Dragon Lost

by Lisa Manifold

  “Where is the casket?” She demanded.

  We all looked at her. Her next move could involve snapping her fingers, or stomping her foot. She was that kind of woman.

  She tried again. “The box?” Without taking a breath, she looked around the room. “Which of you retrieved it?” As she came in, I got a glimpse of a man who stood outside, obviously with this woman.

  “I got it,” Luke all but ran from the room to respond to her request.

  I could see why, if he met her in person, he was practically peeing himself. She had that effect. Next to me, I could feel Margrite’s temper rise, like the hackles of a junk-yard dog.

  “I did,” I said. I didn’t get up.

  “Was there anything difficult about getting it?” she asked.

  I got the impression she wanted to ask more, but was restraining herself. I also got the impression that this wasn’t a normal thing for her.

  I shrugged. “Is stealing something ever easy?” I met her gaze.

  Her cheeks flushed although I think it might be anger more than shame. “It’s important that no one saw you, human.”

  What? “This human—” I emphasized the word, “Got in and out with no problem.” I wasn’t telling anyone about the light show.

  She looked at me, and I could tell that she was dying to say something. Her eyes narrowed as she took me in. Her mouth pursed. Whatever she wanted to say—I couldn’t tell. But I was familiar with the look of someone biting their tongue.

  The man behind her must have been able to tell as well. He came up and put his hand on her shoulder. She turned her head so fast I was surprised she didn’t hit him.

  She said something in a language that I didn’t know. He looked at her, and then at me.

  He responded in the same language, and I felt the weight of both of their stares.

  Her brows furrowed, and she turned and asked him something, looking back at me carefully.

  He inhaled, and I could tell that he was considering. Then he shook his head.

  “We need this,” he said quietly in English.

  I didn’t know if Margrite heard him. He barely moved his lips. But his words calmed the woman, and she gave a single tiny nod. That did not, however, stop her from watching me from under her lashes. She didn’t take her eyes off me.

  I knew enough to know that she wasn’t checking me out. This was something more. I didn’t like it. It was weird, and I avoided weird like the plague.

  Luke was coming in with the box in his hands, and Margrite studied her nails or something. Whatever it was women did to show they were bored to tears.

  I had to smother a smile. I knew her faces, and this was one that she put on when she wanted to piss off someone. Which meant she didn’t like Miss High-and-Mighty any more than I did. She looked up at me then, and I grinned fast and then let the smile fall from my face.

  “It’s right here.”

  “Where is the bag it came in?” High-and-Mighty snapped.

  “It’s still in the warehouse where I found it,” I answered before Luke could say something. “I thought it would be better to let him think he still had it.”

  She was about to rip my head off, but the man with her spoke first. “Thank you for your consideration. It is better that no one know where this is.” He was smooth, practiced.

  “You’re good. As far as anyone who knows it was in the warehouse, they think it’s still there.”

  “And you weren’t seen?” The woman asked again.

  Margrite huffed.

  “No.” I kept it simple.

  “Thank you,” the man said, giving me a sketchy bow. “We appreciate your discretion. Come, my dear. We’re done. Let’s go home,” he added.

  For whatever reason, those words affected her, and she gripped his hand. “Yes,” she breathed.

  Without another word, without a backwards glance, the pair walked from the room.

  Margrite, Luke and I just stared. What else could you do?

  “Well, that was weird as fuck,” Margrite got up. “Let’s go eat,” she said to me.

  “You sticking around?” Luke asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. I knew we were leaving, but I wasn’t advertising my plans to anyone. Not even to Luke.

  “You want me to call—”

  I shook my head. “No. I’ll let you know if that changes.”

  His shoulders dropped a little. I knew he didn’t want to hear that, but I’d made the call that once the job was over, if the pay was what he said, I was getting the hell out of here. Or rather, I’d told him I was done with any jobs for a while. I hadn’t mentioned we were actually leaving the city. And changing our names.

