Dedication

This one is dedicated to the editors at the old White Wolf Publishing house, and to Stephen Mark Rainey, editor of the late and lamented Deathrealm magazine, where the original short story—"In His Heart Live Dragons"—was published. Also my heartfelt thanks to Bob Eggleton for the use of the amazing dragon image on the cover, Voice Talent Corey Snow, who became, and remains, the "voice" of Donovan DeChance through all the audiobook editions, and to my brothers and sisters in Tiburon, MC, where I learned what it's like to truly belong.

Special thanks/acknowledgments

I would like to thank, first and foremost, the love of my life, Patricia Lee Macomber, and my wonderful children, Stephanie, Bill, Zach, Zane, and Katie, who put up with my enthusiastic outbursts about the world of Donovan DeChance on a regular basis, and who have always loved and supported me. I'd like to thank Kurt Criscione, the keeper of the series bible for this and other works of mine, all of which seem to constantly intertwine, David Dodd, for helping me turn Crossroad Press into something more than a hobby, and Aaron Rosenberg, for not only handling most of our print books—but for teaching me how to do it myself. Last but not least, I'd like to thank the words, and the magic, for being my companions in life.

"I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning."

—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

Chapter One

The park was quiet. Clouds scudded across the last remnant of the sunset, obscuring the muted reds and golds that clung to the skyline. The hum of street lamps kicking to life brought dim, yellowed illumination to the night, but it did little to ease the menace of the encroaching shadows. Instead it shaped them and drew them out in elongated patterns on the rolling hills and small forested patches of Santini Park. The hint of a storm crackled in the evening air, bringing the heavy, water and ozone scent of thunderstorm and the soft flicker, far off over the ocean, of lightning fingers stretching down toward the rolling waves.

On the East side of the park, other shadows moved. They slipped from alleys, slid from between parked cars and out of the darkened doorways of decayed apartment buildings and dingy warehouses. Eyes, teeth, jewelry and blades glimmered softly in the dying light. They crossed the street stealthily, entered the park in silence, and disappeared into its depths. No words were spoken, but there was fluidity to their combined motion, and purpose. They entered like a horde of vermin and disappeared into the darkness.

Moments later the silence was shattered by the thrumming roar of a single engine. It wasn't the purr of a sports car, or the roar of V-8 power, but the steady throb of a large V-twin, powerful and throaty. The echo of that sound resonated through the park, caromed off buildings and reverberated in the depths of alleys. The sound multiplied and grew, challenging the distant voice of the thunder for dominance of the night. The first bike slid down Holley St. and into sight at the edge of the park. Its single headlight sliced through the blackness. The rider rolled to a stop, the bike's polished tank and chrome reflecting the weak light of the street lights. He pushed the kickstand down and stepped off. He left the engine running.

Black hair swept over his shoulders, tied back with a silver clasp that caught the light when he moved. The clasp was a spider, long legs twined about his pony-tail tightly. His eyes were small chips of blue ice. His chest was bare beneath a cut-sleeve denim vest, faded and crisscrossed with stains and patches, chains and memories. He was lean and strong, long muscled legs beneath tight jeans ending in scuffed engineer boots ringed by a leather strap, decorated with chipped conches. From his belt a long knife swung, slapping lightly against his thigh.

He stood for a long time, bike leaning on its stand, the engine throbbing. He swept the park with a cold gaze that seemed able to cut through the shadows. Nothing moved but leaves sliding quickly across the grass, caught in the grip of the approaching storm. There was no sound but the bike, and the whisper of wind through the trees.

Snake waited another moment. He wanted to see them, to know they were there, and where, but he also knew that wasn't going to happen. They'd drawn him here, and there was no choice but to get on with it. He reached over and killed his engine.

He raised his arm and waved it in a slow arc. The sudden silence that had fallen when the engine died was broken by the soft throb of more engines. They ground to life and then rose to a sudden roar. The darkness was crisscrossed by brilliant slices of light, dispersing as the bright headlight beams sliced through it, and reforming as each passed, single file. They parked in diagonals, lining the edge of the park. There were dozens of them, each pausing for a moment, canting to one side to catch on its kick stand, then falling to silence.

