Prince of Fire | Dragonfire Book One

Capitolo Quattro

The Original Ten possessed phenomenal power. However, Dracula was endowed with the most lethal and cunning ability: the power of persuasion.

~ Draconic Book of Songs

Chapter Four

Humans drove past Dante in their metal machines. They went about their day, unaware that there was a dragon walking amongst them. Of course, the dragon was ambling in human form to blend in with the populace.

For Dante, it had been a decade or two since he had last stepped foot in a human town. One reason was that training new soldiers took a fair amount of time, given that he trained them as meticulously and thoroughly as he could. Another reason was that he had recently come out of his dormant period.

Due to their immortal life spans, dragons typically hibernate for some periods of time, to pass the occasionally unbearable passage of eternity. For some humans, immortality was a goal, a dream, but they failed to realize the endless, drifting waiting that it curtailed. For humans, they would see their fellow members waste away from time and they would watch as the world changed around them. For them, eternity would be a curse.

On the other hand, dragons that stayed with the clans didn't experience those events. Surrounded by other immortal creatures, dragons didn't succumb to the theoretical human concerns because their peers aged at the same rate.

Human lives, however, were fragile and finite, a fact abused by Dracula. Death never strayed far from his path, as Dante was planning to investigate. He was situated in the town last associated with Dracula. The town was rather busy; it was large enough to have a museum but not large enough with towering office buildings looming in the sky.

According to news reports on television, a museum curator had been declared an official missing person after a week of no contact with anyone in society. Perhaps to some humans, the kidnapping was something that could be glanced over with indifference. But with the timing of the missing status, Dante knew that he needed to follow his hunches and suspicions. And to do so, he needed to pose as a human detective.

It wasn't too difficult for him to sneak into a police station to steal a uniform and a badge because there were all too coincidental spikes of electricity whenever he walked into a room, effectively shorting the security cameras for a moment. His heightened hearing also alerted him to presences around the corner or in a room.

He waited until after he left the station before donning the uniform and taming his wind-rustled hair. Unfortunately for him, it was more challenging to steal a police car from the station. Dante decided that he could merely borrow a vehicle in a neighboring house.

Now that he was dressed in the stolen uniform, it would be pointless to shift and fly to his next destination, just to tear through the fabric with his wings. Not to mention, he was in broad daylight and in the middle of town. There was no need to reveal the existence of dragons to the unsuspecting public or to alert any group of hunters. Both of those scenarios would impede on his investigation and stall his mission. But a stolen car report would be slightly less hassling, hence why he walked to the nearest quiet house and hot-wired a car, a trick he learned last time he was in contact with humans.

Dante didn't particularly like driving a car because he knew what it was like to fly. The freedom and mobility of flight was nonexistent in a metal vehicle, even if some mortals think differently. But, to uphold a human appearance, he needed to act like one.

However, in some dragon clans, members didn't even bother with human forms, or any other form except for their draconic one. Those clans were typically small and resistant to metaphorical and literal change. They also lived on isolated islands in the Pacific, so they stayed away from most human civilizations.