Dragon Coast (32 page)

Of all the great powers Daniel had come across, Gabriel was far from the worst. He could have been a despot. He could have been a Hierarch. Whoever controlled the water could control California, but Gabriel seemed more genuinely interested in making sure the crops got irrigated, the traffic moved, and people didn't die of thirst. They weren't friends, but they weren't enemies, either, and sometimes, in a world of Otises and Cormorants, that was enough for Daniel.

He didn't want to see Gabriel die. But he wanted to see Sam die even less.

Hard choices. Gabriel would've been the first to understand.

“They're going to have to sort it out between themselves,” he said. “Sam comes first.”

They worked their way through the rubble toward the remains of a long rectangular building, an old remnant of the fairgrounds, where the dragon loomed.

A figure came away from the building. Daniel recognized her gait right away.

“Cassie.” He and Moth rushed toward her.

“I'm fine,” she said with impatience when they reached her. But from the pained look in her eyes, Daniel could tell she was not fine.

“What is it?” he asked her.

She closed her eyes and took a breath, gathering herself, and Daniel prepared himself to hear the worst news.

“Is it Sam?”

“No,” she said.

“What, then?”

“It can wait. Do what you came to do and take care of your boy.”

Cassandra took Moth by the arm. “There's a tunnel. It goes under the bay and comes out in North Beach. Let's go.”

Moth pulled his arm away. “Bullshit, I'm staying with Daniel.”

“Daniel's mom is coming up the tunnel. We're going to deal with her so Daniel can take care of Sam.”

Daniel and Cassandra exchanged a quick conversation of silent expressions.

Daniel's mom was not coming up the tunnel. Cassandra was lying to Moth, and she was doing it to help Daniel. The next few moments were going to be a time of flame and magic, and Daniel had enough to do without worrying about immolating his friends. He needed space to work, and Cassandra was going to make sure he had it.

But there was something else she wasn't telling Daniel. When he was about to question her, she shook her head no.

“Not something you need to know now,” she said. “It can wait.”

Moth jabbed a giant finger in Daniel's chest. “If you get killed, I'm going to punch you so hard I'll actually feel it in my knuckles.”

“You do and I'll kick you so hard I'll get a compound leg fracture. Go.”

“We'll be on the other side of the bay,” Cassandra said. “Promise us you'll be there, too.”

“I'll try,” Daniel said. “That's the best I can give you.”

She kissed him on the cheek. “Do better.”

With great relief, Daniel watched his friends scramble off to a direction most resembling safety.

From his pocket, he withdrew the
axis mundi
bone. He used his knife to cut a groove all the way around it, and in the groove he wound the strand of Sam's hair he'd saved.

This was the very last bit of Sam he had left. The other hair was in Los Angeles with Issac Slough, the golem maker. So much depended upon fragile strands.

Cupping the bone in his hands, he blew on it with care, as if trying to ignite a smoldering bundle of dry grass. It grew heavier and heavier, tons of weight compressed into an object the size of a coin, like it wanted to drop through the earth's crust and plunge through dark zones of rock, back home to the molten center of the world. It wanted to drag Daniel down with it. He was holding on to a bullet in flight thundering toward the ground, and it wanted to burst through the cage of his clasped fingers.

Daniel held on. The magic of a thousand creatures lived in his bones, and he used their strength to maintain his grip on the
axis mundi
. He used the strength of the osteomancy his father had given him, and the osteomancy he'd claimed for himself, from every morsel of griffin claw to the Southern Hierarch's heart. He used the early lessons his mother gave him about doing whatever he had to do to survive, even if those things were ugly. He used his love for Sam.

The
axis mundi
was the most powerful bone Daniel had ever touched, and it wanted to return to its deep source of magic. Daniel overrode what it wanted. He held on.

The dragon raised its head on the towering column of its neck. It swept back its wings to their full breadth, blotting out the sky behind sheets of swirling color and generating a wind gust that fed the flames. Blue fire exploded from its yawning mouth, high enough to reach the moon.

