After being thoroughly teased when she ran half-dressed out into the hall to find Sammy coming inside—“You’re not supposed to use all the toys at once, Andi,” Sammy had snarked—Andi retreated back to her bedroom to do a better job of cleaning herself up, setting Damian’s shirt aside in particular to wear after her shower, when she’d texted him.
Was “soon” good enough? What if something she told him egged him on into danger? Then she realized she could spend the rest of her life being nervous about playing into the hands of some fucking puppeteer—or she could just live, giving up. (Which was maybe what she was meant to do? Oh, fuck it, did it matter?)
Andi pulled Damian’s shirt on to sleep in. It was soft and it still smelled like him and she crawled beneath her covers. She hadn’t even been using her Ambien lately because she’d been feeling like she had things to look forward to—like talking to Damian—and that helped her to go to sleep on her own. And now, with his shirt on, it was even easier for her to pretend that he was here. She pulled her blindfold down, closed her eyes, and drifted off into a mostly dreamless slumber….
Except for the one dream.
It was her, Danny, and her mom and dad and they were all out at the zoo. It was the day their father had taken that photo of them, all together, the one he wasn’t in. She remembered the day vividly, how her face had been smeared with pink from cotton candy and how Danny had gotten a bag full of the wax mold creatures you could buy outside each area for quarters, a yellow wax alligator outside the reptile house, a purple gorilla in front of the apes. She could feel how hot the day had been and taste how delicious the sugar was, but it wasn’t as sweet as the way their father had looked at their mother, nor the way she in return had doted on him. For one crisp moment, everything had been perfect.
“They don’t belong in cages!”
She and Danny were both leaning over a wide cement berm, still many feet away from the lounging tigers, with a high wire fence in between them. She remembered hoping to find a long stick to poke them with, wanting the tigers to do more than just pant in the shade with the heat, whereas Danny had found some rocks to plink over the edge.
“They don’t belong in cages!” she heard again, and it was Danny’s voice. She realized he wasn’t aiming for the animals at all; he was throwing the rocks at the cage on purpose, upset that it was there, that the tiger wasn’t free.
“Yeah!” she said, and he looked over, seeing the light of agreement in her eyes. Almost as one they decided that he would push her up and over the berm, and then maybe she could reach the cage and climb over it because surely somewhere there was a lever and—
Their mother had come over and whisked them away, as if sensing the chaos in their hearts….
And when Andi woke up, the sun was shining brightly around the edges of her blackout curtains, and her blindfold had been knocked off sometime the prior night. She reached for her phone, out of habit, and also to figure out what time it was.
Three-thirty. She’d slept way in, for her—or not quite late enough if she was working tonight—but she was off, right? She sat up in bed, confused about the time and date in the way that only night work made you, when you didn’t know if you were coming or going and the days threatened to become a gray slide except….
There was a text from Damian. She swiped her screen on.
Princess?
Are you there?
I just wanted to check on you.
Andi smiled at her phone and texted back. Sorry, I was sleeping.
His reply was almost instantaneous. I know.
You looked??? She gave herself a brief glance in the mirror and saw the kind of bedhead that came from sleeping on wet hair.
Yes. Briefly.
Andi groaned. Damian, I expect to have some privacy.
I’ve seen you sleep before. Nice shirt, by the way.
Shut it, Mister, she typed with a grin.
She cast her phone aside and went to her desk to fish the photo of her family out. Her dream had felt so real, her emotions so genuine and warm. She wished she could rewind everything and get back to that point with Danny, back when they plotted with one another, instead of against, before their mother had pinballed them off in different directions.
I had the nicest dream, she texted, returning to her bed with the photo.
Was I in it?
Don’t take it personally…but no. It was about this trip we took to the zoo as kids. Danny and I hatched this scheme to release the tigers. We were convinced they wanted to go into the air-conditioned reptile house with us. It was a hot day, you had to be there, and it’d help if you were twelve….
That sounds charming.
It was. Andi gave both her phone and the photo a soft smile. Sometimes when I remember the good stuff, it’s hard to remember the bad, Damian. And I know, that’s 100% what someone who was abused would say, so don’t come at me with that. It’s just that…it wasn’t all bad, you know?
I know, princess, he agreed.
She set the photo down and turned her smile just to the phone. Thank you.
For what?
