Chapter Six #4
Panic rode me hard. I glanced toward the Hashmallim—three of them—as they approached, and made a snap decision. I leaned forward, saying softly, “I’ll be back. Don’t lose hope,” before I closed the door and spun around to face the three horrors.
“I told you that now was not convenient,” came the terse voice of Dr. Debruin, who moved into view when the three Hashmallim circled Jim and me. “You will leave now!”
“Fine,” I said, wishing they were looking elsewhere so I could slap on my will glamour. “But the weyr will lodge a formal complaint with the Committee about this treatment. I am an official ambassador! I will not tolerate such actions against the dragonkin!”
I stepped forward, praying to any deity who was around that the nearest Hashmallim let me pass, and to my great relief, it did, but only once I was close enough for several strands of its garment to reach out for me.
I slapped them away, trying to glare into the blackness in the cowl where its face should be, before snapping an order to Jim to follow me.
We made it outside before I had to stop and double over, my stomach revolting against the absolute wrongness of the Hashmallim.
“Where’s Yrian?” I heard Aisling ask as the dragons gathered around me.
“We have to leave,” I said as soon as I was sure I wouldn’t vomit, standing and looking at Drake. “Do you have another car here?”
His gaze sharpened on me for a few seconds before he answered, “In this town? No. But I can procure one.”
“Do it. Something a big shot would use.” I looked back at the entrance of the Asile, but the doors remained shut. “And we’re going to need it in the next ten minutes.”
I don’t know how he did it, but by the time we had all piled back into the car, driven down the hill to the valley below, and made it to the nearest town, a sleek black sedan zoomed out to meet us.
Jim filled everyone in on the ride to the car while I madly created two more glamours, pulling hard on the dragon blessing to give them extra wattage.
“Right. This is going to be a bit dicey, but it’s the only thing I can think of.
I’d suggest you meet us back at the Asile in five minutes.
That’s about as long as my glamour is going to last in a place so heavily warded against magic,” I told the dragons as Jim and I climbed into the back of the sedan.
One of the redheaded bodyguards took up the position as driver.
“I’m amazed you can do anything in there if it’s as impossible as Jim says,” Aisling commented, giving her demon another pat on the head. “Just don’t do anything dangerous.”
“Yeah, I got my coat into peak condition, and I’d hate to get it scorched or anything,” Jim said from where it stepped on the window’s button, and immediately stuck its head outside.
“Fingers crossed, everyone,” I said, trying to summon up enough concentration to craft a will glamour that would ensure everyone in the Asile would not think twice about fulfilling my orders and commands, even if only for a short time.
“Man, if you’re gonna rely on superstition—” Jim started to say, but stopped when I turned in the seat and tossed the glamour on him.
The driver jerked the wheel in response to the back seat suddenly being filled with a Hashmallim, but luckily, Jim’s voice emerging from the depths of the horror had him pulling back onto the road, and zooming up the hill.
“Dude! You Hashied me? Where’s my package?
Aw, man, I don’t even have hands in this form! I’m just all black ooze and emptiness.”
“No speaking unless you can do a tolerable impression of rocks grinding on each other tinged with enough horror to make a slasher-movie fan delirious with joy. Hang tight, driver, another glamour incoming.”
The redhead cast a wary glance in the rearview mirror, but said nothing when I slid the second glamour on myself.
“Niiiice,” Jim drawled as we stopped before the entrance to the Asile.
“I sure hope so, because otherwise, I’m out of ideas.”
Fortunately, no one was present to see Hashmallim Jim emerge from the car, and at a gesture from me, it moved over to the corner of the building where I’d seen the first one.
I pounded on the door, tightening the glamour until it sank into my head and neck, allowing my very atoms to be changed by it.
“Dr. Kostich!” Surprise flashed over the face of Dr. Debruin as she opened the door, her eyes puzzled until Jim glided over to loom behind me. “You’re early.”
“I’ve heard a rumor there are dragons in the area,” I said, hoping the glamour got the cadence of Dr. Kostich’s voice correct.
I’d only seen videos of him before now, but knew the will glamour should smooth over any minor defects in my impersonation.
Accordingly, I pushed past the doctor and entered the building, striding to the hall as I tossed orders over my shoulder.
