One Good Dragon Deserves Another

by Rachel Aaron

  That must have been the PR part of the message, because after it was done, Algonquin’s watery voice lost all trace of humanity. “And to the dragons watching this—the snakes who think they can kill my spirits and infest my land—consider this your first and only warning. With one shot, I have killed the three most powerful of your kind left on Earth. Now, I declare war on the rest. Any dragon who enters the DFZ, or any other nation which requests my protection, will meet the same end. You have now become my prey, and the hunt will continue until the current dragon infestation is entirely eliminated.” Her flickering lips curled in a smile. “See you in Detroit.”

  The video cut out after that, taking them back to the emergency broadcast message, but all Julius could do was stare.

  “Well,” Bob said, slipping the phone back into his pocket. “That escalated quickly.”

  Julius couldn’t even form a reply. He just sank silently to the floor, landing beside the equally shell-shocked Katya as Marci came bursting into the room to ask if they’d seen what’d just happened on TV.

  Epilogue

  A few time zones away, in a heavily warded basement beneath the United Nations headquarters in New York City, a woman of indeterminate age wearing a very expensive suit was cursing under her breath. In front of her, a three-foot-deep nest of layered AR projections showed what had just happened in Detroit on constant loop: the version Algonquin had broadcast, footage from their own cameras, and selected clips from the thousands of independent witnesses that were now flooding video sharing sites. No matter how many angles she watched it from, though, the story was always the same. Algonquin had shot down the three most feared dragons in the world within minutes of their awakening, which meant they were all in a great deal of trouble.

  “Ma’am!”

  The woman didn’t move, just glanced at her side camera to see one of her aides slipping through the heavily reinforced door into her darkened room with a black folder in his hands. “Please tell me that’s the sit rep from the DFZ office. I want a full report of where she got the magic for that,” she pointed at the looped footage of the giant white dragons falling from the sky, “and I want it now.”

  “No, ma’am,” the young man said, his face pale. “This is the confirmation from Stanford University’s Thaumaturgy Department you ordered this morning. They’re reporting the same results as yesterday. We’ve also gotten readings in from our offices in Jerusalem, Mumbai, Tokyo, and London, all positive.”

  The woman sighed and leaned back in her leather chair, turning to glare at the large raven sitting on his custom perch beside her. “I thought you said we had fifty years before we had to worry about this?”

  “I did,” the raven replied, turning its head to look at her with each of its beady eyes. “But I’ve been mistaken before.”

  “A Merlin rising five decades before he’s supposed to is a pretty big mistake,” the woman snapped, glancing back at the falling dragons that were still playing on loop across all her projected screens. “Though I suppose this could help explain why Algonquin chose tonight to play her hand.”

  “Ma’am?” the aide said, glancing nervously at the perch which, to him, most likely appeared empty. “Are you talking to me?”

  “I am now,” the woman said, standing up in a fluid motion. “Pack me a bag with the usual, and have someone dig Myron out of his labyrinth.”

  Now the aide looked terrified. “The Under Secretary of Magic?” he said, voice trembling. “I can try. But forgive me for asking, shouldn’t we be getting someone from the Office for Spirit Affairs for this?”

  The woman laughed. “With Algonquin taking over every video feed in the world to show off a triple-dragon kill? I’m sure the OSA is already at maximum panic, which is to say, useless.” She put out her arm for the raven to hop onto her wrist. “If we’re going to have any hope of getting control of this situation, we need to come at the problem from a different angle, which means I need Myron and a flight to New Mexico.”

  At the mention of New Mexico, the aide cringed. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, pulling out his phone. “But… are you certain you want to handle this personally? The last agent we sent didn’t fare so well.”

  “True,” she said with a smile. “But I’m a lot tougher than he was, and haven’t you ever heard that the enemy of my enemy is my friend?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the aide said, backing into the hall with a defeated sigh. “I’ll go pack your bag.”

