Death Magic

NINE

ROCK Creek Park was a welcome, woodsy sprawl sticking its unpaved finger up D.C.’s concrete butt. Portions of the park were tidied into bike trails, paths, bridges, a planetarium, a couple historic sites, and tennis courts. The wilder bits welcomed birds, raccoons, even the occasional deer or coyote.

And one dragon.

Not that Mika’s lair had originally been one of the wild bits. It had started out as an amphitheater—the closest thing, Lily supposed, to a cave Mika had spotted when he arrived last December to take up his duties as a magic sponge. That lair was supposed to have been temporary, but Mika had decided he liked it here.

No one knew why, exactly. The park was a pretty place, but Lily wasn’t sure dragons shared the aesthetic sensibilities of humans. Though she knew Mika liked trees. She walked along a cement path roofed by the interwoven branches of oaks beginning to don their fall colors . . . a path that was still intact because Mika hadn’t wanted to damage the trees that hugged it so closely. He’d removed most of the cement in his domain.

It was the parking lot, she’d heard, that had pushed park authorities over the edge.

They wanted it back. They wanted their amphitheater back. There wasn’t much they could do about it—the Accords allowed dragons to choose from any publicly owned land. But city authorities were unhappy, too. Lily could see why. People can be remarkably stupid at times. You could post all the “Danger: Dragon Lair” signs you want. A few idiots are going to climb the fence anyway.

As far as Lily knew, Mika hadn’t eaten any intruders. There had been a few incidents, however.

D.C. authorities had grown worried enough to approach Sam about it. Sam—otherwise known as Sun Mzao—was the largest, oldest, and most powerful of the dragons who’d returned to Earth after their long sojourn in the hell realm. It was he who’d sung the gate open wide enough, he who brought Lily and Rule with him . . . or they’d brought him, depending on how you looked at it.

Sam had been the one to descend from the night sky onto the White House lawn when he deemed it time to open negotiations. After the Turning, magic leaked into the world in quantities human tech couldn’t handle. Dragons absorbed free magic—and needed it, too. They also needed a new home, hell having grown too hot for them after a certain demon lord devoured the Great Bitch’s avatar and went wildly insane.

It wasn’t surprising D.C.’s mayor thought Sam was the dragons’ leader. Wrong, but not surprising. People really didn’t understand dragons.

Sam had been—for him—quite polite to the people who’d flown across the country to speak with him. He hadn’t allowed the mayoral party into his lair, but he had replied when they stood at the gate and talked to him.

Mika is young, Sam had said. He will tire of his odd choice eventually.

“But ‘eventually’ might mean years. Maybe decades, from what I understand. People use the park now. Children. It’s an invitation to disaster, having him there.”

Has Mika eaten anyone he shouldn’t? A pet? Your government was anxious about pets, I recall.

“No, but the danger remains. He is—”

Not in violation of the Accords. If he violates the Accords, you may tell any of us and we will deal with it. Otherwise, it is none of my affair. Go away.

“If you don’t wish to order him to move to the new lair, perhaps you could persuade him. Or just talk to him about it. He won’t listen to us, but it’s a very nice place, with a small lake and—”

At that point, the mayor and four of the five people with him had fallen asleep. The fifth—a husky National Park Service employee—had been told to remove the collapsed members of his party. He had. Quickly.

D.C.’s mayor was wonderfully persistent. That’s why Lily knew about the exchange between him and Sam. After he woke up, he’d gone to Grandmother to ask her to intervene.

Grandmother had served him tea—not the full tea ceremony, simply the beverage—gotten the story from him, then told him the truth. “Mika has shown admirable restraint in the face of such rudeness. You will learn to live with his presence. You will stop pestering him, and you will not pester any of the other dragons about this. No one tells a dragon where to lair. Not even another dragon.”

Lily smiled as she reached the end of the tree tunnel. Grandmother did enjoy telling that story.

Trees and path alike ended at a wall of earth and rock greened by uncut grass and an assortment of what gardeners optimistically refer to as volunteers or native plants. Weeds, to most people. Lily looked up. As hills go, this one was more abrupt than most. Lots of boulders, which was like the rocky jumble back home, but these were planted, not grown naturally from the earth’s bones.

