Nice Dragons Finish Last

Chapter 7

“She’s surprisingly hot,” Justin went on, nodding in approval. “Good job, Julius. Didn’t know you had it in you.”

Julius flashed Marci an apologetic look before grabbing his brother and yanking him down with a strength he’d never known he had. “She’s not my human,” he whispered frantically. “She’s a human, and she’s helping me. She also doesn’t know what we are.”

Any sane dragon would have gotten the hint after that and shut up. Justin, of course, paid no attention whatsoever.

He pushed out of Julius’s hold and walked down the alley, coming to a stop in front of Marci with his legs apart and his hands on his hips like a draconic Conan the Barbarian. “You, girl,” he said. “What’s your name?”

Marci shot a nervous glance at Julius, which he couldn’t return thanks to the palm he was currently slapping against his forehead. “Um, I’m Marci Novalli.”

Justin nodded like this was acceptable and stuck out his hand. “Justin, Knight of the Mountain and Fifth Blade of Bethesda. You know, you don’t look half bad for a human.”

“Thanks? I think?” Marci said, shaking Justin’s offered hand like it was an unexploded land mine. “I’m guessing you’re Julius’s brother?”

“His older brother,” Justin said pointedly.

“By two minutes,” Julius snapped, cutting between them before this situation could finish going from bad to worse and move on to catastrophic. “Sorry, Marci, can I borrow Justin for a sec?”

She backed off at once, putting her hands up with clear relief. “All yours. Sorry I interrupted. I’m just going to go back to the car. You guys reconnect or whatever.”

Justin watched her walk away with an appreciative ogle at her backside. “You have unexpectedly good taste,” he said, turning back to Julius. “But do you really have time to be playing around with humans? Mother’s going to eat you soon if you don’t start showing some initiative.”

“I’m working on it,” Julius said. “And Marci is an integral part of that, which is why you need to shut up before you get her killed.”

“What are you so worked up about? Lots of dragons have humans. Just keep her on a tight leash and you’ll be fine.”

Julius closed his eyes, wishing he could close his ears. This was exactly why his brother couldn’t stay. Five minutes with him and Marci would have to be stupid not to guess the truth. Of course, given five minutes, Justin would probably manage to insult her so badly she’d be ready to turn them both in to Algonquin for the bounty. Julius half wanted to turn Justin in himself already, but while he wasn’t feeling it at the moment, Justin was usually one of the few brothers he actually liked, which was why he decided to nip this in the bud as nicely as possible.

“Listen, Justin,” he said in a calm, measured voice. “I really do appreciate you coming all this way to support me. It means a lot, but this isn’t your kind of operation. I’m doing a delicate job for Ian, and—”

“What job?”

It would be more work to put Justin off than to tell him, so Julius quickly explained the situation with Svena and Katya, going to the shaman party, and how he’d come to be standing in front an empty commuter deck in the middle of the night.

“So let me get this straight,” Justin said when he’d finished. “A human gave you a false address, and you let him get away with it?”

“It’s not like that,” Julius said quickly. “I don’t think Lark did it on purpose. Katya probably just gave him a dummy address to keep people off her trail. She is on the run.”

“No excuse,” his brother growled, popping his knuckles. “He lied to us, he has to pay. I say we go back there and squeeze him until something useful pops out.”

“I’m not doing that!”

Justin gave him a disgusted look. “Why? Because it’s not nice?”

“Because it would be pointless,” Julius said. “Look, if Lark was trying to trick me, he’s long gone by now, and if he wasn’t, then he doesn’t know anything more than he’s already said. Either way, hunting him down isn’t going to help. We don’t need violence, we need a professional who knows what they’re doing. There are guys who make their living tracking people who don’t want to be found. I know one, actually.”

“That’s convenient,” Justin said. “What’s his clan?”

“He’s not in a clan. He’s human, one of my old gaming buddies.”

Justin rolled his eyes. “What is it with you and humans?”

“I like humans,” Julius reminded him. “Anyway, he might be able to get us a lead on Katya using the picture Lark gave me. I just need to get some money together for his fee and—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Justin said, putting up his hands. “You’re going to pay him?”

Julius blinked. “Of course. He’s a professional.”

“He’s a human,” his brother snapped. “Humans serve us. Get that through your skull. You’re a Heartstriker, a dragon, an ancient and fearsome predator. You should be making people fall at your feet for the honor of doing your bidding, not paying them, and definitely not letting them lie to you without repercussions.” He turned away with a huff that sent a thin line of black smoke curling from between his lips. “This is exactly why Mother kicked you out, you know.”

“Well, what else am I supposed to do?” Julius cried. “Fly around bellowing for Katya to come out and fight me?”

