Nice Dragons Finish Last (Heartstrikers) (51 page)

“Just a second.”

Her voice was like a balm, sending relief running through his body. The feeling was short-lived, though, because when he finally spotted her, she was crouching on her hands and knees all the way back at the edge of the blackened circle where Justin had first shifted.

“What are you doing?” he yelled, running over to grab her by the shoulders. “Come on! We have to go.”

“But it’s gone!” she said frantically, yanking out of his hold. “It was in my bag back in the gym, and now it’s gone.”

He stared down at her, uncomprehending. “What’s gone?”

“My Kosmolabe!” she cried, pressing her cheek against the ground so she could look along the asphalt at foot level. “It must have fallen out when the magic eaters jumped us. Just give me thirty seconds to find it and—”

She cut off as Julius pulled her up, spinning her around to face him. “We don’t have thirty seconds.” he said, forcing his voice to be calm. “We’ll come back later and look together, I promise, but we’re going to be up to our necks in serious trouble if we don’t leave
right now.
So please, Marci,
please
let it go. For me. Because I’m not going to leave you here, and if you stay, we’re all in danger.”

She stared at him for a long moment, her whole body shaking with urgency, and then she went limp under his hands. “Okay,” she whispered, sliding her bag back onto her shoulder. “Okay.”

Relief flooded into Julius so fast, he almost fell into Marci in his rush to hug her. He didn’t think it was possible to properly process all the emotions stomping through him like a herd of elephants, so he didn’t take the time to try. He simply squeezed Marci tight before tugging her back toward Bob’s car, almost yanking her over in his rush to get them both inside and out of danger. But then, just when he was starting to believe they might actually all make it out of this alive, Justin’s flaring green fire that had been illuminating the Pit from above suddenly snuffed out.

Julius stumbled, his head snapping up, but he couldn’t see a thing. The Pit was once again as black as its namesake, and there was no sign of his brother at all. Not a flame, not a roar, not a flap of his wings, not even the squeals of the magic eaters as they died. Nothing. It was like he’d just vanished.

He was still staring up at the silent void where Justin had been when something whooshed by in the blackness—something enormous and incredibly fast. The only reason he spotted it at all was because he was already looking up, and even then, he didn’t catch more than an impression of power and speed before the thing was gone, vanishing into the dark like a hunting owl. He was still staring after it when his phone began to ring.

He answered it without really thinking. By this point, the pain and repeated shocks had rendered his brain nearly useless. He barely noticed when Marci grabbed his arm and pulled him into Bob’s back seat between herself and the now-stirring Katya. As luck would have it, the call picked up just as Bob hit the gas, knocking them all backwards and sending Julius’s phone clattering to the floor. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because the roar that came through the cell phone’s speaker would have deafened Julius otherwise.

“Do you idiots listen to nothing I tell you?”

The feminine voice was so furious, he almost thought it was his mother, but that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t high-pitched enough, and there was a brutal edge on the words that Bethesda could never manage. It wasn’t until Bob drew a
C
in the air, though, that Julius was able to put a name to it. Not that that made things any better.

He scooped the phone off the floor with a sinking heart, leaning back into the Crown Vic’s padded cushions for strength as he raised it to his ear. “Hello, Chelsie.”

“I specifically warned you not to do anything that would bring the Lady down on us,” his sister snarled, making him wince. “That includes letting your
moron
of a brother run rampant breathing fire over a city like some throwback from the dark ages!”

Julius swallowed. “I can’t exactly control what Justin—”

“I know that!”
Chelsie shouted. “And it’s the only reason you’re still alive. Justin might not be so lucky.”

Her voice had turned into a growl by the end, and Julius began to sweat. “Is, um, is he okay?”

“At the moment, yes, because I snatched him out of the air before he could get himself killed. But I can’t vouch for his wellbeing from this point forward. I have very little patience for
idiots
”—there was a sharp crash over the phone, followed by a pained bellow that sounded a lot like Justin’s—“who
lose their tempers
”— another crash—“and use the power they were given for the
defense of the family
”— another bellow of pain—“to make a spectacle of themselves in the
Algonquin’s front yard!
”

Justin’s pained cries went through Julius like spears. “Please don’t be hard on him,” he begged. “It’s my fault. I asked him to help. He would never have—”

“Justin doesn’t need your permission to be a fool,” Chelsie said, her voice wavering back toward human, but only just. “He has been warned
numerous times
, but his head is like a rock. Now, he’s going to learn the hard way why we do not break the rules, and
you
are going to keep your snout out of it. The only reason I’m even calling you is to make sure you’re running. The Lady of the Lakes would have to be deaf, dumb, blind, and asleep to miss a display like that, so if you don’t want the family to disavow all knowledge of your existence, you will get your lousy carcass out of the Pit this instant.”

“We’re running,” Julius assured her.

“Good,” Chelsie said, slightly calmer. “Let me talk to Bob.”

Julius looked up to see Bob frantically shaking his head. “Uh…he’s not—”

“I
know
he’s there,” Chelsie growled. “Put him on
now
.”

Bob’s shoulders slumped in defeat, and he reached back for Julius to give him the phone. When he got it, he pressed it between his shoulder and his ear, answering in a voice so falsely cheerful, it put Julius’s teeth on edge. “What a delight! A call from my favorite sister. How are you, Chelsie love?”

