Dai shook his head. "It's something you're born with, I'm afraid." He hesitated, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "You have to be...part-dragon. Descended from them."
"Are you telling me that the fifty-foot invisible dragons can," Virginia groped for a politer word than the first that had sprung to mind, "interbreed with people?"
"Ah, yes." Dai avoided her eyes, busying himself unfastening his uniform jacket. "Dragons don't always look like dragons."
With a slight wince, he shrugged off the protective jacket. Underneath he was wearing a simple black T-shirt which strained against his upper arms. Braces ran over his shoulders, holding up his fire-resistant pants and emphasizing the hard lines of his muscled chest. He adjusted one of the straps as he spoke. "Dragons are shifters, you see. Most of the time, they are people."
Virginia stared at him, for more than one reason. "Let me get this straight. You're saying that dragons can turn into people."
Dai fidgeted, rubbing at one shoulder. "I'm saying some people can turn into dragons."
Virginia did not feel that this was the time to argue semantics. "Whatever. And they sometimes...mate with people."
The tips of Dai's ears were turning red. "Quite often. Ah, that is, I mean, often dragons take a mate, not that they often mate with lots of—"
Virginia held up both hands to stop him, shuddering in revulsion. "Please do not tell me about the sex lives of dragons. I don't ev
en want to think about it."
Dai's mouth opened, then shut again. He looked desperately uncomfortable. "It's not—"
"Seriously, this is the one area where I really don't need details." Something was nagging at Virginia. She frowned, thinking back over the night. She abruptly sat bolt upright. "Bertram!"
Dai looked taken aback. "Pardon?"
"Bertram. Bertram Russell. He's a...sort of professional rival of mine."
Dai glanced down at the maps and papers scattered around his feet, then at the small brushes and magnifying glasses laid out on the dining table. "You're an archaeologist?"
Virginia liked the rather reverent way he said the word. It made a nice change from the raised eyebrows she usually got when she mentioned her profession. "Yes. I specialize in the early Saxon period, particularly tracking migrations across Europe. Anyway, earlier tonight I ran into Bertram at a building site his family owns, up on the Downs. I ended up running away because I thought he was going to attack me, but when I looked back he'd vanished. And then..."
Her stomach clenched at the memory of bone-white claws stabbing at her, and she had to pause for a moment to regain her composure. "Then the dragon appeared."
Dai's mouth tightened into a grim line. "He's the shifter, then."
He fell silent, studying her. Virginia had the uncomfortable feeling that those clear green eyes could read her like an open book. She was certain that he'd noticed the way she hadn't mentioned just why she'd been up on the Downs in the first place. She was mentally scrabbling for an excuse for her night time hike that didn't involve a fortune in gold, when Dai spoke again. "Dragons are incredibly possessive."
It was Virginia's turn to blink at the apparent non sequitur. "What do you mean?"
"A dragon always has a hoard. Gold and jewels are irresistibly attractive, especially anything unique or significant in some way. But taking even the smallest coin from a dragon's hoard is like kidnapping one of their children. He'd stop at nothing to get it back."
"I didn't take anything that belongs to Bertram,' Virginia said firmly.
It was technically true, she told herself. The nose-guard, and anything else that remained in Brithelm's burial mound, was part of Britain's cultural heritage. By law, it belonged to the nation, not to whoever happened to own the land it was found on.
Dai let out his breath, looking relieved. "That's good." Virginia felt a twinge of guilt at the way he just took her words on trust, without asking for any details. "It avoids certain...complications with draconic law."
Implying that if she had stolen something, Dai wouldn't have been able to stop the dragon from taking it back. It was a good thing Bertram hadn't managed find the artifact first. Virginia felt physically ill at the thought of the artifacts that must be gathering dust in the dragon's hoard. The nose-guard's true value did not lie in mere gold or jewels, but in the hidden stories it contained, waiting to be unlocked by careful study. The thought of Bertram hoarding it away to privately gloat over was unbearable.
"You know, this does explain a lot about Bertram," she mused aloud. "Now I know why he's such a nasty, controlling, sneering bastard. Suddenly, it makes perfect sense. It's because he's a dragon."
All the relief fled from Dai's face, chased away by dismay. "He could just be a bastard."
Is he defending dragons? Virginia was momentarily puzzled, until she remembered something he'd said earlier. "Wait. You're a dragon hunter."
"It's something I do, yes," Dai said, cautiously. "But if you're asking me to kill this Bertram—"
Virginia cut him off with a shake of her head. "Tempting, but not where I was going." Her eyes narrowed as she studied him from head to toe. "You said you had to be part-dragon in order to hunt them, right?"