Dragonsteel

by Rebecca Baelfire

  “Obviously you do. Do you think I want that for you?”

  “So, because you’re afraid, I don’t get to live?”

  “Don’t be melodramatic. Look, just stay in there, then. When you’re ready to be reasonable and stop using magic we’ll talk, but you’re not working at that place.”

  “I am so. I have an interview tomorrow.”

  There was a bang, his fist on the door. “You’ll cancel it. Don’t come out except to go to the bathroom, until I say.”

  The fire in the living room hearth roared like a demon.

  Dad didn’t let me out.

  I folded myself into a ball on my bed and stewed in my own anger.

  Somehow, I had to change things. He had to understand, he couldn’t hold me back forever.

  Chapter 6

  Compromise

  The morning following the argument with my dad, I woke with sunlight stabbing at my eyes through the dusty bedroom window. I groaned, head still pounding from the crying fest I’d had before I’d gone to sleep. The argument washed over my mind and fresh anger welled up.

  Meaning to find myself some breakfast and mull over what to do about that job, I sat up in my bed…and froze.

  “What the hell?” I lifted my wrists slowly, staring at them. Red steel cuffs encircled each one.

  Indignation made my teeth clench. These were the same kind of cuffs those Dragonlords had put on me when I was twelve. Well, almost. A locking mechanism revealed a keyhole in each cuff, but unlike the ones Cron had used, these ones had no chain linking them. Had there been the same runes embossed on those, engraved in the steel? Whatever the case, Cron had snapped them on my wrists and…

  My magic. I reached inside myself, mentally trying to seize it with an imaginary hand. There was nothing to grab. My magic was cut off.

  “Daaaaaad!” I yelled. I was up across the bedroom and out the door in an instant. I found him sitting calmly at the head of the small dining room table, cleaning his Glock. The picture of cool. “You can’t do this,” I gritted out.

  I thought I saw something flicker in his one dark eye as he looked at the cuffs I held up. Was it regret?

  Face cool once more, Dad started reassembling the pistol. “I couldn’t have you burning this place down or setting me on fire in my sleep, could I?”

  “Take these off.” I held up my cuffed wrists.

  “No. Those will keep us safe if you decide to have another hissy fit.”

  “You put your own daughter in Dragonwatch cuffs.”

  “No one hates that more than me.” He sounded sad.

  “I have to get out of here.” I stomped across the kitchen toward the door. When I got close, it felt like something had pushed me backward, like I’d hit an invisible barrier. I glanced at the cuffs just in time to see the runes on them glowing fiery red. I put my hand out, pushing toward the door. The runes glowed brighter and my hand was pushed back toward me. I rounded on my father.

  “What did you do?”

  He reached out and touched the top of a small, cheap looking white air freshener. “This is a Tether. It’s linked to the cuffs. As long as the cuffs are locked on you, this thing is active, and as long as it’s active, you can’t go more than twenty feet from it. You’re not going anywhere.”

  I marched over to the air freshener and tried to pick it up. It looked like it weighed not eight ounces, but when I grabbed it, it wouldn’t move. I might as well have been trying to lift Thor’s Hammer.

  “Really?” I glared at him.

  He only shrugged.

  I dropped my wrists. “How long do I have to wear these?”

  “As long as it takes for you to get the message, Helena. You don’t use magic on me, and especially not in a temper tantrum.”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “I know. I’ll figure out a way to help you get control of your powers before someone gets hurt.”

  “This is insane.”

  “Maybe, but we’ll have a roof over our heads. You’ve got to learn there are consequences for your actions.” He stood and kissed me on the forehead. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Where?”

  “On a hunt. There’s a vamp’s nest a few hours from here. Stay here, eat some breakfast, and finish the homework I gave you. I’ll be back by sundown.”

  But I didn’t like the way he wouldn’t look at me. What wasn’t he telling me?

