Dragon Rising

Steel Dragon™ Book Three

Kevin McLaughlin

Michael Anderle

This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

Copyright © 2021 LMBPN Publishing

Cover Art by Jake @ J Caleb Design

http://jcalebdesign.com / jcalebdesign@gmail.com

Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

A Michael Anderle Production

LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact support@lmbpn.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

LMBPN Publishing

PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

Las Vegas, NV 89109

Version 1.00, December 2021

Previously Published as part of the megabook Steel Dragon 1

eBook ISBN: 978-1-68500-632-7

Print ISBN: 978-1-68500-633-4

The Dragon Rising Team

Thanks to the Beta Team

Erika Everett, James Caplan, Crystal Wren, Larry Omans, Kelly O’Donnell, John Ashmore, Chrisa Changla, Daniel Weigert, Mary Morris

Thanks to the JIT Readers

Jeff Eaton

Dave Hicks

Micky Cocker

Tim  Adams

Jeff Goode

Dorothy Lloyd

Peter Manis

Nicole Emens

Deb Mader

Misty Roa

Jackey Hankard-Brodie

If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know!

Editor

The Skyhunter Editing Team

Chapter One

The foolish beasts crowded in front of Sebastian Shadowstorm displayed nothing resembling intelligence. They were cattle to be herded, nothing more. One day, he would rule them—or roast their flesh and make them suffer for not asking to be ruled sooner. How anyone could think these creatures were worthy of anything more than being fed table scraps by their betters was beyond the black dragon’s ability to comprehend. Yes, they used tools, but so did crows, and at least crows understood that they were scavengers.

A blaring horn dragged him from his thoughts.

“The light is green. Let’s fucking go.”

He scowled into his rearview mirror. “I am going, you plebian cockroach,” he roared out the window of the 1982 VW bug he currently drove. Humans lauded their inventions, their mastery of machines and medicine, electricity, and frozen pictures, and yet for all their ingenuity, they had invented traffic.

“Well, go faster or I’ll cram my fucking truck up your asshole.”

Human beings were disgusting, crass creatures. And yet, this ape had the right of it. The traffic light was green, and it was his turn to go. He admired the efficiency of the systems humans used to govern their day to day activities. At this intersection, all of them bowed to the color of the streetlights without a second thought. Soon, they’d put the same colors on pine trees they’d bring into their homes and virtually worship the things. It really was pathetic.

His scowl deepened as he eased his foot down onto the gas pedal and the car lurched out and across the intersection. No sooner had he moved forward than the man in the truck behind him raced around his vehicle and leaned pointedly on his car’s horn as he went.

Sebastian stuck his massive arm out the tiny window of the VW bug and raised his middle finger at the man. It was a human gesture that worked as both an insult and a threat. He found it was rather delightful to use.

Or it was until the man in the truck’s passenger seat threw a cup of carbonated sugar water out the open window at him and soaked the sleeve of his black suit.

In that moment, it took every speck of control the dragon had learned over his centuries of life to not transform into his true shape, spread his wings, peel the man out of his truck, and devour him like a human would a canned sardine. How pleasurable it would be to reach out to the clouds and summon the rain and the wind. It would begin to storm and the man in the truck would start to worry about the road. In the blink of an eye, a shadow would eclipse the lightning raging in the sky and the man would be no more than dead meat.

But he didn’t transform, nor did he summon a storm or bolts of lightning. He didn’t even flex his aura and make the man fail to pay attention to the road and crash his obnoxious vehicle.

He was in hiding among humans, so he had to behave as one, as demeaning as that might be. Fortunately, he understood the gravity of his situation enough to control himself. The man in the truck was merely a human. Not an enemy, simply an annoyance. Sebastian Shadowstorm had enemies who could do far worse than make his suit sticky. Until they could be defeated or undermined, he would deal with the insults.

Besides, traffic wasn’t that bad a behavior for humans. The dragon had lived through both the Inquisition before he’d left Europe and the slavery in the new world. Compared to their own past, humans of the modern era were downright peaceful.

Unlike his enemies.

They thought they’d driven him from the Motor City, and he couldn’t betray his position for petty revenge. He’d been in hiding for a few weeks, and Dragon SWAT didn’t seem to have any inkling about where he was. Centuries of practice had taught him to control his aura better than almost any other dragon, which meant he could hide it from most of them. Currently, hiding his abilities was the only skill he was able to practice, and even that hadn’t always worked, not against everyone anyway.

But it did seem to work against Dragon SWAT, and that was what mattered. As long as he remained in Detroit, he was in a position of power. He’d spent decades building up his network of humans to serve him here. This was where his base of power was, and this was where he could most easily take action if he wanted to.

Or if it was demanded of him.

Another driver—apparently fed up with the VW bug’s reasonable speed of twenty-five miles an hour—accelerated around him and cut him off, honking its infernal horn the entire time.

How he wished he had his chauffeur and his limousine right now, but he’d been ordered to come alone and come discreetly, and he had no choice but to obey. Besides, he hardly fit in the tiny car on his own. If Tyler were driving, he wouldn’t have fit at all.

Plus—although he didn’t really like to admit it—he liked Tyler. No, not liked but appreciated his service. He was an efficient, well-trained servant who was more loyal to his master than he was to his own pathetic species, and it would be a pity—no, not a pity, he told himself, but a waste of resources—to lose the man over a car ride.

Sebastian turned down Sand Bar Lane and drove to the end of the street. He parked his car, squeezed out of the small door of the tiny vehicle, and assessed the meeting place. It was humiliating. He’d been told to keep a low profile and remain discreet and yet he’d been ordered to meet at a restored steam-powered paddleboat—the only one in the city, in fact.

The vessel had been built close to a century before, but one wouldn’t know that by looking at it. A fresh coat of white paint practically sparkled in the afternoon sun, the perfect foil for a red paddlewheel and two gleaming smokestacks. Despite the boat being more than twice as old as his VW bug, it looked newer, nicer, and far more glamorous. From its interior came the sounds of a string quartet and the smells of roasted meat. It was the most garish spectacle he had seen in weeks, and it filled him with pangs of jealousy.

He’d abandoned his mansion and moved into a tiny, roach-infested motel. For too long, he had eaten fast food and done nothing for entertainment besides watching television and trying to familiarize himself with the phenomenon that had taken his power from him—the Internet. Now, he was confronted with all he’d lost. There was something absolutely decadent about living the luxuries of decades past while the world raced forward. Obviously, the owner of the paddleboat felt the same way and wanted him to see it and suffer.

Or maybe not.

Maybe—just maybe, if everything went right—he could earn his place back and more. It wasn’t his fault, after all. It was Kristen’s. How he hated the steel dragon and her allies on Dragon SWAT. He could have defeated her and had been tantalizingly close, but she had outwitted him with that infernal smartphone. But he’d learned from that and knew it was her understanding of the modern world—the human world—which had given her an edge. He would simply have to make it clear that it wouldn’t happen again and he was sure that the Masked One would understand. After all, a string quartet playing from a gilded paddleboat wasn’t exactly typical human behavior.

Dragons looked down on the obsession with inventions humans had taken up in the last century or so. Every year, there seemed to be something new. The Masked One undoubtedly knew the new kinds of music and transportation in the world, but he chose to live in the past. Hopefully, he could make the powerful dragon see that they shared the same faults.

Sebastian straightened his shoulders, rubbed the crick in his neck that had come from cramming himself into the tiny VW, and walked up the gangway and onto the ship.

The interior of the vessel was even more garish than the outside. Meticulously carved pillars supported a ceiling that was painted with images of dragons guiding humans through their own history. The winged creatures stood over fields of battle, on ships sent to discover new lands, and above the kings and politicians who derived their power from the scraps of the dragons’ table.

If only those idiots honking their horns could see this. Maybe then, they’d understand how insignificant their species truly was.

He started down a gorgeous winding spiral staircase that led to a ballroom with a marble floor. On the far side of the ballroom, the string quartet played beautifully for a room full of dancers. Men and women danced elegantly to music that had existed for centuries. Despite their fine clothes and graceful movements, he didn’t sense a dragon among them. He smiled slightly at the show of power. The Masked One’s power was such that he could conduct his business in front of all these people. They would obey his every whim and corroborate every story. The scene was a discomforting reminder that the thugs he had employed were little more than disposable muscle.

It was an irritating thought and he pushed it aside as he walked across the dance floor, looking for the man who had summoned him. He couldn’t be dancing, right? No. He looked at the clock on the far side of the room. 6:01. Technically, they should already be talking but he couldn’t find who he was looking for. Still, he wasn’t naïve enough to think that his superior wouldn’t hold that against him.

“Shadowstorm,” a man all but growled, a human dressed in a tuxedo with a pointed mustache.

“What?” he snapped in response.

“Do not speak to the servant of your master thus. You have failed. Do not forget this.”

“He’s summoned me.”

“The Masked One waits above. He likes to watch the dancers to see which of them does not fit into the choreography. Such carelessness makes a thing of carefully planned beauty into a flailing mess.”

Sebastian nodded. The parallels to his own situation were not lost on him. He followed the man up another staircase to find the Masked One seated on a throne.

Well, not a throne exactly, more like an overstuffed red velvet chair with gilded, clawed legs and elaborate armrests. The chair stood beside a small table on which rested a single drink in a martini glass. He wasn’t foolish enough to think he would be offered one until the dragon wished to make a point. Nor was he foolish enough to complain about the metal folding chair the servant gestured at him to sit on.

He ignored the human.

The Masked One wore a dark, blood-red robe with the hood up. His skin was middling-brown, although he could see little of his facial features as he wore the front part of a human skull over his face. This, of course, was why he was called the Masked One. Despite Sebastian’s disdain for mankind, it was still uncomfortable to see one of their skulls worn like a mask.

“Sit,” the Masked One ordered.

Sebastian sat.

“My lord, forgive me,” he begged, took the other man’s hand, and kissed one of the golden rings.

“I am not one to forgive, Shadowstorm. You know this. I occasionally give second chances, although I see little reason to do so now.”

“My lord, I beg you, one more chance.”

“And why should I do this? Detroit was supposed to be crumbling into chaos by now. They’ve had their little time in the sun, but for my plans to continue, this city must fall.”

“Yes, my lord, of course it must.”

“Then why hasn’t it?”

At that moment, the string quartet stopped playing. He hadn’t listened to the music enough to know if the song had ended or if this was some kind of code. Silence descended as he scrambled for things to say. What would the Masked One believe? The truth? But the truth was dangerous in that it was not what had been planned. It had been his own plan, and it had failed. But should he lie to the Masked One? What if the other dragon saw through his deception?

A burst of impatience pulsed from the Masked One’s aura. It was a powerfully uncomfortable thing to be swayed by another dragon’s aura, and rare too. He’d thought himself immune to such things and yet now, the words poured out of his mouth as quickly as the fingers of musicians in the string quartet when they started their new song.

“My lord, it’s all the Steel Dragon’s fault. I had the city on the precipice of chaos. Gangs were ready to raze the place and she appeared and… Well, I failed to anticipate her.”

“Failed. Yes. That is the word for it, isn’t it?”

He slid off his chair and knelt at the Masked One’s feet. Even bowed, he was massive and much larger than the seated dragon’s diminutive frame, but he knew there was far more to power than brute strength.

“Please, my lord, please. I beg you—only one more chance. One more. I will finish what I have started.”

“Can you even do such a thing? Now, Dragon SWAT knows who you are. They know your face. The identity of Mr Black is worthless. You have masked your aura thus far, but they will find you in time.”

“No, my lord, not with the gifts you’ve given me, not with the powers you’ve opened up to me. I can evade them. I can finish the mission.”

“And how will you do that? Buy this pesky Steel Dragon a cup of coffee and try to convert her to your cause?” The Masked One laughed at his words. Clearly, he found them ridiculous.

“I was wrong, my lord, truly I was.” Sebastian spoke to the floor, not daring to look up and face the skeletal mask of the stronger dragon. “I thought I could sway her to our side, that I could get to her before the other dragons infected her mind with their laughable moral codes and humane principles. But she is too far gone—worse even than Dragon SWAT. She believes herself to be a human and I was not able to make her see the truth of the matter.”

“And could you find out where she was from? What made her?”

His heart began to pound in his chest—harder and harder, faster and faster, repeating the same message again and again. You failed. You failed. You failed.

“I…I did not find out that information, my lord.”

“We have spoken much of your failure today, Shadowstorm. Tell me now of how you plan to fix this mess.”

The pounding in his ears began to lessen. He would be given another chance. But he wasn’t out of the caverns yet. If he said something wrong, he had no doubt that his position of privilege in the Masked One’s organization would crumble and make his current lodgings at a cheap human hotel look downright decadent.

“Detroit will fall, my lord. There is a history of inequality here. The city is ripe for destruction despite the false wealth it currently displays. It was only the Steel Dragon who stopped me. I will stop her now, though. I underestimated her and thought I could manipulate her, but I see that I cannot. I have already found a tool capable of removing her. Once her work is done, the rest of the city will fall.”

“And if your tool fails? What then?”

“She will not, my lord. I assure you, she will not.”

“And if she does?”

“Then I will finish the job, my lord. I will kill the Steel Dragon with my own talons if I must, and I will light this city on fire.”

“That will have to do, then, Shadowstorm. And truly, it must. If you continue to slow my plans, you are useless to me—worse than useless. If you think this tool of yours will do the job, by all means, wield the tool. But if it fails, you will complete the task. If you don’t, I will show you how to deal with this steel dragon and it is not a lesson I have ever given twice.”

“Yes, my lord. I understand.”

“Do you? Let me be crystal clear. Failure is no longer an option for you, not if you want to keep your scales intact. Understood?”

Sebastian nodded.

“Good. Rise, Shadowstorm. Have a drink, and if you’ll excuse me, I must dance.”

There was nothing he wanted less than to sit in that uncomfortable chair and sip a drink while he watched the Masked One, but the alternative was far worse.

So, he sat and accepted a drink. He sipped it slowly while the Masked One walked down the spiral staircase to the ballroom floor.

He could at least admit that the drink was good. While he had never been one to get drunk and preferred to be in control, the taste of alcohol—that delicious burn—was something special. Not that the dragon would have guzzled grain alcohol from the bottle like humans did when they reveled in their pathetic mortality. The drink in front of him was far from that, though.

It tasted of cinnamon, orange peel, and a hint of cherry. That combined with the whiskey was something heavenly. Humans did have their inventions that were worth keeping. It amazed him that the same creatures who let their grain rot into alcohol had also learned how to elevate the intoxicating poison to such levels of beauty.

The Masked One reached the bottom of the staircase and discarded his red robe to reveal a tuxedo of the same dark-red color beneath. The skull mask covered his entire head and looked like it had been cobbled together from different skulls over the years and fused with dragon fire. The horrible helmet of death was both garish and grisly, marvelous and macabre.

He approached a pair of dancers and gestured for the man to approach, which of course he immediately obeyed. Sebastian had felt the pulse of power. There was no way the man could have resisted the dragon lord’s power in that moment.

The dancer stood in front of the Masked One.

“Sixteen measures back, you had a misstep,” the dragon said to the human.

“Yes, sir, Alicia’s dress tangled on my shoe, and I—”

“This is when you stop talking, boy.”

The man wisely shut up. Perhaps boy really was a better word for him, though. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old.

“When you are dancing, the man must be the dragon and the woman the cattle that is humankind. You are to lead her and steer her. Her clothes are your clothes, her body your body. A failure to properly control her is a failure of yours.”

“What should I have done, sir?”

“Shut. Up. Boy,” the Masked one snarled. “I was speaking. You should have slit the little whore’s throat and demanded better.”

“But, sir, it was only a mistake!”

“Enough,” the dragon said and waved his hand almost lethargically in front of the dancer’s face. At least it would seem lethargic to a human. Sebastian saw the hidden movements, the godlike speed, and the hand that transformed into a dragon’s claws and severed the front of the skull and face from the rest of the boy’s head.

The victim, though, saw none of this. One moment, he stood in silence and the next, his face was simply gone, a bloody hole where there had once been the young features of a boy, soon to be a man.

He fell back screaming and writhed in pain while blood poured from the wound and down his throat.

The Masked One peeled the skin from the skull as easily as a human peeled a banana, removed his own mask—he turned away when he did this, of course—and put the fresh skull to his face, connected it to his bizarre helmet, and gestured for the string quartet to begin playing again.

They complied as if nothing at all had happened. In fact, none of the dancers screamed or ran despite the dance floor now being slick with one of their group’s blood. Instead, they danced, and Sebastian understood that they had all seen this horrible display of brutality before. Yet they had returned because they understood that to not return was to die equally as horribly.

The Masked One reached out for the dead boy’s partner, Alicia. She swallowed, took his hand, and waltzed through the remains of her last partner. If she felt anything, she did a better job of hiding it than Sebastian did.

The ice in his hand clinked because his hand shook. He swallowed, wiped his brow, and downed the rest of the drink. Surely the Masked One had made his point. He possessed a level of power that he could not match and a level of influence that was almost absurd.

Throughout the centuries, ballroom dancers had consistently come from the upper class. They were typically a larger part of society than the thugs and cretins he had employed. His mind marveled at the boy’s death. Surely the child had family, friends, probably professors and classmates in a university, or contacts at work. To all those people, he would simply disappear. He knew this simply because no one talked about these things. People would go missing and go uninvestigated, and it was because of dragons like the Masked One and the power they held.

There were forces of power in the world that Sebastian Shadowstorm had always resented. The Dragon Council and their childlike morals and creeds. Dragon SWAT with their pathetic attempt to mimic human law enforcement. Even the Circle of Mages was an obnoxious force of rule-keepers.

But as he watched these humans waltz through the blood of their dead companion, he thought he would have preferred all their arguing and proselytizing to this wanton display of death.

And yet this was who he had thrown his lot in with. He’d made his choice long ago, and he couldn’t change it any more than a human could hope to become a dragon.

Sebastian snarled at the thought. For centuries, that phrase had kept humans cowed. Even their bravest leaders—warriors and kings, politicians and poets—had never dared challenge the power structure the dragons had built. They’d conducted their wars with each other, gobbled resources, and built their cities, all because they’d known that to do otherwise was impossible. Humans were not dragons and never could be. They understood that they were but rats.

Or they had.

The Steel Dragon’s emergence from the human population had changed all that. The Masked One was right about her. They needed to unravel her past and reveal it to the world. Then, humanity would see what had always been true—that dragons were born of dragons, and that humans would forever be beneath them.

He believed this with all his heart and yet, to see it displayed so grotesquely on the dance floor below him was beyond his ability to enjoy. Humans’ place in the world was to serve dragons with their clever little monkey minds. It was a waste to treat them as nothing more than dancing meat.

When he regained his position, he could restore them to their place as the preferred servant of dragon-kind, but not if Kristen Hall continued to live. Not if the world continued to think of her as a human with dragon powers who was capable of thwarting the true rulers of this world.

Terrified and more certain than ever of his mission, he left the boat when the next song ended. He would destroy the Steel Dragon. There was no other option.

Chapter Two

“Iwish I could do that when the nurse tries to give me a needle.”

Kristen Hall smiled at the eight-year-old patient in the hospital and turned her body back to skin instead of steel. The little boy gasped in awe. He’d obviously heard of Detroit’s famous Steel Dragon, but hearing wasn’t quite the same as seeing. “But then you couldn’t get your medicine.”

“My medicine makes my hair fall out. I hate it.”

She nodded and honestly didn’t know what to say to him as she’d never had a family member suffer from cancer. Her grandparents had all died from heart disease, so this was an ailment she wasn’t familiar with, and it seemed especially cruel to be affecting kids.

Even being in a hospital wing was relatively new to her. She’d been once when her brother had broken his arm, but her grandparents had died when she was little and her parents were still blessedly healthy—although her father would end up there soon if he didn’t change his diet and start exercising.

This room was weird. There were beds up and down the sides of the room and sheets with cute printed designs of animals, princesses, or spaceships. Beside each bed was some kind of monitoring machine. Most were turned off. Many of the kids in the room didn’t need them while they were there, but the message was clear—death is nearby, children. Never forget it.

The center of the room had a large, brightly colored carpet with the alphabet printed on it. Most of the kids sat on it, choosing some semblance of normalcy despite being stuck in the hospital. The little boy in front of her looked up and scratched his head. Before her very eyes, another patch of his buzzed hair fell out.

She was aghast. It was difficult to admit that such suffering still existed in the world. While she spent her time trying to help people, things like leukemia still took lives. It made her wonder if the mages the dragons controlled could use their magic to heal this little boy’s blood disease. She didn’t know, nor did she know what to say.

He touched her beautiful red hair and smiled wistfully as he did so.

That gave her an idea. “I wish my hair would fall out sometimes.”

“Nuh-uh,” the boy said, but he smiled.

“No, really, I do. The last time I fought a dragon, he pulled me by the hair. If my head was nice and smooth like yours, I might’ve won that fight.”

“Can’t you just transform into a dragon?” the boy asked. Despite his innocence, the words still hurt.

It was a barb under her skin that she hadn’t yet learned to transform into a dragon. At the same time, a part of her didn’t want to.

“I like being in a human body. It reminds me that I’m related to cool people like you.”

His face soured. “I’m not cool. I’m sick.”

Kristen nodded. She didn’t know what to say, only that she’d gone too far. She felt like this always happened. Fortunately, another kid chimed in before she had to justify herself.

“There’s no way you lose fights,” a girl with two broken legs said. She’d watched from her wheelchair and inched forward slowly when she thought the dragon trapped in a human body wouldn’t notice. Her dragon senses had detected each scoot forward, though.

“Oh, she most certainly does. She may be the Lost Dragon, but she’s still a slowpoke when it comes to the lounge.” Butters smiled. He currently allowed a three-year-old to climb over his massive belly. Of everyone on SWAT, the big southerner was by far the most comfortable with kids.

The rest of the team stood awkwardly around the visitor’s area of the children’s hospital. She considered it a small miracle that Lyn Hernandez hadn’t cussed out any kids yet. She was sure that she would, though, given enough time.

Currently, Hernandez stood silently in the corner, a long-sleeved shirt hiding her tattoos and a scowl on her face. It didn’t remain in place for much longer. A small boy had snuck up on her and thrown the paper wrapper from a straw at her when she hadn’t been looking. The two of them now conducted a clandestine projectile battle. The boy sat a few feet away from her with his back to her, but as soon as she raised a balled-up post-it note, he spun and giggled. She scowled at him and he only laughed harder and threw another straw wrapper at her. Kristen was impressed. She’d seen hardened criminals wither under that look.

“What’s the lounge?” the girl with broken legs asked Butters. “Is that like police talk for jail or something? Is that like…like when you chase criminals into a standoff and you’re all, like, ‘get in the lounge, you piece of poop!’” The sniper laughed and Kristen joined him. Someone’s mommy had let her daughter watch way too many cop shows.

“The lounge is where Butters gets all his donuts. Remember kids, watch what you eat,” Keith said and nodded like he was on a public service announcement from the 1950s. He looked like the archetypal strait-laced cop—short hair, strong jaw, slightly narrowed blue eyes, and folded arms. Virtually everything he’d said had sounded like he was auditioning for the alter ego of a cheesy superhero. Still, despite his stiff posture and phony smile, the kids laughed at the mention of donuts.

Kristen smiled and stood. Butters and Keith really were better at this than she was. But they weren’t the Lost Dragon or a steel dragon, so the newspapers cared little and less when they went to charity events without her.

Even there, in a ward for sick children in a hospital, her reputation had preceded her. Most of the kids knew who she was from the news and even those who didn’t seemed to recognize her face. Not that she blamed them. A photographer currently snapped photographs of her smiling awkwardly instead of the little kid who clambered all over Butters or the two kids hanging off Drew’s biceps.

The team leader wasn’t much better at talking to the kids than she was, but at least he had a plan. He used the children as weights. Already, he’d bench-pressed an eleven-year-old boy who weighed far too much for his age and currently did curls with the two giggling children. They didn’t seem to see him as human but more as a moveable jungle gym. That made sense to her. The man was massive. He stood well over six feet and had broad shoulders and a physique that indicated considerable time spent sculpting in the gym. She hoped they could keep him away from the kid in the wheelchair. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see him attempt to squat her.

“Can I have your autograph?” a little girl asked Kristen.

“Sure, of course.” She signed the cast on the child’s arm. The patient appraised the signature and finally nodded. She seemed to want to be sure Kristen hadn’t forged her own handwriting.

“Your steel means you can’t break bones, right? I’m so jealous.”

“You really shouldn’t be,” said Jim Washington, the Wonderkid.

“You shouldn’t say ‘should’ to people,” the girl stated matter-of-factly. “That’s what my mom says.”

“No, you should not,” Jim said, no irony in his voice despite her using the contraband word. Kristen had to admit the Wonderkid was good at visiting with the kids, but that was hardly surprising. He was good at all things police work, even public outreach. That was why they called him the Wonderkid, after all. Her newest teammate would be exhausting if he wasn’t so damn good at his job.

He was the black cop version of Keith’s white cop, but while Keith looked kind of cheesy trying to smile and look stern at the same time, Washington looked at ease. The perfect balance of friendly professionalism—like the big brother who told you to do your homework but helped you the second you asked.

If he didn’t keep glancing at the windows and the doorway, he might’ve looked friendly. But the kids noticed his paranoid mannerisms and mostly avoided him.

“Why shouldn’t I be jealous?” the little girl asked.

“Because if the Steel Dragon walks past a magnet, it sticks to her,” Jim said.

The girl nodded and considered this. Finally, she looked at Kristen with pity in her eyes. “Magnets are cool, miss. I’m sorry you can’t play with them.”

“Actually, as long as I’m—” She was cut off when the Wonderkid elbowed her in the ribs.

“It’s a real pity, right, miss?” He raised an eyebrow at her. With a look, he was able to tell her not to pop the kid’s bubble. Okay, so maybe he was better with children than she realized.

“Yeah, a real shame,” she said, embarrassed that she had been about to tell a kid that she could simply turn her steel skin off when she wanted to. None of these children could do that with injuries. The weight of that sat heavily on her conscience. She had to use her abilities to protect people like this—people who couldn’t protect themselves—even if she was as awkward as all get out.

The door to the visitor’s room creaked open and Beanpole, the last member of their team, walked in. He was tall and lanky and looked at the kids the way a corndog might look at a flock of pigeons—equal parts terror and utter lack of comprehension.

“They’re ready for you downstairs, Kristen.” He didn’t step any farther into the room than he had to. His discomfort made her feel better. Beanpole was an excellent SWAT member and yet children frightened him. She felt much the same way.

She nodded and trudged toward him. Despite her being awkward with kids, she greatly preferred their company to the press conferences the captain had made her do.

Since they’d driven Mr Black into hiding, the city of Detroit had experienced a period of relative calm. For the first week of the criminal mastermind’s disappearance, SWAT had been on high alert, waiting for the dragon to retaliate with another team of thugs or mercenaries, but the expected strike never came.

After a few more weeks, Captain Hansen put Kristen on public relations detail. She’d already visited the homeless shelter, the home for battered women, a whole slew of events at community centers, the police gala, and now, the children’s hospital. In all honesty, she much preferred being shot at to public speaking. At least her ability to transform into steel protected her from bullets. She didn’t know what to do about rude journalists.

As she followed Beanpole down the stairs, she tried to tell herself that it wasn’t all bullshit. She knew it was important to build goodwill toward the Detroit police department and that it was important for people across the country to see that the Steel Dragon was more committed to people than the other dragons who manipulated mankind from afar. Unfortunately, she couldn’t help thinking about Mr Black.

He was still out there, no doubt plotting another way to throw the city into chaos. She should be out there finding him. True, she hadn’t sensed his aura since Dragon SWAT had driven him out of his mansion, but that didn’t mean he was gone. She had trained with him for weeks and she didn’t believe he was the kind of dragon to simply abandon his plans.

“Are you ready for this?” Beanpole asked when they reached the first floor.

“Are you serious? Of course not. I sound as awkward as hell when I’m on TV. I’m glad they never play my whole speeches and only edit them.”

“You’re fine out there,” he said and the encouragement sounded entirely phony.

“No, she’s not. Kristen makes me look like a motherfucking poet laureate,” Hernandez said and darted out the door from the stairway and into the hallway with them.

“You know, that’s not exactly what I need right now,” Kristen said.

“Whatever, Red. I’m only trying to help. If I can make you laugh, maybe you won’t look like a damn deer in the headlights up there.” The woman stuck her tongue out.

“And you being terrified of a room full of children has nothing to do with you coming down here?” she retorted sharply.

“I’m scared of the little shits. I can admit that. I’d take a bullet for one of them but fuck, did you see the snot on that one boy? I can only describe the color as radioactive. That shit’s scarier than an M-16.”

“They’re not that bad,” she said and tried to sound like she meant it, although she failed spectacularly.

“Right, yeah, and neither is public speaking. Come on, you’ve literally taken bullets, been exploded, and fought a dragon fist to claw. There’s no logical reason why a crowd of rich fucking hospital donors who merely want to throw money around and feel good about themselves should freak you out, right?” Hernandez grinned. Oh, how she loved pestering her teammate during these events.

“You know, maybe you should go up there in my place,” Kristen suggested. “Getting some Latina representation up there might be good for the force. Plus, you’re a demolitions expert. You could talk about that gang we defeated. People still ask me for technical details about it.”

“Yeah…see… Fuck that. For starters, there are real advantages to saying fuck every other fucking word. Captain Hansen used to ask me to make speeches about sexism and all that shit when I first started. She had this bullshit reverse-racism angle too, but I told her I wasn’t fucking sure if I could control my shit-talking tongue and she stopped asking.”

“What about you, Beanpole? Do you want to field the questions for me? At least you’re well-spoken.”

“Well, yes, er…that is, I don’t swear like Hernandez does, but that doesn’t mean I like crowds either. I’m with her. I’d take a bullet before I take a microphone.”

“Gee, wow. You two are great at pep-talks.” She gritted her teeth as they reached the functions room in the hospital. When she had first started attending these events, she’d thought that large rooms like these in hospitals or homeless shelters were wasteful. After seeing the money pour in after gatherings like this, however, she understood that they were actually a fundamental part of doing work for the less fortunate. Getting donors was the paperwork of the non-profit world—essential if less than glamorous.

“And here she is,” Captain Hansen said into the microphone. “The Lost Steel Dragon, Kristen Hall herself!”

Scattered applause ensued. The captain had tried to combine her two nicknames, but Kristen hated the sound of it. The Lost Dragon was cool enough on its own. It reminded people that she’d grown up as a human and that there might be other lost dragons out there. Steel Dragon was also cool—and at least it was accurate—but Lost Steel Dragon made her sound like she’d misplaced something.

The Lost Steel Dragon took the stage.

“Thank you all for coming today,” she began weakly.

“How does it feel to know that Mr Black, the criminal mastermind who almost threw this city into chaos and very nearly killed you, is still out there?” a reporter yelled from the back.

She sighed, unsure of how to address the outburst. Honestly, she hated that he was still out there. It gave her a trace of comfort that she had stopped his plans and discovered that he had tried to sway her to his side, but she absolutely hated that he wandered free where he could cause more trouble. More than anything, she wanted to hunt him with Dragon SWAT. She wanted to find whatever hole he’d burrowed into and smoke him out like the pest he was.

But those weren’t appropriate talking points.

According to Captain Hansen, SWAT had done its job and gotten Mr Black, AKA Sebastian Shadowstorm—Kristen was supposed to connect the two names for the public—out of Detroit, and the city was doing better because of it. The statistics certainly backed the captain up. There had been fewer shootings and far less of the assault-rifle, explosives-driven activity that had been the hallmark of the beginning of Kristen’s career.

It didn’t matter to the captain that Mr Black was still out there. As far as she was concerned, the dragon was out of her jurisdiction simply because he was a dragon and wasn’t breaking any laws in the city. But Kristen knew that was only temporary.

She knew that Shadowstorm was merely biding his time. He’d been in Detroit for more than a century. There was no way he would abandon the city. He surely had hiding places and contacts across the entire Motor City, and considering how he saw humans as little more than cattle, she was absolutely certain that even if they did catch one of his minions, the monster would simply kill them and sever the loose end.

But the captain didn’t want her to talk about any of those details. She wanted her to talk about new crosswalks, speed traps, and how the police force would hold a fundraiser gala. While the police officer in her could appreciate where her commanding officer was coming from, the steel dragon didn’t care about any of that. She’d been to more than enough of these events.

It was time she addressed the questions people asked about the issues they cared about. Which meant that she needed to speak her mind. It was time for the world to really hear the Steel Dragon.

She cleared her throat and the microphone immediately blared feedback. Even that was preferable to the tame questions so many reporters normally asked.

The sound settled and she opened her mouth to tell the reporter that the Steel Dragon wanted to fight for her city. Before she could speak, however, pain blossomed in her left shoulder.

Startled, she looked up to where tinkling glass caught the light like drifting stars. The window above and across from her had broken even before she heard the shot.

Chapter Three

By the time Kristen flung herself prone, she had already turned her skin into steel, but the pain didn’t go away.

She thought the actual moment of injury should have hurt the most. While she’d been shot dozens of times, it had always been while she wore her steel skin. With it, bullets felt like nothing more than mosquito bites. Still, when she’d talked to the team about it, she had the impression that the moment the bullet hit hurt the most. It seemed she was wrong.

It had hurt when it entered her shoulder but now, sprawled with her head down, it felt far worse—as if something writhed and twisted in the wound like a centipede hungry for her flesh. It wasn’t only her shoulder that hurt either. Her entire left arm and some of her chest ached as well. Her limb, especially, felt like the nerves had been replaced with sulfuric acid from a car battery and her hand spasmed inside her steel skin. The sight of her own metal hand twitching and trembling reminded her where she was and that her pain was irrelevant in the situation.

The Steel Dragon couldn’t think of herself when people were in danger.

Tentatively, she felt the wound, pulled her right hand away, and looked at her palm. There was no blood. Despite the fact that the bullet had obviously punched much deeper into her body than the skin, her ability to turn into steel was able to stop the flow of blood. Even touching the wound didn’t hurt too much.

The pain came from inside her, from the tissues that had already been damaged.

But if she wasn’t bleeding, she wouldn’t bleed out, which meant she could and must protect these people.

Grimly, she pushed herself to her feet and immediately regretted using her left arm. She wavered slightly but had no sooner regained her balance when another shot caught her squarely in the chest. It was stopped by her bulletproof armor this time and she barely felt it.

Kristen rarely wore bulletproof armor anymore. It was unnecessary given her abilities, and with her habit of drawing enemy fire, she often damaged the vests way more than a regular officer would.

She’d worn it today only because Butters had insisted that the kids would get a kick out of it. He’d been wrong. All they’d wanted to see was Kristen’s steel skin, but part of her was thankful that it was on. The bullet in her shoulder hurt so much more than expected. She didn’t know if that was because the rifle was so powerful or because there was more to the bullet than the typical lead alloy.

A moment later, the sharp report from the weapon carried into the hospital. Wherever the shooter was, he was damn far away and yet somehow, he’d managed to hit her not once, but twice.

“Butters, shots fired to the southeast,” she said into her radio. “The asshole’s gotta be way out there. The bullets arrive before the sound does.” She had to yell to be sure he’d hear her over the sound of the screaming patrons of the hospital.

Drew and Hernandez already led the evacuation and guided people away from the broken window. Kristen looked around for signs of anyone injured, but she didn’t see any blood. The sniper had targeted her.

“I’m on the roof, Kristen. I have a few possible locations. I’ll keep you posted.”

“And be careful. This guy is damn good. If you step out of cover, I’ll kick your ass myself,” Kristen told him. He had seniority over her but she couldn’t help but tell him to keep safe.

“Are you all right? Drew said you were hit.”

“I’m fine,” she lied and glanced at her shoulder. There was a dimpled spot where the bullet went in but it wasn’t a mass of bloody carnage. Still, she touched the back of it and only felt smooth skin. There was no exit wound and she grimaced. This would hurt like hell later.

“Hall, get the fuck out of there,” Drew ordered.

She ignored him. The room was almost empty but one or two civilians still stumbled toward the exit in panic. She was obviously the hostile’s target, but that didn’t mean they were safe. If she left, the sniper might consider hurting an innocent to bring her back in.

Obviously, that wasn’t even vaguely an option.

The first bullet had struck in the brief moment of time before she had been able to hear the shot. The sniper must have known about her ability and planned the distance of the attack accordingly.

But now she knew there was a sniper out there, she wouldn’t drop her armor.

