The Steel Dragon (Steel Dragons Series Book 2)

by Kevin McLaughlin

  Her hopes were immediately deflated when she saw her brother and her friend Jim Washington.

  “Brian, Jim,” she said weakly.

  The Wonderkid seemed a little disconcerted by her disappointment, but Brian didn’t so much as flinch. “It’s okay, Kristen. We smuggled a cake in with a file inside, so you’ll be able to tunnel out of here within the next five years. We’ll have to plan it so I can pick you up in an old-timey car while the rain washes the mud from your face.”

  She smiled and even managed a snort of laughter at the lame joke. Only Brian could make imprisonment seem like a funny inconvenience.

  “We came as soon as we could,” Jim said, his tone all business. “It took some convincing to get us in.”

  “Did Stonequest tell you what happened?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Brian confirmed. “He came by and told Mom and Dad. Dad’s making all kinds of waves about getting you released. He says the charges are ridiculous. You know, being Dad.”

  “How are you, Brian?” she asked. Now that she’d engaged him in reality, he seemed much more shaken than he had when she first saw him. Knowing him, he’d probably spent his time preparing his little joke and trying to ignore the situation.

  “I’m good. Fine. But I can’t believe you’re in here. They have to know you’re not a killer. How can they accuse you of that and lock you up?” He shook his head as he seemed to run out of words.

  Kristen turned to Jim. “What are the thoughts at the station?”

  He shrugged and looked as dejected as hell. “Stonequest told Drew and the team about the DNA and everything. Kristen, the evidence…well, it’s damn convincing.”

  Kristen raised an eyebrow at that, unable to help herself. For the first time, she was glad that the anklet blocked her powers. If it hadn’t, Jim would have been swamped with an emotional wave of betrayal, shock, and hurt.

  “Not that I think you committed those murders! I’m on your side, one hundred percent. Hell, I’d be on your side even if you did it.”

  “But I didn’t,” she said and found that it was easier to keep her voice calm than it used to be. She’d spent so much time learning to control her aura that controlling her face no longer seemed like a challenge.

  “Right, of course not.” Jim backpedaled. “But this was one hell of a frame-up if that’s what’s going on here. We all know dragons can really only be killed by other dragons. Yes, you dropped an incinerator on Shadowstorm, but even that might not have done the job without your claws and teeth. And now they’ve found your DNA on not one, but three murdered dragons. I guess all they’d need was some shed scales or something from you, but still, it means someone’s been what? Raiding your bathroom drain and stabbing dragons with the slime?”

  “I have another idea,” she said.

  Both Jim and Brian leaned closer to listen.

  “I suspect that woman was there at two crime scenes—where Death and Windfire were killed. Constance. I’m sure she shot Death and Windfire with a bullet made from dragon pieces. My guess is that she shot Icebreeze too.”

  “Okay, sure, but she got away,” the Wonderkid said. Kristen could see him trying to stop himself from shrugging. “Plus, how does that explain your DNA? Do you think she’s been following you or something?”

  “Here’s the thing…” She lowered her voice even more, although she realized it probably didn’t matter. If they were being observed, it would be done by magic, which meant lowering her voice probably wouldn’t do a thing. Still, habits were habits. “That woman—Constance—she said she was my mother or thought of herself as my mother or something. At the time, I thought she was crazy. But what if…I don’t know, what if there are others like me? What if Constance was part of a lab and they, like, grew me there or something. Maybe I have siblings with similar DNA.”

  Brian nodded but didn’t say anything. Her family were the only people in the entire world who knew that she had been dropped off by her Aunt Christina. She’d been a biologist working at a dragon lab. Frank—Kristen’s father—hadn’t known much about what she’d done there, but the fact that she’d snatched a baby away seemed to indicate that it was something more than simply a dragon nursery.

  Jim frowned, obviously trying to process all this information. “I guess…” he finally began and rubbed his chin. “I guess we don’t really know where you came from. I assume you hatched from an egg, right?”

