She crashed into the ocean. The burning nets coiled about her frame. Kya couldn’t get free. The more she struggled, the more the nets twisted around her sinking frame. Down she went, deeper under the water.
No air.
Two helicopters joined her in the ocean, a great tidal wave of a crash. Metal burned, men screamed, and Kya continued her breathless descent.
She was going to drown.
“Kya? Kya?”
From a distance and between the slowing pulse of her heartbeats, Kya heard her sister in her head. Ledisi had come for her.
Tired. Kya was so tired, and the net around her neck made breathing so very difficult.
“Kya?”
The ocean wanted her, and she had no strength to object.
Down.
Down.
“What’s got you down in the dumps?”
Armstrong sipped from the beer he’d been nursing for the better part of an hour as Isaiah wiped down the bar. Scratched from age and wear, the thick wood was still a beauty. It had, like the Knight family, withstood much.
“You got the job you wanted, which Mom is still bragging about to her church friends. Two months later, and I still can’t go into the house with you by my side without her pushing me out of the way to get to you.” Isaiah chuckled. “Maybe some of that momma love will swing back to me when I give Mom her first grandbaby.”
“Wait, is Nicole pregnant?”
“Not yet. We’re working on it.”
“Working on it? It’s called having sex with your beautiful wife. Dad gave you the talk before he died, so I know you know where everything goes.”
Isaiah threw the wet, lemon-scented washrag at Armstrong, who caught it before the nasty thing hit him in the face.
“Like I said, we’re working on it. When you’re married, you gotta fit sex in when you can. We’re both busy and work different hours.”
“That defeats the whole point of getting married. Sex after marriage shouldn’t be complicated. She’s there. You’re there. Sex should happen.”
“Says the single man who hasn’t had sex in how long, Armstrong?”
“By choice.”
“Whatever. Is your mood about a woman?”
“Not exactly. I met someone. I thought she liked me, but I haven’t seen her in weeks.”
“So call her. Better yet, get off your moping ass and go see the woman.”
He wished he could call or go see Kya. Armstrong didn’t regret his wish, but it had kept the dragon from visiting him on the rooftop again. Arrogant the Bloodstone Dragon may be, Kya was also sarcastic, intelligent and fun to talk to. If she were a human woman, Armstrong would put a ring on her finger so fast it would make both their heads spin.
She wasn’t, so the thought was pointless and stupid. But they were friends, or so Armstrong had thought. Since her last message in his head, however, she hadn’t contacted him. A part of Armstrong worried that something awful may have happened to her. Despite being a dragon, Kya was also young and naïve. He didn’t doubt she was at least a hundred years older than Armstrong. Which, as she’d told him, human time and dragon development weren’t the same. For all intents and purposes, Kya was the same age as the girl in the alley.
No wonder she was going to have the men for a late-night snack.
Then there was the insecure side of him who thought their talk on the rooftop had meant more to Armstrong than it did to Kya. That once she returned home, she looked back on their few hours together as a short footnote in her long life. Armstrong Knight, a novelty for the young dragon and nothing more.
“Where did you go?”
Armstrong downed the dregs of his beer. “I’m right here, and I can’t call or go see her. I don’t have her number or know where she lives. Besides, it’s not like that between us. Kya’s my friend.”
“Yeah, whatever. Whenever you decide to pull your head from your ass, I’d like to meet your friend Kya.”
Belatedly, Armstrong glanced around the bar. At four in the afternoon, few people were there and only him at the bar. Dammit, he should’ve kept his big fat mouth shut about Kya, even to Isaiah. If she returned, and he prayed she did, he would have to do a better job of keeping her and their friendship a secret.
The Circle of Drayke, ten men of power, wealth and influence, sat around a large conference table. Big Ben’s quarter bells chimed in the background as they watched the grainy black-and-white footage on the screen. Captain Rudolph stood in the rear of the room, ignored by the robber barons who thought themselves captains of industry and a friend to the common man. They wielded their money like a sword, their sterling reputation their shield.
They came from around the world, a meeting of men of means no one would question. They lived lavished lifestyles and bought what they wanted. That included people. People like Captain Winston Rudolph and the soldiers under his command. Growing up in Gary, West Virginia, the son of a coal miner, Rudolph knew he had two choices, the mine or the military.
He’d chosen the military and never looked back. Years later, who would’ve thought the skinny kid from Gary, who went to bed hungry many a night, would be rubbing elbows with men born with silver spoons in their mouths.
He despised each of them. Their arrogance and intolerance. But mostly their discontent. How could men who had so much want even more? What they wanted was crazy. Even their name, ridiculous by a normal person’s reasoning, spoke to their hubris. The name Drakye meant to possess the power of a dragon. Bull, but that was the men’s desire. Not just knowledge of the creatures or even one to cage and parade about like a tamed circus freak, but the actual magic and strength of a dragon.
Ten men. Ten families. A legacy of researching dragons for whatever made them special. To date, they still didn’t know. At this rate, and with the help of mercenaries like him, they soon would.