“Kristen, I think I have a location for the sniper,” Butters said over the radio. “Do you see a nine-story apartment from where you are? It has a big sign on the front that says, ‘move in immediately.’”

“Yeah, I see it. Straight through the broken window. He’s gotta be there.”

“Great. Good, now get out of his damn sightline. He might be a good shot but there’s no other building he can get to where he could take a shot. If you stand clear of that building, you should be safe.”

Obviously, she would do no such thing.

Instead, she turned toward the hole and glared defiantly at the sniper in the distance, even though he was much too far away for her to see.

At a flash of light from one of the rooms on the eighth floor—the third window over from her right—she held her right hand up between her and the shot that had been fired. If she hadn’t possessed dragon speed, it might not have worked, but since she did, she was able to move her hand into position before the bullet covered the hundreds of meters.

It struck her palm and it hurt like hell.

Kristen didn’t look at the wound. Instead, she simply lowered her hand, squared her shoulders, and continued to stare resolutely at the window while the last few stragglers in the room moved into the hallway.

Only then did she move and reached slowly for her radio, all the while keeping her eyes trained on the window that had been the origin of the flash. Another gunshot didn’t appear, so she activated the device. “Eighth floor, third window from the right. He must have taken all his shots from there.”

“I can confirm. I saw the last shot,” Butters said.

“You mean the shot Hall was too damn stupid and stubborn to dodge,” Drew yelled into the radio. “Now get the hell off the stage, Hall. Do you hope he tries a rocket on you next? Take cover. That’s an order!”

She shook her head. A feeling had come over her—one she’d felt before but only since she’d been a dragon. It was a feeling of possession, that someone had tried to take what was hers. She recognized it as a sense of loyalty she felt to the people who served her. At least, that was how Shadowstorm had described it. She was still a human, though, which meant people didn’t serve her. It was her job to defend them.

“Hall. Hall! Get out of there!” Drew ordered.

Sharply, she shook her head once more, reminded herself that Drew was her superior, and left the stage to take cover.

The auditorium was totally trashed. Apparently, wealthy donors flipped chairs and created chaos when they were terrified as much as the less wealthy did.

When she stepped from the auditorium and into the hallway, Drew was on a radio, confirming that units were already on the way to the site to try to apprehend the shooter. She could tell from his tone of voice that he knew what she did—by the time Detroit PD arrived, the sniper would be long gone. There was no chance that someone with that kind of skill and experience would also wait around for the cops to drive there and ascend eight flights of stairs to apprehend him.

Kristen considered apprehending him herself. She was fast—damn fast—and her training with Stonequest, the leader of Dragon SWAT, had improved her skills. If the hostile was a dragon, there was a chance she’d be able to sense his aura the way Shadowstorm had taught her.

But in the next moment, Keith was in her face and she knew that if she ran off, her team would follow her. None of them had steel skin, so that was the last thing she wanted.

“Holy crap, Kristen, are you okay?” Her teammate’s eyes were wide and he stared at the pockmark in her left shoulder.

“Yeah. We’re lucky he only shot at me. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? It looks like that one got through.” He grimaced like he’d been tasked with removing a piece of roadkill from a sidewalk rather than assessing her injury. The look was too much for her. It was so damn human.

It made her smile, then laugh. She dropped her tough visage. “No, Keith, I’m not sure. Actually, it fucking hurts like hell.” She tried vainly to maintain the smile and felt tears well in her eyes. Reality began to sink in. She was hurt—hurt bad—by someone else who thought they could kill the Steel Dragon. Her worst nightmare had come back to haunt her.

Keith grinned. “Don’t expect me to pity you. You may have been shot more than the rest of us, but it doesn’t count unless it breaks the skin.” He put a hand on her other shoulder—the uninjured one—and held her eyes with his for a second. His look said far more than his words did, that he knew that she worried for herself and her friends and the city. That he knew there was nothing he could say and that they’d both signed up for this crazy, selfless job knowing they’d face enemies like this and yet it was still impossible to prepare for it. He didn’t say any of that, because it wouldn’t do for the whole damn team to burst into tears. So instead, his hand on her shoulder would have to do. And instead of crying, she would have to quip in response.

“So that last bust we had where that bullet grazed your neck and left a burn didn’t count?” It was a joke about fear. He could have died and they all knew it, and yet he hadn’t. When you were on SWAT, it meant you had to joke about it, as scary as it was.

“I got burned in the neck by a bullet! Of course that shit counted.”

Kristen laughed again, which was a mistake. The pain in her left shoulder and arm flared and she had to close her eyes and grit her teeth.

“Holy shit, Kristen.” Keith swallowed. The lack of blood had made him think she was less injured than she really was. Now, he understood. “Doctor! We need a doctor!” He rushed to her side as she sagged.

There was no way a human—any human—could support Kristen’s weight when she had her steel armor engaged, but Keith tried. This simply meant that instead of collapsing onto the floor, she tumbled on top of him.

“Doctor! I need a doctor!” he bellowed from beneath her bulk.

Drew was there before any doctor was. She looked at him and shook her head to try to clear the tunnel-vision brought on by the intense pain.

“Drew. I’m fine… I only… I need some air,” she mumbled and told herself she would be fine. There was no other option. She’d be all right because she had to be for her friends and for the city.

“Stop talking, Hall. You’ve been shot. You’re probably going into shock.”

A doctor raced over with two nurses. Between the five of them, they managed to lift her steel body onto a gurney and pushed her down the hall.

“It hurts, Drew,” she said.

“I know, Hall. Getting shot hurts,” he responded calmly.

“Like it really hurts,” she repeated. The shock he had mentioned made sense to her. She couldn’t think much beyond the idea that she was in trouble.

“I know, but look, Hall—it’ll get worse before it gets better.” He clenched his jaw. “That first shot hit you, Kristen. It was aimed at you. The hostile must have known you would take the stage and had that position planned in advance.”

“Obviously.” She laughed. Oh, that was a mistake. Fresh pain wracked her shoulder. Her tunnel vision closed in until she couldn’t see anything, only hear the calm, quick voices of the doctors and nurses, the sound of the gurney as it rolled through the hospital, and the squeak of shoes on tile.

A red blob blossomed in the middle of Kristen’s perception and her vision returned. At first, it was merely bright white until it resolved into a circle connected to some kind of arm—a light mounted to the ceiling.

When she could finally see clearly, she turned her head to take in her surroundings. They had pushed her into a room with way too many lights. Everything was bright and white, the scrubs of the doctors and nurses the only color she could make out in the fluorescent glare. She missed the children’s ward with its carpet and brightly colored pajamas. Here, the sense of urgency was palpable. Every monitor on the walls seemed essential and every machine waited to spring into action.

A nurse had already activated one of these machines, attached it to the patient, and cursed under her breath. Kristen had seen enough medical drama shows to know that the machine should display her pulse and blood pressure, but it was designed to read human flesh, not dragon steel.

“You’re gonna need something stronger than that,” she grumbled to the woman, who jumped when she heard her. Obviously, she’d thought her patient was unconscious.

“Kristen, shut up and listen to me. Whoever this person was, they were obviously a professional. The distance is…well, it’s insane. It looks like it’s over two thousand meters. They knew the bullet would hit you before the sound and probably counted on it. Also, that first one missed your Kevlar. That might have been sheer luck for them or it might have been exactly what they hoped for. A rifle like that might have been able to punch through your armor. We simply don’t know.”

“It didn’t,” she said and pointed to the place where the second round had been stopped by her body armor.

She thought about the hand she’d held up to stop the bullet. While she didn’t think the bullet had punctured her steel skin, she also didn’t think there had been no damage. She wondered if the impact had broken any of the bones in her hand. If it had, the shots that struck her chest could have done even worse.

“Catch the asshole,” she grumbled and looked around the room. Hospital staff washed their hands and put breathing masks on. A nurse drew a table up and placed some kind of a bag on it. She unrolled what was simply a long piece of fabric with pockets to reveal dozens of steel implements—pincers, pliers, scalpels, knives, and clamps. With practiced movements, she slipped some of these implements a few inches out of their pockets, ready for easy access, no doubt. Kristen didn’t like the looks of the tweezers the nurse seemed focused on. They would have to go inside her and that was a painful thought.

“Hall, stop moving. You need to let the doctors work.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Of course you will if you let them work. Think about it. If that sniper made all those preparations, he might have used a different kind of bullet.”

“What are you talking about?” She knew, though. It terrified her, but she knew.

“He might’ve used a bullet that could kill a dragon. Don’t you remember what Shadowstorm said? Lead wouldn’t kill him. This guy might have taken the same precaution. Whoever he was, he targeted a dragon and seemed to know how to get under your skin.”

“Yeah, well, it didn’t work,” Keith said and forced a grin. She had totally forgotten about him and had lost track of him when her vision had faded briefly. Gratitude for her teammates suffused her.

“It might still be doing its job, though,” Drew snapped at the Rookie. “Hall, there’s no exit wound—do you understand me? The bullet’s still in there. We need to get it out. That’s what I told the doctors and they agree. They’re not familiar with your uh…physiology, but that doesn’t mean they can’t recognize effects. Your left arm… Well…it looks like your veins are rusting.”

Kristen looked around the room, which bustled with activity. A nurse continued to attach sensors to her, but the machine they were connected to provided no useful information. It read her blood pressure as over three hundred and her pulse at zero beats per minute. Two doctors argued in hushed voices while they watched Drew talk to her. A flash of a paranoia surged. What if they were targeting her? But that was insane.

Drew was right. There was a bullet inside her body—maybe something worse than a bullet. It had to come out.

“Yeah, fine. Get it,” she said.

“You’re still steel, Kristen. The doctors can’t even get an IV in although they’ve tried. That’s what I’m saying. You need to let the medical staff work on you.”

She looked at her right arm as a nurse jammed a needle against her vein. The needle snapped like it was nothing more than a toothpick.

“No!” She snarled and jerked her arm away. There was no way for her to know what was in that bag of fluid. It could be drugs or it could be something that would stop her powers or even something that could let her powers take control of her. These people—these humans didn’t know! She was a dragon—the Steel Dragon. How could humans think they could help her? The arrogance of the idea made her furious.

A flash of heat made all the nurses and doctors take a few steps away from her with looks of terror on their faces.

Only Drew stayed close. She trusted him. He was one of hers, so she hadn’t made her aura affect him. But she hadn’t meant it to affect the doctors either. She was losing control and was afraid that using the drugs or medicine or whatever the hell the doctors would do to her would make her lose even more control.

“Kristen, listen to me. These people need to help you. We need that bullet out, but we can’t do that if you’re wearing your armor. You need to turn it off.”

“No!” Her steel skin was all that kept her safe and she was at her most vulnerable now. Even when she’d fought Shadowstorm—a full-blown dragon—her steel skin had been what had kept her alive.

Her aura rose inside her, an unbidden force, a tidal wave of fear that she could unleash on Drew to wash away his will and make him leave her alone. She fought the urge. Drew was her friend, not her servant or her minion to be ordered about as she saw fit.

“Kristen, if we don’t get that bullet out, there’s no telling what it could do to you. Drop the armor now. That’s an order.”

Strangely, him ordering her around helped. She had been raised by people and was a person, and Drew was not only her friend but also her boss. That grounded her and reminded her what she was and where she was from. She wouldn’t use her powers on him. “He’ll come for me! Don’t you get it? This is what he wants. He wants me to be afraid of my powers.”

“No, Kristen. Shadowstorm can’t hurt you. We drove him from the city.”

“Who do you think hired that sniper?” she retaliated acerbically.

The look on Drew’s face said he’d already had the identical thought. “Even if he did, we have men scouring that building as we speak. You’re safe now. I’ll keep you safe.”

She shook her head. Talking had become more difficult. Her throat and neck began to burn even worse than her left arm. She wanted to look to see if what Drew had said was true—she wanted to see if she was rusting—but she didn’t dare. It took every ounce of self-control she had to maintain consciousness. If she saw her armor coming apart, she didn’t want to think what her aura would do to the people who tried to help her. She had to turn her steel skin off, but if she did, she’d be as weak as any other human. In her moment of weakness, she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t risk her life.

“Kristen, if you don’t drop your steel skin, you might die. If that happens, we both know that no one will be able to protect us from Shadowstorm. We need you, Kristen. We need your powers to keep us safe, but if you don’t let me protect you while the doctors do their work, you won’t be able to protect us ever again. We’ll die.”

Damn it, that worked. The idea of losing people got through to her. She couldn’t let the sniper win, and if he had used some weird bullet that poisoned her, she had to let the doctors help her or there would be no one to protect her team, her family, or her city. If she died, she had no illusions about what would happen to Detroit. The devastation she’d put off would return. The Motor City would crumble to scrap without her. Nothing would survive but junkyard dogs.

Kristen couldn’t let that happen. She clenched her teeth, took a few deep breaths through her nose as she nodded, and dropped her steel skin.

The pain doubled, tripled, and grew ten times as bad. She felt a twinge of something in her right arm and fought with every ounce of strength she had left not to turn back into steel. It wasn’t poison, it was medicine. It was only the IV. Still, she clenched her teeth as the nurses pumped her full of drugs and the doctor looked at her shoulder.

“Scalpel,” he said and his hand moved outside her line of sight.

She heard nothing more after that. Blackness seized her and she passed into a place of nightmares.

Chapter Four

It was beautifully cool flying above the clouds. They kissed her cheeks with dew and Kristen tried to embrace them and plunged into the billowy pillows of whiteness like a kid diving into a swimming pool.

She felt the coolness with her fingers, only to discover that she didn’t have two arms, but four. Two of them were familiar—upper arm, forearm, wrist, and hand—except the fingers were longer, clawed, and scaly. These weren’t human arms, but those of a dragon. She held them up and sliced through the clouds like a swimmer. Her scales were silver and delicate, more like those of a fish than a reptile.

It surprised her to realize that her other two arms weren’t arms at all but wings. They had upper arms and forearms, but the fingers extended from the palm into long, delicate versions of themselves. Silvery webbing stretched between them like the wings of a bat. She found she couldn’t control her wings the same way she could her dragon arms.

It required no conscious thought to flap them or when to simply coast. She didn’t have to adjust them to the microvariations in air pressure. All she had to think was faster, deeper, and her wings responded. They worked as automatically as her lungs, an extension of her that gave her the skies.

It was an exhilarating and liberating feeling, an intoxicating sensation. She willed herself—her dragon form—to go faster and faster and her body obeyed her commands. With her arms and legs tucked against her scaled body, her wings pumped harder and faster until she burst from the top of a cloud and into a vista of blue skies, where the ground was nothing but a memory.

Mountains of clouds rolled in slow motion. She floated above it all.

Ahead of her, a single cloud seemed…different. Larger than the rest, it rose up from the table of fluffy white like a monster emerging from a pool of water. It was large, so much bigger than she was. It towered higher and higher and eclipsed the sun with its thick gray billowing shadow. Lightning cracked inside it, but she couldn’t hear any thunder, only wind rising to buffet her.

Despite her wings functioning perfectly only moments before, they now seemed powerless to resist the wind. Great gales pounded against her dragon body, but they didn’t come from the storm. Instead, they moved toward it. She was filled with the horrible sensation that she was being devoured—that this cloud would consume the steel dragon as easily as a blue whale swallowed krill.

It was a foe that strong armor would do nothing against, a force that sought metal the way animals sought water. She could not defeat water, wind, and lightning with steel. And yet, she couldn’t escape.

Tendrils of wind sucked her inside the behemoth of a cloud.

Within, all was darkness. Wind battered her from all angles, so she immediately became disoriented. She couldn’t find her way out and when she tried to flap her wings, great gusts of silver scales blew away. Each one left a tiny spec of exposed skin—human skin—and she began to hurt. She gritted her teeth, determined that she wouldn’t let the pain consume her mind.

The lightning already did an excellent job of adding to her agony. It cracked louder and louder and great big bolts moved vertically and diagonally, within and throughout the cloud like nerve impulses in the brain.

Kristen felt that she knew what the cloud was thinking—horrible, malevolent thoughts that chilled her. It sought to rip her wings from her body like a cruel child would an insect and cast her to the earth.

She had to escape!

Despite her renewed attempts to find a way out in every possible direction, nothing freed her. Instead, she constantly found Sebastian Shadowstorm hiding in the clouds. He smiled at her and gave her false courtesies and sweet little lies while his dragon claws harnessed lightning and used it to blow her delicate scales off.

A bolt struck her. She expected it to feel hot and painful like the gunshot had but instead, it was as cold as ice. Rather than pain, she simply felt drained of all power.

In the next moment, she was in human form once more and plummeted earthward. She heard only two sounds—the rush of wind in her ears and Shadowstorm’s laughter.

Dreams of falling weren’t new to her, so she half-expected to wake before she impacted the apartment block that rushed to meet her. But either the drugs or the vibrancy of the dream kept her in it, and instead of waking, she pounded into the building.

Her momentum drove her through floor after floor after floor. Each shattered beneath the weight of her steel skin and concrete, tile, and metal girders tore like paper. None of it slowed her descent, though. She continued violently through the levels of the building until she reached the basement and landed in a swimming pool.

It was only a few inches above her head but she couldn’t get out of the water. She tried to swim but she was too heavy. Her lungs began to burn and she had all but given in when a red-and-white buoy splashed above her. She caught it and pulled herself out of the water long enough to see her brother Brian holding the rope attached to it.

He pulled on it but despite his large frame, he yanked himself into the pool. In the next moment, it wasn’t a pool but the Detroit River and she struggled to release the rope in which she was now tangled. As she sank deeper and deeper into the muck, she dragged him with her. Despite her burning lungs, she didn’t drown. Her brother wasn’t so lucky.

Her thrashing pulled his bloated body to her and she screamed and screamed and screamed. She could feel her aura affecting everything around her. The fish fled, people left the shores of the river, and the entire city of Detroit emptied out, all because of her. Her pain was their pain and her death would be their death. But rather than let the creatures of her domain perish with her, she forced them to flee and to abandon their master.

No one remained to bear witness to the monster that was the Steel Dragon.

There was no one left to help the person who defended the city.

She listened, but no one called her name.

“Kristen! Kristen, wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”

She woke abruptly and sat bolt upright. Her left arm ached from the effort, but her neck and chest felt better. She looked at her steel skin and, with effort, turned it off. Her transformation had already pushed out the IV that had been in her arm. The needle lay beside her and oozed watery-looking blood. She wished her steel skin could have forced the bullet out the same way it had forced the needle out.

“Smooth move, ex-lax. You turned your steel on and off, over and over. You probably short-circuited all their equipment.”

Kristen looked over to identify the speaker. It was the Wonderkid, Jim, who leaned against the doorframe. He gestured at the now useless IV on the bed. She took a deep breath and forced herself to lay down in the hospital bed.

“Smooth move, really? What are you? Like seven?” She managed to say. It sounded snarky despite the fact that she still felt the terror of the nightmare tight around her throat. But this was how SWAT dealt with terror—you laughed in its face.

“Wow, I gotta say I’m impressed you can still talk shit. I thought that after the big bad dragon girl passed out from an itty-bitty bullet, you’d be all quiet and meek by now.”

“You wish, Washington.”

He smiled. “I don’t. I really don’t. And don’t call me Washington, not anymore. We know each other too well for that.”

That drew a responsive smile. He was right, of course. “Thanks for being here, Jim.”

“No problem. Anyway, do you really think I’d miss this? Do you have any idea how much money I could make from the tabloids by selling what the Steel Dragon mumbles about when she has a bad dream?”

“You wouldn’t.”

Jim shrugged, entered the room fully, and sat on a chair next to her bed. “Maybe I would. Maybe I’d like to make an easy ten grand and go on a little vacation. I’m sure the dragons who run this world behind the scenes wouldn’t have any problem with that whatsoever. After all, they respect human lives and all that.” The sarcasm in his voice was palpable.

Before she could protest that not all dragons were like that, his tone changed. “Of course, I wouldn’t piss off the only dragon I’ve ever met who really does care about people, so your secret is safe with me. But I am curious. Who is Brian? You said his name more than once.”

She nodded. Of course she had talked in her sleep. She always had. While she was a dragon with powers unlike any other, she still mumbled in her sleep. No wonder the other dragons didn’t ever seek her out. They must have found her entirely too human. Even her dreams ended up being human dreams. “Brian is my brother.”

“Oh, right, of course. Drew mentioned that.” There was something in his voice that set her on edge—like Brian was more than simply a name mentioned over beers and was maybe a detail to remember, a part of a case.

“Why did Drew mention my brother?”

He shrugged awkwardly. He was obviously holding something back from her.

“Jim, why did Drew tell you about Brian?”

Her teammate took a deep breath. “He sent a detail to your house as a precaution. No big deal. We think it’s very clear that the sniper had targeted you and the identity of the Steel Dragon isn’t exactly secret. You were out cold, so Drew and the captain thought it was better to take precautions. You know how it is.”

“Has something happened?” Kristen demanded and saw right through his attempts to downplay the situation. She sat up again and a fresh wave of pain surged through her shoulder.

“Yeah, something happened. A sniper shot you in the damn shoulder. If you sit up like that again, you’ll rip your damn arm socket to pieces. Take it easy.”

Jim leaned forward and touched her wound tenderly. It was bound in gauze, but he still seemed to be able to tell something about the wound. He was a veteran, she remembered. He’d probably seen any number of dressed wounds.

She ignored his concern. “I need to check on my family.”

He merely shook his head. “No, you don’t. Not yet.”

“Yes, I do.” Her aura rose unbidden, ready to make him want to obey her desires and to feel what she wanted him to feel. She pushed the power down, determined not to use that, not now and not on her friends.

“Look, I know you have your fancy powers, so give me a second to check how fancy they are. Sit up slowly and let’s see what’s going on.”

A little mollified, she nodded and sat with his help. It didn’t hurt when she didn’t jerk upright out of bed.

“Now, rotate your shoulder gradually…good. Exactly like that. Now, see if it’s an ache all over or if you have twinges of pain.”

She rotated her shoulder once again. “It aches, but honestly, it feels worlds better.”

“Good. That’s really good, Kristen. It means you’re on the mend. Your freaky dragon powers are doing their thing to take care of your freaky self.”

“Do you always talk to dragons so disrespectfully?”

“Only when they’re injured.” He grinned. “They can’t chase me as well then.”

Kristen wondered if he understood the seriousness of that statement. She now knew there was much that Shadowstorm hadn’t taught her, but healing power was one ability they’d spent a fair amount of time on. She called on it now and urged her body to focus on the wound and to use all her internal resources to mend the torn flesh and skin. Her teammate probably didn’t realize how short the window was in which dragons were actually injured.

“I passed your little field test. Now, let me check on my family. Where’s my phone?”

“I have it right here.” He tapped the pocket of his shirt. “But there’s more you should know. You weren’t out long, but the situation has developed.”

She stared at him, a little startled before common sense kicked in. Of course, she’d been unconscious, but the idea that the world had moved on and gone about its business while she was out filled her with a sudden pang of dread. This was her city filled with her people. She couldn’t be out cold and dead to the world. “How long?”

“Only a few hours. The morphine should have kept you under for at least eight, but I had a feeling the Steel Dragon wouldn’t rest easy.”

Okay. That was better. At least she hadn’t missed a day. “Did they catch the asshole?” she asked with way too much hope in her voice.

Jim shook his head and she nodded. She wasn’t so naïve as to think that someone as skilled as that sniper had been would have waited around for the cops to arrest him.

“They found his position, though. It was the room you and Butters saw. They’re combing through it now, looking for evidence, asking people on that floor if they saw anything—the usual, nothing a dragon needs to worry about.”

“Great. So let me check on my family.” She knew there were many things she could do that the regular cops couldn’t, but collecting evidence was one area she didn’t have any expertise in. If the sniper had left anything at all, she was confident that her team and Detroit PD would find it. Which meant she didn’t need to worry about that.

It was Brian who sprang constantly into her mind, Brian she kept pulling underwater and into the murk and gloom of the river.

Her teammate looked around conspiratorially as if he didn’t want to be overheard. He scooted his chair closer and reached into the other shirt pocket—the one that didn’t have her phone. “There’s more, Kristen. Look, I might get in trouble for sharing this with you, but…well, you and I were both working outside the law on that last mission, and it’s a good thing we were.”

“I was tracking you and you think that was a good thing?”

He shrugged. “If I hadn’t had made that contact, we would never have exposed Shadowstorm, and if you hadn’t followed me, I’d be dead. The way I see it, the only mistake I made was not telling you. I won’t make that mistake again.”

Kristen smirked. How odd it was to be such close allies with the Wonderkid. When he’d first arrived on the force, he’d hated her simply because of what she was and now, he wanted to recruit her for a clandestine operation? Almost dying together did things to people. In this case, it had brought them closer.

Jim pulled a plastic evidence bag out of his shirt pocket and put it on the table beside her. It contained what appeared to be a bullet, except it didn’t resemble any she had ever seen. The shape was the same but beyond that, it looked like something from an Avengers movie.

For starters, it wasn’t made of metal but of an orangey-red material that made her think of lava rock. There were cracks and fissures down the sides of it and the top of the projectile was deformed slightly, but to her, it looked remarkably intact. “Is that what…”

He nodded. “This is what they pulled out of you.”

“What the hell is it?”

“It’s a bullet, but one I’ve never actually seen before. I’ve heard of these, though. It’s made from dragon scales.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I certainly don’t think it’s funny.”

“How did you get it?”

“As soon as they wheeled you out of surgery, they bagged it and gave everything to the police for safekeeping. It’s a good thing you can trust police—you know, like me.”

“This is supposed to be in evidence?” She was incredulous. Of course, she’d heard of cops stealing from the evidence locker, but never on Detroit SWAT. Captain Hansen ran a tight ship.

Jim shrugged. “No one knows it’s missing yet. And it’s not like I’ll let you keep it.”

She rubbed her face, not sure of what she thought about taking something from evidence and not sure if she even cared. This was bigger than SWAT. “Why dragon scales?” she asked after a moment.

“You know that I…uh, used to be fairly obsessed with hating dragons.” He at least had the decency to look embarrassed but pressed on. “Well, they say dragons can’t be killed with lead. Your physique is…well, different. I’m sure that if someone unloaded enough bullets directly into a dragon’s heart or your brain, that would do the job, but it would take a ton of lead. These things interrupt the healing process or interfere with your immune system or something. Whatever it is, the Internet’s fairly damn certain that a bullet made from a dragon is the best way to kill a dragon.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means this guy not only knew where you were and what you were but had a damn good idea how to eliminate you.”

“Did they recover the other two bullets that hit me?” she asked.

“Yeah, but I didn’t bring them. There was no point. They weren’t interesting enough.”

“They weren’t like this?”

“Dragon? No. They were armor-piercing rounds, though, and two different types if you can believe that. The asshole wanted to kill you with a single shot, but he was prepared in case he didn’t. The other two shots were probably to test your steel skin.”

Kristen peeked under her blanket and looked at her chest. There was slight bruising but nothing serious. The bulletproof armor had done its job. She held her right hand up —the one she’d use to block the third bullet—and looked at her palm. Already, a huge purple bruise had blossomed. That had almost broken through, which meant if the sniper tried stronger rounds, he might get through.

She focused her healing power on the bruise on her hand instead of her left shoulder. If she had to shoot a gun, she’d need her right hand. The purple began to fade away as her blood worked through her body to restore the damage.

The wound in her shoulder was more stubborn, no doubt because of what that bullet was made of.

“Well…that’s better than three dragon rounds.”

Jim shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think that if it were three dragon rounds, we’d know Shadowstorm had simply given a marksmen a number of them. They’re damn expensive—we’re talking tens of thousands of dollars apiece—but I’m sure Shadowstorm could afford that unless there’s a code about dragons not using them.”

He eyed her and his old biases flickered in his gaze before he grimaced and shook them away. “No, what concerns me is that this guy is familiar enough with dragon rounds to know that they’re not particularly good at shooting through metal. I’ve found some mentions of this idea, but it’s difficult to acquire any solid info. I’m worried our sniper wants to conserve his supply of these so was looking for your other weaknesses.”

“It’s a good thing he didn’t find them.”

His frown remained in place. “That’s true, but he also confirmed that he can get under your skin if he can get the bullet to you before you hear the bang and armor up. He’s also eliminated two types of armor-piercing rounds to try. I don’t like this at all, Kristen. I think we’re dealing with someone who knows a fair amount about killing dragons.”

“It’s a good thing you did so much research into killing our kind. Hopefully, you can reverse-engineer a profile on this scumbag.”

“Your kind, really?” He raised an eyebrow.

Kristen sighed. “I didn’t mean that. It slipped out. My kind likes pizza with ham and pineapple and plays way too many videogames.”

“What are you talking about? Pineapple on pizza? That sounds horrible.”

“It’s my brother’s favorite topping, Jim. Now give me my phone so I can call him, please.”

“Right, sorry. Here you go.” He pulled the phone out of his other pocket and set it on the table beside the cracked dragon round. “Are you still worried about him even though it’s most likely a dragon-killer out there? He should be fine, right? I thought your family was normal.”

“They’re definitely normal, but if this guy knows about dragons, he might come for them. That’s why Drew sent a unit to my house. He knows Stonequest enough to know that… Well, you must know that dragons see humans as property?”

The man’s scowl could not have been fiercer. “Yes. I do. Sometimes, I wonder if rich white folks would have enslaved my ancestors if not for their shithead dragon role models.”

All she could do was shrug at that. It was impossible to speculate at what a world would look like without an incredibly powerful, self-centered ruling class. “Well, my family counts as the Steel Dragon’s number one possession. If this person is really targeting me and not Detroit PD, they might set their sights on my family.” She forced her voice to remain calm and didn’t want to mention that she’d also dreamed that her abilities were killing her brother. That had merely been a dream. Dragons weren’t prophetic, but that didn’t make the nightmare any easier to swallow.

She unlocked her phone, opened her favorites, and touched the picture of her brother stuffing two pieces of pizza in his mouth. He didn’t answer so she called again.

“It’s around dinner time. I bet they’re eating that gross pizza. I’m sure they’re fine,” Jim said.

Kristen knew otherwise. Her mom had visited her dad every single time he’d had to go to the hospital because of police work. She was always there before he’d woken up. Always. But she wasn’t here now. Why?

“Did Drew tell them what happened?” she asked as the phone continued to ring. Each beep pushed her level of near-panic up a few notches.

“Yeah. The basics anyway.”

A little distracted, she nodded and tried to stay calm but failed. “They should be here. My mom has walked through police barricades for, like, thirty years.”

“Try your brother again in a few minutes. Maybe he’s in the bathroom.”

“No. We have a code. Two rings within a minute means an emergency. And Brian always has his phone on him—always. Plus, he thinks farting into the speaker is hilarious so even if he’s in the bathroom, he picks up.”

Her brother didn’t pick up.

She tried the house phone, also with no answer.

Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.

“We need to go. Now.” A sense of urgency pushed her out of bed. She put her hand on the table to steady herself and her palm settled on top of the evidence bag with the dragon bullet. She closed her hand around it without thinking.

Jim certainly didn’t notice. He was too busy trying to hide his smile when she stood and felt the cool breeze flowing up her legs and back.

“Damned hospital gowns.” She growled in irritation. In that moment, she didn’t care. She wasn’t ashamed of her body and time was of the essence so she simply held her hand out. “Clothes. Now.”

“Kristen, I—” He somehow managed to close his mouth, gather her clothes, and toss them to her.

She turned her back to him, undid the tie on the hospital gown, and let it fall as she yanked her clothes on.

“Mention this to Keith, and you die. Mention this to Hernandez, and you’ll wish you were dead,” she said as she put her bra and shirt on and dragged her pants on. When she turned, she could see that might have been a mistake. He had obviously been looking at her butt but so had the nurse who’d entered the room.

“Ma’am, you should be in bed,” the woman said, obviously more accustomed to seeing partially naked people than the Wonderkid was.

“No,” she responded quickly and flashed her aura. The nurse scuttled away, clearly nervous at her patient’s ability but still determined to call a doctor. An aura couldn’t change someone’s nature, only heighten it, and a scared nurse ran for a doctor.

“Maybe you should do as they say. Your family’s fine. I can check on them if it’ll make you feel any better.”

“If they were fine, they’d answer their phones.”

Jim held his hands up in mock surrender. “Look, let me call the police on guard duty. They’ll answer for sure. It’s their damn job.”

Kristen nodded. “Okay. Okay, fine, call them.”

He complied quickly and a long, awkward moment of silence followed during which she watched his normally calm smile droop lower and lower as the phone continued to ring. Finally, he hung up.

His expression confirmed that he’d received no answer.

“We need to go. Now.” She headed to the door.

A doctor appeared—a young woman with a last name she couldn’t pronounce and a slight accent. “Ma’am, you need to lie down. Your physiology is different than a regular human’s and we need to continue to monitor—”

She simply turned her body to steel and pushed past her.

“Ma’am! Ma’am, you should stop,” The woman protested, but she didn’t make a move to stop her. She must have understood there’d be no point.

As she entered the hallway and marched toward the exit, she wished, not for the first time, that she had wings. She wasn’t entirely sure which hospital she was in and had never bothered to ask, but it didn’t matter. There was no way any of her teammates had driven her car over from the SWAT station. She would have to catch a cab or, depending on her location, simply run the whole damn way. With her powers, that wouldn’t be a problem, except she had an injured shoulder. Running miles and miles might not be the smartest thing to do right now.

“Miss, you need to check out,” an overweight receptionist tried to tell her from behind her station, but she ignored her in the same way that she ignored the shouts from farther down the hallway behind.

“Hey! Hall! Damnit, Kristen, wait for me.” Jim strode after her, a smile plastered on his face. He wouldn’t run—not while in uniform and not unless he absolutely had to. A cop running through a hospital could trigger panic. This was the level of the Wonderkid’s professionalism.

Kristen gave him a brief glance but didn’t slow. She had no intention to wait for anything and stepped out the sliding glass doors and into the chilly afternoon. It hadn’t snowed yet this year, but it would soon. She looked in all directions but there were no cabs waiting. Worse, she didn’t immediately recognize the exterior of the hospital, which meant it was definitely not one of the ones closest to her parents’ house in Dearborn.

The doors slid open behind her and her teammate exited.

“You won’t stop me, Jim. You know that. I can knock your ass over if I want to.”

He held his hands up in what she first assumed was surrender until she noticed the keys dangling from his finger. “There is no need to whack me, Miss Dragon. If you want my wheels, you got ʼem, but I’m coming too.”

After a moment, she nodded. She hoped she wouldn’t need the Wonderkid as much as she hoped her family didn’t need the Steel Dragon.

Chapter Five

The drive to her parents’ house was painfully long. Jim didn’t have a police car, only his regular wheels, so even though he pushed the speed limit they couldn’t blow through red lights without the help of their sirens. Instead, they had to wait while jazz played quietly on the car stereo and Kristen was forced to think about what might be happening to her family. She’d tried Brian four more times and received no answer, not once. It required all her focus to stop herself from completely freaking out.

Her companion didn’t help. “So…uh, that aura thing. I felt you do it to the nurse.”

“Yeah, what about it?” she snapped.

He was a cop and was used to people snapping at him, so he didn’t react to her hostility. “Do all dragons do that?”

After a moment, she shrugged and nodded. “Basically, yeah.”

“Has Stonequest trained you how to use it?”

“No.” She sighed. “No, he hasn’t. Shadowstorm taught me about it, and he mostly focused on how to read other dragons’ auras and how to keep mine under wraps or not. That’s one of the reasons I’m worried he’s still here. He was able to control his aura really well—certainly well enough to hide from me. But, Jim, I don’t really care about this right now. Is it relevant to my family?”

“No. Not exactly. It’s only…well, when you do it, I can really feel it. You made that nurse damn nervous.”

“That was the point.”

“Sure. Yeah, I get that—”

“But?”

The light turned green and he found a gap between the two cars ahead of him and took it. Despite driving like he was in a car chase, his tone of voice was still casually professional. “Well, I could tell when you did it. I think that basically defeats the point of it.”

“The nurse didn’t think so.”

“Right, yeah, I get that. You wanted her scared and she was scared, but… Well, I don’t know. If you were a little more subtle about it, I think it would work better. People would be more willing to respond if they didn’t know they were being manipulated, you know?”

The sentiment of what he said forced a smile onto her face despite the thoughts of dread surrounding her family. “Wait, did Jim Washington, self-proclaimed hater of dragons, actually give me advice on how to be a better dragon?”

He chuckled awkwardly as he hurtled around a mail truck. They were close to her parents’ house now, less than five minutes away. “Yeah, well, you’ve kind of changed my whole perspective on dragons. Obviously, they’re not all bad.”

