WARRIOR’S BLOOD

STEEL DRAGON™ BOOK TWELVE

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 © 2020 LMBPN Publishing

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LMBPN Publishing

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Version 1.00, April 2022

Previously Published as part of the megabook Steel Dragon 4

eBook ISBN: 979-8-88541-414-2

Print ISBN: 979-8-88541-415-9

THE WARRIOR’S BLOOD TEAM

Thanks to the JIT Readers

Dave Hicks

Deb Mader

Diane L. Smith

Dorothy Lloyd

Jackey Hankard-Brodie

James Caplan

Jeff Eaton

Jeff Goode

Kathleen Fettig

Kelly O’Donnell

Kerry Mortimer

Paul Westman

Peter Manis

Veronica Stephan-Miller

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

Editor

The Skyhunter Editing Team

CHAPTER ONE

Athousand shades of green raced below Kristen as she soared above the rainforests of South America. The beautiful scenery and calls of exotic birds almost made it possible to forget why they were there.

“You’re two kilometers out, Steel. I’d descend to approach from the cover of the jungle.”

“Thanks, Zed. We’ll drop now.” She signaled with her tail that it was time to land. Her people responded instantly and without question, something that had begun to mean more and more to her.

Heartsbane, Lumos, and Stonequest now each commanded a small wing of dragons. Drew and Jim commanded two small platoons of about twenty-five ex-soldiers turned dragon-human peacekeepers. Currently, each platoon was inside a converted shipping container and the two leaders waited for orders via radio.

They heard her give the order, and she knew that inside their somewhat creative airborne troop carriers, men pushed against their seats, tightened their seatbelts, and checked their ammunition.

Lumos’s wing of dragons didn’t carry a container because, during the battle, they would provide air support. Hopefully, the mages who rode with the old golden dragon—Amy, Larry, and a new recruit Amythist brought in called Kristof—would be able to protect the dragons from any air defense.

Kristen was supposed to stay back—not an easy task given her history—but that was the way of things. Their intelligence said there shouldn’t be any high-priority targets at this base, which meant she had to remain at a safe distance so she wasn’t accidentally injured.

Heartsbane’s wing moved to the right, while Stonequest went to the left. Drew led the forces that were carried by her dragons, while Jim led the ones with Stonequest. The Steel Dragon followed Lumos, who continued to fly forward and directly to the base they could now see occupied a clearing in the jungle.

Although the location didn’t appear to be the most technologically advanced, it would still pose a substantial threat.

Its perimeter was a simple ten-foot fence created by wooden posts sharpened to points at the top. While a rudimentary defense, to be sure, it was an obstacle all the same. Inside the base—if Brian’s satellite images could be trusted—barricades were spread across the landscape and four reinforced concrete bunkers, each of which was built like a three-stepped ziggurat—a stepped pyramid with a flat top and two levels people could patrol on the outside. It was odd architecture but not particularly intimidating.

All in all, it didn’t look like much beyond a repurposed base that was probably once used to manufacture cocaine. The two massive cannons on its roof were the only exceptions and didn’t look like the kind of weapons drug lords installed.

They looked like dragon killers.

“All right, first things first, you young pips. We need to find out what they’re packing,” Lumos shouted to the three dragons who flew in a V formation behind him. “I don’t want anyone to get hit, but we do need to draw fire from that CIWS. It will tell us more about what kind of arsenal they have and how foolish the entire mission is.”

He had argued long and hard against this operation. The last time they’d assaulted a base with a close-in weapons system, many dragons had died. He didn’t want to risk such losses again, but the dragons from his wing had argued that they were determined to help the mission—their very first—even if it proved to be lethal. To their credit, they didn’t seem frightened by the decision they’d made in the safety of their base. Their postures were solid, and their auras tasted of confidence with only a hint of fear, exactly what Kristen wanted her soldiers to feel in a situation like this.

Lumos pumped his wings and surged into a barrel roll as he and his wing moved into range of the two massive guns. One of them erupted almost instantly and fired what sounded like a hundred bullets in the blink of an eye with a buzz-saw sound. The team had expected this and they maneuvered in and out of the lines of bullets. Brian’s research skills were proving to be a huge advantage as he had identified the particular make of the weapon there and had been able to define its range.

One of the younger dragons—a dark-scaled female with the ability to make tornados from the rapid beats of her wings—whooped with delight. “These dumbass mages are using regular bullets.” Windspin whirled in her place in formation to display the holes the weapon had drilled in the membrane of her wings that were already healing.

The other young dragons smiled at each other and pumped their wings to propel them even faster towards the base.

Lumos, however, intervened before their enthusiasm could get the better of them. “We haven’t seen the other gun fire yet. Stay in formation and follow my lead.”

The old battle master’s training showed when the young dragons fell into formation again and followed Lumos as he continued to approach the base. Despite his caution, his powers made his golden scales glow with excitement.

Only Windspin didn’t obey her superior’s orders. “I got this!” she shouted and began to beat her wings with such force that great gales of wind swept out from them and slammed against the wooden fence that surrounded the perimeter of the base. In moments, she had outpaced her allies.

Kristen had long since stopped being shocked by such displays of powers that seemingly broke the laws of physics. Dragons needed magic to function, period. This one could make wind without being blown back by it. That was simply the way of things. It made about as much sense as her being able to turn her body to steel and back. Or Heartsbane being able to control other people’s emotions as easily as a professional pianist could play something by Scott Joplin.

But her assault did not go unnoticed. While she raced forward and the gusts of wind from her wings battered the crude fence erected by the technomages, the other massive gun that had yet to fire pivoted until it aimed directly at Windspin’s chest. Without preamble or warning, it fired.

The young dragon’s wind might have been able to demolish a fence made of hundreds of tree trunks if she’d had another minute to use it. Unfortunately, the ordinance launched at her seared a hole in her chest. She plummeted to land in a bloody pile with an aura no longer. It was shocking to see her struck down with such ruthless efficiency.

“The first gun’s a decoy and second is loaded with dragon rounds!” Lumos boomed to his wing, who broke into two smaller groups and moved in slightly different directions. The gun followed one of them and fired, but they used every one of their formidable dragon talents to avoid flying in a straight line.

The shot missed, thank God.

“Everyone stay in formation!” their leader shouted, angry at the unnecessary loss of life so early in the fight. “We have mages on three of us. As long as we stay close, Larry, Amy, and Kris should be able to protect us!”

“Kristof!” the man shouted.

“Is now really the time for that?” he demanded as his wing reformed and made another pass at the two massive mounted machine guns.

“Are we a go?” Jim asked Kristen over the radio.

“Lumos is running interference. You have a green light to engage,” Kristen told both her human team leaders.

Thirty people emerged from the forest on one side of the base and sprinted as one to close the distance between the walled base and the cover provided by the jungle. While the humans moved at what amounted to their full speed, five of them came nowhere close to their peak. Heartsbane and her wing had been ordered to embed themselves amongst the regular humans for this assault and to retain their human bodies rather than their dragons ones. They were smaller targets this way and—if Kristen’s team failed—the enemy technomages wouldn’t learn exactly how many dragons now worked with the Steel Dragon.

The thirty soldiers raced forward and fired constant volleys from their assault rifles at the mages atop a hidden walkway that ran along the interior of the wooden fence. It seemed they weren’t all mages, though, or if they were, they didn’t have any battle powers. The defenders returned fire with bullets rather than magic.

Drew’s soldiers didn’t flinch as they ran into battle or when a lucky bullet struck home in a man’s chest and felled him instantly. Nor did they cower when another shot turned a man’s head into nothing but red mist.

Kristen shook her head. She had known there would be casualties. All their information said this was a heavily fortified base that was a key distribution center for the technomage network of terrorist cells. It would be foolish and naïve to imagine anything less, but losing people this early still hurt.

Maybe the man who was shot in the chest is still alive, she told herself. She’d spared no expense on armor. Perhaps the end of the battle would reveal hidden surprises.

That battle itself was certainly supposed to if their plans played out as expected.

Jim’s team approached from the other side of the base.

They consisted mostly of former Marines as well as Navy Seals and were the stealthier half of the pincer strike. As they had trained to do, they moved across the open space between the thick jungle and the wooden wall that surrounded the technomage base like jungle predators—silent, quick, and deadly.

They had almost made it halfway across the open space before they were noticed.

Blasts of fire, ice, and what appeared to be magical biting flies launched from the top of the wall and attacked the platoon.

Well, at least I know where the mages were hiding, Kristen told herself. But this confirmation of the intelligence her team had received didn’t feel so great when she had to watch as a bolt of lightning seared through a soldier and sizzled his flesh before the man could so much as even raise his weapon.

“Lumos, we have mages,” she told the older dragon.

“Yes, ma’am, we see them,” the golden dragon confirmed. He and his wing swooped over Jim’s platoons’ heads to draw the magical attacks that human armor could do so little against. The mages on their backs were able to deflect the blasts of magic and buy Jim and his people a few more precious yards of advance.

“We have contact with the wall,” Drew shouted from the other side and pulled Kristen’s attention to that location.

Now was the time for the dragons to show their mettle. Humans could have demolished the wall made of dug-in trees, but it would have taken longer. The dragons hidden among Drew’s platoon simply kicked it over, leveled a dozen tree trunks, and created a space large enough for them to enter the base. The invaders continued the assault on the concrete bunkers within. At the top of the wall, the men armed with assault rifles scattered before they were hurled from their perch.

“Dragons!” The word blared over a sound system and the mages attacking Jim traded places with those armed simply with assault rifles.

From her vantage point, Kristen could see that some of the men headed to one of the bunkers and exchanged their rifles for identical models. The difference could only be that the new ones were loaded with dragon bullets.

“Dragons, weapons will soon be hot. Continue to follow your human captains’ leads,” she called over their radio net.

Drew led his team through the gap in the fence. Rather than pushing forward, he led them to take cover at the nearest bunkers. Brian’s intel had told them exactly which seemed to be the headquarters and which were little more than storage and sleeping areas.

Once again, the intel received proved its value.

No sooner had the platoon found cover than the freshly armed technomages opened fire. Kristen couldn’t see the action in that corner of the base. All she could hear was gunfire and screams.

Her heart fell when a great blast of fire rocketed into the air and the rest of the fence that Drew had led his team through was leveled. Even though she knew what must have caused it, she couldn’t help but look.

Sure enough, a dragon had been shot in human form with a dragon bullet. Death made them revert to their dragon body and it leveled the fence in its death throes.

“Damn it,” she cursed. With two dragons down already, this was not going well.

“Orders?” Lumos asked.

She wanted to think about it and take the time to weigh every possible outcome, but it was a luxury she simply didn’t have. They had to destroy the base and this was their only chance.

“Press on. Don’t let them die for nothing.”

“We’ll target the big cannon, then,” the old dragon said.

“Make it so,” she agreed.

He and his team wheeled and launched a new assault at the mages who were now divided to be able to focus on both Jim and Drew’s forces. Even though Kristen knew what was coming, she was impressed with the golden dragon’s battle prowess. He was amazingly subtle, which made it easy to think he simply attacked the mages with his talons while his wing streaked past him and each blasted a ball of fire at the weapon that had fired dragon bullets at them.

Three of the fireballs struck its base, which—unfortunately—seemed to do no visible damage.

The gun pivoted towards Lumos, who systematically hurled mages from their positions on the walkway inside the wall. He watched the weapon more closely than he seemed to, though. As soon as its intended trajectory came too close to his position, he descended to the earth and used his tail to lash at the fence.

Whoever controlled the barrel seemed to think they still had a shot and fired.

Their assumption proved to be their great mistake, albeit perhaps unwittingly, as the fireballs had apparently weakened the apparatus that allowed the gun to pivot. When it fired, it was flung from its mooring and tumbled down the other side of the concrete bunker. It made impact with a boom so loud it rattled Kristen even at her fairly distant vantage point.

The person who piloted the other cannon seemed eager for vengeance, as he swung it toward Lumos and opened fire. The dragons, however, already knew it was loaded with nothing but good old-fashioned lead.

The golden dragon simply spread his wings and shielded the human soldiers from the ammunition that would have laughed at their armor if given the opportunity.

In truth, it wasn’t his wings that blocked the bullets but Larry, the mage upon his back. As they didn’t want the mages to know this, Lumos feigned pain and leapt skyward while Jim and his people raced through the gap he’d made in the wall.

“Kristen—” Brian said over her radio. He was back at their base and watched the battle unfold from cameras mounted on the captains and from satellite feeds of the area.

“Not now, Brian. This battle’s about to change.”

“You’re right about that. She’s here.”

“Who?” she asked reflexively, but she knew exactly who her brother was talking about.

The Iron Dragon appeared as a shadow in front of the sun like she’d emerged from the burning pits of hell itself. She was already in an insanely fast dive by the time Kristen even saw her. By then, it was too late.

“Lumos!” she shouted when she realized he was the Iron Dragon’s target.

“I have her!” Amy replied and launched a great blast of magic that made the cannon that had turned a dragon into mush seem like nothing but a firecracker.

She missed, however. The Iron Dragon tucked her wings and dodged the blast of raw magic as easily as Lumos had avoided the bullets a moment before.

Lumos was thankfully not taken completely by surprise. He rolled to put his claws between his vital organs and his assailant, who fell like a meteor from the sky.

The Iron Dragon made no effort to slow her assault.

She powered into her target, his claws be damned, like a freight train bulldozing through a shopping cart.

Still, he was able to dodge the brunt of her blow with only a few scratches on his chest from the encounter. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to block his adversary’s tail that whipped behind him and knocked Larry from his back.

“Old fool. Dragons aren’t supposed to work with mages and you failed to protect yours.” She sneered as she continued to claw and scratch at Lumos to keep the dragon engaged and unable to help the mage, who now plummeted with no hope of aid.

“Come on, Larry. Come on,” Kristen muttered, her eyes narrowed in focus on the falling figure. The mage seemed to gain momentum with each second and the wind of his rapid descent ripped at his robes as he fell end over end. “Why hasn’t he caught himself with his magic?”

She answered her question because it was so obvious. He was unconscious and would be unable to either register his danger or slow his fall. The golden dragon still tried to keep his assailant at bay. His team attempted to destroy the other gun and save the lives of the rest of Kristen’s soldiers.

Only one person present could save the mage.

“Fuck the battle plans,” Kristen said, transformed into her dragon form, and swooped to catch her friend before he became nothing but another life lost in the jungle.

CHAPTER TWO

She flapped her wings faster and faster, focused on nothing but Larry’s body as it plunged at a rapidly increasing pace. The only gun that could kill her with a single shot had been destroyed. The dragon who wanted to snap her neck was occupied. The mages were trying to kill her friends.

It was up to Kristen to save Larry.

Grimly determined, she pushed herself faster and closed the distance between them until finally, she extended a claw and caught the mage gently by his robes. She drew her friend to her chest and pulsed her aura with alertness, hoping to jolt him awake.

What she should have done was watch the Iron Dragon. At some point, the enemy had extricated herself from combat with Lumos and settled on her as a new target.

At the last moment, she saw the aggressor with seconds to spare but was still able to dodge. It seemed obvious that an attack would succeed on this pass.

Although Katrina barely skimmed her, she didn’t seem frustrated by her failure. Instead, she shed her iron skin, banked into a tight loop that seemed impossible for a dragon, and transformed into her iron body in time to drive into Kristen’s spine.

Despite the protective steel ridges that would have hindered lesser foe, the Iron Dragon was able to dig her claws into Kristen’s back with such force that her wings spasmed in pain.

She clutched Larry against her chest as she pounded into the dirt in what she chose to count as a controlled landing. Her brother, though—who watched everything on the satellite footage—would no doubt say it needed work.

With her body positioned above the mage to keep him hidden, she pushed to her feet. Her instinct to protect him wasn’t misplaced as it sounded like every gun and blast of magic was now aimed at the two of them.

Fortunately, the jolt she’d sent to him via her aura to wake him worked. Seconds before her steel skin was shredded by dragon bullets, he threw up a shield. Dozens of bullets dissipated into nothing but dust merely inches from her face.

“Kristen!” Larry shouted as if he hadn’t saved her life and it was still in peril.

She understood his worry when the Iron Dragon bulldozed into her again. The two metal dragons tumbled in vicious combat and their strikes gouged the black earth beneath the carpet of tropical plants.

Her orders had been for dragons to transform into their human shape if they were grounded, but that strategy had assumed there wouldn’t be any dragon support. No one had anticipated the Iron Dragon’s arrival, Kristen least of all. It didn’t seem wise to turn into her human form during a battle with this beast of a woman.

The time for what-ifs and strategic adjustment was over.

The aggressor extricated herself from Kristen’s claws and lunged again to drive into her chest with horns made of iron. Sparks flew when iron struck steel, but the Steel Dragon was virtually unscathed. Yes, she felt the blow, but her steel skin blunted much of the force.

Before the Iron Dragon could withdraw, she sliced her across her body with her steel claws in the dragon version of a punch to the gut. The attack did even less to her opponent than the headbutt had done to her.

“Fool,” her opponent hissed before she arced her tail to swipe the blade at the end into Kristen’s neck a little below her jawline. Pain seared through her like lightning. “Oh, did I hit a nerve?”

“Why are you doing this, Katrina?” she demanded before she attacked again.

“Because meeting you only proved to me that I’m on the side that will win this war.”

“We don’t have to be at war,” she protested before the other dragon barreled into her again and thrust her through one of the wooden walls that were still standing to bring the structure down on top of them.

None of that particularly hurt. Steel was much stronger than wood, after all, but she soon realized that the attack hadn’t been anything but a means to conceal another strike.

As she tried to free herself from the tangle of fallen logs and wire, the Iron Dragon drove her claw into the joint at Kristen’s armpit. Pain blossomed like wildflowers in springtime as she tried to get away and only entangled herself more in the wreckage of the wooden fence.

“Stupid dragon. You don’t even know how to use your body.”

Her attacker was goading her, but she was also right. She had tried to use her arms and legs to free herself and had ignored her wings and tail. When she flexed them quickly, wood catapulted in all directions. She hoped none of it crushed any of her teammates but she’d completely lost control of the battle and made no effort to command. All she wanted to do now was survive.

Katrina seemed hellbent on not letting that happen.

As soon as she extended her wings and tail to throw off the debris, the Iron Dragon’s tail was there. It stabbed into the joint in the middle of her wing, cut through the steel skin, and reached the bone underneath. To Kristen, it felt like a red-hot poker.

She leapt away and tucked her wings, willing the wound to heal with her dragon powers.

Her enemy watched her and her long, forked dragon tongue slid from side to side in her mouth as if she were hungry.

Kristen decided she’d had quite enough of her adversary’s arrogance.

She pressed an attack, lunged forward, and threw a shoulder into Katrina with enough force to propel her into one of the concrete bunkers behind her. Despite the power behind the blow being strong enough to make the Iron Dragon crack the surface of the structure, it hardly seemed to phase Katrina.

She merely used the wall at her back for support as she raised her dragon legs and used them to kick her opponent’s knee savagely.

The first kick didn’t hurt that much, but the second blow caught a better angle. The pain was so intense, she cried in her dragon form—something she’d never done or seen another dragon do. Tears welled and turned to steam as she stumbled back.

Her adversary laughed. “This is like fighting a child,” she said.

The Steel Dragon pushed off the leg that didn’t hurt, but before she launched a powerful kick, she whipped her tail around and managed to catch the dragon in her armpit.

Katrina winced and backed off a step. Then, she looked over Kristen’s shoulder and grinned. “So much for your soldiers!”

Instinct made her turn to see who of her people were struggling.

It was purely a distraction and one which the Iron Dragon used to the fullest. She powered into her, delivered a blow on her turned neck, and launched her into another tumble. Kristen tried to stand but found she couldn’t as her enemy was on her back.

“How is it that we can be the same age and yet you’re so pathetic?” Katrina emphasized her point by using her tail to slash her other armpit. “You could be exactly like me. Hell, for all we know, you might even be stronger. But instead, you squandered your childhood among humans.” She used a claw to gore a wound into Kristen’s back. Her dragon powers should have blocked a blow like that but with all the wounds, her ability to heal used most of her energy. It seemed her assailant understood this very well.

“I thought you were fighting for people!” Kristen said.

Katrina’s first answer was to simply punch her in the snout. The pain was as intense as getting hit in the nose in her human form.

“I am fighting because those in power do not wish to share. I am not fighting so a lazy human from the suburbs gets to sit on a throne when this is all done. There will be a new order to the world, and I will be one of its leaders.”

“Is that why you obey the mages’ commands? Because you’re a leader?” She knew she shouldn’t have asked such a question.

Her foe agreed and her response was immediate. She vaulted off and kicked her hard enough in the gut to make her roll from her stomach to her back. In that blurry instant while her head spun one hundred eighty degrees, she saw snippets of the battle raging all around her.

Drew hunkered behind a concrete bunker, yelling at Hernandez to blow something up.

Butters perched atop a wall, his sniper rifle to his eye and Beanpole at his side.

Keith was kicked mercilessly by two technomage lackeys.

A dragon set a mage on fire and simply blew away their puny shield of defense and turned them into nothing but ash.

That was all she saw before Katrina bit her chest above her heart repetitively.

Steel scales could only endure for a limited time, unfortunately. The Iron Dragon focused her attack on the one place and savaged it until a scale flecked away, followed by another. This enabled her to bite through the fleshy muscles below the scales and skin. She made it through those even faster than she had the scales and reached the bone. Iron claws grated horribly against Kristen’s ribcage, but there was nothing she could do. The other dragon had her pinned with her legs on their side and her tail under her body. Her front arms were trapped by her adversary’s front arms. Katrina somehow knew how to use her body against her.

The Iron Dragon laughed and both combatants understood that iron was about to beat steel. Even if Kristen could break free, her foe simply had to harry her with attacks until she died of blood loss. The wound on her chest bled freely, but if she couldn’t escape, she knew Katrina would literally eat her heart out of her chest.

It was times like this when she wondered why she hadn’t wanted to be a volleyball player or an accountant rather than a cop.

But she had to focus despite how much pain she was in. She had to stay in the moment and she forced herself to look at the other dragon’s eyes. Her instincts rebelled but she focused her gaze on the pits of evil that looked so much like her own.

It provided a good view when Lumos bulldozed Katrina off her chest.

CHAPTER THREE

“Excuse me, you were sitting on my boss,” Lumos quipped as he soared past after Katrina sprawled away from him.

The Iron Dragon didn’t take the insult lying down. She spun onto her feet and readied herself for him to circle and collide with her again. Despite Kristen having a clear view of the dragon and being fairly familiar with how she handled herself in combat, she realized she had no idea how she intended to attack Lumos. She looked equally ready to use her jaws, claws, tail, or even a blast of fire.

It made her think of herself and wonder if she was as difficult to read when she was in her dragon form. Was there something about her stance that caused problems in combat?

They were questions for later, she reminded herself as she watched the golden dragon rocket toward their enemy. He moved easily and dodged blasts of magic and volleys of bullets as he approached.

Katrina reared to fully engage with him, but the ancient dragon showed no interest in meeting her challenge.

He ignited his eyes with glowing golden energy. At first, his scales seemed to glow brighter, then his claws seemed to be made of white light, and finally, his eyes pulsed brighter than the sun.

The Iron Dragon stumbled backward, blinded by the unexpected power.

Lumos gave her no quarter. He powered into her and somersaulted moments before he made impact to drive his back claws into her chest and thrust the air from her lungs.

She wheezed as she tried to catch her breath, rubbed her eyes, and struggled to her feet all at the same time.

The golden dragon continued his attack, although his claws and tail were ineffectual against her iron scales. Still, Kristen saw the method in the way he fought. He started by striking at the easiest targets—his opponent’s broad chest, her unguarded flank, and her back, but when those blows were rebuffed by the hard scales, he focused his attacks on some of the same regions where she had targeted Kristen like her armpits, her throat, and her groin.

It looked, for a moment, like Lumos might win, but his adversary shook her head and began to defend herself better against the strikes from the shining gold dragon.

It soon became clear that despite Lumos’s excellent skill, Katrina was simply stronger. Whether it was because she was younger or because she had a power better suited for close combat was unclear.

The reasons, however, would make no difference to the outcome. He might be able to beat Katrina in a fair fight or maybe it would go the other way. What did matter was that Kristen wasn’t about to sit back and watch. Her horrific chest wound had healed enough that she was able to stand. She joined the battle, followed Lumos’ lead, and aimed her strikes at the Iron Dragon’s weak points.

Their combined efforts seemed to have given them the advantage. Together, they were able to keep the Iron Dragon on the defensive. Kristen’s raw strength and steel skin with Lumos’ careful tactics and methodology proved to be a potent force against her. But as the tables started to turn, Katrina blasted them both with fire that forced them both to block and thus not pursue her as closely as they would have liked.

Still, Kristen gave chase, and when she did, Lumos followed. They dogged the dragon’s tail until she drew them past one of the concrete bunkers and into the line of enemy fire.

Larry once more saved her life from a volley of dragon bullets with his magical shield powers.

“Let’s finish this!” she yelled.

“I’m afraid the only way this will finish is with you having more holes than a pincushion,” the mage said through gritted teeth.

She stole a glance and saw his nose was already bleeding, a sure sign that he was running low on power. They couldn’t continue to rely on him to shield them, which meant they had to let their quarry retreat to her base. There was no time to lament the loss of this particular skirmish, however. Just because Kristen had been sucked into a duel with her counterpart didn’t mean the battle had stopped.

“We need support, now!” Drew yelled into the radio. She realized that he’d done so for a while, but this was the first time her brain allowed her to process anything besides her personal admonition to not let the iron dragon rip her guts out in front of all her friends.

Kristen looked around the battlefield in search of Drew but saw only carnage and destruction. This was the first all-out invasion-style assault on a mage base they’d done with their new team. The results were staggering.

Bullets had predictably shredded anything that stood in their way, while the mage blasts added points of charred or blackened landscape to the devastation. Bodies had fallen from both these attacks. She was surprised that seeing a body turned to a skeleton from a magical blast was even more revolting to her than the gore of a gunshot wound. The smell too was a strange mix of gunpowder, blood, and the otherworldly aromas of magic manifesting.

Nowhere in any of it did she see Drew.

“He’s behind you—your five o’clock. Getting ready to push toward the main bunker,” Brian said in her ear. She wondered how much he’d been talking to her and how much she’d missed of his instruction during the fight.

Kristen turned and moved toward one of the bunkers. She hadn’t realized the fight with Katrina had moved them well beyond the perimeter of the enemy base.

Gunshots rang out as she approached. She returned to her original orders and changed to her human form now that the Iron Dragon had retreated. Lumos followed suit and together, they raced forward. Lead bullets pinged against her steel skin and fell away. She dodged most of them, using her dragon senses and instincts to hear gunshots, identify a shooter, and move away from the path of the bullet, all in the blink of an eye. Of course, even a dragon couldn’t dodge every shot fired at them, but those that struck couldn’t hurt her. She experienced a slight sting, much like that inflicted by a paintball would hurt, but nothing severe, and none of them were enough to slow the Steel Dragon.

They reached their destination and threw themselves against the wall of the bunker Drew stood behind.

“Man, is it nice to see you!” He grinned. A bullet had grazed his forehead and blood trickled down his face but he didn’t look frightened, only focused.

“Now is not the time to kiss up to your boss,” Larry said once he’d joined them using his powers to fly there. “What’s the plan?”

“I want to finish this,” Kristen said. “These guys are not as well-armed as they could be. They don’t use dragon bullets exclusively, which means resources are tight. If we let them go, it’s worse than them escaping. They’ll use this battle to study us and come prepared with more bullets next time.”

“So we punch through those doors,” Drew said and stuck his head out from the cover of the bunker they had gathered behind to point to another one. The mages and armed men supporting them took the opportunity to shoot at him, but he withdrew his head without earning another wound on his face.

“I think I can handle those,” Kristen said.

“The problem isn’t the doors themselves,” Hernandez said. She gestured to a duffel bag that was no doubt filled with explosives that she had somehow managed to carry across a battlefield without dropping it or worse. “The problem is their defenders on the top of the bunker.”

“Amy? Come in, Amy?” Larry said into a radio. “We need that other gun taken down.”

“I hear you,” the girl said from the back of a dragon as they flew overhead. One of them did a barrel roll and a blast of magic streaked to sever the automatic machine gun on one of the other bunkers. Kristen shook her head at the mage’s power. The plan had been to keep the extent of her abilities as quiet as possible, but Amy didn’t seem interested in sticking to that.

“Get ready,” Lumos said, focused on the wing of dragons that glided over the jungle, banked sharply to turn in formation, and set a course toward the one bunker where the hostiles had dug in.

“And three… two… one… Let’s go!” The golden dragon raced forward as the dragons flew overhead. Kristen sprinted close behind him. Her dragon powers fueled her muscles to enable her to increase her speed, dodge bullets and blasts, and finally vault up ten feet to land on the bunker itself.

It might have been more impressive if the other dragon hadn’t done the same thing but with more grace. The two of them attacked the mages, who tried desperately to conjure magic blasts that could both overpower a dragon and be activated faster than a dragon could move.

There weren’t many spells like that, though, so their efforts were futile.

The two dragons worked through their level of the outside of the bunker to thrust mages aside and hurl the people who fired the guns to the earth below. They weren’t able to disable all of them, unfortunately, and some fled inside the structure itself and triggered explosives as they left. The blasts turned the interior of the ziggurat’s upper level into nothing but impassible rubble.

On the level above them, Heartsbane and her dragons followed the same process to deal with the mages they could and force the others to flee.

The defenders at the very top simply jumped from their position as Amy and the dragons she flew with overwhelmed the magical shields with endless blasts of their fire breath. The outside of the bunker was finally clear and the battlefield fell eerily silent. The enemy had all fled inside, which meant they had reached the next stage of the battle.

“Can you get in up there?” Hernandez shouted from below.

“I think so, but they collapsed the entrances,” Kristen answered.

“Don’t go in! I’d bet a crate of C4 they put more explosives inside. Plus, it means they’re probably not hiding in the top.”

She nodded. The demolitions expert made sense, which meant their best option was to simply go through the front door. Kristen, Lumos, and the rest of Heartsbane’s dragons all dropped to ground level.

“Do you think we should knock?” Kristen asked. “Or should we simply blow the fucking door down?”

CHAPTER FOUR

To Kristen’s shock, Hernandez didn’t want to blow the doors down. Before she set explosives at the barrier, she made a circuit around the building.

“What are you looking for?” she asked their demolitions expert.

“Nothing,” the woman said. “Or I found nothing anyway. Despite the way this building was pounded, I don’t see any cracks in the concrete. I guess our best bet is the front doors.”

“Do I need to give you the order to blow them the fuck up or can I trust you to do the right thing?” She hadn’t intended to sound rude but her blood was up and she didn’t want this battle to end with their enemies escaping. She knew they didn’t have much time. The technomages they’d faced in Florence had teleportation spells. Given that these mages were supported by the Iron Dragon—exactly like the cell in Florence had been—it stood to reason that they might have the same kind of spells. With that in mind, every single second counted.

“No, ma’am. Allow me,” Hernandez said and began to place explosives strategically across the huge steel door. She didn’t take long to do it—less than a minute—yet it still felt like an eternity. Finally, the charges were placed and the woman cheerfully told everyone to get clear or risk being turned into mush. She didn’t sound too worried about that happening to anyone, though.

Everyone took cover and Hernandez detonated her bomb with gleeful abandon.

Her laughter faded when she saw that her bomb didn’t so much as scratch the doors. “How the hell is that even possible?” she fumed.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it. They have magic,” Heartsbane said.

The woman scowled at the kind words. “Jesus, you know you fucked up when the meanest dragon on the team is nice to you.”

Everyone laughed at that except Kristen.

Neither she nor her team had time for this. For that matter, the world didn’t have time for it either. If Hernandez couldn’t gain access for them, she’d have to try instead. Kristen made sure her steel skin was as thick as she could make it before she applied her fists to the door.

She was immediately disappointed when her first blow only dented the surface an inch.

The demolitions expert, though, was much more impressed. “That shouldn’t be…you shouldn’t be able to do that.”

It was unfortunately not enough damage and she punched, kicked, and screamed and made very little progress. While she would be able to get through, it would take too far too long.

“Do you mind if I take a stab at it?” Amy said and Kristen glanced at her in surprise. She hadn’t seen her land.

“Be my guest.” She reminded herself—although the dragon in her didn’t want to admit it—that Amy’s power surpassed her own.

“You’ll need to step back,” the mage warned.

She knew it was well-founded advice and complied without complaint.

The girl thrust her hands out like she was rolling on ecstasy at a rave and tried to cover the rest of the dancers in glitter. The doors lurched.

“That a girl!” Larry shouted.

Amy made no reply as she squared her feet and curled the fingers on her outstretched hands. In response, the edges of the door buckled like construction workers had loosened all the hinges at once and someone in a dump truck heaved on the massive pieces of metal that comprised the door.

“Is that all you have?” Heartsbane asked.

“Not even kind of.” Amy grunted, braced her feet, and moved her hands in circles like she was wrapping a thick rope around each hand. Her hands were empty, of course, and the only thing she manipulated was the air and the invisible magic she’d cast between herself and the doors.

“Stand back!” she yelled and everyone retreated, thankful that they did not need to seek cover like when they faced armed hostiles and magic-hurling enemy mages.

The doors catapulted out of their place in the bunker and became airborne like a giant Olympian who had something to prove. They careened twenty feet, thirty, forty, and at least fifty feet before they plummeted. Both dug deep into the black earth and quivered while they emitted a low hum. Her teammates stared, everyone impressed with the evidence of the power she wielded.

“Jeeee-sus,” Hernandez said, her mouth agape. “Remind me never to get on Amy’s bad side.”

“Lucky for us she doesn’t have a bad side,” Drew said.

The mage turned to them and smiled. “Unless you talk shit about my skateboarding. Do that and prepare to pay the price.”

“Have you all finished joking? I have some mages whose ass I want to kick,” Heartsbane said.

“Let the record show it was the grumpy dragon who crossed our mage, not any of us regular humans,” Keith said.

They entered quickly with Kristen leading the way with her steel skin despite the protests of her team at risking her life over theirs. They finally agreed to it because Amy and Larry shrouded her in shields of magical energy.

The Iron Dragon wasn’t waiting inside, nor did she find a team of mages or a battalion of men aiming their guns at the entrance. Instead, an empty room yawned to welcome them, strewn with rubble that had fallen from the upper levels of the concrete ziggurat when the mages had blocked their exit.

“It’s clear,” she said and signaled the other dragons to come in but to remain behind Amy and Larry’s magic shield as they’d done a hundred times in training sessions.

“They couldn’t have all simply disappeared,” one of the new dragons said and surveyed the mess. Most of the chunks of concrete were small enough to be lifted by hand. A few were large enough to need a few people to move them. One piece was big enough that it would take nothing short of dragon strength or perhaps the magic of a particularly powerful mage to lift it. It was positioned in the center of the room which immediately made everyone suspicious.

“Give me a hand with this,” Kristen said to Stonequest and Emerald. The three dragons grasped the huge piece of concrete and on three, lifted it and flipped it to the side of the room. Nothing exploded, fortunately, and no poison gas was released. It appeared that no hidden spells were activated either, but Kristen’s stomach filled with dread.

Her instincts when she’d first seen the stone had been correct and she now stared at a staircase that led into the earth below the tropical jungle.

“What is with these assholes and being underground?” Emerald asked.

Stonequest shrugged. “They’re like rats, I guess, and can’t help but stick to the sewers.”

“If they’re like rats, they’ll scatter now that we messed up their nest,” Kristen said. “We need to move before they flee and destroy whatever intel we can gather.”

She motioned for the rest of her team before she started down the steps. They were made of rebar and concrete and wound down in a tight spiral. Every step was blind and every move brought them closer to danger.

Despite her steel skin and the layers of magic protecting her, she was still nervous. They had been engaged in open conflict with these technomages for months. She told herself they had done an adequate job protecting knowledge of the extent of their defensive abilities from their enemy but was it something anyone could ever know?

For all she knew, the technomages could have pioneered a new kind of sniper rifle that could fire bullets faster than her mages could react to them, or perhaps a spell that rendered their magical defenses useless.

Despite her caution, no strike came and no enchanted sword severed her head from her neck. No bomb was waiting for her on the next step or the one after that.

Instead, she heard furtive footsteps and the labored breathing of people who tried to move quickly and not be heard. The rats were still on the ship, it seemed, and they weren’t ready to flee yet.

That said, they certainly knew how to hide.

Kristen reached the bottom of the stairs and entered a room as large as the one at the top had been. Two doorways exited the room, one on the right and one on the left.

“Assholes,” Drew said as he stepped off the last step and moved to stand next to Kristen. “I guess this is where we do the dumbass thing they always do in movies and split up?”

“I guess,” she said. “But the mages are the foolish teenagers in this scenario. We’re the ones hunting them.”

She hoped that turned out to be true but she was no longer naïve enough to say such things for any reason other than a moment of confidence for her team. With luck, they wouldn’t squander it.

CHAPTER FIVE

Drew still felt weird giving orders to mages and dragons, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t do it. “My team, left door. Heartsbane, back us up. Lumos, do you mind if we borrow Amy?”

The question was merely a formality. They had already planned on how to divide the teams if a situation like this occurred, but the new dragons responded better to orders framed as questions than direct orders.

The heat of the battle was still in everyone’s veins, so no one complained too much. The dragons took point, the humans fell in behind them, and Amy fell in at the back of the formation. In that position, the humans could defend her while she provided magical shielding for the dragons at the front.

“Right, let’s move,” Drew said and took point despite not having a dragon’s healing ability. He wore a bulletproof vest and carried a gun. That had always been enough for him and he didn’t intend to start thinking otherwise now.

They moved through a narrow hallway with big windows on each side. He had seen enough of these despicable bases to recognize the equipment needed to turn the scales, claws, teeth, and even the bones of a dragon into bullets destined to be fired at their kin.

“I think I’ll be sick,” one of the dragons said, doubled over, and threw up way more half-digested meat than should have been possible for a human body.

“This is why we’re fighting these technomage fucks,” Heartsbane said, her voice cold. “I know that you all knew—at least intellectually—that our enemy is harvesting our kind and using our dragon bodies against us. But it’s another thing entirely to see it.”

“I can’t believe they do this to dead dragons,” the one who puked said and wiped the acrid bile from his stomach off his face.

“It’s not only dead ones, honey,” Hernandez said. “That might be kind of respectable at a stretch—like using every piece of the buffalo or making hotdogs. What they do is far worse.”

“Did you compare dragons to livestock?” one of the other new recruits asked and bristled.

“You need to calm the fuck down before you get someone killed,” Heartsbane said but her admonition was interrupted.

An offensive force of technomages and gunmen kicked open the door at the end of the hall. The dragon whose back was to them so he could face Hernandez as he responded to the particularly poor taste of her joke had no time to turn to face his attackers. Instead, his chest exploded from a gunshot wound and he fell, dead in an instant.

“Amy!” Drew shouted.

