The Steel Dragon (Steel Dragons Series Book 2)

by Kevin McLaughlin

  She clapped twice, and the weapons that had stood guard over the conversation retracted.

  The lightning sphere receded into an oregano bush and the machine guns returned to their hiding place inside the rosemary.

  Finally, the floating sword went to rest in the hand of a statue of a cherub.

  “Lady Amythist, I don’t think that’s wise—” Kristen said to the back of the old woman.

  But she was already too late.

  A shot rang out from the woods outside the house and blood began to spread on the old dragons’ back.

  The woman fell, a dragon millennia old who’d been both a foe and friend of mankind felled by a single gunshot.

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Aghast, Kristen raced to Amythist Skyjewel. The old woman was pale and her wide eyes looked at the overcast sky above her.

  “Are you…did you?” she asked and her mouth didn’t quite manage to close.

  “You’ll be okay,” she told her. “You’ve been shot in the shoulder. I know it hurts but you’ll be okay.”

  The wounded dragon stretched a shaking hand to touch the sticky blood that soaked her clothes. “I have been shot before…many times… It…it’s supposed to feel like an insect sting. Is this what humans feel when they shoot each other?”

  She nodded and blinked tears back. It seemed odd that she was so emotional, but the old dragon woman was so sweet. She might have eaten mages centuries before but now, all she seemed to care about was her tea. More than anything, she didn’t want her to die in her arms.

  “What’s the plan, Steel Dragon?” Jim nudged her aside, took his jacket off, and applied pressure to the wound. Like everything else, the Wonderkid was good at treating victims.

  That snapped Kristen’s priorities into place. She pushed into a crouch, turned her skin to steel, and looked for the shooter. Her search revealed nothing—no movement, no face hiding in the grass, and no aura. She knew she wouldn’t have sensed an aura but still, it might have been simpler if another dragon appeared.

  “I have…salves,” Amythist managed to say.

  “Jim, get her inside, follow her orders, and if you need to—” She didn’t have to say to pull the bullet out. He had seen what the weapons did to dragons firsthand because he’d seen what they did to her.

  “It might not be much safer in there,” he said, but he had already eased Amythist carefully onto his jacket so he could use it to drag her and aggravate her wound as little as possible. “You’re gonna have to keep pressure on that wound while I move you, ma’am.”

  “But it hurts,” Amythist said and her voice seemed to fade.

  “Based on the wound, the shooter’s outside. I know it’s less than ideal, but I think it’s the best we have,” Kristen told him.

  He nodded and pulled the old dragon away with as much gentleness as was possible in the circumstances. “It’ll be all right, Lady Skyjewel. We’ll keep you safe and get you all fixed up. Before the day’s out, I’ll need the recipe for those cookies, though.” His chatter grew quieter and quieter as he moved farther into the house. He tried to keep Amythist conscious because he knew that if she passed out, she might not wake up again.

  The crackle of the radio indicated that he was calling Drew and asking for backup.

  Kristen called Dragon SWAT. Her gaze scanned the perimeter of the gardens but once again found nothing. Her boss picked up almost immediately.

  “Stonequest, I need you at the mansion of Amythist Skyjewel five minutes ago. We have a wounded dragon here—a gunshot wound.”

  “No can do, Steel. There were two explosions at mansions in the city. We’re under orders to get there as soon as we can.” She wasn’t surprised. Part of her had known there had to be more to what appeared to be a simple infiltration.

  “Explosions don’t fit the MO of the killer. Those are distractions, Stonequest. You have to get out here. Lady Skyjewel’s been shot. Washington is moving her inside but the shooter is still loose.”

  “Shit, Kristen, we can’t simply let these fires burn. It sounds like you interrupted the assassin’s attempt. If it’s the human woman you think it is, she’ll pull back and regroup. That’s what she did with Windfire.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Damn it, I know we don’t, but I have to go. There were servants in these mansions. We have people wounded and need to get them out of the flames.”

  “Shit!” she yelled as Stonequest hung up. She was on her own and couldn’t even fault him, not if his priority was to help wounded servants. Some of them were undoubtedly simply regular people.

  Although she continued to scrutinize the perimeter, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But would Constance have left? She honestly didn’t know.

  “Constance!” she shouted. “Constance, I know you’re out there. Come out and talk to me. Why did you try to kill Skyjewel?”

  It was bluff, and maybe a desperate one, but what other choice did she have? There had already been multiple instances in which the assassin could have killed her. She could have done so at Windfire’s mansion, maybe multiple times and definitely when they’d met face to face on the stairs. She had her steel skin on but she’d seen what the bullets could do to dragons. There was no way to know if her steel skin would matter at all and yet, this was the only strategy she had. Constance wanted more than to kill her. All their encounters thus far suggested that. If all she wanted was her death, she could have killed her already.

  Kristen had begun to think she’d fled when Constance stepped from a particularly impressive patch of chamomile bushes. Her stomach dropped. Somehow, the assassin had made it inside the perimeter before she had. She’d avoided detection by Skyjewel’s defenses and remained invisible to both her and Jim, but she’d now voluntarily stepped out into the open.

