“The pain’s there, but some things are more important.”
She laughed.
Suddenly, she stood erect, her hands to her sides, palms out and took a deep breath. She relaxed a few seconds later and winked at me.
“What was that?” I asked.
“You’ll see.”
She came back to the bed, her arms reaching out. I grinned and reached for her, expecting to pull her back into bed. Instead, she playfully batted my hands aside and slipped her hands into my armpits.
Tess lifted me with no apparent effort.
“Hey, when did you learn that trick?” I asked.
She pulled me in tight against her; my boner ignored, and then slid her hands, one at a time down to my cheeks. Without another word, she carried me into the bathroom. We reached the commode, and she leaned back enough to look me in the eye.
“Do you want me to hold you up or set you on the toilet?”
I considered, for all of two seconds, and said, “You can sit me down.”
She did but then stood over me, staring down.
“What?” I asked.
She pointed and asked, “How are you going to go with that sticking up in the air?”
I smirked. “I’ll manage if you give me a little privacy and a couple of minutes.”
Tess grinned wickedly. “Maybe I want to see how you manage it.”
“Good grief, woman, give an old man a break. I’m bashful.”
“Hah.”
She pulled the bathroom door shut behind her, and I heard her laughing as she moved away.
I didn’t wait for her to return. As soon as I finished, I activated my levitation tat to float. I’d been fortunate with the levitation tattoo. It was on my right thigh. The thigh ended about two inches below the tattoo. Half of that was new pink flesh. I thought about how many tattoos were gone or damaged and would have to be recreated when my legs were healed. Damn dragons. I called up a soft breeze to push me to the door.
When I opened the door, Tess was already dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. The shirt was open, and I could see the swell of her breasts in the gap.
“You’re dressed?” I blurted out the obvious.
The disappointment in my voice must have been more obvious than I realized.
She bit down on her bottom lip, and I wanted to be the one nibbling on it.
Instead, I floated to the sofa and dropped to the cushions.
“There’ll be time for that later. You need to get some food in you. I’ve checked, and Joe left us plenty of bacon and eggs. I’ve laid out your grimoire to the prosthesis spell you used on me and–”
Tess saw my face drop and knew the reason. She came close, put her arms around me, and hugged me.
“It’s going to be all right, Raphael. Joe’s gone, but you stopped Rowle. The surviving gods left. Things should be back to that weirdness you call normal.”
For the first time, I noticed her phone was on the coffee table. The screen was lit with some kind of image and a voice came from it.
Curious, I reached for it.
“I don’t know if you want to see that,” Tess said as she bit her lower lip again.
That almost distracted me, but then I heard the voice clearer as I picked up the phone.
“…state of emergency has been declared by the governor for El Paso, Teller, Douglas, and Kiowa Counties. The National Guard has been mobilized. They are sealing off these counties with the help of heavy weapons support from Army units assigned to Fort Carson. Every effort has been made to stop the spread of the creatures that appeared in the Garden of the Gods this morning. Dozens appear to be still on the loose and as darkness approaches the governor is ordering all civilians in the affected area to remain inside their homes. There have been reports of hunting parties roaming the rural areas, and the governor has threatened jail for anyone hunting these non-natural animals without a license. I repeat, anyone caught hunting these things will be jailed.”
I started shaking my head and glanced up at Tess to see her wearing a sheepish smile.
“What are you smiling about, Apprentice? You know this is going to be a horrible mess,” I scolded while trying not to laugh.
“Yep, a horrible mess. I can just imagine a Jeep load of hunters chasing that dragon through the woods.”
“Dragon? One of them survived and is still here?” I asked.
“Yep, at least one. I saw it break away from your flood just before it would have been swept through the portal. I’m pretty sure that I saw it fly off later.”
“Ah, hell,” I said.
“Yep, that’s what I thought you’d say.”
I listened to a few more minutes of the newscast, but didn’t learn anything that I didn’t already know or didn’t feel that I needed to know.
I set Tess’s phone down and reached for my grimoire.
“What are you going to do?” Tess asked.
I met her gaze and smiled. “I’m going to generate a pair of prosthesis legs and then get some food in me.”
Tess watched me, waiting.
Finally, she asked, “Then what are you going to do?”
“We, Apprentice, we–and then we are going to start rounding up these creatures. Who knows, if I can make the really nasty ones disappear, maybe people will forget about dragons.”
“You think they’ll forget what came from that portal? I saw some of the videos. They had pretty good close-ups of the larger critters.”
“Really?”
Tess grinned. “They also had a damn good sequence of Rowle, you, and me fighting–not to mention you being a dragon snack. I don’t think we’re going to be able to show our faces in public without glamours for a long time.”
“Maybe I could destroy the footage,” I said, thoughtfully.
Tess laughed. “It’s on the web now, Boss. There’s no deleting anything once it’s on the web.”
I moaned. “Ah, crap.”
Tess grinned broadly. “Yep thought you would say that. I guess I had better get your leathers clean, but you’re going to need a new set of pants before we start chasing these things down.”
“I’m sure mine will be fine,” I said.
“Really? You’re going to go out and fight monsters while wearing leather shorts?”
I looked to see if she was serious.
“I mean, what red dragon is going to take you seriously if you show up looking like that?”
I grabbed the front of her shirt with both hands and pulled her to me. We kissed long and hard.
Eventually, I pulled back. I winked at her. “I can glamour the look. Trust me; no one will know the Wanderer has no pants.”
The End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Bamberg was born in small town Alabama, to a great pair of middle-class working parents. After high school, he enlisted in the USAF. He earned a degree in engineering from Texas Tech and went on to work for Boeing and the Missile Defense Agency.
He sold his first novel, Emerald Eyes, to Books in Motion in 1994. Since then he’s published ten novels. His novels range from modern action/adventure, to horror, to urban fantasy, and finally science fiction. He’s had numerous short stories published, including one in the award-winning anthology Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction.
He discovered reading at the Hale County Library, Greensboro, Alabama, when he was ten and rapidly devoured all of the science fiction books the small library had to offer.
His hobbies, when not writing, have been fencing, shooting, fishing, RPGs, computer games, and reading. He’s an avid fan of SpaceX and their long-term goal of occupying Mars.
Other Novels
by
Richard A. Bamberg
The Phoenix Egg
Strega
Emerald Eyes (with Joy Bamberg)
The Nazi Legacy (with Joy Bamberg)
Doors Without End
The Hunters: Monster Hunting 101
Ancient Enemy
Wanderers 1: Ragnarök
Wanderers 3: Garden of The Gods (The Wanderers) Page 32
