“No way.” Sani forgets his reverence and fear of my father. “They’re a myth.”
A sharp sound that I’m pretty sure is a laugh escapes my father’s torn lips. “You’re a dragon.”
“Point taken,” Sani says, slouching his shoulders.
“Um, somebody want to fill me in?” I ask.
“Japanese fox spirits,” Sani says. “I don’t know much about them. I only know the name because Wallace showed me an anime about them.”
“Shapeshifters,” my father says. “Except they’re all female and can take any female shape, including your young Ambassador’s daughter—and they’re always beautiful—heartbreakingly beautiful. They can bewitch people by looking them in the eyes, make them do whatever they want.”
“No,” I say. “If she could do that, why wouldn’t she do it before I tackled her?”
“Sounds like every time she did it to you, she touched you,” Sani says. There’s that eye—and ear—for details.
“Because you’re a dragon, her ability isn’t as strong on you,” my father says.
“Oh, it’s plenty strong,” I say, remembering that ridiculous feeling of being lost in the woods in the middle of a crowd.
“Okay,” Sani says. “Harder to activate, then.” He gives me that don’t-be-contrary look he has to use almost every day at school. Sometimes I think Sani’s real assignment is to keep me in check.
Kitsune. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Wait a minute. Why haven’t I heard anything about these monsters?
“Why do you know so much about them?” I ask my father, accusation dripping from my words. He sighs, and an old sadness floods his scarred face. Tears should be welling up in his eyes, but evolution has spared him that. He motions to his second heart—or where it should be.
“The rogue dragon who betrayed us and would have killed me if your mother hadn’t disobeyed orders and come back for me—” He stops and actually smiles. It’s a sad, regretful smile, but it’s the first true smile I’ve seen from him in years. “She was magnificent, Kitty. Fierce, powerful, like an avenging angel.”
“Dad,” I gently say to bring him back to the issue at hand. It breaks my heart to disturb his reverie, but I need to know. “You’re saying the woman who did this to you wasn’t a dragon?”
“She was kitsune, a mercenary we paid to help us out with the mission.”
“How could she betray you like that?” Sani says. The disgust is written plainly on his face, and I know he can’t imagine turning on DIC after all we’ve done for him.
“Kitsune value many things and none of them are loyalty,” my father says. “Someone offered her more money and a chance to cause chaos, so she went for it. She was the one who ended up paying, though, thanks to your mother.”
This fox woman I never knew about almost blew the biggest mission DIC has ever attempted, maimed my father, and was killed by my mother. Anger wells up in me and burns my stomach until I want to spit fire. “You’re saying DIC knew these things existed and they never bothered to tell us? My mom never told me? You—” and my voice cracks like a traitorous bastard. “You never told me.”
“They’re so secretive and slippery. We thought she was the last one,” my father says. It’s hard to read the emotions on his ruined face, but he sounds defensive. Still defending DIC and my mother.
“And the director was probably ashamed to admit he trusted one of these creatures,” Sani says.
My father nods. There’s one thing that still confuses me. “Why could I see her tail in the helicopter? The rest of her was human.”
“Kitsune can’t maintain complete control of the shift when they’re flustered,” my father says. “If they’re injured or stressed, their tails will show. It’s like when the dragon tries to take over when you’re angry, but even harder to control. But with smaller consequences.”
As long as you don’t mind being outed as a mythological creature.
“Wait,” Sani says. He would never do anything as undignified as a facepalm, but he looks like he wants to. “Fuchs.”
“Huh?” I ask.
“It’s German for ‘fox.’ We were trying to figure out why Gesina’s last name was wrong.” Realization crawls across his face. “She did it on purpose.”
Sighing, my father says, “Kitsune like to play games with their prey. It’s very possible she meant for you to figure it out.”
I slap a hand on the table, rattling the teacups. “She was messing with us!”
