The Steel Dragon (Steel Dragons Series Book 2)

by Kevin McLaughlin

  Either way, she would take the satisfying result. This was exactly what she needed. There was footage of the attacker infiltrating the building and slipping something into the coffeepot the servants had served Jasper and Kristen from. It included a recording of the intruder confronting Windfire and Kristen’s fight against the human woman and the assassin’s flight. There was even footage of the woman hopping the fence and two shadowy figures helping her into the woods.

  This changed everything. She copied all the video that showed the intruder onto her phone and shut the computer down.

  Feeling proud of herself, she sealed the room again and went so far as to move a painting from down the hall to cover the hole she’d punched and the smaller ones she’d poked in the wall.

  With her evidence in hand, she left the abandoned mansion, transformed into a dragon, and headed toward Dragon police headquarters. She didn’t know if she was more excited about making Stonequest proud or making Ridgespine swallow his words and admit he had a fair amount to learn from their newest intern.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kristen transformed into her human form in a park a few blocks down from Dragon SWAT headquarters and walked the rest of the way to the Capital Square Building. The dragon working the door in human glamor glanced at her and immediately returned his attention to his newspaper. “I thought you weren’t due back for a couple more days. Did you leave something here or something?”

  “I think I might have cracked this case wide open. Do you know where Ridgespine is right now?”

  “Right here,” the sergeant said and entered from the hallway with the elevator. “I sensed your aura. What are you doing here?”

  “There’s been a breakthrough. I have something to show you. I think we might know more about Windfire’s—”

  “That’s enough, Steel.”

  “Sir?”

  “This isn’t the place to have this conversation. Any human could simply walk in.”

  “You can say that again,” said the dragon tasked with watching the entrance. She found that to be an odd stance from the man whose job it was to make sure that didn’t happen, but she nodded all the same. They were right. Someone could walk in off the street.

  She followed Ridgespine to the elevator. He pressed the button for the fourth floor and as soon as the doors slid shut, she pulled her phone out and brought up the footage.

  “Sir, if you’ll take a look, I think you’ll be surprised to find that in fact—”

  “Now’s not the time. I thought I made that clear.” He didn’t even turn to glance at Kristen.

  “Sir…am I supposed to believe that there are spies in the elevator?”

  “Watch your tone. Dragons were once ostracized for being disrespectful. I have little doubt I could bring the practice back where you are concerned.”

  “But Sergeant, I have vital information that—”

  “I’m sure you do. And we can review your little hypothesis once we get to my office. I’ve lived for centuries, Steel. Telling me whatever nonsense theory you’ve thrown together can wait thirty seconds.”

  “Yes, sir.” She gritted her teeth. For the rest of the ride in the elevator and the walk to his office, she focused on two things. The first was to clench her jaw as tightly as possible to keep her mouth shut, and the second was to keep her aura from spilling rage into the entire building. If anything, doing so made her respect Heartsbane even more. She found it difficult to control her aura, and hers wasn’t even particularly powerful. The other dragon must have really struggled to achieve her position and be treated with respect given how hard she must have to work to suppress the effects of her powers. Maybe. Then again, Heartsbane hadn’t been raised as a human and therefore had probably not been treated as a pariah by dragon kind since she’d been discovered.

  They made it down the hallway without Ridgespine insulting her further or her saying anything else—a victory for both parties. They stepped inside the office and he closed the door and gestured for her to sit.

  She did so in a hard-backed wooden chair that was probably older than most cities in the United States. While the sergeant walked around his desk to sit, she scanned the office.

  There was a painting of Ridgespine on the wall behind him that was no doubt older than the invention of photography. He wore a military uniform that she thought might have been British. She couldn’t really tell, but it did make her wonder about his accent, which was American, and she wondered how many times he’d changed it. That had to be something all dragons did to continue to fit in with human culture. She’d never noticed Stonequest’s accent, which for a being who was centuries old, was kind of strange when she thought about it.

  A few medals hung on the walls of the office, all big, gaudy, and gold, along with a pair of slender curved swords with golden hilts. There were no photos or paintings of family and nothing to indicate that the stern dragon did anything but work on Dragon SWAT in every available moment of his time.

  “Now, what seems to be so urgent that you needed to come into headquarters despite being on leave? Remember, you’re a dragon. Your life’s not ticking away like it does for humans. It’s time to learn patience. There’s no reason to fear the—what do the humans call it? The grim reaper. There’s no reason to fear the grim reaper anymore.”

  “Actually, sir, that’s kind of why I’m here.” Kristen took her phone out and brought up the sequence she’d constructed of the intruder breaking into the house, drugging her and Jasper, confronting Windfire, and fighting her before eventually escaping.

  Ridgespine watched the footage for about six seconds before he realized what it was. “Is this Windfire’s mansion?” he asked, a little stupidly in her opinion.

  “Yes, sir. It was all on a backup system. If you move the slider at the bottom, you can fast forward.”

  The sergeant nodded and clumsily sped the footage up until the battle between Kristen and the assassin. He flinched when the attacker fired the gun into Windfire’s chest, despite the gunshot sounding quiet and tinny over her phone’s speakers. “My God. The bitch really did it with a handgun.”

