“Yes,” Raven said, shaking the fine ash off his feathers. “This is all the remains of the dragons Algonquin bled for power in her first attempt to raise the DFZ. There wasn’t enough magic left in them for another try after you and the Empty Wind wrecked things, so Algonquin just abandoned them here when she moved on to Myron’s plan. But I’m a thriftier bird. I hate seeing anything go to waste, especially something as rare and valuable as a dragon corpse. So, since I had an inside tip that you and your kitten might not actually be out of the game, I decided to put them to use.”
He pointed his beak at a shallow ditch that someone had dug from the base of the ash pile to Marci’s grave. Fittingly, it was lined with chicken-scratch spellwork, though Marci supposed it was technically Raven-scratch. She couldn’t read it either way, but she didn’t really need to. The bloodstained channel that ran from the pile of dead dragons to hergravemade it pretty obvious what had happened here.
“Ugh,” Marci said, putting a hand over her mouth. “You useddragon bloodto bring me back to life?!”
“No,” Raven said. “I brought you back to life with my own fantastic powers. The dragon blood was just to make sure your physical vessel was back in working order when the time came to return you to it.” He puffed out his chest. “Pretty neat trick, if I do say so myself, and quite fitting. Everyone’s always accusing you of being a dragon’s pawn, so it’s only fair that you actually get to enjoy a bit of their power for once.”
Marci supposed that made sense, but she was too busy dry heaving to appreciate his cleverness. “I can’t believe you usedblood magicon me.”
“That’s a fine thank-you for a miracle,” Raven said, turning up his beak. “And for the record, it’s only blood magic if all parties involved are human. If I’d been a mortal mage like you,thenit would be necromancy, but seeing as I’m a spirit using dragons he didn’t even kill, it’s all aboveboard.”
Technically, but… “You usedcorpses!”
“I’m ascavenger!” Raven cried. “I’m not going to leave perfectly good power lying on the ground when I can use it, and I didn’t hear you griping over the details when I wasbringing you back to life!”
“Okay, okay,” Marci said, reaching up to brush the dirt out of her short hair. “I don’t mean to complain. It’s just…I personally knew at least one of those dragons, and the idea that you healed me using the magic left in dead bodies is really freaking creepy.”
“Says the woman who just crawled out of her own grave and keeps an aspect of death as a pet.”
Marci winced. “Touché,” she said, looking down again at the smooth skin of her healed stomach through the hole in her shirt. “And, um, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Raven said, hopping into the air. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, we both have pressing business to attend to. I have to collect an old friend, and you, I believe, have a city to save.”
“Right,” Marci said, getting her head back in the game. Now that the initial shock was fading, it was finally starting to sink in that she was alive again.Actuallyalive, breathing and everything. She had a body, a real one, with no hole in her stomach. Which reminded her…
“Wait!” she cried at Raven as he flew into the sky. “So am I a hundred percent human again?”
“What else would you be?” he cawed, circling over her head. “You’re as human as you ever were, and on a related note, you should probably try to avoid dying again. I was able to bring you back this time due to anextremelyfortunate series of events. We won’t be so lucky again, so you might want to think twice before you jump in front of any more bullets.”
Marci had no intention ofevergoing through anything like this again. In fact, when this was over, she was going to corner Shiro and make him teach her everything the ancient Merlins had known about life extension, because she’d heard stories of mages living for centuries, and she wanted in on that. She had a dragon to keep up with, after all. A dragon she was going to find as soon as things stopped being on fire.
“Come on,” she said, reaching out for Ghost to help her up. “We’ve got a lot to do and no time to do it. First, though, we need to get back into the city. I say we break into one of the Algonquin Corp garages, steal a car, and—”
“We can do a lot better than that,” the Empty Wind said, grabbing her hands and lifting her, not to her feet, but into his arms. Before Marci could ask what he was doing, a freezing wind whipped up from the ground, lifting them both smoothly into the air. It was just like when he’d flown her through the Sea of Magic, but much shakier and way scarier now that Marci could actually see the ground shrinking under her feet.
“Whoa,” she said, wrapping herself around his body like a koala clinging to a tree. “Since when can you fly on this side?”
“Since you became Merlin,” Ghost replied, his deep voice rich with pride. “Our bond has always been strong. Now that you’ve seen my true face, though, we are unbreakable, and you have a physical body again in a place that’s brimming with magic. Both of these give me leverage to do things I never could before. Not on this side, anyway.”
Now that he’d mentioned it, Marci knew exactly what he meant. The air was tense with magic, but not the usual sort. The wild, heavy Reclamation Land magic that normally dominated here was completely overpowered by a sharp power that smelled of grease and wet asphalt. It was the same magic she’d felt in the endless city where she’d confronted the DFZ. What really caught Marci’s attention, though, was the way the magic clung to her skin, seeping into her body like water that then flowed in a torrent straight down her connection to Ghost.
“Are youdrinkingmagic through me?” she cried. “Without my permission?”
“We’re connected,” he said innocently as they picked up speed. “And I needed power. I haven’t gotten anything new to eat since before you died.”
That was true. But still. “I amnotyour sponge,” she growled, though it was hard to be mad at him for taking what he needed, and it wasn’t as though Marci had to worry about him getting the upper hand on her anymore. After what they’d been through, she trusted the Empty Wind with her life and death, and she could get used to traveling like this.
Ghost was flying them through the air the same way he’d moved through the Sea of Magic. Other than the occasional wobble and the ground whooshing past below, there was no sensation of movement, which was crazy seeing how they’d already cleared the forest at the edge of Algonquin’s Reclamation Land. By the time they were over the tumbledown old neighborhood where Marci had first settled into her hoarded cat house, she was a hundred percent on board with this new and improved mode of transportation.
“This is awesome!” she cried, turning around to get a better look at the rapidly approaching city. “You’re better than a helicopter!”
“Iama wind,” he reminded her, but his voice sounded nervous. “Careful. We’re close now.”
Marci nodded, looking down to check her bracelets, which were thankfully still on her wrists. A quick search also turned up a miraculously unbroken piece of casting chalk in her pocket. Given how wet everything looked, her markers would have been more useful, but though Marci had gotten her body back, her bag seemed to be a total loss.
It was probably in the hands of some sellout Algonquin corp mage, along with her Kosmolabe, the loss of which upset her even more than her two-hundred-dollar marker set. Still, after her miraculous rise from the dead, complaining about losing a Kosmolabe was like criticizing the color scheme of your winning lottery ticket, so Marci shoved her disappointment to the back burner. She was looking up to ask Ghost about their next step when a blast of magic shot up from the ground below.
For a terrifying second, the impact sent them reeling. Even after Ghost regained control, wild power was whipping through the air around them in waves, forcing him to weave and dodge to avoid being socked again. After several sickening drops, he gave up and went for cover, setting Marci down on the pointed roof of one of the superscrapers that hadn’t started leaning yet.
