Dragon Deception (3 page)

He was a low-level analyst. His job was to comb through alleged supernatural crimes to find out which ones actually had magic or a magical creature involved. The various police departments in the region handled most local crimes, even the supernatural ones, but it didn't hurt the SupFeds to stay abreast of what was going on. Mercury looked for patterns, repeat offenders, and crimes with enough magic that the local police wouldn't have the resources to handle them. Then he passed everything he found to analysts higher on the food chain. It meant that he recognized when a dragon in distress caused a disturbance, and he did break his security clearance to point Dane in the right direction.

Sometimes Mercury thought he had been hired so the SupFeds could prove how diverse they were in their hiring practices. He was the only dragon on staff and the vast majority of his colleagues were human. Other times Mercury wondered if they were using him to watch Dane. Someone had to know that Dane wasn't a mere human or an ordinary supernatural creature, and once they realized that Dane was involved with Mercury, they probably thought they could somehow keep better watch on Dane's activities through him. Mercury wasn't certain whether that meant they thought he would disclose information about Dane—which he wouldn't—or whether they just wanted a firmer connection with Dane. Mercury wondered if they also realized Dane was using Mercury to keep a better watch on them in return.

"Yay, we're going on a picnic," Dane deadpanned with a heavy sigh. "You bring Lumie's picnic basket and I'll sneak us a pizza."

"You don't think Lumie's picnic is going to be delicious?" Mercury asked. He couldn't help teasing Dane. It made Dane's beautiful face scrunch in the most interesting expressions of disconcertion and disgust.

"Lumie cooked it himself," Dane groaned. He buried his head under the pillow again as he spoke. "There's no telling what's actually in it or whether anything will be edible. I think Daisy just left Lumie to it and only supervised enough that I wouldn't need to replace another oven."

"It'll be an adventure," Mercury declared. Dane just grumbled incoherently into the pillow.

It certainly would be, Mercury knew. Dane was right: there was no telling what Lumie had put into the picnic basket. It could be something dangerous or poisonous for all he knew. Yet, if they ditched the food somewhere and got a pizza instead, Lumie would somehow know and hate them forever.

"So how did your search go today?" Mercury asked, hoping that changing the subject would get his own mind off of his fears over Lumie's picnic.

The pillow covering Dane's face didn't move and Dane's breathing halted for a long moment. It was almost as if Dane were embarrassed, which wasn't an emotion Mercury saw from him a lot. He mumbled something so softly that Mercury couldn't hear what he said through the pillow.

"What?" Mercury asked. This time he kept his smile in check. As funny as it was to see Dane out of his element, the topic was far too serious to tease him over. They had to find those dragons before the enemy did.

Dane slowly pulled the pillow away. "I'm an idiot," he repeated scathingly. "The mother dragon wouldn't stay in pack territory. She moved on while I've been uselessly searching the wrong area."

Mercury hadn't thought of that either. It was common sense that a dragon would want to leave someone else's territory as quickly as possible and Mercury hadn't thought to mention it, or honestly even thought of it at all, the last time Dane had mentioned his search.

"So you were figuring out where to restart your search when I interrupted you?" Mercury wiggled his eyebrows to let Dane know exactly the type of interrupting he meant. Dane's grin was a little sharp as memory quickly surfaced.

"I've got it all figured out. Now, come here so I can figure you out too."

Mercury laughed and let Dane pull him close so their naked bodies still slick and warm from just a few minutes before could press together. Mercury bent down to kiss Dane, and when Dane's hand landed on his butt and squeezed, Mercury smiled.

*~*~*

Dane put on his sturdy boots with his outfit that morning while Mercury was contemplating actually wearing a tie. His kits would tug on it and choke him. Besides, he only wore a tie when he had a meeting with his boss. Wearing it today just because he was going to take a long lunch would probably raise some red flags.

Mercury got away with dodging the business professional dress code because he growled at anyone who mentioned it to him. It probably fell under some species awareness law so the HR department couldn't force someone of another species to conform to human standards. He tossed the tie he was holding on the back of a chair with a growl of disgust and left it where it lay. He was wearing a pair of nice dress pants and a collared shirt, which was good enough as far as he was concerned.

