Old Dark (The Last Dragon Lord Book 1) (28 page)

Gone were the days when he could fly.

Gone were the days when an entourage of dragons followed him everywhere.

If his parents were dead, he had no one to rely on.

He was a failure.
 

A dragon lord failure.

His claws arced in anger every time he thought this, but soon they relaxed, for there was nothing he could do. And so he sank deeper and deeper into despair and quiet rage.

This time, as Gus and Orion zapped him, he was numb. He barely felt the energy pulsing through him, and he focused on the machinery several yards outside of the cage. He had learned to use one of the conveyor belts as a focal point. Every time his muscles seized up, his eyes wandered to the conveyor belt. It gave him a small comfort, and made the paralysis dissipate faster.

Gus and Orion tore off his muzzle and threw it on the floor.
 

It was time to eat.
 

The men clanged the cage shut and turned off the lights.

The paralysis wore off and a wave of relief spread through Dark’s body.

He felt the bulge in his throat.
 

He waited until Gus and Orion’s footsteps were far away, and then he waited a little longer to be sure they were gone.
 

He heaved, and his throat burned. He heaved once more, throwing his entire body into it. A stack of grimoires flew out of his mouth along with a spray of spit.

The white cards slid across the floor.

Dark had to rest several minutes before he could catch his breath. Finally, he picked himself up and snatched one of the cards off the ground.

This was his first chance to inspect them. He had managed to steal some grimoires in a scuffle.
 

The card he held was magical. He was sure of it. He had seen Gus and Orion use cards just like it many, many times.
 

But how did one use it?

He twirled it between his claws. The card was still smooth and glistening, despite having been hidden in his throat. One side was blank, and the other side had a three-dimensional pentagram that seemed to rise off the card stock if he held it the right way.
 

He imagined casting a spell. Suddenly, the card lit up and a ring of light surrounded his face.

“Oh, my…”

He stared in disbelief at the hundreds of runes that glowed in front of him. There were spells for everything—fire, ice, paralysis, and earth movement. Runes upon runes.

He had never seen anything like this.

As a dragon, he only had to think about the kind of spell he wanted to use, and then it happened. The key was remembering the cost of the spell.
 

This was a magical shortcut. Everything you needed was right here.
 

Dark selected a paralysis rune. A display in glowing letters appeared.

Paralysis

Stun your foe.

Cost: Numbness in the feet.

How were elves able to decode magic so quickly?

This was exactly what he had tried to stop in his reign. Elves would abuse magic, waste it on things like this. The less of it they were able to cast, the better.
 

He would have never allowed this.

He would have never let them manufacture these cards!

He growled at the thought of a thousand years passing by while he slept. How much better this world would have been if he had only been awake!

If only he could cast magic.

Could he?
 

When he had awakened in the catacombs, he had tried to cast a spell, but it backfired on him, damaging his claws.
 

The grimoires could be a temporary substitute for him. But how would he defend himself when he was in a cage? No, he needed offensive spells. These self-defense spells might work for Magic Eaters, but this was not the stuff of the aquifer, not the smooth, ancient spells that his mother and father had taught him…

He stopped thinking about magic, and the wheel of light dissolved.

As angry as the cards made him, they would have their use. He scooped the cards up and gathered them into a pile. Then he ate from the buckets of raw meat and drank warm water from the trough in his cell until he gained a little of his energy back.
 

A dragon living like a dog … that’s what they had done to him. Lucan Grimoire had made sure of it.
 

He was the dragon lord.

Pacing around his cage, he wondered how he could escape.
 

He tried to flap his wings. They were still in bandages, and he had a hard time commanding them to move.
 

His mind went back to the grimoires lying on the floor.
 

He grabbed one and activated a wheel of light. He cycled through the runes by dragging his claw across the air.
 

And then he found it.
 

Restore

Revitalize a wound.

Cost: Severe stinging that lasts for hours; fever dreams.
 

A crude version of a restoration spell. Surely this would not heal an entire body … or would it?

Dark tapped the grimoire, as he’d seen Gus, Orion, and Lucan do, and a shimmer of light engulfed the cage. Warmth gathered over his wings. It radiated throughout his entire body. He could get used to restoration like this. For the first time, all his pain went away.

But the feeling was short-lived. It burned off like alcohol on the skin. Then a wave of needles localized in his wings.

He yelled as the needle pain grew stronger.
 

On the night of his attack, elves had driven stakes into his wings. He grimaced as he remembered, reliving the pain as he dropped to the ground.

“Gah!”

He rolled across the floor, landing on his wings, pinning them between his body and the floor. The pressure helped somewhat, but the pain kept intensifying.

The lights turned on.
 

Dark scooped up the grimoires and swallowed them as fast as he could. The sharp edges of the cards cut his throat on the way down.
 

A few seconds later, Gus and Orion were in front of the cage. They struck him with a paralysis spell, and the stinging sensation mixed with the muscle spasms.

The men clamped the muzzle back on. They tightened the straps harder this time, and his cracked scales began to bleed.

“You want to keep making noise, we’ll make your life even more difficult,” Gus said.
 

They left him on the ground, moaning.
 

Had they been able to tell that he had used magic?

They weren’t paying attention. The brutes moved as if nothing had changed.

The lights turned off.
 

He lay on the ground, spasming.

The paralysis faded.

The stinging stopped.
 

Dark stared up at the iron beams in the ceiling. He imagined a starry nighttime sky just above, the heavens gleaming like they used to when he would pray from the depths of the Ancestral Bogs.

I will not break. I will not let them take my dignity.

I am the Dragon Lord.

He dug his claws into the floor, and with all his strength, he pulled himself to his feet. His legs trembled, and he didn’t know if they would hold him up.
 

