Dragonfury 02 - Fury of Ice

His leather jacket stretched across his shoulders, reminding him he’d learned to conjure the thing less than an hour ago.
    Conjure .
    Mother of God, that sounded weird. Like something a voodoo high priestess said during ritualized killings or something. Okay, so the skill was useful. He’d cop to that. No one wanted to see him bare-assed in the moonlight, but man, the ability to whip up leather gear with nothing but a thought fit nicely into the little bag of horrors he’d been carrying around all day.
    Which, naturally, pissed him off.
    He’d never been the kind of guy who got rattled. Uh-huh. Cool under fire, that was him. But tonight, standing on top of the Columbia Center in downtown Seattle, Mac wondered if that was about to change.
    Blowing out a breath, he glanced at the night sky as gravel crunched under his boots. The real estate above him was cloudless and clear, a strange occurrence for Seattle, especially for the time of year. Fall brought rain and cold, damp weather. Bitter wind aside, though, tonight was picture perfect. A wash of midnight blue with pinpoint stars that winked at him from their beds beyond the earth.
    Another gust pushed against his back, spinning into mini tornados around his boots. Rolling his shoulders, Mac headed for the raised edge of the roof.
    Venom passed him on the left-hand side, brushing shoulders with him.
    “Dickhead , ” he said, trying out his fancy new mode of communication.
    Ruby-red eyes flashed, then narrowed as Venom mind-spoke, “Pansy-ass fledgling.”
    Mac clenched his teeth, holding on to his grin. Ah, the sweet stab of predictability. The touchy SOB had been rising to his bait all day. Made for an easy target and even more fun. And hey…wonder of wonders, he’d graduated sometime in the last two hours, moving from blockhead to pansy-ass fledgling .
    Pretty soon the guy would call him brother , instead of slinging insults. Mac would make sure of it. Make Dickhead eat his words before the night was done. Yeah, he might be new, but he wasn’t a lightweight. He belonged with the Nightfuries. Felt it in his bones. Knew it with more certainty than he had anything in his life.
    He was one of them. No fucking doubt. Now all he needed to do was prove it.
    The toes of his shitkickers touched the skyscraper’s metal lip. Mac peered over the edge. His stomach pitched then rebounded, leaving a bad taste in his mouth. From seventy-six stories up, everything looked miniature, like the detailed mock-ups architects constructed for their clients. Small green trees, tops swaying in the breeze. Tiny people rushing to get somewhere: home, the market, maybe even a restaurant to meet their spouses. And the cars looked like colorful Hot Wheels instead of life-size versions.
    Mac frowned at the ground. “You’re out of your fucking mind.”
    “Myst’s building isn’t tall enough.” Shoulder-to-shoulder with him, Bastian glanced at him sideways. “You need lots of height for the first go-round. Columbia Center is the tallest building in Seattle…the best bet to get you airborne.”
    And what? There wasn’t a happy medium between five stories and…shit. This?
    Bastian raised a brow. “You used to jump out of airplanes for a living.”
    “With a parachute.”
    “You’ve got better than that now,” Bastian said. “You’ve got wings.”
    Did he ever. And yeah, those fuckers were cool, but only if they opened. Only if he figured out how to work them. And what did that depend on?
    Wait for it…
    Shifting into dragon form while free-falling from a thousand feet up. Not something he was all that confident he could do. Sure, he’d spent the day practicing, but if there was one thing he’d learned in the SEAL teams, it was that stress screwed with performance. Practice made perfect. That’s why they’d drilled so hard, running through training ops until everyone had it down cold. But what Bastian wanted him to do wasn’t about practice. It was trial by fire…do it right the first time or go splat.
    “All right.” Rolling his shoulders, Mac worked out the kinks. He went through the usual checklist, the way a pilot would his preflight routine. Body ready? Check. Mind focused? Double check. New magical abilities? Okay, so the jury was still out on that one, but what the hell. It was now or never. He wanted to become a member of the Nightfury pack. If he acted like the blockhead Venom liked to call him, he’d never earn their respect. “Tell me