by Tricia Owens
Rise of the Dragon
Moonlight Dragon
Book 5
Tricia Owens
Copyright © 2017 Tricia Owens
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover art by Ravven
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Acknowledgments
To everyone who has come this far.
Read more from Tricia Owens at http://www.triciaowensbooks.com
Moonlight Dragon series
Descended from Dragons
Hunting Down Dragons
Trouble with Gargoyles
Forged in Fire
Rise of the Dragon
I Dream of Dragons (coming soon)
Rise of the Dragon
Chapter 1
"I’d like a burrito," I said. "Make it extra spicy."
My voice echoed off all the hard surfaces of the room and off the man seated across from me. I could have been talking to a wall for all the interest he showed in what I’d said, but at this point I expected that.
I didn’t really want a burrito. My appetite had been obliterated by whatever had been injected into me by the goons who’d kidnapped Vale and me. Not even my best friend Melanie’s coconut donuts waved beneath my nose would have tempted me.
But actually eating the burrito wasn’t the point. It was getting this guy to say yes that mattered.
I called him Colonel Sanders. He was a military officer, though I hadn’t paid much attention to his rank when he told me because I didn’t care. It wasn’t like anything that happened between us was something I could later sue them for. Or tell the media about. Even though I’d been out for the count during the ride in, I had no doubts that wherever we were was an impenetrable secret.
Sounded kind of familiar, and not in a good way.
"What are you going to tell us in exchange for this extra spicy burrito?" Colonel Sanders asked me. He sounded non-committal, like he didn’t actually care about my answer, but I knew better.
He sat on the other side of a steel table that sported a metal loop in the center, which I assumed was for chaining down naughty prisoners. I wasn’t chained to that loop but my wrists were cuffed behind me with a zip tie, forcing me to sit slightly forward. A yellow legal pad rested before Colonel Sanders. He’d doodled a series of interlocking pyramids along the right edge, but other than that he hadn’t written down a word I’d said. Not that I’d said much, and not that he needed to write down anything. This place probably had more bugs than my kitchenette.
A huge and super conspicuous mirror covered nearly the entirety of the wall to my left. Obviously, it was a two-way mirror. Obviously, they wanted me to know that I was being monitored.
But was I intimidated? Hell, no. It was all standard fare that I’d seen in dozens of movies and TV shows, and none of it held a candle to a visit to the Oddsmakers. Unless they had stashed an albino vampire somewhere in here or my zip tie was soon to be replaced by reptilian manacles, this wasn’t particularly nerve-wracking. I would have yawned if I didn’t harbor the tiny fear that I might be beaten up with telephone books. I’d seen that in a movie, too.
"I don’t know what to tell you," I said to Colonel Sanders in response to his question. I shrugged my shoulders to draw attention to the fact that my hands were cuffed. "All this is just nuts to me. You drugged me and kidnapped me. That’s gotta be some kind of federal offense."
"The law as you perceive it doesn’t exist in this place, Anne. Not while you’re under investigation for treason against the United States of America."
"Treason? Seriously?" I sighed. What was it with everyone wanting to hang that particular albatross around my neck? Did I give off shady vibes or something?
"If you come clean, we may be able to reduce or even drop the charges against you."
"Come clean about what? You realize I run a pawnshop right? A pretty mediocre one at that. I’m nobody."
"Yes. About your pawnshop."
Uh oh. I knew an ominous segue when I heard one.
Colonel Sanders stood and knocked on the door of the room. Apparently, that was the cue for a young guy in a gray jumpsuit to open the door and carry in an easel and a painting. One look at the painting and I groaned beneath my breath. The young guy walked out and left Colonel Sanders and me with the painting of the English countryside. He resumed his seat across from me. Surprise, surprise, he finally smiled.
"You recognize this, don’t you?"
"Unless there’s a sweatshop in Vietnam pumping these out by the dozen that’s from my shop."
"It’s quite an interesting painting. Quite…unusual. And disturbing."
Colonel Sanders rested his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand and then pretended to admire the painting as he would a Van Gogh.
"How does it do that?" he asked conversationally. "The man with the axe coming out and murdering them? That’s not done with LEDs or any kind of computer graphic imaging. We’ve had it tested. X-rayed. The canvas is covered with ordinary oil paints. And yet…this is not ordinary."
I pictured the faces of whichever government agents had first come across the painting in Moonlight, and I nearly laughed. Would have been a riot, I’m sure.
Except that this was a whole heap of trouble for me.
"It’s pretty freaky," I agreed of the painting. Honestly, it had sort of grown on me. But I couldn’t deny that it was targeted toward a very niche clientele.
He pointed at the painting. "A large portion of the population would claim this is evidence of the Devil. They’d say this painting is possessed."
"It’d be a great decoration for Halloween."
"Others would claim it’s evidence of witchcraft. Sorcery. How do you explain it, Anne?"
What could I say? All I knew about it was that it probably had been commissioned at the Gallery of Veritatis by a closet serial killer who’d pawned it to my uncle.