For not being mad at me. For not expecting me to just cut him out of my life completely. I know he’s no good, Damian, and I know everything he’s done, but he’s still part of me. And I know you’re going to have to do what you have to do eventually, no matter how much we try to avoid the topic, and I’ll still love you even after that, I’m sure…but…it’s going to hurt me.
Oh, princess. I am so, so sorry.
Andi hugged a pillow to her chest. It’s okay. It’s not even your fault. I mean, they’re not going to stop until you do, so….
I wish I were there with you right now.
Me too.
She stared at the phone disconsolately, willing Damian to say the right thing, even though she had no idea what that might be. Princess, I apologize deeply, but I have to go. Mills is calling a meeting.
The thought of that snapped her to attention. She knew Damian’s group always had meetings before going out. Be safe?
For you? Always.
Andi reluctantly set the phone down and picked the photo up.
Damian joined the others in the conference room and was surprised to find everyone else present and somber. It was clear Mills had sent Grimalkin to call him last. Max was wearing all black and leaning forward with his head in his hands, and Ryana had her wings hidden and a deep frown. Zach was in one of his tailored suits and his arms were crossed, while Austin looked rumpled in jeans and a flannel and had that look in his eye that said he’d rather be anywhere else but here. Stella was the only one who seemed as clueless as he was, again in her motorcycle leathers, and with her helmet sitting in front of her. He guessed she’d just arrived.
“Everyone here appears to be alive, yes?” he said, making his way to his familiar seat at the table’s head.
“For now,” Mills said with a frown. She was in jeans and a tight death metal T-shirt, like she’d been thinking too hard to get dressed for the current occasion, whatever it was. She gave Jamison a meaningful glance. His techmaster lit up the wall to Damian’s right.
“The Hunters are taking their armaments to Cyclo Arena,” Jamison said. He was in one of his usual tank tops and had his wrist plugged into the technology beneath the table. “They’ve been shipping trucks in and out all day.” The screen flickered between still shots of nondescript dressed men and women moving boxes around with dollies.
“Well, then, I’ll make it a point not to go there.” Damian shrugged.
Mills nodded. “That’s well and good, but…there’s a car show starting there this evening.”
Damian smirked. “Did someone enter my Pagani without me?”
“No. It’s a vintage thing. And there’s one Daniel Ngo and his fully restored 1970 El Camino registered to attend,” Jamison said. “The car show opens tonight at seven, but earlier for participants.”
Damian rocked back, as realization washed over him. The closest the Hunters had gotten to hurting him was the night with the helicopter—a trick they hadn’t tried again. So, it seemed in their frustration that they’d adjusted their scope.
Because if you couldn’t kill one dragon…perhaps another would do.
“Let him die, Damian,” Ryana said, the quickest to speak. “In this case, the enemy of my enemy is indeed our friend, and if they take him off the board, then your hands are clean. It’s perfect.”
“I agree with Ryana,” Max said. “This is a Hunter problem. Let Hunters deal with it.”
Damian looked to Mills. “How sure are you?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Mills said. “Although he has his own people to protect him, surely, and they’re fools to think they won’t come after him.”
“Not if all of his people are currently in cages at an undisclosed location trying to become dragon soldiers.” Damian spoke through gritted teeth.
“What?” Stella said, snapping her head to look at him.
“Danny took Andi out last night and showed her his lair. It includes people in cages, apparently, waiting to become draconic. He thinks he needs an army against the Conjunction.”
“Well, poor planning on his part then,” Mills murmured.
Damian looked to the other wolves. Zach shook his head. “I’m out on this one. I have opinions, but I don’t think you want to hear them.”
“I always want to know what you think, Zach.”
“Then, in that case, I’m aligned with Ryana and Max. My heart says you should intervene, but the man who wears this suit,” Zach said, tugging at his cuffs, “says fuck him.”
Damian grunted. The man who “wore” Zach’s suit frequently looked like his father, and that was indeed something his father would say. “And you, Austin?”
Austin leaned forward with a heavy sigh. “You’re boned, D. You can swear all of us to secrecy, and we’ll give it, but if Andi finds out you just let him die….” Austin’s voice drifted as he shook his head.
“Is there a way to help him that isn’t also a suicide mission?” Stella asked, looking around the table in hope.
“There is one way,” Jamison began. “I’ve gotten Danny’s phone number from Andi’s phone. He doesn’t leave it on too often though, which makes it shit for tracking, but there’s a number he contacts regularly. It’s not programed in—he has it memorized—and if I were a betting man, I’d guess it was his uncle.”