“There are too many,” the mage responded, and he saw that she hadn’t let the bullet through out of laziness but of necessity. Over a hundred bullets were frozen in the air, stopped by a veil of blue magic that churned more and more rapidly as the technomages tried to turn the hallway into a tunnel of death.

“Dragons, flank and close in! Humans, fire at will!”

Thank god for training, he thought as the dragons complied and moved to the walls of the hallway before they raced forward. Their human legs moved in a blur, fueled by the dragon powers they always had, even in this form.

While they got clear, the humans fired down the center of the hallway.

To Drew’s surprise, their bullets found their targets easily.

The armed men who had burst into the hallway fell like grain before a reaper. There was no veil of magic to protect them and no defensive spells to extend their expendable lives.

“Go!” he said to the dragons who had already covered the distance of the hallway. “Remember our drills. Watch the corners and clear each room before you move on.”

They vanished into the room and sounds of violence issued from it. The humans ran to join the combat as Amy levitated and flew down the hallway between the human soldiers.

Drew reached the room seconds after Amy, and thank God he did.

Six mages seemed to hold their own against the melee skills of the dragons and Amy’s magic. They didn’t have the upper hand against his team, but they weren’t overwhelmed either. The room was an explosive, high octane stalemate in which the players continued to hurl balls of magic and dragon-powered punches at each other rather than hang back and wait for a power shift.

Unfortunately for the technomages, his human soldiers entered on his heels. The mages had been able to hold their own against the dragons and Amy but the concerted fusillade swept through their ranks and their defenses. Those who weren’t killed in the first volley fell and covered the backs of their heads with their hands as if they were hostages rather than perpetrators of global violence.

What a difference perspective could make.

Once the gunfire ceased, Drew scanned their surroundings and realized that the room they were in was anything but normal.

The back was filled with a giant collection of crystals. Some of the larger ones were almost as tall as him. They were transparent or slightly milky. Now and then, they pulsed with a flash of yellow light.

He frowned as his mind registered a pattern. The flash wasn’t now and then. It was regular like the pulses of a heartbeat.

“It’s like something out of the original Superman movies,” he said aloud.

“The what?” Amy asked.

“Oh, come on. You’ve seen Star Wars and quote Chew-dorka but you’ve never seen the cinematic masterpieces that are the Superman movies?” he asked her.

“Yeah, that’s gonna be a no-go. Star Wars helped us with tactics. Will your dorky Superman movie tell us what the hell that collection of crystals is doing?”

“I don’t think it’s a collection,” Hernandez said as she knelt and looked at the milky white shards as if they were a carburetor that could be conquered with a little help from an online tutorial. “I think they were grown here.”

“Why? It’s not like the technomages are competing in the science fair,” Drew said, but he realized she might be right. When he’d entered, his attention had been on stopping the mages from hurting his people and he’d done that. Now that he had a moment to think, the mages who were still alive were a testimony to the fact that not all the people in this room had been intent on killing the intruders. Some of them had been doing something to the crystals.

“Whatever the hell it is, it reeks of magic,” Amy said. “It’s a much higher concentration than I’ve seen before. I’m not sure what it does, though.”

Drew knelt beside one of the mages who lay face down on the ground. “What the fuck is this? Speak.”

She rolled over and looked at him with a vicious grin. “Mortalis totalis temtano,” she said and spat in his face.

Amy used magic to catch it before her saliva collided.

That was Drew’s first thought, but tendrils of what looked like black smoke issued from the mage’s open mouth. It spread across the room but rather than targeting his team, it moved to the other two mages who cowered under the watchful eye of the human guards. It wound around their faces and within seconds, they convulsed and flailed before they lay still.

“What did you do?” he demanded of the woman he’d confronted, but the cloud must have been part of some kind of suicide pact, not a murder spell, as she was dead. Her teeth were already black with the substance and her body decayed at an unnaturally rapid pace.

“What the fuck,” he said in disgust as he pushed a rising sense of terror aside. “I’ll radio Larry to see if he has any idea what this is.”

“Well, yeah…go ahead, but I can tell you exactly what these crystals are,” Hernandez said as she straightened, her gaze fixed firmly on the odd formation.

Drew cursed under his breath. She was an expert in one thing and one thing only. The fact that she thought her knowledge extended to this bizarre device was not a good thing in his book.

“Do you think it’s a bomb?” he asked.

“Oh yeah.” Hernandez nodded and sounded cheerful. She was always excited when she faced explosive devices that might kill her and all her friends. “And that blinking light is a timer.”

He flinched when the crystals flashed yellow again. “You can’t know that.”

“No, I don’t know it. But I’m very sure that if someone could read these symbols over here, they’d confirm my hunch.” She pointed to a cluster of rune-like symbols that seemingly floated inside the crystal. “I think this is the main circuit for it, and those yellow flashes are like a system status update or something.”

“Okay.” Drew nodded. “Right, this is good. If you know it’s a bomb, I know you can do something about it. What else can you tell us?”

“That those yellow flashes are coming faster and faster and that they’re shifting to orange too.”

“Are you saying we don’t have much time?” Amy asked.

Hernandez grinned. “I’m saying it looks like it’ll blow us all to pieces and that it will do it sooner rather than later.”

CHAPTER SIX

Drew and his team had been able to defeat the mages they’d encountered so easily because Kristen and her team had run into the more formidable fighting force.

The right exit from the entrance to this complex had also opened into a hallway with doors and large windows on each side, but these rooms weren’t empty.

Mages were within and as soon as she poked her head into the seemingly abandoned hallway, bolts of fire, lightning, ice, and a dozen other far more alien and likely more deadly types of energy greeted her.

She wasn’t a fool, though, and fell back immediately.

“What’s the status, Lady Steel?” Larry asked.

“We have mages on both sides. They’re in rooms off the hallway and have a nice little tunnel of death lined up for us.”

Keith stepped forward and—despite being neither a dragon nor a mage—stuck his head into the hallway to assess the situation.

The same bursts of lethal energy that had greeted her streaked toward him and he wisely pulled his head out of the tunnel before he was either burned, electrocuted, frozen, or something far worse although far less describable.

“All right. I have a plan.” He grinned.

“What is it, Rookie?” one of the dragons asked.

“Can you believe this?” he demanded. “I’ve been with the Steel Dragon far longer than you. How come all these guys get to call me Rookie?”

“Because they can eat you if you don’t let them,” Emerald said.

“Oh, right. Well I always was one to appreciate a little teasing,” Keith said, chagrined.

“Your plan?” Kristen asked, impatient because they were wasting precious time.

“Right! Well, a few weeks ago, my party and I faced a room exactly like this in the Lich’s lair.”

“The Lich?” Emerald asked. “There hasn’t been one of those for millennia.”

“This was a tabletop role-playing game, so it doesn’t matter who the opponent was. Also, I had no idea Liches were real. That is freaking radical,” he said.

“Your plan!” the entire group yelled at him in frustration.

“Right!” Keith yanked a smoke grenade off his belt. “We cast a fog cloud.” He pulled the pin on the grenade and rolled it into the hallway. Thick smoke billowed out of both ends, and the mages—not able to see the source of the cloud due to their positions in the rooms along the hallway—opened fire on it. They most likely thought it was a spell from a mage rather than the far more pedestrian alternative.

“Move! Jump through the windows or use the doorways if you can. Our goal is to draw their fire away from the hallway itself. If you can engage one on one, I know you can beat them,” Kristen ordered and her team obeyed.

The dragons moved through the smoke as if it were nothing but a cool mist. She decided it made sense that it wouldn’t bother them, what with the ability to breathe fire and release smoke from their nostrils.

She followed, took three steps into the hall, and vaulted through a window into one of the rooms. A blast of lightning struck her steel skin and traveled across the conductive surface. It hurt but it wasn’t powerful enough to make her muscles seize, so she soldiered on.

Her initial surge placed her in front of one of the mages, but rather than moving into her first attack, she ducked and circled to get behind him. This wasn’t because she was concerned about a sneak attack but because she didn’t want his misses to launch bolts of energy into the hallway that was now filled with her human troops.

The mage spun as she’d expected and released a blast of fire that did absolutely nothing to her. It took considerable heat to melt steel, and this ball of fire was nowhere near the intensity needed. He made another attempt with much the same result, then tried to run. She caught him by the neck, lifted him by the throat, and flung him into a wall to knock him unconscious. After a hasty glance to confirm that he was out of the fight, she moved on to her next target.

Despite the man not being a mage, he was more formidable than the first. Rather than wielding magic, he carried an assault rifle loaded with bullets made of dragon pieces. She knew this because when he opened fire and she dodged instinctively, she wasn’t quite quick enough to completely avoid a bullet and it gouged a white-hot wound in her upper arm.

Kristen flung herself prone. While a small injury normally didn’t affect her, she landed on the gunshot wound and it screamed at her to be more careful as it struggled to heal. The draconic nature always demanded so much more from her healing power.

She knew she had to get back on her feet. These mages had to be brought to justice and she had to stop the violence and the endless cycles of kill and kill again. She couldn’t do that if she was dead with a bullet through her forehead.

Unfortunately, the injury had slowed her far more than a non-dragon bullet would have. She struggled to get her hands under her and push her body from the floor despite the searing pain in her arm that seemed to be increasing. All the guy with the gun had to do was pull the trigger again. Hell, given the weapon he used, she doubted he even had to put any effort into it. With her essentially disabled, he simply needed to point the barrel slightly lower.

Unfortunately, he seemed to read her mind and did exactly that.

Gunfire erupted barely an arm’s length from her, but the bullets never struck.

“Come on, boss. You didn’t forget about old Larry, did ya?” The mage stood behind her, his arms extended and fingers spread, and his robe swirled in a wind of his creation.

Kristen made no reply. Instead, she lunged forward at the man who’d tried to shoot her with bullets made from the bodies of her siblings. She pushed through Larry’s magical barrier as if it didn’t exist at all. It swirled as she moved through and the bullets dropped now that they were no longer suspended by his powers.

“Oh fu—” the man tried to say before she careened into him, knocked the wind from his lungs, and cracked a couple of his ribs in the space of only a few seconds. She didn’t slow to check that her attack had been effective. She was coated in steel, after all, and her mass and strength were considerably higher than the man she’d plowed through.

“This room’s clear!” Larry said from behind her as she raced to help another dragon eliminate a mage. She hadn’t needed to assist as once the dragons were close enough to engage in hand to hand combat with the mages, the fight was over.

“Back to the hallway!” Kristen ordered. Her people obeyed and hurried to the doorways on either side of the room or jumped through the windows on the wall between the doors. She reached the hallway first and could tell from her team’s body language that the room on the other side of the corridor had been cleared as well. Her people now all fired toward the doorway at the end of the hall.

She couldn’t see what they had targeted but knew it was a mage as great swirling clouds of purple smoke obfuscated the end of the passage. Although her team delivered enough lead to anchor a ship into the magical cloud, it didn’t seem to have any effect. No shouts of pain came from behind the cloud, nor did the consistency or pattern of the defense spell change.

So they’ve finally discovered how to stop bullets. She grimaced at the realization.

Galvanized by the implications of this, she showed her team what she believed a leader should do.

Kristen lunged into the swirling cloud and lashed out with fist and elbow, swinging blindly but without hesitation. Her elbow clipped the doorframe and took the steel and cinderblock with her. She pressed forward, counting this as progress.

A moment before, it would have been impossible to hear anything. Now that her team had stopped shooting, however, voices were audible through the purple gloom.

“How much longer?” a female to her left asked.

“We need at least a few minutes each. You have to give us at least ten minutes if you want all of us to make it out of here alive.” Kristen recognized the Iron Dragon and her mind once again struggled to process the impossibility of her involvement. Their intelligence endeavors had found no information on her. Even once they’d discovered her existence—discovery being a strong term when used about something that had punched her in the face—it had been hard to find anything more than rumors about her in the mages’ files. Despite this, she was there and now issued orders to a group of people who had endeavored to end her species since before she was born. They needed to learn how Katrina fit into all this, but before that, she had to see what she was doing first.

“We can’t give you ten minutes,” a man said to her right. “They already stopped firing, which means they’ll send a dragon—” She lurched from the mist into a flying kick aimed directly ahead at the third person near the door, whose voice indicated that he stood in front of her.

When she emerged from the cloud and attacked, her leg stopped short against a forcefield. The mage gaped at her and in his shock, let the spell drop.

Ah. It wasn’t the purple smoke stopping the bullets after all but another mage. Her team didn’t know that yet so she flipped toward the first voice she’d heard. Her elbow met a skull and the woman cried out with the last of her strength before she slumped unconscious.

“Greta!” the man across from her shouted and in seconds, the purple smoke dissipated.

“Dragons, advance!” Kristen shouted and swung back to engage with the mage who used his magic to create the bullet-stopping force shield.

She raced forward and thrust at the man’s face, but her knuckles made impact with an invisible force that was nevertheless stronger than steel knuckles. Irritated, she attempted a kick to the man’s ribs instead and—to her astonishment—connected. He gasped in pain as he careened across the room into a wall and plummeted into a pit below him. A roar of surprise issued from the cavity.

The sound—and the sudden defeat of her opponent—forced her to study the room she’d fought to gain entry to.

It was huge with a high ceiling and a wide cargo door on one side that led God knew where. The area felt even larger than its high ceiling because the four corners were dug out to create a huge pit. Each of these was larger than a living room, and she could only guess how deep—enough that they swallowed any light, certainly. She felt like she already knew what was in the bottom of each one.

Her suspicions were confirmed when she located Katrina off to the left in the far corner of the room.

Kristen had expected to see the Iron Dragon so that wasn’t what surprised her. Nor was it the swirling mists around a glowing portal held open by two mages. Although the large size of this particular portal seemed excessive, it also did not surprise her.

What shocked and infuriated her was that the dragon and three mages all worked together to haul a fully grown, whimpering dragon up and out of the pit.

“Left corner of the room!” she shouted and honestly didn’t care what else was in there at the moment because Katrina was there. Worse, wherever she attempted to take the captive dragon would almost inevitably be the place where the poor creature died. Compared to the life of this imprisoned soul, following proper procedures seemed unimportant.

She sprinted forward, her fists cocked and ready to crush the heads of these mages and the Iron Dragon herself if they took even one more scale from the suffering creature they’d hauled out of its prison. Katrina cursed as she approached and released the captive so she could engage her.

The two met each other with strikes strong enough to crack concrete. Each blow that landed on the other’s metal skin sounded like a steel girder falling into another from a hundred feet up.

Katrina was a formidable warrior, but Kristen found that in her human form—and no doubt because of the fury she felt in her chest that powered her attack—she was able to hold her own against the woman who’d been raised since birth for a fight exactly like this.

Unfortunately, her attention wasn’t on the combat itself.

The mages didn’t use their physical muscles to hold the dragon up, but spells. Even so, they needed the Iron Dragon’s assistance as the three of them grunted and strained. Their outstretched arms began to bulge with veins and tremble as if they lifted the captive with their bodies rather than their minds.

She didn’t want the dragon to fall into the hole. Nor did she want the mages to force it through the portal. She tried to push past her adversary to reach the creature that even now had begun to slip into a pit of despair.

Katrina let her past and threw a wicked elbow into the back of her skull, and the blow made her sprawl forward. She still wasn’t used to fighting someone who weighed as much as she did, so the force of the blow was enough to unbalance her and topple her into the pit.

Kristen screamed as she fell into the hole and tried to gain purchase on the walls but only gouged long, desperate gashes that matched those of the previous tenant.

She landed hard, the wind knocked from her, and immediately forced herself up and out of the mud that comprised the entire bottom of the prison. It stank horribly like rotten meat mixed with the sulfurous tinge of spent fireworks. She looked up the moist walls to the square of fluorescent light at the top. That was all the dragon who had lived there had been able to see for who knew how long. This was beyond anything she had yet seen.

It seemed every stronghold of the technomages revealed a new level of the depravity of the group. She had thought that Amy had truly seen the worst of it in the base in Texas. Surely nothing could be as bad as feeding dragons ground crickets and cardboard in troughs, but the raw filth of this situation was appalling.

Her gaze was distracted from the square of light above her when the dragon’s hindquarters began to slip into the hole.

“Oh no,” she said. “No. We will not let that happen.”

Kristen knelt and sent every ounce of strength she had to her thighs and calves. She jumped and launched out of the pit like a character from a movie with too many people who wore capes.

Even with the superhuman leap, she wasn’t able to get past the dragon. Instead, she changed her body to skin instead of steel and climbed it while it slid past her. She pushed aside the guilt she felt as she clambered past its tail and legs, up its back, and beyond its wings until she could see the surface. Quickly, she doubled back, grasped the dragon once she had transformed her arms into their dragon version, and slung them under the armpits of this pathetic beast.

She landed her feet on the edge of the pit and held strong.

The captive almost pulled her in but something lifted it and she noticed the telltale shimmer of Larry’s magic aiding her. Additional hands appeared to assist with the dragon and Stonequest appeared to finally pull it to safety.

“Dragons, eliminate those mages,” Kristen ordered.

The team Stonequest had recruited obeyed and raced towards the mages with their dragon speed. Before they could attack, the Iron Dragon moved into position to block their attacks.

“Go!” Katrina shouted, her expression furious as she looked at Kristen, Stonequest, the other dragons, and everyone else.

The mages obeyed without hesitation, which meant that whoever had created the portal operated it from the other side. Kristen knew that should mean something, but she didn’t have time to consider it. Now that Stonequest was there, she released the dragon and launched herself at Katrina.

But the Iron Dragon chose not to continue the fight. She stepped through the portal and turned to face Kristen and her team, her fists raised and her face consumed with hatred. She both guarded their exit and dared the Steel Dragon to go through the portal and fight her in a place even better suited for her experience, no doubt.

Still, despite the obvious problems with simply racing through the portal, she would have. The mage who controlled it, however, didn’t seem to agree with the need for more metal on metal combat.

The gateway closed and simply shrank until all Kristen could see was Katrina’s face—so much like her own—staring at her through it. In seconds, their enemies were gone.

Her attention immediately returned to Stonequest and the dragon he attempted to keep from plummeting into its filth. He seemed to be managing fine. Once the mages had fled, the other dragons had gone to help him and together, they’d coaxed the dragon onto the floor of the room and away from the edge of the pit.

“We’re all clear, by the way,” Keith shouted. “Actually, we’ve been all clear since we came in. Us humans were, anyway, as the dragons and Larry handled the Iron Dragon and her henchmen. I do have bad news, though.”

“What?” Kristen asked and her gaze darted to the captive they’d rescued as she felt her heart drop into her stomach.

“There’s another of them in each of these holes,” Keith said. “and they all smell about as bad as you do. I’m sorry, Kristen. This is totally fucked up.”

She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. “That’s…that’s good,” she forced herself to say.

“Good?” Stonequest demanded and tried not to look furious as he attempted to calm the other dragon, but let his aura get away from him and make his emotional state quite clear. “What part of any of this could you possibly say is good?”

“These pits are hideously small, even for a single dragon. It would be impossible for them to hold two. If there’s one in each one, it means we at least stopped their torture. There’s nothing we can do for the pain they already caused you and your friends,” she said to the dragon that still cowered against a wall, obviously unsure of what to do with its freedom. “But we’d be honored to help you however we can.”

It didn’t acknowledge her words or even that it understood them. The only response was to shake its head, its eyes wide like a cow on the way to the slaughterhouse instead of the sentient, thinking being she knew it to be.

“It’ll be okay,” she said and approached with her hands outstretched and palms up in the universal sign of peace. She made no progress with the dragon. The poor creature flapped its wings—to reveal that they were badly scarred and not healing properly—and whimpered as it tried to make itself into as small as a ball as it could against the wall.

Kristen sighed. This would not be easy, and they had three more dragons to rescue. At least this one wasn’t trying to go back into the pit. That would have been a sign of a form of Stockholm syndrome and would have made their job of rehabilitating them far more difficult.

“All right,” she said, turned to her team, and tried to stay calm despite the way her heart thumped in her chest. “The mages and the Iron Dragon retreated and left their prisoners behind, which is a huge success for us.”

Everyone in the room responded with a ragged cheer.

“I’d like to celebrate too, but we all know there’s still considerable hard work ahead of us. These dragons need to be helped out of the pits and cleaned and hopefully, they can be convinced to transform into their human forms.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Stonequest said. The dragon Amy had brought from Texas hadn’t even known it had a human form, and these seemed to be in even rougher shape.

“Okay, people, let’s get to our places,” Larry ordered, cutting in to take control of the important task of delegating labor. “Humans, I want you to look for clues—maps, supply schedules, photos of loved ones, old post-it notes, receipts from convenience stores…nothing is too small. Dragons, work in groups of three to get these captives out.”

“Yes, sir,” everyone replied.

“But take your time with the dragons,” Kristen said. “It’ll take our human teammates time to gather intel, so there’s no reason to traumatize them any more than they already have been. You can afford to spend a few minutes talking them through what we’ll…”

She trailed off when Drew came through on her headset. “Kristen, we have a problem.”

“Well, we have time to help. We sent the Iron Dragon and her mages into retreat.”

“That’s great, but, uh…I don’t think you have much time.”

Her hot dragon blood ran cold. “Why not?”

“Because we’re in a room with the biggest goddamn bomb any of us have ever seen and we think it’ll go off sooner rather than later.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Kristen looked into one of the pits at one of the dragons. It cowered even though she was in human form. Hell, she knew what the mages had done to their captives. It probably cowered because she was in human form. There was no way they could get them out of these pits, into human form, and up the spiral staircase to safety. At that point, she didn’t even know what safety meant. If the bomb was big enough to blow up the entire base, she couldn’t begin to guess how far they’d have to go to be out of the blast radius.

“Drew, I thought Hernandez was with you. Can’t she disarm it?”

“That’ll be a ‘fuck no,’ Red,” the woman shouted over the radio. “This isn’t made from TNT or C4 but some kind of crystals.”

“But you recognized that it’s a bomb? Can’t you stop it?” she pressed.

“Do I look like a mage to you?” the demolitions expert snapped in response.

She knew she didn’t have time to deal with Hernandez’s tone and that in reality, she was only upset because she couldn’t help.

“What about Amy? She’s with you guys, right? Can she disarm it?”

Drew put Amy on the radio. “I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she said. “This is pumped full of magic. I don’t have any idea how I could stop it without destroying it, and that might unleash whatever the hell is inside. Maybe you guys can get clear and I can try that.”

“Absolutely not. Drew, get your team clear of the bomb—now.”

The briefest of moments of hesitation followed, which—for him, straight-laced as he was—felt like an entire minute. “Are you sure, ma’am?” he asked, his tone forcefully polite. Although they communicated over the radio, she could practically see his jaw clench she knew him so well.

“Yes. That is a direct order. All of you said you can’t stop that thing from going off and I refuse to lose any of you to another of these mages’ fucking explosives.”

“But Lady Steel—the captives,” Lumos said from her side of the radio connection. She knew that he and all the dragons had probably already heard every word of the conversation. Dragon hearing was a wonderful thing, although it was hell on one’s privacy.

“Listen up, people,” Kristen said, speaking to both inform the humans with their pedestrian senses and to calm the dragons. “There’s a bomb—a big one. We have to get out of this place. Stonequest, I want you and those three to do your best to get that dragon out of here, but if you can’t convince it to come in a minute…well, I won’t lose you over a captive.”

It almost broke her heart to say it, but there it was. She wouldn’t lose her people. She couldn’t. Not when they were the only souls on the face of the earth brave enough to stand up to both the Dragon Council and the technomage terrorists.

“My lady,” Lumos said, his aura already pleading with her, “We can’t simply leave the captives. They’ve had a horrible life, but we can’t let it end like this.”

“I know, Lumos,” she responded. Tears filled her eyes and overflowed to run down her cheeks, even though she tried to make them stop. “I don’t want to do this. They’re my siblings—my blood. But what choice do we have? Can you save them? All of them?”

“I could…” He trailed off, obviously at a loss.

“You can what?”

“I can…”

“What?”

“Damn it, Kristen! I don’t know,” he snapped, then sagged. “You’re right, of course. This is why I’ve never been a leader. It takes a real leader to make these kinds of decisions.”

“I’ll hate myself so the rest of you don’t have to. Now, go! That’s an order. The last one out will get their wages docked. Go, damn it, go!”

No one looked excited about abandoning the prisoners, but what could be done? Stonequest and his dragons tried to convince the one they’d already rescued to come with them, but they didn’t seem to have any success. The creature whimpered and remained near its pit. It didn’t try to go in but didn’t attempt to flee either.

Everyone else obeyed. Heavy shoulders and heavier steps hurried out of the room and out of the base. Everyone except Larry.

“Larry, I know you have experience that the others don’t, but I also know you can’t lift those four dragons.”

“I might not have to.”

Hope fluttered to life in her chest.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s like you said. If that bomb detonates inside this base, it’ll kill all those dragons if they’re still inside.”

“I’m waiting for the part where you have an idea instead of merely a prediction that we all know will come true.”

He grinned. “Well, we can’t move the dragons, so why not move the bomb?”

Kristen asked Drew the question. “Negative, Kristen. It’s a huge crystal contraption. Even if a dragon was strong enough to carry it, the size makes it too bulky.”

She was relieved to hear his heavy breathing. That meant he was leading Amy, Hernandez, and the rest of his team away from danger.

“Sorry, Larry,” she said.

“No, no, no. I’m not thinking anything like that.”

“Then what?” she demanded. The humans and dragons were already gone. It was only the two of them now. Yes, she knew she could pick him up, throw him over her shoulder, and overtake the humans even with their head start, but his delay in getting to the point had begun to frustrate her.

“I’ve been watching those mage portals. I’ve seen them used a few times now.”

“And you can’t track them, I know.”

“Forget tracking, I want to open my own.” To his credit, his grin didn’t falter.

Kristen was impressed with both that and the sheer audacity of his plan. “You’ve never done anything like that before.”

“I know, but magic has rules. It can’t be cast however one wishes. I’ve seen them cast that spell and I’ve seen the remnants it leaves behind. I can do this!”

“Four times?”

“Oh no, not for the dragons. I think I know how to do this but for all I know, it might scramble everything inside out. I wouldn’t want to do that. I only want to do it once.”

Realization dawned on her like sunrise on a vampire. “You want to teleport the bomb?”

“Sure!” Larry said and his grin betrayed nothing but reckless optimism. “I drop a portal under the bomb, send it somewhere else—somewhere as far away as I can manage. It blows up—again, preferably as far away from us as possible. Then we’d have more than enough time to save the dragons.”

She didn’t give the plan the consideration it deserved. Instead, she weighed her options. Her life and Larry’s versus these four prisoners who’d led lives little better than cattle. Worse than cattle. At least cows could graze on pasture before they were slaughtered.

These dragons deserved an opportunity for a real life. They deserved to see the sunshine, to taste fresh water, to stretch their wings, and feel the air lift their magical bodies. Everything in her said they deserved a chance, and she could give it to them. She grabbed Larry, tossed him over her shoulder, and sprinted toward the biggest bomb they’d faced yet.

CHAPTER EIGHT

They passed Drew, Amy, Hernandez, and the rest of the team that had been working on the bomb as they raced down the hallway.

“I need all of you out of here,” she ordered.

Drew and Hernandez were obviously obeying. They sprinted away from the control room, out of the base, and to safety. The problem was that compared to her dragon speed, it looked like the two of them were swimming through molasses.

The demolitions expert began to shout as soon as she saw them. “That thing is bigger than a MOAB. It might damn well be a nuke for all I know.”

“Do you have any tips?” she asked her.

“I think you gave the best advice,” Hernandez replied. “Get the fuck out of here before it detonates.”

Amy, fortunately, had more productive things to say as she glided down the hallway toward them. “It’s like the big, big brother of the bomb we found in the base outside Detroit. A big magic charge is powering it up like an overblown circuit.”

“I’m sure the flashing lights indicate the timer,” Hernandez added and paused at the end of the hallway. “When it goes solid…ka-boom.”

“What the hell will you do with it, Larry?” Amy asked.

“I’ll show those mages that they’re not the only ones who can open portals.”

The girl froze in mid-air. “I thought you said you needed a scroll to cast a spell like that.”

“I don’t think so. Not after what I saw today. They’re using the entanglement of magic—fusing locations using emotional resonance. At least that’s my working theory. That’s why they always use it to escape. They go from one safe place to another.”

“And you think you can do it too?” Amy asked.

“I’m about to find out,” he replied.

“I want to help you.” She looked at Kristen when she said it, not Larry.

“No way, young lady,” he answered, shook his head, and tried to look stern and fatherly even though he was literally on the Steel Dragon’s shoulder like an uncooperative child.

“Kristen—” the young mage protested.

“No way in hell,” Kristen replied. “I shouldn’t even let Larry risk his life, but I sure as hell can’t lose you. If this goes south, there’s no way the team could survive without your powers. You have to get clear.”

“And you don’t?” Amy demanded.

She shrugged and jostled her passenger in the process. “Those dragons are my family, Amy. My flesh and blood. I can’t simply leave them here, not if Larry might be able to save them.”

The girl sagged. “Okay, I guess. What do you want me to do?”

“Get out of here and keep running until that bomb explodes. If they had it all the way down here and intended it to level this whole base, you guys will have to cover quite a fair distance.”

“Yes ma’am.” The girl saluted. “I’ll use my magic powers to lift all the slow-poke humans and get them to safety.”

“Perfect,” she yelled over her shoulder as she left the hallway and entered the room with the bomb.

How Hernandez and Amy had identified it as a bomb eluded Kristen. It looked more like a science experiment left too long to its own devices or a rave held deep beneath the surface of the earth.

It was comprised entirely of crystals, some of which were larger than her. They seemed to grow from both the floor and the ceiling as well as from the walls. That they were fueled by some kind of energy wasn’t much of a stretch of the imagination because light pulsed through them and they hummed at a low pitch that had grown higher while she surveyed the room.

She put Larry down and he darted forward to take a closer look.

“All right, time is of the essence and all that. Portal it up,” she said to him.

“You got it,” the mage responded, but he didn’t open any portals.

Instead, he shambled around the room. First, he looked at one of the biggest crystals, then some of those on the ceiling and the walls. He half blinked and half flinched every time the light pulsed.

“Larry?”

“Sorry. This is more…elaborate than I realized.”

“Elaborate as in we needed to get the fuck out of here a minute ago?” she asked.

“Elaborate as in I need to make sure that if I open a portal, this will fall through. I can’t tell how securely these crystals are connected to the wall as opposed to each other.”

He raised his hands and two tendrils of energy appeared. Guided by his fingertips, the appendages reached toward the bomb, probed it, and tested it for strengths or weaknesses—Kristen couldn’t be sure but that seemed logical. Now and then, he seemed to find something he didn’t like. He’d jerk one of the magical appendages away and suck in a breath.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“What? Oh yeah, sorry. Amy wasn’t kidding about this being filled with energy. I’m fairly sure if I so much as scratch any of these facets, this entire thing will go off.”

“So maybe you should stop with the tentacle magic?” she suggested as he continued to poke, prod, and—worst of all—flinch at the pulsing crystals.

“I have to find out where the core thing is. If I put the portal under it, hopefully, it’ll drag the rest through with its weight.”

“Hopefully? As in there’s a chance that you’ll simply blow it up?”

“If it was a hundred percent kind of deal I would have done it already,” Larry said to her frustration. “This should work, though. Teleportation magic is rare. I’d only ever heard of it before this. There’s no way they could have anticipated that we’d go this route. It’s the only way.”

“What about your shields?” she asked and already regretted not taking Amy up on her offer to stay and help. Her magic shields were far more powerful than Larry’s were.

“Oh, they definitely anticipated those,” he said and pointed to a few crystals that looked almost identical to all the others to her untrained eye. Maybe they were a little milkier but she couldn’t say with any certainty.

He pointed out a few other crystals as he made his way to the center of the room. “Most of this isn’t the explosive,” he muttered. “It’s merely wards against magic or tampering.”

“But the lights—”

“Are a distraction,” he told her.

Kristen exhaled the breath she’d held. “Oh, thank goodness. They’re blinking faster and faster. I had assumed that meant it would explode.” Already, the lights blinked every five seconds. When they had entered the room, it had been closer to eight.

“Oh, if I don’t get this done before the lights stop blinking, we’re definitely dead,” Larry said.

“Then how the hell are they a distraction?”

“Because the actual timer is right here.” He pointed to a line of runes that seemed to float inside one of the larger crystals like the magic equivalent of a hologram. Sure enough, when one of the symbols changed, the light that ran through all the crystals flashed. “The lights are there to make me scared to fuck with it.”

“Well, I guess it worked,” she said as the speed increased slightly to four seconds between the blinks.

“Not on old Larry Brockton, it didn’t.” He stuck his tongue out at the contraption. “That’s the core of this, and that’s what has to go.” The mage pointed at a few crystals in the center of the structure. She couldn’t see how they were different than any of the other crystals, but she didn’t think this was the time to argue with him about how to best do his job.

Although it also didn’t seem like the time to simply sit down on the job, although Larry disagreed. He sat, crossed his legs, and closed his eyes as if he’d completed a particularly demanding round of yoga and was now ready to spend quality time in meditation.

Kristen knew she could run and that if she left, he would continue to do his job as if she were still there. She also knew she wouldn’t leave him there to die alone. After thirty seconds of him seated in silence while he did nothing at all, she couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she should simply throw him over her shoulder again and run to the exit.

The truth, though, was that she couldn’t, not after seeing the dragon so scared of open spaces and the people who wanted to help her. Even though she had never met these lab-grown dragons or clones or whatever the hell she and the others truly were, she felt a deep kinship with them. They didn’t understand their past or their purpose any more than she did. They’d all been thrust into dangerous, painful roles in a society that demanded far too much from them. Her only consolation was that her job—a role she had at least thought she’d chosen—might free these dragons from theirs.

If, of course, Larry hurried the hell up.

She was about to say something to this effect when a change finally came over the mage. The floor of the entire room had begun to glow. It was faint—more subdued than the fluorescent lights above her—but it was something. Nothing else changed.

While she tried to be patient, it was damn hard to remain cool while waiting to be blown up. She checked her watch before she realized it wouldn’t tell her a damn thing about the time left on the countdown sequence that used symbols she couldn’t decipher. All she had to go on was the blinking lights of the crystals, which were faster than before. They had reached only a two-second gap between the flashes, and the light shifted in hue as well. The color had been yellow, then orange, but it now edged to red. It didn’t take a wild imagination to realize that once the pulse was one solid red glow, the crystal conglomeration would go kablooey.

Larry still hadn’t moved. The light on the floor continued to glow but hadn’t changed as much as the light from the crystals had. She checked her watch again. It still didn’t tell her when she was going to die.

The radio crackled to life.

“Everyone’s out,” Brian told her, “and they are almost two kilometers away from the bunker. It’d be more but our transport vessels are blown to shit. Stonequest contacted me and told me about how, since you went radio silent, you’ve encountered a bomb and are doing the stupid hero thing instead of running away.”

“We have to save these dragons, Brian. They’re like family—”

“Don’t do that, Kristen.”

“Do what? It’s the truth. We share most of the same DNA. The lab results are always the same. It’s my family that’s suffering because of this.”

“You’re damn right if you mean Mom and Dad are probably crapping themselves with worry right now. Look, I get it. You should save these dragons and I’m not saying otherwise. I’m only saying don’t ghost the dude on the radio because he’s beaten you at every videogame on every system ever played.”

“Noted.”

“How’s Larry doing?”

“I don’t know. He hasn’t moved.”

“Okay, well tell me if—shit! Kristen! Something’s creating interference with the…” He faded out and in. “…above the base! You have to…” He was lost, then returned. “Get the hell out! Get out now!”

CHAPTER NINE

Brian’s connection cut out and Kristen cursed. It was amazing how such a little, everyday thing like losing a connection could increase tension, even when already dealing with almost Herculean levels of stress.

Still, although she hadn’t heard all of what he had said, what she had heard had been very clear. He’d told her to get out and do it now. Something was coming and it didn’t look good.

She sighed. It was good advice but unfortunately, she already knew she wouldn’t take it.

Still, they had to hurry. She didn’t want to disturb Larry’s concentration, but if he couldn’t open this portal, Brian was right. They had to get the hell out of there. Already, the pulses of light were so close together that she wasn’t sure if she could get them clear even with dragon speed.

“Larry, I hate to bug you, but how close are you to making this happen? I think the crystals are running out of patience.”

“I’m close,” the mage replied through gritted teeth. “But this is damn hard, and if you think you can do better, by all means do so.”

“If there’s anything I can do…” she offered.

“There is…” Larry said, his teeth gritted so tightly she was concerned he might crack a molar. “You can get the hell out of here. I think I can do this but if I can’t, there’s no point in us both losing our lives.”

“I won’t abandon you, Larry.”

“You wouldn’t be abandoning me. I’m doing my best to save those four dragons. If I die doing it, at least I know I tried. My worth is theirs, especially after everything Windlock did for me. You’re worth more than an old mage who talks too much. Get out of here.”

“Nonsense,” Kristen replied. “I’ve trusted you with my life many times in the past and I’m not about to stop now. Plus, I’m the one in charge of your salary. If you want a raise, you’d better ace this performance assessment.”

“Spoken like a true bureaucrat.” Larry grunted but the words held a faint trace of humor. “The old windbag would be so proud.”

A shout rose in the back of his throat and finally forced his jaws apart so the guttural scream could echo off the walls of the room. It had barely faded when the edges of the glowing floor turned dark and all that was left was a bright circle. Kristen held her breath as the circle slowly—painfully slowly—moved across the floor until it outlined the crystal bomb.

She recognized the glowing circle, having seen similar ones before. Larry’s efforts mirrored the portals the technomages had before they opened. Somehow, he seemed to make this spell work, even though he’d never done it before. She didn’t know much about how magic operated, but she hoped improvisation had a place in it.

“All right, here goes,” he said, and the ring of light intensified. The color shifted from white to blue, and the ethereal glowing edge seemed to solidify. At the same time, the floor inside the ring faded as if someone had adjusted the opacity in photoshop.

“I’m getting close!” the mage grunted, but the words seemed to drain him of some of his concentration because the floor solidified again. The crystals continued to pulse and the flashes grew closer and closer together as the light edged toward solid red.

It was not a particularly pleasant atmosphere.

Larry grunted and squeezed his eyes shut as if watching the room whose physical properties he tried to circumvent distracted him from performing magic on it. He ground his teeth as sweat poured down his face. Again, the ring glowed brighter and the floor beneath the crystals seemed to lose some of its material substance.

Kristen braced herself. She didn’t know what the hell would happen, but she knew that if the crystals exploded, her steel skin would be their only protection against being eviscerated by the bomb. She prepared herself to dive forward and put her body between her teammate and the bomb he was working so hard to get rid of.

Part of her wanted to take the position now and get between him and the bomb so at least she could feel like she was doing something. Anything would be better than standing there watching him sweat while she did nothing at all to help him.

Well, not anything. She knew that even now, she could sprint to safety. She might not make it—she probably would not make it—but it would be better than being at point-blank range, that was for sure. But the idea of abandoning him—even when she couldn’t help him cast the spell—was anathema to her. She would not leave him to die alone. It would be even worse than leaving the four dragons to die.

