Dragon Riders

by Elle Casey

  “Except for the fact that the Overworld is falling apart,” Abby added sarcastically.

  My hands dropped into my lap. “Yeah, there is that detail. And I plan on doing something about it, too, but not until I’ve done the other stuff first.” I wished I felt as brave as I sounded.

  “Why are you so convinced you need to find your friends and Tim before you do anything else?” She tilted her head at me waiting for my answer.

  “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have. It doesn’t seem right just wandering around here without Tim farting in my ear every ten seconds.”

  She spared me a smile. “I hear you, and I understand what you’re saying. I just want to make sure that you’re not being motivated by the fear of being alone when you make these decisions.”

  I frowned at her. “Fear of being alone? What’s that supposed to mean? I can be alone. I’ve been alone plenty of times.” I looked at her like she was crazy. Totally off track. Where was she getting that stuff, anyway?

  She raised her brows. “Really? When was the last time you were alone? Because I always see you surrounded by your friends. Even when you sleep, you have fae on either side of you.”

  It was true that Tim often slept on the pillow next to my head, but this was the first time I’d gotten any indication from Abby that she wasn’t happy about it. Maybe this nonsense about me being afraid to be alone had nothing to do with me. Maybe she was just jealous over all the time Tim spent with me. He complained that she snored, but something told me it was more than that. I got the feeling that even though Tim loved his wife and child more than life itself, sometimes being with Abby made Tim feel too grounded, and being with me made him feel like his life was a little crazy and unsettled. And Tim was definitely the kind of guy who preferred that lifestyle. Being tamed was a fate worse than death as far as he was concerned. It made sense that this would make her jealous of our time together, so I wasn’t going to get mad at her for making up shit about my personality that didn’t exist.

  I shrugged. “I’m not worried about myself. I’m worried about them. They’re in a place where being fae is considered bad and gets your head cut off and put on a spike.”

  Abby’s eyes bugged out. “Excuse me?”

  Oops. Probably shouldn’t have let that detail slip. “Yeah, heh-heh.”

  She said nothing for a few seconds, reminding me a little of a fish out of water the way her mouth was opening and closing silently. I decided quickly that it might not be such a bad idea to show Abby how desperate the situation was. Maybe then she’d stop giving me a hard time about prioritizing getting them back. “They’re really backwards there. If you do anything that seems witchy bitchy, they cut your head off and put it on a spike. I don’t want that for any of our friends, obviously. And, oh, I almost forgot…there’s also a troll there that I need to take care of, and he was really hungry when I left him, so I don’t want him to lose his cool and eat one of them. That wouldn’t be good, right?” I smiled encouragingly at her, hoping she’d dismiss me from this interrogation so I could get to the shower and rescuing bits of my plan.

  “A troll?” she asked, sounding bewildered. “Where did the troll come from?”

  “It was a gift from Judith. Whatever.” I waved her off again. “It doesn’t matter. Do you know how I can get back there or not?”

  She folded her arms over her chest, looking like a parent once more. “My advice to you would be to talk to the council.”

  I couldn’t keep the crybaby tone from my voice. “Well, thank you for your wonderful advice, Abby, except I just came from a council meeting and they were absolutely no help at all.”

  Her arms slowly fell to her sides. “What did they decide to do?”

  I wiped angrily at the tears that fell from my eyes. “They want the gray elves to analyze the shit out of it and make a decision in the next twelve hours about what we should do. But who knows what could happen in twelve hours? A lot, that’s how much. Time moves differently there. Our twelve hours could be twelve days for them. Or twelve months, or twelve years.”

  Abby finally looked really worried, and I’ll admit I was happy to see her face all scrunched up in concern. “This does sound distressing.” She tilted her head toward the garden, her expression freezing as her voice dropped. “I think Willie is waking up.”

  I heard a couple of squeaks that could very possibly have been tiny baby toots. This was how Willie normally announced his transition from sleeping to full-on wakefulness. It was exactly what I needed to push aside the weakness that had welled up in me. Nothing works like pixie toots to clear the air.