“You could go back to that party and start shaking down humans,” Justin said. “She’s supposed to be with an alligator shaman, right? Someone there knows him, so stop being a pushover and go make them talk.”

Julius paused. Going after the alligator shaman wasn’t such a bad idea, actually. Still. “I’m not going to interrogate a bunch of drunk mages,” he growled. “No one’s going to be intimidated by a sealed dragon any—”

A loud, pained squeal shot through the air, making both brothers jump. Justin recovered immediately, but Julius was still reeling when he whirled around to see Marci standing beside her car. Her right arm was out in front of her, like she’d just finished throwing an underhanded pitch, and the first bracelet on her wrist was glowing like a spotlight in the dark. That was all Julius caught before he started to run.

He got halfway across the street before he remembered to drop his speed to a believably human rate. He still made it to Marci’s side in seconds, hands up and ready to take on whatever it was they were fighting. But there were no goons waiting in the shadows when he reached her, no armed thugs threatening to attack. Instead, Marci jogged over to the curb and bent down to grab something black, furry, and unmoving out of the storm drain.

“What is that?”

The sharp question made him jump, and Julius looked up to see Justin standing right beside him. Naturally, he wasn’t winded at all from the run, though he did look a little disgusted by the thing in Marci’s hand. For once, the brothers were in agreement. From what Julius could make out, it looked like Marci was holding a rat the size of a terrier, but no rat he’d ever seen had fangs like that. Or five beady eyes, all of which were still twitching as Marci hoisted the thing aloft like a prize fish.

“It’s a crater vole,” she announced proudly. “I’ve never seen one this big!”

Julius recoiled in horror. “And you’re touching it? I thought they were poisonous.”

“Oh, very,” Marci said. “Why do you think I roasted it first? Well, microwaved, to be precise.” She nodded to the first bracelet on her wrist, a blue plastic ring which was still steaming slightly. “The Thaumaturgical code of safety and ethics forbids the use of magical combustion in urban environments, which eliminates most combat fire spells. So I created a variation on the college staple ‘No-Microwave Microwave’ spell that does basically the same thing, only without the actual fire part.”

Julius gaped at her. “Why?”

“Because the microwave spell is horribly underutilized as a mere cooking charm,” she replied authoritatively. “As you see, the weaponization possibilities of a spell that instantly boils water particles inside organic matter are potentially—”

“No, no, I understand that part,” he said. “I meant, why did you randomly kill a crater vole?”

Marci blinked at him. “For the bounty, of course. Crater voles are an invasive, non-native species. DFZ Animal Control pays three dollars for every one you bring in.”

“Hold up,” Justin said, stabbing his finger at the smoking mutant rat in her hands. “You killed that thing for three dollars?”

“Hey, three dollars is three dollars,” Marci said, hefting the heavy carcass as she walked back to her car.

Justin stomped after her. “But three dollars isn’t even worth the drive to turn it in. Why not go after the bigger bounties?”

“Because I don’t want to die,” she answered, grabbing a trash bag out of her trunk and shoving the dead vole inside. “And maybe three dollars isn’t worth it to you, but when you’re broke, you can’t afford to leave money just waddling around on the side of the road.”

Julius heard the rumble of his brother’s reply, but he wasn’t actually paying attention to the argument anymore. He was too distracted by the storm drain Marci had yanked the crater vole out of. Specifically, he was staring at the deep cuts in pavement around the drain’s metal grate.

From across the street, you couldn’t see them at all. Standing directly over the storm drain, however, the grooves were impossible to miss, and obviously man-made. This was no natural cracking. Someone had deliberately cut a thin line around the edge of the drainage grate with a cement saw. It wasn’t until he’d squatted down for a better look, though, that Julius understood why.

“Marci,” he called. “Can you come over here, please?”

He heard a trunk slam, and then the loud slap of Marci’s boots as she stomped over. “I can’t believe that jerk is related to you. And where does he get off wearing a sword? What century does he think this is?”

Julius wasn’t touching that question with a ten foot pole, so he changed the subject instead, pointing down at the cut in the pavement and the thin copper strip covered with etched markings he’d spotted at the bottom. “Is that a ward?”

Tirade forgotten, Marci squatted down beside him, squinting through what Julius suddenly realized was probably very bad light for a human. “I think it is,” she said. “But it’s a really weird one.”

“A shaman ward?” he prompted, holding his breath.

She nodded. “Without question. No Thaumaturge would be caught dead putting down notation that sloppy.”

He could have hugged her. “This is it!”

She gave him a strange look. “This is what?”

“Lark didn’t give me the wrong address,” he said, pointing at the storm drain, which was located directly in front of the parking deck, right where Lark’s address said it would be. “They’re not in the Underground, they’re underground. The shamans we’re looking for are in the sewers! Right here!”

