Nice Dragons Finish Last

Chapter 8

His first thought was that a bomb had gone off. The lake, which up to this point had been silent and smooth as a polished stone, erupted like a volcano, sending water surging up in long, black streams. It wasn’t until the streams opened their mouths to reveal perfectly circular rings of razor-sharp teeth that latched on to his brother, however, that Julius realized what was actually going on.

“Justin!”

But Justin was already sweeping the curved, wickedly sharp blade of the Fang of the Heartstriker down, slicing through the mass of black, wiggling shapes like they were made of tofu. The toothed heads kept biting even after he’d separated them from their bodies, though, so Justin was forced to retreat, jumping back to where Julius and Marci were sheltered against the wall.

“What the—” His words cut off in a bellow as he ripped a clamped jaw off his arm. “What’s with the snakes?”

“They’re not snakes,” Julius said, leaning over to look at the head in his brother’s bloody hands before Justin flung it away. “I think they’re sea lampreys.”

“Ugh,” Marci said. “You mean those things with the flat mouths and the rings of teeth that latch on to you and suck your organs out?”

“I never heard of them sucking organs out,” he said as he helped his brother pry another severed head—which did indeed have a hinged jaw that opened to form a perfectly flat, round ring of sharp teeth—off his leg. “They’re an invasive species to the Great Lakes. I’d thought Algonquin had kicked them all out, but clearly these found a way back in.” He grimaced at the basketball-sized head in his hands and tossed it back into the churning water. “They’re not normally this big, though.”

Marci gave him a funny look. “Are you a lamprey fan or something?”

“I studied them in my New Ecosystems of the Great Lakes class,” Julius explained. When this only seemed to make her more confused, he added, “I have a bachelor’s degree in Applied Ecology from NYU Online.”

Marci’s mouth fell open. “You’re an ecologist?”

“Try professional student,” Justin said with snort, brushing the blood off his body like another man might brush off dirt. “If it’s online, undergrad, and useless, Julius has it. He also has degrees in Pop Culture, Art History, and Accounting.”

“Accounting’s not useless,” Marci said.

Justin ripped the final lamprey head off his shoulder. “It is if you don’t have any accounts.”

“I like learning things,” Julius said irritably, though that was only a half truth. He did find school interesting, but the sad reality was that online classes and gaming had been the only things that kept him sane and connected to the outside world during the years he’d spent hiding from his family’s plots. Also, being in school had been a great way to keep his mother off his back, at least until she’d realized he was studying things that interested him instead of properly draconic topics like how to exploit the legal system or become a titan of international finance. “Anyway, that doesn’t matter. What I want to know is why there’s a lake full of super-sized lampreys below Detroit.”

“Well, if there was a lake of super-sized lampreys anywhere, it would be here,” Marci said. “This place is Ground Zero for weird.”

She crouched down beside one of the black, slimy bodies Justin had severed. Even without its head, the snake-like corpse was easily as long as she was tall, its slick, muscular flesh barely dimpling when Marci poked it. “They must have gotten washed into the storm water system at some point, and then the magic down here caused them to change.” She wrinkled her nose. “It is pretty thick.”

‘Pretty thick’ didn’t begin to describe the cold, pressurized magic Julius could feel pushing down on them from all directions. “I told you we should have turned around.”

Marci shrugged. “Well, at least this explains why the Kosmolabe led us here. A lake full of magically altered wildlife would definitely account for the blip I was seeing.” She looked around at the bodies littering the cement floor. “I wonder if they’re worth anything?”

“Would you stop talking about the stupid lampreys?” Justin growled, flinging the blood off his sword with a flick of his wrist. “We’re not down here for the fishing. Now let’s go find those mages for real before we waste any more— OW!”

His cry was accompanied by a loud whack as he slapped his hand against to the back of his neck. “They spit at me!” he roared, whirling around to face the still-roiling water.

Julius was opening his mouth to inform his brother that lampreys didn’t spit when he saw the streak of smoking black bile coating the back of Justin’s neck. A second lamprey broke the water as he watched, lifting its head above the surface just long enough to spit another line of burning goo at Justin’s shoulder.

