The Steel Dragon (Steel Dragons Series Book 2)

by Kevin McLaughlin

  “Surrender yourselves now,” the dragon leader said.

  The two looked at each other, then back at him. “And if we don’t?” the red one asked.

  In response, he blasted the earth in front of them with a stream of flame so potent it ripped the sidewalk that led to the church apart and instantly turned the nearby grass to ash.

  “You are more than welcome to fight the five of us. In fact, if you choose to do so—and somehow win—the Dragon Council won’t hold you responsible for any further damages.”

  Kristen was appalled that Stonequest even allowed them to consider this. If two fighting dragons had caused this much damage, surely a battle between seven would destroy the entire town, if not the state. It was an unthinkable, terrifying thought.

  “Stonequest,” she said in response to the inner prompting to voice her complaint. That was why he had brought her on the team anyway, right? To be a voice for humans.

  A hasty jab from Heartsbane’s tail told her to shut up. She intended to say something anyway but in the next moment, the two dragons transformed into their human forms. It appeared Stonequest’s bluff had worked, if that was what it was. She dearly hoped that was the case.

  “He started it,” the red dragon said. In his human form, he was a rather tall and thin man covered in freckles. His British accent wasn’t quite as strong, although he sounded as imperiously whiny as before.

  “I did no such thing!” the copper dragon responded. He was shorter with coppery skin almost the same color as his scales had been and slicked-back black hair. She was surprised to find that his accent was almost nonexistent in his human form.

  Stonequest took out a notepad. “Start at the beginning, Lord…”

  “Lord Rubicon.” The man bowed as if they were meeting at a dinner party instead of a place of wanton destruction. “I was courting the most beautiful dragon. She was enchanting—truly enchanting—with subtle power and a timeless beauty rarely seen.”

  “She was an ancient, then?” Stonequest asked.

  “Possibly. It’s no longer politic to ask about a dragon’s age, you know—a crossover from human culture, to be sure.”

  “All right. What happened then?” the SWAT leader prompted.

  “We were talking, having a grand time, when this barbarian interrupted our evening,” Rubicon exclaimed.

  “That’s a load of ash and you know it. She was bored to death with you and practically begged me with her eyes to come over,” the other dragon said.

  “And you are?” Stonequest asked.

  “Lord Copperstrike,” he replied with a bow and a flourish of his wrist. “And I can tell you all about this woman. He had her cornered, so I went over to help her, right? Well, Rubicon wouldn’t let her go, so I challenged him to a duel for honor and all that.”

  “Nonsense! You threw a drink in my face, took her by the hand, and ran from the tavern.”

  “For starters, they’re called bars in this country, not taverns, and that’s not how I remember it at all.”

  “You don’t remember it, or you don’t want to remember it?”

  Kristen could feel their auras begin to froth again. She was in dragon form while they were simply humans, but she couldn’t let another fight break out. Without thought, she turned to steel and took a step forward.

  Again, Heartsbane switched her with her tail.

  “We can’t let them destroy this town,” she protested.

  “Which means we shouldn’t attack them in dragon form,” Heartsbane said.

  Lumos—to Kristen’s surprise—transformed into his human form and approached the two dragons, a set of heavy manacles in each hand.

  “It sounds like we can chalk this up to the stupidity of youth, huh?” he said as he strode forward.

  “That won’t be necessary, sir,” Rubicon said.

  Copperstrike held his wrists out and let Lumos shackle them.

  “Now, it would be one on five, Rubicon. Do you really want to test those odds?” Stonequest asked.

  The troublemaker grumbled and stuck his wrists out petulantly for Lumos to shackle him. He wilted visibly when they locked decisively.

  “Emerald, check for casualties and catch up with us. Lumos, you’ll transport the prisoners. Heartsbane, you’re on guard duty. If these two try anything, feel free to show them some of the things we’ve learned about the human form.”

  “Give me a second to prepare them for transport, sir, and I’ll be ready,” Lumos said.

  Stonequest nodded. Emerald took flight and soared to the town below. He landed amongst the wreckage of the town, transformed into human form, and was soon lost amongst the buildings.

  “I don’t understand,” Kristen whispered to Heartsbane as Lumos fiddled with the manacles. “What good will those do against dragons? Can’t they simply transform and break them?”

  “Oh, wow, I never thought of that. Hey, Stonequest, Steel pointed out that these dragons could transform and break the manacles.” The sarcasm in her voice rivaled Brian’s.

  “We came willingly. There’s no reason to rub it in,” Rubicon snapped huffily.

  Kristen looked from the human-shaped dragons to Stonequest, who chuckled, then at Heartsbane. “What? What did I say?”

  “They’re magic manacles, obviously.” Heartsbane snorted. “Sometimes, I forget how goddamn annoying it is that you didn’t spend any time in the paper dungeon. You still don’t know a damn thing about dragon culture.”

  “So if they are wearing them, they can’t transform?” She was reluctant to ask but needed to clarify exactly what it meant.

  “Yeah, you got it. I guess your brain is made of metal too, then.”