Now that he said it, it all made perfect sense. Where else would an alligator shaman live in a city like this? Lark had even said they were living in the pipes. If that was right, then maybe Katya was here. Maybe he wasn’t dead after all!

“Why are we staring at a drain?”

Julius jumped at the sound of Justin’s voice, but even that couldn’t bring down his newfound good mood. “Justin, look!” he said, hopping to his feet. “We found them!”

Justin gave the old grate a distasteful look. “The crater voles?”

“No, the shamans. The people we’re looking for.” He moved closer, dropping his voice to a whisper only dragon ears could hear. “The ones Katya’s hiding with.”

Justin’s eyebrows shot up. “That was easy,” he said, breaking into a grin. “How do you want to do this?”

Something about the way he said that made Julius decidedly nervous. “What do you mean?”

Justin heaved an enormous sigh and wrapped his arm around Julius’s neck, dragging him away from Marci. Normally, Julius would have been grateful for his brother’s unusual thoughtfulness in not blurting things out where she could hear. Right now, though, he was too busy trying not to choke to pay proper attention.

“What are you doing?” he gasped when his brother finally released him.

“Keeping you from screwing up,” Justin snapped. “You can’t go in the front door. That’s where all the traps are.”

Julius stared at his brother in astonishment. “You’re worried about traps?”

“No, but I’m not the one who’s sealed, am I?” He crossed his massive arms, looking Julius up and down. “This isn’t some mortal you’re chasing, idiot. You can’t just show up at a dragon’s stronghold and expect to negotiate like equals. She’s not going to listen to a thing you say while she’s in her lair, surrounded by her troops.”

If this had been a dragoness like Svena, or any of their own sisters, that would have been a good point, but Julius didn’t think his brother had the right of it this time. “I don’t think it’s like that,” he said. “We’re not assaulting the Three Sister’s ice palace. The humans down there probably don’t even know Katya’s a dragon.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s not going to act like one,” Justin said, glaring over his shoulder at Marci, who’d been steadily edging closer to them in a not-so-subtle attempt to eavesdrop. When she got the hint and backed off again, he continued. “Look, it’s very simple. All we have to do is sneak in and take out her humans before she knows what’s up. Then, while she’s reeling, we take her down. Once we’ve got our boots on her neck, she’ll do whatever we want.”

Julius suddenly felt queasy. It wasn’t that he thought Justin’s plan wouldn’t work, but taking out a commune full of the sort of mages who hung out with Lark felt…wrong. And then there was Katya herself, who was on the run from her clan, which was to say, ruthless hunters who thought like Justin. Two dragons busting into her safe haven to put their boots on her neck would terrify her, and no one fought harder than a cornered, terrified dragon. That would be a real shame, too, because given the humans she’d chosen to hang out with, Julius had the feeling Katya wasn’t a fighter. He had no idea how to explain all that to Justin in a way his brother would understand, though, so he tried another approach.

“I don’t think we need to do that,” he said, keeping his voice reasonable, rational, and completely without challenge. “The whole reason Ian picked me for this job was precisely because I wasn’t someone Katya would consider a threat. If we go in guns blazing—”

“We don’t have guns.”

Julius sighed. “Fine, if we go in like dragons, she’s just going to bolt, and then we’ll have to hunt her down all over again. But if we go in nicely and give her the chance to see us as allies instead of enemies, we might not have to fight at all.”

Justin stared at him. “Really? That’s your plan? Talking?”

Not knowing how else to answer, Julius nodded, and his brother threw back his head with a hiss.

“You know, Julius, this is your entire problem. You waste all your time thinking up ways not to fight instead of ways to win. Let’s say Katya does agree to chit-chat. It isn’t like she’s going to just change her mind and go back to her family because you ask. What were you going to do then, genius? Knock her on the head and wave goodbye to her mages on your way out?”

Julius had to fold his fingers in a fist to keep them from going to the chain in his pocket. That had been the plan, more or less, but hearing Justin spell it out like that, especially after his own arguments for negotiation, made him feel like a big fat hypocrite. His brother must have seen it, too, because Justin went straight for the kill.

“I didn’t come all the way over here to help you play nice,” he growled. “If this job was actually about getting the Three Sisters’ runaway back, they would have sent someone competent. But they didn’t, because it isn’t. It’s a test. A challenge to see if there’s actually a dragon under that scrawny frame of yours, and I’m here to make sure you don’t screw it up.”

