The Dragon Conspiracy (A SPI Files Novel) - Softcover

Lisa Shearin currently works as the editor at an advertising agency.  She has been a magazine editor and writer of corporate marketing materials of every description.  Lisa enjoys singing, reading, writing novels, and fencing (foil and epee, as well as rapier & dagger dueling).  She lives in North Carolina with her husband, two cats, two spoiled-rotten retired racing greyhounds, and a Jack Russell terrier who rules them all.

She is the author of The Grendel Affiar, Magic Lost, Trouble Found, Armed & Magical, The Trouble with Demons, Bewitched & Betrayed, Con & Conjure, and All Spell Breaks Loose.

1

I was working, but if this was work, then sign me up for triple overtime.

This was my kind of Halloween party—cool jazz, a hot date, and a little black dress I’d paid way too much for, but refused to feel guilty about. It was my treat to me. My first Halloween in New York was shaping up to be one to write home about.

The jazz band was playing “That Old Black Magic.” I wondered if they knew how appropriate that was.

My hot date was my partner, Ian Byrne. No, not that kind of partner; the kind that works with me battling the forces of evil. He was a senior agent; I was the newbie. But his job title didn’t keep him from being the ultimate arm candy.

He was tall, dark, lean, and born to wear a tuxedo.

It was Friday night at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the night before Halloween and we were posing as a hoity-toity Manhattan couple with an invitation to the season’s most anticipated opening night at the Met’s newest exhibit—Mythos.

Gods and goddesses, beasties and monsters, myths and legends, all safely represented in painting, sculpture, or artifact—all of the thrills with none of the danger.

I say danger, because monsters are real.

My name is Makenna Fraser and I work for SPI—that’s Supernatural Protection & Investigations for those in the know. Those in the know consisted of the supernatural community in Manhattan and throughout the outer boroughs.

SPI was headquartered in New York, but had offices and agents worldwide. It was founded by Vivienne Sagadraco in 1647. And no, that wasn’t the boss lady’s ancestor. It was the boss lady herself. Vivienne Sagadraco was much older than she looked, less human than she appeared, and a lot larger than you could ever imagine.

I imagine there were plenty of people who called their boss a dragon lady and meant it as an insult.

My boss was a real dragon—and a true lady.

Right now, she was . . . Well, “holding court” was about the only way I could describe it.

In her actual form, she’d have cleared the room; every human in the place would have been screaming and stampeding for the nearest exit. But as Vivienne Sagadraco, wealthy socialite and generous philanthropist, she drew a crowd of admirers wherever she went—especially admirers who had a cause or event they needed funded.

A mural of frolicking dryads was currently framing her slim and elegant figure. Whether intentional or not, the mural’s jewel-toned tiles of semiprecious stones couldn’t have provided a more flattering backdrop for her.

Though I shouldn’t have been surprised if she had chosen it on purpose. Not because it made her look good, but because it looked good to her. Dragons loved their sparklies, and Vivienne Sagadraco was no exception.

In fact, it was her love of shiny things (and uncanny investment skills) that was behind SPI’s funding. Monster hunting and protecting humans and supernaturals from one another—and keeping humans in the dark about all of it—took the latest technology, developed and run by the most brilliant minds, and seemingly bottomless financial reserves to pay for all of it. Toss in a financial management staff of scary accurate clairvoyants, and Vivienne Sagadraco’s net worth would probably put the treasuries of many first-world countries to shame. Not to mention it made all of us agents warm and fuzzy to know that our 401k accounts were in the best hands.

Ian Byrne and I weren’t here on a date.

We were here to prevent a robbery.

When it came to art with supernatural provenance, value wasn’t always measured in money. There were a handful of items in the exhibition that could cause a lot of trouble if they fell into the wrong hands.

That’s why SPI was involved.

So while we had some idea of what items the thieves were after, we had no earthly clue how anyone could steal any of them, especially tonight.

SPI had received intelligence that there would be a robbery. Tonight. Smack-dab in the middle of a museum gala with hundreds of people in attendance. As to the identity of our potential thief, none of the supernaturals or humans were behaving suspiciously. It looked like a perfectly normal thousand-dollar-a-head museum exhibit opening on a Friday night in New York. People and not-people were out and about, seeing but mostly being seen, looking at ancient art and artifacts, and admiring the pretties and the sparklies from behind velvet ropes and bulletproof glass.

Stealing anything from this exhibition would be humanly impossible.

Inhumans, on the other hand, just might be able to pull it off.

