But Cooper wasn’t around at three in the morning. No one was. She liked the dark, quiet halls. She liked the smell of the wood of the desks and the faint pine of the floor cleaner. At times like these, Wilcox Hall almost felt like an ancient tomb itself.
Yeah, and you almost smell like a rotting corpse, she thought, laughing to herself. If any of her colleagues saw her just then, in her tank top and khaki shorts, covered with red dust and laughing like that, they’d probably think she was a loon. They already think that, she thought. But they won’t for long. Not when I publish my findings.
Brynn headed down the stairs, humming to herself. She walked through the double doors into the night air and turned to lock the door. She could smell the grass from the quad and the soft light from the half-moon reflected off the glass doors.
She froze. A massive reflection loomed in the glass. She turned around and could barely make sense of the man standing before her. Even in the dim light of the moon everything about him stood out clearly. He almost seemed to glow from within. Long blond hair fell just to his shoulders. His eyes were a cool green. And he wore some kind of skin-tight scaly armor that hugged his muscular body. He looked like he’d just walked off the set of a superhero movie.
He stood there with a little half-smile on his lips. He didn’t look menacing, but who the hell skulked around campus dressed like that at three in the morning?
Brynn was terrified. She reached into her satchel and curled her fingers around the canister of mace attached to her keychain.
“Greetings,” the man said in a cheerful voice. “I am Vander Tanglevine, king of the Emerald Isle.”
What? His words made about as much sense as his appearance. He sounded like a lunatic. And he was standing in front of her, blocking the way to the parking lot and her jeep. She could see it over his hulky right shoulder, sitting there under the purple-white light of the lot’s sole lamp.
Brynn pulled the mace from her bag, not caring as folders and papers spilled out onto the ground.
She pointed the nozzle at him. Whoever this guy was, she didn’t want to deal with his crazy shit right now. And he was far too big to mess around with. If he pounced on her, she was done.
“Back off,” she said. “I don’t care who you are. I just want to get to my jeep and go home.”
The man raised his hands palms up and narrowed his eyes at the canister in her hand. “I apologize if I startled you,” he said. “I meant neither provocation nor harm. I merely seek a weapon, a trident lost to my kind and hidden somewhere in your world. Do you know of it?”
That’s it, Brynn thought. This guy may look like a Calvin Klein model in body armor, but now he’s talking about weapons, and he still sounds crazy.
“Get out of my way,” she said.
He took a step towards her, his hands still raised. “I merely wish to—”
Brynn thumbed the plastic trigger, wondering if the stupid thing had a safety or if it were expired. She couldn’t remember how long she’d had it. Did mace even go bad?
These thoughts were running through her mind as the stream of spray shot out and hit the gorgeous psycho right in his open mouth. She smelled it, a weird chemical tang like bug spray, and part of her immediately regretted using it on the guy. She let her thumb off the catch.
The man closed his mouth and took a step back. But he didn’t scream or clutch his face. His eyes took on a curious look as he licked his lips, grimacing like a child who just tried a new food he doesn’t like.
“Is this meant to be some sort of refreshment?” he asked. “Is this how your kind greets newcomers? Because I do not favor the taste of it.”
Brynn looked down at the tiny can in her hand. What the hell? Was the stuff expired? For half a second she thought of spraying it into her own mouth to see, but that was nuts. The moonlight shone on the expiration date, still six months away. She looked up at him, now wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist. Then he tried to flash her a bright, friendly smile, though the taste of the mace was still making him wince a little. Who the hell was this guy?
He’d said his name was Vander Tanglevine? She remembered those old stories about kids who played Dungeons and Dragons and got so lost in their characters they forgot who they really were and thought they were really an elf or a sorcerer. Maybe that’s what had happened here, though he didn’t look like a teenager, or even a college student.
Then the man’s eyes drifted down to the photographs scattered on the steps of Wilcox Hall, and his eyes brightened with recognition. He nodded at one of the photos lying next to her foot.
“The sigil of welcome,” he said. “We mark our homes with it. That is a good omen, is it not?”
Brynn looked down and saw the circle with the missing pie piece and the dot in the center. Then she looked back up at his smiling face.
Holy shit, she thought. She dropped the can of mace on the sidewalk with a tink. “Where did you say you were from?”
“The Emerald Isle.”
“And where is that?”
Good God he was beautiful, she thought. And maybe he wasn’t crazy after all. His green eyes twinkled as he said the word she’d been waiting nearly her entire life to hear.
“Xandakar.”
5
VANDER
He and the earth woman had gotten off to a strange start. But once he had recognized the sigil etched above every home and hearth in Xandakar, and once he’d said the name of his world, she seemed to warm to him.
Well, perhaps warm was a bit strong. She at least no longer seemed frightened of him, nor did she seem to want to spray foul-tasting liquids in his mouth.
She had told him her name was Brynn. It sounded a bit more like a man's name. Nevertheless, it seemed to suit her.
She had gathered up her papers, some with images upon them, like the sigil. He didn’t know papers could bear such clear images. He had bent to help her and she had let him, even looking up to smile awkwardly at him.
