Mac chuckled. “Focus on what, Bruce?” He blinked with spurious innocence.

“Dragons, maybe. Dragon men.”

“Aw, jeez, Bruce. Not that weird shit. Please.”

“So what else have we got?”

“We picked up a redhead in a green trench coat.”

“Yeah? When was this?”

“This morning, before ten o’clock. Breaking and entering. I snagged him out of the general tank. He’s in the cage in interview one, just waiting for you.”

He handed across a sheaf of photocopies. “He’s got what you call your basic history, the usual hairbag crap.

All of it pretty minor, junkie stuff. A real winner, our Maxie.”

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Sandra skimmed through the pages—several drug-related arrests, some hot check charges, a couple of shoplifting arrests, but no convictions. The kid had been defended by some high-powered lawyers.

She raised her eyebrows. “He’s got a lot of clout for a punk. How come?”

Mac shrugged. “Not him, but his daddy. Rich guy, and up until recently, he was paying the tolls.”

“Oh.” Sandra nodded. “Nothing violent.”

“Hell, Bruce, he weighs about ninety pounds dripping wet. And he’s a junkie. He gets violent, your granny would crush him.”

“Well, let’s go talk to him.”

“Hold on, tiger. What happened in California? You look like you stuck your face in a meat grinder.”

Sandra described all the events that had happened since she’d last seen her partner. Mac listened thoughtfully, nodding here and there. When she finished, he said, “Omar. That Omar fuck. That’s the weird shit.

First you run into him at the club, and then he tries to whack you out in sunny California. That ain’t no coincidence, babe.”

“No, I don’t think so, either,” she told him. “And there’s more. The description we got from that girl, Tina. An Arab, she said. An Arab who tried to scrag her, but got stopped by some Chinese kid. Just like what happened with me.”

“Christ, Arabs? Now we got, what? Terrorists or some shit like that, to go along with monsters? Tibetan dragon men?”

“I don’t know. I’m thinking maybe it’s some guy in 330

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin costume, or maybe an animal trainer using some sort of predator that’s been trained to kill on command. Some kind of huge lizard or something that could claw through a man’s chest.” Sandra shook her head. “Maybe this Omar asshole’s working with a partner in a dragon suit.”

“Oh, God, Bruce, that’s screwed up.”

“I know. Everything about this is screwed up. And getting screwier, right?”

He stared at her. “You don’t buy this lizard monster shit, do you?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know what I buy right now.

But we do have one thing that’s real.” She flapped the papers. “We got Maxie.”

Mac grinned. “Yeah, we do, don’t we?”

She slid her rear off the edge of the desk. “So let’s go see just what it is we got.”

Sandra stood in front of the one-way glass. It was him, all right. The redheaded, pimply youth on the other side sat uneasily in his chair. He moved restlessly, fidgeting and shifting, never completely at rest. He picked at a zit every now and then. Sometimes he reached up reflexively to adjust his trench coat, but the officers had taken it from him when they arrested him. His hands would hang in the air over where the collar should’ve been, and then he’d notice what he was doing and put them back in his lap for all of two seconds before he began to tap the table, or twitch, or ruffle his short-cropped carroty hair.

“Nervous, isn’t he?” Sandra said.

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“He’s pulling out of junkie heaven. He’ll be even uglier in a few hours or so.”

Sandra nodded, then opened the door into interrogation room one. The moment Sandra stepped into the room, the kid recognized her. He seemed caught between relief, fear, and the pain of his withdrawal.

“Hey, the cop lady,” he mumbled, his dark-ringed eyes a startling contrast to his pasty, freckled complexion.

He hunched down into himself, never taking his haunted gaze off of her.

“Maxwell Bergot. Your parents must be worried sick about you.” Sandra said.

He snorted and looked away. “Fuck them,” he said.

She nodded. “You’re a real sweetie, aren’t you?”

She pulled up a chair opposite him, spun it around, and sat down. She leaned her chin against the back and stared at him.

“I got a question for you, Maxie.”

He shrugged, looked at the table, then back up into her eyes.

“Why’ve you been following me?” she asked.

“I told you.”

“Yeah. You said you wanted to give me some information, and then you ran. People who want to give me information usually stick around long enough to deliver.

They’re a lot more likely to get paid that way.”

“Shit, you weren’t gonna pay. You tried to stiff me.

I should’ve just left you alone. Should’ve learned from what happened to Madrone. Stupid. Now I’m dead.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Yeah? Why are you dead?

Little drug deal gone bad?”

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“Cut the druggie shit, okay?” he snarled, “I was doin’ you a favor, and now I’m probably gonna die for it!

Just like Madrone.”

“What do you mean, Maxie? What do you know about Madrone? Who killed him?”

He gave her a cynical smile. “You cops are so stupid.

I swear I drew Madrone a white line straight to the guy, and even then, he fucked it up, got himself killed.”

“Madrone?”

“No. The Easter Bunny. Fuck it. Look, I told him where he could find the guy that done the lawyer guy.”

“Wheeler,” Sandra said.

Maxie nodded.

“Where?”

“I was in a bar for . . . ,” he paused, looked up at the one-way mirror and frowned, “. . . for something, and I overheard these guys talkin’. They were talkin’ about that lawyer guy, and I heard one of ’em say he did it and how much he loved it and everything. Then he tries to say he didn’t do it, like it was a joke, but you can tell, you know? I mean, if you seen somebody who really killed somebody, you can tell them from someone who’s just talkin’ shit. This guy done it, even though he said afterward that he was only joking.”

“What was his name?”

“I don’t know. Something strange. Ozar or Okar or something. Omar, maybe. I think that was it. I can’t remember. It started with an O.”

“Omar?” She caught it right away, but a moment later, she caught something else. “So that was why you ran that night. The guy was standing right behind me!”

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Maxie snorted. “Hooray for you. Pat yourself on the back and dig my grave.”

“Who was he talking to at the bar?”

“The bartender,” Maxie shifted again, and this time he broke eye contact and looked at the wall. “He’ll come after me, you know. If he could get to Madrone, he can sure as hell get to me.”

“We’ll protect you.” Sandra said.

“Like I got a helluva lot of choice now, right?”

Maxie said.

“What’s the bartender’s name?”

“Nick,” Maxie said. “His name is Nick Seder.”

“Where does he work?”

“Gwendolyne’s Flight.”

Gwendolyne’s Flight? Justin’s bar—Sandra had just left there, just left his apartment above the bar.

“. . . told Madrone he should talk to Nick, he wanted to find this Omar asshole. Next day Madrone turns up dead.”

“Why’d you keep running away from me all the time?”

“ ’Cause you kept bein’ a bitch!” he exclaimed, “I risk my ass to help you, and you take my stuff, rip me off, then you wanna bust my ass!”

Sandra eyed him without emotion. “Yeah, life’s tough like that. Especially if you’re an asshole.”

Maxie squirmed and looked at the wall.

She nodded. “All right, Maxie. We’re going to keep you here for a while. You’ll be safe. You think good and hard about any details you might’ve missed. I’ll get back to you again.”

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“You’re gonna lock me up, book me?” Maxie asked.

“You scratch our backs, we scratch yours. That’s how it works. For right now, protective custody. Your own private cell. I’ll tell ’em room service.” She reached into her bag, pulled out a twenty, handed it over. “Order a pizza if you want.”

He took the money. “You got something else of mine, too. Maybe you wanna give that back?”

“Sorry, Maxie. The only turkey you get here is cold turkey. Or I could just boot your ass back onto the street, see if Omar looks you up.”

It was obvious he was tempted. But then he subsided. “Naw. I think I’ll hang here for a while. Till you grab the guy. You are gonna grab him, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Sandra said. “We’re gonna grab him.”

She rose to leave.

“You sure you can’t help with a taste?” Maxie said, the sick whine of need in his voice.

“Fresh coffee in the hall,” Sandra said, and went out to find Mac.

“Omar,” he said. “Again with this Omar guy.”

“What do you think?” she asked.

“It’s a lead. I say we drop by this Gwendolyne’s Flight joint, say hi to Nick Seder.”

She swallowed, hesitated. Fortunately Mac didn’t notice.

“Yeah,” she said.

“You know where it is? You’re the big bar hopper, after all.”

“Yeah,” she said, “I’ve been there before.” For some reason she couldn’t bring herself to tell him she’d DARK HEART

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left there only a couple of hours before.

Most likely the murderer was just a guy who came into the bar, got too drunk, and said too much. Most likely. The old stupidity factor. And maybe Justin just happened to know a hell of a lot about dragons. Or dragon men.

Maybe . . .

Cops, she thought, don’t much believe in coincidences, though.

As they left the building, they walked past the little cell where Maxie sat, fidgeting and staring uneasily at his reflection in a small shaving mirror affixed to the wall over the sink. Staring as if he saw something besides his own ugly, sweating mug there.

Something scary. Bad scary . . .

4

t w e n t y

Nick Seder walked up to the

back door of Gwendolyne’s Flight and fumbled in his pocket for the keys. He was beat. The party at his house last night had wiped him out, and he wasn’t looking forward to a busy Friday evening. Fridays were always busy at the Flight. Nick was, however, looking forward to a Bloody Mary to calm the thumping in his head. He’d bitched about the rain yesterday, but he would have preferred an overcast sky to this blindingly bright fall day.

Lost in his own pain, he did not see the two figures approach him until it was too late. A meaty hand fell on his shoulder and spun him around.

“Hi, Nick,” McKenzie said, flipping open his badge case. “How ya doing?”

“What the hell do you want?” Nick looked from McKenzie to Sandra and back again.

“Hey, Nick, my man. Script says we ask the questions, right?” McKenzie spun him around and pushed DARK HEART

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him up against the wall. “And I’ll bet you know the position, don’t you? Ah, you do. What a surprise.”

Grudgingly, Nick spread his feet, put his hands out, and leaned against the wall as Mac body-searched him.

“Aw, man! I haven’t done anything! You can’t just—”

“Sure I can, Nick,” McKenzie said. “You know I can.”

“I don’t believe this,” Nick whined. “You can’t just take a guy and—”

“Hey, Nick? Shut the fuck up, okay?”

Nick frowned, but said nothing else until McKenzie was finished.

“Okay, turn around.”

Nick turned. His eyes widened as he saw what McKenzie was holding in his thick fingers.

“What have we here?” Mac held the two small glas-sine bags and a small black film canister up against the sun. “The baggies look like smack. Would that be about right, Nick?”

Seder’s mouth opened, closed, then opened again.

“Hey, you don’t just walk up to me and go through my pockets, asshole. Ain’t you never heard of a fucking search warrant?”

Ignoring him, McKenzie opened the canister. “And coke, and some little pills here.” McKenzie shook the plastic case. “What would those be, Nick? Speed?

Downers? What else you got on you?”

“Hey, those aren’t even mine.”

“Right. They don’t have your name on them, do they?” McKenzie said. “Guess you put on the wrong 338

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin jeans this morning, huh? They’re your roommate’s, right?”

“That’s right,” Nick said. Then, sullenly, “So show me a warrant.”

McKenzie sighed with mock patience. “Don’t need no warrant, Speedy Gonzales. Not when Detective McCormack—that’s her, right there—and me, Detective McKenzie—saw you behaving in a suspicious manner.

And in the process of us investigating your suspicious mannerisms, we happen to notice evidence indicating that you might be holding in your very own possession this dope here. Which we found in the process of checking you for weapons. For our own safety, of course.”

“That’s all bullshit and you know it.”

“You aren’t that stupid, are you, Nicky? Judge’ll buy it in a New York minute, right?” Mac grinned at him.

“Am I right?”

All the air seemed to go out of Nick. “What the fuck you want, then?”

“You got the right to remain silent, Nick. And you got the right to a lawyer. If you can’t afford a lawyer—”

“I know the fucking drill, man. What the fuck you want with me?”

Sandra stepped forward. Mac handed her one of the baggies. She lifted it, dangled it in front of Nick’s nose.

“You got a sheet, Nick?”

He shrugged.

“Bet you do,” she said. “Bet this won’t help any.

Enough here for a felony possession for sale, I’d guess.

And we got three strikes in Illinois now. How many strikes you got already, Nick? One? Two?”

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“Aw, come on. What do you want from me? This ain’t no fucking dope bust. Is it?”

She stared at him, considering. “Maybe not.”

His shoulders slumped in relief. “So we can deal, is that what you’re saying? Okay, fine. Deal. You want names or something? That’s cool. I got names.”

Mac eyed him with distaste. “Man, loyalty’s always a fine thing. My dad used to say that. ’Course, he’d never met a slime-sack like you, Nicky. You’re a piece of work.”

Seder avoided his gaze, stayed focused on Sandra’s face.

“Lady, tell me what you want, okay?”

Sandra considered a moment longer, drawing it out. Then she nodded. “I want to know about Carlton Wheeler. Who killed him.”

Nick’s resentful posture faded, and he looked scared. “I d-don’t know what you’re talking about,” he stammered. His brow furrowed.

“Nick,” Sandra said kindly, “how we going to deal with you standing there lying your ugly face off ?”

“Look, I didn’t have anything to do with no goddamn lawyer, and that’s the truth!”

“Just like these drugs aren’t yours?” McKenzie pressed.

“Okay, fine! Pin the drugs on me. You bastards wanna roust people who’re just going about their business, fine! There’s nothing I can do about that. But I didn’t kill nobody!” He paused. “And I want a lawyer. I got nothing more to say.”

“We didn’t say you killed anybody, Nick.” McKen-340

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin zie leaned over, close to the bartender’s face. “We just want to know what you know about it.”

“And you know something, Nicky. You know Carlton Wheeler’s a lawyer. And I don’t remember telling you that. Did you tell him, Mac?”

“Nope. Maybe he’s a mind reader. How about it, Nicky? You read minds?”

“I . . . uh . . . man, I dunno nothing about none of that shit. Honest to God.”

McKenzie shrugged. “Hey, look here, cool. Play it that way. See if I give a shit.” He pushed the remaining bag and the canister into his own jacket pocket. And pulled a pair of cuffs off his belt. “Turn it around, Ace.

Hands behind your back.”

Nick’s gaze leaped from Sandra to Mac and back again. Suddenly he licked his lips. “Wait a minute . . .”

“Naw, no more waiting, Nicky. We thought maybe you knew something, maybe you’d wanna help us like any fine, upstanding citizen would.” He shrugged. “But if you don’t feel that way, well . . . just stick ’em out.” He grinned. “You can be one of the thousand tales of the big city.”

Nick’s face crumpled suddenly.

“Okay, okay, wait just a minute . . .” Nick held up his hands in front of him. “Maybe we can cut some kind of a deal?”

“Now you’re talking,” McKenzie said, moving so close to Nick’s face that the bartender had to take a step backwards. “Let’s just go back to the station house, and you can tell us everything you know. You know enough—maybe we can talk deals.”

