My partner Kensington and I were flying the Stonehenge route West of London when we spotted the wreck. The smoke reached for the clouds and contained salty overtones, but the medicinal aftertaste ruined it for me.
“Oooo… that’s a big one, Windsor!” Kensington flapped around me in overexcited circles. He’s not the best flyer. The British branch of the IBDA had restricted us to non-urban patrols after Kensington smashed into one too many buildings in London. All the reconstructive surgeries on his snout had gotten expensive, not to mention the lawsuits for the property damage. “Can we get a closer look? Pleeeeease!”
“Oh, all right.” Traffic jams don’t interest most dragons, since we fly everywhere. My partner just wanted a closer look at all the pretty lights which were much brighter than he was.
The flashing blues of the traffic officers and fire brigade distinguished the start of the thirty-car pile-up on the M3 just before the A30 interchange. A long line of stalled, early morning commuters stretched into the receding night. Their headlights stared like wide-eyed children at the coming dawn.
Kensington and I perched on the skeleton of the overturned lorry which had started the mess. An ambulance screamed past us. The hot steam from where the fire hoses had beaten down the flames coated my green scales in a pleasant mist.
Kensington worked his jaw and snapped his forked tongue as if to spit a bad piece of meat from his mouth. “This air tastes funny, Windsor.”
“Hey there, you two!” A police officer waved for us to get down. Fellow must have had pretty good eyes, because my partner and I aren’t the biggest dragons.
We floated to the ground just beside the officer. We stood just a little short of his knee caps. “Morning, officer. Special Agents Windsor and Kensington with the IBDA.”
“International Bureau of Draconic Affairs?” The officer smiled when I nodded that he had it right. “I’m Officer Bilkins. What brings you boys down here? Um, you are both boys, right?”
“Yes, we’re both ‘boys’.” I rolled my eyes. Humans. “Just flying our beat. Figured we’d drop in for a look was all.”
“Bloody lorry kissed the crash barrier an hour ago,” Officer “State-the-Obvious” said. “Turned the motorway into a right nice car park.”
I sniffed and recognized the odor of cooked meat. “Just the one fatality?”
“Fortunately, but a right strange one.” The officer scratched the side of his head with his pen. The clipboard in his other hand held the initial sketches of the crash report.
“What’s the puzzle, officer?”
The human pointed to a group of people with more pens and paperwork gathered around a body on the left shoulder. “Well, the driver flew through the windshield and landed over there.”
Kensington scratched his brow with his long blue tail. “Um, I don’t get it.”
I pointed to the lorry’s cabin which was facing the opposite direction. “What he means is that the driver landed on the wrong side of the road.”
“Ohhhh.”
“Someone drag the body over there?” I asked.
“Can’t see how that’s possible. Poor bastard was burning like Guy Fawkes when the first responders got here.”
I took another sniff. There was something familiar mingled in with that distinctive smell of burned human. “Mind if I get a closer look?”
“Not a bit.”
I kept to the air as I flew over to the body. One of the forensics ladies winked at me over her facemask and offered a muffled, “Hi.”
“Don’t mind me,” I said. “Just doing a quick reccy.” Was true enough until I saw the empty bottle of malt vinegar to the side of the body.
“Hey, don’t disturb that!”
I ignored her and sniffed at the bottle.
“Officer Bilkins, he’s disturbing the scene!” She waved her clipboard as if she could dispel me like a whiff of smoke.
I swatted away her clipboard with one of my wings. “Actually, you humans are disturbing my crime scene.”
“What’s that?” Officer Bilkins asked as he ran over to us. “What do you mean ‘crime scene’?”
I hovered a little higher to be eye-level with the humans. “You ever see those bumper stickers that warn not to meddle in the affairs of dragons?”
“Oh, I love those,” the forensics lady said. “How’s that go? ‘Because humans are crunchy and good with ketchup,’ right?”
“Actually, most dragons in Britain prefer their human with a bottle of that.” I pointed to the malt vinegar. “What was in the lorry, officer?”