His brother ducked just in time. “Oh, that is it!” he bellowed, brandishing his sword at the water. “I’m going to eat every last one of you slimy bastards!”

“Justin!” Julius yelled, grabbing his brother by the shoulder. “Calm down! You can’t kill them all. There must be thousands in there.” Or more, he thought with a shudder. “Let’s just go before—”

Pain exploded over his wrist, and he cut off with a gasp. When he looked down, his whole lower arm was covered in the same black slime that was on Justin’s neck. It burned like hot oil against his skin, but before he could wipe it off on his shirt, a full-scale volley of black goo shot out of the water, coating the wall above their heads.

At first, Julius thought that was because the lampreys had terrible aim, then he looked up and realized the truth. “They’re aiming for the ladder!” he cried, ducking to cover his head. “They’re trying to cut us off!”

Even as he said it, Julius knew it was already too late. He also knew how the ladder’s metal had gotten so pitted. This was clearly not the first time the lampreys had sprung this trap. They’d hit the ladder perfectly, coating the entire bottom half in thick, acidic spit that smoked and hissed against the old steel.

The fumes were even worse. As if the rotted fish smell wasn’t bad enough, the acidic goo also reeked of magic. Dark, fetid, oily magic that was getting thicker by the second. Julius covered his mouth and nose with his hands and looking around for Marci, but she was no longer behind him. This sparked several seconds of panic before he spotted her on her knees at the far corner where the platform met the wall, yanking something out of her bag.

It looked like a collapsible laundry basket, the kind with the plastic ribs that you could fold up into a tiny ball, but would still spring back to its original size the moment you let up the tension. That sight was absurd enough to make Julius forget the danger for a moment to wonder why she would have such a thing. He was still speculating when Marci dropped the basket on the ground.

The plastic ribs snapped open the second she let them go, flattening out in a ring, and Julius realized it wasn’t a basket at all. It was a circle. A collapsible casting circle made of yellow tent cloth with layer upon layer of spell notation written around the edges in Marci’s meticulous handwriting.

“Get in!” she shouted.

Julius didn’t wait to be asked twice. He sprinted across the cement and into the circle just as the lampreys launched another volley of burning goo straight at their prey. It struck the wall behind them in hissing splats, but when the sticky stuff crossed Marci’s circle, it burned up in a white flash, landing in a patter of harmless ash against Julius’s chest.

He let out a long, relieved breath. “Nice work.”

“Always pays to carry an emergency shelter,” she said, nodding at Justin, who had miraculously managed to dodge every shot since the first one. “Is he coming?”

Julius had no idea. He was spared having to say as much, though, because at that moment, Justin swung his sword with a roar that shook the ground. For a second, Julius couldn’t understand why. From what he could see, Justin was swinging at nothing, and then the air begin to change. All at once, the bite of dragon magic was all around them, surging up so fast and sharp, Julius thought he was going to be bitten in half. Just before the pressure became unbearable, Justin finished the strike, and the black lake parted in front of him like the Red Sea.

Thanks to the glare of Marci’s magic, Julius saw the whole thing clear as a lightning flash. Justin’s strike had cut the water and everything in it, slicing through the enormous, tangled mass of lampreys hiding below the surface like a laser. He saw his brother, larger than life, the bloody wounds from the earlier bites already closing. More than anything, though, he saw the sword in Justin’s hands. The sword that wasn’t a sword at all.

It still looked like a sword. It had a hilt and a wide, curved blade that was sharp on one side, like a long scimitar, but the blade itself was bone-white and slightly discolored at the tip, like an old tooth. An ancient fang of something very large and very, very deadly.

His strike finished, Justin stepped back, resting the Fang of the Heartstriker on his shoulder as the bite of the dragon magic faded and the water fell back into place, covering the bodies of the unknown number of lampreys he’d just chopped in two. “There,” he said, his voice thick with self-satisfaction as he turned around to give Julius a superior look. “That’s how it’s done.”

