The Dragon's Blood (Part 110)
In which Tesla gloats...
110
“Detective Price,” the sorcerer turned to the stunned girl, his voice maddeningly calm.
She turned to him numbly, her mind still too shocked to react. “Yes?”
“Please remain here, you'll be debriefed momentarily, have no fear. In the meantime I'll need you to please pardon me for just a moment while I deal with Mister Blackmoon. Worry not, it won't take long.”
Something in her returned, Trakaan saw, something that had left, banished to nowhere for the last few seconds. She quickly turned from the robed wizard and hurried over to the dying werewolf.
Tesla, he'd called himself, Nikola Tesla if her were to be believed, one of the men responsible for the incredible technological advances of the last two centuries, approached him, his steps nonchalant. He'd not a care in the world. He feared the dragon not at all.
Trakaan struggled with the tightening bonds just as he struggled with his memory while Tesla drew close. Had he ever been in contact with this man before the day he'd mysteriously appeared in his penthouse and handed him Lorelei Price? Had they somehow passed each by other by during the last century, the beginning of it, before Tesla and his creations stepped back into history?
“I see that mind of yours at work, Dragon,” the wizard came up close and just a bit to the side, just far enough away from his mouth, away from what he was holding for him. “I see you searching through that mind trying to find me. How does that feel, great dragon? Centuries upon centuries of memories, of lives, of experiences. How could that possibly feel? Myself, I've only had a century and a half and I have such trouble keeping it all together at times. How do you do it?”
He snapped another of his bonds, the high pitched whine of the metal breaking reverberating throughout the chamber.
'Soon, my friends', he promised them, their voices now so loud they sometimes drowned out Andvari, Tesla and the woman who now began to sob over her rapidly expiring friend.
One eyebrow on the wizard's ageless face arched. “Centuries of life, centuries of strength, you grow more powerful as other beings wither with the flow of time. I am like you now, as you've most likely deduced. I and my kind, for I fear not to let you know of them now, since you'll be quite deceased momentarily.”
Tesla's left hand gestured to a pile of gold coins next to him. They rose into the air, a good number of them, converging around each other as he twirled his wrist, his eyes never leaving Trakaan's own.
He watched as they lost their shape, the designs on them fading rapidly. They became like liquid gold, melted down in seconds with no heat to speak of.
The hum coming from the treasure hoard intensified, becoming more akin to a low moan. It sounded like it was in pain.
“Oh hush, Ylindra,” Tesla told it, admonishing it as one would a child. “I'll deal with you in a moment. Let me finish with your little pet.”
The gold began to take shape, elongating slowly but quite surely into a definite form. One end quickly sharpened.
He was making a lance.
“WHO ARE YOU???” Trakaan managed to growl out through the blazing inferno threatening to explode out from within him.
'Just a moment longer, damn you, just one more bloody moment!!!'
“Why we're your children as well, Dragon. We are the Amaranth, true rulers of the race of man, and just another product of your existence.”
End part 110
If you find yourself interested in the whole damnedable thing and wanna throw me a few bucks, here's a link to it on Amazon.