TERROR OBSCURA

STEEL DRAGON™ BOOK FIVE

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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Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

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LMBPN Publishing

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Version 1.00, December 2021

Previously Published as part of the megabook Steel Dragon 2

eBook ISBN: 979-8-88541-070-0

Print ISBN: 979-8-88541-071-7

THE TERROR OBSCURA 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

Spring had come to the Motor City, and Kristen couldn’t have been happier about it. Winters lingered in Michigan and snow sometimes remained until April to remind humans that they still had no hope of controlling the cold, this most primordial of forces. But on that particular evening, the atmosphere seemed to be firmly on the side of the combatants. Given that she was about to enter a battle between two races, she found it a small comfort that at least the sun felt warm on her skin, the sky was clear, and the ground had thawed.

Kristen currently stood between two groups, although “people” didn’t quite describe who was there. They all looked like people and more specifically, like cops. Despite the fact that this was only a mock battle—airsoft being the name of the game—they all still dressed like cops—sturdy pants, jackets, boots instead of sneakers for the half-muddy recently unfrozen ground, and gloves for the cold that looked well-worn rather than cumbersome. But the similarities were only skin deep.

Her old team had gathered on her right. Drew talked strategy and Keith, Jim, and Beanpole listened intently. Hernandez fiddled with something that could only be explosives. Butters, however, was distracted. He orbited the smoker that one of the dragons attempted to operate as an enthusiastic back-seat griller. There was something about the way the humans—with the exception of the sniper—worked, even at a game like airsoft. They had focus, a drive to win and to succeed in the moment that dragons simply lacked. She thought it might be a matter of mortality.

Certainly, Butters’ obsession with the grill seemed to be driven by his own mortality. “I honestly don’t see how you think a pork shoulder is gonna smoke in less than six hours.”

Lumos, the dragon he spoke to, tilted his head and gave him a sidelong glance. “And what do you propose—that I blast it with my fire breath?” When in his true form, he was a resplendent golden dragon. As a human, he looked like a rather fit old man with a white pointed goatee and a large, well-trimmed mustache. He gave her the impression of a distance runner, one of those sixty-year-old men who could still somehow run twenty miles in a day, although of course, his true age was closer to sixty decades than sixty years. He was the oldest member of Dragon SWAT, but he didn’t seem to have the same cantankerous distrust of humanity that many of the Ancients possessed.

“Jesus, of course not!” Butters reacted as if Lumos had said he intended to urinate on the coals. “The last thing you want is to cook the damn thing too fast. The internal temp needs to reach one-forty-five for the tendons to break apart. If you roast it, we’ll end up with it burnt on the outside and chewy in the middle.”

“I think you fail to realize how much more intimately dragons understand heat than humans do,” the dragon said patiently.

“Are we going to play this human game or simply sit here gabbing about meat all day?” Heartsbane demanded. Although as prickly as any dragon, Kristen could tell her undeniable beauty had an effect on the men she used to work with. Hell, Hernandez seemed to have a crush on her too. She was gorgeous as both a human and a dragon. As a human, she had steel-blue eyes, platinum-blonde hair she kept in two tight French braids, perfect cheekbones, and an unbelievably attractive athletic figure. In dragon form, she was a white dragon, as elegant as she was terrifying, with ivory-white scales and a ridge down her back that was both feminine in its grace and razor-sharp.

“I’m ready,” responded the other member of Kristen’s Dragon SWAT team, John Emeraldeyes, who answered to Emerald among the dragons. Although she liked his human name more, much to his chagrin, she still thought of him as Emerald. After all, it was hard to forget that he could turn into a massive green dragon. He was, in many ways, a counterpoint to Heartsbane—male while she was female, dark skin compared to light, and loose dreadlocks instead of tight braids. He was friendly in a reserved kind of way compared to rude and wordy and was young for a dragon—less than a century—although he looked more like he was in his late twenties. She had only known him for a few months, but she already respected his work ethic and ability to put his head down and get things done.

“We’re ready too,” Drew yelled from his little huddle and immediately resumed talking strategy with her human friends. He directed a glare at Butters, who finally pulled himself away from the smoker to join his team.

“What’s about to happen here is truly remarkable, Kristen. I must say, I’m impressed,” said Stonequest, the last member of Dragon SWAT present and the dragon she knew best. He had first shown an interest in the dragon who was raised as a human, had recruited her to Dragon SWAT, and arranged her promotion at record speed. Truly, he was the only one on her new team she already thought of as a friend.

“You’re impressed that Butters is about to cuss out a dragon because of inferior barbecue?” she joked. She was glad that Stonequest felt good about this, but it was the first time she’d brought these two worlds together for anything besides a murder case. For obvious reasons, she was fairly nervous and could only hope that it would all go well.

Stonequest chuckled. “Lumos has been grilling for centuries. I’m sure all of you will be pleasantly surprised.”

Kristen shrugged. “I’m sure us Detroiters will be, but Butters is from the south. He takes smoked meat more seriously than he takes his job sometimes. But that’s not what you’re talking about, is it?” she said, reading his aura.

He was amused, but that didn’t fully explain the feeling he tried to express. “The barbecue is part of it, honestly. I’m totally amazed we’re all here interacting with each other at all. I know dragons interact with humans, obviously. Our two cultures are entwined and inseparable, but not like this. Dragons and humans never act as compatriots and comrades in arms. Hell, we never rent an airsoft course together for a day of guns and grilling.”

“It’s a good thing we reserved the course for the day too. Can you imagine someone getting caught in the crossfire?”

Stonequest smiled good-naturedly. “That’s not what I’m talking about, though. I’m talking about you, Kristen. You did this. You brought two groups together in a way that hasn’t happened before, not in centuries of cohabitation or in the millennia of history we share. Honestly, I’m not even sure it’s a good thing. Unlike you, I was brought up by dragons. I grew up in my creche learning the reasons why human and dragon kind shouldn’t get too close.”

“Do you still feel that way?” she asked.

His grin widened. “In the long run, who can say? We have such different lifespans and abilities, it makes sense to me to have some kind of separation between cultures, but short term? I’m damn excited. Getting to know you has made life far more interesting. You make the entire world live in the present. Kristen Hall, The Steel Dragon—a lost dragon raised by humans—trying to bring justice to both human and dragon kind. This is the kind of stuff history is made of.”

Kristen shrugged. “What chapter will the first airsoft match be in? Do you think humans will hate me for playing on the dragon team?”

“I’m serious, Kristen. I’m impressed.”

“It’s not really a choice I made to bring us together or anything grandiose like that. It’s simply that I’m part of both worlds, period. I’m obviously a dragon, what with the sick powers and the steel skin and all the other perks, but I grew up as a human. I spent most of my life not knowing that I was a dragon. I can’t simply turn my back on all that. How am I supposed to look down on the people who used to put me in time out for stealing extra cookies from the cookie jar?”

“Are we doing this or are you dragons calling it quits already?” Jim yelled across the muddy picnic area.

She smiled. The Wonderkid had a bone to pick with dragon kind. There was probably no one more excited for this match than he was. Except maybe Hernandez. Despite never following the rules, Hernandez loved airsoft.

“All right, here’s how we play this match.” Kristen raised her voice and directed a look at Hernandez, who winked in response, no doubt already planning how to subvert the game. “The first rule, no transformations allowed.”

Her human friends all cheered and actually went so far as to chant, “Two legs, two arms, two legs, two arms.”

The dragons all groaned dramatically.

“How am I supposed to swoop about and pick them up for little snacks?” Lumos whined.

His teammates laughed at that and the humans shuffled uncomfortably.

She held her arms up and waited for everyone to quiet again. “Okay, next up. In human form, dragons are faster and stronger. It’s not really something we can turn off or ignore, so that means that we will be armed differently. We will carry pistols, while the humans get semi-automatic rifles to keep it fair.”

“No problem there,” Emerald yelled and did a standing back flip. “We have to do something to level the playing field.”

“This doesn’t level it.” Heartsbane sneered. “We’ll still utterly demolish all of you without losing any of our own but maybe now, we might break a sweat.”

Lumos and Stonequest both chuckled at their team’s smack-talking.

“I think that’s about enough of that shit,” Jim hollered in return.

Keith patted him on the back and mumbled something in his ear that Kristen couldn’t hear, but she assumed he was probably trying to calm the Wonderkid down. Jim had a long history of disliking dragons. He’d even seen them fight in war, something that humans rarely did. The joke about eating people was probably too much.

“Oh, what’s wrong?” Heartsbane said in a high-pitched, teasing voice. “Is the little baby human afraid he gonna lose?” She lowered her voice to normal and grinned. “Because you should be.”

“I ain’t afraid, merely sick of this arrogance.” Jim folded his arms. “Dragons use electricity, the Internet, cars and air conditioning, and everything else people have invented, and yet you still act like you’re better than us. Well, I have news for you. This is a human game, played with human weapons. We don’t need an advantage against you dinosaurs. I say we either give the old fogies semi-automatics like we use, or we all use pistols.”

“Why do you wanna lose so badly?” Heartsbane asked as she sauntered forward and away from the other dragons.

The Wonderkid didn’t miss a beat. He also marched forward. The two came to stop beside Kristen, who still stood in the middle of the two groups. They squared off opposite one another, their foreheads only an inch apart, and shuffled like birds or elephant seals trying to test one another. She couldn’t help but be impressed with Jim. Heartsbane could transform into a dragon and eat him and yet there he was, acting like she was nothing more than a schoolyard bully.

More impressive yet was that she could feel the dragon flashing her aura at him. She wanted him to be afraid, and no doubt he was, and yet he fought that fear and held his ground. Kristen thought she’d always be impressed with the courage humans showed to a world that could kill them so callously. Standing face to face with a dragon was equally as brave as remaining in one’s home during a hurricane, although she had to admit it was perhaps even more stupid.

“Heartsbane, right?” The Wonderkid all but growled the question at the woman in his face.

“You’re damn straight I am.”

“Make my fucking day, Heartsbane.” He blew her a kiss.

“All right, all right, that’s enough. This is only a friendly game of airsoft,” Stonequest called. “Please step away from the pissing contest, Heartsbane. We use pistols, humans use automatic rifles. It’s cool.”

Heartsbane jerked her fists up in an effort to make Jim flinch, but the Wonderkid remained unmoved. He merely glared at her.

Kristen shook her head. This was supposed to bring the two groups closer together, but it seemed to create distance between them instead.

“Heartsbane, that was an order,” Stonequest said. “Get your ass over here and grab a pistol. We’ll still slaughter them.” He said the last words as a joke, but no one laughed.

The dragon scowled but she went to stand beside her commanding officer. Once she walked away, Jim turned and returned to the knot of humans. Keith and Hernandez gave him a thumbs-up and Kristen shook her head. Her friends on human SWAT were bold enough to play mind games with a team of dragons. She loved their bravery, even if it was as foolish as anything.

Drew stepped forward and his expression suggested that he tried to contain a smile. “You know what? I think The Wonderkid is right. You think you’ll easily slaughter us even if you have weaker weapons. That’s exactly the kind of arrogance humans have had enough of. We’ll use pistols too. That way, when we win, you won’t be able to say a thing.” He finally allowed the smile to come through.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Kristen protested. “You can’t argue that dragons aren’t faster, and it’s simply not possible for us to not use those abilities. It’s like asking you to be slower. Even if you try, how much slower is slow enough? It’s not something we can quantify. Pistols versus semi-automatics will at least give you a fighting chance.”

“We don’t want it to be a slaughter any more than they do,” Drew said and gestured at the dragons. “Pistols will make everything fairer.” He winked at her. That meant he had a plan and wanted her to go along with it, even though she was on the other team.

She nodded, unable to help herself. Although she would play on the dragon’s side—she was a dragon, after all, and one objective of this practice was working with one’s team against an unusual threat—part of her still wanted the humans to win. That didn’t mean she intended to hold back at all. However, she saw absolutely no reason to tell her dragon allies that the humans were up to something. Not that it would have mattered. Dragons tended to underestimate humans not only physically but mentally as well. It honestly wasn’t smart, considering how many things humans had invented over the years. Airsoft guns were merely one example.

“All right. Dragon SWAT, do you have a problem with humans using pistols?”

They all shook their heads, even Heartsbane. Only Emerald said anything. “I had hoped to break a sweat and maybe not have to work out today, but it’s cool. We’ll see you guys when this is over—let’s say five minutes.”

“Do you want us to wait that long before we whoop you? No problem.” Hernandez stuck her tongue out.

“Load up,” Kristen said, and everyone went to the booth to get their weapons. The kid who worked at the counter and watched the exchange looked equal parts nervous and excited. She noticed he had a monitor with a split screen on it to display camera feeds of the battle. No doubt he was ready to watch it all happen.

“If you stream this, I’ll not tip you a cent,” she told him sternly.

He nodded, but the grin on his face said that was exactly what he wanted to do, and that maybe someone else had gotten to him first. She eyed Keith—he loved repping the Steel Dragon online—but he had already run off toward the far end of the course with the other humans.

“Here we go,” Stonequest said.

Kristen and the dragons moved to the entrance of the airsoft course.

CHAPTER TWO

The five members of Dragon SWAT waited at the entrance to the arena for the horn to blare.

“We stay tight and we do this clean. If they ask us for a rematch and beat us one match out of five, or one match out of three, fine,” Stonequest whispered to his team, “but they will not beat us in round one. That means we do this by the book. They no doubt think we need superpowers to beat them and that we don’t know how to work together. And Lady Steel, if I find out you’re a mole for them, I’ll shoot you myself.” He said the last words as a joke, but she knew he was serious.

“No one has shot these guys with more pellets than I have. Believe me, the last thing I want is to lose and to have to listen to Hernandez gloat about it.” That wasn’t quite true, she admitted silently. What she wanted least in this game was to be eliminated first.

The claxon sounded and the door to the arena opened.

Stonequest nodded. “All right, then.”

Kristen hadn’t been able to see into the arena from the outside. The entire area was surrounded by camouflage netting hung between telephone poles, so the inside had remained a black box until now. She had come to this airsoft course more than a couple times, however. In fact, she’d developed a real affinity for the game when she’d been on human SWAT. She had expected a novel layout but had still thought she’d more or less recognize the interior. The owners of this course were architects who specialized in the pallet. She had imagined a more or less open area with pallet bases spaced here and there and maybe some empty oil drums because that was what was normally there.

Inside, it couldn’t have been more different than her expectations.

The first thing that demanded attention was the eight-foot plywood walls. They were painted black and some of them even had tarps spread across the tops of them. Instead of an open arena with bases, they faced what appeared to be the entrance to a gloomy maze. Spray paint adorned the black paint here and there—an anarchist’s A, a skull in white, and curse words disparaging both cops and dragons.

She had no doubt that Drew had a hand in the design. Hopefully not in the layout itself—although she wouldn’t put it past him—but in the choice of spray paint. He believed in keeping a cool head in any circumstance. From working with him, she knew he was definitely the kind of boss who thought police should come face to face with anti-cop beliefs so that they could stay calm and continue to serve their communities even when it was difficult.

The dragons were obviously less skilled in this mindset.

“What the fuck is this shit?” Heartsbane pointed to a crudely drawn dragon—it looked more like a penis with wings than it did a reptile. Below it, someone had scrawled the words, dragons are dicks.

“Psychological warfare,” Stonequest said. “We set this damn game up a week ago. I bet Drew told these assholes what to paint.”

“Are you sure?” Emerald gestured to another piece of graffiti that said, blue lives murder. “That seems like a really fucking good way to piss a cop off.”

“Don’t blame the owners of this place,” Kristen said. “We’ve really taken advantage here. Private games, weird rules, and hell, Hernandez blows shit up half the time. They know us and probably wanted to make somewhere to actually scare us.”

“Too bad dragons don’t get scared.” Heartsbane huffed.

“Then why aren’t you moving down this passage?” Stonequest asked pointedly.

She didn’t reply in words. Instead, she flashed her aura to tell him and everyone else what she felt about all this before she stepped forward.

They moved down the corridor in a tight group. Despite Heartsbane’s temper, Kristen had to admit she was a damn good cop every time she saw her in action. It was more than that, though. She was a warrior, someone who’d fought for centuries. Kristen had the sense that the dragon could not only handle a gun but she could also handle herself in a sword fight or even a good old-fashioned brawl. That all made sense when she thought about it. She was Stonequest’s second in command, which meant that of course she was good. She met each open passage with her teeth clenched and her muscles flexed, ready to spring out of the way at the slightest sound.

The area really was a maze of walls with far more passages than might be expected. The tarps covered about ninety percent of the space above their heads. There was light—more than enough light for dragons to see given that they had night vision—but also enough for humans to not be disadvantaged. But the tarps made it impossible to see the telephone poles that ringed the arena, so it was difficult to track one’s progress.

Lumos, however, didn’t seem to have any issue with it. “I estimate that we’re about a third of the way through,” the golden dragon said. His voice couldn’t have been calmer if he ordered appetizers at a restaurant.

“Let’s pick up the pace, then, and bring the fight to them,” Emerald said. He reminded Kristen vaguely of Keith and Drew combined. While he was professional, he was less than a century old, which—in dragon society—meant he still had much to prove. On top of that, he didn’t have any extraordinary abilities. He was a common, which meant he had worked damn hard to earn his place there. Still, he had the chip on his shoulder that often nagged at someone not born into wealth and power. It really was an odd trait for a dragon to have, she thought.

“I don’t think that would be wise,” Lumos replied. “They will come to us. That’s the name of the game. If we push too fast and let them get behind us, we’ll give them an advantage. After all, it’s more important to out-think your enemy than to out-fight them.”

“That’s Sun Tzu, right?” Kristen asked. “The Art of War.” She had read the book, of course. It was essential reading for any police officer, member of the military, or business leader.

He shrugged. “I don’t remember if he said that first or I did, but either way, it’s good advice.”

“He’s right, Johnny,” Hearstbane said. Apparently, John Emerald’s name had actually been given to him when he hatched, an unusual practice. Heartsbane and Stonequest had taken human names themselves since they worked with humans so much, but they never actually used them. Emerald had been John since he was born. Heartsbane found this hilarious. “It’s better to go slow.”

“Does this arena have another entrance on the opposite side?” Stonequest asked Kristen as they moved past another of the open passages.

“Yeah. The far end. There are only the two.”

“Do you think they’ll try a direct attack or sneak around?”

“There is no way they’ll come straight at us,” Kristen said, not at all ashamed about revealing this aspect of her former team’s strategy to her new team.

Stonequest pressed her for more information. “What do you think their plan is?”

Extremely loud pop music suddenly blared over the speakers. It was so loud that she was convinced there were speakers hidden in the maze itself.

“I think this is step one.” She couldn’t help but smile. Her former team was crazy, and she loved them for it.

“Which way, boss?” Heartsbane had to yell to be heard over the deep, driving bassline and shallow lyrics. She’d reached the end of the straight passage they’d followed. Now, they had to choose right or left.

Stonequest looked at Kristen and raised an eyebrow.

She laughed in response. “I have no idea.” She also had to shout over the noise. “These guys spend their free time coming up with ways to beat me. Do you really think they shared their strategy with me this time?”

“Left,” he said.

Heartsbane nodded and pressed on.

“Be careful,” the Steel Dragon shouted. “This whole place is a perfect setup for ambushes. And I have no doubt they’ll try to use that to their advantage.”

“No human could sneak up on a dragon. I’ll hear them coming a mile away!” she retorted.

“Even over all this noise?” Kristen asked. She could hardly hear herself think. She did seem to have sharper senses as a dragon and she tried to focus those abilities now, but it was difficult. How could one focus on footsteps when a pop diva screamed at you about dropping panties and taking names?

But sure enough, Heartsbane could somehow hear over the racket. She moved in front of the first corridor after she’d turned left and immediately flinched away. Little rubber pellets struck the opposite wall.

“I found the little monkeys,” she roared and peeked down the passage, drawing another bout of airsoft fire.

“Do not pursue, Heartsbane! I repeat, do not pursue!” Stonequest bellowed.

She ignored him and sprinted forward, moving so fast she almost blurred.

“Follow her,” their leader said hastily. “They’ll probably try to separate and isolate us. It’s a good strategy, but we can’t let it work.” He raced away after the other dragon.

“Monkeys?” Kristen asked and followed.

“It’s, uh…” He looked extremely uncomfortable and rather than attempt an answer, he increased his pace.

“It’s a slur for humans. Your kind is related to primates, right?” Emerald said as he pushed past her.

“That’s fucked up,” she retorted.

“Your boy called us dinosaurs. Same shit.”

She didn’t think so. One group had an enormous amount of power and had wielded it through essentially all of history. The other group had served at their beck and call for centuries if not millennia. To her, it seemed like humans had earned the right to a little free speech. The dragons should be the ones to show respect.

But she chose not to say anything and raced after Heartsbane, Stonequest, Lumos, and Emerald, checking the passageways to the right and left as she ran. She knew that rushing after the other team wasn’t tactically sound but also knew that staying behind and on her own wouldn’t help her team either.

Heartsbane reached another T-junction and stopped.

“Didn’t you see which way they went?” Stonequest yelled over the roar of the pop music, which now blared something about drinking in the pool, drinking like it’s cool.

“I heard something instead,” Heartsbane said, but she didn’t move and merely pointed at her foot.

She was standing on something.

“What the hell is that?” Emerald asked.

Kristen crouched but she didn’t have to look closely to know what it was and who had placed it there.

“A pressure mine. Hernandez has talked about that shit forever. I assume she finally accomplished it. Whatever you do, don’t move. We might be able to slip something on top of the pressure plate so it doesn’t go off.” She chuckled but the rest of her team did not seem to think it was funny. Secretly, she couldn’t help but be impressed. Hernandez was always upping her explosives game.

“This is bullshit,” Heartsbane hissed, and Kristen felt the dragon woman’s anger as her own because of her aura. “The rules are pellets from pistols. She can’t simply bury a whole stash of pellets and try to eliminate us like this. Plus, they were obviously here before us. They couldn’t have buried this shit in the last few minutes.”

“Rats always have the territory advantage on those who wish to drive them out,” Lumos said. Even though he had referred to her friends as rats, there was no bitterness in his voice. Kristen had the sense that it was another saying, although she didn’t recognize this one. He looked amused rather than annoyed.

“Hernandez didn’t fill this with pellets,” she said and sniffed the mine. “It’s not her style. It might have a flash of some kind in there, but judging from the smell, I’d say it’s a stink bomb.”

“A what?”

Before she could repeat herself, the pop song ended.

“Stinkbomb, bitch,” Hernandez yelled from a hiding place nearby in the maze. “If you move, you stink for a week.”

“Then I don’t move, idiot,” Heartsbane yelled in response.

“Then you lose,” Drew yelled.

Despite the fact that everyone sounded fairly close, Kristen couldn’t see where any of them were.

Her attempt to locate them was cut short when pellets erupted from all directions.

She flung herself prone. “Hit the deck! It’s an ambush.”

CHAPTER THREE

When the barrage of pellets started, Heartsbane dove out of the way.

The mine exploded in a blinding flash of light. Kristen pushed herself onto her butt and scooted back, laughing at the insanity of it but extremely careful to avoid being shot. By the time her vision returned, the passage was filled with smoke. It wasn’t a stink bomb, after all, but all smoke and flash. She would have to ask Hernandez later if she had smeared the mine with something stinky to throw the dragons off and lied about it to further cover her intention.

Questions could come later. There was movement in the smoke, and even though she possessed night vision from her dragon powers, that didn’t mean she could see through smoke.

She could hear, though, and right now, what she heard was Heartsbane’s cursing.

“You fucking monkey bastards. You had to use a mine to get me. I see how it is—I can’t transform but you can use every little trick humans have learned over the years.”

“Talk all the shit you want as you make your way to the exit,” Keith retorted and sounded way too confident. “I tagged you fair and square. You’re dead.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said.

Kristen continued to scoot through the smoke. She thought she moved back down the alley through which they’d come, but with the smoke and flash, it was hard to tell. She was disoriented and honestly, she didn’t really want to move away from the action.

More airsoft shots chattered, followed by another curse, although this one was much more good-natured.

“All right, all right, I see how it is. I’m not gonna lie, that wasn’t bad for humans. It never would’ve worked for real, but you do know how to play the game,” Emerald said.

More gunshots followed and Beanpole yelped. A dragon had obviously shot him. It had become five against three.

Another pop song blared, this one without words and only the beat and screaming synthesizers over the top of it.

Kristen pushed herself to her feet and Lumos collided with her.

“You’re still alive?” the ancient gold dragon asked her. A surreal question, to be sure.

“Yeah.”

“I thought so. Your aura doesn’t have any offense in it yet. This way. Stonequest and I will eliminate these little whelps.” There was so much to be said for one’s tone of voice. He didn’t sound angry at all and was merely trash-talking in a fight. She found that she liked the old dragon more and more. He was wise, capable, and patient. She missed Timeflash—the other member of Stonequest’s team—but she was away in Australia on other business. Her powers were unique and therefore sometimes needed at the far corners of the globe. Kristen wondered if that was her own future. There were no other dragons with steel skin. As far as she knew, there hadn’t been a dragon like her before.

Lumos put a hand on her shoulder and she snapped back to the moment. She followed him to a corridor where Stonequest waited.

“Steel, you’re alive. Hell yes.”

“Hell yes, sir.” She grinned.

“This way circles to put us behind them. We’ll give chase but watch our feet. If we don’t step on any mines, we should be good. Our speed and reflexes are faster than theirs.”

“It sounds like a plan, sir,” Lumos agreed.

“Right,” Kristen said and didn’t bother to say that there was no way Hernandez had managed to make another mine, let alone more than one.

They raced forward in silence and burst into another tunnel, then stopped when they realized they were behind some of the human SWAT team members.

“They found us. Move, move, move!” Drew yelled. He was the farthest away, and—being the tallest of the humans—provided cover fire over the top of their heads while the others hastily retreated.

Not all were fast enough, though. Before Kristen flung herself into cover, she fired a few shots and managed to hit Keith in the back.

He fell—a caricature of someone shot—and landed untidily, laughing like an idiot. For someone who cared so much about his online presence, he could be seriously dumb about stuff like that. A video of a cop laughing about someone being shot—even during an airsoft game—could very easily end someone’s career.

The dragons didn’t hit any of the others, though. Hernandez and the Wonderkid made it past Drew, and he followed them around a corner.

“They’ll try to keep near the center,” Lumos shouted over the music as the three dragons gave chase. “If they go near the edges, there will be fewer paths for them to follow.”

“Don’t let them get away,” Stonequest said, drew on his dragon speed, and moved even faster. They rounded the bend to see another long, straight passage that opened into a number of others before it came to a dead end. Jim stood at the far side of the passage before them, both hands on his airsoft pistol. As soon as Lumos came into view, he began to fire.

He’d miscalculated as airsoft pistols didn’t have the kind of power that rifles did. Lumos was able to avoid the flying pellets as easily as if they were big, clunky dodgeballs instead of tiny projectiles. He raced toward the Wonderkid and moved closer and closer while he dodged every pellet fired at him.

Entirely focused on his quarry, he didn’t register the gunfire from one of the side passages until the pellets struck him in the ribs.

Lumos slowed to a halt and looked over his shoulder at his teammates. “Well, I’ll be damned. They tricked me.”

Butters’ low, bubbling chuckle came from one of the side branches. She knew they’d held the sniper in reserve. Even though he had to use a pistol like the rest of them, he still had the skill required to set a trap and seize the opportunity.

“Well, I guess it’s only you and me,” Stonequest said to Kristen over the blaring pop music.

“You, me, and four humans,” she replied.

“We target the sniper first.”

She nodded.

Together, they raced down the passage toward Jim. He fired a few times at them but wasn’t able to dodge like they could so had to tuck out of sight when they fired at him. She spun into the doorway the shots had come and stopped short. Butters stood with his hands up. It wasn’t a passage, after all, but a dead end.

He wouldn’t have put himself in such an obvious position unless— Shots rang out from behind her. While they were barely audible over the music, they were familiar enough to alert her and her hearing identified them with little difficulty. She assumed that Heartsbane had been right about her senses, after all.

It was a damn close thing, but she managed to fling herself aside in time. The pellets rocketed past her and hit Butters in the gut.

“Ya got me! Ya yankee dragons got me shot by my own kind,” he said and clutched his stomach dramatically. Then, he shrugged. “I’ll go check the barbecue.” He liked airsoft but compared to his teammates, it simply wasn’t a priority and definitely not with smoked meat on the menu.

“Not before I do!” Lumos yelled from the other corridor.

“Three left,” Stonequest said, still obviously very much committed to the game.

“Let’s go,” Kristen responded.

They jogged down the passage toward where Jim had been.

“Do you smell that?” he asked when they paused in another empty part of the course.

“Something stinks.”

“It must be your friend who made the mine.”

She nodded and realized that the other dragons’ senses really were more sensitive than hers. It was something to work on.

“This way,” he said and followed his nose.

Kristen obeyed, and the two of them snaked down a few passages. After a half a minute of silent pursuit—except for the music that now sang about California thighs with Mexican hair—they located the human team.

Jim was again at the end of the corridor, ready to fire.

“It’s another trap,” she was about to say, but she didn’t bother. Stonequest had already raced forward, dodging their opponent’s pellets easily. She had recognized the tactic—it was obvious, really—and maybe she should have tried harder to say something. A part of her thought it might be best if the humans won. After all, dragons were incredibly arrogant, and that didn’t bode well for human-dragon relations. Plus, there was a group of people out there who had actually killed a dragon. They needed to be confronted by humans who could show them that they weren’t a lesser species but a force to be reckoned with.

Although that didn’t mean she would let them win either. Dragon SWAT would be forced to admit that she was talented if she defeated the human SWAT team when the other the dragons were eliminated. It would demonstrate the fundamental concept of know thy enemy. If dragons really faced a cabal of humans who wanted to kill them, they needed to know humans in a way they simply didn’t.

She followed Stonequest down the passage and went so far as to shoot at the human as well. It looked like her half-hope of the humans beating dragon kind wouldn’t come to fruition because her dragon teammate shot Jim in the gut.

The Wonderkid—ever the politician—smiled and dropped his weapon. “Good game, Stonequest.” He stuck a hand out to shake.

The dragon, confused but honorable as well, paused, shifted his pistol to his off-hand, and extended his hand.

Without warning, Drew darted out of another tunnel and shot him.

Jim began to laugh so hard that Kristen thought he might genuinely pee his pants.

“That’s bullshit!” Stonequest growled and his aura reflected his frustration. “You offered to shake!”

“In the middle of a fight. Come on, man. Really?” Jim sputtered between bouts of laughter. “Is that what you do when you face another dragon? Simply stop and shake hands?”

“You know I wouldn’t have fallen for it if it wasn’t you, right? Steel always says you’re the goodie-goodie,” Stonequest said. Despite losing, his mood didn’t seem to have soured too much. He must have recognized that falling for a handshake had been particularly foolish of him.

“Come on, let’s go,” the Wonderkid said.

“Are you kidding me? I want to see the end of this.” He stepped out of the path between Drew and Kristen.

“I learned a few things from you, Steel Dragon,” her old boss said and picked up a piece of plywood in his left hand.

She responded by firing her pistol at him. He blocked the pellets with the wood and she smiled. He’d definitely learned that from her.

Before he could return fire, she rushed forward. “I know Hernandez will throw firecrackers or some shit at me, Drew, which simply means I have to beat you before—”

The plywood wall beside her fell and thrust her into the opposite wall.

Her reflexes kicked in and she shoved it off without falling. It collapsed entirely and Hernandez groaned from under it.

“You blew your load early.” Kristen turned to Drew but it was too late.

He’d already fired a dozen shots at her and had been careful enough to aim all over her entire body, not only her chest. Although she was able to dodge the first few pellets, that only moved her into the path of the others.

“Dance, dragon!” Jim hooted, even though he was already out.

The pellets found their target. She’d lost. That meant Drew and the humans had actually won.

“Good game,” he said with a broad grin, way too proud of himself.

“Are you ready for that handshake now?” Jim asked Stonequest.

“In your dreams, human,” the dragon replied and slapped him across the back instead. The two laughed. It seemed that some friendships had been made in the battle.

Drew fired his pistol in the air three times, and the pop music—thank God—stopped.

Together, human and dragon wandered toward the exit of the course. It was a nice moment until yelling became audible from outside the arena. She looked at Stonequest, who also looked concerned.

The group paused to listen but a massive pillar of flame blazed into the sky.

Concern overcame curiosity and, as one, they raced to the exit.

CHAPTER FOUR

Outside the arena, a dragon the color of ivory and beautiful in her rage screamed at the humans before her. “You may have won this stupid game, but that proves nothing. You had to cheat to beat us. And besides. This is the foe you would truly have to defeat.”

“Fuck off, you big lizard,” Hernandez said as soon as she emerged from the course and before she could see what was happening, even though she wasn’t part of whatever had started the argument.

Heartsbane turned to the woman and spread her huge white wings. “I could incinerate you without even trying. This is the true threat of our kind. You using mines is like us becoming this.”

Lumos—still in human form—ran between the two adversaries.

“There was nothing said about using other tools to win,” he said and held his hands up in a placating gesture. “We said pistols and no transformations. We didn’t say what else was or wasn’t allowed and definitely nothing about mines or bad music. The humans beat us in this game, fair and square.”

“I’m only saying it was a game, is all,” Heartsbane snapped.

“Yeah, no shit it was a—” Hernandez started to shout but Keith ran over, threw an arm around her shoulder, and dragged her away.

Without the pop music blaring, Kristen could hear better than she’d realized. Right now, she could hear him telling her that he’d said Heartsbane stank from the bomb and that had set her off. There was no reason to make her even more angry at Hernandez. In response, she laughed.

Heartsbane transformed into her human form and the dragon mediator relaxed. She strode over to a table and sat to redo her hair in a huff.

“I will say this about dragon kind,” Butters shouted with a full mouth. “You know how to smoke a pork shoulder.”

Lumos frowned and marched back toward the grill. “That wasn’t ready yet.”

“Nonsense. It’s fine.”

“The center might still be tough.”

“Might? I feel like you should know whether it is or it isn’t, don’t you think? Besides, it’s time to eat. If the meat’s not ready, you really don’t know what you’re doing.”