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“No, that’s not what I mean! I just mean, well, maybe I might know something.”

“Then you’d better tell us.” McKenzie smiled, but it wasn’t a happy face.

“No way. I’m not telling you something and then having you take me in for drugs anyway. Forget that.”

Sandra moved forward again. “You talk to us, we forget this ever happened. We don’t even know you.” She glanced at Mac. “Is that right, Mac?”

“Nicky who?” Mac said, grinning.

Nick blew a blast of breath out of his mouth and looked at his shoes. “I can’t believe I’m trusting a couple of cops,” he muttered.

“Listen, you cockroach,” Sandra said, “I don’t give a shit whether you trust us or not. You’re not in a good bargaining position here. Or are you too stupid to figure even that much out?”

“All right, all right!” Nick looked at each of them in turn, and then began.

“You said Wheeler, that lawyer, right? That’s what you want?”

“Yeah,” Sandra told him. “That’s what we want.”

Nick chewed on his lower lip a moment. “Okay. It was a couple of weeks ago, I think. In the bar. This guy came in and was drinking. It was pretty late. Close to closing time.”

“This guy? What guy?” Sandra asked.

“Omar something.”

Sandra nodded.

“What did he look like?” McKenzie asked.

“Short. Black hair. He looked Libyan or something.

342

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin Really dark black eyes. He had a wide mouth and he seemed kind of paranoid, you know, freaky?” Nick paused, thinking. “But kinda like he could take care of himself, like he didn’t give a shit. Like, I dunno, like nothing could scare him, he could handle it all. He knew he could handle it.” He paused again, then shook his head. “Hard to describe, I guess.”

Actually Sandra thought Nick had described him pretty well. Omar just kept cropping up all over the place.

She wondered what he would look like in a lizard suit.

But even as she thought that, she knew she was missing something.

“Is he a regular?” she asked.

“He comes in often enough.”

“So what did he say about Wheeler?”

Nick shrugged. “He didn’t say much but he laughed really loud. Since it was pretty quiet, I looked over to see what he was laughing at, and it was the TV. There was something on about the Wheeler guy. Some big case he’d won just before he was killed. How he was supposed to be some kinda champion of justice or something.

Anyway, I mostly remember this Omar dude laughing—

he sounded sort of weird, y’know?—and so I asked him what was so funny.”

“ ‘Big guy, big man,’ he said. ‘Champion of the downtrodden.’ Or some shit like that, and he laughed some more. ‘He pissed in his underwear and all over that stupid kimono when he was looking down the barrel of a gun. Some fucking hero.’ ”

Nick paused, looked down at his shoes. He shrugged. “I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Just DARK HEART

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some guy talkin’ shit, except I knew a girl who was Wheeler’s girlfriend for a while before he got famous.

She came into the Flight a lot. When he first started hittin’ the news, she used to brag about it, a little, how she shouldn’t have let him go, and all that. I asked her what he was like. She said he was a really nice guy, not like some of the celebrities you hear about. She said he was pretty normal except he had a few eccentricities.”

Nick paused. “Like wearing silk kimonos around the house. It was just another story. I’m a bartender. I hear stories all the time. But it stuck in my head because I thought the kimono was weird. I mean, isn’t it a Japanese woman’s dress?”

McKenzie shrugged. “Beats me.”

“Well, anyway, that’s why it stuck in my head, and when this guy said that, my blood kinda froze, and I looked at him, and I knew he’d done it. I knew he was the murderer and he was sitting right there at my bar, bragging about it. I must’ve looked weird, or he must’ve realized he was talking stupid, ’cause he shut up all of a sudden. I didn’t say anything or let on that I believed him. I think I just said something like, ‘Yeah, sure buddy. You want another one?’ So he looked at me really hard for a second, and I played like stone dumb, ’cause I didn’t want him thinkin’ that I thought I’d just heard a confession. The guy was creepy, you know? I mean, I didn’t want to have him following me home and putting a bullet in my brain. No way. He was so twitchy you’d think he’d do something like that. Like maybe he wanted to do that, and was looking for any excuse.” Nick shrugged. “Well, that’s all I 344

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin know. But if you want my opinion, he wasn’t lying. He did it.”

“You see him around a lot?” Sandra asked. “Does he come into the bar on any kind of schedule?”

“Naw. Not recently, anyway. He used to come in almost every night, but he and the owner got into a fight or something. Mr. Sterling doesn’t like him. I haven’t seen him in the last week or so.”

Sandra gave a small sigh of relief. Reassurance splashed over her. Justin had recognized an asshole when he saw one, and had kicked him out of his club. Good.

She was glad of that . . .

“Anything else?” McKenzie asked.

“No, that’s it. I didn’t follow the guy or anything. I didn’t ask him over to play poker. He was creepy. I just wanted him out of the bar. I was glad when Mr. Sterling told Rocky not to let him back in. There’s another one of ’em, though. I think it’s his boss or his brother or something. He still comes in.”

“Another what?”

“Another one of them fucking Arabs. We get a lot of them, but these two, Omar and the other guy, they were together a lot. And the other guy treated Omar like a flunky or something, always made him come to the bar to get the drinks, like that.”

“So, you know the other guy’s name?” Sandra said.

Nick chewed on his lip some more. “It’s uh . . . I dunno for sure, some weird name—begins with a K, I think. I didn’t go up and introduce myself to them.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Mac said.

Nick stared at him. “You kidding? Me, go to the cops?”

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“Okay,” Sandra said. “That’s it? That’s all you got?”

“That’s all I got,” Nick said.

Mac and Sandra glanced at each other. Mac shrugged.

“See you around sometime, Nicky,” Sandra said.

“Hey, wait a fucking minute!”

Mac paused, then turned. “What? You just remem -

ber something else?”

“My shit. You got my shit. You took it off me, and it’s mine.”

He was almost crying.

And Mac grinned at him. “Shit? You know anything about any shit, Sandra?”

“Only the asshole I’m looking at right now,” she replied.

“Oh, you fuckers,” Nick breathed softly. “You thiev-ing fuckers.”

Mac stared at him. “Don’t you need to be getting to work, Nicky? Instead of standing out here in the hot sun, giving me shit?”

Nick’s eyes went slightly wild, and Mac shifted his weight on his feet. “Don’t even think about it, asshole,”

he said softly. “You can’t even begin to imagine what a pleasure it would be.”

After a moment, Nick’s gaze dropped and his shoulders slumped. Without another word he turned, opened the door, and stepped on through.

“Nice guy,” Sandra said.

“Asshole,” Mac replied.

Sandra stared at the back doors of the bar. Two doors. One door was large and one was just ordinary sized. She’d worked in a few restaurants when she’d 346

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin been married to Chuck. None of them had had more than one back door. Despite the difference in size, the doors both looked like utility doors, except one was caked with grime, like any well-used back door to a club or restaurant should be. The other door was polished metal. Why would anyone polish a stainless steel utility door?

For no reason, she stood before the door, staring at her reflection until McKenzie touched her shoulder.

“Hey, Bruce? You okay?”

She gave a slight twitch, caught herself, forced a grin. “I’m good, Mac. I’m just fine.”

Sandra sat quietly in a corner booth near the front door of Gwendolyne’s Flight. The place was hopping. Colored lights splashed across the crowd. A smoke machine sent billowy white clouds snaking around the dancing bodies.

The smoke’s slow, sinuous movement accentuated the frenetic pace of the dancers. The club was packed and she was keeping a low profile. She did not want to alert Justin to her presence. If tonight was the night they nabbed Omar, and Omar turned out to be the killer, then she could relax into Justin’s arms after it was all over.

She had been tempted to let Justin in on the deal. He could have made things easier for her and McKenzie. But as much as she hated to admit it, there was still a nasty, lingering doubt about his involvement in her mind. Omar had been a regular in his bar. The redhead had bought drugs from Nick in his bar. Maybe it was coincidence—this was DARK HEART

347

a big, popular place. But she couldn’t guarantee it. One of the first cop rules was that coincidences usually weren’t. So she wouldn’t risk the entire case by telling him anything.

Because if Justin were involved . . .

Don’t think about it, she told herself. He’s not involved. Just focus on this Omar sonofabitch. Let the rest take care of itself . . .

Moments later she watched a guy cross to the bar and order a drink from Nick. The guy reminded her of Omar, but he wasn’t Omar. Nick made the drink and handed it over. As the guy turned away, Nick caught Sandra’s eye and nodded.

This one did look very much like the man who had mopped up the floor with her in California and then vanished into thin air, the man who’d tried to dance with her at the blues club. But it wasn’t Omar. This character was very well dressed. He acted like a wealthy snob, watching the dancers with a detached air of amusement, like someone thinking about ordering one of them from a menu. When the cocktail waitress arrived at his table to see if he needed another drink, he barely acknowledged her existence.

McKenzie showed up soon after. His bald spot was slick and his coat was splattered. The rain must’ve started up again. He did not come to join her, but glanced at her. She nodded toward where the Arab was enjoying his drink. McKenzie nodded back, shook off some of the rain, and headed straight for the guy’s table.

Deep down inside, despite his formidable appearance, McKenzie was a teddy bear. Nonetheless, McKenzie could 348

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin be very intimidating when he put his mind to it. When he didn’t smile, his face looked stony. With his steely gaze and his immense bulk, he was a much more effective intimida-tor than Sandra was. They had used this routine before.

McKenzie was the front man. Sandra was the backup nobody expected, just in case things got out of hand.

McKenzie approached the man and Sandra watched them exchange words. The Arab shook his head.

McKenzie leaned over the table and said something else.

The Arab stood to leave, obviously not with McKenzie.

Putting his big hand on the Arab’s shoulder, McKenzie started to shove him back into his seat. The man didn’t move. Instead, he reached up, grabbed McKenzie’s wrist, and did something to it. Sandra saw the pain lance through McKenzie’s face as he stumbled backward.

She was instantly on her feet. McKenzie staggered to his knees against an adjacent table, scattering the people seated there. He shoved his good hand into his coat and pulled out his gun. The people at the table jumped up and scurried away, as did several others nearby. The commotion caught the attention of the bouncers, who started pushing through the crowded bar in Mac’s direction.

The Arab walked calmly but quickly toward the kitchen doors.

McKenzie’s eyes caught hers. She could see the pain in them. The Arab must be devilishly strong! Mac was cradling his arm close to his body and looked hurt, but not in any real danger.

He nodded at her and she saw him say “Go!” though DARK HEART

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she could not hear a thing over the music and club commotion. She hesitated only long enough to see the Arab push open the kitchen door, and then she bolted for the front door.

There was only one place the Arab could hope to escape to, and that was the alley. She burst past the startled doorman and sprinted out into the pouring rain. She skidded a little as she rounded the corner of the building, then she poured on the speed.

She stopped at the mouth of the alley. There was no one there. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears.

The falling rain muted the streetlights, so the alley was darker than she’d have liked. She crept closer to the Flight’s back door. Their guy might’ve already emerged and hidden. She drew her gun and looked carefully in every direction. With each step, she looked over at the two back doors, the big grimy one, the small shiny one.

Soon she was soaked to the skin.

She checked the two Dumpsters as she passed, but no one was hiding there. Her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and she started to wonder if McKenzie had grabbed the guy in the kitchen.

She abandoned that thought when the large, dirty utility door rattled sharply, then burst open. The expensively dressed Arab stepped out. His white silk shirt was instantly plastered to his dark skin. He did not have a chance to look around before Sandra yelled.

“Freeze, asshole!”

He looked at her, mildly startled, then smiled. It was that same supercilious, amused smile he gave the dancers inside.

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“Hands in the air,” she commanded, walking slowly closer, keeping her weight centered and her arms rock steady, the pistol leveled at his chest.

His grin widened . . . and he disappeared.

“What the hell?”

Shocked, she dropped her arms, then snapped them back up, pointing all around, scanning the alley. She heard a strange noise, a kind of cracking sound.

Then there was nothing. Only the sounds of rain and traffic slogging through the Chicago night.

“Where the hell did you go, you bastard?” she said, moving to the doors, her gaze still jumping from shadow to shadow. Nobody there. She opened the dirty door and looked inside. The light from the kitchen flooded over her and she squinted.

“McKenzie!” she called. “McKenzie! Talk to me!

Where are you?”

No answer. She was about to step inside when a hand clamped on her shoulder.

She gasped at the strength of it. Pain shot through her, but her training came to the fore and she spun. She could not see her opponent, but she centered her balance and sent the force of the attack beyond her. The grip on her shoulder faltered and she slid out from under it. But whatever had grabbed her had claws, and it ripped her shoulder as it tore loose.

Sandra gasped and gritted her teeth, raised her gun.

What was this thing? Invisible? With claws? Her heart started pounding faster. Sandra felt as if she’d stepped into some weird nightmare. No one could just become invisible!

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A whisper of air warned her that she was under attack again. Claws raked her hand, knocking away the gun. Blood flew and she cried out, pulling her wounded hand against her stomach and cradling it.

The silence fell again, but she could feel the thing there, somewhere very close. Her mind reeled. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening!

She backed away, looking desperately for her gun, not knowing where her attacker was, frantic to find someplace to take shelter, someplace she could defend herself. But her mind wouldn’t function right. Should she run? Where? How could she escape something she couldn’t see?

A claw scraped blacktop to her right and she spun to face it, almost falling. It scraped again, and then it had her.

“No!” she screamed, trying to roll with its weight, but it had picked her up off her feet, giving her no lever-age whatsoever. Its arms squeezed her until she thought her ribs would break. Something like a tentacle wrapped around her legs, muffling the kicks she launched.

She gasped for breath, hoping to force air into her lungs. At this rate, she would pass out in seconds. She tried to scream and couldn’t. Terror gripped her.

Helpless again. Just like with Chuck. All her cop training, all the martial arts, and she was helpless once again. Her furious tears mixed with the rain.

A fetid smell surrounded her, and she felt something smooth, hard, and wet against her ear. Was it a tooth? Teeth? A quiet, gravelly voice began speaking.

“You look just like all the other women in Justin’s 352

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin drawings. I’m surprised how many of you he finds, women who look so much like his dead wife. But you. You’re different, aren’t you? He must really fancy you. He defies the master to keep you alive. That’s sacrilege. It will cost him everything he has. He knows it will, and he does it anyway. He need not worry anymore, though. I’ll do him a favor tonight.”

A rough hand closed over her left breast. She could feel the points of his claws digging mercilessly into her chest.

“I’ll kill you now—his way,” the voice continued.

“That will make him feel much better about the whole matter, I’m sure.” Throaty laughter from the shadowed, invisible creature holding her vibrated through her entire body.

Suddenly the monster’s body rocked and she heard the sound of flesh ripping. Its grip went slack and she fell to the blacktop. A great cry burst from the beast and she realized that the ripping flesh was not her own. There was another low growl and a new voice that seemed vaguely familiar.

