Copper sat back in his chair and stared around his office for a few moments. It was a fairly standard, utilitarian thing. A plain aluminium desk with little decoration, a window at one corner and a bookshelf and filing cabinet at the other. Simple, boring, deniable. All of the Society field offices were like this. Kind of a stark contrast from their main offices in Germany, they were a good lot grander. 

Copper was an older man, pushing sixty, with a greying widow's peak smoothed back almost flat to his head. His features were sharp but solid, an angled jaw and narrow eyes that gave him a perpetual Clint Eastwood squint.

Copper took a long drag from his cigar before stubbing out the smoldering inch-and-a-half. This case had been giving him migraines for months now. A Blood-Dragon. The first one reported in over a century. Somehow kept Unaware for his whole life. In MANCHESTER. 

No right-minded operation commander would willingly take on something like this. So naturally, the case files had just found their way to Copper’s desk on their own. He’d be having some choice words with Gold and Brass later. Copper’s eyes fell on the cigar box and the temptation to pick out another struck him when a knock came at the door. The door was already half open and half of somebody’s head poked through.

“Sir?”

“Sand. Come in. Is Clay with you?”

Sand pushed the door open and stepped in with Clay behind her. The two operatives both carried equally large packs with them. Clay had a large leather-bound book inscribed with Latin, with a series of modern stickers translating the title into English. Sand had with her a large manilla folder so stuffed with papers that looked primed to burst. Copper stared at the two huge piles of paper that had been dropped with a thump onto the desk in front of him and bit his tongue to hold back another angry grumble.

“All the notes we have on Cowell.” Sand stated with a hint of relief at finally putting the thing down.

“And the best grimoire I could find on Blood-Dragons.”

“Short version. Please.” Copper rubbed his eyes. He was used to sleepdeprivation after years in the army, but he wasn't getting any younger. Sand frowned and Clay cleared his throat.

“One confirmed kill and partial drain. Puts him at a stage zero.” Sand unfolded the folder and pointed to a blurry night-vision photograph of two men struggling. Then shifted it aside to reveal another of one of those men running at full sprint, trying to cover his hands under his coat.

“He won’t be thirsting yet. But he’s going to be more aggressive and a lot tougher in a fight.” Clay said in that typical casual tone of his.

“And you said Knight had him.” Copper pulled the folder closer and started pawing through the piles on piles of photographs and scribbled notes.

“Yeah, turns out the flatmate was a Knight sleeper.” Sand seemed more angry at herself than anything else.

Copper spent a few long moments processing the information and putting together a plan in his head. After a few seconds, he sat up straight and cleared his throat.

“If Knight has him under some decent control then that's good, I'll send some messages to him so he knows that we expect him to hold the boy to a standard. What kinds of risks are we running?”

“No prior criminal convictions or registered mental disorders, not particularly ambitious either.” Sand said with confidence. Meanwhile, Clay opened up to one of the multitudes of marked pages and tapped a particular paragraph.

“Largest physical threat of any Dragon sub-species on the continent, I'm very worried about his Wings, too.”

“And why is that?” Copper struggled to read the faded text.

Clay made a non-committal noise and shrugged. “There's a couple of potential ideas. None of them are good. Stuff like matter re-shaping.” Copper nodded grimly.

“Alright, keep your eyes on him. I'm going to make some phone calls, get us some extra muscle from the continent.”

The two operatives nodded to their commander and left the room.

-------

Dragon. Wow. The more I thought about it the less sure I felt about it. I mean, sure I was already technically a being of myth so saying that I couldn't be a Dragon because Dragons don't exist didn't exactly work. Maybe the full implications hadn't hit me yet. I didn't exactly know what being a Dragon meant in the long-term. Perhaps it was better that I keep my head down and put this all together bit by bit rather than try to swallow it all at once.

Right now, though. I needed a fresh change of clothes. Perks of being a generic men's medium meant that I could just fish out one of the white t-shirts and black chino trousers out of the drawers and put them straight on. It was hard to resist checking myself in the mirror as I changed.

I have to say, I looked good. The scales covered my whole hand extended all the way up my forearms to the elbow. Thick v-shaped plates, deep red with blackish streaks that locked together perfectly with the smaller, paler scales. I flexed my hand twisted it, watching them shift around. It didn't feel at all different from my hand before, no heavier and no blocked movement.

Next was my fingers, all I had to do was tense my hands like I was throwing a punch and the tips extended into sleek, black claws. One flick of the wrist and they were gone again.

I smiled at my own reflection in the mirror, seconds before the weight of what I had done to get this far hit me and my confidence drained in an instant.

“It was an accident.” I tried to justify to myself. “I didn't know what was going to happen and neither did he.”

I turned away from the mirror to try and cut off that train of thought before it could do any damage, shaking my head and draping my coat over the back of a char that sat beside the bed, prompting a dull thud on the floor when my phone fell from wherever I had left it. There was somebody I needed to call.

I didn't know how I could tell them. I suppose in some way they already knew.