  She took a deep breath—being in her dragon form meant it was deep in a way human lungs could never be—and tried to calm her nerves. “I merely didn’t know that kind of technology existed, is all. The information would have been useful in the case with Windfire.”

  “We don’t discuss open cases in front of criminals, Steel,” Stonequest snapped.

  “And now you know why we didn’t tell you, rookie,” Heartsbane said. “It’s not the kind of information we want the whole of the human race to know about, and since spreading the news about whatever you damn well please is basically your MO, it wouldn’t have been too smart to tell you before we needed to.”

  Her reply remained unspoken, not because she didn’t want to but because Lumos transformed into a dragon. He pumped his wings and elevated, then picked up each of the dragons by the chain connecting their manacles.

  “Isn’t that cruel?” she asked. It had been a long flight and these men would dangle by their wrists the entire way.

  “Damn it, Steel, can you pick a side? First, you want to barrel in there and bust some heads, then you don’t want to fight them when Stonequest gave them the option of innocence by duel, and now you’re concerned about what? Their shoulders getting hurt? They’re fucking dragons, remember? This won’t so much as make them sore the next morning.”

  “It had better not,” Copperstrike shouted from above.

  “And now you’ve made our team seem ununified in front of a threat. That’s amateur shit right there.”

  “I’m only trying to understand—"

  “Yeah, the thing is, I don’t care. I’ve never cared about humans and yet somehow, I’ve found a dragon I care for even less.”

  Kristen didn’t have to ask who she was talking about. She simply sighed as Heartsbane took to the air, followed by Stonequest. It was exhilarating and amazing to flex these new powers and to learn more about what she was and what she could do, but damn, there were times when she really, really, missed being a regular human.

  She took flight as well and caught up to Heartsbane and Lumos, who flew in companionable silence, then pushed ahead so she could be next to Stonequest. “What will happen to them?” she asked.

  “Probably not much,” he said and glanced at the two prisoners who—true to Heartsbane’s word—seemed to be doing fine. “They’ll be fi
ned for damages, definitely. Given the conflicting nature of their testimony, it will probably end up being a fifty-fifty split, but that’s for the courts to decide, not us. If this woman they were allegedly fighting over turns up, she might be able to serve as a witness.”

  “But there had to be dozens of witnesses in the bar,” she protested.

  “Sure, human witnesses. Those don’t count for much in a dragon court of law.”

  “So humans don’t matter?”

  “No, of course humans matter. If any humans died, there will be fees associated with that as well. Part of those will go to accountants whose job it is to pay out to the humans as well. We try to ensure that the people who are most affected get the largest slice of the pie.”

  “A slice of the pie? This is their lives we’re talking about!” Kristen was aghast. “It’s bad enough to think about destroying a church and repaying the damage to a community by letting these monsters go free with nothing but a fine, but to let them go if they killed people?”

  “It’s not like we’re talking about tiny amounts of money here. If a family loses more than one member, they can be set for life if they play their cards right. Things would be different if this was a dragon’s territory, but it’s not, so the courts will do their best to patch this up.”

  “There’s no way this can be patched up.”

  “We don’t encourage this behavior. The Dragon Council recognizes that humans are entitled to certain rights and that by infringing on those rights, it destabilizes dragon culture by affecting business and land claims, stuff like that. We all know it’s bad for business, and if it happened too often, it might make the humans rise up again. But that’s why the courts are there—to try to fix this as best we can.”

  “But these are their lives.” She simply couldn’t understand how he could be so callous. The worst part about it was that he was one of the dragons who actually seemed to care about people.

  “Yes, and I hope no one died, but the buildings are merely buildings.”

  “It was a church.”

  “At least it wasn’t Sunday, right?”

  That, of course, was not her point at all.

  “Look, I understand that you feel things aren’t quite equitable, and you’re right. But humans and dragons are fundamentally different. Humans recognize this with the other species. You eradicate termites, which is your right, and you protect the whales and dragons respect you for that. But you have to understand that there are a different set of laws because humans and dragons are different.”

  “But I thought that even though they were different, they were still just.”

  “Human laws are for human justice and dragons’ laws are for dragon justice,” Stonequest quipped in response.

  “When I joined SWAT, I expected to be part of bringing criminal dragons to justice. Not asking for murderers to pay fines.”

  “Alleged murderers,” he said. Oh, how she hated him in that moment. “Look, I know that our system is imperfect. We need more officers and smaller districts. We could have prevented far more damage if we had got here sooner. But not all dragons want to serve. That’s a people problem too.”

  Was this really what Dragon SWAT was reduced to? It was supposed to be the most elite security team in the region—and quite possibly the entire continent—and he complained about broken systems and doing the best he could because he didn’t have other people to do his job for him?

  It wasn’t enough for her, not even close. She wanted to bring justice from the dragon world to humankind, not deceive people into thinking that justice existed in the first place.

  These thoughts raced through her head for the duration of the long flight back to the Motor City. She thought of Brian and how he’d accused her of losing her humanity. If she was becoming less human, it must mean she was becoming more dragon.

