The door to the massive room was cracked open and light poured out, painting a wall with a single strip of illumination. Voices drifted through the gap. One of them was Windfire’s, which was a huge relief. Knowing that the old dragon was alive meant she hadn’t failed him. Furthermore, the other voice was hushed as well, so it didn’t exactly sound like an assassin who was there to execute him.
Kristen crept forward. She wanted one peek into the room before she burst in. As she moved closer, she could make out more and more of what was being said. Although Windfire spoke quietly, he sounded strained.
“I’d never betray your people. I’ve made that very clear.”
“How can we believe that?” It was a woman’s voice. She had been right about that much.
“I haven’t said a word in nearly three decades. I live peacefully out here and avoid attention. You must understand that I don’t want to be found out any more than you do. If I revealed what you and your people have done, I would be in a perilous position as well.”
The woman snorted derisively, obviously not swayed by Windfire’s argument. Kristen scooted forward, past the band of light and to the other side of the door.
“You mean your position as one of the most powerful beings on the planet might be imperiled?” The visitor sounded scornful.
Kristen didn’t think she’d check the door while she berated Windfire, so she stole a glance. His back was to her and the intruder was beyond him. Yes, it definitely was a woman with white skin, short, dirty-blonde hair that didn’t quite come to her shoulders, and hard eyes. She was tempted to study her face but she couldn’t stare, so she tucked back into the shadows and avoided the band of light.
“What you’ve done—what we’ve done—is beyond the pale of dragon law. I don’t wish anyone to know of it any more than you do.” Windfire sounded nervous and perhaps even afraid but not terrified. The woman hadn’t held a gun. Kristen assumed she’d hear it in his voice if she became openly threatening. This was how she justified her continued eavesdropping.
“But if the world does find out, you recognize that my people will be eradicated? We’ll be burned to a crisp and our friends and families dug out and slaughtered as surely as we are.”
“And what do you think will happen to me?”
“I have no doubt you’ll lose some of your connections, maybe have to give up some of your property, and be ostracized perhaps, but killed? Burned to death and possibly eaten? We both know that none of that would happen. Instead, you’ll lay low for a century—which we both know is nothing to your kind—and everything will blow over.”
She knew she should burst in. The woman sounded more and more irate. She should move before the intruder did, but it was also increasingly clear that this wasn’t an assassin simply there to eliminate Windfire for political reasons. The intruder knew him and furthermore, they’d worked together on something that would apparently be seen as an abomination by dragon kind.
The woman was concerned about being incinerated by dragon fire, and Windfire hadn’t corrected her. Dragons didn’t burn people to death anymore, not since motion cameras had caught it happening once on film and it had been televised. The public outrage had been so extreme that the Dragon Council had publicly apologized for the dragon’s action and made it illegal to do it again except in self-defense, a concept that at the time had been laughable. That Windfire seemed to take the idea of this woman and her and organization being incinerated seriously meant that they had done something extreme.
Kristen wanted to know what.
“But nothing has changed! I haven’t left this mansion in years. Please, there’s no need to worry. Tell me why you’re here and we can work something out. Do you need money? Connections? Samples? I…I don’t want to give any more samples, not with what you’ve done with them, but if you can offer me assurances that leadership has changed, perhaps we can make something work.” Windfire sounded pleading. It wasn’t a good tone for an ancient, supposedly all-powerful dragon.
She peeked in cautiously. There was still no gun raised but now, the woman’s posture was more overtly aggressive. She knew she should act and she would as soon as the intruder stopped talking and attacked.
“Everything has changed,” his visitor said, her voice as hard as granite.
“Not because of my actions,” Windfire responded. The pleading tone was gone. Now, the dragon sounded defensive like a guilty teenager.
“No, because of the Steel Dragon. And now, she’s here.”
The words struck Kristen like a blow to the head. She was there because of her? What could that possibly mean? She had never met Windfire before and had only been assigned there because she’d gotten in trouble in the paper dungeon.
“She knows nothing. I made sure of that,” he said.
Kristen knew he’d been hiding something from her but now, it was too late to find out what.
“That’s what I needed to know. It’s good you haven’t betrayed any secrets, but we don’t know how much longer you can last without being compromised. I’m here to tie up the loose end you represent. Now that I know you’re the end of that line, let’s get on with it.”
“That’s the euphemism you employ to attempt to murder a being such as myself?” Windfire laughed. “You’ll find I’m not as easy to kill as all that.”
Kristen swung the door open, hoping to draw the woman’s attention, but wind roared down the hall, past her, and toward Windfire. She pushed into it and stepped into the doorway to find him already enveloped in a tornado. It ignited and scorched the ballroom floor beneath his feet.
The woman drew her gun and aimed it at the blazing twister. She really did know what she was doing. Hitting a dragon’s vitals during mid-transformation was practically impossible. This woman knew enough to know that. She waited for him to finish.
Unfortunately for her, her delay gave Kristen more than enough time to transform to steel and draw her own handgun. “Hey. That’s my job you’re trying to kill.”
Chapter Eleven
In mere moments, Windfire had assumed his dragon body. He was massive and filled almost a third of the ballroom, despite it being large enough to comfortably fit at least fifty people.
