More impressive yet was that she could feel the dragon flashing her aura at him. She wanted him to be afraid, and no doubt he was, and yet he fought that fear and held his ground. Kristen thought she’d always be impressed with the courage humans showed to a world that could kill them so callously. Standing face to face with a dragon was equally as brave as remaining in one’s home during a hurricane, although she had to admit it was perhaps even more stupid.
“Heartsbane, right?” The Wonderkid all but growled the question at the woman in his face.
“You’re damn straight I am.”
“Make my fucking day, Heartsbane.” He blew her a kiss.
“All right, all right, that’s enough. This is only a friendly game of airsoft,” Stonequest called. “Please step away from the pissing contest, Heartsbane. We use pistols, humans use automatic rifles. It’s cool.”
Heartsbane jerked her fists up in an effort to make Jim flinch, but the Wonderkid remained unmoved. He merely glared at her.
Kristen shook her head. This was supposed to bring the two groups closer together, but it seemed to create distance between them instead.
“Heartsbane, that was an order,” Stonequest said. “Get your ass over here and grab a pistol. We’ll still slaughter them.” He said the last words as a joke, but no one laughed.
The dragon scowled but she went to stand beside her commanding officer. Once she walked away, Jim turned and returned to the knot of humans. Keith and Hernandez gave him a thumbs-up and Kristen shook her head. Her friends on human SWAT were bold enough to play mind games with a team of dragons. She loved their bravery, even if it was as foolish as anything.
Drew stepped forward and his expression suggested that he tried to contain a smile. “You know what? I think The Wonderkid is right. You think you’ll easily slaughter us even if you have weaker weapons. That’s exactly the kind of arrogance humans have had enough of. We’ll use pistols too. That way, when we win, you won’t be able to say a thing.” He finally allowed the smile to come through.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Kristen protested. “You can’t argue that dragons aren’t faster, and it’s simply not possible for us to not use those abilities. It’s like asking you to be slower. Even if you try, how much slower is slow enough? It’s not something we can quantify. Pistols versus semi-automatics will at least give you a fighting chance.”
“We don’t want it to be a slaughter any more than they do,” Drew said and gestured at the dragons. “Pistols will make everything fairer.” He winked at her. That meant he had a plan and wanted her to go along with it, even though she was on the other team.
She nodded, unable to help herself. Although she would play on the dragon’s side—she was a dragon, after all, and one objective of this practice was working with one’s team against an unusual threat—part of her still wanted the humans to win. That didn’t mean she intended to hold back at all. However, she saw absolutely no reason to tell her dragon allies that the humans were up to something. Not that it would have mattered. Dragons tended to underestimate humans not only physically but mentally as well. It honestly wasn’t smart, considering how many things humans had invented over the years. Airsoft guns were merely one example.
“All right. Dragon SWAT, do you have a problem with humans using pistols?”
They all shook their heads, even Heartsbane. Only Emerald said anything. “I had hoped to break a sweat and maybe not have to work out today, but it’s cool. We’ll see you guys when this is over—let’s say five minutes.”
“Do you want us to wait that long before we whoop you? No problem.” Hernandez stuck her tongue out.
“Load up,” Kristen said, and everyone went to the booth to get their weapons. The kid who worked at the counter and watched the exchange looked equal parts nervous and excited. She noticed he had a monitor with a split screen on it to display camera feeds of the battle. No doubt he was ready to watch it all happen.
“If you stream this, I’ll not tip you a cent,” she told him sternly.
He nodded, but the grin on his face said that was exactly what he wanted to do, and that maybe someone else had gotten to him first. She eyed Keith—he loved repping the Steel Dragon online—but he had already run off toward the far end of the course with the other humans.
“Here we go,” Stonequest said.
Kristen and the dragons moved to the entrance of the airsoft course.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The five members of Dragon SWAT waited at the entrance to the arena for the horn to blare.
“We stay tight and we do this clean. If they ask us for a rematch and beat us one match out of five, or one match out of three, fine,” Stonequest whispered to his team, “but they will not beat us in round one. That means we do this by the book. They no doubt think we need superpowers to beat them and that we don’t know how to work together. And Lady Steel, if I find out you’re a mole for them, I’ll shoot you myself.” He said the last words as a joke, but she knew he was serious.
“No one has shot these guys with more pellets than I have. Believe me, the last thing I want is to lose and to have to listen to Hernandez gloat about it.” That wasn’t quite true, she admitted silently. What she wanted least in this game was to be eliminated first.
The claxon sounded and the door to the arena opened.
Stonequest nodded. “All right, then.”
Kristen hadn’t been able to see into the arena from the outside. The entire area was surrounded by camouflage netting hung between telephone poles, so the inside had remained a black box until now. She had come to this airsoft course more than a couple times, however. In fact, she’d developed a real affinity for the game when she’d been on human SWAT. She had expected a novel layout but had still thought she’d more or less recognize the interior. The owners of this course were architects who specialized in the pallet. She had imagined a more or less open area with pallet bases spaced here and there and maybe some empty oil drums because that was what was normally there.
