The Dragon's Choice Read online

  THE DRAGON’S CHOICE

  By Wesley Allison

  Smashwords Edition

  The Dragon’s Choice

  Copyright © 2017 by Wesley Allison

  Revision 10-28-17

  All Rights Reserved. This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If sold, shared, or given away it is a violation of the copyright of this work. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual people, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Wesley Allison

  Cover Image Copyright © Terence Mendoza | Dreamstime.com

  ISBN: 9781370319855

  Dedication

  For Vicki, Becky, and John

  Patrons

  Darryl Schnell Robbie Wolff

  To find out about how to be a Patron and support this author’s writing, visit:

  www.patreon.com/wesleyallison

   Senta and the Steel Dragon

  A Plague of Wizards

  By Wesley Allison

  The Dragon’s Choice

  By Wesley Allison

  Chapter One: Zoey and Augie

  It was a warm spring day in Birmisia Colony, and the people of Port Dechantagne were making the most of it. The parks were full of families, watching children play football or eating picnic lunches. Several practice cricket matches were being played, with more than a few spectators. Outdoor cafes were full and there was a concert scheduled in the downtown amphitheater for later that day. Many strolled along the sidewalk, rather than taking a car. However, one young couple was driving their steam-powered carriage northward into the warehouse district on the peninsula. Both looked to be about twenty years old. Both were dressed in expensive and fashionable clothing, his a sharp grey suit with a red waistcoat, and hers a creamy peach day dress trimmed in white lace.

  “I thought we were going to the concert,” said the young woman. She ran her hand over the blond hair that spilled down to her shoulders from beneath the peach tri-corner hat perched atop her head.

  “We are,” he replied, steering to the curb of Seventh and One Half Avenue. “I just have to check something first.”

  Engaging the parking brake, he hopped out of the vehicle, running around back to open the relief cock. A loud whistle of steam escaped the pipe.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, peeling off his driving gloves and tossing them into his seat.

  Then he stepped quickly down the street some twenty feet and disappeared into the narrow space between two warehouses. His destination was a locked door near the rear of the leftmost building, and he was busy fishing the key from his pocket so he didn’t notice the two men coming from the other direction.

  One was a shorter man with a thick chest and muscular arms. He was bald and wore an eye patch. The other was a huge fellow, towering over the young man’s six-foot height; with a huge mop of blond hair that half obscured his face.

  “We’ll be takin’ your wallet,” said the shorter of the two.

  The well-dressed young man looked up, startled.

  “Now see here…” his words were cut off when the giant slammed a fist into his stomach. He doubled over, looking up with wide eyes. His expression was not one of fear, but of shock, as if it was simply inconceivable that someone would lay hands on him. He was helpless as the one-eyed man reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his wallet.

  “We’ll take that watch too.”

  “No…” the young man tried to say.

  The giant took him by the shoulders and slammed him against the building wall. The one-eyed man grabbed his watch by its chain and yanked it from his pocket. One brass button shot off his waistcoat and bounced off the neighboring building’s wall.

  “Don’t feel bad, boy,” said the thief. “It’s all a part of growing up.”

  The two stepped back behind the building and were gone. The young man struggled to take a couple of deep breaths. Then he slowly rose to his feet to find the young woman next to him.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  He shook his head. His eyes brimmed over with angry tears.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said.

  “No,” he said, but she was already gone. “Kafira damn it all,” he growled, punching the corrugated tin wall of the warehouse, leaving a fist-size indentation. Then he took several more deep breaths, carefully straightened his jacket, and bent down to brush the dirt off his trousers. His bowler hat fell off and rolled several feet away. He retrieved it and brushed it off too. When he stood up straight once again, she was back.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “How am I supposed to be?” he said, wiping a stray tear from his face. “I’ve been emasculated twice in one day.”

  “Hardly emasculated. There were two of them and they were no doubt seasoned criminals.”

  “Once by them and once by you,” he accused.

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “You tell me. What did you do?”

  “I just taught them the error of their ways.” She held out her hand, holding his wallet and watch. “Here. Don’t be upset, Augie. You are a very powerful man.”

  “Not the right kind of powerful, in this case. I shouldn’t need my woman to fight my battles for me.”

  “I’m not your woman.”

  “You’re supposed to be.”

  “What I mean to say is, I’m not a woman. I am what I am, and when somebody harms someone I love… well, they must die. It’s as simple as that.”

  “This is my father’s watch,” he said, placing it back in his pocket. “I dare say no one ever took it from him.”

  “You shouldn’t let this bother you.”

  “I’m going to hire a boxing coach.”

  “You don’t need a boxing coach,” she said. “I doubt your father had one. He just acted instead of thinking about it. You’re not a fighter. You’re a thinker. Now don’t look at me that way. I didn’t mean it as a rebuke. Thinking is your strength. Use it to your advantage.”

  “How? Hiring a bodyguard?”

  “You don’t need a bodyguard.” She gave him a toothy grin. “You have me.”