He concentrated on his wings.
 

He willed them to move, imagined them flapping in his mind’s eye.
 

The bandages rustled.

His eyes widened.

His broken wing, bandaged and bloody, lifted.
 

The spell had worked.

He was a proper dragon now, with wings that moved!

Dark grinned and let the wing fall to his side.
 

He grabbed an empty bucket and filed his claws against it, sharpening them.
 

II

Lucan Grimoire walked through Skyscraper Park with his daughter, Madelaide, holding her hand.
 

The park was on the ninety-fifth floor of a skyscraper. Long bridges connected a diamond-shaped complex of several blue, glass skyscrapers. The bridges were lined with flowers and trees in planter boxes.
 

The path they walked on was lit by square LCD lights on the surface of the bridge, and by magical street lamps that glowed pink. The crescent moon was high in the sky, the stars like pinwheels of milky light. The air had the sweet smell of freshly watered greenery, and sprinklers sprayed fine mists of water on the plants at controlled intervals.
 

Lucan liked this place. It was one of the few places he could go in the city to be alone, and the tranquility was a welcome distraction from all the action in the last few days.
 

Madelaide let go of Lucan’s hand and looked over the bridge. Below, a shimmer of lights flickered as a cool ocean breeze blew across the city. The ocean and its endless horizon lay several buildings away, and they could hear the distant roar of the waves.
 

“What’s your wish?” Madelaide asked.
 

Lucan shrugged. “I didn’t know it was time to make a wish.”

“Last week we saw a shooting star, remember? You said you had to take a call, but that you’d make a wish next time.”

He didn’t remember that, but that’s what happened when you only had custody of your daughter on weekends.
Some
weekends. Building a billion-dollar business and running for governor tended to make you forget things.
 

“How could I forget?” Lucan asked, smiling. He joined her at the edge of the bridge and looked up into the navy sky with her. “I made my wish.”

“What did you wish for?”
 

“I’m not supposed to say.”

Madelaide’s blue hair glowed in the moonlight. The hair dye that he had bought for her was fading, replaced here and there with lustrous black streaks.
 

The breeze rippled her white dress. Her teeth were stained purple from eating magic pretzels. Lucan had taken her to a bakery for a late snack, feeling guilty for neglecting her these last few days. The pretzels had weird flavors, like turkey and gravy or beef stew, and they had a magical dye that made kids’ teeth change colors. It was a new fad that Lucan didn’t understand. But then again, there was a lot about kids these days he didn’t understand.
 

“You can tell me what you wished for,” Madelaide said. “It’s not a superstition. Miss Oakmire says so.”

“Miss Oakmire, of course. She’s your teacher, right?”

“No, Daddy. You never remember anything.”

“Heh. Heh. Of course I do. She’s the nanny.”

“That’s Miss Chriselda!”

“Oh, then I give up.”

“She’s my counselor, remember? Or wait, I mean—” Her face wrinkled up as if she’d just told a forbidden secret. “Oops.”

“Counselor!”

Two joggers passed by, and he waited until they were out of earshot.
 

“What do you mean
counselor?
Please tell me you’re talking about the rah-rah let’s-pick-a-magical-career guidance counselor...”

Madelaide stared at him blankly.
 

“It’s for the divorce, Daddy.”

Lucan sighed. “That’s what I thought.”

He took her by the shoulder, and they stopped at a female street vendor behind a metal cart. Lucan paid the woman two golden spira coins and bought two chocolate chip scones. He gave one to Madelaide.
 

“I’m not hungry,” she said.
 

“Well, I am all of a sudden.” Lucan snatched her scone and took a big bite. Madelaide laughed.
 

Silence grew between them.
 

“Listen, sweetie...” Lucan stopped. What was he going to say to his daughter who was in therapy, probably because of him?

“I don’t know how to say any of this, so just do me a favor and hear it, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I know I haven’t done the best job.”

“I don’t blame you, Daddy.”

“Right, because your mother is a b—erhm, anyway, I meant—”

Madelaide turned and watched the sea with a sad, wistful look in her eyes. He sensed her fear and he changed direction.
 

“I just want to say that I know I’ve been a crappy dad. But deep down, I know that you’re more like me. One day, you’ll understand why I am the way I am. You’re a Grimoire, too.”

He paused.

“You know that none of what happened between your mom and me was your fault.”

“I know.”

Then why the hell are you in counseling?
He wanted to scream it, but she wouldn’t understand. No, that was an epic battle reserved for Nicole, her mother.
 

Lucan’s phone buzzed gently in his pocket.
 

Time to go. His car would be waiting for him by now.
 

“You know I love you.”

“I love you too, Daddy.”

He put his arm around her shoulder and they walked across the bridge toward an elevator that led down to the ground floor. Two of his bodyguards in black suits stood watch.
 

They passed a tall palm tree. A shadow lurked behind it, and the hair on the back of Lucan’s neck stood up. Then an explosion followed.
 

CRACK!

Lucan jumped. Something grazed his shoulder. His eyes drifted down to torn fabric—the shoulder of his suit was ripped.
 

Pink light sprung up around him and Madelaide—Lucan’s protection spell.
 

A man scrambled out of the shadows of the palm.
 

Bartholomew. Tony’s dad. That snotty-nosed kid that had guided him through the bog to Old Dark’s tomb. They had tried to blackmail Lucan, and he had made sure he put an end to that.
 

Bartholomew’s face was bruised, and he had a cut over one of his eyes. His lips were swollen. He wore a ripped t-shirt, denim jeans, and had a graying beard. He also had a gun.

Lucan stood in front of Madelaide with his hands up.