by Mell Eight
Dane had just put the word out that his consulting firm was particularly interested in helping dragons in need. She hadn't been fleeing from the enemy, but she was a fully trained elementary school teacher with a Masters of Education and two particularly articulate kits. No one would hire her because they didn't trust a dragon with the rest of the kids in the school. She wanted somewhere she could teach and be happy and Dane suggested they build a town exclusively for dragons in need.
It wasn't anything like how dragons lived in the wild. Kits had both parents with them for a while after they hatched, but within five or six years the father would need to return to his old territory to keep from fighting with his mate just as the mother would be forced to send her kits away when they grew large enough to fly. Something about living in the town in a house where everyone was able to carve out their own space and keep it separate from the rest of the dragons living there allowed real family units to form and stay together. That permanence meant that kits could go to school like regular children and adults who loved each other enough to have kits could stay with each other happily.
By the time the town was done raising the first generation of kits, they would have highly educated and socially aware young adults to send out to the world and maybe begin disproving the widely held view that dragons were only wild creatures.
There would have been much more of an outcry had the enemy been experimenting with pack magic, for example, and stealing young cubs from werewolf mothers for their experiments. Werewolves worked and lived openly and happily in nearly every community, unlike dragons.
Martha ran a hand through her white hair, cropped short so it stuck up in spikes. "Any word on the mother dragon?"
"I'm going back to look for her. She sent her kits on ahead, so I'm going to backtrack down their trail and see if I can locate her," Dane answered.
"I'll pass that information on as soon as things quiet down," Martha agreed.
Dane smiled at her and nodded before turning to Mercury, who was looking at his watch and frowning.
"My lunch hour's almost over," he sighed regretfully. "I'll have just enough time to grab a sandwich from the cafeteria and get back to my desk."
"I'm sorry Lumie's picnic didn't go well," Dane said with a laugh.
Mercury shook his head. "I think it went exactly how Lumie thought it would. I wish he would just tell us why he did things instead of doing them and us only finding out why once the results become obvious."
"Lumie change?" Dane asked, with a laugh. "Not a chance."
Mercury laughed in agreement. "I'll see you tonight?"
"Of course," Dane replied immediately. "Can you get through the wards around the town?" He had ensured that a place where a lot of dragons were congregating was well protected, but sometimes those protections messed up transportation spells.
"I think I've got the hang of it." Mercury leaned forward to press his lips briefly to Dane's, and then Dane felt the swirl of his magic before he vanished from sight.
Dane followed, his magic taking him back to the clearing where he would hopefully find the kits' trail and their mother alive at its end. Hopefully.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mercury had just barely finished unwrapping his sandwich and popping open the bag of chips that came with it when Valerie came storming up to his desk.
"Where the hell have you been?" she snarled.
Mercury wasn't going to miss out on his lunch just because she was in a tizzy. He was allowed to take an hour for his lunch on occasion if he wanted, no matter what Valerie might say. He took a big bite of his sandwich and shoved a handful of chips in afterwards, then stared at her expectantly.
Valerie spluttered for a long moment while he chewed, crunching loudly. He couldn't quite make himself chew with his mouth open, but the impulse was there.
"We have a case?" she asked slowly and very sarcastically. "Work? You ever heard of those? We don't get lunch hours when there's so much still to do!"
Mercury took another large bite of his sandwich.
Valerie puffed up with air, her face red and her lips pressed tightly together. "I've laid everything out in the conference room when you're done, Your Highness," she snarled before spinning sharply on one heel and marching off.
"Oh, man. That was beautiful." Cheng popped up to hang over the shared side of their cubicle again and he was grinning widely. "Seriously, I've never seen her that mad and I was her partner for an entire week! You two are a match made in heaven."
"I have Dane," Mercury said after he swallowed. "I don't need any more matches."
Cheng laughed and waved his hand as if he needed to clear the air. "Not a love match, a work match. You don't take any of her shit or grovel whenever she gets all authoritative. That's exactly what she needs. Listen, I know I hate her guts, but she's a hard worker. You and her figure out how to actually work together with a lot less snarling, you could be good."
Mercury took another bite of food and was gratified to see that his new tactic worked on Cheng too. He didn't wait for Mercury to swallow again before returning to his own cubicle. If only that trick would work on his kits, but he doubted it would deter them.
He finished his sandwich before heading to where Valerie was waiting impatiently. She was leaning aggressively over the conference table, her hands planted in front of her while she stared at the documents that covered half the surface. Her scowl hadn't faded in the least, but Mercury refused to let her scare him.
"So, it was definitely a trap," Mercury said as he entered the room. Valerie immediately turned her glare on him.
"Set for you specifically?" she finally asked when her glare didn't immediately make him wilt. She needed to meet 'Ron in a snit. No one glared and grumped like 'Ron. Maybe that was why he was so impervious to her attitude. In fact…
"You want to come to my house for dinner tonight?" he asked with a smile. "The rest of my kits would love to meet you."
Her scowl vanished, replaced with an open-mouthed look of incredulous shock. "You want me to what? Why?"
