Never Deal with Dragons (17 page)

I didn’t even want to think about my earlier interference with Rime. Like Trian had warned, it was about to come back and bite me on the butt. I was beginning to wonder whether the world had turned against me.

I looked back to the angry dragon lord and tried to rein in my panic. On the bright side, Richard’s disappearance meant Trian and I would be the only ones dying a slow, agonizing death.

I swallowed. “Lord Hian-puo. I would request that we table this discussion until after we’ve come to an agreement regarding Lord Relobu’s business.” Was it just me, or was my voice squeakier than I remembered?

Hian-puo studied me in silence for several moments. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that he hadn’t already snapped my head off or not. This kind of deliberation could also mean he enjoyed inventing unique methods of torture. He was still angry, I could see it in his face, but something made him reconsider.

“Very well.” He gestured toward his throne. “Shall we have a seat?”

I blinked. “Well, um, we seem to have lost Mr. Green. If you could excuse me for a moment, I’ll retrieve him.” At a nod from the dragon lord, Hian-puo’s guard released his grip on Jia.

“My servant will fetch him. We can discuss other business while we wait. I assure you, it won’t take long.”

Jia quickly scurried from the room.

At Hian-puo’s request, two plain wooden chairs were placed directly in front of his golden monstrosity. One of his dragons stepped over to adjust the throne into a seat more suitable for a dragon, folding the flat part of the chair until only a thin strip of metal was showing. The strip clicked into place, revealing a perch perfect for Hian-puo’s bird-like clawed feet. A tiny part of my brain marveled at the ingenuity. The rest of it was too busy processing the stark terror running through my body.

Until five minutes ago, I had no idea dragons could morph into human form. And now there was a good chance I was about to be killed by one.

But my brain was still tossing the idea of dragon-morphs around in my skull. If this were true—and based on Hian-puo’s recent show, it was—dragons and humans were more alike than we ever thought possible. This was huge. If this news was made public, it offered up a real chance for dragons and humans to coexist, not just peacefully, but cooperatively.

I shook myself free from my mind’s rampant speculation. This wasn’t the time to change the world. Right now, I just wanted to stay alive. With a cautious smile, I climbed the dais and sat, my legs crossed demurely in front and my hands resting loosely in my lap. Trian followed, but ignored the chair in favor of standing at my side.

I itched to ask him why he looked like he’d been three rounds with a professional boxer, but it could wait.

The silence in the room continued. I felt utterly naked, and wished there were a table of some sort I could fidget under without attracting any more notice.

The dragon lord took his time getting settled back on the throne. When he was finished arranging his impressive pair of wings over the armrests, he spoke. “Myrna Banks. I have but one simple question. Why have you sent a dragon to steal my property?”

“What?” Now I was totally lost. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He shifted on his perch, his thin tongue darting from between deadly sharp teeth. The dragon lord repeated the action twice more. I wished he’d stop. Forked tongues weren’t exactly common with North American dragons, and for some reason the sight was giving me the willies.

He chuckled softly. “Ah, I didn’t think Relobu had it in him for this level of trickery. He hired your guards?” He laughed again, a snorting huff of smoke that quickly dissipated into the surrounding air.

“Yes,” I said slowly, “my security detail was provided by Lord Relobu. But I can assure you, that fact will not affect my ability to provide serve as a neutral facilitator in your talks with Mr. Green.”

The dragon lord was still regarding me with amusement.

“Lord Hian-puo, I’m not sure I follow the conversation.” And it was true. I felt like I’d unwittingly stumbled into the middle of an intricate chess game, then asked to finish up the challenge. I didn’t dare look at Trian. If he noticed how scared I was, he’d be worried. I was a DRACIM employee. I was supposed to work well under pressure.

Hian-puo took in my baffled expression.

“Yes, yes, I see that you don’t. Which is really too bad,” he mused, “since I’m honor bound to kill you for it anyway. I can’t allow Lord Relobu the wherewithal to intrude upon my personal business without punishment, no matter how delightful the messenger.”

