The gathered dragons nodded as though that were the only logical explanation, and Julius slumped in defeat. He didn’t even bother trying to explain that Marci wasn’t his human, because that never worked, and he didn’t feel like wasting his breath again. Time and dragon attention spans were too short as it was, so since everyone was looking at him now anyway, Julius launched into a carefully pared-down explanation of their situation and the plan to fix it that he’d been rehearsing in his head since Marci left. He thought he had a pretty good wrap-up of everything, but by the time he was through, the dragons looked angrier than ever.
“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” said Arkniss, who looked even more treacherous in his human form than his black-scaled dragon had been. “Algonquin got duped into screwing us all over, and now you want us to clean up her mess?”
“Yes,” Julius said, nodding. “Because we’ll all die if we don’t.”
“How like a spirit,” the old dragon muttered, blowing out a line of acrid smoke. “And we’re going to be working together with the Phoenix?” When Julius nodded again, Arkniss glanced over at General Jackson, who’d set up camp in the corner by Myron’s unconscious body. “Strange bedfellows, indeed. But then, you Heartstrikers never were discriminating.”
“What was that?” Bethesda asked, cupping a hand to her ear. “I couldn’t hear you over the sound of my children saving your piebald hide.”
“Considering some of those children are mine, I think I have a right to complain,” Arkniss snapped. Then he gave her a smile. “Though I always did like your sharp tongue.”
Julius’s face went scarlet as his mother blew the black dragon a kiss, and Amelia rolled her eyes. “Can we save the inappropriate innuendo until after we get out of mortal peril?” she groaned. “If we have to wait around for all the ‘your mom’ jokes, the Leviathan’s going to eat us before we get off the ground.”
“I agree,” said Marlin Drake, stepping forward, which made Julius step back.
It was a silly reaction. As leader of the clanless dragons, Marlin Drake had no family magic of his own. He was merely the head of a coalition of outcasts, most of whom had only banded together to keep stronger clans from hunting them down. The other dragons in the circle were far more powerful, but while Drake’s pedigree was technically the lowest, he was still the most famous individual Julius had ever met in person.
As the first dragon to go public after the return of magic, Marlin Drake had rocketed to worldwide fame with countless movies and television shows. Sixty years later, he commanded his own media empire, running three major networks in addition to hosting what was still the world’s highest-rated weekly talk show. Bethesda watched religiously and had been a regular guest on the program for decades. Even Julius, who tried his best to stay out of politics—draconic or human—had seen more episodes of Saturday Night With Marlin Drake than he liked to admit. But despite his mother’s patronage, he’d never actually met the ludicrously famous First Dragon in Television. That made seeing him now surprisingly intimidating since Drake was even more charismatic in the flesh than he was on his show, a feat that didn’t seem physically possible.
“It’s Julius, right?” the handsome dragon said, holding out his hand with a well-timed toss of his television-perfect blond hair. “With a J?”
“I don’t know what else you’d spell it with,” Julius said nervously. “But I—”
“How wonderful to meet you,” Drake interrupted, grabbing Julius’s hand and shaking it vigorously. “And nice work bagging the first Merlin, by the way. You must have a serious eye for talent.”
Julius’s face began to heat. “I—”
“I’d love to have her on my show when this is over,” Drake went on. “And you as well, since you’re the point man on all this. Speaking of, how long do you think it’ll be before your girl lands her banish? I’ve got a full helicopter camera crew ready to capture the whole thing for my exclusive report, but they’re grounded at the moment due to magical interference, and I’d hate for them to miss the action.”
“There’s nothing for your humans to miss, you vain idiot,” Svena snapped, stabbing her finger up at the towering, shadowy form of Ghost, who was still holding the barrier for them even though Marci was gone. “No one can fly right now, thanks to this mess. If it doesn’t clear soon, we’ll still be down here clicking our scales when Algonquin’s End kills us all!”
“It’d better hurry up,” Bethesda said irritably. “What’s the good of gathering everyone together if we can’t set a claw outside this dirt pit without getting crushed?” She looked down at the half-frozen mud coating her golden boots before turning her sneer on Julius. “Why did you live here again?”
Because she’d made him, and because it kept him away from her. “It was a good base,” he said instead. “It still is.” He nodded at the crowd of dragons surrounding them, none of whom were even pretending not to be listening. “We have every dragon in the world here now, and the Leviathan still hasn’t noticed us. I think that’s pretty impressive.”
“Or telling,” said She Who Sees, the dark-skinned dragoness whose extended family claimed most of the African continent. “He could be ignoring us because he knows we’re not a threat.” Her sharp black eyes flicked to Julius. “You said that thing was from beyond our plane. Are you sure we can fight it?”
“Actually, the bigger it gets, the more effective we become,” Amelia said authoritatively. “Normally, the Leviathan would be outside of our ability to hurt physically. We’ve all tangled with it before in various scuffles over the DFZ, so I’m sure we all remember just how impossible those shadow tentacles were to fight. Now, though, it’s using Algonquin’s magic to shove itself into our plane. That means the Leviathan is covered in spirit magic, and we all know how well spirits burn.”
The other dragons smirked appreciatively at that, and Julius let out a breath in silent thanks that Marci wasn’t here. “The point is, we can damage it,” he said. “Maybe not enough to defeat it, but that’s not our job. All we have to do is keep the Nameless End from sucking up the last of Algonquin’s water for the few hours it will take Marci to prepare her banishment.”
“A few hours is a long time to fight something we cannot defeat,” the Qilin said warily. “Especially when we cannot even take off yet.” He lifted his golden head to the hole in the roof where the black tentacles were moving faster than ever. “It’s gorging itself on her magic as we speak. By the time we can fly, it might already be too late.”