“It’ll come back.”
His eyes popped open again just in time to see Justin flash him a reassuring smile. “I’ve taken much bigger hits to my magic and been perfectly fine five minutes later,” his brother said, turning back to the chaos going on all around them. “You’re just in shock and stuck as a human, which makes everything harder. Focus on breathing. Your power will fix itself.”
Julius nodded and closed his eyes, ignoring the bullets whizzing over his head as he tried to follow his brother’s instructions, because if there was anything Justin had experience with, it was recovering from damage. Sure enough, after a few quiet breaths, his magic began to expand again, creeping back to fill the void the monster had left.
The empty-headed feelings of detachment and weakness faded along with it, bringing back the sharp, immediate pain of his shredded chest. Even that was comforting, though. Pain he could work with, pain he understood, and while the ache was bad enough to bring tears to his eyes, Julius couldn’t help sighing in relief. Exceptionally short-lived relief, it turned out, because when he was finally stable enough to start paying attention to his surroundings again, the first thing he saw was Bixby tasing Marci.
He shot to his feet before he could think. Just rolled right up only to fall right back down again when the dizziness hit. But he was recovering with every breath, and the second time he got to his feet, he stayed there, looking around for Justin, who was no longer beside him.
After a few frantic seconds, he spotted his brother again on the other side of the room, kneeling down to scoop something onto his shoulder, but it wasn’t until he saw her pale hair that Julius realized it was Katya. The sight hit him like all the shots he’d avoided. Justin had Katya, which meant they’d done it. They’d gotten her back. They’d won.
Julius sucked in a victorious breath. Even with all the failures, his plan had worked. They had Katya! He wasn’t going to be eaten! Now all they had to do was save Marci from Bixby and—
His thoughts cut off when Justin turned and charged straight for him. For a moment, it looked like his brother was going to run him over, but Justin stopped just in time. “Good, you’re up,” he said, grabbing his arm. “Come on, we gotta go.”
“What?” Julius cried, eyes going back to Marci’s slumped body, which Bixby was hauling toward the gym’s rear door. “No! You have to rescue her!”
“Can’t,” Justin said, yanking him back toward the main door, which was currently packed with fleeing goons. “Bixby’s rigged Three Sisters here like a suicide bomber, and we’ve got magic eaters coming down our necks.”
Julius glanced up at where Katya was slung over his brother’s shoulders. Sure enough, a homemade bomb of plastic explosives was wrapped around her waist, but that didn’t explain the rest of it. “Magic eaters?”
His brother snorted. “Look up.”
Julius did…and immediately regretted it.
The hole in the roof where he’d fallen was now completely swarmed by more of the giant, winged monsters that had attacked him. They were crawling over the ceiling like roaches, hissing at the lights as they tried to get closer to the dragons in the middle. “What are those things?”
“I just told you,” Justin snapped. “Magic. Eaters.”
“Right,” Julius said, mentally rubbing the place where the chunk had been bitten out of his own magic. “But where did they come from?”
“They’re predators that eat magic, you’re a wounded dragon who’s bleeding all over the place. Do the math. Now let’s get out of here before things get worse.”
He turned to go, but Julius didn’t follow. He was too busy looking for Marci.
What he found wasn’t good. The taser must have been turned to max, because she still wasn’t moving. Bixby had dragged her almost all the way to the rear door by this point, one arm wrapped around her neck in a choke hold while the other clutched the bomb trigger against his chest. The rest of his men were in full retreat, throwing themselves at every available exit in their panic to escape the leathery winged monsters crawling down from the ceiling. A smart move on their part, and a stroke of luck for Julius, because with all his men jumping ship, Bixby was now alone.
“Hey!” Justin said, stomping back over. “Are you deaf? I said let’s go.”
“Not without Marci.”
His brother stared at him for a second like he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard, and this his face got scary. “This isn’t the time to be stupid,” he growled, shifting Katya’s body higher on his shoulder. “We got what we came for. Dragon secure, clan war averted, mission accomplished, now let’s scram before we lose it.”
Julius held his ground. “I’m not leaving her.”
“Oh, come on!” Justin yelled. “She’s a mortal!”
“She’s my friend!” Julius yelled back.
“We don’t have friends!” his brother bellowed. “You want to play nice, you do it on your own time, but this is family business, Julius.”
He stopped, waiting for a response, but Julius had already turned away, and Justin cursed loudly. “Is this really the story you want me to bring back to Mother? That you had a clean escape with the Three Sisters’ girl in your hands, and you threw it away to save a human? There are nine billion of the bastards running around! I’ll get you another one. Now let’s go.”
“No!”
The word came out so loud, even Julius jumped. He didn’t regret it, though. He’d already made up his mind, and he’d had about enough of this. “It doesn’t matter what she is,” he said, staring Justin down. “Human or dragon or anything else. She’s my friend and my teammate, and I will not leave her behind.” He dropped his hand to his sword and turned back to face Bixby. “You don’t have to help me,” he said softly. “You don’t even have to stay if you don’t want, but don’t get in my way.”
Justin snarled in frustration and reached out to grab him, but Julius was already gone, racing across the gym with his hand wrapped tight around Tyrfing’s worn grip.
The sprint wasn’t his fastest. Even though he’d thrown everything he had at it, after the magic eater’s attack and this whole crazy day, there just wasn’t enough left to go around. He was still faster than the human Bixby, though, and that was what mattered.
The mobster swore as Julius appeared right in front of him. This close, he could see the panic in Bixby’s eyes, the absolute, up-against-the-wall, survival-at-all-costs battle going on inside him as he dropped Marci to turn his gun on the new threat. Another time, when he wasn’t so injured or out of practice, Julius could have dodged. Now, though, he didn’t have a prayer, so he ignored the gun and stayed on target, fixing his eyes not on the detonator clutched in Bixby’s hand, but on the hairy stretch of wrist between the mobster’s suit cuff and his gold-plated watch as he yanked Tyrfing out of its sheath.
Like it had been waiting for this moment, the short sword leaped into his hand. It flew up so fast, Julius wasn’t even sure it was flying in the right direction, but he didn’t try to correct its momentum. He simply kept his eyes on the mark, swinging his arm as hard as he could and trusting the cursed blade to do the rest.
A well-placed trust, it turned out. The moment the short blade was free of its sheath, it flashed and turned in Julius’s palm, jerking his swing up and sideways to land a perfect strike on Bixby’s exposed wrist. The ancient sword cut through bone and flesh without a whisper of resistance, slicing Bixby’s hand—and the detonator clutched in it—clean off.
The strike was barely finished before Julius lunged forward, catching the trigger as it tumbled from Bixby’s now lifeless hand just like he’d caught the falling water this morning. The moment his fingers made contact, he stabbed his own thumb down on the detonator button, pressing it back into place before the bomb could go off. It was such a marvelous save, such a perfect catch, he didn’t even realize he’d been shot until he heard the bang.