The Steel Dragon (Steel Dragons Series Book 2)

by Kevin McLaughlin

  “I’m very thorough. I told you, I’ve been very interested in you and watched you both offline and online.”

  “Bullshit. You saw it on the screen when you abducted me.”

  “And that’s how I know your history?” She began to rattle off all the games he had played in the last week and went so far as to list some of the details from his highlights reel.

  “Okay, Okay! I get it. So…what’s your name.”

  “Obscura.”

  That sent another chill down Brian’s spine. It meant dark. The last dragon his sister had defeated had been named Shadowstorm. Was there a connection? There had to be.

  “You’re Shadowstorm’s daughter?”

  “You flatter me, Brian. You really do. I’m impressed and believe in honesty, so yes, in answer to your question, I’m related to Shadowstorm, but I’m not his daughter.”

  “Then who are you?”

  “I’m his mother.”

  The implications of that sent ice into his bones. He didn’t think she was lying. What would be the point? But Kristen had mentioned that Shadowstorm hadn’t been particularly adept with technology. If his mother was able to learn his online profile, she was obviously much more advanced. In addition, the room he was in couldn’t have been built overnight, which meant not only was she tech savvy but she was patient.

  Suddenly, he wanted to get out of there very, very badly.

  “Pac-Man’s about clearing boards, right?” He moved around the room and stamped on the four buttons, which plunged the room into darkness. “Board cleared. High score set. Let me go.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad you agreed to play, but what kind of a game ends with the tutorial? Look down the passages. You should see more buttons.”

  She was right. Now that the room he was in was completely dark, he could see down the four hallways. Down three of them were rows of the dim, white buttons set into the floor, but down the fourth there was something else. A figure stumbled toward him.

  “What the fuck is that?” He yelped in real fright.

  “You see, you must make it through the maze and press every button before you’ll be free to go. I was inspired to build this after learning you’re a gamer and after watching The Steel Dragon lose to a team of humans in a setup very similar to this one.”

  “But what is he?” He could now tell that it was a man. He shuffled toward him and a chain—shackles—between his ankles clanked with each step. Brian only realized that belatedly. What he noticed first was the electric glow of the sparking shock wand in his hand.

  “What would Pac-Man be without ghosts?” Obscura said lightly.

  “Hey, buddy. Put the shock stick down and let’s talk about this. I’m sure she seduced you or whatever, but that doesn’t mean we have to do what she says.”

  “Fuck you!” the man screamed in response and his voice lacked anything resembling sanity.

  “You’ll find they’re not very amenable to conversation,” his captor said as he backed away from the approaching man.

  Another man stepped into the hallway behind the first. He was also shackled and carried a wand that glowed with electricity.

  “Buddy, please! You don’t have to do this.”

  “I ain’t being eaten by no dragon, you fucking hologram. You ain’t going to trick me!” The man lunged forward and fell heavily, no doubt still adjusting to the chains on his ankles. Brian jumped back and moved into the opposite hallway. In his haste, he passed one of the glowing buttons.

  “Tsk-tsk-tsk,” Obscura chided from a speaker farther down the hallway “If you miss a button, you’ll have to double back.”

  He cursed and stood on the button before the man could stand. “Stop this!”

  “You die!” one of the other ghosts yelled.

  “You’ll find I’m quite good at motivating the…what do you call them in games? NPCs? I found a few lowlifes on the streets—men with violent histories who had been set free. I brought them here, provided them with nothing but drugs to sustain them, and threatened them with their lives. They fully believe I’ll eat them if they fail this game, even though I would never consume something so stuffed full of chemicals. On top of that, I’ve convinced them that every person they shock is only a hologram. They’ve already done in three of their own kind. I don’t think you stand much chance.”

  Two more now shuffled up the hall to make four in all.

