She soared over the city and her sharp dragon eyes revealed the streets to her like an owl hunting a vole in the snow. Despite the circumstances—which she really would prefer not to have any of them go through—she felt like she finally had a purpose. Her team and her friends had been threatened. She only hoped the assailant was a dragon or a mage. If they were merely a regular human, it wouldn’t go well for them.
With her wings tucked, she dove toward the SWAT station and spread the steel webbing between the thin, impossibly strong bones of her dragon body to slow her descent. She landed in front of SWAT HQ and noted that the van Drew and the team usually used was parked outside. They’d made it back, then, and were presumably safe. If someone was in the hospital, they wouldn’t have driven to the office.
In moments, she transformed into a human and took a deep breath. There had been an attack on her friends. Drew had said that but not much more before she had rushed off to help. Knowing that she needed to stay calm and keep cool, she took another deep breath. She’d rushed into situations before and endangered not only herself but her friends too. This was a situation where they were in danger, so she couldn’t let fear and paranoia escalate any further. No matter what, she had to remain in control.
Calmly, she looked around and tried to take in her surroundings to both ground herself and see if there was anything out of place. A few early morning joggers ran by, but that was typical. The station was near the Detroit River, and people liked to exercise in the fresh air. A van from Ashley’s Flowers, a local flower shop located in the nearby Millender center, was parked nearby. A bum shuffled past, perhaps unusual for the season as it was still cold out at night, but she recognized the guy. Satisfied that she’d seen nothing unusual, she went inside.
At the front desk was a delivery person from Ashley’s flowers—a kid Kristen recognized, in fact. He tried and failed to persuade the woman at the front desk to take the flowers.
“Miss Hall!” The kid’s voice cracked. She’d used Ashley’s for flowers before she’d been the Steel Dragon. He was probably one of the few people in the entire city who still thought of her as Kristen instead of the Steel Dragon.
“Yes?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Can you sign for this delivery?”
“Hold up there, Slick,” said the woman working there. Mrs McGill sounded apologetic but firm. “Captain Hanson said that no one on the force is taking deliveries right now.”
Slick—undoubtedly a nickname but an accurate one based on the sheen of sweat on the kid’s forehead—looked pleadingly at Kristen.
“Who are they for?”
“Uh…” He checked a tablet, “Keith Wentworth? Please, miss? I think it’s for his aunt, maybe? We’re friends on social media and he’s been upset about her. I think it’s for that.”
Kristen nodded and signed for the flowers. That checked out. Keith had lost an aunt a week or so before. His relentless social media presence had taken a morose turn for a few days before he’d cheered up a little.
She took the vase with the bouquet and headed toward the back room. Curious, she sniffed the flowers. They were an unusual choice for sharing condolences. Growing up as the kid of a cop in Detroit, she had attended more than her fair share of funerals. The standard was white lilies, although that wasn’t a hard and fast rule. Still, most people sent white flowers for funerals. Even white roses or carnations were considered more tasteful than the garish red roses in front of her. At least they smelled good.
Her team was already gathered in the old breakroom when she walked in with the flowers in hand. They all looked morose. Cups of coffee stood half-finished on the table and a dejected Butters poked at a box of donuts.
“Did someone die?” she asked in a somewhat weak attempt at gallows humor.
Everyone looked up.
“Flowers? Really?” Drew asked.
“Who are they for?” Hernandez asked.
“Loverboy,” she said and pointed at Keith.
“Now that is weird,” Hernandez quipped. “There ain’t no one on this planet who would send the Rookie flowers.”
“I’ll have you know I am the object of affection of many of my online followers,” Keith retorted smartly.
“The delivery boy thought maybe they were for your aunt,” Kristen told him.
He nodded.
“Red roses?” Butters asked.
“Yeah.” She grimaced. “That’s why I thought it might be a stalker or something. Who sends roses for a funeral?”
“Is there a note?” Drew asked.
She hadn’t seen one but she checked again. “Nope, nothing.”
“That’s weird,” the team leader said, his voice like ice. “Kristen, maybe you should put the flowers down.”
His warning came too late. The arrangement began to spray gas into the room. She turned her steel skin on by reflex—even though it wouldn’t do a thing to protect her lungs from toxic gas—and threw the vase through the window and into the parking lot.
Hernandez had already donned a gas mask. “Come on. Let’s go see if this asshole was more serious about killing Keith than he was about me or Butters.”
Kristen nodded and followed as a pit formed in her stomach, one so deep it could maybe reach all the way to the center of the earth. She had made a mistake—a serious, possibly lethal, and unbelievably naïve mistake. While she had recognized the flower shop van and the delivery boy, she hadn’t even considered that such familiar things would be used against them.
But it made sense. After all, if these three events were connected—and she had no doubt that they were—whoever was orchestrating them had done their research. They had known Butters was a sniper and that Hernandez had a penchant for explosives. It was also very possible that they had known that the cops had received flowers from Ashley’s and would therefore be less wary. Shit. She half-wondered if whoever had done this had only sent the bouquet after the other two events in hopes of snaring her.
