Pierce and Wilcox walked toward us. For a moment, I was afraid the mayor had reneged on her promise, and we’d have to arrange our battle within their rules and parameters. That fear dissolved quickly enough.
“Everything should be ready,” Wilcox said, offering Ethan a hand. “The ops plan looks good.”
“I have a very capable team,” Ethan said, returning the greeting.
The rest of us exchanged the appropriate hellos.
“The helicopter’s waiting in case anyone needs an evac,” my grandfather said.
“Good,” Wilcox said. “We’re on standby out here, with guns ready in case the dragon needs to be pushed back toward the stadium.” He looked at my grandfather and Jeff. “You’ll be coordinating that from the van?”
“We will,” my grandfather confirmed.
Wilcox nodded and looked at our swords, brow lifted. “You sure that’s enough firepower?”
Ethan’s smile was thin. “We’re sure. You let us do what we do best, and we’ll end this tonight.”
“Understood,” Wilcox said.
“And if this doesn’t end tonight,” Pierce began, “what’s the backup plan?”
“There is no backup plan,” Ethan said. “We fight the dragon until it’s dead, or we are. It’s that simple.”
Her eyes widened, but she nodded. “Then I’ll leave it to you.”
“Good,” he said. If only they’d done that in the first place . . .
I put a hand at his back. They’ve done it now. So we’ll do what we can.
• • •
The law-enforcement types stayed outside the stadium. We walked through the dark tunnel toward the playing field, and I bet our sense of anticipation wasn’t much different from what the professional athletes felt on their way to a game. Excitement, nerves, adrenaline, and a killer instinct.
“You ready?” Mallory asked me.
“I absolutely am.” I felt calmer than I had in days. I knew how to use my sword, my sword had been charmed for extra power, and I had two very good fighters at my side. This was, literally and figuratively, what I’d trained for.
“Get it,” Mallory said, and we bumped knuckles.
We walked onto the field, the lights glowing above us, the seats stretched in an oval around us.
“Lions in the coliseum,” Catcher murmured.
“Better than gladiators facing lions,” Ethan said. But he held back when Catcher, Mallory, and Jonah walked into the middle of the field, turned to me.
“This is my last opportunity to request that you don’t fight tonight.”
I lifted my brows at him, irritated that he was going to start an argument before a battle.
“But I won’t make that request,” he continued with a smile before I could object. “Because I know you. And because I cherish who you are.” He put a hand against my cheek, rubbed his thumb along my jaw. “You will fight for the city, for the people who cannot fight for themselves. There is no better reason to fight fiercely.”
I smiled at him. “You’re a pretty good reason.”
He smiled, touched his forehead to mine. “I love you beyond reason.”
“Same goes for me. Otherwise, I’d have locked you away in the House a long time ago.” I leaned up, kissed him on the lips. “Go make me proud, Sullivan.”
“Same for you, Sentinel. Stay safe.”
• • •
I’d never been in Soldier Field without people. It was odd, to be in such a large and empty space. It wouldn’t be empty for long, and I had a sinking suspicion it wouldn’t feel very large with a dragon in it. But we’d cross that bridge when we came to it.
“Mallory,” Catcher said as we unsheathed our swords, left the scabbards by the entrance tunnel. “You’re up.”
She blew out a breath, nodded, and carried her pot into the middle of the field, right on the fifty-yard line.
She put it down, then looked back at us, held up a finger. “One thing first,” she yelled as we walked toward her, and then leaned down and did a tidy cartwheel across the grass, followed by a front handspring.
When she came up, she pulled down her shirt, pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” she said with a grin. “Figured I’d get it in now in case I don’t get another chance.”
“You are medal ready,” Ethan said with a grin.
We took the positions we’d agreed upon—four roughly cardinal points around her, fifteen feet away.
She pulled out a can of white spray paint, grinned as she shook it up, the metal bearings rolling around inside.
“I’ve always wanted to do this, too,” she said, and began to spray white symbols around the crucible, symbols of alchemy.
When that was done, she tossed the can away, pulled a vial from her pocket, and emptied it into the crucible.
“What is this, exactly?” Ethan asked.
“A little river water, a little scraping from Sorcha’s alchemy, a smidge of grass from Wrigley Field, and sand from Oak Street Beach, and a few other odds and ends, combined with a little magic of my own. Like calls to like,” she said, straightening again. “Or at least that’s the theory.”
She pulled a box of matches from her pocket and took one out, holding it up while she waited for our nods.
“Ready,” Ethan said, and she nodded.
“And away we go,” she said, and whipped the match against the side of the box, sparking sulfur into the air.
She dropped the flame into the crucible. Almost immediately, thick white smoke began to rise from the vessel’s top, streaming upward in a column toward the sky and spilling the Egregore’s scents into the air. Smoke, earth, and water, carried by magic.
The smoke rose like a signal fire over the stadium and seemed to glow orange in the lights. Mallory took a seat on the ground.
“While we have a moment,” I said, “how’s Margot?”
Jonah looked startled by the question. “I’m not— Why do you ask?”
