Rise of the Dragon: an Urban Fantasy (Moonlight Dragon Book 5) Read online

  I screamed.

  I was a half-second away from calling up Lucky when I realized Vagasso wasn’t alive. His broken man-scorpion corpse lay draped over a large metal platform that was suspended from the ceiling by thick metal cables. Strange machines, industrial lights, and huge video cameras were arrayed around the platform. Beneath the bright lights I could see that his human-ish chest didn’t rise and fall with breath.

  There was also the small matter of him missing his head.

  Still, seeing his body here in this military installation made me dizzy with fear. It helped to see him dead—because maybe in the back of my mind I’d worried that he was the kind of dark spirit that could resurrect itself—but I didn’t want to see his body in the custody of the government.

  "What do you think, Anne?"

  Colonel Sander’s softly voiced question dragged me down, the biggest bummer ever. What did I think? I thought the magickal community of Las Vegas was about to be screwed. I thought dark days lay ahead and there was very little I would be able to do about it.

  "What is that thing?" is what I asked. I had to play up my ignorance for as long as I could because, frankly, I had no other strategy.

  "Come now, Anne." Colonel Sander’s smile belonged to a high school principal who faced a repeat offender. "We have video footage of you confronting this thing. I’m giving you the opportunity now, right this moment, to come clean about everything. We already know everything, you see, but we want confirmation directly from your lips."

  That was likely a lie, but I let it go. My mind swam with questions: why had the Oddsmakers allowed Vagasso’s body to be seized by the government? Were the Oddsmakers even functioning or had they skipped town once Vagasso failed to open the Rift? Or even crazier: had the government nabbed them, too?

  The latter scenario was too mind-blowing to consider, and I didn’t for long. But I still had trouble accepting that Vagasso’s body was lying here, under study by the government.

  "What do you think you know?" I asked, trying to buy time. I took a quick look around the large room, but it was otherwise empty. No sign of Vagasso’s giant or the remains of the Azima-hustler creature. Maybe those two creatures had vanished or dissolved as magick things had a tendency to do once they died. If only Vagasso had followed suit. A jerk to the end, that guy.

  "You faced this xenoform on Las Vegas Boulevard," Colonel Sanders told me. "We don’t have audio of the encounter, but those who studied the video say you engaged in a conversation with it."

  "Xeno—what?" I turned from Vagasso's body to blink at him. I was sort of familiar with the word, but only because I loved horror movies. Surely he didn’t mean what I think he—

  "Don’t plead ignorance, Anne." His smile fell away. "We know that it, and you, are aliens."

  Chapter 2

  "Aliens," I repeated, watching Colonel Sanders’ face closely for hints that he was pranking me or somehow trying to trick me into revealing something. How, I had no idea, but it was beginning to look like anything was possible nowadays.

  "Is there another term that you prefer?" he asked me, and by god, he was as straight-faced as a poker deck king.

  "Xenoforms is pretty cool," I said cautiously.

  What the hell was I saying? I wasn’t an alien, and neither was Vagasso. This whole situation was drifting into the absurd, not that it had required much of a nudge. But still. Aliens? I would have laughed if my hands weren’t cuffed together and I wasn't being held prisoner in a secret military base. Not much was funny under those circumstances.

  "So, uh, how much do you know?"

  I watched Colonel Sanders clasp his hands behind his back and stroll leisurely up to the edge of the platform. One of Vagasso’s scorpion legs—the one I hadn’t ripped off with my teeth—balanced on the edge of it. Colonel Sanders bent at the waist and studied the limb as though he were a physician checking up on a patient.

  "We know nearly everything, Anne. We know that your persona at the Moonlight Pawn Shop is only a disguise. We know that the shop itself is a way station for transporting goods and other xenoforms to the Earth from other dimensions." He turned his head to look back at me. He smiled pleasantly. "Anything else you’d care to share?"

  To paraphrase Zoolander, I felt like I was taking crazy pills.

  "Other dimensions," I repeated carefully, as if weighing how much I should tell him. I actually had trouble simply comprehending everything he’d said.

  "Sorry, ‘parallel dimensions’ was the term I believe you prefer."

