Dragonseed (51 page)

“Gold seems ill-suited for armor, daughter,” said Vendevorex. “It’s too soft, and too heavy to allow him to move freely.”

“Gold is merely an aesthetic component,” said Jandra. “The armor actually incorporates several different elements, including titanium. There aren’t many things that are going to be able to cut through it. The added weight is offset by the exoskeleton’s power, which will multiply Hex’s strength by a factor of ten.”

Hex spread his wings. She was telling the truth. He didn’t notice any additional weight. He still didn’t feel good, but he no longer felt as if he were about to collapse.

He looked around at the score of men and women who lay on the ground, groaning in agony. Some of the statues still stood, unaffected by Jandra’s spell.

“Were they prisoners of the shells?” he asked.

“No. The statue act is a kind of art. They stand out here for years at a time. Visitors to the garden try to figure out the real statues from the living ones. They’re like very, very, very slow and focused mimes.”

“Why are they in pain?”

“Severe nanite withdrawal,” said Jandra. “The city knows we’re here by the way. Heads up.”

Hex looked toward the sky. The stars were blotted out by an army of onrushing angels.

“Keep them out of my hair,” said Jandra. “I’ve got an antenna to build.”

BITTERWOOD KNEW HE
was being manipulated into this fight. He pondered Zeeky’s counsel that Jandra could be saved. He placed his new arrow against his bowstring. If the shafts were as powerful as Jazz said they were, would they slay even her?

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a moment for contemplation. A throng of marble angels swooped toward him. Despite their wings, they were objects explicitly out of place in the sky. They appeared carved from polished marble, too heavy to do anything but plummet.

If these creatures were like Gabriel or Hezekiah, the danger they represented through their sheer numbers made them more of a threat than the goddess for the moment. Yet, the angels weren’t bearing any obvious weapons. Their faces were placid, devoid of emotion. They looked as if they were here to investigate, not to fight.

Yet, against foes this powerful, the element of surprise was something Bitterwood couldn’t afford to lose. As so often happened in his battles, he would draw first blood… though he doubted they had blood. A rainbow-tipped arrow launched from his bowstring in a glowing streak, punching into the brow of the nearest angel. The winged statue lost control of its flight, its body wracked with spasms as it dropped, crashing onto the granite tiles that surrounded the fountain, sending a shower of gravel and dust skyward.

The other angels instantly halted their descent, their eyes narrowing as they turned their gaze to Bitterwood, assessing the threat. Bitterwood needed no time to think. A second arrow raced skyward, then a third, then a fourth, his bow singing a song of one-note staccato plucks. Three more angels dropped from the sky, silently, with no sign of pain on their faces. They crashed into the ground, shattering.

A strong wind suddenly swept over Bitterwood as Hex beat his wings, launching himself at the angels. They were only a hundred feet overhead, barely two body lengths for the giant dragon. They had no time to focus on him before he grabbed the first angel in his toothy jaws. He whipped his head about, tossing the angel into his nearest brethren. The wings of both shattered from the impact and they plummeted.

It had been almost twenty years since the first time Bitterwood had shot a sky-dragon in flight and watched it fall to earth. Watching the angels fall, he felt the same pulse of adrenaline wash through him. He didn’t know if he was on the right side in this battle. He didn’t know if Jazz was manipulating him into an act of unspeakable evil here in the city of gods.

Mere moments ago, all he had wanted was to save Jeremiah and take him and Zeeky far away, to a place where war was only a distant whisper, to live in peace as something almost a family.  He had wanted to put his life as a killer behind him.  Yet, as he watched his opponents fall from the sky, all these desires faded, washed away by the battle lust that surged through his veins. He targeted the next angel with a feeling approaching glee, and let his arrow fly.

JAZZ PAID NO
attention to the throng of angels. Her experience with the two warriors at her back left her confident that the next sixty seconds would pass in relative quiet. She clapped her hands and the water falling into the pool trickled to a halt. The golden disk atop the fountain would make an excellent conductor for her transmitter.