“So, you’re going to call a leader of the Hunters and ask him for his help?” Zach’s tone conveyed just what he thought of that idea.
Damian considered his options quickly. “I can’t call Danny; he wouldn’t believe me. I know that from last night. And telling Andi to tell him would only put her in danger, I know, and he probably still wouldn’t listen, besides. So, yes, I’ll try calling Lee, and ask him to rein in the others. It’s the least bad idea in the bad idea barrel. Grim?” Damian called, and the cat appeared. “I need a balaclava and a burner phone.”
The cat sat down just out of reach on the table, blinked, and both items fell from the ceiling.
“I’ll never get used to that,” Stella murmured as Damian pulled his mask on.
“What’s the number?” he asked Jamison, who projected it on the wall behind himself. Damian backed up so that no one else would be visible and called on video. Jamison projected that so the others could see too, although Lee would only see Damian’s masked face on his screen.
Lee was a slightly-past-his-prime Asian gentleman with a tidily trimmed beard, and Damian could see the slight resemblance between him and Andi, in the bright intelligence of their eyes, which narrowed on the screen. “Interesting,” he said, at seeing Damian. “Speak, or I’ll hang up.”
“I’m calling on behalf of the Ngo twins.”
Lee made a thoughtful sound. “I’m listening. Be quick.”
“Danny…Daniel…is in danger.”
Lee sounded amused. “Is that so?”
“You left town, left him on his own and left other Hunters, hungry. They’re planning an attack on him tonight.”
Lee’s eyes narrowed. “You presume to know much, stranger.”
“I know that other Hunters are planning to murder Danny.”
Lee laughed once, harshly. “My people will protect him, as if he were me.”
“Your nephew, in his infinite wisdom, decided to turn your people into a dragon army. They’re all currently in cages,” Damian informed him. He could sense the far older man’s reluctance to believe. “Find out for yourself,” he said, hanging up. He set down the phone and pushed the mask off his face.
“I like how he doesn’t disagree that his people are capable of killing his nephew, so much as he thinks they’d be too scared to,” Zach said, one eyebrow high.
“He knows who they are,” Damian muttered, then looked around. “Max, start adding fuel to the Forgetting Fire. If we’re going to do something this public, we’re going to need a fucking river of it to cover up the damages.”
“It sounds like you’ve made up your mind regardless, Damian,” Mills said. “Have you?”
If he’d left off with meeting Andi’s brother in person last night, maybe things could’ve gone a different away. But after being with her last night, and texting with her earlier—while someone else might get frustrated with her for not choosing—he understood. He knew it took a big heart to love himself, flaws and all, as he knew he had a lot of them. He was temperamental, he could be cruel, cold, imperious, demanding, and there was every bit as much blood on his hands as there was on Danny’s, even if he liked to think it more cleanly earned. If Andi was able to still love him, in spite of himself and his problems—and even with his curse!—then it was no wonder some small part of her still loved her brother, too.
And knowing that her brother had been murdered in cold blood by his “friends” to be eaten for his magical properties was not something his gentle mate could so easily return from.
So, we’ve decided then? his dragon asked him. To help this other dragon?
For Andi’s sake. Do you agree?
He felt his dragon thinking free of him. There will be a lot of carnage?
As many Hunters as there are drops of rain, sounds like.
Then I go where you lead. The beast flexed inside of him. As long as we always lead to Andi.
Damian looked around the table at each of his friends, and none of them looked away. “I realize I can’t ask you all to come with me. If Mills is right, which we all know she is, then we’ll be walking into a firefight with several hundred well-armed Hunters, all of whom would like to see our blood.”
“Yours, in particular,” Ryana reminded him. Her frown was unchanged.
“I know,” he said, and the phone rang. Everyone present looked at it and then looked to Damian.
He pulled his mask back down and answered it, Jamison projecting Lee’s image on the wall again.
“There appears to be truth to your words.”
“Can you help him?” Damian asked.
“No.” Lee’s jaw tightened. “And you must have known that when you called.” Lee’s expression became more menacing as he leaned closer to his phone. “So who are you?”
“Someone willing to try to save him.”
Lee looked puzzled. “Daniel cannot possibly mean that much to you. What is it you want?”
