Haru circled the building once, checking for signs of any security patrol, before finally locating a safe location to set down where they would be hidden by the trees.
Adrian deftly slid from Haru’s back to the ground, allowing Haru to shift into his human form. The scent of diesel and humans was much thicker now. The steady hum of an engine running drifted through the fenced area.
“What’s that noise?” Haru murmured.
“A generator. Probably powering the lights and any surveillance equipment.”
“So, we need to destroy it.”
“For starters.” Adrian rubbed his hand across his jaw and over his mouth. “The problem is that we don’t know how many armed guards are waiting inside. Could be five. Could be fifty.”
“I can handle fifty.”
Adrian huffed a wry laugh and shoved his elbow into Haru’s stomach. “Let’s not if we can help it.”
“Then we need to lure them outside where we can pick them off one at a time. Breaking the generator could do that.”
Adrian grunted. “That might lure out one or two poor schmucks stuck fixing shit. That won’t get all the guards. I wonder…”
The human’s voice drifted off, and Haru moved to stand beside him so he could clearly see his face. The heavy cloud cover had broken up in the past few minutes, and thin moonlight gilded Adrian’s face. His hair was beautifully windblown, and his eyes sparkled with wicked menace. He looked like a lost God of Mischief or a magical creature that belonged to the woods.
“What are you thinking?”
“Exactly how well can you control fire, Mister Dragon?”
“I’m a dragon. I’m the master of fire.”
“You better be, or we could end up killing Shey if he’s in there.”
In Haru’s defense,things did not get out of hand because he couldn’t control fire. It was because humans were nonsensical creatures who had strange urges to make things worse.
After locating the generator, Haru set it on fire rather than allowing Adrian to sneak inside the fenced area to break it himself. Once the building was without electricity, Haru used his talons to cut through the metal fence that lined the perimeter.
While a pair of humans charged out of the building and ran over to the burning generator, he and Adrian slipped onto the grounds and hid behind a large, unmarked box truck. Haru created asmallfire on the side of the building, which forced the would-be mechanics to become firefighters. One of them grabbed a bucket. They must have assumed it already contained water. Only it didn’t.
The liquid was highly flammable, and the fire, which had beensmall, exploded as it was hit with the liquid. In a matter of seconds, fire engulfed the entire western wall of the building. Angry yellow-and-orange flames spread across the building, chasing away the darkness and filling the night with loud crackling. Shadows retreated into the forest to lunge forward as the fire danced in the wind.
“Fucking hell,” Adrian muttered.
“That is bigger than you had in mind,” Haru stated.
“No shit.”
Adrian had barely spoken when two more men raced out and added to the panicked shouting and arm-waving.
“Well, I guess we should get rid of them and see if we can figure out how many are inside.”
“I can kill them?”
“Question,and then kill.”
Haru rushed from their hiding spot, snatching up one of the men as he hurried over to a tiny rectangular building that appeared to be a storage shed. He threw the beefy figure into the building, causing the wood to break and buckle. As the man shook his head and peered about, Haru grabbed him again and lifted him from the ground, his toes barely scraping the dirt.
“How many guards are in the building?” Haru barked.
“What? Hey!”
“Tedious,” Haru grumbled and slammed the man into the building a second time. This time his head went through the side of the shed. After he pulled him out, he discovered blood leaking from the man’s skull, and he was no longer conscious. “Even more tedious.”
