Cloak of Dragons

by Moeller, Jonathan

I snorted. “Subtle.”

  Still, I didn’t think Sarkany deserved what had happened to him. He had obviously liked money and fancy artwork, but that didn’t mean he deserved to get killed. I remembered how both the High Queen and Sir Vormythar had said that dragons were like cats. Maybe Max Sarkany / Malthraxivorn had been like a big fancy cat who liked to surround himself with shiny toys.

  I drummed my fingers on the handlebars of my bike.

  But I really didn’t want to find anyone capable of killing a dragon with one blow.

  I sighed, pulled on my helmet, and started my motorcycle.

  It was time to resume my hunt for whoever had killed a dragon with one blow.

  I pulled out of the ramp and headed for Dragon Imports Art Gallery.

  ***

  Chapter 6: We Might Have Missed A Few

  Riordan had to push back the passenger seat of his SUV. The last person to sit there had been Nadia, and she was quite a bit shorter than he was. He passed his keys to Nora as she slid behind the steering wheel. She started the engine and pulled into traffic as Riordan drew out his phone and opened his web browser.

  It was just as well he had his phone to distract him. Riordan was a conservative driver save for emergencies, which exasperated Nora. She preferred to drive like a rally car racer going for the championship. She also tended to operate the radio while driving one-handed, jumping from song to song until she found one that she liked.

  “If you’re not careful, you’re going to wrap my SUV around a lamppost,” said Riordan, typing into his phone.

  Nora snorted. “That’s only if I’m not paying attention.”

  They had had the same conversation a thousand times by now.

  Riordan focused on his phone as Nora drove from Manhattan to Long Island and MacArthur Airport. He started by searching for the ID number he had taken from the RFID tag. That was useless. The number happened to start with the same three digits as an area code in Los Angeles, and so he found several phone numbers that matched it. Most likely that was a coincidence. He tried excluding phone numbers from the search, but none of the results were helpful.

  His next search was for the SONGB text string, but that was equally futile. Most of the search results were from random characters in web applications. Riordan did get a few hits from India & Bangladesh, specifically from a website called Song Bangla, which was devoted to the traditional and modern music of the Bengal region, and whose commenters called the site “SongB” while enthusiastically arguing in English, Hindi, and Bengali.

  Riordan was reasonably sure that Paul Ricci had never visited India or any part of Asia.

  They were on the Long Island Expressway by the time Riordan gave up and put his phone back into his coat pocket.

  “Anything?” said Nora. She was currently doing twenty miles over the speed limit. Cautious for her, really.

  “A text message from Nadia asking if we need help,” said Riordan. “I told her that I’d call if we do.”

  Nora glanced at him. “But you’re not going to.”

  “No,” admitted Riordan. “I should be helping her.”

  “If she needs help, she’ll ask,” said Nora. “Once we get this wrapped up, you can meet her and find out what her job is all about. Did she say what the High Queen wants her to do?”

  “She didn’t,” said Riordan. “We wouldn’t talk about it over text or phone. Too insecure. Only that she thinks there isn’t any danger.”

  “I’m sure if she needs help, she’ll call,” said Nora.

  Riordan blew out a long breath. That wasn’t true, and they both knew it. Nadia had spent so long working alone for Morvilind that she wasn’t good at asking for help when she needed it. He wondered what the High Queen had instructed Nadia to do. Probably investigating Homeland Security – the High Queen would have doubts about the US national police after several state branches had sided with the Rebels during the battle of New York.

  “What are we listening to?” said Riordan to take his mind off the subject. Nadia could look after herself, and Riordan couldn’t help her right now. Brooding about it would only waste energy. “You haven’t changed the station for at least three or four miles now.”

  A woman’s voice came from the speakers, singing about a man who had broken her heart. Slow acoustic guitars accompanied her voice at first, but as the lyrics changed to her triumphant declaration of her newfound strength and independence, the accompaniment shifted to electric guitar and rapid drums. Riordan had heard a thousand songs like that over his life. No doubt the songwriter had gone through a bad breakup and then would shift back to writing love songs once she met someone new.