She was pleasing to look upon, with dark blond hair pulled back into a tail and large, curious hazel eyes. She was dressed almost like a man, though, in a shirt, short pants, and heavy shoes. She smelled a bit off as well.
But once the pleasantries had been exchanged, she seemed willing to help him. From the steps of the building, she had led him to a small carriage with rubber wheels and urged him to climb inside. The fit was tight, but he managed.
What he did not expect was the rumble and noise of the carriage as she awakened it with what looked like a door key. She actually laughed when she saw him flinch as the machine growled to life. Then he laughed as well. Some men from his world might have taken offense at the thought she might think them afraid. But Vander never let such insecurities bother him.
“We need to go somewhere to talk,” she said. “I don’t really want to take you back to my apartment.”
He just watched her, sitting in the vibrating carriage as she thought to herself. Then she turned to him, her hazel eyes bright with enthusiasm.
“Are you hungry?”
If the welcome spray were any indication of the food choices here, he was not eager to try more. But now that he thought of it, he was hungry. And the journey ahead might be fraught with danger. It was always a good idea to keep one’s energy up.
“I would dine with you,” he said.
She grinned and pushed her foot onto the floor of the carriage while moving a stick beside her. “I don’t know if everyone in your world looks and talks like you,” she said. “But I think I could get used to it.”
Before he could answer, the carriage lurched forward. Vander grabbed onto the thick metal bar overhead to steady himself as they rolled, as if by magic, away from the buildings and onto a road with tall lamps lighting it on either side.
“What was the place we just left?” he asked.
She gave him a curious look. “The university?”
“University,” he repeated. “And the courtyard between the buildings?”
“Th
e quad?”
“Good,” he said. “I must return to this place at the same time once I have found the trident. It is the only way for me to return to my world.”
“Hold on,” she said. “We have a lot to talk about. Let’s wait until I get some pancakes and a cup of coffee in me first.”
The carriage moved more quickly than any Vander had ever seen, though not nearly as fast as he could fly. He wondered what the woman would think if he took dragon form, or whether she had ever even seen one of his kind before.
They slowed and turned into a flat patch of black stone next to another strange building with glass windows, torchless light filling the place. A sign on a pole bore strange writing in a glowing neon script written upon a steaming cup.
“What is this place?” Vander said as they pulled to a stop.
“This is The Tip-Top Diner,” Brynn said, as if that explained anything. “It’s the only place open all night around here. I need some food and coffee, and you and I need to talk.”
He climbed out of the magic carriage she had called a “jeep” and followed her inside. The doors to this place were also made of glass, and Vander figured the people of Earth didn’t care much about privacy, or security for that matter.
A dark-skinned woman in a strange white hat greeted them at the door. “Booth or table?” she asked in a bored voice. If she were a servant, she certainly wasn’t doing her job very enthusiastically.
Brynn told her they wanted a booth, then the servant led them to a strange table flanked on either side by red leather benches. Brynn slid into the one on the right and he squeezed into the other. The servant put shiny waxed documents before each of them on the table.
“Anything to drink?” she asked.
“Coffee,” Brynn said. She looked at Vander.
“A cup of wine?” he asked experimentally.
The dark-skinned woman just looked at him from under heavy-lidded eyes.
“Ale?” he tried.
“I’ll just bring you two coffees,” she said before turning to walk away.
“She seems disgruntled,” Vander said, once she was out of earshot. “Did I do something to offend?”
“No,” Brynn said, skimming the shiny parchment. “Pretty much everyone here is disgruntled.” When she saw he was not looking at his own document, she made a gesture pretending to slap her own forehead. He found it charming. “You can’t read our language, can you? What do you like to eat?”
His favorite meal was fresh spearfish, grilled on an open flame and served with spiced mangos. But he doubted they served that here. He smelled something like the greasy meats eaten on the mainland and something that might be a kind of bread. But before he could answer, the woman returned.
“Know what you want?”
Brynn told the woman she wanted pancakes, eggs over easy, and bacon. Then she looked at Vander and told the woman to just bring the same for him.
The woman wrote this down and walked away.
Brynn pulled one of the image parchments out of her bag and put it on the table in front of him.
“Can you read this?” she asked.
The image was of a door of some sort, a message inscribed above it in the ancient tongue. A few fragments and symbols survived into their modern writing, but for the most part the language was lost. He had no doubt there was a shriveled old owl somewhere in the high branches of the One Tree that could read this script, but he surely could not.
“No,” Vander said. “I recognize the welcome sigil, of course. But I cannot read the entire message.”
Brynn sighed.
“Oh, wait,” he said. “I do recognize this symbol here.” He pointed to a symbol near the end of the message. “It is a universal crest, signifying dragonborn.”
Brynn leaned over the paper. Vander felt something stir within him. There was something about this woman that seemed to raise an itch in him he did not know needed to be scratched. She was driven, highly intelligent, and not bothered to hide it. Many females in his clan were beautiful and fierce, but they still felt the need to hide their cleverness in front of the males. Most also either lacked ambition or hid it as well. But the woman sitting in front of him didn’t seem particularly concerned with hiding anything from him. She was who she was, and that was refreshing.