“Good first attempt with the nets. I’ll get my research and design department to make them bigger and stronger.” Hugh Cafferty spoke to Rudolph but hadn’t the courtesy to turn and face the man. Instead, he sipped from his cognac and watched Rudolph’s failed mission to capture the gold dragon. “It’s small, probably still a baby by dragon standards. Its capture would’ve been a real coup and a big payload for you.”
“That’s the same dragon who’s been all over the newspapers this past week.” Dr. Kenneth Westmore, a “Harvard man” he’d told Rudolph the first time they’d met, shifted his cagey green eyes away from the screen and to the men around the table. “Until this week, we could only speculate as to whether there existed a logical reason to the dragon’s healing. We could never discern a pattern. They heal every race and nationality, both genders, all ages, and religions. They heal everything from dementia to kidney disease. No rhyme or reason.”
As much as the Circle of Drayke studied dragon behavior, their haughtiness had prevented them from drawing the most obvious conclusion. Dragons hadn’t survived for thousands of years because they were lucky. They’d survived because they were more intelligent and cautious than humans.
From the eyes of a trained soldier, the battle with the dragons proved illuminating. Once Rudolph stopped thinking of dragons as big flying snakes and more like thinking and feeling human beings with family and friends, his strategy became clear.
For the first time, the smallest of the dragons was on its own. That rarely happened, which, if the dragon was equivalent to a teenager in dragon society, meant two things. One, the older dragons were giving it a taste of independence. Two, with independence came limitations and oversight. That oversight had come in the form of an older and bigger dragon.
The big green dragon had responded to the helicopters the way a caring relative or friend would, it sought to protect. At first, by drawing one helicopter away. Lucky for Rudolph, he had another ‘copter waiting for his directive. Once the pilot chasing the green dragon had radioed in, letting him know the gold dragon was alone, Rudolph had sent the second ‘copter in.
Only three of his soldiers
survived the crash into the ocean and the dragon’s attack. Grainy as it may be, the video footage was salvageable, which was all the Circle of Drayke cared about. Rudolph still had calls of condolence to make.
Dr. Westmore, lean and fit and a man Rudolph wouldn’t trust to write him a prescription no less operate on him, damn near salivated as he shared his thoughts.
“The gold dragon healed children dying from cancer. It didn’t fly to any hospital to do it either. It went to hospitals with cancer centers. That shows thought, deliberateness, and purpose. Not random acts of healing, gentlemen. These monsters know precisely what they’re doing.” He slapped his palms on the table. “That’s why we’re here.”
The men at the table nodded. Greed bloomed in their eyes.
“We’ll have our dragon,” Cafferty assured the group. “Once we do, we’ll learn their secrets and steal their power. It’s only a matter of time.”
“No.”
“Please, Father, it’s been two months.”
Kya walked beside her father through the Eshe Forest. With their golden scales, the dragons contrasted with the browns and greens of the forest. Gasira and Ledisi, however, who trailed behind them, blended almost to the point of camouflage.
“They tried to capture you.”
“Yes, I know.”
“If your sister hadn’t destroyed the helicopters, they would’ve succeeded.”
“I know.”
“You almost drowned.”
The giant golden dragon that was the Aragonite Star Dragon second and Kya’s father first, stopped. At half her father’s height and less than that his weight, she had to stare up to meet his eyes, a swirl of brown and red.
Her siblings halted as well, serving in the role of silent bodyguard, although nothing more dangerous than them called Buto home. Three-fourths the size of the United States, countless species of birds and insects lived on Buto along with a large population of deer, hippopotamus, wildebeest and elephants, which the dragons bred for food.
After the attack on Kya, her father had summoned every dragon home. For a month afterward, her siblings had searched for the origin of the helicopters. They’d had little evidence to guide their investigation. By the time they’d returned to the location in the Pacific Ocean where the helicopters had crashed, the men and the wreckage were gone.
Ever since, Kya has been banned from leaving the island.
A long neck caressed hers, a soothing back and forth that had Kya shifting toward the protective girth of her father.
“I won’t allow the humans to have you. You’re small, my Kya, even for a dragon of your age. Some humans, like the ones who attacked you and your sister, will think their technology superior and a small dragon easy prey.”
Whiskers from a mouth pressed to her flank tickled. Her father used his forked tongue to determine the strength of her scales. His long, wide tongue ran from head to tail to legs before he repeated the movement on her other side.
“You’re the Bloodstone Dragon. You’re the prey of no human. With each passing century, humans develop more and greater weapons of war. As such, we must adapt. If your scales were less durable, their bullets would’ve done considerable damage.”
They’d done damage enough. A furious and worried Ledisi had pulled Kya from the water and carried her home. Their mother, the Bluestone Dragon, had used the magic of her Lapis Lazuli stone to revive and heal Kya. When she slept, Kya dreamed of helicopters, nets, and scale-piercing bullets.
“You will train more, my Bloodstone Dragon. Make your scales impenetrable and your fire magic unstoppable. We may not prey on humans, and I may believe in healing the worthy among them, but that does not mean I will permit them to threaten my family.”
The Aragonite Star Dragon stood to his full height of thirty feet, his length double that size, and looked over Kya’s head and toward her oldest siblings.
