He smacked his lips and pulled out one of the menus from the holder at the end by the jukebox on the table. “I’m—”
“He’s old as fuck!”
“Zinter! Shut the hell up!” Max ran a hand down his face. “I’m a hundred and twenty-five. I was born in Brzozow, in what was the Hungarian Empire at the time. It’s Poland now. I was born in the Carpathian Mountains.”
“Way to break that stereotype.”
“I’m a dragon, not a vampire.”
Leveling a gaze at him, she shook her head. “I’m a historian, too, Maximillian. The stories of medieval dragons came out of the Carpathians. I’m just glad they can’t trace those to you. I mean, you’re only a hundred and twenty-five…”
A long, slow breath drained out of his lungs. He didn’t want to put Amy off with his age. At all. He wasn’t nearly as old as just about every other living dragon. The dragons in Pine Valley—he, Niko, Henry, and Raissa—along with Niko’s brother, Valarian, were the youngest. There weren’t a lot of dragon shifters in the world. “Amy…”
“Hey. I’m looking for booze. Tell me about the drink.”
She didn’t want to talk about it, so he took the out. “Henry lived in upstate New York during the war, and they didn’t want anything to do with those Japs—”
Amy was confused. “But Zhang is Chinese…?”
“Not to people who just defeated the Emperor. If you looked vaguely Japanese, they treated you like one. And they weren’t popular. That’s when he moved here. He was appalled that we didn’t have dragon fruit and made Zinter go find some.”
“I had to go to fucking San Francisco!”
Turning in the booth, he looked at Xavier. “Do you want to tell the story? Or can I?”
Covering her mouth with her hand, Amy was trying not to laugh. “You two fight like an old married couple.”
“Really old, right, Xav?”
“Fuck off, you big lizard.”
“There. Now he’ll shut up for a few.”
“Really? He called you a big lizard?”
“I call him Smokey all the time.”
The laugh burst out of her. “You’re how old and you call him Smokey?”
“Look when you’ve seen the shit we’ve seen, you either get a sense of humor, like Dragon’s Breath, or you turn into Marvin the Paranoid Android.”
She snorted and slammed her hand over her mouth, still laughing but still horrified that she had snorted while laughing. “Oh my God. For real.”
Max folded his hands on the table, trying not to join her giggling, studying her features. She really was a beautiful woman, and she was everything he’d been struggling to find for over a hundred years. His perfect woman—the mate he dreamed of—was sitting here, with him, in a place he had helped build, helped run, helped save. Zinter’s was as much a part of him as it was Xavier.
“Okay, all right, I’m good. It’s good.” She caught her breath, but he loved the flushed look on her skin as she did. His mind went to very, very dirty places. “Okay. Tell me about the Dragon’s Breath.”
Taking a drink of water, hoping to calm the raging hard-on he had managed to achieve with those thoughts, he started the story again. “So. Henry shows up and he’s all angry that we don’t have dragon fruit. How do dragons not have dragon fruit? Well, me from the mountains where the most exotic thing was cinnamon, and Xavier, from Montana where fresh fruit was blackberries and apples for a few weeks, had never even heard of dragon fruit. I was, frankly, a little scared that it was dragon’s fruit, if you take my meaning.
“Eventually, Henry manages to convince Xav that it’s a real thing and it’s amazing and he has to go get some. Xav starts phoning around the country, looking for these things, and there are two places in the whole US that have them. New York and San Francisco. Henry pays for Xav’s plane ticket, oh, and suit because in the forties you didn’t fly without being dressed to the nines. Xav cursed us both out because why weren’t dragons doing this flying shit? Why were they putting a bear on the plane?
“All the way to San Francisco and was raucously air sick. He says. He could have burped twice and he would have claimed he was sick. But Henry put him up in one of the best hotels that existed at the time, had a private car for him, all his meals were paid, and he was able to stay out there for a week and poke around, enjoy, check it out—and all for the price of two hours at the Chinese market for exotic fruits.”