“Oh yeah? How many of us make the cut?”

“Well, you’re okay, I guess. And Stonequest seems fine. Drew trusts him, anyway.”

“Wow. The Wonderkid has found it in his heart to trust an entire two dragons. You do realize two is the second smallest number there is? Trusting two dragons isn’t exactly magnanimous.”

“I never said I wanted to be magnanimous to dragons.” He said the word with enough sarcasm to make Hernandez proud. “Only that if we have one on our side, I’d rather she be as skilled with her abilities as possible. You might as well be as strong as you can be so you can stop the rest of those scaly, fire-breathing salamanders.”

“I’ll have you know my brother had a pet salamander.” She had meant it as a joke but mentioning her brother’s name had the effect of bringing bile up into her throat. They had to be okay. If something was wrong—if they had been hurt because of her—there would be hell to pay.

“Yeah, well, I think most dragons think of people in those terms. Pets that can be let off a leash.” There was the old Jim—the marine with a chip on his shoulder and the soldier who’d seen what dragons could really do to people in a warzone.

“And you’d still want me to learn to control my aura? You know it doesn’t really work on dragons, right? It’s an ability that we—they—use to control people. If I learned to control it better, people would suffer for it.”

“No, they wouldn’t, Kristen. Not from you. Of course, people don’t like being manipulated, but you could use it for good. If you could get a hostile to surrender without hurting hostages or get a perp to confess, well, that would help people. Think about it. This sniper is probably human. Most dragons don’t fiddle with firearms too much. Stonequest can kind of handle a gun, but not really. Dragons use people as intermediaries or as pets or whatever. If you can control that ability, you could set them free.”

“Or I could use it to get Hansen to send the whole damn force to my parent’s house instead of a couple of measly cars.”

Jim looked taken aback. He said nothing, but she saw distrust flash across his face. He couldn’t think she’d ever do something so brazen with her powers, could he? Taking control of an entire police force wouldn’t help her city but hurt it. And yet, at that moment, Kristen wanted nothing more than to bring the full force of the Motor City to her parents’ house.

The sniper—whoever he was—had targeted her. He was after the Steel Dragon. That was painfully obvious. The bullet she had pocketed was a testimony to that. And according to what she understood of dragon culture, her family would be seen as nothing more than collateral damage.

He was right, though. If something happened to her family because of her, she would use everything in her power—every trace of every dragon ability and every speck of leverage she’d earned at Detroit SWAT—to obtain vengeance and make sure that whoever was terrifying her city wouldn’t do so again.

Her teammate slowed as they reached her parent’s street.

“What are you doing?” She hissed her annoyance. He was costing them precious seconds.

“The element of surprise might be the key. We’ll drive past once and run a quick check, park a few houses down, and go from there.”

“So you do think something is wrong?”

“You’ve called your brother’s phone way too many times. It’d be stupid to act like that doesn’t mean anything.”

She nodded. At least they were on the same page.

They drove past the house. Two police cruisers were parked out front, their lights out. The outline of a person sat in the driver’s seat of each one. One of them had a red mote of light near his face—a cigarette, obviously.

“Wilson must be smoking. That’s a good thing,” Jim commented.

“Oh yeah?”

“Dead people don’t smoke.”

She nodded but had paid more attention to her parents’ house. The living room light was on, the blinds were closed, and the porch light was off. None of that was unusual, though. It was early evening, so her mom would no doubt be cooking and they often closed the blinds because the elderly couple who lived across the street regularly complained about her dad walking around without a shirt on.

Jim pulled to a stop a few houses down in front of Mrs. Ciskowski’s house. She was an old Polish woman who used to make little cabbage-wrapped dumplings for Kristen and Brian. It was strange the things that came unbidden to the brain in stressful situations.

They exited the vehicle quickly. He unholstered his gun and she turned to steel. If they were walking into a trap, at least she’d be ready to fight.

Quietly and cautiously, they walked down the sidewalk in the fading light. A chill breeze picked up. She felt it through her steel skin but it didn’t cut to her core like she knew the onset of winter could. Despite believing with almost every fiber of her being that something was wrong, she felt a sudden stab of hope that her family hadn’t answered the phone because they were crowded into the kitchen, making hot chocolate.

They approached the cop cars and Jim cleared his throat. The innocuous sound should nevertheless have drawn the attention of the cops in the cruisers.

Neither one of them moved.

She moved toward the vehicle with the man smoking. Her gaze pierced the growing gloom and she frowned. His eyes were closed and the cigarette was jammed in his mouth, still smoldering.

“Fuck, Jim! Wilson’s out cold.”

When she turned, he had his arm inside the cop cruiser, his hand at the other man’s neck. “Anders is too. He still has a pulse, thank God. Shit, Kristen. You were right.”

He snatched the car’s radio and called for backup. “We have injured officers at the Hall residence and reason to believe this is a hostage situation. Requesting immediate backup. We want Drew and Butters here if you can.”

“I read you loud and clear, Wonderkid. Have shots been fired?”

“Not yet. The officers are unconscious but otherwise appear to be uninjured. We’ll go in.”

“That’s a negative, Wonderkid. Hansen wants you to wait for backup. Repeat. Do not enter the Hall residence without backup.”

“Are you saying that you want me to let the Steel Dragon go in alone?”

Kristen had already begun to approach the door. Her ears—sharper than they’d ever been when she’d believed herself to be simply human—could hear the angry protests of the dispatcher over the radio but the complaints fell on deaf ears. Jim followed her hurriedly and they moved silently across the lawn.

“Kristen, wait,” he whispered.

“In your dreams.”

“No, look.”

She glanced behind her, frustrated by the delay, but he had taken one of the unconscious police officers’ pistols and radio. After a moment’s hesitation, she accepted them. A gun was a tool every bit as dangerous in her hands as her steel skin was. She’d be foolish to not have one.

“We take this slow, Kristen. These guys didn’t kill those officers, even though that would have probably been the easier option. There’s a good chance your family is alive and unhurt.”

“Bullshit.”

“No. Think about it like a human, not a damn dragon. They’re concerned about their image or something or they aren’t paid to kill cops. Whatever it is, leaving those officers alive is better than killing them. If you bust in there and start trying to rip people in half, you might make these assholes panic. When people panic, they do stupid shit. Now, there’s gotta be a back door or something, right? Let’s get close and see if we can see anything.”

Tense with a mixture of fear and fury, she ground her teeth and glowered at him, but he made sense. So, instead of kicking the front door off its damn hinges like she wanted to do, they would sneak around the back. It wouldn’t take more than a minute anyway, otherwise, she probably wouldn’t have agreed to it.

Kristen moved in that direction but he put a hand on her shoulder. “You gonna be quiet like that?”

She understood that he was talking about her steel skin. If she tried to sneak with it, she’d undoubtedly snap branches and could even kick a chunk out of the concrete driveway if she wasn’t careful.

But she couldn’t go fully human either. If this was a trap—and she began to think it was—whoever was inside would be ready to hurt her. If she turned her steel skin off completely, she’d be in danger.

Clearly, a compromise was needed so she paused, concentrated on some of the lessons Stonequest had given her, and made her feet turn to flesh. She did the same with her hands. Changing them was simple enough but maintaining her body’s armored state was more difficult. Still, she had practiced and she managed to stabilize. Her core and head remained steel, while her hands and feet were normal.

Jim nodded and looked impressed, and they proceeded.

The small gate was closed—another good sign—and she opened it barely enough for them to squeeze through. Any more, and it would squeak.

They eased past her mom’s struggling azalea bushes, past her dad’s soot-stained barbecue grill, and up the four steps to the back door.

Despite their careful scrutiny, they still hadn’t seen a damn thing. All the window blinds were closed, and if anyone was in there, they kept their distance from the blinds.

Kristen put her ear to the door.

For a moment, she heard nothing but her dad spoke suddenly and, thank God, he sounded pissed off.

“Keep your fucking feet off the couch,” Frank Hall grouched. A wave of relief washed over her. That sounded like her dad bitching her brother out for disrespecting the rules of the house, another regular night at the Hall residence.

She leaned in and allowed herself a smile as she imagined the tableau within and waited for Brian to either say something about the couch being twenty years old or her mom to chastise Frank for swearing.

But that wasn’t what she heard.

“Please don’t hurt him. He didn’t mean to be disrespectful,” her mom said, her voice high and shrill with fear.

The dull, meaty thwack of someone being struck followed and fury blossomed inside her.

In a blink, her hands and feet transformed to steel. She leaned back, ready to smash the door down and become a wrecking ball of vengeance but again, a hand settled on her shoulder and she hesitated.

“Wait, Kristen. That was only one punch. They’re not roughing him up too bad.”

“Not too bad? Can you even hear yourself?”

“Maybe these assholes will tell us something we need to know. Give it ten seconds.”

Everything in her protested at any further delay, but ten seconds later, she had to acknowledge that the Wonderkid was indeed more experienced than her.

“We don’t want to hurt you people, got it?” stated the gruff voice of a stranger.

“We’re only here to keep you safe until we move you to a more secure location.” The second voice was higher-pitched and more wheedling. She wondered if there were more than only the two.

“Do you expect us to believe you’re here to keep us safe when you killed the cops out front?” Frank demanded, his voice thick. Kristen had a feeling he’d have a swollen lip from the blow. She vowed to do the same to every person in there.

“The cops are compromised, got it?” the voice that reminded her of a weasel said. “You can’t trust them anymore, but don’t worry, we didn’t kill them either. Now, I’d kindly appreciate it if all of us simply sat quietly while we wait for our associates to arrive. It shouldn’t be long now.”

Silence descended on the Hall residence.

Jim leaned closer to her ear. “There’s no reason to break your mom’s purple door. Is it locked?”

She tried the doorknob. It wasn’t.

“We go in together, on three. What’s the layout like?”

“The back door opens to the kitchen and the open floorplan connects it to the living room. From back here, there are two bedrooms and a bathroom to the right. It sounds like my dad and mom are in the living room. Brian’s probably there too. It’s not like he would be anywhere else. I hear at least two hostiles, but my guess is there are more. If we’re lucky, they’ll have their backs to us.

“That it? Is there anywhere to hide?” he asked.

“There is a tiny pantry in the kitchen but I don’t think anyone’s gonna hide in there. It’d be damn tight. Plus, it sounds like they’re waiting for a pickup or something and don’t expect me at all.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. What?”

“I thought the Steel Dragon would’ve come from nicer digs than a two-bedroom.”

“Later, Wonderkid. Right now, I have skulls to crack.”

“Right. We go in. You take point, obviously. If there’s someone in the kitchen, ignore them and target whoever is on your parents. I’ll cover you and take out anyone you blow past.”

“All right. Are you ready?”

Jim nodded.

“Good. Here we go, in three. One… two…three.”

She opened the door and they slipped inside.

Chapter Six

Trevor Styx wasn’t a bad guy. He’d merely made a few bad decisions.

That was practically one of the definitions of what it meant to grow up poor in the inner city of any major American metropolis. Not that he was angry or bitter. It was simply that he recognized there were many factors that had led him here, not all of which were within his control.

For example, if he had not tried to break into the same house as a group of criminals, he would never have met his current crew. It was an odd coincidence and at the time, one that he had thought would be fatal. The criminals had turned out to not be police, so that was something.

Although they had known so much more than he did. In retrospect, that alone should have been enough to clue him in to the stakes of the runs they went on.

For example, that house they’d all broken into at the same time—mansion was really a better word—wasn’t merely a rich asshole’s summer home but the residence of a bonafide dragon.

He hadn’t known that. In fact, he hadn’t had any idea, but the other three goons were quick to explain the situation once they’d given him a small but painful makeover. They had known what the place was and even known the name of the dragon—Ironclaw or some shit. While he had been after the silverware and maybe jewelry or antique coins, the other goons had known about the dragon’s secret stash.

They’d befriended him once he’d made it quite clear that he wasn’t working with the dragon who lived in the house. That hadn’t been difficult for him as he’d always been good with words. In fact, words were about the only thing he was good with.

The thugs had taken him under their proverbial dragon’s wing then and they’d all worked their way into the safe to find a collection of the weirdest shit he had ever seen.

Claws, teeth, scales—it was like someone had taken the dragon’s bathroom trashcan and stashed it under lock and key. His new teammates had taken all of it but had been particularly excited about a finger—an honest to God finger—that had seemed to be made of cast iron.

He had simply tried not to think too hard about what was clearly seriously weird shit.

When they’d made their escape and returned to their getaway van, he accepted their invitation for a ride. His getaway plan had been the city bus, so everything about the situation seemed an improvement to him.

How wrong he’d been.

They’d gone to meet their boss on the top floor of a fancy hotel.

At first, Trevor had thought that even this was a stroke of good luck. Their boss had been smoking hot with a great fucking body all decked out in form-fitting black and technical gear. Black hair hung in front of one eye and she wore dark-red lipstick.

She’d beckoned for him to come closer in a voice as scratchy as Bob Dylan’s. That appealed to him as well.

He’d told her what had happened and about how they’d robbed the same place. Ha-ha. What a great coincidence and all that.

The woman had smiled demurely and Trevor had almost lost it. There he was, meeting a criminal mastermind, and she liked him!

She invited him out to the balcony and Trevor remembered fantasies playing through his mind. Maybe this woman needed a proper man, a man gifted in all things tongue for her team. Maybe she’d take him on as henchman lover and put him in charge of these other goons and maybe in charge of her finances. He was sure he could have negotiated her a better deal on the hotel room.

His first inkling of how royally fucked he was came when he saw what she’d left on the balcony. It was an entire damn armory—more weapons and more varieties than he’d ever seen.

Well, that wasn’t quite true.

It was mostly rifles and the kind of scopes you’d need to see a moth’s asshole from a mile off. She picked one of them up, handed it to him, and told him to find someone who was harming the city.

Trevor had put his eye to the scope and tried not to shake while he looked through the lens. Obviously, this woman had some kind of moral code that was somewhat in line with his. She robbed mansions—or the mansions of dragons anyway—and seemed to think guns were a useful tool. What did that mean, though? Someone who was hurting the city?

Warily, he scanned the ground far below while he tried to decide what counted as harm. A junkie was hidden in a back alley. Detroit had been through one hell of a period of growth lately but there were still junkies. Every city had junkies but now, they stuck to the back alleys.

But, as worthless as the guy was, he wasn’t harming the city. He barely took up any space and didn’t bother anyone. The dude looked so tweaked-out he wasn’t even asking for change. His alleyway probably smelled like piss, but that wasn’t a punishable offense.

His search continued.

For a moment, he settled on a family. He loved his mom, God rest her soul. Obviously, he didn’t want to do anything to that one.

A firetruck drove past and he moved on.

Movement caught his attention and he paused. A police officer stepped out of a bank, talking animatedly with someone. He watched the conversation and a frown gathered on his face.

He couldn’t hear the words, of course, but the expression made it clear to him what was going on. The cop was getting something from the banker, something that made him exceedingly happy. He pumped the other man’s hand and grinned like he’d busted into someone’s house and found a stash of emeralds.

The banker didn’t look any more innocent. He nodded knowingly and added encouragement of some kind every now and then. Obviously, the two were in cahoots.

“In front of the bank. You have a dirty cop and a corrupt banker.”

The woman took the rifle from him and aimed it at them. That was his first inkling that perhaps something was wrong. She wore gloves and seemed far more adept at handling the weapon than he was. He’d assumed she’d given him the weapon so he could use the scope, but now… Well, if something happened, his prints would be on it, not hers.

“How do you know the police officer is harming the city?” the woman had asked and annunciated each word carefully. She had a faint trace of an accent—something eastern European maybe? He didn’t know, but the accent plus the figure plus the dark lipstick made him want to please her.

“Have you ever talked to a banker? They don’t help anyone who actually needs it and are only interested in their damn shareholders. Do you know what shareholders do for this country? Nothing. Nothing at all. If he’s working with a cop, that cop must be looking the other way for something—some sick fucking things bankers do in their back corners. Have you ever heard about those sex-rings politicians and their investors run? Apparently, little children aren’t beyond their preferences. I’ll bet that cop is delivering one or letting one slip through. Something horrible.”

She nodded at his explanation and he smiled inwardly. He’d always been good with words and it seemed like she was as powerless to resist his charms as anyone else.

“I trust your judgment,” she had said, and his heart had quickened. No one trusted him, not even his own sister. That was simply not a word used to describe Trevor Styx. Some people listened and even went along with him temporarily, but trust wasn’t the word they used.

“Do you trust mine?”

“Your judgment?” he had asked. “Sure.”

The woman fired the rifle as the cop’s car drove into an intersection. They were so damn far away it actually took a moment for the bullet to strike. When it did, he breathed a sigh of relief. She’d missed. Thank fucking God, she’d missed. She’d hit the front tire instead of drilling a hole in the windshield.

His relief faded when the cop’s car had swerved because its front tire was flat and drove in front of a bus going maybe forty miles an hour.

He saw the collision and the way the little green sedan had crumpled like a beer can at a party under a bridge. The man was dead. He had no doubt about that. Jesus Christ himself would have had to be seated in the passenger seat for someone to survive something like that.

“You have my trust, Trevor. This city is a better place because of your judgment.”

“My judgment? I didn’t tell you to kill the guy!”

“And I didn’t. You did.” She thrust the rifle into his hands.

He’d accepted it instead of letting it clatter to the floor. That might have been what he regretted the most. Why hadn’t he simply run out at that moment?

“But I didn’t know you would kill him.”

“That’s no longer relevant, Trevor. What matters is that I trusted you and now, you are in my trust.”

The conversation had never really gone in his favor after that. Apparently, the woman had brought the crew into town and—lucky Trevor—they were working on a target on the police force.

The robbery where they’d found him had only been to obtain those weird dragon pieces and trade them for something. The stakes of this relationship had terrified Trevor. He’d thought he was working with a team of thieves so professional that they regularly robbed dragons.

It turned out that was their first attempt to rob anything larger than a pawn shop, and that their boss—the woman in black—normally didn’t conduct that kind of business either. She’d only accepted the gig because the contact had known the dragon who owned the mansion would be busy that night.

To make it all worse, she had explained that their mission was to kill the Steel Dragon herself. Apparently, the robbery that had brought him onto the team had merely been a part of that puzzle.

This had scared the shit out of him, but when he’d found it wasn’t simply a dirty cop that this assassin was targeting but the goddamned Steel Dragon, what could he have done? Quit?

The worst part was that she was always watching. Every mission they went on, there’d be some crazy fucking moment where a bullet would come out of nowhere and shoot the lock of a door, or where a camera would burst into scrap immediately before it turned to look at him.

He had no doubt that if he’d tried to flee, there’d be a bullet in his brain to stop him.

Which made his current situation all the more troubling.

The goons—as he liked to think of his quiet, surly associates—had disabled the two cops in their cars before he even knew what the hell was going on.

In the next moment, they were inside, beating the shit out of some fat man and his fat kid. The mom had screamed at them to not damage the carpet with their blood and that her husband was an ex-cop and their little crew was royally fucked.

Trevor didn’t particularly like hitting women. He understood that some men got a real kick out of getting a mouthy bitch to shut up, but he didn’t fault women for talking. After all, he was chatty himself. But damn, had it felt good to get her to shut up with the back of his hand.

After barely a minute, they had the three fat fucks subdued and more or less quiet on the couch. Everything had seemed to be fine but now, they were there waiting. That was what bothered him the most about the whole damn operation. This was supposed to be simple. Go in, subdue the family—he hadn’t known about the cops, but after his few weeks with the goons, he found most of them were rarely told the whole story—and wait for pick-up.

But it had been more than five minutes. That was a long time to wait with cops out front who could wake up at any moment.

One of the thugs had plopped down next to the fat kid’s fat dad. He wasn’t a kid really but a nineteen-year-old, privileged piece of shit. He told himself he didn’t give a shit about some fatso who lived with his parents, had a roof over his head, and was well fed. That was more than many people had.

Everything had been fine until the idiot—Martin was his name—had put his feet on the couch.

“Keep your fucking feet off the couch!” the fat man had complained like he had any fucking right to talk.

Martin had looked at him once. He stood, dusted the dirt off the couch, then kneed the fat man so hard in the crotch that Trevor had actually seen his eyes bug out like a cartoon.

“Please don’t hurt him! He didn’t mean to be disrespectful,” the woman had whined.

“We don’t want to hurt you people, got it?” one of the other goons had told the woman but that hadn’t calmed her. She looked around the room, no doubt for a weapon or a phone or something to change her situation. Trevor had recognized the look in her eyes—a mixture of desperation and resolution.

It wasn’t a good look for an old bitch who was supposed to sit quietly on her couch.

“We’re only here to keep you safe until we move you to a more secure location,” he said.

Those were their mission parameters, after all. He had been glad to take this mission at first. The orders hadn’t come from the woman in black but another man—well, not a man but a dragon. He was bigger and more obviously intimidating than the assassin and had to be her partner or something. The goons had listened to him when he’d given them orders, so he assumed they knew who he was. It had been nice to get out and do something. Even if it was kidnapping, it was better than being bored.

“Do you expect us to believe you’re here to keep us safe when you killed the cops out front?” the fat man said, his voice both weak from being kneed in the crotch and a little thick from his bruised face.

“The cops are compromised, got it?” Trevor explained and walked toward the kitchen to get himself a beer or a pop. “You can’t trust them anymore, but don’t worry. We didn’t kill them, either. Now, I’d kindly appreciate it if all of us simply sit quietly while we wait for our associates to arrive. It shouldn’t be long now.”

What happened next would be the moment that defined his life. He’d end up describing it more often than any other sequence of events, and yet he’d never quite believe it.

The first thing he noticed was that the doorknob turned extremely slowly.

He took a few steps back and moved past one of the goons who was in the kitchen. It was a little cowardly but he had no loyalty to these guys and besides, he was the mouth, not the muscle. He didn’t need to be closest to the door.

Still, he thought that perhaps he should warn them and was about to say something when the door swung open.

“You’re fucked now!” the fat kid had shouted and all three of the goons turned toward him instead of the open door.

Trevor alone saw the silver blur enter the house, race past the man getting a beer from the fridge, and slam its palm into Trevor’s chest hard enough to catapult him over the dining room table.

A rapid gunshot felled the man in the kitchen. Before he’d even landed, a cop strode in through the open back door. The motherfucker had killed a man just like that, more or less in cold blood.

Dammit, he hated cops.

But the silver blur was what held his attention. It raced into the living room, caught the third goon—his name was Dorson—and lifted him into the air.

He saw then that it wasn’t a blur but a woman.

She had stopped moving at that incredible speed to pick Dorson up. The woman had steel skin and obviously possessed superhuman strength. She lifted the man up and hurled him through the window of the living room with such force that when his head struck the window frame, the wood simply cracked.

This wasn’t merely any woman but the damn Steel Dragon.

Trevor sat, raised his hands in the air, and spread his fingers wide. “I’m unarmed!” he shouted.

Martin had a totally different tactic. Rather than surrender, he yanked the fat kid to his feet and put a gun to his head.

“I know you’re fast but you’re not that fast,” he said to the Steel Dragon and the whole room froze.

“Let him go,” her partner said, a black guy with a thin mustache.

“Fat fucking chance,” the thug responded, tightened his grasp on the boy’s neck, and pressed the gun more firmly against his temple.

“We’ll tell you everything,” Trevor said. “Names, places, you name it. But don’t kill us! Please. No one was supposed to get hurt. We didn’t even kill the cops out there.”

“Look at my father’s face,” the Steel Dragon bellowed. “Look what you’ve done to him.”

Terror swamped him. Looking into her eyes was like looking into hell itself. There was nothing there but fire and fury and rage and he felt his bladder let loose. Still, he continued to talk. “That wasn’t us! Honest! That was Dorson, that asshole you threw out the window. Please, ma’am, I’m telling the truth. We were supposed to pick these folks up and get them somewhere safe. I swear it.”

“That’s kidnapping,” the black cop said.

“You two need to step the fuck into the back yard if you want this guy to live,” Martin said and still held Brian tightly.

“Everyone needs to calm down,” Trevor shouted. His hands were still raised. The black cop had his gun aimed at his chest now, while the Steel Dragon stared balefully at Martin and his hostage.

“He’s right, Kristen. Now’s not the time to do anything rash.”

“Listen to the fucking cop,” Trevor said.

She looked once at Trevor, disdain barely hidden behind her silver features, then drew her gun and put it on the floor. Unlike her clothes, the weapon wasn’t silver. He assumed that meant it still worked.

“Look. We don’t want anyone else to get hurt,” she said and raised her own hands in the air. “We want to help you guys. It sounds like someone set you two up, right?”

“Damn right,” he responded quickly. “We were supposed to be picked up by the boss. We thought the family wanted to get away from the cops. Seriously. This is all a misunderstanding. We don’t want your family hurt any more than you do.” One of his gifts was that he could lie as easily as he could tell the truth. He’d even passed polygraph tests. Most people felt something when they lied, but not him. Statements were categorized not into truth and fiction but into things he could say that would help him and things that wouldn’t.

“Stop talking.” The black cop gestured with the pistol still aimed at his chest and he nodded. He’d said his piece and hopefully, it would be enough.

Suddenly, he felt like it would be okay. A wave of relief washed over Trevor. His worry seemed to slowly seep away.

“We don’t know what’s going on here, but we really don’t want anyone else to get hurt—not our people and not your people,” the Steel Dragon said to Martin and took a step toward him.

“Bullshit,” Martin said, although his voice lacked conviction.

“It’s true, really,” she said in a soothing tone. “We know you two didn’t mastermind this whole thing. We have questions and you have answers. Let’s work out something mutually beneficial. Like you said, you haven’t killed anyone, so there are no charges that can’t be worked out through a plea deal. Let’s all relax and talk through this.”

To Trevor’s great surprise, the other man nodded at this—hesitantly at first but then with more feeling. He hoped the goon felt the great sense of relief and calm that he did and that these cops weren’t there to hurt them, but to protect them. They wanted to know the truth, but that was only fair. He knew precious little about this whole operation, and he could empathize because he too wanted to know more about what was going on. Maybe he really could help the police.

“So take the gun away from Brian’s head, drop it on the floor, and we’ll all be fine.”

Martin hesitated and for a moment, Trevor thought he saw the man battling the sense of calm. Finally, he relented and lowered his weapon.

The fat kid exhaled and fainted. His captor managed to slow his descent so he didn’t crack his head on the coffee table. That, Trevor decided, was how he would describe the whole tableau if he ever stood in front of a jury. As soon as Trevor made that decision, his brain believed it to be the truth.

“We have more police coming, so we need to put you two in cuffs. It’s for your own good. We don’t want anyone to see those cops you hurt out there and get the wrong idea.”

“Yes, officer. Thank you, officer.” Trevor stuck his wrists out to the black cop. The man pulled him to his feet and cuffed his wrists behind his back. Even that felt strangely soothing to him. He felt like the chance for violence had passed. It was a huge relief. “We didn’t hurt those police, by the way. It was Dorson—that’s the guy you threw out the window—and Hector. That’s the guy who you, uh…that’s the guy in the kitchen.” He only wanted to be helpful. Martin didn’t need to take the fall for that. It had merely been orders.

“You too,” Kristen said to the goon, who nodded and let her cuff him.

Chapter Seven

The smell of strong coffee and nervous sweat permeated the station. Kristen didn’t think she’d ever seen so many officers jammed into the building before. There was no way they could all fit in the lounge so instead, they milled around the desks, argued about who the shooter could have been and what kind of monster would go after a cop’s family, and generally gave Frank Hall one hell of a hard time.

She wondered if most families taken into protective custody felt the way her dad probably did. He’d been a cop for thirty years, and although he’d never made SWAT, he still knew a number of the officers there. Despite the fact that he’d been targeted in his own home, he acted like he owned the place, glad-handed people, and asked about their folks. Looking at him, it was easy to forget that he’d almost been kidnapped by an unknown enemy less than an hour before.

The rest of the family dealt with their stress in more predictable ways. Her mom nursed a cup of coffee despite the later hour and stared into the middle distance. Brian zoned into a game on his phone—typical behavior, but she’d have to talk to him later.

Captain Hansen came out of her office, climbed onto a desk, and waited for the room to quiet. It didn’t take very long. “All right, so first thing’s first—Officer Hall and Officer Washington, the force owes you a debt of gratitude. You saved the lives of two officers. Because of you, they get to go home to see their families tonight. Plus, I guess we’re happy you saved the retired one. Some of us would’ve been sad to see him go.”

The woman nodded at Frank as the crowd laughed and broke into applause and cheers. She waited for them to quiet before she continued. “Here’s what I can tell you. Three hours ago, four hostiles tried to take our dragon’s family hostage. She didn’t let them.”

More cheers followed.

“Kristen Hall and Jim Washington called into the station, confirmed orders, and went to Hall’s residence—at least that’s the story if any reporters come around. They apprehended three of the four hostiles. One was injured but seems to be stable, so good job there.”

“The one Hall chucked out the window got away?” the Wonderkid asked.

“That’s right. Because of all this, the Halls will be under our watch for a while. We obviously can’t have the Steel Dragon hovering around them while this sniper is hunting her. Which brings me to my next point. Kristen Hall, you’re on office duty until this is all resolved.”

The cheers and humor were sucked out of the room as if by a giant vacuum.

“What? But that’s ridiculous!” Kristen protested.

“What it is, is an order. And I’m telling the room so everyone understands that if you take Hall out, you risk your own life and your job. If she gets in a cruiser, you answer to me.”

“This is bullshit.” She was furious. A few other officers—those nearest her—took up her chant.

“If you have a problem, see me in my office. In fact, that’s an order. You, Wonderkid, and Drew—my office. Now. Everyone else, get back to work.”

A half-hearted cheer went up and was quickly replaced with grumbles about paperwork.

In the office, she quickly found that not everyone was as forgiving as the captain had seemed to be.

Drew wasn’t normally one to show much emotion, but he showed it now. He paced like a wolf stuck behind a chain-link fence.

“Hey…Drew,” she began haltingly.

“For the record, I recommended full disciplinary action against you two. The captain might not want to put a smudge on the Steel Dragon’s record, but I disagree. Running off was reckless, stupid, and beyond dangerous.”

“Yeah, but if we didn’t do it, Hall’s family would be dead,” Jim replied.

That only earned a growl from the other man along with a reluctant nod. “I know. And really, I don’t know what two regular cops could have done against four armed thugs. It’s only… Don’t you see you’re being manipulated?”

“And what is my alternative?” She was on her feet now. “Let my family be taken prisoner?”

“Obviously not.” Captain Hansen sat at her desk behind steepled fingers. “We won’t dissect your actions, but we also won’t let it happen again. This sniper is hunting you, Kristen. From here on out, you need to be a regular cop.”

“A regular person won’t be able to stop this killer.”

“Kristen, look, I understand that protecting the people you love is a huge part of who you are.” The anger had left Drew’s voice and been replaced by a pleading tone that Kristen didn’t quite know what to do with. “Until now, I’ve seen it as a huge strength.”

Jim laughed. “I hear that. Going into a firefight knowing the Steel Dragon has your back is a great feeling.”

The team leader smiled for half a second before his frown returned. “Not least of all because we know you’d do anything to protect us, but that’s the problem.”

“How is protecting my friends and family a problem?” she asked.

“Because this enemy is obviously smart and will try to turn your strengths into weaknesses,” Captain Hansen said. “For all we know, that shot was aimed at your arm to get you to the hospital instead of kill you so they’d be able to snatch your family.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little paranoid?” Jim raised an eyebrow.

“No, I don’t, Wonderkid. I really don’t. In fact, I think the smartest thing we can do is be as paranoid as possible. A piece of evidence has already gone missing, which is troubling in itself. I think the safest thing we can do is get Kristen out of here completely. I want you to check into a hospital in the suburbs until that shoulder is healed.”

“Respectfully, ma’am, that won’t be necessary,” Kristen said and chose not to acknowledge the dragon-scale bullet in her pocket.

“It’s well within my power to put you on medical leave.”

“Even if I’m unhurt?” She yanked the bandage off her shoulder.

The two men’s gasps were yet another reminder that she was no longer human.

“Don’t be ridiculous Hall. It’s been less than twenty-four…” Captain Hansen trailed off, her mouth agape.

“The wound… It’s already closed?” Drew was incredulous.

Kristen nodded. “It’s still stiff but it won’t be by tomorrow morning.”

The captain recovered first. “That changes nothing. There have been multiple attacks against you and your family. We need to discover how they’re connected before you or your family are hurt again.”

“Do we know anything about the kidnappers yet?” Jim asked.

Drew nodded. “They are a small ‘thug for hire’ team. We’ve seen them before and think about half of them are still at large, but we have people looking for them. We’ll catch them.”

“The shooter is another matter,” Captain Hansen stated.

“Did you find any clues in his nest?” Jim asked.

The team leader responded first. “We did, but you’re not gonna like it. For one thing, those shots were fired from about two thousand, six hundred meters away.”

The Wonderkid whistled at the distance. “Damn.”

“Most snipers are listed with a maximum of one thousand, eight hundred to two thousand meters. Two-six is… Are you sure?” she asked.

“Positive,” Drew confirmed. “And I didn’t realize you were a gun-head.”

“I’m not, but my brother plays a ton of video games. He can tell you the specs on almost any weapon ever made, whether or not you ask him. But even in games, you can’t make those kinds of shots.”

“Our shooter can. She has the chops.” Captain Hansen flexed her jaw.

“Wait, we know who the shooter is? That’s good!” A desire for vengeance flared inside her. She saw the same emotion pass over everyone else’s face and immediately reminded herself that she really had to get that under control.

“It’s really not.” The woman dug in her desk and withdrew a shiny silver half-circle about the size of a quarter. “She left her calling card.” She tossed it to Kristen.

She caught it and turned it over in her hand. “It’s…a dragon scale?”

Drew shook his head. “No, only a little silver made to look like one.”

“The assassin’s name is Death. Most of our sources say it’s a ‘she,’ but we really don’t know for sure. This scale has been found at multiple crime scenes across the world. Almost any time a dragon has been shot and killed in the last twenty years, one of these silver scales is there.”

“And no one’s ever caught her?” She was amazed that such a tiny, beautiful thing could symbolize murder on a global scale.

“No one’s really tried.” The captain sighed. “Killing dragons is out of human jurisdiction the world over. You know how they are and how they hate us to pry into their lives. All we know is that Death has an impressive kill list. If the dragons know more, they’re not telling us.”

At that moment, the door to the office opened and Stonequest entered.

He glanced at the scale in her hand, then at her. “So, it is Death.” He didn’t look any more pleased to know who the shooter was than the captain was.

“Tell us you’ve been holding out on the intel,” Drew said and a weak grin slid onto his face.

Stonequest shook his head and crushed any hope that might have built. “All we know is that when Death chooses a target, she doesn’t stop until she succeeds. She’s damn resourceful and beyond dangerous. Kristen, this means your training can’t be at your pace anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we need you to have every possible dragon ability available to you. If Death is hunting you, she no doubt knows what you can and can’t do. You’ve still never taken your dragon form. I have no doubt that she knows this and is operating around it. We need to unlock your abilities if you’re going to live through this. We’ve never had a steel dragon before. This might be the opportunity we’ve waited for.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re coming with me.”

He nodded at Captain Hansen and Drew who both nodded to acknowledge Dragon SWAT’s preeminence over human affairs.

“What about my family?” she asked.

“We’ll keep them safe—change hotels, armed guards in their rooms, the works,” the captain assured her.

“That might not be enough,” Kristen protested.

“With respect, if you can’t activate more of your abilities, I know for a fact there’s nothing these humans can do to keep you safe.”

She glared at the other dragon but she followed him out of the office and into the night.

Her logical assumption was that they’d get into a car or something because Stonequest took her to the top of the parking garage. Once there, however, he approached the edge and turned to her.

“We’re practicing here?” she asked.

“No, but it’s easier to start a flight from up high.” No sooner had Stonequest finished speaking than he transformed. First, his skin seemed to flake away to reveal stone beneath but the flaking continued. More and more thin fragments of stone and dust fell off him as he doubled in size, then doubled again and again. Wings burst from his back like bones made of lava rock. A tail erupted from his spine to spray more stone and dust across the roof. A membrane, clear as crystal, spread between the bones of his wings and he flapped them once. Dust and debris blew across the top of the parking garage but in a moment, it was all gone, vanished to wherever it had come from.

“I really need to learn how to do that.” Her mouth was agape.

“Some dragons learn by simply leaping from a building and activating their powers in a moment of need.”

Her expression wary, she peered over the edge. The parking garage was high but not that high. “I think I could survive that landing in my steel form.”