  The woman stood with both hands on her pistol, the barrel of which was aimed at Kristen’s chest. She didn’t look angry, though, more like exasperated.

  “Hello, Kristen. It’s not too late to make this work. I’ll fire a shot so it sounds like we fought, then you let me go in there and finish that mage-eater off. I promise I won’t hurt your human companion either. We have to hurry, though. He called reinforcements.” As she spoke, she approached slowly, her pistol trained unwaveringly on her chest.

  “That won’t happen, Constance, and I know you won’t kill me.”

  “I don’t want to. Please don’t make me. We’ve worked hard to keep you alive.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked. She should have told her to stop and to keep her distance, but Constance was the one who had her gun drawn. Keeping at a distance was to her advantage so she let her continue and felt a little like a kid being approached by the principal.

  “I shot Death. You knew that, though, didn’t you?”

  “Why?”

  “She was about to kill you. That’s all the reason I needed. You can think of me as a guardian angel. Even with all this…” She gestured toward the mansion with her pistol before she immediately trained it on her chosen target. “We can still make this work.”

  “Guardian angels don’t kill.”

  “They do if they’re fighting demons.”

  “The woman in there is not a demon.” Kristen swallowed.

  Constance shook her head sadly. “The dragon in there has done more to maintain the status quo of dragon dominance than most of her species. I heard her history lesson about the second rebellion as well as you did. If she hadn’t acted as she had, the mages might have won. We might live in a world where human beings have actual freedom instead of this phony version of it the dragons allow us.”

  “She was protecting her people!” she protested.

  “Her people? Really? Do you hear yourself? We are not theirs, Kristen. You knew this once. Humans deserve to control their own destiny, not be guided by the Dragon Council’s oppressive yoke. Step aside and let me take a step in realizing that future.”

  “I won’t do that.”

  “Why?”
The assassin’s cool demeanor cracked. “Haven’t you seen enough of the injustice of dragons yet? You’ve had your family threatened by dragons, your city and even your home attacked by the machinations of dragons. You’ve been imprisoned and almost killed by dragons. You know that dragon justice is far from perfect, worse even than our corrupt system.”

  “How do you know about what happened to me in prison?” she demanded. She hadn’t told anyone the full details of that, not even Stonequest, and it had happened two days before. Constance had to have a network, then. The question was, did it include some of the mage guards in the prison—that made a certain kind of sense—or was it bigger than that? She had overheard the assassin admit to working with Windfire before she’d killed him. Were there other dragons displeased with the order of things? Were there dragons who wished to overturn the Dragon Council and who were willing to use a human armed with dragon-killing weapons to do so? If so, maybe Stonequest had been right.

  Or maybe this conspiracy was merely far larger than anyone could have guessed.

  The woman didn’t answer the question, though. “You should be on our side,” she pleaded. "You should fight against dragons, not defend them. You could have been our greatest asset. You can still be.”

  “What’s your endgame, Constance? I want to build a bridge between humans and dragons, a path forward, but you’ll start a war.”

  “Not a war, a rebellion.”

  “I don’t care how you brand it. The fact is it won’t be good for anyone. I know you have weapons that can hurt dragons. I’m not naïve enough to think that you’ll start a war simply so dragons can walk all over you, but they have considerable power as well. Humanity would suffer in any kind of open conflict, probably far more than dragons would.”

  “Humans are already suffering,” the woman retorted venomously. “Humans have suffered through all of history—since before history. Our entire past is suffering under the thumb of the tyrants who rule us and think only of themselves. Do you expect to bring about justice through incremental change? You can’t fix a broken system. You have to build a new one.”

  “People will die, Constance—too many people. Millions, potentially billions if the dragons have a unified front. You eliminating dragons will give them exactly that.”

  “That’s why you’re supposed to join us. Be our herald, our champion. With the Steel Dragon on our side, other dragons will join us. They can be spared for a time.”

  Kristen shook her head. “I can’t let people die. I can’t let people be eaten or be burned to death.”

  “It’s worth a few lives to set humanity free from their rule. People are already dying because of dragons. When we topple the throne they’ve built of our bones, the dying will stop. It might not be pretty while we get there but living free and of our own volition is worth it. Our human government is corrupt, but at least we can see it. The Dragon Council rules from the shadows.”

  “Constance, you are killing people. I know about the explosions you set off at the other mansions to keep Dragon SWAT from getting here in time to stop you. People were in those buildings. They served dragon kind, yes, but they are people with families all the same. Some of them won’t heal and will leave others to mourn them. These people will see you as the enemy.”

  For the first time since they’d begun to talk, Constance looked surprised. The barrel of her gun wavered before she snapped it back to point at Kristen’s chest again. “You’re lying. We didn’t detonate any explosions.”

  “I’m not lying. If I was, Dragon SWAT would be here already.”

  “You’re stalling, then,” she said.

  “I’m not. I’m trying to prevent a war. Build bridges with me, Constance. If we want to make peace, we’ll need humans, dragons, and mages at the table too. That’s who has been helping you, right? Is that who forms the core of your organization? Mages were instrumental in the first two rebellions and that’s how you knew about what happened to me in the prison, right? We’ll need you and we’ll need everyone to lay their weapons down and forget the atrocities of the past.”