“Here goes,” Larry said again. The ring intensified in brightness. The floor flickered and became fainter and fainter until it seemed almost transparent.

The crystals—despite being inanimate—noticed as well. When the floor seemed to vanish, they shifted as if they attempted to settle onto a surface that was no longer solid.

Kristen noticed that a fair number of the crystals didn’t move at all. Those on the ceiling and walls and possibly half of those on the floor didn’t shift at all. But a central group, including the crystal with the runes counting down to destruction, all sank perhaps a centimeter. Even with this tiny shift, she could see the entire trap for what it was—an elaborate trick of the eye.

Most of the crystals weren’t connected to the central cluster Larry had identified as the threat and source of most of the magic. They had a purpose as well, obviously, but it seemed it was largely to simply intimidate whoever wandered in there.

None of this made her think the level of destruction caused by the bomb would be less than apocalyptic.

“Here we fucking go!” Larry shouted and the floor beneath the crystal vanished completely.

The disk inside the ring of light transformed from concrete to the shining blue of the sky. Bright, unfiltered sunlight poured into the room as the bomb slid into the hole and vanished from the room.

He shouted again and the disk was replaced once more with concrete. It looked as if someone had performed surgery on the crystals and removed a tumor. She wondered if that maybe that was exactly the case, only it had been magic instead of a scalpel.

It was neither the time nor the place to waste time thinking about it, though. Kristen rushed to Larry and barely managed to catch him before he collapsed. He bled from both his nostrils at this point, was drenched in sweat, and every single muscle of his body trembled. Thankfully, the bomb was gone, although she had no clue where it might have vanished to. It wasn’t there, thank God, so the two of them would live.

She’d no sooner thought that when an explosion delivered a shockwave so strong it threatened to collapse the bunker, even so far under the earth.

Drew was on the back of a dragon when the crystalline bomb he’d used every reserve of energy he’d possessed to escape appeared in the air above him.

“Lumos, get down!” he shouted as he gaped at something that should not have been possible. A circle appeared in the sky with glowing edges that were filled with what appeared to be the interior of the room he had recently left.

This was bizarre but not particularly troubling until the crystal bomb fell through the hole. It didn’t take a senior mage to understand that the bright red color of it was a bad sign.

Lumos reacted only as a dragon could—instantly and with inhuman speed. One moment, Drew was on the elder dragon’s back, enjoying the cool but faintly humid air high above the tropical jungle despite the danger he knew Kristen was facing. In the next moment, Lumos plunged so quickly into a barrel roll that his rider was thrown from his back.

The golden dragon roared in a way that was entirely out of character. It was a high-pitched keening that Drew heard in his ears but felt in his toes and fingertips. A nightmare scenario of the crystal not being a bomb but some kind of mind control device raced through his head as he plummeted away from the dragon. Before he could begin to panic, Lumos extended his claws and caught him as if the battle-hardened officer of the Detroit SWAT was nothing but the delicate egg of a robin.

It was from inside this cage of golden scaled claws that he witnessed the enormous explosion.

The first thing to happen was that a sphere of transparent energy radiated from the crystals. He felt it on his face like a blast of hot air before he saw its effects as it pushed away every wisp and puff of the thick gray clouds that seemed to perennially hug this landscape.

Lumos spun to put his back to the blast and his body between Drew and the explosion.

Still, the man felt the blow like someone had dropped a bag of concrete on him. He gasped as the dragon cried out in pain and tried to flap wings that had been shredded by the explosion.

But Drew understood that he was one of the lucky ones.

The blast expanded in a sphere that first touched the tops of the massive jungle trees of the rainforest. Their leaves ignited, their branches were ripped off, and finally, the trunks were felled like they were nothing more than poorly stacked dominoes.

This happening to even a single tree represented a huge amount of energy. He had no idea if a dragon possessed the strength it would take to first fire-blast the foliage from a tree the size of one of these and then still be able to topple it. As extraordinary as it was, it didn’t happen to one, but hundreds.

The massive trees surrounding the bunker were flattened. Seen from the air, it was a perfect blast radius and all the trunks pointed back to the bunker where the bomb had been positioned underground, waiting to inflict its destruction on the world. Drew had only seen something like this in photographs of a meteor strike in Siberia more than a century before.

He hadn’t thought that humans were capable of such destruction. While he knew nuclear weapons possessed more power than this, a team of hundreds of scientists working together to devise a bomb was somehow easier for his mind to digest than a few mages growing crystals so that one day, they could fill them with destructive energy.

The shockwave struck the bunkers themselves and Lumos continued to fall, either unconscious or unable to use his mangled wings.

“Lumos!” he shouted and pounded in vain on the dragon’s chest. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from the destruction, though.

It savaged the concrete of all four of the bunkers and ripped a layer of the artificial stone off with as much ease as a gardener might till a patch of soil in his back yard with a hoe. This seemed to be the extent of the damage to three of the concrete structures.

The one they’d worked so hard to gain entrance to crumbled. It had been riddled with bullet holes and damaged by dragon bodies and the doors had been overcome by Amy, the most powerful mage he had ever met.

The blast ripped through it like it was made of puff pastry instead of concrete. He didn’t know if the other bunkers had simply been built better or if the damage to this one had been far more than superficial, but speculation was pointless. The force chewed through it and left nothing but a pile of rubble.

And still, Lumos fell.

The ground raced closer at an alarming rate. The wind whipped past his face so hard that Drew was concerned he might get yanked free of the dragon’s claw.

His mind raced to consider his options and finally, he drew his handgun.

He wondered about the dragon’s strength and knew they could feel bullets hit them even though they rarely caused more than superficial damage. Also, he knew that in certain situations, bullets could overcome a dragon’s healing ability and kill them. Being struck by the biggest bomb imaginable seemed to qualify as an overwhelming amount of force, so rather than shoot Lumos in the shoulder and hope the pain would wake him and his healing powers would mend him, he fired every round into the air.

The old dragon’s head had tucked in toward his chest as he fell, making it just close enough that Drew could get his hand near it. He stretched to the limit to hold the gun as close to the dragon’s earhole as his understanding of the anatomy of dragons allowed.

Although he squeezed the trigger repeatedly and as fast as he could, his adrenaline-fueled brain could still parse the time between each shot.

The wind whipped at Lumos’s long mustache along with the first.

With the second, the dragon began to shift and rolled so that instead of looking at the bunker below, Drew was looking out at the jungle.

As he fired the third, he saw Heartsbane—in dragon form—lift a tree branch in her teeth and check on the humans underneath.

He pulled the trigger again as Emerald burst from beneath the fallen, burned ash of the canopy, shockingly green amongst the blackened trunks and branches of the decimated rainforest.

Somehow, his gaze settled on the shocking pink of an orchid as he fired the fifth shot. It must have grown fifty feet in the air before its host trunk was felled. He had no idea how it had survived while everything around it had died. He honestly didn’t think he would be as lucky.

Lumos’ massive chest muscles flexed like great cords of rope beneath scale mail wrought of pure gold.

Drew fired three more shots in quick succession.

The old dragon gasped for a breath of air, a wonderful sound to the man’s ears despite it sounding much the same as the wind rushing past him.

“Oh dear,” Lumos said as if he’d put milk in a cup of tea that demanded lemon. His dragon’s wings spread and he twisted in midair. Drew’s stomach dropped as their fall stopped and they leveled out over the burnt floor of the jungle.

Lumos managed to flap his wings three times before a sickening snap issued from one of the bones in the dragon’s left wing.

“Bother. Hold tight!” he said and rolled onto his back to hold Drew up to the sky like he was a football that needed to make it into the endzone without touching the ground.

The dragon impacted hard and gouged a path through the charred undergrowth until his head thumped into the exposed root ball of one of the fallen trees. It was large enough to finally stop his momentum abruptly.

Drew tumbled out of his claw. He slid down the dragon’s chest and landed beside him.

“Are you all right, big guy?”

“By most definitions of the phrase, no, but I have experienced far worse so yes, I will be all right.”

“Good.” He patted the dragon’s golden scales, stood, and strode through the forest to where he had seen the other dragons. His radio had been lost during the crazy descent and he had to know if Kristen was okay. She’ll be fine. Right now, I need to find out how everyone else is and then find a radio.

It was almost frightening how easy it was to move through the destroyed jungle. The approach to the base wasn’t particularly long but it had been grueling when they’d first arrived. They’d had to hack through overgrown brush and vines as quietly as they could and remain under cover so as to not be seen by the mages. Now, there was nothing at all between him and his destination.

Nothing but death and destruction, he amended as he studied his surroundings. He didn’t think of himself as an environmentalist—he’d been a cop for over a decade and his first priority was always to end human suffering as best as he could—but he couldn’t help but feel appalled at the wanton devastation around him. He hoped death hadn’t come to the people they had brought to this jungle as quickly as it had come to the landscape.

A little farther ahead, dragons, humans, and mages all worked together to free those who were still trapped. He wanted to demand a radio and almost did, but when he saw Butters’ legs protruding from beneath a tree, his heart almost stopped.

No… No! Not like this. He’d known the sniper since he’d first become a police officer. The big guy was like a father to him. He couldn’t bear to think that he’d died because he hadn’t run far enough from a blast and had been caught up and become part of the collateral damage.

Drew lent a hand to wedge smaller trunks under the large one on top of his teammate—not corpse and not body, only Butters—and heaved with a strength he hadn’t known he still had. He could have waited two minutes for a dragon to come and lift the tree trunk without so much as breaking a sweat, but that wasn’t the kind of guy he was.

He heaved and grunted and prayed that none of the humans helping him slipped and dropped the tree again. They managed to raise and move it over before they let it settle on the ground again. He raced to Butters and felt for a pulse. His nerves and the man’s girth made it harder than it should have been. At first, he felt certain his teammate was gone but the sniper finally opened his eyes.

“Gravy…I need…gravy.” He wheezed and sat.

Drew finally let himself smile. Then he remembered he still hadn’t spoken to Kristen and the brief moment of relief was gone.

“It’s a good thing your big gut blocked that tree trunk,” Beanpole said to Butters, and the larger man chuckled, although it was obvious that he only now processed how close he’d come to dying.

The SWAT leader looked around for someone with a radio. Finally, he saw Stonequest. He marched up to him, about to demand the one the dragon carried when he heard Kristen’s voice issue from it.

He took the last few steps so rapidly that he almost fell. “Is she all right?” he asked as he fought to keep his balance. “Is Kristen alive?”

The dragon shot him a look that made him feel like a student asking a teacher if they had homework.

“What the hell do you think I’m asking her?” Stonequest asked.

“Right sorry. I only—”

“If you could give me a minute so I can hear her, that’d be great,” the dragon drawled.

Drew smiled. He felt like a witness outside of every crime scene he’d ever had to lock down.

“Kristen, repeat that. There was an interruption,” Stonequest said.

“We’re okay,” she replied over the radio, her voice barely comprehensible due to the static.

The dragon fiddled with the radio and her voice came in a little more clearly. “Larry did it. He disposed of the bomb. I have no idea where the hell he sent it, but he got it out of here.”

“We have a location on that.”

“Great!” She sounded excited and Drew understood the feeling. She was happy to be alive. “Is everything all right? We heard an earthquake or something.”

“We’re fine. Have you been back to the chamber with the dragons? The bomb…well, it detonated here. It collapsed most of the compound, including the building you’re under.”

Kristen laughed and it sounded sweeter than any music Drew had ever heard. “That’s where I am right now. We’re working on getting them out as we speak. Apparently, they’ll come for food. It’s not my proudest moment but we got them moving. We should be out soon.”

“That’s what I’m saying, Kristen. The compound collapsed. We can’t get you out.”

“That’s okay,” she responded cheerfully. “We opened the hangar door down here and it’s a gentle slope all the way to the surface. We’ll see you soon.”

Drew couldn’t believe it. They’d survived with minimal fatalities, driven out the mages, and even saved the hostages.

“Holy shit,” he murmured. “We won.”

CHAPTER TEN

Rescuing people was one of Kristen’s’ favorite parts of her job. It had to be one of the main drivers for most police officers. What could be more rewarding than helping someone out of a situation in which they’d lost control and suffered? It certainly beat writing speeding tickets or processing paperwork, the two things her father always said took up most of his time as a beat cop in Detroit.

She had never had to do much of that. When she’d graduated from the academy, she’d been passed over for regular police work because dragons had taken an interest in her. They’d realized her abilities even before she did and because of that, a substantial part of her job had always been saving people.

The only problem with it was that she wished she was better at helping them recover from the trauma they experienced.

Four days had passed since their assault on the South American base in the jungles of Colombia. In that time, her wounds had healed, as had the wounds of every dragon due to their amazing powers. The bruises the humans had suffered blossomed to dark purples and now mostly faded to ugly yellows and oranges. Larry and Amy had both slept off their fatigue from their exertions. Everyone had attended a funeral service for the humans and dragons they’d lost. Those were the wounds that still hurt the most, or so she thought.

That was about to be sorely tested, though, as she tucked her wings and came in for a landing at Amythist’s sprawling garden estate. The old dragon’s home was truly a thing of beauty and a reasonably sized mansion stood at the center of the large grounds. She went so far as to call it a cottage-style home, but this was indicative of dragon wealth rather than that her home was anything a human would ever call humble.

All around the house, gardens stretched in every direction. Flowers in a hundred different shades of red, yellow, purple, and blue edged pathways of lush green grass. Often, dragons’ homes were immaculately landscaped and not a weed or fading blossom could be seen. Amythist’s estate was quite different, with flowers and herbs in all stages of growth and overgrown plants to provide habitat for the woodland creatures that visited her from the surrounding forest.

Although Kristen could see that even with the often-overgrown landscaping, her new guests were causing problems. Great swaths of flowers had been rolled in here and there. In other places, dragon-size holes had been dug and apparently used to wallow. A huge willow tree that bordered a pond had deep gashes in its bark as if the world’s largest cat had decided to use it as a scratching post.

But she knew it wasn’t cats who did this. It was the dragons they’d rescued from the base in Colombia. She hoped Amythist was coping well enough with the destruction and chaos her new house guests seemed to be causing.

Well, there’s nothing left but to find out for myself, she thought as she settled on the brick pavilion in front of the world’s largest cottage.

“Ah, Kristen,” the elder dragon said, coming out of her house the moment Kristen landed as if she’d expected her. Which she had, given that she had been able to read her aura from a distance, which meant she also knew how she was feeling.

“You’re worried about them, aren’t you dear?” Amythist said and offered her a cup of tea.

She snorted in amusement, the closest thing she could bring to a smile right now. “It took Larry and I a fair amount of work simply to get them out of those pits. We had another fight to get them up the tunnel the mages had dug. They basically lost their mind when they saw the sunlight. The whole way out here, I kept thinking about how hard it must be for you to have to deal with them and of how much damage they’re causing.”

“Oh, pish-posh.” The old dragon smiled and the wrinkles around her eyes deepened. Kristen wondered if she would be able to tell the dragon’s advanced age as easily in the woman’s true dragon form. “I don’t mind them at all.”

“It’s kind of you to say that, especially given how much they mean to me and everyone who risked their lives to save them.” And those who lost their lives trying, she thought but didn’t say it aloud. “But you don’t have to sugarcoat the situation for me. I saw how they were back there. Feral would be a kind way to put it. It was more like looking at animals that had somehow suffered PTSD.”

“Oh, honestly, dear, it’s nothing. I understand the situation you found them in was appalling and surely quite different from how you were raised in a human home, but they are adapting well here.”

As if to prove her point, one of the dragons flew overhead and landed amongst a huge overgrown patch of wild roses.

“Scratch! Out of there. Get out, you big lummox,” Amythist chided, took her dragon form, and pulsed her aura to let him know that he was doing wrong.

He snorted his acknowledgment and backed away until she stopped her approach. Once out of the flowers, he sprawled in a sunny spot, rested his head on his claws, and proceeded to stare at Kristen.

“Is he…okay?”

“Scratch is non-verbal,” the old dragon explained. “We used to raise dragons this way, long before we spent so much time in our human forms. We have instincts, exactly like human babies do, and one of them is to obey the aura of older dragons.”

“Are you telling me he can’t speak?”

Amythist shook her head sadly. “I hope he’s only adjusting. It’s been less than a week, after all, but he’s yet to say a word. The other male is the same. The two females have some language, but it’s not as if they can hold anything like a conversation. They can ask for food and tell me when they’re tired, that kind of thing.”

Kristen’s heart began to pound in her chest. How could the old dragon simply accept this? “Are you telling me dragons used to be raised this way? That the reason your culture is so horrible is because you cage your young? These dragons were chained to walls and trapped in their dragon bodies so they could be harvested for scales, teeth, and claws for their entire lives. Do you think they used painkillers or that they were given any consideration other than what was the most efficient way to get them to grow more scales? How can you be all right with dragons being raised this way? I don’t care if it was a thousand years ago. This is horrible!”

The other male dragon bounded around the side of the mansion, his nostrils smoking and fire in its eyes. Scratch, who had been ready to take an afternoon nap, sat on his haunches and raised the spines on his back to prepare himself for a battle with this newly spotted rival.

“Kristen, my dear, you must calm yourself. Your aura is filled with anger and it’ll make them fight!”

“How can you expect me to be calm when you can be so calm in the face of such abuse?” she demanded.

“Because I must be calm for these dragons to be able to learn humanity,” Amythist said and her aura echoed her words and urged Kristen to shed her anger. “When I said this was the way things were done, I simply meant that language wasn’t always such a priority. Never have dragons allowed our kind to be imprisoned, let alone used for parts.”

“Do you swear it?”

“Yes! On my life and on the lives of every dragon I’ve ever helped raise. Dragons don’t do this to our young. Now, calm down.”

Kristen took a few deep breaths while Amythist flapped her wings and went to stand between the two young males. Scratch immediately lost interest in his prospective opponent and instead, preferred to watch the tip of her tail move through a particularly overgrown patch of wildflowers. The other dragon was more agitated and lunged at her, but Kristen had been in more than enough dragon battles to recognize that he wasn’t attacking.

He collided with the old dragon without trying to strike her with his claws or teeth. She moved aside deftly and he toppled, and she put a claw on top of his chest and began to tickle it. He pretended to fight it for a minute before he snorted with laughter and exhaled a great cloud of gray smoke.

With both her wards calm once more, Amythist sent him off to swim in the pond. Once again, she did this primarily through her aura. While she said, “the pond,” her aura reinforced the spoken command. Kristen felt like she wanted to get wet and play—like she was hot and wanted to cool her skin. Was this really how dragons spoke to each other before they’d adopted human language? It was fascinating and kind of amazing that they might have taken so much from human culture. It was also horrible, though, that they could turn their backs on humans after taking such an essential skill like language.

“I simply meant there was a time when we let young dragons behave in such a way. Although of course, these dragons are all fully grown and even by ancient standards should be able to speak by this point. I only wanted to assure you that I have experience dealing with dragons such as these, although admittedly none who were so large.”

“But do you think you can help them?” Kristen asked and forced herself to remain calm for the dragons’ benefit.

“I do,” Amythist said, although she could have used a more confident tone of voice. “However, these dragons have suffered abuse beyond any I have ever seen. Dragons don’t torture each other. It’s simply not done. If there are grievances, we fight. If they are serious, it might even be to the death. Confinement and brutality for some unknowable purpose are human inventions. I do not know how they will recover after decades of such treatment. It is quite possible that they’ll never be able to fully join society.”

“I guess we have Constance to thank for that,” she muttered.

“No, my dear, no. There is nothing constant about human cruelty. Yes, your kind is capable of the most heinous acts of violence. There are times when I wonder what humans could accomplish if they would apply their most creative minds to something beyond violence, but that is not their only legacy. Humans are capable of great compassion as well. Few dragons would have risked their lives for the well-being of poorly bred, untitled runts such as these. It’s remarkable that you got humans to do it and if Lumos wasn’t simply being dramatic, some even laid their lives down to help these dragons.”

“That’s true,” she confirmed. “We all understand that we’re in this together. It’s good to see you feel the same way as well. But I referred to Constance Vigil. As far as I can tell, it was she who first started working with my biological dragon father to harvest the genetic material needed to grow dragons and use them in this way.”

“Ah, yes. The plain-faced little bitch who wore all black the last time she came here? She was the one who tried to put one of these poor fellow’s scales through my skull, correct?”

“Yeah, her. She was the leader of the technomage cell near Detroit that was responsible for the deaths of so many dragons around here, and from what we’ve been able to tell, one of the true architects of this whole plan.”

“A true monster, then,” Amythist said and her aura shifted at the memory of being shot and made Scratch growl in his sleep.

“She was…is.” Kristen corrected herself but was still unsure which tense was correct for the technomage leader. She had captured her and turned her over to the Dragon Council. All logic said that the mage must have been pumped for information and executed, but if that was the case, she didn’t know it for certain. “But even she was motivated by good intentions.”

“Impossible,” the old dragon said but she didn’t argue further.

“It’s true. She told me many times that she was doing all this because she wanted to make the world a more just and equitable place.”

“And she told you this when? In the middle of a fight in which she tried to put a bullet through your brain?” Amythist sneered.

She knew that in reality, Constance could have killed her a few times over but she’d never taken any of the opportunities she’d been presented with. Most of the time, she’d been too concerned with trying to recruit her. How ironic that she was now fighting for the same cause but with different means. “She fought for humans and mages to have rights in the eyes of dragons. I can understand those intentions.”

“Maybe that’s how she started, but she couldn’t have fought for justice if this is how she treated her captives,” Amythist argued. “How can you believe what she told you after this? The ends do not justify the means.”

“I couldn’t agree more. By treating their captives the way they did, they turned to ethical bankruptcy. That’s why we’re working so hard to root out the rest of these cells and end their obsession that war is the only way to make the world more equitable.”

“Well, I wish you the best of luck in all your endeavors. I would like to see more of these dragons rescued. With a few more, I could form a proper classroom.”

“Finally, something hopeful to work toward,” Kristen agreed.

She spent some time after that walking the grounds with Amythist and meeting the two females. They were hardly more civilized than the males, their attempts at language barely more sophisticated than a parrot’s. It was difficult for her to have to treat them as little more than domesticated animals, and even that was being generous. She had met dogs that had more social graces than they did but the healing process was beginning.

Kristen merely wanted to make sure no one else—not dragon, mage, or human—was forced to live lives of such horrid squalor while others had so much. That idea—and what to do about it—consumed her thoughts as she flew to her base in Detroit.

She arrived at the base to no fanfare. At this point, everyone had been on the team for almost a month and they’d all seen what combat with magic-slinging mages could look like. She could tell that Jim and Stonequest had recruited professionals, as the base was alive with groups of humans and dragons running drills with more intensity and focus than they had before they’d battled the mages. Now that they had seen what they were up against, everyone knew that their already rigorous training methods simply weren’t enough. She hoped they found something that was, impossible though it seemed.

When she walked inside the converted factory, Jim and her brother stood and stared at Brian’s bank of monitors.

“Lady Steel!” The Wonderkid snapped a salute.

“At ease, Jim, and you don’t have to use my dragon name.” Kristen smiled at him. It never ceased to amaze her how much he’d grown and how much he’d changed. He’d once hated dragons with every core of his being because of what they’d done to some of his fellow men at arms. Now, he used their honorifics.

“We’re talking shop, so I thought it’d be better than Kissy-Krissy,” Jim said.

“You didn’t!” She turned to Brian.

He grinned like a fool and thank goodness. She hardly recognized her brother. Since joining her team, he’d completely changed his diet and started working out every day. His slightly round middle and less than defined arms proved that he didn’t push himself nearly as hard as the soldier beside him did, but he looked healthier than she had ever seen him in her entire life. Healthier than their parents, for sure. It was too bad she would have to kill him.

“Calm down, Kissy-Krissy. I give you smooch-smooch.” Brian extended his arms, licked his lips so they dripped with saliva, and stumbled towards her like a toddler desperate for a big brother’s love.

Jim almost died laughing at the impression. “And she did this until she was seven years old?”

“As a joke,” Kristen said. “I did it because it made Brian laugh.”

“You did it because you liked giving big wet kisses to your older brother. Don’t deny it.” Brian took another step forward, so she caught one of his arms and spun him into an armlock.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!”

“Did Brian also tell you how he used to give his little sister noogies?” She rolled her hand into a fist and rubbed her knuckle across his head until he stopped making kissy lips.

“Jeez, you didn’t have to use your dragon speed to catch me,” he muttered.

She rolled her eyes. He might be in better shape but she had always been far more athletic than him, even before she’d activated her dragon powers.

“Can you please tell me what the hell you’ve been working on so I can decide if I’ll pay your lazy ass this month?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said and dropped the annoying sibling act, and his fingers danced over his keyboard.

“At the Colombian base, we turned up a good lead on what looks like it might be the main base for all the technomages,” Jim narrated while Brian showed satellite images of a large farm complex. It contained multiple barns and rows and rows of huge hoop houses that she assumed were used to grow animals to feed to the dragons.

“Based on what we found in Colombia,” the Wonderkid continued, “it seems like almost every order of dragon bullets traced back here. Even those that came from other locations had often ordered components from this location—hell, Colombia itself had four dragons they used for ammunition and they still got stuff from this location.”

“It sounds like we hit the jackpot, then.” She smiled. There was nothing like a lead to cheer her when faced with the obscure paths of the technomages.

“I’m afraid not,” Brian said.

“What? Why not?” Jim said.

“As soon as we had a location, I positioned a satellite over this farm to start taking photographs.”

“You can do that?” Kristen asked. She certainly hadn’t given him the go-ahead to start hacking corporate and government satellites. Not only that, there was the point that she thought satellites had to be moving and couldn’t stay in place anyway.

He grinned bashfully. “It’s a figure of speech and it’s more like I made every satellite that passed over that area take a photo. It took about twenty-two hours to get the first shot, but after that, I have an image from every couple of hours. Nighttime too.”

Jim looked impressed. “How did you do that? Some of those must have been government satellites, and those that weren’t don’t simply let people take selfies with them.”

“It might have taken some dragon access codes.” He kept the grin plastered on his face.

“And you got those from?” She certainly hadn’t given him any because she didn’t know any codes, even if she had them.

“From you, dear sister!” Brian said. “Once you were promoted to investigator, you were given digital access to almost everything the Dragon Council of North America has. There are a few files that are encrypted enough that I can’t get to them—”

“You shouldn’t even try.”

He shrugged like a basketball player who had forced a foul and caused two potential free shots instead of a slam dunk. “I didn’t push against the secure stuff too hard. In fact, the toughest part was getting your credentials to mesh with the entire system. Apparently, mages usually oversee all this, but with the heightened security due to all the dragon killings, they were impossible to obtain.”

“So you hacked in,” Jim said.

Brian raised his hands from the keyboard in defense. “You say hacked, I say efficiently navigated a bureaucracy.”

Kristen put her hands on her hips. “We’ll come back to you stealing my identity later—”

“I didn’t steal anything.”

“Later,” she said and used her aura on her brother because he had been affected by it enough to know that she was doing it. He felt it and smiled. It was time to listen to the boss. “Right now, I need to know what those satellites turned up.”

“Nothing.” He turned his hands as if he was pouring sand onto the floor. “And I don’t mean nothing new, or nothing much, but nothing. If that was their base—and I think Jim’s right, it probably was—it’s not anymore. No goods have come in or out of there for a week and no lights have come on. No cars have driven off and no trucks have loaded a delivery. I did catch the motion sensor lights on one night.”

“And?” Jim asked.

“Unless the technomages can transform into deer, I think it was exactly what I said—nothing.”

“Well, shit,” the Wonderkid said. “I suppose we could investigate it?”

She shook her head. “That’s a negative. They’re not stupid and won’t leave a roadmap to their next location behind. If anything is left in the base, you can bet they want us to find it.”

“And detonate it, you mean,” Jim said glumly.

“Unfortunately, I think that’s how we need to assume they will behave,” she said and didn’t like it any more than he did.

“Still, we’re doing good, right? At this point, we’ve saved six dragons and stopped four cells. There can’t be many more of them, can there?” Brian nodded as if he could will it to be true by positive thought alone.

“I don’t think we can leave them alone now that they’re only ‘mostly defeated,’” Kristen said. “With one dragon, they can continue to make bullets. They won’t be able to be as aggressive but it only takes one bullet to kill a dragon. As long as they’re out there, the Dragon Council could still vote to go to war to try to root them out.”

“Plus, they could capture more dragons or even grow fresh ones,” Jim said. “I don’t know much about dragon biology, but it seems that if they could get a couple of eggs, this whole process would simply start over.”

“Come on, that would take years,” the techie protested.

“Time is one thing they have demonstrated that they know how to use,” Kristen explained sourly. “They must understand that their foes are immortal and that they can’t rush anything. If we leave them alone now, they’ll regrow into an even stronger organization. And in the meantime, we’d simply wait for them to strike. We still don’t know how many bullets are out there or how many dragons they’ve used. But like I said, it only takes one dragon to make bullets and even a hundred of those bullets are enough to kill every member of every Dragon Council the world over. We can’t let this go.”

“I agree,” the Wonderkid responded. “But how the hell do we do that if we don’t know where to look?”

She sighed. “If I knew the answer to that, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Frustrated, Kristen headed to the training area between some of the old factory buildings that now made up the central complex of her base. It had been designed by Timeflash, as had most of the base, but Kristen could tell the dragon had consulted some of her old human teammates regarding what was essential for humans to work out.

She found the traditional equipment one needed for strength training—barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, and more, all on racks under makeshift roofs to keep them out of the rain. Her first choice was to load a bench press bar with more weight than she had ever imagined she’d be able to lift before she’d discovered she was a dragon. She curled the bar as easily as a child might lift a pillow above her head. It was hard to get a burn from weights anymore, but by loading the bar, doing more repetitions than she could count, and alternating it with other high-intensity exercises, she could still make gains. These seemed to be getting to be incrementally less and less as time went on, though.

Still, it felt good to push herself to her limits. She put the weights down after doing a few lifts over her head and sprinted through the obstacle course.

This was obviously designed by a human, as a dragon’s abilities made most of the obstacles that had to do with strength, grasp, or jumping irrelevant but it was still a challenge to break her own record. She jumped onto a crisscrossing path made of two-by-fours and moved from one to the other, landing carefully on each one and not letting herself jump too high. If she created too much momentum, it might snap the wood in half.

She reached the end of the elevated balance maze and leapt onto a hanging rope, shinnied up to the platform on top, and climbed down the cargo net on the other side. That, at least, was one thing her dragon powers didn’t help with too much.

“Hey, boss, do you want to make this an actual challenge?” Hernandez shouted from the sidelines, an airsoft gun in each hand.

“I can’t turn my skin to steel without breaking these platforms,” Kristen said as she moved from the cargo net to the straight wall climb. Even without her steel skin, her fingers could punch grooves into the brick if she wanted to.

“Oh, boo-hoo, the Steel Dragon might have to feel pain,” the woman jeered. “Should we tell the technomages to only attack when you feel up to it?”

She laughed, which counted as consent in Hernandez’s book. The woman sprayed airsoft pellets at her, familiar enough with the Steel Dragon’s abilities to know that she shouldn’t aim where she was but where she would be.

Kristen ducked into the next part of the obstacle course, a number of pallets set up as a mini airsoft arena.

It quickly became obvious that the demolitions expert wasn’t the only one who thought it might be good fun to shoot at their boss as pellets rocketed at her from all sides.

Normally, she would have ripped a piece of wood out of the scrap around her and used it for a shield, but that wouldn’t achieve any gains in her speed or agility, the two things she knew she needed to build if she wanted to beat Katrina.

Truly, the Iron Dragon was why she was out there training. She dodged pellets, vaulted over them, slid under them, fell prone, and scrambled up in the cardio instructor’s dream workout, and throughout, she kept her adversary in mind.

How did she beat her so consistently? She knew they had to be genetically similar because they were siblings. They looked the same, were the same height, and had the same powers in dragon form, and yet Katrina always seemed to have the edge.

A pellet popped her in the forehead and yanked her focus to the task at hand.

“Ha! You owe me a beer,” Hernandez shouted.

She surged towards the demolitions expert and avoided every pellet the woman fired at her. No matter what Hernandez did, she could anticipate and protect herself from getting hit.

Why couldn’t she do the same with the Iron Dragon?

Kristen pushed herself even faster and became a blur as people fired at her from all sides. In her desire to push her limits, she was able to dodge every shot aimed at her. She moved faster and faster until she became such a blur she could see the pellets flying past her and knock some of them out of the air.

Was this her limit? Did Katrina have the same limits? Why did she constantly lose to the other woman? Was it training or was it luck? Did her adversary have a genome she simply lacked?

A pellet hit her in the small of her back and she flinched, and a dozen more pellets struck her from all angles.

“Argh!” she shouted, more in frustration than pain, and punched the asphalt beneath her feet with enough force to crack it into chunks.

“Sorry, boss!” Hernandez waved. “But you now owe everyone on the team a beer. Even Lumos.”

“Lumos?” Kristen asked and turned to see the ancient gold dragon lounging against the wall of one of the buildings that framed the training area. He radiated power even in his human form. It was odd to see him there. Most of the dragons rarely went to the human training area.

“Impressive.” He nodded respectfully at her. “But it won’t accomplish what you hope it will.”

She studied the dragon in silence for a moment. How much did he know? Was her frustration so obvious? Did the entire team know she was becoming more and more obsessed with her defeats at the hands of the Iron Dragon?

“That’s a wrap, people,” Hernandez shouted. “It looks like the big, tough dragons need to talk this one through. Good job, everyone, on shooting your boss. I’m proud of you today. Beers taste better when you’ve broken the chain of command. Believe me, I would know.”

Apparently, her frustration was that obvious because everyone cleared the area and left the two dragons alone.

“What do you know about what I want to accomplish?” she demanded.

He favored her with another of his enigmatic smiles. “I haven’t seen you push yourself like this since you first joined Dragon SWAT. But even if you can get faster and stronger this way, it won’t be enough to defeat the Iron Dragon.”

Kristen froze, unsure of what to say. She was surprised that Lumos was there at all. It was even more surprising that he seemed to know exactly what went through her mind.

“Do you have mind-reading powers you never told me about? Or am I that transparent?” she asked.

“The latter,” he replied dryly. “You’ve fought against the enemy dragon three time now and came out worst both times. I know how frustrating that must be for you, particularly since this is a ‘mirror match’ of sorts.”

She merely nodded because although she agreed, she didn’t know what to say.

“I hate to tell you what to do because I do respect your leadership on this team, but you do realize that she’s not the biggest threat, correct?”

“She’s the biggest threat I’ve faced since Shadowstorm. She’s beaten me consistently, and the second time she also outsmarted us and appeared when we didn’t think she would.”

“True enough, and I agree she is an obstacle and even a big one. But not your biggest one.”

“Then what is?” she demanded and tried not to sound petulant, but her aura betrayed her.

“I know you didn’t forget about the dragon you fought in the caves so quickly,” Lumos said, his voice level.

Kristen shuddered. Of course, she hadn’t forgotten that dragon. She still had nightmares about the inky black shapes it could take in the darkness. In those dreams, she’d be swimming across a pool or going to the lake with her family, when suddenly, the lights would go out or a cloud would blot out the sun. He would be there in the darkness to grasp her arms and legs and pull her underwater and she’d wake, drenched in sweat.

“That dragon hasn’t appeared before or after that. The Iron Dragon is part of the organization I built this force to fight. She’s a priority.”

He shook his head. “Just because you haven’t seen this dragon of shadow doesn’t mean he hasn’t been involved in all this.”

“You can’t know that, Lumos,” she stated, her words like steel.

“No, but the evidence points to him being far more than some—what’s the human expression?—lone wolf with a bone to pick.”

“That’s two expressions,” she corrected him, not eager to talk about the source of her nightmares but not able to do anything but use humor to hide her fear.

“He—or someone working with him—sent most of your team to Colombia on a false alarm before we had located the technomage cell. He was also able to trick us into thinking that the Dragon Council wanted you to meet them alone. Both of those clues point to a dragon with connections—high level, powerful connections.” Lumos paused, stroked his mustache, and let her put it all together herself, even though she sure as hell didn’t want to think about any of this. She merely wanted to train and focus on the torturous technomages.

“What are you trying to say? That a member of the Dragon Council set me up?”

The golden dragon nodded. “Either that or someone who is very, very good friends with someone on the Council.”

Kristen sighed. He was right, of course. She’d thought about all this before the mission to the base in Colombia. It was so frustrating, like hunting a whisper in the dark when another enemy stood in broad daylight and shouted profanities. “What do you recommend?”

“Focusing on that dragon, whoever he was. He was obviously an elder and a very powerful one at that. The way he used his powers indicates that he had a long time to perfect the subtleties of his abilities. You’ve made strong allies, but you’ve also managed to annoy an extremely powerful foe.”

“I guess that means what we’re doing is working,” she muttered.

Lumos smirked. “Ah, I do so love human optimism. Yes, I agree that we have made progress. This dragon who attacked you wouldn’t have made so bold a move and exposed his powers had he not felt it necessary. So yes, we are making our enemies uncomfortable.”

“I want to do much more than make a group of bigots uncomfortable. That won’t happen if I can’t beat the Iron Dragon.” She hated to admit it, but it was true.

“I agree. You’re strong and you’ve grown much since I first met you, but you need to be better still.” Lumos smiled enigmatically.

Kristen tried not to be annoyed. “Why do you think I’m out here training?”

“I understand your concerns and I understand that increasing your strength in your human form will make your dragon form stronger, in the same way that increasing your strength in your dragon form will increase the strength of your human body. Honestly, that might be enough to beat the Iron Dragon.”

“Then why are you here interrupting me?” She didn’t mean to be rude, but her frustration pushed through.

“I apologize. With your methods and the help of others, you could likely defeat the Iron Dragon, but that won’t be enough. Not if—”

“Not if the shadow dragon attacks again,” she finished for him.

“Precisely.” He nodded. “You may very well need to face him again. In fact, if I am honest, I am certain you will face him again before this is over. He most likely interfered because you meddled with the technomages and probably has a stake in their success or, at the very least, some facet of their operation. If you wish to survive his next assault, you need to be a better warrior.”

“But how?” Kristen asked and hoped she didn’t sound desperate. “I’ve never been able to progress much in my dragon form, and if you think training in this body is a waste of my time, what the hell am I supposed to do?”

“It’s true that there are limitations to the human form,” Lumos agreed. “But worse, for all the strength you have amassed, you still fight like a human in both forms.”

“I am a human.”

He chuckled. “My dear, you are most definitely not a human. You fight well in this form but both the Iron Dragon and this unseen shadow dragon are more effective in their dragon bodies than you are. To say it plainly, you are unable to use your dragon body to maximum effectiveness.”

“I’ve become stronger and faster as a dragon thanks to my training as a human,” she countered.

“I’m sure you have,” he conceded. “Human hand-to-hand combat and martial training are helpful for dragons and many train in those techniques. But for dragon versus dragon combat in our true bodies, the winner is often the one who understands that mode of combat best. I don’t think the Iron Dragon is any stronger or faster than you but she’s much better trained at fighting in dragon form.”

