Hidden Dragon (Dragon Rising Urban Fantasy Series Book 1)

by Trudi Jaye

  Then he turns and stalks off in the opposite direction.

  I struggle, but the two men are strong, and I can’t find the leverage I need to escape their grip. I’m not sure without the help of the spell web, but they have to be supernaturals of some sort. They’re too strong to be humans.

  As I move, something bumps against my chest. The small blue bottle, tied around my neck by a piece of string. For some reason, no one here has guessed just how dangerous it is. The demon inside could beat these two men into the ground without a second thought. The only problem is that he’s more likely to come after me first. Just like he did to the pawnshop owner. I’d get the guards dead, but I’d be dead too.

  Although... presumably they have ways of dealing with things like demons around here. They wouldn’t be a very effective supernatural policing organization if they didn’t.

  The only problem is how to get the guards to let go of my arm.

  I clear my throat. “You’re hurting my arms,” I say.

  They ignore me, continuing to drag me down the hall.

  “I can walk on my own, you know. If you’d just slow up and let me gather my feet under me.”

  Their speed starts to seem suspicious. “Are you trying to get me out of here in a hurry? To avoid someone? Maybe Agent Walker?”

  An idea forms in my head. Is this sanctioned? Or is the director acting on his own? I’m suddenly sure that, for whatever reason, the director is working at cross purposes to Agent Walker. There’s a power play in action, and I’m stuck in the middle of it.

  “Are you allowed to do this?” I say carefully. “I mean, the director told you to do it, so you have to. But is he acting within his powers?”

  The guards don’t even acknowledge that I’ve spoken. I sigh. Jeff would have been out of here, with some kind of monetary compensation and a limo to the airport by now.

  The thought of Jeff makes me pause, a lump settling in my throat. I swallow back a self-pitying sob. I’ve been leaping from one crisis to the next since we were attacked, and I can’t get a moment to think.

  Then I remember Si isn’t dead after all. He’s here somewhere, working on a plan to get me out.

  Perhaps that’s the rush. The director wants to get onside with the Earthbound, send them a toy to play with instead of the real dragon, so they’ll help with whatever scam he’s running.

  Although, his is the director of the SIG. He can probably just do stuff like this.

  We round another corner, and suddenly the corridor is filled with a green gas. I cough and accidentally inhale a small amount of it. It stings all the way down my throat, and I gag instinctually. The hands that were holding me so tightly fall away, and I hear a thump on the ground. I hold my breath, but I’ve inhaled enough of the green gas to be as susceptible as the guards. Through the billowing green cloud, two men stride toward me, gas masks in place. One of them hands me a mask and I pull it on, taking a relieved gasp of air.

  “Come on. We don’t have much time,” says a voice through the headset in the gas mask. I turn with a relieved smile to Seth. He’s grasped my hand in one of his, and he’s pulling me along the corridor. Ahead of us, Si is marking point.

  “How did you know?” I ask, trying to see through the cloud of gas in the corridor.

  “We didn’t. At least not until ten minutes ago. The director sped up the timeframes. You weren’t supposed to be moved anywhere until tomorrow.”

  I blink and my heat vision turns on. All I can see are the heat signatures of myself, Seth, and Si, and the small Demon bottle around my neck, which is like the sun compared to everything else.

  We sprint around a corner and there’s a large red lump in front of us. I blink and my normal vision returns. It’s a group of seven agents with gas masks in place and guns aimed directly at us. The director stands in the middle of the agents, his face red and a sheen of sweat on his forehead. He pulls off his gas mask, his face smug. “Did you think we’d be unprepared for your little escape plan?” he says with a sneer. “A junior agent and a lizard? You don’t have what it takes to beat me.”

  I glance at Si. He usually gets riled up over lizard comments. He’s a chameleon; there’s a difference. But his expression is calm, almost amused under the face plate.

