Firestorm Forever: A Dragonfire Novel (28 page)

Melissa shook her head, even before he had finished speaking. “I have to do this. I have to cover this story. She’s already blaming the
Pyr
for this Roger’s angina attack and that other person’s broken ankle. You guys need to turn public opinion in your favor, and I can help.”

Rafferty smiled just a little. “I knew you would say that.”

She smiled back at him then gave his fingers a squeeze. “I like that you want to protect me, but it’s better if you protect Isabelle.” Their adopted daughter had to be defended.

“There are no good choices.” Rafferty nodded once then. “See if you can convince them to return to the island for the interview.”

“It will be better for the video if they do.”

“It will be better for many things.” Rafferty’s tone was ominous and expression was resolute. “I will meet you there.”

It was clear that he didn’t expect anything good to happen. Melissa shivered, knowing she’d be glad to have her
Pyr
at her side. She would have liked to have been selfish and not parted with him at all, but Melissa was the only one who could secure that interview, and time was of the essence.

She had to choose between her own defense and that of Isabelle, and it was no choice. Isabelle was still young, and Melissa had fought dragons on her own before she’d met Rafferty.

She’d beat cancer, after all.

These dragons weren’t metaphorical, but she’d do it again anyway.

It was the only way to ensure that Isabelle had the future she deserved: a future with
Pyr
, not
Slayers
. A future with dragon shifters defending the human race.

Preferably a future without people like Maeve O’Neill.

Chapter Ten

Jac read Sigmund Guthrie’s book three times from cover to cover. It was written in a convoluted style that wasn’t as accessible as would have been ideal. In fact, she had a definite sense that there were secrets hidden between the lines, like it might have been in code. She wasn’t nearly as good at solving riddles as her brilliant sister, but she was determined to figure out this one alone.

If nothing else, this book might be the key to making her dream happen. She’d always tended to others and put her own dreams aside in favor of theirs. It was time for that to change, and Jac had been determined to start by avenging Nathaniel. That was her goal and no one else’s.

That meant hunting dragons—well, dragon shifters—and returning the favor of doing them injury. She’d moved to Seattle to be at the source, the place closest to ground zero. She’d tried to find out more about that gold dragon, even to find some hint of his presence, but without any luck.

Until she’d received this book, she’d feared she would fail.

Knowing more about her prey made the difference.

When she was done reading the book for the third time, Jac made a list. As far as she could determine, these dragon shifters had a few weaknesses.

First, they could lose a scale because they loved someone. That would leave a bit of their skin unprotected, and that—obviously—was the place to strike to give the greatest wound. Jac wasn’t at all sure she’d have the time to search for missing scales if confronting a fire-breathing dragon intent upon defending himself—or destroying her—but it was good to know. She also wasn’t convinced that she’d be able to reach the vulnerable point—that would depend upon its location and their relative positions in the fight—but still, even discovering they
had
vulnerabilities was good.

Secondly, they hid their clothes when they shifted shape and evidently could only change back to human form if in possession of those clothes. Jac would have preferred that they could have been stopped from changing into dragon form, but she supposed beggars couldn’t be choosers. Finding the clothes and taking them—or better, destroying them—could compromise a dragon shifter’s ability to shift.

Thirdly, they mated once in their long lives, always with a human woman. The woman would be a point of weakness, Jac had to believe, because humans were easier to kill than dragons. She didn’t think it right to avenge herself upon dragon shifters by injuring the women they loved, though.

She wanted to injure dragons.

But what kind of a woman would a dragon love? Maybe she’d be a human as rapacious, greedy and destructive as a dragon shifter. Maybe she’d deserve to die, just as much as her lover.

Especially if the woman loved the dragon in return.

Jac considered her list and wished it was longer. She flipped through the book again.

The truly strange thing about the book was that it seemed to be written for other dragons. Its instructions about the protocol for a dragonfight, for example, insisted that one should lock talons first “in the customary fighting pose,” but slip out of the other dragon’s grip early, or thrash the other dragon with one’s tail before he was ready for an assault. Jac didn’t have those options at her disposal.

She considered the title of the book for the umpteenth time.
The Compleat Guide for Slayers
. Was it true that there were two kinds of dragons: good dragons and bad dragons? That’s what Melissa Smith said.

Were they all dragon shifters?

Did dragons slay each other?

Jac didn’t know how she would find out.

If nothing else, she had more to add to her notebook of details about dragons. She’d already spent days on her computer, trolling through all of the video footage of the
Pyr
on YouTube. From each short film, she’d slurped one good image of each dragon and printed it out. Her compilation of known dragons included the date and location of their appearances. She tried to augment it with weaknesses and information from this old volume on hunting dragons.

There was the opal and gold dragon that appeared in Melissa Smith’s documentary. There was the huge moonstone and silver dragon that had shifted shape in a crowd in Washington, D. C. There was a trio of them filmed fighting near a roundabout in England, an opal and gold dragon and a moonstone and silver one pitted against a jade and gold one.

Jac bit her lip as she watched that one again. Clearly, there could be a dispute between dragons. It was possible that the opal and gold one was the same dragon as the one in the documentary, and that the moonstone and silver one was the same dragon as shifted shape in D.C. Jac couldn’t see any differences, so she concluded that they were the same dragons in different places.

Shortly after that, three dragons had closed the Thames Barrier in London. One was ebony and pewter, while the second was tourmaline and gold, his scales shading from green to purple and back again. The third had scales in vivid hues of orange and yellow, edged with gold, and was so vivid that the sight of him was like looking into the sun. Jac watched the video several times, listening to the commentator’s remarks that the closure would save the city from flooding and keep thousands of people from dying.

