Meg wasn’t looking at me, so I took the moment to mouth help—not that I didn’t think I could take Meg on my own. It was probably a good idea to sound an alarm for whatever errand she’d sent her lords and ladies on.
Odyssey looked from me to Meg without any acknowledgment, and sat back in her chair, feigning nonchalance. Or maybe she was giving herself an opportunity to trigger the silent alarm she hopefully planted on the underside of her desk.
“To what do I owe this unexpected visit, Meg Vogahn?” Odyssey asked. Behind her, the world was red and flickering. There was too much noise and too much light, but none of it was coming from the sky—everything capable of combustion was exploding: gas tanks in cars, generators in buildings, even the batteries in phones being discarded by the fleeing civilians. Everything that could went poof on the whim of one or another of Meg’s warlocks, snapping their fingers and throwing glass bottles against the walls—Molotov cocktails, with a little extra something to make them burn and burn and burn.
A city at war. Creatures descending upon humanity with oppressive force, demanding the return of something they didn’t even know was missing. I didn’t want to think what kind of hell would rain on the supernatural community when this was all over. If it ever was over.
“Nothing in particular,” said Meg, disappearing into a blossoming cloud of black smoke and reappearing behind Odyssey’s chair. She put her nails at Odyssey’s throat, drumming her fingers against her skin. My heart started to pound. “Just a social call.”
Odyssey didn’t flinch. “I see. Tell me, is this a hostage situation, or an assassination?”
Meg put her face right next to Odyssey’s, drawing her tongue up to Odyssey’s jaw, all the way into her ear. Pushing her nails into Odyssey’s skin until she drew blood, the pinpricks of red trailed down, staining the president’s blouse. Meg inhaled sharply, savoring the smell of it, and letting it paralyze her. She was waiting for something. Listening to the thunder, the rough-and-tumble shutter of sounds beyond the window in some street we couldn’t see.
In a threadlike whisper, Meg said, “What do you think?”
Here it was. The last moment, all of Meg’s people coming into play. Whatever backups she had planned, if any, they were too far off now to do her any good. She had nobody on hand to take up her mantle if she dropped the ball.
Or if, for some reason, her beloved daughter shot her in the face with a dead man’s gun.
A glimpse of movement was all it took for me to dart forward, snatching a gun from the hands of the security officer—dragon’s blood on principal. Flying backwards, I was aiming and firing …
Bang!
I was fast, but Meg was just a hair faster. She dodged to the side, pulling Odyssey with her, maybe hoping to catch the bullet with the president’s head. But I adjusted as she moved, becoming no more than a black blur with a broken smile. It scared me for the two seconds I spent thinking about it. I shouldn’t have been as fast as a vampire, I shouldn’t have been able to see her move.
I moved with her and pulled the trigger. Just a tad slower than her. I was aiming for her head, and the bullet struck her hard in the shoulder, leaking out the green dragon’s blood.
She didn’t even flinch.
“Fuck, how old are you?” I screamed at her.
The dragon’s blood should have taken her down, or at least given her a run for her money. It was a contact-lethal substance, so she shouldn’t have been able to touch it without going down, never mind cantering through her bloodstream like an overeager tourist.
Meg stared at me. For a moment, she looked genuinely shocked. Devastated, even, or something just at the edge of a human emotion. Then the expression fell away, replaced with snarling teeth, and a gnashing, guttural, animal sound that began rumbling in the back of her throat.
“I love you,” she said, her words splintering and breaking. “I loved you!”
“Sure you did,” I said. My words slurred together, but they were mine, and sounded mostly unhindered.
Don’t look her in the eye, Dulcie!
I fired again. Another bullet sank into the skin below her collarbone. She howled, with rage or pain, I didn’t know. It was a hideous sound, like the moaning of a wolf in the middle of the night, or the chittering cries of the chimera in the woods, wailing for something that got away.
She sprang back to Odyssey’s side, grabbing her by the back of her shirt, holding the knife to her throat. Odyssey looked at me, calm as a morning lake. Her eyes flicked to the window—maybe listening for the sound of her city being destroyed, or perhaps she was indicating to me that help was on the way.
