Dragons Wild (4 page)

Ashe approached his sister’s apartment, Griffen spied her striding down the sidewalk ahead of him, obviously bound for the same destination. He’d know that rump anywhere.

Not that the rest of her was unremarkable. While he had never actually lusted after her, being her brother did not keep him from noticing that Valerie had a stellar bod.

A bit over six feet in height, his sister’s shoulders were a bit too broad and her face a bit too round to be considered a classic pinup beauty. Still, she was short waisted with ample breasts and legs that ran forever so that she had no difficulty drawing male attention whether she wanted to or not. What was more, Valerie moved with the easy, confident grace of a natural athlete, which she was. Whereas Mai always reminded Griffen of a doll, Valerie always made him think of a panther…or a wide receiver after a really good sex-change operation. With her blond hair, it was easy to see why he thought of her as Valkyrie rather than Valerie. Especially when she wore her hair in braids.

Passing her, he pulled his car over to the curb and got out, leaning against the vehicle as he waited for her.

She spotted him a dozen yards out and lengthened her stride to an easy lope.

“Hey, Bro!” she called. “What are you doing here?”

Still moving at speed, she swept him up in a bone-crushing hug and held him aloft.

“Val…I…QUIT!” Griffen managed, prying himself from her grip.

He tried to recompose himself, while not making it too obvious he was trying to get his breath back. His sister’s greetings always left him feeling like he knew what Godzilla was like as a puppy.

“Hey, brat,” he said finally. “Still working out, I see.”

“My God, Grifter. What happened to the Goblin?”

She was staring at the recent damage to his vehicle. He had been avoiding looking at it too closely, himself, and her attention made him uncomfortable.

“A couple guys in pickups decided to contest my right to use their road,” he said quickly. “I’ll tell you about it some other time. Right now, we’ve got to talk.”

“Yeah? What kind of trouble have you got yourself into now, Big Brother?”

Instead of answering immediately, Griffen peered closely at the hand she was waving.

“Speaking of trouble, Val,” he said, “would it be impolite to point out that you’re bleeding?”

Valerie glanced at her hand briefly, then licked the wet and drying blood from her knuckles like an animal before answering.

“No big deal,” she said. “Just some muscle flexer who wouldn’t take ‘No’ for an answer.”

“Some things never change,” Griffen said, shaking his head.

“Now don’t change the subject,” Valerie pressed. “What’s up that brings you my way…and while the sun’s up, even.”

Griffen glanced up and down the street before answering.

“First, let’s find somewhere we can talk without being interrupted. Someplace other than your apartment, if possible. I have a lot to tell you.”

Over an hour, and several coffees, later at one of the campus hangouts, Griffen finally concluded his narration of what he had heard and experienced since visiting their uncle.

Valerie leaned back in her seat and sipped at her lukewarm beverage.

“Huh,” she said at last. “That’s got to be the weirdest thing I’ve heard in a long time. So what are we going to do?”

“I dunno,” Griffen admitted. “I’m still trying to figure out if I believe it at all.”

“Does it matter?” His sister shrugged.

“What do you mean, ‘Does it matter’?” he said sharply. “Either the world has just been redefined for us, or a lot of people including our uncle have gone round the bend.”

“And I repeat, does it matter?” Valerie shot back. “Whether this dragon thing is for real or not, enough people seem to believe in it that it already
has
redefined our world. I mean, if they’re trying to pressure us or kill us, does it matter if they’re right or wrong? It makes a difference to us and we’ve got to decide what we’re going to do.”

“You know, Val, that’s why I wanted to talk this out with you.” Griffen smiled. “You always manage to cut through the bullshit and get right to the heart of the matter. You’re right, of course.”

“So what are we going to do?”

He had missed it the first couple times, but it finally sank in.

“What do you mean ‘we’?” he said. “I’m the one they’re after. I just wanted to get your opinion and give you a heads-up.”

“This affects both of us, doesn’t it?” Valerie said stubbornly. “First of all, I’m not going to let you try to deal with this alone. Second, if they’ll be after both of us eventually, it’s easier to plan a defense if we stick together. Besides, I don’t like the sound of that ‘We have other plans for her’ bit. If they’re thinking of trying to use me for breeding stock, they’ve got another think coming.”

“But what about school? You can’t just pick up and go.”

“Why not?” she said. “The semester’s nearly over, and my grades are good enough that I can skip the finals without serious consequences. I couldn’t concentrate anyway with this thing hanging over our heads.”

“Val, look—”

“No, you look.” Valerie cut him off abruptly.

Griffen was used to her changes in mood, but her sharp tone surprised him. She seemed to sense this and her tone softened.

