End Times in Dragon City (2 page)

Yabair shook his head with menacing purpose. “You don’t know what you’ve done here.” 

I opened my mouth to protest, but he waved me silent. 

“You are too young. You humans — all of you together — are too young. The eldest among you has lived, what? Perhaps a hundred years. You’re children, every last one of you, and you act like it, like petulant, spoiled youths who have no way to even start to comprehend what your elders and your betters sacrificed to bring you the comforts that you enjoy. 

“You think that it’s hard in the Village? Or atop the Big Hill where you reside in that office of yours above that fat halfling’s restaurant? Or even down in Goblintown where we let the dregs of our society drain?” 

He granted me a bit of the truth to that with a nod before he continued. “Sure, life there can be a challenge. It can be brutal and all too short. It’s unfair.

“But at least it’s life. When the Ruler of the Dead arrives — when her unstoppable armies come marching through our streets, working their way up the side of the mountain until they can claim every inch of it from its swampy foothills to its frozen peak — then you’ll understand. Then you’ll realize how good you had it here under the Dragon Emperor’s rule for so long. 

“Not only that, you’ll thank his memory for how many generations of you wouldn’t have even been whelped if it hadn’t been for him. You’ll weep for his loss. And every damn one of you — even you, Gibson — will curse the bastard that took him from us and left us all exposed to the horrors of the wider world.” 

I laughed at him, and I saw his anger well up inside him and threaten to burst forth again. The only thing that prevented it from boiling straight over was the door that stood between us, protecting me as much as it kept me captive. That just made me laugh harder, so hard that I could barely breathe. 

“What’s so funny?” he said, his eyes blazing, his nostrils flaring. “I put you in this cell so you can be the last of your people to go. So you can hear them curse you and your entire bloodline from one end to the other, right up until the moment some zombie tears out your throat, and you laugh?” 

I wiped my eyes as I caught my breath. “The joke’s on you,” I said. “You and everyone last one of us. We think it makes a difference that we had an Emperor rather than a Ruler, right?” 

He nodded at me, unsure where I was heading with that. 

“They both wind up devouring us, defiling us. They don’t want us. They don’t care about us. All they need are our bodies, our remains. We’re just grist for their mills. Chickens for their pots.” 

“The Dragon gave you safety. He gave you society. He gave you life.” 

“My parents gave me life. My friends gave me what excuse for society I could find.” 

I turned back to the window to watch the zombies herd against the wall as if someone had rung the dinner bell for them, and to see Goblintown burn. Lights from uncapped glowglobes had appeared all throughout the city to fight the coming darkness, and the streets arrayed before me sparkled like constellations in the night sky. War was coming to my city, and I wanted to be out there to fight it. 

“The Dragon just failed to kill me before I killed him,” I said. “And I can’t see how I should feel bad about that, not even for an instant.” 

C
HAPTER
T
WO

Yabair left me then with nothing more than a snarl. I kept staring out the window and wondering what was happening down there, not just to Goblintown or to the Great Circle, but to my friends and family, as scattered about the place as they might be. 

After I’d shot the Dragon and Yabair had arrested me, we’d sat there for a few moments, taking it all in. Belle, Cindra, and Danto had somehow escaped from the pit the Dragon had dug to get at us. Moira had slipped back into the surrounding wreckage above, disappearing into Goblintown too. Kai, now that I thought about it, had vanished in the middle of the fight. 

Kells and Johan had hovered overhead for a moment in that well-armed palanquin they’d rigged together, but Yabair had started firing on them the moment they got close. I knew they meant to rescue me, but I waved them off despite that. Enough people had died that day already. I didn’t need them getting added to that total — or even Yabair for that matter. 

I didn’t blame any of them for getting away. I would have done the same myself. It was one thing to take on the Dragon — who’d literally dug up a full city block to pull us out of a sub-basement. It was something else to voluntarily fight the Guard, a foe from which you could actually get away. 

I hadn’t even argued the point myself. When Yabair had flown his chariot down to grab me, I’d dropped my gun and let him take me in. Sure, the fact that I’d run out of bullets and had been clinging to the side of that fresh-dug pit had more than a little to do with that. 

