NEVER CAGE A DRAGON

STEEL DRAGON™ BOOK SIX

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

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Version 1.00, January 2022

Previously Published as part of the megabook Steel Dragon 2

eBook ISBN: 979-8-88541-083-0

Print ISBN: 979-8-88541-084-7

THE NEVER CAGE A DRAGON TEAM

Thanks to the JIT Readers

Dave Hicks

Deb Mader

Diane L. Smith

Dorothy Lloyd

Jackey Hankard-Brodie

Jeff Eaton

Jeff Goode

John Ashmore

Larry Omans

Micky Cocker

Misty Roa

Paul Westman

Peter Manis

Rachel Beckford

If we’ve missed anyone, please let us know!

Editor

The Skyhunter Editing Team

CHAPTER ONE

When Kristen Hall had worked at the Detroit Police Department on the Special Weapons and Tactics team, she had served in a one-story building. When emergencies had presented themselves, she’d raced outside or to the parking garage, never down a set of stairs. Because of this, she didn’t quite understand why running upstairs for an emergency felt unnatural, but she couldn’t shake the feeling.

Maybe it was that the Capital Square Building in downtown Detroit was six stories high so she had to climb multiple sets of stairs. Maybe it was because the stairs took her past offices with mages filling forms out with levitating pens, a gym filled with what appeared to be people lifting ungodly amounts of weight, and a top floor where her bosses appeared in ceremonial robes as often as they did in business attire.

She burst through the door and onto the roof of the Capital Square Building. Six stories below, the city of Detroit went about its business. Umbrellas kept some dry from the late spring rain and cars splashed through puddles and soaked the unobservant. Coffee shops and restaurants beckoned them inside as otherworldly creatures sprang into action above them.

Stonequest—Kristen’s boss—stood at the edge of the building and looked down onto the slick street below. “Good time,” he said without turning to her. “But remember, you don’t always have to use the stairs.”

“I’m first, aren’t I? It looks like the stairs worked well.”

“First to the roof is not first into the air.” Heartsbane climbed over the wall next to him.

With a curse, she realized that she’d hesitated and retained her human form—a rookie mistake.

Heartsbane sneered at her, then transformed. In a moment, the woman with steel-blue eyes and platinum-blonde hair tied in tight French braids became a dragon covered in scales as white as ivory. Although Kristen had seen her teammates transform hundreds of times, it was still impressive.

“Still, second,” she said to Stonequest with a grin.

“Hardly,” He pointed to the air. Two other dragons already circled above the Capital Square Building like hawks rising higher and higher on thermals despite the rainy weather.

She sent him a crooked grin. “Race ya!” she challenged as she shed her human form and became the Steel Dragon. First, a cloud of silvery glitter materialized all around her. She still didn’t know if the steel particles came from her or the air or what but had decided it didn’t matter. The transformation was magical in nature, so maybe it was irrelevant where the metallic shards came from. What did matter was that they enveloped her to surround her in a shimmering cloud that coalesced on her body.

Within this, her arms, legs, and neck extended, her body thickened, and her hands became claws. A ridge of steel spines appeared along her back and her spine elongated into a long tail with a pointed tip and a wedge like an ax blade immediately below it. Finally, wings grew from her shoulders. She pumped them once, scattered the silvery flecks that had hidden her transformation to send them back to wherever they’d come from, and became airborne.

“How’s that, Stonequest?” Kristen boasted from the air, only to realize that he had already transformed. In his dragon form, he appeared to be made of whitish marble with veins of pink and green running through the stone. He had a similar power to her in that his skin was as hard as stone when in his dragon form, but that was a fairly common power, at least compared to her steel skin. Other dragons in history had been made of stone but no dragon had ever possessed steel skin. The rest of her team made sure not to let this go to her head.

“Good job, Steel,” Heartsbane said, using the name dragon society had given her despite her not ever really asking for it. “If your plan was to make a sparkly firework and cost us a half-minute, you did extremely well.”

Despite her harsh words, Kristen knew she was joking. All dragons had emotional auras they could use to communicate and influence what they thought of as lesser species like birds, dogs, and—unfortunately in Kristen’s view—people. Heartsbane was a normal dragon but had an especially powerful aura. While Kristen could influence a small crowd with broad strokes of emotions—things like make a group angry or calm them—Heartsbane could influence much greater numbers of people and could even make multiple people feel different things at the same time. Currently, she let her teammate know that she felt like she’d done fairly well but could do better.

She would take it. For Heartsbane, that was practically awarding her a trophy. For someone who had their pulse on the emotions of others, her default was pissed.

Then Stonequest and his second in command vanished into the clouds.

For a moment, Kristen panicked. She didn’t know where she was going or even what the emergency had been. Dragons didn’t use GPS or anything like that. When something came in, one of them got the location and they flew there. If she lost track of the convoy of flying dragons, she wouldn’t be able to make it to their destination as she didn’t even know where it was.

Before she could truly panic, she felt the aura of John Emeraldeyes—Emerald, to the other dragons, although she liked to think of him as John. He was young for a dragon—only a century—and he was a true common. While he could transform from his dark-skinned, dreadlocked and buff as hell human form into a fire-breathing green dragon, that was about all. He had dragon strength, speed, and heightened senses in his human form, plus an emotional aura, but beyond that, he was normal. Well, as normal as a shapeshifting dragon could ever be. Kristen might have actually used his human name, but whenever she did, the rest of the dragons gave him endless shit for it. John had a real chip on his shoulder for being young, a common, and having been given a human name from birth. Really, he was mostly chips on the shoulder, but she still liked him.

She pumped her wings to follow him and entered a cloud and her sightlines dropped to nonexistent. Although she couldn’t see a thing, she could still feel Emerald’s aura and flew toward it like a lighthouse through the clouds.

When she caught up to him—flapping her wings like a pigeon—he coasted effortlessly like an eagle riding high. She was getting better but still had much to learn about flight.

“What’s up, Steel?” he asked and nodded for her to get into position behind him. Dragons often flew in formation to reduce air resistance and make for an easier flight. She settled in to fly at his right wing and a little behind him.

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” she replied.

“An alarm went off at a mansion in the burbs,” he said.

“A dragon’s place?”

“We wouldn’t be here otherwise, Steel. You know that,” Emerald said.

Kristen wanted to press for more detail but Heartsbane emerged from the clouds and fell into formation behind the tip of Emerald’s left wing. “Not bad, Steel. I fully expected you to crash into that cell tower back there.”

“You knew where I was the whole time?” she asked incredulously.

“Yeah, of course. Confusion and nerves are fairly easy emotions to track, plus…well, feel free to be offended by this, but you still feel like a human.”

The dragon had probably meant that as an insult, but Kristen didn’t take it as one. She’d been raised by humans—Frank and Marty Hall—and had a human brother. The official story was that they’d found her on their doorstep when she was a baby and had raised her like their own. She would always think of herself as human first—at least she hoped she would. Living for centuries would undoubtedly change one’s perspective.

“Wait, there was a cell tower? You know I’m made of steel, right? I could have been electrocuted.” She hadn’t seen any obstructions in the sky and had no idea how close she’d come to disaster.

“Naw, they cut off fairly quickly when you collide with them.” They punched from the cloud cover obscuring Detroit and Erin Timeflash came to fly with them. She fell into formation behind Kristen and then, noticing that she was still kind of shaky when it came to drafting, coasted over to fly behind Heartsbane instead. “Besides, if you had crashed into it, I could’ve fixed it before it hit the ground. Those cell towers look huge but they’re mostly empty space. Steel beams in regularly repeating patterns are easy to put back together, way easier than a house filled with odds and ends.”

“Or steel dragons,” Heartsbane quipped.

Kristen rolled her eyes at her. She knew full well that Erin’s powers couldn’t fix living things. Still, her powers were amazing. Timeflash couldn’t control time, but it sure as hell looked like she could. She could restore broken things to their pre-broken shape, assuming the things hadn’t been destroyed for too long and that they weren’t complex. She’d never be able to reconstruct ruins, for example, or even a house that had been wrecked by a storm a week before, but the extent of her powers was always impressive. She liked it when Kristen called her Erin, which Kristen was grateful for although she didn’t really mind Emerald insisting that she not call him John. Timeflash’s powers were incredibly rare and she’d always been treated well because of them.

Still, it was nice that growing up as a pampered purple dragon hadn’t turned her into someone spoiled and disconnected.

“Good to have you back, Erin,” she shouted over the wind and flexed her aura so the other dragon could feel she was serious. “This means I can wreck more stuff without Stonequest getting mad.”

“I heard you all had quite the battle in a warehouse when I was gone. Pity. I might have been able to put it back together and determine how much Obscura had done herself.”

“Who cares how much the ancient bitch did? Steel beat her and she’s locked up in dragon prison. End of story.” Emerald said.

“I didn’t beat her on my own,” Kristen explained. “Human SWAT helped, plus Lumos. Speaking of which, where is Old Gold?” She had tried and failed to give Lumos a nickname.

“I’m here, Steel Baby,” Lumos said. From a human, it might have seemed sexist, but he was simply too nice and too old for her to think of him as anything but a kindly old-timer. He was an ancient gold dragon and should have owned a ridiculous estate somewhere but instead, was still part of Dragon SWAT. He was her best friend on the team. Although she’d known Stonequest longer, Lumos was more relatable, and—being lower ranked than Stonequest—didn’t hurl bureaucratic bullshit at her the way their leader could.

He fell into formation behind her and didn’t complain about her less than perfect drafting skills.

Finally, with the team assembled, Stonequest emerged from a cloud and took point. Emerald shifted to the left, making Heartsbane and Erin fall farther back. Kristen adjusted to drafting off Stonequest instead of Emerald—an operation the rest of the dragons made look effortless. For the second time in the flight, she felt like a pigeon, flapping and flapping until she finally found the sweet spot.

“So, what’s the deal, boss?” Emerald asked. “I know you said there was an alarm. Is that all we have?”

“Basically,” Stonequest replied.

“Then why is the whole team going out there?” Heartsbane sounded annoyed.

“Troubling times, Heartsbane, troubling times,” he replied solemnly but said nothing further as they flew from Detroit and out into the suburbs. They gradually left the clouds behind them and soared over an idyllic springtime countryside below them.

Their route took them over a few subdivisions, past hotels, and followed a road to a private residence. Like all the dragon estates Kristen had seen, it was absolutely sprawling. Massive manicured grounds surrounded an impressive mansion. Visitors could get lost in a hedge maze made of rose bushes or perhaps visit one of several small outer buildings all built of stone.

They made two laps around the estate from the air, looking for movement, signs of a break-in, bloodshed, or anything at all, but nothing seemed out of place. It appeared to be a quiet mansion, although with far less security than Windfire’s property had possessed.

She hoped this case was different than that one. Windfire had been obsessively paranoid and with good reason—he’d been murdered by a team of techno-mages with a grudge against dragons. Dragon SWAT still refused to admit this, but she didn’t see any other option. At this mansion, at least, it seemed possible that someone else could have snuck in besides an elite infiltration team equipped with magic. Then, there was the fact that Windfire had been shot in the chest and killed while she watched. She very much hoped to avoid anything like that again.

Stonequest signaled for them to land so the dragons all banked their wings and spiraled lower and lower, surrounding the mansion like giant vultures.

The team settled in front of the building. Kristen transformed into her human form—although she activated her steel skin—and approached the front door.

“Hold up, Steel.” Stonequest shook his head.

“Oh, sorry. Do you want to take point or something?” she asked, confused why no one else had transformed yet.

“That’s where the elder dragon entertained guests.” The leader nodded toward the mansion. “The alarm that went off was from his private residence below. This way.”

He led them around the mansion toward a massive garage. Sports cars were parked out front despite the intermittent rainy weather of spring in Michigan. That seemed like an odd thing to her, especially considering the size of the garage behind the vehicles. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could fill such a large place with anything, let alone cars.

Stonequest—still in dragon form—approached the garage, entered a code on a keypad, and the doors opened.

The interior was completely empty. There were no sports cars, no weird old hotrods, and no limousines. Instead of concrete, the floor was all steel—a weird affectation, she thought until all the dragons moved inside and Stonequest operated another control panel.

He entered and the team joined him in the middle of the garage as the floor began to descend.

Kristen couldn’t believe how large the platform they were on was. Five dragons currently stood on it, and there was definitely room for her to transform as well.

She struggled to accept the scale of it, and as the elevator sank deeper and deeper into the earth, she couldn’t help but feel that they were being swallowed by something far larger.

The team seemed to feel the same and no one joked or talked shit as they continued into the abyss. Instead, they stood poised and ready to strike, even in their dragon form, as if their very lives might be at stake.

It wasn’t a pleasant ride.

CHAPTER TWO

“Dragon form, Steel,” Stonequest ordered, which sent a chill down Kristen’s spine as she transformed. “We don’t know what’s going to be down there,” he continued. “It could be a couple of dragons with a grudge they have already resolved or it could be a pissed-off elder dragon who accidentally set his own alarm off and doesn’t even know that we’re on our way.”

She didn’t mention that it might be a team of mages armed with dragon-slaying bullets because she knew it would irritate her teammates and Stonequest especially if she did, but she hoped they all at least considered that as an option.

The doors to the lift opened and Dragon SWAT sprang into action. There was no immediate threat, so their priority was to secure the area. Stonequest led Heartsbane and Erin to the left and Kristen followed Emerald to the right with Lumos on her heels.

While she was trained to look for movement or any other sign of hostiles, she’d never had to search for them in such a grand setting.

The elevator had opened into a cavern large enough to let the six dragons all fly simultaneously if they wished to do so, but the size of it wasn’t the most important part. The entire surface—every inch of the walls, ceiling, and even part of the floor was adorned with elaborate carvings.

On one wall, two dragons carved in stone fought for all eternity. One breathed fire on the other, the flames highlighted with gold inlaid into the stone. Both had gemstones for eyes that were almost comically large. Another wall had a landscape carved into it. A stream anchored the foreground in front of a forest which, in turn, sprawled before a mountain range with a castle perched high atop it. Animals rendered so beautifully that she thought they might come off the wall were hidden in the trees as well. Their eyes were also gemstones.

The landscape gave way to a carving of a small town of villagers who, again, were all beautifully carved. They watched the dragon battle above them with equal parts fear and awe, frozen forever. The humans didn’t have gems for eyes, she noticed, but their clothes were worked with silver and gold filaments. Each of the walls flowed into the one beside it, so rather than feel like she looked at pieces of art, she had the sense that she was immersed in this stony tableau. It was breathtakingly beautiful, the workmanship both realistic and evocative. Added to this was the sheer magnitude of gold and precious gems scattered about. She imagined that this cavern alone was worth more than many of the buildings in downtown Detroit.

“Clear!” Emerald said and earned an acknowledgment from Stonequest, who had led his team to an exit at the far side of the room. Although the hole in the cavern’s wall was large enough to frame a dragon, it had been carved to look like a humble villager’s house. As a result, Stonequest, Heartsbane, and Erin seemed to shrink as they left as if they stepped into a hut.

Kristen followed Emerald through another exit, this one disguised to look like a cave hidden in the forest. As they made their way through the opening, she saw that a bear—carved of stone, of course—hibernated in this connecting tunnel. Even more impressively, the ceiling had been carved into what must have been a thousand bats. Each one had two tiny rubies for eyes and as she moved beneath them, the sparkling red lights seemed to follow her.

It was almost too much to process. The bats alone must have taken hundreds of hours—maybe thousands—and they were only a fraction of the entire carved environment. She wondered how many people had labored away down there beneath the earth to carve life from stone, possibly for their entire life. Surely it had taken an army of sculptors and perhaps generations of them as well. The idea that a dragon might have done it never crossed her mind. They loved the intricate work of humans but they never did it for themselves.

They made it through the tunnel and into another room. This one still had its natural walls. Stalactites hung from the ceiling and stalagmites grew from the floor. Flecks of natural crystal glinted in the walls and ceiling as well. But it was the interior of this room that held her attention, not the walls. While the last room had been empty, this one was positively packed with stuff.

Although maybe stuff wasn’t the best word for what filled this smaller cavern. To her, it looked like treasure.

Little tables stood everywhere, each with an object of unimaginable wealth on its surface. One held a sword with a hilt crusted in diamonds. Another displayed a goblet made of gold. A sarcophagus leaned up against one of the walls as if to watch the room for who knew how many centuries. A few crowns rested on separate tables, some bedecked in jewels and some far humbler, but all of them heavy with the power of the people who’d once worn them, people who were long gone.

She could have spent an hour in that room. Her keen gaze drifted across daggers made of jade, strange tools carved of obsidian, and a porcelain mask of a beautiful woman’s face.

Brusquely, she reminded herself they had to clear the room and keep moving.

They proceeded through another tunnel to the next room. She prepared herself for anything—mountains of gold coins, lost paintings of Michelangelo, or even the skeletons of kings, but what she saw was far stranger.

The room contained Pez dispensers—thousands of them, all sorted by set. There was Batman, Joker, and all the other villains from Gotham. Nearby stood a few of the heads of cereal mascots, all ready to serve candy from their necks. She even noticed a collection of US presidents, although they were of substantially lower quality than many of the others. They appeared to be knock-offs that this dragon, in its centuries of life with limitless wealth, had tracked down for some reason she would never understand.

The next room was different than the other two in that instead of a carefully curated collection or obviously intentioned sculpted walls, it was left entirely in its natural state. A similarity was the vast and garish display of wealth. Although unlike the other two rooms, the wealth on display here wasn’t organized in any kind of system she could discern. While the first room had gemstones embedded into the wall and the second and third had been carefully organized, this room’s glut of treasure lay strewn over the floor. It made her think of the aftermath of a boss battle in one of the online games her brother liked to play. And like the aftermath of one of those, a dead dragon sprawled in the center of the room.

“Shit,” Emerald said.

Kristen nodded and fanned out into the room.

Stonequest, Erin, and Heartsbane entered from another passageway and they joined their teammates in securing the area. While they did this, Lumos approached the victim.

It was immediately obvious to Kristen that the room contained no intruders, but she followed Emerald all the same and looked behind piles of gold and treasure chests that lay open to spill strands of pearls. While she checked these nooks and crannies for the killer, she watched Lumos tend to the dead dragon.

It was a supremely odd and strangely beautiful experience to see a dragon tend to another’s wounds. She had seen them check fallen dragons but always in human form. Lumos didn’t change, though. He simply approached the blueish dragon, stretched his long neck, and sniffed a few times.

This obviously satisfied some question the gold dragon had asked as he then reached out with his tail. He moved slowly and almost tenderly and touched the chest of the fallen dragon with the spine at the tip of his tail.

Finally, he spoke. The words were heavy and sank into Kristen’s mind like lead weights thrown from the side of a ship to drag her deeper and deeper. “He’s dead.”

CHAPTER THREE

Once they made sure the location was safe and that the dragon they had been sent to help was dead, Stonequest called backup in to help with Icebreeze. Apparently, that was the victim’s name. They didn’t have to wait long for others to arrive, but it still felt like a long time for her to be inside this strange dragon home.

“Do all dragons have places like this? Do you guys?” she asked her team. She’d wanted to examine the body but Stonequest and Lumos were adamant that none of them were to approach until the examiner had attended to it.

“I have a cave,” Lumos confirmed, “but nothing like this. Icebreeze was powerful and well respected. Most of us don’t grow this wealthy. That someone could get in here is…well, it’s troubling.”

“We came down the elevator with no problem,” she pointed out.

“But he would’ve heard us coming. These places are designed to have an easy entrance. It’s a way to trap your attacker,” Emerald explained.

As if on cue, the elevator rumbled to life. They could hear it rattle and echo through the entire chamber. There was no question that it was in operation and using it to sneak in would have been impossible.

“Could there be another way in?” Kristen asked.

“It’s not likely,” Heartsbane said. “Dragon lairs normally only have one dragon-sized entrance.”

“So there could be other ways in?” she prodded.

Heartsbane and Stonequest shared a look. In it, he seemed to try to make her shut up. She kept her aura hidden but she stormed away all the same.

“Kristen, we don’t need that right now. The examiner will be here at any second. Let him do his job, answer any questions he has, and for the love of roast sheep, don’t say anything to him about your…conspiracy theories.” He looked supremely annoyed.

“Asking about another entrance is not a conspiracy theory,” she protested.

“But pushing this narrative about humans somehow being capable of doing this is not helping anyone at all.”

“I’m not pushing anything.”

“You’ll keep your mouth shut when the examiner gets here. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir,” she responded. It would be better for this examiner to come to his own conclusions anyway.

He entered in human form a few moments later, although it was obvious to her that he was a dragon and made no attempt to hide his aura. In a black hat and a long coat, he looked like every detective from every movie made before the advent of color.

“Stonequest,” he said by way of greeting the team.

“Senior Investigator Windlock, it’s good to have you here,” Stonequest replied cordially.

“Did you guys touch anything? Pocket any of these Pez dispensers?” Windlock asked.

“No, sir.”

“And Timeflash, did you do anything to the walls? I don’t see a scratch on them. I’d understand if you wanted to preserve a place so beautiful.” Windlock scratched his chin.

“Sir, you know fixing something of that magnitude is well beyond my abilities,” Erin Timeflash replied with a small smile.

He chuckled and his professional demeanor cracked for the first time. “I know, I know. I’m merely doing my diligence. It’s funny though, huh? Not a scratch in the entryway and not a gem knocked loose. Nothing else has toppled over either. Maybe this room saw the scuffle but it’s hard to tell with all the coins strewn about like this. Do you mind putting this room back to where it was?”

“If you think it’ll help.” She shrugged.

“Indulge me.”

Erin Timeflash raised her wings and activated her bizarre powers. She was unable to turn back time and had made this quite clear to Kristen on multiple occasions, but it was hard to fathom her powers doing anything else.

She raised her wings, pumped them slowly, and flicked her tail from one side to the other as her magic went to work before her.

First, a pile of coins flew backward before a smattering of gems on the floor reassembled into the small pile they’d been in before. A treasure chest—shattered and hidden beneath a pile of loot—put itself back together and filled itself. A few necklaces reknitted and piles of coins reformed. Others were pushed one way or the other as if the victim’s had pressed against them.

Her dragon body began to tremble and shake, starting with her tail and wings but soon spreading to her entire body.

Windlock noticed this and waved at her to stop. “That’ll be fine, Timeflash. I didn’t mean to push you on that.”

“Sorry, sir. I had thought this room would have been like the others—organized and everything—but it wasn’t.” She released a deep breath. “Sorry, but it’s hard to use my power when there’s not an obvious pattern to put everything back to. Bricks in a building or the walls of a household respond well to this kind of energy, but piles of treasure are more difficult.”

“I know. I didn’t mean to push you.” Windlock seemed genuinely concerned for Timeflash but she was all right. She caught her breath while he approached the body. In all the movement of the treasure, the dead, blueish dragon hadn’t moved at all. Her powers didn’t work on the living or the dead, only inanimate objects.

“Lumos, do you see anything out of the ordinary?” the examiner asked.

“You mean besides a dragon dead in his home without any signs of a struggle?” the golden dragon countered.

“We’ll see about the struggle. The rest of the team is checking the place as we speak, but I was referring to the body.”

“Only the one wound, sir.”

Windlock approached the dead dragon, still in his human body, and pulled a rubber glove on. It was a supremely odd thing, Kristen thought, to see this dragon of unknowable age do something so sensible. She decided in that moment that she liked Windlock. He seemed practical.

“Brockton, are you ready with a scroll?” he yelled before he began to poke and prod at the dead dragon.

“Yes, sir!” replied a voice that sounded a little out of place. It didn’t have the careful, non-regional diction that most dragons had, nor did it have the midwestern drawl she had grown up with. The guy didn’t sound like a Detroiter either. He sounded like maybe he was from the Northeast to Kristen, but she couldn’t be sure.

Wherever he was from, he was obviously a mage. A scroll and a ballpoint pen floated in from the room of Pez dispensers and both hovered near Windlock. Kristen had never seen such a display of magic. She’d seen Atramento make pens write by themselves in the paper dungeon, but to see both tools float from the other room and hover in readiness was a whole other matter. It was like something out of a kid’s book. The examiner paid them no more attention than a coroner would a tape recorder.

“This is Senior Investigator Windlock. It’s May 29th. We’re here investigating the death of Sir Titus. We are in his gold room with no obvious signs of flight or battle. Some kind of scuffle, perhaps, but it’s impossible to reconstruct given the disorganized nature of the room. Titus is dead and the apparent cause of death is a broken heart. Scratch that—a puncture wound to the chest.”

When he told the pen to “scratch that,” it ran a line of ink through the phrase that sounded like Titus had been a scorned lover.

“There’s a single small entry wound slightly to the left of the center of the chest. Internally we have…dragon’s flame! We have a ton of internal damage. The heart has sustained massive injury and the lungs have also been shredded. The wounds are consistent with some kind of natural dragon weapon. Not teeth, obviously, as there’s only the one wound, but the reaction to whatever punctured the skin is the same as it would be with dragon wounds. I don’t want to draw any conclusions yet, but we’re looking at a horn, a spike, or maybe a tail sting. It might be worth investigating dragons who have a single protrusion morphology.”

Windlock waited for the pen to catch up. Once it did, he continued his assessment. “Furthermore, this is the only wound on Titus’ body. I see no other lacerations, abrasions, or bruising. It seems obvious that the wound itself was caused by a dragon, but there are none of the telltale signs of battle.”

He paused and pushed on the dragon’s body here and there. “I don’t even feel broken ribs or bruises from blunt force trauma. I think it’s safe to say this was a surprise attack, as his body suffered only the one injury and his lair seems completely undamaged.”

Again, he paused and waited for the pen to catch up. “Have I missed anything else? Do we have any other leads on what could have done this without otherwise marking our victim? Is there missing treasure or anything else besides the alarm?” Windlock asked.

“It could be a gunshot wound,” Kristen said, unable to help herself.

“Is that right?” He raised an eyebrow and gestured at the pen to write something down.

Stonequest was far less amused. He spun to Kristen, clapped a hand on her shoulder, and marched her to the edge of the room. “Did I not make myself clear when I told you to keep your mouth shut?”

“He asked a question,” she argued.

“Not the one that you answered,” Stonequest responded furiously. “This is not the time to throw these theories out there.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, rest assured, Lady Steel, I will go over the reasons in vivid detail before the day is up. But right now, we will let Investigator Windlock do his job and we will not offer any more theories of this nature.”

“Fine.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right, then.” Stonequest marched back toward Windlock and put himself squarely between the investigator and Kristen. She still couldn’t understand why he acted this way. They’d seen two dragons killed by humans armed with guns in addition to the motorcyclists who’d tried to rob another dragon’s treasure convoy during transit. They’d also been armed with weapons that could hurt dragons. Despite this, Stonequest continued to try to act like everything was fine and there was no explanation beyond dragon on dragon violence. It was beyond frustrating to her and it was stupid. Dragons were dying, and he refused to even do a full investigation. Hopefully, Windlock would prove to be less willfully ignorant.

Although she didn’t want to push Stonequest, either. She’d stay quiet—or as quiet as she could.

While the SWAT leader went to talk to Windlock about the body, her focus was drawn to the mage who’d sent the scroll to help the dragon investigator. He noticed her attention, walked over, and extended his hand to shake.

“Brockton, Larry Brockton. You must be Kristen Hall, the Steel Dragon. I’ve read an awful lot about you, but I guess you probably hear that all the time. Not many people grew up human and became a dragon. I won’t lie, when I was a kid, I thought that might’ve been me, but I’m only a mage.”

“It’s, uh…nice to meet you, Mr. Brockton,” Kristen said, took his hand, and marveled that he’d said all that without taking a breath. “You seem to have me at a disadvantage. I can’t say I know anything about you.”

Brockton laughed. “No surprise there, ma’am, none at all. See, I used to work at a convenience store in Burlington. That’s in Vermont, by the way.” He laughed again and she almost had time to say something before he plowed on. “Until then, I’d always been able to do a little magic, but I’d never known it was magic, right? Like I’d be so hungry at dinner and my mom would be, like, wow, I don’t remember making all these potatoes, or I’d want to win at hockey and my puck would go in, that kind of thing, you know?”

She nodded, unable to interrupt the barrage of words.

“Anyway, there was a robbery and my magic came in. You know what I’m saying? Well, of course you do I read all about your big bust when those assholes—pardon my French—fired a rocket at you and you transformed into your steel body. How cool is that by the way? Steel skin? It must be wicked.”

“It’s great but… uh, you were talking about a robbery?”

“Oh yeah, sorry about that, yeah. Okay, these two guys point their guns at me and tell me to empty the register, so I did. I picked up every damn quarter in there and pelted the assholes with them. It made the local TV show and everything on account of it being on the security footage. I was famous for, like, a week and then Sir Windlock over there showed up and said he wanted my help. He said he could train me and I could join a security force if I wanted to.”

“And you said yes?”

“Fuck no I didn’t say yes! Oh, sorry about the French again. I said no, told him to get lost and even hurled some quarters at him for good measure. He left all right, but another dragon arrived the next day. This one gave me a second option. Death by incineration. I volunteered right then and there and boy, am I happy to work with Windlock. We have been at it ten years and he’s yet to threaten to light me on fire. I don’t know about you, but I like that in a boss.”

“Brockton! Brockton! If you’re done assaulting Lady Steel’s ears, get over here!” Windlock commanded. From his tone of voice, Kristen had the sense he’d called for a while and that maybe he often had to do so.

“Right, well, that’s my cue. Nice meeting you, miss!”

“Tell me about the auras, Brockton,” Windlock said.

“Yes, sir, you got it, sir.”

For a moment, she wondered if Larry Brockton’s magic came from the same place his river of words came from because as soon as he stopped talking, silvery light began to emanate from his fingertips. He took a deep breath and the gleam pushed out and away from his hands. It looked like little tendrils of silver electricity as it spread and tentatively touched the dragon corpse in the room.

“I detect his aura…remnants of it,” Brockton said. “He was…surprised. I guess that’s obvious.”

“Perhaps,” Windlock said, his face an unreadable mask.

“Oh, wait a minute…wait a minute. There is something unusual on the elder dragon’s body—or rather, in it. I pick up faint traces of his aura but also faint traces of a second dragon aura.”

Stonequest elbowed Kristen in the ribs as if to say, “See? I told you so.” She chose to not respond.

“Anything else?” the examiner asked.

“Not yet, sir, I’ll keep probing for a minute, but nothing else stands out. That other presence, though… It’s coming from the wound.”

“Understood and thank you, Brockton. Keep at it,” Windlock said, fumbled in his pocket, and took out a few small vials. He approached the dead dragon, retrieved a cotton swab from another pocket, and inserted it into the wound. Once the swab was safely stowed in a vial, he repeated the process a few more times and bottled each sample separately.

“Will that be used for magic?” Kristen asked Stonequest.

He shook his head. “They’ll run it for DNA. Human technology has its merits.”

“If you think there’s human DNA, maybe we should dust for prints,” she ventured.

Windlock cocked an eyebrow at her, clearly incredulous at the idea.

“Dragons don’t leave prints like humans do. The scales don’t lead to perfect identification. We’ll have to hope for DNA.”

“Right, but there could be human prints,” she pointed out and earned another elbow from Stonequest.

“Sure. There might be. Feel free to dust, if you wish. Brockton, are you done?”

“Yes, sir. I think that about does it. I don’t detect much else besides those two auras which I think we both know could mean any variety of—”

“That’ll be enough, Brockton.”

“Yes, sir. Do you mind if I help the Steel Dragon, sir?”

“Of course not, Brockton.”

Kristen smiled at the mage, grateful for his help. It had been a while since she’d dusted for prints, so she knew it would take time. Brockton, though, clearly had a system.

Unlike Windlock, who looked like a Hollywood detective, he was dressed like nothing she had seen before. He wore a green and silver robe and a large burlap sack dangled at his side from which dozens of jars, bundles of herbs, and various other trinkets hung. From this collection, he selected a blue jar, opened it, and mumbled an incantation over it.

A cloud of dust exploded from the jar and traveled throughout the room and into the others. It landed here and there before it resumed its hurried task through the dragon’s lair. After a few minutes of frenzied, swirling flight, it returned to Brockton, who had mumbled throughout the entire spectacle. He held a scroll up and the dust poured onto it. A moment later, over a hundred separate fingerprints were visible.

“It looks like there were people here,” Kristen said and accepted the proffered scroll from the mage.

Lumos shrugged. “A dragon elder like Titus often has many humans coming and going, even in their lair. Servants, guests, important human leaders, and even lovers could have been brought down here.”

It was disheartening to have her theory brushed off by Lumos, who she considered her strongest ally on Dragon SWAT now that Stonequest consistently refused to listen to her theories about humans killing dragons.

Still, that didn’t disprove her theory, and she said as much. “It still makes quite a list of suspects.”

Windlock raised another eyebrow at her. He was curious, obviously, but not curious enough to press her any further.

Instead, it was Heartsbane who spoke. “If you’re saying that one of these hundred people killed Titus, I’ll help you run the prints. I’ll snuff out all these fucking monkeys if it means his death will be avenged.”

Kristen wisely didn’t say anything else.

CHAPTER FOUR

Once Windlock had completed his investigation, Dragon SWAT returned to their base in Detroit. On arrival, Stonequest sent the team to work on reports in the paper dungeon. Paperwork was a whole different activity for dragons than it was for people, especially when working with mages. The dragons didn’t fill out their own documents but instead, the mages did it for them with magic, if they could, or simply by hand. Kristen had always been impressed by the mages who could manipulate a pen on the desk in front of them but after seeing Brockton use a spell to control a pen and floating scroll from another room, it was a little underwhelming. It sometimes boggled her mind how fast one could get used to new things. Only a few months before, seeing these mages work was beyond amazing. Now, it was less than impressive.