  Kristen shrugged. “That’s where dragons come from.”

  “Okay, so say there were other eggs in this…nest. How would we go about finding them? Hell, who’s to say they even hatched? And if they did, it’s not like they have steel skin, right? You’re the only dragon with that ability in all of history. If there were others, it’d be way easier to make contact.”

  “I don’t think we’ll be able to track down the other eggs from my creche.” Saying the words aloud was almost disorienting to her. My creche. The thought had never really occurred to her before. She’d always identified as a human girl with a human brother and who’d been raised by humans, but there was more to her identity now. There had always been more to it.

  “So, where do we start?” Brian asked.

  She took a moment to study her brother. He looked different. Not since she’d been in prison, obviously, but since everything had happened with Obscura. He had lost a little weight—not much, but it was a start—and he carried himself differently. With more awareness, maybe, and more intent. She liked the change.

  “I think we have to start with Constance. She’s the key in all this. For one thing, she was at Windfire’s mansion and I’m positive she almost killed Death. Her fingerprints were found in the room where Icebreeze died. She has to be what this whole thing revolves around.”

  “Then that’s who we’ll find,” Jim said, clearly glad to have a mission.

  “By the time you get out of here, we’ll have some leads for you,” her brother assured her.

  Kristen felt a wave of tears well up but fought them back. Still, it was with a shaking voice that she asked her next question. “And has Stonequest said anything about the case?”

  Jim’s face went tight and Brian hung his head.

  “Nothing’s come up yet,” the Wonderkid said. “Only that one fingerprint, but compared to the DNA, the dragons don’t seem to be buying it.”

  “You have to be strong, Krissy. I know you can do it. Keep doing push-ups and pull-ups and getting a law degree or whatever it is people do in prison to pass the time.”

  “I’ll be fine. You guys take care of yourselves, okay? Obscura’s in here and well—”

  Brian went pale at the mention of the dragon who had abducted him from his home and trapped him in a human-sized Pac-Man game, complete with ghosts armed with shock sticks.

  “You know what? I think she was bluffing. It’s fine.”

  “Bluffing about what, Kristen? Tell me, I have a right to know,” he said.

  She would not have relented to the younger and more naïve Brian but that boy was gone. Slowly but surely, a new Brian seemed to carve himself from what their mom affectionately called her man-child.

  “Obscura’s in here and she says she’ll get out soon. She might be bluffing, but… I don’t know. For some reason, I don’t think she is. Be careful out there, okay?”

  He nodded.

  “All the more reason to find this Constance quickly. If we find hair plucked from your brush or from your long-lost siblings or whatever, we’ll be able to get you out.” Jim left the obvious “and keep us humans safe” unspoken.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  The next morning at breakfast, Kristen received an invitation. It came on stationery decorated with an elegant castle and a single dragon flying overhead. She had seen the stationary in the library and knew it cost quite a few credits to purchase. It meant that whoever had sent this note to her no doubt wanted her to be impressed. She already knew who it was without having to read the signature at the bottom of the short invitation. “Meet me in my
yard,” it began. There was only one dragon so arrogant as to think that the prison belonged to her. Well, maybe there were more dragons with that level of arrogance, but she was the only one she had met in the yard.

  For some reason, Obscura wanted to talk to her. She sighed, checked the time on the invitation—she had an hour—and finished her breakfast. Her choice today was only eggs and toast with a side of fruit. She was saving credits, for some reason. What the mind did when trapped was an interesting, often illogical thing.

  Once she’d eaten, she left and went to the appointment. The last time she’d faced Obscura, she did so with her head held high, meeting the dragon as equals despite being the newcomer to the prison and the presence of her adversary’s allies. It had worked, mostly, in that the black dragon had left her alone. It was enough to make her determined not to limp in twenty minutes late. She wanted her to know she wasn’t afraid of her.