I had thought perhaps Yabair would just haul me straight off to the Garrett, but he hadn’t been quite ready for that yet. The Dragon was inarguably dead, but there might have still been a chance for the Voice of the Dragon, the flame-robed elf who’d rode into battle in a basket suspended from a chain around the Emperor’s neck. He’d taken a number of bullets from Kells’ machine-gun, but he’d been alive enough to shout at me after that — right up until he succumbed to his wounds. 

Yabair had sent his chariot’s driver off to check on the Voice while he cuffed me and slapped me around. By the time the other elf got to the Voice though, he was long past anyone’s help. 

I didn’t know that just from the way he didn’t move or the fact he’d stopped breathing though. I figured it out from how he stood straight up in that damned basket of his like there wasn’t a thing wrong with him. And then, as if that hadn’t been enough, he’d opened his mouth and laughed. 

I recognized that horrible sound right away: dry and triumphant and devoid of life. I’d heard it just moments ago, emanating from the remains of Belle’s dead sister Fiera. It belonged to the Ruler of the Dead. 

The guard had already recoiled from the Voice as he rose in his basket. Now the hapless bastard scrambled back so fast that he tripped over his own feet while trying to get away. He stumbled down off the pile of rubble on which the Dragon rested and tumbled head over heels all the way down into the bottom of the pit I’d just climbed out of myself. 

I would have laughed that that if the sight of the Voice standing up and staring out at Yabair and myself hadn’t been so horrifying. And then the Voice opened his mouth and spoke in the tone and words of the Ruler of the Dead. 

“I hope you didn’t think this was over, son of Gib,” the Ruler said. “Oh, no no no. I’m afraid it’s just beginning. As I speak through this shell — through the former voice of your Emperor — I’ve already begun to summon my armies to Dragon City.”

“The wall still stands,” I said, summoning up every bit of defiance I had left in me to keep from crumbling into a trembling heap. “We’ll fight you until our last breath.” 

“Oh, I’m depending on that,” the Ruler said, curling up the corners of the Voice’s mouth in a disgusting sham of a smile. “But my army will be like the tide: powerful and ceaseless. We will pound against your bulwarks, chipping away at your defenses day by day, hour by hour, until we erode them away. And the moment your insignificant levee gives way, we will rush into this pathetic settlement of yours, and we will wash you away on a tide of mayhem and blood.” 

Yabair pointed his pistol at the Voice then and fired. The bullet caught the creature in the chest and knocked it back against the dead Dragon’s scaly chest. 

I glanced at the Captain of the Guard. “Thanks.” 

He didn’t look at me, keeping his eyes fixed on the basket into which the Voice’s body had slumped. “I didn’t do it for you.” 

A wheezy noise came from the basket, echoing against its metal shell. “You’ll need to be a better shot than that, Yabair,” the Ruler said, her voice rattling inside the dead elf’s chest. “The years have not been kind to your aim.” 

“If I’d wanted to put the bullet between your eyes, I would have done so,” Yabair said, his words calm and assured. “For now, it’s enough to disable your unfortunate pawn.” 

I understood. Yabair hoped to be able to chat with the Ruler of the Dead through the Voice’s body, but that would mean playing a dangerous game. He might want to trick her into revealing something that the Guard could use against her and her army, but it seemed to me just as likely that he or one of his soldiers would slip up and accidentally give her an advantage instead. 

“Not a word, Gibson,” he said to me, “or you’ll suffer a similar fate.” 

That had made me shudder all the way back to my cell. 

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

I was still shivering with thought of the Ruler of the Dead as night fell across Dragon City. Or maybe that was just the cold that seeped into me through my cell’s cut stone floor. The jailers there hadn’t provided me with a pot to piss in, much less a blanket to stave off the evening’s chill. 

It was cold enough at the Garrett’s altitude during the day, but I could see my breath fogging the air in the little bit of moonlight that filtered in through my cell’s glassless window. Yabair had thrown me into the highest and most isolated of the cells, which sat atop a lonely tower that stabbed out from the mountain’s highest crag shy of the Dragon’s Spire itself. The wind howled around it like a banshee, its wailing harmonizing with that of an actual ghost secreted away somewhere in the prison’s lower levels.

