Gunshots rang out as she pushed herself to her feet. Her friends were trying to buy her some time and she hoped it didn’t cost them their lives.
Her adversary roared and exhaled a huge wash of flame toward the team. Curses came as her friends—she couldn’t see who—managed to evade them. Some of the scaffolding caught on fire and Shadowstorm laughed.
She rolled behind a pillar and pushed herself to her feet.
“Little Steel Dragon, where are you?” He chuckled. In his dragon form, there was a low tone beneath it like the rumble of a lion. “Oh, wait, you’re not precisely a dragon, are you?”
His tail whipped around the pillar she had hunkered behind. If she had still been there, it would have pounded her face into the concrete. She made a note to avoid the tail—and another to avoid the jaws, claws, fire-breath, and whatever other bizarre abilities the dragon had.
“Backup’s on its way,” she shouted and her voice echoed off the walls.
“We both know that’s not true, little tin human.”
Instinctively, she screamed when his massive dragon head appeared beside her. She didn’t run and instead, drew her fist back and punched him in his teeth with every ounce of strength she had.
He recoiled—slightly—but snapped at her and she was no longer sure if she’d even hurt him or if he’d simply readied a strike like a heron hunting a minnow.
In the next moment, his bulk moved around the pillar and she faced a full-grown dragon. He raised his claw and tried to crush her like a bug.
Kristen moved toward his wrist, getting within his reach with her dragon speed, and avoided being pinned.
Shadowstorm hissed and tried to stab her with his other claw. She dodged again. This was one move, at least, that Stonequest had helped her practice against.
The dragon abandoned this tactic and—now that she was so close—simply tried to eat her. That might have been the end, but she managed to get a foot on his bottom jaw and her hands on his top jaw.
He tried to close his mouth but her steel form was too strong. She briefly entertained fantasies of forcing his jaw back and cracking his skull open, but the inferno that boiled out of his throat rapidly snuffed that idea out.
Flames engulfed her and she was blown from the dragon’s mouth. Once again, she encountered the far wall amongst more scaffolding that he had ignited when he’d expelled her from his mouth.
She stood shakily and almost blacked out from the heat. Her skin didn’t hurt—it would take more than that to burn her, apparently—but the heat seemed to be cooking her brain inside her skull.
Utterly disoriented, she stumbled out of the burning scaffolding and tried to get her bearings. The entrance was…behind her?
Her curse was echoed by her teammates. Shadowstorm had now turned their exit into a wall of flame.
“Everyone needs to get out,” she shouted over the crackle of flames.
In response, more gunshots chattered.
Gallows humor until the end. She had to force a grin at the sheer arrogance of even attempting to shoot the dragon.
“A good point, tin human,” her adversary said from across the room. She expected him to vanish into shadow and reappear close enough to obliterate her with his tail, but instead, he turned.
“You’d better run,” she shouted, and it sounded like her mouth had a swollen lip. Okay, so he was able to hurt her through her steel skin. That was good to know.
He merely laughed before his tail whipped at the entrance to another tunnel into the room. It collapsed as if he were a toddler and the structure was nothing but wooden blocks. “I’m having so much fun, tiny tin human. Let’s not lose our audience now.” Another gout of flame erupted from his throat, then another. Soon, all the equipment in the room was ablaze. She could feel the heat through her steel skin and knew that while she might survive, her friends were only human.
“You monster,” she screamed and raced forward in a burst of dragon speed. She had to fight back and had to defeat him. Without thinking, she caught hold of his tail and tried to yank him away from her friends but held on too long. He flicked it and catapulted her through the ceiling and into the roof of a tunnel filled with steam.
Kristen’s arms flailed as she attempted to grasp the ledge of the hole she’d created. She barely managed to hold on with her fingertips. This only brought more laughter from Shadowstorm.
“I spy, with my dragon’s eye, the legs of a human.” His clawed hands curled around her and yanked her through the hole.
He swung her into the floor, then a pillar, the ceiling, and another pillar. Between each strike, she moved so fast, her vision closed in and her stomach twisted. Finally, he smashed her into the tiled floor. He didn’t release her and instead, ground her face into tile like she was nothing but a cigarette butt.
“You know, I think I’ll eat your friends first, then come back and kill you. It’s been so long since I’ve tasted the flesh of man. A couple of months, at least, but it feels like years.”
She struggled to stand. Her muscles protested and seemed to prefer the quick passage of death to a continued fight against this fire-breathing monster of an enemy.
Her gaze was drawn to the bullet that nestled in a pile of rubble that moments before had been a pillar. She summoned a deep well of strength and dragged herself toward the tiny weapon.
“Where are those little humans, though?” The dragon moved through the flames and his tail swished like that of a cat hunting a mouse.
His targeting her friends gave her a burst of strength. She couldn’t let him kill them. Somehow, she stumbled to her feet, managed the couple of steps required, and retrieved the bullet. It took concentration to put it between her knuckles and finally, she made a fist.
