“Is it time?”

“No.

“But I’m getting hungry.” Petulance accompanied the statement.

“Soon, Tessien.”

Rainbow plumes rustled, colorless in Hart’s night vision as she watched the serpent settle its coils. With its wings folded against its sides and the great fanged head tucked under the left pinion, it soon resembled nothing more than an uneven pile of feathers. It was hardly camouflage. In the lane between warehouses of United Oil’s docking facility on Puget Sound. such a pile was even more out of place than a dracoform.

For all its uncharacteristic impatience, Tessien was a dracoform, one of a variety of creatures that laid claim to the powers of legendary Dragons. It-Hart was unsure of the beast’s gender-was of a type known as a feathered serpent, the most common of the greater dracoforrns in the western hemisphere. Stretched out, it would measure ten meters of feather-scaled muscle, and its wingspan matched its length. Tessien was a dangerous beast, and had been her partner for four years of shadow business.

She almost trusted it.

A soft beep from the box in her jacket pocket alerted her that someone had broken one of the sensor beams she had placed earlier that evening. A second beep of a different tone told her the vector on which the target was moving. She slipped her hand into her pocket to silence the receiver. Its sound could betray them before they sprang the ambush. Any additional information the sensor could give wasn’t worth that.

She glanced at the mirror she had propped across the lane to give her a view toward the main warehouse. Four figures were running away from the building, headed toward Hart and Tessien’s position. From their silhouettes, she judged them to be shadowrunners. Three men and a woman. A faint jingling came from the leader as amulets and talismans swayed and clashed on his chest, marking him either as a mage or a very superstitious fellow.

The faint sounds were drowned out as a group of United Oil security men poured from the warehouse. The slap of their boots pounding on the concrete covered the noise made by the fleeing intruders but that rhythmic sound was soon overwhelmed by the screeches of the brace of cockatrices they loosed on their prey.

Cockatrices were an avian paraspecies favored for security work because the animal’s touch could shock its prey’s nervous system into collapse, paralyzing an intruder for easy arrest by the paranimal’s handler. Of course, the handler must pull the cockatrice away before it dined on the helpless victim, but the multinationals didn’t worry much about a few trespassers unavoidably mauled or killed. It made for less trespassers These paranimals were eager, flapping their stubby wings and pumping their long legs as they devoured the ground separating them from the shadowrunners.

The lead cockatrice closed with the trailing runner. It leaped for its prey, going high to swing its long, scaled tail at the man. One touch would paralyze him, leaving him helpless as its claws ripped into him. The runner dodged left, away from the tail as it swung forward and missed him.

Hart pegged the runner as a razorgoy, one of those cybernetically enhanced punks who liked to call themselves street samurai and always seemed to be working as muscle for a shadowrunning team. It usually took a jacked-up nervous system to react so quickly and evade attacks so easily.

Steel glinted in the moonlight as a blade extended from the man’s forearm, confirming Hart’s guess. The samurai twisted as he moved, slicing his weapon into the animal’s flesh. It squalled and crashed to the ground.

The second beast engaged another runner, who desperately blocked its attacks with a boxy object that Hart recognized as a cyberdeck. Hell of a way to treat expensive technology.

Before the cockatrice could pierce the desperate runner’s guard, the samurai cancelled its options. He ripped several bursts of full automatic fire into the creature before raking his aim back to his first opponent and gutting it as it started to rise.

Hart noted that the samurai had not hit his partner as the muzzle of his weapon swung past. Smartgun link, she surmised.

“That one’s fast, Tessien,” Hart observed as she pointed out the street samurai. “Take him first.”

“Too much metal. He won’t taste good.”

“You won’t get the others if the razorguy slices you. I’ll cover the mage while you’re doing that. With the artillery and armor down, the infantry will be easy meat.”

“True.” Anticipation. “You have a discerning eye for tactics, little one.”

She slid a hand under the ruff of feathers and scratched at the joint of Tessien’s head and neck. “You really know how to flatter a girl, my friend. Now go get ‘em.”

Tessien broadcast its eagerness as it rose into the air with a rustle, then a roar, to challenge the runners. They skidded to a stop, motionless for a second before recovering and launching their own attack as though having planned for such a contingency. They probably had, she realized. It was common knowledge that United Oil’s head of security in Seattle was the Western Dragon Haesslich.

Hart felt the power gather around the mage. The runners were relying on his spells for their first strike against the dracoform. Just as she had expected.

Lavender flames streamed from the mage’s outstretched hands, lighting the sky as they washed across the feathered serpent. Hart caught a glimpse of UniOil security diving for cover behind the runners.

Tessien’s coils arched straight for a second and Hart saw the mage begin to smile. The grin faded as his spell fractured and his flames flickered and died, leaving the serpent unharmed. The Dragon soared higher. Emboldened by how little she had needed to bolster Tessien’s magic defense, Hart stepped out to confront the mage.

“Having trouble?”

His eyes narrowed and he nodded as though he understood what had happened. He reached toward one of his amulets.

She pumped three slugs from her Atchison riot gun into his belly. He flew backward, spraying blood, entrails, and shreds of ineffective flak vest.

The sour stench that filled the air was swirled away by super-heated air as Tessien unleashed its flaming breath on the street samurai, flesh cooked as the water in the man’s tissue boiled. He collapsed to the concrete, a pile of charred bones, fused steel, and melted plastic.

Tessien circled the suddenly timid survivors as Hart called for their surrender.

“Drop your weapons and you won’t be hurt.”

A metallic clatter was her answer.

Tessien swooped behind her to settle. Its head arched up on a serpentine neck into a protective overwatch position as the United Oil security guards emerged from hiding and rushed to surround them. Nervous guards watched Tessien and Hart more closely than the shadowrunners. All around the circle, fingers rested on triggers.