The tunnel smelled like old stone and something else, something sharp and metallic that made my teeth ache. Sulfur, maybe. Or whatever dragons left behind when they'd been bleeding.

  "Left at the next junction," Holly's voice crackled in my earpiece. "Then straight for about two hundred meters. You should start seeing scorch marks on the walls."

  I adjusted my grip on the rifle. Not that it would do much good if Pyraxes decided talking was overrated, but it made me feel slightly less suicidal. "You sure this route avoids the elves?"

  "Ninety percent sure."

  "Holly."

  "Okay, seventy-five percent. But the alternative is walking straight through their forward positions, and I'm one hundred percent sure that ends badly." A pause. More keys ccking over the line, Holly said she had problems of her own tonight but hadn’t shared more than that. "You’re not exactly the only show in town right now. If I wanted you off the board, I wouldn’t have waited this long… How's the shoulder?"

  I rolled it experimentally. Still hurt like hell from where the dragon had clipped me during our fight at my apartment, but it moved. "I'll live."

  "Famous st words."

  "You're a real confidence booster, you know that?"

  "It's why you pay me the big bucks." Her fingers ccked over a keyboard in the background. "Okay, you should be close now. Thermal imaging is getting weird, too much ambient heat to read clearly. You're on your own for the st bit."

  “Wait… I don’t pay you, though.”

  “Not that you know of, darling. Interference is going to cut us off again soon. Come back in one piece, you hear? That kid of yours is too smart to end up an orphan.”

  Of course, Holly knew all about Kelly. Probably had just as many cameras back home as I did myself. She was still the smartest person I knew but I hadn’t anticipated my own person, Brother Eye. Great.

  The scorch marks started about fifty meters ter, bck streaks across ancient brick that looked like someone had dragged a blowtorch along the walls. They got thicker as I went deeper, overpping, until whole sections of the tunnel were carbonized. Having been on the wrong end of those fmes more than once in the st few days was not making me look forward to this meeting. The temperature climbed with every step. Sweat stuck my shirt to my back.

  The tunnel opened into a cavern that shouldn't exist under Manhattan.

  I'm talking cathedral-sized. Maybe bigger. Where we had entered earlier must have been a smaller chamber, but this one was the main event. The ceiling disappeared into darkness somewhere overhead, and the walls were rough-cut stone that predated anything human. Piles of treasure, actual treasure, the kind you read about in fairy tales, scattered across the floor in haphazard drifts. Gold coins, jewelry, weapons, things I couldn't even identify. All of it coated in a fine yer of dust and ash.

  And in the center, coiled around a rocky outcrop like a living mountain, was Pyraxes.

  She looked worse than I did. Scales torn along her fnk where my RPG had connected, one wing hanging awkwardly, burn marks across her snout that probably came from blowback when she'd tried to incinerate me. Her eyes tracked my entrance, massive, golden, reptilian. Pupils contracting to slits.

  I stopped about a hundred meters out. Any closer felt like pushing my luck.

  "Pyraxes," I called. My voice echoed off the stone. "I have come to barg… I want to talk!" I caught myself, no need to court fate, quoting someone who ended up dying hundreds of times.

  The dragon's head lifted. Smoke curled from her nostrils. "The thief returns." Her voice was like grinding stones, female but ancient. "Did you come to finish what you started, Hunter? Or are you here to steal what little I have left?"

  "Neither." I kept my hands visible, rifle pointed at the ground. "I came to apologize."

  That got a reaction. Her head tilted, serpentine and predatory. "Apologize."

  "My daughter, Kelly, said something after you attacked. Said there was more to it than just rage. That you were looking for something." I took a careful breath. "I should have listened then. I'm listening now."

  Pyraxes stared at me for a long moment. Then, slowly, she shifted. Her massive body uncoiled enough to reveal what she'd been protecting.

  The cage.

  Human-sized, made of what looked like twisted iron, sitting in the shadow of her bulk. And inside,

  "Hunter!" Lisa Parker grabbed the bars, pressing her face between them. "Oh, thank god, I knew you weren’t going to leave me to rot down here. Been talking to the dragon, she can be reasoned with… sometimes.,,"

  "Lisa." Relief flooded through me. She looked rough, clothes torn, dark circles under her eyes, hair matted, but okay. I had been nervous the dragon would take her anger out on her prisoner, but she was alive. Very alive. And very much her usual self, which meant talking at about three times normal speed.

