by C. C. Mahon
Mother Dragon open her mouth, and the fires of hell were unleashed in the parking garage. The flames engulfed Callum, and the wave of heat that followed hit me straight in the face. I curled up and raised my sword in front of me as a laughable defense. The roar of the fire invaded my ears.
A few moments later, the sound of the flames decreased, and I opened one eye. In front of my face, my sword was giving off a green dancing glow, like northern lights. Beyond that light, the flames were still raging. A human torch was writhing where Callum had been standing a moment before. The shape fell to its knees and froze. The flames subsided, and my sword extinguished itself. Vertigo took hold of me. I was short of breath. I opened my mouth like a fish out of water. A black veil fell in front of my eyes.
I felt the concrete ground under my cheek and heard the creaking of one of the parking garage doors. Fresh air flooded in. I took several deep breaths before opening my eyes and straightening up. Mother Dragon was leaning over me.
“Are you okay? I tend to forget how sensitive humans are to heat.”
I nodded silently. Then we turned towards Callum’s prostrated form.
He was naked—the fire had consumed his clothes—and his skin was charred. Black patches were smoking in the sun’s rays coming through the door that Mother Dragon had just opened. But Callum was still alive. I heard him groan, and he straightened up. I had immense difficulty holding back the nausea as pieces of charred skin fell to the ground, revealing red and oozing patches. His face hadn’t been spared any more than his hair had. I had a nightmarish vision in front of me, a barely human silhouette, like a melted wax figurine.
His eyelids had disappeared, but his eyes were still there, intact, piercing, and burning with rage. He turned what was left of his face towards my rescuer and spat, “How dare you?”
She took a step forward and wagged her finger under his nose—well, where his nose should have been. “Silence! You’re in my house here! Not only did you come into my lair without even introducing yourself, but you’re fighting this human here. Do you have no shame? As we’re getting ready to cremate our beloved Adam. Who are you? Who invited you? All the dragons staying in town have to introduce themselves to me first!”
Callum got back on his feet and tried to size up Mother Dragon. That failed; she straightened up at the same time as him and towered over him by several rollers. They gauged each other for a moment, during which I saw Callum’s skin regenerate quickly with a capital Q, the dead layers falling to the ground with small revolting sounds as a new epidermis formed immediately.
Suddenly, Callum knocked over Mother Dragon, jumped over my head, and sprinted towards the garage door. Mother Dragon immediately ran after him, but she was wearing slippers, and he outran her.
I didn’t even have the presence of mind to get back on my feet.
Mother Dragon had disappeared onto the street for a few seconds then came back to the parking garage empty-handed. She closed the swinging door, flipped a switch, and came to stand in front of me.
Lights were crackling somewhere on the ceiling, and a pale light fell over the parking garage and Mother Dragon, who was holding out her hand to me.
She pulled me up to my feet with so much vigor that I almost lost my balance again.
“What are you doing here?” she asked in an unpleasant voice.
It took me a moment to remember why I was there.
“I was making sure Gertrude was okay.”
“She’s sleeping at this hour.”
“I was worried that,” I gestured in the direction that Carver had run off, “that man…”
“Not a man,” she said, “a dragon.”
“A…Are you sure?”
“I know how to recognize one of my own when I see them. And I would like to know what he was doing here.”
“Getting revenge,” I said. “I think.”
“Hmm! Go settle you business somewhere else. I have a son to cremate today.”
She turned her back on me and disappeared in the stairwell. I gave her a few minutes’ head start before going up myself and leaving the building.
23
I was trembling so much that I dropped my keys three times before managing to start my bike. After which I took off slowly, my feet brushing against the pavement. I more or less found my way back and managed to get to the club without getting run over. I stopped in front of the door, got off my bike, and forgot to put down the kickstand. I heard my Italian beauty crash to the ground. I stood there a moment, arms at my sides, faced with this spectacle, before letting myself fall to the ground and break down in tears. Lola found me in this position some time later. She pulled me up with more gentleness than Mother Dragon had shown, helped me straighten up my bike, and led us both into the hangar, sheltered behind the magical protections.
“Are you going to offer me some coffee?” she asked, motioning toward the door to the bar.
“Up there.”
I led her to my loft, climbing the stairs with heavy steps.
“Wow!” exclaimed Lola when she saw my apartment. “Nice. But all these windows, it must be a nightmare for the air conditioning.”
I headed to the kitchen and began to fill the coffee pot. The familiar motions help me to regain my composure.
“It’s triple-thick bulletproof glass,” I said. “And the Guild offered me a climate control spell that works rather well. Do you take sugar in your coffee?”
“And milk if you have some.”
To busy myself, I put everything I could get my hands on onto a tray: buns, charcuteries, cherry juice… I added two mugs and the coffee pot full of fresh coffee and carried everything over to the coffee table in the living room. I spilled a decent amount of coffee outside the first mug, and Lola took over. She served us, cleaned up my mess, and sat down on the sofa before asking, “Were you able to get a hold of Gertrude?”
