Max_Through the Portal

by Celeste Raye

  She did; making herself loosen her muscles was hard but she managed it and just as the portal took them in, spinning them through a field of sheer white nothingness.

  Spires and tall buildings appeared in her field of vision. They zoomed straight down, the dragons moving at a dangerous speed to keep themselves from being seen by humans as they aimed for a deserted alley.

  The dragons touched down. Wind whipped her hair as Heather climbed off and then they were gone, their scaled bodies flashing for a second and then vanishing in a burst of speed and strength.

  Heather sighed, “So now what?”

  Christy chewed on her bottom lip and then looked down. “Your heel’s fixed.”

  Heather looked down at the boot that Max had fixed. “Yeah. I hope it holds. I don’t know where we are; do you?”

  Christy shook her head, “No. let’s get out of this alley. That seems to be the first logical step.”

  It was, but with every single step, a sense of disorientation and dislocation settled in and stayed in Heather. She stopped at a newspaper stand and bent to look at one, her mouth dropping open as she saw the date. She nudged Christy, who also looked, groaned, and then took her arm, leading her away from there.

  Time was funny over there, and it seemed she had lost a few months in the world in which she moved. Heather trudged down the avenue, her nose wrinkling at the smell of the pollution and car exhaust and her forehead crinkling too as the noise of cars and trucks and people crammed into tight spaces beat against her eardrums. The place was so loud!

  Christy said, in a sad voice, “Well I guess I am going to have to figure out what to do next. I am sure I got fired at some point.”

  Heather shot a look at her face. “You care about Blake, don’t you?”

  “What? Hell no! He’s…” Christy’s face softened. “Oh shit. I don’t want to talk about it. The good thing is I still have an apartment thanks to my paying my rent for a whole year. Not sure if you can say the same, so if you need a place, mine is yours too.”

  “I am sure I will.” Heather surveyed the shoals of pedestrians clogging the gray concrete sidewalks. “Do you think anyone even missed us?”

  “No. I mean they likely figured I went to a different job. Your boss is a dick who probably figured you left like everyone else. Our neighbors don’t give a damn. I mean, it’s the city. Nobody really knows their neighbors. And since neither of us have any real sort of family there’s probably no way anyone reported us missing or anything either.”

  “You are probably right.” Heather’s mood flattened yet again. “I don’t know what to do now. I guess I can say I lost my mind and ran off for a tour of some exotic country or something and try to get a job. I don’t even know what happened to my stuff either.”

  They were in front of the building that Heather had lived in now. Christy said, “Well, let’s go in and ask or at least try to get into the place.”

  “That sounds reasonable.”

  The lobby was the same as ever, but it looked uglier, dirtier and more run down, or was it that she had simply been away long enough that she could see just how seedy it was?

  Either way, it felt gritty and a little dingy. They went up the stairs, and she tried her keys. They didn’t fit, but the door swung open to reveal a middle-aged man with beady eyes and a suspicious glare. “Can I help you?”

  Christy said, “Oh shit. Heather, you big dummy, you got the wrong apartment!”

  Heather went with that. She gave the number on the door a second look and cried out, “Oh! Oops! Wrong floor! Sorry!”

  He slammed the door shut. Christy put an arm around Heather’s drooping shoulders. “That is one question answered anyway. Come on; maybe we can find out what happened to your stuff anyway.”

  It didn’t really matter. She had not had much, just clothes and few knick-knacks and mementos. Still, Christy seemed determined, and Heather knew that part of that was due to Christy’s needing to do something to make the re-entry into this world less heinous.

  They went back down the stairs and then made their way to the desk. The man behind it was new, and she tried for a smile, but it didn’t really meet her eyes. “Hi. I’m…I lived in 3-B. There seems to be a mistake. I was supposed to have my things shipped to me and…”

  “Oh. That’s you? Yeah they put your stuff in the downstairs lockers.” He fumbled out a key. “You have a bill here for storage and I’ll have to have payment in full before I can let you get the things.”

  Christy snapped, “That is ridiculous! No way is she paying for storage! This was management’s mistake! She arranged to have her things shipped to LA, and to have it done on time. Whoever the manager is here, well, they dropped the ball. We were overseas and not available to know that there was a mistake and that that mistake meant that her things were here! In fact, we should be billing this building for the inconvenience and the hassle and the…give us the keys!”

  The guy behind the desk stuttered, “Well, um, see…the old manager left. He went to Florida or something. Like…I don’t know…I mean, this is not my job. I was just told you had to pay.”

  Heather rolled with Christy’s lie. She kind of had to. She had no idea if she had any money in the bank or if the credit and debit cards in her wallet even worked anymore. “I am not about to pay for your mistake! In fact, I will sue you before I do that!”

  His eyes rolled. He shuffled and danced for a moment and then he gulped out, “Okay, look. I don’t know if anyone ever expected you to come and get it anyway and the guy in your old place has been bitching like crazy about wanting the storage space, and since he also wants to pay for the storage space because they don’t come free anymore, I guess we could always just say we threw your stuff out to make room?”

