Dancing with Dragons

by Lorenda Christensen

This was the point where my memories started to get hazy. Unfortunately the fear of the experience was still all too clear. I remember Richard arriving, and me stabbing at a dragon with a fireplace poker, but not much else.

  * * *

  I blinked twice and waited until my vision was something other than a mass of wet, shimmering bubbles of light. The wait was much longer than I expected, but at least my eyes were working.

  And they were staring at a ceiling. A large water stain marred the white surface above my head. The panel looked a little soggy, and I wondered idly whether anyone was aware of the leak. They should send someone to fix that.

  “Carol?” I heard Richard’s voice just before his face appeared above me. His hair was a mess and his face unshaven. “You’re awake. You had me so scared.” I felt his hand grip mine, and I gave his fingers a reassuring squeeze.

  The movement caused pain to shoot up my arm.

  “Ow. What happened?” I raised my hand to find it nearly twice the size it should be and covered in scabbed skin and bruises. It looked like I’d gone toe to toe with a brick wall and lost. Badly.

  Richard’s forehead creased. “You don’t remember?”

  I searched my memories. “I remember leaving Hian-puo’s trial, and coming to look for you...” I glared at him. “You were ignoring me and hanging out with Myrna’s good-for-nothing boss.”

  Richard worked for the North American dragon lord, doing everything from hiring Lord Relobu’s house staff to negotiating business deals with foreign nations on the dragon’s behalf. Though Trian—Myrna’s boyfriend and the head of Relobu’s security team—had recommended Myrna as DRACIM’s best mediator to work through the prisoner exchange with China’s Hian-puo, Richard had been the one to actually hire her for the job.

  She’d introduced me to Richard soon after, and we’d started dating. I’d thought things were going well between us, until Richard had pulled out the silent treatment at the Budapest hotel. At first I’d assumed he was busy with the week’s cleanup—a bomb, a homicidal dragon, and a dragon lord’s criminal trial wasn’t exactly normal, even in his line of work. But when all of that had been taken care of and he still hadn’t talked to me, I’d started to worry. Then I’d started to get paranoid.

  And when I say paranoid? I don’t mean the normal, run-of-the-mill version where I thought Richard was just staying with me for the sex. No, I tipped completely into crazy-land. After the last day of the Chinese dragon lord’s trial, I got drunk, got dressed in the world’s most ragged set of pajamas, and turned my impressive skills of ass-hattery toward blaming Myrna for pretty much everything. I blushed as the memory of accusing Myrna of sleeping with Richard popped front and center in my mind. The shame of it almost felt worse than my injuries.

  I had to give her credit—she didn’t laugh in my face, even though any fool could see that she was head over heels in love with her newly reclaimed boyfriend, Trian.

  Nope, Myrna was a stand-up gal who also had the benefit of knowing me for years. She was well-aware that I didn’t have the best track record with guys.

  It was my fatal flaw: I was attracted to good-looking men.

  My preference for the card-carrying members of the eye-candy club doesn’t sound like a flaw. In fact, most people would likely consider my tastes normal. Probably nine times out of ten, if I asked a woman whether she was more attracted to the hot dude shooting hoops on a basketball court or the hefty, middle-aged man running the concession stand, she’s gonna go with the attractive ball player.

  But if you told that same woman that the ball player lived out of his car, beat his dog, and stole money from every girlfriend he’d ever had, the concessions manager would start looking pretty darn good by comparison. But me? I was always the idiot who offered to share an apartment, watch the dog, and sign up for a joint checking account just because the hot guy looked even hotter when he was about to kiss me.

  Like I said, my fatal flaw.

  Usually Myrna was there to knock some sense into me before I did something irreversible like marry one of these jerks. But she’d seemed to almost approve of Richard.

  But here I was, barely conscious and already throwing blame around like it was rice at a wedding.

  I looked down at my hand once more. Despite my angry outburst, Richard had put his palm over mine.

  Maybe I was overreacting. Again.

  I sighed. “I’m sorry, Richard. I’m sure you had perfectly good reasons.”

