Bad Times in Dragon City (20 page)

The Ruler laughed again. “I didn’t need to kill you,” she said. “I just needed to show that it could be done. Your days — your hours — are now numbered, oh Emperor with claws of clay!” 

The Dragon reared back his head and inhaled once again. This time, I wouldn’t be down there to help Danto and Belle with the shield — or Cindra with the shooting — and I was sure they couldn’t hold it without me. The dragonet may have gotten to safety, but without my help the rest of my friends in that pit were going to die. 

Cindra started firing at the Dragon, peppering him with the freezing bullets she’d used against the Black Hand. They appeared as blue-black splashes against the Dragon’s scales, but those colors evaporated almost instantly in the Dragon’s ferocious heat. In his rage, they didn’t seem to do more than tickle him, but they forced him to cough to clear his throat. Then he inhaled for another fiery blast once again. 

The smart thing to do, I knew, would have been to crawl up the side of that pit as fast as I could and hope the Dragon was too busy with the people below to pay any attention to me. I looked up toward the top of the hole and spotted silent Moira there, beckoning for me to join her. I glanced back at the trio of my friends below, bracing for the blast. 

I couldn’t leave them to die, and I knew it. Not while I had even a single bullet to fire or spell to cast. I didn’t know any magic that could hurt the Dragon, but I had something in my holster that might. 

I drew my sawed-off shotgun, pointed it at the humongous beast’s chest, and fired. The bright silver slug Kells had given me kicked so hard that the recoil almost knocked me off the wall, sticky spell or no. It spun me about, wrenching my back and smacking my gun arm against the rocks behind me with such force that I bobbled the gun. I barely caught it before it tumbled into the cavern below. 

The slug slammed into the Dragon’s armored hide and knocked him sprawling. Maybe he was off balance to begin with. Maybe Cindra’s bullets and the Black Hand’s lightning bolt had hurt him more than it had seemed. 

Either way, the slug smashed between the Dragon’s ribs and left a crater there the size of a dinner table. Believe it or not, though, the big bastard’s scales held. The bullet might not have broken through his armor, but it put a dent in it massive enough it made it hard for the beast to breathe. 

I pulled myself back onto the wall, finding new footholds, and I scrambled to break open my shotgun one-handed by bashing it against the rocks next to me. The Dragon’s head snapped around to glare me, and the Voice started to scream in agony and surprise. 

The Dragon howled along with him, making a racket that made me want to stop to cover my ears, even if it meant I would fall to my death. I fought that urge and instead tried to hunker my head down between my shoulders until the awful ruckus went away. 

“That damn well
hurt!
” the Voice said with more emotion than I’d ever heard from him. 

As he spoke, the Dragon huffed for a big breath once more but winced in pain at what I hoped was a broken rib instead. Giving up on trying to fry me with his fire, he peeled back his lips instead and bared his rows of sword-long teeth at me. 

I tucked the broke-open shotgun into my holster and fumbled in my pocket for another one of the silver slugs. As I pulled out a box of red shells instead, I knew I was dead. The Dragon would pluck me from that wall and swallow me whole before I could get that gun back together, and he’d probably belch up my incinerated remains a minute later and use my femur to pick the shreds of my jacket from between his teeth. 

I hollered in frustration as I tossed the red shells aside and stuffed my hand back into my pocket, hoping for a box of silver slugs this time. The Dragon came right at me, cocking back a mighty claw to strike me dead and stuff me into his mouth in a single, lethal move. 

“Son of Gib!” the Voice said. “You have lost my favor!” 

The dragonet zipped down between us then, hovering between his father and me and shielding me with his body. The Dragon didn’t even blink at his child. He used the claw he’d raised against me and swatted his son out of his way. The dragonet sailed high up into the air and disappeared over the Great Circle, skittering off the side of the Night Tower before he vanished from sight. 

I wanted to call out the little guy’s name, but it struck me then that I’d never given him one. I knew if I hung a moniker on him, that would mean he was mine — and that I was his — and I’d not been ready for that. Not then. 

And now I’d never get a chance. 

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-T
HREE

I yanked a box of shells from my pocket and came up with silver. While I fumbled with them though, the Dragon reared back his head. He’d given up on grabbing me first and had decided to go straight to biting me in half instead. 

“Wahoo!” someone shouted from high above, but I didn’t look that way. I couldn’t pull my gaze from the forest of teeth coming at me. 

Then the air filled with the sound of continuous gunfire, as if an army of angry dwarves had fanned their pistols at once. Bullets stitched a line across the Dragon’s snout, and he recoiled in pain. 

