The Dragon Conspiracy

by Lisa Shearin

  I scanned the page Yasha held, trying to will the Cyrillic letters to turn to something I could read myself. “I don’t suppose it says what color those eggs are?”

  “Nyet.”

  “So the Romanovs didn’t get the Dragon Eggs in one convenient carton,” I said. “They had to collect them, just like Viktor Kain. Think Rasputin might have gotten a line on a way to heal Alexei? He was the heir, he had hemophilia, and his parents were willing to move heaven and earth to find a cure, and they had more than enough money to do it.”

  “Rasputin was rumored to be a wizard of black magic,” Yasha told us. “It was said to be how he had gained power over Nicholas and Alexandra. He claimed to be a healer.”

  And being an evil wizard would explain those freaky crazy eyes I’d seen in that photo online.

  “Maybe he had ‘gem mage’ on his resume, too,” I said. “Or considering that he couldn’t cure Alexei, maybe he just fancied himself one. Either way, he couldn’t deliver on his promise. What’s the date on that letter?”

  “October 7, 1916.”

  “About three weeks from Halloween,” I noted. “The timing’s right for him to try to use the diamonds to heal Alexei. Though Russians wouldn’t have known it as Halloween, but if Rasputin was a wizard with contacts in the elven or goblin realms, he’d have known when the barriers would be the thinnest and the diamonds would be the strongest.” I remembered something else. “And it was about two months before his bullet-riddled body was found tied up and weighted down in a frozen river. Russian aristocrats trying to save the monarchy supposedly did the deed, though it danged near took them all night to finally kill the guy. I wonder if that could’ve been fueled by a smidgen of royal disappointment at Rasputin failing to cure Alexei. It’s one of those things that make you go hmm.”

  Ian was only half hearing me; he was staring out the room’s one window. Now, just because I was a history buff, I didn’t expect everyone else would be enthralled. My little factoids didn’t have any bearing on our problem. But still.

  Then I realized Ian wasn’t staring out the window; he was looking at something on the windowsill.

  What on earth?

  Ian went to the window and I followed.

  A pigeon statue?

  On a side table by the window was another one. Eddie had been using it as a paperweight.

  Ian opened the window.

  On the fire escape was a birdcage. Not the kind for keeping pet birds; this one was for trapping birds.

  There was a live pigeon inside next to some scraps of bread and a few peanuts.

  “One trapped pigeon plus two stone pigeons.” I did the math and got a completely unexpected conclusion. “Eddie? It couldn’t be.”

  “A monkey demon spit in his eye, my ass,” Ian snarled.

  “Someone’s been practicing,” I said. “Or else, snacking on pigeons between meals.”

  Eddie Laughlin was our gorgon.

  16

  “EDDIE the Gorgon,” I said, trying it out. “Okay, I’m sorry, but that just sounds ridiculous.”

  We’d freed the pigeon, and Ian had called Ms. Sagadraco yet again, this time to drop the bomb that one of her security consultants was a gorgon, and an indiscriminate killer of people and pigeons. When Ian finished his call, he’d run into the tiny kitchen and come out with a handful of those big, black trash bags. “Yasha, watch the front door.”

  The big Russian gave a grim nod and an affirmative grunt as he pulled on gloves.

  Gloves? Huh?

  “What are you doing?” I asked my partner.

  Ian cleared Eddie’s desk of papers with a single rake of his arm, dumping everything in a garbage bag. “Getting the evidence and getting out.” He tossed me a bag. “Get to it.”

  I did. “We’re scared of Eddie? But we’re wearing glasses.”

  “And one touch from Eddie on bare skin will get you just as stoned as a stare. I’d rather not go hand to hand with him right now.”

  Oh yeah.

  Oh shit. That was why Yasha had gloved up.

  Then I remembered what Helena Thanos had said about the only way to kill a gorgon. “When you were ransacking the kitchen,” I asked Ian, “you didn’t happen to have seen a big-ass knife, did you?”

  My partner answered my question with another question. “Yasha?”

  The Russian reached behind his head and under the collar of his leather coat—and pulled out a freakin’ machete.

