Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

“Go! Get back!” Victor barked, turning to the ranks of Lost Ones and urging them to get off the bridge.

Zee hung back, uncertain. “Kitten?”

I knew what he was asking. He didn’t want to go. “I’ll be alright, I’ve got this.”

His pained face hurt my heart like an open wound. “I love you, Adam. Always did.” He swooped in and captured my mouth in a kiss I couldn’t help but fall into.

I gripped his hair, and a horn, clutching him close, and kissed him as though this kiss might be our last. Gasping free, I pulled him down, eye to eye. Our foreheads bumped. His horns tangled with my hair. “I’m going to be alright. This was always meant to happen. I’ll be fine. And there’s no way I’m letting Tom Collins run the bar.”

Zee’s grin was all I needed to see. “You gotta come back, Vic’s useless without you.”

“Vic?”

“Meh, I’m trying out new names for Daddy Spice.”

“Victor is a perfectly good name,” Victor said, reappearing next to Zee.

I reached for him, and with my right arm hooked around Zee’s neck, I pulled Victor in with my left. With Zee, I could pretend to be tough. But Victor always saw behind the act.

I hugged them both. I loved them so hard it hurt.

No dragon had ever loved like this.

“I’m coming back,” I told them. A defiant tear escaped my blurry eyes before I could swipe at it. “I’m coming home.”

“You had better,” Victor said, his voice tight. He laid a gentle kiss on my forehead and whispered, “Zodiac is a mess without you.”

Cain’s thunderous roar belittled the real thunder rumbling above the city.

“Go.” I pushed them away. “Go, please... I... You have to go.” I needed them to be far away for what came next. I needed them safe.

Zee backed up, then spread his wings and took to the sky. He swooped over the retreating Lost Ones, lightning forking through the dark above him.

Tom Collins appeared at my side, his dapper attire untouched by the howling wind, the prior battle, or any of this night. A smile warmed his semitransparent face. “You know all that shit I said was to distract Cain?”

“You mean you don’t really hate us?”

He snorted. “You’ll see them again.”

I faced the AI bartender, who wasn’t an AI bartender at all but was my best friend.

Tom’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t do personal displays of affection.”

“Really? You don’t say.”

He thrust out a hand. I wrapped mine around his strange, weirdly solid fingers, and ignored the strange tingling.

“Don’t fuck it up,” he said.

“Great advice.”

Saluting, he took a step back, and vanished in a fizzle of static.

The Lost Ones were off the bridge. I could barely see anyone on the bridge deck now, among the abandoned cars. I was alone.

Turning, I faced the living, breathing, enormous storm of dark intentions made real.

Whatever had been in that bead, it had made Cain a hundred times worse. Why couldn’t we have gotten bubbles, instead of whatever this was?

I probably should have expected it, with our luck.

But here we were, the epic showdown.

And here I was. Adam Vex. Not human at all. Definitely dragon.

I planted my feet, spread my hands at my sides, and with Cain’s laugh barreling around me like a freight train, I freed all the restraints holding the real me inside. One by one, the mental chains snapped, and the creature I was inside began to wake up.

It had been a long time since I’d been dragon... really let myself get into the role, and my true skin.

Four years in hiding. Longer if you counted my whole life running from destiny.

No more hiding.

No more running.

No more shame, fear. No regrets.

It was time to show the world who and what I really was too.

In the movies, the bad guys wait for the good guys to get their act together. This wasn’t the movies, and Gideon Cain wasn’t going to wait for me to power-up. I wouldn’t have waited either.

Cain’s sideswipe hit like a wrecking ball. Had I been human, I’d have been dead on impact. The blow knocked me into the air—but that was fine—and so was the fiery pain racing through my veins. It would all be over soon.

I fell, the wind rushed, the bridge’s lights stuttered but stayed on as they shrank from me.

I hit the water hard, punching through it, back first.

I gasped. Water poured down my throat. But the renewed fire inside burned hotter, brighter.

This water was nothing.

This world was nothing.

I was fire, I was devastation, I was destruction.

My name was Mydros, and I was dragon.

A roar tore from my chest as I broke the surface. Wings stretched, I climbed the struts holding up the bridge, and made quick work of the tower.

The world seemed so small now, and everything in it miniatures of reality.

Atop the tower, I spread my wings and unleashed the burning, tumultuous rage born from a lifetime of being hunted.

I was free.

But not safe.

Not yet.

The dark sorcerer had become an enormous storm, its shape vaguely humanoid. Tendrils the size of office blocks writhed and knotted around it. And as I targeted it in my sights, all of its rage and fury turned on me.

No, I was not safe. Nobody was until this monster was dealt with.

“Glorious power!” the creature that had been Gideon Cain boomed. Whatever had been in that bead, his innate power had amplified it, like Zee’s had amplified the effects of the bead he’d swallowed.

One of Cain’s whipping limbs lashed out and cracked toward me. I beat my wings and lifted off, spiraling higher into the sky. Lightning flashed. My heart burned, stoking the fire in my throat. Higher, I spiraled, into the clouds, until there was nothing around but darkness. Arching around, I tucked my wings in, and dove.

The fire built. Burning in my chest. Surging, broiling.

There was only one power strong enough to defeat darkness—and that was light.

Bursting from the sky, I swooped down, toward the bridge.

Gideon’s spray of thrashing limbs reached for me, like a net closing in. I spread my jaws and unleashed a wave of fire, blasting the bridge deck. Cars exploded one by one, igniting the asphalt, the air, everything around Cain.

His howl churned.

I swept out, across the inky waters of the bay. San Francisco’s gleaming city lights glinted at the edge of my vision. My home. I knew that now. I had a home, a family... people who needed me, loved me. I’d destroy anyone and anything that threatened that and them.

