by Alan Marble
He shrugged a little in annoyance, feeling slightly defeated. He didn't really want to be convinced; what he really wanted was for her to admit it was a hoax and let him be on his way. Yet he found himself unable to confront her directly, call her out on it like that. “Maybe you could prove your story some other way. You know, if you’re this big mighty dragon, then why don’t you turn into one?”
Rebekah laughed softly at that. The sound of her laughter was oddly lyrical, soothing to his nerves, and apparently genuine; she shook her head, smiling in spite of herself as she flagged down the wait staff to ask for the check before she bothered with any kind of response. “Somehow I don’t think a dragon crashing around the place would be very appreciated by the locals.”
“I don’t mean right here and now,” Jonah scowled, somehow irritated by the fact that her laughter was further defusing his bad mood. “Could find a quiet road that goes off into the mountains or something, somewhere private. Then you could show me. That’d go a long ways toward convincing me.”
“Oh? Someplace nice and quiet in the mountains, no one around to see what we’re doing? Just the two of us?” With a sly sort of grin she reached across the table and brushed a fingertip against his forearm. “Why, Jonah. If I didn’t know better I’d say you were coming on to me.”
All at once he forgot what point he was trying to make or where he was trying to go with his line of reasoning. He felt his cheeks flushing hot as he averted his gaze and sputtered. “What? No, no, that’s not what I meant,” he insisted, trying his best to ignore the little peals of laughter that his reaction had caused, the embarrassment transforming into irritation at being caught off guard like that.
Then, too, there was some part of his imagination that wanted to indulge in the thought of finding a quiet place where he could be alone with her. It was only a fleeting sort of afterthought, but it was enough to deepen his irritation.
“Of course it isn’t what you meant. That’s what I mean when I say if I didn’t know better,” she teased quietly, sitting back in her seat with another little laugh. “I’m sure you’d be rather ashamed of yourself, flirting with a girl you just met and hardly know.”
Jonah was desperate to change the subject, and let the first words that would form in his mouth spill out. “Well, then, why don’t you tell me more about yourself.”
If her earlier tease had caught him off guard, his own question seemed to have much the same effect on her. Sitting back in her seat and blinking at him quizzically, she brushed an unruly lock of hair from her forehead. “What do you mean?”
“You expect me to follow you to Detroit. Fine. But that’s what … another half a day’s drive from here?” He didn’t really know how long it was going to be, only that it was longer than any drive he had been on so far, with the possible exception of the travel earlier that day. “If I’m going to spend several hours in the car with you, I think I deserve to know a little more about you.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” she objected, the smile on her face wilting a little, her expression suddenly growing a little guarded.
Jonah, sensing that he had the upper hand in the conversation, even if for a moment, did not back down. “It’s only fair. You’ve been stalking me long enough to know my name and God only knows what else. I don’t want to be traveling across the country with a complete stranger. Come on, tell me something about yourself. Tell me what you do when you aren’t dodging motorcycles.”
For a moment it looked as if she were going to respond, or that she was at least considering it. Her mouth hung open uncertainly, her bright green eyes regarding him with a slightly wavering glance, but before she could get anything out the waitress reappeared with the check, setting it on the table with a pleasant thanks for their patronage. It had broken the moment, however, and Rebekah’s expression hardened a little. “Look, we’ve got to get going. I don’t want to get there too late.”
Without giving Jonah a chance to protest, she reached into her pocket and withdrew a few bills, leaving them on the table and getting up to stalk toward the exit. Feeling once again trapped by the situation, unable to make any choice other than to simply follow along, Jonah pushed his own chair back and made his way after her.
FIVE
It was nighttime again when they had finally made their destination in Detroit. Nearly eight hours had passed since they’d left the little diner back in Tennessee, eight hours that had felt more like sixteen. Rebekah had been standoffish since they resumed the trip, and with the exception of a little idle banter about who would go inside to fetch drinks when they stopped for gas there had been little in the way of conversation.
Were it not for the radio stations that came and went as they made their way northward, the whole trip would have passed in near silence. It was enough to make him feel immensely uncomfortable long before the sun had set.
In the darkness Jonah had been unable to see much of the city, little more than a blur of nondescript buildings as they rushed along the interstate before pulling off an exit that dropped them right into the heart of the city. Though he had heard more than his fair share of horror stories about what a blighted town it was, the little part of the city that he’d had a chance to see that night seemed fairly normal enough.
Rebekah navigated the truck a few blocks away from the freeway, swinging around and coming to a stop in front of a skyscraper, rising some thirty floors up into the night, the concrete and stone facade fading into the darkness where the lights didn’t illuminate it so well. It was hardly the tallest building Jonah had seen, but the rather staid colors and the stone seemed like such a contrast to the modern glass and steel buildings that dominated the skyline back in Miami. It seemed vaguely reminiscent of the Empire State Building in style; he could not help but to crane his neck a bit.
“Enough gawking. Time to get out.”
He turned in time to see Rebekah swinging the door to the truck open and hopping out, casting him a glance that seemed more grave than was necessary. With a shrug of his own he opened his own door, stepping out and swinging it shut behind him, the sound artificially loud in the relative quiet of the night. “All right. What’s this place?”
