by Riley Storm
The fire dragon had nearly two centuries on him. Two centuries to hone his power, to grow stronger, for dragons continued to increase in strength until they reached the last decade or so of their lives, at which point they faltered rapidly. There was no slow decline for their species.
In all likelihood, he’s just trying to figure out how to do this without hurting me.
A giant crack echoed down the hallway, and abruptly Valla knew what had happened. He hadn’t been holding off Aaric’s full powers as he’d thought, but instead, Aaric had held him off, while he worked to free Victor at the same time.
“Aww crap.”
It was all he had time to mutter before a wave of water surged out of the fog and smashed into him. It moved faster than rapids, tumbling Valla around and around as he bounced off walls, and the ceiling, and the floor.
He slammed into something rather hard that left him woozy. A moment later, he realized it had been the massive brass front doors of Drakon Keep.
Several seconds later, they gave way under the pressure and Valla spilled out into the circular driveway and courtyard beyond as the water dissipated.
He tried to get to his feet but had only reached his knees before a blistering—literally—fist crunched into his jaw, dropping him to his face.
A moment later, darkness closed in and he passed out.
Chapter 9
The wind immediately caught her hair and messed up what little sense of style she’d been able to impart on it.
Sighing in frustration and knowing there was absolutely nothing she could do about it, Liz stepped out of her little hatchback and looked around. The first thing she noticed was the assault on her ears from the noise of various construction equipment. The second was the progress that had been made in six months of work.
“I really need to get out here more often,” she remarked to nobody in particular, relishing the warmth of the sun as it washed over her, working to dispel some of the chill of the cool day.
“Won’t be long before we have larger amounts of snow and they have to stop working.”
She turned to see Cheryl walking over from a little mobile building that looked like a smaller version of a school portable.
“Well they certainly have made impressive progress already,” she replied, looking around.
The Drakon Family Outreach Center was going to be a one-of-its-kind facility that would house all sorts of services and equipment for the people of Plymouth Falls, all of it paid for by the Drakon Family.
Valla’s family.
She immediately tensed at the thought of Valla, his scruff and his icy-blue eyes, then scolded herself for letting him have such a hold over her. He’s just a man. Nothing more. You don’t need to react like that to his name or the thought of him. Grow up!
“Thanks for coming out,” Cheryl said, gesturing to follow her back to the little office building on wheels.
“I’ve actually never been here,” she said. “Not since the ground-breaking ceremony. I only realized that when you asked me to come by. I see pictures, I read reports, sign forms, but I’ve not actually laid my own eyes on the progress. It’s bigger than I imagined.”
“They certainly don’t do things small,” Cheryl said with a little smile. “But it’s not all good.”
Liz’s eyebrows went up as the smile disappeared, replaced by a scowl. That wasn’t a look she saw on her boss’s face all that often. When she did, however, it meant something was wrong and not immediately fixable.
“What’s wrong, boss?” she asked, following Cheryl up the stairs into the long rectangular building.
Cheryl sighed as they entered the heated room. It wasn’t tropical inside, but it took the bite off the late fall winds to the point that they could remove their jackets and sit comfortably, at least.
“We have a problem, Liz. Something that’s only just come to my attention, and that unfortunately I don’t have time to deal with in addition to everything else on my plate. So, I’m putting you in charge of it.”
“Sure. Whatever you need.” Liz wasn’t overly enthused about having more work dumped onto her plate, but at the same time, the chance to solve a problem was always a good add to the resume come review time at year end.
“Progress is slowing.”
Liz looked out of one of the little sliding windows at the skeleton of the building rising up around them. “It is? It looks like it’s going pretty fast.”
“We should be farther along. But we aren’t, because somebody is stealing from us.”
Rocking back in her chair, Liz stared for a moment. “Stealing? Like, what kind of stealing? Money?”
Cheryl shook her head, the long silvery-blonde hair going flying as some of her anger translated into the movement. “No, though I wish. Money would be easy to track, and then I could get Victor or Aaric involved on their side to figure out where it was going. No, I’m talking literally stealing things. Supplies, mainly, right out from under our noses here on site.”
“You’re joking.”
The gaze she got wasn’t one of amusement.
“You’re not joking. Like, what kind of supplies?”
“Last night, an entire truckload of lumber was taken,” Cheryl said bluntly, crossing her arms.
“I’m sorry. They took a truck’s worth of wood off site?”
“No,” Cheryl corrected. “They took the entire truck, which was filled with lumber to help frame up the inside of the building. Two weeks ago, a nearly identical amount of exterior wrap and board was taken.”
“That’s…how the heck did they take an entire truck without us noticing? Don’t we have security cameras here? Not to mention security itself?” Liz was confused. This wasn’t a tiny job site.
“Just cameras,” Cheryl admitted. “Though I’m going to be fixing that. I’ve hired two guards. They’ll help you with the investigation as well. Whatever you need them to do, just tell them. All I want you doing is trying to figure it out. Don’t get your fingers dirty, that’s what they’re for, got it?”
