The Nothing: A Book of the Between (34 page)

Even for this small gesture, he used his left hand, the right pressed stiffly against his side. There were lines of pain on his face, the skin around his eyes pinched. Vivian dipped into the magic, moving around the edges of the wound, exploring the inflammation and growing infection.

“Vivian? What do you want to do?”

The voices seemed far away and unimportant as she examined the struggle between healthy cells and contagion, the brutal rift in the structure of muscle and skin. She could feel the dying cells and the damaged ones fighting to repair and rebuild. Cells as a community, where one lost affected all of the others. Warrior cells and healing cells and the invading bacteria. And she could see that the bacterial colony was going to win.

Her clinical brain kicked in with words like cellulitis, gangrene, amputation. This was Zee, the Warrior. He needed his arm if they were to fight with dragons. He needed his arm afterward if they survived. And so, she used the magic to intervene, blowing up bacteria like tiny little bombs, accelerating the reproduction of new and healthy cells and the speed with which debris could be carried away.

When it was done, she found herself drifting through a space that she didn’t know, dark and quiet. She felt emptied and tired but peaceful. Lights and shadows, shapes and the negative space between shapes, all like a movie she could watch without feeling the need to intervene.

A bright flare of energy disrupted the serenity and Kalina’s voice burned into her. “What are you doing? Come back here now.”

She fought against the command, but it pulled her against her will into a place of invasive light and heat and decay. Blinking, she began to register objects and put names to them. Sun. Dust. Bones.

Zee. Flexing his right arm and running his left hand over a wide, jagged scar. But it was a scar, not an open wound. He turned to her with a touch of wonder. She didn’t like that expression.

“Functional?” It was hard to access words, so she used only the one.

“Seems to be.”

His expression shifted to one she knew and recognized, the one that meant he was about to kiss her. Except for damned Kalina, who got in the way.

“If you two are quite done wasting time, can we talk about that strategy now?”

Strategy. What did she know of strategy? She had no idea of how many dragons they were facing on what type of terrain. Had Aidan joined forces with the dragons of the Forever? No matter what tactics they took, the chances of winning against an entire contingent of dragons were pitifully small.

She tried to think of her companions in terms of resources and liabilities instead of people she loved and wanted to protect. Kalina had powerful magic. Kraal, a Giant’s strength and a thirst for retribution born from the destruction of his home world. Zee, so lethal with a sword, born to be warrior and dragon slayer.

But looking at the boneyard stretched out for miles, she doubted that it would be enough.

“We need to get to the Pool of Life, steal some of the water from it, and get away. How we’re going to do that, I hadn’t thought.”

“I’ll kill Aidan with my bare hands as a beginning,” Kraal growled.

Kalina’s magic surged, blue lightning flickering from her eyes and fingers. “She’s mine!”

“I owe her several deaths,” Zee said. He paused. “What about the child?”

“Lyssa?”

“No. Aidan’s unborn.” He didn’t say the words Vivian knew were in his mind.

“Any spawn of hers will be vermin,” Kraal said. “Kill it along with her.”

Kalina was more perceptive. Her eyes went from Vivian to Zee and back again. “You two know something. Why is this a question?”

“Killing Aidan or her child won’t stop the Nothing,” Vivian began. Zee laid a restraining hand on her arm.

“Because the child is mine,” he said.

Silence followed, the little group staring at him in disbelief. Vivian alone knew what this admission cost him, and laced her fingers with his in solidarity and support.

“Killing Aidan won’t stop the Nothing.” She moved to the center of the group, turning in a circle to make eye contact with each one. “If killing her will facilitate the objective of carrying the water of life to the Cave of Dreams, then we need to consider killing her. We all want her to die a thousand fiery deaths, but if doing so distracts us or keeps us from what we need to do, then we let her live once again. Understood?”

A deep silence followed, which she chose to take as acquiescence. “Strategy needs to revolve around how we get away with water from the sacred Pool.”

