The Steel Dragon (Steel Dragons Series Book 2)

by Kevin McLaughlin

  Finally, she reached a part of the form that was actually interesting and grimaced when the dragon in the checkered gray suit spoke. “They’re ready for you. Second floor.” At his words, an elevator dinged at the end of the hall. Kristen stole one more glance at the form. It provided a list of maybe twenty dragon abilities and she was supposed to put a check beside each one she had. Before she could commit any of these to memory, the dragon coughed rather loudly and she gave him the paperwork.

  “Did you finish it?” he asked.

  “Almost. I didn’t see a place on the form for steel skin, though.”

  “I’ll mark it under ‘other’ for you. Now, move along. It’s not polite to keep dragons waiting.”

  Kristen smiled a sickeningly sweet smile and went on her way, neglecting to point out that he’d actually kept a dragon waiting.

  She rode the elevator up one floor, where it stopped automatically. As she waited for the doors to open, she tried to compose herself. Despite the disappointingly bureaucratic introduction to Dragon SWAT, she was still excited. She could feel anticipatory energy pouring off her, no doubt alerting the room of dragons she was about to meet about her rookie response. To settle her emotions, she took a few deep breaths and reminded herself that she needed to stay calm.

  That proved to not be a problem.

  The doors opened to reveal an office space before her that was exactly that—an office. There were no suits of armor lining the walls and no swords hung at the sides of the officers. In fact, she didn’t think she saw any officers at all. Instead, the room was filled with people shuffling paperwork, fixing coffee, and talking in the bored voices that suggested they wished they could be somewhere else.

  “Ah, Lady Hall, welcome to the inner workings of Dragon SWAT.” A man in a red robe bowed. He’d darted out of an office as if he’d waited for the ding of the elevator. Kristen couldn’t sense any aura emanating from him, which made her think he wasn’t a dragon but a mage. The tattoos on his hands and head further confirmed this suspicion. Stonequest had told her once that dragons could not take tattoos because of their healing abilities.

  “The inner workings?”

  The man grinned, but Kristen could read his emotions enough to know that it wasn’t genuine. “Indeed,” he said. “This is where it all happens. We interpret the Dragon Council’s will here, compare it to local human law, and redraft appropriate language that appeases both parties. Everything from land rights to centuries-old cold cases pass through this office, and you’ll be able to get a glimpse of all of it, sometimes multiple times as we send it to other offices across the country. I am the head mage of this office. You may refer to me as Atramento, although if that name does not suit you, feel free to call me another, your dragonship. As our newest intern, you’ll no doubt have many questions—”

  “Wait, what did you say?”

  The mage smiled, this time a little more genuinely. “Atramento. Latin for ink. I chose it both because of my tattoos and my love for the power of ink on paper.”

  “No, not that, Atramento,” she said, feeling the word out. It felt clunky in her mouth. “Did you say I was your newest intern?”

  “But of course, and may I say it is an honor for you to join us here. We’ve had dragons in the office before, although not in decades, but I’ve never had a dragon intern under me before.”

  “And you’re not about to get one now. I’m a cop. I defeated Shadowstorm and I didn’t take this job so I could be stuck in an office filling out someone else’s paperwork.”

  Atramento tittered awkwardly at the mention of Shadowstorm’s name. “Yes, your defeat of Lord Shadowstorm caused quite the flurry of activity in this office. No doubt you’ll see some of the splashes you caused on many of the appropriate forms. The requisition of resources to repair the machines alone has proved to be quite a headache. Humans and their independent contractors are truly masters of paperwork in a way this office is not.” He sounded equal parts disgusted and impressed at what regular people did with paperwork.

  “I didn’t join Dragon SWAT to learn about independent contractors. And what do you mean, their contractors? You’re human too, right?”

  That drained the color from Atramento’s face. “I was born of a woman, yes, but…uh, well, dragons often speak of humans in disparaging terms.”