I braved a glance up and saw Johan sitting in the front of Ingo’s glossy black palanquin. Kells perched in a chair he’d bolted to the top of the ride, his hands wrapped around the handles of a larger version of that submachine-gun he’d showed me in the Quill. He’d mounted it on a tripod in front of himself, bolting it to the top of the palanquin and giving him a clear field of fire at everything in front of him, which at that moment meant the Dragon. 

As many bullets as the machine-gun could fire, though, the slugs didn’t do much more than annoy the Dragon. They put pockmarks in his scales and made him furious, but not one of them punched through to the flesh beneath. 

I had to turn over the box of silver shells to get one of them out of it, and every last one of them spilled out. I managed to snag one of them with a desperate grab, but the rest scattered into the air and rained into the pit below me. Cursing, I slammed the single slug home into my shotgun and then slapped the weapon back together with a snap of my wrist. 

Meanwhile, Kells kept spraying the Dragon down with bullets, feeding a belt of them through his magnificent machine. The ammunition never seemed to run out, but it just bounced off the Dragon’s hide like hail on a tin-roofed shack. 

I drew a bead on the big bastard, knowing I would only get a single shot at him. Once I pulled the trigger, I was done. I had to not only pick my target well, I had to make sure I hit it. 

If I couldn’t get through the Dragon’s scales, I needed to shoot him someplace softer. I figured his eyes would be the weakest spot, but that meant I had to get him to look at me. I wasn’t sure I wanted that. 

The dragonet dived back into the battle then, soaring up over the Great Circle and zooming straight down at me. He gave out a high-pitched roar that would have sounded cute if it hadn’t been filled with so much rage. He hauled up at the last moment and perched on my shoulder. I worried that his weight might pull me from the wall, but he kept his wings wide and beating hard enough that he only felt like a feather wobbling there. 

Hey!
I heard a voice echo in my head.
Hey! Hey! HEY!

I glanced up at the dragonet. He had his eyes fixed hard on his father, screeching at him like a bird of prey trying to flush a meal from cover. That was his voice in my head. 

If the Dragon could hear him, though, he ignored him to concentrate on the palanquin instead. He spread his mighty wings wide, and I thought that he might take off into the air and chase down Johan and Kells before I could get my shot in at him. Instead, he beat his wings hard and fast, buffeting the palanquin with a blast of wind stronger than a tornado. 

Johan hollered in surprise and terror as the Dragon-made gale took the palanquin and tossed it about like a leaf in a thunderstorm. In a panic, he brought his ride back and up, trying to escape from the creature’s wrath. Still strapped into his seat on top of the palanquin, Kells stopped firing, unable to keep a bead on the beast for now. 

Hey! Face me! Coward! BULLY!

The dragonet’s voice echoed in my head again, louder now, and this time the Dragon spun about to focus his wrath on his thankless child — who hovered over my shoulder. 

The Dragon’s voice boomed in my skull then, almost stunning me blind. 

How dare you? You are but a little error, a minor mistake. One that I will correct right now. 

The Dragon moved toward us, and I brought my shotgun up to bear on him. He spotted it right away, and he froze. The Voice of the Dragon lay slumped over the edge of the basket hanging beneath him, bleeding from a dozen bullet wounds. 

You cannot harm me. You wouldn’t dare. 

“Let’s see about that.” 

I am the check on the Ruler of the Dead. The bulwark behind the Great Circle. If I am gone, who will keep my city safe? You? 

His laughter echoed in my head. This was the same argument he’d used to get the city’s founders to sign the Imperial Pact. They’d battled long and hard against the Ruler of the Dead, and they’d decided they couldn’t manage it on their own. They had thought their only chance for survival rested with feeding their dead into that damned lizard’s stomach. 

I answered the Dragon with my last damn bullet. 

The silver shell smashed into his left eye and drove straight through his brain. Once the bullet got past his scales, their strength worked against him. They kept the slug ricocheting inside his skull until the charge inside it went off, turning the contents into blasted jelly.  

The great beast toppled over backward then, his wings collapsing in toward him as he went. For a moment, I feared he might slide all the way down into the pit and crush Danto, Cindra, and Belle, but his wings caught on the rim of the great hole he’d made. He came to a rest there, his gigantic carcass suspended over the cavern floor, only his limp tail flopping into it. 

I looked down at Belle, my shotgun still smoking in my hand, to make sure she was all right. She gaped up at me and my imperial victim, stunned at what I had done. 

It shocked me more than a little too. The whole world seemed to have gone silent, although I swore I could still hear the echoes from my gun’s report ringing in my ears. 

I gazed past Belle there and spotted what was left of her sister lying sprawled in pieces just beyond her. Through Fiera’s remains, the Ruler of the Dead opened up her mouth and laughed and laughed and laughed until her jaw fell from her face. 

THE END

The tale concludes in
End Times in Dragon City
. 

Special Thanks

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