The low-stakes argument and smell of the food lured all the combatants over to the grill. While Butters and Lumos argued the proper resting time, everyone else piled their plates with coleslaw and buns. There was nothing like a springtime barbecue to bring people together, Kristen thought.

She was about to head over and join them when she felt Stonequest’s aura tug at hers.

Startled, she turned to him and he gestured for her join him at a table. She approached and sat.

“I’m sorry we lost,” she lied, knowing full well that he could see through it. “I thought Hernandez would have another explosive ready.”

He waved off the phony apology for what it was.

“It’s fine. Really, I wanted to thank you again. Setting this up was a really good idea. We need to think of our two teams as allies, not competitors, and this was a good exercise for my people.”

“Oh yeah? I thought you might be bitter about losing to humans,” she replied.

Stonequest shook his head and snorted. “This style of fighting isn’t something we’ll ever have to do in the field. It’s far more likely that we’ll have to engage in dragon to dragon battles, which we practice all the time. This kind of activity is good to get us out of our comfort zone—like go-kart racing, or mini-golf.”

Kristen could tell from his aura that he wasn’t worried at all, which she found kind of annoying. “Fair enough. Human police have to train for gunfights all the time, so it makes sense that they won, even without dragon abilities.” If the dig bothered him, he didn’t show it. “But don’t you think that with dragon-based ammunition in the hands of people it might be worth Dragon SWAT’s time to practice with handguns in human form more often?”

Stonequest’s aura shifted from relaxed to uncomfortable, even though his posture didn’t change at all. Sometimes, it was odd communicating with a dragon in human form—definitely odder than talking to one while they were in dragon form. “I still have doubts about the conclusions you drew from that case.”

“Conclusions I drew? We have the fights on camera. A human killed a dragon with a handgun. Period. The only way I was able to stop her from killing another dragon was by using my human form. A dragon body presents too big a target.”

“Maybe you have a point there, but let’s look at the evidence. We found no trace of any of the bullets, which makes determining how it was done almost impossible.”

“But we know it was a human.” She had argued this point so many times and yet he still routinely dismissed it.

“I simply don’t see how a human could have made a bullet that can kill dragons and then vanish. It’s ridiculous. There has to be another explanation. We simply haven’t found it yet. It would be more realistic to think that they obtained it from a dragon.” Maybe he was named Stonequest not only for his stony appearance in his dragon form but also for his impossible stubbornness.

“Is it as unbelievable as a team of humans defeating a team of dragons in a tactical exercise?” she said, unable to help herself.

“Come on, Kristen. Your human friends obviously explored this arena beforehand, buried that mine, and studied the layout. This hardly counts.”

Kristen looked at her friends, both dragon and human. They’d given up on waiting for the pork shoulder and carved into it to pack their buns with smoked meat. Butters nodded appreciatively. Hernandez and Heartsbane seemed engaged in some kind of a shit-talking competition. The others sat at a table and talked amicably enough.

“Stonequest, even a month ago, this would have been impossible. There are vast rifts between human and dragon culture. I think you might not fully understand how much humanity has grown in the last hundred years. Think about it—electricity, cars, TV, assault weapons. Things will not continue as they have always been.”

“Do you really think you’re the first person to talk this way? I remember that during the Renaissance, people spoke in the same terms. Telescopes and other technological breakthroughs came along but didn’t change much.” Stonequest yawned.

“The Renaissance did change everything, but things are poised to change even more now. Think about this. Dragons are used to being virtually invulnerable. Your kind—”

“Our kind,” he interjected.

She thought it was annoying to quibble with her about her own identity during an argument but her point still needed to be made. “Sure, you’re right. Our kind. Our kind is used to being invulnerable. But that strength can be a serious weakness. Look at my steel skin. I began to rely on it and that proved to be disastrous. Not only did Shadowstorm realize tasers were effective against me but now, these bullets can cut right through the steel.”

“But it was a dragon who figured that out.” Why was he being so stubborn? Was he really this adverse to change or was it simply too hard to process? Kristen didn’t know exactly how long he had been alive but since before the Renaissance, apparently. Her own dad got stressed when he went to a different pizza place than his usual one, and he was in his sixties. Maybe dragons had a kind of crisis of thought caused by their old age.

“A dragon might have figured it out, but he used human tech to do so. I’m only trying to say that thinking oneself invulnerable is actually a fairly dangerous mindset. It makes it too easy to get surprised.”

Stonequest straightened at the table and blew out a long breath. It steamed, despite the spring afternoon being fairly warm. “The problem our two cultures have faced for so long is that there’s no common ground. You can change all that. Don’t burn down the bridge before we’ve even finished building it. I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m simply saying we need more evidence to lead us to the right answers.”

Kristen nodded and let him join the rest of the party. She simply didn’t know what else to do. He dug his heels in and clung to his beliefs despite being confronted with evidence that directly disproved them.

Maybe humans and dragons were more alike than she had realized.

CHAPTER FIVE

Obscura arrived in the city of Detroit at nighttime. She preferred nights. Shadows were her friends, after all, but something about the way the city was garishly lit up appalled her. The arrogance of these humans, to take the night like they took everything else. To subjugate a force of nature and then complain when they themselves were subjugated. It was hypocritical. If humans recognized that they were above some forces—those as ancient and powerful as the dark—they also needed to recognize that there were others more powerful than them. Forces like her.

This city and the rats who called themselves its rulers had taken her son from her. Sebastian Shadowstorm had been born to rule. He’d had not only one unusual power but two, plus a mind and the strength to back it up—or, at least, Obscura believed he had. She was not so arrogant in her own abilities to fail to recognize that she’d made a mistake with regard to the true abilities of her son, especially his intelligence. But it mattered not. He was gone, killed by a human—no, worse than a human. He had been killed by a dragon—one with powers greater than most yet who thought of herself as human. It was unnatural, obscene, and utterly not right.

Her task in this shining city was to fix it.

And—unfortunately for her quarry—the trail wasn’t hard to follow. There was a video of her and her son fighting online, posted by one of the Steel Dragon’s human lackeys.

She found it to be the most offensive thing she’d ever witnessed in her millennia of life. How dare this Kristen Hall with her peasant’s name hurt her son and broadcast it on the Internet like a battle with him was nothing but cheap pornography.

When the news of his death finally reached the world of dragons, she had already heard about it through her own channels. She was thankful that there wasn’t a video of that battle, but she knew in her heart that if there were, the humans would have posted it all the same. They had no scruples and no sense of decency. This Kristen, the Steel Dragon, was no different. She had to be completely destroyed. Humans could be useful and those who weren’t could be squashed, but Kristen had the toxic ideas of humans plus the powers of a dragon. She represented a real threat to dragons and would try to push the status quo in exactly the wrong direction. Obscura would do a good thing by killing her. In fact, it would be a gift for dragons everywhere. The hurting that she would do beforehand would be the only part that she would personally enjoy.

And how could she not take the death of her son personally? He had died in a trash facility, of all places, hardly a fitting grave for a dragon of his pedigree.

Obscura flew toward it now. The location was no secret and the Internet had maps and diagrams. There were even conspiracy nuts who had somehow traced out the battle.

She didn’t shy from the Internet the way most dragons did. Especially in the wake of Sebastian’s death, she threw herself into human culture and technology. Obviously, the creatures were gaining in power. Dragons had long had a power advantage over humans, but there was much more to it than that. One of dragon kind’s greatest strengths was their auras. The ability to communicate instantaneously on an emotional level was powerful, as was the ability to manipulate lower life forms.

Humans now had those abilities. Their technology made them smarter than they were individually, and although most of them squandered this power, she would not make the mistake her son had of underestimating her opponent. She would use Kristen’s people to kill her. Oh, revenge would be a sweet thing.

Moments later, she soared over the grounds of the facility where he had done battle. She landed amongst the trash trucks in her dragon form.

While Sebastian was large, she was truly massive. She was larger than a garbage truck, large enough that she could probably pick one up and lift it high enough into the air to drop it and destroy it completely.

Part of her wanted to do that now—the same part that her son had no doubt inherited and failed to exercise control over—but she didn’t. Instead, she settled between the trucks and flashed her aura once to make the workers think nothing of her. They would continue to go about their work. When they went home to their human wives and broods of children, they would fail to mention the massive dragon who had prowled among them. They wouldn’t mention her bat-like wings or her scales that seemed to change color depending on the light shining on them. Nor would they mention her crown of horns or the anarchic spikes at the tip of her tail. They wouldn’t mention a damn thing, because her aura could hide her from them almost effortlessly.

The failure to properly hone this skill was Sebastian’s first mistake. He’d had a penchant for the garish and had liked his human servants and the pleasures they could provide him. While he had hidden from some humans, he’d relied on others. He had been weak, whereas his mother had to be strong.

She told herself to be strong as she entered the facility and transformed into human form as she did so.

As a human, she was unremarkable—average size and build, a little thin, and old. She had white hair, light brown, wrinkled skin, and a face she kept devoid of emotions. If she chose to, she could appear much younger, however. Auras affected perception, and perception was the window to the mind. She didn’t need to for this task, but Obscura could mask her true appearance in many forms. For now, she settled for the invisibility of being instantly forgotten. She wore a suit, a dis-gendering of human culture that she—for once—approved of. As she walked through the facility, the humans who noticed her treated her like a visiting bureaucrat, someone to avoid and nothing more. If her son had learned anonymity, he might still be there but of course, one couldn’t teach a shark to fly like a bird.

Obscura approached the towering incinerator. It was old in human terms, her research had told her that much, but she could tell parts of it were new. It had been touched by magic. She could feel that and knew it had been rebuilt by the dragon Timeflash and the mages who served her. How convenient that this particular dragon was on another continent at the moment. The last thing she wanted was to face human mages. They occupied a frustrating middle ground between the two cultures that she would happily grind out. She thought it unremarkable that her web of secret influence spread to other continents and was such that a murder could be used for a distraction, but there were surely others who would have been awed by such effortless power.

Ah, but now was not the time to think about that. Her purpose was to look upon the place of her son’s destruction and understand what had happened there.

She stepped inside the incinerator. As soon as she’d moved within range of the humans who worked at the garbage processing plant, she’d used her aura to tell them to stop burning the trash. As a result, what she now walked into wasn’t a blazing fire but a mountain of smoldering coals. The heat didn’t bother her at all, though. It would take temperatures far higher than this to harm even the weakest of dragons, and she was most certainly not the weakest of them.

Although the bricks were no longer below where Shadowstorm’s body had been robbed of its life and turned into a corpse, she could see his blood on them all the same. It was spread all the way up the shaft. Timeflash had restored the structure but she hadn’t been able to remove the blood. Now, even in the heat of the incinerator, his dragon blood was still present. Like molten glass, it clumped together on different bricks, black and hot.

Obscura touched one of the drops on a brick in front of her but felt nothing. Her son had already been dead too long for these tiny specks of blood to still hold any of his essence. Despite a lifetime that stretched millennia, despite losing hundreds of friends, she felt her heart lurch at this lack of sensation. Not toward sadness and definitely not toward remorse for the loss of her foolish son but toward anger. This Steel Dragon bitch has snuffed out my son’s life in a garbage pile, she thought bitterly. Sebastian had been many things—arrogant, impetuous, and hedonistic—but he deserved more than to die and be forgotten in a heap of trash.

And to think that humans were part of his death. The disrespect to dragon kind and the blatant disregard of the natural order was almost too much. She swallowed and fought back the churning pit of fire in her stomach. She wanted to burn this entire building to the ground so everyone in this cursed city would know she was there and fear her, but she knew that would be counterproductive. If she announced herself, the Steel Dragon would come for her and Obscura would have to kill her. She didn’t want that, not yet.

But she didn’t want to simply leave her son’s body to be forgotten either. She knelt amongst the coals at her feet and pushed aside the burned trash, stumps of chair legs, and pieces of metal that had once been screws or broken tools. There was a fair amount of debris to clear away but she finally found the brick floor beneath the garbage.

She extended her hands to feel for her son’s presence or some memory of him. There was power in dragon’s blood as there was in all things dragon. This place would no doubt give humans uncomfortable feelings and even spawn ghost stories given enough time. That was if she could find—

Her search located a puddle of blood, Sebastian’s life essence spilled there in this place of ultimate human waste. It was far larger than any of the burnt specks that had been on the bricks magically rebuilt into the towering incinerator. She touched it and it clung to her fingers, still slightly sticky despite a fire being burned atop it every day for months now. She’d had to wait until Dragon SWAT stopped their regular patrols there and she was relieved that some of the blood was still almost slick.

Obscura raised her right hand and transformed the pointer finger of her left hand into its dragon form. She extended the clawed digit, pointed it at the palm of her hand, and scored a line across her palm. Blood blossomed and with it, the pain of being wounded by a dragon’s claw.

The dragon pressed her bloody palm against Sebastion’s blood. She added her own rage to the energy present in the residue to further taint the site to the human psyche before she continued with something a little more extreme.

Still on her knees, she spoke words in a language long unused. To say it was forgotten would be a disservice to the type of memory dragons had, but it was safe to say that a human hadn’t heard words said in this tongue since they’d settled in cities to serve dragon kind.

It was a guttural, rasping sound, only possible to make by letting her teeth and tongue change to their true form, that of a dragon. Although the words were unknown to human ears, the message might have been familiar.

“I vow to avenge my son, to make his tormentors suffer like he suffered, and to kill his killer. May my blood see it so.”

The heat of the oath coursed through her arm to bind her to these words. It would strengthen her as long as she served it. It was old magic, old and powerful, and somehow tied to the same magic that let dragon’s bodies exist despite them going against what humans called “physics.” If her purpose faltered, the magic of the oath would remind her of her duty with the oldest of memory aides—pain.

But Obscura wasn’t worried about that. Her plan was not to murder the Steel Dragon as quickly as possible but to make her as desperate as her son had been. He had made his last stand in a glorified garbage heap. That spoke of fear and desperation. His murderer must feel the same thing before she was snuffed out, and the humans who served her must feel it ten-fold. The language with which she spoke the oath made this distinction clear.

It was not death that she wanted for this dragon and her band of human servants but emotional collapse. When she finally ended their lives, they had to have reached a place where they begged for their own death, if not consciously, then in their dreams. This would mean that when she did kill them—and kill them she would—relief would be the last thing they felt. Relief at finally escaping the shadow of dread that had hounded them. Relief at finally being free of a world ruled by dragons.

Oh yes, she thought. Oh yes, this would definitely be fun. As the magic of the oath coursed through her, she felt it strengthen both her resolve and her body itself.

She walked from the facility with her shoulders back and head held high. The power she felt—taken from the place of her son’s death—bolstered her. She would feel this way as long as she endeavored to make the Steel Dragon suffer.

The old dragon decided that she might actually enjoy her stay in the Motor City.

It was with giddy excitement that she once more transformed into her dragon body. She was no larger—after all, she was already quite massive—but there was an energy in her muscles that could only come from a dragon sworn to vengeance. She flapped her wings, took to the air, and raked her claws across a garbage truck to tip it as she passed.

In the morning, the workers would report it as a malfunction. They’d explain the gashes as best they could, but if their supervisors chose to investigate, it might become clear how large a threat had come to their city.

Obscura flew into the night sky toward her hideout.

There was much to prepare—traps within traps and feints within feints. She couldn’t wait to reveal herself to the Steel Dragon but wait she would. Her oath would give her patience until she’d taken everything from the aberration and then, she would snuff out the creature that shouldn’t be—a dragon who’d killed another to protect people.

The idea of that was almost enough to make her wish to declare war on the Steel Dragon and the humans she served, but the oath she swore reminded her of her purpose. War was about eradication. This was about suffering.

The time for a fight would come. Until then, she had much to do.

CHAPTER SIX

Kristen had been impressed with the pork shoulder that Lumos had smoked—crisp on the outside yet tender on the inside. While she thought it could have gone for another ten minutes, there were people who would have disagreed. She only felt confident in having such a particular opinion because of where she now stood beside her brother while he worked the grill in his parents’ backyard.

“I hope you’re hungry, Krissy.” Brian lifted the lid of the grill to reveal four deboned chickens, each being crushed beneath a brick. This was one of his favorite dishes. Brick-chick, he called it, and she knew he’d waited all winter to be able to indulge that particular preference. Now that spring was here, her family would basically live in the backyard, which suited her perfectly. She tried to come home at least once a week—although sometimes it was closer to once a month—so she could keep in touch. If barbecue would be part of that equation until the snow started to fall again, she had absolutely no problem with that.

“I’m starved.” She realized she’d salivated over the chicken sizzling away beneath the bricks instead of answering him. “Although yesterday, Lumos made some damn good pork shoulder. He knows how to use his dragon abilities to keep the temperature exactly right.”

“Oh, wow. Someone named Lumos is a dragon? What a shocker. Do you really think his food will be better than mine?” Brian didn’t sound like he thought it was funny. In fact, he sounded kind of pissed.

“Hey, your grilling is good and always has been. It was only interesting to see him use his abilities to do something that—”

“That people have to slave away at?” Brian retorted before she could finish.

“No…I mean, yes, I guess. I’m simply trying to make small talk. Are you all right?”

“Trying to make small talk by saying my grilling is less than exactly right. Gee, what a compliment.”

Kristen didn’t know what to say to that, so she wandered inside and left him with his brick-chick. There was something about him that seemed off, but she couldn’t quite place her finger on it. It was almost like something pushed at his aura, but she would have been able to tell if that was the case.

In the house, her parents were setting the table.

“Hey, guys!” She gave her mom a hug and kissed her dad on the forehead.

“Hi, Kristen,” Marty turned back to a bowl of potato salad.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” Frank said. “Did you go straight around back or something?”

“I flew. It’s more efficient than driving and better for the environment too.”

Brian came through the back door with his platter of chicken. He’d left the bricks outside, although his face was as red as they had been. “Really, Kristen—really?”

“Really what?” She had no idea what she’d said.

“Now dragons are better for the environment?” he demanded as if it was the most offensive thing in the whole world.

“Instead of cars? Yeah, obviously. No fossil fuels. What’s your deal?”

“My deal is that you’re acting all high and mighty about being a dragon. Shit, at least people are trying to make electric vehicles and solar panels and shit. What do dragons do for the environment? Light more shit on fire?”

“Brian Hall! Language!” Marty snapped. “I will not have that kind of talk at my table.”

“We’re not at the table, Mom,” he replied querulously.

“Don’t argue semantics, Brian, or I’ll steal the cord to your game station!” Frank took a place at the table as if sitting there would support his wife’s point.

“Jesus, Dad, it’s a Playstation, not a game station,” Brian protested.

“Like I said, semantics. Now put that chicken on the table. It smells too good to let it get cold.”

That put a smile on Brian’s face. There was nothing like good food to cool a hot temper.

The Hall family sat and dug in. The chicken was great. Brian had obviously brined it because the meat was tender, moist, and dripping with flavor. Her mom’s potato salad featured fresh herbs from the garden. Marty had always been able to use her windowsills for gardening space, so as soon as the outdoors thawed, she had plants in the ground. That she had enough dill to season the potato salad and lettuce for a tossed salad counted as a victory over nature itself in Kristen’s book.

“Mom, these herbs are awesome,” she said, her mouth still half full. “You know, on some of those dragon mansions they have mages who control the climate on a local scale to extend the growing seasons.”

“Gee, how impressive. Magic herbs while one in seven Americans live with hunger,” Brian said.

She shot him a look that was supposed to say, “What’s your problem?”

He returned it with a glare that very clearly said, “You.”

Quite honestly, she had no idea what she’d done wrong. She decided to try flattery, “The chicken’s good too.”

“Even for your advanced dragon taste buds?” Brian sneered.

“All right, I don’t know what happened outside but it needs to stay outside,” Frank said in as close to his cop-voice as he could with a mouthful of salad. “You two have been at each other’s throats since Kristen got here.”

“I haven’t been at anyone’s throat,” she protested.

“Can a human be at a dragon’s throat? Is that even possible?” Her brother’s voice dripped sarcasm.

“Whatever!” Frank yelled. Judging from her mom’s expression, he had crossed some unspoken decibel threshold. There was a moment of extremely awkward silence before Marty cleared her throat.

“Brian, how’s the job hunt going?” she said by way of changing the subject.

“Not good.” He sagged. “I can’t find any game tester gigs here in Detroit and well… I don’t know if I want to move.”

“Why not? It feels good to get out of your parents’ house,” Frank said. He’d tried to get his son out on his own for years. “Going to another city might be fun too. I spent some time in Milwaukee before coming back to Detroit. It gives you perspective.”

“I know—really, I do, but it’s, well… I downloaded one of those dating apps.”

Kristen’s mom immediately perked up at the word ‘dating.’ She cleared her throat. “Someone please tell me that a dating app involves actual dating.”

“Yeah, Mom, of course it does.” Brian glared at her with far less annoyance than he had at Kristen. “The thing is, I actually have a date coming up this week, and I know that’s not a big deal or whatever, but…well, this will kind of be my first date. I guess I don’t want to leave Detroit yet, you know? But I can’t get an apartment here because there are no jobs for gaming.”

“God forbid you get a job outside of the Playstations,” his father muttered.

“I, for one, am excited that you’re looking for a woman to spend time with,” Marty said, absolutely beaming. “Of course you can stay here a while longer. It’s great to see my little boy finally grow up!”

Frank rolled his eyes so hard they almost fell out of his head, but he didn’t say anything else about it. Instead, he changed the subject to Kristen’s job, his favorite topic of conversation over dinner. “So, Kristen, any new busts for Dragon SWAT?”

She shook her head, finished chewing her mouthful of chicken, and swallowed. “No, not really. Everything’s been fairly quiet after what happened this winter.”

“Ah, too bad.” He looked heartbroken. The only thing he looked forward to more than Kristen’s stories of fantastic dragon police action was the Detroit Tigers.

“We did play airsoft, though. I brought my old team together and played against the dragons,” she said.

Her parents had never taken them to play airsoft, but since she had started playing with Detroit SWAT, she’d regaled them with stories from the arena more than a couple of times.

“Oh yeah?” Frank said and dared to hope for an interesting story.

“Which side did you play on?” Brian asked.

“With the dragons, of course,” she replied.

He sucked his teeth and scowled but didn’t say anything.

“Did you have fun?” their mom asked.

“Sure, Mom. We had the funnest, most everyone-is-a-winner time ever!” she joked. “To be honest, it was very cool. The humans actually won, believe it or not. They had to use some tricks, of course. I think they might have designed the course for how well they knew it plus, Hernandez used a mine rigged with a flash and some smoke, but still, they pulled it off.”

“Can you even hear yourself right now?” Brian demanded.

“What are you talking about?” Kristen was genuinely confused.

“The humans actually won—like it’s such a shock that people can stand up to dragons in a game that humans invented. I beat dragons online all the time.”

“It is a big deal,” she snapped. “Dragons are faster and stronger than people, you know that. They should be proud of themselves for beating us. And how can you know they’re dragons? People could simply lie about that online.”

“See!” Brian said and pointed a finger shiny with chicken grease in her face. “See? I knew it!”

“Knew what?” she asked, even though she didn’t really want to know whatever it was he was whining about. Was he mad that she’d trash-talked video games? That was one of her standard avenues of attack.

“You act like one of them.” He wiped his hands as he spoke. “You thought you were human until maybe a year ago. Even when you first found out, you were cool about being a dragon. But ever since you joined Dragon SWAT, you lord it over the rest of us. You act like being human’s not good enough.”

“Humans aren’t good enough when it comes to fighting dragons. Dragons can withstand explosions, gunshots, and all kinds of attacks that would kill people. It’s our duty to protect regular folk.” She tried to keep her voice calm. It wasn’t easy to argue about things that were so obviously true.

“So what, you think you know what’s better for us? Is that it? A few months with Dragon SWAT and you’ve seen the light?” Brian was so angry he practically spat the words.

“That’s enough, Brian,” Marty said, her gaze focused on her plate. Kristen knew that meant he had gone on about this for a while or at least since before she had arrived. When he was in one of these moods, it was better to let him get it off his chest than it was to push back, yet she couldn’t help herself.

“I don’t think I’m better than people. In fact, I think I’m way more accepting of human culture than any dragon I’ve ever met. Most of them think people are beneath them, true, but I’m trying to change that. I want to use my abilities to make the world safer for everyone, not only dragons.”

“Gee—wow, Kristen, how noble.” Her brother wielded the sarcasm like a razor. “So not only are you better than humankind, you’re better than dragons too. It’s great to be related to someone so wonderful. Oh, wait, are we related?”

“That’s enough, Brian,” Frank warned. Ever since she and the world discovered that she was a dragon, her dad had steadfastly refused to call her anything but family. Brian had acted that way too until now.

She knew her dad was right and that she should try to change the subject, but she couldn’t. He had struck a nerve. She spent so much of her time trying to bring dragons and humans closer and had even put together an airsoft match to start to bridge that divide, and he now gave her shit for it? He wasn’t being fair as she was doing her best.

“Seriously Brian, drop it. I came to save you from Shadowstorm’s minions. I killed him to make sure he wouldn’t come back to hurt you. Humans couldn’t have done that.”

“They only tried to kidnap us because of you,” he said venomously.

“So you think I should have left you to die? What are you even mad about right now, Brian?”

“I’m mad that I lost my sister. You used to care about me—about our neighborhood and about everyone. You don’t act that way anymore. Fair enough, I get it, there are no dragons attacking Detroit right now, so you get to go unwind with your coworkers or whatever. That’s fine. But it doesn’t mean crime stopped. A chicken place was shot up the other day and no one did a thing about it. Some guy’s been tossing bricks off one of the bridges onto cars below. Two people have died as a result of this asshole, and what do dragons do? Nothing. Shit, someone flipped a garbage truck.”

“You don’t understand. That’s not our jurisdiction.” Kristen regretted the words almost as soon as she said them. She couldn’t believe she’d actually uttered the same phrase Stonequest had used to get her to stop talking a thousand times over.

It was obvious that the words had had a similar effect on Brian that they usually had on her. His mood went from white-hot anger to ice-cold rage. He clenched his teeth and stared at her. She was about to speak—to apologize or to defend herself, she wasn’t entirely sure—but he spoke first. It was almost as if he had waited for her to speak so he could cut her off.

“So, let me get this straight,” he said, his voice low and cool, unlike her normally bubbly, good-natured brother. While he’d sometimes had spells like this when he’d get into funks, she hadn’t known what to do about it when they were younger and she didn’t know what to do about it now. He seemed so much angrier than usual. She wanted to reach out to him with her aura to calm him, but if he felt her doing that to him, it might push him even further. Instead, she decided to simply try to listen. “To be clear, humans aren’t in your jurisdiction. Is that right?”

She nodded. “Stonequest says that all the time. I guess it sank in and—”

“But you can fly in here in your dragon body, land in the backyard, cruise over the city, go in and out of human airspace, and obey human laws as you see fit. Do those even apply to you, by the way?”

“Not…technically,” she admitted. “But we’re supposed to follow them so we don’t—”

“What?” He cut her off again, his words like razors. “So you don’t make a scene? Or ruin your reputation?”

Kristen nodded at the truth. “That’s how it is now, yeah.”

“And you’re actually fine with that?” he demanded.

“No! Of course not. Dragons have underestimated humans for all of history. I’m trying to change that. That’s why I took this job, so I could change dragon culture from the inside. I know it’s not happening fast enough but that’s because—” She didn’t know what to say. That there were humans who hunted dragons with weapons that could actually level the playing field between the two species? That the dragons wanted to keep it secret? That it was kind of a good thing that dragons viewed humans as pets, or cattle, or servants rather than as a threat? That open combat between the two species wouldn’t be good for anyone?

“Let me guess, it's classified to dragon kind?” he taunted.

“So…who wants dessert?” Their mom pushed herself up from the table and went to retrieve a chocolate cake on the kitchen counter.

“No thanks, Mom. I was just leaving.”

“But Kristen, it’s your favorite,” Marty said.

“She made it for you, Kristen. Everyone does everything for you.” Brian had never sounded so angry about the prospect of eating chocolate cake.

“Damn it, Brian—” Frank said but Kristen didn’t hear the rest. She pushed herself up from the table, snatched her coat up, and marched into the front yard.

When she looked back through the living room window, she could see directly through the tiny house to the dining room. Brian and her dad were yelling at each other. Her mom threw the chocolate cake in the trash and began to do dishes, her posture and movements angry.

What was happening to her family? She wasn’t completely certain what had come over Brian, but it sure did seem like it was her fault.

The temptation was to transform right there, take to the skies, and forget about all this, but Brian was right. She had already turned herself into an international headline, and yet her parents refused to leave the house where they’d raised their children. The least she could do was not transform directly in front of it. There was no need to reveal the exact whereabouts of her family to the few people who didn’t know that she was a dragon

Instead of transforming, she ran and pushed herself faster and faster as she let tears streak down her face. She moved so fast they couldn’t even make it down her cheeks before they were pulled into the wind.

Kristen ran for seemingly endless miles, a loss of stamina now a thing of the past. Finally, lost and alone, she transformed in a back alley and became airborne. She knew she should go home and sleep. Tomorrow was a workday, but Brian was right about that, at least. No dragons had threatened the city for some time. It was better to use her abilities to help the regular people whom she had first sworn herself to protect.

Her search of the city below revealed nothing. Without Dragon SWAT’s system of signal fires and empathic awareness, she was limited to her own senses. And without a police radio, she was deaf to any people who needed help.

Eventually, she wheeled in circles high above the incinerator where she’d defeated Shadowstorm. Even it seemed to be going on with its normal activities without her. Her brother was right. A garbage truck had been toppled and people set about righting it using forklifts and chains they had made themselves.

Humans really could solve their own problems if dragons would simply get out of the way.

Finally, she went home and slipped into a restless night of sleep.

Her dream world was one without dragons. There, her family had a happy life and Brian thrived when he wasn’t forced to live in her shadow. She watched the whole dream from an invisible, ghost-like perspective.

When she finally awoke, she wasn’t immediately sure if she existed, let alone whether she deserved to.

CHAPTER SEVEN

At the office, Kristen found that there wasn’t enough coffee in the world to make her feel better. What made things even worse was that she’d looked forward to this morning. There was nothing as good as her mom’s chocolate cake and a cup of coffee, and yet even thinking about how disastrously dinner had gone filled her stomach with dread.

“Are you all right?” Lumos asked as he paused outside her office.

It was a human gesture to ask. She knew that he and probably every other dragon on the floor knew exactly how she felt due to her aura. Although she tried to control it, thinking about it merely reminded her how different her life was now that she was a dragon, which only made it worse.

She looked at him and tried to summon a smile. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You just did.”

“Oh, right, sure.”

He merely smiled encouragingly and waited for her to continue. It was kind of impressive that a dragon as old he was could seem so human but who better to talk to about this than him?

“Okay, don’t take this the wrong way but…well… I’m afraid I’m losing touch with my humanity.”

The old dragon studied her over his mustache for a long moment before he finally said, “What’s the question?”

That teased a weak laugh from her. “How do you stay focused on what’s important? Last night, my brother pointed out that for the last few months, I haven’t done anything to really help people. How is that okay?”

“You have, though. You stopped those zealots from murdering more dragons than only Windfire.”

“But isn’t that protecting dragon kind?”

Lumos stroked his mustache in thought before he sat in the chair opposite her. “You know, that’s a good question, one I haven’t really thought about for centuries. I suppose I think of it like this—it’s not our job to make rules.”

“You mean dragons? It seems to me like they actually make numerous rules.”

“No, I’m not talking about dragons. I’m talking about cops. We don’t make rules, we enforce them. Our job is to keep the status quo, keep society stable, and keep the streets from descending into chaos so the baker knows he can produce his loaves for everyone who needs them in the morning.”

“The baker?”

Lumos chuckled. “Okay, so maybe I need to update my references. The factory worker?”

“Not for much longer,” she said when she thought of all the factories that once powered the Motor City. Most of those were gone now.

“Okay, then that’s a good example. Our job isn’t to find new jobs for people. They do that themselves. Our job isn’t to stop them from stealing from one another or lying to each other. People do those things and so do dragons. That’s simply how it is.”

“So what is our job?”

“Our job is to…what’s the modern expression?” He paused as he considered what he wanted to say and his expression lit up when he found the expression he was looking for. “Our job is to stop the shit from hitting the fan.”

Kristen laughed, unable to help herself. “And if there’s no shit flying?”

“There will be. There always is.”

“And if our bosses don’t recognize it?”

“I think they normally do. Sometimes, they don’t react in the right way or quickly enough, but I think they always notice. Then, they tell us to react.”

“But what if dragons—or cops or whoever—are on the wrong side of it?”

“As long as our intention is to stop people from hurting each other, I think we’re on the right side of it. There have been some horrible abuses by both human and dragon police over the years. The way your politicians used police during your civil rights movement was awful but, in the end, the leaders did the right thing.”

“And you think the dragon council has a commitment to justice?” she asked. It was a question she’d been afraid to ask every dragon she’d ever met. She was almost afraid to ask now, but there was something about him that put her at ease. Perhaps it was simply his age. He was like a boulder in the way he did little but observe and act as a solid force.

“I think sometimes, they must be reminded that times are changing,” Lumos said carefully. “But—and maybe this is centuries of police work talking—I don’t think trying to stop humans from committing crimes against each other merely because work is slow is the way to do that.”

Kristen sighed. So she was simply supposed to sit there and do nothing? That was worse than anything else.

“Things will pick up, and when they do, you’ll be there. You’re on Stonequest’s team now. He doesn’t exactly sit things out.”

“That’s true,” she said and thought back to all the conflicts the dragon leader had involved himself in. Maybe part of being a dragon meant sitting back and letting people work things out for themselves and only getting involved when absolutely necessary. But how much longer would she have to wait for something to happen?

As if in answer to her question, He frowned, tilted his head, and smiled slowly at her. “Do you feel that?”

“Feel what?” All she could feel was her own miserable aura.

“Stone has something. He's on his way here, I think.”

A door at the end of the hallway slammed open with enough force to echo down the hallway. “I need Stonequest’s team on the roof in thirty seconds. Let’s go, dragons. This is not a drill!” Pounding footsteps meant that he had followed his own advice and raced to the roof.

