End Times in Dragon City (15 page)

“Just for a while?” Whitman said. 

“Until she gets used to it,” Danto said. “Maybe.” 

“So she’d lose her hold on the rest of the zombies in Dragon City, but she’d be trading them in for a zombie Dragon?” Moira said. “I’m not sure how that helps us much.” 

“I’m shocked to admit it, but I agree with the halfling,” Whitman said. 

Moira smiled at that for a moment until she spotted the insult buried in it. Then she went back to scowling at the headmaster again. 

Danto shrugged. “I just provide data points. The plans are up to you.” 

The headmaster ignored the fact that Danto was talking to me. “Well, if you’d kindly leave us to it then, I’m afraid time is running short.” 

Danto opened his mouth to respond, but my father took him by the arm and tugged him toward the door. “I’ll just show them out,” he said as he led us out of the council chambers. The large oak doors slammed shut behind us with an ominous echo. 

My father let go of Danto and put a hand on my shoulder. “Where are you going next?” he asked. 

“To the Stronghold, I think. The dwarves seem to think they can hold out against the Ruler of the Dead indefinitely.” 

My father shook his head. “Not if she takes over the Dragon. If she manages that, no place on the mountain or under it will be safe.” 

“I think we understand that.” I tried to tamp down any sense of hostility I had toward him, and I failed. 

He gave me a wan smile filled with years’ worth of regrets. “I know you do. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about how I’ve been treating you.” 

That almost knocked me to the floor. “How hard did you hit your head in there?” 

“It’s not that.” He shook his head. “It was something Celia told me while she was healing me with her magic.” 

“And what was that?” I had a good idea, but I wasn’t about to show my hand first. 

“It’s not important now,” he said with a smile. 

He put his hands on my shoulders and held me out at arm’s length as he gazed into my eyes. “I’m proud of you, and you deserve to know that. Whether we all see the sunrise or not, that won’t change.” 

I smiled as he let me go and Belle took my hand to lead me away. “I love you too, Dad.” 

This time I meant it.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-O
NE

“What was that all about?” Belle said as we cut through the air on Schaef’s carpet, heading upslope toward the Stronghold Gate. 

“Nothing.” I hadn’t said a word since we’d left the Academy, and I didn’t feel the need to start. She was determined to pry a few more than that out of me though. 

“Liar,” Moira said. She’d sensed an ally in satisfying her endless curiosity. “I’ve never seen your father be that, well, un-mean to you.” 

I looked to Danto for some support, but all he did was shrug at me and pointedly look away. I was on my own. 

“I think we have other concerns at the moment.” 

“It’ll help us take our mind off those,” Moira said. “We have time. Spill.” 

I stared up toward the Stronghold Gate. The tall band of metal arching over it still gleamed in the glowglobes that lit it from below. It had always been my most stable point of reference in the city, at least by night. You could see it from almost any point in the city, no matter how late the hour or how drunk you might be, and I’d navigated my way home by its silvery shape more times than I could count. 

Belle stroked my shoulder. “That might be the last time you ever see him. Is that it?” 

I sighed. “I hadn’t thought of it that way until you mentioned it. I suppose that’s part of it.” 

“What’s the rest?” 

I shrugged. “I didn’t hear what Celia said to him. I was too busy dealing with Whitman.” 

“But if you had to guess?” 

I allowed myself a reluctant smile. I was used to people not giving a damn about me on any given day. “It would be that she told him how I got myself kicked out of the Academy.” 

“I thought you dropped out?” Moira said. “Isn’t that what you always said?” 

I nodded. “Out of respect for my father’s position in the Academy, I was offered the choice to leave rather than face a hearing and expulsion.” 

“What did you do?” Belle said, her voice a soft but insistent whisper in my ear. 

“Nothing.” I glanced at Danto. He wouldn’t meet my gaze. “I didn’t do a thing.” 

“Then why did you let them run you out of the school like that?” 

I peered back over my shoulder and saw flashes of gunfire and loosed spells coming from atop the Great Circle. The Guard there still fought on against the invading zombie horde, but it was only a matter of time until their resolve failed. 

They didn’t have long. None of us did. 

