“Ask me where it is. Say, ‘Quentin, where is it?’ ” he said. “Go on.”
“Quentin, where is it?” she parroted without expression as she started to throw the keys onto his desk.
“Why, thank you for asking, Pia. How uncharacteristically polite of you.” He strode back and told her, “It’s just outside of Charleston.”
She froze in midtoss. “South Carolina, Charleston? The seat of the Elven Court Charleston, smack in the middle of their demesne?”
Quentin smiled. “That’s the one. The one Cuelebre can’t enter without the Elven High Lord’s permission, or he breaks all kinds of treaties and things get really fucked-up for him.” His smile faded and he searched her gaze. “I don’t know what happens after you get there or what your next step is. This may do nothing more than leverage some Elder politics to buy you some breathing room. But it’s a first step.”
“Yes, it is,” she breathed, staring at the keys. She stuffed them into her pocket and threw her arms around Quentin.
Maybe, just maybe, there was hope for her after all.
Quentin pushed another set of keys on her and walked her out the back to the small parking lot adjacent to the back of the bar. He stopped by an unassuming blue 2003 Honda Civic. “Take it,” he said.
“This is too generous,” she said, her throat clogged. “And you’re too involved as it is.”
He refused to take the keys back. “Look, the car can’t be traced to you, or back to me. I keep half a dozen of these. It’s no big deal. Shut up and get in.”
“I’m going to miss you,” she said.
He gave her a fierce hug. “This isn’t good-bye.”
“Sure it isn’t.” She wrapped her arms around his long waist and held him tight.
“I mean it, Pia. Find a way to keep in touch to let me know you’re okay, or I will come after you.”
She could only hope that something would happen to keep him from making good on that promise. He had to stay out of this mess. She couldn’t bear to think she might have gotten her boss and friend killed because she couldn’t leave without saying good-bye.
He pressed his lips to her forehead and stepped back. “Go on, get out of here.”
She pushed the unlock button on the key ring, threw her backpack in the passenger’s seat and climbed in the car. When she pulled to a stop at the end of the block, she looked in the rearview mirror.
Quentin stood at the edge of the parking lot watching her, his hands on his hips. He waved at her.
There was a break in the traffic. She pulled onto the street and he was gone.
Quentin had said the drive took more or less twelve hours, depending on traffic, from New York to Charleston, most of it on I-95. She wanted to get as much distance between herself and the New York Wyr demesne as she could. After forty minutes, she stopped at a Starbucks and bought a tofu salad sandwich and a large coffee so strong it could have scoured her bathtub clean. Then she drove until she couldn’t see straight.
The demesnes of the Elder Races lay superimposed over the human geographical map. There were seven Elder demesnes in the United States, including the Wyr demesne seated in New York, and the Elven Court that was seated in Charleston.
Each demesne had its own lord or lady who enforced its laws. Some Elder rulers preferred to live at a distance from humankind. They kept their Courts in Other spaces where only those with magical aptitude could discern and cross dimensional boundaries. Others, like Dragos, lived in the human realm.
She wasn’t clear where the Wyr-Elven border was so she drove until she was sure she had crossed over. Sensible or not, she felt a little of the fear peel away. Finally around 3:00 A.M., the exhaustion she had been fighting wouldn’t take no for an answer. She pulled into a motel and got a room with one of her fake IDs. She put the door chain on, dropped her backpack onto a chair and sank onto the bed. The room spun as she toed off first one shoe, then the other.
I could sleep for a month, she thought as she got sucked down a whirling drain into black.
She wasn’t that lucky.
Dragos stood at the edge of his penthouse balcony atop Cuelebre Tower. He looked out over his city as the sun approached the horizon. This late in the day the deepening sunlight was a heavy golden weight with the richness and complexity of a rare, aged white-burgundy wine. His feet were planted wide apart, hands clasped behind his back.
