“There’s my handsome guy,” I said, getting most of the blood off him.
“Hi,” he said, grinning at me. “Hi, Sam.”
“Hey, dude. You okay?”
He nodded. “I smashed.”
“You did. You’re the best smasher.”
He preened at that.
“—and then I let out a great gout of fire, and I know I looked majestic as fuck, because how can one not look majestic when they can breathe fire? Oh, that’s right. They can’t. Wait. They can’t not. Okay, is that a double negative? I feel like I’m not making the point I want to make.”
“How did they tear a hole in his wing?” Justin asked, watching the Meridian City Guards start to poke through the bodies that were still intact. In the distance, I could see townsfolk beginning to exit through the front gates and head toward us.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Contrary to popular belief, I don’t know everything.”
“No one believes you know everything,” Just
in said. “In fact, most people believe you don’t know much at all.”
“Thanks for understanding,” I said, feeling relieved.
He rolled his eyes at me.
“Well?” I asked, looking up at Kevin. “How’d it happen?”
“Hmm?” he said. “Oh, this old thing?” He stretched out his wing again, wincing as he did so. The hole looked rough. “Don’t rightly know. One moment I was winning, and the next, I was still winning but was wounded in the heat of battle. Granted, it didn’t do much to slow me down because I still kicked ass, but it certainly hurts. I suppose that maybe if I was given a reward of shinies, I’d feel much better about it.”
“I’m sure you would,” I said, eyeing the approaching crowd, an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. “And I’ll get right on that, I really will, but I have a question. Why are people coming out here to look at the dead bodies? And a follow-up question. Why are they bringing their children?”
They all looked toward the people coming to stand along the edges of the field of battle. There were men and women, hookers and drug dealers. Many of them looked as if they hadn’t bathed in a long time. Some wore the smallest stitches of clothing that I was sure would probably be considered extraordinarily indecent in any place other than Meridian City. A few looked as if they were strung out on some kind of drug.
But most of them were staring at me with such derision that I looked over my shoulder, sure that I would see the most evil of men standing behind me. Because that was the only thing that made sense for those expressions.
Of course, there was no one behind me.
I looked back toward the crowd.
“Me?” I asked, pointing at myself.
The crowd nodded.
“Huh,” I said. “That’s… unexpected. I didn’t do anything.”
“You’re standing on the blood of your enemies,” someone called out.
I looked down. Sure enough, I was standing in a large pool of blood. “That’s unfortunate.”
“He’s so bloodthirsty,” another voice said. “He probably wants to bathe in it.”
“Well I never,” I said, putting my hand to my throat.
“They were just people,” someone else said. “And he murdered them.”
“What the hell,” Justin said. “They were Dark wizards. They would have attacked Meridian City!”
“The Prince is defending me,” I whispered to Ryan excitedly. “Are you hearing this?”