  “I need to talk to some witches,” I said, standing.

  “Be careful, Jayne. I’m no mind reader, but the look on your face tells me that you’re about to go ask for a spell you probably shouldn’t.”

  “You are very perceptive, Abby. And I would appreciate it very much if you would not share those perceptions with any council members who might show up at our door.”

  “Are you going to try to get back to the realm where you left the others?”

  “Yes. Even though I’m not exactly sure where it is, I think I can find it using my memories. That’s what Red said, anyway.”

  She shook her head. “I would be careful about getting involved in any spells that are cast by Red. He’s very powerful, it’s true, but not always the most…accurate.”

  I laughed. “Well, what’s the worst that could happen?” I let my mind wander a bit before I completed my thought. “I could end up in caveman days, I suppose.” I could only imagine what would happen to me there. I’d probably get thumped over the head with a club and dragged into a cave and made part of a harem in my first ten minutes. But then I’d bring the Earth and Water elements up into the hizouse and really impress the shit out of them. They’d probably turn me into a goddess and start worshipping me. There’d be cave paintings of my face for people to discover thousands of years later. I got a little lost in the idea and was only brought back to the present when a small pixie thumped into my forehead.

  “Hello, Lellemental,” he said, hovering just next to my eyeball. “You waked me up.”

  I held out my hand for Tim’s son Willy to sit on. He basically fell into my palm, not awake enough to control his landings properly. “Sorry about that, Baby Bee. But you need to go back to bed for a little while. It’s too early for you to be awake.”

  Abby pointed toward the garden. “Back to bed. Mama will be there in a minute to help you get some clothes on.”

  I had to avert my eyes from the naked baby looking up at me. His wee Willy winky was way too close for comfort as he rose in the air in front of me.

  “But I want to stay with the Lellemental and I don’t like clothes!” He had his arms and legs out, telling me he planned to do a full-body grab onto my nose. I started huffing out air and spitting a little to keep him at bay, because I am not cool with naked pixies on my face.

  “You can’t stay with her,” Abby said, flying up to get him, but missing him when he dodged left. “She’s leaving.”

  “Where are you going, Lellemental?” Willy asked, zooming around my head and making my eyes cross as I tried to follow his flight path. “I want you to stay and play wif me.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry. I can’t play right now, but I promise I’ll play with you later.”

  He showed up in front of me again, his little hands on his hips and dangly bits dangling. I closed my eyes as he spoke in a very demanding tone. “When you promise, you have to do it. That’s the rule. Mama says.”

  “Yep. I know the rule, trust me.” I opened my eyes and snatched him out of the air, throwing my hand out sideways in the direction of the garden. The surprise launch sent him into a flight pattern he hadn’t been expecting. He screamed and laughed as he caught his balance halfway to his family’s home and zigzagged the rest of the way to his bed.

  Abby watched him go, shaking her head.

  “I promise I’ll find Tim and bring him ba
ck to you.”

  Abby turned her attention to me. “Just be careful. I doubt very highly that Red could screw up so bad as to send you back to caveman days, but he could send you back to a place where you wouldn’t want to be, that’s for sure.” She frowned and sounded like she was talking to herself with her next comment. “I’m never really sure what his motivations are, to be honest.”

  “Don’t you worry. No matter where I end up, I’ll find a way to jump forward again, no problem.” I was speaking with a lot of bravado that I didn’t really feel, but I needed to get myself out of the conversation and beat feet outta there. I had no idea what Red had planned for the day, but I was going to track him down and get him working on that friggin spell. My guess was that it needed some super awesome ingredients that he probably didn’t have on hand, like newt nads or skunk nipples or something equally disgusting.

  “After I get Willie set up with his playgroup, I’ll go work in the clinic with the healers to try and find a solution for Falco and Robin, but I think you should plan on making another trip to the Overworld to deliver Falco once you’re back. He doesn’t belong here; he has not earned his place in the Here and Now.”

