by N. D. Jones
“The girls haven’t been sick, not even a cold since Kya moved in with you.” Nicole’s hand came to her mouth, and she shook her head. “God, Armstrong, none of us have been sick. Momma Knight has never been healthier. It’s as if decades have been taken from her.”
“It’s not possible.” Isaiah slammed his palm against the countertop again. “Dammit, it’s not possible.”
“Kya is the Bloodstone Dragon. Gold and beautiful and taken because someone wants what isn’t theirs to have.”
Armstrong may have forgotten about the five men who’d come to his home, but he’d done his homework. With the help of a couple of FBI buddies, who’d he’d passed the driver’s licenses along to, Armstrong had learned a lot about Captain Winston Rudolph and the other four men.
Ex-military. Special Operations. Hardcore. Professional soldiers who fought for money. That’s who’d taken his dragon. Getting her back wouldn’t be easy, especially since Armstrong’s FBI friends hadn’t been able to track down Rudolph’s contractor.
When the first year had gone by without incident, and then the second, Armstrong had convinced himself that Rudolph and his men had either died on Kerguelen Island or their employer had lost interest and turned to other ventures.
It had never felt so painful to be wrong.
“It’s true. Deep down, you know it makes sense. That’s her secret. Our secret.”
Nicole slumped in her chair. “Kya’s a dragon. The gold dragon that heals children?”
“Yeah.”
“I would say it’s impossible, but I was standing in the kitchen looking out the sliding glass doors when Isabelle, Michelle and Jasmine appeared. Like you said, there was a fog. A lot of it. I didn’t know what it was and didn’t see the girls until they stumbled from the red cloud. I’ve seen her on television. Huge and gold, and never sticking around for applause or praise. That dragon is our Kya. I can see it, but it’s hard to reconcile with the human Kya I know.”
“If you want to punch me, Isaiah, do it now. I have important phone calls to make.”
“Why in the hell would I punch you?”
“Because my secret endangered your children. Because I lied to everyone for years. Because I can’t beat my own ass for what happened to Kya and our baby.”
Two big arms yanked Armstrong forward. Isaiah hadn’t hugged him since the day of their father’s funeral. He’d cried like a baby then, thinking his life would never be the same without his dad. He’d been right. But he’d survived, thanks to Isaiah’s strength.
He wished he could cry now. Armstrong damn sure felt like bawling. But crying wouldn’t get Kya back and help his child.
“I can’t fault you for falling in love and wanting to protect that love. I’d do damn near anything for Nicole. I wouldn’t expect you to feel any differently about Kya.”
“I can’t get her back on my own.” He backed away from his brother and toward the wall phone. “I have to break my promise to Kya. She may never forgive me, but I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t do everything I can to rescue her.”
“Who are you going to call?” Nicole asked.
“The Director of the US Secret Service, who I hope will pass my story along to the president.”
“That’s a huge gamble,” Isaiah said. “What if the government decides to only help you to get their hands on a shapeshifting dragon?”
He’d thought of that, which was why his second and third call would be to the Washington Post and New York Times.
“How many children do you think the Bloodstone Dragon has healed? More, what do you think will happen if all the dragons stopped healing humans because of Kya’s kidnapping? Do you really think the president of the United States, who’s running for reelection, would want to be responsible for driving the dragons away and for doing nothing to help the one dragon who’s saved the lives of thousands of children?”
For the first time since arriving at his brother’s home, Isaiah smiled. “From the poorest family to the rich and famous, the Bloodstone Dragon has touched the lives of many people. Even the Pope has praised her. I get it. You plan to out the dragons in order to turn the whole world into your ears and eyes.”
“Someone, somewhere, must’ve seen or know something. Those mercs aren’t amateurs, and their employer probably has enough money to buy silence and support. I need to leverage what I have. And what I have is a dragon story everyone will want, as well as the Bloodstone’s Dragon humanitarian reputation. Those will be my sword and shield. It’s all I have, Isaiah.”
