Wyoming Dynasty (American Dragons Book 10)

by Aaron Crash

  Steven felt himself getting excited again.

  Hwedo must’ve felt him swelling under her because she laughed. “I would miss you, Steven, and your lovely wives who not only understand my perversion but rejoice in it. Building my own empire sounds lonely. I was lonely enough in the fire desert.”

  Sabina wailed in the other room, and Quinnestri snarled something, and then someone else let out a cry as they orgasmed.

  “We should join them,” Hwedo said.

  “As humans or dragons?” he asked.

  “Let’s start off as humans.” She licked his nose. “For now.”

  Chapter Twenty

  FORTUNE, WYOMING, WAS a nothing little town of four shacks, three abandoned, two hundred miles west of Cheyenne and a million miles from anywhere interesting.

  Its closest neighbor was Creston Cross, but that town had its throat cut in 2007 when it lost its zip code.

  Time went to Fortune, Wyoming, to die. Robert Stains had tried to avoid towns like this, and for the most, he’d been successful. Not this time.

  The only open business in Fortune was a bar, but it was probably selling more meth than beer. The owner, George Roy Hooker, tried to keep the place legit, though that was a losing battle. Every summer, he resurrected the fireworks stand across I-80, four lanes of asphalt cutting through the wasteland. He’d get some tourists, or so he told Robert, and he’d gotten a cotton candy machine, because that shit was cheap, and the markup was great. He had a case of pink and blue cotton candy over at the other end of the bar. The painted clowns and colorful balloons looked completely out of place.

  Robert had flown into Denver, taken a regional flight to Laramie, and then rented a car.

  Fortune was where Collidium wanted to meet, just the two of them, at George’s Torch, Bar, and Grill. George Roy Hooker was there as well, so it looked like it would be a threesome. You see, he and his wife had split up—she got the kids and was living in Rock Springs farther west. George Roy stayed in Fortune because beer was easier than women. He lived on fifty blasted acres fifteen minutes south on Wyoming Highway 788.

  Robert had shown up early, around eight, and it had been just him and George Roy in the place for two very long hours. The man had a scraggly beard whitening where it wasn’t yellow, stained like his teeth were by Camel cigarettes. The man had a thick head of gray hair and eyes the color of a bruised sky, a mixture of gray and blue. He was coyote lean, so much so, his jeans hung off his hip bones. He wore a yellow Western-style shirt with bright mother-of-pearl buttons and, of course, cowboy boots. His hat hung from the antlers of a coatrack near the jukebox, which still played outlaw country from before Garth Brooks was a thing.

  George Roy had lived hard, and he didn’t seem to be slowing down any.

  Robert had to envy his hairline if nothing else.

  And the clock ticked, and more seconds died, and there George was, wondering how he was going to keep the lights on. “Gonna get one of those IEGs,” he vowed. “Then maybe the state will throw a hooker my way. A hooker for a Hooker.” The man laughed. “I’m too damn old to jerk it like I did when I was younger. The plumbing ain’t what it used to be.” The man’s cloudy-sky eyes lingered on him. “Not funny, Mr. Washington DC?”

  Robert shrugged. “I’m not sure what’s funny anymore. Can you believe there are actual dragons around?”

  George leaned on the bar, triceps flexing. You could hear and smell the air-conditioning. “Oh, I can believe there are dragons. I’ve had vampires in here, and then there are the alien abductions. Sure. I’ve always known there is some weird shit in the world.”

  “Vampires?” Robert raised an eyebrow.

  George Roy laughed. “Yeah, I married three of them. Ex-wives, vampires, both are goddamn bloodsuckers, I’ll tell you what. But I had a mother-in-law I liked, and if that ain’t supernatural, I don’t know what is. Point is, Gladys, her name is Gladys, has bad breast cancer. She’s on a list to get that cured, now that the dragons can cure people.”

  It was well past ten o’clock, on a Wednesday night, and there was no sign of anyone but George Roy Hooker and his closest friends and business compatriots: Johnny Walker, Jim Beam, and Jack Daniels. Robert wasn’t going to count the clown faces on the cotton candy case down the way.

  George glanced at a Pepsi-Cola clock, probably from the late 1970s. “I don’t think your guy is coming. He said he’d be here at ten, but nope.”