Gasira and Ledisi snapped to attention without their father having to say a word.
“Small does not mean weak. I never want the Bloodstone Dragon to fear for her life because her elders have failed to prepare her for the world of humans. Train her better.” His eyes, once more, fell to her. “When you’re ready, I’ll permit you to return to the land of humans and your diata. Until then, listen to Ledisi and Gasira.”
Upon waking, Kya had confessed all. She hadn’t liked lying to her parents any more than Ledisi had. There was no shame in befriending a human, although her father did not approve of her doing so while in dragon form. She’d assured them all that Armstrong Knight was an honorable man who would keep her secret.
Unless her father wanted to kill Armstrong to guarantee his silence, he had little choice but to accept Kya’s judgment of the human.
Once she began her training and made noticeable progress, her father granted Kya a boon.
Flying high above Buto and beyond the protective mists of magic, Kya reached for and found Armstrong’s mind.
I hope while I’ve been away that you haven’t shocked any other female with your naked form.
Tension flooded her at the thought that her sudden reintroduction into his life, after months, would be unwelcomed.
If you’re willing, diata, I can teach you how to speak to me telepathically. The magic involved requires absolute trust from the both of us.
A month. That’s how long it took Armstrong Knight to master their dragon-human telepathic link.
It took Kya, however, much longer to make her “scales impenetrable” and her “fire magic unstoppable.”
4
All he wanted to do was make a quick deposit, scarf down a lunch of burger and fries, and then go home and get ready for work. Was that too much for a man to expect the day before Thanksgiving? A quiet, normal Wednesday? Armstrong guessed it was because three idiots who must’ve wanted to spend the next ten years in a federal pen pulled pump-action shotguns from their long leather coats.
Man, could these losers get any more cliché? He guessed they could because the men wore honest-to-goodness stockings over their faces. Squinted eyes, squished noses and mouths, if the men weren’t cursing and waving their guns around and scaring the shit out of the tellers and customers, Armstrong would’ve laughed out loud. They looked that ridiculous.
But the situation and the danger everyone was in, including himself, was no laughing matter. The assholes may have been stupid because really, who in the hell robbed a bank nowadays, but they were about the greedy and deadly business of getting what they wanted.
Money.
Armstrong hoped the bank police officer, red-faced from anger and a bleeding nose he’d received when the tallest of the bank robbers sucker punched and disarmed him with embarrassing ease, wouldn’t do something stupid and get himself shot. The man, who looked to be retirement age, probably thought a security detail at a bank an easy money gig. He didn’t doubt it had been until the three clichés strolled in, shotguns out and demanding money.
“Get the hell on the floor.”
Armstrong, who was second in line, followed the six other customers to the floor. Off-duty, he wasn’t armed. Good thing he wasn’t. If he were, he’d have an even larger dilemma. As it was, the reckless side of him wanted to take the men on. Fortunately, the trained Secret Service agent was in control, which had him planting his face to the floor and doing nothing.
“Put it all in the bag. Come on, we don’t have all day. Hurry the hell up.”
Only one of the men spoke, barking orders at the tellers while one served as lookout and the other was in the back with the bank manager.
“I said hurry up.”
Armstrong chanced a glance upward. Twisting his head to the side, he could see the tall man, dressed in all black and leather coat like his partners, pace from one teller to the next. Two women and one man, Armstrong recalled when he waited in line. He held his gun at his side, the barrel pointing upward. It wouldn’t take but a second for the bank robber, in a fit of anger or fright, to lower the weapon and shoot one of the tellers
.
Turning his head a little more, Armstrong saw the black booted feet of the second man. He stood near the glass doors to the bank. Broad daylight. This brain trust had thought it a good idea to rob a bank in the middle of the day.
“Come on,” the guy by the door yelled. “We can’t be in here all goddamn day. Sooner or later someone else is going to want to come in. What am I going to do then?”
“All right, man. Damn. You heard him, hurry your asses up.”
“Here. This is everything from the drawers.”
He recognized the voice of the male teller. Armstrong hadn’t liked the way the man had watched him when he’d entered the small neighborhood bank, as if he would, well, stick up the joint. He’d hoped, when it was his turn in line, that the guy would have to wait on him. His money was as green as everyone else’s and the color of a person’s skin didn’t determine their morality.
The teller’s voice had trembled, but he’d spoken loud and clear. The unspoken message in his voice was just as clear: you got what you wanted, now get the hell out of my bank. He hoped the tall robber hadn’t detected the same.
“Gotta little attitude, do you? Think you better than me?”
“Ah, no. But you got what you came for.”
“So we can leave, huh? Is that what you trying to say?”
“You got the money. That’s it. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Leave it. We don’t have time for him. He’s right, we got the money. Let’s go.”
Armstrong wished the tall man would take the lookout’s advice.
Pop.
Shit. What the hell?
A child about five, who’d been quiet as his mother held him close, screamed and began to cry.
At the sound of gunfire, the security guard jumped to his feet.
No.
Pop. Thud.
Dammit.
More screaming, the tellers and customers.
Sirens and Scales Page 308
