Then Pie’s voice. “A horn, a hoof, an eye, a bone.”
Before I can even think about it, I’m reciting the next line. “A man, a girl, a place of stone.”
“A tick of time.”
“A last mistake.”
“Keep them safe behind the gate.” She sighs. “I think I get it.”
“Get what?”
“The curse, Pell. It’s in the poem. I think it’s you and me. You’re the man and I’m the girl.”
We think about this as the earth stills and the stench of dragon fades. There are no flames, no fire, and the molten stone that used to be the wall of the sanctuary is hard, and cold, and black as night.
Finally, I stand, pull her to her feet, and then we look around at the destruction.
But it’s not the destitution of moments ago. It’s the ruins of a battle that took place thousands of years before. It’s something from the future and the past all at once.
It is the magic of Saint Mark’s.
“Tomas!” I yell. “Tomas!”
“What the hell… What the hell am I lookin’ at?”
Pie and I turn to find Sheriff Russ Roth standing in the middle of the great entrance hall. But there are no longer walls between there and here because they have been destroyed by the breath of a blood dragon.
“What the fuck is happening out here?” He says it calmly. He doesn’t even shout. In fact, I’m not even sure he’s talking to us. He might just be thinking out loud.
“What do we do?” Pie whispers.
“Banish him,” I say. “Banish him now!”
The sheriff is not that close. He’s maybe a hundred feet away. But he must hear me because he pulls his damn gun and points it at us. “You’re under arrest for—”
Pie grabs the dragon scale from my hand and raises it and this motion kicks off his trigger-happy instinct because once again, he fires his gun.
Everything goes slow. Each moment becomes an eternity as the bullet flies towards Pie, the scale still too low, and this time there’s nothing to break the momentum. It hits her right in the chest and she goes flying backwards and in that instant two more things happen. Pie Vita croaks out the words, “Be gone!” and I use one of my few innate magical powers to freeze her in place.
When Pie actually stops falling mid-air and it hits me that she cannot die as long as I hold her there, I breathe out a sigh of relief and turn back to the sheriff. Because he is now a dead man as far as I’m concerned.
But he is gone. Pie’s last words were just enough to finish the job.
Then I look back at Pie and realize that she is gonna die. She is gonna die before we even get started because her chest is a mangled mess of flesh. “Help!” I call. I don’t even know who I’m calling to. Tomas? The gods who deserted me? The little sparrow? Hell, I’d let the sheriff back in if he could save Pie from her now-certain death.
But there is no help.
Tomas is gone.
Pie is frozen.
Grant… dead?
Sheriff Roth… banished?
And now there’s only me.
Standing alone in the blood dragon debris field feeling as cursed as I’ve ever been.
I glance down and see my chopped-off horn. Still dripping blood over the ground. Bubbling, and sizzling, and turning everything it touches to black obsidian.
I reach down to pick it up out of instinct. But the moment my fingertips touch the horn, the whole world goes black.
CHAPTER THIRTY - TWO - PIE
I am running. Breathless running. Exuberant running. The kind of running that only happens in a wood. That can only happen to creatures with hooves and hind legs.
Pell is next to me and he, like me, is overflowing with joy, his breaths coming hard and fast in perfect rhythm with my own.
We leap over fallen trees. Jump from rock to rock on a steep cliff edge. We make the orange leaves on the white-bark trees shudder as we pass.
It is the best moment of my life.
And this thought is still lingering in my mind—still echoing off the sweet happiness filling me up—when it all changes. When it all goes from bright to dusk.
I am alone. Not running. Standing.
Breathing hard, though. Like I was running. Like that was real. Pell, and me, and the woods. It was real.
It just isn’t anymore.
The air is crisp and cool enough that tendrils of steam billow out from my mouth with each exhale. “Hello?”
And now panic begins to build. Because I am me. This is not a dream. This is real. I am real.
And I am not supposed to be here. This is not a place for creatures like me.
This is a place for the old gods.
The damaged gods.
The vengeful gods.
This is where they live, not us.
This is their wood, not ours.
And I am trespassing.