  “Collidium,” Robert said. “Does that word mean anything to you?”

  “Coliseum? The great games in Rome? Fucking gladiators, I’ll tell you what, like that movie. Yeah, that was a good flick. Swords and shit.” George grabbed Robert’s mug and filled it up. “I’ll give you another round for free ’cause I like that movie so much.”

  “No, the word is Collidium,” Robert said. “It might be a name.” He would’ve taken off his suit coat if he hadn’t had his shoulder holster on, with a Smith & Wesson M&P 9 Shield under his left arm. He had loosened his tie.

  George smiled. “Yeah, I heard it. I’ve been dicking with you, kinda this whole night, to tell you the truth. I know Collidium. Let’s just say, I work for him.”

  “You?”

  “He’s a silent partner in my bar.” George grinned. “And with him bankrolling me, I don’t believe I shall ever be in any serious trouble.”

  “What about what you said about the fireworks stand, the markup on the cotton candy, and all that?” Robert asked.

  “I make shit up. A lot of shit.” George reached into his front pocket, but instead of taking out cigarettes, he had an old flip phone. He hit a button, and a second later, Robert’s own phone vibrated.

  Robert frowned. “This is bullshit, George. If that is even your real name.”

  “It’s bullshit, all right,” he agreed, sticking the phone back into his shirt. “And no, my name is not George Roy Hooker. Let’s just say, I have had, do have, and will have many, many names.” He walked down the length of the bar, opened the case, and pulled out a paper cone topped with a swirl of pink. He licked off a bit of the cotton candy.

  Then he walked back, boots squealing on the squeaky floor.

  “Like Collidium?” Robert asked.

  The man grinned, showing his yellow chompers and pink tongue. “Yeah, you got me. Only, you wouldn’t believe I was him, now would you?”

  Robert felt his entire world shifting, and suddenly, none of this felt right... this crappy little bar surrounded by coyotes and prairie dogs, the antler coat hanger, the jukebox with golden country hits, the out-of-place cotton candy case... none of it. Suddenly, the place felt staged.

  That beer in front of Robert looked very cold, very good, and very necessary. He lifted it to his lips and sipped. “No, George, and I’ll call you George, because Collidium is harder to say. I don’t think you could be the mastermind who cracked my phone security, who reached out to Rhakshor Khat and gained his trust.”

  George squinted at him and gnawed on more pink cotton. “You want proof, don’t you?”

  “No.” Robert shook his head. “I think this was a fool’s errand from the beginning. I think I should let Steven Drokharis rule his dynasty, and I should take my retirement and find myself a much younger woman, maybe two. If he can have a harem, why can’t I?”

  “Katherine would chop your balls off. Metaphorically speaking. I think I’d rather face the Zothoric than divorce attorneys.” George sighed and licked his lips, which were stained pink. “The shadows of teeth and talon... what a game that would’ve been. Well, I’ll take the next best thing.”

  Robert didn’t know what this hillbilly was talking about. And he wasn’t impressed. “Okay, you know my wife’s name, probably could get to my kids, all of that. I’m taking this as a veiled threat.”

  George shrugged his narrow shoulders. “No, Mr. Stains, you’re not worth my time, no offense. You’re just useful because you hate Steven and the gang. Like Bud—you hate that little cocksucker. Am I wrong?”

  “Not wrong,” R
obert said. “So, how can I be useful to you?”

  The bearded man, with the gray eyes and the very thick gray hair, ate more of the candy. “I like this stuff. I like how it melts in my mouth. It’s like it wasn’t there at all, only can taste the sweetness. I wonder if you could make it thick enough, strong enough, to hang someone with it. I bet you could.”

  Robert didn’t like this turn in the conversation. “Your threats are getting less veiled. No, I don’t think you could hang anyone with a cotton candy rope.”

  “Maybe not.” George Roy, or whoever he was, licked his lips again.

  “What do you want from me?” Robert asked.

  The answer was immediate. “Well, now, I need twelve cannons. And I need you to be bait. I have another game I wanna play. I’m going to lure in Steven and the gang, you’ll help with that, and it might all stop there if Stevie’s luck runs out. If it doesn’t? I’d like you at a poker game a friend of mine is putting on. Wanna see something cool?”

