Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
SEB
One perk of being a zodiac dragon is the ability to fold space.
When we reach adulthood, our parents and the Oracle present us with a key that allows us to travel from place to place as easily as stepping from room to room.
It also opens the portal to Cardinal Island, a realm of safety where we perform our most sacred rituals, train for war, and meet with our spiritual leader, the Oracle.
Choosing a target, then, isn’t about geographical constraints.
We do it randomly, picking a name from the list Imani provided us and manifesting outside the upstate New York address of Ronald Folman.
“House is dark,” Remus mumbles. Like me, he’s armed to the teeth with concealed weapons, a gun in the hollow of his back, and daggers strapped all over his body.
All the lights are out in the massive home, and my sensitive dragon hearing picks up no signs of life. I have one last trick up my sleeve, though, a talent that will ensure this house is empty. “Could be asleep. I’ll check.”
I reach out psychically, searching for a human mind inside the walls, one I can infiltrate if I need to.
Dreamwalking isn’t something I do on a whim, but it’s useful when you’re on a mission.
A few minutes into someone’s dreams, and you can learn a lot about them.
Maybe more than they know about themselves.
But I don’t find a single head in the house. Not even a wife or servant. The place is completely vacant. “They’re not sleeping. There’s no one in that house.”
Remus does a quick Google search. “He owns a club in the city. Looks like our man is recently divorced too. I’m betting he keeps an apartment in Manhattan for late-night activities.”
I glance at the address and the Street View picture of the club. “The Red Room? Who exactly is this guy?”
“According to his profile, he’s a beauty industry entrepreneur. Looks like he owns a bunch of salons throughout the city. But this is his only club.”
I look over Remus’s shoulder at the photo he brings up of Ron Folman. The man has a scruffy beard and a comb-over. “Has he actually ever visited a salon?”
Remus adjusts his cap. “Let’s go get us a ring.”
I grab my key and leap. We arrive, shoulder to shoulder, on the sidewalk in front of The Red Room.
Immediately, the scent of cigarettes and sex is almost overwhelming.
The club is a windowless box with a line of men and women dressed in black leather that wraps around the block. “Well, this is a choice.”
“Yeah,” Remus says. “No judgment on the peeps into this lifestyle, but it’s not what I was expecting from a member of the Saint’s Order.”
“Let’s go.” I lead the way toward the door, engaging my camouflage.
Dragons can’t make themselves entirely invisible, but we can blend into our surroundings in a way that’s almost as effective.
As I slip along the brick wall toward the door, my body reflects the wall, the wood paneling, the sidewalk.
If a very astute human were looking right at us, they might experience disorientation, might notice the bricks shifting.
But most of the humans out here are half drunk, and none of them is paying attention to the wall.
We slide inside behind the bouncer, the thump of the music guiding us deeper into the crowd.
People are gathered around windows in the dark hallway, watching couples performing in rooms on the other side.
Remus nudges me as we pass a scene where a naked woman, blindfolded and strapped to a X-cross, is being eaten out by a fully dressed man, while another dribbles hot wax on her breasts.
“You okay, man?” Remus asks.
He expects my dragon to be all about the peep show, given my alignment, but instead, it feels like that part of me is curled in the back of my head. If anything, I’m repulsed. “All I can think about is Zoe.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry, bro.” His eyes linger on the next room, where a woman is on all fours with a man behind her. I keep going, reaching out with my dragon senses, pushing into minds, looking for Ronald. I find him behind a door marked office in the back, and he’s not alone.
I grab Remus by the elbow and drag him toward the door. He lifts an eyebrow, wiping the dopey smile off his mouth. He catches on quickly and snaps back into warrior mode. He tries the door handle. Locked.
I hold up three fingers. He nods. He’s sensing what I am. Three heads inside. One of them is Ronald. I nudge into his mind and get a sense of him sitting behind a desk. But my hold only lasts a second. Pain shoots through my temple. I grab my throbbing head.
“It’s the ring,” Remus whispers.
The sound of a chair drawing back reaches our ears, a sound that would be drowned out by the music if we were human. Remus meets my eyes, and we flatten ourselves against the wall.
Footsteps.
The door opens.
Ronald Folman squints into the darkness, the ring on his hand glowing blue.
Silently, I slip inside the gap between him and the door, heart hammering. Two men in suits sit waiting for Ronald at the desk. Fuck, they have rings too!
Ronald turns around, staring right past us. I hold my breath and go absolutely still. He closes the door again.
“What was that all about?” one of the other men asks, pushing a pair of black glasses up his nose.
