The Steel Dragon (Steel Dragons Series Book 2)

by Kevin McLaughlin

  “Okay, thank you.”

  As soon as he left, she turned to Drew. “We have the exact location. I think I should go, but I want to know what you think. I’ve rushed in before.”

  “For starters, we have to assume that this Obscura knows that we know where she is. She might have neglected to notice the watch, but she cut the camera feed as soon as she realized what had happened.”

  “So you think she’ll spring a trap for us?”

  “Honestly, I’m more worried about Brian than a trap,” he said, which surprised her.

  “How…what do you mean?” Her blood felt like ice.

  “I don’t want to freak you out or anything, but this is like serial killer behavior. She obviously wants him to suffer and she wants you to know that he’s suffering. I think moving her timeline up will make her move him.”

  “We can’t be sure about that, though. He could be the piece of bait in the trap,” Jim said.

  “That’s true, of course,” Drew agreed. “But that means he’s already in the location anyway. By waiting, we don’t do him any favors. He might be caught by one of those…uh, junkies or whatever they were, for one thing, and we also give Obscura more time to prep for us.”

  “So you’re saying we need to rush in and fuck shit up?” Hernandez asked eagerly as she entered the room again. She was dressed in full tactical gear. Kristen had been so concerned about her brother she hadn’t even seen the woman slip away.

  “Damn straight,” Drew said and revealed one of his rare smiles.

  The SWAT team dressed quickly. By the time she’d looked up the coordinates Brian had revealed on her phone and made it out front, they were all outside. The team leader brought the van out from the parking garage.

  “Come on in, Steel,” Hernandez said and gestured for her to climb into the back of the van with the rest of them.

  “You guys get going. If the van’s too fast for me, I’ll land and hitch a ride.”

  Drew nodded and immediately accelerated to race toward where Brian was hopefully still hanging on.

  Kristen transformed into the Steel Dragon.

  She inhaled, then exhaled, and released a shower of silvery glitter from her steel skin. It enveloped her in a whirling, churning silvery cloud. Inside, her appendages elongated as more and more of the silver flecks connected to her body and grew her arms, her legs, and her neck. Finally, they added a tail and created wings. More and more of the silver compacted until she was in her dragon form. She flexed her wings and took to the air.

  Drew was already a half-mile ahead. He was going fast and was a good driver, but it wouldn’t be fast enough. That didn’t worry her too much as she had a plan.

  As she approached the van, Lumos fell into formation behind her. “What’s the plan?”

  “I’m going to get my brother back.”

  “Very good. I contacted Dragon SWAT and they’re on their way, but it might be a while. Apparently, there was a bomb threat at a lesser dragon’s estate somewhere in southern Ohio. Heartsbane and Emerald were down there. Stonequest was near your parents so should arrive more quickly, but for a time, it will only be the two of us.”

  She nodded. The location where Brian was held was close, but that didn’t mean they could dally.

  “We can get there much faster by air than by road,” the golden dragon said.

  “I know, but we can’t leave my team behind. This is as personal for them as it is for me. Besides, if this oath of hers gives her strength when she thinks she’s hurting me, seeing the people she tried to hurt alive and well and hunting her ass is bound to have an effect.”

  “Leave it to a dragon raised by humans to see a potential flaw in an ancient oath. I’m not sure how doubt plays into it all, but confidence certainly gives it power, so there might be something there.”

  “I hope so.”

  “But that doesn’t change the fact that we can get there much faster by flight.”

  “Then let’s fly,” she said, tucked her wings, and swooped into a dive. She spread her wings as she came above the van, sank her steel claws through the roof, and picked it up off the road.

  Cheers erupted from inside. Her team had her back. For now, her responsibility was to make sure she didn’t drop them.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Obscura wasn’t happy that the fat boy had revealed his location to the Steel Dragon, but it didn’t change much. The trap was set, and although she’d hoped that the she would arrive to find her brother’s fresh corpse, she now recognized that it wouldn’t be prudent.

  She needed Brian alive if she was to lure her quarry into the maze. If Kristen Hall could sense her brother’s terror, she would attempt a rescue while blinded by her own childish emotions.

  It had been a long time coming, but the old dragon was determined not to botch the ending. The Steel Dragon was the bitch who had crushed her son with bricks. She had given him a beast’s death—worse, the death of a peasant—and for that, she would suffer vengeance like no one had suffered it before.

  So, despite having the skills to shoot the her between the eyes, Obscura hid. Darkness was her friend, after all, and the warehouse she’d built was a labyrinth for others but a nest for her. Kristen could explore it for hours and not find her unless she wanted her to.

  It was unfortunate that she’d overlooked Brian’s watch. Humans constantly developed new technology and it was virtually impossible to keep track of it all, especially when they reinvented crap they already had. She had noticed the watch and not thought anything of it. In fact, she’d even hoped that it would wind down and leave him even more confused and disoriented, but that had been a moment of blind foolishness.

  Still, this didn’t change much. She might not have understood smart watches but she understood surveillance equipment, drones, and best of all, explosives. She’d needed help of course—there were simply so many bombs that had to be armed, but now that the job was done, she was quite happy with the work.