“Thirty seconds? That doesn’t give us enough time to gear up,” she said. “Are there weapons on the roof or something?” She tried to recall if she’d ever seen anything, but if there were she hadn’t noticed.

“There will be very soon,” Lumos said and ran down the hallway.

She followed, impressed at the dragon’s speed despite his age, and took the stairs two at a time. Despite that, she still arrived on the roof without being winded. Dragon stamina was awesome.

“We have an unsanctioned battle happening about sixty miles northwest of here with collateral damage and the potential loss of human lives in the hundreds. Let’s move. We can talk more on the wing.”

With that scant information, Stonequest transformed into his dragon body. First, he was surrounded by dust. The cloud expanded and with a gust of wind, it was gone and a dragon stood in its place. In this form, he looked like he was made of marble—off-white with ribbons of green and pink shot through like his massive body had been cut from a quarry. With a pump of his wings, he took to the air.

“Don’t we need to gear up or something?”

“You’re a steel-skinned, fire-breathing beast who’s larger and stronger than any land animal on the entire planet. What gear do you think we need to bring?” Lumos asked, his voice light but his point serious.

“And we’ll simply fly there?”

“Did you want to ride in the back of a van?”

“No, never mind.” Kristen prepared to transform but he put a hand on her shoulder.

“Wait your turn. If we have two dragons up here at once, it’ll cave the roof in.”

She nodded, her anticipation now almost at a fever pitch.

Heartsbane transformed next. Other than her aura, she had no unusual abilities so her shift lacked the grandeur of Stonequest’s. Her body simply grew scales and wings, her limbs elongated, a tail sprouted, and that was that. By the time she was airborne, John Emeraldeyes was transforming.

The process was the same for him. He went from human to dragon like a rapid-motion version of metamorphosis.

“Your turn,” Lumos told her and she nodded. Steel shards erupted from her like glitter. They encompassed her and blocked her from the world around her while her body grew as if an interdimensional force filled a dragon mold with molten steel. A moment later, the steel glitter sucked back into her skin and she was a dragon. She pumped her wings and took flight.

Kristen gained altitude and spun in circles above the streets of Detroit, using the thermal from the concrete to take her higher and higher. She looked down once—hoping to catch a glimpse of Lumos’s transformation—but he’d already changed into his golden dragon body.

Higher and higher she rose until she reached the other dragons. As soon as she did, Stonequest headed off with Heartsbane and Emerald behind him. She knew that they were riding his wake. Like geese, they could ride the wind he tweaked, and although she had done it once before, right now, she was simply too nervous.

While the other dragons all matched pace with each other and flapped their wings in a repeating cascade that started with Stonequest, then to Heartsbane, then Emerald, and finally Lumos, she struggled to keep up.

“What’s the protocol when we get there?” Kristen asked. She had read the manuals of course—or tried to, anyway—but they were written in language that must have seemed out of date the moment it had been put to paper. There was something about confirming combatants’ right to duel, and a ground most proper, and weapons of flame and claw, but she hadn’t made any more sense of it than she had the Detroit SWAT training manual. Some things one had to learn by doing.

“Heartsbane, stick with Steel. Get her drafting your wake so she’ll be fresh when we’re there. Answer her questions too.”

Immediately, Heartsbane made her feelings about the order quite clear. Her aura screamed disdain for the rookie, but she obeyed all the same, dropped back, and positioned herself in front of her. “The first rule of engagement is to draft. If we show up flapping our wings like a flock of damn sparrows, we won’t calm the situation at all. Move to my right and follow my wingbeats.”

Kristen obeyed, despite it being difficult given that the dragon’s aura made it quite clear that she would far rather see her crash.

Still, she got the hang of it. She found if she focused on following Heartsbane, her wings could more easily do their job. If she tried to focus on flapping, she messed it up.

“So, what do I need to know? Will we secure the perimeter from the air, or what? Will I go in because I have steel skin? Will you do the negotiating because your aura is more powerful, or will you leave that to Stonequest since he’s the boss?” She couldn’t stop talking. Even when she flew through a tiny swarm of moths and felt a good number of them go down her throat, the questions continued to spew.

“The first thing you need to do is calm the fuck down,” Heartsbane replied, which of course didn’t help her nerves at all. “Unsanctioned battle can mean many different things. We’ll assess when we reach the location.”

“So we will land?”

“Can you please shut up for the flight? I won’t have any sway on them if all they can feel is how fricking annoyed I am to have to babysit the freaking human turned dragon.”

That effectively stopped the babbled flow of questions. It reminded her where she was in the world right now—namely, isolated. Too physically dragon to be human but too emotionally human to be a dragon. It really sucked. She had a thousand more questions to ask, but she kept them to herself.

Her focus shifted to an effort to tell herself that she wouldn’t rush in and would follow her boss’s lead. The idea was good, but part of her knew that if people were in danger, she wouldn’t be able to help herself. Hopefully, Stonequest recognized that this was the nature of the dragon he’d hired.

They could see the destruction from miles away. Houses were all but demolished as if airplanes had been dropped on them and then removed. Between the houses, people ran, drove, and did everything in their power to get away.

Kristen could feel their fear, even from the sky. It was a palpable yellow, sweaty feeling, one that came when people were reduced to their most basic animal instincts—run, hide, and survive.

“What did this?” she asked, mostly to herself.

Heartsbane answered all the same. “Dragons, you twit.”

They soared past the fleeing people, over the abandoned town, and toward a hill in the middle of the town. On the sides were attractive houses, not mansions—there weren’t too many of those in Michigan outside Detroit—but nice all the same. A picturesque church stood at the very top of the hill.

Now, however, many of the houses burned from holes blasted into them, no doubt the aftermath of dragon fire. The church itself was completely ablaze. As she approached, she saw firefighters at the bottom of the hill, waiting and not rushing in.

“Why aren’t they helping?” she demanded.

“I thought you cared about humans.” Heartsbane sneered. “They could get roasted to a crisp if they go in now.”

Sure enough, another gout of flame erupted from the church and the blast was enough to finally weaken the steeple. It imploded and debris pounded into the roof which—already weakened by the fire—collapsed inside the building.

A roar came from within before a dragon was hurled from the interior, up and out through the broken roof. Before it could land, it flapped its wings and dove back into the structure, breathing fire with such force that the few windows still intact shattered outward.

“Let’s stop these assholes,” Kristen yelled to the team.

“Not yet,” Stonequest said. “Start the circles of warning.”

“What do you mean, not yet?” She wondered if she’d heard right.

“For fuck’s sake, Steel, we can’t simply rush in there and break up a duel. That’s against the dragon code of engagement.” Heartsbane scoffed like was supposed to be common knowledge.

“I thought this was unsanctioned combat,” she protested and followed her to join the other dragons circling around the church like a flock of vultures waiting for an animal to finally die.

“They shouldn’t be fighting here,” Lumos yelled from the opposite side of the wheeling pattern the five members of Dragon SWAT now maintained, “but if we interfere without giving them the circles of warning, we’ve essentially joined the battle.”

Kristen couldn’t believe this. They would simply let the dragons spew destruction and wreak havoc on the landscape below? It was a small blessing that the humans had escaped—she didn’t sense any of their auras—but what would they come back to? Many of their homes had already burned and now, their place of worship would be reduced to rubble.

Below, a dragon’s tail pounded through one of the walls, which then fell on top of it. The rubble slowed it and the other one—a coppery-toned, slender dragon—used this opportunity to attack the larger red dragon. It slunk in—moving fast like a skink—and caught hold of its adversary’s throat. With a violent gesture, it yanked its foe’s head back with such force that she thought the other dragon was about to be decapitated. Instead, the red dragon pumped its wings and avoided losing its head as it soared across the church turned battleground. The copper dragon still held it by the neck and controlled its trajectory, and the red dragon careened into the altar at the center of the church.

“We have to go in there,” Kristen roared in frustration. Three walls still remained, but not much else. If they didn’t step in now, nothing would be left standing.

“One more circuit,” Stonequest said and sounded as calm as Drew did on a stakeout.

She didn’t know if she could do it. How was she supposed to fly in lazy circles while the center of these people’s community was destroyed? Then there were the burning houses. Every minute these dragons battled was another minute the firefighters wouldn’t go in. Already, a few of the houses had collapsed in the flames, and the fires hadn’t stopped burning.

Orders be damned. These dragons had to be stopped.

She broke rank, veered toward the center of the circle they’d maintained, and dived toward the church. As soon as she broke rank, John Emerald did too.

Oh, thank God. It was a relief that she wasn’t the only person on the team horrified at the violence these dragons were allowed to inflict on this town and its place of worship because of protocol.

But he didn’t swoop down toward the church. Instead, he swerved in front of her, twisted his body, and clawed at her.

She flapped her wings to slow her descent and avoid a collision with him.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Making you follow orders. If you go in there now, these people might not get a damn thing.”

“They’ve already lost so much,” she screamed and tried to sneak around him, but he was too experienced. She wasn’t nearly as comfortable in flight as the other dragons. He was far more maneuverable and could take risks that she wouldn’t dare to attempt. As much as she wanted to help the people of this town, she didn’t simply want to tuck her wings and plummet. She might demolish another house or destroy one of the church’s remaining walls.

“If you interfere now, they get nothing back,” Emerald said.

Horrified, Kristen could only stare beyond his green wings as the copper dragon pounced on its adversary. The red dragon—larger and seemingly more powerful—caught it on its back legs and hurled it away and into the front wall of the church. The masonry literally disintegrated when the huge body bulldozed through it.

Still, the two combatants continued to fight. The red dragon glanced at the dragons above them and raced back into the burning wreckage.

“All right, three loops,” Stonequest said. “Steel, you follow our lead if you care about the people of this community.”

“If I care?” she shouted indignantly.

“This is not the time,” Lumos said as he swooped past her. Heartsbane also descended and once the three had landed, Emerald finally allowed her past.

She settled behind the other three dragons, the green dragon at her heels.

The five of them stood on the front steps of the destroyed church—front row seats to the senseless destruction of a holy place. By now, there was nothing left save two walls. She stared as the crucifix on the back of the church—already on fire—fell from the wall to join the devastation. It was a vision of hell on earth.

The combatants didn’t notice any of it. Instead, the red dragon pounced on its opponent. The copper dragon, unable to escape, thrashed with its tail and scattered smoldering wreckage as easily as a child could kick over a sandcastle.

“This is Dragon SWAT. I am agent Stonequest. We have completed the circles of warning and allowed each of you an honorable end to this duel. Now, in accordance with the will of the Dragon Council, you must cease this battle or face the intervention of this team of enforcement officials. Furthermore, any failure to comply will force the Dragon Council to seize your fortunes without trial and without regard to the outcome of this duel.”

Kristen couldn’t believe that he went through this entire speech while the dragons continued to brawl. Humans were read their rights too, of course, but after they were apprehended.

The dragons—who had both scuffled as he spoke—finally stopped when he spoke about seizing their fortunes.

“For the record, I won,” the red dragon said. His claw rested on the other’s chest, who was sprawled on his back. He spoke like a lord from a British drama and was the first dragon she had encountered whose voice sounded as self-interested as most dragons behaved.

“Sheep’s guts you did,” the copper dragon replied in an accent that she couldn’t place beyond being somewhere in eastern Europe. He slipped out of his rival’s talons, rolled over, and whipped the other dragon across the chest with his tail. The copper one was smaller—Kristen didn’t know how to express the size of dragons as they were so large. It was perhaps the size of four horses end to end instead of the red dragon’s five, but that didn’t seem to affect the ferocity of his strike at all. His adversary replied in kind and lunged once more at him.

“The success and veracity of your duel will be determined in front of a tribunal. Please step away from the human structure. If you attack us, the rules of duel will not apply. The five of us are allowed to use lethal force to subdue you if we must,” Stonequest said and sounded like a cop running through a script despite actually telling these dragons he might kill them.

The combatants tussled through the entire speech but once he stopped speaking, they ceased as well.

Kristen thought back to the airsoft battle between human and Dragon SWAT. In that battle, Stonequest had stopped fighting because Jim had offered his hand to shake. At the time, she had thought it absurd that he’d fallen for such an obvious distraction. Now, after seeing the other two dragons stop fighting after his little speech, she thought that maybe it did make sense. Dragons were beings of immense power and one of the ways they navigated this was with an overemphasis on manners. They were politicians, every one of them, and politicians weren’t supposed to brawl.

“Come this way at human speed,” Heartsbane ordered.

The dragons complied and approached the SWAT team. Their massive claws shattered what was left of the blackened pews into nothing more than chunks of coal.

CHAPTER EIGHT

To say the dragons stepped from the church would sell short the damage done to the structure. There was no longer a door to step through, let alone the wall that framed the entry. All that remained of the church was two walls—the back and the right if one faced the altar. In a span of minutes, the combatants had reduced the structure to burnt ruins.

Even the hill itself was scarred. Huge gashes rent the ground where the dragons had hurled one another’s spiny bodies across the lawn. Many oak trees had stood in front of the church not an hour before. Now, they were charred stumps. The heat from the dragon’s flame was no doubt enough to have killed even the roots.

In short, Kristen didn’t see how people could ever return there. A place of worship and community had become a scorched reminder of mankind’s fragile existence in the world.

The dragons emerged from the wreckage and came to stand in front of Stonequest. Both of them flicked their tails like cats annoyed at being pulled away from wounded birds. She had a sudden urge to neuter them.

“Surrender yourselves now,” the dragon leader said.

The two looked at each other, then back at him. “And if we don’t?” the red one asked.

In response, he blasted the earth in front of them with a stream of flame so potent it ripped the sidewalk that led to the church apart and instantly turned the nearby grass to ash.

“You are more than welcome to fight the five of us. In fact, if you choose to do so—and somehow win—the Dragon Council won’t hold you responsible for any further damages.”

Kristen was appalled that Stonequest even allowed them to consider this. If two fighting dragons had caused this much damage, surely a battle between seven would destroy the entire town, if not the state. It was an unthinkable, terrifying thought.

“Stonequest,” she said in response to the inner prompting to voice her complaint. That was why he had brought her on the team anyway, right? To be a voice for humans.

A hasty jab from Heartsbane’s tail told her to shut up. She intended to say something anyway but in the next moment, the two dragons transformed into their human forms. It appeared Stonequest’s bluff had worked, if that was what it was. She dearly hoped that was the case.

“He started it,” the red dragon said. In his human form, he was a rather tall and thin man covered in freckles. His British accent wasn’t quite as strong, although he sounded as imperiously whiny as before.

“I did no such thing!” the copper dragon responded. He was shorter with coppery skin almost the same color as his scales had been and slicked-back black hair. She was surprised to find that his accent was almost nonexistent in his human form.

Stonequest took out a notepad. “Start at the beginning, Lord…”

“Lord Rubicon.” The man bowed as if they were meeting at a dinner party instead of a place of wanton destruction. “I was courting the most beautiful dragon. She was enchanting—truly enchanting—with subtle power and a timeless beauty rarely seen.”

“She was an ancient, then?” Stonequest asked.

“Possibly. It’s no longer politic to ask about a dragon’s age, you know—a crossover from human culture, to be sure.”

“All right. What happened then?” the SWAT leader prompted.

“We were talking, having a grand time, when this barbarian interrupted our evening,” Rubicon exclaimed.

“That’s a load of ash and you know it. She was bored to death with you and practically begged me with her eyes to come over,” the other dragon said.

“And you are?” Stonequest asked.

“Lord Copperstrike,” he replied with a bow and a flourish of his wrist. “And I can tell you all about this woman. He had her cornered, so I went over to help her, right? Well, Rubicon wouldn’t let her go, so I challenged him to a duel for honor and all that.”

“Nonsense! You threw a drink in my face, took her by the hand, and ran from the tavern.”

“For starters, they’re called bars in this country, not taverns, and that’s not how I remember it at all.”

“You don’t remember it, or you don’t want to remember it?”

Kristen could feel their auras begin to froth again. She was in dragon form while they were simply humans, but she couldn’t let another fight break out. Without thought, she turned to steel and took a step forward.

Again, Heartsbane switched her with her tail.

“We can’t let them destroy this town,” she protested.

“Which means we shouldn’t attack them in dragon form,” Heartsbane said.

Lumos—to Kristen’s surprise—transformed into his human form and approached the two dragons, a set of heavy manacles in each hand.

“It sounds like we can chalk this up to the stupidity of youth, huh?” he said as he strode forward.

“That won’t be necessary, sir,” Rubicon said.

Copperstrike held his wrists out and let Lumos shackle them.

“Now, it would be one on five, Rubicon. Do you really want to test those odds?” Stonequest asked.

The troublemaker grumbled and stuck his wrists out petulantly for Lumos to shackle him. He wilted visibly when they locked decisively.

“Emerald, check for casualties and catch up with us. Lumos, you’ll transport the prisoners. Heartsbane, you’re on guard duty. If these two try anything, feel free to show them some of the things we’ve learned about the human form.”

“Give me a second to prepare them for transport, sir, and I’ll be ready,” Lumos said.

Stonequest nodded. Emerald took flight and soared to the town below. He landed amongst the wreckage of the town, transformed into human form, and was soon lost amongst the buildings.

“I don’t understand,” Kristen whispered to Heartsbane as Lumos fiddled with the manacles. “What good will those do against dragons? Can’t they simply transform and break them?”

“Oh, wow, I never thought of that. Hey, Stonequest, Steel pointed out that these dragons could transform and break the manacles.” The sarcasm in her voice rivaled Brian’s.

“We came willingly. There’s no reason to rub it in,” Rubicon snapped huffily.

Kristen looked from the human-shaped dragons to Stonequest, who chuckled, then at Heartsbane. “What? What did I say?”

“They’re magic manacles, obviously.” Heartsbane snorted. “Sometimes, I forget how goddamn annoying it is that you didn’t spend any time in the paper dungeon. You still don’t know a damn thing about dragon culture.”

“So if they are wearing them, they can’t transform?” She was reluctant to ask but needed to clarify exactly what it meant.

“Yeah, you got it. I guess your brain is made of metal too, then.”

She took a deep breath—being in her dragon form meant it was deep in a way human lungs could never be—and tried to calm her nerves. “I merely didn’t know that kind of technology existed, is all. The information would have been useful in the case with Windfire.”

“We don’t discuss open cases in front of criminals, Steel,” Stonequest snapped.

“And now you know why we didn’t tell you, rookie,” Heartsbane said. “It’s not the kind of information we want the whole of the human race to know about, and since spreading the news about whatever you damn well please is basically your MO, it wouldn’t have been too smart to tell you before we needed to.”

Her reply remained unspoken, not because she didn’t want to but because Lumos transformed into a dragon. He pumped his wings and elevated, then picked up each of the dragons by the chain connecting their manacles.

“Isn’t that cruel?” she asked. It had been a long flight and these men would dangle by their wrists the entire way.

“Damn it, Steel, can you pick a side? First, you want to barrel in there and bust some heads, then you don’t want to fight them when Stonequest gave them the option of innocence by duel, and now you’re concerned about what? Their shoulders getting hurt? They’re fucking dragons, remember? This won’t so much as make them sore the next morning.”

“It had better not,” Copperstrike shouted from above.

“And now you’ve made our team seem ununified in front of a threat. That’s amateur shit right there.”

“I’m only trying to understand—"

“Yeah, the thing is, I don’t care. I’ve never cared about humans and yet somehow, I’ve found a dragon I care for even less.”

Kristen didn’t have to ask who she was talking about. She simply sighed as Heartsbane took to the air, followed by Stonequest. It was exhilarating and amazing to flex these new powers and to learn more about what she was and what she could do, but damn, there were times when she really, really, missed being a regular human.

She took flight as well and caught up to Heartsbane and Lumos, who flew in companionable silence, then pushed ahead so she could be next to Stonequest. “What will happen to them?” she asked.

“Probably not much,” he said and glanced at the two prisoners who—true to Heartsbane’s word—seemed to be doing fine. “They’ll be fined for damages, definitely. Given the conflicting nature of their testimony, it will probably end up being a fifty-fifty split, but that’s for the courts to decide, not us. If this woman they were allegedly fighting over turns up, she might be able to serve as a witness.”

“But there had to be dozens of witnesses in the bar,” she protested.

“Sure, human witnesses. Those don’t count for much in a dragon court of law.”

“So humans don’t matter?”

“No, of course humans matter. If any humans died, there will be fees associated with that as well. Part of those will go to accountants whose job it is to pay out to the humans as well. We try to ensure that the people who are most affected get the largest slice of the pie.”

“A slice of the pie? This is their lives we’re talking about!” Kristen was aghast. “It’s bad enough to think about destroying a church and repaying the damage to a community by letting these monsters go free with nothing but a fine, but to let them go if they killed people?”

“It’s not like we’re talking about tiny amounts of money here. If a family loses more than one member, they can be set for life if they play their cards right. Things would be different if this was a dragon’s territory, but it’s not, so the courts will do their best to patch this up.”

“There’s no way this can be patched up.”

“We don’t encourage this behavior. The Dragon Council recognizes that humans are entitled to certain rights and that by infringing on those rights, it destabilizes dragon culture by affecting business and land claims, stuff like that. We all know it’s bad for business, and if it happened too often, it might make the humans rise up again. But that’s why the courts are there—to try to fix this as best we can.”

“But these are their lives.” She simply couldn’t understand how he could be so callous. The worst part about it was that he was one of the dragons who actually seemed to care about people.

“Yes, and I hope no one died, but the buildings are merely buildings.”

“It was a church.”

“At least it wasn’t Sunday, right?”

That, of course, was not her point at all.

“Look, I understand that you feel things aren’t quite equitable, and you’re right. But humans and dragons are fundamentally different. Humans recognize this with the other species. You eradicate termites, which is your right, and you protect the whales and dragons respect you for that. But you have to understand that there are a different set of laws because humans and dragons are different.”

“But I thought that even though they were different, they were still just.”

“Human laws are for human justice and dragons’ laws are for dragon justice,” Stonequest quipped in response.

“When I joined SWAT, I expected to be part of bringing criminal dragons to justice. Not asking for murderers to pay fines.”

“Alleged murderers,” he said. Oh, how she hated him in that moment. “Look, I know that our system is imperfect. We need more officers and smaller districts. We could have prevented far more damage if we had got here sooner. But not all dragons want to serve. That’s a people problem too.”

Was this really what Dragon SWAT was reduced to? It was supposed to be the most elite security team in the region—and quite possibly the entire continent—and he complained about broken systems and doing the best he could because he didn’t have other people to do his job for him?

It wasn’t enough for her, not even close. She wanted to bring justice from the dragon world to humankind, not deceive people into thinking that justice existed in the first place.

These thoughts raced through her head for the duration of the long flight back to the Motor City. She thought of Brian and how he’d accused her of losing her humanity. If she was becoming less human, it must mean she was becoming more dragon.

Only now, she wasn’t sure that was something she wanted at all.

CHAPTER NINE

Kristen could barely hold herself together for the rest of the workday. She understood that criminals had rights and believed that they should be treated with respect—in theory. But she felt that Dragon SWAT took it too far with Rubicon and Copperstrike. Everyone they passed greeted them with a, “my lord.” Even worse, any mages they encountered in the hallways as they processed the alleged criminal and took them to their cells bowed and supplicated themselves to an excruciating degree.

By the time they’d actually filed their paperwork in the paper dungeon and taken the two dragons to holding cells—surprisingly plush accommodations—Dragon SWAT seemed downright friendly with the brawlers. Heartsbane didn’t seem to care at all that they’d burned a church to the ground, and even Lumos treated them genially enough. He seemed especially adept at putting the two dragons at ease. She told herself that he was playing the role of the proverbial good cop, but no one really played bad cop so it lost its relevance.

Even when Emerald returned and told Stonequest that their brawl had killed twenty-two people, no one really dropped the act. The SWAT leader frowned at the death toll and talked a tough game about fines and fees and how the dragons would need to pay before they could be released, but in the end, he never made any threats about holding them for any length of time. The dragons looked annoyed to be fined millions of dollars, but even the amounts they were quoted seemed low to her. Plus, their lack of reaction proved that although they didn’t want to, they could afford to pay the fines. Both seemed confident that they’d be free before too long.

The system seemed even more corrupt to her when, by the time she was ready to leave at the end of the day, Rubicon had already been processed and released. Apparently, he’d recently bought a mansion and surrounding estate outside one of the major cities in the Midwest and had offered it to the Dragon Council in exchange for the damage caused to the town and the loss of human lives. They had accepted, and that was that. Stonequest said that if the money made selling the property didn’t quite cover the damages, the Dragon Council would help, but that didn’t seem like justice to her at all.

It appeared that Copperstrike would be freed in the morning. He apparently owned a rather substantial silver mine in Kazakhstan. All he needed was for one of his agents there to deliver the appropriate amount of silver into an account the Dragon Council maintained for this purpose. Because of the time zone difference, he would most likely have to stay overnight, but given that the beds in the cells looked plusher than the ones in her apartment, she didn’t exactly feel bad for the guy.

Kristen could hardly take it. These dragons were murderers—murderers of twenty-two people—and they would walk out of there like they’d done nothing more than make a generous charitable contribution. It was an egregious abuse of power, and to her, another example to prove that although humans and dragons shared a planet, they lived in different worlds.

When Stonequest mentioned to her that they’d be stuck in the office for the rest of the shift and that if she wanted to leave an hour early, she could, she jumped at the opportunity. In reality, she had no idea how she would have lasted another hour, so it was with rage and relief that she walked to the roof, transformed into her dragon body, and left.

A glance at the office clock had told her that it was almost quitting time at human SWAT, so she headed over there. Her dad might have been a good ear but she didn’t want to see her brother again so soon. He’d been so angry the last time she’d seen him. She didn’t want to set him off again if he was still upset, and she hadn’t done a very good job of calming him. It would be better to see her old team. At least the only risk they posed was excessive trash-talking.

She landed about a block away from her old Detroit SWAT office, transformed into her human shape, and walked the rest of the way toward the building. When she was almost there, she was greeted with, “Incoming!” yelled at the top of Keith’s lungs.

“Whassup, Rookie?” she called in response and wrapped him in a big hug. That was another thing dragons didn’t do—hug, smile, or show any trace of warmth unless they had a reason to. Keith was in front of a building filled with cops—and not regular cops but a group of SWAT officers—and he hugged her like it was nothing extraordinary.

“How long you been on Dragon SWAT?” he asked.

“I’m not sure—a few months?”

“It sounds like you’re the rookie to me.”

“You’ll always be the Rookie, Keith. You have this deer in the headlights look about you.”

He raised an eyebrow “Says the woman walking down the street to her old office all alone making everyone on the street depressed and pissed?”

She cursed silently. “Sorry. I can get that under control.” She tried to reel her aura in, a little irritated that she’d let it get out of hand. Its power had definitely increased and in general, she was able to control it better—when she remembered to. But she still didn’t always think about it or the need to manage it constantly the way the other dragons seemed to. Still, now that Keith had pointed it out, she was able to will it to start to subside with only a few deep breaths.

The Rookie chuckled. “It’s cool. I kind of want to punch someone in the face, but I can more or less tell when it’s your aura doing that now, you know? It’s weird but cool. I don’t think I’d be able to tell at all if I hadn’t spent time with you, but I guess being friends with a dragon has its perks.”

Hernandez burst from the door to the SWAT building behind Keith, “Steeeeel Draaaagon,” she shouted like she was announcing a wrestler coming into the ring. “What the fuck brings you to this shitty neighborhood?” Before she could answer, the woman stuck her head inside the building and hollered, “Red’s back!”

“Hey, Hernandez,” she said in greeting.

“Sorry, it’s Steel now, huh? I guess the color of your hair’s not really a big deal compared to fancy dragon powers.” The demolitions expert took a step back and almost flinched. “Shit, Kristen, that pissed-off shit is you, huh?”

“Yeah, sorry. I was trying to get it under wraps.”

“It’s cool. Its less than what it was,” her old teammate said in a rare moment of kindness.

“That’s because she’s happy to see me,” Keith said.

Hernandez threw an arm around his shoulder and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Well, aren’t we all, Rookie?”

“You know, technically, Jim has been on the force for less time than—”

“Kristen!” Butters burst from the building and enveloped her in a massive hug.

“If you crush me any harder, I’ll have to turn to steel to save myself from having my ribs cracked,” she wheezed.

“Bring it. I need the workout. Plus, can’t your dragon powers heal a couple of cracked ribs?” he asked as he put her down and smiled. “What you doing around here? Are you up for a night of slumming?”

“That’s what I wondered,” Hernandez said. “What, did you get sick of people treating your bitch-ass with respect?” She grinned and dared her to rise to the insult.

Kristen merely laughed weakly.

The other woman frowned. “Oh, shit, what’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you guys over drinks. The first round is on me. Are Drew, Jim, and Beanpole off too?”

“They’re finishing up some paperwork but I’ll text them and they can meet us there,” Keith said and dug in his pocket for his phone.

“Okay cool. I wouldn’t want to only buy drinks for the members of SWAT I never liked.”

Hernandez laughed hard at that. Butters put on a fake dopy frown and feigned being insulted. It was a nice moment, one in which to forget all the bullshit of her job and the awkward place between two societies where she would spend the foreseeable future.

They walked to the bar and Keith chattered about how many views the video of SWAT in airsoft combat had received. Apparently, he had told the kid manning the cameras to post it online, and it was doing very well. She wasn’t surprised. The Steel Dragon was an Internet sensation.

They reached the bar, ordered a few pitchers of beer, and made small talk for another few minutes. Kristen reveled in it all—Butters’ insistence that the wings weren’t really that great even as he virtually inhaled them by the fistful, Hernandez’s constant, unending shit-talking, and Keith’s bubbling enthusiasm that would forever make him seem as green a cop as could be.

When Drew, Jim, and Beanpole arrived, they greeted her with the same self-effacing humor.

“Oh, shit. Lady Steel has come to inflict her will upon her loyal subjects,” Jim said in a horrible attempt at a British accent and dropped to one knee.

“I hope I can drink a beer before you enlist us to hunt another dragon,” Drew said, but he didn’t reach for one until she poured it for him. He was always a cop first and a human second and, given their history, he probably thought that the chances of them hunting another dragon on their off time were actually fairly good.

“Hi, Kristen,” Beanpole said. He still seemed shy with her, but he was shy with everyone, really. But you didn’t necessarily need people skills to be a good cop, especially if your go-to role was as a lookout who didn’t let anyone get past him.

“So…” Jim turned to her and raised an eyebrow after everyone had talked shit for a few minutes about Captain Hansen and her obsession with filing forms in a timely manner. In that moment, she could feel tension, as if her old team had an aura of their own. She supposed she could feel their emotional state with her new powers. It was an odd realization.

Still, tense or not, she filled them in on the bare outline of their earlier callout. She used the opportunity to tell them about the trials and tribulations of her own job, hoping she could bitch and moan about work with the rest of them, but it didn’t work. As soon as she mentioned that two dragons had been fighting, Keith told everyone to shut the hell up so he could hear her talk about the battle.

“It wasn’t a battle for Dragon SWAT,” she explained. “They surrendered like rich assholes always do.”

“Man! I wanted to hear how a Steel Dragon fares against your garden variety fire-breather,” the Rookie said. She made a mental note never to share such details with him. He’d probably post it all online. He and Hernandez started an argument about how the dragon powers they’d seen might stack up and everyone else ignored them.

“It’s still great that you went out on your first real bust,” Drew said, a proud cop.

“Yeah…I guess,” Kristen muttered.

“Wait a minute, spill it. Why are you disappointed to apprehend these two dragons?” Jim asked.

The side conversations at the table stopped and Kristen sighed. She supposed this was what she wanted, but she didn’t even want to think about it and risk getting pissed at the whole situation again. After a moment’s hesitation, she took a sip of her beer and told them about the battle.

She mentioned the burning homes and the firefighters too frightened of the dragons to stop the flames. They winced when she described the church that the dragons had demolished like it was nothing but a sandcastle on the beach. She mentioned the land they’d burned and the ancient oaks they’d incinerated. No one interrupted, even when she described the plush accommodation where the dragons had waited for their cases to be finalized. She added that one dragon had already walked free and the other likely would in the morning. Finally, she told them about the twenty-two people who’d died and how each victim would be given a price tag that would be paid and that would be the limit of their justice.

“And after that kind of massive destruction, all they’ll have to do is pay fines.”

“For human lives?” Jim asked. He sounded even more furious than she felt.

She nodded.

“How much are we talking here?” Hernandez asked.

“That’s a bullshit question,” the Wonderkid protested.

“I don’t know,” Kristen snapped, and her aura flared alongside the words before she hauled it back under control. “I know they will have to pay tens of millions, although I don’t know how much the final amount is. But that is supposed to cover the houses too, and the church, which I don’t see how they could even rebuild.”

“A million is a good life insurance payout,” Beanpole said. All eyes fell on the normally quiet lookout. “I know it doesn’t make it okay but at the same time, I’m glad they get something.”

“No, fuck that attitude, Beanpole. These people didn’t die in a car crash or a goddamn tornado. They were killed.” Jim scowled. Kristen wasn’t surprised to see that this was his reaction. He’d held a grudge against dragon kind for a long time and she was the only reason he tolerated them at all.

“Yes, Jim, you’re right, but at the same time—” Drew began.

“Oh, come on, Drew. Don’t fucking start with your devil’s advocate bullshit,” the Wonderkid protested.

The team leader held up a hand for him to listen. “No, I don’t excuse them and obviously, you can’t put a price on a human life. But listen to me for a second. I’ve seen plenty of shitty, stupid murders like drive-by shootings that killed old people making dinner, car accidents where the drivers turned guns on each other—and shit, I once saw a man who’d been shot in the gut simply because he was in a convenience store when a stooge tried to steal scratch-offs. Scratch-offs! There can’t be a more pathetic, shitty reason to die than that.”

“So people killing each other means dragons can kill us and get off scot-free?” Jim’s tone was almost a snarl and sounded as ferocious as any dragon.

“No, Jim. Would you put that shit on the back burner for a goddamn minute?” Drew said.

The other man scowled and reached for a beer, but at least he stopped talking.

