That was putting it cynically, of course.
“Can we see them?” I asked Adelaide, crossing my arms to hold in my frustration.
It worked. I was suddenly calm.
Sort of.
Adelaide sighed audibly and I knew that we were meant to hear it. She marched down the middle of the parking garage area. Lights flicked on as we moved deeper into the basement. We passed the Sprinter van that I used to take out with Scott. I hadn’t used it since Hank came aboard and became my partner. I wasn’t sure I’d trust sleeping in that machine with just Hank, at this point. I’d probably wake up wrapped in his arms with no memory of how I’d landed myself in that position.
We passed the El Camino and the 70s restored Camaro. A lot of the vehicles were supposedly for undercover stuff, or for Adelaide’s fun. She restored them, on the Flameheart’s dime and it was always for “future undercover gigs,” which never actually cropped up. We hardly ever went undercover. I didn’t even remember the last time someone had.
“Here’s the Mini Cooper,” Adelaide said, stopping in front of it and inspecting her nails while Vivian walked around it, looking the car over.
It was bright orange, with a black convertible top. It looked fun, and I figured a teenager would get a kick out of it. But Vivian had kept her cards close to her chest.
When she finished her inspection, Adelaide continued on, leading us further into the garage, until we came to a moped. I’d secretly hoped that Adelaide would have gotten an ugly, cheapo moped, but it turned out to be some kind of Italian brand in a robin’s egg blue that made me whistle softly.
Vivian’s face lit up and she strutted around the little vehicle, her eyes glowing.
“What’ll it be, kiddo?” Adelaide asked, almost like she was interested.
“This?”
Adelaide frowned. “You sound like you don’t know.”
“No, I do know. This is what I want. But I’m still not sure you’ll let me drive it.”
“Captain Fua will be doubling the insurance on it, I’m sure, otherwise I wouldn’t let Dred loan our vehicles out to a runaway.”
Vivian’s shoulder’s twitched when Adelaide coldly said the words. I bit back a response before realizing that was dumb. Vivian was a kid. Adelaide, an adult, and furthermore, Vivian was new. Everyone else had been cool to her, I wasn’t going to let this happen on my watch.
“Runaway shrunaway. We’re all trying to outpace the ghosts of our past. Right?”
“Running away from home isn’t running from ghosts from the past,” Adelaide pointed out.
“Not in your case, Adelaide, you’re running toward some future you hope is better than the present.”
“What?” A scowl took over Adelaide’s normally aloof expression.
“Look, you mess with the kid, you get my horns. She’s more than whatever story you think you know about her.”
“Chill out, Dred. It was just an observation.”
“Make your observations elsewhere. Try a group therapy session or AA. Lord knows you could use it,” I said, dryly. It was hard to stop once I’d started. “Thanks. The keys are on the moped?”
“In the ignition. I suggest taking it out to the parking lot now, so it’s ready when you’re ready to head home.” Adelaide had already begun to walk off, swaying her hips like she was on display. Her affectations really bothered me. Be a hard ass mechanic chick, like Watts in Some Kind of Wonderful. But don’t overcompensate with ass-and-curve-hugging clothes and then over-exaggerate your goddamn walk.
Adelaide was an Achilles heel for me when it came to coworkers at the fortress. I would have said arch-nemesis, except that I was pretty sure we were on the same team.
“Let’s ride it out of here. You drive. I’ll ride. And we’ll park it next to Hank’s ridiculous car.”
“Thanks, Dred,” Vivian muttered as she straddled the moped. I got on behind her and gripped the seat under my thighs.
“For what?”
“You know what,” she answered quietly. “That lady was a royal bitch.”
“Royal. Honestly, I figured if anyone around here was going to give you trouble, it was going to be Adelaide. If I had an enemy in the ranks, it’d be her. But she’s good once you get to know her,” I said, trying to sound hopeful and maybe a bit team-oriented about my work.
“Or so I’ve heard.” I said, immediately giving up. I wasn’t sure she was good once you got to know her. That hadn’t happened yet for me.
30
I left Vivian with Dorothy for a while because I had a date with our library.
When I dropped her off, Dorothy shot me a look of understanding, that of a woman who’d raised four kids and longed for grandkids, but would take anything at this point, including a crabby runaway teen born into riches.
“I’ll be back to get you in a while. You can follow me home on the moped—which, by the way,” I said, pointing at Vivian, “will be needing a name.”
Vivian rolled her eyes at me.
“She’ll be fine. We’re going to get into lots of mischief together,” Dorothy said.
As Dorothy took over the care of Vivian, I was grateful that the older woman was so keen to show her the ropes. Though the kid now had access to the moped, I still didn’t feel right about saying “take off on that moped and have a good time.” I was almost certain I wouldn’t see her again and then I’d be on the hook for the moped.
And who knew what might happen to Vivian.
And then, if that happened, no one would ever trust me again. And who could blame them in a situation like that? Vivian, was, after all, the person I’d insisted on bringing aboard. I put my reputation on the line for her.
I was indebted to Dorothy for giving the kid the 411, but the idea was that Vivian would help in all the different areas of the fortress, and the best person to show her that aside from each respective area manager was Dorothy, who knew the inner workings of the fortress from top to bottom.
