Dragon Consultant

by Mell Eight

  A man was standing in the driveway approximately halfway between the house and the forest. Mercury couldn't make out exact facial features from such a long distance, but he could see the snarling contortion the man's lips and teeth were in. It was almost as if he were growling at his enemy or holding in a scream of pain behind his clenched teeth. Maybe it was both. He wasn't physically moving forward, but if the tainted magic was his then he was doing something.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, the man lifted one of his feet off the ground and pushed it forward as if he were trying to take a step through a pool of molasses. It took a while and Mercury thought he heard the man scream, but eventually he completed one step forward. As his foot touched the ground again, Mercury felt his ears pop. The weight in the air vanished, but the touch of the tainted magic tripled.

  Dane's shields around the house had fallen. It was the only explanation Mercury could come up with for the way the magic around him was reacting.

  The man outside took two more steps forward. This time he was completely unimpeded. His grimace was replaced by a wide smile as he strode towards the house with confidence. Mercury saw death coming closer in that grin and knew he had to kill the intruder before he destroyed everything.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Becky had sweets in the bottom drawer of her desk. Dane learned something new every day. After Lumie had introduced himself and Becky had finished cooing over him, she had reached into her desk and pulled out a large handful of candy. Apparently the best way to get Lumie's attention was to bribe him with sugar because he let go of Dane's leg and dashed to Becky's side as quickly as his little legs could take him.

  Lumie had picked all the red colored candy out of Becky's hand and was currently sitting on the floor in the middle of the office, carefully tasting each one.

  "Any messages?" Dane finally asked Becky, tearing his attention away from Lumie carefully separating out all the red gummy fish from a packet of multicolored ones.

  Becky was smiling at Lumie, but it faded as she looked up at Dane. He hated to remind her of the bad deal they were fighting with Jacobson, but at the same time as Lumie was in hog heaven—or was that fire dragon heaven?—Nickel was glaring a hole into Dane's back. Did it say something weird about Dane that he wanted to hug homicidal Nickel more than adorable Lumie? Probably, but Dane's messed up mental state wasn't a recent realization for him.

  "Gregory called," Becky began. She flipped through a stack of papers on her desk until she located the message from Dane's centaur lawyer. "He wanted to know why you were sending him to hound an old lady and if you were going to give him a challenging case any time soon. I called him back and asked whether he had met the crazy old bat and her dog yet. When he said he hadn't, I told him to call and complain once he had." She put the paper aside and pulled another forward. "A Madame Boothby called. Her son is molting out of season and she thinks he's allergic to something. She would like to hire you to find out what's causing it."

  "Call her back and set up a meeting time next week," Dane replied. Nickel's glare was intensifying on Dane's back as impatience set in, but there honestly wasn't anything Dane could do until Jacobson called first. "Ask if she can bring her son with her as well as any medications or health spells he might be using."

  "Of course," Becky began, but she turned away from Dane before she could finish her sentence. "Honey, I don't think you want to eat that one," she said gently to Lumie. "That's a Cinnamon Bomb. I'm not sure you'll like it."

  Lumie was holding a round, fire-red candy between two fingers. It was about a half inch in diameter. Dane recognized it as one of the candies he avoided if he wanted to have working taste buds for the rest of the day. Lumie sniffed it hesitantly, but before Dane could voice his own protest Lumie popped it into his mouth. Lumie gasped at the initial taste—Dane was already cringing in sympathetic memory—and then Dane swore Lumie purred like a contented cat. Lumie dug through his pile of uneaten candy until he found a second Cinnamon Bomb, pulled it out of the wrapper, and stuck it in his mouth with the first one.

  We have a winner! Ding, Ding! Dane foresaw pounds of cinnamon candy in his pantry in the near future. Maybe finding a candy that Nickel liked would soften his disposition too? Dane would have to look into that at some point.

  The phone rang, which made everyone except Lumie jump in surprise. Line two lit up. Becky let it ring a second time before hitting the button for the speakerphone.

