The Steel Dragon (Steel Dragons Series Book 2)

by Kevin McLaughlin

  The pain receded up her arm as easily as the tide flowed back into the ocean. Little by little, it faded until nothing hurt except for the wound itself.

  “That should heal before too long, dragon powers and all that.”

  “Well, that didn’t seem so bad,” Kristen said.

  The mage shrugged. “We know how to heal such wounds, but these snails are incredibly rare. I’ve had this one for years, but the dose he took from you…well, this will be his last time to help anyone.”

  “Do you mean that it will kill him?”

  “Yes, Lady Steel.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He bowed. “It is an honor to serve you, my lady.”

  She nodded, once again both impressed and confused at the strange formal obedience the mages showed dragons and led the man out of the room.

  In the hallway, Jasper had joined the conversation. Stonequest didn’t seem any happier about this than he was with anything else. “Are you saying that you called them in?”

  “Yes, sir. I saw there was a break-in, but as there were no dragons here… Well, it didn’t seem to be a dragon matter, so I called the humans.” Jasper grinned widely at the absurdity of the lie. She was too tired and exhausted to read his aura—reading for lies wasn’t a strength she’d developed yet, anyway—but Stonequest had to know something was up.

  “And what exactly were you doing here? You were dismissed from this case.”

  “Windfire paid me in advance, sir, and more than he should have. Plus, he was a good friend. I couldn’t simply pack up and leave.”

  “Right,” the other dragon said, disbelief heavy in his voice.

  “And then you folks—”

  “Answered the call, sir,” Keith responded and sounded like the eager kid he so often seemed to be.

  “So it was you who called Kristen?” Stonequest asked him.

  “Yes, sir. There’s nothing wrong with her doing what she wants, right? She was suspended from dragon SWAT.” The Rookie grinned as broadly as Jasper.

  “To be clear, Stonequest, this is a human matter,” Drew said. “We were called by someone presenting themselves as human to solve a human matter, namely breaking and entering. There are no dragon laws against that.”

  “And you came fully loaded to do that?”

  “You’ve met us.” Hernandez stuck her tongue out. “Do you think we do anything less than fully loaded?”

  “Fair point,” Stonequest said. “But it seems like you didn’t really listen to me about not mixing human and dragon affairs, Kristen.”

  “Was I supposed to let them rush in here and get slaughtered?” Kristen asked.

  He finally cracked a smile again. “No, of course not. That’s not why I brought you on. But all of you need to understand that this is top secret. Every aspect of these weapons is classified until the Dragon Council can determine what to do about them.”

  Stonequest turned to the humans assembled. “That goes double for you too.” He flexed his aura, and she felt it as surely as her team did. He was deadly serious.

  Drew straightened. “Sir, the last thing we want would be for news of this kind to get out and endanger the security and stability of our city, state, or country. Rest assured, your secret is safe with us and that if anything else like this does crop up, Dragon SWAT will be the first to know.”

  “That brings me to another point,” the dragon said. “This whole situation is a jurisdictional mess. Honestly, even thinking about the headquarters lawyers is a nightmare.”

  “But sir,” Kristen interjected. “I answered a human call. What’s the problem?”

  “That’s the damn problem. Humans do not tell us what to do.”

  “And they didn’t,” Jasper said, clinging to his story. “They answered a dragon, which means Kristen did too.”

  Stonequest shook his head. He clearly wasn’t convinced in the slightest. “Maybe we can get this to blow over this one time, but that doesn’t mean it won’t keep happening. The fact is, I need to find somewhere to keep you out of trouble.”

  Her heart dropped into her shoes. There must be some kind of curse that could entrap her in the paper dungeon. Ah, well, freedom had been nice while it lasted.

  “You’ve proven that I need to keep my eye on you, and I can think of only one place where I can really do that.”

  “Where’s that, sir?” She couldn’t even pretend to keep the dread out of her voice.

  “On Dragon SWAT, serving with me.”

