Chapter 16
“We have to find Marci,” Julius said frantically. “I don’t know what this place is—”
“I do,” Raven said, hopping around the strange silver circle where Myron was tied down like a spider’s dinner. “This is the DFZ’s domain. Both halves of it, overlapped. She’s pulled in so much magic, she’s torn the barrier, and now the physical world and the Sea of Magic are blending.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s a disaster,” Raven agreed. “But it’s an unsustainable one.”
“And we’re standing on the weak point,” Amelia finished, kneeling beside the strange silver ribbon. “Pull out the pin, and the whole thing blows.”
“Still not reassuring,” Julius said, lifting into the air. “If this place is going to blow, I’m going to find Marci.”
Amelia grabbed his tail. “Relax,” she said, yanking him back to the ground. “Marci’s a Merlin now. That makes her the biggest girl around. She’ll come to us. We just need to make sure we’re ready when—”
The rest of what she said was drowned out by a sudden roaring wind. It swept through the cavern of the Pit in a freezing gale, blowing the silt into a dust storm. Then, fast as it had arrived, the wind vanished, leaving…
“Marci!”
Just like before, she appeared out of nowhere, standing straight and determined in the center of the cloud of falling dust. She was shaking the debris out of her hair when Julius pounced on her.
“Are you okay?” he cried. “Where did you go? What happened?”
“I’m fine,” Marci said, staring at him in confusion. “But how did you get here?” She turned to the Empty Wind, whom Julius only now realized was standing right behind her. “Did you bring him?”
“Not I,” the spirit said out loud.
Marci frowned. “Then how—”
“It was me,” Amelia said, walking over with a cocky grin. “Well, team effort, really. Julius provided the fire, and I did the rest.”
“Amelia!” Marci cried, delighted. “You did it! You’re alive!”
“I’m way more than that,” the dragoness said with a wink. “But we’ll talk about that later. Right now, we need to deal with him.”
She turned to point at Myron, and Marci’s face grew grim.
“I thought so,” she said as she walked over to the silver circle. “I knew the DFZ had to be getting all her magic from somewhere, and the only thing that feeds magic to spirits is a mage. For her, that means Myron.”
“But how?” Julius asked, hurrying after her. “He’s unconscious.”
“This is just his empty body,” Marci explained. “His soul is still back in the Sea of Magic.”
That sounded a lot worse than unconscious. “Can you fix him?”
“That’s the plan,” she said, getting down on her knees beside the silver circle. “First, though, I have to get him out of…” She faded off, leaning over to peer at the spellworked metal ribbon. “Um, what is this?”
“My spellwork,” Raven said angrily, flying over to perch on her shoulder. “Myron and Algonquin had nothing that could chain a Mortal Spirit, so they stole my creation.”
He nodded at the head in Myron’s hands, but it must have taken Marci a few seconds to realize what she was looking at, because Julius could see the moment her curious confusion turned to horror.
“Holy—” She jumped back, eyes wide in horror. “Is that…?”
“It is,” the raven spirit said, his voice dark and angry. “It’s bad enough that Algonquin and Myron altered my Emily to be a vessel, but then Myron was reckless enough to follow the DFZ to the Sea of Magic while leaving his physical body hardwired to her magic. Now the overgrown city’s taking advantage of that to suck magic through that idiot’s empty body like a straw to continue her war with Algonquin, which would actually be pretty brilliant if it weren’t so horrifically destructive.”
“And dangerous,” the Empty Wind added, looking out at the dark. “The magic of this place is deeply polluted. Taken directly, with no Merlin to help mitigate it…”
“It’s driving her nuts,” Marci finished, her face pale. “So how do we unplug him?”
“Very carefully,” Amelia said. “The DFZ’s already pulled in enough magic to overwhelm the barrier that divides this plane, blending her physical domain with her vessel in the Sea of Magic. I didn’t even think that was possible, but apparently anything’s game if you use enough force. Unfortunately, this means we’re basically standing inside a magical pressure cooker.”
Julius might not have known much about magic, but he’d seen enough Internet fail videos to know what happened when a pressure cooker went wrong. “You’re saying this place could explode.”
“Only if we’re not careful,” his oldest sister said. “Or unlucky.”
There, at least, Julius had an edge. It wasn’t as overwhelming now, but the golden music of the Qilin’s good fortune was still humming in his bones. If there was ever a time he could count on not being unlucky, it was now. “Let me help.”
“I was just about to ask,” Marci said, flashing him a warm smile as she motioned for him to come closer. “I need to borrow your magic.”
“Why his magic?” Raven asked as Julius sat down beside her.
“Because he’s a dragon,” she said, reaching up to bury her hand in the soft feathers of Julius’s neck. “Amelia might have connected them to our plane, but no amount of spirit representation can ever make them truly native. So long as they have fire, they’re always going to be on a different wavelength from everything else, and different is what I need.”
She turned back to the silver circle. “There’s so much power running through this right now, I can’t even touch it without cooking myself. But if I can get some dragon magic in there, the disconnect might disrupt the flow long enough to yank Myron out.”
“Use a foreign element to jolt the system,” Amelia said. “Clever. But does Julius have enough juice for that? I might have made him use up a lot of fire getting in here.”
“I don’t think I’ll need too much,” Marci said. “Source seems to play a much bigger role in spirit magic than it does for normal spells, and dragons have always been part of the DFZ. Also, Algonquin hates them. That makes dragons a DFZ ally by default, and given how much anger she’s wallowing in, I think some friendly magic would go a long way right now.”