  Seconds later, it becomes obvious why. One of the agents behind the director lifts the butt of his gun and slams it into the back of the director’s head, knocking him out. He slumps to the floor. I hesitate, glancing between Seth and the other agents across from us who still have their weapons trained in our direction.

  As one, they lower their guns, standing down.

  One of the men takes off his mask. “Get out of here, Seth. You don’t have much time.” It’s Agent Harkness, the metal worker I saw when I first arrived.

  Seth nods. “You won’t regret this.”

  Harkness shakes his head. “I owe Agent Walker. There was never any choice. Now get outta here.” He pushes Seth toward the end of the corridor.

  And then we’re off again, running for all we’re worth.

  We skid to a halt outside a bank of elevators, and Seth presses the button to take us to the ground.

  “Where are we going? How’d you even plan this?” I ask, as we get into the first elevator that arrives, my heart pounding like it’s trying to escape my chest.

  “We’re meeting Walker in the garage and we’re getting you out of here,” Si tells me. His voice is muffled through the gas mask, and I frown. I put my hand up to pull it off, but Seth stills my movement.

  “We need to leave them on until we’re out of the building. Just in case,” Seth says.

  I nod and put my hand back down. We’re not out of the woods yet.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The elevator doors open to the garage and green gas fills the air. There’s no visibility at all, and we have to make our way through it to whatever vehicle they’ve got for us. Gun shots ring out all around us. There’s a blind shoot-out going on—no one can see what they’re firing at, but they’re shooting all the same.

  Si gestures for us to fall into line behind him. His body has already changed into the hard lizard scales that protect him in moments like this. We can’t see more than a step in front of us, and my pulse is hammering so hard I’m sure they’re going to find us just because of the noise.

  I blink, and my heat vision is back. I can’t see the gas, but I can see the shapes of about five men in front of us. One of them is Agent Walker, and the other four must be SIG agents who were smart enough to put gas masks on before coming to investigate.

  “I can see five figures,” I whisper into the mask, hoping my voice doesn’t carry over the sound of gun shots.

  “Where?” Si whispers. I notice he doesn’t question how I can see them.

  “I think it’s probably Agent Walker at about our eleven o’clock. The other shooters are gathered together at about three o’clock.” I scan the room. “Wait. There’s another man moving slowly around the back.”

  “That could be Agent Walker as well,” Seth says.

  I nod in acknowledgement. I don’t know who the heat signatures represent.

  A gun fires, and I’m staring at it when it goes off. The light blinds me, and for a moment, I can’t see anything. I hear the bullet hit flesh close to us, and Si grunts.

  “Are you hit? Did it get you?” I whisper frantically at Si, grabbing his arm.

  Seth pulls us behind a car and Si follows more slowly.

  “It hit my scales. I’m just winded. I’ll be fine.”

  I throw my arms around his neck in a tight hug. “I can’t lose you again,” I whisper.

  He puts one hand on my back. “It’s okay. I’m fine, little one.”

  “We need to hurry,” Seth says. “There’s not much time.”

  Si nods. “You two stay here. I’m going after those agents.” Si moves off before I can tell him to stop.

  Seth has a similar frustration in his eyes.

  “Maybe we should help?” I ask
. I blink and my normal visions returns.

  “How?”

  “A distraction?”

  Seth frowns. “What do you have in mind?”

  I finger the small blue bottle around my neck, but it doesn’t seem like a good idea. There’s still no guarantee it won’t come after me first. “Maybe we could start up a few of these cars? Or...” I glance around me, trying to find something that might work. There’s a fire extinguisher behind glass on the walls. “What about using that?” I ask, pointing.

  “Can’t we just shoot at them? You can see them, can’t you?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know who is who. There’s a chance we’d accidentally shoot Agent Walker or Si.” I blink again, and nothing happens. I don’t know how to get the heat signature vision back, so I actually have no idea where they are at this moment in time anyway. “We should take them out one by one, like Si.”

  “It’s harder one on one. These guys are professional agents.”