Besides, she had other things she wanted to do rather than fill out paperwork. She left her task with Lumos and tracked down one of the few non-magic humans who worked in the paper dungeon. Trevor Williams was in charge of what human tech the dragons did use.

“Ms Hall, what can I do for you?” Despite being in his early thirties, Trevor’s voice still cracked practically anytime he spoke to Kristen. She wondered if it was nerves but if it was, working in a dragon police station didn’t seem like a job for the faint of heart.

“I have some prints I’d like you to run.” She unrolled the scroll and gave it to him.

He looked surprised when she handed it to him like he hadn’t quite expected to see it.

“Is that a problem, Trevor?” she asked, although she didn’t mean to intimidate the already nervous technician.

“No, no, ma’am, of course not. Well, yes. A little.”

“Is it a problem or not?”

“No, it’s not. Certainly, I can do it. It is a ton of prints, but I can run them.”

“Great. How long will that take you?”

“At least a week?” He sounded like he was asking a question.

“What? Why?”

“Well, we have a few other cases with prints right now, so we’re a little backlogged.”

“Make this a priority, then. It’s about the dead dragon we just investigated.”

“Yeah, see, that’s the thing.” Again, the poor kid sounded like he was asking a question instead of explaining himself. “See, Stonequest already asked me to work on some DNA, and he mentioned that there were prints too. He said they weren’t a priority.”

“He what?”

“I’m really sorry and I can run them, really I can, but I can’t bump them up to be run before other prints, and I can’t do them before I do the DNA. Like I said—”

“It’ll be a week.”

“Yeah?” Trevor did not sound happy to be caught between two dragons.

“Fine. But…let me know when you’re done with the other prints. Okay?”

“Of course.” He sounded relieved that there was now a path that didn’t involve conflict.

Kristen snatched the scroll up and headed to Stonequest’s office. She could hear Trevor sigh all the way down the hall.

She found the SWAT leader in his office, working with a mage to detail the location they’d been to. Leave it to dragons to still use verbal descriptions when a human could literally now record a three-dimensional model simply by walking around inside with the right kind of camera.

Stonequest looked up and—to his credit—recognized the fury in her eyes.

“If you’ll excuse me, Graphitus.”

“But of course, sir.” The mage bowed and saw himself out.

“What’s it now, Lady Steel? You might as well jump to the point. I can feel your aura from here.”

“Why are you stonewalling me looking into my hypothesis? We know humans have killed dragons. We have to consider that as a possibility here.”

“We don’t have to do a damn thing.” He gestured at the chair in which Graphitus had been seated.

Kristen sat, her spine rigid, and Stonequest closed the door to his office. Shit. The action didn’t bode well. A closed door at human SWAT meant that the captain wanted to yell loudly enough that the rest of the force would be able to hear the dress-down through the door.

But apparently, he had a different plan. He didn’t begin a tirade. Instead, he sat heavily, covered his face with a hand, and rubbed his temples.

She let him have a moment. In the time she’d known him, she’d never seen him so obviously frustrated and yet not giving orders, telling her off, or redirecting her. After a few seconds, he lowered his hands, folded them in his lap, and looked at her. He seemed incredibly tired.

“Look, Kristen, I understand that you want to get to the bottom of this. That’s why I wanted you on Dragon SWAT, because of that passion. I wanted you to investigate corrupt dragons—dragons like Shadowstorm, whom you stopped. Those actions brought you onto the force. Then I gave you a promotion when you beat Obscura, right?”

“Yes, sir, but this isn’t about dragons—”

“Damn it, Kristen, it has to be about dragons. Don’t you get it?”

“But Stone, we know humans have done this.”

“You might know that. And I am certainly considering the possibility, but no one else is.”

“Well, why not?” she demanded.

“Because no human has killed a dragon in hundreds of years. Most dragons simply don’t even see it as a possibility. I hate to put it this way but it’s like humans being concerned about a raccoon killing them. I guess it could happen, but it’s not a viable threat.”

“Except that it is. A raccoon that has a gun is what we’re talking about in terms of your metaphor.”

“And what happens to raccoons if that’s the case? Do people still let them raid their garbage? Are they still allowed to live in cities?” Stonequest sounded deadly serious about such an ostensibly silly question.

“Well, no. If one raccoon was a problem, it would have to be stopped. That’s what I’m talking about here,” she explained. It seemed so obvious to her. That’s what being a police officer meant to her. Stopping the dangerous elements of society and ensuring freedom for everyone else.

“No, Kristen, you’re not thinking clearly. Your kind—humankind—has eradicated countless animals from the landscape because they’ve killed a few dozen sheep or taken a child or two. You have waged a war on the predators of this planet for crimes that any animal would forgive. Do you disagree?”

“Well, no, not really.”

“Okay, what if I told you that the only reason people haven’t been exterminated is because they’re not seen as a threat?”

“Wait…exterminated? Like wiped out completely?” Kristen had trouble wrapping her head around the concept.

Stonequest rubbed his forehead again. “No…not exterminated. But certainly…uh, culled. I know you think of most dragons as anachronistic and aloof, but that’s only those who deign to go to parties or live out their lives in mansions. There are elements on the Dragon Council who have followed human development very closely. Some of them are very concerned about what you've accomplished. Drones, missiles, nukes—all kinds of things concern the Dragon Council. Some, not all—but certainly more than a few—believe that humanity has grown too powerful. They believe that humanity should be knocked back a bit. Culled, like I said.”

“Culled? Like culling the herd? What does that mean?”

“Well—and this is only some elements of the Council, right? Obviously, most dragons don’t want to kill people in these numbers.”

“What numbers?”

“The most commonly referenced number is about half. Four billion people.”

“They want to kill four billion people?” She was appalled.

“Not all of them, but some, yes. They see human advancement as an existential threat to both dragons and the planet at large. Most think we should stop your carbon-spewing technology completely, and many areas of South America should be evacuated of human life completely.”

“But…but that would be beyond genocide. That would be the greatest murder of all time.”

“You’re right. I think it needs to be prevented, which is why I need you to stop yelling about these damn bullets to everyone you meet.”

“But to kill half the earth’s people?”

“Keep in mind that a hundred years ago, your population was substantially less than it is now. To some, this is still seen as generous.”

“But why not help us?”

“Human technology has far outpaced most of our ability to understand. Take Death’s rifle as an example. It was special and customized but was still essentially a human weapon. It’s possible humans could use technology to build things that might hurt dragons specifically.”

“It’s already happened.”

“You say that and I’m inclined to agree, but so far, we’ve managed to keep the dragons focused on dragons. Death was a notorious killer, but she was a dragon. Her killing dragons isn’t an existential threat, even if she used a human tool. After all—or so the thinking goes—Death figured that out, not a person.”

“But if she could, surely humans could too.”

“That’s what I’m hoping the Council doesn’t realize. There’s considerable anti-human bias baked into dragon culture. You have to understand that we’ve seen most of your darkest and most ignorant moments. You enslaved your own kind and burned each other alive because of your beliefs. Rationality seems to be growing but…well, it’s not a foregone conclusion yet.”

“But a human did shoot Death. The same one who killed Windfire.”

“I haven’t been able to explain Windfire, and that’s been a real pain, but honestly, most dragons don’t think humans had anything at all to do with killing Death. They credit you with that.”

“What?” Kristen was shocked.

Stonequest shrugged and a tiny smile showed for the first time. “You struck the killing blow and all the injuries on Death’s body were made by a dragon whose DNA closely matched yours. She had targeted your humans. No one blames you for it.”

“But they don’t know she was shot and hurt before I met her? They think I did it all myself?”

“Well, I haven’t dissuaded them of the idea.”

“But that’ll get in the way of the investigation. The real dragon killer is still out there.”

“Yes, you’re right, and we need to stop them, definitely. But it can’t be a person who does it. End of story. If it’s the Steel Dragon, it makes dragons more accountable for hurting people. That helps your cause. If it’s a person who did it, call it what you will. Genocide, slaughter, murder, or culling.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I guess I understand that you don’t want dragons to turn on people, but it wouldn’t exactly be one-sided, would it? Whoever is murdering dragons obviously has firepower to share. I don’t think they would have put this whole campaign into action if they only had five bullets.”

“I think you’re right.”

“Plus, like you said, there are jets that fly faster than dragons armed with missiles. We have nukes and tanks and everything else. I know I withstood a grenade, but I have steel skin. Many dragons could be hurt in war with people. It wouldn’t be totally one-sided.”

“I agree. A war would be terrible for both sides. It could get worse than that too. If some dragons joined with people, either out of goodwill or to help topple the Dragon Council, that would be bad. It would be even worse if major human superpowers like the USA and China took different sides. Say one sided with the dragons. That wouldn’t be good.”

“So you’re saying we should simply let these people—these technomages or whatever they are—continue to kill dragons?”

Stonequest shrugged and sighed. “I don’t know, Kristen, I really don’t. We should stop them. That’s the best way to avoid this war. But if Dragon SWAT stops them, we’ll have to document the whole damn thing. Honestly, I find myself thinking that if it turns out these humans really are working on their own, the best thing to do would be to frame a dragon. At least then, the hostility would stay between dragon kind.”

“But…you’re talking about ruining an innocent’s life.”

“I didn’t say anything about an innocent dragon, Kristen. There are many dragons who walk free who have killed other dragons in duels merely because they were weaker, or who killed hundreds of people in the dark days before your video cameras and film strips could hold our kind accountable.”

“But you’re a cop. You’re supposed to find the truth, not frame people for crimes they didn’t commit.”

“My job is to keep the world safe, Kristen.”

“By any means necessary?” Kristen said the words with more venom than she’d intended, but it felt honest so she didn’t apologize.

Stonequest shrugged, dropped his head into his hands, and sat in silence. He didn’t cry but from his aura, she could tell he was torn apart inside. Without a doubt, he was conflicted, guilty, and most of all, at a loss about what to do.

She left him like that. He might not know what to do, but she did. Somehow, she would find the truth and stop the killer. That was her job.

Unfortunately, she would have to do it through other channels.

CHAPTER FIVE

For once, Kristen didn’t feel bad about leaving early. Stonequest had given her nothing to do—no paperwork, no leads to follow up on, and nothing to occupy her. Presumably, he was concerned that she would continue to push her hypothesis that a human might be behind all this. Of course, he was right.

She left the Capital Square Building via the rooftop, soared over downtown Detroit, and landed a few blocks away from her old station. Although she wanted to rush in, she didn’t. Captain Hansen wouldn’t appreciate her being there on something besides official business, so she would wait until the captain left. She passed the time by watching birds on the Detroit River. It was a simple pleasure to focus on the pair of eagles that lived on Belle Isle as they hunted for fish, but it got her mind off what was at stake. After a while, though, she noticed that eagles soared in much the same way as dragons. That made people the fish, a thought that effectively curtailed her enjoyment.

Impatiently, she shook her head to clear away the thought and went into the station. It was fairly late—a little after five—and when she entered, she found that her old team had already gone. She could have pulled some strings—she was a world-famous dragon after all—but she felt guilty about it, so she didn’t. Instead, she peeked quickly into the breakroom, telling herself she was looking for someone but in reality, looking for a donut. It was fortuitous, as her gaze immediately settled on Jim Washington.

He had a laptop on a table and a cup of black coffee on the table beside him. No donuts, of course. He valued his fitness far too much.

“Oh, well, if it isn’t my favorite dragon,” he said and stood when he saw her enter the breakroom. They hugged and she sat at the table with him.

“I thought you hated dragons,” she teased.

“Oh, I most certainly do, but I can make an exception for you as long as you’re not here to stir up more trouble.” He smiled a winning smile. Everyone called him the Wonderkid and she could see why. He had a great smile and was always polite and professional. He was fit, good at his job, and didn’t seem to have any skeletons in his closet save his dislike of dragons, and that wasn’t exactly unusual for people.

She smiled weakly in reply and his expression sobered.

“What is it? Are you already hunting another dragon? We just caught Obscura.”

“No, not a dragon—at least, I don’t think so. I want you to run some prints.” Kristen unfurled the scroll to show him the hundred-plus fingerprints.

The Wonderkid whistled in appreciation. “That’s quite the…uh, document you have there. What happened to the equipment at the Dragon SWAT HQ? Have you already fed them the Dead Sea scrolls or something so they’re all busy?”

“Something like that.”

Jim raised an eyebrow “Seriously, why can’t you do this at Dragon SWAT? They have money. I’m sure they can afford a fingerprint system.”

She sighed. While she hadn’t really wanted to get into it, she also wouldn’t hide anything from him. That simply wasn’t who she was. “Dragon SWAT has a fingerprint system, but, um…I don’t.”

“So, this is rogue work? Do you wanna tell me what’s going on?” he asked.

“I’m worried that that human woman is still out there hunting dragons. Another one has been killed and Stonequest refuses to admit that people could have done it.”

“That seems a little narrow-minded,” Jim agreed.

“I thought so too and I told him as much, and that’s when— Okay, Jim, I know you don’t like dragons, so try not to get too fired up about this, all right?”

“All right…” he said slowly.

“Stonequest thinks that if it becomes public knowledge that a human is killing dragons, the Dragon Council will start a war with humanity. Only he didn’t call it a war. More of an extermination or ‘culling.’”

“Culling? Like you would a herd of sheep? How many people are they talking about murdering?” His voice was hard now. He’d seen dragons in war, something people weren’t supposed to do. No one knew better than Jim Washington how bad that would be.

“Four billion people,” she said. “Half the world’s population.”

For a moment, the two of them sat in silence and let the weight of that sink in. It was a terrifying thought, beyond any horror either of them could imagine. She knew that, and she would have a better chance of survival than any human being would.

“Well, you know I don’t like dragons, present company excluded, but I sure don’t want that to happen,” he said finally. “How can I help stop it?”

“Running these fingerprints is a start. Stonequest seems to think that if it gets out that humans are behind this, it’ll set a war in motion. My view is that we can’t let the killer go free. Every dragon killed by a gunshot is merely more fuel on the fire. We have to stop whoever’s doing this, and we have to do it quietly.”

“So you want to catch them and not tell Dragon SWAT?” The Wonderkid didn’t exactly sound eager about that idea.

“No—or at least, I don’t think so—but honestly, I’m not sure. I hope that if I can find something, Stonequest will come on board. He seems to think everything would be all right if a dragon is leading these people, so maybe we can find one.”

“You mean…like frame someone?”

Kristen threw up her hands in frustration. “I don’t know, Jim. I really don’t. All I know is that if we do nothing, more dragons will die, and if the Dragon Council discovers the truth, the whole world is apparently fucked. I hope I can catch these people and…I don’t know, give them a trial in a human court, maybe? Perhaps we could show that humans and dragons are working together or something. If we show dragons that human laws are trying to protect them, they’ll do the same for us.”

“It sounds like a stretch.”

“I know, but I have no other ideas.”

Jim nodded and looked none too pleased, but he stood quickly. “Grab a donut and let’s run these prints.”

She nodded and followed him, thankful to have a friend who was willing to help her, even if meant staying later at work. Although maybe staying late was a silly concern. After all, she had just told him half of the world’s population was at risk of being incinerated by dragons. For him, that was basically his worst fear come to life.

Kristen followed him to the machine they used for running prints and he got to work.

Much to her surprise, it didn’t take long to get a match. She’d assumed that the people the dragon brought into its lair would have been people who existed on the fringes of society—dropouts or those who didn’t want to participate with human culture. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

The first match they had was for the mayor of Detroit. She supposed that made sense. Most of the people in public office had been fingerprinted, and the mayor visiting an important dragon wasn’t unusual. A few more matches indicated a couple of state representatives and city council members for both Detroit and other cities as well as the governor and a senator. She shook her head. This dragon had been connected. There was no doubt about that. More matches came up, these for people with tattooed faces and hands. Mages, she realized. She had never apprehended a mage, so she was a little confused as to how they’d been added to the database.

“Do you think the dragons make their servants get printed?” Jim asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t really know. I’ll have to ask about it later, but it makes sense.” She didn’t want to say that people often put tracking chips in their animals. Dragons probably thought of humans the same way.

For a while, they let the software run its process and it constantly highlighted matches. This was going way better than she had expected, but at the same time, it was almost an overwhelming amount of evidence and hadn’t really narrowed her search down. Plus, if it somehow turned out that the senator had killed the dragon, shit would get real bad, real fast.

Jim seemed to have the same thought. “So, do you have a plan, Steel Dragon? Are you gonna start busting doors down, starting with the mayor? Because I gotta say, that’s probably gonna start a shitstorm. It’ll only validate the idea that dragons can act with impunity and honestly, I don’t think most people would be okay with that.”

Kristen nodded. Truly, dragons already could more or less act with impunity, but there were limits. She dearly hoped that one of these political leaders hadn’t done this. “I don’t think politicians would hurt this guy. They’re obviously after reelection money or influence or whatever. Shooting him in cold blood doesn’t seem like the action they’d take.”

“You’re sure he was shot, then?” he asked.

She raised an eyebrow. “Officially? I guess not, but I’ve seen the aftermath of a fight between two dragons, and this wasn’t it.”

“How do you mean?”

“That place was basically spotless. Maybe there was some scuffling, but nothing was broken and nothing knocked over. If two dragons actually battled? Well, you’ve seen what that looks like.”

“A mess, yeah,” he agreed.

As they talked, the machine chewed through more prints. It picked up a few people who had records of employment with Titus. It seemed dragons often had their servants fingerprinted, so a fair number showed up that were supposed to be there. It didn’t exactly exonerate anyone, but it didn’t point to foul play either. With everything that had happened in the dragon world lately—and with much of it seeming to revolve around this growing tension between humans and dragons—she doubted that this death was caused by a disgruntled servant. Plus, that wouldn’t explain how they got a gun with dragon bullets.

The machine beeped and Jim paused it. “That’s funny,” he said.

“What is?”

“We have a match but no face.”

“How is that possible?”

“They were found in Windfire’s mansion. We never put a match to them, though. Whoever they are, they’ve been careful to avoid being printed.”

“They were in that house, though.” Kristen nodded. It was as she feared—worse than she feared. She sighed. How badly she’d wanted to be wrong. But now, seeing a match to the site of another break-in at another dead dragon’s home, she felt sure she knew what they were dealing with.

The team of mages who had killed Windfire, shot Death, and tried to rob a convoy of trucks despite it being guarded by multiple dragons was back.

CHAPTER SIX

Although it was late, Kristen had to call Stonequest. It wasn’t a hard lead and yet, she knew in her gut that she’d broken the case wide open. She had to tell the rest of Dragon SWAT as soon as possible so the investigation could begin in earnest. After her earlier discussion with Stonequest, she understood where he was coming from now. He didn’t want to ignite a war between humans and dragons. She didn’t want that either, but it seemed like stopping a team of humans from killing dragons in their own homes would be essential if they really didn’t want to let the world descend into the chaos of war.

He answered before the phone had even finished ringing for the first time. “Kristen. Where are you?”

“I had a meeting with Washington. Are you still at the office?”

“You were off with humans? It figures,” he grumbled. “Yes, I’m at the office. Can you come in?”

“Sure, I was actually going to—wait, why do you ask?”

“It’s about the case. Come straight here, okay?”

“Yes, sir.” She hung up and transformed into her dragon body, took to the sky, and hurried to Dragon SWAT headquarters. While she flew, her mind raced. Maybe Stonequest had come across a similar piece of evidence. After all, they had a machine that could run prints too. Maybe he’d realized what they were up against and that they would have to work quickly and carefully if they wanted to stop this woman and the people behind her before this all blew up in their face and more dragons were hurt.

She landed on the roof of the Capital Square Building and turned into her regular human form. When she reached the stairs, Emerald waited there for her.

“John, hey! What are you still doing here? It’s kind of late.”

“I could ask you the same thing, and you know I don’t like it when you use my human name.”

“Sure, sorry. I didn’t see anyone else around.”

“Uh-huh.” He turned and led Kristen down to the sixth floor and toward Stonequest’s office.

“I have a big clue to this case. I think it might be humans again.”

Emerald shook his head. “You know, I have trouble believing this shit right now.”

“What do you mean, believing it?” she demanded, surprised at her outburst. “You were there when those people on motorcycles attacked us. You were there when they shot Heartsbane. I know it’s an uncomfortable thought, but we have to face the idea that humans might be behind this.”

“Yeah, or dragons raised by humans,” he grumbled.

“Excuse me?” she said and tried to plant her feet but was pulled forward by her companion.

He threw an arm around her shoulder. It was not a new gesture from him. He could be fairly chummy, especially after a workout, but this seemed more aggressive than before. He kept her moving toward Stonequest’s office as he talked. “All I really remember about that escort mission was that you were the only one who wasn’t shot at. You chased those guys off and they happened to get away.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” She was incredulous but he didn’t slow so she simply shook her head and kept walking. Stonequest should have let others into the investigation sooner. If he had, she wouldn’t have to deal with whatever brand of paranoia Emerald currently displayed.

As they walked down the hall, two dragons came out of their office and fell into step behind them. At first, she tried to pull aside so they could pass, but when Emerald didn’t move with her or even acknowledge the others, she sensed that something was wrong.

When two more dragons came out and followed them the rest of the way to Stonequest’s office, she realized she’d made a mistake. She should have paid more attention to Emerald’s aura. When she read it now he was angry, raw with betrayal. She couldn’t read more than that, but with the four dragons following her, she sensed that investigating humans really had pissed off the dragons at Dragon SWAT.

The other four had almost unreadable auras. That didn’t mean they didn’t feel anything, only that they didn’t want the Steel Dragon to notice anything about them. Kristen took a deep breath and tried to calm her aura. She wasn’t as adept at controlling it as these dragons all were, but she could at the very least make sure it didn’t ratchet up into anxiety. It wasn’t an easy task but she managed until Emerald steered her into Stonequest’s office.

Inside, her boss sat at his desk, his expression cold. In contrast to his marble-like presence, Heartsbane paced in the tiny space and did little to hide the tempest of fury that radiated from her. No, that wasn’t right. If Heartsbane was mad, her aura was powerful enough to let everyone for miles around feel it, but she hadn’t felt a thing until this moment. That meant she wanted her to know she was pissed. Lumos sat in one of the other chairs in the room, his eyes weepy and his smile barely holding together. He looked like a parent who had cried on the drive to pick their child up from school and now held it together by sheer force of will. She couldn’t feel his aura, not with Heartsbane’s pounding at her skull.

“Lady Steel,” Stonequest said and sounded quite formal. “Where were you?”

“Stonequest,” she replied and tried to match his formality. “I got a match on the prints.” Kristen looked around at the dragons who now crowded the room. She didn’t know who the other four were. While she’d seen them around, she hadn’t really met them. She assumed they were part of this investigation, which meant they had a right to know what she had discovered. “I had Washington run prints and we had a match. Someone at the mansion was also at Windfire’s mansion. It had to be the human assassin I fought—the mage. She said her name was Constance. We don’t have her whereabouts yet, but I’m sure we can track her down and maybe find out if she’s working with a dragon.”

She didn’t believe that the assassin was working with a dragon. The zealous mage had killed Windfire even after he’d helped them, so she obviously didn’t have any loyalty to dragon kind. Still, with these other dragons around, it might be better to present that option to Stonequest. The facts would be the facts, regardless of the assumptions they started with.

“Damn it, Kristen, can’t you let that go?” he demanded and sounded surprisingly upset.

“Look, I followed the evidence. That’s what we’re supposed to do,” she retorted.

“We followed the evidence too,” one of the dragons she didn’t know said from the back of the cramped office.

“My terms, Icerain, my terms,” Stonequest said and she felt a flash of frustration from Icerain. But there was more than frustration. There was also...excitement?

“Kristen Hall—Lady Steel—we ran the DNA results and have found a probable match. It’s essentially a sure thing.” Her boss’ formal tone had returned.

“Really?” She was shocked, but maybe this explained why everyone was in such a dour mood. A dragon killing other dragons couldn’t feel good. “Who?”

“You,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” She felt fury rise inside her like bile. Her skin turned to steel, out of her control already.

“Can you account for your whereabouts last night?” he continued.

“I…not really, no. I was in my apartment. Alone. I…uh, I didn’t even order delivery.”

Lumos stood. “That’s a horrible alibi, Kristen,” he said, then—strangely—embraced her in a hug.

She hugged him in return, still unsure of why he was crying, but when she tried to pull away, she couldn’t. He’d handcuffed her to him.

Immediately, her steel skin returned to normal. Her sense of the other dragons’ auras vanished. Her augmented strength and speed—always on reserve, always ready to be tapped—faded to nothing. For the first time in what felt like a long time—longer than Kristen had known she was a dragon, in fact—she felt weak. She didn’t know if it was the lack of the power she’d grown accustomed to or the fact that she was handcuffed and stripped of her abilities by her friends.

“Kristen Hall, Lady Steel, you are under arrest,” Stonequest said and defaulted to formality once more.

“On what charges?”

“The charge is serial dracocide. We have completed a path of warning and told you of your crime.” His voice was heavy as he went through the dragon legalese. “In accordance with the will of the Dragon Council, you must come willingly or you put yourself in opposition to this team of enforcement officials. Furthermore, any failure to participate with us will force the Dragon Council to seize your fortune without trial and without regard to the outcome of this trial.”

“Oh, cut the shit, Stonequest. I don’t have any fortune.”

He ignored her and pushed through the words he needed to say for a legal arrest. “Your fate will be determined in front of a tribunal. If you attack us, the rules of duel will not apply. We are allowed to use lethal force to subdue you if we must.”

“This is bullshit, and you know it,” she replied caustically.

“You’re over a ninety percent match for the DNA found at the sight of Icebreeze’s murder,” Emerald snarled. He sounded pissed.

“You’re a fucking monster. Worse than human,” Icerain said. “He was my cousin.”

Kristen cursed. She had thought the blueish pallor of Icerain’s human skin had seemed familiar. If she’d seen Icebreeze’s human body she might have recognized it, but she’d only seen his dead dragon body.

“We also checked the other recent murders. That same DNA—your DNA—has been found in the wounds that killed both Windfire and the dragon assassin who went by the name Death.”

Agreeing to give her DNA to Dragon SWAT had been a prerequisite for being hired. She didn’t care that they’d run it, but she couldn’t accept these conclusions. Rather than attempt another verbal protest, she reached for her aura. She wanted to use it to show them that she was innocent. They’d know she was telling the truth because she was horrible at manipulating her aura.

Unfortunately, the handcuffs around her wrists blocked her powers completely.

“I…this is crazy! If it’s me, wouldn’t it be a hundred percent match?” she asked.

“That’s what I said, Steel, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re the best lead we have.” Lumos sounded downright heartbroken.

“But you saw what happened to Windfire. You have the video.”

“Which you very conveniently found,” Stonequest pointed out. “How can we be sure you didn’t plant it yourself?”

Heartsbane stepped forward “Are we really going to let this shit happen? We all know she didn’t do this.”

Kristen was surprised that she of all people had come to her defense, but there it was.

“It doesn’t matter what we believe,” Stonequest said. “We have to follow the evidence, and the evidence is damning. Kristen, I don’t believe it was you either, but you have been at every site and now, your DNA has turned up in a wound. We need to take you into custody until we have a better lead. You understand.”

It wasn’t a question but she nodded anyway. Sometimes, police worked like this, she told herself. Sometimes, they arrested a false lead to goad the true suspect or they made mistakes or…or people were framed… Her veneer dropped.

She didn’t cry or wail but a single tear fell from her eye. She used the hand that wasn’t cuffed to Lumos to wipe it.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

“It’s fine. This will all blow over. You’ll see. We all know I didn’t do it,” she said.

Not everyone believed that, though, and the four dragons who took her and guided her to a cell were decidedly rough about it.

Still, Kristen could have weathered all that well enough. She’d seen false leads before and knew the dragons were merely doing what they thought was best. It occurred to her that she might even be able to actually sleep that night too. After all, the cells were surprisingly plush, but as she was escorted to hers, she passed Obscura, the dragon who’d hunted and tormented the humans in her life.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the Steel Bitch.”

She punched the shadow dragon’s door but the occupant only laughed. She knew as well as Kristen did that all she’d managed to do was hurt her knuckles. In payment, the dragons shackled her hands together and threw her in a cell a few down from the monster who had terrorized her loved ones.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Kristen slept that night despite her predicament. She woke in the morning, ate the food the guards provided, and prepared herself to stand before a dragon judge.

That moment didn’t materialize, however. Apparently, the dragon prison system worked differently than the human one did. Rather than waiting in jail for bail or a lawyer, the dragons would transfer her to a prison outside the city limits of Detroit. At first, she wanted to protest the injustice, but then she saw the wisdom of it.

After all, a pissed-off dragon could cause far more damage than a pissed-off human. Bail didn’t really make sense when the accused could simply fly away across an ocean, burning cities as they left. She wondered briefly why Obscura was still there, but assumed there was a good reason.

When they took her from her cell and put the cuffs on her once more for transport—the cell had the same spell that stifled her dragon powers—she took it all in stride. After all, she was innocent, which meant her honoring the system gave credence to how the system treated the guilty.

She knew she didn’t commit these murders and was entirely innocent. That didn’t mean she’d be released immediately, of course, especially if she was being framed. That was a train of thought that she wanted to avoid, though. It was possible—of course it was—but to her, there seemed to be a more plausible explanation.

This occupied her thoughts as they loaded her on a bus with a few other dragons—Obscura included—and drove out to the prison.

The first piece of evidence she needed to know more about was the gun the assassin had used to kill these dragons. She was fairly confident that Constance had killed all three of them, but that would be a harder sell than simply focusing on the gun. To her, Icebreeze’s wound had obviously been a gunshot and she thought that as the dragons looked at the evidence, this would become increasingly clear. Yes, it was possible that they wouldn’t be able to move past their own biases, but surely they’d be able to tell that there hadn’t been any kind of battle in Icebreeze’s lair.

The gun would crack the case. She knew it, but there was nothing she could do about that. Stonequest knew about the gun and would follow any leads he could. She couldn’t know this for certain, of course, but she had to believe it, at least for now. Her feelings might change if she had to stay in prison for more than a week but currently, she still trusted him. And Heartsbane, apparently. The feisty dragon arguing for her innocence was still a surprise to her, but it was a kernel of hope she badly needed.

It was better for her to focus on the assassin, she thought as the bus left the highway and started down a small road toward a building surrounded on all sides by twelve-foot-tall chain fences topped with razor wire.

What had the assassin said? That she was her “real mother” or something like that? It didn’t seem right. After all, the woman had been a human and she was a dragon. But there could be something there. Maybe she did share some portion of her DNA with the woman or perhaps with a dragon Constance had recruited to her cause. If that was the case, maybe she shared DNA with other dragons. Perhaps they’d all been born together from the same clutch? Or…made, somehow, through magic or technology? Cloned? If so, she had family out there she didn’t even know about. Were they allied to the technomages? Or were they prisoners?

It was kind of a fantastic thought to Kristen, and it made her skin crawl to think of it. Normal for her was hatching from an egg. Maybe being some kind of a clone or test tube hatchling wasn’t really that farfetched. It could certainly explain the ninety percent DNA match.

Not that there was a way she could investigate any of this from a jail cell inside a prison ringed by razor wire.

The bus pulled through a gate that rolled shut behind it. Once closed, another one opened in front of them and the bus continued onto the prison property. It drove down a dirt road lined by more fences on both sides. She couldn’t help but wonder about the fences. They were twelve feet tall and ringed with razor wire, but that didn’t exactly make them an impediment for dragons. Even in her human form, she had strength from her dragon abilities to rip the fences to pieces. She still wore the shackles that limited her powers, but she didn’t see shackles on the prisoners in the yard. There was no time to consider it, though, before the bus came to a stop.

The two guards at the front stood, drew swords of all things, and gestured for them all to stand. “You’re gonna exit one by one. We’ll get you checked in, showered, fitted with a prison uniform and an anklet, and show you the yard and your cell. Are there any questions?”

“Must I endure all this nonsense even if I’m a returning customer?” Obscura asked querulously.

“How about you skip the shower and we simply put you back in your cell. Does that sound better, smart ass?” The guard was not amused.

“Certainly,” she replied as if she’d been invited to board a private jet rather than enter a jail cell.

“All right, then. You first. Get up and come this way. No one else moves.”

The shadow dragon stood from the back of the bus and made her way forward. When she was about to walk past Kristen, she stumbled. The younger woman was surprised at the dragon’s clumsiness—when they’d battled, she had been supremely graceful—but she understood when her adversary whispered in her ear. “You may have got me locked up here, Steel Bitch, but all you really did was send me home. Welcome to hell.”

“Fuck you, dinosaur,” she replied.

“No talking on the bus,” the guard shouted and strode toward them.

Obscura straightened quickly and held her hands up in deference to the man armed with a sword. Kristen couldn’t be certain, but she thought she could sense something odd about the blade. It seemed to almost drag mist behind it like it was freezing cold. Whatever its nature, the shadow dragon seemed to either fear or respect it. Once the guard brandished the weapon, she kept her hands up and followed him off the bus.

She watched as he took her inside. A few minutes later, he returned and gestured for her to come next.