  Now I just needed to do it on the quiet so that no one knew. So how Luke knew, I wasn’t sure. It made me nervous.

  Margrite didn’t say anything to Luke as she walked out the door. I followed her, raising my hand to him in farewell.

  Finally, it was time to go eat.

  At the diner, we ate in silence. When Margrite had finished her burger, she sucked noisily on her milkshake. We were splurging.

  “So, you think that’s it? You think he’s going to just let you go?”

  I nodded. “He won’t know anything other than we’re moving away from this. He doesn’t know all the rest,” I waved a hand to encompass all of our plans.

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I am.” I hoped that Luke had made merely a lucky guess.

  “Okay, when do you want to put this into action?”

  “Let’s get a bike, and get all the things we need, and say, maybe two days? I want to be gone before Caleb finds out,” I dropped my voice. “You know it’s not just him.”

  Caleb, in spite of being the biggest douche ever, worked for someone. No one knew who, but they were big. I’d seen people come to see him from his boss, and it’s the only time I’d ever seen the little pissant look frightened. In public, too, so the boss had to be some big, scary bad ass.

  I wanted no part of that.

  Margrite nodded. “I’ll start packing.”

  Neither of us kept all our valuables in one place. We’d learned the hard way that you put all your shit in one place, someone only had to find your one spot. Another awesome foster kid legacy.

  So packing, for us, encompassed visiting the hiding spots. I knew where Margrite stashed stuff. Unlike me, she went outside of our ratty building. I disagreed with her philosophy. Scattered hiding places made it tougher to get out in a hurry, but it wasn’t my shit, so I let her be. Besides, as she was happy to remind me, we’d never had to run.

  “I’ll get a bike,” I said.

  “You think you can?”

  There was the small problem of no ID, no driver’s license, and it went without saying that plates would need to come with the bike. But I nodded. “I have a guy. I’ve been talking to him.”

  We had the fake IDs—but I wasn’t going to share my new name to anyone here. No way. That was a sure-fire way to have someone track you down and do less-than-positive things to you. Once I shook the dust from this place off me, I never wanted to come back.

  As we left, I asked her, “You heading out for a bit?”

  She nodded. “I’ll be back later.”

  We split up and after stopping at one of my hidey holes to grab some cash, I went down to the garage of the guy I’d been talking to.

  “You still got that bike?” I asked him as I got to his office at the back of the building.

  The guy, whose name was Keene, looked up from the paperwork he was surrounded with. “Hey, Aodan, I didn’t know if you still wanted it.”

  “Yeah, if you have it. If not, another bike, something similar,” I didn’t want to let on that this was a big deal in any way.

  “You still need some plates?” He shuffled some of the papers.

  As much as I wanted to do something other than stealing for a living, I was really glad that I didn’t have a job that had a lot of paperwork. “Yeah,” I said again. “I’m
getting tired of hoofing it.”

  For years, I’d used a bike. As in, pedal my ass around bike. Much easier than trying to keep something motorized, and if someone lifted it, I just got another one. It wasn’t a huge hassle.

  Okay, in the rain it pretty much sucked. My latest ride was stolen two days ago.

  “‘Bout time,” he grumbled. “Come on back here. I put it aside for you. I have a nice, clean plate for you, too.”

  “Already?” I was surprised.

  “‘Course. I told you I would.” His tone was gruff.

  I remembered that I’d stolen his daughter’s diaries back a couple of years ago. She had a really shitty boyfriend, wrote all kinds of stuff like teenagers in love do in her diary, and then he stole them and threatened to blackmail her. At least, that was what Keene told me. It was why he asked me to steal them back for her.

  I had a lot of problems with people taking advantage of kids. Blackmail happens, but to a teenager? I told him I’d take the job for nothing.

  I hadn’t looked in them when I got them—I never looked—but Keene had been pretty grateful. She’d gotten into Stanford, I remembered him telling me.

