Vampire Dragon

by Annette Blair

  I’m shivering in my scales, Darkwyn thought. You keep telling yourself I’m not real, old man. Stand firm. Make this easy for me. I hate a moving target.

  Darkwyn approached the mobster, so slowly he wanted to yawn, while his claws came out, and he stretched his neck to tower higher over the killer, then his wings came up to add a further, satisfying bit of menace. His sneer revealed his hungry-dragon teeth, his smoke a bonus of torture.

  Darkwyn raised a dragon hand and closed his claws around the mobster’s surprisingly bony neck. He’d have to be careful not to squeeze too hard.

  With his other hand, Darkwyn knocked the glass from a picture window, basked in the cooling air, and raised the old mobster off his feet.

  A goon who thought the moment right lunged toward Zachary, but as he did, Zachary produced a remote and aimed it at the dumbwaiter.

  Zap! And welcome to the Fourth of July.

  Fireworks came shooting from the dumbwaiter, breaking Ming vases, toppling French bronzes, annihilating priceless glass and dumb gorillas.

  When the fireworks stopped, an energetic, ugly-faced, glow-eyed sizzler, like a fire-flashing head at the end of bungee-bouncing body—Zachary’s name written all over it—chased goons in circles all over the room, into walls, over furniture, and into each other.

  Still holding the old man off his feet, Darkwyn snorted; he couldn’t help himself. How uncool for a black ice dragon to laugh, but when two bozos body-slammed each other senseless, what was a tickled dragon to do?

  That’s when Darkwyn noticed Zachary wielding a two-handed remote-type thingy full of buttons that he worked furiously, and Darkwyn realized that Zachary made the ugly-faced glow sizzler move in whatever direction he wanted it to.

  The boy was chasing them without breaking a sweat, only one at a time, true, but whatever bozo the sizzler chased did all the damage while running from it.

  Every time another goon approached, the sizzler turned on him, until they got it, steered clear, and let the scary thing torture one poor schlub until that one finally ran through the adjoining room and out a window.

  Another thug down. Two goons and one cop left. Better and better odds.

  “He’s okay,” one of the bozos announced, looking out the window. “Landed on an awning. Looks a lot like a beached whale, ’specially since he pissed himself.”

  The sizzler chose another victim, but for Zachary, this torture must have seemed dull, because he picked up the other remote and clicked it for another, more powerful round of fireworks.

  Finally, the gangsters ran for cover. The cop, he took a priceless painting off the wall and used it as a shield when he wasn’t grinning and watching the show.

  While the goons cowered, Darkwyn gave Zachary a wing wave toward the good guy, so he’d notice they weren’t alone in the fight.

  Zachary understood, followed Darkwyn’s silent order to take cover, and when the boy got close, the cop pushed Zachary behind him, though, truth to tell, Zachary could have protected the cop.

  Meanwhile, Sanguedolce, gasping for every breath and unable to speak while suspended, found himself outside, suddenly, with five or so floors drop beneath him, his legs kicking cold air.

  Darkwyn turned and gave Zachary a nod.

  The cop let the boy go.

  Zachary ran to the window. “Where’s Bronte?”

  Sanguedolce, a powerful killing machine, nothing human about him, trembled with fear and swore vengeance and malice, and Darkwyn hoped he suffered triple for everyone he ever harmed. He even lessened his grip on the mob boss to scare him, and allow him a little more air in his lungs, so he could answer Zachary.

  “I know of no Bronte,” Sanguedolce said, after a terrified squeal at nearly falling.

  “Damn,” Zachary snapped. “Ysabelle? Where is Ysabelle?”

  Good grief, Darkwyn thought. His wife’s name was Ysabelle?

  “Why?” Sanguedolce asked, too cocky by half. “Have you misplaced her?”

  Darkwyn shook the old bastard just for the fun of it.

  “I am keeping Ysabelle,” he said, defiantly, “so you will behave, in trade for Raven Shadow, who you killed in Salem, as reported by the man you let live.”

  We let one of his men live? Darkwyn couldn’t imagine who.

  “We let none of yours live!” Zachary snapped. “If one did, it was an accident.”