Daniel staggered in the heat blast. He fell, chin hitting baked concrete. He didn't search his bones for defensive magic. No Colombian dragon to protect him from the heat. No hippogriff to run away. He needed all his strength to keep hold of the
axis mundi
bone, and he couldn't spare the magic.

Writhing on the ground, he held on.

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

“Does it hurt?”

Sam could barely breathe. “Yes. It hurts a lot.”

He'd been shot through with kraken lightning. He'd been yanked from his perch high in the brainworks and dashed to the ground far below. He tried to summon fire from his bones, but his bones were all cracked, and all his magic was spilling out.

The Hierarch sat cross-legged and leaned over him, his massive body occupying everything in Sam's vision. There was color to his flesh now. More muscle. He was a vision of what Sam might have become had he eaten more magic and grown in power.

The Hierarch winced, not with his own pain, but in sympathy with Sam's. “I'd really prefer not to eat you.”

Sam tried to speak and coughed till he had spots in his eyes. He swallowed, took a breath, and tried again. “That's a first. Too full from gorging yourself on my friend?”

“Your friend. Oh, the girl with the hydra.”

“Annabel Stokes.”

The Hierarch looked confused.

“That was her name. Annabel Stokes.”

“Annabel,” the Hierarch said, as if trying to commit her name to memory. “Yes, Annabel's healing magic was helpful. But I don't want that kind of help from you, Sam. Discovering myself alive in the firedrake was a surprise. And a nice one. As I once gave you life, you gave it back to me. Thank you for that. I mean that. Thank you very much. But now I want your mind. My own isn't quite fully formed yet. I suppose you may have noticed.”

“It's noticeable,” Sam agreed, spitting the words out in a sob of pain.

The giant smiled. He was a good sport. “May I have it? Your mind?”

“I need to think about it,” Sam said. “Catch my breath.”

“You'll have to think quickly, I'm afraid. Daniel Blackland is right outside us. I don't know what he's doing, but I'm sure he means the dragon harm.”

Of course Daniel was outside. Where else would he be? Daniel always showed up eventually.

Sam reached deep for the last of his magic.

His remaining fire wasn't strong enough to roast a marshmallow.

But fire wasn't what he needed.

He needed healing. He needed the hydra he'd inherited from the Hierarch. The hydra the Hierarch had devoured.

What he needed was Annabel Stokes.

He searched through his bones and through all his cells, reconstructing the memory of Annabel's scent, just as Daniel had taught him. She'd been inside the dragon as long as Sam, so she smelled mostly of sour acid and bitter flame, of viscera and meat. That's what everything smelled like in the dragon.

He thought of the sound of her voice. A bit of a gruff alto. He thought of her eyes, not afraid to look at Sam, not afraid to see him.

“I think you'd better go ahead and eat me,” Sam said.

The Hierarch blinked. “I don't understand.”

“I mean I don't want to be your copilot. I mean I would literally rather you eat me than force me to spend another minute with your pizza-dough face. I mean screw you, you idiot. Down the hatch with me.”

The Hierarch leaned forward and brought his face close to Sam's. His breath smelled of his last meal. It smelled of hydra and of Annabel.

He opened his mouth wide, and the last thing Sam saw before he closed his eyes and braced himself against the pain of ripped flesh and muscle were the Hierarch's teeth.

The Hierarch let out a small squeal of surprise. White bumps formed on his forehead and grew outward, elongating like wriggling fingers. A pair of fully formed hands followed, and then wrists, and forearms, and then elbows.

“What are you doing?” the Hierarch said, his voice strangled with pain.

“Looks like something you ate doesn't agree with you.”

His forehead bulged out with the crackle of dry spaghetti. It was the sound of a splintering skull. Sam watched in horrified fascination as a human form continued to grow out of him—the crown of a head, shoulders, and a back.

The Hierarch shrieked. And the dragon shrieked. And Sam shrieked.

“This
hurts
. This
hurts
.”

Sam didn't know which one of them had spoken. He clutched his head, and the Hierarch's eyes bulged in pain.

“Stop it. It
hurts
.”