“But how is that possible?” she demanded. “She was raised by mages. How can she be a better dragon than me? I trained with Dragon SWAT and I’ve trained with you. I even trained with Shadowstorm before I realized he was evil.”

Her protest opened the door to understanding. The technomages had a dragon benefactor. It was the only way to explain how the Iron Dragon was such a good warrior in her dragon body. That meant Lumos’ theory about the shadow dragon orchestrating at least some part of the technomage operation from the background suddenly made much more sense. He watched the realization come across her face as easily as a human could watch a sunset.

“I am not saying you are not a formidable warrior. The fact that you have fought so many dragons—including the Iron Dragon and this shadow one—prove that fact, but there is much you can learn. Also, you’ve never trained with me.”

Kristen raised an eyebrow at that claim. “What are you talking about? We’ve sparred together plenty of times.”

He chuckled. “That was not training. It was me working with a rookie because Stonequest told me to. You must remember that I am an old warrior with centuries of knowledge. I’m slower than I once was and not as strong, but I still have all the knowledge you need to succeed.”

“And you’re willing to share that knowledge with me?” she asked when she recognized this for the huge offer it was.

“I am,” Lumos said. “although it won’t be easy.”

She nodded. “Can I ask one question that I promise I don’t mean as rudeness?”

“By all means.”

“Why now? If you’re such a fantastic warrior, why not teach me all this sooner?”

“Honestly, I had hoped that it wouldn’t be necessary. You are a formidable force. I had hoped your strength coupled with what we other dragons can do, plus the mages and humans you have recruited, would be enough. There are…methods of fighting as a dragon that can seem savage and barbaric and there are techniques I wish would be forgotten. I had hoped they might die with me, but I see now there is still much optimism leftover from my youth, as long ago as it was. I’ll warn you again, this won’t be easy, but I believe that if you commit to training with me, I might give you the edge you need against both these foes in the battles to come. Do you have any questions before you decide?”

Kristen thought for a moment. She was both frightened and honored. Frightened because she hadn’t known about dragon techniques and she wondered how many battles she had survived simply by virtue of her steel skin. She felt honored because he trusted her enough to share these skills. While she had no doubt it would be hard, she still didn’t understand how he could even frame this as a choice.

She had to defeat the technomages. Failure was not an option unless it meant that she was killed trying to make the world a better place. If all that was between her and victory were some tough stretches and a few extra pushups, how bad could it be?

“I guess I have only one question,” Kristen said. “When can we start?”

Lumos transformed into his dragon body in a flash of golden light. One moment, an older gentleman with an impressive mustache and a gold suit stood before her and in the next, an enormous golden dragon with long tendrils in place of his mustache regarded her calmly.

“There’s no time like the present.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Kristen and Lumos flew west from Detroit over highways, suburbs of the Motor City, and patches of trees heavy with the smell of pine. They soared above townships, farms, and the odd mixture of gas stations and fast food joints that made up much of the American countryside.

He didn’t speak to her and instead, pumped his wings intermittently but mainly used the wind to speed their flight. Although the elder dragon didn’t seem to work particularly hard at beating his wings, after ten minutes, Kristen found she was winded from the pace he set.

She wasn’t quite sure how, but he seemed to fly faster than her with less effort. While she pumped and pumped and tried to force herself through the air like a fish through the sea, he glided more like a great bird of prey and somehow gained speed with the barest movements of his wings. She could fly like that too but not at such speed and not so low.

“How do you do that?” she asked after winding herself in her efforts to catch up with the golden dragon.

“It’s not only wings that make a dragon fly but our body too,” Lumos explained patiently. “If you hold your legs right, you won’t feel any wind at all because they’re providing lift. The same principle applies to your tail. Try to keep it rigid like one of your whirlybirds does.”

“A what?”

“Oh, you know.” He chuckled. “One of those great metal contraptions that are like planes but have propellers?”

“Ah. Helicopters,” she said once she realized what he meant.

“Yes. Indeed. Helly-coppers. Keep your tail straight like one of those and focus on capturing the wind and riding it.”

Kristen did so and found that her speed didn’t exactly increase but the amount of work she did decreased. She counted that as an improvement. “Why didn’t you tell me about this way of flying sooner?”

“For the same reason I did not bother to teach you how to fight. Your methods are quite successful, and—given what the technomages are capable of—I think your unorthodox approaches to problem-solving are what will ultimately save this world from war. It is only because of the dragon of shadow—and to a lesser extent the Iron Dragon—that I feel it necessary to teach you more of dragon combat.”

“I guess I’ll take that as a compliment,” she ventured.

“It was meant as one,” he said fondly.

She didn’t exactly beam at the praise. It was hard to get that kind of feeling from someone she regularly gave orders to but she also took his comments to heart. She had been successful in battles in the past and merely needed new methods for these new foes. It felt a little daunting, but she could do this. It was like learning anything else, after all.

They continued for a while longer before Lumos banked and glided over a huge wooded area that surrounded a few large lakes. “Half-moon Lake, right?” Kristen asked, pointing a claw at the lake on the horizon that they were already approaching as the earth seemed to spin beneath their great speed. When she held her claw out, it did indeed affect her aerodynamics and she slowed noticeably.

“Perhaps for a swim after we’re done, but I was heading to that one.” Lumos gestured towards a smaller lake that was already beneath them.

She felt like she should know the name of it because she’d been out there with her family a half dozen times and had driven past it at least that often. But flying and driving a car was totally different. On the wing, everything on the surface of the earth was laid bare for a dragon to see. She could read the land as easily as she could read a map on her phone. In a car, even a clump of forest that was only a few trees deep was more than enough to completely hide the rest of the landscape from view. She wondered how many places had already been transformed in her mind after becoming a dragon. Certainly, the city of Detroit felt like an entirely different place than the city she’d spent so much time in during her youth.

Lumos glanced at her and banked to spiral above the body of water below. She followed, but—unable to help herself—tucked her wings and plunged beneath him to drop into the water.

It was cold and refreshing—and if she was completely honest, a little terrifying. She’d never been the strongest of swimmers. Even as a young, extremely athletic girl, she had shied away from the water. She could swim—everyone in Michigan could swim. There were too many lakes to not learn how at some point in life, but she’d always been averse to spending her day in and under water. She wondered if that was because a part of her had always known about her ability to become steel and what a liability that was in a body of water.

The nightmares she still had about the shadow dragon who had attacked her in the subterranean lake were worse, but that fear was also why she forced herself to plunge in. If water was her weakness, her enemies would use it against her. It wasn’t like drowning a metal dragon was terribly creative, after all. She’d have to assume that most of her foes might try to push the advantage by seeking to fight her somewhere she would sink.

She dove into the lake because Lumos was there and it was the middle of the day. There was nothing to fear and yet, as she pumped her wings and swished her tail to propel herself underwater, she couldn’t shake a feeling of dread. It was truly exhilarating to burst from the surface and rise into the air again. It was something she hadn’t done against the dragon in the cave. There had not been enough room, probably by her enemy’s design.

Still, Kristen would be a fool to go that deep underground by herself again. It was far more likely that if she battled near water, it would be on the surface of the earth, not beneath it. She plunged into the water and burst out of it repeatedly, practicing the maneuver until it was comfortable for her.

Up ahead, Lumos had already landed on the far shore of the lake. Still in dragon form, he waited for her and tapped a claw like an impatient teacher.

She thrust from the water a final time, flipped, and landed on the narrow sandy bank that hugged the lake before giving way to grass.

“If you’re quite done playing, I think it’s time we began,” he said, although his aura said that he was rather amused with her splashing.

“Sure. But why did we come all the way out here if we won’t use the water?” Kristen asked.

“We may end up practicing an aquatic battle if you wish, although based on the powers of your foes, I don’t think it’s the most likely of arenas for your fights against them.”

“Then why here?” she repeated.

Lumos raised a claw and pointed at the empty landscape around them. There were perhaps a hundred yards of grass between the water and a forest. No picnic tables, campsites, or roads marred the green of this particular location. “Because this part of the park is hardly used, and if we get a little…messy, no one will mind.”

“All right, let’s do this.” She raised her tail to ready herself for a strike and pumped her wings so she could lift her front claws off the ground to strike.

He didn’t fight back. Instead, he approached her and while she still flapped her wings, he touched the joint where her wing connected to her body with the tip of his tail. “You’re leaving this joint open.”

“But if I use my wings to flap up, I can get elevation and do more damage,” she protested. She’d used the technique against more than a few mages.

“A fair consideration if you’re a hawk hunting a squirrel, but you are not. We often use those kinds of techniques against humans as it makes us seem even larger than we are, but it’s not wise against a dragon.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“The most important part of fighting a dragon is understanding that it’s an organism like any other. True, we have magic and healing abilities, but we are not invulnerable. The joints between our scales are a weak place on almost every body type out there. The most vulnerable of these are your wings. Observe.” He tucked his wings tightly against the sides of his body and lunged at her. She tried to use her wings to help her evade him, but when she did, he put his claws to the membrane of her wing.

Kristen stopped immediately, not wanting to tear the membrane unnecessarily. “I don’t understand. I’ve had that membrane torn more than once and I’ve ripped it on dragons. We can heal it almost instantly.”

“Indeed,” Lumos said and moved his long sinuous neck so his teeth hovered at the joint of her wings where all the bones radiated out. “But if I were to pin you and bite right here, you would be unable to fly for the rest of the fight. If you can bite this joint here or better yet, stab it with that ax-blade you have on the tip of your tail, you’ll have an advantage over your foe. With practice, you should learn to snag the membrane, disable this joint, and strike at where the wing connects to the body.”

He demonstrated by extending a long claw on one of his fingers to poke the joint at the place closest to her belly. It didn’t particularly hurt until Lumos applied slightly more pressure.

“Ow, shit. Okay, you’ve made your point,” she said and winced at the pain. It was deep and sharp and made her think of the time her brother had refused to clean his hands after getting cut while out fishing and how his hand had swelled. They’d had to lance it with a knife and squeeze the pus out. This felt like some horrible pressure was released.

“It’s difficult to do much to that main joint of the wing from the outside,” Lumos explained as he released her. “That’s probably why you haven’t suffered this particular injury. But if you can manage to force the dragon to open its wings or if you attack them from the front, it can be a much better target than going straight for the heart.”

“So use pain as an advantage?” Kristen asked, surprised that the fighting method of this ancient race of beings who held themselves above humanity resorted to something as crude as pain-compliance strikes in their battles.

Lumos nodded. “It’s the most natural thing in the world, especially considering that your opponent will be able to heal most wounds. It's damn hard to make a dragon bleed out or to even overwhelm their healing power, so it’s best to disable a joint or two and go for a killing blow.”

“And how would I make a killing blow if you think going for the heart isn’t the best strategy?” She was strangely fascinated by the vicious savagery he explained so calmly.

“A blow to the heart is one of the best ways to kill a dragon,” he confessed, “but it’s a strike best saved for the end of a battle. It’s the same with a shot to the brain or an attempt at decapitation. Any of those three will surely kill a dragon, but if you haven’t weakened them and slowed their healing ability enough, they are all extremely risky things to do.”

“Okay.” She nodded and tried to internalize that it was good to use cheap shots when dragons were fighting. “It makes sense. Don’t kill until you think it will stick.”

“Sure.” He chuckled. “I’ve never heard it said in those terms but yes, that is the short of it.”

“Where else do I target besides the joints of the wings?” she asked.

“All the joints that connect a dragon’s limbs to its body are good targets,” he explained. “If you can knock a dragon on its back, do so, then bite at either a wing joint or where one of its legs connect to its body. The only exception to this is the neck.”

“I would think the neck would be a particularly good place to attack,” Kristen commented.

“It is if you can strike a dragon in the throat and as close to the base of the skull as possible without actually hitting the skull. If you can deliver a blow there, you’ll likely stun a dragon if you hit it hard enough. The rest of the neck is well-armored. It’s still worth it to try to bite through it but isn’t something I’d recommend while your opponent is at full strength.”

“Are there any more dirty little secrets you’ve kept from your boss?” Kristen teased.

“Only the eyes, although that won’t help you as much as it does me,” he said and stared directly into her.

“How do you mean?” she asked, a little confused.

“My light works so well as a weapon against dragons precisely because our eyesight is so keen. We can see in the dark quite easily, but that means a sudden flare of sunlight can overwhelm a dragon’s eyes. It’s odd but against dragons, my light is quite effective, while if a human simply blinks at the right moment, it’s often enough to prevent disorientation. A dragon needs to turn its head or shield its eyes with something besides its eyelids.”

“You’re right. I don’t see how that helps me,” she said.

“Eyes aren’t armored. If you can put a claw or the tip of your tail in an eye socket, your opponent will most assuredly be at a disadvantage for at least a few moments.”

“Don’t dragons disapprove of fighting like this?” she asked, still confused that the dragons—so often as prim and proper as any human she had ever met—would fight by trying to gouge each other’s eyes out.

“Some do, yes, but not the ones you’ll fight. Plus, we’re surprisingly forgiving when it comes to wounds our healing abilities can mend. If you rip a dragon’s wing off, it’ll grow back most of the time and they will forget. But if you pull a single claw off badly enough to ensure it never returns, a dragon will haunt you for centuries, even over the smallest of claws.”

“So are you saying I pissed these two off sometime?” she joked.

Lumos didn’t laugh. “No, or I doubt it anyway. But if you do manage to seriously injure one, I’d recommend finishing the duel with lethal force. Dragons hold grudges and these already have issues with you.”

“Okay, anything else?”

“Yes. Dragons don’t give warning before they strike.”

“You mean—”

He lunged forward at her chest.

Kristen fought her instinct to pump her wings and avoid him and instead, drew her wings close to her back, lowered herself to the ground, and protected her joints.

Her opponent still crashed into her, but he tumbled off her scales. “Good,” he said and apparently didn’t mind being thwarted by his student. “Your back is the most armored part of your body. As long as you don’t let your opponent pull your wings away, you’ll be all right.”

Before she could respond, he lunged at her again. She tried the same maneuver but this time, he snagged his tail under her wing and made her tumble back.

Immediately, she tried to right herself to protect her belly and the joints that connected to it. He scratched and slashed at her armpits and seemed more like a feral badger than a man who could change to his dragon form and back, but she protected herself.

It was awkward to focus so much on defense, but she found that if she protected these areas, the rest of his blows didn’t do much at all.

Lumos kicked off her, vaulted high, and spread his wings to surge into another attack. She dodged this one as she had before by ducking low rather than moving out of the way. He streaked overhead and she lashed out with the ax-blade on her tail and tried to land a solid chop on his wing joint.

He caught her tail in his teeth instead and bit hard, and pain erupted through her tail. It wasn’t as bad as the weak places on her joints and wounding her wasn’t his intention.

Rather than sinking his teeth deeper into the underside of her tail, he flew in a tight loop, lifted her off the ground, and hurled her into the dirt.

Her opponent pounded into her exposed stomach, pinned one of her wings that she hadn’t meant to extend with a claw, and positioned his jaws around her neck.

Kristen froze, knowing full well that his teeth were sharp enough to cut her when she didn’t have her steel scales engaged.

“Dead,” he said and released her.

“Again,” she demanded.

Lumos smiled long enough to put her off guard before he launched into another assault. He got under her defenses this time and lifted her off the ground, but as he slipped beneath her, she reached around his wing and landed a lucky jab of her claws into his armpit.

The dragon yelped in pain and knocked her off his back with his wings and tail.

“You said not to do that,” she protested while she tried to right herself.

He spun and was above her before she could get her body back in action. This time, he put a claw at each of her armpits and forced her to open her guard so he could once again put his teeth to her throat. “Dead again.”

“But you cheated!”

“I did no such thing. Based on your position, there was no way you would reach any of my vulnerable parts. Because of that, I risked using my wings and tail. Are you beginning to understand? A dragon battle is not a brawl but a game of chess, only faster and more vicious.”

“You never played against my brother,” she murmured. She’d never been one for chess and had preferred soccer, lacrosse, martial arts, basketball, tennis, and the more active sports. Having to outthink her opponent as they fought instead of simply overpower and outmaneuver them did not sound like it would come easily.

“Again,” he said, ignorant of her ruminations.

This time, Kristen struck first and lunged at his chest as he had done to her in an effort to get under his guard so she could reach the tender places he’d shown her.

Lumos knocked her aside by simply dodging under her blow before he stood and threw a shoulder into her chest that careened her away. She twisted in midair—careful to not fully extend her wings—and landed on her feet.

She was too slow, however. He had watched her like a dog watched a treat and as soon as she touched the dirt, he drove into her and forced her into a roll until he was on top of her and pinned her to the ground once more by her wings.

“I told you to guard these,” he said and raised one of the bones of the wing with his claw. Before he could simulate a slice—or inflict a real gash, she thought, because she had learned dragons liked to go hard when training—she transformed her wing. It vanished as if she were turning to her human form but she left the rest of her body as a dragon.

Lumos lost his hold on her as soon as the wing vanished. He took a step back and focused on the space within her dragon body where he knew her human form would appear. Kristen had no intention to change into her human form, however. She had merely shed the wing to free herself.

She lunged forward, her head lowered and horns aimed at her opponent’s neck.

In the time it took for her to attack, the gold dragon had recovered from his surprise. He parried her head butt with a slap of his tail, and when she stumbled, he grasped one of her back legs with a claw.

Kristen tumbled, opened her eyes, and found that Lumos had killed her again.

Frustrated, she sighed.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” he said to comfort her. “It takes most dragons a long time to master these techniques and you have already improved in this short session. Tell me, how much control do you have over your transformative ability?”

“Oh, not much,” she said and assumed her human shape. She made her hands into human-sized versions of her dragon claws. “I can do my hands and feet, and that’s about it. I’ve worked on the tail and wings, but it's slow going.”

He nodded and his aura told her he was impressed. “It’s interesting that you have so much control over that ability.”

“You don’t need to flatter me, Lumos. I’ve seen many dragons transform only part of their body. Hell, Shadowstorm could use his transformations to kind of teleport. He could move while he did it too. Beating him with that ability was a real bitch.”

“And he no doubt practiced that particular tactic for centuries,” he said ponderously. “You, on the other hand—pardon my pun—have only known how to do that for what—a year?”

“Less than that but yeah. It’s not that hard, though. Changing my body to steel feels much the same as changing to my dragon body, and when I’m in my dragon form, I often activate only a small part of my body into its steel mode so I don’t weigh too much. My steel skin was what I practiced the most early on.”

“Hmm… Most dragons don’t bother with that ability to the extent you have.”

“Really?”

“Indeed,” Lumos stated. “Perhaps because most dragons—myself included—think of our scaled form as our true self. You, obviously, do not.”

“No…no, I suppose not.”

He shrugged. “It’s curious. However you’ve managed to do it, continue to push yourself. It could be a real asset in a fight. Some dragons turn to their human form to escape but even that is a rarely used tactic. Transforming only part of yourself to dodge a blow…yes…this opens up some possibilities.”

“Should I practice that before our next session?”

“Next session? Why Lady Steel, we’ve only just begun.”

Before she could blink, he had knocked her to the ground, forced her to roll over by stabbing her in the armpit with his tail, and killed her.

Kristen smiled despite being pretend-murdered by her teacher. “Again.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Kristen wasn’t entirely sure how she got back to base. She remembered leaving the training session with Lumos, beyond exhausted—dog tired and maybe more tired than an entire pack of dogs. Vaguely, she recalled trying to use the new method of flying he’d shown her that required her body to be more rigid to better use the wind instead of only her wings. Mostly, she remembered how much her aching muscles refused to obey.

The entire journey had been little more than a blur of almost delirious flying. If she had been driving, she would have pulled over and taken a nap. Being airborne, however, she simply made sure to not fly over any streets or people so if she fell asleep, she wouldn’t crush anyone. She remembered telling herself this was smart of her when it had probably merely been reckless.

At some point—multiple points?—she had stopped to feast on fast food. It did nothing to sate her appetite and for the first time since she’d learned she was a dragon, she wondered in her delirium if she should have followed Lumos into the woods to eat a few fresh deer.

She’d apparently pondered her meal choices for most of the flight because when she arrived at the base, she couldn’t recall any other thoughts, only fantasies of sleep—no, of a hot shower, then sleep. She could almost feel it now. Timeflash had installed a shower that had dragon-level water temperature and pressure, which was absolutely divine, even for someone who sometimes felt like she needed to scrub her steel skin. There were bunks, too. Delicious, communal, fairly uncomfortable bunks that right now, sounded like a personal paradise.

She walked through the front door and toward the stairs but didn’t get halfway there before Brian intercepted her.

“Kristen! I’ve been looking for you,” he said.

“What? No Kissy-Krissy this time? Did your check not clear or something?”

“Nah,” he replied. “No one else is close enough to hear, so there’s no point in irritating you.”

“Did you have a point? Or did you decide to deny me a shower and sleep for fun?” she asked sharply.

“I was going to fix you a cup of coffee, but I thought this was too urgent.”

Kristen sagged. She’d have loved a cup of coffee but he had piqued her curiosity. She tried to shake the need for sleep off and prepared herself to hear what he had to tell her.

“The Dragon Council called,” he said and sucked in a breath of air as if to ready himself. Obviously, that wasn’t the big piece of news.

She frowned. “Are you sure it’s them? After that shit show with the wild goose chase in Colombia and me getting…” Lured? Tricked? What did you call it when an elder dragon tried to make you go insane before they attempted to murder you? “Misdirected?” she finished lamely.

“It was the real one this time. I spoke to them via video and connected via multiple lines. Apparently, they have a new protocol after that mess in the caves,” Brian said.

“Well, it’s good that they can at least adapt when needed,” she snapped. She didn’t mean to be so snippy but desperately wanted sleep. Instead, she had to listen to messages like her parents had once done on a machine. “Did you tell them about our mission to Colombia?”

“Yes. I updated them on our progress with the four dragons we rescued from there and confirmed that we haven’t seen any further activity. They said they’d already read the report I initially sent in, but—”

“But what?” Again, Kristen hadn’t meant to snap, but her fatigue plus speaking to someone she was familiar with like her brother took away most of her self-control.

“But dragons are hard to read. I can tell you’re tired and annoyed right now, no problem, but this guy on the line…I don’t know. I couldn’t tell if he was pleased with our progress or not.”

She sighed. The council was a constant worry for her. For now, she had managed to convince them to hold off on killing most of humanity, but she knew that decision hung by a thread connected to an ax that waited to drop and cleave the relative peace of the Earth in two. The dragons had only managed to hold onto their power via force. If their position as the preeminently powerful lifeform was taken from them, they would retaliate in the only way they knew how—with violence.

While she knew stopping cells was important and that the dragons probably understood this—at least intellectually—she also knew that the leaders of the technomages—like Havington, who they’d faced in Florence, and the Iron Dragon—were the real prizes. If she wanted to stop the dragons from slaughtering billions of humans, she needed to get them more results.

“I had hoped that they would be more pleased with Colombia. That was an entire cell,” Kristen complained. Despair was able to worm its way into her mind quite easily given her exhausted state.

“Maybe they were pleased.” Brian threw his hands up in a placating gesture that he’d used a thousand times on their mom. It was about as ineffective against his sister as it was on Marty.

“Yeah. Maybe not,” she said. “But come on, what’s the real news? You wouldn’t have stopped me to say you filed a report.”

“True,” he said, his lips tight.

“And?”

“And they passed a message along as well,” Brian stated.

“Will you tell me the contents of this message or should I assume that a force of dragons has already started burning Europe to the ground?”

“Honestly, I wish it were that straightforward.” He shook his head.

“Brian.” She used her most motherly tone.

He straightened. “The Dragon Council wants you to speak to Constance Vigil.”

In an instant, every trace of sleepiness, exhaustion, and fatigue evaporated from her mind. “She’s alive?”

“I had the same thought.” He nodded grimly. “I assumed they would have pumped her for as much information as they could before…” He mimed dangling a tiny human above his mouth and pretended to drop it in and swallow it.

“Are you sure?”

“Of the message? Yes. They said she has information she will tell only to you, in person, and to no one else. They want that information badly, apparently, so want you at a location tomorrow morning.”

Kristen wasn’t sure what to do. She needed to appease the Dragon Council and knew that not only the lives of her team but the lives of millions of innocent people depended on her. But something about this seemed…off.

She told her brother as much.

“So…you want me to tell them to go fuck themselves? Or…”

She guffawed at the sheer absurdity of telling the most powerful group of beings on the planet such a thing. “No…tell them…” Something brilliant occurred to her. “Tell them you need to verify their credentials again and once that’s all in order, I’ll head out with a security force.”

“I already verified it. I promise you, this message is legitimate.”

“I know,” she said. “But this will buy me time for a shower and a few precious hours of sleep.”

“You got a message from the council and you intend to take a nap?” He looked both horrified and impressed.

“It’s the middle of the night. That doesn’t count as a nap.”

He shrugged. “It depends on your sleep schedule, I guess, but yeah, I can stall for you. I’m sure I won’t be incinerated or anything because of it.”

“Calm down. They won’t do anything but ask again—and I do need a security team. While I turn my brain into a functioning body part again, do me a favor and assemble a few dragons to accompany me there in case.”

“They said Constance wants to speak to you alone and were very clear on that,” Brian said dubiously. He already knew she would not follow their orders.

“I won’t be separated from my entire team again. If they can’t see the wisdom of that after what happened, they don’t deserve to be on the Council.”

“Okay, okay,” he agreed. “I’ll tell them you’re assembling a team, not that you’re talking about a rebellion of your own.”

“Good. See you in the morning. We’ll try to leave before ten AM.”

“Right.”

Kristen didn’t even hear him. She skipped the shower and hurried to the bunks. By the time her head hit a pillow, she was already blissfully unconscious.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

What felt like moments later, Kristen woke with a jerk.

“What time is it?” she asked Brian, who stood over her armed with a cup of hot coffee in self-defense this time.

“Five in the morning,” he said as quickly as humanly possible as if he didn’t want her to realize she was up at such an ungodly hour after a day of heavy training.

“I told you I wanted to leave at ten. It won’t take me five hours to shower and eat breakfast.” She rubbed the sleep from her eyes but it didn’t help.

“You try telling dragons to be patient and let your sister sleep in,” he retorted.

“You didn’t tell them it was an order?” She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and put her feet to the floor. Why wasn’t she in her room? She thought hard until she remembered how tired she’d been and also that she lived there now. A moment later, she also recalled that she did have a private room but had been too tired to consider using it. She sipped the coffee and thanked it silently for the magic of caffeine.

“I told them you wanted a security force to escort you to a meeting with the Dragon Council and Constance Vigil, and they stopped listening to me completely. When I told them you wanted to sleep in—” He shuddered at the recent memory. “I thought you said they don’t eat people anymore.”

“They don’t.”

“Well, they still threaten to.”

She stood, drank more coffee, and headed to the showers.

“Kristen—”

“They can wait. They don’t want to smell this.”

Although she’d promised herself she would enjoy her scalding hot shower, this did not turn out to be the case. Rather than letting the hot water cleanse her body and mind, she was assaulted by the auras of what felt like a dozen dragons who pestered her to hurry up, stop dawdling, and remember that she had to meet the Dragon Council as soon as possible.

Disgruntled, Kristen scrubbed without ceremony and rinsed her hair until it was her natural flame-red instead of the dirty brown the muck of Silver Lake had changed it to after she had trained with Lumos. She toweled off quickly, dressed in her uniform, and went downstairs to find the drove of dragons so impatient that they couldn’t even wait until dawn to start harassing their leader.

It turned out there weren’t many dragons waiting for her but one of them could make her aura seem like many.

“About damn time,” Heartsbane said from the bottom of the stairs.

“Exactly what I thought,” Hernandez said. She stood at the dragon’s side and a duffel bag that was no doubt filled with explosives rested near her feet.

Emerald was there too, his arms folded across his broad chest and his eyes narrowed at her as she came down the stairs. Those were the only two dragons, though. Hernandez, Larry, and Jim rounded the team out.

“Has Brian filled you in all on what’s going on?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jim said.

“And we won’t let you anywhere near that bitch Constance without backup,” Hernandez added.

“She asked for a private meeting,” Kristen protested.

“Yeah, and I request to stick a pipe bomb up her asshole. How will we both get what we want?” the woman asked.

Heartsbane chuckled at the vulgar humor. “I don’t know how a bomb becomes a pipe bomb, but I support Hernandez’s plan on what to do with it.”

Kristen looked at the two women, one dragon and one human. She should have assumed that the two quick-tempered, foul-mouthed cops would get along, but she was still pleasantly surprised to see how much they seemed to have in common. A desire to blow Constance to smithereens, for starters.

“What about the rest of you?” she asked and looked at the others.

Emerald shrugged. “That was some bad shit that happened in Mammoth Caves. If we hadn’t gotten there when we did…” The dragon shook the dreadlocked, dark-skinned head of his human form. “You taking forever to wash your hair would have been the least of our problems.”

“Brian said he checked the intel,” she explained.

“I know. And I recognized the location we’re going to. It’s a maximum-security dragon prison reserved for those the Dragon Council wants to kill but can’t for some reason. I’ve taken a few prisoners there over the years.”

“So you know it’s not a trap,” Kristen said.

He snorted in amusement. “I know that if it is a trap, it’ll be a damn good one.”

She nodded. While she didn’t want to be paranoid, after what had happened the last time, it was probably better safe than sorry. “And what about you two?” she asked Larry and Jim.

“You should have a mage with you at all times if possible,” Larry explained. “And this place will be filled with complex security spells. Amy’s more powerful than I am, but if she got curious and poked at their systems…” He mimed an explosion with his fingers.

“And you, Jim?”

The Wonderkid half-smiled. “I know this might not make much sense on account of Constance saying she wants to speak to you and you alone, but I thought I should come in case I get a chance to talk to her.”

“You want to talk to that bitch?” Heartsbane demanded and her aura made it clear what she wanted to do to him.

“I think I might be in a good position to understand where she’s coming from. I used to hate dragons but I don’t anymore. She needs to go on the same journey of understanding I went on. I might be able to remind her why she got into all this.” He smiled his Wonderkid smile. “Plus, if shit goes south, I’m the best shot out of everyone here.”

The group laughed at the tacit threat of violence, a pressure valve to release their tension.

“All right, then,” Kristen said and acknowledged the team that would go with her. “I haven’t checked where we’re headed. Will we take the jet or go by dragon wing?”

“Jet,” Brian said as he approached the group from his bank of computer monitors. “You’ll take the jet to the Denver airport and from there, fly to the top of this mountain.”

Her phone buzzed and she saw he had sent her a location.

“I’ve given you access codes and Larry knows a spell of identification that should get you in without too much trouble,” her brother said.

“I thought they were expecting us?” She frowned. “When I was in dragon jail, I could still receive visitors.”

“This facility is a couple of levels of security clearance beyond where you were locked up during that investigation,” Emerald said. “They’re extremely paranoid. There’s never been a breakout but not for lack of trying. You have to remember that the only beings who might try to get someone out of this jail are either dragons, mages, or teams of both.”

“Noted,” she said.

“If you guys are all done chatting, I’d recommend getting your asses to the airport and on your way to Denver,” Brian said.

Kristen couldn’t help but smile at her brother’s pushy language. “Did something happen that you now feel comfortable bossing around a couple of dragons, a mage, and cops who know how to apply lethal force?”

“Yeah. A group of dragons and mages have been on my ass all night for not accepting their credentials. I’ll take my chances against you punks if it means they’ll stop bugging me.”

“It’s not like they’d hurt you,” Larry said sympathetically.

“Yeah, well, they certainly are more than willing to try to convince me otherwise,” he grumbled.

“Brian’s right,” Kristen said. “I appreciate the sleep, as short as it was, and the shower. Now, let’s go.”

They hurried to the airport, boarded the private jet, and left without delay.

She focused on keeping her aura confident but in reality, she had no idea what to expect. Why on earth would Constance—the woman who had almost killed her half a dozen times and who had claimed to be like a mother to her—want to see her now? How was she even still alive?

While she needed the answers to these questions, she didn’t know if she wanted them.

The flight to Denver was uneventful and the flight to the mountains only more remarkable in that she had to get used to flying in the thinner air. Her dragon healing powers made simple work of it, though, and pumped her body full of extra red blood cells to fuel her dragon form. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the magic required to outsmart the wind.

It was a strange comfort that neither Heartsbane nor Emerald seemed better equipped for the thin air. All three dragons worked twice as hard to gain half as much altitude as they rose higher up the mountain to where the prison was located.

“Too bad Lumos didn’t come,” Emerald said when they were maybe halfway up. “I’ve seen that old dragon stay stable in hurricane winds. I bet he knows a trick or two about flying in thin air.”

Heartsbane chuckled. “The old fart was too tired.”

“From what?” Kristen asked. All he’d done the previous day was train with her, and from the way the session had gone—what with him killing her something like a hundred times—she’d come out of it worse than he had.

“From training with the Steel Dragon, no doubt,” Larry said from her back.

“No way. He was fine the entire time and barely winded.”

“I don’t know.” The mage sounded skeptical. “Windlock was like that, too. He’d be all claws and flames while we were on a case but when we had a day off, he would rest his old bones.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Steel,” Heartsbane said. “I’ve trained with you. It’s not easy and Lumos is thousands of years old. It probably took him every ounce of strength he had to beat you.”

She felt an immediate swell of pride at the praise of her team. It felt good to think that she’d done better with Lumos than she’d realized. But the emotional lift was short-lived. If he was already coming up against his limits while training her, what did that say about her chances of getting strong enough to face the Iron Dragon and the hidden dragon who had attacked her in the cave?

The thought left her uneasy but she’d have to consider it more later. Besides, holding back in a fight was sometimes more draining than going all out, so maybe he was suffering from something like that. In the next moment, her concerns were finally pushed from her mind when she saw the prison.

She had looked for it on the snowcapped peak of the mountain, thinking it would be tucked in on one side or the other or perhaps even nestled at the very top.

None of these proved adequate for the level of defense the dragons wanted.

The facility wasn’t on any of the sides because it was built into the top of the mountain. As they approached, Kristen could see that four walls surrounded a sunken fortress. At the top of each of these walls was a dragon guard and a mass of explosives. She realized that the sides of the prison were rigged with bombs so they’d start an avalanche. Anyone who thought they could walk up the side of the mountain would simply be hurled to the bottom or worse, crushed to death by thousands of tons of snow, dirt, and stone.

At each of the four corners of the perimeter walls were massive crossbows—scorpions, she knew they were called from her time playing videogames with Brian. These were each manned by a dragon and they tracked her and her team as they approached the prison.

“Larry? Do you think you could block one of those bolts if they fired them at us?” Kristen asked.

He laughed. “Not a goddamn chance. Every one of them is enchanted to resist magic or anything that will slow them. I can feel the spells from here. Whoever cast them wasn’t exactly subtle about it, but I guess that would defeat the point. I have to say, I don’t think even Amy could block those.”

“It’s better not to cause them to launch,” Emerald said. “Every one of them is tipped with a cut diamond bigger than any you humans have in your museums. It’s sharp enough to even slice through dragon scale.”

“At least they’re taking something seriously,” she muttered.

In the center of the recessed mountain top was a blocky structure of brick and concrete, completely lacking in windows. On its roof, seven dragons prowled in formation while an eighth signaled for the team to land.

Kristen nodded at Emerald and Heartsbane to get into formation, pointed her nose at the roof, and led them to the landing zone.

Simply stepping foot on the structure sent a tingle up her spine.

“I feel it too,” Larry whispered as one of the seven dragons patrolling the roof changed to human form—albeit a human form that wore armor and was armed with a sword—and approached them.

“This feels as secure as dragons can make it. The same spell they use to rob mages of their powers with those bracelets and imprison dragons is woven into the very bricks here. I don’t know if I could so much as conjure a spark.”

“Now’s not the time to try,” she said as the dragon came to stand before them.

“Lady Steel,” the woman with closely cropped hair in her human form said as she bowed. “We have expected your arrival and trust that your flight here was without turmoil.”

“Thank you,” she responded, not quite sure what to do with the woman’s frigid tone. At least she welcomed them. She made an attempt at humor. “Are you sure you don’t need to check our IDs?” She flashed the smile the media always played when they had footage of her.

The dragon appreciated neither the smile nor the joke. “Every dragon aura is unique. One of our people recognized you as soon as you came into range from a…celebration you both attended in Detroit. Most of us met Emerald when he came here in the past.”

“What’s wrong, Quickclaw? Don’t you want to explain how you know my aura?” Heartsbane smiled at the leader of the guards.

The woman flashed the smallest, coldest smile that could still be counted as a smile before she simply answered, “No.” She turned her attention to Kristen. “I recognize that you felt you needed an escort to come this far. I hope the rest of you can enjoy the spectacular views from the top of this mountain while I escort Lady Steel to see the technomage.” She said “spectacular views” the way a doctor might describe an infected wound.

“Hell no!” Hernandez said as she clambered off Heartsbane’s back.

“You must have lost your mind,” Heartsbane said and transformed into her human form so she could approach Quickclaw until they stood face to face.

“I assure you, she’ll be safe,” the guard said, her sneer directed at Hernandez. She was evidently a dragon who didn’t care for impertinent humans and wasn’t concerned with hiding her bias.

“We’re not worried about you.” The woman sneered with equal disdain. “I have no doubt that the Steel Dragon could declaw you if she wished to.”

“I see you finally found someone as skilled in social niceties as you are,” Quickclaw said to Heartsbane.

“The human’s right,” Heartsbane said. “We won’t let Lady Steel near that mage without backup.”

“It’s not an option,” the guard said. “If I had my way, we wouldn’t even let you in.” Quickclaw nodded at Kristen.

“Why not?” she demanded.

“Because this is a maximum-security prison for dragons and mages. These people don’t get visitors,” one of the other guards snapped. They’d all listened to the exchange with their dragon hearing, of course.

“Besides that,” Quickclaw continued, “we can’t have random people in the prison as it would expose the layout and damage the security of the facility.”

“I assure you that you can trust my people,” Kristen told her.

“I have heard of you, Steel Dragon. Even up here on the edge of nowhere, we have heard the stories of how you work with human and mage and dragon. I have no doubt that you trust your people, but that does not change the nature of the world.”

“They won’t tell anyone.”

“Not intentionally, no,” Quickclaw admitted. “But what if they came under duress? What if a mage goes fishing in their mind and finds something of interest?”

“They wouldn’t do anything to endanger our mission.” She was adamant and aside from the fact that she believed it, she did not want to be separated from her team.

“And if someone could convince them that getting inside would help your mission? The person you are here to see fights for a new world order. What if someone can use magic and force to convince one of these people to divulge our secrets? What recourse do we have when the dragons and mages we have kept in here for centuries are released into the world?” Quickclaw looked at the team comprised of dragons, humans, and a mage. She seemed expectant rather than distrusting like she knew one of them would crumble as surely as a log would burn.

“Then why allow me inside at all?” Kristen asked. “I’m not particularly well learned in magic, and the entire world knows I don’t like the way things are between humans, dragons, and mages. Why trust me and not them?”