“I told you not to touch her.”

“You will suffer dearly for this, Justin. The master will twist you into a bloody rope,” the first voice said.

Sandra sucked in a pain-wracked breath and tried to see what was happening, but there was nothing to see.

She could only hear the noise of a terrible fight between the two invisible creatures—their slashing, their biting, the rip of flesh and crunch of breaking bones. The ground shook with their battle. Something slammed into one of the Dumpsters, knocking it three feet back DARK HEART

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into the building on the far side of the alley. A huge dent appeared in its side.

As she watched, mesmerized, dazed, she thought she could make out two barely perceptible shadows in the rain, charging each other, grappling, limbs pulling back and descending in fierce blows with blurring speed. The growls and ripping sounds came from that direction.

“I don’t believe this . . .” she whispered, trying to collect her senses, trying to think what to do next. “This isn’t real. I’ve lost my mind. This can’t be real.”

She pushed herself to her feet and lunged for the back door. Snatching up her gun in her good hand, she turned and concentrated again, was able to pinpoint the almost-invisible combatants. Bringing the gun to bear, she locked her elbow and began firing into the huge shadows. Two pain-filled roars split the night and blood spattered on the far wall.

The shadows broke apart and one of the shadows ran toward her. She followed it, continuing to fire until the chamber clicked empty. A harsh wind slammed past her and she threw herself to the side. The footsteps suddenly stopped. They didn’t slow or scrape to a halt. They just ended. Sandra looked to her right, but she couldn’t make out anything. Just the wall and the two doors. She thought she saw the smaller, polished door rippling, but she concentrated on it and realized she must’ve been mis-taken.

A tremendous flapping of wings began down the alley. Sandra spun, even as she hit the catch on her pistol, letting the empty magazine fall to the ground. The 354

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin flapping faded slowly upward. Then she heard nothing but the sounds of the city.

She thrust her hand into her coat pocket and withdrew another clip, jammed it in the gun. With her back against the wall, she pointed her weapon outward as she slid toward the door. This was crazy! It was all crazy! She couldn’t think anymore. She let her body move instinctively while her mind reeled.

“McKenzie!” she yelled, pulling on the cold metal handle, opening the grimy back door with her foot and slipping through. She butted shut the heavy door behind her, then turned the dead bolt. From what she had just experienced, it would hardly keep them out, but maybe it would give her a warning if they burst through. Like that would help. The strength of those things was unbeliev-able!

They had been invisible!

Lizard men . . .

Dr. Simmins’s words floated through her overworked brain.

No, she thought. Impossible. That’s not possible!

Don’t think about it, she told herself. One step at a time. Find McKenzie. Find—

Sandra looked down as she turned the corner into the kitchen.

“No!” she cried out, falling to her knees. McKenzie lay chest down on the red tiles. His head was twisted all the way around, his dead eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“No no no no no . . .”

She grabbed a fistful of his jacket and laid her face against his back. He was cooling already. Already inhu-DARK HEART

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manly cold. Rage and remorse slammed into her, and she gritted her teeth so hard she could hear them grind. A waitress came around the corner from the interior.

She froze and screamed.

Sandra could hardly blame her.

“I’m a cop. Shut up!” Sandra snarled, fumbling for and then flashing her badge with her wounded hand, still clutching her pistol in her good one.

“Just shut up . . . call the police and an ambulance.

Tell them an officer is down. Got that? An officer down!”

The girl scrambled away, her eyes wide.

She leaned over McKenzie’s back again. The butt of her pistol smacked angrily into the tile, cracking it. She held her dead partner in her arms, cradling him, even though it was too late to save him.

Tears ran down her face, spattered across Mac’s dead, staring eyes, a river of unbearable, unending pain.

4

t w e n t y - o n e

Justin dropped in through the skylight and landed heavily on the floor of his apartment.

He bled from a dozen slashes Kalzar had put into him, but he was sure that Kalzar was in far worse shape. His injuries were healing even as he watched.

Justin’s Wyrm body wanted to find Kalzar and rend him into such small pieces they could never be reassembled. He trembled as he tried to control the rage that surged through him.

Slouching over to the dais, Justin sat down and took a rapid inventory of his injuries. In addition to the gashes, he had taken three of Sandra’s bullets. They’d burned like fire—one through his wing, one through his forearm, and one into his upper side. The first two had passed through him harmlessly. But the third bullet was lodged between two ribs next to his breastbone, and he must remove it, or he would walk around with lead in his chest forever.

As happy as his dragonling body was to do harm to DARK HEART

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others, it was not nearly so excited about ripping holes in itself. Slowly he used his claws to widen the wound.

The shiny green scales of his hide resisted him. He growled. He could not easily reach the bullet. It was too far inside him and too awkwardly placed to get a grip on.

He paused a moment, then growled again and punctured a new hole in his back, trying a different direction. There it was. His claws closed on the lead slug, and he plucked it out.

Levering himself to his feet, Justin stumbled into the bathroom and brought out an armload of clean towels. He threw them over his chair to protect its upholstery, then slumped into it.

He considered returning to human form, but the dragonling body would heal faster, and he must go out again soon. He had to find Sandra.

The huge mirror behind the dais rippled. Kalzar’s scales were the color of Arabian sand, and he had a slighter build than Justin, longer and thinner. His elongated face resembled that of an alligator. Justin was pleased to see how badly he’d wounded Kalzar. Great lines of red crisscrossed his chest. A huge chunk was missing from his neck and the back of one arm. One of his slender wings hung at a strange angle as he picked at a gaping hole in his thigh.

The bullet came free and he tossed it onto the dais. It clacked down the steps and came to rest on the carpet.

“I haven’t been shot by anything that painful in a hundred years,” Kalzar said. “I’d forgotten how much it hurts. The last time I was hit this nasty it was a mus-358

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin ket ball in Palestine. I had the taste of lead in my mouth for weeks.”

Justin rose. Kalzar’s narrow eyes followed Justin’s progress as he walked toward the dais.

“I am going to make something perfectly clear to you, Kalzar,” Justin rasped. “Sandra is mine. Don’t touch her again. I will fight the master himself if that is what it takes to keep her from harm.”

Kalzar was unmoved by the threat. “Kill? Me?”

His many rows of teeth shone in the light as his too-flexible lips peeled back in a smile. “You can’t kill me, Justin. And we both know it.”

“We are both Elders, Kalzar,” Justin said. “But you do not know all things. If you were a studious man, you would never make such a statement. Try frequenting libraries for a century or two, rather than staking out stray kittens and peeling the skin from their bodies.”

“Your bluffs are transparent, Justin,” Kalzar said.

“And your ignorance is immeasurable,” Justin replied.

“There is no way to kill us.”

“Read your Beowulf, Kalzar. There is a way. Cross me again, and I will show it to you. I promise you that.”

As he spoke, Justin again saw the thing in its hiding place. So commonplace a cache for something so deadly to one of his kind. He’d found it in the most unlikely of places, doing his master’s work; had found it, realized what it was, and bundled it up to take along with the artifact his master had sent him to fetch.

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The museum guard had interrupted him as he was doing this. The guard’s name had been Baxter, though he hadn’t learned that till later. But Baxter’s death had been a necessity, not only to protect the Dragon, but to conceal any possible knowledge of what he’d found in the room Baxter had tried to guard. To conceal that knowledge even from the master . . .

Kalzar’s eyes narrowed, as he tried to determine whether or not Justin was lying. “The master will hear of this,” he said as he backed through the mirror and disappeared.

Good, Kalzar, Justin thought. Tell the master. I have suffered your incompetence long enough, and now it is time for you to fear, for I have come to the end of my patience with you.

As he stood there, staring at the disappearing Kalzar, Justin felt the mirror catch hold of him. He tried to turn away, but he was caught. Letting out a breath, he waited for the long-fanged face to appear.

He waited to see the enormous dragon’s head, a head as large as his own body.

Instead, it was Justin’s reflection that began to talk to him, except that the eyes were smoldering red. The voice was deep, low, and tinged with enormous age.

“My servant, tell me,” the master said to him, “do you not think the time is ripe to put aside your small amusements?”

Justin closed his eyes and fought the impulse to immediately cry, Yes! I will kill her now, for you, my master!

His defiance took every bit of strength he could muster.

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“I would ask you, master, to give me time—”

“Time? I have given you enough time, Lord Sterling. Such a response is unacceptable. How much time do you require when all of eternity is before you?”

“I wish to turn her, my master. She is worthy, resourceful, intelligent. I want her to become a disciple, to serve you as I do, forever.”

The master narrowed his smoking eyes. The Dragon made no quick response to the request, but studied its disciple. It was the first time Justin had ever known the master to hesitate.

“What kind of offer is this, Lord Sterling?” the Dragon asked at last. “I have a purpose of my own—a noble cause. That purpose requires all my attention—

and all of the attention of my servants. It is not in me to offer boons to you for your idle enjoyment. The trappings already bestowed upon you are sufficient for the work which needs you as its champion.”

“She would be a great asset to you, I assure you. I have watched her. Have you not watched her, as well?”

Again, the master paused. When the Dragon spoke, its voice was barely a whisper, “As I do watch you, Lord Sterling.”

Justin said nothing.

“You have served me well, Lord Sterling,” the Dragon continued. “Under this consideration, I do give you a single day to accomplish this. If she looks in the mirror with welcome in her heart, I shall make my own decision upon the span of your lady’s life.”

Justin gulped and nodded.

“One day, no more,” the master said.

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And then Justin’s reflection was his own again.

His own blue eyes looked out at him, blinked once, and looked at his clawed feet.

One day, no more. Justin rubbed his finger, looked down in curiosity at the sapphire ring the old Chinese man had given him so many years ago. It was an enigma to him—the only item of his apparel that had ever survived the transformation from his human form to his Wyrm form and back again unscathed.

He’d left it on ever since he retrieved it from the trunk—it seemed to speak to him sometimes, to calm his rage, to flare with internal fire at each change of his emotions. It burned his flesh now as though someone had put it in an inferno . . .

4

t w e n t y - t w o

The cathedral was practically

empty, but it was always open for those who needed to come in and pray. Because it was in a big city, the hours of this church bent to the strange schedules of its inhabitants. The priests kept the sanctuary open twenty-four hours a day, even though they risked the worldly evils of looting and other urban dangers.

Sandra’s priest said that God was present at all hours—therefore, his house should be open to those who needed him at all times. There was no orga-nized ceremony tonight. A few people wandered the side aisles, admiring the rows of sculpted apostles, prophets, saints, and patrons in the Gothic structure and lighting candles in the lady chapel. The building was filled with that wonderful smell—a hundred years’ worth of incense and holy candles—common to all old Catholic churches.

The nave—richly ornamented with gold leaf and mosaics—was a hand-built cavern, all perfect curves DARK HEART

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and right angles. Intricate stained glass windows glowed with jewel-like colors. Carefully positioned lighting outside the church made the windows nearly as beautiful in the evening as they were in daylight.

Fluted stone columns speared into the vaulted ceilings.

Sandra stared at their tops. The columns, reaching to become a part of the sky, always calmed her. The medieval artisans who had built the soaring stone churches of Europe had managed to paint the emotions of religion in stone. This New World imitation of their art captured that spirit. The very stones of the church cried out the convictions of those who shaped them—that the impossible was attainable. God is near. Reach for him, and perfect yourself for his coming. Work hard. Dedicate your life to the light.

She took comfort from her surroundings. She needed that comfort. It wasn’t the first time she’d sought relief from a crisis here. The church had been pivotal in her escape from Chuck. Those fluted columns had spoken to her then as well. From them, she gained the idea that she could be more than she was, that she could strive for a better fate than life as Chuck’s punching bag.

And now where was she? She was back in the same place. Her lover was a monster, just as Chuck had been. A monster with claws and teeth and wings.

A mythical being. A dragon. Her lover was a dragon.

She’d finally placed that strangely familiar voice in the alley. Even distorted by a transformation into who knew what kind of monster, she’d recognized the cadences of her lover’s voice. The stories Justin 364

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin had told her and Benny at the restaurant were not the products of his mind or his arcane reading. They were true. In his apartment was a mirror surrounded by dragons. Between the cycles of their lovemaking in that long, wonderful night, Sandra had stood in front of that mirror, bathed in her own sweat and Justin’s, and studied the medieval carvings on the border, entranced. An heirloom, he had said. The oldest, most prized possession of his family. He had brought it from overseas because he had always loved it, he had said.

Did his master speak to him through this mirror? She was sure it did. What was Justin? Was he truly some sort of demon?

She rested her head in her arms against the back of the next pew. What was she going to do now? She had fled the crime scene as soon as she could, after she’d surrendered her weapon for testing, had her hands swabbed to prove she had indeed fired shots, answered the questions for her captain and Internal Affairs. She’d had the paramedics patch her up but refused to go to the hospital to have the claw marks on her shoulder stitched. She was held together by but-terfly bandages, medical gauze, and some painkiller the paramedics had given her. Good stuff, whatever it was.

She’d have to look at the name when she had the pre-scription filled. Nice to know for the next time her life fell apart.

She was on medical leave, according to her boss.

Don’t come into the office, he’d said. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

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None of it had penetrated the soft, fuzzy cocoon of her shock. She left as soon as she could to come here, stopping only to retrieve the small Chief ’s Special revolver that was her off-duty weapon. Now it pressed reassuringly against her bruised ribs, fully loaded. She was going to get the first priest she saw to bless it. Maybe dragons were like vampires or werewolves, vulnerable to bullets dipped in holy water or something.

It was too much. And who could she tell? Who would believe her? Mac might have, at least some of it . . . but Mac was dead.

She almost didn’t believe it herself. She had no proof. Not a shred of evidence. Certainly not an eyewitness. Not that an eyewitness would have helped.

If nobody would believe her, a cop, why would they believe anybody else?

That made her want to laugh, but she clamped down on the impulse. At this point of emotional exhaustion, laughter opened the gates to hysteria.

She could not afford that. Her lover was out there, somewhere, with his claws and his invisible body and his irresistible strength. And his friend was out there as well, waiting for her. Waiting to do Justin the favor of killing her.

She was going to have to file a report. What would she say? There would be an office full of questions for her, and she had no answers. She had discharged her firearm nine times. She had slow-bleeding punctures around her left breast, a three-clawed gash on her shoulder and on her hand. Her partner was dead.

366

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin And Linda . . . and McKenzie’s kids . . . What could she tell them? What could anyone possibly tell them? She would never again hear Mac arguing with Linda. Linda would never again call him at work.

Never.

“Oh, Mac . . .,” she whispered, fighting her tears. Soft footsteps intruded on her private pain, and she lifted her head, though she did not look behind her. She heard the steps move into the pew just behind her and stop. Somebody settled into the seat with the swish of fabric brushing across wood.

Fear rustled across her skin. She knew who it was, who it had to be. She didn’t even need to turn around. Somehow, she’d known he would come.