Not that we could afford to wait for it.
“This is the culmination of everything we have worked so hard for!” Meg seethed at me.
“No, it’s everything you’ve worked so hard for,” I replied stonily.
Then she just looked at me, her eyes swimming with a glamour on a hook, sharp and glinting; she was calling me. “This is what you want, Dulcie, this is your mission!” The words clawed their way out of her throat, and she began sobbing and pleading.
“This is never what I wanted,” I protested.
“This is your destiny!” she screamed at me. “With me at your side, your mother, the one person who loves you above everyone else!”
“You are not my fucking mother,” I ground out.
She didn’t like that at all.
But instead of slitting Odyssey’s throat, Meg screamed. Eyes shut, she was wailing at the top of her lungs.
I shot again. This one hit her squarely in the mouth, punching through the back of her throat and landing in the wall behind her with a violent, red splattering. She slumped back against the wall, letting the force of the shot carry her backwards—dropping mostly from shock than anything else. Her knife slid across Odyssey’s throat and she nicked it, drawing some blood before it fell away and clattered to the floor.
I darted forward. Odyssey’s face was mostly expressionless, but her eyes reflected her jangled nerves. I lifted her up in my arms—and she weighed no more than a child’s doll.
“Madam President,” I said, nodding inanely before I threw open a door and started to run.
I immediately stopped at the end of the hallway half a second later, startled by the sudden white-on-black blur that surrounded me. I looked at the door twenty yards away. Meg’s screams became lung-stretching sobs, coughing, gasping, shrieking, banshee kinds of sounds.
Speed, I thought. One concise word, another instance of something I shouldn’t have possessed.
Fuck if I wouldn’t use it, though.
I turned a corner and ran down a flight of stairs, the world going crystal-white around me the faster I went. I became no more than a shadowy blur—but I could make out every detail and see every chair I might bump into, as well as every discarded book I might trip over—but not seeing them so much as knowing they were there. My awareness was far more disturbing than my new speed, mostly because it wasn’t something that came from vampires.
Something to brood about later, I thought. I’d been drinking potion after potion after potion at Meg’s behest, cocktails of vampire blood and honey and Hades knew what else. With no clue how much of it affected me, I’d have quite an arsenal to sort through.
The sound of wood splintering and metal tearing alerted me that Meg was ripping a door off the wall.
“Where’s a way out of here?” I asked—searching for any door: front, back, maintenance access, I didn’t care. Odyssey was shaking, her face still blank, her body rebelling against both options: a non-human speedy escape; or the prospect of being murdered by a lunatic vampire.
After a moment, she pointed somewhere without looking up.
I ran and I kept running, ignoring Meg’s doomsday screaming, and not giving the time of day to the hundreds of scattered corpses I found throughout the building. They were stippled with bleeding green bullet holes, and I began leaping over banisters to floors two stories below, landing hard enou
gh to put cracks in the shining floor … Keep moving, and don’t look back! Move!
I was fast—but Meg was faster.
She plowed into me from behind, sinking her nails into my back. I stumbled forward, pulling myself out of the monochrome glitz long enough to drop Odyssey and turn on Meg. I grabbed her by the shoulder, pulling her the rest of the way down the stairs and onto the ground. We made it as far as the entry hall, a vast expanse of beige and brown checkerboard floors, pillars, and red carpeted stairs. Littered with bodies, the men in suits still lay with their guns at their sides, steel shells scattered around them like confetti.
Blood was everywhere.
I feared the blood might send Meg into a frenzy. But perhaps it would distract her long enough for me to grab Odyssey and get away, burying myself in the chaos outside. Her people had no reason to believe I was anything but a loyal daughter. If they saw me running off with a ragdoll president, they’d surely assume she was already dead, and I was looking for someplace to display the cadaver.
But Meg didn’t seem to notice the blood surrounding her. She was on all fours now, with blood on her palms, her face, and her back. Mine, too We rolled a short distance before coming to a stop. Now we were barely inches from each other, staring, glaring, and waiting for something.