The other man, Latino and sporting a neck tattoo, toys with his ring. “This thing is burning, true? Why’s that happening, Ronnie?”
Ronnie’s picture didn’t do justice to his size. Yes, he is on the older side and has a belly, but he’s as tall and broad as a linebacker. And that ring on his finger is glowing like it’s radioactive. The energy makes the hair on my arms stand on end.
“Guys, you are about to get a hands-on lesson in dragons,” Ronnie says, and then that ring on his finger transforms into a Thor-sized hammer. Remus and I spare each other a half-second glance, and then we move.
I draw the dagger at my thigh and come down on Neck Tattoos' wrist, the power of my blow severing muscle and bone but also knocking me out of my camouflage, or maybe that’s the power of the rings in this room, because I see Remus flicker into being as well.
Neck Tattoo starts screaming, “He cut off my hand! He cut off my fucking hand!” He cradles his stub as Ronnie attacks. Remus blocks his blow with his blade as I try to pry my dagger from the desk.
Glasses is on his feet, his ring transforming into a bow and arrow. I laugh, but it’s Ronnie who says, “Wrong choice, numbnuts. It’s too close in here.”
The bow turns into a sword. I abandon the blade in the desk and draw my gun from the small of my back.
I aim and fire at the center of his forehead.
Ronnie’s hammer blocks the bullet, and it ricochets toward my head.
I move at dragon speed, barely dodging the bullet as it whistles past my ear and embeds in the wall.
I fire again and again, but the magic of those rings must be attuned to bullets because they block me each and every time. No way could a human pull that off.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Glasses yells, distracted by Neck Tattoo, who has collapsed in the corner, I’d assume from loss of blood. It’s everywhere. Across the desk, sprayed along the walls.
I toss the gun aside and go for the long blade down my back just in time to block Glasses’s blow.
He’s clumsy and obviously new at swordplay, but that makes things even more unpredictable.
He swings at my waist as if he means to chop me in half, and I leap straight up.
Although his blade grazes my hip, it slices under my feet.
I land on the desk, my boots squelching in the puddle of blood next to Neck Tattoo’s severed hand.
My sword comes around, and this time, I don’t have the time or angle to aim for his wrist.
My blade severs his neck, and Ronnie yells as Glasses’s body drops. It’s two on one. Now, we have him.
But as I leap down from the desk, my sword aimed at his torso, Ronnie moves fast, faster than a human should be able to move. His hammer comes down on Remus’s right arm with a sickening crunch. Remus howls in pain as the blow lands him on his back, his sword clattering from his hand.
Ronnie laughs. “You fucking lizards need to die!” His hammer aims for my gut, but I’m faster.
I dodge the blow, moving behind him. I strike.
Rage makes me lethal. I take off his right arm at the shoulder and growl as it splats on the linoleum.
The hammer transforms back into a ring instantaneously.
I have him by the throat and on the ground in no time.
“Who the fuck is running the Saint’s Order?” I ask him. I have a million questions, but the way this asshole is bleeding, I don’t have much time.
Ronnie’s eyes meet mine, and the look he gives me is diabolical. “The destroyer,” he rasps.
“Don’t fucking give me that bullshit. Who took over for Stefan? Who is the grand master?”
The man’s face turns white, and his eyes roll back in his head.
“You will die in blue fire at the hand of the destroyer,” he rasps, and then he passes out.
I drop his sorry ass and move to Remus’s side.
My brother is whimpering, and he hasn’t moved since the hammer crushed his arm.
Blue veins branch around the point of impact. Fuck!
“It’s my drawing hand, Seb,” he says, his eyes wild.
“I’m getting you to Morwyn,” I promise.
But he raises his good hand. “The rings, Seb! Don’t forget the rings. Don’t let this be in vain.”
Right. I pull a thick black bag from the pocket of my pants and then use the tip of my blade to retrieve each of the rings and put them in the bag without touching any of them.
It’s harder than I expect, and I have to get creative to get it done, but I manage.
As quickly as possible, I tie the three rings to my belt.
Boom. Boom. Boom. A loud knock comes on the door. “Ronnie? You okay in there? I thought I heard a scream, and not the good kind.”
I hoist Remus into my arms, his face drawn from the pain. “Fuck, I’m cold, Seb.”
“You’re also heavy as hell.”
Another pound on the door and then I hear a key in the lock. I reposition Remus so I can grab my key, and then I step.
The Red Room melts away, and I arrive at Morwyn’s clinic with three Order rings on my hip and a broken dragon in my arms.