Nice Dragons Finish Last (Heartstrikers) (31 page)

In the sudden silence, Julius could hear heavy shoes rustling through the undergrowth as their attackers checked the windows. One man even walked down to the door to push on the ward and got zapped for his trouble. Marci looked a little smug about that, but it didn’t last long, because while the ward kept the enemy out, it also kept the two of them
in.

“Is there another exit?”

Marci nodded and pointed at the sea of trash that filled the non-warded half of the basement. “There’s a stairway up to the main house somewhere over there.”

Julius grimaced. Even if they could battle their way through all the debris, they’d expose their backs to the open door. Not a valid option. “What did you do to Bixby, anyway?” he grumbled, leaning out as far as he dared in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the driveway.

“Oh, no, this can’t be Bixby,” she said, shaking her head frantically. “I mean, yeah, he wants me dead, but there’s no way he’d send an army like this all the way to Det—”

“Novalli!”

Marci froze, her eyes going wider with stark, naked terror as the deep, booming voice bellowed her name. “Come on out, sweetheart,” the man continued. “We’ve got you surrounded, and this time we
know
you’re in there. Don’t make us torch the place.”

Marci threw her head back, squeezing her eyes shut as she mouthed a string of silent curses.

“Do you know that guy?”

“It’s Oslo. He’s Bixby’s freaking
second
. What is he doing up here?”

Julius had no idea, but at least that answered the Bixby question. “See if you can stall them,” he whispered, pulling out his phone.

“Why?” Marci whispered back. “What are you doing?”

“Calling the cops. They’ll run when they hear sirens.” And so would he and Marci, but she was already shaking her head.

“That won’t do any good. This is the DFZ, remember? The police are all contractors. Even if we paid their fees in advance, it would take a riot to get them to take a job this close to the Reclamation Zone.”

Julius rolled his eyes. Of course. Why should he expect anything else from this capitalist dystopia of a city? He supposed he could call Justin, but his brother would have to fly to get out here fast enough to save them, and there was no way anyone could miss a dragon flying over the DFZ during the
day
. With his brother out of the picture, though, Julius was rapidly running out of ideas, and Oslo seemed to be running out of patience.

“Last chance, Novalli!” Bixby’s second yelled. “The boss gave orders that you weren’t to be killed, but he didn’t say anything about you not being shot. We even brought along a medic, just in case. Of course, that means we can be as rough as we want and you’ll still pull through, and my boys and I are mighty pissed about having to come all this way on short notice. So if you want to keep your limbs intact, you should stop wasting my time and get out here now.”

The color had completely drained from Marci’s face by the time he finished, but her jaw was set as stubbornly as ever. “
You’re
pissed?” she shouted at the open door. “
I’m
pissed you idiots can’t take a hint and shove off! But feel free to keep yelling at my ward. I’ve already called the cops. We should be hearing helicopters any second!”

Julius stared questioningly at her, and Marci shrugged. “What? If you didn’t know, they might not either.”

Oslo, however, did not seem to take the threat the way it was intended, because his reply was, “Break it down.”

The order had barely finished when the glowing wall of Marci’s ward flashed bright as the sun. Marci gasped at the same time, doubling over like someone had just punched her in the gut. “They have a mage,” she whispered through clenched teeth when Julius reached out to steady her. “They’re going to brute force the ward.”

He grimaced. “How long have we got?”

“Don’t know,” she said, her face pained. “Whoever they hired has some serious weight behind him. Bastard must be pulling off a small fortune in magical materials.” Another blow landed, making Marci’s whole body clench so hard it took her several seconds before she could speak again. “If I keep holding it up like this, I’d say two, maybe three minutes?”

Julius shook his head. Even if he’d had a plan, three minutes wouldn’t be enough to pull it off. His eyes darted over the trash, looking for something he could use when the time came—a gun, a shovel, even a baseball bat would be better than nothing. He was debating the weapon potential of the rusty rake in the corner when he felt something soft and freezing cold brush against his leg.

He looked down with a start to see Ghost sitting beside him, twitching his semi-transparent tail back and forth across the glass-strewn cement floor. Considering their situation, the sight of a death spirit, even one for cats, was enough to thoroughly creep Julius out. Marci, however, looked delighted.

“Ghost!” she cried. “Perfect! Get out there and do your thing. Jump on them! Eat their souls!”

The transparent cat gave her a look of absolute disgust and started bathing its paw.

“Oh, come
on
,” she pleaded as another hit landed on her ward. “You’re my death spirit. Go be scary!” Ghost started washing his other paw, and Marci slumped against the wall, defeated. “I don’t get it. I thought bound spirits had to obey their masters.”

“Well, he is still a cat,” Julius pointed out. “‘Obey’ isn’t exactly in his vocabulary.” Still, Ghost’s appearance had given him an idea. He actually liked it less than the attack-gunmen-with-a-rake plan, but at least this one had a chance of actually working. “Marci,” he said quietly. “If you had a strong source of magic to pull off, could you beat these guys?”

“If you mean Ghost, it won’t work. Bound spirits are at equilibrium with their masters. He can pull on my magic just as hard as I pull on his, so the net return—”

“I’m not talking about Ghost,” Julius interrupted. When she gave him a funny look, he took a deep breath. “What if you used me?”

Marci’s face went blank in surprise. “You?”