He waited impatiently while she scooted out of her seat and stood, the manacles dangling from her wrists. Her clothes were a mess. She’d slept in them in the cell at Dragon SWAT HQ and didn’t know if it was good or bad that she currently wore her Dragon SWAT uniform. On the one hand, the guards might respect her more, but the other inmates would probably feel quite differently if they knew exactly what she was. Although that might not matter. She was the Steel Dragon, after all, arguably the world’s most famous dragon. If the inmates didn’t recognize her when they first saw her, everyone would know who she was within a week.

Would she be there that long? She couldn’t imagine it being longer than that. It seemed too unjust to have to wait as the accused without a chance to defend herself, but again, she saw the validity of not letting a pissed-off and possibly murderous dragon run free. Obscura was locked up there despite her case apparently still working through the courts of the Dragon Council, and Kristen thought that was definitely a good thing. She told herself that her temporary imprisonment was the cost of safety for mankind.

She followed the guard off the bus, obeyed his words without question, and focused her gaze on his sword. It was definitely magic, she had no doubt about that, and he was clearly a dragon. She could feel impatience emanating from his aura. Trying to fight back against him while powerless in her human form was obviously out of the question. Again, she told herself this was a good thing, a price she paid for human safety.

Her expression calm despite her thoughts, she followed the guard into the prison.

Once inside, he handed her off to another guard, who led her into a processing room.

“Name?” she asked, but she could tell from her grin that the woman knew exactly who she was.

“Kristen Hall—”

“The Steel Dragon,” the guard finished for her with a broad smile. “My name’s Sangre, by the way. I’m a mage and, like, your biggest fan. It’s an honor to book you, ma’am.”

“Do you have any idea how long I’ll be in here?” she asked, hoping that Sangre being a fan would be able to provide her with some information.

“That all depends on your trial, doesn’t it? Speaking of which, why are you here?”

“Because I was arrested?” she replied, totally unsure of what to say.

“No, what crime did you commit?”

“I didn’t commit anything,” she stated.

Sangre smiled. “Right, sure. Innocent until proven guilty is the American mantra. They’ll respect that here, but I need to write down what you did.”

“Nothing,” she said again. This was ridiculous. She was all for sacrificing her freedom if it meant the guilty couldn’t walk free, but how would there be a fair system if she had to incriminate herself?

“You wouldn’t be here if it was nothing, Lady Steel,” the mage said and continued to smile like nothing at all was wrong.

“Okay…well, I guess you can say insubordination,” she snapped.

“Yeah…that’s not a reason to be here.”

“Well, I didn’t do anything, so I guess we’re stuck.”

The woman frowned for the first time, then picked a feather up. She whispered something to it, and it began to twitch like a wind grew slowly in the room, although Kristen couldn’t feel anything. After a few more twitches, the feather darted over her, out of the processing room, and into the prison.

A moment later, it returned and went directly to an inkwell and a pad of paper. It wrote, of its own volition, the words, Kristen Steel killed Icebreeze in his own lair without proper dueling rules.

“See? Was that so hard?” Sangre said and copied the words from the pad to a scroll in front of her.

“But I didn’t do it,” she protested.

The woman waved her hand at the protest like she had declined to let her buy lunch. She clearly had no interest in discussing it. “I need to write your crime down, is all. It’s standard procedure.”

“Okay—”

“Look, there are more prisoners waiting to be checked in. I’d love to go through all this, but we really don’t have time. Obscura’s here too, right? She obviously built that freaky weird game place and tortured your brother. There are hours and hours of video footage of it. But do you know what she says to me every time she comes in here? The same shit you do. I didn’t do it, I’m innocent, yadda-yadda-yadda. I’m not saying I don’t believe you. I’m only saying that arguing with me won’t sway the Dragon Council. Only evidence will, which of course will depend on if you’re innocent or guilty. Okay?” Sangre said it all like she was describing what went into her favorite recipe for cookies. Despite comparing Kristen to a true monster, she sounded nothing but peppy.

“Okay…well, can you tell me how long until I get to plead my case?” she asked.

“Nope, not really. You’ll be here at least a week, I’m sure of that. It takes that long to present anything to the Court of the Dragon Council, but it could be longer, though. I’d try not to make any enemies.”

Great, but there’s not much I can do about that. She already had an enemy and she hadn’t even been checked in yet.

“Now, do you prefer to shower alone in human form or supervised in dragon form?”

“Uh…I can shower alone?” Kristen asked. She’d seen enough prison movies to be able to visualize prison showers as wide open spaces.

“Sure. If you don’t need to change into your dragon form again, I’ll slip the anklet on you and you can shower now. There’ll be a fresh uniform when you’re done. You really don’t want to go in your dragon form again?”

“No. Human is fine.”

Sangre nodded and looked thoughtful. “You know, you’re the first dragon I’ve ever booked who is willing to shower as a human. Most choose a scrub down.”

She simply shrugged because she had no idea what that meant.

Another guard arrived and took her to the ablution area. Before she could disrobe, he dropped to one knee and took out a tiny silver band. “This silver cuff is enchanted. It’ll keep you in human form until we remove it. If you try to take it off without the spell, it’ll inject a paralytic into your body that’ll keep you frozen for twelve hours as well as alert the guards that you attempted to tamper with it. Don’t mess with it, okay? We hate cleaning up when you dragons crap yourselves.”

It was obvious that he enjoyed delivering the threat. Not that she blamed him. How many other people on earth were able to threaten dragons with impunity?

Kristen agreed to the anklet and he clicked it onto her ankle. She didn’t feel any different but that was probably because she was already wearing the manacles. The guard slipped those off and she found that her powers were indeed still deactivated. That explained the prisoners in the yard who hadn’t had manacles.

The guard showed her to the showers and she indulged herself. There was no reason to rush—she’d be there a week at least, after all—and the water was hot and the pressure high. She scrubbed her body clean and washed her hair, impressed with the variety of shampoos they had on hand in a prison, then simply stood under the hot water for a while.

A half-hour later, she was finally bored and surprised that no one had tried to make her stop. She turned the water off and stepped from the shower into a dressing room. There, she found a bright yellow jumpsuit, underwear, and a white shirt to wear beneath the uniform. She dressed, stepped out, and found Sangre waiting for her.

“Hi,” the woman said. “I finished checking people in, so I thought I’d show you around.”

“Sure, thanks,” she said and again weighed the benefits of being in the good graces of the guards compared to being at odds with the inmates. She found that she couldn’t help but side with the guards, though. They were the peacekeepers, after all, the police of the prison. Their task was to maintain order as well as the wellness of the prisoners until her eventual freedom. It made sense to be nice to them.

And her companion certainly wanted to be nice. She practically bubbled with enthusiasm as she showed her around the prison. First, they stopped at her cell, 113. It looked very much like a cell in a human prison—three walls built of cinder blocks with a tiny window crossed with iron bars in one of them. The front wall was simply a row of bars with a door that slid open and a slot near the bottom for people to slip food or whatever in. There was a toilet as well, but it was hidden behind a little curtain, something she had never seen in a human cell.

The bed was surprisingly plush, and Sangre told her there was a library of resources she could check stuff out from. Apparently, she could even get a TV or workout equipment in her room. The priorities of human and dragon prisons were obviously different. She couldn’t help but think that dragon prisoners probably never committed suicide.

From her cell, her guide took her to the cafeteria. Restaurant might have been a better term, though. There wasn’t a line there but waiters who went from table to table, taking orders and refilling cups of water. There wasn’t any privacy—the tables were all long bench-style—but other than that, it seemed like a reasonably good place to eat. It smelled shockingly good, and she saw a variety of foods being served—everything from curried rice to whole salmon. She supposed it might be easy to treat a society’s prison population well when much of the history of that society was built on hoarding gold and other forms of wealth.

From there, they stopped at a library that had everything from books to tablets, then a gym, and finally, the yard itself. Everywhere they went, she saw guards, all of whom were armed with magic weapons. But beyond that, they didn’t seem particularly on edge. Many of them talked with the dragon prisoners, helped them check things out, or spotted for them in the gym.

Kristen realized that the power balance was so different that it made for unusual housing conditions. These dragons were all used to being flying, fire-breathing monsters. Now, they were trapped not only in their human bodies but within the limits of their human strength. The guards were all either dragons or mages. That meant they didn’t feel threatened, and the dragons didn’t feel like they could threaten. It seemed to ensure a fairly calm environment, although she wouldn’t describe it as lax.

Outside, guards manned towers at the corners of the chain-link fence and she even saw giant crossbows—scorpions, she believed they were called—aimed at the yard. She would have been able to make it past those in her dragon form, although she was sure they were loaded with enchanted projectiles of some kind, but in her human form, it was impossible. Even climbing the fence would be extremely difficult. Razor wire was a significant impediment.

As they completed the tour, Sangre explained the basic rules. “Number one, obviously, is don’t fiddle with your anklet. It will mess you up badly if you try, and once you become conscious again, we’ll have put more on you. Plus, you lose privileges.”

“Privilege sounds about right,” she murmured.

“Privilege? Really?” the woman asked, incredulous before realization clicked in. “Oh, right. You were a human cop, right? Yeah, compared to human prisons, this must seem fairly pleasant. Dragons would never treat their own the way humans do. It’s one of the reasons I’m happy to be a mage. If I freaked out and lost my powers, at least I could still take a private shower and eat decent food. Human prisons are…” She grimaced.

“Yeah, this is a little different,” Kristen said. “I can’t use my powers, which feels horrible, but other than that, I can do whatever I want?”

The guard shrugged. “Basically—within limits, of course. We only have so many tablets, so many books, and so much workout equipment. You can put yourself on the waiting list for it, but if someone has credits, they can bid for a better place in line. It’s the same with the food. We always have enough meat for everyone, but if you want something besides ground beef or chicken, you need to bid credits. We only get so much fresh fish a day, you know?”

“How do I earn credits?” she asked, unable to believe that such a system existed. She could earn cuts of steak or an Xbox in her cell? How strange.

“We’ll pay you five a day for good behavior. I know security might seem lax, but we’re always watching. If you get in trouble, you lose that daily income. If you start trouble, you might have your account docked. You can also do jobs for us.”

“Really? Somehow, I can’t see dragons doing laundry,” she responded.

Sangre giggled. She had to be the most jubilant guard in the history of the penal system. “Some dragons will, believe it or not. Most of our prisoners—scratch that, none of our prisoners—have ever worked. Some get bored enough that they find laundry interesting or reshelving books therapeutic. Although no one ever wants to help in the kitchen. I think the desire to eat raw meat is too high in your people.”

“Huh, that’s weird. I wouldn’t think a dragon would ever lower themselves to laundry duty.”

“Well, you have to remember some of our inmates have been in here a long time.”

“How long is long?”

“We have one inmate who’s been here for over three hundred years, which was before the prison was modernized. When he came in, he had to wear an unbreakable chain around the neck of his dragon form. It didn’t let him turn into a human at all and didn’t even limit his powers. It merely stopped him from transforming. We lost many guards in the old days but technology has improved since then.” Sangre pointed at her anklet like it was the latest phone to come out rather than a device that stripped her of her powers.

“It seems like we have considerable freedom,” Kristen said and told herself yet again that this was all for the best. It was a better situation than humans experienced, that was for sure. And she shouldn’t be there long, not unless she was being framed. And that, unfortunately, was a problem she wouldn’t know how to tackle.

“That’s a really good way to look at it.” The mage nodded. “But there is a tight schedule you’ll have to stick to, especially if you want perks before you have credits to choose your time. You’ll adapt, though. Most learn the ins and outs in a few weeks.”

Kristen nodded, not at all happy with the casual certainty with which Sangre had implied that she would be there for more than the week she’d prepared herself for.

The guard led her back to her cell, showed her the schedule posted on her wall, and left her to walk about the prison at her leisure.

She told herself once more that she was there to learn and that by submitting to her incarceration, she was doing humankind a kindness. Rather than dwell on her circumstances, she headed to the cafeteria, hoping that a burger might settle the dread that kindled in her stomach despite her attempts to remain positive. Her greatest fear was being imprisoned there for centuries, utterly powerless and surrounded by beings who hated humans.

CHAPTER EIGHT

It wasn’t particularly easy, but Kristen fell into a routine over the next three days. She would wake up and breakfast alone in the cafeteria before she spent time in the gym. After lunch, she’d visit the library and kill time—far too much of it—until dinner. At night, she’d lay awake in bed and try not to think about a war between humans and dragons that plunged the entire world into chaos. The worst part was that there was so much time with nothing to do. Her mind had little to occupy itself but wander through her imaginings and ponder worst-case scenarios. The rest of the dragons at the prison kept their distance from her. They obviously knew she was the Steel Dragon, a cop, and a dragon killer. She assumed that bought her a modicum of respect and only hoped it lasted longer than however long she would be locked in here.

On the third day, something broke her routine of boredom.

She attempted to read a novel—which felt like a pointless task considering it wouldn’t help her solve anything about whoever was killing dragons—when a knock came at her door. She peered into the gloom. It was after dinner so the lights were mostly off, although the prison never allowed the inmates full darkness, of course. The doors to the cells weren’t locked yet and the silhouette of a man stood there. He was short and a little twitchy.

“Hey—hey, Steel. Someone wants to see you,” the inmate said.

“Unless it’s someone to spring me out of here, I think I’ll pass,” she replied and refocused on her book.

“It’s not about getting you out but about you putting someone in.”

“I’m really not in the mood for riddles, buddy. You might as well head on back to your cell.”

The man snorted at that. She recognized it as a gesture that dragons did but it came off strangely when performed by a human body.

“It’s Obscura. She wants to see you and have a little chat about why you’re both in here.”

That gave her pause. Why on earth would the black dragon want to see her? She told herself quickly that she didn’t really care. Obscura was a psychopathic monster who had abducted her brother and threatened all her friends on human SWAT. She was in there because she was a killer who needed to be kept away from society. Kristen was there because she hadn’t yet got to the bottom of a mystery. There was nothing to talk about it. “Unless it’s to pay my respects to her corpse, I don’t have any reason to see the old dinosaur.”

The dragon at the door scowled at that. She couldn’t quite make out his face in the dim light—she missed the night vision her dragon powers would have granted her if she didn’t have the silver anklet on. Still, she could see the guy was frustrated and tried to be intimidating. He was small but in dragon form, the scowl would have no doubt shown that he could have swallowed a human in one bite. But he was as powerless as her so she didn’t really give a shit about his little errand.

“You shouldn’t speak that way about your own kind,” the dragon said. “Those are monkey words.”

“Look, I don’t plan to spend any more time in here than necessary. And that means I don’t intend going for a stroll after lights-out and losing the few credits I have. I don’t care if she sends me an invite for afternoon tea. Unless she takes a long walk off a short pier, you can tell her to go fuck herself.”

“You can’t talk about her that way.”

“Can’t talk about who? The bitchy old lizard?”

The dragon’s eyebrows raised at that and his entire posture stiffened. He growled again and marched away in a huff.

Good riddance. She sighed and tried to go back to her book.

Before she could really focus again, he returned, this time with a friend.

His companion was considerably larger than him. He stood with his arms folded behind the shorter man, who pulled the door to her cell open. The two dragons in human form took a step inside. She wasn’t sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing that the thugs had come now. That they’d arrived while the doors were still unlocked meant that they probably didn’t have a key—a good thing—but it also meant that they assumed no guards would appear.

“You were rude to me before, but that’s fine. This place is stressful. Now, come quietly so we can all have a nice little talk with Obscura,” the short one said.

“If that’s a problem, we can try to help you up, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you fall down a few times. These bed frames are brutal. They leave all kinds of bruises,” the taller, broader dragon said. He had a deep voice that was particularly effective for delivering threats.

Kristen stood slowly. Before she was even completely up, the shorter dragon rushed forward with his fists clenched. She twisted her back to him. His blow didn’t hurt, but it slowed him enough for Kristen to be able to spin and land a nasty right hook. He fell with a curse.

This didn’t seem to intimidate the other dragon, though. He approached like a tidal wave—slow, sure, and inescapable.

Rather than wait for his assault, she delivered two punches, but the big thug blocked them with his forearms and retaliated with a vicious kick that caught her in the side and catapulted her into the wall of her cell. He didn’t give her a chance to recover but closed the distance and threw a punch that pounded her head against the brick wall.

She rocketed a knee up, aiming for his crotch. He blocked her once again but had to move back to do so. She was ready to lunge forward and seize the opportunity, but his smaller cohort rejoined the fight. He ran forward with his head down and hammered his skull into her solar plexus.

Her breath gone and lungs frozen, she careened into the wall again.

The little dragon stepped back to admire his handiwork and let the big thug step in. He caught her by the hair and pummeled her half a dozen times in the gut. She did her best to resist the blows, but it still hurt badly.

Finally, seemingly finished, he hurled her down by her hair.

Kristen’s head struck the bed and for a second, she saw stars.

When she managed to focus through the pain, her large assailant was breathing heavily.

Slowly, she pushed herself to her feet. “Are you getting tired, asshole?”

“Fuck off,” he wheezed.

Without warning, she launched herself at him and aimed her jabs as his face, which forced him to keep his guard up. The other man jumped on her back and tried to restrain her arms, but she back pedaled and slammed him into the bars of her cell. He released her and fell with a groan.

His cohort resumed his offensive. He threw a punch that seemed like it would have been hard enough to crack bone. She avoided it—barely—and backed away. The prison bars stopped her retreat way too soon, but that gave her an idea. The next time he threw a punch, she dodged and his fist pounded into the bars. He howled in pain, loudly enough for it to echo through the prison. When she heard no guards coming, she understood that she would be alone until this fight was over, one way or the other.

While he moaned and cradled his fist, Kristen attacked the smaller dragon. He didn’t like that at all. Obviously, he was used to aiding the bigger thugs in fights and when he saw her determined approach, he tried to scurry away. But she had trained with her human friends. Drew had forced her to not use her powers when they sparred, so she didn’t need dragon speed to cut off her opponent’s exit.

She kept moving and made sure to remain between him and the door until he rushed forward. Kristen shoved him back and cracked him across the temple with an elbow. It was a brutal move and it was effective. He yelped in pain and sagged into a heap, rubbing his temple.

Unfortunately, the other man had recovered and grabbed her from behind. He trapped her with his long arms and pinned her arms to the side of her body. She could feel his ragged breath in her ear.

“You miss your dragon powers, huh?” Kristen said.

“Fuck off. Splinter, on your feet and work her fucking gut.”

Splinter pushed himself up and limped toward her. He threw a couple of exhausted punches into her gut and she spat in his face.

“You bitch!” he wheezed. He was obviously tired and hurt.

“Waiting for your healing powers, huh?” she demanded before she drove the heel of her foot onto her captor’s pinky toe.

He cursed and released her. Kristen took half a step forward and threw an elbow back and into his face. She felt something warm and moist and knew she’d at least bloodied his nose, if not broken it. He staggered into the bars of her cell and fell.

Splinter made another attempt, but she was able to kick him in the throat before he could get close. He collapsed, writhing in pain as he tried to breathe.

Kristen put her hands on her knees and took a few deep breaths. “You assholes made me fairly tired. Thanks. It was way better than the gym.” In reality, she was almost spent. She had a pounding headache from where she’d struck the bed and her stomach ached from the pounding. Without a doubt, her entire torso would be a bruise by the morning. The only question was if it would be yellow or purple.

“Bitch,” the large man said through the blood pouring from his nose.

“That’s right, and don’t you fucking forget it. You may think I’m weak because I grew up with humans, but we’re all human in here. You probably feel slow and weak, like your wounds aren’t healing fast enough. Well, guess what? I lived that shit for more than twenty years. In here, my time as a human is an advantage.”

She told herself that she would have to thank Drew when she was released. He’d been a real hard-ass about training without her powers. She had never envisioned a need to strip a dragon of their powers but she was thankful for the demanding training sessions. If she ever saw her freedom again, she’d be sure to buy him a beer.

“Now, get the fuck out of my cell,” she said and thought she should drag them out to really show them how strong she was. But honestly, after that fight, she didn’t think she could. She’d won—barely—but what had that achieved? Nothing at all if she couldn’t intimidate them.

“Out. Now, before I grind your nuts into the floor. You’ve been human enough to know that hurts, right? They’re not on the inside like they are when you’re in lizard form.”

“We’re not lizards,” Splinter retorted but he scurried out of the cell and left his cohort against the bars.

“Are you gonna move your ass or do you need assistance?” Kristen kicked him gently in the ribs. He grunted and scooted out of the cell on his rear end.

“You’re tough, Steel, able to take two dragons. It’s a good thing there aren’t more of us in here,” he said as he pushed himself to his feet. He spat on the ground between them and left a big nasty mess of snot and blood. “See you around.”

Obscura’s goons stumbled away and left her alone once more, this time with the door to her cell standing wide.

For a moment, Kristen didn’t do anything but catch her breath. She’d won the fight, but only barely. She would be bruised and exhausted in the morning, no doubt about that. Training without her powers had given her an advantage, but even in those training sessions, she had been willing to push herself well beyond human limits because of the amazing healing abilities that being a dragon granted her. Now, with this silver anklet on, she didn’t have those abilities. That meant she would have to be careful. If she cracked a rib or broke a finger, it would once again take months to heal instead of days.

Of course, this lack of power put the other dragons at a disadvantage as well, but the two thugs’ threats hadn’t gone unheard. There were far more than two dragons in this prison, and if she understood anything about them, more than only two had allied with Obscura. They’d chosen a time when they know her cell door would be open and no guards had come to investigate the sounds. That bespoke a greater power that she wouldn’t be able to fight with her fists.

Which meant it was probably better to face the black dragon. Kristen knew she wanted something more than her death. Otherwise, she would have sent more thugs and they’d have been armed. Suddenly, a shank was a danger to her again. She couldn’t turn to steel anymore, and if stabbed, would bleed like any other human. No, the more she thought about it, the more she realized she couldn’t simply let this go. If Obscura sent six men, she would lose, plain and simple. She had to confront the dragon before that happened. And ideally, if possible, she had to somehow save face.

Kristen stepped from her cell and headed toward Obscura’s. She’d seen it and made a note of it earlier—after all, she was not only an enemy but the only dragon she knew in there. She wiped her face on her sleeve, hoping there wasn’t too much blood anywhere except on her jumpsuit.

She reached the cell and found that this part of the prison was shrouded in total darkness. Either a light had gone out or the black dragon had the power to influence the maintenance workers. She very much doubted the light would be replaced in the morning.

As she approached the cell, she silently lamented the fact that her human eyes couldn’t pierce the gloom. She saw nothing at all inside the tiny room.

Still, Obscura wouldn’t have free reign of the place, would she? She had to be in there. The doors weren’t locked yet, but she wouldn’t go in. Instead, she kicked the bars to generate a metal clang.

Two silvery orbs opened in the darkness, and Obscura spoke. “What?”

“I received your little message from your goons. You wanted to talk?” she replied and refused to be intimidated by the dragon’s glowing eyes. Surely it was an effect of the light. It had to be. If she didn’t have an anklet on, she would already be dead. After all, she could move through shadow.

“Where are they?”

“Nursing their wounds,” she replied.

“Brute.” Obscura hissed her indignation.

“Whatever. Did you want to talk or what?” she demanded.

“I did but you’re too late now. Find me in the yard in the morning. We’ll talk then in full view of the guards.” Her voice was a purr.

“Are you scared to face me now?” Kristen smiled, hoping her adversary could see her.

The other woman only chuckled. “I see the way you limp, little dragon, and I see the cut on your forehead. Perhaps a night of rest would do you good. We’ll talk in the morning. It’s not like there’s much else to do here, is there?”

“And if I don’t show because you’ve already wasted my time tonight and you’re simply going to waste it again tomorrow?” She couldn’t believe this shit. Now that she’d arrived like Obscura wanted, the dragon refused to talk? After a moment, though, it made sense. She had probably expected her to either come willingly like a little dog or be dragged there. The last thing she’d anticipated was for her to march over with the goons’ blood still on her knuckles.

“If you don’t show tomorrow, I’ll make sure you never get bored here again with visits every night and pats on the back during the day. You did very well against two dragons. Maybe you’d like to meet more.”

“Tell me what you want.”

“In the morning. I tire.” The two silvery orbs winked out, and Obscura said nothing more.

By then, she’d had enough. She tried to open the door but it was locked. “You’re a fucking coward.”

The shadow dragon made no response at all. Before she could deliver another scathing comment, an announcement for last check came over the speakers and she had to hurry back to her cell before she was locked out.

She sat on her bed with seconds to spare. The door locked automatically, and a guard walked past a few minutes later. He illuminated her cell with a sphere of magic white light. If he noticed her wounds and the blood on the floor, he didn’t say anything. Sleep came with difficulty that night.

CHAPTER NINE

For the first time in months, Kristen woke up in pain. Her ribs were sore from the vicious attack by the two goons and the gash on her head stung. She hadn’t realized how accustomed she had become to her healing powers. They handled all but the most pernicious wounds overnight. Even with broken bones, she had been able to feel better day by day. Now, she was painfully reminded of what her powers had afforded her.

She scratched at the silver band on her anklet. It was amazing to think that such a tiny thing could stop her from accessing her bevy of abilities. Then again, perhaps it was more amazing to think that every person inside this prison was actually a dragon trapped inside a human body.

With a heavy sigh that made her ribs ache again, she pushed herself out of bed and went in search of breakfast. She hadn’t earned any credits besides the ones she’d been given for not misbehaving but burned all twenty of them on extra breakfast. It wasn’t a bad investment, given that if things went south with Obscura, she was sure to lose them anyway.

She piled her plate high with proteins—perfectly scrambled eggs, crisp, thick, maple-glazed bacon, and sausages stuffed with sage and some kind of seeds that tasted so fresh, she wondered if they were ground in-house. On the other half of her plate, she piled fresh fruit. Apples and bananas but also papaya, honeydew melon, and pineapple—fruits that weren’t often seen in grocery stores in spring in Michigan, at least not in the less affluent parts of the state. It seemed wrong, somehow, that in a prison, they were served at their moment of perfect ripeness.

All in all, breakfast was yet another reminder of the difference between human and dragon culture. In this prison, there were no powdered eggs and no canned fruit. The staff treated the inmates as guests, not criminals. The only things the imprisoned dragons were denied were their freedom and their true form. Of course, the dragons thought this a punishment worse than anything.

Still, even with such blatant inequality between humans and dragons, she recognized that it was better to maintain the status quo. If the solution to humans trying to garner more power from the dragons was a species-on-species war across the planet, it was obviously better to let the dragons keep their breakfast buffets in prison.

More frustrating than this realization was that there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to help to prevent that war. There was an investigation in progress in the outside world, an investigation whose purpose was to track down and stop someone—a person, she wholeheartedly believed—from killing more dragons. But she couldn’t help with it. The dragons had arrested the only person who had a real grasp of the situation. Instead of working the case, she was locked away and had a meeting with a dragon she’d made an enemy of.

With breakfast finished, there was nothing to be done other than confront Obscura. Kristen still ached, but she’d trained hard enough times to feel sore the next morning. Her body was a few levels beyond simply being simple pain but she told herself it wasn’t and that everything would be fine. It wasn’t an easy lie to tell.

She made her way outside to the yard and located her adversary perhaps ten yards away from one of the fences between the prison and the outside world. The black dragon stood in the shadow of one of the towers and watched her approach through the mist stirred by an overly cloudy sky.

As she moved closer, several other dragons stepped in her path. Their arms were folded and their posture unmistakable. They were the proverbial goons, thugs, call them what you will. She had seen their ilk before and had kicked more than a few around, but this was different because she was outnumbered and already beaten up. A glance at one of the towers confirmed that a mage was indeed watching the exchange but he didn’t seem particularly worried.

The two dragons had come to her cell the night before and no one had intervened, so she wondered if the mage’s proximity offered any kind of protection. Surely he’d prevent her from being killed, but did his obligation go any further than that?

As things turned out, she fortunately didn’t have to test that hypothesis. She approached the goons with a show of unconcern and Obscura waved them aside. They nodded and let her walk up to the shadow dragon.

Kristen hadn’t realized how much of the woman’s appearance had been her aura that made people believe she was gorgeous. She was undeniably attractive and even beautiful, but with her powers stripped way, she looked older. In her fifties, perhaps, instead of the thirty-year-old who’d seduced her brother. Her poise was unaffected by the limits on her powers, though, and if she felt at all intimidated by facing the Steel Dragon without her true self hidden, she hid it behind a blustering posture.

“Nice face,” Obscura said and gestured at the wound on her forehead. “I would have thought that after that little encounter, you wouldn’t have come alone.”

“Those thugs aren’t here right now, are they? Neither of them. Meanwhile, I’m fine.” In reality, her ribs hurt, her face ached, and a headache had begun to creep in, but she knew the other woman couldn’t read any kind of aura so decided she might as well bluff with everything she had.

“I guess I merely thought the Steel Dragon would have made friends by now. Tell me, is it difficult talking to dragons when you’re so used to slumming it with humans?”

“I didn’t bring anyone because I’m not intimidated by a powerless old woman. If those two were the best you had to send, you need stronger friends.”

The black dragon laughed at that and actually went so far as to throw her head back. Ugh, the arrogance of this woman. “I suppose you’re right about that. We fought, after all. I should have known those two oafs wouldn’t be enough to force you to come to see me. And yet, here you are, all the same.”

”Yeah, well, I assumed that thousands of years of self-entitlement wouldn’t go away in a few months. And who knows, maybe we have something in common. If you want me to drop dead, I can assure you the feeling is mutual.” She smiled sweetly.

“You’re right in that I wouldn’t leave you alone if you disrespected my summons. It’s good to see your police training has paid off and that you’ve presented yourself out of respect for your superiors.” Obscura smiled even more sweetly—saccharine sweet, which made it all too clear that it was a threat. I can do this better than you, she was saying with that smile. You’ll crack before me because I have allies in here and you don’t.

Kristen couldn’t play that game. It didn’t take thousands of years of experience to see that she would lose.

“So what do you want?” she demanded. It was far better to be direct with people like Obscura who thrived off ambiguity and misdirection.

“Merely to check in, Lady Steel, nothing more. I find it amusing that the person who caged me in my human form is now imprisoned in her own mortal coil as well. Tell me, why are you here? Did you do something naughty?” The shadow dragon licked her lips, an obscene gesture. For once, Kristen had no idea if it was intentional or not. It could have been a move designed to creep her out or the old dragon might have been genuinely hungry for the information she demanded. She didn’t know which was worse.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said.

Obscura laughed hard at that and the ring of dragons milling around them who had previously pretended to not pay attention laughed as well.

“Did you hear that?” the older woman asked, her voice raised and with a tone of grandeur. “Like the rest of us, The Steel Dragon has been falsely accused.”

“I was,” she reiterated.

“As was I, miss,” a bald man with a pockmarked scalp said. “They say a whole school full of human children was crushed in that duel I fought, but I swears it was the other dragon who did that, not me. I’s innocent!”

A woman with long brown hair spoke next. “They said I stole another dragon’s horde of gold, and yet they never found a coin on me. The Dragon Council said the mansion I’d recently purchased and a racing yacht was proof that I’d come into stolen wealth. I’m a victim of circumstance.”

“And, of course, you know I’m innocent of these fraudulent charges as well,” Obscura purred. “They say that it was an unsanctioned duel, but I enacted vengeance against a dragon who’d murdered my son in an unsanctioned duel.”

“You attacked my friends and family,” she snapped in response.

“Which is my right, as it is any dragon’s right to take action against those who swear fealty to one of your enemies.”

“They could have died,” she countered and shook her head, done with this nonsense. The woman merely tried to piss her off, no doubt in an attempt to get her to attack or something so she could turn the guards against her. Kristen wouldn’t oblige her. “Don’t fuck with me again or I’ll attack you directly. You were a dragon for a long time. I was only a human a year ago. Do you really want to try me in a fight?”

Obscura scowled and she knew she didn’t.

She turned on her heel to leave.

“And maybe if I’d have actually killed your friends, I’d be in here longer,” the black dragon called almost lazily.

“Longer?” She paused. “Longer than what? You’ve been in here months. I’ve been in here for five days. I’ll be out before you will because I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Neither did I, Lady Steel, neither did I. And I agree that the length of one’s sentence in our esteemed and honorable court system reflects the severity of the crime. Which is why I’m so pleased to be getting out so soon.”

She scoffed at that. “That won’t happen and you know it. They have the proof to lock you up for a long time. You recorded everything you did to my brother on video.”

“Ah, yes, but these videos of yours can get corrupted, can’t they? Misplaced, broken, and sometimes, the footage there isn’t as telling as we wish it to be.”

“You’re bluffing,” she said.

Obscura chuckled, a smug expression on her face. “Ah, Lady Steel. You are a powerful foe, I’ll give you that. Brawny and with an unswerving—if misguided—sense of right and wrong. But you are still so naïve. I know it’s not your fault. You were raised by apes, after all. But still, can’t you see that there are some parallels between our two cultures? There’s more to justice than courtrooms, and there’s much more to dragon justice.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Kristen felt rooted to the spot. She couldn’t feel her bruises or wounds anymore. In fact, she couldn’t feel anything except a ball of rage that grew hotter and hotter in her belly.

“Our world, like yours, is governed by the rule of who you know more than what you know. Surely you’ve seen the truth of this in your justice system. And fortunately, I’ve been contacted by a powerful patron who assures me I’ll be released quite soon.”

“You’re lying.”

The black dragon giggled. God, Kristen hated her. “And why would I do that? So that in two weeks, when I’m still locked in this horrible place, you can laugh in my face? What purpose would my lies serve?” She laughed again.