  “Much like the ghosts in Pac-Man, they’re not great at teamwork, but I assure you, if you stay where you are, they’ll shock you and kill you. They’re quite resourceful. Why…” Obscura chuckled. “Last time, one of them choked Pac-Man to death with the chains on one of the other’s legs. Isn’t that simply amazing? Perhaps they are learning to work together after all.”

  “Fuck,” Brian said and stumbled down the corridor. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He pressed the buttons on the floor as he proceeded but that only meant that these crazy-ass ghosts would be able to follow him. Unless, of course, he could get far enough ahead to create a false trail, double back, and go a different way. Even then, with four of them, he’d have to do that multiple times.

  Brian turned his back on the men and ran. He reached the end of the hallway and a T-junction. Without hesitation, he chose the left first, extinguished a few lights, and doubled back, but the ghosts had already caught up. He cursed and went back the way he’d come.

  “Excellent strategy! The lowlifes haven’t learned how to use the lights yet.” Obscura sounded absolutely delighted like he had ridden a bicycle with no training wheels for the first time.

  “Games are supposed to be fun. This isn’t fun,” he yelled at her.

  “It is for me,” she replied. “Now hurry up. I wasn’t able to learn how to put food in here like they do in Pac-Man, and I wouldn’t want you to starve to death—although with your fat gut, I’m sure that would take some time. More to the point, if you don’t clear the board in an hour, it resets. That’s how long it took me to walk the course. Given that you’re more…motivated than I was, I’m sure you can beat my high score.”

  “This is fucking crazy. You’re fucking insane!” he shouted as he rounded a corner. He could hear the tinkle of chains behind him as his pursuers followed the line of extinguished buttons. The only strategy he could think of was to go faster and get far enough ahead to leave a false trail. He wasn’t naïve enough to think winning would do a damn thing except unlock difficult mode.

  “No, Brian, it isn’t crazy. This is revenge.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Even though she was a dragon herself, Kristen couldn’t help but be amazed when she saw one come into sight. They were simply so enormous—huge, flying creatures who could soar above the world as effortlessly as birds. It was insane to think she was one.

  Lumos landed, transformed into his human shape, and entered the SWAT building. She had seen him through the window and now waited for him. He didn’t so much as greet her when he stepped through the door, which she actually appreciated. “What’s our next move?” was his first question.

  “More like first,” she muttered.

  “We don’t know where he is, then?” he prodded.

  “We don’t know shit,” Keith complained. “Obviously, they’re smart, because they were able to orchestrate a bullshit sniper attack, a fake bomb, and a non-lethal smoke bomb with flowers, and then abduct Kristen’s brother. Unfortunately, that’s about all we know.”

  “We know Kristen’s central to it,” Drew said. “I think, given Brian’s abduction, we have to work on that assumption.”

  “Which makes me think this has to be a dragon,” she finished. It didn’t take long to run through the facts when there weren’t any. “But we don’t know where they are.”

  Lumos shrugged at that. “I don’t think that’s something we need to worry about.”

  “Fucking classic,” Jim growled. “A dragon arrives and says we don’t need to worry about where the victim is located. How the fuck are we supposed to help him if we don’t e
ven know where he is?”

  “Don’t misinterpret me.” Lumos held his hands up in defense. “Look at the pattern. There have been three fake assassination attempts, correct?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Obviously, our target doesn’t want to kill anyone—or not yet, anyway. They want to send a message, though, and to make the Steel Dragon afraid. And then there’s the picture they sent of your brother.”

  “My brother who is held captive who knows where.”

  “Right, but why send the picture if not to make you even angrier? My guess would be that whoever is doing this is trying to make you so angry and so desperate, that you don’t think clearly. If they accomplish that, they’ll reveal where Brian is and wait for you to march into the trap. All we need to do is wait. They’ll show us where to go. We merely have to make sure we’re careful when we follow the bait.”

  “And if they kill Brian?” Hernandez asked.

  “That would piss me the fuck off,” Kristen said.