  "Supernatural Consultants. This is Becky speaking, how may I help you?"

  "Is Dane there?" Jacobson asked, his voice barely more than a snarl as he spoke.

  "Yes, he is," Becky replied, her voice still perky and happy even as she was scowling at her phone. "Give me a moment to redirect your call. Dane would like to speak with you personally." She reached out to hit the button that would send the call to the phone in Dane's private office, but before she could touch it, the call died with a hard click. It sounded like Jacobson had purposefully hung up on her.

  Lumie moaned. Dane looked at him to see if Lumie was about to throw up Cinnamon Bomb all over his carpet, but Lumie was glaring at the door. Dane followed his gaze and saw a strange distortion. The lines of the door looked wavy as if they were made of water in a current. It wasn't natural. Dane reached out with his magic and slammed into a wall.

  "There's a shield around the office," Dane snarled, reaching as far around him as his magic could go and running into the wall in every direction. It didn't feel like a normal shield to Dane. For one thing, it was actually blocking his magic. Very few creatures had the power to do that.

  "It's not dragon magic," Nickel said slowly. The unsure tone of his voice made Dane turn to look at him. He was biting his lip uncertainly. Dane felt Nickel's water-based magic swell around him only to splash against the same shields Dane was stuck behind. "I don't think it's dragon magic," Nickel repeated awkwardly.

  It wasn't dragon magic. Dane could tell that much. But then again, he was familiar with almost every kind of magic around the world and he couldn't identify the shield spell. It could be dragon magic, then, only a form Dane had never encountered before. There were two types of dragons in the world, elemental and precious, but this magic didn't belong to either. It felt more elemental than not, but it also felt strangely tainted. It was almost as if someone who wasn't a dragon was using dragon magic.

  Dane forced himself to stay still and keep his face blank as that realization rang true. Someone that wasn't a dragon, yet could still use dragon magic? Dane couldn't help looking at Lumie, who was swaying slightly side-to-side as he looked at the door, and at Nickel who was still trying to force his way through the shield with his magic. Dane had assumed those poor dragon kits had been experimented on so the government could breed a super weapon of some sort within the unhatched eggs. But it wasn't inconceivable that the labs had multiple purposes. Humans were the only creatures on earth that didn't always have magic. Some were born with it and some had the ability to learn it, but there were far more humans who never had an ounce of magic to their names. What if those labs were trying to genetically and magically change what humans could do? Dane didn't know why they had chosen dragon magic—he wasn't a scientist and he didn't know the ins and outs of genetics—but it explained Nickel and Dane's confusion.

  All of Dane's swirling thoughts had passed through his brain in only a few seconds. Becky was on the phone with what sounded like Jacobson's long-suffering secretary. Jacobson wasn't available as he was out of the office, but hadn't he just called from there? Lumie was still sucking on his Cinnamon Bombs while staring at the wavering door while Nickel continued to batter at the shield with his magic.

  "Nickel, stop. I can bring down the shield. Just give me a few minutes to finish gathering my magic," Dane told Nickel, mostly to get him to stop wasting magic and distracting Dane as water dripped from the ceiling. Dane always had a large supply of magic at hand in case of emergencies, but he would need more to bring down the shield. Dane's magic was slippery and hard to
hold on to. That was the trade-off he suffered for being so powerful. Dane could do just about everything with his magic, but the more magic a spell took, the more difficult it was to perform. Breaking the shield spell would not be easy.

  Dane had just started gathering magic when he was slammed in the chest with a magical backlash. Magic, his magic, returned to him abruptly as a large spell he had cast was shattered. It felt like a rubber band being snapped against his skin, only a hundred times more violent. Dane staggered at the impact and gasped in pain.

  "What is it?" Nickel snapped worriedly. Dane could feel him gathering his magic again, although he didn't unleash it.