Taking another sip of water, Max smiled. “He met his wife that week. A gorgeous South Pacific beauty he managed to cough up the money to fly home with him. Tekiri. She was his everything, even though she wasn’t his true mate. They had four kids, and they always had dragon fruit in the house.
“Anyway, they come back with not only dragon fruit, but kiwi, passionfruit, persimmons, almonds, star fruit, Chinese pears and apples, real saffron, fresh navel oranges, jicama, aloe, beautiful fresh Gros Michel bananas that are now nearly extinct and tasted so much better than the Cavendish we eat all the time now. There were two dozen different types of alcohol we’d never heard of.
“Which, joke was on Henry at this point, they grew in Central America, and several southeastern countries had grown them, and that’s why he thought they were Asian. He really thought they were from there originally. But I’ve told him time and again, the really weird fruits are always from Central and South America.
“We crack open the crates, cut open the fruit, and get to mixing. And mixing. And mixing. We were totally plastered. You have no idea how much alcohol it takes to get shifters drunk. Gallons. And we weren’t just drunk, we were titty fuch mucking fit shaced. We passed out in the diner, and Tekiri found us the next morning in various states of hangover, including still drunk when she got there.
“I… well, I belched. She declared I had dragon breath. So our last creation was named Dragon’s Breath—dragon fruit liqueur, cinnamon schnapps, and spumanti.”
Wrinkling her face, Amy shook her head. “That sounds disgusting.”
“I don’t know how or why it worked, but that combination was perfect for getting shifters drunk. Every single shifter who has ever had more than one has gotten really drunk. Normally, beer, wine, spirytus, moonshine, none of it gets a shifter drunk, but if you give them that combination? Smashed.”
“And you want me to drink that?”
“No, I don’t. Xav just wants to make you one so I drink it because it’s not a super pleasant combo, like you said.”
Xavier appeared and put two mugs full of coffee on the table. “If he has two, you can take advantage of him. He needs to get laid.”
Max roared this time, “Xavier!”
“You do.” Addressing Amy alone, he went on, “You know how you get hangry when you don’t eat? Is there a word for getting angry when you don’t get laid?”
“I’m going to kill you, Xav.”
Laughing, Amy answered, “Sangry? Angxual?”
“Ooh, angxual. I like that.”
“Please, please, don’t encourage him.”
Max didn’t miss the obvious wink Xavier gave her as he walked back to the kitchen, but he was still utterly mortified by his friend.
Patting his hand, Amy comforted him. “Don’t worry, Max. I get it. I can’t wait to get Betsy all set to go home. I miss my fiancé.”
Those words slammed into him like a freight train. It felt like the whole world shook and started to crumble. “Fiancé?”
Her eyes alight, Amy smiled. “Yes. Brent and I are planning a fall wedding in the mountains next year. I miss him something awful right now. I also can’t wait until Betsy and I get home so she can meet him and we can get her into the wedding. It’s going to be so nice to have her home.”
His heart was cracked in half. He had no idea she was engaged—everything in him was telling him that she was his. His mate. No one had told him that she had someone. No one bothered to inform him the gorgeous little dreamwalker was dreaming of someone else.
That was why he decided to be so cruel w
ith his next topic.
“This is her home.”
She didn’t like that. “No. Her home is in North Carolina. With her dad, and the Sectorum.”
“Her home is with her mate. She’s part of our world now.”
Amy cocked her head. “He can move to NC with her. Her father needs her there. She’s been gone too long and—”
Max leaned forward. “She’s going to prison, and you know that. She’s going to go there, serve her time, and that’s the end of it. She’ll be back here on the next flight out after her sentence is over.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Tell me what she has there? In the mountains by you. Aside from you and her father?”
