Nice Dragons Finish Last (Heartstrikers) (2 page)

At first sight, the ball appeared to be made of solid gold. On closer inspection, however, it became clear that the sphere was actually glass: hollow, ancient, paper-thin glass gilded on the inside with a gold leaf pattern so dense, it looked like a solid, shimmering wall. The combination of glass and gold leaf was as fragile as it was beautiful, and it was protected accordingly by a nest of tissue paper that was itself tucked inside a towel-lined basket and lashed to the passenger seat by both the seatbelt and a half-dozen strips of duct tape. But for all the care the girl had clearly put into packing the delicate golden orb, the glare she shot it was anything but gentle.

“You’d better be worth it,” she grumbled, scrubbing again at the tears that refused to stop coming as she started the car.

It took three tries before the old engine actually caught, and longer still before the dashboard booted up. For once, though, the car’s age worked in her favor. It was too old to have integrated augmented reality, which meant she could still drive it manually whether the computer was up or not. Good thing, too, because she’d already made it all the way to the end of the subdivision by the time the screen above the gearbox finally flickered to life.

“Destination?” the hollow voice of the GPS wheezed.

“Detroit Free Zone,” the girl replied, wincing at the blinding glare of the burning house in her side mirror. “Fast.”

That last command was pure wishful thinking, but the computer did its best. “Calculating fastest route,” it announced sedately.

The girl okayed the first suggested route as soon as it came up, tapping her fingers anxiously on the steering wheel as the auto-drive took over, rolling them out of the crumbling subdivision and onto the dark highway just in time to avoid being seen by the flashing emergency vehicles coming over the horizon from the other direction.

And back in the subdivision, unseen in the dark and the smoke, a pigeon flew out of a nearby juniper bush. It was a common city pigeon, completely out of place in the desert, but it flew like it owned the smoky sky, riding the hot updraft from the roaring fire to the top of the smoke pillar before circling back around to follow the girl’s fleeing car into the night.

Chapter 1

“G
et up.”

Julius woke with a jump, toppling off the slick modern couch. He landed face down on hard white carpet, smacking his knee painfully on the corner of his sister’s abstract coffee table in the process. When he reached down to clutch his smarting joint, his sister kicked his hand away again with the pointed toe of her black leather flats.

“I have to be at the hospital in thirty minutes,” she continued as she marched across the room to yank open the hanging blinds. “That means you need to be out of here in ten. Now get moving.”

Julius rolled over and sat up, squinting against the bright ray of sunlight she’d sent stabbing across her ultra-fashionable, ultra-expensive apartment. “Good morning to you, too,” he said, furtively rubbing his injured knee, which was still throbbing.

“Try afternoon,” Jessica snapped. “Honestly, Julius, it’s nearly five. Is this when you got up at home?” She turned with a huff, walking over to the marble breakfast bar that separated her immaculately white kitchen from the other immaculately white parts of her apartment’s open floorplan. “No wonder Mother kicked you out.”

Mother had kicked him out for a whole host of reasons, but Julius didn’t feel like giving his sister any more ammunition, so he spent the energy he would have used explaining himself on standing up instead. “Where’s your bathroom?”

She stabbed one perfectly manicured nail at the hall, and he shuffled as directed, though it still took him three tries before he found the right door. The others led into beautifully furnished bedrooms, none of which looked to be in use.

Julius sighed. Two guest bedrooms, and she’d
still
made him sleep on the couch. But then, Jessica had always been very conscious of where she stood in the pecking order, which was usually directly on top of Julius’s head. The only reason she’d let him sleep here at all was because he was her brother, and the consequences for not helping family were dire. In any case, it wasn’t like he was in a position to complain. When you found yourself shoved off a private plane into a strange airport at dawn with nothing but the clothes on your back, you took what you could get.

He found the bathroom and showered as fast as he could only to get right back into the same faded T-shirt and jeans he’d slept in, because what else was there to wear? He didn’t even have a toothbrush, and he wasn’t about to risk Jessica’s wrath by using hers. In the end, he had to settle for mostly clean, raking his shaggy black hair into some semblance of order with his fingers and wishing he’d had a chance to get it trimmed before his life had gone down the drain. Of course, if he’d had any advanced warning of last night’s personal armageddon, he wouldn’t have wasted it on a haircut.

By the time he emerged into the living room again, Jessica was dressed for work in a pants suit, her long, blond-dyed hair pulled back in a tight French twist. She sat in the kitchen, perched on a silver barstool like a model in an interior design magazine as she sipped coffee from a minimalist white mug. Naturally, she hadn’t made any for him.

“Here,” she said when she saw him, shoving a sleek, black metal rectangle across the marble countertop. “This is for you.”

Julius’s breath caught in amazement. “You got me a phone?”

Jessica rolled her brilliant green eyes, the only family feature they shared. “Of course not. Unlike you,
I
know how to be a dragon, which means
I
don’t give out freebies just to be
nice
.” She hissed the last word through sharpening teeth, letting a bit of her true nature show before resuming her human mask. “It’s from Bob.”

Julius snatched back the hand he’d been reaching toward the phone. Bob was his oldest brother and their dragon clan’s seer. He was also insane. Presents from him tended to explode. But the phone looked normal enough, and Julius had already been kicked out of his home and dropped in a strange city without a dollar to his name. Really, how much worse could today get?