They both went down to the kitchen together for breakfast. Lumie and Alloy were waiting for them. Both kits were holding their breakfast bowls in their hands and were waiting patiently for someone to come and help fill them with food. Lumie had just allegedly cooked an entire picnic, yet he couldn't get the cereal down from the cabinet and pour himself and Alloy some breakfast? Something didn't add up, and unfortunately the answer was locked up somewhere in Lumie's head, which meant Mercury would never know.

Between Mercury and Dane, they were able to get Lumie and Alloy happily crunching on cereal. Nickel wandered into the kitchen yawning widely and fixed himself a bowl on his own.

"I'm not bringing all of you to work today," Dane grumbled ineffectually. If Lumie and Alloy wanted to go to Dane's office, they would go. Nickel went to Dane's office every weekday and did his schoolwork and some easy office work. It kept Nickel happy and gave Daisy fewer kits to look after during the day.

Lumie made a face. "Just want breakfast. Don't want to walk in the woods. Make sure you come back for your picnic!"

Dane sighed tiredly and Mercury had to suppress a laugh. "I won't forget," Dane replied.

"Neither will I," Mercury echoed.

Dane gripped Nickel gently on the shoulder, and they both vanished with a whoosh of magic. Mercury ruffled Lumie's and Alloy's hair.

"Try to behave today?" he asked them both. He got reluctant nods in return, which was probably the best Mercury was going to get out of them. "I'll see you for dinner."

Mercury's magic was different than Dane's magic. He couldn't just vanish into thin air. Dane emulated a basic transportation spell by using enough power to do what he wanted it to. Mercury, on the other hand, needed to recall how the magic had to be shaped around him so the transportation spell would work properly before he cast and magic pulled him away. The kitchen vanished around him and the front entrance of his office building appeared instead.

The building had magical shields around it that prevented someone like Mercury from appearing inside his cubicle at will. Instead he had to walk through the front entrance just like every other employee. Mercury didn't need to carry car keys, though, which made walking through the metal detector a quick process. His badge was scanned by the guard and then he was waved towards the elevators as the guards tried to hurry the morning line along.

There was more than one federal department inside the building. Mercury's office was on the sixth floor, the entirety of which belonged to the SupFeds. His space was a small cubicle amid a floor of small cubicles. The outer edges of the room were lined with windowed offices for people with considerably more clout than Mercury. He didn't want an office like that; it just brought more scrutiny and more work hours. Daisy did an amazing job corralling Mercury's kits, but it wasn't fair to keep her from her own family just because Mercury's job required more hours. He would apply for a promotion to get a slightly larger cubicle, but going into a private office was too much.

The fuzzy walls of Mercury's cubicle were an ugly gray. Some of his coworkers had plastered their cubicle walls with family photos and awards certificates. Mercury had one lone picture hanging next to his computer. He studied it while he waited for his computer to boot up.

Alloy was hanging over Copper's shoulder, grinning widely. Lumie had his thumb in his mouth and was clinging to Dane's leg. Copper and Zinc were glaring at each other from opposite sides of the frame. Nickel was in the center of the picture next to Mercury. His smile was small and hesitant, as if he were still unsure of his place in the world. The picture had been taken before Dane had finally relented and Nickel had become a permanent fixture at Dane's office. 'Ron was clinging to Mercury's arm and grinning widely, and Chrome was standing on Nickel's other side glaring sullenly at the camera.

Daisy had only gotten the one shot before the kits started wandering off to play in different directions. Dane had a copy at his office too.

The computer beeped softly to let Mercury know it was finally on. He input his password and settled into his chair to begin sorting through his work email. Most of them were junk or the usual reply-alls that accidentally went viral. Mercury had to delete all of those first before he could get to work on the real emails.

"Mercury, if I might have a word?" a voice asked from outside the cubicle. Mercury jumped in surprise and a fizzle of magic sparked between his fingers. He quickly moved his hands away from his keyboard and mouse so he didn't fry another motherboard. His work computer wasn't as sturdy as Dane's spelled laptop.