My mind decides of its own accord to move past the pain of being lied to and manipulated and toward the plan on how to kick this fox’s tail. How do I fight someone who can practically send me into a coma as soon as she touches me? That’s an easy one, Kitty: don’t touch her. “Weapons,” I say. “I need weapons.”
“For what?” my father says. He knows I’m not a fan of guns. On this subject, I’m more old-fashioned than he is.
“To get Jacob back.” Duh.
“Katherine,” my father says, his voice breaking. “I heard the news. The president is holding the dragons prisoner.”
“And?”
“Your responsibility to him is breached,” my father says. His tone is harsh and quiet, like polished steel. “Even if you rescue him—and I don’t know how you will without any idea where he is—they’ll only repay you by tossing you in with the others.”
“Oh, good point,” I say. I’d been on mission autopilot and hadn’t even stopped to consider how one affected the other. Why rescue the son of the man who represents the country that’s holding my mother and friends hostage?
Then, my conscience speaks up. His name is Sani. “Can you really abandon Jacob to that woman? Who knows what she wants with him? Right is still right, no matter how you’re repaid.”
After spending three years with that kind of honor, it’s no wonder I lov—um, like him. I like him. A freaking lot.
“You don’t owe them anything,” my father says, his face reddening. “Your mother, your friends, they’re all being held by—” He stops and tilts his head to the side like a dog listening to the wind. My father’s special gift is amazing sensory perception, and he still accesses some of it, even in human form. His hearing and eyesight were once even better than the best African dragon.
“Someone’s coming. Paramilitary. Armed,” he says. He looks at me with a wide eye.
Chen Lung doesn’t get scared. Everyone knows that. But he looks terrified right now.
“Hide,” he whispers fiercely.
Sani grabs my arm and starts pulling me behind the counter.
“No,” my father says. “Hide.”
“Right.” I move to the most open part of the shop and allow my dragon self to completely take over. Even pulling my coils in as tightly as I can, I miscalculate, and the sudden increase in size knocks a teacup off the table. The cup falls to the cement floor and my enhanced dragon senses give me the distinct displeasure of hearing every crack form and break. Maybe the expression should be “dragon in a china shop.”
Sani climbs on to my back and whispers, “Up.”
Concentrating on not breaking anything else, I slowly increase my altitude until we hover just below the ceiling. Sani presses flat against me, wrapping his arms around my neck, and we disappear just as six serious-looking, seriously jacked men with coats that bulge in all the dangerous places walk in the front door. The door that had been locked. The hanging bell resonates into the sudden silence. Before the door slams shut, I see no fewer than four black government-issued SUVs and accompanying CIA thugs waiting out on the street.
“Mr. Chen?” the man in front asks. He’s the oldest of them, with a cleft chin, splashes of gray in his dark, cropped hair, and the hint of an aging body hanging over his belt.
“Know anyone else who looks like this?” my father asks, some of the old fire still making him defiant. He sits tall and proud, not giving away a single thing.
“Do you know where your daughter is?” Cleft Chin gets straight to the point. He
stares into my father’s good eye unflinchingly—something very few people on the planet can accomplish—like he’s going to read the answer there.
“Haven’t seen her in months.” If there’s one thing all DIC operatives excel at, it’s lying. I—the aforementioned daughter—was floating here and I believed him.
Cleft Chin stares hard at my father before letting his gaze slide across the room. It stops when he sees the two cups on the table and one shattered on the floor.
“Months?” Cleft Chin says. He turns to the five guys at his back. “Search the place.”
They obey immediately, fanning out to different areas of the room, one going to the back storage area. Four of them pass directly underneath me so closely I feel the air disturbed by their movement. Both of my hearts erupt in a synchronized techno beat and Sani tightens his grip around my scaled neck, his hearts joining mine until I can’t hear anything but crazed thumps. If they have heat sensors or particularly good hearing, we’re screwed.
“Clear,” a goon declares. He’s soon echoed by all the others.
Cleft Chin swaggers closer to my father and bends over to look him eyes-to-eye. “Where’s Katherine?”