  I looked at him sharply. "Who told you that?"

  But he ignored the question and continued his stroll around Vagasso’s corpse. I looked around the room, hoping to find another exit, because what did I have to lose at that point? They friggin’ thought I was an alien that was smuggling alien goods through my shop. I was pretty sure there wasn’t a safe U-turn for me in sight. I was in deep doo-doo.

  "When you were speaking with your friend here," Colonel Sanders said from the other side of the platform. I could barely see his buzz cut silvered head from where I stood. "You collapsed to the ground for some time. And then you disappeared from the footage. Would you please explain what happened? We have our suspicions, of course," he added hastily. That only made me suspect that he and his bosses didn’t know half of what they pretended to.

  While that relieved me, I was snagged on his earlier comment. I’d disappeared from the footage? That didn’t make much sense. After confronting Vagasso at the chapel that night, I’d jumped into my dragon form. My body would have collapsed to the ground just as Colonel Sanders had said because my consciousness had shifted into my dragon. But disappear? That made no sense—

  And then suddenly, it did. I hadn’t walked away from the chapel after defeating Vagasso. I’d had my dragon scoop up mine, Vale’s, and Christian’s bodies and fly us to Fremont Street. My body hadn’t disappeared. It had been physically picked up by my dragon. No mention from Colonel Sanders about a big, fat, golden Chinese dragon with wings and why not? That was kind of hard to ignore.

  Unless he and the others hadn’t been able to see it. I’d never tested whether Lucky or myself in dragon form could be photographed or recorded on video. Proof of magick was a bad thing. That had been drilled into my head since I was a child, so creating evidence of my dragon had never, ever crossed my mind.

  So were Lucky and my dragon invisible to recording devices? It sure sounded like my dragon had scooped up my body and by some weird magick had created an invisible shield that blocked my human body from view.

  "I’d like to speak to Vale," I blurted. My mind was running a million miles a second. "Give me private time with him, and I’ll consider sitting down for an extensive interview with you."

  "You’ll ‘consider’ it? You can do better than that." I gave Colonel Sanders credit for not tsking with disapproval. "If I permit you to meet privately with Mr. Morgan, the two of you will conspire to 'get your stories straight.' That won’t bring us any closer to the truth, will it?"

  "But Vale isn’t like me. He’s not a…xenoform." I nearly burst into laughter. Desperate laughter.

  "He’s something." A tremor of foreboding rippled through my body at Colonel Sander’s tone. His expression didn’t change, which made it worse. It showed me that he could be sly and wasn’t to be trusted. Not that I had planned to. I’d seen the X-Files.

  "We’re still testing him. Think about that, Anne. Wouldn’t you rather tell us the truth about everything before we get the blood test results back from the lab? We’d treat you much differently if you came clean on your own."

  "I don’t have the right to tell you anything about him," I shot back, angry at the threat and the thought of Vale being subjected to tests. He would have resisted, which meant they would have restrained him. I pictured him again at the Oddsmakers’ lair, pinned to the wall by albino, reptilian hands, his body shaking from the torture he’d been subjected to.

  No.

  "But I do have the right to tell y
ou to back off, Colonel Sanders." I ignored his blink of bewilderment. "I’m not saying another word to you or to anyone else until I see him. Vale’s well-being is the only currency I trust, so you’d better pay up."

  He recovered as he walked back around the platform to rejoin me. He was all smiles again, just a benevolent—if super fit—grandpa.

  "Anne, I want us to be friends here. If you’d feel more comfortable after seeing Mr. Morgan—Vale—then I’m going to make that happen."

  "Oh, yeah?"

  "We’re not monsters here, Anne." Man, that poker face. I mean, we were literally standing beside a monster, and he managed not to be snarky or sarcastic. "We humans want to work with you. We think a partnership is in order, don’t you?"

  I eyed him with interest. "What kind of partnership?" That sounded promising. Better, at least, than torture and experimentation.

  A door slammed behind us. I yelped and spun around. Even Colonel Sanders appeared startled. Then he only appeared annoyed when another man in a dark suit stormed across the room to us.