  So much for whether Ian and Yasha knew how to dispatch a gorgon. I felt safer already.

  I started shoveling. And while I shoveled, I thought out loud. “So Eddie killed Denny?”

  “That’s what I’m going with.”

  “So that was Eddie out there watching us.”

  “Stands to reason.” Ian scooped up the laptop and dug around under the desk until he found a messenger bag Eddie must have used as a case.

  I didn’t need Ian to tell me that the only reason Eddie probably hadn’t gone for three outs in Central Park was that we were ready for a gorgon. We had glasses and guns—and a werewolf with a machete who was about two days shy of going furry. Silver bullets wouldn’t kill a gorgon, but it’d put a hurtin’ on him long enough for Yasha to do his thing.

  Right now I almost wished Eddie would come home. A good, old-fashioned ass kicking could be delivered via boot, no hands needed. Because in addition to Denny—whom I didn’t think many, if any, people would miss—Eddie had killed Sebastian du Beckett, an old man who’d taken Ben Sadler under his wing and kept the boss happy with high-quality sparklies.

  “Sebastian du Beckett would have just let Eddie in the house this morning,” I said. “The old guy trusted him. No wonder he was killed sitting behind his desk; he didn’t suspect a thing. Why would Eddie kill Sebastian du Beckett? He worked for the guy, liked him even.”

  “Ms. Sagadraco said Bastian had a keen eye for new talent,” Ian replied. “What if Eddie checked in this morning and du Beckett knew on first sight that Eddie’s eye problems weren’t from monkey demon spit? He probably recognized gorgonism when he saw it. Eddie had to kill him to keep his secret.”

  I stopped shoveling and stuffing. “Wait a minute. I’d never seen a gorgon before this morning.” I waved my fingers around my head. “Kenji said the whole snake-hair thing is a myth, but that’s what I saw going on with Helena Thanos’s aura. At the museum, I just saw a thick film over Eddie’s usual aura caused by the magic monkey spit. Eddie had to know there were people who’d realize he was a gorgon. Maybe he actually did goad a monkey demon to spit in his eye, just for the aura disguise, and to give him a real excuse to wear dark glasses. Eddie being our gorgon also means that Helena Thanos was right. Mr. du Beckett knew his killer, and it was a young gorgon. Eddie must have been turned recently.”

  “He came back last Thursday from three weeks in Thailand on a buying trip for du Beckett.”

  “And while he was there, he made a new friend.”

  “More like really pissed them off. If he did get infected in Thailand, that Thai gorgon could have turned him to stone, but gave him gorgonism instead.”

  I thought of Miss Helena and what she’d said about the curse being an eternal damnation and worse than Hell. “Whatever comes after ‘pissed off’ must have been what Eddie did.” Then I realized what he was doing now. “Eddie’s a new gorgon looking for a cure.”

  “Uh-huh,” Ian said. “Once I get this laptop to Kenji, I imagine he’s going to find a lot of searches on cures for gorgonism.”

  “Rasputin used the Dragon Eggs to try to heal Alexei,” I said. “It didn’t work. Eddie’s a gorgon looking for a cure. From all these papers and books lying around here, he must know the Dragon Eggs didn’t cure the tsar’s son. Why would Eddie think the diamonds would work for him?”

  A proverbial ton of bricks fell on my head.

  Holy cr
ap.

  “Alexei was human; Eddie’s a gorgon, but even before he got infected he wasn’t human. He’s an elf/goblin hybrid, a supernatural. Like the goblins who have been using the Queen of Dreams to heal for thousands of years. Since there’s no known cure for gorgonism, that diamond would be his only hope.”

  “Eddie’s a smart guy,” Ian said, “and he’s got some connections, but a harpy-wrangling, criminal mastermind he’s not.” My partner thought of something, swore, and kicked one of the three full garbage bags over to the door where Yasha was tossing them into the hall. “And last night I told him where we were taking Ben Sadler.”

  “He sent that harpy after us?”

  Ian shook his head. “Not his job. His job was to be the inside man in SPI. He and his real boss had to have seen us leaving with Ben.”