“I’m the only human you get to kill today,” she shouted.
Shadowstorm laughed maniacally at that. “What great words to die by!”
He pumped his wings once and the gust of air fueled the flames that now ringed the room and made them burn blue instead of orange before he drove into her. She once again clattered to a painful stop on the hard tiles and gasped for breath.
The dragon bounded toward her. With the constraints of the room, it took only a single leap before he towered over her where she cowered below him on the floor.
He rumbled a satisfied laugh as he raised a clawed hand to crush her. Her training with Stonequest said she should dodge but she ignored the instinct. Instead, she clenched her fist and aimed it at his palm.
His claw swung and immediately recoiled, and he grasped one hand with the other.
She knew it wouldn’t kill him, not in the palm, but she had to save her friends.
“Drew! Jim! Keeeeeeith!” she shouted as he thundered around the room and his frenzy shattered pillars and hurled flaming scaffolding everywhere.
“Hall!” Drew yelled in response. He and Jim had the unconscious Rookie between them, an arm over each of their shoulders. They were as close to the wall as they could be, but with the equipment on fire, they had exactly zero cover from the dragon that continued to demolish the room.
“I’ll clear a path for you,” Kristen called.
“Finish him off,” Drew ordered with his boss-cop voice.
“I can’t. Hurting his palm took everything I had. We have to get out of here.”
“Through the steam tunnels? We’ll never make it. This is it, Kristen.”
“No, no we can do it If we make it to the van—”
“He’ll pick us up and drop us in the river. You have to face him, Kristen.”
The sound of an avalanche behind her made her turn quickly to see that most of the ceiling had collapsed.
In the moment that followed, she realized she could hear her own breathing over the crackle of the flames. Shadowstorm had stopped moving. Was he trapped under the rubble? Had he broken a bone? Was he dead?
Through the smoke, the hulking shape of his human form appeared. His hands were clasped together in front of him but he was laughing.
“That was dragon’s flesh? Clever, clever little human. Considering you aren’t one of us, you sought to use our bodies against us? Too bad you didn’t hit my throat or heart with it. As it is, my hand will take days to heal.” He held the bullet up in his two fingers and crushed it.
“No—” She choked on the protest.
“Was that your—what’s the human expression—ace up your sleeve? I must say, I expected more from Stonequest’s little protégé. No matter. You’ve proven yourself as pathetic as the apes who now cower behind you. Step aside as I consume their flesh.”
“You’re bluffing,” she said. “You can’t transform now.”
He chuckled, a low, dark sound that grew lower as he approached and became a rumble that filled the room while his body once again took the shape of a dragon.
“No, I am quite hungry—healing powers and all that,” he growled, whipped his tail, and flung her through the flames.
Before she could fall, the tail snapped again and pressed her against the wall. In horror, she realized he intended to force her to watch while he ate her friends.
And there was nothing she could do. It was over and she’d lost. He would destroy this city, starting with her friends, then her family. Once he’d revenged himself on those she loved, he’d take the city and it would be as if she had never existed.
Shadowstorm had won.
Chapter Seventy-Two
“The only question left is which of these steaks I eat first,” the dragon said with mock deliberation, “and if I should eat them rare or well-done.”
Tears poured down Kristen’s face, strangely soothing in the smoke-filled chamber. She would die there but with the knowledge that he would kill everyone she loved.
“Bring it, you fucking alligator.” Drew spat in the dragon’s direction.
“I’ll find the sack of rocks you need to eat to digest your food, you overgrown fucking chicken, and I’m gonna take a shit. Every time you eat, you’ll taste my asshole.” Jim smiled mirthlessly.
The team leader barked a laugh at that.
“It looks like it’ll be this one, then.” Shadowstorm took the Wonderkid in his claw and began to squeeze. “It appears you need an anatomy lesson.”
Keith coughed and shifted briefly through consciousness as his brain fought to wake him fully.
“The Steel Dragon will…fuck you up,” Keith managed before he passed out again.
She actually laughed at that. It was so insane. Her friends were about to die because of her, and what did they do? They didn’t cry or rage or quit, they simply laughed in the face of death.
But they weren’t laughing at death, not really. Even in the dragon’s grasp, Jim looked at her, hope naked on his face. Drew also looked at her, his expression grim but not dire. And Keith had awoken only to say he believed in her.
There would be nothing worse than letting her people die. She couldn’t fail them.
Her people.
Before, she had thought of that as a bad thing, but that’s what they were. They were her people.
Dragons weren’t the only ones who had people they protected and cared for, people they thought of as their own because they wanted them in their lives. Her mother and father thought of her and Brian as their own, and there was nothing wrong with that. People spoke of “my husband” or “my grandmother.” Yes, there was possession to that, but that didn’t make it wrong. In fact, it made perfect sense.
Something solidified inside her like molten steel touching water and a sense of purpose took shape.
