Stones of Dracontias

by N. D. Jones

  His injuries weren’t severe, and not life-threatening like cancer. The greater the damage to the human, physical or psychological, the more magic and skill required of the dragon. His wish would take time.

  I will do my best, diata.

  He shifted onto his side, so very close to her nose. But he didn’t reach for her despite the way his hand twitched on the graveled ground between them.

  “I know you will. You would’ve killed those men in the alley if I hadn’t gotten to them first, wouldn’t you?”

  Yes, I was prepared to do so. The thought of eating such vile creatures was sickening. But I couldn’t do nothing while they hurt the woman further.

  “You really are young. Seeing you would’ve sent the bastards running and saved the girl. You wouldn’t have needed to upset your stomach by eating those maggots.”

  You didn’t run away from me.

  “I’m not them. May I touch you? Your gold scales call to me. I don’t know why.”

  To her discomfort and confusion, Kya desired the human’s touch. She scooted away from the hand raised above her nose before lifting inches into the air. If Armstrong was intent on touching her, she’d left herself within his reach. But he wouldn’t because he was an honorable man, and she hadn’t granted him permission to lay hands upon her.

  My scales are too sharp for your tender human flesh. Dragon scales may resemble the snakes you’re used to, but ours are not harmless to the touch.

  Disappointment bloomed across his face before he hid it behind a smile. Armstrong lowered his hand, and Kya felt a stab of guilt. She neither enjoyed the sensation nor appreciated the emotions this human created within her.

  I can, however, use magic to soften my scales so you won’t sever your hand if you insist on petting me as if I’m a domesticated animal.

  A loud bark of laughter. “You, a domesticated animal? I don’t think so. First, you could barely fit in my living room. Second, I would never insult you by thinking of or treating the Bloodstone Dragon as I would a dog or cat. I don’t want to pet you, Kya, I want to touch you, know you. That’s not the same.”

  It wasn’t the same. It was worse.

  Kya concentrated, her attention inward and on the magic that was her birthright. She saw her skin and the scales that grew from it. Thick, heavy, and sharp for protection. Scales were a dragon’s last line of defense. She learned at an early age how to adjust the strength of them, a natural shield for her kind.

  The adjustments, however, normally increased not decreased, although that direction was also within her power. As she shifted the texture and density of her scales, the magic and focus required much the same as when she shifted into her human form. Kya breathed magic through the vents of her scales.

  She envisioned a malleable human bed, capable of comfort and support. The change tingled, the way it did when Kya cast her magic with purpose and heart.

  Touch me where you will, Armstrong, my scales welcome your hand.

  At his boyish smile, Kya returned to the rooftop. She reclined, as she’d done before.

  She didn’t know what she expected from the human, but it wasn’t the feel of his face against hers. Kya had assumed Armstrong would explore her tail, maybe her wide flank or even the nose he’d been so close to minutes earlier. Instead, he leaned in and pressed his cheek below her right eye. Hands came up and rested beside his head, palms against her and so very small and warm.

  “This is our first hug of what I hope will be many. Thank you. I appreciate your trust. I’ll never betray anything you tell or show me. We Knights aren’t built for betrayal.”

  Neither were dragons.

  CHAPTER THREE

  KYA WAS EXHAUSTED, and she still had thousands of miles to go before she reached Buto. After the last four days, she couldn’t wait to see the green of her island home and bask in the fresh air. There was a stench to sickness, Kya had known, but the aroma of dying children was unlike anything she’d smelled before or hoped to smell again.

  Yet she would because there was nothing like curing a dying child and seeing the child healthy and running about pounds lighter for the pain lifted from shoulders too small to carry its weight. Parents had cried and thanked Kya. Doctors marveled and gazed upon her with gratitude. Nurses had invited her back, although from the questioning looks on their faces they were unsure if she comprehended their language.