"I have no explanation for it," I told him. "I don’t know how it works, but it’s a real conversation starter."
"My scientists are going to find an explanation for this," Colonel Sanders told me. He smiled after he said it, but there was no mistaking that he had just issued a warning.
I wasn’t afraid. I had nothing to do with the painting. Maybe they’d be satisfied with examining it for the next sixty years. Maybe it would serve as a distraction.
"There are other interesting items for sale in the Moonlight Pawn Shop," Colonel Sanders went on. "Initial tests show that many of them register unusual amounts of electromagnetic activity. Some emit radiation. Not in concerning amounts, but little girls’ dolls should not emit radiation, don’t you agree?"
Had the dolls bled out their eyes for the scientists? Had any of them tried to crawl across the lab floor like they did in Moonlight? I began to grow a little nervous. I might not be directly responsible for the supernatural tendencies of my merchandise, but I was in charge of them. I presented them for sale. I was the only one who could be held accountable for them if the government deemed them a danger to the public.
"I don’t know anything about electromagnetic activity or radiation. Obviously I think everything in the shop is safe since I live and work there every day."
"Yo
u never noticed that they were unique?"
It was my turn to smile. "That’s the whole point, right? If they want mass produced stuff, people can go hit up a Wal-Mart. They come to me for the funky goods."
"Funky goods," he repeated softly. Then he turned and made a point of looking at the two-way mirror, as if waiting for some kind of acknowledgment from whoever was on the other side of it. He could have been merely psyching me out, and if so, he did a good job of it. I quickly ran through everything I’d just said.
After an excruciatingly long moment, Colonel Sanders turned away from the mirror and tapped his pen against the legal pad as if considering how he wanted to proceed—straight to the waterboarding or use the phone books to soften her up first? He carefully drew another pyramid to extend the chain of them. With his eyes on what he was doing, he said casually, "Do you honestly believe that there was no footage?"
I stilled. Finally, my heart rate began to pick up. "Footage of what?"
"Las Vegas is a well-documented city as you probably know. Casinos, in particular, utilize closed circuit cameras extensively. Cameras cover every inch of a property except the restrooms. Why did you believe that your actions wouldn’t be recorded? Or was it your intention to go back and destroy the evidence?"
So the gloves were off. No more friendly fried chicken man.
"I think there’s been more than enough destruction," I said.
"Yes. There has, Anne. That’s why you’re here."
I should have anticipated this. In the days immediately following Vagasso and the Oddsmakers’ attempt to open the Infernus Rift, I’d searched the internet for any evidence of what had occurred. And yet I’d found nothing. No phone recordings, no news reports. No videos on YouTube or on any of the other social media platforms. I’d foolishly—ignorantly—chalked it up to dumb luck. But who was I kidding? The only way such a thorough media blackout could take place was if it had been orchestrated by the government. They’d hushed this up like they were hiding evidence from the grassy knoll.
"Much of the city will be undergoing extensive repairs," Colonel Sanders acknowledged, still drawing pyramids. "The recovery costs will be exorbitant, even with the governor declaring a State of Emergency."
"That’s too bad," I said warily.
"Sadly, there was a death count. Fortunately, it was as low as we could have hoped for, considering the damage." Colonel Sanders completed a pyramid and looked up at me. "Quite a few people seem to have disappeared."
"Weird."
"Would you care to see a video?" he asked me politely.
Oh, no.
I forced my hands to uncurl. "If it’s about dogs or cats I’ve had my fill. Also sloths. Sloths seem to be the big thing lately."
He smiled. "No dogs. No cats. No sloths."
"I think I’m still gonna have to pass." I rolled my head on my shoulders. "I’m getting the worst headache. Probably from whatever you used to knock me out and kidnap me. Do you have any ibuprofen?"
"Later. Right now we’re discussing a video, one of many that were taken that night. Are you aware, Anne, that you’re very photogenic?"
"Guess I missed my calling."
So they had video. Of course they did. They could probably run a twenty-four hour marathon with the amount of footage they had on me. I wanted to castigate myself, but the truth was I hadn’t had any choice that night. It was either save the world or avoid cameras. It was a no-brainer for me. Though now that it was over and everyone was safe, I couldn’t help wishing I’d thought to wear a mask of some sort. Guy Fawkes commanding a dragon would have set some tongues wagging.
"We could watch the video together," Colonel Sanders said, "or another option is to take a walk with me so I may show you something."
"Somehow you made that sound worse."
He smiled. Maybe he was a good guy when he wasn’t interrogating shifty magick users, but in here I got the impression that he had a core of steel. Like he’d seen stuff that would turn your hair gray and yet it had only made him curious to learn more, not because he enjoyed discovery but because he was motivated to investigate anything which might strengthen the military in some fashion. He was a lifer, and he loved it.
"You’ve been sitting here for five hours," he told me, which only made my hips and butt suddenly ache something fierce. "You might like to stretch your legs."