“And no one’s friendlier than Julius,” Amelia said with a grin.
“Technically, personality’s not an issue here, but it can’t hurt,” Marci agreed. “I just need something to make her hesitate long enough to let us break the chain without getting fried.”
“I don’t like all this talk of frying and cooking,” Julius said nervously. “Can’t we just talk to her? We’re all on the same team against Algonquin.”
“You can talk to her all you like once we knock her out of her cackling madness phase,” Marci assured him. “That’s actually what I’m counting on. Like I said, she’s not bad. She’s just drunk on power.”
“I think you mean high on revenge,” Ghost said, his eyes glowing brighter as he watched the dark above them. “Be careful. She’s—”
He never got to finish. There was no sound, no warning—the Empty Wind just doubled over, his glowing eyes wide in shock at the slender hand that had been stuck through his ribs. It vanished a second later, and his warrior’s body crumbled like sand to reveal the figure standing behind him. A figure that appeared to be a human girl in very plain clothes but smelled like madness and death.
“Ghost!” Marci threw out her arms just in time for a white cat to fall into them, his transparent body panting and smaller than Julius had seen it in a long, long time.
“Are you insane?” she cried at the newcomer, shooting to her feet as she clutched Ghost to her chest. “I’m trying to help you, and it’d be a lot easier if you stopped hurting my cat!”
“You’re the one hurting people,” the DFZ replied, her strangely glowing orange eyes flicking to the mage bound in silver ribbons. “Step away from him.”
“No,” Marci said stubbornly. “You’re using him.”
“He used me first!”
“That doesn’t make it right!”
“That’s how I win!” the DFZ screamed, throwing her hand out like a spear.
Magic seized at the same time, forming a wave so dense, Julius could actually see the outline of it shimmering in the air. He got an even closer look a second later when he jumped in front of it, taking the full blast before it could slam into Marci.
In sober reflection, it was a smart move. As his family’s favorite punching bag, Julius knew how to take a hit. He knew how to brace his magic and use it like a shield, just as he had against the giant lamprey in the DFZ storm drain what felt like forever ago.
But clever as all that was, Julius hadn’t actually considered any of it. He’d just jumped, because whatever happened, it couldn’t hurt more than losing Marci again. The fact that everything else lined up was just happy coincidence. More good luck.
Or, at least, that was what he’d thought before he realized just how big the spirit’s magic was.
The attack crashed into him like a cruise ship running aground. It was stronger than his mother’s fire, stronger than anything Julius had ever been hit with before. It hadn’t even finished washing over him before he felt himself start to dissolve. But then, just as he realized he was probably going to die, something in his fire twisted, and a dragon appeared in front of him.
She’d already done it once before, so Julius wasn’t too shocked to see Amelia suddenly flicker into existence. What was shocking was the fact that there was no fire this time. She was simply there, grabbing the hardened lump of pure, angry magic the DFZ had thrown and tossing it away.
It landed like a bomb in the dark several blocks over, exploding in a blast wave that sent everyone except Amelia and the DFZ to the ground. Even Raven was knocked to the dirt, flapping and cawing, but Amelia didn’t so much as flinch. She just stood there and took it, watching the DFZ with a sly smile as she lowered her smoking hand.
“What did you do?” the city demanded, looking nervous for the first time. “This is my domain. How did you do that?”
“Easy,” Amelia said casually. “I’m bigger.”
The DFZ narrowed her orange eyes. “You lie.”
“Try me,” the dragon taunted, blowing out a line of smoke. “You might be all ’roided up on stolen power right now, but that doesn’t change the fact that your domain is nothing compared to mine. I am Amelia the Planeswalker, the Spirit of Dragons, and that”—she pointed at Julius—“is my vessel. I’m no longer a dragon who has fire. I am dragon fire, and I’ve burned better cities than yours.”
She grinned as she finished, showing the DFZ all of her sharp white teeth. It was pure predator, the essence of what it meant to be a dragon. Even Julius cringed away, and she wasn’t even facing him. But though she couldn’t hide her flinch, the spirit of the DFZ didn’t falter, and she did not back down.
“This is my world,” she said, clenching her fists. “My one chance to destroy the tyrant that has always held me down. You will not stop me!”
“She’s not trying to,” Marci said, pushing herself up from the ground.
“Oh yes I am,” Amelia snapped, keeping her fire-colored eyes on the city spirit. “I’m sick of this nonsense. I’ll keep her busy. You cut the cord.”
“No,” Marci said angrily, glaring at Amelia’s back. “You are not helping.” She turned to Julius. “Tell her.”
“Don’t you dare sic Julius on me,” Amelia said, but to his surprise and despite her obvious anger, she did step back. A concession that did not escape the DFZ.
“The Spirit of Dragons takes orders from a human?”
“I don’t take orders from anyone,” Amelia said flippantly. “But unlike you, I’m smart enough to listen to sense when I hear it. Marci’s never done anything but try to help spirits like us. She’s the one who freed you to go crazy, in case you forgot. If you had the brain of the rat you’re always pretending to be, you’d listen to—”
She cut off when the ground heaved. Julius’s first thought was that it was the DFZ again, but she looked as surprised as they were.
“What was that?” Marci asked, clutching the ground.
“Algonquin,” the DFZ growled, her face contorting in hatred. “She’s landing another wave.” The city shook again, and this time, it was the DFZ. “I will kill her for this! I will—”
“Julius!”