She needed to concentrate. She allowed the shell of light that clung to her like her third skin to fade away, revealing her second skin, the silver genie that was affixed to Jandra’s pores. It had been an obvious mistake to wear her genie in such a compact form inside her old body. Balling it up like that had left it vulnerable to Gabriel’s sword. By spreading it out along the full surface of her new body, she had a greater chance that, should any part of it be damaged, the rest of it would survive. Her personality was still mostly located within the computer memory of the genie. Once all the excitement was over, she’d spend a few days relaxing on the beach, soaking up some sun, and rewiring the synapses of her new brain so that it would be truly her own.

Threads of silver shot from her fingers and wrapped around the glass spire at the center of the fountain, twining upward around it, sinking into the gold at the top, etching elaborate maps across its surface.

An angel crashed into the fountain on the other side and the glass rim shattered. The pool water surged out the new opening, leaving goldfish flopping about beneath her. She didn’t mind that she was about to kill or cripple six billion people, but she felt bad that the fish had to suffer.

She was vaguely aware that Vendevorex was standing right beside her. She was a little perplexed as to what she should do with him. He wasn’t part of her plan. If she’d killed him back in the barn, it would have made her Jandra act less convincing. On the other hand, Hex, Bitterwood, and all the others were recent acquaintances according to Jandra’s memories. They were easy to fool. Vendevorex had known Jandra her whole life. Was he buying her act? She’d called him by his full name earlier, which was a slip up. Jandra had a more affectionate term for him.

“Ven,” she said. “The key to talk to your nanites once the pulse is activated is 17351. It’s about twenty seconds in coming. Since you’re not doing anything in the meantime, could you save the goldfish?”

Vendevorex nodded. He swept his wing over the shattered pool with a dramatic flourish, sending out a shower of silver dust. The shards of glass began to dance, hopping and popping until they formed bowls around the gasping fish. He closed his fore-talon, and the water that clung to the bottom of the pool rose in a mist. He opened his talon, and the water poured down in precise rain clouds, filling the fishbowls.

If Jazz had known he’d complete the task so efficiently, she wouldn’t have shared the key. Not that it was important. Vendevorex might have been a wizard among more primitive minds, but he was little more frightening than a birthday party magician to her. He could push a few molecules around, bend a little light, and knit together a bad cut. Parlor tricks compared to the technology’s full potential. Jazz configured the last circuit.

“Omega,” she whispered, activating the signal. Instantly, the angels remaining in the air exploded into clouds of dust.

Seconds later, a howl that could have come from the depths of hell itself echoed through the city, as six billion souls that had felt the touch of a shared mind for a millennium suddenly found themselves alone with their own thoughts.

In the rain of dust, it was impossible to see more than ten feet. Hex and Bitterwood couldn’t see her right now. Jazz turned to Vendevorex. She twisted the electromagnetic field around her fingers as she once more opened the razor thin underspace gate that would form a rainbow blade. “Thanks for helping with the goldfish. Now, no hard feelings, I’m going to kill you.”

She slashed the blade across his throat. She waited, watching for his neck to slide from his shoulders. His eyes, rather than rolling back into his head, glared at her with a stern look of disapproval.

He said, with a voice unmarred by trachea severing, “You’ve taken something from my daughter. It’s time you give it back.”

The underspace blade was so sharp that perhaps the surface tension of the water in his cells was holding his neck. Jazz stretched her silver-plated fingers forward to give his head a nudge and knock it loose.

Her fingers passed through thin air.

Her feet were suddenly locked in place as the thick glass rim of the fountain began to climb up her legs. She went blind as twin phosphorous flares erupted inches from her face. A dragon’s fore-talon fell upon her shoulder from behind.

Parlor tricks.

FROM THE MOMENT
she’d stepped from the rainbow gate, Vendevorex had suspected that Jazz was the mind animating the body of Jandra. When he’d come back into contact with his genie, he’d discovered something curious: Nearly a month of Jandra’s recent memories were stored within the device, recorded during the time Jandra had worn his genie. Jandra apparently hadn’t discovered this was a function of the device, since she hadn’t encoded her memories so that other users couldn’t access them. Thus, he knew in great detail the events of Jandra’s life from the moment she’d put on his skull cap to the moment that Hex had ripped the genie from Jandra’s spine. He knew who Jazz was, and the threat she represented.

