Lupi 04 - Night Season

still and video images, and the reports of two of its own agents, namely Cynna and Lily—there had been no solid proof. Talk show hosts had had a field day with dragon-sighting jokes.
    When they showed up again, no one was laughing. This time, the world needed them to be real.
    The realms had done one hell of a bump-and-grind, knocking streams of magic loose from nodes all over the world. Loose magic has a randomizing effect on technology, especially anything run by computers…which was just about everything. It turned out that, in addition to being strong, beautiful, and deadly, dragons made dandy sponges. They soaked up all the excess magic in their vicinity.
    Two days before Christmas, the black dragon had landed on the White House lawn. Sam—whose other call-name was Sun Mzao—had negotiated for the rest, assisted by Lily’s grandmother. Much to Cynna’s frustration, no one would tell her why Madam Yu had been involved. She had some guesses, though they were so preposterous…but so was Lily’s grandmother.
    Sooner or later, Cynna promised herself, she’d worm the truth out of Lily.
    So far the Dragon Accords were working. Computers operated normally in the nation’s capital, on Wall Street, and in and around the twelve U.S cities and eight throughout the world that had a dragon. True, dragons ate a lot, and the animal protection people were not happy about their preferred presentation style—the dragons insisted on catching the evening’s cow or pigs themselves. But they’d stuck to their agreement to leave people and pets off the menu.
    Problem was, there weren’t enough dragons.
    Cynna watched Washington’s dragon bank and head down. Looked like he was heading for Rock Creek Park. He’d claimed the amphitheater there while governmental types argued over where to build his permanent lair.
    â€œYou coming?” Lily said.
    Cynna slid in the car and buckled up. “Do you ever wish we’d gotten Sam instead of Mika?”
    Lily shrugged and started the car. “Sam wanted to be near Grandmother. Or else Grandmother wanted him near. Or maybe he just wanted to be warm. It’s never warm here.”
    â€œBitch, bitch, bitch. If you’re still around this summer, you’ll be complaining about the heat. It’s not a dry heat like you’re used to.”
    â€œSan Diego isn’t as hot as you’d think. Hotter in the mountains, of course. As you move away from the coast, you don’t get the cooling effects of the ocean.”
    â€œYou miss it.”
    Lily sighed and pulled out. “More than I expected. This was supposed to be temporary.”
    Lily had originally been posted to Washington, D.C., for two purposes: to assist the Secret Service in an investigation and to take an abbreviated version of the standard FBI training at Quantico. Like Cynna, she belonged to a special unit in the FBI’s Magical Crimes Division, one that until recently very few knew existed. Lily had been recruited last November. She was a touch sensitive, able to feel magic tactilely yet impervious to its effects, but her background as a homicide cop was as valuable to the Unit as her Gift. A lot of the Unit’s agents lacked that kind of law enforcement training and experience.
    Lily had finished up the assist-the-Secret-Service part of her assignment, but what with demon assassins and the Turning and all, her training still wasn’t complete.
    â€œThere is an upside, I guess,” Lily said. “Being parked at Headquarters puts twenty-six hundred miles between me and my mother.”
    â€œYeah, but planes are flying again, cell phones are working—”
    â€œDon’t remind me.”
    Cynna smiled because she was supposed to, but she wondered…if her mother had lived, would she be as mom-averse as Lily? Some of her other friends were like that, too. A few seemed to be close to their mothers, but a lot of them had issues.
    Not that she didn’t have issues. You didn’t have to have a living mother to find knots tangled all over your heart tagged “from Mom.” Which was a damn good reason for never…not going there, she reminded herself. “How’s Rule?”
    â€œHe’s good. The mantles have settled into peaceful coexistence…which you’d know if you hadn’t been avoiding us. I—oh, God.”
    â€œWhat? What is it?”
    â€œI sound like my