Don't Feed the Dragon: A Dragon Rider Urban Fantasy Novel (Setting Fires with Dragons Book 1)

Chapter 1

Ever broken into a mansion in New Orleans? Let’s just say it ain’t the “Big Easy.”

As I stood under a second story balcony with Louise, the name I’d given my seven-footer bullwhip, I caught a glimpse of the gibbous moon over the rooftop. And with it, the sound of jazz filtering from the French Quarter.

“Man, Percy,” I whispered, “didn’t I tell you nighttime in this city is unlike anywhere else? I mean, compare this to Kentucky where I grew up ... Who am I kidding? There is no comparison to Kentucky.”

A pause. Then, through the Bluetooth in my ear, “No. You never said that.”

“Well, I meant to.” I eyed the distance between me and the edge of the wrought-iron balcony. Only twelve feet up—I’d climbed the backs of elephants taller than that. “I’m going in.”

“Let me help you,” Percy said into my ear. “At least up to the window.”

“Nope.” I shot Louise up with her tenterhooks extended. Her cracker wrapped around the railing and held on the first try. “I need you keeping watch on the street.”

“The street’s dead,” he sighed.

I gave Louise a tug and found her steady. When I jumped onto her and climbed her like a rope, she didn’t loosen a smidge—not until I climbed over the railing and unhooked her. She was my first-class girl.

I wound Louise up, replacing her at my left hip as I stepped to the French doors. “Hey Perce, how much would you bet me this rich guy left his bedroom door unlocked?”

“I wouldn’t bet you anything,” he said. “Because I’d lose.”

I reached out with a gloved hand, tried the knob. It turned like butter, and I smiled as I pushed it open. “That’d be smart of you.”

Inside, the moonlight provided my only view of the room. I unhooked my flashlight from my belt, flicked it on. A king sized bed greeted me, perfectly made.

Didn’t make it himself, I thought. If I knew one thing about members of the gang known as “the Scarred,” it was that they’d never pick up a broom except to clobber someone. No way they were doing their own dishes, sweeping their own floors.

Particularly this one.

I swept my flashlight around the bedroom. Empty, clean, austere. I needed to get downstairs, into his office; that’s where I’d find the dirt. If he was who I thought he was, he’d have the evidence I was looking for. The Scarred didn’t hide their identities well enough. Not from me, at least.

I opened the bedroom door, peeked out. The house was predictably empty; I’d waited until the car had left the driveway. 

“This one knows how to live,” I murmured as I came to the grand staircase. On the wall, I flashed the light on a portrait of a family—husband, wife, three children. I stared into his face. “And he sure knows how to procreate.”

“Gross,” Percy said.

He didn’t look evil, but did anyone ever really look evil in a family portrait? I stared a second longer, as though I could pick out evidence of his wrongdoings. It was always in the eyes. I swore I could see it there.

I lowered the flashlight, started
down the stairs. “Hey, procreating’s perfectly natural.”

“Could you please stop using that
word?”

“How about reproducing?” 

“Worse. Much worse.”

I chuckled to myself. As big as he was, Percy was still a kid at heart. And nothing made kids more uncomfortable than talking about birds, bees and fornication. “You’re the boss.” 

I came to the base of the stairs, turning a slow circle. Real nice digs—earned through blood, I imagined. Lots of it. “See anything out there?”

“I’ll tell you if I see something,” Percy said. “I’ve got night vision twenty times better than you, you know.”

“And you can smell a fart in a typhoon,” I added as I approached a second set of French doors.

When I opened them, my flashlight shone over a classic office. In fact, this whole house couldn’t be more classic—big wooden desk, big-screen Mac atop it, a leather armchair in one corner. 

He even had a case of cigarillos on the end table.

“Don’t mind if I do.” I opened the cigar case, lifting one out as I replaced my flashlight at my belt. I turned on the small end-table lamp and rolled the little cigar between my fingers. “Straight from Cuba.”

“What’s straight from Cuba?”

“This here cigarillo I’m going to smoke later tonight.” I tucked it behind my ear, turned toward the desk. When I opened the drawer directly under the computer, I found a stack of bills. Decoys, all of them, just utilities and the mortgage.

“Smoking’s bad for you,” Percy said.

“You’ll see the irony in that statement when you’re older.” I sat in the comfy office chair, lifting out the manila folders. I felt around the insides of the drawer, searching for an imperfection.

Bingo.

The bottom of the drawer came loose, and beneath it I found the real drawer. And in it, a thick manila folder.

I yanked my latex gloves out of my belt, replaced my all purpose gloves with these thinner ones. Then I lifted out the folder and rolled the chair left to splay the first folder open on top of the desk. “Ah, well would you look at this.”

Before me lay a stack of sheets profiling… gnomes. How’d I know? Because under the name on the first sheet, the race was listed as gnome. And paperclipped to the corner of the page was a photo of who I assumed was the gnome himself. Small, cute, childlike.

I flipped through the stack. Nine profiles, all with photos. 

“Look at what?” Percy asked.

“Say, Perce.” I flicked one of the photos with my finger; this gnome looked awfully childlike. “Do gnomes have children?”

“How should I know?” Then, “Is this guy the one you’re looking for or isn’t he?”

I was about to shrug, to tell him I didn’t know yet. But then my eyes fell on a framed portrait of the homeowner and a few of his buddies standing together on a golf course.

I picked up the portrait, stared at it. That could be Peter standing half in shadow—the ex-vampire I’d spent five years hunting after he’d taken part in the murder of my family. Back then he’d been the right-hand vamp to the coven’s leader, and now it was very possible I was staring at a picture of him teeing off.

Mortality really was a game changer.

But that suited me fine. While he was getting fat, I was hunting the members of the coven one by one. I was going to make them pay for what they did to my family.

Every. Last. One. Of. Them.

“Yeah,” I murmured, tapping the glass frame. “This guy’s connected to them.”

This man whose home office I was sitting in would lead me to the Scarred.

I set down the portrait, returned to the manila folder. Whatever this guy was up to, it wasn’t good. Not unless he ran an Other adoption agency…and I somehow doubted that.

This smelled like gnome trafficking. Did Peter have his finger in this pie, too?

“Hey—remember the story of the king, the pauper, and the genie?” Percy asked through my earpiece.

I made a face. This really wasn’t the time, but it was awfully cute. “Of course I do. A king and a pauper discovered a cave with a genie inside. The genie gave them each a wish. The king wished for—”

“I remember all that,” Percy said. “But what would you wish for, Tara? Don’t give me anything cheesy like in the show.”

“That wasn’t cheesy,” I said. “That was beautiful.”

“Whatever,” he snorted. “Give me your honest answer—what would you really wish for?”

“Well I don’t quite know, Perce. What would you wish for?”

He gave a great sigh, full of longing. “All the mutton I could eat.”

I half-smiled. “Now who’s being cheesy? What would you really wish for, Percy?”

“I don’t know,” he said after a pause. “It’s such a hard question.”

“You keep thinking on it.” I replaced the folder in the drawer. It was otherwise empty. I put the false bottom back in, spun the chair around. “Where else would this guy keep his dirt?” My circus days had taught me that anyone who moved around a lot—like I suspected this man had—had a keener instinct for keeping their valuables hidden.

I stood, approached a bookcase on the far wall.

“Tara.”

I paused. “What is it, Perce?”

“I don’t know how to put this…”

I glanced toward the shuttered window. “Tell me.”

“Well, there’s seven tiny ninjas breaking into the house.”