“I’m only saying I’ve seen many killers get off without paying their due, money or timewise.” The team leader sounded world-weary. “Man, this one time, a rich guy drove his car into a house where homeless folk were squatting a while back and got off with a charge for property damage because the woman he killed didn’t die until a few days after the collision. His lawyer was able to convince the jury that her bruised ribs and fucking ruptured lung were from smoking meth, not being hit by a car. That asshole didn’t pay more than ten thousand—and that was to the owner of the fucking derelict property—and he sure as shit didn’t serve any time in prison.”

“But simply because there’s human on human injustice doesn’t mean—”

“For Christ’s sake, Jim, let me finish,” Drew said.

The Wonderkid slammed his hands on the table, stood, and stormed away.

Drew continued calmly. “All I’m saying is that humans escape justice sometimes too. You don’t know if this was a one-time kind of thing or what. Maybe most dragons can’t pay damages.”

“So the rich should be treated differently than the rest of us?” Kristen asked pointedly.

Hernandez laughed. “Uh, that’s reality. Like, are you fucking serious right now, Lady Steel? Rich folks in this country have health insurance, good neighborhoods—shit, they have roofs that don’t leak. We live in Michigan. Have you ever heard of Flint? Do you think that town would have water problems if the rich gave a shit about it? It sounds like these dragons were richer still.”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said, not liking the fact that these cops were making excuses.

“Justice isn’t perfect,” Drew said matter of factly. “Sometimes, the bad guys get away, but that doesn’t make catching them any less important. And think about what could have happened if you hadn’t been there. That whole town might’ve been nothing but a smoking crater.”

“I guess,” Kristen said again, still petulantly.

“Oh, come on, Steel,” Hernandez said. “You never saw this shit happen before? I guess you weren’t really with us that long—”

“Which is why we should call her Rookie, not me,” Keith interjected.

Everyone laughed and began to yell over each other why that wouldn’t happen. He simply had a rookie face. She already had a way cooler nickname. Calling a dragon a rookie was like asking to be set on fire.

“All right, all right, but listen,” Hernandez said once everyone had calmed. “You want to talk about injustice? Let’s talk about injustice. I was once called in for a bomb threat and disarmed this whole mess of C4. I’m talking blocks and blocks worth of it, only to learn that the detonator switch wouldn’t have actually worked. The dumbass kid who put it together didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. And guess what the dude’s lawyer harped on in court? Do you know what it feels like to give testimony under oath that helps get a guilty man off? I told them the bomb couldn’t have gone off—because that was the truth, and I was under oath—so the lawyer convinced the jury to let him go on account of it wasn’t really a death threat. How’s that for bullshit?”

“I’m from the South,” Butters added. “Which means injustice isn’t about money but race. I was once on a case where five white boys on the college football team beat the shit out of a black wide receiver from their own damn team because he dropped a pass. They all got off because one of their parents was on the city council.” He laughed bitterly. “City councils don’t have any fucking power, we all know that, and yet it was enough to let this guy and all his friends walk.”

“I’m sure all of us have seen justice go unserved,” Beanpole said sagely. “Except Keith, since he’s a rookie.”

Everyone laughed but not as uproariously as before. Failed justice wasn’t something that made anyone feel good.

“It’s merely part of being a cop,” Drew added. “As much as I hate to say it, that’s the truth. We don’t catch ʼem all, you know that, but even some of the ones we do catch get away with it.”

“It’s fucking crazy to think about considering how many people we have in prison in this country,” Hernandez commented.

“Yeah, but that’s drug laws plus private prisons,” Jim said as he returned to the table, ready to argue.

Drew held up a hand to stop the tangent. “It sounds like justice going unserved is something that happens to dragons too. Yes, it’s disgusting—absolutely disgusting—that these two dragons went free, but at least they paid something.”

“Plus, now the Steel Dragon knows their faces and we all know she don’t give a shit about legal procedures,” Keith interjected. That drew a ripple of laughter again.

“The Rookie has a point there,” Butters said. “How many more times are you gonna make us circumvent justice? Not that I have a problem with being a dragon hunter but shit, if it’s a million a pop to kill a human, I don’t think there’s any way I can afford to pay what it costs to eliminate one of them flying dinosaurs.”

Even Jim smiled at that. “Can you imagine them trying to target us with what happened to Shadowstorm? Like if they wanted us to pay that shit off. I can totally see Stonequest in my shitty apartment with my framed posters instead of oil paintings and my TV with its broken speaker. I bet I couldn’t pay for the damage done to one of Shadowstorm’s nuts, let alone the whole damn lizard.”

“Do you need a new TV?” Keith asked. “Why not rob a pawnshop? Drew just said you might be able to get off with nothing but a slap on the wrist.”

Kristen shook her head. Her friends were ridiculous. While an outsider might see these jokes as tasteless or callous, she knew the truth of the matter. This was one of the few ways to deal with the horrors police officers saw. As shitty as it was, there were still stigmas attached to seeking mental health treatment, and even with proper treatment and counseling, cops needed to build relationships as much as any other profession. It was simply a little different when they joked about their work than it was when people who worked at a zoo or whatever were unwinding. Dark humor was cathartic, far more so than silently enduring the injustice they all witnessed every day.

Plus, controversial jokes or not, it made her feel better. As her old team worked through the pitchers she’d bought them and ordered more, she felt the pressure that she’d carried start to lift. She’d missed them, their human problems and human jokes, and their focus on today and tomorrow and on their lives and not much beyond that. It was a perspective that dragons didn’t appreciate, and it was what she wanted to bring to the group that essentially ruled the world—even if it was through the back channels.

They all left a few hours later. The humans shared a cab and she took flight after her friends had ribbed her unmercifully about flying drunk.

They didn’t know she could use her healing powers to burn the alcohol off almost effortlessly.

As a result, it wasn’t a drunk Kristen who flew home but a contented one. She knew she wouldn’t be able to handle every issue that came her way with perfectly delivered justice, but at least she could try. That made her feel a little more ready to face whatever Dragon SWAT had for her the next day.

CHAPTER TEN

Obscura was at a loss as to what to think about Kristen Hall, the Steel Dragon and the woman who’d killed her son. She watched her now from across the tavern—humans called it a bar these days—seated with a group of human law enforcers. They appeared to be friends and it was an extremely odd thing for a dragon to do, to be sure. The old dragon was in her human form, and—being a master of her aura—she was hidden effectively from the other dragon despite being only a few tables away. All in all, she still didn’t know what to think.

Part of her was cautious. After all, this was the dragon who had killed her son, and for all Sebastian’s shortcomings, he was still powerful in his own right. He had possessed powers of shadow—like his mother, he could use the gaseous matter that appeared when he transformed to move from shadow to shadow. In addition, he had also possessed a little of his father’s ability, although he’d never mastered it like the old dragon had. Shadowstorm’s ability to control the weather hadn’t gone much beyond starting storms and causing lightning strikes, but this was still beyond the power levels of most dragons.

And yet Kristen had killed him.

She’d fought him to a standstill and collapsed a garbage incinerator on him. It was a humiliating way to defeat a dragon with blood as ancient and powerful as Sebastian’s had been.

Because of this, Obscura knew better than to underestimate her quarry. She knew she was dangerous, powerful, and committed to her causes.

But she was also infuriatingly close to humankind.

In theory, she thought she could understand. Kristen—even the name wasn’t worthy of a dragon of her power—had been raised by humans. Instead of a creche, she’d had a crib. She’d never been heated by the flames of a parent and fed meat and had been fed milk like a suckling pig or a side of veal. Rather than learn about dragon culture in schools and on the practice combat ground, she’d learned about it from the outside. Fortunately, the Dragon Council—pack of fools that it was—still believed in maintaining a veneer for the humans. Much of their culture was hidden and would remain so. This explained why the Steel Dragon hadn’t understood dragon culture, but Obscura had trouble understanding why she didn’t embrace it now.

She had been raised by an inferior species—this much she could understand—but how could she still spend time with them now that she knew what she was?

The old dragon could hide her disgust effortlessly while she watched. She could even engage in a conversation with a man who’d joined her at the table—no doubt thinking her to be a human woman in the latter part of her second decade—so as to further hide her intent, but she couldn’t look into the woman’s mind and see what she appreciated in these hairless apes.

They grew louder and louder as they drank more and more beer. Obscura appreciated the effects of alcohol but she was a dragon. If she got too drunk, she could simply burn off the offending toxins and regain control of herself once more. Humans had no such ability, and yet they drank the poison all the same. They debilitated themselves deliberately with no remedy to fix their simple biology other than time and sleep. It was odd, to be sure, but not why she was ultimately there.

She focused on Kristen and listened to the woman’s conversation while the young man across from her tried to ply her with drinks and poorly crafted innuendos.

No matter what the Steel Dragon said to these humans, Obscura didn’t understand why she valued them. After a while, though, she realized she was going about this all wrong. She didn’t need to understand the woman and her fascination with the lesser species to move against her. It was obvious that she had a weak spot for these soft, squishy, and oh so vulnerable humans. The thought was hilarious, actually, given that the Steel Dragon could literally turn her body to metal.

Her powers made her invulnerable in a way most dragons simply weren’t. A well-aimed slice of the old dragon’s tail could decapitate any dragon, but not this one. She could have been a queen if she so desired but instead, she spent time with humans.

It was like she asked to have them used against her.

If Kristen had been raised by dragons, she would have seen this as the weakness it was. Dragons were taught from a young age not to get too attached to humans or risk them being used against them. In the old days—before telegraph wires, then radiowaves, and now the Internet tied everything together—it had been an easy way to undermine benevolent dragons.

They’d sit in their castle, lord over the holdings, and teach the peasants how to think and to live with decency and respect for each other—all traits that humans didn’t naturally possess in Obscura’s opinion—in exchange for the humans providing food and comforts for their lord. It was almost too easy for another dragon to obliterate these city states. One simply flew in, incinerated everything, and waited for the dragon to emerge from the stronghold and fly into the trap.

She didn’t want to burn the city down, of course. Well, she did, but she wouldn’t as she understood the dangers of the media and of cell phones too. Now, every human had a camera in their pocket that they could use to instantly share with the world around them. And there in Detroit, almost everyone was always ready to record anything that happened to the Steel Dragon.

Obscura had even watched a video of Kristen and Dragon SWAT face a team of humans. Better yet, she’d seen what strategies worked against her.

It was a simple matter to take her own phone out and pretend to put the man’s number in it while actually taking photos of the humans Kristen was with. The faces matched those of the people she’d seen try to hunt the dragon in the video she’d watched. She could tell them apart fairly easily—the demolitions expert, the sniper, and the one who worshipped the young dragon and had posted the video online. Two of the others looked more capable and like they’d make annoying victims. The tall, quiet one didn’t seem worth targeting.

But target them she would. As her plan started to form in her mind, Obscura felt the oath she’d sworn with her son’s blood course through her veins. Oh yes, this was how to make the Steel Dragon suffer the most. Doing things to these police officers would do more damage to the human-minded dragon than a physical battle ever could. She’d weaken the girl’s mind and then strike.

These humans would be pieces of the puzzle that she had failed to fully recognize earlier. She’d already identified the human family. They made easy, obvious targets that even her foolish son had known he could use as leverage.

She had started working on them and was reasonably confident with what she’d done so far. The Steel Dragon now believed that her brother was angry with her. The old dragon didn’t know the exact particulars of their relationship but she thought it best to assume that if they were angry with each other, they wouldn’t be in contact as much. Cell phones and online communication made everything more complicated, but she was confident that she’d played the first parts of this game well enough. Now she saw that there were more pieces that needed her attention.

Although she wouldn’t move yet, much as she wanted to and the oath demanded her to. First, she’d learn more about these humans, watch them in action if possible, and discover their own weaknesses beyond the laughable fragility of their human flesh.

Then, and only then, would she enact the final part of her plan. She would use these humans to teach the Steel Dragon that she wasn’t invulnerable by striking where she was weakest.

The oath began to churn in her veins as Kristen and her team prepared to leave and it spread through her and consumed her with a need for vengeance. She turned to the young man in front of her and consented to let him escort her to her hotel.

The girl’s pathetic connection to these humans could be used against her. Then, when the Steel Dragon felt nothing but fear, Obscura would kill her and vengeance would be hers.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

With her background in human SWAT, Kristen found it hard to remain quiet while Stonequest allowed his team to essentially be hired out. To her, it seemed like a gross misuse of power, but she told herself there were times when human police escorted people, so she kept her opinion to herself. The issue was that she didn’t think Dragon SWAT really needed to help someone move.

Harandhyl, an ancient black dragon, was moving his base of operations to Detroit and had requested police assistance during the transfer of his goods. Honestly, it was like she and the rest of them were nothing more than a glorified security team.

He sat across from them now in a conference room in the Dragon SWAT building. His black suit with tails seemed horribly out of date to her but it seemed to fit with his thin, pointed mustache. He carried a cane, which had to be an affectation because she hadn’t ever seen a dragon with a limp.

“The value of the convoy cannot be estimated, you understand.” Harandhyl spoke in an accent she couldn’t quite place. New England, perhaps? That had to be it, given that Harandhyl was moving to outside Detroit from Maine.

“Yes, sir. We’ll do our best to make sure nothing happens to it,” Stonequest said placatingly.

“You’ll have to do better than that.” Harandhyl wheezed and coughed. “The jewels alone are worth a fortune, but there’s much more that we simply cannot risk getting damaged. Then there’s my art collection—priceless masterpieces painted by some of the earliest American artists. It would be a tragedy to lose any of those.”

Kristen wondered if the dragon let people even see the paintings. They had probably been kept hidden from human eyes in his mansion on the east coast despite them being painted by people.

“Believe me when I say that there is nothing we want more than a smooth transfer of goods to your new residence,” Stonequest assured him.

She felt a flash of anger and glanced at Heartsbane. From the outside, the hotheaded dragon seemed calm enough, but she’d let her powerful aura slip.

Harandhyl noticed the anger too, but he didn’t seem to understand its real source. “I feel exactly the same way, young lady. The idea of some common human crooks trying to take wealth I have accumulated fair and square is a rather unpleasant idea.”

“Right,” Heartsbane said through clenched teeth.

A few days later, the team soared high above a convoy of semi-trucks. Lake Eerie was on their right, although the people driving the trucks couldn’t see it since the forest was so thick on either side of the highway. They had recently left the state of New York and now traveled through Pennsylvania. The trip had been unremarkable thus far. Kristen had enjoyed the journey up because it was the first time she’d traveled so far using only the power of her own flight. But the trip back lacked the novelty of the trip to Maine.

The only good thing was that Harandhyl wasn’t with them. He was already at his mansion in Michigan—getting things prepared, he’d said. She didn’t know if she necessarily approved of the fact that the dragon made little effort to help with his own things, but at least they could talk shit without worry.

Heartsbane exercised this particular privilege to its fullest. “Do you think he’s not helping us because he’s simply an old windbag filled with hot air?”

“We’ve been over this, Heartsbane,” Stonequest said.

“No, no, no, hear me out. At first, I thought he was merely lazy, but maybe he’s literally a windbag. Like the only way he could’ve kept up with us is if we tethered him to one of the semi-trucks and they pulled him along like a kite.”

“Enough, Heartsbane,” the leader said, although his voice lacked conviction. He wasn’t excited to be doing this either.

Emerald started to laugh the manic uncontrolled, hysterical laughter of the extremely bored.

“Don’t encourage her,” Lumos said. “Harandhyl is a wise old gentleman. He has given much to dragon culture.”

“Oh yeah, like what?” Emerald asked.

“I, for one, find that thinking about the conversations I’ve had with him over the centuries is an extremely efficient way to get to sleep.”

Kristen, Heartsbane, and Emerald chuckled. Only Stonequest didn’t seem amused but he remained silent for a few minutes as they flew on.

They’d already been flying for days, so the regular rules of conversation had long since stopped being applicable to their situation. It was perfectly fine to fall into silence for a few minutes before someone started a random conversation.

It was fairly pleasant to take her relationship with dragons to this level of familiarity, Kristen thought, but also problematic. She knew that while she was up there, crimes were still taking place down below. People were being shot and killed and those in power were abusing their privilege. There were real issues facing the world—as there had been forever—and they were up there making sure nothing happened to a horde of crap.

And there was the whole timing and specificity of the request. Why had Harandhyl contacted Stonequest? Why move to Detroit? Why insist that the entire team go? She didn’t like it and had difficulty with the fact that they were out there in the middle of nowhere while stuff was going down back in the Motor City.

“We have a motorcycle,” Lumos said. He was currently closest to the rear of the convoy of five semi-trucks. How anyone—dragon or otherwise—could accumulate five semis worth of belongings was beyond her, but then again, if she’d been paid by a dragon to pack and transport his entire fortune, she might have kept things rather spread out too.

“Did you ever ride one of those?” Emerald asked as the motorcycle picked up speed to pass the convoy of trucks.

“I can’t say that I have, no,” Lumos replied as he watched the motorcycle lazily. It was one of the high-speed, streamlined ones—crotch-rockets, her brother called them when he piloted them in racing games.

“It’s a trip, man. I recommend it,” Emerald said. “They can’t go faster than a dragon in flight, of course, but something about being in human form on two wheels so close to the asphalt is exhilarating.”

“That’s like riding a skateboard,” she said.

“A what?” Lumos asked.

“It’s a board with wheels,” she explained. “You can’t actually go that fast on one, but it feels way faster than a bicycle, I think because you’re closer to the ground.”

“Emerald, that motorcycle—it should be able to pass those trucks, right?” Heartsbane asked.

“Oh yeah. That’s a Kawasaki Ninja H2 R. The engine is, like, a thousand ccs.”

“Which means?” Lumos asked.

“That it’s a fast one. Crazy top speeds and kickass acceleration.”

“So why is it staying right next to the driver of the middle truck?” Heartsbane asked.

“I’m sure he’s about ready to take off. He’ll pop a wheelie or some shit,” Emerald said.

“I don’t think so.” Heartsbane pumped her wings a few times to pick up a little speed.

As she did so, the biker lifted one hand off the handlebars of the bike, reached inside his jacket, and drew a handgun.

“Do you guys see this moron?” she asked and plummeted toward him.

Before she could get close enough to scoop him up in her claws, the biker fired two shots into the window of the semi-truck. The driver swerved as soon as the gun was fired but managed to keep driving.

“Heartsbane, take him out,” Stonequest said, energy in his voice once more.

“You got it, boss.” She sounded downright excited to be doing something.

The dragon swooped in, closer and closer to the biker. When she was almost on him, he turned, pointed his handgun at her, and fired.

She screamed in pain. The sound was more akin to a hawk screaming in the sky than a human’s agonized shout. She tried to flap her wings to stay airborne but the bullet had caught her in the shoulder, precisely where her wing extended from her body. It was obvious to Kristen that her left wing was in severe pain.

“Lumos, come on,” the Steel Dragon shouted and dropped lower toward Heartsbane.

The golden dragon followed, then passed her. He was much more experienced in flight than she was so was able to reach Heartsbane before she made impact in front of the fourth truck in the convoy. He wound his tail around her chest and neck and pumped his wings to slow her fall.

“A little help, Lady Steel!” he shouted.

Kristen caught hold of Heartsbane’s tail with her talons, and not a moment too soon.

They hauled her back into the sky and out of the way of the vehicles, slowed, and finally deposited her on the grassy embankment between the forest and the highway.

“He has dragon bullets,” Kristen shouted to Stonequest and Emerald, who were both still airborne.

“And company,” Lumos yelled before he breathed a gout of flame as another biker rocketed past them. The bike was, unfortunately, as fast as Emerald had said it could be. It must have gone in excess of a hundred miles an hour, because by the time Kristen had even seen it, it was past them.

“I can’t believe that gun hurt me,” Heartsbane said as she tried to work her wing and flinched in pain. Each time she moved, the joint popped. It was a horrible sound.

“You’ll have to change into human form until we can get you to a healer,” the golden dragon said.

“After those fucking monkeys shot me? Yeah right!” Heartsbane hissed in pain and fury.

“Well then, at least stop moving your damn wings. You’ll rip a tendon.”

“I’ll be—” Something tore and Heartsbane screamed before she transformed slowly into a human. Even in this form, one of her arms didn’t work. The bullet had really done significant damage.

“These can only be the same people who killed Windfire,” Kristen said.

“Then Stonequest and Emerald will need your help,” Lumos said.

“The old man is right. Go,” Heartsbane said through clenched teeth.

Kristen nodded, raced after the vehicles on her dragon legs, and took to the air. The convoy had gained at least a mile on her in the time since she’d landed to help her wounded teammate. She flapped her wings furiously to catch up but was still a less than skillful flyer. It would be at least a minute before she reached the fight.

Ahead of her, more motorcycles had joined the ambush. Six of them now swarmed around the center truck of the convoy like a pack of wolves trying to cull a young or sick elk—although she was sure there was more to their strategy than that. If they could crash the third truck and keep the wreckage on the road, the fourth and fifth would have to stop. Between them, it would make quite a haul for the thieves.

They seemed to be more than thieves, however. The reality was that they could have already disabled or destroyed the vehicles. They could simply have shot the tires or sprayed the drivers with bullets, but they hadn’t. Instead, they seemed to be playing some kind of game of cat and mouse with the dragons.

The motorcycles were both faster and more maneuverable. The dragons had to fly in relatively straight paths to maintain their speed. They were big, bulky, and not particularly agile. When a dragon approached one of the bikers, they would simply throttle up and race away, then cut between the semi-trucks so they were on the far side and safe from the dragons.

Perhaps if the drivers of the vehicles had been trained in defensive maneuvers, they could have stopped the motorcycles, but as it was, the humans in the convoy did everything in their power to simply keep moving.

Kristen worked hard to close the gap, but she still had a fair distance to cover.

Still too far away to do anything, she responded with helpless terror when one of the bikers darted out from behind the fourth truck, gunned his bike so hard it popped a wheelie, and aimed his weapon at Emerald.

“Watch out!” she screamed and flashed her aura to warn the other dragons of danger.

Emerald paid no attention and focused instead on the biker who was near the front of the pack and zigzagged tantalizingly close to him in what she now saw was an obvious attempt to bait him.

The other biker coming up from behind steadied his aim on the dragon despite his speed. She had no doubt the gun contained dragon bullets. Why else had the biker not yet fired?

A gunshot rang out and almost at the same time, Stonequest crashed into his teammate.

At first, she thought that the team leader had been shot. But when the two dragons tumbled to the grass with such force that they felled pine trees before they scrambled to their feet, she realized that he’d only narrowly saved Emerald from a bullet.

She passed them, the only one of her team still in flight. “Don’t worry, I’ll stop them!” she said.

“Damn it, Kristen, slow down. Slow down!” Stonequest shouted, untangled himself from Emerald, and tried to get back into the air.

The problem was that the convoy now raced down the road in a stampede and as out of control as a herd of buffalo.

Kristen was almost impressed by the drivers, but then she realized they were probably worried about being eaten by dragons if they failed. Compared to that fate, a crash might not seem so bad.

That wouldn’t happen, though, not if she could do anything about it. She pumped her wings as fast as she could to gain altitude and speed until she’d caught up to the vehicles and the motorcycles harrying them.

Once in position, she tucked her wings, plummeted, and added the acceleration of gravity to her speed. She extended her wings seconds before she struck the last truck of the convoy and the wind caught her.

A biker tried to swerve out of her way, but she had come in too fast for him to react. She snatched him by the shoulders and yanked him off his motorcycle, then dropped him as the biker ahead turned a gun on her and started shooting.

Her captive fell from her claws and onto the grass on the side of the road, where he rolled to a stop. She didn’t turn to see if he was okay, but she did notice that one of the other motorcycles slowed and fell away from the convoy, no doubt to rescue their fallen comrade—or finish him off.

But that wasn’t her concern at the moment. She was the only member of her team in position to stop this robbery from happening. It was strange how when it was boring, she hadn’t cared, and now that there was action, she didn’t want these guys to escape. Either way, someone else would have to pick up the stragglers.

Kristen flew on and pushed herself to maintain her speed and stay close to the trucks. She reasoned that if she could pick up another of the bikers, it might end the chase. If they didn’t want to leave anyone behind, disabling one could force another rescue. That would leave only two, and against a dragon, that seemed like lousy odds.

The thieves seemed to have the same idea because one of them swerved out from behind the trucks and began to fire indiscriminately at her.

She reacted by reflex, gained altitude, and tried to stay clear of the potentially lethal bullets. But almost as soon as she did so, she realized it was a bluff. Before, the thieves had taken careful aim and conserved their ammo. The person firing at her now delivered a veritable barrage. That could only mean he wasn’t armed with a pistol loaded with dragon bullets but an automatic weapon with old fashioned slugs.

Reasonably sure of her assessment, she descended and turned her wings to steel. Sure enough, the bullets only sparked when they struck her. If they’d been dragon bullets, they’d have torn her to shreds, despite being made of metal.

Another biker veered out from behind the vehicle in front of her. This one had a handgun, which in this fight meant they were far more dangerous than their cohort with the automatic weapon.

They had, however, appeared in front of a pissed-off, steel-skinned, fire-breathing dragon.

Kristen used her dragon-granted powers and unleashed a great gout of flame at the armed biker.

The thief’s bike left the ground from the force of the blast and its gas tank exploded. This catapulted the bike into a somersault that pounded the rider against the pavement three times before they finally came to a stop in the grass on the side of the road.

No one would go back for that one, she knew. His helmet was scattered along the road together with what had been inside.

Another thief emerged from between the trucks immediately behind her. This one already had a gun aimed at her, and because he was behind her, she didn’t know how she could reach him. She wasn’t practiced enough at flying to shoot fire behind her. While she could slow and try to trick him, the motorcycles were fast and maneuverable. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that losing speed would lose her pursuer.

Which meant there wasn’t a thing she could do. The weapon was leveled at her and no other dragons were nearby. If the shooter squeezed the trigger, she wouldn’t be able to do a thing but hope the bullet didn’t strike her in the heart.

Before he could fire, another biker accelerated from behind the back of the truck, going so fast that their front wheel left the ground. They pulled up beside the gunman and shook their head vehemently.

A curl of blonde hair protruded from the back of the helmet, and—although she couldn’t see through the vizor—Kristen thought that she knew who the rider was.

It could only be Constance, who had killed Windfire with dragon bullets and had, thus far, made no real effort to kill her.

The biker gestured at the Steel Dragon and the woman shook her head once more.

She tried to use the opportunity to gain the advantage, but the bikers were ready. Constance gunned her engine and rocketed past, going from seventy to a hundred and twenty miles an hour in an instant and outpaced the lumbering steel dragon.

The other thief with the gun swung between the trucks before she could slow enough to catch him. She pushed herself higher and gained altitude in time to see him accelerate down a side road and into the forest. He was beyond their reach already. There was no way a dragon could follow a motorcycle if the bike was able to drive on asphalt streets while she’d have to deal with tree cover.

The only other biker—the one at the front of the pack—turned down another side road.

That only left Constance ahead. Kristen tried to gain on her and for a moment, she seemed to do so.

She was almost close enough to blast the woman with fire when her quarry slowed and brought herself close.

Crazily, she lifted her vizor, no doubt to confirm her identity. She was about to incinerate her, but there was something in the woman’s eyes. Compassion? Pity? Respect? Whatever it was, it made her hesitate and in that moment, Constance throttled up and hurtled away down the next road to the right.

Kristen, furious at herself for not eliminating this dragon murderer when she’d had the chance, gave chase.

She pursued her determinedly, but the smaller street was much more difficult to navigate. The trees almost covered the road completely, so she only caught glimpses of the biker here and there.

Constance wasn’t able to go as fast as she had on the other wider, straighter road, but the Steel Dragon couldn’t reach her. If she crashed through the trees, the fugitive would no doubt simply race away, and she didn’t want to light the canopy of this forest on fire. She’d already seen quite a few houses tucked into the woods, and given that it was spring, even these country homes were likely inhabited.

That left her with little choice but to pursue, even though she couldn’t close the final gap.

Return to us! Kristen felt Heartsbane using her powerful aura to communicate with her since she was much too far away for voices to carry.

She flinched when she felt the aura tug at her and her quarry veered toward a fork in the road that was frustratingly obscured. The assassin had no doubt chosen her route ahead of time.

Frustrated, she chose one of the directions at random, only to realize that she’d taken the wrong one. She flew higher and moved to the other road, but the bike wasn’t there either.

It seemed that Constance and her team had vanished into thin air.

She briefly considered landing in the woods and trying to pursue on foot. It seemed likely that the killer had simply stopped under the dense tree cover in an attempt to wait the dragon out, but she knew that even with the woman’s apparent hesitation to shoot her, that would be a risky thing to do.

Disgruntled, she returned to her team and accepted that the ambushers had escaped.

When she reached the convoy, it had stopped and the dragons prowled around it, as frustrated as she was.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Lyn Hernandez arrived home at her apartment building late after another long day at SWAT. She trudged up the steps and wanted nothing more than a long, hot soak in the tub but knew that she wouldn’t get to do that yet. First, she’d have to go to the roof to check on her…experiments.

When she let other folks come over—which wasn’t often and mostly only Keith because she’d made him swear he wouldn’t talk about it—she didn’t let them go to the roof, despite it being the favorite part of her apartment.

Up there was where Lyn had her little lab, as she liked to call it. That was where she’d developed the flash grenade and smoke bomb turned landmine. She tested trip wires, motion sensors, pressure plates—obviously—as well as her favorite part of it all, the explosives themselves.

She didn’t use C4 or anything like that, but she had a working relationship with virtually every fireworks manufacturer in Michigan, so her little bombs would detonate with fountains of green sparks or bursts of red and orange or whatever she felt like cannibalizing for her lab that day.

There were disadvantages to filling one’s workspace with traps, though, especially when it was open to the world. The first of these was that she always had to check the space before she could actually go home.

Ever dutiful, she walked past her apartment and onto the roof to make sure nothing had gone off. She was very glad she did.

Someone had been up there. She saw that immediately. The tripwire across the top of the stairs had been triggered. A burned-out canister tacked to the side proved that someone had faced the shower of sparks that she had left for them.

One of her pressure plates was messed up too, although this one wasn’t activated but had simply been crushed deeper into the floor. She might have wondered more about what could have done such a thing but had spent so much time trying to get the damn things to work that it didn’t come as a surprise that this one seemed to have had something dropped on it without going off.

Lyn did not check her apartment rooftop every day because her traps could cause damage to the building. They could, sure, but there were sprinklers on the roof as well. She made sure to do so every day because her traps had killed two pigeons and once cost a cat a good chunk of its fur.

This had happened years before—back when she hadn’t known how to properly calibrate her toys for people instead of animals—but the idea of hurting an innocent cat or even a pigeon still spooked her. She’d adopted the damn cat—Blasterface, she called him—and she didn’t want to have to adopt another one, but she’d be damned if she skipped the roof only to find a dead cat in the morning.

Despite her concerns, there didn’t seem to be anything else wrong. Only the tripwire at the top of the stairs—which probably hadn’t been a cat given that it was strung at about a feline’s eye level, plus the pressure plate which she hadn’t been able to get to work at all.

The whole situation was weird, but nothing that couldn’t be pondered in a bath. If she hurried, she might still have time to call Keith over.

She was occasionally bisexual, which was an oddity she saw no reason to advertise. While she strongly preferred the company of men—that was one of the reasons she liked working on SWAT so much—she was sometimes more interested in female partners. Keith was nice because he was such a sweetheart. He was undemanding and enthusiastic and he didn’t mind her cussing. It was convenient and the added bonus was that they had both agreed that it should be kept discreet. Granted, the rest of SWAT knew about it by this point, but it wasn’t a big deal.

These were the thoughts that went through Lyn’s head as she walked down the stairs, unlocked her apartment door, pushed it open, and heard the click of an explosive device being triggered.

Her brain told her to disarm it—turning bombs back into potential explosives was what she did as a job, after all—but her instincts told her to get the fuck away from the door before she blew up.

Instincts won, and she dove toward the stairwell. Years of airsoft practice turned the dive into a roll but she was moving too fast. She came out of it and tumbled down the stairs. Momentum flung her into a somersault, and she protected her neck and head with her arms as she careened down the first flight of stairs and impacted with the wall of the first landing.

“Fuck this,” she moaned and rubbed her left shoulder, which had taken the brunt of her landing. She didn’t stop moving, however, and scrambled down the next flight of stairs, around a corner, and hoped she would be safe from any flying shrapnel. There, she waited and took slow, shallow breaths so she could hear as much as she could from the bomb in her apartment.

She waited for an entire minute and nothing happened.

Finally, she shook her head. “Maybe I need a different hobby,” she muttered quietly. There were disadvantages to working with explosives all day and spending her free time playing with even more. It made any unexpected click seem like a trigger and any out of place smell seem like some kind of chemical attack.

That didn’t seem to be the case now, however. She pushed away from the wall, walked up the stairs, and pushed her apartment door open carefully. It definitely hadn’t been blown off its hinges, which was a plus.

Lyn sighed. She hadn’t overreacted like that in years and told herself she was probably on edge because of the roof. Still, she’d fucked her shoulder up for no good reason.

The thought and the irritation it engendered continued until she stepped inside her apartment.

About five feet inside and lined up with the doorknob was a bomb-like device. A metal cable now hung loosely from it. Obviously, it had been connected to the door until she had opened it.

She wasted no time, flicked the lights on, and moved toward it. If it had some kind of delayed fuse, it could still be dangerous.

Within moments, she saw that was not the case. Her entire apartment was covered with glitter and even the ceiling above the device was more sparkly than the floor around any stripper’s pole she had ever seen. The rest of the apartment was absolutely swimming in it too. There would be no easy way to clean it either. It was absolutely everywhere.

Lyn tried to make herself smile. It was only a joke—a dumb, weirdly specific joke made with some of her own tech stolen from the roof. Someone who knew her must have done it, but who? None of the members of her SWAT team knew a thing about explosives. That was why she was so essential, after all.

Keith had seen her lab, but he had been at work with her all day and then headed to the gym. It couldn’t have been him.

With all these thoughts running through her mind, she crouched and examined the bomb-like device. It was definitely one of hers. She normally filled the pressurized canister at the top with something stinky, but whoever had done this had switched that for the now inescapable glitter.