Julius sighed. It wasn’t that he wasn’t happy they weren’t going to be eaten by overgrown sea snakes, but he wasn’t exactly looking forward to the next several hours of inevitable bragging. Justin was already opening his mouth to begin when something long, black, and glistening shot out of the water and wrapped around his waist from behind, yanking him off his feet back into the water.

“Justin!” Julius shouted, almost running out of Marci’s circle before he caught himself. Even if he had risked it, he would have been too late. Justin had already vanished beneath the black water without a trace.

He was still watching the waves when Marci grabbed his hand. Julius glanced over his shoulder in confusion to see her staring at him with her heart in her eyes. She looked like she was about to cry, though with everything that had happened, it took Julius a stupidly long time to realize why.

“Don’t write Justin off yet,” he said with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “He’s very hard to kill. But we need to make a safe place for him to come up.” Or a safe place for them to take shelter in case Justin lost his temper down there. “Can you move the circle closer to the edge?”

Marci’s expression made it clear she thought he was being crazy optimistic, but she played along. “No. This circle’s a prototype. I haven’t figured out how to make it mobile yet.” She bit her lip. “I’m actually kind of surprised it worked just now. Maybe we can—”

Her voice cut off in a yelp as a wave of black, wiggling bodies shot out of the water straight toward them.

Julius moved instinctively, knocking the first lamprey away before it could smack Marci in the face. The next one made it past him, and though it began to smoke when it crossed Marci’s circle, the power that had incinerated the blobs of acidic spit must not have been strong enough to cook seven feet of wiggling, magically corrupted sea parasite. The lamprey crashed into Marci’s legs with a horrible, unearthly squeal before she kicked it away.

“What is going on?” she cried. “I thought lampreys lived under the water!”

Julius squinted through the glare of Marci’s circle at the black lake, now boiling harder than ever. Everywhere he looked, the lampreys were in a frenzy, flinging their long, black bodies out of the water. But it wasn’t until he saw the ones trying to slither up the slick, straight walls that bordered the lake like they were trying to get clear of the lake at any cost that he realized what he was actually looking at.

“They’re not trying to attack us,” he said, wiping the greasy water from his face. “They’re trying to get away from something.” Justin, he added to himself with a shiver that was equal parts pride and dread.

That was going to be a real problem. But when he leaned out over the edge of Marci’s circle to try and get an idea of what form of his brother they should be expecting, a strange glow began to fill the room.

Up until this point, the only light in the cavernous spillway had been the flashlight he’d dropped when Justin was first attacked and the glare of Marci’s magic. Now, something beneath the water was shining with a blue, ghostly light that didn’t look like anything his brother could do. It was getting brighter, too, and as it grew, the cold, oily pressure that had been making Julius uneasy since they first arrived grew exponentially worse.

Julius was very young for a dragon, and undeniably inexperienced, but even he understood there were some things you just didn’t want to look at. Some sights couldn’t be unseen, and immortality was a long time to carry those kinds of memories. Unfortunately, he was already looking at the water when the thing broke through, and the moment the hideous shape came into view, Julius knew that even if he lived to be as old as the Three Sisters added together, he was never going to be able to forget this.

Other than their remarkable size, spitting ability, and supernatural aggression, the lampreys they’d seen up to this point had looked more or less like overgrown versions of the normal predatory sea creatures of the same name. This thing, on the other hand, was a true monster. Its skin wasn’t just black; it was a void, drinking in Marci’s light without leaving so much as a glimmer. He had no idea how big it was beneath the water, but what he could see above was nearly twenty feet tall, an enormous column of thick, serpentine body ending at a small, flat head ringed with snaking black feelers, almost like a mane. No part of it, however, was glowing, and Julius was starting to wonder what it was he’d seen under the water when the thing opened its mouth.

Like the other lampreys, its mouth opened to form a flat, round circle. But where the other lampreys had three or four rows of jagged teeth, this thing had endless interlocking rings of arm-length points descending all the way down its throat. Julius could see them all, too, because the monster’s mouth was the source of that sickly blue light.

