Sinister Magic: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #1) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,18
ring?—but she could have something under the covers.
“No. I wish. Do you have anything for cancer?”
“Uh, this one protects you from fireballs and also the UV radiation of the sun. I don’t suppose it’s a skin cancer?”
“No. Ovarian, and it’s spread quickly.” A haunted look entered her dark brown eyes.
It was as unfamiliar from her as the Garfield slippers and hospital gown, and I didn’t know how to respond. A hug? A pat on the shoulder? It was hard to imagine the no-nonsense colonel wanting either. The only time I could remember us doing anything like hugging had been on a judo mat, and I’d ended up thrown over her shoulder afterward.
“I’ve had a fever and infection they can’t pin down too,” Willard added, “so they haven’t let me leave the hospital. It’s been a lovely couple of weeks.”
“Is there a plan? How, uhm?” My gaze drifted to a folder on a tray on the other side of the bed. “Do you have scans of, er, it?”
“Yes. I asked for all the information they had. Are you a practicing oncologist when you’re not slaying monsters? How did the wyverns go?”
I took the second question to mean she would rather not talk about details. She must have already started treatment.
“Got the last one. I ran into a dragon though.” I moved around the bed to pick up the folder.
“A dragon?”
“He wrecked my Jeep. And almost me with it. We were after the same wyvern, and I… tricked him and got it first.”
“How did you survive?”
I would have liked to talk about how clever or skilled I’d been, but the truth was, “He let me live. And warned me never to get in the way of his work again.”
“His work? I’ve never heard of a dragon here on Earth, not since ancient times. They used to consider this a purgatory of a sort, at least for themselves. My understanding from the data I’ve gathered from the various magical informants and witnesses we’ve worked with is that dragons are why so many of them came here to start with, to avoid the so-called justice of the Dragon Justice Court.”
“Yes.” I looked up from the scan—the angry blobs on it did not look good, but I couldn’t sense anything magical from a picture itself. “That’s exactly what he called it. He said he was a Lord Zavryd-something-unpronounceable.”
“Lord? Not an arbiter?”
“I didn’t catch everything he said before I got my translation charm turned on, but it sounded like he was basically a cop, there to drag criminals back for punishment and rehabilitation—that’s what he called it. The wyvern was quaking in her scales.”
“Whatever he is, I’m sure he’s more than a beat cop. All of the dragons consider themselves a sort of nobility. Everyone is either a king or a queen or prince or princess, though females are born less frequently than the males. They’re often more powerful, and they’re usually the rulers—the males fight each other, often to the death, for the right to present themselves as mates to one of the females. I guess since they kill each other off, it doesn’t matter that the numbers are skewed.”
“We didn’t get into all that.” I was more concerned about whether I would run into Zav the Self-Righteous again, not if he had the grit to find a dragon mate. “I asked him if he was going back to his realm, and he said no. He had more work to do here. That’s when he warned me to stay out of his way.”
Willard leaned back into her pillows, looking tired, as if the speaking wore her out. Should I leave? Maybe the coffee would revive her, though she hadn’t taken much more than that first long swallow.
“If for some reason the dragons have decided to police the problems they’ve inadvertently caused for us, then that could be a good thing, but this is, if not unprecedented, something that hasn’t happened for a thousand years. Magical beings have come here, fleeing the reach of the Dragon Justice Court since humans were smacking flint together in caves to make fire.” Her eyes narrowed. “We have been wondering why so many more magical beings have appeared in our world lately. Wyverns didn’t used to swoop down and eat children in broad daylight. Or at all. We had more than twenty years after the elves and dwarves left when there weren’t any sightings of the magical at all.”