Damian stared down into the phone and let the impassive wall he used to keep his dragon at bay overtake him. “I want carte blanche,” he said coolly. “I want permission to murder every Hunter we find there, without retribution later.”
“Very well,” Lee promised. “Do not let a single traitor live.” Damian heard his sister snort, as Lee went on. “But what on earth could possibly cause you to risk your life for Daniel?”
“I’m not doing it for Danny, Hunter. I am the dragon that’s in love with your niece.” Damian reached up and pulled off his mask, as Mills gasped and Zach started wildly shaking his head across from him. “I’m not saving Danny for you or for him. But for Andi, I would do anything—and finding out that men like you slaughtered her brother will break her.” He threw the mask on the table.
For the first time a genuine emotion, amazement, penetrated Lee’s stern facade. “A dragon. In love with Mei Li’s girl.” He stroked his beard as he mused. “Truly, fate is unpredictable.”
Damian gave Lee a withering look, and let some of his magic echo out in his voice, while allowing his dragon to ride just beneath his skin. This would be as much its fight as it was his. “You wanted to know what ties would bind me to earth, human,” he said, his voice like gravel. “Andi has chained my heart.”
Lee took a sharp inhale and licked his lips. “Go then, Andrea’s dragon. Win,” he said, and Damian hung up the phone.
Andi had just eaten lunch, if you went by the time of day, or breakfast, in that it was her first meal of the day and that it also had been cereal, when her phone buzzed again.
Hey, you know how sweet my car is, right?
She would’ve known who was texting her without seeing the name. Debatably, yes.
Her brother sent over an eye-rolling emoji. Well, I’ve got it entered at this car show. They’ve got free early entry for participants. Wanna come check it out with me?
She squinted at her phone. Her life felt like it was getting more complicated which, at this point, was entirely unfair. But…she did have to tell Danny to let those people out, somehow, without letting on how she knew that his experiments would never work on them.
I’ll buy you cotton candy, he went on, and she smiled at her phone.
Diabetes on a stick? You’d do that for me?
Yeah, I think there’s probably 75 cents still stuck inside my car somewhere.
That car’s so old it’s probably seven hundred fifty dollars now, with inflation.
Another laughing emoji. Actually, the Elky’s already at the show. I dropped it off yesterday. Can you bus in or uber to Cyclo, and I meet you at the doors at five-fifteen to get you in?
Her eyebrows rose in bemusement. At least if she took the bus in, she wouldn’t be treated to Danny’s driving, and there was no way she could accidentally wind up at a pool hall. Sure.
Sweet. See you soon.
Andi went through the rest of her “morning” while Sammy was still at work. She combed out her hair, hit it with a flat iron just because it’d been ages since she’d gone out, and put makeup on for the same reason too. She and Sammy had redone the blue streak not that long ago, back when Damian had been in his “alive” phase, so she was particularly pleased with the color, and planned her entire outfit around showing it off—dark blue jeans, low gray ankle boots, and a tight white T-shirt that made her hair and features pop. Then she took the shirt off and replaced it with Damian’s because she wanted to, and she could.
His shirt was more appropriately a nightshirt on her, like she’d worn it the prior night to be, but eff that. She tied the excess fabric in an off-center knot at her waist, cropping it up. She was going to a car show; she could show a little skin.
And then at four-thirty she caught the appropriate cross-town bus to Cyclo, getting off it at precisely five-fifteen. She hadn’t figured out what or how to tell Danny in the meantime, but she knew she’d think of something.
“You made it!” Danny announced, seeing her walking up.
“I’m the on-time one, remember?” Andi told him.
“See also: judgmental and one most likely to drink haterade.”
“But also most beautiful and smart,” she corrected. “The haterade makes my skin glow.”
Danny laughed. “Come on in,” he said, gesturing her over with a ticket.
“So you’re going to explain what we’re looking at to me?” she said as they queued in line for wristbands. It was a hot day; she’d been wise to leave her coat and purse at home and just load up her pockets.
“All our childhood, all those cars, and none of them stuck?” he asked, reaching over to tap her head as she ducked.
“No, nursing school pushed all nonessential information out of my head. What’s your name again?”
“Oh, that’s low,” he said, grabbing his chest and looking pained before rebounding and giving her a look. “So, what, like, now that I know about your man, you’re just flaunting him at me now?” His eyes indicated her shirt.
