The words had scarcely left my mouth before I felt the hard prick of metal pressed against my ribs. Though he’d managed to conceal it from onlookers, Arch had a small blade wedged against my jacket. Strange as it was given the circumstances, my first concern was that he might have put a hole in the shirt and jacket, both of which were rentals. Only after I’d had a second to process did I realize all the terrible implications his action might carry.
“Not a word more,” Arch whispered. Despite the harshness in his voice, he was still looking as placid as he had moments prior. Krystal, on the other hand, seemed as though she were rounding the bend of confused and was now on a direct track toward pissed off.
“Arch, get your fucking hands off my boyfriend.”
“Apologies.” Just like that, the blade was gone, stashed somewhere in the old-fashioned coat he wore. I hadn’t even thought about it at the time, but no one had bothered frisking us for weapons when we came in. It made a certain amount of sense, though. Bullets and knives were less effective than most parahumans’ natural abilities—unless they were made of silver, of course. The flaw in that strategy was that it was akin to having a deadly shellfish allergy and carrying around a shrimp bomb: it invited unnecessary danger upon one’s self.
“We need to speak somewhere with more privacy.” Arch was still calm and detached; honestly, he struck me as closer to bored than anything else. I didn’t know what sort of parahuman he was, but I’d begun to suspect it wasn’t something I was familiar with. Not when even a situation like this didn’t make him panic.
“Let’s go back out to the stairway. Meet on the left,” Krystal suggested. She still didn’t seem happy, but it was evident that she was going along with whatever Arch wanted for the moment.
Arch nodded, pulling out a cell phone and pressing it to his ear. He jammed a finger in the other, muttered some words as he scowled at the band, and then hurried out of the room. It happened so quickly, I barely had time to register that he’d faked getting a call and needing to find a place with silence. Arch definitely thought on his feet, I had to give him that.
“We’ll have to wait a few moments.” Krystal whispered this directly in my ear, a feat she accomplished by unabashedly pressing herself against me in a way that almost certainly would have made most onlookers uncomfortable. Given the very public place we were in, it would have made me uncomfortable too, if not for the still fading sense of terror that was soaked into my system.
I nodded, my eyes sweeping the room as I killed time. I caught sight of Albert and Neil, both loading plates high with items from the buffet. Neil was cutting a swath through the shrimp skewers and crab quiches, while Albert had helped himself to more cake than any reasonable person would be able to put down. Moments later, I saw Amy and Bubba, both walking away from the bar. Bubba was holding three beers—two unopened in his left hand, the one he was already drinking in his right—while Amy had a tall glass filled with ice and purple liquid. There was perhaps a fifty percent chance that hers was a regular cocktail, and not something she’d added her own ingredients too. As I watched them, Bubba noticed me, giving a nod and rerouting Amy in our direction.
“Oh dear. Amy and Bubba are coming this way,” I told Krystal.
“Guess it’s time to move then.” She leaned away from my ear and moved to my face, pulling me in for a kiss far more gratuitous than the situation called for. After a few moments, she pulled away, taking my hand with her and leading me back out toward the stairway entrance. To any observers, we no doubt appeared as if we were heading off to find a private spot and finish our moment. It was mortifying, but the situation was so dire, I only managed to be slightly embarrassed by the whole thing.
We emerged into the darker area of the landing at the top of the stairs. Krystal kept up the act as she pulled me around the side and toward an undecorated hallway to the left. Only when we were out of sight did the dramatic sex-kitten act fall away, revealing the serious face of an agent in an unexpected situation.
Arch was already there, leaning against a wall with his phone still at his ear. He was impossible to see from the stairwell, but if someone walked over and caught a glance of him, it would seem as if he were doing nothing more than trying to take a call. As soon as we arrived, he lowered the phone and turned to face me.
“How did you know?”
“It’s hard to say.” I didn’t need to ask Arch for clarification—there was only one bit of information I had that he could possibly be interested in. “Something about his aura of fear. It felt different than the other times. And when he gave me his blood, it faded completely. Tonight, it was—”
“Hold. Gideon, the King of the West, allowed you to drink from him?” His eyebrows were slightly raised, and there was the barest of wrinkles in his forehead. It was the closest thing to shock I’d yet seen on Arch’s face.
“Months ago, when Sally Alderson was kidnapped. He needed me to get her to safety, and I was catatonic from being near him, so he gave me a drop of his blood. When that happened, the fear stopped affecting me. Tonight, I felt the aura as strong as ever, only this time, it felt like something . . . I don’t know . . . stopped it.”
“Lovely.” Arch leaned back against the wall and reached into his coat. He pulled out a cigarette and twirled it through his fingers. Given how many he’d gone through the last time I saw him, I could only imagine how badly he wished he could light the thing up.
“All right, Arch, what the fuck is going on?” Krystal asked. “News like this would get a reaction, even from you, if it were really news. Obviously, you knew something, so how about you spill?”
“There were concerns that, over the last few days, Gideon’s behavior had become slightly different,” Arch said. “Nothing erratic, or dangerous, just variant. Given his status, however, any potential issue must be considered, so I was sent in to see what I could find out. Thanks to Mr. Fletcher, I now know that he was captured, and another dragon has taken his place.”
“Wait, another dragon?” My voice came out in a choked whisper as I tried to reconcile my need for secrecy with my desire to yelp.
“Gideon is old, and very powerful,” Krystal said. “We know he wasn’t killed, because slaying a parahuman as strong as he is would have sent out the sort of magical resonance that every mage in the state would pick up on. Plus, I seriously doubt he’d have gone down quietly. The only creature that could have contained him, set up the runes outside the building, and still projected a draconic aura is another dragon.”
“Which leaves us dealing with a rogue dragon, and no idea where the King of the West is,” Arch surmised.