“Forget school, school isn’t important. This sounds important, and you need someone you can trust. Oh, sure, Uncle Malcolm was never exactly hands-on with our lives, but a betrayal is a betrayal. Not to mention your little…friend Mai.”

He couldn’t help but wince. When he had been telling her the story, she had been most furious over Mai. At this point, Griffen had doubts he would ever see Mai again, but if he did, he’d have to see about keeping Valerie away from her.

“And the senator, that makes this serious, even if it’s ridiculous,” Valerie continued, smiling a little. “I’m with you, Big Brother. Period.”

Griffen couldn’t think of a good argument for her reasoning. Truth to tell, he rather liked the idea of her coming along, even though he hadn’t thought of it originally. Still, something nagged at him.

“I know you too well, Sis. Do you know something else that is prompting you?” he said.

“No…maybe. Just thinking back. How many times would I catch some guy staring at me or following me, and how often was it just your average stalkeresque loser? Maybe, just maybe someone was keeping an eye on me for more than my looks.”

Griffen shivered.

“Recently?”

“No, not recently. Still, you’re stuck with me. Accept it.”

“Oh, darn, do I have to?”

He grinned and she chucked him affectionately on the shoulder. He managed not to wince from impact.

“So what now?” she said.

“Well, all I can think of is for us to find a safe place to go to ground while we try to figure out a game plan,” he said. “Someplace no one would think to look for us.”

“Sounds good for a start,” Valerie said, rising to her feet. “Just swing by my place so I can pack a few things and we’ll be off.”

“Actually, Val, I’m kinda beat from driving all night,” Griffen admitted, suddenly not relishing the thought of hitting the road again so soon. “Why don’t I drop you off and check into a motel so I can sleep a couple of hours before we take on the great unknown.”

“If you worked out once in a while, you’d have more stamina,” his sister chided him. “Okay then, that will give me a little time to pick and choose what I’m bringing. A girl’s gotta look her best, even if she’s on the run.”

There was a motel only a few blocks from where his sister lived. The clerk gave the crumpled back of his Sunbeam a hard look, but when Griffen carded over twenty-one and paid cash in advance there was no problem. His room was on the first floor on the back side of the long, low bulding. Throwing his bags on the floor next to a bed covered by a garish purple quilt, the young man turned and left the room. He should be tired, but somehow he wasn’t. He went back outside and paused in front of his room to just stare at the stars. They were reassuringly the same.

A chill ran up his spine and the hint of a sound caused the young man to look to his right. A figure a hundred feet away was silhouetted in distant streetlights. There was something about the way the man stood there that set off alarm bells. Griffen backed into a shadow near his doorway and watched. The dark figure paused and then took a few steps. It seemed to the young man that he could sense the dark man was smiling, but he was equally certain there was no humor in that smile.

Both stood perhaps a hundred feet apart and half-visible in the shadows of the badly lit back of the college-town motel. The sounds of traffic and a dog baying a few blocks away seemed to get louder. Then it happened.

For the first time, Griffen understood what was meant by a fight or flight reaction. The need to do something screamed inside him. The man, thing, dragon, or whatever it was, had seemed to be bigger and taller now. Without knowing it, he took a step back.

Then it hit him. If he was a dragon, there would never be a better time to become one. Which only left one urgent question. How did you change into a dragon?

He tried willing himself to change. Nothing happened.

So Griffen decided he would command himself to change, complete with a sweeping arm gesture. No dragon.

Risking closing his eyes for a moment, Griffen tried to picture himself as a dragon. “Be the dragon, be the dragon,” he intoned mentally, but all he got was the image of Chevy Chase in
CaddyShack
intoning, “Be the ball.”

Frustration led to anger. Okay, if he was going to get mashed by a massive supernatural monster in the back of a motel, he might as well go down fighting. He felt rage rise inside him. It seemed to take hold and his vision blurred. Everything was out of focus, and the sidewalk seemed to recede. He reached for the wall and steadied himself while desperately trying to see what his attacker was.

A car came around in the lot. The headlights speared brightly across the sidewalk and the man disappeared around the corner of the building. Then the lights swung away as the car pulled into a space.

Griffen slumped against the wall and discovered he was nauseous. After two tries the key worked in his door. Minutes later the shaking stopped and Griffen risked a look out the door. The parking lot was pleasantly empty.

Tired as he was, Griffen was far too wound up now to sleep. The surge of adrenaline from his mysterious encounter had left him feeling shaken and wired up. After checking one more time to make sure the coast was clear, he made his way into the motel’s lobby bar and settled in for a short drink and a long think.

Valerie was right, of course. It didn’t matter if Uncle Malcolm was crazy or sane about the whole dragon thing. If there were people out there who believed it and were ready to act on it, then he and Valerie had little choice but to take it seriously as well. The only trouble was, he didn’t have the vaguest clue as to what he should do next.