  That final question came out of nowhere. Robert ignored it. “What kind of cannons?” Robert asked.

  The man bit into the cotton, chewed, and swallowed. “The name escapes me. You guys, you have a name for everything. A hurdy gurdy? whirligig? A hurts-her? Howie Mandell? Howie something...”

  “Howitzer?”

  George snapped his fingers and pointed at him. “Yes, a Howitzer, an M777A2, with the high-explosive shells, the M795s, one hundred and fifty-five millimeters of fun, a bursting round with fragmentation and blast effects. Boom. Boom. Boom. Twelve booms.”

  “You didn’t know Howitzer, but you knew all that?” Robert drank more of his beer. It was helping.

  “Took a bit.” The bearded man grinned. “I have a lot of irons in the fire. You have no idea.”

  Something about this whole thing felt so wrong, so absolutely wrong, that the hairs on the back of Robert’s neck stood up. The bad feeling filling his gut turned from ice water into acid. “What did you want to show me you thought was so cool?”

  George turned to the side and moved his hand up past his ear. Hie earlobe was round at the top until the hand passed over it. Then the lobe rose to a sharp point. When he moved his hand back down, his ear was round again. “Between you and me, I’m not human, not even a little, though I have found your little rock interesting. I didn’t even seed it, and yet, so interesting. There is a certain amount of irony there.”

  “What do you mean seed?” Robert asked.

  The strange man, who appeared human, but wasn’t, shrugged. “Oh, you know, sowing seeds, creating civilizations, reaping what I have sown. That really would bore you more than my stories of my bitch ex-wives. Because, well, if you have one ex-wife, you might as well have three. Isn’t that one of your commercials on your idiot boxes? Can’t eat just one. Applies to potato chips as much as it applies to wives.”

  Robert drained the beer. “No. No to everything. No to you, no to the cannons, and just no.” He jumped off the bar stool and pulled his pistol. “George, Collidium, whatever you are, I’m not going to play any of your games. How could I ever trust you?”

  “Because I can kill Steven Drokharis.” Collidium threw the cotton candy to the side. Then he changed. He wasn’t a skinny hick bartender running a watering hole in the middle of nowhere. No, standing before Robert was some kind of godlike creature, bathed in light, with galaxies in his eyes.

  Robert Stains then understood that there was no Fortune, Wyoming, on I-80. Such a place didn’t exist. Collidium had created it, and he’d made it so perfect, so convincing, that Robert’s best research people had been fooled. In some ways, creating the wood, metal, and booze of George’s Torch was far easier than manipulating the various databases the government used to keep track of such towns.

  Then, George was back to being George, behind the bar, wearing his human mask. “You’ll want another beer, I think. Am I wrong, Bob?”

  “It’s Robert,” the bureaucrat breathed. His pistol was back in his holster, and he was back sitting on the barstool. How had he got there? He wasn’t sure.

  “No, Bob,” Collidium said, “for this game, it’s just Bob. I kill Stevie, Rhakshor Khat takes over as the Dragonlord of Dragonlords, the Prime of Primes, and you get your old job back. We’ll give you a raise, more power, and international acclaim. Do we have a deal?”

  “We do, Collidium, we do.” Robert drank half the beer, then pondered if he was too drunk to drive to Wamsutter to his hotel room there. Or was Wamsutter fictional as well?

  Either way, Robert Stains was fairly certain he’d met something that would be a match for Steven fucking Drokharis.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  BACK HOME, STEVEN STOOD in the outdoor living room, under the Wyoming sun, grabbing books that Tessa handed him through the portal. He set them on a glass table. Instead of doing their reading in the Mont-Saint-Michel Aerie, she and Quinnestri would study the old texts in the comfort of the Infinity Ranch.

  The barista and the elf queen had already started working on Tessa’s Bellicosia skills. They practiced the Lyran magic on the balcony of the French Aerie, and they sparred on the Wyoming plain. Zoey was quick to point out that she was responsible for Tessa’s athletic endurance, since she was always on Merlin’s daughter to read less and exercise more.

  That made them all laugh except for Hwedo, who didn’t think an out-of-shape warrior wife was a joking matter.