“Yes,” she said. “I got a hit on this one from the internet. What does that mean, dragonborn?”
Vander couldn’t help letting out a little chuckle. Of course they wouldn’t know what dragonborn were in this world, but it still seemed strange that they wouldn’t know something that was common knowledge to every child in Xandakar.
“The meaning is as it sounds,” he said, trying not to sound too condescending. “The symbol refers to those such as myself, those with the blood of the dragon in their veins. Those that can take dragon—”
The woman returned to their table holding two white stoneware plates topped with steaming food. She set them down on the table in front of them, and Vander felt his stomach rumble.
Before him was a small pile of bread discs, topped with a pat of what he hoped was butter. A tiny pair of cooked eggs stared up at him, the yolks gleaming yellow. And on the edge of the plate were two paltry strips of meat. Boar? The portions were laughable, seemingly meant for a child. But Vander realized he hadn’t eaten since the flight to the Icelands, and he was famished.
The paper with the symbols forgotten for now, he picked up the circles of bread and folded them, taking a bite. They were sweet. He hadn’t expected that. But they were delicious. He was pleased to discover that not everything tasted like the greeting spray Brynn had shot into his face.
“This is good,” he said, his mouth full. Brynn was looking at him with an amused smirk.
“There’s a fork rolled up in the napkin right there,” she said, nodding next to his plate. “And there’s syrup, too.”
“I am well,” he said, taking another bite and nearly finishing the hunks of sweet, buttered bread.
Brynn used a dull, flat blade to spread the butter on her stack of bread evenly, then reached for a small glass vase full of amber liquid and poured it across the top. He had to admit, that did look tasty. Perhaps he would have the serving woman bring him another stack or two.
“You were saying?” Brynn asked. “About the blood of the dragon running through your veins?”
The look on her face was skeptical, and he realized that was another thing he was beginning to like about her. He supposed it couldn’t be helped. But as king, and even when he was a prince growing up, nearly everyone fawned over him. Very few people dealt with or spoke to him plainly, and even fewer questioned what he said. But he could tell this woman wasn’t sure she believed his words and wasn’t shy about letting him know.
Vander finished off the, what had she called them? Panned cakes? Then he shoved one of the strips of meat in his mouth. It was oily, but pleasantly salty. A pile of these might be nice for snacking, but why would they think it made a proper meal?
In any case, he was feeling a little more cheerful. He looked across the room to the serving woman to make sure she was not observing them. She seemed to be busy waiting upon a group of young ones, their hair dyed whites and purples, rings of metal in their ears and noses like the tribes that still dwelt in the deep heart of the jungle.
They were interesting, but he turned his attention back to Brynn, who was eyeing him closely.
“It would probably be best if you did not cry out,” he said, putting his left hand flat on the cool table.
“Cry out?” she asked. “Why would I—”
He shifted his hand, the scaled armor from his wrist growing up across his fingers, which were now becoming claws.
“Oh shit,” Brynn whispered, dropping her fork with a clatter as her eyes widened. Thankfully, she did not cry out.
Vander smiled, letting his huge green claw rest upon the table between them. He clicked the tips against the surface and was amused to see her jump a little.
“Ya
’ll need anything else?”
Now it was Vander’s turn to jump. He snatched his claw under the table and looked up to see the serving woman, her eyes still flat and disinterested. She had clearly not seen his hand.
He actually did want another pile of panned cakes, and perhaps a plate full of the meat strips. But Brynn answered before he could send the woman for more food.
“No,” she said, clearing her throat and looking up at the woman with a strained smile. “We’re fine.”
“All right, then,” the woman said, tearing a piece of paper from her little book and putting it down on the table before walking away.
Vander shifted his claw back to a hand and put it back up on the table.
Brynn looked at him now with shock and a bit of fear. “What the hell just happened?” she whispered.
“I told you,” Vander said. “I am dragonborn.”
The young people across the room glanced their way. A girl with purple tips on her hair and dark ink around her eyes snickered at them.
“Lower your voice, for chrissakes,” Brynn whispered.
“Very well,” he said, dropping his volume a bit and smiling. She was pretty when she was her usual confident self, but he found her even prettier when she was flustered.
“So,” she said, gathering her thoughts. “You’re telling me you can…I mean, not just your hand. You can turn yourself into, what? A dragon?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Well if you were thinking of doing it, don’t,” she said. She pointed at his hand. “Don’t even do that again.”
“Your kind would find it frightening?” he asked.
“My kind would find it very frightening,” she said. “Then, I don’t know, somebody would call the military or something and all hell would break loose. Just…stay like you are. Be discreet.”
“As you say,” Vander said. She was the first person he met in this world, and that was no coincidence. Whatever power Miranda wielded, it had brought him to Brynn. She had papers with writings in the ancient tongue. Why, he did not yet know. And from the earliest moments of meeting her, he had felt something else, a pull of some sort. That seemed not to be coincidence, either.
Dragon Green Page 4