Old Evil (The Last Dragon Lord Book 2) Read online

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.

  “What the—”

  “You’re a son of a bitch!” Bartholomew cried.

  People nearby screamed and started to scatter.

  Bartholomew pointed his gun at Lucan. “Now you’ll get what you deserve, finally.”

  “Hey, pal, why don’t you put the gun down and we can talk—”

  BANG!

  Lucan’s bodyguards fired at Bartholomew, but he had cast a protection spell on himself before approaching Lucan, and a pink aura around him deflected their bullets.

  Bartholomew cursed and dove behind a planter box as the guards fired again.

  An incessant ringing sound filled Lucan’s ears, and suddenly he could only hear his own heart beating. His head pulsed as if it were going to explode, and his vision narrowed.

  He grabbed Madelaide and they ran down the bridge, away from the gunfire.

  “Daddy, what’s happening?”

  Madeline’s voice sounded as if it were underwater.

  “Follow me and be quiet!”

  A pink wall sprang up in front of them, and Lucan slid to a stop. Bartholomew must have cast it. If he touched that wall, there was no telling what would happen.

  Instinctively, Lucan reached into his pocket and pulled out a grimoire.

  Behind him, Bartholomew was aiming his gun at Lucan’s bodyguards, trading shots.

  Lucan fingered the smooth grimoire and thought of a spell. A wheel of pink light flashed in front of him, and he selected a paralysis rune. A blue ball of energy flew forward and struck Bartholomew, but it did not paralyze him. A pink force field of light blinked around the man’s body as Bartholomew activated another protection spell.

  Bartholomew side-stepped and tucked his gun in his belt. A wheel of runes floated in front of his head.

  Lucan grabbed Madelaide and threw her into a bush.

  WHISH!

  A wave of fire slammed into him. His entire body seared under the flames and he screamed, patting himself down as the fire evaporated.

  Lucan selected another rune, and a javelin of ice shot out of his magical wheel. It impaled Bartholomew’s arm, and he gave a blood-curdling scream.

  BANG! BANG!

  The guards seized an opening and fired at Bartholomew, but he took cover. He ripped the ice javelin out of his arm, screaming.

  Nothing was going to stop the man.

  WHAM!

  Bartholomew sent a gust of wind at the guards, knocking them backward against the elevator doors.

  The countereffect of the spell blew Bartholomew into a palm tree a few feet from Lucan. He landed with a hard crack against the cement. As he grunted and pulled himself to his feet, the man’s wild eyes went immediately to Madelaide.

  Lucan’s heart raced and then almost stopped beating.

  He was out of grimoires.

  Bartholomew lunged for Madelaide, but Lucan tackled him. “Run, Madelaide!” he shouted. She dashed down the bridge, and he turned back to Bartholomew.

  “You tried to silence us,” Bartholomew screamed. “You sent goons to hurt us!”

  Lucan kneed the man in the groin and they rolled across the ground.

  Bartholomew landed a punch. Lucan’s cheek stung. The man was too big. Lucan couldn’t fight him.

  If he couldn’t spar with him, he could at least reach for his gun…

  Bartholomew saw Lucan’s hand going for his waist, and he grabbed his gun and aimed it at his head.

  “Let’s see how you win the election now.”

  Lucan closed his eyes. Then, instead of a gunshot, he heard a gasp of surprise.

  Lucan opened his eyes.

  The gun lay on the ground next to him, and Bartholomew was suspended in the air above Lucan, his arms bound by vines.

  Two reptilian eyes flashed in the concrete and blinked.

  “That is enough,” the voice said.

  The bridge rolled up into a hulking, four-legged shape, and the popcorn-textured concrete took on a new, dull gray color.

  A massive gray dragon stood over Bartholomew, growling.

  A dragon in Abstraction. Lucan had forgotten. The entire skyscraper complex and this dragon were one in the same. He must have been waiting for the best opportunity to strike.