“Then I guess this is goodbye,” she said with a fake smile. She found it was much harder to make it sweet in any way.

“Now, are you sure about such a succinct farewell? You’ll be able to have human visitors, of course—we all have rights to receive reports from our servants—but you have so many friends, don’t you? Surely you’d like me to say something to one of them, wouldn’t you? I’m sure they won’t all be able to visit you behind bars, after all. Is there a message I could relay to them?”

Her fury seized her, and she marched toward Obscura with clenched fists. Two of the goons surrounding the ancient dragon stepped forward to block her path. She punched one of them in the face and he sprawled with a muttered oath. The old dragon actually looked frightened, but a whistle screeched from one of the guard towers and Kristen found that she was no longer touching the ground.

A whirlwind of air had lifted her from her feet. It carried her halfway across the yard and dumped her unceremoniously in a heap. She pushed herself up and looked at one of the towers. A mage in a white robe stared at her with her hands raised and her fingers locked in intricate and deliberate patterns. She had no doubt that she’d been the one to cast the spell to remove her.

Another mage strode toward her, although he didn’t seem angry so much as shaken from his boredom. “You’ll lose ten credits for that.”

“I don’t have any credits,” she said.

“Well, you won’t earn your five for today,” he responded. The thought hardly even registered with her.

Obscura had threatened her loved ones. She didn’t care about credits to spend on lunch or the media room or whatever. Her scowl settled once more on her adversary, but when another breeze threatened, she took the cue and left the yard, seething.

CHAPTER TEN

Afew days passed and Kristen fell into the routine. She didn’t avoid Obscura but she also noticed that the dragon was still there. Good. Maybe she really had been bluffing.

Early in her second week—a Tuesday, in fact—she received her first visitors. She let her emotions get the best of her, and when the guard told her she had company to visit her, she said her farewells to her cell and its surprisingly plush bed. Obviously, Stonequest had come to release her, she thought. After all, she was innocent.

Her hopes were immediately deflated when she saw her brother and her friend Jim Washington.

“Brian, Jim,” she said weakly.

The Wonderkid seemed a little disconcerted by her disappointment, but Brian didn’t so much as flinch. “It’s okay, Kristen. We smuggled a cake in with a file inside, so you’ll be able to tunnel out of here within the next five years. We’ll have to plan it so I can pick you up in an old-timey car while the rain washes the mud from your face.”

She smiled and even managed a snort of laughter at the lame joke. Only Brian could make imprisonment seem like a funny inconvenience.

“We came as soon as we could,” Jim said, his tone all business. “It took some convincing to get us in.”

“Did Stonequest tell you what happened?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Brian confirmed. “He came by and told Mom and Dad. Dad’s making all kinds of waves about getting you released. He says the charges are ridiculous. You know, being Dad.”

“How are you, Brian?” she asked. Now that she’d engaged him in reality, he seemed much more shaken than he had when she first saw him. Knowing him, he’d probably spent his time preparing his little joke and trying to ignore the situation.

“I’m good. Fine. But I can’t believe you’re in here. They have to know you’re not a killer. How can they accuse you of that and lock you up?” He shook his head as he seemed to run out of words.

Kristen turned to Jim. “What are the thoughts at the station?”

He shrugged and looked as dejected as hell. “Stonequest told Drew and the team about the DNA and everything. Kristen, the evidence…well, it’s damn convincing.”

Kristen raised an eyebrow at that, unable to help herself. For the first time, she was glad that the anklet blocked her powers. If it hadn’t, Jim would have been swamped with an emotional wave of betrayal, shock, and hurt.

“Not that I think you committed those murders! I’m on your side, one hundred percent. Hell, I’d be on your side even if you did it.”

“But I didn’t,” she said and found that it was easier to keep her voice calm than it used to be. She’d spent so much time learning to control her aura that controlling her face no longer seemed like a challenge.

“Right, of course not.” Jim backpedaled. “But this was one hell of a frame-up if that’s what’s going on here. We all know dragons can really only be killed by other dragons. Yes, you dropped an incinerator on Shadowstorm, but even that might not have done the job without your claws and teeth. And now they’ve found your DNA on not one, but three murdered dragons. I guess all they’d need was some shed scales or something from you, but still, it means someone’s been what? Raiding your bathroom drain and stabbing dragons with the slime?”

“I have another idea,” she said.

Both Jim and Brian leaned closer to listen.

“I suspect that woman was there at two crime scenes—where Death and Windfire were killed. Constance. I’m sure she shot Death and Windfire with a bullet made from dragon pieces. My guess is that she shot Icebreeze too.”

“Okay, sure, but she got away,” the Wonderkid said. Kristen could see him trying to stop himself from shrugging. “Plus, how does that explain your DNA? Do you think she’s been following you or something?”

“Here’s the thing…” She lowered her voice even more, although she realized it probably didn’t matter. If they were being observed, it would be done by magic, which meant lowering her voice probably wouldn’t do a thing. Still, habits were habits. “That woman—Constance—she said she was my mother or thought of herself as my mother or something. At the time, I thought she was crazy. But what if…I don’t know, what if there are others like me? What if Constance was part of a lab and they, like, grew me there or something. Maybe I have siblings with similar DNA.”

Brian nodded but didn’t say anything. Her family were the only people in the entire world who knew that she had been dropped off by her Aunt Christina. She’d been a biologist working at a dragon lab. Frank—Kristen’s father—hadn’t known much about what she’d done there, but the fact that she’d snatched a baby away seemed to indicate that it was something more than simply a dragon nursery.

Jim frowned, obviously trying to process all this information. “I guess…” he finally began and rubbed his chin. “I guess we don’t really know where you came from. I assume you hatched from an egg, right?”

Kristen shrugged. “That’s where dragons come from.”

“Okay, so say there were other eggs in this…nest. How would we go about finding them? Hell, who’s to say they even hatched? And if they did, it’s not like they have steel skin, right? You’re the only dragon with that ability in all of history. If there were others, it’d be way easier to make contact.”

“I don’t think we’ll be able to track down the other eggs from my creche.” Saying the words aloud was almost disorienting to her. My creche. The thought had never really occurred to her before. She’d always identified as a human girl with a human brother and who’d been raised by humans, but there was more to her identity now. There had always been more to it.

“So, where do we start?” Brian asked.

She took a moment to study her brother. He looked different. Not since she’d been in prison, obviously, but since everything had happened with Obscura. He had lost a little weight—not much, but it was a start—and he carried himself differently. With more awareness, maybe, and more intent. She liked the change.

“I think we have to start with Constance. She’s the key in all this. For one thing, she was at Windfire’s mansion and I’m positive she almost killed Death. Her fingerprints were found in the room where Icebreeze died. She has to be what this whole thing revolves around.”

“Then that’s who we’ll find,” Jim said, clearly glad to have a mission.

“By the time you get out of here, we’ll have some leads for you,” her brother assured her.

Kristen felt a wave of tears well up but fought them back. Still, it was with a shaking voice that she asked her next question. “And has Stonequest said anything about the case?”

Jim’s face went tight and Brian hung his head.

“Nothing’s come up yet,” the Wonderkid said. “Only that one fingerprint, but compared to the DNA, the dragons don’t seem to be buying it.”

“You have to be strong, Krissy. I know you can do it. Keep doing push-ups and pull-ups and getting a law degree or whatever it is people do in prison to pass the time.”

“I’ll be fine. You guys take care of yourselves, okay? Obscura’s in here and well—”

Brian went pale at the mention of the dragon who had abducted him from his home and trapped him in a human-sized Pac-Man game, complete with ghosts armed with shock sticks.

“You know what? I think she was bluffing. It’s fine.”

“Bluffing about what, Kristen? Tell me, I have a right to know,” he said.

She would not have relented to the younger and more naïve Brian but that boy was gone. Slowly but surely, a new Brian seemed to carve himself from what their mom affectionately called her man-child.

“Obscura’s in here and she says she’ll get out soon. She might be bluffing, but… I don’t know. For some reason, I don’t think she is. Be careful out there, okay?”

He nodded.

“All the more reason to find this Constance quickly. If we find hair plucked from your brush or from your long-lost siblings or whatever, we’ll be able to get you out.” Jim left the obvious “and keep us humans safe” unspoken.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The next morning at breakfast, Kristen received an invitation. It came on stationery decorated with an elegant castle and a single dragon flying overhead. She had seen the stationary in the library and knew it cost quite a few credits to purchase. It meant that whoever had sent this note to her no doubt wanted her to be impressed. She already knew who it was without having to read the signature at the bottom of the short invitation. “Meet me in my yard,” it began. There was only one dragon so arrogant as to think that the prison belonged to her. Well, maybe there were more dragons with that level of arrogance, but she was the only one she had met in the yard.

For some reason, Obscura wanted to talk to her. She sighed, checked the time on the invitation—she had an hour—and finished her breakfast. Her choice today was only eggs and toast with a side of fruit. She was saving credits, for some reason. What the mind did when trapped was an interesting, often illogical thing.

Once she’d eaten, she left and went to the appointment. The last time she’d faced Obscura, she did so with her head held high, meeting the dragon as equals despite being the newcomer to the prison and the presence of her adversary’s allies. It had worked, mostly, in that the black dragon had left her alone. It was enough to make her determined not to limp in twenty minutes late. She wanted her to know she wasn’t afraid of her.

Also, they both knew that she didn’t have a damn thing to do. If she was late, it couldn’t be taken to mean she was busy with something more important, only that she’d chosen to disrespect her. She was fine with that but would much rather the ancient dragon think of her as a worthy combatant than a disrespectful sneak, an attitude she chalked up to her own dragon arrogance.

At the requested time, she sauntered carefully into the yard. She didn’t march as she didn’t want to seem too eager—that would be an obvious bluff—but she didn’t trudge out there either. She held her head high, kept her shoulders back despite her bruised ribs, and took deliberate steps.

Kristen approached the black dragon, who waved her retinue of peons away.

“To what do I owe the honor?” she asked formally but sneered slightly after the word “honor.”

“I only wanted to say goodbye,” Obscura said and batted her eyelashes as if fending off tears. She really was too much, a powerful actress as much as anything else.

“Whatever do you mean, fair dragon?” she replied, trying for elegance and sounding like a performer in a middle school play. Fuck that. “Is there a cliff nearby you wish to walk off? May I suggest you jump out from the ledge. It’s better to fall and crack your damned skull than to smash yourself upon the rock wall repeatedly as you tumble down the mountainside. Actually, maybe you should tumble. It might do your face good.”

Ah, yes. Much better. Talking to her like that felt much more natural.

“As honored as I am to spend my nights acting out your pathetic human dreams as you sleep, my time has come. I am being released.”

“Released?” she asked, her mouth agape.

The black dragon ignored her. “Walking off a cliff? Honestly? That is such a human fear. Dragons launch themselves from cliffs. Long ago, those who controlled the cliffs controlled all they could survey. Truly, you must be the only dragon in this entire prison who dreams of their human body despite being imprisoned in one.”

Kristen glared at her. “How are you being released? Or do you mean from this mortal coil?”

Obscura shook her head and chuckled. “Again, your perspectives are so human. Do you honestly think of yourself as mortal? You’re a being who could live for thousands of years—you know, if you weren’t so abjectly horrible at making allies who actually matter. Of course I’m not being executed. I’m rejoining society. What is supposed to happen in human prisons? Ah, yes, I have been rehabilitated.”

“You…you can’t go free. Not after what you did to my brother. There’s no justice in that.”

“Justice isn’t quite what you think it is, is it?” The older dragon smiled and malice poured from her eyes. “Justice, little Steel Dragon, is what you make of it. Like I will have my justice against you for what you did.”

“Shadowstorm broke dragon law and got dozens of humans killed.”

“Pah! Most of the dead my son left behind were common criminals. He purged your world of its worst people.”

“They weren’t his people, though. And isn’t that supposed to make all the difference in dragon society?”

Obscura waved the objection away. “Before you came along, little Steel Dragon, no one gave a wet spark about Detroit. Dragon SWAT is stationed there.”

“Yeah, no shit,” she retorted.

Her adversary only tsked her tongue. “Such foul language from the Steel Bitch.”

Kristen didn’t know which nickname she liked less, little Steel Dragon or Steel Bitch.

Obscura didn’t seem to be able to tell either, as she switched between the two. “The people my son freed of their mortal coil didn’t belong to any dragon. Until you came along, all of Detroit was a wasteland, a garbage heap of a place trapped in the bureaucratic claws of Dragon SWAT. I find it endlessly amusing that the dragon who clawed herself out of that mess of humanity can’t even lift her head high enough to see farther than the dumpster it is.”

“My city has seen hard times, but that’s not what it is anymore.”

The woman tsk-tsk-tsked again. “Oh, little Steel Dragon, how naïve you are.”

She decided she definitely liked being called little Steel Dragon less than Steel Bitch.

“I am not speaking of property values or the petty crimes of thieving from a human. I am talking about what that city is. The Motor City, you call it, yes? There is no place more inimical to dragon kind and all we represent than that rat’s nest. It started as a port city and in doing so, immediately began to foul the greatest source of fresh water on this planet. Then it moved to manufacturing, further sullying the land, water, and air. The machines that spewed from that pit of disgust even changed the outcome of your Second World War.”

“It’s no surprise that you’d be on the side of the Nazis,” she said snidely.

Obscura waved the comment aside. “It isn’t only your technology I hate, but your culture too. The music that has come from there is all disrespectful nonsense. Motown, punk rock, rap—all of it is trash, disloyal to what came before it. It’s the American London, the modern Rome. A disgusting place of sacrilegious human ingenuity.”

“You forgot Detroit-style pizza and our architecture.”

“That city is a blight to what dragon kind can be, and now that it’s self-proclaimed guardian is locked up—as you should be—I can finally do with it as I wish. Tell me, when do humans scream louder? When they’re all killed together or one by one? Ah, forgive me, I don’t know why I’m asking. Either way, I’ll kill your fat, sexually deprived brother first, then your mother and father—leaving them alone was a huge mistake—then I’ll move on to the pathetic human SWAT team. Not that I’ll start with your friends there. I’ll probably simply bring the entire building down and send a message to the rest of the rats that the ship is sinking.”

“Shut your mouth.” Kristen clenched her fists and took two steps forward.

The black dragon laughed and raised a claw and her goons all took a few tentative steps closer. “Do not order me about, little one, or I will tell you even less of my plans than I had intended. Oh, wait, it seems I already gave everything away. What a bother! Now you’ll be able to stop…oh, that’s right. You’ll still be locked up as the murderous bitch you are.”

“Call these thugs off and we end this now. You versus me. First to blood or until one of us is beaten unconscious. You choose.”

“Such brazen behavior. To the blood? Honestly, what do you take me for? Not all dragons share your obsession with sullying themselves with human culture. We couldn’t do such a thing and you know it, not with the guards watching.”

She glanced at the mage in the guard tower. Currently, there was only a single man up there, which didn’t reassure her at all. There was something unsettling in his eyes and in the way he watched what transpired below.

“Still, despite your arrogance, I wouldn’t want you to get too lonely without me. I can only imagine how hard it must be for you to make friends here, given that you’re a slave and a tool to the Dragon Council and their petty obsession with the status quo. I’ve prepared a present for you—a parting gift, you could say.”

Before she could even think of a response, Obscura spat in her face.

Kristen had experienced much worse from some of the common criminals she’d dealt with between confronting dragons when she’d worked at Detroit SWAT.

However, she quickly realized that the disrespectful gesture was only the wrapping on the gift. The mage who’d watched her so intently levitated from his place on the guard tower and came to stand beside the black dragon. He pointed at the prison and she nodded before she followed him inside.

That left Kristen alone in the yard with the six dragon goons who had listened to the entire conversation. Without a guard to interfere, they approached her from all sides with makeshift weapons in hand, ready to beat her senseless.

She took a deep breath—grimly aware that it still hurt her ribs to breathe—and clenched her fists.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kristen had to give the six thugs credit. They all attacked at once instead of waiting for her to disable them one at a time. What was worse was that they were prepared. Each had a weapon—a shiv made from a screwdriver, a length of chain, a chair leg, an impressively ornate set of brass knuckles, a piece of rebar, and a rope.

Worse still was that she recognized most of the dragons themselves. One of them—Copperstrike, if memory served—she’d personally put away. She thought he’d been waiting on a shipment of silver to secure his release, but it appeared it had never come. She recognized some of the others too. Mostly, they were all small arrests, dragons who’d been locked up because they’d trashed a human town or structure and not had the funds to pay for it. They were all young dragons and angry dragons.

But who they were didn’t really matter, not beyond the obvious. What she realized was that each of these dragons was more than merely a thug working for Obscura. Each of them was in prison because of her or Dragon SWAT. It meant that this fight was personal for them.

For her, though, it was about survival, which meant she forgot their identities and focused on their weapons. She prioritized them in her brain as they surged toward her as one angry mob.

Kristen dodged a jab from the shiv—she absolutely could not let herself get stabbed, not without her dragon powers—and that earned her a crack across the shoulders from the chair leg. She tumbled in pain but relieved that the wooden leg had connected and not the piece of rebar.

Before she could stand, she was kicked by the dragons who could reach her, but she scurried out from the mob, found her feet, and attacked.

She dodged a swing from the rebar and kicked the woman with the chain in the throat. The female dragon staggered back and gasped.

That left her open to the dragon who had the brass knuckles and had obviously spent some of his credits on hair gel. He capitalized on her vulnerability with a punch to her arm. The pain was intense, but she knew she was lucky. If he had struck one of her bruised ribs, the fight would be over.

The blow made her stumble, but she still had to seize the opportunity. She dodged the chair leg and targeted the dragon with the shiv. That was the priority.

The woman anticipated her attack and held the sharpened screwdriver up. Still, it was obvious that Kristen had far more experience disarming thugs with knives than the dragon had using them without her powers. When the Steel Dragon kicked her hand, she lost the weapon, which thunked into the dust a few feet away.

Obviously aware of the lethal potential of the weapon, the dragon dove to retrieve it. Kristen was faster, placed a foot on it, and dragged it toward her enough that the woman couldn’t reach it. She bent and picked it up—she couldn’t let it be used against her—but that left her open to the man with the rope.

He was the skinniest of the human-shaped dragons who had attacked her, and she knew what that meant given his weapon of choice. He wouldn’t fight with the rope but try to strangle her.

It dropped over her head and he immediately pulled it tighter and tighter around her neck. Part of her brain—firing at rapid speed from good, old-fashioned human adrenaline—was impressed. He knew how to work a rope, which meant he must have strangled before. It was not a skill she thought a dragon would have possessed. Fortunately, she knew what to do about him.

She spun the sharpened screwdriver in her hand so the point was closer to her pinky and jabbed it into his gut.

He yelped, but didn’t let go—again, impressing a part of her—so she stabbed him in the leg.

His only response was to pull tighter.

The assailant with the chair leg came to help and clubbed her in the solar plexus. The blow forced a gasp from her, and she struggled to fill her lungs because of her blocked windpipe.

Her peripheral vision began to fade as the man pulled tighter. She flipped the shiv in her hand, raised it, and used one of its sharpened edges to cut the rope.

It snapped and she stumbled forward, free and able to breathe.

With her first breath of air, she hurled the shiv as hard as she could and it sailed over the fence. No one else would be stabbed today.

Kristen flinched when the piece of rebar came down hard enough to almost crack her skull, but her instincts saved her. The weapon continued past her and wedged in the springtime mud of the yard.

She looked at the thugs and reassessed the scene. The dragon with the rope was out, thank God. When Kristen had pushed away from him, the chain had caught him in the face with a strike obviously intended for her. The hangman now lay in the fetal position and clutched both his face and his gut, where she had stabbed him. His leg bled freely, but he only had so many hands.

The woman who’d had the shiv was also now unarmed, but she didn’t look ready to quit. Neither did any of the other five.

When the man with the rebar yanked his weapon free—it was close to three feet long—she had to consider her assessment concluded.

Cautiously, she backed toward the fence to prevent them from surrounding her again but only succeeded in cornering herself.

The dragons with the longer weapons—rebar, chair leg, and chain—came forward, able to inflict damage from a distance. The man with the knuckle dusters and the dragon who’d formerly brandished the shiv hung back, no doubt looking for an opportunity.

Kristen dodged when the rebar swung and again, the piece of metal descended with enough force to get stuck in the mud. She grasped it and tried to throw a shoulder into its user. Although she succeeded in pushing him away, the chain arced menacingly and she had to let the potential weapon go or risk it breaking her fingers.

The chair leg cracked her across the back with enough force to send her stumbling against the chain-link fence. Its wielder struck her again, then once more before she could dodge. Again, the length of chain struck where she’d been a moment before. It was an odd sensation to be thankful to be hit by a chair leg but there it was.

She straightened and rushed the woman with the chain, who was quickly proving to be the biggest remaining threat.

Unfortunately, she didn’t get far though before the now shivless dragon who had hovered in the background caught her hair and yanked her head back. The brass knuckles drove into a rib and for a moment, pain was all she knew.

She heard something through the hurt and held an arm up in front of her. The chain struck her and wound around her forearm. It hurt, but not that badly and better yet, nothing was broken. With a much better hold on the weapon this time, she pulled the woman who held it toward her. It was wrapped around her forearm instead of only held in her hand, so she was able to wrench it free.

The dragon screamed in outrage but was shoved out of the way by her cohorts with the chair leg and rebar. Kristen actually let the first attack connect. The dragon had aimed the chair leg at her arm, which at this point, she considered expendable—especially given that the man with the rebar now attempted another sword-like swing directed at her head.

Thinking quickly, she held the length of the chain up and managed to absorb much of the rebar’s force, but not all of it. The tip struck her on the head and hot blood began to ooze from her scalp.

Tangled as she was with one assailant pulling her hair and another refusing to let go of the weapon now caught in the chain, she was open for attack.

The brass knuckles worked her side and pummeled her ribs brutally after landing one particularly vicious blow to her mouth. At the same time, the dragon wielding the chair leg proceeded to batter her back with the piece of wood. Each blow grew stronger and stronger until she could hear the wood at its breaking point.

Luckily for her, it would shatter before her bones did.

Her teeth clenched, she wouldn’t quit. Instead, she slumped. The woman holding her hair didn’t release her so the pain from her scalp was intense, but the ploy brought the dragon into the path of the chair leg, which cracked upon her skull and knocked her unconscious.

Her hair now free, Kristen fell to her knees.

The man with the rebar was inches from her, so she borrowed a page from Obscura’s book and spat in his face.

“Bitch!” he bellowed as he wiped his eyes.

Kristen tottered forward, clutching her chain.

She turned to see four dragons still facing her. The broken chair leg had created two makeshift shivs. The man with the rebar managed to yank his weapon free from the chain. He looked tired but unhurt. The woman she’d taken the chain from looked pissed that she’d been disarmed but was still in the fight. The dragon with the brass knuckles still looked as fresh as a daisy.

Kristen spat blood and a tooth and wondered if she’d regrow the molar if she ever got the silver cuff on her ankle off long enough to give her back her dragon healing powers. Those knuckle dusters had really done a number on her face.

“Do you dinosaurs ever play sports?” she asked and wiped the blood from her mouth as she began to spin the chain at her side.

Only one of the four answered as he raised his brass knuckles and smiled. “Boxing. I held the heavyweight title until they realized I was a dragon.”

“So you were cheating?” she asked.

“Did that feel like I was cheating?” He pointed at her jaw.

“Face it, Steel Bitch, you’re beat. There’s no point stalling,” the man with the chair-leg shivs said.

“I’m not stalling, merely asking.” She spun the chain faster and faster at her side, then made a circle above her head and crossed over, keeping the momentum and the acceleration. “Before I knew what I was, I played all kinds of sports. Soccer, tennis, color guard.”

“Isn’t that the one for girls?” Rebar asked.

“Mostly. We used to twirl flags.”

“Big fucking deal.” The other man advanced with his wooden weapons at the ready.

Kristen spun her chain into his face with enough force to knock his head back and catapult him into the mud. That left three.

“This chain reminds me of those flags.”

Already, she could tell the fight was down to two versus one. She’d done far more damage than the dragon who’d originally wielded the chain had done. The woman clearly knew they wouldn’t win. She didn’t step back or anything or even lower her fists, but her muscles weren’t tensed to attack. While she wouldn’t run away—that would make her lose far too much face—she wouldn’t lead the attack either.

“Are we going to do this thing or what?” She maneuvered the chain into a complex series of twirls that went in front and behind her body.

The other two attacked as one. The rebar swung first and she trapped the metal with the chain, but this proved to be a mistake. As soon as her weapon was tangled, his comrade rushed in. She moved her free arm to block and he simply hammered the brass knuckles on it. Each punch hurt like hell, but he didn’t crack her bones so she endured it.

She yanked the chain toward her, which brought the dragon in with it, and tried to kick him into the boxer. He was too quick, released the piece of rebar, and stepped away.

Kristen dropped the chain and picked up the steel club. She swung it at the boxer, who dodged, then ran his hand through his gelled hair.

“Hey,” he said as if she’d crossed some kind of line and he and all his cronies hadn’t struck first and been fighting six on one.

The piece of metal was an even more familiar sports implement than a chain, of course. She had played lacrosse for years—much longer than she’d been in the color guard, honestly. Thankful for the weight of it in her arms, she raised it in readiness.

“Bring it on, Steel Bitch,” the boxer said.

She stepped toward him but swung her weapon in a wide loop around her head. When he cursed, she felt exultant. The idiot who’d let go of the piece of metal had attempted to snag the chain. Now, he was unconscious.

“Your move, Fancy Fist,” Kristen said.

“Fancy Fist? What the fuck you talking about?” the dragon demanded, but the goading had worked. He moved forward, ready to pummel her.

Kristen swung down once with all her might. He parried the strike with his brass knuckles. That wasn’t good. If he could block her at her strongest, he could block everything she had left. He hadn’t really taken many blows, while her jaw hurt and her face was swelling so badly it threatened to close her eye. Her ribs ached, which made breathing difficult. Her arms were both exhausted from the fight and sore from being hit. And the boxer was fresh. Even though it was finally one on one, she felt like the odds were more against her than ever.

He seemed to sense her hesitation and started forward with both fists raised, the one with the brass knuckles slightly higher than the other.

She struck and he blocked.

When she swung again, he dodged.

“Why are you doing this?” she demanded. “Obscura has no loyalty to you.”

The boxer shrugged. “I’m bored and I’m not a fan of the human turned dragon turned cop. No one in here is.”

Kristen attacked as he spoke. It was a dirty trick, but so was ambushing one unarmed person with six armed people.

He stepped back but not quite fast enough. She caught his forehead with the tip of her piece of rebar and blood dripped down his face.

“You cut me.” He smiled. “It takes me back to the ring.”

Apparently unaffected by her attack, he surged forward.

In the senseless brawl that followed, she managed to land a few strikes on her opponents back, but it paled compared to what he did to her. She hammered his shoulders—the shoulders of a man who quite obviously spent too much time in the gym—while he pulverized her middle. And yet she couldn’t pull away. If she did, she knew he’d aim for her face. One punch with those things on his fists would knock her out and perhaps kill her.

That couldn’t happen.

But by that point, she had no idea what else to do. She was losing strength, losing blood, and losing hope. Her ears were ringing—screeching, in fact—and her limbs seemed heavier and more sluggish by the second.

She was almost at the point of giving up when suddenly, the fight was over.

Kristen was lifted off her feet and levitated in midair, the wind whipping at her jumpsuit. The boxer was also elevated about ten feet away from her.

“Ladies and sirs, fighting is not allowed. We will have to confiscate your weapons and you will be sent to solitary. All credits are suspended until further notice,” a mage said and tried not to let his voice shake. She was thankful that he had broken the fight up before she’d been beaten or done something she’d regret. It also impressed her that he was obviously scared yet had stepped in anyway.

“Now, please, who was involved?” he demanded.

“Only us two, that’s it,” the boxer said and raised an eyebrow at her, asking her for cooperation that he hadn’t even remotely earned the right to.

“It was this asshole plus five others. I knocked four of them out but there might be one making a break for it. Copperstrike, I think his name is.”

“Snitch,” her adversary said.

“Coward. If it had only been you and me, I’d be in solitary. You’d be in the hospital.”

He grinned. While he knew the truth of the threat, he didn’t admit defeat. Instead, he spat, a futile gesture as the whirlwind that held them both suspended whipped it away.

The mage lowered them, and she discovered that another ten guards had arrived. She had to admit she was a little impressed with herself. That seemed like quite a response for a scrap she hadn’t even been prepared for.

All seven combatants were shackled and taken to solitary.

She remained on her feet when they threw her in the padded room. Doggedly, she stood in silence when they slammed the door. She stayed on her feet as she listened to the other doors slam, but when she heard the last one finally close, she collapsed and passed out from her wounds.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Solitary confinement turned out to be much worse than she expected. The cell was clean and well maintained. The guards brought food two times that day, and the lights seemed to be on for roughly daytime and off at night. But that was all the context she had for what was happening. She had no clock and no window to the outside world, no notebook, no visitors, and nothing to break the monotony. Not even the guards would talk to her. One of them had told her what she’d be eating for the first meal but had been reprimanded for it. She hadn’t heard another word spoken by another being—human or dragon—since then.

As time passed in the cell, she felt her mind slipping away from her. There simply wasn’t anything to anchor it. She could be lost in a thought forever with no need to come back to reality for any reason. To her—a person who’d spent her entire life thinking about others, both as competitors and as people to help—it was torture.

The thought she couldn’t escape most of all was what she was. A dragon. A human. A woman. A monster.

When she first discovered what she was, she had seen it as a boon, even a gift. She’d been able to protect the people she loved and was invulnerable, impervious to bullets and able to withstand grenades. But even in that first encounter, she’d lost a friend. Although she’d felt invincible, she hadn’t been, not in the way that mattered anyway. She’d transformed to protect her friends, yet Jonesy had died. And if she hadn’t been a dragon, maybe it wouldn’t have happened.

That seemed to be her entire history of being a dragon. She had the abilities to protect her family, but now that she was a dragon, her family was a target. Her powers hadn’t made them safer. They’d put them in peril. Being a dragon was fun to her, but wasn’t that an incredibly self-centered position?

Besides, it was no longer fun. She hated feeling that being a dragon wasn’t enjoyable, but there it was. Her mind was only able to escape the feeling for so long. She loved being able to run at superhuman speeds and have superhuman strength and senses. And then there was the sensation of transforming into an actual dragon. There was no feeling she could compare it to. In a breath, she could change from being a regular human into a silvery being capable of flight. And oh, how she loved to fly. She wasn’t great at it yet, but it was an absolute joy to take to the air and to fly over her city and look at her people below.

That thought—the thought of her people—made her mind spiral off in another direction. She tried to work out for a few minutes, but she was still too injured to sustain any kind of activity, so her mind went back to exactly where she didn’t want it to go.

Her city and her people. Kristen had been with dragon culture long enough to begin thinking like them—that people were hers to protect and they were her responsibility. But was that a bad thing? She honestly didn’t know but thought it was honorable for the more powerful to stand up for the powerless. That’s what she expected and rarely saw from politicians. It was why she had wanted to become a police officer in the first place. She’d wanted to help those who couldn’t help themselves.

Now that she was a dragon, she could really do that. Before, when she’d only thought of herself as a human joining the police force, she’d unintentionally never thought about the dragons. She knew they were there, of course. Everyone knew that dragons were there, but there simply wasn’t any point in dwelling on them. There was nothing a human could do to a dragon. If they ran afoul of one, they could be incinerated, snatched from the earth, and dropped from the sky. Hell, they could be eaten and there would be little recourse besides the family asking for a cash payout. She had known this when she was a cop but she couldn’t spend time thinking about it because there was nothing she could do.

But now, she was a dragon and could protect people from dragons. She could finally afford to think about the advantages of dragons claiming territories and being responsible for the people therein. It meant that they wouldn’t kill people in each other’s territory. The system of ownership kept people safe.

At least, that’s what she had begun to believe.

But now she knew that some dragons simply wanted to exterminate humanity. Stonequest had told her that there were dragons who believed the human population should be culled by half.

There she was, trying to assimilate herself into dragon culture because she tried to view it as a necessary tool—not an evil exactly, but simply something that must exist—only to find that there were dragons as horrible as her worst nightmare.

Some thought people were no better than slaves or sheep or dogs.

Other dragons thought half the world should die.

There were dragons who wished people to live only so they could serve them as slaves.

It was the epitome of power run amok. It was despicable, deplorable, and disgusting. And yet—until she had been put in manacles—she’d still believed that being on Dragon SWAT was helping. She’d believed that she was fighting against this callous disdain for humankind in general.

But now, she’d learned that the dragon justice system was corrupt.

When she’d been locked up in prison, Kristen had been able to tell herself that it was for the greater good and she was there because the evidence seemed to point to her. She knew that it didn’t, simply because she did not kill any of the dragons, but she also respected the forensic process. Evidence had to be gathered and assessed and clues investigated. Her being incarcerated meant that other dragons who had committed crimes would also be locked up because of evidence. She was sacrificing her freedom—temporarily, she had thought—so that the guilty wouldn’t be able to tear the net of justice to pieces.

Only now, her enemy had gone free.

Obscura, who had targeted her friends after stalking them for weeks, who had kidnapped her brother and put him inside a sick, man-sized game so she could torture him while she waited to catch Kristen. Obscura, who had raised Shadowstorm, the dragon who had tried to make a city blow itself up so he could rule over the ashes. She was a monster, a cruel and vicious being who cared only for herself, and yet she had gone free because of a benefactor?

