Dragon Book
Dragon Over Washington, as its name implies, is a book about dragons in a contemporary environment. There are a lot of dragon books out there, and Dragon Over Washington tries to look at dragons, their behavior, their characteristics and their very being in a very different way.
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Excerpt from Dragon Over Washington:
Anderson moved his head slowly, trying to see into the trees that lined the hills to the north. Nothing. He stopped moving his head, trying to see if he could spot a movement that he might have otherwise missed because of his own movement. Nothing. No, wait, something moved. He quickly turned the objective lens counter clockwise and focused. There was a movement, something slithering, coming closer. Anderson blinked and tried to focus on it. It was as if a ripple passed over the earth, a disturbance that approached the farm's fence.
Something was sliding over the ground, something that Anderson couldn't see though it left a deep undulating track in the ground behind it. A tree in the path of the disturbance was shaken as if something heavy rubbed against it. Anderson opened his mouth to sound the alarm. The invisible disturbance reached the fence and the fence moved, making the thick steel beams imbedded into the ground shudder. Something was brushing against the fence, something massive. Anderson could see nothing except bright green earth and darker vegetation beyond through his night vision goggle. The fence started to bend, the steel beams giving way. A breach formed, its edges moving apart as something invisible pushed itself into the farm's grounds.
Anderson didn't breathe. He tracked the approach of the thing, whatever it was. The undulating path over the land headed straight towards the largest group of cows, moving slowly, inhumanely slowly. Anderson jumped. A lone cow mooed in distress. The undulating motion stopped. Anderson jumped again. A pair of luminous eyes, bright green reflections in his PVS-7 scope, blinked once and then disappeared.
"All alpha units. Bogey, four hundred yards north of alpha," Anderson croaked.
"Alpha, where's that?"
"I don't have anything!"
"You sure?"
"Alpha, say again." Anderson didn't respond. His eyes remained glued to his night vision goggle. Something swam into view, becoming slowly visible. It was a snake like thing, massive, bulkier than any creature Anderson had ever seen or heard about, more than thirty feet from snout to tail. It slithered slowly across the earth, snake like, belly rubbing against the ground. The cows shrieked in fright and ran off, moving as fast as they could. A bull stayed behind, trembling slightly. Anderson saw the hot breath steaming away from the bull's mouth. It stayed in its place, even as the monster approached. The creature's huge, overlapping scales were changing color lazily, black to green, finally assuming a pale orange shade.
"What the fuck!"
"Look at that mother!"
"Get a load of that!"
"Soldiers, cut the crap. Get off the horn," Agent Mathew said shortly.
"Base. Confirmed contact. Phase one commencing. Phase two ready." Anderson heard Agent Mathew's voice near him. The monster was now somehow growing. Anderson blinked in confusion. The monster didn't grow, it was rising up on its legs, a cobra rearing up before attacking, only a hundred times bigger.
"Holy ..." An awe struck voice echoed in Anderson's earphones. His own. A triangle shaped head, horned and spiked, rose up even higher on a long neck. Long jaws moved fractionally as the eyes stared at the frozen bull. Its four clawed legs dug in and a long whip like tail with a large spike moved continuously. A forklike tongue darted out, tasting the air. Anderson tore the night vision goggle off his head. He watched the dragon rearing up before the frozen bull. A pitiful bleat from the bull made Anderson shake himself.
"Move, damn it! Move!"
"That's mother nature, man!" Benson said.
"The bull is paralyzed," someone said. The bull didn't move, not even to trample the ground or to snort. He just stood there. Anderson looked back at the reptilian dragon. The huge triangle shaped head was held steady, the faintly luminous green eyes fixed on the bull. Its jaws opened, two pairs of huge fangs unfolded themselves, rotating and moving forward. The fangs, the pair on the upper jaw slightly longer than the pair on the lower jaw, were easily visible even in the murky darkness of the night. The jaws kept opening, the triangle shaped head tensing. Then, faster than Anderson could follow, the monster flashed forward, reaching the bull in a blink of an eye. The monster coiled around the herbivore, a rabbit caught in the unforgiving grasp of a python. Dust and sand exploded up as the beasts struggled but the bull's hooves slid on iron hard scales, its feeble struggle short lived. Thick, black smoke rose off the bull as if it was being roasted alive.