  Kristen’s face hardened which only frightened the man further. “That doesn’t mean you’re not human, and that doesn’t mean they should talk about people that way.”

  “I apologize, Lady Hall. The dragons in this office often insult humans. Their culture is an old one, you see, and it can be difficult to…let’s say update their language. It’s merely the way they speak, but not to worry. They don’t mean it against mages.”

  “Oh, so you’re better than regular people?”

  “These are their words, not mine. I was born of regular people. My brother is a regular person.” His cultured accent had begun to slip.

  That made her feel bad. Fear was obviously one of the poor guy’s motivators to do his job, which had to suck. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I didn’t mean to insult you or make you defend someone else’s belief system. I merely didn’t understand all that.”

  Atramento relaxed visibly. “Very good, Lady Hall. If there’s nothing else, I can show you to your desk.”

  “There is one other thing. Can you tell me where Stonequest’s office is?”

  “Lord Samuel Stonequest’s office is on the sixth floor with the other senior officers, but he is currently occupied, so the elevator won’t service that floor.” His answer was smooth as silk.

  “That’s fine, I’ll take the stairs,” Kristen turned and left him there, sputtering and somehow turning even grayer than he had before.

  She would make sure to tell Stonequest—Sam? How had she not known his first name this entire time?—that Atramento had done a good job of trying to keep her busy. Too bad Dragon SWAT’s newest member didn’t go for busywork.

  Chapter Two

  Her expression disapproving, Kristen took the steps two at a time and repeated the litany that she wasn’t angry. She kept telling herself this despite the pit of rage that began to boil in her gut. If she allowed herself to be angry, she would definitely lose control of her aura. She was in a building filled with dragons who would undoubtedly judge her every move, so now was not the time to get pissed. That time would come if Stonequest tried to send her back to do more bullshit paperwork.

  When she reached the sixth floor, she scowled at the doors that were unexpectedly locked. For a brief moment, she considered kicking them open. In her steel body, she’d done that very effectively countless times, but she decided it probably wasn’t the best way to start her new job. Regretfully, she retreated to the fifth floor and, finding the door unlocked, pushed it open.

  She paused on the threshold and stared into a spacious gym complete with weight equipment, treadmills, punching bags, and an area with mats on the floor for sparring.

  While she didn’t know exactly how she would find Stonequest, she assumed someone there might know. But what was the etiquette for approaching a dragon in the gym? It was awkward enough in human gyms, so who knew the rules here? It didn’t help that she wasn’t dressed to work out. She’d shed her winter gear and now wore a skirt and a yellow blouse, of all things. Her assumption had been that training would be mostly in dragon form and that they’d provide her with a uniform if they went on any runs. And yet, there she was in a skirt like a damn intern.

  Luckily for her, she didn’t have to make the first contact.

  A woman with platinum blonde hair done in long French braids who was spotting for a man at the bar press noticed her and took immediate issue with her. Kristen could feel her annoyance from her aura as plain as the scowl on her face. She realized that she made absolutely no attempt to hide the emotion. The woman wanted her to know she was annoyed. Which was, she had to admit, damn annoying.

  “What are you doing here?” the dragon half-y
elled across the gym.

  Kristen smiled. This was her in. “Heartsbane, right?” she asked as she recalled the women’s cheekbones and French braids and that she had worked with Stonequest.

  “Yeah, and you’re the Steel Dragon.” Heartsbane stopped spotting and walked toward the newcomer.

  “Melissa! A little help here!” the man at the bar press grunted.

  Heartsbane—Melissa, which was kind of interesting, actually—ignored him. Instead, she marched across the gym and stopped deliberately mere inches from Kristen’s face, a challenge if ever there was one.

  “Kristen’s fine,” she said and plastered a smile on her face.

  “I thought you only started today.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then shouldn’t you be down there at your desk, cutting your egg teeth?”