“If there’s any water in it,” Kalina said, with a meaningful look at the cracked and pitted riverbed.

“If it does not exist, we fail, and all of this was for nothing.”

“We must assume it exists.” Zee’s eyes glowed with the fire of the hunt. “As for strategy—either we fight our way through or we use trickery.”

Vivian knew full well what his preference would be. Zee would confront all of the dragons in the world without fear and die with a heart full of the joy of battle.

Kraal, although his eyes also shone with battle lust, spoke on the conservative side. “They will outnumber us greatly. We are a lethal company, but even so, we cannot win through if they all stand against us.”

“Maybe a mixed tactic, then,” Zee said. “Some of us do battle, creating a distraction, while somebody makes a break for the Pool.”

“Not me,” Kalina said. “I can fight. You need my magic.”

“We also need Vivian as a dragon, I think… It may have to be you, Kalina.”

“Lyssa and I will get the water,” Isobel said. Her voice was tentative but determined.

“It’s not safe.”

Isobel smiled. “It’s a little late to be worrying about safety. Let me be useful for once.”

This was hard to argue with. If they failed now, everybody was going to die. Still. Vivian swallowed hard, looking at her mother, at the little girl, already damaged. Somehow, it was the missing hand that cemented for her the finality of where they were.

“Basic strategy, all down through time,” Zee said.

Vivian had to try. “But if the dragons find them, they’re dinner.”

“Isobel’s right. They’re dinner hiding behind a rock.”

“We could leave them here.”

“And if you don’t come back? No water, no food. Nowhere else to go.”

“It’s the only thing that might work,” Zee said.

“You didn’t bring us here,” Isobel said. “Not me. Not Lyssa or Zee or any of these others. You’re not responsible for a single life. Fate brought us. Every one of us. For a reason.”

“We’re wasting time,” Kalina said. “Every minute we stand here talking, another world dies.”

“Zee?” Vivian said. “What do we do now?”

ZEE WOULD have given a great deal for a pair of binoculars. The little group had made its way to the top of a towering cliff that must once have been a thundering waterfall. Sheltering behind a boulder, he peered down at the landscape below and tried to picture a strategy that ended with access to the Pool of Life and the survival of everybody in their little company.

Try as he might, he couldn’t see it.

The City of Dragons was laid out in a grid that stretched for miles. What dragons needed with houses, he didn’t know, but there were thousands of them, separated by wide streets and spacious outdoor bathing areas. All of the basins were full of dust, except for the one that mattered.

At the base of the dry falls lay a round, steep-walled chasm, just large enough for one full-grown dragon to bathe. It was almost empty, but there was a golden shimmer at the bottom that promised a hope of success.

Just beyond the Pool stretched a wide, sweeping curve of land paved with flat stones, large enough for a host of dragons. At the center was a massive protrusion of stone cut with steps. On the top hunkered a platform made of what appeared to be solid gold. It was carved all around the edge with images of dragons, their eyes set with stones that flashed blue, red, and yellow in the sunlight.

How many dragons were down there? Had Aidan and the dragons of the Between wiped out the dragons of the Forever? Or was there a host beyond counting, hidden from his sight? He could smell them, sense them. But nothing moved below and he couldn’t begin to guess at their numbers. Not that it really mattered whether there were a hundred or thousands.

He stiffened as a black dragon emerged from around the corner of a building. He knew her, recognized the shape of her and the way her scales seemed to absorb the light rather than reflecting it back. As he watched, she slithered up the steps to the golden platform, stood there for a long moment with her nostrils raised, scenting the air.

“She knows we’re here,” Vivian said. Her eyes had shifted to dragon, golden, the pupils horizontal. It made her look dangerous and wild. “Get ready. The others will all pick up on her warning.”

“Shit.”

But instead of raising an alarm, the dragon shifted into a slender, dark-haired woman.

“What’s she doing?”

“I don’t know. I can’t read her when she’s human. But then, neither can the others.”