  “They’re dead then?”

  “By now. Eaten by marine reptiles or drowned. I dropped them out in the bay.”

  “Hmm,” he said. “Did I hear you say you loved me?”

  “You might have.”

  “I thought you just loved my money.”

  “Make no mistake. I love your money too.” She placed her hands on either side of his face and kissed him deeply.

  “I love you too, Zoey. Let’s go on to the concert.”

  “Don’t you want to check whatever you were going to check?”

  “No. I don’t really need to.”

  “Come on.”

  “Oh, all right.” He found the key and unlocked the warehouse door, opening it for her. “I was going to surprise you with this next week.”

  “What is it?” She stepped inside.

  “It’s a new car—a cherry red Bromsfeld X.”

  “Ooh, it looks expensive.”

  “It was. Very.”

  “I love it.”

  * * * * *

  Augie leaned over and kissed Zoey on the corner of the mouth. Then he hopped out of the car and hurried over to help her out. She put one hand on his shoulder and cupped his face in the other.

  “Are you feeling better now?”

  “Concerts always make me feel better.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’ll survive,” he said. “That is, I’ll survive if you agree to have dinner with me tomorrow.”

  “You’ll manage to go more than twenty-four hours without me?” She stuck out her lower lip. “I guess I’m not all that d
esirable, after all.”

  “I won’t be without you,” he said. “You’ll be right here the whole time.” He pointed at his head, and then put his hand over his heart. “And right here.”

  She kissed him on the cheek and then leaned in and bit his ear. “You make me feel all squishy inside,” she whispered.

  She giggled as his face turned bright red, and then skipped away to the front door. She watched him climb back into his car, and then went inside. Passing through the foyer into the parlor, she twirled around on a toe and laughed aloud. Her spin took her a little more than 360 degrees and her laugh stopped abruptly when she found herself facing Senta, who had been, up until now, unobserved in the corner chair.

  “Zoantheria.”

  Senta Bly, in addition to being the world’s most powerful sorceress, was Zoey’s mistress, almost like a mother, having looked after her since her hatching. She stood up and stepped forward. The two looked enough alike to be sisters, though Zoantheria’s appearance was the result of magic.

  “What have you been doing, Pet?”

  “Um, I was at the, um concert,” replied Zoey.

  “You were with that boy again.”

  “He was at the concert too. With me. And Augie’s not a boy. He’s a man.” She smiled. “He’s a very, very handsome man. And he’s wonderful. He’s so nice and so nice to me.”

  “And he’s rich,” said Senta.

  “And he’s very, very rich,” purred Zoey.

  “He’s a handsome, rich man and you are a dragon.”

  “What does that have to do with anything? Does being a dragon mean that I can’t be happy?”

  “It means that someday, young Lord Augustus Marek Virgil Dechantagne will find a nice girl and marry her and it won’t be you, because you are a dragon!”

  “I know I’m a dragon. Quit throwing that in my face. I act like a dragon all the time. Why, just a few hours ago, I killed two people.”

  “Taking care of criminals is a job for the police,” said Senta with a dismissive wave. “It is not befitting of a goddess.”

  “You were spying on me?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. I had to do some divination magic. I was getting a pimple.” The sorceress stepped close and draped her arm around the dragon in human form. “You’ve been trying so hard to live like a human. You’re not eating right. You’ve only slept here and there for the last two weeks. You can’t keep that up.”

  “I’ll sleep for a week or two,” said Zoey. “After tomorrow evening. I have a dinner date with Augie.”

  “At least go get a proper meal. I don’t want you to accidentally eat your young man.”

  “Yes, you’re right, of course.”

  The two walked through the dining room and out the door into the garden. Senta stood watching, with arms crossed, as Zoey released the magic that held her in human form. Suddenly she filled the garden. The size of a locomotive engine even with her wings held in, the dragon was covered in metallic scales that reflected a pinkish coral color in the sunlight. Her head, alone larger than she had been as a woman, was covered with spiky horns, and long whiskers hung down around her mouth.

  “You’re much more beautiful this way,” said Senta.

  Zoey blew a smoke ring out of her right nostril. Then suddenly she was gone—shot into the sky, seemingly with no effort. For a second, she made a streak across the sky, like lightning, and then she was gone.

  Senta sighed, and then turned and went back inside.

  * * * * *

  The seas around the continent of Mallon were extremely dangerous, filled with a whole encyclopedia of deadly creatures from small poisonous invertebrates to large carnivorous fish, salt-water crocodiles, and dozens of types of sharks. The dominant species of the entire underwater world here though, were the kronosaurs. Typically thirty to thirty-five feet long and weighing in at around eleven tons, they were built like a crocodile with an especially large mouth and flippers instead of legs. They feasted on giant fish, sharks, and other marine reptiles and they did so with alacrity.