I explained to her that the troll wouldn’t be able to answer her phone until nightfall and that I had gone to her place to check that no one had broken into her apartment. When it came time to bring up Callum’s attack, emotions stopped my words in my throat. But it wasn’t the first time that the detective questioned a victim in shock.
“Someone hurt you?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Carver?” she added.
Another nod.
“Are you injured?”
I shook my head from left to right. “Mother Dragon showed up,” I said.
It was Lola’s turn to be speechless.
I filled her in on who Mother Dragon was and how she had intervened. “Good thing Gertrude rents from dragons and not Tinkerbell,” I said in conclusion.
“Wait, Carver is a dragon? And all these years you didn’t suspect anything?”
“First of all, I had no idea dragons existed or that they could take human form. Second…”
“Yes?”
“It’s something he said. That he had changed too. That he had become invincible.”
“Just like that?”
“He ‘made the fire his ally.’ And if I kill him, he’ll be reborn from his ashes.”
“Wait, isn’t that what phoenix do?”
Doubt spread in my mind, sending me waves of pure terror in the pit of my stomach. I grabbed my phone, ignoring Lola’s questions.
Britannicus answered immediately. “Erica, I have to apologize, I am—”
“Forget about that. Are dragons reborn from their ashes?”
“I… Excuse me?”
“Dragons,” I said. “Are they reborn from their ashes?”
“No. Only phoenix can—”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. Why do you—”
“Brit, is it possible to steal someone else’s magic?”
My question was met by a long silence. Then, “Erica, what are you talking about, exactly?”
In front of me, Lola shot me alarmed looks. I must have looked like a crazy person in a frenzy. I took a deep breath before starting
again, both for the benefit of Britannicus and the detective. “I just ran into my ex, Callum Carver. Until recently, I believed him to be human. I just found out he might be a dragon. But he also bragged about being able to be reborn from his ashes. Also a few days ago, a young dragon and a phoenix were found dead. I’m wondering if…”
“If Carver was able to steal their magic before killing them,” finished Britannicus.
I didn’t need to see the wizard to know that he was thinking at full speed.
“There might be,” he began. “No. Yes. Well…I would have to check. Ah! How frustrating it is to no longer have access to the Guild’s resources.”
“What do you need?”
“Grimoires. And a lot of tea.”
“Come to the club tonight, and I’ll get you what you need.”
I hung up and met Lola’s interrogatory gaze.
“He doesn’t know,” I said. “He needs grimoires to check.”
She nodded distractedly, as if consulting grimoires were an integral part of her policing tactics.
“Let’s assume that your hypothesis is correct,” she said. “Carver is kidnapping supernaturals, stealing their magic, killing them, and dumping their bodies. The motive seems obvious.”
“He wants their powers,” I said.
“The ‘how’ might be in the grimoires. What I’m interested in is keeping him from claiming any new victims. For that, I need to know where he’s doing this and who his accomplices are.”
“I followed the meta-wolves to the building on the Strip,” I reminded her.
“I don’t know much about magic,” said Lola, “but it seems to me you’d want somewhere more discreet than a loft in the middle of Vegas to practice on non-consenting subjects. And then there’s those black cars…”
“The what? Wait, you lost me there.”
She shot me an apologetic smile. “My mind often jumps from one thing to the other. It drives my colleagues nuts. I’m talking about the 4X4s who cut off Matteo during his attempted kidnapping…”
“Matteo! I forgot to ask you: did you call him? Is he okay?”
“I went to his apartment. He was also sleeping.”
“You know his address? Wait, if he was sleeping, how was he able to talk to you about his attack?”
She dismissed my questions with a wave of her hand. “The important thing is that two similar 4X4s caused your meta-biker’s accident.”
“Kitty? You found footage?”
“A friend found it for me. Your kitten was knocked out, tied up, and loaded into one of the 4X4s while his bike was loaded in the back of the second vehicle. After which all these people sped off.”
“To where?”
“The cameras lost them on a small road heading towards the desert. But nothing says they didn’t turn around.”
I let myself fall back into the back of the sofa. “So we still don’t know anything.”
“You’re kidding?” exclaimed Lola. “We know that Carver is alive, in town, and a dragon. We know that he’s coming for you specifically. We have serious reason to believe he killed Adam and Phoebe and kidnapped Patricia and Kitty. And everything points towards him being in bed with those meta-wolves.”
“But Andrew?”
“The kid in the casino parking lot?”
“No one in the community spoke to me about him. He wasn’t even from around here. Where does he fit into all this?”
“He might not.”
“Those wolf bites are a coincidence then?”
Lola ran her hand over her face, emptied her mug, and poured herself another coffee before answering. “If those bites are in fact staged, like the coroner says…and seeing as the kid died right under the wolves’ noses, as it were…I’d say someone wants to pin it on them.”