“Go ahead,” Danto said, looking me in the eye now. “It’s now or never, isn’t it?” 

“I’m okay with never.” 

“Make it now.” 

Belle and Moira glared at each of us in turn. Moira got tired of waiting for me to say something and poked me in the side. 

“I was pretty young,” I said, launching into it without preamble. “Because my father taught there, I’d been a part of the Academy since I was a kid, but taking classes there was something entirely different. There was a lot of pressure to succeed, to fit in. 

“I didn’t feel it much, mind you, but others did. One student in particular had a hard time of it. She decided to turn to illegal means of improving her test scores.” 

“Celia?” 

I nodded. “We’d started dating. She was the first girl I really fell for, but I could tell she was struggling. I’d tried to tutor her, but it wasn’t enough, so she turned elsewhere.” 

“To dragon essence.” Moira gave me a sad look. 

I agreed with a grimace. “I didn’t know it at the time, but I should have recognized the signs. Like I said, I was young.” 

“And she got caught,” said Belle. 

“She did. They found the stuff in her room. Not a lot of it mind you, but any bit is enough. They pressured her to tell them where she’d gotten it from.

“The Academy has been fighting against dragon essence forever. Any use of it is cause for immediate expulsion. Celia had worked so hard to get into the place — her parents had sacrificed so much for her to become the first wizard in their family — and she’d blown it badly.

“She was grasping at straws. She even tried to kill herself. When she failed at that too and wound up in the Academy’s infirmary, the school insisted that she tell her where she’d gotten her supply. If she could to do that, they’d be willing to forget this one-time transgression, to erase the crime from her record.” 

“She told them it was you,” said Moira. 

Belle gaped at her. “How did you know that?” 

Moira blushed, something rarely seen on her, shameless as she could be. “It’s what I would have done.” 

“She did,” I said. 

“But it wasn’t true,” Belle said. 

“No, it wasn’t.” 

“Then why did you take the blame for it?” 

I glanced back at the Academy stabbing out from Wizard’s Way behind us. “I was suffocating there. I’d been at the school too long already, even though I was only in my first year. I didn’t mind leaving. Not so much.” 

“So you did that for her?” Moira said. “You always amaze me, Max. Too bad it didn’t work out between you and that girl.” 

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” I leaned back into Belle, who wrapped her arms around my chest and held me close. “I think it worked out all right.” 

“Still, you went through all of that for a girl.” 

“Not just for a girl,” Danto said. “A girl and her supplier.” 

Belle and Moira gasped. “It was you?” Belle said, an infuriated edge in her voice. “You let Max take the blame for what you’d done?” 

“Actually, I insisted,” I said. “Once I found out myself. Celia had already named me as her supplier at that point.” 

“And you didn’t just turn and point the finger at him?” Moira gawked at Danto. 

“They offered me the same deal as Celia. Since they didn’t find any dragon essence on me or in my room, they figured I had to be getting it from someone else and passing it along at a profit. They told me if I gave up my source, my record would be cleared.” 

“And you passed that up?” Belle said. 

“I’ve known Danto since I was a little boy. He and my father used to be best friends. He was the uncle I never had.”

“I promised him I’d stop,” Danto said. “And that I’d leave the faculty too. And I did.” 

Moira narrowed her eyes at him. “You were still using last week!” 

“Don’t get high and mighty with me,” Danto said with a scowl. “You sold me that stuff.”

He turned toward Belle. “And you too. I know where she got it from. She always said it was from the Gütmanns, but I knew better.” 

“And he did stop,” I said. “He stopped supplying it to others. That was my condition.” 

“You didn’t insist he stop using?” Belle said. 

“I asked him to, but I knew better than to depend on an addict’s promises to quit. To his credit, though, I think he’s kept his word about the rest of it.” 

“I have,” he said, his voice trembling. “I’ve taught over a dozen apprentices since then, and I’ve not let a single one of them near a drop of the stuff.” 

“But they’ve seen you using,” Belle said. 

Danto straightened his robes. “If anything, I served as an excellent example of the horrors of consuming dragon essence, I think.” 

Moira couldn’t help but giggle at that. “I suppose you did.”

“Wait,” Belle said. “And that’s how you got Danto to join us in our tomb-robbing trips.” 

