Julius turned back to the screen in time to see the camera shake, and then the whole city rocked as three enormous shapes appeared in the sky above the DFZ with a thunderclap as big as an earthquake. They were so large, Julius didn’t even recognize them as dragons at first. Even with the DFZ’s superscrapers for scale, it was hard to comprehend a living thingthatbig, let alone three of them. But when spotlights came on all over the city to illuminate the monsters in the sky, he wasn’t surprised at all to see that their scales were white as snow.
YOU WILL PAY, WATER SPRITE,the Three Sisters roared in unison, their voices twined together like a braid as they flew toward Algonquin’s tower in the center of Lake St. Clair.YOU AND YOUR CITY.
White fire was glowing in all three throats by the time they finished. It looked just like Estella’s, but on a city-destroying scale. And then, just as Julius was saying goodbye to the crazy town that had become more of a home to him than anywhere else, a new light appeared in the sky, rising from the darkness that marked Reclamation Land.
It flew up like a firework, sparkling in the night like sunlight on water. For a long heartbeat, it hung there in the air, a silver thread connecting the dark land and the starry sky. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the thread of light exploded outward in a perfect halo, shooting across the sky like a scythe to cut through all three dragons.
The blast was so bright, it whited out the screen. In the split second it took the cameras to adjust and bring the picture back, the enormous dragons were already falling, crashing out of the sky in a cascade of snow-white and shimmering red down into the lake surrounding Algonquin’s Tower. The impact when they hit sent water flying almost to the tower’s peak, and then the cameras cut back to Algonquin’s triumphant smile.
“Mortals of this world,” she said proudly. “You have nothing to fear. We Spirits of the Land have ever been your protectors. You have known my anger once before. Now, you see it again, cutting down the vipers who would enslave you all.”
That must have been the PR part of the message, because after it was done, Algonquin’s watery voice lost all trace of humanity. “And to the dragons watching this—the snakes who think they can kill my spirits and infest my land—consider this your first andonlywarning. With one shot, I have killed the three most powerful of your kind left on Earth. Now, I declare war on the rest.Anydragon who enters the DFZ, or any other nation which requests my protection, will meet the same end. You have now becomemyprey, and the hunt will continue until the current dragon infestation is entirely eliminated.” Her flickering lips curled in a smile. “See you in Detroit.”
The video cut out after that, taking them back to the emergency broadcast message, but all Julius could do was stare.
“Well,” Bob said, slipping the phone back into his pocket. “Thatescalated quickly.”
Julius couldn’t even form a reply. He just sank silently to the floor, landing beside the equally shell-shocked Katya as Marci came bursting into the room to ask if they’d seen what’d just happened on TV.
Epilogue
Afew time zones away, in a heavily warded basement beneath the United Nations headquarters in New York City, a woman of indeterminate age wearing a very expensive suit was cursing under her breath. In front of her, a three-foot-deep nest of layered AR projections showed what had just happened in Detroit on constant loop: the version Algonquin had broadcast, footage from their own cameras, and selected clips from the thousands of independent witnesses that were now flooding video sharing sites. No matter how many angles she watched it from, though, the story was always the same. Algonquin had shot down the three most feared dragons in the world within minutes of their awakening, which meant they wereallin a great deal of trouble.
“Ma’am!”
The woman didn’t move, just glanced at her side camera to see one of her aides slipping through the heavily reinforced door into her darkened room with a black folder in his hands. “Pleasetell me that’s the sit rep from the DFZ office. I want a full report of where she got the magic forthat,” she pointed at the looped footage of the giant white dragons falling from the sky, “and I want it now.”
“No, ma’am,” the young man said, his face pale. “This is the confirmation from Stanford University’s Thaumaturgy Department you ordered this morning. They’re reporting the same results as yesterday. We’ve also gotten readings in from our offices in Jerusalem, Mumbai, Tokyo, and London, all positive.”
The woman sighed and leaned back in her leather chair, turning to glare at the large raven sitting on his custom perch beside her. “I thought you said we had fifty years before we had to worry about this?”
“I did,” the raven replied, turning its head to look at her with each of its beady eyes. “But I’ve been mistaken before.”
“A Merlin risingfive decadesbefore he’s supposed to is a pretty big mistake,” the woman snapped, glancing back at the falling dragons that were still playing on loop across all her projected screens. “Though I suppose this could help explain why Algonquin chose tonight to play her hand.”
“Ma’am?” the aide said, glancing nervously at the perch which, to him, most likely appeared empty. “Are you talking to me?”
“I am now,” the woman said, standing up in a fluid motion. “Pack me a bag with the usual, and have someone dig Myron out of his labyrinth.”
Now the aide looked terrified. “The Under Secretary of Magic?” he said, voice trembling. “I can try. But forgive me for asking, shouldn’t we be getting someone from the Office for Spirit Affairs for this?”
The woman laughed. “With Algonquin taking over every video feed in the world to show off a triple-dragon kill? I’m sure the OSA is already at maximum panic, which is to say, useless.” She put out her arm for the raven to hop onto her wrist. “If we’re going to have any hope of getting control of this situation, we need to come at the problem from a different angle, which means I need Myron and a flight to New Mexico.”
At the mention of New Mexico, the aide cringed. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, pulling out his phone. “But… are you certain you want to handle this personally? The last agent we sent didn’t fare so well.”
“True,” she said with a smile. “But I’m a lot tougher than he was, and haven’t you ever heard that the enemy of my enemy is my friend?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the aide said, backing into the hall with a defeated sigh. “I’ll go pack your bag.”
“And make sure they get Myron specifically!” she yelled after him. “Don’t waste my time with anyone else!”
The door slammed shut before he could answer. It didn’t matter, though. The woman was already in motion, stripping off her suit jacket as she walked to the weapons wall—a massive display that took up the entire rear half of the room—and started loading up.
Thank you for reading!
Thank you for readingOne Good Dragon Deserves Another! If you enjoyed the story, or even if you didn’t, I hope you’ll consider leaving a review. Reviews, good and bad, are vital to any author’s career, and I would be extremely thankful and appreciative if you’d consider writing one for me.
The third Heartstriker novel,No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished,is available now in ebook and audio! Keep clicking for a sample chapter ororder it right now from Amazon.com! You can also always check out one of my other completed series. Simply click over to the “Want More Books?” page in your eReader’s table of contents, or visitwww.rachelaaron.netto see a full list of all my books complete with their beautiful covers, links to reviews, and free sample chapters.
