Page 50 of Claim the Dragon
Steele shrugged.“There’s other ways of figuring out if there’re preternaturals in the building.”
“Yeah?How?”Reese asked.
“First, we’ve got to get into the building,” he said and stepped out into the street.
He could hear Magnum chuckle behind him and knew that Reese was frowning behind his back.They came to a stop at the row of thick yellow tape that had been wrapped around street poles from one corner to the next.Six enforcer vehicles were double-parked in front of the building, blocking in the vehicle marked “fire marshall” and two more with the fire department logo.
“Okay, genius, how do you propose we walk up in there?”Reese asked.
Steele looked to Magnum, who nodded at him.“Easy,” he said.
Then he and Magnum both walked away from Reese, getting closer to the group of enforcers that were supposed to be guarding the front door.
“Whoa, guys, you can’t be here,” one of the enforcers said holding up his hands as Steele and Magnum lifted the tape so they could walk under it.
He was a tall, slender guy with yellow-gold hair peeking from beneath the fitted cap the enforcers wore.
“Officer Grant,” Steele said after reading his badge.“We’re here to see your supervisor.”He walked closer to the enforcer and watched the stern look the guy was now giving him.
The minute Officer Grant opened his mouth to speak—probably to tell Steele he wasn’t going to see any supervisor today—Steele pursed his lips and blew the slightest breath full of sleep dust in the man’s face.The enforcer’s legs wobbled and before he could fall Magnum caught him and laid him gently on the ground.
They could hear the sound of guns being drawn and feet clattering as the other enforcers ran toward them.
Magnum pushed his sunglasses up farther on his nose and looked at Steele who rolled his head on his shoulders.
“Let’s go,” Steele said.
Both he and Magnum turned toward the other enforcers and blew sleep dust in their direction.And because they’d tried to all come after them at once, neither Magnum nor Steele moved to buffer the fall when the dust took effect and each of them hit the ground like dominoes.
Steele looked over his shoulder to see Reese still standing on the other side of the tape.“You comin’, buddy?”he asked with a smirk.
Reese gave him the middle finger and snapped the tape apart before walking through.
There were still people moving around inside the hotel and Steele didn’t want to put them all to sleep, even if it was just a temporary slumber, because that would risk more exposure and Theo wouldn’t like that.He pointed to the stairs instead and Magnum and Reese followed him.They were able to get up to the twenty-second floor using the steps but above that was taped off, and they could hear a number of people on the floor above.
“What now?”Reese asked, but before any of them could answer he continued, “You hear that?”
The three of them stood on the stairs in silence.Drakon hearing, like all their other senses, was heightened and some with sonic power could actually hear through walls as thick as steel.They didn’t have to be that powerful to hear the soft footfalls coming toward them.Reese stood at the bottom of the stairs, bracing his body for whatever was coming toward them.In his human form his power of indestructibility was like a force field.As a dragon it was a lethal weapon that allowed him to get closer to any enemy than anyone else.
Magnum always carried a gun.He reached behind his back and pulled the long-nozzle silver-plated weapon and held it in front of him.Steele preferred hand-to-hand combat first and foremost, but he also had a gun.He didn’t get a chance to draw it because a woman came around the small turn from the stairs on the twenty-first floor to the stairs on the twenty-second.Simultaneously a door on the twenty-second floor going to the twenty-third opened.
Steele spun around and grabbed the arm of the guy coming through the twenty-third-floor door, pulling him hard and then releasing, so that the gun the guy carried bounced off the opposite wall.Reese only had to reach out a hand, grabbing the woman by her neck.The man knocked his head on the wall a bit too hard and slumped to the ground, out cold.The woman on the other hand, bared her sharp fangs and hissed at Reese.
He dropped her instantly, but stood over her, daring her to move.
“You can kill me but then you won’t learn who’s really after that dagger,” she said.
Steele and Magnum both recognized the woman who’d been sucked down a storm drain in an alley a few months ago.Her hair was lighter now, almost white, but still cut low to her head and her eyes flashed a brilliant gold, two distinct contrasts to her golden-brown hue.
She was also the woman Ziva had been involved with at some point.
“Let her up,” Magnum told Reese.
“Your name’s Enes,” Steele said, coming down the steps behind Magnum.
Reese stepped away from her but only far enough so she could get up off the floor.She rubbed her neck as she cut her eye at him, then turned her attention to Magnum and Steele.
“You were at Twilight a couple weeks ago,” she said, looking directly at Steele.
