The Steel Dragon (Steel Dragons Series Book 2)

by Kevin McLaughlin

  “Don’t argue semantics, Brian, or I’ll steal the cord to your game station!” Frank took a place at the table as if sitting there would support his wife’s point.

  “Jesus, Dad, it’s a Playstation, not a game station,” Brian protested.

  “Like I said, semantics. Now put that chicken on the table. It smells too good to let it get cold.”

  That put a smile on Brian’s face. There was nothing like good food to cool a hot temper.

  The Hall family sat and dug in. The chicken was great. Brian had obviously brined it because the meat was tender, moist, and dripping with flavor. Her mom’s potato salad featured fresh herbs from the garden. Marty had always been able to use her windowsills for gardening space, so as soon as the outdoors thawed, she had plants in the ground. That she had enough dill to season the potato salad and lettuce for a tossed salad counted as a victory over nature itself in Kristen’s book.

  “Mom, these herbs are awesome,” she said, her mouth still half full. “You know, on some of those dragon mansions they have mages who control the climate on a local scale to extend the growing seasons.”

  “Gee, how impressive. Magic herbs while one in seven Americans live with hunger,” Brian said.

  She shot him a look that was supposed to say, “What’s your problem?”

  He returned it with a glare that very clearly said, “You.”

  Quite honestly, she had no idea what she’d done wrong. She decided to try flattery, “The chicken’s good too.”

  “Even for your advanced dragon taste buds?” Brian sneered.

  “All right, I don’t know what happened outside but it needs to stay outside,” Frank said in as close to his cop-voice as he could with a mouthful of salad. “You two have been at each other’s throats since Kristen got here.”

  “I haven’t been at anyone’s throat,” she protested.

  “Can a human be at a dragon’s throat? Is that even possible?” Her brother’s voice dripped sarcasm.

  “Whatever!” Frank yelled. Judging from her mom’s expression, he had crossed some unspoken decibel threshold. There was a moment of extremely awkward silence before Marty cleared her throat.

  “Brian, how’s the job hunt going?” she said by way of changing the subject.

  “Not good.” He sagged. “I can’t find any game tester gigs here in Detroit and well… I don’t know if I want to move.”

  “Why not? It feels good to get out of your parents’ house,” Frank said. He’d tried to get his son out on his own for years. “Going to another city might be fun too. I spent some time in Milwaukee before coming back to Detroit. It gives you perspective.”

  “I know—really, I do, but it’s, well… I downloaded one of those dating apps.”

  Kristen’s mom immediately perked up at the word ‘dating.’ She cleared her throat. “Someone please tell me that a dating app involves actual dating.”

  “Yeah, Mom, of course it does.” Brian glared at her with far less annoyance than he had at Kristen. “The thing is, I actually have a date coming up this week, and I know that’s not a big deal or whatever, but…well, this will kind of be my first date. I guess I don’t want to leave Detroit yet, you know? But I can’t get an apartment here because there are no jobs for gaming.”

  “God forbid you get a job outside of the Playstations,” his father muttered.

  “I, for one, am excited that you’re looking for a woman to spend time with,” Marty said, absolutely beaming. “Of course you can stay here a while longer. It’s great to see my little boy finally grow up!”

  Frank rolled his eyes so hard they almost fell out of his head, but he didn’t say anything else about it. Instead, he changed the subject to Kristen’s job, his favorite topic of conversation over dinner. “So, Kristen, any new busts for Dragon SWAT?”

  She shook her head, finished chewing her mouthful of chicken, and swallowed. “No, not really. Everything’s been fairly quiet after what happened this winter.”

  “Ah, too bad.” He looked heartbroken. The only thing he looked forward to more than Kristen’s stories of fantastic dragon police action was the Detroit Tigers.

  “We did play airsoft, though. I brought my old team together and played against the dragons,” she said.

  Her parents had never taken them to play airsoft, but since she had started playing with Detroit SWAT, she’d regaled them with stories from the arena more than a couple of times.

  “Oh yeah?” Frank said and dared to hope for an interesting story.

  “Which side did you play on?” Brian asked.

  “With the dragons, of course,” she replied.

  He sucked his teeth and scowled but didn’t say anything.

  “Did you have fun?” their mom asked.

  “Sure, Mom. We had the funnest, most everyone-is-a-winner time ever!” she joked. “To be honest, it was very cool. The humans actually won, believe it or not. They had to use some tricks, of course. I think they might have designed the course for how well they knew it plus, Hernandez used a mine rigged with a flash and some smoke, but still, they pulled it off.”

  “Can you even hear yourself right now?” Brian demanded.

  “What are you talking about?” Kristen was genuinely confused.

  “The humans actually won—like it’s such a shock that people can stand up to dragons in a game that humans invented. I beat dragons online all the time.”

  “It is a big deal,” she snapped. “Dragons are faster and stronger than people, you know that. They should be proud of themselves for beating us. And how can you know they’re dragons? People could simply lie about that online.”

  “See!” Brian said and pointed a finger shiny with chicken grease in her face. “See? I knew it!”

