Steel Dragon (Steel Dragons Series Book 1)

by Kevin McLaughlin

  He shrugged, his gaze still fixed on the screen. “It makes sense to me. Leveling up makes everything easier.”

  “Right? And yet they act like that would make me vulnerable.”

  “Well, you are vulnerable, right? For one thing, you found out that steel skin and electricity don’t get along. Or magnets.”

  “Right. Or magnets, so my boss wants me to forego using my powers so I don’t rely on them.”

  “That’s stupid.” Brian paused the game when the microwave beeped. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who wanted a corndog.

  “I don’t know…I guess it makes sense. After all, there are levels without special, right?”

  “Yeah, but not in real life. I guess if you’re fighting in a powerplant or something you’ll need to not use your steel power, but that only means you’ll need to be even better with your other powers, right?”

  “I guess? I don’t even know what my other powers are.” Kristen sighed. It was so frustrating.

  “Obviously not videogames,” he said, slid his corndog into the microwave, and fixed his special sauce—mayo and ketchup with tabasco.

  “I don’t know if dragons can have powers like they do in videogames.” She shook her head at the ridiculousness of it. “Honestly, I don’t even know if dragons can really breathe fire. I’ve yet to see it myself. And they have these weird names. Like maybe they’re clues about their abilities. I simply don’t know.”

  “You need a tutorial,” he said sagely.

  “A what?” she asked around a bite of corndog.

  “You know, like in fighting games? A tutorial shows you all the moves, the combos, how to block, that kind of stuff. You need to take a dragon tutorial.”

  “Adults call that training, Brian.”

  “Sure, whatever. You need training then. Dragon training.” Brian removed his corndog from the microwave and bit it as if that emphasized his point.

  “But I can’t train with Drew and the others.”

  “Right, that’d be like using a fatality in Street Fighter.”

  “What?”

  “You know, it’s a real shame you never got into fighting games. I simply mean…” He scratched the pathetic growth of peach fuzz on his chin. “You’re using the wrong move set is all. You need someone who can show you what it means to be a dragon. Which probably means—”

  “A dragon,” Kristen said and finished his thought.

  He nodded, his corndog already reduced to only the stick.

  “Too bad you’re a huge loser who doesn’t have any dragon friends.” He selected a different game, loaded it, and selected a fighter. “I will show how you to kick someone’s head off, though.”

  “I have dragon friends!” she said and immediately regretted it. If there was anyone who knew how to get under her skin, it was her brother.

  “Yeah, I don’t know, Kristen. Does that Stonequest dude from Dragon SWAT really count as a friend? Didn’t he say to stick with SWAT until your powers fully came in? That doesn’t exactly sound like the kind of guy who has time to train a total noob.”

  “No, no, you’re right. I don’t think Stonequest would help. Also, he didn’t give me his card or anything. I’d have to go through proper channels and that might piss Drew off.”

  “So, you’re stuck then.”

  She nodded, even though it wasn’t true. At the dragon party, the black dragon had offered to help if she ever needed anything. Sebastian Shadowstorm was his name. He’d been a real gentleman.

  Thoughtfully, she finished her corndog, poked the stick in one of her mom’s potted plants, and dug in her purse for the card. She withdrew it and looked at the phone number. There was no address.

  “Hey, Brian, I’m going to make a phone call.”

  “Oh, yeah? Did some other dragon swipe right?”

  Kristen ignored him and stepped into the back yard. She dialed the number. It rang three times before a man’s voice answered.

  “How may I help you?” It wasn’t Shadowstorm.

  “Hello. Maybe I have the wrong number. I’m trying to speak to Sebastian Shadowstorm. Do I have the right number?”

  “Who is calling?” the man asked rather rudely and didn’t answer her question.

  “This is Kristen Hall. I met Mr Shadowstorm at a party. He said to call if I needed anything.”

  “Ah, yes. Lady Hall. The master has been awaiting your call. Would you like to come to his residence this afternoon?”