Kristen realized that she had looked at being a dragon all wrong. She had thought her power would make her a danger to the people in her life, but that wasn’t the case at all. People had only survived dragons and wars and malaria because they cared about each other. They wanted the people they loved to stay in their lives so badly, they’d seize any power they could do keep them there.
Yes, some abused their power. There were monsters who walked the Earth, but just because she had power didn’t mean she had to abuse it.
She could use hers selflessly. It was a way she could protect those who needed protection from monsters like the lying beast of shadows who now threatened her friends.
It started in her heart, which was a surprise to her. She’d always thought it had been a mental block, but when her chest doubled, then tripled in size, she thought maybe she’d had it wrong from the start.
Steel scales burst from her chest, raced down her arms and legs, and altered her steel skin from the smooth nearly hairless texture of a human to the scaly armor of a dragon.
Her limbs extended and her legs grew another joint. Claws extended from her hands and feet. Wings emerged from her back and with barely a thought, they pushed her off the wall and she slid from Shadowstorm’s grasp.
The Steel Dragon landed on all fours, although her neck was now long enough that she could still see her enemy in front of her. Her spine extended and another appendage came into existence in her mind. She had a tail—a wickedly long tail with a barbed tip like that of a halberd. The word for the weapon came to her in her brother’s voice.
She breathed in through a longer snout. Thousands of tiny silver particles reabsorbed into her body. Apparently, her transformation shrouded her in silvery glitter. She was one hundred percent cool with that.
A great heat surged in her chest like a forge or an engine—no, a nuclear reactor.
Shadowstorm tossed Jim aside and growled at her.
Her new senses told her there was more to the sound than simply a threat. There were unspoken words. An emotional language revealed itself to her. She could sense his rage, his desire to destroy her, and, like sour milk in a cup of coffee, his fear.
The knowledge told her that he could taste her emotions as easily as she could his. He could taste her resolve, her courage, and her unwillingness to let him live and didn’t like any of this.
Kristen smiled a dragon’s grin before she attacked.
She pounded into her adversary, unprepared for her own strength. Her steel body outweighed the larger dragon and she plowed over him. The two of them bulldozed through the rubble in the middle of the room.
Though Shadowstorm was afraid, there was also a sense of purpose in his aura. He had fought dragons before and had killed dragons before. That lent him confidence she had yet to learn. They rolled together and she attempted to end up on top but he thwarted her and gained the advantage. She’d forgotten to use her wings.
He bit at her throat to sever her jugular but she struck him with her tail. The blade at its tip sliced his face and slit the scales that would have been his cheek if he’d been human.
With a bellow of pain, he fell back, stumbled, and staggered through the rubble. Apparently, the tip of her tail was as effective as the tiny bullet if not more so. She decided that she liked being a dragon.
“Kristen! A little help,” Drew yelled.
She turned to locate him. Keith was still unconscious, but the team leader was strong enough to carry him. Jim had made it to them but was limping. At least he still had his gun. She cleared the burning scaffolding from their exit with a single swoosh of her tail and didn’t even feel the flames.
“Wait for me,” she told them as Shadowstorm attacked, brandishing both claws.
Kristen dug her rear talons into the tile so instead of tumbling, she only slid.
He brought his tail around and snapped it at her face. She dodged it but he had anticipated this. He used her movement to snap at her neck once again and managed to get his jaws around her before she retaliated with a claw swiped along his throat. She shoved him off.
Her adversary roared and she smiled, exuding confidence. She’d cut his neck and could tell from his aura that the wounds burned.
“The neck, huh?” she said, pumped her wings, and flung herself at him. She over-calculated and he was able to dodge. Her momentum carried her into the far wall and the impact shook the entire room and more of the roof rained down aroun
d them.
She could tell from Shadowstorm’s aura that he had become more frightened. If she’d caught him with a strike like that, she could have knocked him out long enough to savage his throat and end this battle.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t do that again. Her friends were in the tunnels above her.
The thought seemed to occur to him at the same moment it occurred to her, for he billowed into a shadowy mist and flew up through the hole in the ceiling and into the dark steam tunnels where her friends had fled.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Whatever Shadowstorm’s shadow powers were, they didn’t allow him to simply vanish. With a pump of Kristen’s silvery wings, she followed him into the tunnel above them. His massive bulk blocked the passage ahead of her.
Gunshots resounded around him, almost muffled by his girth.
She clamped her jaws on his tail and pumped her wings to drag them both back.
He mewled like a cat as she yanked him from the passageway. As soon as his arms and legs were free, he clawed and scratched at her, screaming something about her not knowing how to fight with proper etiquette.
In response, she kicked him with her back legs and hurled him into the chamber where they’d originally fought.
“Get up and out of here,” she told her friends, using her aura to assure them that she would be safe.
“The steam,” Drew replied.
When she studied the pipes, she could see the heat like she wore infrared goggles. There seemed to be a main pipe that fed the other smaller pipes. This one was the size of a man instead of an arm. She struck it with her tail, severed it, and gave the steam an easier path of escape than the relatively tiny, twisting veins that ran through the tunnels.
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