  “Melissa!” the man at the bar press grunted. It rested on his chest and Kristen noticed for the first time that the weights on the bar must have totaled close to four hundred pounds.

  “Dammit, Heartsbane,” another woman said. Her aura made it obvious that she was also a dragon. She had dark, wavy hair and was also very beautiful. The shade of her purple workout gear was quite familiar, too. She strode over toward the man who struggled with the weights, murmured something, and the weight lifted off his chest and settled on the rack.

  “Thanks, Timeflash.” The man gasped, stretched for a nearby towel, and wiped his dark skin.

  The name triggered the memory of where Kristen had seen the woman’s aura before. This was the dragon who had turned back time—no, not turned back time, actually. As Timeflash had explained, it was more like putting things back where they’d been. She was also Stonequest’s teammate.

  “It’s nice to see you again, Lady Steel,” she said. Her tone of voice said it wasn’t at all nice to see her, but at least she wasn’t openly hostile like Heartsbane was.

  “Look, I didn’t mean to interrupt, but there’s been some kind of a mistake. I’m merely looking for Stonequest so we can sort all this out,” she said to Timeflash.

  “And what’s the fucking mistake?” Heartsbane demanded.

  “Someone seems to think I joined SWAT to be an intern,” she replied.

  The belligerent dragon snorted derisively. Obviously, the newcomer being an intern was exactly what she expected. Kristen glanced at Timeflash for support but she too looked annoyed.

  “Can you believe this shit, Arin?” Heartsbane said to Timeflash. Her first name was appealing, and it seemed to fit better than Timeflash did.

  “Believe what?” The man from the bench press came to stand beside them. His dreadlocks stopped short of his shoulders and he looked like he’d rather be anywhere than right there having this conversation.

  “Can you believe that they haven’t promoted Lady Steel here to captain of Dragon SWAT yet? Seriously, she’s already worked here for, like, twenty minutes.” There was undisguised venom in Heartsbane’s words.

  “Ah. You’re the intern then. My name’s John Emeraldeyes. Most people call me Emerald.”

  Kristen shook his hand and noticed that indeed his eyes were a sparkling green. She also noticed that he seemed to be intent on crushing her hand into a fine powder. Instinctively, she squeezed his in return, but the shirtless human-formed dragon was much stronger than her. She flared her dragon strength, but Emerald simply continued to crush her hand. Finally, she turned it to steel to prevent any real damage to the bones. Once she did so, she of course squeezed his hand even harder.

  He snorted. “No dragon powers in the gym, and why would you turn your hand to steel? Are you trying to show off because you have extra powers?”

  “You were crushing my hand.”

  “And you reciprocated. It was a test of strength. You could have simply stopped squeezing instead of trying to win by cheating.”

  She was beyond confused. “How is using my dragon powers cheating? You were bench pressing, like, four hundred pounds.”

  “Not with my powers. There ain’t no point in using your powers to train. You have to grow the actual muscles in your human body if you want gains. Wait, wait, wait—are you serious right now? Are you really asking me basic anatomy questions?” Emerald shook his head and clenched his jaw.

  “What’s wrong with wanting to know more?” she asked.

  “The problem is,” Heartsbane cut in, “that if you had been amongst dragon kind for more than a half-hour you might have actually learned some of this already. Instead, you’re here, wasting our time, trying to waste Sam’s time, and hell, probably wasting your own time. There are mages who would be happy to answer this crap for you. This is all some of them do—talk about dragons and pretend they might be as strong as us one day.”

  “Don’t talk about them that way,” Arin said to Heartsbane.

  “I didn’t say anything,” the other woman countered.

  “Oh, here we go.” Emerald rubbed his face irritably. It seemed an old argument was about to resurface.

  “Your tone was enough. I don’t care what you think about mages, but you’ll treat them with respect,” Arin said firmly.

  “So I can’t use certain tones when I talk about them? There aren’t even any here right now! How the hell am I supposed to think of them as equals if they’re weaker than us?” Heartsbane looked to be both baffled and repulsed.