“Just pharmaceuticals headed for some stores in London. Wouldn’t think you dragon folk have any interest in those sorts of things.” Officer Bilkins was scratching his head with his pen again. “You thinking some dragon came after the driver for a quick brekky?”
“Not likely. You humans aren’t that tasty. Probably why this chap brought along the condiment.”
Kensington landed next to the bottle and sniffed it. “Smells good. Makes me hungry.” The officer stepped back from Kensington as if he might go feral and take a bite out of him. Stupid humans.
I scowled at my partner. “We can grab a lamb on the way back into headquarters—later. For now, call into dispatch and let them know what we’ve got.”
“Aw, okay.” He pulled out his radio.
“Where did he get that from?” The forensics lady leaned right to left as if looking for a hidden seam in Kensington’s scales. “I mean, he doesn’t have any pockets?”
“Dimensional-portal pockets, actually.” I pulled out my radio, too, just to show her.
“I’m sorry. A what?”
“It’s a dragon thing. Don’t worry about it.” I put some distance between me and the humans as I flew back to the wreckage of the lorry. I sifted through the debris and spotted a half-burned, blue box cover with the word “Loratadine” in white letters.
The lorry’s cabin contained the most useful clue, though. The rays from the rising sun distinguished my find from the shards of the windshield. Dragon scales have rainbow-like ripples in them. This one was no different, even though it was predominantly purple. Our hungry thief had left a bit of himself behind. I just hoped this dragon was registered in the database.
• • •
The IBDA occupies the twenty-first through twenty-third floors of New Scotland Yard. You can’t ride an elevator to those floors either, so don’t plan any visits unless you have a pair of wings.
I was watching the lazy rotation of the London Eye from the view of my boss’s office. Inspector Merlin wasn’t my first supervisor since joining the Bureau, but he was the best. He’s headed up the London Branch for five centuries, and while he has a deductive brilliance to shame Sherlock Holmes, he’s gotten a bit distractible in his old age.
The inspector flew into his office and landed behind his desk. He tossed down a manila folder like a practiced gambler dealing cards.
The only one playing a gamble was me. I hoped the scale I found at the crime scene would point to a suspect and give me a one-way ticket back to London from my rural exile. “Sir, what did they fi—?”
“Wait!”
He crouched down until his black eyes were almost level with the desktop. He reached over to a set of pendulum balls decorating his desk and pulled back one of the suspended silver orbs. “Hmmm…” Then he let it go and watched as the ball collided with the other four, sending the farthest one into the air, the process going back and forth.
“Fascinating.” Going by the inspector’s whisper, I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me and Kensington or to himself.
“Um, inspector?”
“Hm? What? Oh, yes! No time to waste!” He sat up and flipped open the folder. “Top chop work, lads. You’ve given us a break in one of our biggest cases.”
“Which case would that be, sir?” This was why I hated patrolling the farms and motorways. I couldn’t track any of the ongoing investigations while I was in the field. I’d petitioned for a transfer for three years, but since I was the only one who seemed capable of working with Kensington, they weren’t moving me anywhere until he learned to fly straight.
“We only recently started to connect the dots, but it seems someone is targeting all the allergy medicines in the British Isles. A series of heists and arsons throughout the UK have all but wiped out the available supply.” He slid a series of pictures from the open folder. “So far, we’ve seen factories burned down, pharmacies robbed and your lorry attack makes for the third in as many weeks. It’s bad, lads. Things are getting dicey out there.”
The list of events chilled the fire in my gut. “When you say ‘dicey,’ you don’t just mean these attacks, do you?”
The inspector rifled through the folder and placed a list in front of me. “It’s only within the past week that our 999 center noted the sudden rise in accidental flamings. We’ve seen a jump from an average of five a week to almost fifty.”
“Sir, what do accidental flamings have to do with—?”
A deep breath from the inspector cut me off. He crouched behind his desk, his eyes on the pendulum balls. “It stopped.”
“Um, sir? I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to do that.”
Kensington crouched on our side of the desk like a mirror for the inspector as our boss set the balls in motion again. He went for two this time.
