Last Dragon Standing (Heartstrikers #5)(59)
“I hope the spirit of the DFZ will be okay,” she said as Ghost flew them over the pile of rubble that had once been Marci’s favorite discount magical supplies warehouse. “I don’t know how the city is going to come back from this.”
“She’ll be fine,” the Empty Wind assured her. “She’s a Mortal Spirit. An idea, not a place. So long as people remember the DFZ, she will live on, and she will rebuild. The only reason she hasn’t started already is because she’s been busy with the Leviathan.”
“He certainly does dominate the conversation,” Marci grumbled, glowering at the black shape that filled the sky high above their heads.
The Nameless End looked even bigger now that they were out in the open. As fast as Ghost had to be flying, if Marci didn’t look at the ground, she wouldn’t have known they were moving at all. But implacable as the enemy above them looked, Ghost’s words gave her hope. When this was over, the DFZ would be the only place in the world ruled by a Mortal Spirit. A power that rose not of the land, but from the ideas and dreams of the humans that lived in it. Marci had already seen the DFZ move buildings like fingers and twist overpasses like vines during her fight with Algonquin. What could that power do when it came to rebuilding? Could she sprout new superscrapers from the ground? Lift the broken Skyways back into place like a surgeon setting a bone?
Marci didn’t know, but she desperately wanted to see it. Reason number eighty thousand to beat the Leviathan and stay alive.
As expected of the aftermath from a fight between a city and a lake, the damage was largely concentrated along the water. Downtown and the other shore districts were an absolute mess, but the farther inland they flew, the less dire things looked. By the time they reached the tumbledown houses of the old University District at the border of Reclamation Land, the landscape below looked almost normal. Better than normal, actually, because the hazy, pea-soup magic leaking over the fence from Algonquin’s spirit paradise was gone. True, it had been replaced by the even thicker magic of the crash, but that was already starting to feel natural. From the shimmer of Ghost’s magic surrounding them, Marci knew the ambient magic must still be crazy high, but at least there was no more glowing snow rising from the ground.
“Looks like it’s finally fading,” she said as Ghost set them down. “How does it feel to you?”
“Thinner,” the spirit reported. “Ten, maybe twenty more minutes, and we won’t need a shield at all.”
“That’s good news,” Marci said, glancing again at the Leviathan, which still filled the sky in every direction for miles. “If our counterattack doesn’t get up in the air soon, there’ll be nothing left to defend.”
The Empty Wind nodded grimly before they both turned to walk up the broken driveway toward the slanting, ivy-covered, ranch-style brick house that had been Marci’s first home in Detroit.
The place looked even worse now than it had then. The basement windows were still shot out from the fight with Bixby’s goons, and the garden had been torn to pieces by the treads of Algonquin’s anti-dragon taskforce tanks. The roof had collapsed in places, probably due to all the shaking from the DFZ’s battle last night, but as battered and sad as it looked, the house was still standing, and in the broken, dusty, junk-piled windows, Marci could see the gleaming eyes of cats watching their every move.
“We always end up back here,” Ghost said quietly.
“Because it’s yours,” Marci replied, stepping off the driveway and onto the grassy path that led to the basement stairs. “Of all the death-filled places in this city, this is where you rose. It’s also where I was able to recharge you when your magic was almost gone. If there’s anywhere in the city that’s closest to your domain, this would be it.”
Ghost nodded and followed her through the shot-off door into the basement, his glowing eyes watching the cats as they fled deeper into the ceiling-high piles of trash that filled the damp brick room. “I wish I could tell you why,” he said as Marci pulled magic into the circle of her bracelet to give them some light. “But I don’t actually remember why I picked this place. I don’t remember much of anything from the beginning. All I know was that I was in darkness, and I was so angry. Angry, hungry, and alone, just like them.”
He knelt down on the stained cement floor, holding out his hand to the scrawny, bony cats watching nervously from the mounds of trash piled against the walls. “We were all forgotten. No one wanted us. No one remembered. No one cared if we lived or died.”
“Maybe that’s why you rose here,” Marci said. “They needed you.”
“They needed a champion,” Ghost agreed. “But I needed…” His voice fell off as he shook his head. “I don’t know. I knew I needed something, but I had no idea who I was or what I was meant to do back then. Helping them made me feel like I had a purpose, though. Even when I was killing that poor, sick old woman, I remember feeling righteous. She was the one who’d brought them all here and forgotten them, who’d left them to die buried under garbage without even a name. I thought killing her would make it right, but…”
“But it didn’t,” Marci said, squatting down beside him. “The old lady’s long gone, but this place is even worse off without her. Algonquin’s DFZ has no animal control, no shelters other than what volunteers provide from the kindness of their hearts. Once their owner was gone, no one even knew the cats were here except for you.” She smiled. “You remembered them.”