  “We’ll never forget the deaths the dragons caused,” the assassin said and smiled thinly. “But I agree that we can’t kill each other either. I hope you remember this—that I didn’t choose death.” She lowered her weapon a few inches and shot her in the leg.

  The bullet punched through her steel skin, and she fell, clutching the wound.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Through the pain, Kristen watched Constance approach, her gun once again trained on her chest. “Stay down, Kristen Hall. Stay down. That wound won’t be fatal, and once you get the bullet out, your healing powers will take care of you.”

  “But how?” Tears streamed down Kristen’s face.

  “Pieces of dragon,” the assassin replied, her voice soothing like a mother assuring a child that there were no monsters under the bed. “Scales, fangs, claws… Pieces of dragon shaped into bullets. It turns out that the thing dragons are most vulnerable to is other dragons. It’s embarrassing, really. We knew dragons could kill each other. They used to do it fairly often when their duels got out of control. We’ve known for decades, now, what dragon parts can do to other dragons, but we’ve only recently been able to weaponize that knowledge.”

  “Why?” Kristen was desperate to understand, and she struggled to focus beyond the pain. She felt like she’d pursued Constance’s shadow for so long, she was desperate to have something tangible. Plus, she was still a cop—one with backup on the way. She wanted to stall the assassin as long as she could.

  “We needed a weapon for the war that was to come. Everything now is merely setting the table and arranging the pieces. We can’t have dragons for people to flock to, not if they’re to see the shackles about their ankles, even if some of those shackles are made of silk.”

  Kristen clutched her leg. It hurt considerably but there wasn’t enough blood for the wound to be arterial. That meant she wouldn’t bleed out. She battled the intense, excruciating pain, but she wasn’t fighting for her life. That meant she had to keep Constance there as long as she could. Drew and his team could apprehend the woman or, if that failed, eliminate her. One shot from Butters might be able to do it, although she found herself hoping that if they did shoot her, they didn’t shoot to kill. Even if she had actually shot her, she had spared her life.

  “Can’t you see that a war between dragons and humans will end with the slaughter of millions? And that’s if it goes our way. It could be billions if the dragons are truly enraged.”

  “There is a price to freedom. We have suffered under their yoke for ten thousand years. How many people have died with nothing to hope for but that their masters don’t treat their children as cruelly as they treated them? Help us make this dream a reality. You won’t be able to rule—we want an end to dragon rulers—but you can serve alongside us and serve with honor.”

  “Fat chance,” she said under her breath. Exactly as she’d hoped, the woman leaned in to hear her better. She kicked out with her good leg and knocked the pistol from her hand.

  The assassin cursed and attempted to retrieve the weapon but again, she had hoped for this to happen. She pushed herself to her feet, used most of her mental energy to tell her leg to stop complaining about the excruciating pain, and drew on a burst of dragon speed as she bulldozed into her adversary’s back

  Constance reacted like a Tasmanian devil caught in a cage. She struck out with what felt like a dozen blows in as many seconds. A punch caught Kristen in the face and the assassin chopped at her throat with the hard line of her hand. She kicked her in the crotch and even jammed a finger into the bullet hole in her leg.

  Kristen wasn’t able to fight back as her leg hurt too much to put weight on it. Even the brief burst of speed had made the pain worse, but that wasn’t her plan, anyway. When she’d tackled the assassin, she hadn’t knocked her to the ground. Instead, she’d wrapped her arms around the woman’s shoulder and locked her two hands into a grip that
was literally as strong as steel.

  Her opponent punched and kicked and raged against her and she made no effort to stop her. After all, her body was made of steel and Constance would simply tire herself. She could hardly feel the blows through her metal skin or beyond the insane pain in her leg. The assassin shouldn’t have led with such a painful injury.

  After a frantic minute, she executed the next part of her plan and raised her wounded leg off the ground. Immediately, the woman sagged under the weight. She tried to shove her off but she wouldn’t allow it. Instead, she pushed off the ground with her good leg and put even more weight onto her.

  That was finally enough to do it. The killer fell and she landed on top of her and pinned her legs. As cruel as it was, she’d hoped that one of them would break, but it didn’t happen that way. Instead, Constance struggled to pull free as she tried to remain on top of her.

  Wingbeats in the sky preceded the massive shadow of a dragon that eclipsed the sun like an enormous, solid cloud. It descended and the grounds of the mansion swirled with dust.

  When it landed behind Kristen, she made no effort to see which of her teammates had arrived.

  “It’s over, Constance. If you try to run, they’ll blast you with fire.” She was sure to say this loud enough for Dragon SWAT to hear. “It’s not how I want you to go, so surrender.”

  But the voice that spoke next was not anyone on Dragon SWAT. “I found you at last.” It was Obscura. The shadow dragon was free, she’d pulverized Lumos, and now, she had arrived to finish what her goons had started in prison. “I’ve fantasized about this moment so often. There are many ways to kill you with the oath I have strengthening me, but I like your suggestion best of all. There is something very special about the idea of melting Kristen Steel.”

  Chapter Seventy-Six