Dragon Lost Read online

  Dragon Lost

  Dragon Thief Book One

  Lisa Manifold

  Copyright 2018 Dragon Lost by Lisa Manifold

  Cover: Steven Novak

  Model photography: Neo Stock Photography

  Model: Daniel Gemsa

  All Rights Reserved. No portion of this book may be used without the express permission of the author and/or the publisher. Inquires may be made to:

  Ocean Top Press

  [email protected]

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Enter the world of the Dragon Thief…

  Lagniappe

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Written by Lisa Manifold

  Enter the world of the Dragon Thief…

  One last heist and I’m out of here. Except today I woke up as a dragon, and now someone is trying to kill me. Yeah, a dragon. You know, teeth, claws, blue scales, furniture exploding under my massive form… I don’t have time for this.

  Lagniappe

  (That means a little something extra!)

  Want to meet Aodan before he exploded into a dragon? Click the image below!

  Dedication

  Always to my family.

  Jimmy, Cooper, Dale & Eve, Mom, Mom, Daddy, Dad, Dick, Liz, Shannon, and Mike.

  And my bonus family of Corinne & Rachel.

  To Grandma Mazie,

  Who took me in and squeezed my hand with love from the very beginning.

  To my readers - especially Ms. Jan N. and Kristy.

  All the folks I get to meet at events

  and my Advance Readers –

  I love you all.

  And to Imagine Dragons, Lady Gaga, and B0RNS. They carried me through.

  Prologue

  The woman held the sleeping boy.

  “Oh, my sweet boy. I am sorry,” she said.

  The sun moved across the room, and still the woman held the boy, rocking back and forth, singing softly and stroking his face and hair. Tears would fall down her face occasionally. Even more so, one of the tears would fall on the sleeping boy.

  A knock on the door made her jump. She glanced up from the child at the door fearfully, tightening her hold on him.

  He stirred a little. But he didn’t wake up.

  Inhaling deeply, the woman pulled herself up and wiped at the tears on her face. She looked at the child once more.

  Blowing on her hand, she ran her hand over the boy’s head. A faint blue glow sparked and then faded.

  “You are still there,” she said.

  Then, still cuddling him, she went to the door.

  A young woman with a brown bob, wearing a skirt and jacket with a white blouse and low-heeled shoes.

  “Hi,” the woman said softly.

  “Hi Marion,” the woman with the little boy said.

  Neither spoke.

  Marion said, “Can I come in?”

  The woman stood back, and opened the door wider.

  Marion walked in.

  “Do you have the bag?”

  The woman nodded. “It’s over there,” she pointed with her chin.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Marion said, her words coming out in a rush.

  The woman bowed her head, and brushed the boy’s cheek. “I do. I know you don’t understand and you have been wonderful, trying to help. But there’s no other way. I must.”

  Marion pursed her lips. Then she opened her mouth as if to say something, but closed it before any words came out.

  “All right,” she said. “I’m ready to go whenever you want me to.”

  The woman looked up, and the tear tracks were visible on her face. “I’ll never be ready, but since no time is good, let’s do this now.”

  Marion took a few steps and picked up the duffle bag the woman had indicated a few moments before. Hesitatingly, she walked back to the woman, and held out her arms.

  The woman pulled the boy close, holding him to her chest. Then with a muffled sob, she put the boy into Marion’s arms.

  “If you—” Marion began.

  The woman walked to the window. “Just go. Please, go,” she said.

  Marion waited for a moment, then slowly went to the door, and let herself out.

  The click of the door echoed in the room.

  On either side of the door, a woman cried.

  1

  A noisy thief is a dead thief… so of course this was the moment that I was clinging to a dusty beam and trying not to scream for my life. This was supposed to be my last job—the one that would set me up and get me the hell out of here.

  I clamped my hand over my mouth as I flattened myself onto the ceiling beam, trying to become invisible. Down below me, a circle of light popped into existence. It kept getting larger, until it grew to the size of a doorway, and then a man stepped out of it.

  My practice of getting in—my skills, really—and stealing whatever I was hired to steal, then getting out without a sound or any sort of disturbance at all was being tested right now. I prayed that I’d make it through. The light was so bright it was making me dizzy. I squeezed my eyes shut, the refrain of “noise equals death” kept playing in my head even as my eyes tried to take in what I was seeing.

  Focus, Aodan! The bag. Get the damned bag. Ignore the guy in the light.

  Yeah, yeah, I know stealing is wrong. I closed my eyes again, and forced myself to breathe, in and out, in and out, quiet and steady. The breathing in and out was a challenge, too. I had the oddest sensation of smoke in the back of my throat that made me want to cough.