Mercury shrugged. "I think my kits would like you and I know they'll want to meet you when I tell them about my day during dinner." And Valerie might learn that her angry and antagonistic ways wouldn't have any effect on him for a very good reason. Working with a partner who was surly all the time would get very old very quickly. "So, six o'clock? I'll come to your place to pick you up?"
"Will it get you to shut up and focus on the case?" she asked sharply. At Mercury's nod, she sighed. "Fine. Six o'clock. Now tell me about the trap."
Mercury pulled forward a picture of the paint from the scene and tapped it with one finger. "The evidence points to the fact that the paint was added sometime after the fires were out, but before the police were actually able to secure the scene. When I attempted to get a closer look at the paint, a spell was activated."
"When you tried to disturb the evidence, you mean," Valerie said pointedly.
"Yeah, okay, no touching strange paint decorating a wall from now on," Mercury agreed. "Anyway, the spell must have been keyed to a dragon. It immediately encircled my hand, making it impossible to move away from the wall, which gave the second part of the layered spell the time it needed to coalesce."
"And the second spell was trying to force you to change shape?" she asked.
Mercury nodded. "That's how I know it was keyed to a dragon. Werewolves and other shape shifters utilize a different form of magic than dragons to change their shape. Their bones, muscles, and everything else inside their body move around, elongating, or shortening depending on what new shape is needed. Dragons simply are one form or they are another. It's difficult to explain, but it's like both forms exist simultaneously and we consciously decide which one we want to wear in any given moment. That's how our magic works and the spell was designed to call to that magic and force me to change shape."
"And if you had changed shape?"
"Well, I would have destroyed the scene entirely and probably acciden
tally squished a few people since my claws would still have been stuck in place. I wouldn't have been able to get myself out of the way. So I called for backup."
"We have to have a talk about bringing outsiders into potentially confidential crime scenes," Valerie grumped. "You'll get us both fired."
"But it worked," Mercury shrugged. That was all that mattered to him.
"So, you called your partner and a child and they were able to save you?" she asked, quickly changing the subject as her frown grew. She had apparently learned that starting an argument with him wasn't going to work.
"Dane put up a block between me and the spell and Lumie was able to get my hand free. The part of the spell that was trying to force me to change shape needed me to stay in one spot for it to work, so it faded away."
"So it won't have any negative effect on the FBSI witch we're taking to the scene in an hour?" she asked.
Mercury didn't know the answer to that. "She won't be affected by the spell that attacked me, but I have no way of knowing whether there's another spell keyed to a witch in the paint."
"She should be strong enough to tell," Valerie replied.
"Okay. So what do we need next?" Mercury looked over the many different papers strewn across the conference table, wondering if the answer was hidden somewhere inside. This was his first field investigation, so he didn't know how these things worked.
"We need to know who actually set the fire, which means I have to get that idiot O'Simmons off his ass and into gear. He's still insisting that there hasn't been any evidence of dogfighting inside his jurisdiction. I'm wondering how many reports did actually come across his desk that he ignored for political reasons. O'Simmons' boss holds an elected position and I'm certain he appreciates not having major crimes or scandals marring his reelection."
"Yikes." There were so many potential layers to the problem that he had never considered. He had thought O'Simmons was just a bad cop, not that he was corrupt.
"I've got the FBI on that, since it's their jurisdiction. They're supposed to red flag me on anything relating to dogfighting that they might come across. They're also going to have a look into why there aren't any witches or other magical creatures living there, but racism and discrimination is a separate department."
"So we just have to wait?" Mercury sighed.
"Wait and read through what we do have to double check we didn't miss anything," Valerie agreed. "You really don't know who might be impersonating Quicksilver?"
Mercury pulled out one of the chairs around the conference table and sank into it. "Not a clue of who they are specifically, but I know what they want and why."
"You think it's the same people who were kidnapping dragons and doing terrible experiments on them," she said evenly. Mercury couldn't tell if she believed him or was being sarcastic, so he chose to go with the former. "Look, I was at each scene and I saw the broken eggs and dead bodies that were uncovered. I tried to fight back when all my evidence and my findings were classified, which made me unable to pursue the case like I wanted to. It's one of the reasons I'm one more failed case away from being fired, although I think Director Stockton is aware that I got stonewalled by his predecessor. He's giving me a chance to reopen those cases with all my old notes and files unclassified again."
Mercury sat up straight at her words and stared at her. "Do you think I could read all your old notes sometime?" he asked sharply. There could be a clue to the enemy in there. He needed to know who they were and where they were hiding. Platinum and the other dragons they were still experimenting on needed to be saved.
"If you're right and the same people who operated those terrible labs are the ones who set your trap, then there might be a connection somewhere. I'll pull everything I can find." She jogged off.
Mercury flipped open a folder in front of him and began reading. While he had been away at lunch, Valerie had apparently typed up all their findings into an official document. At his desk job, Mercury compiled dozens of reports exactly like Valerie's; he couldn't make himself feel guilty that he had made her do this one. Unfortunately, Valerie's report didn't outline anything he didn't already know. Mercury pushed it aside and pulled another folder forward. This one contained photographs of the scene. He browsed through them, but didn't find anyone looking shifty while carrying a bucket of paint hidden in the background.