  “Yeah, I get it. Good idea. We’ll do that, I promise.” I stood and brushed myself off. “I’m going to go find Red.” I paused to stare at her meaningfully. “Just do me a favor and keep my plans on the down low. This stuff isn’t exactly sanctioned by the council.”

  “And by ‘not sanctioned’ you actually mean ‘completely forbidden.’”

  I smiled. “Yes. We understand each other perfectly.”

  Abby sighed. “Jayne, please be careful. You know I care very deeply for you, and if anything were to happen to you, I would be heartbroken; but I can’t even imagine what it would do to Tim. You’ve become like his child in a way, or his sister. I can’t even explain what you are to him. Suffice to say, you’re very special to both of us.” She couldn’t finish her words because she was quickly becoming too emotional, but I didn’t want her to. I was already upset enough about leaving a guy who loved me that much about two thousand years in the past; I didn’t need her making it any worse.

  “You don’t have to worry,” I assured her. “I’ll be really careful.”

  As I was walking out the door, her voice followed me into the hallway. “Being careful and working a spell with Red are mutually exclusive concepts!”

  As I made my way toward the dining area, I pulled a little of The Green into me, searching for Red’s signature grouchy vibe in the mix. He was somewhere nearby, and as soon as I got something in my stomach and some shampoo in this ‘do of mine, I was going to track him down and convince him that he was right. Screw the council and those slow-as-molasses gray elves; I needed to go back in time and find my friends ASAP.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I FOUND RED in a part of the compound I’d never been to before. The entire area was dark and dank…no big surprise there. I pushed open the door to the room where I sensed his presence waiting. His back was to me, but he didn’t even flinch when he heard my voice. “Hey, there. Sorry to bother you…”

  “I was expecting you. Close the door.”

  I tried not to feel creeped out over the fact that I was shutting myself up in Red’s Frankenstein lab or his bedroom or whatever this place was. There was a small cot with a blanket in the corner that appeared as if it had been slept on recently, but the rest of the space was taken up by tables and shelves full of stuff. There were definitely body parts of various animals and bugs there in jars. Possibly eyeballs too. I had to look away from one of the bigger containers that had what appeared to be a troll fetus in it. I closed the door behind me, suppressing the urge to scream when the latch clicked into place, shutting me inside.

  “Sit down,” he ordered.

  I frowned at his harsh attitude, but did as I was told. There were only two seats in the room, so I took the one farthest from him. I noticed steam rising from the pot he was working in front of. He was standing at a small table that had a Bunsen burner on it like the kind we used in chemistry class. The burner was heating the contents of whatever he was brewing. The odor coming from it was not pleasing, to put it lightly. It reminded me way too much of smelly gym socks.

  “Take off your weapons,” he ordered.

  My hand strayed to my thigh and touched the dragon fang strapped to my right leg and the demon sword strapped to the other. “If it’s okay with you, I think I’ll leave them where they are.” You never knew when you’d need a go-go gadget boner sword or an orc-burning dragon fang handy. Leaving them behind in Red’s bedroom didn’t sound like a great idea for my survival or my reputation.

  “You can’t bring anything with you when you cross through time, so you need to leave those things here or they could be lost forever.”

  I couldn’t keep the disgusted look from crossing my face. “What about my clothes?” I could just imagine myself showing up à la Terminator, buck naked in the middle of some village somewhere. For sure my head would end up on a spike then, especially with this hairdo.

  He shrugged. “Maybe you can keep those. We’ll see.”

  No wonder people were warning me away from Red’s spells; this guy didn’t know what the hell he was doing. I stood. “I just remembered…I have to go wash my hair.”

  He lifted his arm and waved it at the door. A giant bolt slid into a bracket on the wall, effectively locking me inside the room, and I was pretty sure I didn’t have what it would take to get that thing to reverse itself and set me free. There was definite witch bitch magic afoot.