With school behind him, he had gambled heavily on getting a job with his uncle Malcolm only to have that crumble completely. Now he was homeless, adrift with all his worldly possessions in two suitcases, in what was left of his car. What was more, now he had Valerie in tow.

Hooking up with his sister completed the only agenda he had when he blew out of Michigan. Short of throwing a dart at a map, he had no idea of where they should go from here.

“Yo! Bartender! A Jack and Coke for me and another Irish for my man here!”

The familiar voice pulled Griffen out of his reverie and he craned his neck around to view the figure striding toward his table.

“Jerome?” he said. “Man! What are you doing here?”

The lean, dark man held up one finger signaling for Griffen to wait a moment as he detoured by the bar to gather up their drinks. As always, Jerome was stylishly dressed, with a tan sports coat worn over a cream-colored shirt with dark brown slacks that set off his coffee-colored skin to perfection. No matter what situation they were in when they ran across each other, Jerome always made Griffen feel underdressed.

Fast on the heels of his recognition, however, Griffen felt a sudden stab of suspicion. What
was
Jerome doing here?

They were passing friends on campus. Mostly, their relationship had grown from Jerome serving as his on-campus bookie on the rare occasions that he bet on football or other spectator sports. They gained a mutual respect for each other over the poker tables, as Jerome was one of the few that could hold his own against Griffen even when he was trying his hardest. None of this would help to explain what Jerome was doing here, hundreds of miles from their mutual stomping grounds.

“Here you go, Grifter,” Jerome said, setting a fresh Irish down next to the half-finished one already on the table and pulling up a chair. “Nice to know someone else who always drinks the same thing. Simplifies things.”

“Thanks, Jer,” Griffen said, forcing a casualness he didn’t feel. “I sure didn’t expect to see you here. What brings you to these parts?”

“Lookin’ for you, of course.” His friend smiled, leaning back. “Fortunately or not, you aren’t hard to find. We need to talk, my friend.”

Griffen’s head was spinning, and he held up a restraining hand.

“Slow up a minute, bro,” he said. “I’ve been driving all night and so I’m a little slow. Why are you looking for me, and what do you mean I’m not hard to find?”

“To tell the truth, Grifter,” Jerome said, dropping his voice, “after the word got out that you had turned Mal down, Mose, that’s the head of my crew, gave me a call and told me to look you up. Now, I remember you talking about your sister and her bein’ in college here, so I…”

“Hold it. H-o-l-d IT!” Griffen said, waving his hand. “Jerome, are you going to tell me that this is about the whole dragon thing? And that you’re one, too?”

“’Course it’s about dragons,” Jerome shot back. “And yes, I’m one, too. I’m way down on the totem pole from where you are, though. Near as I can figure, I’m maybe an eighth blood at best, which is pretty powerful for my crowd but nowhere near what you’ve got behind you.”

“Uh-huh,” Griffen said. “And how long have you known about this?”

“About you or about me?”

“Both.”

“I’ve known about it most of my life,” Jerome said with a shrug. “I was raised knowin’ it and expected to live up to it. Fact is, I’m slated to take over Mose’s business when he retires, or at least be the right-hand man to whoever does.”

He cocked an eyebrow at his friend.

“I understand that they kept you in the dark until yesterday, so I guess it’s kinda hard for you to get your head around it. Even so, you had the instincts and the moves as long as I’ve known you. Anyone who knew what they were lookin’ for could spot it.”

“So you’ve known all along,” Griffen said, not even making it a question. Somehow, his first drink was empty, and he reached for the next. “And you never said anything.”

“Not my place to,” his friend said. “I didn’t know what they had planned for you or how they were gonna go about it. Like I said, I’m just a little fish and I don’t mess with the big boys. I just did what I was told and kept an eye on you.”

“You make it sound like the only reason you were on campus was to keep tabs on me,” Griffen said.

“That’s about the size of it.” Jerome nodded. “To tell you the truth, Grifter, I’m older than I look. I got my degree a long time ago. I got sent there specifically to size you up and report back to my crew…and I’ll tell you, I wasn’t the only one watching.”

Griffen’s mind flashed back to Mai.

Aloud, he said, “But why, Jerome? I mean, even if everything you say is true, what makes me so important?”

“Like any longtime group, dragons have their legends and prophecies,” Jerome said. “Oh, they’re not written down or painted on some cave wall or anything, but everybody knows them. One of the long-standing ones is that someday a near pureblood will come along and change things for dragons forever.

“Now ‘change’ is a pretty nebulous word. It could mean for the better or for the worse. Of course, for those who are comfortable with things the way they are, change is something they look at with distrust if not outright fear. The odds of change improving things for them aren’t nearly as high as that it will really mess things up.”