  She wasn’t sure if he said bitch because the attacker was a human or woman, but she didn’t like it either way. Still, this wasn’t the time to say anything. There was a murder that needed to be solved. “Yes, sir,” she said, confident that her aura told Ridgespine what she thought of his language.

  He watched her try to catch the attacker until the chase moved outside. The footage was harder to make out there—the harsh glare of the lights on the snow made the shadows almost impenetrable—but even with the low quality, it was obvious that she had told the truth. He even rubbed his chin when something blew the snow back into place and erased the woman’s last set of tracks to give her the advantage over her pursuer.

  “I’ll be damned,” the sergeant said once the video ended. “How the hell did you find this? Don’t tell me it’s on the Web.”

  “The Web? Oh, the Internet?” How Ridgespine had latched onto slang that was twenty years out of date was a mystery for another day. “No, sir, it wasn’t online. I went back to the crime scene and went through the cameras. I found a dead area in the security system and assumed that given Windfire’s paranoia, it didn’t seem likely that he had accidentally left a place in his mansion that wasn’t on camera. I was right. He was hiding a secret room with a backup hard drive.”

  “And you went into this room?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s where I got the video. I made a backup on my phone—you know that entire crime scene is completely abandoned?—and came straight here to show you, sir.”

  “And you can make me a copy?” Ridgespine gestured at his computer the way a vegetarian might gesture at a slab of raw beef with equal parts fear and confusion.

  “Yes, sir. If you’ll give me a moment.” She connected her phone to the computer and transferred the files. An awkward few minutes followed while the videos copied. Ridgespine said nothing and watched the progress bar with the sa
me strange, anxious fascination that her brother devoted to his console when he was downloading new games. Finally, the files finished copying. The computer dinged and—despite it saying so right on the screen—he looked at her for confirmation.

  “We’re all done, sir.” She disconnected her phone.

  “Very good then, Lady Steel.”

  Kristen sighed with relief. “Thank you, sir.” When she’d first come into Dragon SWAT HQ, she had hated being called Lady Steel. Now, she was pleased to hear the anachronistic honorific.

  “This will probably prove to be er…useful. I think that, in time, the uh…organization will see the value of what you’ve done here.” Obviously, Ridgespine was unaccustomed to giving compliments, yet she had the sense that there might have been something more to what he was trying to say because of his aura. It vacillated between being impressed and disdain. He liked what she had done but he also really, really didn’t.

  “Sergeant…with all due respect, what will we do from here? We need to take this to Stonequest or whoever is in charge of this investigation. I have some ideas on how to cross-reference some of the video here with—”

  “That will be enough, Lady Steel.” Ridgespine’s aura was all professional once more.

  “Sir?”

  “We appreciate what you did here, and I’ll do my best to get you a civilian reward for assisting us. It’s been a few decades but I’m sure there are still a few gold coins lying around in the coffers. I’ll make sure that your help as an outside informant is noted and will do my best to protect you.”

  “Do your best to protect me? Sir, again, with respect, what the hell are you talking about?”

  That earned her a harsh glare from him. “You broke the rules by going to a crime scene solo. There is a whole slew of reasons not to do that, not least of which being that you could have contaminated the evidence and hurt the investigation.”

  “Contaminated the investigation? There wasn’t anyone there. I simply walked right in. What’s to stop anyone else from doing that and contaminating the whole damn place?” Kristen knew she shouldn’t raise her voice, but she simply couldn’t help herself. This was ridiculous.

  “We have an aural sensor on the premises and will know if a dragon moves in. You showing up will make that harder to discern.”

  “Oh, for the love of Christ, a dragon did not do this. You saw the video. What kind of a dragon would fight Windfire in their human form?”

  “This video lends some credence to that theory—or at least supports the idea that a dragon manipulated humans against Windfire, which is outside the rules of engagement. When we wrap this all up, I’ll reference that you found this video. Get yourself under control and when this is all over, you might actually have the beginnings of some kind of a reputation.”

  “This is absurd. I did what needed to be done to solve the crime. I brought back the evidence you need to get a handle on this and all you talk about is what rules I broke? Those are some fucked up priorities.”

  “If you had theories—”

  “You would have ignored them. Admit it. There’s no way you would have listened to me if I didn’t have evidence.”

  “And now we have the evidence. Thank you for that. Now that it’s off your phone, you can go.”

  “Off my phone? What are you—” Kristen cut the question off before she revealed anything further to the archaic dragon. Of course, he didn’t know how copying files worked. She didn’t need to inform him that it worked quite differently from moving a stack of papers from one drawer to another. There was no need to correct this misconception, not with his present attitude. “There’s a map in that file as well that shows the location of the hidden room if you want me to show it to you when I’m back from suspension or whatever.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Lady Steel. You’re suspended for this infraction—”

  “But I didn’t even know—”

  “You were on leave and you’re a former human cop. Don’t give me any of this nonsense about not knowing any better. Besides, those are the consequences for skipping out on training sessions. You’d know good and well that you’re not supposed to operate by yourself at a crime scene if you’d stayed in the paper dungeon for more than a few seconds. You were supposed to learn that you can’t simply go haring off by yourself any time you please. There are reasons for procedures. Reasons that have been around much longer than you have.”