  Two lifetimes’ worth of anger and frustration coursed through Zachary.

  “I am proud of you, my boy,” Sanguedolce said. “You killed, and you are proud of it. You sound like me.”

  “I’m gonna try not to puke right now,” Zachary said. “I want Bronte and Darkwyn, and I wanna go home . . . and wait for the day you fry.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Raven Shadow had been Sanguedolce’s. Hadn’t Bronte said she was a regular? She’d been going to Drak’s for months. That meant Sanguedolce found Bronte and Zachary long before he, Darkwyn, had mentioned his dragon past. He may have brought the media down on them, but he did not bring the mob.

  One of the goons, taking advantage of his distraction, stabbed his side with the fire poker.

  Darkwyn roared.

  Zachary turned on his stabber. “Hurt him again and he’ll drop your boss,” the boy warned.

  “Good,” the stabber said. “Let him go. Give us all a chance to breathe easy.” The poker entered Darkwyn’s thigh again, a burning pain, as if to assure his attacker that the mobster would get dropped. Dragons must have a lot of blood to lose, Darkwyn thought, watching it pool around his feet.

  He just might drop Sanguedolce, unintentionally on purpose.

  Killian showed herself, or her vision of herself as young and beautiful, in a deadly sort of way. Almost appropriate, seeing her when he was at his weakest.

  The sky grew black as doomsday. The clouds parted and the heavens pelted his dangly-toy with hail, fiery freezing hailstones that stuck to Darkwyn’s arm scales and burned the mobster’s skin.

  Next up, Killian sent a twister, big and black and weaving a path of destruction across the property. Lightning struck, and the mobster became its conduit.

  Darkwyn magick-cloaked his mind while he fought the energy trying to enter his body through the mobster, because the longer he fought, the weaker Killian and Sanguedolce would become.

  Then he could send Killian’s deadly energy back her way, and best both enemies at the same time.

  True, he couldn’t best Killian until he bested Sanguedolce for Bronte, but Killian’s lightning was doing that for him.

  Midzap, the lightning stopped, but the twister took out half the first floor. A chandelier fell and the floor beneath their feet dropped about six inches, which meant he dropped the mobster as much, and the weakened mob boss wept like a baby.

  Killian must have realized she’d been working against herself with the lightning, so she’d stopped. Scumduggers.

  Darkwyn brought Sanguedolce back inside, set the trembling puddle of mob boss on the floor, and realized he’d retained a great deal of energizing strength from the electrical power he’d absorbed.

  Killian had actually done him a favor, though he hadn’t bested her. Yet.

  The poker-wielding, big-mouthed goon who had wanted the mobster dead panicked and pretended to fight now for the boss, raising his gun toward Zachary, of all people, safe behind the cop, and the mobster managed to raise himself against a table.

  A distracting thump echoed off the hall door.

  Darkwyn heard a muffled “Ouch,” then, “FBI. Open up or we come in shooting.”

  FBI? Wrong country. And that voice. Naw. It can’t be.

  A second thump, the “ouch,” less noticeable. “FBI. Come out with your hands up. You’re surrounded.”

  The goons pulled their leg-shaky, fast-aging boss to safety, held a gun to the traitor cop’s head—the slow learners—yanked Zachary from the cop’s hold, and tossed the boy’s remotes against a wall.

  Darkwyn’s stabber shoved Zachary toward the door, so they could hid
e behind him, typical cowards. “Come in shooting,” Darkwyn’s attacker shouted. “That’s the only way you’ll get Sanguedolce.”

  Good thing Puck the cock would neither carry a gun nor shoot Zachary.

  A third shout of “FBI, open up” came without action. Puck may temporarily have stopped the poker-wielder from stabbing, but the bird’s lack of action after his announcements was going to get them killed, as soon as the idiots’ cumulative brainpower caught up to the facts.

  Rounding on them, Darkwyn roared, but he found them hiding behind sofas, chairs, a piano. He kicked each piece from here to the next room, tearing down walls and turning the inner sanctum into a double-wide.

  Goons hit walls and forgot to bounce. Goon football!

  Feeling himself shifting back into a man, likely due to his loss of blood, Darkwyn turned and slipped in a slick, sticky pool of it.

