She was right. I hated it when she was right.
“Fine.” I turned to face the room, taking in the scattered guardians and my family, all of them looking to me for direction. The weight of their expectations was far too heavy, but I knew I had no choice except to keep going for as long as necessary. “Grandma, can you and the Sharmas extend the wards to cover the whole house?”
Emily exchanged a glance with Priya’s uncle. “It’s possible. But it will take time, and we’ll need to anchor the working at each corner of the building.”
“Do it. Use whatever power you need.” I looked over at my father. “Can you get a message to Brigid and Kenji and let them know what’s happening here?”
He was already pulling out his phone. “The cell network is still up. Gregory’s people haven’t jammed it yet.”
“They will soon,” Rebecca said. “Standard tactical protocol. First you contain, then you isolate.”
“Then we’d better work fast.”
Even before she finished speaking, Emily and the Sharmas began to move through the house, pausing at each corner to perform brief rituals that left shimmering traces of light on the walls. Finn coordinated with the guardians in town while Rebecca directed defensive preparations — furniture barricaded against doors, sight lines established through windows, emergency exits identified and memorized. Ben stayed close to me, his presence a steady anchor as I fought to maintain my connection to the ley line without being overwhelmed by the feedback still pouring through it.
Outside, the mercenaries had finished their deployment. They formed a loose perimeter around the house, their weapons trained on the doors and windows, but they hadn’t moved to breach yet. Waiting for orders, I guessed.
Or waiting to see what we would do.
“They’re not attacking,” Josie said quietly. She stood at the living room window, peering through that same gap in the curtains. “Why aren’t they attacking?”
“Because they don’t need to.” Rebecca had positioned herself near the front door, her weapon held low but ready. “Their job isn’t to kill us. It’s to keep us contained while the drill finishes its work. As long as we stay in this house, we’re not a threat to Gregory’s operation.”
“And if we try to leave?”
Rebecca’s expression was answer enough.
Another wave of pain crashed through me, stronger than the last, and I heard myself cry out before I could stop it. Ben was there instantly, his arms steadying me, his bioelectric field reaching out to merge with mine and absorb some of the overflow.
“It’s getting worse,” I said through gritted teeth. “The drill — it’s going deeper. I can feel it cutting into — ” I broke off as another spike of agony lanced through my skull. “Into something it really shouldn’t be touching.”
“The Dragon?” Ben asked quietly.
“The Dragon’s heart.” The words came from my grandmother, and when I looked at her, her face was pale but composed. “Your great-grandmother’s journals mentioned it — a core of concentrated dimensional energy that the Dragon uses to maintain the ley line network. If Gregory’s drill has reached that deep….”
“Then he’s not just tapping the network anymore,” I said dully. “He’s draining the Dragon itself.”
Everyone knew what that meant. The Dragon had given us until the winter solstice to stop the infection in the ley lines. But that deadline had assumed we were dealing with surface damage, with contamination that could be cleaned and healed. If Gregory was draining the creature’s core energy, stealing the very force that kept the network stable….
“How long?” Finn asked. His voice was steady enough, but I could see the fear in his eyes. “How long before the Dragon has no choice but to act?”
I closed my eyes and reached deeper into the ley line, pushing past the pain to find the answer. The network spread out before my inner sight like a vast web of golden light, but that light was flickering now, dimming in places where the Dragon’s energy was being siphoned away. I traced the damage back to its source — to Welling Glen, to the massive wound that Gregory’s drill had torn in the fabric of reality — and felt the Dragon’s consciousness pressing against the barrier between sleep and waking.
It was fighting, I realized. Fighting to stay dormant, to give us the time it had promised. But every second the drill continued to operate, that fight grew harder.
“Hours,” I said, opening my eyes. “Maybe less. It’s trying to hold on, trying to give us our chance, but Gregory’s taking too much too fast. If we don’t stop the drill….”
I didn’t need to finish the sentence. Everyone in the room knew what would happen if Julian Gregory’s team kept at their reckless drilling.
“Then we stop the drill.” This from Josie, her voice fierce in a way I’d rarely heard from my gentle mother. “We have to find a way to get out of this house and to Welling Glen so we can shut that thing down.”
“There are twelve armed mercenaries outside,” Rebecca pointed out. “Professional operators with military-grade equipment. Even if we could get past them, Gregory will have more security at the drill site itself.”
“So we don’t go through them.” Josie looked at my grandmother. “The wards you’re setting up — can they be extended? Pushed outward to create a corridor through their perimeter?”
She shook her head slowly. “The power required would be enormous. We’d need — ” She stopped there, her gaze shifting to me as if she’d just thought of something. “Your connection to the ley line. If you could channel energy through the ward structure….”
“I can barely stand upright,” I said, which was only the truth. “Every time the drill pulses, it’s like someone’s driving a spike through my brain. I don’t know if I have enough control to — ”