“Well, yeah. That much is kinda obvious.”
“I don’t only mean in your DNA, Krissy. I mean in your heart. You’re worried about all this changing you, but what I see is it’s simply made you into more of what you already were.”
“I don’t know, Dad…”
“Well, I do. You’ve always been driven—special. Your mother and I always knew you’d exceed your wildest dreams.”
“All parents say that about their kids.”
Frank laughed and hooked a thumb at Brian, passed out and snoring on the couch. “Your mother and I would be pleased if this one got a damn job. He’s special, sure, but not like you, Kristen. I’m sure this is crazy for you, but you’re not becoming anything you weren’t. You’re simply discovering a part of yourself that’s always been there.”
Kristen nodded, wiped a tear, and stood. “I should go, Dad. I should keep training.”
“That’s my girl!” he said and beamed. “But don’t you want to drink these beers and spend the night?”
She grinned. “I do, really. But I can’t, not until you guys are safe.”
“I’ll tell your mother you stopped by. You know she’ll be pissed for you not waking her up.”
“I know.”
“Well, all right, then.” He enveloped her in a hug.
When she left the room and rode down in the elevator, she felt better—like a veil had been lifted. She had to do this—for her family and for herself. Stonequest had been right about that, at the very least. Maybe he’d been right about everything he’d said in his little speech to her. She needed to come into her full dragon strength if she wanted to be at all useful to her friends and family. But that didn’t mean giving up who she was. The only part of her that she had to leave behind was the part of her that doubted what she was capable of.
And now, with her family’s support, she thought she could finally do that.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Death couldn’t believe how lucky her night had turned out to be. First, Shadowstorm had let slip that he had been in contact with the Masked One. That had been a bluff on her part, but he had confirmed it before he could cover his surprise. One never knew when such information might come in handy. Now, to top the day off, the Steel Dragon herself had arrived to visit her parents.
The assassin had thought she was still at the dragon’s manor in the countryside—one of the few places she didn’t dare to go—but it seemed that had changed.
Her plan had been to wait for one of the family members to leave, wound them in the leg, and wait for the Steel Dragon at the hospital, but the process could be simplified.
She was in the building visiting her family. When she left, she would wait for her to be alone on the street, kill her with her usual efficiency, and move on to her next contract. There was no need to bother with the humans. That was good. She hated dealing with humans. It was embarrassing for someone of her talents to have to work directly with the cattle who ran the background of the dragons’ world.
As she sat with her rifle aimed at the door, she did nothing but think. She knew there were assassins who didn’t watch through their scopes, but she found this laughable. Her job was to kill, which meant her work was to be ready for the killing moment. She couldn’t do that with a pair of binoculars.
She hadn’t accomplished all she had by being anything but patient.
And she had accomplished so much. Wars had been avoided because of her work.
Dragons didn’t normally go to war with each other. For thousands of years, there had been a more or less civil peace between them. They still fought proxy wars, of course, using the humans who lived in their territories, but that was totally different than dragons actually plotting to murder each other.
Physical combat was the main way for dragons to solve their disputes. A duel of the gods, it must seem to humans, and indeed it was. Dragon combat often ended in death, and because of this, there were dragons who didn’t wish to participate in it.
Their powers weren’t uniform. All had the same basic abilities—flight, increased speed and strength, and aura. But from there, their abilities varied. Most could breathe fire, but there were variations to those powers too. Some dragons could control flame for example, while others spat acid.
Some of these found themselves in disputes with dragons who had a particularly powerful skill set. When this happened, the weaker dragon often discovered that physical combat was a barbaric, demeaning thing—not to mention a surefire way to reduce their own life expectancy. If they felt this way, they would hire professionals like her to deal with these disputes.
That’s what Death was—a problem removal specialist. She stabilized the world, helped those with powers that didn’t translate into combat skills, and pruned the dragon family of its more bloated, obnoxious branches.
Truly, she would work for anyone who would hire her. It took a special kind of dragon to see the wisdom of assassinating a foe instead of airing their grievances and resorting to pummeling each other. Most of the time, the wisdom of the client to hire her was all the commitment she needed, but she had to admit, there was something wrong about this Steel Dragon.
It wasn’t her obsession with following human laws. Law itself was an interesting construct and all dragons—even Death—had codes of honor they believed in. And it wasn’t her unusual abilities. She was always interested in the unusual. What affronted her sensibilities about the target was that she saw herself as human, which was an affront to all of dragon kind.
The Steel Dragon had to be destroyed, culled from the herd and weeded from the garden before she could spread her disgusting ideas about humanity having rights.
Merely thinking about it was enough to make her aura begin to pulse. She quickly snuffed that out, though. It was an ability she rarely used and it wouldn’t do for other dragons to sense it. But forcing it down all the time meant that she had exquisite mastery over the tool. There weren’t many dragons who could kill one of their own kind and not ever let their heartbeat elevate or their aura spill out in either pride or guilt. She was as cool-headed as they came, and yet something in her boiled and she wished to slay this Steel Dragon tonight.