She’d been warned about this aspect of Mika’s upgrades, so she’d dressed for it—jeans, Nikes, a tee, a light jacket that hid her weapon and had a secure inside pocket for her phone. After a moment, she spotted the faint trail off to her right and started climbing.

There were two ways into the heart of Mika’s lair. One involved the lost parking lot, now a large livestock pen. Lily had been told not to approach through the dining room, so she toiled up the Mika-made slope. It was steep but not tricky; only one short stretch required handholds.

As she reached the top, magic buzzed faintly on her skin. Mika’s ward, she assumed. She looked down. Farther down than she’d come up.

It didn’t look much like an amphitheater anymore. Where rows of seats had stepped neatly down toward the stage, stone buttressed the earthen wall she’d climbed. Not solid stone, nor were the boulders arrayed with the tidy geometrics humans favored; it was thicker here, thinner there, with the occasional jut of a boulder clearly not native to this soil. An artistic choice, perhaps. At its foot was bare earth—Mika’s landing pad and sun porch. Beyond that, the half dome where orchestras had played was partly obscured by hard-packed dirt built up to create a lip. The dome’s roof was obscured by yet more heaped dirt. For a startled moment it made Lily think of an enormous sand crab burrowing down to safety.

Dragons always lair in earth and rock. They blocked the mental cacophony. “Hello, Mika,” Lily said—and nearly jumped when a small, gray streak arrowed past her feet. A cat.

I named her Beelzebub, Mika said. His mental voice was different from Sam’s—cool and precise, yes, but without the razorlike clarity, and with a whiff of flavor. It was like the difference between Arctic ice and a snow cone dribbled with a few drops of Bahama Mama. She wanted more syllables at first, but I don’t think her name should be longer than she is. Beelzebub is a use-name, of course.

“Ah—do cats have real names?” Lily eyed the rocky jumble. This was going to be harder than the other side had been. Her bad arm twinged as if already protesting its role in the descent.

Your question is silly. I don’t know all cats.

“I suppose not. Look, do I have to come down there for my lesson? Maybe we could do it with me up here.”

No. Thirty feet below and twice that far horizontally, the shiny coils disposed on the sun porch began unwinding. Mika wasn’t as large as Sam—no longer than a house, she thought, tail included, and dragons were eighty percent tail, neck, and wings. But he was ohmygod beautiful.

His scales were red. All shades of red, from ruby to magenta to crimson, shading into eye-popping orange on the wings currently folded along his back. He glistened and gleamed in the sunlight like every jewel men had ever coveted.

Sam said you had sustained damage to your limb. I perceive it has not healed. Humans heal poorly. This impedes you? Hold still. I’ll fetch you.

“No, that’s not necessary, I can—” But dragons can move fast when they want. Before Lily could finish telling him not to, Mika’s bunched haunches had launched him into the air. He jumped most of the ninety feet between them to land in a blaze of brilliance, wings outstretched for balance. Landed lightly, too, his rear talons gripping a couple of those outthrust boulders.

His front talons gripped her. She made a deeply undignified noise more squeak than scream.

You are very loud, Mika told her disapprovingly. And shoved himself backward off the stone-strewn embankment.

The trip down was scary and uncomfortable—his talons were rough and gripped too tightly—but blessedly brief. They hit with a small jolt and a flurry of dust from his wings. He set her down and folded those wings back in place.

Lily’s legs tried to buckle. She stiffened them. I did not scream.

You think loudly. Or you were. Your mindspeech isn’t that bad. It’s bad, just not as bad as I thought it would be.

Oh. She’d done it again—used mindspeech without meaning to. That had happened three times in the past month. Well, four now. The other three had all been with Rule, which was just as well. Some people would get upset if they found her thoughts in their heads all of a sudden.

You didn’t intend to? Headshaking was not a dragon gesture, but Mika flavored his reply with something very like a disgusted headshake.

“Sam doesn’t want me to practice on my own.”

Of course not. At this stage, you would only acquire bad habits. Sit down and we will start.

She obeyed. “I know why Sam is teaching me. Why did you agree to do it, too?”

You know very little. It is not surprising you ask a great many questions. Mika’s head darted to the right and swung back with a small branch in his mouth. He dropped it in front of her. It burst into flame. Find me there.

