Wyoming Dynasty (American Dragons Book 10)

by Aaron Crash

  Hwedo stood with the Night Lance, in white capris and a red blouse, watching him interact with his other children. They were adopted, but Steven was a part of their lives, an important part. They did have a father figure in Australia—that would be Harold Finkfuss. The Aussie Magician was drinking less and daddying more. Finkfuss was a blowhard with a good heart. That made him tolerable.

  The Malian woman walked over. She bent and put out a hand. “I’m Hwedo.”

  “Cooper.” The kid was brave and shook her hand.

  Emma, though, was struck by another round of shyness. She hid behind Steven’s leg.

  Cooper sighed. “That’s Emma. She’s little and shy.”

  “Am not!” Emma rushed Cooper and shoved him, and he might have fallen onto the cement if Hwedo hadn’t caught him.

  Yes, she was fast, like living lightning. Or the reflexes of a paranoid panther.

  Cooper, once on his feet, went after Emma, but again, Hwedo caught him. “Easy, child, this is the time for motorcycles and fun, not fighting.”

  The kid turned. “You are very super fast and quick. And fast.”

  Hwedo rubbed the stubble on his head. She then went and knelt in front of Emma. “And you, brave girl, you are a warrior.” She pushed a strand of wet hair behind Emma’s ear.

  Hwedo stood, tears in her eyes. She bowed to Steven and then turned. “I will put my things away,” she said thickly.

  Steven thought about reaching out with his mind to ask her what was wrong, but he knew. Hwedo hadn’t been around children since she’d lived with her father in the Malian Primacy. Rahaab found humans disgusting; he wouldn’t have wanted human children anywhere near him.

  Rahaab must’ve overcome his disgust at least once. He’d had one child, this mysterious Mulkred character, who may or may not be Collidium, the villain who had supplied Silas von Forcade with the elven weapons. And Umbra with the Night Lance. The Malian woman had taken a liking to it. Until they knew what it did, Steven was fine letting her practice with it.

  With how quick she was learning, she could then show Steven the finer points of wielding the spear.

  Steven forgot about the Collidium mystery for a bit. He had fun with Cooper and Emma, with Zoey and Tessa coming to help, since they loved kids.

  Aria was coordinating the afternoon pool party, and Quinnestri had taken a dozen books back to her room to read.

  After a little motorcycle ride for both the kids, Steven got them playing with Blackfoot and Zoey, in her wolf form, and he snuck off to give the Three Queens their turns—Isla, then Adelaide, and finally Mathilda.

  With Mathilda, he had to be gentle and a little careful. Out of all the queens, she was the one that had wanted to marry him the most.

  They lay naked, sweaty, in the bedroom at the top of the tower. Quinnestri, at the height of her powers, had enchanted the walls so they could adjust them to be solid rock or transparent, or they could make them disappear completely. Steven and Mathilda chose the last option. They lay in the bed, the gossamer curtains fluttering in the warm afternoon wind. Like always, it smelled of sage, but then, it also smelled like Mathilda, whose fragrance was part perfume and part musky eucalyptus.

  He sat up and rubbed her thigh, still wet with sweat. “Mathilda, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Marriage, I know,” she said.

  That surprised him. “How do you know?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’ve been with men before, and when there’s commitment in the air, they always start out that way. Women are just as bad, only they want the commitment, and you men want to be free.”

  He laughed gently. “Do I look free? I have a baby, and babies and freedom don’t exactly mix. I had all these dreams of visiting other worlds, and now, just an overnighter in France feels like a lot.”

  “Which is why I don’t want to marry you, Steven Drokharis.” Mathilda brushed her foot against his leg playfully.

  “You don’t?”

  “Close your mouth, Dragonlord. It’s not attractive.” She had such a peaceful look on her pretty face, and she was so relaxed. She’d gone last, and so it had taken him a bit longer. When he did get there, he’d taken her along. “You freed us, Steven. You’ve given us a life. Part of why we wanted to marry you was because we weren’t safe being single. Now? Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free? And so, we pop in, get your milk, and get out. A little milk, a little cream for the kitty. You know, I love Skylar and Abby. They can get pretty wild. Now, I’m curious about this elf queen, and then there’s the new girl, with the dark skin and frizzy hair. She’s a bit interesting.”

