The Dragon Conspiracy

by Lisa Shearin

  The Sun King’s moniker was given to it by its first official owner, Louis XIV. No excessive ego involved there. The canary yellow diamond must have been happy with its name; it kept its bad mojo to itself. Not so much with the next two guys named Louis to sit on the French throne. In the beginning of his reign, Louis XV was called “Louis le Bien-Aimé” (Louis the Well-Beloved). By the end of his time wearing the crown, he’d made so many monumentally crappy decisions that when he died in 1774, he was the most hated man in France, and had the distinction of being identified by many as the excuse for the French Revolution. But it was the next Louis and his wife, Marie Antoinette, who bore the brunt of the Sun King’s bad karma, and it certainly didn’t delay their wagon ride to the guillotine that they also owned the Hope Diamond, another famously cursed gem.

  The last two diamonds weren’t slouches in the death, destruction, and despair department, either.

  The London Blue had been used by Henry VIII to woo Anne Boleyn.

  We all know how well that turned out.

  After sending the first Anne he’d married to the chopping block, ol’ Henry dangled the diamond in front of wives numbers three through six.

  Enough said.

  And before coming into Viktor Kain’s hands/claws, the Heart of Darkness had surfaced briefly—after taking care of business in Russia with the Romanov family—to find its way into the hands of the SS, who had a nasty habit of liberating paintings and jewels from their owners to enrich themselves and the coffers of the Third Reich. The black diamond came into the possession of Adolf Hitler, who gave it to Eva Braun as a wedding gift the day of their marriage—and one day before their joint suicide.

  “Damn, that little rock didn’t mess around,” I muttered.

  But there’d been no mention of the diamonds ever having been used for anything other than deadly adornment. At least not individually.

  The one and only time (before now) that all seven diamonds had been together had been with the Romanovs. I clicked through several photos of the royal family, which naturally included some with Rasputin. I clicked on one to make it bigger. “Mad Monk” was right. Those were some seriously crazy eyes.

  So when a hand touched my shoulder, I damned near jumped out of my skin.

  It was Ian with two coffees in one of those carry-out holders.

  I pressed my hand into my chest and tried to remember how to breathe.

  Ian held up the hand he’d touched me with. “Before you say it, I did not sneak up on you. You weren’t paying attention.”

  “Another training opportunity.”

  He handed me a coffee and a cheese danish. “You made this one; not me.”

  I took both gratefully. “Thank you. Cream?”

  “Yes.”

  “A lot?”

  “Enough to refill a cow.”

  I took a sip. “Perfect.”

  His own coffee would be black, and the longer it’d sat in the pot, the better. Between his time in the military and the NYPD, the need for any froufrou coffee fixins had been programmed right out of him. Like he’d told me once, “Soldiers and cops are grateful to get coffee any way they can.”

  SPI now had a functioning cafeteria. Entirely too many of our cases involved twenty-four hours or more of being awake and working. We’d lured a hotshot incubus barista from an East Village Starbucks. Most of us were a little more discerning than Ian when it came to our coffee. If we needed caffeine to stay awake, it’d better be good.

  The coffee served here was also hot. As SPI agents, we were expected to know how to use virtually anything as a weapon. Coffee in our cafeteria qualified as a weapon, only our take-out cups didn’t have some fancy version of “It’s hot, stupid” printed on them. As SPI agents, we were expected to have enough sense to know it.

  Since my coffee had enough cream to qualify as a latte, I could’ve guzzled mine without risking third-degree burns.

  I couldn’t resist it; I had to ask. “I noticed you popped out of here pretty quick when Kylie left. Did you get a chance to talk to her?”

  I had waited until Ian had just started to take that first cautious sip of coffee before asking my question. Not that I wanted him to burn himself, but it was a lot harder to hide a reaction while your tongue was being scorched.

  Ian must have gotten some seriously intensive anti-interrogation/torture training in the military. He didn’t even wince at what had to have been nuclear-hot black coffee.

