“I will show you self-centered,” she said, and flicked a hand in the air.

Such a fickle gesture to have so much power in it. Energy burst through the air. I shielded Mallory from it, took the blast full-on. I hit the ground on my knees, limbs shaking with the new round of shocking pain.

Light bulleted past me, a shot of blue fire that sliced across her arm, propelled by Mallory. Sorcha slapped a hand over the wound, screamed out with pain that seemed to shake the earth. Thunder cracked like a gunshot as lightning split the sky in the same sickly green shade.

“I am owed!” she screamed into the sky. And when she looked down at us again, her lips were moving in some silent chant. She pulled a fat bundle of what looked like sage from her pocket, touched a fingertip to the end, and it began to smoke. She drew it through the air in front her, lips still moving, and that same greasy magic gathering around us.

“Magic incoming!” I said into the comm over the static, my voice hoarse with pain, and hoped someone could hear me. “Prepare yourself.” For the magic and the monster it might create, I thought.

Mallory screamed and crumpled to the ground, clamping her hands over her ears. And the air around her began to glow, to buzz with magic. It looked like steam was rising from her body. But it was magic—magic that Sorcha was pulling out of her with the power of her filthy song.

“Mallory!” I said, and put my arms around her, shielding her body with mine, and covered her hands with mine in case it helped block the sound.

Mallory cried out again.

“I’m here!” I called out over the crackle of Sorcha’s power. “And I’ll help you. Just concentrate! Don’t let her use you!”

Mallory’s entire body was rigid, and she began to shake from the effort.

I didn’t know what else to do, how else to help her in the war she was waging with herself, to block out the magic and the sound of chanting. I began to sing the only tune I could think of.

“I’m sorry!” I called out, and screamed out words I hoped I’d never have to repeat. “Never gonna give you up! Never gonna let you down!”

“We’ve found the crucible,” Jeff said, his voice crackling in our ears. “Going to destroy it!”

They were a moment too late.

Sorcha kindled the magic. Thick swirls of sickly green power began to compose themselves in the air, spinning and blossoming, and obscuring her completely behind them. The air filled with the chemical scents of the city.

Mallory shuddered. “No,” she said. “No, no, no, no, no!”

“Get out of there!” called a voice over the communicator.

“I’m here, right here,” I said, and she curled into me. “You’re stronger than she is. Never gonna run around and desert you!”

“Merit!”

“Here!” I called out, leading Catcher and Ethan to us. They scrambled up the side of the hill.

“Sorcha’s been draining Mallory,” I said as Catcher lifted her into his arms.

Ethan offered a hand, helped pull me to my feet. “I’m okay,” I said. “Just a little unsteady.” The earth shuddered, sending ripples across the lagoon’s surface. “And that is not helping.”

“To the evac point!” Ethan yelled, as another concussion shook us, and the cloud of smoke and magic blossomed larger yet.

Catcher scrambled down the hill, snow flying as he tried to keep his balance. We followed suit, hands linked together, my vision not quite focused, and slipping every few feet in snow that was becoming slushier.

A hot and hazy wind blew across the island, carrying the scents of sulfur and smoke, and warming the air by at least twenty degrees. Cracks echoed across the island as the ice in Burnham Harbor began to split with the sudden temperature increase.

“The snow and ice are melting!” I said. “Be careful!”

We made it back to the looping trail around the lagoon when a sound cut through the darkness, something hard and sharp, a blade meeting stone, that sound bouncing against the city’s glass and steel and echoing back again.

It was loud. It was close. And it sounded very, very angry.

It screamed again, and we clapped our hands over our ears, but the scream still pierced through, furious and cutting. The sound wrapped claws around my heart and squeezed, and for a moment I couldn’t find my breath.

Sorcha had made a monster of the Egregore. And her monster was coming for us.

“I hope to God that is Chris Pratt riding a velociraptor,” Catcher said.

“I don’t think we’re that lucky,” I said.

“I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse right now,” Ethan said, gripping my hand with steel force.

There were two more pounding concussions. And one more minute of silence—the horrible silence of anticipation, the blissful silence of not yet knowing what monster awaited us.

The ground shook as it lifted off the hilltop, screaming furiously.

It moved on four legs, had a long and serpentine neck, was covered in gleaming black scales. Or I thought they were black. They were so dark it was hard to discern a color, but they gleamed in a shimmering rainbow of luminescence that shifted as the creature moved.

Its wings were thin and veined, mottled dark and red, with claws at the ends of the supporting bones. Its body ended in a long, whiplike tail, and steam rose from its length like it had ascended directly from the depths of hell. Its tongue, long and black, was forked like a swallow’s tail.

I stared at it, my brain trying to catch up with my eyes, trying to process what I was seeing.

Catcher got there faster than I did.

“Holy shit,” he said. “She made a dragon.”

• • •

There was no breathing of fire, at least as far as we could see. No medieval maidens in pointed caps, no armor-wearing knights. But the thing Sorcha created sure looked like a dragon.

We just stared at it, trying to comprehend what we were seeing.

“Get them!” Sorcha screamed.

Like a newborn fawn still getting used to its feet, the dragon lumbered forward, tripped on the curb, crumpled. It stood again on wobbling feet and stretched its wings, flapping them awkwardly and out of rhythm, still learning the syncopation of flying.

The hollow sound of an outboard motor drew our attention, and we all turned around. Jonah steered a boat to the south end of the island, negotiating through slabs of ice. He sent waves over the shore as he moved in, then gestured us forward. “Let’s go!”

“That’s our ride!” Catcher said. “Run!”

“Get everyone off the island,” Ethan yelled into his comm as we ran. “She manifested the Egregore into a dragon. Yes, I said dragon,” he repeated, in case anyone hadn’t yet seen the monster flapping its way across Northerly Island.

We hauled ass toward the boat, splashed through mud at the shoreline, and climbed into the boat.

“Where am I going?” Jonah asked.

“Back to shore,” Ethan said. “And step on it.”

• • •

Jonah steered back into the harbor, moving as quickly as he could through the chunks of ice that still floated in the water, ignoring the NO WAKE signs and sending the other boats swaying.

It had become suddenly and swampily August. I pulled off my jacket, stuffed it beneath my seat.

“What the hell was that?” Jonah asked.

“Dragon,” Catcher said. “She made a damned dragon.”

“Quit saying that,” Mallory snapped, lifting her head from Catcher’s shoulder. “Dragons aren’t real.”

“I’m pretty sure that was a dragon,” I said.

“Dragons aren’t real,” Mallory insisted, gaze narrowing at me. “It is absolutely not a dragon.”

“You can call it a fluffy bunny if that makes you feel better,” Catcher said. “But it’s not gonna change what we just saw.”

“Dragons aren’t real,” Mallory said again. “Also, batteries just about . . .” Her eyes rolled back.

Catcher caught her before she could hit the deck. “Empty,” he finished.

The dragon lifted, wings sending snow and ice and mud into the air, and went airborne, made it forty yards before touching down again, scrambling for another running start.