The coffee mug stayed in front of her mouth, so Max couldn’t gauge what she was thinking for a long moment. She just stared at the rim of the cup, clearly wanting to argue with him. “She has nothing anywhere, Max. Not here, not at home. She’s been gone so long…”
“She’s been gone a long time from North Carolina and hasn’t been here very long. But Niko has friends here. He has a home. He has a business. He has a life here. She’s been a nomad. How you can you expect either of them to pick North Carolina, which Betsy left behind, over a place that Niko has ties to? Ties that run far deeper than I can explain to you.”
“What? Your friendship?”
“He grew up in that house. His father built it. His parents are here, buried in the Pine Valley Cemetery up behind the Cliffs. He has friends, beyond just me. There are younger magicals here who look up to him, and there are older ones who like and depend on him.”
“North Carolina is her home.”
“She left that behind three years ago, Amy. She’s not going home.”
“I don’t see why they would just blankly choose this place…I mean, they—”
He leaned forward on the table. “Niko belongs here. His mate is an Omphalos Locus. The dragons are all here.”
“Well, maybe she could live in North Carolina half the year.”
He chuckled. “Like we’re arguing over Persephone? Really? Maybe you don’t understand the mate bond. They need to be together. She’s part of him, and he’s part of her. There’s no splitsies on this one. And I can tell you right now, it’s going to be here.”
“The mate bond is just something that happens faster than love with humans.”
Shaking his head, he tsked at her. “Oh, no. No. It’s so much more. They are literally part of each other.” This time he leaned back. “You want to understand that? Niko’s favorite place to swim in the whole world is Darkwater Lake. Go there. Watch them. Watch her. You’ll see.” He picked up the coffee mug and took a drink. “She’s staying here.”
His words had hurt.
With all that had been going on, Amy hadn’t even considered that her best friend wouldn’t come back to North Carolina. When they found her in the barn, she was so thrilled and happy and it seemed that nothing could take her down from that.
But slowly, the hope had eroded. Betsy was bound to Niko. She was in love with him, the way she was in love with Brent. Faster, but still the same. She and Brent had plans, ideas, schemes. She was still going to have to tell Brent about the Sectorum and her dreamwalking, but that wasn’t a deal breaker.
Not having Betsy there to have over to dinner or to go shopping with was a possibility she hadn’t considered. She just assumed that once the sentence was served, she and Niko would be there.
Max had been an asshole about it. He hadn’t, however, been wrong.
Betsy wasn’t the same girl who ran away. She was a grown woman, and apparently, more grown since she met Nikomedes. Confident that their friendship was good for years to come, Amy was starting to lose faith that she and Betsy would live in the same state.
She and Carl had worked so hard to find her, and nothing had worked. It was only when Betsy was ready to be found did they have any kind of clue about her. She’d hidden well, and Amy realized they never would have found her if she didn’t want to be found.
Every time she dreamed about finding her best friend, it was always after they were back together, and married and happy and had their kids playing in the backyard together. They were shopping, having lunch, being friends. She’d made friends since Betsy—hell, she had a whole career and second life—but no one knew her like her old BFF.
Amy picked at the rocks underneath her. She was cold, sitting out here in the December night, the moon waning above, the ice on the lake slightly more than a crust now. Not strong enough to walk on, but the animals in the deep would start to slow and rest for the next few months.
Or most of them would, anyway.
She watched the huge, deep sapphire dragon winding his way through the cold of Darkwater, spinning and diving and even breaking the surface near the outcropping where his mate sat laughing. He splashed her a few times, the icy water sending a shiver down her spine, but not seeming to bother Betsy at all.
She’d been watching them for long minutes. Amy had seen Niko transform before, apparently the first time he’d ever been able to out of water, but watching him release the dragon and dive into the water was a whole other experience. She knew it wasn’t right that she was watching like this, away from them, without letting them know she was there. Somehow, she’d convinced herself this was part of her work for the Sectorum.