“Tell me the truth, Justin . . .,” she said quietly.

“Tell me I’m going insane. Tell me everything I saw was a hallucination brought on by stress, brought on by something. Tell me that.”

“That is not the truth,” he answered, his voice soothing.

Still she did not look at him. She stared straight ahead, her eyes fixed on a statue of the Virgin Mary.

“Your friend said I look like your wife. Is that the truth?”

“Yes.” Justin paused, then said, “He is not my friend.”

“Where is she?”

“She died a long time ago.”

“A long time ago? What exactly are we talking here—decades, centuries? Are you going to tell me next that you live forever?”

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Justin said nothing.

Sandra choked on the truth. “I don’t believe this!” she cried. “This isn’t happening. What are you, a vampire or something?”

“No.”

“Worse? A demon? One of the devil’s creatures?”

“No.”

“What, then?”

“You remember the story I told you and Benny at dinner the other night?”

“Of course, I remember. I’ve been thinking about it since . . . tonight. What does that make you, then?”

“One of the Dragon’s disciples.”

“You’re a dragon man?”

“Something like that.”

“Then that was you tonight, fighting with . . .

that other . . . dragon man.”

“Yes. His name is Kalzar.”

“I shot my pistol at both of you. Did I hit you?”

“Yes.”

Sandra swallowed. “But you’re okay, of course,”

she said sardonically.

“Weapons can only kill me if they are appropriately blessed. I am not mortal,” Justin replied. “They hurt, but aren’t fatal. I was impressed, however, by your calm in being able to shoot me at all.”

“You’re not mortal. Of course not. What self-respecting demon would be?” She started to laugh, heard the harsh hysteria in it, and stopped herself.

“Did the gunshots hurt badly?”

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“Yes.”

Again, she swallowed, but said nothing.

“Sandra—” Justin began.

“How do I look like her?” she interrupted him.

“In what ways?”

He paused, then, “If you took your hair down, and looked into a mirror, you might see Gwendolyne looking back.”

“Gwendolyne . . . Gwendolyne’s Flight. You named your club after her? That was her name?”

“Yes.”

“What did she flee?”

“This life. Too soon.”

“And I look exactly like her?”

“Yes. She was beautiful, inside and out, as you are. Her beauty took my breath away every time I looked at her. But in other ways, the two of you are nothing alike. She was quiet, soft-spoken. She moved through life gently, like a murmuring brook over smooth stones. You’re a fighter who challenges the world to come and meet you. Everything you touch, you ignite with your passion.”

“How did she die?”

“We were taken by the plague, both of us. We were at death’s door. The Dragon came to me in a silver mirror. I was swollen with pustules, lying on the cold stone floor in a puddle of my own urine.

The Dragon offered me immortality, and the strength to change the world for the better, to fight for his cause. I accepted. Someday the world will be safe for the Dragon to return, and that day will DARK HEART

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usher humanity into a new and brighter age of evolution. The Dragon cannot come back as long as there are people who would hunt it, people like Saint George.”

“Why didn’t the Dragon make the same offer to Gwendolyne that he did to you?” Sandra asked, still staring at the Virgin Mary, still unwilling to turn around and let the plea in Justin’s eyes threaten her resolve, steal her strength.

“The Dragon did make that offer to her.”

“I see,” Sandra said softly. “She refused.”

“You must understand,” Justin said, “she was a child of the Dark Ages, raised on stories of witches and devils. Like all superstitious people she thought anything she could not understand must be evil in nature. When she saw the Dragon’s face, she saw only its intimidating appearance. She did not hear the wisdom of its words, could not know the wisdom of its years, its benevolence. Her fear of the Dragon was greater than her love for me.”

Sandra paused. It was all so strange, but she had seen enough evidence to convince herself that he spoke the truth. She nodded slowly.

“There’s something I don’t understand. Who killed that girl’s boyfriend? What great purpose could that possibly serve?”

“Does it matter? He hurt her. He deserved to be punished.”

“That girl looked like me. Like your wife.”

“Yes.”

“So you slept with her, too?”

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“No!” Justin’s reply was vehement. “She was just a child.”

“Then what? You watched her? Spied on her?”

“Protected her,” he insisted.

“Those sketches on your wall—you didn’t tell me the truth, did you? You said they were of me, but they’re not. Only some of them are me. Some of them are that girl, aren’t they? And some of them are other women. Centuries of women who live in your memories . . . yet all the same . . .”

“Sandra, please understand. You cannot know what it is like to live so many years and never have the chance to live a normal life. Through the years I choose people to watch and I live my life through them vicariously. My normal life. From them, I can taste what it would be like to grow up, to have mortal concerns, to love, to die . . .”

“By chance, are all of these people you watch young, pretty women with wavy hair and brown eyes?”

Justin paused. “I am afraid so. We all have our eccentricities.”

“Do your eccentricities include ripping people’s hearts out of their chests, by any chance? Trying to kill me? Killing my partner?”

“That was Kalzar’s doing.” Justin’s voice was firm.

“Why?”

“You cannot understand a mind like Kalzar’s without first understanding the conditions under which he was raised. He was born on the Arabian DARK HEART

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peninsula in a time of holy war and vast ruin.

Everything is a jihad to him, a divine battle. He believes my need for a personal life jeopardizes our mission. He has taken it upon himself to rid me of what he sees as my weakness. He is a shortsighted soul who cannot appreciate the beauty at the end of the road we travel. He can only appreciate the necessarily bloody work we must do to get there.”

“And you tolerate that?” she asked.

“Believe me, I would kill him if I could. But we do not die easily. And our master forbids us to fight among ourselves. That is one of the Dragon’s few laws.”

“And you broke that law tonight?”

“I did.”

“For me.”

“For you. I would break it again. Kalzar knows this. It may make him wary of coming near you. On the other hand, it may make it more tantalizing to him to try. I do not know.”

“And your guardian Dragon, doesn’t it care that Kalzar is a bloody murderer?”

“You cannot judge the Dragon by human standards. The Dragon is over four thousand years old.

It carries the memories of every other Dragon before it. To the Dragon, a single human life is nothing.

The Dragon cares for the whole of the human race, not the sum of the parts. It cannot afford to lose sight of the long view for momentary compassion. It is not a generous master, but its purpose is the highest possible.”

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“And the end justifies the means?”

“Of course. You know this as well as I do. You’re that kind of detective. Your own police force has people trained as snipers for SWAT teams as well as those officers who travel to grade schools and teach bicycle safety. The city needs all kinds of law enforcement officers. So does the Dragon.”

“Kalzar just killed my partner. Somebody killed Jack Madrone, Baxter, and Zack. And Omar, Kalzar’s buddy. Is he one of you, too?

“In a way.”

“Would he have killed me if you hadn’t intervened that night in front of the jazz club?”

“You know a great deal about us now,” Justin said softly. “That makes you a liability . . .

or an

asset.”

Sandra finally turned around, looked into Justin’s vibrant blue eyes. If he was hurting from the fight, he didn’t show it. It was impossible to believe she’d pumped nine bullets into him and the other dragon man. But then, this was all impossible to believe.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I want you to join me,” he answered. His eyes entranced her. “I beg of you.”

“Become what you are?” She heard her voice as if from a great distance away.

“Yes. It is the safest option for you.”

“Join you or die? Is that it?” she asked bitterly.

“Sandra, I can’t always be around to protect you from Kalzar. If he is determined, he will kill you.

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And he is a zealot. Few thoughts enter his small mind, but once they do, they never leave.”

“You’re serious . . .,” she said. Suddenly she laughed. Laughed even as she realized she was crying.

This morning she’d been a cop. She lived in Chicago, a city in the United States in the twentieth century. Now she didn’t know who or where or even when she was. She felt a horrifying lack of stability, as if the cathedral was made of the smoke rising from the altar candles.

“I am serious, Sandra,” Justin pleaded. “I want you with me forever. I love you.”

Her emotions threatened to overwhelm her. She loved him, too, but she couldn’t say it. There was . . .

too much between them. She couldn’t just . . . an ocean of blood roiled between them. McKenzie’s death.

Madrone. Zack. Baxter. Wheeler. Who was Justin, really? Who was this Dragon who was prepared to grant her immortal life? And for what price?

“I want that Arab’s head on a plate,” she said.

“You may be able to tolerate him, but I can’t. I don’t care how he goes down, but I want him down.”

“The end justifies the means?”

“Damn straight!”

Justin smiled. “You see? I knew we were the same, you and I.”

She said nothing.

He reached out and took her hand. “I have answered your questions. I have but one for you.”

Sandra nodded.

“You left, that first night we spent together.

374

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Sandra licked her dry lips and averted her gaze from his. “I was afraid,” she said. “Benny got that right. I had a husband once . . .” She told him everything. The beatings, the verbal abuse, how she kept coming back for more of the same . . .

“I’ve been afraid to trust my emotions since then.

After I escaped that whole fucked-up situation, I always felt that I had damned myself with my own lying heart.

I . . . didn’t want to do that again. I couldn’t bear to lose myself that way again. When I spent the night with you, I let down my guard, and you crept in.” She paused, looked up at him. “I didn’t want you to be there. I didn’t want to admit that I . . .”

“What?” he asked softly.

“That I’d fallen in love with you.”

He reached out a hand and touched her cheek.

“How could anyone strike such a wonder as you?” he whispered. “Of all the sins I have seen, that must be the greatest.”

She bowed her head, then looked at him. “Your friends Omar and Kalzar have been taking turns sinning, then, since the day I met you.”

“Sandra . . .” He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “I would never do that.”

She nodded. “I don’t think you would.”

He rose, still holding her hand. She looked up at him.

“You need some time alone,” he said. “I think it’s best if I leave for a while.”

“Yes.”

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He let go of her hand and began walking quietly down the aisle.

“Justin?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

He turned. “Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“For?”

“For saving my life back at the club.”

“You’re welcome.”

4

t w e n t y - t h r e e

Sandra pulled into the District Eighteen lot and parked close to the door. After the events of the last few days, she saw danger in every shadow. Any little noise sent a spike of adrenaline racing through her body. She was exhausted, but she didn’t want to go home. She knew the moment she touched her bed, she would fall asleep, and she couldn’t afford to sleep now. Not while Kalzar still walked the earth free, in whatever form he chose. She wanted to trust Justin, but she had wanted to trust him before, and now Mac was dead.

Sweet, loud-mouthed, dependable Mac. Sandra dreaded talking to Linda more than anything else. And she hadn’t, not yet, at least. She had her own pain to deal with first.

Sandra spent another hour at the cathedral after Justin left, trying to pull herself together. Somehow, she felt he was watching her the entire time. The sensation left her with conflicting emotions. Was the dragon at the DARK HEART

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door to protect her from other dragons? Or to devour her the moment she stepped outside?

She went up the stairs to the precinct and to her desk. She didn’t see who was working graveyard, and she didn’t care. She had only two purposes here now.

Her fingers felt numb as she scribbled out a note and signed it. She had no idea what time it was. Looking at the windows, she realized it must be near sunrise.

The night was giving way to day along the eastern horizon in the faintest of pastel glows.

After folding the note, she searched through her desk for an envelope. Not finding one immediately, she started toward the captain’s office. She was too tired to be bothered with details.

“Sandra,” the captain’s voice stopped her. She looked up to see him standing in his doorway. He was a stocky man in his forties, a little taller than she was. His dark red hair had a few streaks of white in it. She had always been impressed by how muscular his forearms were, all covered with that curly, crimson hair. His face had always seemed old to her, which was odd because he had almost no wrinkles. Only a few at the corners of his eyes. Perhaps it was just the way he looked at her. It seemed like he knew more than anyone alive. He appraised her, checking for injuries.

“Captain . . .” She blinked, swallowed, and tried to think of something to say. She hadn’t expected him to be in the precinct at this hour. “You’re here early.”

He nodded. “I told you not to come in, unless IA called. You’re on med. leave, Sandra. Why the hell are you here?”

378

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin She held up the note. “I’m sorry this isn’t couched in official language on the proper form, but I just can’t handle going through all the channels right now.”

“What is it?” He raised a bushy red eyebrow in inquiry.

“Request for a formal leave of absence. Of indefinite length.”

“Sandra . . . I’m sorry about Mac. He was one of my friends, too.”

She nodded. “Yeah. I know.” She passed him the piece of paper.

“You sure you want to take this kind of leave right now? A medical is understandable, but people will talk about this. It might not be so easy to come back.” He paused. “There’ll be questions about you . . . about your mental health.”

“I know. I don’t care.”

“Will you at least bring Johnson and DeWitt up to speed on where you and Mac were with your cases?”

“It’s all in my files—every bit of it. Though I think I can guarantee they’re not going to like my conclusions.” She thought for a minute. “If you want, I’ll write it up now.”

“Later is fine.”

“Good.” She turned and started walking away. The captain didn’t say anything. As she passed Mac’s desk, she looked down at all his paperwork, scattered about.

She could hear his phone ringing in her mind. She could see him picking it up, talking to Linda with that patient expression on his face. Grunting and nodding and shrugging at Sandra as she waited.

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The tears threatened to overwhelm her again, and she turned away. The captain had followed her. He was talking to her, but she hadn’t heard a word of what he was saying.

“—they can call you if they need help or background on your conclusions, right?”

She shook her head.

“Don’t you want us to catch this guy, McCormick?”

She shook her head. “Yes, sir. I want him caught.

Just, maybe, not the way you think . . .” She cut herself off and began walking away again.

“Sandra.” The captain’s voice carried across the room. It had that tone she had heard so many times when he was warning an officer away from a course of action. “Don’t try anything on your own. We’re cops, not vigilantes.”

She kept going. Following the hall she’d walked so often with her partner at her side, talking about nothing, him teasing her, getting on her nerves. She couldn’t get his voice out of her head, so she just listened to it and remembered. Mac smiling. Mac laughing. Mac talking to Linda.

Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I gotta go. Look, Sandra’s here, I gotta go . . .

Sandra got in her car and drove to the coroner’s office.

She pushed through the door and went inside, followed the darkened hallway to find an attendant.

He was a tall young man with a big nose, bony and a little bent to the side. She’d seen him around.

He’d been working here for more than a year. He 380

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin was handsome in a lost-little-kid way.

He glanced up from a microscope and smiled hesitantly. “Hi,” he said, “how can I help you?”

“You worked on the Zack Miller case with Dr. Ben-son, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “A little.”

“Can you help me? I need to know some things about the Miller kid.”

He nodded back. “Sure . . . uh, what, exactly?”

“I want you to see something. Pull the file and meet me in the examination room.”

“Okay.” He seemed confused, but he went to get the file and Sandra continued into the examination room.

One wall was all stainless steel, covered with twelve square doors, each about the size of a dorm refrigerator’s.