“I don’t trust you,” Quickclaw said matter of factly. “In fact, I don’t trust any of the guards on this roof with me, although some of them have worked with me here for decades. It is not in our job to trust or to be lenient or bend rules.”

“Then why let me in?” she repeated.

“Because part of our job is also to obey the Dragon Council, and they ordered us to let you in.” The guard ground the words out, obviously still aggrieved at being usurped of her power where she was master. “If it were up to me, I would let the magic bitch rot before she had any visitors, but the Council feels this is not wise. Thus, here we all are, arguing about things that none of us like and yet we will soon all agree to.”

“Who says I’ll agree?” Kristen asked.

That earned another tiny smile from Quickclaw that vanished as quickly as it appeared. “You didn’t fly all this way to go home without coming inside. Come, I will take you to Constance’s cell. If you still feel that she is a threat after you see what is in place to keep her secured then, by all means, come out here and fly home without speaking to the big bad scary mage. My orders were to let you in to speak to her, not to hold your hand while you two have teatime.”

She looked at her team. Heartsbane and Hernandez shook their heads firmly but neither spoke out of turn, which she knew must have been a struggle for them both. She looked at Larry and was unsurprised to see him nod. His response made sense as he’d been a dragon investigator’s mage for a long time. Of course he wanted the next clue. Emerald surprised her by nodding as well. She didn’t know if that was because he thought she could beat Constance in a fight if it came down to it—a debatable hypothesis to be sure—or if he simply thought it would be worth talking to the mage. Finally, she turned to Jim, curious as to what he would do given that her team’s opinion was tied.

To her surprise, he nodded. It was interesting that he now trusted dragons enough to trust her life to them. More interesting was that he seemed to trust Constance enough to want whatever information she had.

Kristen nodded as well.

“It’s great to know the leader of the only group of people fighting to stop a war from breaking out relies on her escort to make her decisions,” Quickclaw snipped.

“I know you lash out when you’re stressed, Quickclaw,” Heartsbane said. “But the freaking Dragon Council operates by working together to decide, so quite frankly, I don’t know what the hell makes you think Kristen should be any different.”

“Plus, a smart leader listens to the wisdom of her advisors, then does whatever the fuck she thinks is best,” Hernandez said.

Neither of the two women made a move to follow Kristen, though, which proved that although they disagreed with their leader, they still respected her decisions.

Quickclaw didn’t fail to notice this, either. She took it all in and frowned as she tried to parse the balance of power in evidence. Apparently, she found what she was looking for because she nodded at one of the guards on the roof to follow her and Kristen into the prison.

They walked to a padlocked iron trapdoor that was sunk into the concrete roof. Quickclaw stood upon it, and—to Kristen’s shock—danced. It was an elaborate series of movements like something out of a Celtic festival that might look best if accompanied by bagpipes and a base drum. After a moment during which her legs moved incredibly fast and something pinged and clinked in a beautiful melody, the door clicked. The other guard—a gruff, bearded man who looked none too happy to see the visitors—opened the outside lock.

They descended a rickety ladder into a bright white room.

“Do you have any magic items?” Quickclaw asked. “Because if you do, they’re about to be junk.”

“Only one,” Kristen said and took a magic dampening bracelet out.

“I thought you’d be above such things,” the woman said.

In truth, the device was one of the special ones that appeared to block magic without actually inhibiting it. It was good—and slightly troubling—to see that it fooled even these security experts. “You never know,” she said enigmatically, which seemed to be enough for their escort.

A dragon—they were all in human form now that they were inside the prison—took the bracelet upstairs and gave it to someone on her team before they returned.

“Are you ready? This will feel weird,” Quickclaw said.

“I’m ready for whatever you have that—”

Before she could finish, a bright light flashed. She closed her eyes to protect herself from such a childish defense and wondered if this was all these dragons had when she realized that she could no longer feel her powers. She couldn’t turn into a dragon or steel or use her dragon speed.

“It’s a bitch, huh?” the guard asked.

“Do you do this every time?” she asked. She’d forgotten how much her body weighed when she didn’t have magical energy to power her.

“It’s the only way to be sure no magic artifacts or mages sneak inside. It hurts the mages worse than it does us. Your powers will be back in time for the other security measures…well, partially, anyway. I’ll need you to stick close to me once we start moving, understand?”

“I thought we were only going to see a prisoner?” Kristen asked. Her brain had had difficulty functioning and her mind, like everything else, felt slower.

“This is the most secure building in the world,” Quickclaw said. “One cannot simply saunter into this prison.”

The woman pushed a door open at the far end of the white room to reveal a spiral staircase. They started down it. Every few feet, there was a hole in the wall. “Murder holes,” the guard said proudly. “If you try something, my guards kill you. If I don’t check in before I come out, they kill you when you try to leave.”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to know your secrets.”

Quickclaw chuckled. “Oh, child, the murder holes are no secret. There is a long way to go, yet.”

Kristen nodded and followed while the other dragon guard brought up the rear. At the end of the spiral staircase, they reached a hallway carved out of the stone of the mountain itself. There were three paths, one to the front, and one to both the right and left.

“This one we show all the prisoners so we’re all on the same page. Walk ahead and see what happens.”

She took a tentative step forward, only for the floor to fall away as if it were nothing but sand. A few paces out—a jumpable distance—the effect seemed to stop. She was about to jump across the gap—she thought she could clear it even without her dragon powers—when a bolt of energy cracked where she had intended to land. Disconcerted, she swallowed and realized she could feel the spell across the distance. She didn’t want to imagine what it would be like if she jumped.

“That is there because we know most people will reflexively jump past the crumbling floor. You need to understand that this entire prison is like that. It is a labyrinth made of traps created by guards with nothing better to do than find new and unexpected ways to kill those dumb enough to try to escape or break in here. Every time you think you can outsmart a trap, there is another one. When you think three steps ahead, we have thought ten. This facility is designed to kill you in as short a time as possible and drive you insane if you last more than a few minutes. You must stick close to me and step only where I step. If you dawdle, Oakfist will force you to go faster. If you dawdle again, we will simply let the prison swallow you.”

“I thought the council wanted me to meet Constance,” she said.

“They knew there were risks,” Quickclaw responded.

Kristen nodded. “Is there a reason why we’re waiting?” That earned her a tiny smile from her guide before they continued.

They proceeded down the right corridor, turned right, and after another few turns, she was well and truly lost. The problem wasn’t only the twisting turns of the monotonous stone walls but that every few paces, Quickclaw would point out a tripwire, a pressure plate, or a dusty old rune etched into the stone itself.

Most of these allowed them to pass without incident but sometimes, that was simply impossible.

“Get ready to jump,” Quickclaw said at one of them before she tripped a wire that delivered a barrage of spinning axes at their shins. Kristen jumped and the weapons streaked on, only to vanish into the gloom behind them.

“Those get many of our visitors,” Oakfist said as if having your legs chopped off at the knee was somehow funny.

They continued over pools filled with liquids far darker than water and past pits filled with creatures Kristen hadn’t thought existed. Sometimes, they’d pause for Quickclaw to mutter spells under her breath that would set runes to glowing. This seemed to be the worst kind of trap as whenever she activated one of these, she and Oakfist would stop their banter—as infrequent as it was—and focus on escaping before whatever force they’d disabled came back to kill them.

“How can you do this every time there’s a visitor?” she asked.

“I told you,” Quickclaw said as she flung her arm into Kristen’s chest and flattened her against a wall as a series of darts rocketed past. “We don’t do visitors here. Our last one was…”

“Two years ago?” Oakfist volunteered.

“I was trying to think when the last one was who made it out alive.”

He chuckled. “Oh. I think that was eight. One of the Dragon Council members wanted one of our captive dragons to know that they’d finally liquidated their entire estate. I lost a finger helping deliver that message, but the look on the dragon’s face was worth it.”

Great, Kristen thought as she dodged a swinging blade held up by a spell and nothing more. I’m escorted to my death by a couple of suicidal masochists.

“We’re here,” Quickclaw said after a particularly taxing set of jumps and flips they’d had to accomplish to avoid being caught on almost invisible strands of something both guards had assured her was far stronger than steel.

“Where?” she asked. It didn’t look any different than the rest of the prison had. From what she could see, it was merely more endless twisting corridors that were riddled with traps.

“Her door,” Quickclaw said, slid a key between two cracks in the stone, and opened a door Kristen was certain had not been there a moment before.

“Are all the prisoners down that hall?” she asked and peered down a long corridor that was lit with painfully bright lights. It was odd to see it after so much gloom.

The guard snorted a bitter laugh. “Prisoners are hidden throughout the maze. This might be the first cell we’ve passed or the fiftieth. That’s the power of this prison. She’s by herself, the only cell at the end of the hall. There are no traps in there. We keep a magic dampening field in place so they won’t work.”

“Now you suddenly want me to go alone?” she asked. “What happened to stick close to me or die?”

“Because that’s the only way the technomage bitch would agree to speak at all,” Oakfist growled.

“Do you mean she set the terms for this meeting?” For some reason, that deeply unsettled her.

“We haven’t managed to get a damn thing out of her,” Quickclaw said. “Not us, not the Council, no one. She told a councilor that she’d speak to you, and they’re all desperate enough to prevent this war that they agreed to it.”

“The idiots should have let her rot,” Oakfist added.

Kristen nodded. She accepted what they said but didn’t relax at all. She believed the guards were telling the truth, but something about all this felt wrong to her. Despite her reservations, she started down the hallway to speak to Constance Vigil, the woman who’d come closer to killing her more times than anyone else.

She only wished she didn’t feel like she was walking into the biggest trap of the entire prison when the guards closed the door behind her.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

As Kristen walked down the long, stark, brightly lit hallway, she wondered why the hell the dragons would decide to illuminate the inside of their magic prison with the harsh light of fluorescent bulbs.

Perhaps the intention was to keep the prisoners on edge, but if Constance was any indication, it didn’t seem to be working.

Her breath caught when she saw the technomage leader at the end of the hallway. She was seated behind a pane of glass reinforced with steel mesh—cross-legged and her eyes closed as she took deep, controlled breaths. Her posture suggested that she was meditating and was at peace with herself. It immediately stirred resentment and outrage. This woman—who had taken freedom from so many and the lives of even more—didn’t deserve such solace.

She cleared her throat and drew the prisoner out of her meditative state. Still, the mage didn’t look flustered. She opened her eyes slowly and a placid smile slid onto her face until she saw her visitor.

“Oh!” Constance said simply.

“Who the fuck did you expect? The Easter Bunny?” She was annoyed that she’d been summoned by this murderer and the woman had the audacity to act like she was surprised to see her.

“I wasn’t sure you would come,” the mage said.

“You told the Council you’d only speak to me. Some of us are willing to put our personal pleasure below a greater cause. I’d talk to far worse than you if it meant saving lives, although I guess that might not be possible,” Kristen said.

“That’s fair…” The woman still seemed shaken to see her and pushed to her feet. “I did ask for you to come but I never thought the Dragon Council would send the Steel Dragon to my cell to speak to me. I guess it’s gotten worse out there?”

“Exactly like you planned. More people and dragons have died,” she said.

“Then I owe you my gratitude.” Constance bowed. “I know we’ve had our disagreements in the past. Honestly, I wasn’t sure you would come at all.”

“I didn’t come for you, so don’t act like I did.”

The prisoner nodded. “You came because you want to know what I have to say.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” She retrieved her cellphone and showed the woman a picture of a dragon whose scales had been ripped from its body. “I came because I have a bone to pick with you—and I wanted to know if dragon security works to protect prisoners even when they don’t deserve it.”

She showed her another photo of a dragon, this one with her horns sawed off, followed by one of a dragon with no talons, a dragon’s wings impaled with meat hooks to stop it from flying, and finally, of a dragon’s eyes filled with terror. Her expression grim, she held up an image of a festering wound followed by numerous others, all similar.

“I’d ask what you have to say for yourself, but I realized a while ago that there’s nothing you can say that can make any of this right.” Kristen was shaking with rage.

“I know,” Constance agreed. She hung her head as a tear slipped down her cheek to fall on the hard floor of her cell.

“It’s good to know you haven’t wasted your time here. Your acting practice is paying off,” she said, determined not to let the technomage ruffle her. This was the woman who—as far as she knew—masterminded this entire operation and she now thought…what? That she could shed a few crocodile tears and her visitor would beg the guards to open her cell so she could give her a hug?

“I know you won’t believe me, but I am sorry.” Constance wiped her eyes and tried to meet her steely gaze.

“Sorry for not recruiting me? I had thought you wanted me to join your team and be a freedom fighter, but after seeing your…your assembly lines, I realized you merely wanted even stronger ingredients for your damn bullets.”

“No!” the mage said and the fierceness in her tone surprised her. She sagged as if even that exertion tired her. “Not for you, Kristen—never for you. If you’d joined me, you would have been a prime ally and a powerful friend, hopefully one of our leaders like…” She trailed off.

Kristen knew exactly what had made her stop talking. “I’ve met your Iron Dragon. You would’ve turned me into a weapon like her instead of using my body to make weapons? Somehow, I’m not exactly flattered.”

“No one could have made Katrina into a weapon without her wanting to become one,” Constance countered with no effort to pretend she didn’t know what she was talking about, a small triumph for Kristen. Maybe the bullshit the woman had spouted for so long had finally dried up.

“Oh, so she simply learned how to use her powers to fight and kill all by herself?”

“You have learned how to fight and kill and we never trained you,” the technomage pointed out. “We should have…although then, perhaps you wouldn’t have the moral resolve that so impresses me.”

“Fuck your flattery,” she said harshly. “You trained a child to be a warrior. Admit it.”

Constance shrugged. “It’s true. We did and would have done the same to you as well.”

“Then why didn’t you?” Kristen didn’t see how this could be pertinent to finding and stopping the other technomage cells. Still, ever since she’d known of the woman’s role in her early life, she couldn’t help her curiosity about how their pasts intertwined.

“Like fools, we didn’t think you were a dragon.” The prisoner laughed weakly as if it were all a cosmic joke played on her. “Most dragons respond to spells we have that can force you to change shape. You didn’t. We thought that perhaps you were some kind of runt—a dragon stuck in its human form. It was an existence that Windfire couldn’t allow. It pained him, but he ordered you disposed of and in those days, none of us mages were bold enough to talk back to a dragon.”

“It’s a good thing not everyone in your lab was so spineless,” she stated.

“Indeed. If I had known the woman who stole you out from under our noses took you to a family before we ran her off the road, we might have a very different meeting right now.”

“You’re cheering that my father’s sister was killed? How can you be so heartless?”

“I trained myself to be heartless,” Constance said morosely. “I had to if I wanted to be able to fight dragons. I’ve lost so many people—friends, allies, lovers—all to the dragons.” She shook her head.

“If you want me to pity you, forget it. That won’t happen,” Kristen said, although part of her had begun to wonder about why the woman had called her here. Had she finally been forced to come face to face with her regrets? Was this a changed woman? Or was it simply an act?

“I know,” the technomage replied. “I don’t deserve your pity. I should have fought harder for you like I did for Katrina.”

“What do you mean?”

“The second batch of…you’re not clones, not exactly. Each of you is genetically unique, but the methods we used were unusual and based on cloning methods devised by humans. There was considerable variation. Some of you and your siblings—like you and Katrina—are so incredibly strong, while others are…well, not like you.”

“Those were the ones you used to create weapons from?”

Constance nodded. “I thought it would all be worth it in the end. Now…I don’t know anymore.”

She had known that the mage always believed the ends justified the means but did she still feel that way? There was something else she said that caught her attention. “What did you mean when you said you fought harder for Katrina?”

The prisoner looked at her as if it were her duty to answer these questions. “I fought to keep Katrina around, even when she didn’t manifest an ability to transform into a dragon. She was such a happy baby, and once she started walking…well, it was clear she had dragon speed and strength. None of us had seen a toddler punch through a cabinet door until she discovered that was where we kept the animal crackers.”

It was both horrifying and endearing to hear about this alternative childhood that she could have grown up with. “How long was it until she manifested her dragon form?”

“Not long. She was six years old. There was a raid—even then, some dragons knew of our activities—and she was almost incinerated in the attack. She turned to iron to protect herself. No one had seen anything like that before so of course, we devoted even more time to her. It didn’t take long before Windfire got his precious little daughter to transform. Since then…well, if you have met, I’m sure you know she’s a powerful ally and champion of our cause.”

“And we’ll stop her and throw her in this place with you, exactly like we will the rest of the technomages who come willingly.”

Constance sagged. “Those photos you showed me…you took those yourself?”

“My team and I document the atrocities that have been committed in the name of the cause you champion. I don’t take credit for having the stomach to be able to take all of those pictures.”

“My mages are in trouble then. Our cause is hurting and maybe failing.”

Kristen folded her arms. “It’s my job to stop the fire you tried to start. I’m here because I was led to believe you could help me with this. Will that happen or should I leave you to rot like the guards seem so desperate to do?”

“I have information for you but first, answer me this.” There was a tinge of desperation in the woman’s eyes, so she let her speak. “Do you feel absolutely certain that the Council will follow through with not slaughtering humanity when you have removed the knife from their throat?” She let the question hang but before Kristen could answer she asked another. “Or will the Council go ahead anyway, once the risk of war is gone thanks to the Steel Dragon obliterating the mage cells, and remove the danger once and for all?”

“The Council won’t kill all of humanity,” she said. It was the only true statement she could make about the Dragon Council’s motives.

“Of course not. They need their servants, don’t they? But how many might they kill if they decide to? Have they promised you a number? A percentage?”

Kristen didn’t know how to answer. The Council hadn’t promised her anything. They merely held off on beginning a war to give her a chance. What the prisoner had said made a horrible kind of sense. Once the mages were out of the picture and the dragon bullets removed from play, the dragons would be free to decimate humanity without any risk to themselves. Was that their end game? She knew some dragons wanted to do exactly that. Others had more loyalty to the humans on which they so relied. She didn’t know what most dragons thought about it, though, and worse, she didn’t know the minds of the Council—the dragons who would ultimately decide the fate of the world.

“They’ve promised you nothing,” Constance said and immediately saw through her indecision and doubt.

“And you have?” she shouted through the glass. “You asked me to join an organization that uses sentient beings for ammunition and you dare insult the credibility of others? You never told me the horrors you committed or what you were capable of.”

“And they have?”

“This is not about them!” she shouted.

Constance recoiled visibly from the glass between them, but she didn’t stop talking about the dragons. Then again, she never had stopped talking about them, even when the two of them had been in combat. “You’re right, Kristen, about the way we treated the dragons. There were dozens of them, you know, and many more besides who we lost to power outages or a bad pH in their tank or any other number of reasons that don’t matter. Beyond that, we killed dragons. I admit it.”

“And people. Don’t act like humans weren’t caught in some of your bombings.”

“Of course humans were lost.” The woman sneered and some of her old fury revealed itself. “Humans are lost every goddamn day on this planet, and do you know why? Because of them.”

“That’s why I joined Dragon SWAT—to stop dragons from hurting people. We could have used mages like you, you know.”

“Oh, you poor, sweet thing.” She shook her head as if she’d failed her. “Still? After all this? You still believe these things you say?”

“It’s why I keep fighting,” she said, the words like rock.

“Why exactly? To stop a few dragons from killing a few people? You’re right in that dragons don’t directly kill that many people. A few are incinerated every year and a few others crushed, but most people get to go about their business.”

“Then why try to burn the world?” Kristen demanded.

“Because it was already on fire!” Constance raged. “Think about what most people’s business was. You live in America so you should know better than most. When one of your fellow Americans was sick, who paid for it? If there was a car accident, who picked up the mess?”

“We did,” she said. “Humans work for themselves.”

“I know they do. Believe me, I know. I also know that when an insurance claim is denied, it’s because a shareholder with a cave full of gold wants more profits. I know that when animals are killed and thrown to rot in the field, it’s because it's more economical than butchering them and sending them to the places in the world with starving people. I know that so many Americans—thousands and thousands—don’t have a roof over their heads, warm food in their bellies, or jackets to keep out the rain. Meanwhile, who sits atop their piles of gold, getting richer and fatter off the suffering of humans?”

“You don’t get to preach after what you’ve done—”

“I know, Kristen, I know. I’ve made serious mistakes, one of the largest of which was letting you go and get brainwashed to believe that the status quo of the world you live in works for anyone but the very top.”

Kristen shook her head. She didn’t know about all that but she did know that Constance had done horrible things and hidden true atrocities from her simply so she could further her agenda. She wouldn’t let the mage worm her way into her mind.

“What did you want to say to me? I hope it wasn’t all this bullshit about a childhood you wished I had,” she said and deliberately moved the subject away from conjecture and the political agenda the woman always agitated for—even there, apparently, in the depths of the bleakest prison ever built.

“You’re right, of course, as you always seem to be,” she said with a weak smile as she wiped the tears from her face. She’d lost control of herself and took a few deep breaths to try to regain composure. “I asked you to come because I know the name of the dragon who is behind the push to exterminate humanity.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“You’re lying,” Kristen said to Constance. Maybe it wasn’t the best tactic when interrogating someone for knowledge, but it was all she could manage and seemed to speak for itself. It was almost insane for her to think that a single dragon could be behind the entire technomage rebellion. She had come to understand that the prisoner was a huge player in all that had happened and even she wasn’t fully in control of the technomages, as proved by their continued attacks even now that she was incarcerated.

“It’s true,” the woman said sagely. “All of this really does point to a single individual and what’s more, it’s a member of the Dragon Council.”

She wanted to deny it. Her instinct pushed to scream in the technomage’s face that she would remain locked in there forever with her bullshit. She wanted to walk away and leave and tell her team that this was all one huge waste of time but she couldn’t. When she’d been attacked in the cave and her team sent on a false operation in South America, the orders had come from the North American Dragon Council. Larry and Lumos both agreed that all signs pointed to someone on the Council itself or someone powerful enough to influence its members. Now, the mage corroborated that.

“How can you possibly know this?” She tried to phrase it as a demand but her voice was too shaky.

“Remember,” Constance told her, “a huge part of my role in the organization was intelligence gathering. We waited for over twenty years for the right moment to strike at dragon society. While we were doing that, we became quite good at gleaning information from patterns.”

“You weren’t that good,” she retorted.

“Please,” the prisoner said and raised an eyebrow at her. “We were always a step ahead of you. My teams were able to circumvent security systems in homes and at dragon events. We were able to track the motions of many of the world’s most powerful dragons and strike with impunity.”

“Until I came along.”

Constance nodded. “Why do you think I asked for you?”

Kristen had no reply to that, so she simply said, “Go on,” and folded her arms.

“There is a web of connected events out there, all of them pushing the world into a more chaotic state and bringing multiple factions to the brink of war.”

“When did all this start?”

“Long ago—in our organization and probably before that—but the first event that directly crossed with your life was Shadowstorm’s attempt to destroy Detroit.”

“It wasn’t a very successful attempt,” she said.

“I know—because of you,” the woman said. “You stopped it. You were a factor in this that no one expected, least of all him.”

“Who? Shadowstorm?”

“No, Shadowstorm was only a pawn—a young dragon hungry for power like so many others. Who do you think told him to try to start a civil war using the gangs of Detroit in the first place?”

“The simplest answer is that he did it for personal gain,” she said after a moment. “He wanted to control more land and wealth than he already did. I thought that was one of the reasons you and your terrorists were so opposed to dragons ruling the world.”

Constance chuckled darkly. “Shadowstorm was wealthy enough that he could have purchased half of Detroit outright if he so desired. If he had only been more subtle, he could have had the entire city eating out of his hand. And you know—probably better than I—that subtlety was one of his strengths. Plus, dragons have thrived on the work of humans long enough to know that chaos isn’t good for business. Why burn a city? No one will be left to cook your meals or clean your messes.”

“Maybe he simply did it for the fun of it,” Kristen said. “Shadowstorm was an asshole. Sometimes, assholes merely like to watch things burn.”

The technomage nodded. “You’re right of course. And Shadowstorm acted of his own volition much of the time. But I’m not asking you to trust me based on a single shred of evidence.”

“Then what else do you have?” Kristen asked, not sure if she wanted more intel so she could disprove the woman or believe her.

“What about his mother? Who released her from prison early? That is not something that is done often for beings who live as long as the dragons do. A powerful player must have been involved to tip the scales of justice in her favor, especially after that mess with your brother. It was an embarrassment for dragons the world over. Those kinds of perversions are not the kind of thing they simply forget and yet they seemed to when they released her.”

“At this point, you’ve only told me that a mother and son were working together. That hardly sounds like a grand conspiracy.”

“What happened in Florence? Do you have all the answers to that?” Constance asked.

“How do you know about what happened in Europe? You were locked up here when all that went down,” she replied flatly.

“This prison is powerful but these guards are weak. They’re not used to dealing with matters this urgent. From what I can tell, they usually leave a dragon in here for years before they bother to ask them anything. They fear the rest of my organization and have been in here asking questions that are quite easy to glean information from. For example, they asked me how the technomages in Europe knew to blow up a certain sound studio before you even got there. Tell me, do you have an answer to that question?”

Kristen’s blood ran cold. Florence had been a hot mess. Every step of the way, it had become more and more apparent that there had been a leak in European SWAT—something finally confirmed when one of the dragons had confessed. They had consistently been outmaneuvered by a small band of mages, and she had never fully known how…not until now when she recalled the fact that the betrayer must have reported to someone higher up the chain.

And there was the series of events that led to her being trapped in a cave, alone and at the mercy of the shadow dragon and his diabolical powers. That was the most compelling evidence of all that a powerful dragon was manipulating events to take her and her team out of the picture. Was it so farfetched to think that this wasn’t all about her? That someone attempted to stop her because she was interfering with a larger plan? She didn’t want to believe Constance at all. Everything in her wanted to dismiss the woman as a nut and a terrorist—as the murderer and the monster that she was.

But she couldn’t.

There was something to what she was saying. Whether it could be proved or not was another thing, but she already knew she couldn’t ignore it.

Still, she had to push. “You haven’t told me anything but conspiracy theories yet. If you want me to believe you, I need to know the name of the dragon you say is behind all this.”

Constance nodded fearfully, then leaned closer to the glass. She gestured for her to do the same.

She did, both curious and almost eager for the prisoner to try something. Her words were troubling but if she attacked, retribution would be automatic. That sounded far simpler than trying to untangle the web of deceit that seemed to stretch all around her.

Once she was sufficiently close to the glass, Constance whispered so quietly she almost had to read her lips to make the words out. “The Masked One.”

Kristen wanted to dismiss the title as the stupid fake name it obviously was, but hadn’t she heard that name once before? As La Flamme lay dying, he’d said something about a ‘masked one,’ hadn’t he? It didn’t make sense at the time and she’d almost forgotten it. Then she thought of her battle against the dragon of shadow deep under the earth. He had threatened to kill her friends and wear their skulls…was he this Masked One? Had she already fought against him and discovered how powerful he could be?

Her innate caution warned her not to reveal all that to Constance. She had more sense than whoever had let the woman learn too many of the details of what happened in Florence.

“That name means nothing to me,” she said. That was true, at least. She didn’t know why she didn’t want to lie, but she didn’t unless she had no choice.

“Ask some of your dragon friends about it, especially the older ones. They will have at least heard stories. I promise you that.”

“And that’s all you have for me? A code name? I can tell you right now that no one on the Dragon Council of North America is named ‘the Masked One.’ If this is it, I guess I should simply go.” She was bluffing, but the technomage didn’t seem to notice anything beyond the mention of the name.

“Don’t say his name here. For all we know, he could be the one who got you access to me,” she protested.

“Don’t you think that’s a little paranoid?” Kristen glanced over her shoulder and down the long white hallway, feeling paranoid herself.

“I have come to believe there is a player working behind the scenes to engineer much of what’s going on,” the woman confided. “Someone—a dragon—helped my cell get the initial DNA for our effort.”

“That’s bullshit,” she said. “I met the dragon who provided the DNA. Windfire. He was nice until you shot him in the heart with a bullet made from one of his children—from my sibling. I guess I never got to tell you to go fuck yourself for killing my biological father.”

Constance rubbed her face as if she could somehow wipe her past transgressions away. “Killing him was a huge mistake although not my biggest…” She looked at the Steel Dragon when she said that and her eyes were painfully mournful. “I thought—at the time—that him going public with what he knew was a huge threat to our organization. Now, I wish he had.”

“Why?” she demanded.

“Because I thought I was a master of my fate but someone has pulled my strings for far longer than I realized. It was a dragon who set up the meeting between Windfire and myself.”

“That doesn’t mean it was this hidden actor,” she said.

“No, not by itself it doesn’t, but—”

“But what?” She thought she might as well get all the information she could. There would be time to parse the bullshit later, but she had begun to feel there was less and less of that.

“But when I first met with Windfire, he was extremely hesitant about agreeing to the entire project.”

“Then why did he?”

“I never found out but I think he was blackmailed or threatened into the position. When he wanted to go public…well, it wasn’t our idea to kill him. It was our dragon contact.”

“That doesn’t absolve you of his death,” Kristen said.

“I know it doesn’t,” Constance agreed and took a deep breath. “If it did, maybe I wouldn’t feel the guilt I do.”

She ran a hand through her red hair as she considered this information. “But why not use his own DNA? Especially if he has these shadow powers?”

“I’ve thought about that as well and I have two theories. One, shadow powers aren’t exactly conducive for bullet-making. Two, if he used his DNA to seed our project, genetic testing might have linked the dragons to him instead of you and Windfire. This way, he’s still merely a rumor.”

“But why?” she asked. “Why go to all that trouble? What could a dragon possibly gain from all that effort?”

The technomage clicked her tongue like a disapproving teacher. “Please, try not to be as dense as your steel skin. Human rights have improved steadily for over a hundred years. A good deal of that is based on the sheer number of humans, but the technology people have created is part of it too. Surely you can imagine the threat fighter jets with missiles represent for dragons?”

“Of course I can imagine weapons like that,” Kristen said through clenched teeth. “I’ve worked to try to stop you and your mages from building weapons exactly like that. We’ve already seen machine guns and bombs made with dragon parts. The next step would be to try to get the military to take over the production and implementation of these weapons. If you recall, we stopped you from doing that too.”

“I know. And thank God you did,” Constance said quietly.

“Wait, what?” She was shocked. Had the woman admitted she was glad she had stopped her?

“A military—especially the United States military—gaining the production capabilities for those weapons would have been a disaster,” the mage admitted. “I…I’ve had time to think in here, just sitting in this cell, and I’ve come to believe that much of what we were doing for our cause was wrong.”

“No fucking shit.”

The prisoner chuckled at her vulgarity. “When I think of all the times you told me to stop, I have to wish I had listened.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I would talk to the leaders of other cells and we all spoke of how committed we were to the cause. But I see now there were patterns in the excuses my former allies gave. I now believe that me and my allies were manipulated and that the entire mage rebellion was engineered by a dragon who also wants this war and wants to win it before humans get so advanced that they cannot be beaten. He wants it to destroy any dragons or mages who could stand against him so he can rule what is rebuilt from the ashes.”

“And you think this hidden foe—this Masked One— put all this into action?” Kristen asked.

Constance nodded and mouthed the word yes. “I only wish I had worked this all out sooner. So many lives were lost…or worse. I thought we were fighting for equality and justice. For goals as lofty as those, I was willing to let lives be lost, but to think that all that we did—every bullet we built and every dragon we tortured—was all because a dragon wanted to burn it all down…”

The thought overwhelmed her and she began to cry. Big, heavy tears ran down her cheeks until they plopped onto the glass wall that separated the two women, where they trickled like streaks of rain.

Kristen sighed and tried to think about what her mom would do in this situation. “It’s all right,” she said. “We all make mistakes. I’m sorry for what happened to you. I’m sure you being duped makes it feel even harder to wash the blood from your hands.”

“Yes!” The woman collapsed, weeping heavily with heaving sobs that she tried to hide behind her hands. The fluorescent lights of the hallway were merciless, however, and laid her pain bare.

“I only wish I would have stopped you sooner,” she said.

“Me too…” Constance said between the tears. “Me too.”

The mage clearly had nothing left to say, so she left her like that and told herself that the woman deserved to suffer for the atrocities committed against others. When she reached the end of the hallway, though, she couldn’t help but look at the wreck of a human in the glass cell.

She found it wasn’t fury that came into her heart but pity for a broken woman.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Kristen opened the door from the bright, white hallway and entered the gloomy, twisting dungeon passage. She wasn’t surprised to see a dragon in human form there—she knew she’d need an escort to leave the facility—but she was surprised to see that it was Shimmerclaw and not the two guards who had shown her inside.

It wasn’t every day that one found a platinum dragon and head of the Dragon Council waiting for them outside a prison cell, although she supposed it made sense. The reason she was there was because Constance had said she had intelligence that she would only give to her. Of course, the Council leader wanted that intelligence. Hell, she probably already had it.

“Lady Steel, how are you?” Shimmerclaw asked and favored her with a slight nod of her head.

“We can skip the formalities since we’re deep inside a torture maze and move directly to what you really want.” She didn’t mean to be rude to the most powerful dragon on the continent but damn, she had not expected to see her so soon after everything she’d heard from the prisoner. The fact was that she needed a minute or two to process it all and parse the truth from mistruth, but she wouldn’t get it, unfortunately.

“Of course.” The dragon nodded as if she had spoken with the utmost politeness. “So, what did the mage say?”

“Ma’am—or Your Ladyship, or whatever you wish to be called—”

“Shimmerclaw is my name.”

“Fine, right. Of course, Shimmerclaw. We both know damn well that everything that was said in there was recorded, so you already know all the details of our conversation.” She didn’t want to be in the dungeon any longer and decided it was better to cut the crap and get to it. That’s what she had done since becoming a dragon, and she saw no reason to stop now.

“You are right, of course. Everything was recorded. Humans are infinitely useful. The things they can do with electricity never cease to amaze me. I suppose what I really want is your take on everything the mage said.”

That was something else she hadn’t expected. “My take? Why on earth do you want to know what I think about it? You’ve been alive for longer than me. You’re the leader of the Council.”

“Yes, and you can rest assured that I won’t ask you for any policy decisions any time soon.” Shimmerclaw chuckled. It seemed like the platinum dragon’s metaphorical feathers were impossible to ruffle. “But I am quite curious if anything Constance said was interesting to you. Or, perhaps more bluntly, does any of it ring true? Or is it a web of lies? I ask you because you know her better than any other dragon. You have fought against her multiple times, and she has tried to sway you to her cause. If anyone can provide insight into her mind, I would hope it would be you. So, what did you think—or do I have to threaten?” She smiled so sweetly that Kristen almost wanted to know what the threat was. Almost.

“Honestly?” she asked, perhaps a bit rhetorically.

“Lady Steel, there is no reason I would want lies,” the Council leader said patiently.

“Well, if I’m honest, the whole thing sounds like a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. If I were in her position, I would be desperate to lay the blame anywhere but on herself. She painted a picture using facts that fit it and only included examples that might bolster her case. Plus, she has the whole ‘master of deception’ argument that can be used for everything from aliens to sasquatch. I don’t think it holds much water…but…never mind.”

“But what?” Shimmerclaw pressed.

She sighed, unable to dismiss the whole scenario as the fabrication she wanted to call it. For it to all be a lie, everything about Constance’s actions had been a performance and she simply didn’t think that was the case. The woman was too hurt and too regretful. It could be a lie, but her instincts said otherwise.

“Too many of the details match up,” Kristen stated. “There have been too many weird little incidents that this explains far too well. If there is a big bad dragon out there making all this happen from behind the scenes, it’s like the missing piece from a puzzle, at least to my mind.”

“Do you have examples?”

She nodded. “We now know for certain there was a mole in Florence feeding the technomage cell information. We decided to follow a lead one morning, and they were able to plant a bomb before we even got there. I had assumed it was a low-level dragon, or maybe a disgruntled mage, and a member of European Dragon SWAT confessed. But someone at the top to whom he reported makes sense, especially when it comes to explaining how Shadowstorm’s mother Obscura got out of prison.”

“Yes, the paperwork on that case is…perplexing,” Shimmerclaw admitted.

“Plus,” she continued. “Constance is a bitch but she’s never been a liar or crazy. In fact, that was one of the worst things about fighting her. She relied on facts so much that it was hard to argue with her.”

The Council leader nodded and nothing about her aura changed. She still radiated placid, bemused calm, but there was the smallest twitch of concern across her eyebrows. Kristen had a feeling that the movement was so slight that a dragon raised by dragons wouldn’t have even noticed. She, however, grew up in a human family, so she saw the twitch.

“So you believe there is something to her theory that a member of the Dragon Council is working hard against the rest of us?” Shimmerclaw asked.

God, it was awkward to answer a question about a corrupt official when the person asking was from the very group in question.

Kristen did her best. “I don’t know about that. I’ve met the Council and it’s not like I could tell you who is the bad apple.”

The dragon raised an eyebrow at her unspoken “but.”

“But there was the attack in the Mammoth Caves,” she explained after a moment of silence. “I was tricked into thinking the Dragon Council had sent me there.”

“Yes, I apologize for that. We’ve made our communications more secure since then,” Shimmerclaw said.

“Thank you, I appreciate that, but there’s more to it than only the message. The dragon I fought… I’ve never seen powers honed to that level of precision. When I fought Shadowstorm and Obscura, they could use their ability to transform from a human to dragon form to move without being able to be touched, but only to a certain degree. This was like that times a million. He could hide in any pool of shadow, no matter how small, for as long as he wanted. In fact, I think he could move through cracks so small that even a human couldn’t fit through. And when my friends came and we fought him…” She shuddered. “It was a close call.”

“And you believe this dragon is on the Dragon Council?” Shimmerclaw asked the question casually enough and her aura betrayed no indication that anything was out of the ordinary but again, a flicker of emotion crossed her face. This time, she thought it was recognition.

Had the platinum dragon recognized the power as belonging to someone who sat on the Council itself, or did she simply know a dragon with such abilities?

“Does that…mean anything to you?” Kristen asked. It was obvious that Shimmerclaw didn’t want to say anything outright because her aura hadn’t changed. She could understand. When conducting investigations, she often let her people take charge and not give them clues as a way to verify her assumptions. Maybe the Council leader was doing something similar. She only hoped that the platinum dragon keeping her cards close to her chest didn’t cost Kristen her life.

Shimmerclaw shook her head sadly. “Not in particular.” If it was a lie, it was a well-masked one. “It is clear, though, that an enormously powerful dragon is out there looking to do you harm.” She sighed. “It’s a pity…Lumos used to be one of the best fighters I knew. There was a time I would have entrusted such a foe to him, but he isn’t the warrior he was in his youth.”

“He has offered to train me,” she admitted. “And he’s able to hold his own fairly well.”

The dragon brightened at that. “Lumos is an outstanding fighter and an excellent teacher. Many of our finest warriors were trained by the old Bright Knight. Him training you is an excellent idea that—hopefully—will give you a real edge.”