The Dracontias would likely kill him for revealing their secrets to the world. They could do whatever they wanted to Armstrong after he saved his Kya.
Nicole sat up straight in her chair, brown eyes full of worry. “What about Kya’s family? I don’t want to think about what they’ll do once they learn Kya has been taken.”
That was a problem for tomorrow. Tonight, he had a promise to break and a world to set on fire.
CHAPTER TEN
“DON’T WORRY ABOUT it, Rudolph.” Dr. Kenneth Westmore slapped him on the shoulder. “Once this dies down, you’ll be able to return home. They have nothing on you.”
“They have my name, address, entire military history, and my face is plastered all over the goddamn television and newspapers. I have no idea what my wife thinks because I can’t risk calling or going to see her.”
“It’s the price of success. Speaking of price, we wired your payment into your Swiss account this morning. You’re a millionaire.”
He said the last word in a sing-song voice, as if money replaced everything Rudolph lost and still had left to lose.
Dr. Westmore walked away from Rudolph and to the bank of televisions on the other side of the viewing room. Each screen displayed an image from one of the surveillance cameras inside the room adjacent to the one they were in. Miles underground and in a remote location, this labyrinth of reinforced steel was the equivalent of a panic room for the Circle of Drayke. More, the room Dr. Westmore watched with orgasmic pleasure had been designed for one purpose.
To contain the Golden Fleece.
“I can’t believe it. The gold dragon. But not a dragon. A woman.” The man, eyes bright with a lust that had nothing to do with the beautiful creature strapped to a gurney but with the sadistic anticipation of playing Victor Frankenstein, licked his lips. “I thought you and your team lied to hide your failure. A dragon that can turn into a human, ridiculous I thought.” A long finger that hadn’t known a day of hard labor ran across the unconscious face on the screen in front of him. “Beautiful. I can’t wait to peek inside.”
Thanks to Armstrong Knight and his pet dragon, Rudolph and his men had spent more than six months on an island he’d never heard of. They had no money and provisions and didn’t speak the language. The dragon had dumped them in the middle of nowhere and left them for dead, which is what his wife had thought him. When he’d stumbled home, with no reasonable explanation for his long absence, his wife threatened to file for divorce if he ever did anything like that again. He supposed the million dollars could go toward lawyer’s fees.
Rudolph hadn’t lied to the Circle of Drayke. Who in the hell could make up a story like that? He’d been shocked when a red fog had surrounded him and his men, stealing his breath and crushing his bones. Powerful hands had clamped around arms, legs, and neck and squeezed. Even now, five years later, Rudolph could still hear the sound of his bones breaking.
He hadn’t screamed or cried out. Not because he was military tough and didn’t fear death, but because the woman in the middle of the fog wouldn’t allow it. Her magic had controlled every molecule of his body, and her red eyes sparked dragon fire.
The next thing he remembered was waking. Cold, dazed, and smelling of shit. The dragon had won that day, reducing Rudolph to a terrified puppy who shits his load when scared. Today, Rudolph had reclaimed his manhood. If he’d had his way, he would’ve put a bullet between the dragon’s eyes.
But no, the Circle of Dra
yke wanted him to bring the dragon in alive. Four years of waiting and watching had finally paid off. The Secret Service agent was a non-issue. A couple of his men could’ve taken care of the man. But the dragon, even in human form, was a force of freakish nature. So he’d bided his time.
Snipers, like Rudolph, were patient. There had been many missions where he’d go days hunkered down in the same spot, waiting for the perfect kill shot. The dragon’s pregnancy turned out to be his perfect kill shot. Once one of his men noted the dragon’s protruding stomach and increased frequency at the house she shared with Armstrong, Rudolph scented the opening he’d been waiting for.
He had to make sure, so the rotating team of men who’d observed the dragon’s every movement was tasked with documenting everything. Their notes proved revealing, as did the notable absence of the gold healing dragon over North America.
Rudolph grinned now as he did then, wide and malicious. He had her. The dragon, knocked up by her human lover, disgusting, no longer shifted into her dragon form. He hadn’t known if her pregnancy made her weaker, which meant he needed a plan that would put the dragon at a disadvantage and his men in the best possible position to take her down.
