Nice Dragons Finish Last (Heartstrikers) (47 page)

That was the detail she’d argued with Julius about the most, actually. She would have felt much safer leaving the actual Kosmolabe in the car with Ghost and Bob where there was no chance if it being damaged in the chaos, but Julius had refused to back down. The Kosmolabe was the highest value target, he’d said, which meant Marci should have it on her to ransom for her own life if something went wrong.

Given her own misgivings about her ability to pull off the operation, she had to admit it was nice to have a backup. But they were nearly halfway through now, and everything was running smoothly. Bixby was almost to the table already, and she hadn’t messed up yet.

She wouldn’t, either. Even though the cut on her neck stung like crazy and the stress was making her sweat so badly she was worried the spellwork she’d painted around her body would start to smudge, Marci just clutched her illusion of perfect calm tighter and waited for her chance. Bixby was almost in position. Six more steps and she would finally be able to pay him back for all he’d done. All she had to do was hold on. Just five more steps and it was done. Four more. Three—

A crash exploded trough the room, followed by an animal roar that turned her blood to ice.

No,
she thought frantically. Not yet. It was too soon. But Bixby had stopped in his tracks a good three feet away from the fake Kosmolabe to look for the sound, and he wasn’t alone. Everyone’s heads were jerking toward the roof, and Marci knew with crushing certainty that it was all ruined. There was no way she could draw the room’s fire now. All she could do was look up with the rest as Julius hurtled down from the roof to land on the dusty gym floor…

With an enormous creature right on top of him.

The sight drove all thoughts of ruined plans from Marci’s head, replacing them with pure, frozen panic. Julius had hit the ground so hard, part of her mind couldn’t accept that he was still alive even after he rolled over and started fighting the thing on chest. The thing Marci couldn’t actually put a name to.

Even with the glaring floodlights Bixby’s people had set up, the monster on top of Julius was unrecognizable. The best she could make out was a roughly eight-foot-long mass of black leathery wings, hooked claws, and teeth that seemed to be getting brighter every time they snapped. Whatever it was, Julius didn’t seem to be able to get out from under it, and the fear on his face was what finally broke Marci out of her shock and into action.

In the space of a heartbeat, she dropped every illusion she had, pulling the magic back into her like she was sucking in a breath. The power burned as it returned, a pointed reminder of why you were always supposed to release and redraw magic instead of reusing, but even in her scramble, she wasn’t about to touch the awful stuff in the Pit. She only had to bear the pain for a second, anyway, just long enough to bring up her arm and shove the power through the circle of her bracelet, sending a scorching spear of super-heated air straight at the creature that was currently trying to bite out Julius’s throat.

And that was when things got weird.

Generally speaking, when Marci cast a spell, that was it. She’d been holding Justin’s magic for a long time at this point, though, and her connection to it lingered longer than it should have. As a result, part of her went along with the magic as it slammed into the monster’s side. But just as she felt the heat begin to scorch the creature’s hide, the spell vanished.

The loss was so sudden, she actually stumbled. Her body rebalanced itself instinctively, which was good, because her brain was no help at all. It was too busy trying to comprehend what had just happened.

Any way she approached it, it made no sense. She’d
felt
the spell work, felt it
hit
, and then the magic was just
gone.
But that was impossible. Magic obeyed the same laws as energy. It changed forms and lost quality, but it didn’t
vanish
. Apparently, though, no one had told the spell that. She’d thrown enough power at that monster to boil it alive from the inside out, but it didn’t even seem to notice her in its frenzy to dig its talons into Julius’s ribs.

After that, Marci forgot about impossibilities. She reached out desperately, swallowing her revulsion as she yanked in the cold, heavy magic of the Pit. Before she could gather enough to start on a movement spell to save him, though, a second shape plummeted through the hole in the ceiling like a shot.

Justin must have done something more than simply jump down, because the gym’s ancient rubberized floor cracked when he hit. The resulting wave of dust and debris sent the men, who until this moment had been standing around like gaping statues, scrambling to cover their faces. Justin ignored them completely, turning instead to Julius, his unsheathed sword flying at the winged creature’s head.

By the time the monster realized it had a new opponent, it was too late. Justin lopped its head off in one clean stroke, sending an arc of blue-black blood flying all the way to the back of the broken bleachers. For a shocked second, the wet splatter was the only sound, then Bixby shouted something unintelligible, and all hell broke loose.

The air filled with the pop of gunshots as the entire room full of hired thugs turned and fired on Justin. He grunted when the first shots hit, but though Marci could see the impact of the bullets rippling over Justin’s body, not a drop of blood appeared on his white shirt as he took up a defensive position over Julius, who was still on the floor. It was such an astonishing sight, Marci didn’t realize the thugs were also shooting at
her
until her ward, which she’d drained nearly dry in her attempt to save Julius, started to buckle.

She shored it up as best she could, pulling in more of the heavy, repulsive power of the Pit and forcing it through the spellwork she’d written in casting marker on her skin under her clothes. But the magic here wasn’t just disgusting to touch, it also wasn’t nearly as concentrated as the power she’d siphoned off Justin, and she simply couldn’t keep up.

A ward that was tuned to only stop bullets shouldn’t have taken so much magic. The general rule was the more specialized the ward, the more efficiently it worked. But there was a practical limit to everything, and there were a
lot
of people shooting at her. The ground at her feet was already carpeted with crumpled slugs, and the work of canceling all that force had left the protective bubble of magic around her dangerously dim. Another ten seconds and it would go out entirely, which would have been enough time if she’d been running for the door. But she couldn’t run. Not until she got the others out, too.

