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For my family
Contents
Chapter One: The Heat of Battle
Chapter Three: Of Serpents and Samurai
Chapter Four: The Dragonhunter’s Home Life
Chapter Five: A Home Life Destroyed
Chapter Six: How a Dragon Tracks its Prey
Chapter Seven: Hunting a Master of Dragons
Chapter Nine: A Loneliness of a Great Ship
Chapter Eleven: Showdown at Sea
Chapter Twelve: The Contents of One Abandoned Dragon Ship
Chapter Thirteen: The Unknown St George
Chapter Fourteen: The Dragon of Japan
Chapter Fifteen: How the Other Half Lives
Chapter Sixteen: Culture Clash
Chapter Seventeen: A Traveller to the Orient
Chapter Eighteen: Light Without Heat
Chapter Nineteen: Heat Without Light
Chapter Twenty: Never go to Tokyo Without a Sword
Chapter Twenty-one: Beware of Falling Serpents
Chapter Twenty-two: The Doctor is Out
Chapter Twenty-three: Bullets of a Bullet Train
Chapter Twenty-four: Tricks of the Trade
Chapter Twenty-five: Fire that can Hide
Chapter Twenty-six: Where Tigers Lurk
Chapter Twenty-seven: A Tiger’s Eyes
Chapter Twenty-eight: City of a Billion Wonders
Chapter Twenth-nine: Secrets of Bombay
Chapter Thirty: Cornered Beast
Chapter Thirty-one: Enemies and Allies
Chapter Thirty-two: Where There’s Smoke
Chapter Thirty-three: No Suicide Missions
Chapter Thirty-four: Dragon Trapping
Chapter Thirty-five: Chamber of Horrors
Chapter Thirty-six: The Way a Fire Dies
Chapter Thirty-seven: Small Sacrifices
Epilogue: The Dying Embers of the Day
CHAPTER ONE The Heat of Battle
There is only one thing you can count on with Evil.
Evil will do things you never counted on.
Simon St George hated that fact as much as he detested the African sun. The heat in Kenya was unbearable and the shadows the sun cast on the trail were hatefully dark, making it difficult to see if a serpent was ready to leap out of the tall grasses.
And they were hunting serpent. The possibility of a fiery death was always with him, and Simon found it sickening rather than exciting. His father was quite the opposite. Riding tall in the saddle ahead, Aldric St George steered his horse with a stern energy, a quiet thrill that a fight could come at any moment.
Aldric insisted on them both going on horseback for the ease of movement over the rough terrain, but looking back jealously at the car in his wake, Simon cursed his father’s old-fashioned ways and yearned for air conditioning.
Behind him, the battered Jeep spat rocks from its wheels, slowly