The balcony was one of his favorite places to meditate. There was no railing. It was a large ledge that ran the circumference of the building, which took up a city block. The balcony was a handy, more private place to launch or land when he didn’t feel like going to the roof, which was used by his sentinels and certain other privileged members of his Court. He could enter or exit the penthouse from any number of large French-style doors.
Cuelebre Enterprises was the umbrella for any number of businesses, and it consistently ranked in the top ten of the world’s largest corporations. Casinos, hotels and resorts, stock trading, shipping, international risk assessment (private army for hire), banking. He employed thousands of Fae, Elves, Wyr and humans worldwide, although the majority of Wyrkind preferred to live in New York State so that they could live within the law and protection of his demesne.
Those Wyr who clustered in Dragos’s Court and occupied key positions in his companies tended to be predators of some sort, the type of shapeshifter that thrived in a competitive, volatile, sometimes violent environment, although there were a few tough-minded exceptions like Cuelebre Enterprises PR faerie Thistle Periwinkle, known to her friends as Tricks.
Like Rune, his First, all seven of his sentinels were immortal creatures strong in Power. They were also raptors of some sort. There were the four gryphons, Rune, Constantine, Graydon and Bayne, each responsible for keeping the peace in one of the four sectors of his demesne. The gargoyle Grym was in charge of corporate security for Cuelebre Enterprises. Tiago, one of the three known thunderbirds in existence, headed Dragos’s private army.
Last but not least was the harpy Aryal, who was in charge of investigations. She had not taken well to giving over the investigative reins on this theft to Rune. She was not known for having a serene temperament. There was a reason she had risen to such preeminence in his Court. Dragos’s smile was grim. The harpy was one hell-spawned bitch when she lost her temper.
He reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew the scrap of paper left by his thief. The message was scribbled on the back of a 7-Eleven receipt. The thin paper was already getting dogeared from his handling. He opened it and read what the thief had bought yesterday. A pack of Twizzlers and a large cherry Coke Slurpee.
Rune, he said telepathically.
His First’s response was immediate. My lord.
You will go to—he squinted at the faded lettering on the receipt—the Forty-second Street 7-Eleven store and retrieve all of their security footage for the last twenty-four hours. There is a good chance our thief may be caught on it.
Re-eally, drawled Rune, his hunter instincts engaged. Leaving now. Back within the hour.
Oh, and Rune?
Bring back Twizzlers and a cherry Coke Slurpee. He wanted to know what these things were.
Sure. You got it, said his First, clearly taken aback. Dragos?
What. He squinted and stretched, basking in the last of the sunlight.
Any idea what size Slurpee you want? His First’s mental voice sounded odd.
They had known each other and worked together for several hundred years now. Dragos said, You know my tastes well enough. Will I like it?
Now that Dragos was back in control of his temper, Rune fell into their normal friendly informality. Uh, I don’t think so, buddy. I’ve never known you to do junk food before.
Make it a small, then. Dragos held the receipt up, sniffed and frowned. Even to his sensitive nose the receipt was starting to lose that delicate feminine scent and smell like him.
He strode inside. The penthouse took the Tower’s top floor. Just below that were h
is offices, meeting rooms, an executive dining hall, training area and other public areas. The third floor down housed his sentinels and other top Court and corporate officials. If it had been a stand-alone building, it would have been a mansion. All the rooms and halls were built on a massive scale.
Dragos located the kitchen in the penthouse. It was a foreign place filled with chrome machines and countertops. No one was there. He went in search of the communal kitchen responsible for serving the dining hall and all the sentinels, Court and corporate executives’ needs. He located it on the next flight down.
He strode through the double doors. A half-dozen kitchen staff froze. In the corner a brownie gave a squeak of dismay and faded into invisibility.
The head chef hurried forward, wringing her hands. She was a dire wolf in her Wyr form, but she kept her human shape, that of a tall gray-haired middle-aged woman, during work hours. “This is an unexpected honor, my lord,” she gushed. “What can we do for you?”
“There are plastic bags with zippers on them. I’ve seen them in commercials,” Dragos said to her. He snapped his fingers, trying to remember the name. “You put food in them.”
