Dragonslayer (Twilight of the Gods Book 3) (11 page)

In the dark, she might have thought it an eagle by the way it moved, and if not for its freakish size. Bald eagles nested in this area, and their wingspans could extend seven feet. It might just be an abominably large specimen. One that had developed a taste for chicken and Chihuahua…and people. That had attacked a hound by the sound of it and was now circling her.

She stumbled over another damn rock and fell on her ass with a startled grunt. The creature chose that exact moment to dive, and it missed her by a hairsbreadth, issuing a shrieking cry and adjusting course at the last minute. Something hard and icy cold sliced across her cheek. For a moment the spot went numb, and then it blazed to fire.

She had no time to tend to it, though. The creature they’d been hunting landed only a few feet away. Still for a moment and finally close enough to see. Its body was about the size of a small horse, though much thinner. Its wingspan nearly twenty feet from tip to tip.

For one breathless moment, Jacey could only stare. Glittering orange eyes stared back at her from an angular snakelike head that was attached to a long and sinuous neck. It seemed black, but she didn’t think that was its natural color. The color shifted as it stepped forward, moving across the surface of its body like water. It wasn’t as smooth as water, though. Plated…no. Scaled.

Beautiful, that’s what it was. Exquisitely graceful. It was, dear God, it was a…

“Dragon,” she whispered.

Slowly, the dragon extended its neck toward her, a narrow forked tongue licking at the air like a lizard. Unthinkingly, Jacey extended her hand.

Before she could touch it, Christian shouted. She jerked her hand back and her gaze up. Sword raised, he ran across the clearing. The dragon reared back. It hissed at her and then leapt into the air. It rose quickly in a rush of wind. Jacey had to fling herself to the ground to stay clear of its barbed tipped tail.

“Are you all right?”

Christian’s hands on her shoulders were gentle but firm as he turned her over. She struggled to sit up, pushing his hands away. “I’m fine.”

At that moment, the sun finally tipped over the horizon, gilding the very tops of the trees. Christian frowned as he reached out to touch her cheek. “You’re bleeding.”

She raised her hand to see how bad it was, but he caught her wrist.

“Leave it alone. Alan will be up in a moment.”

She smiled but winced when it pulled at her wound. “Well, I guess at least we know what it is we’re looking for now.”

He looked up to search the skies. “A gods-damned dragon.”

Chapter Eleven

The sun was well and truly risen by the time they left Aiden’s house. After getting all of the horses settled, the hunt gathered in Aiden’s living room to discuss their next move. Kamis and the crows briefed the group on everything they knew about dragons, which was precious little considering they’d been nearly hunted to extinction on Asgard and the people of Midgard had always believed them to be mythological.

Kamis was able to explain how the dragon was able to come to Midgard, if not exactly what had awakened it. “Dragons have always been able to pass between worlds without using the bridges. They nest in Yggdrasil and so are not bound to any one world as we are.”

Which apparently meant that it wasn’t tied to the fault at all, only drawn here by the magical energies that seeped through. Apparently, this place was like a watering hole for the magical beasties. This deeply pleased the wildlife biologist in her while at the same time horrifying her sane and rational human side.

Kamis seemed to believe that the dragon’s presence here meant that Yggdrasil was beginning to heal itself.

When Raquel had asked if they’d broken something by messing around with the portals last year, Kamis had shaken his head. “Perhaps like a breath of wind that triggers an avalanche, but no, we cannot claim responsibility for this. And if it is as I suspect, it is quite the opposite of broken.”

If Yggdrasil was truly beginning to heal, that meant that the bridges would begin to stabilize, the old creatures reawaken, and the gods once again walk between worlds. The old witch had actually gotten tears in his eyes over the possibility before Aiden had directed the conversation back to the problem at hand—how to deal with a magical creature that wasn’t tied to the fault, that grew in strength and size with every passing day and that would shine a spotlight on the people of Ragnarok, were it to be discovered.

Because the dragon apparently had a dampening effect on magic, as evidenced by its ability to extinguish Aiden’s light spell, it was decided that they wouldn’t be able to depend on a magical solution to taking care of the animal.

Kamis and Raquel had argued that point, saying that the wards protecting the portal as well as the hound and crow transformation spells had all held up just fine. The wards were bound to the earth and the transformation spells to DNA, and the witches thought it might be possible to find a way to work around the problem. Kamis and Raquel were going to tackle that one. The hounds would continue to patrol the land inside the border, and Jacey… Well, she had the boring but necessary task of going back into the real world to try to keep people away from Ragnarok while they took care of the dragon trouble.

“Maybe it’s friendly?” she ventured as she and Christian pulled out of Aiden’s driveway.

“It ripped a chunk out of Brian.”

Brian, the hound who Alan had patched up before healing the cut to her face. She touched the spot. The skin there was smooth, better than new, really, because before she’d had a bad case of windburn.

“Are you a virgin?”

She turned sharply to look at Christian, certain she’d heard him wrong. “
What?
”

His eyes were on the road. “The legends say dragons like virgins, and it seemed to like you. I wondered…”

“No.” She shook her head. “Not that it’s any of your business, but no. Maybe the dragon just liked me. I’m likeable. Lots of people like me.”