  Kristen—for a rare moment—was speechless. Finally, she managed, “But I thought I had to earn my place there?” It came out sarcastic and a little bitter, which wasn’t what she had really intended but was how she felt.

  Stonequest shrugged and pointed to the trashed mansion. “I think this proves you have what it takes. You single-handedly pursued one hell of a killer not once or twice, but three times, and you uncovered a treasure trove of evidence.”

  “I told you that it was me who—”

  He waved his hand at Sergeant Ridgespine and the other dragon stopped talking. “It might not have looked like we were watching, but we were. And that only proves my point. You convinced all these folks—human and dragon alike—to work together, and that woman still escaped. If we want to catch her and the people she works with, I have no doubt that I’ll need your help.”

  “But I failed,” she said, still dumbfounded. She’d let the murderer escape and he wanted to promote her? Maybe dragons really were different.

  “Hall, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Drew snapped in the voice of her old superior officer.

  “Or the throat of a dragon,” Jim quipped and earned a glare from Ridgespine.

  “All right…” Kristen said hesitantly.

  “Excellent. I’m glad we’re in agreement on something, for once.” Stonequest smiled.

  “Don’t get the wrong idea,” Drew said and immediately wiped the smile off the dragon leader’s face. “Kristen, if they don’t treat you like the excellent cop you are, you are always welcome with us.”

  The rest of her team nodded, and her heart swelled.

  “Oh, shit, Drew. You’ll make her cry.” Hernandez grimaced.

  “And hug.” Kristen caught the other woman in a bear hug. When she tried to fight, she whined that her arm still hurt so Hernandez relented and let the Steel Dragon hug her while everyone else made stupid cutesy noises.

  It was nice to be able to torture a friend with something so simple. It was even better than shooting Drew in paintball.

  “We will endeavor to make sure you don’t leave us, Lady Steel,” Stonequest said and sounded quite formal. “We want you on the team so you can help us and so we can learn from you. I can’t promise that we’ll change thousands of years of culture and methods overnight, but I’m willing to try to get started. Besides, it would seem that if we don’t, someone will try to hold a gun to our head to force us. What do you say? Are you here for this?”

  She nodded and took his hand. They shook and their auras pressed against each other, feeling for any degree of hesitancy or disagreement, any hidden resentment, or feelings that had gone unspoken.

  Kristen found none in him, only an earnest desire to do better, do right by her, and try to help people who didn’t always know they needed help.

  With that simple exchange, she accepted the promotion. She didn’t know what was more exciting—the idea of being an actual officer on Dragon SWAT, tasked with investigating a new kind of weapon and the cabal of criminals who had invented it, or the prospect of bragging about it to her brother.

  Luckily for her, she didn’t have to decide. She would be able to do both.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Spring had come to the Motor City, and Kristen couldn’t have been happier about it. Winters lingered in Michigan and snow sometimes remained until April to remind humans that they still had no hope of controlling the cold, this most primordial of forces. But on that particular evening, the atmosphere seemed to be firmly o
n the side of the combatants. Given that she was about to enter a battle between two races, she found it a small comfort that at least the sun felt warm on her skin, the sky was clear, and the ground had thawed.

  Kristen currently stood between two groups, although “people” didn’t quite describe who was there. They all looked like people and more specifically, like cops. Despite the fact that this was only a mock battle—airsoft being the name of the game—they all still dressed like cops—sturdy pants, jackets, boots instead of sneakers for the half-muddy recently unfrozen ground, and gloves for the cold that looked well-worn rather than cumbersome. But the similarities were only skin deep.

  Her old team had gathered on her right. Drew talked strategy and Keith, Jim, and Beanpole listened intently. Hernandez fiddled with something that could only be explosives. Butters, however, was distracted. He orbited the smoker that one of the dragons attempted to operate as an enthusiastic back-seat griller. There was something about the way the humans—with the exception of the sniper—worked, even at a game like airsoft. They had focus, a drive to win and to succeed in the moment that dragons simply lacked. She thought it might be a matter of mortality.

  Certainly, Butters’ obsession with the grill seemed to be driven by his own mortality. “I honestly don’t see how you think a pork shoulder is gonna smoke in less than six hours.”