They writhed together, the Hierarch's giant form and Sam's tiny body, joined by magic and pain. And if this was how it ended, so be it. The end of Sam and the end of the Hierarch.

But Sam changed his mind. Even in his agony, he didn't want to die. Even in this form, a thought inside a dragon, a reflection of the Hierarch, he wanted to live. He wanted grass tickling his bare feet. He wanted cool fog on his skin. He wanted flavors on his tongue. He wanted to feel a warm hand in his. He wanted to talk to someone, to tell truths and not hide behind made-up identities. He wanted these things and he wanted Em, and he wanted to live.

He wanted to heal.

The Hierarch's head came apart with a gush of liquid magic, and a form fell to the ground like a birthed calf.

Annabel lay curled among the Hierarch's remains, naked and gasping.

Sam held her, and even though she came out of the healing magic in his body, he hoped he could somehow give healing magic back to her. In a just universe, things would work that way.

He couldn't say how long they stayed together like this. He felt the firedrake's heart like a big, deep drum in his chest, strong and slow.

He didn't know how often the dragon's heart beat. A dozen times a minute or once an hour or once a year. But when Annabel opened her eyes, he felt the thudding in his chest quicken, and the flow of blood through his body strengthened him.

She was still healing him. He released her.

“I have to go to the cockpit,” he said.

“Why? What's so great about the cockpit?” Her voice was rough, as though she'd swallowed acid.

“The Hierarch said Daniel's on the outside. I have to go see.”

He began unbuttoning his shirt.

Annabel blinked. “Sam? Why are you taking off your clothes?”

“Because you're not wearing any. You can have my shirt.”

“Oh. Turn around.”

She plucked the shirt from Sam's outstretched hand.

“Thanks,” she rasped.

“Well, you saved my life. You're my hydra.”

“So I can keep the shirt?”

“Yeah. Sorry if it stinks.” He helped her to her feet.

“It's a stinky world, Sam. The whole thing. Inside and out.”

Leaning on each other like drunk friends stumbling home, they made their way to the cockpit.

*   *   *

Sam took the pilot's seat and turned a knob, and the dragon raised its head. With the movement of a few levers, he spread the dragon's wings out to their full span and laughed a little with delight.

“Are you doing that?” Annabel said.

“Yeah. The Hierarch's dead. Or … you healed the part of me that was the Hierarch. The part of me that wanted the dragon to burn people. The part of me that just wanted to consume. Hell, I don't know. But I think I can operate this thing now.”

“Let's see what's happening on the ground,” she said.

“Okay, okay … I think it's this one.” He turned another knob, and the dragon stretched open its jaws and shrieked flame into the orange sky. “Oh, crap.”

“Maybe you should be a little more careful.”

“Sorry, sorry … here. It's definitely this one.” He touched a control, and the dragon's head angled down. The scene outside the dragon's eyes was one of burning structures, charred mechanical equipment, melting wires, billowing smoke, and spreading flames.

Daniel knelt in the middle of it, a small man confronting a colossus. He struggled to his feet, his chin smeared with dirt and blood. He looked like a mess. He always did. It was almost comforting to see him this way.

Daniel clasped his hands and spread his legs, as if trying to lift an enormous weight, something the earth was trying to claim for its own. Sam felt its gravitational pull as well. He braced his feet against the control panel, afraid he'd fly through the dragon's eyes and out into … what, exactly?

Daniel was working some kind of magic. In his grip was probably an osteomantic bone, and he'd no doubt gone through great pains to obtain it, and to bring it here to Sam.

Annabel held him in the seat by his shoulders. “What's wrong with you?”

“Don't you feel it? Daniel's pulling.”

“No,” Annabel said, somber. “It's just you.”

Sam flew from her and smashed into the control panel. He gasped, pain in his ribs.

Annabel wrapped her arms around him.

“Maybe you should let go,” she whispered in his ear. Her breath was warm, her lips brushing his jaw. “Maybe you should go home.”

“Go home to what?”

“He's your friend, right? You trust him?”

Sam didn't want to live in a world where he couldn't.