She began to consider how she would prank whoever had done this. It could have been Karl Gantz. He was the demolitions expert on another team, and she had certainly bandied words with his dumb ass before. He quickly became her preferred candidate until she noticed a sheet of paper attached to the underside of the bomb. She checked once more to make sure the device wasn’t armed and finding nothing, turned it over to see the missive.

Stationary was a more accurate term than simply paper, and her theory of who had maybe done it immediately went out the window. The paper itself was beautiful but the handwriting convinced her that it couldn’t have been Gantz. He typed up every report he submitted because his handwriting was so bad. This was written elegantly in ink and contained only three words.

Bemused, she read them out loud. “Bang. You’re dead.”

Something about those simple words delivered with such elegance sent a chill down her spine that the bomb hadn’t. Gantz wouldn’t have joked about that. He would have used a note to say, “Gotcha!” She felt in her gut that this wasn’t a coworker prank at all. It was too elaborate and too specific. It seemed like weird serial killer shit.

It was a threat, of that she was certain, and whoever had placed it had done a great job of freaking her out. She left her apartment and the glittery mess and called Keith on her phone.

While she could usually handle anything, no matter how weird, she didn’t want to be there tonight. In fact, she didn’t want to be there until she found the source of this threat.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The rest of the escort mission went well enough. When they delivered the trucks to Harandhyl’s mansion, he thanked them profusely and instructed his staff to start unloading with such eager attention that for a second, Kristen could almost believe that nothing had happened.

The reality, though, was that something had.

They had been attacked by humans armed with bullets that could hurt dragons. She couldn’t state with total certainty that they were the same technology and the same group, but she was damn sure that was the case. The woman was definitely Constance, which meant that the bullet that had injured Heartsbane and almost sent her plummeting to her death had been made from a dragon’s body.

The wound had been so bad that they’d had to call a car and complete the rest of the escort without her. She had already made it back to HQ, though, and thankfully without further incident. That was where the team was now headed.

Kristen tried to remain professional, but as she followed Stonequest, Lumos, and Emerald over the Motor City, she found it increasingly difficult. She wanted to make a difference in this case—no, she needed to—and could feel in her bones that this whole thing with humans harming dragons was all centered around her. Beyond the simple fact that she wanted to understand more, she wanted to stop these people from killing dragons. Yes, she agreed that they had too much power and should show humans respect, but killing them wouldn’t do anything but set off an inter-species war, something she was terrified of having to take sides in.

All of it came down to these bullets. Who made them and out of what? How many were there? All were questions that Stonequest dismissed when she asked him.

“Look,” he said when they landed on the roof of Dragon SWAT HQ, “I know Heartsbane was hurt back there and that you have a theory as to why, but I need you to back off on this one.”

“She could’ve been killed,” she argued, unable to suppress her instincts.

“You’re right, she could have but she wasn’t,” Lumos said. “We were lucky, and we all know you helped. Let Stonequest write it up and we’ll move on to the next mission.”

“You mean escorting more of some rich old dragon’s priceless crap?” she demanded.

Their leader gave her a cold look and the golden dragon looked uncomfortable. Emerald was the only one who laughed, and even that was short-lived, more of a guffaw that withered to a chuckle under Stonequest’s look.

“What? Sorry.” Emerald shook his head. “It’s only…well, she’s right. We all thought it. That was supposed to be a bullshit time-killer mission. Instead, we almost lost someone.”

“Which means it’s out of her hands,” Stonequest said.

“And into whose?” Kristen asked and struggled to remain calm.

“Just…let’s check on Heartsbane,” he said.

Kristen nodded. She could at least agree that the well-being of her team was the priority. That was why it was so important to find out as much as they possibly could about it.

She took a deep breath. While she was as frustrated as hell, she knew that losing her temper with the dragons wouldn’t accomplish anything. Instead, she followed her teammates down to a medical wing that she hadn’t known existed.

They found Heartsbane already up and moving around despite an attendant who continued to fuss about her. “I’m telling you, Hypocrandas, it feels fine.”

“That doesn’t mean you should be moving already,” the female mage protested. Her curly brown hair stuck up in a puff from the middle of her head and the sides of her head were shaved.

“It’s fine.” The dragon winced. She’d tried to gesture with the arm and had aggravated the injury.

“It will be,” Hypocrandas said. “Your healing rate is unaffected by the wound, so you’ll be fine soon, but this was a gunshot. Humans can take months to heal from such a serious injury. You can’t expect to be better in only a few hours.”

“That’s good, though,” Stonequest interjected and drew an awkward but deferential bow from the mage. “The bullet hurt you,” he continued, “but at least it hasn’t retarded your natural healing ability. You’ll simply have to sit tight for a week or so.” He sounded incredibly relieved.

“What about the bullet itself?” Kristen asked.

Hypocrandas bowed at the question and showed her the same respect she had given Stonequest. “There was no sign of the bullet, Lady Steel. It went straight through the muscle and exited the shoulder behind it. Maybe if it had struck a bone it would have stopped but then Lady Heartsbane would be out even longer. I think it was a lucky thing.”

“Do you have any idea what kind of ammunition could do this to a dragon?” she asked.

Hypocrandas looked at Stonequest, who shook his head curtly.

“No, my Lady.”

Kristen noticed the exchange between him and the healer and glared at him. “If there are no leads, we need to try to find them, right?” They both knew damn well there were leads. Two dragons had already been killed by handguns. This was a pattern, not merely random thugs.

“Drop it, Lady Steel,” he ordered.

“But shouldn’t we at least try to find out? Isn’t this the point of Dragon SWAT? We’re supposed to protect dragon kind and keep things stable. I see a gun that can hurt and kill dragons as a threat to dragons and possibly the greatest destabilizing force on the planet right now.”

“She has a point,” Emerald added. “This is a mystery that needs to be solved.”

The leader folded his arms and stared a little belligerently at the two youngest dragons on the team. “It will be solved, but not by us. This whole thing is out of our hands. The Dragon Council has classified the matter. It’s above our rank now. Special Operations will sink their claws into it. These kinds of investigations simply aren’t what SWAT is supposed to do. Believe me, when this whole situation is finally resolved and declassified, I will be the first to read the report, but until then, we need to respect the hierarchy.”

“Wait, Special Operations? I thought Dragon SWAT was special operations.” She frowned in confusion.

“I’ve said too much already.” Stonequest rubbed his face with his hands.

“For the sake of dragon’s fire, tell her the rumors, at least,” Heartsbane said.

“If you’ll excuse me.” Hypocrandas bowed and saw herself out of her own office. Kristen hated the way human mages deferred to dragon authority, but now was hardly the time to get into office politics.

“There’s nothing to tell,” the leader said stubbornly.

“Nothing but rumors, anyway,” Lumos added and earned a glare from Stonequest.

“Oh, hush,” Lumos chided. “There have been rumors for over a hundred years. If she grew up as a dragon, she’d know them already.”

“True that,” Emerald said. “I had heard about special ops before I joined SWAT. Everyone has.”

“Everyone has heard what?” Kristen asked and tried not to sound demanding.

“There’s not much to tell,” Stonequest said before Lumos could add anything. “Aside from the fact that they’re real. I’ve seen one of their agents cleaning up a mess before, but they’re a shadow group. They’re used by the Council when they don’t want their work to be done in the open.”

“When the Council wants to keep secrets, you mean?” she said, her tone accusatory.

He took a deep breath, obviously frustrated.

Lumos sighed. “Look, Lady Steel—Kristen—you have to remember the scope of the Dragon Council. They’re responsible for maintaining international peace not only between dragon factions but between human governments as well. After the world wars, there has been less overt aggression in the world—mostly—but counterintelligence measures between nations have become more and more secretive, which makes sense. Dragons can’t allow a hidden network of information to exist. It would be the perfect channel to start another war, or worse, a rebellion.”

She thought a war was far worse than people standing up against dragon kind but knew enough to not say anything about that.

“The dragons who work for Special Operations have a tough, thankless job, but they get it done. It’s better if you simply forget about them and focus on SWAT,” Stonequest said.

“Well, that sounds better than the bullshit we’re doing,” she muttered.

Of course, all the other dragons heard. They had extra sensitive hearing so muttering didn’t do much to hide one’s words from them. Stonequest clenched his jaw at her comment, Heartsbane laughed, and Emerald merely looked uncomfortable.

It was Lumos who spoke. “What we’re doing is not…uh, bullshit, Lady Steel.” It was obvious from the way he said the word that it was one he wasn’t familiar with.

“Really? Because that’s what it feels like. Our most recent mission was to escort treasure. Harandhyl wasn’t even there.”

“If we hadn’t escorted that treasure, the people who hurt Heartsbane would have had access to a ton more resources,” Emerald pointed out.

“So you admit it was people who shot Heartsbane?” Although it was Emerald who had spoken, she directed the question to Stonequest.

Heartsbane answered first, though. “Obviously it was people. There’s not a dragon alive who can fire a gun from a moving motorcycle.”

“A dragon could have ordered that strike. I’m sure that’s the focus of the investigation,” Stonequest argued, although he didn’t sound like his heart was in it.

“And what about the mission before that?” Kristen countered, not intentionally meaning to keep him off balance but not wanting him to think he’d won any part of the argument either.

“We saved people on that one,” Emerald said.

“Yeah, as an aside. I thought we would save a town from two destructive dragons but it became obvious very quickly that the real goal was to break up the fight.”

“If we hadn’t have stopped that fight, more people would have died,” Stonequest said.

“Sure. Yes, I can see that, but there don’t seem to be any actual consequences for the dragons who did the damage.”

“They’ll pay millions—”

“Which I’m sure they can afford.” She cut Stonequest off brusquely. “I guess…I guess that when I signed up, I thought I’d make a real difference in the world—in the worlds, really. I thought I’d bring justice to dragons and humans. Now, it feels like I did more of that as a human SWAT team member than here as a dragon.”

Stonequest cleared his throat and tried to adopt his most reassuring expression, “You are making a difference. I know it may not feel like it, but these are the actions that must be taken to maintain the stability that humans and dragons need. If we’d gone in and aggressively confronted those two dragons who fought in the city, we could have had hundreds or even thousands killed in the flames. This way, only—” He glanced at Emerald.

“Twenty-two people.”

“This way, only twenty-two people died. Surely that’s better than simply letting dragons run amok. And with the escort mission, yes, I’ll admit that seemed like bullshit at the start, but it ended up being a serious raid. If you’re right about a group of humans hunting dragons, it was absolutely essential that we stopped them from acquiring more resources.”

She looked at Stonequest and shook her head. “But did I need to be there for any of that? You could’ve handled the battle without me. There’s no doubt about that one. And I guess I dispersed the bikers, but if I hadn’t had been there, do you really think you would have let them go?”

“I was shot back there,” Heartsbane said. “I was shot and it hurt. If you hadn’t said something to Stonequest and Emerald, maybe one of us would have been killed.”

Kristen nodded, even though she knew full well that the dragons could tell she wasn’t placated. The fact was that she had already faced humans armed with dragon bullets when she’d been with human SWAT. She’d been on a case that had been more important to her—stopping the people who’d tried to use her family as hostages—and had been closer to unraveling it than she was on Dragon SWAT.

All she wanted was to protect the people she cared for. She wanted to be that person more than anything, but it felt like her time with Dragon SWAT wouldn’t allow her to be a person at all.

“Look, I have paperwork to catch up on,” she said lamely and wandered out of the medical wing feeling dejected, worthless, and like her purpose wasn’t being fulfilled.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Butters poured himself a cup of coffee and checked his pork shoulder. It had been cooking all night—low and slow, exactly like his grandfather had said—and looked like it was about done. The outside looked damn good and the temperature inside was all right. He knew he should let it rest but he had to get to work and he also needed to know if it was as good as the one the dragon Lumos had made.

He tested it with a fork and the meat parted effortlessly under the slightest pressure as he pulled a small piece out. It still dripped with fat as the meat hadn’t yet had time to reabsorb the juices and he put it in his mouth. It was damn good. Better than the dragon’s, in fact, and he grinned.

Hernandez had talked about a rematch against Dragon SWAT on the airsoft range. He hadn’t really cared about all that, but now that he knew he could win in the smoked meats department, he was ready for another competition. Feeling a little smug even at the thought of culinary victory, he downed the remainder of his coffee and checked the time.

Realizing he was now running late, he hurried to the door, paused to grab his cell phone—he’d almost left it on the shelf at the door—and stepped out into the predawn light.

Before he could close the door behind him, a bullet streaked past his nose and into his apartment.

Butters’ instincts kicked in and he rolled forward. An absolutely massive weeping willow grew beside the stream that ran outside the front of his apartment complex and the trunk was large enough to hide even his girth. It was one of the reasons he’d stayed in this apartment. The leafy cover of the tree’s canopy gave the sniper some sense of protection.

But whoever had shot at him had seen through the bright yellow-green flush of springtime growth.

Butters pressed his back up against the tree and was able to feel the shots from the sniper as they pelted the far side of the trunk. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. All were delivered a few seconds apart like whoever used the gun was able to do so as easily as he could breathe. He knew he couldn’t move. If he stepped out from behind the tree, the shooter would have no problem finding a target.

The bullets stopped, probably so the marksman could reload or move to get a better angle. Butters knew that if it was the second, he’d have some time. There was only one apartment block across the street where this guy could be shooting from. He had been a sniper for years and feeling that first shot streak past his face and drill into the floor of his apartment was enough to tell him the rough direction of the gunman. If the asshole wanted to kill him, he’d have to go down six flights of stairs, then a few blocks over, and up another four flights.

Thankful that he’d grabbed his cellphone as he was leaving for once instead of having to go back for it like he usually did, he called Drew.

Despite the early hour, his boss didn’t sound surprised or groggy. Knowing him and his own obsessions, he was probably at the gym. “What’s up, Butters? Did you burn your apartment down with another pork shoulder?”

“I am under attack. Some Yankee sonofabitch is across the street with a damn sniper rifle and has me pinned down.”

“Can you get to cover?” He could hear Drew moving, no doubt springing into action. It was good to have friends like him.

“I already am. Do you know that willow tree in front of my place?”

“Of course.”

“That’s where I am. I reckon I have maybe six minutes before this guy repositions.”

“We’ll be there in five,” the team leader replied.

“Make it four. This guy could either move or stay where he is, I suppose. If I guess wrong, he’s got me. No doubt about that.”

“We’ll be there.” Drew hung up.

A minute later, Butters heard sirens wailing down the street.

In another fifteen seconds, a SWAT van stopped with a squeal of tires and almost drove into the willow despite it being on the grass. The door slid open and Keith slid out with a bulletproof vest for Butters. He helped him get it on and together, they ran to the van. Hernandez was inside and looked freaked out for once.

“Where’s Beanpole?” Butters demanded. All these people were his team, but Beanpole was his partner. He’d be damned if something had already happened to him.

“He went with the other SWAT van,” Drew said.

“Now why’d he go and do a fool thing like that?” he demanded and the tone of his voice sounded like the southerner who’d been raised in a Baptist church that he was.

“He does look out for snipers, so he said he’d be the best person to find this asshole and deal with him,” Drew said and tried not to grin.

“The dude was pissed,” Keith added and his grin broadened.

The radio hissed to life with Beanpole’s voice. “We found the site of the shooter. At least I believe we did. There are no casings or anything, but it smells like gunpowder and there are scratches from where a bipod was mounted.”

“Are we clear?” the team leader asked.

“Oh yes,” Beanpole replied. “I sent police to the other two buildings that might be able to get a bead on Butters’ front door. They’re making a ruckus on the top floors and haven’t found a thing. We’re clear.”

“Do you want to go see if we can recover any evidence from this willow?” Drew asked.

Butters nodded. He’d felt those seven shots through the tree. Not one had hit the ground or gone wide.

They stepped from the safety of the SWAT van. This was always a harrowing moment for him, to go from known safety to danger merely by taking a single step. He’d once thought that he’d become accustomed to it over the years, but it still set his heart racing every time. He was cool as a cucumber in actual combat, but once the all-clear had been sounded and he was no longer supposed to hide behind his rifle, he became as nervous as hell.

It turned out there was good reason to be worried about the gunman this time.

He and Drew went around to the other side of the willow tree to examine the spread of the shots.

Butters had been worried about a tight little circle or maybe a bullet hole or two that had overlapped. What he saw was far more terrifying.

The sniper had drawn a smiley face on the tree trunk with a bullet hole for each eye and another five in an unmistakable smile.

Drew cleared his throat, obviously freaked. “That’s…”

“That’s damn near impossible,” he finished for him. “It means the first shot wasn’t a miss, either.”

“The first shot?”

“When I stepped out the door, the sniper damn near gave me a shave, the bullet was so close. I assumed it was a miss, but if they could draw a picture with bullets at that range, hell, he shouldn’t have missed.”

“Do you think it was some kind of warning?” Drew asked.

“What was?” Hernandez stepped from the van.

Butters pointed at the smiley face on the tree. “I should be dead. Tell me I shouldn’t.”

“That makes two of us,” she said, her face white.

“What are you talking about?” their boss asked.

“Last night, I got home to find that some kind of explosive device had been rigged to my door,” she said. Butters knew she was serious because she hadn’t cursed once.

“Why the fuck didn’t you say anything sooner?” Drew demanded.

“That’s why you showed up at my place last night?” Keith also sounded surprised.

“It wasn’t actually a bomb so it was fine.” She shrugged. “Someone had taken one of my little experiments and rigged it with glitter.”

“I thought you’d gone to a strip club,” Keith said and gestured at her face. It was indeed sparkly.

“I thought it was a joke. I didn’t think it was funny, of course, because glitter’s never funny, but now, well…”

“This isn’t a joke,” Butters said. “We were targeted by someone with a sick sense of humor.”

“And who knows I like explosives and you’re a sniper,” Hernandez said.

“We might all be in danger.” Drew pulled his phone out.

“Yeah, but the whole team is right here. Who are you calling?” the sniper asked.

“Kristen. It seems like when the shit hits the fan, the Steel Dragon’s always involved.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When Kristen was awakened by a call from Drew telling her that someone might have targeted her and her old team, it was almost a relief. They’d already placed some kind of explosive at Hernandez’s place and used a sniper rifle against Butters, although both of them were fine. Finally, action was needed. She knew what to do when faced with this kind of threat. She stepped out of her apartment, transformed into a dragon, and flew to SWAT HQ, remaining high above the city so as to avoid potential sniper fire.

She soared over the city and her sharp dragon eyes revealed the streets to her like an owl hunting a vole in the snow. Despite the circumstances—which she really would prefer not to have any of them go through—she felt like she finally had a purpose. Her team and her friends had been threatened. She only hoped the assailant was a dragon or a mage. If they were merely a regular human, it wouldn’t go well for them.

With her wings tucked, she dove toward the SWAT station and spread the steel webbing between the thin, impossibly strong bones of her dragon body to slow her descent. She landed in front of SWAT HQ and noted that the van Drew and the team usually used was parked outside. They’d made it back, then, and were presumably safe. If someone was in the hospital, they wouldn’t have driven to the office.

In moments, she transformed into a human and took a deep breath. There had been an attack on her friends. Drew had said that but not much more before she had rushed off to help. Knowing that she needed to stay calm and keep cool, she took another deep breath. She’d rushed into situations before and endangered not only herself but her friends too. This was a situation where they were in danger, so she couldn’t let fear and paranoia escalate any further. No matter what, she had to remain in control.

Calmly, she looked around and tried to take in her surroundings to both ground herself and see if there was anything out of place. A few early morning joggers ran by, but that was typical. The station was near the Detroit River, and people liked to exercise in the fresh air. A van from Ashley’s Flowers, a local flower shop located in the nearby Millender center, was parked nearby. A bum shuffled past, perhaps unusual for the season as it was still cold out at night, but she recognized the guy. Satisfied that she’d seen nothing unusual, she went inside.

At the front desk was a delivery person from Ashley’s flowers—a kid Kristen recognized, in fact. He tried and failed to persuade the woman at the front desk to take the flowers.

“Miss Hall!” The kid’s voice cracked. She’d used Ashley’s for flowers before she’d been the Steel Dragon. He was probably one of the few people in the entire city who still thought of her as Kristen instead of the Steel Dragon.

“Yes?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Can you sign for this delivery?”

“Hold up there, Slick,” said the woman working there. Mrs McGill sounded apologetic but firm. “Captain Hanson said that no one on the force is taking deliveries right now.”

Slick—undoubtedly a nickname but an accurate one based on the sheen of sweat on the kid’s forehead—looked pleadingly at Kristen.

“Who are they for?”

“Uh…” He checked a tablet, “Keith Wentworth? Please, miss? I think it’s for his aunt, maybe? We’re friends on social media and he’s been upset about her. I think it’s for that.”

Kristen nodded and signed for the flowers. That checked out. Keith had lost an aunt a week or so before. His relentless social media presence had taken a morose turn for a few days before he’d cheered up a little.

She took the vase with the bouquet and headed toward the back room. Curious, she sniffed the flowers. They were an unusual choice for sharing condolences. Growing up as the kid of a cop in Detroit, she had attended more than her fair share of funerals. The standard was white lilies, although that wasn’t a hard and fast rule. Still, most people sent white flowers for funerals. Even white roses or carnations were considered more tasteful than the garish red roses in front of her. At least they smelled good.

Her team was already gathered in the old breakroom when she walked in with the flowers in hand. They all looked morose. Cups of coffee stood half-finished on the table and a dejected Butters poked at a box of donuts.

“Did someone die?” she asked in a somewhat weak attempt at gallows humor.

Everyone looked up.

“Flowers? Really?” Drew asked.

“Who are they for?” Hernandez asked.

“Loverboy,” she said and pointed at Keith.

“Now that is weird,” Hernandez quipped. “There ain’t no one on this planet who would send the Rookie flowers.”

“I’ll have you know I am the object of affection of many of my online followers,” Keith retorted smartly.

“The delivery boy thought maybe they were for your aunt,” Kristen told him.

He nodded.

“Red roses?” Butters asked.

“Yeah.” She grimaced. “That’s why I thought it might be a stalker or something. Who sends roses for a funeral?”

“Is there a note?” Drew asked.

She hadn’t seen one but she checked again. “Nope, nothing.”

“That’s weird,” the team leader said, his voice like ice. “Kristen, maybe you should put the flowers down.”

His warning came too late. The arrangement began to spray gas into the room. She turned her steel skin on by reflex—even though it wouldn’t do a thing to protect her lungs from toxic gas—and threw the vase through the window and into the parking lot.

Hernandez had already donned a gas mask. “Come on. Let’s go see if this asshole was more serious about killing Keith than he was about me or Butters.”

Kristen nodded and followed as a pit formed in her stomach, one so deep it could maybe reach all the way to the center of the earth. She had made a mistake—a serious, possibly lethal, and unbelievably naïve mistake. While she had recognized the flower shop van and the delivery boy, she hadn’t even considered that such familiar things would be used against them.

But it made sense. After all, if these three events were connected—and she had no doubt that they were—whoever was orchestrating them had done their research. They had known Butters was a sniper and that Hernandez had a penchant for explosives. It was also very possible that they had known that the cops had received flowers from Ashley’s and would therefore be less wary. Shit. She half-wondered if whoever had done this had only sent the bouquet after the other two events in hopes of snaring her.

But no, probably not. If they knew she was a dragon, they would have known her reflexes would have reacted much faster than the time it would take for a gas canister to fill a room. Which meant that whoever they were, they weren’t infallible. That they hadn’t anticipated her action was a tiny, infinitesimal comfort. And considering how close it had been, it was probably safe to assume that no more mistakes could be made, not with the lives of the people she cared about on the line.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It had taken all night, but Brian had finally done it. He was first on the leader boards. The game had been out for hardly twenty-four hours—a second-world first-person shooter in which you had to craft your own guns from the beasts you slew—but Brian had already climbed to the top.

He probably wouldn’t be able to hold the number one position—few could and especially given how exhausted he was—but he’d likely keep his place in the top ten for at least a week, even if he stopped playing. Not that he would do that. He still had a base to reinforce, plus there was some kind of a warthog-centipede fusion monster that, if he could kill and harvest it, would grant him some sick armor. He’d need to sleep, but he’d be back at it thereafter.

A chime sounded—a new sound he didn’t recognize as a proximity alert or anything else from the game. Was there a feature he’d somehow neglected? That was impossible, though. He was in first, and not by a tiny margin. There was simply no way he’d neglected an entire component of the game.

The noise repeated.

He looked up from his screen when he recognized the sound. Someone had rung the doorbell.

His first thought was to simply wait for his parents to answer it but he then remembered something about them going to get brunch and him demanding pancakes.

With a sigh, he signed out of the game—he was in his base and had it locked down so it wasn’t too risky—and answered the door.

No one was there. Brian shrugged, turned toward the couch, and tried to decide whether to continue to kick ass or if a nap would better maintain his place as number one. He frowned when he realized the couch wasn’t empty.

A person sat there, right next to his usual position.

Startled, he rubbed his eyes. He’d gone for quite some time without sleep, and he had to admit that the woman on the couch looked like she had come from a dream.

He rubbed again but the woman didn’t evaporate so he studied her quickly.

She was gorgeous, easily the most beautiful woman he had ever seen with long, dark hair and beautiful, exotic features. Her figure was like something out of a videogame. She had a narrow waist, an ample chest that was barely contained in the tiny black dress she wore, and legs that poked from a slit in the skirt and set his mind racing. A garter there caught his eye and oh, how he longed to remove it. She reminded him of a Bond villain, and he liked Bond villains.

“Uh, hi…uh, who are you?” He stumbled through the words.

“My name is Obscura and I’ve heard a lot about you, Brian Hall. Number one in only a day? I like fast boys.”

Brian’s heart hammered in his throat. This woman—this perfect woman—was on his couch, talking about his high score. It was almost too good to be true. Of course, there was the question of how she’d gotten inside.

“You’re…you’re a dragon?” He said it as a question but he already knew the answer. That was the only way she could have made it inside and anyway, he could sense her aura.

Kristen didn’t actively use her aura on him, but she sometimes did by accident. He could feel the same sensation tug at his brain to make his sleep-deprived mind even more sluggish.

“Is that a problem?” the woman asked in mock outrage, her finger pointed at her breasts—her chest, he told himself—like he’d accused her of a horrible thing.

“No, I…you must know my sister is a dragon.”

“I’m not interested in your sister, Brian. I’m interested in you. Stop being such a stranger and come sit with me. I’m cold.” She shivered, which made parts of her body dance in a way that graphics simulators had yet to emulate.

“Yeah, of course.” He knew he wasn’t thinking clearly because he was tired, because this dragon lady was manipulating him with magic, and because he hadn’t so much as had a girl talk to him since he’d graduated high school. His brain dismissed all these potential conflicts of interest and logic as quickly as they arose.

Brian sat beside the woman and pulled a blanket over them both.

To his agonized delight, she squirmed closer so their bodies were pressed against one another and her breasts pushed against the side of his chest. He hoped she didn’t reach under the blanket and discover his enthusiasm, but he also desperately wanted her to reach under the blanket and discover that he felt the same as she seemed to.

“My mom keeps it cold in here,” he said in what even his addled brain recognized to be possibly the worst pick up line in all of history.

“Brian, I want to talk about you. After all, you’re the gamer and the one with the high score. Do you want to play a game with me?” She took his arm and put it around her shoulder.

She was hot and not sexy hot—obviously, she was that—but temperature-wise, she was so warm. He wanted to sink into her and never let go.

“I…uh, don’t get me wrong,” he said. The small part of his brain that still struggled against a situation he’d literally dreamed about rebelled and ruined it for the rest of him. “But are you one of Kristen’s friends or something? Is that why you’re here? Because she’s out of town. Or maybe she just got back or something. She’s…she’s not here.”

“Oh, I know full well all about her movements and how she went on some mission from Maine to here. I know about her team and I know about you. I thought it was so brave of you to get so angry with her this week. Those words you used were so…evocative.”

“You heard all that?”

“How many ways do you want me to say it, Brian?” she whispered into his ear. “I’ve been watching you, thinking about you, and hoping that I’m on your mind the way you’re on mine.”

“Wait…” Brian would’ve pulled away, but his arm was around her shoulder and the feel of her hair on his forearm made it hard to think. “You’ve been nearby? Was it your aura that made me so mad with Kristen?”

“How does this thing work, anyway?” The woman gestured down and for a second, he thought that this was his moment and he would score with a dragon. Then, he saw that she was pointing at a game controller.

She pulled the blanket down and leaned over—obviously to give him another tantalizing look at her body—and picked the control up. “Will you show me?” she asked and pulled Brian’s arms around her like he was Patrick Swayze in Ghost but with videogames.

It would be a lie to say this wasn’t his most epic fantasy moment, and this woman seemed to be into that.

“You work the buttons, and…uh, watch to make sure you’re doing it right,” he said. There, that sounded better. That could’ve passed for innuendo, right?

“I love that you’re a man who knows what he likes,” the woman said, drew away from the controller, and rested her hand on his belly. “You must like food too, huh?”

“Well…uh, yeah.”

“Don’t be ashamed, Brian. Dragons aren’t ashamed of what we like.”

“And, uh…what do you like?” he asked, desperate to please her and to do anything for her. Whatever part of his brain had fought her had given up. Her touch was intoxicating, and that she liked his body and his mad skills…well, it was too much.

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that, Brian. You don’t need to worry at all. You see, I have what I want, and right now, I want my big strong gamer to be nice and rested. You’re tired, aren’t you?”

Brian nodded, his eyelids heavy.

“You’re tired and we have a long, hard day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“I…”

“Shh…” The woman put a finger on his lips. He didn’t lick her—much as he wanted to, he knew that that would be weird—but he did smell her. She smelled red like candied apples and red hots and cinnamon and heat. “Now, close your eyes,” she said and worked her hand slowly from his lips to his neck and finally, to his chest. She touched his plump body like it was some kind of sensual temple and even squeezed his man-boobs.

He wanted to know what else she’d squeeze, what else she’d do, and how he had managed to seduce this amazing woman, but he slid into sleep to dream the dreams Obscura put in his head.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Is everyone all right?” Kristen asked as the team hurried down the corridor.

“Yeah, thanks to you,” Drew said.

“But also, this is kind of your fault,” Hernandez said, but she didn’t sound pissed. She adjusted her gas mask and pushed ahead of the others toward the exit to the parking lot.

Her teammates donned gas masks and followed as quickly as they could.

Other cops were already out there as well, no doubt distracted by the smoke as they arrived for work.

The demolitions expert had already picked the bouquet up despite the smoke that still seeped from somewhere amongst the roses. The vase itself had shattered and she poked through the flowers and located a small device tucked between the stems.

She held it up like she’d won a lottery ticket.

“Officer Lyn Hernandez to the fucking rescue yet again,” she shouted and earned a high-five from one of the officers who’d formed a perimeter around the bouquet.

Then, to Kristen’s horror, she removed her mask.

“Damn it, Hernandez! Don’t be an idiot,” Drew yelled but she only laughed.

“Oh, calm the fuck down. It’s not VX or we’d be dead already. The amount we smelled inside would have been enough to kill us. We’d merely be walking corpses until it did.”

“Then why the gas masks?” Keith asked, his voice muffled through his.

“Appearances.” She grinned. “Plus, just because it’s not lethal doesn’t mean it won’t fuck you pussies up.” Hernandez laughed. She really was in her element when dealing with volatile chemicals.

“What is it?” Kristen asked.

“Not VX. That doesn’t fit the pattern. Do you smell the ammonia? My guess is muriatic acid and ammonia, commonplace kitchen chemistry.”

“Muri-what?” Keith asked, confused no doubt.

“Muriatic acid contains hydrochloric acid, which reacts with ammonia to make smoke. It’s another fake scare like the others. This shit’s about as dangerous as a glitter bomb,” she explained.

Drew shook his head. “Bag the whole thing and send it to the lab for analysis. Not that I’m hopeful. None of the other samples have turned up anything resembling clues.”

“Isn’t it too early for that?” Kristen asked.

“We might get some forensic trail or something eventually, but the glitter bomb was made from Hernandez’s stash. There were no prints on it and no obviously rare compounds besides the glitter. The bullets we recovered from the tree were purchased from literally the closest gun store. We’re still waiting on the place to open, but my guess would be by someone with a broad-brimmed hat who never looks at security cameras.”

“Whoever is doing this is good,” Beanpole said.

“And working fast,” the leader added.

“Did you make any new enemies?” Keith asked Kristen.

“Do you think this is because of me?” she asked, even though that was exactly what she had thought from the beginning.

“It makes sense. You’re the Steel Dragon and we’re simply cops.”

“I don’t want to jump to a conclusion, though,” Drew warned.

“Oh yeah? Do you have suspects in mind?”

“Too many.” He sighed. “We’ve put many people away over the years and some folks might want a piece of us. Considering the technical expertise needed to make a bomb and deliver a gas attack, not to mention the precision sniper, I’d say it’s not necessarily a dragon. Plus, no one targeted Kristen.”

“Yeah, because I was out of town until late yesterday,” she objected.

“And that means this is all about you?” he asked, although he didn’t sound incredulous, only curious.

“Well…that’s my thought at the moment,” she responded.

“I can’t honestly say I disagree.” He nodded. “The ‘playful’ nature of these fake attacks is weird. It doesn’t seem like a common criminal to me, and you being out of town over this time is curious.”

Kristen’s phone buzzed in her pocket to indicate that she’d received a text. She took it out, glanced at the screen and frowned when she saw that the caller ID was blocked.

“Kristen? Is there something more important to your life than your friends being attacked by some weird joker assassin?”

“Yeah, actually. There is. I think I know who the real target was, and I hate to say I told you so, but…well, whoever this asshole is, they’re after me.”

“How can you be sure?” Butters asked.

She held her phone up to show them up and found their expressions of shock appropriate.

There was no text on the phone and no identifying number, only a photo.

On her screen was a picture of her brother Brian, asleep and tied to a chair in the middle of a dark room.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Fury filled Kristen and rippled out from her through the assembled police. It was still so hard to control her aura, especially when confronted with yet another psycho trying to use her family against her.