The glow emanated from deep in its throat, almost like dragon fire. But where dragons breathed flame in a continuous stream, this thing launched it like a shot. Their only warning was a slight hiss and the sight of the huge, slimy neck puffing up like a bullfrog before a car-sized lump of blue, luminous, deathly feeling magic exploded out of the thing’s throat straight at them.

As the blast left the monster’s mouth, Julius felt Marci pull in magic for a counter shot. But even though she was sucking down power so fast the air was crackling, it wasn’t enough. The magic in her circle felt like a raindrop compared to the tidal wave hurtling down at them, but there was no time to gather more. There was no time to dodge, no time to flee, no time for anything. Already, the blue glow filled his vision, and Julius knew this was it. He was going to die. But even as his mind accepted this fact, he realized it didn’t mean Marci had to die with him.

After that, the choice was simple. It was barely a decision at all to step in front of Marci and reach, not with hands, but with his power. The mental muscles he hadn’t exercised in nearly a decade screamed as he forced them into action, giving him an instant pounding headache. Julius ignored it, digging deep into his own magic—not the physical shape his mother had cut off, but his actual power, the spark of internal magic that made him a dragon trapped in a human body instead of just human.

He reached as hard and as far as he could. And then, when he felt the burning pain that meant he was at his absolute limit, Julius yanked up, pulling his magic over them like a shield as the creature’s magic crashed down.

Years ago, when he’d been a hatchling too young to even assume a human form, Julius had developed a knack for using his magic as a wall. His mother, not yet realizing what a failure of a son she’d hatched, had declared him “exceptionally gifted” for figuring out such a unique way of using their inborn power. For Julius, however, it was a simple matter of self-defense. As a small dragon already at the bottom of his clutch, learning how to make a shield to protect himself had been a vital survival skill.

Unlike humans, who drew their magic from the outside, a dragon’s magic was inborn. This difference was the reason his kind had been able to scrape by when magic had vanished for the last thousand years while human mages and spirits had completely shut down. Unfortunately, it also meant that when Julius used his magic as a shield, anything that struck the barrier also hit him, and right now, he felt like he’d just hit the ground after jumping off the Grand Canyon.

The giant lamprey’s magic slammed into his own so hard, he felt it in places he hadn’t realized he’d had. Just when he thought for sure he was going to be pounded under completely, the lamprey’s blast struck something heavy, dense, and immovable deep inside him, and the surging magic stopped.

For a terrible moment, that was actually worse. The impact raced through Julius’s body, shaking him nearly to pieces. But then, like a tennis ball bouncing off a wall, the lamprey’s spell rebounded, shooting back across the water to strike the monstrous sea snake square in the throat.

By this point, Julius was more magical than physical. He could still see, still feel, but all of his normal senses were secondary to the horrible shaking going on inside him. So when the glowing blue blast he’d sent back at the lamprey exploded in its face so hard the monster was blown back, he saw it only vaguely. It wasn’t until Marci grabbed him around the chest and dragged him to the wall, away from the waves caused by the giant’s frantic thrashing, that Julius realized what he’d done. He’d bounced the monster’s magic. He was still wondering at the miracle of that when he saw something jump out of the water and began scaling the giant lamprey’s body. Something that looked remarkably like his brother.

He sat up so fast Marci yelped. Sure enough, Justin, still human and seemingly uninjured, was climbing up the writhing monster’s back, stabbing his sword into the thing to keep his hold whenever it dropped under water. But while Justin was clearly doing damage, the lamprey wasn’t going down. Worse, it seemed to be recovering from the blow Julius had accidentally landed on its head.

That thought had barely finished when tentacles began flying out of the water to yank Justin off. Normally, this wouldn’t have been a problem, but with his sword stabbed into the thing’s back like a climbing hook, Justin couldn’t fight them all off. If Julius hadn’t been sealed, he could flown over and cut his brother free, but he couldn’t fly. He could barely sit up after all that magic. But he had to do something. Justin could be a royal pain, but he’d come to help him tonight, and he was his brother. Julius was trying to figure out what that something could possibly be when the tentacle wrapped around Justin’s waist suddenly let go.