The corner of his mouth turned up. “It didn’t like me much. I’m likeable too, and it tried to kill me.”

“You had a sword. I’d say it had plenty of good reason not to like you much. Besides, if there was any truth to the virgin-dragon thing, you probably would’ve burst into flames as soon as it set eyes on you.”

He took his eyes from the road for a moment to look at her. “Did you just call me a slut?”

She lifted her chin. “When I went back to the library for my computer, Elin warned me about you.”

“Elin really needs to keep her mouth shut.”

She stared at his profile, unable to read his expression. “Is it really true that you slept with half the town?”

“It’s not that big of a town.”

She crossed her arms and glared out the window. People were starting to go about their business. They passed two pickup trucks and an empty school bus. She wondered exactly how many women he’d slept with. A dozen? More? She wasn’t even sure what the population was here, but how many women could there possibly be within his age range? Elin, for one. She was pretty sure, by the possessive way Elin had warned her off, that Elin had once been his partner. And why on earth should it bother her? Christian had been honest with her. He’d told her up front he wasn’t interested.

Maybe that was it. It was hard not to be a little offended when the man who would sleep with anyone said they weren’t even remotely interested in sleeping with
you
.

As they entered town, Christian said, “Why so quiet? It can’t possibly matter to you how many women I’ve slept with.”

“Of course not. I was thinking about the dragon. As impressive as your sex life surely is, it pales beside mythological creatures.”

“Ouch.”

She glanced over at him, but his gaze was on the road. A smile played about his mouth, so she knew she hadn’t even dinged his pride. The man did not seem to have any issues with confidence.

Christian drove the few remaining blocks to his house, pulled into his driveway and parked the car. She climbed out first, nearly slipped on a slick spot in the driveway and put her hand on the roof of the car to steady herself. When Christian turned, the morning sun sifting through the branches of the big tree in his front yard touched his hair, and for a moment, it looked like he had a halo. Which was hilarious, all considered.

“Door unlocked?”

“Of course.”

“I’m just going to grab my keys and I’ll be off.”

She walked through his neatly organized mudroom and grabbed the keys to her truck off the hook on the wall. Christian stood near the door with a slight frown on his face.

“Where are you going today?”

“I have a lunch date with a reporter from the local paper and an appointment with the sheriff this afternoon.”

“A date?”

“With Anna Perez from the
Gazette
.” She looked up. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to spill your secrets.”

“Not even now that a dragon is involved?”

“
Especially
now that a dragon is involved. If news about this gets out, it won’t end well for you or the dragon.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad thing for you, though. Wildlife biologist discovers dragon?”

He moved forward, stopping when he was barely a foot away. She tipped up her chin, ready to offer to let him truth-stone her again if he wanted. She hoped he’d take her at her word, though. He might not see her as girlfriend material, but she had thought he was beginning to see her as a friend.

“I’d rather be the wildlife biologist who saves the dragon’s life while preventing anyone else from getting hurt.”

“Out to save the world, are you?” He smiled and reached up to touch her cheek. She went still at the contact. He didn’t seem to notice. His thumb swept lightly across the crest of her cheekbone and then he dropped his hand. “You’ve bitten off more than you can chew, Jacey Morgan.”

Standing so close to him, she felt that truth keenly. She also felt more alive than she had in all of her twenty-three years. “You’re probably right about that.”

“You’ll call if you need help.”

“I will,” she said. “And you’ll call if you find the dragon?”

“Promise.”

Chapter Twelve

The further away from town she got, the more it seemed that everything that’d happened there had been a strange dream. It was disconcerting how normal the world seemed, when Jacey knew it was anything but. Monsters were real. Just a few miles down the road behind her was a portal to another world and an entire town full of Norse demigods, witches and shapeshifters.
Dragons
. But the people around her were too busy taking their kids to school and going grocery shopping to notice. She wanted to shake them all to wake them up, and at the same time she was so jealous of their ignorance that her heart was sore with it. She couldn’t tell anyone the truth, and even if she did, who would believe her?

If she’d been alone the other night and had somehow escaped the demon chasing her, she’d long since have convinced herself her mind was playing tricks on her. She wouldn’t have spoken a word of it to anyone. She’d have checked in with Mark and likely would be on her way home by now. If she’d been alone…well, if she’d been alone she never would have escaped the jötunn in the first place. That monster would have taken a bite out of her before she made it up the tree and she’d be dead. Crazy or not, she knew what she’d seen that night. She trusted Christian, and she knew, by letting her drive out of town, that in his own way Christian trusted her too.

Christian… She remembered him rushing toward her, sword raised, to fend off the attacking dragon. So fierce and terrifying. Sometimes, Christian seemed like the weirdest part of the strange dream the last few days of her life had been.