  Lumos, the dragon he spoke to, tilted his head and gave him a sidelong glance. “And what do you propose—that I blast it with my fire breath?” When in his true form, he was a resplendent golden dragon. As a human, he looked like a rather fit old man with a white pointed goatee and a large, well-trimmed mustache. He gave her the impression of a distance runner, one of those sixty-year-old men who could still somehow run twenty miles in a day, although of course, his true age was closer to sixty decades than sixty years. He was the oldest member of Dragon SWAT, but he didn’t seem to have the same cantankerous distrust of humanity that many of the Ancients possessed.

  “Jesus, of course not!” Butters reacted as if Lumos had said he intended to urinate on the coals. “The last thing you want is to cook the damn thing too fast. The internal temp needs to reach one-forty-five for the tendons to break apart. If you roast it, we’ll end up with it burnt on the outside and chewy in the middle.”

  “I think you fail to realize how much more intimately dragons understand heat than humans do,” the dragon said patiently.

  “Are we going to play this human game or simply sit here gabbing about meat all day?” Heartsbane demanded. Although as prickly as any dragon, Kristen could tell her undeniable beauty had an effect on the men she used to work with. Hell, Hernandez seemed to have a crush on her too. She was gorgeous as both a human and a dragon. As a human, she had steel-blue eyes, platinum-blonde hair she kept in two tight French braids, perfect cheekbones, and an unbelievably attractive athletic figure. In dragon form, she was a white dragon, as elegant as she was terrifying, with ivory-white scales and a ridge down her back that was both feminine in its grace and razor-sharp.

  “I’m ready,” responded the other member of Kristen’s Dragon SWAT team, John Emeraldeyes, who answered to Emerald among the dragons. Although she liked his human name more, much to his chagrin, she still thought of him as Emerald. After all, it was hard to forget that he could turn into a massive green dragon. He was, in many ways, a counterpoint to Heartsbane—male while she was female, dark skin compared to light, and loose dreadlocks instead of tight braids. He was friendly in a reserved kind of way compared to rude and wordy and was young for a dragon—less than a century—although he looked more like he was in his late twenties. She had only known him for a few months, but she already respected his work ethic and ability to put his head down and get things done.

  “We’re ready too,” Drew yelled from his little huddle and immediately resumed talking strategy with her human friends. He directed a glare at Butters, who finally pulled himself away from the smoker to join his team.

  “What’s about to happen here is truly remarkable, Kristen. I must say, I’m impressed,” said Stonequest, the last member of Dragon SWAT present and the dragon she knew best. He had first shown an interest in the dragon who was raised as a human, had recruited her to Dragon SWAT, and arranged her promotion at record speed. Truly, he was the only one on her new team she already thought of as a friend.

  “You’re impressed that Butters is about to cuss out a dragon because of inferior barbecue?” she joked. She was glad that Stonequest felt good about this, but it was the first time she’d brought these two worlds together for anything besides a murder case. For obvious reasons, she was fairly nervous and could only hope that it would all go well.

  Stonequest chuckled. “Lumos has been grilling for centuries. I’m sure all of you will be pleasantly surprised.”

  Kristen shrugged. “I’m sure us Detroiters will be, but Butters is from the south. He takes smoked meat more seriously than he takes his job sometimes. But that’s not what you’re talking about, is it?” she said, reading his aura.

  He was amused, but that didn’t fully explain the feeling he tried to express. “The barbecue is part of it, honestly. I’m totally amazed we’re all here interacting with each other at all. I know dragons interact with humans, obviously. Our two cultures are entwined and inseparable, but not like this. Dragons and humans never act as compatriots and comrades in arms. Hell, we never rent an airsoft course together for a day of guns and grilling.”

  “It’s a good thing we reserved the course for the day too. Can you imagine someone getting caught in the crossfire?”