Great. She’d hoped a different teacher meant different methods. With a sigh, Lily looked at the small fire.

Her left ankle itched. The flames were too bright, making her squint. Why had she been determined to do this? Because Rule didn’t want her to? Surely she had a better reason.

Oh, yeah. Because Sam told her to. But that reminded her . . . I promised Rule I’d tell you about my headache.

That was pathetic. You sent perhaps one word in three. If I weren’t able to read your mind anyway, I’d have no idea what you said. What headache?

“Have you ever taught anyone?”

No. I thought it might be interesting. So far it isn’t.

“You aren’t supposed to tell your students they’re pathetic.” She went on to describe her brief pain-in-the-skull, ending with, “. . . since kinspeech hurt me in sort of the same way, Rule wants to be assured the headache has nothing to do with my mindspeech lessons.”

Kinspeech is not mindspeech.

“Sam says they’re related.”

You’re related to Beelzebub, since you are both mammals, but you are not Beelzebub. If mindspeech could damage you, Sam would have warned me. Find me in the flame.

When Mika called an end to the session, Lily had found him three times. She lost him again each time, but she was encouraged. She hadn’t been sure how well her practice at finding Sam would translate to finding Mika. Turned out it was pretty much the same . . . a lot like groping in the dark with her hands tied behind her, trying to pick up a feather with her toes. Mostly she failed, but at least now she could tell what the feather felt like if she did come across it.

And her head didn’t hurt. In spite of her insistence to Rule that her mindspeech lessons weren’t the cause of that brief headache, she was relieved.

That was more interesting than I’d hoped.

“Oh?” Lily felt as wrung out as if she’d spent the past hour running.

Not your mindspeech. That remains pathetic. But human brains are interesting—much more elastic than human minds, fortunately, which I suppose is necessary, given your brief allotment of time. You wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to learn much of anything. Yours is forming new synaptic connections quite rapidly.

“You’ve been watching my brain?”

Perceiving is a better descriptive. I am uncommonly good at this.

“Is this perception like what a physical empath does?”

Closer to what one of your healers does. I need to observe that. I am not perfectly clear on the time frame, but since it will fall to me to—oh. You don’t know about that yet.

“About what?”

If you don’t know, I can’t tell you. There was a broody feel to his thoughts. This splintering of time can be disruptive. I am not accustomed to it.

Alarmed, she sat up straighter. “What splintering? What are you—does this have anything to do with—”

The troubles foreseen by your Ruben Brooks? Of course. Oh. You are thinking I meant that time itself splinters. His breath huffed out, hot and smelling of metal and spice, in what might have been amusement. No. I am newly arrived at . . . you lack a referent. It is the time when a dragon begins to grasp threads from not-now. It is a confusing period. Such threads are experienced much like memories, but they arrive tangled and before the events occur. Of course, “before” and “after” are poor constructs for out-time perception, but as usual, your language lacks more precise terms.

Lily blinked. “Are you talking about precognition?”

No, I do not manifest those threads the same way Ruben Brooks does. Not that you have the slightest understanding what he does, either, so there is little point in discussing it. You need to bring me your healer. Oh, and someone who is injured, also, so I can observe the process.

“I don’t happen to have a healer,” Lily said dryly. “You know about Ruben’s—”

I see. She is Rule Turner’s healer. I will tell him I require her.

Rule didn’t “have” a healer, either, but he had access to two. Nettie Two Horses was Rule’s niece, Nokolai’s healer, and on the other coast. The Leidolf Rhej was also a healer and was much closer. Leidolf’s Clanhome was in Virginia.

That one will do. I believe my observation of your brain is helping me untangle your muddy thinking. A definite tinge of satisfaction coated that thought. Why do humans all believe they are their thoughts?

“I don’t know. You know about Ruben’s visions.”

Why else would we ally with him? The wolves do not mistake their thinking for their selves, although they err this way when they are men. Li Lei, of course, has the advantage of having been dragon for a time, but I had thought that a human with a true name would know the difference. Yet you do not.

“Wait. Wait. You’re allied with Ruben?”

A contemptuous snort. We do not pass on his communications for the pleasure of reading your murky minds. If you could be a bit quicker to learn mindspeech . . . oh. A whiff of chagrin. You did not yet know that part. Not-now is very confusing.