And then, as if the flames themselves smiled down upon her, Death had her chance.
Her target stepped out from the first floor of the hotel. This was the moment. She took aim. Last time, she’d merely tested her target’s power with a shot to the shoulder. Now that she knew her scale-tipped bullets would work, there was no reason for further trial.
That was the secret to her success, something that almost no one knew. When she hunted dragons, she tipped special rounds with fragments of her own scales. Much like a dragon claw or tooth would wreak great damage on another dragon, her scale-tipped bullets did what mere lead could not.
They put dragons down.
There would be no more tests. She aimed for the Steel Dragon’s head and was about to pull the trigger when Kristen turned and spoke to someone inside.
The assassin waited. She could give this girl a few more moments of life. It would cost her nothing, while firing too soon would ruin her entire attack.
She doubted that even the dragon’s steel skin could withstand the bullet she had loaded into her rifle. The weapon itself was incredibly large and super-high caliber—a custom job that most humans couldn’t ever hope to handle.
The bullet was even more special than most of her rounds. In addition to the scales, this bullet was diamond-tipped and the most powerful she’d ever created. Certainly more powerful than the one she’d first tried on the Steel Dragon. This particular combination of gun and ammunition had killed eleven dragons. It took extraordinary measures to eliminate one of her own kind. With incredible healing abilities, dense muscles, and scales as tough as metal, a round had to not only pierce the dragon’s body but also destroy either the heart or the brain.
The brain being the better option, of course.
It was easier to kill a dragon in human form, bu
t even that wasn’t a sure thing. Most dragons transformed the moment they sensed danger, and those transformations changed the location of hearts and brain.
The Steel Dragon turned to the street again. The door to the hotel closed behind her and she began to walk.
Death could see her face. She looked happy and totally oblivious to what was about to happen. Her quarry wouldn’t even hear this shot. By the time the sound reached her, the shot would have already splattered her brains on the sidewalk behind her.
The assassin took a breath and held it, steadied her weapon as she led the target, and was about to pull the trigger when she heard something on the roof behind her.
She cursed. Her intended target would have to wait a moment. She’d placed alarms, magic and otherwise, on the roof exactly as she always did. They were complex things, and they should have slain anyone who came near. That they’d failed to do so meant the person up there was a threat.
Despite having the shot lined up, she took her eye away from the gun and transformed into her true body.
Some dragons’ transformations were flashy things of smoke and fire. Others vanished into clouds of dust and debris.
Death simply extended. One moment, she was a woman and the next, her fingers were claws, her arms were scaled, and wings emerged from her back.
She wasn’t particularly powerful in her dragon form—not like her client Shadowstorm, who really was an impressive specimen—but she was more than competent with her abilities. It would take a considerable fight to best her.
Her night vision easily pierced the darkness of the roof but she saw no dragon. She stared intently but still, encountered no fiery breath boiling and primed to erupt or bolts of lightning carefully parsed and ready to crack. All she saw was a human.
And a woman with a handgun, of all things. One of the dinky little things that they liked to brain each other with.
The assassin laughed at the tiny weapon aimed at her chest. “That can’t hurt me.”
Even in her human form, the weapon would have done little damage. Dragon muscles were tough. It would take something special to crack through them and obliterate the heart. Simply injuring one wouldn’t be enough. A dragon’s heart could heal unless it was destroyed completely. In this form, her dragon form, she would be practically invulnerable to most weapons. A handgun was a particularly laughable threat.
It was curious that the human had made it past her alarms, though. Was she a mage, perhaps? That might explain it.
“How did you get up here, little thing? You should have felt terror unlike anything you’ve ever experienced.” Not to mention that there should be holes in her body and her flesh should be burned to a crisp.
“I don’t fear you, beast.”
Death grinned at that. Beast? Really? Who was this impetuous little insect? Well, she would find out soon enough. She flexed her aura and used it like a laser to unravel this puny human’s will. Soon the human wouldn’t fear her but instead, would want to please her. She’d tell her everything she wanted to know.
“Who are you?”
“Merely a human who has had enough,” the woman said and fired her little handgun.
The assassin laughed at the bang but almost instantly, something changed. She looked down. The bullet had penetrated her scales and it hurt badly. It was, she thought, like being gored by a dragon’s claw, but far worse.
“How did you—”
Death never got her answer. The human stepped forward quickly and before she could say another word, fired her gun three more times in rapid succession. Each bullet ripped a hole in her scales and each shot inflicted a wound. She teetered on the edge of the building and toppled over to fall toward the street below.
“You never should have gone after her,” the strange human said.
Constance Vigil watched Death tumble from the rooftop. It seemed a shame to let the dragon go to waste—something akin to killing a bison and simply letting the meat rot. She could have killed hundreds of dragons with the bullets made from Death’s corpse.