  Bartholomew yelled in fright.

  The dragon turned in Lucan’s direction. “Mr. Grimoire, you’d best be leaving.” Then he turned back to Bartholomew and growled again.

  Lucan nodded to the dragon. “Thanks, buddy.”

  He ran to Madelaide, who was hiding behind a palm. Her face was full of tears.

  “Sweetie, you all right?”

  “What happened?” she asked, half crying. “Why did he try to kill you?”

  He took her and hugged her tight. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

  “Mom was right! You always attract drama!”

  He caressed her hair. “Just calm down, Madelaide…”

  His bodyguards ran to him. Their eyes were wide with worry.

  “Sir! Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine, fellas.”

  A sharp pain in Lucan’s shoulder got his attention, and he reached to touch it. He hadn’t even noticed it in the struggle. He cursed as he felt warm wetness around his shoulder blade.

  There was blood. A lot of it.

  III

  Deep in the Ancestral Bogs, Miri Charmwell ran her fingers along a gnarled birch tree that lay on the forest floor.

  She knelt and beheld an entire sea of fallen trees around her. They were piled up like matches, thin bundles of wood dotting the landscape.

  She had been here since six in the morning, studying every tree for oddities. They had been uprooted, like something simply pulled them out of the ground as if they were weeds, then laid them down in big piles.

  She had given orders to her research team to inspect every tree before doing anything else. It was long, mundane, tedious work.

  She had to work side-by-side with them, even though she already knew the cause of the destruction.

  No one else did, though. And studying the trees bought her time to figure out how she was going to save herself, continue her research with Old Dark, and still give the governor what he needed.

  The oppressive heat had taken its toll on her. She thought she had been prepared, but as the day sweltered on, it eroded her energy.

  And she had only been here for a morning. She didn’t know how she was going to last for two weeks.

  She uncapped her water bottle and took a long drink. The water had turned tepid and was distasteful. She had just poured it from the cooler an hour ago. She found herself thinking that the Ancestral Bogs should have been called the Infernal Bogs instead.

  She wiped a mass of sweat from her neck. The wide-brimmed hat on her head was ringed with perspiration, and so was the floral bandana around her neck. Already she’d taken several breaks, sitting on fallen trees as she watched Laner and the rest of the crew walk around with phones and notebooks, taking photos of everything they saw.

  Laner had tried to stay close to her, but she kept her distance. With all the history between them she didn’t want him getting any ideas. He just couldn’t let her go, and every time he doffed his sun hat at her and adjusted his auburn bangs, he had a look in his eye that said he still had feelings for her. His eyes did the talking.

  She didn’t have any feelings for him.

  Her mind was elsewhere, thinking about all the events that had happened in the last few days.

  Just a few days ago, Old Dark’s tomb had been here. She had seen it. She had been inside it.

  Now it was a wasteland in the middle of a
wasteland, a semi-circle of felled trees half a mile in diameter, the biggest mystery the media had ever seen. Even Miri didn’t know what happened here for sure.

  Nearby, two team members balanced delicately on a tree as they walked, talking to each other. They wore long pants and long sleeves, and they carried backpacks with airflow systems to keep their backs cool. Clearly they knew what they were doing.

  Miri didn’t mind the crew. Just earlier, she had met them and introduced herself. They were a young group, much younger than she had expected. Most of them had only been out of college a few years. But they shared a love of archaeology. As she told them her expectations (she made them up), they had taken notes eagerly and asked a lot of questions.

  They were refreshing compared to the governor, who had barked orders at her on exactly what he wanted. He would be demanding a report later, and if she didn’t have something for him, he was, quite literally, going to chew her a new asshole.

  A woman plopped down on the tree next to her. She wore a pink shirt and jeans, had purple hair in a bob hairdo, and a diamond stud just next to her lip.

  “Want some water?” Jasmine asked.