  She glanced inside. Brian clenched his teeth as he pounded buttons, deep in the clutches of a fighting game. “Yes. That would be great.”

  The man gave her the address and she wrote it down. She poked her head inside, said goodbye to Brian, and left through the side gate.

  “Enjoy your hot date,” her brother called after her.

  After a perfunctory and somewhat distracted wave in his general direction—which he obviously wouldn’t have seen anyway—she slid into her car and headed to the address.

  The journey took her through a part of Detroit that, decades before, had been one of the wealthiest and most opulent. Every house was a mansion made of brick complete with a sunroom and tower. The street had been laid almost a hundred years before by the capitalists of the last century, although in the years since then it had fallen from what it was.

  Still, she knew it was in better shape than it had been. It used to be that every third mansion stood crumbling with sagging roofs, broken windows, and overgrown lawns but now, it was more like one in ten was in disrepair. Before long, even those last few places would fall to the wave of gentrification that had swept the city over the last ten years.

  She continued until she found Shadowstorm’s address. As soon as she saw the mansion, she knew it was his without the need to verify the address.

  While most of the houses in this neighborhood—and compared to Shadowstorm’s residence, the mansions she had driven past were little more than houses—had gone through a phase of disrepair, his looked like he’d spent the last hundred years adding to the splendor of his property.

  The house was in absolutely perfect condition. She wasn’t sure how, but the wood siding looked original—although the black paint might have been a more recent affectation—and the red brick chimney wasn’t sooty or crumbling anywhere along its towering height. There was another tower as well, this one ringed by windows.

  The front yard was amazing. Perfectly trimmed grass pushed up against flowering hedges and well-manicured oak trees. She even saw a wisteria in bloom. Odd, considering they usually bloomed in spring and it was late summer, but whoever took care of Shadowstorm’s landscaping obviously knew their stuff.

  Kristen parked, got out, and approached the wrought iron black gate that surrounded the property. Walking past the extensive gardens, she realized that there probably used to be more houses there. It looked like he had bought the properties and demolished them to create more space for a garden filled with marble statues of people and bronze sculptures of parts of dragons.

  Here was a dragon’s head and there was the skeletal arm of a dragon that pulled itself from the earth. All over were people, done slightly smaller than life-size in bright marble, which only made the pieces of dragon seem all the larger. A woman crouched, protecting a child, while a man stood with a raised sword—although the stone weapon was broken—and terror on his face.

  She didn’t think there were this many sculptures in the Detroit Institute for Art. And it was all so specific. Parts of dragons and people in various states of terror. Had Shadowstorm had it all commissioned? It certainly looked as if he had.

  What did that say about him? Did he like people’s fear? Did he wish to protect them? Did he wish to see dragons torn to pieces? Did he find their anatomy fascinating and beautiful?

  Impatiently, she shook her head. She was overthinking it. Her parents had a statue of a peacock in their front yard for years until she had caught a football and plowed into it. They’d bought it because they could afford it and kept it becaus
e they hadn’t known what else to do with it. Surely Shadowstorm had a reason for the specific collection of art, but it might be a reason that made no more sense than her parents’ peacock.

  Finally, deciding she could wait no longer, she approached the gate and looked for the buzzer, only to be confronted by a guard, who asked to see her ID.

  Kristen showed him her police badge—it was, after all, valid identification, and besides, Shadowstorm had met her because of her face being plastered all over the news. The guard studied it, glanced at her once more, then closed the window to his station and spoke on his radio.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “A human girl is here, flashing a Detroit Police Department Badge,” the guard said over the radio.

  Sebastian Shadowstorm frowned. A human girl with a police badge? Who else could that possibly be? The damn guards could sometimes be incredibly dense.

  “Is her name Kristen Hall, by chance?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She’s not a human, you fool, but the SWAT’s Steel Dragon. Do you ever go home and read the newspaper or do you spend all your time in that guard shack?”