  “Knew what?” she asked, even though she didn’t really want to know whatever it was he was whining about. Was he mad that she’d trash-talked video games? That was one of her standard avenues of attack.

  “You act like one of them.” He wiped his hands as he spoke. “You thought you were human until maybe a year ago. Even when you first found out, you were cool about being a dragon. But ever since you joined Dragon SWAT, you lord it over the rest of us. You act like being human’s not good enough.”

  “Humans aren’t good enough when it comes to fighting dragons. Dragons can withstand explosions, gunshots, and all kinds of attacks that would kill people. It’s our duty to protect regular folk.” She tried to keep her voice calm. It wasn’t easy to argue about things that were so obviously true.

  “So what, you think you know what’s better for us? Is that it? A few months with Dragon SWAT and you’ve seen the light?” Brian was so angry he practically spat the words.

  “That’s enough, Brian,” Marty said, her gaze focused on her plate. Kristen knew that meant he had gone on about this for a while or at least since before she had arrived. When he was in one of these moods, it was better to let him get it off his chest than it was to push back, yet she couldn’t help herself.

  “I don’t think I’m better than people. In fact, I think I’m way more accepting of human culture than any dragon I’ve ever met. Most of them think people are beneath them, true, but I’m trying to change that. I want to use my abilities to make the world safer for everyone, not only dragons.”

  “Gee—wow, Kristen, how noble.” Her brother wielded the sarcasm like a razor. “So not only are you better than humankind, you’re better than dragons too. It’s great to be related to someone so wonderful. Oh, wait, are we related?”

  “That’s enough, Brian,” Frank warned. Ever since she and the world discovered that she was a dragon, her dad had steadfastly refused to call her anything but family. Brian had acted that way too until now.

  She knew her dad was right and that she should try to change the subject, but she couldn’t. He had struck a nerve. She spent so much of her time trying to bring dragons and humans closer and had even put together an airsoft match to start to bridge that divide, and he now gave her shit fo
r it? He wasn’t being fair as she was doing her best.

  “Seriously Brian, drop it. I came to save you from Shadowstorm’s minions. I killed him to make sure he wouldn’t come back to hurt you. Humans couldn’t have done that.”

  “They only tried to kidnap us because of you,” he said venomously.

  “So you think I should have left you to die? What are you even mad about right now, Brian?”

  “I’m mad that I lost my sister. You used to care about me—about our neighborhood and about everyone. You don’t act that way anymore. Fair enough, I get it, there are no dragons attacking Detroit right now, so you get to go unwind with your coworkers or whatever. That’s fine. But it doesn’t mean crime stopped. A chicken place was shot up the other day and no one did a thing about it. Some guy’s been tossing bricks off one of the bridges onto cars below. Two people have died as a result of this asshole, and what do dragons do? Nothing. Shit, someone flipped a garbage truck.”

  “You don’t understand. That’s not our jurisdiction.” Kristen regretted the words almost as soon as she said them. She couldn’t believe she’d actually uttered the same phrase Stonequest had used to get her to stop talking a thousand times over.

  It was obvious that the words had had a similar effect on Brian that they usually had on her. His mood went from white-hot anger to ice-cold rage. He clenched his teeth and stared at her. She was about to speak—to apologize or to defend herself, she wasn’t entirely sure—but he spoke first. It was almost as if he had waited for her to speak so he could cut her off.

  “So, let me get this straight,” he said, his voice low and cool, unlike her normally bubbly, good-natured brother. While he’d sometimes had spells like this when he’d get into funks, she hadn’t known what to do about it when they were younger and she didn’t know what to do about it now. He seemed so much angrier than usual. She wanted to reach out to him with her aura to calm him, but if he felt her doing that to him, it might push him even further. Instead, she decided to simply try to listen. “To be clear, humans aren’t in your jurisdiction. Is that right?”

  She nodded. “Stonequest says that all the time. I guess it sank in and—”

  “But you can fly in here in your dragon body, land in the backyard, cruise over the city, go in and out of human airspace, and obey human laws as you see fit. Do those even apply to you, by the way?”

  “Not…technically,” she admitted. “But we’re supposed to follow them so we don’t—”

  “What?” He cut her off again, his words like razors. “So you don’t make a scene? Or ruin your reputation?”

  Kristen nodded at the truth. “That’s how it is now, yeah.”

  “And you’re actually fine with that?” he demanded.

  “No! Of course not. Dragons have underestimated humans for all of history. I’m trying to change that. That’s why I took this job, so I could change dragon culture from the inside. I know it’s not happening fast enough but that’s because—” She didn’t know what to say. That there were humans who hunted dragons with weapons that could actually level the playing field between the two species? That the dragons wanted to keep it secret? That it was kind of a good thing that dragons viewed humans as pets, or cattle, or servants rather than as a threat? That open combat between the two species wouldn’t be good for anyone?

  “Let me guess, it's classified to dragon kind?” he taunted.

  “So…who wants dessert?” Their mom pushed herself up from the table and went to retrieve a chocolate cake on the kitchen counter.

  “No thanks, Mom. I was just leaving.”

  “But Kristen, it’s your favorite,” Marty said.

  “She made it for you, Kristen. Everyone does everything for you.” Brian had never sounded so angry about the prospect of eating chocolate cake.