"Okay. Let’s go." Might as well. I was going to get a blood clot at this rate. Maybe I’d come across a chance to escape.
Colonel Sanders’ expression brightened. He stood and came around to my chair, helping me to stand with a hand on my biceps.
"You can’t release my hands?" I gave him my most pathetic look.
He was unmoved. "Not quite yet, Anne. But if you prove amenable, I will gladly remove the cuff and see that you get that burrito, too."
"I’ll believe it when I see it," I muttered, but let him lead me to the door. That alone was already novel. I’d woken up in this room and hadn’t seen an inch beyond its walls.
It turned out there wasn’t much to see outside of it. The hall he guided me down looked like it could have belonged to a prison or an insane asylum. The walls were a dull gray, the tiles cheap white linoleum. We passed doors with key code entry systems, but no labeling to indicate their purpose or who might be behind them. Each had a covered slot at waist height, which I assumed was for serving food. I strained to listen, but didn’t hear anyone screaming for mercy or demanding to be released. The air was chilly enough to make me shiver.
Or maybe that was just my nerves.
"Should I bother asking where we are?" I said as we walked side by side down the hall. I kept hoping to hear the sound of another person, but the place was utterly silent. It was like a spotless crypt.
"We’re at a military installation," Colonel Sanders replied as if that explained anything. "This facility is below grounds. Have you ever visited a space beneath the surface of the Earth, Anne? Say, eight miles or so deep?"
I was glad we weren’t back in the interrogation room and he was facing me because there was no way I could hide the widening of my eyes upon hearing him ask that.
"Why in the world would I be eight miles deep?" I asked once I’d recovered from my shock.
"I’m hoping that you’ll eventually tell me."
That would be a discussion I hoped we never had. How in the world had the government learned about the Oddsmakers’ lair? I highly doubted it would show up on any sort of ground penetrating radar or whatever it was the military used to find bunkers and hidey holes. The lair was practically a figment of my imagination, surely too strange and otherworldly to exist in real life or register on measuring devices. It led me to worry that they’d come by the information through one of my friends.
Speaking of whom… "Where is my friend? The one you also grabbed. Is he here, too?"
Vale being kidnapped was a much bigger issue than it happening to me. The sun should be coming up soon. I’d asked him early into our relationship how his shifting worked, whether time changes affected if and when he turned into a stone statue. Specifically, I’d asked if he could continually fly around the world, avoiding the sun, and never shift forms. He’d said yes. He believed that the receptors in his eyes needed to see sunlight, even a hint of it, in order for his body to activate the change.
Now that we were in the dwarf underground kingdom would he remain a man? I shuddered to imagine if he didn’t. These military guys would cream themselves when they got a look at Vale’s statue. They'd probably chip off parts of him to study…
"Mr. Morgan?" Colonel Sanders asked airily. "Yes, he’s here, too. He’s cooperating with us nicely, so he’s being treated differently."
Him saying that actually made me feel a lot better because I knew it was a big, fat lie. Vale would never in his ridiculously long lifespan tell secrets to Colonel Sanders or his buddies. That Colonel Sanders had felt the need to claim otherwise told me he was a touch desperate, throwing different techniques at the wall to see what woul
d stick with me. Lying outrageously certainly wouldn’t work. It was just plain dumb.
"He always was a blabbermouth," I said with a dismissive shrug. "Guess he’s dead to me now."
"Is he?" Colonel Sanders sounded more amused than worried, unfortunately. "I’ll keep that in mind as we escalate our interrogation with him."
My toe stuck against the tile, making me trip. "Escalate? You just said he’s talking."
"Yes, but sometimes talkative people aren’t the most honest. They tell us things they think we want to hear, rather than the truth. The only way to get the truth is to use enhanced techniques."
"You’re talking about torture," I gritted out. I jerked to a stop and leaned away when he began to reach for my arm again. "Don’t you lay a finger on Vale."
Colonel Sanders cocked his head as he studied me. "Or else what? What would be the consequence if someone did lay a finger on him?"
I’d burn this world to the ground, buddy.
But that was the answer that Colonel Sanders was angling for, and I wasn’t going to fall into his trap that easily. I glared at him and began walking again, leading, though I had no idea what I was leading us to.
"It’s right there through that door. Yes, coming up on the left."
The door looked like the others we’d passed, with two exceptions. No food slot, for one, and no numerical keypad. Colonel Sanders came up beside me and pressed his finger flat to a small square of black glass set in the wall beside the door frame. No buzzer sounded and no light blinked on. The door popped slightly ajar with a quiet click. My curiosity was climbing my shoulders by this point and when he pulled the door open and motioned for me to proceed I didn’t hesitate. I stepped inside.
The lights were off, but I could tell from the echo of my footsteps that this was a large room with high ceilings. It was impossible not to draw comparisons with the Oddsmakers’ lair, and I instinctually looked up. But what I could see of the ceiling by the light that poured in from the hallway were steel girders and metal walls. No demonic cherubs or a wizard Adam, thank goodness. Colonel Sanders flipped on the lights.
