London

Present Day

Kirith despised London.

To be fair, he despised pretty well every city in the world, but London had earned its own special kind of hatred over the centuries he’d spent avoiding its borders. The rancid place had never appealed to him, from the time when it had been a filthy mound of codpiece-wearing, unhygienic Elizabethan era bastards to the current, modern pile of shite that smelled of burning engine oil and fried fish. Perhaps there were no more codpieces, but there was certainly too much fucking cod.

As far as the Dragon shifter was concerned, it was and would always remain England’s smelly armpit. A foul stew of humans, shifters, noise, rubbish and filth.

Yet here he was, headed straight for its centre on a bleeding high-speed train. I’m a masochist looking for a fix, he thought as he stared out the window at the tapestry of passing buildings.

His fingers drummed a rapid percussive pattern on his vinyl armrest as the train approached Euston Station, just as they’d been doing off and on for the last hour and a half. If the sound drove the passengers around him mad, they weren’t showing it. Most likely because they weren’t utterly foolish. Messing with a man who stood a little over six-foot-eight, his shoulders as broad as most refrigerators, wasn’t widely considered the brightest idea in the world. Particularly when that man had a look of a Dragon’s searing rage in his green eyes.

“Too many fucking humans,” Kirith said to no one in particular when the station’s platform came into view. The damned place was positively swarming with them. Bloody humans had always been far too impressed with England’s intricate rail system. Trains, they said, were so efficient, so easy to use. One could get around quickly, they insisted. Yeah, well that was because the inferior arseholes didn’t have wings. They had no understanding of how slow and cumbersome trains actually were.

Not to mention that being cooped up inside an aluminum can with a pile of strangers was a bleeding pain in the testicles. The only reason he was riding in one of the sodding things right now was the cover it offered.

His enemies wouldn’t be looking for the likes of him on public transit. So for that, he supposed, British Rail was worthy of a grudging sort of praise.

There was one other thing about the system that impressed him, though he’d never have admitted it out loud. It had been so many years since he’d set foot on a train that he hadn’t realized the individual rail cars had installed Wi-Fi, which meant that all the passengers had their heads tucked into their laptops and mobile phones. There was no dealing with bored, wandering eyes. No inquisitive look thrown his way when this or that person noticed how large he was.

Things had evolved since the old days; days that the Dragon shifter remembered well. He recalled the centuries that had come long before trains were a glint in any inventor’s eye. The days before paved roads, before telephones, even before indoor plumbing. He could still describe, in graphic detail, the way England had looked from the sky when it was known as Britannia, a Roman-occupied wasteland of stone walls, military tents and unsanitary conditions that led to the death of many a man and woman.

Those were the days of his youth, long before he’d ever settled down or had children. The days when the Dragons had flown over the lands and terrified the human population into submission. The days before his kind had learned to hide in the shadows and cower in fear of what their human counterparts might do if they discovered that they still existed.

His son and daughter had listened to him speak about those years on many an occasion while they sat by the fireplace in their small cottage, their small, bright eyes open wide with wonder. Stories of knights and Dragons, of fair maidens and not-so-fair ones. Of trolls, fairies and beastly creatures who killed for sport.

His children should one day have been Dragons themselves. They should have learned to shift, to dart through the sky like birds. They should have experienced so many things, if not for one terrible night when the world had crashed down around them all.

Since that night, Kirith hadn’t had any patience for other living things, human or otherwise. For years he’d hidden himself away from society for its own protection, as well as for his. But now he was coming out of hiding. His life would be focused on one thing only.

A thing, they said, that he could find in London.

When the train had stopped he disembarked, stepping down onto the hard slabs of stone that made up the Euston Station platform. He looked to his right and left, taking in the scents of the city, a disgusted expression scrunching his handsome features. Bah. Humans, coffee, cigarettes, waste. London definitely hadn’t grown any more appealing over the last several decades.

But no matter. Kirith wasn’t in the city to sight-see. He was here on a mission. His goal was simple and straightforward. But before he could achieve it, he’d need to make sure his presence was welcome here.

Which meant seeking out the Kindred of the Dragons’ Guild.