Steel Dragon

by Kevin McLaughlin

  “Nice to see you too, Red,” the demolitions expert said. Those casual words were an admission of terror she had never before heard from the woman. Lyn Hernandez didn’t do nice. Facing your own demise had a way of humbling people.

  “Hall, Drew, I want you in my office,” Hansen said.

  “Ma’am?” Keith asked.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Bring the whole team.”

  A moment later, they all crammed into Hansen’s office and looked at a manila folder the contents of which were surely far more important than the bland exterior.

  The captain appraised her officers. “Obviously, we need to find this assassin or whoever hired them.”

  “It’s Shadowstorm, it has to be.” Kristen’s tone brooked no argument.

  Her superior raised her hands in a gesture that indicated frustration. “Well, if you can find him, Hall, by all means, bring him in for questioning. It went so well the last time we brought a dragon in.”

  “Do you think the sniper’s a dragon now?” she asked.

  Captain Hansen shook her head. “I have no idea. I don’t want to make any damn assumptions, but I can’t imagine dragons paying humans to kill dragons.”

  “Captain, with respect, you didn’t call us in here to talk about the sniper.”

  “Perceptive as always, Drew. You’re right. We don’t know shit about the sniper. The asshole operates on a whole other level. There has been a further complication, though.”

  “What is it?” Kristen asked.

  “Those thugs who tried to kidnap your family? They don’t know a damn thing. They said their boss made all the contacts and that they only followed orders.”

  “Business as usual, then.” Drew sounded tired.

  The boss scowled and nodded.

  “Can’t you simply catch the boss, then? The toad can’t be that hard to find,” Keith said.

  “You’re right about that, Rookie. In fact, we already found him—and the rest of the team too.”

  “But that’s great!” Kristen said. “I can pump them for information and put the fear of the Steel Dragon into them.” Suddenly, the idea of having an aura that could make people feel things didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Hall. We found the team because they’re all dead. Each one was eliminated with a single bullet fired from a high-powered rifle. Perfect fucking executions.” Captain Hansen looked disgusted. “No one even called the cops on the damn crimes.”

  “And none of the ones we have are talking?” the Wonderkid asked.

  “Oh, one of them is talking. Styx, the scrawny one. He won’t shut up, actually. I get the feeling he’d give us his buddy’s social security numbers if he knew them, but that’s the problem. They don’t know a damn thing, and half of what he says is false. I don’t think he even realizes he’s lying. My guess is that Death ordered it like that so the part of the gang doing the kidnapping wouldn’t know anything about her—or him. That way if it went wrong, well…”

  Everyone nodded. It had gone exactly as Death had wanted it to.

  “I don’t think we’ll solve this with regular police work,” Kristen said finally.

  The captain sighed. “You’re probably right. There have been assassinations like these in a dozen countries and on multiple continents. If no one else could catch her, I don’t know why we’ll be able to.”

  “Because we have a dragon,” Keith said and sounded optimistic despite the evidence that suggested he should feel otherwise.

  The truth of that struck her like an arrow to the heart.

  “We’re only in this situation because Hall is a dragon,” Drew said.

  “No, no, Keith is right. If I can unlock more of my abilities—those Death doesn’t know about—I can beat her. That’s the whole reason for me training with Stonequest, but I need to focus more intensely on it. Originally, we all thought it was a way to protect myself, and it is, but it might also unlock abilities that enable me to track her and defeat her when I find her. I have to. We don’t have any other choice.”

  “Are you’re sure leaving the station is safe?”

  “We trained at a mansion out in the country with, like, fifty dragons. If Death can get me there…well, we’re all beyond screwed.”

  Captain Hansen snorted a chuckle at that. “All right. Sure, it’s better than anything I have right now. Call Stonequest and keep away from the damn windows until he gets here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  After a phone call to Stonequest and thirty minutes of waiting, Kristen once again flew out toward the dragons’ palatial manor on the back of a dragon.

  He said nothing on the journey, which gave Kristen time to think—something she both desperately needed and wished to avoid at all costs.

  She couldn’t see a future in which she didn’t realize the entire spectrum of her dragon powers. Shadowstorm—she was quite confident that the dragon was involved in all this—wouldn’t stop throwing enemies at her until either he’d been defeated or she was dead. The latter would be inevitable unless she learned to transform.

  She would have to fully become a dragon to save her friends and family.

  And yet, what would be the cost of that? Unlike any other dragon she had met, she’d grown up as a human. She identified as human and her friends were human but now, if she was to protect that world, she needed to become something else—something more. It occurred to her that until this moment, she’d believed she could be both—a human dragon, and not merely in words but in reality. She’d somehow envisaged herself as a human who could also become a dragon when the need arose. The reality, though, was that it worked the other way. She was a dragon who could also be human. In this situation, being human was not enough and she would have to take that final step and become more than that.