But no, probably not. If they knew she was a dragon, they would have known her reflexes would have reacted much faster than the time it would take for a gas canister to fill a room. Which meant that whoever they were, they weren’t infallible. That they hadn’t anticipated her action was a tiny, infinitesimal comfort. And considering how close it had been, it was probably safe to assume that no more mistakes could be made, not with the lives of the people she cared about on the line.
Chapter Forty-One
It had taken all night, but Brian had finally done it. He was first on the leader boards. The game had been out for hardly twenty-four hours—a second-world first-person shooter in which you had to craft your own guns from the beasts you slew—but Brian had already climbed to the top.
He probably wouldn’t be able to hold the number one position—few could and especially given how exhausted he was—but he’d likely keep his place in the top ten for at least a week, even if he stopped playing. Not that he would do that. He still had a base to reinforce, plus there was some kind of a warthog-centipede fusion monster that, if he could kill and harvest it, would grant him some sick armor. He’d need to sleep, but he’d be back at it thereafter.
A chime sounded—a new sound he didn’t recognize as a proximity alert or anything else from the game. Was there a feature he’d somehow neglected? That was impossible, though. He was in first, and not by a tiny margin. There was simply no way he’d neglected an entire component of the game.
The noise repeated.
He looked up from his screen when he recognized the sound. Someone had rung the doorbell.
His first thought was to simply wait for his parents to answer it but he then remembered something about them going to get brunch and him demanding pancakes.
With a sigh, he signed out of the game—he was in his base and had it locked down so it wasn’t too risky—and answered the door.
No one was there. Brian shrugged, turned toward the couch, and tried to decide whether to continue to kick ass or if a nap would better m
aintain his place as number one. He frowned when he realized the couch wasn’t empty.
A person sat there, right next to his usual position.
Startled, he rubbed his eyes. He’d gone for quite some time without sleep, and he had to admit that the woman on the couch looked like she had come from a dream.
He rubbed again but the woman didn’t evaporate so he studied her quickly.
She was gorgeous, easily the most beautiful woman he had ever seen with long, dark hair and beautiful, exotic features. Her figure was like something out of a videogame. She had a narrow waist, an ample chest that was barely contained in the tiny black dress she wore, and legs that poked from a slit in the skirt and set his mind racing. A garter there caught his eye and oh, how he longed to remove it. She reminded him of a Bond villain, and he liked Bond villains.
“Uh, hi…uh, who are you?” He stumbled through the words.
“My name is Obscura and I’ve heard a lot about you, Brian Hall. Number one in only a day? I like fast boys.”
Brian’s heart hammered in his throat. This woman—this perfect woman—was on his couch, talking about his high score. It was almost too good to be true. Of course, there was the question of how she’d gotten inside.
“You’re…you’re a dragon?” He said it as a question but he already knew the answer. That was the only way she could have made it inside and anyway, he could sense her aura.
Kristen didn’t actively use her aura on him, but she sometimes did by accident. He could feel the same sensation tug at his brain to make his sleep-deprived mind even more sluggish.
“Is that a problem?” the woman asked in mock outrage, her finger pointed at her breasts—her chest, he told himself—like he’d accused her of a horrible thing.
“No, I…you must know my sister is a dragon.”
“I’m not interested in your sister, Brian. I’m interested in you. Stop being such a stranger and come sit with me. I’m cold.” She shivered, which made parts of her body dance in a way that graphics simulators had yet to emulate.
“Yeah, of course.” He knew he wasn’t thinking clearly because he was tired, because this dragon lady was manipulating him with magic, and because he hadn’t so much as had a girl talk to him since he’d graduated high school. His brain dismissed all these potential conflicts of interest and logic as quickly as they arose.
Brian sat beside the woman and pulled a blanket over them both.
To his agonized delight, she squirmed closer so their bodies were pressed against one another and her breasts pushed against the side of his chest. He hoped she didn’t reach under the blanket and discover his enthusiasm, but he also desperately wanted her to reach under the blanket and discover that he felt the same as she seemed to.
“My mom keeps it cold in here,” he said in what even his addled brain recognized to be possibly the worst pick up line in all of history.
“Brian, I want to talk about you. After all, you’re the gamer and the one with the high score. Do you want to play a game with me?” She took his arm and put it around her shoulder.
She was hot and not sexy hot—obviously, she was that—but temperature-wise, she was so warm. He wanted to sink into her and never let go.
“I…uh, don’t get me wrong,” he said. The small part of his brain that still struggled against a situation he’d literally dreamed about rebelled and ruined it for the rest of him. “But are you one of Kristen’s friends or something? Is that why you’re here? Because she’s out of town. Or maybe she just got back or something. She’s…she’s not here.”
“Oh, I know full well all about her movements and how she went on some mission from Maine to here. I know about her team and I know about you. I thought it was so brave of you to get so angry with her this week. Those words you used were so…evocative.”
“You heard all that?”