“Why?” I asked. “The police doesn’t know about them, and as for the supernaturals, no one cares about the wolves. Except the coyotes, but they’re trying to settle that on the battlefield. I have trouble picturing them murdering a kid just to be able to point the finger at other metamorphs. It makes no sense.”
“You said the young dragon, Adam, also had bite marks? Maybe they’re trying to make it seem like the two murders are linked.”
“Making us think that the wolves also killed Adam?” I asked. “But if Callum killed him, and if he’s working with the wolves, I don’t see why…”
Lola grabbed a small spoon and twirled it between her fingers. She was staring off into the distance, and I barely dared breathe for fear of distracting her.
“Do you know what this reminds me of?” she asked. “It reminds me of an old case that dates back to the heyday of Vegas. When mafia families fought over casinos and the city as a whole. One day a casino burned down. They feared an all-out war in retaliation. But the next morning, they found six bodies in front of the smoking ruins, each with a bullet to the head and note pinned to their jackets. Their ‘godfather’ explained that they had acted of their own accord and that he had punished them for that. Some years later, we found out that the godfather had ordered the arson, but he thought the job was done poorly; they’d left evidence. So he killed two birds with one stone: getting rid of careless employees that linked him to the crime while at the same time exonerating himself of the fire.”
“I think you’ve lost me again.”
“Yes. I might have also lost myself along the way. I don’t know. I still need to think about all of it.” She checked her watch and let out a sigh. “I have to get back or Dale is going to chew me out.”
“He’s a strict supervisor?”
“Not really. But he is…”
“Strange?”
“It’s more than that. I can’t figure him out, and that, that annoys me.”
“About that, I have to tell you—”
Lola’s phone rang, cutting me off, and my friend took off before I had time to finish my sentence.
24
Enola had made it two nights before leaving me hanging. She didn’t bother to warn me or to pick up when I called her. She simply didn’t come to work. I wondered if it was because the job was too hard for her or if she had gotten a revelation about the club or me. Maybe Carver, her infamous spider-man?
I decided not to think about it. Luckily, Barbie arrived on time as usual, and even if she was in a terrible mood—she was trying to quit smoking again—she still proved to be just as effective.
Gertrude called me in a panic to find out what had happened. She had found my note under her door, and Mother Dragon had explained to her that I had fought with an ill-mannered dragon and that if I didn’t stop bringing this mess on the doorstep of innocent people, Gertrude could pack her bags and find a new basement to stay in.
I reassured the poor troll that I was fine and informed her of my decision not to cause any more trouble for her landlords. I advised her to stay home for her night off, where Mother Dragon could protect her and where Carver wasn’t going to set foot again anytime soon. I hung up with a twinge in my heart, thinking about how I was condemning the young troll to stay locked up in a stinky basement.
The club opened its doors, and Britannicus arrived five minutes later with his doctor’s bag and a contrite smile.
“I have to apologize to you,” he said bluntly. “You’re right, these disappearances are worrisome, and I shouldn’t…”
“Apology accepted,” I said. “Anyways, tonight I need you to look up information, not practice magic. Customs isn’t going to come after you if you look at a few books?”
“I have alas consulted all the ones at my disposal,” he said with a gesture towards his leather bag. “And I did not find anything.”
“There’s a regular of the club who always comes in armed with a pile of huge grimoires,” I said. “She must have access to a damned library. I hope she’ll accept letting you take a look at her research. While we wait for her to get here, do you want a glass of wine?”
“I’ll stick to the tea,” he said. “And if I could have something to e
at…”
I bit my lip. Matteo was late, for the second time.
I went to prepare a pot of tea and took out my phone. Matteo didn’t pick up any more than Enola had.
“Barb,” I said. “Have you heard anything from Matteo?”
“Nope. But he’s only a few minutes late. Maybe he overslept? Crazy night with an over-emotional woman? Or man, for that matter…”
She shrugged and went to take her first order of the night.
I served Britannicus his tea and tried to reach Matteo again, without any more luck. I was starting to get seriously anxious, and I decided to go up to talk to Nate. I didn’t think he could pull Matteo out of his hat, but I needed to move.
Like every night, Nate was set up at the door of the hangar. The big rolling door had been opened halfway, and my bouncer’s silhouette was framed by the light coming from the streetlights, like a shadow puppet.
He moved to let through two young zombies on a binge, and I took advantage of it to get his attention.
“It’s quiet tonight,” I said.
“It’s still early.”
The street was deserted. A streetlight flickered, its crackling the only sound of the block. Car traffic purred dozens of yards away. The club was like an island of silence in the city.
“Matteo isn’t here yet,” I said. “He’s not answering his phone.”
“Are you worried?”
“What if the men who tried to kidnap him tried again?”
Nate thought for a moment and opened his mouth to answer, but he didn’t have time to. A gust of wind swept the street, and suddenly Matteo stopped in front of us.
“Sorry, boss. I had…I was…”