The guy doesn’t know it, but this is the second he makes his big mistake. Saying my full name lets my dad know this guy knows absolutely nothing about me except what my official file says. And my dad will give him no more.
My father’s face stares back at him like a stone gargoyle, unmoving and hard. Liquid fire rises up in his eyes, begging for release, and my dragon-self aches to respond, but I sandbag it with fear and restraint. Mostly fear, though.
“Search harder,” Cleft Chin orders his men, his jaw clenching and unclenching.
Half a second after the command is given, the first crash rips through the air as an apothecary cabinet is knocked to the ground. Now there are so many things breaking and shattering I can’t keep up with the sounds.
Broken shards of glass, fragments of teacups, and a shower of herbs assault my scales and fall to the floor, harmless. I turn to look at Sani, who has his eyes slammed shut. His grip on my neck would choke me if not for the thick scales.
A teacup thrown high bounces off my belly, and I hold my breath, wondering if any of them saw it change direction in mid-air. But it doesn’t matter. The men aren’t even attempting to look for me; they’re simply destroying the place.
Jackasses.
I clamp my jaws shut, knowing that reacting wouldn’t help. Yesterday, my father was one of the most trusted and reliable consultants on covert strategy for the U.S. government. Today, he’s worse than a criminal—not even allowed the basic rights of the Constitution he gave his life, legs, eye, heart, and family to protect.
And it’s my freaking fault.
Watching this is different from a vague notion that the government is holding the dragons. Even the president’s announcement and the warning from Wallace didn’t solidify the betrayal, but every crash and break builds the picture in my mind like a computer rendering a scene, pixel by pixel.
As the thugs run out of things to break, the percussion slows and stops.
I know my father’s dragon-self must be searing with rage, as mine is, but he doesn’t show it. “Told you she wasn’t here,” he says simply.
“That’s too bad,” Cleft Chin says. He shrugs. “At least we’ll be returning one rogue dragon to the compound.”
One rogue dragon? I don’t think there are any other dragons out on assignment today due to last night’s mishap. Domestic missions had been immediately recalled, and foreign missions were told to hold off on returning until further notice was given. Who could they be bringing in?
When one of the thugs takes out a pair of handcuffs, I realize they’re talking about my father. My dragon-self roars in my head, the sound drowning out all logical thought.
“No!” I yell, but only Sani can hear me. My ability protects us from being heard, though I’m ready to lose control of that when Sani places a hand on the side of my dragon-head.
“Kitty.” He sounds scared, but far more in control than I am. “Look at me.”
I can’t. These assholes are putting handcuffs on my wheelchair-bound father and I’m calculating how many seconds it would take for me to rip out all of their throats. Less than three, I’d bet.
“Your father doesn’t want you caught,” he says. “They have half an army outside and I still can’t change.”
They start wheeling him out and the full length of my dragon body tenses. I’m thinking, as mad as I am, I could take out the bulk of the U.S. Army right now. If I let the dragon take full control, I probably wouldn’t even feel bad about it. I loosen my hold on the magnetic currents keeping me aloft and we descend a few inches.
“Look at me.” I hear Sani’s plea on the very edge of my rage-colored world. “Damn it, Kitty!”
That, of all things, steals my attention. Sani doesn’t cuss. Ever. I’ve seen him stabbed with a six-inch blade, fall seven stories down a climbing wall, and now shot—and he’s never uttered so much as an “oh, poop.”
I freeze our descent.
“Look at me,” he says again.
I turn my head slowly and meet his eyes, the cool green tempering my frenzy just enough so I can think clearly again. He places both hands on either side of my snout now, and his fingers feel like ice against the heat of my temper. My dragon quiets, and I feel very much like a teenage girl again, thrilling at Sani’s intimate touch.
“We’ll get him back,” he says. “I promise. But not now. There are too many of them outside. Listen, can you hear them?”
