The Dragon Conspiracy

by Lisa Shearin

  Numbers didn’t matter. Screwed was screwed.

  “You got any tips on how to kill these things?” Ian asked Rake. “We’re zero and two.”

  “These are exclusive to your dimension. We have a similar creature, and have found the joints to be vulnerable—once they have sustained enough direct hits.”

  “How many is enough?”

  “Half a dozen has been known to be effective—occasionally.”

  Yasha made a snatching motion with one of his clawed hands, then the other.

  Ian interpreted. “Yasha’s just going to rip their arms off.”

  “That would work, too.”

  A tremor shook the ground beneath my feet, sending a vibration up into my legs. Two seconds later it happened again, the tremor more intense, going all the way up into my spine this time.

  The guys felt it, too.

  So did the girls.

  The harpies shifted uneasily, looking around for the source.

  They didn’t have long to wait.

  We looked up . . . and up . . . and up.

  Viktor Kain in his true form was making an entrance Godzilla would have been proud of, right down the middle of the road, his massive body and tail twisting sinuously side to side with every step.

  I’d seen a lizard move like that before on one of those animal or nature channels—a Komodo dragon, multiplied in size and temper by a hundred or so. Kain breathed out, and the fire he had banked inside glowed out of his nostrils.

  I hadn’t seen that on Animal Planet.

  Kain had his wings tucked close to his body. Like Vivienne Sagadraco, he could have walked upright on two legs, but that would probably put his head above the tree line. With the East River full of police, he didn’t want to draw attention to the island or himself.

  Viktor Kain was in stealth mode, and the impact of his clawed feed tippy-toeing on the ground still felt like an earthquake.

  Our all-powerful, badass, goblin dark mage spoke for all of us.

  “Oh shit.”

  26

  VIKTOR Kain could have taken the building apart with one claw tied behind his back. But then he’d have a pile of rubble to sift through to find seven diamonds. It’d be like looking for hypodermic needles in a hospital haystack made of bricks.

  He didn’t have time for that.

  And we didn’t want to end up squashed inside that brick haystack.

  The booming we heard was the asphalt being crushed to pebbly dust beneath the weight and pressure of those four feet.

  I got ready to make a run for the door.

  Ian blocked me with his arm.

  “But he’s almost here,” I protested. “Get there while the gettin’s good.”

  “Wait.” Ian was calm and sure.

  I’d have been satisfied to share just one of those emotions. I was terrified. Big, crashing waves of terror, in fact. My fight-or-flight response was in full adrenaline overload, with my body and mind voting unanimously for flight—through those doors and into the pavilion. I didn’t know what was waiting in there, but I sure as hell knew what I had out here. The prize I wanted was whatever waited beyond door number one; be it trick or treat, I didn’t care. I’d deal with it when it jumped out and started killing me.

  But Ian had been doing this for SPI, the NYPD, and the military before that for about a dozen years.

  Coworkers still called me a newbie.

  Ian said stay. I stayed.

  There must have been some kind of unspoken signal, or one only harpies could hear. Almost as one, they dove from their perches, covered the four stories in an instant, and swarmed Viktor Kain.

  “Go!”

  Ian added a shove to his verbal order that put me a good ten feet in front of where I’d been standing, so that when my feet found the ground, I was actually keeping up with him and Rake.

  Yasha had shot across the kudzu-choked street and through the pavilion doors before we’d even stepped off the curb. If anything had been waiting to jump us, it’d just been flattened by a werewolf who took his self-appointed job of clearing the way for us very seriously.

  We covered the distance to the pavilion entrance without being shredded or even dive-bombed. Yasha had obligingly destroyed the doors, and was glaring into the darkness beyond, daring anything inside to have a problem with that.

  Rake was the first to look our gift horse in the mouth. “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

  “You don’t have to like it,” Ian fired back. “You’re still breathing, aren’t you?”

  The goblin didn’t snap “For how long?” The look he shot at Ian said it for him.

  In this kind of situation, I’d usually be the pessimist. But at this moment, a Russian mafia boss, who was a fifty-foot-tall, bloodred dragon that could tear through the trees out there like a can of pick-up sticks, was being attacked by a flock of harpies that made the playground scene in The Birds look like a Disney movie. Plus, they were out there; we were in here. That made me seven kinds of happy right now. I knew it wouldn’t last, but I’d enjoy it while I had it.

  Yasha had long shattered the hospital’s quiet rule. Anything down the corridors that stretched into darkness to either side of us knew we were here. So while I asked my question quietly, I still asked it.

  “Why didn’t some of those harpies follow us in here? Not that I mind.”

  Maybe the harpies had been told to expect many heavily armed men, not two humans, a goblin, and a werewolf. If so, thank God for simple minds.

  “Either Kain’s the bigger threat,” Ian said, “or their job is to defend the outside, and something else is inside with us.”

  Or someone we had yet to see hide or hair of.

  Eddie the Gorgon.

  No one had to say that out loud; we knew it.

  In unison, we all put on our anti-gorgon-glare glasses.

  Oh crap. Yasha had glasses, but they’d only fit his human face.