Kristen nodded but still wondered what this dragon knew. She was experienced enough to know she couldn’t simply demand that Shimmerclaw divulge all her secrets and theories, but she couldn’t help wondering if the knowledge the dragon possessed would be what would truly give her the edge she needed so badly.

Before she could think of a polite way to press the dragon, Shimmerclaw nodded and said. “Thank you for coming all this way. I think it was worth getting the mage to speak and share her secrets but of course, it was no inconvenience for me like it was for you, so again, thank you. I hope you found it helpful in your hunt.”

“Yes, ma’am, I did,” she said and realized that the statement was true as she fell into step behind Shimmerclaw. The platinum dragon led her down one of the cut stone passageways, reached a wall, and muttered a spell that made the stone melt away like it was made of pudding.

“Through here, please, and step quickly. We wouldn’t want you to be trapped in the rock. You’d think it would kill you quickly, but the dragons who have managed to make it this far always languish for a few days before they finally succumb.”

A platform of stone waited inside the alcove. The two stepped onto it, and it lifted them with all the pomp and circumstance of a regular old elevator. Well, a regular old elevator that made the ceiling melt and reform into solid rock beneath them.

The ride stopped and they entered the blindingly white room that served as the entrance to the labyrinthine prison.

“Once more, I’d like to thank you for your time, Lady Steel,” Shimmerclaw said with polished formality.

“Of course, Lady Shimmerclaw. I’m at the Council’s disposal, as always. If you need anything, send it over an extremely well-secured channel.”

If the dragon understood that she was joking, she gave no indication of it. Instead, she waved her hand at the words as if she could dismiss the sentiment. “You are already doing extremely important business for the Council. Please get back to it and forgive this interruption.”

She nodded once more and chose not to take the last word from the Council member. Shimmerclaw transformed into her platinum dragon form, leapt skyward, and soared into the distance.

Kristen walked to her crew, who had not fraternized with the prison staff at all. The guardian dragons stood at attention as if her people might attack them at any moment. Hernandez made faces at them, but it didn’t seem to have any effect on the stone-faced guards.

“What’s going on?” Heartsbane asked.

“Did Constance have anything important to say?” Emerald demanded.

She looked around and wondered if ears were listening even now. Surely the guards could be trusted, right? But she decided the answer to that question was no. If she couldn’t trust Council members, she certainly couldn’t trust guards.

“I’ll tell you on the wing,” she said, paranoid that someone was listening. They took to the sky in silence, the mood heavy and the air pregnant with secrets.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Kristen wanted to enjoy the flight down the mountainside and parts of it were pleasant. The air warmed from frigid cold to cool to pleasant and the smells changed from the painful cold of ice and snow to the aromas of pine and meadows blooming with wildflowers. All were appealing compared to the flight up.

The conversation was unfortunately much worse. She filled her team in on what had happened. Although she had briefly considered not telling them, she decided that if any of these people or dragons were against her, she was well and truly screwed. She told them what Constance had said about the mysterious dragon known as the Masked One, about how the technomage believed she’d been manipulated, and about how Katrina and Kristen truly were genetically sisters.

Her team took it all in stride. Yes, they grew glummer at the thought of facing an unknown and powerful foe, but Emerald was quick to point out that they’d already faced the asshole once and beaten him, so what was there to worry about?

She would have liked to enjoy his optimism but her phone rang.

“Telephone call,” Larry said from her back. “It’s your brother. Oh, wait. I should say it’s our master of whispers, Zed.”

“Answer it,” she told him. “And tell him that if it’s about pizza, I’ll murder him.”

The mage answered. “Uh-huh, uh-huh. Shit. You don’t say? Holy hell, already? Okay. Yeah, I’ll tell her.” As he spoke, his tone grew darker and darker.

“What the hell is going on?” Heartsbane demanded and flew closer to Kristen and Larry.

He took a deep breath. “Detroit is under attack.”

Everyone responded at once.

“What the fuck did you say?”

“We have to get back there.”

“I knew we shouldn’t have come and talked to that damn human.”

“I need details,” Kristen said and silenced her crew.

“Right,” Larry replied. “Multiple mages are in different parts of the city, and all of them are using magic to toast things. Stonequest led a force to stop them but it didn’t go so well. They’ve already killed one dragon who tried to intervene.”

“Not Stone,” Emerald said and terror crept into his voice.

“If it was, Zed didn’t say so. He said they’re doing their best to stop the mages, but if you could get back there at the soonest convenient time, that would be great.”

“Now’s not the time to try to lighten the mood with humor,” Heartsbane growled.

“I’m only quoting what Zed said. He always talks bullshit like that,” the mage protested.

“Shit,” Kristen said.

Jim repeated the sentiment. “Shit, this is bad. We’re not even near the airport yet. We won’t be able to get there for hours. By that time…”

He didn’t need to finish the statement for them all to know it was bad. Detroit had almost been lost to the chaos generated by a gang armed with regular guns and grenades when Kristen had first joined Detroit SWAT. She didn’t want to think what a horde of zealous mages could do to the Motor City.

“Larry, talk to me about the portal spell. Can you do that to get us home?” she asked.

“Uh, well…hmm,” he stammered. She had obviously caught him off guard.

“Damn it, Larry, I need a yes or a no. Lives are on the line.”

“Right. Well, yes. I think I can. It would have to be much bigger to fit us all through and way farther.”

“We could fly through it in single file,” Heartsbane said.

“Sure, okay, that might help,” the mage conceded. “But the distance will be the tough part. Last time, I merely focused on throwing the bomb straight up as high as I could. This time, I need to target a specific destination.”

“I understand that we need to get there but Larry, you got that bomb what—a mile up in the sky last time? Maybe two or three? This is hundreds of times that,” Jim said. “Can it be done?”

“I…I think so.” They could tell from his voice that he had already closed his eyes and extended his magic to create a portal. “No. No, I can’t. Not for all of us. I think I might be able to get me and Kristen there, but I can’t keep something like this open for that long.”

“That’s fine,” she said quickly.

“It is not!” Hernandez protested from Heartsbane’s back. “What if some asshole needs to be blown the fuck to pieces? Who will do that for you if I’m stuck on the private jet?”

“We’ll make do,” she said. “But without Larry, Amy is the only mage.”

“Plus, they’ll need the Steel Dragon,” Emerald added.

“There’s still a chance I might open the other end of this underground or in a building or something and scramble our guts,” Larry said.

“That’s a risk we’ll have to take,” she responded briskly. “Plus, Shimmerclaw told me dragons can last a few days when that happens, so don’t worry about me.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I don’t like this,” Heartsbane said. “I don’t like this at all.”

“Is it your job to like orders or follow them?” she demanded.

“Right.” Heartsbane ceased her protest. “Emerald, follow me! Hernandez, call the pilot and tell him to get airborne. We’ll board on the wing. That’ll save us a half an hour. Lady Steel, we’ll see you in Detroit.” She pumped her wings and put her body into the rigid position Lumos had shown Kristen. Emerald did the same, and the two raced down the mountainside.

“All right, Larry. It’s you and me. Tell me what I can do to help,” she said.

“Slow down and try to fly level,” he responded, his voice already tight with exertion. “Do you see that big old pine tree over there? It’s about a mile off.”

“The one that looks like it was struck by lightning?”

“That’s not what I had in mind but sure. Fly toward it and try to keep as even a pace as you can—and for the love of all that is holy, fly level. I have no idea what’ll happen if your wings clip the edges of the portal. I don’t think it would be good.”

Kristen obeyed. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. Pray?”

She didn’t respond but mumbled something to whatever power was out there that was greater than her, locked her wings into place, and focused on flying straight ahead towards their rendezvous with a pine tree.

Lightning cracked above it and struck the branches repeatedly, although she knew the effect was magical because no sound accompanied the flashes of energy, and there were no clouds in the sky.

As she approached—desperate to pump her wings and get there faster but terrified to do anything that might interfere with Larry’s concentration—the sky above the tree began to fade from the crystalline blue of the Colorado mountains on a clear day to something drearier.

The mage uttered a grunt of frustration and suddenly, a disc of light appeared to perfectly frame the patch of gray clouds. Lightning cracked from the tree to the disc of energy but something was wrong. She couldn’t see through the portal. It was like a veil hung in front of it or someone had put a filter in their path.

“Larry…”

“I know.”

“Larry!”

“I know!” the mage shouted and a great blast of energy streaked from him on her back to the portal ahead. If he had been a second later she didn’t want to even consider what would have happened, but he had done it. The portal solidified to create a window through time and space that she rocketed through as it began to close.

Kristen went from flying through the clear, thin air of the Rocky mountains to the slightly polluted, drizzling sky of Detroit in the blink of an eye.

The mage didn’t make the transition with the same grace as the dragon he rode upon.

With a mumbled, “I did it,” he fell unconscious and slipped from her back.

She immediately tucked her wings and dove after him. At least she had a little distance to travel. They were well above the Detroit skyline and directly over the old Dragon SWAT headquarters building in the middle of downtown. She pumped her wings, tucked her arms and legs in, and straightened her tail.

Although she had more than a few seconds to catch him, it only meant that if she failed, there was no way that he would survive.

As she raced towards the falling, unconscious mage, she saw that her city was burning.

Great plumes of smoke rose from Tiger Stadium. Fires burned on the roof of the opera house despite the steady drizzle. One of the stops for the people mover—the elevated train car that ran in a loop over downtown Detroit—had been completely obliterated, and the train had plummeted earthward.

Kristen was immediately filled with white-hot fury. She had to help her city and save the people who were no doubt already dying. Somehow, she had to stop the chaos these damn technomages were so determined to unleash.

But first, she had to save the man who had made all that possible. If not for Larry Brockton, she would be on her jet right now, tapping her toes with anxiety and waiting to be able to help. She couldn’t let him suffer the same fate as the raindrops falling all around him.

She flew faster than gravity pulled her, so fast that the raindrops splashed against her face. A trail of dry air slipstreamed behind her as the raindrops that touched her dragon scales evaporated from the heat. Resolute, she increased her speed until the mage was directly in front of her, tumbling end over end in an undignified freefall that was defined by nothing more than the wind ripping at his robes.

As soon as she was within range, she extended a claw and caught him. He was unconscious so didn’t say anything, but she thought she saw a smile creep across his face. Awake or not, the human body didn’t want to die.

Kristen spread her wings to slow her descent and aimed for the roof of the Dragon SWAT headquarters building. It had been months since she’d worked there but the dragons and mages inside would still help Larry get back to good health and—hopefully—join this fight.

But it wasn’t the mage she needed to worry about.

She spread her wings and caught the air to slow herself barely seconds before the Iron Dragon struck.

Pain lanced through her wing as her assailant’s claw tried to rip it from her body.

Her reaction was instinctive. She lashed out with the ax-blade on the tip of her tail and forced her adversary to back away.

The motion almost knocked Larry from her claw.

Somehow, her flinch didn’t dislodge him and she managed to curl her claw protectively around him. She went into a barrel roll as the Iron Dragon attempted another attack. Kristen parried this one with her one free front claw and her two back legs.

Her opponent laughed as if this were nothing but a sick, perverted game and pulled up as she placed Larry on the roof of the Dragon SWAT building.

She hadn’t seen them from the air but now realized that mages stood on the roof, all of them with spells loaded into their fingertips and pointed at the sky. They worked together to keep the enemy dragon at bay, whose withdrawal had nothing to do with any sense of chivalry for the wounded and unconscious mage in Kristen’s claw.

“Make her pay, Lady Steel,” one the mages said. She nodded at Atramento, the head mage of the Paper Dungeon, whose swirling tattoos augmented his powers. Clouds of swirling ink floated in the air around him. Here and there, parts of the cloud focused into points finer than the tip of any pen. “And if she doesn’t listen, tell her I’ll be happy to write her a check.”

“Jesus…even in the face of death…you’re a true bureaucrat.” Larry wheezed, apparently having regained consciousness to insult the other mage.

“I’ll tell her that her credit line has been declined,” she said to Atramento, who nodded, while Larry groaned either in pain or in response to the horrible pun.

Then Kristen launched herself into the air.

The Iron Dragon flew above the city and breathed fire indiscriminately at historical buildings and modern skyscrapers alike. When she saw that Kristen moved closer to fight, she turned to face her and pumped her wings so she hovered in place. Behind her, the storm grew in intensity. Lightning cracked and the wind began to truly rage, but it was the Iron Dragon’s laugh—deeper and more ominous than any thunder—that sent a chill down her spine.

How did she know to attack my city when I wasn’t here? she wondered as she gained speed and raced into battle. It was a question that—like so many others—would have to wait to be answered if she was still alive at the end of this fight.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The battle was worse than any nightmare or dark fantasy that kept her from falling asleep in her bed.

From the very beginning, Kristen knew she was outmatched. Katrina—beneath all those scales and behind those claws and teeth and flaming breath, she was merely a girl like her—held the high ground in the sky. She let the Steel Dragon come to her and forced her to use the wing she hadn’t thought had been injured but in reality, was quite damaged.

Before she could use her momentum to collide with her, the Iron Dragon tucked her wings and dropped on her like the massive weight of iron she was.

She tried to dodge but her wing prevented her from moving as quickly as she needed to. The impact didn’t catch her head-on, but it did strike her hard enough to thrust her into a spin before she could get the wind beneath her wings again.

But catch it she did and she continued into a low swoop that took her between some of Detroit’s taller buildings. As she traversed the space, she saw that she wasn’t the only one engaged in combat.

A battle raged below. Stonequest, in dragon form and blessedly still alive, led a group of dragons to attack a formation of mages who hurled balls of ice at them. As soon as the airborne attackers came close enough to use their fire breath, the mages scattered into nearby buildings and left swaths of destruction in their wake.

As she crossed an intersection, she noticed Drew, who led a team of humans from the back of an armored vehicle. Mages harried them with both blasts of magic and dragon bullets. A man she didn’t know who stood next to the human leader took a bullet in the shoulder and tumbled from the back of the vehicle. Drew shot the mage who killed his ally but the scene didn’t fill her heart with anything but dread.

The battlefield was a mess. Buildings were being destroyed and both sides suffered brutal casualties, but that said nothing of the civilians who were no doubt hiding in the midst of all this violence and death.

She adjusted her course to rake the mages who’d shot at Drew with fire, but the Iron Dragon found her again.

“Does the steel bitch think she can hide from me?” her pursuer bellowed.

Kristen dodged and Katrina flew past her and careened into the street to create a massive crater, a pothole that even Detroiters would be forced to swerve to avoid. She didn’t seem even slightly wounded from the massive collision and vaulted into the air to resume her pursuit.

The Steel Dragon tried to outfly her and gain altitude so their battle wouldn’t take place within the actual city, but her wing was still injured. Her assailant caught up to her with little effort. She spun in midair and slashed at the dragon with her claws, hoping to injure her wing as Lumos had shown her.

Katrina parried her claws with her iron forearms and merely laughed. “Oh? So you won’t try to go for my throat or heart with every damn strike? Someone’s been taking lessons.” She whipped at her with her tail. Kristen defended her neck, only to have the spiked ball at the end of the tail drive into her hip joint.

The pain was excruciating, and she instantly understood what Lumos had been talking about. Her entire body was steel but at that joint, her scales simply weren’t as thick and her foe had capitalized on this. It was terrifying to think that this dragon—raised by mages to be a killer of her own kind—understood this better than she did.

But the wound wasn’t lethal and her tail had an ax at its tip. She swung it at the Iron Dragon and forced her to retreat, if only momentarily.

“I spoke to our mother,” she shouted into the storm.

“She was weak and a fool to be captured like she was,” Katrina responded.

“She misses you,” she said as she led the dragon through the streets. “She wishes she could have given me what she gave you so that we could be sisters instead of enemies.”

“Then she’s softer than I realized,” the Iron Dragon said once she was close enough to bulldoze into her.

Kristen was so caught up in trying to protect her vulnerable areas—her joints, her wings, and her neck—that she let Katrina hit her directly in the chest.

The force was enough to catapult her away and through the glass wall of an office building. Her momentum drove her through cubicle after cubicle to destroy computers, copy machines, and coffee makers before she could even register what they were.

She managed to right herself before she plunged out the far side of the building. The Iron Dragon was already poised and ready to lunge at her through the mess of what had once been office space. She launched a blast of white-hot fire at her opponent, not because she thought it could hurt her scales but because she hoped to temporarily blind her like Lumos had taught her.

Katrina blocked this attack as she had all her other attempts. This time, she raised her wings to effortlessly bat away the ball of white flame. Her smirk seemed to say she was nothing but a child, a cub playing with an older sibling.

“We want the same thing!” Kristen shouted as her enemy continued to approach.

“Funny, I didn’t know you wanted to die.” The dragon sneered.

She cursed and jumped out of the building and into the rain.

Katrina followed her but had expected her to go down instead of up, so she was able to watch as the Iron Dragon cruised the streets below in search of her while she sprayed fire on the battle that continued to rage.

Kristen knew she couldn’t defeat the Iron Dragon in a straight fight. She had to find an advantage and take it. Her gaze settled on the top of the building she’d jumped out of. Would the Iron Dragon think of using her environment? She only knew that her police training demanded it, so rather than flying after the dragon who now attempted to kill her friends, she clawed up the side of the building until she reached the roof.

“Katrina! Enough!” she shouted once she was at its pinnacle.

“There you are.” Her enemy turned away from the humans she’d been about to incinerate and began to pump her wings to get up to her level.

“Work with me,” she shouted from the spire she’d climbed. “Together, we can make the Dragon Council see there can be peace between us.”

“Peace?” the dragon roared incredulously. “You want peace after what you’ve done to the mages who fight for freedom and equality? You want peace after I’ve seen you kill my friends and my family?”

“We’re family,” she shouted in response. “You, me, and the dragons those mages imprisoned are kin. Work with me to free them.”

“They are nothing but failures doing their best to help a noble cause,” Katrina said, surpassed Kristen’s height, and circled her as the rain bucketed and lightning cracked. She dove at her and she readied her claws to parry but realized she might not need to when lightning struck the Iron Dragon.

Kristen smiled as electricity coursed through her attacker’s scales. She had felt her form be electrocuted before. It was horribly painful and that had been from a source far less potent than a crack of lightning. There was no way—

The Iron Dragon barreled into her and transferred the power of the bolt of lightning through her claws and into her body.

She had no idea how Katrina had learned to do such a thing. Her body was overwhelmed with the energy and she was blown from the spire—a lightning rod, she now realized—and plunged earthward as her muscles twitched uncontrollably.

The other dragon joined her in her descent and fell at the same speed but a little above her. Her claws were outstretched and ready to strike while Kristen did nothing but twitch as she fell in the rain.

“You offer an alliance but have nothing to offer,” Katrina goaded. “You are weak, a poor excuse for a dragon, and are driven by nonsense.” She stopped speaking to bite savagely at the wing she’d already wounded.

Kristen writhed in pain as she fell. Her body still didn’t respond to her commands but it was more than willing to show her opponent how much she suffered.

The Iron Dragon ceased her attack on her wing joint and instead, began to claw at her armpit while she struck her in the opposite back leg with the spiked ball at the end of her iron tail.

The pain was so extreme that she hardly noticed when she finally made impact with the road.

She blacked out for a second and woke with the Iron Dragon standing above the crater she had made with her dragon body. The storm raged behind her and lightning cracked at the tops of the skyscrapers and illuminated the teeth of the Iron Dragon that twisted in a cruel rictus.

“Please.” Kristen gasped. She could hardly breathe and it felt like one of her lungs had collapsed. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Oh, but I do.” Katrina all but purred and slunk into the crater like a stoat after a wounded mouse. “You see, although you are not a threat to me physically, you are something even worse.”

“I’m not a threat because I want to work with you.”

Her enemy ignored her as she continued to slide closer. She reached her tail and stepped on it to gore it savagely with her iron claws. “You have become a symbol and that is quite dangerous. Already, you have united a force of humans and mages in your directionless cause. The humans love you. The dragons respect you. Your dopey optimism must be removed from the equation.”

“Please,” she begged. “I only want a world where no one has to live in fear.”

“I already live in that world,” Katrina boasted. “The trick is to not be afraid to kill whoever stands in your—”

Something plinked off Katrina’s back and the dragon straightened. She poked her head out of the crater and ducked inside quickly at a volley of gunfire. “Well, speak of the devil.”

“Leave them alone,” Kristen pleaded. Her body was too broken to move. She tried to push herself up so she could fight but her arm, leg, and wing had all been shattered by the relentless attacks. She was so wounded that she could hardly raise her head from the muddy water that pooled in the bottom of the crater.

“I don’t think I will,” her adversary said. “I think I’ll see what happens to the Steel Dragon when she sees her little warriors slaughtered before her eyes.”

“Don’t do this!”

“Would you prefer I kill them where you can’t see?” she asked. “Would you like to hear their screams and guess who they belong to? I suppose I can grant such a request.” Katrina cackled in glee and leapt out of the hole.

Gunfire answered her attack and in the next moment—to Kristen’s shock—the Iron Dragon slid into the crater with her and cowered beneath its lip.

“You crazy bitch!” Katrina spat and looked at a gunshot wound in her forearm. A bullet had punched straight through her iron scales. “You armed your team with our dragon bullets?”

Before she could answer, more gunshots rang out. The dragon flinched at the sound now that she knew the bullets could wound her.

“I can make them stop,” Kristen said.

“Fuck you, you fucking hypocrite.” Her adversary vaulted out of the hole to attack Kristen’s friends, but she didn’t have the chance.

As soon as the Iron Dragon emerged, a telephone pole swung and caught her in the chest to fling her aside, although the wooden pole cracked in half.

Kristen struggled to push out of the muddy water. She managed to twist her body around as Amy reached the edge of the crater.

“I found her!” the girl shouted as two dragons swooped overhead and human soldiers ran past on either side of the crater, their guns raised to release a sustained barrage at Katrina.

Amy enveloped her in a shield of protective blue energy and lifted her up and out of the hole. She placed her behind her allies, who continued to fire at the other dragon and her mages at the end of the street.

The enemy mages weren’t throwing bolts of energy, though. Instead, they all concentrated with their arms raised and eyes closed until a portal opened. As the defending forces maintained their fire, the mages retreated into it.

Katrina, still unafraid of Kristen’s forces, took to the air. She flew over their heads and unleashed fire on them that was so hot, it made all the rain washing over the street evaporate.

“No!” the Steel Dragon shouted through the steam but her people were still alive. Amy had diverted the flames away from the humans, so each of them now stood in a puddle although the rest of the street was dry.

“We can do this again any time you wish.” Katrina sneered before she flew through the portal the mages had opened and vanished. The gateway closed and Kristen was alone with her people in the battle-ravaged streets of Detroit.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Sometimes, it seemed like the world made the weather match events—like when it rained at funerals or the sun shined at a wedding. The thunderstorm during the battle had felt almost cosmic to Kristen, and when the fighting had ended, she had expected the sun to come out and perhaps grace her and the survivors of the bloody battle with a rainbow.

The weather did not oblige her, unfortunately.

It continued to rain in thick, gray, merciless sheets that hammered the roof of the warehouse and streamed off and down the windows so it seemed like the building itself mourned the losses they’d suffered in the battle.

They’d put out cots and makeshift beds all around the wide floor of the warehouse for the people who’d been injured in the fight. It was a bleak place with so many new faces suffering.

But it wasn’t only new faces who had been injured. Butters had been shot in the leg—squarely in the thigh, in fact—so he couldn’t walk. Keith was wounded as well. He’d insulted a mage and the woman had taken it personally and used some kind of spell to sever the trigger finger on his right hand.

Still, he was in high spirits. “It’s a good thing I’m a decent shot with my left,” he boasted.

“You are not, Rookie,” Butters groused. He was coping far worse with his injury despite the fact that Amy thought she could heal it once she had some rest. She made no such promises about Keith’s finger. “You’re such a shitty shot with your right that your left seems decent by comparison.”

“Whatever.” His teammate was nonchalant about it. “Do you want to race to the shooting range?”

The sniper snorted in contempt but the comment also managed to draw a smile onto his broad cheeks. Kristen left the two of them with Beanpole fixing coffee and Hernandez fetching beers.

She wanted to stay at their side as well, but she knew they had no time. They couldn’t afford to comfort the wounded, let alone mourn, not after a strike as aggressive as the one they’d barely survived. Regretfully, she left them and called a council of her team on the top floor of their base.

All her key leadership and most of her oldest friends were already there when she entered the boardroom. She stood at the head of the table and checked to make sure everyone she’d spoken to had come.

Both mages were there and looked equally exhausted, Larry from opening the portal that brought her to the battle, and Amy from her final efforts that saved her life.

Drew was there, as were Jim and Brian. She would have liked more regular humans to be present, but her other oldest friends were below. It wasn’t a terrible situation, though, because she knew that of everyone on her force, she could trust them to follow orders the most.

Of the dragons, Stonequest was present—of course—as were Lumos and Heartsbane. Emerald and Timeflash were working security and fortunately, Amythist was at her estate with the rescued dragons. It had blessedly not been attacked during the strike on Detroit. She had expected some kind of feint given how quickly Katrina and her mages had retreated, but it seemed the technomages had no intention of recapturing the dragons who had been their sources of ammunition for so long.

As much as she wanted to sink into the chair at the head of the table, Kristen remained standing. Her arm and leg both ached but her dragon powers were working on the wounds. She was far luckier than the humans who’d have to suffer through the pain or endure the numbing fog of painkillers until Amy could heal them. If she could heal them. It seemed to be complex magic and despite her power, she couldn’t perform too much of it. Larry didn’t seem to be able to do it at all.

So—thinking of the people below as well as the civilians of Detroit who’d perished or lost a loved one in the attack—she stood as straight as she could and addressed her team. “We have to stop our enemy before they inflict any more damage.”

Wide stares and dull nods answered her. Everyone had been as overwhelmed by the surprise attack as she felt.

“If we continue to fight defensively,” she continued, “we can’t win. I thought we could take the time to unravel their organization one cell at a time, but I don’t think that’s aggressive enough anymore. There’s no reason to think the mages won’t continue to strike and escape before help can arrive. They demonstrated that they can do it even in a city where help is right there. What would they be able to do in an area without any immediate backup available?”

“So you think this attack was simply a display of power?” Stonequest asked.

“I hope that’s all it was,” she said. “But the speed and efficiency with which they evacuated as soon as the battle turned against them make me think they’d already accomplished everything they wanted to. Maybe their goal was to damage the city, which they succeeded at. I think a big part of this attack was a demonstration against us, though.”

“But why attack humans?” Drew asked. “They’ve always targeted dragons before. And not to be morose, but they could have gone to Amythist’s and executed her and probably either killed or taken some of the dragons we rescued long before we got there.”

“I’m not sure if this was an attack on people,” Lumos interjected ponderously.

“People died,” Jim said. “Some of ours, plus some civilians who weren’t able to get out before we arrived. That makes it an attack on people.”

“Yes, of course,” the old dragon conceded. “They have proven time and time again that they see lives as little more than collateral damage. Even so, almost all the buildings that were damaged were real estate that is owned by dragons. The fighting caused some damage to human-owned businesses as well, but I don’t think that was their original intention.”

“Wait, are you saying dragons own a good chunk of Detroit?” Drew sounded surprised. “I didn’t know they bought anything besides mansions in the countryside.”

“Oh yes. Dragons collectively own a sizeable part of Detroit and most of the major cities in America. You should see New York and Chicago. All the rent checks flow to dragons there.”

“But human-owned buildings were harmed,” Brian said from behind his laptop. Kristen had no doubt that he’d run an analysis on what had been damaged and who it all belonged to. She was still surprised that all his time behind the computer continued to be so useful.

“Of course, once the fight started, some human-owned buildings were harmed,” Lumos agreed. “And unfortunately, a few humans were killed when the dragon-owned buildings burned. But less than ten by my count. I know that even ten is too many, but I think it’s worth pointing out that the mages kept human casualties to a minimum. They could have done far more to our community than they did.”

“Did we kill any mages?” Kristen asked. “When I got here, I thought I saw some fall.”

Heartsbane shook her head. “If any of them were killed, they took their dead with them. When it was all over, I checked for survivors so we could…interrogate them.” She growled the last two words.

“We got in a couple of lucky shots that caused some injuries but nothing serious,” Stonequest said. “They were in and out too quickly and fled as soon as opposition arrived. That portal of theirs makes it impossible to harry their exit.”

“What about us?” Kristen asked.

“We lost a man,” Drew said through teeth clenched. She had seen him die and he’d been right next to Drew. “But only one. We had a good handful of injuries but nothing too serious. I don’t want to lose men in any confrontation, but with all the chaos of that fight, I think we can count this as a victory.”

She knew the words pained him even as he said them because he was a cop, not a soldier. He wasn’t trained to deal with casualties or collateral damage or whatever euphemism the dead were given in the bloody aftermath of battlefields.

“It sounds like we did well, given that we were completely blindsided,” she said. “But we all know it’s not good enough.”

Sullen nods around the room proved that she wasn’t the only one to feel this way.

“The problem continues to be that they’re a few steps ahead of us. We’re playing defense and worse, catch-up defense. We barely held on in our hometown. If this attack had been even a hundred miles away, I don’t want to think about what could have happened.”

“It’s a good thing Larry knows how to teleport.” Heartsbane gestured at the sunken-eyed mage.

“Barely,” he said. “But I had another look at how they did it. They all work together on that spell and there are many more of them than only two like me and Amy. I might be able to open a portal and follow them, but I reckon they could do that maneuver a couple of times in a row—in which case you could put a fork in me because I’d be done.”

“And if we can’t stop these attacks, I worry that Shimmerclaw and the rest of the Council will simply decide to go ahead with the war the mages want,” Kristen said.

“After all they’ve done to slow this war?” Amy asked.

“I think so.” She looked around the room at all the faces of these people she trusted with not only her life but the lives of everyone in the city she called home. The quiet voice of assurance within reminded her that she could trust them. She had to trust them. After a deep breath, she told them what Constance had said about a dragon operating behind the scenes to make all these events happen that she and her team had tried so hard to stop. She considered telling them that she knew an alias of the dragon and that he went by the Masked One but didn’t want to give out the name yet. She’d had a sense from talking to Shimmerclaw that it could be dangerous to tell her people and decided she would approach some of the older dragons like Lumos about it quietly later.

Still, even without a name, Brian perked up. “That makes perfect sense,” he said as calmly as if he’d discovered how to beat the final boss in a particularly vexing videogame.

Everyone turned to look at him, so he shrugged and smiled. “Think about it,” he said. “That whole trap for Kristen in Mammoth Cave? The big bad dragon who almost beat four of you? It had to be a super-tough dragon, right?”

Everyone nodded because it was obvious.

“That has to be the dragon who wants this war. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Kristen sighed. “That means we have two foes to stop if we want to end this war before it begins.” She could feel the weight of it all coming to rest on her shoulders. “We need to find and stop the mages and the Iron Dragon who is either their leader or high up in their chain of command, and we also need to identify and stop this enemy dragon—both before it’s too late.”

“So where do we start?” Stonequest asked. She knew the former leader of Dragon SWAT was eager to start chasing leads. There was nothing like a meeting to make someone feel like they weren’t getting anything accomplished.

“I don’t think we can ignore the mages,” Kristen said and tried not to sound exasperated. “This…hidden dragon still seems to be content to attack from the shadows. As long as he doesn’t operate publicly and hurt people, I don’t think we can prioritize him.”

“I don’t know if that’s wise—” Heartsbane interjected before she cut her off.

“I know it’s not. But that dragon can turn into liquid shadow, and if we can believe Constance, he’s done this for decades, if not longer. We won’t find him unless he messes up and we simply don’t have the resources to fight the mages with one hand and try to force a mistake from him with the other.”

“Then we start with the mages?” Stonequest asked to confirm a way forward.

“Yes. Brian, I want you to collate all the data we have so far. Everyone else, Stonequest will divide you into teams of people to go to each of the hideouts we have already identified. I want our people at both those we raided and the couple that have been abandoned.”

“It sounds like you have a hunch,” Larry said.

“I do. If I were in Katrina’s position, I’d gather all my forces in the most secure place I have, especially with their teleportation powers. It seems that if they were all stationed centrally, they could use their combined power to strike wherever they wanted. If we can find it, we can bring the fight to them. And if we can find even the smallest clue at one of those locations, maybe we can turn this war around.”

Everyone nodded and went to Stonequest to be allocated their assignments.

She hoped it was the right decision but she didn’t see what other choices she had.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Although it pained her to send her teams out while she remained at the base, Kristen knew it was the smart decision. She kept Larry grounded as well so if anyone was attacked, she’d be able to get there in time—she hoped. Part of her hated that so many of her plans of late seemed to rely on hope.

It was better to rely on herself and her abilities, and that was why she had stayed behind. She’d suffered yet another brutal defeat at the hands of the Iron Dragon. The simple truth was that she needed to be able to defeat her or they’d never beat the technomages. With this in mind, she trained with Lumos—again, and again, and again.

“We’ve already been at it for four days. We should take a rest,” he told her when she asked him to come to the training ground they had created in the parking lot of their base.

“It’s fine. I’ve eaten well and used my dragon healing.”

“You can’t keep this up,” he protested.

“Sure I can.”

“Have it your way,” the old dragon said and attacked.

Day after day, they continued the training. Kristen learned new definitions of pain as Lumos showed her how useless her steel scales were against a properly trained dragon. She made time for little else. When she was hungry, she ate and when she was exhausted, she slept. She paid attention to the reports her teams gave her while she waited for her wounds to heal.

They were all much the same—nothing. No one had turned up any new clues and all they had found were the bare shells of bases with everything stripped away. It would have been discouraging if she hadn’t had a master of combat like Lumos to show her the brutal strikes she would need to defeat the most powerful dragon she’d ever faced.

After a week of this endless and brutal regimen, Kristen was doing better. She learned the subtle movements a dragon needed to master to avoid being grievously wounded. The lessons included how to strike at the vulnerable places and—more importantly—how to mask those strikes within feints. She knew the Iron Dragon had a lifetime of training, but she was fighting for the living—for her friends and family—and for the people she’d already lost.

Grimly determined, she pushed herself until the old dragon was forced to admit that she had improved.

A week into this, he arrived for another early morning training session to find her already there, practicing with her pistol in their indoor range.

“Good morning, Lady Steel. Did you decide to finally take my advice and let your body rest for a moment before we resume our combat?”

“I suppose you could say that,” she admitted.

“I must say, I am surprised,” he confessed.

“About what?” she asked.

“Well, your marksmanship is excellent. The best I’ve ever seen in a dragon, in fact. What compels you to practice with a gun when you could be in bed and sleeping like a regular person?”

Kristen chuckled. “I gave up on being a regular person a long time ago. Plus, you’re never so good at something that you don’t need to practice.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“There’s also the fact that dragon bullets have different ballistics from regular bullets. I need to be as accurate with them as I am with the regular variety.”

For the first time since they’d been training, he looked taken aback. She wasn’t quite sure why. She’d ripped his wing from his body and savaged one of his shoulders so badly that he hadn’t been able to use it the next day, but a little shooting practice upset the old dragon?

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

Lumos frowned. “You’re using dragon bullets?”

She nodded. “We have to be pragmatic about it. I’ve had some of my old SWAT team practice with them since we faced the Iron Dragon, and I’m glad too. If not for those bullets, I don’t think they would have been able to drive her off in the last fight.”

“But…don’t tell me you’re making them?” Lumos tried to keep the horror out of his voice but it slipped into his aura.

“No! God, no!” It was her turn to be taken aback. “Lumos, I would never do anything like that.”

“Then…”

“We’ve collected tens of thousands of rounds so far. I know that in the long run, they need to be destroyed but because they are dragon parts, that’s easier said than done. It's not like I can simply douse them in gasoline and burn them.”

“I suppose,” he said, still on edge.

“The Dragon Council knows about this. In fact, it was they who left the bullets in my care. I had Timeflash set up an armored vault where we store them.”

“Oh. Well, I guess it’s all under control, then,” Lumos said with forced cordiality.

“I’m sorry, Lumos. I didn’t think to tell you because you never use a gun. Stonequest and Timeflash don’t like it either, but with the Iron Dragon…” She shrugged. “We need to be able to maximize our abilities to fight our enemies. They have already proven to be a life-saver against the Iron Dragon, and we may very well need them against this elder dragon who wants me dead.”

Lumos nodded. “Yes, I suppose that all makes sense.”

“And yet your aura makes it very clear that you’re repulsed.”

He nodded again. “To me, it’s rather vulgar—like using the femur of a dead human to carve into a knife or something. I can think of scenarios where humans might do such a thing but it’s certainly rather macabre, isn’t it?”

“Everything about this war is macabre,” she agreed but didn’t mean to sound as bitter as she did.

“Indeed.” The golden dragon stood in silence while she unloaded a magazine into her target.

Satisfied with the tight cluster on the chest of her target, she turned to her companion. “What’s the plan for training today?”

“Truly, I think you might be making the smartest choice of what to do,” he said, his gaze fixed on her pistol as she returned it to the holster at her side.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Kristen asked, trying to decipher the meaning of the enigmatic smirk on his face.

“It means that I believe you are already close to the Iron Dragon’s skill level. We’ve gone through much of what she did to you in her last attack and I think you’re capable of defending yourself now.”

“I don’t want to only defend,” she pointed out.

“And now you know how to attack. But remember, she’s done this a long time. When you fight, she’ll take advantage of any mistake you make. Your defense must be flawless so you can force her to make an error you can capitalize on. If you can make that happen, I would not bet against you in a battle.”

“Thanks, I guess,” she mumbled.

“Whatever did I say? I hoped you’d be cheered by the possibility of defeating your foe already. It’s only been a week and you’ve progressed remarkably.”

“I am,” she said, “It’s only…over this past week, you’ve done a good job of convincing me that the Iron Dragon isn’t my biggest opponent.”

Lumos let his smile fade. “Indeed, she is not.”

“If you think I need to fight flawlessly against Katrina, where do you put my chances against the elder with shadow abilities?”

He took a deep breath and smiled warmly. “Even if you were to fight perfectly with your current skill set, it would not be enough to defeat the dragon who was able to escape you and three of our best fighters.”

She wilted despite his obvious attempt to soften the blow.

“That should be expected, Lady Steel,” Lumos said. “You are very young and your opponent must be very old. He’s fought other dragons for many of your lifetimes. You should be quite proud of the progress you’ve already made. The fact that you’re already so powerful is quite remarkable. Give it time. You have already grown so much. You will grow stronger yet.”

“I don’t know if I have time,” Kristen said and tried not to sound depressed or let her aura show her anxiety. “I have a feeling that things will come to a head sooner rather than later. I can’t think of another reason why the technomages would have attacked Detroit if they weren’t ready to accelerate their plans to fruition.”

“There is nothing to be done but continue to train. Until we know your foe, we cannot do anything else,” he insisted.

“And if we do know the foe?” she inquired.

Lumos raised an eyebrow.

“Have you heard of a dragon called the Masked One?” she asked bluntly.

He inhaled sharply at the mention of the name. “Where have you heard of that dragon?”