The meat lockers. Bodies were kept here, chilled and waiting, until the police were finished with them, and then they were sent to the city morgue. Miller’s body would be long gone, but that was all right. The coroner kept extensive records, videotapes, and photos.

The young doctor returned a moment later with a file. Sandra had looked it over before. Among the contents were photographs of Zack Miller’s grisly wound, and a few suppositions as to what could have caused it.

Nothing concrete. But now Sandra knew what could rip a hole in a man’s chest like that. She had felt those claws rip into her own body.

The young man was shuffling through the photographs. Looking up at her, he said. “What exactly did you want me to review?”

“The wound.”

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“Oh. Okay. Yeah, I remember. Unknown puncture wound, punched through the rib cage. Probably a steel mechanism. Powerful launching device.”

“Right.” She paused. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Joe,” he said.

“Okay, Joe. I want you to look at something for me.” Sandra began unbuttoning her blouse. Joe actually took a step back, gulping and turning red to his hairline.

He blinked several times, and seemed to be searching for something to say, and something to look at far above her head. Finally he just closed his mouth and tried to look elsewhere as Sandra removed her blouse and then her bra.

She ripped the bandages off her breast and shoulder to reveal the wounds. “I want you to identify these for me.”

Joe coughed nervously, turned his head to look at her while keeping his body facing the other direction.

“Um, well, that is . . . where did you get those marks?”

He looked into her eyes, unwilling to look lower.

Sandra’s gaze turned flinty and she closed in on him, took his hand, and put it on her shoulder just where Kalzar’s claws had rested.

“Can we get on with this?” she asked.

“Y-yeah, sure,” he nodded. He craned his neck to look. “Um, maybe you should, uh . . . maybe you should lie down. I’m sorry. All the people I’m used to working on tend to be, um, lying down.”

Sandra hopped on one of the tables. Joe grabbed some latex gloves out of a cardboard box and pulled them 382

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin on. He did seem more relaxed once she was on her back, although he got a little flustered every time she moved.

The fact that her chest rose and fell as he examined the wound seemed to unnerve him a little. But she waited patiently, and finally he was finished looking over her injuries.

“Okay . . . ,” he began. “I . . . well, what did you want to know?”

“This was obviously done by some sort of claw, correct?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Imagine that what killed Miller was also a claw.”

“Okay,” Joe said.

“Is it the same claw that made this mark on me?”

Interest lit in the coroner’s eyes and he shuffled through the photographs of Miller’s chest, pulled a few out, and then focused on one in particular. Sandra remained still while he probed at her again, looking at each of her small wounds in turn, and then backing up and looking at them as a whole.

He held the photograph he’d chosen up against her chest as he looked. Slowly he shook his head. “No. Not the same.”

Taking the photograph from her belly, she handed it to Joe as she sat up. Immediately he was nervous again.

She put her bra on.

“Why?” she asked, pulling her blouse on.

“Well, um, do you mind if I ask you where you got that wound?” He indicated her chest.

“Yes. I mind. Why are they different?”

“Oh, well, Miller’s killer’s claw—if it was a DARK HEART

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claw—was larger. The incision points were wider than the claw wound around your . . . on your chest.”

“And that’s all? It’s larger? Are you sure it wasn’t the same claw simply opened up wider?”

“Well, no, because it’s not just the size that’s different. Miller’s claw had four incision points. Three and one—like an eagle’s talon. Three claws on one side and one directly opposite on the other side. Yours is like a human hand would be if it had claws. Well, more so than an eagle’s talon, anyway. You’ve got four wound points on your chest. Three and one, except the opposing claw isn’t directly opposite, but off to the side like a human thumb.”

Sandra slid from the table as she finished buttoning her blouse. Looking him straight in the eye, she asked,

“You mean there is absolutely no way these two wounds could have come from the same claw?”

“No. If they were animals, I’d say they were similar, but a different species. Close, but definitely not the same creature.”

Sandra made a fumbling, dazed attempt at tucking in her shirt.

“That’s not the answer you wanted, was it?” Joe asked hesitantly.

“No,” she said as she headed for the door, leaving the rest of her blouse untucked. “No, it wasn’t.”

4

t w e n t y - f o u r

On a normal day, Sandra would

race up the stairs to her apartment at a steady pace, giving her legs their daily workout. This time, she plodded. Using the elevator would have been faster, but she had no intention of being trapped in a closed space right now.

Mac was dead, Kalzar wanted to kill her, and nobody around here was safe—including Benny. Even Justin had said he couldn’t protect her from Kalzar forever. And why had Justin dragged Benny into it?

Had Justin made that connection with Benny just to have something to hold over her? Or did he like her brother for himself—Justin would certainly be able to see beneath the scarred surface to the real man inside.

Sandra couldn’t help wondering why Justin had taken such an interest in Benny. She worried that it wasn’t a good sign for Benny’s continued health.

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Could she just grab Benny and drive to another city? She doubted it. But she had to try. He was the only person they could use against her now. She wouldn’t lose him like she’d lost Mac. Once she had Benny safely hidden, she would come back.

It was past time for a reckoning. Kalzar would pay for killing Mac. But Benny had to be safe first.

And Justin? What about Justin?

It was too confusing. Her thoughts whirled. She could find no clear resolution for the situation. There was a part of her that would gladly spend the rest of her life with Justin, but the rest of her immortal life?

Serving a master who could, and did, force his servants to murder the innocent? Could she reconcile the part of herself that loved Justin the man with the part of herself that loathed him for what he became at the master’s hands? He was a killer. She’d spent her adult life bringing killers to justice. How could she possibly still love him? Did she?

Sandra’s fatigue pulled at her. She wanted to sleep, but she didn’t dare. She didn’t have a moment to spare. Kalzar was still out there, walking free, and Mac was dead. She knew she wouldn’t find rest until that situation ended, either with Kalzar in jail—or dead. For Mac’s sake. For Benny’s sake. And for her own sake, and her unshakable belief in the power of justice.

She entered the condo and found Benny looking out the window. Awake again, despite the early hour.

It was unlike him. The lights were off, but the sun 386

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin was just up, pink dawn light streaming into the room throwing long shadows.

She wondered if he’d awakened because he was worried about her. She didn’t know if she could face him telling her how happy he was that she had loosened up and spent another night at Justin’s—

tell her that she needed to trust men again. If only he knew . . .

“Benny,” she said wearily, closing the door behind her. He didn’t move. “We’ve got to leave.

We’ve got to leave Chicago. Today. Now. In half an hour or so. I want you to—” Her brother still hadn’t moved. His back was to her, and she couldn’t see his face.

“Benny?” she cried, her voice going tight in terror. “Benny!”

She crossed the room, shoving aside a table that blocked her path. Grabbing his wheelchair, she spun it around.

Benny jumped up out of his chair. His arms encircled her in a big hug and he lifted her off the ground, laughing.

Inside her, something went over the edge. She heard herself screaming. Terror filled her heart. Ducking low, she broke the grip of Benny’s arms and shoved him, hard. He landed in a tangled sprawl of arms and legs. She stepped back from him, shocked at what she’d done, fighting to get herself under control. Benny was lying on the floor, looking bewildered. He shook his head a little.

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“Whoa, ace, remind me never to surprise you.”

He stood up. He was standing!

“B-Benny?” she said, her breath coming fast.

“Isn’t it great?” He laughed and leaped into the air, pointing at his nose. His perfectly straight nose.

It was completely normal, healed. All the scars on his face were gone. All the deformities wiped away as if Benny had stepped from the distant past into this present day, whole and well.

“What . . . what have you done?” she asked, backing away from him. She bumped into his wheelchair, stumbled past it, and leaned up against the wall.

“Me? I’ve become whole again. I’m walking! I’m jumping! I’m sparring with you, I guess! I don’t know! Look at me, Sandy! I can walk! ” He started toward her, as if to prove it.

“Stay away from me,” she yelled. Her wide eyes flicked from him to his wheelchair and back to Benny’s face.

Benny stopped dead as if she’d shot him. His smile vanished. “Sandra . . .,” he said, concerned. “It’s all right. I know it seems strange, but . . .”

“I’m going crazy,” she whispered. She shook her head, closed her eyes to see if the strange new world she’d walked into would vanish when she opened them again.

“Benny . . . tell me how this happened.”

“You won’t believe how wonderful it is, Sandra.

You can’t imagine what it’s like to go from being able to walk to not being able to walk and then back again. I feel like I could kick the walls down. No more pity and disgust in people’s eyes. Fuck that.

388

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin Fuck them!” His eyes radiated a strange combination of joy and contempt.

“Benny . . .” Sandra heard her voice go flat, as the truth began to dawn on her, the only truth it could be. “How did this happen to you?”

“Justin showed me a mirror. I looked into it and—”

“A mirror! No, Benny! When?” Sandra gasped.

“A little while ago. He came by and—”

“He did this to you?” Sandra’s throat tightened.

She couldn’t move. Despair settled around her like a black cloak, followed by a searing, white-hot rage.

“Did this to me? You make it sound like a sin, not a blessing.” He paused, staring at her, then shook his head. “No, it was the Dragon.”

“Where is he? Where’s Justin?” she snarled.

“He’s not here now. He left, but Sandra, don’t be angry. He told me what happened at the club, about Mac. I’m sorry about him, but look . . . just look at me! Sandra, he showed me the mirror. Inside it . . . you wouldn’t believe. The Dragon was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. That story Justin told us at the restaurant, it’s all true! It was the Dragon in that mirror, and he’s everything Justin claimed he was. The Dragon looked inside me, said it could see the strength trapped there, and it asked me if I wanted to be released.”

“Save me from this . . .,” she whispered. Sandra’s mind filled with images of Benny slaughtering Zack Miller, of Benny punching a hole through Jack Madrone’s chest.

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“I said yes,” Benny’s voice lowered, awed, “and he gave me my life back.”

“Oh, no, Benny!” Sandra pressed back against the wall. “God, no, Benny . . . !” When the Dragon decided to kill her, would it send Benny after her?

She felt herself falling, and Benny was there, holding her up, just as he’d done when she’d fled from Chuck. Just as she’d done for him after the accident.

“Don’t touch me,” she said. She felt herself sliding down the wall. Benny grabbed her, held her upright.

His arms were incredibly strong. “Please, no. . . .”

“Don’t be silly,” he said unhappily. “It’s still me, Sandra. Your crazy brother Benny. Everything is going to be all right. I promise.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she said, breaking his hold and shoving him away. He stumbled backward a couple of paces and she tried to run past him. She bumped into his wheelchair. She picked it up and hurled it to one side.

He watched, stricken, as she ran from him. She clutched and fumbled at the front door, flung it open, and lurched out, slamming it closed behind her.

Benny walked the few steps to the door and stopped before it, tragedy written in the lines of his face. An elegant figure emerged from the hallway. The man laid a hand on Benny’s shoulder.

“What happened, Justin? Why did it go wrong?”

390

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin Benny asked, his voice trembling. “I did what you said.”

“She is only frightened, my friend,” Justin replied.

He, too, was disappointed.

“I wasn’t frightened.”

“Everyone reacts differently. Give her time.

She’ll come around.”

“I guess so.” Benny sounded dubious. “I just don’t understand why she wouldn’t be excited for me, at least. This is so amazing.”

“She has not had an easy time of it lately. Keep in mind—you didn’t see Mac’s dead body, or feel Kalzar’s claws rip your flesh. She’s had reason to fear us in the past. Give her time to deal with the changes.” He paused, and then spoke again. “She is still in very real danger. She is not yet one of us. We must protect her.

Take a cab and follow her.”

He withdrew a small, folded piece of paper.

“Here is my cell phone number. I will keep the phone with me at all times. The moment you see Kalzar or any other suspicious person near her, call me immediately. Do not hesitate, because they will not allow her to live unless she accepts the change.

The Dragon’s disciples are many. She’s in the greatest danger of her life right now. We must give her our help, whether she asks for it or not.”

“Don’t worry about that, Justin. Sandra means more to me than any of this. They won’t get to her without going through me.”

Justin gripped Benny’s shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Yes, Benny, they will. I know how you DARK HEART

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feel. Strong enough to beat down mountains, but it’s not enough. Don’t try to be a hero. You’ll fail. You cannot withstand Kalzar. He will tear you open and then let you watch as he guts her. Call me.”

“Okay, Justin,” Benny promised. “You have my word.”

4

t w e n t y - f i v e

As soon as Benny shut the door, Justin set Benny’s wheelchair upright, walked to the windows, and stared out at the city. He was tired, far too tired. Perhaps it was the wounds he had received. He had never fought with another of the Elder disciples. Never.

Perhaps the weariness he now experienced came from that. Or perhaps it was the Dragon’s punishment for his continued disobedience.

Justin did not know. He had not come close to a mirror since the fight. He could feel his master’s desire to speak to him, but he refused to respond. He felt rage surge within him. Rage at Sandra. But it was the Dragon’s rage, not Justin’s own. As a consequence, he did not dare change into his dragonling form for any reason. Hiding while Benny and Sandra argued had been torment for Justin. He’d had to clench both hands to keep from bursting through the door. He’d been terrified he’d end the conversation with Sandra’s heart in his hand. Why couldn’t she just look in the mirror and accept her fate?

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Justin looked down at the sapphire ring on his finger. For some reason, it gave him comfort. It brought Angela to mind, and how he had not wanted to kill her, either. It reminded him of how terrible he’d felt afterward. He did not want to stare at Sandra’s bloody corpse—the feelings he had for her were so much more intense that he knew the aftermath would be unbearable. Somehow, the thought of Angela eased his struggle with the Dragon’s wishes.

He would have to face Sandra soon. The Dragon had promised Justin a day to convert her, but it seemed that the Dragon was not willing to be patient. The incessant longings for Sandra’s death were proof enough of that. Why was she resisting the choice? She loved him, he knew that, sensed it in her every move. Gwendolyne, too, had loved him . . .

Justin sank down on the couch. He closed his eyes.

In the darkness he saw a flash of a dream. The same dream as before. Of him, doing battle with a great, fiery shape, wielding a sword of light. Was that what it meant?

His subconscious throwing up a graphic scene represent-ing his own situation now, in essence battling the master he had obeyed for so long?

And he thought he knew what the sword of light was, too. The knowledge frightened him. Because that sword was real. Did it mean the dream might become real as well? But that would be . . .

No, it would be impossible.

He opened his eyes and sighed. How long could he wait? He would have to face her soon, convince her or . . .

394

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin Justin shook his head. Each moment he delayed was one more moment Kalzar would have to exact his revenge. Kalzar had finally found Justin’s weakness—

Sandra—and he would use it. He wouldn’t be able to help himself. Kalzar would never forgive Justin for best-ing him.

Justin let out a breath, relaxed, felt his eyes closing. It felt so good simply to rest a moment. Just one moment . . .

The vision began the same way as every vision he’d had since his pact with the Dragon. Justin cried out against it, cursed himself for relaxing his guard, but there was no escape now. The red eyes of his master opened and Justin saw through them.