He picked up the feather-light piece of electronics with tentative fingers. Cursed gift or not, this phone was much nicer than the old one he’d been forced to leave behind. As soon as the metal contacts on the back touched his skin, the phone’s augmented reality system blended seamlessly into his own ambient magic. After a second’s calibration, the air above the phone flickered, and a 3D interface appeared. He was still getting used to the beautifully designed, almost unusably small icons floating above his hand when a flashing message appeared directly in front of his face, titled THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT.

Hesitantly, Julius reached up to tap the floating message. The moment his finger passed through the icon, a short paragraph appeared, the glowing letters hovering seemingly in thin air.

My Dearest Brother,

Sorry I didn’t warn about Mother’s incoming Upset. I foresaw it last year and simply forgot to tell you due to other VAST AND SERIOUS events currently unfolding. To make it up to you, I’ve taken the liberty of preparing the proper credentials for your new Life in the Big City. I can only hope it’s all still valid, seeing how I’m putting this phone in the mail to you four months before you’ll need it, but We Do What We Must. I’ve also set you up with some money from my private hoard to make the transition a little easier. Try not to spend it all in one place!

Hearts and kisses, your infallible and all-knowing brother,

Bob

PS: I almost forgot to give you your advice for the day. You must be a GENTLEMAN above all else, and a gentleman never refuses to help a desperate lady. You’re welcome.

Julius read the message twice before setting the phone back down on the counter. “If he knew to mail me a phone four months before I needed it, why didn’t he just tell me Mother was going to kick me out instead?”

“Because he’s not really a seer, idiot,” Jessica replied, setting her empty mug down with a clink. “He can’t
actually
see the future. He’s just insane. You know how old dragons get.” She slid off the barstool with a huff. “Honestly, his only real power is his ability to convince Mother that his stupid antics are all part of some huge, incomprehensible scheme that’s going to help her defeat the other clans and become queen dragon of the world.”

Julius didn’t know about that. From what he’d seen, Mother believed in Bob completely, and she didn’t do anything without good reason. Of course, it was hard to tell what was really going on across the enormous distance he kept between himself and the more powerful members of his family. That was Julius’s entire life strategy, actually—stay out of the way of bigger dragons—and up until last night, it had worked perfectly. More or less.

He sighed and grabbed the phone again, putting his finger through the glowing accounts icon as soon as the AR interface came up. Whatever the actual status of his sanity, Bob was indisputably old. Old dragons couldn’t help storing up vast piles of wealth. If Bob was giving Julius money from his own private stash, then maybe…

His fledgling hopes crumbled when the balance appeared. Ninety-eight dollars and thirty-two cents. Bob had given him ninety-eight dollars and thirty-two cents. That was barely enough to get him through half a week back home. It probably wouldn’t last him a day in a big city like the DFZ.

Julius slumped against the breakfast bar, staring blankly at the miles of shiny white superscrapers and animated ad-boards looming beyond Jessica’s floor-to-ceiling windows. What was he going to do? And how? His life back home might not have been great, but at least he understood it. Now he was uprooted, lost, tossed into the biggest city in the world with nothing, and he couldn’t even change into his true form and fly away because of what his mother had done.

That thought made him more depressed than ever. He’d been trying his best not to think about what had happened last night, what had
really
happened, but there didn’t seem to be much point in avoiding it now. He’d have to face facts sooner or later, so he might as well get it over with. It wasn’t like things could get any—

His phone rang.

Julius jumped, jerking the phone up so fast he narrowly missed cracking it to pieces on the underside of the counter. Jessica jumped as well, and then her green eyes grew cruel. “I can guess who that is,” she said in the sing-song voice he’d hated since they were hatchlings.

“It might not be her,” Julius muttered, though that was more desperate hope than any real belief. After all, there were only two people who could plausibly know this number, and Julius didn’t think he’d be lucky enough to get Bob.

Jessica clearly didn’t think so, either. “Much as I’d love to stick around and witness you get chewed to bits, I’ve got work,” she said cheerfully, grabbing her bag off the counter as she strolled toward the door. “Don’t touch my stuff, and don’t be here when I get back. Oh, and if she decides to kill you, make sure you don’t die in my apartment. I just got this carpet installed.”

She tapped her heel on the white carpet before walking into the hall, humming happily to herself. As soon as the door closed, Julius sank onto her vacated stool. He propped his elbows on the counter as well, shoring himself up as best he could. Finally, when he was well supported and out of ways to put off the inevitable, he hit the accept call button like a man ordering his own execution and raised the phone to his ear.

“Well,” crooned the sweet, familiar, smoky voice that never failed to tie his insides in knots. “If it isn’t my most ungrateful child.”

Julius closed his eyes with a silent sigh. “Hello, Mother.”

“Don’t you ‘hello, Mother’ me,” she snapped, the click of her long fangs painfully audible through the new phone’s magically enhanced speakers. “Do you know what time it is?”

He glanced at the clock. “Five fifteen?”

“It is exactly nineteen hours since you left my company.
Nineteen hours
, Julius! And you never once thought to call and reassure your poor mother that you were alive and had found somewhere to stay? What is wrong with you?”

Julius could have reminded her that it was her fault he was in this position in the first place. She was the one who’d barged into his room at midnight and ordered him to get out without letting him grab his phone or his money or any of the tools he needed to make the call she was angry about not receiving. But burdening Bethesda the Heartstriker with facts when she was in a rage was only slightly less suicidal than contradicting her, so all he said was, “Sorry.”