  It had already begun to happen. While she had always been protective of her family and close friends, she now felt personally responsible for them in a way she never had until she’d found out that she was a dragon. Her emotions didn’t always feel like her own, which seemed even stranger because she could now more easily affect the emotions of others.

  At the root of this was the fact that she didn’t want to lose who she was. Perhaps the fear that she might lose that was the reason why she hadn’t yet managed to transform. It was an interesting thought. The who she was had always been defined by her belief in her humanness. Yet part of her had always wondered if there was more to her life. She had chalked that up to youth and assumed that many people felt that way. As things turned out, there had been more to little Krissy Hall. Now, she still wanted to belong to both worlds.

  Kristen felt like she knew what she had to do. Her family had already been attacked and that made her choice for her. The implications of that—of what she needed to become—was exhilarating but it was frightening as well.

  She could see that with more power—the power that was her true dragon birthright—she might be able to better protect her people, her family, and her city. With that, she could stop this threat and root out Shadowstorm.

  It wasn’t a choice, really. She knew that she must become what she was born to be. And yet, if she fully embraced her powers, she would also accept that she wasn’t human but was something more powerful and more deadly. What would happen to the person she had been?

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  After a decadent dinner, a night of rest, and a massive breakfast, Kristen and Stonequest were in the sandy training arena again. They had spent the morning meditating, but despite the fact that she enjoyed the process, her mentor had been less than impressed.

  “I’ll attack you. Defend yourself.” He removed his shirt and revealed the chest that really did seem to be carved from marble.

  “Human or dragon?”

  “Is that a question you’ll ask all your enemies?”

  “No, of course not—”

  Her protest died when he launched into the attack. His fists pounded into her gut and she catapulted away and
tumbled through the sand.

  She pushed herself to her feet, thankful that she’d practiced activating her steel skin so many times.

  Before she could so much as dust herself off, he was on her again. This time, he swept her legs out from under her and in the instant before she fell, threw one hell of an elbow into her chest.

  The hard landing winded her and she gasped for air. Steel skin protected her from puncture wounds, but she could still have the wind knocked out of her.

  “Will you give me a minute?” she pleaded.

  In reply, he kicked her in her steel gut and she somersaulted through the sand.

  All right. Enough was enough. Now, she was pissed.

  She pushed to her feet and raced forward to rain a flurry of punches and kicks on her opponent. He blocked them and barely flinched at the blows. She couldn’t really tell because of her steel protection, but it seemed like his skin was more mottled than it had been. Maybe he could armor his human form in stone the way she could turn herself to steel?

  The time spent thinking about anything except how to pummel him cost her dearly. Stonequest struck and caught her in the neck with a karate chop that bowled her over.

  Kristen rubbed her neck. “That could’ve killed me.”

  “We are facing Death. It’s time to act like it.”

  “What is your fucking problem?”

  “My problem is that you have a vast reserve of power at your disposal and you refuse to access it.” He glared at her. “I can feel you holding yourself back.”

  “I’m not trying to.”

  “Enough whining.” He launched himself into a flying kick. It would have been an impossible move for a regular human, but dragons in human form were far from regular. Still, she had seen more than enough kung-fu movies. She caught his leg and hurled him away from her.

  He began to transform into a dragon before he even fell. A gale of dust and chips of stone resolved into a dragon with skin of mottled marble.

  She tried not to think about when she’d last fought a dragon in her human form—not an easy thing to do. Her battle against Shadowstorm had been in an arena exactly like this. He would have killed her if not for her friends, but none of them could help her now.

  “This isn’t fair.”

  “Tell that to Death.” With a pump of his wings, Stonequest propelled himself forward and pounded into her with a claw as big as her chest. She struggled to break his hold but couldn’t and he crushed her into the sand as if to grind her like a cigarette butt.

  “Fight me, dragon!” he roared.

  “Fuck…you!” She spat sand and managed to slide from his grasp.

  Kristen turned to run in an effort to get beyond his reach. She made it three steps before his tail whipped around and struck her in the back.

  Once again, she tumbled helplessly through the sand before she finally stopped and pushed herself up.

  Already, Stonequest was there. He plucked her up in his front claws, flew fifty feet into the air, and dropped her.

  The wind raced past her as she fell. Now was the time to transform. She knew that but still, she didn’t. Instead, she made sure her steel skin was on.

  When she impacted, sand spewed around her and her muscles screamed in protest.

  “Stop it,” she pleaded.

  He ignored her, tucked his wings, and plummeted toward her.

  The dragon was so large, she couldn’t even roll clear of his shadow before he barreled into her with the force of a semi-truck focused into a fist the size of a cannonball.

  She blacked out for a half-second.

  When her brain began to work again, she was in his talons. Compared to him, she was merely a doll. He shook her viciously.

  “Is this how you protect your friends?” Stonequest roared and thumped her head against the sand. “Is this how you save your family?” He pummeled her with his other fist. “Is this how you die?”

  He hurled her like a piece of discarded trash, useful no longer. She plowed through the sand and tried to get her hands and knees under her. Even that was a struggle and tears came unbidden. She’d trusted him and he intended to kill her.

