This time the scene changed from the lush to the devastated…burnt-out houses, dead bodies lying about, decaying. There were no trees, no plants that were viable. The ground looked as if it had been scorched dry, burnt to the point that nothing would grow there. He looked at Bryn as she continued.
“There are many humans that believe that they’re responsible for the continuation of the earth. That cleaning up the air and water and making better cars are the thing that is helping the world. And they are, to a point. The dragons are more plentiful now. They are no longer hunted and killed. The dragon slayers, for the most part, have given up and moved on.” Jacob pointed out that there were still some out there. “Yes, from the slayers from my time passing on the information, the need to kill them, to their own. It is, sadly, going to get worse before better. They will, if given the chance, kill everything in their path, only to be disappointed when even that does not satisfy their need for murder.”
“What can we do?” She told Sally that they were doing all they could now. “But there is more. You know something that we don’t.”
“I do, and I’m afraid that you’re not going to like the answer any more than you did those men coming here. I have to be contained. I am the last of my kind. The last warrior faerie to be able to draw a sword against them.” Onimia asked her why she had to die. “Not die, I cannot, but I must be buried deep within a hold near water so that I cannot be brought forth. Because so long as I’m here, where I can be found, people are going to go after the dragons. I am drawing them to you. For this, I am profoundly sorry.”
“There has to be a plan b.” She shook her head at Akassa. “No, we’ll think of something. And if not, then we’ll be buried right along with you. Because as surely as I’m standing here, I’m not going to survive without you in my life now that you’re here. We do this together, or we’ll be buried alive together. I’m all for suggestions on how to make this work.”
“It’s the magic.” Everyone turned to look at Caroline when she came into the room and looked at Bryn. “My goodness, you’ve turned into such a beauty, my child. I heard that you were here. And I can’t think of a better person than you to bring this all together. Now, we have to plan and play around a bit, and talk to Anthony and Eve. I’m sure that they might have a trick or two up their sleeves. And if not, we’ll wing it, as I’ve heard said.”
“Caroline.” Bryn bowed before her, and didn’t stand until Caroline touched her. “I have so missed you.”
“And I you, child. Your parents would be so proud if they could see you now. I was sorry to hear about your family, but you have a good one now. Not to replace them, but to join you in this.” Bryn said to her that they’d get hurt. “Yes, perhaps, but now that you’re here, there is no chance for them to die. You brought that to them, and when you’re mated to these fine men, you’ll bring so much more. Gain more than you give. But that’s not what’s important at the moment, now is it?”
“My goodness, I think we might be able to pull this off.” Everyone turned to look at Jacob when he shouted out his joy. “Yes, siree bob, I’m thinking that not only will we be all right, but we’re gonna be better for it. Pass me the peas, love. I’m suddenly hungry as a bear.”
Chapter 4
Harrison looked at his son. He’d been so proud of him when he’d gotten the warrior to work for them, and now this. There wasn’t any way that he’d ever get the smell out of the car. He’d have to sell it, there was no hope for it now. Harrison Marsh would not tolerate embarrassment to his name, and his son had done that in a matter of minutes.
“Huston, you’re going to pay for any cleaning I need done to this car. Christ. If I have to get rid of it after this, you’re going to pay for that too. What the fuck is wrong with you?” Huston said he’d been terrified. “Well? What the fuck did you expect them to do? Let us come along and take them away? The next time I go there, I’m going to make sure you have a diaper on you. I’m betting that they got a good smell of you too while we were there. What a disappointment you are to me.”
“They turned into fucking dragons, right there in front of us.” He’d been startled by that as well, but he’d not shit himself over it. “They’re bigger than you said, too. You said they’d be small, like cats. And that fire? It came close enough that I could feel it like it was on me. Dad, you said that we’d be able to take them without any problems. Well, I see a huge fucking problem, don’t you?”
“Well, I guess I was wrong, now wasn’t I? But think of it this way, son, we’re going to be rich when this hits the papers. And when that’s all done with, the hoopla over finding them, then we’ll cut them up for the parts. You said you know someone that deals in that shit, right?” Huston nodded, but still looked sullen. “Cheer up, buttercup. Your old dad is going to put our names out there.”
“How you planning on doing that? If it’s all the same to you, I don’t want it to be in the obits part of the paper. You heard him, he’s the king. According to the lore, he can keep the warrior from helping us. At least we know that part’s right, don’t we? Christ, this is going to be a shit party, I just know it.” There was that, but Harrison chose to ignore it for now. Opening the window, he let some of the fresh air blow over him while Huston went on about laws and shit. “Also, you should know that what she told me about killing the dragons, she can’t do that. Not even the king, nor his family. I didn’t remember that until I came home and looked it up. She can no more kill the dragons than she can die. We’re so screwed.”
