Worlds War One

xxxii [Badia]

Raqqa had haunted Badia's dreams for years. Even back home, safe and sound, the memories hadn't stayed behind. What had happened there followed her across the ocean, trapped in her head inside the land of the free, binding her forever to that terrible place. She would wake up some nights, eyes wide, a scream choked in her throat. Charlie would remain asleep. Bad had survived enough terrors to know how to keep a cry leashed tight, even when she was unconscious. But Bad could never go right back to sleep. She would get up, stay awake, pace through the rooms she shared with her family, and feel very, very far away from home.

The horrors of war-scarred any soldier. Some more than others. Each in their way. Drill handled it better than most. But this was different. Not worse, but different. He could take Human depravity, but a dragon was outside his realm of rationalization. The Demons he could deal with were of the evils of mankind rather than creatures with indigo flesh and little horns and a tail. The only aliens he had ever been concerned about were the illegal immigrant variety, and Drill believed that Angels ought to stay on the top of a Christmas tree. In the face of incineration by a mythological winged beast, Drill froze like this dragon breathed ice instead of fire.

Bad opened fire. Airman Fox and Private Ramírez joined. Drill was paralyzed. And Seaman Choi was insubordinate and insane.

Seaman Choi had unsheathed his Bowie knife. He stepped forward, but Penina grabbed him by his arm. The bullets did not affect the dragon, hovering a hundred feet above them and inhaling a lungful of air to unleash a napalm nightmare onto their little lane in the Lost City. Guns wouldn't stop the creature, and they didn't have time for Seaman Choi to attempt an insane attack. They were moments from being grilled.

Penina reached down and touched a cobblestone beneath her foot with her white porcelain fingers. The roadway began to move even as the dragon unleashed fiery hell above them. In a wave like water, stones the size of small loaves of bread twisted and turned, making a barrier between the squad and the sky. It deflected the flame, relegating the team to slowly baking instead of instantly incinerating. It bought them a brief reprieve.

After expelling its breath, the dragon descended, and a massive wing swatted the scorched cobblestones away, making steaming rocks spatter against the buildings along the lane. The squad was already retreating—everyone except Seaman Ji-Sung Choi.

"Fool," Saanvi spat, stopping, staring.

Seaman Choi faced the dragon alone. His Bowie knife's green blade glowed with otherworldly power. Penina had said he possessed abilities beyond a Human's. Could he defeat a dragon? Was the weapon enough to slay the beast?

The monster opened its mouth and tried to swallow Seaman Choi up as it had Hristos the Magi. The soldier was more agile than Argyro's brother had been, and he danced away. The Seaman swiped his blade at the dragon's face, cutting a long wound in the beast from eyeball to nostril. The dragon threw its head back on its long neck and bellowed, black smoke vomiting into the air and blocking out the sun.

The blade could hurt the beast.

Seaman Choi seemed emboldened by the first strike. He followed up with a leap that achieved at least twenty feet straight up in a graceful movement like flying. His arm moved faster than a professional pitcher tossing a speedball. But the dragon was a predator that reacted on instinct rather than strategy. Even if Seaman Choi was half-Angel, the matchup was still like a man fighting a shark with a toothpick. The dragon plucked the soldier right out of the air, mid-leap.

In one quick snap of its beaklike jaws, it bit off Ji-Sung Choi's left arm.

Seaman Choi fell to the ground, screaming. Blood jetted from the wound, a red arc splashing ten feet from where the soldier knelt in agony. Airman Fox and Private Ramírez both started forward to the rescue, but Bad gave Drill one look. He had snapped out of whatever faraway state he was in for a brief moment. He ignored the dragon, but he never ignored Badia. The big man grabbed both boys by the scruff of their necks like they were kittens and lifted them off the ground, legs kicking like cartoon characters.

Bad rushed in where she feared an Angel dead. But Seaman Choi had stopped his screaming and had somehow stopped his bleeding. Did a nephilim have the power of mind over splatter? He stood and turned toward the dragon, attacking again. The beast was too fast. Bad hardly saw it happen. She heard the snap of jaws, then Seaman Choi only had one leg, toppling over like the last bowling pin while the beast picked up the spare.

"No," Bad screamed as she kept running toward her soldier.

The dragon inhaled, and Bad didn't stop. The dragon aimed its beak at Seaman Choi, gravely maimed and immobile on the cobblestone lane, and Bad didn't halt. It opened its mouth, and the fires of hell itself erupted from its maw, engulfing the Seaman, and Bad didn't stop. The flames singed her hair and scalded her face, and Bad didn't stop. The immolated Seaman Choi screamed and screamed and screamed. Then he stopped.

Badia let loose a battle cry heard across all the Lost City. She wielded the Bowie knife with the jade blade, such a small weapon against this murderous machine. The creature displayed amusement as Bad swiped the knife at its tail, opening a cut as long as her arm span. The dragon didn't even flinch. It sucked in another lungful of oxygen and aimed at Bad, intent on making her ash.

The dragon let loose its flame.

A wall of brick hit Badia rather than a wall of flame. It knocked the wind out of her and maybe a tooth or two loose. She felt her boots start on fire and the hem of her pants and the cuffs of her sleeves. She could smell hair burning. Maybe flesh. Seaman Choi's? Hers? Or was it whatever had hit her?

Bad opened her eyes, and she wasn't dead. Yet. Drill had plowed into her at full speed, knocking her out of the trajectory of the dragon's flames and landing them both behind a pile of the charred cobblestones Penina had used to save them the first time. Drill patted out flames flickering on the fringes of her limbs, then put out his own fires. He'd saved her. Again. Always.

The dragon was inhaling for another assault, redirecting to where Bad hunkered down beside Drill. They were moments from being dead. She didn't have another saving grace.

"Throw me at that thing," Bad said, pointing at a spot on the terrifying dragon. "Right there."

Drill didn't ask why. He didn't challenge her, nor did he disobey as Seaman Choi had. He followed orders.

He picked her up like she was a slingshot of stones, wound up, and launched.

Dragon biology. Like any other living, breathing thing. It had to have lungs. And while the dragon inhaled, it exposed its chest. Maybe most things couldn't puncture dragon flesh, but the blades from the First World could. Drill threw Lieutenant Badia Robinson right at the center of the winged nightmare. Bad stabbed down as she smacked against the devil's chest, into its hide, and plunged the blade deep into the creature's lung. She felt a hiss of scalding air from the puncture, a gurgle from the monster's molten maw. A mortal strike! With a punctured lung, the dragon couldn't breathe fire. It retreated. Wounded severely, it crawled back into the hat. And Bad collapsed, next to Seaman Choi's body, burned beyond recognition and missing most of his limbs. So close, she could feel him still moving.

He was alive.