The fire from his brother Alal never hurt him. Kur’s fire was made with stronger magic.
“You will obey, boy,” Kur said.
Etel, Ezzu’s eldest brother, came outside. Ezzu heard every step on the dry ground.
“Father, your methods aren’t working,” Etel said.
“The boy needs to learn,” Kur grumbled. “I will teach him respect.”
“Will you? Look at him. Even now he loathes you. Torture doesn’t help,” Etel said.
“It’s discipline.”
“He doesn’t have any skin left,” Etel said. Then he called out, “Alal! Make yourself useful and tend to the boy.”
Ezzu, curled up on the ground, heard his much older brother walking away. Etel was hundreds of years older than Ezzu. Then he heard running footsteps.
“What have you done?” Alal asked as he crouched beside Ezzu.
Ezzu couldn’t respond, but the question wasn’t for him. He felt Alal’s magic. In a matter of seconds, he went from blazing hot to freezing cold to pleasantly numb.
“He calls me by my name,” Kur responded.
“Of course he does,” Alal said, lifting Ezzu into his arms. “I know you want to take an active role in training him, but you’re going to kill him.”
“He needs to learn,” Kur said.
“You’re right, father. But the pain he’s already in probably has him half out of his mind. He’s not ready to be trained by the first dragon, anyway. He’s only been here for a week. Let Etel and I prepare him to train with you.”
Alal didn’t wait for a response. He carried Ezzu to his bedroom. Dragons didn’t need to sleep as humans did, but they had beds for show. Ezzu had to admit that the bed he had in Kur’s home was far better than the mat he had to lay on for hours at a time in his mother’s home while she slept.
Alal gently laid the boy on the bed and sat down beside him.
Etel came in with a bowl and a lizard.
“What are you going to do?” Alal asked.
“I learned a new spell,” Etel said.
“A new one? You could kill the boy.”
“It probably won’t kill him. I really don’t know, but it’s better than the suffering he’s about to go through. You can’t keep him frozen forever.”
Ezzu was willing to let Etel give it a try, but he found he couldn’t move his mouth to give consent.
“He’ll heal on his own. Don’t do it, Etel,” Alal said.
Etel looked Alal in the eyes and said, “Sig.”
It was a Sumerian word. They were always speaking Sumerian. Ezzu gathered that the word meant “silence” but when Etel said it, it had magic to it. Now Alal couldn’t talk.
Etel set the bowl on the bed. He began saying more words in Sumerian and then he ripped the head off the poor little lizard. He poured the blood into the bowl, all the while he chanted. He tossed the dead lizard aside and then used his own dragonfire to ignite the contents of the bowl.
The ground shook and dust came from the walls. Sun dried brick homes weren’t the most stable.
The numbing cold left Ezzu and his body again felt like it was burning. He screamed and then everything went dark.
He didn’t know how long he was out, but he awoke to the sound of his brothers arguing. His skin itched terribly. It was almost as bad as the burning.
“Idiot, you killed him,” Alal said.
“I did not. Look. His eyes are open,” Etel said.
Alal peered down into Ezzu’s eyes. “Are you okay, little brother?”
“It itches,” Ezzu said.
“Cool him a little, but not too much,” Etel said.
Alal used his magic on Ezzu again. The coolness relieved the itching.
“That’s better, thank you brothers,” Ezzu said.
“Now that you’re better I want you to listen to me, boy,” Etel said. “Stop trying to get yourself killed. You will never defeat Kur, but you can survive him if you stop being stupid. In a few years, you’ll be ready to fly out of here and never return. For now, live. That’s your only goal, do you understand me?”
“Etel,” Alal began.
“Straighten out his head Alal. We can’t always be here to protect him, and it appears he’s too stubborn to live. I’ll go talk to father.”
Ezzu was thankful for the help his brothers gave him. He’d only known them for a week, but they seemed like good dragons. Neither of them felt like family, though. Ezzu had a family already.
Chapter 1
Cybersecurity was about more than protecting clients from hackers sitting in their basements. The truth was, if someone really wanted to get into a company’s network, they would likely do a little footwork. The most secure network could fall because one employee scribbled their password on a sticky note.
Jess entered a law firm dressed as a delivery person from a local sub shop. It was a favorite among the firm’s paralegals. No one paid attention to her in her unflattering lime green polo shirt and oversized black slacks that made her butt look three sizes bigger and as flat as Kansas.
She left sandwiches on unoccupied desks and took pictures of closed client files left out for anyone to see. She peaked under twenty keyboards and found two password lists. One included usernames. No one questioned her, though one man snuck up behind her and asked if she had a ham and swiss. She didn’t know. She just handed him one at random.
It was much too easy. Anyone dressed as a service worker could break into the firm’s system. No wonder they’d been hacked three times in the past month.
Finished with the law firm, she went out to the parking garage and climbed into the back of her SUV. She had to change clothes if she was going to get into character as a personal assistant named Rhonda for her next job.
Thank God for tinted windows.
It was a little bit of a drive to Tech Ridge, in Austin Texas, but she should be there in time to scope out a bar and prepare to take on her next target.
She ate a sandwich she’d set aside for