  Christy said, “You’d be in the right, legally speaking, to get rid of it all given how much time has passed. So, we’re just going to get it, and say nothing. Okay?”

  He handed over the key. “Yeah, but listen, let’s keep this between us, okay?”

  Christy fumbled around in her pockets and came up with a few bills. He made them vanish. Heather and Christy went down to the basement and to the locker and then they began the task of gathering up the plastic trash bags that held her stuff. Tears started and dripped off Heather’s nose as she grabbed yet another of the cheap plastic bags. “My whole life is in trash bags. I don’t even know what that says about me or my life, but somehow it seems fitting.”

  The sobs started and she could not stop them. She dropped the bags and crumpled onto the floor. Christy hugged her, hard. “Girl, it’s okay. It is. I know it hurts and you are hurting bad. I could kick Max in his balls for what he did to you! The least he could have done was say goodbye!”

  Heather let a last harsh sob rip up from her throat. “I don’t think he cares that I left. In fact, I know he doesn’t. If he did, he would have stopped me, or at least tried to stop me. Wouldn’t he?”

  Christy turned away and began gathering bags. “I don’t know, Heather. I just know I got us both into a really shitty situation and it’s all my fault that you’re heartbroken and…and I don’t even know if you still want to be my friend after all that I did to you!”

  A little laugh broke from her lips. “You’re crazy. It was awesome. I mean, come on, who can say they saw dragons, and rode on them too? And got to dance on mountaintops and eat under the stars? I can, and so can you. So yeah, it sucks that it didn’t work out for me and Max but…but that was the biggest adventure I ever had and am likely to ever have.”

  She got up off the floor, and they hugged again. Christy sighed. “I won’t miss the lack of running water.”

  Heather found herself smiling again. “I know, right? But if we could have just convinced them to put in plumbing, it would have been a five-star resort experience! I mean, come on, it’s a castle.”

  It was a castle, and castles belonged in fairy tales. Fairy tales were supposed to have happily ever after endings, but that fairy tale—hers and Max’s
—had not had that ending. Instead, it had just ended.

  She was going to have to live with that fact and make the best of what had happened to her. She was going to have to learn to put that behind her and maybe, one day, when she was a lot older, she would be able to look back on it all and find herself swept away at the good memories and the sheer romance of it all.

  Todd had left her with no good memories because she had never really loved him. She had loved that her family loved him and that he wanted the same dream her parents wanted for her, and that he made her feel like it was okay to settle.

  Max? She had not settled. He was everything she had ever wanted, and he had not wanted her in the same way. That was okay; she could, eventually, learn to accept that. She had no choice in the matter. She was in her world, and he was in his, and that portal was closed and would not open again except from his side—and it was clear he had no intention of opening it.

  She blew out a long breath. “I guess it is a good thing we are still friends since it also looks like we are about to be roommates.”

  Their laughter was short but real. They took the bags and trudged up the stairs and back out onto the street where they hailed a cab. The driver didn’t bat an eye when he saw what they were carrying. Of course not. There were millions of people in the city, and nobody gave a damn about anyone else or cared what they might be doing. She could have a body in those bags and he would not care.

  That thought just made her miss Dragon World all the more.

  Chapter Twenty

  Max stared at the sky, his dark eyes searching the expanse as if he were searching for an answer to his dilemma, and maybe he was. He wanted Heather so much that he hurt all over. He could not seem to think or even breathe now that she was gone, but he also could not go to her.

  She did not want him. If she had, she would have stayed. She did not want to live in his world and had made no secret of that fact, and there was no way he could live in hers. He could not lose his dragon heart and be human; he was too needed in his world, and he loved his world too much.

  But did he love it enough to lose her?

  Did he want to be a dragon more than he wanted to be the man who loved her, and the man who would spend his life with her?

  If he stayed a dragon, he knew how that would end. She would age, and he would not. She would grow older and weaker and frail, and no matter how much he loved her, he would not be able to stop that from happening to her.

  He would lose her.

  What then? Would he choose the dragon fire that his father had chosen?

  That was a hard death, but death was nothing but a doorway, according to the legends—and really, what good was a life without love?

  He took a few deep breaths, trying to seek out a solution that would help him to ease the heartache.

  None of his thoughts on what would happen if they could be together mattered at all anyway—because she did not want to stay with him and had not stayed even when she had had the chance.

  For a human to stay in Dragon World, they had to want to. That was the law. Humans had to want it, to ask for it, and to stay of their own free will without any coercion. They, he, could not ask her to stay because to do so would be to break that law.

  Blake spoke from behind him. “You look like hell.”

  “I feel like it too.” He slapped a hand down on the back of his neck. “You hear anything from the Orcs?”

  Blake moved to stand beside him. The wind coming off the sky whipped over them. Blake leaned into the wall and said, “Don’t you want to know if she said anything?”

  Max eyed him. “You mean, did she say anything about me?”

  Blake sighed. “I know we don’t always get along, but I’ve seen you get hurt before. Leria did a real dance across your back in fact. I get that. But what I don’t get is how you could have just let her go.”