His name was the only warning he got. He was still staring at the DFZ’s tantrum when Marci grabbed his left hind foot, and he felt the belovedly familiar—but still extremely uncomfortable—sensation of Marci yanking his magic out of him.
She grabbed the silver circle surrounding Myron next. As she connected them, Julius felt the full scale of the DFZ’s magic for the first time. How huge she was, and how angry. It was only for a fraction of a second, but in that fraction, he was connected to the magic of the world like never before.
To his amazement, it really was a sea. A vast, violent ocean of power rocking in a storm, and he was part of it. They all were. Deeply. Intrinsically. How had he never realized this before?
Because it wasn’t true before, Amelia whispered through his fire. Bob and I did this, and we’ll do a lot more. Just wait and see.
The last thing Julius wanted was to wait. Before he could demand an answer, though, the incredible connection vanished in a blinding flash as the surging power finally overwhelmed Marci’s interruption, causing a backlash that knocked them both into the air.
As always, Julius missed landing on his feet. He managed to scramble back to them in record time, though, following his nose frantically to Marci, who was groaning on her back a few feet away. “Are you all right?!”
“I’m fantastic,” she croaked, reaching up to wipe away the trickle of blood running down from her nose. “Haven’t been backlashed that hard in a long time, but look.” She tilted her head back toward the spirit. “It worked.”
Sure enough, the DFZ was frozen when he turned around, her mouth hanging open as the roaring magic drained out of the air. “No,” she whispered, desperately grabbing at the emptying space in front of her. “No, no, no!” She turned on Marci. “How could you do this to me?”
“Actually, she was just the interruption,” Raven’s voice croaked from the dark. “I’m the one who took your power.”
The spirit whirled around only to freeze again. Raven was sitting inside the silver circle, which was still shining as bright as ever, though it was no longer shining out. All the light was focused inward now, shining in a laser pinpoint on the piece of metal where Raven was perched, the only bit of the circle that wasn’t gleaming silver.
It was steel. An old, battered chunk of debris on which someone had carved a name. Which name, Julius couldn’t tell. The letters had all been clawed out, and above them, squeezed in along the metal’s edge, Raven’s name had been written in shaky talon marks.
“You stole it,” the DFZ whispered.
“I can’t steal what was never yours to begin with,” Raven said as the silver light converged on his name. “Emily the Phoenix is my creation. She belongs to me. Not to you, not to Myron, and never to Algonquin.”
The light flared as he finished, and all the silver ribbons began to flail like whips. They whistled through the air at Raven’s call, unraveling from the spiraling circles and folds they’d been so carefully arranged into, including the net of bindings that held Myron’s body down.
He was thrust from the circle like a dead fish, thrown facedown on the dirt beyond. The silver ribbons plucked Emily’s sleeping head from his hands as he fell, sucking it back into the coiled silver cocoon that was now forming at the center of the circle. Raven jumped in next, folding his wings and diving into the swirling spellwork with a loud caw. That was all Julius saw before the spinning ball of silver vanished with a flash, leaving nothing but the smell of ozone and burnt feathers.
“What just happened?”
“Raven took back his construct and left,” Marci said, holding up her arms so he could pull her to her feet. “We should, too. I’m not sure what happens to magical pressure cookers when you pull the plug, but it’s probably not—”
The ground split, opening a huge crack that ran across the floor of the Pit and all the way up one of the support beams to the skyway above.
“—good,” she finished, staring wide eyed at the destruction before turning to scramble back onto Julius’s back. “Time to bail.”
“Bail to where?” he asked frantically, helping her up. He grabbed Ghost next. The poor spirit cat was hobbling now, his glowing eyes dim as Julius placed him in Marci’s arms. “And how? I’m still not entirely sure how I got here.”
“We go out the same way we got in,” Amelia said, suddenly appearing beside them. “We burn through. First, though…”
She turned and scooped Myron’s body up under her arm like a sack of flour. “Can’t leave without our prize.”
“What about her?” Julius asked, looking over his shoulder at the DFZ, who was still sobbing on the ground.
“Nothing we can do,” Marci said. “This is her domain. We can’t take her out of it any more than we could take her out of herself. But she’s an immortal spirit. She’ll be pissed, but she’ll recover. We, on the other hand…”
“Right,” Julius said, looking around at the quaking Pit. “So do I need to find an edge or a wall or—”
“Just use your fire,” Amelia said, tossing Myron onto his back behind Marci. “I’ll do the rest.”
Julius’s throat was still raw from his fire earlier, but he did as she asked, breathing a gout of flame into the empty space in front of them. Amelia waited beside him, watching his fire go from red to orange to bright white. Then, just when Julius was starting to overheat, she reached out and grabbed his flame.
He nearly choked. She wasn’t just grabbing the fire in front of him. She’d grabbed him, her fist clenching around the fire that burned at the heart of his magic.
Julius was still trying to wrap his brain around that when Amelia lashed out, slicing the flames through the dark like claws. It was just like what had happened when they’d cut their way in through the trash, only this time it wasn’t the air in front of them that ripped. It was everything else.
Like a spark to tinder, the false DFZ was consumed by flames. Everything burned, surrounding them in an inferno. It should have been terrifying, but Julius wasn’t afraid at all. The heat was actually comforting, because it was his. This was his fire, his magic amplified through Amelia, and when it faded, they were back in the real world, standing in the flooded Pit at the base of the DFZ’s column of trash.
