The Dragon's Secret (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 2) (3 page)

BOOK: The Dragon's Secret (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 2)
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She screamed louder. Her fire grew hotter, turning from red to blue.

The next ball hit her on the side of her face and painted silver across her head.

A second later, the fire stopped and the girl-dragon froze. Covered in head to toe in silver, she looked like a metal statue of herself.

Merlin brushed his shirt and jeans off. One of his eyebrows was half singed off and his hair looked black around the edges. Otherwise, he was unharmed. “Well then,” he said, looking around with wild eyes. He must have caught me glaring at the mess he and the dragon made, because he said, “Sorry.”

“I wish you hadn’t frozen her,” I said.

“Consider the alternative, my dear,” he said.

“Remind me to be way more polite to the next dragon I meet,” Lila said.

Adam frowned and draped a protective arm around Lila’s waist. “So that was some kind of dragon trick to find Merlin? She just wanted to attack you?”

Merlin sank down heavily into the nearest chair and shook his head. “No. I don’t think she would say her father was in trouble if he was not. Dragons are an honest sort.”

I nodded. “I’m guessing she didn’t plan on attacking you, except you were right there. Dragons are hot-headed, literally and figuratively. How long until she unfreezes?” I asked. We had gotten almost no information out of her, such as where her father might be.

Merlin looked embarrassed. “Anywhere from ten hours to a week? And any attempt to hurry it up might hurt her.”

“Time that Y Ddraig Goch does not have,” I said. “Tell me, wizard, why would whoever has the Red Dragon trade him for you?”

Merlin shrugged. “No idea. Besides the obvious guess that these men are on a quest for power and magic. They have the world’s most powerful dragon, and now they want the world’s most powerful wizard.”

I frowned. “What could they possibly need you for?”

“Need? They need nothing. In your long life, have you ever met a man who had some power and decided that was enough?”

I stared at him. I had met one such man. One man who I longed for, even as he sat within easy reach.

“So what now? How are we going to help this Red Dragon get free?” Lila asked.

“We should start in Chinatown, I think,” Merlin said. “Everyone knows there are no dragons left in the world, and yet the Chinese unders, across the globe, still perform dragon rituals every year. Someone there will know something, if anyone in this town does. Who do you know there, Morgan?”

I contemplated saying that I knew no one, even though Merlin was right: Chinatown was the place to begin searching. And I knew just the person to talk to. I sighed. “I have a friend.” A friend who I would prefer Merlin never met. “Unless someone else knows someone?”

They didn’t.

 

 

 

 

 

4

Bigfoot

Across the world, most cultures have Bigfoot stories. There’s a good reason for that: there’s a lot of half-human unders out there: sasquatch, yeti, mogollons, hibagons, etc. My friend Ken was a Yeren. An extremely tall Chinese-American man-bear with lovely red fur that he shaved nightly in order to pass for human. I’d met him at a Chinese New Year’s party a couple of years ago. We’d ended up drunk and daring each other to jump off tall buildings in Pioneer Square. He busted up the road landing hard, and told me I looked lovely in my leather pants as I floated down through the air.

I told him that I looked even better out of them.

Ken was a great lover, as long as he clipped his claws and remembered to take breaks now and again. Things with him were simple: we had fun. A lot of fun. Neither of us wanted more than what we gave each other, but we did so with great affection. Ken also happened to know every under in Chinatown. Yeren were famously friendly.

I drove to his small kung fu studio, past the ornate gates and the colorful dragon statues winding around telephone poles that marked the border of Chinatown. I parked my Mini, and we walked into the concrete garage that he’d converted into his studio. Long halogen lights glowed overhead and the floor and walls were covered with mats. Ken led a class of cute five-year-olds in white uniforms through an easy sequence. He towered over them and moved slowly, making the precise motions look natural and easy.

“Ni hao,” I called out to him.

He spotted me in the wall-length mirror. “Sup, Morgan.” His eyes took in my entourage and he moved faster, rushing through the end of his class. The small bodies around him struggled to keep up, laughing as they bumped into each other and fell onto the mats.

When the class ended, he grabbed a towel, draped it around his neck, and walked over to us with long easy strides.

Ken looked at me, really looked at me, in that way that lovers do. I glanced at Merlin, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

He did, of course.

I shoved my hands in my pocket and worried about what Merlin would think. He couldn’t have expected me to live like a monk all these centuries away from him, especially since I didn’t even know he existed. Besides, were we even monogamous when we were together? I sighed. So many questions and no answers.

“We were hoping we could take you out to dinner and pick your brains about something,” I said and introduced him to the others.

“Merlin,” he said. “Like the wizard?”

“Exactly so.”

Ken, like most people in my life, didn’t know I was Morgan le Fay. He knew I was a witch, sure, but not the rest of it.

“And Adam, you’re a werewolf?” Ken said

“Good nose,” Adam said. “You’ve got some bear in you?”

Ken grinned. “You could say that.”

He locked up his studio and we walked a couple of blocks to a hole in the wall with crumbling plaster walls and dirty floors. The rule of thumb in this neighborhood was the dingier the place, the better the food. Ken ordered for all of us in rapid Mandarin, and then settled back in his chair. “So what’s up?”

The server brought us tall bottles of Tsingtao beer.

“Someone came to me today, looking for help,” I said. “A dragon.”

Surprise rippled through him, but then his features settled back to their calm baseline. “No such thing as dragons,” he said loudly.

 

 

 

 

 

5

DnD Nerds on Steroids

Before we could question him more, the dumplings arrived: big steaming bowls of spinach and tofu goodness bathed in a tangy ginger sauce. I ate four of them in quick succession.