I gave him a bland look.
“That was a setup?”
“It was supposed to be. No spark?”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to discuss this with you.”
I narrowed my gaze at him, but the harsh look didn’t work. I’d have to talk to Margot later.
“The dragon’s moving,” said Wilcox in our ear. “He’s off the lighthouse and headed your way. ETA three minutes.”
“Lighthouse still intact?” Jonah asked.
“It is.”
“Good,” Jonah said with a nod. “That’s something, anyway.”
Some nights, you took the victories you could get.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CONSEQUENTIALLY
The dragon circled once, then twice, around the tower of smoke, screaming wildly. Like called to like, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it said. Was it hopeful there was another like it, or angry at what it might have believed was the origin of its anger?
“Swords up!” Ethan called out, and we lifted our blades.
It dove like a waterbird and came in fast, moving within twenty feet of us before banking again, rising along the bleachers, and turning for another pass.
It dropped again, and this time aimed for Mallory.
Jonah jumped, spun his katanas against the dragon’s right wing, managed to nick the tendon.
I ran beneath the dragon, sliced at its leg, in a spot with scales thicker than those on its toes.
The sword was strong, and Catcher’s magic made it stronger, but it was still tough going, felt like cutting through concrete. Each millimeter forward took a disproportionate amount of effort.
I managed to slice a wound into its thigh. The dragon shrieked and ascended again, trailing blood into the sky. And then it turned and headed in for another round.
“Second vo
lley!” Catcher said, and Ethan rolled his blade around his body, gaze set on the creature arrowing toward him.
The dragon reached him, snapped its teeth, and roared with pain and anger. ENEMIES.
Ethan dodged gnashing teeth and swung the sword in an arc, catching the plates on the underside of the dragon’s neck. They cracked with a snap, like tiles breaking against concrete, blood welling in the cut beneath them.
The dragon hit the ground, rolled, leaving a trail of blood across the grass, and scenting the air with blood and chemicals. Ethan ran toward it, sliced its leg. I did the same with the other, then darted away when the dragon roared with anger, rose to its feet.
Our magicked swords were working. We actually had a chance at this.
And wasn’t that always when pride got in the way?
The dragon climbed to its feet. It was nimble in the air, but not on the ground, so I expected it to amble forward. Instead, it darted to the side, head snapping. Its teeth—serrated and sharp—scraped against my arm, leaving a trail of pain and heat.
I cursed and dodged away, and the dragon screamed as a katana lodged in its foreleg only inches away from my head.
I looked back at Jonah, hand still lifted in perfect follow-through form.
“No throwing swords near a vampire’s head!” I called out. “New rule!”
“Saved your ass, didn’t it?” he said, running forward and hopping onto the dragon’s foot, snatching back his sword before flipping away again.
Little wonder he was captain of the Grey House guards.
“Your arm?” he asked.
“It’s fine.” It actually burned like fire, but that didn’t much matter now.
Ethan and Catcher went in for another volley; Catcher tossed fireballs while Ethan spun forward, going in low and catching slices across the dragon’s abdomen. The dragon pushed Ethan away, sent him sailing onto his back.
You good, tiger?
Fine, he said, climbing to his feet again, cheeks pinked with anger. But now I’m pissed.
With what I’d swear looked like fury in his eyes, the dragon slapped its tail at the fireball, sending it flying through the air. Catcher dodged, but not fast enough. It caught him across the thigh, searing his jeans and the skin beneath.
“Shit!” he said, and fought for control.
FIRE, the dragon said.
It was learning, had figured out how to use its scales’ resistance to fireballs to launch them back at us.
Ethan got another shot at its abdomen, and the dragon turned, wings flying around it. “Jonah!” I called out, but a moment too late. The swipe caught Ethan, sent him sprawling forward into the grass.
He didn’t get up immediately, and I had to tell myself he was a vampire and could take care of himself, that he’d just had the breath knocked out of him.
I needed to bind the dragon now, before it hurt anyone else.
I put my palm against the katana’s cutting edge, pulled. Pain shot through my hand as blood beaded at the edge of the steel.
I turned the blade on its side, watched the drops of blood roll down the blade as if with purpose and into the inscription Catcher had etched there. Blood met magic, and fire burst across the blade, which quickly spread from handle to tip.
“With blade and blood I bind you,” I screamed, yelling the words that Catcher had composed.
YOU CANNOT BIND ME. I AM EVERYTHING.
“You are pain and death.”
SHE GAVE ME LIFE, POWER.
“And you killed her, so don’t lie to me. With this blade and blood I bind you!”
The dragon screamed and flapped its wings and began to ascend straight out of the stadium. I wasn’t sure how intelligent it was, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t fall for Mallory’s bait twice. That meant this was our one and only chance to take it down without more injuries, more deaths.
I’d either have to give up, or go with it.
If I didn’t stop it now, it would destroy more of Chicago. More people, more sups, would be injured and killed. More homes and businesses destroyed. The apocalypse would continue.