  Lumos’ confidence seemed to fade a little. Dragons could be so aloof. Obviously, he spoke about tactics from experience, but equally obviously from his reaction, people had died in the past. But that wasn’t an option, now. She had to save her brother before anything else happened to him.

  “We… Well, what do we know? I saw the photo, but does that give us anything? Can’t you examine the concrete on the floor or something?” he asked.

  She clenched her jaw. He didn’t know anything about forensics work, only dragon behavior.

  As it turned out, that was the thing to know.

  Her phone buzzed and she yanked it out.

  “Holy shit, it’s another message from the same number.” Everyone crowded around her to see the screen.

  This one was a video, not an image. At first, it was hard to make out what was going on. There was the back of a heavyset man—Brian, obviously. She would recognize his heavy steps anywhere. Everything beyond that was confusing. He moved down a dark hallway but there were lights on the floor.

  The camera lowered as Brian stepped on a light and it went dark. He stepped on the next one only a few feet ahead. It too went dark.

  He ran on, breathing heavily, and stamped on button after button. Although obviously exhausted and running from something, he took care not to miss the buttons and even went so far as to double back to one he missed.

  When he did that, he moved past the camera again. A drone maybe? It followed him, pivoted, and bobbed and she caught a glimpse of another man. This one had shackles on his ankles and wore the crazed look of the desperate. In his hand was a shock wand that he thrust out at Brian.

  Her brother dove to the ground and narrowly missed the strike.

  “You know, in Pac-Man, there are supposed to be buttons that make it so I can get the fucking ghosts,” he yelled, seemingly to the drone.

  The camera focused on his face for a moment before he scrambled to his feet. He didn’t look good. Red and blotchy and drenched in sweat, the indications were that he wouldn’t last long.

  “I’ll have to keep that in mind for the next version,” a woman’s voice said. Although Kristen didn’t see her, she knew this was their target.

  “He’s in some kind of real-world game.” She was aghast.

  Brian began to run again, and the drone followed him. He paused at a T-junction in his path and looked behind him. Lights from the drone shone on his face and made the terror and exhaustion painfully apparent.

  The left path was already dark, so he went right and systematically pounded the buttons as the drone followed him. This was horrible—no, utterly insane. This woman had tricked him into playing, but everyone had to know there wasn’t a way to win this insanity.

  But still, he made the attempt. He jogged down the hallway and extinguished light after light until he came to another passage. This one only had a few lights in it.

  “Wow. That was your closest yet,” the woman’s disembodied voice said.

  “No, please, no!” Brian begged and killed the lights. “I got them all! I won!”

  “Sorry, you missed two of them farther back. I keep forgetting you can’t see it like I can, but rules are rules.”

  All the little button lights came on. Brian squeezed his eyes shut and actually began to cry. “How many more times?” he asked weakly.

  “I’m sure you can do this. And cheer up,” the woman said as the drone moved closer to him and hovered virtually in his face. “The Steel Dragon is watching. Maybe with an audience, you can beat it this time.”

  “You’re…you’re showing this to my sister right now?” He turned to look at the camera. Kristen was now quite certain it was a drone from the way it bobbed up and down and slowly moved closer.

  “I want the Steel Dragon to suffer. There’s no better way for that than for her to watch you die.”

  “The only one who will suffer is you,” he retorted and held the back of his hand up to the camera. For a moment, Kristen thought he had flipped the drone off but soon realized that he was, in fact, showing her the face of his smartwatch.

  It was open to the compass app, which displayed his precise longitude and latitude.

  The dragon cursed and the video went black.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  “Oh, shit,” Lumos said as soon as the video feed went dead.

  “Yeah, no shit,” Kristen replied. “I barely got those coordinates down. Do you think this dragon knew those were coordinates?”

  “How can you be sure she’s a dragon?” Drew asked.

