The idea of calling the Draakonriik embassy in San Francisco came to mind. They would know what to do about a rogue, right? The Draakonriik was dragon territory. It was run by the fiercest, most terrifyingly attractive dragon in the world: Taevas Aždaja, Isand of the Draakonriik and Lord of the Dragonclans. Surely the dragons would know how to deal non-lethally with one of their own.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
Except, the dragon doesn’t have that kind of time.
Even if she were able to get in touch with the embassy, and even if they were able to assemble a crew to take down the dragon, there was no way they would get there in time. Patrol remained on call for just this sort of thing at all times. They would probably use an emergency m-gate, a magical tear in space that took an incredible amount of energy to produce, and have a bolt in the dragon’s brain in less than an hour.
They wouldn’t ask questions and they wouldn’t show mercy. Not everyone in Patrol was elvish, but most of Command was. Elves didn’t do mercy. If you were a threat, you were extinguished. End of story.
So calling the embassy was out. What other options did she have?
Paloma lifted her head and opened her eyes to stare at the innocuous red triangle moving slowly across her screen. Her chest ached. What could one arrant woman do to save the life of a being so beyond her reach?
Even a low-level witch, a brightling, might have tried to telepathically connect with the rogue. A harpy could have flown to meet it at a lower altitude. An elf would have had the resources to get in contact with help. Even a damn demoness would have a clan around to figure it out with her.
Paloma had never felt lacking before. Being an arrant wasn’t a bad thing. Millions of people were just like her. No, she wasn’t born with the right m-paths for magic. It was nothing more than a quirk of genetics; the hand fate dealt. The goddess Glory hadn’t blessed her or any of the other arrants out there, leaving them to Craft’s whims. She wasn’t religious, but even she thought it was a little unfair that her people were left under the care of the trickster god.
Sure, life wasn’t always easy or fair when you went up against people who could move mountains with their thoughts.
But then again, the world wasn’t exactly kind to those people, either.
She reached out to press her fingertips against the cool glass of the screen, tracing the path of the dragon headed her way. The poor being was probably exhausted and lost, looking endlessly for a place to land and rest their wings. Because of Paloma, the moment their clawed feet landed, they would be executed. Her eyes stung. The satellite image and its digital overlay blurred.
The dragon would die because of her fuck-up. Just because they needed a place to rest.
Paloma jerked her hand back from the screen with a cry. “Craft’s ass!” She slammed her palms onto the desk three times in quick succession, her breaths excited puffs. “Holy shit! Shit!”
The dragon needed a place to land. If she could lure it to her cliffside before dawn, no one in the town below would know that the dragon was even there.
Of course, she wasn’t foolish enough to think the dragon would never be seen, but it could buy them both time. If they weren’t that bad off, she might even be able to coax them into shifting. Even she knew that communicating with dragons was much, much easier when they wore their humanoid shapes.
But how did one draw the attention of a dragon? She couldn’t risk any sort of siren, since sound traveled for miles around. Normally she would use the electrical storm warning system, but that would draw the town’s attention directly to her and her dragon.
Paloma wracked her brain, trying to think of any way to draw the dragon’s gaze to her research station that wouldn’t immediately alert the town.
What could possibly get a dragon’s attention?
Dragons were known for two things: their love of wealth and fire. Paloma didn’t exactly have a big pile of gold to flash at a moment’s notice, but she did have fire.
Heart pounding, her thoughts snapped to the old metal fire pit, unused since her father’s passing, on the deck. Normal fire might do the trick, but with the dragon still so far out, she didn’t want to take the chance. If she really wanted to get the dragon’s attention, she had to make them think there was another dragon nearby.
If her dragon really was considering setting up a roost nearby, they would be compelled to investigate any evidence that another dragon was within their chosen territory.
Dragon fire was easy enough to fake. Hollywood did it all the time for entertainment feeds. Back in school, one of her professors moonlighted as a stunt tech on sets. He regaled her requisite chemistry class with his chemical misadventures — and taught them all the easy trick to faking the color of dragonfire.
No one but a dragon could really make it, of course, but Paloma didn’t need to. She just needed the dragon’s attention.
It was pure luck that she had just the thing to make that happen.
* * *
It was well past midnight by the time Paloma got the fire roaring in the pit. The air was frigid, but blessedly windless. Her breath fogged up in front of her as she made a dozen trips to and from the woodshed, piling one seasoned log on top of another in the huge iron bowl of the pit.
The fire grew and grew, spitting smoke and flames into the air. Great curls of blue-gray smoke swept upward before fading into the velvet black of the night sky. Standing too close to the flames made her sweat under the layers of her down jacket, but Paloma didn’t stop to unzip it. The dragon was closing in on her side of the mountain. If she missed this chance, they would swerve around to the opposite side — where the town would see them silhouetted against the rising sun.
So she added more logs to the fire and ignored the sweat gathering between her breasts or beading along her hairline. She didn’t think about how her cheeks stung with a combination of bitter cold and blazing heat. Paloma built the fire until the pit could take no more.
And then she added the copper chloride.