  I shake my head and lean toward him. “It won’t be one on one. It will be two on one. Plus fire extinguisher foam.”

  He hesitates for a moment, then nods. “Let’s do it.”

  I grin, and he gives a half-smile back.

  I blink, and suddenly I’m seeing everything in reds, oranges, and yellows again. It’s very disconcerting. “There’s someone over there, on the other side of that car,” I whisper.

  “Let’s get the fire extinguisher and find our first victim,” Seth says, appearing as a red-orange blob in front of me. He crouch-runs over to the glass box set into the wall and smashes his elbow against the glass. It shatters loudly, in what turned out to be a moment of silence. There’s silence for a second, and then bullets start firing in Seth’s direction.

  But he’s already removed the fire extinguisher and is running in a low crouch back to me.

  “What now?” I whisper.

  “The man behind the car?” he asks quietly, handing me the fire extinguisher.

  I nod and follow behind him. We venture out from the protection of the rows of cars, into the space between, and I have to force myself to keep going, despite knowing we’re protected by the green gas that’s still floating in the air. I settle with relief back into place beside Seth when we reach the car. It’s a Ford station wagon. I can’t imagine what the SIG might use it for. Seth points to the back of the car, and I nod. The heat signature is still tucked in behind the back of the station wagon. Seth dodges back around the other side, and I creep forward on this side.

  I blink back to normal vision as I count to three and then leap out from the car, spraying the agent in the face. From the other side, Seth knocks his gun out of his hands with a well-aimed kick. I grab for the gun, while Seth punches the guy in the face. The agent screams from the impact, and blood squirts through the foam, turning it a pinkish red. He curls over and clutches at his face.

  “Do we knock him out?” I ask.

  Seth pulls some plastic zip ties out of his jacket pocket and wraps them around the agent’s legs and hands. The agent resists, but Seth whispers something in his ear, and he stills.

  I blink and nothing happens.

  “Where now?” whispers Seth.

  I close my eyes deliberately and open them again. Nothing.

  I blink again, and the heat-vision returns. I let out a breath and look around, trying to find the next agent. The heat signatures are clustered around one small area now, and I point Seth in the right direction, taking the lead this time. We crawl at the back of the cars, along the concrete wall at one side of the garage area. I blink and my normal vision comes back. I sigh with relief—it’s hard to maneuver when you can only see heat.

  When we’re close to the spot where I saw them clustered, Seth and I check under a big black SUV. I encounter the wide eyes of an agent I don’t recognize staring back out at me. My heart skips up into my throat, until I notice the duct tape across his mouth, and the rope holding his hands in place.

  He’s already been subdued.

  We crawl to the edge of the car, and I poke my head around the corner. Si is crouching over a second agent, this one unconscious, who now has rope tying his hands and legs to the other agent.

  “We got another one back there,” I whisper to Si, who nods.

  “Walker has taken out one of the others. There are still two out there.”

  I blink my eyes into heat-vision, getting more confident with it every time. I can see the three other heat signatures. Two of them are close together and writhing about like they’re fighting, and a third is closing in on the other two. “Quick, just over there. I think Agent Walker is fighting one of them.”

  We run toward the back of the garage. The gas has almost completely dissipated, and I can see two men struggling between two SUVs just ahead of us. Another agent is creeping along one side of a smaller black Audi, and I immediately raise my gun. I hesitate, but when I see him aiming his gun at Agent Walker I pull the trigger.

  The agent collapses to one side, and a spreading stain emerges on his shirt. I’m frozen in one spot, mesmerized by the spreading pool of red around the agent lying on the concrete in front of us.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “Come on, Mei. We have to go.” Seth grabs at my arm, and I jerk back into awareness. Agent Walker is walking toward us, smoothing down his rumpled suit.

  “We need a car. Something bulletproof,” he says. He heads to a black SUV and opens the door, grinning back at the others. “No need to lock the cars when they’re in the SIG building, right?”