  “Eddie offered his car.”

  “And when he couldn’t get Ben into his car, he asked where we were taking him, and like an idiot, I told him.”

  “Hey, we all trusted Eddie.”

  “But I was the one to do everything but stick a bow on the kid’s head. Ben attacking those harpies must have been a lifetime of Christmas presents rolled into one. They’d found their gem mage; now all they had to do was snatch him.”

  “And Eddie told someone on his earpiece that he’d be right there,” I said. “What you wanna bet he wasn’t talking to any of our people?”

  “Or no one at all. Just an excuse to leave fast once we wouldn’t put Ben in his car.”

  “To run back into the Sackler Wing to report to the guy who’s been pulling all of our strings.” This still wasn’t making any sense. “The goblin diamond cures goblins, elves, all supernaturals. The elf diamond negates magic. I could see a lack of magic as being a bad thing, but curing?”

  Ian stopped. “Curing who?”

  “Uh . . . supernaturals.”

  “And curing them from what?” He asked it like he already knew the answer.

  The lightbulb in my head came on, and I looked at my partner in dawning horror.

  “From the diseases that made us what we are.” It was Yasha. He was standing by the door, a full garbage bag held by suddenly loose fingers. He dropped it to the floor. “To be cured would make me what I used to be many years ago, a human man.” He looked at us—disbelief and fear in his eyes. “A ninety-six-year-old human man.”

  Oh. Oh no. No, no.

  Yasha didn’t need to say anything else. We knew.

  He’d be cured of being a werewolf, but the shock of it would probably kill a ninety-six-year-old human.

  “Moreau,” Yasha said, his voice a quiet rumble. “And all others.”

  As with werewolves, vampirism was a disease, spread through blood. Alain Moreau would be cured of being a vampire; but as a human, he was centuries old. He’d be instantly reduced to bones.

  I plopped down on Eddie’s couch. My legs didn’t really want to hold me up right now.

  Miss Helena? She’d be dust.

  “Ms. Sagadraco,” I whispered. “A disease didn’t make her a dragon, but she uses magic to hide what she is. The elf diamond negates magic. If that happened, she wouldn’t be able to hide. Everyone would know she’s a dragon.”

  Ian nodded. “If Ben is forced to activate those diamonds at midnight, every supernatural within their range will lose their ability to use magical glamours to hide what they are.” He put the final piece in place, and we could see it all. “Viktor Kain brought the Dragon Eggs to New York. Vivienne Sagadraco’s territory, SPI headquarters, home to the world’s largest concentration of supernaturals and undead. Viktor Kain wants to destroy everything the boss ever built, and force her into hiding—or to be hunted down.”

  It wouldn’t take the military long to find a dragon as large as Vivienne Sagadraco. As soon as a blue dragon the length of three city buses was seen flying over New York or anywhere else, I guarantee the military would get involved. I remembered back to the night I’d first seen the boss go dragon. It’d happened inside headquarters; she had to fight a male grendel and dozens of his hatchlings. Vivienne Sagadraco’s head had nearly reached the top of the fourth story. Later that night, she and her sister Tiamat had battled in the skies over Times Square. They’d each had a device to make them invisible to humans. If all magic was negated, even that wouldn’t save her. My King Kong analogy came back to me. Biplanes with machines guns buzzing around him like hornets. Substitute Ms. Sagadraco for King Kong . . .

  The modern U.S. military used fighter jets with not only guns, but rockets, missiles, and bombs. With technology that could find terrorists in caves, they’d have no problem locating a dragon anywhere in the world.

  “When Ben touched those diamonds, every supernatural in Manhattan and two other boroughs felt it,” I said. “It could ‘heal’ all those undead and expose every supernatural in that area.”

  “Or further. Ben only touched the harpy that held the diamonds.”

  “And whoever Eddie’s working for promised to cure him, meaning they plan to use the Dragon Eggs for the exact same thing. So why hasn’t Viktor Kain flown home with his scaly tail between his legs?”

  “He still has time to leave.”