  “I appreciate it,” I said. “How long do I have with it?”

  “It’s registered to me,” he said.

  “What?”

  “You buy it from me, and if you ever get questioned, I’ll say I let you use it, with no idea that you had lawbreaking in mind,” he grinned at me suddenly as he unlocked a gate on the other side of the garage. “And you use it for as long as you want,” he added.

  “That’s—you don’t have to do that,” I said. I wasn’t used to this. Kindness, generosity—they’d been long gone in my world.

  “You helped my daughter out of a pickle,” Keene said. “I been looking for a way to thank you for that. I can do this. Just don’t screw things up too bad, okay?”

  “You sure I’m going to be breaking the law?” I asked with a small laugh.

  “Don’t you?” He went in and brought out a bike. “This is a generic, no attention-grabbing kind of bike. Plain, simple, looks like every other motorcycle out there. Now how you dress… well, I can’t do anything about that,” he said. He looked my coat up and down.

  I smiled. I loved my coat, but it wasn’t exactly low-key. Red never is.

  Back to the bike. It was lovely. It was shiny black, but Keene was right. It was an older Kawasaki Ninja. It wouldn’t attract attention, and while it was worth something, it wasn’t anywhere near top of the line.

  “It’s perfect,” I said. “This is kick ass, Keene. What do I owe you?”

  We’d agreed on a price before, but I wanted to give him the chance to up it if he felt he needed to. He was seriously doing me a solid.

  “Same as we agreed to two months ago. What do you think I am?” He actually sounded insulted.

  I handed over the cash and took the keys. I started it and grinned as the sound echoed around the mostly empty garage. In another corner, I saw a guy quietly working on a nice BMW. I ignored him. Not my business.

  “She’s in good shape. Try not to kill yourself,” Keene put the money in his front shirt pocket.

  “Thanks, man,” I said.

  “Good luck.” He studied me for a moment. “Get out of here,” he waved and turned around, heading back for his office.

  I watched him. Is that what fathers were like? Did the right thing for their kids? Tried to help others who’d helped them? I felt envy for his daughter. He might not be totally honest, but he was a good guy.

  “Fuck this,” I muttered. There was no reason for me to be moping around about what I didn’t have. Because what I did have was exactly what I wanted, and I’d be able to make my life what I wanted. And I’d done it on my own, with the help of only one person.

  I gunned the bike out of the garage bay door and headed for home. I had the perfect hiding place for this. No one would ever find it, and in two days, we were out of here.

  The wind on my face made me smile even as it stung at my eyes. I’d have to get helmets. Not because I was overly safe—I enjoyed the wind across my hair—but because it would be easier to hide my identity.

  When I got to our building, I wheeled the bike around the back, and into one of the ground floor apartments. There was a big hole in the wall, so I wasn’t sure it counted as one anymore, but it would work. I headed for the far corner of the apartment, and put the bike in a closet, in a busted-out wall. Then I threw a tarp over it, and then a ratty blanket, and piled trash and other debris I found around the place.

  Once it was concealed, I moved several steps away, looking it over, satisfied with my work. This wouldn’t be a good long-term solution, but it only had to last for two days. Forty-eight hours.

  “Let’s just get through this,” I whispered.

  As I was leaving the apartment, I heard someone whisper.

  Come to me.

  What the fuck? “Who’s there?” I whispered, trying to throttle the anger that raged up within me.

  No one answered. But I’d clearly heard it.

  I stood still, listening. There was no one. Nothing, not even the garbage and crap all over the place, stirred. If someone was in here, I’d hear them.

  I thought about the voice. I didn’t recognize it, but it was said with command. With an expectation of being obeyed. I knew that tone just fine.

  “No,” I said out loud.

  Aodan, is that you? Have I found you at last?

  I stopped in my tracks. The voice was back. And this time, it sounded hopeful, and slightly unsure. Like they—whoever this was—couldn’t believe they were speaking to me.