  "It's been over a week and the accommodations are terrible, and she won't even give me a bathroom break without supervision, which is super awkward because, you know, dragon, and can’t expin to her how strange it is to drop trou in the corner, and I’m missing my shows! Please tell me you are recording Powerful Princess Peppermint for me!"

  "Lisa. Breathe."

  She sucked in air. "Right. Breathing. I can do that. Hi."

  "Hi." I looked back at Pyraxes. The dragon hadn't moved, but I could feel her attention like a weight on my shoulders. "Why are you keeping her?"

  "Because she came to kill me." Pyraxes's voice was ft. "Just like you did. Just like all the others the elves have sent."

  "I didn't come to kill you!" Lisa protested. "I came to investigate reports of a dangerous creature threatening the city. Which, for the record, seems pretty justified now that I've met you, but the mission brief was super vague and,"

  "The elves hired us both," I cut in. "Told us you were a threat. Didn't mention they'd been robbing you blind."Pyraxes's eyes narrowed. "You know."

  "I'm starting to piece it together. Your treasure," I gestured at the scattered piles. "It's been picked over. And you said something about thieves and killers. You weren't talking about Lisa and me specifically. You were talking about what we represented."

  "It's true!" Lisa said. "I've been talking to her, well, she's been talking at me, mostly, but her hoard's been getting looted for months. Gold, artifacts, magical items. Someone's been sneaking in while she's out hunting."

  "And recently," Pyraxes said, her voice dropping to something dangerous, "they took my eggs."

  The temperature in the cavern seemed to spike. Heat rolled off the dragon in waves.

  "Three of them," she continued. "Hidden in the deepest part of my ir, warded with protections older than your city. And they were stolen. Taken while I slept." Her cws gouged furrows in stone. "I have been searching for weeks. Following every lead. Hunting anyone who might know where they went. And then I caught the scent of someone who'd been in my ir,"

  "Me," I said quietly.

  "You. At your dwelling. The scent was fresh. I thought..." She trailed off. "I thought you were one of them."

  "I’m a parent too, I understand the instinct of shing out against anyone willing to hurt your kids. It wasn’t me, however."

  "I know that now." Pyraxes looked away. "The elves. They must have pnted something. Led me to you deliberately. When you arrived in person the other day…"

  "It's a setup," Lisa said. She'd calmed down now, back to her analytical mode. "They hire hunters to take you out, make it look like you're the aggressor, and while everyone's distracted, they loot your ir. Cssic misdirection. And if one happens to take you out, they make bank."

  I thought about the job offer. The money they'd offered. The vague details and urgent timeline. "They wanted us to fight each other. Weaken you, maybe kill you. Either way, you'd be too busy dealing with us to stop them."

  "And it worked." Pyraxes's voice carried something that might have been pain. Or rage. Hard to tell with dragons. "I have been hunting false leads while they plundered my home. While they took my children. I’ve slept long, and this world is not the one I left."

  "It's not her fault," Lisa said, looking at me. "I've been trying to tell her that, but she's stubborn and also terrifying, so,"

  "I heard you the first hundred times, little bird." Pyraxes's gaze shifted back to me. "But understanding does not change the situation. My eggs are still gone. My ir is still vioted. And the elves are still,"

  "Gathering an army," I finished. "Yeah. I know."

  Both of them stared at me.

  "Holly's been tracking troop movements," I expined. "The elves are mobilizing forces. Looks like they're pnning a full assault on this location within the next day or two. Probably figured you'd be weak from fighting me, or distracted looking for your eggs. Either way, they want you gone permanently."

  Pyraxes's growl was subterranean. The whole cavern vibrated. "They dare."

  "They've been daring for months," I said. "And getting away with it. But that stops now." I lowered the rifle completely, let it hang from its strap. "I'll help you find your eggs. I'll help you stop the elves. But I need something from you first."

  The dragon's eyes locked on mine. "You are not in a position to make demands, Hunter."

  "I'm not demanding. I'm negotiating." I kept my voice steady. "You want your eggs back. You want revenge on the elves. I want those things too; they pyed me, tried to get me killed, and I don't appreciate it. But I can't do this alone. And you can't either, not with an army coming for you."

  "I have survived armies before."

  "Not while injured. Not while defending your ir and searching for your eggs simultaneously." I pointed at Lisa. "She's been travelling the magical underground for years. She knows the elven factions, their politics, and their strongholds. She can help us find your eggs and figure out who's really running this operation. If it’s just a few elves of the whole lot of them."

  "She is my leverage," Pyraxes said. "The only thing keeping you from simply walking away."

