Burn(90)

“I lived as one for thousands of years. You have nothing new to tell me about them. I know their cowardice, their avarice, their hate. They proliferate like a disease. I am superior to them in every conceivable fashion.” She was smiling now. “And when my brood hatches—”

There was a silent flash of light on the horizon, so far away no sound was heard yet. They all turned at the brightness of it, a ring of light rising into the sky, evaporating the clouds above it.

Then the sound came. A rumble like an earthquake, rolling and rolling and rolling.

“Your brood,” Kazimir said, “will not hatch.”

“What the hell was that?” Gareth Dewhurst asked.

“The general dropped a quarter-strength nuke on the crater of Mount St. Helens,” Agent Dernovich said, his voice disbelieving.

“Why?” Darlene asked.

“It was supposed to be just a threat,” Dernovich said. Kazimir had told them what the Goddess would almost certainly be doing and where might be good places for a satellite to look. But it was meant to be a bargaining chip to drive her back to her own world or, failing that, at least a ceasefire to ensure other cities didn’t burn. Exile or treaty was their only hope, but the general had clearly been unable to resist the nest, not when it was unguarded by the mother.

A mother who would now be enraged.

“You kill my children?” she screamed. “This is supposed to convince me to bow to you?”

“They were not supposed to bomb them,” Kazimir said, visibly shocked.

“And this is the species you trust, blue?” she sneered.

“I never said I trusted them.” He looked her in the eye. “But you know, even you, deep down, know that we need them.”

Her fury went from hot to cold, which was in no way an improvement. She lowered her head so that she was level with Kazimir. “I am a Goddess. I am a Creator. I will birth another brood. They will still not stop me.”

“Perhaps not,” Kazimir said, “but she will.”

He held up his hand, the signal for Sarah to come out from behind the fence.

Sarah nearly missed it. She had been consciously looking away from Kazimir’s nakedness—again, this had been such a weird week—when fire wasn’t being breathed or mountaintops being nuked. But now he was waving urgently (for him). Ignoring the mind-warping terror that told her to run the other way, she jumped back over the fence. The ground gave off waves of heat that bent the air like tarmac on a hot summer day. She stumbled a couple times, but kept going toward his outstretched hand.

Toward the giant red dragon, watching Sarah like fury itself.

Darlene gripped Gareth’s arm tighter. “There she goes.”

“This is madness,” he whispered. “Oh, please be safe.”

“You said she wasn’t our daughter,” Darlene said, but gently.

“Close enough,” Gareth said.

“And what exactly will she do?” the Goddess said, watching Sarah stop next to Kazimir. “She will not survive my flames so easily.”

“She will stop you,” Kazimir said. “The prophecies say so.”

The dragon billowed out her wings, and Sarah remembered the pose from Kazimir on the night they hired him in the gas station parking lot. She was making herself look her most threatening, as if Sarah wasn’t terrified enough— Then she realized the dragon was frightened of her.

It took all of Sarah’s courage not to back away as she came nearer. And nearer. She felt Kazimir take her hand, the other still holding the Spur of the Goddess, sticky with his own blood.

The dragon brought two great nostrils up to Sarah and inhaled hugely, again reminding her of that night by the gas station.

“There is no magic in her,” the dragon said, watching Sarah from less than a foot away. “She is human, through and through. She is nothing special.”

“She never has been,” Kazimir said.

“Then what am I doing here?” Sarah squeaked, unable to not watch the Goddess.

“The prophecy said you would be in the right place at the right time,” Kazimir said. “And so you are.”

He leapt forward and, just like Malcolm had done to him in another world, he slashed at the dragon’s neck with her own Spur.

“He’s made his move,” Agent Dernovich said, still watching through the binoculars.

He felt Grace pressed against him and held her tight. He saw Darlene and Gareth do the same, Darlene taking Hisao’s hand, too.

The world rested in the balance.

The dragon flinched, a winged claw flying to her neck to feel the wound. She roared, but then she laughed.

“A scratch,” she said, leaning back down toward Kazimir. “That was your plan? Have the girl distract me, while you tried to kill me with my own claw? I shall chew you both alive, then spit out your screaming bones.”

“I was not trying to kill you,” Kazimir said. “My blood alone was not enough.”

“Enough for what?” the dragon said.

Intoning the words, invoking the magic through her blood, Kazimir activated the Spur of the Goddess and shot her with the same spiral of light that had so recently destroyed a satellite.

The blast was even stronger than Kazimir had warned. It had been enough to take down a massive hunk of metal from space, he’d told Agent Dernovich, it should be enough to take down a dragon without anyone else having to die.