But she didn’t need to kill her. She only had to keep the assassin from killing Kristen Hall—who would likely show up in only a few moments. That reminded her that she didn’t have long to get out of this building before the Steel Dragon arrived.
She ran.
Really, the Lost Dragon was why she’d had to stop this assassin. Death—as Constance had been told this dragon was known—had targeted Kristen, and that simply wouldn’t do. Stopping her was a priority.
In all honesty, she didn’t know any more about the Steel Dragon than any of the other mages in her circle, but debates swirled around her existence and her arrival in the same city in which they’d conducted their own experiments. Could the now-famous Kristen Hall be one of the experiments their mages had designed? It was quite possible, but if she was, how had she gotten loose in the world? The girl should have been locked up with all the other dragons they’d created.
Constance had to remind herself that no one had all the answers.
She smiled to herself. Being part of a clandestine society of mages intent on taking the yoke of power from the dragons that controlled the world had given her a very specific skill set. She’d had the magic ability to disarm Death’s traps and the practical experience to plan an escape route.
A quick rappel down a rope brought her to ground level, this time on the far side of the building from where her quarry had fallen. A quick peek around the corner told her that Kristen and Death had already encountered one another. She didn’t have any doubt that the Steel Dragon could prevail in this fight. The assassin might be a dragon, but she was a dragon with several dragon-scale bullets inside her, each one weakening her powers and sapping her strength.
For a brief moment, she wondered if she’d look back on that moment one day with fond memories or shame. Maybe the Steel Dragon would join their fight or maybe she would prove to be as dangerous to mankind as the other dragons. If that happened, perhaps her body would prove capable of making bullets that could truly destroy any dragon.
Constance hoped that wasn’t the case, but hers was a position in the world that offered no comforts. One way or the other, her organization would act. Only time would tell what that would involve.
She also hoped the Steel Dragon would see what had happened—that someone had saved her life, an ally stronger than a dragon.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Kristen heard a gunshot and instinctively, flung herself prone and turned her skin into steel. In the same moment, she realized that by the time she’d heard the gunshot, it would have been too late for her abilities to protect her.
But the projectile never came. Nothing struck her, nor did any piece of nearby pavement shatter from an impact.
“Did you hear that, Hall?” the officer at the door of the hotel yelled.
Before she could answer, three more gunshots rang out. She tried to pinpoint the source of the sound with her heightened dragon abilities. It was closer than she had thought—the top of a building only a few blocks away. Then she saw an enormous shape fall from the roof and smack into the side several times before it impacted with ground-shaking force. A dragon! But who? Was it Stonequest, keeping an eye on her? Or someone less friendly?
“Call for backup and send them there.” She pointed at the building and the officer nodded. He was already on his radio.
Kristen ran with every ounce of speed her dragon powers gave her. Snow pelted her face as she ran. It appeared to be some kind of fancy apartment building like those that appeared all over Detroit. Not for the first time, she cursed her inability to fly. If she could turn into a dragon, she would be there already. She knew she’d have to transform and that she could keep her identity, but something about pursuing a gunner was so human. It hadn’t occurred to her to try to transform until that moment. She covered the few blocks in less than a minute and reached the building.
She brushed the thoughts of unused powers away as she studied the scene.
/> It was a dragon that had fallen, all right. But it wasn’t Stonequest, Sebastian, or any other she had seen before. Its dark-red scales glittered as it rolled itself slowly upright. Blood poured from several wounds. One was in the chest, but the others all seemed to be in various limbs.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“No,” the strange dragon replied. It was a woman’s voice. “Not really.”
“Help’s on the way,” she told her as she stepped closer. Strangely, the wounds weren’t healing. They continued to bleed and slow trickles of liquid dribbled down the massive body.
A glittering flash caught her eye. Something on the ground sparkled as it reflected the lamplight. At first, she wasn’t sure what she saw. Then she realized the reflections were made by scales—small, silver dragon scales. They’d poured from a black leather pouch that must have been torn free from the dragon as she fell.
She knew those scales. They looked exactly like those Death used as her calling card. She glanced at the dragon quickly and saw those dangerous eyes staring balefully at her.
“What a shame. I had hoped to avail myself of that help you offered and worry about killing you later,” she told her. “But I suspect you’ve realized who I am.”
“Death.”
“Just so.” The dragon heaved herself onto her hind legs. Her claws raked the air where Kristen had stood, but she had already moved left and into a roll that carried her away from the slash.
“I’ve been looking for you,” she said as she found her feet. She punched out with a steel hand to deliver a powerful blow to an already injured rear leg. The assassin roared with pain and whipped her head around.
Jaws snapped closed inches away from her head as she ducked the attack. She drove a right uppercut into Death’s jaw. The dragon’s head jerked away from the attack.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” she said. “You can come quietly, and we’ll get you medical attention.”
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