Better to focus on dealing with the dragon. That, and keeping her job. She’d bought a little bit of time by telling Mark she was sick yesterday, but today the clock was ticking again. If they didn’t wrap this up soon, she’d either have to take vacation time or abandon the search to Christian and his clan. She really didn’t want to do that. She wanted to see the dragon again. To actually see it in full daylight this time and not the predawn gloom of a winter morning. She also wanted to stop it from hunting before it went after bigger prey.

Once she reached Decorah, she stopped at the small restaurant where she was to meet the reporter for the local paper. If not for the fact that she’d just come from Ragnarok, she’d have considered Decorah a small town, but it was easily ten times the size of Ragnarok. Downtown lay at the bottom of a valley, with a river running behind the main street. Houses had been built on the surrounding hillsides, and some of the roads were surprisingly steep considering she was still in Iowa. She’d passed the entrance to a college campus on the way in, and that might have explained why she didn’t get quite as many curious looks after she parked her truck and walked down to the diner. The people here were apparently more accustomed to strangers whose families hadn’t lived in town for nine generations.

While she waited, she left messages for her mother and roommate and then read the local paper cover to cover, just to see if there was mention of anything strange going on. Nothing, unless you counted the “Beaver Causes Power Outage” front-page headline as strange.

The bell above the door to the diner jangled, and she looked up to see a tall woman with long, dark hair enter the restaurant. Her gaze swept the room as if she were searching for someone, and Jacey raised her hand in a half-wave. The woman’s eyes focused on her and she smiled, said something to the waiter up front and then started down the aisle.

“Jacey Morgan?” she asked, and when Jacey nodded, she introduced herself as Anna Perez and slid neatly into the booth opposite. “Thanks for meeting me. I wasn’t certain that you’d still be in the area.”

“My manager asked me to stay. There was a stray in Ragnarok that attacked a neighbor’s dog and was shortly after hit by a car. Some possible reports of rabies in the area. We think it might be the cause of the trouble, but Mark asked that I stick around to tie up any loose ends.”

The woman pulled a pen and pad of paper from her purse and slid them onto the table. “And I am a loose end.” She smiled to soften the remark. “I thought that might be how he saw me.”

Rather than answer that directly, Jacey gestured toward the folded paper. “I didn’t see your article today.”

Anna shrugged. “A small note in the police blotter mentioned the missing chickens. I wanted to speak with you before I ran the full story. What’s your sense of it all now that you’ve had time to poke into things?”

It was an innocent enough question, but something about the calculating look in the reporter’s eyes set off an alarm in Jacey’s head.

“I thought Mark had already given you an official statement.”

“He did. I wanted your take.”

If Jacey’s take got back to Mark, it could get her in trouble. She saw that knowledge in Anna’s eyes, a dare for her to speak her mind anyway, and a complete lack of compassion for whatever consequences Jacey might have to face because of it. Not very nice of her, perhaps, but Anna was probably a damned good reporter.

When Jacey hesitated, Anna gave a sigh and leaned forward as if she was about to confide in a friend. “Your expression only confirms my hunch, you know.”

Jacey raised her eyebrows. “Your hunch?”

“Doing this job, you begin to get a sixth sense. We have some trouble with drugs in this area, mostly meth, mostly small-time arrests that come to nothing. The lead article, did you read it?”

“Beaver, tree, power line?”

Anna flipped the paper and pointed to a headline about an explosion at a lab in a trailer court, one man injured. Jacey had missed that one, but at the time she’d been looking for weird animal stories.

Anna folded her hands atop the table. “There were two children living in that home last week. Their father had been arrested twice. I told the sheriff that if he didn’t get the kids out soon, they would wind up dead. Just in the nick of time, wouldn’t you say?”

“And you’re taking the credit for that?”

“You see patterns. Patterns of behavior. Patterns of misfortune. I say this trouble with the missing animals is bigger than one stray dog.” She inclined her head. “And I would like to know your opinion on the matter.”

“There was very little evidence in the first place, and we haven’t received any additional reports since the dog was killed.”

“Yesterday,” Anna said. “If the dog was killed yesterday, then you wouldn’t have heard anything yet.”

When Jacey didn’t comment, Anna grabbed her notepad and flipped it open. “Mrs. Douglas’s cat has been missing for two weeks. She didn’t report it but has posted signs all over town. That’s in Waukon. Two dogs near Pine Creek—a poodle and a corgi.”

“Pets go missing all the time.”

“Not in these numbers. You have only to look at the bulletin board in the grocery store. The flyers are papered three layers deep.” Anna sighed and closed her notepad. “Look, I understand that you don’t want to be here. William, the animal control officer, has been out with his back surgery for nearly a month. He is not a nice man and the sheriff resents having to cover for him. It’s usually not necessary, as most people out here are generally willing to address animal problems themselves. But this is a problem that someone needs to look into.”

“The sheriff—”

“Has bigger fish to fry, as he likes to remind me. There is something going on here, I’m certain of it.”

Jacey rubbed at her forehead. She wanted to turn Anna away, but she was half afraid that would only make the woman more determined, and possibly suspicious as well. When the waiter came, she ordered another iced tea. When he left, she pulled her own notepad from her bag.

“Okay. Tell me more about Mrs. Douglas’s cat.”