The cops, all slaves to the emotions she made them feel, took up the sentiment.

“Enough is enough!”

“Someone’s gotta show these assholes that enough is enough!”

“You got our back, Steel Dragon?”

It was perversely funny that these thoughts should come from people asking her for help when they only felt this way because of her.

Well, not only because of her. A group of police clustered around Butters, Hernandez, and Keith and listened to their stories of the odd attempts at fake assassination. The cops didn’t care that they all seemed like jokes. They didn’t think it was funny and recognized it as the threat it was, one that included them all.

Someone was toying with them and trying to show the Detroit PD that they weren’t safe in their homes or at work. That same someone tried to show Kristen that she was outmaneuvered. Not only had they taken her brother from her, but they had undermined the most trusted people on the force. But whoever they were, they’d made a mistake. They’d left her unmolested, which meant she would bring the full power of her dragon abilities against whoever this sociopath was. Once she found them, she’d defeat them as completely as she had Shadowstorm.

She had a feeling that this wasn’t a regular human attack either. A human—given these opportunities—would have taken them. This was something else, some kind of power game that she wanted to flip off the table.

But she had to be cautious. Much as she wanted to light every warehouse in a ten-mile radius on fire, she couldn’t simply rush off and not without support. She’d learned that much at both human and Dragon SWAT. The group was stronger than the individual, even if the individual was a flying, fire-breathing, steel-skinned dragon intent on revenge.

Her friends already looked at her like they understood this. Drew’s jaw was hard and his face was grim. She could almost see him going through what he would say to the Captain when they all ran off to help her.

Butters looked more than ready, but this whole thing was already personal to him.

Beanpole—never one to make waves—looked nervously at her all the same. He’d follow his team, obviously, but was sometimes less than enthusiastic to go against the captain. But three officers’ lives had been threatened. Surely that would be enough to force action.

Kirsten didn’t have to guess at what Keith or Hernandez wanted to do.

“My only question is if I should prep a glitter bomb for this asshole.” Hernandez sounded reflective.

“Yes!” Keith grinned. “And real bombs too, obviously. I want those loud bangy ones so I can throw them around.”

The Steel Dragon—despite the mounting stress and the terror she felt—smiled at her friends. This was what friendship was supposed to be—people ready to drop what they were doing when someone was in need. And it was obvious that Brian was in need.

But she was worried about that too. It seemed more and more apparent that whoever had orchestrated all this and kidnapped him had a grudge against her. Nothing else made sense, at this point. Which, to her, meant it was most likely a dragon. After all, it was their centuries-old culture that she’d upset and their world that she’d unwittingly crashed into.

And much as she wished it wasn’t true, her human friends would need help if they had to face a dragon. They’d beaten Shadowstorm—barely—but she didn’t want to risk their lives again, especially now that she was a member of Dragon SWAT.

“I’ll talk to Hanson about following some leads and send patrols to the warehouse district looking for leads,” Drew said.

“What makes you think it was a warehouse?” Butters asked.

“There weren’t any walls or anything in that photo,” Drew replied and looked pensive. “Only Brian, a naked bulb, and a concrete floor. That would be a fairly large room to have in any building except for a warehouse.”

“It still seems like a stretch,” the sniper replied.

The team leader nodded. “I know, but where else do we start? Do you have any ideas, Hall?”

Kristen loved that Drew still called her Hall like she was any other cop. “Yeah, I do. I’m calling in reinforcements.”

She retrieved her phone and made a video call to Stonequest.

He picked up after only one ring and listened as she explained the events of the last twenty-four hours.

“I’m so sorry this is happening to you and your friends,” he said once she had explained the three weird attempts plus Brian’s kidnapping.

“Thanks, Stonequest, really. It’s good to know there are dragons out there who care enough about people to do something about it. My hunch is that a dragon’s behind this. I think a human would’ve used the opportunities to hurt my friends. My thought is that we could form a network and use our auras to try to feel out this hidden dragon.”

“Lady Steel…Kristen, I’m sorry, I really am, but I can’t do that.” He looked like he felt horrible about it, but that was his answer all the same.

“My brother was kidnapped, Stonequest. Kidnapped! The last time something like this happened, it was Shadowstorm who tried to do it. It’s gotta be a dragon. Who else would try to piss off the Steel Dragon?”

“I think you might be right. At the very least, I’ll admit it’s possible but so far…well… These are human crimes. A sniper? A…what did you call it, a glitter bomb? Poison gas in flowers? Those are all things people do. Even kidnapping isn’t something dragons normally resort to. It’s too difficult to control humans. Most dragons simply, uh…” He didn’t say what most dragons did, but she could make the deduction. The fact that Brian hadn’t been swallowed in the photograph meant Stonequest didn’t think it was a dragon.

“I call bullshit. The only connection between these four people is me. Someone’s trying to send me a message or something. It has to be a dragon.”

“You might be right, but until you have evidence to prove that, it’s out of our jurisdiction.”

“People’s lives are at stake. Even if they weren’t my friends, these are cops and a kid in danger here. None of them did anything wrong,” she pleaded.

“I hear you, really, but there’s precedent. Dragons have been duped into going into action before when it wasn’t our place to do so. We’ve tried to save humans from humans. It causes all kinds of trouble if we guess wrong or if we use our abilities. There was an incident in 1962 with the kidnapping of a pregnant teenage girl. She was a senator’s daughter, so it was a high profile case. Her father said the man who’d impregnated her against her will had asked a dragon advisor to involve SWAT. He did, found the kidnapped girl, and burned her kidnappers to death.”

“Good!” Kristen fumed, unable to believe that he was quoting old cases to her. “Let’s go burn the kidnappers.”

“No, Kristen. It turned out the senator had been lying. The teenager hadn’t been kidnapped. Hell, she wasn’t even a teenager. She was twenty-two, which is older than the age of consent for people. She’d run away with the kidnapper. Apparently, she’d hated her daddy’s politics. Dragon SWAT burned a group of hippies to death for no good reason. We can’t let that happen again.”

She clenched her jaw. “If you expect me to leave Brian on his own, tied to a chair and waiting to be tortured, you have another think coming.”

“No, no, no! That’s not what I’m saying at all. Brian is yours and that should go without saying. The police—your friends—who were attacked would be considered yours by all but the most conservative of dragons as well. Dragons—private dragons, that is—are allowed to protect their humans. There’s a well-established precedent for that as well. You merely can’t involve Dragon SWAT. If something goes wrong when you attempt to rescue him, the Dragon Council can take action against you. That’s much harder to do when it’s one of their own police forces.”

Kristen took a deep breath. She was on her own, then. Obviously, she had her human friends, but how useful would they be in hunting a dragon? One gout of flame could incinerate the entire team. For that matter, if they weren’t careful, their very emotions could be turned against themselves. She shook her head and wiped a tear away when she realized she had no idea how she would find Brian, let alone save him.

“Hey, hey, don’t cry. You’ll rust.”

She looked up as Lumos shoved his way onto the screen.

“I’m old enough to recall the time before we had all these rules and to remember some of the oaths dragons once swore to each other. You saved Heartsbane and Emerald, so you’ve earned a place in my book. I’d love to come, uh…what’s the human expression? Ride shotgun on these motherfuckers.”

Her frown dissolved into a smile and she swiped at another tear. Lumos being there to help would make a significant difference as he was ancient and experienced. Of course, she wasn’t sure yet if the Dragon SWAT leader would let him go.

“Will that be a problem, Stonequest?” she asked pointedly, knowing full well she was pushing the limits of loyalty.

“An officer of the Dragon SWAT cannot aid a human in an official capacity,” he replied woodenly.

She clenched her jaw, unable to believe that he wouldn’t relent,

“Why are you upset?” Lumos wore a grin on his face. “Oh! I forgot that you can’t feel auras over these things.” He winked at her. “Old by-the-book can’t say a damn thing, but he doesn’t need to. I won’t act in any official capacity. That would besmirch the fine name of Dragon SWAT. I’ll merely come along to help a friend save her humans. That’s happened thousands of times in dragon history. It’s not a big deal, not at all.”

Stonequest nodded tightly once and she relaxed. At least she had one dragon on board and wouldn’t have to deal with bureaucratic repercussions.

“I seem to recall that you’d asked for the day off, right Lumos?” the leader said.

“Sure, yeah. If we gotta keep it that square, put me in for a holiday.” Lumos twirled his mustache. “Where are you Kristen? Human SWAT headquarters? Is that the one near the river?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I’ll be there as fast as my wings can carry me.”

“Thank you, Lumos.”

“Let’s not celebrate prematurely,” he said. “I’ll see you when I see you and we’ll kick some ass.”

“Thank you,” Stonequest said quietly. “Both of you. As leader of this team of Dragon SWAT, my actions are watched very closely. I can’t act with as much freedom as would often make sense.”

Kristen nodded. She wasn’t angry at him, more like at the entire system that made him act in this way.

“Although—” He coughed twice. “I feel a little unwell. I might take a day and fly around. It’s great for the lungs. Maybe I’ll drift around Dearborn. Do you know the area, Kristen?”

She smiled. “That’s where my parents live.”

“Ah, yes…they have good air over there. I’ll do a few laps and try to shake this…uh, cold and well, if I see anything happen there, it’s not against any rules for a dragon to land, is it?”

“Thank you, Stonequest, really.”

He nodded. “It’s the least I can do—literally the least and legally the most, but I wouldn’t want anything to happen to the rest of your family, especially if you’re right about the involvement of a dragon. And, of course, if you find even a speck of evidence that points to a dragon—if you see a scale, find something burned with dragon’s fire, or hell, if you feel an aura, you call me. Understand?”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.” Kristen wouldn’t try to do something like this solo again. She only hoped she could discover where Brian was sooner rather than later.

She hung up and looked at her human friends. They’d prepared the SWAT van for action, even though no one knew where the captive was.

“What’s the plan?” Drew asked.

“We find who did all this, catch them, save my brother, and make sure they never do this shit again.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Brian woke up seated in a chair. His wrists hurt, and he brought them up to his face so he could see in the dim light. There were marks on them like he’d been tied. That was weird. The last thing he remembered was making first place on the leader boards and then that woman—

He stood quickly and knocked the chair over when the truth sank in that he had been kidnapped. The dragon had obviously used her aura to make him find her really, really attractive, and then she’d knocked him out. What really pissed him off was that he’d recognized that she did have an aura. If he hadn’t been so tired and, honestly, so desperate for the attention of such a beautiful woman, he might have been able to resist.

But none of that mattered now. She’d captured him and taken him to…a room with four open doors?

That was a little weird.

Nothing else was in the room except for four buttons that protruded slightly from the floor. Each of them glowed white and provided the only illumination in the room. He walked toward one and examined the plastic knob set into the floor. It looked like the kind one would see on an old arcade console, not that Brian had ever played those. Having to leave one’s home for video games was a phenomenon that happened long before his time.

Although he was tempted to press it to see what would happen, he wasn’t an idiot. The dragon had brought him there and left him unbound in the room. There was a purpose to the buttons, of that he was certain. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of doing her work for her. If she wanted to kill him, she’d have to do it herself.

“Where am I? Is anyone there?” he called. A hunch told him that although he seemed alone, he wasn’t.

“I’m here, Brian.” It was the woman’s voice—the dragon’s, he reminded himself. It was easy to think of her as the woman who’d come into his house and pressed against him on the couch, but that was no doubt what she wanted him to think. Dragon, Brian told himself in his head. Dragon, dragon, dragon. Scaly, gross, and probably as old as hell dragon. Your sister’s a dragon, and this one is crazy. You can’t think anything else. “Great. That’s really useful to know. And who the hell are you? Besides a dragon slut, obviously.”

A tinkle of laughter answered the insult. It came from a speaker on the ceiling. “I haven’t been called that for centuries. You flatter me.”

“You want flattery? Tell me where the nearest exit is and I’ll call you all kinds of things.”

“I must say, I’m disappointed in you. Here you are in this game I built especially for you, and you’re not even curious. I thought you liked games.”

Ah, so that’s what the buttons were. Okay, at least he was getting somewhere. “I won’t press your stupid fucking buttons, so you might as well bring up the house lights and let me out of here. I quit.”

“But you made it to number one. You’ve posted interest in virtual reality on message boards. Why not live it? And the prize is…well, I do so want you to win.”

Brian sighed. His brain seemed to default to game mode. He merely had to determine the goal and the obstacles that prevented him from achieving it. If this was a game, there would be rules, and if there were rules, he could exploit them. “What’s the game?”

“That’s more like it. I modeled it after a classic. Pac-Man, one of the greats.”

“Yeah, that’s gonna be a hard pass.” He snorted. “Pac-Man has no real strategy and no subtlety to the rules. Seriously, it was made before I was born. I understand that for a dragon, that’s like cutting edge technology, but man, it’s not for me.”

More tinkling laughter greeted this statement. “You’re funny, Brian, the way you joke and act like you have a choice. I like confidence in young men. Now, press a button.”

“Well, I guess you understand video games at least.” He pressed one of the buttons gingerly. When he removed his foot, it had gone dark. The other three were still illuminated. “I did it. Yay!” he said with all the sarcasm he could muster, which, given who his mom was, was considerable. “Now, let me go.”

“That’s not how you win in Pac-Man, Brian. You must know that.”

“Can you stop using my fucking name?”

“Do you prefer I use the name Lancer681?”

He felt a chill ripple down his spine. “How do you… How do you know that name?” Lancer681 was his gamer profile, but he didn’t tell anyone that name. Not even Kristen knew it.

“I’m very thorough. I told you, I’ve been very interested in you and watched you both offline and online.”

“Bullshit. You saw it on the screen when you abducted me.”

“And that’s how I know your history?” She began to rattle off all the games he had played in the last week and went so far as to list some of the details from his highlights reel.

“Okay, Okay! I get it. So…what’s your name.”

“Obscura.”

That sent another chill down Brian’s spine. It meant dark. The last dragon his sister had defeated had been named Shadowstorm. Was there a connection? There had to be.

“You’re Shadowstorm’s daughter?”

“You flatter me, Brian. You really do. I’m impressed and believe in honesty, so yes, in answer to your question, I’m related to Shadowstorm, but I’m not his daughter.”

“Then who are you?”

“I’m his mother.”

The implications of that sent ice into his bones. He didn’t think she was lying. What would be the point? But Kristen had mentioned that Shadowstorm hadn’t been particularly adept with technology. If his mother was able to learn his online profile, she was obviously much more advanced. In addition, the room he was in couldn’t have been built overnight, which meant not only was she tech savvy but she was patient.

Suddenly, he wanted to get out of there very, very badly.

“Pac-Man’s about clearing boards, right?” He moved around the room and stamped on the four buttons, which plunged the room into darkness. “Board cleared. High score set. Let me go.”

“Oh, I’m so glad you agreed to play, but what kind of a game ends with the tutorial? Look down the passages. You should see more buttons.”

She was right. Now that the room he was in was completely dark, he could see down the four hallways. Down three of them were rows of the dim, white buttons set into the floor, but down the fourth there was something else. A figure stumbled toward him.

“What the fuck is that?” He yelped in real fright.

“You see, you must make it through the maze and press every button before you’ll be free to go. I was inspired to build this after learning you’re a gamer and after watching The Steel Dragon lose to a team of humans in a setup very similar to this one.”

“But what is he?” He could now tell that it was a man. He shuffled toward him and a chain—shackles—between his ankles clanked with each step. Brian only realized that belatedly. What he noticed first was the electric glow of the sparking shock wand in his hand.

“What would Pac-Man be without ghosts?” Obscura said lightly.

“Hey, buddy. Put the shock stick down and let’s talk about this. I’m sure she seduced you or whatever, but that doesn’t mean we have to do what she says.”

“Fuck you!” the man screamed in response and his voice lacked anything resembling sanity.

“You’ll find they’re not very amenable to conversation,” his captor said as he backed away from the approaching man.

Another man stepped into the hallway behind the first. He was also shackled and carried a wand that glowed with electricity.

“Buddy, please! You don’t have to do this.”

“I ain’t being eaten by no dragon, you fucking hologram. You ain’t going to trick me!” The man lunged forward and fell heavily, no doubt still adjusting to the chains on his ankles. Brian jumped back and moved into the opposite hallway. In his haste, he passed one of the glowing buttons.

“Tsk-tsk-tsk,” Obscura chided from a speaker farther down the hallway “If you miss a button, you’ll have to double back.”

He cursed and stood on the button before the man could stand. “Stop this!”

“You die!” one of the other ghosts yelled.

“You’ll find I’m quite good at motivating the…what do you call them in games? NPCs? I found a few lowlifes on the streets—men with violent histories who had been set free. I brought them here, provided them with nothing but drugs to sustain them, and threatened them with their lives. They fully believe I’ll eat them if they fail this game, even though I would never consume something so stuffed full of chemicals. On top of that, I’ve convinced them that every person they shock is only a hologram. They’ve already done in three of their own kind. I don’t think you stand much chance.”

Two more now shuffled up the hall to make four in all.

“Much like the ghosts in Pac-Man, they’re not great at teamwork, but I assure you, if you stay where you are, they’ll shock you and kill you. They’re quite resourceful. Why…” Obscura chuckled. “Last time, one of them choked Pac-Man to death with the chains on one of the other’s legs. Isn’t that simply amazing? Perhaps they are learning to work together after all.”

“Fuck,” Brian said and stumbled down the corridor. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He pressed the buttons on the floor as he proceeded but that only meant that these crazy-ass ghosts would be able to follow him. Unless, of course, he could get far enough ahead to create a false trail, double back, and go a different way. Even then, with four of them, he’d have to do that multiple times.

Brian turned his back on the men and ran. He reached the end of the hallway and a T-junction. Without hesitation, he chose the left first, extinguished a few lights, and doubled back, but the ghosts had already caught up. He cursed and went back the way he’d come.

“Excellent strategy! The lowlifes haven’t learned how to use the lights yet.” Obscura sounded absolutely delighted like he had ridden a bicycle with no training wheels for the first time.

“Games are supposed to be fun. This isn’t fun,” he yelled at her.

“It is for me,” she replied. “Now hurry up. I wasn’t able to learn how to put food in here like they do in Pac-Man, and I wouldn’t want you to starve to death—although with your fat gut, I’m sure that would take some time. More to the point, if you don’t clear the board in an hour, it resets. That’s how long it took me to walk the course. Given that you’re more…motivated than I was, I’m sure you can beat my high score.”

“This is fucking crazy. You’re fucking insane!” he shouted as he rounded a corner. He could hear the tinkle of chains behind him as his pursuers followed the line of extinguished buttons. The only strategy he could think of was to go faster and get far enough ahead to leave a false trail. He wasn’t naïve enough to think winning would do a damn thing except unlock difficult mode.

“No, Brian, it isn’t crazy. This is revenge.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Even though she was a dragon herself, Kristen couldn’t help but be amazed when she saw one come into sight. They were simply so enormous—huge, flying creatures who could soar above the world as effortlessly as birds. It was insane to think she was one.

Lumos landed, transformed into his human shape, and entered the SWAT building. She had seen him through the window and now waited for him. He didn’t so much as greet her when he stepped through the door, which she actually appreciated. “What’s our next move?” was his first question.

“More like first,” she muttered.

“We don’t know where he is, then?” he prodded.

“We don’t know shit,” Keith complained. “Obviously, they’re smart, because they were able to orchestrate a bullshit sniper attack, a fake bomb, and a non-lethal smoke bomb with flowers, and then abduct Kristen’s brother. Unfortunately, that’s about all we know.”

“We know Kristen’s central to it,” Drew said. “I think, given Brian’s abduction, we have to work on that assumption.”

“Which makes me think this has to be a dragon,” she finished. It didn’t take long to run through the facts when there weren’t any. “But we don’t know where they are.”

Lumos shrugged at that. “I don’t think that’s something we need to worry about.”

“Fucking classic,” Jim growled. “A dragon arrives and says we don’t need to worry about where the victim is located. How the fuck are we supposed to help him if we don’t even know where he is?”

“Don’t misinterpret me.” Lumos held his hands up in defense. “Look at the pattern. There have been three fake assassination attempts, correct?”

Everyone nodded.

“Obviously, our target doesn’t want to kill anyone—or not yet, anyway. They want to send a message, though, and to make the Steel Dragon afraid. And then there’s the picture they sent of your brother.”

“My brother who is held captive who knows where.”

“Right, but why send the picture if not to make you even angrier? My guess would be that whoever is doing this is trying to make you so angry and so desperate, that you don’t think clearly. If they accomplish that, they’ll reveal where Brian is and wait for you to march into the trap. All we need to do is wait. They’ll show us where to go. We merely have to make sure we’re careful when we follow the bait.”

“And if they kill Brian?” Hernandez asked.

“That would piss me the fuck off,” Kristen said.

Lumos’ confidence seemed to fade a little. Dragons could be so aloof. Obviously, he spoke about tactics from experience, but equally obviously from his reaction, people had died in the past. But that wasn’t an option, now. She had to save her brother before anything else happened to him.

“We… Well, what do we know? I saw the photo, but does that give us anything? Can’t you examine the concrete on the floor or something?” he asked.

She clenched her jaw. He didn’t know anything about forensics work, only dragon behavior.

As it turned out, that was the thing to know.

Her phone buzzed and she yanked it out.

“Holy shit, it’s another message from the same number.” Everyone crowded around her to see the screen.

This one was a video, not an image. At first, it was hard to make out what was going on. There was the back of a heavyset man—Brian, obviously. She would recognize his heavy steps anywhere. Everything beyond that was confusing. He moved down a dark hallway but there were lights on the floor.

The camera lowered as Brian stepped on a light and it went dark. He stepped on the next one only a few feet ahead. It too went dark.

He ran on, breathing heavily, and stamped on button after button. Although obviously exhausted and running from something, he took care not to miss the buttons and even went so far as to double back to one he missed.

When he did that, he moved past the camera again. A drone maybe? It followed him, pivoted, and bobbed and she caught a glimpse of another man. This one had shackles on his ankles and wore the crazed look of the desperate. In his hand was a shock wand that he thrust out at Brian.

Her brother dove to the ground and narrowly missed the strike.

“You know, in Pac-Man, there are supposed to be buttons that make it so I can get the fucking ghosts,” he yelled, seemingly to the drone.

The camera focused on his face for a moment before he scrambled to his feet. He didn’t look good. Red and blotchy and drenched in sweat, the indications were that he wouldn’t last long.

“I’ll have to keep that in mind for the next version,” a woman’s voice said. Although Kristen didn’t see her, she knew this was their target.

“He’s in some kind of real-world game.” She was aghast.

Brian began to run again, and the drone followed him. He paused at a T-junction in his path and looked behind him. Lights from the drone shone on his face and made the terror and exhaustion painfully apparent.

The left path was already dark, so he went right and systematically pounded the buttons as the drone followed him. This was horrible—no, utterly insane. This woman had tricked him into playing, but everyone had to know there wasn’t a way to win this insanity.

But still, he made the attempt. He jogged down the hallway and extinguished light after light until he came to another passage. This one only had a few lights in it.

“Wow. That was your closest yet,” the woman’s disembodied voice said.

“No, please, no!” Brian begged and killed the lights. “I got them all! I won!”

“Sorry, you missed two of them farther back. I keep forgetting you can’t see it like I can, but rules are rules.”

All the little button lights came on. Brian squeezed his eyes shut and actually began to cry. “How many more times?” he asked weakly.

“I’m sure you can do this. And cheer up,” the woman said as the drone moved closer to him and hovered virtually in his face. “The Steel Dragon is watching. Maybe with an audience, you can beat it this time.”

“You’re…you’re showing this to my sister right now?” He turned to look at the camera. Kristen was now quite certain it was a drone from the way it bobbed up and down and slowly moved closer.

“I want the Steel Dragon to suffer. There’s no better way for that than for her to watch you die.”

“The only one who will suffer is you,” he retorted and held the back of his hand up to the camera. For a moment, Kristen thought he had flipped the drone off but soon realized that he was, in fact, showing her the face of his smartwatch.

It was open to the compass app, which displayed his precise longitude and latitude.

The dragon cursed and the video went black.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Oh, shit,” Lumos said as soon as the video feed went dead.

“Yeah, no shit,” Kristen replied. “I barely got those coordinates down. Do you think this dragon knew those were coordinates?”

“How can you be sure she’s a dragon?” Drew asked.

“I’m quite certain,” Lumos replied, his voice like ice and the fear palpable. “I know that voice. It belongs to an ancient by the name of Obscura. She is a very old and very cunning dragon.”

“Do you have any idea why she would go after my family?” she demanded. More than anything, she wanted to rush off to the coordinates but recognized that any intel she could gather could very well mean the difference between life and death.

“Yes. Yes, I’m afraid so. You see, some dragons take vengeance very seriously.”

“So?” Hernandez interjected. “Kristen’s never tangled with Obscura. Why the fuck did she put a glitter bomb in my apartment?”

“Because Shadowstorm was her son. She’s trying to hurt you where you hurt her.”

“So why not simply attack me?” Kristen demanded. She sensed there was something about dragon kind she didn’t quite understand.

“Because vengeance is an important thing for dragons. We live for millennia and have plans that can span centuries. We’ve even developed specific kinds of magic simply to power vengeance. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that she swore an oath.”

“So what?” Jim asked. “I swear I’m gonna help take this crazy bitch down. Anyone can swear an oath.”

Kristen was slightly relieved Jim had asked the question instead of her, but she also didn’t want anyone else to interrupt. She needed to know about Obscura, but she also needed to take action. Every minute delayed was another minute Brian had to suffer in that hellhole.

“An oath of vengeance is something special for a dragon. If she visited where her son died and found some of his blood, she could have used it to empower her. As long as she strives for vengeance, she’ll be stronger, faster, more powerful, and some even say more cunning.”

“Then why not attack me? If she has this extra strength, why not flex it?” She was already turning to steel and back again, itching for a fight. Obscura was obviously more interested in the long game.

“Because she’s convinced herself that she wants you to suffer. If that’s part of her oath, she’ll be strengthened as long as she serves it. With the correct magic—and given Obscura’s age, she almost certainly knows how to do it—she can use the oath to strengthen her in all kinds of ways.”

“Like making her more skilled with a sniper rifle?” Butters interjected.

“Precisely.” Lumos nodded.

“She could use this oath to help her make bombs?” Hernandez asked.

“Or design this weird fucking video game torture place?” Keith added.

The dragon shrugged. “Yes. In theory, an oath can be used to strengthen any skill—and I bet with the sniper shots, that’s indeed what happened—but that’s not all there is to Obscura. She’s always regarded humanity as a threat. There was a time—this was before your written history, mind you—when she argued that all humans should be exterminated. She sees your technology as an existential threat to dragon kind.”

“So she made a maze out of it?” Keith asked. “It seems a little hypocritical.”

Lumos shook his head. “Not to her. It became clear to her, again and again, that dragons would not exterminate humankind, nor would we limit their technological progress. The last I heard of her, she was learning Morse code. This was over a century ago, obviously, but I think it stands to reason that she understands tech in a way most of us dragons simply do not.”

“But she neglected to notice Kristen’s brother’s smartwatch? Lucky for us,” Keith said and pumped his fist in the air.

“Or it’s a trap,” Drew pointed out.

Kristen nodded. She’d thought the same thing and had no doubt that Obscura had planned a trap for her. The best-case scenario was that Brian had revealed her whereabouts and thus ruined her timeline, but she would still have some of the pieces needed to snare the Steel Dragon, of that she was certain. The worst-case scenario was that the dragon could have compelled Brian to show the coordinates against his will via her aura.

Frustrated, she pushed all that from her head for a moment. “Lumos, are you sure this is Obscura?”

“Oh yes. I’d recognize that voice anywhere. Plus, the complexity of the attempt at vengeance fits her very well. If it’s not Obscura, it’d be a level of deception that I’ve never seen before to try to make us think it was.”

She nodded. “Then we can call in Dragon SWAT?”

“Yes, of course. I can’t imagine any reason not to. She’s obviously interfering with the stability of the region. I’ll call Stonequest immediately.”

“Okay, thank you.”

As soon as he left, she turned to Drew. “We have the exact location. I think I should go, but I want to know what you think. I’ve rushed in before.”

“For starters, we have to assume that this Obscura knows that we know where she is. She might have neglected to notice the watch, but she cut the camera feed as soon as she realized what had happened.”

“So you think she’ll spring a trap for us?”

“Honestly, I’m more worried about Brian than a trap,” he said, which surprised her.

“How…what do you mean?” Her blood felt like ice.

“I don’t want to freak you out or anything, but this is like serial killer behavior. She obviously wants him to suffer and she wants you to know that he’s suffering. I think moving her timeline up will make her move him.”

“We can’t be sure about that, though. He could be the piece of bait in the trap,” Jim said.

“That’s true, of course,” Drew agreed. “But that means he’s already in the location anyway. By waiting, we don’t do him any favors. He might be caught by one of those…uh, junkies or whatever they were, for one thing, and we also give Obscura more time to prep for us.”

“So you’re saying we need to rush in and fuck shit up?” Hernandez asked eagerly as she entered the room again. She was dressed in full tactical gear. Kristen had been so concerned about her brother she hadn’t even seen the woman slip away.

“Damn straight,” Drew said and revealed one of his rare smiles.

The SWAT team dressed quickly. By the time she’d looked up the coordinates Brian had revealed on her phone and made it out front, they were all outside. The team leader brought the van out from the parking garage.

“Come on in, Steel,” Hernandez said and gestured for her to climb into the back of the van with the rest of them.

“You guys get going. If the van’s too fast for me, I’ll land and hitch a ride.”

Drew nodded and immediately accelerated to race toward where Brian was hopefully still hanging on.

Kristen transformed into the Steel Dragon.

She inhaled, then exhaled, and released a shower of silvery glitter from her steel skin. It enveloped her in a whirling, churning silvery cloud. Inside, her appendages elongated as more and more of the silver flecks connected to her body and grew her arms, her legs, and her neck. Finally, they added a tail and created wings. More and more of the silver compacted until she was in her dragon form. She flexed her wings and took to the air.

Drew was already a half-mile ahead. He was going fast and was a good driver, but it wouldn’t be fast enough. That didn’t worry her too much as she had a plan.

As she approached the van, Lumos fell into formation behind her. “What’s the plan?”

“I’m going to get my brother back.”

“Very good. I contacted Dragon SWAT and they’re on their way, but it might be a while. Apparently, there was a bomb threat at a lesser dragon’s estate somewhere in southern Ohio. Heartsbane and Emerald were down there. Stonequest was near your parents so should arrive more quickly, but for a time, it will only be the two of us.”

She nodded. The location where Brian was held was close, but that didn’t mean they could dally.

“We can get there much faster by air than by road,” the golden dragon said.

“I know, but we can’t leave my team behind. This is as personal for them as it is for me. Besides, if this oath of hers gives her strength when she thinks she’s hurting me, seeing the people she tried to hurt alive and well and hunting her ass is bound to have an effect.”

“Leave it to a dragon raised by humans to see a potential flaw in an ancient oath. I’m not sure how doubt plays into it all, but confidence certainly gives it power, so there might be something there.”

“I hope so.”

“But that doesn’t change the fact that we can get there much faster by flight.”

“Then let’s fly,” she said, tucked her wings, and swooped into a dive. She spread her wings as she came above the van, sank her steel claws through the roof, and picked it up off the road.

Cheers erupted from inside. Her team had her back. For now, her responsibility was to make sure she didn’t drop them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Obscura wasn’t happy that the fat boy had revealed his location to the Steel Dragon, but it didn’t change much. The trap was set, and although she’d hoped that the she would arrive to find her brother’s fresh corpse, she now recognized that it wouldn’t be prudent.

She needed Brian alive if she was to lure her quarry into the maze. If Kristen Hall could sense her brother’s terror, she would attempt a rescue while blinded by her own childish emotions.

It had been a long time coming, but the old dragon was determined not to botch the ending. The Steel Dragon was the bitch who had crushed her son with bricks. She had given him a beast’s death—worse, the death of a peasant—and for that, she would suffer vengeance like no one had suffered it before.

So, despite having the skills to shoot her between the eyes, Obscura hid. Darkness was her friend, after all, and the warehouse she’d built was a labyrinth for others but a nest for her. Kristen could explore it for hours and not find her unless she wanted her to.

It was unfortunate that she’d overlooked Brian’s watch. Humans constantly developed new technology and it was virtually impossible to keep track of it all, especially when they reinvented crap they already had. She had noticed the watch and not thought anything of it. In fact, she’d even hoped that it would wind down and leave him even more confused and disoriented, but that had been a moment of blind foolishness.

Still, this didn’t change much. She might not have understood smart watches but she understood surveillance equipment, drones, and best of all, explosives. She’d needed help of course—there were simply so many bombs that had to be armed, but now that the job was done, she was quite happy with the work.

What made it better still was that so many of them couldn’t be disarmed now that the people who’d helped arm them were being digested in her stomach. There were some dragons who maintained that humans shouldn’t be eaten—that, like dolphins, they had a certain level of intellect and therefore needed to be protected.

Obscura thought that was all nonsense, of course. The only reason not to eat humans was that they weren’t as tender as chicken. Still, there was something that fear did to the flesh that she simply loved.

It was yet another disagreement she’d had with Sebastian. If he’d seen things her way, she wouldn’t be in this mess. Still, disagreements were precisely that. Shadowstorm’s own shortcomings wouldn’t affect the oath she’d sworn to avenge him.

With Brian running for his life and the Steel Dragon doubtlessly en route, the ancient dragon felt stronger than she had in centuries. The oath coursed through her, the strongest it had been since she’d taken it. She was faster and stronger, and best of all, her transformative powers that let her move through darkness when she shifted from dragon to human felt as smooth as butter.

She didn’t want to ruin the chances of trapping the Steel Dragon exactly where she wanted her. At the same time, she also knew that she could pursue her through the maze and harass her as she saw fit, while her prey would be oblivious in her clunky steel skin.

Merely the thought of snapping her neck from the shadows was enough to further strengthen the oath. Obscura wondered if this was what human drug users felt. Certainly, the goons who pursued Brian seemed more powerful once she had begun to give them stronger and stronger drugs. She knew they’d crash eventually, but this would all be done by then.