  “Simply because they’re weaker doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to be treated with respect,” Kristen said and immediately came to the defense of the mages she’d met.

  “You shouldn’t have said that.” Emerald shook his head and moved to a rack of free weights. He glared at all three dragon women as he did curls.

  “You really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Heartsbane said dismissively.

  “I know that mages are people too, exactly like my family and exactly like you and me.”

  “That’s bullshit.” The woman’s aura made it quite clear that she truly detested mages and those who defended them. “Mages have tried to overthrow dragon kind not once, but twice. They bred entire races of beings into existence to try to destroy us. Because some of them play nice doesn’t mean we should stop watching them.”

  “You do know you sound insane, right?” Arin said. “You say mages are weaker than us but that they’re also dangerous. Choose one—weak or strong.”

  “How the fuck is that crazy?” Heartsbane snapped in response. “It’s the same thing as the Steel Dragon here. An odd steel skin quirk makes her perhaps more powerful than us but she’s still greener than Emerald’s eyes.”

  “I heard that,” he grunted.

  “I served on SWAT for months. I defeated Shadowstorm in hand to hand combat,” she protested.

  “Sweetie, we’ve all defeated dragons in hand to hand. That’s part of the job description,” Arin pointed out. “Don’t think that because I disagree with Melissa on mages it means I think you should be anywhere but at your desk in the paper dungeon right now.”

  “The paper dungeon?” Kristen was appalled. “Why the hell would you stuff me somewhere you call the paper dungeon?”

  “Because that’s where we all started.” Emerald grunted and dropped his dumbbells with a clang. They landed on the mats at his feet and the sound echoed through the gym. “You weren’t even down there long enough to realize that everyone calls it the paper dungeon. How does that make sense to you? Do you want to guess how long I worked in there?”

  She really didn’t. There was no way it was shorter than the five minutes she’d been in the room, but she wouldn’t be silenced. “I don’t know—three months?”

  The other three dragons all laughed, Emerald so hard that he had to wipe tears from his eyes. “More like three years.”

  “You were all interns for three years?”

  “I was in the paper dungeon for five,” Heartsbane fumed. “Arin was only down there for one year, but that’s because her powers are unique. She’s perfect for a security force trying to keep dragons from interfering wit
h humanity as she can make things look as good as new. A charmer like myself and a common like Emerald don’t count for much.”

  “But—”

  Before Kristen could speak, he cut her off. “So you have steel skin? Big deal. Sam can turn to rock. Fair enough, I get that steel’s stronger, but do you think that means you get to cut in line and be immediately placed on the force? Why? Because you can stop bullets? I have news for you, honey. We can all stop bullets.”

  She was about to say something about Death and the woman who’d hurt her so badly with nothing but a regular pistol, but Stonequest and his team had been on that job. Emerald no doubt knew about it already. Instead, she asked, “What’s a common?”

  He shook his head and walked to his weights, mumbling as he went. “I can’t believe this shit.”

  “A common is a dragon without any unique abilities,” Arin explained. She tried to sound patient but didn’t quite achieve it. “They have increased speed, strength, and healing abilities, plus an aura. They can transform and breathe fire, but that’s it. There aren’t many of them on Dragon SWAT. Emerald had to bust his ass to make the cut.”

  “Unlike the Steel Dragon,” Heartsbane sneered.

  The other woman continued. “You and I are sometimes called specials because of our abilities. Stonequest is a special too because he can turn to stone. Shadowstorm was also a special, although he had more than one power, which made him especially unusual.”

  “Are you a special?” Kristen asked Heartsbane.

  The woman recoiled. “You don’t simply ask that.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “I can’t believe we’re dealing with this greenhorn baby shit right now,” Emerald said.

  Arin grimaced “It’s uncouth. It’s the human equivalent of…how did my mages put it? It’s like asking how much money someone makes or their dress size.”