“Entire trucks full of stuff,” Liz said, speaking mostly to herself, still puzzled at the revelation. “Has anyone asked why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are these people stealing our stuff? They’re obviously using it to build something, right?”
“I’d say so,” Cheryl admitted. “The trucks always return the next night. Empty, but returned.”
“So, whoever this is, they’re not only freely stealing massive amounts of materials, but they’re brave, or brazen enough, to taunt us by bringing the trucks back. They can’t believe they’ll get away with that for long,” she mused, her brain starting to think. “Or they just don’t care. Like, they don’t believe themselves to have to submit to the authorities.”
“They are criminals, Liz. They tend to think that way,” Cheryl pointed out. “Anyway, listen, Chase and Peter should be back any minute now. I sent them out to walk around, to get a feel for the site, start learning its ins and outs, that sort of thing. I’ll introduce you, then I’ve got to take off, okay? I really need this done asap, before the mayor or anyone hears about it, okay?”
“Of course. We’ll put our heads together and see what we can see.” Liz hoped she sounded more confident than she actually was. This was so far outside of her wheelhouse that she really didn’t know what to do.
“Why aren’t we going to the police?” she asked belatedly.
“I did. They’ve taken the information, but since the trucks come back, they’re not really interested in missing construction materials unless they have more evidence to go on, you know?”
“Figures,” Liz muttered. “Even in Plymouth Falls, they’re too busy.”
“Basically. So, it’s on us to get them that evidence.” She leveled a finger at Liz. “Let Peter and Chase do all the work, okay? You just watch video, talk to people, that kind of thing, okay? They’re good. Chase is a former Marine, Peter is a retired cop.”
“I got it,” she said, l
eaning back to rub her stomach. “Trust me. I’m going to do see what I can find, but I’m not going to take chances, Cheryl. We’ll get some proof, then let the police do the actual dirty work.”
“Good. Thanks for overseeing this for me. I would, but between this, the mine and a new project, I’ve got all that I can handle.”
Liz could see the stress on Cheryl’s face, and knew that her boss wasn’t exaggerating at all. She was being torn six ways at once and looked like she was having a hard time keeping up.
“I’ll handle it, Cher,” she said with a smile. “You can trust me.”
“I know.”
There was a knock at the door, and two men entered.
Liz sized them up immediately. Chase was a few inches over six feet tall, still looking muscular, but with all the signs that he was starting to add a layer over top of it that was a little softer. Still, he had a stern, serious look to his face, accentuated by the crooked nose that had been broken a few times before and never quite set right.
Peter wasn’t at all the portly, beer-bellied former-cop-turned-private-investigator sort that she’d expected. Instead, he was an inch taller than Chase, wirier, but in a way that suggested he still worked out on the regular. He was covered in tattoos that reached from his hands up to his neck. He was bald and didn’t bother trying to hide it with a hat. Liz wouldn’t have given him a second thought if he’d appeared chewing on a barely lit cigar. It would have appeared natural for him.
They went through introductions, and Liz listened stoically as Cheryl told them the same thing she’d said to Liz.
“She’s pregnant, and she’s not to do anything besides oversee everything. You two are here for anything that might be the slightest, even remotest bit unsafe. If she’s interviewing anyone, you two are there ready to deter anything that might arise. Got it?”
The two men rumbled their assent, eyes flicking over to Liz. To her surprise, neither gave her condescending looks, but instead nodded their heads respectfully. They had their job, it seemed, and she had hers, and everyone was happy with that.
“Alright, well I’ll leave you to it,” Cheryl said, giving Liz a quick friendly embrace before pushing open the door.
Liz went to follow her, moving down the steps to watch Cheryl depart. Chase and Peter moved up on either side of her like protective guardian angels. She looked up to her left, then to her right, regarding them once more.
They were big, she decided, but not as big as Valla. Nor as muscular either.
Stop thinking about him!
She tried but it wasn’t easy. A low, thumping beat kept intruding into her head, bringing back memories of her night on the dance floor with him, when the stress of work and the grinding, gyrating movements of their bodies had made her lose all control.
“Who is this idiot?”
Blinking at Chase’s rumbled question, she focused her attention as another vehicle zipped into the construction parking lot. The thumping noise wasn’t coming from her head, she noticed, as the vehicle came to a halt nearby. It was the bass from the music.
The sporty little red coupe looked so out of place among all the dirty, dusty construction vehicles.
“Oh no,” she moaned as the door opened and a familiar figured emerged. “What is he doing here?”
Think of the devil, and he shall appear!
Valla grinned as he spotted her over the roof of his car and immediately headed her direction.
Chapter 10
“Another pointless mission,” he growled, whipping the import sports car around another corner, touching the handbrake, feeling the wheels drift.
He grinned, pulling it back into line and continuing on, ignoring the horn sound from the car on the other side. “Relax!” he called through the closed windows. “It wasn’t even close to you.”
If there was one thing Valla had taken a shining to upon awakening, it was driving. He had devoured everything he could about it and had practiced non-stop until he felt confident with it. Now he was trying more advanced precision driving techniques, and truly felt like he was beginning to get the hang of it.