  On the other hand, most of his non-Shadow Hunter income came from writing books about historical adventures. Who was he to judge?

  Nora’s white grin flashed in her dark face. “Well, I finally found something good on the radio. American music is all right, but not as good as what we have in the UK.”

  “Of course,” said Riordan with a straight face.

  “But this is pretty good,” said Nora. “Della Sarkany. Ever heard of her?”

  “No,” said Riordan. He rarely listened to music, and Nadia never did. “Wait.” Something about the name Sarkany tugged at his mind. He had heard it recently, hadn’t he? In the news, he thought, but he couldn’t recall it.

  Then Nora took the exit for MacArthur Airport, and Riordan put it from his mind.

  It was time to get to work.

  “How should we play this, boss?” said Nora. “There’s a good chance that Ricci’s warehouse will be crawling with Homeland Security officers.”

  “Maybe,” said Riordan. “But like you said earlier, maybe not. You might be right. Homeland Security’s still stretched pretty thin after the Sky Hammer battle. And the writ of execution we left behind has already been authenticated, else the Firstborn wouldn’t have authorized our payment. Homeland Security would have removed the bodies, but I doubt they’ll investigate very hard.” He rubbed his jaw. “Drive past, and we’ll see what we can see.”

  Nora nodded, and they drove past the airport complex and came to Ricci’s warehouse. The gate to the yard stood open but had been sealed off with yellow crime scene tape. There were no Homeland Security vehicles visible in the street or in the warehouse yard. Riordan’s guess had been right. The writ of execution meant law enforcement had done a cursory overview of the site and hauled away the bodies. No doubt someone would be along to destroy Ricci’s summoning circle and clean up the blood, but that might take weeks.

  They would have a few hours to look over the warehouse.

  “Park around the block,” said Riordan.

  “We’re just going to walk in?” said Nora.

  “That’s the plan,” said Riordan.

  “Just as well. These shoes do great things for my legs and ass, but I’m not climbing over any fences in them.”

  Riordan only grunted as Nora pulled up to the curb and shut the engine off. He got out and looked around. It was a chill October day, the sky gray and overcast with heavy clouds. It wasn’t raining, but the concrete and the asphalt were wet, and the air smelled like both car exhaust and wet dirt.

  “Let’s go,” said Riordan.

  “Anything in particular we’re looking for?” said Nora as they circled the block.

  “Evidence,” said Riordan. “Clues to where Ricci got that copy of the Summoning Codex. You know what this kind of work is like, Nora. We spend most of our time chasing our own tails until we stumble across something.”

  “The glam life of the Family,” said Nora. They crossed the street to the warehouse. “Travel the world, see beautiful and exotic locations.”

  “I just wish the Firstborn had let us know we would need to do this,” said Riordan. “It would have been a lot easier to go through the warehouse last night before we called Homeland Security.”

  “Yeah,” said Nora. “Isn’t that what happened with you and the tigress? You met her in Milwaukee, and had no idea who she was?
Then the Firstborn told us to track her down and see if she was working with the Forerunner.”

  Riordan nodded. It had taken him and Nora several months of work to find Nadia, and they had only done it by following the movements of the Dark Ones cults who had tried to kill her. Though given that Riordan was now married to Nadia, he was glad it had worked out the way that it had.

  He ducked under the yellow crime scene tape, lifted it for Nora, and they walked into the warehouse yard. It looked unremarkable, with no trace of the Shadowlands creatures they had fought last night. Their carcasses would have dissolved by now. The interior of the warehouse had not changed. It was still a gloomy, cavernous space, dim gray radiance leaking through the skylights. To judge from the dampness of the concrete, the roof had a leak or two. Ricci’s summoning circle sat where it had been earlier, along with the table holding documents.

  Blood stained the concrete where Ricci and his followers had died.

  “Doesn’t look like there’s much here, boss,” said Nora.

