungs. They were standing in the Pit. Not the current flooded one, but the Pit as he remembered it from their fight with Bixby.

  A few seconds later, Julius realized that wasn’t quite it either. This Pit was far bigger than what he remembered, a huge open cavern that smelled like a grave. Strange as that was, though, Julius couldn’t spare it more than a glance. His instinctual focus was pinned on the new dragon in front of him.

  The one that had come out of his fire.

  “Who are you?” he whispered.

  The dragon looked over her shoulder, her red flames flickering like laughter. Don’t you recognize me, Baby J?

  Julius jumped. Like before, the words had come from inside him, but not from his mind. This was deeper, down in the roots of his fire. Weird as that was, though, what really knocked Julius for a loop was the part where she was right. He did recognize that voice. It was one he knew well, but never thought he’d hear again.

  “Amelia?”

  In the flesh, the fiery dragon said with a grin. Or not, as the case may be. But I see how all this awesomeness might be a little intimidating. Give me a second.

  She spread her wings, and the fire that was her body shifted, the flames swirling into something far more compact. By the time they settled again, Amelia’s human form stood in front of him exactly as he remembered her from the first time they’d met, right down to the red dress and the flask on her hip.

  “There,” she said in a physical voice this time, looking at Julius with eyes that gleamed like the fire she’d just been. “Man, it’s good to be back.”

  She flashed him a cheeky smile, but Julius just stood there sputtering.

  “How?” he got out at last. “You were—”

  “Dead?” She laughed. “Only temporarily.”

  “But Svena saw Bob kill you,” Julius said angrily. “I collected your ashes.”

  “You did?” she said, her voice touched. “That was sweet of you, kiddo, but you should have known there was no need. This is me we’re talking about! I take ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ to a whole new level.”

  “Modest as always, I see,” Raven said, flapping over to land on her shoulder. “But I have to say, you’re looking much better.”

  “I feel much better,” Amelia said, looking down at her body. “Julius gave me one hell of a light.” She flashed him a grateful smile. “Thanks for that, by the way. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through today.”

  Julius didn’t believe any of this. “So Bob didn’t kill you?”

  “Oh no, he killed me good,” Amelia said. “But only because I asked him to.”

  He stared at her in horror. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because he was the only one who could,” she said, lifting her chin proudly. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a hard target. But it was all part of our plan. He killed me so I could hitch a ride on Marci’s death to the spirit world and become this.” She threw out her hands in a grand gesture as her voice echoed again through Julius’s fire.

  Say hello to the Spirit of Dragons, your new god!

  Julius stumbled backward. Even the joy at discovering his sister wasn’t actually dead and Bob might not actually be the murderer he’d feared couldn’t gain traction next to the incredible strangeness of feeling another dragon in his fire. “I don’t think I’m ready for this.”

  “No one’s ready for this,” Amelia assured him, smiling her cockiest smile yet. “I told you I had bigger ambitions than Heartstriker. But I’ll have to fill you in on the details later. Right now, we’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  She turned as she finished, pointing through the dark of this new Pit at the structure that marked its center. In the same place the pillar of trash had been back in the real world, a silver casting circle glittered on the silted ground. Inside it, silver ribbons of spellwork crisscrossed like the net across a dream catcher, pinning down an older man Julius recognized immediately as Sir Myron Rollins, the UN’s undersecretary of magic. What he was doing there, Julius didn’t know, but though his eyes were closed, his hands were moving, clenching and unclenching around the dark, irregular object he held clutched to his chest. A head, Julius realized in horror. Emily Jackson’s head.

  “Why is that here?”

  “Because she’s the key,” Raven said, his croaking voice suddenly huge and terrifying. “So that’s how she was doing it.”

  “Doing what?” he asked.

  Both spirits ignored him.

  “That would explain a lot,” Amelia agreed, looking around. “The only question now is where’s the owner of this house of cards?”

  “That’s not the only question,” Julius snapped, his voice frantic as he realized there was no one else waiting in the dark.

  “Where’s Marci?!”

  ***

  Marci was getting pretty darn sick of being snatched into the dark.