  Jasmine White was the team lead. Governor Grimoire had recommended her highly and she had proven him right. She reminded Miri of her former self a long time ago, when college graduation was still fresh on her mind and the world held endless potential.

  Miri dumped out her bottle of water and poured some of Jasmine’s into her own.

  “Don’t worry,” Jasmine said, “I’ve got plenty in the van. You don’t do many archeological digs, I assume.”

  Miri drank the cold, crisp water and gave a relaxing sigh. “I guess that’s obvious.”

  “Water’s important, but not as important as beer. We always bring a few cases for later.”

  Miri smiled. “I’m looking forward to that, then.”

  Jasmine took a swig from her canteen and glanced over at Laner, who was bent over, inspecting a tree. “We’re a tight-knit group. Most of us went to archaeology school together.”

  “I didn’t expect you to be so young.”

  “Neither did we,” Jasmine said, laughing. “Governor Grimoire was pretty fed-up with the last team. They weren’t adhering to the Magical Lands Act. Last election he decided to put some new blood in the department. Most of us grew up in the Half-Eight, so it was a no-brainer.”

  Miri puffed. Obviously, the governor needed support from younger voters in the Half-Eight. That was the only reason he hired Jasmine. Was she too naïve to understand that? Miri decided not to ask.

  “We’ve been doing this for four years,” Jasmine said. She leaned forward and ran a stick through the mud.

  “Can I ask your opinion?” Miri asked. “What do you think about all of this?”

  Jasmine thought carefully before she spoke. “There was something here, but now it’s gone.”

  “What do you think it was?”

  “Could have been an entrance to the aquifer. My first thought when I arrived was that this had to be aquifer-related, but now I’m not so sure.”

  Jasmine motioned for Miri to follow her. They stopped at a tree that was split in half. “I’ve spent a lot of time around birches. They look sickly, but the truth is that they’re quite vibrant and resilient. If we were looking at an aquifer event, we would see the presence of magic. Birches, more so than other trees, have shallow root systems that attract magic. When you pull one up, it usually looks something like this...”

  Jasmine showed Miri a smartphone picture of her sitting atop a papery birch tree whose roots were exposed. They had a pink tinge to them, as if magical bubbles were leaking out.

  “Ah...” Miri said, tilting her head at the photo.

  “These birches didn’t go that deep,” Jasmine said. “Their roots are averaging about twenty feet at most per all the ones I’ve seen.”

  “So what do you think now?” Miri asked.

  Jasmine pointed to a notch on the tree. “Foul play is what I think. Birches bruise easily. But this is a forceful bruise. Something like this could only be caused by machinery.”

  Miri gasped.

  Jasmine knew her stuff. Miri would have expected no less from a field researcher.

  But that was going to make her life difficult.

  A lot more difficult.

  “This was definitely machinery,” Jasmine repeated. “Other than that, though, I’m completely stumped.”

  Miri knew she had to find the pond.

  Old Dark told her that there was treasure at the bottom of it, enough to completely distract the investigation.

  The old dragon had been right. Distraction was what she needed.

  “What do you think, Professor Charmwell?”

  Miri was about to respond, but then someone called her name from across the dig site.

  Laner waved to them. His voice was enthusiastic. “Hey, Miri, I found something!”

  Miri and Jasmine started walking toward him.

  “I’m glad the governor picked you for this,” Jasmine said. “I have a ton of respect and admiration for you.”

  “You’re too nice.”

  “No, really. It’s nice to see a woman who isn’t afraid to speak her mind. I hope one day I can be like you. I can’t believe they took your doctorate. I’ve been hoping you would get it back.”

  “Sometimes I wonder why I’m even a professor anymore.”

  Jasmine looked over at her with concerned eyes. “You don’t mean that, do you?”

  Miri regretted saying anything at all.

  Ethics. It was such a gray area...when you needed it to be.

  Miri called out to Laner. “What do you have?”