His unexpected companion seemed irritated at the questioning, as if she were still giving him the silent treatment. Squaring her shoulders, she began to stomp her way across the sidewalk and right up toward the entrance to the building. “Doesn’t matter. Come on.”
“What’s got you all worked up, now? You’re the one dragging me across the country with the insane story,” he protested, but followed her up toward the entrance all the same. “You’re damned lucky I haven’t just walked away, or called the cops, or something.”
After a bit of a sigh, she apologized in a slightly begrudging voice. “Sorry. Being behind the wheel for that long takes a bit out of me. The place doesn’t matter. Just who.”
“That’s right. The guy who is going to answer all my questions. Make sense of it all, right?” He responded with a little more sarcasm than he intended to, and involuntarily flinched back as soon as the words had crossed his lips.
If she had noticed the sarcasm she gave no sign, and in fact did not react to his question in the least. Stopping at the door she reached out and rapped her knuckles against the glass twice, waited, and then repeated it once again. A light dimly visible in the distance responded by pointing in their direction and then bobbing, the silhouette of a man resolving itself after a moment. The guard briefly pointed his flashlight right in their direction, briefly blinding him, forcing Jonah to cover his eyes and flinch again while he heard the sound of a bolt being unlatched.
“Ah, Bekah! You finally made it. We were wondering when you’d finally get here … hurry on in. There’s word that trouble might be on your tail.”
Jonah found himself being ushered into the building a little hastily, the burly, uniformed guard giving him a not so gentle nudge inside as he passed the threshold, turning to lock the door behind them. If he ha
d any protest to offer he wasn’t given the chance; Rebekah spoke up first. “I think we’re all right. He up in his office?”
The guard nodded. “He is.”
Returning the nod, Rebekah then turned her head to glance at Jonah a little sharply. “All right, just follow me.”
Their footfalls echoed in a disturbingly loud fashion against the polished stone floor, another product of the late hour. He imagined that during the day the lobby would be filled with people going about their business, but their slinking around in the night was beginning to feel increasingly inappropriate, illegal, or worse. “Wait just a second. Something doesn’t feel right about this.”
Stopping halfway toward the nearest elevator, Rebekah turned to shoot him a slightly irritated look. “What?”
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable sneaking around like this. It feels … I don’t know. Wrong.”
“And letting a strange woman take you on a wild drive across the country feels right?”
Jonah bristled at that comeback. “Now you’re going to give me a hard time for coming along with you?”
“Yes.” She shrugged and turned back to the elevator. “Come on. After this, if you decide that you want to go back home and pretend like this never happened, handle it all in your own little way, then be my guest. Just see this out for me.”
Feeling like he didn’t really have much say in the matter, he simply shrugged in acquiescence and trudged along behind up to the elevator. The doors slid open immediately and they filed in; he watched quietly as she pushed the button marked 21, the elevator lurching slightly as it pulled them upward. With the exception of the quiet chime marking the passage of each floor, they passed the short ride in silence.
The doors slid open once again and admitted them to a quiet, darkened hallway. A directory on the wall in front of them pointed the way to various offices on the floor but Rebekah clearly knew exactly where she was going, not so much as pausing before she marched down the hall and to the left. Once again Jonah felt the urge to turn around and walk away, as he had for countless times in the past twenty four hours, but once again he felt oddly trapped by the circumstances. Rather unwillingly, he found himself following along. She led him straight to a door marked “Sawyer & Assoc”, opening the door and stepping inside without so much as breaking her stride.
Beyond the door was something of a contrast to the rest of the night so far. He found himself in a small waiting room, well-appointed with plush leather seats and couches, the table in the center littered with highbrow magazines. The room was well lit, and some kind of contemporary jazz was being piped in through hidden speakers in the ceiling. A faint but cloyingly sweet and spicy scent lingered on the air, made him wrinkle his nose.
“Good to see you again, Bekah!” The voice belonged to a plump, middle-aged woman who was sitting on the other side of a sliding glass window, inside a comfortable little vestibule lined with innumerable pictures of small children and various pets. Festooned with rosy cheeks, curly auburn hair and horn rimmed glasses, the woman looked almost like a caricature of a secretary from a bygone era. “How are you doing? Oh, but, you aren’t really here to chit-chat are you? He’s been expecting you, go right on ahead.”
For the first time in the night Rebekah managed a smile, albeit a weak one. “Good to see you too, Nanette. But, actually, I’m not the one who is here to see him.” She turned on her heel, casting a glance back at Jonah and gesturing to a door next to the vestibule. “You’re the one with the questions; he’s the one with the answers. It’ll be the second door on the left.”
Jonah blinked in surprise. “What, you’re not going along with?”
“Want me to hold your hand?”
Again Jonah felt himself bristling. He wanted to snap back that he’d been only too patient, too willing to go along with the insanity that was happening. He wanted to shout that he’d really done more than he rightfully should have, that any sane person would have gone straight to the police after the attack at his home, that any sane person would not have gotten into a truck with a strange woman and allowed themselves to be dragged more than a thousand miles across the country to a city they’d never been to before, to meet some mysterious person with all of the answers.