  Max glowered. “It seems to me that you had something going with that crazy friend of hers and did nothing to stop her from leaving either.”

  Blake said, “She’s her own person.”

  “I’d say Heather is too.”

  “Yes, but you don’t actually need children. I do, and Christy has some sort of thing against them. Said she’s sure she would rather die than have kids, in fact. And she would also much rather die than marry me, not that I proposed since, you know, she’s really sort of…I don’t know with her. Half the time I’m afraid she is going to kill me and the other half of the time I’m afraid she might just decide not to. She’s got me all screwed up. I never met anyone like her, and dammit…yeah. I want her. But we’re not talking about me and Christy. We’re talking about you and Heather.”

  Max shook his head, “No, we aren’t.”

  “The hell we’re not. What’s wrong with you?”

  “She did not want to stay. If she had, she would have. Besides, you know the law about humans. They have to want to stay. We can’t make them. We can’t ask them to stay either because doing so might influence them to stay when their hearts are not really in it.”

  “Oh, screw the law.” Blake raked his hands through his hair. “I do mean screw it.”

  Max felt exasperation start. “You are a ruler…”

  “So are you. I get why the law, especially that one, has to stand, but maybe that law doesn’t take into account that sometimes humans, especially human women, need something besides a prayer that they’ll stay. Maybe they need to be told they are wanted, and that that someone wants them to stay.”

  “Are you talking to me or about yourself?”

  “I already told you why Christy won’t work for me and me for her. We’re way too different, and if I don’t have a child, my side of this line is dead. I can’t do that. I can’t let my clan die out.”

  Max looked down at his feet. “No, I guess you can’t.”

  Blake looked up at the sky. The portal pulsed and shone. Here only hours had passed since she’d gone, but in her time days, and maybe even weeks or months, depending on how the time stream was flowing would have passed. Was she over him already? Was she back in her life and happy?

  He turned away from the sight of that portal’s shimmer. There was no way he could go to her. She didn’t want him. He wanted her; God, he wanted her. But she was free to choose, and she had made her choice. That choice had not been him. That choice she had made had been for her world, for the life she had there.

  Blake said, “You know, I never thought I’d say this but, cuz, you’re a coward.”

  Blake had the good sense to walk away before Max could toss him off the roof. Max stood there, his eyes going back to the portal and his heart breaking as he wished that he could have asked her to stay, to be his without breaking that law. That she would have asked him to be hers: to join her in that world.

  Max let out a roar of pain and changed, his wings spreading out widely around him.

  Flight: he needed flight. It was the only space he could breathe in at the moment. Flight was the only way to release his agony, and so he soared upward, his black wings beating at the skies and his heart glowing ruby red beneath the scales that covered his chest.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “This day is fired,” Heather huffed as she kicked her shoes across the foyer that ran from Christy’s front door to the small open concept living room and kitchen. “And I mean fired. I hate my life right now. Apparently that dickhead ex-boss of mine is giving me the most horrible recommendations ever!”

  Christy looked up from the massive plate of spaghetti she was eating. The smell of garlic and oregano hung over everything. “You too huh? Ugh, I don’t know if I’m ever going to get another job.”

  Christy peered down at her plate. “Wow, you’re really stress eating. I haven’t seen you do that since that time you broke out right before prom.”

  “I know.” Christy passed the plate over. “Save me from myself, will you?”

  Heather sat down, took the plate, and dug in. “This is great.”

  “I do mak
e good pasta.” Christy leaned back, patted her slightly bulging belly and asked, “So I take it you had no luck today?”

  “Nope.” Heather twirled strands of spaghetti around her fork. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “What you should do is ask a few of your clients for a reference to counteract his poison.”

  Heather slurped in noodles. “That’s a good idea. Hell, that is a great idea. I will. Thanks for that, and this. Did you put mushrooms in here?”

  Christy nodded. “Yeah, of course. We both love mushrooms.”

  Heather found herself remembering the mushrooms she had had in Dragon World. “I wish we’d brought some of the wild truffles back from there. I bet we could have sold them for a fortune.”

  “You’re right, since they’re rare over here and so common there we could have started a truffle-smuggling business and never had to worry about money ever again.”

  They gawked at each other and then burst into laughter. Things had been hard in the two months that had passed since they had come back, and things looked like they were going to get worse before they got better. To her relief, she had actually been able to use her credit and debit cards, but the balances were going up on the credit cards and dropping like a stone on the debit. She knew Christy wasn’t in much better shape despite them both pulling together to keep the bills paid there, and she also wondered just how long they were going to be able to manage to keep afloat.

  Christy said, “You know, I’m beginning to get worried.”

  “I was just thinking that,” she admitted.

  “I was just thinking that maybe I should use that dating app. We might have to start getting free food and coffee.”

  Heather’s eyebrows went up. “No. I mean, hello. With our luck, we’d end with a werewolf or a vampire who’s anemic or something. And we’d have just the blood type it needed to live.”