Julius swallowed. “I know that. But I’m supposed to do what Ian—”

“Screw Ian,” Justin snapped. “He’s using you. So forget him, and forget his stupid plan. You don’t show Mother how great a dragon you can be by exploiting the fact that no one thinks you’re a threat. You need to be a threat, so here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to walk down the street to the next storm drain over and go in from there. We’ll find a way into Katya’s hiding place from the side, where her defenses aren’t as strong. Once we’re in, we’ll smash her humans before they know what’s up and force her to submit. When it’s over, Ian will have his lost dragon back, the Three Sisters will be reminded that Heartstrikers are not tools, and you’ll come out looking like a dragon to be feared at last. Trust me, Mother will love it.”

Julius had no doubt that Bethesda would, in fact, adore such a blatant show of ruthless force. There was a reason Justin was one of her favorites. Julius, on the other hand, didn’t like it at all. “I don’t think—”

“I don’t care,” Justin said. “It was your stupid way of thinking that got you into this mess in the first place. My way is going to get you out. Do you want your wings back or not?”

Julius closed his eyes with a silent curse. This whole thing felt like it was spinning out of control. Much as he hated to admit it, though, Justin did have a point, and it wasn’t like Svena’s plan to trick and chain her sister was any better. Seeing that, why not trade a distasteful plan that used him like a tool for one that least made him look fearsome and ruthless in his mother’s eyes? Other than the part where he didn’t particularly want to be fearsome or ruthless, or kill a bunch of human mages who probably had no idea that the woman they were protecting was actually a dragon, or—

“You’re taking way too long to think about this,” Justin said, slapping him on the back hard enough to bruise. “Come on, let’s go.”

He walked away before Julius could protest, marching back to the car where Marci, who’d apparently given up trying to overhear, was attempting to stuff a few more things into her already massively over-packed shoulder bag. Julius followed a second later, doing his best to reason away his rapidly ballooning sense of impending doom.

So Justin had bulled him into doing something he didn’t want to do. What else was new? His brother meant well, and he really did seem to be genuinely trying to help, which was more than Julius could say for the rest of his family. The fact that his plan didn’t feel right didn’t mean a thing. Nothing properly draconic ever felt right to Julius. But however bad Justin’s plan to make him look like a ruthless dragon seemed, it couldn’t possibly be worse than getting eaten by your mother for not being one, right?

That logic sounded solid in his head, but Julius still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was about to do something he’d regret. A feeling that only got worse when Justin started jogging down the street toward the next closest storm drain, yelling over his shoulder for them to get a move on.

“I want it stated,” Marci said, grasping her bag tight as she stared down the gaping hole beneath the storm drain’s cover, “just for the record, that this is a terrible idea.”

“Duly noted,” Julius muttered, peering into the dark in an attempt to see the water he could hear rushing below them.

“I mean it,” she went on. “I don’t care what your idiot brother says. Going into the DFZ sewers is a stupid, reckless, horribly dangerous thing to do under any circumstances, but going down at night is just suicidal. Haven’t you ever watched Sewer Hunters: DFZ?”

Julius hadn’t, but he could guess well enough. “Let’s just get this over with quickly.”

“Why’d you let him talk you into this, anyway? This is your job, not his.”

Julius didn’t know how to reply to that in a way Marci could understand. He’s bigger than me, or he’s what I’m supposed to be weren’t explanations that would fly with a human. In the end, he settled for a half truth. “It’s just easier to go along when he gets like this. Justin’s very stubborn.”

“I’m stubborn,” Marci said with a snort. “He’s a runaway freight train.”

“We’ll be fine,” Julius insisted, albeit with more confidence than he felt. “You’re a great mage, and Justin’s tougher than he looks. Also, we’re not going into the sewers. We’re going into the storm water system, which should be pretty clean thanks to all of Algonquin’s water regulations. And anyway, it’s not like we have to go far.” He nodded back toward the warded storm drain, only half a block away. “Surely we can survive walking a hundred feet underground.”

“Well, I still think it’s a stupid risk,” Marci said. “There’s a reason all the DFZ’s sewer work is done by automated drones. Magic rises from the ground, and thanks to Algonquin, Detroit’s ground has more of it any other city on the planet. Not all of that power is friendly. Why else do you think everyone who can afford to lives up on the skyways?”

Julius could think of several reasons, but he was tired of arguing. “You don’t have to come with us if you don’t want to.”

“No way,” she said, shaking her head. “I said I’d stick with you and I will. I just want to get all this out now so I can say ‘I told you so’ later when we get eaten by a Balrog.”

Despite everything that had happened, Julius couldn’t help smiling at that. “I can’t believe you know what a Balrog is.”

She gave him an arch look. “Who doesn’t? I mean, really.”

“A ball-what?”