Which was collapsing.
“Move!”
Amelia’s shout was still ringing in his ear when Julius rolled to the left, skidding through the shallow water just in time as the whole pillar came crashing down on top of itself.
It fell like a demolished building, the stacked cars and dumpsters and washing machines sliding apart like knocked-over wooden blocks before crashing into the water below. When everything finally clattered to a stop, all that was left was a pile of trash rising like an island from the floor of the flooded Pit, and kneeling on top of it with her head buried in her shaking hands was the DFZ.
“It’s over,” she sobbed, her voice raspy and pitiful. “You’ve broken everything. She’ll kill me now.”
“No, she won’t,” Marci said firmly, sliding off Julius’s back. “We won’t let her.”
“What can you do?” the DFZ said bitterly, lifting her head, which didn’t even look human anymore. “You can’t fight Algonquin. No one can. That’s why I did this. I had to protect myself.” She fisted her hands, which now looked more like rat claws. “Why did you stop me?”
The question was screamed at Marci, but it was Julius who answered.
“Because you were killing yourself.”
“This is none of your business,” the spirit snarled, glaring at him with beady eyes. He’d been watching her the entire time, but even Julius couldn’t say for sure when the human-looking DFZ had changed into a rat. That’s what she was now, though. A giant, angry, wounded rat, cowering in the trash.
“What do you know?” the rat cried. “You’re a dragon. You can fly away any time you want! But I’m chained to Algonquin forever, and she will never let me be.” The spirit bared her yellow teeth. “You have no right to tell me what to do!”
“I’m not trying to tell you what to do,” Julius said calmly. “But the DFZ was my home. What Algonquin does hurts all of us, but so does what you do to yourself.”
The rat glowered. “What do you care?”
“I care because I know what it’s like to be under someone’s boot,” he replied. “I know how it feels to be at your enemy’s mercy, how it feels being helpless. All this anger and rage isn’t hurting Algonquin, but it’s ripping you to bits. You’re just doing her job for her, but it doesn’t have to be like that.”
He looked over at Marci, who was hovering beside him. “Marci’s the best mage I’ve ever met. She and Ghost have stood against Algonquin before. They’ll help you do it now. So will I, because Algonquin’s my enemy, too. There are dragons out there right now risking their lives against Algonquin and her Leviathan to buy us time to help you.” He smiled at her. “You don’t have to fight alone.”
His plea was a long shot. He still didn’t fully understand the situation or Marci’s plan for fixing it, but while Julius wasn’t a mage or a spirit, he understood despair very well. He knew what it felt like to be trapped and stomped on, but where he’d had Marci and Justin and Chelsie and even Bob, the DFZ had no one. She was a city of millions, but she thought she was fighting alone, and as one of those millions, Julius couldn’t let that be.
“We’re your allies,” he said firmly. “You can’t stand against Algonquin, but Algonquin can’t stand against the world. She’s the one who’s alone, not you. We want to help you. You’re our city, our home, and we’ll fight to defend you if you’ll just let us.”
The rat stared at him for a long time after that. “I remember you,” she whispered at last. “You lived in the house under the underpasses, and you cleared rats from the sewers. You had a business here. A life, even though you’re just a little dragon.”
Her round eyes dropped. “I’m touched you want to fight for me, but you’re wrong. Even with your help, we’re no match for Algonquin. All the magic I gathered is gone. Without it, I’m no longer bigger than she is.” She looked up at the flooded Pit with a shudder. “When the next wave comes, she’ll drown us all.”
“Then we’ll just have to make sure it doesn’t come,” Marci said, marching up the pile of trash. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Raven has a plan.”
“Raven?” The rat cringed. “Raven hates me.”
“Raven doesn’t hate anyone,” Marci said. “I don’t even think he hates Algonquin. He’s just mad because you took his construct and ran amok. But he was the one who came to the Heart of the World to help me, and who brought me back to this world so I could help you. It’s all part of his plan to stop Algonquin’s threat for good, and that starts with you letting Myron back into his body.”
“What?” The DFZ cried, skittering backward. “NO! He’s the one who chained me!”
“He did,” Marci said. “And he was an idiot. Just like you, though, he only did those stupid, self-destructive things because he was afraid. He thought the rising spirits were going to destroy humanity, and he made some very bad choices because of that. If you give him another shot, though, I think you’ll find he’s had a change of heart. At the very least, you need to release your hold on his body so he can come back from the Heart of the World.”
The rat looked surprised. “He got in?”
“I let him in,” Marci said. “So he wouldn’t die. Now he’s trapped there until you let him out.”
“I don’t want anything to do with him,” the spirit grumbled. “Why can’t Raven do it? He brought you back.”
“Because I was dead,” Marci reminded her. “Myron’s not. At least not yet.”
She glanced back at Julius, who was still carrying Myron’s unconscious body on his back. “However it came to be, you’re his Mortal Spirit. The two of you are intrinsically linked, connected across the two halves of this world. Just as you were the only one who could get him into the Sea of Magic, only you can get him out.” She smiled. “If nothing else, it’ll give you a chance to yell at him.”
That argument seemed to appeal to the DFZ more than any other, but when Julius walked up the pile of trash to carefully lay the unconscious mage in front of her, the spirit looked nervous. “I’m not sure how to—”
“Just reach out to him,” Ghost said. He was still a cat in Marci’s arms, but his eyes were open and bright again, looking at the DFZ with the exasperated patience of an old hand talking down an excitable, foolish novice.