  “I’m quite certain,” Lumos replied, his voice like ice and the fear palpable. “I know that voice. It belongs to an ancient by the name of Obscura. She is a very old and very cunning dragon.”

  “Do you have any idea why she would go after my family?” she demanded. More than anything, she wanted to rush off to the coordinates but recognized that any intel she could gather could very well mean the difference between life and death.

  “Yes. Yes, I’m afraid so. You see, some dragons take vengeance very seriously.”

  “So?” Hernandez interjected. “Kristen’s never tangled with Obscura. Why the fuck did she put a glitter bomb in my apartment?”

  “Because Shadowstorm was her son. She’s trying to hurt you where you hurt her.”

  “So why not simply attack me?” Kristen demanded. She sensed there was something about dragon kind she didn’t quite understand.

  “Because vengeance is an important thing for dragons. We live for millennia and have plans that can span centuries. We’ve even developed specific kinds of magic simply to power vengeance. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that she swore an oath.”

  “So what?” Jim asked. “I swear I’m gonna help take this crazy bitch down. Anyone can swear an oath.”

  Kristen was slightly relieved Jim had asked the question instead of her, but she also didn’t want anyone else to interrupt. She needed to know about Obscura, but she also needed to take action. Every minute delayed was another minute Brian had to suffer in that hellhole.

  “An oath of vengeance is something special for a dragon. If she visited where her son died and found some of his blood, she could have used it to empower her. As long as she strives for vengeance, she’ll be stronger, faster, more powerful, and some even say more cunning.”

  “Then why not attack me? If she has this extra strength, why not flex it?” She was already turning to steel and back again, itching for a fight. Obscura was obviously more interested in the long game.

  “Because she’s convinced herself that she wants you to suffer. If that’s part of her oath, she’ll be strengthened as long as she serves it. With the correct magic—and given Obscura’s age, she almost certainly knows how to do it—she can use the oath to strengthen her in all kinds of ways.”

  “Like making her more skilled with a sniper rifle?” Butters interjected.

  “Precisely.” Lumos nodded.

  “She could use this oath to help her make bombs?” Hernandez asked.r />
  “Or design this weird fucking video game torture place?” Keith added.

  The dragon shrugged. “Yes. In theory, an oath can be used to strengthen any skill—and I bet with the sniper shots, that’s indeed what happened—but that’s not all there is to Obscura. She’s always regarded humanity as a threat. There was a time—this was before your written history, mind you—when she argued that all humans should be exterminated. She sees your technology as an existential threat to dragon kind.”

  “So she made a maze out of it?” Keith asked. “It seems a little hypocritical.”

  Lumos shook his head. “Not to her. It became clear to her, again and again, that dragons would not exterminate humankind, nor would we limit their technological progress. The last I heard of her, she was learning Morse code. This was over a century ago, obviously, but I think it stands to reason that she understands tech in a way most of us dragons simply do not.”

  “But she neglected to notice Kristen’s brother’s smartwatch? Lucky for us,” Keith said and pumped his fist in the air.

  “Or it’s a trap,” Drew pointed out.

  Kristen nodded. She’d thought the same thing and had no doubt that Obscura had planned a trap for her. The best-case scenario was that Brian had revealed her whereabouts and thus ruined her timeline, but she would still have some of the pieces needed to snare the Steel Dragon, of that she was certain. The worst-case scenario was that the dragon could have compelled Brian to show the coordinates against his will via her aura.

  Frustrated, she pushed all that from her head for a moment. “Lumos, are you sure this is Obscura?”

  “Oh yes. I’d recognize that voice anywhere. Plus, the complexity of the attempt at vengeance fits her very well. If it’s not Obscura, it’d be a level of deception that I’ve never seen before to try to make us think it was.”

  She nodded. “Then we can call in Dragon SWAT?”

  “Yes, of course. I can’t imagine any reason not to. She’s obviously interfering with the stability of the region. I’ll call Stonequest immediately.”