Author:
Anna Mantovani is an author, blogger and songwriter based in Turin, Italy. She has a degree in Media Engineering and works in the railway sector. With her sister Maria Carla, also a science-fiction writer, she manages the blog “The Mantovanis”, which focuses on independent speculative fiction and geek culture. With her husband Dario (and sometimes their two kids as guest stars) she plays in the electropop duo “Sedona”. Find out more at: www.themantovanis.blog.

The story is set in the fictional city of Europa, in Central Europe, the last city left after a nuclear war that made most of the Earth uninhabitable and woke up dragons - prehistorical creatures that caused an mass outbreak of a lethal disease that decimated the population and turned the survivors into scale-covered, violent mutants that rebel against the government.

Sophie, a young doctor working for her boss Amanda Solarin in a medical facility, accidentally meets an elderly woman, Emma, who miraculously recovered from the dragon plague, and whose blood could be the key to a vaccine. Saving Emma from government persecution, Sophie goes on the run with her.

Meanwhile, Erik Persson, a police officer, sets out to track Sophie and Emma, while suspecting that a mole might be hiding in the ranks of the police.

Sophie and Emma hide in the slums and after almost getting caught by the police several times they finally fall in the hands of the rebels; in her captivity, Sophie discovers that the plague survivors are not as irrational and violent as the press portrays them and agrees to work with them to develop a vaccine. She also discovers that some of the survivors have the ability to communicate telepathically with a dragon.

She meets the General, the leader of the rebels, whose name is Cain, and despite her fear for his terrifying looks and enigmatic personality, she is strangely attracted to him.

The Dragon Plague

James headed to the door, opening it for her. Sophie was careful to keep as much distance between them as she could while she passed in. 


You can leave it here, you know. That stone, I mean. In the kitchen there are knives, cleavers, everything you can wish for, James suggested. 


His expression was deadly serious, and Sophie could not tell if he was joking.


Sophie followed James into the kitchen: this room, unlike the one in which she had awakened, seemed routinely used, and was clean and organised.


All the furniture here was very old, and seemed to date back to hundreds of years ago: the table was made of plastic, Sophie noticed, but the stoves were made of wood and heavy, dark metal. She had only read about such things in books, and saw them in some films set before the Great War.


The kitchen, like the darker the room upstairs, was illuminated by candles, Sophie noticed with some confusion.


Chapter 34