  On this particular day, in the waters some four miles northeast of the city of Port Dechantagne, one kronosaur had just finished feasting on a twenty-foot long cretoxyrhina shark, and now floated near the surface to take in the warmth of the sun. The cretoxyrhina shark was no small prey, especially a fully-grown one, but this particular kronosaur was the king of its undersea world. Forty-three feet long and half again as heavy as the others of its kind that hid when it slid through the water, it had fed on creatures far scarier than any shark. Now it rolled onto its back and lifted his flippers up into sunshine.

  It was at that moment that it was hit by an object shooting down from the sky like a meteor. The force pushed the great beast down into the depths. It didn’t feel the claws grabbing hold of it and pulling it back to the surface. The kinetic energy of the collision had killed it. The coral dragon lifted the kronosaur to the surface. It was too heavy to carry up into the air, so she flew toward land, dragging it through the water. Reaching the water’s edge, she heaved it up onto the rocky shore, and began to feast. She tore off huge hunks of the carcass, chewing through meat, fat, skin, and bones without regard to the blood coating her face and neck. Seemingly of its own accord, her long barbed tail wove a complex pattern through the air, warning away any potential scavengers.

  “Thus, as the bass takes the minnow, so does the pike take the bass.”

  Zoantheria looked around for the source of the deep voice. There seemed to be no one there. Then she noticed the bright crimson cardinal perched on the branch of a dead pine tree.

  “Am I supposed to be the pike in this little allegory?” she asked.

  “Maybe I’m the pike and you’re the bass. Watch your tone with me, child.”

  “Yes, My Lord.”

  “You stink like a human.”

  She shrugged.

  “Why are you here, My Lord, and in that disguise?”

  “I woke up and my slaves told me you hadn’t been to see me the entire year I had been asleep. That will not do. You can’t spend all your time cavorting with humans. It’s unbecoming of a goddess.”

  “Funny. You know, she said the exact same thing to me earlier today.” The coral dragon paused, took another bite of her kill, and then continued. “Ah, that’s why you’re not here as yourself. She might see you.”

  “Foolish female, human spell-casters cannot scry a dragon.”

  “She can. She did it to me earlier.”

  “What do I care?” asked the bird, but he tilted his head to look around. “I’ve eaten her like for breakfast—literally.”

  “You know, she knows that spell. She could be any random sparrow.”

  “I’ll deal with her, but on my own timetable. Of course I might not even have to. Perhaps she’ll do it for me. She has no idea what to do with her own power. She throws it around with wild abandon. It’s like watching a monkey with a gun.”

  “So I didn’t visit you,” said Zoey. “What exactly do you want from me?”

  “I want you.”

  “You what now?”

  “You shall be my mate, Zoantheria, the first that I have taken in a dozen centuries. That whelp shall not have you.”

  “Wha… what whelp?”

  “The God of the Sky.”

  “Bessemer? He doesn’t want me, I can assure you of that. He has absolutely no interest in me, certainly not a romantic interest.”

  “Romance,” he spat. “It’s going to take a century just to wring out the human ideas contaminating you. Of course he wants you. Who wouldn’t want the Goddess of the Sea?”

  “I’m not a goddess,” said Zoey. “I’m just a dragon.”

  “They are one and the same,” said the red bird. “I shall expect a visit from you within the fortnight, Zoantheria. You must pay your respects to your future lord and master.”

  The cardinal flitted up and away to the southeast.

  “Yes, My Lord Voindrazius,” said Zoey.

  She
turned back to the kronosaur and sliced down its belly with her razor sharp claws. The top half of a massive shark slid from its opened stomach, out onto the rocky ground.

  “Yum, shark.”

  * * * * *

  Zoey skipped down the steps from the front door and into Augie Dechantagne’s arms. Her brand new purple and pink day dress was trimmed with black fur cuffs and collar. The black top hat didn’t hide her new hairstyle of cascading golden ringlets.

  “Shall we go?” she asked, after giving him a kiss and a squeeze.

  “Wait. Let me look at you. There’s something different about you.”

  Her smile slipped a bit.

  “I know what it is. You’re even more beautiful than you were yesterday. Are you hungry?”

  “Famished,” she said, grinning.

  He helped her into the car and then hurried around to the driver’s side. A moment later, they were shooting down the red brick street. Though already past seven, the sun was only just setting and it was still quite warm. Sliding over to the center of the seat, she took Augie’s arm and leaned her head onto his shoulder.

  They stopped across the street from Café Etta. After stepping down, Zoey took her companion’s arm once again, and together, they hurried across the busy thoroughfare.

  Café Etta was busy and there was a line of waiting diners, but Augie led her to the front, expecting to be seated immediately, which they were. The Mirsannan host led them to a table just left of the center of the dining area. Café Etta featured open-air dining, though it had hardwood flooring. It was surrounded by a waist-high banister, above which were strung colorful lights. A member of the restaurant staff was even now lighting them with a match at the end of a long pole. The host first pulled out Zoey’s chair for her and then Augie’s.