  “Great. So, now I’m your captive. What do you plan to do with me?” I rested both hands on my weapons, just in case. I’d never tagged Red for a perv, but things weren’t always what they appeared to be around this place. People were always surprising me. I wasn’t overly worried, though. I still had my weapons, and if he even so much as took a step toward me, his nuts were going to be removed from his body and plopping on the ground in no time.

  “Just sit down. I’m almost finished.”

  “Almost finished with what? Making your oatmeal? Putting together a love potion to make Maléna fall in love with you?” I was starting to question his loyalties at that point. For all I knew, he could be in cahoots with that crazy-ass silver elf and her wannabe boyfriend, Leck. I hated that I didn’t know their exact location; I was almost sure they were behind Judith’s shenanigans.

  “Hush your mouth, girl. This takes concentration. Do you want to end up as a cavewoman?”

  My jaw dropped open. Cavewoman? How did he… A conversation with Tim came back to me, when he’d been bragging about how he was able to spy on pretty much everyone in the compound. “You put a listening spell in my room? How dare you!”

  “No. I threw a listening spell on you.”

  I looked down at my chest. “Holy crap. My boobs are spelled.” I hadn’t even felt it happening, either. I wasn’t sure whether to be happy about that or pissed. I expected him to say something, but he remained silent, which only made me feel worse. How had he done it? Had he bumped into me? Had I seen him throw something at me out of the corner of my eye? The answer was No to both questions. I was going to have to ask Samantha how this particular spell was delivered. It wasn’t something I wanted thrown on me again, that was for sure. Some things that went on in my room were meant to stay private. And my bathroom, for that matter.

  Red turned around with a small cup in his hand that held about three ounces of liquid he’d ladled out of his pot. “This is all I have. You need to drink every last drop of it or it won’t work properly.”

  As the cup came closer, I noticed there was smoke coming out of it. “Cooking up your own moonshine, Red? Heh-heh. Looks yummy.” Yes, I was nervous. Who wouldn’t be? For all I knew I was about to down a shot of hemlock tea.

  His gaze moved to the door. “We don’t have a lot of time. If you want to go back and find your friends, you need to drink this, and you need to drink it now.”

  I loo
ked at the door. “Is somebody coming?”

  He moved over quickly, nearly tripping in his hurry, and held the cup up in front of me. “Drink it. Now.” The smoke coming out of it was turning orange. “Focus on your memory of where your friends are.”

  I looked up into Red’s eyes, finding them dark and unfathomable, his motives a mystery. Was he dosing me with poison? With a spell that would turn me into a gnome or a buggane? With a love potion that would convince me he was my knight in shining armor? There was no way to know the answers to those questions for sure, but I did know some things: Red was a powerful witch, and he’d been impressed by the mention of Ishmail Windwalker, who I happened to think was a pretty cool guy too. Red also didn’t think we should be messing around in the Overworld, but he didn’t seem to mind the idea of bringing everybody back. And since that was my first priority, I figured we were playing for the same team, at least on this particular issue. My misgivings over drinking his brew were overtaken by a desperate need to see my friends and make sure they were safe. I grabbed the cup and lifted it to my lips. “You’d better not be trying to kill me with this stuff.”

  “If I had wanted to kill you, I could have done it a hundred times by now.” He lifted an eyebrow at me, for the first time pulling off a cocky look successfully.

  I raised the cup in his direction. “Here’s looking at you, you cranky bastard. Skal.” I threw the concoction down the hatch, the entire thing going right to the back of my throat without stopping at my tongue. I nearly gagged when the burning started immediately and the new and improved odor of it hit my olfactory nerves. Holy cat poo brew! Ack! And then I realized I hadn’t been thinking of anything at all, other than how awful that stuff tasted. I tried to force memories of my friends and Ish’s realm to take up space in my head but they wouldn’t come. Something was blocking me, and I wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t me doing it to myself. Tony…Ben…No! Not Ben…Spike…Jared…Becky…Mom…No! Rick the Dick…Torrie…No! Not them!