  I slumped into a chair, watching him put on his favorite leather trench coat. Watching him take the gun off the table and holster it under his coat. He looked like a one-eyed, short-haired Van Helsing, the picture of badassery, but without the hat. Right then, idolization mixed with strong dislike. I’d have given anything to pick up a crossbow and fight back to back with him, slaying evil.

  “I’ll get out of these, you know.”

  He gave a wry smile. “No you won’t.”

  He left and locked the motel suite door.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t try to get out of those damned cuffs. It’s just that nothing worked.

  My dad’s words acted like a challenge. His conviction that I wouldn’t escape was a red flag to a bull until escaping became the most important thing in the world just to prove him wrong.

  First, I hunted for the key, but two hours after I’d torn apart the whole motel suite, I still hadn’t found it. Shit. Dad probably had the damned thing with him.

  Next, I tried to will myself out of the cuffs. Turning my mind inward, I searched for the faintest glimmer of my magic. Nothing. It was like it didn’t exist.

  Then I dug up Dad’s hacksaw among the few weapons he kept in the suite. I tried to saw through the air freshener, but the metal blade on the saw broke.

  “Fucking dragonsteel.” I raked my shoulder-length hair into a ponytail and hunted around the motel suite for another solution. When I didn’t find one, I tried hacking the cuffs off. After a minute of sawing at them, the steel bore not a mark.

  Damn. It wasn’t even that I wanted to do anything if I managed to escape. Would I have gone to the interview if I’d gotten the cuffs off? No, his warning about how dangerous it was, about the risk of exposure, was right. It was just that I needed to show him he couldn’t control me.

  Crestfallen, I used the hotel phone to call Ink and Skin and cancel the interview. God, I hated my dad.

  By the time my father returned, the November sun was already setting, casting the city in a veil of orange-gold. Heat blasted from the hotel furnace, keeping out the evening chill. My chest loosened with more relief than I liked, hearing his Blazer outside the suite window, his key in the door.

  He swept in and shut the door behind him, victorious and unharmed, except for a few minor claw marks on his neck. Eyes swollen from crying, I waited for him on the couch. He slid off his trench and laid it on the back of the dining room chair. That small red knick from last night cut across part of his anchor tattoo. Regret tried to quell my sullen mood, but I wouldn’t let it. I wished he’d go out and hunt another vamp’s nest, anything not to have to see him.

  “Still sulking then?” His voice was soft and low.

  I looked at the wall, not ready to talk to him yet.

  A soft snort made me look at him. He nodded at the ruined hacksaw still on the table. “You tried to hack the cuffs off.”

  I said nothing.

  Slowly, he lowered himself onto his knees in front of me. “Helena, do you get why I’m doing this? Why I don’t let you work?”

  I wiped away a tear. Did he get that loneliness ripped a hole in my heart? That a girl couldn’t feel remotely normal while spending all her time with only her father in drab motel rooms while he went out on hunting adventures?

  “You don’t get it. I hate that you don’t trust me.”

  He let out a long sigh. Then he slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out an old looking, heavily ornamented key. I widened my eyes as he unlocked the cuffs on my wrists and opened them, then set the cuffs aside on the floor.

  The feel of my
magic warmed my skin, heating my blood a few degrees. I rubbed my wrists and tried to decide what to say to him.

  “I trust you, Mit—Helena. But I also want to keep you safe.”

  “But safe can’t mean not living.”

  “I know.” He looked at the ugly brown carpet between his knees for a moment. Then he reached into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He handed it to me. “That’s why I got you this.”

  Slowly, I took the paper from him and unfolded it. The letterhead read, Canvas Ink Designs. The pamphlet for a tattoo place.

  “Dad. Is this…?” A smile pulled at my lips, something big and powerful blooming in my chest.

  “It’s a job. You’re already hired. If you want the gig, you start tomorrow.”

  “How? What about a paper trail?”