The creature shrieked at the same time, and he looked up in alarm to see Marci standing at the center of her circle with two lampreys, one of which was still alive and wriggling, piled in front of her. He was working up the strength to help her knock them away when Marci shoved her hand out, and the two oversized black sea creatures at her feet seized up like they’d been electrocuted. At the same time, a wave of super-heated air shot out to strike the monster’s face.

It screamed in pain when her spell hit, but Marci wasn’t even looking. She was already yanking another snapping, terrified lamprey into her circle, kicking out the old ones to make room. It wasn’t until she fired another shot, though, that Julius realized what she was doing. She was using the lampreys like batteries, sucking power out of them like she’d done with the chimera tusk back at the house.

Fresh lampreys must have been much more powerful than preserved chimera parts, because now that the shock of bouncing the creature’s attack was fading, Marci’s magic was all Julius could feel. Power rolled off her in waves as she launched shot after shot of her repurposed microwave spell at the monster in the water, leaving long, blistering burns across its pitch-black skin as she screamed for Justin to just kill it already.

Julius didn’t know if his brother could hear her, but Justin obeyed all the same. With a speed and strength that would never pass for human, he tore himself out of the web of grasping tentacles that had gone stiff from the pain of Marci’s attacks. Using his sword like a pick, he scaled the lamprey’s slick side until he was right behind the monster’s head. Then, grabbing the Fang of the Heartstriker with both hands, Justin slammed his sword into the creature’s skull.

As always, the Fang of the Heartstriker cut clean. With a roar of rage and victory, Justin sliced sideways. The moment the sword cleared the last of the creature’s inky flesh, its horrible bellowing cut off like a switch, and then it toppled so fast Justin was forced to dive back into the water before the enormous body crushed him like a falling redwood.

The lamprey landed with a crash that sent a wave washing all the way over Julius and Marci’s heads. They were still sputtering when Justin hauled himself up onto the cement platform beside them. He shook his body like a dog, spraying blood and black water everywhere, and then he rolled his shoulders beneath the soaked remains of his shirt and turned to survey the now-quiet lake.

“See?” he said. “I had it in the bag the whole time.”

Julius had no comeback for that, especially since his ears chose that moment to start ringing. He was trying to figure out how to get them to stop when Marci bent down and plucked his miraculously still-functional phone out his jeans pocket, the actual source of the ringing.

He expected her to hand it to him, but Marci didn’t. Instead, she looked at the caller’s name on the screen, lifted the receiver to her ear, and said, “Hello?”

It was like watching a horror movie. Punch drunk on magic, flat on his back, muscles useless, Julius couldn’t do anything but lie there and feel his blood go cold as Marci said, in her cheerful, clearly human voice, “Oh, I’m sorry, Bethesda. Julius isn’t available right now. Can he call you ba—”

Justin snatched the phone out of her hand mid-word. “It’s me,” he said gruffly, shoving the phone between his soaked shoulder and his dripping ear. “No, she’s Julius’s and he hasn’t trained her properly. You know how he is. No, I’m not going to kill her. Calm down.”

Marci’s eyes went wide, and she turned back to Julius with a questioning look. He didn’t have time to answer, though. He was too busy forgiving Justin for every childhood insult and thoughtless word. That idiot dragon had just saved Marci’s life, and he was probably the only one who could have. Mother adored Justin. Things that would have gotten another Heartstriker gutted were deemed “cute” when he said them. Normally, the double standard annoyed Julius. Right now, though, Justin was his favorite sibling.

“Here.”

He jerked as Justin’s voice sounded suddenly right beside him, and then again when his phone appeared in the air above his face. “She wants to talk to you.”

Julius raised a shaking hand and took the phone, pressing it against his ear, which he’d just realized was bleeding. He moved the phone back a bit with a grimace and tried again. “Hello?”

“Julius Heartstriker,” Bethesda roared. “What are you doing?”

“Currently? Lying on my back.”

“Don’t get smart with me,” his mother snarled. “What has gotten into you?”

