DRAGON'S FIRE Page 4

  Suddenly, the pipe opened up into a large room and I just barely managed to keep from tumbling down to the water below. I could see about a half dozen pipes all emptying into the same place, and under each one was a metal wheel that apparently could be used to close and open the pipes. My brain only registered these things as peripheral and unimportant. The thing perched on top of the giant pump in the center of the room captured all of my attention.

  Almost seven feet tall. Shining green-gold scales. Wings folded onto its back. A tail nearly twice as long as its body. Razor sharp claws and a lizard-like face.

  I blinked. I had to be dreaming. This wasn't possible. When it didn't disappear, instead opening its mouth to let out another deafening roar, I stumbled. I felt myself falling, felt the pain in my head as it struck the edge of the pipe, but all I could think was one single word.

  Dragon.

  Chapter Five

  I'd been knocked out enough times to be able to assess my surroundings fairly quickly as I regain consciousness. The sense of smell always came back first for me, followed quickly by sound. One breath was enough for me to know that I wasn't in the sewer anymore. Dust, machinery, oil. My hearing kicked in. Creaks and echoes indicated an old, large building. Between the two senses, I was going to guess I was in an abandoned factory. The sixth sense that I'd relied on my entire life told me that I wasn't alone, though whoever was with me wasn't close enough for me to gather any information about them. Whoever it was had saved me from being eaten or roasted by a dragon – or both, I guess – so I was pretty sure they were friendly. I wasn't stupid enough, however, to be complacent. A monster could have saved me as easily as a human. Or it could have been a human monster. Those still existed.

  Before I opened my eyes, I did a quick inventory to make sure I didn't have any injuries. My head throbbed, but that wasn't a shock. I remembered hitting the edge of the pipe. I couldn't feel any blood on my face, dried or otherwise, but that didn't mean I hadn't been bleeding. If I'd fallen into the water, any blood could have been washed away. I didn't want to think about what else could have been in that water. My clothes seemed dry, but I could have been unconscious long enough for them to have dried on their own. Based on the absence of stench, I didn't think that was the case, but that could have just been wishful thinking. All in all, I was hoping for a short period of blackout time and no immersion in sewage. Aside from my head, nothing else was hurting, so I took that as a good sign. When you do what I do, you learn to find the positive in the small things, like only having a concussion after having come face-to-face with a dragon.

  Slowly, I raised my eyelids. Without moving, I looked around as much as I could. My guess of an abandoned factory appeared to be accurate. I waited until I was sure that I'd be able to react to any attack and then I sat up. My head swum a bit, but nothing I couldn't manage. This was far from the worst knock to the head I'd taken. A piece of advice: never wake a sleeping selkie. They may look like cute little seals, but they can be pretty strong when they're pissed.

  A shadow behind a giant, dust-covered machine caught my eye and I tensed, readying myself for an attack. I reached for the knife in my boot sheath, suddenly sure that it was gone. The moment my fingers closed around the handle, a wave of relief washed over me. I didn't pull it out, but prepared myself to do so if the shadow turned out to be hostile. Adrenaline raced through me, sharpening my senses.

  “Hello?” I pitched my voice low. I didn't know where the dragon was and I wasn't about to risk attracting its attention.

  “You don't need to be afraid.”

  The voice was male, anywhere from early twenties to late forties.

  “Where's the dragon?” I didn't bother to tell him that I wasn't afraid of him. I was confident that, concussion or no, I could more than hold my own against a solitary man, no matter what else he was. A dragon on the loose, however, did nothing to relax me.

  “It's...gone,” the shadow shifted.

  “Where did it go?” I didn't like the way he'd said gone.

  “Don't worry, it won't be back for a while.”

  I pulled myself up in to crouch, unsheathing my knife. I kept it gripped tightly, but the blade down. No need to seem hostile. “Why don't you come out here where I can see you?”

  “All right,” the man's voice was soft as he stepped out into the light.

  It was the hot journalist from the crime scene. I'll admit it, that surprised me, but, it didn't surprise me as much as the next thing I realized. He had a dusty blanket pulled around his shoulders and I was pretty sure he wasn't wearing anything underneath it. Had I fallen into the water and he'd pulled me out? It was possible, I supposed, and was a reasonable explanation as to why he wasn't wearing clothes. I could have been wrong before when I'd thought I hadn't gone into the water.

  “You were the reporter at the bakery.” All right, so not exactly erudite, but what was I supposed to say? 'Hey, why don't you take off that blanket and show me what you've got to offer?' Though, I'll admit, the thought did cross my mind.

  “Judah Mills,” he came closer and I could see dark circles under his eyes. He glanced around before leaning back against some machine that looked like it had been made for torturing giants.

  “I'm Sio...”

  “I know who you are,” his voice had a weary note that I hadn't noticed before. “I've been following your career. You're quite the hunter.”

  “You knew about the vampire in Colorado,” I suddenly remembered his question.