  “How are we going to find those diamonds?”

  Yasha had all three bags clenched in his huge hands, his eyes glittering gold with determination. “First we must warn our people, then we find the diamonds, and the real monster who would murder us all.”

  17

  BAD news travels fast.

  News of imminent supernatural Armageddon breaks the sound barrier.

  It was eight o’clock Halloween night. While humans dressed up as vampires and werewolves would be coming into the city for parties, the real deal was getting the hell out of town. Part of me wished I could have been leaving with them; the other half knew that while fake monsters would be out partying until the wee hours, many vamps and weres—considered real monsters by humans—would be dying permanently at midnight.

  Four hours from now.

  Four hours and we still didn’t know where Ben Sadler and the Dragon Eggs were.

  Since it was Halloween, the chaos wouldn’t start immediately at midnight, but when morning came and the humans took their makeup off, the supernaturals wouldn’t be able to put their glamours back on. Those who didn’t turn to dust would be exposed to every human who saw them. Manhattan and the other boroughs would be turned into the urban version of villagers with torches and pitchforks.

  It was going to get nasty.

  The three of us had gotten out of Eddie’s apartment with three trash bags full of evidence and hopefully a computer with the location of the bitch and/or bastard behind this, Ben Sadler, and the Dragon Eggs. If we couldn’t find the diamonds and stop their activation, that location would become ground zero for the largest mass murder in the history of the supernatural world.

  Fortunately for the fate of the world, Eddie’s apartment wasn’t far from SPI headquarters, and Yasha had never been more determined to get us all there with all of our pieces and parts intact.

  We did a conference call from the speeding SUV. The three of us summarized what we’d found and what we feared it meant to the boss, Alain Moreau, and Bob and Rob, aka the Roberts.

  Bob, Rob, and their team would be waiting to take in the trash.

  SPI’s Research team had the best analytical minds Vivienne Sagadraco could lure away from the human private and government sectors, and from the courts of the supernatural realms. They’d absorb the evidence, and hopefully shoot our theory down in flames. I’d love to see that. God, we hoped we were wrong, but my gut was telling me that it would be even worse than we’d imagined. After all, it was supposed to have been Viktor Kain’s show. The only difference now being that the supernatural Armageddon had a different ringmaster.

  Yasha pulled into a private parking garage on West Third Street a block f
rom Washington Square Park, and began taking what I call the corkscrew route to the lowest level. Turn the steering wheel to the left and pretty much leave it there. It’d always made me queasy and unfortunately this time wasn’t the exception.

  At the bottom, Yasha pulled into a parking space near the back of the garage between two concrete columns and pushed a button on the dash. It was a hydraulic lift cleverly disguised as a parking space. The SUV was lowered into one of the city’s many abandoned subway tunnels SPI had paved and converted to an access road to the headquarters complex.

  Bob and Rob were waiting with what looked like a hospital laundry hamper. We tossed the trash bags in, and they headed for the freight elevator up to the office level. No one spoke. If we were a little less than four hours away from what we thought was going to happen, none of us were in the mood to exchange chitchat.

  Me, Ian, and Yasha took the passenger elevator up to the bull pen. Normally, Yasha would stay with his vehicle to oversee it being prepped to go back out, but the rules had been thrown out the window. Your priorities changed when you might only have a few hours to live. Yasha wasn’t going down without a fight.

  We weren’t going to let Yasha down.

  18

  JUST as Vivienne Sagadraco rarely left the executive suite, Kenji Hayashi simply felt better about the world and his place in it when he stayed as close to his beloved computers as possible. He was only a keystroke away from every agent at SPI New York, and another few clicks from every SPI agency office around the world. While each office had a chief technology agent—Kenji’s official title—no one had anyone like him.

  He was what every other SPI CTA wanted to be when they grew up.

  Kenji wasn’t at what I called his computer command center when the elevator doors opened.

  He was waiting for us at the elevator doors.

  “That it?” The elf indicated the messenger bag Ian wore across his chest because he wasn’t letting it out of his sight.

  Ian slipped the bag’s strap over his head and handed it over without a word.