“Whoa, let’s just—” I put up a hand, blocking Trian’s step toward the dragon. Despite my fright at the sinister turn of the conversation, I struggled for a level head. “Let’s just talk about this for a minute. Exactly what do you believe has been stolen? And what dragon do you think did this? I have only five dragons with me on this trip, and I can account for their movements since our arrival.”

“My darling girl.” Hian-puo’s voice was soft and indulgent, like a father to a particularly small child, and it chilled my veins like nothing else could. “I’m not speaking of the dragons housed elsewhere. It’s the dragon-morph you smuggled into the fold.”

“Dragon-morph? What’s a dragon-morph?” I forced a laugh from my dry throat and scanned the room, looking for a sign, any sign, to tell me I was the butt of an elaborate joke.

“Myrna.” My head tipped up at the sound of Trian’s voice. He stood stiffly with his hands fisted at his side, staring at the dragon lord.

“Lord Hian-puo, may I have a moment?”

The monarch lowered his chin in assent. I stood and walked a couple of steps away from the throne. After a brief pause, I heard Trian’s footsteps as he followed.

“Trian.” I puffed out the breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding. “What is he talking about?”

“Me.” Trian’s voice was completely expressionless as he met my gaze directly.

“I don’t...” I stopped speaking and shook my head, trying to make sense of this entire conversation. “What’s a dragon-morph?”

Trian didn’t answer. Instead, he looked at a point over my shoulder and calmly drew his needle-thin sword from a scabbard I hadn’t even noticed him wearing.

I pivoted to find out what he was looking at. While we’d been speaking, Hian-puo’s dragons had formed a loose semicircle around Trian and me.

Hian-puo rose from his chair and went to stand between his men. He bared his teeth.

He addressed Trian. “Relobu’s dragon-morph, in the flesh. I never guessed he’d send you. And what vile thing have I done that Relobu sends his assassin to my doorstep?”

“I’m not here as an assassin.
Lord
Relobu,” Trian stressed the title of his leader, “sent me to ensure Myrna’s safety as a neutral party in this discussion. She will not be harmed.”

I looked from Hian-puo to Trian and back. “Okay, guys. I feel like there’s a whole lot of significance to this conversation that I’m not catching. Anyone care to clue me in?”

Neither party even glanced in my direction. They were too busy trying to burn through each other’s skulls with testosterone-laden laser vision.

“I think it’sss a little too late for that,” Hian-puo said with a triumphant smile.

He was hissing again. Not a good sign.

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice a strange dragon in my home? No matter your color, you are not invisible. You sealed her fate as well as yours the moment you accessed my office.”

Trian ignored the dragon’s threat. “I did no such thing. We came here in good faith, to see to the return of our science team. Or did you think Lord Relobu would calmly accept the deaths of his team members at your hands?”

I wasn’t following a lot of the conversation, but I gathered Trian assumed the missing dragons had been killed. I cleared my throat. “They’re not dead.”

This time I got their attention. Both sets of golden eyes focused on me. I looked at Trian. “Lord Relobu’s team. They aren’t dead. At least I don’t think so. They’re actually here in the building with us. In the basement.”

My pronouncement was met with silence, until Hian-puo, his eyes narrowing in malice, made a small noise, almost like he was choking on a hairball. “Myrna, run!” Trian leapt between me and the dragon lord, pushing me in the direction of the door.

His shove knocked me off balance. On my rear, I stared in horror at a pool of venom coating the floor where I’d just been standing.

Maybe Trian’s order to run wasn’t such a bad idea.

I struggled to my feet and faced the door, intent on following his instructions. But reality never turns out exactly how I expect. “Uh, Trian. That’s not going to happen.” I’d forgotten the circle of Hian-puo’s dragons between me and the exit. They’d advanced when Trian had first pulled his sword, until their bodies formed an impenetrable barrier between me the safety of another room. With their height, I could barely see daylight. There was no chance of slipping through their ranks without one of them dicing me into tiny pieces first.