  He nodded. “Like I said, I follow your career. I have really good sources.”

  “Look, if you're the one who saved me from the dragon, I'm grateful,” I stood. My muscles weren't as stiff as I'd feared. “But that thing can't be allowed to roam free, especially not in DC, not if we want to keep a working government.”

  “I know,” he agreed. “That's why I went into the sewer after you.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. There was something that this guy wasn't telling me. “You followed me?”

  “I wanted to see how you handled yourself with that wendigo, to see if you would be able to slay a dragon.” Judah leaned forward. The blanket slipped off of one shoulder, revealing one muscled shoulder.

  “Why haven't you informed the local police or the FBI? They have specialty divisions for Paranormal...Beings,” I hesitated on the last word. I wasn't entirely sure if a dragon was a Being or a creature. Everything else that I hunted had some sort of human-like intelligence. A dragon wasn't like that. Unless...I shivered at the thought that popped into my head. Was it possible that a shape-shifter had figured out how to shift into a dragon? That would be very bad.

  “It's complicated.” Judah's eyes darted away from me and I knew that my suspicion that he was being evasive had been correct.

  “Look, Judah, do you want me to get rid of the dragon or not?” Not that it mattered much what he wanted. I was taking it out whether he wanted me to or not, but if I played nice, I might get some useful information.

  “Yes.”

  That one word held so much desperation.

  “Then you have to be honest with me. Tell me everything you know about it and I'll make sure it never hurts anyone.” I closed the distance between us and sat down at his feet. The floor was dusty, but after walking through the sewer for hours, I wasn't really going to worry about a bit of dirt.

  Judah studied me for a moment, as if weighing whether or not he could trust me. I didn't say anything. He had to make the decision on his own. If I pushed, I'd lose him.

  “All right,” he said finally. He lowered himself to the ground as well, clutching the blanket close. “It's kind of a long story.”

  “Then you better get started.”

  Chapter Six

  “I was a sophomore at Georgetown when The Revealing occurred,” Judah began. He kept his eyes on the floor as he spoke, as if it were too difficult to look at me while telling his story. “I'd just declared my journalism major so, of course, this was the hot topic
in all of my classes. Everyone wanted a supernatural scoop. By the time I was a senior, the existence of Paranormal Beings was old news, but they were beginning to take on roles in the government and society.”

  I remembered. That had been the year a werewolf had won the Senate race in California and a warlock had gone to the House of Representatives from Louisiana. More than a hundred smaller political offices had been filled by various Paranormal Beings that year, everything from state Senate to mayors and sheriffs. Now, it was estimated that over one-third of all state and local level positions were held by Paranormal Beings. The federal government was full of them too. Thirteen Senators and seventy-six members of the House were one thing or another, the Secretary of State was a witch, a Supreme Court Justice was a djinn and it was rumored that the Director of the CIA was a vampire. I'd heard somewhere that forty percent of the lobbyists, twenty percent of White House interns and over ten percent of the President's Staff were all Paranormal Beings. Granted, pretty much all of the ones in politics were the nearly-human ones like vampires and witches, but it still made me uncomfortable. The fact that some of them had been in place before The Revealing didn't make it any easier to accept.

  Thinking about politics just gave me a headache. I turned my attention back to Judah.

  “Just after the election, rumors started circulating that the recently elected Senator from Georgia had used magic to win his seat. Of course, at the time, there were hundreds of similar rumors about everyone from janitors to the President. For some reason, this one story just stuck with me, so, I decided to pursue it. I hit dead-end after dead-end for weeks, until finally, I received an anonymous tip to check a Swiss bank account. Long story short, I figured out that the Senator had been having an affair with a succubus.”

  I tried not to make a face. Succubi and incubi were worse than vampires in my opinion, feeding off of sexual energy rather than blood. The reason I found the idea of fucking one so repulsive was that they weren't created like vampires, they were born. Vampires, at least, had been human at one point in time. Succubi and incubi never had. Most hunters theorized that the succubi and incubi were actually the ancestors of the vampire. Some scientists were trying to prove this by studying the DNA of both 'species.'

  “You don't approve.”

  Okay, so apparently I hadn't been as discreet in my facial expression as I'd thought. I also hadn't realized that Judah had been watching me. Bad hunter. “Not really, no,” I answered without apology. “I don't approve of fucking something that doesn't understand what it's like to be human because they never were. We're food for those things, plain and simple. If something that was human kills a person, they have a human response. When a succubus or incubus drains someone dry during sex, it doesn't feel remorse.” I made a motion with my hand. “Keep going with your story. I have a dragon to hunt.”

  Judah nodded, a strange expression flitting across his eyes before disappearing into their jade depths. “My anonymous tipster called me back after I'd found out about the affair and said that they had proof that the Senator had used magic to influence voters. They arranged to meet me in an old parking garage that was undergoing renovations. I knew it wasn't a good idea, but I wanted the story.”

