We were also burning down Brighton Pier.

“Pull the ax!” Blondie yelled.

“No,” I shouted, “it’s what she wants! She’s showing her hand, hoping we show ours!”

“We’re not going to have any hands to show if we’re all dead!” Blondie replied, the sweat on her brow attesting to how much energy she was using by holding the bulk of our shields against the dragon’s fierce flames.

I looked at Anyan, and he nodded. So I reached into that space hidden deep inside me, calling on the labrys and the creature’s power. Both responded with a surge, and suddenly I was holding a beacon of light in the darkness.

If I thought the labrys had lit up before, I now knew the real meaning of the word “supernova.” The ax was so bright that I imagined it could be seen throughout Brighton, certainly, and I hoped it wouldn’t be seen all the way out in London.

Something told me the Alfar Powers That Be weren’t going to be too happy with us for destroying Brighton Pier, only a few days after destroying Borough Market.

But the ax wasn’t listening to me. As it had that day outside Roast when it had undoubtedly recognized a truth the rest of us couldn’t see—that Morrigan had become its ancient enemy, the Red Queen—the labrys took over.

And it wanted to fight.

It was pulling me forward, straight at the dragon. I was screaming and literally digging my heels into the ground, trying to stop my forward momentum. If I went past our shields, the damned magic ax would be dragging a selkie shish kebab, not a champion.

But it pulled me forward effortlessly until with my last scream it took me past our shields. I poured as much strength into my own shields as I could as I squeezed my eyes shut, ready to be roasted. And yet, although I did feel an increase in temperature, I definitely wasn’t on fire.

Cracking open a single eye, I could see that the ax’s power was streaming forward towards the dragon’s maw, pushing back the fire emanating from it like they were two hoses trained on one another.

The dragon took a step back, its fire cutting out abruptly as it tried a more physical approach. Rushing towards me, its head lowered, it slashed with teeth and claws and the impact on my shields was like being hit by a thousand linebackers. My protections held, but I was being battered like a hamster in a ball when Blondie, Anyan, and Magog came to my rescue.

Out of nowhere, the snakelike shape of the roller coaster track ripped off its legs and came lurching out of the darkness to wrap itself around the dragon. Blondie had enchanted it so that it moved like a snake. Magog, meanwhile, darted above it in the night sky, helping direct it with her air magic while Anyan aided Blondie by helping to strengthen the wood of the roller coaster with his earth powers.

The roller coaster wrapped itself around the dragon again and again, enclosing it in a cage of wood.

“It’s not going to hold!” Anyan warned, pulling me against him as we backpedaled towards the end of the pier.

Back to where the water lay, waiting for me.

I scrambled through the tottering remains of the roller coaster, which fell around us as we ran, bouncing off our shields. There was a tremendous crash behind us and I craned my head around, nearly slipping on all the debris, to see the dragon shrugging off its wooden prison in an explosion of fire and wood. Its enormous tail flexed and lifted, batting Magog out of the sky like it was swatting a fly. The raven fell into a little booth, upon which the dragon was about to pounce. Blondie and I both sent powerful volleys of magic straight towards it, trying to distract it before it could end Magog.

The blasts hit the beast, and it turned towards us—but its green eyes narrowed on me when it caught sight of its true enemy. Blondie scampered off to help Magog, leaving me with an impetuous labrys that raised itself in my arms as if taunting the creature. I groaned, wishing the ax would stop volunteering me for things. Despite the ax waving my arm around like I was imitating Queen Elizabeth, I kept climbing away, trying to get as close to the water as I could before the dragon-formerly-known-as-Morrigan caught up with us. Anyan was a step in front of me, helping clear the way with powerful scoops of his magic, his shields doing the bulk of the work to keep us from getting our heads bashed in by the crumbling vestiges of the roller coaster. Not for the first time, I thanked my lucky stars the barghest was on my side.

Unfortunately, there’s only so far you could go trying to outrun a dragon on a pier, before you ran out of pier. We were at the very edge of the water, and Morrigan was coming along quickly, breathing fire at our heels.