  Richard’s cheek twitched and he looked to the window. “Of course. Emory and I were simply discussing DRACIM’s role in Lord Relobu’s future mediation projects now that Myrna’s assignment is complete. That’s all.”

  I started to snort, but the effort made my head hurt. Emory was Myrna’s boss at DRACIM, and quite possibly the biggest idiot on the face of the planet. “You’d have been better off asking Myrna. If Emory had his way, DRACIM wouldn’t be involved at all. You should have seen the stack of liability releases she had to sign in order to come on this assignment.”

  To be fair, Lord Relobu’s offices had insisted on almost as many for me. When DRACIM had flatly refused to provide one of their own agents to serve as the engagement’s dragonscript expert, I’d volunteered my services. The trip had been Myrna’s chance to get out from under her manager’s thumb, and I’d been happy to help. Especially when taking the position meant I’d get to spend more time with Richard and see China at the same time.

  Myrna had warned me the trip might be dangerous, and I thought I’d understood what she meant. My friend worked around dragons every day, and had to be constantly on her toes to avoid being crushed or eaten by the much larger creatures. But she’d been at DRACIM for years and had always managed to come home in one piece, and I figured I’d do the same, especially since Relobu was sending us with a security team. And I hadn’t expected our hosts to actually make plans to cause us harm.

  Oh how wrong I’d been.

  “Myrna’s job sucks. Did you see how the Chinese dragon walked right up and threatened her? At his own trial, for God’s sake.”

  The lines on Richard’s forehead became a bit more pronounced. “So you remember Hian-puo’s trial. Can you remember what happened after that?”

  I frowned. I could picture the dragon lawyers making their last remarks to the ruling council, and the trial concluding just before dinner. I’d milled around the groups of formally dressed “party” attendees looking for Richard, but I’d quickly given up when I realized there was no way to see over the enormous dragons crammed into the room.

  When I’d finally caught sight of him in the hall talking with Emory, I’d called his name, but they were already halfway inside the elevator. That’s the point where I, angry, headed to Myrna’s—

  “Oh crap! A dragon busted into Myrna’s room! Oh my God, is she okay?” I only realized I’d been trying to climb from the bed when Richard pushed me back toward the pillows.

  “She’s fine, Carol. She’s fine. Calm down.”

  I let him help me settle back into the pillows, wincing when he got too close to my knee. While he fussed with my bedding, flashes of the attack ran through my head, right up until the moment the dragon had slammed me backwards into the wall. But interspersed in these memories were pictures of Richard and Myrna’s faces above me, tense and angry.

  “What were you and Myrna fighting about?” The question seemed silly, considering I’d just woken up in a hospital with no memory of being brought here, but for some reason my subconscious was screaming that the answer was important.

  But Richard didn’t answer. Instead he reached down to my bed railing and hit the nurse call button.

  “Yes?” The disembodied voice was young and buried under a heavy foreign accent. So I was still in Budapest. Good to know. At least I wasn’t suffering from amnesia. This trip had been my first—and last—trip to dragon lord Lady Adelaida’s Pearl of the Danube. I’d found international travel wasn’t to my liking.

  “She’s awake. Carol is awake.”
Taking his hand from the button, he smiled at me and ran a finger along my cheek. “Don’t worry about any of that right now. Let’s make sure you’re going to be okay.”

  Richard didn’t meet my gaze as he spoke. He was hiding something, but my head was throbbing and I admitted that I didn’t want to deal with anything heavy at the moment. So I changed the subject, which was harder to do than I thought it would be with my muzzy brain refusing to cooperate.

  I flicked my eyes to the soggy ceiling. “What kind of dump did you bring me to?” The hospital equipment looked new enough, but the stained ceiling, combined with the general smell of damp made me think this wasn’t exactly a state-of-the-art facility.

  As I was speaking, a nurse stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. Dressed in standard blue scrubs and tennis shoes with her hair tied into a high ponytail, she looked fifteen years old.

  It must be the middle of the night. They always stick the newbies on the night shift.