Very soon, she would have her revenge and the oath would be fulfilled. She could feel it growing and growing, ready to leech the strength from its master if it wasn’t completed. Secure in her machinations, she laughed the feeling away. She was confident this would end with her target dead at her feet.

And if the oath thought she was tarrying, she could always kill Kristen’s brother. That should go quite a long way toward proving her intent.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Kristen set the van down in the far end of a parking lot near an old abandoned warehouse. The building was truly massive, so large that Brian’s coordinates indicated a specific position inside, not merely the building itself. That information was irrelevant, of course. He had surely moved on but it confirmed how big this damn place was and how challenging it would be to get him out.

The warehouse itself appeared derelict from the outside. The windows were all blacked out from the inside but other than that, the exterior looked hopelessly run down. However, it did appear that it had seen action recently, though.

The black streaks of truck tires marred the old, cracked concrete, and a dumpster overflowed with packing material that was still fresh. It hadn’t been rained on yet so couldn’t have been more than a few days old.

“This is it,” she said, even though she couldn’t feel Brian’s aura at all.

Drew nodded. “Last time we invaded a dragon’s stronghold, there were automated weapons. Do you want to check that for us, Steel Dragon?”

She nodded and approached in dragon form. Despite not having steel skin, Lumos accompanied her. No guns began to fire and no drones came to life. It seemed that if the building was defended, it wasn’t done actively.

“It looks clear to me,” she said, transformed into her human form—keeping her steel skin on, of course—and approached it.

Cautiously, she followed the track marks in the parking lot to one of the loading docks. The doors themselves were probably all locked, but this was where the whole bizarre game seemed to have been put together, so it might serve as a back door. She noticed that it wasn’t so much as padlocked and stepped forward to lift it.

“Whoa, whoa! Hold up!” Hernandez yelled and ran past. “Do you really want to simply walk in there given that we’re dealing with some crazy bitch who knows how to make a glitter bomb using someone else’s gear?”

“Bombs can’t hurt me,” she reminded her teammate.

“Yeah, great for you. I’m worried about me, though, and then there’s your brother to be concerned about.” The demolitions expert studied the latch on the door.

“I’m sure Brian’s not at this door.”

“It doesn’t matter if he is,” Hernandez said and pointed to a wire that ran along the gate. “Do you see this shit? It’s wired to blow if the door is opened. Let’s check the others.”

Kristen growled. They’d already wasted so much time but setting a bomb off probably wasn’t a good way to start a rescue. She waited impatiently for Hernandez to check the other doors.

“This one’s armed too,” the woman said, shook her head, and repeated herself when she reached the third and final door.

“We don’t have time to walk around this entire building and check every single one,” Kristen said.

“I don’t think that we should anyway.” Hernandez rubbed her chin. “These bombs are linked. If we trigger one of them, all of them blow up. Given what she did to my apartment and the connection between these, I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole place is all wired together.”

“You mean like one big bomb?” Jim asked.

“More like dozens of medium-sized bombs perfectly linked to bring this whole place down on whoever the fuck is inside.” The demolitions expert shrugged. “At least, that’s what I would do.”

“Surely she left one door unarmed,” Lumos ventured. “There must be one through which she wants us to enter. Somewhere this game of hers starts.” He had transformed himself into human form to look at the closed doors.

Keith shook his head. “If we play by her rules to that degree, we’ve already lost. This is like the airsoft match. We won because we were able to choose the entrance you dragons took. That led you to the landmine. If she controls how we get inside, well… I think that might be worse than blowing the building up.”

“What could be worse than killing my brother?” Kristen demanded.

There was an awkward moment where everyone undoubtedly thought the same thing. Kristen seeing Brian at the end of a tunnel having a heart attack from being shocked by one of the people chasing him. Her embracing him in a hug, only for Obscura to exhale flames on them both. The Steel Dragon would survive, while he cooked to death in her arms. Kristen somehow restrained with electrical shocks or magnets while the dragon simply ate her brother.

She shuddered. “Maybe you’re right, Keith. We can’t let her choose our point of entry. But we can’t stay out here either.”

Lumos shrugged “Stonequest might have an idea—”

“We don’t have time to wait.” She shook her head. That wasn’t an option. They needed to gain entry immediately. “Wait—Hernandez, you said all the doors are wired together, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. This motherfucker’s set up to make one hell of a barbecue if we force a lock.”

“What about the walls?”

The woman rubbed her chin again and frowned as she considered the question. “Well…it’s virtually impossible to run a tripwire all the way around the walls of this building, especially if Brian’s stumbling around in there. He could set it off. So the walls would probably work—”

“Except you’re forgetting one thing,” Jim raised an eyebrow. “We’re not mutants or whatever. We can’t simply walk through brick unless there’s more to the Steel Dragon than you’ve told us.”

Kristen walked away from the large hangar doors. She moved about a third of the way to the next door and punched the wall.

She didn’t break it with a single blow. It cracked and she punched it again. Her steel knuckles remained unscratched as she pounded the cinderblocks that made up the walls of the warehouse. She delivered a blow with her other hand to crack another brick, then took hold of the edges of the hole and pulled the damaged masonry free. Her steel skin didn’t mind the rough concrete and her muscles made no protest at the fact that she ripped a hole in artificial stone rather than cardboard. She worked at the edges of the hole, widened it to shoulder width, and finally kicked the bottom out so a human-sized hole appeared in the wall.

“Okay. Lumos and I will go in. Drew, when Stonequest gets here, show him this entrance and tell him about the bombs.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Keith protested immediately.

“Hold up now. You didn’t make that hole big enough for me,” Butters pointed out.

“How many times do we have to go over this, Kristen?” The team leader sounded impatient. “This is the job we all signed up for—helping people even if there is danger involved. Brian is a citizen of this country and a resident of Detroit.”

“Dearborn,” she reminded him.

“Whatever. It’s close enough. We all knew it was risky when we loaded into the van.” His jaw was like iron, a sign that he wouldn’t back down but still, she had to try.

“We didn’t think this entire building would be wired to explode.” She gestured to the doors. “It’s a level of risk that I can survive without a problem. Even Lumos will be fine with his healing powers, but if any of you are caught in the blast—”

“Wait a minute,” Hernandez protested. “Did you think this bitch put a glitter bomb in my apartment and would forget about using bombs completely? Plus, do you think this is it? She did the outside and the inside is bomb-free? How are you gonna stop the explosives without yours truly?”

“I—”

“Plus, what if she has a gun?” Butters added. “Either she knows how to shoot or she has a minion who does. If she suddenly appears at the end of a hallway, you’ll need me to lay down cover fire.”

“You don’t have bullets that could hurt her,” Kristen countered.

“So I’ll shoot the goddamn gun out of her hand. Does that work for you?”

She let a smile sneak through. The team might be almost suicidal but she loved their confidence.

“Okay. Hernandez and Butters, let’s go. Everyone else, someone will need to tell Stonequest where we are.”

“I can relay that they can’t simply break in with my aura,” Lumos said quickly. “In fact…” He took his phone out, texted a picture of the hole in the wall, and sent it along with GPS coordinates. “They’ll know where to go.”

The team members all smirked.

“It’s too dangerous.”

“No, it’s too dangerous to go without us,” Drew said. “We all saw the video—narrow hallways, tight corners, and poor lighting. It’s the same damn thing as the airsoft course we designed to catch you dragons.”

“You did cheat,” Lumos shouted triumphantly.

The team leader smiled. “Of course. How the hell else are we supposed to beat dragons? Honestly, I think it’s a good sign that this dragon put in all this work. It means she doesn’t want a direct fight. That means she’s intimidated.”

Lumos shook his head. “Not necessarily. If she’s sworn an oath of vengeance, the preparation for revenge can be as important as the death itself. We can’t underestimate her.”

Kristen nodded. They made sense, dammit, but that didn’t mean they all had to go. “Okay, fine, but Jim, Keith, and Beanpole, you three stay out here.”

The Wonderkid simply laughed in her face, stepped through the hole, and entered the maze. “You’re fucking crazy if you think I’ll miss a dragon battle. I already saved your brother once and I won’t let him die for no good reason.”

“Keith—”

“This thing is like Pac-Man, right? Well, I’m the fucking Pac-Man king,” the Rookie boasted.

“Beanpole?”

“I think it prudent for one of us to stay outside. I’ll make sure no one leaves and talk to Dragon SWAT when they arrive.”

“All right, great.” Kristen shook her head but accepted the inevitable.

“If you don’t mind…” Butters gestured to the hole.

She yanked a few more bricks from the wall so he could fit through.

“All right, then,” Drew said with a nod, clearly impressed. “Note to self. One is never safe from the Steel Dragon.”

“Damn straight,” Keith responded.

They entered the maze, knowing full well that the building might blow up at any second. She didn’t know whether to be thankful for the courage of her friends or to prepare herself to mourn all their deaths.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

When they first entered the maze, it was completely dark. A hallway stretched in both directions, right and left, equally dark and shadowed.

“Which way?” Jim asked.

“There’s a light that way at the very end,” Lumos said. His dragon eyes noticed what the humans could not.

“Then we go that way,” Kristen said and they turned left.

She took point, with Hernandez directly behind her to watch for bombs and Drew at her right. He held his gun up, ready for action.

They reached an opening in the side of the hallway at another corridor with a long row of glowing buttons on the floor. Keith stepped forward and stood on one and its light extinguished. For a moment, nothing else happened. Then, a drone buzzed down the hallway.

It stopped about ten feet away and hovered above one of the lights. A voice spoke from a speaker above them. “A new player. Did you remember to put your dollar in?”

“Pac-Man was always twenty-five cents, you fucking monster,” the Rookie said with not a shred of irony in his voice.

“There are a few more bells and whistles to this version,” Obscura said from behind her network of speakers. Her voice filled the hallway, a strange, ominous sensation.

“I’m impressed that you got through without blowing a door up, but the walls were obvious enough. Don’t make the same mistake in here. If you knock a wall down, it triggers gas. It might not kill you, Steel Dragon, but it might make these minions of yours cough their lungs out.”

“They are not minions,” Kristen replied.

The dragon laughed. “Wonderful, absolutely wonderful. I would’ve hated torturing people you didn’t care about to death. This is much better.”

Drew shot the drone out of the air. “Is that against the rules, bitch?”

The woman laughed from the speakers yet again. “Of course not! If I told you to limit your gunfire, it would limit the chances of you accidentally shooting the Steel Dragon’s brother. What fun would that be? In fact, I’ll give you ten bonus points for each drone you do shoot down. That means you could make up to a thousand bonus points. You might even beat Brian’s score.”

Suddenly her brother’s whimpers came over the speakers.

“Brian!” Kristen yelled.

“He can’t hear you, moron. He’s holed away somewhere, trying to set a time score or something. It’s pathetic. He never even activated some of the features you already have.”

She tried to ignore Obscura and flexed her aura in an effort to calm Brian and make him feel that she was there and was coming to help. She knew her brother could feel her aura and would know it was her. He’d told her as much before. But as she reached out, she felt like it was being stifled. It was as if she tried to blow wind through a closed window or through a wall. She tried harder, but it wasn’t exactly easy to feel calm while all her concerted efforts failed.

Finally, Lumos put a hand on her shoulder. “It won’t work. Obscura is a master of auras. Much of what we can do to people is based on her original research. Of course, she was always willing to push limits many of us weren’t. For now, your brother is alone.”

Before Kristen had time to process what that meant—her mind immediately jumped to how angry Brian had been with her the last time they’d been together—another drone appeared at the end of the hall. This one was smaller and zigzagged as it approached.

“Butters,” Hernandez said sharply and stepped back so he could move forward. “I think I’ve seen these things. You have to take it out.”

He fired three times before he managed to hit the drone and it plummeted. The demolitions expert picked it up and turned it over.

“This has a cone-shaped charge on it. If it tags one of us, it’ll blow a hole in us.”

“Great. Only ninety-nine more to go,” Keith muttered.

“Don’t worry. I understand that sending these things at you isn’t fair, not with the board being what it is. If you’re to have any chance of winning here, you’ll need more dots to set the high score.”

“What the fuck is she talking about?” Jim asked.

“Dots are the food Pac-Man consumes to clear a level,” Keith explained, but what happened to the maze made it clear exactly what the dragon had meant.

All the buttons on the floor turned on.

“Shit.” Kristen cursed. She’d hoped to use the extinguished lights to track Brian but Obscura must have had the same idea.

More buzzing issued from the hallway behind them.

“Butters, Drew,” she ordered.

Both men moved to the back of the group and began to fire at the two tiny drones that approached.

“Keith, which way?”

“We can’t cut through the sides of the board and teleport like you can in regular Pac-Man, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Hernandez echoed, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

“Which means this is like any other board game. We move toward the middle of the board. That’ll be the strongest position and the place where we’ll most likely be able to pick up Brian’s trail.”

“Let’s go,” Kristen ordered.

The Rookie led the way and the others followed. Drew and Butters caught up once they’d dispatched the drones.

Keith led them like a man possessed. He seemed to have some kind of sense of the layout as he would glance left and right at each intersection and make a decision without hesitation.

This worked for a few minutes—or Kristen thought it was working, anyway, although they still hadn’t seen Brian—until they rounded a corner and encountered one of the men they’d seen in the video.

Already, gunshots rang out as Drew and Butters dispatched more drones, which had become a constant threat. Her focus, however, was on the person at the end of the hall.

He stood with his shoulders hunched and stared at them before suddenly, like a lion sensing that its prey had scented it, he ran toward them.

She braced herself. The man might have thought of himself as a predator, but she was a dragon. The shock wand that sparked in his hand would hurt, but she could withstand the pain if he managed to land a strike.

“We have more chances,” the man yelled as he approached and another man stepped from behind him, followed by two more. All of them carried shock wands in their hands.

“Kill the holograms for our freedom!” one of them yelled.

Well, at least she knew what their plan was.

“That should be all of them,” Keith commented. “Pac-Man only ever had four ghosts.”

Kristen turned to steel, ready to fight. The shocks would hurt her steel skin but she could eliminate them with a single punch. Her fighting them was what made the most sense.

The team apparently disagreed.

Jim darted past her and struck one of the men in the head with the butt of his gun. The guy stumbled back and collided with a wall to knock the thin partition over. As promised, smoke began to pour from behind the damaged wall.

Keith joined the fray, ducked below one of the shock wands, and sank his fist into his attacker’s gut. The man wheezed and collapsed.

More gunshots from Butters and Drew meant that more drones had been unleashed. After four shots, they stopped firing. That was a good sign and meant they’d hit their targets.

“Forward,” she ordered and as a group, they proceeded out of the smoke and toward the two attackers who were still standing.

Kristen tried to strike one of them with the bottom of her hand, using it like a blade, but despite her dragon speed, the assailant only had to move his wand in the way. The electrically charged barbs touched her metal skin and pain lanced through her, traveled across her conductive shielding, and made her body convulse. She fell and her assailant kicked her savagely in the gut. It didn’t hurt, of course. In fact, he seemed to have broken his toe from the impact with a steel surface as he screamed and dropped onto his butt to clutch his foot.

He didn’t drop the wand, however, and he thrust it into her neck to release a fresh wave of convulsions across her body.

No longer able to move, she was forced to watch as he caught his breath and stood, raised the wand, and grinned a perverted rictus smile. Clearly, he would enjoy hurting her.

More gunshots told her that another drone was coming.

“Get down, you damn fool!” Butters yelled, but Kristen didn’t understand what he meant. Was he talking to the guy about to strike her?

Hernandez leapt over Kristen and threw her shoulder into the man who’d been ready to attack the Steel Dragon. She was fairly short and he was tall and broad, so she didn’t knock him over, only back.

The drone that had raced down the hallway thudded into his back and activated its trigger.

The demolition expert screamed with indignation—a short, high shriek—and immediately fell silent. She was covered in blood that spewed from a hole in the goon’s chest where the drone had detonated.

Even this grisly death caused by their master or captor or whatever Obscura had made herself to them wasn’t enough to stop the others.

The fourth man struck Hernandez with his wand and flung her into convulsions on the floor. He advanced on Kristen, who was still unable to move.

Keith was tangled with a goon, as was Jim. Drew and Butters couldn’t join the fray and risk letting another of the lethal drones through. She realized then that they were royally screwed.

Lumos stepped forward.

He made no attempt to even vaguely dodge the wand’s electrically charged tip.

It struck him and he flinched, obviously not completely impervious to the electricity, but he didn’t collapse as a result. Instead, he glared at the man who’d attacked him.

“That’s quite unpleasant you know,” he said.

His adversary grimaced and brandished his wand for another strike, but this time, when he brought it down, Lumos moved with dragon quickness and caught his forearm.

With his free arm, he slowly and almost casually plucked the weapon from the man’s hand. He released him as if he were a struggling child and snapped the shock rod in half like it was nothing more than a stick.

More gunshots indicated that another wave of drones had been eliminated.

Keith drove his knee powerfully into his opponent’s gut and the man collapsed.

“Enough of this,” Lumos said and the last attacker, who still struggled with Jim, paused to look at the dragon.

“I don’t know what kind of deal Obscura made with you, but I can assure you she won’t honor it. If you follow the lights we put out, there is a hole in the wall. Run now. Your freedom awaits.”

The man on the floor shook his head as he pushed to his feet, although his eyes showed nothing but fear. “She has those drones. There ain’t no way we can escape. If we don’t beat you…you holograms, we die. Plain and simple.”

“Do you think a hologram could have snapped your little toy in half?”

The man looked at the broken pieces and seemed to weigh the implications of the broken weapon in front of him before he returned his attention to Lumos.

“Whoever you are, you can’t hurt us as much as she can. She told us the Steel Dragon herself was coming, and we beat her. Who are you?”

“The question is what, not who.” He growled and his eyes became slitted and his teeth extended. A forked tongue lolled from his mouth and he licked his lips once before it vanished inside. “And the answer is hungry.”

The man took a few steps back, cursed, and realized he needed to run through the smoke that was now behind the dragon and everyone else.

He did so without further hesitation and in moments, was hidden by the smoke.

Jim pushed his opponent against the wall. Instead of continuing the fight, he raced away after his friend—or fellow prisoner, whichever it was.

The attacker who had broken the wall held his hands up in surrender before he followed the others through the smoke. He was slower, most likely due to an injury, and coughed heavily as he made his way through the gas that issued from the broken section of the maze behind them. Within moments, he too was gone.

“All right,” Kristen said when she finally caught her breath and pushed to her feet. “Well done.”

“You know, we probably should have arrested those men and kept them for questioning,” Drew said matter of factly. “Humans are our jurisdiction. They were kind of the bridge in this situation.”

Lumos shrugged and looked completely unconcerned. “I’m here for a bad dragon. Having them around would have complicated matters.”

“Complicated is the name of the job,” the man replied.

“Not with Obscura. She’s a master with her aura and could have made those men agree to come with us if she wanted to, then had them turn on us at the most opportune moment. Believe me, this way is better.”

“If you’re quite done defeating the ghosts, there is more to accomplish before I slaughter the Steel Dragon’s brother. It’s interesting that a dragon could even be related to a pig,” Obscura said over the speakers. She’d watched the entire fight, then, and had simply let it play out. That was the behavior of someone who still very much thought of themselves as in charge.

“I think Lumos is right,” Kristen said to Drew. “We can catch those guys later, but none of this is their fault. We have to stop Obscura.”

He nodded. Hearing the dragon’s voice had a way of clarifying their goals.

The team moved on.

They proceeded through the hallways in search of Brian. Once or twice they found dead lights, which indicated that either he or they had moved through there. After the fight, Keith had lost his bearings, so it was a random hunt and was as frustrating as hell. She wanted to simply incinerate the entire building but she couldn’t, of course, not without knowing where her brother was.

They rounded another corner and something surged toward her through the darkness. It was like a shadow incarnate as if darkness had been given form or the night itself was animated with rage. It pounded into her but was unable to topple her. Her steel skin made her too heavy.

It did, however, knock everyone else—including Lumos—to the floor. Worse still was that as everyone pushed to their feet, she could sense the terror that poured from them.

“What the fuck was that?” Hernandez shrieked.

“That was her,” Lumos said. He didn’t look as shaken as the rest of them but he still looked fairly freaked out.

“What was her? That fucking cloud of crazy?” Jim said.

He nodded. “That means we’re getting close. She wouldn’t reveal herself if she didn’t feel like she had to.”

“That was revealing herself?” The Wonderkid was incredulous. He was the one who’d spent the most time studying dragons because of his vendetta against them, and he’d obviously never come across powers like these.

“We need to keep moving,” Kristen said.

“Agreed.” Lumos nodded. “But be ready. She’ll try to split us up so she can pick one of us off. She’s powerful in her dragon form, but when she uses these abilities, well…she can be almost impossible to stop.”

“Almost?” Drew asked.

He didn’t answer and merely followed the Steel Dragon’s lead.

Kristen thought he was right about Brian. She finally felt like she could sense him. He was close, scared, tired, and worried that he would never see the light of day again. Still, he was close and that was what mattered.

They stepped beyond another corner and again, the cloud of angry shadow barreled past them. This time, she tried to strike at it but her hands found no target. The cloud struck back, however. Claws materialized and lashed out at her team as the insubstantial dragon passed between them.

Gashes appeared on Butters’ chest and he screamed in pain as he fell. Jim and Keith hauled him up, but he was bleeding from the neck. Fortunately, his bulletproof vest had stopped most of the attack but he wouldn’t be able to be their gunner anymore. He had to keep a hand on his neck to staunch the bleeding and couldn’t go back alone either. Obscura would simply devour him.

She surged again, this time from the direction she’d vanished into.

Her claws found Drew, but he raised his arms in the way and earned gashes on his forearms instead of his chest.

“She’s trying to take our gunners out,” Kristen said. She couldn’t believe they were close to Brian—so close—and yet Obscura would manage to stop them. This was the end.

Again, the shadow of the dragon attacked. Kristen braced herself but didn’t know what she could do as she was steel, not shadow. She supposed she could turn her body to flesh and maybe goad their adversary into attacking, but that didn’t seem wise, not when Obscura might simply slice her head off.

Lumos, though, had a plan.

As the shadow-form careened toward them, the golden dragon’s human body began to glow. At first, Kristen could hardly notice it but in moments, light radiated from his skin and filled the hallway. His eyes and fists seemed to burn brightest, and this time, when Obscura tried to creep past them, he struck out with his hand held in a claw and caught hold of something.

For a moment, it looked like nothing more than black cloth but it began to coalesce almost immediately.

“Go. I’ll hold her for a time,” Lumos said and his glowing hand dimmed a little as the shadow began to take a solid form around him.

“Lumos,” the darkness snapped. “I should have recognized you,” Obscura growled from her shadowy form. As before, the voice seemed to come from all around them but it was no longer distorted through the tinny speakers. Now it was low, ominous, and seductive too. They were the words of a woman who knew she was in control.

“It’s the mustache,” he said.

“We could’ve been something you know. Light and dark.”

“Good and evil.”

The hallway erupted into violence.

This wasn’t Kristen’s fight—not yet and not now. She had to save Brian.

“Let’s go!” she yelled and the human SWAT team obeyed. They sprinted from the battle between Lumos and Obscura, down a hall into a right turn and down another.

“There!” Keith shouted and pointed down a corridor where every button was illuminated. “We never did that shit. It’s gotta be Brian!”

She nodded and raced forward down the hallway.

When she spun around the next corner, he didn’t see her at first. He stumbled along as fast as he could and pressed every button, committed to his strategy like he always was when playing a game.

Drew and Keith arrived next and moved much more loudly than she had. The noise alerted Brian to their presence.

Kristen realized she should have said something, but the sense of relief had been so palpable, she’d frozen. That was a mistake as when her brother saw the two men, he screamed.

“You fucking ghosts. Go away! Please,” he pleaded. “I’m tired. All I want is my sister.”

“It’s me, Brian,” she said and pushed past her teammates.

Brian ran to her and they embraced. She was smiling and tears ran down her cheeks, her brother safe in her arms. He wept the great wracking sobs of the doomed who had realized that they’d live another day.

The moment was short-lived as seconds later, the roof collapsed.

“Get to me!” Kristen screamed and instinctively transformed into her dragon form. She used her massive steel wings to envelope Brian and the human SWAT team while brick, ceiling tiles, and shards of debris rained upon her.

Lumos’s shining golden form pounded into what she at first thought was a storm cloud that Obscura had summoned. For a moment, she had a flashback to fighting Shadowstorm—he too could control the weather—but the cloud coalesced and she realized that it wasn’t a storm cloud but Obscura herself.

She was massive, almost twice the size of Shadowstorm, who had been substantially larger than Kristen in her dragon form. She bit Lumos on the neck and hurled him aside. The team lost sight of him as he careened from the window into the sky above them.

“You have to go,” Jim said.

“I have to get Brian out of here,” she argued.

“I’ll be all right.” Her brother still sounded shaken but seemed better. “Go kick some ass.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Kristen didn’t have to be told twice.

She vaulted into the air and pumped her wings as she did so to clear the warehouse roof and emerge into the midday sun. It was insane to think they’d arrived there as early as they had. Now, the sun was high overhead and shining down on the battle before her.

There was no opportunity to look around because Obscura rocketed into her and sent her skittering across the roof. Hastily, she turned into regular dragon skin instead of steel in an attempt to prevent the roof from caving in, but even without that, she was still a dragon. As she careened across the surfaces, pieces inside came loose and plunged into the maze.

Instinct told her that she couldn’t let her adversary dictate where this battle would take place. She had to get off the roof and take the fight somewhere with less collateral damage. When the vengeful dragon struck her again, she moved with the blow instead of resisting it. Her momentum carried her from the roof and into the asphalt parking lot that surrounded the warehouse, where she donned her steel skin once more and roared at the larger black dragon.

Obscura leapt off the building and moved with the speed of a viper despite her enormous size, but she didn’t make it far. At the top of her arc, Lumos pounded into her. It wasn’t enough to bring the dragon to the ground—she was so much larger than either of her two adversaries—but it did succeed in deflecting her headlong trajectory toward Kristen.

The black dragon landed and whipped her tail into Lumos, who catapulted away.

His attack had left an opening for Kristen, and she took it. She vaulted onto Obscura and landed between her wings. Before her foe could retaliate, she sank her jaws into the back of the larger dragon’s neck, hoping to sever her spine or a vein but it wasn’t enough. She simply shook her off like a dog from the back of a grizzly bear.

The Steel Dragon spread her wings to ease her landing.

In an instant, Obscura launched her next assault. She constantly expected the old dragon to be slower because she was so massive but that wasn’t the case at all. In addition to her speed, she turned insubstantial, raced toward Kristen, and transformed to her solid state in time to crash into her.

Kristen fell once again and landed heavily in the parking lot. Her assailant was on top of her almost immediately, her claws on her chest and her weight pressing down.

“You took him from me and for that, you will suffer,” the black dragon said viciously.

The Steel Dragon experienced true terror in that moment because an energy unlike anything she had ever sensed before coursed through her enemy. It started in one of her claws and surged through her body to empower and invigorate her. When Obscura pounded on the young dragon’s face with her fist, the back of her skull cracked the pavement.

“How can you—” she managed to say before another fist drove into her with enough force to knock out some of her teeth.

“A blood oath is nothing to be trifled with. Everything I’ve done up until now, I’ve done to hurt you the way you hurt me. I’ve used your family and friends against you like you did to my son. I made their strengths into their weaknesses, exactly like you did to my son. And now, I’ll kill you like you did my son.” Obscura reared her head back, opened her jaws wide, and was blasted in the face by what appeared to be a beam of pure sunshine.

“Watch my back,” Lumos said as he bounded past Kristen and bulldozed into the black dragon. She hadn’t seen what he’d done but it must have been some kind of blast power. While she hadn’t ever paused to think where he got his name from, it was now becoming clear—he was a dragon of light. He could illuminate, apparently to a devastating degree.

But that didn’t mean he could defeat their adversary. He collided with her, but that seemed to be a mistake. Before he’d touched her, the shadow dragon had thrashed around blindly, obviously incapacitated by the solar blast and blinded as well as hurt. But once he made contact, sight was no longer necessary to strike back. Her tail whipped around and its barbed point aimed directly at his gut.

Kristen had realized that they couldn’t fight this dragon by themselves. It had to be together. She’d waited to help Lumos and when Obscura’s tail whipped toward the older dragon, she caught it in her teeth and bit down hard.

Her foe screamed and Lumos struck. He opened his mouth and emitted a blast of what Kristen would only ever be able to describe as sunlight. It blazed more brightly than the sun above them, and its target writhed in pain.

But still, she fought. She tugged at her tail—still in Kristen’s jaws—and was able to yank the young dragon into Lumos. The two rolled across the pavement.

“I will avenge him!” Obscura roared and a wave of shadow blasted from her to envelop them in darkness.

Kristen tried to keep her bearings but that became impossible when claws came from the darkness to slash at her eyes and stab at her throat. Lumos cried out and she assumed he’d been injured.

“Can you do anything about this cloud of ink or whatever the hell it is?” she asked, thinking again of his ability to use light itself as a weapon.

“I can try.” With that, his entire body began to glow. It started with his eyes and nostrils and gradually glimmered from between his scales. Finally, the scales themselves gleamed until Lumos became a blinding light, a beacon in an artificial cloud of darkness and shadow.

She could now see through the gloom. Within it, Obscura moved in human form, her hands still huge and with the massive claws that belonged to her dragon form.

Everything in her said that this should have been impossible. There was no way a dragon could control their transformation for the length of time that she seemed to be able to, but then she remembered her oath of revenge. In the cloud, she could practically taste her attacker’s rage. This was more than a vendetta and so much more than personal. This was everything to her. She would get revenge or she would die trying.

That meant Kristen had to push herself that much harder.

The black dragon attacked through the now luminescent mist. Able to see her because of Lumos’s illumination, the Steel Dragon struck at the human form with her tail.

It whipped savagely and Obscura stumbled back, then cursed as her hiding place no longer provided the advantage.

“You’re a traitor,” she screamed as she sucked the cloud of darkness into herself and resumed her dragon form. “You’re a traitor to us all, Lumos. The girl I can understand. She’s but a whelp and grew up among the filthy, hairy humans, but you’re a dragon even older than I am. Why side with these…these inferior beings.”

“Because they’re people,” Lumos said. “They have as much a right to live on this planet as we do.”

“Pish-posh,” she retorted as she circled. Lumos and Kristen tried to flank the larger dragon. Their only hope of penetrating her defensive perimeter was to draw her attention one way and attack from the other, but even that would be fraught with danger. Unlike a human or any other creature on the planet except the scorpion, Obscura’s rear was as well guarded as her front.

The black dragon continued. Although she spoke to Lumos, her aura was focused on Kristen. “Humans kill other species all the time. Cockroaches, rats, chickens, and even noble lions and wolves. They treat this planet like it belongs to them and I don’t fault them for that. The other creatures are exactly that—creatures. Their intellect and abilities preclude them from a right to rule.”

“Humans are different,” the golden dragon responded.

“Indeed. I would argue that they are the second greatest force on this planet. But in nature, second doesn’t mean much.”

“That doesn’t mean you can slaughter whoever you wish,” Kristen yelled.

“Oh, but I’m not. My goal is only to slaughter you. To me, you’re the wolf that came to the village and killed a child or the tiger that attacks the men in the rice paddies. My opinions of what humans are and their place in the world doesn’t alter the fact that you must die for what you did to my son.”

Obscura—unable to abide this standoff any longer—launched herself at Kristen. Lumos sprang into action, surged toward the black dragon’s side, and sank his teeth into her gut, but it was to no avail.

Their adversary bulldozed into her and buried her teeth in Kristen’s chest, no doubt in an attempt to damage her heart. She responded in kind, closed her jaws on the back of her attacker's skull, and tried to use their strength to leverage a snapped bone and end the fight. If she could only crack the massive dragon’s spine, this whole thing could be over.

Obscura was too strong and moved too much. It took all Kristen’s strength to simply hold on as the three of them tumbled wildly in the throes of battle. At some point, they rolled over a car and completely destroyed it. A nearby pond retention system and stand of trees were demolished in the whirlwind struggle. She hadn’t even noticed the woods when they arrived, and now they were gone, reduced to kindling and firewood, nothing more.

All the while, she tried to maintain the pressure on the back of Obscura’s skull, and the black dragon continued her attempt to bite her way into her chest.

It seemed both endless and fruitless until something very strange happened.

Later, she would have trouble describing it. It wasn’t conscious, but it happened all the same.

While her teeth locked into Obscura’s skull, the massive dragon tried to become insubstantial to break the grip. In an almost immediate response, Lumos did the same thing and together, a form of shadow and light began to flee from Kristen.

With no idea what she was doing, she did the same thing. She transformed from her dragon to her human form but as she did so, she tried to follow the others.

Somehow, it worked.

Security cameras caught the next minute of the battle, otherwise she might not have believed it was possible. In one moment, the three dragons scuffled and struggled in a huge, bloody tangle and in the next, they became clouds of darkness, light, and silver. These transformed into people, biting and scratching as viciously as animals before they became clouds once more and from there to another tangle of dragon bodies. This pattern repeated constantly as they moved around the warehouse and demolished trees and everything in their path. Sometimes, they would become airborne before the battle continued in the now devastated parking lot. Again and again, the dragons tussled and fought and tried to maintain their hold on each other, an impossible task that the three of them somehow made possible, at least for a time anyway.

Kristen thought she was getting the hang of it. They were about to land in human form and she was ready to kick the shit out of her adversary when Obscura shifted into her dragon body instead of her human one.

“Enough,” she hissed and took to the air.

“Don’t let her get to the warehouse,” Lumos bellowed as he too transformed into a solid dragon once more and followed.

Kristen didn’t need to be reminded of this, of course. She wasted no time and as soon as she was airborne, she sent a blast of fire that cut off Obscura’s path to the warehouse with the humans still inside.

The black dragon roared and pumped her wings to rise higher and higher. “I will have my vengeance on you. You are an abomination, a monster on this earth. You’ll ruin dragon kind.”

“The only monsters are the beasts like you and your son!” she shouted in response.