Andi inhaled sharply. “Would you believe that nursing school also pushed out the fact that dragons can smell other dragons?”
“Sure,” Danny said with a shrug, shaking his head before giving her a lopsided grin, half-poisonous, half-pure. “Why not.”
Once inside, the arena opened up, and the entire floor of it was parked full of all sorts of vintage cars. There weren’t too many people yet, and she guessed most of the owners gravitated toward their own cars for quick inspections. She followed Danny’s lead and he took her over to a neon green car, which had a square of paper underneath a windshield wiper, announcing it was a 1970 Plymouth Duster.
Andi looked at the car. It was a car, just like any other car, only greener, and then looked at her brother, who’d ditched her to peer in the windows and make out the smaller writing on the tag. She pulled her phone out of a pocket and turned around to snap a desultory selfie with the car over her shoulder and started texting Damian.
Danny was back at her side in an instant. “Who’re you texting?”
“You know very well who I’m texting.”
“Should I be in the photo?”
“Probably not. Besides, he’ll see the cars and know I’m out with you.”
“What does he think about that?” Danny asked, frowning, as she finished typing the words to go along with the photo—just gotta tell him about the cages is all. wish me luck—and hit send.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make him happy. But he’s also not a controlling jerk, so….” she said with a shrug, as they walked to the next car. “He cares about me.”
“So do I,” Danny said.
She raised her hand between them just like he had his the prior night, rocked it, and said, “Ehhhhhhh.”
“Look, I don’t have to be around you all the time. Not when we have history.”
“Well, that part’s true.” She made a show of looking in the windows of the car they were beside, even though she didn’t know what she should be looking for. “I was just remembering that one day at the zoo with the tigers. When you were so pissed off they were in cages.”
Danny laughed. “I about had you over that guard rail. If Mom hadn’t come by when she did, oh my God. That shit would’ve made the evening news for sure. And do you remember after that? All our plots?”
“Oh my gosh,” Andi said, putting her hand to her mouth. “I’d forgotten.” They’d spent the rest of that summer formulating plans to get the tigers out. They were going to smuggle in ropes and they stripped an umbrella of its fabric and struts so that they just had the extendable pole to help them reach the buttons. “We were so serious, weren’t we?”
“Deadly so! I don’t know how Mom handled us, frankly. We were kind of jerks when we teamed up.”
Andi snickered and sighed, biting her lips. “Danny…you can’t let them put you in a cage again.”
“What, because I’m a tiger?” he asked with a glint in his eye.
“No, because you’re you. And you’ve got to let all those other people go.”
“I’m doing science, Andi; it’s not safe,” he scoffed.
“What if your ‘science’ never works? Or what if something happens to you? Then what happens to all them?”
“Like what?” he laughed. “I’m fucking invincible, Andi.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” she said with a head shake.
He took a fast step closer. “What’re you saying, Andi-bear? Is your man coming for me?”
“No. He would never,” Andi protested, and then Damian materialized beside them. He was wearing an all-black outfit that clung to him, outlining every tensely flexing muscle, his strong arms and his broad chest, wrapping around his thighs like a hug. The outfit’s color matched his hair, the stubble on his square chin, and his mood. He’d brought his storm with him; she could read it in his bearing, and his gold eyes shone like distant lighting.
She knew he wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t trouble, but at seeing him, she’d never felt safer.
“Both of you need to take one of these, now,” he demanded, holding two marble-sized spheres on his palm. Andi remembered them from their night in the hospital, how they’d allowed them to get away safely without being seen. She took one without hesitation.
“What the fuck,” Danny seethed at seeing him.
“You’re in danger, asshole. I’m here to save you. Take this so you can hide,” Damian said, shoving his hand farther out.
Danny picked the sphere up, held it up for inspection, and then crushed it like a grape before flicking it aside. “Fuck you.”
“Danny!” She immediately got between them. “I’m sure Damian has a reason!”
“He does, and I’m looking at it,” her brother growled at her. “Step aside, Andi.”
“Don’t change!” Damian shouted. “That’s what they want!”
“Who?” Andi asked of him.
“The Hunters that’ve lined this arena with weapons,” Damian answered, looking only at her brother. “They’re coming for you. Other Hunters.” He stepped closer to them both. “If you stay between Andi and me, our spheres can cover you, we can keep you protected until we get out of here.”
“My people would never—” Danny began.
