Page 4 of Dragon's Desire

Another minute passed before he cracked and bowed his head in defeat. When he looked up at her again, he began to talk. And, just as before, what came out of his mouth was nonsense.

A jumble of sounds—some guttural, some nasal, some sibilant—came pouring out. She only caught two words remotely familiar to her:hwaetandborboleta. Each pinged hazy memories from classes she’d thought long forgotten, but neither made any sense.

Her patience snapped. She slapped the table and said, “Hold up. What does the first word of Beo-fucking-wulf in the fucking original Old-fucking-English and the Portuguese word for butterfly have to do with what went down tonight?” Kiercy waited for a smug grin or any indication that the vampire was yanking her chain on purpose.

He spoke again, spewing nothing but gibberish. The rising pitch, volume, and speed of the sounds coming out of him communicated only one thing clearly—and it wasn’t satisfaction.He’s not faking, that’s for sure.

“Anyone got a pen and paper? Maybe we can work around whatever spoken word issue is messing up everything,” she said. Her colleagues jumped on the request, and it didn’t take long for the items to appear. She pushed them over to the befuddled vampire and silently called on the Goddess for luck.

Hope sparked in his expression as he put pen to paper. He scribbled frantically and filled two sheets before stopping. He howled—and when that cry of despair broke into a cat’s yowl, a crow’s caw, and the bleating of a goat—he let the tears fall.

Kiercy thanked the Goddess she hadn’t allowed herself to gape at the man in astonishment. There’s no sense adding insult to injury. Instead, she maintained a mostly neutral expression, placed a fingertip on the papers and slowly slid them toward her.

The sheets were unintelligible. Among the alphabet most familiar to her, she spotted bits that looked like Cyrillic mashed with Arabic abjad, Japanese kanji, Greek letters, and what she thought could be Korean hangul. The chaotic tangle of scribbles made her head ache.

What few words she could identify made as little sense as those she’d picked up in his speech. If it was code, it was far beyond her abilities. She liked to think she was the sort of person who didn’t let ego interfere in doing the job right—and it felt like the right time to call in for reinforcements.

Kiercy turned to the agent closest to the door and said, “We need to get a specialist in here. See if Arthur Lin is available—I’m fairly certain he’s got expertise in both languages and codes. Maybe he can make sense of this nightmare.”

It took Agent Lin two hours of study, one phone call, and a repeat interview with the subject before he was comfortable enough to share his preliminary report. Kiercy knew he was a methodical man who needed plenty of time and space to do his work but suppressing the urge to prod him into second gear had been a challenge.

The moment he looked ready she pounced without hesitation. “The suspense is literally—

no, scratch that—metaphorically killing me, Arthur. Please tell me you’ve got something,” she said. In different circumstances she might worry more about the sound of desperation in her tone, but whatever was going on here felt too ominous to worry about it.

Arthur cleared his throat nervously. He gripped the stack of papers he was holding so tightly his fingertips paled. “What I do know is that the subject is currently incapable of coherent communication. He’s using words from every known modern and ancient language—as well as some I can’t identify. There are also multiple grammatical systems at work,” he said.

Kiercy blinked. “Is there a pattern or anything? I can ask for more personnel to be put on this. Or—if you need some special computer program or whatever, I think we can get that. I don’t fool with the things, but figure you’d know,” she replied, trailing off weakly at the end.Stupid machines.

“That’s the main issue. There is no discernible pattern. This isn’t code. It’s more like an explosion. It’s language broken beyond repair,” he said. His face settled into a grim mask, but his eyes revealed his fear.

“It isn’t natural, then,” she replied. Kiercy already knew the answer—it still felt oddly reassuring to say it aloud. Maybe there was comfort in sharing the scary truth or maybe the luxury of not having to waffle or whether to turn to magic or not had helped her relax.

In the end it didn’t matter. A path forward, however dark and tangled, had opened. It was passed time to get going on it.

She thanked Agent Lin and wrote up a hasty but thorough report. She busied herself as best she could while she waited for the response. There was always more paperwork to catch up on.

Kiercy was halfway through a breaktime cup of warm mint tea when the message arrived. She hated the insipid little noise the computer made, disliked touching its keys, and everything about it. Handwriting was so much more informative, personal, and useful.

It was a losing argument, so she clicked. “Oh, hell no,” she said. Her face flushed as her heartrate accelerated.

She stormed through the halls until she reached the Task Force Commander’s office and pushed right in. The outraged fury in her voice was barely contained as she said, “Are you seriously considering this heinous course of action?”

Liam Sharpe looked unsurprised by her presence and unruffled by her tone. He replied, “Yes. We’ve called in Peter Winthrop. Who better to chase down powerful dark witchcraft than a witch hunter?”

4

PETER

Peter watched as the new PEACE cadets filed into the room. He was already picking out the ones who would make it through training and the ones who would wash out. He'd been whipping new recruits into shape for years now, and while there was the occasional surprise, he was almost always right.

He stood at the podium and nodded as they took their seats. Giving lectures wasn't his favorite part of the job. He wanted to be out there doing what he did best—eliminating dangerous witches. But his experience made him one of the best trainers PEACE had.

Just as he could usually tell who would succeed and who would fail, he could also tell which students wanted to do extra credit work with him after class.

A curvy, black-hair woman smiled at him. Her bronzed skin tone made it hard to pin down where her ancestors had come from. He gave her a wink, and she sat in the front row. In fact, the front row ended up being almost exclusively women.

This was Peter's cross to bear.

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