Kissed by Fire (5 page)

“What fits? What killed my niece?” He was
angry now. Impatient. But there was an eagerness there, too.
Definitely odd.

I sighed. This was not a good time to be
right. If I was wrong about this, I would create some temporary
chaos. Piss some people off. But if I was right? Then I could start
a war. The gods help us all.

“I could be wrong, but from the looks of
things, Alison was killed by something that’s not even supposed to
exist anymore.”

“What?” he practically snarled at me.

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. This
was not going to go down well. “It looks like Alison was killed by
a Dragon.”

Alister and Dex stared at me as though I’d
suddenly grown a second head. I got that. It wasn’t every day
someone blamed a murder on a dragon. Especially since dragons had
supposedly died out centuries ago.

“Did you just say ‘dragon’?” Dex
repeated.

“Yeah, I did.” I slammed the scale down hard
on the edge of the table. It gave a dull ‘thunk’ but was otherwise
unaffected. “This isn’t metal or stone. If this were just about
anything else, it would have broken. It doesn’t scratch, either.
I’ll bet if we try and melt it we’ll find it’s resistant to fire.
And look,” I tilted toward the light, “it shimmers, changes color
like abalone. I’ve read up a bit on dragons, and their scales fit
the bill perfectly.”

“This is a dragon scale.” Kabita sounded
gobsmacked. I couldn’t blame her. It was pretty cool.

“You’re sure?” Alister’s voice still had that
strange edge of eagerness. It made me uncomfortable, though I
couldn’t put my finger on why. My Spidey senses didn’t really work
with humans.

“Yes, I believe so.” I ran my thumb over the
warm surface and felt a little thrill run through me. I was holding
a real dragon scale. “Interesting, though, since dragons are
supposed to be extinct.”

Alister didn’t comment and Kabita narrowed
her eyes at him. “According to the Hunter records dragons were
hunted to extinction nearly four hundred years ago. You have
anything to add to that?
Dad?
” Her voice dripped with
sarcasm. Kabita was really good at sarcasm.

Alister gave her a look before calmly
returning to his curry. “Not here, Kabita.”

I glanced around at the other diners. They
looked harmless enough in their Saville Row suits and Manolo
Blahnick heels. Plus we were sitting pretty far away from anyone
else. He was right, though. Too many eyes and ears. Very cloak and
dagger, but anyone could be hiding in the crowd.

Even if the restaurant was spy-free, there
were still plenty of innocent, ordinary citizens who’d be none too
thrilled to hear there were dragons on the loose. If there were
dragons on the loose. Murder wasn’t exactly dragon style. Full out
mayhem, certainly, but not murder.

I turned the scale over in my hands again,
for once completely distracted from my dinner. What I held was
something akin to a scroll from the lost Library of Alexandria. If
I weren’t actually holding the thing in my hands, gliding my
fingertips over its smooth surface, I would have never believed it
was real.

I glanced back up at Alister. “You want to
find out who killed your niece? We’d better get some answers.
Soon.”

He gave me a regal nod that was just a tad
too theatrical. “Soon,” he agreed. “Soon.”

I glanced at Kabita. Her expression was stony
as she focused on the plate in front of her. She didn’t want to
rock the boat? Fine. But this was a boat that needed to be rocked.
I was starting to get tired of all the non-answers. Kabita’s dad or
not, I was going to have to get bitchy.

It wasn’t the British way to get all up in
someone’s face, but I’d been away from London too long and this was
too important to play the game of being civil. Because if I was
right, a lot of lives were in danger.

“By soon, I mean today. You don’t want to
talk here? Fine, I get that. I can’t speak for Kabita, but if you
want me involved in this thing, and trust me you do, you’d better
get us somewhere you
can
talk. Now.”

I didn’t know who was more surprised. Kabita,
because someone finally talked back to her dad, or Alister himself
because someone had the
cojones
to call his bullshit.

“What’ll it be, Alister?” I let the dragon
scale catch the light, reminding him of what was at stake.