It helped that it was the one thing Victor and Aaric let him do to escape their overbearing rules. With all the cars that belonged to House Draconis being tied into a central GPS system, they could simply enforce a hard limit on how far from Drakon Keep he could go before the car simply shut down.
Thankfully, there were plenty of empty, bendy roads within a few miles’ radius that allowed him to practice.
Today, however, he was back in town. Plymouth Falls. It was the first time he’d been “allowed” back out since the whole pregnancy, fighting his brother’s issue.
Up ahead, he could see the bare bones of the Outreach Center under construction, its spindly arms reaching up to the sky, metal girders welded together, waiting to be framed and turned into a building. Even as he watched, a crane lifted another beam up, where a team of waiting workers guided it to where it needed to be.
Valla wasn’t going to find anything there. He knew that. It was a pointless quest, brought about by a pair of dragons who weren’t trackers, who couldn’t find what they were looking for if it came up and bit them on the nose.
He chuckled at the thought of noses, and how broken Aaric’s had been after the fight. Then he sobered, rubbing his jaw. Valla hadn’t been able to talk for two days after; his jaw had been broken in so many places, it needed that long to properly heal. Even for a dragon, that was a long time.
Still, he was out from under the thumb of his older brothers, and he was being set free to finally begin his mission. The mission that would allow him to make the world a safer place for his child.
My child.
It was crazy to believe he was going to be a father in just a few months, and it was one thing that even a few days of quiet reflection hadn’t helped him come to terms with. He was beyond excited at the fact, but that giddy feeling was tempered by the fact that Liz wasn’t interested in having him be a part of any of it.
Valla aimlessly pulled into the parking lot, letting himself get lost in the blaring bass of the music blasting from the speakers. He would find a way to convince her to trust him. To show her that he could be the type of father she would want to be around.
As the dust settled from his abrupt entrance onto the loose dirt of the site, he noticed a trio of figures watching his approach.
Is that…?
“Well, well, well,” he chuckled to himself, doffing his seatbelt and pushing open the door. “Look who it is.”
Standing up, he couldn’t help the grin that tugged at his lips as he waved over the roof of his car at Liz.
She looked thoroughly unimpressed to see him, but Valla didn’t care. His mission to come to the site and try to find any trace of the vampires had suddenly taken on a whole new level of interest to him.
He would search around, of course, doing due diligence, but even Aaric had conceded he was unlikely to find anything. Ever since his older brother had moved the burial site of the ancient Native-American Skinwalker, the Naagloshiii, the interest in the grounds of the Outreach Center had disappeared for the vampires.
“What brings you out here?” he called, not bothering to tamp down his smile one bit.
Liz didn’t approach, staying where she was, arms crossed. “I’m in charge of things here. Why are you here?”
He thought about telling her the truth. That he was out hunting vampires, to protect the townspeople of Plymouth Falls. Then he could tell her about his heritage and that of their shared child.
“Does he have permission to be on the grounds?”
Valla blinked. “My goodness,” he said with false joviality, turning his head slightly to the side. “You speak. You’re a real human. I never would have known. I thought you were a statue.”
“Valla,” Liz said warningly. “This is Chase, and Peter.”
“You hired bodyguards?” he asked, astonished. “What for?”
“To keep her safe from unwarra
nted intrusions and danger,” the bald one said through a taut jaw. “Including people who go places they aren’t supposed to be.”
Valla straightened. The bald one was almost his height, though much skinnier of frame than his slightly shorter companion. Still, they could both look him in the eye, and that was giving them a false sense of strength. He could do any number of things to hurt, wound, or completely incapacitate either or both of them, before they could react to his movement. The only danger here was allowing them to think they could boss him around.
“Boys, we really don’t want to play this game,” he said in a deep voice, letting some of his dragon strength flow into it, and into his body. “Trust me. On any level, you are outclassed.”
“Can you three stop comparing dick sizes?” Liz huffed. “Chase, Peter, this is Valla. Valla Drakon.”
The mention of his last name brought understanding to both sets of eyes trained on him, and immediately, they relaxed.
“Good boys,” he said quietly, unable to resist one last barb, smiling as both of them bristled.
“Why are you here, Valla?”
“To look around. See what my family’s money is paying for,” he said. “I’ve heard about this place from Victor and Aaric but decided to come see it with my own eyes.”
“Right.”
“But now that you’re here, I was hoping we could talk.”
“We are talking.”
“I know that,” he said, exasperated. “I meant in private, without goon one and goon two hanging over your shoulder.”
“We can talk here.”
“Liz.” He tried urging her with his voice. This wasn’t really a subject he wanted the two stooges to overhear, though it didn’t really matter.
“It’s not happening, Valla. If that’s what you want. I made my decision. You aren’t changing my mind.”
“How can you make a decision when you haven’t even given me a chance!” he protested. “I only found out about it two days ago.”
“Where have you been in those two days then?” she challenged. “I haven’t heard from you at all. Nothing.”