Cain, ablaze on the bridge, thrust all his limbs upright and let loose a lance of dark, pulsing power, thrusting it into the sky. Lightning scattered and the sky split, tearing apart.

That couldn’t be good.

Especially as all my fire had done was warm him up.

I was going to have to get up close and personal.

With the bridge coming up fast, I beat my wings, slowing, and came in to land between the red towers. The bridge groaned, its deck stretching under my clawed feet.

Cain saw me, and flung one of those dark-funneling limbs as though to skewer my chest.

I snapped my teeth at it, and tore the limb in two.

Cain howled.

So he could be hurt.

More of those strange, funneling limbs broke off from the fountain that headed skyward and speared toward me. I got one, two, but the third struck my shoulder and plunged in.

Cain laughed and pulled, jerking me toward him.

Ugh, not a lance—a harpoon.

Another one came at me. I snapped my jaws through it and tore the limb free, but another slammed into my wing and hooked there, dragging me faster toward Cain’s pulsing mass.

A tiny, purple-glittered, pixie-sized demon flew between Cain and me. “You touch my kitten, you fuckin’ die!” Zee squeaked.

Shards of purple lightning tore from the sky and rained over Cain, falling like jagged pieces of glass. Cain grunted, jerking, and his mass staggered. Whatever he’d been funneling from above, he broke off the connection, and flung those horrible tendrils all at Zee, all at once.

No!

I roared, dug my claws into the bridge, and leaped—wings back, teeth bared.

Cain hadn’t been expecting it.

Neither had I.

I plowed into Cain’s heaving mass, knocking him backwards off the bridge, toward its welcome center on the south bank. We tumbled, I snapped my teeth at his head, determined to sink them in and tear whatever he was made of apart. He was solid, I felt that much, but getting a hold on him was almost impossible. We sprawled over the park area, tangled together in a mass of wings, tail, and tendrils. I snapped at his limbs holding me, snipping them free. He whipped enormous lashes down my back, tearing at my scales.

And in all of this, I had no idea where Zee had ended up.

Was he alright? Had he gotten caught in the chaos?

Cain’s lashing whips snapped at my face, catching my left eye. I roared, flung my head back, and raked my front claws through his body—the parts I could get a hold of. He roared too.

This wasn’t working.

We were too evenly matched.

How could I stop him?

And in the chaos, I’d lost Zee... This was my fear. That I’d hurt the people I cared for.

Was Cain going to win? Even now, I had nothing else to throw at him. Fire hadn’t worked. Size didn’t matter. Cain matched me in viciousness. What else was there?

“Psst...” A purple pixie buzzed between my eyes. Zee! “Hey, baby.” He zipped to my ear. “Get him back on the south end of the bridge. We’ll do the rest.”

I could do that.

I snapped my jaws together and huffed, hoping he’d know that to mean I’d understood.

Get Cain back on the bridge.

Flinging open my wings, I beat the air, and whipping up my own storm, took to the sky once more. Cain’s dark limbs tried to grab at my legs, but missed. Gaining height, I circled above the bay, riding the buffeting winds.

Cain had rightened himself, and stood like a giant, vaguely man-shaped storm in the Golden Gate Bridge park.

News helicopters hovered north of the bridge like tiny mosquitoes.

The whole world was watching.

I landed on the south tower, spread my wings, and roared, turning myself into a dragon-sized target. With Cain riding high on his power, thinking he had a chance to ruin me, he took the bait and stomped across the park, then climbed onto the roadway.

That’s it ... just a little closer.

Fire burned in my chest. Steam hissed from between my teeth.

I wasn’t just any dragon. I was the last.

I’d eaten all the rest.

I’d survived.

That had to mean something.

But I couldn’t do this alone.

Cain approached the part of the bridge where it spanned over an old Civil War fortress. There were cars in that parking lot, and two tiny specks of people.

And a beaten-up, rusty purple van.

Just a little bit closer.

Cain paused his marching.

No . . . keep coming . . .

Why had he stopped?

Cain’s lashing limbs reached down, toward the parking lot and the Love Wagon .

I unleashed a blast of flame, washing Cain in liquid fire. His mass stumbled, recoiled, and then flung those reaching, horrible harpoon limbs at me.

I steadied myself, expecting the worst. But with all his focus on me, whatever Zee planned it had to be now.

Now, do it now!

One, two, three—the harpoons punched into my chest. I gasped, choking on fire, and teetered on the tower. The bay tilted, the city lights flared.

No, I had to hold on. For them.

A needle-thin pillar of light shot up from the van. Just a little shaft of light in the dark tempest of Cain’s and my making. But as I watched, that little shaft of light struck at Cain’s mass, instantly rocking him sideways. Like his harpoons in me had done, that thin needle of light pierced deep, hooked in, and held on.

Cain swayed, and his enormous pulsing mass began to shrink as though that light had cracked him open. Or was siphoning his power...

I knew what it was . . .

I knew what they’d done.

The harvester had been in that van.

I clung to the tower, clung to consciousness, and inside, I smiled.

Gideon Cain’s night was about to be over.

It was a shame I wouldn’t be around to see it.

I slipped, and tried to make a grab for the tower, but my claws skittered down metal. I was already falling. The harpoons twanged free, reeling back into the flailing, shrinking Cain. My back struck the bridge deck, turning cars to crushed metal beneath me. The bridge bounced, its cables groaned.

If I was dying, I should probably have tried to die somewhere more convenient than in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge. Traffic would be a nightmare for days.

But hey, I’d stopped the bad guy.

Maybe I was the hero after all?

Wait. Did heroes die in the end?