  I didn’t have a choice, however. I had a job. You got hired to do it, you took the deposit, and you did the job. That’s how it was… that’s what I was doing. I didn’t get involved any further than that.

  And the guy I was stealing from? A lot more wrong than me. I stifled the snicker creeping up my throat. The whole I’m bad but you’re worse thing. Sounds like a crutch, right? Not really. The fact that I couldn’t stand him was like the client sliding me a bonus.

  Not to lean on the ‘but he’s worse’ thing, but he really is worse than me. He’s also a giant asshat.

  I sent up a sorry to the heavens, or whatever. Wherever it was my foster mother Tina was. She hated cussing. When I would do it in front of her, her hand would whip out and flick the edge of my ear to remind me that a lady was present. How she managed to flick the same place every time, regardless of which ear it was, no matter the situation bordered on gifted.

  Mea culpas to Tina managed, I thought about the job. I didn’t think about the guy stepping through the wall of light, who was still down there. Was there a trap door in the floor I’d missed in my scan of the plans? Where the hell had that light come from? And why was this happening tonight?

  I had planned this out. Nothing should have gone wrong. But it had. It had gone wrong in a way where I wasn’t sure of my next move. So here I am, trapped on a beam in a warehouse. If I’m caught, I’m dead. There’s no other outcome—either I get out alive, and life gets better, or I die.

  That’s it.

  Da
mn it.

  The disorienting light. The choking smoke… if I wasn’t careful, I was going to fall. I swallowed back a sneeze and sent up another prayer to Saint Dismas, the patron saint of thieves. What? Just about every other sad case in the world had a saint. Why not me? Not that I was normally a sad case, but at the moment, I most certainly was.

  I don’t understand why my body isn’t working like it should. There’s some weird stuff going on. I don’t feel right, don’t feel like myself. If I can’t get it together, the very least of my worries is going to be falling off this beam. A fall and the subsequent noise would attract the attention of not only light boy, but the killer muscle that I knew lurked somewhere nearby. Even if they were on the other side of the warehouse, they’d hear me fall on my ass.

  And when I say killer muscle, I mean three huge guys who kill when told.

  Shit.

  My continued need to sneeze is distracted by light boy. He’s moving around, and then I see he’s struggling with someone else, a woman. Her hair is flying, and she opens her mouth, but before she can say anything, he throws her off of him. Her hands reach out, and he pushes her away. Without warning, his voice rings out in the empty quiet of the warehouse.

  “You stupid woman!” He pulls back his foot and kicks into the light. I hear a small cry, like an animal that’s been hurt. I know it’s the woman, and I want to help—but I can’t. The man looks around, says something in a language I don’t understand. But I get tone, and boy, is there a tone.

  He steps into the light after her and then the light winks out.

  I blink and I can still see the edge of the circle each time I close my eyes.

  What just happened?

  Why did I take this job, anyway?

  Two Days Earlier

  This was it. One last score. One last time I had to squeeze into a too-small place, or some dusty hole, or any other shitty little hiding spot to steal for someone else.

  This score would allow me—and Margrite—to get the hell out of here and start over. In a place where no one knew us, and no one would care. We’d have enough cash that we could live a life where no one cared what we did.

  I thought about it as I made my way home. Luke found me in the nameless dive I frequented and told me that someone was looking for something that required a certain set of skills to retrieve. That there was one hell of a reward on the other side if I could get that something for them.

  Just as my mind began to calculate how easy it would be to live with that much green on an island somewhere, Luke dropped the catch.

  Because there’s always a catch.

  Caleb was the person had the something. Caleb. My nemesis. The asshole. The guy I would run over, and then drive back and forth over a few times, should the chance present itself. Why the bloodthirsty thoughts? Well, he was not a good guy, and he’d hurt a lot of people like me, like Margrite. Just people trying to get by, kids usually. Since kids aren’t as good at fighting back. Maybe I had some experience with that, but I wasn’t going down memory lane.

  Except to say I wasn’t a kid anymore, and I was a better thief than Caleb. I had actual skills. He was just lucky, with muscle and some major boss man backing him up.

  I took the job. So now, I needed to figure out how to get the something.

  The something turned out to be a backpack. I didn’t care what I stole, or from whom. I did sometimes care who wanted it stolen, but the higher the payoff, the lower my ability to care. Not the best morals, I know. Sue me. Life in the street is what it is. Morals can easily take a back seat in a hurry if you’re hungry, and there’s no roof over your head.

  Thankfully, I had a roof. And a bag of cheeseburgers. All I had to do know was sell Margrite on the merits of this job. Margrite should be back by now, and I’d need a couple of cheeseburgers to convince her this was worth it. Things were serious when I brought food. We’d gotten to the point where we ignored Caleb, and he ignored us. It was better for everyone that way. But this was just too good an opportunity to pass.