The phone rang, every repeat of that rhythm making me more nervous.

“Hey, kiddo.” The man on the other side finally answered.

“Hey, dad.” I was mentally rehearsing what I was supposed to say.

“What's up?” He had that cheery tone, same as always.

“I...Uh, I got a new job.” I managed to strain out.

“Hey! That's great!” I could almost hear that big dumb grin spread across his face. “Who with?”

“Well, y'know Jason? I'm working for his dad.” There was a long pause. “Dad?”

“I see...I'm guessing you know about...you, then?” I sat myself down on the oversized bed, staring down at the floor.

“Yeah. I...Yeah.”

There was a heavy sigh from the other end of the line. “Please be careful, okay? I'm coming to town tomorrow. We'll talk in person, okay?”

“Yeah, okay dad. See you then.” The line went silent and I leaned back against the wall, thumping my head back against the wood for no real reason. There was a lot I would need to talk to him about and I didn't know where to start.

I dropped the phone and with my back against the headboard for a while, just staring off into space. How could I tell dad about what happened with the mugger? Could I even tell him? I mean, he was a vampire too, surely he knew what I was going through?

Thoughts were piling together and turning into an unstoppable snowball that threatened to give me a heart murmur. A knock at the door and a voice on the other side told me I was needed outside.

I had to change into something more 'professional' compared to before, a tall-collared black windbreaker jacket with a red stripe along the inside of the lapel. Made me look like a real mobster.

One of the many out-buildings around the mansion was a kind of garage. It was small and squat, constructed out of poured cement. The place was fully stocked too, huge tool chests, a pneumatic lift, and inspection pit. This place looked like it could maintain a whole fleet of cars. And probably did.

The door to the garage was open and a huge Transit van was parked inside. A group of men seemed to just appear from nowhere around me, loading it up with those plastic cold-boxes you mostly see in shows like Casualty for transporting hearts and stuff. The activity quickly dispersed when they had finished loading, heading back to wherever they had come from just as quickly as they had appeared. Occasionally glancing back over their shoulders and making hushed remarks to one another.

The driver stepped out of the van checking his phone and then looking up to the sky.

“Evening.” He greeted me grumpily. He was a pale man, thin with wispy brown hair that seemed more like some kind of smoke that vaguely followed his head around. He looked like what you would get if you told a cartoonist to make someone look shifty.

“Hey.” I approached, looking over the van. “This my job for tonight?”

“You must be Mac, then.” The corner of his mouth very nearly threatened to start thinking about moving into a smirk. I gave him a sideways look, wondering how he knew me already. “Word travels fast, get used to it.” He made a rather dismissive gesture at the van, which I assumed meant he wanted me to get in.

“So what's the plan?” I asked, climbing in on the passenger's side. The partial sneer on his face made it obvious that he wasn't happy about this.

“Last delivery never showed up, so we're stopping solo runs.” The driver grunted, putting on his seat-belt and starting up the engine.

“And what exactly are we delivering?” The question made him roll his eyes at me.

“Take a guess.” He shifted the van into gear and the thing lurched forward down the wide country road.

It was more than obvious that he wasn't happy about having to babysit the new guy. So I decided to keep my mouth shut and my eyes open. If I was going to be working with these guys long-term it was probably not a good idea to annoy them.

Within an hour the city was back in view. The silence was heavy but not awkward. But that left me plenty of time to keep an eye on any of the other cars we shared the road with. Not many thanks to it being fairly late, which made things easier.

“Y'know.” The driver eventually broke the silence. “When they said 'Dragon', this wasn't what I was expecting.”

I couldn't help but give him a weird look for a comment like that. “What were you expecting?”

“Something a bit more lizard-y.” He shrugged. I blew out my cheeks.

“Yeah, me too.” The driver furrowed his eyebrows, not taking his eyes off the road.

“S'that supposed to mean?”

“I didn't know about any of this until a couple of hours ago.” The driver grunted in confusion after a short pause.

“They were talking about you like you were some kinda badass.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Hey. If the boss can vouch for ya, then you at least got a reason for bein' here. Better than some we get.”

A few more minutes passed in silence before I noticed something. The pair of headlights I had been staring at in the mirror had been following us for a while now. I nudged the driver on the arm and pointed to the lights.

“Got a car following.”

“Society, probably.”

“Want me to get rid of them?”

“No, we're here.” The car pulled over into the car park of an industrial estate. The car following us slowed down slightly but didn't follow, pulling away again and driving off into the night. “Didn't think so.” The driver chuckled, pulling up outside one of the buildings with a group of gangsters heading out to meet us.

“Head up to the front, make sure nobody comes in.” The driver grunted, visibly changing modes when business needed to be done.

The yard was silent and empty, the wide approaches needed for a lorry left plenty of long lines of sight between the warehouses and very little cover for anyone that wanted to sneak in. Add in the massive LED floodlights bathing the whole place in a cool white-blue light and that left me with an easy job.