“You mean werewolf, right?” Cynthia asked, leaning in.
“Alchemist,” the dragon responded.
“Ohhh, boy.” David rubbed his shoulders and seethed. “E-lis here is human,” he said, smiling uncomfortably.
“You brought a human here, and were shocked to find my Guild Master trying to kill her? Who’s this Fumnaya bitch – is she a human, too?”
“Oh no, she’s a mage, Genki is a kitsune, so a lot like the whole dragon friend thing, actually,” David said, stroking his chin.
“I can’t believe this! Why? Why did you bring a human here, you idiot?” Cynthia transformed her hands into claws, though the burnt palms and insides of her fingers didn’t seem to like it that much, and she started to claw at David.
Unlike a werewolf making use of Clawve-maga, she didn’t have a stance. She was just scratching at him, shredding his stomach and drawing more and more blood. David, for his part, was acting as though this was a routine punishment, sighing and standing there waiting for it to be over.
“Backoff!” I said, shoving her face away with my hand.
Sensing the impending fight, my dragon jumped off my shoulders. She got into a regular stance, while I got into Clawve-maga stance.
I didn’t have claws, nor my gloves, but it didn’t matter. She lunged at me and I sidestepped and slashed at her face, before jumping back and grabbing hold of her second swing.
“You wanna know why he’s kept me along?” I swapped to Judo and flung her down to the ground, before putting my foot over her chest. “Because when others couldn’t do it, I did. I saved Silvia, I saved the whole damn community center from a demon mage, and I stopped him again when he brought Genki out to cause chaos, even in Silvia’s body!”
The girl rolled and transformed, before jumping at me. Keeping David’s instruction from that year ago to mind, I jumped out of the way and grabbed at her tail, to hold her down.
“Your stupid boss is just as blind as her brother was when he first met me! Just because I’m a human doesn’t mean I’m of no use!”
I jumped on her, and she tried to throw me off, before transforming back and turning around to try and slash at me.
“Cynthia, E-lis, that’s enough!” David said, his chest still a bleeding hole. “What she said is true, we found her passed out beside a starstruck Silvia – she’d nearly killed herself on a man who’d found out where she’d be, had an alchemical silver knife and had the full intent to kill her, and his group had every intention and the possibility to kill us all.”
“You can’t be serious. The witches must have known someone like that was coming.” Cynthia transformed her head and growled at me.
“Demon mage. If this Zambol guy was smart, I’m sure he’d find a way around the witches’ power,” David said, helping me and her up.
“Zambol?” Cynthia said, looking up as though she’d remembered that name.
“Yeah, at least I think that was his name,” David said.
“Okay, shit, if that’s what you’re going up against I can’t blame you then.” Cynthia suddenly pulled in really close, closing off every portion of her body language.
She transformed into fully human and started to rub her arm with her hand. It was apparently so out of character that David raised an eyebrow and peered over at her.
She shook her head. “But no one’s a better markswoman than me, so if you’re going to be covering my brother, I’d best see how well you shoot!” She moved her hand to her pocket.
She then moved it to the other pocket in her pants on that side. Then she used her other hand to check the two pockets on the other side.
“W-where the hell?” she asked, searching her back pockets.
“Looking for this?” David asked, holding up the key.
“What? How did you?” Cynthia gritted her teeth.
“Well, when it seemed like you weren’t going to help me, I decided why not just take it? You were focused on scratching my chest to shit, so why not?”
“I… I didn’t even see you reach for her. How’d you learn to pickpocket?”
David frowned.
“Ohhh, right, yeah.” I seethed a little, and it died and became a whimper.
“What? How’d you learn to pickpocket? Did someone have to die for it? I don’t understand what you’re doing,” Cynthia said.
“Cassy – still don’t know what’s up with her,” I said.
“That crazy bitch who keeps messing up my ammo?”
10
Chapter 10
The tunnel led to an open area of dry grasslands, that seemed to have a strategic burnt line around them, in case someone got cavalier with the fire rounds.
Cynthia brought out several rifles, along with a custom-crafted sniper rifle, with boxes of ammunition for each.
“Not many people know how to enchant stuff, let alone bullets. It was me and Cassy’s secret, despite the fact that she kept putting different kinds of ammunition into the same magazine.”
“I mean, she stayed consistent. All the ammo magazines she’s given me were fire electric ice force.”
“What the fuck? What could you be fighting that would need that asinine combination?” She was shaking with anger.
“Uh well, the two ices worked well on demons, the force always comes in handy…”
“Counterpoint, you face a demon with a full magazine of ice rounds, what happens then?”
“He goes down before you have to reload,” I admitted.
“Go up against a Fae with a magazine filled with fire rounds?”
“Actually, haven’t run into a lot of Fae. One Fae adjacent Yokai, but no Fae,” I said, shrugging.
“The point is, you use the right bullet for the job, and you don’t have a random assortment of bullets. She wanted two different kinds of pistol magazines, one with a darkness bullet in it, which is pretty much useless for most applications, a vortex wind one on the other, it was all just an asinine waste of time. Why did I even give her ammo?”
“Well, we’re glad you did,” I said, shrugging.
