leather straps caught my wrists. I was still feeling weak and disconnected from my body, but I could move it, and that was enough.
Growing up in my family meant ambushes on your birthday, crossbows for Christmas, and games of dodge ball where the balls were occasionally rigged to explode. It also meant learning how to work your way out of a wide variety of death traps. Failure to get loose on your own could lead to missing dinner, or worse, being forced to admit that you missed dinner because your baby sister had tied you to the couch. Again.
The leather straps were probably intended to keep us from bruising ourselves. Maybe sacrifices are like apples—they go bad when they’re bruised. Whatever the reason, leather was better than rope, since it wasn’t as likely to rip my skin off when I started squirming. I went as limp as I could, letting the remains of the Tooth Fairy dust do the majority of the work for me. By breathing out until my lungs ached, I was able to get almost a half an inch of give between myself and the leather. With this accomplished, I pointed my toes and began to pull.
I had to stop twice to breathe. The second time, I caught Istas with her head canted to the side, watching me intently. I offered her a wan smile and kept working.
Ballroom dancing teaches strength, stamina, and above all, flexibility. I gave my left leg one last firm tug and pulled my calf free of the two lower leather straps. After a pause to take a deeper breath I repeated the trick, this time pulling my right calf free. Most of me was still pinned, but now that I’d managed to get things started—
“Well, aren’t you the industrious one?” A hand slapped down on my shoulder. I tilted my head back, unsurprised to see that the well-dressed snake cultist was back. He beamed at me like a demented Santa Claus, giving a small shake of his head as he said, “My dear, you really are astonishing. It’s a pity someone with your training and potential has to … well, you can stop fighting now. It was a lovely try, but it simply wasn’t lovely enough. Boys!”
The hissing that greeted his call told me what was coming even before the first servitor came into view. It was limping, and the look it was directing toward me seemed to have more than the usual dose of reptilian menace. “I think we’ve met,” I said.
“Oh, you’ve met several of the boys,” said evil Santa, pulling his hand away from my shoulder. “It’s good to have the family together like this, isn’t it? Boys, take them to the Chamber of the Dragon.”
The servitors made sure to strap my legs down tight before they moved the gurney. The muscles in Istas’ neck bulged again when they began pushing her toward the door. That was the only visible change in her anatomy, and it passed quickly. Tooth Fairy dust must have a more incapacitating effect on waheela physiology, because I felt almost back to normal. Still a little shaky, and doubly naked without my weapons, but still, almost back to normal.
The servitors pushed our gurneys down a sewer tunnel that looked like it had been constructed and abandoned sometime in the early 1800s. The clacking of their claws and the rattle of the gurney wheels echoed off the rounded walls until it was impossible to estimate how many servitors there were. It could have been the six I’d managed to count; it could have been sixty. Not that it really mattered with Istas and me both strapped down, but miracles have happened before, and as Mom always says, no miracle has ever come off without assistance.
The room at the end of the tunnel made the chamber we’d woken up in seem small. The walls were natural stone, carved out of the rock by time and erosion, rather than by human intervention. People in long brown robes stood in a loose cluster up ahead of us, clearly waiting for our arrival. And behind them, with his massive head resting on his crossed forelimbs, slept the last of the male dragons.
My breath caught in my throat, all thoughts of captivity and impending sacrifice replaced by awe. Since the dragons supposedly went extinct before photography was a factor, none of the books or field guides came with anything other than drawings of dragons, and half the time those drawings couldn’t agree with each other, much less present a reliable picture of what dragons were really like. The number of limbs, the number of wings, even the number of heads was a subject for debate. At least one early Covenant bestiary showed the dragon as some sort of super-sized naga, with the dragon princess being nothing but a lure growing out of its tail. So it’s not a surprise that I was unprepared for the reality of what was in front of me. There was no way I
The dragon’s head was shaped like a raptor-type dinosaur’s, assuming you like your Velociraptors super- sized; it was easily the size of a small car, covered in pearly green scales that managed to look delicate, despite being the size of dinner plates. His eyes were closed, but judging by the size of his eyelids, they were each somewhat larger than a bowling ball. He had hands—huge hands, covered in scales and ending in talons, but hands all the same—and a long, serpentine neck that led to the immense bulk of his body. His wings were furled like broken umbrellas along the length of his spine. There was no possible way they could have supported him … but maybe that was part of what got the dragons killed. Maybe the males were only mobile when they were young, before they outgrew the potential span of their own wings. They couldn’t start off
His breath was slow and easy. Whatever the snake cult had been doing to try to wake him up, it clearly wasn’t working. That was almost a pity. I might not be able to sweet-talk my way around snake cultists, but I was pretty sure “I know where you can get some girls” would have been a bargaining chip worth having.
One of the servitors pushing Istas suddenly snarled and jumped away from her gurney. I looked over, and smirked as I saw the blood running down her chin. “Get a little close, did you?” I called. He turned and hissed at me.
“Now, now,” said evil Santa. “There’s no call for that sort of behavior. You’re both about to assist us with a great undertaking.”
“Um, not so much, really. Snake cults are pretty passé. Couldn’t you have joined a swing dance club or something? Not to get overly personal or anything, but you could stand to lose a few pounds, and it would be a way to meet women that doesn’t involve stripping them naked and drawing on them.”
Santa scowled. “I see that you’re not going to be reasonable. Well, I suppose we can take care of that by letting you be the first one to leave us today. Marcus! Claude! Prepare the ritual circle.”
Me and my big mouth. Two of the men in brown ropes stepped forward to my gurney and wheeled me away from Istas, toward the slumbering dragon.
I estimated the ritual circle as about twelve feet in diameter when they wheeled me into it. It was drawn onto the rough stone floor with Sharpie, and looked like it had been retraced at least once in blood; the lines were rust-brown and irregular around the edges, like they’d been working with an uncooperative medium. It smelled like a half-dozen different kinds of blood—the sharp copper-iron of human, the slightly acidic bite of harpy, and the maple-sugar sweetness of Madhura. A bubble of fury rose in my chest, making me buck involuntarily against my restraints. I wanted to kill these people. I wanted to kill them all.
All I had to do was break through a bunch of institutional-strength leather straps and kick all their asses, naked, without a weapon. Somehow, I didn’t think this was going to be as easy as it sounded—a thought that was only reinforced when one of the figures in brown stepped forward, holding a bowl of deep ruby blood between her outstretched hands. I gaped at her.
“
The dragon princess matriarch smiled her smug little Mae West smile as she asked, “You were expecting someone else?”
“But—”
“If I helped them, they left my girls alone. I’m sure you understand the importance of family in matters like this one.” She leaned over me, setting her bowl down on my stomach and dipping her fingers into the liquid. “Besides, I have a—shall we say, vested—interest in their success. Once that beautiful boy in there wakes up, everything will change.”
“Even if he’s being controlled by a snake cult?” I spat. “I thought we were on the same side here.”
“I’m on the side of whatever wakes the male,” she said, and began using her fingertips to trace over the symbols on my body in what was now indisputably blood. Leaning closer, she whispered, “Why else would I have given you the gold? You just had to go and tell Candice that this lovely buck was down here, and she told the Nest, because she didn’t know any better. I had to do