  The Malian dragon had considered staying in France, since she had some serious thinking to do. Steven didn’t blame her. So much had changed since she’d come flying through the doorway from her exile in the fire desert. In the end, Hwedo decided to come back with them, to practice with the Night Lance and to enjoy the company of her new friends. She said she’d spent enough time alone, and she could do her thinking with other people around.

  Sabina had returned home after the marathon sex the night before. Zoey had taken care of everything. As a literal mother bear, the Morphling had shifted into a bear and let Reggie sleep on her furry belly. Wonder of wonders, Reggie went six whole hours, which was why the Latina Magician had been able to break away to get some adult time.

  Already, Sabina was more relaxed and far more smiley. Her filter was working, so she didn’t spout out any little thought that came to mind.

  Steven heard the wail of a baby, and it wasn’t Reggie. Then a toddler shrieked. Then a little boy, soaking wet from the pool, came running into the outdoor living room. He thrust himself into Steven’s arms. Luckily, Aria was there to grab the next book from Tessa so it wouldn’t get wet.

  Cooper grinned up at his adopted father. “Dad! I saw those motorcycles! Mum said she’d let you take me for a ride. That would be awesome!” The kid then frowned. “Mum said my last name is Drokharis, but her name is Kellar, so shouldn’t I be Cooper Kellar?”

  Steven tousled the youngster’s hair. “Coop, you can have any last name you want. The world is yours.”

  The kid hugged him hard. “Come to the pool. Come and throw me around. I love that!” Five years old, Cooper had huge brown eyes, but his dark curls had been cut off in favor of a stubbled scalp. Cooper saw Steven notice. “Yeah, I got gum in my hair. Mum shaved it out.”

  Tessa and Quinnestri finally came through the portal. The barista saw Cooper and clapped her hands. “The Three Queens are here? Oh, this is just so great! We can have a big BBQ, a huge pool party, and we can turn on some EDM and dance all night long!”

  “All night will end at nine when Reggie goes to sleep.” Aria laid the last book on a pile.

  Steven figured it would take several trips to take them in, but instead, Tessa lifted them up with her telekinesis, thanks to a modified Defensio spell. She moved the stack of books into the house. Over her shoulder, the barista called out, “I’ll get my suit on. I can’t wait to chat with the Three Queens again.”

  Steven was tired from all the sex the night before, but he could take a nap once he greeted his guests.

  The Three Queens were Isla Keller, Cooper’s
mom, Matilda Janszoon, the mother of Emma, who was three and turning into quite the lady, and lastly, Adelaide Sima, the mother of Aubrey, who had been a baby during the Australian Primacies trouble. Now, Aubrey was on the verge of toddling into toddlerhood.

  Aubrey had her swim diaper on, and she was with her mom in the pool, splashing playfully.

  Isla and Matilda were on lounge chairs. Little Emma ate orange slices, smiled at Steven, and then got shy. She ran and hid her face in her mom’s bare belly.

  Both women lowered their sunglasses.

  “G’day, Steven, I hope it’s okay for us to visit,” Matilda said. “I’ve been missing you.”

  Steven loved her thick Aussie accent. Matilda’s green eyes smoldered, and she adjusted her dark red hair. From the very start, there had been chemistry between Steven and her. His eyes went down her body and back to her face.

  “Wanna help me unpack, Matilda?” he asked.

  Isla frowned, her brown eyes worried. “Can you just play with Cooper a little? He loves being with you.”

  Isla had found her way into Steven’s bed, though it had taken some time. The same was true for Adelaide, who stood in the pool, holding her little girl. Adelaide was older, with a slightly hooked nose and hair the color of mahogany. Her bright blue eyes were full of mischief. “Yeah, Steven, play with Coop. We can wait our turn.”

  “It’s good to take turns,” the kid said. “It’s hard though.”

  They all chuckled at the double entendres.

  “What’s so funny?” Cooper asked innocently.

  “I’ll tell you when you’re older,” Steven said. “It’s boring adult stuff. For now, let’s go find a helmet and I’ll take you for a ride on my KillaCycle.” He threw the Three Queens a wave and turned to leave.

  That’s when Emma overcame her shyness. She rushed over and hugged Steven’s leg. He laughed. “Okay. You can come too.”