  The hands that had dragged her into the pile of debris let go almost immediately, leaving her to fall backwards through trash that felt increasingly like the world of spirits she’d just left. What little light there was in the Pit had vanished in the first inch, leaving her struggling in a crowded dark that reeked of fetid water, grime, and magic.

  So much magic. More than she’d ever felt floating freely on this side. It was so strong, it burned her skin, making her hiss even as she reached out frantically with her mental hands, grabbing as much of the ambient power as she could to use as a barrier. And a megaphone.

  “Ghost!” she cried, letting the power amplify her call. When there was no reply, she tried again.

  “GHOST!”

  Again, there was no answer, and Marci clenched the magic with a curse. She’d known something was wrong when he’d stopped talking. But when she went to grab another handful of magic to try blasting her way out of whatever this was, something struck her from behind, shoving her out of the dark and into a blinding sea of lights.

  Marci fell on the ground with a grunt, blinking rapidly as she struggled to adjust her eyes. When she could more or less see again, she raised her head and found herself in a familiar place.

  It was the DFZ. Not the ruined one, but also not the one she remembered. Instead, she was standing in the crowded square from the endless city she’d found inside the DFZ’s vessel in the Sea of Magic, and the DFZ herself was right in front of her.

  “Welcome back.”

  Marci shoved herself to her feet, glaring at the hooded figure of the girl who appeared to be the city’s self-image when she wasn’t being a rat. “Where’s my spirit?”

  The DFZ’s glowing orange eyes twinkled cruelly in reply, and then she flicked her hand to drop something small, white, and limp at Marci’s feet. Something that looked terrifyingly like a dead cat.

  “Ghost!”

  She scooped her limp spirit into her arms. “What did you do to him?”

  “Only what was inevitable,” the city replied casually. “He was weak. I was strong. He set himself against me. I struck him down. Cause and effect.”

  “But he wasn’t against you!” Marci shouted. “Neither of us is. We’re here to help you!”

  “Do I look like I need your help?” the DFZ said, looking up at the endless expanse of superscrapers that rose above their heads. “Where do you think you are?”

  Now that she’d said it, Marci realized
with a start that she didn’t know. It looked like they were back in the DFZ’s domain at the bottom of the Sea of Magic, but that was impossible, because they weren’t in the Sea of Magic. This was the physical world, not the land of spirits, and yet it felt all wrong. The magic here wasn’t the normal soft, ambient power she was used to. It wasn’t even the heavy magic of Reclamation Land, or the boiling magic she’d felt when Ghost had flown her through the city. Whatever was going on here, it was new, and it was getting stronger by the second.

  “What did you do?”

  “What I had to,” the DFZ snarled. “Algonquin tried to smother me, to hold me back, but she’s no longer the biggest spirit around. I am. I have all the power now, and I will destroy her for what she has done to me.”

  “You’re destroying yourself,” Marci said angrily. “Look outside! Your city is in ruins.”

  “Because of Algonquin.”

  “Because of you!” she cried. “You’re the one throwing buildings! Algonquin gets more water every time it rains, but you can’t grow new superscrapers.”

  “Of course I can,” the DFZ said. “Detroit always rebuilds.”

  You can’t rebuild lost lives.

  Marci jumped, snapping her head down to the cat in her arms. He still looked terrifyingly faint, but his ghostly blue eyes were open and glaring at the spirit in front of them with righteous fury.

  Can you not hear them? he growled. Algonquin evacuated your city to weaken you, to rob you of your heart, but she did a sloppy job. The poor, the forgotten, those who couldn’t leave, they’re all still here. Your people, the blood of your streets, they’re here, and you’re killing them.

  The DFZ sneered. “They’re just mortals.”

  WE are mortal! Ghost roared, his mouth opening in a silent hiss. We are the souls of humanity’s care, of its hopes and fears! We are them, they are us, and you are sacrificing both to Algonquin!

  “I’m standing up to Algonquin!” the DFZ roared back, her orange eyes painfully bright. “I’m the only one of us with the guts to fight her and her monster! I don’t care if it takes every building I have. I will destroy her lakes. I will kill her as she tried to kill me!”