The storm crept slowly closer, just off the coast and heading inland. The lightning flashes grew in brilliance and frequency. Snake stepped forward onto the soft turf of the park common, and the others filled in behind him, row upon row, tattered jeans, dark eyes, their weapons, belts, and leather gleaming with steel and silver. Each wore a sleeveless denim vest with the club's colors, blue and green dragons, whirling in a tight 69, devouring their own tails. The top bar simply stated the obvious: "Dragons MC". The bottom rocker, lined in blue, read "San Valences, CA."

A tall, dark-skinned man stepped up beside Snake and scanned the shadows. Vasquez was leathered and worn, years of sweat and road-dust sun baked into his skin; his arms were corded with muscle born of hard labor. His eyes were deep brown, nearly black, and his hair blew free and shaggy about his shoulders.

"They're out there, Snake," he said softly. "I smell them."

Snake nodded, not speaking. He breathed slowly and gathered his energy. He sensed them too, shifting through the shadows. Los Escorpiones. The thought of the young, violent Latinos made his skin crawl, but he knew he could show no sign of fear or weakness. The others could spare a moment to think of how their hearts were growing chilly and empty, or how their lives were riding on the actions of a few short moments. Snake had no such freedom. If he faltered, their courage would break, and they would be finished. Leadership always came with a price.

Along the line Snake heard the shuffle of booted feet, the soft clatter of weapons, and slowly the growing murmur of nervous voices. It was time. They were charged and ready and he couldn't afford to hesitate and let that moment pass.

He threw his head back suddenly face turned to the churning clouds of the approaching storm and screamed. His fists were clenched, arms curled up and back toward his chest and the sound rose, unfettered, from deep within his soul. At that moment the lines broke and the Dragons surged forward. Pent up rage, fear, and adrenaline burst in a flood of screams, merging their voices and their hearts with the energy of Snake's bellowed challenge.

As they thundered down the sloping field, shadows melted free of darker shadows and Los Escorpiones were on them. The storm broke at that moment, as if the heavens sensed the coming clash and wanted their rightful share of the fight. The lightning flashes were so closely spaced that the landscape became a strobed parody of battle, like a scene from a poorly written zombie movie.

The darkness was split by cries of anger and pain. Each flash showed pale, drawn features and flashing metal. Gunshots rang out, lost in rolls of booming thunder and echoed beyond them. Warriors crashed together, weapons drawn, lips curled back in the fury of battle and the terror of death. The scent of blood and screams of anguish washed away in sudden torrents of rain; the grass soaked blood and water into its heart and the sky was striped and marbled with the anger of the Gods.

The storm grew in fury; they slid and slipped on mud and the gore of the fallen, and they fought. Blades ripped soft skin and hard tendons. Gunshots, half-wild in the heat of the battle and the clutches of the storm, ripped through hearts and heads, spattering the ground, trees, and combatants with bits and pieces of those they'd called brother.

Vasquez towered over his opponents, a mountain of flesh and bone they tried again and again to scale. They clung to his shoulders and he shook them off. His blade ripped through limbs and organs with wild, uncontrolled abandon. Bodies flew from him, tossed, reeling from heavy blows, and his dark eyes shone, alive with reflected lightning and deep-seated rage.

There were too many. For each he knocked aside, two more slid from the shadows. And they were fast. It wasn't the speed of youth; Vasquez was fast. It was inhuman speed. They shot out of the shadows and tried to climb him like a tree, swarming like rats over something dead and rotting.

Vasquez bellowed in rage, kicking and slashing, leaving a trail of Escorpiones strewn across the park, but it wasn't enough. Those he left broken and sliced rose again as if nothing had touched them and launched at his throat.

About ten yards away, locked in furious combat with a young, lean Latino, Snake saw Vasquez going down. He cried out, called for help from the others, but there was none to be had. Snake brought his knee up suddenly, slammed it into the boy's chin and snapped back his head. The Escorpione fell, but as Snake turned and leaped toward Vasquez, another rose from the shadows, and another. Too many.

He wheeled and pistoned his fist into the jaw of the first that lunged at him and sent him skidding across the muddy field. Then he reached for the second and cursed as a sharp blade raked his forearm. He pulled back and kicked instead, knocking the boy's legs from beneath him. Snake pounced, grabbed his opponent's long hair and yanked back hard. He slid his blade in between ribs, out, and back. He let the boy fall and turned. Something was wrong. They were too fast. When they fell, they didn't stay down. It was crazy, and he had no time to figure it out. He fought for his life.