He floated in the high vaulted ceiling of the cathedral. Below, Sandra sat in a pew, head bowed, silent. One of the doors at the front of the church opened, and he saw himself enter, saw his dark hair and long black coat silhouetted in the sunlight of the doorway. Then he moved forward and the door shut behind him. He walked toward Sandra. She rose, afraid of him. She tried to run, but he grabbed her, spun her around. Her fists struck out at him.

She managed to escape his grip. She sprinted away, but he knew it was hopeless. He had done this too many times before. He changed into the dragonling. His powerful wings flapped twice and he overtook her. The dragonling picked Sandra up like a rag doll. Her neck snapped.

Her screams died away. His clawed hand plunged into her chest . . .

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•

•

•

The vision changed, replaced by another. This time Justin was in London. He could see no landmarks, but he knew his homeland simply by the feel of it on his skin.

He stood on the roof of a great cathedral. Low clouds hung over the city, and the rain fell constantly. In his hand, Justin gripped the Blade of Beowulf, the sword the legendary hero used to slay Grendel’s mother, the dragon named Gyzalanitha. The blade had survived through the centuries, imbued with Beowulf ’s power through a piece of his thighbone, which was kept in the haft. This was the sword Saint George had carried in his hunt for dragons. When he finally died, a sliver of his finger bone had been inserted into the haft as well. Both dragon slayers had eaten dragon wings, and both had become something more than mortal. Their magic had become a part of the sword. It was the only weapon Justin knew of that could kill a Dragon . . . or a Dragon’s disciple.

Kalzar, in dragonling form, stalked toward him across the great stone sculptures adorning the cathedral’s eaves. He walked toward Justin with a terrible smile on his face. His smile slipped when he saw the sword in Justin’s hand. The smile’s last remnants froze forever on Kalzar’s face the instant the blade swept through his neck . . .

The vision wrenched away, and once again Justin saw himself walking into the cathedral. Once again, he killed 396

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin Sandra. He wrestled with the dream. Again he was in London on the cathedral. Again Kalzar’s head rolled to the stone facings of the great church. Then Sandra’s death played out once more. And again . . . and again . . .

and again . . .

Justin willed himself awake, finally escaping the clutches of the visions that haunted him. He’d never escaped such visions before until released by the Dragon, had never been able to do so. Perhaps he hadn’t done it this time.

Perhaps the Dragon had let him go. After all, Justin’s mandate was obvious. The Dragon wanted Sandra dead.

But he seemed to want Kalzar dead as well.

Perhaps not all the visions had come from the Dragon . . .

“I will not kill her . . .” Justin vowed through gritted teeth. “She will convert. I swear it.”

But even as he said it, pain shot through him, burning him alive as he cried out. He staggered and slammed into the coffee table. Wood cracked and a huge, jagged splinter of it pushed through his forearm. His blood gushed onto the carpet, but that pain was peripheral to the other agonies the Dragon was unleashing on him.

Now there was pressure on both sides of his head, and it felt as if his eyeballs were going to pop from their sock-ets.

“No.” He was defiant. “I will not!” His forearm came free of its impalement, and he struggled to stand.

Huddling into himself, Justin forced the pain from his body. He willed the Dragon away. Electric shocks DARK HEART

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coursed through his limbs and he screamed in agony, but his resolve did not falter. He remained hunched over, eyes shut, fighting.

With each jolt of burning anguish, a memory of the last time he had fought this battle came to him.

The other . . .

Images of her flashed across his mind and he focused on her, not the fire burning his flesh.

He was in Russia. It was the turn of the century. A young woman entered the barn. Her breath was a white cloud in the frosty air. She had recently given birth for the first time. Justin could hear the baby crying from where he hid in the barn. He perched in the loft, one with the early morning shadows.

The woman’s blonde hair was a cascade of sunshine framing her soft, round face. Her movements were graceful and her happiness radiated from her. The vision of her would always stay with him, the way her lips were curved in a smile, the way her cheeks were flushed, the way she whistled softly as she worked, never knowing of the demon who hovered by her door.

His dreams had sent him here, the only kind of dreams he had anymore. She was his victim. He had seen how he would kill her. Here, in the barn. Now, as she was gathering eggs. Now, as she lifted her skirts and tucked them in her waistband, to keep them free from the straw and dirt in the barn as she collected the eggs.

He watched her exposed legs, smooth and youthful, and he remembered when he had first seen Gwendolyne.

He had been in his nineteenth year, fully a man by the 398

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin standards of the time. She had been fourteen, a slim and agile sylph of a girl, all hair and eyes and that beautiful smile. His first glimpse of her by the riverside had been enough for him. He’d known then that he would marry her.

He had seen too much of Gwendolyne in that young Russian girl. He had dared to love her and the Dragon had disapproved, just as Justin’s father had disapproved of Gwendolyne. That first night Justin could not bring himself to kill her. He waited until she left, and that was when the pain hit. All of that day and all of the next he stayed hidden from the young woman, locked in his personal struggle with the Dragon, drinking hell by the mouthful. In the night, sometimes, he would allow himself to cry out quietly, caught in the throes of torment.

By the third day, he could not remember what it was like to be without pain. All he knew was that he could not continue the struggle for another minute without going mad. That morning, when the young Russian girl entered the barn, he was ready to take her. Her death was instantaneous. A knife from behind. A slit throat. She never had time to realize what exactly was wrong before she passed from the land of the living.

He had bought her three days with his pain. Three days. How valuable were three days of happiness? He’d had little more than that with Sandra. What price could be put upon such a thing?

Slowly Justin’s memory faded away . . . and with it, the pain . . .

The phone. His cell phone was ringing.

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Justin plunged his hand into the inside pocket of his coat, fumbled after the phone.

“Yes?” His voice was tight, controlled.

“Justin? It’s Benny. I’m at the cathedral. Sandra’s here. I had to go to a pay phone outside to call you. You told me to call as soon as I saw someone suspicious. Well, he’s here, I think. That guy you mentioned. Kalzar.”

“Kalzar,” Justin managed to say.

“Yeah, him. He came in and sat by the door. I think he knows who I am. The way he looked at me . . .”

“It’s possible. Elders can often tell when a younger disciple is near. Very well. I’ll be there as soon as I can.

Stay as close to him as you can without revealing yourself. Don’t fight him, but do what you can to keep him away from Sandra.”

“How do I do that?”

“I don’t know . . . but you have to try.”

“Okay.” Benny hung up.

Justin folded the phone and slipped it back in his pocket. Was the Dragon sending Kalzar to kill Sandra?

Or was Kalzar operating independently? If it was the latter, then Justin might buy himself time by killing Kalzar.

If it was the former, Justin could never protect Sandra.

There would always be another disciple assigned to kill her. One of them would eventually succeed.

There was only one way to protect Sandra forever . . .

Justin stepped out the door and sensed them immediately, though they weren’t readily apparent to human 400

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin eyes. He wasn’t surprised when two men stepped from the shadows near the corner of the building.

They were Chinese, an older man and a teenage kid.

They seemed familiar, though Justin couldn’t place either one of them in his memory. Justin looked down at the ring on his finger, looked at them, then narrowed his eyes.

The two flanked the edges of the staircase that descended from the door of the building to the sidewalk.

Never pausing, Justin started down toward them. What would have been creepy to anyone else was merely annoy-ing to Justin. He didn’t know who these people were, but he had a fair idea who might have sent them. They could stand in his way at their peril.

“Who are you?” he asked. They didn’t seem inclined to stop him, but they weren’t afraid of him, either.

The man was middle-aged. His short, black hair was streaked with gray. His eyes appraised Justin, and Justin didn’t like the feeling at all.

“You know who we are,” the man said.

Justin nodded. “Yes, of course. You’re Drokpas.

Human slaves of the dragons from Beyond.”

The man nodded. “Yes. We serve them, but we are not slaves. We seek—”

“I know what you seek,” Justin said. “You think you can stop my master from returning to this world.”

“You do not realize—”

“I realize that if you try to stop me, I will rip you limb from limb. You know I can do it.”

“We know,” the man said. He and the kid bowed and stood aside.

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Justin brushed past them. “At any other time I would not suffer your kind to live,” he growled, walking quickly down the street.

When Justin was almost out of earshot, the man yelled to him, “Remember the blue flame! It will serve you well!”

The words were so surprising he froze for a moment.

He spun around to ask them what they meant, but when he faced the steps again, they were gone.

As if they’d never been.

Hidden in shadow, the two Chinese men could still see Justin as he hailed the cab. Neither spoke for a long moment.

“I fear for her,” the younger finally said.

“I know. Matters are coming to a cusp,” the older returned.

“I don’t trust him.”

“It is not our mission to trust him. It is our mission to help him understand his true nature and that of his master.”

“What if he hurts her?” the younger asked.

“Then that is as it must be.”

“I cannot stand by while this happens,” the younger said.

“Then I will send you back to Drokpasyl,” the older man said. “She is not our purpose. The earl of Sterling is. We have watched him for hundreds of years. He is the one who can end everything.”

“So we may save the girl Tina, but we may not save 402

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin Sandra?” The younger man’s voice was thick with rage.

“Tina was meant to be taken into the fold. So the Dragons said.”

“And yet they will not take Sandra. How are we different from Justin, then? We justify these deaths as necessary things. How are we different?”

The older man turned a stern gaze on the younger.

“Your passion is admirable, but your logic is lost in a sea of anger.”

“I just don’t think—”

“That is correct. You are not thinking clearly. You assume that you could stop the earl of Sterling as you stopped his henchman, Omar, from killing Tina. Need I remind you that if Omar had spent a little more time on you, you would be dead? There is nothing you can do to stop Justin. If you stand in his path, he will cut you down and think nothing of it. And your resistance might be the one thing he needs to work himself into a rage. And then how would you have served his future victim?”

“The Dragons could take Sandra into the fold,” the younger man pointed out.

“Would you have them take her as Justin wishes to take her? Would you tell her, ‘Join us if you wish to live.

You have no choice’? I turn your question back upon you.

How would that differ from what Justin is doing?”

“At least she would be alive.”

“So Justin thinks, also. You are both correct. But neither of you are right. They both must make very important decisions. They cannot make those decisions if we do it for them. What must be will be.”

The younger man paused for a long time. He strug-DARK HEART

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gled with himself, but finally his face became calmer, more placid. He let out a long, slow breath.

“Yes, Grandfather.”

“We must trust,” the older man said.

“We must trust,” the younger echoed.

4

t w e n t y - s i x

The cathedral had three entrances, the great double doors in the center, and two smaller, steel-bound wooden doors on either side. Statues of the apostles flanked the center doors. The pointed arch was a recess three feet thick, carved into delicate filigree which sloped down to the entranceway. Above the arch was a scene of Jesus weighing souls, with Mary to his right and Peter to his left. It was an impressive edifice, even to a man who had watched Gothic cathedrals being built, as Justin had witnessed the construction of parts of Westminster Abbey and other great churches.

Below those scenes was a representation of Christ at the time of Armageddon. Souls floated free, rising from their tombs. Radiant angels with beautiful wings carried the devout up toward Jesus.

But farther down, a more insidious scene took place.

At the bottom of the frieze, the souls of the wicked reached imploringly for heaven, crying out in pitiful, silent shrieks of terror as long-horned demons with DARK HEART

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maniacal grins gripped their legs and dragged them down to where the flames leapt high. Within those flames, every atrocity imaginable was occurring. A huge devil, by far the largest figure of the scene, held a man in seven tentacles. The devil was ripping the man’s head off. A naked woman ran through the flames, tears sliding down her face. Three snakes sank their fangs into her flesh, one at each breast and one at her genitals. Another man was being stuffed headfirst into a tub of flames by three small demons. His legs kicked fiercely.

Justin turned his gaze from the scene. If he should die—actually die—worse awaited him. Eternal torment.

Yet wasn’t that how he might describe his current existence?

Justin reached the right-hand door and opened it.

The pain had stopped, for now. He was approaching his victim. In the eyes of the Dragon, Justin was no longer resisting his edict.

The cathedral was all but empty. Only two people—Sandra and Kalzar—sat in the pews. Benny was there somewhere, hidden in the shadows.

At the sound of the door opening, Kalzar, close to the entrance, turned around. As always, he was impeccably dressed in a gray, pin-striped three-piece suit. Kalzar saw him and grinned. For a moment Justin’s rage almost slipped out of control. His hands longed to strangle the smile from that smug face, to push those glinting eyes back into his skull until they burst. But now was not the time. Soon enough there would be a more appropriate moment. Justin would wait.

Kalzar stood up, smoothed his lapels. Justin did not 406

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin even spare him a glance as Kalzar walked by, nodding in approval. He opened the door and left the cathedral.

Justin saw Benny out of the corner of his vision, standing in the shadows of the nave. Justin beckoned the newly made disciple to his side with a slight motion of his head.

Benny walked to him without a sound. Already he had slipped into a disciple’s powers as if he had been born to wield them. Justin placed a silent hand on Benny’s shoulder. He nodded toward the door. Benny shot him a questioning glance.

“Follow Kalzar. Keep your eyes on him if you can. I wish to know where he goes.”

Benny smiled. “It will be a pleasure. What about Sandra?”

“Give me this moment alone with her,” Justin whispered. “I must dissipate her fears. She will be one of us soon. It will be all right.”

Benny nodded and followed Kalzar.

Justin began the long walk down the center aisle.

Sandra was sitting in the same pew as when they had first talked here. Perhaps she always sat there. He allowed himself to wonder how often she came, how often she sat in that pew. The questions took his mind off the Dragon’s singing desire for her death. Every cell of his body ached with the Dragon’s need to destroy her.

He carefully chose a pew three back from hers and sat down. The pain returned with a vengeance as he halted. He gripped the back of the pew. The wood creaked under his tightening hands.

Sandra had not moved since she’d heard the door DARK HEART

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open. Her back was straight, and she gripped the seat in front of her just as Justin did.

“Is it you, Justin, really?” she asked, her voice drift-ing up into the ceiling. “And will it? Really?”

“What?” Justin asked, quietly, trying to conceal the struggle within himself.

“Will it really be all right? Or did you just tell Benny that to get him to leave?”

A pain like hundreds of small burning blades opened the flesh on Justin’s back. He gasped. “That depends upon you.”

She turned around. Her tear-stained gaze was hurt, angry, betrayed. “Join you or die, is that it?”

A spear of fire slammed into Justin’s guts, twisting.

He let out a tight breath and tried to keep his arms from shaking. The wood of the seat in front of him cracked.

He nodded. He could not speak now. The pain was too intense.

A tear ran down a well-traveled track on Sandra’s cheeks. “Why did you have to drag Benny into this?

Couldn’t you have just let it be between the two of us?”