Julius and Marci both turned to see Justin standing behind them, his hand resting casually on the hilt of his sword. “If you nerds are done yakking, can we get a move on? I’ve got other things to do tonight.”

Marci’s face pulled into a snarl, but before she could rip into Justin as she so clearly wanted to, the dragon jumped into the storm drain and vanished. A few seconds later, a loud splash echoed up the pipe as he hit the water below.

“Drop’s only about twelve feet,” he called. “Hop on down.”

By this point, the look on Marci’s face had gone from deadly to deathly. “I can’t hop that.”

“Neither can I,” Julius said, pointing at the metal ladder that was bolted to the side of the drain pipe. “There.”

The sight of the slimy rungs only made Marci’s eyes go wider, and for a second, Julius was sure she was going to bolt. Instead, she took a deep breath of the stale, Underground air and sat down on the drain’s edge, slowly feeling out the ladder with her feet. Too slowly for Justin, apparently.

“Get a move on, woman!” he bellowed up the pipe.

“I’ll move when I’m ready!” she bellowed back, clutching the ladder for dear life.

“I’m very sorry about him,” Julius said quickly. “He doesn’t mean anything by it. My brother’s just a jerk sometimes.”

“Only sometimes?” Marci grumbled, glaring down the pipe at Justin’s head like she wanted to drop something heavy on it.

In the end, though, they made it down, landing safely in a cement spillway that was much larger than Julius had expected. The ceiling was high enough that even Justin could stand up straight, and since it was the end of summer, the water flow was barely more than a trickle, leaving plenty of dry space on the sides to walk. But despite the roomy proportions and the Lady of the Lakes’ strict water regulations, it was still a storm drain. The runoff water might have been relatively cleaner than in other cities, but it still stank, and every surface was covered in bugs and black slime mold glistening wetly in the light of the LED flashlight Marci had pulled out of her bag.

“Lovely,” she said, using the light to send the bugs skittering before training the beam on Justin’s back, already twenty feet ahead of them down the tunnel. “Does that man even know the meaning of the word patience?”

“If he does, I’ve never seen it,” Julius said, catching Marci when her foot slipped on the spillway’s slick floor. She flashed him a quick smile that made him feel slightly less guilty about getting her involved in all this and started carefully making her way after Justin.

“You know,” she said, stepping high over a puddle where the trickle of water had caught and pooled on a knot of trash, “there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to get into whatever this place is from down here. If I was living in the storm water system, I’d consider the below-ground entrances much more dangerous than the street level and ward them accordingly, if I didn’t just brick them over.”

Julius nudged a rat skeleton out of their way. “Are the things down here really that bad?”

“Not all of them,” Marci replied. “But think of it like this. The DFZ is full of magic, and magic attracts magical creatures. That wouldn’t be so bad if the DFZ Underground wasn’t also one of the world’s densest human populations, but it is, which means all those magical animals are competing with people for space. Usually, this is where the government would step in and balance things out, but this is the Detroit Free Zone. Animal control is an outsourced, free market system, just like everything else.”

“You mean the bounties?”

She nodded. “People pay the Animal Control office, and they pay freelancers per head—small amounts for minor annoyances, and big pay outs for the really dangerous stuff. It’s not actually a bad system most of the time, but the whole thing breaks down when you get into areas where the cost and trouble of killing the animal is more than the price you get for its head.”

“I see,” Julius said. “So the hunters don’t come down here because it’s too much risk for the reward, and as a result, the pipes have become a safe haven for magical nuisance animals.”

“Bingo. It’s like roaches running under your fridge because they don’t want get stepped on. Only these roaches are enormous, man-eating, and sometimes fire-breathing.”

He grimaced. “What a lovely picture.”

“Welcome to the DFZ!” Marci said with a laugh, hopping over a particularly smelly pile of washed up plastic bags.

Julius was digging out his phone to look for pictures of the sort of stuff they could expect down here when the slime-coated pipe they’d been following suddenly merged into a much larger spillway that was actually filled with water. Fortunately, some long-dead contractor had thought to build a metal walkway into the wall above the waterline. Justin was already on it, perched on the edge of the rusting metal like a giant, overly aggressive bird. He pulled Marci up one-handed when she came into arm’s reach, and then did the same for Julius, plucking him off the ground as easily as he’d pull a weed.

“We have a problem,” he announced once they were both safely above the water. “The mages we’re after should be straight ahead.”

“And?” Julius prompted.

His brother’s answer was to point further down the way they’d been walking, which, thanks to the T-intersection of the pipes, meant he was now pointing straight at a cement wall.

“Oh,” Julius said. “That is a problem.”

“I’d cut through it,” Justin said. “But it looks load-bearing, and you two are kind of squishy. We need to find another way around.”