  “Hwedo is interesting all right, a little troubled, a lot skilled.” Steven considered what Mathilda had said. “So, since you were at the very top of the petition list, you wouldn’t be mad if I married Hwedo?”

  “I wouldn’t. Some other women might be. In the end, you can do what you want. You literally have all the power here, Stevie.” Mathilda blew him a kiss. “Except you can’t stop us from calling you Stevie.”

  He blew her a kiss back. “So, do I keep this petition thing going?”

  “You can take me off if you get me off one more time, my Prime.” Mathilda waggled her eyebrows at him.

  “You’re so dorky.” Steven fell onto the pillow and kissed her ear. “Are all you Australian Dragonsouls dorky?”

  “Only the good ones.”

  Their kissing led to more.

  Afterwards, while Mathilda slept on his chest, he stared at the stone ceiling of the tower, thinking about how many wives he could logically have.

  Hwedo’s father had had a hundred. Steven had the stamina, but he’d have to take them in shifts. In the end, though, he wanted to be a safe haven more than anything.

  He decided he’d continue to take applicants, though the process needed some work. Maybe he’d go on a date, once a month, where he would talk with a potential wife. Then he could evaluate them and their expectations.

  Mathilda was right—they didn’t need vows or rings, because in the end, he wasn’t going anywhere. He would be a father to Cooper, Emma, and Aubrey. He’d given them a safe world and a stable home.

  And there were others he could help. If he could bring them in, great. However, he had to be careful with the women who wore his ring. The rituals bound Dragonsouls together, usually for life, unless other sorcery was involved.

  He thought of Mouse’s doomed marriage to Rhaegen Mulk. They’d snapped the connection through the force of their wills. Then there were the Wayne twins and their marriage to Carlo Bart Baxter. That, of course, was tainted from the start, thanks to Cactus Bill’s magic. Their rings bound them to each other far more than to that dead bastard.

  Killing Baxter had been a pleasure.

  He drifted off with Mathilda as the warm breeze turned cool and the sun started its journey to the western horizon.

  It was a message from Tessa that woke him. Unlike a cell phone, he couldn’t simply turn off the ringer in his own consciousness. Hey, Steven, if you’re done banging the queens, the twins need to talk to you. Come down and grab some food. We got burned ends for you fresh out of the smoker. We know that’s your favorite.

  He woke Mathilda with a kiss, and they got dressed. Instead of taking the stairs, Steven shifted into his partial form. He swept the Aussie woman off her feet and flew her down to the pool. Everyone was there, with Haru at the grill, laughing at how upset Chazzie and Pru were getting. They had definite ideas on grilling, and he wasn’t doing it right. They wouldn’t let the fat ninja get close to their smoker.

  The twins were in cutoff jeans and bikini tops with sparkly flip-flops on their pink-nailed feet.

  Heridan, Nefri, Uchiko, and Aria were at the far end of the pool, drinking cocktails and being typically antisocial. He had to remind himself he needed to address this Morta Clique business, since cliques were not good for Escorts. He was glad to see Aria with them. She might be able to turn their “mean girl” meters down to a tolerable
level. The Indian woman still was one of the more stable wives in his Escort, even with her Morta core and her heart of iron.

  At least Blackfoot wasn’t hanging out with the mean girls. The wolf tried to steal food off any number of plates, and when that didn’t work, he sniffed the wind, ran up to a wall, leapt off, and let the breeze catch the folds of skin between his legs. He went soaring, expertly flying over the grill and snatching a hamburger away from Haru.

  Chazzie aimed a finger gun at the flying wolf. “Oh, Blackfoot, you’re playing a dangerous game, puppy. Us Waynes take our grilling serious, real serious. Whole wars have been started for less.”

  The Onari Guard had set up some collapsible tables in the northern garden, around the statues of the fallen. Steven filled up his plate, mostly baked beans and burnt ends, and sat in the garden. Having the metabolism of a Dragonsoul was nice—he could eat whatever he wanted.

  Chazzie and Pru joined him.

  “Good, you’re alone. We have bidness.” Chazzie had a big hamburger, with all fixings, including raw onions, sautéed onions, and onion rings. Crazy Earl’s Magic Sauce dripped down a cheesy pile of quality beef. She also had tater tots and a salad.