“The other Hunters don’t give a shit, and your people are in cages,” Damian growled.
Danny’s eyes narrowed in on her. “You told him? Is that why you wanted me to free them? You felt guilty for playing along with his trap?”
Andi gasped. “Danny…no! There’s no trap here! Damian would never lie!” She reached for him as he stepped back into a clearing. She heard the sharp report of a distant gunshot, followed by a scream.
Damian intuited what Danny was planning before she did, and started talking fast. “My people are up there, taking out Hunters, risking their lives for you because I asked them to. Don’t do this, Danny. Don’t waste their efforts. And don’t put her in danger.” Damian placed himself in front of her. “I am begging you, as a dragon, and a man. Do not do this. Please.”
Danny shrugged and shook his head. “Nah. This is all your fault. Although, I suppose we both knew it would come to this, didn’t we?” And then he spread his arms wide, threw his head back, and Andi didn’t see what came next because Damian picked her up and ran.
Andi yelped in surprise and struggled against Damian, not to fight him, but because she had to see. She pulled herself up to peek over his shoulder and saw that Danny wasn’t Danny anymore. He was a dragon now, slightly smaller than Damian’s, four legs and two wings, and beautifully, dangerously, sinuous. Instead of gold, he was a deep army green, almost the color of his Elky. Screams started up behind them on all sides.
“Oh God, Damian.” She didn’t bother to ask if his story was true. Of course it was. “How many Hunters are there?”
He set her down inside one of the cement alcoves that lead to the arena floor. “A lot.” He looked over his shoulder at Danny, then gave her a haunted look. “Andi—I don’t want to fight him. You have to believe me.”
“I do,” she said, and meant it. He stood up straight and became invisible because she wasn’t inside a sphere anymore. “Shit!” she cursed. “I dropped mine—” It’d gotten jostled from her hand when he’d grabbed her.
“Take mine,” Damian said, planting his into her hand.
“No!” She shook her head quickly, trying to give it back. “The Hunters—they know who I am. They know not to shoot me. My uncle would—”
“I don’t think we can risk your life on them being afraid of him right now.” A herd of people were running down the hall behind them, none of them sparing them a glance inside their bubble of magic, although Damian was having to shout to be heard above their screams. “I need you to be safe, Andi. I can survive anything as long as I know that you’re all right,” he told her, and she realized he was leaving.
She stood straighter and slammed both her fists against his chest, finding it rock hard, like his dragon was waiting, just underneath. “You have to come back to me!”
Everything about him softened, just for a moment, and he leaned into her hands. “Of course, princess. It’s fate,” he said, then pulled away and ran into the crowd behind them, going against the flow.
Despite the fact that all his dragon wanted to do was change and wrestle Danny, Damian knew that wasn’t very smart. His crew kept reporting in via earpieces. No casualties so far, but the tide of Hunters hadn’t slowed, and a few of the Hunters had talismans that let them see through the spheres’s magicks, so clearing them out wasn’t going as fast as they had hoped.
He ran back into the arena and up a set of stairs, knowing that Danny could likely smell him, but he needed to make it to the second level quickly because Jamison was in his ear shouting out the location of the nearest harpoon.
“Second floor, section C, behind the sound station!”
“I see it,” Damian grunted, running flat out.
It would be faster if we flew, his dragon complained, likely because he himself wanted to change.
And give them two targets?
They are mere humans, his dragon sniffed.
Who still managed to orchestrate all this. Damian was nearing the Hunters now. There was a group of them still trying to get their weapon in place.
The harpoons were heavy and unwieldy and they hadn’t gotten to bolt the launchers into the ground so they had them wedged in between steep rows of seating, and they were aiming it as a group. One of them saw him nearing but then ignored him entirely, likely thinking that he was just some lost car aficionado, racing up out of fear, until he reached them and started throwing the men and women there aside like rag dolls, not caring how they landed or if he hurt them. When he was done, he pulled the whole assembly free, yanking out the harpoon to bend it against his knee, before stomping a dent into the launcher’s barrel. “Next?” he demanded.
“Same spot, two floors up!”
Damian looked up at the wide shelf of concrete above him. “Fuck.”
Now? his dragon asked, waiting, longing to go back to Danny.
No. Not yet. We have to take these fucking things out first.
Why?