Inside, it couldn’t have been more different than her expectations.
The first thing that demanded attention was the eight-foot plywood walls. They were painted black and some of them even had tarps spread across the tops of them. Instead of an open arena with bases, they faced what appeared to be the entrance to a gloomy maze. Spray paint adorned the black paint here and there—an anarchist’s A, a skull in white, and curse words disparaging both cops and dragons.
She had no doubt that Drew had a hand in the design. Hopefully not in the layout itself—although she wouldn’t put it past him—but in the choice of spray paint. He believed in keeping a cool head in any circumstance. From working with him, she knew he was definitely the kind of boss who thought police should come face to face with anti-cop beliefs so that they could stay calm and continue to serve their communities even when it was difficult.
The dragons were obviously less skilled in this mindset.
“What the fuck is this shit?” Heartsbane pointed to a crudely drawn dragon—it looked more like a penis with wings than it did a reptile. Below it, someone had scrawled the words, dragons are dicks.
“Psychological warfare,” Stonequest said. “We set this damn game up a week ago. I bet Drew told these assholes what to paint.”
“Are you sure?” Emerald gestured to another piece of graffiti that said, blue lives murder. “That seems like a really fucking good way to piss a cop off.”
“Don’t blame the owners of this place,” Kristen said. “We’ve really taken advantage here. Private games, weird rules, and hell, Hernandez blows shit up half the time. They know us and probably wanted to make somewhere to actually scare us.”
“Too bad dragons don’t get scared.” Heartsbane huffed.
“Then why aren’t you moving down this passage?” Stonequest asked pointedly.
She didn’t reply in words. Instead, she flashed her aura to tell him and everyone else what she felt about all this before she steppe
d forward.
They moved down the corridor in a tight group. Despite Heartsbane’s temper, Kristen had to admit she was a damn good cop every time she saw her in action. It was more than that, though. She was a warrior, someone who’d fought for centuries. Kristen had the sense that the dragon could not only handle a gun but she could also handle herself in a sword fight or even a good old-fashioned brawl. That all made sense when she thought about it. She was Stonequest’s second in command, which meant that of course she was good. She met each open passage with her teeth clenched and her muscles flexed, ready to spring out of the way at the slightest sound.
The area really was a maze of walls with far more passages than might be expected. The tarps covered about ninety percent of the space above their heads. There was light—more than enough light for dragons to see given that they had night vision—but also enough for humans to not be disadvantaged. But the tarps made it impossible to see the telephone poles that ringed the arena, so it was difficult to track one’s progress.
Lumos, however, didn’t seem to have any issue with it. “I estimate that we’re about a third of the way through,” the golden dragon said. His voice couldn’t have been calmer if he ordered appetizers at a restaurant.
“Let’s pick up the pace, then, and bring the fight to them,” Emerald said. He reminded Kristen vaguely of Keith and Drew combined. While he was professional, he was less than a century old, which—in dragon society—meant he still had much to prove. On top of that, he didn’t have any extraordinary abilities. He was a common, which meant he had worked damn hard to earn his place there. Still, he had the chip on his shoulder that often nagged at someone not born into wealth and power. It really was an odd trait for a dragon to have, she thought.
“I don’t think that would be wise,” Lumos replied. “They will come to us. That’s the name of the game. If we push too fast and let them get behind us, we’ll give them an advantage. After all, it’s more important to out-think your enemy than to out-fight them.”
“That’s Sun Tzu, right?” Kristen asked. “The Art of War.” She had read the book, of course. It was essential reading for any police officer, member of the military, or business leader.
He shrugged. “I don’t remember if he said that first or I did, but either way, it’s good advice.”
“He’s right, Johnny,” Hearstbane said. Apparently, John Emerald’s name had actually been given to him when he hatched, an unusual practice. Heartsbane and Stonequest had taken human names themselves since they worked with humans so much, but they never actually used them. Emerald had been John since he was born. Heartsbane found this hilarious. “It’s better to go slow.”
“Does this arena have another entrance on the opposite side?” Stonequest asked Kristen as they moved past another of the open passages.
“Yeah. The far end. There are only the two.”
“Do you think they’ll try a direct attack or sneak around?”
“There is no way they’ll come straight at us,” Kristen said, not at all ashamed about revealing this aspect of her former team’s strategy to her new team.
Stonequest pressed her for more information. “What do you think their plan is?”
Extremely loud pop music suddenly blared over the speakers. It was so loud that she was convinced there were speakers hidden in the maze itself.
“I think this is step one.” She couldn’t help but smile. Her former team was crazy, and she loved them for it.
“Which way, boss?” Heartsbane had to yell to be heard over the deep, driving bassline and shallow lyrics. She’d reached the end of the straight passage they’d followed. Now, they had to choose right or left.
Stonequest looked at Kristen and raised an eyebrow.
She laughed in response. “I have no idea.” She also had to shout over the noise. “These guys spend their free time coming up with ways to beat me. Do you really think they shared their strategy with me this time?”