Julius nodded grimly. This wasn’t how he’d wanted her to find out the truth, but he didn’t have much choice. If they didn’t do something, they were going to die in a hoarded cat house to a bunch of human thugs, and after everything he’d survived since being dumped in this city, that end was too pathetic to stomach. “Do it,” he said, putting out his hand just as Bixby’s mage hit her ward again, sending sparks flying. “Quickly.”

“No!” she cried, horrified. “I can’t do that!”

Now it was his turn to be surprised. “Why not? You pulled on those lampreys last night just fine.”

“
Those were
animals
,” Marci said, her voice frantic. “Drawing off another human’s soul is
blood magic
! It’s the mage equivalent of cannibalism, and it’s illegal even in the DFZ. Also, that stuff taints you for
life
. My magic would be ruined forever!”

Considering they were in a life-or-death situation, Julius thought that sounded like an acceptable price. Since he wasn’t human, though, it was also an irrelevant one. “Marci,” he said gently. “It won’t be blood magic. Trust me.”

Her panic faded as she stared at his face, and then her expression shifted to something he couldn’t quite put a name on. Cracks were already appearing in her ward above them, but Julius didn’t try to rush her. It wasn’t like he could force her to take his magic, anyway. All he could do was sit and hope that the trust that had allowed her to fall asleep beside him was still there.

Finally, she raised her own hand until her fingers were hovering right above his outstretched palm, but she didn’t touch him yet. Instead, she looked at him again.
Really
looked at him, like she was searching his face for the final bit of evidence that would convince her this was the right decision. She must have found it, because a second later, her hand slammed into his, fingers wrapping around his palm like a clamp.

Julius relaxed his guard at once, opening his magic wide to let her in, and Marci jumped like she’d been electrocuted. Seconds later, her shock faded, and then her face broke into the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen. “I
knew
you weren’t human,” she whispered, her voice humming through him like it was his own.

“We’ll talk when we get out of this alive,” he replied, breathing deep as he adjusted to incredibly strange feeling of having someone else inside his magic.

Marci nodded, squeezing his hand even tighter. “Ready?”

He nodded, and then nearly fell over as Marci yanked his magic so hard he saw stars. Julius almost broke the connection after that, but stopped himself at the last moment, clutching her tighter instead. This had been his idea. He’d asked her to take a chance and trust him, and she had. Whatever happened, he couldn’t pull the rug out from under her now, so he breathed through the pain, keeping his magic steady as Marci pulled and pulled and pulled until she was shining bright as a spotlight.

That was all the warning he got before Marci’s ward exploded.

***

Aside from the time he’d spent with Marci, Julius hadn’t seen a lot of human mages at work. He had, however, seen enough magic to know when he was witnessing something amazing.

The dust from her exploding ward had barely settled when Marci walked away from the shelter of the basement wall and into the open doorway, pulling Julius behind her. She grew brighter with every step, her body saturated in a golden haze of magic so thick, she looked like she’d been dipped in sunlight. Even for a dragon, it was an awesome sight, though Julius would have appreciated it more if she hadn’t been sucking him dry in the process.

Her hand was still clamped around his like a vise, drinking his magic down with impossible strength. He hadn’t realized a human could take so much, though he should have known better than to underestimate Marci. But though he was quickly going lightheaded, he refused to cut off the power he’d offered her, especially since it seemed to be working.

Now that she’d pulled him to the open door, he was able to get his first real look at their attackers. From the amount of gunfire, he’d expected ten guys, maybe fifteen. What he saw was a small army.

Thirty men were crowded in the overgrown driveway behind the house. Still more had fanned out to the sides of the property. Their weapons were a mix of assault rifles and automatic pistols, and most of them were clearly muscle augmented, their dark suits straining over their technologically enhanced physiques. All of them had the hardened, seen-everything look of professional criminals. Or, they would have, if they weren’t all currently gaping like fish at Marci’s sudden and spectacular appearance.

Their shock lasted only a second, but for Bixby’s men, it was a second too long. As soon as she cleared the door, Marci’s arm flew up, her plastic bracelets vibrating wildly on her wrist as she pushed Julius’s power through. Attached to her as he was, he could actually feel his magic flowing through her spellwork, the raw power twisting and folding like paper into a new shape. It was wondrous and terrible, and he was still trying to make sense of it when a shimmering wall of super-heated air exploded from Marci’s fingertips and slammed into the men in front of them.

Her spell hit the thugs like a freight train, the modified microwave spell cooking their skin even as the explosively expanding hot air knocked them through the bushes and into the neighboring yard. The thunderous boom of her first attack was still echoing when Marci sent out the next, this time blasting the goons off her car. The old sedan was too heavy to be thrown by air pressure, but the heat of her attack blistered the fading paint on the driver’s side and cracked the half of the windshield that hadn’t been shot.

Marci didn’t seem to notice the damage. Even when the men on the side of the house recovered from their shock enough to start shooting again, she didn’t flinch, not even when a bullet grazed her cheek. She just kept going like a one-woman army, yanking power out of Julius as she launched wave after wave after wave, scorching the grass black and blasting everyone she saw until, at last, there was only one person left.

The moment Julius saw him, he understood why this human alone hadn’t been burned or thrown back. The young man standing in the middle of the cracked driveway was so covered in magic, Julius could smell it even over Marci’s. With so much blatant power, he didn’t need the blood trickling down the man’s face from Marci’s backlashed ward to know he was looking at Bixby’s mage. Marci knew it, too, and she yanked her hand back, muttering under her breath as a different bracelet began to vibrate.