  “The boss said dragons are immune to gorgons,” I said. “How about werewolves?”

  “I don’t think so,” Ian said. “Yasha?”

  The Russian werewolf did something that on a human could be a shrug; then he flashed some teeth and flipped his thumb upward through his closed fist—like he was popping the cap off a bottle of beer.

  Rake Danescu chuckled darkly.

  Ian didn’t need to translate that one; we all got it.

  Well, Helena Thanos had said that the only way to kill a gorgon would be to decapitate them. Popping Eddie’s head off his neck like a bottle cap would discourage him from looking at us or anyone else ever again.

  Ian got out his flashlight and turned it on. I did the same. Everyone and everything knew we were here, or at least knew Viktor Kain was here. Through all the screeching and hell-raising ruckus going on outside, we could pretty much make all the noise we wanted. No one would ever hear us.

  Who would have ever thought that Viktor Kain would be helpful to SPI?

  My inner pessimist did remind me that the world as we knew it was going to end in less than an hour unless we moved our asses and did something about it.

  “Okay, buddy,” Ian was telling Yasha. “Find Ben.”

  Damn, I’d completely forgotten about that. Ben had not only been inside of Yasha’s beloved Suburban, but he’d bled there while Yasha had been in werewolf form kicking that harpy’s butt. He’d told me before that once his wolf form smelled a person’s blood, he could track them to the ends of the earth.

  I slammed the door on my pessimist, and invited hope to come on in the house.

  Dust was falling everywhere from Yasha essentially obliterating the front doors, which now hung in splintered ruin from one hinge each. He was now fully transformed. The excitement and sprint across the moon-drenched street must have topped off his tank. The Russian werewolf stood perfectly
still, letting the air flow across his nose. He abruptly turned to the right, stalking with long and determined strides into the dark.

  27

  THE last thing we saw was one of Viktor Kain’s Smart car–sized front feet coming down hard on a harpy, reminding me of what happens when you step on one of those ketchup packets, but infinitely worse, at least for the harpy.

  The adrenaline hadn’t stopped, and considering that I hadn’t slept since the night before last, the fear of imminent death was all that was keeping me upright and moving. So fear was good.

  The walls of the tuberculosis pavilion were covered in sky blue subway tile, and someone long ago had the bright idea to paint the walls to match while they were at it. Probably had to do with being cheerful and soothing to patients. It wasn’t doing a danged thing for me.

  Chairs, charts, and miscellaneous papers were strewn down the hall along with chunks of the ceiling and wall plaster, doors stood open or rotted from their hinges revealing rusted examining tables; and beyond one door, a huge tiled bathtub with a small set of stairs going up the side sat in what must have been a treatment room.

  One thing was missing.

  Graffiti.

  In the city, if there was a blank surface, it was a canvas to people with paint cans. Heck, I’d read recently that a dead whale had washed up in Jersey and had suffered the further indignity of getting tagged with graffiti.

  Not here. It appeared as if the hospital employees had left at the end of their shift and simply never come back. At night, it was spooky. In the light of day, it would just be sad.

  When we reached the main stairwell, the tile changed from blue to a pale yellow tile. Sections of the round metal railing actually gleamed in the beams of our flashlights.

  Yasha didn’t even pause, but took the stairs five at a time in complete silence. When I’d reached the second-floor landing, Yasha had stopped, sniffing in one direction, then the other.

  This time he went left. The moonlight washed out the yellow tile to near white. There was only one nurses’ station on the left side of the hall. The right side was lined with reinforced metal-covered doors with a single slit at eye level, and a big slide bolt—on the outside. They were the leftovers from the early 1960s when this place had been used as a rehab facility for young heroin addicts.

  “The isolation rooms,” Ian murmured. He shone his light down the line of doors: two were about to fall off their hinges; others were standing slightly open.

  Yasha made a beeline for the one directly across from the nurses’ station midway down the hall. We quickly followed.

  “And it has one thing the others don’t,” Ian said with satisfaction, aiming his light on a brand-new, shiny lock on the door.

  Bingo.

  Yasha had gone into the room to confirm Ben’s scent. He came out and nodded once.

  “Stand guard while we take a look,” Ian said. “And find which direction they took him.”

  Ian and I went in. Rake stepped into the room far enough to see.

  The window was covered with a heavy mesh screen—the better to keep addicts in the throes of withdrawal from escaping. Along a side wall was a cast-iron radiator. Like the door, it was sporting new hardware.

  Chains.

  The heavy, steel links had been wrapped around the radiator and secured in place with another lock identical to the one on the door. What we didn’t see were the handcuffs—or actual manacles—that the chain had been looped through, meaning that wherever he’d been taken, Ben was still wearing them.

  There were scratches in the plaster next to the radiator. I knelt down and shone my flashlight on it. These weren’t random marks on the wall. They were letters, and from the small pile of plaster dust on the floor directly beneath, they’d been done recently.

  Today.

  “What does it say?” Ian asked.

  We were so focused on deciphering what Ben had scratched into the wall that we hadn’t noticed the hole in the ceiling . . . until the harpy dropped through, landing on top of Rake Danescu and knocking him out cold.