I’m not sure what he saw in my eyes, but
whatever it was must have convinced him that I was one hundred
percent serious. And I was. Between Trevor Daly’s obnoxious
meddling, the crap with Jack and the Atlantis thing, I’d had my
fill of secrets and lies. I wanted the truth and Alister Jones
could either give it to me, or he could shove off.

“Fine.” His voice was rife with irritation.
“Dex, go get the car.”

I smiled as I slipped the scale into my
purse. No way was I handing it back to Alister Jones. I didn’t
trust the man. Not by half. Something about him didn’t add up.

Dex, looking somewhat bemused, tossed his
napkin on the table and headed for the front door while Alister
glanced at the head waiter. Within minutes the bill had been paid
and we were on our way out the door. I guess that was the kind of
service you got when you dined Michelin.

Kabita hopped into the front with her
brother, so I settled myself in the back with Alister. I started to
speak, but he held up his hand. “Not here. One never knows who is
listening. Dex, head for the Bridge.”

I could deal with that. I settled back into
the plush leather seats, determined to enjoy the ride as we headed
down Embankment, the wide street that ran alongside the River
Thames.

It wasn’t a long ride. Fifteen minutes later,
Dex was pulling into St. Katherine’s Dock and Alister was ushering
us from the car. I’d always enjoyed St. Katherine’s Dock. Best view
of the Tower Bridge in London. Tourists usually thought it was the
London Bridge because it was the fanciest one, but it was named
after the London Tower which lurked at the base of the bridge.

“We’re all right here?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yes. We should be fine.” He
sighed. “I suppose I should tell you about the dragons, first.”

“Yeah, that would be a good place to start.”
I leaned my elbows against the cold metal railing and let my gaze
wander out across the Thames. I still didn’t entirely trust the
man, but I wanted to hear what he had to say.

“Very well, I shall go back to the
beginning.” He leaned next to me while Kabita and Dex sat on a
bench nearby, chatting quietly while keeping watch.

I nodded. “Also a good place to start.
Where’s the beginning?”

“About seventeen hundred years ago.”

“So, not a short story, then?” I let a thread
of amusement color my voice.

“Not really, no.” Alister smiled, but there
was an edge of tension to it. I was beginning to realize that
Alister was not a very comfortable man. “Let me try to hit the
important bits.”

He was quiet for a moment, staring out over
the water, gathering his thoughts. “About two thousand years ago
this country was being ravaged by dragons. Most of the world, in
fact, lived in fear of the creatures. It had been going on for
millennia. Between the dragons’ monstrous appetites for flesh, both
human and animal, and their vast intellect, our somewhat primitive
ancestors didn’t stand a chance.”

Not really something one learned in history
class. “Something obviously changed,” I prompted. “Or we wouldn’t
be here.”

He nodded, silver hair gleaming in the dim
orange light from a nearby street lamp. That was one thing it had
taken me a while to get used to when I first moved to London.
Street lamps in the UK were dim orange instead of bright yellow or
white. Energy saving or something. “Yes. Something did change. The
first Dragon Hunter was born,” Alister said.

I blinked. I liked to read and the histories
of the Hunters made for some interesting reading, but I’d never
heard of a Dragon Hunter. I opened my mouth to say so, but Alister
held up his hand.

“I realize you’ve never heard of Dragon
Hunters before. There were reasons they were expunged from history.
I’ll explain later. First, let me tell the tale in my own way.”

I nodded in agreement. Patience wasn’t
exactly a virtue of mine, but I figured I’d better start exercising
it.

“The first Dragon Hunter was born to a poor
family in Athens in the year 311 AD. His name was Georgos.”

No freaking way
. “You mean, Saint
George? I thought he wasn’t around until the Middle Ages.”

Alister shrugged. “Every legend has its roots
in reality. Even the legend of Saint George and the Dragon, which
was based on a real man born nearly 800 years earlier.”

“So, George was real and he was a Dragon
Hunter?” Weirder and weirder.

Alister gazed up at the bridge, but I wasn’t
sure he was seeing it. “Yes, he was real. Born at a time when it
seemed the human race was doomed to extinction. To this day we
don’t know where the dragons came from. It’s possible they may have
evolved here on earth, but how they existed for so long without
annihilating everything … we just don’t know. They were so
incredibly destructive.