Before he could really let loose with his thoughts, however, he felt all of the ire inside of him suddenly deflate. He wasn’t sure if it was the way she was looking at him, or perhaps some kind of morbid curiosity of his own to see where this was all leading, but once more he found himself incapable of saying no to her, incapable of fighting against what was happening. His shoulders drooping, he shuffled toward the door and pushed his way into another, shorter hallway.
The strange, sweet-spicy scent on the air seemed to grow thicker as he approached the second door on the left, as he was instructed. Pausing at the door, trying to decide whether or not he should knock, he was surprised to hear a voice calling out from inside. “Come on in, the door’s open.”
Jonah frowned, pushing the door open, and discovered the source of that odor as he was suddenly hit in the face with a thick cloud of smoke, pungent and faintly sweet. Caught off guard, he involuntarily breathed in a lungful of the stuff and promptly began to cough and wheeze, waving his hands in front of his face to try and push the smoke away. “Ugh!”
“You’re not supposed to inhale the smoke like that. Just savor the flavor, the aroma.” The voice, deep and sonorous, belonged to the man who was sitting on the other side of a sumptuous mahogany desk, the man who supposedly had all of the answers for him. A man who was apparently in the midst of enjoying a big fat cigar. “Come, sit, Jonah. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
Still coughing, Jonah frowned and squinted through the haze, flopping down on a plush leather chair on his side of the desk. “Everyone seems to know my name. Not very fair.”
“Sorry about that. Name’s Abraham Sawyer. You can call me Abe.”
Getting a better look at the man behind the desk, Jonah had the strange thought that the man did not look like much of an Abe. Even seated behind the desk the man loomed large, his broad shoulders all but filling the big executive chair that he sat in. Abe, as he called himself, had a swarthy complexion and dark black eyes. Though he was completely bald, not a hair on his head, gray stubble adorned his jaw and chin in a sort of shadow of a beard. His scalp above his left eye was heavily pitted in what looked like an old burn scar. Something about his demeanor seemed to demand respect, but Jonah had had enough of granting strangers the benefit of the doubt. “You shouldn’t smoke. It’s bad for you,” he blurted rather abruptly.
“So it is, so it is,” the man conceded, speaking with a slight accent that Jonah could not readily place. After what seemed to be a moment of contemplation, he set the still smoldering cigar down, black eyes regarding it before he spoke up again. “Or, at least, that’s what they tell me. But you aren’t really going to try and deny an old dragon his favorite vice, are you?”
Folding his arms over his chest, Jonah frowned. “So. You’re in on this dragon thing, too, are you?”
Abe grinned a toothy smile. “Well, of course I am. Were you expecting anything else?”
“Right.” Much of the pent up frustration that he had been feeling the entire drive northward was beginning to bubble up inside of him. In spite of the fact that this man seemed to demand respect - the lavishly appointed office, the smart, double-breasted suit that he was wearing, the gold Rolex and fingers studded with rings, even the look of authority in his eyes - Jonah did not feel nearly as compelled to acquiesce to him, not in the way he felt helpless to demur to Rebekah. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me that you’re a thousand years old and you breathe fire or something like that.”
The man faked an offended frown. “A thousand years old? Is my age really beginning to show? I’m actually only, oh, just turned seven hundred and forty five last week, actually.”
Jonah just shook his head, suddenly no longer in the mood for these kinds of silly games.
“Look. I promised that I would come here, listen to your little spiel, and I’ve held up my end of the bargain. God knows why. So, go on, say what you are going to say so that I can get my ass back down to Florida, before I get into any more trouble.”
The faint hint of a grin on Abe’s face retreated, leaving the man to regard him in a curious, cautious manner. “Spiel? Well, I suppose if you have to call it a spiel, go right ahead and do that. But it’s more than that, Jonah, a bit more than that. You see, I’m supposed to be good at convincing people of things. Opening their eyes to the truth, as it were.” The big executive chair creaked as Abe leaned back, folding his hands behind his head and relaxing. “I’m supposed to convince you of this whole … how did you put it? Dragon thing?”
“The whole thing is just ridiculous. You’re clearly not a dragon, even if there were such a thing,” he grumbled a little angrily.
“Oh? And you know there is no such a thing how? Because you’ve never seen one? What if we just don’t like to be seen?”
“Well I see you now,” Jonah retorted, tapping his foot on the floor lightly, impatiently. “And you don’t look a thing like a dragon.”
Abe flashed another light, toothy smile. “Well, now, of course I don’t. Wouldn’t do to have a dragon sitting here running a law firm, now would it? I know Rebekah didn’t tell you much but I thought she’d at least have the courtesy to let you know we don’t usually wander around in our, ah, true form. Masquerading as a human has got certain advantages, as I am sure you can imagine.”
Jonah sat up a little more upright, frowning pointedly at the man across the desk. “Bullshit. You can sit there and tell me about being in some kind of magical human form all you want, but it’s just bullshit. I can sit here and tell you that I’m actually the freakin' Loch Ness Monster in human form. Anybody can say what they want. So prove it to me. If you’re really a dragon, then prove it. Show me.”