“Reach out, and he’ll grab back,” he said. “Humans are quick learners, and Myron’s probably ready to come home.”
The DFZ didn’t look convinced, but she leaned down, nudging Myron’s body with her pointy nose. For several seconds, nothing happened, and then Myron’s body convulsed, his eyes shooting open as he gasped for breath.
“Myron?” Marci said, waving her hand in front of his wide eyes as he lay panting on the trash. “You back?”
Myron’s answer was to scramble to his feet, waving his arms frantically as if he were under attack. “We have to stop!”
Marci jerked back. “Stop what?”
“Everything,” he said, his eyes haunted as he scrubbed his shaking hands through his graying hair. “The seal, Novalli. I tried to hold it, but Algonquin’s attacks, whatever the DFZ did to blend her domains, you!” He stabbed his finger at Amelia. “You plunged all the dragon fire in the world into the Sea of Magic at one time! What were you thinking?!”
“Easy,” Amelia said, putting up her hands. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything!” he cried, whirling back to Marci. “The seal is breaking. I kept it together as best I could, but with all of you down here swinging magic around like bats, there was nothing I could do. If we don’t calm everything down right now, the seal’s going to break wide open.”
“It’s okay,” Marci said. “We’ll just—”
“It is not okay!” he shouted. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! When you left me up there holding the dam together with my bare hands, you didn’t tell me you were going to shake the tank! That crack is as wide as my arm! It’s—”
“Myron,” she snapped. “We get it. Things are FUBAR. But we can still fix them, because your spirit”—she looked pointedly at the rat behind him—“has already taken her chill pill, so why don’t you chill, too?”
“You’re still not understanding,” the mage said through gritted teeth, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the DFZ, who watched him back warily. “I’m very grateful to the DFZ for deescalating, but the damage is already done. The only reason a thousand years of magic isn’t falling on our heads right now is because I rigged up the world’s most ridiculously temporary barrier, and it’s not going to hold much longer. This is bigger than the DFZ. What you did here has sent tidal waves all through the Sea of Magic. If we can’t reverse them, the whole mountain’s going to crack.”
“What mountain?” Julius asked, thoroughly confused.
“He means the Heart of the World,” Marci explained. “It’s the place where the ancient Merlins put all the magic they sealed off during the drought.”
“Wait,” he said, horrified. “Merlins caused the drought?”
“It’s a long story,” she said. “What matters is that all that magic didn’t just go away. It’s built up behind a seal.”
“And the seal’s cracking,” Julius said, nodding. “I got that part.”
“The crack is the least of our worries,” Myron said angrily. “A crack can be managed, which is exactly what I was doing when you reckless idiots started rocking the boat. We’re on the edge of catastrophic failure. Once my barrier fails—and it will—we’re looking at a total shattering, and not just of the seal. The whole mountain could blow, releasing a thousand years of magic back into the world in a single blast.”
“Oh,” Marci said, pursing her lips. “That’s worse than I thought.”
“So how do we stop it?” Julius asked.
“I told you,” Myron snapped. “We have to calm the Sea of Magic down. I mean press it flat. If we can do that, there’s a chance Marci and I may be able to build some kind of housing around the seal before it reaches critical mass.”
“That’s a lot of ‘chances’ and ‘mays,’” Amelia pointed out. “But you’re forgetting a critical factor in all of this: us.” She turned to Julius. “Who did you say was keeping Algonquin busy?”
“Chelsie and Fredrick,” he answered at once. “And the Qilin.”
Amelia’s eyebrows shot up. “No way! The Golden Emperor’s in on this?” When he nodded, she whistled. “That explains a lot. I can’t believe Bob wrangled the Qilin into his deck. I knew that kid had talent!”
Julius stared at her. “You can’t think this is all Bob’s doing.”
“Who else’s doing would it be?” she asked. “How do you think I got here? Or you? Why do you think you were in the DFZ at the exact right moment to see Marci come back and get involved in this merry venture? Luck?”
Normally, Julius would say no, but with the Qilin... “Maybe?”
Amelia snorted out a ring of smoke. “You need to trust your brother,” she scolded. “We’re all pieces on his board, even me. I’m cool with that, though, because Bob always wins. That’s his superpower. He takes an impossible situation, and he makes it his. And speaking of impossible situations, I’m going to go lend my dear little sister and her golden boyfriend my godly assistance. That should buy you”—she turned her glare on Myron—“enough time to do your part of this job.”
“Weren’t you listening?” Myron cried. “There is no more job! Raven’s plan is a wash. The seal is far more—”
“Raven’s plan is all we have,” Amelia snarled at him. “That seal is nothing compared to what will happen if Algonquin goes to her End, get me?”
Julius didn’t at all, but whatever she’d said was enough to make Myron go pale. He was still opening and closing his mouth when the pile of trash beneath them began to shake.
“It’s not me,” the DFZ said when everyone looked at her. “I’m not—”
She didn’t get to finish, because at that moment, one of the flattened cars flew up off the ground like it had been launched, sailing into the dark to land with a distant splash. The water was still falling when Raven flew out of the hole where the car had been, and behind him was…Julius wasn’t sure, actually.
It looked like a modern art statue made from spare bits of metal bound together with silver ribbon. Aside from having the right number of arms and legs, though, the only part of it that actually looked human was its head, which was that of a stern, middle-aged, dark-skinned woman, her brows furrowed in grim determination as she maneuvered her scrap body out of the muck.