Meg started crying. Soft little sobs, she tried to keep quiet, but they echoed in the room.
“I don’t understand,” she said as she shook her head. “Why … why are you doing this? You are supposed to love me as much as I love you!”
She looked so pitiful then. And breakable. So impossibly fragile. If I touched her, or pushed her a little too hard, I feared her skin would fold in on itself, and she would disappear.
So I hesitated. I looked at her for half a second longer than I should have, feeling sorry for her. Until she lunged forward. Snarling like a rabid animal, she sank her teeth into my neck.
I didn’t know what she thought she would do. Kill me? Maybe. Drain me until I couldn’t move? Or just stay there, her fangs in my skin, and not do anything? Was she forcing me to be close to her again, if only to allow her broken mind to pretend everything was okay?
Whatever she wanted to do, she didn’t get the chance. I froze underneath her, staring at the ceiling and shook my fist behind her back. The golden dust was gathering between my fingers, absorbing my thoughts. Shaping itself into a long, curving blade of pure silver.
It glinted above her, catching the distant firelight. I saw my reflection in it, my eyes narrowing hard, my mouth clenching. I plunged it into her back, dragging it down as hard as I could.
She screamed and pushed me away. I let go and the blade stuck in her back, halfway down her spine, wedged between the marble bones. Blood, deep scarlet, gushed from the jagged, red line. She reached back, wrenching the knife free, and tossing it aside.
“You ungrateful bitch,” she hissed, the blood staining her teeth. Maybe it was mine, or hers, or maybe it belonged to one of the dead men lying all around us.
“You’re fucking crazy,” I said—making a very astute observation, but not much in the way of a taunt.
She charged—slipping in blood, and stumbling rather than running. She was also blurring every third second like she couldn’t control her own speed. Drunken with grief, she was three seconds slower than she ought to have been. Giving me three seconds longer to wonder what vampires were afraid of.
The first word that came to mind was fire … Then there it was! Glimmering in the palms of my hands, the flickering bulbs of orange flame began reaching and twisting. Blinking like static, it was barely fluid enough to control. I lifted my hands up, my palms forward like a shield, resisting the ward, and I imagined them growing, coiling around Meg, daring her to get close enough to burn.
She stopped. But she didn’t just stop—she stumbled, and slipped on a slick of blood, her eyes going wide. Staring in wonder, fear, and awe, she began suddenly gasping for air she didn’t need. Clawing her way backwards, and never blinking, she never took her eyes off the fire as it winked in and out of existence. Power surged through me, too much to control, too much for me to try to contain. The flames grew and spread, rearing back their heads like dragons roaring, lurching towards her, their mouths open, hungry …
They sank into her, like teeth of burning amber, and she screamed.
Bloodcurdling screams, a high whine of pure terror as the gleaming, orange bodies wrapped themselves around her, blistering her skin. I watched, my face growing hard, my eyes even harder. Staring, my hand curling shut, I drew deeper heat and brighter light from the fire.
Something shifted. Meg blinked, and her breathing slowed, then stopped. Her eyes changed too—from brown to black to blistering red, and to black again. Swimming with all the magic she had inside her, every ounce of her control.
And then she was right in front of me, and faster than I could follow. Trailing orange and white smoke. She was grabbing my face, forcing me to look at her.
“You are nothing,” she hissed, her voice sounding thin, her eyes wild, “without me.”
My mind went blank. The dark pulled me in, swaddling me, in warmth and quiet. The flames died. A glamour entered my soul, turning all my nerves to stone.
“What do you say?” she demanded. Her hair smoking and clothes scorched, half her face burned pink and white, webbed with layers of skin that didn’t remember how to scar.
“Y … es. M … Mo … ther …” I said, incapable of thinking anything else.
The anguish melted off her, and she smiled. She let me go, and I sank to the ground. My dress billowed out around me, soaking up the blood, turning black at the edges.