“Why not?” Huston told him. “You mean just because they’re all one big happy family, we have to just walk away from this? I don’t think so. She’s been claimed by us, and she will damn well do as I tell her.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Dad. Once she’s been marked, like I did to her, she has to work for us. And you should have told me that we’d have to touch her to get her claimed. I felt like an idiot when it happened. Then she pulled out that contract stuff to mess me up. Well, there ain’t one that we have to sign, just in case she tries that again. But she would have had to do everything we told her. Even if it’s something that is against the law, or if it’s one of our own family we want dead.” Harrison said that was what he wanted. “Yeah, but if she is claimed by the king, which that man said he was, then she has to do what he says over everyone else. It’s sort of like he trumps our ace. And she will never be able to kill a dragon, nor cause them any harm for anyone. However, if they’re trying to kill her, then all bets are off. And she’s a true immortal.”
“True immortal, huh?” He had no idea what that meant and didn’t want to ask him, but he couldn’t stand the fact that he wasn’t informed. “What is the difference?”
“She can’t be killed. No one can take her head off, or pierce her heart either. There is too much armor and magic surrounding her that would prevent anyone from doing that.” Harrison asked how they contained her if she was bad. “They dig a hole and put her in it. Then they cover it with water. I’m not sure what all that means, but that will contain her for all time. Or until someone lets her out. She also has to hibernate when she’s been hurt really badly. I think she sort of heals herself. And before you ask, it doesn’t say how long she’s down. I’m thinking the worse she’s hurt, the longer she’s down.”
“Why do you know so much about this shit?” He told him he’d looked it up on the Internet, that there was a lot of it out there. “Oh, so most of this could just be bullshit, and the rest is a lie. I see. When you have some real facts, then we’ll talk. Until then, you take a bath as soon as we get home and toss out those clothes. And when I want something told to me, things I already know, then I’ll find you. Christ, you stink like you’ve shit yourself. Oh wait, you did.”
Harrison was going to do his own investigating. After finding all that crap at an auction about six months ago, when the brotherhood had gone under, he’d thought it would be a lark to go and see about these dragons. But the couple of people that had been there, when it
supposedly went down, had said that there had been real dragons and that they’d had fire for breath, as well as enough strength to tear a man apart. He’d only believed about half of that shit, but it had made him want to look harder. And he had turned up some pretty convincing arguments for getting hold of a dragon. The riches were what he was hoping for.
When they got home, he didn’t even bother pulling into the garage. Not that anyone would complain about his piece of shit in the driveway again. He’d nipped that in the bud a few years back. The society that ran their development had given up on him getting shit down on time and keeping his yard according to their rules. He hated them, for the most part, and their rules. The one that caught up in his craw was the trashcan one.
His service had run out a few months back, so, in order to not have trash piling up so that the damned raccoons couldn’t get into it, he’d been having the boy take the trash out and put it in some of the cans around the neighborhood the night before pick-up day. That had worked out really well for them until someone told on him. Harrison realized that he should have been better at hiding his address by not throwing his mail into the lot. But come on, people, it was trash, for Christ’s sake. But he’d been told to stop, and had even gotten a fine. Like he was going to pay that.
To his way of thinking, his house was just that, his. He paid his taxes on the place. Made the payments when he could, anyway, and he mowed when the grass was too high for him to find his chair. Besides, his house had been there first, not theirs, and they should be following his rules, not making them up as they went along.
The house was a mess too. Not just the yard, where he did somewhat take pleasure in making that area of his living space a little trashier than he would normally have. But the inside, the place where him and the boy slept and ate, was nasty. Even he was aware of that. Since Huston’s mother had run out on him a few years back, saying that he was a slob and a pain in her ass, he’d just not had the energy nor the inclination to do much of anything that meant housework to him. He didn’t like to do any job, but housework was a bitch, and he couldn’t make Huston do it either.
Not that he was thinking it was all a woman’s job. No, his mom had raised him to know that work was work, and everyone messed up and so everybody did the cleaning. But he hated it with a passion. Dishes, laundry, and anything that related to him cleaning up, he just didn’t want to do. Even going so far as getting paper plates when there was money for them, and cups too. But that only generated more trash, which was a problem too. It was like one of them catch twenty-one things. Or whatever the number was. But he was in a pickle with it.
It was nearing midnight when he got on the computer. It wasn’t his. He’d snatched it a while back when someone had left it out on their porch. He knew that they insured those kinds of things, so taking it when he needed it so badly hadn’t bothered him overly much. But then, rarely did things bother him overly much anymore about his neighbors and their crap. As he looked up about dragons, the first thing he saw was the number of books about them. Then he realized it was romance shit.
“Christ almighty. Don’t people have enough to do without going out and reading this crap?” But he found himself intrigued by some of the covers, and before he knew it, he’d picked out several that he was going to see if he could get sometime. Not having a credit card was the only thing that prevented him from getting them right then. One by Julia Mills had him thinking he might be working harder on getting it. It looked good.
