“Don’t think about it now,” she said, reaching out to rest her hand awkwardly on his shoulder for a moment before snatching it back. “Just focus on getting yourself and your human back to your house. You need to go check on Amelia, anyway.”
“What about you?” Julius said. “Why don’t you come with us? You could cut us all there right now.”
His sister rolled her eyes. “First, I’m not a taxi, and second, you’re an idiot if you think Algonquin doesn’t know what just happened and isn’t arranging a counter attack as we speak. You’re still sealed, which should put you beneath her notice, but I’ve been standing out here being an obvious dragon for almost an hour now. When they come, I’ll be the natural target, so I’m going to try and lead them as far away as possible while you are going to go home and keep your promise to guard our sister. Is that understood?”
Julius didn’t like the idea of Chelsie using herself as bait, but if there was anyone who was a master at keeping ahead of the hammer, it was Bethesda’s Shade. “Understood,” he said. “Just be careful.”
For a second, he thought he saw her smile at that. It must have been his imagination, though, because Chelsie’s face was as grim as ever when she drew her sword. “You, too.”
By the time the words were out, she was gone, vanishing into the dark like the shadow she was named for.
Chapter 17
Chelsie reappeared seconds later less than a block away, collapsing against the trunk of a tree growing out of what was left of a convenience store as she fought to catch her breath.
It was her own fault. She hadn’t realized Julius’s mage could take so much. Just cutting her way this far had taken what little reserve she had left. It probably would have been wiser to just stay with Julius, but being weak in front of her baby brother was more shame than Chelsie could stand, and she hadn’t been lying to him about Algonquin’s counterattack. She was actually surprised the anti-dragon SWAT teams weren’t here already. Apparently, today was their lucky day. But no luck held out forever, which meant it was time to get moving.
Gritting her teeth, Chelsie shoved herself upright and pulled out her phone, dialing up the car she kept in long-term storage for just such an emergency. It would have been safer to just cut back home and report, but she was supposed to be laying a false trail, and it wasn’t like she had enough power to get back to Heartstriker Mountain anyway. At this point, just standing unassisted was a challenge, so getaway vehicle it was. But as she was sending her GPS coordinates to the car’s autodrive for the pickup, a breeze brushed the back of her neck.
It was a tiny thing, just the briefest sensation of cool air wafting over her flushed skin, but Chelsie hadn’t survived as long as she had by ignoring the little signs. She dropped her phone and drew her sword in a single motion, spinning around with her blade up just in time to see the dragon step out of the shadows behind her.
“Gotcha,” Estella whispered, her arm shooting out to throw something long, black, and snaking around Chelsie’s neck.
She jerked back with a gasp, dropping her sword as she reached up to rip away whatever it was the seer had thrown at her throat, but there was nothing. No weapon, no talisman, nothing but her own skin and horrible feeling of a noose tightening, cutting off her air.
“You should be proud,” Estella said as Chelsie fell choking to her knees. “Of all Bethesda’s spawn, you were by far the hardest to corner.”
Chelsie ignored her, fumbling across the ground for her dropped sword only to have it knocked from her fingers when the seer kicked it away.
“I might not have been able to pull it off at all had you not shown me your weakness last month,” Estella continued, crouching down beside her. “I can’t tell you how hard I laughed when I discovered that the Heartstriker Enforcer has a weakness for whelps, but I must say it worked like a charm. All I had to do was drop a hint to Algonquin’s hunter so he’d put pressure on the babies, andpop.” She snapped her fingers. “You appear like a rabbit out of a hat.”
She smiled as she finished, but all Chelsie saw was red. “It was you,” she whispered. “Vann Jeger, the trap, it was allyou.”
“Oh, child,” Estella said, her eyes gleaming like ice in the dark. “Haven’t you learned by now? It’salwaysme. Now go to sleep. We have much to do.”
The suffocating feeling grew heavier with every word Estella spoke, but Chelsie would have none of it. She wouldnotgo down like this. Not with so much left unfinished. Not to Estella. She had to escape. Had to get away.
The thought had barely cleared her mind when fire washed over her body, igniting the grass at her feet as her human disguise burned away. At this point, changing wasn’t even a conscious decision. It was instinct, the overwhelming need to run taking physical shape. But as she spread her still-forming wings to take off, Estella’s noose cinched tighter.
Maybe if she hadn’t been so weakened to start with she could have made it, or maybe she’d been doomed from the beginning. Either way, Chelsie barely made it ten feet into the air before she came crashing right back down, collapsing into the still smoldering grass at Estella’s feet. The last thing she saw with her darkening vision was the seer’s smug face hovering over her as sirens began to wail in the distance.
***
“Marci,” Julius said, nervously looking over his shoulder in the direction of the approaching sirens. “Time to go.”
“Just a sec,” she called from her crouch on top of the mountain of priceless, ancient, magical weapons that now stood like a monument in the middle of the field where they’d defeated Vann Jeger. “I’m almost done.”
Julius sighed. If he had a dollar for every time she’d said that… “I thought we were supposed to leave the weapons alone?”
“The ones that don’t belong to us, yes,” she said, grunting as she moved a battle ax that was almost as tall as she was. “But Ghost says Tyrfing’s in here. Vann Jeger must have taken it when Justin lost.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate the effort, but I can get another sword, and the cops will be here any second.”
“But I’ve almost—ah ha!” She yanked her arm up, tugging a short, familiar, mirror-bright blade out of the pile. “Ta da!”
Happy as he was to see his sword again, Julius was far more relieved that she was finished. “Thank you,” he said quickly, running over to take it from her. “Now can weplease—”
A flash of light cut him off. Somewhere on his left, something was flaring emerald green in the night. By the time Julius whipped his head around, though, it was gone. He was wondering if he’d imagined it when Marci yelled, “What wasthat?”