But he wasn’t what held Kristen’s attention. She was now focused on the intruder, who regarded her with a cold, implacable expression. The gun she aimed at her was no doubt the same one she’d used to wound her earlier, a gun that had been loaded with bullets made of dragon.
She moved toward the assassin in steel form. The woman clenched her jaw—there was hesitation in her gesture, but the stubbornness of a resolution made long ago as well—before she fired.
Kristen reacted as she did every time she faced a single gunman. She moved toward the weapon and held her arms up to block the bullets. There was something about actively blocking bullets that seemed to scare the hell out of criminals, even though it didn’t matter where on her body one struck. The steel was the same throughout.
She hoped that was the case now as well. The assailant’s bullets were made of dragon parts, but that didn’t mean they would affect steel, right?
Pain erupted on her forearm and she instinctively flung herself behind one of the many pillars that separated the main dance floor from the perimeter of the room. Windfire seized the opportunity to attack the distracted woman. He struck at her with a claw that was big enough to eviscerate a horse, but his quarry was fast. She rolled under the swipe and came up on her feet.
Kristen looked at her arm, knowing that she needed to help Windfire but also knowing that she needed to assess her own wounds if she wanted to be effective. It felt strange. Wounds from anything but dragons were not something she’d had to deal with for a long time.
The pain from the slash of red on her steel arm was a reminder of this. Nothing had ever penetrated her steel skin before. Nothing. Shadowstorm had beaten her senseless and bruised her bones, but he’d never cut her, and yet the bullet from this weapon had. It had left a gash on her skin
like she was nothing but fresh-cooked ham.
That meant the bullets could kill her, even if she wore her steel skin. Windfire too.
Terrified but accepting of this new knowledge, she leapt out from behind the column and rejoined the fray.
Windfire struck at the attacker with his claws and tail. Each blow forced the woman to jump above it, dodge below, or move one way or the other and out of the dragon’s range.
She did so effortlessly. It reminded Kristen of the time her brother Brian had tried to catch a dragonfly with a bug net. No matter how fast he moved, the insect was faster.
It was the same now. The woman’s reflexes were as fast as anything she had ever seen. She didn’t simply dodge Windfire’s attacks but almost seemed to guide them. Her deft movements around the massive dragon forced him to pivot in the small space until she was on the other side of one of the rows of pillars.
Now, if the old dragon wanted to reach her, he had to punch through the openings rather than swipe across in front of him. It was a good way to limit his size.
Too bad it wouldn’t work on another human-sized fighter.
Kristen raced into battle, past Windfire’s whipping tail, and into the same narrow space between the pillars and the wall that the woman occupied. “Stop now and I won’t shoot.”
In response, the woman fired once more at her. The bullet didn’t hit but she rolled into cover all the same. The idea of being wounded by one of those again was not a nice thought. If it did anything more than graze her, the pain would basically debilitate her. At least it had when Death had shot her with a bullet made of dragon.
But that only meant she had all the more reason to protect Windfire.
She stepped out but her adversary had closed the space between them. Taking advantage of her lack of steel skin, the woman struck her with a karate chop to the neck.
Kristen gasped and tried to suck in air. Her healing powers obeyed and made the wound from the pedestrian blow vanish as quickly as it came.
But already, the woman raced across the open space of the ballroom and past Windfire, who’d stuck his head between two of the pillars to try to bite her.
Immediately, Kristen pursued, turned on her dragon speed, and drew level with her quarry. At least she had been until Windfire got his head clear and tried to swing at the attacker with his tail.
He was in a corner, so the first part of his strike impacted a pillar. In that moment, the assassin shot him once in the shoulder.
The golden dragon screamed. Kristen had no idea that the pain of a dragon could be so powerful until she felt the pain as her own, his aura radiating the effect to her and probably the woman who’d injured him as well. Windfire used his dragon speed to get his tail free, but in his blind rage, he lashed out with it and hurled his protector across the ballroom floor to collide with a wall.
A part of her mind understood that this was exactly what the attacker had planned. She really did know too much about dragons.
“Lady Steel!” Windfire called, embarrassed by his own mistake.
The woman had dodged his tail effortlessly.
He roared and again, flicked his tail at her. She avoided it easily and went into a roll.
“Enough,” he said and inhaled a huge breath. The light of the dragon’s flame illuminated in his throat as the woman came out of her evasive maneuver and onto one knee. Both hands held her gun aimed at Windfire’s chest.
“No!” Kristen yelled from across the ballroom as she pushed herself to her feet and raced toward the combatants.
She was fast, but she wasn’t as fast as gunfire. No dragon was.
The pistol bucked three times and bullets struck the golden dragon in the chest.
Each bullet shattered the scales that covered his torso and turned his protective armor into shrapnel that shredded through his lungs and heart. The fire died in his throat. Brief licks of flame escaped from the holes in his body before he stumbled and fell, mortally wounded.
The woman looked once more at Kristen and shook her head as if trying to dissuade her from following before she fled.
