Breath of Fire Read Online Free PDF

streaks of silver so my eyes always looked like they flashed lightning.
    I’d heard it mentioned once that I looked a great deal like my mother. It’s only one of the reasons my father hates me so much. Dragons don’t show affection in general—not to their mates and not to their offspring—it’s the human mate’s job to show love and affection, not the dragon’s. It’s seen as a weakness for us to show anything resembling love. Which is a hard concept to understand when most of us have human blood running through our veins, and the desire for such emotions is built in. I know I’ve never understood it. But I’ve learned to bury the need. At least in public.
    I checked the clock. Ten thirty. My stomach rumbled, but I pushed the thought of food away. I took a deep breath and headed downstairs to face my father. The ring of chimes echoing through the house saved me from my task. I was grateful for the distraction, but in the back of my mind I thought it best to deal with the devil I already knew. We didn’t get a lot of drive-by traffic in this area, and by not a lot, I meant none. The only thing that could bring someone to our door was trouble.
    I picked up a modified weapon Erik had created that hung from a hook in the foyer. It was an air compression chamber loaded with poisoned wooden spikes. It looked like a modernized crossbow. The poison would incapacitate a dragon long enough for me to snap the head away from the body and find a way to incinerate it. Sometimes I used them when I was hunting others of our race, but my ability to use compulsion was almost always sufficient enough.
    I stopped at the arched front door and closed my eyes, searching for whoever stood on the other side. I smelled the musty scent of the ancient wood, the damp of the rain outside, and I heard the gusts of cold air whipping through the portico. And very faintly, I heard a heartbeat—a small flutter like butterfly wings that thumped steadily, and the rush of blood that fed it. But I couldn’t grasp the person behind the heartbeat. Whoever it was had a solid wall built around their mind. I readied my weapon and opened the door, confident I could handle whatever or whomever it was on my own.
    The man wasn’t at all what I expected. I had the weapon pressed against his chest in a heartbeat, my hand steady even though my pulse raced.
    “Are you going to pull the trigger?” he asked, somewhat amused. He towered over my five-foot-four frame, a few inches over six feet at least. His hair hung shaggily over his collar and ears, but the color was amazing—a rich auburn that glinted with shades of copper, russet and gold. Rain dripped off the ends and rivulets disappeared into the collar of his shirt—a shirt that was plastered to a well-defined chest. His eyes were bluish green, like Caribbean waters, the expression in them good-natured.
    And they were human.
    I lowered the weapon. “We don’t get a lot of traffic out here. It never hurts to be careful.”
    “Fair enough, though maybe a No Trespassing sign would be a good idea so you don’t give a Girl Scout a heart attack when she comes to sell you cookies.”
    “What fun would that be?”
    He gave me the full force of his smile, and I almost backed up and slammed the door in his face. I didn’t need a complication in my life right now, no matter how attractive.
    “I’m Special Agent Noah Ford.” He held up a badge so I could see F.B.I. printed in bold letters next to his photograph. “Do you mind if I ask you some questions?”
    Instead of inviting him inside, I stepped out on the porch and shut the door behind me. I didn’t think it was a good idea to invite him in, considering Erik was probably up to his elbows in dragon ash.
    Agent Ford raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything as I joined him on the porch. If he really was human he wouldn’t be there long. The temperature was in the lower single digits, and he was wet. I gave him two minutes before he started