  Only now, she wasn’t sure that was something she wanted at all.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Kristen could barely hold herself together for the rest of the workday. She understood that criminals had rights and believed that they should be treated with respect—in theory. But she felt that Dragon SWAT took it too far with Rubicon and Copperstrike. Everyone they passed greeted them with a, “my lord.” Even worse, any mages they encountered in the hallways as they processed the alleged criminal and took them to their cells bowed and supplicated themselves to an excruciating degree.

  By the time they’d actually filed their paperwork in the paper dungeon and taken the two dragons to holding cells—surprisingly plush accommodations—Dragon SWAT seemed downright friendly with the brawlers. Heartsbane didn’t seem to care at all that they’d burned a church to the ground, and even Lumos treated them genially enough. He seemed especially adept at putting the two dragons at ease. She told herself that he was playing the role of the proverbial good cop, but no one really played bad cop so it lost its relevance.

  Even when Emerald returned and told Stonequest that their brawl had killed twenty-two people, no one really dropped the act. The SWAT leader frowned at the death toll and talked a tough game about fines and fees and how the dragons would need to pay before they could be released, but in the end, he never made any threats about holding them for any length of time. The dragons looked annoyed to be fined millions of dollars, but even the amounts they were quoted seemed low to her. Plus, their lack of reaction proved that although they didn’t want to, they could afford to pay the fines. Both seemed confident that they’d be free before too long.

  The system seemed even more corrupt to her when, by the time she was ready to leave at the end of the day, Rubicon had already been processed and released. Apparently, he’d recently bought a mansion and surrounding estate outside one of the major cities in the Midwest and had offered it to the Dragon Council in exchange for the damage caused to the town and the loss of human lives. They had accepted, and that was that. Stonequest said that if the money made selling the property didn’t quite cover the damages, the Dragon Council would help, but that didn’t seem like justice to her at all.

  It appeared that Copperstrike would be freed in the morning. He apparently owned a rather substantial silver mine in Kazakhstan. All he needed was for one of his agents there to deliver the appropriate amount of silver into an account the Dragon Council maintained for this purpose. Because of the time zone difference, he would most likely have to stay overnight, but given that the beds in the cells looked plusher than the ones in her apartment, she didn’t exactly feel bad for the guy.

  Kristen could hardly take it. These dragons were murderers—murderers of twenty-two people—and they would walk out of there like they’d done nothing more than make a generous charitable contribution. It was an egregious abuse of power, and to her, another example to prove that although humans and dragons shared a planet, they lived in different worlds.

  When Stonequest mentioned to her that they’d be stuck in the office for the rest of the shift and that if she wanted to leave an hour early, she could, she jumped at the opportunity. In reality, she had no idea how she would have lasted another hour, so it was with rage and relief that she walked to the roof, transformed into her dragon body, and left.

  A glance at the office clock had told her that it was almost quitting time at human SWAT, so she headed over there. Her dad might have been a good ear but she didn’t want to see her brother again so soon. He’d been so angry the last time she’d seen him. She didn’t want to set him off again if he was still upset, and she hadn’t done a very good job of calming him. It would be better to see her old team. At least the only risk they posed was excessive trash-talking.

  She landed about a block away from her old Detroit SWAT office, transformed into her human shape, and walked the rest of the way toward the building. When she was almost there, she was greeted with, “Incoming!” yelled at the top of Keith’s lungs.

  “Whassup, Rookie?” she called in response and wrapped him in a big hug. That was another thing dragons didn’t do—hug, smile, or s
how any trace of warmth unless they had a reason to. Keith was in front of a building filled with cops—and not regular cops but a group of SWAT officers—and he hugged her like it was nothing extraordinary.

  “How long you been on Dragon SWAT?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure—a few months?”

  “It sounds like you’re the rookie to me.”

  “You’ll always be the Rookie, Keith. You have this deer in the headlights look about you.”

  He raised an eyebrow “Says the woman walking down the street to her old office all alone making everyone on the street depressed and pissed?”

  She cursed silently. “Sorry. I can get that under control.” She tried to reel her aura in, a little irritated that she’d let it get out of hand. Its power had definitely increased and in general, she was able to control it better—when she remembered to. But she still didn’t always think about it or the need to manage it constantly the way the other dragons seemed to. Still, now that Keith had pointed it out, she was able to will it to start to subside with only a few deep breaths.

  The Rookie chuckled. “It’s cool. I kind of want to punch someone in the face, but I can more or less tell when it’s your aura doing that now, you know? It’s weird but cool. I don’t think I’d be able to tell at all if I hadn’t spent time with you, but I guess being friends with a dragon has its perks.”

  Hernandez burst from the door to the SWAT building behind Keith, “Steeeeel Draaaagon,” she shouted like she was announcing a wrestler coming into the ring. “What the fuck brings you to this shitty neighborhood?” Before she could answer, the woman stuck her head inside the building and hollered, “Red’s back!”

  “Hey, Hernandez,” she said in greeting.

  “Sorry, it’s Steel now, huh? I guess the color of your hair’s not really a big deal compared to fancy dragon powers.” The demolitions expert took a step back and almost flinched. “Shit, Kristen, that pissed-off shit is you, huh?”