“I gave her ammo years ago. If she still has it, it isn’t my stuff,” Cynthia said. We arrived at the firing range. There were hay bales piled up to make the table, and the targets downrange. There was an ageing wooden fence around the place, but other than that there was just dense overgrowth and a few trees out here.
You couldn’t even hear the hustle and bustle from the suburban streets. Yet somehow there was someone else at the range.
“Aw shit, gotta hide the sniper – that’s one of the policemen that sometimes use this range…”
“That’s not just any policeman,” I said, squinting my eyes for a better look. “That’s cop man…”
“Cop man? What is that, some kind of superhero?” Cynthia said, looking to David for some confirmation.
David had no idea what I was talking about, or at least had forgotten the one mention that might have reached his ears on the radio.
“Cop man, nanananana cop man,” Cynthia said in a low voice.
“Okay, fine, Jim the cop, happy now?” I said, walking over to him.
“Should someone go back with the sniper rifle or…?”
“I think it should be fine,” David said.
I walked up and paused, looking down at the dragon around my neck. I tucked him in and shushed him quietly and held the hot sweater above my neckline as I approached.
“Hey, uh, Jim, was it?” I said, showing up next to the guy. Despite the hearing protection, he turned and set the gun down.
“Elizabeth, is that you? What’re you doing out here?” he asked.
His eyes seemed to be contracting like something was seriously wrong. “Uh, test-firing some guns?” I said, as innocently as I could.
He looked over his shoulder, then around in the open field. He ducked under the bench, and that was when I realized what he was doing.
“You think someone would bug this place?” I asked, leaning down next to him.
“I don’t know, but I
can’t be too careful. Listen, after that little thing rampaged all over your campus, the military started to get involved in the investigation. I wanted to tell my baby girl, but they would no doubt find me if I’d used a phone.”
“Oh shit.” I bit my lip and looked back at Cynthia. While, yes, I’d done a lot to protect the world from magic, the problem of the magical getting out and causing havoc was kind of a hard problem to solve.
“What did they ask you? What’d you say?”
“I’m fairly certain if they had evidence that without the shadow of a doubt you fellas are a threat, they’d have come down on you, so I don’t think they have enough, but they put some good people on me to ask me about what I was doing.”
“Damn it. I’m– I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Listen, you focus on yourself, and I’ll focus on myself, but promise me one thing…”
“I’ll look after Fumnaya,” I said. “You have my word.”
He paused since I cut him off, but it’d been fairly obvious.
“Watch your backs. Any little thing could have full military personnel running after you to figure out what’s going on.”
“That’s a problem, because the reason given to me as to why the mages weren’t ruling the world mentioned that they couldn’t even stand up to knights, let alone guns.”
“More than just guns are employed. We don’t have any nuclear missiles, but I assure you, they know how to track people down and they have some good hardware,” Jim said.
Cynthia and David walked up, only Cynthia wasn’t carrying anything, and David was a wolf.
Jim looked down at David, who gave him his best puppy dog eyes, and panted.
“Uh, have a nice day then. I think I’ve had enough practice,” he said, picking up his gun and holstering it.
“What’d you say to him?” Cynthia asked.
“It’s less about what I said to him than what he said to me.” I looked back towards the manor house in all its pristine glory.
“Valkyrie Galvos doesn’t know how close this area is to being investigated by the military, and she’s setting off explosions and attacking us, while we’re trying to vacation. You’ve given us some guns, sure, but you nearly disembowelled your brother.”
I slumped down with my back against the hay bales. Hay bales are rather sharp, and this was a very painful experience.
“Woof!” David said, wiping the look off his face and leaning in close to me in wolf form.
I started to pet him and Cynthia’s eyes twitched. “Okay, I have had enough of your group’s wacky antics, you’re petting my brother.”
“Shhh, the trick is not to talk about it,” I said, petting softer.
“Is this why you joined, you have a petting people fetish?” she said, clenching her fingers.
“No, as I told you, I stopped a knife-wielding maniac and then helped everyone stumble out of a tight spot. You really have to pay attention.”
“Honestly, even I know humans love petting domesticated wolves, and I was born today,” the dragon said, popping his head out.
“Why can you joke at a time like this? You just collapsed from fear!” Cynthia said, practically going hoarse from screaming at us.
“I guess your brother just has a way with words,” I said, looking down at David.
“We’d best get this over with and head back. I don’t like how long it’s been since we’ve left everyone, especially Fumnaya since I just promised to protect her,” I said.
David transformed, and all the ammo and guns appeared, before David transformed back into wolf form.
“Isn’t the lady going to get mad at the smell of wolf?”
“He can shower, and it’s the only way to quickly heal those love taps I gave him.”
“If you did that to someone you love I’d hate to see someone you hated,” the dragon said as he slithered down the sweater and up onto David.
I took the time to take off the hot sweater and tie it around my waist. “You mean, near disembowelling,” I said, glaring a little off to the side at Cynthia.
“When you’re siblings, it’s kinda the same thing,” she said, getting out some targets from a box.
