Robert Asprin - Dragons Wild

“If I can interrupt for a moment,” Griffen said, “could you elaborate a bit on what it is I’ll be deciding?”

“I’ll give you an example,” Mose said. “Something that’s just come up that I’m trying to decide how to handle. There are some poker games around town that aren’t really a part of our group, but that pay us a percentage to operate. Now one of them that’s run by a young kid named Gris-gris has decided to stop paying us that percentage. It’s up to me to decide how to react. If it were you in my seat right now, Young Dragon, what would you do?”

“Me?” Griffen blinked, taken aback. “I…I don’t know. I guess you’d have to arrange for some kind of punishment to make an example of him.”

Mose threw back his head and laughed.

“I can see what Jerome means that you truly love your movies. Well, in part you’re right. But if you’re thinking of roughing him up or shooting up his game, you couldn’t be more wrong. We just don’t do that kind of thing. The kind of punishment we deal in would be to cut him off from the network.”

“The network?” Griffen said.

“That’s right.” Mose nodded. “You see, we have a whole network of people all through town who operate cabs or work at the hotels. When tourists or conventioneers are looking for a game, these folks check them out to be sure they aren’t the law, then send them along to one of our games with an initialed business card to show they’re clean. That’s where we get a lot of our business and most of our new regulars. If Gris-gris wants to operate independently, his game gets dropped from the spotters’ list and he has to make do with locals. That’s the kind of punishment we usually deal in.”

“That’s all?” Griffen said. “I guess it makes sense. I was just expecting something a little more dramatic.”

“Uh-huh,” Mose said. “Well, it can be a bit more tricky once you really get into it. Like in this case, Gris-gris has been shooting his mouth off about how he’s going independent and there isn’t anything we can do about it. Now, whether he stays with us or not I figure is his business, but talking that kind of trash is disrespectful. That’s a whole different issue to be settled.”

“So what are you going to do?” Griffen said.

Mose looked at him and smiled.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you think about it for a day or two, then we’ll sit down and talk it out together.”

“Um…excuse me?” Valerie said. “But before Big Brother here got you sidetracked on the Gris-gris business, you were about to explain how the powers factor in at all.”

“That’s right.” Mose nodded. “Now, realize that not everyone in our organization is a dragon. In fact, most of them know even less about dragons than you do. Those people you should be able to lead and control with nothing but your attitude and presence. There are some folks you’ll run into who will stand out as having dragon blood in them, but are totally unaware of it. They’re a little more tricky to deal with, because they’ll be drawn to you without knowing why…some will want to ally with you, some will feel the need for a confrontation. Again, you should be able to handle them without using any kind of powers.”

“The problem is the dragons who know what they are and what you are. Most will be willing to leave you alone if you don’t pose a threat to them. There are others, though, who will want to test you or simply eliminate you. That’s when it will be a good thing if your secondary power potential proves to be true.”

“Would this guy Stoner be one of those?” Griffen said.

“Definitely,” Mose said. “Jerome told me about your little set-to on the expressway. He would have the contacts to try something like that, but it just doesn’t seem like his style. Don’t focus all your attention on him. There are others out there that can be just as nasty.”

“Speaking of that,” Griffen said, “do you happen to know a guy who goes by the name of Maestro?”

Mose and Jerome exchanged glances.

“We’ve crossed paths a couple of times,” Mose said carefully. “Why do you ask?”

“I ran into him at the Irish pub the other night, and he recognized my name,” Griffen said. “He even specifically asked if I knew you.”

Again Mose and Jerome looked at each other.

“Don’t worry about him,” Mose said at last. “He’s got his own thing going that doesn’t affect us one way or the other. Not a bad man to have for a friend, though.”

“Is he a dragon?”

“I figure him for one of those I was telling you about,” Mose said. “The ones with dragon blood who don’t know it.”

“Does he have any secondary powers?” Griffen pressed. “Does he use them?”

Mose shook his head.

“No,” he said. “He uses a knife.”

Mose studied the tarot card Griffen had passed him, then glanced at Jerome.

“Is that what I think it is?” Jerome said.

“Depends on what you think it is,” Mose said with a sigh, “but probably yes. My only question is why you didn’t tell me about this before?”

“If you mean before today, I wanted Griffen to show it to you himself.” Jerome shrugged. “Besides, I figured we had a bit of time, what with him just having hit town and all. I wasn’t even sure it was the real thing. If you mean why not earlier, I wanted to wait until Valerie wasn’t around.”

Valerie had finally gotten bored with the details of even a preliminary briefing on Mose’s gambling operation and had excused herself to run some errands.

“Uh-huh.” Mose nodded. “I can see why you’d want to keep her out of this until we sort out what’s goin’ on.”

“Excuse me,” Griffen said, “but would someone please tell me what it is we’re talking about?”

“Could be nothin’ but someone pulling your chain,” Mose said. “On the other hand, it could be real trouble. Truth is, I’ve never actually seen one of these before. Only heard about them.”

“Since you’re the one I heard about it from, Mose, I thought you should be the one to fill him in,” Jerome said.

Mose nodded, tapping the card with his finger.

“Sorry to keep walking around this, Griffen,” he said, “but I’m having a bit of trouble getting my mind around this. It may be that you’ve got George on your trail.”

“Who’s George?” Griffen asked quickly.

“No one knows who he is,” Mose said. “But there are rumors about what he is.”

He pursed his lips, then continued.

“There’s supposed to be some kind of freelance enforcer or hit man that dragons hire when they want something to happen to another dragon. Like I told you, we aren’t big on direct confrontation. Now this enforcer isn’t a dragon himself, but he’s made a study of how to hurt or kill dragons so now it’s his specialty. I’ve only heard him referred to as ‘George’ or ‘Saint George.’ You know, the Dragonslayer. He’s supposed to charge an arm and a leg for his services, so things usually have to be pretty desperate or someone has to have a big hate on to call him in. That’s why all we have to go on is rumors. We’ve never been big enough or important enough to draw that kind of big league attention.”

“That’s just great,” Griffen said with a scowl. “I’ve only known about being a dragon for a couple of weeks…less than that, actually…and I’ve already got a professional hit man on my trail.”

“Don’t panic yet, Grifter,” Jerome said.

“Why not?” Griffen snarled. “Right now, panicking seems like a pretty good idea to me.”

“Because panicking never helps,” Mose said. “It only makes things worse and can maybe even get you killed. You should know that if you’re as good a gambler as Jerome says.”