  "The shields around my home were just destroyed. We need to break out of here fast." Dane no longer had the time to leisurely gather his magic together. Instead, he started grabbing it out of the air and shoving it into his storage reserves. It was painful, but Dane shuddered to think of what might be happening at home. Chrome and 'Ron were there and they would be helpless against the sort of tainted magic Dane was fighting against. Dane didn't know Copper well enough to really say what he might be able to do, but he would die protecting that egg. And Mercury. Dane's heart leapt into his throat at the thought of Mercury, helpless in bed. His beautiful face contorted in rage as he fought against an enemy he didn't yet have the strength to defeat. Dane had to hurry.

  "Up!" Lumie insisted suddenly, breaking Dane's concentration, which allowed for a string of magic to slip through his fingers and escape. "Up!" Lumie repeated. Lumie was standing by the twisting door with his hands in the air. He glared at Dane imperiously and waved his hands in the air as if he were waiting for Dane to pick him up.

  "Not right now, Lumie," Dane replied through his teeth as he tried to regain the concentration he needed to gather magic.

  "I help! Up!"

  "I think he means the doorknob," Nickel gasped. He dashed forward and bent down so he could pick Lumie up. Lumie immediately reached for the door. His hands passed effortlessly through the obscuring spell and his fingers wrapped around the doorknob. He turned the knob as hard as he could, and with a pop the shield dissolved.

  It took Dane two strides to reach the door and another half-second to ensure he had both kits safely in his arms. Dane's magic pulled them away from his office. They reappeared on his lawn just inside the edge of the forest. Dane didn't know what had happened at the house or where it was safe to land. He chose a spot and hoped for the best. The transportation spell faded away quickly, so he put Nickel and Lumie down.

  A dragon roared and the earth underneath their feet shook. Dane could sense magic running through the ground and the air. It felt like Mercury's magic, except it was thin and reedy. As a bronze dragon, he should be able to wipe the floor with any intruder, but he was still recovering from the fever. That he had held on this long spoke of his desperation to save his kits.

  Dane ran out of the forest and out onto the open expanse of lawn. The first thing he noticed what that his house was still standing. The great window over the front door was shattered, but this wouldn't be the first time Dane had to replace it. The second thing Dane noticed was Mercury standing on the front lawn. He was beautiful in dragon form with his bronze scales gleaming in the sunlight. His snout was long and his teeth sharp. There were two horns on the top of his head and a line of deadly-looking spikes down the center of his back. Mercury was also as tall as Dane's two-story house with his leathery wings flared at full length.

  Magic sparked through the air, Mercury's battling with the tainted magic Dane recognized from the shield spell, and the ground shook again. A flare of sparks erupted between Mercury and what looked like a human man. That any human, even one with magic, could withstand Mercury's onslaught spoke of just how weakened Mercury was by his illness. It also probably said something about how strong the intruder was, but Dane wasn't feeling monogamous enough to give him the benefit of his admiration.

  A smaller, adolescent red dragon was creeping along to the intruder's left. Copper, Dane felt safe assuming, kept his body low to the ground and was moving soundlessly through the short grass. Dane felt a swell in fire magic mere seconds before the intruder was engulfed in a column of flame. Dane was still too far away to see the results, but he heard the intruder's scream and saw Copper's body jerk suddenly as he was flung violently away. The fire faded quickly as Mercury roared and the intruder staggered back a step.

  An inexperienced eye might think Mercury and Copper were winning. Dane wasn't inexperienced. Copper was hurt and he was too young to have full control over his powers anyway. The intruder was singed, but it wasn't life threatening or even anything more than mildly distracting. Mercury's eyes kept closing and abruptly popping back open as if he were fainting from exhaustion and was staying conscious only through an extreme act of will.

  Enough was enough. Dane stopped running and let his magic take him to where he needed to be. Dane reappeared between Mercury and the intruder with his hand pressed against the intruder's chest.

  "Jacobson," Dane said sharply, looking at the government weasel he occasionally worked for. Jacobson gurgled helplessly in response and his magic battered against Dane's as if he could actually get free. "Mercury," Dane continued as he studied the idiot in front of him, "get Copper and go back inside my house. I'll handle this."