  Pru had gone with the ribs, just a big plate of ribs, also slathered up in the magic sauce. “I’m certainly going to get messy while we talk. And yes, bidness.”

  “Is it going to spoil my appetite?” Steven asked. He crunched into a burnt end, and damn, he loved it more than the brisket, even at its meltiest.

  Both twins tittered.

  “Stevie,” Chazzie said, “I don’t think another war with the Zothoric would spoil your appetite.”

  “It certainly might spoil ours.” Pru made a face. “We couldn’t find Joe Whipp, but we could find Daddy, but he’s his normal, bad self.”

  “That man.” Chazzie shook her head and pursed her lips. “I will not let him spoil a meal. I won’t.”

  “What is it about you and your father?” Steven asked.

  The Texas machine-gun twins exchanged glances.

  It was Chazzie who spoke first. “There’s not a day long enough, or a night short enough, for that conversation. But you’ll see. You’ll get to meet him, and he knows where you can find Joe Whipp. Daddy won’t come here, though. Nothing so easy. Bob Wayne likes to call all the shots, and he found some place, some bar in fuck-you Wyoming, off the highway.”

  Steven wasn’t surprised. “Let me guess. It’s called Torchy’s.”

  Chazzie answered. “Close. It’s called George’s Torch, and it’s in some place called Fortune, Wyoming, off Highway 788. There’s a problem, though.”

  “More than one,” Pru corrected. “There are certainly more than one. You talk. I’ll eat. Mama is gonna get herself some ribs!” And then she started in, and it wasn’t pretty. Her hands, her face, even one ear got splashed with sauce. She even ended up with some Crazy Earl’s in her hair.

  Chazzie wrinkled her nose. “Ew, sis. Every time it’s the same with you and baby backs. It’s not attractive.”

  Pru waved her ring at her twin. “Married now. I can get fat, watch soap operas, and be a bitch. Ha. We certainly beat you in the game, Steven.”

  He laughed. “So is getting fat, lazy, and bitchy getting it all, and getting it now?”

  “Fuckin’ A right.” Pru winked at him.

  Chazzie sighed. “Well, okay, back to Daddy and his many, many problems. For one, Fortune, Wyoming, doesn’t exist. You’d think it would, but it don’t. Cactus Bill did some mojo on it, and it is one fabricated place. That’s the first problem. The second? Daddy don’t want to meet with anyone but you. You can’t fly in. You can’t portal in. He wants you to drive up there in a more human type of transportation. And then comes the worst part.”

  “What’s that?” Steven asked.

  “When I mentioned the word Collidium?” Chazzie set her burger down. Her next words came out in a whisper. “He got scared.”

  Pru stopped eating. She sat, with a bare bone in one greasy hand, and a rib dripping sauce in the other. “Yeah, Steven, Daddy was scared. And Bob Wayne ain’t never been scared a day in his life.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  STEVEN RACED DOWN I-80 on a KillaCycle, cloaked in his Morta, which he’d also hardened into a helmet. Perfecting the ichor to make the visor transparent had taken some tweaking but Heridan had helped him with that. He’d also created armor for himself in case he put the bike down on the highway.

  Wasn’t going to happen. The asphalt was perfect, a river of black and yellow cutting through the wastelands of central Wyoming. Clouds, like castles, floated through the endless blue sky. He sped through the washed-out grays and greens and brittle yellows of the plain marked by buttes, bluffs, and ridges of dry rock. The mountains and pines of the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests were to the south.

  If Fortune, Wyoming, had been a real place, it would’ve been about three hours west of Cheyenne, and that was where Steven and the Morta Clique were heading. He’d asked them to come along because he wanted to use the opportunity to talk to them. Also, he liked the idea of bringing his Morta-wielding wives since this Bob Wayne might have defenses against Animus-based magic, but he wouldn’t be expecting something like the Indian dragon or the Prosha.

  Yes, Daddy Wayne wanted to meet Steven alone, and he would, but there was no way Steve was going in without backup.

  Aria and Heridan both wore Morta armor as well, though the Prosha had a crown of thorns on her helmet and spikes rising off her shoulder blades.