But if I jumped, if I took flight with it, I’d have to face my fear of heights, and I’d have to face it alone. I’d have to fight the dragon without Mallory, Catcher, Jonah . . . or Ethan. I’d have to fight him alone—just me and my steel—in a place of his choosing. And then I’d have to find my way back.
I’d have to face the risk of losing, of dying on whatever field it chose for the inevitable battle.
For a moment, I was back in the green land, with the child’s laughter echoing across the hills. The laughter, I thought, of a happy little girl.
Yes, I thought, as tears blossomed again, we might never know her. Or worse, we might know her and lose her, as my parents had done with their first Caroline. But if there was a chance I was to be a mother—her mother—she deserved more than fear and bravery. She deserved a Sentinel of her own, someone who would fight for her father, her family, her city.
Gabriel’s test, I realized, wasn’t about triumph or victory. It wasn’t about winning. It was about bravery. It was about trying, and persevering. It was about staying the course even when things seemed desperate, even when all seemed lost.
That left me only one choice.
I ran toward the dragon and jumped, gripping for purchase with my nails one of the ridges that lined his spine and climbing up his leg.
NO, it screamed, furious at the contact, but didn’t have enough rotation in the limb to shake me loose.
Its scales were pitted and cracked, giving me handholds to climb the relatively short distance from leg to neck, then throw a leg over its side, settling between two ridges on its back.
Our fates were bound together now. Either the dragon would live and die by my sword—or we both would.
“Merit!”
I wasn’t sure whether Ethan screamed the word aloud, or silently for me. But it ran through the air on a current of fear and grief and fury that I’d offered myself up.
Too bad. I was Sentinel of my goddamned House.
I love you, I silently said, and hoped that he could hear me.
The dragon banked sharply, lifted, and I pressed my face into its scales, the scent of chemicals and city, of tears and anger, of sweat and fear.
“Don’t fire!” Ethan yelled, his voice in the earpiece Luc had handed out before we’d left the House. “Don’t fire! Merit’s on the dragon.”
The dargon turned and banked toward the heart of downtown Chicago.
I considered my options. I didn’t think I could finish the magic in the air. I had to wait until it landed and we were both on solid ground. Otherwise, it would disappear beneath me, and I was pretty sure falling a thousand feet wasn’t the same as jumping a few hundred.
So I held on, and felt guilty about the exhilaration of soaring over Chicago, soaring over glass and asphalt as the wind whipped my hair into tangles. I shouldn’t have reveled in the feel of flight, shouldn’t have closed my eyes in the warm breeze. But it wasn’t often that a girl who loved fairy tales, who spent her childhood dreaming of princesses and haunted woods and dragons, got an opportunity like this.
But the exhilaration faded as we moved closer to the river, as I saw what the dragon had done to the city of my heart.
It was an apocalypse. Limited to Chicago, but severe enough that it would take months, if not years, before the city was the same.
The dragon plunged down, zeroed in on the top of the Towerline building. But then again, it was hurt, it was angry, and it felt it had been tricked and betrayed. The magic that created it had begun at Towerline. It had apparently decided this was the place to heal.
I screamed into my comm unit but wasn’t sure if they could even hear me this far away. “We’re heading to Towerline!”
The building’s large roof, still scar
red by the magic we’d used before, grew larger and larger in front of us, and I closed my eyes against the rising vertigo.
The dragon hit the roof hard, skidding across the gravel and debris and throwing me off. I made my own sliding roll across rock and asphalt, my momentum only stopped by one of the building’s remaining HVAC units.
What was a little concussion between friends? I thought, closing my eyes for a moment to give my head a chance to stop spinning.
The roof shook beneath me, and I reached for my sword before opening my eyes.
The dragon’s foot—as big as a hubcap—loomed above my head.
“Shit!” I said, and rolled just before the hubcap came down and smashed a divot into the roof. I climbed to my feet, but the dragon caught my foot with a talon and brought me down again.
He began dragging me backward across the gravel, and then its breath was on my back.
“This is not how the story ends!” I said, and spun my sword blindly over my head.
The dragon screamed and reared backward in pain. I rolled away and scrambled to my feet, gravel spraying beneath my boots, and put distance between us before looking back again.
Like the scales on its foot, those on its neck were small and easier to penetrate, and I’d etched a gash on one side.
PAIN! it screamed, the sound cutting the air as sharply as my sword.
“It doesn’t have to be pain!” I said, and lifted my sword. “Surrender now, and I won’t have to kill you!”
I AM ANGER AND PAIN AND FEAR. I AM HATRED AND REVENGE AND AGONY. YOU CANNOT STOP ME.
The only dragon in existence, and it had to be a sociopath. “This sword in my hand says different.”
PAIN WILL EXIST EVEN IF AM GONE. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE MORE.
Now it was just pissing me off. I let my eyes silver, let my fangs descend. “Anger and pain and fear are part of life in Chicago and everywhere else. But so are joy and love. And I’ll be damned if you take any more of that away.”
Katana in front of me, nearly perpendicular to my body, I strode toward the dragon. “With blade and blood I bind you!”