I sprinted across the basement, my heart thundering in my chest, fatigue rolling through my mind. But I wasn’t sweating beneath my coat and ballistic vest. Intense magic use tended to leach away body heat, and I was cold, cold, cold. And tired. I wanted to lie down and sleep for a day or two.
But not yet. Not until I had gotten Edina and Neil.
I might have been cold, but my blood was up.
Edina had pissed me off with all that talk about making a better humanity. Nicholas Connor had used to make speeches like that, and his plan for making a new and shiny humanity had involved nuking New York City and knocking the Skythrone to the Earth to cause catastrophic impact waves in the Atlantic Ocean. What did a few billion dead people matter when you were trying to build a better world? Guys like Nicholas and Edina talked a good game and spun a pretty tale, but when it came down to details, to them a few million dead people here and there were collateral damage.
Fourteen people in New York killed by a restauranteur who had bought a copy of the Summoning Codex?
Or Malthraxivorn, who as far as I could see had been guilty of nothing but being rich and enjoying fancy toys?
Besides, if we killed the High Queen, who would take her place? People like Nicholas Connor and Charles Edina? Yeah, I could just imagine what kind of world they would create.
Besides, Tarlia had arranged for Russell to be healed, and as far as I was concered, that was that. I owed her.
Though it definitely helped when she sent me after people like Edina.
“Let me go first,” I said, gasping it out between breaths. “Shield spell.”
Riordan didn’t look happy about that, but he nodded. We reached the door to the stairs, and I cast the Shield spell, calling the hazy half-dome of crimson light before me. I went first, Riordan right behind me, and Nora and Della brought up the back. The stairwell was empty. No doubt Edina was fleeing as fast as his legs could carry him, and…
Or he had told Neil to set an ambush.
I looked up, shifting the angle of my Shield as I did, just in time to see Neil swing his rifle down to aim at me. Two blaster shots hammered against my Shield, and I swayed a little on my feet as I felt the strain of blocking them roll through my mind. God, but that rifle could hit hard. It could probably shoot through a steel block without much trouble.
Neil whirled and vanished, and I heard his footsteps clicking against the main corridor.
“Go!” said Riordan.
I hurried up the stairs, my Shield spell still in place, and ran back into the main corridor next to poor Hamilton’s office. I saw Edina disappear into another door a few yards down the corridor. Was he heading to the truck dock?
“The roof!” said Della. “He’s going to the roof!”
Now that didn’t make sense. Why the hell was he running for the roof? I thought he must have a car parked out back, something he could use to attempt an escape. Why run for the roof?
Maybe he had a weapon up there, something he thought would give him an advantage. Or maybe it was something that actually would give him an advantage. Neil had killed Malthraxivorn for him, and that gauntlet had let Edina summon a whole hell of a lot of wraithwolves. Perhaps he had something even nastier waiting on the roof.
I wrenched open the door to the stairs, still holding my Shield spell ready, but the stairwell was deserted. I started up, maintaining the Shield, moving as fast as I could while remaining vigilant. I didn’t hear anyone on the stairwell above us. I did, however, hear a low thrumming whine, a thrumming that got louder as we passed the second and the third floor.
We reached the fourth floor, and then scrambled up the final set of stairs to the roof. I pushed open the door, Shield extended before me. I expected Edina or Neil to attack at once, to unleash a blaze of blaster fire or another mob of wraithwolves. Or maybe some other cunning trap.
I did not, however, expect to see the helicopter lift off the roof and rise into the gray autumn sky.
It wasn’t a big helicopter. It was one of those little two-seater craft that get used as training vehicles or the personal transports of rich men and their pilots. Once I had been driving across the Great Plains on one of Morvilind’s little errands, and I had seen ranchers using three small helicopters like that to help corral a massive herd of two or three thousand cattle. In its bubble-like cockpit, I glimpsed Neil at the controls, his expression impassive, and a panicked-looking Edina sitting in the passenger seat.
Even as I ran onto the roof, the helicopter soared away, heading east towards Brooklyn proper.
“Damn it,” snarled Nora as the helicopter picked up speed.