“Sorry for the delay,” Raven said cheerfully. “I had to fix my favorite toy soldier.”
“Are you sure you succeeded?” Amelia said, looking the amalgam up and down. “She looks like a bunch of trash tied together.”
“I’m a scavenger,” Raven said defensively. “I made do with what I had. But that’s the lovely thing about my Phoenix: she may not look pretty, but she always rises from her ashes.”
“Sorry for being out of service,” General Jackson said, her voice creaking and rusty but unmistakably human. “I’m obviously not field ready yet, but Raven’s been filling me in, and when we heard you were planning to go fight Algonquin, we had to come out ahead of schedule.”
“Got jealous, did you?” Amelia asked, wiggling her eyebrows. “You’re welcome to come with.”
“You’re not going at all,” Raven said firmly.
“What?”
“He’s not saying you can’t fight her,” Emily explained patiently. “But Raven’s plan requires Algonquin to think she’s won, which will be difficult if there’s a brand-new hybrid Spirit of Dragons blasting fire at her.”
Amelia’s face fell. “I suppose if you put it that way.”
“There’s no other way to put it,” the general said, turning to Myron. “Have you convinced the DFZ to do her part yet?”
“Not yet,” he said. “I was just about to…that is…” He trailed off, looking at her in helpless bewilderment. “Are you not mad at me, Emily?”
“Mad at you?” she asked, crossing her makeshift arms over her makeshift chest. “You abused your position, sided with the enemy, ripped my body apart, and used it to launch yourself to power. Now I’m stuck in this rusted-out hodgepodge made from whatever bits Raven could scavenge out of the Pit. I’m furious at you, Myron, but we don’t have time for that now. We’re on a mission here, people.”
“What mission are we on?” Julius said, utterly lost yet again as he turned back to Marci. “How many people did you bring with you back from the dead?”
“It was pretty busy,” Marci said. “But I’m glad you asked about the mission.”
She turned to face the DFZ, who’d been quietly trying to slink off into the dark. “Julius was right when he said you weren’t alone. We’re all here to fight against Algonquin, but what you don’t know yet is that Algonquin does have an ally. A terrible one.”
“Not so free with that information, if you please,” Raven said quickly, flapping his wings. “Remember what I said about this being a very big secret for Merlins only?”
Marci rolled her eyes. “It’s a little late for that. If Julius is putting his neck out for this, he deserves to know why, and the DFZ needs to know. She’s kind of integral to this whole thing.”
“Why me?” the DFZ squeaked, glaring at Myron. “I’m only here because he and Algonquin yanked me up.”
“Exactly my point,” Marci said, turning back to her. “You’re not a natural Mortal Spirit. You were engineered by Algonquin specifically so she could get her hands on the first Merlin and gain control of the magic. She’s terrified of you and Ghost and all the other Mortal Spirits because you’re bigger than her, and she hates humans because we cut off her magic and sent her to sleep. To be fair, those are both valid. Mortal Spirits are dangerous, and the ancient mages did screw her over. But rather than deal with that herself, Algonquin brought in outside help.”
“What do you mean ‘outside help?’” Julius asked nervously. “What’s outside for a spirit?”
“She’s talking about the Leviathan,” the DFZ said, her voice shaking. “I knew he wasn’t a spirit.”
“He’s not anything we know,” Marci said. “He’s not part of this world at all. He’s an extra-planar being called a Nameless End, and though he answered Algonquin’s cry, he’s not here to help. He’s here to take advantage of her.”
“It didn’t help that she made herself an easy target,” Raven said bitterly. “Algonquin’s so obsessed with the wrongs that have been done to her that she’d rather destroy the world than accept them.” He looked pointedly at the DFZ. “I imagine you can sympathize with that.”
The DFZ dug her claws in stubbornly. “I was just trying to protect myself.”
“So is she,” Raven said. “In her own fashion. But that’s actually good for us. So long as Algonquin has hope, she’ll keep fighting, and as destructive as that is, it’s preferable to the alternative.”
Julius winced. “What’s worse than fighting Algonquin?”
“What happens when she gives up,” Marci said quietly.
“Nameless Ends survive by eating planes,” Amelia said. “Normally, this happens after the plane collapses, but it seems the Leviathan convinced Algonquin to let him in early, and the only reason he hasn’t eaten everything already is because he’s here on a probationary basis.”
“What does that mean?” Julius asked.
“Nameless Ends are extra-planar powers,” Amelia explained. “As in outside. Since our plane is healthy, that means he can’t cross the planar barrier unless someone with power on the inside—like, say, a giant lake spirit—gives him an in. It’s kind of like what I did for dragons when I became their spirit. We could live here, but we weren’t actually part of the native magic until I blended my fire with the magic in the vessel I took over to become a spirit. Now we have an anchor, a magical connection. If the Leviathan wants to come all the way inside, he’s going to need the same. That’s why he’s playing Algonquin. If he can get her to surrender her magic to him, that’s his way in. Algonquin hasn’t given in to him yet because she’s still hoping to salvage the situation, but if she loses that hope—”
“She’ll let the monster run rampant,” the DFZ growled, lip curling to show her pointed teeth. “Prideful lake.”
“So how do we stop her?” Julius asked, looking at Raven. “Everyone keeps saying you have a plan.”
