Branded (17 page)

More cries and gasps mixed with the bleeping and dinging. Some pointed. Others scampered away on unsteady feet.

Then came the rumbling.

Directly under my feet. Even though I floated a good six inches above the red carpeted floor, I could feel the vibrations emanating upward. It sounded like a tank boring its way through the foundation.

Nope.

Not a tank.

“Oh, shit.” I flew forward, passing through a bank of slots right before the section of floor I’d been hovering above broke open. Chunks of concrete and shreds of carpet flew in a geyser straight up to the ceiling. Through the hole rose a dragon’s head. The head was the size of a golf cart, covered in gray scales, a small row of wicked sharp horns above each of his yellow eyes like deadly brows. His slit pupils flicked from side to side as he thrashed his head about in an effort to wrench the rest of his body out through the hole.

I floated backward like an ice skater, transfixed as the Detroit dragon rose out of the cracking and crumbling floor, first clearing his shoulders, then his front legs, then his folded wings which whooshed open the moment they came free.

The wings knocked slot machines aside as if they were made of paper. Quarters and half dollars flew in all directions, scattering like candy from a busted piñata, the tinkling sound like a thousand wind chimes caught in a storm.

People screamed and ran.

A few were knocked aside along with the slots, bodies flung like rag dolls, hitting the walls or tumbling along the floor. I heard more than a few limbs crack.

The dragon was oblivious to his destruction. He twisted and bucked until his entire body came out of the hole and he crouched among the debris around him. His tail flicked, punching a hole in the far wall where it got stuck for a moment. The dragon whipped his tail free and took most of the wall with it.

Pieces of the ceiling rained down.

Most of the people who had avoided getting struck by flying chunks of floor and slot machines quickly cleared the room. Screams and shouts rippled outward through the casino as the news traveled that a dragon had come up through the floor.

The dragon swung his head from side to side, scanning the room. Until his serpentine eyes found me.

He peeled his lips back from a set of teeth that would make a great white weep with envy—right before it swam away in terror. The dragon huffed, and smoke blew from his wide nostrils on the end of his snout.

“Oh shit,” I said again, reduced for the moment to a two word vocabulary.

The dragon opened his mouth and sprayed a plume of fire at me.

The ghost blood was still working, so the flames didn’t touch me. They did, however, melt everything around me. The piles of loose change turned to liquid metal. The carpet was obliterated to nothing and the floor underneath was scorched black.

When the dragon finished breathing, I hovered in a ring of fire and embers.

The dragon narrowed his eyes when he saw me unscathed. A growl grew in the back of his throat until it burst out his mouth in a full-on roar. His raging voice shook the rafters.

It also shook me out of my daze.

Time to split.

I turned and floated my ghostly body out of there. I paid no attention to what I flew through or who I passed. I did not pause or hesitate until I had cleared the casino entirely and burst out into the humid night.

I wished I hadn’t used valet because I had no idea where my car was. The last thing I wanted to do was search the parking structure with a raging dragon out to get me. I could fly away, but I wouldn’t get far before I lost the potion’s effects.

So what? I could put significant distance between me and the casino. Then catch a cab after the ghost blood wore off. I’d come back tomorrow. Or a week from now. Who knew? Maybe I would get lucky and the MGM’s parking structure would still be intact with my car somewhere inside. Either that, or I’d find a giant crater in the heart of what had once been Detroit’s Chinatown.

I whirled around, ready to soar away from the casino.

Then I heard the screams. I heard the crashing and breaking. And the angry roar of the dragon. In his rampage to find me, he would tear that place apart. He didn’t care what he destroyed or who he hurt. Anger had completely blinded him. I knew dragons took treasure stealers seriously, but I had no idea how insane it could make them.

I had been joking about coming back to a crater. But I had a feeling Kuan-Yin Chern might live up to the joke if he didn’t find me.

I couldn’t leave him to do that. Couldn’t let these folks suffer for my actions.

Damn it.

With a ghostly sigh, I sailed back into the casino. By this point, the dragon had crashed his way out of the slot room. I couldn’t tell what room he had plowed into, though, because he had thoroughly trounced it. Video poker maybe?