Stonequest sighed, a truly odd thing to see a dragon do. “This would be easier if you could transform too,” he grumbled. “But until then, climb aboard and hold on tight.”

The ride out of the city was a heady, surreal experience. Despite apparently being made of rock, he flew gracefully and barely flapped his wings as he reacted effortlessly to the changes in the cold air.

Kristen longed to be able to do it as well, but not enough to jump from his back and test his theory about necessity being a good teacher.

They flew for close to an hour, and by the time they reached their destination, she was exhausted.

It was a mansion of some kind. Stonequest said something about “our finest palatial manor,” before he took her to a bed and told he’d fetch her at dawn.

She nodded and was asleep the moment her head touched the pillow.

Chapter Eight

Kristen awoke and stared in bemusement at a beautiful ceiling. It was an odd sensation because prior to this moment, she hadn’t ever thought that ceilings could be beautiful. In her experience, they either came in white with little popcorn-like things on them or maybe dingy tiles like in an elementary school. The roof above her bed was auburn with gold lace painted in a delicate pattern. She rubbed her eyes and assumed she was having a beautiful but boring dream, but the ceiling persisted.

A little more awake, she pushed up and favored her left arm but quickly discovered she didn’t need to. She seemed to be fully healed. The room itself was as beautiful as the ceiling above it. Two antique chairs and a roll-top desk could only ever be described as presidential.

She got out of bed and discovered a pile of neatly folded clothes on one of the chairs. It appeared to be some kind of training outfit much like something used for martial arts.

Fresh clothes made her think of a shower. The thought had no sooner manifested than a knock came at the door. She answered it.

“Would you like a hot bath, ma’am?” asked a short-statured woman wearing black and white and a headscarf that completely eclipsed her hair.

“Uh, yes, please? But…um, where is Stonequest, and—not to be rude—but who the hell are you?”

“Stonequest is meeting some of his allies. He told me to send you to him when you were clean and fed.” There seemed to be something more that the woman wanted to say, though. She wondered if it was something Stonequest had said about a stinky human riding his dragon form. Before she could ask, the woman cleared her throat. “My name is Farah. I am a housekeeper at the Dragon Retreat. I can take you to the baths and help you wash your hair.”

Struggling to take it all in, she simply nodded and followed the woman to the most elaborate bathroom she had ever seen. Truly, after seeing the space, she didn’t think she’d ever actually been in a bathroom before. Her dad’s preference for the word ‘shitter’ seemed a better description for all the tiny rooms with toilets that she had previously thought of as bathrooms.

This room was something else.

Every inch of it boasted tile the shade of eggshell with little blue, pink, and green flowers painted into the tiles. Sinks and showers were positioned around the room, but what held her attention most was the massive pool in the center.

It was a circle perhaps ten feet in diameter with three gargoyles spaced around it. Steaming water bubbled from the throat of one and two of the most beautiful women she had ever seen were seated in the water.

One of them lounged against the wall, her breasts above the water and her eyes closed as another woman in a headscarf massaged shampoo into her scalp.

The other woman’s hair was wrapped in a towel, and her eyes shot daggers at the newcomer.

“Your clothes, Lady Steel?” Farah said.

She hesitated for only a moment before she stripped down. While she might be the new kid in town, she wouldn’t let this woman—a dragon, no doubt—intimidate her.

Farah led her to a shower where she washed off the grime that came from being an officer for SWAT. Once her skin was a well-scrubbed pink, she returned to the bath.

As she settled into the steaming water, knots of tension that had been in muscles for months melted away.

While her helper washed her hair—a truly decadent experience—one of the dragon women continued to stare at her. The moment might have been perfect if not for her constant sneer. She was about to say something to her, but the woman spoke first.

“So, you’re the steel bitch, huh?”

“Excuse me?” she said, shocked at the imperiousness of this other woman.

“We all know who you are. You’ve plastered your pretty red hair all over the television, haven’t you?”

“That wasn’t my idea—”

“You haven’t shied away from the camera either. Know this, steel bitch. You’re not a dragon. You may do the little trick with your metal skin, but for all we know, you’re merely a dragonling whose egg should have been cracked. Until you can transform, you won’t be anything more than a curiosity.”

Before she could respond, the woman stood and the water wicked away from her body. It wrung itself from her hair, pushed itself down her naked body, and formed in waves where it held and waited to crest against her legs.

“How did you—” Kristen began.

“You’re not the only one of us with unusual abilities. There are mages who can do little parlor tricks like yours. Do yourself a favor and walk home before you waste more of Stonequest’s time.”

With that, she stepped from her side of the pool and the water surged to fill the void she had created with her abilities. A servant brought her a garment much like a karate gi and similar to the one Kristen had found in her room.

“I apologize for Lady Aqua,” Farah said and rinsed her hair. “She has not been kind to a new dragon for centuries, but she will come around when she sees what you are capable of.”

“There’s no point in delaying the training, then.”

“Yes, my lady.”

She stepped from the bath and Farah fetched her a towel. Once dry, she put on the gi and was relieved that it fit well but was still loose enough to allow her a full range of motion. It made a perfect training outfit, really.

From there, she was led to a dining room with the largest spread of breakfast she had ever seen. Every kind of fruit she knew was on offer, plus a few others that had to have been imported from well south of Michigan’s border. There were breads of every kind, bacon, sausage, and ham, and a chef would cook eggs to order, omelets or otherwise.

Kristen noticed with growing delight that everyone in the dining room ate with the gusto of a Hall. Despite the men having chiseled arms devoid of body fat and the women all being narrow-waisted, they ate like the buffet might run out of food at any moment. This was a piece of dragon culture that she could participate in.

Her enthusiasm returned and she attacked the breakfast buffet without delay. She ate six pieces of avocado toast, a four-egg omelet crammed with sausage and olives and topped with an absurd amount of crème fraiche and more bacon than she could count. Between it all, she tried the various fruits and savored the perfect texture of each one. All in all, it was the best breakfast she could remember eating. Better even than the platter of breakfast tacos she had once had when she’d visited Austin, Texas, with her family.

While she ate, the dragons ignored her and she did the same. She hoped that outside of the bathroom, there would be some sense of decorum and the dragons seemed to respect this.

Finally sated, she pushed her chair back and belched. That drew a look of disfavor from the other dragons, but she didn’t care.

“Lady Steel, if you’re ready?” Farah said and startled her as she hadn’t seen her return. “Stonequest is waiting for you.”

“Oh, right, sorry! I thought with the bath and the meal that I’d have more time.”

“His orders were to see that you were bathed and fed. If you’re satisfied on both counts, I am to bring you to him.” There was a tinge of fear in the woman’s voice. Kristen didn’t like it but wondered if that was the price of working for beings who could eat a human as easily as they could a pile of bacon.

“Let’s not keep him waiting.” She pushed herself from the table. While she didn’t think that Stonequest would punish Farah—he seemed more interested in the welfare of human beings than most dragons—he didn’t run this place either. She would feel horrible if the woman were punished because she had taken her time to nurse a cup of coffee.

They moved quickly through the hallways of the manor and past oil paintings and marble sculptures. Many of them were of humans—or at least dragons in human form—but a few of the paintings were of dragons in front of castles or on fields of battle. Like everything else there, the collection was beyond impressive.

Her guide led her to a huge hallway. This one had marble floors instead of carpet and seemed to be the entryway for the residence. Honestly, she didn’t have the vocabulary to describe it. The room was as large as a ballroom, with curved staircases that led to the upper floors. A grand entryway? A dancing hall? Whatever it was, it was beautiful, but she didn’t have much time to appreciate it as Farah led her between the staircases and out the back door.

Outside, the grounds were as beautiful and well-maintained as the palace itself. Perfectly trimmed grass was interrupted only by beds of flowers in bloom despite the cold weather. Gazebos dotted the landscape to provide shade for quiet conversations. On a hill toward the back of the grounds stood a pillared structure that looked like it belonged in ancient Greece, not outside Detroit. Between the mini-Parthenon and the palace lay a huge rectangle of sand.

Within it, dragons sparred in both dragon and human form with weapons both ancient and modern. She saw swords, crossbows, and guns. They used all of it on each other, seemingly without fear. It made SWAT’s gym and shooting range look like it was made for preschoolers.

“Farewell, Lady Steel,” Farah said as she scuttled back to the palace.

“Thank you!” Kristen yelled at her retreating back, which seemed to draw the ire of a few dragons who’d strolled quietly across the immaculate grounds.

“Kristen! It’s about time.” Stonequest jogged toward her from the sandy rectangle. A servant tossed him a towel and he dried off before he pulled a shirt on. A good thing too, she decided, as he looked like his human body was chiseled from marble by a hand as skilled as the ones that made the sculptures inside the manor. He was less distracting this way.

“Morning, Stonequest. Sorry for being late.”

“It’s fine. We have a long day ahead of us, so I wanted you to be fed. Are you good to skip lunch?”

She nodded before she knew what she was doing. That possibly explained why the dragons had eaten so much. Halls didn’t skip lunch.

“Good. Are you enjoying it here?” he asked and gestured for her to walk with him.

“Uh…mostly.”

“Mostly? Most of us are amazed the first time we come to the Dragon Retreat. It’s hard to get the European style right in this country.”

“The place is great, seriously, but everyone is a little…cold?”

He grimaced. “Try not to worry about them. They’ll all change their tune once you have your wings.”

“Do you really think you can teach me how to transform into a dragon?”

“You already are a dragon and have all the hallmarks of a dragon in human form. We merely need that last piece. You’ve made great progress so far. I’m sure you can do it with a teacher who actually wants to unlock your abilities.”

“I hope it doesn’t take long. That sniper is still at large. Did you hear that some thugs targeted my family as well?”

Stonequest nodded, his grin gone. “I did, yes. Which is all the more reason to train, and train hard. I understand how…fragile human families can be.”

Kristen didn’t really know what to say to that, so she merely nodded.

“I did have some questions about what happened that night, though. Can you tell me your version of events? The police report said the thug who had a gun to your brother’s head surrendered. Is that true?”

“It is.” She told him the whole story, careful to include all the details of her dragon abilities—how she could transform only parts of her body into steel if she wanted to, her increased speed and strength, and her night vision. But he was most interested in how she’d disarmed the man with the gun.

“It sounds like you activated your aura on that guy.”

She nodded. “I wondered if that was what happened. Shadowstorm talked often about sensing auras, so I’ve done some study there, but I’m still not really sure how to control it directly. I think there have been a few times when I’ve made people angry because I’m angry or made them agree with me, but well… It’s not always pretty.”

“Our aura is one of our most powerful abilities, especially as it relates primarily to humans. It doesn’t take a ton of control to be able to shield yourself from other dragons, so we won’t focus on that too much, but its effects on other species can be huge.”

“Are you saying that humans are other species?” she asked and while she tried not to sound confrontational, she failed dismally.

Stonequest shrugged awkwardly. “We’re different but that’s not what I meant. Our aura can do far more than make an angry mob or quell one. Watch.”

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and raised both arms. She felt something emanate from him, but it wasn’t an emotion exactly, more like an…interest? It was hard to describe.

She understood that she couldn’t make sense of it when a bird landed on his finger. It was a gorgeous little thing, entirely red with a thick orange beak, black mask, and a little tuft of feathers at the top of its head.

“Wow! Is that a robin?” she asked.

“What? No!” The look of disdain on his face was palpable. “This is a northern cardinal. Seriously? You thought this was a robin? Robins are the state bird of Michigan and have a puffy red breast, a yellow bill and—”

“Is learning about birds an important part of my training?”

“No. It’s only—you’re right. Never mind. This is a cardinal. A male. I’m using my aura to make him think of me as a friend. If I tweak it only a little…”

The bird sang a song.

“Or I can have it fly off and return.”

It flew about twenty feet away, came back, and sang on his finger again.

“Or make it think you’re a predator.”

The bird flapped its wings and attacked her face, chirping angrily as it did so.

She held up her hands to defend her face but the bird had already landed on his finger.

“The trick with auras is that you make the subject feel a certain way. Animals have simpler emotions than we do—most animals, anyway, and don’t get me started on using an aura with a sperm whale—so they’re easier to control. The hard part is matching the emotion to an action. You can’t simply tell the bird ‘land on my finger.’ You have to make the bird want to land on your finger if that makes sense.”

Kristen nodded. In theory, that made sense. “So, it’s not mind control but emotion control.”

Stonequest nodded. “Yes…well, kind of. You don’t really control anything but rather simply nudge one way or the other. It’s easier if you actually try it yourself.”

He waited while she focused on the bird. The cardinal? She tried to make it think her finger looked like a great perch. When that brought no response, she tried to make it afraid of Stonequest. Finally, she tried something that he’d already done and attempted to make it think her face looked like a monster.

“You can try whenever you’re ready,” he said.

“I am trying!”

“Oh. Sorry. Normally, the bird does something. Are you sure you’re trying?”

“Yes!” She focused harder on the bird and willed it to feel happy, sad, terrified—anything. It chirped once and cocked its stupid little red head to the side.

“Most dragons start by simply scaring it. Nudge it to think you’re a hawk.”

Feeling like a fraud, she tried a nudge and it simply chirped sweetly.

“Look, this doesn’t make sense to me.” She rubbed her face. “Maybe it’s because I don’t see how it can be a good thing to control other creatures’ minds.”

“Emotions.”

“Whatever. Isn’t it an abuse of power to take control of what’s inside another being’s head?”

“Using your aura can be an abuse of power. Throughout history, many have used it to subjugate the weak-willed,” Stonequest said.

“So, it is bad.”

“Not necessarily,” he countered. “It’s a tool, like a pen or a hammer or a handgun. All tools can be used either for horrible purposes or to elevate our existence. How it’s used determines its ethics.”

“Okay…but isn’t controlling someone else’s emotions inherently worse than all those things?”

“I would argue that handguns are worse than our aura. Even in the hands of police officers, they often kill. Our auras don’t do that. But the fact is it’s an ability that dragons possess. It’s as integral to us as venom is to a spider. We’ve used it for thousands of years and will continue to use it. I understand if you’re uncomfortable with it and I think that coming at it from the human perspective might be a good thing for more dragons to think about, but it doesn’t change the fact that if you ignore it, it’s a tool you won’t have. It could even be the decisive factor against Death.”

“So you think the sniper is a human, then?”

He nodded. “I do. I can’t imagine a dragon mastering a gun like that. It’s a human tool, not really our speed.”

“But you think I can learn an aura?”

“You’re not human.”

She raised an eyebrow at that.

Stonequest chuckled. “This is why I want you here for periods of training. Your perspective is so interesting. Now come on, get this bird to land on your finger before the big bad dragon takes advantage of it.”

Kristen nodded. While she still wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea, if she mastered it, at least she could use her aura to stop other dragons from using theirs.

Once again, she focused on the cardinal perched on his finger. He had said it worked by nudging its emotions, so she tried to nudge. Be happy, little birdy. Be so happy you want to land on my finger.

The bird chirped.

Perhaps it was time for a different approach. She tried to feel its emotional state. After a minute of probing with an inner awareness she hadn’t even known she’d possessed, she sensed a small mote of feeling. The tiny bubble seemed to be contentment and not much else. She tried to feel the emotion and immediately thought that Stonequest was totally trustworthy.

Okay, so she was closer.

She tried to extend that feeling of comfort to herself and the bird turned to her. It cocked its little head and flew off. She cursed under her breath but flexed the nudge to calm the bird and make herself feel like an ally, someone who would protect it.

To her delight, it circled her once before it landed on her finger.

“Oh, wow!” For a moment, her reservations faded completely from her mind. She’d actually communicated with a different species. That was amazing!

Then, the bird pooped on her hand. “Ahh!” She dropped her hand, lost the aura, and the bird flew away as she wiped the poop on her training gi.

“Did you do that?”

“If you had full command of your aura, you’d already know the answer to that question.”

Kristen struggled not to roll her eyes. He sounded a bit too mystical for her taste.

Then, Stonequest’s visage cracked into a grin. “But enough of that for now. Let’s get to work.”

Chapter Nine

“We have a robbery in progress. Requesting units to the comic bookstore on Library Street. I repeat, requesting units to the Vault of Midnight. Someone made off with forty thousand dollars’ worth of rare comics.”

Kristen had been back at the station for a day and had a while to wait before her next training session. For some reason, Stonequest insisted that she alternate time between her human team and the dragon training. She bolted up from her desk and rushed to the gear room. She had to go on this one. If Brian found out she had saved comic books, he’d be beyond amazed. There were no doubt people in peril too and she didn’t forget about them, but it was pleasant to have something come up that wasn’t about people getting shot or blown up or taken hostage.

She raced through the halls and reached the gear room to find Drew there, geared up and with his arms folded. “You’re grounded, remember?”

“But…the comic books,” she protested.

“Take it up with the captain. She said to send you to her office if you came here.”

“Okay. Okay.” She sighed. “But try not to ruin the comics, all right?”

“Whatever you say, Hall.” He snorted a laugh as she trudged through the station and toward the captain’s office.

“Where did you think you were going?” Captain Hansen yelled as soon as Kristen stepped inside. The only thing worse than being yelled at by the captain for trying to do her job was that she was being reprimanded in front of Stonequest. He sat in one of the guest chairs and wore a broad smile.

“I only… Comics can’t be that dangerous. It’s probably only some nerds trying to get rich. How is SWAT even going out for that one?”

“The crooks made off with a Spider Man #1. People would die for that comic—or kill,” the captain stated matter-of-factly.

She raised an eyebrow. “Ma’am, are you a nerd?”

“What I read in my free time is none of your concern,” the woman snapped in response. “The fact remains that we have an assassin at large. And until Death is brought in, you will not leave your desk. I don’t even want you near the windows.”

“So, you did put me at that desk on purpose?”

“Of course, I did. Not everyone on SWAT operates on instinct like you always try to.”

“But ma’am, I need to be out with my team. Death obviously knows who I am, which means she might target my teammates. Right, Stonequest?”

“I have to say I agree with the captain. Death hasn’t targeted any other police officers, so thinking that she will is purely conjecture. Plus, your training hasn’t progressed enough for you to handle a major threat like that. Dragon’s flame, I’m worried about taking her on with my team from Dragon SWAT. If it were only you, especially without your dragon form, you’d be killed.”

“But I have steel skin,” she protested.

“Which Death knows all about. Sorry, Kristen. I’m with the captain.” He folded his arms.

“Ugh. Fine. Can I go back to my desk, then?”

“But of course,” Captain Hansen said.

She cursed inwardly because she had hoped that Stonequest was there to whisk her away for more training. Worse, it seemed that the two captains simply swapped notes, so there went any chance she had to deliver her planned monologue of protest about the hypocrisy of her being grounded. Damn.

Kristen didn’t think she’d ever experienced time pass as slowly as it did for the next three hours. What made it even worse was that when her team returned, they almost bounced off the walls with stories to tell.

“I could not believe when you hit their trunk and popped the lock,” Hernandez said to Keith.

He made no response aside from a hearty laugh.

The team moved to the break room, so she left her desk and fell into step to follow them.

“It was like a confetti of wizard cards,” Butters said.

“Wizard cards? You mean Magic the Gathering?” she asked.

“That’s the one.” The sniper snapped his fingers when he recognized the title. “They’d filled their trunk with these things. Apparently, the comics were too valuable to keep out of sight. Anyway, the Rookie got a lucky shot off—”

“It was not lucky,” Keith protested.

“It was mid-pursuit. It’s not like you can make shots like that on the regular. No one can,” Drew said.

Keith huffed and folded his arms. “Whatever. I did aim for the trunk.”

“Anyway…” Butters took the narrative back. “These cards scattered everywhere, and what did the perps do? They swerved and stopped and tried to pick the things up.”

“Not all of them.” Hernandez laughed. “One of them stayed in the back seat, reading comic books as fast as he could until we cuffed him.”

Everyone laughed at that, the demolitions expert so hard she had to wipe a tear from her eyes.

“So, Red, what have you been doing here?” she asked.

“Paperwork.” Kristen sighed.

“There’s more of that to come. The comic shop is throwing the book at us. Apparently, all that crap was insured and they argue that by failing to respond fast enough and then chasing the crooks, we endangered their livelihood.” Drew smiled. “If you want to help, we’d be happy for it.”

“I don’t mind talking to the comic shop,” Keith said and grinned. He’d found a mop in the corner of the breakroom and thrust it into Kristen’s hands. “Hall has stuff to do here to be useful. The station won’t clean itself.”

Everyone laughed and she joined in, although hers was a rueful chuckle.

As soon as the Rookie’s mouth closed and his grin faded to hide his teeth, she slapped him across the face with the dirty mop.

“What was that for?” He wiped dirty water from his face.

“You said to clean. I simply looked for the dirtiest thing handy.”

Hernandez leaned in and sniffed him. “Sorry, Rookie, but Red has a point. You stink.”

Chapter Ten

Acall came in for a mission and Drew assembled his team. Part of him felt bad that Hall wasn’t allowed to join them, but he agreed with the captain. Death was too dangerous to mess around with. That aside, it was also pleasant to run missions with only regular people.

He had been on SWAT for years and was good at his job. Damn good at it, if he was honest. And it wasn’t that Hall wasn’t good as well. Really, he loved her like a sister and thought she was a damn good cop. But there were times when it was nice to be more than back-up for the Steel Dragon.

Well, not nice. Dealing with armed criminals was never nice, but it was what he knew how to do, and he did it well.

They loaded into the van with him at the wheel and headed out.

“What’s the mission, Drew?” Butters asked.

“It’s fairly basic.” He raised his voice and spoke over his shoulder so those in the back could hear. “A couple of robbers hit a convenience store. They have a hostage, but the place is locked down and the officer in charge says things are looking good to get them to surrender. They only want us as back up in case it doesn’t go well.”

“We can handle that without the Steel Dragon,” Hernandez said. “She’d probably rush in there and snap their necks before they could even piss themselves.”

Everyone laughed but it was forced. Without Kristen on missions, their team didn’t feel complete. All too often, he’d have to remind himself how pleasant it was to be a team of normal humans—exactly like he’d done a few minutes earlier—but the truth was that he missed her as much as they did. He didn’t know how the hell they would catch Death, but he hoped they did and that it was soon.

Drew appreciated that his team had to work harder and be more precise with Hall grounded, but he didn’t like what her being stuck at the base did for his team’s morale. Steel Dragon or not, she was part of them now. Not having her there felt as odd as it had to lose Jonesy. He rarely entertained the thought that if they didn’t catch the sniper soon they might lose her as well.

He issued the standard basic orders—Butters and Beanpole on sniper duty, the Wonderkid and the Rookie headed around back—and after a few minutes, they arrived at the convenience store.

What was it about those kinds of establishments that criminals loved? He would never understand it. They seemed to attract the slightly insane and mostly incompetent. After they’d arrived and assessed the scene, he could tell that this situation was no different than most.

Two guys had tried to steal cash and maybe some scratch-offs and hadn’t escaped quickly enough. When the cops showed up, they took the clerk hostage. It was almost pathetic how common a story it was but his job wasn’t to ponder societal ills. They were there to save lives.

He could see he’d need to do that today. One of the crooks stood in the doorway with the hostage in front of him and a handgun held to the man’s temple.

“Where’s the other one?” Drew asked over the radio.

“Inside behind a shelf. You can see his shoulder poking up,” Butters replied.

“All right. I’m going in,” he said to the officers who’d called in the situation. “Cover me and be ready to move in. This guy wouldn’t stand in the doorway if he didn’t want to talk. I’ll go radio silent. Hernandez, if Keith and Jim find an entrance, it’s your call whether they go in.”

“Yes, sir.”

He nodded, drew his handgun from its holster, held it in the air, and placed it on the pavement at his feet. “I’m unarmed, see? They called me in because I like to talk,” he said to the man. The trick with talking to criminals in these kinds of situations was to be loud enough to be heard over their own heartbeats pounding in their ears but to not sound like you were screaming at them. His low, booming voice worked well.

“Talk is cheap, pig,” the robber yelled in response.

Typical. They often liked to start with a line from a movie, especially if there was more than one of them.

“You’re right. So is robbery. With the right lawyer, you might do less than a year. If you hurt that man, though, you’ll find yourself facing far more time. No one likes a murderer.” As he spoke, he approached the convenience store slowly with his hands raised.

“I’m not a murderer.”

“I know you’re not. Believe me. We’ve seen monsters and you don’t seem like one, merely a man down on his luck.” He made it a few steps closer.

“You don’t know the half of it, pig.” There was desperation in the man’s voice. That could be good if properly channeled but could also be extremely dangerous.

“Luck changes. Yours can change. What’s your name?” he asked as soothingly as he could.

“Fuck you! You assholes will only feed me to your fucking pet dragon.”

“That isn’t true.” He took another step forward. “And anyway, she’s not with us today. It’s only us humans. My name’s Drew, by the way.”

“Not another step closer.” The man shoved the pistol against his hostage’s head. “They call me Dogface.”

He could see why. The man’s face was so badly pockmarked it looked like whiskers, and one of his ears was damaged. The top half of it hung down like a bulldog’s. Drew frowned inwardly. Dogface probably wasn’t the best name to negotiate with, but that was what he had.

“Look, Dogface, I’ll be straight with you.” Fortunately, he didn’t have to raise his voice as much now as he was about ten paces away. “You won’t walk away from this. We have you surrounded. You’ll face a jury of your peers—people like you. What story do you want to tell them? That you were down on your luck and you messed up, but at your darkest moment, you let a man live? Or that you’re a killer?”

“I’m not a killer.” His pistol raised marginally from the hostage’s skin and lowered slightly. Drew had him. The man simply didn’t know that yet.

“Good. That’s good, Dogface. Now, here’s what we’ll do. You’ll lower that weapon to the ground and kick it toward me. I’ll tell your lawyer all this was your idea, of course. Then, you’ll tell your buddy to do the same, and you guys will come out of this looking like victims of circumstance. All right?”

“Al-all right,” Dogface stammered. He lowered his pistol a little more.

No sooner did he lower the weapon than a red hole appeared in his forehead and his brains blew back into the convenience store.

Dogface fell back, very clearly dead.

The hostage screamed and stumbled forward.

A moment later, Drew heard a gunshot in the distance.

Shock gave way to reality—Dogface had been shot.

“That’s the sniper! Find cover people. The asshole’s behind us.” Drew immediately fell prone. There wasn’t any cover available close by. He was in the parking lot between the police cars and the convenience store. Still, he scooted forward and realized as he did so that the bullet that might end his life could already be on its way to kill him.

He glanced up to where the cops scurried behind their cars. Hernandez had got them to come to the correct side anyway. Thank God for that.

The sound of broken glass was followed and a scream from inside the convenience store a second before the report of another shot cracked from behind them.

Drew turned his head as the other robber staggered out from his hiding place in the aisle, a hand clamped around his neck in an effort to stop the blood that gushed from his wound.

The sniper had got him. Through a window, a shelf, and a bag of chips, the sniper had still found her target.

He reached the front of the store before his hand slid from his neck and he collapsed next to his partner.

The hostage stumbled past and screamed in terror, so Drew did what he did every day at work. He pushed to his feet and helped someone—threw his arm around the man and led him to the police cruisers. They slumped behind a door and waited.

The clerk was crying, thanking his God, thanking Drew, and thanking the police. The SWAT team leader heard none of it. He waited for another shot. While he didn’t think the sniper could hurt anyone through a police car, that shot into the convenience store through the window was all but impossible. If they could do that at a distance far enough for there to be a delay in the sound, the regular rules didn’t seem to apply.

After a few minutes and no more shots, he felt confident enough to step out from behind the police cruiser.

He stood, faced the direction the shots had come from, and looked for a flash of light. If he saw one, he’d have a millisecond to dodge before the bullet killed him and seconds before he heard the weapon.

No shots came and everyone seemed to draw a collective breath of relief.

“I think we’re in the clear,” Drew said into his radio. “I want helmets on and Butters, keep your eyes in the direction those shots came from. Still, I think we’re in the clear.”

“You already said that, sir,” the Wonderkid said over the radio.

He tried to force a smile. This was a new sensation for him. Normally, he operated under the assumption that he could do his job because he had been better-trained than the common criminal and had a team that could protect him. With Death on the other end of the sniper rifle, neither was the case. It was a profoundly uncomfortable feeling.

What was worse was that they needed to do something about the bodies. He called an ambulance, but that simply meant he had to stick around and make sure no one else was hurt.

He sent in a team to investigate where the sniper had been as well, but there were multiple apartment blocks in that direction. It would be basically impossible to find her.

It was also impossible to know if Death was simply waiting for them, which created additional stress.

But they went about their jobs, blocked the crime scene off for forensics, and ensured that EMS had what they needed.

Despite all the activity, no more shots were fired.

“What the hell do you think that was all about?” Hernandez asked as EMS left with the two bodies. She too was jumpy. Her gaze darted constantly toward where they had heard the gunshots come from.

“I think that was her way of saying she’s watching us.” Drew hadn’t realized he’d been sweating until he wiped his brow and found it slick.

She nodded. “She could have taken us out instead of the robbers.”

“I know. She chose to let us live.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“It means she thinks she owns us.”

“And what the fuck are we supposed to do about that?”

He sighed. “I have no fucking idea.”

Chapter Eleven

“Oh, thank God you’re all right.” Kristen had never been so relieved to see anyone walk through a door as she was when they entered the lounge. She’d followed the incident at the convenience store over the radio. It had taken everything in her power not to rush out after them, but given all that had happened, she saw now that it was good that she hadn’t.

The sniper could have shot her in the back of the head and there wouldn’t have been a thing she could have done about it.

But for some reason, Death had spared her team. For that, she was grateful, albeit confused. However, she could deal with confusion. She rushed forward—windows be damned—and hugged each one to make sure they knew she was happy they were okay, even Hernandez.

“Nice to see you too, Red,” the demolitions expert said. Those casual words were an admission of terror she had never before heard from the woman. Lyn Hernandez didn’t do nice. Facing your own demise had a way of humbling people.

“Hall, Drew, I want you in my office,” Hansen said.

“Ma’am?” Keith asked.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Bring the whole team.”

A moment later, they all crammed into Hansen’s office and looked at a manila folder the contents of which were surely far more important than the bland exterior.

The captain appraised her officers. “Obviously, we need to find this assassin or whoever hired them.”

“It’s Shadowstorm, it has to be.” Kristen’s tone brooked no argument.

Her superior raised her hands in a gesture that indicated frustration. “Well, if you can find him, Hall, by all means, bring him in for questioning. It went so well the last time we brought a dragon in.”

“Do you think the sniper’s a dragon now?” she asked.

Captain Hansen shook her head. “I have no idea. I don’t want to make any damn assumptions, but I can’t imagine dragons paying humans to kill dragons.”

“Captain, with respect, you didn’t call us in here to talk about the sniper.”

“Perceptive as always, Drew. You’re right. We don’t know shit about the sniper. The asshole operates on a whole other level. There has been a further complication, though.”

“What is it?” Kristen asked.

“Those thugs who tried to kidnap your family? They don’t know a damn thing. They said their boss made all the contacts and that they only followed orders.”

“Business as usual, then.” Drew sounded tired.

The boss scowled and nodded.

“Can’t you simply catch the boss, then? The toad can’t be that hard to find,” Keith said.

“You’re right about that, Rookie. In fact, we already found him—and the rest of the team too.”

“But that’s great!” Kristen said. “I can pump them for information and put the fear of the Steel Dragon into them.” Suddenly, the idea of having an aura that could make people feel things didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Hall. We found the team because they’re all dead. Each one was eliminated with a single bullet fired from a high-powered rifle. Perfect fucking executions.” Captain Hansen looked disgusted. “No one even called the cops on the damn crimes.”

“And none of the ones we have are talking?” the Wonderkid asked.

“Oh, one of them is talking. Styx, the scrawny one. He won’t shut up, actually. I get the feeling he’d give us his buddy’s social security numbers if he knew them, but that’s the problem. They don’t know a damn thing, and half of what he says is false. I don’t think he even realizes he’s lying. My guess is that Death ordered it like that so the part of the gang doing the kidnapping wouldn’t know anything about her—or him. That way if it went wrong, well…”

Everyone nodded. It had gone exactly as Death had wanted it to.

“I don’t think we’ll solve this with regular police work,” Kristen said finally.

The captain sighed. “You’re probably right. There have been assassinations like these in a dozen countries and on multiple continents. If no one else could catch her, I don’t know why we’ll be able to.”

“Because we have a dragon,” Keith said and sounded optimistic despite the evidence that suggested he should feel otherwise.

The truth of that struck her like an arrow to the heart.

“We’re only in this situation because Hall is a dragon,” Drew said.

“No, no, Keith is right. If I can unlock more of my abilities—those Death doesn’t know about—I can beat her. That’s the whole reason for me training with Stonequest, but I need to focus more intensely on it. Originally, we all thought it was a way to protect myself, and it is, but it might also unlock abilities that enable me to track her and defeat her when I find her. I have to. We don’t have any other choice.”

“Are you sure leaving the station is safe?”

“We trained at a mansion out in the country with, like, fifty dragons. If Death can get me there…well, we’re all beyond screwed.”

Captain Hansen snorted a chuckle at that. “All right. Sure, it’s better than anything I have right now. Call Stonequest and keep away from the damn windows until he gets here.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

After a phone call to Stonequest and thirty minutes of waiting, Kristen once again flew out toward the dragons’ palatial manor on the back of a dragon.

He said nothing on the journey, which gave Kristen time to think—something she both desperately needed and wished to avoid at all costs.

She couldn’t see a future in which she didn’t realize the entire spectrum of her dragon powers. Shadowstorm—she was quite confident that the dragon was involved in all this—wouldn’t stop throwing enemies at her until either he’d been defeated or she was dead. The latter would be inevitable unless she learned to transform.

She would have to fully become a dragon to save her friends and family.

And yet, what would be the cost of that? Unlike any other dragon she had met, she’d grown up as a human. She identified as human and her friends were human but now, if she was to protect that world, she needed to become something else—something more. It occurred to her that until this moment, she’d believed she could be both—a human dragon, and not merely in words but in reality. She’d somehow envisaged herself as a human who could also become a dragon when the need arose. The reality, though, was that it worked the other way. She was a dragon who could also be human. In this situation, being human was not enough and she would have to take that final step and become more than that.

It had already begun to happen. While she had always been protective of her family and close friends, she now felt personally responsible for them in a way she never had until she’d found out that she was a dragon. Her emotions didn’t always feel like her own, which seemed even stranger because she could now more easily affect the emotions of others.

At the root of this was the fact that she didn’t want to lose who she was. Perhaps the fear that she might lose that was the reason why she hadn’t yet managed to transform. It was an interesting thought. The who she was had always been defined by her belief in her humanness. Yet part of her had always wondered if there was more to her life. She had chalked that up to youth and assumed that many people felt that way. As things turned out, there had been more to little Krissy Hall. Now, she still wanted to belong to both worlds.

Kristen felt like she knew what she had to do. Her family had already been attacked and that made her choice for her. The implications of that—of what she needed to become—was exhilarating but it was frightening as well.

She could see that with more power—the power that was her true dragon birthright—she might be able to better protect her people, her family, and her city. With that, she could stop this threat and root out Shadowstorm.

It wasn’t a choice, really. She knew that she must become what she was born to be. And yet, if she fully embraced her powers, she would also accept that she wasn’t human but was something more powerful and more deadly. What would happen to the person she had been?

Chapter Twelve

After a decadent dinner, a night of rest, and a massive breakfast, Kristen and Stonequest were in the sandy training arena again. They had spent the morning meditating, but despite the fact that she enjoyed the process, her mentor had been less than impressed.

“I’ll attack you. Defend yourself.” He removed his shirt and revealed the chest that really did seem to be carved from marble.

“Human or dragon?”

“Is that a question you’ll ask all your enemies?”

“No, of course not—”

Her protest died when he launched into the attack. His fists pounded into her gut and she catapulted away and tumbled through the sand.

She pushed herself to her feet, thankful that she’d practiced activating her steel skin so many times.

Before she could so much as dust herself off, he was on her again. This time, he swept her legs out from under her and in the instant before she fell, threw one hell of an elbow into her chest.

The hard landing winded her and she gasped for air. Steel skin protected her from puncture wounds, but she could still have the wind knocked out of her.

“Will you give me a minute?” she pleaded.

In reply, he kicked her in her steel gut and she somersaulted through the sand.

All right. Enough was enough. Now, she was pissed.