  “This tree is different than the others. It’s—”

  Laner lost his balance and fell. A huge splash resounded through the area.

  The pond.

  It was so full of sediment and so placid that no one had seen it.

  “Laner!” Miri cried.

  But he didn’t rise. Bubbles rose to the surface of the water and popped.

  “I don’t think he can swim!” Miri said.

  Jasmine whistled. Nearby, one of the research crew ran to the spot where Laner had fallen. He took off his shirt and dove into the water.

  A few moments later, he resurfaced with Laner in tow. Miri and Jasmine pulled them out of the water.

  Laner looked stunned.

  “God, Laner!” Miri said. “I didn’t know you couldn’t swim.”

  “Of course I can swim,” Laner said between coughs. He was covered in beige mud. “But I found this. It was embedded in one of the trees.”

  He held out his hand, revealing dull, mud-covered shards.

  Jasmine took the shards from Laner and wiped the mud off of them with the bottom of her shirt. She gasped. “These are Magic Eater shells. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re in business!”

  Miri’s heart raced as the crew circled around.

  IV

  Amal Shalewood drove down the coastal highway of the western continent with the ocean on her left. The foamy gray waves washed against the rocky bluffs of the highway, and she tasted the salty air on her lips. She’d been glad that she decided to ride with the top down so she could enjoy the crispness of the coastal air. That she was driving at sunrise made it all the better.

  In her rearview mirror, the hopeless maze that was Magic Hope City lay far in the distance, like an urban crystal against the hilly landscape.

  She adjusted her sunglasses and was glad to be out of the city for a while.

  She’d been running a long, almost futile campaign, and the city just made her think about all the things she had to do and whether they were even worth doing.

  She was a distant third in the polls so far. Her party, the Progressive Party, had all but abandoned her. They had told her it was too late to do anything and that she had squandered her opportunity. Not that there was much of one in the first place since there was a strong incumbent.

  Governor Grimoire had s
ixty-three percent of the vote.

  Lucan Grimoire had thirty-seven percent.

  And she, Amal Fredericka Shalewood, the only human in the race—a woman and a dark-skinned one at that—was stuck at seventeen percent. Her numbers had been slipping lately now that Lucan was on a warpath against his uncle.

  She and her husband had already had “the talk”—about dropping out of the race and keeping whatever dignity was left in her bank account.

  But she wouldn’t quit.

  Not yet.

  She passed a sign for the Bogville exit, ahead in one mile.

  She shut off the cruise control in her convertible and took manual control.

  She took in the sandy air and told herself she should get to the beach more often. If she lost the election, which almost seemed inevitable at this point, she’d have a lot of time on her hands. Maybe she could get her position back as head of the Magical Crimes Unit.

  No. If Lucan won the election, that wasn’t going to happen.

  She’d been appointed as a magical detective almost on a whim. The planets had aligned and Governor Grimoire had been looking for someone fresh to fill up his appointment selections. Despite the fact that her appointment was obviously to fill a seat, they’d had a good working relationship.

  She’d been lucky. She was the only human to ever lead the Magical Crimes Unit (MCU), an oxymoron since she couldn’t cast.

  Her conviction rate had been decent too.

  She put illicit magic users in prison, and she brought an analytical understanding to the office, and her working knowledge of spells and runes rivaled elves’. She and her husband—also a human—gained the respect of the other elven detectives and became somewhat of a power couple in the MCU.

  Nothing to criticize. Her opponents had certainly not made her record a target in the election, and that was a sign that she had done something admirable.

  If only she felt like it.

  She signaled and turned off the coastal highway onto a lonely outer road that ran alongside the beach. Before long, a small seaside town appeared in the distance. A windmill spun in the wind, reflecting sunlight off its steel flaps.

  As Amal entered the outskirts of Bogville, she began to notice just how out of place her red convertible was. The other sedans and trucks in traffic were grimed with dust so thick you could write in it with your finger.