SPECIAL OFFER – FREE URBAN FANTASY
A drought-ridden Arizona town hires a very special kind of rainmaker: A siren.
But when it comes time to pay for her services, Mayor Archer Bertrand has a change of heart. After all, the old races are legally non-people and can’t sign contracts.
That was just his first mistake.
This short story is set in the old races-inhabited world of Magorian & Jones, written by Taylen Carver. It is not commercially released, but provided free to readers and fans of the series.
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About The Dragon of Falconer
Title Page
The Dragon of Falconer
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ABOUT
THE DRAGON OF FALCONER
Here be dragons…
Harley von Canmore is firebird--a rare breed, even among the Old Races. She is also the Chief of Police of Falconer, a tiny town in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. Falconer is different, just as Harley is. Everyone in the town is either one of the Old Races—orcs, fae, salamanders, and more—or they are human and waiting for their time to transform.
When a dead body is reported, Harley meets Campbell von Havre—the town’s only dragon and her superior, for they are both of the fire element. Only Harley’s twenty years experience as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer tells her that Campbell is hiding something. When she investigates, what she learns about Campbell puts her in a quandary…
The Dragon of Falconer is part of the Harley Firebird urban fantasy series of novelettes, which is set in the same world as Taylen Carver’s Magorian & Jones series.
1.0: The Dragon of Falconer
…and more to come.
Urban Fantasy Novelette
THE DRAGON OF FALCONER
Harley refused to take it personally that on the first day of her job as Falconer’s first police chief, someone died. Death calling unexpectedly, usually with gross unfairness, was part of life these days. Only, she was the chief of police. Dealing with a dead body was part of her job.
If this had been an ordinary Canadian town, one of her constables would process the paperwork, but Falconer wasn’t ordinary. Neither was she.
She had precisely two constables, both utterly new to police work. Neither had uniforms, but neither did she. They wore black jeans and black button through shirts, the best Mayor Akicita Frazier could do for now. Both men were currently covered in fifty-year-old dust, cobwebs and grime.
The shopfront Mayor Frazier had acquired for Harley’s police station had been abandoned after Falconer’s last coal mine closed in the 1970s. They had built for endurance back then and the two-story building was still sound, although the furnace clanked and refused to raise the temperature above fifteen centigrade, even though Harley had dialed the thermostat up to twenty-five.
The main floor was all one room, with stairs to the top floor on the right when one came in the door. Getting to the stairs was a challenge, because when the store owner had abandoned the town, he’d left all the fittings in place. The owner now used the building for storage. Harley could just glimpse the walls, which had once been white but were now patchy yellow. Between them was a fossicker’s delight. Old, empty glass counters, mystery boxes with yellow, brittle tape turning up on the edges. A dressmaker’s dummy with a missing leg, leaning drunkenly to one side. Drop cloths that once covered things were moth-eaten and moldy.
There was even a cash register behind the counter, one of the punch and pull-the-handle types which Harley had only ever seen in historical movies.
“Hey, help me here a second,” Bohdan Kask called out, wrestling with a stack of scratched laminated shelves leaning against a stool. He had his gaze fixed on something beyond the shelves, which Harley couldn’t see from her position by the counter.
Bohdan was five ten, in his late twenties, with dark blond hair and a gym-built, but still useful, physique. And dimples. He knew he was good looking, too. His eyes had glittered and his smile held a touch of cheek as he shook Harley’s hand this morning.
She’d been slightly chilly to shut him down. He’d got to work without a shred of resentment, while Harley took a moment to recover from the idea that a human had even sort-of hit on her. It had been a very long time since anyone had looked at her, and not at the wings visible over her shoulders. Or the graduating dots of horny skin following the line of her brows. But Bohdan had stared into her eyes, letting her know that he liked what he saw.
Mojag Bear, her other constable, stepped over boxes and crud to where Bohdan struggled with the shelves. He scooped up three of them with one long arm. He was six-two, but slender, his waist-length midnight black hair tied back with a thong. He was of Akicita Frazier’s Stoney tribe, but lived in the town now. Mojag was strong and smart and genuinely wanted to help Harley make the town safe. He hadn’t turned his nose up at the idea of cleaning out the store, either.
The two of them moved the shelves out of the way and Bohdan dusted off his hands. “Yeah, thought that was what it was.” He glanced at Harley. “Wood stove.”
Mojag glanced out the high window in that wall. “Metal chimney out here, too, boss. Reckon we can fire it up?”
“If it makes this room warmer, knock yourselves out,” Harley told them.
“There’s plenty to burn around here,” Bohdan said. The two shoved everything away from the old iron stove against the wall. The stove was tarnished, scratched and white with disuse. It needed re-blacking. But it had a flat top for a kettle and