“How many ways do you want me to say it, Brian?” she whispered into his ear. “I’ve been watching you, thinking about you, and hoping that I’m on your mind the way you’re on mine.”
“Wait…” Brian would’ve pulled away, but his arm was around her shoulder and the feel of her hair on his forearm made it hard to think. “You’ve been nearby? Was it your aura that made me so mad with Kristen?”
“How does this thing work, anyway?” The woman gestured down and for a second, he thought that this was his moment and he would score with a dragon. Then, he saw that she was pointing at a game controller.
She pulled the blanket down and leaned over—obviously to give him another tantalizing look at her body—and picked the control up. “Will you show me?” she asked and pulled Brian’s arms around her like he was Patrick Swayze in Ghost but with videogames.
It would be a lie to say this wasn’t his most epic fantasy moment, and this woman seemed to be into that.
“You work the buttons, and…uh, watch to make sure you’re doing it right,” he said. There, that sounded better. That could’ve passed for innuendo, right?
“I love that you’re a man who knows what he likes,” the woman said, drew away from the controller, and rested her hand on his belly. “You must like food too, huh?”
“Well…uh, yeah.”
“Don’t be ashamed, Brian. Dragons aren’t ashamed of what we like.”
“And, uh…what do you like?” he asked, desperate to please her and to do anything for her. Whatever part of his brain had fought her had given up. Her touch was intoxicating, and that she liked his body and his mad skills…well, it was too much.
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that, Brian. You don’t need to worry at all. You see, I have what I want, and right now, I want my big strong gamer to be nice and rested. You’re tired, aren’t you?”
Brian nodded, his eyelids heavy.
“You’re tired and we have a long, hard day ahead of us tomorrow.”
“I…”
“Shh…” The woman put a finger on his lips. He didn’t lick her—much as he wanted to, he knew that that would be weird—but he did smell her. She smelled red like candied apples and red hots and cinnamon and heat. “Now, close your eyes,” she said and worked her hand slowly from his lips to his neck and finally, to his chest. She touched his plump body like it was some kind of sensual temple and even squeezed his man-boobs.
He wanted to know what else she’d squeeze, what else she’d do, and how he had managed to seduce this amazing woman, but he slid into sleep to dream the dreams Obscura put in his head.
Chapter Forty-Two
“Is everyone all right?” Kristen asked as the team hurried down the corridor.
“Yeah, thanks to you,” Drew said.
“But also, this is kind of your fault,” Hernandez said, but she didn’t sound pissed. She adjusted her gas mask and pushed ahead of the others toward the exit to the parking lot.
Her teammates donned gas masks and followed as quickly as they could.
Other cops were already out there as well, no doubt distracted by the smoke as they arrived for work.
The demolitions expert had already picked the bouquet up despite the smoke that still seeped from somewhere amongst the roses. The vase itself had shattered and she poked through the flowers and located a small device tucked between the stems.
She held it up like she’d won a lottery ticket.
“Officer Lyn Hernandez to the fucking rescue yet again,” she shouted and earned a high-five from one of the officers who’d formed a perimeter around the bouquet.
Then, to Kristen’s horror, she removed her mask.
“Damn it, Hernandez! Don’t be an idiot,” Drew yelled but she only laughed.
“Oh, calm the fuck down. It’s not VX or we’d be dead already. The amount we smelled inside would have been enough to kill us. We’d merely be walking corpses until it did.”
“Then why the gas masks?” Keith asked, his voice muffled through his.
“Appearances.” She grinned. “Plus, just because it’s not lethal doesn’t mean it won’t fuck you pussie
s up.” Hernandez laughed. She really was in her element when dealing with volatile chemicals.
“What is it?” Kristen asked.
“Not VX. That doesn’t fit the pattern. Do you smell the ammonia? My guess is muriatic acid and ammonia, commonplace kitchen chemistry.”
“Muri-what?” Keith asked, confused no doubt.
“Muriatic acid contains hydrochloric acid, which reacts with ammonia to make smoke. It’s another fake scare like the others. This shit’s about as dangerous as a glitter bomb,” she explained.
Drew shook his head. “Bag the whole thing and send it to the lab for analysis. Not that I’m hopeful. None of the other samples have turned up anything resembling clues.”
“Isn’t it too early for that?” Kristen asked.
“We might get some forensic trail or something eventually, but the glitter bomb was made from Hernandez’s stash. There were no prints on it and no obviously rare compounds besides the glitter. The bullets we recovered from the tree were purchased from literally the closest gun store. We’re still waiting on the place to open, but my guess would be by someone with a broad-brimmed hat who never looks at security cameras.”
“Whoever is doing this is good,” Beanpole said.
“And working fast,” the leader added.
“Did you make any new enemies?” Keith asked Kristen.
“Do you think this is because of me?” she asked, even though that was exactly what she had thought from the beginning.
“It makes sense. You’re the Steel Dragon and we’re simply cops.”
“I don’t want to jump to a conclusion, though,” Drew warned.
The Steel Dragon (Steel Dragons Series Book 2) Page 31