It had taken three tranquilizers meant to incapacitate a ten-thousand-pound adult male elephant to drop the dragon. They’d had to shoot her again halfway to their secret location. She’d begun to stir, red vapors hissing and snapping from her nose, mouth and ears. One tranquilizer to the neck got them through the rest of the flight.
“How human do you think that monstrosity inside her belly is?” Rudolph didn’t get it. Sure, the dragon’s human form was beyond beautiful. But she was still an animal for God’s sake. “She looks ready to pop.”
“She is. A month, maybe less.”
“Well, tell you what. Whatever you’re going to do to her, I suggest you do it before she gives birth.” He banged the side of his fist against the closest reinforced wall. “I don’t know how long we can keep her doped up and unconscious. Her body is fighting back, even when she’s asleep. We must increase the dosage every time we shoot her up. If she gives birth, there’s nothing stopping her from transforming back into her dragon form. If that happens, no amount of reinforced steel will keep her in and us protected.”
Dr. Westmore straightened from where he’d been hunched over one of the television screens. “My problem. Yours is Armstrong Knight. He’s making things difficult for us. We couldn’t move her to another location even if we wanted to. Her human face is plastered all over the television and is in every major newspaper. He has public sympathy on his side, and the public wants their healing dragon found. Did you hear the president’s last campaign speech?”
“Yeah. ‘Dragons are our friends.’”
“Knight has managed, in a week, to galvanize the international community against us, even though he has no idea who we are. So far, the politicians we’ve paid off have kept silent. If Armstrong’s one-man campaign continues, I’m uncertain if they’ll stay that way.”
“How much to take care of the agent?”
“Three hundred thousand. Make it look like a suicide. We want him silenced but not seen as a martyr.”
“Consider Armstrong Knight already dead.”
“Good. I’ll let the others know.” Dr. Westmore licked his lips again. His eyes had returned to the screen and the dragon. “One of the x-rays revealed a hexagonally shaped object below her frontal bone. I intend to find out what it is.”
If anyone could, it was Dr. Westmore. The man wielded a scalpel like Rudolph did a gun. He left the mad doctor to his patient. Rudolph had a Secret Service agent to kill.
Two weeks and no kill shot. For that, he would have to get close to the man. Between the blackout curtains in every window of Knight’s house to the Secret Service agents who followed him everywhere, Rudolph either couldn’t get a clear shot or get away without being spotted and taken out if he did chance a bullet to the agent’s head.
Then, there were the dragons. Jesus, he had no idea there were so many of those monsters. Dozens of them had slithered from their hiding holes and taken to the skies in search of the gold dragon. They were relentless in their hunt. When one disappeared, it was replaced by another.
Even now, as Rudolph pulled the baseball cap low over his forehead, shoulders hunched to his ears and keeping to the shadows, he could feel their heated presence patrolling DC.
The green dragon his men first encountered when they almost caught the gold dragon thirteen years ago had been Rudolph’s biggest pain in the ass. Nightly, she’d perch her forty-foot body of menace on the roof of the agent’s house.
He never saw her shift into a human during her vigil. She watched and waited. So had Rudolph. Come morning, she’d fly away just as the first shift of Secret Service agents arrived. Rudolph could almost respect Knight and the battle he waged to find his doomed dragon lover and to keep himself alive while his plan played out in the streets and in the news.
Worse than the predatory dragons were the enraged public. Knight had given the gold dragon a name and bestselling story. The stupid public loved nothing more than a good hero-villain tale. Kya, the Bloodstone Dragon. Children’s Guardian Dragon. Diamond in the Sky.
The titles were endless and the reverence contagious. The men who’d helped Rudolph capture the dragon were in custody, thanks to anonymous tips. It would be a matter of time before a dragon-loving asshole spotted him and dropped a dime.