“La Flamme mentioned it before he died, but most of what I heard came from Constance,” she explained. “She told me she believes her entire organization of technomages may have worked to fulfill the Masked One’s agenda without knowing that was what they did.” She filled him in on everything the woman had told her—how there had been a dragon who had set up the first meeting between Constance and Windfire and how she believed there had to be someone in a high position within dragon culture who had been able to both track Kristen’s work and guide the mages.

If he truly knew the Masked One, he didn’t give away anything about what he thought of him. He listened intently as if any detail of what Constance told her might be the key to unraveling a weakness or failing of the elder dragon.

Finally, when she had finished, Lumos spoke. “Let me tell you what I know of him. It’s not much, mind you—mostly secrets shared by various sources that have far too many details in common and rumors that have lasted for centuries. I’ve never seen the dragon, but I don’t think anyone has seen anything but the mask he wears.”

“And what mask is that?” she asked.

“It is said the Masked One takes the skulls of his human victims and wears them over his face.”

“Why?” Kristen asked and recalled the threats the dragon she’d faced in Mammoth Cave had made. They’d been exactly that. He had said he’d kill her human friends and wear their skulls.

“Probably to appear as a bloodthirsty monster to both human and dragon kind.”

“What else do you know about him?”

“Again, nothing concrete, but I’ll tell you the details I feel the most confident about. For starters, the Masked One is incredibly old. Older than me, if you can believe that.” He chuckled in an attempt to lighten the mood but his aura was wound so tightly that it did nothing to calm her. “There were rumors of him even when I was growing up.”

“Rumors about what?”

“That there was a dragon who wished to operate outside the open and public setting of the Council. That he was incredibly powerful and valued secrecy as much as most dragons valued communication.”

“So you don’t know much?”

“As I said, nothing concrete.” He frowned. “But the rumors have always had some element of a darkness-oriented ability.”

“Like what?”

“I cannot say precisely. In fact, that is one of the reasons I’ve always been so interested in the Masked One. My powers derive from light and his from darkness. For centuries, I trained so I would be ready to fight him when the day came. I thought it was—and forgive me the arrogance of youth—but I thought it was my destiny, of sorts. However, I fear those days have passed. I am not as spry as I once was. If he were to attack us, I would fight, but I wonder if I could face him alone as I surely could have even a few centuries ago.”

“So it makes sense that the dragon I fought in the caves was the Masked One. He could merge into shadows and lash out from the darkness. Who else could that have been?”

Lumos hesitated before he answered. “It’s certainly possible. There are other dragons with powers that derive from darkness, however. Obscura had abilities like that and she was no Masked One.”

“But you think the dragon I fought was?”

He nodded, although he looked like he didn’t want to. “That might very well have been him but if it was, all of you were extremely fortunate to escape at all.”

“How can you know that? If he works from the shadows, who is to say he has any power at all?” she asked. She knew it sounded falsely optimistic but was also unable to help herself.

“There are more to the rumors than only his powers,” the old dragon said. “And I should also say that some of the details of these rumors only corroborate that your foe may indeed be him.”

“Details like what?”

“Well—and again, this is not proven, because there is no one on the Dragon Council who openly wears a skull for a mask—but it is said that he ascended to the Council years ago and that every challenger for his position died. It is said that those who learn which Council member he is are found murdered and that no one has bothered to look into such a dangerous prospect for well over a century.”

“What councilors have been on the Council for over a thousand years?”

Her companion smiled. “Did I not just say that he has killed those who ask such questions?”

She returned. “I heard you, and I also heard that it’s time someone stopped this asshole.”

“In North America, there are only three. Lady Shimmerclaw, Lord Boneclaw, and Lord Decimus Aurelius.”

It was her turn to suck in a breath. Decimus had long been one of her only supporters on the Dragon Council. Could it all be an act? And to think that Shimmerclaw was against her and agitating for war was more frightening still, but she seemed the least likely suspect, at least on the surface. She was sure the dragon she’d battled underground was male. If that was the Masked One, it wasn’t Shimmerclaw.

She didn’t know much about the other dragon, Lord Boneclaw, but she hoped to find a ton of dirt on him so she could absolve the other two.

“Okay…well, maybe that gives us somewhere to start.”

But Kristen wouldn’t get to begin her investigation anytime soon as Brian burst out of their main building and ran to the shooting range. He wasn’t breathless as he would have been months ago from a short run. Instead of red and splotchy, his face was pale, a visage of terror.

“What happened?” Kristen demanded.

“She’s out,” he stammered. “Somehow, they busted Constance out of prison.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

They came for her a week after the Steel Dragon paid her visit, exactly as Constance had known they would. In this twenty-first century world of satellite feeds, cell phone cameras, and big data, it was easy enough to keep tabs on Kristen. She had made her request to see the Steel Dragon and the technomages traced her movements as she went to visit her.

That alone would not have been enough, but she had practiced with the subtleties of the magic needed for secret observation for decades. She’d been drained of her power like everyone else when the dragons had taken her through the white room, but—exactly like the dragons—beyond that room, her powers had begun to regrow.

She wasn’t foolish enough to think her abilities would help her escape the labyrinthine prison. There were too many traps designed to kill creatures far more powerful than her. No, her plan was far simpler—create a beacon where it was safe, a lighthouse spell that told the mages exactly where to open their portal outside her doorway.

Using a magic prison was the dragons’ greatest mistake. If they had simply dropped her down a well and lashed it shut with anti-magic spells, she might have spent all her days dreaming of escape, but because they used spells to arm the traps of the prison, they needed magic to function. This meant her team could open their portal directly in front of the glass Kristen had stood behind a week before.

While the mages attacked Detroit—as Constance had planned—she had cast her spell that would tell them where to come.

This escape had all been planned and preordained, she would have once said, months earlier and long before she had been captured.

It was too bad she didn’t feel the same about it as she once had.

When she had helped create the plans that caused the portal to now open outside her cell, she’d had only the faintest of hunches that a dragon was pulling her strings as well as the strings of everyone in her organization. Now, she believed that was the truth of her existence and the force behind her actions for decades.

So it was not pure relief that she felt when the portal opened and her adopted daughter—the Iron Dragon—stepped through and kicked down the bulletproof glass that had kept her imprisoned for so long.

It was not joy she felt as she stepped through the portal and out of the prison but trepidatious worry.

And it was not guilt she felt when she left the barest hint of magic behind to mark her time in this cell and her passing from it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“What the hell do you mean Constance escaped?” Kristen demanded. “I’ve been to that prison. How far down the hallway did she make it before she was cut in half?”

“I don’t know. The surveillance feeds were all cut so we don’t have eyes on the location,” Brian responded.

“What do you have?” She tried not to yell as they ran to his workstation monitors.

He fell into his chair and began to pound keys and bring up different items of interest on his screens. “The Council issued a full alert.” He brought it up on the screen.

Somehow, the prison where the technomage had been held had been broken into. Only one prisoner had been freed—Constance. The rest of the notice was frustratingly vague.

“I need more.”

“I’m working on it,” he said. His fingers flew and in moments, they looked at a satellite feed of the prison as viewed from space. Even from this vantage point, she could see what had happened to the guards.

Their red blood shone quite plainly against the white stone and concrete that was the roof of the prison.

“Did they blow it up?” she asked.

“No one knows.” He flipped through screen after screen of warnings and alerts and processed information far faster than she could. “From what I can tell, they did a hit and run, a smash and grab attack.”

“Who?”

Brian showed her a frame that showed the silhouette of a dragon the color of cast iron. “Katrina was there with technomages to open a portal,” he said and pointed at another frame that displayed the telltale glowing blue ring of a teleportation spell. “They were in and out before any help could arrive and their dragon bullets annihilated the guards.”

“Goddammit.”

“From what I can tell—and again, this is speculation based on satellite feeds and not much else—they teleported to the roof, killed the guards, busted in, killed more guards, and portaled to Constance’s level. Once they freed her, they got the hell out.”

“No one wore bulletproof armor?” Kristen asked.

He brought up another image. It looked like something from an old videogame and was grainy. He pointed to a spot on it that looked like nothing but a splotch of red pixels to her. “Armor doesn’t do much when you are shot in the damn face.”

“That prison was there for centuries.” Lumos sounded stunned. “It was built before the United States was founded. It has never been seen except by a select few, let alone broken into. This is impossible.”

“The impossible just happened,” she said, none too pleased about it.

“But those were some of the greatest warriors who still walk this planet. Why, Quickclaw was the fastest swordswoman I had ever seen—”

“That’s why the mages used bullets,” Brian said. “Even if a dragon can beat one, you can’t beat a hundred a second coming at you from different angles.”

“Of course not…” The old dragon was shaken. “But they did this with the same cavalier recklessness with which humans rob banks. No one is even supposed to know about this prison and yet they were somehow able to penetrate its defenses effortlessly? How did they find it?”

Kristen wished she had an answer to that question, especially since she had a feeling she might be partly to blame.

But she didn’t have any idea how Constance could have escaped. She knew they’d used their teleportation magic, but that only frustrated her more. How had these technomages unearthed a form of magic that the mages who worked for the dragons didn’t seem to be familiar with? Were the dragons so assured in their control of the world that they didn’t bother to push their mages to discover new forms of magic? Or was it simply that the technomages were all unbound by the dampening cuffs that mages who worked for dragons were required to wear?

She couldn’t say. And the person who undoubtedly had the best understanding of how it was possible to get past all those defenses had used that knowledge to escape from prison.

With a heavy sigh, she acknowledged the feeling that nothing could go right. She’d been beaten by the Iron Dragon despite her commitment to training with Lumos. Now, one of her most dangerous adversaries was back on the street, an opponent she would need an entirely different skillset to beat.

Stopping the technomage cells had made her feel she was successful, but Constance escaping washed any feeling of success away. It felt as if for each step forward they made, they took two back.

“I want the jet ready to go in a half-hour and I want every person we can fit on it. We’ll find out how Constance got out of there, and we’ll help anyone who survived this.”

She’d intended to say “this massacre” but chose not to. Someone had to be strong, and that responsibility had to fall on the Steel Dragon’s shoulders, as always.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

She had no idea how the hell Windlock had trained the pilot of his private jet to be so comfortable with people jumping out midway, but she was thankful all the same. Every time Kristen asked the man to crack the door so the dragons could launch, he responded with as much concern as if she’d asked the flight attendants to provide peanuts.

Now, she stood in front of the open door of the jet as the wind whipped her hair and stared at the mountain that housed the dragon prison below her.

“Does everyone know their assignments?” she asked.

Her team responded with a loud, “Yes ma’am!” She turned to check on them. Every single person on the jet—she had crammed the plane as full as any economy class airline—was suited up and ready to go. After fighting in Colombia, then defending Detroit against the Iron Dragon and the technomages, her team worked more tightly together than ever. Even the new troops Jim had brought in had meshed well with the old guard of the team. They wore parachutes, guns strapped to their chests, and grim looks on their faces.

Despite their resolution, she didn’t envy them. It was scary enough to jump from a plane knowing full well that she could simply transform into a dragon and catch the wind with her wings. It was another thing entirely to rely on a dragon to catch you in mid-air.

“Remember, only open your parachute as a last resort. We’ll use dragons to get there, so everyone on this plane has a ride. If we come under fire, your dragon might not catch you. In that case, deploy your parachute and rendezvous with us at the prison.”

The dragons nodded to confirm this. She noted that they all watched the soldiers they were supposed to catch. The assignments had been made carefully. None of the dragons wanted to be the one who forgot which teammate they were responsible for.

“All right then, here we go,” she said when no one posed a question.

She jumped from the plane and her stomach lurched into her throat as her body screamed at the sensation of falling. In seconds, she transformed into a dragon and her wings stabilized her. The other dragons followed suit and plummeted toward the mountains below in their human form for a few seconds before they transformed and caught the wind with their wings.

Larry and Amy followed as they could use their powers to fly but not carry others. The girl still used her magic to make objects besides herself fly. She was strapped onto a snowboard and cruised effortlessly as if she was on an obstacle course on the surface instead of falling through empty space. Larry was less graceful and used his abilities to tug on his robes to keep him from reaching terminal velocity.

Now that they were all airborne and the plane circled above the top of the mountain, the humans began to jump out.

Kristen swooped below some of her old SWAT teammates. She caught Drew, Jim, and Beanpole on her back and snatched Hernandez and Keith in her claws—although she let the woman fall for a longer period of time than the others because she screamed in delight throughout her freefall. Amy hadn’t been able to regrow Keith’s finger but she had healed the wound. The Rookie, to his credit, didn’t seem to mind. The mage had better luck with Butters, but his wound still hadn’t healed enough for him to walk on the leg so he’d stayed at the base with Brian.

With her team on her back and in her arms, Kristen glided towards the top of the prison, unsure if they would arrive to see nothing but a field of dead bodies, magical traps left by the mages, or something worse.

None of those things greeted them and instead, a dragon came up to meet them in midair.

“Southwest Dragon SWAT. You’re speaking to Officer Heatburn. Can you please kindly tell me what the fuck you’re doing here and why I shouldn’t mobilize the other dragons to blast you out of the sky?” His scales looked dry and flaky like he needed to molt—not that dragons did that—and his aura was equal parts concern and bravado. It was clear he didn’t want to fight this dragon with armed humans on her back but he would if he needed to.

“I’m Investigator Kristen Steel. We didn’t report our movements because we weren’t sure who would be here and didn’t want to walk into a trap. It’s good to see you made it here first,” she replied.

Heatburn pulsed his aura in a wave of calm that was no doubt directed at his partners on the roof of the prison.

“I gotta say I’m glad to see you, Investigator Steel!” he admitted. “We mostly deal with dragons fighting out in the desert and legal disputes with the show business dragons in Hollywood. This is a little outside our wheelhouse.” He guided them into a landing.

Two other dragons were on the roof in their dragon bodies and watched her approach in obviously aggressive stances. They weren’t the guards she had seen when she’d last been there.

“Who the hell is this?” one of them demanded, a female whose scales were a richly patterned mix of browns, tans, and blacks. It looked like perfect camouflage for a dragon to hide in the desert. The idea struck her as odd as she’d never seen a dragon try to camouflage and hide.

“My name is Investigator Kristen Steel,” she explained as the humans climbed off her back and stood at attention. She transformed into her human body and flashed her badge. When she did so, the desert dragon visibly calmed.

“Oh, thank God,” the woman said. “My name is Sidewinder. Ma’am, are we happy to see you. This is…this is a mess.”

“What have you done so far?” she asked.

Sidewinder straightened, although she didn’t stand at attention as well as Kristen’s humans did. “We set up a perimeter, ma’am, and investigated the guard station.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Do we have survivors? We brought a mage who knows how to heal.” Especially dragons, she thought a little bitterly. She’d like to have Butters there watching from behind a sniper scope. Somehow, the southerner’s eyes seemed better than most dragons’.

The other dragon clenched her jaw. Kristen already knew what she would say. “No, ma’am. No survivors.” She unintentionally looked around the rooftop at the bodies strewn there. “Most of the dead were up here. Our working theory is that whatever those technomage bastards did, the shooting started here. When they arrived, most of the guards came out to fight but they were mowed down as soon as they reached the roof.” She gestured to the trapdoor that led into the magic dampening white room Kristen had passed through. “I don’t think the poor bastards even thought about dragon bullets.”

“Unfortunately, that makes sense,” Emerald said as he landed and unloaded his group of human soldiers. “These guys were always aloof when it came to current events. They spent their days training in combat. I’m not surprised that they’d think their skills could have held strong against any attackers they might face. The crazy shit is that a year ago, they would have been right.”

Kristen nodded. “What about the magic defenses?”

“They are still intact, thank God,” Sidewinder said. “They trashed the roof but after that, it looks like they somehow skipped all the traps on the way to the leader of the technomages’ cell.” She shook her head. “It’s like fighting demons. They don’t follow the rules.”

She realized that this dragon and her team didn’t have access to the satellite feed Brian had shown them, nor did they know about the proficiency with teleportation that the mages had honed.

“No other prisoners escaped?” she asked as more of her dragons settled on the roof. Lumos and Timeflash immediately began to examine the dead for clues, but she knew damn well that every dragon had been shot and killed with dragon bullets. She’d seen enough of the brutal wounds—in both humans and dragons—to know that all the victims had died from that particular kind of gun violence.

“Not to our knowledge, ma’am,” Sidewinder said. “But we haven’t been here long. We left as soon as the Council sent the alert out, but we were only here maybe half an hour before you.”

“What about Shimmerclaw?” she asked.

Sidewinder recoiled visibly. “You mean the leader of the Dragon Council? I haven’t spoken to her. Oh, God—was I supposed to report in? We saw the carnage and tried to set up a perimeter—”

“No, no, I mean was she still here when the attack happened?”

The dragon looked confused. “No, ma’am… She wasn’t among the dead, anyway. I had Heatburn check the visitor logs. You were the last person to come through and that was a week ago. There hasn’t been anyone since then.”

“And before?”

“No visitors, ma’am, and I would have noticed if the head of the Dragon Council had signed the log. Hers would have been the first body we looked for.”

Kristen nodded. It was good that Shimmerclaw wasn’t among the dead, obviously. She saw her as one of the more forward-thinking dragons on the Council and her strongest potential ally besides Decimus Aurelius. While she didn’t want her dead, her not being on the visitor’s log was also a concern.

Lumos said there were only three dragons who had been on the Council long enough to possibly be the Masked One and Shimmerclaw was one of them. She had reason to believe the Masked One was a male dragon but no proof of that yet.

While she wanted to trust the platinum dragon, she knew that professionally, she had to be careful. She wanted to believe that the Council leader had a perfectly sound reason for not signing the visitor’s log, in light of the attack, it couldn’t help but raise suspicion in her mind. Still, there was nothing to be done about it now. It certainly wouldn’t help to tell Sidewinder, who seemed to be on the edge of paranoia already.

It was far better to focus on the task at hand.

“Dragons, I want you ready to go through the maze with me to get to Constance’s cell. Mages too. Humans, you stay here and make damn sure no one else we don’t want here comes to join this little party. There is no clue too small. Anything could give us a lead on their location or their next target. If there’s something here, I want it.”

While the humans went to work, she led the others into the maze. The white room that took their magic was the first stop but it wasn’t white anymore. Apparently, the guard inside had failed to lock the door and paid for his unprofessionalism with his life. Now, the white walls had his blood and brains sprayed over one of them.

The maze wasn’t easy to get through, but when tackled by a team of dragons, it was passable. They took turns to lead so those who sustained injuries were able to heal. Fortunately, they managed to dodge the obstacles that would have proven lethal and reached the hallway that housed Constance’s cell without incident.

Kristen opened the door to the hallway to find it was the same as it had been the last time she’d been there. That was a shock to her as she’d expected destroyed walls, blood, and chaos, not the sterile white glow of fluorescent lights, broken glass, and an empty cell.

She and the dragons began to poke around, but none of them came up with anything of interest. There were no claw marks and no blasts from a mage’s spell. Nothing indicated that anything was done in this hallway beyond something breaking the glass that had caged the technomage.

“Another dead end,” Lumos said as he stood in the hallway near the cell and as close to a literal dead end as she had ever seen.

“Dammit,” she cursed. “I thought there’d be something here. I can’t believe we wasted all this time—” She noticed Larry and her outburst ended abruptly.

The mage stared at a space in the middle of the hallway, his head tilted to the left like a dog waiting for someone to reveal a treat he knew was hiding out of sight.

“Do you have something Larry?” Kristen asked.

“What?” He jumped at the question, shook his head, and turned to her as he pointed to a place in the air in front of him. “Yeah, actually. This is where the portal was.”

“Of course that’s where the portal was,” Heartsbane grouched. “They got in here and took their precious mage leader out via portal.”

She didn’t want to be rude but she had to agree with the other dragon. “She’s right, Larry. It’s very obvious that they portaled Constance out from this hallway.”

“No, I mean, the portal was right here.” He pointed again as if he could touch something that none of them could see.

“And that’s significant?” she asked.

He nodded. “It’s not like the other closed portals. When we went to Colombia, the mages escaped via a portal and did the same in Detroit. Both times, I tried to focus on what they were doing.”

“And both times, you had a ton of other shit going on,” Emerald joked.

“True,” the mage admitted. “But that doesn’t mean the brilliance of Larry Brockton was in any way diminished.” He smiled and gained steam. “Now that I’ve studied them, I’ve learned to understand the spell a little better. Not as well as the technomages understand it, but I have managed to cast it twice.”

“Wow.” Heartsbane’s sarcasm was palpable. “Brilliant and humble. What a combination.”

“The thing is, once the spell is finished, there aren’t any traces left.”

“And this is different?” Kristen asked.

“Yeah, it is.” His gaze returned to the invisible point in the hallway. He stared at it so intently that she wondered why she couldn’t see anything. “There’s a faint touch of magic lingering in the air—almost like a loose thread from a spell. Some magic leaves those behind but not the portals.”

“Does that help us or is this mage shit we don’t need to care about?” Heartsbane asked.

“The thread starts in the cell and goes to this point, then it simply vanishes. It doesn’t feel like a loose end, though—more like the middle of something. Also…I’m sure this will sound crazy, but I know who cast the spell, too.”

“Constance,” said Amy, who had stepped closer after she’d heard what he had to say.

“Do you feel it too?” he asked.

She nodded. “I spent time with Constance before I met Kristen. She was one of the first mages I saw do magic. I assumed this hallway felt like her because she’d been imprisoned here, but I now see that it must be this spell.”

“Can you trace it somehow?” Kristen asked. “Like…can you sense the other part of the spell, wherever it is? I can’t believe she messed up this badly but if we can leverage it to our advantage, we must.”

“I’m sorry, but no,” he said. “I can sense it but it’s extremely weak. It’s like trying to imagine what a sweater looks like after seeing a loose piece of yarn.”

“What if I helped?” Amy asked.

Larry looked dubiously at her. “I don’t know. We’d have to empower the spell, which is a tricky business. As soon as we get any sense of where it leads, one of us would have to stop and try to open a portal to that location. Then—depending on the distance to that portal—the first mage would need to drop the thread and switch to opening it. The process would take a ton of energy, plus there are no guarantees that it would turn up anything worthwhile. They could have portaled again.”

“There are no guarantees in our line of work,” Kristen said.

“I’m willing to try,” Amy said. “I can pump energy into this one and when you open the portal—if it appears—I can try to help.”

He shrugged. “Sure. Why not? The worst thing that could happen is the spell is some kind of trap and by adding our energy to it, we activate it and blow up our entire damn team.”

All eyes—dragon and mage—turned to Kristen. It was her call, of course. That was the burden of being a leader.

“I think the alternative of a dragon versus mage versus human war is far worse,” she said. What she didn’t say was that after talking to Constance, she didn’t believe this was a trap. She couldn’t say that she trusted the woman but she didn’t think the mage would kill her in cold blood. After she’d tried to convert her to her cause so many times, she couldn’t imagine it all ending like that.

Of course, Constance could have had a change of heart, in which case she had no doubt that their death would be swift.

But it was her call to make, so she made it. “Amy, empower the spell. Larry open the portal. Dragons, race up top and get our human forces. If this thing is opened and we can’t tell the location, we’ll go through.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Stonequest said. “How long do you think that’ll take?”

Amy looked at Larry, who only shrugged. “At least ten minutes, I’d say. Amy will have to discover how to augment the magic, and it’ll take me a few minutes to open and stabilize the portal.”

“We’ll be back in five,” the dragon said and raced out of the hallway with the others on his heels.

“Amy?” she asked.

The girl nodded and looked at her fellow mage, who reached out for the thread. Kristen frowned when she noticed a tiny filament of light begin to glow in the air. Although it wiggled and moved as Larry filled it with energy, as he’d said, one end of it simply vanished. It looked as if the thread had been nailed to a point that simply floated in mid-air.

“All right, Amy, if you would?” he said.

Amy joined her magic to his and the difference was immediate. If his was a babbling brook, hers was a raging river. The filament thickened and began to move even faster as it glowed brighter and brighter.

“Easy!” he shouted.

“I’m going as easy as I can. This spell is sucking my magic up,” Amy yelled in response.

Larry released the spell and began to focus on the portal. To Kristen’s shock, the ring of light that portended a portal appeared almost instantly. She looked down the hallway. This wouldn’t take ten minutes.

She pulled her radio out. “I need everyone down here now!”

“Amy!” Larry shouted, caught in the spell and oblivious to how little time had passed. “Let the spell go and help me with this portal.”

Again, the young mage’s overwhelming magical powers became instantly apparent. As soon as she added her power to his, the disc in the middle of the ring of light filled with light before a window opened to somewhere very far and very different from the isolated mountain prison.

A beautiful beach was visible with sand only a few shades darker than white. Crystal-clear blue waters rolled gently inside what might have been a cove. The smells of hot air, salty sea, and a dense jungle wafted into the cold, sterile hallway. Kristen took a step closer and saw that the beach ran all the way to a tropical jungle that clung to a mountain that didn’t rise high enough to be topped with snow. She saw no buildings, no distinctive landmarks, and nothing but trees, water, sand, and sky.

“I can’t tell where it leads. It’s a tropical island, but that’s all I have,” she said. Shit, she didn’t even know if it was an island. It could simply be a tropical coast.

“Figure…it…out…please.” Larry wheezed before he stumbled and fell to one knee. The energy he used to help fuel the portal flickered.

“Are you okay?” Kristen asked but tried to not look at him so she could spend every second she had trying to decipher where this beach was. Was the mountain a volcano? If it was, it was so covered by jungle that it wouldn’t be much use. Could she identify any of the trees? Not even kind of.

“So…far…” Larry managed to splutter before he collapsed, drenched in sweat and bleeding from both nostrils.

Now, only Amy held the portal open.

“It’s slipping,” she said through clenched teeth and her skater hoodie flapped in the wind caused by opening the gateway.

“I’ll contact you when I figure it out,” Kristen said before she’d even consciously decided what she would do.

But there was no choice, really. This was their one chance to trace the technomages to their base and she knew what she had to do. She took a leap of faith and dove through the portal seconds before it slammed shut behind her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The portal snapped shut as Kristen fell onto the beach. It was hot and the warm breeze that had blown into the cold mountain prison now felt like a stifling wave of heat.

She looked around as she took her coat off and tried to find something—anything—that might give her a clue as to where she was. Despite her scrutiny, she found nothing except trees, sand, and water.

Not to be dissuaded, she took her phone out, hoping to use the magic of a satellite connection to find where she was.

The device displayed no bars, but maybe there was still the faintest signal she could use. She tried her maps app, which opened to show her downtown Detroit and a spinning loading circle, nothing else.

Still, she knew her phone was the key. She paced down the beach, hoping to pick up even the smallest signal. Staying on the move seemed like the smart course of action anyway.

There! She had…something showing on her connection icon. It sure wasn’t 4G, but it would have to be enough. Kristen dialed Brian in the certainty that if she could get a connection, he could probably use his nerdy Internet skills to discover where she was. Honestly, she loved his nerdy Internet skills.

It didn’t seem like he’d ever have a chance to use them for this, though. As soon as she dialed, a bolt of magic blasted the device from her hands.

Kristen reacted as any dragon who’d studied melee combat for the last week would—she transformed into her steel dragon form and raised her tail so she could throw the barbs near her ax-blade tip at whoever had attacked her before she incinerated them for good measure.

Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that her dragon powers wouldn’t be enough.

The mage who had attacked her stood near the shore, a swirling cloak of energy already up to shield her from whatever attacks she might attempt to launch at her. She knew she could probably overwhelm the mage if she was alone. But as soon as she transformed, she heard gunshots all around her.

There weren’t that many and certainly not the barrage she knew the weapons most of the mages held were capable of unleashing. Still, it was enough for her to know that about ten mages surrounded her, all far enough away to be out of her range and all with weapons aimed at her except for the one who’d used the blast of energy.

“You don’t all have dragon bullets,” she said and used her aura to make them feel fear.

“You might be right,” the mage on the shore said. “Would you like to find out?”

The others aimed at different parts of her body.

“You know I’m faster than any of you,” she said. “Lower your weapons and I’ll come quietly.”

The mage shook her head and tsked at her. “You may be faster than any one of us. But you are not faster than all of us. If you think I’m wrong, attack me. We’ll see what the rest of my patrol does.”

Kristen didn’t move. She knew exactly what they would do.

“Good!” The mage beamed. “It would be a shame to have to tell Constance that we used the Steel Dragon for target practice.”

“She’s here, then?” she asked.

“You don’t seem as smart as Constance and Katrina say you are,” the woman said. “You’re still asking questions like you’re in charge but you aren’t. Change into your human shape and put your hands above your head. I’ll come and cuff you. If you resist, you die. If you try to hurt me, you die. The rewards for the mage who kills the Steel Dragon are ample. My family would never want for anything.”

She sighed, and—not seeing any other option that didn’t end with her being filled with bullet holes—let the mage cuff her.

Immediately, she felt her powers drain from her like she was back in prison. She could not transform into a dragon or turn her skin to steel and wouldn’t be able to access her dragon speed, strength, or healing abilities.

The mage knew this too. She shoved her forward and laughed as the once-mighty Steel Dragon stumbled and fell into the sand.

“You need to be better on your feet than that,” she snapped. “We have a long walk and it’s tougher going than sand.”

Kristen prepared to take notes on how to get to the base, but one of the mages threw a sack over her head, and for the next thirty minutes, she was led on a march through the jungle.

When she stumbled, she was yanked to her feet and when she managed to stay balanced, she was shoved over. All the while, she listened for clues. Would that birdcall be what could tell her team where she was? Was the smell of a particular flower the clue they’d need?

It was hard not to lose hope given that her phone had already been shattered.

Finally, they took the bag off her head. She prepared herself for the bright light of a tropical sun but instead, found herself in a long tunnel. Perhaps a hundred yards behind them, the tunnel opened into the jungle from which she’d come. Even that wasn’t much use, though, as it looked as if whoever had created this tunnel in the mountain had used a natural cave opening. She still wore layers of clothing for the cold so she hadn’t noticed that the air temperature had dropped inside.

Is this a bunker from World War Two? she wondered. It seemed as a good a guess as any and might mean she was on an island in the Pacific…which only narrowed it down to a needle hidden in the largest geographic feature on the entire Earth.

They pushed her through the concrete tunnels, took her to a cell, and thrust her unceremoniously inside before they locked the door.

Kristen sighed. This had not gone well. She hadn’t expected such a distant location. While it probably was foolish of her, every other technomage base had been built somewhere with a supply of meat to feed captive dragons. There was no way this island could support even one dragon—not without a fleet of fishing boats, of which she had seen no sign.

But before she could sink too deeply into despair, Constance arrived.

“You were a damned fool to come here. Especially alone.” The woman shook her head in disappointment.

She wondered if the technomage meant that she wanted her team to come. Was that why she’d left the spell in the prison? Or was she merely threatening her like any good prison guard would?

“What did you think you would accomplish?” Constance asked, unlocked the door to the cell, and stepped inside. “Now, you’re our prisoner and better yet, a hostage. If your friends come for you and manage to penetrate our defenses, we threaten to kill you and it’s over. One problem with the kind of fierce loyalty you inspire is that it can be exploited.”

The woman punctuated this comment with a hard uppercut to her gut.

Kristen doubled over, not used to feeling pain without her dragon strength. Her assailant moved close to her ear and whispered. “If you’re still in here when your friends show up, you lose.”

Then, she rocketed her knee into her captive’s face to break her nose and cover the concrete floor with blood.

“Your friends can’t find you, can they?” she demanded.

Before she could answer, the mage stamped savagely on her arm and she gasped in pain.

Constance did it again and focused on her wrist. After another blow, she took a break to work her face into a bruised mess. “You dragons and your healing abilities. You have no control over those now. You have no choice but to keep these bruises. Do you hear me? No choice but to keep them.”

There was concern in the woman’s eyes. Kristen tried to decipher what that meant but her assailant stamped on her wrist again.

But this time, the blow—and a twinge of magic that burst from Constance’s fingers—popped the cuff that had dampened her powers off her wrist.

“Pathetic,” her attacker said and ignored what she’d done to free her. “You can’t even heal. When your friends get here, you’d better hope you vanish. Otherwise, we’ll slaughter every last one of you and end this stupid conflict once and for all.”

In the next moment and with no warning, Constance left.

Kristen was left bruised and confused. Still, she knew enough to pocket the bracelet and listen to the cryptic command—don’t let the bruises heal. While her dragon powers went to work to fix her nose and mend her wrist, she made sure the bruises remained on her face. She only wished she knew what the hell the mage was thinking and if this was simply another of her mind games or something entirely new.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!” Brian cursed as his fingers clattered over his keyboard. He hoped he could somehow locate Kristen despite the call she’d made to his cell phone not connecting.

He knew that shit had gone wrong because the blip on his map that showed where she was, based on her cellphone’s GPS tracking, had completely vanished from the prison complex. The young man had played numerous videogames in his day, so he made the leap of logic that others might not have. Kristen had vanished because she stepped through one of the portals the technomages had used.

Wherever the other end of the portal was, he assumed it wasn’t near any city in North America. Otherwise, her blip would have registered as soon as her cellphone pinged a message off a cell tower. Without GPS, he had relied completely on her to call him, so it had been a huge relief when his phone rang and displayed his sister’s face covered in whipped cream, a legendary prank he’d pulled on her.

He didn’t find it funny when the line went dead before he even connected.

Damn it, he could do this. If the phone had been able to patch through, it meant Kristen had service. It might have been from a satellite, but he could work with even that.

Focused, he traced the message from his phone to the cell phone tower closest to them and from there to a satellite over the United States. He breached firewalls in the process, thwarted security protocols, and left a mess of open doors into computer systems as he forced his way through them. The signal led him from one satellite to another and he traced it from the middle of America to a satellite off the coast of California, another one over the Pacific, and finally, to a cell phone tower on an island in the middle of the ocean.

As his fingers moved of their own accord after years of playing games on every system known to man, Brian found images of the island as viewed from space.

“Shit,” he said again for good measure. He didn’t think this was the place. There was a mid-sized city on it with maybe ten thousand people, judging by the sprawl of houses. Most of the island was used for agriculture. He didn’t see how a technomage base could operate there in secret. There were too many people and not enough cover. Plus, if she had made her call from this island, the connection would have been stronger. Despite the haste with which he’d raced through the connections, he hadn’t failed to notice that Kristen had almost been unable to make her phone connect.

It took tremendous effort for him to not chuck both his cellphone and keyboard across the warehouse floor, but he managed to restrain himself. Instead, he zoomed out and looked for other nearby islands.

There were nine, so too many to search individually for clues. Plus, the technomages were smart. It wasn’t like they would build a base with a sign on the roof that said get your dragon bullets here. He ran a search on the area, looking for signs of something that might bring him closer to the answers he needed.

Finally, he got a hit.

One of the islands had been used as a bunker during World War Two. Apparently, it had been used by the Japanese to house troops. There was a fairly large complex of tunnels built into the mountain that sprawled in the center of the island. Brian zoomed in on this location. He saw nothing of the base, only thick jungles and beautiful beaches, but he did see a couple of fishing ships docked in a harbor. When he looked through the satellite footage of the last few days, he confirmed that the fishing ships were in operation. They went in and out of the harbor, which meant people were using them.

That was good enough for him.

He picked his cellphone up and called Stonequest.

“Brian, please tell me you have good news.”

“I think I know where Kristen is,” he said.

“Oh, thank the fire in us all,” the dragon replied.

“I wouldn’t celebrate yet,” Brian said in a rush. “She’s on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Most likely in an old Japanese bunker on a tropical island.”

“You’re kidding.” Stonequest did not sound amused.

“If I was kidding, it would be funny,” he said while he ran calculations on his computer during the conversation.

“Send us the coordinates and we’ll take the jet there,” the dragon said.

“No. I’m chartering a flight as we speak. We’ll meet you in Colorado and we’ll all head out together.”

“Negative, Zed. That’ll cost us hours your sister might not have if we want to find her alive.”

“How can you say that?”

“It’s the damn truth,” Stonequest said, his voice stern. “Send the coordinates and we’ll head out there. We have all our dragons, our mages, and a good force of human soldiers.”

“You can’t expect me to stay behind.”

“That’s exactly what I expect,” the dragon confirmed. “She’s in a bunker, you said?”

“Yes, I think so anyway.”

“Then I want a map of it.” Stonequest’s tone brokered no argument but Brian couldn’t help himself.

“I haven’t found anything but references to it. How can you be sure there’s a map?”

“I’m not!” the dragon shouted over the phone. “But if it exists, you’re the only one who can find it. The best place for you to do that is in Detroit.”

He nodded. As little as he liked it, even he had to acknowledge that it made sense. “What else do you need?” he asked as he sent orders to the captain of Kristen’s private jet. It was a relief to see the captain’s GPS beacon already at the airport closest to the prison.

“Shipping manifests to the island if possible. If they have non-magical defenses, I want to know about it. See if you can find out how much food they import as well. That might give us a clue about how many soldiers they have there.”

“There’ll be more than there were,” he said. “If they captured Kristen, you can bet they’ll be ready for us to attack.”

“Still. If there’s usually ten people at this base, that’ll be a different fight than a hundred.”

He nodded, relieved he was not on video with Stonequest so the dragon couldn’t see the terror on his face.

It didn’t take long for Stonequest to get everyone on the back of a dragon and headed to the airport. As soon as Kristen had gone through the portal and it had vanished, they’d all gone to the roof of the prison, knowing full well that they’d need to get somewhere else and get there fast.

They flew down the mountainside, reached their jet, loaded up, and were soon airborne.

He checked his phone constantly. While he knew Brian was digging up all the intelligence he could, did he damn well have to take so long? After about an hour—as they flew past the California coast and out over the Pacific—the techie called.

Stonequest answered and had to give the phone to one of the humans who seemed to have a better idea of how to accomplish what Brian wanted him to do.

An agonizing minute later, they had maps on the flat screen in the dining area of the jet. Everyone crowded closer while the young man talked to them from a tiny video feed in the corner of the screen and manipulated the rest of the display beside him from the base in Detroit.

“The bunker has a few entrances, all near beaches and all damn far from its center,” he explained. “At first, I thought maybe we could punch into the center, as that’s where I’m sure Kristen is, but it’s not possible. This base was built during World War Two and it was designed to withstand serious damage. Plus, while I can’t be sure, it looks like there’s something built into the jungle.”

“Turrets,” Stonequest said.

Brian nodded. “That means approaching from the beach will be a shit show.”

“Well, fuck,” Heartsbane said. “We can’t attack the center or the edges, so what the fuck are we supposed to do?”

Brian smiled. “I found an entrance near the fishing boats. I think it was added later after the base was abandoned but before the technomages started using it. There aren’t any of the turret structures there. I think that’s where you should land. I’ve sent the pilot a course that should be able to get you all damn close, keep you out of turret range, and get him out without landing.”

“Excellent,” Stonequest said, relieved that they had a plan. “I knew keeping you there was the right thing to do.”

“And what about me?” It was Butters, the overweight sniper who Kristen had worked with for so long. He pushed into the tiny box that showed Brian’s face. “How am I supposed to help?”

“Your leg still isn’t healed,” Amy said.