One of Hian-puo’s guards must have seen me as an easy target, because he swiped his weapon—a club as thick as my body—toward my head. I tried to dodge and fell to the ground, narrowly avoiding decapitation. I fumbled under my skirt for the knife. The dragon growled and swung again.

Trian must have heard me scream, because I heard him say my name just before a black claw reached out and plucked the club from the furious attacker. I used the guard’s momentary distraction to aim my weapon at the sensitive area just below the neck that Trian had shown me in combat practice.

I was as shocked as the guard when he choked and coughed, purple blood spewing from his mouth. The other would-be attackers stopped and watched in horror as he fell to his knees and teetered before losing consciousness and tipping forward.

This was so not a normal mediation session.

I jumped back to avoid being crushed under the body, but I hit something hard. I whirled, expecting another attack.

What I saw made me freeze. A dragon—black, enormous and enraged—swiped furiously at his attackers, knocking them down one after another with the same heavy club that had almost killed me. Blood poured a deep red from his multiple wounds. Something was wrong with one of his wings. Instead of a series of angled bones connected with leathery skin, his wing was splotched with human flesh and curled inward, against his back.

I suddenly understood what I was seeing.

The dragon was Trian, and he hadn’t finished morphing.

I tore my gaze from Trian’s mangled appendage as Hian-puo drew a knife and smiled, his eyes trained on the delicate flesh of Trian’s half-formed wing. Before I could fully comprehend his actions, I stepped in front of the dragon lord and hacked at the tendons of his outstretched arm.

Hian-puo cried out in pain and anger and angled his body in my direction. He made the same hacking cough just before a stream of venomous saliva spewed in my direction. I had no desire to see how my skin held up under the corrosive substance, so I jumped to the side, landing hard on my hip.

The black dragon—I still couldn’t think of it as Trian—hopped awkwardly toward me, until his scaly thighs straddled my prone body.

“Stay put!” It was Trian’s voice, screaming at me roughly in dragonspeak.

My ears were still ringing from the knock on the head I must have received during all the excitement, but I forced myself to look around. At some point Dreru and his dragons had joined the commotion, and they were hacking their way in our direction with a skill on par with Trian’s expert moves. I heard the voices of several other dragons, their American accents a welcome addition to all the noise.

Richard must have freed the missing team. I groaned as I pulled my legs closer to my body, trying to give Trian a little more room to maneuver. He must have heard the pain in my voice, because he snarled and looked down at his feet.

“I’m okay. Really.”

He seemed to take my word for it because he stepped aside and allowed me to struggle into a sitting position. The fight was nearly over, all of Hian-puo’s men either seriously injured or dead. My gaze traveled of its own accord to the body of the dragon I’d killed. He lay face down on the floor, his right claw resting on the cool stone. His left arm was curled underneath, probably still covering his fatal wound. The one I’d caused. My mind took the opportunity to replay the surprise and dawning horror of his expression when he’d realized the extent of his injuries. I shuddered and searched for something to shift my focus.

I located the Chinese dragon lord at the same time as Trian. Hian-puo was bleeding profusely from a hole in his right thigh; a thin stream of red trickled down his leg with every movement. Didn’t see that very often. I guess dragon-morphs inherited the color of their blood from their human side as well.

I smiled cynically at the thought that from this point on, I’d forever feel the need to stab a dragon and see what color it bled before taking its appearance at face value. Limping and with one wing hanging at an awkward angle, Trian approached the dragon lord and put a razor-sharp claw to Hian-puo’s throat.

“Where are you hiding them?”

Hian-puo laughed. “You’re too late. Execute me here, assassin, and you will never find the dragon-killer. The machine was transported just this morning.”

I was about to ask what Hian-puo was blathering about when Trian knocked the dragon lord unconscious with a hard swing at his head. The huge doors to the hall opened.

Chapter Thirteen

Richard strolled into the room like he’d just arrived for afternoon tea, surrounded by Dan, Henry and three other men who appeared to be at the end of their strength. One of whom was wearing a sling. It was the human portion of the science team. They must have been kept in the basement with the others.

