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Curiosity burned inside of Robb – and, perhaps against his own better judgment, he asked, “And what would they be?”
Anne leaned forward ever so slightly, the tiniest hint of excitement sparkling in her previously dull eyes.
“Tell me, Mr. Lockwood,” she said. “Would you like to wake a dragon from its slumber? Not a dragon shifter. An actual dragon.”
Robb blinked, and his mouth ran away from him before he could stop it. “What do you mean?”
What on earth is she on about?!
“There is a dragon beneath the earth in country Victoria,” Anne said, her voice lighting up with barely repressed excitement, “that has been sleeping for decades with its immense hoard. We here at Hargreaves intend to wake that dragon.”
Horror overcame Robb, leaving his throat so tight that he could barely get any words out. Such a situation would be beyond catastrophic, both for the dragon and the general population.
He knew there were sleeping beasts out there – things even he as a shifter and as someone who was pretty familiar with a lot of weirdness as a member of the Agency hadn’t had any idea about.
His team had had a very close run-in with one that had been slumbering beneath the waters of Sydney Harbour for who knew how many centuries. Just for once, Hargreaves seemed to have had nothing to do with that – waking it had been the work of some evil alicorn shifters, who had nonetheless seemed just as megalomaniacal as Hargreaves ever had been, and it had only been convinced to go back to sleep thanks to Euan’s mate Delilah and some alicorn mind-reading powers that had temporarily been gifted to her. That was the only reason it hadn’t destroyed the whole city, instead only leaving a few moored yachts sunk and some minor damage to the Opera House to show for its curtailed rampage.
But even if Hargreaves had had nothing to do with waking the thing under Sydney Harbour, the incident had obviously given them ideas.
They clearly wanted a giant sleeping mystery beast of their own under their control. And Robb didn’t really have to have much imagination to figure out why.
They will succeed over our dead bodies, the dingo growled.
Robb agreed fervently.
Forcing his mouth to work, he managed to say, “And why do you think I would want to help you do such a thing? And how would you even control a dragon, if you managed to wake it in the first place?”
“Why, Mr. Lockwood, I’m glad you asked,” she said, her mouth stretching into a smile that her face clearly wasn’t used to… and which wasn’t a pleasant sight to behold.
I think I preferred it when she looked like a soulless corporate drone, Robb thought with a suppressed shiver.
“The question of how to control the dragon is none of your concern,” she continued after a moment. “I have my ways – dragons might be powerful, but they’re also strictly hierarchical. If they sense a beast with a larger hoard and a stronger will than their own, they can’t help but submit. It’s in their nature. And since Hargreaves and all its holdings are mine, and since it will sense the power of my will, I have no doubt I will be able to control the creature from the moment it opens its eyes.”
Everything Anne had said about dragons was perfectly true, as far as anyone knew, and yet…
She’s clearly crazy, he thought, feeling slightly dazed as Anne stood and pressed an intercom button on the wall. How does she know for sure the dragon will see her as its superior? Is that really a risk worth taking?
“Bruce,” she said crisply, her professional veneer having returned. “Your services are required.”
I guess it’s true what they say about the banality of evil, Robb thought as he struggled unsuccessfully against his cuffs, and wondered just what Bruce was going to bring to the table.
Robb had trained hard over the years to resist all kinds of torture, but if there was one thing he could say for Hargreaves, it was that they were incredibly inventive when it came to coming up with new ways of causing pain.
Whatever it was they were going to do, though, he was going to resist it, or die in the process. There was no way he was going to be a party to Hargreaves unleashing a dragon upon the world. Absolutely none.
Strolling over to the table, Anne picked up Robb’s phone, before bringing it around to Robb’s cuffed hands and pressing his thumb to the fingerprint sensor, then the DNA scanner. The phone sprang to life, and Robb cursed internally. The absolute last thing he needed was the head of Hargreaves accessing his phone.
“Seventeen missed calls in the past half hour?” she mused, idly scrolling through them. “You’re quite the popular gentleman. The rumors I’d heard about you being a joyless prig must’ve been wrong.”
Seventeen?!
Robb’s heart churned in his chest. It was bad enough that he’d been captured, but now it seemed like someone else was in trouble as well – and he wasn’t there to help them.
“Six calls from Joe,” Anne said. “That’s your codename for Agent Euan Hawkins, isn’t it? Two from Brian – Agent Trent Bowman, I believe that one is – two from Nick…”
She rattled them off one by one, clearly familiar with all of his team members’ actual names and the codenames he kept their details saved under in his phone.
At this point, though, he was less disturbed by the fact that she knew so much about his team, and more by the fact that they had obviously desperately been trying to make contact with him.