  Regardless of her age, her manner was totally professional as she wrapped my arm in a blood pressure cuff and checked the levels of the IV bags hanging from a hook beside my bed. Everything must have been fine, because she turned back to me with a forced smile.

  “You are awake. We were beginning to worry.” Her tone suggested otherwise.

  I probably should have found something other than the soggy ceiling to talk about, because she’d clearly taken offense.

  Only then did I process her words, and it suddenly occurred to me that I may have been out for a long while. “Could you tell me where I am? And what’s the date?”

  Richard, who’d stepped away from the bed at the nurse’s arrival, stepped back into my line of vision. “You’re at the Péterfy Sándor in Budapest. It’s a hospital.”

  I shot Richard an exasperated look. The monitor pretty much gave that one away.

  “We are a very good hospital.” The nurse’s expression was almost militant, as if she dared me to disagree with her. Yep. She’d definitely heard my “dump” comment.

  I was an idiot. It was like the restaurant rule, only more important. Instead of simply spitting into your food for bad customer behavior, hospital workers could unplug some pretty important machinery. Like the IV currently feeding me much-needed pain medications. I had a feeling that the dull headache I had was only the tip of the iceberg.

  The nurse was right. The Péterfy Sándor was one of the oldest hospitals in Budapest, and also one of the most well regarded. When I wasn’t being chased by dragons or puking my guts up in rental cars, I worked for an international advertising and publicity empire, CreaTV. I’d actually art-directed a spread for the facility, highlighting the fact that it had managed to survive all three World Wars as an active medical operation throughout. It had become one of Budapest’s national treasures and a source of national pride.

  And I’d just insulted it.

  “Of course. You’re right. I apologize for the insult. Can you tell me what day it is?” I gave her my best smile. Based on her sniff, I was far from being in her good graces, but the comment must have done something to appease her because she answered my question.

  “It is Thursday.”

  Thursday? The “party” we’d attended, the trial of Chinese dragon lord Hian-puo, had been on a Saturday. I turned my head to find Richard. “I’ve been out for five days?”

  His lips tightened into a thin line. “Carol, today is the 23rd. You’ve been unconscious for a week and a half.”

  The shock of his statement seemed to worsen the thumping in my skull. I raised a hand to inspect the wound on my head. But instead of the frizzy hair I expected to encounter, my fingers touched a not-so-small amount of gauze.

  Good Lord, that was a lot of gauze.

  The nurse frowned and captured my wrist before I managed to run my fingers around the entire expanse.

  “Do not touch. It needs to heal.” She eyed me closely, her hand holding firm, and waited until I nodded.

  “I want to see it.” I blinked and returned her stare, relaxing my arm to demonstrate my intent to follow her directions.

  Only then did she release my wrist and enter the attached bathroom.

  Returning with a small hand mirror, the nurse turned the glass toward my face.

  For a moment I didn’t recognize myself. And when I did, I fought a strange urge to cry. Bruises spread under both my eyes, so big and dark that I almost reached up to try and wipe them away. They looked drawn on, as if I were just another girl with ruined mascara, albeit mixed with a faint tinge of navy blue and purple eye shadow. The spot along my cheek where Richard had run his finger was similarly decorated, except that it had already started to heal, giving me that weird yellow-green tint under pale white skin.

  But the thing that had caused a catch in my heart was the huge surgical pad balanced high on the left side of my skull. It was bigger than my hand, and taped firmly to my head with copious amounts of tape. But it wasn’t the amount of adhesive that had me feeling dizzy with rage. When I looked back to Richard, I knew I was shooting daggers.

  “You let them shave my head!?”

  My shriek startled the nurse, and I was more than a little startled myself to see the mirror I’d been holding shatter against the far wall. Both she and Richard turned to stare at me as if I were a wild animal.

  Richard treated me accordingly, both of his hands palm out in a conciliatory gesture. “There was so much blood, they couldn’t be sure you didn’t have other wounds.”