I floated into range and waved the brand over my head like a flag. “Hey, Chern. Right here big boy.”

The dragon swung his head around and glared at me.

“Let's take this outside,” I said.

The dragon narrowed his eyes. More smoke plumed from his nostrils. A sound like an idling semi truck engine rumbled in his throat.

I slowly glided backward, keeping eye contact, making sure he saw where I was headed. Instead of passing through the walls, I made my way through the actual passageways of the casino.

The dragon chuffed and followed, keeping low either in readiness to pounce or to keep from crashing through the ceiling. Since he hadn’t shown any concern for the casino’s structural integrity yet, I went with pounce.

I only hoped I could lead him out before the ghost blood petered out and he could eat me.

He crept through the casino’s corridors as I led him back toward the exit. His wings brushed the walls and ripped giant gouges down them as he came.

It seemed to take forever, but I eventually led him out the casino’s valet entrance, which he promptly destroyed on his way out. The few valets on duty ran screaming.

When I floated out onto Third Avenue, I stopped in the middle of the street by the median with its well manicured grass and trees. Small spotlight in the ground illuminated the median’s landscaping. This time of night, there wasn’t any traffic. Me and the dragon had the street to ourselves.

“You can’t touch me, you know,” I said, craning my neck back as he approached. One large scaled paw stepped onto a compact Ford and crushed it under his weight. Bits of glass from the car’s windows sprayed through my ghostly form.

The dragon lowered his head until his snout came mere inches from my face. The heat from his sulfur-scented breath made the air ripple like water between us.

“Might as well give it up,” I said.

He huffed. Snot blew from his nostril and landed, sizzling, on the pavement.

“No need to hurt anyone else. This is over.”

The choppy grunt that came from him next sounded kind of like a laugh.

Then I noticed the tingling across my skin and realized it
was
a laugh. Dragon’s are old. They know magic more than most anything that still walks the Earth. He had sensed the ghost blood’s effects wearing off before I had.

The tingling swelled for a moment, then quickly stopped. I dropped the few inches I had been floating above the street, my shoes knocking against the pavement as I landed. All at once I felt the night’s humidity surround me. Which was nothing compared to the blast of heat the dragon shot from his snout when he stopped laughing.

“Oh, shit,” I said for the third time that night.

The dragon reared back, opened his mouth, and flame poured forth.

Chapter Twenty-Three

I dove sideways right before the dragon exhaled. A heat like none I had felt before blazed behind me as I sailed to the ground. A pair of small trees on the median disintegrated in the dragon’s blaze.

I landed awkwardly on my side. The impact knocked the brand from my grasp and it clanked away. I didn’t waste time chasing after it. I knew another shot of fire was coming my way, and the brand wouldn’t do a damn bit of good to my ashes.

I scrambled to my feet and sprinted blindly forward.

The roar of fire chased me.

I reached the bumper of a van and ducked behind the vehicle just in time to avoid the fiery gout the dragon had blasted at me. The side of the van turned to slag. It occurred to me that I was getting a little taste of my own medicine. I never thought I would feel sorry for any demons I put down with my own fire bolts, but I almost did right then.

I had no illusions that the van could provide any significant cover. I couldn’t outrun a dragon. And I could only dodge so many blasts of fire. He would tire, but not before I did. I had to stop him somehow. Had to fight him.

But I was a sorcerer without enough magic to light a match, let alone go up against a dragon. And fire wouldn’t harm him anyway. I would have to hit him with something else. None of which mattered, because the only juice I had left was what was keeping me from turning into a vampire.

The thump of the dragon’s feet on the ground echoed in the night.

I chanced a peek around the half-melted van to find him coming my way, no anger or urgency in his stride anymore. He had me and he knew it.

So I was left with two options.

Let him burn me to nothing, or use my magic to stop him, but allow myself to turn into a vampire in the process.

Either way, technically I was dead. Undead was just a different kind of dead.

Could I sacrifice my soul merely to save my flesh? Would becoming a vampire be any better than disintegration?