  She did. But Kya wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. She’d remained silent, flying away before they could take too many pictures of her. To Kya’s annoyance and dismay, Armstrong’s wish meant she’d had little time to visit the human on the roof of his apartment building. She was annoyed she’d missed him and dismayed she had to leave without saying goodbye in person.

  Kya had flown past the building where he told her he worked, hoping to spot him on the scaffold. It rained then, as it did now, so there were no humans outside on what looked to be an unsafe structure.

  I must return home, diata.

  She spoke in his mind. He would hear her. Kya’s telepathy extended thousands of miles. Once she approached the protective mists of Buto, however, her telepathic link to the human would be severed.

  I look forward to seeing and speaking with you again. Be safe, Armstrong Knight. And have faith. Your dreams are well within your reach.

  Kya had enjoyed Armstrong’s company more than she ought. More than she would reveal to him or even to Ledisi, who flew toward her.

  Fast.

  Why was she moving so fast? A second later, Kya’s question was answered in the form of an armored helicopter. Kya had seen planes in the air before, but nothing like the one that chased her sister.

  Gray like the rainy sky, the helicopter’s blades whirled through the air. Men in green-and-black uniforms pointed weapons from the open door. One of the weapons fired. A large net shot from it and toward her sister.

  Ledisi slashed through the sky, cutting to the right and avoiding the net. Instead of continuing her path toward Kya, Ledisi banked left and the helicopter followed.

  More nets were cast out, and Ledisi avoided each one. She didn’t attack the humans pursuing her, even when bullets rang out.

  Kya roared. How dare the humans attempt to harm the Soul Stone Dragon.

  She flew in the direction her sister had gone.

  “No, Kya, stay away. I can handle this.”

  “But they’re trying to hurt you.”

  “Their bullets cannot penetrate my armor. But they may be capable of slicing through your young scales. Make them as strong as possible, Bloodstone Dragon, and keep your distance.”

  Kya rarely disobeyed. Yet the urge to do so had fire churning in her belly with the force to hunt, protect, and kill.

  What would she do if Ledisi didn’t return? What would Kya tell her parents if she returned home without their eldest offspring? Unlike other species, dragons didn’t give birth but once every two to three hundred years. It had taken four hundred years between her mother’s last hatchling for Kya to be born. By dragon standards, her parents were quite old, which also meant they were powerful beyond reckoning.

  These humans did not want to begin a war with the Dracontias.

  In the distance, she heard the Soul Stone Dragon roar. Ledisi was a full-grown and experienced dragon, she reminded herself. Her scales were tough and her magic even stronger.

  Still, the absence of her sister by her side frightened Kya. Even more so than the second helicopter she heard coming toward her.

  It approached fast, but not as fast as Kya could fly.

  She took off. Kya knew not to fly in the direction Ledisi had gone or toward Buto.

  The helicopter pursued, and she flew faster. Magic curled around Kya and propelled her through the sky. The same nets Ledisi had so easily avoided, Kya was fairing less impressively.

  She’d never flown defensively or with a rush of anger and fear that had her throat burning.

  Not just burning, but hot from pain. She’d been shot. More than once. The bullets
hadn’t gone in, but the impact hurt. Kya tried to focus on strengthening her scales, but the high-speed chase and barrage of bullets made it difficult to recall her training.

  She dipped, slowed, and let the helicopter fly over her. Pivoting, Kya flew in the opposite direction. She couldn’t maintain her rate of speed, not after having spent four days flying all over the United States and using her healing magic at over a dozen cancer centers.

  Kya felt her magic and strength wane. She tried to fight through the fatigue. Tried to stay ahead of the helicopter that had turned and was once again hunting her with determination.

  When the net came this time, Kya was too slow. The tight net fell over her head and half of her body. Clawing with her front legs, she tore at the net, which was stronger than she thought. But not strong enough to contain the Bloodstone Dragon.

  It ripped, and Kya breathed easier.

  Another net caught her. Then another. And another still, until her head and legs were tangled.