“You—you’re how Ruben and his Shadow Unit communicate? You and the other dragons?” Of course. Dragons were the most undetectable communication device possible.

It is time for you to go.

“Mika—”

When a dragon says it’s time to go, he can make it so whether you agree or not. Mika scooped Lily up in his front talons and hurled himself skyward. His wings snapped up and out. The jolt from their first massive buffeting of the air was huge. So was the second. And the third.

The jolt of terror and memory was pretty huge, too. Lily had been carried this way across the plains of hell, sundered from everything, even her name, hurt and lost and terrified, unable to do anything but endure . . .

You are loud!

“Put me down!” she screamed with mind and voice together.

He did. He landed about twenty yards from a teeming horde of fourth- or fifth-graders and the outnumbered adults trying desperately to corral them, set her on her feet, and leaped skyward again.

The shriek level was ear-numbing. She could not let her wobbly legs give out on her. She had to go calm down the miniature civilians and . . . oh, shit. Not all of the screaming was from fear, and here came . . .

“Tawny!” screamed one of the adults. “You come back here right now!”

The pigtailed sprinter had long legs for her age and a head start on the heavyset woman in pursuit. Lily could see how that was going to work out and started toward the girl, calling out, “It’s okay. I’m, ah, a friend of Mika’s. He didn’t hurt me. It’s okay, everyone.”

The kid jolted to a halt in front of Lily. Her skin was dark. Her eyes were lit with urgent joy. “I want to meet him! Tell him to come back. I want to talk to him, to—to—he’s your friend? You could introduce me. My name’s Tawny. I need to meet the dragon!”

“Um, well, I don’t think I can arrange that, but you got to see him from pretty close up. That’s something, isn’t it? I . . . uh-oh.” Tawny’s escape or her teacher’s pursuit had stampeded the herd. Fifty or so kids were racing straight for her.

The teacher got there first. She was a tall woman, gray-haired and out of breath. “Tawny, you will go back to the class right now, you hear me?”

“The class is here, Miss Pearson.” Tawny’s eyes were limpid with innocence. “Mostly here, anyways.”

Miss Pearson’s skin flushed to a really deep chocolate. She glared at Lily. “I have no idea what you thought you were doing, flying that dragon so close to these children—”

“I didn’t fly him. He flew me.”

“But for every one like Tawny here who is overly fascinated by dragons, there’s another child who was scared to death when it flew over us like that! It was shockingly irresponsible for you to—”

“Ma’am, a dragon is not a horse. I was not steering Mika.”

The herd arrived. Everyone was shouting, wanting to know how to get a ride and if it had hurt and what if the dragon had dropped her and what did dragons eat and did his claws hurt and I don’t see any blood and where did he go . . . although one voice, belonging to a young blond woman, did ask Lily if she was all right.

“I’m fine,” she assured her sole well-wisher. “I’m sorry Mika scared some of you. He’s not always very considerate. Oh. Sorry. I have to get that.”

Lily had seldom been so glad to hear her phone buzz. She pulled it from her inside pocket. “Excuse me, I have to answer this, and I need to step away . . . no, ma’ am, I realize that. Yes—” One of the teachers or aides had recognized her. “I’m Special Agent Yu. Move, please. Excuse me.” She finally broke free of the horde and thumbed her phone on. “Lily Yu here.”

It was Martin Croft, his smooth tenor voice utterly uninflected. “I need to know where you were from 8:30 until 12:30 today.”

Her brain went blank. This was one hundred percent not what she’d expected. “Well. Okay. I arrived at headquarters at 8:00 and remained there until 11:05, when I left for Rock Creek Park to see Mika. I reached the park at approximately 11:15—the guard at the gate should be able to confirm—and was with Mika until”—she glanced at her watch; it was 1:00—“12:45 or 12:50.”

“Mika.” There was an odd note in Croft’s voice. “I suppose that works, though I’d prefer not to be the one to depose him, should it be necessary.”

“What’s going on?”

“I’m taking you off limited duty, effective immediately. Report to Special Agent Drummond at 14321 Camber Lane in Georgetown. He’s lead.”

“Yes, sir. Lead on what?”

“Senator Robert Bixton has been murdered.”