“In any case, when Georgos was a small boy,
his village was razed by dragons, his entire family killed. The
local monastery took him in along with a few other boys who
survived, but it wasn’t long before they discovered he was
different. Much different.

“One particular monk had been trained as a
Vampire Hunter. He recognized the signs of another Hunter, so he
began to train Georgos. The boy was a quick study. By the time he
was fourteen, he’d surpassed his teacher.

“One day Georgos came running into the chapel
while the monks were at prayers, screaming at everyone to hide in
the cellars. The monastery was under attack by a dragon. Then he
took up a sword and ran to the courtyard of the monastery. There,
within the shadow of the chapel walls, he fought and killed his
first dragon.”

“Surely people had killed dragons before.” I
wasn’t gullible enough to believe Saint George was the only person
who’d ever killed a dragon prior to that day.

“True. Others had killed dragons before, but
never a single man. Always it had taken whole villages or large
numbers of heavily armed militia to take down one of the beasts.
Never a man hardly more than a child armed with nothing but a
sword. And there was something else.” He hesitated, but I already
knew.

“He could feel them. The dragons,” I said.
“He felt it coming, that’s how he was able to warn the monks.” Just
like I could feel vampires. The thought made me shiver.

“Yes. That’s what he told the abbot. Despite
his bravery and the fact that he’d saved the entire monastery, he
was cast out along with his teacher. The monks claimed his gift was
evil, from the devil. Ridiculous, of course, but from then on the
two of them wandered Europe together killing dragons.”

“You said he was the first Dragon Hunter.” I
pointed out. “There were others?” I glanced back at Kabita and Dex.
They had moved closer in order to hear the story. From the look on
Dex’s face, I could tell he’d heard it before. Kabita looked as
surprised as I felt.

“Yes, of course. Just as there are Demon
Hunters and Vampire Hunters and so on today, back then there were
also Dragon Hunters. Most Hunters were ordinary men specially
trained and well armed, but there were a few true Dragon Hunters,
like Georgos, who were born with a little something extra.
Something which made them nearly invincible. For the first time,
people weren’t sitting around waiting for the dragons to attack so
they could defend themselves.”

“They took the war to the dragons,” I
guessed.

He nodded. “Yes. And within a few
generations, they’d nearly wiped the dragons out.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Nearly?”

“Georgos had a son, also a Dragon Hunter. He
had a son and so on down the line. Every male in his line was born
with the same ability to sense the dragons. Each was a formidable
Hunter, and each in his turn became leader of the Dragon
Hunters.

“Sometime around 525 AD, the Dragon King
approached the lead Hunter under a flag of truce. By that time the
dragons were nearly extinct. If the slaughter continued, they would
cease to exist. Like any creature, the dragons wanted to survive,
to ensure their children would survive. So, they made a pact with
the Dragon Hunters. They would stop killing, remove themselves to
the most remote places of the earth, vanish from the world of
humans. In return, the Hunters agreed to stop hunting them and act
simply as guardians.”

“They agreed to guard the dragons? Were they
insane?”

Alister shook his head. “It was a tactical
move. Many human lives had been lost in the wars. So many towns
laid waste. The fighting had to stop before both sides were
destroyed.

“The dragons surprisingly kept their word.
They vanished. After centuries, the Dragon Hunters finally
withdrew, no longer needed. It’s been over four hundred years and
no one has seen nor heard from a dragon in all that time. We’d
assumed they had finally died off, there were so few left.”

I thought for a moment. Things were beginning
to click into place. “The records were altered to protect the
dragons that remained.”

“Yes. About a century later. By then it was
felt that genocide would be … wrong.” Again, there was something
odd in his voice. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something
felt off.

“Unusual for the time. What happened to the
Dragon Hunters?”

“Most of them were assimilated into the other
Hunter groups,” he said. I had a feeling there was more.

“And the others?” I prompted.

He stared out the window for a moment then
heaved a sigh. “The ones who were like Georgos, the ones who were
born to hunt the dragons, they didn’t adjust quite as well.”