  Also, they both knew that she didn’t have a damn thing to do. If she was late, it couldn’t be taken to mean she was busy with something more important, only that she’d chosen to disrespect her. She was fine with that but would much rather the ancient dragon think of her as a worthy combatant than a disrespectful sneak, an attitude she chalked up to her own dragon arrogance.

  At the requested time, she sauntered carefully into the yard. She didn’t march as she didn’t want to seem too eager—that would be an obvious bluff—but she didn’t trudge out there either. She held her head high, kept her shoulders back despite her bruised ribs, and took deliberate steps.

  Kristen approached the black dragon, who waved her retinue of peons away.

  “To what do I owe the honor?” she asked formally but sneered slightly after the word “honor.”

  “I only wanted to say goodbye,” Obscura said and batted her eyelashes as if fending off tears. She really was too much, a powerful actress as much as anything else.

  “Whatever do you mean, fair dragon?” she replied, trying for elegance and sounding like a performer in a middle school play. Fuck that. “Is there a cliff nearby you wish to walk off? May I suggest you jump out from the ledge. It’s better to fall and crack your damned skull than to smash yourself upon the rock wall repeatedly as you tumble down the mountainside. Actually, maybe you should tumble. It might do your face good.”

  Ah, yes. Much better. Talking to her like that felt much more natural.

  “As honored as I am to spend my nights acting out your pathetic human dreams as you sleep, my time has come. I am being released.”

  “Released?” she asked, her mouth agape.

  The black dragon ignored her. “Walking off a cliff? Honestly? That is such a human fear. Dragons launch themselves from cliffs. Long ago, those who controlled the cliffs controlled all they could survey. Truly, you must be the only dragon in this entire prison who dreams of their human body despite being imprisoned in one.”

  Kristen glared at her. “How are you being released? Or do you mean from this mortal coil?”

  Obscura shook her head and chuckled. “Again, your perspectives are so human. Do you honestly think of yourself as mortal? You’re a being who could live for thousands of years—you know, if you weren’t so abjectly horrible at making allies who actually matter. Of course I’m not being executed. I’m rejoining society. What is supposed to happen in human prisons? Ah, yes, I have been rehabilitated.”

  “You…you can’t go free. Not after what you did to my brother. There’s no justice in that.”

  “Justice isn’t quite what you think it is, is it?” The older dragon smiled and malice poured from her eyes. “Justice, little Steel Dragon, is what you make of it. Like I will have my justice against you for what you did.”

  “Shadowstorm broke dragon law and got dozens of humans killed.”

  “Pah! Most of the dead my son left behind were common criminals. He purged your world of its worst people.”

  “They weren’t his people, though. And isn’t that supposed to make all the difference in dragon society?”

  Obscura waved the objection away. “Before you came along, little Steel Dragon, no one gave a wet spark about Detroit. Dragon SWAT is stationed there.”

  “Yeah, no shit,” she retorted.

  Her adversary only tsked her tongue. “Such foul language from the Steel Bitch.”

  Kristen didn’t know which nickname she liked less, little Steel Dragon or Steel Bitch.

  Obscura didn’t seem to be able to tell either, as she switched between the two. “The people my son freed of their mortal coil didn’t belong to any dragon. Until you came along, all of Detroit was a wasteland, a garbage heap of a place trapped in the bureaucratic claws of Dragon SWAT. I find it endlessly amusing that the dragon who clawed herself out of that mess of humanity can’t even lift her head high enough to see farther than the dumpster it is.”

  “My city has seen hard times, but that’s not what it is anymore.”

  The woman tsk-tsk-tsked again. “Oh, little Steel Dragon, how naïve you are.”

  She decided she definitely liked being called little Steel Dragon less than Steel Bitch.

  “I am not speaking of property values or the petty crimes of thieving from a human. I am talking about what that city is. The Motor City, you call it, yes? There is no place more inimical to dragon kind and all we represent than that rat’s nest. It started as a port city and in doing so, immediately began to foul the greatest source of fresh water on this planet. Then it moved to manufacturing, further sullying the land, water, and air. The machines that spewed from that pit of disgust even changed the outcome of your Second World War.”