  “No,” said Riordan. “Let’s start at the table. Put on gloves. We don’t want any fingerprints left behind.”

  They crossed to the table and began sorting through the documents. Riordan had taken a cursory look through them last night, but nothing had caught his eye. Mostly they were different sketches for designs of the summoning circle. The standard edition of the Summoning Codex included diagrams for a variety of summoning circles, all designed to bind different creatures of the Shadowlands. Ricci had settled on a circle configured to bind as many different creatures as possible. Likely the maelogaunt had influenced his choice, intending to feed on the resultant carnage.

  “Nothing useful here,” said Nora. She held up a sketch of an anthrophage crouched in the summoning circle. “Though he was a good artist.”

  “Too bad he wasted the talent,” said Riordan, looking around. “Let’s check that office.” At the far side of the warehouse, a flight of metal stairs led up to a door with a window. Likely that had once been the administrative area for the warehouse, or where the security guard had sat and watched cameras. “Maybe we’ll find something there.”

  They crossed the concrete floor and climbed the metal stairs. Nora cursed the metal grillwork roundly, taking care to keep her heels from getting stuck. The door was unlocked, and Riordan swung it open. The office was shabby and decrepit, with obvious water damage on the floor and walls. Four metal desks had been shoved against the walls, rusted chairs sitting before them. Three of the desks were empty, but the one nearest the door looked as if it had been used recently. An untidy mess of paper lay atop the desk.

  “Well, well,” said Nora. “What have we here?”

  She picked up a piece of paper. It was a bill for some artwork. The first page of the bill was missing, but it looked as if Ricci Food Services had purchased a large quantity of artwork from an antique store, probably for decorating Ricci’s Italian Restaurant. Riordan scanned the numbers, wondering idly why Ricci had spent so much on artwork…

  “Wait,” he said, pointing at one of the items. “Look. That number.” He pulled out his phone and double-checked. “That’s the number from the book’s RFID tag.”

  Nora snorted. “It’s described as ‘antique book, decorative.’”

  “I wonder if the seller knew what he had,” said Riordan, sifting through the papers. “See if you can find the rest of the bill…says it was page 2 of 4. If we can find an address, we have our next link in the chain.”

  They sorted through the rest of the papers. Nora found page 3 of 4, but the rest of the documents were either orders for restaurant supplies or more sketches of summoning circles. Riordan straightened up with a grimace, thinking. It was easy enough to see how Ricci had been entrapped. He had bought the antiques to decorate his restaurant and had happened to page through the book. Ricci had realized the book was the Summoning Codex and had taken it here to page through it. Maybe to try out one or two of the spells, to see if they could give him an advantage in the cutthroat world of the restaurant business.

  Then he had managed to summon a maelogaunt, and he had been ensnared.

  Damned fool.

  “I think we’re going to have to break into Ricci’s office again,” said Riordan. “We’ve got an invoice number, but no address. If we can pull the invoice number out of his accounting software, we’ll know where he got his Summoning Codex. Hopefully, it’s just some clueless antique dealer who had no idea what he sold.”

  “That would be nice,” said Nora. She opened the top drawer, closed it, and then opened the bottom drawer. “It would…whoa. What’s this?”

  She lifted a folded piece of paper from the bottom drawer and set it on the desk.

  Riordan frowned.

  The document was in Russian. The page was thick and yellowing, and the fold had been pressed deep into the paper. The ink was faded, and it looked like a typed summary of some kind, with a list of bullet points followed by Cyrillic characters.

  “I think that was folded up inside a book,” said Riordan.

  “The Summoning Codex?” said Nora.

  “Maybe.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t speak Russian.”

  “Neither do I,” said Riordan, drawing out his phone, “but there’s another way.”

  He fired up the translation app on his phone and held the camera lens over the paper. The app ground away for a moment, and then spat out a rough translation.

  “It looks like a medical or lab report,” said Riordan, parsing the badly translated English. “It’s talking about a lab, and five subjects who…entered containment? Or hibernation? The app isn’t sure, the words keep changing. And all five subjects entered containment on…”

  His frown deepened.