  He leans down and starts the car using a couple of wires. Without a word, we all climb into the vehicle behind him, Si in the front, Seth and me in the back. I lean wearily on Seth’s shoulder, glad to know he’s okay and to have him around again.

  “Everyone put your seatbelts on, this is going to be a bumpy ride.” Agent Walker sounds excited rather than anxious, but I sit up and buckle my belt. The car screeches backward and out of the parking space toward the exit. We’re almost there when the door to the stairwell bursts open and SIG agents stream out, shooting at the front of the car as they run toward us. I’m not sure we’ll be able to make it out of here with that many agents flowing out the door.

  I jerk down below the window, and touch the blue bottle at my neck. Should I let him out? They’ll be able to subdue the demon—that’s what SIG agents are best at—but it will take them time. Meanwhile, we’ll be going fast enough to hopefully get us the hell out of Dodge.

  I press the button to lower the window.

  “What are you doing?” Agent Walker yells as he squeals the car around a corner. “Trying to get us shot?”

  Ignoring him, I open the window enough to throw the small vial outside. As the window goes back up, I see the bottle crash into a thousand pieces on the ground behind us. The same smoky gas as last time emerges from the broken bottle. We’re heading out the exit by the time the demon has fully formed, a couple hundred yards behind us. It turns immediately toward our SUV, its gaze like two molten disks of lava shining out of its head. I can almost smell its desire for revenge, and I can’t stop shivering.

  But most of the SIG agents are shooting at the demon. They’re not stupid; they recognize the greater threat. The demon has to turn back to deal with the agents behind it, or it won’t be around to get revenge on me.

  My hands are shaking, and I hold tight to the side door as I watch what’s happening behind us. I’m sure they’ll all be fine. SIG agents are tough. And they deal with demons all the time.

  I keep repeating it to myself, even as we speed away down the streets of New York. I don’t know how, but Agent Walker seems able to avoid the worst of the congestion, and soon we’re just another car in the middle of the city.

  “Where the hell did you find a demon?” he asks.

  I shrug. “Around.” I don’t feel like talking to him just yet.

  He glances at Si, who shrugs. “I’m not complaining. I just can’t believe you had it around your damn neck on a
string the whole time.”

  I lift my hand to my now empty neck. “What else was I going to do with it?” I ask neutrally. “I couldn’t leave it for someone else to find.”

  Agent Walker clearly has nothing to say to this, and concentrates on driving. I sit next to Seth and lean my head on his shoulder again.

  I shouldn’t be able to, but I slide into sleep.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  There’s a thick liquid all around me, and I’m being pulled down into the darkness. I swim frantically, pushing with everything I have, but something is dragging me backward. The water feels tight and sticky. It’s more like slime than water, and I know if I open my mouth and try to breathe, I’m going to die.

  So I hold my breath, despite the burning in my chest, and keep trying to swim. Just when I know I’m going to die, I open my eyes and gasp in the sweet fresh air. A scream dies on my lips, and a door opens on the other side of the room. Seth comes in, his eyes wide with concern.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  “Where are we?” I ask huskily, still half dazed from the dream.

  “A motel just outside of Philadelphia.”

  It’s one of the flashier motels I’ve ever stayed in. The room has two beds, and through another door I can see an en suite. I’m assuming Seth came from the main room.

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “A couple of hours. You didn’t even wake when I carried you in here.”

  I nod. “Have Si and Agent Walker talked about what we do now?”

  “They’re waiting for you. They’ve been particularly tight-lipped.” Seth glowers, and I manage a half-smile. At least they’re being consistent.

  I sigh and move to dangle my legs over the edge of the bed. I push myself to standing and almost topple over. Seth rushes forward and catches me just in time.

  “What’s happening?” I ask, panic overriding everything else. Seth helps me to sit back down on the bed.

  “I don’t know.” He turns to the door, and yells, “Agent Walker. Si.”