“I want the documents pertaining to this troublesome dragon. Where is he? Hashmallim—fetch the prisoner. You, guard, take a group to search the grounds and verify no one is lurking thereabouts. I wouldn’t put it past the dragons to try to rescue their dangerous kin.
Why are you still standing here? Go fetch the documents!
The Court won’t accept him without the transfer order. ”
Behind my back, I applied the will glamour, a little skitter of nerves causing me a moment of doubt, but that was eased when the doctor, with a slightly glazed look to her eyes, murmured something about fetching the paperwork from her office.
She scurried off to do so before I bent Dr. Kostich’s eye on the guard who stood at the reception desk.
One raised eyebrow was all it took before he left to do as I ordered.
A faint machinelike drone drifted down the stairs from the floors above, no doubt from the cleaning staff.
I waited until the guard disappeared outside before bolting for the stairs, Hashmallim Jim hot on my heels.
As we reached the top and turned to go down the passage where Yrian was held, I stopped in surprise.
Half of one of the walls was completely destroyed. And then there was the fact that the entire hallway was on fire.
“Is that—” I started to ask.
“Yup. Dragon fire. Looks like Yrian didn’t want to wait around for you. He must have let off a doozy of a blast to destroy his room like that.”
Just as it spoke, a loud siren sounded from below at the same time a gaggle of people in white coats emerged at the opposite end.
“Where is the prisoner?” I bellowed to them, not trusting the dragon fire.
“He is trapped below, in the ballroom,” one of them called back, moving aside as a new person arrived with a fire extinguisher. “The Hashmallim are just outside, though.”
I didn’t wait to find out more. I spun on my heels and raced back down the stairs, turning to follow the hallway that led off at right angles.
A second siren joined the first, making my head hurt from the tone and decibels, but Jim and I ran along the building, throwing open doors as we passed.
Another group of people was huddled in one of the offices, shrieking when I flung their door open.
“Where is the dragon?” I snarled, feeling Dr. Kostich was the sort of person who did that sort of thing when he was thwarted.
One of the women pointed to the right.
“Stay here where you’re safe,” I yelled, and dashed off to jerk open a set of double doors. Inside, Yrian was wielding a chair like it was a weapon, fending off two Hashmallim, the room also alight with fire.
I was about to yell for the Hashmallim to back off, but at that moment, Yrian—with a battle cry that raised the fine hairs on the back of my neck—lunged forward and slammed a wall of fire into the nearest Hashmallim, causing it to reel backward.
“Jim, get the one on the right,” I yelled, and ran forward, pulling every last bit of power that I could out of the life force of beings around us, and from the dragon blessing, blasting the two Hashmallim with it.
One of them, the one Yrian had attacked, went down with a screeching cry that damn near made the skin crawl off my body.
Its terrifying form melted into nothing and disappeared, leaving behind only a small mound of gray ash.
Yrian turned to see who was helping him, and stumbled at the sight of Jim and me, but I could feel his gaze on my forehead for a second before he turned back to the remaining Hashmallim.
“Again!” he commanded, and lowered his head as he raised his hands, obviously gathering his own power.
I gave a quick assessment to my skills and staggered forward a few steps, trying to gather to me enough power to destroy the Hashmallim’s form, but my body felt boneless and hollow.
Jim rushed past me to obey my order, but I caught at its sleeve, pulling it toward me despite my mind shrieking warnings.
“I have to break your form. I’m sorry,” I told it, ignoring the jerk back it made as I did something I’ve only done twice before—I smashed the glamour to smithereens, thereby releasing the energy stored within it.
For a second, Jim reverted back to its doggy form, its eyes huge, and then it was gone, leaving an oily black mark on the ground. I made a mental promise to apologize later, but first ...
The Hashmallim lunged at Yrian, sending him flying backward through the wall into the room beyond.
I made a leap I hadn’t known I was capable of performing, but before I could reach the Yrian-shaped hole in the wall, he reappeared, now in the shape of a dragon covered in scales that seemed at first to be a dark gray, but the light shifted along them in a way that reminded me of water on the black sand beaches of Hawaii.
I stood mesmerized for a few seconds before I remembered we were in a fight for Yrian’s life.