Another fire bolt streaked past. Somehow Skippy rolled us out of the way at the last instant. The hotel just ahead of us took the hit. The concussion shook us hard, then we were pinging and banging our way through a cloud of expanding shrapnel. Tanya screeched as a chunk of hot metal punched a hole through the wall next to her head. The girl had a set of lungs like you wouldn’t believe.
“What? Is that…Elf! There is filthy elf here! No wonder spirits displeased!” Skippy sounded relieved, like that explained everything. “Stow way…Edward, throw out window elf, please. Fix good.”
Edward grumbled, “No…Elf girl. Nice.”
“What? Exszrsd, no!” Skippy was shocked and dismayed at his brother’s betrayal. “Noooo!” The Hind turned on its side to fit between two towers. The dragon was forced to swing around. Skippy launched into a giant tirade in his native, guttural, nearly incomprehensible language. Despite my having a great natural talent for learning languages, so far Orcish had eluded me. It was like trying to understand someone shaking a bucket of rocks. Edward snapped something back. Apparently he was just as terse in Orcish as in English. They went back and forth as the dragon’s tail swept the twenty-foot neon sign off the top of the Paradisio.
Tanya, who I think understood even less of their angry exchange than I did, didn’t help by adding “Yeah!” every time Ed said anything.
“Now is not the time to debate your feelings on interspecies dating,” Julie shouted as she cranked off several more ineffectual shots. Luckily my wife understood a lot more Orcosh than I did. “Tanya, promise Skippy that you won’t use your elf magic to steal their souls.”
“Uh…Okay. I promise?” Apparently soul-stealing hadn’t been on her To Do list. “You better not try to put my ears on your elf-ear necklace.”
“Fine.” Skippy grunted in frustration. “Curse you, row-tor spirits! Stubborn…Exsrzd!” and then Skippy rattled off some complicated instructions in Orcish. The only word I’d picked out of that was sacrifice. “Fast now go!”
Edward slid to the back of the cabin and rummaged around behind the rear seat. He came out a moment later with a cardboard box that had been wedged in. Ed reached inside and pulled out…a chicken? I’m pretty sure it was the same chicken he had stolen up north. The bird was alive and seemed very nervous. For good reason, too. “Seriously, Ed? Seriously?” Julie groaned. “Okay, fine. Whatever. Do it!”
“Go toward the light, brave little bird,” Tanya said.
“More sacrifice!” Skippy bellowed.
The orc grumbled something to the tail rotor spirits, squeezed next to me, and hurled the chicken like a football right out the door. It zipped straight into the smoking tail rotor and disappeared in a flash of feathers.
“Holy crap! Did you see that?” But then I had to concentrate, since the dragon had swung back around on my side. I lit the beast up with the 240.
The shocking part was that our improvised chicken repair seemed to actually do something. Skippy at least sounded happier. “Much better…Hang on.”
The Hind tilted up, then rolled over, and over, and over, and then we were upside down. Every one of us screamed. The lucky ones were pressed against their seat by the g-forces. A gigantic aluminum case that had been wedged beneath the chicken box came free and smacked Ed in the arm. I floated in the air, holding onto the grip of a machine gun, hit my head on the roof, and then landed back on the floor. I was so temporarily disoriented that I’m not even sure what kind of maneuver we performed, but then we were heading back the way we’d come from and the dragon was below us, furious and trying to turn around.
“Go, Skippy, go,” Julie gasped.
The Hind was still making a terrible rattling noise and there was dark smoke trailing behind us. The dragon was banking hard, wings spread wide, and for a moment it was illuminated in a brilliant spotlight for the entire world to see. I didn’t know how complete the evacuation was, but somebody was going to have to some explaining to do. “Get us back to the quarantine line. Let me off and then the rest of you, run like hell.”
Julie looked at me like I was stupid. “That’s not going to happen.”
“You can’t come with me.”
“Really? And why the hell not?”
I really wish there was a better way to handle this…I screwed up my courage and dropped the bomb. “You’re pregnant.”
“Wha—wait…What?” She really hadn’t seen that coming. “I can’t be. How?”
I couldn’t resist. Near-death experiences bring out my inner smartass. “When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much—”
“Aargh! No. But I’m not…How do you know? Wait…Earl…That ass.”
“Yay! Babies,” said Skippy as way of congratulations.
