“Yes.” The dragon sounded weak, pained, his breathing labored. “I did my best, but I could not stop him. He ripped it from my mind. He combed through my treasures…” There was a long wheezing noise. Management was in pain. “He went back to the beginning, when I was a hatchling and the great dragonfathers ruled the sky. Beware…He means to devour you.”

The Nachtmar returned. “I have taken the great beast’s words and I will tell his story.”

And the radio turned to static.

Edward’s head swiveled from side to side, suddenly suspicious. The orc was sensing something. Without a word he disentangled from Tanya, unbuckled himself, moved to the door, unlatched it and slid it open. Disregarding the wind and the potential fall into eternal nothingness, Ed looked back the way we’d come from and twitched in surprise, which was a remarkable display of emotion for the orc warrior. Then he signaled that Julie and I needed to come take a look.

The Last Dragon complex was in the distance, partially visible only as the sheets of mist moved and the unnatural lightning provided illumination, but the gaping hole in the middle of it was obvious. Something had torn its way out of the ground. The central gardens had been replaced with a fresh new hole.

Julie looked at me and mouthed the word, “Management?”

The lightning cracked the gray open above us, and for the briefest instant we could see shape of something vast and winged coming after us.

Chapter 23

Chapter 23

I had never been so happy to see Las Vegas before.

One second the Hind was plowing through the storm, and the next we were streaking over the blinding lights of the Strip. The churning mist stopped behind us like it had crashed into an invisible wall. The chopper was vibrating madly. There was a distressing noise coming from our gargoyle-struck tail, but at least if we were going to crash, it was going to be on the solid ground of my home planet.

We had done it. We’d escaped. There had been enough of a head start that the Nachtmar’s newest creation had never been more than a shadow in the fog behind us.

“We made it!” Tanya bit off her yell, probably because she wasn’t sure if Skippy would toss her out if he found out there was an elf aboard.

But Skippy was preoccupied and hadn’t heard. “Row-tor spirits…they fight me. Must hurry. Land…in road,” he warned. “No problem. No problem.” The chopper rotated in a series of jerks and fits. Out the window was a shockingly well-contained pillar of whirling nightmare. Our passage hadn’t made so much as a ripple. “Probably no explode.”

“Can the Nachtmar come across?” Julie asked.