  “And make sure they get Myron specifically!” she yelled after him. “Don’t waste my time with anyone else!”

  The door slammed shut before he could answer. It didn’t matter, though. The woman was already in motion, stripping off her suit jacket as she walked to the weapons wall—a massive display that took up the entire rear half of the room—and started loading up.

  Thank you for reading!

  Keep going for a sample of my completed Fantasy series, The Legend of Eli Monpress!

  Thank you for reading One Good Dragon Deserves Another! If you enjoyed the story, or even if you didn’t, I hope you’ll consider leaving a review. Reviews, good and bad, are vital to any author’s career, and I would be extremely thankful and appreciative if you’d consider writing one for me.

  Want to know when my next novel is available? Visit www.rachelaaron.net to see all my books and to sign up for my new release mailing list! You can also follow me on Twitter @Rachel_Aaron or like my Facebook page, facebook.com/RachelAaronAuthor, for up-to-date information on all of my releases.

  The third Heartstriker novel, A Dragon of a Different Color, should be coming out in early 2016! If that’s too long to wait, I hope you’ll check out one of my other, completed series. Simply click over to the “Want More Books by Rachel?” page in your eReader for a list, or you can visit www.rachelaaron.net to see all of my books complete with their beautiful covers, links to reviews, and free sample chapters!

  Thank you again for reading, and I hope you’ll be back soon!

  Yours sincerely,

  Rachel Aaron

  Enjoyed One Good Dragon Deserves Another? Try the Fantasy series that started it all,

  THE LEGEND OF ELI MONPRESS

  Eli Monpress is talented. He's charming. And he's the greatest thief in the world.

  He’s also a wizard, and with the help of his partners in crime—a swordsman with the world’s most powerful magic sword (but no magical ability of his own) and a demonseed who can step through shadows and punch through walls—he's getting ready to pull off the heist of his career. To start, though, he'll just steal something small. Something no one will miss.

  Something like… a king.

  "I cannot be less than 110% in love with this book. I loved it. I love it still. Already I sort of want to read it again. Considering my fairly epic Godzilla-sized To Read list, that's just about the highest compliment I can give a book." - CSI: Librarian

  Keep reading for a sneak peek of the first chapter, or buy it now in ebook, print, or audio!

  Chapter 1

  In the prison under the castle Allaze, in the dark, moldy cells where the greatest criminals in Mellinor spent the remainder of their lives counting rocks to stave off madness, Eli Monpress was trying to wake up a door.

  It was a heavy oak door with an iron frame, created centuries ago by an overzealous carpenter to have, perhaps, more corners than it should. The edges were carefully fitted to lie flush against the stained, stone walls, and the heavy boards were nailed together so tightly that not even the flickering torch light could wedge between them. In all, the effect was so overdone, the construction so inhumanly strong, that the whole black affair had transcended simple confinement and become a monument to the absolute hopelessness of the prisoner’s situation. Eli decided to focus on the wood; the iron would have taken forever.

  He ran his hands over it, long fingers gently tapping in a way living trees find desperately annoying, but dead wood finds soothing, like a scratch behind the ears. At last, the boards gave a little shudd
er and said, in a dusty, splintery voice, “What do you want?”

  “My dear friend,” Eli said, never letting up on his tapping, “the real question here is, what do you want?”

  “Pardon?” the door rattled, thoroughly confused. It wasn’t used to having questions asked of it.

  “Well, doesn’t it strike you as unfair?” Eli said. “From your grain, anyone can see you were once a great tree. Yet, here you are, locked up through no fault of your own, shut off from the sun by cruel stones with no concern at all for your comfort or continued health.”

  The door rattled again, knocking the dust from its hinges. Something about the man’s voice was off. It was too clear for a normal human’s, and the certainty in his words stirred up strange memories that made the door decidedly uncomfortable.

  “Wait,” it grumbled suspiciously. “You’re not a wizard, are you?”