  Mercury moved achingly slowly, but he obeyed. He clearly knew he had reached his limit and that getting out of Dane's way as he continued the fight was the better course of action. He was smart as well as pretty.

  The stasis spell Dane had caught Jacobson in wasn't unraveling because Jacobson's magic, though strong, couldn't touch Dane's. Instead, Jacobson's magic was beginning to fray at the edges, which was odd. Dane looked closer, trying to identify the cause, and saw something Jacobson couldn't be aware of or he wouldn't be using magic so injudiciously. Magic had limitations. There were a few things that even Dane couldn't do. Jacobson's stolen magic's limitation was that it had a finite end, and it was powerful until the moment he reached that end. It was like a line of string. Jacobson could pull and pull until suddenly the spool was empty and there wasn't any more string to pull on. Dane helped it along, drawing on Jacobson's magic, dumping it into the ground as quickly as he could summon it from within Jacobson's body. Dane would have very green grass for the rest of summer.

  "You injected liquid power into yourself?" Dane asked Jacobson as Jacobson struggled against him. Dane didn't expect Jacobson to answer and he didn't even try. Instead he kept trying to use his magic to stop Dane, which only unrolled the spool of string even faster. "I'm guessing it's still mostly untested, but you took some anyway in order to get the dragons Quicksilver has been taking from you back. I always knew you were too arrogant to understand that you are not the top dog in our relationship. I never knew you were stupid enough to move against me." Dane's glamour had dropped when he was fighting against the shield around his office, but he let his power swell around them to prove a point as the spool of Jacobson's magic finally came to an end.

  Jacobson gurgled at the end of Dane's stasis spell as his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Too late Dane saw the green skull and crossbones hidden at the end of Jacobson's magic.

  Foam dripped from Jacobson's mouth as his body jerked with seizures. It only took milliseconds for him to die. There was no time to combat the death spell someone had added to the magic injected into Jacobson's system. As a failsafe, it was ingenious. Jacobson wouldn't talk now.

  "Damn it!" Dane swore. He tossed the body aside and let his magic take it away before it could touch the ground. Jacobson's body would be found eventually, but not today and not before all traces of what he had done to himself had fully dissipated. Dane didn't want any coroner's office to stumble on the terrible magic Jacobson had taken in and try to emulate it. Jacobson's magic needed to die with him, which meant Dane needed to find the lab where the testing was being done. Someone had added the death spell to Jacobson's magic. The idiot might not have even known it was there, although Dan
e wouldn't be surprised if Jacobson had known and had been foolhardy enough to think a little magic made him invincible. It meant there were additional people who needed to be stopped before more dragons were hurt.

  Dane needed to go dig through Jacobson's office and home to find what information he had before his associates could hide it, but first Dane needed to get his own home back in order.

  Copper was sitting up. One of his arms looked abraded as if the grass had given him a nasty case of rug burn as he slid across it, but otherwise he looked unharmed. Mercury was kneeling at Copper's side in human form, but his body was swaying back and forth like he was caught in a stiff wind. Copper reached out with his good arm to steady Mercury and was joined a few seconds later by Nickel.

  Lumie was… Dane looked around and didn't see him until a small hand yanked on Dane's pants.

  "Up," Lumie insisted. Dane bent down and picked Lumie up and walked over to Mercury. As Dane walked, he formed his magic into a new shield for his home. He made it larger in diameter. Before, someone could walk along the edge of his wards and catch glimpses of his house. That was probably how Jacobson had known Dane had taken the dragons in; he had seen them playing in the yard. The new shield terminated well in the forest where no one could get a free show.

  When they reached the three dragons, Dane passed Lumie to Nickel and bent down to pick up Mercury. Dane had one hand under Mercury's shoulders and the other under his knees—just like the last time Dane had carried Mercury—as he led the way towards the house. Mercury let out a tired sigh as he let Dane carry him. His head tilted on Dane's shoulder with his long hair gently brushing against Dane's neck.