She pushed to her feet and raced forward to rain a flurry of punches and kicks on her opponent. He blocked them and barely flinched at the blows. She couldn’t really tell because of her steel protection, but it seemed like his skin was more mottled than it had been. Maybe he could armor his human form in stone the way she could turn herself to steel?

The time spent thinking about anything except how to pummel him cost her dearly. Stonequest struck and caught her in the neck with a karate chop that bowled her over.

Kristen rubbed her neck. “That could’ve killed me.”

“We are facing Death. It’s time to act like it.”

“What is your fucking problem?”

“My problem is that you have a vast reserve of power at your disposal and you refuse to access it.” He glared at her. “I can feel you holding yourself back.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“Enough whining.” He launched himself into a flying kick. It would have been an impossible move for a regular human, but dragons in human form were far from regular. Still, she had seen more than enough kung-fu movies. She caught his leg and hurled him away from her.

He began to transform into a dragon before he even fell. A gale of dust and chips of stone resolved into a dragon with skin of mottled marble.

She tried not to think about when she’d last fought a dragon in her human form—not an easy thing to do. Her battle against Shadowstorm had been in an arena exactly like this. He would have killed her if not for her friends, but none of them could help her now.

“This isn’t fair.”

“Tell that to Death.” With a pump of his wings, Stonequest propelled himself forward and pounded into her with a claw as big as her chest. She struggled to break his hold but couldn’t and he crushed her into the sand as if to grind her like a cigarette butt.

“Fight me, dragon!” he roared.

“Fuck…you!” She spat sand and managed to slide from his grasp.

Kristen turned to run in an effort to get beyond his reach. She made it three steps before his tail whipped around and struck her in the back.

Once again, she tumbled helplessly through the sand before she finally stopped and pushed herself up.

Already, Stonequest was there. He plucked her up in his front claws, flew fifty feet into the air, and dropped her.

The wind raced past her as she fell. Now was the time to transform. She knew that but still, she didn’t. Instead, she made sure her steel skin was on.

When she impacted, sand spewed around her and her muscles screamed in protest.

“Stop it,” she pleaded.

He ignored her, tucked his wings, and plummeted toward her.

The dragon was so large, she couldn’t even roll clear of his shadow before he barreled into her with the force of a semi-truck focused into a fist the size of a cannonball.

She blacked out for a half-second.

When her brain began to work again, she was in his talons. Compared to him, she was merely a doll. He shook her viciously.

“Is this how you protect your friends?” Stonequest roared and thumped her head against the sand. “Is this how you save your family?” He pummeled her with his other fist. “Is this how you die?”

He hurled her like a piece of discarded trash, useful no longer. She plowed through the sand and tried to get her hands and knees under her. Even that was a struggle and tears came unbidden. She’d trusted him and he intended to kill her.

“What is your fucking problem?” she screamed and forced herself to her feet.

Kristen looked across the arena and saw through her tears that Stonequest was in human form once more. He ran to her, put an arm under her shoulder, and helped her to her feet. She flinched at his touch.

“What the fuck is this?”

“Kristen, I’m sorry. Really.”

“Bullshit!”

“I should have explained but I was worried it wouldn’t work if I did. Obviously, it didn’t either way.”

“Worried what wouldn’t work?” She choked out a sob.

“The first time you activated your powers, it was because someone had fired a rocket at you. In a moment of great crisis, your body instinctively saved you. I…I hoped to brute-force your transformation, I guess.”

He led her to a bench beneath a gazebo. A servant appeared from nowhere with a pitcher of cold water.

“That kind of training…it’s inhumane,” she said and fought to keep the fury out of her voice. The result was that she simply sounded scared and she hated that. She’d rather have Stonequest know she was pissed.

Still, he balked at the word. That he took it as an insult to be called inhumane was a small comfort. “I see that now, and I’m sorry. It’s only—well, you’re being hunted and I don’t want Death to win.”

“So your plan was to nearly kill me?”

“I won’t do it again. I merely thought that with enough duress, you’d transform.”

“Maybe I don’t have that kind of power yet.”

Stonequest shook his head. “You have more than enough power.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“Your aura. Everyone walking the grounds of this manor can tell from your aura that you should be able to transform. Honestly, I think that’s one of the reasons so many of the dragons treat you so coldly. You have more raw power than most of them, and yet you refuse to transform.”

“I’m not refusing anything,” Kristen protested.

He sighed. “I don’t mean it like that. But with the power I feel coming off you, transformation shouldn’t be difficult. If anything, it ought to be natural. Our winged, scaled form is our true form after all.”

“Maybe for you.” She looked away, out across the landscape that was so obviously designed for humans to walk. Despite them growing ever closer to winter, it was still warm there. Flowers still bloomed. On second glance, she saw that this place wasn’t for humans at all. It was unnatural, governed by different laws than her mom’s azalea bushes.

“I think that maybe that’s the problem. You still haven’t accepted that you’re a dragon.”

“Yes, I have! I take bullets for my team. I use my speed and strength to stop criminals.”

“But those are human affairs, and human ways of fighting.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“You’re not human,” Stonequest retorted. “You’re something far more powerful. You’re clinging to your human form, augmenting it, strengthening it, but not setting it aside like you need to. I think you might be unintentionally repressing the transformation. You have a mental block that’s trapped you in that body, limiting your powers and your true essence.”

Kristen stood and whirled on him, her bruises forgotten as anger coursed through her. “Can you even hear yourself? You sound like him—like Shadowstorm! You think being in my human body means I’m trapped? That this form is inherently weaker than you?”

He didn’t have to answer. She could see it on his face. He obviously thought humans were weaker than dragons and she hated the part of her that knew he was right—and that so much of what he said dovetailed with her own thoughts on the matter.

“This is the whole damn problem with dragon kind. You think that you’re better than humans.”

“We are better than humans,” he stated as a matter of fact. “We’re stronger, faster, and live longer, which means we can study things in far more depth.”

“But none of that means you’re better. You’re more powerful, sure, but that doesn’t mean you’re better than mankind. It was our weak night vision that drove us to master the electricity that lights your mansion. It was our inability to fly that led us to invent the airplane. We might not live as long, but we really live. We’re part of this world in a way that you’re not. We share far more in common with the animals than you do.”

“Can you even hear yourself, Kristen? All this talk of we and you makes it sound as if you’re not a dragon at all. But you are. You’re one of us. You’ll outlive your family by centuries and you can already destroy even the strongest human in any contest of strength. I know that you’re young but in time, you’ll grow to see that humans can’t fully understand the world in the way you can. Already, you shrug bullets off. How can you still identify with the creatures who invented war and the atomic bomb and ignore their own polluting filth?”

Kristen grimaced as if she’d been struck. “Just because people aren’t perfect doesn’t mean you get to control them.”

“Yes! There it is, Kristen. This is what you need to see! Humans are a them. You are different from them. You are a dragon. Realize your power and you can help us change our broken systems. But first, you need to realize your power.”

She had heard enough, and her own inner conflict raged with the same ferocity as their outward debate. Angry with him and angry with herself, she turned her back on him and marched across the grounds. She went to her room, changed into her regular human clothes, and pulled out her human phone.

By some stroke of luck, her rideshare app showed that someone was nearby. She ordered a ride and went out front to wait.

Stonequest found her there as the car made its way down the long driveway to the mansion. “Kristen, you don’t need to do this. It’ll take you hours to get back to the city.”

“Once it would have taken people days to cover this distance. I see a few hours as a triumph of mankind’s, not an inconvenience.”

“I’m sorry I was harsh on you, but don’t leave. We need to keep training.”

“There’s already somebody trying to kill me in Detroit. At least if I’m there, I can protect the people I love. I’m sorry if that seems like a liability.”

“I want you to transform so you can protect them. Don’t you see that?”

“I do,” Kristen said. “I’m not even really angry with you anymore. But I have to do this my way.”

“Even if your way gets you killed?”

“Look, I gotta go. It’s not polite to make people wait.” She got into the car, checked with the driver that he wouldn’t mind the drive into the city, and they left.

Thankfully, the man recognized her need for silence and she was able to nap on the ride home and let her body heal from the pummeling she’d received. She’d meant what she said to Stonequest. His heart was in the right place, maybe, but his methods? They plain sucked.

She was a dragon and knew that deep inside. But she was human, too. He wasn’t wrong about her needing to find her power. But her gut said she had to handle that in her own way.

Chapter Thirteen

They met at a place of Shadowstorm’s choosing on the roof of an abandoned apartment block slated to be demolished in a few days. Although he’d only given the assassin less than an hour to reach the location, she’d still beaten him here.

He might have been impressed if the Steel Dragon were dead.

“Perhaps it’s time you changed your moniker,” he said to the other dragon. Both had arrived in their true forms. His body was dark, the color of bruised clouds, with flickers of lightning that played across his scales. He seemed to drink in the light, being one of the few dragons who drew from more than a single elemental force for his magic.

Death’s dragon form was dark as well, with scales that bordered on black. He couldn’t tell exactly what her power was, but no one could. Already, she’d transformed into a human form—a thin woman with dark hair and dressed in black. Obviously, she didn’t want him to glean any information from her dragon body. She’d made a career of killing dragons. One couldn’t do such a thing by giving away information about oneself.

Although to be a successful assassin, one was expected to actually kill the target.

“Her death will come as it did for every other dragon I have ever targeted,” she said.

It bothered him that she knew who he was. Not long before, he could have operated behind the guise of Mr Black, but now that the Steel Dragon had outed him, everyone knew his identity. The only advantage of this was that he could conduct meetings in dragon form.

Dragon to dragon, Shadowstorm was quite large, but dragon to human, he was beyond massive. And yet Death didn’t seem intimidated at all. She held herself with a self-assured arrogance he found obnoxious given that she’d failed.

“I paid you well to solve this problem,” he complained.

“And solve it I will.”

“When?”

“As soon as possible. The Steel Dragon is proving harder to kill than I expected. Her skills are fair in her human form, and that steel skin is a tricky thing.”

“I warned you about her steel skin. The entire human news apparatus warned you about her steel skin,” he roared. He hadn’t meant to lose his temper but it was so fun to roar at human-shaped beings.

“Yes, true, but you failed to fully brief me on her team. They are more than competent.”

“I told you they were police.”

“Even for human peacekeepers, they are exceptionally skilled. Plus, there’s Stonequest.”

Shadowstorm growled at the mention of Stonequest. “He’s hardly around.”

“And how close did you let him and his precious dragon SWAT get to you before you tucked tail and went into hiding?”

He sneered at her. “You tell me all your reasons for failure, and yet you have not returned the treasure I gave you for this job.”

“Because I have a plan. You see, the Steel Dragon does have a weakness. Her humanity.”

“I tried to turn her already. It wasn’t possible. Something tells me she won’t listen to a killer.”

“I won’t need to convince her of anything. I’ve found where her human family is nesting.”

Hope bloomed inside his chest. It was the same feeling as one he’d had when he’d discovered a new human settlement centuries before. There was a power to knowing about unconnected humans. They were strong together but isolated, they were laughably weak.

“So snare them!”

Death had the audacity to laugh in his face. “Don’t insult what I do, and I won’t insult whatever mess you’ve got yourself into with the Masked One.”

“How did you—”

“You hired an assassin, Shadowstorm. Do you think I accept simply any contract? There are many dragons out there who would like me dead. It’s good to know I’m not the only one of us with enemies.”

Shadowstorm took a deep breath and exhaled. Smoke and steam came from his nostrils and made swirling clouds around her. The gesture terrified humans, but despite her form, she didn’t seem intimidated in the least.

At least I’m not working with a coward, he reassured himself.

“If you get the family, the Steel Dragon will come to save them.”

“Your little kidnapping gambit with those thugs I’d found failed. There’s no reason to think I could find thugs that are any more competent, especially considering this is supposed to be your city.”

Anger surged and he growled, a low, almost subsonic sound that he was quite sure Death understood despite her human form. If she insulted him again, they would fight. Honor demanded it. Even in the world of dragons that existed outside the Dragon Council and their petty dragon SWAT, there was honor that must be defended.

She held up her hands in a placating gesture. It was the first sign of deference to her employer she’d shown all night. “I won’t stoop to kidnap humans, no matter the price. Things have happened in the past—messy things—and it’s simply not worth the hassle.”

“So why even concern yourself with their location?” He had begun to grow frustrated. Yes, Death was an assassin—a master of ending the lives of dragons—and yet, there she was, a few feet in front of him and still in her human form. This was not how she hunted dragons. He could attack her now and snap her little human neck before she could even transform. If she didn’t start talking sense, he would too.

“I won’t fetch them, but I’m not above using them,” Death said, her tone a purr.

“How?”

“If I put them in jeopardy, do you believe the Steel Dragon will come to their aid?”

“It’s all but a certainty. As long as she knows they are in peril, she will be unable to resist.”

“Then imperil them I will. She’ll come running, and I’ll finish her off in the confusion.”

Shadowstorm shook his head. “This sounds needlessly convoluted. You won’t capture them, but you’ll make attacks on their life? You’re letting the human police decide where you battle the Steel Dragon.”

Death shook her head and clicked her teeth like he was nothing but a disobedient servant. “I know my trade. The Steel Dragon will die. Tonight.”

He nodded. While he certainly wouldn’t trust Death with his life, he felt he could trust her to end Kristen’s. She was an assassin, after all, and if her price were any indication, the best in the world. Besides, he didn’t really care about the details of the plan, only that it came to pass.

The Steel Dragon must die if the Masked One was to be appeased. And he must be appeased if Shadowstorm wished to keep his life.

Chapter Fourteen

The carshare ride was a long one, and when the driver neared the destination, Kristen would still have a few blocks to walk. She didn’t want anyone to have the address of her parent’s safe house in their phone. She tipped well—after all, it had been an hours-long drive—exited the vehicle, and found her bearings.

Her parents were staying in a honeymoon suite in a pleasant hotel. They were on lockdown so they couldn’t come and go. She thought it was a fairly safe location. The cops had first recommended a safe house in a rundown hotel. It even had undercover cops stationed there, but her mom had balked at the prostitutes on the street so they’d been sent to a nicer establishment. She was sure her parents didn’t mind.

As she wound through the streets and moved steadily closer to the hotel, she watched her backtrail constantly with her dragon night-vision the entire time. She had to be sure she wasn’t followed. Her family had already been put in danger once because of her and she would not let that happen again.

Although a part of her wondered if such thoughts were naïve. Could her parents ever return to their quiet suburban life? They’d already faced droves of reporters, news vans, and now kidnappers. Perhaps it was childish to think they’d ever be safe again.

It was a somber thought and left her a little despondent as she showed the receptionist her badge.

The woman nodded politely and told her to wait, but instead of telling her the room number, two police officers came over. Some people might’ve been worried at the reception, but she was pleased to see they were taking their jobs seriously. She recognized one of them and waved. He nodded and led her to the elevator.

The officer used a key to access the floor her parents were on. Without it, the elevator wouldn’t allow anyone entry.

“Has anyone else asked to see my folks?” she asked casually, even though if someone had asked that it would mean this place wasn’t secure.

“No, ma’am.”

They rode up and stepped out to where two more men stood on guard outside the room. She showed them ID since she didn’t personally know them, and they let her in.

Inside, she found what she’d expected. Her mom and brother were passed out—Mom in the bed and Brian in front of a TV that someone had long since muted.

Her dad was awake, though, and chatted to the two cops in the room.

“Krissy!” Frank Hall said when Kristen entered. “I wondered if you would visit your poor family. Do you know we’ve already eaten everything on the room service menu? Johnson here says he won’t even go get me a pizza from Buddy’s. Can you believe this shit?”

Johnson held his hands up to protest the accusation. The other cop laughed and Frank smiled.

“You didn’t—that’s not honest to God beer, is it?”

She pulled the six-pack out from behind her back, glad that she’d stopped at a liquor store on her walk over. Part of losing any possible tail, she’d told herself, but really, she’d only wanted to be able to have a drink with her dad.

“Bell’s Oberon Ale.”

One of the cops grinned at that, so she opened four bottles and passed them out.

“We shouldn’t,” Johnson said.

“The Steel Dragon’s here. We’ll be fine,” Frank proclaimed and took a sip. “Aw, goddammit, Krissy, you got this fancy wheat-beer microbrew shit?”

“Dad, this is good.”

“Not as good a cold can of PBR.”

“I’m sure you can get crap beer from room service.”

“Yeah, for six dollars. Six, dollars, Kristen. For a god damn PBR.” He shook his head in disgust and seemed more appalled at the expensive room service than the fact that someone was actively hunting his daughter. But then, that was Frank Hall.

“Well, if you don’t like it, I can drink yours.”

He waved her away. “I’ll make do, Krissy. Now, tell us, what on earth is the Steel Dragon doing keeping her old man up on a work night?”

“Keeping you up? It looks like you’re doing fine here.”

Frank laughed, but she heard his voice crack. “There’s a goddamn assassin out there hunting you, Krissy. I’m sure you’ll be fine. Your mother is scared shitless, but I know better. Still, do you think I can simply pull the covers up and sleep when we have armed guards watching us fart?”

Kristen didn’t laugh at the joke. In fact, it took almost everything she had not to break down into tears. Her dad could read her like a book, though. He put his beer down and gestured at the two cops to give them some space. They both retreated to the doorway so father and daughter could talk.

“What’s going on, Kristen?” he said, stood quickly, and fixed her a cup of coffee.

Despite opening the beer, Kristen was relieved that he fixed her coffee. Her mom had made it a rule for as long as she could remember for him not to drink alcohol when he was stressed. Frank—being a cop—had seen what alcohol could do to people who were already stressed, so had honored his wife’s wishes. It was nice that he honored them even when she was passed out.

She took a sip of coffee and managed not to grimace. It was horrible. Her father had never learned how to use enough grounds.

“Is it the assassin?” he asked.

Kristen uttered a single painful guffaw. “Believe it or not, no, not really.”

He grinned at that. “Well, what the hell could put you on edge more than some super-sniper?”

“Okay, that’s part of it, for sure. I’ve been training with Stonequest, mostly so I can be ready to defeat Death.”

“Death?”

“That’s the assassin’s code name.”

“Isn’t that like a firefighter’s nickname being hose?”

“Dad!” She glared at him and he merely grinned in response. Frank Hall was a man who believed in using humor to defuse a situation. She tried to maintain her glare but finally, a smile broke through. At times like this, she simply couldn’t help it.

“Go ahead, sweetie. I’m only making sure my little girl’s still in there.”

She looked down and noticed she’d turned herself to steel, something she hadn’t meant to do. “See, this is exactly it. Stonequest is trying to train me to take more control of my powers. I want to be in more control. I really think I need to.”

“So, what’s the problem? You have super-speed and stuff. Big deal. Your brother has a super-fat mouth and he’s absolutely shameless about it.”

“It’s not those powers, dad.”

“Then what? Are you worried you’ll have to start dressing like the rest of those douchebags? You know I saw one of them dragons the other day wearing an ascot. Honest to God.”

Kristen snorted. Leave it to Frank to see the big issues. “Well, yeah, that’s kind of it, actually. I haven’t transformed yet.”

“Sure, you have. You’re steel right now.”

She made her skin revert into flesh and acknowledged that she’d let it get away from her because she was stressed. “But I haven’t turned into a dragon. I’ve already felt myself changing. I don’t have to worry about getting hurt like regular people. I have an aura that can affect other people’s emotions—”

“Use that one on your mother for me sometime—”

“Dad!”

“Sorry, sweetie. Go ahead.”

“I have all these powers that I never expected, and they’re already changing me. I take risks I wouldn’t have taken without them and do things that would have terrified me before, but now… Well, it’s simply a way of life. Plus, there’s this sense of…of loyalty.”

“Loyalty?” He sounded almost comically disbelieving.

“Yeah. Kind of? That doesn’t really begin to explain it, honestly. Like the idea of you or Mom or Brian getting hurt makes me feel…” She grunted, unable to express herself. “I simply can’t let that happen. It’s the same with my team. None of you can get hurt because of me. You’re all my responsibility now. I’ve already changed so much. I’m scared that if I do actually transform into a dragon body, I’ll lose who I was. I’m scared that I’ll be governed by what it feels like to be a dragon and forget who I am. I’m scared that I’ll have to give up who I am—that the Kristen Hall you know will vanish if I change.”

Frank took a sip of coffee and studied her for a moment. He set the cup down and took her hand. “Krissy. I don’t know much about dragons. You know that, of course. Even when I was a cop, I wasn’t on SWAT or anything. I know more about parking meters than I do the Dragon committees—”

“The Dragon Council,” she corrected him.

“Whatever. My point is that I don’t know them, but I do know you. You’re my little baby and I might know you better than you know yourself.”

“You didn’t even know I was a dragon.”

“I did so.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Will you stop taking after your mother for five damn minutes and let me talk?”

She smiled. Marty never let Frank finish a sentence either.

Her dad took another sip of coffee. “I may not know dragons, but I knew you were one. Listen to things you’re describing. Taking risks? Kristen, you tried out for every damn sport there was. Your whole fucking childhood was risk after risk. And loyalty? You once beat a kid up because he said Mario was better than Donkey King and it made your brother cry.”

“Donkey Kong.”

“Let me finish.”

Kristen nodded and sipped her coffee.

“The point is, if you’re a dragon, you’ve always been one. If other dragons are brave, loyal, and stubborn, then it makes sense you are too.”

“I didn’t say anything about stubborn.”

“Well, maybe that one you get from your old man. Plus, you have your mother’s iron will. I know this is all crazy. I’m merely your fat old man, watching you do all this amazing stuff. It’s crazy, but I still have my fat gut. For you, it’s gotta be…well…” Frank shook his head, speechless for a rare moment. “But, honestly, when the news came in that you were a dragon? I wasn’t surprised.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Really, Kristen, I wasn’t. And you know what, neither were you.”

“Yes, I was. I was shocked.”

He shook his head firmly. “Maybe you were surprised—maybe. But what did you do when you transformed? You sprang into action. You took risks to protect those you loved. You did what you’ve always done, only with more power than you had before. The truth is, you’ve always been a dragon.”

“Well, yeah. That much is kinda obvious.”

“I don’t only mean in your DNA, Krissy. I mean in your heart. You’re worried about all this changing you, but what I see is it’s simply made you into more of what you already were.”

“I don’t know, Dad…”

“Well, I do. You’ve always been driven—special. Your mother and I always knew you’d exceed our wildest dreams.”

“All parents say that about their kids.”

Frank laughed and hooked a thumb at Brian, passed out and snoring on the couch. “Your mother and I would be pleased if this one got a damn job. He’s special, sure, but not like you, Kristen. I’m sure this is crazy for you, but you’re not becoming anything you weren’t. You’re simply discovering a part of yourself that’s always been there.”

Kristen nodded, wiped a tear, and stood. “I should go, Dad. I should keep training.”

“That’s my girl!” he said and beamed. “But don’t you want to drink these beers and spend the night?”

She grinned. “I do, really. But I can’t, not until you guys are safe.”

“I’ll tell your mother you stopped by. You know she’ll be pissed for you not waking her up.”

“I know.”

“Well, all right, then.” He enveloped her in a hug.

When she left the room and rode down in the elevator, she felt better—like a veil had been lifted. She had to do this—for her family and for herself. Stonequest had been right about that, at the very least. Maybe he’d been right about everything he’d said in his little speech to her. She needed to come into her full dragon strength if she wanted to be at all useful to her friends and family. But that didn’t mean giving up who she was. The only part of her that she had to leave behind was the part of her that doubted what she was capable of.

And now, with her family’s support, she thought she could finally do that.

Chapter Fifteen

Death couldn’t believe how lucky her night had turned out to be. First, Shadowstorm had let slip that he had been in contact with the Masked One. That had been a bluff on her part, but he had confirmed it before he could cover his surprise. One never knew when such information might come in handy. Now, to top the day off, the Steel Dragon herself had arrived to visit her parents.

The assassin had thought she was still at the dragon’s manor in the countryside—one of the few places she didn’t dare to go—but it seemed that had changed.

Her plan had been to wait for one of the family members to leave, wound them in the leg, and wait for the Steel Dragon at the hospital, but the process could be simplified.

She was in the building visiting her family. When she left, she would wait for her to be alone on the street, kill her with her usual efficiency, and move on to her next contract. There was no need to bother with the humans. That was good. She hated dealing with humans. It was embarrassing for someone of her talents to have to work directly with the cattle who ran the background of the dragons’ world.

As she sat with her rifle aimed at the door, she did nothing but think. She knew there were assassins who didn’t watch through their scopes, but she found this laughable. Her job was to kill, which meant her work was to be ready for the killing moment. She couldn’t do that with a pair of binoculars.

She hadn’t accomplished all she had by being anything but patient.

And she had accomplished so much. Wars had been avoided because of her work.

Dragons didn’t normally go to war with each other. For thousands of years, there had been a more or less civil peace between them. They still fought proxy wars, of course, using the humans who lived in their territories, but that was totally different than dragons actually plotting to murder each other.

Physical combat was the main way for dragons to solve their disputes. A duel of the gods, it must seem to humans, and indeed it was. Dragon combat often ended in death, and because of this, there were dragons who didn’t wish to participate in it.

Their powers weren’t uniform. All had the same basic abilities—flight, increased speed and strength, and aura. But from there, their abilities varied. Most could breathe fire, but there were variations to those powers too. Some dragons could control flame for example, while others spat acid.

Some of these found themselves in disputes with dragons who had a particularly powerful skill set. When this happened, the weaker dragon often discovered that physical combat was a barbaric, demeaning thing—not to mention a surefire way to reduce their own life expectancy. If they felt this way, they would hire professionals like her to deal with these disputes.

That’s what Death was—a problem removal specialist. She stabilized the world, helped those with powers that didn’t translate into combat skills, and pruned the dragon family of its more bloated, obnoxious branches.

Truly, she would work for anyone who would hire her. It took a special kind of dragon to see the wisdom of assassinating a foe instead of airing their grievances and resorting to pummeling each other. Most of the time, the wisdom of the client to hire her was all the commitment she needed, but she had to admit, there was something wrong about this Steel Dragon.

It wasn’t her obsession with following human laws. Law itself was an interesting construct and all dragons—even Death—had codes of honor they believed in. And it wasn’t her unusual abilities. She was always interested in the unusual. What affronted her sensibilities about the target was that she saw herself as human, which was an affront to all of dragon kind.

The Steel Dragon had to be destroyed, culled from the herd and weeded from the garden before she could spread her disgusting ideas about humanity having rights.

Merely thinking about it was enough to make her aura begin to pulse. She quickly snuffed that out, though. It was an ability she rarely used and it wouldn’t do for other dragons to sense it. But forcing it down all the time meant that she had exquisite mastery over the tool. There weren’t many dragons who could kill one of their own kind and not ever let their heartbeat elevate or their aura spill out in either pride or guilt. She was as cool-headed as they came, and yet something in her boiled and she wished to slay this Steel Dragon tonight.

And then, as if the flames themselves smiled down upon her, Death had her chance.

Her target stepped out from the first floor of the hotel. This was the moment. She took aim. Last time, she’d merely tested her target’s power with a shot to the shoulder. Now that she knew her scale-tipped bullets would work, there was no reason for further trial.

That was the secret to her success, something that almost no one knew. When she hunted dragons, she tipped special rounds with fragments of her own scales. Much like a dragon claw or tooth would wreak great damage on another dragon, her scale-tipped bullets did what mere lead could not.

They put dragons down.

There would be no more tests. She aimed for the Steel Dragon’s head and was about to pull the trigger when Kristen turned and spoke to someone inside.

The assassin waited. She could give this girl a few more moments of life. It would cost her nothing, while firing too soon would ruin her entire attack.

She doubted that even the dragon’s steel skin could withstand the bullet she had loaded into her rifle. The weapon itself was incredibly large and super-high caliber—a custom job that most humans couldn’t ever hope to handle.

The bullet was even more special than most of her rounds. In addition to the scales, this bullet was diamond-tipped and the most powerful she’d ever created. Certainly more powerful than the one she’d first tried on the Steel Dragon. This particular combination of gun and ammunition had killed eleven dragons. It took extraordinary measures to eliminate one of her own kind. With incredible healing abilities, dense muscles, and scales as tough as metal, a round had to not only pierce the dragon’s body but also destroy either the heart or the brain.

The brain being the better option, of course.

It was easier to kill a dragon in human form, but even that wasn’t a sure thing. Most dragons transformed the moment they sensed danger, and those transformations changed the location of hearts and brain.

The Steel Dragon turned to the street again. The door to the hotel closed behind her and she began to walk.

Death could see her face. She looked happy and totally oblivious to what was about to happen. Her quarry wouldn’t even hear this shot. By the time the sound reached her, the shot would have already splattered her brains on the sidewalk behind her.

The assassin took a breath and held it, steadied her weapon as she led the target, and was about to pull the trigger when she heard something on the roof behind her.

She cursed. Her intended target would have to wait a moment. She’d placed alarms, magic and otherwise, on the roof exactly as she always did. They were complex things, and they should have slain anyone who came near. That they’d failed to do so meant the person up there was a threat.

Despite having the shot lined up, she took her eye away from the gun and transformed into her true body.

Some dragons’ transformations were flashy things of smoke and fire. Others vanished into clouds of dust and debris.

Death simply extended. One moment, she was a woman and the next, her fingers were claws, her arms were scaled, and wings emerged from her back.

She wasn’t particularly powerful in her dragon form—not like her client Shadowstorm, who really was an impressive specimen—but she was more than competent with her abilities. It would take a considerable fight to best her.

Her night vision easily pierced the darkness of the roof but she saw no dragon. She stared intently but still, encountered no fiery breath boiling and primed to erupt or bolts of lightning carefully parsed and ready to crack. All she saw was a human.

And a woman with a handgun, of all things. One of the dinky little things that they liked to brain each other with.

The assassin laughed at the tiny weapon aimed at her chest. “That can’t hurt me.”

Even in her human form, the weapon would have done little damage. Dragon muscles were tough. It would take something special to crack through them and obliterate the heart. Simply injuring one wouldn’t be enough. A dragon’s heart could heal unless it was destroyed completely. In this form, her dragon form, she would be practically invulnerable to most weapons. A handgun was a particularly laughable threat.

It was curious that the human had made it past her alarms, though. Was she a mage, perhaps? That might explain it.

“How did you get up here, little thing? You should have felt terror unlike anything you’ve ever experienced.” Not to mention that there should be holes in her body and her flesh should be burned to a crisp.

“I don’t fear you, beast.”

Death grinned at that. Beast? Really? Who was this impetuous little insect? Well, she would find out soon enough. She flexed her aura and used it like a laser to unravel this puny human’s will. Soon the human wouldn’t fear her but instead, would want to please her. She’d tell her everything she wanted to know.

“Who are you?”

“Merely a human who has had enough,” the woman said and fired her little handgun.

The assassin laughed at the bang but almost instantly, something changed. She looked down. The bullet had penetrated her scales and it hurt badly. It was, she thought, like being gored by a dragon’s claw, but far worse.

“How did you—”

Death never got her answer. The human stepped forward quickly and before she could say another word, fired her gun three more times in rapid succession. Each bullet ripped a hole in her scales and each shot inflicted a wound. She teetered on the edge of the building and toppled over to fall toward the street below.

“You never should have gone after her,” the strange human said.

Constance Vigil watched Death tumble from the rooftop. It seemed a shame to let the dragon go to waste—something akin to killing a bison and simply letting the meat rot. She could have killed hundreds of dragons with the bullets made from Death’s corpse.

But she didn’t need to kill her. She only had to keep the assassin from killing Kristen Hall—who would likely show up in only a few moments. That reminded her that she didn’t have long to get out of this building before the Steel Dragon arrived.

She ran.

Really, the Lost Dragon was why she’d had to stop this assassin. Death—as Constance had been told this dragon was known—had targeted Kristen, and that simply wouldn’t do. Stopping her was a priority.

In all honesty, she didn’t know any more about the Steel Dragon than any of the other mages in her circle, but debates swirled around her existence and her arrival in the same city in which they’d conducted their own experiments. Could the now-famous Kristen Hall be one of the experiments their mages had designed? It was quite possible, but if she was, how had she gotten loose in the world? The girl should have been locked up with all the other dragons they’d created.

Constance had to remind herself that no one had all the answers.

She smiled to herself. Being part of a clandestine society of mages intent on taking the yoke of power from the dragons that controlled the world had given her a very specific skill set. She’d had the magic ability to disarm Death’s traps and the practical experience to plan an escape route.

A quick rappel down a rope brought her to ground level, this time on the far side of the building from where her quarry had fallen. A quick peek around the corner told her that Kristen and Death had already encountered one another. She didn’t have any doubt that the Steel Dragon could prevail in this fight. The assassin might be a dragon, but she was a dragon with several dragon-scale bullets inside her, each one weakening her powers and sapping her strength.

For a brief moment, she wondered if she’d look back on that moment one day with fond memories or shame. Maybe the Steel Dragon would join their fight or maybe she would prove to be as dangerous to mankind as the other dragons. If that happened, perhaps her body would prove capable of making bullets that could truly destroy any dragon.

Constance hoped that wasn’t the case, but hers was a position in the world that offered no comforts. One way or the other, her organization would act. Only time would tell what that would involve.

She also hoped the Steel Dragon would see what had happened—that someone had saved her life, an ally stronger than a dragon.

Chapter Sixteen

Kristen heard a gunshot and instinctively, flung herself prone and turned her skin into steel. In the same moment, she realized that by the time she’d heard the gunshot, it would have been too late for her abilities to protect her.

But the projectile never came. Nothing struck her, nor did any piece of nearby pavement shatter from an impact.

“Did you hear that, Hall?” the officer at the door of the hotel yelled.

Before she could answer, three more gunshots rang out. She tried to pinpoint the source of the sound with her heightened dragon abilities. It was closer than she had thought—the top of a building only a few blocks away. Then she saw an enormous shape fall from the roof and smack into the side several times before it impacted with ground-shaking force. A dragon! But who? Was it Stonequest, keeping an eye on her? Or someone less friendly?

“Call for backup and send them there.” She pointed at the building and the officer nodded. He was already on his radio.

Kristen ran with every ounce of speed her dragon powers gave her. Snow pelted her face as she ran. It appeared to be some kind of fancy apartment building like those that appeared all over Detroit. Not for the first time, she cursed her inability to fly. If she could turn into a dragon, she would be there already. She knew she’d have to transform and that she could keep her identity, but something about pursuing a gunner was so human. It hadn’t occurred to her to try to transform until that moment. She covered the few blocks in less than a minute and reached the building.

She brushed the thoughts of unused powers away as she studied the scene.

It was a dragon that had fallen, all right. But it wasn’t Stonequest, Sebastian, or any other she had seen before. Its dark-red scales glittered as it rolled itself slowly upright. Blood poured from several wounds. One was in the chest, but the others all seemed to be in various limbs.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“No,” the strange dragon replied. It was a woman’s voice. “Not really.”

“Help’s on the way,” she told her as she stepped closer. Strangely, the wounds weren’t healing. They continued to bleed and slow trickles of liquid dribbled down the massive body.

A glittering flash caught her eye. Something on the ground sparkled as it reflected the lamplight. At first, she wasn’t sure what she saw. Then she realized the reflections were made by scales—small, silver dragon scales. They’d poured from a black leather pouch that must have been torn free from the dragon as she fell.

She knew those scales. They looked exactly like those Death used as her calling card. She glanced at the dragon quickly and saw those dangerous eyes staring balefully at her.

“What a shame. I had hoped to avail myself of that help you offered and worry about killing you later,” she told her. “But I suspect you’ve realized who I am.”

“Death.”

“Just so.” The dragon heaved herself onto her hind legs. Her claws raked the air where Kristen had stood, but she had already moved left and into a roll that carried her away from the slash.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she said as she found her feet. She punched out with a steel hand to deliver a powerful blow to an already injured rear leg. The assassin roared with pain and whipped her head around.

Jaws snapped closed inches away from her head as she ducked the attack. She drove a right uppercut into Death’s jaw. The dragon’s head jerked away from the attack.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” she said. “You can come quietly, and we’ll get you medical attention.”

Her adversary laughed. “Oh, I don’t think my employer’s employer would like that. I appreciate the offer, but I would like my hide to remain intact, thanks.”

Quickly, she weighed her options. Help was coming, but it would probably be human police, not Dragon SWAT. Humans would merely give the dragon additional targets to threaten. She needed to finish this fight before anyone else was hurt. That was a problem because she’d never beaten a dragon in its real form. Stonequest had assured her that doing so was simply impossible.

But this dragon was hurt, bleeding, and limping. Rather than closing, each of those wounds seemed to be growing slowly worse. Spotted lines of bright red seeped from each injury. She recognized that right away.