Closing my eyes, I let my hearing slide outside the shop’s front door. The rustle of gunmetal on leather, car doors closing, footsteps. There are at least forty men out there. Crap.
Forty men to get an old cripple and a sixteen-year-old girl? That’s a Public Enemy Number One situation.
Exhausted, I lower us to the littered ground. I stand there, Sani’s hands on my dragon face, amid the rubble of a ruined Chinese tea shop, until we hear the last man get in a car and drive away.
I echo Sani’s words. “We’ll get him back.”
Chapter Seven
I’m still in dragon form when we retreat to the storage area through the roll-up cargo door because my anger hasn’t slackened enough for my dragon-self to release its hold. It’s a weakness I seem to endure more than most other dragons; what does that say about me?
I raise my tail to move back the corner ceiling tile and lower the bag of handguns and grenades my father revealed to me when I was ten, “just in case.” There really is no such thing as an ex-spook. I have no idea how he ever intended on reaching them himself, though—or how they got there in the first place. Sani unzips the bag and reveals a note laying on top. He picks it up.
“I can’t read it,” he says. “I think it’s Chinese?” Sani speaks six languages, but not this one.
“Let me see.” I only speak four fluently, but Chinese is one of them.
He holds it up for me. “Katherine,” I translate and read out loud. “I hope the time won’t come when you’ll need these, but I also fear you won’t reach retirement before that time arrives. Wherever I am as you read this, know that I believe in you. Loyalty and justice, always.”
Sadness overtakes me. And a little…amusement? My father, the master strategist, Gods bless him.
My dragon-self finally fades back inside me and, for the first time since I was a kid, the change overwhelms me. I stumble on my seemingly inadequate single pair of feet. Sani catches me in his arms, and I surrender to his strength until I regain my own.
My arms linger around his waist longer than necessary, and I search his eyes for something I’ve not found the other hundred times I’ve looked. His gaze is guarded, as usual.
As he takes in my face, though, something tender flickers deep in his eyes. Maybe it’s wishful thinking.
“Hey,” he murmurs. “Are you okay?”
“Oh yeah. I’m peachy.” I try to
maintain my carefully crafted tough-girl image, but my voice cracks. The truth is, I can’t tell him I’m on the verge of falling apart. If I start down that road, it will drag us both into my turmoil, and nobody has time for that.
His fingers pulse where they rest on my back. “Kitty.”
My name on his lips is a symphony. How can two simple beats of basic human language engulf me so completely? We stare at each other for a mini infinity. I’m terrified of speaking and breaking the spell that’s fallen over us.
“It’s been a terrible day. You’ve just watched the last of the people you love imprisoned.” He stops, swallows, inhales a slow breath. “Whatever you need. I’m here.”
My mouth forms words before my befuddled brain can stop it. “He wasn’t the last one.”
Sani freezes and I realize my mistake.
“I mean…” I stumble, trying to find the words. “I have, you know, friends.”
But we both know what I mean. If there was a trophy for moment-ruining, I’d win every year.
He pulls away, clears his throat, and begins to check out my father’s bag of tricks. I’m grateful he’s not looking at me because my face is probably blood-red with embarrassment. Look at me; about to start a war with the CIA on their own turf and somehow still a petulant girl upset about rejection from her crush. Pathetic.
“We should try to get a message to Wallace,” he says.
“Yeah, sure.” I agree, but that’s about number two-hundred sixty-eight on my list of priorities right now.
We empty our backpacks of history books and three-ring binders and other useless props to make room for as many weapons as possible. Even distracted, I notice they’re immaculate, like they were just cleaned last week. I have no idea how my father did this, but he’s been known for pulling off the impossible.
Sani straps his backpack on and turns to me expectantly. “What’s our next move?”
I freeze in the middle of putting my backpack on. “Me?”
Sani smiles sadly. “You’re the highest-ranking uncompromised agent in the D.I.C.”
“But I’m not a strategist! I don’t…” I take a deep breath that rattles my ribs. “I can’t.”
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