Page 56 of Dragon Fires Everywhere (Witchlore #4)

We need more than witches.

We need everyone .

I look up in the sky, hoping to see Azrael return—but instead my breath catches.

The largest raven of them all, violet-eyed and familiar, takes a dive at the tornado’s center. Gideon.

But just as he’s about to reach his target, the zombie’s tail—which looks exactly like a weasel’s—whips out lightning-fast

and slams against his body, sending him hurtling down to the ground.

I reach out, trying to stop his fall with magic, but it’s too far, and I have so little, and—

I watch my dad dive forward from the back of the melee. And then he blocks Gideon’s inevitable crash to the ground by catching him.

In his arms.

As brave as can be.

I want to revel in that, but I can’t, because something is creeping up my back. I whirl with the sword and manage to cut off

the tendril before it latches around my throat—but that’s all the warning I need. I have to pay attention to my own attackers

or I’ll be taken out.

Jacob and Emerson are on the stage, but they keep having to fend off attacks. They can’t speak the necessary vows. I try to

get to them, but it’s not quick or easy.

There are too many tendrils, everywhere.

And the snow keeps coming, heedless and quiet in the face of all this chaos.

When I’m almost to the stage, I hear that mighty dragon roar in the distance.

Then Azrael comes into sight, and he’s not alone.

He’s brought ghosts.

All the ghosts I know and some I don’t. I’m not sure how he managed it, but they all ride on his back or fly fanned out behind

him, as if that’s just... normal. Like the afterlife is all about dragon rides and air currents.

He drops them off at the stage.

“We can’t do much, but we’ll do what we can,” Lillian tells me as I climb up on the stage myself, beating the tendrils off

as they try to drag me back.

I point at Jacob and Emerson. “Protect them so they can finish the vows.”

My grandmother—and it still makes me feel good to call her that—gives a ghostly nod, then rallies her ghost troops. They form

a circle around Emerson and Jacob, and with whatever vestiges of power and energy they have left or can summon, they work

together to block everything flinging itself Jacob and Emerson’s way.

I want to help them, but I have to assume they’ve got it.

I need to put myself back into the fight.

I think of fighting spells. I think of every anti-evil speech I’ve ever heard. I try to feel all of that right inside me and propel it out toward all that wrong .

But as I do, I see Azrael fly low with fire shooting out of his mouth, and he’s just a hair too close to Carol.

She suddenly has a sword, just like mine but fully black. She flings it upward, and it rips through Azrael’s belly. I scream

out, feeling that pain like I’ve been sliced open too. I want to fly toward him, but a tendril of black has gotten around

my ankle. It burns, though I barely feel it.

I need to get to Azrael.

Maybe I scream that.

Zander’s trying to free me, but then Emerson’s voice rings out. Loud. Sure. “Because love cannot be torn asunder. Love will set us free.”

Something cracks so loudly I nearly drop the sword and slam my hands over my ears. I don’t. Somehow I don’t, but I’m suddenly

free of the tendril, and I can move.

To Azrael.

It’s chaos now. An earthquake. Black magic explosions. A veritable war zone, but I rush to Azrael anyway, like my life depends

on it. I know, deep down, it does.

And I’m not happy when I get there. He’s bleeding dark and oily evil from the stomach, laid out on the ground while a few witch Healers try to help him.

Somewhat tentatively.

I skid onto my knees at his head. His eyes are closed, but his dragon chest rises and falls, so mine can too. I hear Emerson

and Jacob in the distance, but I can’t pay attention to them now. Not now.

“Well, at least it wasn’t a fucking crow,” he says when I stroke my hand along his face. “This time.”

“No, Azrael. Not defeat. Hope. ”

“Your witch Healers can’t fix this, Georgina.”

He opens his eyes and meets my gaze. He opens his mouth to say something I’m sure I don’t want to hear. Someone interrupts

us first.

“But I can.”

I look up in the direction of the woman’s voice. It’s Melisande. She’s holding... Octavius? “We both can,” the mermaid

says, gently pushing me out of the way. She murmurs words I do not know, or maybe she’s singing them. Octavius curls up next

to Azrael’s rising and falling chest and purrs . His eyes gleam bright. And slowly but surely, Azrael’s wound begins to stitch itself together.