  "Lieutenant Colonel Basher, you’re finished here," the newcomer said. He had eyes like black almonds. They weren’t friendly. "I’ll take over Miss Moody’s case from this point on."

  Basher actually sputtered, which told me this was a hostile takeover. The hostile part I got. This new guy looked pissed. He also didn’t look military. His jet black hair was cut civilian style, and he was my height and slender, maybe mid-thirties. His smooth features made me think possibly Japanese-Hawaiian. He had a glare that would make Batman flinch.

  "Mr. Kusahara, you agreed to leave this to the U.S. Air Force—"

  "I did no such thing. I agreed to observe until you became ineffective. You have. It’s my turn now." When he wasn’t barking out orders from across the room, Kusahara’s voice was cool and inflectionless, like a pond on a windless day. He stopped in front of us and stood there with his arms hanging loosely at his sides. Unreadable black tattoos ringed the fingers of his left hand. His shoes were so highly polished they reflected glare back at my eyes. His black tie was skinny.

  "This isn’t right," Basher growled, showing some real passion.

  "Feel free to shout and stamp your feet with your superior, Lieutenant Colonel. Please leave Miss Moody and me. Your time with her is at an end."

  "You’d better believe I’m taking this up with my CO. I never agreed with letting you people take over." Basher seemed to remember that I was standing right beside him and listening to everything. He promptly clammed up. With a final glare for Kusahara, Basher strode briskly out of the room.

  Which left me with someone I sensed in my gut was far more dangerous than Colonel Sanders had been.

  "So you’re from the FBI?" I asked warily.

  "I’m not from the X-Files," he said, "so don’t bother with the jokes."

  I shrugged. "Then I’ve got nothing."

  "Lieutenant Colonel Basher was something of an ally to you," Kusahara told me. "But now he’s gone, and you’re dealing with me."

  "You realize that’s not exactly the best way to get me to warm up to you, right?"

  "I’m not concerned with whether you warm up to me, Miss Moody. You’re a hostile organism, and I don’t befriend hostiles."

  Yeah, I was thinking I wanted Colonel Sanders back. This guy was a real drag.

  But was this a variation on the old good cop-bad cop play? Was I supposed to be intimidated and beg to spill my guts to the chicken Colonel? Or Lieutenant Colonel, as the case seemed to be?

  "Us becoming friends is a non-issue because I don’t know who you are," I told Kusahara. "But if we’re hostiles then I guess I have nothing to say to you. I want my lawyer."

  "We have custody of your boyfriend. He is going to be tested, as are you. What will the lab results tell us, Miss Moody?"

  "I don’t know about Vale, but you’ll probably conclude that I need to eat fewer sweets and perform more exercise than running to the nearest food truck." When Kusahara stared at me—and I’m talking this guy could have been a demon for how deeply his dark gaze penetrated my soul—I laughed weakly. "Or, you know, that he and I are both normal human beings."

  "You and he are extraterrestrial in origin," he told me. "We know this for a fact."

  This should have been hilarious. But it wasn’t. "If you know this for a fact then why the hell are you grilling me and testing us?"

  "It’s called confirmation."

  And then he smiled, and it was worse than if he’d growled at me because Kusahara looked like a nice guy. Hell, he was sort of attractive in a friendly, hotel receptionist way. He was the guy you could take home to mom. Except if I took Kusahara home, he’d arrest everyone I knew. Or maybe put a bullet between their eyes.

  "No one here," he said, "is going to ask you a question to which they don’t already know the answer. This is especially true of me."

  "But who are you?" I pressed. "You’re not Air Force."

  "I’m with a special department whose name you will never learn. Nor does it matter to you. What matters to you is answering truthfully. Because we know everything. If you lie, we will know, and we will take the necessary steps."

  I waited. He just stared at me, no longer smiling.

  "What steps?" I prompted.

  "To ensure that you are not a threat to this planet."

  "Such as?"

  He moved closer. I was proud of myself for not backing away. "Steps, Miss Moody. You won’t want to know them ahead of time, trust me."

  "Trust you," I muttered as he circled around me. "Why should I trust you?"