I cleared my throat as loud as I could manage. “Sir, the accidental flamings?”
“Hmmm.” He leaned back and stared at the balls as if watching a murder suspect confess. “What? Oh, yes. The flamings.” He settled into his chair. “You see, an inordinate number of dragons who live in predominantly human-occupied regions tend to develop severe allergies. Whether it’s an allergy to the humans or their waste products or whatever is anybody’s guess, but one thing we all learn at an early age is to never stand in front of a sneezing dragon, not unless you enjoy getting torched.”
The inspector tapped at his rounded snout. “Hmmm… Wait. What was—?” Then he slammed one of his talons on the desktop. Kensington screamed and fell onto his back as the inspector shouted. “1666!”
“I’m sorry, sir. What?” My head ached as if my stubby horns were digging into my skull.
“The Great Fire of London was in 1666,” he said. “Rather bad day at the office, I can assure you. Haven’t seen the like since, but at the rate these accidental flamings are escalating, London might turn into a cinder box. We have only two courses open to us. That’s why I’m tasking all our resources with hunting down the devil targeting the nation’s allergy medicines.”
“I take it that’s the first course of action. What’s the second option?”
“To stock up on marshmallows.” The inspector capped off his answer with a nod of total certainty.
“I’m sorry, sir, but how would marshmallows prevent a massive fire in London?”
“Don’t be daft, Special Agent Windsor. Marshmallows won’t stop a fire, but they’re excellent when roasted over an open flame. I have my secretary working on that.”
“Can we get chocolate and graham crackers, too, sir?” Kensington jumped around on all fours. “I love s’mores!”
“I’ll pass that along to my secretary.” The inspector rifled through his desk for a pen and some paper to write down the suggestion. “Yes, now then, where was I? Oh, yes. To the break in the case. We’ve identified the owner of the scale you recovered from this morning’s crime scene. Tell me, Special Agent Windsor, what do you know about the Dug?”
“Douglas Rand? That dragon is the most dangerous hoarder in all of England.”
“Let me assure you, Agent Windsor, the Dug is the most dangerous hoarder in the world.”
My wings quivered enough to lift me an inch out of my chair. This case was huge, enough to save me from the Stonehenge route for the rest of my career. “I heard he caused the 2009 spike in gas prices.”
“Quite. Took a fancy to oil barrels that year.”
Kensington scratched his brow. “He was hoarding oil?”
“No, just the barrels. Cost the oil industry millions to replace them.” The inspector paused to set his balls in motion again. “Once even took an interest in bellybutton lint.”
That one made me throw up a bit in my mouth. “Not that I understand why he’d want to do that, but I don’t see why that would bother anyone.”
“He didn’t leave the previous owners of the lint around to complain.” Inspector Merlin turned to look out his window, and his profile faded to a dark green shadow backlit by the sunset. “All our kind feel the urge, that need to hoard something we cherish. Most of us find a single passion. For me, it’s Ferraris—such lovely cars. The Dug—I once thought it was a matter of surrendering to that urge, leaping from one thing to the next in hopes of finding what it is he desires but never able to. Now, I believe he hoards something you cannot lock in a safe, store in a warehouse or stuff in a mattress. What he hoards is chaos.”
Kensington and I followed his gaze towards the London skyline, the fiery rays of sunset a foreshadow of what the Dug’s deeds might do to this city.
“I collect croutons.” Kensington spread his lips into a wide smile. “Garlic herb is my favorite.”
The more I heard my partner run his mouth, the more I feared my chances of running this investigation might turn to smoke. I’d waited too long for this chance. “Sir, I’d like to fly point on this case.”
Inspector Merlin chuckled. “Tired of chasing hungry sheep thieves on the Stonehenge route, eh?” He smiled at me and cast a curious glance at my partner. “Very well. I’m temporarily reassigning you both to investigations and relieving you of your patrol duties. Prove yourselves, and we might consider making the arrangement more permanent.”
Kensington flew in a circle. “Oh, goody!” That is, until he slammed into the wall. “Ouch!”
“Inspector, does he have to go with me?”