Julius couldn’t make out Chelsie’s answer from the back seat, but her tone didn’t sound nearly as pissed as he would have expected given Bob’s greeting. Then again, Chelsie had known Bob much longer than he had. Maybe she was too used to his antics to care? He was wondering if he shouldn’t take a page from her playbook when he felt Katya stir beside him.

He turned just in time to see her sit up in a rush. Her blue eyes popped open, looking around the car in frightened confusion, and then in horror when she spotted Bob in the front seat. “What is going on?” she whispered, turning to Julius. “Why are we in a car with the Great Seer of the Heartstrikers?” Her eyes dropped as she spoke, and she recoiled, pressing her back against the door. “What
happened
to you?”

Between the dark and the constant panic, Julius hadn’t actually had a chance to look at his wounds properly. He did so now, tilting his head down to study the shredded bloody mess that, this morning, had been a brand new shirt. The longer he looked, though, the more he realized that wasn’t quite right. Most of his shirt had been ripped away during the fighting, which meant the torn-up, far-too-bloody thing he was looking down at was actually his
chest
.

With that awful realization, the world officially became too much. After all the shocks, attacks, and blood loss of the last hour, he simply had nothing left to pull on, and Julius passed out on the spot, slumping back into the seat with Marci’s frightened shout ringing in his ears.

Chapter 18

E
stella the Northern Star, Seer of the Three Sisters, stood behind a rusted-out dumpster at the end of what had once been a high school parking lot, waiting. Above her, the magic eaters she’d lured with her sister’s blood were still swarming, but they gave her a wide berth. Estella paid them no mind in any case. She simply stood, waiting patiently until, at last, she heard the beautiful
clink clink
of antique glass rolling over decaying asphalt.

She leaned down, pressing her fingers to the broken ground just in time to catch the golden ball rolling across it. The priceless treasure the human mage had lost in the chaos. The Kosmolabe. Estella stroked the smooth, cool glass with her fingers.
Her
Kosmolabe, at last.

Tucking the beautiful orb carefully into the warded box she’d brought along just for this purpose, Estella hurried back to her car. This whole operation had been a mess. Thanks to the young Heartstriker’s antics, there wasn’t even the remotest possibility the Lady of the Lakes wouldn’t notice what had happened here, which meant Estella needed to leave. The idea irked her—she did not run from anyone—but her mothers had taught her early that it was best to give Algonquin a wide berth, and Estella always listened to her mothers.

Fortunately, her limo was waiting just around the corner. She slid into the back seat, commanding the autodrive to take her back to her hotel. She’d barely made it a block before her ears caught the muted blare of sirens approaching at top speed, and the thundering hooves of a horse.

A minute later, she passed a convoy of DFZ heavy weapons teams going the opposite direction, led by an enormous man riding a horse made of crashing waves and carrying a spear the size of a telephone pole. His magic was so potent, Estella caught the scent of him even inside her car: ocean spray and blood, dragon’s blood to be precise. But then, whom else would you send to a situation like this but a dragon slayer? She was only sad the overgrown Heartstriker whelp had vanished before Algonquin’s hunter could spear him.

In an ironic twist, the wasteland created by the Lady of the Lakes’ emergence was located directly below the DFZ’s Financial District. This meant it was barely a five-minute drive from her hotel, yet another reason why she’d chosen it as the stage for Bixby’s final act. She had hoped he’d beat the odds and survive since he was the only human she had in Vegas, but then, that was why she’d made him give her all his information before sending him in. Estella never bet on long odds.

She’d avoided touching the Kosmolabe the whole drive over, but once she reached her hotel, a massive superscraper luxury development directly across from Svena’s, Estella gave in, digging out the golden ball the moment the elevator doors closed. As a dragon, she’d always coveted beautiful, rare, powerful things, but it was the seer in her who treasured the Kosmolabe’s true gift. With this as her guide, she could find her way straight to any of the outer planes, no matter how hidden. The one she sought was the most hidden of all, but when she looked into the Kosmolabe, there it was, nestled in among all the others like a little star in the heavens, and all she had to do was follow her new compass right to it.

But while Estella finally had what she’d set out to acquire, the cost had been higher than she’d reckoned thanks to Brohomir’s interference. Katya’s loss was negligible—the girl had always been more of a liability than an asset—but Svena was a blow from which their clan could not recover. Estella had seen the possibility building for years now, but even so, she’d held on to hope. She’d even broken her rule against betting on long odds by ordering Svena directly in a desperate attempt to change their fate, but it had all come to nothing. Despite her best efforts, everything had turned out exactly as she’d foreseen. Now, the only thing left to do was to make sure the last chance she’d paid so dearly for came through.

When she reached her hotel suite, Estella locked the door and started clearing a space in the front room. When she’d pushed all the matched furniture to the walls, she stepped into the middle of the now open floor, clutching the Kosmolabe between her palms. Peering down into the twitching, interlocking gold patterns, she fixed on her target and pulled her magic tight, honing her power to an edge sharp enough to slice through the fabric that separated this world from the worlds beyond. She was almost done when the phone in her purse began to ring.

The noise made her jump. She hadn’t foreseen getting a call now. She didn’t recognize the number, either, but her surprise plus the Chinese country code at the front was as good as an engraved calling card, and by the time Estella answered, the voice on the other end was as expected as it was deep.