“Amelia!” Marci screamed, or she started to. Before she could actually make a sound, though, the blast wave from the plane’s impact shot through the portal, slamming her off her feet and into the cement wall behind her.
***
When the rumbling finally stopped, Estella lowered her frozen barrier to reveal a smoking wasteland. Amelia’s famous beach was now a smoldering crater. Inland, a forest fire was beginning to rage, though whether it had been sparked by the jet fuel or Amelia’s own attacks, Estella didn’t know. Nor did she care. She had more important business to take care of, but just as she was about to set off into the smoke, something cold and sharp wrapped around her ankle.
She looked down, eyes narrowing as she saw Svena’s claw, the tip of which was hooked around her leg. “What?”
Her sister responded with a rattling gasp, her pain-dilated blue eyes pleading through the haze of smoke. Below her, the sand was now red with her blood. Her white scales were stained as well, and Estella sighed.
“It won’t be much longer,” she promised, reaching out to touch her sister’s scorched nose. “But we can’t rest yet. There is no room for weakness.”
The dragon’s blue eyes narrowed, but Estella was having none of it. “Start working on the spell to take us home,” she ordered, snatching her hand away. “This will only take a moment.”
A growl rumbled through the sand, and for a heartbeat, Estella thought her sister was going to balk. But she’d already made sure there was no more disobedience in Svena’s future, and in the end, the bloody white dragon bowed her head. Still, Estella waited until she actually felt the freezing wind of her sister’s teleportation spell before she turned back to the task at hand, unraveling the next to last black chain from her hand as she began picking her way through the plane’s smoking wreckage in search of the red dragon lying beneath it.
***
Marci woke to the feeling of a deathly cold paw gently patting her face.
Alive?
She groaned and turned her head, wincing when the motion jostled the newly formed lump on the back of her head.
The paw tapped again.
“I’m up,” she grumbled, opening her eyes to see Ghost standing on her chest. “What happened?”
The spirit flicked his ears.Not sure, was asleep.He looked over his shoulder.Explosion, then nothing.
Marci frowned, confused for a moment, and then it all came back. She sat up with a curse, ignoring the pain as she looked for Amelia, but the room was empty. Other than the door Estella and Svena had ruined, there was no sign the storage unit had ever housed a portal to paradise. Or a dragon. And that was a big problem.
What are you doing?Ghost asked as Marci shoved herself to her feet.
“Don’t know yet,” she said, grabbing the wall for support as a wave of nausea swept over her. “Something.”
Tell someone, she added to herself, and fast. She didn’t want to believe a dragon as old and powerful as Amelia could be killed by a rogue aircraft, but she wasn’t willing to rule out anything when a seer was involved, especially since the whole thing had obviously been a trap. She wasn’t sure why Estella would go through all that trouble andnotkill Amelia, but assuming the dragon mage was dead didn’t help anyone. There was no way Marci could do anything on her own in any case, which meant her first priority had to be getting word of the attack to someone important as soon as possible. Normally, that would be as simple as calling Julius and letting him relay it up the chain, but even that was complicated since Marci had crushed her phone last night to prevent traces, a scorched earth policy she was beginning to regret.
Well, it was too late to cry over crushed phones now. Fortunately, she still had Ghost, and he was actually awake. Convincing him to play messenger cat again would take some doing, but this was an emergency. When Marci glanced down to ask, though, her eyes were drawn instead to a paper envelope lying on the floor where she’d fallen.
What’s that?Ghost asked, nosing curiously at her hand when she bent over to pick it up.
“I think it’s the thing Estella gave me for Bob,” she replied, turning the envelope over in her hands. Given the disasters going on at the time, she hadn’t actually looked at the thing when Estella had handed it to her, but the envelope felt right. But while there was clearly something inside it other than paper, it didn’t feel magical or dangerous. She was about to open it up and see for herself when she felt Ghost tense in her mind.
“What?”
Someone’s coming,he said, ears swiveling.Quickly.
Probably security, Marci thought grimly, glancing at the storage unit’s busted door. They’d certainly made enough noise to attract even the laziest rent-a-cop. But as she was leaning through the broken door to peer down the hallway for a glimpse of what was coming, her spirit tensed again. That was all the warning Marci got before a leather-gloved hand closed over her mouth.
“You have five seconds to tell me where Amelia is.”
She couldn’t help it. She screamed, jumping off the ground. Or, she would have if the person behind her hadn’t instantly wrenched her back down.
“Try that again and you’ll lose an arm,” the deadly voice growled. “And you now have four seconds left.”
Marci froze, eyes wide. Beside her, Ghost was hissing silently, his glowing fur standing up on his back. He wasn’t attacking, though, and since Ghost was more than capable of taking out a human, that told Marci that whatever was behind her wasnot. Not that that was a surprise considering the question about Amelia, but the realization was enough to make her stop panicking and start thinking.
She went limp immediately, lowering her head in obvious surrender. Even so, the hand over her mouth stayed firm for another few heartbeats before letting her go.
