Page 195 of Nobody Told Me Thrift Shops Sell Stolen Dragon Heirlooms

The baton would have been a problem for my human body.

In dragon form, it was an irritation.

The man came at me low, aiming for the inside of my foreleg where the scales thinned near the joint. He was trained. That annoyed me. I let him come close enough to think the strike might land, then swept my tail across the floor.

He hit the wall and didn’t get up.

The rifleman fired.

The round struck my shoulder and sparked off scale, not harmless but far from fatal. Pain flashed hot and brief. I turned my head toward him.

He lowered the rifle by an inch.

I opened my jaws and exhaled a narrow stream of fire along the floor between us. The man erupted in flames and shrieks of agony. I hated to waste a life, but I wouldn’t chance one of these men harming Quinn or Max where they were huddled in the corner.

Dimitris glanced over. “Show off.”

I couldn’t answer in this form, but I bared my teeth.

His smile widened. “Touchy.”

Another construct hit me from the side.

I slammed into a display wall hard enough to fracture the glass. Shelves shook. Somewhere, something priceless fell and shattered.

Dimitris made an offended sound.

I drove my claws into the construct’s shoulder and dragged it away from the detonator table. It had no nerves. No fear. No blood. It swung again, and pain burst through my ribs as a stone fist struck behind my foreleg.

I held my grip and pulled heat up from my chest, opening my jaws, burning through the construct’s shoulder.

Stone split. Iron softened. The arm came free in my claws.

Luke’s expression sharpened.

Ah, so he hadn’t known what my fire could do.

Good.

Dimitris saw it too.

“Oh,” he said, delighted. “That explains it.”

I snapped my head toward him.

“Why your fire felt so good,” he said. “Hotter than expected.”

I didn’t have time to hate that sentence properly as Luke spoke a word that made the air fold in on itself.

Pressure struck my chest. I slid backward across broken glass, claws scoring deep lines into the stone floor as I stopped myself short of the detonator wires. Dimitris threw fire toward Luke, but it bent away, diverted by a clear shield that shimmered once and vanished.

“Your guards are down,” Luke said. “Your alarms are dead. Your vault is half-open. Be wise for once and open the rest.”

Dimitris’s smile thinned. “You wound me.”

“I intend to.”

The lights flared. Every loose object in the room lifted at once. Knives. Shattered glass. Bronze fragments. Pieces of carved stone. The air filled with debris and intent.