  “Damn it, Brian—” Frank said but Kristen didn’t hear the rest. She pushed herself up from the table, snatched her coat up, and marched into the front yard.

  When she looked back through the living room window, she could see directly through the tiny house to the dining room. Brian and her dad were yelling at each other. Her mom threw the chocolate cake in the trash and began to do dishes, her posture and movements angry.

  What was happening to her family? She wasn’t completely certain what had come over Brian, but it sure did seem like it was her fault.

  The temptation was to transform right there, take to the skies, and forget about all this, but Brian was right. She had already turned herself into an international headline, and yet her parents refused to leave the house where they’d raised their children. The least she could do was not transform directly in front of it. There was no need to reveal the exact whereabouts of her family to the few people who didn’t know that she was a dragon

  Instead of transforming, she ran and pushed herself faster and faster as she let tears streak down her face. She moved so fast they couldn’t even make it down her cheeks before they were pulled into the wind.

  Kristen ran for seemingly endless miles, a loss of stamina now a thing of the past. Finally, lost and alone, she transformed in a back alley and became airborne. She knew she should go home and sleep. Tomorrow was a workday, but Brian was right about that, at least. No dragons had threatened the city for some time. It was better to use her abilities to help the regular people whom she had first sworn herself to protect.

  Her search of the city below revealed nothing. Without Dragon SWAT’s system of signal fires and empathic awareness, she was limited to her own senses. And without a police radio, she was deaf to any people who needed help.

  Eventually, she wheeled in circles high above the incinerator where she’d defeated Shadowstorm. Even it seemed to be going on with its normal activities without her. Her brother was right. A garbage truck had been toppled and people set about righting it using forklifts and chains they had made themselves.

  Humans really could solve their own problems if dragons would simply get out of the way.

  Finally, she went home and slipped into a restless night of sleep.

  Her dream world was one without dragons. There, her family had a happy life and Brian thrived when he wasn’t forced to live in her shadow. She watched the whole dream from an invisible, ghost-like perspective.

  When she finally awoke, she wasn’t immediately sure if she existed, let alone whether she deserved to.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  At the office, Kristen found that there wasn’t enough coffee in the world to make her feel better. What made things even worse was that she’d looked forward to this morning. There was nothing as good as her mom’s chocolate cake and a cup of coffee, and yet even thinking about how disastrously dinner had gone filled her stomach with dread.

  “Are you all right?” Lumos asked as he paused outside her office.

  It was a human gesture to ask. She knew that he and probably every other dragon on the floor knew exactly how she felt due to her aura. Although she tried to control it, thinking about it merely reminded her how different her life was now that she was a dragon, which only made it worse.

  She looked at him and tried to summon a smile. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “You just did.”

  “Oh, right, sure.”

  He merely smiled encouragingly and waited for her to continue. It was kind of impressive that a dragon as old he was could seem so human but who better to talk to about this than him?

  “Okay, don’t take this the wrong way but…well… I’m afraid I’m losing touch with my humanity.”

  The old dragon studied her over his mustache for a long moment before he finally said, “What’s the question?”

  That teased a weak laugh from her. “How do you stay focused on what’s important? Last night, my brother pointed out that for the last few months, I haven’t done anything to really help people. How is that okay?”

  “You have, though. You stopped those zealots from murdering more dragons than only Windfire.”

  “But isn’t that p
rotecting dragon kind?”

  Lumos stroked his mustache in thought before he sat in the chair opposite her. “You know, that’s a good question, one I haven’t really thought about for centuries. I suppose I think of it like this—it’s not our job to make rules.”

  “You mean dragons? It seems to me like they actually make numerous rules.”

  “No, I’m not talking about dragons. I’m talking about cops. We don’t make rules, we enforce them. Our job is to keep the status quo, keep society stable, and keep the streets from descending into chaos so the baker knows he can produce his loaves for everyone who needs them in the morning.”

  “The baker?”

  Lumos chuckled. “Okay, so maybe I need to update my references. The factory worker?”

  “Not for much longer,” she said when she thought of all the factories that once powered the Motor City. Most of those were gone now.

  “Okay, then that’s a good example. Our job isn’t to find new jobs for people. They do that themselves. Our job isn’t to stop them from stealing from one another or lying to each other. People do those things and so do dragons. That’s simply how it is.”

  “So what is our job?”

  “Our job is to…what’s the modern expression?” He paused as he considered what he wanted to say and his expression lit up when he found the expression he was looking for. “Our job is to stop the shit from hitting the fan.”

  Kristen laughed, unable to help herself. “And if there’s no shit flying?”

  “There will be. There always is.”

  “And if our bosses don’t recognize it?”

  “I think they normally do. Sometimes, they don’t react in the right way or quickly enough, but I think they always notice. Then, they tell us to react.”

  “But what if dragons—or cops or whoever—are on the wrong side of it?”

  “As long as our intention is to stop people from hurting each other, I think we’re on the right side of it. There have been some horrible abuses by both human and dragon police over the years. The way your politicians used police during your civil rights movement was awful but, in the end, the leaders did the right thing.”