  My partner was a rock of resistance.

  Ian glanced at my screen. “Looks like you’re reading up on our AWOL diamonds.”

  I sighed and nodded. “And they’re as nasty as those harpies.” I gave him the Reader’s Digest condensed version of their history. “What about your black market art dealer? You get up with him?”

  “Nothing yet. Considering what went down tonight, I imagine he’s busy right about now, and hopefully it has everything to do with the Dragon Eggs. I left a message. He always calls back.”

  “Know where he might be?”

  “He doesn’t trust anyone that much. I’ve met him in a different place every time.”

  “Speaking of contacts, this du Beckett guy—I’ve heard that name before, but I can’t remember where and from who.”

  “Eddie does work for him.”

  “Security?”

  Ian shook his head. “Acquisitions.”

  “Fancy way of saying that Eddie’s his picker?”

  “You got it. Mr. du Beckett hears about a piece through that grapevine of his, and he sends Eddie out to go get it and bring it back. While he’s out there, if he and his team see anything else they think du Beckett will like, they bag it and bring it home with them. World travel, exotic locations, danger around every corner, and at the end of the day, the big bucks.”

  “Crappy sounding job, but I guess somebody’s gotta do it.” I glanced over to where Kenji Hayashi and his people were going over the Met surveillance tape. There wasn’t any code the elf tech couldn’t crack, any encryption he couldn’t decipher, or computer system he couldn’t hack. Kylie considered Kenji her brother from another mother. From the looks of the scowl on Kenji’s face, the identity of our heist mastermind was eluding him and endangering his perfect record, and Kenji was not amused.

  “Doesn’t look like they’ve hit pay dirt yet,” I noted.

  “Nope,” Ian said. “I took a look and saw a lot of familiar faces. I was surprised some of them could scrape off enough blood and brimstone to mix with polite company.”

  I froze. “Demons? I didn’t see any demons there.”

  “The figurative kind. The things that like to walk on the dark side—like Rake Danescu. Word has it he’s put together enough gold to turn Viktor Kain’s head when the bidding starts, but tonight he might have been too clever for his own good.”

  “Meaning?” I asked.

  “You weren’t all Rake was admiring.”

  I remembered. “The harpy statue.”

  Ian flicked his finger across the tip of his nose. “And he’s strong enough to do what happened tonight. Whether he has the talent or not is another question, but whenever a crime goes down in this city with a supernatural perp, if Danescu doesn’t have a hand in it, he at least has information.”

  “When Ben was about to go after those harpies,” I said, “Rake was gone.”

  “Maybe his work there was done. Not accusing him, I’m just saying what I saw.”

  “He did advise that I step away from the harpies right before they broke loose.”

  “That was nice of him.”

  I snorted. “First time for everything.”

  Ian started toward his desk, stopped, and looked at me over his shoulder. His lips twitched at the corners. “Nice try with the hot coffee.”

  9

  BY the time the sun came up, we’d discovered another thing Be
n Sadler was good at—healing fast. He didn’t have any special healing skills, just the stubbornness that came with being in the middle of a crappy situation that involved him, and refusing to stay in an infirmary bed while others did the legwork of solving the problem. Part of me did a facepalm when I’d heard he wanted to go with us, but the other part was proud of him. When your problem involved a Russian mafia boss who also happened to be a dragon large enough to eat you and use one of your ribs to pick his teeth afterward, that problem needed solving quick.

  It said a lot about Ben Sadler that he wanted in. On second thought, maybe it just said he was nuts.

  There were two other things Ben was adamant about: going to his apartment to get clothes, and going to see Sebastian du Beckett with us. Vivienne Sagadraco’s acquirer of unacquirables had been less than forthcoming about Ben, Viktor Kain, and what his interest was in the Dragon Eggs, but he’d said he “owed it to the boy” to tell him in person.