That earned another roar from Obscura and she tucked her wings to dive into the attack. Kristen made to dodge but her adversary was still too fast. She fell more rapidly than seemed possible and they collided in mid-air. The black dragon used her momentum to guide her toward the warehouse, released her at the last moment, and added a thrust that drove through the roof to scatter the maze walls beneath her bulk.

She looked around wildly and located Brian and the human SWAT team nearby. They were inside some kind of control room or office space in the middle of the warehouse.

“We’ll be okay,” Brian shouted. “This room is reinforced. I think she used it as her base.”

Kristen smiled and returned to the skies.

Her friends would be fine unless one of the dragons crashed directly into them. They would make it, and that was what mattered most.

“Lumos, there’s a control room in there.” She pointed with her tail and Lumos nodded before he dodged another blow from Obscura. “As long as we don’t hit that, my friends will be fine.”

“Then let’s end this,” he said and evaded another of their adversary’s oath-powered attacks.

She roared in frustration and ascended again. The two dragons followed and tried to keep up with their larger foe but were unable to do so. She was too fast and too powerful, fueled by magic that neither of them could use.

But maybe there was a way to take it from her.

“You can’t hurt me,” Kristen screamed.

“Oh, I most certainly can.” Obscura turned, opened her jaws, and spewed fire on her two pursuers.

They both swept aside and managed to elude the blast. Dragons could withstand regular fires, but dragon’s breath was another thing entirely. It could easily melt steel and incinerate flesh. It might not kill a dragon instantly, but it would hurl them from the sky.

Kristen retaliated with her own gout of flame, but the larger dragon dodged effortlessly.

“I will melt the skin from your flesh, Kristen Steel. Then, I will gobble your friends who are still alive one by one.”

“They’re all still alive, you big lizard.”

“All the better for me. I’d love to feel your aura when I crush one of their fragile mammalian bodies with your own steel spine.”

“It won’t happen, Obscura. They found your little control room. You can’t use Lumos or me to destroy them. Face it, they’re safe.”

The black dragon roared in frustration. Obviously, that was not what she’d intended.

“And another thing. You have my name wrong. It’s not Kristen Steel, it’s Kristen Hall. I was raised a human and always will be.”

“Then you’ll die a human’s death,” she said and lashed out with her claws as the two dragons flew past each other.

Obscura managed to rake her claws across Kristen’s gut, but before she could sink them past the steel skin, Lumos clawed at her back and she let go.

“That’s the problem with your plan, Obscura,” she yelled at her opponent as she flapped her wings to circle for another strike. “You seek to kill me, but I’m human. You can’t.”

“What foolishness is this?” her adversary demanded as she barreled into her. This time, the two dragons managed to take hold of one another. They pushed and kicked at each other’s stomachs, but before either could do any damage, Lumos blasted Obscura with another beam of light and she fell back.

Kristen followed her this time, rather than trying to turn to strike head to head. It was a risky plan because her opponent was both faster and more maneuverable, but she had begun to realize she couldn’t beat her physically, not with that oath powering her. She had to take that magic away and weaken her resolve.

“You can’t kill me because humans don’t die as long as their loved ones live on. My brother will remember me. My friends will remember me. Your son might have died in darkness and his name will soon be forgotten, but that doesn’t happen to humans. You see, the only dragons anyone cares about are the ones who are still alive. Humans, on the other hand…well, most of our greatest heroes are dead.”

“We shall test that!” Obscura roared and spun into another attack.

Now, the two were in a kind of hummingbird’s battle. Each pumped their wings furiously to stay aloft while they struck out at each other with tail and claw. Lumos swooped into the fray again and again in an attempt to keep their foe off balance and thus make the combat somewhat more even.

But still, even though opponent’s size and experience gave her the advantage, Kristen could sense that something was slipping. Her strikes—while still fast and powerful—weren’t quite what they were a moment before. When she clawed at the black dragon, she flinched.

“You see the truth of my words, don’t you?” Kristen yelled. “You haven’t hurt me like I did you. I’m not afraid of losing the ones I love, and if they lose me, they’ll know that I died with honor. You’ve broken your oath to your son. You won’t make me hurt even if you do get vengeance.”

“I don’t need an oath to slay the likes of you,” Obscura said and latched onto her with her jaws once more.

She bit in retaliation and for good measure, sliced one of her wings with the steel ax blade at the end of her tail.

They fell together and plummeted toward the earth. Lumos grasped Kristen’s tail and towed them away from the warehouse but other than that, he didn’t interfere. He had no doubt made the same calculation that she did. If she landed on top, she would crush Obscura. On the other hand, if the heavier dragon landed on top, she might kill Kristen, but Lumos could finish her off.

They tumbled wildly as they fell, Kristen on top one moment and Obscura the next while they blasted each other with fire in a battle that could be seen for miles.

Her skin blistered from the heat and her wounds healed slower and slower as the attacks used up all there was of her healing power.

In the next instant, too soon to even register, they impacted with the earth and she was on the bottom. Obscura’s bulk hammered her into the hard surface.

Lumos had managed to get them onto earth instead of concrete so the impact didn’t kill her, but it came damn close.

The breath was knocked from her—an experience new to her dragon body—and she had cracked ribs, of that she was certain. Her adversary didn’t do much better. She stumbled away and then, to Kristen’s shock, transformed into a human.

She changed back into what she thought of as her true form—an opinion that no other dragon shared—and tried to stumble after her foe.

A little dazed, she stopped when she realized that she didn’t need to. The fight was over and she really had won.

Stonequest had arrived with Emerald and Heartsbane. The three of them plus Lumos all walked toward Obscura in their dragon forms.

The shadow dragon, her fists still clenched, held her arms out in surrender.

Heartsbane transformed into her human form and clapped manacles on her.

Instantly, the power that emanated from the other dragon diminished. The manacles limited her and trapped her in this form.

“You’ll come with us to face the Dragon Council,” Stonequest said. “You will defend yourself and your actions, and they will decide your fate. If you do not come willingly, we are authorized to use lethal force, but do not feel compelled to speak. Our task is only to take you to the Council, not hear your pleas.”

To Kristen’s shock, Obscura turned to her. “You were right, you know,” she said, her words heavy.

“About you being an ancient bitch?” she asked. She didn’t know if she’d said that yet but she’d certainly wanted to call her that.

“About vengeance. Me killing you is not the same as you killing my son. I didn’t want to kill you, not until you’d suffered like I had. Maybe the oath sensed that and prevented me from finishing my quest.”

“Maybe you’ve simply grown weak in your old age,” She smiled.

“No, no, no. I lost track of my purpose. After all, you didn’t kill me, you took a loved one from me.”

“I didn’t know you could feel love.”

“Oh yes,” Obscura said. “And heartbreak. And I’m sure you can as well. In fact, I’m counting on it.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind,” Kristen said. “Lumos and I were able to stop you from hurting my friends. Now, you’re cuffed and in case you hadn’t noticed, there are five of us. The fight’s over.”

“You’re right. The fight is over, especially since your friends are all inside that nice little room in the middle of the warehouse. However, did they find it? I was sure I had hidden it so well.”

Her stomach lurched when she felt Obscura’s aura. It was muffled by the cuffs but was still there. She hadn’t really noticed it, what with being pounded into the ground after their dramatic free-fall, but she felt it now.

Obscura did not feel fear, resignation, or even defeat. She felt triumph.

The black dragon smiled as she held her fists up.

“What’s in her hand?” Emerald yelled, but it was too late.

“I thought that office was nice and secure, that’s why I put most of the explosives there. I wouldn’t want them to go off accidentally.” She pressed the detonator and the warehouse exploded.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Kristen took her dragon form and raced toward the collapsing warehouse. She used every ounce of speed she had available in her dragon body and pushed her muscles as hard and as fast as they could go, but she still couldn’t outrace Obscura’s taunts.

“They all die and you live, Kristen Steel.” The black dragon howled with laughter.

She tried to ignore her and reached out to her friends. If she could only get a sense of their aura, she’d know where they were.

“This is how it ends, you abomination—with your failure and a return to order. I may be punished, but in a century, dragon kind will look at me as a hero.”

“My name is Hall!” she roared.

Obscura bellowed in frustration and that was the last she heard from the shadow dragon. She was close enough to the warehouse that all she could hear were explosions.

The center of the building was already a smoking hole. If her friends had stayed there…well, it was better not to think of that.

The rest of the building, though, thundered with a seemingly endless series of detonations.

Kristen pumped her wings and took flight. It was more of an extended jump, for as soon as she reached the top of her leap, she coasted down into the warehouse, through the flames, and into the wreckage.

She found the room where Brian and her friends had been hiding. Frantic, she hurled cinderblocks aside like they were leaves and checked the wreckage for bodies, blood, or anything that might confirm their deaths. She found nothing and relief seeped in behind the panic. That meant her friends were either still alive or that they hadn’t died there, at least.

Her mind racing, she looked around and tried to decide which way they could have gone. In that moment of hesitation, another bomb went off above her and brought down a large chunk of the roof. In her steel form, she took the brunt of the blow and shrugged it off. She wouldn’t die there, of that she was certain, but if she lost Brian and her friends, she might not really ever live again either.

Another blast high up loosened another avalanche of debris. Kristen pulled back but not quite quickly enough and part of the rubble landed on her tail. The pain was excruciating. Despite having steel skin, her body was still very much filled with flesh and bone and having a roof fall on it hurt.

But it hadn’t killed her.

Not like it would the people she cared for.

She forgot her pain when she saw what was maybe a clue—a line of buttons. Half were turned off and the others still on. Hope flared and she immediately raced down the hall.

Before she made it even ten feet, her dragon body’s shoulders pushed up against the thin walls that had been used to construct the maze. This didn’t slow her down, of course. She could move cinder blocks so cubicle partitions or whatever these flimsy walls were made of presented no physical barrier. The only issue was the smoke that seeped from the floor.

Kristen pumped her wings to disperse the noxious gas into the air before she realized that she shouldn’t actually do that. Not with her friends ahead of her. Instead, she transformed into her human body and sprinted on down the passage.

Despite still being made of steel, being in her human form made the crumbling maze much more terrifying. Whereas before, as a dragon, she could see above the maze, as a human she was back inside the tunnels. If not for the gas primed to release if the walls were broken, she could have simply demolished the maze and saved her brother in an instant. But Obscura’s planning once again made her dragon abilities more dangerous to her human allies than they were useful. Frustrated, she ran through the tunnels and followed the lights. She occasionally had to duck or even fall prone to avoid something that fell from the warehouse roof far above her and through the thin ceiling Obscura had installed to house her speakers.

Her search continued past broken drones, walls that had been moved, and the gas already expended. She increased her pace and pushed herself to the limit until finally, when she thought that all hope was lost, she located her friends.

Brian had fallen and was weeping. “I can’t, I can’t. I’m too tired.”

“You have to, for fuck’s sake,” retorted Hernandez, ever the motivational speaker.

“What’s the point?” he shrieked. “Every door we come to is locked and rigged to blow. We might as well lie here and wait for the ceiling to come down and crush us.”

“I don’t think your sister would like that,” Drew said. He’d noticed Kristen and his grin showed brightly from a face covered in soot from the explosions.

“I only hope my sister’s okay! I hope she flies off safely and beats that fucking sexy dragon and lives a thousand years and never has to worry about my fat ass again.”

“Sorry, Brian, you’re stuck with me,” she said and closed the distance to her team. Everyone cheered except Brian, who merely smiled the largest smile she had ever seen him wear. He pushed himself to his feet and threw a giant hug around her.

That was when the roof finally collapsed.

She heard it before she saw it. A great rending of metal flooded the maze with light. Kristen knew she had only moments to act. Escape wasn’t an option. Survival might not be an option, for that matter, but she would fight like it was.

Kristen transformed, pummeled by the debris even as she did so, and resumed her dragon form. She spread her wings, turned them to steel, and like a mother bird, pulled the humans beneath her chest.

There was only a split second before the building collapsed and pinned her beneath a mountain of brick, lumber, metal, and shingles. The avalanche continued to trap her wings and her tail and pummel her relentlessly until finally, a brick struck her on the temple and she was knocked unconscious.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The first thing Kristen could sense when she came to was the light. It had been dark—so lovely and cozy and dark. Beneath her were other warm things—her friends, part of her knew, and they had clung to her like tiny birds afraid to leave the nest. They’d been afraid. She had felt that even in her dreams, but they also hadn’t been able to go anywhere and nothing had been able to reach them. It had been comforting, like hiding beneath the sheets in her parents' room.

And now there was light. It was demanding and told her to open her eyes, to make sense of it, and to leave the comfort of the nest. She sighed—a shockingly painful thing to do—and tried to move her head. Her neck—far longer than it should have been—felt like it been beaten with a hammer in a dozen places. How a neck could even have a dozen places was beyond her current powers of comprehension. All she knew was that it hurt and she couldn’t move it.

She settled for opening her eyes.

A dragon stood in front of her. He had wise eyes, radiantly golden scales, and a long mustache that flitted with the breeze. She thought briefly that she had woken from a dream into another dream, but when the dragon spoke, a flood of memories came back to her.

“I found the Steel Dragon!”

That was right. She was the Steel Dragon. But she was supposed to be strong, tough, and almost invulnerable. Right now, she felt like every muscle in her body had been ground into a pulpy mess. The Steel Dragon wasn’t supposed to suffer concussions. She wondered vaguely why she hadn’t thought to turn completely to steel.

“Hold still, Kristen. We’ll get you out of there,” Lumos said and began using his massive claws to shift debris with surprisingly delicate movements.

She smiled at that. Holding still was an order she could currently obey.

Two more dragons approached—Stonequest and Emerald, she remembered when the haze of unconsciousness faded—and started pulling rocks and rubble from her back.

“I can’t believe that crazy dragon loaded the roof with boulders,” Emerald said to their leader.

Kristen shook her head and grimaced at a jolt of pain in her neck. “We saw no rubble.”

“I know we didn’t,” Lumos said. “There was a false roof. I think her plan the entire time was to get you to fight her, then kill the humans inside. If I hadn’t had been there to help…”

“Are you saying I owe you a drink?” she mumbled.

“I think you owe Lumos a bottle—and top-shelf too,” Emerald said and lifted a massive beam from one of her wings.

Once the weight moved, a fresh wave of agony surged into her wing. But there was also reason to feel hope as well. From beneath it, she heard sounds. For a moment, she pictured a bird on its nest except there weren’t hatchlings under there.

“You folks stay where you are,” Stonequest yelled through the membrane of her wing.

“Yeah, no shit,” Hernandez bellowed in response. “Where the fuck does this asshole think we’re gonna go?”

“I heard that,” he said with a chuckle.

The dragons removed a few more pieces of debris from her wing. Strangely, no longer being pinned in place made the pain worse. The pressure of hundreds of pounds of jagged stones had been a familiar thing. Now, the crisp breeze over fresh wounds stung like acid.

“Hold still, Steel. Don’t shift yet,” Emerald said.

Kristen grimaced and fought the urge to transform into her human form. She didn’t have wings as a human so they wouldn’t hurt—or, at least, that was what her still recovering brain had latched onto.

“We almost have you clear. Then, you can shift to human and we’ll get your friends out. If you do it now, a boulder might crush them,” Lumos explained.

She understood that because she was currently being crushed. It didn’t feel great.

Finally, after what was surely only a few minutes but to her felt much longer, the rubble was cleared and Stonequest told her to transform into her human body.

It actually took effort and she had to summon the last reserves of strength she had to transform her body into silvery shards of confetti that vanished into nowhere and left her bruised and battered in the middle of her friends.

They were all there—Drew, Jim, Hernandez, Keith, and Butters. All bruised, some bloody, but all fine. All except—

“Where’s Brian?” she demanded and tried to push herself up.

“Right here,” he groaned from beneath her. “You basically sat on me, so I guess you owe me.”

Drew and Keith helped to pull her to her feet and off her brother. He stood slowly, filthy with dust that had clung to his sweat. Dried, crusty blood around his nostrils seemed to indicate that he’d faced the shock-rod wielding ghosts at least once inside the maze.

“Brian, you’re all right!” She lurched forward and threw her arms around him, stink and sweat be damned. It felt good to have him safe.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m a little hungry, but fine,” he said.

“I hear that,” Butters agreed.

Kristen chuckled at the two of them joking about food despite the fact that they’d been only the thickness of a dragon’s wing from certain death. Laughing made her ribs hurt, however. “You guys decide about dinner. I have to talk to the lizards.”

She stumbled out of the wreckage with Brian and the other humans at her back. Once clear of the devastation, she tried to stand at attention before Stonequest but it wasn’t easy. Her ribs hurt like no one’s business, one of her eyes was swollen shut, and her left arm hung limply at her side, obviously broken.

Stonequest, Emerald, and Lumos all smiled with genuine pride, now in human form like her.

“Where’s Heartsbane? Is she pissed off that I went to save the humans or something?” she asked in what couldn’t have been more than a loud mumble.

“She’s taken Obscura back to Headquarters and will take special care to make the ride as bumpy as possible,” Stonequest said.

“I thought for sure she’d be pissed that I took the wrong side.”

Emerald laughed. “Typical, isn’t it? Heartsbane finally says someone’s growing on her, but only after she’s done pissed them off too much for them to care.”

Stonequest and Lumos smiled at that. She didn’t really follow the reversal but was pleased to know that Heartsbane apparently hated her less.

“What will happen with Obscura?” she asked. She had to know. If she would be released within twenty-four hours, she had no idea what she would do. She wouldn’t fight her, not immediately and definitely not with her body feeling like someone ran it through a meat grinder. It would need at least forty-eight hours.

“You don’t need to worry about that right now. Lumos is writing up a report on what she built here. She really crossed a line—using human technology, kidnapping people, and doing it all to lure you here for an unsanctioned duel. This simply isn’t how things are done. We’ll have her locked up at least until the Dragon Council goes through the report of what happened here.”

“So, what does that mean—a week?” Kristen asked. She tried not to sound bitter but failed miserably.

Stonequest shrugged. “I think this case will change how the Dragon Council and dragon society at large view human culture. Many of us see your kind as transient, powerless beings.”

“Gee, thanks,” Hernandez interjected.

Again, he shrugged. “It’s not an opinion I share, but there it is. What Obscura almost accomplished here, primarily using human technology, will convince many that human advancement has risen to a level that must be reckoned with.”

“It probably scares you shitless, huh?” Jim said.

Stonequest chuckled, obviously not intimidated. “I’ve argued for dragons to pay more attention to people since the automobile was invented. Some of us have, but I think nothing besides nuclear weapons and television has really impacted the dragon sphere. I hope this changes dragon opinion on that. One way or the other, though, Obscura broke all kinds of rules. I’ll do everything I can to make sure she has the book thrown at her.”

Kristen nodded. It would have to do.

“So, uh…not to interrupt or anything, but she is my sister,” Brian said, stepped up beside her, and threw an arm around her shoulder. It felt wonderful to be hugged by her brother and also absolutely terrible to have a reminder that her ribs were bruised or broken.

“Do you mind if we take her away from here?” he asked.

“Just one more thing—Emerald?” Stonequest said.

Emerald stepped forward. “You know you’ll be healed in a few weeks, right?”

She nodded. “Yeah. If there’s a way to speed that up, it would be great.”

“There isn’t. You merely need food and sleep.”

“Like I was saying,” Brian said smugly.

“First, we have to do something about that arm, though,” Emerald said.

Kristen grimaced. She’d hoped that transforming between her two forms would have healed the broken bone but that obviously wasn’t the case. Although she’d broken the bone in dragon form, it was still snapped in this body.

“Your body will prioritize fixing that bone first,” he explained. “It’s a structural issue and limits your effectiveness as a predator. Your subconscious dragon healing knows this—at least that’s what our mages think—and will start there, but we have to make sure it heals cleanly.”

Reluctantly, she nodded. She had been afraid of this.

“Are you ready?”

She nodded again and gritted her teeth.

In a blink of dragon speed, he grasped her arm, yanked it from the wrist and elbow, and straightened the bone.

Kristen screamed in pain. Her aura poured from her and swamped her human friends with enough force to make them all scream in pain as well.

In the next moment, he placed a splint next to it and wound it in a soft cast. “I’m sorry.” Kristen didn’t think the asshole sounded sorry enough but that was no doubt the pain talking directly to her brain. “It should be fine now. Don’t fuck with it until tomorrow. By then, the bone should be solid enough. It’ll take time, though, and while that’s working, uh…”

“What the handsome man with dreadlocks is trying to say is that your face is as bruised as fuck and you look like a creature from the supermarket tabloids,” Hernandez said and grinned.

“Hey! What the fuck?” Keith cut in.

Kristen smiled at the Rookie who had no doubt come to her defense.

“I thought you thought I was handsome,” he finished, affronted and insulted.

Hernandez rubbed her eyes and shook her head. “Straight boys. So simple and so shortsighted.”

“Anyway,” Brian said and sounded a little desperate. “The thing is, I’ve played Pac-Man for hours and hours.”

“Yeah, so? It sounds kind of cool to me,” Jim said. “Except for the thugs trying to shock you into cardiac arrest.”

“Right, yeah, so obviously, you’re not a gamer,” Brian responded.

“Guilty as charged, but what’s your point? Your sister makes you sound like the video game king. Those ghosts would never have caught you.”

“Yeah, but Pac-Man had power pellets, dots, and fruit to eat. Did you notice what wasn’t in there? Food. I’m starving!”

“Pizza?” Kristen asked.

“Pizza!” everyone replied.

“All right, awesome.” Her brother looked relieved. “I don’t seem to have my wallet, what with being kidnapped and all, or I’d call a rideshare. Kristen, do you mind being the pony?”

She laughed. As a kid, she’d ridden Brian as a pony too many times to count but even this fond memory couldn’t push away the pain she felt in her ribs. “I don’t think I can transform, Brian. I think we’ll have to wait for a ride.”

Stonequest glanced at Lumos and Emerald. They both sighed.

“Just…get in your SWAT van and we’ll, uh…I’ll give you a ride,” Stonequest said, although he didn’t sound too enthusiastic.

Lumos transformed into his dragon form and twitched his mustache. “But if it gets out that dragons give rides to cars…well, we’ll eat you instead of whatever games Obscura had planned for you.”

The parking lot attendant at Buddy’s Pizza gasped audibly when three dragons, one of which carried a SWAT van, landed inside the fenced-off area surrounding the parking lot.

Kristen stepped from the back of the van, still too exhausted to transform into her dragon form, and asked him for a table.

Apparently, dealing with bruised people with an eye swollen shut and a nose that continued to bleed intermittently was way more up to speed for the man. When she asked him for a table for—she had to count—eleven, he led her to a large one in the back without so much as blinking.

They all settled in. Keith ordered six pitchers of beer, only because when he first tried to order one for everyone at the table, the waitress looked uncomfortable and didn’t take the order fast enough. Brian was as prepared when it came to pizza. He ordered cheese sticks, two salads, and five pizzas in the amount of time it took the rest of the people and dragons there to even pick up a menu.

“Is that all for you?” Kristen joked.

He laughed and shook his head. “Naw, that should cover at least you and me, right?”

She smiled. It felt good to have her brother back.

For a few minutes, the conversation was awkward as it often was between the exhausted and the famished. When the food and cheese sticks showed up, however, everyone relaxed and fell into their side conversations.

Hernandez dissected the explosives while Keith and Lumos listened indulgently. Butters complained that he’d never had to get into a sniper shooting contest with Obscura. Beanpole replied that it was good because Butters didn’t know how to draw emojis anyway. Drew and Stonequest argued about proper infiltration technique but kept coming up against logistical differences based on their species. She honestly expected them to start arm-wrestling. The chest-beating couldn’t have been any more apparent.

Emerald and Jim also seemed to be engaged in some kind of testosterone-fueled beer drinking contest. She grinned at that. Both had serious chips on their shoulders about being born into a place in society that was obviously less privileged than others. They boasted about who was better until Emerald revealed that he could burn off any alcohol he drank, thus making drinking contests obsolete. This caused the Wonderkid to declare himself the winner, which prompted Emerald to swear off his sobering ability for the evening to show Jim that he knew how to drink better than a human. So far, that didn’t seem to be the case as the green dragon’s human form was already swaying, but maybe Jim’s drunkenness would catch up.

Kristen, though, couldn’t take her eyes off her brother.

“Are you all right, Brian?”

He nodded and put a slice of pizza down—only his third—and smiled at his sister.

“Yeah, I’m doing all right. You know, when you came to Mom and Dad’s last time, I didn’t mean to be so shitty to you. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Its cool, Brian. I think it was Obscura’s aura.”

Brian nodded, obviously relieved to be absolved of the guilt, but there was still a tightness to his expression, something that made it obvious he wasn’t comfortable.

“Yeah…I guessed that. Obscura was…well, let’s say I’ve never been attracted to a ten-thousand-year-old before.”

“Wait, what?” She wanted to laugh but he still looked so nervous that she held it in.

"You’ve told me about auras, though. You said they can influence people’s emotions but that they can’t make you do something totally against what you believe. Like it would be really hard to make a vegan eat a steak or a Christian light a bag of dog poop on fire and put it at the front door of a church.”

“Yeah…that’s true.”

“Well, I guess all this made me realize that I do have issues with you being a dragon.”

“Brian, it’s fine, really.”

“No, it’s not. Listen to me for a second, okay?” he demanded and sounded angry once more. “I thought I would die in there. You know that, right? Every time those fucking ghosts came around a corner, every time a drone swooped toward me, and every time my fat ass fell while I tried to run away from them, I thought it was the end.”

“I wouldn’t let someone take you from me,” Kristen stated. She knew it to be truth. Brian was her brother.

“That’s what makes me feel so shitty, though, Krissy. You’ve always protected me, stood up for me, and saved me, and this was how I repaid you? I’m so sorry…like so, so, sorry, Kristen.”

“It’s fine, Brian. I’m only glad you’re all right.”

“Do you know what I thought about when I was running, though? I thought that I would never see my sister again and that your last memory of me would be of me yelling at you and being a shitty asshole. That was a scarier thought than dying, you know? I love you, Kristen. I know we say that on the phone or whatever, but I want you to know that if anything ever does happen to me, I love you so much. I don’t care if you’re the Steel Dragon or anything else. You’re my sister, and I’ll always whoop you in video games, and well…it was fucking terrifying to almost lose that.”

“I love you too, Brian,” she said and threw an arm around his shoulder.

They hugged and he tried to wipe his eyes. The cops all around them—more familiar than most people with the emotions that followed a violent situation—pretended not to notice. They maintained their conversations and arguments, although perhaps in slightly quieter tones. They might have been professionals, but gossip was gossip.

“And that’s another thing,” Brian said when he finally pulled away from her. “I don’t know how long I was in there. It couldn’t have been more than six hours, though, because she took me in the morning and you saved me by the afternoon.”

That was a wild thought to Kristen, that all this had transpired—the glitter bomb at Hernandez’s apartment, the sniper taking shots at Butters to send a message, the bouquet of flowers—in less than twenty-four hours. “It’s been a long day,” she agreed.

“Yeah, for fucking sure, but I should have been able to last longer. When you rescued me, I thought I was dead. I could hardly run anymore.”

“It makes sense. You didn’t have food.”

He grabbed his gut. “I had plenty of calories. What I didn’t have was any training at all. I don’t remember when the last time was that I walked around the block, let alone ran to the park. That’s…that has to change. Especially with the Steel Dragon as my sister.”

“You don’t have to change because of me,” she said.

“No, I really do. All your other friends are crazy cops who play airsoft for fun. All of you are fit and strong and have, like, plus four to constitution. Still, with all that shit, they barely survived that maze. If y’all hadn’t have come for me, I would’ve died.”

“That’s true, I guess,” she agreed. “But you did keep up with them, despite all of them doing all their training and you never doing anything. That’s impressive, really.”

“That’s only desperation,” Brian said but he smiled. He hadn’t thought that the fact that he had managed to make it that long was kind of impressive.

“I think it’s more than that, Brian. But if you want to start training, I know the right folks.”

He looked around the group of fit cops who laughed and arm-wrestled and boasted to each other. “Yeah… I think I might start with the gym,” he said.

“Well, whatever you want to do, I want to be there. I’ve been gone too much too, and it totally bugs me. I joined SWAT to keep people safe and Dragon SWAT because I thought I could make a difference, and now, I think maybe I finally am. All this would have been impossible before, and because of the crazy shit you went through, we’re all able to share this moment,” she said.

“Hear, hear!” Keith raised a glass. “To the crazy fucking shit we all go through for each other!”

Everyone grabbed their glass and raised them in the air, clinking and spilling beer absolutely everywhere.

“Wait, you guys listened to that whole conversation?” Brian demanded and looked terrified.

Drew raised an eyebrow at him. “Cop powers. We pretend to be indifferent while we eavesdrop. Speaking of which, I have some great techniques to try if you want to start working on your arms and shoulders. You have the frame for it.”

“That’s all bullshit,” Hernandez said. “The shit that matters is cardio. We start with a five-mile run. You think you can’t do it, but you can. We suffer through and then you know—like you fucking know—you can run five miles, so training is possible.”

“Oh, God, what have I done?” He gasped and looked around the ring of smiling, fit people.

“Welcome to airsoft, Brian,” Kristen said. “Your experience with first-person shooters will help…a little.”

He swallowed hard but didn’t reach for his pizza. “I guess I need to stop drinking if I don’t want to be hungover for airsoft?”

Everyone cheered at that, although the rest of them downed their beers. It was a great night, made all the sweeter because she knew the monster who had precipitated the crazy shit was behind bars imbued with enough magic to keep them all safe, for a while anyway.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“Is there anything else we can do for you, my lady?” the insolent little mage asked with a false tone of politeness.

“Yes, you can remove these manacles and let me stretch in this filthy hole,” Obscura replied.

“I can’t do that ma’am. Strict orders. And sorry about the accommodations. This is the nicest we have. Dinner will be served at seven. Please place your order by six or our chef will choose for you.”

“There are things I can do for you, even in these cuffs,” Obscura said and turned her aura into a thing of seduction.

“No thank you, ma’am,” the mage said, left the room, locked the door, and recast the impermeable spell that would keep her inside. Her attempt should have worked, except the mage had tattoos of protection all over his head. She couldn’t penetrate those, not with the manacles stifling her and not with the other dragons waiting outside. Heartsbane especially was a beast when it came to auras. She was less controlled than the shadow dragon but perhaps even more powerful. And so insolent.

She came to the window, her platinum-blonde hair still in its natural state. Her aura was the shining silver that came with age, even to the human forms of dragons. “I want you to know that I’m missing pizza and beer for this shit,” Heartsbane stated coldly through the window of the cell.

“I’m so sorry, dear,” the prisoner said sweetly.

“Oh, there’s no need to apologize. I love locking away old assholes like yourself. It makes me feel young.”

Obscura snarled and stood from the plush bed. “Come in here and say that.”

“How stupid do you think I am?”

The black dragon merely smiled. “Then be gone with you, whelp. Let me rest.”

“You got it. I know how tiring failure can be. Rest up. You have a long trial ahead of you. If everything goes your way, this’ll be the last bed you sleep in with blankets.” Heartsbane left with a definite air of smugness about her.

The black dragon scowled because she recognized the truth in that. The room she was currently in wasn’t befitting of one of her stature, but it was still adequate. The bed was plush and there was a desk with an electric light and paper and a quill if she wished to work. Tasteful art hung on the walls. It was a holding room, not a cell, normally used for dragons who broke the peace rather than those who swore vengeance oaths.

Thinking of the oath forced her to lay down again.

Even with the oath in her blood, she hadn’t been strong enough to beat Kristen. Well, that wasn’t true. She was sure she could have beaten her if not for Lumos. This whole debacle merely proved how unjust Dragon SWAT was. They could have had a fair fight, Steel Dragon versus dragon of shadow, but Dragon SWAT had to stick their snouts in her business. When she was free, she’d make them all pay.

But first, you must make Kristen suffer.

Obscura nodded and let the pain wash over her. What the oath did to her was debilitatingly painful but ultimately cleansing. When she’d failed to kill Kristen’s friends in front of her, the oath had sapped her strength. It knew as well as she did that to truly make the Steel Dragon pay the price for taking Shadowstorm’s flesh, she had to be stripped of those she loved. When she had thought that she had failed, it believed it too and stopped empowering her.

But she no longer believed it.

Oaths of vengeance were ancient things. They used the magic of a dead dragon to work and historically, when they failed, killed the dragon who’d sworn them. To take the oath, one had to totally commit to vengeance. Failure, then, meant that one’s entire mental resolve was challenged and confronted with its own shortcomings.

For most dragons, this was debilitating. The oath, once denied its purpose, no longer empowered. It took back all the strength it had given and more. This left dragons weak and listless. Those who survived that original vacuum of power rarely lasted more than a week. If Dragon SWAT knew anything about the magic in her blood—and they surely did, considering the smartass little mages they employed—they’d try to keep her in this cell as long as possible and let her suffer the consequences of her own failure.

Except that wouldn’t work with Obscura. As soon as the rest of Dragon SWAT had arrived, she reformed her plan in her brain. She had thought that the Steel Dragon’s friends were the humans and that she tried to keep up with the dragons and failed. But no, no, no, that wasn’t the case.

The little bitch had made friends with the dragons as well.

Once she realized this, she redefined her plan. Slaying the humans wouldn’t be enough. She’d still try to catch them in the blast, but she knew that even if she somehow caught them all—which was unlikely given the human female’s interest in explosives—there’d still be people left who the Steel Dragon cared about.

Those were the pathetic dragons who allowed her to share the same breath as them. Any plan of true vengeance couldn’t ignore the dragons. Vengeance had to be complete and total. Obscura had to take everything from Kristen—everything. Her brother, her human friends, her dragon allies, and her parents.

But it didn’t have to happen right away, she told herself—and thus the oath—again and again.

When most dragons would have withered at the loss of power, she used it as a reminder. She had to exercise patience and caution and bide her time until the moment was right.

Then, and only then, would she take the world away from Kristen Hall, the Steel Dragon, and justice would be hers.

Yes… The oath echoed her thoughts, still hungry to be fulfilled and for what was promised. Yes…

THE STORY CONTINUES

The story continues with book six: Never Cage A Dragon, 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 (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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