“I don’t need a leg to shoot,” he complained.

Stonequest cut the bickering off. “Any news from Kristen?”

“No.” Brian shook his head. Even on the tiny, grainy video feed of his face, it was obvious his expression was grim. “The phone cut off almost as soon as she arrived. I haven’t gotten anything else off it since then. I think it was destroyed when she was captured.”

“How do you know she was captured?” Heartsbane asked. “It could be worse.”

He clenched his jaw. “She was captured,” he repeated. “She had to be.” The young man stared out of the camera and somehow locked Heartsbane in his gaze until she looked away first.

Emerald cleared his throat. “We have to be prepared for all possible outcomes.”

“We are not giving up on Kristen,” he said and the crappy microphone he used distorted his voice as it rose in volume. “She’s been through crazy shit before and come out in one piece. We have to believe in her ability to do it again.”

Stonequest nodded. “He’s right. We’ll operate under the assumption that Kristen is alive, and we will continue to do so until we defeat every damn mage on that island and find her.”

In his heart, though, the dragon was already preparing for the worst.

Hours later—far too many hours by Stonequest’s reckoning—they could see their destination on the horizon. It was part of a cluster of islands, although none were so close to their target that a human would be able to swim between them easily. He could also see the other island with the cellphone tower Brian had mentioned.

Thank the flames for humans and their technology, he thought. Without that cell tower, he knew Kristen would be doomed.

As things stood, he still had hope.

“Everyone fasten seatbelts,” the pilot said. “We’re coming in hot, and the next ten minutes will be bumpy. When I give the order, unstrap and get ready to jump.”

The dragon couldn’t help but grin. There was something awesome about jumping from a moving plane as a human and changing into a dragon in midair. Cooler still was that they would use the method to surprise these mages and rescue the Steel Dragon.

Or so he thought until red lights started flashing.

“We have incoming,” the pilot said.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Heartsbane demanded.

Brian answered from Detroit. His eyes in the sky could see a wealth of information invisible to everyone on the plane.

“I have good news and bad news,” Kristen’s brother said.

“Tell us!” Stonequest shouted.

“There’s a heat-seeking missile headed directly toward you,” he said in a rush.

“How is that good news?” Stonequest roared and his aura sent rage to everyone on the airplane.

“The good news is that there are no turrets on this side of the island.”

“Dammit, Brian,” the dragon said as the plane veered sharply.

Apparently, the techie had already told the pilot as the aircraft zigzagged in an effort to avoid the missile. But even Stonequest understood the difference between a passenger jet and a fighter, and this was no fighter.

Still, Windlock hadn’t hired simply anyone to fly his private jet. The pilot did his job as well as he could and banked the plane at the last second. An explosion detonated outside but at least they were still relatively in one piece.

“We will go in with a barely controlled descent,” the pilot said over the intercom. “That blast missed us but the shockwave destroyed most of our wing and fried the engine on that side. We won’t make it to the island but I’ll put us down as gently as I can.”

Everyone braced themselves, but no one was prepared for what Brian said next.

“They’ve launched another missile. You guys need to get the hell off the plane!”

Stonequest knew there was no time to argue, not with as many squishy humans as they had aboard.

“Let’s move, people! You heard Zed. Move your ass or you’re all dead,” he ordered. “Dragons, you know the humans you need to bring in. We’ve trained for this.” They had not trained for a missile strike but they knew how to evacuate the plane in the air so that would have to be good enough.

“Dragons, I want you to stay as close to the aircraft as you can. When that bomb hits, I want it to look like nothing fell from this plane but debris. Pilot, can you get us over that island?”

“I might make it to the bay but it’ll be close.”

“Do your best,” Stonequest said and stepped forward for his turn to jump.

He leapt from the plane, transformed almost instantaneously, and scooped up Hernandez, Keith, Beanpole, Drew, and Jim.

Despite knowing it was being targeted by a heat-seeking missile, he flew closer to the aircraft.

The other dragons did the same, rescued the evacuees, and hugged the profile of the jet.

Finally, the pilot stepped out, and not a moment too soon. The missile struck and converted the jet to metal scrap. The dragons all took the blast and used its force to blow themselves and their human riders from their positions in the air.

They did so well that Stonequest was honestly afraid some of them were dead, but moments before they splashed into the water, they spread their wings and flew toward the beach. A minute later, he did a headcount as his team armed themselves with gear in the shadow of a few old fishing ships moored in the bay.

“Humans, how do we look?”

Drew answered for all of them. “We have most of our weapons—”

“I have my explosives!” Hernandez cut in enthusiastically.

The SWAT leader continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “But our communications were fried. Does anyone have a cell phone?”

Those who did checked, but no one had service. Stonequest couldn’t help but wonder if the technomages had disabled the nearby cell tower. He wouldn’t put it past them. It was a novice mistake to underestimate a foe and it was far better to overestimate them. He had a feeling there was no way he could overestimate this particular band of opponents.

“Wasn’t there supposed to be an entrance for the fishermen or something?” Larry asked.

Hernandez pointed to a pile of stones that protruded incongruously from the green jungle of the island. “That’s a recent demolition. I’d bet you a hundred to one they blew that when they saw we were getting close.”

Stonequest shook his head at the savviness of their foe. They’d already enlisted deadly mages and a dragon even more fearsome than Kristen herself. Now, they’d somehow taken his team’s element of surprise. Instead of coming undetected through a back door, it looked like they had a long slog through the jungle ahead of them.

“Mages, I want you ready to respond defensively. Everyone else, shoot anything that attacks. I don’t give a shit if it’s a monkey. If it moves, shoot. When we get inside, show caution so we don’t hurt the boss, but there’s no way they left her out here.”

Stonequest only hoped they made it inside. It felt more and more like an “if” than a “when.”

They set off with a team of humans in the lead to cut through the undergrowth and try to find the entrance they were looking for. The mages were in position to cover them, followed by dragons who both itched for a fight and were in danger of being shredded by bullets made of their own species.

He had seen numerous battles in his day, but none seemed stacked against them quite like this one.

Still, he wouldn’t give up, not with Kristen in their clutches.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Kristen’s prison cell was a tiny part of a sprawling complex, of that she felt certain. But however large the base was, it wasn’t so big that she couldn’t hear the sounds of people springing into action.

She listened carefully as she lay on the stone floor of her cell and didn’t so much as twitch. It seemed a logical assumption that she was being watched and she didn’t want whoever was on the other side of the hidden cameras to know that she could hear what was going on.

If she was a regular human, she would not have been able to hear the echoing sounds of boots on stone, the telltale clunk of magazines loaded into guns, and the rough rips of Velcro used to tighten boots and vests, then torn loose to be tightened again. She shouldn’t have been able to hear any of this because the scouting patrol that had caught her had put a magic dampening cuff on her wrist to strip her of her powers.

Inexplicably, Constance had taken that off.

Despite having full access to her dragon abilities, she had as yet done nothing with this secret advantage. She might have been able to escape—if she’d been lucky and missed any guards in the halls armed with dragon bullets—but that relied on too many mistakes on her captors’ part and too much going right for her. She knew very well that it would only take one dragon bullet to stop any attempt at escape, so she bided her time and waited for the ideal moment. She hadn’t let the bruises the technomage had given her heal, although she’d let her nose mend since she could leave the dried blood on her face to add to the illusion of injury.

But the time for action had come. The sounds she heard could only be explained by an invasion. If something else were the culprit—like a tsunami or a volcanic eruption—no one would have bothered with the guns. And if there were an invasion, she had a pretty damn good idea who was doing the invading.

She had no idea how the hell they’d found her as she still didn’t know where she was. But she had given up on underestimating her team a long time before. If they could find a mage lost in the woods of Maine or locate her when she’d been hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth in a cave, finding an island that could be almost anywhere in the earth’s tropics would be like child’s play to them.

Whoever had solved the riddle had done so because they’d wanted to rescue her, but she couldn’t help but want to throw an elaborate reward at whoever had cracked it. If it was Brian who had managed to trace her call, she’d dump a ton of cash in his account and tell him it was to buy more surveillance equipment. He’d probably say he needed drones or something and grin as he spent every penny.

If it was Amy who’d used her magic to trace her, she knew she’d start with a new skateboard deck and go from there.

But there would be no rewards if she didn’t get out of there. It was a good thing she wasn’t the helpless prisoner the technomages thought her to be.

The two guards who stood outside her cell hadn’t shown any indication that something was going on, but the enemy had always demonstrated extreme competence. Even rookies in the Detroit police station knew better than to keep the prisoners informed of every detail of current events happening outside their cell.

Kristen coughed loudly enough to earn the attention of one of them. He looked at her with open contempt as if coughing were another sign of a dragon’s superiority.

She coughed again—from the diaphragm this time and hard enough to sound like she’d hack up a lung.

“Do you need something, or what?” he asked. He had an American accent—New York, she thought—and although she didn’t have any reservations about hurting technomages who had imprisoned and tortured so many dragons, his manners didn’t earn the man much respect.

“Water? Please.” She wheezed for added effect.

The man sighed, took a tin cup, filled it with water, and brought it to the cell. She limped to the bars and he rolled his eyes as he thrust the cup through. “I thought you dragons had healing powers or some shit. Can’t you quench your own thirst?”

“Not without water.” She wheezed again and grasped the man by the wrist. “But you’re right about the healing powers,” she said. “Did you know we can even turn them off if we wish?”

Before he could answer, she pulled him into the bars hard enough to make his skull clang against them. It didn’t knock him out, unfortunately, and he reached for his gun with his other hand. She jerked his arm sideways and cracked the bone.

The man screamed for half a second before she thrust her other arm through the bars and across his mouth.

“You stupid bitch!” the woman guarding the cell said and aimed her gun at her. “We’re packing dragon bullets. Let him go or you die.”

“The problem with dragon bullets is that they don’t have the greatest penetration,” she said, holding the guard between them. “You might be able to shoot through your friend here, but your bullets might stop once they punch holes in his organs.”

“Fucking bitch,” the guard said and took a step to move around her teammate, who was used effectively as a shield.

Truthfully, this was what Kristen wanted. It was true that the dragon bullets probably couldn’t drill through a human body to hurt another person, but the last thing she wanted right now was to have either of these guards pull the trigger. A gunshot from deep in the base would remind anyone who might be listening that the technomages still had an ace up their sleeve in the form of their dragon hostage.

Common sense said she needed to be out of this cell before anyone was smart enough to put a gun loaded with dragon bullets to her head.

Thinking quickly, she threw the guard she held at the woman. The female guard’s reflexes proved to be better than her wits and rather than dodging the man’s unconscious body, she instinctively tried to get her gun up.

She didn’t manage it before the man careened into her. The two guards fell into an awkward pile but immediately, the woman attempted to untangle their limbs. It was lucky that she was short and slight while the New Yorker was tall and heavier. Still, that would buy only seconds, at best.

Wanting to stay quiet but left with no choice, Kristen donned her steel skin and yanked the door off the cell. The woman had raised her gun by then, but it was hard to keep one’s aim when a door comprised of metal bars hurtled toward you.

Rather than taking the shot and being struck in the head by the iron bars, she moved her gun hand to protect her skull. That probably saved her life as the door bulldozed into her arms, which connected with her head and knocked her unconscious.

Kristen stepped from the cell as the clanging of the door being thrown off its hinges echoed down the hallways. The sound wasn’t as problematic as a gunshot, but it still might bring technomages who weren’t so keen on having the Steel Dragon loose inside their base. She stretched through the bars of the door she’d thrown on top of the guards, took the woman’s assault rifle, and checked the magazine. As expected, it contained dragon bullets as the guard had claimed. They were good enough.

She started through the complex. Immediately, she encountered two more guards who moved toward her, probably responding to the sound of the door. With a burst of dragon speed, she disabled them both and moved on.

Her pace increased slightly. She needed to get her bearings, get out of there, and meet up with her team so they could finally defeat these technomages in the base where they had thought they’d always be safe. Grimly, she made her mind up that she wouldn’t hesitate if anyone got in her path—anyone except one person.

Although she didn’t know what she would do if she saw Constance, she was glad that she’d have a gun when they finally met.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Drew had never hated his job. He was one of those odd police officers who liked exchanging fire with criminals. It made him feel like a hero and like he drew their fire so normal people could get to safety. He’d loved his promotion to SWAT because it meant more opportunities to push himself to his limits.

His limits were being pushed right now and for the first time in a long time, he hated his job.

The jungle was thick—impossibly thick in his estimation. Huge leaves created far too much cover. Vines seemed to reach out and grab their feet as they marched. Tropical flowers pumped saccharine-sweet smells into the air that lulled him and the rest of the humans into a fuzzy daze. The heat didn’t help with that either. He had already sweated through his bulletproof vest and protective gear. His mind wandered constantly to the beach and he dreamed of taking a dip in the crystal-clear water.

His daydreams ended abruptly when mages opened fire on them from deep in the jungle.

“Down!” he shouted as bullets ripped through a thicket of palm fronds and caught Beanpole squarely in his chest, thankfully in his bulletproof vest. The gangly lookout fell heavily, gasping in pain but alive.

Drew pushed to his feet and fired in the direction of the gunshots as he cursed volubly. Beanpole was the best damn lookout they had. The man could see a rat climbing a rain gutter from two blocks away, but he was as out of his element there as anyone else.

The technomages seemed to be the only ones with any kind of familiarity in the terrain. Despite the team always returning fire—it wasn’t hard to ascertain where the shots came from when the leaves in one direction suddenly had bullet holes—they never found any bodies.

This time, they located a foxhole dug into the dark tropical soil. A few spent casings remained but nothing more. He cursed, growing more frustrated than ever.

“Down!” Keith shouted as he crashed into the SWAT leader.

A disc of energy rocketed overhead, cleared a path through the forest effortlessly, and severed trees, bushes, and branches indiscriminately. If a human had stood in the projectile’s path, their legs would have been cut from their torso without even slowing the disc.

Drew scrambled forward to find the source of it, but nothing was left but a clay pot filled with some kind of acrid slime that poured smoke from the top. This was the third magical trap they’d found and none of them had been comprehensible to Larry or Amy.

“Damn it, no one’s here,” he said, but in the span of a heartbeat, that wasn’t true anymore.

Gunshots erupted from the depths of the jungle all around him. Two men died before they could so much as return fire. The rest of his people retaliated with a concerted barrage aimed into the jungle. The thick leaves swallowed their bullets as if they were hungry for more.

“This isn’t working!” he shouted into the chaos of it all.

Unfortunately, he was right. They would have been pinned down already if not for Larry and Amy, whose bulletproof shields swirled around them so no more people died after those first two soldiers.

“Where are we headed?” Emerald shouted over the din of the gunfire. He and all the other dragons marched with them so as to not risk being shot out of the sky, but that only meant they didn’t have eyes in the air.

Drew didn’t know what to do. They needed to get somewhere with goddamn cover, which precluded all this damn brush.

“I can buy us a minute, maybe,” Lumos shouted from somewhere near the back of the long procession through the jungle.

“We’ll take it!” he yelled in response.

“Everyone, close your eyes,” the old dragon ordered.

“Are you fucking crazy?” Hernandez demanded.

“That’s an order, people. Close your eyes and squeeze ʼem tight,” Jim bellowed.

His soldiers listened but Drew kept his open a moment longer. Even though he knew the danger of seeing Lumos unleash the power for which he was named, he couldn’t help but watch the old dragon crouch on one knee, look up, and leap forty feet into the sky.

The technomages did not fail to notice one of their targets break cover with superhuman strength. A hundred hidden guns tracked him skyward as the lean old man with a mustache blowing in the wind transformed into a giant golden dragon.

Drew shut his eyes but he still saw the outline of the dragon, his wings splayed and tail erect, as bright white light seeped through his eyelids.

“Uphill!” he shouted to his men when he opened his eyes. The flash of light had gone already, but its effects were everywhere in the forest. The mages had stopped firing their weapons. A few tentative spells issued from some of their hands in the form of clouds of mist or tendrils of electricity.

The dragons raced to each of these exposed mages but even blinded, their spells damaged the dragons who dared to approach.

Drew stumbled forward and led the human portion of their force up a hill. They pushed through a mass of vines and paused beneath a troop of monkeys that screamed in rage at their loss of sight. A mage stumbled beneath them, his weapon aimed at the monkeys but not keen to waste ammunition.

He shot him in the chest and took his weapon.

Forward, he reminded himself. He had to move forward and fast. As he pushed through the vegetation, blinded insects fell from the canopy and birds screeched to their fellows.

Through the rich greens and bursts of colorful flowers, he saw a patch of darkness. “There! That way…that way,” he ordered and pushed toward the achromatic aberration.

They thrust through the thick undergrowth into a space that had been cleared of plants outside a cave. Two mages stood with their fists wreathed in flame. As soon as the team pushed through, they unleashed their magic blasts. One went wide, but the other caught a young man who Drew didn’t know squarely in the chest.

Despite knowing they would lose people, the shock of someone dying so close to him still hurt. It took a moment for the surge of sadness to give way as the man who’d been struck raced forward and lifted the mage by the neck. He hurled him with superhuman strength that immediately made it obvious that he was a dragon in his human form and not one of the new recruits whose name he had simply failed to learn.

The dragon dispatched the other mage by pounding his head against the stone wall. For a moment, all was quiet. Drew peered into the cave. Mist poured from its interior to join the thick humid jungle air before it dissipated like the breath of a horrible beast waiting for a fresh meal to walk inside.

A rustling from the trees heralded a golden dragon who plowed through the canopy and into the underbrush. He transformed in midair and landed on his feet as gunshots were fired again in the jungle.

“What are we waiting for?” he asked, but Drew immediately noticed his voice was strained.

“You’re hurt,” he said to the ancient dragon. Lumos clutched one of his forearms to his body with the other.

“Not badly,” he said. “I’ll live.”

“Not unless we get that bullet out,” Heartsbane said. “As long as that is in there, your healing powers will be compromised. You know that.”

“I know, I know,” he said but held the wounded arm closer as if to hide his frailty from the younger dragons.

“That can happen inside,” Drew said. “Humans, lead the way. I want that hallway cleared. Larry and Amy, you go with them and keep them covered.”

“We have,” Larry complained. One of his nostrils was bloody from his exertions.

“I know, and you’ve done a damn good job. Let’s get inside. That way, they can only get us from two angles instead of three hundred and sixty.”

The human soldiers entered the tunnel and the mages followed.

“Dragons next,” Drew ordered and in moments, their entire team was out of the heat and into the technomages’ nest.

Well, almost everyone. “Hernandez, I need you to wire this exit to explode.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” she said sweetly and whistled as she set her explosives.

“Are you ready, Lumos?” he asked and retrieved a pair of forceps from his belt.

“What on earth do you plan to do with that?”

“Get that bullet out.”

“Amy can do that.”

“I know, but we can’t spare her right now. It’ll only take a few seconds. I’ve had more than enough practice.”

He didn’t tell the old dragon that just because he had practice, it didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt.

Lumos took in in stride, though, and clamped his teeth so hard on a branch he’d found that he cracked it in half.

That done, they proceeded into the tunnel to save their friend.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Kristen’s cell, unfortunately, had been located on the opposite side of the base from wherever the action was.

It meant that instead of breaking free to the outside and the faces of her friends, she now stood in a control room in the center of the base with two mages she’d met before—Constance and Neal Havington, the leader of the cell in Florence—plus one she hadn’t who seemed to be particularly adept at shooting shards of metal. As if that wasn’t enough, the Iron Dragon herself was present.

To call it an unpleasant surprise would be an understatement.

“The Steel Dragon!” Constance shouted when she threw the door open. Her mouth seemed to gape as wide Kristen’s did.

“Kill her!” Katrina ordered and the other two mages hastened to do so.

Havington threw balls of fire at her. She could swat them away well enough with her steel skin, but if they got too close to her eyes, the brightness made it hard to see. The other mage launched a spray of needles at her.

At first, she had no idea where the shards of metal were coming from, but most of them bounced off her steel skin easily enough. The problem was that when they penetrated, they hurt, so it was quite troubling that she already had twenty or thirty of the damn things sticking out of the tender joints between her digits on her fingers. Not only that, but it also made her gun incredibly painful to fire.

She fired all the same, but Constance blocked her with a veil of magic.

Wisely, she dove for cover.

The metal-slinging mage didn’t seem to have any issue delivering his swarms of needles around the bank of computers she had ducked behind. They continued to ping against her steel skin and occasionally stabbed where her armor was thinner. She poked her head out and fired as many dragon bullets as she could, but Constance blocked them again.

Shit, she cursed silently as she acknowledged that this wasn’t going well.

Havington took the initiative to simply blow the bank of computers she was hiding behind into nothing but scrap. She raced to find somewhere else to hide, but there was nowhere. The mages cast spell after spell at her to harry her retreat and made it damn obvious that she was outmatched in a big way.

She threw herself behind a concrete pillar and tried to catch her breath and come up with some kind of plan, without much success.

“Surrender!” Havington said. “It’s your only choice. Somehow, you used your dragon wiles to trick the guards. That’s fine. It means they were weak. But you can’t beat us. Put the gun down and come out and no harm will come to you. Persist, and Eric and I will be forced to kill you.”

“How about you go screw yourself?” Kristen said and squeezed off another couple of rounds that Constance blocked.

“I’m afraid it really is over,” Constance said, although she didn’t sound pleased.

A team of troops rushed in. “The enemy forces have penetrated the base and are on their way through the tunnels to the inner sanctum,” one reported.

“You moron!” Eric cursed. “We need all troops to engage. Now!” He pressed a button on the console in front of him. Red lights began to blink and alarms blared throughout the complex.

“I won’t lose this base because one of you idiots led the steel bitch here,” the mage fumed and followed his troops into one of the tunnels, no doubt to try to kill Kristen’s friends.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t exactly follow him.

“Havington, are you coming?” Eric demanded.

“Of course.” The man wreathed his hands in flames and followed him out. “Ladies, I trust you can put the steel bitch down?”

“With pleasure,” Katrina replied.

The enemy dragon’s heavy iron steps approached her pathetic hiding place.

Without much of an option, Kristen spun from behind the concrete pillar and emptied every round she had into Katrina’s chest.

Once again, Constance blocked all the shots. “Not like that,” she said and shook her head as she looked like her heart was being torn in half. Katrina couldn’t see the mage’s face because her back was to her. She wondered if the woman would have let such emotion show if the dragon could see.

“Thank you very much, Mother,” Katrina said. “Now, you can leave the runt to me.”

The technomage darted one last look at Kristen and ran from the room. There was nothing to be done now but fight.

She reloaded with a spare magazine she’d taken from a downed guard. Before she could so much as aim at the Iron Dragon, Katrina raced forward and knocked the weapon from her hand.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Kristen didn’t lament the loss of her firearm. Instead, she threw a knee into her opponent’s ribs and shoved the iron-skinned woman back with a grunt.

“So you want to lose again, huh? How many times will this be?” Katrina asked and began her transformation into her Iron Dragon form.

She miscalculated, though, and the room they were in was barely big enough to house a dragon. While she was changing, Kristen simply left.

“Bitch!” the Iron Dragon roared down the hallway she had vanished into.

“It takes one to know one,” she responded, which pissed the dragon off enough to compel her to change into her human form and follow her down the tunnel.

Of course, she hadn’t fled and had stopped at the first intersection to wait. As soon as her adversary tried to pass, she struck out with a chop to the woman’s windpipe. Steel clanged against iron and Katrina stumbled back and gasped.

Kristen pushed her attack. Every one of her blows sounded like a blacksmith beating an anvil with a hammer. She targeted her enemy’s face, ribs, crotch, and the back of her neck with her elbow. Far more proficient as a human fighter, she knew where the weak areas were on a human and better yet, she knew where the weak points were on someone with metal skin.

Katrina tried to block, but she had an edge like the other woman had in dragon form. She pressed harder and moved faster and faster until she was a blur. Her adversary blocked most of her blows but finally, after a brutal combination of blows to her neck, she had an opening.

She vaulted and landed a dropkick on the woman’s chest powered by every ounce of strength she had.

Her opponent catapulted away and bulldozed through tunnel after tunnel until she finally came to a stop when she impacted with a cave wall. Kristen raced through the human-sized hole she’d created and reached Katrina before she could pull herself out of the hole she found herself in.

She caught her adversary by her hair—knowing that iron hair wouldn’t rip out any more than steel hair would—and hurled her through another couple of walls.

This time, Katrina was able to pull herself together before she reached her. She surged into her and their metal bodies clanged louder than any gong as Kristen now powered through the walls.

The woman tried to rush in and take advantage, but she was ready. She used her knees to drive into the Iron Dragon’s gut, which made the woman double over.

Her follow-up kick was hard enough to launch her through the ceiling. Katrina plunged into a hard landing and a pile of rubble fell on top of her. When she made impact, the tunnel they were in sagged and a crack spread through the roof.

“We should get out of here,” Kristen said. “We’ll bring this whole place down.”

“Our inner sanctum is fortified, you insipid bitch,” Katrina snapped.

“It’s your base, not mine,” she said, caught the woman by the throat, and thrust her into the ceiling three times in quick succession.

She released her as the roof caved in.

Kristen raced back as part of the mountain collapsed onto the Iron Dragon and buried her in rubble. The dust hadn’t even begun to settle when Katrina was already pushing herself out of the debris.

Before she made it clear, the Steel Dragon attacked again.

She launched a concerted assault, punching, kicking, headbutting, and doing anything and everything she could to prevent her adversary from realizing the collapse had given her enough space to transform into her Iron Dragon body.

When Katrina did realize that she had the room, Kristen simply vanished into another tunnel.

“Bitch!” she roared after transforming into her dragon body. She blew flames into the air, and—consumed by hatred as she was—made the mistake of changing into her human body to pursue her quarry through more tunnels.

Kristen was ready for her at another intersection. This time, when the woman tried to race past, she darted out behind her and locked an arm around the Iron Dragon’s neck.

“Let…me…go…” Katrina wheezed as she squeezed her air pipe.

“You should try to save your air,” she said sweetly.

“Don’t…tell me…how to…fight…” The Iron Dragon was fading. It was damn hard to choke someone with metal skin—Kristen knew this from personal experience—but it wasn’t impossible. The thing about steel or iron skin was that it could only be so deep. Muscles, veins and windpipes still needed to do their job, which meant they couldn’t be solid metal.

Although Katrina’s iron skin protected her from getting bruised, it also allowed her throat to be strangled. She fought back or at least tried to. Awkwardly, she elbowed Kristen in the ribs and stamped on her foot. She tried to gouge her eyes out but Kristen had a brother. She knew everything there was to know about headlocks, how to break them, and how to keep people locked.

She tightened her hold when Katrina fell to one knee and tightened it further when she pounded on her arm to release her. Her face resolute, she retained her stranglehold on Katrina’s neck until the woman lost consciousness.

Even then, she didn’t waste a moment. She knew that dragon healing powers worked fine when someone was unconscious. That was why she had to take them away from her adversary.

Fortunately, she had the perfect solution.

She took the cuff out of her pocket—the one Constance had taken off her, thus making her escape and this entire chain of events possible—and put it on Katrina’s iron wrist.

The effect was immediate. Her adversary’s iron skin vanished and she whimpered in her sleep, no doubt feeling her bruises more acutely. Kristen sighed and tried to accept the fact that it was over.

Or so she thought until an explosion collapsed the tunnel around her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Larry and Amy followed the regular human soldiers into the inner sanctum of the base. He couldn’t believe that the mages had done it. They’d fucking hollowed out the center of the dormant volcano in the middle of the island and used it for their damn base of operations.

“At least now we know they’re evil for sure,” he said as he stared at the solidified lava formations all around the edges of the volcano. “Good guy bases are never in places like this.”

“If you’re done sightseeing, I’d appreciate backup,” Amy replied.

“Sure,” he said, although he didn’t know why she even bothered to ask him for help. She was so much more powerful than him. Her powers coupled with the humans’ weapons were more than enough to overwhelm these mages.

He’d almost convinced himself of that when two mages rushed into the heart of the volcano. Larry recognized one of them. Neal Havington, the leader of the European cell, was quite proficient in hurling balls of flame.

The other was a man he had never seen before who seemed to prefer throwing needles at his foes. He quickly decided he didn’t like the asshole. While the rest of the troops focused on pushing deeper and deeper into the inner sanctum, Larry and Amy turned their attention to the two mages.

He would later wonder if this was how the ancient fights between mages had been, long before the rebellions when mages had ruled in their own right.

The man—Eric, he heard Havington call him—threw what must have been a thousand needles at Amy. She simply ripped a door off its hinges and spun it in a complex set of twists and spins that she’d no doubt picked up in her skateboarding days. Using it as a shield, she caught every one of the projectiles the mage hurled at her.

Havington joined the fight.

“Watch out for the European asshole!” Larry shouted and managed to throw up a defensive shield that slowed but did not block the man’s ball of fire.

The girl reached out with her powers and somehow found the mages’ source of water. She doused Havington’s flame while Eric launched another attack.

What happened next was almost too fast for Larry to follow.

It seemed that Eric’s powers were comparable to Amy’s in that both mages were proficient in picking shit up and throwing it at each other.

In one minute, the battle inside the interior of the volcano progressed more or less like every battle sequence from every James Bond movie. The enemy fired and tried to move forward and the heroes shoot and try to move forward—classic and simple.

But in the next moment, it was like a Jedi battle.

Everything that wasn’t part of the stone wall was lifted off the ground and hurled from one mage to the other.

Amy threw a desk and Eric caught it.

He threw a file cabinet and she deflected it.

Soon, a hurricane raged inside the volcano as furniture, rocks, and even bullets were snatched from their places and flung at each other.

Both mages, however, were too skilled to let the other break through their defenses.

“Damn it!” Havington cursed as he watched the epic battle with the same dumb amazement as Larry did. “We’re losing ground.”

Larry spared a quick glance and saw that he was right. The invading team had taken more than half of the floor of the cavernous room while the two mages battled above them.

“Open a portal!” Eric ordered as he directed a crate at Amy. It shattered on her defenses and dragon bullets spilled everywhere and were snatched up by the magic of both mages and used against each other.

A small group of mages broke away from the fight and began to work together to open an escape route.

“Larry!” Amy yelled, “You can’t let them open that portal!”

He knew it was true and yet, try as he might, he couldn’t stop them. When he tried to attack the mages, Havington launched fireballs at him to force him to play defense or be incinerated.

The girl couldn’t extricate herself from her battle either.

The mages would escape again. Despite finally finding what had to be one of their best-guarded bases, it wouldn’t be enough. This fight would continue forever and eventually bring the entire planet into it.

Larry had begun to feel a little desperate when a blast of flame exploded from above and raked the mage who had tried to open the portal. For a second, he thought the frenzied combat had somehow awakened the dormant volcano, but then he realized that what had happened was far better.

Kristen had come to their rescue through the top of the volcano. She’d blasted all the mages who had been leading the escape.

The remainder of the defenders scattered, no longer willing to fight now that they didn’t have an escape plan.

“Destroy their boss!” Larry ordered, and every human troop began to fire at Eric.

It was a testimony to the mage’s power that more than a dozen people firing hundreds of rounds at him wasn’t enough to stop him, at least not immediately.

Finally, a round penetrated, caught him in the leg, and felled him with a scream of pain.

All the objects that had whirled around the room careened into the wall behind him, forced there by Amy’s powers. In the chaos, Larry didn’t see Kristen until she’d already transformed. She held a pistol pushed against Havington’s temple.

“It’s over!” she yelled to Eric, who still attempted to summon the energy to continue the battle despite his injury. He didn’t look like he was the kind of man to go down without a fight, but before he could initiate anything, Constance stepped into the room.

Larry clenched his teeth, ready for the battle to start anew.

“She’s right!” the woman shouted. “It’s over. Everyone stop fighting. We don’t want anyone else to die if they don’t have to.”

He was shocked that she agreed with Kristen. Eric, bleeding from his leg, looked from his former ally to Kristen’s hard gaze. The Steel Dragon glared at him despite still holding a pistol against Havington’s head. Finally, he glanced at Amy, who only tilted her head like she was ready to play another round.

“Fine,” the man snapped.

“What was that? I don’t think your troops heard you and they’ll need to if you don’t want them dead,” Kristen said.

“Throw your weapons down,” Eric shouted at his mages. “That’s an order. I don’t want anyone dying to these savages for no good reason.”

Larry exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Holy shit. It was done. It was finally done.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Afew hours later, Kristen was reasonably confident that they had dug through every inch of the enemy base.

Deep beneath the inner sanctum, they’d found a half-dozen captive dragons and more troubling, a lab where it looked like more could be made. There was also an enormous stockpile of dragon bullets, more than she had anticipated and certainly more than she’d seen in one place.

Constance admitted that the mages had been building and storing the ammunition in this location for well over a decade. It was a stockpile so big, the Steel Dragon wondered if it could be destroyed. She might have rested easier if the volcano in which the battle had been fought was still active. They could have dumped everything inside it, although she didn’t know if even that would have the heat needed to melt refined dragon scales.

The surviving enemy mages were all cuffed to block their power and tossed into the cells where the captive dragons used to be. Despite her seeing the cosmic irony of imprisoning them in the same horrible place where dragons they’d tortured for so long had been, she didn’t want to leave them there long. Her team worked on reestablishing communications with the outside world so she could obtain guidance on what to do with them from the Council. Katrina was there, too.

In the meantime, Kristen had questions and she thought she knew who had answers.

Heartsbane, Stonequest, Amy, and Drew all brought Constance to her. Drew kept a gun aimed at her head while the others stood tensely nearby, ready to use their powers if needed. Her other closest allies were in the room too—Larry, Lumos, Hernandez, Emerald, Keith, and Beanpole. Everyone had their weapon of choice trained on the mage. For once, she didn’t feel it was naïve to think that Constance wouldn’t be able to turn the tables on them.

“I need to know why you switched sides like you did,” she said to the woman.

The technomage smiled. “I didn’t switch sides.”

“Can we kill her? Please?” Hernandez asked.

Constance obviously couldn’t tell it was a joke—but, for that matter, Kristen wasn’t entirely sure it was either. “No, please,” the woman said as she glanced at the duffel bag near the foot of the demolitions expert and probably imagined tools of torture inside. “I’ve always been on the side of humanity surviving. I’m sure Kristen has told you what I told her.” She sighed. “I realized that if a powerful elder dragon wanted war between dragons and humanity, it might not be in humanity’s best interest to go ahead with that war.”

Kristen nodded. She believed it. After Constance opened the cuff binding her powers and then called for an end to the fighting, she believed it.

“Wait, did you deliberately leave the trail for us to follow?” Larry asked.

The mage nodded. “I did. I felt certain that you or Amy would notice it and be able to trace it here. I’m glad I was right.”

“You could’ve sent a text with a pin dropped on your location,” Keith said.

“I could not have. If all of you had shown up, we would have blasted you out of the sky. I knew Kristen would come through, although I must admit, I did not think she would come alone.”

“That’s why you uncuffed me?” she asked. “You wanted me to defeat these mages because you thought their goals were fulfilling the plans of the Masked One?”

“Indeed, and I must say, I’m rather pleased that this all worked out with minimal losses. I was concerned the body count would be higher.”

“I’ve always had a problem with your acceptance of human lives as collateral damage, Constance,” she said. “Don’t start saying stupid shit now and making me think that maybe your life could be collateral.”

“I thought that by helping you—”

“We’re grateful,” she said. “But the actions of today don’t erase the actions of yesterday. You’ve hurt dragons, humans, and mages. Many people won’t be able to simply forget that.”

Constance nodded and looked around the room, perhaps realizing for the first time how much pain she’d caused to the people gathered there before she even considered the others in the world.

“But you’ve done a real service by bringing this war with the technomages to a close. With them finally gone, the Dragon Council should back away from the idea of war. If war is avoided between humans and dragons, I think I may be able to forgive you, although I’d never ask that of any of the people you hurt.”

“If the prevention of war is what is needed to earn my forgiveness, I fear it will never come,” the woman said.

“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?” Stonequest asked.

Constance sighed. “Although the stockpile here was large as you no doubt saw, the technomages at this facility have already shipped tons of dragon bullets around the globe.”

“By tons, you don’t literally mean—” Keith protested.

“Unfortunately, I do,” the woman said. “Plus, we all know that human militaries everywhere now know how to kill dragons. The proverbial genie is out of the bottle.”

“But none of that matters if the technomages stop their aggression,” Kristen said, “There are still nuclear weapons, after all, but no one wants to use them, so we haven’t had a nuclear war. The mere existence of the weapons doesn’t mean they have to be used. Reality doesn’t need Chekhov’s gun to be fired.”

“But there is still a side agitating for war,” Constance said. “The Masked One wanted a war long before we came on the scene, and he’ll want one still. This might set him back but it will not stop him. The war may not take the form of a fight between dragons and revolutionary mages, but it will take place as long as he continues to operate on the Dragon Council. He will find a way to make it happen. That’s what he does.”

“And you’re sure it’s a dragon on the Council?” Stonequest asked. After the battle, she’d filled her closest advisors in on their next enemy, including the rumored name, and it was something Stonequest struggled with. Through all the twists and turns this war had taken, he had always wanted to trust the Council. Kristen couldn’t blame him. He was a cop, after all, one who served on Dragon SWAT but a cop all the same. He needed to believe their leaders weren’t violent or corrupt.

“It’s what makes the most sense,” Constance said matter of factly.

He looked at Kristen, his eyes hungry for her to deny the accusation, but she couldn’t. Not after all that had happened, all the false leads, and all the strings they’d pulled at only to find themselves wrapped more tightly in a web that none of them could see the edges of.

“Everything I have ever heard of the Masked One indicates that he would indeed like to bring ruin to the world so he could remake it as he sees fit. A world of darkness instead of light, a world of shadow instead of sunshine.” Lumos still cradled his wounded arm. Despite having the bullet removed, his dragon powers were taking time to kick in.

Kristen sighed and looked at the old dragon, who looked so frail with his injury. Somehow, he was supposed to give her the training she’d need to defeat the arch enemy. It was a frightening prospect.

“I’m not willing to say we’re fighting a mythical legend,” she told her team. “But we very well might be. Whoever is behind all this—if indeed there is a dragon agitating for war—I know that together, we’ll be able to put an end to it. And when all this violence and bigotry and hatred is finally over, we can all sit down for some pizza.”

THE STORY CONTINUES

The story continues with book thirteen: The Battle of Detroit, coming soon to Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.

BOOKS BY KEVIN MCLAUGHLIN

Steel Dragon

(with Michael Anderle)

Genesis Draconis (Book 1)

Scales of Justice (Book 2)

Dragon Rising (Book 3)

Dragon Swat (Book 4)

Terror Obscura (Book 5)

Never Cage a Dragon (Book 6)

Dragon's Party (Book 7)

Dragon Rescue (Book 8)

Destruction Imminent (Book 9)

Ties That Bind (Book 10)

The Masked One (Book 11)

The Warrior’s Blood (Book 12)

The Battle of Detroit (Book 13)

The Battle of Dragons (Book 14)

Of Scale and Teeth (Book 15)

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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