  “Sorry. sir. My apologies, sir,” the man blubbered. Even over the radio, Shadowstorm could tell he was terrified. Excellent. Security needed to know what they were fighting for. “Shall I let her in?”

  “You said she flashed her badge?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very well. We must not stand in the way of official police duty. Let her in, lock the gate behind her, and engage the moat.” If she was on police business, she might have discovered his secrets or be close to it anyway. But if she was alone? Well, he could take the steel dragon so long as she was stuck in human form.

  “The…moat, sir?” the guard asked and broke into Shadowstorm’s thoughts.

  “Damn it, you fool, you know what I mean. Not the moat but the…perimeter defenses. To stop any vehicles.”

  “As soon a she’s inside, I’ll bring up the tire spikes sir,” he replied, obviously not happy at all to correct his boss.

  “Yes, the tire spikes. Do that!” He growled his annoyance. Times changed so rapidly and humans could rarely see the long picture of their development. Call a car a carriage or even an automobile, and they looked like the foundation of their very existence had been questioned. Now with the invention of their infernal jabbering television, it was even worse.

  His residence reflected what he thought of the revoltingly fast turnover of technology. He left his tower and walked down his carpeted stairs past oil paintings of kings he’d deposed and princes wise enough to swear secret fealty to him.

  Various suits of armor stood strategically, still blackened from the knight being cooked alive inside. He passed treasure taken from five continents and furniture that had supported some of the documents that now governed the world.

  Sebastian did have a telephone—he could see the value in that invention anyway, even if he couldn’t stand the cursed ringing of its bell—and he had electric lights, of course. That aside, he’d never purchased a television and didn’t quite understand the obsession with computers.

  But none of that was important now. Incompetent guards merely had a way of reminding Shadowstorm of humanity’s priorities and why they needed to be usurped or at least guided with a stronger hand than the weak wrist of the Dragon Council.

  He wondered again about this Kristen Hall. He’d invited her and yet she had waited over a week to come and visit. That didn’t exactly sound like a social call. It sounded more like a sheriff following up on unanswered questions.

  But how could she have discovered anything so quickly? Still, it didn’t matter. If she knew, she knew, and that meant she would be destroyed. He considered taking a sword from the wall but decided against it. With her steel skin, his dragon form would be all but essential in defeating her.

  But was that her purpose? To apprehend him? He couldn’t be sure.

  If the whelp intended to challenge him in his home, he’d destroy her himself. Invading another dragon’s stronghold was quite improper, after all.

  Shadowstorm considered meeting her in the garden to prevent any possible damage to his residence but decided against it. It would be better for her to come inside. If she turned against him, it might cost him a few walls but the collateral damage would be more convincing if other dragons questioned what might happen today. If it looked like a home invasion, no one—not even that moron Ironclaw—would challenge his decision to slaughter the little steel runt.

  At a knock on the door, he gestured for his two servants to open it. Each took hold of one of the huge iron and oak doors and pulled them open.

  Kristen Hall stood in the doorway, framed by the massive opening. In her jeans and t-shirt, she looked entirely out of place like a piece of modern art that had somehow made it into the renaissance collection.

  “Mr Shadowstorm, hello,” she said.

  He hid a smirk. She didn’t sound like a sheriff on a case, she sounded…perhaps intimidated was apt. “Ms Hall. I thought I asked you to call me Sebastian.”

  Her nervousness cracked and she smiled. “Right, Sebastian. Sorry. It’s simply that this place is…well, it’s amazing.”

  “Indeed, thank you. Please, won’t you come in? You honor me with your visit.”

  Kristen nodded, glanced quickly at the chandelier, then at the polar bear rug on the floor, and stepped across the threshold and into his stronghold. “Well, you said if there was anything I needed, I should call you, so…here I am.” She tried to smile, but her nervousness made it a little shaky.