  Stealing from Caleb, particularly on such a juicy score, would upset the truce. Margrite was even fonder of safety than I was. The childish side of me thought it would be great to pull one over on him.

  I approached the building where we lived. It was almost a shell, except for the small apartment she and I had found, and spent years fixing up. I liked that the building looked ready to fall down. It meant that no one bothered it.

  It also meant I had to be careful when I went home. I snuck in via our entrance and made my way upstairs.

  “You home?” I asked quietly.

  “Yes.”

  Margrite was lying on the couch, reading. She picked up everything she could find to read. “You brought food,” she said.

  I should explain. Margrite is my best friend. We’ve been friends ever since we were trying to steal the same lunchbox in school. Back when I still went to school. My mother died when I was two. I was in foster care after that. They never were able to find my family. I walked away from my last foster home when I was almost eighteen. Margrite, a year younger even though we were in the same grade, left with me. By that time, we were living in the same foster home and it sucked. A lot.

  We’ve been on our own ever since. And we’re both good thieves. I’m the better of the two of us. It’s why Luke came to me. Since I was better, Margrite tended to manage what happened after we, or I, did the job. She drove a really hard bargain. I wondered if I ought to have her go back to Luke for me. She’d squeeze him for everything but his ratty-assed underwear.

  “Yeah, we gotta talk,” I said, putting down the bag.

  “That sounds promising.” She grabbed a cheeseburger and sat back, eying EYEING me warily. “Spill.”

  “Luke came to me tonight.”

  Margrite rolled her eyes. She doesn’t like Luke.

  “He has a job.”

  “He always has a job.”

  “Yeah, but this one is the one we’ve been waiting for.”

  “In what respect?”

  I told her the price.

  “Holy shit.” Her hand holding the cheeseburger dropped into her lap. “Was he drunk? Did you get it in writing?

  “Don’t be stupid. He’s good for it.”

  She didn’t respond, and I grinned as I ducked my head to focus on my own food. Really, though, it was so I didn’t laugh in her face. She hated to be wrong, and in this case, I was right. Luke always paid. He was the only guy I dealt with anymore. But I still wondered if it was worth having her talk with Luke.

  “You sure? Why would we want to leave all this?” She gestured around our little set of rooms.

  The walls had chipped plaster and peeling paint. We stole electricity from a warehouse across the way. Same with the plumbing. I love the internet. You can figure out how to do anything on the internet.

  It wasn’t pretty. But it was warm, and comfortable, and safe. I had four different places in the building that I could use to stash things if I needed to.

  “What’s the job?”

  “Get a backpack. From Caleb, who already stole it from who knows where? Luke said his guy didn’t tell him how Caleb got hold of it.”

  “This is going to upset everything,” she said.

  “Did you hear me when I told you the amount?”

  “Yeah, I heard you. When something is too good to be true, I generally don’t believe it.”

  “Then come and talk to Luke with me. I know you don’t like him. He’s not fond of you, either. But you can see for yourself. Plus, Caleb is a bigger shit than usual. He took a job that someone else already accepted.”

  “That fuck,” she took a bite of her burger.

  “I know. Makes it all the better, doesn’t it?”

  We grinned at one another.

  “It does, indeed. And we leave after that?”

  I nodded. “Yep. We have the passports, and all we need to do is get out of the city, and buy a flight.”

  “We need to check the cards.” Sh
e rooted in the bag for another burger.

  Do I know my best friend or what? Bring enough cheeseburgers, and you can talk her into anything. Another souvenir of being hungry growing up.

  “I check them every month. They’re still good.”

  “Good. We won’t get shit for a plane ticket without them.”

  I nodded again. “I know.”

  “Where’s the thing?”

  “It’s a backpack. It’s safety orange, and from what I hear, it’s in his warehouse spot.”

  “What’s in the backpack?” She asked.

  “Does it matter?”

  “It might…”

  Margrite glared over her burger. I glared back. “Oh, all right,” I relented. “A box.”

  “What kind of box?”

  “A small one? One that fits in a backpack? One that the client wants?”

  “Very funny. Where is it?”

  “It’s in his hiding spot on that one warehouse.”

  “Geez,” she said. “That place is a pain in the butt to get into.”

  “I know. I need to think about it a little, and then I’ll go in the next couple of nights.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “You have that much time?”

  “Apparently the buyer isn’t expecting it until next week. That’s when Luke said he has to report in on any progress, good or bad. He made it clear he wanted to be able to call early with ugly backpack in hand.”