In his head, Griffen was hearing his uncle’s words: They’ll try to recruit you or kill you.

“You may or may not be the one who’s gonna do all this,” Jerome continued, “but the legend’s strong enough that anyone with a stake in things is gonna want to check you out, then try to figure out how to deal with you.”

Griffen shook his head. “Let’s put all that on hold for the moment,” he said. “Now, what did you mean I was easy to find?”

“Like I said, I remembered you had a sister here, so that’s where I looked for you.” Jerome smiled. “Figured you’d want to talk things over with her once you were enlightened. After that, it was just a matter of cruising until I spotted the Goblin. Man, if you want to move around without bein’ noticed, you’ve
got
to get a different set of wheels. That ride of yours is way too easy to spot.”

While he knew Jerome was right, Griffen bristled at the thought of giving up his beloved Goblin.

“So it’s distinctive,” he said. “What are the odds of someone being in my vicinity to spot it if they don’t know where to look? If you hadn’t known about Valerie, would you be here looking?”

Jerome threw back his head and laughed.

“Man, you have no idea what you’re up against,” he said. “I said our crew was small and weak compared to the big boys. Let me give you an idea of what can be done. One of the top dragons on this continent is Stoner. You know what he does for his nine to five? He’s one of the high lords of the new Homeland Security. That means that if he wants, he can put your name, description, and the description of your car out on the computers as ‘suspected terrorist associate—do not detain but report location and movement’ and every cop and federal agent will be keeping their eyes peeled for you.”

An image suddenly appeared in Griffen’s mind. A picture of a state police car pulling up beside the Goblin and looking it over.

“And you can forget using credit cards,” Jerome was continuing. “For that matter, there are rumors that cell phones—”

“Wait a minute, Jer,” Griffen interrupted. “Do you know this Stoner guy?”

“Only by reputation.” His friend shrugged. “Like I say, we don’t travel in the same circles.”

“In your opinion,” Griffen said, “is he the type to arrange a car accident for someone he’s got a problem with?”

“That sounds kinda specific,” Jerome said, cocking an eyebrow. “Anything in particular you have in mind?”

Griffen filled him in on the morning’s highway skirmish.

“I dunno,” Jerome said when he had finished. “That doesn’t really sound like Stoner’s style. Dragons, particularly big ones like Stoner, tend to avoid open confrontations. Too high profile. I’ll tell you what it might be, though.”

He leaned forward and lowered his voice.

“Even though law-enforcement types are supposed to cooperate when called on, the truth of the matter is they don’t like anyone trespassing on their personal jurisdiction…especially not Feds. If Stoner
did
put out a tracker on you as a terrorist associate, I’d say there’s an even chance that while the boys in uniform would follow the letter of the law, they wouldn’t be above calling some of their buddies, maybe retired buddies, to take an unofficial hand. That would be especially true down here in the South. The good old boy right wingers would love to get a bead on a terrorist…especially since 9/11.”

“Doesn’t sound like someone who would slide a card under the door of my motel room,” Griffen said almost to himself.

“A card?” Jerome said. “You mean like a business card?”

“No, I mean like a tarot card,” Griffen said, and produced the card from the motel, which he was still carrying in his wallet.

Jerome leaned forward and studied the card, then leaned back with a scowl.

“I don’t know for sure,” he said carefully. “I just hope that isn’t what I think it is.”

“What’s that?” Griffen said.

Jerome shook his head.

“I think you should wait and talk to Mose about that,” he said firmly. “He knows more about that stuff than I do. Last thing I want to do right now is to give you bad information.”

“Speaking of information, let me ask you something else.” Griffen said uneasily. “When my uncle Malcolm first told me about being a dragon, he said something about how my secondary powers should be appearing soon. I think that’s what might have happened this morning.”

“Could be,” Jerome said. “Sounds like it took some pretty fancy driving to get out from under all that. ’Course, faster reflexes and above-average strength are part of the normal package deal.”

“That isn’t what I was talking about,” Griffen said. “I was thinking more about my temper. I mean, it should have been over, Jerome. I drove my way out and was sitting safe on the soft shoulder. I could have just let them drive away. Instead, it was like something clicked in my head, and I took off after them. I really don’t remember clearly what all happened after that, but one of them ended upside down on the median with the other backing up to try to help. That just isn’t like me.”

“I don’t know if dragons have tempers any worse than anyone else,” Jerome said, shaking his head. “The problem is, with their powers, they can’t afford to give in to it. You’d better start learnin’ to get a handle on yours, Grifter. If you start drawing too much attention to yourself, then you’re gonna have the whole pack of ’em down on your case. The one thing nobody wants is to have the humans get wise to the fact there are dragons walkin’ around among ’em.”