Another dragon moved into the square.

Kraal crouched beside Zee. “There is no strategy to encompass this. Too many of them, too few of us. Picked off one at a time over a matter of days, that we could do. But to take them all at once? This cannot be done.”

“We don’t need to kill them,” Vivian reminded him. “Just to get to the water.”

“And back again. How do you propose getting to the Pool without being seen?” Zee asked. “Magic?”

Vivian shook her head. “Dragons sense magic. Even if they don’t see through it, they’ll be drawn to it.”

“The rest of us serve as a distraction,” Kraal said. “Bait.”

“A suicide mission, then?”

The Giant’s voice and face were granite. “We are expendable. We must distract them long enough for Isobel to reach the Pool and fill the waterskin. This is all that matters.”

“What about after the Pool? It counts for nothing if they don’t get back to the Cave of Dreams.”

Isobel seemed not to even hear. She sat on a stone, her hands over her ears, trying to shut out the dragon voices in her head. But Lyssa, cross-legged in the dirt with the griffyn in her lap, was all attention. “If I get the water and take it to the cave, that stops the Nothing?”

Kalina, kneeling beside the child, rubbed the cub’s ears. “Of course. You get the water and pour it out at the entrance of the cave. Make sure some of it gets onto the dream matter and the decay stops.”

Vivian gave Kalina a warning look. “Don’t lie to her. She at least deserves the truth. We think it will stop the Nothing. We hope so. Nobody knows for sure.”

“If it doesn’t work, the Nothing gets me.” The little girl’s eyes were wide, her face serious.

“If it doesn’t work, the Nothing gets everybody,” Kalina added. “Since we’re being honest.”

Lyssa’s lip trembled but she held her head high and returned Vivian’s gaze. “I’ll go. Isobel will be with me.”

“After they get the water, how will they get back to the cave?” Kraal asked.

“That part’s easy.” Lyssa plumped down on the ground and closed her eyes. A door opened in the air beside her. It looked like something straight out of a fairytale picture book, complete with twining vines decked out with small purple flowers.

Vivian cracked it open and peered through. No fairytale princesses behind that door. She slammed it shut and leaned all of her weight against it. Trying to keep her voice casual, she said, “Lyssa, could you lock that up tight?”

The door vanished and she took a deep breath.

“What is it?” Zee asked.

“Definitely the cave,” Vivian said. “Or what’s left of it. Look, Lyssa. When you open the door, you might want to just pour the water through and not go all the way in. You hear me?”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Gods,” Zee murmured. “How old did she say she is?” He shook his head and turned to the rest of them. “All right, then. Here’s the plan, such as it is. Isobel, Lyssa—you need to be quick. Kraal, I’m thinking you and I launch an attack on the side farthest from the Pool. Vivian, are you going in as a dragon?”

She nodded. “The minute I shift, they’ll be aware of me. I’ll get some of them into the air.” Poe pressed up against her leg and she knelt to smooth his feathers. “You should go with Lyssa.”

Poe fixed her with his inscrutable penguin stare, then pressed his head against her for an instant before waddling over to the little girl. He hissed at the griffyn cub and it growled in response. Lyssa tapped it on the back of the head. “Behave.”

Zee turned to Kalina. “Can you provide some sort of shielding for the little one and Isobel? Because if they are seen…”

“I can make them invisible, I think.”

“What does that mean, that you think?” Vivian demanded. “Tell us what you know.”

“I mean that we’re dealing with dragons. They have magic. I can make an illusion, but they’ll sense it. And if they are focused enough, they will be able to unravel it.”

Kraal nodded, grim as death. “So, they must not have a chance to focus. Shield the little one and Isobel until they are close to the Pool but far enough still not to stir interest. Then I will engage the dragons from the earth, Vivian from the sky. Kalina shifts her shield to Zee until he’s close enough to Aidan. He kills her. There will be a moment of confusion then—dragons can all hear each other’s thoughts, yes?”