It was an apocalypse. Limited to Chicago, but severe enough that it would take months, if not years, before the city was the same.
The dragon plunged down, zeroed in on the top of the Towerline building. But then again, it was hurt, it was angry, and it felt it had been tricked and betrayed. The magic that created it had begun at Towerline. It had apparently decided this was the place to heal.
I screamed into my comm unit but wasn’t sure if they could even hear me this far away. “We’re heading to Towerline!”
The building’s large roof, still scarred by the magic we’d used before, grew larger and larger in front of us, and I closed my eyes against the rising vertigo.
The dragon hit the roof hard, skidding across the gravel and debris and throwing me off. I made my own sliding roll across rock and asphalt, my momentum only stopped by one of the building’s remaining HVAC units.
What was a little concussion between friends? I thought, closing my eyes for a moment to give my head a chance to stop spinning.
The roof shook beneath me, and I reached for my sword before opening my eyes.
The dragon’s foot—as big as a hubcap—loomed above my head.
“Shit!” I said, and rolled just before the hubcap came down and smashed a divot into the roof. I climbed to my feet, but the dragon caught my foot with a talon and brought me down again.
He began dragging me backward across the gravel, and then its breath was on my back.
“This is not how the story ends!” I said, and spun my sword blindly over my head.
The dragon screamed and reared backward in pain. I rolled away and scrambled to my feet, gravel spraying beneath my boots, and put distance between us before looking back again.
Like the scales on its foot, those on its neck were small and easier to penetrate, and I’d etched a gash on one side.
PAIN! it screamed, the sound cutting the air as sharply as my sword.
“It doesn’t have to be pain!” I said, and lifted my sword. “Surrender now, and I won’t have to kill you!”
I AM ANGER AND PAIN AND FEAR. I AM HATRED AND REVENGE AND AGONY. YOU CANNOT STOP ME.
The only dragon in existence, and it had to be a sociopath. “This sword in my hand says different.”
PAIN WILL EXIST EVEN IF AM GONE. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE MORE.
Now it was just pissing me off. I let my eyes silver, let my fangs descend. “Anger and pain and fear are part of life in Chicago and everywhere else. But so are joy and love. And I’ll be damned if you take any more of that away.”
Katana in front of me, nearly perpendicular to my body, I strode toward the dragon. “With blade and blood I bind you!”
It roared, swiped out, one nail catching a gap where rock had shredded leather and striping a slice across my ribs. The pain was outrageous, fire searing across my skin. But I didn’t have time to worry about that now.
I dodged and ran beneath its leg. “With darkness and steel I bind you!”
FEAR WILL ALWAYS EXIST. The dragon’s tail whipped to the side, and I jumped up to avoid it, hit the ground and rolled, sword in hand. I came up bruised and scraped again, but the sword was still in my hand.
“Maybe so,” I said. “But fear doesn’t have to be the only thing that exists.” I blew out a breath, narrowed my focus, and stared him down.
“With water and wind I bind you! With hope and fear I bind you!”
The sword heated in my hand, the blade going white-hot with the force of the spell. I ignored it, gripped it harder, and ran toward the dragon.
It opened its mouth and snapped, trying to pull the same trick it had pulled with Sorcha. I ducked beneath its mouth and thrust the sword up with both hands between two of the scales in the dragon’s neck.
Magic exploded.
Light shot from the katana as the dragon bucked, screamed with the pain of a million souls.
I let go of the sword, tried to scurry back from its thrashing legs and tail, from the magic that bloomed, huge and white, an unfolding flower of supernatural energy.
The dragon bucked as the flower enfolded it, then froze as if captured in glass, just like Portnoy’s drawing. But the flower kept growing.
I tried to run, slipped in blood and gravel and hit my knees again—and was too late. The blooming magic covered me. I instinctively braced against the impact of it, of the power I was sure would incinerate us both.
But unlike the Egregore, this magic wasn’t violent, and it wasn’t angry. It was familiar, because it arose from the connection that already existed between me and the katana, born when I’d tempered the steel with my own blood.
Even while the dragon was frozen, the magic moved through me, strengthening my bond to the sword . . . and the bond between me and the life that had only just begun to grow. A life I hadn’t known existed until the magic firmed its connection to me, binding it inside me, just as the magic bound dragon to blade.
Hope welled so powerfully that tears immediately spilled over. I moved my hand through thick magic, put a hand on my abdomen, felt the flutter that I’d been afraid I’d never feel, but which now seemed undeniably real.
“Hi,” I said with a silly grin. “Hi.”
Suddenly, with a high-pitched whine, the blossom began to retract, to shrink back toward the captured dragon, the bound dragon. I remembered I was still midbattle, inside a spell, and mere feet away from a magically petrified dragon. So, immediate priorities first.
When the magic freed me, I crawled back, putting space between us and the spell that folded itself over the dragon like a budding flower in reverse, condensing itself more and more until there was nothing in the darkness but a spear of light around my spinning blade, the dragon, the Egregore, condensed inside it.
One final flash of light, the sword white-hot with energy, and it stilled in the air, dropped to the roof with a heavy thud.
I fell to my knees, my body still buzzing with magic, the slice along my ribs burning outrageously. But I was alive, and we were safe, and Chicago would go on.
That was enough for tonight.
• • •
My blade had cooled, the steel going gray again, by the time everyone else reached the Towerline roof.
I felt the footsteps before I heard them, shudders across the roof. Ethan moved into my vision first, gaze searching frantically. Mallory and Catcher appeared behind him.
“The dragon is bound,” I said, “and I survived.” But my head was still spinning.
“Merit,” Mallory said, falling to her knees beside me. “You’re glowing.”
“Looks like you got a good dose of magic,” Catcher said, running a hand along my arm. “But I don’t see any lasting damage.” He looked back at the sword, and a grin pierced the fear on his face. “And there’s a helluva lot of magic in that sword.”
“Yeah. There’s a dragon in there. And I feel . . . kind of purple.” I looked up at Mallory, then Ethan. “Is that a thing? Feeling kind of purple?”
She smiled, pushed hair from my face. “It absolutely is a thing, you crazy vampire.”
“My crazy vampire,” Ethan said, and scooped me into his arms. “Who I very well may handcuff permanently to the House.”
“Not leaving anytime soon,” I said, and dropped my head to his shoulder. “Glad you found me. I got the bad guy.”
“So you did,” he said, and there was no mistaking the pride in his voice. “For now, be still.”
He’d said his magic words, and the lights went out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CRAVING
Winters in the Midwest were fearsome things, and summers often weren’t much better. But early fall, with clear skies and temperatures as crisp as autumn apples, was undeniably beautiful.
Two weeks after the dragon’s demise, when the wounded had been attended to and the city had begun to right itself again, we enjoyed that gorgeous autumn weather from the stage at Pritzker Pavilion—the place where we’d first heard the Egregore speak—while thousands of Chicagoans looked on.
Microphone in hand, Mayor Kowalcyzk stood in jeans, boots, and a windbreaker, her power suit abandoned for clothes better suited for walking Chicago’s broken streets and helping pick up the scattered pieces.
We stood behind her—vampires of Cadogan House, my grandfather and his staff, Mallory, CPD officers, and the men and women who’d served at Soldier Field.