  Ben told us he had wondered why a client of Sebastian du Beckett’s wealth and influence had requested an inexperienced junior appraiser to evaluate the Dragon Eggs for him. Now that he knew about his “condition,” as he had taken to calling it, he knew that du Beckett had ulterior motives, not necessarily nefarious, but Ben wanted to hear what they were straight from the horse’s mouth. So we took the necessary security precautions and Ben got to go along on our morning field trip to the Upper West Side.

  The first errand didn’t need to be done by Ben. SPI dispatched a couple of our guys posing as air-conditioning repairmen to Ben’s West Village apartment. Tool cases and duffels were empty going in, full coming out.

  Clothes obtained. Objective achieved.

  The second errand was trickier.

  It involved getting back into a moving vehicle with Ben Sadler. I wasn’t superstitious or anything, but I had to admit to being nervous. As usual, Yasha was our driver, and I wouldn’t call him nervous, more like growly.

  The SUV was a Tahoe, not Yasha’s beloved Suburban.

  Ben reached for the door handle and tensed. “Is he growling at me?” he whispered.

  I remembered that Ben had been unconscious last night and hadn’t been properly introduced to Yasha. Some things Ben wasn’t ready for yet. Like the fact that our driver was growling at him, was a werewolf, and that it was futile to whisper because Yasha could hear a tick burp at fifty yards.

  “Yasha, this is Ben Sadler,” I said. “Ben, this is Yasha Kazakov. He was our driver last night.”

  Ian got in the passenger seat, and shot the Russian a look. “He’s not growling; he’s clearing his throat.”

  I patted Yasha on the shoulder as I slid across the backseat. “How is she?”

  “Looks worse than is, but looks bad.”

  “She’s got the best looking after her. I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  That was the truth. The mechanics in SPI’s motor pool could repair any automotive damage. Bullets, claws, steel-dissolving alien secretions, you name it, those guys and gals could make the vehicular victim look and run like new.

  They’d had a lot of practice.

  Ben looked confused at my and Yasha’s exchange, but didn’t ask any questions. Wise man.

  Regardless of how secure the line was, Sebastian du Beckett had refused to talk about Ben over the phone last night with Vivienne Sagadraco. Her growl when she’d hung up the phone had probably rumbled the Old Masters paintings plum off her office walls.

  She was sending Alain Moreau, her chief legal counsel who also happened to be my manager, to “inquire as to his reticence to discuss the matter.”

  I think she was sending Moreau rather than going herself because she would’ve been too pissed to be polite. As a Brit, there wasn’t anything more important than politeness, unless it was not alienating the man who kept her hoard topped off. It was known throughout the supernatural world that Alain Moreau spoke for Vivienne Sagadraco, so du Beckett shouldn’t be offended. Heck, if he had a lick of sense, he’d be relieved to have a vampire knocking on his door rather than a dragon whose real form was as tall as his brownstone.

  On second thought, du Beckett might be in more danger from Alain Moreau. He was hundreds of years old and had impeccable Old World manners to go with each and every year. However, any attempt to harm or even show the slightest disrespect to Vivienne Sagadraco, and he would make the offending party regret they’d ever been born. He looked proper and like he didn’t like getting his hands dirty with violence, but I had no doubt he could unleash copious amounts of chastisement if he had to.

  Alain Moreau had somewhere else to go first, so he took another car, but he was there waiting for us as we pulled up to the front of the Upper West Side brownstone. With his fangs retracted, my vampire manager looked like Anderson Cooper in need of a week of sun in the Hamptons. He was his usual flawlessly dressed and dapper self. He was old enough to be able to be out during the day. Most vamps his age still avoided daylight; for Moreau, it gave him a chance to add yet another stylish accessory to his ensemble. His sunglasses probably cost more than I made in a month.

  The street was quiet. It was an affluent, residential neighborhood and it was before nine in the morning, but that didn’t do a thing to stop my heebie-jeebies.