“There, there,” she said, leaning down to pat my cheek. “It’s all right. Everything is going to be okay. I forgive you.” She kissed the top of my head and spun around, pulling a sharp, needlelike knife from her belt, before sauntering towards Odyssey where she lay on the stairs. Blood was gushing from her nose—maybe it was broken from when I dropped her, maybe. Dropped her? Why was I carrying her? Where were we going?
Away, away from here, away from her. Focus, Dulcie, focus. Fight Meg’s power! a distant voice railed inside me.
Mother—no, Meg, not Mother, Meg, Meg, Meg—Meg put her knees on either side of Odyssey’s stomach and leaned over her, waving the knife above the president’s face like a stick of incense.
“Time to meet your doom,” she said, tapping Odyssey’s nose with the flat blade. Odyssey’s eyes snapped open and she blinked, staring blearily up at Meg.
I looked at a gun on the floor. The magazine was half open with three bullets still inside.
Move, I thought. Move. My words could have been spoken underwater, the soundwaves trapped in amber.
My fingers twitched. Prickling and numb. My arm moved. Spastic, uncontrolled.
Meg began carving a thin, red line into Odyssey’s cheek. Even from here I could smell it, rusty iron and the dull tinge of pheromones—anger and stoic resignation. Fear. I moved my hands to the floor. Shaking and forcing myself to breathe.
“This is the end of everything,” Meg whispered to Odyssey.
Stand. Up. I did. Slowly. Agonizingly. Fighting every muscle in my body.
Walk.
Meg drove the blade into Odyssey’s shoulder, deep enough to pin her to the stairs.
Keep walking. Pick it up. Close the magazine. Carefully. Slowly. Don’t make a sound.
“The Houses of the Nether appreciate your valiant sacrifice,” Meg said. She took three precious seconds to laugh and that was all I needed.
I lifted the gun. Higher, higher. Fighting for control. I pressed the barrel firmly against my temple.
“Mother,” I called to her.
Meg turned to me. Her eyes went wide, yellow swallowing their hungry red—fear. Pure, unadulterated fear.
“Step away from Odyssey,” I said.
She did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sam
The dragon reeled toward us, spinning through
the sky in a wild, uncontrolled dive. Its eyes were flashing furious red.
“Go!” said Casey. For a fraction of a second, nobody moved. We just stared at the massive, lurching body of the wyrm, careening down …
“Go!” he shouted again, and we took off across the lawn.
As though we thought we could outrun it! Sure.
Its shadow fell over us, eclipsing the splintered glow of the city. A wash of orange fire split the earth beside us, drawing a fine, black line through the grass. I lifted my hands, shielding my face, my skin searing while the fire licked the air, remaining just out of reach. Then, with a violent thud, the beast landed in front of us, its sharp teeth glinting and wings outstretched.
Casey fired at it. Everybody did on reflex, but the bullets didn’t make a dent in its scales—some disappeared into the soft spot just beneath its jaw, which wasn’t much more than a small thorn to a dragon. The Preternatural Division carried dragon’s blood-tinged weapons—which were absolutely useless against the very dragons they came from.
The dragon reared its huge head back, roaring, and sounding more irritated than anything else. It opened its mouth, the embers coiling in the back of its throat, preparing to spit fire again.
“Duck!” I screamed as I dove to the side, seeking shelter behind the burnt-out skeleton of an armored car. I saw people’s shadows also diving for similar cover, behind slabs of stone from the busted fountain, or mounds of bricks and dust and mortar, or the pillars, now fallen on their sides. The dragon followed us with molten eyes, twitching, squealing, and dragging itself backwards and forwards and sideways—it seemed to be at war with itself, and scrabbling for control, or running scared, like in a bad dream.
It opened its mouth, and the smoky red and orange and white it exhaled singed a half-circle inferno onto the lawn. The heat blasted right past me, burning the air, scalding my lungs before it was gone, rotating, trying to find us all. Running its hot, iron claws over the bodies already fallen on the lawn, it seemed to be turning calm at seeing the bloody faces of pink and brown and black.