“I am going to hate owing you a favor,” he mutters at her.

She grins. Then she gestures around us. “I think you’ll have quite a few favors to owe when this is done.”

“But...” I’m still staring at Octavius.

“He was only a baby when he was cursed,” Melisande tells me. “He never learned to communicate, but he’s not your average familiar.” She reaches out, scratches behind his ears. “Octavius is a fairy cat.”

“A fairy cat.”

Melisande nods. She gestures to someone, and Ellowyn appears with a mug that she hands to Azrael. With a huff, he drinks it,

still in dragon form. Still healing as Octavius purrs next to him.

“Now that we’re uncursed, he’ll learn to talk to you,” Melisande says, getting to her feet. She glances at Azrael. “But be

warned, fairies and dragons have somewhat contentious relationships. Though this particular dragon should take an intense liking to mermaids and fairies, since he was saved by them.”

Azrael only grunts, but I’m distracted, because she said uncursed . I look around and the war is still on, but it’s... different.

The crows have amassed in bigger numbers, in all their bird and human forms. There are fairies and centaurs. Basilisks, griffins,

and the Fenrir from Sage’s spigot. Even the nachtkrapp from the rug in Wilde House. Witches that I saw Zander and Frost help out of the cross fire have come rushing back with weapons.

Crystals, swords, and athames of their own.

But there’s only one way this could have happened.

Emerson and Jacob finished the vows. The magical creatures were freed—fabulae and crow.

We have united . Come together at last.

“It worked,” Azrael says in awe.

As if he didn’t quite believe it. But he fought for it anyway.

Because I believed it.

I want to sob. I really want to take the longest nap ever, but it isn’t over yet. Carol is still there , even if her hair is starting to fall out and her zombie is smaller. She’s still hurling out desperate black magic, but she is... surrounded.

Because we came together—not just magical creatures of all descriptions, not just witches, not just crows.

All of us.

Even the high school graduates who we befriended on our way to Litha are here. They saved us once already this year with their

votes, using their powers for good.

As Azrael and I join the circle, I see Gideon across the way. His leg is bloody, his face bruised—but he’s alive.

And he’s adding his power to the magic—good, bright, light magic—surrounding Carol now. On one side of him is the fairy from

my window growing up. On his other side are Ellowyn’s mother and her partner, Mina. Next to me is Emerson, with Azrael on

the other side. Witches, magical creatures, crows, and ghosts begin to surround Carol and her monster.

“Hope. Love. Unity,” I whisper to myself.

Then louder.

And it catches on.

Slowly it becomes a chant. A spell.

So simple, when the world, and even our future free of black magic, won’t be simple .

But sometimes you have to start with simple to get anywhere. Sometimes, no matter how complex the things you build on top

of them, the foundations have to start with the most simple truths.

Hope.

Love.

Unity.

And people brave enough to fight for them all, no matter the cost.

Carol is screeching, but she’s turning into a Joywood zombie herself. Her skin is melting away. Her hair is gone.

The creature she made is falling apart at the seams. Black magic oozes all over the bricks, then is covered by the insistent snow.

Though he’s still healing, Azrael begins to create a ring of fire around the black that remains, and another dragon flies

in to help him finish the circle when his energy flags.

We chant until we have Carol trapped. She’s dissolving before us. There is nothing but black ooze left.

“Now what?” Zander asks.

“I can think of several fitting ends,” Azrael mutters.

“I am certain I know a spell for each,” Frost agrees. They look at each other in a moment of perfect understanding, like they

might one day be friends.

Imagine that .

My father rushes over to me with a book. It’s one of the Joywood books from Carol’s house—I recognize that smell. He holds

it out, opened to a page.

“Containing black magic,” he says excitedly. “There’s a whole chapter on how to contain and dispose of it.”

I take the book from my father, and it doesn’t feel evil anymore. Because wiped of Carol’s intent, it’s just information.

As intended.

“We need to contain it in something,” I say as I read. “No one person can hold on to it, and it must be displayed for all to see at all times.”

I frown a little. How are we going to come up with that?