Toft seemed to do okay. He was one of the “tame” vamps, as we called them. I could be a friendly vampire. I didn’t have to turn into an evil, blood-sucking monster. Just a nice, neighborly blood-sucking monster.

Cold comfort.

I heard the familiar gurgle of the dragon drawing in a breath to spew forth more flame. So I made my decision on instinct. Misguided survival instinct. I jumped to my feet, scanned my surrounding, and spotted the crushed car the dragon had stepped on. Nothing but a useless chunk of metal now. But a pretty good weapon. And since lifting a car had worked for me recently, why not give it another go?

The dragon chuffed hesitantly when he saw me come out from behind the van. He hadn’t expected me to face off with him. The hesitation gave me the few seconds I needed to focus my power and gain control of the air around the demolished vehicle. The moment I redistributed the power, I felt the infection rush through me like crude oil in my veins. Cold, thick, and nauseating. I did my best to ignore it as I flung the car up into the air, directed its arc, then drew it down directly onto the dragon’s skull.

The sound of twisting metal and more shattering glass made my ears hurt. I winced, but I didn’t miss watching as the dragon’s head dropped under the car’s weight. His jaw landed hard on the concrete and audibly cracked. The car smashed down on his head like an ugly hat.

I had to jump backward to avoid flying debris. Several of the dragon’s teeth were knocked loose on impact, and a twelve-inch incisor cut my cheek as it flew by.

With a creak and groan, the car rolled off the side of the dragon’s head.

The dragon’s eyes rolled backward, and the rest of his body collapsed with an echoing thud. He went still, except for a steady rise and fall from his breathing.

I’d knocked him out cold.

Word of the unconscious dragon outside the MGM Grand would travel quickly. The Ministry would show up and conduct damage control. They weren’t the Men in Black. They couldn’t erase memories. But they would get Kuan-Tin Chern off the street and do their best to concoct a story to explain it away to the civilians who’d witnessed his rampage. Movie studios had started doing a lot of filming in the Detroit area, which had provided the Ministry with convenient explanations for events like this in the recent past. Although I think they’d have a hard time convincing the injured here that the dragon was merely a special effect gone terribly wrong.

In any case, that was the Ministry’s problem, not mine. And I wanted to be far away from this mess when they arrived.

The adrenaline thrill from bashing the dragon with the car began to wear off. In its place, the vampire infection’s growing effects took hold. A terrible hunger filled my gut, as if I hadn’t eaten in days. My body had turned cold and impervious to the surrounding humidity. I looked down at my trembling hands. My nails had turned a sickly yellow.

I had to get to Toft. Maybe it wasn’t too late to reverse the spreading effects. One thing was for sure, I didn’t have a lick of magic left in my body. I had nothing to fight off the infection with any longer.

I was beginning to turn.

I quickly recovered the brand. I scanned the cars parked along the street. Decided on an old station wagon that had probably belonged to someone’s great- great- great-grandfather, who would have been horrified to see the mismatched paint job between the hood, the doors, and the rest of the car’s body. I smashed the driver’s side window with my elbow, unlocked the door, brushed the glass off the seat, then ducked down and got to work on hot-wiring the wagon. Not a typical skill for a sorcerer, but I had gone through a rough patch during my teens when I hung around with a bad crowd of normals who taught me tricks like this, among others. It was one way young sorcerers rebelled, pretending to be a normal. Drove my parents nuts.

Once I had the car running, I tossed the brand into the passenger seat, then climbed behind the wheel. I adjusted the rearview and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I’ll be damned if my reflection didn’t look faded. Fuzzy around the edges, and my facial features blurred.

For the love of the gods, I was losing my reflection.

Chapter Twenty-Four

It was well after hours for the Black Rose, but I had called Toft on the way over, and his troll bouncer met me at the door to let me in. I rushed past the big guy and sprinted for the back office. I found Kitchens standing off to the side. His desk had been pushed back against the wall. A circle of white powder—probably salt—took up the center of the room. A dark-skinned and wrinkly old man in a raggedy robe stood in the center of the circle mumbling something under his breath. On the floor in the center of the circle sat a metal bucket filled with flaming coals.