Dark and Stormy Knights (P.N. Elrod) (Kitty Norville 0.80)

Even though, of course, that was accurate enough.

I looked down at myself—sloppy, fuzzy zip-front robe, flannel pajamas underneath even in the heat of summer, bony feet in grubby fleece house shoes. I’d been planning to dress up a bit, maybe put on something formal for the occasion. The impressive red silk robes given to me by one of the long-dead emperors of China, perhaps. Or something from the papal treasure chest.

Oh, screw it. Who was I trying to impress, anyway?

I shuffled to the front door, checked the peephole, and saw a fish-eye view of a medium-tall young girl. Ridiculously young, it seemed to me, and fashionable. She was smiling nervously, shifting around as if she were thinking of leaving at any second. Sadly, she did not.

I fumbled back the six or seven locks, one after another, forgot the chain, banged the door hard at the full stretch of it, closed it and slipped it off, and finally opened the door fully to gaze upon the new Dragonslayer.

She looked like a goddamn cheerleader. Maybe twenty, if that—fresh out of the petty rigors of high school, glowing with youth and vitality and health and smart-ass attitude. She was wearing a hipster t-shirt with some ironic logo, tight blue jeans, and some kind of cheap-looking sneakers that had probably cost more than my monthly rent. “Mrs. Martin?” she said. She sounded bright and chipper and nervous.

“Get your ass inside,” I said. I was still wishing I’d put on the formal robes or something, but the whipcrack of command in my voice was effective without them. The girl scurried over the doorstep, and I slammed and locked it behind her. “What’s your name?”

“Ellen,” she said. “Ellen Cameron.”

“I’m going to call you Ellie. Coffee?”

She looked relieved to have something so normal to agree to, so I tottered off to the kitchen to put on a fresh pot. While it brewed, Ellen stood politely where I’d left her, looking around but not touching. Good. I couldn’t stand people who fondled my things uninvited. Not that I’d had any of that sort of behavior in the last hundred years.

God, I hated being old. Looking at Ellie, with her fresh, summery youth, made that burn inside me like a b

lowtorch. When I was her age, I’d had dragon’s blood forced down my throat, fresh from a dying beast. It had been a foul custom, but it had rendered me almost as immortal as the dragons. Impossible to get more now, though. The girl would just have to do without.

I brought back the cups and sat the girl at the table. She was a neat, strong child. If not a cheerleader, she’d be a gymnast or a soccer enthusiast. Soccer, I decided. She had an outdoor glow, and gymnasts tended to spend their time inside.

“Right,” I said. “My name is Lisel von Haffenburg-Martin, and I have killed four dragons in my time, which is more than any Dragonslayer before or since. Most would-be Dragonslayers die before they feel the breath on their neck from the dragon who’s been stalking them. Lucky me, I have survived to retire. Now, I get to train you to take my place.”

Ellie folded her hands in her lap and did her best to look like a good student. It was a poor attempt, but then the child was hardly out of school. At least she had better manners than most of her contemporaries, I’d give her that. “Do you mind if I ask—” She swallowed hard. “Ask if you ever—if the dragons . . .” She burst out into laughter all of a sudden, and the painfully polite girl disappeared. “Oh, man, this is crazy. You’re an old lady, and we’re talking about fighting dragons.”

“No,” I said. “We’re talking about killing dragons. Not fighting them. This is something else altogether. We’re not knights, Ellie. We’re not heroes. We’re exterminators. Think of dragons as enormous, eternal roaches, and you get a better idea of what it is we do.”

“Ugh.” Her pert little nose—quite different from my prominent beak—wrinkled in disgust. “But I get to use a sword, right?”

“You must read a great many stupid books,” I snapped back. “Of course you don’t. Why in the world would you go up against something as fierce as a dragon with a sword? Honestly, it takes a man to think of something that idiotic. You kill a dragon with only one weapon.”

Ellie started to ask the obvious question, but then I saw her shift sideways. I liked that. She’d be clever and not easy to predict. “You’re not talking about real dragons, right? Like with wings and scales and grrrrrr?” She made a kittenish attempt at a predator’s face and hooked her fingers like claws. It was moderately amusing.

“Oh yes,” I said. “Huge, vicious, fast beasts. They breathe fire. Their scales are as hard as diamonds. If you catch their gaze, they can freeze you in place for the kill. They’re smart, cold, and utterly without mercy.”

Ellie thought I was lying. It was written all over her milk-fed, self-confident face. I’d grown up in a grim world, rocks and hard edges, steel and muscle and violence. We’d thought it civilized at the time, but now that I look back on it, it was a savage time, and I’d taken to it like a duck to water.

I couldn’t imagine this child surviving half a day in that time, even without a dragon’s threat hanging over her. She’d have been slaughtered by the first cutpurse fortunate enough to stumble over her.

“Dragons,” I said with cool precision, “can also take other forms. And when in other forms, they are vulnerable, without their natural defenses.”

“Other forms,” Ellie repeated. I could see that regardless of what she’d been told, whatever papal letter she’d received, whatever counseling from her local bishop, she was sure that I was a batty old lady. “Right. Like—what?”

“A particular favorite of Vixariathrax was to assume the form of a cow grazing in a field. He dispatched four separate Dragonslayers that way. Of course, cows were as common as dirt then.” I shrugged, although my shoulder was beginning its daily rhythmic dull ache.

“A cow.” Her face was a study in doubt. “Then how did you figure it out?”

“It was the only cow in the field.” I smiled slowly. “Cows come in herds, girl. Vixariathrax was a hungry old bugger. One placid cow, left standing in a field trampled by dozens? Something was definitely wrong.”

“How did you kill him?”

“Same way I killed them all,” I said. “With cleverness. For him, I shot him from cover. He never saw me coming until it was too late. Poisoned arrows. When he changed back to his dragon form, the poison was trapped inside. He thrashed himself to death out in that field. Took a while, but it was effective enough.”

Ellie had gone quiet, frowning. I saw revulsion in her now. “Doesn’t sound very . . .”