Jac tapped her pencil. She was back to good dragons and bad dragons, but still skeptical. The three closing the Thames Barrier had kept the city of London from flooding. That might mean they were good—or it might mean that they had another agenda, one that had nothing to do with the survival of humans.

She wasn’t yet convinced that any of the dragon shifters deserved to live, but she put a divider into her notebook and put these three dragons on the other side of it.

Of course, there was the video of the incident that had changed her own life. She could barely watch the topaz and gold dragon as he shook blood over the crowd, because her gaze was snared by Nathaniel and his excitement. God, she missed him. And she hated feeling responsible that he was gone. Her heart clenched that she’d taken him there, instead of to the Space Needle yet again, and Jac fought her tears as she pasted that dragon’s image into her book.

The topaz one was obviously evil.

Jac dug deeper and found an interview with an eyewitness about the Thames Barrier. He’d observed a fight between two dragons over the controls. One was jade and gold, the other opal and gold. That had to be two of the ones who had fought by the roundabout, shortly before that. So, if the jade one had been evil, was the opal one good as Melissa insisted? Was the moonstone one good, too?

Jac didn’t have nearly enough information. The videos were years old.

Where would she find these dragon shifters now? Where were their lairs?

And what would she do once she did find one?

Jac set the book aside in frustration and turned on the television. To her horror, there was a story breaking on the news, and more pictures of dragons.

These dragons had been over Easter Island.

Jac watched in disgust and revulsion as the photos of the dragons were shown over and over again. They were red and gold, and they looked so similar to each other that they could have been siblings. She guessed they probably were, because they’d been hatched out of the same nest. She winced as the eggs were shown, the way they disintegrated almost immediately revealing why dragon eggs had never been found before.

Her heart stopped cold when a topaz dragon appeared out of thin air, snatched the red and gold ones, and disappeared. That was the dragon from Seattle again!

The evil one had claimed these newborns.

Did that make them minions or captives?

Did they have a choice about their allegiances? Or would he force them to be evil just like him? Jac could only guess. She put the red and gold dragons on the “evil” side of her divider.

Guilty until proven innocent.

The helpful links on the screen took her to two other recent videos she had somehow missed, probably because she’d been so absorbed in reading Sigmund’s book. The first showed a red and gold dragon, exactly like the ones hatched, battling an ebony and pewter one over Chicago. She added another image and sighting notes for the ebony and pewter one. He’d been one of the dragons at the Thames Barrier, she was sure.

So, did being attacked by evil dragons make him good? It was possible. Her notebook gained a third section: now she had Evil, Good and Unknown. The guy shifting shape in the desert went in the Unknown section too. He hadn’t hurt Cassie Redmond, but that wasn’t enough to make him a good guy.

The second linked video was blurry, as if shot from a cell phone by a shaking hand, and showed four red and gold dragons with a fifth red and gold one who was injured. Other than the injuries, they were identical, as far as she could see, just like the ones on Easter Island. Did they all look the same when they were hatched and develop differences later? These ones fought with each other, one—that seemed to be missing an arm—vanished, then the others consumed the last one. That said something horrible about sibling rivalry, and Jac was glad that her relationship with Sam had never disintegrated that much.

Were these the dragons just hatched at Easter Island? They sure looked similar, and the timing was right. Jac grimaced as she added a note to the Easter Island dragons, then wondered where those dragons were now. One was dead, but what of the others? They definitely belonged in the Evil category.

Were there more dragon eggs in the world, just waiting to be hatched? Jac was on her feet at the very idea. That would be the easiest way to destroy dragon shifters, she was sure of it. Maybe the eggs could be broken before the dragons were ready to hatch. Maybe they’d be weaker then and easier to kill.

Of course, these eggs had looked like round rocks before they hatched, and who knew how long they had been there, incubating. Checking every round rock on the planet seemed like an insurmountable challenge, but there had to be a way to stop these monsters.

Maybe Marco knew more than he’d revealed to her.

Maybe the package hadn’t been misdelivered.

Maybe it had come from Marco.

The idea stopped Jac cold. Her new neighbor certainly was mysterious. There was something alluring about his patience and stillness. Jac liked that she could see his admiration in his eyes, but he didn’t rush to make a move on her. If anything, he seemed to be waiting for an invitation. She had no doubt of his orientation—the heat in his eyes when he surveyed her said it all, and set her simmering, too. Jac had the feeling that she only needed to crook her little finger to have an awesome night with him, or even more.

She was giving serious consideration to crooking her finger.

If nothing else, Jac recognized a conversation starter when she found one. She wasn’t sure if her hot new neighbor was home, because his apartment was really quiet. It always was. The only way to find out for sure was to go up there.

And ask him about dragons and their eggs. Either he’d reveal that he knew more and they’d find a common interest, or he’d think she was insane. Jac hoped for the former, but feared the latter.

Either way, she’d get to see him again. She could decide whether he was just as attractive as she remembered, or whether she’d imposed her own hope on the view. Jac was pretty sure she knew the answer, which was why there were butterflies in her stomach when she decided to go.

She brushed her hair and put on her favorite shirt for luck. Lipstick would be overkill, she knew, especially as she was trying to look casual. Just dropping by with a question. Jac checked her reflection in the mirror, picked up the book, then headed upstairs to knock on Marco’s door. It was time to find out whether her sense that he knew more about the parcel than he’d admitted had any justification at all.