The wind picked up suddenly. Rain whipped into their eyes and blurred one body to the next and each face to the shadows. Snake couldn't see Vasquez any longer, though there was a rolling, flailing pile of bodies a few feet to his right. He spun toward them, caught a form moving up on his left and swung to grip the man's throat, only to find it was a Dragon he held. They met one another's gaze for a long moment, leader and follower, and then he released and turned away.

At that moment, Vasquez roared free of the mass of flesh that held him, flinging bodies to either side and swinging his huge fists like hammers, all thought of weapons forgotten in the heat of the moment. Escorpiones fell away like dust, and still it wasn't enough. As Snake cried out to the huge biker, his arm outstretched toward that wild, untamed face, the night exploded once again.

It wasn't lightning. A single gunshot and Vasquez's throat erupted. Blood spurted and splashed; his huge hands gripped the hole uselessly, his eyes shocked, voice silenced. The Escorpiones who'd swarmed over the big man only moments before scrambled back, wild eyed, not certain at first who held the gun, or who'd been shot.

"No!" Snake screamed, he leaped for his fallen brother, just failing to catch the massive body as it crashed to the ground. Rain and mud and gore coated Snake's hands and his jeans as Vasquez slumped at his feet. In the distance, the muted wail of sirens sounded, and Snake became aware, slowly, that it wasn't over.

He leaned in quickly to check for a pulse, but the ruined mess that had been Vasquez's throat relieved him of that hope. No way was the big man alive. Lightning flashed again, and Snake looked up, caught the rising, urgent whine of the sirens and shook the tears from his eyes. The Escorpiones were scrambling back, the approaching police driving them even more urgently than the scent of Dragon blood. Snake knew he had only moments to act.

He leaned down, turned Vasquez quickly, dragged the denim vest from the man's shoulders, and clutched it tightly in his hand. He turned and shook it at the sky. He screamed again then, in torment, and in rage, screamed to be heard above the voice of storm and sirens. The sound echoed, endless and powerful.

The Dragons knew that sound. It began the battle, and it ended it. Already they were turning from the last remnants of their private skirmishes, dragging their tortured and injured bodies through the mud, cursing and slipping, fighting to reach their bikes and the streets before the police arrived.

Snake hesitated. He didn't want to leave Vasquez like this. He didn't want to abandon the remnant of his friend to the city and the police and the reporters who would swarm over the park come morning. He wanted to spin back the hands of time and free himself of the pain, end the guilt and the huge, empty, gut-grinding pain of the reality at his feet.

He shook his head a final time, glanced down at Vasquez's inert form, then spun and raced to his bike. It would serve no purpose to be taken in and questioned. He had a greater responsibility, and though it ate at his soul, he would stand up to it; with honor.

The bikes were sluggish in the rain. Some of them wouldn't start at all, and were pushed down side-streets, obscured by rain and darkness. Snake kicked once, twice, and his engine ground to life. He gunned it, felt the throb of the big V-Twin, and wanted to just pop the clutch and slam himself and the bike, pain and responsibility be damned, into a building. He worked the throttle, revved the engine carefully to dry the distributor, and spun it in a quick skid that nearly bounced him off the curb before the tires caught. He roared up the street and slid down thirty-eighth as the cops hit the main drag at Laurel and Thirty-Sixth. They would find what they really wanted. No one moving and nothing but another mess to clean up. They didn't want to cuff and question in the rain. They didn't give a spit in the wind for the lives of any involved. Vasquez' bike remained, canted to one side and forgotten beside those of five or six of his brothers.

Turning toward The Barrio, Snake gunned it and shot recklessly through the storm.

***

In his dreams, Salvatore Domingo Sanchez shook. The wind whipped against the thin outer walls of his shed mercilessly, threatening to rip the tired old structure from its foundation and send it spinning away into the storm, which loomed like the maw of some huge, malevolent beast. That is how his nightmare started.

Then he was walking down a beach. The soft sand beneath his bare feet, sifted through his toes and the salt-spray from the ocean teased his senses. It was dark, no moon, and no stars. There was only the beach and the roar of the waves crashing on the stones further out to guide him along the shore.

