Discount Armageddon
Page 89

“I am sure I will recover without them, but I appreciate the offer.” The dragon transferred his orange gaze to Dominic. “The Covenant of St. George is here? I have never seen one of your kind so poorly armored, or so alone. What do you think you can do against me, small one?”
“Nothing, sir,” said Dominic. I’d never heard him sound so respectful. “I came here to assist my friends, not to bring challenge. This is not my city to defend.” He nodded toward me. “It’s hers. I, and by extension, the Covenant, will stand by her decisions in this matter.”
I stared at him.
The dragon seemed to take this much more in stride. Maybe he was used to humans being insane. Turning back to me, he asked gravely, “And what are your decisions in this matter, Miss Price?”
“I promised the dragon princesses I’d find you for them, and I promised the cryptids of the city that I’d make the snake cult stop sacrificing virgins to you. I think both of those are pretty much done. Candy? What do you think?”
Candy nodded, still crying.
The dragon tilted his head to study her before looking to the servitors clustered at the back of the cave. A deep sadness seemed to fall over him like a burial shroud, and his voice was very soft as he said, “None of the others survived. After all that we did to flee, none of the others survived. Oh, you poor dearest one.” He placed one fingertip on Candy’s shoulder. She grabbed hold and cried even harder. “So long without us to protect you.” He looked toward me. “How long?”
“It’s been about three hundred years since you went to sleep,” I said. “There haven’t been any reports of dragons in that time. Everyone thinks you’re extinct.”
“Everyone except you.” He studied us thoughtfully. “What stops me from destroying you all, and keeping myself secret?”
“I have a family, and Dominic has the Covenant,” I said. “They’d come looking if we disappeared. Besides, we came here to help, and you’re going to need allies if you’re going to restart your species. Candy isn’t the only dragon princess left.”
The scaly ridges over the dragon’s eyes—what would have been his eyebrows, if he’d had any hair—rose. “Truly?” He turned a quizzical eye on Candy. “We always knew the females could survive without us for a little time, but everyone assumed there was a limit to the number of generations.”
“If there is, it hasn’t been reached,” I said. “There are more than a few women waiting eagerly to meet you right now.”
Candy sniffled, still holding onto the dragon’s fingertip. “We prayed and prayed that somewhere, somehow, one of the males had survived. I never thought I’d still be alive when we found you.”
“Poor dearest ones, waiting so long. I would have woken long ago, if I had realized.” The dragon tugged his fingertip gently, leading Candy closer to him. Turning his eyes back to the rest of us, he said, “I was hunted. I was hurt, and I was weak. I asked my sisters to guard me while I slept and healed. I thought I would wake … sooner than I did.”
“The local settlers found your sisters, and took them,” I said. “No one thought you might still be alive down here. I’m so sorry.”
“Perhaps it was better this way. The Covenant seems to have changed—at least enough that one dragon may be left in peace with his family.” His jack-o-lantern eyes blazed. “Is that not so?”
“Unless you directly threaten the human population of this city, I will not tell the Covenant you are here,” said Dominic. “You have my word that I will not take away your peace … as long as you do not take away ours.”
“The Covenant has changed.” The dragon sounded somewhere between amused and amazed. Looking past us to the servitors, he added, “But humanity has not. You say this ‘snake cult’ made them of its own?”
“I think they probably made them of the city’s homeless and a few mysterious tourist disappearances, but yes, it was humans that did this. One of your females—” I glanced at Candy. “One of your females sort of lost sight of what it means to keep other people’s best interests at heart, and she told them how to do it. She was trying to help them wake you up.”
The dragon narrowed his eyes. “Where is she?”
“I killed her.” Candy’s voice was very small. “She was going to shoot Verity. She was dressed like all the others. She was saying things … and she lied to us. She didn’t tell us you were here. She knew, and she wasn’t going to tell us.”
“Shhh, my little dearest one. You did nothing wrong. If you hadn’t, I would have.” The dragon bent his head, blowing gently on Candy’s cheek. Sparks danced along her cheek like firefly kisses, leaving more soot marks in their wake. “You are more beautiful in my eyes than you could ever know.”
Ryan stepped up next to us, back in his human form, with a semiconscious Istas lying sprawled in his arms like a starlet on a bad B-movie poster. Tanuki Terror, coming soon to a theater near you. At least he’d managed to coax her back into her own human shape, which was probably easier to carry. “Hey, Very.”
“Hey.”
“That’s a dragon.”
“Yup. That’s two dragons, actually. Candy, and…” I paused. “Excuse me, Mr. Dragon? What’s your name?”
“William,” replied the dragon, with immense gravity.
“… okay,” I said. If the dragon wanted to be named “William,” I wasn’t going to argue. “William, this is Ryan—he works with Candy and me—and the naked, unconscious one is Istas.”
“Hi,” said Ryan.
“Hello,” said William.
“I’m talking to a dragon. Cool.” Ryan looked at me. “Istas is in a pretty bad way. I need to get her to a first aid kit.”
My eyes widened. “How bad?”
“She’s alive, but she could use some stitches and some britches.” He smiled, showing teeth that were still longer than the human norm. “Get it? ‘Stitches and britches’?”
“You’re a riot, Ryan. Can you get her to someplace safe?”
He nodded. “I can, if you’re sure you’re going to be safe with a dragon, a murderer,” he wrinkled his nose at Dominic, “and some chick who called saying she was your cousin.”