  “What is your fucking problem?” she screamed and forced herself to her feet.

  Kristen looked across the arena and saw through her tears that Stonequest was in human form once more. He ran to her, put an arm under her shoulder, and helped her to her feet. She flinched at his touch.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  “Kristen, I’m sorry. Really.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “I should have explained but I was worried it wouldn’t work if I did. Obviously, it didn’t either way.”

  “Worried what wouldn’t work?” She choked out a sob.

  “The first time you activated your powers, it was because someone had fired a rocket at you. In a moment of great crisis, your body instinctively saved you. I…I hoped to brute-force your transformation, I guess.”

  He led her to a bench beneath a gazebo. A servant appeared from nowhere with a pitcher of cold water.

  “That kind of training…it’s inhumane,” she said and fought to keep the fury out of her voice. The result was that she simply sounded scared and she hated that. She’d rather have Stonequest know she was pissed.

  Still, he balked at the word. That he took it as an insult to be called inhumane was a small comfort. “I see that now, and I’m sorry. It’s only—well, you’re being hunted and I don’t want Death to win.”

  “So your plan was to nearly kill me?”

  “I won’t do it again. I merely thought that with enough duress, you’d transform.”

  “Maybe I don’t have that kind of power yet.”

  Stonequest shook his head. “You have more than enough power.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “Your aura. Everyone walking the grounds of this manor can tell from your aura that you should be able to transform. Honestly, I think that’s one of the reasons so many of the dragons treat you so coldly. You have more raw power than most of them, and yet you refuse to transform.”

  “I’m not refusing anything,” Kristen protested.

  He sighed. “I don’t mean it like that. But with the power I feel coming off you, transformation shouldn’t be difficult. If anything, it ought to be natural. Our winged, scaled form is our true form after all.”

  “Maybe for you.” She looked away, out across the landscape that was so obviously designed for humans to walk. Despite them growing ever closer to winter, it was still warm there. Flowers still bloomed. On second glance, she saw that this place wasn’t for humans at all. It was unnatural, governed by different laws than her mom’s azalea bushes.

  “I think that maybe that’s the problem. You still haven’t accepted that you’re a dragon.”

  “Yes, I have! I take bullets for my team. I use my speed and strength to stop criminals.”

  “But those are human affairs, and human ways of fighting.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “You’re not human,” Stonequest retorted. “You’re something far more powerful. You’re clinging to your human form, augmenting it, strengthening it, but not setting it aside like you need to. I think you might be unintentionally repressing the transformation. You have a mental block that’s trapped you in that body, limiting your powers and your true essence.”

  Kristen stood and whirled on him, her bruises forgotten as anger coursed through her. “Can you even hear yourself? You sound like him—like Shadowstorm! You think being in my human body means I’m trapped? That this form is inherently weaker than you?”

  He didn’t have to answer. She could see it on his face. He obviously thought humans were weaker than dragons and she hated the part of her that knew he was right—and that so much of what he said dovetailed with her own thoughts on the matter.

  “This is the whole damn problem with dragon kind. You think that you’re better than humans.”

  “We are better than huma
ns,” he stated as a matter of fact. “We’re stronger, faster, and live longer, which means we can study things in far more depth.”

  “But none of that means you’re better. You’re more powerful, sure, but that doesn’t mean you’re better than mankind. It was our weak night vision that drove us to master the electricity that lights your mansion. It was our inability to fly that led us to invent the airplane. We might not live as long, but we really live. We’re part of this world in a way that you’re not. We share far more in common with the animals than you do.”

  “Can you even hear yourself, Kristen? All this talk of we and you makes it sound as if you’re not a dragon at all. But you are. You’re one of us. You’ll outlive your family by centuries and you can already destroy even the strongest human in any contest of strength. I know that you’re young but in time, you’ll grow to see that humans can’t fully understand the world in the way you can. Already, you shrug bullets off. How can you still identify with the creatures who invented war and the atomic bomb and ignore their own polluting filth?”

  Kristen grimaced as if she’d been struck. “Just because people aren’t perfect doesn’t mean you get to control them.”

  “Yes! There it is, Kristen. This is what you need to see! Humans are a them. You are different from them. You are a dragon. Realize your power and you can help us change our broken systems. But first, you need to realize your power.”

  She had heard enough, and her own inner conflict raged with the same ferocity as their outward debate. Angry with him and angry with herself, she turned her back on him and marched across the grounds. She went to her room, changed into her regular human clothes, and pulled out her human phone.

  By some stroke of luck, her rideshare app showed that someone was nearby. She ordered a ride and went out front to wait.

  Stonequest found her there as the car made its way down the long driveway to the mansion. “Kristen, you don’t need to do this. It’ll take you hours to get back to the city.”

  “Once it would have taken people days to cover this distance. I see a few hours as a triumph of mankind’s, not an inconvenience.”