Fire encircled Justin’s heart. The burn spread throughout his chest, choking him. He paused until he could speak. “Benjamin . . . he wanted this,” Justin managed. “It is all he has wanted for a long time now. You know it’s true.”

“No,” she said. “The Benny I saw back at the apartment was some mutated version of my Benny! What did you do to him?”

“He chose his path, Sandra. You should choose it, too. You are just afraid.”

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Margaret Weis and David Baldwin Sandra laughed, a hollow sound. “Of course, I’m terrified. Look at what it’s done to you. Look at what you’ve become. The same thing will happen to Benny, and you brought him to it!”

Justin felt the pain of his fingernails being plucked out, one at a time. The hairs on his head, as well, one by one. His jaw was shaking when he opened his mouth to speak. He closed it with a snap, marshaled his strength, and spoke slowly. He could hear the pain in his voice, though. If Sandra were listening, he was sure she could hear it now, too.

“What I do is painful, and not necessarily just. I do not deny it. It is a heavy burden to bear, but a necessary one for all of mankind.”

Sandra gripped her seat with white knuckles. “So killing that kid? Killing McKenzie? Those murders served the good of mankind? I don’t buy it. It’s not necessary! It could never be necessary!”

“I did not kill McKenzie.”

“What difference does it make?” She turned to face him. The cathedral thrummed, echoing with her ire. “It’s all the same! People die at your hands—

Madrone, Baxter, Zack. What justifies that? Nothing could!”

“Wait. . . .” The pain intensified. “Let me. . ..” He let out a small breath. “ . . . Let me tell you something, a story, before you make your decision.”

“Forget it.” She started to leave, but Justin cut her off.

“Please,” he begged, and for the first time, she noticed his pain. She finally realized the price he was pay-DARK HEART

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ing to let her live. She was silent, watching, wary. She sat back down, prepared to listen.

“Long ago, near the turn of this century, I was ordered to the Russian countryside to kill a young girl.”

Sandra seemed about to say something, but Justin motioned her to be silent.

“I did not want to do it,” he continued. “She was the wife of a poor revolutionary named Iosif Dzhugashvili.

Iosif supported his small family by doing odd jobs and by keeping the farm. In his spare time, he wrote for a tiny underground Bolshevik newspaper under the name of Joseph Stalin. I did not want to kill Yekaterina. She was a wonderful woman. I do not believe I have ever seen such devotion between a couple. They were in love, despite the danger that was always a part of their lives. She had recently given birth to a son, Yakov. She was wild, spirited, and she bolstered her husband’s convictions when he despaired. He lived in constant fear of the day when men would appear at his door and arrest him for treason.

“If he was the mind that helped lead to revolution, she was the backbone that kept him straight. And she was also his weakness. If she had asked him to give up his writing for her, he would have done it in an instant. But she would never ask him to give up his dreams and convictions. She was brave, and she believed that since they were right, they would be invincible.

“I struggled for days, hidden in their barn, trying to resist my call to be the reaper of this beautiful life.

You . . .,” he gasped as new agonies roared through him,

“ . . . cannot imagine the pain of resisting my master. I could only resist for three days, and then I murdered 410

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin her. I made it look as if her dismemberment was carried out by czarist aristocrats. I lingered long enough to see her husband find the body. Young Iosif ’s heart broke before my eyes.

“From that moment forward, nothing else mattered to Iosif but his work. He threw himself into it. Before long he was discovered, arrested, and sent to Siberia.

Later he escaped and returned to the struggle where he caught Lenin’s eye. By then Lenin did not see an intellectual, in love with words and ideas, dedicated to a higher purpose. Lenin saw a man of action who wanted to fight and to kill.

“I watched these events from a distance, watched as Stalin climbed to power. The millions of deaths he inflicted on his enemies, his own people, even those he called his friends, were torture to me. For I knew that I had begun it all with a single act of violence. I was appalled at the way Stalin turned his old friends against one another, the way he exiled Trotsky and later had him killed, the way he seized complete power when Lenin died. He was the worst tyrant I had ever seen. He drove peasants off their land, starved his people to death, killed anyone who opposed him. I could not believe that I had made such a man. I could not believe it . . .

“Until I saw a man who was worse.

“I detached myself from my master after Yekaterina’s death. I avoided him, I hid from him. I could not believe in him any longer, not after what he’d made me do.

“But when I walked through the frozen streets of Stalingrad after the Russians captured the ‘indestructible’

German Sixth Army, turning the tide on Nazi Germany DARK HEART

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forever, I knew that the Dragon’s long view had out-reached me again. Whatever Stalin was, he was not Hitler.

“Stalin was a cruel and bloody leader, completely ruthless. It took a man like Stalin to defeat Hitler.

“That day I reconciled with my master. He saw the understanding within me, and he bestowed a new gift upon me. In those frozen streets, I first assumed my dragonling form, with all the strength and power that accompanies it. That day I became an Elder disciple. I flew across the countryside, viewing the carnage.

Millions died in the six-month battle for Stalingrad, but it was not the Dragon’s fault. He was trying to guide them away from war. As he puts it, monsters that destroy need monsters to combat them. That is his philosophy. You cannot stop a sword’s blow without steel of equal quality. As harsh as the Dragon’s methods may seem sometimes, he is our only hope of reaching past this bloody nature of ours. He is our only hope of reaching true civilization. . . .”

When Justin finished his story and looked up, he realized that Sandra was sitting next to him. Her eyes were red rimmed, full of sorrow, wet with tears. The back of the pew in front of him had disintegrated under his clenched hands.

Her light touch trailed across his tensed jaw. He jumped at her touch, delicate as it was.

“Join me . . .,” he said in a hoarse voice.

“I was you,” she whispered. “I was just like you.

Look at what you endure for him.” She never wavered in her gaze. “My dragon’s name was Chuck, and every time 412

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin he struck me, I told myself that he didn’t mean it. Every time I stared in the mirror for hours at a time, watching the bruises darken on my face, I told myself that he really loved me. He was just frustrated, and needed me to help him get past this tough time in his life. I needed to help him achieve his dreams. I told myself he hit me because I had to learn. I believed it for so long. But Justin . . .”

She paused long enough to draw a deep breath. Both her hands reached up to touch his face. “He lied.”

“What?” He peered through the agony, focusing on her face, concentrating on her words. “No. . . .” He shook his head.

“Yes. Don’t you see?” she urged. “We believe their lies because we want to. We make them our own and call them truths. Because we let our fear have us. Because we won’t face the devil we don’t know, as opposed to the devil we do. And we hate ourselves for it.”

“No. . ..” Justin’s memories pulled at him, and the Dragon’s pain threatened to rip him apart. Gwendolyne’s face hovered in his memory, pleading for her life. “No, it’s not like that . . . she was just afraid. She was . . . she couldn’t face . . . it was what she wanted. I didn’t . . . I didn’t force her. She was just afraid. It wasn’t me. It was the plague, not me . . . the plague that killed her. She didn’t choose in time, and. . . .”

Sandra’s hands came away from Justin’s face. He opened his eyes, which he’d closed in a desperate bid to block the pain. He looked up into Sandra’s eyes.

She had risen and was backing away from him. Her face was a mask of terrible surprise, as if she were seeing him for the first time.

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“I’ve been a fool,” she said.

“Sandra.” His voice was the dragonling’s voice. Dear God, he was changing . . . he resisted the change with everything in him. He concentrated on making his voice sound human. “Don’t back away. Please don’t leave me.

She left me alone. All alone. . . .”

“You killed her,” Sandra said, staring at him with terrified eyes. “You said she died of the plague, but you lied. You lied to yourself. You lied to me. All of it . . . lies.

You killed her, didn’t you?”

“Sandra! I . . . no . . . I couldn’t have . . .”

“You did. You’re lying. You lie about everything.

The ends justify the means. That applies to everything for you, doesn’t it? You’ve lived it so long, you’ve lost touch with everything else, haven’t you?”

There was a wet crackling deep in Justin’s bones.

Skin crinkled and hardened, becoming scales. The scales flowed down his arm like a disease.

“Sandra, please!” Justin’s voice was an animal howl buried in a man’s words. He clutched his scaled arm to his side. “Join me. Quickly!” He held out a hand to her.

His fingers were slowly disappearing, curling and hardening into thick, scaled talons. His thumb twisted around his hand, opposite the hooked claws.

“You’re just like Chuck. What is it with me . . .every man I ever love is always just like him . . . .” Sandra bumped back against a fluted column, trapped between two pews that ended there.

“Quickly!” he roared. “We need a mirror.” He grabbed her wrist and dragged her toward the altar, where he could see a gleaming silver urn.

414

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin Sandra screamed as a bone in her wrist snapped.

“Please . . . let me go . . . I can’t do this,” she begged.

“No! Quickly!” He grabbed the urn and shoved its reflective surface at her face. “Give yourself to him!”

She turned her face away from it, looked at the wreck of the man she loved with sorrow in her eyes, pain in her heart.

“I will be . . . myself.” She reached into her coat and drew out her gun.

Justin’s claw lashed out, ripping her open from armpit to wrist. Sandra screamed. The gun clattered to the floor. Blood sprayed across the altar, across the steps, soaked the dark red carpet.

Sandra slumped against him, staring at her ruined arm, staring at the blood that pumped out of her in steady spurts. “Please, Sandra,” Justin pleaded, holding her gently in arms desperate to crush her, “all the pain will go away. You’ll live forever. We’ll be together forever!

You will live! Choose to live!” His muscles sang to him.

He had to restrain them from crushing her into a pulp, from bashing her head into the flagstone steps. “For the love of God, look into the mirror!”

“The love . . . of God . . .” Sandra’s body shook.

“Yes . . . that is the answer . . . ” She looked up at him.

“Justin . . . you will . . . have to live with yourself again.

You cannot have me. You go . . . with your God. I will go with mine. May he have mercy upon you . . . upon your soul.”

Her words blasted into his brain like shrapnel. He staggered back from her as if she’d hit him. Her words were Gwendolyne’s words. Gwendolyne had spoken DARK HEART

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those exact words to him before her death. She had prayed for his soul, damned him for his decision to join the Dragon.

Justin lost control.

With a powerful surge, he leapt forward and snatched Sandra by the neck. Her scream was cut off in a gurgle and a wet snap. His taloned fist drew back and he plunged it into her heart . . .

. . . into his heart.

4

t w e n t y - s e v e n

Sandra’s body slid down the length of his arm, her red blood staining his skin. She fell on the altar, then tumbled to the stone floor in a crumpled heap.

Sandra’s eyes, always so full of passion and pain, were glassy now. They stared past his left shoulder at nothing. Her last breath gurgled through the blood pouring from her nose and mouth. Her arms were broken, as was her neck, and her body lay on the blood red carpet of the church aisle, all unnatural angles and bruised and torn flesh.

Justin stared at what he’d done, horrified. Sandra’s last agonized look was engraved on his memory, merging there with Gwendolyne’s dying agony. Both . . . he had killed them both . . . both of the women he had truly loved . . .

“Well done, my servant.”

Justin looked at the silver urn. The Dragon was there, all smoldering eyes and long teeth.

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“You have served me well this day, Lord Sterling.”

Justin roared. Grabbing the urn, he threw it the length of the cathedral. The urn flew across the building to the front of the church, where it clanged against the double doors and fell to the floor.

Justin launched himself into the air. His powerful wings carried him toward the stained glass rose window over the altar.

Glass exploded into the air. Sparkling shards fell.

Pedestrians in the street screamed. Brakes squealed and cars slammed into each other.

His wings pumped furiously, carrying Justin instantly away from the scene. People had seen him, watched him fly away. He didn’t care. Let them scream. He could har-ness the light rays, bend them around his body to make himself invisible, but what did he care if they saw him?

What did he care if they screamed? They should scream.

Justin roared. The concrete canyons of the city echoed with his rage.

His wing clipped a building. Its brick facing ripped into his shoulder and sent him spinning downward.

Chunks of brick came with him. He smashed into an awning.

Again he roared. He launched himself back into the sky. His muscles roared with pleasure, wanting more, wanting to fly into the crowds of the city and unleash carnage. But he curbed the desire. He flew straight to Gwendolyne’s Flight.

It was nine in the morning. Chairs were neatly upended on the tops of the tables, waiting for the new day.

418

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin He smashed through the plate glass window, landed on the wide dance floor, cracking its paneled wood surface. As soon as he looked up, he saw the Dragon’s reflection gazing at him from the huge mirror behind the bar.

“Listen to me, Lord Sterling . . .”

“No!” Justin snarled, grabbing a bar stool and pitching it at the glass. The Dragon’s image shattered and fell to the floor in a rain of silvered glass fragments. Two pillars at either side of the bar were also mirrors, and the Dragon’s face began to appear there.

Before the master could speak, Justin smashed them.

Methodically he found every mirror in the room and smashed them all before the Dragon could speak another word.

At the end of his rounds, Justin collapsed to the floor, exhausted.

“Sandra . . .,” he wept. His fists crushed the floor into dust. “Gwendolyne . . . both of you . . . how could I have killed you both?”

Clenching his long, spiked teeth, he willed himself back to human form. Slowly the dragonling body collapsed. His wings rumpled in upon themselves and his muscles slithered back, away, underneath the scaled skin that pulled away from him.

Ripping his way out of the skin, he stood, naked and wet in his deserted club.

A chair scuffing the floor caught his attention and he turned. He had not heard the door open, but Kalzar sat calmly at the end of the bar, swirling bourbon in a cut crystal glass.

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“Terrible service in this place,” he said. “Must be bad management.”

Justin said nothing. His hands curled around a tall, thin statue at his end of the bar. It was an Art Deco piece—two elongated lovers intertwined in a kiss.

“You know, I’ve often tried to imagine the quickest way to put you in the master’s disfavor, but you outdid anything I could imagine today.” Kalzar chuckled, “You really lost it this time, Justin. I suspect I’ll be dreaming about you tonight.”

“You won’t be dreaming about anything tonight,”

Justin vowed.

Grabbing the statue in two hands, he lifted it and smashed it on the bar, revealing the thing he had hidden there. Hidden from everybody, from the Dragon, even in a way from himself. The other artifact he’d taken from the museum.

Justin brushed the chalky debris off the steel edge and lifted the broadsword from the statue’s wreckage. It gleamed with rivulets of fire in the light from the shattered window.

Kalzar’s grin faded. His thin lips tightened.

“What is that?” he asked, taking a step back.

“Why don’t you tell me?” Justin said, moving toward him. Kalzar backed up another pace. “You can feel the power just the same as I can. Beowulf used this sword to kill Gyzalanitha. Saint George killed countless others of our kind with it. Using this blade, he chased our master into a lake in Libya. That was where the priests trapped the Dragon. The king drained the water away and thus ended the Dragon’s ability to return to 420

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin this world.” Justin smiled a terrible smile. “What’s the matter, Kalzar? Haven’t you read up on this? I am surprised at you. Such a powerful artifact, and you didn’t think to look for it? Well, I did. Until I found it by accident. Or perhaps it wasn’t an accident.”