Kristen ran to Windfire. She wasn’t a medic and only knew basic first aid, but it wouldn’t have taken a doctor to know that he was gone. The carnage where his chest was supposed to be was too much and his body too still.
She cursed when she confronted the reality that she’d failed. It seemed impossible that she’d been on this job for less than a week and she’d failed.
Determination settled in and she gave chase as she transformed her body into steel by reflex, even though the pain in her forearm told her that steel skin wouldn’t do a damn thing to protect her against this woman.
As she pushed through the doors the killer had used, she stopped abruptly and stared at her adversary waiting at the end of a hallway. The assassin raised her gun—a revolver, Kristen realized, like she thought she was a sheriff or something—and fired. She’d obviously used the moment to reload, no doubt with more dragon-killing bullets.
Kristen cursed and took cover. Footsteps from the end of the hallway told her the woman was making an attempt to escape.
She wasn’t about to let that happen and raced down the hallway, furious at herself for letting Windfire die but more determined than ever to stop the killer.
Chapter Twelve
Constance Vigil tried to focus on her breathing. She had put enough dream tincture in the Steel Dragon’s coffee to knock a horse out, and yet there she was, pursuing her down the hallway. She’d shot her in the arm—and not injured her too much, thank God—and made her bleed. Still, Kristen hadn’t given up. Her determination was both terrifying and inspirational.
She focused on her breathing because she didn’t actually have increased speed the way dragons did. What she had was a mage in her organization who could increase her metabolism so she didn’t tire. The trick was to make sure her body got enough oxygen. As long as she didn’t cramp up, she could get out of there.
“Stop and no one gets hurt!”
Part of her believed the statement. Kristen Hall had demonstrated her commitment to humankind again and again. She truly was different from any other dragon in the world. If she said she wouldn’t hurt her, she wouldn’t.
But that didn’t mean she would surrender. The dragon had no doubt already called for backup—or would if she apprehended her. If that happened, decades of hard work would be burned away as dragon kind descended on Constance’s allies. That was unacceptable. They’d fought so hard for so long to be in the position they were currently in, as tenuous as it was.
Driven by necessity, she ran on down a hallway and toward a staircase.
Her pursuer followed doggedly in steel form. Constance had already shot her—and proved that her bullets could damage her even through her steel skin—and yet she still wore the protective layer. She would have to get her to drop that armor if she wanted any chance of getting out of there. Fortunately, she and her allies had talked through a few possible scenarios of how to deal with the Steel Dragon if she attacked in her steel-skinned human form. Hopefully, one would work. At the time, she hadn’t realized how pivotal those conversations would prove to be.
She took a deep breath, waited for her adversary to make it part of the way down the hallway, and sprinted up the stairs. On the landing halfway between the second and third floors, she drew another pistol. This one had regular bullets instead of the expensive and difficult to make dragon ones that were in the revolver. She unloaded the entire clip into the landing and tried to keep the bullets spread out enough that it wouldn’t be obvious there was a hole but all still in the Steel Dragon’s path.
“If you hurt someone, I won’t be able to help you!” Kristen shouted.
Constance felt pride swell in her chest for this human woman with a dragon body. She knew that the Steel Dragon wasn’t only referring to other dragons. She genuinely cared about people—human people. She counted that as a huge success.
At the third floor, she waited and focused on
her breathing. She hadn’t experienced any cramps yet, but she could tell her body was beginning to experience fatigue. The spell cast on her could only last so long and she couldn’t drag this out forever.
The dragon moved incredibly fast. She was up the stairs practically as soon as she was in the stairway. But Constance had planned for her steel skin, and Kristen didn’t disappoint. As soon as she put a foot down on the landing, the weakened boards collapsed, unable to support her heavy body.
She barely managed to catch herself on the broken boards and turned back to skin as she tried to pull herself up.
“Stop,” Constance said and leveled the revolver with the dragon bullets at her pursuer’s face. “I did what I was sent to do. I don’t want to hurt you or anyone else.”
“I’m a person like you. There’s no reason to kill me. My name’s Kristen Hall. I’m from Dearborn. You don’t have to do any of this.”
Constance knew the Steel Dragon’s name. The whole world knew her name but hearing it from her own mouth changed something in her. It was simply that Kristen seemed so genuine. She looked at her with eyes that seemed pleading. She wanted this to end and she wanted answers.
“I’m sorry, but I do.”
“Why?” Kristen demanded and made no effort to haul herself up. The poor thing understood that she knew something, but she couldn’t possibly realize how much that really was.
In that moment, she wanted to tell her a thousand things. That she worked with a group of people who might very well have made her. That they had made other dragons in a lab, and that she most likely came from that same lab—not that Constance was completely certain. She wanted to tell Kristen that if she joined them, they could overthrow the tyrannical rule of the dragons together. That soon, so very soon, they could arm her with weapons that would slaughter dragons as easily as dragons did humans. But—as much as she wanted too—she didn’t know if she could trust her. She had worked her entire life to get humans to the pinnacle of society. Kristen might help them, but she was still a dragon. She might push back against the dragons they’d grown in the lab and harvested to make their weapons.
The Steel Dragon (Steel Dragons Series Book 2) Page 8