My question came too late. The inspector waved us out and returned his attention to the pendulum balls on his desk.
• • •
Sherly’s Pub has drifted from one London rooftop to the next for the past three centuries. These days, it rested atop a grey, four-story monstrosity near the intersection of Northumberland and Craven. As any investigator worth his coin can tell you, information floats. You just need to know the right place to perch to find it. The hotter the info, the better the odds it would float to Sherly’s.
We could hear a pair of dragons crooning about love and charcoal coming from inside the small pub. Sherly’s didn’t look like it could stand up against a small shower in April, but the dark brown, enchanted wooden boards that appeared to lean against one another had survived far worse. I hadn’t been here since it moved six months ago. I was glad to see its new home was on a flat roof. The gable roof of the previous address forced you to hold onto your drink the entire time and made walking around quite tricky when you started feeling squiffy. Soon as we went inside, I realized we’d picked a busy night to visit.
“Well cover my wings in cement and call me a gargoyle, I haven’t set my beady eyes on you two in months!” Miriam wobbled her pale pink girth around the bar and crushed me and Kensington with a hug. She inherited Sherly’s from her husband two centuries ago. Rumor had it the old sot was still digesting in her belly after getting caught rubbing wings with one of the hired help.
“Sorry, Miriam. The Bureau has been keeping us busy.” I’d done my best to keep our banishment to the Stonehenge route from public knowledge.
“Busy, is that?” She scratched at one of the silver horns jutting down from her jaw as she issued a contemplative growl. “Heard you two got shafted with hunting down sky-diving sheep stealers.”
So much for protecting my reputation. Time to go for damage control.
“We’re done with that.” I perched on a stool in front of the bar. “Been reassigned to investigations. Got a big case, too.”
Kensington hopped onto the stool next to me. “It’s a temporal assignment!”
Miriam laughed and wobbled back behind the bar. “You two must be needing something strong then. Fire water?”
“No, we’re on duty. Better stick with blood tea.” Good stuff that. Brewed from tea leaves soaked in sheep’s blood and then—well, you probably don’t want the finer details about that. Nevermind.
“So, big case, eh?” Miriam hefted her round body to the back of the bar and prepared our tea. “You two must be after those allergy pill bandits.”
“Gotten that bad, has it?”
“Straight up! Had to add a rule to the bar because of it.” She pointed to the blackboard hanging on the wall behind the bar. In white chalk, rule number fourteen proclaimed in all caps, IF YOU FEEL A SNEEZE COMIN’ ON, TAKE IT UPSIDE! “Had one girl, drunk up to her back scales, nearly do in the whole pub the other night. Right bitch, she was. She burned my bar top. My poor Sherly’s ashes would be turning in the wind if he could see these scorch marks.” She patted the far end of the bar where the twin lines of blackened wood stood out against the pale varnish. “Taught her a thing or two.”
“What did you do to her?” Kensington asked.
Miriam’s tummy gurgled, and she quickly concealed a burp with one of her talons. Her bright green eyes widened. “Don’t you be interrogating me in my dead husband’s pub, Kensington. I didn’t do nothing to that little trollop.” She busied herself with placing our drinks in front of us and then muttered, “Nothing she didn’t deserve.”
“Relax, we’ve got bigger dragons to torch.” Not that there are many dragons bigger than Miriam, but I wasn’t going to say anything lest I pay a visit to her late husband. “Don’t suppose you’ve seen the Dug.”
“Dropped in for a drink just last week.” She picked up a napkin and fanned herself. “Such a naughty thing that boy is, the way he flicks his pointy tail, and he’s got that long, slender neck I could just nibble on all night.”
I did my best not to let that mental image take form. Good thing blood tea is a natural antiemetic.
“So, any idea where he’s holed up these days?”
“No, but I hear he took Analiese home with him that night. She’ll dive with anything that has wings, scales, and a tail. Between you and me, I hear the scales part is optional for her.” Her pink hide rippled with disgust. “Stick around long enough, and you can ask her. She’s usually in about this time. Just look for the girl with pale green scales and a lavender belly, one of them exotic types.”