Richard’s gaze scanned the room as he meandered around the puddles of blood and dragon bits that were too far gone to regenerate. When he found me curled up on the floor, and obviously still breathing, the tightness on his face eased.

“As you probably noticed, you were right about Lord Relobu’s team being held in the basement. They all had some bumps and bruises, but they’ll be fine.”

“Tell them I said thanks for coming to the rescue.”

“Will do. Carol’s outside with Jia and her daughter. Oh, by the way, Rime left a message with Dreru. He wanted to say thanks.”

“He isn’t dead?” The way Hian-puo had been talking, I was sure the general was in a ditch somewhere looking like Jui Bai, the only other general to attempt defiance against the dragon lord.

Richard smiled. “Nope, though it was a close call. Hian-puo’s men tracked him down after his meet-up with Trian, while he was packing to leave the country. With the help of a good dose of luck, the family managed to stay hidden. Rime wasn’t so lucky. Hian-puo’s dragons cut open his chest and left him bleeding, thinking they’d finished him off. You’d think they’d know better than to allow even a chance of regeneration. His family came out of hiding, found someone to sew up the worst of the damage, and looked after him until he could move around on his own.”

I grinned, glad to hear the general was still in one piece, even if he was heavily injured.

Richard shifted his attention to Trian. “You look like hell.”

Trian tried for a smile, his deadly teeth stretching out of a reptilian face. I looked away. The idea of Trian being a dragon was still too new.

“Still look better than you.” I turned back when Trian shifted position. There was blood pooling under one wing. It was torn almost completely off his back; the only thing holding it together was a thin strip of cartilage.

It didn’t escape me that Richard wasn’t at all surprised to see Trian as a black dragon instead of a human. Boy, was Trian in a lot of trouble when I managed to get him alone.

Unaware of my plans to skin a certain dragon, Trian nodded to Dreru, who’d approached after dealing with the last of Hian-puo’s guards. “Get a few of our team to take Hian-puo to the basement. There are some restraints that should hold him.”

The dragon nodded.

Trian looked to Richard. “We need to talk. There’s something much bigger than the science team happening here. And Hian-puo is right in the middle of it.”

“Where is he?” Richard scanned the room.

I pointed. “He’s the one bleeding red, over there.”

“I still can’t believe he’s a dragon-morph. I’d only ever seen him in his dragon form, and Lord Relobu never mentioned it. I wonder whether he knew.”

“So I’m not the only one surprised by the Hian-puo thing? Good to know.”

Richard’s expression went grim. “Speaking of the boss, I called Lord Relobu. There will have to be a trial for Hian-puo’s treatment of Relobu’s team, and most likely for this attack as well. He’s contacting all the other dragon lords to try and schedule a time, and find out how the ruling council wants to conduct the inquisition.”

It was well-known that dragons handled their own justice. But this was the first time a dragon at Lord Hian-puo’s level would be called out for his actions. It seems not even dragon lords were above the law.

Dreru and a couple of the American dragons made short work of Hian-puo, who, considering he was still unconscious courtesy of a sharp knock to the head, allowed himself to be carted out of the room. The rest of the Chinese court still loyal to Hian-puo officially surrendered and were seen to by the medics.

One of the health team, a small dragon I’d seen the last night at the dinner, approached Trian to ask about his wing—which was bent in an unnatural direction even if Trian were a double-jointed flying acrobat. Trian tried to wave off the dragon’s help, but the creature persisted until Trian submitted to his care.

His body might look completely different, but Trian’s eyes were the same golden color. So it was easy to see he was in a lot of pain, but at the moment I had a hard time feeling sorry for him.

“Well, that was fun, don’t you think?” I smiled brightly at my teammates. But from the way Richard blanched and took a step back, I’m guessing it was clear that I was the farthest thing from happy. I made no attempt to hide my fury.

“I can’t decide which part I enjoyed more, having Richard disappear just before another mediation session, or almost being killed because of Trian’s secrets.”