Julius sighed and glanced down at his phone, but the AR display came up blank. Apparently, even the DFZ’s municipal wireless couldn’t reach all the way down here, and GPS completely useless when there was twelve feet of pavement and dirt between you and the satellite signal. In any case, the map would have only shown roads, not the water system below them. Julius was about to use this as an excuse to tell his brother they should call the whole thing off and go knock on the front door like he’d originally suggested when Marci spoke up.

“I have an idea.”

Justin and Julius both turned to see her digging through her bag.

“We’re looking for a commune of mages, right?” she asked, handing her flashlight to Julius.

“Right,” he said slowly, taking the light.

“Well, lots of mages means lots of concentrated magic, and if it’s magic we’re looking for, I think we could try this.” She pulled her hand out of her bag with a flourish, holding up the golden, grapefruit-sized orb Julius had seen her examining in the car after his dust-up with Chelsie. Back then, it had glittered like a golden ornament. Now, it sparkled like the noon sun on a waterfall in the brilliant glare of the LED flashlight, throwing little golden dots all over the waterway’s dark stained walls.

“What is that?” Justin asked. “A golden disco ball?”

“It’s a Kosmolabe,” Marci said, her voice giddy with excitement. “An ancient tool used by mages, the first mages from back before magic faded, to detect and identify other dimensions.”

“Why would we need that?” Justin said with a snort. “We’re already in the right dimension.”

Marci must have been amazingly excited, because she didn’t even look annoyed. “Ah,” she said. “But Kosmolabes find those other dimensions by detecting their ambient magic. It’s been theorized for decades now that a properly trained mage, given enough power, could open a portal to another dimension. No one’s actually tried it yet, though, because there’s no way to know what would be waiting on the other side. The wall between our world and the other planes is simply too thick for us to see through. We could be opening a hole into the vacuum of space, or into a star, or into a completely new environment we can’t even imagine. That’s where the Kosmolabe comes in.”

She stuck the ball directly under the flashlight, making it shine painfully bright. “You see the pattern on the gold leaf under the glass? It acts as an amplifier, reacting to the natural vibrations of magic on a molecular level that’s supposedly a thousand times more sensitive than anything a human can feel. Sort of like a compass, only the needle points at magic instead of North. I’ve been dying to try it out!”

“Uh-huh,” Justin said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Still waiting to hear why I should care.”

“You should care because we’re looking for a heavily warded community of shamans,” she said hotly, leaving the implied you moron thankfully unvoiced. “And if the theories are correct and the Kosmolabe is like a compass, then that sort of magical density should act like a magnet.”

“I see,” Julius said. “They’ll pull the needle right to them. That way, even if we have to go off course, we’ll always know which direction the mages are in.”

“Yes, thank you,” Marci said, giving him a beaming smile. “At least someone here gets it.”

Justin rolled his eyes, but Julius moved in for a better look at the golden ball. This close, he could actually see the points in the tiny golden patterns twitching, exactly like little needles. “That’s amazing. I’ve never heard of a Kosmolabe.”

“They’re incredibly rare,” Marci said. “Even back when mages were thought to be common, not many places had the sophistication needed to make one, and once the magic dried up, the knowledge was lost all together.” Her face fell. “Most magical learning was, actually. The only reason we know dimensional connection is even possible is because Kosmolabes exist. We’re only beginning to rediscover just how much we lost during the magical drought, and we still don’t why the magic went away in the first place. Thankfully, we have our ancestor’s tools to help us figure everything out again.” She smiled down at the golden ball in her arms. “This one’s a Persian Kosmolabe. They’re supposed to be the most accurate, and the most delicate. It’s a miracle this one survived so perfectly intact. It might just be the last fully functional Kosmolabe remaining in the whole world.”

“Uh huh,” Justin said. “So why do you have it?”

Marci jerked at the question, then she relaxed, shrugging with the sort of careless flippancy that was the hallmark of someone about to tell a whopping lie. “My dad gave it to me. Anyway, like Julius said, this Kosmolabe should be able to guide us right to our target. Once I figure out how to use it, of course.”

“You mean you haven’t tried it yet?”

Marci lifted her head high. “Well, obviously I haven’t had the chance to test its ability to find missing mage colonies, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t work.” She looked down, peering into the golden patterns like she was trying to read her future in a crystal ball. “Actually, I think I’ve got something already. Follow me.”

She got to her feet and set off down the walkway, her boots clacking on the metal grate. When Julius stood up to follow, though, Justin grabbed his shoulder.

“You sure about this?”

“No,” Julius said. “But coming down here was your brilliant idea, remember?”

“I’m not talking about the sewers. I’m talking about the part where your human just lied to us.”