“That’s not entirely true,” Amy said. I nearly leapt up to the ceiling in surprise, but Arch and Krystal seemed unfazed. Unlike me, it seemed, they’d been paying enough attention to our surroundings to notice her and Bubba approaching us.
Amy continued, politely ignoring my impromptu leap. “To seal a dragon like Gideon, this other fellow would have to stay close to the cage. Unless he’s as powerful as another king, there’s just no way he could maintain the spell over a distance.”
“Highly unlikely,” Arch replied. “If one of the major players suddenly vanished, we’d have noticed. How close would you say the faux-Gideon needs to be in order to keep the real one contained?”
“Ordinarily, I don’t think he’d be able to get more than half a mile away from the cage.” Amy pulled an eye-dropper from somewhere in her dress and added a few splashes of yellow liquid to her cocktail, which shimmered with a metallic sheen as she took a sip. “But with the whole building sealed off like this, they’ve basically created a distinct environment, separate from the outside world. Which means, as long as our dragon is in here, he or she is close enough to keep the mojo flowing. So the bad news is that Gideon could be anywhere in this building, but the good news is that he has to be somewhere in this building.”
“All we need to do is track him down,” Bubba said. “If we find something of his with scent, it should be no trouble at all.”
“First off, this is a building full of therians, so if the dragon went to the trouble of caging Gideon, they almost certainly warded off his smell. Secondly, even if that weren’t the case, I doubt you could do more than pick up a few fragrant notes here and there, seeing as the runes out front will have suppressed everyone’s parahuman abilities.” Arch twirled the cigarette faster through his fingers, it’s dancing movement the only sign of the frustration he had to have been feeling.
“Not everyone’s,” Krystal said. “You and I should be fine, and Fred has Gideon’s blood inside him. I thought it might keep him functioning when it was just Gideon’s wards we were dealing with; against some imitator’s attempt, I’m sure he’s still at full vampire power.”
“Is that true, Fred? How do you feel?” Arch asked, finally looking away from the spot on the wall he’d been staring at.
“Same as ever.” I really didn’t feel any different; my senses were still keen, my muscles strong, and obviously my undead body was still animated. “Well, same as since I died, I mean.”
“Given how high he jumped when we came up, I’m guessing he’s still pretty strong,” Bubba noted, blatantly ignoring the unspoken agreement to let my brief moment of shameful shock pass unmentioned.
“Congratulations, Fred,” Arch said. “As the only non-agent here who still possesses all of his abilities—and the only one with a blood connection to our missing parahuman—you have just been selected to lead the search for him. Agent Jenkins and I need to get back inside the party.”
“The hell I do,” Krystal snapped. “I’m with Fred.”
“No, you’re not.” Arch didn’t raise his voice or puff out his body. He did nothing more than put the cigarette back in his pocket, yet, as he spoke, it was with such authority that I couldn’t even imagine saying no to him. “You and I are agents, which means any identity-stealing dragons will keep an eye on us. Fred is a relative nobody; his presence won’t be missed, which will ideally stop our hand from being tipped. The longer we can keep our opponent in the dark, the better.”
I might have been ready to go along with anything Arch said, but Krystal was made of more stubborn stuff. She thrust a finger down into Arch’s chest, the height difference between them making the exchange almost comical.
“You might have come here on a case, but I’m here as a guest, with my date, who I am damned sure not going to send skittering off into a therian’s building on a wild dragon hunt. I am not your subordinate, and I won’t take orders from you just because you’ve got more experience. Clear?”
“Like most of our younger personnel, Agent Jenkins, your emotions are getting the better of you.” Arch pointed down the hall, toward the party. “Those people are the ones in danger. They are the ones in a room, their own abilities suppressed, within striking distance of a dragon we know nothing about, save for the fact that it’s strong enough to capture the King of the West. I am sending your boyfriend away from the threat, but you and I have to stay put for the sake of the others. Should this facade turn bloody, we’re likely to be the only defense they have.”
“Krystal, it’ll be fine.” I gently put my hand on her shoulder and pulled her away from Arch. “It’s just searching an empty building for Gideon. Even I won’t mess it up.”
“Fred, you don’t get it. If someone went to all the trouble of capturing Gideon, they won’t have left him undefended,” Krystal said, turning around to face me. “I don’t know if its guards, or magic, or what, but there will be something, probably something deadly, designed to keep you from reaching him.”
“Which is why Fred isn’t going alone,” Bubba piped up from behind us. “Amy and I aren’t big deals either. We can go with him and help.”
“You two are closer to human than para at the moment,” Arch pointed out. “It’s more likely you’ll get in the way.”
“First off, fuck you,” Amy said. “Secondly, we can still use our eyes and look for things. Thirdly, Bubba knows this building better than any of us, so he’s the one who can point us toward the most likely spots to hold a dragon. Fourthly, all the runes in the world won’t change the effects of the potions I brought along. And fifthly, fuck you again, just for good measure.” She took a long swig of her metallic purple drink to punctuate the sentence.
“I still don’t like this,” Krystal said. Her hand was gripping mine tightly, so strongly in fact, that, for a moment, I wondered if her power were somehow leaking through.
“It’s not how I wanted to spend the night either, but Arch is right. You two have to keep the others safe. I’ve got Bubba and Amy with me, and we’re going away from the dragon. We’ll be fine.”
Krystal leaned forward and kissed me. This was nothing like the theatrical lip-smacking she’d laid on me when there was a room full of people to sell the act to. This was short, and tender, and fierce. Neither of us was good at talking about our feelings, but she managed to pack all the fear she had for my safety and the loneliness she’d experience without me into that single kiss. When we parted, she immediately looked away from me, turning to Arch.
“Let’s get this fucking thing done.”