“You had a taste of your own medicine, did you? Someone used dragon bullets on you,” she taunted.

“And it hurts like hell,” Death agreed. She flapped her wings once and became airborne, then crashed down again where her opponent stood.

The Steel Dragon didn’t move this time. She held her ground, her guard up, and hammered a blow into the massive chest as the dragon bore down on her. Death bellowed with pain and tumbled back.

Kristen didn’t waste a moment. She lunged forward and used the massive forelegs as steps to climb up onto her neck. Once she was there, she clamped her steel arms around the dragon’s throat and began to squeeze. Death coughed, bucked, and even rolled over completely in attempts to dislodge her attacker, but she clung tenaciously even when the massive bulk rolled over her.

“It doesn’t have to end like this,” she said through gritted teeth. “You can surrender.”

“Never.” The assassin hissed her fury. “I took a contract. I finish it or I die.”

“It’s your call.”

She now felt she’d given her attacker more than enough chances and tightened her grasp around the sinewy neck. The dragon tried to cough, no longer able to breathe. She wound her steel arms even tighter and increased their pressure until vertebrae began to crack. All the emotional turmoil from the past few days emerged in a single inarticulate cry of rage.

The release surged through her and she poured all her fury into her arms and yelled in triumph when something snapped inside Death’s neck. The dragon toppled and was still. She rolled off to one side and came up in a fighting stance, ready in case her enemy was still alive.

Cautiously, she approached, but all her senses told her the dragon was dead. It was completely still, a difficult feat for a creature with lungs that must have been larger than an entire person. No sound came from its body either, but most importantly, she sensed no aura. Even when dragons weren’t actively trying to influence something, they always radiated an aura. This one didn’t. That could only mean it was dead.

She looked at the wounds on her adversary’s chest. They were tiny holes. On the dragon’s huge body, they looked like punctures from a pellet gun. She shivered. That was the fate Death had intended for her. She must have waited for her on the roof, ready to fire when she left the hotel. But who had shot Death, then?

Kristen knew her team was on the way so she’d have backup soon, not to mention a forensics team. But that made her think of Stonequest. He’d been very involved in this case. Surely he’d get wind of it and when he did, he’d no doubt take over the crime scene. That meant if she wanted answers, she had to get them now.

She returned to the dragon’s corpse, made a hasty circuit around its body, and located the black pouch again. After a quick glance around her, she retrieved the bag and stuck her hand inside.

The first thing she felt was more of the little scales. The next thing she found was a smartphone.

Her smile was one of triumph. To a dragon, the phone might have been nothing more than a curious bauble, but to a human, it was the greatest source of clues one could hope for.

Quickly, she took the phone out and examined it, hunched over it to block the snow—that now fell faster and faster—from touching the screen. It was a cheap Android phone, obviously something Death had bought recently and intended to dispose of. She tried to open it but it was locked and had a button for a fingerprint.

Kristen wondered how paranoid the dragon could be. Would she have used her human form or dragon form to unlock the phone? The human form would have been more obvious perhaps, but if Death could turn only part of her body into her dragon form, that might be even more secure.

After a moment’s thought, she picked up the dead dragon’s clawed hand and hoped that she had been like all the others she had met—supremely confident in her own abilities.

It turned out she was. The phone unlocked at the touch of the dragon’s thumb. It was a good thing her dragon form wasn’t that big. If she’d have been as large as Shadowstorm, it would have had to be her human hand that unlocked the phone.

She wondered about that. Since she’d died this way, did that mean she would forever remain in her dragon form? What would happen if Kristen died with her steel skin activated? Would she be impossible to cremate? If she was buried, would rust dispose of her body instead of microorganisms? It was an odd and perhaps unsettling thought but irrelevant at the moment.

Right now, she needed to go through the phone as quickly as she could. She knew that either her team or Dragon SWAT would be there momentarily. Dragon SWAT seemed to have an uncanny knack for arriving at dragon-related crime scenes.

There wasn’t much on the smartphone. It was obviously a burner with a VPN and a secure browser but nothing useful. But, if the assassin had used the phone at all, they might be able to trace where it had been by using GPS coordinates.

Kristen called the station using Death’s phone. She asked for computer forensics and once transferred, asked them to run the number and IMEI through the GPS search. The operator told her it would take a minute, but once he had the information, he’d send it to her personal phone.

Once she’d thanked him and hung up, she went into the building and sprinted up the first stairs she could find, taking steps four and five at a time in her haste to reach the rooftop. Maybe the shooter was still there, maybe not, but there could be something.

For the next forty seconds, she tried to scour the roof for more clues but found little. Snow had begun to accumulate in patches here and there, but it had barely started. There were no footprints but there was some kind of a spherical device set up near the door. She thought it might have been magic, but she couldn’t tell. A huge crack down the middle of it suggested that whatever it had once done, it no longer functioned.

She also found a tripwire connected to a flash grenade at the top of the stairs, but that too had been disarmed. That was good luck. She knew her steel skin was impervious to grenades, but her eyes could be blinded as easily as any human’s.

Still, it all left her with more questions than answers. Who had made it past these traps? Who would have knowledge of both magic traps and tripwires? Was it a person who did this or a dragon? A single culprit—perhaps mourning the loss of one of Death’s victims—or a team working together?

There was nothing else to see up on the rooftop and she could hear approaching sirens. The police would gather around Death’s body soon, and she assumed she should be there when they did. She bounded down the stairs and stepped into the cold air to find her team already moving toward her.

“Do we have hostiles?” Drew shouted and sounded breathless.

“Only one. Dead.” She pointed at Death’s body.

“Holy fucking shit! Red killed a dragon,” Hernandez cried.

“But that’s… Kristen, that’s amazing,” Butters sputtered.

Beanpole and Keith said nothing. The former was wide-eyed but cool-headed, while the Rookies mouth hung open with the corners still somehow turned up into a grin.

“Nice job,” the Wonderkid said with a nod.

“Thanks, but it wasn’t only me. Death was injured when I arrived,” she said. “Shot with dragon bullets.”

“Dragon bullets?” Drew asked.

“Like the one Death hit me with. Someone gave her a taste of her own medicine.”

“Any idea who?”

She shook her head. “The shooter was on the roof with Death, who was up there ready to take a shot at me. But whoever it was, they were long gone by the time I got there.”

“Well, shit. You did this, though? You killed her?” the team leader asked.

Kristen merely nodded. She tossed Drew one of the silver scales she’d pulled from Death’s bag. “I found that.”

“Anything else?”

“Her gun’s up on the roof, aimed at the entrance of the hotel where my parents are—a big damn thing. Other than that, only her cellphone.”

She took it out and waggled it at her team. Everyone’s eyebrows raised appreciatively.

“Doesn’t that belong in an evidence bag?” The Wonderkid winked.

“Dragon SWAT won’t know what to do with it. I already called the station. They’re running its history as we speak. I’m hoping for GPS data.”

Everyone nodded, then split up to cover the scene. Before another minute had passed, Dragon SWAT arrived. Stonequest was in the lead with three other dragons behind him. They flew between the Detroit skyscrapers and through the falling snow, their wings pumping to create flurries in their wake. Massive beats of their wings as they landed scattered the traces of snow that had accumulated.

With four concurrent flurries of energy, the dragons transformed so four beings in the shape of people stood with the team.

“Well done, Kristen! Is this your work?” Stonequest pointed to the dead dragon.

“Yes.”

He studied the huge corpse. “What are those strange wounds from?”

“Someone shot her,” she replied. “With dragon-scale-tipped bullets, I assume. Like the one Death used on me.”

“But that is Death, right? Someone else fired those shots?” he asked.

Kristen nodded.

Stonequest nodded. “All right. So, we have a killer’s killer to find. Clues?”

“Her gun, a few traps, a bag of silver scales she wore around her neck, and this.” She tossed him the locked phone and he obviously didn’t know what to make of it.

“It unlocks with her fingerprints,” she said helpfully.

Stonequest nodded and gestured for two of the other dragons to join him. The three of them made a triangle around Death’s corpse and began to chant in unison. The wind picked up, the stars seemed to glow through the clouds, and she was a dragon no more but a human woman wearing black tactical gear.

A sudden burst of fear rose in her chest. She’d thought the dragon was dead, locked immutably in its bestial form, but seeing it transform was a reminder that there were more than dragons in the world. There were dwarves that ruled Canada, pixies with unpredictable magical powers and alien to humans, and even mages—human beings who’d mastered magic.

But it wasn’t only the magic that put Kristen on edge. It was seeing the form that had tried to kill her. This slender female body was the one who had targeted her from afar and hunted her across the city while she had been going about her life. After seeing Death in her real body, it seemed wrong that this was the form in which she had tried to kill her—the one to fear. It was all the more frightening that her body lay in the dry silhouette of a dragon’s frame. The snow that had landed had melted and made an outline around her dragon body. In moments, though, the illusion was gone as snow landed in the dry space and instantly melted.

Kristen had to turn away.

“The damn thing won’t open,” Stonequest said.

“Try her dragon form?” Hernandez said casually.

He nodded, muttered an incantation over Death’s hand, and it transformed into a claw. That unlocked the phone and he stared at it in obvious confusion.

“Stonequest…” Drew began.

“Dragon SWAT appreciates your help, but we’ll take it from here. Dragons killing dragons is our jurisdiction.” Despite having worked together for months now, his response sounded canned and impersonal.

“Right,” the team leader said and sent Kristen a look that said, let’s go.

She agreed and they wandered to the SWAT van without protest.

They piled in with Drew and Butters in the front and the others in the back.

“Arrogant pricks,” Jim said.

“Too bad, too.” She held her phone up. “I have the GPS map.”

Drew and Butters clambered out of the front seats and joined the team in the back. Together, they poured over the data.

It was like viewing a convoluted obstacle course, a maze made up of the streets of Detroit. The first thing that became obvious to Kristen was that Death never went anywhere twice. She said as much to her team and they all nodded.

“She must have been crazy paranoid,” Keith murmured.

“With good reason,” Butters pointed out. “Can you imagine your job description being to hunt down the greatest cop Detroit’s ever seen? She must’ve been scared silly of our Steel Dragon.”

Hernandez mimed gagging at the compliment but Kristen didn’t mind.

“Wait, look there,” Beanpole said. “She’s been there twice.”

“That’s where we are right now,” Kristen said. “That doesn’t help us much.”

“There’s another place, though. Look, both times, she went to that other place before coming here,” he continued.

“Do you think that’s where she received her orders?” Jim asked.

“It must be. Other than that, there’s no pattern at all to her movements. She’s as cautious as hell but still had to get her missions from a boss with a different kind of paranoia,” Drew said.

“Do you still think its Shadowstorm?” she asked.

He nodded. “I do, but we’ll need more evidence.”

“Then let’s go get it.” The Wonderkid sounded downright eager.

“Should we tell Dragon SWAT?” Keith asked.

Drew and Kristen shared a look. She broke the silence first. “We gave them the phone. They should be able to figure it out.”

Beanpole shook his head. “I don’t want to go in without backup. This guy—Shadowstorm or whoever it is—might be there.”

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Kristen interjected. “Do you remember the last time we had Shadowstorm cornered? We called SWAT in and he fled as soon as he sensed them. He’s incredibly perceptive when it comes to auras. If we call in Dragon SWAT, he’ll simply run off again and find a new hole to hide in.”

“Well, won’t he sense your aura or whatever?” Hernandez asked.

“Yes, probably. I’ll try to suppress it as much as possible, but I don’t think I’ll be able to hide it from him.”

“Then won’t he run off?” Keith asked.

“He might,” she agreed. “But he might not. The last time we fought, he almost killed me. I think that if he senses me coming and only me, he’ll try to stay and fight. I don’t know why, but I think I’m a real threat to him. Hiring Death was extreme and I’m willing to bet he wants me dead badly enough to fight me.”

“But Kristen, the last time he fought you, you almost died.” Drew avoided eye contact. It was never pleasant bringing up when someone else almost died.

“That’s true, but things have changed since then.”

“You didn’t tell us you could transform,” Keith said. He truly was the dragon fanboy.

“I can’t, not yet, but I think I know what’s stopped me. I was scared that I’d become someone else, but I don’t think that’s true anymore. I think I’ll simply become me.”

Hernandez groaned. “That’s so cheesy, Red.”

Everyone laughed.

“Are you sure you can do it?” Drew asked once the laughter had died down.

Kristen grinned. “Nope, not at all. But we have to risk it. There’s a good chance Shadowstorm’s not there, anyway. If that’s the case, we’d be letting evidence get away for no reason. And if he is there, then yes, I want to destroy him or die trying.”

No one laughed at that. She grimaced. While she tried to keep her aura from affecting her team, she’d apparently tried too hard. None of them felt her confidence, her certainty in herself, or her devotion to her city.

But that was okay. That was what it was like to be human. And if she died protecting the people she loved, that would be a very human way to go. And if she did manage to find Shadowstorm, she’d push herself to her very limit. She’d either die fighting him, ridding the city of a parasite that had lived off it for decades, or she’d win. Either way, she would end this, once and for all.

Chapter Seventeen

The crystalline sphere on Sebastian Shadowstorm’s desk began to glow—first a mild yellow, then a dull orange. The device had been made by a mage and could sense auras even better than he could. It meant a dragon was approaching and looking for him. It wasn’t Death, either. The orb would have remained yellow instead of turning amber if it had been her.

There was no one who knew where he was hiding save the assassin. He hadn’t even shown his thuggish minions his current hideout. It meant that not only had Death failed, but she’d also done so in spectacular fashion. He had no doubt which dragon now approached. It was Kristen, the Steel Dragon, traitor to her kind. It couldn’t be anyone else.

For her to have discovered his whereabouts, she must have bested Death, either killing her or beating her so badly that she was apprehended by dragon SWAT. That meant there would be no one to punish and no one to torture for their mistake. The Masked One wouldn’t see it that way, though. He’d still very much have someone to place all the blame on. Shadowstorm grimaced when he thought back to the dancers forced to waltz through the gore of their own kind. He didn’t believe humans were any more than cattle, but there were still limits to what should be done when slaughtering meat. Nevertheless, he understood his allies. He’d chosen them, after all.

Working with the Masked One simply meant he couldn’t fail.

Although he was disappointed that Death had not met expectations—the amount of resources he’d expended on her fees was embarrassing to even contemplate—he wasn’t entirely surprised at her inability to kill the Steel Dragon.

Kristen Hall was a feisty, stubborn little being. She had stood against him in combat despite not activating her dragon body. And then there were her pesky allies. While his alarm didn’t indicate that any dragons accompanied her, he assumed she’d bring her human police. In fact, he counted on it.

While Death had pursued her through the city, Shadowstorm had quietly prepared his base for a final showdown with the Steel Dragon.

Although the Detroit Renewable Power facility had been officially shut down due to licensing and permits, no one seemed to have noticed that the steam continued to run.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He chuckled smugly. His contact at the Detroit Free Press said one of the reporters had asked questions, but he’d been shot down and sent to cover the water treatment situation in Flint. The dragon hadn’t simply wasted more than a century in Detroit. He was a part of this city, a hidden master who knew where all the strings could be pulled.

For example, despite the Renewable Power facility being shut down, trash was still delivered for incineration. The transformer station was still operational—even though there had been unusual spikes in its energy consumption. And while the building was devoid of workers, no one had bothered to lock the network of tunnels that started beneath the facility and radiated out into the city.

That was where he headed now, down into the tunnels beneath the facility. These were the blood vessels of Detroit that delivered hot steam to the city that was spawned from its own burning garbage.

Shadowstorm didn’t doubt that Kristen would find where he had gone. In fact, his plans required that she do so. But she wouldn’t find the way down to his lair easily either. He had grown increasingly paranoid since being summoned by the Masked One and no longer relied on people to protect him. Once they’d set up the web of traps, he’d had them executed. That was one of the other reasons he knew she had found Death. There simply wasn’t anyone else alive who could possibly know where he was.

The Steel Dragon would come to the facility and that would be her downfall. She would either be snared like an insect in a web or, if she somehow did make it all the way into the tunnels where he was waiting for her, she would die at his hands.

He knew that if this happened, he’d not only have the advantage of centuries of experience but that the deaths of her pathetic human allies would weigh on her as well.

While he wasn’t stupid and hated that she saw herself as a human, he also accepted it. He could use this weakness to his advantage. She had some kind of traitorous sense of loyalty to the lesser species and would risk her life for the humans she cared for.

By the time she reached him—if she reached him—she’d either be exhausted from protecting her humans or mourning their death. Either way, he would be able to destroy the pathetic excuse for a dragon and take back the city that the insolent little whelp had inadvertently pried from his hands.

Shadowstorm almost relished meeting with the Masked One. He’d explain the careful traps he’d set and the way he’d quickly and efficiently dispatched Kristen’s allies, and the powerful dragon would only stare. He was old, but the Masked One was positively ancient and wouldn’t understand the dangers of steam tunnels, the power that humans had harnessed and put into their machines, or the sheer mass of garbage humans created.

But that would come in time. First, he would destroy the Steel Dragon. Then, he would celebrate.

Chapter Eighteen

The SWAT van eased to the curb outside the Detroit Renewable Power facility.

“This is the place?” Butters asked.

Kristen nodded. “That’s what it says on the phone.”

“What is it?” Keith asked.

“It’s basically an incinerator for garbage.” Jim stepped from the back of the van and studied the gate in front of them.

“That’s disgusting.” Hernandez frowned.

“The city council agrees,” the Wonderkid continued. “I read that they voted to shut this place down. It releases particulates into the air, for one thing. Plus, there are all kinds of weird rules about who pays how much to get their trash burned. I won’t get into it because we have a dragon to kill but apparently, it’s not a great deal for Detroit.”

“What do they do with all the burned garbage?” Drew asked as he took out an assault rifle and checked the magazine.

“They use it to make steam, which they send around the city to heat many of the buildings downtown. It’s why we have all those grates that spit steam all the damn time. Those are leaks. I guess there’s a whole network of tunnels under the city and has been since 1903.”

“I thought that was sewer gas or something,” Hernandez said.

Jim laughed. “This city would smell far worse than it does if all that came from the sewers.”

“But if it shut down, how come there’s still steam coming from that smokestack?” Butters gestured to the towering brick smokestack that protruded from the white-and-red block of a building.

“Because Shadowstorm is expecting us.” Kristen had no doubt that this was true.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t call your boy Stonequest?” Keith sounded nervous.

She was glad he did, though. It would give her an opportunity to deal with her team.

“I’m sure. He’ll run.”

“There has to be a whole mess of tunnels down there for him to choose from,” Jim pointed out.

With her back turned on the facility, she faced her team. “I’m also sure this won’t be an easy fight. Shadowstorm wants me dead, obviously. His assassin failed, so I have no doubt that we’ll walk into a real death trap. I think it would be better if all of you went home.”

The response was instant.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Fuck off, Red.”

“Under no circumstances.”

Kristen couldn’t track who’d said what, only that they’d all refused. “I’m serious. Last time, it was all of you that exposed him. He won’t forget that. I…I can’t lose you—any of you.”

“So what, we’re supposed to watch you walk in there without backup and let Shadowstorm grind you to pieces?” Drew said.

“I’ve been training—”

“So have we,” Hernandez cut in. “We’ve all done this far longer than you, Red. You forget you’re still the newbie on the team and that we all signed up for this crazy job because we know that someone’s gotta risk their fucking life.”

“Hernandez is right.” Jim nodded. “You have a way better chance to defeat him if we have your back, which means this city has a better chance.”

“This city is my responsibility,” she protested.

“With all due respect, Kristen, no, it’s not.” The words were especially surprising coming from Keith. He was generally her biggest supporter. “This is our city as much as it's yours. We’re glad to have a dragon on our side, but it’s still ours. I’d rather risk my life than have dragons duke it out like we’re nothing but a prize to be fought for.”

For a moment, she was speechless. She simply didn’t know what to do with her friends’ courage. None of them had her strength, her speed, or her steel skin, yet they were all willing to venture into a place that would put their lives at risk simply so she could try to defeat Shadowstorm? It was too much.

“Oh, Jesus, Red. Stop crying, you’ll rust,” Hernandez said.

She nodded and wiped her eyes. “Okay. Let’s do this. Drew, bolt cutters for the gate?”

“They won’t be necessary,” Beanpole said. “The gate is not locked.”

Kristen nodded. Of course it wasn’t. They pushed the gate open and entered. Inside the fenced-off area was a massive parking lot dotted with various buildings—cooling towers and a few others that were probably offices or something similar. Garbage trucks, a few dumpsters, and a massive pile of garbage cluttered the lot and in the center was a massive red-and-white building. It appeared to be the heart of the operation and looked like it had recently been expanded to house the tower of bricks that probably comprised the smokestack of the incinerator.

“All right. Beanpole, watch our back. Butters, I very much doubt this asshole will give us vantage points to snipe from but if he failed to notice one, I want you there. Hernandez, are you packing explosives?” Drew’s eyes never left the facility.

“Does a bear shit in the woods?”

“Good girl. Now, I don’t want you to bring this place down on our heads, obviously, but once we see Shadowstorm, look for exits. He doesn’t have a problem with running off when he loses a fight, so if he reaches one of these tunnels, make him regret it.”

“What about me, sir?” Keith asked.

The team leader grinned and tossed him an assault rifle. “You, me, and Jim? We’ll watch Kristen’s back. We have the fun job of shooting a dragon with bullets we know won’t hurt it.”

The Wonderkid shot her a knowing look and she felt the bullet that had punctured her shoulder in her pocket. She didn’t know what she would do with it but leaving it behind seemed like definitely the wrong answer.

They pushed forward into the Detroit Renewable Power facility, a building she had only ever previously heard about on the local news. It now seemed to possess the importance of an ancient European castle.

Slow and careful progress brought them about halfway across the parking lot that surrounded the red-and-white building. The entire team startled when the electric transformers in a corner away from the facility itself crackled. Bolts of electricity arced between them like a tesla coil gone mad.

“The dumbass missed us,” Hernandez said.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Kristen said. She could feel the electromagnetic energy pulling at her steel skin. It was getting stronger and stronger and in a moment, it would drag her across the parking lot and slam her into one of the massive transformers, where she’d be crucified with electricity.

She turned her steel skin off and the tug stopped.

Keith laughed. “That was a weak trap.”

“I don’t think it was only for me. What about your guns?” she asked.

Drew answered first. “Mine’s getting pulled for sure. Double time toward the facility.”

“Ahh!” Beanpole yelled. His weapon had already slipped from his hand and clattered across the parking lot toward the transformers. He cursed and bolted after it but was too slow.

Everyone else raced toward the facility before the magnets could rob them of theirs.

“Beanpole, get back to the van and keep your radio handy. It would help to know if anyone else shows up—mages, thugs, even Dragon SWAT,” Drew yelled at the other man as he ran. “And for Mom’s sake, don’t approach the malfunctioning electrical transformers. There are more guns in the van.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir!” Beanpole yelled and adjusted direction toward the vehicle.

Kristen led them to a door, concerned that this was exactly what Shadowstorm wanted, but the rapid fire of a machine gun peppered the ground ahead of them with a line of bullets. It seemed that he didn’t want them to use this door after all, but that didn’t mean she could allow them to be shredded by the barrage.

She turned and led the team away from the door and toward a massive pile of garbage outside the facility.

“Do we have a sniper, Butters?” Drew asked.

“No, sir. It’s an automated system, looks like. I can’t tell if its magic or machine-powered.”

“Can you take a shot?”

He lifted his rifle, aimed, fired and cursed.

The gun started to fire in return.

They ran farther from it and closer to the garbage.

“Either it's one hell of an AI or magic, but either way, it’s firing through a tiny slit. I can’t target the gun itself and I don’t know where the sensors are.” Butters looked downright ashamed that an automated system had already bested him this early in the fight.

“I think we need to assume its magic,” Kristen said. Everyone nodded—an agreement of necessity.

“There’s an entrance.” Keith pointed to open hangar doors. A conveyer belt led inside them and a giant claw looked like it normally deposited trash on it but was currently still.

“We can go in with the trash,” she said. “I don’t think Shadowstorm would think a dragon would sink that low.”

They moved toward the conveyer belt and the stench of garbage became more acrid as they approached.

“This plan stinks,” Keith joked. No one laughed. That would have involved breathing far too deeply.

They had reached the base of the garbage pile when the crane activated. She saw no operator seated at its controls, but the massive machine began to move all the same. Its boom arm swung out and a dangling claw of metal gnashing teeth hung below it. “Go, go, go! Up the pile!” she said. She stayed on the ground near a giant circle with an X painted on it, no doubt the claw’s typical target.

It probably wasn’t smart, but she thought she could totally destroy it.

Instead of targeting her, however, it tracked the Wonderkid up the garbage heap. She cursed, turned on her dragon speed, and reached him as the claw descended. Its massive metal jaws closed around them both and she activated her steel skin.

The machine was strong but the Steel Dragon was stronger.

“What do you want me to do?” Jim asked as she held the jaws apart so they couldn’t close.

“Get inside. Hernandez!” she bellowed. “Blow the controls for this fucker.”

He obeyed and scurried up the garbage heap, his legs sinking into the trash up to his knees as he did so.

Kristen tried to hold the jaws of the claw at bay but it was too much. They slammed shut. Her head, arms, and torso were now inside the clawed scoop and her legs dangled out. If she was a human, she’d no doubt be dead.

She was forced to wait, blind and deaf as her prison carried her to who knew what.

After an agonizing thirty seconds, the expected explosion—dulled from her being enclosed in metal—stopped the mechanical claw’s movement.

Impatient, she kicked her legs but her prison remained shut.

Something pinged off the claw, followed rapidly by another. After the third, it opened and dumped her into a pile of garbage inside the facility.

The team stood above the pile in the massive open hangar doorway. Butters settled his rifle on his shoulder. He must have shot the release for the claw—a damn hard shot, but he had done it in three tries.

“Where’s Hernandez?” she asked, tried to push herself up the pile of muck, and failed. She was impressed her team had not only scaled the garbage pile but reached the doorway.

“She blew the controls. She’s on her way,” Drew called.

The door to the facility began to slide closed from either side with the team trapped in the middle. Already, the catwalks that led around the trash pile were blocked.

“Hernandez, see if you can find another way in without getting shot!” Drew yelled over his shoulder as he turned his back to the outside and scrutinized something in the building.

“Fuck that!” Hernandez yelled but it was obvious from how faint it sounded that she was too far. She wouldn’t make it.

“Everyone else, jump!”

“No!” Kristen yelled but the others ignored her. They all flung themselves into the garbage pile. Butters and Drew did so with disgusted resignation, but Keith and Jim almost looked like they enjoyed it. She couldn’t let them go it alone, so she turned her dragon speed on and raced up the pile. At the top, she discovered another garbage pile inside the building and she jumped into it with her team.

They plunged into the trash and she immediately realized they’d fallen into another trap.

The stack began to writhe and convulse like some great beast had been asleep at the bottom and had now awoken.

“Stay near the top,” Jim shouted. “I saw a video online about this place. Those are giant metal corkscrews down there. They’ll grind us up like hamburger meat.”

That instruction was easier said than done. As the trash was pulled into the garbage grinders, lighter items were pushed toward the top while heavier things—like people—seemed to sink through the mass like pasta in boiling water. Already, they’d sunk six feet, and the top of the wall was out of reach. No one could jump that high, and even if they could, the footing was so poor that it gave instead of providing a springboard. She had to turn her body back to skin instead of steel to avoid sinking through it all.

“How deep you think this pit is, Jim?” Drew asked.

Kristen turned to him as well. He was the only one of them who seemed to have any idea about the specs of this place.

“How the fuck am I supposed to know? I’ve seen this place on the news once or twice and Googled it, but it’s not like I know the goddamn engineering plans!” There was panic in his voice and she couldn’t blame him. They were way too close to those grinding screws.

Chunks of garbage spewed—coffee grounds, popped diapers, and the leftovers from kitchen sinks. The screws continued to grind, and they sank even deeper.

“We need an idea!” Butters shouted. Despite his weight, he wasn’t any deeper in the garbage than the rest of them, but there was real panic in his voice. She had to do something—anything—if her team was going to survive this.

She pushed toward the surface and again, the mass of garbage threatened to swallow her. An extension cord wound around her neck. It seemed both ends were already stuck in the grinder below. She tried to pull herself free but had an idea. A dumb, dangerous idea, but an idea all the same.

After a deep breath, she dove into the garbage. Moving down through it proved to be much easier than staying afloat in it. Yes, the smell was almost unbearable. It was dark, although not pitch-black thanks to her night vision, but at least she could head down. It made it easier that she’d turned her skin to steel again, so she basically sank through the muck. She wondered if—in all of Earth’s history with its dragon overlords—a single dragon had ever willingly dived into garbage. From what she could tell, not getting their hands dirty was maybe rule number one of being a dragon. Swimming through trash had to be a serious no-no.

When she reached the bottom of the pit, she confirmed that Jim had been right. Massive screws spiraled to churn the garbage and break it into tiny pieces. She had no doubt that they would do the same thing to a human body—grind it up beyond its constituent parts.

Fortunately, her body was not human. She’d already activated her steel skin to make her descent faster.

Having reached the bottom of the pit, she rotated herself so her feet pointed down and jammed her steel-skinned legs between the screws.

The pressure was immediate, like the world’s worst shiatsu massage chair. Her skin held, though, and didn’t break. She hadn’t thought it would—she could withstand bullets, after all—but a wave of relief surged all the same. The screws continued to grind against her body but failed to damage or dislodge her and after a long moment, an odd pop sounded from somewhere hidden in the walls of the pit and the pressure stopped. She had done it. Her intervention had prevented them from being crushed into fuel for the incinerator.

“Kristen!” She heard them call, their voices muffled through the trash. Their obvious anxiety spurred her into action, and she dragged her arms through the garbage in an effort to clear the surface away from her head. With her legs still trapped, she had to dig her face clear rather than simply scramble through. Bags split and rained muck on her and she grimaced but hauled herself upward. Still, the trash in her hair and on her face was worth it when she felt a hand catch hers.

Another pair of hands and another appeared in her vision, digging garbage furiously away from her. After a moment, she could see again. Drew, Keith, Butters, and Jim looked at her and grinned like fools.

“Steel Dragon? More like trash snake,” Keith said.

Everyone groaned.

“That was a golden opportunity, and that’s what you did with it?” Butters joked and slapped the Rookie on the back of the head.

“If it was such a good opportunity, let’s hear what you have,” he countered.

The sniper paused. Everyone laughed despite almost being crushed. He had nothing.

“I thought Princess Leia was tough. She has nothing on the Steel Dragon,” Jim quipped.

Everyone smiled and nodded, Kristen included, but no one laughed. They’d laughed once in the face of death because they’d had to. Almost dying on the job regularly brought out the gallows humor in people, but to do so twice seemed downright arrogant.

“Not to bring the mood of this trash party down even further, but we’re still stuck in a garbage pit,” Drew said and didn’t release her hand. “Do you have a plan to get us out of here Miss Steel Dragon?”

“I do, actually. Do any of you see an extension cord?”

Keith, Jim, and Butters didn’t have to look far to find the cord that had caught her and given her the idea. The Wonderkid located it first.

“We can use this to climb out.”

She nodded and winked, which caused some kind of slime to run out of her hair and into her eyes.

“The only problem is that both ends of this are stuck.” Keith grimaced. Despite his complaint, he’d obviously worked out how to solve this particular logistical problem, although he seemed determined not to voice it. She did it for him.

“One of you tough SWAT boys has a knife on you, right?”

Drew and Keith both reached for theirs.

“Well, get down there and get us this repurposed rope,” she said.

His expression resigned, Keith nodded. He didn’t want Drew to let go of Kristen any more than the team leader did.

“If you guys keep calling me Rookie after this, you can all go fuck yourselves.” And with that, he dove into the garbage.

They waited for what seemed like forever before he reappeared with one end of the extension cord. Somehow, he’d managed to get it with the plug still intact.

“It was wound around the metal screw.” He said every word while exhaling and obviously tried to keep as much filth out of his mouth as possible.

“Halfway there, Rookie,” Butters said.

“Listen, you fat fucker, why don’t you get the other half? Whales are supposed to be able to hold their breaths for like an hour, right?” the man retorted with a solid dose of vitriol.

No one laughed harder than Butters.

Keith grinned. He’d obviously prepared the joke but he didn’t press the point. With a deep breath heavy with resignation, he dove back into the garbage. He surfaced maybe twenty seconds later with the other end of the extension cord. This one, he’d had to cut with the knife.

“Nice,” Kristen said. “Now, find a piece of pipe or something, tie that cord around it, and throw it around one of those handrails up there so we can climb out.”

He nodded and he and Jim went to look for a pipe. They found a piece of PVC without too much work, ran the cord through it, and knotted it. Thereafter, they took turns to hurl the makeshift grappling hook up toward the handrail. After a few attempts, the Rookie managed to loop it around.

With a triumphant, “What do you think of that Wonderkid?” He climbed up.

It almost came loose once, but he did a weird little flip trick with the cord and it held. Once at the top, he held it so Jim could climb up. His teammate wasted no time and his experience in the military was obvious in the way he raced up the cable.

“You next, Drew,” Kristen told him.

“If you think I’ll climb out of here while your foot is still trapped in there, you’re fucking crazy.” Drew shook his head.

“You have to. The Wonderkid and the Rookie will be eaten alive without you, Drew.”

“We’re all dead without the Steel Dragon.”

“It’s okay. I have a plan.”

He took a deep breath and his face soured at the smell, but he nodded and released her. She had been a little worried that she would be yanked back into the twirling screws despite hearing something that had sounded like the motor had broken. There was no way to be sure that was the case but either way, her steel legs did far more to stop the screws than him holding her hand had and she didn’t move.

The team leader ascended and looked like a veteran rock climber every step of the way.

Only Kristen and Butters were left.

“All right, then, Miss Steel Dragon. What’s the plan?”

She swallowed and forced a smile.

“You don’t have a plan, do you!”

“Not exactly, no. But I think I can get out of here. Go ahead and climb up and I’ll meet you there.”

He folded his arms and shook his head. “We both know that cord won’t hold me. For our team to survive, you have to make it up before I try.”

Kristen nodded. She’d tried not to think about that, but he was right. It was a small miracle the wire had held Drew. She very much doubted it would hold Butters.

But that didn’t solve the more immediate problem of her steel legs being stuck between the massive screws. When she tried to jiggle them, they didn’t move an inch. She tried flexing, twisting, kicking, and every movement she could think of, but nothing worked. Without a doubt, she was trapped.

“Kristen, not to rush you but…uh…” Keith didn’t have to finish.

Flashes of light were visible through the windows to the facility. Shadowstorm was summoning a storm. She didn’t think his control was enough to actually strike any of her team with lightning bolts or anything so dramatic, but she also had a feeling that she’d had only a glimpse of his power.

The thought of hurricane-force winds coalescing on downtown Detroit came to mind. He could bring wind damage, lightning, and maybe a blizzard given the conditions outside. His extreme weather could destroy the city if she didn’t get her leg unstuck. What was worse was that she didn’t understand his powers any better than she understood her own. What if she defeated him but took too long and the storm lingered? Maybe once he set it in motion, it would be self-sustaining. If that was the case, she really was out of time.

“Kristen, what do we do?” Butters asked.

She knew what she had to do. The answer was obvious. Stonequest had tried to get her to do it and her father had said she needed to. Even Butters must know she had to become the Steel Dragon. She had to transform.

The problem was she didn’t know how.

Perhaps if she concentrated and thought about how she was stuck and how if she could transform, she could simply break the machinery and be free… Despite her focused attempt, it didn’t work.

“Come on, Kristen!” Drew yelled. “Something started rattling down below. We need to go.”

A little panicked now, she tried again but with no result. She remained stuck, which meant Shadowstorm would have free reign over her city. He’d be free to hunt her family and kill her father, her mother, and Brian, for no reason beyond their relationship to her. But he wouldn’t stop there. He’d kill her teammates one by one, no matter how hard they tried to fight him. She knew they wouldn’t be able to stop him. He was simply too powerful and would take everything away from her.

“Yes, Kristen! Yes!” Butters shouted.

Something shifted inside her. Suddenly, her leg was no longer human but something with power unlike anything she had ever experienced.

There was no time to consider it, though, as she realized her legs were free. She moved quickly and climbed to the top of the garbage pile, grinning like a fool. Something had changed and she’d activated a power she’d never used before. She looked at Butters, expecting to be congratulated.