  Stonequest smiled good-naturedly. “That’s not what I’m talking about, though. I’m talking about you, Kristen. You did this. You brought two groups together in a way that hasn’t happened before, not in centuries of cohabitation or in the millennia of history we share. Honestly, I’m not even sure it’s a good thing. Unlike you, I was brought up by dragons. I grew up in my creche learning the reasons why human and dragon kind shouldn’t get too close.”

  “Do you still feel that way?” she asked.

  His grin widened. “In the long run, who can say? We have such different lifespans and abilities, it makes sense to me to have some kind of separation between cultures, but short term? I’m damn excited. Getting to know you has made life far more interesting. You make the entire world live in the present. Kristen Hall, The Steel Dragon—a lost dragon raised by humans—trying to bring justice to both human and dragon kind. This is the kind of stuff history is made of.”

  Kristen shrugged. “What chapter will the first airsoft match be in? Do you think humans will hate me for playing on the dragon team?”

  “I’m serious, Kristen. I’m impressed.”

  “It’s not really a choice I made to bring us together or anything grandiose like that. It’s simply that I’m part of both worlds, period. I’m obviously a dragon, what with the sick powers and the steel skin and all the other perks, but I grew up as a human. I spent most of my life not knowing that I was a dragon. I can’t simply turn my back on all that. How am I supposed to look down on the people who used to put me in time out for stealing extra cookies from the cookie jar?”

  “Are we doing this or are you dragons calling it quits already?” Jim yelled across the muddy picnic area.

  She smiled. The Wonderkid had a bone to pick with dragon kind. There was probably no one more excited for this match than he was. Except maybe Hernandez. Despite never following the rules, Hernandez loved airsoft.

  “All right, here’s how we play this match.” Kristen raised her voice and directed a look at Hernandez, who winked in response, no doubt already planning how to subvert the game. “The first rule, no transformations allowed.”

  Her human friends all cheered and actually went so far as to chant, “Two legs, two arms, two legs, two arms.”

  The dragons all groaned dramatically.

  “How am I supposed to swoop about and pick them up for little snacks?” Lumos whined.

  His team
mates laughed at that and the humans shuffled uncomfortably.

  She held her arms up and waited for everyone to quiet again. “Okay, next up. In human form, dragons are faster and stronger. It’s not really something we can turn off or ignore, so that means that we will be armed differently. We will carry pistols, while the humans get semi-automatic rifles to keep it fair.”

  “No problem there,” Emerald yelled and did a standing back flip. “We have to do something to level the playing field.”

  “This doesn’t level it.” Heartsbane sneered. “We’ll still utterly demolish all of you without losing any of our own but maybe now, we might break a sweat.”

  Lumos and Stonequest both chuckled at their team’s smack-talking.

  “I think that’s about enough of that shit,” Jim hollered in return.

  Keith patted him on the back and mumbled something in his ear that Kristen couldn’t hear, but she assumed he was probably trying to calm the Wonderkid down. Jim had a long history of disliking dragons. He’d even seen them fight in war, something that humans rarely did. The joke about eating people was probably too much.

  “Oh, what’s wrong?” Heartsbane said in a high-pitched, teasing voice. “Is the little baby human afraid he gonna lose?” She lowered her voice to normal and grinned. “Because you should be.”

  “I ain’t afraid, merely sick of this arrogance.” Jim folded his arms. “Dragons use electricity, the Internet, cars and air conditioning, and everything else people have invented, and yet you still act like you’re better than us. Well, I have news for you. This is a human game, played with human weapons. We don’t need an advantage against you dinosaurs. I say we either give the old fogies semi-automatics like we use, or we all use pistols.”

  “Why do you wanna lose so badly?” Heartsbane asked as she sauntered forward and away from the other dragons.

  The Wonderkid didn’t miss a beat. He also marched forward. The two came to stop beside Kristen, who still stood in the middle of the two groups. They squared off opposite one another, their foreheads only an inch apart, and shuffled like birds or elephant seals trying to test one another. She couldn’t help but be impressed with Jim. Heartsbane could transform into a dragon and eat him and yet there he was, acting like she was nothing more than a schoolyard bully.