“Sir Myron Rollins,” Marci said, turning to the terrifying spirit beside her. “This is the Empty Wind, spirit of the Forgotten Dead. He champions and protects those whom everyone else has forgotten, including the hundreds of thousands Algonquin killed when she flooded Detroit sixty years ago. Algonquin’s spirits can rebuild their land, but what they took from the people who lived here can never be repaid. Given how little Algonquin cares for human life, I’d think you would be on their side, not hers.”
Sir Myron scowled when she finished, but General Jackson looked almost proud, her clenched fists shaking in a surprising show of emotion. “If that’s the truth,” she said, nodding respectfully to the ghostly soldier, “then I’m happy to have him on our side.”
“Well, I’m not,” Myron snapped, drawing himself to his full height. “I don’t care if she’s the first Merlin or the last. A power that relies on the exploitation of human soulsis not a weapon we need.”
“It’snotexploitation!” Marci cried.
“Myron!” Emily snapped at the same time, but the mage just gave her a savage look.
“I’m done,” he said coldly. “You might be willing to do anything for a weapon, Emily, but I’m not.” He glanced at the Empty Wind again, and Julius caught the faint scent of human fear. “I know a monster when I see one, and that thing is a god of death. He’s an end, not a beginning. If that’s the spirit you want to make into a Merlin, then I wash my hands of this whole affair. I’d rather wait another sixty years than accept the devil we’ve got just because he’s here.”
“Don’t be a fool,” the general growled, pointing at the pile of dragon corpses. “We don’t have another sixty years when Algonquin’s doing things like this. I don’t care if her spirit is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, we need himnow.”
“Then take him,” Myron spat. “But good luck getting any progress without me. I’m the Master of Labyrinths, the only one in all of this whoactuallyknows what he’s doing.” He looked down his nose at Marci the same way Bethesda used to look at Julius. Like she was dirt. “This one’s nothing but a dragon groupie who got lucky. She doesn’t even have her PhD.”
Marci clenched her fists with a snarl. Julius was worried she was going to take a swing at the older mage when Chelsie stepped between them. “This is not the place to discuss this,” she growled, jerking her head at Algonquin’s lake. “I don’t know why she’s not here yet, but she’s coming, and if we don’t want to end up like them”—she pointed at the dead dragons—“we need to go.”
“Agreed,” Emily said, shooting Myron a final chilling look. “This isn’t over.”
The look on the undersecretary’s face said otherwise, but he remained silent. When it was clear he wasn’t going to cause any more trouble for the time being, the general lifted her hand. “Move out.”
“Where?” Marci asked, looking around at the empty field. “How were you guys planning to get back, anyway?”
The blood drained from Julius’s face. He’d been so desperate just to get to Marci, he hadn’t actually thought past that. Thankfully, Chelsie had him covered.
“I’ve got it,” she said, drawing her Fang. “Heartstriker Mountain always has dragons, which means I can get us back no problem, but I’ll have to make two trips.”
Julius breathed a sigh of relief. That was right. Chelsie’s Fang could cut to any Heartstriker. Thank goodness someone was planning ahead. “Take Marci and the undersecretary first, then,” he said quickly. “I’ll stay here so you can cut back to me, and then the general, Raven, and I will—”
A wave of magic crashed down on top of them.
The shock knocked everyone but Emily and Raven to the ground. Chelsie was back on her feet almost before she hit the grass. Julius was only a hair slower, but when he reached down to help Marci back to her feet, she didn’t take his hand. She just lay there on her back, staring up at the sky like she was watching the ax fall at her own execution. When Julius looked up to see why, though, all he found was black. He almost thought something was wrong with his eyes before he finally understood what he was looking at.
The Leviathan was looming directly above them.
Before this moment, Julius had only seen Algonquin’s monster on television. But the little measurements they always put up on the screen couldn’t accurately convey just howbigit was when you were standing below it. In the back of his mind, the one remaining rational sliver of Julius’s brain knew that Dragon Sees the Beginning must have technically been bigger, but he’d also looked like a dragon. Even as a magical construct, he’d been familiar. Understandable. But Julius couldn’t make heads or tails of the thing towering over him now.
Even the way it moved made no sense. There was absolutely no way something that big could move that quietly, or that fast. And yet it did, floating over the destroyed, bloody field like a black cloud. Its huge tentacles stretched out at the same time, ringing them before Julius realized what was happening. He was still staring at the slick, undulating surface of the Leviathan’s multiple appendages when lake-smelling water began to pour down the Leviathan’s eyeless front, becoming a woman as it hit the ground. An extremely angry-looking woman whose sopping-wet face flickered wildly between all of theirs as she rose to her feet.
That was a very stupid thing to do.
Julius swore under his breath. The thing in front of him looked nothing like the Algonquin he’d seen on television, but there was no mistaking that terrifying, watery voice. Honestly, the only surprise left now was what had taken her so long. But while Algonquin was clearly here to kill them all, her eyes were locked on Marci and her spirit with a special kind of hate.
“Do you know how much damage you just caused?” she said out loud, the words rocks in a stream, sending huge ripples through her human image. “The work you undid?”
“Of course,” Marci said, glaring right back. “Why do you think we did it?”
Julius cringed. That was not the sort of thing you said to a furious spirit with godlike powers. But before he could think of something to defuse the situation, assuming it could be defused, Chelsie appeared at his side.
“On three,” she whispered in a voice only dragons could hear. “You grab Marci, I’ll grab you.”
He bit his lip. “What about the UN team?”
Her silence was answer enough, and Julius winced. “We can’t just leave them.”
“Sure we can,” Chelsie said. “They have diplomatic immunity for this kind of thing.”
Algonquin didn’t look like she was in a mood to honor the niceties of international politics, but given how fast things had gone south, Julius was starting to think it was time to take what they could get. He nodded to Chelsie and was starting to reach for Marci’s hand when Myron suddenly broke the silence.