“Adventures.” 

“Whatever. I never did understand why he was willing to join us. I had chalked it up to a mid-life crisis.” 

“I didn’t think elves got those,” said Moira. 

“We recognize the phenomena in others.” 

“Once I left the Academy, I was at loose ends,” Danto said. “I wouldn’t have joined you if I hadn’t wanted to.” 

Belle arched an eyebrow at the wizard. “And the fact that you owed Max for saving you from a cell in the Garrett had nothing to do with it?” 

He gave her a sheepish grin. “Maybe a little. And he was still my honorary nephew, as he said.” 

Belle leaned forward again and kissed me on the cheek. “You, Max Gibson, are an amazing man.” 

I brought my head around to give her a proper kiss, one last thing before we landed at the Stronghold Gate. Our lips met, soft and warm and sweet.

“I love you too.” 

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
WO

“Forget it,” Benno Bricht said. “We all have our roles to play here. We completed ours when we built the Great Circle. It’s up to the Guard to defend it from there.” 

“Because the Brichts always play so well with the Guard,” I said. 

I should have watched my mouth. There I was, standing in the heart of the Stronghold, the center of the Brichts’ influence, though, and I couldn’t help it. Benno’s hypocrisy — combined with the fact that I had nothing to lose at this point — prodded me on. 

Benno leaned over the horseshoe-shaped table at which he sat, most of the rest of the dwarf leaders arrayed to either side of him, and snarled at me. “What is that supposed to mean?” 

I cast an eye to my right and speared his nephew Henrik with my gaze. The sawed-off bastard — a fat, greasy pig with a dark and lanky beard — jerked in his seat at the sudden attention. What I could see of his face flushed in anger and embarrassment. 

“Let’s stick to the matter at hand,” I said, still staring at Henrik. 

Henrik and I had never had any direct dealings before, but I knew all too much about him. He was murderous and reckless and had a taste for the blood of those who dared defy them, no matter who they might be. A while back, he’d hired Kai and his cousin Sig as muscle for him for those times when he wandered outside of the Stronghold, paying off guards to ignore various indiscreet acts of the Brichts’ little kingdom under the mountain. 

The two orcs had witnessed Henrik murder a guard in a fit of rage. And then another. And another. Still, they’d been loyal and kept their mouths shut. 

Then Henrik had murdered Ames, one of our friends from our adventuring days, and he’d managed to pin it on Sig. Thinking they had their killer, the Guard had been unsurprised to later report that Sig had killed himself in his cell — by stabbing himself in the neck. I’d considered going after Henrik myself for that, something that hadn’t interested Yabair and the rest of the Guard, but the bastard had been untouchable at the time. 

How times had changed. 

Henrik sneered at me now. “If you got something to say to me, Gibson, go right ahead and say it. You don’t have the Guard around to protect you and your kind anymore.” 

I stalked toward his side of the table, and the fat bastard started to sweat. “You think that because the Dragon’s gone, all rules are off? The rules never applied to you anyhow, did they? You made sure of that.”

I leaned over the table and glared into Henrik’s dark and beady eyes. “The trick here, sunshine, is you’re right. There aren’t any rules for me now either. Before I might have worried about what the Guard might do if they found me standing over your bloody corpse with your heart in my fist. Now? I don’t think they’ll care.” 

“You don’t scare me.” 

The sweat streaming into his eyes told me otherwise, but I let it slide. I turned back toward Benno instead. “My point is that the old rules don’t apply. The deals are broken. The compacts are dissolved. The only thing that matters now is that the Ruler of the Dead’s army is knocking down that wall you supposedly built so well, and if we don’t figure out a way to band together against her, she’s sure to slaughter us all.” 

Benno squirmed in his chair and shot his nephew an uncomfortable glance before he returned his full attention to me. Belle, Moira, and Danto stood with me, as did Johan. I wondered if I’d just given him cause to regret that, but he hadn’t even tried to edge away. 

“My people feel safe here in the Stronghold,” Benno said. “We built this place to withstand attacks by the mightiest armies, even one composed of the dead. Why should we risk ourselves — our families, our children — to lend aid to the Guard now?”