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

 Eriks new job turned out to be as depressing as he had imagined.


Having to work in shifts destabilized him: sometimes he woke up at the same time as Thea and Peter and went to work as he always had done. Those were the best days, when he could pretend that nothing had happened and that his life was going on as always. Only having to wear that silly uniform clashed with the illusion.


Leaving the house at midday and coming back at night felt strange, but it did not bother him that much. Other weeks, however, he went to the hospital in the late evening and slid the exit badge in the early hours of the morning, then woke up in the afternoon, when the house was still empty but already dark.


There were moments, as he was just waking up, when he looked around the empty apartment, wondering vaguely what happened to everyone. Then he would remember that the change was not in the others, who were going on with their days as they always had, but in him.


Chapter 41