He had been able to read a bit of her work…it was something that he might have seen his wife reading. Sexy covers and the men looking like they could just stare you into whatever they wanted of you. Harrison had them in his wish list thing, and even unmarked some of the other shit he had in there so he could get them first.
The sun was coming up when he realized that he didn’t have a clue what he was doing. Yeah, there was a lot of information out there about dragons and shit, but nothing he could use. He decided to pull out the books he’d gotten at the auction and read up on them. At noon, he found what he’d been searching for.
Huston had been right, about all the shit he’d been spouting. Not only could she not be killed, but it sounded like nobody believed that her kind were around anymore. That even if you could find one, a warrior faerie, convincing them to do what you wanted might be harder than it seemed. There were rules about how to go about that, too.
He had to touch her armor. It didn’t say where it might be, but touching it would bind her to you. And if she was touched by a king, the only mark there’d be would be a little thumbprint, smaller than his pinky finger. He wasn’t sure how one was supposed to see something so tiny, but he guessed that like the rules, it was meant to be confusing. Harrison read on to come to understand why it was so small.
“To ensure that the other kingdom will not know who had sent her.” Seemed kind of silly to him, but then this whole thing was a might off. “Once she has done the deed that has been asked of her, she is to be paid the equivalent of her weight in gold. If she is not paid, then the holder will forfeit something or someone of great value to the holder of the warrior.”
So, she might have to take his kid, if he weighed as much as she wanted. But then, it only said that she would take something, not that it had to weigh as much as her. Harrison wondered if that meant she was wearing her armor, if she had any. He thought that would add a considerable amount to her if so. But he was thinking that she’d end up with his kid. There wasn’t any gold to be had in this family, much less weighing out as much as she might.
He glanced over at his son, who was currently eating a bowl of what looked to him like puke in a bowl. Where he’d gotten the milk or the cereal was beyond him. Just last night he’d asked after some milk for his coffee, and had been told there wasn’t any. Now his own kid was lying to him. Then he found what he’d been looking for. A breakdown of a dragon.
The prices on a whole dragon were a lot more than he’d thought…like thousands more than he would have guessed. Of course, he’d not believed there was one out there, so he’d not really looked for any prices, but the breakdown on them, the volume of things that could be taken off a dragon, was inconceivable. Even if the scales alone were correct in number and price, he’d be a rich man forever.
Harrison hadn’t had a great deal of schooling. He’d graduated, but it wasn’t because he’d been smart enough to do so. It was more like he’d bullied his way through. And when he’d turned twenty, he’d been given his diploma and sent home. The stupid thing still hung in his bedroom on the wall.
Huston had dropped out the moment he’d turned sixteen and never looked back. Not that it bothered Harrison all that much. Not having to buy school shit for him and new clothing had been a relief. But he’d kept up with reading, so Harrison was sure Huston was smarter than he was now. Not that he’d tell him that. And he could do math in his head faster than Harrison could bring it up on a calculator.
Anyway, Harrison could understand that the things he was seeing here, that he was going to have to work hard for it. Not just that, but he might get himself hurt too. Not that he was afraid of pain or nothing, but he didn’t want to linger with it. Those dragons were big, and while he was too, they were strong and he was fat.
When his son left for his job, whatever the hell he did all day, he got himself out a piece of paper and a pencil and began figuring out what he would need and needed to do. Surely the first thing had to be to get more people. Even if he could do the rest of this on his own, he couldn’t very well wrestle down a dragon. But they had to be good people, not like his neighbors.
“Got to be able to trust that they don’t think I’m nuts.” Harrison chuckled. “I am, I guess, if I try this, but the money will convince everyone that I’m not.”
By the time he was done with his list, he’d figured out a few things too. He had to get himself a bigger car, not to mention one that ran every time you turned the key. There also needed to be a first aid kit nearby.
> Telling people what he had once he had the dragon would get him arrested. No one, it seemed, believed that there actually were dragons, except this group called Death to all Dragons. It took him an extra ten minutes to figure out that that had been the name of the group that had disbanded a few months back. But there was a bigger organization, one that seemed to have plenty of money, if their ad on the computer was anything to go by. He decided that they were his best bet in getting information on the dragons and how to bring one down. And he was going to do it too. Even if he had to give someone his kid to make it happen.
Writing down the email address that they had there, he got him another piece of paper and wrote out what he wanted the email to say. He wasn’t so much worried about his spelling on the computer. The thing all but did the writing for him when he had to get it right. Harrison didn’t want to come off sounding like a fool. For all he knew this group could be about killing off dragon flies, the nasty things that flew in his face when he was just out walking around.
It took him twenty minutes to get his letter straight, then another ten to get it all typed into the computer. He was exhausted by the time he was finished, and staggered to the bed. He knew that he wasn’t going to hear from anyone, knowing that they were just as dumb as the rest of the world, and had thought their name was cool. Harrison had already figured out that they more than likely sold shoes or hats or something equally dumb. It was hard to tell about things like that when there was nothing to see but a computer ad.
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