That was where SPI came in.

Or, more to the point, me.

I’m what SPI calls a seer.

Most of the members of my family could see supernatural creatures for what they really were. We could see through any magical veil, ward, shield, or spell any supernatural could come up with as a disguise. I could identify every supernatural present at this little shindig. It wasn’t in the least bit surprising that supernaturals were among New York’s glitterati. When your life span was measured in centuries, you could accumulate wealth in quantities unimaginable to all but Middle Eastern sheiks, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, or Kardashian divorce-settlement recipients.

What passed for figments of peoples’ overactive imaginations, or things that went bump in the night and day, were SPI’s bread and butter.

Fact meets fiction.

Science meets entertainment.

Myths and monsters. If the museum hadn’t wanted to tap into that, they wouldn’t be officially opening the Mythos exhibition to the public on Halloween.

Most of the supernatural guests were the vampire, elf, and goblin variety. Naturally they were veiled, meaning they had used small magics to conceal their most distinguishing features—or at least those that would be most alarming to humans. That meant fangs for the vamps, upswept ears for the elves, and both of the above plus silvery skin tone for the goblins.

I could see them all, but I’d learned at a young age to keep that knowledge to myself. Most supernaturals didn’t want to be seen for what they really were, especially by a human, which many of them viewed as a sub-creature, dinner, or both. I’d always made it a point to avoid being seen as either one.

An unremarkable-looking, middle-aged couple gazed with obvious disdain and quiet, derisive laughter at one of the promotional posters the Met had liberally spread around town on buses, subway stops, and anywhere else people couldn’t help but notice them.

The couple were vampires.

In honor of the gala, a few of the more popular posters had been expanded into banners and hung suspended from the ceiling in all their glossy glory. In honor of Halloween, and people’s seemingly never-ending fascination with vampires, one banner depicted what the Met’s Marketing department knew humans wanted to see if confronted by a vampire—a breathtakingly beautiful, darkly seductive creature, with just a hint of fang visible, and deep bedroom eyes that assured their victim that their primary intent was merely to boff them silly. Yes, there was that tiny, insignificant thing that involved driving those fangs into the side of your neck and essentially ripping your throat out as they drained your blood and left you to die in an alley, darkened park, bathroom in a SoHo nightclub, or wherever they’d found you when the mood to munch took them. But because you’d be so hot and bothered by their sexy selves, you’d enjoy the hell out of the throat ripping while they did it to you.

Though most vamps were discreet in their selection of dining partners, and unless they were feeding for the first time, they didn’t need to drain their victims dry. Regardless, it still felt like a pair of nails being hammered into the side of your neck. There was nothing sexy about that; I didn’t care what you were into.

I looked again at the banner and had to agree with the vampire couple. The depiction was highly inaccurate. I guess I should just be glad that the damned thing didn’t sparkle.

I turned to the man on my arm. “How about a spin around the dance floor? Just one song.”

My ever-vigilant partner continued scanning the crowd for any oddity, something out of place that would signal a team of paranormal thieves getting ready to make their collective move. “We’re not here to dance.”

“No, we’re not,” I agreed, not about to give up that easily. “But we were told to blend in. A lot of people are dancing, therefore dancing blends in.” I had new shoes to go with my new dress, and my new shoes wanted to dance.

“And a lot of people are not dancing,” Ian countered. “They’re going through the exhibition, which is why we’re here, remember?”

How could I forget?

Change of tactics. Ian was always telling me that a good agent is flexible. “Okay, then. Think how many more people you could see from the dance floor.” I lowered my voice conspiratorially. “It’s raised.”

Ian continued his surveillance. “I noticed.”

“Of course you did. But I bet even you can’t resist that song. It’s perfect.”

Ian didn’t respond, at least not with words.

Quicker than a takedown in one of our hand-to-hand combat lessons, Ian swept me onto the dance floor.

I yelped. Fortunately the music covered it up. “You could warn a girl.”

“You asked for it. A good agent is always careful what they ask for—spoken or unspoken.” A trace of a grin quirked his lips. “You never know what you’re going to get.”

Like my normally by-the-book partner being coaxed into mixing a little fun into our business this evening.

“Everything’s a teaching opportunity, isn’t it.” I didn’t ask it as a question; I already knew the answer.

“It is until you learn everything.”

“Which means my future’s gonna be chock-full of teaching.”