“Can you blast them out of the sky, Worldburner?” said Della.
I started to gather magical power to do just that, but I stopped myself. With a helicopter that small, I could force it down any number of ways. Congealing an ice wall over the main rotor. A fire blast to the fuel tanks. Or a volley of lightning globes to fry the control systems.
Trouble was, anything I did to the helicopter was going to make it crash. The deaths of Charles Edina and Neil Freeman would not trouble me very much, though I suspected that Neil had been coerced into this against his will. But I couldn’t control where the helicopter landed, and Brooklyn was a crowded place. It might land in the street. Or in a storefront.
Or on a bus full of kindergartners.
And even a small helicopter carried enough fuel to make a big fireball.
“I can’t,” I said, and Della cursed. “It might crash into someone. If it hits a bus or a store or something, it could kill a lot of people.”
“We’ll head back to the SUVs and pursue,” said Riordan, turning back towards the door.
“No,” said Della. “They will escape by then. I shall pursue them myself.”
With that, she started to strip naked, then and there on the roof. She was going to return to her true form, take to the air, and hunt down Edina’s helicopter herself.
“You won’t have any protection from the blaster rifle, Lady Delaxsicoria,” said Riordan as she tossed aside her underwear. I was kind of relieved that he didn’t stare at her impossibly beautiful body. But he knew that her human shape was not her true form. “If Neil shoots you through the head, I think that will kill you even in your true form.”
Della paused, golden light beginning to play up and down her toned limbs. “That is true. Worldburner, will you accompany me?”
I blinked. “I can’t fly.”
“You shall know an honor that few of your race have ever known,” said Della. “You shall ride upon my back.”
I blinked several more times.
“What?” I said.
“Fear not, I shall not permit you to fall,” said Della. “I am excellent at flight, but we must hurry.”
It wasn’t falling that bothered me. With my levitation and telekinetic spells, I could probably manage a landing with only a few bruises, maybe a broken bone or two. But the thought of riding on Della’s back was just too damned weird. I know she was a dragon and all, but still…
I glanced at Riordan, hoping he would have an objection to the plan.
Sadly, he was too sensible, and he knew me too well. “We’ll follow you in the SUV.”
I looked at Edina’s helicopter receding in the distance. I thought of his talk about merging men with machines, and how he controlled Neil like a slave. I thought of how Paul Ricci had killed fourteen people to unknowingly create a distraction for Edina.
Goddamn it.
“Fine,” I said. “Fine, fine, fine. We’ll do it. Just one condition.”
“What is that, Worldburner?” said Della as the golden light engulfed her human form.
“Don’t call me Worldburner.”
The golden light flared, and Della’s human form vanished and swelled into the mighty shape of the great green dragon, her leathery wings flexing.
“Very well, Nadia MacCormac,” said Della. It was still strange to hear her beautiful voice coming from that huge reptilian head. “Climb upon my shoulders at the base of my neck. You may grasp the spines there for additional stability.”
“See you guys on the ground,” I said to Riordan.
“Be careful,” he said, his face solemn, but I saw the worry in his eyes.
“I’m always careful,” I said, which was an enormous lie. “Good luck. I love you.”
If I was about to get killed by falling off a dragon, I wanted that to be the last thing I said.
“I love you, too, Nadia,” said Riordan. For just a moment, his grim expression softened. Then he nodded to Nora, and they both sprinted for the stairs.
I took a deep breath, stepped forward, and jumped. As I did, I cast the levitation spell, just enough to boost my leap, and it carried me onto Della’s shoulder. I settled into the faint indentation between her shoulders, grasping one of the bony spines there for balance. The spine felt like stone, and the scales beneath me were feverishly hot. Given how cold I was, it was a pleasant feeling.
“Your husband,” said Della. “He smells of his desire and love for you.”
“That’s good, but this is not the time,” I said. “Let’s go get the man who killed your uncle.”
Della raised her serpentine neck and roared, loosing a basso roar that I assumed was her hunting cry. Her great wings unfurled, and she leaped into the air.
The warehouse shrank beneath us, the wind tugging at my hair, and I rode a dragon through the skies over Brooklyn.
***