  Zachary handed him Bronte’s discarded backpack and led him to a corner.

  Quickly, Darkwyn healed himself, more or less, and shifted while Zachary grabbed a remote in one hand and a gun in the other, wielding both as a warning. In that way, he kept watch so Darkwyn could have his privacy.

  Zach went so far as to raise a hand to the cop to keep him where he was.

  The cop gave Zachary a respectful nod but he watched as much of Darkwyn’s change as he could see from where he stood.

  A man again, Darkwyn put on his jeans and shirt fast. More than partially healed, he pulled himself up and made his way to Zachary while he gave the cop a nod of thanks.

  From the hall, they heard footsteps. “RCMP, you’re surrounded!”

  Whoa, different voice, right country.

  “That’s what I’ve been saying.” Puck perched on the exposed sill of the broken window and tilted his head Zachary’s way. “Don’t shoot.”

  The door flew open and a contingent of Royal Canadian Mounted Police flooded in.

  “How did you know we were here?” Zachary asked.

  One of the officers went to talk to the cop Darkwyn had pegged as RCMP, the one who’d protected Zachary, while the head man, addressed by his men as Commissioner bent to Zachary. “We got an anonymous tip, son. What happened here?”

  Sanguedolce stood straighter. “My grandson came to visit me is all.”

  “Your grandson beat up your men?”

  “No, the men, they were playing. Fighting it out.”

  “Considering the blood, looks like a couple of them blew up. Sorry, but this ‘playing to the death’ has your name written all over it.”

  Zachary caught the commissioner’s sleeve. “I’m his stepgrandson, and I hope you won’t hold that against me. I can’t help who my grandmother married. They were holding us against our will, and they’re holding my . . . mother, probably in one of the cells behind the wine cellar. This is Darkwyn Dragonelli . . . my dad.”

  “Hey,” one of the goons said. “He looks like that Vampire Dragon we saw on TV. And he acted like it, too.”

  Humbled at having Zachary call him dad, Darkwyn shook the commissioner’s hand. “They were holding us against our will. And the boy’s right, my wife is locked up somewhere in the house.”

  “Sam, Al, go look for his wife. What’s her name?”

  “Bronte. Bronte Dragonelli.”

  “She is my daughter, Commissaire,” Sanguedolce said.

  “It’s not even legal to lock up your daughter, Sanguedolce,” the commissioner said. “Find her,” he told his men.

  “Are you hurt?” the commissioner asked. “There’s blood all over your hands and feet.”

  “I got stabbed with a poker by thug number three. Yes, that’s the one,” Darkwyn said as one of the officers lined them up.

  A medic came over as if to examine him. “No thanks,” Darkwyn said. “Just flesh wounds.”

  The medic looked entirely doubtful but he took his cue from the cop who saw everything, and nodded, and the medic closed his bag. “You can be transported to a local hospital, or you can see your doctor when you get home.”

  “I’ll see my own doctor, thanks.”

  Bronte rushed into the room, embraced Zachary, then Darkwyn. “Oh, the blood. It looks like you slaughtered pigs in here.” She looked around the room. “Whose blood is that?”

  Nobody said a word.

  “Darkwyn?” she asked. “Who died?”

  “You’ll have to check the body count on the pavement out back. One or two thugs went out the window.”

  She went to check. “Hey, that’s Boris, down there. He’s been coming to Drak’s longer than Raven Shadow. A mob man . . . in my world all this time. This didn’t all happen because you talked, Darkwyn.”

  “I figured that out,” he said. “But I still should have kept quiet.”

  Bronte shook her head, relieving him of blame. “You were provoked.”

  “You got here fast, Mrs. Dragonelli,” the commissioner said. “My men?”

  “I met them halfway. They’re getting the guy I tied up downstairs. I anchored him, arms, wrists, ankles, and legs, to separate cell bars; poetic justice and all that.”

  “You do like to do it up right,” Zachary said. “Now give him my mother’s jacket.”

  Bronte started to take it off, but stopped to focus on Zachary. “What happened to the book of evidence?”

  Zachary shook his head. “Burned to a crisp.”