Way too much magic, Julius thought, but even that had an odd detachment. Normally, the sound of his mother’s angry voice was enough to send him into instant cowering obedience. After the giant lamprey, though, Bethesda’s rage didn’t seem so bad. Clearly, he must be in shock.

“I’m sorry,” he said, more out of habit than any real sincerity since he still didn’t know why she was angry.

“You should be,” Bethesda said. “What you thinking, using my magic like that? I felt that blast all the way down here. If I wasn’t so shocked to discover you possessed the presence of mind to come up with such a clever trick, I’d fly to the DFZ and skin you for your presumption.”

Julius closed his eyes with a trembling sigh. So that was what had happened. The lamprey’s attack hadn’t bounced off something unknown inside of him—it had bounced off Bethesda’s seal. His mother’s punishment had just saved his life and Marci’s, and the irony was so beautiful it actually struck him dumb for several seconds. Fortunately, his mother was too busy chewing him out to notice.

“Well,” she said when she’d finished, her voice scalding. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Historically, those words were the cue for him to clam up in terror. Woozy as he was from the blast and everything else, though, Julius rolled with the first thing that came to him. “Only that I’m very sorry. I never dreamed you’d be able to feel such weak magic from so far away, but I should have known better than to underestimate your incredible powers of perception. I’m grateful for your mercy in allowing me to survive and learn from the experience so that I may never make such a stupid mistake ever again.”

That was the biggest line he’d ever fed his mother. Even Justin looked taken aback. Bethesda’s voice, on the other hand, sweetened noticeably.

“My my,” she said. “It seems this fiasco has finally taught you how to grovel. That’s a step forward, but don’t you ever do anything of this sort to me again. Children exist to help their parents, not hinder them. And if you must keep a human, teach it some manners before it gets itself killed. Now put Justin back on.”

Julius dutifully handed his phone back to his brother before reaching his hands out for Marci to help sit him up. She did so without looking, eyes glued to Justin’s back as he walked away.

“What was that about?” she whispered. “And what did you do earlier? What’s going on?”

Julius didn’t know how to answer any of that safely. He didn’t know much of anything, actually. The world had started spinning as soon as Marci had pulled him up, and as he tried and failed to focus on a single point, he wondered vaguely if this was what being drunk felt like. Dragon metabolism was so fast that actually getting sloshed took way more effort than he was willing to invest, but he’d always been curious. If this was what it was like, though, Julius was glad he’d never bothered. Not knowing whether you were going to hurl or pass out was hardly his idea of fun.

In the end, passing out won. He dropped Marci’s hands and fell straight back, mercifully blacking out before his skull hit the concrete.

When Julius woke up again, his head was much clearer. It also hurt like hell. Groaning deep in his throat, he opened his eyes to see he was still on the platform by the lake, though he was no longer lying directly on the floor. Someone had put a folded sweater down to cushion his head, and since he was pretty sure Justin didn’t wear bright purple, he could only assume it was Marci’s.

“Hey, you’re up!”

He looked over just in time to see her boots come to a stop right beside his head before her face filled his vision. “How are you feeling?”

He considered the question for a moment. “I’ve been better,” he said at last. “How long was I out?”

“About ten minutes. I’m actually amazed you’re conscious. That was the nastiest case of backlash I’ve ever seen, especially in someone who isn’t supposed to be a mage.”

“For the last time,” Justin’s voice echoed from somewhere beyond Julius’s feet. “He’s not a mage! Julius is terrible at magic.”

“If you can use magic, you’re a mage,” Marci called back with the sullen tone of someone who’s already said this numerous times, though she didn’t take her eyes off Julius. “I’ve never seen someone just shove magic out of themselves like that. How did you do it? Can you show me? Your brother won’t tell me anything.”

“Because he asked me not to,” Justin growled, finally stepping into Julius’s line of sight. “So stop asking questions already.”

Marci shot his brother a deadly glare, and Julius closed his eyes with a sigh. Not that he didn’t appreciate Justin actually keeping his mouth shut for once, but would it be too much to ask that he do it in a way that didn’t make it sound like Julius was hiding things?