  “Me?” Eli clutched his chest. “I, one of those confidence tricksters? Those manipulators of spirits? Why, the very thought offends me! I am but a wanderer, moving from place to place, listening to the spirits’ sorrows and doing what little I can to make them more comfortable.” He resumed the pleasant tapping, and the door relaxed against his fingers.

  “Well”—it leaned forward a fraction, lowering its creak conspiratorially—“if that’s the case, then I don’t mind telling you the nails do poke a bit.” It rattled, and the nails stood out for a second before returning to their position flush against the wood. The door sighed. “I don’t mind the dark so much, or the damp. It’s just that people are always slamming me, and that just drives the sharp ends deeper. It hurts something awful, but no one seems to care.”

  “Let me have a look,” Eli said, his voice soft with concern. He made a great show of poring over the door and running his fingers along the joints. The door waited impatiently, creaking every time Eli’s hands brushed over a spot where the nails rubbed. Finally, when he had finished his inspection, Eli leaned back and tucked his fist under his chin, obviously deep in thought. When he didn’t say anything for a few minutes, the door began to grow impatient, which is a very uncomfortable feeling for a door.

  “Well?” it croaked.

  “I’ve found the answer,” Eli said, crouching down on the doorstep. “Those nails, which give you so much trouble, are there to pin you to the iron frame. However”—Eli held up one finger in a sage gesture—“they don’t stay in of their own accord. They’re not glued in; there’s no hook. In fact, they seem to be held in place only by the pressure of the wood around them. So”—he arched an eyebrow—“the reason they stay in at all, the only reason, is because you’re holding on to them.”

  “Of course!” the door rumbled. “How else would I stay upright?”

  “Who said you had to stay upright?” Eli said, throwing out his arms in a grand gesture. “You’re your own spirit, aren’t you? If those nails hurt you, why, there’s no law that you have to put up with it. If you stay in this situation, you’re making yourself a victim.”

  “But . . .” The door shuddered uncertainly.

  “The first step is admitting you have a problem.” Eli gave the wood a reassuring pat. “And that’s enough for now. However”—his voice dropped to a whisper—“if you’re ever going to live your life, really live it, then you need to let go of the roles others have forced on you. You need to let go of those nails.”

  “But, I don’t know . . .” The door shifted back and forth.

  “Indecision is the bane of all hardwoods.” Eli shook his head. “Come on, it doesn’t have to be forever. Just give it a try.”

  The door clanged softly against its frame, gathering its resolve as Eli made encouraging gestures. Then, with a loud bang, the nails popped like corks, and the boards clattered to the ground with a long, relieved sigh.

  Eli stepped over the planks and through the now empty iron doorframe. The narrow hall outside was dark and empty. Eli looked one way, then the other, and shook his head.

  “First rule of dungeons,” he said with a wry grin, “don’t pin all your hopes on a gullible door.”

  With that, he stepped over the sprawled boards, now mumbling happily in peaceful, nail-free slumber, and jogged off down the hall toward the rendezvous point.

  ***

  In the sun-drenched rose garden of the castle Allaze, King Henrith of Mellinor was spending money he hadn’t received yet.

  “Twenty thousand gold standards!” He shook his teacup at his Master of the Exchequer. “What does that come out to in mellinos?”

  The exchequer, who had answered this question five times already, responded immediately. “Thirty-one thousand five hundred at the current rate, my lord, or approximately half Mellinor’s yearly tax income.”

  “Not bad for a windfall, eh?” The king punched him in the shoulder good-naturedly. “And the Council of Thrones is actually going to pay all that for one thief? What did the bastard do?”

  The Master of the Exchequer smiled tightly and rubbed his shoulder. “Eli Monpress”—he picked up the wanted poster that was lying on the table, where the roughly sketched face of a handsome man with dark, shaggy hair grinned boyishly up at them—“bounty, paid dead or alive, twenty thousand Council Gold Standard Weights. Wanted on a hundred and fifty-seven counts of grand larceny against a noble person, three counts of fraud, one charge of counterfeiting, and treason against the Rector Spiritualis.” He squinted at the small print along the bottom of the page. “There’s a separate bounty of five thousand gold standards from the Spiritualists for that last count, which has to be claimed independently.”