“Good?” Ken asked.

“Excellent,” I replied.

“About these dragons,” Merlin said.

Ken shot him a warning look and then glanced over at a table nearby where two ancient men sat drinking cups of oolong. “No such thing,” he said, and then mouthed,
later.

Merlin nodded. “Well then, how did you and Morgan meet, Ken?”

“I hardly think—”

Ken interrupted me. “At a party. Morgan drank everyone under the table.”

“As she does.”

“And then she started dancing. On tables.”

“Which she excels at.”

“There are other topics we could discuss,” I said.

“And then she started breaking things, including the diamond store’s window across the street, while ranting about bourgeois luxuries at the expense of African lives. Cops showed up. She ran away. I followed.”

“An excellent decision.”

Ken smiled at Merlin. “Oh. You and Morgan, too? Since when?”

“From way back. We should compare battle scars.”

“The scratches alone,” Ken said.

The two of them clinked their beers together and drank.

I looked to Lila and Adam, hoping they might change the subject, but they sat on one side of the table, heads bent toward each other, alone in their pocket universe of early love. He fed her dumplings. She sipped beer and ran a foot up and down his shin. They would be no help.

Luckily, the two old men paid their bill and walked slowly out of the restaurant while Ken and Merlin discussed other things I was good at breaking: laws, safes, and the tender hearts of good men.

“So, back to business,” I said, interrupting them. I lowered my voice. “A dragon showed up in my shop.”

“They’re extinct,” Ken said much too innocently.

“You know they are not”

Merlin added, “You might as well admit what you know, lad. Once she gets her hooks in, she’s uncanny about calling out your bullshit.”

I glared at both of them as they clinked beer bottles again.

“Do all the Chinese know?” I asked.

“I don’t think all one point three billion Chinese know any one thing,” he said.

“You know I mean the Chinese unders.”

Ken shrugged. “We pissed the dragons off less than the rest of the world. Dragons have always been sacred creatures to us.”

“Good,” I said. “You will contact them. You can take us to some and they can help us find their missing kindred.”

Ken bit into a dumpling and shook his head. “Slow down, Morgan. We’re not best friends. It’s not like they show up at one a.m. at my place all impatient to use me however they want and leave by morning.” He looked at me innocently as Merlin laughed.

My lovers, annoyingly, bumped bottles once again.

“Besides,” Ken added, “dragons almost never come to town, and when they aren’t here, no one knows where they live.”

“Have you heard any

news about any of them? About anything bad happening to one?” Merlin asked.

Ken sat up straight. His hands clenched and his yellow nails sharpened. “What happened?”

I put a hand over his. “Before you get an army of Chinese unders organized for battle, know that we are set to help this dragon, and I suspect a discreet attack will be our best offense. Y Ddraig Goch was kidnapped. His daughter came to us for help, but got inconveniently frozen.”

Ken’s heavy brow furrowed and he shook his head. “Kidnapped? How is that even

.”

“Possible?” Merlin said. “Good question. How would one capture a creature with power as immense as a dragon? And not a young one, either. There are many stories of people killing dragons, but kidnapping one? That is much more difficult.” He took a deep swig of beer.

Ken ate some dumplings in silence, shaking his head. After a while he said, “There is one thing. It’s probably nothing. Last year, around the New Year, these guys showed up. A bunch of normals. They were asking questions and offering big money for information about dragons. They knew about the under world: they knew how to find us. No one talked to them, at least that’s what everyone told each other.”

“Tell me about them,” I ordered.

“They were young. Under thirty, maybe. White guys, mostly. Bros, you know?”

“Dragon-hunting bros?” Lila asked. “The world is weird.”

“It wasn’t just any dragon,” Ken said. “They wanted to know about medieval ones: ancient ones from England.”

Merlin frowned. “Did they say why?”

“They said they were on some kind of relic quest,” Ken said. “They seemed like DnD nerds on steroids. I didn’t take them seriously.”

A knot formed in my belly. Dragons and relics—trouble and more trouble.

Ken slurped up some sesame peanut noodles. “That’s all I’ve got. They hardly even talked to me since I’m just the mutt that runs a kung fu school.”

“Talk to me about kung fu,” Lila said. “You’ve seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, right?”

Ken nodded. “Of course. I love that movie.”

“Me too,” Adam said. “Can monks really fly?”

Ken grinned. “Of course. If they practice the right kung fu.”

The young ones chatted about pop culture magic and the intersections of real magic while Merlin and I quietly finished our food, both lost in our own thoughts.

I paid the bill, waving away Ken’s insistence that he had plenty of money.

Ken turned to Merlin. “She ever let you pay?”

“Always, but never with money.” Merlin placed a hand lightly on the small of my back for a moment. “Thank you for your help, Ken. I wish you the best of luck in all things,” Merlin said.

“You too, Merlin. Hey, I just thought of something. Your name is Merlin, and she’s Morgan. Like Morgan le Fay and the Merlin wizard, those two medieval legends who were enemies? That’s funny, right?”

“Right,” Merlin echoed, and the sadness in his voice went all the way down.

Outside on the street, Lila and Adam asked what we should do now. We had no real leads.

“Research,” Merlin said.

I nodded in agreement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

6

True Relics

I drove us to the hotel where Merlin had the penthouse suite rented in perpetuity, it seemed.

The place was a combination of fancy and squalid, with piles of bachelor effluvium everywhere. Balled up socks sat shoved under the king-sized beds, dirty dishes piled up in the sink, and a toilet full of urine stains that stank up the lovely marble bathroom.

BOOK: The Dragon's Secret (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 2)
3.15Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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