Julius blinked. He hadn’t actually thought Justin would pick up on that. His brother didn’t usually do subtleties, but then, Marci was a pretty awful liar.

“She probably only lied because you asked her such a nosy question,” he said. “Anyway, it’s not my business where she got her Kosmolabe. All I care about is how Marci does her job for me, and so far, she’s been excellent. When it comes to magic, I trust her completely.”

His brother snorted. “You’re gonna get yourself killed thinking like that. Blind faith makes a terrible leader.”

“It’s not blind faith,” Julius said. “I trust Marci. She’s my…”

Justin went after his hesitation like a bull after a red flag. “Your what?”

“I trust her,” Julius said again.

Justin crossed his arms over his chest. “Why?”

Because she was his friend, and because she trusted him back. But Justin was too much of a dragon to understand that, so Julius said nothing, which of course, his brother took entirely the wrong way.

“Oh, no,” he groaned. “You’re not having a thing with her, are you?”

“Of course not,” Julius snapped. Not that having a thing with Marci would be bad, but… “I just trust her, okay? Leave it alone.”

He stomped away, leaving his brother to follow. For a moment, the metal walkway was silent, and then, with a long sigh, Justin jogged after him. His brother quickly matched and then beat his pace, leaving Julius to run alone behind him through the dark.

Thirty minutes later, the Kosmolabe had led them up, down, and over more disgusting, slime-covered, bug-riddled pipes and tunnels than Julius ever wanted to see again in his life. Even Justin was starting to look a little green. Marci, however, was practically skipping in delight, all her earlier fear completely replaced by the dazzling sparkle of the Kosmolabe.

“It works!” she cried yet again, nuzzling the golden ball with her nose. “I knew you would work, you beautiful darling!”

“Works nothing,” Justin snarled, shaking something unmentionable off the toe of his boot. “We’ve been walking for half an hour, and we still haven’t seen so much as a Keep Out sign.”

“It works perfectly well,” Marci said. “It’s not the Kosmolabe’s fault your mages decided to hide in the one drain that apparently doesn’t connect to any of the others.”

“But why do we keep going down?” Julius asked, stepping over a stagnant puddle. “It would be one thing if we were going in circles around a fixed point, but we’re not. We just keep heading lower.”

Marci shrugged. “That’s where the signal goes.” She tapped her heel on the dank cement floor. “There’s an enormous magical concentration right below us. It has to be our mages. Nothing natural could generate pressure like that. I mean, just look at it.”

She held the Kosmolabe out for them to see, but while the gold leaf flecks were indeed all waving like tiny flags in a storm, they didn’t seem to be waving in any particular direction. Julius imagined it would look different if he focused on seeing the magic instead of the physical reality, but since physical reality was the one that was going to soak him with disgusting water if he slipped, he kept his attention on the real world.

“Okay,” he said with a sigh. “So we’re closing in. What’s the plan when we get there?”

He directed the question at Justin, partially because he needed to know, and partially to prevent his brother from snipping at Marci again. He’d taken to playing peace-keeper for the last quarter hour just so he wouldn’t have to hear them bicker, and he’d quickly discovered that the key to keeping harmony between his mage and his brother was to keep each of them focused on their respective jobs. Fortunately, both Justin and Marci were highly distractable when it came to their areas of expertise.

“Recon comes first,” Justin said, drumming his fingers on his sword hilt. “We need to know what we’re up against. Once we’ve got that, we make a battle plan from the information and proceed from there.” He glanced back at Julius. “I’ll do the actual fighting, of course. The way you’re panting like an old woman, you’d probably just give yourself a heart attack.”

“I am not panting like an old woman!” Julius protested, albeit breathlessly. This hike through the pipes had been a lot more exercise than he was used to. “I’m just a bit out of shape.”

“I can’t tell you ever had a shape to start with,” his brother said, giving him a caustic look. “Seriously, what happened to you? You used to be the fastest of all of us, but I think even Jessica could run circles around you now. Did you completely stop training when you exiled yourself to your room?”

More or less, Julius thought with a sigh. He’d hadn’t liked combat training even back when he’d been relatively good at it, and once he’d turned seventeen and his clutch had been declared ready to enter the world, he’d seen no reason to continue. This was especially true living at home since the nature of combat training meant it had to be done in the same gym used by the exact hyper-competitive, aggressive older siblings he’d hidden in his room to avoid. Before he could think of a more flattering way to explain his lapse to Justin, Marci’s voice rang out down the tunnel.

“Found it!”

Justin was moving at once, racing down the pipe and around the corner Marci had turned. Julius followed hot on his heels… and nearly crashed into him when he rounded the corner to find both Justin and Marci standing right on the other side. They were perfectly still, staring at what appeared to be a black wall. A second later, though, Julius saw it wasn’t actually a wall at all. It was a precipice.

