Chapter One – Kris

 

I blinked in disbelief at Colonel Harrington, and at the request he’d just made.

“Cole?” Harrington asked, barely moving, not even adjusting the file folder he held in his hand. “You okay? Kris, talk to me.”

Over three months of being more or less buried alive in a fifty-year-old bunker in the Alaskan tundra. No contact other than with a variety of interrogators wearing black tactical masks. No real human, or dragon, contact for weeks. Just food pushed in through the slot, and a copy of William Shakespeare’s complete works to keep me company. And always the questions. Questions about who I was, how I’d found this place, who sent me, which government I was working for, what my affiliations were in the outside world.

And now, here was my former boss. Standing across the metal table as he looked expectantly at me. The man who’d been my surrogate father for over a decade. Who’d basically “gone out for milk” nearly two years ago now, leaving me high and dry with a team of shifters below me and absolutely zero fucking guidance on how to run a private security agency.

“Excuse me?” I asked. I gritted my teeth. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“You know I don’t kid,” he said, his voice completely scrubbed of any kind of regional inflection or accent. Harrington had always seemed like a man from nowhere, a government military spook who’d spent his entire life drifting from one shadow to another. Somehow, the slight echo of his words on the concrete walls around us seemed to intensify that aspect.

“Three fucking months, Colonel,” I growled, leaning forward over the table, my eyes following him as he paced in front of me. “You waited three fucking months to offer me a goddamn job? You couldn’t have done that, oh I don’t know, about eleven weeks ago? Or written me a letter, so I didn’t have to fly all the way up to the goddamn Arctic Circle to have a little fucking chat?”

He looked at me, a blank expression on his face. “What’s the longest a clairvoyance spell can target a person, Cole? Even with outside intervention to cancel it?”

I bared my teeth at him for just a moment, but fought back the expression and turned it into just a nostril flare from hell. He was right, without my even having to say he was right. Clairvoyance spells were the trickiest kinds of magic to defend against, especially when you were in the cloak and dagger business. Unlimited remote viewing and listening on a subject, no matter where they were in the world. All you needed was a fingernail, a piece of hair, or a bit of blood, and you could ring up their world anytime you wanted. Three cycles of the moon was the longest recorded mystical scrying spell on record. Three months, give or take, for the connection to wane and become useless.

I should know, too. I’d been responsible for grabbing those follicles of hair, those clips of nails, and those drams and drops of blood. Back in a different life, it now seemed.

“This place has every precaution under the sun and stars layered on top of it,” Harrington continued, when I didn’t. “We’ve had you warded from the time you stepped through our doors. But, there’re some things that are too tricky for even us.”

I let loose another growl. “Three fucking months, though? Tabitha’s probably having kittens. The guys, too.”

“Really think we didn’t consider that?” Col. Harrington asked. “Think I wanted to cause my old team undue stress? Tabitha and you have been exchanging text messages, even phone calls, for the last three months.”

My mouth dropped open. “You’ve been…How? How have you been impersonating me?”

“We’ve got all your biometrics on file, days of phone calls recorded, and a mainframe that makes the NSA look like a kid’s computer literacy class from nineteen-ninety. An entire suite of electronic and analog details filed away in case we ever needed them. Modern technology’s a marvelous, terrifying thing. A lot like magic, if you think about it. Hell, we could have faked some video calls if we’d wanted.”

Even if the grey at his temples had spread a little further, not much else had changed. Maybe he was a little leaner from constant training, and his eyes a little bit more steely. He was still focused on the war with the supernatural. The murky world that exists right alongside the human, mundane one. The one where an apocalypse comes every two months, but our biggest fear is never a nuclear warhead. Instead, it’s more like ancient world-eating dragons awakening, or Yggdrassil itself, the great tree at the center of creation, being chopped down. He and I, along with the dragon Hunter Jackson, four other shifters, and a particularly cunning witch at the Paranormal Research Board, had been what stood between humanity and the world coming apart at the seams.

“But none of that’s the point. We did it because you’re important, Kris,” he said. “We did it because I need you back. I need your expertise.”

I shook my head and sighed, feeling like my whole body was deflating as I slumped a fraction of an inch in my chair. “You want me to come back? But we both left, Colonel. You said yourself you were sick of seeing innocent US citizens getting chewed up and spit out.” I stabbed at the air between us with my finger. “You made that decision, not us. And we followed you, damn it.”

“That’s right,” he said with a nod. He gripped the back of the metal chair pushed beneath the table across from me, leaning towards me. “Times change, though. We might have dissolved the PRB, but we’ve got an even bigger opportunity now. The Paranormal Defense Board’s willing to put serious financial weight behind us, give us an opportunity to really make a difference. Protect more people, even focus on a domestic program, where we can do more investigations and less commando work. Turns out Full Moon was just a trial run, one the right people were watching. And you and the boys pulled through just fine, showed them what even a small, dedicated group could do when they’re focused on the home front.”