“Ziploc bags?” she asked in a cautious voice.
He pointed at her. “Yes. I want one.”
She turned and snarled at her staff. A faerie leaped to a cupboard and then bounded to them. She bowed low to Dragos, head ducked and eyes to the floor while holding a cardboard box up. He pulled out a baggie, placed the 7-Eleven receipt inside and zipped it closed.
“Perfect,” he said, placing the small bag in his shirt pocket. He walked out, ignoring the babble that rose behind him.
While he waited for Rune to show up, he went to his offices to confront the most urgent of issues waiting for his attention. His four assistants, all Wyr handpicked for their quick intelligence and sturdy dispositions, occupied the outer rooms that were adorned with works of abstract expressionism by such artists as Jackson Pollock and Arshile Gorky and sculpture by Herbert Ferber.
Located in a corner of the building, his office was decorated in natural tones with wood and stone. As with the penthouse, the outer walls of the office were plate glass set with wrought-iron French doors that opened to a private balcony ledge. The interior walls were adorned by two mixed-media canvases he had commissioned from the late artist Jane Frank. They were from the artist’s Aerial Series, which depicted landscapes as if seen in midflight. One canvas was a landscape by day, the other by night.
As he sat at his desk, his first assistant, Kristoff, poked his dark shaggy head in the door. Dragos clenched his teeth on a surge of irritation. Head bent to the contracts laid on his desk, he said, “Approach with caution.”
The Wyr’s ursine nature and shambling demeanor masked a Harvard-trained MBA with a quick-witted, canny mind. Clever bear that he was, Kristoff said the two words guaranteed to grab his attention. “Urien Lorelle.”
His head lifted. Urien Lorelle, the Dark Fae King, was one of the seven rulers of the Elder Races; his demesne was seated in the greater Chicago area, and he was the guy Dragos most loved to hate. He sat back and flexed his hands. “Bring it.”
Arms overflowing, Kristoff lunged forward and spilled documents onto his desk. “I’ve got it—the link we were looking for between Lorelle and weapons development. Here are hard copies of everything. Transcontinental Power and Light’s 10-K filing with the SEC, last year’s proxy statement and annual report and its quarterly corporate-earnings conference calls. I’ve marked the relevant pages and typed up a report.”
Formed in the latter part of the nineteenth century, Transcontinental Power and Light, Inc., was one of the nation’s largest investor-owned utility companies. The Dark Fae King was the largest individual shareholder.
Dragos picked up the 10-K filing and began to flip through it. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission document was thick, some 450 pages in length and dense with statistics, tables and graphs.
Urien Lorelle and he shared so many differences of opinion. Lorelle’s utility company was partial to mountaintop-removal mining. Dragos preferred mountaintops to stay where he could see them. Urien’s fleet of aging coal-burning power plants emitted over one hundred million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Dragos preferred to breathe clean air when he flew. Urien wanted to see him dead. Dragos preferred to see Urien not just dead but utterly destroyed.
“It’s because you prefer to live in an Other land. You don’t care how much you pollute this side of things, you anachronistic bastard,” he muttered. He said to Kristoff, “Summarize.”
His assistant said, “Transcontinental has set up a partnership called RYVN, the acronym—well, it doesn’t matter. RYVN has applied for a Department of Energy grant to clean up an old Energy Department site in the Midwest that produced nuclear fuel and defense applications back in the fifties. RYVN says they want to explore building a new electricity-generated nuclear plant on the site, along with new contracts with the Defense Department.”
His eyes flashed lava hot. He hissed, “Defense applications.”
Kristoff nodded, dark eyes bright. “Weaponry.”
The financial documents he held smelled like printer ink and paper, but Dragos scented the blood of an imminent kill.
“Get a hold of our DOE contact,” Dragos said. “Make sure he knows to reject RYVN’s grant application and why. After you’ve done that, I want you to destroy the RYVN partnership. When that’s gone, go after the individual partners and dismantle them one by one. Head the project yourself.”