Beyond the cement lip, the sewer fell away into a space so huge, Marci’s flashlight couldn’t penetrate the darkness to find the edges. Julius couldn’t even guess how big the room beyond must be, but what really bothered him was the smell. The air here was still, far too still for such a large space, but the draft that did reach him had a cold, oily thickness to it that he didn’t like at all.

“What’s down there?” he asked, covering his nose.

“No idea,” Marci said, glancing at the golden ball in her hands. “But the Kosmolabe says our target is dead ahead.”

She pointed straight down into the inky dark, and suddenly, Julius was more certain than ever that this was not something they should be doing. “I—”

“There’s a ladder right here,” Justin interrupted, reaching out to grab the condensation-beaded metal ladder bolted to the wall beside the ledge. “Let’s go.”

Julius grabbed his brother’s sleeve. “I don’t think we should go down there,” he whispered, deliberately pitching his voice too low for Marci’s ears. “I don’t like the smell of this place.”

“You don’t like anything,” Justin said. “It’s part of being a wuss.”

Julius ignored the insult and tightened his grip. “I mean I really don’t like it.” Even just standing on the edge, he could feel the strange, oily power of the darkness below coating his lungs with every breath. “We shouldn’t do this.”

His brother smacked his hand away. “Enough. Stop being an embarrassment and come on.” With that, Justin grabbed the metal ladder with one hand and swung out, pivoting like a hinge to land on the nearest rung. The moment he was steady, he clamped the insoles of both his boots against the ladder’s side rails and let go, sliding down the ladder into the blackness.

Marci watched him vanish with a look of grudging respect. “Fearless, isn’t he?” she muttered, stowing the Kosmolabe back in her bag.

“I think it’s more that his arrogance has created a shell so thick, no fear can get through,” Julius replied, reaching out to grab the disgustingly slick, cold ladder. “Let’s get this over with.”

It took them forever to reach the bottom. Not because they had particularly far to go—the seemingly endless drop ended up being only about thirty feet—but because Marci’s pace down the ladder was only slightly faster than glacial.

Julius didn’t blame her in the least. This place looked like a pit into the abyss even to his eyes, so he couldn’t imagine what it must look like for her. It didn’t help that the ladder’s metal rungs were strangely pitted, like they’d been etched with a strong corrosive. Some rungs had actually rotted through completely, forcing them to cling to the ladder’s edge and slid down to the next solid foothold. But though Marci’s breathing sped up to almost hyperventilating every time she had to skip a step, she didn’t complain, and she didn’t stop.

By the time they finally reached the bottom, Julius had decided he was going to regain his ability to fly if it killed him. To add insult to injury, the climb hadn’t even gotten them anywhere. The ladder let out on wide cement platform beside what looked like an artificial underground lake. Justin, who’d gotten there way ahead of them, was already pacing the edge, his growling audible even in his human form. “There’s nothing here!”

“This must be the spillway overflow,” Julius said, shining Marci’s flashlight, which he’d carried down the ladder in his teeth, directly into the murky water in a futile attempt to see how deep it went. “Somewhere for all the excess water in the system to collect until it can be pumped out and treated.”

“I don’t care what it is!” Justin yelled. “It’s not mages. That stupid Cosmonaut led us to a dead end!”

“Kosmolabe,” Marci corrected sharply, snatching the aforementioned golden ball out of her bag again. “And it’s not a dead end. According to this, our mages are right there.”

She pointed at the water, and Justin threw up his hands. “What? Are you saying they’ve got a low-rent Atlantis down there or something?”

Marci made an irritated sound. “I meant on another level.”

“I don’t think there is another level,” Julius said softly. “If this is where the water’s resting, then this is probably as low as it goes.”

“Well, that doesn’t make any sense at all,” Marci said, walking toward the water’s edge with a huff. “Let me look.”

Julius caught her sleeve before she’d taken two steps. Now that they’d reached the bottom of the pit, the cold, oily pressure was stronger than ever. He wasn’t quite sure if it was the natural magic of this particular place or something more sinister, but there was a lot of it, and he didn’t want any of them getting closer than was absolutely necessary.

“Come on,” he said, tugging Marci gently back toward the ladder. “Let’s get out of—”

“Incoming!”

Julius fell into an instinctive crouch, while Marci jumped a full foot in the air. They both whirled around to see Justin standing at the lake’s edge with his sword in his hands, and Julius’s breath caught. He’d only seen a Fang of the Heartstriker out of its sheath once before in his life, and never up close. He didn’t have a chance to gawk, though, because at that moment, the water in front of Justin exploded.