“You must choose wisely,” Frost says then, frowning as if this is a memory. “She must be contained by her own evil, or she’ll

be a threat again.”

“I have an idea,” Azrael murmurs.

Then, with a loud thump, the dragon statue from the cemetery lands in the courtyard at the end of Main Street.

We all look at Emerson. Her beautiful wedding gown is torn.

She has a gash on her cheek, and she’s holding her arm at an odd angle.

She is clearly being careful to hide the majority of her injuries from Jacob, who is standing at the edge of the alley.

He’s trying to heal a sniveling Sage, who keeps crying out in a pain that is no doubt minor.

Save everyone else first. That’s our Emerson. And I don’t feel a pang of sympathy or hate for Sage. Just a delightful nothingness.

Because that’s all he really was.

“Yes,” Emerson says, nodding at the dragon statue. “How do we do it?”

I read them the book, the spell. And we all come together—not as our coven, or even the citizens of St. Cyprian. But as anyone

who wants to be part of a new world, free of black magic and greed and evil.

Witches, ghosts, magical creatures, and crows all come together and say the words.

And the black, oozing representation of all Carol’s evil solidifies into a little gemstone. On the last word of the spell,

it hovers in the air, then is sucked into the dragon statue.

We all stand in silence for a few beats, just staring at it. Something’s missing. I can feel it.

The sword will seal it. It will seal the black magic. It will be a sign, forever, that division and curses, greed and cruelty, cannot sustain a world.

I look down at my sword. What do I do? Shove it into a dragon statue’s hand? Get a little King Arthur with it?

“It will seal it,” Azrael agrees, even though I wasn’t speaking . “But a dragon cannot wield the sword of unity.”

I feel something brush against my leg then. I look down, half expecting to see another tendril of black magic.

It’s my fairy tale. On the cover is a statue like the one before us. But instead of just the dragon, there’s a princess on

the dragon. Holding a sword up to the sky.

“Perfect,” my dragon rumbles.

Azrael waves a hand, and I don’t know how he has any energy left, except the magical creatures seem to have fared better than the witches and crows. Probably because they’ve had years upon years to store up magic and strength.

Now riding the fearsome dragon statue in real life is a stone woman that looks an awful lot like the princess in my book.

And me.

“Go on then,” he says, nudging me forward.

The stone princess is holding out her arm, and inside the fist is a hole made so that the sword’s hilt should go right in.

“Hope, love, unity,” I murmur, more to myself than to anything else.

As the sword goes in, a ripple of magic flings itself out like snow.

And in the actual snow is something else.

A lifting. A lightening.

The curse we’ve all been under lifts. The Joywood’s mind control.

I remember Skip Simon attacking Emerson.

I hear people talking excitedly.

“Remember when the Joywood...”

“My entire family was made into a pack of plague-stricken rats for a whole winter!”

“One of my best friends was a crow!”

“Did Carol really turn her own son into a weasel? Or a weasel into her son?”

Frost is rubbing his temple, with Rebekah’s hand on his back. I can tell he’s remembering things he’s lost too.

I turn to Azrael, and just lean . I’m exhausted. But then Ellowyn starts doling out cups of her brew that will revive us. All of us.

As I lift my cup to my mouth, I see the ring Azrael once gave me on my finger. I don’t recall him putting it there. I look

up at him, eyes narrowed. “It’s been there all along, hasn’t it?”

He shrugs. “Perhaps.”

But it has. I know it has. I’ve felt it, even though he hid it from me. I lean into him even more. “I always knew you’d come through. Even when I was afraid you wouldn’t.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he says a bit grumpily.

“Of course it does.”

He snorts. “It appears we will have quite the long life to become bored with one another, Georgina.”

I smile at that. “I don’t know if you know this, Azrael, but a girl who enjoys reading is never bored.”

“Witches, magical creatures, crows. Friends. ” Emerson’s voice booms out from the speaker, and I know it reaches everywhere in witchdom. Everywhere in the world. “I’ll

have a cleanup crew organized for first thing in the morning, but you know what we’re going to do right now?” She lifts a

fist and pumps it toward the crowd, the mess, the complicated and beautiful knot of us . “We’re going to celebrate . Happy solstice, St. Cyprian. May we appreciate the coming light.”