The Last Dragon Lord

XVIII

XVIII

Jasmine stood on a tree stump and watched as a crew of contractors rode roughly into the job site. Several dirt-smeared pickup trucks led the way, followed by bulldozers that threw up splotches of mud. Almost suddenly, the air filled with tough, stifling exhaust, and grinding and roaring and humming and accelerating from all the machinery.

She choked on the thick brown clouds and the fumes stung her eyes. Wiping her eyes, she saw a red pickup truck swerve to a stop.

A man in a denim shirt and jeans jumped out. He had short, cropped red hair and blue eyes that reminded Jasmine of the sky. He was well-built, with a look of wildness on his face like the younger men in college she’d known that were never cut out for school, but for the roads and the great outdoors. He reached into the bed of his pickup and pulled out a hunting rifle. He slammed the door and c****d the rifle. With a holler, he called his men to do the same.

And then a symphony of slamming car doors followed and his crew jumped into the mud with their guns on their shoulders.

Laner walked up next to her and shook his head.

“They sent in the real guns, huh?” he asked.

“Looks like it.”

“They’re not even paying attention,” Jasmine said. “If they were, they’d—”

The man glanced around the job site, and Jasmine wondered how long it would take for him to notice her. After a few seconds, he settled on her and waved.

“You Jasmine?” he shouted.

She jumped off the tree stump. Her foot was wrapped with gauze and one of the elves on the research team had cast a healing spell on her that numbed the pain temporarily. She limped toward the man, waving back.

“That’s me,” she said.

The man’s face lost some of its ruggedness as he searched the job site.

“I got a call to come help you out,” the man said. “I’m Gunther Penrose. You all right?”

Jasmine laughed. “We were all pretty freaked out. We thought it was a monster. But it was just magic.”

“Magic?”

Jasmine turned and walked over to the metal chests. They were opened like clam shells, packed to the top with golden spira coins. She grabbed one of the coins and rubbed it between two fingers. It had an imprint of Old Dark himself on it.

“God, that’s a lot of money,” Gunther said.

“If only we could all keep some of it,” Jasmine said. “There were elven skulls on top of the gold, too. Must have been sacrifices. The crew removed those and we’ve got them in one of our tents for study. I don’t imagine you’d like to see them.”

Gunther was too busy staring at the gold in the chests.

“No, I’m not interested,” he said. “Sure you don’t want me to take one of these cases off your hands?”

“Very sure.”

“So you’re saying that it was magic that caused all that commotion?”

Jasmine nodded. “Whatever it was, it was pent up inside the chests for a really long time. Maybe a thousand years. When we unlocked the chests, we let it out. We still don’t know exactly what it was or who it belonged to, but it’s pretty safe to say that it must have come from Old Dark’s reign.”

“Eh?”

“The old dragon kept caches of magic in different places,” Jasmine said, “along with gold in case he needed them. If he were ever to be weakened, the magic would revive him. You’ve heard the legends, right?”

Color drained from Gunther’s face and his jaw was open.

“Yeah, I guess I’ve heard…the legends.”

“Anyway, the magic flew around here, knocked over a ton of stuff, scared the hell out of us.”

Jasmine pointed to her foot.

“I broke my foot trying to get away,” she said. “But after a few minutes it flew away. Too bad we couldn’t track it. It might have led us to the old dragon’s tomb, if it ever existed in the first place.”

“Maybe that wouldn’t have been so good,” Gunther said. “Considering what a bastard he was. You know.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Jasmine said. She smiled. “But in any case, we don’t need any help. I appreciate you coming, Mr. Penrose.”

She extended her hand. Reluctantly, the man shook it and gave her his firm, leathery hand. Three pumps, and he motioned to his men to leave.

Laner shook his head at them as they climbed into their trucks and began to drive away.

A bulldozer reversed, its loud beeping piercing the area. As it turned around, it crashed into a clump of trees, cracking them in half. They fell into the mud, shaking the ground, and Jasmine and Laner shielded their eyes from the cloud of dust and mud thrown into the air.

When the air settled, the contractors were gone, the sounds of their loud machinery diminishing into the distance.

“Who were those guys, anyway?” Laner asked.

“Miri sent them,” Jasmine said.

“I didn’t know Miri to have contacts in the construction business,” Laner said.

He stared after the trucks, then his eyes drifted down to the fallen trees. He tilted his head at them.

“What’s wrong?” Jasmine asked.

Laner made his way across the job site and knelt near the trees. Jasmine limped after him. When she arrived, Laner was running his hand across a grooved notch where the bulldozer’s teeth had struck a tree. He swiveled and ran his hands along a nearby birch that they had catalogued in their earlier research.

“These notches are the same,” Laner said.

Jasmine compared the two, regarded them in silence, and then after a moment, said, “Could be.”

“No, they are,” Laner said. “What else could have felled a tree like that?”

“A monster, maybe.”

“With what teeth?” Laner asked, incredulously. “Name one magical monster around here with a mouth big enough to do this kind of damage.”

Jasmine pursed her lips. “It’s a weird coincidence, that’s for sure.”

Laner rose, grinding wood chips in his palm.

“They got here awfully quick, too, now that I think about it,” Laner said. “Took us a few hours to find this place for the first time. We had to reverse up and down the bog roads quite a few times.”

“We did, didn’t we?” Jasmine asked.

“If I didn’t know any better, it looks like those guys have been here before.”

Jasmine wanted to reach for her phone, but then she thought the better of it.

Laner faced her. “Elves have a saying for things like this. ‘When you’re fishing and you don’t catch anything, look first for holes in the net. If there are no holes, then look inside yourself.’”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Jasmine asked.

Laner pulled out his phone. His face carried a mixture of sadness, anger, and anxiety. “It means there’s more to all of this than we realize. Call Miri—we need to talk.”