  "I'm not going to walk away."

  "You say that now."

  "I'm saying it because my daughter was right." Kelly's face fshed in my mind, her insistence that something was wrong, that the dragon's attack felt desperate rather than malicious. "You're not a monster. You're a mother looking for her children. And I'm not leaving until we get them back."

  Silence filled the cavern. Lisa watched me with wide eyes. Pyraxes didn't move, didn't even seem to breathe.

  Then: "If I release her, and you betray me,"

  "I won't."

  "If you do," the dragon continued, "I will burn everything you love to ash. Your home. Your friends. Your daughter. Everything."

  The threat hung in the superheated air. I should have been terrified. Part of me was. But another part, the part that had seen too much, done too much, lost too much, just felt tired. The part that held Kelly close to my heart, though, understood.

  "If I betray you," I said, "I'll deserve it."

  More silence. Longer this time.

  Pyraxes moved. One massive cw reached out, delicate despite its size, and pulled a section of the cage apart like it was made of paper. The metal screamed. Lisa scrambled out, stumbled, and caught herself.

  "Thank you," she breathed. "Oh my god, thank you, I thought I was going to die in there,"

  "You still might," Pyraxes said. "If this goes poorly. If the eggs are not recovered. If I discover treachery." Her gaze fixed on me again. "The elves will attack soon. They have numbers and magic and the advantage of preparation. What do you have, Hunter?"

  I thought about Holly in her hidden server room, fingers flying over keyboards, signal likely out of reach. About Lisa's knowledge of the magical underground. About Mara, somewhere above us, fighting her own battles. About Kelly, back at the Pierre, probably worried sick.

  About the fact that I'd walked into a dragon's ir unarmed except for a rifle that wouldn't even scratch her scales, because sometimes doing the right thing meant being spectacurly stupid.

  "I have a really good team," I said. "And a lot of experience with things going wrong. And more than one has told me I am too bullheaded to lose."

  Pyraxes's ugh was like rocks grinding in an avanche. "That will have to be enough." She shifted, settling back onto her rocky perch. The movement was careful, pained. Worse off than she wanted to admit.

  "The elves have a forward staging area," she said. "Two levels above us, built into the old subway tunnels. That is where they store what they steal before moving it to market. If my eggs are anywhere, they will be there."

  "How many guards?"

  "Unknown. I have not been able to approach without triggering arms."

  Lisa pulled out her phone, frowned at the ck of signal, and put it away. "I might be able to get us in. I've done work with some of the fringe elven houses; they don't like the main faction any more than we do. Might be able to call in a favor."

  "The main faction," I said. "Who's running it?"

  "I don’t know their name," Pyraxes spat the name. "Ancient, ambitious, and utterly without honor. He has been consolidating power in the underground for decades. This, the theft, the army, the manipution, it could be any number of the little scampering creatures in my walls."

  "Alright. Lisa and I will scout the staging area, see if we can locate the eggs. If we're lucky, we can get in and out before they even know we're there."

  "And if you are not lucky?"

  I checked my rifle. Checked the spare magazines on my belt. Looked at Lisa, who was already bouncing on her feet despite a week in captivity, eyes bright with that manic energy she always got before things went sideways.

  "Then things get loud," I said. "But either way, we're getting your eggs back."

  Pyraxes studied me for a long moment. Then she lowered her head in something that might have been a nod. Or a threat. Hard to say.

  "Go," she said. "Before I remember that trusting humans has never ended well for my kind."

  I could have told her the track record for trusting dragons had gone even poorer, but instead I turned to leave, Lisa already chattering in my ear about possible entry points and guard rotations and whether she should have brought her good lockpicks.

  "Hunter."

  I looked back. The dragon's golden eyes gleamed in the darkness.

  "If you save my children," Pyraxes said quietly, "you will have my gratitude. And my debt. Dragons do not forget either."

  "I'll keep that in mind," I said.

  Then Lisa and I headed back into the tunnels, leaving the wounded dragon to guard her empty ir, and I tried very hard not to think about the fact that I'd just promised to go up against an elven army with nothing but a hyperactive young woman and the ouch full of rocks she kept with her at all times.

  “All right!” Lisa cried out as we walked. “This is the best part of the movie when the heroes rally and make everything right again.”

  “Or the part where they think they will only for everything to go to shit instead,” I smirked to myself. Lisa was many things, but more than anything, she was a survivor. I saw her jaw set.

  “Yeah or that…”

  Just another Tuesday, really.