It was all simply too much.

Now, her friends and family were once more in danger from the twisted dragon, and there was nothing she could do about it. She’d accepted being sent to prison precisely because she thought that by doing so, she would help to affirm a system that kept dragons like Obscura behind bars, but it hadn’t worked out that way at all. She was now trapped, while the shadow dragon was free.

This wasn’t justice. It was a travesty.

And on top of all that, for the first time since she’d been a dragon, Kristen was actually afraid for her own life. If she got out of solitary and found that the six dragons had friends, she wouldn’t last long. If she had her dragon powers, she might be halfway to healed already, but she didn’t. She was trapped in a room with bruised ribs and a jaw that was painfully swollen.

As she lay alone, scared for her people, helpless, and frustrated, she couldn’t help but wonder if being a dragon was really such a great thing after all.

And if—by some miracle—she did get out of there, a war seemed inevitable. She honestly didn’t know which side she’d be on.

Obviously, she couldn’t kill humans. She had been raised by people, most of her friends were people, and she would forever protect people, but how would she do that? If fighting broke out and hundreds of dragons tried to kill humans, it seemed logical that they would use fighter jets, tanks, and everything else at their disposal to defend themselves. Would it make sense for her to join mankind in the fight against dragons?

The reality was that she wouldn’t be able to stop more than a few dragons. She simply wasn’t experienced enough. While she had steel skin, which was an advantage, there were all kinds of powers she was still ignorant about. Hell, Shadowstorm seemed to be able to control lightning to some extent. Another dragon with that ability would make her conductive skin quite a liability.

She wouldn’t fight against humans. That went without saying, but would she fight for them? She couldn’t win the war by herself, she knew that. And then there was the possibility that by joining the humans, she would further galvanize the dragons against them. Dragon kind might see her allegiance to humans as a threat to their hierarchy and act even more swiftly to crush humankind. After all, that was what had happened with Obscura. Her being a dragon had made the other dragon swear vengeance. Perhaps her fighting for people would do the same thing, but to every dragon in existence.

No, if it came to war, Kristen wouldn’t fight for people. It simply wouldn’t achieve anything. The only thing she could do if the situation degenerated to open warfare was to try to act as a bridge between the two worlds. She knew she couldn’t defeat hundreds of dragons on her own, but if she could convince them not to attack people, she might be able to turn the tides of war.

Of course, she’d no doubt have to do the same with humankind. She was famous and she’d have to use that. After all, they possessed nuclear weapons. At the end of the day, it was humans who could end the world and she didn’t think that they would necessarily pull that option off the table. After all, they’d used them against each other so why not use them against an even more powerful foe?

No, no, it was unthinkable. She had to make sure that war between humans and dragons simply didn’t happen. There would be no real victors. Humans would not be able to wrestle independence from dragons by force, and dragons wouldn’t be able to force humans back into complete servitude. Both sides were too powerful, but she also had a feeling that neither side thought of the other that way.

After all, dragons could fly, breathe fire, and heal super-fast. They obviously thought themselves superior.

Humans had fighter jets that could go faster than dragons, plus tanks, and if they were really and truly threatened, the aforementioned nukes.

Kristen couldn’t let a war happen.

But she currently couldn’t do a damn thing.

She was trapped in a padded room with no contact with the outside world, while her nemesis was out there, probably already hunting her friends and family.

While she wanted to make a difference and to make peace, if Obscura had killed her family or any of her friends, there was a very real chance that the Steel Dragon herself might be the one to trigger the world war.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

After twenty-four hours, Kristen was led back to her cell. She should have felt happy or relieved, at least, that she could now see other faces, but she didn’t. Instead, it was merely a reminder that she didn’t belong there. She was locked up in this prison with other dragons even though she hadn’t done anything wrong and didn’t even see herself as they did. Her heart would always be human. None of these dragons felt that way.

Still, it was better to be back to the strangely comfortable bed in her prison cell. At least she could actually watch the time and eat what she wished. She could go outside or visit the library.

It was fairly obvious to her that her brawl with the six dragons wasn’t a secret. Everywhere she went, she received deferential nods. She didn’t know who’d told the story, but the fact that she had beaten six dragons seemed to impress most of the population in the prison or at least intimidate them.

Still, she would have given all that up for a friend right now. But even that was a weird thought. Why did she want to be friends with a dragon criminal? Considering that the burden of proof needed to keep a dragon in there seemed so high, she could assume that most of them were guilty of horrible things.

But could she? Maybe the only dragons who were released were those with benefactors. After all, that was how Obscura got out. And Kristen had battled Copperstrike, a dragon who’d trashed a town while battling with another, wealthier dragon. Both had damaged the city, and yet the richer one had gone free while the poorer one was still locked up. Maybe being in there had nothing to do with guilt or innocence and all to do with connections.

She felt a pang of guilt when that theory seemed to bear out.

The morning after her first day out of solitary, a guard arrived. He led her to a part of the prison she hadn’t seen since she’d been checked in.

Stonequest waited in the admittance room. He tried to smile but mostly looked as guilty as hell.

“What, no flowers?” she asked him before he could say anything.

He smiled awkwardly and cleared his throat before speaking. “There’s been another murder. The same method was used, and a dragon was killed without signs of struggle or battle. A tiny wound caused enormous damage and there is a DNA match with the others again.”

“I thought that DNA was supposed to be mine?” Kristen said. She knew it was a petty, stupid thing to say when she said it but she hadn’t had a real conversation with anyone since she’d been in there. Her social skills felt raw.

“I never thought it was, Kristen, you have to trust me on that. We were only doing our due diligence. Now that there’s been another murder, I was able to convince the Council that even if it is your DNA, it has to be someone else using it as you were locked up here.”

“Well, thanks for that, Stonequest. It’s good to have someone pulling the strings.”

“Pulling the strings? What are you talking about?”

“The only reason I’m free is because you talked to someone. Admit it, that’s how this works.”

He glanced at the dragons and mages standing guard and watching the door. “Kristen, I understand that you’re upset. You’ve obviously had a tough time in here.”

She could feel his gaze on her bruised jaw. The swelling had subsided but half of her face was still purple and yellow.

“That’s putting it lightly. Did you know Obscura was in here? She and her little thugs made my stay fairly fucking horrible.”

“Can we please not do this in here?” Stonequest pleaded. “Let’s get you checked out, get that silver cuff off your ankle, and head home. I have a car, a driver, and a pizza. I know that’s not enough, but…well, it’s what I have.”

Kristen glared at him. “Mushroom and pepperoni?”

He nodded.

“Fine.” She turned her back to him and strode to the desk. The dragon there showed her to a changing room. It was extremely odd to change from a prison jumpsuit back into her SWAT uniform, but that was what she’d worn when she’d been booked and Stonequest—being a guy—had not thought to bring her regular clothes.

When Kristen stepped into the lobby, she saw surprise on the faces of the guards.

A mage knelt to undo the silver cuff on her anklet. “This is a new one, officer,” he said, and with a spell muttered in a language she didn’t know, her powers returned.

It felt like being sick with a fever for three days and waking up to find yourself normal again with nothing out of place except an unusually large appetite. Or, she thought, like having a cast taken off her entire body. To have her powers back felt so good it was almost orgasmic.

Kristen drew a deep breath—the first one she’d dared since her ribs had been pummeled by the brass knuckle—and felt her heart beat faster with the extra oxygen. Her ribs still hurt and they wouldn’t heal instantaneously, but she could tell that her body was now doing something about it. She touched her bruised face. It was still tender, but not as much as it had been before. She tried to concentrate on healing her face, already quite irritated by how Stonequest stared at her.

“Shall we?” he said and offered her a hooked elbow for her to hold.

“I’ll walk, thank you,” she said and marched from the prison, her head held high and her shoulders once again able to carry more of the weight of the world.

They crossed the parking lot to a black Mercedes parked in the rain. Stonequest opened the door for her and she slid in. He followed so they were both in the back seat and on either side of a pizza. It smelled divine. She had eaten breakfast—food being one thing the prison did surprisingly well—but now that she was actively healing, she could feel hunger growing inside her.

“Where to, ma’am?” a mage with dark skin and elaborate patterns shaved into his tight, curly hair asked from the front seat.

“Daryl?” Kristen asked.

“Um, yes, ma’am.” The mage’s practiced and slightly foreign accent slipped into the much more familiar sound of a Detroiter. His gaze glance from her to Stonequest. “But most dragons call me by my mage name, Enfuegus.”

“You were the first mage I ever met, Daryl. It’s good to see no one’s eaten you.”

He chuckled at that. Stonequest looked intensely uncomfortable.

“I think so too, Lady Steel. I think so too. Are you doing all right?”

She craned her head to see herself in the mirror. Her face was still bruised. No doubt that was what he was referring to.

“You should see the other guys. All six of them.”

The mage chuckled again.

“Enfuegus, if you’ll excuse us. We need to talk about police business,” Stonequest said formally.

“But of course, sir,” Daryl responded, his slightly foreign and totally fake accent present once more. Apparently, he could slip it on and off effortlessly. Kristen both respected him for it and despised the fact that dragon culture made him do it. He started the car, exited the parking lot, and cast a spell that created a shimmering wall of air between the front and back seats.

He fiddled with the radio but she heard nothing. Apparently, it was a soundproof spell. Cool.

“First off, Kristen,” Stonequest said as the vehicle moved toward the gates. “I want you to know I never actually believed that you killed Icebreeze.”

“Well, that’s a fucking relief since I didn’t.” She might have said more but she snatched a slice of pizza and devoured it first.

“We’re all relieved you’re finally free.”

“Are you?” She took a second slice. Her wounds, the bruises especially, were fading quickly but as they did so, her hunger seemed to increase proportionately. At this rate, she would have to get Daryl to stop for burgers, although most of a pizza was still left.

“Of course we are.”

“I have a little trouble believing that considering no one came to visit me except for my human friends.”

“I didn’t want to create the appearance that I favored you because you’re on Dragon SWAT,” he explained.

“What about creating the appearance that I was actually innocent? You know, I understand that I’m a dragon by blood or whatever but so far, my experiences with dragons have definitely not been super-great. Every time I need an actual friend or companionship, I have to go back to humanity. You dragons really are cold-blooded.”

“Us dragons, Kristen. I know you went through some hard stuff in there, but you’re still one of us.”

“Hard stuff? I faced a group of Obscura’s goons and almost died.”

“And they’re all still in there, while you’re free.”

Kristen clenched her teeth. “Obscura’s free. What the hell is that? It seems like all you dragons are allied against me and against humanity in general.”

“I understand that you might feel that way, but I assure you there are dragons on your side.”

“Then why no visitors?”

“Because of the charges in the case. Think about it. There was DNA evidence. If someone came in here to visit you, they could conceivably have taken some of your DNA—like a vial of blood or fingernails. That could have ruined your chances of getting out at all. We had to stay away. It was the only way to prove that the case was objective.

“Well, it sounds like while I was defending my life, you were working on excuses to placate me.” She helped herself to another slice of pizza.

“It wasn’t you I was worried about, it was Heartsbane.” He snorted with exasperation.

“What do you mean?”

“She was more…uh, let’s say forceful about getting you released. It took a fair amount of persuasion to keep her away. Honestly, I regret it now. I didn’t think that you’d be involved in any fights or anything while you were in there. If I’d have known that would happen, I might have let her try to visit and…intimidate the guards, I think her words were.”

Kristen paused before her next mouthful to think. She couldn’t stop eating, not when her body was taking away the pain one bite at a time, but she needed a moment to absorb what he had said. Finally, she managed to ask, “Heartsbane? Really?” She couldn’t picture the obviously anti-human dragon coming to her defense.

“Yes, really.” Stonequest nodded. “Dragons are used to playing the long game, which means not always playing our cards until the chips are down. Heartsbane acts tough, and she really is tough, but she also cares deeply about her own. You’re one of us now, one of hers.”

She nodded. That was something she could relate to. Even before she’d been a dragon, she was fiercely defensive of her own family and friends. Now, it had become an even stronger drive.

“I… Thank you for telling me that, Stonequest. It means a lot to me, actually.”

“That the only reason I didn’t come was to ensure your innocence?”

“No. That’s bullshit you’re hiding behind and you know it, but for telling me about Heartsbane. If she’s anything like me, that’s something she’ll never say to my face, like ever. So thank you.”

“For betraying her secrets?” He smiled for the first time in the conversation.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Does this mean I can have a slice of the pizza I bought you?”

“Hell no,” she replied. “I’ll save you a crust, though, if you tell me where we’re going next.”

“We’re going to find your dragon killer,” Stonequest replied.

“Oh yeah? Did you finally come around to the idea that it’s a human out there shooting dragons?”

His jaw clenched involuntarily but he nodded. “I still don’t like it, but if there is a human out there killing dragons, the best way to stop everything from going to hell is to have Dragon SWAT catch them.”

“Her,” she said. She knew damn well who the killer was and even knew her name.

Now, they merely had to find a way to stop her.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Kristen had been more than ready to hate dragon kind. She’d told herself she wanted to build a bridge and to try to forge some kind of a middle path, but she was still bitter. Also, despite her dragon healing powers, her ribs still hurt.

It came as quite a surprise, though, when they reached the Capital Square Building and most of Dragon SWAT seemed genuinely happy to see her. Dragons filled the lobby—in their human forms, of course—congratulated her, and patted her on the back. It turned out a few of them had done time in prison as well—it was merely part of living in a system without bail—and a still smaller portion nodded in understanding at the fights she’d endured. It seemed that cops, whether they’d been raised by humans or dragons, were still not popular among criminals.

She made her way through the crowd and up to the fourth floor where Stonequest’s team was already assembled. Emerald nodded, Timeflash gave her a huge smile, and Heartsbane gave her a hug. She was almost in shock at that and had no idea what to say so was actually kind of thankful when she whispered a threat in her ear about never telling anyone ever or else.

The only member of the team missing was Lumos. Before she could ask about him, Stonequest began to fill her in on the investigation.

“With this most recent murder, dragons in the area are becoming nervous.” He paced as he spoke. “It’s a mess, and we’re not the only people to have pieced together that there have been four dragon murders in this area within the last few months. We’re talking global attention, which means we need to be extra careful because everything we do will be examined under a microscope.”

“Are you good with that, Steel?” Heartsbane asked.

“Not making waves? Me? That’s what I’m best at,” she replied sarcastically.

“Maybe you two don’t think the idea of a serial dragon-killer is serious, but I do,” Emerald said.

Timeflash nodded. “It’s a scary idea. Nothing like this has happened for centuries. Not since… Well, not since humans rebelled.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean this is a human-controlled operation,” Stonequest said.

“Really?” Kristen demanded.

“But—as I intended to say—I think we can operate under the assumption that it is a human who is murdering these dragons with a gun. We know that whoever is doing it gets past aural sensors, which rules a dragon out. Plus, we have Kristen’s encounter with the woman who named herself Constance. Currently, that’s our number one suspect. But—and I need to make this very clear, Lady Steel—we are not to speak of that assumption to anyone outside this team. Not the media, not other dragons, and not your friends on human SWAT, got it?”

Kristen made a gesture that was half-nod and half-shrug.

“Can’t we simply go to her estate and arrest her?” Heartsbane asked contemptuously.

“Humans don’t work like that. They have some level of anonymity,” Stonequest tried to explain.

She scoffed.

“Plus. It’s not like Constance is her real name. Or even if it is, she’d use a fake name for any business she needs to conduct,” Kristen added.

It was obvious that her dragon teammates were puzzled, although that wasn’t surprising. After all, they’d spent centuries building their identities.

“Are we the only team on this?” she asked.

Stonequest shook his head. “Not at all. This is priority number one for the entire agency. Every team we have is ready to respond to any kind of emergency that occurs, but many dragons are leaving the Detroit area anyway.”

“That makes things easier for us,” Heartsbane said. “Fewer dragons means fewer targets to protect.”

“What about Obscura?” Kristen asked. “Has she…has she attacked anyone yet?”

“Lumos is keeping an eye on her to make sure she stays out of trouble.”

“Thank you.” It had been the elephant in the room on the car ride there. She hadn’t wanted to ask about it because she knew she was still too weak to fly, which meant she was far too weak to fight Obscura. That Lumos was out there keeping an eye on her was a huge relief. It was like a weight lifted from her shoulders that she hadn’t known she’d carried. She’d hidden it behind anger and it felt good to let that go.

“I’m only doing my job.”

Despite her very real relief, it was still something of a fresh wound and she couldn’t leave it alone, much as she might have liked to. “I thought that keeping humans safe isn’t really in your job description.”

Stonequest’s eyes twinkled. “You’re a dragon, Lady Steel. Keeping your people safe is definitely part of my job description. At least, that’s how I interpret it.” He looked so proud—smug even—that he was doing so much to protect a few people for her benefit, but he still missed the point.

She wanted dragons to defend people because it was the right thing to do. Humans didn’t deserve to live because they were owned by a dragon. They deserved to live simply because they were humans. It was a little like when oil companies paid to clean the beaches they sullied and turned it into a giant PR campaign. Yes, it was good that they cleaned up their own mess, but that they seemed to do it primarily so they would look good and could run commercials seemed phony and shortsighted.

Still, after her time in dragon prison, she finally understood how progressive Stonequest at least attempted to be. It couldn’t be easy given that he was also regularly confronted with the faction of dragon society that simply wanted human beings to be exterminated—or half-exterminated, anyway.

At least he was doing something, she thought, so she thanked him and tried to sound as genuine as she could. If her aura betrayed her discomfort, so be it.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

As the meeting broke up, Kristen’s phone rang. A quick glance at it told her it was Jim Washington.

“If you’ll excuse me,” she said.

“Is it important?” Stonequest asked.

She shrugged. “I think it’s only someone checking on me since I’m out. Do you mind? The plan is to be ready to go if something else happens, try to follow this Constance thread if we can, and see if Obscura is dumb enough to do anything, right?”

“Not so loud on the Constance angle, but yeah, you have the long and long of it,” Stonequest replied.

“Long and short,” she corrected the centuries-old dragon and accepted the call.

“Jim, how are you?”

“I’m good! It’s great to hear your voice outside the walls of a prison.”

“You have no idea.” She chuckled. Her ribs still ached but they felt worlds better. It was almost unthinkable that she’d been in a prison only a few hours before. “How did you know I was out?”

“Stonequest called Drew to tell him he was going to get you.”

“Oh.” She was surprised. That was actually fairly thoughtful of her dragon boss. He’d probably talked to her parents too.

“Are you free for a bite to eat?”

“Uh…no, not really. I’m back on the job. No rest for the wicked.”

“I think you spent two weeks in prison and you deserve a couple of Coneys.”

She decided not to tell him that she’d been in a prison where most of the inmates would have scoffed at the idea of eating hotdogs smothered in chili and mustard and topped with onions, but she humored him. “Are you asking me out to Lafayette Coney Island?”

“No, Jesus. What’s wrong with you? I’m asking you out to American Coney Island.”

“Seriously? Why would I want to eat the second-best Coney in town when the best is literally next door?”

“For one, because Lafayette is second best and everyone knows that. American Coney is simply a better-quality dog. I think that’s been proven time and time again. Plus, they use Dearborn dogs and Dearborn mustard. Isn’t your family from Dearborn? Why are we even having this conversation right now? You liking Lafayette is damn near sacrilege.”

“That’s a good question. I thought you had another reason to get an inferior hotdog when the Lafayette is right next door.”

“I do.” Jim sounded exasperated and she understood the feeling. The hotdog feud ran deep in the blood of any good Detroiter. “American Coney Island has wrap-around windows.”

“Oh… Okay, then,” she responded.

“And Lady Steel?”

“What, Officer Washington?”

“Fly here quickly but land at least a mile out and take the bus for the last leg.”

“You got it,” Kristen said, still not quite sure what he was getting at but beginning to see a picture of something form in her mind. She had an inkling what wide windows plus a quiet approach meant—stakeout. Her stomach grumbled and she hoped there was still time for hotdogs.

As she talked to Jim, she had ascended the stairs in the Dragon SWAT headquarters. She stepped onto the roof now and transformed.

It was amazing that in less than a year, she had already begun to take her dragon abilities for granted. She’d begun to forget the thrill of transformation and the power that came when her dragon strength and speed were no longer contained in a human body and were instead infused throughout her massive dragon form. The shards of silvery glitter enveloped her as her human body melted into the transformation. She inhaled, brought all the silvery shards back into her, and was a dragon once more.

And oh, it felt good. Her ribs still ached, as did the bones in her arm where the boxer had beaten her with his stupid brass knuckles, but her bruising was gone. She was a being of power once more and back in her city. She smiled with real pleasure as she pumped her wings and took to the sky. Despite all she’d told herself, she still found herself thinking of the Motor City as a place she needed to defend. These were her people, she realized, in the same way that they always had been. They were her compatriots, her fellow citizens, and her brothers and sisters who made this city work. Whether they drove the busses or delivered flowers or picked the trash up—hell, whether they begged for pocket change in the warm springtime air—their presence added to what Detroit was and she didn’t want to lose even one of them.

She flew above her city, careful to keep her distance from the dueling Coney Island location, and landed about a mile away near a bus route. Quickly, she transformed behind a building, ran to the street, and barely made it onto the bus before the driver closed the door. She found a seat near the back and called her mom.

Marty answered after the first ring. “Kristen, honey. I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks, Mom. It’s good to hear you’re all right too.”

“Hardly. You know your father almost died from high blood pressure when you were in there? We wanted to visit but Stonequest wouldn’t let us. He said the dragon prisons aren’t safe, even though they take away your powers. I told him I’ve seen many men made powerless, but he wouldn’t listen to reason.”

“I’m glad he didn’t,” Kristen said. She couldn’t imagine a worse scenario than even more dragons knowing the faces of her parents.

“Well, you just talked yourself out of banana-nut bread next time you’re in the slammer, young lady.”

She laughed. Her mom had dealt with police life for over thirty years. It was inspiring that she could roll aside the stress of having her daughter locked up for two weeks so easily.

“I only wanted to let you and Dad know that I’m out and I’m safe.”

“And that you’re coming for dinner.”

“Actually, probably not. I kind of got roped into this thing at work but I’m meeting someone at American Coney Island for lunch, actually.”

“Oh, Kristen Hall, that is too much,” her mother chided her. “I was married to a man married to his work for thirty years, but at least he had good taste in Coney Islands. Now I have to mother a daughter who is obsessed with the same thankless job and has questionable taste?”

“Hey, Dad’s retired now, which means you can spoil him rotten instead of me.”

“That’s no fun.”

“I’m sorry I can’t make it tonight, Mom. Give everyone a hug for me, okay?”

“Of course, honey. Tell me how the hotdogs are.”

“Love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, Krissy.”

She hung up and wiped a tear away. Trying to be a bridge between two worlds that could prevent a world war from happening meant she would have less and less time for the people she loved. She knew Washington was up to something, but she still couldn’t help but feel slightly bitter that she was on her way to see him instead of her family. Still, he surely had a reason, she told herself as she stepped from the bus and walked into the hotdog shop.

Despite having never been to American Coney Island before, the smell was nostalgic. There really was nothing like grilled hotdogs, chili, and onions.

Before she reached the counter, Washington waved at her from a seat at the window. She ignored him. If this place was anything like Lafayette next door, ordering food would take seconds.

“Two loose with everything, chili cheese fries, and a pop, please,” she ordered.

“We’ll bring it to you,” the guy behind the counter said and nodded as she paid.

She thanked him and went to sit with Jim.

“You didn’t need to get food. I heard your misinformed disdain earlier and I ordered you two up with everything. I couldn’t let you miss this opportunity.”

“I may know what’s a better Coney, but I’m not a fool. I won’t come here for the first time in my life and not eat a hotdog.” Kristen reached for the two hotdogs beside his empty plate.

“I thought you ordered more food?”

“I did.” She was in the process of devouring her first hotdog already and had to admit, it was good. Not as good as Lafayette, obviously, but still very, very good to a Detroiter who’d been in prison for two weeks and forced to eat Waldorf salads and omelets for lunch. The dog itself was different, as was the chili. And the mustard was indeed on point. All in all, it tasted a little less sweet, which made it less crave-able in her opinion, but still damn good.

“So, tell me you didn’t bring me here to talk hotdogs?”

“Nope. Like I said, the windows were a factor too. The Coneys were merely a perk.” Jim handed her a photo. “Does that look familiar?”

Kristen recognized the face right away. It was Constance, the assassin she had fought and who had escaped. The image reminded her that the woman seemed to know something about her past.

“How did you find that?” she asked. She’d never seen any evidence of the woman before. Even in the security footage they’d found of her, she did a good job of hiding her face.

“I called up some old DOD contacts, folks I used to work with who have picked up extra rank since I got out. I cashed in a few favors, but…well, it’s not exactly a secret that I used to work on the same team as the Steel Dragon. I think that put some weight behind it, to be honest. Once they realized how important it was that they find this woman—that lives depend on it—they asked around.”

“Not too loudly I hope.” She turned and thanked the woman who brought her order and wondered if they always delivered food to the table or if Jim had pulled strings for his window seat.

“No, no, no, of course not. They asked friends, people they could trust, and slowly spread the word. I would have said something when I visited but I still had jack so didn’t want to get your hopes up over nothing. Plus, I don’t know how dragon surveillance works. They probably had a wizard in there recording everything I did on a stone tablet or something. Say, will you eat all those chili fries?”

“Fuck yes, I’ll eat all these chili fries. Don’t you dare touch one.” She had already all but inhaled the first of her Coneys and her appetite was finally beginning to become satiated. Depending on Jim’s reason for the meeting, she made a note to stop at Lafayette for a couple more—to compare, she told herself. “And they’re mages, not wizards. Plus, they use parchment, not stone tablets.”

Jim frowned at Kristen’s denial of a taste of her chili fries but he didn’t argue. At the rate she was eating, he was probably concerned that she’d eat one of his fingers if he got in the way. “Well, aren’t they fancy with their parchment and what-have-you. Anyway, this just came in.”

“Do we know if Constance is her real name?”

He shrugged and finally wrenched his gaze away from her food. “No name, only the picture. She was once some kind of ultra-secret black operative. Honestly, I don’t think shit would have come back if it wasn’t for you. Information this classified is well beyond a Marine like me. I think someone up the chain is a fan of the Steel Dragon.”

“That’s good to know,” she said, her mouth crammed with fries.

“Yeah, but make sure you don’t dine with any government officials. You do know you’re like a garbage disposal?”

“Hey, these are better than I thought.” She wiped her mouth with a napkin, and it came away soaked with chili and mustard. “A picture is great, but she’ll be hard to find. She’s remained hidden for a while now.”

“You’re right. She was hard to find.” The Wonderkid winked at her. “I ran the photo through CCTV and found a match.” He pointed to the Westin Book Cadillac, one of Detroit’s oldest hotels. It was literally directly across the street. “She’s in there.” He looked more smug than she’d ever seen anyone look before. “Or went in, anyway. There’s no sign of her having left, so she’s probably still inside. I assumed you’d want a bite to eat before you decided what to do about following up but I didn’t know you’d want to eat the whole damn place. Was the food really that bad in prison?”

“You have no idea.”

Jim shook his head, still in awe of the amount of food she had consumed.

“Will you be good to do this right now?”

“Oh, definitely,” Kristen replied. “That’ll hold me over for a few hours.”

“Jesus.” He shook his head again. “What’s the plan?”

“You keep watching. I’ll go to the top of that skyscraper behind the Independence bank and jump over to the roof.”

Jim looked at the span between the two buildings and uttered a low whistle. “Won’t you fly in?”

“No, I think your instincts are right. She has to be hardwired to watch the sky for dragons. It’s better if I don’t use that body unless I need to. Don’t worry about me, I can clear that. Will you be here?”

“Actually. I think I might go next door and try the Lafayette version.”

“Do you have a radio?”

He took one out and handed it to her. “Tell me when you’re on top.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Jim left and went next door. Kristen gave him a few minutes to order and settle in at the one window in the front, then headed to the building behind the bank. It had a corporate logo on the top of it. She had no idea how long it had been there and didn’t really care. Once inside, she rode the elevator to the top floor, flashed her badge, flexed her aura against the guard watching the boardroom, and found the stairs to the roof. Unfortunately, she realized that the distance between the two buildings was much farther than it had looked from the ground.

Still, she’d been in prison for two weeks, her dragon powers cut off from her. Now that she was free again, she itched to use them. And if she didn’t clear the gap, well, she could always transform into a dragon and fly the rest of the way, right? She’d never done that before, but she could certainly try. The worst-case scenario was that she’d fail at that transformation, activate her steel skin, and make a crash landing. Yes, that would crack the street and no doubt alert Constance that they had located her, but she didn’t see another choice.

Aware of the risk, she positioned herself at the back of the roof, took a deep breath, and sprinted to the opposite edge.

She let every ounce of her dragon powers course into her muscles as she moved faster and faster, her feet a blur. At that speed, she covered the entire building’s roof in less than five seconds until she stepped onto the far ledge and leapt across the gap.

For the first half of the jump, she thought she might actually make it. She virtually soared, not carried by the wind or wings and with nothing affecting her except gravity.

But gravity continued to tug.

Kristen was more than halfway when she realized that she wouldn’t make it to the other roof, but she was too close to transform into a dragon. With her current momentum and trajectory, she’d impact into the side of the building, reveal her presence, and cause damage to a landmark of Detroit that only Timeflash would be able to fix.

A little desperate, she tried something new and transformed, but only partially. She focused on her hands and only her hands and willed her fingers to extend into her dragon talons. To her surprise and amusement, it worked.

Eddies of silver shards of metal surrounded her hands as she careened toward the building. Her palms grew, her fingers extended, and her fingernails transformed into claws as sharp as razors and as hard as steel.

And not a moment too soon.

She pounded into the Westin Book Cadillac like a cartoon character into a painted wall. For a moment, she seemed stuck there, pressed against the glass like a fly, but gravity soon took control and she started to slip.

Her slide took her about a floor down before she found a crack in the surface that made up the outside of the building and found purchase. Of course, that wasn’t quite soon enough, as her body dangled in front of a window that revealed a man leading a blindfolded woman. The bed was covered in rose petals, and the room was lit with candles despite the early hour. He removed the blindfold, and the woman—seeing her body dangling outside the window instead of the impressive view her paramour no doubt wanted her to see—screamed in terror.

Kristen winked and began her climb to the top. Once she knew to focus on the surface of the building and avoid the windows, it was actually fairly easy.

Her claws were able to chip away at the stone-like surface—probably concrete? She didn’t know much about architecture despite Detroit having so much of it. Whatever the material was, her talons gripped it easily and she hauled herself up one hand at a time until she was on the roof. Once her feet were on a solid surface, she thanked Constance for not choosing one of the newer, all-glass hotels. She probably would have fallen already if it had been one of those.

It was amazing that she had scaled a vertical surface and was hardly winded. Oh, to have her powers back was a sweet thing. She walked quickly around the perimeter of the roof looking for exits. There was one on each side, plus a sky bridge connecting the building to the one next door. She couldn’t exactly watch them all at the same time, but she found that as long as she remained standing, she could dart between three sides of the building rapidly enough to see any people walk out. The side of the hotel that Jim was on had the valet parking, which she thought Constance would probably use, given her obvious resources.

It wasn’t the most ideal stakeout as there were multiple exits, but it would have to do. They were still lucky that they’d found the woman at all, she reminded herself. If they managed to snag her on the same day she was released from prison, she imagined it would impress the rest of Dragon SWAT.

She considered calling them because she could use the eyes, but that would mean pulling them away from being able to swoop in to stop Obscura if Lumos saw her attempt anything. Kristen couldn’t allow that. She knew she had to stop this dragon-killing woman, but she couldn’t do so at the risk of her family’s life. Still, maybe she should contact them anyway. At least one of them could join her—Heartsbane maybe, since apparently, she was fond of the Steel Dragon. But before she could follow through on that thought, Washington contacted her on the radio.

“Those were some fly moves. I thought you were a dragon, not a spider lady.” She wasn’t at all concerned about people overhearing him and could hear the rumble of Lafayette Coney Island in the background. Everyone inside was trying to be heard over everyone else. It was as good a place to conduct a stakeout as any and less obvious than a quiet car, in fact.

“If you tell a soul about that, I’ll eat you.”

Jim chuckled. “After what I saw you do to that food, I have no doubt that you would.”

A few minutes passed and Constance didn’t exit the building. A little bored, she wondered about her ex-teammate. He’d really gone out on a limb for her, especially if he’d cashed in as many favors as he said he had. “Why did you do this for me, anyway?” she asked. “We’re not exactly a team anymore.”

“Are you kidding?” he asked, humor in his voice around a mouthful of Coney Island.

“Pretend I’m not and enlighten me.”

“I feel like I owe you more than a little, Kristen. You saved my life when we first met and Shadowstorm sent his men to kill me. I thought I was outmaneuvering dragons but instead, was saved by one. Did I ever thank you for that one?”

“But everyone has saved your life. That’s how it works. We’re cops, remember.”

“Yeah, that’s true, but you saving me goes further than rescuing me from being eaten. I was mad back then, Kristen.”

“Back then? It wasn’t exactly a long time ago. Less than a year.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jim replied, “but it feels like a lifetime. You gotta understand, I hated dragons. It had reached a point where that was why I got up in the morning. Every day, my time was spent thinking about what I could do to stop them, to bring them down, or to hurt them. That’s partly how I became known as the Wonderkid. I wanted to be perfect and flawless, to build a reputation so I could have access to those scaly lizards. I didn’t know what I’d do beyond that, but I knew I would fuck them up.”