“Where’s the funding coming from? Who are these people?”

“Mixture of government and private. Mostly private, though. People are starting to wake up to the dangers all around us, and how much worse they’re growing.”

“So concerned citizens, is what you’re telling me? Can we trust them?”

“More than most.”

I ran a hand back through my short auburn hair, down over my split ends. The institutional shower I’d been given, and its lack of conditioner, hadn’t exactly been beneficial for the health of my follicles. I thought about how I needed to get a haircut, and had to suppress a chuckle. Here I was, sitting at the edge of civilization in a Cold War-era bunker, getting a proposition to join a paramilitary group, and I was worried about my hair. How ridiculous was that? How vain.

But dragons had always been that way, hadn’t they? And this dragon was certainly no exception.

I folded my arms across my chest, looking around the concrete and steel room I’d been dragged to for the fortieth time since Hunter and I had found the sealed vault door leading down into this place. The room where they had me staying wasn’t much better, to be honest, but at least when I was there, I wasn’t asked a million questions about how I’d found this location.

And always, it had been the same answer. You’d think they’d have gotten tired after week nine or so.

“Colonel, I don’t know if I can get the other guys on board. Probably just Luke and Ryder.”

“Not asking you to.”

I looked back to him with a start. “You’re leaving them out? Why?”

“They’re all family men now,” he said, sniffing a little. “You know how I am about family. Even a chance of hesitation, and any op can go under. Besides, the things we’re fighting, if they were openly associated with us, their families at home would just be liabilities. You know these enemies aren’t like a foreign military. They’ll strike wherever they can do the most damage, attain the most leverage.”

“You’ve been following them?” I asked. “Since you left?”

“Sound surprised.” He held out his fist, ticking off names as he went. “Samuel Fitzgerald just bought an engagement ring for Faith Riley, Carter Grant and Lucy Skinner just bought enough supplies to add a wing to their cabin up in the woods, Ryder Williams just helped Stephanie Kaufman get enrolled in classes for the summer semester, and Luke Oldham rented a U-Haul truck to move Molly Long cross-country from Tucson to St. Louis. Why wouldn’t I keep track of them? I worked with them for nearly a decade, Kris. They’re the closest I’ve got to sons.”

I sighed. “Luke and Ryder, too? Goddammit.”

Three months spent in this hole? Is that how long it had really been?

Harrington shrugged. “You can never keep shifters locked up emotionally like that. Even I’m surprised I was able to keep them from finding mates while I had them working directly under me. Surprised you lasted as long as you did while riding herd on them.”

“So that’s it, then? Just cut them out entirely?”

He shook his head, pulling out the metal chair. He set the folder down off to the side as he took a seat. “They’re doing just fine chasing down cases on their own. PDB might become a silent investor in the company, of course, give them a little more opportunity. But I need you up here. Never met an agent better than you when it came to international operations.”

“I thought you just said we were going to focus domestically?”

“Part of the organization will, yes. We’re still in our infancy, here, and we need all the help we can get.” He looked as if he was about to say something further, but didn’t continue.

“You need an agent right now, though, don’t you?”

“Not right now. But soon. Before the next full moon.”

“Jesus Christ, Colonel,” I said, dropping my hand to the table in exasperation as I rolled my eyes. Mentally, I calculated what phase the moon had been in the last time I saw the night sky, and moved it up by twelve weeks. It was going to be tight. “That’s just over a week away. Couldn’t have just given me a fucking call? Or, I don’t know, come to talk to me sooner?”

“Needed to vet that you were fine to talk to, Kris. You just showed up here out of nowhere.”

“No, I followed the goddamn clues you left me. Hunter and I came out here because of your damn bread crumb trail. I’d thought someone had kidnapped you, or was holding you hostage, or you’d gotten into some kind of trouble with an ancient god.” I gestured to the room, and, by extension, the whole base. “Not this.”

“Fair enough.” He paused, smiled a wry smile. “Still keeping track of moon cycles, I take it?”

“Kind of comes with the territory.” I sighed as I leaned back in my chair, re-crossing my arms. “What kind of job do you need me for?”

“You’re not cleared for that. Yet.”

“Jesus, Harrington.”

He shook his head. “Come on, Kris, you know the rules.”

“We need Coal for this, I take it?”

He drummed his fingers on the table. “Can’t give you specifics, like I said.”

“So you want me to fly blind?”

“No, I want you to consider it. The opportunity this presents. You can do some real good in the world, Kris. You won’t be stuck in the office managing those guys. It’ll be a chance to get your hands dirty again, to make a difference.”

I took a deep breath, exhaling it slowly. My eyes flickered down to the folder on the table between us, and I nodded towards it. “That the case file?”