  What made it better still was that so many of them couldn’t be disarmed now that the people who’d helped arm them were being digested in her stomach. There were some dragons who maintained that humans shouldn’t be eaten—that, like dolphins, they had a certain level of intellect and therefore needed to be protected.

  Obscura thought that was all nonsense, of course. The only reason not to eat humans was that they weren’t as tender as chicken. Still, there was something that fear did to the flesh that she simply loved.

  It was yet another disagreement she’d had with Sebastian. If he’d seen things her way, she wouldn’t be in this mess. Still, disagreements were precisely that. Shadowstorm’s own shortcomings wouldn’t affect the oath she’d sworn to avenge him.

  With Brian running for his life and the Steel Dragon doubtlessly en route, the ancient dragon felt stronger than she had in centuries. The oath coursed through her, the strongest it had been since she’d taken it. She was faster and stronger, and best of all, her transformative powers that let her move through darkness when she shifted from dragon to human felt as smooth as butter.

  She didn’t want to ruin the chances of trapping the Steel Dragon exactly where she wanted her. At the same time, she also knew that she could pursue her through the maze and harass her as she saw fit, while her prey would be oblivious in her clunky steel skin.

  Merely the thought of snapping her neck from the shadows was enough to further strengthen the oath. Obscura wondered if this was what human drug users felt. Certainly, the goons who pursued Brian seemed more powerful once she had begun to give them stronger and stronger drugs. She knew they’d crash eventually, but this would all be done by then.

  Very soon, she would have her revenge and the oath would be fulfilled. She could feel it growing and growing, ready to leech the strength from its master if it wasn’t completed. Secure in her machinations, she laughed the feeling away. She was confident this would end with her target dead at her feet.

  And if the oath thought she was tarrying, sh
e could always kill Kristen’s brother. That should go quite a long way toward proving her intent.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Kristen set the van down in the far end of a parking lot near an old abandoned warehouse. The building was truly massive, so large that Brian’s coordinates indicated a specific position inside, not merely the building itself. That information was irrelevant, of course. He had surely moved on but it confirmed how big this damn place was and how challenging it would be to get him out.

  The warehouse itself appeared derelict from the outside. The windows were all blacked out from the inside but other than that, the exterior looked hopelessly run down. However, it did appear that it had seen action recently, though.

  The black streaks of truck tires marred the old, cracked concrete, and a dumpster overflowed with packing material that was still fresh. It hadn’t been rained on yet so couldn’t have been more than a few days old.

  “This is it,” she said, even though she couldn’t feel Brian’s aura at all.

  Drew nodded. “Last time we invaded a dragon’s stronghold, there were automated weapons. Do you want to check that for us, Steel Dragon?”

  She nodded and approached in dragon form. Despite not having steel skin, Lumos accompanied her. No guns began to fire and no drones came to life. It seemed that if the building was defended, it wasn’t done actively.

  “It looks clear to me,” she said, transformed into her human form—keeping her steel skin on, of course—and approached it.

  Cautiously, she followed the track marks in the parking lot to one of the loading docks. The doors themselves were probably all locked, but this was where the whole bizarre game seemed to have been put together, so it might serve as a back door. She noticed that it wasn’t so much as padlocked and stepped forward to lift it.

  “Whoa, whoa! Hold up!” Hernandez yelled and ran past. “Do you really want to simply walk in there given that we’re dealing with some crazy bitch who knows how to make a glitter bomb using someone else’s gear?”

  “Bombs can’t hurt me,” she reminded her teammate.

  “Yeah, great for you. I’m worried about me, though, and then there’s your brother to be concerned about.” The demolitions expert studied the latch on the door.

  “I’m sure Brian’s not at this door.”

  “It doesn’t matter if he is,” Hernandez said and pointed to a wire that ran along the gate. “Do you see this shit? It’s wired to blow if the door is opened. Let’s check the others.”

  Kristen growled. They’d already wasted so much time but setting a bomb off probably wasn’t a good way to start a rescue. She waited impatiently for Hernandez to check the other doors.

  “This one’s armed too,” the woman said, shook her head, and repeated herself when she reached the third and final door.

  “We don’t have time to walk around this entire building and check every single one,” Kristen said.

  “I don’t think that we should anyway.” Hernandez rubbed her chin. “These bombs are linked. If we trigger one of them, all of them blow up. Given what she did to my apartment and the connection between these, I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole place is all wired together.”

  “You mean like one big bomb?” Jim asked.

  “More like dozens of medium-sized bombs perfectly linked to bring this whole place down on whoever the fuck is inside.” The demolitions expert shrugged. “At least, that’s what I would do.”

  “Surely she left one door unarmed,” Lumos ventured. “There must be one through which she wants us to enter. Somewhere this game of hers starts.” He had transformed himself into human form to look at the closed doors.

  Keith shook his head. “If we play by her rules to that degree, we’ve already lost. This is like the airsoft match. We won because we were able to choose the entrance you dragons took. That led you to the landmine. If she controls how we get inside, well… I think that might be worse than blowing the building up.”

  “What could be worse than killing my brother?” Kristen demanded.