“A very clever one,” Raven assured him. “We—”
“We trick her into thinking she’s won,” Marci said excitedly. “If she thinks she’s got control of the magic, she’ll have no reason to keep the Leviathan around. In order to convince her of that, though, we need to prove she’s got control of the Heart of the World, which means sending her spirit/Merlin pair in to break the news.”
Julius wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but the DFZ jumped like Marci had taken a swing at her. “No.”
“It’s only—”
“No!” the spirit screeched, her beady eyes staring at Myron in fear and rage. “He chained me! Bound me! I am not accepting him as my mage.”
“Assuming the Merlin Gate would let him in even if you did,” Amelia said with a snort. “What?” she added at Marci’s angry glare. “Someone had to say it.”
“Amelia,” Marci said through clenched teeth. “You’re not helping.”
“But she is right,” Myron said, turning to face the DFZ, who took another step back. “I’m sorry.”
“Little late for that,” the rat hissed. “You let me be born into chains.”
“I did you great wrong,” he agreed. “You and many others, but I was only trying to do what I thought was best for everyone. I was…”
He trailed off with a sigh. “I was afraid,” he said at last. “In my work for the UN, I saw human cruelty in all its terrible forms. I spent my whole life believing that Mortal Spirits would be our salvation. That they were the good and righteous forces in us that would finally elevate humanity to an equal playing field with dragons and spirits. That was my dream, but after the Empty Wind, after I saw Algonquin’s pool of blood, I felt like a fool. Then, later, when Algonquin told me the real reason the magic had vanished was because the Merlins had bound it to banish the monsters that were humanity’s uncontrollable gods, it fit my own experiences too well for me to disbelieve her. That was when I decided to seal the magic away again forever. That’s why I used you. I wanted to save humanity from itself.”
The DFZ glowered at him. “But?”
“There is no but,” Myron said. “Humanity is foolish, selfish, fearful, and violent, and our spirits reflect that. If I’ve learned anything from all of this, it’s that you truly are Mortal Spirits. You are us, and I am sorrier for that than anything.”
Marci put her hand over her face. “Myron,” she groaned. “This isn’t useful.”
“It’s not meant to be,” he said angrily. “I’m telling her the truth. I watched everything that happened here from the Heart of the World. I saw the DFZ’s rage, and I know it wasn’t only from the spirits Algonquin used to fill her. My anger was in there, too. I was also ready to destroy myself and all of human magic if it meant defeating Algonquin and everything like her. I still think it would be a worthy sacrifice to give my life to make a safer world for future generations. That’s why I joined the UN, why I’ve done everything that I’ve done. The only difference now is that I no longer see Mortal Spirits as an enemy to be defeated.”
He looked at Marci. “You were right, Novalli. They are us, and that’s better reason than any to lock the magic away again forever. It’s the only way to make sure they don’t suffer as we do. If you think about it, all Mortal Spirits are is magic that we’ve dragged down to our level. The only reason I’m here doing this instead of dragging you back to the Heart of the World to banish all spirits forever is because that doesn’t work. We can’t stop the magic. It just keeps flowing no matter what we do. Even if we could make another seal, it would just be this problem all over again in another thousand years.”
“That’s what I said,” Marci grumbled.
“And I’m admitting you were right,” Myron snapped. “I don’t like it, but anyone who can’t change his mind in the face of evidence is an irrational fool, and for all my other flaws, I’ve never been one of those.”
Marci stared at him in wonder, but before she could follow up, the DFZ beat her to it.
“So what are you going to do?” the spirit asked warily. “Just because you’ve given up trying to block the magic doesn’t mean the rest is forgiven. Good intentions don’t excuse what you did to me. Why shouldn’t I cut you loose?”
“Because we need each other,” Myron said sternly. “I thought cutting off the magic was the silver-bullet solution to all our problems, which was why I was willing to do such terrible things to get it. I’m sorry for that, and I don’t expect you to forgive me, but that doesn’t mean I’ve quit. I’m still in this for the future of humanity, only now, instead of a single simple solution, we have to do things the hard way. We have to change, fight humanity’s inclination toward cruelty and violence spirit by spirit, mage by mage. That’s not a task I can accomplish in my lifetime. I’m not confident it can be accomplished at all. But we will absolutely fail if Algonquin gives the Leviathan what he wants.”
He held out his hand. “I’m not asking for your forgiveness. All I want is for you to help me stop this disaster. Let me be your Merlin long enough to fool Algonquin, and I promise, I will set you free immediately after.”
“Set her free?” Ghost said, incredulous. “There is no setting free. The Merlin bond is for life.”
“Then I’ll end mine,” Myron said without missing a beat. “I’ve staked my life on far less. If I have to die to help humanity avoid this disaster, I’ll count it cheaply bought, but I will not stand by and do nothing.” He thrust his hand at the DFZ. “Let me be your Merlin, and I swear, I will not live to see you regret it.”
That was a terrifying way to put it, but to Julius’s amazement, the DFZ was smiling. She shifted next, her rat-shape collapsing into her human body, who was staring at Myron with a new gleam in her orange eyes.
“You’re crazy,” she said. “And a pompous jerk. But I’ve always been a city of people who don’t take no for an answer. Dreamers, too.” She tilted her head at him. “Being Merlin was always your dream, wasn’t it?”
“My greatest ambition.”
The DFZ grinned, and then she grabbed Myron’s hand. “I accept,” she said, squeezing his fingers until he winced. “If only to see how you’ll try to cheat your way out of death.”