  “I don’t care if my brains were leaking from my ears, Richard! You let them shave my head.” I knew it was stupid, and childish, to scream at Richard about something that likely saved my life, but I wasn’t exactly reasonable at the moment. I couldn’t help the tears welling in my eyes. I looked around to see if there was a tissue within reach, with no luck.

  In fact, my nurse had made a point to roll the room’s dinner cart a few feet away from my bed. She continued to watch me suspiciously, and I found myself suddenly annoyed at her presence.

  I took a deep breath and turned my head to look at her. “Did you need anything else?” I struggled to keep my voice even, but failed miserably.

  Her lips thinned as she shook her head and turned. Walking a large circle around the broken glass, she stalked out the door, every inch of her body telegraphing her affront at my attitude. With my luck, she was probably off to find a member of hospital security. Or a doctor from the psychiatric wing to come and evaluate the crazy American. I couldn’t dredge up enough energy to care.

  They’d cut my hair. My long, curly, red hair that I spent a fortune every six weeks to maintain. It had taken me years to get the length I wanted without the split ends. And now it was gone. Shaved close to my head just over my right ear, and hacked into uneven hanks of curls everywhere else.

  Richard murmured something about me being beautiful no matter what, but I didn’t believe him. I looked like a dress-up doll who’d fallen into the nefarious hands of a mean older brother. Combined with the bruises and bandages, I could barely even recognize my own face.

  I sniffled. “Where’s Myrna?” With Richard’s twitching and empty words, I wanted—I needed—someone here who would understand how I felt. Or at least someone who wouldn’t lie to me and pretend everything was okay when it wasn’t. Somewhere in the back of my mind I understood that it wasn’t just my hair that had me bothered, but that I’d lost control of just about everything in my life.

  Richard was quiet for a moment, as if he were weighing his words carefully. “I talked to Trian last week. A bomb went off in the Tulsa DRACIM offices, killing eleven dragons. Myrna’s back in Tulsa trying to get things cleaned up.”

  “Oh my goodness. That’s terrible. What about the humans?”

  “No humans were injured.”

  My eyes widened. Eleven dead dragons and no human casualties? Impossible. Unless... “The bomb. It was a biomatter bomb, wasn’t it? Just like the one Hian-puo tried to use on Lady Adelaida.”

  He
nodded. “Specifically formulated to affect only dragons. It didn’t cause a single human injury. But DRACIM is involved nonetheless.” Richard sounded frustrated.

  I’d assumed Myrna was still here in Budapest, and was a little hurt when she hadn’t been by to see me since I woke. But now I realized she had much bigger problems.

  “Do they know who’s responsible for the attack?”

  Richard walked to the window and jammed his hands into his pockets. “How much longer do you need to stay here? I’d like to leave as soon as you’re able.”

  His frequent changes of subject were giving me whiplash. “I don’t know. I just woke up.” My tone was more than a little petulant; it’s not like it was my fault a dragon had tossed me against a wall like a broken puppet. I’d expected a bit more coddling on his part before he started rushing me out the door. But here he was, only minutes after I’d woken from a freaking coma, acting like a husband waiting for his wife to put on her lipstick before heading out to church.

  Relobu probably needed him back in Tulsa and helping Myrna, so I understood his impatience. But I was bothered by the fact that he seemed to be blaming me for the delay.

  “It’s fine, Richard. If you need to get back to Tulsa, I understand.” I didn’t. Not really. But all his brooding and snapping made me feel guilty for keeping him here. “I’ll just call a taxi to take me back to the hotel for my things before I catch a flight back stateside.”

  At least I hoped I could do that. Commercial flights, especially to and from international locations, were rare. Flying was just too dangerous. In addition to the cost of fuel, salaries, and maintenance, airlines had to hire dragon guards to fly with them for protection from rogue or distracted dragons who might collide with them midair. Combining the cost of service with a severely low demand—there weren’t many people willing to take the risk of death-by-dragon—and the airlines were simply no longer cost effective.

  We’d originally flown to Europe by private charter and with a Relobu-supplied dragon escort. I would just hope that one of the dragon lord’s staff would be available to help me make similar arrangements.