Which was why it had to be tonight. With the green dragon elsewhere and the last Secret Service shift gone for the night, Rudolph wouldn’t find a better opening than this one. There was also no way he could make this kill appear anything other than what it would be. Murder. Westmore was a fool if he thought anyone, least of all Knight’s boss, would believe the secret service agent, so broken up over the loss of his pregnant dragon, would take his life.
Nothing about the agent screamed suicide. Rudolph would end the man his way.
Pulling his powder coated stainless blade from his ankle sheath, Rudolph wedged the knife between a window and the lock. He’d slipped unnoticed around the back of the house. From this position, he wouldn’t be seen from the street as he worked his blade back and forth. A line of thick shrubs separated Knight’s backyard from his neighbor’s. Lights were out next door and the house quiet.
Snap.
Rudolph smiled, held onto his blade as he pushed up the window and crawled inside. Television, couch, bookshelves and floor lamps, Knight’s den. Rudolph remembered this room from the last time he was in the man’s house. He’d committed every room to memory. From the looks of things, little had changed in the intervening years.
To the right of the den was a short hallway which led upstairs. Three bedrooms and a full bath. At the end of the hall and to the right was the master bedroom.
On silent booted feet, Rudolph climbed the stairs. He had a gun at his waist, but he still held the lethal blade in his right hand. The gun would be quicker and clean. He could stand in the doorway to the man’s room, aim and shoot. The silencer would guarantee no one heard anything suspicious coming from the Knight residence.
But Rudolph didn’t want quick. A slow and messy kill, that’s what had him sneaking into Knight’s home and creeping into his bedroom. He’d begin with removing the tongue that had incited the nation and then the world. Then he’d take the brown eyes that had stared into the cameras with a mix of sorrow, hope, and determination.
Finally, Rudolph would cut Armstrong Knight’s heart out. How dare the man love a dragon more than he did his own kind. Maybe he’d even take the bloody organ back to the dragon so she’d see what he’d done to her pathetic human. Then again, after weeks with Dr. Westmore, Rudolph doubted if any part of the gold dragon remained.
Stepping inside the pitch-black room, Rudolph could make out nothing. As quietly as possible, he pulled his night vision glasses from a deep side pocket in his cargo pants. Slipping them on, he saw a lump in the bed. Covers up to shoulders, the man in
the bed snored, unaware his life would soon end.
Rudolph crept forward. The carpet absorbed the little sound he made. Yes, after tonight it would be done. He could fly the hell away from DC and the stench of circling dragons. He’d find a country where he could lay low until the dragon’s kidnapping and Armstrong’s death were footnotes in people’s memories. Soon enough, some other sensational news event would distract them, and they would lose interest, forgetting all about Rudolph, Armstrong and the Bloodstone Dragon.
The handle of the blade felt good. It would feel that much better when he sank it into the sleeping man’s body. Rearing up, then plunging down, he drove the blade into Knight’s neck.
The metal shattered on impact.
Lights flickered on.
Rudolph held a broken knife pressed to the throat of a man. A man who wasn’t Armstrong Knight.
Click.
Eyes flew up. Standing inside a closet that hadn’t been opened a minute ago was the Secret Service agent. Dressed in jeans, T-shirt, and a bulletproof vest, he held a SIG Sauer P229 sidearm in his hand. The silver-and-black gun was pointed at Rudolph’s head.
A clawed hand came up and circled his neck. In an effortless move, Rudolph was lifted off his feet and into the air when the man in the bed rose.
The dark-brown arm holding Rudolph rippled with muscles as did the massive neck that led to impossibly wide shoulders and a chiseled chest. The behemoth’s other hand plucked the handgun off Rudolph’s hip, the sound of crushed gunmetal loud in the quiet room. That same big hand rose to his face. Off came his night vision glasses, tossed to the floor and then smashed under the giant’s foot.
The eight-foot man, eyes reddish-brown and narrowed to deadly slits, opened his mouth and roared. A wide snake tongue came out and smacked Rudolph across the face. Acidic saliva burned the skin where the wet tongue touched, and the mercenary screamed.