Even I couldn’t deny it. The more I learned, the more I realized I didn’t know. My bullets were getting closer to the centers of our shooting range’s paper targets, but human silhouettes were only one kind of target that I practiced on. Some of them were so big you’d think I couldn’t miss them. Wrong. In my defense, when multiple targets popped up either at the same time or one right after the other, it was hard to remember where to shoot. Some of the things we came up against didn’t have hearts in the same places as humans. Heck, some didn’t have hearts at all.

The rest of my training was going even slower, though it’d help if Ian wasn’t the ultimate commando-ninja-badass monster fighter. Him being so good made me look even worse. However, if someday I found myself backed into a dead-end alley facing a wendigo with a hankering for a late-night snack, I knew I’d be glad that I’d been taught by the best. Ian hadn’t deemed me competent enough to progress past what looked to me like Nerf knives, and I still couldn’t last more than fifteen seconds on the sparring mat without Ian pinning me. If he wouldn’t throw me quite so hard, at least that part would be fun, though I think that was why he did it; that and to be a constant reminder that any encounter I had on the job with a supernatural critter wasn’t going to feel like fun and games.

Ian and I had spent a lot of time together since he’d been assigned as my partner/bodyguard/babysitter. SPI’s seers didn’t get combat training, but since my three predecessors had met with fatal accidents that might not have been so accidental, SPI’s management had taken steps to protect their personnel investment. That would be me. Ian Byrne was that protection. To Ian, a big part of that protection was teaching me to fend for myself. I couldn’t have agreed more, and was doing my best to learn everything he had to teach. However, I think Ian was feeling a whole lot like Henry Higgins to my Eliza Doolittle.

During that time, my training had extended to time off the clock. Though it was more like an educational series of “Let’s have a beer after work, and I’ll tell you how to tell normal sewer sludge from the mucus trail of a giant demon slug.” Let me tell you, nothing puts you off your bar-food nachos quicker than a lecture on the color and consistency of slug secretions.

But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t fun, because between the lectures on monster bodily fluids, Ian would tell me about past missions. Purely from an instructional viewpoint, of course. At least that was what Ian wanted me to believe. I could tell he enjoyed the telling as much as I did the hearing. It must have been the Irish storyteller in him.

Ian began maneuvering us toward the center of the dance floor. One spin was so sudden I nearly fell off my heels. Though any heel height was too high for me. I was the only person I knew of who could fall off a pair of flip-flops.

“Easy there, partner. What’s the rush?”

Ian lowered his head to my ear while still steering us toward the center, showing his usual impressive coordination. I displayed my usual lack.

“I want you to get a look at Viktor Kain’s date,” he said. “Human or not human?”

I stiffened, and if Ian’s hand hadn’t been firmly at the small of my back, I would have stumbled.

Ian knew my reason wasn’t due to clumsiness.

“Relax,” Ian told me. “He’s just dancing.”

Well, if Nero had fiddled while Rome had burned, it stood to reason that mass murderers could dance, but that didn’t mean I wanted to dance anywhere near one.

Viktor Kain had loaned art to the Met for the exhibit—art that was the main reason we were here—and Ian had spotted him before I had.

Way to be a watchful agent, Mac.

I was glad Ian had seen him first. If my partner had swung me around and I’d suddenly gotten a gander of the Russian, I’d have probably freaked out, which would have blown our cover, at least with Viktor Kain. Though if the people around us had known what the Russian businessman really was, they not only wouldn’t have blamed me one bit, they’d have run like hell.

Viktor Kain was a dragon.

That wasn’t my problem with him. Far from it. I knew a few dragons. Heck, our boss was a dragon. Once you got past the whole humans-occasionally-on-the-menu thing, dragons could be nice people.

No, my problem with Viktor Kain was that he was the head of an international crime syndicate. He had personally killed hundreds, maybe thousands of people over his long criminal career and even longer life, and he’d ordered the deaths and ruin of even more—and he’d enjoyed every last minute of it.

Ostensibly, the Russian was here in New York because he’d loaned several items to the museum for the exhibition. SPI strongly suspected that wasn’t the only reason. Viktor Kain had brought more than art with him; he’d brought trouble, not just for SPI, but for every human on this island and probably beyond.

The Russian’s very presence on East Coast soil was a slap in the face to every rule of dragon etiquette, and two skips away from a declaration of supernatural war. No dragon would dare set claw on another’s territory without an invitation. I’d put enough agency rumor and innuendo together to know that Vivienne Sagadraco and Viktor Kain had crossed each other’s paths in the past, and as a result of those encounters, each barely tolerated the existence of the other on the planet. So...