“The master will have your head if you—”

“Fuck the master,” Justin yelled, stepping forward and swinging. The blade caught Kalzar in the ribs, ripping into his expensive suit, his muscular chest, trailing blood in its path.

Justin pulled the blade back for a second blow. “Can you feel it? It howls for our blood. Even as I hold it, I can feel it wanting to turn on me, as well. It was made to kill our kind. Much as it wants me, it wants you more, Kalzar. I am honored to aid it in its quest.”

Bleeding from his terrible wound, Kalzar bolted for the men’s room. Justin cut him off with a swipe of the sword.

“So that was how you came in? The mirrors in the bathroom. I thought I’d gotten all the mirrors in the place,” Justin said. “Now they’re your only escape. The doors are all locked. You’d never get through one before I cleaved you in half. All of the other mirrors are shattered.

Now, which way will you run, Kalzar?” Justin stalked his old enemy, sword point first, making sure to stay between him and the bathroom door.

Kalzar’s eyes flicked from Justin to the blade, then back to Justin. “Calm yourself, Justin. This is not what you want. The master will forgive you if you repent. You know he will. His Elders are valuable to him.”

“Begging now, Kalzar? How very unlike you.”

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They crossed the floor slowly, Justin waiting for Kalzar to make a move, Kalzar biding his time. Then he heard it. The telltale bone-cracking sound that preceded the transformation.

Justin leapt forward, but Kalzar was a split-second faster. He launched himself into the air. The sword caught his foot, slicing through two of his clawed toes.

Kalzar howled, but while he was in the air, his transformation completed itself. Wings broke through his back and unfurled, spraying blood. His snout grew long and fanged. His suit ripped along the seams and tan scales bubbled all over his body. His howl of pain became a roar of fury. His wings flapped. His burning eyes turned to look back at Justin.

“I will rip the flesh from your bones,” he growled.

Justin’s urge to metamorphose into his own dragonling form was almost overwhelming. A mortal’s chances against a dragonling were low. Even a lesser disciple could not fight an Elder, as he had shown Omar. But Justin refused to transform. To do so would be to enter the Dragon’s realm again. That body was a gift from the Dragon, susceptible to the Dragon’s manipulations.

Kalzar dove. Justin swung the sword. The blade slashed Kalzar’s chest. He howled again and backed off.

That wound would not heal, the toes would not grow back, and his side still bled from where Justin had slashed him while he was still in human form.

For most of his immortal life, Justin had felt nothing but contempt for Saint George, the man who had driven his master from the world. But Justin had only 422

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin faced the Dragon’s reflection in the mirror. Saint George had fought the Dragon flesh-to-flesh. He had sent Justin’s master fleeing, using only this slender span of metal.

For the first time in many years Justin felt fear. The Dragon’s powers had kept him safe from harm. But he had spurned the Dragon, and now he fought one of the Elder disciples with nothing but a sliver of sharp metal and the power of a faith he’d forsaken for centuries. If Justin failed, Kalzar would carve him up with Justin’s own weapon, and that would be the end of it.

“Give it up, Justin!” Kalzar cried. He scooped up handfuls of shattered mirror and began throwing the glass at Justin.

The tiny shards ripped into Justin and he gasped.

Glass rained down on him with hurricane force, and he fell back, bleeding from a dozen wounds.

Justin jumped inside the DJ’s booth and slammed the door. Kalzar attacked the booth, shattering the glass.

Holding Kalzar at bay with the sword, Justin flicked on every switch in the booth. Thundering music blared out of the speakers, smoke poured out of the machines.

Strobe lights cut through the white, billowing clouds.

Colored lights danced.

While Kalzar tried to make sense of the chaos, Justin ran up a staircase that led to the metal balcony encircling the dance floor. He didn’t go far, but positioned himself directly above the DJ’s booth, hidden in a gout of smoke that chugged out of a spout just below.

It took Kalzar only a moment to realize that Justin had escaped him. By the time he looked back, Justin DARK HEART

423

had disappeared into the smoke that already hung thick over the booth. Justin knew the limited visibility would turn Kalzar’s advantage of flight into a disadvantage.

Kalzar would be forced to fight blind against an opponent he could not kill, while a wild slice from out of the smoke could mean death for him.

Kalzar flew toward the DJ’s booth, intent on turning off the machine before the entire club filled with a white cloud of smoke.

And Justin was waiting for him.

Fearing a trap, Kalzar hovered cautiously near the balcony. Justin leaped outward—Kalzar flapped his wings in a sudden lunge for safety, but it was too late.

Justin’s sword bit deep into the dragonling’s side, severing the left wing and deeply cutting into the right one.

Dragonling and man crashed to the ground. Justin landed on the bottom, his sword clattering onto the floor, sliding out of his reach.

Justin gasped for a breath and lurched to his feet.

Kalzar was stronger, quicker. Despite the vicious wound in his side, despite the fact that his wing was torn from his body and was not mending, he lunged for the sword.

Justin lunged for him.

Dragonling claws grasped the hilt of the sword just as human fingers gripped the edge of the wounded wing.

Justin pulled. The wing tore free. Kalzar dropped the sword, screaming and falling to his knees.

Justin kicked the sword away just as Kalzar reached for it. The dragonling lashed out at Justin. Kalzar bunched his legs to jump, but his injured foot betrayed 424

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin him, and he slipped in his own blood. He took a step forward and leapt again.

Justin dove for the sword, snatched it up, and flipped over on his back just in time to meet the hurtling form of Kalzar. Justin swung. Kalzar slashed at him with his claws. Both slammed into the floor under the force of the dragonling’s charge.

The blow knocked the breath from Justin’s body.

His left arm snapped under Kalzar’s weight. But Justin managed to drive the sword deep into Kalzar’s thigh.

Kalzar roared again and rolled away from Justin.

Justin dragged himself to his feet and, breathing heavily, looked at his opponent.

Kalzar was writhing on the floor. His two clawed hands grappled at his leg, which was nearly severed at the thigh, gushing blood.

Justin mercilessly chopped the remaining stubs of wing from Kalzar’s body. No screams this time. Only a pitiful grunt. The giant dragonling shrank, its magic snipped away. Kalzar’s human form lay in a sack of scaled flesh. With a flick of the sword, Justin slit the sack so that he could see Kalzar’s face.

“You’ve . . . killed me!” Kalzar croaked in a barely audible voice.

“I told you that I would,” Justin said.

Justin stood over Kalzar, the sword gripped in his good hand. His left arm crackled and snapped under his skin as his broken bones knit together.

“You . . . hesitate . . .” Kalzar gasped. “Why don’t you finish it?”

Justin said nothing.

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“I see . . . now. He chose you . . . so well . . .” Kalzar whispered. “Everything . . . you do is what he . . . wants you to do. He wanted he . . . dead. And she . . . is dead.

He wants you to let me live now . . . and you . . . cannot kill me.” Kalzar’s choke became a coughing laughter.

“You cannot . . . defy him . . . not really. None of us . . .

can. He chose us . . . too well.”

Justin’s expression was flat and emotionless. Stepping forward, he brought the blade of the holy sword down on Kalzar’s neck. Steel chopped cleanly through flesh, bone. Kalzar’s head fell to the bloody floor. The face—even in death—wore a shocked expression.

“You’re wrong,” Justin told the dead man.

4

t w e n t y - e i g h t

Benny watched from an inconspicuous entryway at the front of the club as the coroner’s van pulled up. Police cars flashed their red beacons, turning the facade of Gwendolyne’s Flight into a nightmare of crimson. He had followed Justin all the way from the cathedral. And now he waited.

Two gurneys rolled out of the front doors. One gurney held a body which, though draped with a white sheet, was headless. The other gurney also had a sheet draped over it, but it was impossible to tell from the outline of fabric what it concealed. A crowd had gathered in the street.

People flocked to watch, but Benny didn’t care. He had seen all he needed to see. Nothing further that happened here could alter his sworn course, one way or the other. He knew what he had to do.

The body wagon pulled away from the Flight and started down the street. Benny stepped from his shaded alcove. The van slowed to a stop at the first red light, and Benny ran to open the passenger door.

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“Hey!” the man inside protested.

Benny grabbed the passenger’s head and slammed it into the dashboard twice. Blood sprayed from his broken nose onto the windshield. The driver yelled, opened the other door, and scrambled out. Benny threw the unconscious body of the paramedic onto the pavement, jumped into the driver’s seat, and pulled the van into the intersection.

He could not hope to escape the city in the stolen van, especially when he’d taken it by violence not half a block from a crime scene filled with cops. But he didn’t want the van.

He drove for a couple of minutes, then turned into an alley. Tires squealed and rubber smoked as he slammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt.

Leaving the engine running, Benny opened the back and looked at the two gurneys. The one with the dead body did not interest him. He knew who it was, and Kalzar could rot there for all he cared. But the other gurney . . .

Benny whipped the sheet off and looked at the blood-smeared plastic bag. In it was a head and two gory masses of bone and flesh that most people would not be able to identify. But Benny knew what they were. They were what he wanted.

Ripping the plastic open, he dragged the two wings out of the van. A fence bisected the alley. He threw his bundle over and climbed to join it. Once on the other side, he knelt and looked at the wings. They were badly damaged, ripped or cut off at the joint, but that shouldn’t matter.

428

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin He could not stay here long, and he had much to do. He brought the first wing to his mouth and bit into the bloody flesh of the shoulder joint, scales and all.

Slowly he chewed, forcing down his urge to gag.

No sooner had he swallowed than he began to feel the power course through him. A wide grin spread over his crimson-spattered lips. He ripped away another bite with great zest.

Yes . . .

“Now you are mine, Justin,” Benjamin McCormick vowed. “There is no place you can hide where my master and I cannot find you.”

Tina huddled close to Li on a Chicago rooftop. She trusted all the Drokpas, but she felt the most comfortable with Li. Maybe it was because they were so close in age, but Tina figured it was mostly because Li had saved her from Omar in the very beginning. Li was the bravest person she had ever met.

They watched Benny quietly as he devoured Kalzar’s wings. When Benny finished, he loped off into the dark.

Li sighed and moved away from the edge. He rolled onto his back and stared upward.

“This was not foreseen,” he said.

Tina nodded. “We’ll have to ask the others to keep an eye on him.” Tina didn’t like to see Li so downcast.

“But the rest is going as they hoped it would, isn’t it?”

Li closed his eyes and Tina could see his pain in the lines around his mouth.

“Sandra’s death saddens you,” Tina said.

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He nodded. “I wanted to save her. I was overruled.”

“Dr. Shiang says—”

“I know what she says. I know what Grandfather says. I’ve heard it all before, okay?” Li pushed himself to his feet and walked toward the fire escape. She saw the tears streak down his face.

“I’m sorry,” Tina said, following.

“Don’t be sorry,” Li said, shrugging. “Everyone is so sorry. Sorry doesn’t do anybody any good.”

4

e p i l o g u e

Vincent Carthy didn’t know why

he had been chosen to make this meeting or these arrangements. It all smacked of something highly illegal, and if he hadn’t been given the impression that his job hung in the balance, he would’ve turned down the assignment. Certainly no one else had wanted to do it.

Stanford & Bentley Financial Consultants did not usually send their employees on errands for clients, and especially not a junior partner like Vincent. But here he was, with a checklist of the most bizarre instructions he’d ever been given, a checklist he had filled with the preci-sion for which his firm was famous.

Again Vincent checked his watch. His client was thirteen minutes late, going on fourteen. Vincent wondered nervously what he would do if the guy didn’t show.

How long should he wait? Vincent wanted to leave now, but . . .

Vincent looked up and jumped. One minute he’d been staring at a deserted country road. The next he was looking 432

Margaret Weis and David Baldwin at a man in a black trench coat, with long hair, Ray-Ban sunglasses concealing his eyes, walking toward him. Where had he come from? Vincent wanted this over with.

Vincent smoothed his lapels and waited by the BMW with the matte black paint. The man walked straight up to him and stopped. He did not remove his glasses.

“Good afternoon, sir,” Vincent greeted him.

The man nodded. “A good afternoon to you,” he said, in a crisp English accent.

“Here is your car, sir.” Vincent made an eloquent motion with his hand. “Exactly as you requested. All of the modifications have been made. The chrome trim and surface paint have been covered in matte black.”

“The windows have been smoked on the inside, as well as the outside?” the man asked.

“Yes, sir. It reduces visibility.”

“I shall have no trouble seeing, rest assured.”

Vincent nodded. “You realize that it is not legal, not without any mirrors whatsoever?”

“I am aware of that.”

“Very well, sir.”

“And the other matter?”

Vincent cleared his throat. “Yes. The funds have been wired, sir. The purchase has been made.” He extended his hands with a ring of six keys. “These are for the ignition and the doors. This one is for the trunk.

These two are for the yacht ignition, one for the doors on board. I took the liberty of labeling them for you, sir.”

“Thank you.” The man took the keys. “And the name?”

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“I have contracted the work. It should be complete by the time you arrive. ‘Sandra’s Truth’ in black, across the stern. Correct?”

“That’s correct. Thank you.”

The man stared at Vincent a moment longer, then nodded. “I have instructed a limousine to pick you up here in ten minutes. I hope you do not mind the wait.”

“Not at all, sir.”

“Good.” He went to the door of the BMW and opened it.

“Sir?” Vincent asked, his curiosity finally getting the better of him.

The man turned. “Yes?”

“I realize that it is none of my business, but might I ask where you’re bound?”

For the first time, the man smiled. “There are some people in China I have to meet.”

Vincent furrowed his brow. “I see, sir.”

“I doubt it.”

“Excuse me, sir?” Vincent asked, confused.

“Do you believe in dragons?” the man returned.

“Sir?”

“Dragons. Do you believe they exist?”

“I can’t say that I do,” Vincent stammered.

“I had a dream,” the man said softly. “A dream that perhaps someday they won’t.”

Vincent’s mouth dropped slowly open.

The man closed the car door behind him. The engine roared to life, and he pulled out onto the highway.

4

about the authors

MARGARET WEIS is the New York Times bestselling author of over thirty books, including the Star of the Guardian series, the Death Gate Cycle, the Darksword Trilogy, and the Dragonlance series. She lives with her husband, Don Perrin, in a converted barn in Wisconsin.

DAVID BALDWIN has held a variety of jobs in his twenty-eight years, including security guard, tattoo artist, and carpenter. In addition to his writing career, he is a Harley Davidson mechanic.

Credits

Cover illustration © 1998 by John Howe.

Cover design by Carl Galian.

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DARK HEART. Copyright © 1998 by Margaret Weis, David Baldwin, Todd Fahnestock, and Big Entertainment. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™.

PerfectBound™ and the PerfectBound™ logo are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

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