  This wasn't going anywhere good.

  “When I got there, my informant wasn't there. I waited for a couple of minutes and then, just as I was getting ready to leave, everything went dark.” Judah stopped for a moment and I saw him swallow hard, as if the next bit was the entire point of the story. “I woke up under a tree next to the Lauinger Library, completely naked. The campus police insisted that I'd just blacked out. The hospital said nothing was wrong with me, not even hypothermia despite the temperature for the past few nights had been near zero.”

  I was right. Nowhere good.

  “Then,” he shivered and pulled the blanket closer. “Three days later, just as the sun was going down...”

  His voice trailed off, as if he couldn't make himself say the words. It didn't matter. The pieces had fallen into place and I already knew.

  “You shifted.” It wasn't a question. I didn't need it to be one. My entire body went cold as I realized the implications of what had happened.

  “Since then, every three days, from sunset to sunrise, I change. If I lose control, I shift and I can't stop it.” He was trying very hard to keep his voice flat, but I could hear the minute tremble. “That's what happened earlier. I heard the wendigo coming and I knew what it could do to me as a human and...”

  I couldn't let myself feel at the moment. I had questions that needed answering. “Listen to me very carefully, Judah. I need you to be one hundred percent honest about this: is anyone in your family a Were?”

  “I think everyone would know if there was a family in Rhode Island turning into dragons at sundown every third night.”

  Judah retort was sharp and made me want to smile. I couldn't though; I had to confirm some things first. “Were there ever any rumors of anyone being a Were? Any kind of Were.”

  He shook his head. “Never.”

  It didn't necessarily mean that there wasn't someone hidden in the past, but families usually had at least rumors of these things. No one ever just turned into a Were. It wasn't possible. Either you carried the gene or you didn't. If you carried it from one parent, you had a fifty-fifty chance of becoming a Were. Both parents, and you were pretty much guaranteed to start shifting when you hit puberty. I explained my questions to Judah as much to hear myself as to give him answers. If what I was thinking was correct, it was nothing that had ever been done before.

  “People are Weres because they carry the genetic coding that allows their body to shift. Half of that genetic coding addresses the changes the human body goes through while the other half determines the type of Were a person becomes.” One advantage to The Revealing was the opportunity to research the science behind some of the Paranormal Beings. “As far as anyone's been able to tell, no one who doesn't have at least one Were parent has ever shifted on their own. There had always been rumors that witches and warlocks could force a change on someone who either hadn't shifted on their own yet or who was too far removed from their Were ancestor for the recessive gene to take effect. Based on some recent studies, the rumors could be true.”

  “That wouldn't explain what I shift into,” Judah's eyes darted up to my face. “I've never heard of a Were who turns into an animal that isn't real.” His eyes widened as he took in my 'about that...' expression. “Dragons are real?”

  I refrained from giving him a smart comment. It wasn't the time or the place. “They've been extinct for about three thousand years.”

  “But, somehow, I'm changing into one,” Judah held out his hands and his blanket slipped off of his shoulders. He caught it before it revealed anything important, but didn't cover up his torso again. It was almost distracting. “How is that possible?”

  I forced myself to focus. “If you had Were blood, I'd say a witch or warlock tried to force you to shift and you were so far removed from your Were ancestry that the gene was corrupted and changed you into something else. It'd be a long shot since most of the time genes are corrupted, the Were explodes or gets stuck in a half-shifted state, and then dies.”

  “Could an ancestor I didn't know about have been a Were-dragon?”

  I could see him almost choke on the word. I shook my head. “There's no such thing. Or,” I amended, “at least there wasn't until now. Besides, even if there had been, the Were recessive gene completely fades away after five generations. There's no way a dragon existed in any form that recently.”

  “So what am I?”

  There really wasn't an easy way to say this. “You've been cursed.”

  “Cursed.” He repeated the word. “Great. So what happens now? You kill me?”

  I got up onto my knees and faced him. “No.” I said the word as firmly as I could without raising my voice. “We find the asshole who cursed you and get them to remove it.”

  “I can be cured?” J
udah looked at me, his eyes so full of anguish that I winced.

  “Probably,” I hated having to be honest about it, but he had to know the truth. “But, sometimes, there is no cure.”

  “If there isn't, I don't want to live. It hurts so much when I change, like I'm being pulled inside out. Every bone in my body breaking, every muscle tearing. My insides are boiling. More than three hundred times, I've shifted, and every time, I scream.”

  The words broke my heart. I'd known people who had been in relationships with Weres and didn't have a problem with it, but I'd never expected to feel anything for anyone other than a pure human. He was human, I reminded myself firmly. This wasn't in his genetic code. This wasn't a choice he'd made. He'd been cursed. Once the curse was lifted, he'd be human again. I couldn't imagine what it must have been like to realize that you were no longer human. I reached out and put my hand on his cheek.