“You are mine, Champion!” The dragon growled, terrifyingly loud. I also hadn’t thought a dragon could talk, but I should have known better than to assume.

I wasn’t sure where Blondie was, but Anyan was busy trying to use his shields to push back as the dragon tried to push forward, all while still protecting us from Morrigan’s fire. He wasn’t going to be able to do much more to stop the Red’s head-on assault, so it was up to me.

Luckily, all that fire had given me an inspiration, and with the ocean behind me, I had more than enough of the wet stuff to play with.

So I reached, as hard as I could and with all of my own power and that of the creature’s, towards the sea. I could feel her answer within my bones, a split second before an enormous wave came surging up behind me. But it wasn’t a normal wave: it didn’t rise and fall as a wave should. Instead it floated in the air, growing in size, until it resembled a massive wall of water.

Using another massive surge of power, I envisioned the water forming itself into a tongue, and then I sent it lapping straight at the enemy.

The dragon that had been Morrigan gave a rather undignified squawk as the water came towards it, and it tried to back peddle ineffectually. The wave caught the dragon despite her best efforts, and I heard satisfying hissing sounds as she got well and truly drenched.

That day, I learned a wet dragon is a sad thing. Coughing and spluttering, the dragon tried her best to create fire from a belly that only spat and sizzled. Morrigan gave me a furious look as I strode forward, labrys at the ready. When she saw Blondie also coming at her from where the Original had been healing Magog, Morrigan snorted wetly before crouching and spreading her massive red wings. With a few powerful wing beats and a huge surge of magic, the Red Queen was airborne, taking with her our chance of getting back that damned book.

Lofting the labrys, I prepared a massive strike that I doubted would have any effect on the beast’s shields, when I felt a little hand tickling the back of my knee. Jerking involuntarily, my magic died as I turned to find the gwyllion staring up at me.

“Let her go,” Hiral said, spitting an ugly yellow glob of mucus onto the wood of the pier in front of him. “I only let her catch me so I could steal what ye wanted.” And with that, he pulled a bundle of paper out of the crotch of his pants.

I nearly kissed him. I nearly kissed the papers. Then I realized where both had been, and I checked myself.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

He might have been smelly and blessed with a singularly unpleasant character, but Hiral was an excellent spy. Having realized there was no other way, he’d used the chaos of his ransoming to steal the pages from the stolen book, with which Morrigan never otherwise parted. She’d only given it to one of her most trusted henchmen after stepping out of the limo they’d driven to the pier, knowing that she was probably going to go dragon and dragons don’t have pockets.

After she’d made that hand-off, and the chaos of the battle had started, it had been child’s play for Hiral to pinch the book off the guard, rip out the pages he knew were important, and put the book back where it belonged. If all went well, Morrigan wouldn’t even notice anything was missing until we’d foiled all of her evil schemes.

Before the gwyllion had gotten captured, however, he’d made a few more important discoveries.

“Jarl is Morrigan’s prisoner?” I asked, incredulously.

“Aye. He’s treated like a guest, but the kind of guest who’s not allowed to leave the room or go anywhere without guards. And he’s not the arrogant shite that led in your Compound, either. He’s terrified.”

“What happened to scare him like that?” Blondie asked. Hiral snorted.

“I’d think my lover becoming a bloody great dragon might have that effect.”

“No,” I said, the truth popping up its head and giving me a raspberry. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Morrigan’s the Red Queen, but Jarl’s still Jarl.”

“And the Red Queen needs her king,” Anyan said, running his fingers through his shaggy hair. My own fingers itched to do that for him.

“Which is why they needed the book,” Blondie added, pulling me back to the conversation.

Magog nodded as we talked, but Gog looked confused, bless him.

“What’s going on?” he asked, when it was obvious more clarification wouldn’t be forthcoming, otherwise.

“They must have been able to cobble together enough of the remains of the Red Queen to transfer her power to Morrigan. Morrigan must have been willing to let the Red in. Maybe she didn’t know how thoroughly it would take control,” Blondie explained to the coblynau, patiently.