  As for Nefri and Uchiko, they wore leathers like the ones the ninja had worn on her trip out to the coast when she’d met him at the lighthouse in the former PNW Primacy. Their faces were hidden by their visors, but he could tell them apart—Uchiko had her kusarigama wrapped around her body while Nefri had her new bow on her back in a special holder.

  The four buzzed behind Steven. The bikes ran quiet, overwhelmed by the roar of the wind across their bodies as they swept by semis and tourists out to see the West. Signs promised them that Little America was the gas station to end all gas stations. You could get ice cream, the finest rooms in the West, and some good home cookin’ there.

  Tessa had a thing for Little America. They went to one in Cheyenne since it was far closer than the one in middle of the abyss between Green River and Evanston. The barista had been tempted to go because, yes, Little America ice cream was intrinsically better than all over ice creams. However, she stayed behind to train more with Quinnestri. The two also had a pile of books to read. Quinn mostly stayed in her suite, while Tessa had everything spread out on the big dining room table in the main house.

  Chazzie and Pru had debated coming with him, but in the end, they knew their father didn’t really want to see them. That was the hard truth, and both were tough enough to take it on the chin.

  Also, the twins knew that their father would be better with Steven, one-on-one, one man to another man, rather than surrounded by women or, worst case, having to deal with his daughters.

  Steven wasn’t sure what that meant. He figured he’d get a more complete picture of the Wayne family dynamics once he’d talked with Bob Wayne himself. They’d be chatting in a place that hadn’t existed the week before, only the IRS claimed it had been around since the 1950s, and there were tax records, birth and death certificates, and records from the county clerks of Sweetwater County.

  Sabina could see through the bullshit but not much else. Steven and Tessa were equally cloudy. All they knew for certain was that the next clue in the Collidium mystery was inside George’s Torch, and it probably wasn’t an ambush. Nevertheless, Steven would go in fully armed and ready for a fight. He had the Baxter rings on his fingers and Icharaam’s Crown on his head. He also had the teardrop amulet. That wasn’t much of a weapon, though it did heroically save jeans and other apparel.

  At noon, straight up, Steven and the four women pulled into the dirt parking lot of the bar. Two cars were parked out front, a light-blue Ford F350 from fifty years ag
o and a diesel Mercedes Benz, white and rusted. The Benz might’ve been something twenty years ago, but now it was a car looking for a scrap heap. It matched the bar. George’s Torch was a ramshackle structure, with siding peeling off like scabs, the roof like tinder about to spark, and a collection of neon signs, some broken, some working. It all looked real enough. Across 788 were the ruins of an A&W Drive-In. To the north was a defunct gas station and a fireworks stand that still had red, white, and blue banners flapping in the hot wind. That wind rolled out of the west, drier than a cow skeleton in dust. Was that love or hate in the wind?

  Probably both.

  Steven liquified his suit of Morta and sucked the energy back into his core. He was in jeans, a white Battle Beast T-shirt, thanks to Mouse, and cowboy boots. His clothes were a bit sticky from his sweat.

  The four women leaned against their bikes, their own armor gone, looking badass in full-body suits. The Shadow Archer and the ninja held their helmets.

  The wind blew Heridan’s inky hair away from her face. Her eyes were black marbles, showing no emotion, as her voice slithered into his brain. We’ll wait out here, Steven. But if things turn south, we will go in there, and I will fucking destroy this place, this world, all the worlds.

  Steven grinned. Hey, Heridan, I think Tessa packed you some powdered-sugar Donettes. Have a whole row of them. You’re getting galactically demonic on me.

  Morta tentacles snapped out of Heridan’s hand and unzipped a saddlebag, and out came the Donettes. She opened the package with her coils, and soon sugar dotted the chest of her leathers.

  Much better, Steven. I do like a good Donette. And she packed me Corn Nuts. Road food!

  Nefri’s voice joined them, since the power of Connexra linked all their minds. The chocolate ones work better. They calm her more. She will still be evil.

  Not so evil, Aria countered. Just very focused on complete victory. We are here for a very important mission. Nefri and Uchiko will run reconnaissance. Let us stay connected. We can listen and strike if Steven is in trouble.