“Uh…scaly lizard right here.”

Jim laughed. “Yeah, I know. That’s what’s so crazy. Meeting you, and since then, Dragon SWAT, has shown me that not all dragons are bad. I obviously still have major issues with them being the behind-the-scenes ruling class, but my life’s goal is no longer to infiltrate as an army of one. You burned the hate out of me. It might sound trite or whatever, but there it is.”

“And now you’re willing to risk your job for a dragon. It’s wild that you’ve come so far. Maybe dragons can change too.”

“Risking my job? What are you talking about?”

“Are you telling me Drew knows you’re here?”

“At Lafayette Coney Island? Okay, he doesn’t know that I sold my taste buds out, but yeah, he knows I’m here on a stakeout with you. He made me promise to call it in if we actually see the suspect. The rest of them want to come play too.”

Kristen smiled. “Of course they do.”

“You softened my view of dragons in general, but knowing an officer of Dragon SWAT doesn’t exactly let any of us sleep easy, you know? Especially now that Obscura is out again. The way we all see it, we’re part of this one way or the other. It’s better to be out in front of it than caught unawares.”

“Well, I’m thankful for you.”

“See? There it is again, changing my damn presuppositions about dragons. You’re welcome, Kristen. Shit, you’re welcome, Lady Steel.”

She continued her laps around the roof but saw nothing at all. Heads merely looked like heads from this height, even with her dragon powers. She was considering calling it a day when Jim’s voice crackled over the radio.

“Shit, Kristen, we have movement.”

In an instant, she moved to the side of the building above the front door. “Which one? What kind of hat?”

“She’s not wearing one. I guess she must be very confident that no one has identified her yet. She’s walking around in broad daylight without trying to hide.”

“I see her,” she replied, and her heart stilled its rapid thumping. Her gaze settled on the woman who’d killed at least two dragons and, she felt confident in her belief, that she’d attempted to kill Death as well. This was the woman who’d shot her with a gun, eluded her, and stood against her dragon powers in combat. She claimed she was her mother—or something like her mother anyway—and she wanted to simply swoop down, snag her in her talons like an eagle catching a fish, and carry her up above the skyscrapers. Despite the urge, she wouldn’t.

For starters, she wouldn’t get any answers if she did that. She wished she didn’t care about what Constance knew—didn’t care that the woman thought of herself as her mother—but she needed to know what she knew about these weapons and their connection to her. She needed to know if the magical powers the assassin had displayed against her the last time they’d fought were from a team of mages and if they were—which was what she believed—if she was the leader of that team.

But, perhaps most frustratingly, she couldn’t snatch her quarry from the air because she knew the Dragon Council would ignore her version of events if she did. Not that she would get in trouble, far from it. She had a feeling that if she flew down, scooped Constance up, and killed her, most dragons would turn a blind eye. Stonequest—much as she respected him—would almost undoubtedly be relieved and consider the case closed. He didn’t want to believe that humans were killing dragons, so if she removed the one human he was willing to believe was capable of such an act, he would be more than happy to close the file and move on.

Kristen couldn’t allow that. She knew Constance had allies and had seen them help her outside Windfire’s house and on motorcycles. What she didn’t know was if they were simply paid lackeys or fellow mages complicit in the conspiracy to kill dragons. She wanted to believe that if she stopped the killer, the murders would cease, but she couldn’t be sure. For all she knew. there could be some kind of worst-case scenario plan for the group to initiate if something happened to their assassin.

That meant she had to catch her, either in the act or close enough to it that Stonequest couldn’t deny what was happening.

She had to show both worlds—human and dragon—that the only way to avoid conflict was to work together to protect each other.

So, despite her inner urging, she let Constance get into a car.

“Kristen—dammit, Steel Dragon, are you gonna pursue or what?”

“Negative. Not while she can see me.”

“Do you want me to tail her in my car?” Jim stepped out onto the sidewalk.

“I don’t. I have the make and license plate. Stay there.”

“Damn it. Are you sure about this?”

“I am. Now, stay put.” She waited for Constance to turn a corner and jumped from the top of the building.

It was a risky move but she simply had to try it.

As she fell, she transformed into a dragon. The wind whipped at the silver particles around her until they transformed into her wings, then caught those two silvery sails and slowed her. She cruised lower and lower toward the streets of Detroit until she landed outside the front of the hotel.

The response was not what she had hoped for. Her plan had been to get in the car with Jim and tail Constance, hopefully back to her base. That plan evaporated quickly though.

The people of Detroit had seen their currently most famous celebrity and they wanted selfies.

“Oh, my God, it’s the Steel Dragon,” someone shrieked and everyone on Michigan Avenue came to see.

Kristen, still in her dragon form, tucked her wings and wrapped her tail around her. Both appendages could sometimes move instinctively, and she didn’t want to inadvertently hurt anyone. This only caused more people to snap photos.

“She’s posing. Steel Dragon, blow fire in the air.”

She rolled her eyes and obliged the fawning masses. A gout of flame seared the air high above the crowd and she spread her wings. She couldn’t help but think about Keith and his obsession with social media. He’d no doubt see the moment and be jealous he wasn’t there.

“You saved my husband from a pawn shop robber with a shotgun,” one woman shouted, tears in her eyes.

“You’re a goddamn hero,” another man said and nodded sagely like she was a firefighter or a retired cop.

“You saved my daddy.” A little girl fawned over her and went so far as to hug the giant, fire-breathing dragon’s leg.

“I’m sorry. Pardon me, but can you please give me a little room,” Kristen said as she tried to make space without much success.

No one was scared of her, not at all. When she tried to back away and accidentally bumped someone with her tail, the crowd merely laughed. She felt more people touch one of her back legs. Apparently, that was a popular photo spot.

“Hey there, Steel Dragon, can I get an autograph?” someone shouted. Jim winked and grinned, obviously amused at the situation.

As soon as he said that a queue began to form of people who wanted her autograph.

“I don’t know about that. The thing is, we’re on official police business and I can’t stay for long,” she said, still in her dragon form.

“Oh, no worries there, ma’am. The rest of the team has been contacted and is on their way.” Behind his smile and the joking demeanor, there was a hardness in his voice. That meant she had to get moving. He did his best to keep the situation from getting out of hand—ever the perfect cop—and didn’t want to start a panic or even give people a reason to worry that something was wrong on social media.

“Okay. Sure. Great. Hey, everyone, would you like a real photo opportunity?” Kristen asked.

The crowd cheered.

The Wonderkid raised an eyebrow. He looked curious but confused. She had read his signals and knew they needed to go, but if he intended to act like nothing was wrong for the benefit of the crowd, two could play at that game.

“All right, I need everyone to take a few steps back. You guys know I haven’t been a dragon that long. Sometimes, my wings and tail still get away from me.” She pretended that her tail twitched of its volition and damaged a newspaper stand.

People gasped and took a few steps back but still didn’t look particularly scared. More like excited, she decided. Still, they gave her the space she needed, so that was good.

“How about you, sir—the guy with chili stains on his shirt?”

Jim actually looked down, only to find nothing there, of course. Any Detroiter knew how to eat a Coney Island. Plus, he was the Wonderkid. She would have to rib him for that later.

“Would you like to climb on my back for a photo?” she asked him in front of everyone.

The crowd absolutely lost it. Everyone cheered and practically begged him to climb on the Steel Dragon, no doubt so he could hurry and get off to give them their turn. People even took a few steps farther back. They understood the value of a good photograph in the modern age. It was better to give them some room so their own social media feeds would have clean pictures.

Her friend didn’t react other than to widen his eyes in surprise.

“What’s the matter? Afraid?” Kristen challenged him.

“I’m merely a little concerned about climbing on the back of a dragon who saw a chili stain where there wasn’t one.”

She grinned. Oh, he’d pay for that remark, that was for sure.

“Maybe it was an old stain. My mistake. Now, will you climb on or should I let a brave little girl get up before you do?”

That finally forced him into action. He took a deep breath, walked through the crowd, and stood beside her. The spectators took pictures as she lowered her dragon chest and let Jim step on her elbow to swing himself onto her back so he was seated in front of her wings.

“All right, everyone, take a few steps back so we can get a good shot,” she said.

Everyone obeyed and only one clever observer noticed that Jim hadn’t given anyone his phone to take a picture. “Hey, buddy, who’s gonna take your picture?”

The Wonderkid didn’t have time to answer. Kristen pumped her wings and the crowd stumbled away from the gust of wind. In seconds, she was airborne, flying through the streets of Detroit with a human rider on her back.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Normally, Kristen could simply flap her massive wings, aim her body vertical, and ascend into the sky. Now, with Jim on her back and in real danger of falling off, she had to take a little more care and slightly longer to ascend.

That was fine, though, as it would give her more time to use the Detroit buildings as cover, but he was less enthusiastic about it.

“Can’t we fly straight?” he whined, clinging to her back.

“You mean into one of those buildings?”

“No, no, no, no, no, no!” he screamed as Kristen banked hard and followed the direction in which she’d seen Constance’s car go.

She finally saw it enter a highway that led away from downtown.

“I’m gonna have to get up to the clouds, all right? We can’t let her see us.”

“Why does it make me nervous that you bothered to warn me?” Jim called in response.

“Because you’re smarter than you look.” She laughed, tucked her wings, and plunged without further warning.

Wind whistled past them as she descended until her belly almost grazed the tops of the busses before she extended her wings once more and used her momentum to rocket them up.

Jim screamed for dear life but hung on tightly.

That was good. She knew she could catch him if he fell—she’d come a long way since dropping duffel bags—but that maneuver would cost her time and probably result in Coney Island splattered all over her spines.

“Are you telling me you do this every day?” he hollered over the wind.

“It’s faster than the morning commute and better for waking up than a cup of coffee.”

“I’d take the coffee, thanks!” He squeaked as she punched into the clouds and leveled out.

For a few moments, she merely flew northwest and followed where she thought the highway was. Then, she ducked down below the bottom of the clouds to get a visual confirmation on Constance’s car. Thankfully, it was still there. She adjusted her speed so she was at roughly a forty-five-degree angle up from the roof of the vehicle. That way, it was impossible for the assassin to see her in the rearview mirror. Luckily, she didn’t have a convertible, but then again, in this weather, it’d be miserable.

Which reminded her of her passenger. “Are you all right up there?”

“I won’t lie, I’m a little chilly!” the Wonderkid replied. She could feel him shivering through her scales.

“I can warm you.” She blew a small jet of flame.

That finally calmed him enough that he could actually laugh. “I’m gonna have to pass on that one. Although, when this is all over, I think you definitely owe me something to warm me up. Something like a stiff drink.”

“I’ll stay in the clouds as much as I can, okay? I know it’ll be cold but I don’t want her to see us.”

“It’s cool. The adrenaline that makes my heart pound like a jackhammer is helping.”

“Okay,” she confirmed and felt slightly bad but had no idea what else to do about it. If it were winter, this wouldn’t work at all. Hell, in summer, there’d be far fewer clouds. But springtime in Michigan meant overcast days, so it was a boon.

“Do you think this is another hit?” Jim asked after a few minutes.

“I don’t know,” Kristen replied. She didn’t actually have to speak very loudly for Jim to hear her. Perhaps he could feel her voice vibrating through her scales or something. “It feels like it, though. We’re past the wealthier suburbs and are moving into estate territory. Many dragons live around here.”

“Oh yeah? friends of yours?”

“I can tell by the landscaping and weird statues, you dork. Now, be quiet or I’ll eat you.”

“Be careful what you wish for. I might take you up on that. It sounds warm.”

“Nah, you’d probably give me indigestion.”

After about fifteen minutes, Constance exited the highway, made a few turns down increasingly private streets, and parked her car. She slid out and moved furtively into the woods.

Kristen waited until she could no longer see her outline among the trees. “Hold on.”

“Why?” Jim asked, but he did as he was told. He tightened his grasp on her spines and held her with his thighs like she was an uppity horse.

Satisfied that he was secure, she tucked her wings and plummeted toward the earth. He didn’t scream—she would forever let him brag about that—but she thought she might have heard a prayer mumbled into the howling wind.

After a breathtaking moment, the descent was over. She landed beside the car, Jim climbed off her back and hugged the ground, and she transformed into a human.

While Jim went to examine the vehicle, Kristen called Dragon SWAT.

Stonequest picked almost immediately. “Go, Steel.”

“Stonequest. Another attack is going down right now, I think. I saw that woman—Constance, the assassin—and followed her to a dragon estate.”

“Damn it. I was afraid of something like this.” Now that she had heard more than two words from him, she could hear the strain in his voice.

“What’s going on?”

“We just found Lumos. He’s been badly beaten and is unconscious.”

“Oh, my God. Will he be okay?”

“I…yes. Yes, he’ll be fine if we get him back to base but he can’t turn into a human right now. We can’t spare anyone to send, Kristen. We’re trying to stabilize him, and I already sent Emerald and Heartsbane to try to catch Obscura. He was on duty watching her.”

“You lost her, then?”

His silence was as definitive an answer as she needed.

“Shit,” she said. “Shit! All right, Stone, I’ll be there soon. If Obscura decided to attack Lumos, it means she wanted to dump her tail. My friends might be in danger.”

“Hold up, Kristen.” Washington put a hand on her shoulder. “Detroit SWAT can handle themselves. You know that.”

“My family—”

“Is safe. I already texted Drew and told him to bring them into protective custody as soon as I felt your aura shift when you were talking to Stonequest on the phone.”

“Still. If Obscura targets them, there’s nothing they can do.”

“That won’t happen. If she moves openly against a police department, she’ll be back in jail. Right now, there’s a murder we have to stop.”

“Are you serious?” Kristen stared at him in complete disbelief. Her family and his friends were in danger, and he wanted to protect a dragon? “You can’t seriously want to protect a dragon over humans.”

“If there’s anything I’ve learned from hanging out with you it’s that not all dragons are bad. They’re like humans, with good ones and bad.”

“But we know she’ll attack good people.”

“We don’t know that. In fact, we don’t know where Obscura is. Stonequest has people trying to find her so there’s no reason to think that you rushing off at random will be more effective than two dragons trained at this. Plus, the conspiracy you’ve tried to unravel is about to get even more complicated. We can’t simply walk away.”

“Still, it’s a dragon versus people. You know, they think of us as cattle.”

“Some of them do, but some of them don’t. Hell, I happen to know one dragon who even lumps herself in with humans.”

Kristen snorted. This was unbelievable. Jim Washington tried to convince her to save a dragon’s life. “Well, shit. I guess you’ve got me to eat my words twice in one day.”

“Twice?”

“American Coney was damn good.”

“So we’ll go in, then?” Jim asked.

“Let’s go stop this probably ancient and unspeakably powerful dragon from being killed by a woman with a ski mask and a handgun.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Freedom was a sweet, sweet thing. The moment Obscura was released from dragon prison, she found the air sweeter and the grass greener, and even the smell of the dirt was something that she appreciated for once. She stepped from the prison and into the sun in the great outdoors. Perhaps the only thing sweeter than having the cuff removed from her ankle and once again having her dragon powers was knowing that the dragon who’d had her locked up in the first place was currently being beaten senseless.

She hadn’t told her allies to kill Kristen, but she hadn’t told them to spare her life either. It had been quite a surprise that she’d been able to get the guard to abandon his position. She wasn’t so naïve as to think that her benefactor hadn’t played a role in that as well. Now, she could only imagine how the six dragons tasked with beating her enemy would have felt. As far as she knew from her time in prison, it was impossible to escape supervision. They might have really embraced the task she had given them in their moment of independence.

Ah, but that was behind her. She was free and the Steel Bitch was still incarcerated. If she was honest, she didn’t think she would be locked up for much longer, which meant she would have her revenge and fulfill her oath.

The oath she had sworn on the blood of her dead son once again coursed through her veins. She merely had to bide her time, wait for the Steel Dragon’s release, and strike. Her oath would be fulfilled and in executing it, she would drink of its power and it would be good.

Obscura looked around the parking lot of the prison for her mysterious benefactor but saw no one. There were no idling cars or limousines waiting to take her away. That irked her somewhat. After all, she was one of the world’s most powerful dragons and deserved more than a brisk walk after being released from a punishment for bogus charges that a few centuries before would have amounted to playing with her food.

Honestly, it was too much to accept that she had gone to prison at all. She hadn’t even killed anyone. The fat one—the Steel Dragon’s fake brother—had been forced to sweat a little and she’d intended to kill all of them, but none of those plans had come to fruition. How could she be charged with crimes she hadn’t committed? The entire situation reeked of human justice. Dragons—despite ostensibly still being ruled by the Dragon Council—had changed in ways that she didn’t like at all. They weren’t obeying humans, exactly, but it seemed they were listening. Their courts were shifting along with their sense of justice. It was as if being crammed onto this planet with so many of the filthy primates was enough to weaken the dragons. Her instinctive desire was to burn this entire continent like they’d been able to do in the old days.

She took a deep breath and realized that she couldn’t really complain. The bitch who’d got her locked in that hole was being pulverized while she was free. Although truthfully, the prison hadn’t been that bad. Obscura—always one to network—had made friends there.

Still, no one had come to get her, which was a disappointment. It would have been pleasant to ride away—perhaps while sipping champagne wrested from a dead king—but alas, she was old enough to know one didn’t always have their way.

All those thoughts would vanish, she knew, the moment she transformed.

To be denied her true form had truly been the worst part of the prison. As a human, she was a beautiful albeit slightly older woman. She could convince humans she was still in her thirties with her aura, but thousands of years had a way of aging a human body, even if it was merely a glove that a dragon wore.

Dragons, on the other hand, aged magnificently.

Obscura walked from the parking lot in her human form until she reached the edge of a forest. Once in the shadows, she released her power.

First, dark clouds roiled from her body—she was partial to making the effect look as if it sprayed from her mouth, eyes, and fingertips as humans seemed to find that particularly terrifying—and enveloped her in shadow. She was one of the few dragons who could actually move in this transitive state but today, she didn’t want to. Instead, she let her dragon body rebuild after its time in prison.

Her arms and legs elongated and ceased to conform to the simple single elbow of the human body. She grew claws as sharp as black crystal. Leathery wings extended from her back and a crown of horns grew from her skull. Her tail—hidden no longer—lengthened and sprouted a mass of spikes at its tip. While the changes followed in the instinctual shift that was so much a part of her, her body continued to grow.

Even to her, after all these years, it almost boggled the mind that she could be so large in her true form and still so dainty as a human. As a woman, she was slightly below average for human females and a good deal shorter than most males but as a dragon, she was a true behemoth. She was larger than an elephant and easily as big as some of the beasts humans called dinosaurs.

They used it as an insult when referring to dragons, but she didn’t see it as a problem. After all, dragons had been around—thinking, planning, and developing their culture—when humans were still huddled together in caves. They would still be there once the Dragon Council finally saw that humans had to be eradicated. Dinosaurs might not have survived an asteroid strike, but humans would not survive dragons.

Obscura completed her transformation. She stretched her wings and her long sinuous neck and flicked her tail. The trunk of a pine tree exploded into splinters and it toppled, but before it could fall completely, she incinerated it.

Ah! It felt so good to be back.

She took to the air and soared higher and higher in the black, acrid smoke that poured from the tree she’d destroyed.

For hours, she did little beyond ravage the countryside, although she wasn’t so foolish as to attack humans themselves. She had been arrested for that particular crime, after all, and humans—with their pesky technology—had a way of snitching that they simply hadn’t possessed in the past. She had embraced technology in a way most dragons hadn’t, but that mostly meant that she was wary of it. Humans had used their tools to pull themselves out of their own filth and mud. She thought it was a dirty trick, like beavers building a dam while destroying a forest.

Still, she fed on the work of their labor. She found a flock of sheep and devoured them once their shepherd had put them all in their barn. Part of her—the part that had been imprisoned—wanted to burn the entire structure to the ground but she knew better than that. Instead, she transformed into her human body, crushed the lock with her bare hands, and let the sheep out into the late afternoon sunshine. Those stupid enough to emerge were swallowed whole. She made sure to open the gate to their pasture as well to leave no evidence of a dragon.

A dairy cow made a poor second course as the damn thing was too bony. Obscura ended up dumping its mangled corpse in a pond. She killed a few horses, not because she liked the taste but simply because humans had been allied with the stupid beasts for so long that she didn’t like them. These she dumped in the deep woods to be eaten by bears, mountain lions, and any wolves that still lived. She hoped to give them a taste and desire for horseflesh once more. Long ago, before humans had mastered steel and then later gunpowder, the wolves and lions had been allies of dragons—not pets but fellow predators. That time had passed, though.

She slaughtered countless barking dogs. Obscura hated dogs. All one had to do to earn her ire was to bark its stupid flapping mouth at her. Her dragon ears could hear the pathetic yaps from even above the clouds. She’d descend, take her human form in a cloud of shadow, and strangle them with her bare hands.

It would afford her some pleasure to see how all this played out in the news. Despite humans living in the shadows of dragons, they still had superstitions. Sometimes, it was simply easier to play pretend in the dark than it was to turn the lights on and face the true monsters.

After a day of this, Obscura sensed another dragon approaching.

She considered hiding but decided against it. After all, it was only one and she had never been beaten in single combat by another dragon. She was simply too large and the control of her powers too sharp. Even the Steel Dragon had needed the support of that old fool Lumos. If it had been a true duel, the upstart wouldn’t have been able to best her.

The dragon approached in the evening and she landed on a bridge and took her human form to greet him. She didn’t wipe the animal blood from her teeth, although she’d long since learned to do this effortlessly while she transformed.

The dragon—a light, silvery being—landed on the bridge, took his human form, and approached her. He wore a suit with preposterous tails, shiny black shoes, and a smug look on his face. With a formal bow—which she didn’t mind at all—he presented her with a gilded invitation. “The Masked One requests your presence in the Detroit Opera House in tomorrow’s evening.”

Obscura nodded and took the invitation.

The flamboyant little fop glanced once at her and a flicker of distaste flashed across his face. “And please, do make yourself more presentable.”

She nodded and spat animal blood at the boy’s feet.

He smiled uncomfortably, transformed, and left her.

Honestly, the only thing worse than humans might be dragons who acted like them. This dragon could transform into a being of immense power and he wrinkled his nose at a little animal blood? It couldn’t work both ways. It was no longer considered politic to eat people, but eating animals also made this little cretin feel uncomfortable? Pathetic.

The black dragon was no servant, but she was not without her social graces either. She had to at least give thanks to her benefactor, as it was he who had no doubt arranged for her release from prison and gave her freedom once more. If nothing else, she owed him a thank you for seeing through the lies that had imprisoned her so unjustly.

A few miles on, she found a farmhouse and was ready to slaughter the family therein as the pigs they were but sensed another dragon approaching—Lumos, a member of Dragon SWAT. She recognized his aura. So, instead of murder, she simply ran the family off, then bathed and groomed herself. Once finished, she used her aura to make the terrified humans return home with the feeling that a pack of animals had driven them to flee.

With her pockets full of stolen cash—in the mattress, really? Humans were so stupid—she returned to Detroit and purchased a black dress with rhinestones that sparkled like the night sky.

Lumos followed her the entire way. He tried to keep his distance, obviously, but she could sense him all the same.

She couldn’t afford the sapphire necklace she wanted—not with the pittance the farmers had stashed away—so she seduced a gentleman who had been shopping for a fat diamond to no doubt place on his bride’s fat finger, and made him pay for it with one of his many credit cards. Lumos might or might not be able to discern the details of this seduction but he didn’t interfere and the idea of him watching her ruin this human’s future marriage and do nothing to prevent it was a sweet thing indeed.

From there, she had her hair done—again with the credit card of the would-be groom, who’d been kind enough to give it to her—and ordered a chauffeur.

Lumos continued to follow, which simply would not do. She’d let him tag along in the hope that it would prove that she meant no violence and he would leave her alone and report that she’d changed her ways. Unfortunately, he showed no interest in leaving her, so he would have to be dealt with. She told the driver to head to the wreckage of the warehouse where she had almost killed the Steel Dragon.

Once there, she stripped off her new dress and sapphire necklace and stood naked in the parking lot to wait for him to arrive.

The golden dragon couldn’t resist the strange tableau below him and landed on the other side of the parking lot.

“Do you wish to ride me, Sir Lumos?” Obscura asked, using her aura to tell Lumos she wished to seduce him.

“After the farmyard animals you ate? Of course not.” He was an ancient and had experienced every kind of aura so no doubt saw through hers. She didn’t think he’d run into her arms like the Steel Bitch’s fat brother had but he didn’t attack either, which would be his downfall.

“How did you know about those?” she asked and sauntered closer in her human form. Lumos, to his credit, didn’t change into his human form. He wasn’t that stupid, then.

“A young dragon told Dragon SWAT about the barbarisms you’ve committed in the countryside. It wasn’t a smart way to start your time out of prison, especially if you wished to avoid being seen.”

Ah. This was a test then. The young dragon who’d seen her had no doubt been the same one who’d delivered the invitation. That meant that her benefactor had alerted SWAT before their engagement and wanted to see what she would do about it.

Obviously, she would not disappoint.

Obscura transformed into a black cloud and surged at him.

He tried to ignite his solar glow and stop her, but she was already too close. She solidified from her shadowy state and drove into him with the horns that grew across her brow.

That might have been enough to kill him outright, but the old dragon hadn’t survived as long as he had without learning to defend his heart.

Rather than try for another killing blow, she proceeded to pulverize him with methodical viciousness.

He couldn’t activate his glowing powers as quickly as she could hammer his skull with her tail, so it wasn’t much of a fight.

Still, by the time she was finished, she was winded from her first real workout since her release.

“I could stab you in the heart right now, you know.” She smiled as she took her human form and donned her dress and sapphires once more.

Lumos didn’t respond. He was unconscious and beaten almost to a pulp. She’d especially relished breaking bones in all four of his dragon legs—and his wings, which were so brittle, she hadn’t been able to help herself. Stamping on them in a half a dozen places was a real treat.

“Some gentlemen seem to forget their manners at the smallest of provocations.”

With that snide comment, Obscura got back into the car and had the driver stop once more so she could fix her hair for the second time.

She arrived precisely on time and stepped from the vehicle as a being of absolute splendor. The dress fit her perfectly and the sapphires enhanced the sparkling gown, making them look like a galaxy in the starry velvet that was the dress.

She walked into the Detroit Opera House, impressed with the grandeur humans could conjure when they tried to convince themselves that their short, feeble lives were more significant than the animals they slept in the dirt with.

It was a beautiful entryway, with elaborate gold inlays everywhere, golden banisters, and a chandelier some might consider gaudy but she actually liked. She was a little surprised to find it empty.

There were attendants but no patrons. Inside, the performance had already begun, which was unfortunate. The invitation had said six, and that was precisely when she had arrived. If the performance itself was to start then, the invitation should have indicated an earlier time. Although perhaps it wasn’t a performance at all but some kind of dress rehearsal?

Obscura set the questions aside and simply followed the attendants, noting that at least half of them were mages. That added more credence to the theory that perhaps her benefactor was responsible for the guards respecting her request for privacy when the six dragons had attacked Kristen.

She was shown to the very center of the balcony. There, amidst rows of red velvet chairs, her host sat on a throne that had obviously been brought in as it stood on clawed legs and had elaborate armrests that the rest of the theater lacked. It didn’t stand out, exactly, as it was also covered in red velvet trimmed with gold.

He almost seemed a part of the auditorium in a red robe but that revealed little about who her benefactor was. She knew it was the Masked One, however, because he wore a human skull upon his face.

She curtsied low—to deliberately display her cleavage—and stood a little to the side so he could once more watch the opera singers on the stage below. Despite the theatre being empty, the show proceeded as if playing to a full house. He gestured for her to sit in one of the auditorium’s built-in folding chairs to his right.

Wordlessly, she complied.

For a moment, he said nothing and only watched the performance. When he finally spoke, he sounded irritated. “You’re late.”

“I arrived at six.”

“The show started at six.” He tsked his tongue in disapproval.

“Forgive me, sir. I was followed by a member of Dragon SWAT but I dealt with him as quickly as I could. Thank you for securing my release and restoring my powers to me. It felt good to use them against one of our enemies.”

Again, the Masked One watched the performance for a moment without speaking. Obscura watched it too and tried not to let her abhorrence of the horrible screeching show in her expression.

He spoke without turning to face her. For a moment, she actually felt nervous she’d miss one of his words but obviously didn’t want to crane forward and get any closer to him. “That dragon appeared only after my agent delivered your invitation. How did you know he wasn’t working for me as well? Perhaps he followed you to ensure that you’d come to meet your benefactor?”

She knew she couldn’t show hesitation or doubt. “I knew that dragon. He worked with the Steel Bitch, who killed my son. I relished pulverizing his bones.”

“But he could have been working for me. Perhaps Shadowstorm died by my will. He had become messy, you know, and couldn’t do the tasks I gave him as well as he once could.”

“Sir, with respect, you do not surround yourself with weaklings. If Lumos was your agent, he was not worthy of your patronage. He was obvious in his approach and easy to manipulate. His powers—although unusual and an excellent countermeasure against my own abilities—are sluggish and one-dimensional. If he was your agent, I am glad to have destroyed him so that I may serve in his place.”

The Masked One actually chuckled at that. The three short, low exhalations weren’t exactly laughter but definitely a show of amusement. “And how do you know I do not favor the Steel Dragon?”

“You freed me and not her, sir, unless I am mistaken. But there are few capable of navigating the Dragon Council’s bureaucracy and still remaining in the shadows. Plus, you knew of my—shall we call it history?—with the Steel Bitch. I do not think you released me so I would treat her with kindness.”

Again, his slow chuckle met her statement. A power radiated from him, wrapped in his aura—which Obscura was usually particularly adept at reading but his was well hidden. She suddenly thought of the beasts that lived in the oceans—whales, the humans called them, although she preferred the old name, Leviathan. The Masked One felt like a leviathan. Traces of its power poked through the surface, but the bulk of this dragon’s abilities lay hidden.

“You are correct, Lady Obscura. I do not wish you to treat the Steel Dragon with kindness. She has interfered with plans far larger than herself too many times. I wish you to end her miserable existence.”

“Of course, oh Power in the Shadows.” She sat back and tried to relax, but the opera was simply so burningly awful. Why anyone would want to watch portly humans scream at each other about their petty lives was absolutely beyond her. Still, she wasn’t so foolish as to think she could simply take her leave. She’d never met the Masked One before, but she’d heard stories and wasn’t at all surprised to learn her son had worked with him.

But there was only so much of the shrieking she could take. “If I may but learn a little wisdom from you, oh Venerated and Unknowable One?” Obscura asked, no longer able to sit and listen to the opera.

“You may try.”

“Why free me from that cruel prison and honor me with this task I wish to do? We have not met, but I have heard legends of you and your abilities. Surely you do not need my help with the Steel Dragon.”

“If my only wish was to leave a bloody smear where she once stood, then no, I do not need you. My agents are many, their powers multitudinous, and their origins diverse. Yet I do not believe any of them are capable of defeating her in single combat. If she were to vanquish a dragon who attacked her, she will no doubt crow about it for the world to hear, and if multiple dragons attacked, it would create far too many questions. Then, of course, there is the nature of your grudge.”

“My lord?”

“You have already attempted to kill the Steel Dragon. If you do so again, no one will suspect anything but you enacting your own plans. Your doings will not garner further questions. Even if you escape the crime scene—which you should be able to, although that will be left to you—many will assume it was your doing. After all, she killed your son.”

Obscura nodded. It made sense. She did want to kill the Steel Bitch. She needed no goading and no encouragement, only the means to do so. Now that she had her freedom, she was almost there. She might have already tried if she had not expected a meeting with the man who’d secured her release.

“If you will excuse me,” he said and stood.

She nodded but remained seated. His aura told her that was what he wanted her to do, so she obeyed. She could have fought the smidgeon of power he displayed but again, she could sense that there was far more beneath the placid surface of this dragon than what he allowed through. She watched him walk across the balcony and step off it into thin air.

His wings materialized—shredding his red robe—and he glided down to the first floor of the opera house.

The performers were obviously nervous. They darted anxious glances toward the man approaching them in a dark red suit with a human skull for a mask, and one of their piercing voices cracked as she tried to hold a high note.

The Masked One reached the stage, took the stairs up, and came to stand in the very middle of the performers. Still, the show continued, although she could now see the glisten of tears on some of the singer’s faces. They wept yet they did not stop, not until he gestured for them to do so with a single finger.

“You were sharp,” he said to a beautiful woman in a dark-blue dress.

“I’m sorry, sir.” The singer curtsied. “When you came down, I became nervous. We don’t normally have people grow wings during our show.” She attempted a laugh.

“It’s pre-show jitters,” said an older man wearing a preposterous tuxedo and an even more preposterous mustache. “I heard that too but rest assured that Aisha is merely getting them out before we have a crowd. I promise you, she’s the best we have and she never misses a note, not on a show night.”

“This is a show night. Do you not see my guest?” The Masked One gestured at the room, empty save for Obscura.

The man snorted in disbelief—a sound so quiet she barely heard it—and that was his undoing. The dragon backhanded him with enough force to careen him across the stage. The blow might have killed the man, but he landed in the thick velvet curtains that hung on one side.

No one else moved. Some flinched—it was an involuntary reaction for many lesser creatures, after all—but no one screamed or ran at the show of violence. This was not their first time to see someone displease the Masked One. A smile grew on her face.