  If anyone was watching, I glanced around just as a person who’d never been here before would have, mildly curious, taking in the surroundings. Perfectly normal. In reality, I was as jumpy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Not that I expected to see a harpy walking down the street, but when you worked for SPI, you saw stranger things, several times a day, often before lunch.

  “Tell me you’ve got heavily armed folks posted around here,” I said to my partner, trying not to move my lips.

  “Hidden and in plain view,” Ian assured me.

  “The two yuppie moms with strollers down the block?”

  “You don’t recognize Elana?”

  I looked closer without trying to be obvious. I’d been working off and on with Elana since my first night with SPI. If there was a dark alley that needed investigating, Elana was the go-getter who wanted to go in first. She was that person, the one who didn’t necessarily start the bar fight, but come hell or high water, she was gonna be the one to finish it.

  “Wig and glasses,” Ian said helpfully. “The woman with her is one of our new recruits. Early retirement from the Navy. She got tired of waiting for the SEALs to accept women.”

  “Uh . . . lucky us?”

  “Yes, lucky us.”

  “And I’m betting the NYPD wouldn’t approve of what they have in those strollers.”

  “Probably not. I also have three lookouts on surrounding rooftops alert to incoming anything, especially harpies.” With the barest nod, he indicated a manhole cover about five feet away. “And you’d be amazed at how quickly that manhole cover can come off with a motivated ogre under it, right, Carl?”

  A disconcerting mix of grunt and evil chuckle came up from beneath the street.

  Jeez. Our backup was scarier than what was after us.

  We went up the brownstone steps beside Ben and behind Alain Moreau. My manager rang the doorbell, and we all waited.

  And waited.

  “He’s got a camera mounted out here somewhere,” Ben told us. “And all around the outside of the house. I’ve seen the monitor in his office. He’s always answered right away before.”

  “I imagine you didn’t bring this much company with you then,” I murmured, in case the old guy was watching and listening.

  Ian smoothly pushed back his jacket, clearing the way for his hand to his gun. A gun that was always loaded with silver bullets, casings cooled in holy water when they’d been made. “Moreau?”

  “I agree. Something’s wrong.” The vampire reached for the knob and turned it. Locked. Then the fingers of his hand tightened and gave the knob a sharp jerk. There was the di
stinct and unnerving sound of door hardware breaking and clattering to the floor on the other side.

  The door opened.

  Moreau led the way. No gun, no need.

  Sebastian du Beckett’s house looked like a live-in museum in need of a good cleaning. The walls were wood paneled, the furniture was leather, and stuff that looked really old and expensive was everywhere. I wondered if he knew my friend Ollie Barrington-Smythe. A rich guy with a house full of spooky shit definitely needed an introduction to a snooty little Englishman who ran a shop full of the same.

  Moreau and Ben had been here before and took off down a side hall.

  Moreau’s sharp command came from the end of the hall. “Monsieur Sadler, don’t move.”

  Ian had his gun in his hand, and swept me behind him as we followed. When I got a good look at what was in the room, I had to nix the idea of an introduction to Ollie.

  There was a man sitting upright behind a desk in an office chair.

  He couldn’t be any more dead.

  Getting turned to stone would do that to you.

  “Sebastian du Beckett?” I asked.

  Ian lowered his gun, but didn’t put it away. “Yeah.”

  There was no sign of a struggle. The two guest chairs were angled in front of the desk, a small table between them. No other visible way in except the door we’d used. A nice, big window behind the desk looked out over a small backyard, or maybe folks who lived in brownstones called it a garden.

  Alain Moreau had his phone out. “Madame, Monsieur du Beckett is dead.” Without hesitation he went right up to the presumed corpse and poked at him with one long finger. “Stone, Madame. It appears to be gorgon inflicted.”

  “Gorgon?” Ben gaped. “As in Medusa?”