Chapter nineteen #3
Before I could respond, my phone buzzed with another message from Dante’s phone.
I stared at the bloody mess that was Dante’s face and decided right then I was going to kill Odin Clark. If there had ever been any doubt before, it was gone. And strangely I wasn’t tempted to force my dragon back down. He was still. So angry he was immobile.
“See you in Chicago, Coach. More directions to follow.”
Before I could say a word to Ignatius, the door to my office opened and Doryu stepped in, his laptop under one arm and his expression grim. Ignatius’s mate was brilliant with research and technology, and right now he looked like he’d found something that didn’t sit right.
“I’ve been digging into Odin Clark’s business dealings,” he said without preamble. “Something doesn’t add up.”
“What do you mean?” Ignatius moved to his side immediately.
Doryu set his laptop on my desk and pulled up a series of documents.
“Clark has invested hundreds of millions into a single highly secure facility outside Chicago. State-of-the-art security, industrial-grade equipment, the works. But he owns no mines, no drilling operations, no exploration contracts. Nothing that would suggest he’s preparing to actually extract dragonsteel ore. ”
I stared at the screen, trying to make sense of what he was showing me. “So what’s the facility for?”
“That’s what I can’t figure out.” Doryu pulled up more documents—blueprints, permits, financial records.
“The security is excessive for a simple warehouse or storage facility. The power consumption alone suggests something industrial is happening inside. But there’s no paper trail for what that something actually is. ”
“Maybe he’s planning to use Theron to find the ore first, then set up extraction operations after,” Cole suggested.
“That would be the logical assumption,” Doryu agreed. “Except he’s been building this facility for over a year. Long before Dante moved to Denver and gave him leverage over Theron. Which means he was planning something else entirely.”
My dragon stirred with unease. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that if Odin needs you to locate dragonsteel, why isn’t he preparing to extract it?
Why build a facility with no apparent purpose except high security and industrial equipment?
” Doryu looked at me, his expression troubled.
“None of it makes sense unless we’re missing something critical about what he actually wants. ”
Doryu leaned closer to his screen, his fingers moving rapidly across the keyboard with focused intensity. The rest of us waited, the silence in my office broken only by the distant sound of the arena staff beginning their cleanup.
“Here,” Doryu said finally, pulling up a series of scanned documents that looked old enough to have been typed on an actual typewriter. “Purchase records from Clark Senior’s company. Going back about fifty years.”
Ignatius moved to look over his shoulder, and I watched something shift in his expression.
“Lead,” Ignatius said quietly. “Significant quantities.”
“Tons of it,” Doryu confirmed. “Purchased over a period of about eight years. And before you ask, Clark Senior’s company at the time was manufacturing precision optical equipment.
Lenses, calibration instruments, that kind of thing.
” He looked up at us. “There is no logical reason an optics company needs that much lead.”
“Unless someone convinced him that lead was just the beginning of something much more valuable,” Ignatius said, and the way he said it made my dragon go very still.
I stared at the documents, my mind working through the implications. “He thought forge dragons could transmute it.”
“There are references here,” Doryu said, pulling up another file—handwritten notes this time, scanned in with the slightly skewed angles of someone who’d been in a hurry.
“Fragmentary, but consistent. Clark Senior was apparently convinced that a forge dragon under the right conditions—controlled conditions, he writes here—could fundamentally alter the molecular structure of base metals.” He paused.
“He was trying to manufacture the conditions for alchemy.”
The silence that followed was almost funny in its collective disbelief.
“Turning lead into gold,” Max said flatly. Then, after a beat: “So we’re dealing with the world’s most dangerous medieval chemistry student.”
Cole made a sound that might have been a laugh if the circumstances had been different.
“It’s not entirely absurd,” Ignatius said, though his tone suggested he found it at least somewhat absurd. “Forge dragons can do things with metal that defy conventional understanding. If you don’t know the actual limits—”
“It’s impossible,” I said. The word came out with more force than I intended, but I needed them to understand this clearly.
“Lead is far too stable. The atomic structure is…” I stopped, aware that a chemistry lecture wasn’t what the moment called for.
“Forge dragons can enhance what’s already there.
We can locate deposits, assess quality, accelerate natural processes in ore that already has potential.
But we can’t fundamentally transform something that has no capacity for transformation.
You can’t make a diamond out of coal just because they are both carbon. Lead is lead. It will always be lead.”
“Odin doesn’t know that,” Cole said slowly. “His grandfather was a forge dragon, but his father wasn’t. Most forge dragons are so secretive they aren’t willing to share secrets even with their own family.”
I nodded in acknowledgment.
“His father spent years and what looks like a considerable fortune chasing this theory,” Cole continued, his voice taking on that careful, deliberate sound he used when he was working something out.
“Odin grew up with it. It’s not just a business proposition to him—it’s an inheritance.
A belief system.” He met my eyes. “He’s not going to question it when you tell him you’re willing to try. ”
The room went quiet in a different way than before.
I felt it then—the first real breath I’d taken since I’d seen that image of Dante unconscious in the back of a vehicle. Not relief exactly, but the cold clarity of a plan taking shape.
“He wants me cooperative,” I said slowly.
“Wants me to believe that compliance is the only way to keep Dante safe. So I comply. I walk in there alone, like his message demanded. I tell him I’ll do what he wants, that I’ll try the transmutation.
He’ll need time to set it up, to position me in whatever industrial facility Doryu found, to feel like he’s in control of the situation.
” I looked around the room. “And that gives you time to find Dante and get him out.”
“It’s a distraction,” Taz said.
“A very convincing one, because he already believes it’s possible. I don’t have to sell him on the concept—his father already did that thirty years ago. I just have to sell him on my willingness.” I stood up, feeling the particular focus that came when a plan crystallized into something actionable.
Max was pacing, which he did when he was thinking. “So you go in, you stall, we extract Dante.” He stopped pacing. “What happens when you can’t actually turn lead into dragonsteel or whatever and Clark figures out he’s been played?”
“Then I stop pretending to be cooperative,” I said simply.
The room absorbed that.
“Right,” Max said. “So the backup plan is you going full dragon in an industrial warehouse.”
“I’d prefer not to. But I’ll do what I have to. Once Dante is secured, there’s nothing he can do. It’s the only leverage he has.”
“And I’ve made sure his family is safe,” Ignatius murmured.
Cole nodded once, the kind of decisive nod that meant he’d already committed to whatever came next. “Then let’s get ready for Chicago.”