Instead, he frowned and studied her human body with disappointment and without apology. “That was, uh…anticlimactic.”

“Whatever.” She shrugged and waded toward the cord.

Butters followed, chuckling. “What did you do—make your leg into a tiny dragon leg or something?”

“Like you’d even understand. Foolish human,” she joked.

“Oh! Perhaps you have become a dragon then,” he called after her as she clambered up the orange extension cord. She reached the top without issue. Jim and Drew caught her arms and pulled her up beside them.

“All right, Butterball, try not to let your greasy fingers slip,” Keith called down to their teammate.

“Hardy-ha-ha. You know, I may not be the strongest, pound for pound, but if you think I can’t climb a rope you have another think coming. In fact, I once singlehandedly climbed the rope hanging from the bell in the church’s steeple because the preacher said we couldn’t eat until it chimed and a swarm of paper wasps had taken up residence. The things were damn surprised when—”

The cable snapped.

He plummeted into the garbage.

“Butters! Kristen called.

“I’m all right. I’m all right. But I landed funny on my—oh, dear God. Why?” He gasped when he rolled over to find he’d landed on his rifle and had snapped it in half.

“Are you okay?” Drew asked. He had to raise his voice as something in the facility had begun to make considerable noise.

“I’m fine. I’ll live, but I won’t be much help now. I broke my baby. Oh, cruel mistress Hostess and unfair Colonel Sanders, why must you taste so delicious?”

“Are you blaming twinkies and fried chicken for your fat ass?” Keith hollered.

“Can’t a man have a moment to grieve?” he protested.

“No,” Drew said and drained the humor from the moment. “It’s getting hotter in here. I think Shadowstorm activated the incinerator.”

“Butters, you have to hurry.” Jim was looking around the top of the garbage heap from up on the ledge. “There has to be another cord down there—a rope, some clothesline, something.”

The sniper shook his head. “You need to leave me here. Without my rifle, I’m not much good. You need to hurry and stop Shadowstorm before this storm gets out of control.”

“We can’t leave you here.” Kristen’s words emerged as a growl and she was surprised at the ferocity of her own voice.

“You have no choice. Besides, Hernandez will find a way in here. I’m sure she’s already placing explosives. I’ll be fine. But you have to end this tonight.”

She nodded. While she hated herself for it, she understood the wisdom of what he argued for. She had to leave him behind so she could save him.

“Is there anything you want me to tell Shadowstorm for you?” she asked.

“Tell him he’s a plucked turkey.”

That teased a grin from them all as they left their friend in the garbage pit.

It was difficult not to think about the missing three when she turned to the remaining members of her team. Had this been Shadowstorm’s plan? To stop her teammates and eliminate them as allies so she would be forced to face him alone?

But no, it couldn’t be. He would definitely have planned to kill her friends, not keep them away. Which meant she was winning. And if she wasn’t? Well, she had to believe that she was.

“Do we have a plan?” she asked the others.

“He’s not anywhere in the facility. I checked the offices and don’t see anywhere else he could be hiding,” Drew stated.

“There’s a ton of places in here he could be!” Keith protested.

The team leader shrugged. “True, but you really think that’s his style? He’ll simply hide behind a trash compactor and pop out at the perfect moment?”

“No way. Not with his ego.” Kristen scanned the room to try to determine where he would have gone. The incinerator ran at full capacity now and made the room hot. Steam began to build in pressure and seeped from leaks in pipes throughout the room.

“The tunnels.” As soon as she said it, she knew that was where he’d gone.

Shadowstorm had been in Detroit for a long time. He undoubtedly knew more about the tunnels beneath the Motor City than most. In addition, he’d probably also had more than enough time to boobytrap them.

“If he’s down there, it won’t be easy to find him,” Jim pointed out.

Kristen closed her eyes and felt for Shadowstorm’s presence. It didn’t take long before she touched it. It was a white-hot presence, a ball of fury and hate hotter than the steam from the boiler that issued into the room.

“I have him.” She looked across the facility and immediately located a grate in the floor. It didn’t take a detective to guess that it would be conveniently unlocked. “But you guys can’t come with me. Shadowstorm wants to kill you all so I’ll lose focus. It’ll be better for everyone if y’all stay here. Get Butters out and get to safety.”

“And give Detroit to the winner of a dragon battle? Fuck that!” Jim protested.

“Yeah, that’s bullshit! I want to cap this motherfucker.” Keith slapped the side of his assault rifle. “It would be fucking awesome to have that on my resume.”

Drew only stared at her and silently challenged her to tell him to go away again. She was brave but not that brave.

“All right, then. Let’s move.”

They descended a staircase to the floor of the facility, approached the grate with their weapons raised, and found—unsurprisingly—that it wasn’t locked. Keith pulled it open while the others trained their weapons on the entrance.

Nothing emerged and, after a few moments of waiting, they entered what was surely Shadowstorm’s greatest trap.

Chapter Nineteen

The first few minutes in the tunnel were almost tedious. Nothing attacked them and nothing fired at them or threw sparks or anything like that. The lights even worked on that first level.

To navigate, Kristen followed the seed of rage she felt she knew could only be Shadowstorm. Her aura couldn’t make her a map of the maze of tunnels, but that didn’t matter because mostly, she could sense that he was below. Down was therefore the main direction in which they went.

They followed the tunnel to a stairway and descended there, then traversed that one to another stairway and went down again.

“You can feel the weight of the city on our shoulders,” Keith murmured.

“That’s why we call you Rookie, Rookie,” Drew murmured in reply. “You should feel that weight every time you put your badge on.”

“I don’t know, Drew. I like working under pressure, but this is something else,” he said and sounded like he wanted to say more.

“We have action.” Jim was all business.

The lights above them went out first and plunged them into darkness. Kristen didn’t mind it as she could see with her dragon abilities, but everyone else activated the lights on their guns.

They froze in readiness but nothing attacked. Instead, one of the pipes along the sides of the tunnel rattled as if some beast had passed through it. The disturbance moved beyond them and before it reached the stairs they’d come down, it burst out of the pipe.

They simply stood and stared in something close to astonishment at a jet of steam that had emerged rather than the expected attacker.

“He doesn’t want us to leave,” Kristen said.

“No, it’s fine. It’s only a little steam. Haven’t you ever been to a sauna?” Keith let his gun drop to his side and extended his hand. There was something dreamlike to his tone of voice.

“No, Keith!” She tried to flash her aura to make him fear the steam, but she was too late. He stuck his hand into it and screamed.

“Fuck!” He yanked his hand out quickly and the dreamlike tone of voice was gone. When he grasped his weapon, he cursed. He’d burned his palm. “I’m sorry, you guys. I don’t know what the hell happened. I had this feeling like I used to when I was a kid and we’d all go to the sauna and I… I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t’ be.” She squared her jaw. “It was Shadowstorm. He used his aura on you. It’s my fault. I should’ve been able to protect you.”

“From my own feelings?” Keith—for the first time since she had discovered what she was—looked terrified to work with the Steel Dragon. He didn’t understand what she was becoming. No one did.

She gritted her teeth. “We have to keep moving.”

They crept down the narrow passage and the steam billowed behind them until they reached another stairway. This one took them down to another tunnel that immediately opened into a three-way intersection.

Kristen chose a direction at random, Shadowstorm was still below them—waiting for them, no doubt. She assumed he wanted to use the steam to tire them, but she felt certain that he wanted to face her. Apparently, she’d made the wrong choice. As soon as she started down the left path, another wave of energy seemed to surge through the pipes and burst one of those directly ahead.

Steam immediately filled the tunnel.

“Let’s push through,” Drew shouted over the hiss of steam.

“No!” she yelled and turned the other way.

“He’s herding us to him,” Jim protested.

“Better that than being cooked like dumplings,” she responded and strode on. There was no need to explain that she felt sure he was guiding them to him and that she intended to go along with it.

The team followed until one of the pipes in that tunnel also erupted. She had been damn close to it at that moment and immediately turned her skin to steel but could still feel the heat through her protective layer of metal. There could be no doubt that one of her teammates would have second- or third-degree burns if they’d been the ones to lead.

“Turn back,” she ordered.

“I saw a stairway through there,” Keith hollered.

“It’s too dangerous. Turn back.”

“But—” She ignored his protests and turned quickly, caught him by the arm, and dragged him from the steam-choked passage. She didn’t want to use her aura on her team—partly because it would split her focus and make it harder to track Shadowstorm, and partly because she thought they deserved better than that—but she was sorely tempted. Her adversary wouldn’t have had any reservations about using his aura to keep humans from danger. In fact, he’d probably think that not using his aura would be wrong. Like letting a killer walk free when you had many jail cells.

But Kristen wasn’t him, not yet anyway. So she avoided the temptation to make her team feel terrified at the prospect of facing a dragon made of shadow and storm that had the knowledge to control the steam veins of the Motor City. Instead, she treated them as equals, and they pressed on.

She led them down the third tunnel. They made it perhaps thirty yards when they discovered the end blocked by fallen rubble. She was dumbfounded as she’d honestly thought Shadowstorm was leading them to him. Why send them down a collapsed tunnel?

“We need to go back,” Drew said, stating the obvious before anyone else could.

They spun to begin their retreat but one of the pipes in the tunnel they were in ruptured and filled the tunnel with steam.

“Shit!” she cursed. “This is my fault. I thought he was leading me down there for a fight.”

“Why fight the Steel Dragon when you could simply steam her alive?” Jim asked morosely.

“We have to take those stairs that Keith saw.” Drew gestured down the tunnel and then toward the left.

“How the hell can we get through that?” Keith rubbed his head. “It’s like pea soup. I can’t see through it at all. Plus, it’ll steam us like broccoli.”

“The pipe ruptured on the left,” Jim said. “I think if we stick to the right, the temperature shouldn’t be that bad.”

“Then we follow the wall with our hands until it turns to the right, hold hands, and cut across to where Keith saw the stairs.” She tried to keep her voice calm despite the rising temperature in the tunnel.

“That sounds good,” Drew said and took point.

“Sure, if by good you mean it sounds like a great fucking way to end up on a dragon’s plate next to a cup of melted butter,” Keith said but he fell into step behind the team leader.

Kristen let them go first. If she led the way with her steel skin, she wouldn’t be able to tell if it was safe for humans.

They entered the steam. Even with her night vision, she could hardly see through the billowing clouds of heated vapor so it wasn’t much of a surprise when Keith vanished.

It was terrifying—definitely and unequivocally terrifying—but not a surprise.

“Rookie!” she called into the superheated mist.

“End of the line, Steel Dragon,” Keith said, and she found that he was right. Her hand reached the end of the tunnel. It was time to leave the guiding brick wall and move out into the steam.

“Here we go, Wonderkid,” she said over her shoulder and stepped forward.

It was a supremely disorienting experience. Although Drew and Keith talked loudly to maintain audio contact, it was easy to lose a sense of where she was. By the time she touched the opposite side of the hallway, she was drenched in sweat and practically hoped Shadowstorm would attack her there and then.

But, of course, he didn’t. He understood human emotions better than people did—after all, he’d exploited them for centuries. That knowledge was a tremendous advantage as he undoubtedly knew that her fear, anxiety, and exhaustion would be the first blow against her. Although, as she moved through the steam and her lungs began to burn and her breath turned ragged, she began to wonder if he really did want a fight. Boiling her alive under the city seemed like it might do the job for him.

She tried not to lose herself to these thoughts, but it was a struggle. If any of her team passed out, she wouldn’t even be able to find them in the steam. The horrifying thought seemed to echo in her mind.

But ultimately, the fear was needless. She made it through to where Drew and Keith waited for her. Footsteps from behind her told her when Jim emerged. All of them were sweating, red-faced, and exhausted but alive.

“I don’t think we’ll make it through much more of this.” The Rookie tried to catch his breath.

“I have a feeling we won’t need to go much farther.” Kristen could feel Shadowstorm. He was close—so close—and unbelievably angry. She somehow knew that he could sense Keith, Drew, and Jim in a way that she could not. Their survival did not please the callous dragon.

“All right, let’s go.” Jim nodded toward the stairway.

“Hold up.” Drew touched the pipes that ran through the tunnels. She hadn’t realized there was more to this subterranean warren than only the steam pipes. Electricity was present, cable, and even fiber optics by the look of it. He passed over each in turn before he settled on a larger pipe than the others. “You guys know I love this city, right?” He touched the selected duct tentatively with a finger.

“Not as much as Kristen and I do, but yeah, sure.” Jim raised an eyebrow. “Why, what do you plan to do?”

“Take water away from way too many people.” Drew stepped back from the pipe, raised his rifle, and fired three times. The first bullet didn’t break it, nor the second, but the third cracked it and water began to spray on the wall beside them.

“All right. You’re all hot and you stink. Hit the showers.”

She didn’t need to be told twice. As she passed through the cold spray of water, she turned her skin off briefly so she could better appreciate the refreshingly cool and—best of all—clean, water.

The team all did the same and looks of relief settled on their faces.

All except Drew. He didn’t look proud of what he’d done.

“It’s gonna be all right, big guy.” Keith patted him on the shoulder.

“I know. Its only…it’s a school night.”

Jim chuckled—more of that laughing in the face of death. “It’s damn near one in the morning. Any kids still up to take a shower probably won’t go to school tomorrow.”

The team leader actually smiled at that—a rare sight to see—and nodded. “Let’s do this damn thing. Are you ready, Steel Dragon?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she said and tried to sound like she meant it.

They descended the stairs to a landing, reversed direction, and continued.

When they finally emerged in a tunnel, it soon opened into some kind of underground station. Kristen had no idea what the room was for. Perhaps it had once been used for trains or perhaps this was where the construction equipment that must have dug these tunnels had been housed while the workers slept.

Either way, it was a large, cavernous room, close to the size of a basketball court. Compared to the passages they had been in, it seemed practically endless and could easily have accommodated something the size of a rec center. The floor was surfaced with old tiles, some cracked here and there. The walls were brick, although sections had been tiled over long before—lending credence to the abandoned train station theory, even though Detroit didn’t have a subway. The ceiling was raw stone crisscrossed by wires and pipes. Wooden scaffolding lined most of the walls, abandoned decades before. Bare bulbs hung above them but barely illuminated the space. Pillars dotted the room to support the tons and tons of stone and brick they’d passed through.

There was, however, still sufficient light to see Sebastian Shadowstorm standing in the middle of the space. He wore a black gi with a red sash across his waist and his trademark black gloves piped in red. His arms were folded across his enormous frame. In the stark light of the naked bulbs, he seemed to be more shadow than man, his shoulders so large they eclipsed his legs from the light. Only the red of his belt gave any hint that he had the body of a human. His hair was pulled into a tight ponytail, and his goatee framed the cruel rictus that defined his face.

“Kristen. You made it,” he said, his voice cold and humorless, so different than the kindly tone he’d used when they’d trained together. Of course, she now understood it wasn’t really training but a dissection of her abilities.

“Sebastian,” she replied and attempted to sound as cold and furious as he did.

The flinch of his scowl told her she had at least partly succeeded.

“We’ve wasted time enough, don’t you think? Come now. It’s time you died.”

Chapter Twenty

Kristen raced toward Sebastian. She couldn’t wait for him to attack. If he struck one of her friends even once, they’d be dead.

He anticipated her attack, of course, and swung a massive right hook into her gut as soon as she entered range. She careened across the room and against a wall of tile that immediately shattered and revealed the raw brick behind it.

Before she could scramble to her feet, he launched his assault. His arms blurred as they struck her ribs repetitively and pummeled her ribcage like it was nothing more than a punching bag. If she were human, she’d be dead.

But she wasn’t a human.

She kicked off the ground and pounded her steel forehead against his skull.

He reeled back, dazed by the blow.

Using the brief moment of advantage, she pushed off the wall and tackled the larger man, who fell heavily. He was obviously unaccustomed to facing a foe who could do such a thing and she was able to batter him a few times before he managed to throw her aside.

His strength was unimaginable. Despite the fact that she was made of steel, he hurled her with ease. She twisted in midair like a cat and came down on her feet hard enough to crack the tile.

“Ah, Steel Dragon, I miss our little sparring matches. I forget what it’s like to fight a foe more massive than myself. A fun little challenge.” He chuckled but the sound cut short when bullets raked his chest.

Drew had fired a couple of rounds.

Shadowstorm cursed but the weapon had done nothing to him. Instead of blood, shadow itself seemed to leak from the wound.

Kristen couldn’t let herself gawk, though. Instead, she bounded forward, vaulted up, and caught him in the chest with her steel knees.

He toppled back but unfortunately, she wasn’t able to stay on top of him this time.

She landed beyond him. In the time it took her to turn, he was able to kick her in the small of the back.

The blow felled her, and she gasped as pain seared along her spine. He really did know how to hurt her despite her skin. She couldn’t believe she’d actually trusted this monster. While she had thought she’d been the one learning, it was him discovering her weaknesses.

When she turned and lashed another kick, Shadowstorm had gone.

He stepped from the shadow of a pillar behind her, his hands clasped together, and struck her across the shoulders.

Her dazed mind reeled at what she thought she’d seen as she sprawled and struggled to stand. It looked like he had moved from shadow to shadow…but that was impossible, right?

“What are you?” She finally managed to push herself to her feet.

“You insolent little bitch, I am your better.”

Bullets caught him in the shoulders and he roared and turned.

Jim had obviously been the marksman and he simply ran off, sticking to the perimeter of the room, and grinned like a child who’d stolen a slice of pie before Thanksgiving dinner.

Kristen noticed that again, blood didn’t issue from his wounds but some kind of black smoke. It looked like blood did under water, only jet-black.

Though it wasn’t blood, she still karate-chopped the injury with every ounce of her strength behind it.

Shadowstorm roared in pain and stumbled forward. The blow hadn’t knocked him over but it had hurt. That might be better.

Unfortunately, when he turned to her, she could see the wounds from the first bullets had already healed. She often forgot about dragons’ legendary healing abilities. So much of her own powers were spent avoiding any injury at all. This was possibly the worst way to be reminded that she wasn’t the only dragon who could shrug bullets off.

But not all bullets…

Her thoughts immediately turned to the bullet in her pocket. She couldn’t fire it, but maybe she could still use it as a weapon.

Thinking in the middle of the battle cost her dearly. Her adversary vanished into another shadow and reappeared beside her friends.

“Keith!” she shrieked as the dragon picked the Rookie up like he was nothing more than a soccer ball.

Images of him ripping her teammate in half flashed before her eyes but apparently, humans were below even this level of notice. Rather than tear him limb from limb, he hurled him at her.

Kristen caught him—she had to, or he’d snap his neck—but when she did, Shadowstorm raced forward and slammed his fist into her gut.

She doubled over in pain but as she did so, she fumbled in her pocket and retrieved the cracked dragon-scale bullet. She could use this. If she could only wear him down a little more she could—

A massive uppercut connected with her chin. The dragon struck her with such force that she rocketed into the ceiling. She plummeted amidst a rain of stone and prepared for a hard landing.

But while the rocks struck the floor, she didn’t have the opportunity. As she approached, her opponent kicked to arc her across the room once more.

She impacted hard with the tiles and sensed that this was it—he would move in to finish her now—when gunshots erupted in a concerted barrage that echoed almost painfully loud in the underground chamber.

Shadowstorm roared.

Drew, Jim, and Keith had managed to triangulate him. Despite the Rookie’s burned hand, he managed to fire as well. The dragon seemed momentarily distracted as if he didn’t know what to do about the onslaught of projectiles.

He whirled constantly in an attempt to target his attacker, but each time he faced one of the three men, they moved and left the other two to fire. Soon, he was draped in a cloud of his shadow blood.

This was Kristen’s moment—her single opportunity—and she grasped the bullet in her hand with the point protruding through her steel knuckles. She’d punch him in the temple or the chest, whichever was open, and hope that he felt the same burning she had from the terrible weapon.

There was no time to think it through. She raced toward the cloud of blood and toward Shadowstorm’s screams of pain. Her fist raised, she leapt high and let gravity add even more momentum to her finishing blow.

A dragon’s tail lashed out from the cloud and struck her across the chest. She pounded into the tiled floor and rolled.

He began to laugh. She could hear him clearly as her friends had evidently run out of ammunition and had to reload.

“A cute battle, certainly, but enough is enough,” he roared from the cloud of shadow-blood.

She slid her hands under her and pushed herself to her feet. When she looked at her adversary, he wasn’t shrouded in a cloud of blood but the energy he put out when he transformed.

The light seemed to leach from the room as the form in the center grew larger and larger. A nightmarish cloud of teeth and claws, lightning and storm clouds, spawned the dragon that stood amongst them a moment later, deep under the heart of the Motor City.

Her heart sank when she realized that she’d dropped the bullet. She looked around frantically while her mind reminded her that the tiny point of dragon claw was her only chance against this beast.

“Are you looking for an exit, Kristen?” Shadowstorm rumbled, his tone amused.

“More like an end to this battle.” She located the bullet. It was her only hope now that she was trapped facing this monstrosity. She shifted closer to where it had rolled against a pillar and was lodged between a tile and the ground.

“There is but one end, you worm. If you hold still and surrender yourself, I can give it to you more quickly.”

Shadowstorm—in the largest dragon body she had ever seen—attacked.

Chapter Twenty-One

He struck Kristen with the force of an eighteen-wheeler. The space wasn’t large—not by dragon body standards—but there was still enough for him to pump his wings once and propel himself into her. She catapulted wildly into some scaffolding. Instead of the heaviness of steel, she seemed to weigh what a pebble would compared to the monster she now faced.

She pushed herself out of the equipment but more of it collapsed around her as she tried to untangle herself. Shadowstorm caught her in one of his claws and plucked her from the tangle of broken wood like a farmer would pluck an apple from an orchard.

“I like your steel body, Kristen,” he taunted and squeezed her in his fist. He flexed his aura and tried to make her feel terror in every fiber of her being. Obviously, he thought her less than dragon if he believed that would work. “It has more heft to it.” He hurled her across the station again. Her momentum carried her through a pillar and she struck a second with her shoulder, stopped, and fell.

Gunshots rang out as she pushed herself to her feet. Her friends were trying to buy her some time and she hoped it didn’t cost them their lives.

Her adversary roared and exhaled a huge wash of flame toward the team. Curses came as her friends—she couldn’t see who—managed to evade them. Some of the scaffolding caught on fire and Shadowstorm laughed.

She rolled behind a pillar and pushed herself to her feet.

“Little Steel Dragon, where are you?” He chuckled. In his dragon form, there was a low tone beneath it like the rumble of a lion. “Oh, wait, you’re not precisely a dragon, are you?”

His tail whipped around the pillar she had hunkered behind. If she had still been there, it would have pounded her face into the concrete. She made a note to avoid the tail—and another to avoid the jaws, claws, fire-breath, and whatever other bizarre abilities the dragon had.

“Backup’s on its way,” she shouted and her voice echoed off the walls.

“We both know that’s not true, little tin human.”

Instinctively, she screamed when his massive dragon head appeared beside her. She didn’t run and instead, drew her fist back and punched him in his teeth with every ounce of strength she had.

He recoiled—slightly—but snapped at her and she was no longer sure if she’d even hurt him or if he’d simply readied a strike like a heron hunting a minnow.

In the next moment, his bulk moved around the pillar and she faced a full-grown dragon. He raised his claw and tried to crush her like a bug.

Kristen moved toward his wrist, getting within his reach with her dragon speed, and avoided being pinned.

Shadowstorm hissed and tried to stab her with his other claw. She dodged again. This was one move, at least, that Stonequest had helped her practice against.

The dragon abandoned this tactic and—now that she was so close—simply tried to eat her. That might have been the end, but she managed to get a foot on his bottom jaw and her hands on his top jaw.

He tried to close his mouth but her steel form was too strong. She briefly entertained fantasies of forcing his jaw back and cracking his skull open, but the inferno that boiled out of his throat rapidly snuffed that idea out.

Flames engulfed her and she was blown from the dragon’s mouth. Once again, she encountered the far wall amongst more scaffolding that he had ignited when he’d expelled her from his mouth.

She stood shakily and almost blacked out from the heat. Her skin didn’t hurt—it would take more than that to burn her, apparently—but the heat seemed to be cooking her brain inside her skull.

Utterly disoriented, she stumbled out of the burning scaffolding and tried to get her bearings. The entrance was…behind her?

Her curse was echoed by her teammates. Shadowstorm had now turned their exit into a wall of flame.

“Everyone needs to get out,” she shouted over the crackle of flames.

In response, more gunshots chattered.

Gallows humor until the end. She had to force a grin at the sheer arrogance of even attempting to shoot the dragon.

“A good point, tin human,” her adversary said from across the room. She expected him to vanish into shadow and reappear close enough to obliterate her with his tail, but instead, he turned.

“You’d better run,” she shouted, and it sounded like her mouth had a swollen lip. Okay, so he was able to hurt her through her steel skin. That was good to know.

He merely laughed before his tail whipped at the entrance to another tunnel into the room. It collapsed as if he were a toddler and the structure was nothing but wooden blocks. “I’m having so much fun, tiny tin human. Let’s not lose our audience now.” Another gout of flame erupted from his throat, then another. Soon, all the equipment in the room was ablaze. She could feel the heat through her steel skin and knew that while she might survive, her friends were only human.

“You monster,” she screamed and raced forward in a burst of dragon speed. She had to fight back and had to defeat him. Without thinking, she caught hold of his tail and tried to yank him away from her friends but held on too long. He flicked it and catapulted her through the ceiling and into the roof of a tunnel filled with steam.

Kristen’s arms flailed as she attempted to grasp the ledge of the hole she’d created. She barely managed to hold on with her fingertips. This only brought more laughter from Shadowstorm.

“I spy, with my dragon’s eye, the legs of a human.” His clawed hands curled around her and yanked her through the hole.

He swung her into the floor, then a pillar, the ceiling, and another pillar. Between each strike, she moved so fast, her vision closed in and her stomach twisted. Finally, he smashed her into the tiled floor. He didn’t release her and instead, ground her face into tile like she was nothing but a cigarette butt.

“You know, I think I’ll eat your friends first, then come back and kill you. It’s been so long since I’ve tasted the flesh of man. A couple of months, at least, but it feels like years.”

She struggled to stand. Her muscles protested and seemed to prefer the quick passage of death to a continued fight against this fire-breathing monster of an enemy.

Her gaze was drawn to the bullet that nestled in a pile of rubble that moments before had been a pillar. She summoned a deep well of strength and dragged herself toward the tiny weapon.

“Where are those little humans, though?” The dragon moved through the flames and his tail swished like that of a cat hunting a mouse.

His targeting her friends gave her a burst of strength. She couldn’t let him kill them. Somehow, she stumbled to her feet, managed the couple of steps required, and retrieved the bullet. It took concentration to put it between her knuckles and finally, she made a fist.

“I’m the only human you get to kill today,” she shouted.

Shadowstorm laughed maniacally at that. “What great words to die by!”

He pumped his wings once and the gust of air fueled the flames that now ringed the room and made them burn blue instead of orange before he drove into her. She once again clattered to a painful stop on the hard tiles and gasped for breath.

The dragon bounded toward her. With the constraints of the room, it took only a single leap before he towered over her where she cowered below him on the floor.

He rumbled a satisfied laugh as he raised a clawed hand to crush her. Her training with Stonequest said she should dodge but she ignored the instinct. Instead, she clenched her fist and aimed it at his palm.

His claw swung and immediately recoiled, and he grasped one hand with the other.

She knew it wouldn’t kill him, not in the palm, but she had to save her friends.

“Drew! Jim! Keeeeeeith!” she shouted as he thundered around the room and his frenzy shattered pillars and hurled flaming scaffolding everywhere.

“Hall!” Drew yelled in response. He and Jim had the unconscious Rookie between them, an arm over each of their shoulders. They were as close to the wall as they could be, but with the equipment on fire, they had exactly zero cover from the dragon that continued to demolish the room.

“I’ll clear a path for you,” Kristen called.

“Finish him off,” Drew ordered with his boss-cop voice.

“I can’t. Hurting his palm took everything I had. We have to get out of here.”

“Through the steam tunnels? We’ll never make it. This is it, Kristen.”

“No, no we can do it If we make it to the van—”

“He’ll pick us up and drop us in the river. You have to face him, Kristen.”

The sound of an avalanche behind her made her turn quickly to see that most of the ceiling had collapsed.

In the moment that followed, she realized she could hear her own breathing over the crackle of the flames. Shadowstorm had stopped moving. Was he trapped under the rubble? Had he broken a bone? Was he dead?

Through the smoke, the hulking shape of his human form appeared. His hands were clasped together in front of him but he was laughing.

“That was dragon’s flesh? Clever, clever little human. Considering you aren’t one of us, you sought to use our bodies against us? Too bad you didn’t hit my throat or heart with it. As it is, my hand will take days to heal.” He held the bullet up in his two fingers and crushed it.

“No—” She choked on the protest.

“Was that your—what’s the human expression—ace up your sleeve? I must say, I expected more from Stonequest’s little protégé. No matter. You’ve proven yourself as pathetic as the apes who now cower behind you. Step aside as I consume their flesh.”

“You’re bluffing,” she said. “You can’t transform now.”

He chuckled, a low, dark sound that grew lower as he approached and became a rumble that filled the room while his body once again took the shape of a dragon.

“No, I am quite hungry—healing powers and all that,” he growled, whipped his tail, and flung her through the flames.

Before she could fall, the tail snapped again and pressed her against the wall. In horror, she realized he intended to force her to watch while he ate her friends.

And there was nothing she could do. It was over and she’d lost. He would destroy this city, starting with her friends, then her family. Once he’d revenged himself on those she loved, he’d take the city and it would be as if she had never existed.

Shadowstorm had won.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“The only question left is which of these steaks I eat first,” the dragon said with mock deliberation, “and if I should eat them rare or well-done.”

Tears poured down Kristen’s face, strangely soothing in the smoke-filled chamber. She would die there but with the knowledge that he would kill everyone she loved.

“Bring it, you fucking alligator.” Drew spat in the dragon’s direction.

“I’ll find the sack of rocks you need to eat to digest your food, you overgrown fucking chicken, and I’m gonna take a shit. Every time you eat, you’ll taste my asshole.” Jim smiled mirthlessly.

The team leader barked a laugh at that.

“It looks like it’ll be this one, then.” Shadowstorm took the Wonderkid in his claw and began to squeeze. “It appears you need an anatomy lesson.”

Keith coughed and shifted briefly through consciousness as his brain fought to wake him fully.

“The Steel Dragon will…fuck you up,” Keith managed before he passed out again.

She actually laughed at that. It was so insane. Her friends were about to die because of her, and what did they do? They didn’t cry or rage or quit, they simply laughed in the face of death.

But they weren’t laughing at death, not really. Even in the dragon’s grasp, Jim looked at her, hope naked on his face. Drew also looked at her, his expression grim but not dire. And Keith had awoken only to say he believed in her.

There would be nothing worse than letting her people die. She couldn’t fail them.

Her people.

Before, she had thought of that as a bad thing, but that’s what they were. They were her people.

Dragons weren’t the only ones who had people they protected and cared for, people they thought of as their own because they wanted them in their lives. Her mother and father thought of her and Brian as their own, and there was nothing wrong with that. People spoke of “my husband” or “my grandmother.” Yes, there was possession to that, but that didn’t make it wrong. In fact, it made perfect sense.

Something solidified inside her like molten steel touching water and a sense of purpose took shape.

Kristen realized that she had looked at being a dragon all wrong. She had thought her power would make her a danger to the people in her life, but that wasn’t the case at all. People had only survived dragons and wars and malaria because they cared about each other. They wanted the people they loved to stay in their lives so badly, they’d seize any power they could do keep them there.

Yes, some abused their power. There were monsters who walked the Earth, but just because she had power didn’t mean she had to abuse it.

She could use hers selflessly. It was a way she could protect those who needed protection from monsters like the lying beast of shadows who now threatened her friends.

It started in her heart, which was a surprise to her. She’d always thought it had been a mental block, but when her chest doubled, then tripled in size, she thought maybe she’d had it wrong from the start.

Steel scales burst from her chest, raced down her arms and legs, and altered her steel skin from the smooth nearly hairless texture of a human to the scaly armor of a dragon.

Her limbs extended and her legs grew another joint. Claws extended from her hands and feet. Wings emerged from her back and with barely a thought, they pushed her off the wall and she slid from Shadowstorm’s grasp.

The Steel Dragon landed on all fours, although her neck was now long enough that she could still see her enemy in front of her. Her spine extended and another appendage came into existence in her mind. She had a tail—a wickedly long tail with a barbed tip like that of a halberd. The word for the weapon came to her in her brother’s voice.

She breathed in through a longer snout. Thousands of tiny silver particles reabsorbed into her body. Apparently, her transformation shrouded her in silvery glitter. She was one hundred percent cool with that.

A great heat surged in her chest like a forge or an engine—no, a nuclear reactor.

Shadowstorm tossed Jim aside and growled at her.

Her new senses told her there was more to the sound than simply a threat. There were unspoken words. An emotional language revealed itself to her. She could sense his rage, his desire to destroy her, and, like sour milk in a cup of coffee, his fear.

The knowledge told her that he could taste her emotions as easily as she could his. He could taste her resolve, her courage, and her unwillingness to let him live and didn’t like any of this.

Kristen smiled a dragon’s grin before she attacked.

She pounded into her adversary, unprepared for her own strength. Her steel body outweighed the larger dragon and she plowed over him. The two of them bulldozed through the rubble in the middle of the room.

Though Shadowstorm was afraid, there was also a sense of purpose in his aura. He had fought dragons before and had killed dragons before. That lent him confidence she had yet to learn. They rolled together and she attempted to end up on top but he thwarted her and gained the advantage. She’d forgotten to use her wings.

He bit at her throat to sever her jugular but she struck him with her tail. The blade at its tip sliced his face and slit the scales that would have been his cheek if he’d been human.

With a bellow of pain, he fell back, stumbled, and staggered through the rubble. Apparently, the tip of her tail was as effective as the tiny bullet if not more so. She decided that she liked being a dragon.

“Kristen! A little help,” Drew yelled.

She turned to locate him. Keith was still unconscious, but the team leader was strong enough to carry him. Jim had made it to them but was limping. At least he still had his gun. She cleared the burning scaffolding from their exit with a single swoosh of her tail and didn’t even feel the flames.

“Wait for me,” she told them as Shadowstorm attacked, brandishing both claws.

Kristen dug her rear talons into the tile so instead of tumbling, she only slid.

He brought his tail around and snapped it at her face. She dodged it but he had anticipated this. He used her movement to snap at her neck once again and managed to get his jaws around her before she retaliated with a claw swiped along his throat. She shoved him off.

Her adversary roared and she smiled, exuding confidence. She’d cut his neck and could tell from his aura that the wounds burned.

“The neck, huh?” she said, pumped her wings, and flung herself at him. She over-calculated and he was able to dodge. Her momentum carried her into the far wall and the impact shook the entire room and more of the roof rained down around them.

She could tell from Shadowstorm’s aura that he had become more frightened. If she’d caught him with a strike like that, she could have knocked him out long enough to savage his throat and end this battle.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t do that again. Her friends were in the tunnels above her.

The thought seemed to occur to him at the same moment it occurred to her, for he billowed into a shadowy mist and flew up through the hole in the ceiling and into the dark steam tunnels where her friends had fled.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Whatever Shadowstorm’s shadow powers were, they didn’t allow him to simply vanish. With a pump of Kristen’s silvery wings, she followed him into the tunnel above them. His massive bulk blocked the passage ahead of her.

Gunshots resounded around him, almost muffled by his girth.

She clamped her jaws on his tail and pumped her wings to drag them both back.

He mewled like a cat as she yanked him from the passageway. As soon as his arms and legs were free, he clawed and scratched at her, screaming something about her not knowing how to fight with proper etiquette.

In response, she kicked him with her back legs and hurled him into the chamber where they’d originally fought.

“Get up and out of here,” she told her friends, using her aura to assure them that she would be safe.

“The steam,” Drew replied.

When she studied the pipes, she could see the heat like she wore infrared goggles. There seemed to be a main pipe that fed the other smaller pipes. This one was the size of a man instead of an arm. She struck it with her tail, severed it, and gave the steam an easier path of escape than the relatively tiny, twisting veins that ran through the tunnels.

“You should be safe now. Most of the steam is flowing into the room below us. Get up top and get to safety.”

“We’re not leaving you,” Drew said.

To save time, she pulsed her aura to him so he would understand that he wouldn’t be leaving her but saving Keith and Jim.

He nodded as emotional understanding resonated with him far faster than thoughts could.