Violence against humans was considered distasteful in the modern age, a development of dragon culture that she detested. But here, it seemed, his behavior was not only tolerated but expected. How delicious, she thought. To think he could display such brutality in this grand opera house. Yes, he had servants watching the door but there was still something wonderfully perverse about the way he treated humans so callously in one of their own buildings, while hundreds of thousands of other humans went about their lives outside. It was like the old days when dragons ruled from castles and dispensed justice as they wished while the peasants toiled in the fields and labored in their villages, oblivious to the whims of their masters until they were punished for failing them.

But what she saw next chilled even her cold feelings toward mankind.

The Masked One turned to Aisha. His facial expression was hidden behind the skull he wore as a mask, but she could feel his displeasure. It filled the room like acrid smoke. “I hate it when a singer is sharp.”

She bowed.

“It is much worse than being flat. When a singer is flat, it often indicates that they are trying to listen to their peers and their own voice. When a singer is sharp, it indicates that they are trying to hear nothing but their own voice—that they think they are the most important part of this performance.”

“I assure you, sir, I only wish to please you.”

“Well then, you have failed. Again. Do it again and this time, without that horrible dress.”

“I… Yes, sir. I’ll change.” The woman turned to go backstage but The Masked One hissed and she froze.

“I did not request another dress, merely the removal of this one.”

She nodded and began to cry as she slid one shoulder of the dress off, then the other. None of her human companions came to her defense and no one raised a finger.

Finally, the man who’d been thrown into the curtain did. “You can’t do this!” he said. “We’ve done this three times today. You acting out some sick perverted fantasy with our lead won’t make us any better. We need rest.”

The dragon moved so fast that Obscura almost didn’t see it. No doubt the humans couldn’t process the movement at all. They’d only known where to look because the man had been speaking and perhaps—based on their behavior—from past experience.

The Masked One appeared above the man, knocked him down, and proceeded to stamp on his throat again and again. First, the skin tore and then, bone crunched, but the irate dragon continued the vicious assault. He could have sliced the neck of the man with a single claw, but instead, he stamped relentlessly until he’d severed the man’s head from his shoulders.

Blood seeped everywhere. It formed a massive pool around the corpse and began to flow beneath the stage and through the floorboards the Masked One had destroyed in his rage. Droplets had also reached every corner of the stage.

He lifted the dead man’s head and tucked it under an arm, a macabre trophy he treated with no more gravitas than an athlete would a ball.

His rampage complete, he turned to Aisha, who had frozen, still holding the dress up. “Ah…” He sounded so happy now. “That’s much better isn’t it? Those speckles on your dress look like fish beneath a still ocean. It’s an improvement. Do not be sharp again, understand?”

She nodded.

“Very good.” He lifted the head beneath his arm by its hair to show the humans around him. “Now, this buffoon was correct. We’ve had quite enough performances for one day and I’d hate for your opening night to sound anything but perfect. All of you go home to your precious little families while I have the crew clean this mess. We wouldn’t want any spots on the big day.” He turned to Aisha. “Except those, of course,” he said and gestured to her dress. “You’ll wear that dress to every show, and you will not remove those wonderful embellishments.”

Everyone scattered.

The Masked One left the stage in a casual stroll. His hands transformed into dragon claws and he peeled the flesh and skin from the skull expertly like it was nothing more than an orange. In the next moment, he vanished beneath the balcony. A few moments later, he reappeared at the top of the stairway. His skull mask was no longer bone-white and traces of flesh still clung to it here and there. Bile rose in Obscura’s throat. It was one thing to treat humans like cattle—as easily controlled, ultimately unintelligent living tools—but quite another to harvest them oneself and wear their bodies like clothing.

“Do you have questions, my servant?”

“When can I begin, oh Patient One?” She would definitely not let her revulsion show.

“Immediately. Dragon SWAT has been alerted to the whereabouts and condition of their wounded member. That will take them some time because he cannot transform into a human, correct?”

“Yes, my lord. He cannot transform, not in the state I left him in.” She had assumed she’d needed to leave Lumos so pulverized that he wouldn’t be able to change shape and was pleased to see she had been correct.

“Excellent. From there, they will receive another false call for help. You will have a very narrow window to fight the Steel Dragon alone and without any of her allies there to provide her assistance.”

She bowed. “Then I will begin immediately, my lord. Although, I must admit, I have one small trace of curiosity that has yet to be satiated.”

“Speak quickly. Time wastes.”

“What are the machinations that the Steel Dragon stopped, my lord? After I do this task, I hope to be able to continue to serve you.” She didn’t add what she was really thinking. So you don’t slit my throat once you’re done with me.

“My plans are simply to stop the chaos that has festered in the last century and restore order to the world. I am but a player of a game with many unseen pieces, as you are now as well.”

Obscura nodded and bowed once more. “It is an honor to play at your table.” She saw herself out.

While she didn’t know what to think of the Masked One, she knew how she felt about him. He was terrifying, powerful, and not someone she wanted to cross.

But none of that mattered right now. What was relevant was that she was free and the blood oath she’d sworn on the grave of her son would soon be fulfilled. It had almost destroyed her in prison, consuming her from the inside. If not for the inhibiting power of the silver anklet she’d worn there, she would doubtlessly be dead already.

But now, she was free and flying toward the coordinates that one of the Masked One’s servants had given her. She was strong from eating fresh meat, emboldened by her masked benefactor, and empowered by her blood oath.

Today would end very well. The Steel Dragon would die.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Kristen had Jim climb on her back again and flew the short distance to the mansion. She landed a block away and they approached on foot. It was a charming place, she thought. Thick ivy covered in tiny blue flowers overflowed over the fencing, and through the gate—the only place that wasn’t overgrown with ivy—a landscape cluttered with flowers and herbs could be seen. It looked more like a witch’s garden than a dragon’s estate. Immediately, she felt a pang of concern for the resident. Why were they targeted by the assassin? She already had the sense that this wasn’t a typical pompous dragon based on the aesthetic of their property. Cautiously, she pushed the gates with one of her talons. It was unlocked and they exchanged a concerned glance before they went in.

As they stepped onto the property, an audible alarm activated, and red lights began to flash. Movement inside some of the bushy herbs caught their attention. They could be cameras rotating to follow the intruders or something more sinister. She had already seen machine guns mounted to defend one dragon, and there were magical defenses to think about as well.

But there was also a life at stake, so she took a few more determined steps toward the mansion.

The lights began to flash faster and a recorded message added its voice to the wailing claxon. “Stop. You have been detected. If you would like to visit the owner of this estate, please send a written request for permission to visit. Leave now. Stop. You have been detected—”

Kristen—knowing full well that some of the defenses were magical in nature—stopped moving. She didn’t know if they could hurt her, but after being bound in the prison using magic, she knew it was at least possible.

But what to do? She glanced at Washington who positioned himself beside her.

He looked warily at the lights but was still a cop so he didn’t show any fear. Instead, he appraised them with the eyes of a tactician in an attempt to determine what kind of threat they posed. She was thankful to have him there. “They don’t seem to care about me.” He took another three steps forward.

“Jim, stop.”

“What will they do to me? Turn me to stone?” He moved on. The alarms hadn’t intensified and no weapons appeared.

Kristen realized that perhaps the system had recognized her aura. After all, dragons didn’t believe that humans could harm them. Why make armed defenses for a creature they thought was about as harmful as a guinea pig? Windfire had possessed proximity alarms and motion sensors, but he’d also been allied with humans. And even his defenses had seemed to primarily rely on some kind of aural sensor.

“I think you’re right,” she said. “Go knock on the door.”

“Oh, sure. You stay there while I go and ask to be eaten.”

“If the owner of this place really didn’t want human visitors, don’t you think they would have locked the gate?”

“Maybe they like food delivery,” he grumbled, but he approached all the same.

He knew as well as she did that every moment they wasted was another moment in which Constance could get into position. She hoped that the alarms had scared the assassin away but she wouldn’t let her guard down. An unforeseen surprise could ruin an infiltration attempt, but it could also provide the perfect distraction.

Jim knocked on the door.

The door creaked open and an old woman stepped out. Kristen could feel a dragon aura emanating from her, which indicated that she was annoyed and impatient but also curious about the human standing on her steps.

She didn’t address him, however, and instead, raised a hand and snapped her fingers once. The blaring alarms and the vocal recording ceased instantly, but the red lights continued to flash. More disturbingly, weapons disgorged from the bushes of herbs scattered around the messy, overgrown garden. Kristen frowned when she identified a pair of laser-sighted automatic machine guns, some kind of sphere that crackled with electricity, and an honest-to-God floating sword.

The woman looked at her. Her back was slightly hunched and her fingers were a little gnarled with calcium deposits, but her eyes were sharp and her expression impatient. “I could have you obliterated with one word. Why are you here?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, my lady. My name is Kristen Hall, although you might know me better as the Steel Dragon—”

“I know who you are, Lady Steel. Everyone does. The lost dragon who was raised by humans and who now fights for their rights. You’ve caused quite a stir. I don’t know what you think I’ve done but I won’t come willingly. I put some tea on a moment ago and don’t intend to waste my first fresh harvest. If you’re in such a hurry, keep stepping on my flowers and watch what the orb of lightning does to you. I didn’t get it for your steel skin but I have a feeling it will work all the same if the tabloids can be believed.”

“You seem to have me at a disadvantage, Lady—”

“Amythist. Amythist Skyjewel.” She curtsied slightly to show her some respect, although she continued to completely ignore Jim despite the fact that he stood a few feet in front of her.

“I know you killed that Shadowstorm boy and I know you were there when Windfire died. You’ll find that my dragon form isn’t quite as decrepit as this human body. I will ask you once more and I strongly suggest you answer. Why are you here?”

Kristen—with no intention to seem threatening—transformed into her human form, although she didn’t move any closer. “If you know who I am you also know I work with Dragon SWAT. What you might not know is that there is a dragon killer on the loose. I have reason to believe that the assassin has selected you as their next target. We came to stop her.”

“Well, it seems you’ve succeeded.” Amythist made a complicated gesture with her hands and the weapons system no longer focused on her. They didn’t go away but they did return to some kind of algorithmic control no doubt designed to keep them aimed in as many directions as possible.

“Lady Skyjewel, I don’t think it’s wise to turn your security off,” she said.

“Nonsense. I didn’t turn it off, merely told it to stop treating you like a threat. It’ll still blast any dragon who dares to step into my territory. If this serial killer is looking for me, consider them fried.” Amythist chuckled. “Now, who wants tea? Maybe we can determine why they plan to kill me, eh? Young man”—she finally looked at Jim—“please go into the kitchen and fetch the teapot as well as the plate of cookies. You two really did come at an opportune moment.”

The Wonderkid looked at Kristen for confirmation. She didn’t really like the idea of him going inside on his own, but it didn’t make sense that Skyjewel would kill him. She had enough weapons on her property to kill both of them immediately. Why send him inside if her wish was to simply end his life? It made more sense—given what little she knew about dragon culture—that Skyjewel simply attempted to flex her political muscles. She issued orders to what she assumed was her visitor’s servant simply because they were on her property. It was also very likely that she aimed to intimidate them by making them sip tea while the lightning orb and the rest of her weapons loomed.

Kristen nodded to Jim to go inside. If she was right and Skyjewel was posturing, she could play along. Besides, she’d warned her of the threat and the security system seemed to be functioning. At least they would have warning if Constance were to strike.

A minute later, she was seated at a small, wrought iron table in the ancient dragon’s herbaceous garden. Her guard was still up but it seemed less and less like it needed to be. The floating sword that never went farther than a few feet from Skyjewel was oddly comforting. The old dragon probably intended it as threatening but all the Steel Dragon could think about was how good it was that she had a piece of her defense equipment so close to her.

“So, tell me, why me?” Lady Amythist asked. “Why does this assassin of yours wish to murder an old gardener who is persnickety about her herbs?”

She wasn’t sure, of course, but she wanted to know. If she could identify a pattern, maybe they could catch Constance in the act next time or even lure her into a trap. At the same time, she couldn’t tell Amythist everything either. The old dragon doubtlessly believed that humans were incapable of harming her. She had no motion sensors on her property, not even cameras. The machine guns seemed to be the only acknowledgment of the idea that humans could be a threat, but that didn’t necessarily mean that humans were their intended targets. Machine gunfire could still be quite painful to dragons who didn’t have steel skin, although rarely lethal.

“I’m not sure, Lady Skyjewel.”

“Please, call me Amythist. Or Amy. Some of the humans do.”

Kristen seized that clue like a drowning victim grasping a rope from a ship in the ocean. “You have human friends?”

The old dragon smirked and the expression reminded her of her own grandmother when she’d still been alive. “Not friends, exactly. It’s hard to be friends with humans when they’re so fragile and short-sighted—no offense,” she added for Jim’s benefit. “But I am friendly with people. I have been for centuries.”

“Why?”

“Must I explain my feelings for humans to you? Rumor has it you still think of yourself as one of them. I had thought that of all the dragons on this planet, you would understand what it means to care for people.”

She noticed that Amythist didn’t call them monkeys or servants or anything else denigrating. “No, I understand, of course, but I think there might be a connection between humans and the dragons who’ve been attacked.”

The old dragon sucked her teeth at that and nodded. “It makes sense, I suppose. Icebreeze always pushed the boundaries of acceptable influence over humankind. He tailored politicians and befriended those in power, always from the background, you understand.”

Kristen nodded. “Do you know anything about the last victim?”

“I know she fought in a human war.”

Jim tensed at that. He’d seen dragons fight against humans in a war zone. Seeing their powers unleashed on men and women was what had made him so radically anti-dragon.

“I’m not sure of the connection between that and Icebreeze playing politics, but both interacted with people more than most of us, albeit in quite different ways.” Amythist seemed to be thinking aloud.

“What about yourself? How do you interact with people?” she prodded and hoped she sounded polite.

“I don’t. Not anymore, anyway. That’s one of the reasons why I’m still here. I have heard about this dragon killer—how could I not?—but didn’t think they would be interested in me of all people. I’ve been a hermit out here for decades. I rarely leave my mansion anymore and only use humans for a few tasks that I need done—groceries and whatnot—but I pay them these days.”

“What about before that?” she asked while her senses continued to scan all around them without identifying anything even vaguely worrying. Maybe they really had spooked Constance off her attack.

“I did play a part in the second human rebellion.”

“On which side?” Jim asked.

Amythist turned to him. She didn’t scowl but her smile was cold as ice. “On the side of my people, if you must know.”

“Do you mean your people or your dragons?” Kristen asked and tried not to sound accusatory.

“When the second rebellion began, there was a call to arms from the mages who led it. They demanded that all humans serving dragons abandon their posts and their so-called dragon-masters and aide them in the rebellion. Many humans did but mine did not.”

“Were they too afraid?” he asked.

“You are a brave little human, I’ll give you that,” Amythist said. “But no, I never liked it when humans feared me. I don’t think they stuck with me out of fear.”

“Then why?” Kristen pressed.

“They were too loyal. I have always treated my servants well. I think it the proper thing to do and besides, they work better when they’re respected, exactly like everyone else. When the rebellion happened, I told them to take shelter in my castle if they wished.”

“And did they?”

“Oh yes, of course they did. The second rebellion was a bloody thing, you know. It’s tough to kill a dragon, but those mages found ways to do it, especially with their newly minted pixies. My people merely wanted a place to keep their kids safe and their bellies from being empty.”

“Pixies were made for war?” she asked.

“Powerful little things they were too, but fickle and volatile. Some of their magic was strong enough to destroy us, but it was rare that they could manage such a feat without bursting into flames, permanently transforming themselves into a tree, or committing some other form of self-destruction. Those that remain aren’t the powerful warriors the humans created to destroy us but the rejects and their descendants. There are still powerful pixies, mind you, but they know very well the dangers of pulling too firmly on the magic in their blood.

“But I digress.” The old dragon took a sip from her tea. “My people sequestered themselves in my castle, but we weren’t able to stay completely locked inside. We needed fresh meat, salt, hay—things like that.”

“And you sent the humans out,” Jim said.

“You’re bloody well right I did. If I had been killed, they all would have been put to the sword at the first opportunity. The mages knew that without people, we dragons were at a disadvantage. We were powerful, of course—more powerful than mages or pixies—but there were so many humans, you know. And there is creativity and a willingness to sacrifice in numbers. If mankind had truly united against us, they might have been more successful. They saw my people as traitors to their race simply because they wanted to feed their children.”

“What happened to the people you sent out?” she asked and almost dreaded the answer.

“Most of the time? Nothing. But sometimes, a mage would recognize who they were or realize that they were stocking up for me. Those who were discovered still returned, only in pieces.”

“Did you ever catch any of the mages who did that?”

“Oh yes.” Amythist smiled wickedly. For the first time, Kristen had a sense of the dragon hidden in the form of this little woman. She was a powerful being—as all dragons were—but seemed to possess a certainty in her actions. It empowered her to do what she did and she knew why she did it.

“What did you do to them?” Jim asked slowly.

“You know, not many species like to eat their own kind. When confronted with a choice between starvation in the cold or the flesh of their kin, most humans choose to starve. I couldn’t let that happen, not when there were horses and sheep to stretch if they didn’t have to use them to feed a dragon’s appetite. This was before humans had found out how to capture swine, cattle, and fowl and cage them in their meat factories, of course. Fresh meat was still hard to come by. Quite simply, I had to share or the humans I sheltered would have starved or turned on each other. They’re only human, after all, and you can’t blame them for being flawed.”

“You ate one of them?” The Wonderkid wasn’t able to keep the horror out of his voice.

“One?” Amythist chuckled. “No, no, no, my child, you do me honor with your kindness. I did not eat one. During the second rebellion, I became known as a mage eater. They said you could see me fly through the sky, sparkling with the magic of my meals as I ate. That’s where I earned the name Skyjewel. I suppose, given that, it makes sense that a dragon killer would target me. After all, in the last rebellion, I both gave hope to humans and cast terror on those who opposed the dragons. I was a candle of hope and a fire of destruction. If they are targeting those of us with unusual ties to people, I make a fine target for many reasons.”

For a moment, there was only silence. Finally, the old dragon stood with a smile. Despite her slightly hunched back, she really was quite spry. “Oh, bother, we’re out of tea. I’ll fetch more. Come inside and I can tell you what I know of the other dragons in the area. Maybe we can see who else has cast long shadows on human history.”

She clapped twice, and the weapons that had stood guard over the conversation retracted.

The lightning sphere receded into an oregano bush and the machine guns returned to their hiding place inside the rosemary.

Finally, the floating sword went to rest in the hand of a statue of a cherub.

“Lady Amythist, I don’t think that’s wise—” Kristen said to the back of the old woman.

But she was already too late.

A shot rang out from the woods outside the house and blood began to spread on the old dragons’ back.

The woman fell, a dragon millennia old who’d been both a foe and friend of mankind felled by a single gunshot.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Aghast, Kristen raced to Amythist Skyjewel. The old woman was pale and her wide eyes looked at the overcast sky above her.

“Are you…did you?” she asked and her mouth didn’t quite manage to close.

“You’ll be okay,” she told her. “You’ve been shot in the shoulder. I know it hurts but you’ll be okay.”

The wounded dragon stretched a shaking hand to touch the sticky blood that soaked her clothes. “I have been shot before…many times… It…it’s supposed to feel like an insect sting. Is this what humans feel when they shoot each other?”

She nodded and blinked tears back. It seemed odd that she was so emotional, but the old dragon woman was so sweet. She might have eaten mages centuries before but now, all she seemed to care about was her tea. More than anything, she didn’t want her to die in her arms.

“What’s the plan, Steel Dragon?” Jim nudged her aside, took his jacket off, and applied pressure to the wound. Like everything else, the Wonderkid was good at treating victims.

That snapped Kristen’s priorities into place. She pushed into a crouch, turned her skin to steel, and looked for the shooter. Her search revealed nothing—no movement, no face hiding in the grass, and no aura. She knew she wouldn’t have sensed an aura but still, it might have been simpler if another dragon appeared.

“I have…salves,” Amythist managed to say.

“Jim, get her inside, follow her orders, and if you need to—” She didn’t have to say to pull the bullet out. He had seen what the weapons did to dragons firsthand because he’d seen what they did to her.

“It might not be much safer in there,” he said, but he had already eased Amythist carefully onto his jacket so he could use it to drag her and aggravate her wound as little as possible. “You’re gonna have to keep pressure on that wound while I move you, ma’am.”

“But it hurts,” Amythist said and her voice seemed to fade.

“Based on the wound, the shooter’s outside. I know it’s less than ideal, but I think it’s the best we have,” Kristen told him.

He nodded and pulled the old dragon away with as much gentleness as was possible in the circumstances. “It’ll be all right, Lady Skyjewel. We’ll keep you safe and get you all fixed up. Before the day’s out, I’ll need the recipe for those cookies, though.” His chatter grew quieter and quieter as he moved farther into the house. He tried to keep Amythist conscious because he knew that if she passed out, she might not wake up again.

The crackle of the radio indicated that he was calling Drew and asking for backup.

Kristen called Dragon SWAT. Her gaze scanned the perimeter of the gardens but once again found nothing. Her boss picked up almost immediately.

“Stonequest, I need you at the mansion of Amythist Skyjewel five minutes ago. We have a wounded dragon here—a gunshot wound.”

“No can do, Steel. There were two explosions at mansions in the city. We’re under orders to get there as soon as we can.” She wasn’t surprised. Part of her had known there had to be more to what appeared to be a simple infiltration.

“Explosions don’t fit the MO of the killer. Those are distractions, Stonequest. You have to get out here. Lady Skyjewel’s been shot. Washington is moving her inside but the shooter is still loose.”

“Shit, Kristen, we can’t simply let these fires burn. It sounds like you interrupted the assassin’s attempt. If it’s the human woman you think it is, she’ll pull back and regroup. That’s what she did with Windfire.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Damn it, I know we don’t, but I have to go. There were servants in these mansions. We have people wounded and need to get them out of the flames.”

“Shit!” she yelled as Stonequest hung up. She was on her own and couldn’t even fault him, not if his priority was to help wounded servants. Some of them were undoubtedly simply regular people.

Although she continued to scrutinize the perimeter, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But would Constance have left? She honestly didn’t know.

“Constance!” she shouted. “Constance, I know you’re out there. Come out and talk to me. Why did you try to kill Skyjewel?”

It was a bluff, and maybe a desperate one, but what other choice did she have? There had already been multiple instances in which the assassin could have killed her. She could have done so at Windfire’s mansion, maybe multiple times and definitely when they’d met face to face on the stairs. She had her steel skin on but she’d seen what the bullets could do to dragons. There was no way to know if her steel skin would matter at all and yet, this was the only strategy she had. Constance wanted more than to kill her. All their encounters thus far suggested that. If all she wanted was her death, she could have killed her already.

Kristen had begun to think she’d fled when Constance stepped from a particularly impressive patch of chamomile bushes. Her stomach dropped. Somehow, the assassin had made it inside the perimeter before she had. She’d avoided detection by Skyjewel’s defenses and remained invisible to both her and Jim, but she’d now voluntarily stepped out into the open.

The woman stood with both hands on her pistol, the barrel of which was aimed at Kristen’s chest. She didn’t look angry, though, more like exasperated.

“Hello, Kristen. It’s not too late to make this work. I’ll fire a shot so it sounds like we fought, then you let me go in there and finish that mage-eater off. I promise I won’t hurt your human companion either. We have to hurry, though. He called reinforcements.” As she spoke, she approached slowly, her pistol trained unwaveringly on her chest.

“That won’t happen, Constance, and I know you won’t kill me.”

“I don’t want to. Please don’t make me. We’ve worked hard to keep you alive.”

“What does that mean?” she asked. She should have told her to stop and to keep her distance, but Constance was the one who had her gun drawn. Keeping at a distance was to her advantage so she let her continue and felt a little like a kid being approached by the principal.

“I shot Death. You knew that, though, didn’t you?”

“Why?”

“She was about to kill you. That’s all the reason I needed. You can think of me as a guardian angel. Even with all this…” She gestured toward the mansion with her pistol before she immediately trained it on her chosen target. “We can still make this work.”

“Guardian angels don’t kill.”

“They do if they’re fighting demons.”

“The woman in there is not a demon.” Kristen swallowed.

Constance shook her head sadly. “The dragon in there has done more to maintain the status quo of dragon dominance than most of her species. I heard her history lesson about the second rebellion as well as you did. If she hadn’t acted as she had, the mages might have won. We might live in a world where human beings have actual freedom instead of this phony version of it the dragons allow us.”

“She was protecting her people!” she protested.

“Her people? Really? Do you hear yourself? We are not theirs, Kristen. You knew this once. Humans deserve to control their own destiny, not be guided by the Dragon Council’s oppressive yoke. Step aside and let me take a step in realizing that future.”

“I won’t do that.”

“Why?” The assassin’s cool demeanor cracked. “Haven’t you seen enough of the injustice of dragons yet? You’ve had your family threatened by dragons, your city and even your home attacked by the machinations of dragons. You’ve been imprisoned and almost killed by dragons. You know that dragon justice is far from perfect, worse even than our corrupt system.”

“How do you know about what happened to me in prison?” she demanded. She hadn’t told anyone the full details of that, not even Stonequest, and it had happened two days before. Constance had to have a network, then. The question was, did it include some of the mage guards in the prison—that made a certain kind of sense—or was it bigger than that? She had overheard the assassin admit to working with Windfire before she’d killed him. Were there other dragons displeased with the order of things? Were there dragons who wished to overturn the Dragon Council and who were willing to use a human armed with dragon-killing weapons to do so? If so, maybe Stonequest had been right.

Or maybe this conspiracy was merely far larger than anyone could have guessed.

The woman didn’t answer the question, though. “You should be on our side,” she pleaded. "You should fight against dragons, not defend them. You could have been our greatest asset. You can still be.”

“What’s your endgame, Constance? I want to build a bridge between humans and dragons, a path forward, but you’ll start a war.”

“Not a war, a rebellion.”

“I don’t care how you brand it. The fact is it won’t be good for anyone. I know you have weapons that can hurt dragons. I’m not naïve enough to think that you’ll start a war simply so dragons can walk all over you, but they have considerable power as well. Humanity would suffer in any kind of open conflict, probably far more than dragons would.”

“Humans are already suffering,” the woman retorted venomously. “Humans have suffered through all of history—since before history. Our entire past is suffering under the thumb of the tyrants who rule us and think only of themselves. Do you expect to bring about justice through incremental change? You can’t fix a broken system. You have to build a new one.”

“People will die, Constance—too many people. Millions, potentially billions if the dragons have a unified front. You eliminating dragons will give them exactly that.”

“That’s why you’re supposed to join us. Be our herald, our champion. With the Steel Dragon on our side, other dragons will join us. They can be spared for a time.”

Kristen shook her head. “I can’t let people die. I can’t let people be eaten or be burned to death.”

“It’s worth a few lives to set humanity free from their rule. People are already dying because of dragons. When we topple the throne they’ve built of our bones, the dying will stop. It might not be pretty while we get there but living free and of our own volition is worth it. Our human government is corrupt, but at least we can see it. The Dragon Council rules from the shadows.”

“Constance, you are killing people. I know about the explosions you set off at the other mansions to keep Dragon SWAT from getting here in time to stop you. People were in those buildings. They served dragon kind, yes, but they are people with families all the same. Some of them won’t heal and will leave others to mourn them. These people will see you as the enemy.”

For the first time since they’d begun to talk, Constance looked surprised. The barrel of her gun wavered before she snapped it back to point at Kristen’s chest again. “You’re lying. We didn’t detonate any explosions.”

“I’m not lying. If I was, Dragon SWAT would be here already.”

“You’re stalling, then,” she said.

“I’m not. I’m trying to prevent a war. Build bridges with me, Constance. If we want to make peace, we’ll need humans, dragons, and mages at the table too. That’s who has been helping you, right? Is that who forms the core of your organization? Mages were instrumental in the first two rebellions and that’s how you knew about what happened to me in the prison, right? We’ll need you and we’ll need everyone to lay their weapons down and forget the atrocities of the past.”

“We’ll never forget the deaths the dragons caused,” the assassin said and smiled thinly. “But I agree that we can’t kill each other either. I hope you remember this—that I didn’t choose death.” She lowered her weapon a few inches and shot her in the leg.

The bullet punched through her steel skin, and she fell, clutching the wound.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Through the pain, Kristen watched Constance approach, her gun once again trained on her chest. “Stay down, Kristen Hall. Stay down. That wound won’t be fatal, and once you get the bullet out, your healing powers will take care of you.”

“But how?” Tears streamed down Kristen’s face.

“Pieces of dragon,” the assassin replied, her voice soothing like a mother assuring a child that there were no monsters under the bed. “Scales, fangs, claws… Pieces of dragon shaped into bullets. It turns out that the thing dragons are most vulnerable to is other dragons. It’s embarrassing, really. We knew dragons could kill each other. They used to do it fairly often when their duels got out of control. We’ve known for decades, now, what dragon parts can do to other dragons, but we’ve only recently been able to weaponize that knowledge.”

“Why?” Kristen was desperate to understand, and she struggled to focus beyond the pain. She felt like she’d pursued Constance’s shadow for so long, she was desperate to have something tangible. Plus, she was still a cop—one with backup on the way. She wanted to stall the assassin as long as she could.

“We needed a weapon for the war that was to come. Everything now is merely setting the table and arranging the pieces. We can’t have dragons for people to flock to, not if they’re to see the shackles about their ankles, even if some of those shackles are made of silk.”

Kristen clutched her leg. It hurt considerably but there wasn’t enough blood for the wound to be arterial. That meant she wouldn’t bleed out. She battled the intense, excruciating pain, but she wasn’t fighting for her life. That meant she had to keep Constance there as long as she could. Drew and his team could apprehend the woman or, if that failed, eliminate her. One shot from Butters might be able to do it, although she found herself hoping that if they did shoot her, they didn’t shoot to kill. Even if she had actually shot her, she had spared her life.

“Can’t you see that a war between dragons and humans will end with the slaughter of millions? And that’s if it goes our way. It could be billions if the dragons are truly enraged.”

“There is a price to freedom. We have suffered under their yoke for ten thousand years. How many people have died with nothing to hope for but that their masters don’t treat their children as cruelly as they treated them? Help us make this dream a reality. You won’t be able to rule—we want an end to dragon rulers—but you can serve alongside us and serve with honor.”

“Fat chance,” she said under her breath. Exactly as she’d hoped, the woman leaned in to hear her better. She kicked out with her good leg and knocked the pistol from her hand.

The assassin cursed and attempted to retrieve the weapon but again, she had hoped for this to happen. She pushed herself to her feet, used most of her mental energy to tell her leg to stop complaining about the excruciating pain, and drew on a burst of dragon speed as she bulldozed into her adversary’s back

Constance reacted like a Tasmanian devil caught in a cage. She struck out with what felt like a dozen blows in as many seconds. A punch caught Kristen in the face and the assassin chopped at her throat with the hard line of her hand. She kicked her in the crotch and even jammed a finger into the bullet hole in her leg.

Kristen wasn’t able to fight back as her leg hurt too much to put weight on it. Even the brief burst of speed had made the pain worse, but that wasn’t her plan, anyway. When she’d tackled the assassin, she hadn’t knocked her to the ground. Instead, she’d wrapped her arms around the woman’s shoulder and locked her two hands into a grip that was literally as strong as steel.

Her opponent punched and kicked and raged against her and she made no effort to stop her. After all, her body was made of steel and Constance would simply tire herself. She could hardly feel the blows through her metal skin or beyond the insane pain in her leg. The assassin shouldn’t have led with such a painful injury.

After a frantic minute, she executed the next part of her plan and raised her wounded leg off the ground. Immediately, the woman sagged under the weight. She tried to shove her off but she wouldn’t allow it. Instead, she pushed off the ground with her good leg and put even more weight onto her.

That was finally enough to do it. The killer fell and she landed on top of her and pinned her legs. As cruel as it was, she’d hoped that one of them would break, but it didn’t happen that way. Instead, Constance struggled to pull free as she tried to remain on top of her.

Wingbeats in the sky preceded the massive shadow of a dragon that eclipsed the sun like an enormous, solid cloud. It descended and the grounds of the mansion swirled with dust.

When it landed behind Kristen, she made no effort to see which of her teammates had arrived.

“It’s over, Constance. If you try to run, they’ll blast you with fire.” She was sure to say this loud enough for Dragon SWAT to hear. “It’s not how I want you to go, so surrender.”

But the voice that spoke next was not anyone on Dragon SWAT. “I found you at last.” It was Obscura. The shadow dragon was free, she’d pulverized Lumos, and now, she had arrived to finish what her goons had started in prison. “I’ve fantasized about this moment so often. There are many ways to kill you with the oath I have strengthening me, but I like your suggestion best of all. There is something very special about the idea of melting Kristen Steel.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“Itold you, my name is Hall!” Kristen roared at Obscura, rolled off of Constance, and transformed into her dragon form.

The shadow dragon, true to her promise, opened her throat and unleashed an inferno that threatened to envelop her entire body it was so large.

She didn’t have time to dodge, not with her injured leg that still ached even in this body. Instead, she fought fire with fire. When the blast of flame surged toward her, she unleashed her own. The two jets of flame collided with a roar like a freight train filled with welding torches careening toward another. All around them, Amythist’s garden burst into flame. The two pillars of dragon’s fire didn’t spread but the heat that radiated from them was enough to make many of the shrubby plants spontaneously combust into orange fire.

Out of the corner of her eye, Kristen saw Constance scramble to her feet, glance once at the handgun—now trapped between two raging infernos—grimace, and run into the woods.