  I tried to play it cool and didn’t turn as he walked behind me, but when I felt his hand on my forearms, I began to spin around.

  "I’m freeing your hands," he told me. A snap, and the zip tie fell off my wrist. I immediately turned to face him, keeping distance between us.

  I massaged my wrists. "So now what?"

  "Now, you talk. I will not be striking any bargains with you. You will receive nothing in exchange for your honesty except your life."

  "What if I can’t be killed?" I challenged. I was playing fast and loose with that one, essentially daring Kusahara to kill me, but I still had Lucky. I didn’t truly feel that my life was in danger. Not yet.

  "We know you can be made to feel pain," he said quietly.

  No evil cackle, no leer or twist of an invisible mustache. His simple delivery made it worse, because it meant that somehow Kusahara had gained experience hurting magickal beings.

  "Did you hurt Vale?" I growled.

  "Not yet, and that’s an honest answer. Not yet."

  It was freaky hearing him state it so plainly. But why shouldn’t he? There was no one to cry foul, no one to accuse him of human rights violations. We were in a place out of time, where he and his department were all-powerful. If I dropped dead, no one would ever find my body. Not unless Kusahara staged a car wreck just to put the mystery of missing Anne Moody to rest for good.

  In his way, Kusahara was the human mirror of the Oddsmakers.

  And lucky me, I was the common denominator.

  Shaken, though doing my best to hide it, I said, "Why aren’t you afraid of retribution? From my…kind."

  "Because we know about the Rift."

  I sucked in my breath. There was no point in playing ignorant anymore. "How do you know about that?"

  "I told you. We know everything. Your attempt to open a rift in the time-space continuum in order to bring your armada into this universe failed, which means no back-up is coming. It’s only you and your friends."

  Time space whaaaat?

  "Oh, that rift," I said, but my mind was blown. Someone had fed Kusahara and the military some seriously potent magic mushrooms.

  "We’ve identified your alien compatriots," he went on, "so the threat that you present is contained. You are outnumbered and we are in control. So for your sake, and the sake of your fellows here on Earth, you’d be wise to cooperate fully."

  Holy guacamole.
/>   "What do you want to know?" I asked. I’d test Kusahara and see what a little compliance bought me. According to him, it wouldn’t be much, but I needed to know for myself.

  "Who is leading operations on Earth?" Kusahara, outwardly, didn’t appear to be that interested in my answer, but I sensed his excitement that I was apparently willing to play ball. If he could get excited, that meant he needed something from me, and that gave me a bit of an advantage.

  "They call themselves the Oddsmakers."

  For the first time, a hint of emotion showed on Kusahara’s smooth face. Oddly, I read it as wariness. But I couldn't tell if it was because he didn't believe me or because he did.

  "Where can they be found?" Kusahara asked. He glanced away from me, as though he couldn't help it, slanting his eyes to the corner of the room where, as far as I could see, was nothing of interest. Probably security cameras were up there, recording us. Maybe audio, too. Maybe he was worried the equipment wouldn’t catch my answer.

  "Near Area 51," I replied. "But that’s all I’m saying until you let me see Vale. That’s non-negotiable and I don’t care if you’re too cool to negotiate. You may think you know all about me, but trust me—you don’t. I’m more dangerous than you realize."

  I threw that out there hoping he would smirk and reveal that he did indeed know about Lucky. But he was one cool cucumber. He gave me nothing but a constant feeling of dread.

  "Very well, Miss Moody. I’ll allow you to visit with your fellow alien—"

  Every time he said "alien" I wanted to giggle.

  "—and you will return the favor with information."

  "Okay, that sounds—"

  "However, you won’t be visiting with your boyfriend. He’s something special, so he will remain isolated."

  My thoughts ran in a panic. "Then who else is here?"

  My heart pounded so hard it hurt me. I had to massage my chest, trying in vain to relieve the pain. I feared who he must have. Melanie was my weak spot besides Vale, even more of a weak spot because she was a monkey shifter. She couldn’t defend herself the way Vale could. Not to mention she was, well, silly little Melly. My eyes burned with unshed tears as I pictured her being tortured. She wouldn’t handle it well at all.