Circles of glowing light loomed through the darkness, huge and imposing. They did not flicker, as torches might, or pierce the darkness in long beams, like those of flashlights, or headlights. They glowed, hoarding their illumination, using it only to draw his gaze and thoughts into their depths. They were eyes. Salvatore shuddered as the outlines became clearer, and though he wished with all his heart to turn and to run, he could do nothing but pad slowly down that unknown beach.

The sound of the wind beyond the walls of his shed became the breath of something large and sinuous, and the rain, crashing in heavy waves across the time-worn walls and tin roof the scrape of talons on stone and sand. Salvatore clutched his dirty, tattered sheet closer about his thin frame. The glowing orbs grew in size as he approached until they filled his vision, and out beyond the crashing waves, lightning crackled against a backdrop of purest ebony. Salvatore concentrated during those flashes of light and tried to make out the form of what lay beneath and around those eyes. He failed. There was an amorphous shadow against the backdrop of pure darkness that was the moonless sky, but no outline, no structure that he could apply to make the thing more real, or less terrifying.

Salvatore's heart thudded in his chest, seeming to miss every other beat in its hurry to skip from one moment to the next. He tried to breathe slowly, but could not seem to fill his lungs at all, forced to settle for small gasps or air that served only to raise his heartbeat to a thundering pulse in his head.

The lightning flashed closer, and he tossed in his sleep, nearly slipping from his narrow cot to the dirt floor beneath. Flashes of green and gold flickered from the darkness in that instant, and then faded. Salvatore blinked, hoping the strobed image would take a more defined shape in his private darkness, but it did not. Again, all he saw were the huge, yellowed eyes, glaring down at him. He felt the thing's hot breath, and knew its rage - its thoughts.

He stepped closer still, and the sky around him exploded in a sudden burst of light. The fury of the storm washed over the beach, drenching him; the lightning flashed so suddenly, and so bright that his sight was stolen. His breath ended in the sudden wave of water, ears pounding with the twined beat of surf and storm and the roar of thunder, rippling over the sand and melting to a mind-shattering scream of rage.

Salvatore reeled under the assault. He fought to close his eyes and blank the nightmare images from his thoughts. He fell back, landed roughly on the damp sand, and he saw it. The dragon reared over him in the strobed lightning illumination, its form and rage embedding themselves in his mind and soul.

Salvatore shook his head and whispered, "No," to the howling wind and roaring dragon, but there was nothing he could do. The dragon screamed and soared into the darkness, visible now, though barely. The sky melted from image to image as only dreams and nightmares can. Salvatore screamed then, too. He knew this Dragon, recognized the pulsing heat at the center of the creature's image. He wanted to cry out, to scream a warning, but it was too late.

The Dragon wheeled once, roared its defiance into the face of the storm, and flipped to its back in mid-air. It hung there for a long moment, and then plummeted toward the sand and waves. Salvatore turned and crawled toward the surf. He wanted to scream again, but the image of the falling dragon had robbed him of breath once more. He whispered, low and soft. "No."

The sudden crack of thunder too close to the shed ripped through Salvatore's dream and brought him bolt upright on the cot, shivering uncontrollably. His sheet was drenched in sweat, and wind whistled through the cracks in the walls and tore at him, dragging goose bumps up to ripple over his skin. His teeth chattered, and his eyes were open so suddenly, and so wide, that he was momentarily blinded. He saw nothing but the final image of the dream. Nothing but the dragon.

He gasped and fought to calm his heart, and his breath. The dragon released his vision, but it was trapped inside him, thrashing and raging against the storm that was his mind. He glanced toward the doorway, wanting to rush out into the night, and to find out what had happened. The visions never came to him without cause.

Slowly, Salvatore rose, pulled his tattered jacket down from its hook on the wall and wrapped it around the damp sheet. He closed his eyes, but sleep was very slow to come, and not deep enough to provide rest. He dreamed of the dragon until the sun reached soft orange-red fingers over the skyline to tempt him from his bed. Finally he rose, dressed, and slipped out the door into the fresh morning air, where he walked to Old Martinez's steps and sat on the cool concrete to wait the "Prophet's" arrival. All he could expect was a warm cup of tea and a slice of bread, but at least he would not greet the morning alone.