Tanya agreed. “Aw, cute.”
Julie went white as a sheet, and not just at the prospect of impending motherhood. She was the smart one in our relationship. “It might be hereditary…” She’d realized what I had been thinking. “The Nachtmar called you chosen. He talked about breaking into your mind and enslaving you.”
“Right. That whole bloodline thing. I don’t know, but the poor bastard that’s stuck as its current host is sort of like me. Will this kid be like me too?” I was some sort of cosmic intersection of weirdness, and Julie was all sorts of cursed. I wouldn’t take odds on this one. “Maybe. I hope not, but we’re not going to find out. This thing is not going to possess my kid. No way. Screw that.”
“I can’t leave you—” but even as she said it, she knew she was wrong. Julie bit her lip and nodded. It was a lot of information to process.
“I’ll hit the ground running.” That was wishful thinking. I’d hit the ground limping. “I’ll find Mosh and Holly. They were with the host last. I want the Nachtmar to intercept me. I want both halves of it, him, whatever, in the same place.”
“And then what?”
“I talk them into surrendering.”
“Talk?”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“You? Talk? Oh, we’re screwed.”
“Thanks, hon.” I checked out the door. The dragon had got turned around was heading back up the Strip. I wouldn’t have much time at all. My leg was throbbing, and since I hadn’t walked on it for a bit, it was probably going to be extra stiff. “I’ll go as fast as I can.”
Edward was more perceptive than he looked, and he’d seen how buggered up my leg had been earlier. He handed me a flask. “Drink.” It smelled like rancid pond water. “Gretchen make. Help feets.” She was their healer, after all, and I’d benefited from some of her crazy remedies before. She insisted that her magical remedies needed to be fresh and made for a specific person, but this was worth a shot. It tasted worse than it smelled, and burned going down. I passed Gretchen’s magic energy drink back to Edward and tried not to puke. My injured foot began to tingle, which was either a good sign or a bad sign.
I could only hope that the feds would have some weaponry down there that would buy me some time. Edward was rubbing his arm. The big case that had struck him was leaning on the seat next to him. “What’s that?”
The case had a pink invoice on the outside, Anzio Ironworks. To: Milo Anderson/MHI. For Test and Evaluation Purposes. It was one of Milo’s free samples that he had bragged about picking up at the tradeshow. I popped the latches. Please be good. Please be good. “What the hell is that?” Since I was the biggest gun nut in the company, me not recognizing a firearm was especially notable.
Julie adjusted her bungee cord so she could come over to see. She whistled. “I don’t know, but it’s huge.”
It was ridiculous. It was shaped like a rifle, but it made my Barrett look like a .22. It was also disassembled to fit in the foam cutouts of the case, but it looked like it went back together fairly rapidly. “Where’s the rest of it?” Ed pointed at another case that had been under this one. Julie began dragging it out. Put together, this gun had to be longer than I was tall. The case felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. “Is there ammo?”
Julie cracked open the other one. “Here’s the barrel, muzzle brake is the size of a phone book, owner’s manual…Okay, there’s a few rounds.” Julie hefted one. “But they’re the size of bowling pins.”
“What is that? Freaking twenty millimeter? Isn’t that what fighter jets shoot? Never mind. I need to move fast. I’ll never be able to lug this thing around with me.” I guess there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. “I was hoping for a weapon, not a piece of farm equipment.”
“Almost there,” Skippy warned. “Much fog. Hard to see.”
I closed the case. The ground below us was soupy, but lights glowed through the thick mist. It seemed heavy enough that it had congealed close to the ground. The actual pillar of smoke was entirely gone, spilled loose into the city. And there, battered and looking like it had been the victim of an air raid, was the Last Dragon hotel and casino, the top floors blasted and scorched, dark without power, but most importantly, it was here. Hopefully our friends had returned with it.
“Put me on top of the Taj parking garage. You see it? Straight ahead. Next to the white one with the big dome in the middle.” The Hind turned and we were heading for the top. Most of the cars were gone, so there was plenty of room to land. I checked behind us, but couldn’t pick the dragon out of the dark. I couldn’t feel the buffeting effect of its mighty wings, so that was a good sign. Maybe I’d be able to get inside before I got stepped on. Unhooking my safety cord, I got ready to hop out.
Julie grabbed my arm. “You can’t—”