An hour later, the crooner in the far corner had moved onto a tune called “Raw Deal.” The lyrics provided an overly clever analogy between an uncooked piece of lamb and the misrepresentation of dragons in the human media. I was working on my second mug of blood tea and Kensington was near the bottom of a bowl of Mongolian unicorn. That’s when she flew into the pub. Exotic fell five stories shy of describing her. Her scales shimmered like green gold.
“Kensington,” I slapped him on the back with my wing to get his attention, “that’s her.”
He turned on his barstool for a better look as she sashayed her slender tail over to a table near the stage. “Yep, that’s a her.” He leaned closer to me and whispered. “So who is she?”
“Analiese… the girl the Dug was hanging out with.”
The horns on his head rubbed against each other as his brows furrowed in total confusion. If his memory was a knife, it couldn’t cut a stick of butter.
“Just follow me and try not to talk.” I hopped down to the floor and made my way over to her. “Analiese?”
Her forked tongue slipped out to lick the edges of her cool smile. “Yes?”
“Special Agents Windsor and Kensington.” I displayed my ID. “We’d like to ask you a few questions about Douglas Rand.”
“Don’t know him.” She pulled out a smoke made from faery tree leaves and placed it between her slender lips. “Would you?”
I was about to answer when I realized she wasn’t looking at me, but over my shoulder at Kensington.
“Huh?”
“She wants a light, idiot,” I said as I sat at her table.
“Ohhhh.” He leaned forward, placed a finger on his snout to close one of his nostrils and shot out a flame with the other.
She blew out a stream of smoke, its scent sweetened by the faery tree leaves, that all but groped his face. “You have a nice, long tail,” she said.
“Yeah, I trip on it a lot.”
Her chuckle resembled a purr. “I bet you do.”
“Ma’am, I’m told you spent some time last week with a dragon known by many as ‘The Dug’.”
Analiese ignored me. If her violet eyes had fingers, I could have charged her with felony groping of my partner, not that he’d noticed. Odds favored she’d mistaken his vacant stare for being smitten instead of stupid.
“Here’s a picture of him.” I slid a mug shot of the Dug across the table top. She glanced at it, flicked it back at me and then returned her attention to Kensington with a salacious wink. “Ma’am, he’s wanted in connection with a long list of larcenies and a series of injuries related to accidental flamings.”
That got a reaction out of her—but not the kind I’d expected. “Ha! Accidental flaming is right. His flame shot a little too early for me that night.”
“So you did spend time with him that evening.”
She tapped her smoke on the edge of the table, knocking its ashes onto the floor. “Not long enough for my satisfaction.”
“Yes, got that. Were you with him long enough to know where he’s holed up?”
“Perhaps.” She exhaled a tight stream of smoke into my face. This had more of a “bitch slap” quality to it compared to the sex offense stroking she’d given Kensington. I knew what she was really saying.
“Just what is it you want to change that ‘perhaps’ into a ‘yes,’ Miss Analiese?”
The scales of her neck rippled as she stroked Kensington’s chin. “What is your friend here doing later tonight?”
“I usually go to bed at ten.” He laughed. “That tickles!”
“If the information’s good, consider him yours for the night.” I figured I better get the goods before she found out he didn’t have the brains to put his tail to the kind of use she wanted.
• • •
Analiese’s tip led us to Brick Lane where folks go Sunday mornings for the Up Market. No crowds were searching for bargains this time of night, though. The warehouse where she claimed the Dug was holed up was near the intersection with Quaker Street. So much graffiti had overwhelmed the outside that it was the vandal equivalent of white noise.
Kensington and I flew the perimeter, looking for any signs of activity. Someone had painted the windows black, so I couldn’t even tell if any lights were on inside. Perhaps the Dug was out searching for more easy tail to dive with.
“You do know to wear protection later tonight, right?” I asked as I pressed my face up against a third story window, trying in vain to see something through a crack in the black paint.
“Um, I don’t think they ever replaced my Kevlar armor after I crashed into the Prime Mister’s bedroom.”