  Shadowstorm, meanwhile, simply beamed. He could barely believe it as he’d all but given up on trying to build a relationship with the Steel Dragon. Humans, he’d learned, had the attention span of any of the lesser animals. Some had focus, true, but if they didn’t return a call within a day or two, they simply forgot about it. Apparently, he’d been on her mind.

  “But of course, Kristen, but of course. Please come in and make yourself at home. Tyler, libations, if you please. Our guest looks like she’s in need of something to calm her nerves.”

  The two servants closed the door behind her and one vanished to fetch drinks.

  The other man—Shadowstorm could never remember his name, Mitchell? McDonald? Something like that—escorted his visitor across the spacious entryway to the sitting room.

  Sebastian gestured for her to sit in the last chair Mussolini had sat in before he’d died, while he made himself comfortable on Napoleon’s couch.

  “So, how may I be of assistance?”

  “Well, to jump right to it, I want to unlock more of my dragon abilities.”

  “Yes, of course.” It was time for a gamble, but he had always believed in playing the odds. “But hasn’t Dragon SWAT shown you some of our methods?”

  Kristen laughed derisively. “I wish. They—or he, I guess, a guy named Stonequest—ordered me to stay where I am until my powers develop.”

  Shadowstorm hid his glee. His gamble had paid off wonderfully! “Stonequest… Yes, I must say I am familiar with the gentleman. He’s quite committed to his job of bullying the rest of us around. I can’t say I’m surprised that he’s not taken the time to properly welcome you into our little community.”

  She sighed. “So, what? He’ll simply keep me at arm’s length until I learn what I’m doing?”

  He shrugged slowly and delicately like he wanted to avoid saying something against Stonequest although really, he only wanted her to ask more about him. “That might be his intention.”

  “Oh yeah?” She raised an eyebrow. “Well, what else might it be?”

  “Well, Kristen, I know you’re quite new to all this, but…well, how do I put this delicately? Not all dragons can be trusted.”

  That seemed to startle her. Shadowstorm found it an actual challenge not to smile. How could she be so gullible? His effort to defund public schools might be paying off.

  “So you think he’s…he’s been lyin
g to me or something?”

  Again, he shrugged delicately. He pushed himself to his feet and began to pace in the sitting room before he paused to admire the crossed swords hanging on the wall. “I don’t think he’s evil or anything like that, but…well, Stonequest works for the police, and police like stability. But you know that, of course.”

  “Of course. But there’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Of course not. But, look at it from Stonequest’s view. His job is to police dragons, beings that have been around for centuries or even millennia. Not all of them keep up with the times or like their motives questioned.” He snorted playfully. “Why, even I have yet to purchase one of the new portable phones.”

  “Okay, but so what? I know how to play Xbox, but what does that have to do with ignoring me?”

  He had no choice but to ignore the Xbox comment. It must have been some kind of amusement game like the pinball machines humans were so fond of. “It’s not that he’s ignoring you, it’s that he has a balance to maintain between many different powerful and stubborn forces. You—by your very nature of being raised by humans and being so young—will have a new set of ideals. And then there’s your ability. I’ve never seen anything like it and although Stonequest’s fingers reach farther than mine, he probably hasn’t either. From his perspective, it’s probably simpler if you stay a human sheriff who can stop bullets.”

  “A sheriff?” She laughed.

  Shadowstorm waved his hand at her tinkling laughter. This was honestly too easy. “Officer, keeper of the peace, whatever you call yourselves. I will help you, but you must promise not to drag me into this century. It’s too loud and far too bright.”

  “You will help me?” she asked.

  “Of course. Although, I wasn’t kidding about Stonequest. It would probably be better if you don’t tell him about this.”

  “I won’t. He probably has—what did you call them? Fingers?—in our offices too. If you can train me to be a better dragon, I’ll let the results speak for themselves.”

  In that moment, Tyler returned with the drinks. Shadowstorm took his and raised it in a toast to her. “A toast, to our new alliance.”