“It’s complicated,” he said at last, pulling Marci’s attention back to him. “I’ll be happy to explain everything later”—never—“but this isn’t really a good place or time. We’re still on a deadline, and we need to find those mages.”

Marci and Justin shared a look Julius couldn’t make out. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

Before Julius could ask what she meant by that, his brother grabbed his arm and heaved him to his feet, putting him face to face with the crowd waiting at the other end of the cement platform.

Even seeing it with his own eyes, Julius couldn’t quite believe it. The landing beside black lake was packed with human men and women in clothes ranging from fashionably distressed to straight-out bizarre. Still more humans were on the water in boats, fishing bits of lamprey out of the bloody lake with large nets. All of them were clearly mages, a fact made obvious both by the hum of human magic that had replaced the deathly aura of the giant lamprey pool and by the bright glow of the light spells hanging from the spillway’s roof like the world’s most elaborate chandeliers.

“Turns out my Kosmolabe was right,” Marci said smugly, patting the bag at her side. “They were under the water. Their base is in an old bomb shelter that goes under the lake. That was why we couldn’t reach them from the pipes. They were never actually part of the water system! The storm drain we saw is a fake they use to disguise their entrance. They actually cut a door into this spillway so they’d have a back exit, but they had to stop using it when the lampreys moved in.”

Happy as Julius was that Marci had solved the mystery of their missing mages, he was only listening with half an ear. The rest of his attention was on his nose as he breathed deeply, sorting through the various horrid sewer stenches for any sign of their prey. But while he did catch a trace of a cold, wintry sea scent that reminded him of Svena, it was old. Katya wasn’t here.

“Justin,” he said softly.

“I know,” his brother whispered back. “I smell it, too. But don’t worry, I’ve got a plan.”

That made Julius more worried than ever, but before they could discuss it, his brother yanked him to his feet and half helped, half carried him over to the edge of the platform, as far from the humans as possible. When Marci tried to follow, Justin shot her a full-on “I am predator, you are prey” glare that stopped her in her tracks. Only when she’d turned and scurried back to the mages did he finally return his attention to Julius.

“We need to work quickly,” he said, his voice low and urgent as he propped Julius against the wall. “Our target’s gone, but from the scent, she was with these people up until at least an hour ago, so she can’t have gotten too far. Now, the dragon smell is strongest on the guy who’s acting like their leader, so here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll grab him and be bad cop since you couldn’t pull it off if you tried. You be good cop and tell your mage to run interference on the others. I don’t think they’ll fight since they’re all impressed we killed big-and-slimy, but if they do, we’ll smoke ‘em. Ready?”

“No,” Julius said, resting his weight against the wet cement. “Justin, the only reason I’m even standing right now is because of the wall.”

“Well, how much longer are you going to be?” his brother said. “Because we’re in kind of a hurry.”

“Do you even listen to yourself?” he said, jerking his head at the group around Marci. “There have to be thirty humans here, and that’s not counting the ones in the boats. You can’t actually think we can beat them all.”

Justin didn’t answer, but then, he didn’t need to. His confident look was answer enough.

“They’re mages,” Julius continued, a bit more frantically now. “I’m sealed. Katya’s not even here.”

“She was,” Justin said, adjusting the sword on his hip.

“There’s no way you can do it without revealing your true nature!” he cried, playing his final card.

His brother shrugged. “So what? It’s not like we’ll need them again. Now, are you ready to do this, or do you need to pass out like a pansy again first?”

Julius began to shake. His brother really meant to do it. Of course, Julius had known Justin had no problem killing the humans when he’d suggested they sneak in, but he’d talked himself into believing that was acceptable since Katya would be inside. But she wasn’t, and these people were just standing there. If Justin attacked, they’d defend themselves, and then he’d kill them. Even if he didn’t, there was no way they’d believe he was human past the first fire breath, which meant if Justin didn’t kill them, Chelsie would. Either way, every human in this room was about to be dead, and it would be all Julius’s fault.

“No,” he whispered.

“What did you say?” Justin asked, arching an eyebrow.

“No,” Julius said again, lifting his head. “We’re not going to attack. We’re not going to fight these people.”