“That’s ‘Prime Minister,’ idiot, and I was referring to—oh, forget it. You hear anything in there?”
“Nope.”
I could feel this was the place, though. Problem was we couldn’t just break in the window or door and search it. Regulations dictated probable cause. I’d considered having Kensington fly in circles around the building in hopes he’d accidentally smash through the wall, but knowing my luck, he’d smash into the coffee shop across the street, sending us back to the Stonehenge route for good.
We landed and walked the sidewalk. I prayed for something suspicious, but the only thing suspect was that a pair of dragons would be walking down this street at night.
“We gotta get this guy’s attention, make him peek his head out of this door, if he’s even here.”
“I usually knock.” Kensington stepped up to the door and banged his head against it three times. “That hurts.”
“Don’t do that! If he sees us out here, we’ll never get him to—”
I shut up when the door pulled back, and a small, narrow head with a floppy ear poked out. It was the Dug.
“What?” He snapped at me as if he meant to bite off my snout.
I stammered like an idiot stuck on repeat. When my mouth put together a solid word, the only thing I managed was, “Allergies.”
The Dug smirked in the finest fashion of the sleaziest of salesmen. “You here to buy?”
“We were looking for you.” Kensington jumped in place with the exuberance of a hatchling. “And we found you!”
“Hey, if you got the sniffles, I got the cure.” He pulled the door open enough to let us in.
“I don’t have allergies,” Kensington said.
I grabbed my partner by the snout before he could say anything to ruin our chance. “That’s right. I’m the one with the allergies.” I rubbed my nostrils and tossed in a long series of sniffles.
“Well, get in here, friend. Be quick about it.”
I kept a grip on Kensington’s snout and walked into the warehouse. How perfect was this? Not only had we found the Dug, but we were about to catch him peddling the stolen goods. The inside reeked of pharmaceuticals and dust. It smelled like a promotion.
“How much you needing?” the Dug asked.
“Um, enough for a month.” I didn’t even know how much that was.
I’d never worked with the narcotics unit. The last time I’d worked a drug deal was back in my training days, some fifteen years ago, and that was part of a mock exercise.
“You prefer the twenty-four hour or twelve-hour stuff?” he asked.
“Um, twenty-four.”
“I got what you boys want in the back.”
He led us down an aisle bordered by two long rows of box-shaped piles covered in dark tarps.
“Wow, that’s a lot of medicine.” Kensington’s voice surprised me. I didn’t realize I’d let go of his snout.
I remembered my part and sniffed a few more times. All the dust in this place made staying in character simple enough. The one thing I couldn’t remember was when to make the takedown. Could we do it yet? I didn’t think so. Figured if I waited until he took my money and handed me the product, we’d be good to go, though.
Unfortunately, I was so focused on figuring out the whole process that I didn’t think to wonder why the Dug was leading us to the back of the warehouse when he had the stuff up front, too.
“Now then.” The Dug stopped at the far end of the warehouse and turned to face us. “Let’s talk money.”
“Oh, yeah.” I shoved my hand down into my personal dimensional-portal pocket and dug around for some cash. “You got change for a twenty pounder?”
The Dug laughed. “Twenty pounds might get you through the next twenty-four hours. If you want a month’s worth, you better have three hundred pounds.”
“Draco’s scales! Three hundred pounds?” My payday wasn’t until Friday, and I’d gone on a huge iTunes binge last night. I knew buying Duran Duran’s greatest hits was a mistake even after I’d downloaded it and danced through my flat screaming the lyrics to “Hungry Like the Wolf.”
“Just how much do you have?” The Dug stepped up to me, close enough to lick my snout if he’d wanted to.
“Um, I think I’ve got twenty…” My voice trailed off as my fingers rooted through my pocket for some change. My fingers snatched onto something circular and pulled it out. “And a—oh, um—a button?” Bugger.
“What about your friend?” The Dug hadn’t asked that question. Kensington and I turned to see a trio of dragons behind us. That’s why he’d led us to the back of the warehouse, to trap us. The three dragons looked like they’d hatched from the same weyr. The only difference was in color—one red, one blue, and one green.