Because! Damian shouted at it, but then they both saw their answer. A harpoon sailed out from above, aiming at Danny, who had been pacing the arena floor with his bulk. It missed, landing just beside him, but it exploded still, and suddenly Danny’s dragon turned, looking at where it’d just been shot from. Danny’s dragon hurled itself into the sky, hovering, before coming straight at them.
“Duck, duck, duck!” Mills shouted in his ear, but he didn’t. Damian was pinned in awe. He hadn’t seen another dragon in flight since his father had died, he’d forgotten how glorious their passage was.
Danny’s dragon reared its neck back sixty feet overhead, and then spewed out fire. Two floors below Damian was still buffeted by its heat. He knew all the Hunters above were dead, and he heard the sounds of the rest of the munitions there exploding.
And then Danny’s dragon turned to look at him.
“We’re on the same side,” Damian bellowed, wondering if it could hear him. But before he could find out, another harpoon shot across the arena and hit Danny’s flank, exploding and shoving him sideways. The dragon howled and whirled in midair, turning to chase this new assailant down.
Other harpoons popped off, their nylon tails stretching behind them like streamers, like the car show below them was being decorated for a particularly bloody prom. Not all of them hit, and not all of them were explosive, but they were harrying him, and soon Danny’s green-scaled bulk was dotted with harpoons, making him look like a toreador’s bull at the end of a fight. Damian felt his own dragon sink in on itself internally, finally understanding.
“We took out half of them Damian, but there’s just too—” Jamison began on his earpiece.
“I know,” Damian cut in, racing for the railing to watch what was happening below. Danny’s dragon had been knocked back to the floor of the arena, where it was picking up cars to hurl at the people that shot at it. It shrieked defiance with each new blow, writhing itself left and right, casting about itself in a circle of fire. Its wings were so shredded, they’d take too long to heal, so it couldn’t fly again now if it tried. He hoped like hell that Andi’d gone, as he cupped his hand to his earpiece to shout, “Tell everyone to keep going!”
Andi was entirely sure she should have left but she just couldn’t. The rational part of her brain had taken the first bus and was half-way home, but the rest of her, the things that made her her, all her emotions and guts and blood, kept her pinned here, hiding just inside the cement alcove where Damian had left her, watching her brother fight.
And…lose.
It didn’t matter that he was a dragon. He kept healing, but they kept fighting him, shooting him with horrible things that looked like spears. Oh, God, fucking harpoons? They’d already knocked him out of the sky and now massive metal nets were dropping down, the size of a basketball court. He kept burning things and thrashing and throwing cars, but there was nothing he could do. The hunters were too far away to attack and they were pinning him to the ground.
All of that power he’d been imbued with, all of the torture that he’d tolerated, and it was going to end here for him. Like this.
Alone.
Or not…because she started running for him. It was the absolute stupidest thing she could do, but she couldn’t listen to the dragon—her brother, Danny!—howl in pain and not respond. Not as a nurse…and not as a sister.
“Danny!” she shouted, so he would know she was coming for him, running around the wreckage of burning cars, trying to see him through the smoke. “DANNY!”
She saw his grand head raise, trying to see her, straining against the nets. A harpoon speared out of his neck, and she could see the spurting green of his blood. “I’m here, Danny!” she cried, racing up beneath him, getting splashed.
But his eyes wouldn’t focus on her and he was looking around wildly.
“I’m here!” she shouted. His head fell to look directly at her, his wide nostrils taking monstrous inhaling breaths, and she realized he couldn’t see her with the sphere, only smell her, and she smelled like Damian. “It’s not a trick! It’s me!” She threw the sphere away, revealing herself, and Danny bent his head to acknowledge her with a sorrowful sound.
He didn’t sound human anymore, and she didn’t think the Hunters would stop now, even if he did.
“Step away from the dragon, girl,” someone with an Australian accent told her. She turned to see Jack there, with his omnipresent ivory toothpick, and a beautiful Latina woman by his side.
“At this point, why save her?” Xochitl said, unsheathing her bone sword.
Danny snaked up a protective paw around her, and flapping the remnants of his wings against the nets that pinned him ineffectually. Andi struggled to bring one of his claws down so that they could see her speak. “You don’t want to do this,” she warned them.
“Andrea, we’re not afraid of your uncle,” Jack said with a rough laugh.
Andi stepped onto Danny’s lowest claw to gain more height and shook her head. “That’s not who’s coming.”