  “What is it?” said Nora.

  “All five subjects entered containment on July 12th, Conquest Year 109,” said Riordan.

  They looked at each other, and then at the yellowing lab report.

  “That’s over two hundred years ago,” said Nora.

  “And apparently,” said Riordan, “this document was folded up inside Ricci’s copy of the Codex.”

  “So why was a two-hundred-year-old Russian lab report inside a copy of the Summoning Codex?” said Nora.

  “I have no idea,” said Riordan.

  “Bloody hell,” said Nora with a shake of her head. “I hate mysteries. Absolutely hate them. Give me a sodding row of anthrophages and an M-99 carbine any day. Not some goddamned mystery.”

  “That’s why we make the big bucks,” said Riordan.

  “You make the big bucks, Mr. Famous Writer,” said Nora. “You’ve written a few mysteries, you probably love this stuff.”

  “It’s more fun to write about than to experience firsthand,” said Riordan. He started checking the remaining desks. A formality, most likely, but it had to be done. “It’s easier to write mysteries set in the pre-Conquest era than the contemporary one. The Department of Education doesn’t let anything even remotely critical of Homeland Security get published.”

  Nora snorted. “Yes, we wouldn’t want to accidentally tell the truth, now would we?”

  Riordan closed the last drawer and straightened up. “Let’s go. We’ll need to head for Ricci’s restaurant.”

  Nora fell in next to him as they left the office. “Going to just walk right in?”

  “Something like that.”

  They descended the stairs (Nora taking care in her heels) and returned to the SUV. Riordan half-expected to see Homeland Security vehicles arrive, but the street was deserted. The combination of the writ of execution and Homeland Security’s overwhelming case load meant that the scene of Ricci’s death would receive only the most minimal scrutiny. Some desk drone in Homeland Security’s New York headquarters was probably typing up the final report even now.

  Nora drove them back to Manhattan, and another Della Sarkany song came on the radio, much to Nora’s immense satisfaction. This one seemed to be a sad song about a woman watching her h
usband go to war as an Elven noble’s man-at-arms. Riordan ignored the music and spent the drive working with his phone’s translation app, trying to get a better English rendering of the old Russian document he had found.

  Riordan got the sense that the document was either a lab report or a medical report. It talked about five subjects and claimed that all five subjects had successfully entered hibernation, or stasis, or had been put to sleep. The translation app seemed unable to make up its mind as to which definition was correct. There were several references in the document to a laboratory with an incorporated catalyst, but Riordan had no idea what that meant.

  “I think we might need someone who actually speaks Russian to translate that, boss,” said Nora, flipping through the radio stations after Della Sarkany’s song ended. “Those translation apps are always dodgy. I think a couple of the blokes at the Sanctuary know Russian.”

  “Yeah,” said Riordan, giving up and putting his phone away. “McGrath and Konstantin both speak Russian. And Yerin’s Russian.”

  “Want to send it to one of them?” said Nora.

  Riordan hesitated and then shook his head, his distrust of telecommunications technology coming to the forefront. “No. Too insecure. Whatever this lab report is, I don’t want it floating around the Internet until we know what it is.”

  "Isn't the translation app cloud-based?"

  "I have the offline version. More secure."

  “Might be something innocuous,” said Nora. “Some Russian doctor’s lab report from two hundred years ago that someone decided to use as a bookmark.”

  “Maybe,” said Riordan. “But I want to know for sure first.”

  About a half-hour later they reached Manhattan and headed for Ricci’s Italian Restaurant. Nora managed to find metered street parking two blocks from the restaurant, and Riordan fed two hours’ worth of quarters into the meter. He wasn’t sure how long this would take, but he definitely did not want his SUV towed or booted when they returned.

  “So, what’s the plan?” said Nora. “We’re just going to walk right in?”

  “Yes,” said Riordan. He took a few things he might need from the back of the SUV and then crossed the street, Nora following him. “I think we can manage it.”