  “It’s no surprise that you’d be on the side of the Nazis,” she said snidely.

  Obscura waved the comment aside. “It isn’t only your technology I hate, but your culture too. The music that has come from there is all disrespectful nonsense. Motown, punk rock, rap—all of it is trash, disloyal to what came before it. It’s the American London, the modern Rome. A disgusting place of sacrilegious human ingenuity.”

  “You forgot Detroit-style pizza and our architecture.”

  “That city is a blight to what dragon kind can be, and now that it’s self-proclaimed guardian is locked up—as you should be—I can finally do with it as I wish. Tell me, when do humans scream louder? When they’re all killed together or one by one? Ah, forgive me, I don’t know why I’m asking. Either way, I’ll kill your fat, sexually deprived brother first, then your mother and father—leaving them alone was a huge mistake—then I’ll move on to the pathetic human SWAT team. Not that I’ll start with your friends there. I’ll probably simply bring the entire building down and send a message to the rest of the rats that the ship is sinking.”

  “Shut your mouth.” Kristen clenched her fists and took two steps forward.

  The black dragon laughed and raised a claw and her goons all took a few tentative steps closer. “Do not order me about, little one, or I will tell you even less of my plans than I had intended. Oh, wait, it seems I already gave everything away. What a bother! Now you’ll be able to stop…oh, that’s right. You’ll still be locked up as the murderous bitch you are.”

  “Call these thugs off and we end this now. You versus me. First to blood or until one of us is beaten unconscious. You choose.”

  “Such brazen behavior. To the blood? Honestly, what do you take me for? Not all dragons share your obsession with sullying themselves with human culture. We couldn’t do such a thing and you know it, not with the guards watching.”

  She glanced at the mage in the guard tower. Currently, there was only a single man up there, which didn’t reassure her at all. There was something unsettling in his eyes and in the way he watched what transpired below.

  “Still, despite your arrogance, I wouldn’t want you to get too lonely without me. I can only imagine how hard it must be for you to make friends here, given that you’re a slave and a tool to the Dragon Council and their petty obsession with the status quo. I’ve prepared a present for you—a part
ing gift, you could say.”

  Before she could even think of a response, Obscura spat in her face.

  Kristen had experienced much worse from some of the common criminals she’d dealt with between confronting dragons when she’d worked at Detroit SWAT.

  However, she quickly realized that the disrespectful gesture was only the wrapping on the gift. The mage who’d watched her so intently levitated from his place on the guard tower and came to stand beside the black dragon. He pointed at the prison and she nodded before she followed him inside.

  That left Kristen alone in the yard with the six dragon goons who had listened to the entire conversation. Without a guard to interfere, they approached her from all sides with makeshift weapons in hand, ready to beat her senseless.

  She took a deep breath—grimly aware that it still hurt her ribs to breathe—and clenched her fists.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Kristen had to give the six thugs credit. They all attacked at once instead of waiting for her to disable them one at a time. What was worse was that they were prepared. Each had a weapon—a shiv made from a screwdriver, a length of chain, a chair leg, an impressively ornate set of brass knuckles, a piece of rebar, and a rope.

  Worse still was that she recognized most of the dragons themselves. One of them—Copperstrike, if memory served—she’d personally put away. She thought he’d been waiting on a shipment of silver to secure his release, but it appeared it had never come. She recognized some of the others too. Mostly, they were all small arrests, dragons who’d been locked up because they’d trashed a human town or structure and not had the funds to pay for it. They were all young dragons and angry dragons.

  But who they were didn’t really matter, not beyond the obvious. What she realized was that each of these dragons was more than merely a thug working for Obscura. Each of them was in prison because of her or Dragon SWAT. It meant that this fight was personal for them.