“That’s her department,” Myron said, tilting his head at Marci, though his attempts to play it cool did nothing to hide his obvious relief. “Shall we go try the door again? With less breaking, this time?”
The spirit’s answer was to jerk him forward, and then the two of them vanished down an open manhole that definitely hadn’t been there a second ago. It vanished a second later, leaving Myron’s body lying facedown on the piled trash, empty again.
“That can’t be healthy,” Amelia said.
“Myron’s never been one to let physical limitations get in his way,” General Jackson replied, walking over to flip Myron onto his side so he could breathe more easily. “Do you think he’ll survive?”
“You mean, ‘Will he make it through the Merlin Gate?’” Marci shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m still not sure what logic governs the gate’s decision, but I’d say he’s got a much better chance this time around. Other than having a Mortal Spirit, the only real requirement for being a Merlin is ‘be a champion of humanity.’ You don’t have to be a nice person or even a good one. You just have to be willing to protect humankind. All of it, including our spirits. I think Myron’s got that now. We’ll just have to hope the Heart of the World feels the same.”
“Oh, goody,” Raven said with a sigh. “Our survival depends on a vetting program written by the same humans who thought cutting off the magic was a great idea.”
“It’s your plan,” Marci reminded him. “And speaking of, we’d better get into some kind of position, because if this is going to work, it’ll work fast.”
“So what happens next?” Julius asked as Marci climbed onto his back.
Raven fluffed his feathers. “For us? Hiding. This whole thing depends on making Algonquin believe Myron has the Heart of the World under his sole control, and there’s no chance of that if she spies Little-Miss-Miracle-Merlin-Back-From-The-Dead running around.” He poked his beak at Marci. “I say we all get somewhere high and dry and watch the show.”
“What about my family?” Julius said worriedly. “They’re still fighting Algonquin, or at least they were.”
“Then you’d better tell them to stop,” Raven croaked. “The calmer she is when Myron talks to her, the better. We want her cocky and confident, not in a dragon-induced rage.”
That was a good point, but Julius still hesitated. He needed to warn Chelsie, but that meant leaving Marci behind, and he didn’t think he’d ever be able to do that again. If he didn’t go, though, he’d leave his family in trouble, which he absolutely couldn’t do, especially since they’d flown into that trouble for him. He was warring back and forth between these two priorities when Amelia’s hand landed on his wing.
“Go,” she said gently. “I’ll keep an eye on Marci. You go get our sister out of danger. Bob didn’t reunite her with her lost love just so she could get herself killed.”
Julius’s heart clenched. “You really think that’s what Bob was doing?”
Amelia flashed him a smile. “I was never privy to that part of the plan since it happened after my death, so I can’t say for sure, but it fits his style. He might run you over a few times to get there, but Bob’s endgame is always worth playing. Trust me, he’s a good kid.”
Julius didn’t see how anyone who let their sister and her children suffer for six hundred years just to line up a coincidence qualified as a “good kid,” but Amelia’s words were still like water in the desert. All this time, through all the evidence to the contrary, he’d wanted so hard for Bob to be exactly what she said. He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to accept someone who thought it was okay to run over you so long as he made it up to you later, but just knowing Bob had killed Amelia at her behest in the pursuit of greater power was a lot better than what he’d thought for the last twenty-four hours.
It wasn’t perfect, but Julius was so tired of losing people, he was more than ready to take it. Especially since, if he could just keep Chelsie safe now, he wouldn’t actually have lost anyone at all.
“I’ll go get her,” he said, steeling his nerves.
“Atta boy,” Amelia said, helping Marci down off his back again. “Round ’em up and get to a safe distance. We’ll take it from here.”
Julius nodded, but his attention was already back on Marci. “Be safe.”
“I’ll be fine,” she promised. “I’m a Merlin now, and I’m with Amelia and Raven and everyone else. What could happen?”
“You were with a lot of powerful people the first time you died, too,” Julius said. “Including me, and I…I can’t take that again, Marci. I’m sure you can’t, either, but I just…”
He leaned down, resting his head against hers. “Please be safe.”
She smiled warmly at him, rising up on her tiptoes to press a kiss against the short feathers of his nose. “I will,” she whispered. “Now go save your sister.”
He pulled away reluctantly, but as he was spreading his wings to take off, Raven flew in front of him. “One more thing,” the spirit said quickly. “Don’t breathe any fire.”
Julius hadn’t been planning to, but that didn’t make the warning less alarming. “Why not?”
“Because Myron wasn’t wrong. I don’t even need to go back to the Heart of the World to know the seal protecting us from a thousand years of magic under high pressure is hanging by a thread. This wouldn’t normally be a problem for you since dragons make their own magic, but now that you’ve got a spirit of your own, you’re in the drink with the rest of us, and that has consequences.”
He flapped in Julius’s face. “This is a team effort now, so don’t breathe any fire, don’t let anyone else breathe any fire, and whatever you do, do not let the Qilin drop another one of his giant luck bombs. Good or bad, they’re horribly disruptive, and I don’t know if we can take one now that Amelia’s sunk all of you into the Sea of Magic.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Julius said nervously. “But I don’t know how I’m going to stop—”
“Don’t think,” the bird said, giving him a push with his claws. “Just do. Now shoo. We don’t have much time left.”
Feeling more nervous than ever, Julius cast one final worried look at Marci and took off, flying as quietly as he could out of the Pit, through the holes in the broken Skyway, and into the smoke of the burning city.