She placed the sniper rifle down at the hay bale table and started to head down the end to set up said targets. Jim didn’t take him since he didn’t seem to have the time, so I thought we could just use that one, but she set up her own.
I understood why soon enough, as she got a rig to move the targets from side to side.
“Oh great, moving targets that are smaller than two stories. My specialty,” I groaned to myself and picked up the rifle, without my hand on the trigger.
I assumed there was going to be some manner of sportsmanship that was required for this to work, like only getting a few moments to fire or firing at it in the middle of the range since it didn’t move very fast.
Without putting my finger on the trigger, or even inside the trigger guard, I lined up the crosshairs within the scope.
There were the red lines crisscrossing, but there were also several lines with some numbers written beside, denoting how far away something would have to be for that line to be useful.
I’d never really had that great a gauge of distance, which might have been the cause of my marksmen problems before. I thought that perhaps it’d be a good idea to improve said judgment of distance.
“This range can only be about one hundred meters, right?” I asked, looking down at David. He was laying down, watching the surrounding area. “So, it should line up with the centerline, or maybe it’s less that and more halfway between the two? Would that work? There’s no cross line to look at it, but it’d make sense?” I was in over-analyzation mode.
“Okay, two mundane magazines, hit the bullseye or get a combined score over fifty and I’ll lend you the gun, otherwise, I’m giving you the semi-automatic rifle…”
“Okay,” I breathed in as she handed me two regular old magazines of sniper bolts. “Hold on.” I examined the rifle a bit more closely. There was no bolt on this one, which must have meant it was semi-automatic. It definitely couldn’t be the non-automatic one I had been using.
I shifted the thing around, trying to feel for where the weight of it lay.
“Having problems?” Cynthia asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Naw, the other rifle had a bolt, so you know…”
“All guns have bolts – you mean it was bolt action.” Cynthia folded her arms.
“Is that so?” I asked, leaning forwards and aiming.
“It’s what hits the freaking thing,” Cynthia moaned.
“That’s the firing pin, isn’t it?” I asked, firing a shot at the target once it paused at the side.
“Oh shit, I forgot, you have to hit it at center range,” Cynthia said, handing me another bullet.
“I figured as much,” I sighed – so much for making the easy shots. I took out the magazine and popped the new bullet in, and shifted myself to focus on the center.
The target was moving its fastest down the center of the range, as it had to slow down around the edges. It passed by in an instant inside the scope.
David yawned, still scanning the area, and Cynthia shook her head.
“That’d never work in combat. You can’t take your time like this.”
I fired, just to shut her up, but the bullet only seemed to clip the edge of the page.
“That’s zero,” Cynthia reminded me.
I could see the numbers on the thing. Bullseye was ten, and there were several thin rings that counted all the way back to zero on it. Fifty, that’s ten shots on the five-ring, or less if I got a higher ring.
I never liked math, but that didn’t stop it from buzzing around in my head.
This time I tried using my other eye to track it. That got me one. Two shots down and with one point out of fifty.
Forty-nine was seven cubed, wasn’t it? Seven shots above or on seven? Was that possible? The seven circles were bigger than bullseye, but was it big enoug
h to hit consistently?
“Okay, Jesus, who taught you how to shoot?” Cynthia said, looking at me.
“C-cassy,” I said, smiling in a very uncomfortable way.
“That figures, that girl wouldn’t know a bolt from a spring, much less how to stand when firing a rifle like this.”
She came beside me and put her elbow up, and used her other hand to display where I should put the gun.
“When standing it’s hard to stay stable, so most people use the elbow as a sort of artificial table.”
“But there is a table – and how does that steady it?”
“Look, do you want my help or not? First of all, your breathing is all wrong, You must be calm. Centred. Every little move is another way to fuck up, so minimize the problems!”
“Okay, okay.” I stood up straight, using my elbow for stabilization, and lined up the sight with the middle of the range, firing once I saw the target.
It was a seven, and I was ecstatic! That trick seemed to work wonders for me, although I’m not sure how well I could hold my breath while in actual combat, especially with my heart beating so fast from the adrenaline, it could definitely help.
“You’re jerking it harder than David!” Cynthia said.
I blinked. “Okay, to be clear, we’re not in a relationship, and I don’t need to know how hard he jerks it… as it were.”
“Classy,” the dragon said, turning to us and giving us the half-lidded stare.
“The gun, you idiot. The rifle. That thing you’re holding currently!” Cynthia blushed, clearly not wanting to think about that either. “When you pull the trigger, you’re doing it too hard! You have to gently squeeze the trigger, caress it if you have to. That way your hand doesn’t shift around all your hard work!”
I nodded and breathed in deep to try again. I gently pulled at the trigger, no longer grabbing it and pulling it back but finding its breaking point and then–
BAM!
I looked down the range, and it seemed like I’d hit somewhere on the eight rings, and seven rings combined.
“That’s an eight,” she said, clearly annoyed.
“Any other tips?” I asked.
Cynthia blinked. It seemed her intent was just to lecture me on the gun – her area of expertise as it seemed. She apparently didn’t realize this would let me shoot better.
The Stray Dragon : (A collage age urban fantasy with werewolves werewolf community center book 3) Page 8