  There was an awkward moment where everyone undoubtedly thought the same thing. Kristen seeing Brian at the end of a tunnel having a heart attack from being shocked by one of the people chasing him. Her embracing him in a hug, only for Obscura to exhale flames on them both. The Steel Dragon would survive, while he cooked to death in her arms. Kristen somehow restrained with electrical shocks or magnets while the dragon simply ate her brother.

  She shuddered. “Maybe you’re right, Keith. We can’t let her choose our point of entry. But we can’t stay out here either.”

  Lumos shrugged “Stonequest might have an idea—”

  “We don’t have time to wait.” She shook her head. That wasn’t an option. They needed to gain entry immediately. “Wait—Hernandez, you said all the doors are wired together, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am. This motherfucker’s set up to make one hell of a barbecue if we force a lock.”

  “What about the walls?”

  The woman rubbed her chin again and frowned as she considered the question. “Well…it’s virtually impossible to run a tripwire all the way around the walls of this building, especially if Brian’s stumbling around in there. He could set it off. So the walls would probably work—”

  “Except you’re forgetting one thing,” Jim raised an eyebrow. “We’re not mutants or whatever. We can’t simply walk through brick unless there’s more to the Steel Dragon than you’ve told us.”

  Kristen walked away from the large hangar doors. She moved about a third of the way to the next door and punched the wall.

  She didn’t break it with a single blow. It cracked and she punched it again. Her steel knuckles remained unscratched as she pounded the cinderblocks that made up the walls of the warehouse. She delivered a blow with her other hand to crack another brick, then took hold of the edges of the hole and pulled the damaged masonry free. Her steel skin didn’t mind the rough concrete and her muscles made no protest at the fact that she ripped a hole in artificial stone rather than cardboard. She worked at the edges of the hole, widened it to shoulder width, and finally kicked the bottom out so a human-sized hole appeared in the wall.

  “Okay. Lumos and I will go in. Drew, when Stonequest gets here, show him this entrance and tell him about the bombs.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Keith protested immediately.

  “Hold up now. You didn’t make that hole big enough for me,” Butters pointed out.

  “How many times do we have to go over this, Kristen?” The team leader sounded impatient. “This is the job we all signed up for—helping people even if there is danger involved. Brian is a citizen of this country and a resident of Detroit.”

  “Dearborn,” she reminded him.

  “Whatever. It’s close enough. We all knew it was risky when we loaded into the van.” His jaw was like iron, a sign that he wouldn’t back down but still, she had to try.

  “We didn’t think this entire building would be wired to explode.” She gestured to the doors. “It’s a level of risk that I can survive without a problem. Even Lumos will be fine with his healing powers, but if any of you are caught in the blast—”

  “Wait a minute,” Hernandez protested. “Did you think this bitch put a glitter bomb in my apartment and would forget about using bombs completely? Plus, do you think this is it? She did the outside and the inside is bomb-free? How are you gonna stop the explosives without yours truly?”

  “I—”

  “Plus, what if she has a gun?” Butters added. “Either she knows how to shoot or she has a minion who does. If she suddenly appears at the end of a hallway, you’ll need me to lay down cover fire.”

  “You don’t have bullets that could hurt her,” Kristen countered.

  “So I’ll shoot the goddamn gun out of her hand. Does that work for you?”

  She let a smile sneak through. The team might be almost suicidal but she loved their confidence.

  “Okay. Hernandez and Butters, let’s
go. Everyone else, someone will need to tell Stonequest where we are.”

  “I can relay that they can’t simply break in with my aura,” Lumos said quickly. “In fact…” He took his phone out, texted a picture of the hole in the wall, and sent it along with GPS coordinates. “They’ll know where to go.”

  The team members all smirked.

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “No, it’s too dangerous to go without us,” Drew said. “We all saw the video—narrow hallways, tight corners, and poor lighting. It’s the same damn thing as the airsoft course we designed to catch you dragons.”

  “You did cheat,” Lumos shouted triumphantly.

  The team leader smiled. “Of course. How the hell else are we supposed to beat dragons? Honestly, I think it’s a good sign that this dragon put in all this work. It means she doesn’t want a direct fight. That means she’s intimidated.”

  Lumos shook his head. “Not necessarily. If she’s sworn an oath of vengeance, the preparation for revenge can be as important as the death itself. We can’t underestimate her.”

  Kristen nodded. They made sense, dammit, but that didn’t mean they all had to go. “Okay, fine, but Jim, Keith, and Beanpole, you three stay out here.”

  The Wonderkid simply laughed in her face, stepped through the hole, and entered the maze. “You’re fucking crazy if you think I’ll miss a dragon battle. I already saved your brother once and I won’t let him die for no good reason.”

  “Keith—”

  “This thing is like Pac-Man, right? Well, I’m the fucking Pac-Man king,” the Rookie boasted.

  “Beanpole?”

  “I think it prudent for one of us to stay outside. I’ll make sure no one leaves and talk to Dragon SWAT when they arrive.”

  “All right, great.” Kristen shook her head but accepted the inevitable.

  “If you don’t mind…” Butters gestured to the hole.