She couldn’t follow her. Hell, with the fire pouring from her throat, she couldn’t even tell her to stop. Not for the first time, she wondered what kind of help the assassin had on her team. Did another mage protect her from this heat? Was someone waiting nearby on a motorcycle to whisk her away? So many questions seized her mind while her massive dragon lungs ran out of oxygen and then fire.

Obscura had started first, so she stopped her blast seconds before Kristen did, much to the Steel Dragon’s relief. If she hadn’t, she honestly didn’t know how much longer she would have been able to maintain the flames.

Her adversary was already in motion and prowled like a cat trying to get behind its prey without being noticed. She pivoted to face her and knew she should pace too—or better yet, attack the larger dragon—but her leg was a mess. Obviously, the bullet that Constance had shot her with was still buried in the wound. She would be at a severe disadvantage in either of her forms.

But only if they were on the ground, she realized. If they were in the air, she wouldn’t have to put any weight on the leg. She wouldn’t be able to attack with it but that seemed like less of a disadvantage than not being able to walk.

She tried to push up and off the ground and pumped her wings as she leapt, but with her back leg wounded, she wasn’t able to jump at all, so had to rely entirely on her wings. Still, she had the strength of a dragon—strength not entirely given by muscles and brawn but by magic as well. She managed to thrust herself into the air.

Her efforts proved too slow and the black dragon lunged forward, bit her tail, and hauled her back. She thrashed her tail and shook her loose—after all, her tail was made of steel and had an ax blade on the tip—but her opponent didn’t seem intimidated. Far from it, actually.

Kristen tried to fly higher and this time, the shadow dragon let her go.

“Where are you running to, little whelp?” Obscura demanded as she took flight. Already, she had achieved greater height. Her legs had propelled her into the sky and her wings carried her motion. Still, now that they were in the air, Kristen might be able to hold her own.

Unfortunately, the older dragon was a far more experienced flyer. That fact was immediately and painfully obvious.

While Kristen struggled to gain altitude, Obscura swooped and gained speed before she elevated again and slashed at her legs.

She didn’t kick out—it would’ve hurt far too much—and instead, swung with her tail, which only unbalanced her as tails were an essential part of dragon flight.

“The little Steel Bitch is wounded,” Obscura said as she dodged Kristen’s tail.

Dammit. She cursed silently. This was a bad plan. Her adversary was a good enough flyer to be able to diagnose her injuries in flight. But was landing the smart choice? She didn’t think so. It would be far better to draw her away from there so Jim didn’t get hurt.

Kristen tried to flee and for a moment, it seemed Obscura would let her. But the hope was short-lived and she sensed the dragon above her growing closer. Claws struck and ripped her wings. She could still fly but it was more difficult like swimming with your shoes on.

She tried to fly lower and the shadow dragon followed and even went so far as to put her back feet on her without her claws. Rather than dig her talons into her back, she simply shoved her into Skyjewel’s mansion and used her face to break brick and roof tiles. She tried to get her feet under her and run along the roof but again, her back leg screamed in pain so she took flight.

Her adversary seemed to have expected this as she caught her in her massive talons. It wasn’t exactly a death-grip as she wasn’t so big that she could force her to the ground, but she stabbed her and squeezed so Kristen didn’t dare to do anything lest the talons puncture her organs. Obscura guided her into the iron fence that surrounded the estate and used her skull to destroy metal. The Steel Dragon found that iron was indeed a formidable substance and it hurt like hell when she hit it.

Airborne no longer, she tried a different tactic. She whipped her tail in an attempt to catch her opponent with the side that was the ax blade.

The black dragon dodged but at least she looked wary.

Kristen hissed at her and struck out with her tail again, but Obscura fought back with her own tail. It lacked an ax blade but it was longer and the older dragon seemed more adept at using it like she was with so many dragon abilities. She was able to parry her strikes, such was her level of control. The Steel Dragon tried to strike again and again but her adversary knocked the blade away effortlessly and pounded her spiked tail into the base of Kristen’s near the wounded leg. The force of the blow was such that one of the spikes actually pierced her steel skin.

She screamed and pulled away, stumbled back on her three good legs, and used her shredded wings to aid her retreat.

Obscura didn’t push her offensive, however, and only laughed. “Oh, little Steel Bitch, how foolish you are. Do you know tail dueling was quite popular in Europe in the twelfth century? It’s been some time since I practiced but one doesn’t simply forget these things.”

“Don’t you see you’re being manipulated?” she asked, hoping to distract her and earn herself a few seconds.

“Yes, by you and poorly. Honestly, do you expect to distract me?”

The black dragon pounced and for a moment, Kristen was back in the sewer tunnels where she’d fought Shadowstorm. He too had been a massive dragon who was able to move faster than his bulk should have allowed. The memory was shattered as she rolled through a burning bush of rosemary. There’d been no organic matter in her battle with Shadowstorm, only hot steam and brick walls.

“You cannot beat me in flight, Steel Bitch, nor with flame or tail. You are strong, yes, but you lack the technique I have acquired over millennia.”

“Then we fight.” She lunged forward and tried to snap her jaws around her opponent’s throat.

Obscura rolled and caught her with her front legs. She sank her claws into her shoulders while she kicked her in the gut with her back legs. In the frantic tussle, she felt like a bird trapped by a large, malevolent cat.

The shadow dragon threw her aside and once again, she tried to take to the air. Her adversary flew above her in an instant, crashed into her back, and sank her teeth into the back of her neck. Her massive weight forced her to the ground while she once more shredded her wings with her claws. She was a ruthless fighter and no doubt enjoyed her barbarism.

Kristen impacted with a greenhouse tucked around the side of the building. The glass and metal frame shattered under her bulk but did nothing to her steel skin. What hurt was not the collision but the massive dragon biting at the back of her neck and trying to shred her wings with her tail.

She swung her tail and Obscura released her.

In the wreckage of the greenhouse, she pushed painfully to her feet. Broken glass and plants were strewn everywhere.

“I came ready for quite a fight but it’s obvious that the little human really weakened you,” the black dragon snarled. “I suppose with the oath I swore to end your miserable life fueling me, I’m simply too powerful. I had expected a real battle but I’ll lower my expectations. If you can draw my blood, I’ll pull off.”

Kristen knew it was a lie. It couldn’t be anything else. Her enemy didn’t know mercy and she didn’t know restraint and yet, what was she to do? Refuse a chance to live through the day? It was stupid, but she decided to change her tactics.

She lunged weakly and the larger dragon dodged easily but this was what she wanted. As soon as Obscura moved to the left, she whipped her tail at her and forced her to hold a forearm up to block the steel ax blade. She hissed when it sliced into her flesh.

“You’re bleeding, you old bitch,” she said. She knew she should have said something more clever than simple profanity or that she should have tried to call upon her honor or sense of history or something, but that wasn’t who she was. The challenge had been thrown at her and she’d risen to it. She’d dishonored her foe, at the very least, and ended the fight at the very best.

“I was lying, obviously,” Obscura said and launched into another assault. This time, she didn’t tackle her, though. Instead, she came close enough to be barely out of the reach of her claws and rained blows upon her.

Kristen’s steel skin did nothing to stop her. She felt each swipe of the claws as keenly as a little girl skinning her knee. None of them were lethal or even close to it considering how difficult it was to kill a dragon, but the pain added up. Strike after strike drew blood on her forearms, her shoulders, her ribs, and her back. She had no idea how the black dragon was able to slice through her steel skin so easily. Was it because she was weakened or because Obscura really had sworn a magical oath that made it easier to hurt her?

Either option seemed equally negative.

She tried to fight back but she could feel herself becoming sluggish. Her adversary’s blows were too fast and also strange coming from a dragon. When she sparred in dragon form with the members of Dragon SWAT, they mostly focused on powerful, forceful blows that would be lethal if properly delivered.

That wasn’t how the other dragon was fighting, however. She was merely inflicting as much pain as she could. None of these scratches or slashes would kill a dragon and all they would do was hurt. It was yet another technique she might have learned over the centuries that Kristen simply didn’t have any experience with.

But the Steel Dragon knew enough to realize that she couldn’t last in an extended battle. She had to end this.

Unfortunately, Obscura also seemed to wish to end the battle.

She pushed forward and given their close quarters, this was enough to put her shoulders into Kristen and knock her back.

The shadow dragon landed on top and proceeded to savage her neck with her teeth.

All the little scratches she had previously experienced—hell, the gunshot too, for that matter—suddenly seemed like nothing but minor irritations. No pain could compare to dozens of dragon teeth sinking into her throat. There was no terror like having a larger and stronger dragon attempt to saw her head from her body with its teeth.

Kristen struggled and thrashed beneath her assailant, but her attacker was so large, she couldn’t dislodge her. She whipped her tail, but Obscura simply knocked it away and pinned it to the ground with one of her spikes.

With no other options and the pain at her neck making it practically impossible to think about strategy or even cause and effect, she once again tried to incinerate her enemy. Flames came up her throat and out her mouth and blasted the larger dragon in the face.

Obscura released her and flew away, blowing the flammable magic venom off her face with her wings.

Yet again, Kristen had done more damage to herself. Some flames had come out the wounds that had been inflicted in her neck. Now, the new flesh wounds stung like hell. The other dragon was off her—which was good, obviously—but the wounds she had inflicted burned worse than ever.

Still, she shook her head and tried to keep her mind in the fight.

“You are a persistent one, I’ll give you that,” Obscura said. “I think I’ll rip one of your wings off next.”

“Fuck y—”

Before she could finish, the shadow dragon attacked once more. This time, she leapt forward and used her shadow powers to get behind her.

She tried to turn but Obscura sank her teeth into one of Kristen’s wings.

Although she tried to pull it free, her opponent simply didn’t allow it. Instead, she crushed the bone in her teeth and shoved her with her back as she ripped the wing away at the bone.

Kristen screamed and Obscura flapped her wings and pulled up on her wing, taking half of it with her and pulling the weakened membrane apart as she did so.

Without thinking, she pulled her wing back and helped her enemy to rip it. She tucked it close to her back and felt her blood dribble down her back.

“I haven’t done that in centuries, my dear. Thank you.”

“All I was doing was trying to protect the people I love,” Kristen cried. “I didn’t want to kill your son but he left me no choice!”

“Well, we have that in common, at least. I have no choice in your death, not anymore. Not with the oath I swore and my benefactor relying on me.”

“Who is your benefactor? I’m sure that whoever he is, he’s not kind. Tell me what you know and you can join our side. What you did to my brother was wrong, but we all make mistakes.”

“None as large as when you hurt my son,” Obscura hissed.

“I never wanted to hurt him.”

The black dragon smiled cruelly. “We’re different in that regard. I very much want to hurt you.” She lunged again.

Kristen was barely able to get her tail up in front of her body before her assailant drove into her and the two tumbled together. She had recognized that attack. It was intended as a killing blow. Obscura had hoped to pierce her heart with her claws.

Thankfully, she had got her tail up and thus saved her life. Defense against killing blows was something she had practiced.

They rolled until they collided with the side of the mansion. The black dragon came out on top and used the position to rake her claws across Kristen’s face.

Compared to everything else she had done to her, being scratched in the face was negligible. She tried to fight, scratching and clawing at Obscura as the dragon’s heavier weight once more rested on her chest.

“Did you know that even a dragon’s eye can regrow?” Obscura said and thrust her clawed thumb into her eye socket.

Again, for what felt like the hundredth time in this fight, Kristen knew a definition of pain she’d never before experienced. That half of her vision simply winked out as the pain intensified made the sensation even more horrible.

Her enemy punched her in the gut before she slid off her.

She pushed to her feet once more. It was a struggle, but she would not go down. It wasn’t her life on the line, after all, but the fate of her family, her friends, and perhaps mankind itself. If Obscura killed her, who would stand against her? Lumos hadn’t been able to. She might have if she hadn’t been injured, but who else could even hope to? Stonequest, if he had his team with him, but what if her benefactor had more dragons under his influence?

If she couldn’t stop her now, war could erupt. She couldn’t stay down and definitely couldn’t die, not today.

Grimly, she faced Obscura once more.

“I think we must sever your tail and then we can finish this, yes?” She spoke as if addressing a child about the missing components of an arts and crafts project.

“You know, if you beat me, your oath will fail you and when Dragon SWAT arrives, they’ll finish you off.”

“Finish me off?” Obscura laughed loudly at that. “Finishing me off implies that I’m injured. I’m not, my dear. The only reason you’re still alive is because it’s entertaining to break your body one piece at a time before I finish you.”

“That won’t happen.”

“It hasn’t happened yet but like I said, your tail still functions.”

Even though she knew exactly what the shadow dragon would do, she couldn’t stop it from happening.

The huge dragon surged at her and she tried to keep her body between the larger, more experienced fighter and her tail. Obscura moved left and she mirrored her, then right and she followed. Then, she whipped her across the face with her spiked tail with enough force to make Kristen’s neck pop. She’d also struck her on the side of her face with the wounded eye, so to say the pain was blinding was actually accurate.

Cold, cold dread clutched her heart when she felt her adversary take hold of her tail. She tried to shove her off but of course, that was impossible with her injured leg. Desperate, she flapped her wings and the bloody stump of the one that had been brutalized struck her enemy with a wet sound. At least it didn’t hurt. She now experienced pain in too many other places to notice the bloody stump of a wing.

She did feel Obscura drive her claws into her tail, however—one on either side, about halfway down. In the next moment, her back legs were on Kristen’s back and she couldn’t even fight. She felt like a professional wrestler locked in one of their ridiculous holds. All she could do was move with her attacker’s movements to stop what pain she could, even though she knew even more was soon to arrive.

The black dragon pushed on her back as she yanked viciously on her tail. Truly, the pain was less than many of the injuries she had already suffered, but the sensation was sickening. She felt the bones dislocate from each other one by one as Obscura yanked again and again.

Finally, the larger dragon released her clawed hold and flew up and away to land across the burning garden from her.

Kristen stood slowly. Her tail was dead weight. It was completely limp beyond the point that had been injured. The only feeling came when she moved forward—normally, she used her tail instinctively to balance—but now it was only pain and then nothing. It was a disadvantage so severe for a dragon it might have been even more debilitating than her injured leg, but she wouldn’t stay down. She stood, as ready for the next attack as she could be.

Obscura walked closer, her movements almost languid. She was obviously enjoying this. Dragons might have believed humans were less than them, but in this fight, she was happy to play the animal.

“I won’t quit,” Kristen snarled, although it sounded more like a choked plea. Even she could hear her strength failing her.

“I don’t want you to quit, you silly little girl. I want you to die.”

The shadow dragon didn’t even have to move fast to take her. She simply snapped, bit her shoulder, and twisted until the pain overcame her failing strength. Kristen rolled over, on her back now. Obscura released her and instead, thrust a claw into the fresh wound.

She writhed but she couldn’t escape.

Her enemy moved to stand over her. “It is a complete and utter moral failure that you have been so brainwashed by humans, but in your last moments of life, I do find myself thinking of the silly apes and their petty traditions. Tell me, do you have any last words?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Kristen wanted to spit in Obscura’s face. She wanted to curse her name and tell her that she would be avenged but the pain was too much. The shadow dragon had her pinned and one clawed hand drove into her shoulder.

It took most of her strength to stay conscious. Instead of saying anything, her head lolled to the side. Anything was better than having to face this beast who had haunted mankind since before history.

Her gaze came to rest on a small black object. A gun. Her almost unconscious mind registered the weapon with surprise. What was a gun doing hiding in a pile of ash under a burned bush?

Clarity seeped in and reminded her that it was Constance’s gun, the weapon that had shot her in the leg and doomed her to lose this fight and her life. More importantly, it had been loaded with bullets that could hurt dragons.

Too bad it was empty.

Except it wasn’t. She suddenly realized that it couldn’t be.

The assassin had shot her in the leg because she intended to go inside to kill Amythist Skyjewel. That meant there had to be at least one more bullet inside capable of killing a dragon. Unfortunately, she couldn’t use it as it was beyond the reach of her claws. Maybe her tail could have pulled the weapon closer, but that was nothing more than a broken mass of flesh and dislocated bones.

“This is disappointing,” Obscura purred. “I had hoped you would make some petty remark about hope or justice or maybe for you to simply shit yourself, but I see now that I pulverized you too completely for you to even understand this moment. Truly, you are a pathetic excuse for a dragon.”

That was when she remembered that she wasn’t a dragon—or only a dragon, anyway. She was one who knew what it was like to be a human. She’d grown up playing with human kids and sharing human meals. Like them, she’d grown up afraid of the sky—as so many human children were—always watching past their parents’ reassurances and wondering if the dragons would turn on them and burn the whole world down. She’d played humans and dragons as a kid. One would be the dragon and chase the others until they could find somewhere they could hide, somewhere small to squeeze into and get away. Even as a kid, she had known that being small was the only defense against these fire-breathing terrors of the sky. There she was, facing a dragon larger than she’d ever met before, and once again, it felt like the only option.

Kristen would simply have to try to be small.

She transformed into her human shape. A cloud of silver glitter briefly exploded from her and collapsed onto her smaller form. Now, instead of Obscura thrusting a claw into her shoulder, she had Kristen caged under her claw. Fortunately, it was an inadequate cage. The dragon was so big that she could slip out between her claws.

Her enemy could have killed her then—all it would have taken was one snap of her spiked tail against her head. She knew it too. When Kristen escaped, the ancient dragon merely laughed.

“Truly, you understand your place. Perhaps Steel Runt is a better name for you than Bitch. I hate dogs, but even I know a good bitch should have plenty of fight in her.”

Kristen ignored her as best she could. She moved doggedly toward the gun that Constance had dropped. Her leg burned, she still couldn’t see out of one of her eyes, and it was hard to breathe after the pummeling she’d received, but at least she could no longer feel her broken wings or paralyzed tail.

“Your human form will be easier to kill than your dragon one,” Obscura said languidly and again reminded her of a cat toying with a bird. “Maybe there was a time where your steel skin would have protected you from me, but the oath I swore means that time is long past.”

Kristen was so incredibly close. Her leg screamed in pain—finally done with walking—so she flung herself prone and grasped the pistol. She tried to roll and come up with the gun, but she couldn’t get onto her feet. Her injured leg hurt too damn badly.

In the time it took her to basically fall over, snatch the gun, and push shakily to one knee, Obscura flew overhead and came to land directly in front of her. She sat on her haunches, wrapped her tail around her feet, and flicked the end of it ever so slightly like the world’s most powerful and pissed-off cat.

With a deep breath to steady her arm—even that hurt—she raised the pistol to aim at her enemy.

“Oh, you stupid little girl. Bullets cannot hurt dragons, especially a bullet fired from that kind of gun. Maybe if you had one your friends with their high caliber weapons close by, you could have slowed me—those big bullets can really sting—but that kind of weapon won’t do a thing to me. I’m immune to such petty worries. All dragons are. This is simply more proof that you have wasted any potential you might have had by growing up in one of those human rat nests.”

“You know what?” Kristen said, her gaze locked on Obscura. “You talk too damn much.”

She fired the gun at her broad chest at almost point-blank range.

It blew a messy hole in the massive dragon. It didn’t explode but rather shredded her hard dragon scales and ripped her flesh to pieces.

But even this wasn’t enough to kill the ancient dragon. Despite the massive, bloody hole in her chest that spewed blood, rage kept her alive.

Obscura roared and lunged at Kristen with her jaws, fire already blossoming in her throat to finish her off if her teeth didn’t.

She fired the pistol at her open jaws.

The bullet went through the shadow dragon’s top jaw and she shrieked in pain. She now had an extra hole behind her nose and before her eyes. If she were to try to eat a human, they could simply step up and stand on her tongue.

It was an insane wound, one that might prove deadly. Still, she didn’t stop.

Kristen didn’t hesitate. She shot her once more in the head.

That bullet caught her between the eyes and the top of her head was simply blown away like Kristen had popped a water balloon filled with blood.

Obscura’s massive body—now lifeless—collapsed. The dead dragon’s wings flapped weakly a few times, her tail twitched for a moment, and all movement ceased, the corpse completely still. Kristen had seen dragons die before, but what happened next would prove to her that there was something to the oath Obscura had sworn.

Black tendrils rose from her body, first from her heart, then from her tongue as if her belief plus the words she’d spoken had been what bound her to her course. She felt fear then. This was an oath meant for her. Would it peel off Obscura’s body and invade hers? Or perhaps bring the dragon back from the dead by healing wounds that nothing should have been able to live through? Would it simply kill her? If Obscura had failed sooner, perhaps she would already be dead.

But it seemed the magic of this particular ilk wasn’t interested in doing its master’s wishes now that she’d failed. It seeped from Obscura’s body, first from her heart and tongue and then from her eyes and ears, and finally, between her claws. The mist coagulated into droplets that became tiny black worms that writhed and pulsated as they turned on the shadow dragon to devour her skin and her flesh. Soon, nothing was left but bones and a shattered skull that Kristen had already destroyed with her pistol.

It was over.

Obscura was dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“Kristen, hey.” Her alarm clock was really annoying. “Hey, Hall, snap to it!”

She opened her eyes to see Drew’s face in front of a cloudy sky. She lay in the grass, her entire body basically on fire with pain although she didn’t quite remember how she got there.

“There’s my little dragon. Are you all right?”

When she forced herself to smile, even that hurt. “We have to hang out more outside of work.”

“It looks like you won’t be hanging out for a while,” Hernandez said. “Is any part of your body not broken?”

Slowly, she pushed herself up and blinked to settle her vision. She could see out of both eyes again, although the one Obscura had gouged out was still hazy. Hopefully, she told herself, it would improve with time. She prayed that was the case and forced her mind not to dwell on it.

“I’ll be fine. I only need time to heal and some food. Can one of you do me a favor and see if there’s a fucking bullet in my leg?”

Drew nodded and helped her to her feet. Hernandez dropped to one knee and looked at her leg.

“I have bad news for you, Hall. The bullet is definitely still under the skin at the back of your leg. It must have been stopped by your steel skin when it tried to go through. If you want, I can take it out.”

“Get that fucking thing out of me,” she replied.

“I would say this is gonna hurt,” the woman said, “but compared to everything else that’s wrong with your fucking body, this might not be so bad.”

“Just do it.”

Hernandez drew a knife, flipped it deftly in her hand, and stabbed her in the thigh. It hurt, there was no way to pretend that it didn’t, but she endured it. After all, it was only another flesh wound, one of many. When the tip of the blade slid past the bullet, that definitely hurt, but when the bullet was removed, she felt nothing but relief. It was like aloe on a sunburn or water after a trudge through the desert. She knew that her body could heal now, although it would take time. More importantly, she would live. Before, she hadn’t been so sure. The pain had been so intense, she hadn’t known if it would stop. Even the rest of her body hadn’t seemed to heal properly. Those bullets really were a force to be reckoned with.

“Something tells me pulling a bullet out of her won’t do the trick,” Butters said and pointed at Obscura’s corpse.

Kristen immediately saw what he meant. It was almost laughably obvious. While she was all scratches, bruises, and breaks, the shadow dragon’s body was nothing but clean, off-white bones. Only the skull was broken, shattered in two places from the bullets. The oath that she had sworn had taken everything else.

The door to the manor opened and Jim came out with his gun in hand. “Amythist is locked up tight in her safe room and—holy shit. What happened out here?”

She looked around at the blackened landscape and vaguely remembered that when they’d first arrived, it had been a verdant garden with bushes thick enough to hide security equipment.

Now, it was a wasteland. Virtually every inch of the ground had been scorched. Here and there, a few blades of grass were still green but that only heightened the sense of desolation, a reminder that this morning, the entire estate was a garden. The plants were all blackened stumps and the weapons they’d concealed were either destroyed and bent out of shape or melted into slag. There was the greenhouse—or what was left of it—that she remembered plummeting into. Apparently, Obscura had also pounded her against the side of the mansion as there was a dragon-sized crater in the brick.

“It’s a long story,” she said.

“I’ll say it is! When I went in, you confronted that human woman, Constance. A few minutes later we have a dragon skeleton out here? Based on the size of that, I’d guess Obscura? How the hell did you manage that? I was only gone a few minutes.”

“Like I said, long story.” Kristen limped toward Jim with Drew’s help. “The kind of story that can only be told over a few shots if it’s to be told in its entirety.”

“I’d buy the whole bottle of whiskey to find out what happened here,” Butters said.

She tried to laugh but God, it hurt. Drew noticed and lowered her gently to the ground. He’d probably realized that he’d had to carry most of her weight. She had barely managed to walk.

“Let’s get that leg patched up. It looks like you’ve lost considerable blood,” he said.

Kristen nodded and stretched her leg out.

He cut away her pant leg and gasped. “You know, I never cease to be amazed at your powers. You were shot and the muscle is already reknitting itself. What about your eye? It’s quite milky.”

“Obscura punctured it with a claw. If it’s intact at all, I’ll count that as a win right now.”

Drew placed a hand over her other eye and held up fingers for her to count.

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Close enough,” he said with a brief smile. Kristen knew it had to be hard for them to see her like this. Besides the grievous wounds in her leg and her eye, her neck felt absolutely ragged from when Obscura had tried to rip her head off. Her body was covered in wounds too, bruises and beatings that had transferred over from her dragon form, but she’d still won. She tried to tell herself that meant something. Maybe it would in the morning. Better yet, maybe it would once she’d had a beer.

They carried her to the SWAT van and put her inside. Drew told her Stonequest had called and said he was on his way. He wanted to stay until Dragon SWAT got there and secured the scene.

“How did Stonequest know you were coming here? Have you guys been in contact?” she asked.

“No, nothing like that.” He looked kind of sheepish.

“Dragon SWAT knows we are the knights of the Steel Dragon,” Keith shouted, cracked open a beer from a cooler, and gave it to her. “We didn’t make it in time to record your battle, by the way.” Now, he sounded sheepish.

“It’s great to know I have my own cavalry,” she said. “Too bad you’re all so slow.”

“So slow?” Jim looked incredulous. “I was inside for minutes—as in less than five.”

“Like I said, too slow.”

The Wonderkid merely shook his head as he looked around the destroyed estate. It really was an impressive amount of destruction. Obviously, the grounds had been burned and the greenhouse was a pile of twisted metal and glass, but they’d done damage to the mansion as well. Apparently, when Obscura had hurled her into the roof, she’d taken a chimney and a few ornamental spires, plus a skylight and what had to be close to a hundred bricks. Seeing so much that had all been basically destroyed by using her steel dragon body as a tool was kind of cool.

“So, did Obscura show up before you could face Constance or what?” Jim asked.

“I was able to talk to her for a minute,” she explained and sipped the beer with enthusiasm. Good Lord, it tasted good going down her bruised throat. Swallowing actual food would likely be a nightmare but fortunately, there was beer, ice cream, and milkshakes. She told herself she’d eat nothing but those until she felt like herself again,

“And?” he prompted.

That brought her back to the present. She had a concussion or two as well, she reasoned, because the idea of taking a nap right now sounded really, really good. But not yet, not now. She had to tell her team what she’d discovered.

“They’re making bullets out of dragon pieces.” She raised the gun which she hadn’t yet put down. Even when she’d awakened, she had clutched it in her hand, unable to release the weapon that had saved her life. No one had said a thing about it until now, which she found slightly funny but mostly terrifying. A few scant years ago, she’d been a young woman—a girl, really. She’d known how to handle a gun—her dad was a cop and father to a beautiful daughter, after all, so it wouldn’t do for her not to know how to handle one—but she’d never have considered herself a gun person. Now, keeping her hands on one was like second nature.

Kristen checked the pistol and found there were three more rounds in the magazine. Each of them was a creamy color like a piece of tooth or claw. She had known that Constance had told the truth. After all, she’d been shot in the leg with a bullet that had been able to punch through her steel skin like aluminum foil. Even so, seeing the unspent bullets was another matter.

It made it all feel so much more real—and more dangerous and urgent. She didn’t like the feeling at all. Instinctively, she turned to look at the bones of Obscura. Would the assassin be able to harvest her bones to make weapons? Probably not. She had said they’d used teeth and claws, but the skeleton had those as well. Was this how a war between humans and dragons would be fought? Dragons would eat humans while humans would harvest dragons? It truly sounded like a nightmare scenario. She knew she wouldn’t have to explain it to Stonequest but suddenly, she didn’t want to go until she knew exactly what would happen to the dead dragon’s body.

“But why make weapons to kill dragons at all?” Jim asked. “If they’re doing it to rebel against dragons, it seems like an arms race they’ll never win. And for some reason, I can’t see them trying to arm local communities to protect themselves, what with all the subterfuge and assassinations.”

“This could make dragons turn on humans simply because they won’t know what else to do,” Kristen said. “It’s the Dragon Council’s nightmare.”

“Now that’s something I don’t want to think about.” Butters tried to chuckle to break the mood. “My bad dreams are all either about falling, my teeth falling out, or showing up to work naked. What kind of nightmares does a dragon have if they can fly, regrow their teeth, and regularly fly around without so much as a speedo on?”

“War,” she said, perhaps too cryptically as everyone in the van fell silent.

“Do you care to elaborate on that fucking bombshell?” Hernandez asked.

“I thought they were trying to kill dragons to harvest pieces for their weapons but now, I don’t think so, not after talking to Constance. It’s more like they’re trying to set the board. They want this war to come, and when it breaks out, they want to have already weakened the dragon side and taken away any players who might fight against them. Apparently, the dragon inside the mansion—Skyjewel—earned her name by eating mages.”

“How do you get Skyjewel from mage-eater?” Keith asked.

“You really, really don’t want to know,” Jim said.

“The technomages—or whatever the group of mages call themselves who work with Constance—know their history, and they know who might be able to sway human perception against them. I don’t think they’ll be easy to fight,” Kristen said. “But it gets worse.”

“Worse than a secret cabal of mages trying to kill dragons who might actually be helpful to people? What the fuck could be worse than that?” Hernandez asked.

“The dragons ran a DNA test on the bullets they’ve used to kill the other dragons. They matched me ninety percent. That’s why I went to jail,” she said.

“Right.” Jim nodded.

“But that doesn’t make sense. If it was my DNA, it should have been a one hundred percent match. Ninety percent is high but it’s not me.”

“What do you mean?” Drew asked.

“I have a girlfriend whose entire family did one of the DNA tests. Her brother and sister were about ninety percent the same,” Hernandez said.

“Exactly.” Kristen nodded. “Which means that the dragon whose body they’re using is my sibling.”

Silence descended in the back of the SWAT van as everyone tried to process what that meant to them.

To Kristen, it meant she wasn’t alone. There might be someone else trapped between two worlds but it also foreshadowed a hard conflict ahead.

She was who she was because of her past during which she’d been raised by humans and had played with humans. Even now, she thought of herself as a human with dragon powers more than she thought of herself as a dragon. Could there be someone else trapped in the middle like her? Would they feel the same way that she did? What if they’d been raised by dragons? What if they’d been raised by mages? There were other, darker ideas of what their life could be like as well. She had seen numerous science fiction movies and didn’t much want to think about a potential sibling suspended in some horrible goo, kept alive so they could be harvested to make weapons. But she couldn’t rule it out either. She simply didn’t know.

This was what plagued her and kept her from following the conversation taking place in the back of the van. Well, that and a probable concussion.

Stonequest arrived before too long and took her statement. She explained everything exactly as it had happened. Drew corroborated the part with Constance—namely the part where a human had shot a dragon with a handgun and almost killed her with a single shot—although Stonequest didn’t look too pleased about it. She didn’t blame him. After all, she had put more hard evidence in his hands that could be used to start an interspecies war the likes of which had never been seen. Before, humans had used pixies and magic. They still had magic, only now, they also had fighter jets, tactical drones, and even nuclear bombs.

“Why Amythist?” he asked her.

“Because you were right. This isn’t a grudge against dragons and it’s not about eliminating a few bad players. They’re after war. And the only person it's personal for is me.”

“Why you?”

“Because they’re making the bullets with the body of my sibling.”

She could tell from Stonequest’s expression that he’d already come to the same conclusion. She hated him for a second—hated how he could be so rock-hard resistant to any real emotions. Briefly, she wondered if he was called Stonequest because of that and not his marble-like appearance when he was in his dragon form. She wouldn’t be surprised.

He assured them that they had the site locked down and were speaking to Amythist. Then, he thanked her for her service and told her he’d call her the next day but to not come for a few days unless she wanted to be chained to a desk. Even dragons needed time to heal.

Kristen didn’t need to be told twice. She had to heal because she knew Constance definitely wouldn’t sit around given her ambitious agenda.

Still, she had the night at least. She motioned to her old human SWAT team to all load up in the van. They—bastards one and all—looked at Drew to confirm the order. He nodded and they obeyed. Kristen loved them all, stupid foolish humans that they were. They’d come all the way out there to help her but still behaved like Drew was in charge. And he really was, which was good. He had more experience than she did and was better at managing people and not…uh, running into things half-cocked, she supposed she could say.

Still, everyone piled into the back of the vehicle and let her take the front seat.

“So, what do we do next?” Drew asked.

“I want to find them—my sibling and the people using them. I’ll free whoever it is they’ve used to make these weapons and stop these mages before they start a war that neither side can win.”

He nodded.

“But first, I could really use a beer.”

THE STORY CONTINUES

The story continues with book seven: Dragon's Party, 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 (Book 4)

Terror Obscura (Book 5)

Never Cage a Dragon (Book 6)

Dragon's Party (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

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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/

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/KOMcLaughlin

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Connect with Michael Anderle

Website: http://lmbpn.com

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