“Right,” said Kristoff.
“No mercy, Kris. When we’re done, no one will dare partner with Urien on something like this again.”
Kristoff asked, “Project budget?”
“Unlimited.” The Wyr-bear turned to go, and he added, “And Kris? Make sure they know who shut them down. Especially Urien.”
“You got it.” Kristoff gave him a grin.
So many differences of opinion between him and the Dark Fae King. So much hate, so little time.
Just then Rune appeared in the doorway wearing torn jeans, combat boots and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. The gryphon’s tawny hair was windblown. He carried two drinks in a cardboard box drink holder, a plastic bag and a bulging manila folder under one arm. He dumped out the contents of the bag. Packets of Twizzlers tumbled across the desk.
Dragos tore open one packet. Rune shoved straws into the drinks, gave him one and kept the other.
“I’ve got the footage,” said Rune, gesturing to the folder under his arm. “Do you know what we’re looking for?”
“Make prints of anyone who buys Twizzlers and cherry Coke Slurpees and bring them to me. Just those two things, nothing else. It will be a female, although she may be in disguise.” Dragos bit into a red rope of candy. He stared in disgust at the remaining half in his hand and threw it in the trash can. Then he picked up the drink and sucked on the straw with caution.
Rune burst into laughter at his expression. “I said you wouldn’t like it.”
“So you did.” He slam-dunked the Slurpee. “Apparently you will be watching the tapes for someone with no taste.”
“This shouldn’t take long. Thank the Powers for fast-forward,” Rune said. He swiped up a few of the Twizzlers packets, winking at Dragos. “Since you don’t like them,” he said, and left.
Dragos went back to work, but his concentration had splintered for other matters. He kept three wide-screens on the opposite wall on different news channels. His other three assistants came and went. The ticker tape headlines of one channel caught his attention and he turned the volume up. The preliminary cost estimate for the property damage he caused that afternoon was already in the tens of millions.
The news crew conducted interviews of pedestrians. One woman said tearfully, “Forget about property damage. I heard that sound earlier today and I’m going to be in therapy for the rest of my life. I want to know if Cuelebre is going to pay for that!”
He pushed the mute button. It was
turning out to be one expensive damn penny.
Outside the wall-sized windows, early evening fell into full night. Then Rune came loping back into his office, paper in his hands.
“I’ve got it, got her,” his First exclaimed. “Lots of people bought lots of crap, but only one woman bought only Twizzlers and a Slurpee. What are the odds?”
Dragos leaned back in his chair. He felt a pulse of dark anticipation as Rune handed him the paper. He shuffled through all of the photos. They were of a fixed scene of the 7-Eleven’s registers and the glass front doors. Rune threw his large frame into a chair and watched as, with an impatient shove, Dragos wiped clear the large expanse of his desk and began to lay the photos out one by one.
Rune had printed several sequential eight-by-elevens. As Dragos laid out the grainy black-and-whites he could almost imagine the woman in the photos moving. He couldn’t wait to see the footage and watch her move for real.
There she was, opening the door. She moved to the left and disappeared from the camera. There she was again, reappearing, holding a packet of Twizzlers and a Slurpee drink in slender hands. She paid, gave the cashier a smile. The last photo was of her pushing out the front door.
He went over them again with more care.
The angle of the shots made it difficult to say for sure, but she seemed a normal height for a tallish human woman. She was whippet graceful with long bones and delicate curves. The camera caught the dip and hollow of her collarbones. She wore her thick hair in a ponytail that was somewhat disheveled, and it was either white or some other light color. He was betting on some shade of blonde. Her triangular face was far too young for it to be gray.
The slash of Dragos’s dark brows lowered over his blade-straight nose. The woman looked tired, preoccupied. No, she looked more than tired—she looked haunted. The smile she gave the cashier was courteous, even kind, but sad. She wasn’t what he expected, but he knew in his old wicked bones that this was his thief.
Dragon Bound Page 5