  Kristen gritted her teeth but failed miserably to control her aura. She knew that Ridgespine could feel every spark of her white-hot fury. “How long will my suspension be extended, sir?” she asked when she managed to speak without yelling.

  “Until we finish the investigation, at least. That could take a week or longer.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Months, depending on the track Stonequest wants to pursue.”

  “Months? Come on.”

  “Until then, you need to take a step back and stop throwing everything into disarray. I understand this world’s new to you, so take time to say goodbye to the old one. I think that…well, I shouldn’t say this, but I think that this evidence will impress some people, but you need to learn patience.”

  “I’m supposed to wait months while a killer of dragons is on the loose?”

  “During the last human rebellion, some of us held our positions for years. Consider yourself lucky that you live in a time as frenetic as the current one. You never would have survived in times past.”

  “Right, sir. Whatever you say.” Kristen wanted to say that Ridgespine was barely surviving now—that he didn’t understand computers, or people, or the city outside the walls of the building, but she held her tongue. She was sure he could read her aura anyway. Disdain was such a strong emotion and she made no effort to contain it in the least.

  “That will be all, Lady Steel.”

  She nodded, stood, and saw herself out of his office. The asshole even went so far as to watch her enter the elevator like he thought she might trash the place or something. It was appalling and pathetic. He didn’t understand what was happening, so he focused on her and acted like that attention would help instead of hinder.

  It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She wouldn’t let this woman hurt any more dragons, and she wouldn’t let the team supporting her continue to operate from the shadows. If Dragon SWAT didn’t want her on the investigation, fine, but that didn’t mean she would simply give up and stand on the sidelines while yet another secret enemy threatened to choke her city.

  And luckily for her, she happened to know people who would feel exactly the same way she did.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Once she stormed out of the building, Kristen texted her friends and asked if they wanted to meet at a brewery after work. She was pissed and didn’t think there was time to waste, but also knew Captain Hansen well enough to understand that if she marched into SWAT headquarters in Detroit and demanded her old team come to talk to her, the woman would either yell at her until she backed off—despite her being only human she was still quite intimidating—or she’d simply tell Stonequest.

  She didn’t want either of those things to happen, so she ordered a dark beer—she always preferred porters, stouts, and the likes in cold weather—and waited at the bar for her friends to finish work.

  They came in one by one and she told them what had happened. Hernandez—for once—was wildly supportive of her and went so far as to suggest that they burn down the dragon patriarchy, something she couldn’t quite wrap her head around the logistics of.

  Jim was also very supportive of her operating outside of Dragon SWAT, but that didn’t surprise her either. He didn’t like dragons so probably wanted to buck their rules merely for spite, although he did show an interest in the group that had killed Windfire that she should have anticipated. It did make sense, after all. He didn’t like dragons and they attempted to kill dragons, so it seemed like a match.

  Keith had Kristen’s back, but he always did. Butters also
supported her and seemed appalled at the lousy perimeter that Dragon SWAT had maintained. Beanpole went along with everyone else, although the furrow of his brow seemed to suggest that he was less than happy to do so.

  It was Drew who had the biggest issue with what she had done, so she considered it quite fortuitous that he was the last of them to arrive. By the time he was able to voice his opposition, she had a cheering squad.

  “You know, when you worked with me and my team, you had to follow rules too. I had issues with you rushing into buildings even though you had steel skin, and you had to learn to respect that,” he said over an untouched beer.

  “This is different, though. She used her experience to investigate a case, not put herself in jeopardy,” Keith said in support of her.

  “We can’t know that, though. You’ve said yourself that you missed out on the magic training part of your job. Maybe there are curses or hexes or some shit you don’t know about,” the team leader pointed out.

  “If there are, none of them activated,” she replied.

  He shrugged and nodded half-heartedly, which meant he still wasn’t convinced. “I’m only saying that if you had gone to one of my crime scenes without my permission, I might have tried to bench you too.”

  “But would you have willfully ignored what I was saying because you worried about the political ramifications?”

  Drew grinned. “You, me, and Captain Hansen all know that the answer to that is an enthusiastic fuck no.”

  Kristen smiled. She thought she had him. “I’m not asking for us to put ourselves in danger, only run some discreet intel. I have this woman’s face, right? There has to be something we can do with that.”

  “But isn’t this dragon business?” Butters protested.

  “I don’t think so. It might be, and if it is, I have no doubt that Stonequest will catch the dragon with his crystal spheres or whatever. But if this is a human breaking and entering and murdering in Detroit, this is a human concern. The dragons can’t keep this to themselves in the same way that they couldn’t when Shadowstorm terrorized the city. Shit, busting him got me on dragon SWAT. At the end of this, either I’ll be wrong—in which case, maybe I can come back and work here—or I’ll be right and all of you will be the first human heroes to dragon kind.”