Kristen scrutinized the broken chamber below her, now filled with smoke, fire, and steam.

A fitting setting for the Steel Dragon to end the terror Shadowstorm had inflicted on the Motor City.

Satisfied that her friends were now safely on their way, she dropped into the steam and smoke and landed effortlessly with a pump of her wings.

Shadowstorm was waiting.

He emerged from the vaporous cloud in a whirlwind of claws. She tried to block his attacks with her claws but found his dragon body was simply too big to stop with her arms alone. His claws raked her belly, a sharp pain she felt even through her steel skin. He knocked her on her back and attempted to rip her stomach open.

She tried to push him off and discovered that her back legs were much stronger so she forced them under his bulk and shoved him off. Her tail darted out and nicked him as he staggered into the steam. She looked at her belly, fearful that she’d see her guts spilling out, but she wasn’t so much as bleeding and couldn’t restrain a grin.

“Hey, Shadowstorm. You’re fucked!”

Kristen righted herself and tried flicking her tail. It was much faster than her arms and legs. He attacked from the steam again but this time, she defended herself with her tail. It arced and sliced one of his forearms, then the other as he tried to get past the darting blade. It seemed her tail worked almost completely by reflex. She thought block and her tail blocked. She thought stab his eyes and her tail did its damnedest to stab his eyes with its pointed tip and ax blade. Seriously, she liked her tail.

Once again, he vanished into the steam but this time, she followed him. She pumped her wings, cleared the obscuring vapor, and revealed her enemy, who hissed like an animal cornered in its burrow.

Obeying a deep inner impetus, she leapt forward, used her wings to carry her even farther than her muscles could, and attacked him with both claws and her tail.

Apparently, that was how dragons were supposed to attack. He defended against her claws and her tail, but he couldn’t stop her jaws. She pushed through his swipes and latched her teeth around his neck. His flesh gave beneath her bite. This would be the end of the monster who tried to destroy her city.

Shadowstorm turned insubstantial and slipped out of her bite.

For a second, Kristen thought he’d vanished completely but saw that he’d simply turned into his human form and slipped through her jaws and claws.

So, his shadow power wasn’t that special, then. He had merely learned how to use his transformation in an unusual way.

She turned and followed him and was alarmed to realize that her instincts very much liked pursuing a human. That was more than a little odd and she’d have to remember it. But there was some kind of perfect justice to ending him while he was in human form.

Too bad he had other plans.

As soon as he reached the massive opening in the ceiling, he transformed into a cloud of shadowy smoke. Two dragon wings emerged from the cloud, pumped a few times, and elevated him into the tunnels above them.

Kristen followed. At first, she grinned at the knowledge that she’d put this arrogant dragon on the defensive—until she realized that her team was probably still trying to get out of these tunnels.

She landed moments after him but he was already gone, vanished into the gloom and the steam that still seeped through the subterranean passages.

Immediately, she called on her aura. She felt him already another level above her. The coward was trying to escape. She could feel the fear in his chest and the terror at facing another dragon.

There wasn’t enough time to race down the tunnel, transform into a human, and run up the stairs to the next level, so she simply powered through the two ceilings above her. She found him there, but he wasn’t cowering.

Instead, he was coiled like a spring. As soon as her body was in range, he struck. He was a master of his aura and he’d used it to trick her.

Her stupidity drew a loud curse. She was halfway through the floor so she couldn’t dodge. Still, her steel skin would protect her.

Or so she thought.

Seconds before his claws touched her chest, the tips turned into black clouds of shadow. Instead of merely raking across the surface, they penetrated her steel skin and somehow reformed inside her and raked at the muscles in her chest.

Kristen roared in pain and managed to smash her tail through the ground and slice him across the chest. Otherwise, she very much thought she might be dead.

He didn’t give her time to recover or pull herself free but attacked again and again. His relentless assault forced her to all but demolish the tunnel in a poor attempt to defend herself.

The latest assault had scared her. He could somehow get his claws through her skin. What was to stop him from stabbing her directly in the heart? A vision of him reaching into her chest and plucking her heart from her filled her mind. She felt a pulse from his aura and knew her death was his intention.

A volley of gunfire erupted from the end of the hallway, and Shadowstorm spun toward it. “Your friends die today!” he bellowed and ran down the hallway.

Something above them exploded, and the hallway between the two dragons collapsed. An avalanche of bricks thundered on top of him.

“Meet us up top, Red!” Hernandez yelled. The woman had obviously made it inside the facility.

The Steel Dragon pulled herself free and moved into the collapsed hallway. Hernandez had blown the bottom of the first tunnel they’d been in, so she could see lights from the facility now. But she didn’t go up yet. Her adversary attempted to extricate himself from the wreckage.

She pounced, landed on the bricks, and drove them into his wounded body.

“It’s over, Sebastian. Stop fighting now and I’ll take you in alive,” she growled and flexed her aura to show him that she had reserves of strength left.

Beneath her, the bricks shifted and collapsed as Shadowstorm once again became insubstantial and freed his body from the rubble.

Kristen swiped viciously and tried to catch him with a claw when he became human, but he never fully did. Instead, he took his mist form once again and attempted to boil past her.

He tried to flee down the hole she had created but before he could, light flooded the space and his shadowy form dissipated to reveal the human-like Sebastian.

Blinded by the light, he glanced around quickly and stepped into the shadow.

“It’s not a fair fight anymore, Shadowstorm. I have backup. You won’t get out of here.”

“This was never a fair fight,” he hissed, surged forward, and transformed into his dragon form once he was in the shadow. She was ready for him, parried his tired attacks, and pushed him toward the blinding light.

Shadowstorm tried to turn to mist again but this time, she was prepared. As soon as the edges of his form blurred, she called upon the furnace she’d felt in her belly since she’d transformed.

White-hot flames erupted from her to trap him in her hands in his human body.

But even being incinerated at close range wasn’t enough to kill him. He struggled against her grasp, unable to use his transforming ability in the bright light, but the flames themselves didn’t hurt him.

That might have frustrated her if she was alone, but she knew she had backup. She clenched her fist tightly around him, ran directly below the light, and hurled him up and into the facility.

The reports of assault rifles rang out. She could tell that Beanpole had made it back from the van with guns for everyone.

She paused beneath the hole, pumped her wings, and elevated through it. The team had fired at Shadowstorm when he’d reached the top of his ascent. He’d transformed into a dragon and stayed low.

“Incinerate that piece of trash,” Drew yelled. He stood beside the hole she had come through and near one of the dozen massive lights that pointed into the aperture.

If that wasn’t code, she didn’t know what the hell was. She nodded.

In the facility, though, it was much harder to corner her enemy. She had the sense that this was how dragons truly fought—in the air.

He raced around the room and his slow wingbeats hardly explained his great speed. She followed and realized that up there, without walls so close around her, she could really move.

He was tired, while she was exhilarated, and she was gaining on him.

Kristen caught him and they exchanged blows from claw and tail. He managed to thrust her off and resumed his flight around the facility. As he altered his trajectory toward one of the windows, he began to turn insubstantial again. They were large but not so big that he could fit his dragon body through them.

“The lights!” she yelled, but her team had already understood the importance of them. Three lights illuminated the window and in his weakened state, Shadowstorm couldn’t transform. Instead, his head shattered the glass, his wings and shoulders impacted the brick frame, and he tumbled into a writhing pile of claws and black scales.

She swooped to land on top of him and pounded into his chest with her claws like a cat pouncing on a toad.

He cried out in agony as she ripped at his chest with her steel claws but she could tell that wouldn’t be enough to finish him. His aura showed pain but it didn’t weaken at all. His healing powers would keep him alive unless she destroyed his heart or his brain.

Or his throat, she thought grimly.

Her dragon form had few reservations about biting through an enemy’s jugular. She snapped but once again, Shadowstorm became insubstantial and squirmed out from her hold.

Down on the ground, the lights the team was using couldn’t penetrate every corner.

He slipped through one of the paths of shadow between the equipment.

It seemed the others were ready for this eventuality as well, though. Once he was in human form, a furious barrage of assault rifle fire once again drew more curses from the enemy.

“If I can’t kill you, I’ll have to settle for them,” her adversary yelled and raced toward the gunshots.

When she tried to follow, she was immediately stopped because of her size. She transformed into her human body in a flurry of silver dust and raced after him.

They sprinted between conveyor belts and towering equipment. She attempted to gain on him as he followed the gunshots to their source. Bullets struck him and drew more of his dark, shadowy blood from his body, but he didn’t seem to care. He merely raced forward, hungry for death.

The shadow dragon didn’t realize he was drawing ever closer to the incinerator, but then, why would he?

Kristen rounded a corner and saw the flash of gunshots from inside the incinerator.

Hernandez’s voice yelled from inside the tower of bricks. “Bring it on, you fucking lizard.”

Shadowstorm roared and raced forward, transformed into his dragon form once more, and extended his massive head inside the structure.

No sooner was his head inside than lights flared and the tower exploded.

She watched in awe as five stories of brick almost a century old collapsed onto his head in the cleanest demolition she had ever seen. It was even well-lit. The lights her team had used to limit his power illuminated every brick as they plunged onto the dragon to crush first his head, then his entire body under the destruction.

“Hell yeah! I always wanted to do that,” Hernandez shouted from behind her. She had a radio in one hand and a detonator in the other.

“Are you’re all right?” Kristen yelled over the clatter of bricks rather than the more appropriate, “How the hell did you get out of there?”

The other woman answered the unspoken question, though. “The dumbass really didn’t think nearly enough about tech. I left a radio strapped to a bundle of C4 in there.”

Kristen laughed and turned to the rubble and the defeated dragon.

The bricks moved and somehow, in defiance of the limits of what she could even understand, Shadowstorm pushed himself free.

He roared, his dragon form intact but broken. Both wings were hopelessly mangled. His tail worked and swished in fury, although there were kinks in it like a cat that had its tail slammed in a car door.

Although he was missing teeth and blood wept from many of his interlaced black scales, he wasn’t dead.

“Humans…death to humans,” he growled and inhaled in preparation to incinerate everyone in the room.

In an instant, she transformed into a dragon once more and raced forward to drive her full weight into his gut before he could release the flame.

With another roar, he collapsed onto the pile of brick. She body-slammed him again.

When they’d been in the air, there had been a kind of poetry to their fight—like eagles fighting over a fish or dragonflies over a pond, perhaps. What followed was far less elegant.

Despite possessing the body of a dragon, she felt more like an elephant seal as she and Shadowstorm pounded their bodies against each other again and again. They tumbled through the rubble and scattered it with their claws as they hurled their bodies together and each tried to find purchase on the other’s neck with their jaws.

“You could have ruled with me,” he hissed as she knocked him back.

“Why would I wish to rule nothing but the ash of the city I love?” she retorted.

“Love?” He said the word with the same disdain most people reserved for the words, “genocide” or “torture.” “You can’t love humans and be a dragon.”

His tail caught her, although he was too weak to knock her away. All he could do was slow her long enough to inhale and breath fire into the room. Garbage ignited, the paint on the walls burst aflame, and even bricks began to melt.

She considered pulling back. The flames were hot—intensely hot—but out of the corner of her eye she saw the fire started down in the tunnels had spread too. The flames had greedily followed remnants of trash and wooden scaffolding until they too had reached the recycling facility. Instead of only the center being on fire, every wall was.

“Kristen!” Keith shouted. “You have to get out of here.”

That steeled her resolve. “If humans can care for dragons, we can care for them.”

With new resolve, she pushed forward through his flames and felt the heat through her steel skin, feared it would melt, but no longer cared. She wouldn’t allow him to hurt her friends. She couldn’t, so she pressed forward despite the pain and the heat that threatened to pop her eyeballs like grapes. Finally, she reached him.

Kristen sliced his gut with a claw in the moment that the fire stopped, but he writhed, opened his jaws again, and breathed more fire on her.

The intelligence and cunning behind his eyes was gone. Instead of guile and false charm, she saw only hatred and rage burning hotter than the fire that spewed from his guts.

She lunged forward and used every ounce of her dragon speed to knock him back, but even then, the flames didn’t stop.

Left with no choice, she did what Shadowstorm had done to her. She had to if she wanted to save her friends. With whip-like speed, she uncoiled her long sinuous neck—the strike of a snake or a heron—and closed her steel teeth around his neck.

He didn’t try to turn insubstantial or fade into shadows or even attempt to escape. Instead, he twisted in an effort to position his mouth to spray flames at his adversary. When she closed her jaws and felt his windpipe crush and his jugular tear, she felt no guilt. She felt more like she’d put down a rabid beast than a human adversary.

But that had been Shadowstorm’s point until the very end. He wasn’t a human but something different.

Kristen stepped back and scrutinized his broken body. He was dead. She’d almost severed his head and apparently, that was enough to kill a dragon. He lay amongst the brick and the flames, dead on the throne he’d tried to carve from her city.

“Hall! A little help!” She turned quickly at the sound of Drew’s voice. He and the team had climbed onto a piece of equipment and were now trapped. Flames licked at them from all sides. They’d probably be dead already except the broken windows and the hole in the ceiling where the incinerator had been let out the smoke that would otherwise have choked the room.

They had little time to spare. She pumped her wings and was there beside them in a moment. “Climb on my back,” she ordered and wondered how many times, if ever, this had happened. Did dragons use their abilities to save human lives? she didn’t care whether they did or didn’t. She was a dragon and she would use her abilities as she saw fit. Today, that meant saving the people who cared about her.

They complied, all six of them—Drew, Keith, Hernandez, Jim, Beanpole, and Butters.

“Butters, did you stop for a snack?” she asked. The rest hadn’t felt like anything, but he felt like someone had loaded her shoulders with sacks of grain. She smiled at the absurdity of the comparison she had made. A sack of grain would now be a trifle.

“You can come back for me,” the sniper said and shifted as he tried to get off. That was a lie, and he knew it. If she left him behind, he’d roast like the turkey he was named after.

“Sit still,” Kristen said and used her aura to calm her friends despite the inferno that roared all around them. They calmed—she could feel their emotions now as easily as she could see the heat of the flames all around her—and she pumped her wings to push herself above the flames.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t simply soar out. The superheated air wasn’t thick enough to support a steel dragon burdened with so many humans. But she honestly didn’t know what else she could do. She couldn’t simply bulldoze through a wall, not if she wanted her friends to survive.

“Can you turn off the steel, or what?” Keith shouted.

She smiled and changed her body from steel dragon to only dragon.

Instantly, she felt lighter and when she pumped her wings this time, the force was enough to lift her higher. She flapped through the flames and made a quick, tight circle before she glided through the hole in the ceiling that had once been where the incinerator stood.

They cleared the roof not a moment too soon as the flames inside reached a cache of propane or perhaps a tank of methane. She would never know the exact mechanism, only that something exploded in the heart of the facility, and that was enough to destabilize one of the walls. Once one wall on the decades-old building went down, two others followed.

The force of that much brick collapsing on a network of tunnels was enough to avalanche the entire building, industrial equipment and all, into the pit where the two dragons had begun their battle and that Hernandez had further weakened with her explosives.

In a moment, all that was left of the garbage sorting and burning portion of the facility was a blazing pit and a single brick wall. The upper half of galvanized steel had melted away into nothing.

“Thanks for saving us, Red, but I’m not dressed for this shit,” Hernandez shouted over the wind.

“Can you take us out for coffee?” Jim asked.

Kristen smiled. Below them, Shadowstorm’s body burned in a grave he’d dug for himself, but all around them, snow was falling. This high, there hardly seemed to be any sense to the movements of the flakes. They drifted this way and that, pushed about by her wingbeats as much as by the wind itself.

She didn’t feel cold, though. Inside her chest, a fire roared, a furnace of power that fueled her abilities. She realized she knew that feeling. It was the same sensation that had made her stand up for her brother when he’d been bullied. This was her dragon heart, and it had always been a part of her.

It was an easy choice to share the warmth she felt and she nudged it into the hearts and minds of the humans on her back. She felt them all relax. Despite being high above Detroit, they all now understood that they wouldn’t die. They understood that they were safe and that she cared for them and would do anything in her power to protect them.

“Kristen, I think I speak for all of us when I say that we appreciate the warm-and-fuzzies you’re giving us right now,” Butters shouted over the wind, “but if you don’t land and let us put goddamn hats and scarves on, we’re all gonna freeze to death up here.”

“Right, sorry.” She swooped into a slow descent toward the city. Her dragon’s heart might keep her warm, but the humans on her back were still regular people. She found that comforting but also knew that they’d all prefer to be comforted with a glass of something steaming.

She flew them carefully into the city they all called home.

Chapter Twenty-Four

In her dragon body, Kristen found she could sense auras far more easily than she could when she’d been stuck as a human. It was as if her gleaming silvery scales were conductors for the ability. When she landed outside the Detroit Renewable Power facility, she could tell that Stonequest and six other dragons were already headed toward them.

It was almost a surprise when Drew cleared his throat and asked about them. “Let’s call the station and get backup. This place needs to be cordoned off. The fire and steam in the snow are screaming special news bulletin.”

“It’s out of our jurisdiction,” she said, a little startled that as a dragon, she spoke slightly slower than she did with a human mouth. It was still her voice, but it was slightly lower and more melodic.

“What do you mean? This place is definitely in Detroit.” Keith folded his arms.

She pointed a claw at Dragon SWAT. The seven dragon forms were close enough now she could easily make out their silhouettes against the clouds glowing with light from the city.

No one else seemed to be able to see them, though, until they landed one by one and there were so many around them that the snow ceased to fall on them. The seven dragons were so hot that together, they created a bubble of heat against the cold.

“Kristen Hall, the Steel Dragon,” Stonequest said by way of greeting. Normally, he transformed into his human form, but now he remained in his dragon body and circled around her silvery body. She still hadn’t turned to steel, but she did so now. In the blink of an eye, she went from silvery dragon with whitish, slightly leathery skin between her scales, a mane of white hair, and horns the color and texture of ivory to completely steel.

He didn’t answer verbally but he did flash his aura at her. It seemed he was pleased and impressed that she could transform and completely unsurprised. The feeling he gave her reminded her of how her dad had felt when she finally rode her bike down the block without training wheels.

“We defeated Shadowstorm,” she began to explain but Stonequest and the other dragons’ auras told her that they knew this already. But of course they did. They were undoubtedly there because they’d sensed the battle. In the end, Sebastian hadn’t controlled his aura at all. Every dragon within fifty miles might have felt his rage.

“He’s over there?” Stonequest gestured with his long neck toward the burning pit that spewed smoke and steam into the snowy night.

Kristen nodded.

“How did you finish him?” There was something in his aura that made her worry she’d done the wrong thing.

“We fought, then brought the incinerator down on him. Even though he was defeated, he tried to burn my friends, so I snapped his neck in my jaws.” She expected to be reprimanded. In the heat of battle, it had seemed the natural thing to do, but saying it now seemed grisly.

He nodded. “It’s good to know he’s finished.”

“You thought he wasn’t?”

“Shadowstorm is a master of his aura. We could all sense it from miles away—yours too—during the battle, then it snuffed out at the same moment that yours burned hottest. I assumed he was dead but needed to be sure you delivered a finishing blow.”

“You mean he could have survived?” She was incredulous.

“Not if you crushed his neck. A dragon’s bite is a powerful thing, and we need our heads connected to our bodies as much as any other creature. To defeat him, you either needed to pierce his brain or his heart or sever his jugular.”

She knew the power in the bodies of dragons. The bullet that had been made from one had worked as effectively as a taser on a human body.

“All right, team. I want this mess put away and I want it done yesterday.”

“That will not be an easy thing to do, Stonequest,” a purple dragon replied. Her aura was strange to Kristen. It lacked the straightforwardness of Stonequest’s or the layers of Shadowstorm’s. It felt…smoky, maybe?

“Even with the mages helping?”

“I won’t tell you how to do the job without using the tools,” the purple dragon snapped in response.

Ah, that was what she had sensed in this dragon’s aura. She was a particularly adept magic-user. She realized that there were also three mages on her back. From her aura, she could tell that the dragon thought of these humans as hers. To harm them would be a personal insult to her, to which she would retaliate. She found it comforting that this dragon made it known that to hurt these people would result in a dragon battle, but it was weird that she thought of them as hers.

Kristen sighed. She supposed this was how she thought of her friends too.

“Can you clean it up or not?”

The purple dragon smiled. “We might not fix the machines, but bricks and beams are not a problem.”

“Fine, Timeflash, do it.”

Stonequest followed Timeflash toward the burning pit.

The dragon and her three mages each stood near a corner of the demolished building. A purple light erupted from Timeflash’s eyes, mouth, and hands and a moment later, it was mirrored by her three assistants. Kristen could sense from the dragon’s aura that the mages were augmenting her power.

After that, though, she wasn’t able to do anything but gawk. Her dragon jaw dropped open when the purple dragon and her people repaired the building she and Shadowstorm had so completely demolished.

The fire withered and steam began to seep back into the hole.

Unbelievably, the incinerator repaired itself with a roar like an avalanche as the bricks sorted themselves and stacked themselves into the tower. At first, she could only hear this happening, but in a moment, they cleared the roof of the red-and-white building and continued higher. Smoke and steam continued to pour past them as they returned to the tower from which they’d come and which—until a moment before—had been destroyed.

Once the tower was done, the metal walls of the building pulled themselves into place, straightened the bends and kinks caused by the heat and explosions that had occurred in the building, and resumed functioning as the walls as if nothing had happened.

A glass window repaired itself and it was as if the facility hadn’t been damaged at all, at least from the outside.

Timeflash sagged when it was finished and the purple light left her and her mages. The three humans raced toward her and magic flared from their fingers. The spell they wove turned into a massive net of energy which caught her before she fell. She looked paler than before. The effort of fixing the building had obviously wearied her.

“Wait, some dragons can turn time back?” Kristen was incredulous.

Stonequest chuckled. “It looks like that and it’s why she named herself that, but no. It’s as impossible to turn time back as it is to bring someone back from the dead. So don’t worry. Shadowstorm’s body is still in there.”

“But then how—”

“She can sense how objects touched by humans fit together. If she can act quickly enough, she can repair things that were destroyed. Tests have proven its not time magic, more like following instructions with a type of telepathy.”

Her mind spun. Shadowstorm had seemed to possess powers the likes of which she couldn’t understand—not least of which being the snowstorm that now blanketed the city. She didn’t know if he had called it into existence or simply hastened its development and now, she assumed she’d never know.

“But then, she could repair bombed cities and fix car crashes.” The possibilities seemed endless to her.

Stonequest shook his head. “Not really, no. Her powers are limited. Even to do that building, she needed those mages to assist her, and they didn’t fix the machines inside. Regular mechanics will need to do that. But don’t worry. You’ll learn about all this kind of stuff once you’re on dragon SWAT.”

“Yeah, right, whenever that is.”

“Now, Kristen. That was an invitation.”

She laughed until she saw that he merely smiled gently. He wasn’t joking? “You’re joking,” she stammered. It was all she articulate.

“No, I’m not. You’re one of us now. You activated your dragon form and I don’t think anyone on the Dragon Council would dispute your powers. I knew you’d be powerful, but this? Defeating Shadowstorm in a lair of his own devising would have been a mighty challenge, even for me. You’ve done incredibly well. I have the right to recruit the dragons I choose to, and right now, I’m recruiting you.”

“But my team—”

“Were fine before you arrived and will continue to do their excellent work after you’ve moved on,” he said. He looked at the human team leader. “Am I correct?”

Drew nodded. His eyes looked a little sad but he smiled. “We knew this day would come, Hall.”

“I’m more than only a dragon, though,” Kristen said. She felt disagreement from Stonequest’s aura and smiled. “Okay, yes, I am a dragon, but that’s not all I am. I’m still human. I was raised by humans and I grew up as a human. That will always be a part of me, and even if I could pretend like I wasn’t, I don’t want to. Being human…being human rules.”

“Hell yeah!” Keith said from behind her.

Stonequest nodded. “I won’t argue. After all, you may be the first dragon in history who has spent decades more time in her human form than her dragon form. But still, there is training that must be done. Things that you must learn about being a dragon. Your time working with people in this capacity is done.”

Kristen glanced at Drew again, seeking permission, guidance…something. He nodded, still grinning. That gave her courage enough to take the next step. “When do we leave?”

“I assume you’ll want to see your family again.”

“And that they’ll throw a barbecue before you go,” Butters suggested.

“Tomorrow then,” Stonequest said.

She nodded and he dismissed her and her team. Quickly, she transformed into her human form and entered the van. Together with her team for perhaps the last time, they drove back to the station.

The barbecue started out so normally it was almost surreal. Despite the snow that had fallen the night before, Kristen’s dad still wore shorts. The snow hadn’t stuck to the ground—because Shadowstorm had died? she wondered—but that didn’t mean it wasn’t cold. Still, Frank’s pale, knobby knees would not be hidden on barbecue day.

“Frank, are you sure that’ll be enough pulled pork?” her mom asked for what had to be the fortieth time.

“For Christ’s sake, Marty, it’s twenty goddamn pounds of pig and another six chickens.”

“Yeah, but Dad, dragons might be here. Dragons,” Brian said cryptically. He’d done nothing to help the entire day, which was entirely normal for him. Instead, he’d spent his time playing videogames and begging his sister to transform.

She’d done so once, which had made her dad release such a stream of profanities that she’d actually been proud until she’d realized he wasn’t swearing in amazement but at what she’d done to his front lawn. Her mom had only been able to cry. When she had reverted to her human form, Marty had crushed her in a hug so tight she thought it might have been capable of asphyxiating dragons.

“Brian, we’re out of pickles,” the woman now said. “Run to the store. You can take the car.”

“Moooom! Seriously? Kristen can fly there. I’ve almost beat the boss.”

“I’m not using my dragon abilities to get pickles,” she snapped at her brother. She’d sat down with him and told him she’d be away for a while training, but he had only shrugged.

“And Kristen’s friends are showing up,” her mom added.

At that, she rolled her eyes. Leave it to her mother to ignore magic dragon powers but be concerned about proper hosting etiquette.

“Ugh, fine!” Brian scowled. “But mark my words, Steel Dragon, if you eat any pickles, you answer to me.”

Her parents shared a look that said what went wrong? Then, Marty opened the door. Jim Washington stood there with a bouquet of flowers.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Hall. I brought some flowers for your lovely home.”

“Oh, you must be the Wonderful kid,” she said and managed to embarrass a steel dragon of unimaginable power for possibly the ninetieth time that day.

“They call me the Wonderkid, ma’am,” he said as she took the flowers.

Kristen showed him through the house and out to the backyard, the opposite path to the one they’d taken the last time he had been here.

“Nice to see you, sir,” Jim said to Frank, who currently removed chunks of pork shoulder from his smoker.

“Yeah, likewise. It’s nice to have Kristen bring cops over when it’s not a kidnapping.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you two will excuse me,” her dad said and took his pork inside.

For a moment, the two said nothing and simply watched their breath steaming in the crisp winter air. Then, he cleared his throat and spoke. “You know, I learned a lot from you.”

“Jim, we don’t have to do this,” she protested.

“No, we do. When I met you, I hated you simply because of what you were, and I didn’t even know what you were. I thought all dragons were cruel, callous beings and believed you were the same. I’m proud to say that you changed that in me. And now, you can transform.” Jim shook his head. “I want you to know I’ll always appreciate that—”

“What the fuck’s going on back here?” She turned when Hernandez appeared at the side gate with Keith in tow.

“Are you two having a heart to heart?” The Rookie grinned.

“No—” she tried to say but Hernandez noticed Jim’s watery eyes and grinned.

“Holy shit, this is pathetic. You’re not even drunk yet, Jim. Grow a pair.” The woman laughed and Keith joined her.

“Thanks for coming out, Hernandez,” Kristen said.

The demolitions expert shrugged. “Eh, I wasn’t doing anything important and who can say no to free barbecue?”

“Nothing important?” Keith’s eyebrows almost raised completely off his head before he turned bright red.

“Wait a minute…” Kristen looked from his embarrassed face to Hernandez’s wicked grin. “Are you two—”

“Banging? Yeah, obviously,” the woman said. He only blushed more fiercely.

Jim frowned. “I thought you were…uh…”

“A dyke? You can go fuck yourself, for starters. No, I’m not a dyke. I’ll bang anything. Bombs, boys, and bimbos.”

“Class act, Hernandez,” Drew said as he descended the steps from the house. “It’s good to know your work ethic goes all the way down.”

She shrugged and actually looked proud of herself.

“Drew! You made it,” Kristen said.

“I almost decided to stay home so you’d feel guilty and come visit us.” He smiled.

“Nothing like that Steel Dragon guilt,” Keith added.

“I’ll visit as much as I can, but I’m still glad you made it.”

“Of course. I wouldn’t miss it. Your dad has the best stories about the old-timers on the force.”

She smiled. Drew, even off-shift, was still one hundred percent obsessed with being a cop.

“Wow. Here for the Steel Dragon’s fat dad. That’s a new one,” Hernandez said.

Kristen might have balked at someone calling her dad fat once—even though it was true—but she was so damn pleased that the people who’d seen her transform and fight a dragon to the death were there and still thought of her parents as her parents.

Drew smiled awkwardly. “I’ve gotten to know one Hall. They’re cool. I don’t want to lose that.”

“It’s not like I’ll vanish forever! You guys talk about me like I’m moving to another planet. We see Stonequest on the regular. I’ll be around.”

Eye-rolls all around met this statement. Hernandez went so far as to snort in derision. “Yeah right, Red—maybe I should call you Steel now, though—like you’ve ever had any chill at all. I can’t exactly see you facing an existential threat to dragon kind and clocking out at five and stopping by for airsoft with us.” By the time she had stopped talking, the humor had drained from her voice.

“Yeah…yeah, I guess you’re right,” she said. Suddenly, the air felt way colder than it had been. “Do you guys want to head inside?”

“Aren’t you going to do tricks or something? Show us dragon moves?” Keith tried to joke but given the moment, it felt forced.

“I can’t. My dad will kill me if I mess the grass up.”

That earned some chuckles, at least. By the time they went in and removed their jackets, the awkwardness had passed. Until Butters burst in the front door with Beanpole trailing behind him.

“Kristen! Come hug me before I get all covered in sauce.”

He stumbled forward and threw his arms around her. She smelled alcohol on his breath. “Has he been drinking?” she asked Beanpole.

The man shrugged, then nodded quickly. “He said he couldn’t say goodbye sober.”

“And now I won’t have to,” the sniper said and crushed her tightly in his grip.

“Dude, let go before she has to turn into steel,” Keith shouted from the kitchen.

Butters released her and rubbed his eyes.

“I want you to know that if Dragon SWAT gives you any trouble, you can count on us.”

“Ha!” Hernandez laughed. “To do what, exactly?”

“I saw that sniper lady. I’ll shoot holes in their wings. I’ll step on their tails, and I’ll…I’ll…”

“Dinner is served!” Kristen’s mom shouted and Butters changed demeanor immediately.

“I’ll have to fill my plate.” Kristen forgotten, he lumbered through to the kitchen. He led the charge, much to her mother’s delight, and stacked his plate high with pulled pork, chicken, pasta salad, coleslaw, and a couple of buns to cram it all inside of.

The others followed, then Kristen. Brian arrived as they sat and complained loudly about the injustice of being sent for pickles only to find that they weren’t actually needed. Marty consoled her son by chopping them and putting them on his plate, which only made all the cops at the table laugh and pleased her son not at all.

“A toast!” Frank Hall said, raised his half-finished can of beer, and waited for the swearing and storytelling to pause. “To Kristen. Your mother and I always knew you were something special. You might be the only person in the world whose parents weren’t surprised to find out you were actually a dragon. You’re amazing, Krissy, and now you’ve beat a dragon, and well, I’m so… That is…” He had been doing well but now, the tears began to run.

Her mom tried to salvage the speech. “We’re proud of you, honey, and we’ll always be here for you.”

“Even with them people breaking in here?” Jim asked. Obviously, he’d had a beer too many. That question was a little too rude for the normally perfect demeanor of the Wonderkid.

“We’re not moving simply because some dickholes thought they could scare us, especially not now that my sister can turn full dragon.”

Everyone laughed at Brian’s joke and Kristen finally felt like it would be okay. These people—her people—would be able to go on without her. They were strong, brave, and capable of things she needed dragon abilities to accomplish. She was proud to know them and knew that each of them in their own way defined who she was.

The party went late into the night and her coworkers indulged so much that they crashed on the couch and slept over. Marty wouldn’t let anyone who’d so much as sipped a beer head home.

In the morning, when Stonequest arrived in the falling snow to take Kristen to join Dragon SWAT, all the people she loved were there to say goodbye and wish her well.

As she transformed into her dragon body—careful to do so in the street so as to not damage her dad’s precious grass—she thought of all they’d given her. Confidence. Courage. Strangely good reflexes when it came to playing fighting games. She might have still become a dragon without them, but she wouldn’t have been the person she’d become. Being the person they all, in turn, cheered for, insulted, looked up to, or came to trust was her favorite person to be.

It was with a strange lightness in her heart that Kristen took flight with Stonequest and waved goodbye to the people she loved. She knew she’d see them again—to deny herself that would be like denying that she was a dragon and a failure to see the world as it was.

“Will you be okay?” Stonequest asked over the wind. He’d no doubt sensed her aura.

“Thanks to all those people down there, I think I will be.”

The Steel Dragon and Stonequest flew off into an unknown future.

The Story Continues

The story continues with book four: Dragon Swat, coming soon to Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.

Books By Kevin McLaughlin

Steel Dragon

(with Michael Anderle)

Genesis Draconis (Book 1)

Scales of Justice (Book 2)

Dragon Rising (Book 3)

Dragon Swat (coming soon)

Dragon’s Daughter

(with Michael Anderle)

Never A Dragon (Book 1)

Dead Dragon New tricks (Book 2)

Thicker Than Blood (Book 3)

Dragon Fire and Pixie Dust (Book 4)

The Cult of Tiamat (Book 5)

The Sum of All Magic (Book 6)

Adventures of the Starship Satori (Space Opera blended with military SF)

Finding Satori - prequel short story, available only to email list fans!

Book 1 - Ad Astra: Book 2 - Stellar Legacy

Book 3 - Deep Waters

Book 4 - No Plan Survives Contact

Book 5 - Liberty

Book 6 - Satori’s Destiny

Book 7 - Ashes of War

Book 8 - Embers of War

Book 9 - Dust and Iron

Book 10 - Clad in Steel

Book 11 - Brave New Worlds (2019)

Book 12 - Warrior’s Marque (2020)

The Ragnarok Saga (Military SF)

Accord of Fire - Free prequel short story, available only to email list fans!

Book 1 - Accord of Honor

Book 2 - Accord of Mars

Book 3 - Accord of Valor

Book 4 - Ghost Wing

Book 5 - Ghost Squadron

Book 6 - Ghost Fleet (2019)

Valhalla Online Series (A Ragnarok Saga Story)

Book 1 - Valhalla Online

Book 2 - Raiding Jotunheim

Book 3 - Vengeance Over Vanaheim

Book 4 - Hel Hath No Fury

Blackwell Magic Series (Urban Fantasy)

Book 1 - By Darkness Revealed

Book 2 - Ashes Ascendant

Book 3 - Dead In Winter

Book 4 - Claws That Catch

Book 5 - Darkness Awakes

Book 6 - Spellbinding Entanglements

By A Whisker (short story)

The Raven and the Rose - Free novelette for email list fans!

Dead Brittania Series:

Dead Brittania (short prequel story)

Book 1 - King of the Dead

Book 2 - Queen of Demons

Raven’s Heart Series (Urban Fantasy)

Book 1 - Stolen Light

Book 2 - Webs in the Dark

Book 3 - Shades of Moonlight

Other Titles:

Over the Moon (SF romance)

Midnight Visitors (Steampunk Cat short story)

Demon Ex Machina (Steampunk Cat short story)

The Coffee Break Novelist (help for writers!)

You Must Write (Heinlein’s rules for writers)

Books By Michael Anderle

Sign up for the LMBPN email list to be notified of new releases and special deals!

https://lmbpn.com/email/

For a complete list of books by Michael Anderle, please visit:

www.lmbpn.com/ma-books/

Connect with the Authors

Connect with Kevin McLaughlin

Website: http://kevinomclaughlin.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kevins.studio

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KOMcLaughlin

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevins.studio/

Connect with Michael Anderle

Website: http://lmbpn.com

Email List: http://lmbpn.com/email/

https://www.facebook.com/LMBPNPublishing

https://twitter.com/MichaelAnderle

https://www.instagram.com/lmbpn_publishing/

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/michael-anderle