Comparing herself and Brent to what Niko and Betsy had was a desperation move earlier. What she and he had was nothing like this at all. They communicated and connected on a whole new level that she didn’t know was possible. Dreamwalkers didn’t have mates—they had husbands and wives the way non-magicals did. There was no instant connection for them, and she’d always assumed that the mate bond was merely a faster, easier way of confirming they were meant for each other.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
She and Carl, along with the new couple had been spending time in one of the hotel’s smaller conference rooms, talking to Nevada and North Carolina, as well as Illinois and Georgia, trying to get Betsy surrendered and bailed out as quickly as possible in each place.
Nevada didn’t want anything much out of her but testimony because they considered her a coerced accomplice. They dropped the charges and released the bail as soon as she agreed to give testimony in open court, either live or via Internet conference.
Minnesota wasn’t interested in her as much as they were the fines. She was a non-violent offender in their eyes and it only took an application of a large sum of money from Niko to get them to completely dismiss the whole thing. He also promised to give to the Benevolent Association on a regular basis.
Georgia wanted her, but as a character witness to Wayne’s trial. They were willing to not pursue the smaller petty larceny charges against her, and even Wyatt, if they both turned state’s evidence against Wayne. And to all of their shock, Wyatt and his lawyer, also on the call, agreed readily. He’d finally realized his continued association with his brother was nothing but trouble.
And then, there had been North Carolina. They wanted her. And they weren’t willing to drop it at all no matter the amount of money. Carl had ended the call with the State DA when it was clear Wyatt’s presence on the phone was becoming a problem. He’d then called the man on his cell phone and let him and his daughter talk for a while. What came out was just what Amy had always thought. Her best friend had gone with Wyatt because she thought she was in love, and he offered adventure. When they robbed the armored car, it was grand larceny and it was close to seventy-five thousand dollars.
Amy had never been so angry with Betsy as she was when she heard the details of what had gone on with that robbery. It was the beginning of an eighteen-month petty larceny spree she and Wyatt had gone on across most of the south and the northeast, eventually ending in Minnesota. No one had been hurt in any of that, and most of the petty offenses Niko volunteered restitution for. But the armored car robbery wasn’t going to go away or be a footnote on her record.
She was goin
g to jail.
The DA eventually agreed to a two-year suspended sentence, with the possibility of six months off for good behavior, as long as she turned state’s against Wyatt, and she and Wyatt agreed to turn state’s evidence against Wayne for any state that asked. She had to surrender herself for the sentence in June, and she had to be an absolute model prisoner to get the time off.
Carl stood over his daughter, who sat meekly in the chair after ending the call. “What in the name of fuck were you thinking, Erzabet? You were always happy, far more than your brother and far more than any of your cousins. And you had such promise as a veterinarian. You were so good in school.”
“I can be again, Dad.”
He folded his arms. “You are going to have a criminal record. I can’t get the DA to seal it or expunge it. It’s going be very hard for you when you get a background check for anything. You’ve fucked up, Bets. You fucked up big time.”
She folded her hands in her lap, and Amy watched as two tears fell. “I know.”
Niko spoke words Amy wanted to shove back in his mouth. It just compounded what Max had said days earlier. “No one here will hold that record against you, Betsy. There are people here with records longer than a roll of paper towels and have found their way back to the good side of the law.” He wiped her tears away. “It’s only this lifetime, Bets. Just this one. We have an eternity of lifetimes.”
Amy was shocked. There weren’t very many immortal magicals. There were insanely long-lived ones, like sorcerers, harpies, sirens that could push a hundred centuries or more. There were the ones that could easily live for close to a thousand years, like shifters and witches. But there were only two she knew who were immortal: vampires and demons.
Now, there were three. Dragons.
And those dragons made their mates immortal with them. Betsy would be at Amy’s funeral in three-quarters of a century, looking no older and being no less active than she was now. Amy would be dead.
This wasn’t the same person she knew as her best friend.
The massive dragon lifted out of the water where Betsy was dangling her feet in the cold water that Niko had cracked the ice on. He slithered around her and nudged at her back. The tinkling laughter let Amy know that Niko and his little mate were communicating through their mate bond, another bonus of the magical world.
Skydance Page 4