"Director Stockton!" Mercury gaped, standing up abruptly when he saw who had interrupted his work. Ames Stockton was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Supernatural Investigations. He was so far above Mercury on the food chain in terms of work that he should be locked in his office on a pedestal while peons like Mercury did his personnel fetching. Stockton was a big man, tall and thickly muscled. There wasn't an ounce of extra fat on his body, but Mercury had little doubt he had to go up a suit size or two in his shirts just to accommodate his shoulders. His skin was dark and his eyes sharp with intelligence as he looked at Mercury.

"This way, please," Stockton said, waving his arm towards one of the conference rooms. Most of Mercury's coworkers were probably still fighting through the crush of people downstairs trying to get through security, but enough people poked their heads around their cubicles to see what was going on that he knew the gossip would be flying once he was out of earshot.

"Is something wrong?" Mercury asked as he obeyed Stockton's directions. There were two other people that Mercury didn't recognize in the conference room and a very large stack of papers covering one end of the long table. Mercury walked inside. Stockton followed and closed the heavy door.

"Nothing is wrong, per se," Stockton began as he took a seat at the head of the table. He gestured that Mercury should sit too, so Mercury pulled out a chair further down the table and perched awkwardly on the edge. "We just have some questions for you."

"Okay?" Mercury asked, wondering where this was going and if he should be contacting Dane to break him out of the office.

"As you know, we performed our usual extensive background check prior to your hiring," one of the other men Mercury didn't recognize said. "Because you were raised in a government-funded foster home, you have a Social Security number and identification we can track. School records, work locations, etcetera. Except one day you simply vanished and only reappeared three years later. You explained the missing time as going dragon in your interview. You realized you needed time to embrace your cultural heritage by spending time in the wild. There were people who believed your story, enough that you were hired, but those few who still had concerns kept digging."

He pulled a piece of paper off the top of the stack and pushed it across the table for Mercury to see. It was a print out of a news article from eight years ago.
"Terrorist bombing! Government lab set on fire by a terrorist calling himself Quicksilver."
Mercury could make out the destroyed remains of the lab that had held the water dragons captive in the grainy photo.

"You were living in Chicago at the time of this attack and the facility in question was only ten miles outside the city. You did not arrive at work on the day this attack occurred and did not reappear until the day after the fourth attack in Maryland occurred three years later."

Three additional pieces of paper were placed in front of Mercury, each an article detailing Quicksilver's attacks. Mercury looked up at Stockton, whose face was as blank as Mercury hoped his own was. Inside, Mercury was wondering if he should demand to contact a lawyer before the interrogation continued. Gregory, Dane's centaur lawyer, would be tickled pink to be given the chance to go after the SupFeds.

Mercury was guilty of the bombings, although he hadn't used any actual explosives. He had woken up after being kidnapped strapped to a gurney in a lab where scientists had been conducting cruel experiments on dragon kits and eggs. He still didn't know why someone wanted an adult dragon, but he felt safe in assuming that someone had noticed what he was, and that he was in his less-protected human form, and had taken him. The first attack in the newspaper articles had occurred when Mercury escaped from his bindings and started killing the bastards that had kidnapped him. Then Nickel had blown open a wall for his own escape attempt and together they had brought the entire building down around them. The following two attacks had been Mercury rescuing the earth and fire dragons from their own separate labs, and the final attack had been a trap laid to stop him and Dane from pursing the government and the scientists. They had barely escaped with their lives and with Zinc. But he wasn't going to tell the SupFeds any of that.

The government had funded those labs, and there were some who were also benefiting directly from the experiments being conducted there. Jacobson, Stockton's immediate predecessor, had been one of those people. Jacobson and others had forced the media to keep the findings of smashed dragon eggs and the bodies of dead kits mixed in with the dead scientists a secret, one that had only gotten out when Dane leaked it to the media five years ago. Stockton knew the terrible truth about the labs and hadn't confronted Mercury about it, although he had to have his suspicions about Mercury's involvement.