  “There isn’t one. This place hires people under the table. The woman who owns it runs it out of her house, downtown. I know you’d have preferred to do the interview yourself. But I went in and asked about the job posting on her window. She said if you were willing to work hard and show up every day for your shifts, you’re hired. Paid in cash, no paperwork.”

  My throat tightened. Love for him filled me near to bursting.

  “What made you change your mind? I behaved horribly with you.”

  “Yeah, you did. I meant what I said, we need to do everything we can to keep safe. But I also realized you’re right. You need to be able to contribute, to start becoming independent. I won’t be around forever. Not to mention, we could use the cash.”

  His remark about not being around forever made me wonder just how close those vamps had come to getting him this time. One of the claw marks on his throat disappeared under the neck of his tee.

  I threw my arms around him, eyes watering. “Thank you, daddy.”

  He gripped me close. The smell of peppermint and pipe smoke filled my nose. I inhaled deep and clutched him.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  “It’s just a cut.” He drew back and glanced at the knick on his arm with a shrug. Then he laid his hands on my knees. “If you do this, there are rules you have to follow at all times. Do you understand?”

  I beamed. “Uh huh. I know. No real names, no personal information, don’t bring anyone back here, and come straight home after.” Those were the same rules I had when I went into town to run errands for him.

  While here in Springfield, he was Rick Carter and I was his daughter, Diane. When he wasn’t hunting, he worked as a security guard at a company that hired him under the table. Long hours, with little pay, but the job suited his skills and posed little risk of exposing us.

  “There is one extra rule,” he said, pushing my long bangs back. “No tattoos or piercings, anywhere, ever.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I’m serious. You can’t have any distinguishing marks that make it easier for someone to place you.”

  “Mkay.” I hated it, but he made sense. He had a tattoo, yes, but I knew he took care to keep it hidden, and he’d gotten it before he knew he’d married a woman who turned out to be a witch hunted by the Dragonwatch. Apparently, the tattoo had something to do with my mother, which is why he could never bring himself to have it removed.

  Again, I hugged him tight. He kissed my ear. “I love you, Helena.”

  “Even when I use magic?”

  “Especially when you use magic. I like that you’re a handful.”

  I grinned at him.

  “Still, you need to understand, you can’t use magic like you did last night. People could get hurt.”

  I lowered my eyes, shame scalding me. “I know. What are we going to do? About my magic, I mean? I don’t like how out of control it’s getting.”

  “I don’t either. But we’ll figure it out somehow.”

  “Okay.” One last time, I hugged him.

  “I’m still going to call you Mittens sometimes, though.”

  “Please, no.”

  “Yeah.”

  We stayed in our embrace, rocking from side to side for a long time. Tomorrow, I’d start my first ever job.

  God, I loved my dad.

  Two weeks later, things went sideways.

  I arrived at the tattoo shop for my morning shift at 9:00am and stopped halfway up the walk to the front door. The door’s stained-glass window had been smashed.

  A break-in? It looked like someone had smashed the glass to get access to the inside lock. Was Maddie okay? Had she been here when the break-in had occurred?

  I pulled open the door and went inside. Maddie, the woman who owned the shop, looked up from her chair beside her first client of the day and waved.

  “Hi,” I said. “We were robbed again?”

  “Yeah. They cleaned out the register this time. Stole a bunch of my designs.”

  “Shit, that sucks. I’m sorry.”

  A woman in her late twenties with black streaks in her shoulder-length, wheat-blond hair and more piercings than I could count, she looked unharmed. My chest loosened. In the two weeks I’d been working for her, she’d been wonderful, asking few questions even while we often shared a lunch from the deli down the street, and giving me all the hours I wanted.

  My job mainly consisted of cleaning up the place, helping clients pick out designs from her large catalogues, and working the cash register. She often let me sit and watch her ink up the patrons, talking to them and distracting them from the pain of the needle. She did fantastic work.

  “Were you here when they broke in?” I asked her, already tidying up behind the counter and setting the catalogues back on the shelf.