“Left,” he said.
Heartsbane nodded and pressed on.
“Be careful,” the Steel Dragon shouted. “This whole place is a perfect setup for ambushes. And I have no doubt they’ll try to use that to their advantage.”
“No human could sneak up on a dragon. I’ll hear them coming a mile away!” she retorted.
“Even over all this noise?” Kristen asked. She could hardly hear herself think. She did seem to have sharper senses as a dragon and she tried to focus those abilities now, but it was difficult. How could one focus on footsteps when a pop diva screamed at you about dropping panties and taking names?
But sure enough, Heartsbane could somehow hear over the racket. She moved in front of the first corridor after she’d turned left and immediately flinched away. Little rubber pellets struck the opposite wall.
“I found the little monkeys,” she roared and peeked down the passage, drawing another bout of airsoft fire.
“Do not pursue, Heartsbane! I repeat, do not pursue!” Stonequest bellowed.
She ignored him and sprinted forward, moving so fast she almost blurred.
“Follow her,” their leader said hastily. “They’ll probably try to separate and isolate us. It’s a good strategy, but we can’t let it work.” He raced away after the other dragon.
“Monkeys?” Kristen asked and followed.
“It’s, uh…” He looked extremely uncomfortable and rather than attempt an answer, he increased his pace.
“It’s a slur for humans. Your kind is related to primates, right?” Emerald said as he pushed past her.
“That’s fucked up,” she retorted.
“Your boy called us dinosaurs. Same shit.”
She didn’t think so. One group had an enormous amount of power and had wielded it through essentially all of history. The other group had served at their beck and call for centuries if not millennia. To her, it seemed like humans had earned the right to a little free speech. The dragons should be the ones to show respect.
But she chose not to say anything and raced after Heartsbane, Stonequest, Lumos, and Emerald, checking the passageways to the right and left as she ran. She knew that rushing after the other team wasn’t tactically sound but also knew that staying behind and on her own wouldn’t help her team either.
Heartsbane reached another T-junction and stopped.
“Didn’t you see which way they went?” Stonequest yelled over the roar of the pop music, which now blared something about drinking in the pool, drinking like it’s cool.
“I heard something instead,” Heartsbane said, but she didn’t move and merely pointed at her foot.
She was standing on something.
“What the hell is that?” Emerald asked.
Kristen crouched but she didn’t have to look closely to know what it was and who had placed it there.
“A pressure mine. Hernandez has talked about that shit forever. I assume she finally accomplished it. Whatever you do, don’t move. We might be able to slip something on top of the pressure plate so it doesn’t go off.” She chuckled but the rest of her team did not seem to think it was funny. Secretly, she couldn’t help but be impressed. Hernandez was always upping her explosives game.
“This is bullshit,” Heartsbane hissed, and Kristen felt the dragon woman’s anger as her own because of her aura. “The rules are pellets from pistols. She can’t simply bury a whole stash of pellets and try to eliminate us like this. Plus, they were obviously here before us. They couldn’t have buried this shit in the last few minutes.”
“Rats always have the territory advantage on those who wish to drive them out,” Lumos said. Even though he had referred to her friends as rats, there was no bitterness in his voice. Kristen had the sense that it was another saying, although she didn’t recognize this one. He looked amused rather than annoyed.
“Hernandez didn’t fill this with pellets,” she said and sniffed the mine. “It’s not her style. It might have a flash of some kind in there, but judging from the smell, I’d say it’s a stink
bomb.”
“A what?”
Before she could repeat herself, the pop song ended.
“Stinkbomb, bitch,” Hernandez yelled from a hiding place nearby in the maze. “If you move, you stink for a week.”
“Then I don’t move, idiot,” Heartsbane yelled in response.
“Then you lose,” Drew yelled.
Despite the fact that everyone sounded fairly close, Kristen couldn’t see where any of them were.
Her attempt to locate them was cut short when pellets erupted from all directions.
She flung herself prone. “Hit the deck! It’s an ambush.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
When the barrage of pellets started, Heartsbane dove out of the way.
The mine exploded in a blinding flash of light. Kristen pushed herself onto her butt and scooted back, laughing at the insanity of it but extremely careful to avoid being shot. By the time her vision returned, the passage was filled with smoke. It wasn’t a stink bomb, after all, but all smoke and flash. She would have to ask Hernandez later if she had smeared the mine with something stinky to throw the dragons off and lied about it to further cover her intention.
Questions could come later. There was movement in the smoke, and even though she possessed night vision from her dragon powers, that didn’t mean she could see through smoke.
She could hear, though, and right now, what she heard was Heartsbane’s cursing.
“You fucking monkey bastards. You had to use a mine to get me. I see how it is—I can’t transform but you can use every little trick humans have learned over the years.”
“Talk all the shit you want as you make your way to the exit,” Keith retorted and sounded way too confident. “I tagged you fair and square. You’re dead.”
The Steel Dragon (Steel Dragons Series Book 2) Page 21