“Well, how else are you going to get them to talk?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “But I thought I’d start by asking.”

Justin rolled his eyes. “I’m serious.”

“So am I,” Julius growled.

His brother stared at him in utter confusion, like he couldn’t believe he was hearing this. Julius couldn’t believe he was saying it. He’d never directly contradicted anyone in his family before, much less Justin, but he didn’t take it back.

He wasn’t sure exactly when he’d reached his limit—when he’d nearly died fighting that lamprey, or when he’d realized they’d done all of this for no reason. Marci had just told him the storm drain with the ward he’d found earlier led directly into the shaman’s commune, which meant that if he’d followed his instincts instead of letting Justin bully him into a more “draconic” plan, none of this would have happened. They might have even have gotten in quick enough to catch Katya before she bolted. They definitely wouldn’t have almost died fighting a stupid lake monster they’d never needed to bother in the first place, and the more Julius thought about that, the angrier he got.

He always did this. He always let bigger dragons talk him into doing things he didn’t want to do, because they were draconic, and he knew he should want to be like them. But he didn’t. He’d been told his whole life that he was a failure, but how could he be anything but a failure when the thought of acting like Justin or Ian or any other successful dragon filled him with loathing? The attempts and subsequent disasters of tonight were like a microcosm for his entire existence, and Julius was sick to death of it. Sick of the expectations, sick of failing them, sick of trying to be what he wasn’t. He was sick of everything, and he wasn’t going to do it anymore.

“I’m done,” he said.

Justin scowled at him. “What do you mean? Done with what?”

“Everything.” The word fell so easily from Julius’s lips that it startled him, but even more surprising was the weight that fell off with it. It was like he’d let go of two decades’ worth of fear and expectations, and suddenly, he felt light as a feather. “I’m done,” he said again, his voice full of wonder. “I give up.”

“You can’t give up!”

A bit of the backlash must still have been lingering, because the sound of his brother’s anger almost made Julius laugh. “Watch me,” he said, putting out his hands in surrender. “I always thought if I just tried hard enough, I could change myself, but I can’t. I can’t change what I am, and if I keep trying to force it, I’m just going to keep failing like I always have. But I’m done banging my head against the wall. It’s time to face the truth, and the truth is I’m never going to be like you, and I’m never going to be the sort of dragon Mother wants, either.”

His brother’s growl grew louder with every word. By the time Julius finished, it was vibrating the puddles of water at their feet. “You can’t be serious.”

“Why not?” Julius said. “I can’t just keep doing the same thing over and over and hope some day I’ll get a different outcome. That’s crazy. If I want to get out of this rut, then I’m going to have to try something new. So I’m going to do things the way I want for once and see what happens. I mean, it’s not like I can fail any worse.”

“You absolutely can!” Justin roared, making the humans at the other end of the platform jump. Justin didn’t even spare them a look, though he did lower his voice. “Dammit, Julius, can’t you see I’m trying to keep you alive here? How am I supposed to convince Mother not to eat you when your ‘plan’ consists of ‘ask humans nicely, hope it works out’?”

His teeth were bared and sharp when he finished, but Julius couldn’t help smiling. That little speech was the closest his brother had ever come to actually admitting he cared. In the end, though, it didn’t change a thing.

“I’m tired of trying to be what I’m not,” Julius said, pushing off the wall to stand on his own. “You were right. This is a test. My test, and from here out, I’m going to pass or fail on my own. I’m done doing things I’m ashamed of, so if you still want to stay and help, you’re welcome, but we’re doing this my way from here on.”

Looking as scared as he felt would fatally undermine his point, so Julius held his ground with all the bluster he had. Inside, though, his heart was pounding. This was the first time he’d ever told his brother what to do, and he fully expected to have to pay for it. Justin wasn’t the sort of dragon who took challenges to his dominance lightly.

But though he was braced for the retaliatory fury, Justin didn’t say a word. He simply stepped back and opened his arms in a go for it gesture. So, with a nervous swallow, Julius went, using the wall for balance as he hobbled back across the platform toward the mages on the other side.