He wondered if Jazz was aware of the threat he represented.

The ground beneath them rumbled as an earthquake wracked the island. He had no time to ponder the cause.

By now, the glass of the fountain had climbed to Jazz’s waist, immobilizing the lower half of her body. Jazz twisted her neck around, trying to see him, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d swiveled her head in a complete circle. With the flares before her eyes, she couldn’t see a thing. He fashioned a long staff of glass with a head in the shape of his fore-talon, and lowered it to her shoulder. As anticipated, she whipped her arm over her back, stabbing the rainbow blade into the space where he should have been standing in order to touch her. He dropped the staff and leapt forward, grabbing her wrist, pushing it against her back so that the impossibly sharp sword cut away a thin slice of the nanite shell along her spine, exposing Jandra’s skin.

He needed both his talons to control the blade as she struggled to free herself. He bent his serpentine neck forward and caught the torn edge of the silver shell with his teeth, peeling it out from her skin. Then, though it would cost him his powers, he willed his genie to reconfigure itself, turning into a stream of silver liquid that raced down his scaly snout and leapt onto the patch of skin he’d exposed.

Instantly, the flares vanished. He leapt back, flapping his wings, getting out of the reach of the blade. The glass around Jazz’s legs cracked and shattered, as Jazz overpowered his unguided nanites.

Jazz spun around, her face distorted with rage. “Flying won’t protect you, you bastard,” she snarled.

Before Vendevorex could fly higher, the glass of the shattered fountain reshaped itself into an enormous hand that reached up and plucked him from the sky. The fingers closed upon his ribs with an unearthly swiftness and pressure. The sound of snapping bones reached his ears a fraction of a second before the bolts of pain.

Suddenly, Jazz shouted out, “No! Noooo!”

The glass hand went slack. Vendevorex lost awareness as he tumbled into the flowers below.

SHAY FELT AN
odd sensation in his wings, a new sense he hadn’t known he possessed until this moment. There was an unseen wave of energy in the air as he emerged through the gate, and his wings tingled with each pulse.

His arrival was badly timed. He seemed to be in the middle of an earthquake. The air was thick with dust. The ground beneath him shook violently. Yet, instead of buildings toppling, the opposite was happening. A structure was rising from the earth nearby. He recognized it from the books he’d studied as a Greek temple, with walls formed by gleaming white columns of marble. In scale, it rivaled the Dragon Palace. Within its shadowy confines, a giant man, two hundred feet tall, glared out. He wore a shimmering toga and sported a thick white beard and a mane of long white hair. He carried a trident, like the image of the god Poseidon.

The god did not look happy.

Thunder rumbled through the air, loud enough to rattle Shay’s teeth. It took a second to realize the thunder formed words: “Who dares silence the voices of my children?”

A golden dragon that bore some resemblance to Hex darted through the air toward the god. In scale, it was like an eagle attacking a bear. The god lifted his hand in a dismissive swat. The golden beast flew off in a streak and smashed into one of the impossibly tall towers. The force drove the dragon through the wall. Shay couldn’t see if he emerged from the other side.

Skitter slithered from the gate beside him. Zeeky craned her neck toward the god’s angry face. She sighed. “I guess I’d better go talk to him.”

“Talk to who?” Shay asked.

“Him,” said Zeeky, pointing to the giant.

“Him?”

Zeeky nodded. “I can talk to pretty much anyone. It’s my gift.”

By now, the dust was starting to settle. Jazz stood beside a large spire topped with a golden disk. The granite-tiled walkway she stood on was sopping wet. For some reason, she was surrounded by hundreds of goldfish bowls.

Jazz looked as if she were dancing. Her skin was silver once more. She was whipping back and forth, her silver hair flying, raising her hands over her shoulders to claw at her back.

Shay rushed toward her and raised his sword to strike. Yet, as he neared, he realized Jazz wasn’t dancing. There was something moving beneath the silver shell that coated her back, and she was trying to claw it off.

“Get out!” Jazz screamed. Or was it Jandra?