Swallowing against her fear, Marci glanced back at Julius to see what she could do to help. Not much was the answer. Obnoxious as his arrogant bragging could be, Justin was guarding his downed brother like a wall. There were actually more spent slugs around his feet than hers, but the dragon didn’t even look winded.

That sight did more to calm her panic than anything else, and Marci was finally able to move past Julius’s immediate danger and focus on the next most important thing: salvaging the job.

By this point, her ward was in serious danger. It hadn’t cracked yet, though, so Marci forced herself to ignore the bullets and look for Katya. The man who’d been guarding her earlier must have had other things to do, because when she finally spotted the dragoness, Katya was lying on her side against the gym’s far wall, alone and miraculously untouched by the violence around her.

Target in sight, Marci darted across the gym, dodging the gunmen who tried to grab her. She lunged for Katya the moment she was in range, yanking her out of the black tarp Bixby had wrapped her in. But as the covering came off, Marci saw there was something else hidden beneath it. A dark, padded band had been wrapped around Katya’s waist, almost like a weightlifter’s belt with wires sticking out of it, each one of which was connected to a sewn-in compartment filled with a gray, clay-like substance that reminded her of—

“Enough!”

The enraged shout cut through the racket, making Marci jump. She whirled around as the gunfire died to see a panting Bixby standing by the card table where the illusionary Kosmolabe had rested before Marci had been forced to drop it. His hand was out in front of him, his fist wrapped around something that looked like an old-style joystick. There was even a red button at the top that he was currently mashing down with his white-knuckled thumb as his wild eyes slid over the room to stop on Marci.

“Hands up!” he bellowed. “She’s wrapped in enough C4 to take this whole place out. One false move out of any of you, and I blow us all sky high.”

Marci snatched her hands away from Katya, raising them instantly over her head. All around the room, Bixby’s men were lowering their guns and regrouping, but even though the shooting had stopped, it was hardly quiet. A horrible sound was coming through the broken roof, a mix of flapping wings and shrill, inhuman shrieking. The combination made Marci shake from her toes to her fingers, but while she was desperately trying to get a hold of herself, Bixby began to laugh.

“Well, well, well,” he said, looking from Marci to Justin, who was still crouched protectively over a bleeding Julius. “Life just gets weirder and weirder, doesn’t it? But it all came together just like the seer said. Even them.”

He jerked his head up to the dark shapes fluttering around the hole in the roof, and despite the ridiculousness of her situation, Marci’s curiosity immediately got the better of her. “What are they?”

“Magic eaters,” Bixby said, his face breaking into a wide, slightly unhinged smile. “A little known local specialty. I’m told they don’t usually flock in numbers like this unless there’s wounded prey to be had, but magical predators aren’t so different from the normal variety. All it takes is a little blood in the water to start them circling.”

His looked pointedly at Marci’s feet as he said this, and she looked down to see something red coating the ground where Katya had been lying. It was on her arms, too, staining the dragoness’s white shirt crimson. But while the color suggested blood, the liquid was much too shiny, and there was a rainbow sheen on its surface, almost like gasoline floating on water…

And that was when Marci realized that dragon blood looked very different from human.

“Oh yes, Miss Novalli,” Bixby cackled as her expression turned horrified. “It’s done. Just listen to those wings. It’s only a matter of time before we’re up to our necks in those bastards, especially with all the new blood your little surprise attack there is dumping on the ground.”

Marci supposed he meant Julius, and scared as she was, that just made her mad. “You don’t know what you’re messing with, Bixby!” she yelled. “It never pays to piss off things bigger than you.”

“Save your threats,” Bixby said. “I’m perfectly safe. The magic eaters don’t care about humans—at least, not about ones who aren’t mages. That would normally put you in a lot of trouble, but you’re in luck tonight. There’s better meat to be had.” He jerked his head at Justin and Julius. “Your rescue squad is about to be the main course of a monster-on-monster feeding frenzy, and if you want them to have a prayer of escaping with their lives, you will shut up and do exactly as I say.”

“Don’t do it,” Justin barked, making Marci jump. When she turned to him, though, the dragon wasn’t even paying attention to her. He was glaring at Bixby, growling with a rumble Marci could feel through her shoes. “Don’t do a thing he says. I will not be used as a bargaining chip by a human!”

“You do
not
want to push me today, buddy!” Bixby snarled, brandishing the C4 remote in his fist. “Now shut up and back off before I turn you into dragon salsa.”

His finger began to lift off the trigger as he said this, and Marci gasped. “Wait!” she cried, pulling the Kosmolabe out of her bag. “Here it is. This is the real one. I’ll roll it to you right now, just don’t be stupid.”

That must have been what he was waiting for, because Bixby’s face lit up in a triumph. “Oh, no,” he said slowly. “You bring it to me, nice and easy.”

Marci swallowed and glanced at Julius. He was always the one with the plan. Surely he’d thought of something. But Julius was still down on the floor, his bloody chest rising and falling in shallow, pained gasps. Overhead, the shrieks were getting louder as the magic eaters grew bolder. A few had already come inside, crawling upside down along the ceiling like spiders.

Now that she knew what to look for, Marci could actually feel their presence sucking the magic out of the air, leaving an emptiness even more awful than the Pit’s creepy death magic. From the set of Justin’s shoulders, she knew he felt it too, and that only made things worse. If
Justin
was getting nervous, they were
really
screwed, and it was that more than anything that made Marci’s decision.