“Yeah, empty those pockets, pal.” The tall, blue dragon pushed Kensington from behind.
“Okay.” His talons dug deep and croutons flew out. The pile of stale bread challenged the Dug’s stack of stolen meds.
The Dug growled. “What the hell is this?”
“Croutons!” Kensington giggled. “I love croutons, especially the garlic and herb kind.”
“We want cash, you fool,” the red dragon shouted right into Kensington’s ear. “Where’s the money?”
I felt my throat go dry and the scales on the backs of my talons quiver. We had to get out of here. Forget busting the Dug. I just wanted to get out of this warehouse alive. Even if we had the money, we didn’t have the backup for taking down four dragons, three of whom were twice as big as us. The Dug’s growing irritation steamed against the back of my neck. Every second made our situation worse, and to top it off, I now had Duran Duran’s “Wild Boys” stuck in my head.
“You two better make with the cash. I’ve torched a lot of people and property to stockpile all these pills.” The Dug’s talon gripped my throat. “Fandral, show these fools what will happen to them if they don’t give us the money we want.”
“Sure thing, Dug.” The green one jumped forward and shot twin jets of fire from his nostrils. The flames engulfed the pile of croutons, overwhelming my senses with a combination of burned oregano, garlic, and basil.
Then I heard Kensington’s scream. “My croutons!!!”
The next moments whistled by me in loud, panicked screeches. Kensington, now a scaly airborne pinball shooting flames, bounced off the walls of boxes. The Dug barked commands at his hench-dragons as big, white pills rained on us. None of them had a chance to react. The instant a lick of realization struck my brain, I shouted, “Halt, in the name of the IB—!”
My partner’s large body collided with mine before I could say more. I got a face-full of his purple belly, and then everything went black.
• • •
I woke up an hour later on the sidewalk. My eyes opened and found Inspector Merlin’s face inches from mine.
“Good show! He’s awake.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “How do you feel, lad?”
“Baked.” My face hurt worse than anything else, but I ached all the way to the outer tips of my wings. I thought I was squinting, but then I realized I simply couldn’t open my eyes all the way because of the swelling.
The inspector pulled me to my feet. The street was buzzing with activity. A human fire brigade was sifting through the ashes of the warehouse. The Dug and his hired wings were cuffed and sitting on the sidewalk just down the street. At least a dozen agents were standing guard over the prisoners.
“Top chop work, lad.” The Inspector placed a hand on my shoulder. “You boys found the stolen goods and bagged the Dug and his whole gang. Top chop!”
“Uh, yeah.” I looked around and realized my partner was missing. “Where’s Kensington?”
“Debriefing a young lady at Sherly’s, I believe.” He pulled out a notepad and flipped through the pages. “Name of Analiese.”
“Lucky bastard.” I tried to walk but fell on my hindquarters as I took my first step.
“You need some time off, lad?”
I shook my head. “I’ll be fine in the morning.”
“Very good, because I’m putting you two on the London investigative team. You’ll be reporting to your new supervisor at 0800 sharp!”
“New supervisor?”
“I know you’ll enjoy working for this chap.” He elbowed me in the ribs. “You and Kensington make an excellent team, after all, and that lad has all the makings of a great leader.”
“Kensington? You’re promoting Kensington?!”
“Exciting, isn’t it!”
I wanted to throw up, and that had nothing to do with the multiple concussions I’d probably taken from Kensington’s pinball routine.
“Oh, you should hurry to the back of the warehouse before you go.” The inspector flew ahead. “Thanks to your partner’s quick thinking, we’re having s’mores. Seemed a shame to let all those marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate bars go to waste.”
“I’ll be there in a moment, Inspector.”
I sat there and chewed on the ashes of my success. All that wingwork I’d done, and Kensington was getting the promotion and the girl. At least I’d seen the last of the Stonehenge route. For tonight, I’d have to settle on some s’mores and dancing solo in my flat, howling “Union of the Snake” with Simon Le Bon.