  Losing her equilibrium, Kya plummeted. She struggled against the webbing, using teeth and claws. These nets felt wrong, strong in a way that suggested they were made to do exactly this.

  Capture a dragon. A small dragon. The first helicopter hadn’t been after Ledisi. It had served as a diversion, a well-planned distraction to draw the older, bigger and stronger Soul Stone Dragon away from the easier prey.

  Kya.

  Opening her mouth as far as she could, Kya blasted the nets with her fire magic, singeing them but not much more. She breathed deeply, fought her fear of crashing into the Pacific Ocean from such a high altitude, and blew a continuous stream of fire.

  Too close. Dragon fire wasn’t meant to be released so close to the originating dragon. But Kya had no choice, so she closed her eyes and pushed even more fire from her swiftly falling body.

  She crashed into the ocean. The burning nets coiled about her frame. Kya couldn’t get free. The more she struggled, the more the nets twisted around her sinking frame. Down she went, deeper under the water.

  No air.

  Two helicopters joined her in the ocean, a great tidal wave of a crash. Metal burned, men screamed, and Kya continued her breathless descent.

  She was going to drown.

  “Kya? Kya?”

  From a distance and between the slowing pulse of her heartbeats, Kya heard her sister in her head. Ledisi had come for her.

  Tired. Kya was so tired, and the net around her neck made breathing so very difficult.

  “Kya?”

  The ocean wanted her, and she had no strength to object.

  Down.

  Down.

  “What’s got you down in the dumps?”

  Armstrong sipped from the beer he’d been nursing for the better part of an hour as Isaiah wiped down the bar. Scratched from age and wear, the thick wood was still a beauty. It had, like the Knight family, withstood much.

  “You got the job you wanted, which Mom is still bragging about to her church friends. Two months later, and I still can’t go into the house with you by my side without her pushing me out of the way to get to you.” Isaiah chuckled. “Maybe some of that momma love will swing back to me when I give Mom her first grandbaby.”

  “Wait, is Nicole pregnant?”

  “Not yet. We’re working on it.”

  “Working on it? It’s called having sex with your beautiful wife. Dad gave you the talk before he died, so I know you know where everything goes.”

  Isaiah threw the wet, lemon-scented washrag at Armstrong, who caught it before the nasty thing hit him in the face.

  “Like I said, we’re working on it. When you’re married, you gotta fit sex in when you can. We’re both busy and work different hours.”

  “That defeats the whole point of getting married. Sex after marriage shouldn’t be complicated. She’s there. You’re there. Sex should happen.”

  “Says the single man who hasn’t had sex in how long, Armstrong?”

  “By choice.”

  “Whatever. Is your mood about a woman?”

  “Not exactly. I met someone. I thought she liked me, but I haven’t seen her in weeks.”

  “So call her. Better yet, get off your moping ass and go see the woman.”

  He wished he could call or go see Kya. Armstrong didn’t regret his wish, but it had kept the dragon from visiting him on the rooftop again. Arrogant the Bloodstone Dragon may be, Kya was also sarcastic, intelligent and fun to talk to. If she were a human woman, Armstrong would put a ring on her finger so fast it would make both their heads spin.

  She wasn’t, so the thought was pointless and stupid. But they were friends, or so Armstrong had thought. Since her last message in his head, however, she hadn’t contacted him. A part of Armstrong worried something awful may have happened to her. Despite being a dragon, Kya was also young and naïve. He didn’t doubt she was at least a hundred years older than Armstrong. Which, as she’d told him, human time and dragon development weren’t the same. For all intents and purposes, Kya was the same age as the girl in the alley.

  No wonder she was going to have the men for a late-night snack.

  Then there was the insecure side of him who thought their talk on the rooftop had meant more to Armstrong than it did to Kya. That once she returned home, she looked back on their few hours together as a short footnote in her long life. Armstrong Knight, a novelty for the young dragon and nothing more.

  “Where did you go?”

