Last Dragon Standing (Heartstrikers #5)(71)

The Black Reach didn’t dignify that with a response. He just stood there silently, rolling Marci’s Kosmolabe between his long-fingered hands as the dragons overhead began burning the Leviathan’s tentacles to ash.

***

The sky was chaos.

Though it was technically thin enough to move through, the magic still clung to Julius like glue. Flying through it was like trying to swim through molasses, forcing him to fight with all his strength just to stay airborne. Even after he got the hang of it, it was still a struggle to keep from being sent spinning whenever the bigger dragons blew past him, sometimes much bigger.

So far as he could tell just by looking, the average dragon seemed to be in their mid-hundreds. This meant most of them weren’t much bigger than Gregory, but some were enormous. The Daughters of the Three Sisters in particular filled the sky like a weather front, turning the ruined city into a snowy wonderland as they blasted the Leviathan’s black tentacles with their frosted flame. Conrad dominated as the wing leader of the Heartstriker attack, his enormous size matched only by Bethesda herself, who kept to the center of the pack, shouting orders at her dragons from a safe distance. But as huge as the dragons were, they were nothing compared to the monster they fought.

The first time Julius had crawled up to look at him, the Leviathan’s black body had filled the sky. Now, though, the Nameless End was the sky. Even this high up, Julius could see no end to him. Not even the memory of sunlight got past him now, leaving the city blacker than any night under his shadow. If it hadn’t been for all the dragon fire going off, Julius wouldn’t have been able to see at all. He had no idea how the human pilots were going to manage, but the military flew night missions all the time, so he assumed they must have a way. He just hoped whatever system they used saw well enough to avoid the dragons, because from some of the near misses going on above him, crashing into each other in the dark posed more danger right now than the Leviathan.

“Julius!”

General Jackson’s voice was an explosion in his ear. Her face appeared in his AR a moment later, floating in the sky somewhere off to his left, but she wasn’t looking at him. Her attention was on the screen behind her, which Julius could only see because she’d apparently patched him directly into her own AR.

“Satellites are up,” she said. “We still can’t see through the Leviathan, but from the heat map data, it looks like Lakes Superior and Ontario are already dry. I’m ordering a flyover to be sure, but you should go ahead and tell your dragons to focus on protecting what’s left of Lakes Michigan, Erie, and Huron so we’re not wasting our time defending already lost territory.”

“Understood,” Julius said, looking around at the dragons, who’d already fanned out over the DFZ at astonishing speed. “I’ll spread the word.”

“Roger,” Emily said before her feed cut out.

Julius took a deep breath. Technically, less territory to defend was good considering how much they had to cover, but it was still disheartening to hear they’d already lost two of the five Great Lakes. What he could see of Lake Erie in the distance didn’t look good, either. When he tried shouting to the others to spread the information, though, he realized within a few words that no one could hear him.

As the runt of his clan and a firm believer in staying out of trouble, Julius hadn’t spent much time in his dragon form, and practically none in actual combat. His fight with Gregory had been relatively close quarters, so he’d never realized just how fast a voice—even a dragon’s roaring one—fell off over distance. In the two minutes it had taken him to get up in the air and get the information from the general, the dragons had spread out over several square miles, much too far for his voice to carry. He was desperately trying to think of another way to get the word out when a laughing voice bubbled up in his fire.

Looks like you could use a divine intervention.

Julius almost sobbed with relief when his oldest sister materialized in front of him, her giant dragon body coalescing out of bright-orange-and-red flame that kept burning even after her red feathers had formed. “Sorry to be fashionably late,” Amelia said, spreading her wings to fly beside him. “I had some business on the other side. What’s the deetz?”

“Leviathan’s already eaten two lakes,” Julius replied immediately. “We need to focus on defending Michigan, Erie, and Huron, but I can’t—”

“Say no more,” his sister replied, breathing a lick of fire as she cleared her throat. Then, without warning, she roared, shaking the air and filling his magic with her voice.

Listen up, worms! she bellowed. Thanks to our late start, we’re already down two lakes. Ontario and Superior are Leviathan food, so anyone headed there needs to pick another body of water. I’m not going to bother assigning you all positions because we don’t have that kind of time, so if you’re fighting and you find yourself competing with other dragons for targets, move somewhere else. Likewise, if you’re having trouble covering your area, call for me, and I’ll send someone your way. The humans will be sending us backup in—

She glanced at Julius. “How long until we get jets?” she asked in her normal voice.

He frantically brought up the updated maps the general had shared to his AR. “Two minutes.”

Two minutes, Amelia repeated, the words hammering thorough his fire. Remember, those planes are friends, not food. If I catch any of you being idiots, I’ll snuff your fire on the spot and send you to an idiot’s death. Ignore the Leviathan’s main body as well. Our target is the tentacles. As my brother Justin is already demonstrating—she motioned at Justin’s distinctive flame in the distance, and Julius’s head was suddenly filled with the image of his brother blasting black appendages out of the sky with giant bursts of his green fire—they burn pretty well, but don’t get carried away and waste time trying to turn everything to ash. The only thing we’re up here to do is keep the Leviathan from drinking any more water than he already has, so just focus on stopping the tentacles from reaching the ground, and we should be all good.