  What the hell? Was I really debating my imaginary voices?

  But I’d heard it. As clearly as though someone was standing near me.

  “Who are you?” I whispered. I peered into the darkness, looking for someone, anyone. Any sign that someone was fucking with me.

  I have finally found you! I’ve been searching for a long time, the voice said. Where are you?

  Oh, no, I thought. I’m not saying shit. Looks like forty-eight hours with peace and safety might be asking too much. I ignored the voice and sprinted upstairs.

  We were leaving tomorrow.

  5

  “You get everything?” I asked as I walked in. Margrite was sitting on the floor with a couple of small bags.

  She nodded. “This stuff will all be one fat backpack when I’m done.”

  I didn’t inquire. Her stuff was her stuff. Besides, I was too rattled about the voice in my head.

  “It’s got to be comfortable on the bike,” I said. “I got it, and it’s hidden. But I heard someone whispering outside, so let’s move things up to tomorrow, okay?” It couldn’t have been in my head. It had to be someone prowling around.

  Margrite looked up, instantly on alert. “You look around?”

  “Not really. But I stood and listened—whoever they are, I think they left. We’ll hear if someone tries to get in here, or look around too much.”

  Another benefit of our building. We laid booby traps, for lack of a better word. Just shit all over the place so that anyone who was wandering around would step on it, and wake us up. We had black curtains on all the windows so that you couldn’t see our light. We each took turns looking at the place at night occasionally to make sure that everything stayed blacked out.

  I know, I know, what about letting sunlight in? I could safely say that Margrite and I preferred a comfortable, dark safe place.

  Her shoulders relaxed. “Okay. Everything go okay with Keene?”

  “Yeah, he even gave me a clean plate.”

  “Really?” Her eyebrow indicated a lack of belief.

  “He said he owed me for the job I did for him a while back.”

  She smiled briefly. “That was nice. Good. It’ll make it easier when we go.”

  “You’ll be ready tomorrow?”

  “I have all my shit. You’re the one who needs to go dig yours out,” she shot back.
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  “Stop nagging. I’m heading to bed, and then I’ll pack.” I gave her a big smile. Another benefit of hiding all my stuff here, around the building. I didn’t have to go far.

  She rolled her eyes and went back to ignoring me. That was one of the great things about her as a best friend. You say whatever, and it’s over. We’d never had a fight, ever. We worked well together, on the few occasions where I needed help.

  I tossed my coat on a chair, and stripped down, leaving my clothes where I could grab them easily.

  Then I turned off the light and crawled into bed. I was really tired all of a sudden, like I’d been doing a hell of a lot more than I had been.

  The last thing I remember was the soft, questioning voice in my head.

  Aodan?

  I woke up to Margrite’s scream. I nearly fell out of the bed, and it broke as I scrambled to get up.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  My voice came out in a growling, snarling tone.

  “What the fuck?” I said.

  Margrite stopped screaming, her mouth hanging open in an ‘O’.

  “Did you just say something?” Her hand crept up toward her mouth. She whispered, “Where’s Aodan?”

  “It’s me!”

  Her shock gave way to anger. “Did you eat him, you bastard?”

  “Margrite! What the hell are you talking about?”

  Her mouth fell open wider if that was possible.

  “What did you say? Say it again,” she hissed.

  “I said,” I made myself speak slowly, not sure why my voice sounded like I was growling, “What the hell are you talking about, Margrite?”

  “You know my name,” she whispered, edging toward the door.

  “Of course, I do,” I put my hands on my hips and looked down—

  “What the fuck?” I fell backward as I shouted—roared, really—while crashing onto the already damaged bed. The floor creaked alarmingly.

  My hand wasn’t a hand. It was a claw. A blue-ish green claw. And I wasn’t me. I had the body of a lizard, something with scales. I was big, bigger than I’d been.

  What the fuck?

  I looked up. Margrite was hovering by the door, obviously scared, but not able to run away screaming.