Last Dragon Standing (Heartstrikers #5)(89)
“Get off me!” Emily Jackson snarled, shoving at Julius. The temporary body Raven had cobbled together for her must not have been a patch on her old one, though, because she couldn’t even budge him. “I have to do this!”
Julius’s answer to that was to grab her com unit and crush it with his claws. He crushed his own as well, shaking the sleek black headpiece off the crown of his transformed Fang and smashing it into plastic shards.
“Are you insane?” the general yelled. “It’s over, Heartstriker! We tried, and we failed. Now we have to use whatever we have left to blow that thing out of the sky!”
“No!” Julius yelled back. “If you call in those missiles, everything in North America will die!”
“Better than losing the whole world!” Emily cried, her dark eyes wild. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but this is the only weapon we’ve got left. We have no choice!”
“Incorrect,” Bob said, crouching down beside her. “I’m the local expert on choices, and I can tell you that there are at least twenty left. More importantly, though, it won’t work. The Leviathan is magic, not flesh. His tentacles were vulnerable to physical attack because they were disposable, but nuclear warheads won’t bother his main body any more than your other attacks did. I’ve already seen how that future ends. If you authorize a launch, all you’ll achieve is killing off the rest of us.”
Marci wasn’t actually sure if Emily believed that dragon seers saw the future, but she must have believed Bob now, because she slumped beneath Julius’s hold. “Fine, fortuneteller,” she said bitterly, relaxing into the dirt. “If you see so much, what do you suggest?”
“What I always suggest,” Bob replied, placing a hand on Julius’s head. “Listen to my brother.” He glanced at the smaller dragon. “You want to talk to Algonquin, right?”
Julius nodded rapidly. “We don’t know how to get to her, though,” he said. “She’s inside the Leviathan, and nothing we’ve tried can get through his shell. Even Amelia couldn’t burn him.”
“Hey, I burned him a little!” Amelia said defensively, scampering up Bob’s arm to perch on his shoulder opposite his pigeon. “I could have burned him a lot more if I’d had my old fire, but now that our magic’s hooked into the Sea of Magic, we’re trapped in the same sinking boat as everyone else.”
“Why?” Marci asked, genuinely curious. “I used to use Julius’s magic all the time in my spells. It worked great. Why won’t it work now?”
“Because we’re not casting spells,” Amelia explained. “Humans aren’t picky, so I’m sure you’ve never noticed, but dragon fire is fundamentally different from any other type of magic on this plane. We came from an entirely different system! Our magic was basically alien, which was why we never really integrated into our new home. I fixed that when I became a spirit, but in order to fit our magic into the rules of this realm, I basically had to turn fire into water. That’s great for us in the long term considering we have to exist in a Sea of Magic, but it’s hard to burn a hole in something like the Leviathan when you’ve traded your flame thrower for a fire hose, you know?”
Marci wasn’t quite sure that she did, but Bob was shaking his head. “Don’t bemoan our fate yet,” he said. “You might have changed our fundamental nature, but there’s still one dragon whose fire isn’t connected to yours.”
Amelia blinked at him. “How is that possible? I’m the Spirit of Dragons. If it’s a dragon, it’s mine.”
“Not this one,” Bob said, smiling wider. “He’s got a loophole, because, despite appearances, he’s not actually a dragon.”
He turned to point at the Black Reach standing alone in front of the tunnel that led out of the spiral of on-ramps, his tall body silhouetted by what was probably the last working streetlight in the DFZ, and Julius gasped. “Of course!” the dragon cried. “The Black Reach is a construct, a magical machine! He was built, not born, which means he’s not under your control!”
“Are you sure about that?” Amelia asked, frowning. “My domain is pretty broad.”
“Absolutely sure,” Bob said, giving his sister a flat look. “Do you think I would have put myself through that melodrama with Julius earlier if you could have pulled the Black Reach’s string to save me?”
“Good point,” Amelia said, her voice growing excited as she launched off Bob’s shoulder to flap toward the Black Reach. “Let’s go get our super weapon!”
“I don’t think he’s going to help us if you call him that,” Julius said as he hurried after her.
Marci followed right behind, looking suspiciously over her shoulder at Bob, who was watching the unfolding events play out like a director on opening night. “Are you sure about this?” she whispered, catching Julius’s sleeve.
“No, but it’s the best plan we’ve got,” he said, looking down at her. “What’s wrong?”
Marci shot another glare at the seer. “I just don’t like how convenient it is. Bob’s normally subtler about his tip-offs, but he practically gave us a quest to go talk to the Black Reach.” She shook her head. “I don’t like it. Smells like a plot.”