There were a number of shots of Mercury and Valerie, which confused him. Very few of the photos were captured as part of the larger scene. Most of them were close ups of his and Valerie's faces. He knew the police liked to get shots of the rubbernecking crowd because oftentimes the criminal liked to return to see his or her handiwork, but he had never heard of needing to purposefully take pictures of the responding officers. The last picture in the pile was another one of Mercury and Valerie. A white halo was standing next to Mercury, holding up a red haired child. The halo was Dane—he didn't show up on regular photography thanks to his heritage—and the child was Lumie. It only showed the back of Lumie's head and his hand as it reached up to free Mercury, but Mercury swallowed hard in fear all the same. That photograph proved to the enemy that Lumie wasn't a regular dragon, that their crazy experiments had been a success.
Mercury had put Lumie in grave danger all because he couldn't control himself at a crime scene. Admittedly, the enemy would have a devil of a time catching Lumie and an even harder time keeping him confined, but that wouldn't stop them from trying. Mercury sighed—there really wasn't anything more he could do to protect Lumie than he already was—and forced his focus to Dane's image instead.
Dane could control himself for long enough to take a picture when he tried. It was how the photo hanging next to Mercury's work computer had been taken. He couldn't suppress the halo when he was using his magic, which was why he was so bright in the picture. Just beyond him, Mercury could just barely make out O'Simmon's face. O'Simmons looked beyond furious, as if Dane and Lumie's arrival had ruined his life. It wasn't a proportionate reaction to the general inconvenience they had caused by barging into a crime scene.
Valerie came back a moment later carrying a laptop. It was open and she was typing into it one-handed as she walked, but she put it down on top of the papers so Mercury could see the screen too before taking her own chair.
"Have you seen these pictures?" Mercury asked her, unwilling to let himself get pulled into the past cases on the computer when the present still held so many questions.
"You mean all the pictures of you and me? I wish my badge had a picture as nice as some of those," Valerie grumbled. "I also wish O'Simmons would give me the photographer's name so I could figure out who paid him or her to get pictures of the responding officers instead of the actual scene. Now that I know the trap was set for you, I'm going to get that name if it kills me and follow that money trail until I get you some answers."
"Did you see this picture?" he asked, passing over the final picture with Dane and Lumie.
"I'm sorry they caught a picture of your kit," she said, sounding truly apologetic even though it hadn't been her fault. It was the first emotion he had seen from her that wasn't angry in some way. It transformed her face from harsh to youthful and pretty. All she needed to do was cool down and she would get a totally different reception from her coworkers.
"What about him?" Mercury asked, tapping the photo just above O'Simmons head.
Valerie bent over the picture and squinted. Her frown returned with a vengeance when she saw what Mercury had found. "He's just pushing all my buttons. I need to figure out what's making him tick. You catch up on all the reading while I make some phone calls." She walked to the far corner of the room while poking at her cell phone. Mercury pulled over the next folder and started the lengthy task of catching up on years of Valerie's hard work.
*~*~*
Mercury let his spell bring them into the foyer of his home. Valerie was clinging to his arm, her nails digging in slightly as if she were afraid she might fall off mid-transport and be lost forever. The air smel
led faintly of cooking chicken and potatoes roasting in herbs. Mercury had texted Daisy ahead of time to warn her he was bringing a guest, but he wanted his kits to be surprised.
"Daddy's home!" 'Ron shrieked from the top of the staircase above them. "He brought a girl home!"
Valerie jumped, but she suppressed her scowl. Mercury could see the effort it cost her in her clenched fists, but her lips remained in a slight frown as she looked up at 'Ron. Doors slammed, upstairs and down, and the scent of dinner suddenly grew stronger as a half-dozen pairs of footsteps stampeded towards Mercury.
'Ron was closest and she ran directly into Mercury's stomach, making him oomph out a breath of air. Her arms wrapped around his waist and she squeezed happily. Two impacts against his legs that he could feel, but not see, thanks to 'Ron, told Mercury that Lumie and Alloy were saying hello. Nickel, Copper, and Zinc were more sedate. They were older, but no less excited. Mercury had little doubt they had also run into the room, but they were content to wait for their turn. Chrome, on the other hand, whined and pushed 'Ron out of the way so he could get his hug in. She pushed back and Mercury had to take a few seconds to dispel the fight before it got out of hand.
"Everyone," Mercury said once all the hugs had been given. "This is Valerie. She's my new partner at work. She wanted to meet you all."
A chorus of hellos and one, "You're so tall!" from an admiring 'Ron echoed around the room. Mercury made introductions.
"So you're not cheating on Dane, then?" Zinc asked. She tried for nonchalant, but Mercury could see the anxiety in her eyes. She had some lingering separation issues from her time locked away in a cell. After being left behind to die and separated from her biological brother Platinum, she was always slightly worried that Mercury or Dane would do something similar. Usually that fear was banked, but every once in a while it reared its ugly head.
