Page 58 of Bleeding for the Prince
They debated where they should talk to Howard. In theory, as he was the client, they could go to his office in one of the expensive towering office blocks in the City of London. But Hyax had thought Howard might not want to be in a public place when he was told the news that a massive fuck-off dragon was sleeping under his multi-million pound shop. So Gwil had asked Howard to come to his consulting rooms at his earliest convenience, saying they had a breakthrough.
Hyax hadn’t expected him to arrive so soon, but Howard had arrived in less than half an hour and was now sitting opposite them in the swivel chair by Gwil’s desk.
“I came as fast as I could,” Howard said, accepting a cup of tea. “I can’t wait to hear what you found out.”
Hyax suspected he might change his mind in a matter of minutes, once they’d broken the news to him. “I was surprised you managed to get here so quickly. London’s traffic can be a nightmare.”
“I have ways and means in an emergency, and I was thinking this warranted my immediate attention. What have you got for me?”
Hyax had debated the best way to tell Howard about the situation. He’d been in favour of a gentle approach, a soft soap, whereas Gwil had said Howard was the type to prefer the direct approach, and given how quickly he’d got here and his comment, Hyax accepted Gwil was right.
“We deployed a specialist agent to support the reconnaissance. And it paid off, but I do need to warn you, this might seem a somewhat fantastical conclusion.”
“Trust me, Prince Hyax, I would have been more surprised if you were to tell me it was something mundane causing everything strange going on. Any answer is welcome.”
“Before we go on,” Gwil said, “there’s a personal question we’d like to ask. It is relevant, and I swear we’re not being impertinent.”
Howard frowned. “Okay, but I reserve the right not to answer.”
“Fair enough. Are you a wyvern?”
“I don’t think my species is important.” His top lip curled. “Why do you ask?”
Some species could tell if there were others of their kind within a certain radius, and Hyax wasn’t sure if wyverns were one of them. If so, they would have an added mystery of why he hadn’t realised there was a close cousin of his under his store.
“There’s a school of thought that wyverns are able to sense other species,” Gwil said. It was a bit of a fib. “And we need to rule something out.”
“I don’t advertise my species, but let’s say hypothetically, if I were at least partly on the scaly side when in a shifted form, then I would be able to tell you that proximity identification is not one of their traits.”
Hyax thought they should get on with it. “Then I can tell you that under Dante’s is a massive dragon. It’s asleep. Might have been so for millennia. Its natural magic is protecting itselfby creating a neutral zone, which is why magic is deadened throughout the store. Our current working theory is that the incidents are being caused by bubbles of its magic rising and popping as it slowly comes out of long-term hibernation.”
Howard’s jaw was hanging, then he snapped it shut and spent several moments figuring out what to say. “I must have misheard.Dragon?”
Hyax took out his phone and showed Howard the photos they’d taken. “Yes, and bloody big one. I don’t know a lot about dragons, but I thought ones this size had died out.”
Howard peered at the screen. “If that’s real, it has to be a Rex.”
“It’s several meters underground, and while I’m no expert, there had to be innate magic relating to hibernation that helped keep it hidden, but it’s definitely a dragon. I picked up several scales from the floor. Like the one we found in Dante’s.”
He held out one of the filmy gold scales for Howard to take. “But how did they get inside the store if the dragon is asleep underneath?”
“Manifested after the magic bubble pops, or at least that’s my best guess. There’s no way it’s been inside; otherwise, you’d have been missing a few walls. Magic usually leaves a trace, which is why this has been so baffling, and the trace is the scale.”
All things being said, Howard was taking the news well. “What do we do about it? I own the store, not the dragon under it. But no one’s going to care about that little technicality if a dragon erupts out from underneath Dante’s.”
Howard couldn’t legally be held responsible, and Hyax doubted his insurance would cover complete destruction by a dragon. But Howard was right about the reputational damage he was facing.
“I’ve no idea when it will wake up,” Hyax warned. “Could be centuries or next week.”
“As far as I know, only Rexes hibernate,” Howard said. “Once dragons and wyverns evolved to shift, they lost the need to.”
“So we have an extinct Rex with an unknown sleeping habit,” Gwil said. “We think we’ll need to find a way to move it, but how and to where is still being worked out.”
“They’re not extinct. Just not here,” Howard said.
Hyax wasn’t expecting that, and Howard had spoken as if this was general knowledge. “What do you mean?”
“The story goes they left this realm because the humans were spreading and were getting annoying, so they went to live in another place beyond the elf meadowlands.”