  She shook her head without looking up from her work. A woman with spiky hair and sleeves of ink already covering her arms sat in what looked a lot like a dentist’s chair, chewing gum while Maddie colored in the yellow portion of the Batman symbol on her shoulder. The needle buzzed as my boss worked, a sound that had somehow become comforting to me.

  “No, thank God. I was at an exposé in New York until this morning. The camera recorded the two guys breaking in only a couple of hours ago.”

  Lucky. Maddie lived in the apartment above the shop. Had she been here, who knew what the robbers would have done to her.

  “Was your apartment robbed?”

  “Yeah, but they didn’t find much. Just my grandmother’s diamond rings.”

  “I’m sorry.” My heart went out to her. Kept under the table, this place wasn’t altogether legal, so it wasn’t rolling in the dough. She’d have lost rent money last night. Still, I couldn’t help being relieved she hadn’t called the police. An investigation would risk her losing her shop, but it would also put my father and me in danger if they happened to find out who we were. And not just from the police themselves.

  “Meh. We’ll survive. We’ll have to get a lot of clients this week though, if we want to make rent.” She turned and nodded to a small coffee table where yellow leaflets were stacked. “Do me a favor and post those around town? Pass them out to whomever you can this morning.”

  Ugh. I hated this part of the job. Walking around the streets stapling fliers to lamp posts and outside stores, dealing with people brushing me off or worse—I’d rather have cleaned the habitually flooded toilet in the back of the parlor. Especially when it was chilly enough outside that frost had covered my dad’s Blazer that morning.

  “The rookie always gets the hard work, right?” I teased.

  “Yepper.”

  The woman in the chair smiled at our banter before she put ear buds into her ears and turned on a flash player.

  “You’re lucky I like you.” I picked up the leaflets and grabbed a stapler and masking tape from a drawer.

  “Or you like your paycheck.”

  “That too.” I headed for the door, but stopped when I saw what pulled up outside the front entrance. A black and white police car.

  Fuck!

  My heart sped up. I glanced back at Maddie.

  “What is it?” She stood.

&
nbsp; “Did you call the cops?” I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking.

  “What?” She hurried across the room to me, eyes on the squad car outside. “Shit. The guy next door must have called them.”

  An officer climbed out of the car and shut the door. Pale hair buzzed close to his scalp, a bored, faintly lived-in face, and a heavy-set frame with a police belt stretched across his middle put him at about forty. What I assumed to be his partner climbed out of the passenger’s side door and closed it.

  “Diane, listen to me.” My boss lowered her voice, then glanced at her customer in the chair. The client sat with her head bobbing to her music, the cord from her ear buds snaking to the player on her hip. She wouldn’t hear anything Maddie said. “Let me do the talking. If they ask you anything, just tell them you don’t know, you weren’t here.”

  An easy answer, since it was the truth. Still, my heart raced as if I was the criminal.

  The truth was, police didn’t make me nervous; who they might know, did. According to my dad, while most cops didn’t know about the Dragonlords or about anything supernatural, there were departments in some cities that unknowingly worked with Suvia Kyans. Very rarely, police jurisdictions had secret departments who handled some of the supernatural beasties my father dealt with. Those departments sometimes knowingly worked with Dragonlords. Any association with police ran the risk of the Dragonwatch Guard discovering our secret.

  Half of me was tempted to get out of there before the officers came in the door. No. The past two weeks working here, I’d finally had a taste of a normal life. I wouldn’t give that up now. Besides, if I left this job now, I’d never get my dad to let me have another one. All I had to do was keep my head down, my mouth shut. I knew and saw nothing.

  “Got it,” I nodded.

  Maddie returned to her seat, looking completely casual as she went back to work on her client. I swallowed, hoping I looked half that convincing.

  The bell above the door jingled softly. The officers stepped in and the door swung shut behind them.

  Chapter 7

  A Boy, a Wolf, and a Dragon