Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,99
his hips and began a slow pace back and forth across the Monsters clan garage.
A few black leather couches, armchairs, and accent tables had been placed artfully in the garage, and the open building even sported a well-stocked bar. All along the walls, chrome motorcycle parts gleamed, stacked in neat rows and hanging from pegs for whoever might need them next. Likewise, all along the massive back wall of the large building, the motorcycles those parts went to were lined up in perfect procession, one brutally fast metal beast after another. Conall had spared them a wary glance, as they’d served a healthy reminder of just whose territory he was now on. But he was admittedly pretty focused on trying to get this mess of an ordeal straight in his head.
He licked his lips and said, “Billions and billions of eons ago – ”
“Well, not quite that long,” chuckled one of the Monsters members from where he sat back on a bike Conall presumed belonged to him, his long legs crossed at his booted ankles.
Conall ignored him. “The Great Black dragon Bantariax confronted a kind of god that had somehow found the mortal dimension and was planning to destroy it as he had several others.”
“That’s how we’ve always heard it,” said another Monsters member.
Conall nodded. “So that’s probably, what, the very force of entropy that rules our universe? As in, nothing stays in its same state for long. Food rots, soda goes flat, stars burn out or smash into one another, mortals age, and so forth.”
They nodded.
He said, “The natural order. Bantariax wanted to stop the natural order.”
“Unfortunately it’s not that simple,” said Jacob Crow. Conall tried not to shoot the man a dirty look when he met his gaze. “If you’ll notice, all of those things you mentioned still happen in this dimension. The chaos god? Would have made it happen a lot faster and with much more violence.”
“Think of that dragon creature on My Little Pony who’s voiced by John de Lancie. You know, ‘Discord?’ The one who makes chocolate milk rain and cotton candy clouds and eats the tea cup that leaves the liquid inside still in the shape of the cup?” one of the men suggested.
His clansman nudged his arm excitedly. “Bro, you saw that one? I told you Discord was off the charts. De Lancie killed it! He was one hundred percent ‘Q’!”
The first clansman laughed. “Watched it with Chroi. Man, you weren’t joking. The Goblin King is one sick My Little Pony fan.”
“I think they’re called bronies,” said Crow. “And we’ve gotten off topic.”
Everyone stopped laughing, and instead of an irate look, Conall now found himself giving Crow a grateful one. Jacob Crow returned the smile with a single nod.
“Okay,” Conall said, taking a deep breath. “So Maze is worse. Like entropy on fast-forward.”
“Basically,” said one of the men, now much more serious.
“So this legendary dragon decides to sacrifice himself, using his power basically twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five-forever to keep the big bad Discord in another dimension.
“Yep,” someone said.
“Only, the dimension he was held in was weakened somehow,” someone else said.
Conall asked, “How?”
“We don’t know,” said Crow. “Something about time being stopped for too long, maybe. Honestly, that I’m aware, no one knows. The point is the dimensional wall of Maze’s prison was weakened, making Bantariax’s job even more difficult. Maze, seeing his opportunity as a now or never kind of thing, decides to fight back – hard. And just like that, the dimension shatters.”
“And now he’s free and Bantariax was injured in the escape and no one can find him.”
“Right.”
“Okay, so what does Maze want?”
“We assume he wants total chaos,” Crow said with a shrug. “But he isn’t yet powerful enough to exact it on the mortal realm. He’s slowly building his strength by pulling it from a source he keeps close by – we assume this is Randall Price, the serial killer. He then turns around and, little by little, he utilizes snippets of his returning power to create more chaos in the world around him.
“Hence the passenger vehicle crashes and the bad flu and now this,” Conall gestured to the image he’d pulled up on his cell phone screen, of a headline on the phone’s news app declaring a stock market drop that was greater than any in forty years.
“No doubt that’s also his doing,” said Crow. “Though you do have to give some credit to humans, who are more than capable of wreaking plenty of havoc all on their own.”