  “Figures.” The king slurped his tea. “The Council can’t even ink a wanted poster without the wizards butting their noses in. But”—he grinned broadly—“money’s money, eh? Someone get the Master Builder up here. It looks like we’ll have that new arena after all.”

  The order, however, was never given, for at that moment, the Master Jailer came running through the garden gate, his plumed helmet gripped between his white-knuckled hands.

  “Your Majesty.” He bowed.

  “Ah, Master Jailer.” The king nodded. “How is our money bag liking his cell?”

  The jailer’s face, already pale from a job that required him to spend his daylight hours deep underground, turned ghostly. “Well, you see, sir, the prisoner, that is to say”— he looked around for help, but the other officials were already backing away—“he’s not in his cell.”

  “What?” The king leaped out of his seat, face scarlet. “If he’s not in his cell, then where is he?”

  “We’re working on that right now, Majesty!” the jailer said in a rush. “I have the whole guard out looking for him. He won’t get out of the palace!”

  “See that he doesn’t,” the king growled. “Because if he’s not back in his cell within the hour . . .”

  He didn’t need to finish the threat. The jailer saluted and ran out of the garden as fast as his boots would carry him. The officials stayed frozen where they were, each waiting for the others to move first as the king began to stalk around the garden, sipping his tea with murderous intent.

  “Your Majesty,” squeaked a minor official, who was safely hidden behind the crowd. “This Eli seems a dangerous character. Shouldn’t you move to safer quarters?”

  “Yes!” The Master of Security grabbed the idea and ran with it. “If that thief could get out of his cell, he can certainly get into the castle!” He seized the king’s arm. “We must get you to a safer location, Your Majesty!”

  This was followed by a chorus of cries from the other officials.

  “Of course!”

  “His majesty’s safety is of utmost importance!”

  “We must preserve the monarchy at all costs!”

  Any objections the king may have had were overridden as a surge of officials swept down and half carried, half dragged him into the castle.

  “Put me down, you idiots!” the king bellowed, but the officials were good and scared now. Each saw only the precipitous f
all that awaited him personally if there were a regime change, and fear gave them courage as they pushed their protesting monarch into the castle, down the arching hallways, and into the throne room. “Don’t worry, Your Majesty,” the Master of Security said, organizing two teams to shut the great, golden doors. “That thief won’t get in.”

  The king, who had given up fighting somewhere during the last hundred feet, just harrumphed and stomped up the dais stairs to his throne to wait it out. Meanwhile, the officials dashed back and forth across the marble—locking the parlor doors, overturning the elegant end tables, peeking behind the busts of former kings—checking for every possible, or impossible, security vulnerability. Henrith did his best to ignore the nonsense. Being royalty meant enduring people’s endless fussing over your safety, but when the councilors started talking about boarding over the stained-glass windows, the king decided that enough was enough. He stood from his throne and took a breath in preparation for a good bellow when a tug on his robes stopped him short. The king looked down incredulously to see who would dare, and found two royal guards in full armor standing at attention beside the royal dais.

  “Sir!” The shorter guard saluted. “The Master of Security has assigned us to move you to a safer location.”

  “I thought this was a safer location.” The king sighed.

  “Sir!” The soldier saluted again. “With all due respect, the throne room is the first place the enemy would look, and with this ruckus, he could easily get through.”

  “You’re right about that,” the king said, glowering at the seething mass of panicked officials. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He stomped down the steps from the high marble dais and let the guards lead him to the back wall of the throne room. The shorter soldier went straight to an older tapestry hanging forgotten in one corner and pushed it aside, revealing, much to the king’s amazement, a small door set flush with the stonework.