I twisted around to face Trian. “You. I might not have followed everything about the conversation just a second ago, but I’m almost positive Hian-puo said you broke into his office last night. Not only did you ‘forget to mention’ you were secretly flying around here and sticking your snout where it absolutely didn’t belong, you didn’t have the decency to tell me you could turn into a freaking black dragon.”

And that was the crux of it. He’d done it. Again. With his promise to explain things last night, I’d started to think maybe we still had a chance. That he had a valid reason for leaving me a year ago. Or that he regretted his actions. But he was still the same old Trian, who’d rather lie and steal and prevaricate than sit down and have an honest conversation with someone who loved him.

“I dated you for almost a year and this.” I waved my hands in the direction of his sleek, scaled body, “never once made it into the conversation?”

“Why?” I felt tears gather as I stared into his warm golden eyes. It made me hate him even more, that he could so easily reduce me to this condition. “Why can’t you trust me?”

Trian dropped his gaze and spoke. But not to me. My heart broke just a little more. “Richard, I’ll be out in a minute to help you get everyone ready for the trip back home. I just need a minute by myself.

Richard nodded once and scrambled out of the room like the hounds of hell were on his heels. I guess I couldn’t blame him. If I’d had any feelings left, I’d have done the same.

By unspoken agreement, Trian and I waited until the doors closed with a thud. The only sound in the room was the steady drip of Trian’s blood as it leaked from the cut on his head and dropped to the floor.

“You’ll bleed to death if you don’t cover that.”

“It’ll keep.”

And just like that, we were strangers again. I stifled a groan as I wrapped fingers around what was left of the bottom of my dress. Even with the material already ripped, I had to exert a lot of pressure and suffer more than a little pain—my knuckles were sore from being wrapped too tightly around the hilt of a knife—to rip a large strip from the bottom. Once I’d separated a large enough section, I folded the cloth into a makeshift bandage. My muscles screamed as I got to my feet, and my left knee threatened not to hold me as I shuffled toward Trian.

“Let me see it.”

Trian lowered his head until the cut was level with my chest, and I pressed the material against the wound. “Head injuries usually look worse than they are because of the blood supply and all.” I said it more to convince myself than calm Trian.

“Yes.” We stood there for several minutes in silence, each waiting for the other to speak.

It never happened.

Finally, when we’d been there long enough that the wound had begun to seal, I dropped the cloth and started toward my knife. “You’re probably still going to need stitches though.” I wasn’t sure of the specifics of dragon-morph healing talents.

Trian watched me through slitted eyes. When I turned for the door, he spoke.

“I didn’t want you to know.”

I sighed. “What?”

“I didn’t tell you I was a dragon-morph because Lord Relobu felt that information was best kept from DRACIM. The paperwork contained a photo of me in the middle of a transformation. One of your agents caught me on film. We were able to convince him to leave DRACIM in exchange for a trust fund set up for his daughter’s college expenses. She had plans to go premed.”

“Larry.” The middle-aged father had surprised us all by resigning right in the middle of a long-term assignment. We’d all assumed the stress had finally been too much.

Trian nodded. “He accepted our offer, but he’d already handed off the picture with the rest of his files.”

“To me.” I’d been the agent who got the majority of his caseload. In fact, I’d volunteered for the job, confident that the extra work would be the last step on my way to a promotion.

Oh, how wrong I’d been. I hadn’t even had a chance to sort through the folders before Trian’s actions had me stripped of my position.

He’d decided his career was more important than what we had. My heart clenched. That’s not something I could change.

Trian’s steady gaze as I tried to come to terms with his confession was too much. I asked a question to shift his attention. “So no one at DRACIM knows about dragon-morphs?”

“Lord Relobu thought it was best to keep it kind of a secret. Before this,” he gestured to the mess around us, “we thought I was the only one. It didn’t seem worth it to raise a fuss about yet another new species. Since we’d never met my birth parents, we’re not sure how my mutation is even possible. The humans have enough trouble trying to accept normal dragons. He thought the idea that people like me might walk among the population undetected would cause unnecessary panic.”