He shook his head. “No. This is a parting gift, of sorts.” He slid the folder over to me.

The folder was the same unassuming green we’d always used at the PRB, and the label covering the tab was yellowing from age. The outer edges were worn down, and creases had formed through years of handling. One thing stood out, though: the name on the tab.

This was something that I’d spent the last year searching for. Through Harrington’s records, through his home, through his office, which I now occupied back in St. Louis.

“Hunter Jackson?” I asked as I reached out and spun the folder towards me. “This is your blackmail file on him?”

“It is.” If he was hurt that I’d figured out that he’d put a spell of compulsion on Hunter, Harrington didn’t show it. He was as cool as a cucumber as I flipped open the folder and began to go through it. Months ago, I’d promised Hunter that I’d get this back for him, and if I couldn’t, I’d threaten to leave the agency until the colonel released him. Now, though, that particular weakness in all things called curiosity began to take over as I opened the file.

Page after page after page of aliases, ID photos, and copies of passports, all with the same handsome face staring out at me. Whatever else you could say about Hunter, you had to admit that he kept himself looking good.

Typed reports detailing names, places, and dates where Hunter had been during the biggest European art heists of the last twenty, thirty years. He was a dragon like me, but had used his near immortality for his own selfish interests, even managing to burgle and steal from the wealthiest of our kind. He’d left a trail of wreckage and picked locks across the world, with zero regard for whom he robbed or screwed over.

Col. Harrington had scooped him up somehow a while back while we’d been in the PRB, put him to work under threat of releasing this file to Interpol, the FBI, and all the other major investigative bodies of the world, then locked him and the rest of us under some kind of magical spell to keep him from discussing it with the rest of the team: a geas, which eventually broke. Maybe because Col. Harrington hadn’t been around to renew it on a regular basis? I still wasn’t sure, but I’d first felt its shackles begin to loosen about six months after the colonel had disappeared on us.

When we’d dissolved the PRB and started Full Moon Security down in St. Louis, Col. Harrington had dragged Hunter along right behind us, and we’d barely even questioned why. That’s the power of magic.

And this, right here, was everything Hunter needed to be free. Everything I’d promised him in exchange for his help to find Col. Harrington.

Or, this file was everything I needed to put him away for a long, long time. If I put this in the right wealthy hands, or the right foreign intelligence or law enforcement service, he’d be dead before the end of the month. Or worse.

I shifted in my seat, uncertainty gnawing away at my guts. “You’re giving up your leverage on him?” I asked, glancing from the folder to Harrington.

“Did I say I’m giving it up?” Harrington asked. “I’m giving it to you, Kris. There’s a difference.”

“What do you think I’m going to do with it?”

“What you believe is right,” Harrington said, as if he were anticipating my threat to leave if Hunter wasn’t released. He leaned forward a little. “All I’ve ever asked of you, Kris—you know that.”

“I give this to him, he’s liable to just disappear on you. You’ll lose an intrusion asset.”

“Disappear on us,” he said, emphasizing the last word. “And, you’re right, we’ll lose an intrusion asset.”

“I still haven’t agreed to anything, Colonel.”

The faintest of smiles broke that grim look of his as he ignored my words. “Besides, with these resources, I’m not sure it’s worth the hassle of keeping an angry dragon on a leash. Maybe it would be a good thing?”

I turned back to the folder, my fingers running over the yellowing pages spread in front of me. Like an ancient tome, it contained more secrets than I’d ever imagined possible. Yeah. If I gave this to Hunter, he’d be gone like morning dew when the sun finally rises. No doubt about it.

“How far back does this go?”

“Little less than a century, I think. It’s everything I’ve got on him. Not all pertinent to his criminal legacy, but nevertheless solid background information.” He pushed back the metal chair, the legs scraping hollowly on the concrete floor of the bunker room.

I paused in my spot in the file, looking up at him. “Leaving?”

“Looks like you need some time alone with history. You should really consider my proposal, though, instead of reading through that file.”

I sighed, closed the blackmail document, and pushed it away. “Yeah. You’re probably right. What’s going to happen now, anyways?”

“Now?” Harrington asked, a little surprised. He was already up and across the room, his long strides closing the distance between him and the exit. “Well, you’re free to leave. You and Hunter both are. If you need some time to decide what you want to do and how you want to proceed, put your affairs in order, you’ve got it. One week.”

He rapped on the door three times, and a guard immediately opened it.

I shook my head. “Still not much time, if you ask me.”

“Well, the clock’s never stooped to being any man’s servant. Only his master.” He turned back to the uniformed guard. “See Ms. Cole back to her room, and make sure her clothes are laundered. She and Mr. Jackson will be leaving us soon. Don’t confiscate the file from her, either. That’s hers now. Try and touch it, she’s liable to break your arm in three places, and all the fingers still attached.”