  Armstrong downed the dregs of his beer. “I’m right here, and I can’t call or go see her. I don’t have her number or know where she lives. Besides, it’s not like that between us. Kya’s my friend.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Whenever you decide to pull your head from your ass, I’d like to meet your friend Kya.”

  Belatedly, Armstrong glanced around the bar. At four in the afternoon, few people were there and only him at the bar. Dammit, he should’ve kept his big fat mouth shut about Kya, even to Isaiah. If she returned, and he prayed she did, he would have to do a better job of keeping her and their friendship a secret.

  The Circle of Drayke, ten men of power, wealth and influence, sat around a large conference table. Big Ben’s quarter bells chimed in the background as they watched the grainy black-and-white footage on the screen. Captain Rudolph stood in the rear of the room, ignored by the robber barons who thought themselves captains of industry and a friend to the common man. They wielded their money like a sword, their sterling reputation their shield.

  They came from around the world, a meeting of men of means no one would question. They lived lavished lifestyles and bought what they wanted. That included people. People like Captain Winston Rudolph and the soldiers under his command. Growing up in Gary, West Virginia, the son of a coal miner, Rudolph knew he had two choices, the mine or the military.

  He’d chosen the military and never looked back. Years later, who would’ve thought the skinny kid from Gary, who went to bed hungry many a night, would be rubbing elbows with men born with silver spoons in their mouths.

  He despised each of them. Their arrogance and intolerance. But mostly their discontent. How could men who had so much want even more? What they wanted was crazy. Even their name, ridiculous by a normal person’s reasoning, spoke to their hubris. The name Drakye meant to possess the power of a dragon. Bull, but that was the men’s desire. Not just knowledge of the creatures or even one to cage and parade about like a tamed circus freak, but the actual magic and strength of a dragon.

  Ten men. Ten families. A legacy of researching dragons for whatever made them special. To date, they still didn’t know. At this rate, and with the help of mercenaries like him, they soon would.

  “Good first attempt with the nets. I’ll get my research and design department to make them bigger and stronger.” Hugh Cafferty spoke to Rudolph but hadn’t the courtesy to turn and face the man. Instead, he sipped from his cognac and watched Rudolph’s failed mission to capture the gold dragon. “It’s small, probably still a baby by dragon
standards. Its capture would’ve been a real coup and a big payload for you.”

  “That’s the same dragon who’s been all over the newspapers this past week.” Dr. Kenneth Westmore, a “Harvard man” he’d told Rudolph the first time they’d met, shifted his cagey green eyes away from the screen and to the men around the table. “Until this week, we could only speculate as to whether there existed a logical reason to the dragon’s healing. We could never discern a pattern. They heal every race and nationality, both genders, all ages, and religions. They heal everything from dementia to kidney disease. No rhyme or reason.”

  As much as the Circle of Drayke studied dragon behavior, their haughtiness had prevented them from drawing the most obvious conclusion. Dragons hadn’t survived for thousands of years because they were lucky. They’d survived because they were more intelligent and cautious than humans.

  From the eyes of a trained soldier, the battle with the dragons proved illuminating. Once Rudolph stopped thinking of dragons as big flying snakes and more like thinking and feeling human beings with family and friends, his strategy became clear.

  For the first time, the smallest of the dragons was on its own. That rarely happened, which, if the dragon was equivalent to a teenager in dragon society, meant two things. One, the older dragons were giving it a taste of independence. Two, with independence came limitations and oversight. That oversight had come in the form of an older and bigger dragon.

  The big green dragon had responded to the helicopters the way a caring relative or friend would, it sought to protect. At first, by drawing one helicopter away. Lucky for Rudolph, he had another ‘copter waiting for his directive. Once the pilot chasing the green dragon had radioed in, letting him know the gold dragon was alone, Rudolph had sent the second ‘copter in.

  Only three of his soldiers survived the crash into the ocean and the dragon’s attack. Grainy as it may be, the video footage was salvageable, which was all the Circle of Drayke cared about. Rudolph still had calls of condolence to make.