  Bronte removed her sister’s denim jacket which she’d taken from the attic. “Officer, you might know Sanguedolce as a mob boss that you can rarely pin anything on, but if you look behind the crocheted rosebud in this pocket, you’ll find a camera chip.”

  “There was an evidence book,” Zachary said, “but it’s ash in the fireplace, right there. Doesn’t matter, this chip has a picture of every page and every picture. It pretty much tells you where all the bodies are buried, half a century’s worth.”

  Sanguedolce shouted, “No,” as if to the universe, but no one listened, except perhaps the growing hoard of angry spirits crowding him, half a century’s worth. And they were not happy.

  Darkwyn looked from Zachary to Bronte and wished that Sanguedolce saw the spirits of his evil work the way they could.

  Darkwyn had never seen Zachary smile like he was now, and he suspected that old Zachary Tucker might be bolstering the boy’s satisfaction.

  Puck ruffled his feathers. “Happiness.” Squawk. “An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.”

  Zachary faced his stepgrandfather. “You above all know that life ends in a blink.”

  The wind hissed a moan, as if agreeing, and the sun peeked out for less than a second.

  Darkwyn knew he’d helped Bronte reach her goal: to best Sanguedolce and free herself and Zachary.

  He would like to think that he had also bested Killian, except that she’d stopped torturing him on her own.

  No, the evil one was not a sorceress to give up easily. For now, he must accept a partial victory. Bronte’s victory.

  The cop who’d been there all along took off his hat, scratched his head, and gave Darkwyn a questioning look. “Vampire Dragon?”

  Darkwyn raised his chin. “Just another man in a costume.”

  The cop gave him a double take, scanned the blood on the floor, and turned to Zachary. “How about you, young man? What can you tell me about your stepgrandfather’s crimes?”

  “Hey.” Zachary gave an exaggerated shrug. “I’m only a kid.”

  FORTY-NINE

  “I’m only a kid,” Darkwyn mimicked, as they reached the roof of Castello Sanguedolce several hours later.

  Bronte put an arm around Darkwyn’s waist, and squeezed Zachary’s shoulder on her opposite side.

  “I didn’t want to be detained,” Zachary said, “and with everything the old man knows, that could have been like a life sentence. No, the evidence was all in the book, or it used to be. Old Zachary always worried they’d find it and destroy it, so I got the idea to take pictures.”

  “Bronte, why didn’t that
cop ask you any questions at the end?” Darkwyn asked. “You’re a mobster’s daughter.”

  “Stepdaughter! I’m a woman; I played dumb and got taken away. Zachary, now he fought with old Zachary’s emotions, so no wonder the cop asked. And you, Darkwyn, shape-shifting in front of him. I think he, like the goons, decided to shut up and not get put in a psychiatric ward.”

  Zachary grinned. “When they finally put that chip in a drive and took a look, they were so happy, they just let us leave.”

  “Which we should do, and fast,” Darkwyn said. “I need to shift again, before something—”

  Killian appeared right there on the roof beside them, sending her ten-fingered lightning his way, up close and personal.

  That fast, Darkwyn pushed Zachary and Bronte aside, knocking them to their knees, but he couldn’t stop focusing on Killian to worry about that. Neither could Killian stop fighting him long enough to care that Bronte and Zachary now stood behind him, because the evil sorceress had grown weak throwing all her energy at him through Sanguedolce, and not pulling it back. Calculated error, there.

  He had more strength than her, but which of them could outlast the other?

  “I’ll help you, Darkwyn,” Bronte shouted.

  “Crackle here, fire there.

  Snap your heels; sizzle’s fair.

  Gone her strength, no one cares.

  This my wish, harm prove ill.

  Darkwyn’s fight, aim to kill.

  Banish Killian at his will.”

  The hiss and sizzle, fizzle, and pop, however powerless, broke Killian’s concentration long enough for Darkwyn to turn back into a dragon, turn her power on her, so the evil sorceress screeched, glowed gold, then blue, then, pffftt, she turned to air.

  “Has she disappeared to regroup?” Bronte asked. “Or did I get her in her Achilles’ heel, pure fake distraction? Is she gone?”

  “Yeah,” Zachary said. “Did you win?”