Chapter Thirteen
The Dragon’s scream tore through me like a serrated blade.
I’d felt pain before — the phoenix merge, the dimensional burns searing themselves into my flesh, the countless small agonies of learning to channel energies my body was never designed to hold. But this was different. This was the earth itself crying out, and because I was connected to the ley line, because the phoenix fire had woven me into the network at a cellular level, I felt every inch of that cry as if it were my own.
My knees hit the moss-covered ground. Distantly, I was aware of Ben’s arms around me, his voice calling my name, but I couldn’t respond. The feedback from Gregory’s drill was a freight train bearing down on me, and all I could do was brace for impact.
It hit.
The world went white. For an endless moment, I existed only as pain — not localized, not specific, just a vast and overwhelming sensation of wrongness that obliterated everything else. I felt the ley line buckling under the pressure, felt the Dragon’s fury and anguish reverberating through the network like a bell that had been struck too hard. Cracks were spreading through the magical infrastructure that had been stable for millennia, and I was powerless to stop them.
Then Ben’s bioelectric field wrapped around mine, and the world came back into focus.
“Sidney!” His face swam into view, pale and terrified. “Sidney, we have to move. Now.”
I tried to speak, but what came out was closer to a moan. The connection to the ley line was still open, still flooding me with sensations I couldn’t process. I could feel the Dragon thrashing somewhere deep beneath the earth, its ancient consciousness ablaze with rage and pain. Gregory’s drill had done more than tap the ley line; it had wounded the creature itself, and now that wound was bleeding dimensional energy into the network faster than anything could absorb it.
“Can’t,” I managed. “Have to — have to try to contain — ”
“You can’t contain this.” Ben hauled me to my feet, his arm tight around my waist. “Look.”
I forced my eyes to focus on the clearing around us. The standing stones were pulsing with light now, green and amber and sickly white, their Ogham inscriptions blazing so bright it was like trying to look directly at the sun. The cracks in the earth had spread to the edges of the circle, and heat was rising from them in visible waves, distorting the air like a desert mirage. As I watched, one of the smaller stones shifted, tilting several degrees before settling into a new position with a grinding sound that I felt in my bones.
The portal site was destabilizing. And we were standing at ground zero.
“The house,” I said. My voice sounded strange and distant, like it belonged to someone else. “We have to get back to the house.”
So we ran.
Trees blurred past, and my muscles screamed at me, pushed far beyond their limits. Through it all, though, Ben’s hand gripped mine and his bioelectric field pulsed in rhythm with my own, the only anchor I had in a world that seemed to be coming apart at the seams.
The Dragon’s scream followed us through the forest, a subsonic vibration that made the trees shiver and sent birds exploding from the canopy in panicked clouds. I could feel the creature’s attention turning toward the source of its pain — toward Welling Glen, toward Gregory’s operation — and I knew with terrible certainty that if it decided to surface now, nothing we did would matter. The cauterization would happen ahead of schedule, and Silver Hollow would be the first casualty.
We burst out of the tree line and into the backyard of the house just as the first of the black SUVs came roaring up the road.
“Inside!” Ben shouted, already pulling me toward the back door. “Everyone inside, now!”
The guardians who had stayed behind were already moving. Finn held the door open as we stumbled through, his face grim and pale. Emily and Josie were in the living room, pushing furniture against the windows while Priya Sharma and her uncle chanted something in Hindi, their hands tracing patterns in the air that left faint trails of golden light.
“The others?” I gasped as I collapsed on the couch.
“Brigid and Kenji got their teams into position before the vehicles showed up,” Rebecca said. She had her weapon drawn and was peering through a gap in the curtains. “They’re holding the perimeter around the town center, but they’re cut off from us. Gregory’s people have the house surrounded.”
I forced myself over to the window so I could look out. Three black SUVs had pulled up in front of the house, and men in tactical gear were piling out of them — eight, ten, a dozen, all armed, all moving with the coordinated precision of professional mercenaries. More vehicles were arriving from the other direction, blocking off any escape route.
“How did they know?” My voice rasped, scraped raw by the pain I’d absorbed by the portal site. “How did they know we’d be here?”
“Gregory’s not stupid,” Finn said grimly. “He knew we’d try to interfere once he activated Prometheus. This is a preemptive strike to keep us pinned down while the drill does its work.”
Another wave of pain rolled through me, and I gripped the windowframe to keep myself from falling. The ley line was still screaming in my head, and beneath it, the Dragon’s rage pulsed like a second heartbeat. I could feel the creature clawing its way toward consciousness, toward the surface, and every minute that Gregory’s drill continued to operate brought it closer to the breaking point.
“We have to stop the drill,” I said. “If we don’t — ”
“We can’t stop anything if we’re dead,” Rebecca broke in. “Right now, our priority is survival. We have to hold this position until Brigid and Kenji can regroup, and then we’ll figure out our next move.”
“There might not be a next move.” I pushed myself upright, ignoring the way my legs wanted to buckle beneath me. “You don’t understand. The Dragon is waking up. Not stirring, not dreaming — actually waking up. If Gregory doesn’t stop drilling — ”
“Then we’re all dead anyway.” Rebecca’s voice was matter-of-fact, as if death was only a momentary inconvenience for her. “But we’re definitely dead if those mercenaries get through the door. One crisis at a time, Sidney.”