  “Perhaps I can be of service,” said a cultured voice from the man framed in the doorway.

  Instantly, Ian had his gun aimed at the man’s head.

  “Would the name be Sebastian du Beckett?” the man continued smoothly. “Or perhaps simply Beckett? My first name is rather lengthy, and young Ben wasn’t left alone for very long during his short stay. He would have had minimal time for artistic endeavors.”

  28

  HOLY. Crap.

  A quick glance at Ian’s face told me I wasn’t the only one struggling to regain my mental footing.

  “But . . . but,” I stammered, “you were . . .”

  “Dead?” du Beckett offered helpfully. “Petrified? I needed to buy time, and I located a gentleman who could have been my twin brother.”

  So he could have Eddie Laughlin turn him to stone. Bastard.

  Rake groaned while the harpy quickly handcuffed him. The steel had a faint green glow with rune-like etchings.

  Magic-sapping manacles.

  Sebastian du Beckett had been prepared for everything, including magically talented opposition.

  Where the hell was Yasha?

  Ian’s eyes flicked past du Beckett and out into the hall.

  “Your werewolf friend is indisposed.” He raised a pallid hand as he pulled his glove back on. “A light touch merely paralyzes. I haven’t turned him to stone—at least not yet. That depends on how little trouble you give me.”

  Whoa . . . wait. Two gorgons?

  “Yes, I am afflicted with that malady. If you doubt my word, I can demonstrate on your goblin companion.”

  The harpy roughly pulled the now semiconscious Rake to his feet.

  “Lord Danescu, this is a surprise,” du Beckett said.

  I slowly stood, my mind trying to wrap itself around this one.

  “Even though bullets will cause me no more than a momentary inconvenience,” the gorgon continued, “I can ill afford any additional delays. Please holster your weapon, Agent Byrne.”

  The eyes behind the glasses that were as thick as the bottom of a Coke bottle turned on me. I flinched even though I had on my anti-gorgon-glare glasses.

  “Agent Fraser, I presume.”

  I didn’t answer.

  He didn’t care.

  A second and third harpy came into the isolation room, one through the door, the other through the hole in the ceiling. Du Beckett said something short and sharp to them in a language that sounded to me like Greek, and they came toward us.

  “They will not harm you,” he said, “unless you resist. I’ve asked them to remove all of your weapons. You may keep your glasses for now. Disobey and . . . well, I will let the state of your werewolf friend act as a deterrent.”

  Then it started to make sense—at least some of it did.

  I wore contacts. Without them, I couldn’t see well enough to get out of my own way.

  Judging from the thickness of the glasses that’d been on the dead man in his office, Sebastian du Beckett made Mr. Magoo look like the poster child for 20/20 vision.

  “Your glasses,” I said. “The dead man in your office was wearing glasses with a cracked lens, an old pair that was broken. You obviously need your glasses to see, but you needed to convince us that was you in your office chair, so you had whoever the dead man was sit in your office chair. Then you paralyzed him, put the broken glasses on him, then you turned him to stone, killing him.”

  “Bravo, Agent Fraser,” du Beckett said blandly. “Vivienne has always hired clever agents. You’re simply the most recent.”

  “Who was in your office chair?”

  “A homeless gentleman I made the acquaintance of who, unfortunately for him, met my physical parameters.”

  “But Ms. Sagadraco likes you. Why would—
”

  “I assure you the feeling is far from mutual.”

  Rake’s laugh was more of a dry rasp as he raised his head. One side of his face was cut and bruised, and a thin trickle of blood ran down over his chin from the cut on his bottom lip. That harpy had rung his bell but good when she’d flattened him.

  “I had the chance to slit your throat three months ago, Bastian,” the goblin said. “I could have done the world such a favor. An opportunity passed is a chance lost.”

  Something rattled in the hands of the harpy that had relieved me of my gun and knife.

  Manacles, not handcuffs.

  They were huge. The ones for Ian were similarly large. They’d fit around my ankles, but they’d fall right off my scrawny wrists, so I didn’t struggle a bit as she clipped one around my left wrist and the other on my right. I hoped they weren’t so loose that they fell off of me and Ian and spoiled the surprise we’d be giving them later. Helena Thanos had been right; harpies were not bright.

  Okay, maybe we should have struggled.

  The instant the second manacle closed around my wrist, both shrank, tightening around my wrists like a vise.

  Ian swore and twisted sharply when his wrists got the same treatment. In an instant the harpy had her arm around his neck, cutting off his air.

  “I would strongly advise that you not struggle further, Agent Byrne. Those manacles are of goblin manufacture. Shrinking to fit is not the only surprise they have. Too much resistance and they will add electric shock to their repertoire.”

  Ian glared at Rake Danescu.

  “He said goblin manufacture,” Rake snapped. “I didn’t make them.”

  Ian always carried handcuff keys in his back pocket, but these were shrink-to-fit goblin creations; NYPD-issued handcuff keys wouldn’t do us a bit of good.

  Sebastian du Beckett turned and left the isolation room. The harpies with the three of us firmly in hand followed.

  29

  YASHA had slid down the wall and was sprawled there like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He was unblinking, unmoving.