As you went down through the prison’s levels, the cells became less like rooms with a view and more and more like actual tombs. By the time you reached the bottom, you’d find yourself inside of rooms reputedly more secure than even the dwarves’ Vault, which hunkered deep in the heart of the Stronghold. Maybe I should have been grateful I’d not been locked up in one of those living graves, but at least then I’d have been warm. 

Yabair had confiscated my wand, but like any other wizard, I didn’t need it to cast spells so much as focus and direct them. I didn’t have much mojo left after the day I’d had, though, and the Garrett had been ensorcelled to be proofed against all sorts of magic. I took a gamble though, and I laid my hands on a section of the floor beneath me and muttered a few secret words. It began to glow with a soft light and — better yet — a hint of warmth. I curled up on top of it and tried to find sleep. 

The winds seemed to carry the noises from the city below right up to my window though. I could hear people screaming in the distance. Gunshots seemed to echo from all over the place, coming in sporadic bursts. And the dull roar of the zombies’ groans as they battered themselves against the Great Circle rose and fell like the waves of a raging sea. 

Sleep still hadn’t found me when I heard the door to my cell unlock with the grating of metal on metal, followed by a solid click. I considered pretending to be asleep, but I didn’t see how that would grant me much of an advantage. In any case, I was too curious to just lie there, so I spun about, sat up, and waited. 

The door creaked open on rusty hinges that maybe hadn’t seen oil since before I was born. Someone slipped inside then and shut the door behind her. “Good evening, Max,” she said. “It’s been a long time.” 

“Not long enough, Alcina.” I suppressed an urge to get up and choke whatever resembled life out of her. 

She stepped into the moonlight streaming in through the window, and she was just as gorgeous as ever, a stunning, raven-haired beauty with violet eyes and porcelain skin. The sight of her stole my breath away — not because of her looks but because she was supposed to be imprisoned in one of the most secure cells in the Garrett. 

I ought to know. I put her here. 

“Is that anyway to treat an old lover?” she said, running a delicate finger across her pale lips. “I thought we’d meant something more than that to each other, once upon a time.” 

I pushed myself to my feet and kept my back toward the wall with the window in it. “We didn’t exactly end our relationship on a good note.” 

“Oh, that?” she said. “It’s all water under the bridge, Max. Long forgotten, I’m sure.” 

“I still remember.” She’d tried to rip my throat out. It wasn’t the kind of thing I was going to forget. 

She flashed a coy smile at me. It showed all her teeth, including the fangs that stabbed down where her canines should have been. “I don’t blame you for dumping me,” she said. “I might have done the same thing myself, in my breathing days. You should know, though, that I never meant you any harm.” 

“That’s not how I remember it.” 

She smiled. “Not in the long run, silly. Sure, it might have hurt at first — a lot, even — but you’d have gotten over it. And you’d have been so much better after you joined me.” 

“For the last time, no thanks.” 

She pouted at me, feigning hurt feelings she didn’t really have.

“What are you doing here, Alcina?” I said. “This can’t be a social visit.”

“Why can’t it? It’s not like you get up here to my shelf of the mountain all that often, right? I thought I’d take the opportunity to offer you a proper welcome.” She edged toward me. 

“You’re a prisoner, not a jailer.” I stepped backward as nonchalantly as I could manage. 

It was an old reflex, wanting to keep my back against the wall. It wasn’t like she, as a lone person, could circle around behind me without me noticing. She was so damned fast it wouldn’t likely matter anyhow. I’d been damn lucky to get the drop on her the last time we’d met, and I’d been prepared, with my gun and wand in hand. 

Right then, I don’t think I’d ever felt so naked in my entire life. 

“That’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it?” she said. “I reside here, that much is true, but it is at my choice and under my conditions.” 

I had a strong urge to call for a jailer then, but if what she said was true, it wouldn’t do me a lick of good. I’d only seen one of them once so far, when he’d come to bring me a bowl of cold gruel and a mug of dirty water for my dinner. He’d been a cruel-faced man who’d not said a single word to me, just sniggered at my plight. I didn’t think he’d be much help to me either way.