I didn’t agree, but that was beside the point.

I turned to meet his eyes. “Do you believe I was so untrustworthy? That I’d immediately run to the nearest newspaper and blurt your secrets?”

“No. Of course not. It’s just—” he shuffled his feet uneasily. “Just give me a second to organize my thoughts.”

Trian didn’t trust me. His secrets, Lord Relobu’s, the real reason we were in China—all of them lies.

“Ha.” I swallowed the ache in my throat and turned my back on the black dragon. “Don’t stretch your brain, Trian. You can keep your secrets. I’m starting to believe I don’t want them anymore.”

* * *

I sat on the stone steps of Hian-puo’s estate and watched as Trian, still in his dragon form, approached. After our argument, I’d taken a long walk around the mansion, trying to gather my thoughts.

By the time I’d dried my tears and returned to the throne room, everyone had disappeared. Dreru and Richard had rounded up the troops, and I guess Carol had been too busy helping Jia and Cai pack to worry about me. Jia was finally getting her wish. Richard had formally accepted their request to join Lord Relobu’s clan in Tulsa.

Trian and I were the only two around.

Normally it wouldn’t be a problem; I’d actually started looking forward to spending time alone in Trian’s company. But that wasn’t happening today. Today I was aching, both inside and out.

“How’s the wing?” I tried for a friendly tone of voice, but my body just wasn’t up to it. The question came out flat and resigned.

“It’s healing. Not as fast as I’d like. Sore, but it’ll be back to normal in a couple of days.”

Back to normal?
Nothing about today had been normal.

Trian’s words were matter-of-fact, as if we were discussing the weather instead of a secret he’d hidden from me for over a year. I couldn’t gather enough energy to care. Besides, there were other things to talk about.

“So, what is this machine Hian-puo was bragging about?” I hadn’t forgotten Hian-puo’s excited ranting, or the look on Trian’s face when the dragon mentioned it. Richard’s reaction had been just as animated; he’d called for the jet to be ready as soon as possible.

Trian’s gaze warmed as he took in my bedraggled appearance. “You really are hell on clothes.”

“Just answer the question.” I was in no mood for evasions, and his attempt to joke with me after what I considered a betrayal was more than my heart could handle.

His eyes cooled immediately, but he did as I asked. “Shui-Tech, in addition to being a leading telecommunications supplier, also owns their own biogenetics research facility.”

I frowned. Richard hadn’t mentioned the company’s ties to biological research. “Weren’t all genetics labs outlawed?” The decision had been made by a conglomeration of national governments still standing after the war. Their official justification for the ruling was linked to human rights and economic stability, but everyone knew the law was invoked to prevent another mutation similar to the dragons.

So far none of the dragon lords had challenged the ruling, probably because they rarely concerned themselves with human governments. The few laws that humans tried to impose upon them were negotiated on a case-by-case basis by DRACIM.

Trian shook his head. “Not all. An exception was made for labs using biomaterial in computers. The idea of liquid hard drives has been tossed around for a while. Shui-Tech is required to submit quarterly reports to the Chinese government proving the lab is used only to further their telecommunications interests, and not for medical purposes. Lord Relobu sent a team to Shui-Tech, because he’d recently been informed of a project they’d developed to integrate liquid, biomechanical hard drives into personal electronic devices.”

“Right. These bio-drives were supposed to be resistant to EMPs pulses and last longer than the traditional disk drives. Richard told me about them.”

“Well, Hian-puo was interested in Shui-Tech for the same reason, only he received the information before Relobu.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Rime told you all this?”

“Yes.”

“So Hian-puo kept tabs on the Chinese electronics market. That’s not hard to believe. I imagine Hian-puo has more than a few Chinese government officials at his beck and call. It would be hard to say no to a dragon known to kill people who disagreed with him.”

Trian nodded. “Well, one of those officials gave him a heads-up on the developing tech, and Hian-puo sent a dragon to inspect the product. That dragon died within two days of his visit.”