Or Lucy, I guess, but she was a wild card and totally not safe to be alone with Vivian at the moment.
Hank and Captain Fua both sent me text messages as I left Dorothy’s desk and wandered through the haphazard hallways of the old church. I ignored them. I needed some time alone and I had a list of things I wanted to look up before ten fires cropped up that I couldn’t ignore.
I went to the back stairs and hiked up them to another narrow hallway that felt like it was closing in on me. Sunlight spilled in through one window at the end of the hall, but otherwise it was fairly dim in the corridor. The floors creaked and flexed beneath my feet. I turned and went directly into the heart of the upper floor and stopped at the heavy wooden door. This room, like all the secure rooms, was locked.
Lucy let me in.
“Dred, I haven’t seen you in here for a while,” Lucy said.
The door opened
“Been busy. How’ve you been, sweet Lucy?” The lights flickered, and I knew she was laughing. She loved it when I called her terms of endearment. If I thought too hard about that, it pulverized my heart. God. A tiny girl. Dying before she’d even lived. In some kind of twisted house of worship accident, no less. She was stunted, still the child that had looked hopefully out at the world, trusting it to catch her.
“There’s a new person here,” Lucy said. “I don’t like her.”
“That makes sense. But, you know, she’s a kid sort of like you, and all alone. She needs us. I think you’ll get used to her if you give her a chance.”
The lights went out. I’d said the wrong thing. I groped in the utter blackness for something to hold onto to avoid falling or colliding with a bookcase. My hand crashed into the spines of books and then I found the shelf below them and held on.
“We’re a family, Lucy. Having more friends means that if something happens to one of us, there’s more of us to help. We’ve got each other’s backs.”
I wasn’t sure if she understood the idiom. It came out before I could stop it.
The lights came b
ack on.
“What does that mean?”
“Have each other’s backs? It means that there’s someone looking out for you and making sure no bad guys sneak up on you from behind. You have a friend watching you. Protecting you.”
“Like I do for you?”
“Yes, little one. Exactly like that!”
I strolled through the shelves as I spoke and searched the spines, looking for a few specific titles, found them, and then carried them to the large oak table and sat down.
Concentration was imperative, so I was grateful that Lucy grew quiet and I could search through the books looking for a connection between a clan of fire dragons and demons.
At the surface, I could really only see one connection, but perhaps there was more that I was missing.
Maybe there was an unknown history that they shared. Maybe there was a genetic link that no one ever discussed because it would seem like heresy to suggest that demons and dragons were related. I didn’t know, but I had to search to see what I might be missing.
I turned the pages of John Milton’s Secret History of Dragons seeking words that popped out at me.
Demons had many subsets. I thought about them as I turned the pages of the dragon book, considering what I already knew about the creatures. Like many supernaturals, they had branches within their species that forked off into types. Most demons drew their power from fire, but there were some whose power came from the void. Void demons. On top of that, as demons grew, they tattooed or burned runes into their bodies to give them a specific affinity to another element such as earth, air, or water.
The demon at Lagoon was a fire demon. Void demons were much more powerful and dangerous. Most of their lives they spent existing in the darkness of the Netherworld. When they came to the terrestrial sphere, it was to carry out horrifying things—kidnapping babies, slaughtering entire families, those sorts of things—and they were one of the supernaturals that we tended to throw all our firepower at without hesitation.
When we saw them, that is, which wasn’t very often. I had never run into one, myself.
Dragons had similar traits to fire demons, however, and as the Secret History pointed out, there were dragons for each of the four elements. Whatever element the dragon was tied to, changed their appearance and influenced where they lived and how they interacted with other creatures.
Milton’s point, which I eventually unearthed in chapter fifteen, was that beyond the various subsets of dragons and demons, many experts seemed to see too many parallels in dragons and demons for them to not have a common ancestor. He also pointed out that many of those experts saw proof of this in religious texts, both canon and apocryphal.
Lights seemed to be blinking on in my head as I turned the pages and continued to read. I finished skimming the Secret History and opened Dracans aef se Middangeard. It was written in Old English, but that was one of the languages I had trained in as part of my job. I felt a breakthrough bearing down me. Missing pieces seemed to float into the air before me and land square in my mind in flashes of brilliance. I could almost feel the revelation I needed as it began to open up to me.
“Dred. There you are,” a voice said, interrupting the flow and shattering the silence.
I jumped, then cringed. “Never sneak up on me like that again,” I said, putting my 1911 back in its holster.
“Jesus Christ. Touchy.” He sat down opposite me. “What are you doing?”
“Not killing you.”
“Thanks.” His voice was dry.
“Any time.”
He let out a hefty sigh. “Sorry.”
“For what? Spell it out. Come on, don’t be shy.” I could be brutal when I wanted to be.
And Hank could ignore it like a pro. “Lucy told me you were here. That’s the first time she’s spoken to me.” He smiled, his teeth so brilliant they almost lit up the relatively dim the room.
“That traitor. Well, now I know who to blame. I was this close to a breakthrough.” I demonstrated with my finger and thumb.
“On what?” He pursed his lips. “I felt like Lucy speaking to me was a breakthrough.”
“The demon and dragon. The source of all our recent problems.”
“‘The Demon and the Dragon.’ I like that. sounds like a fun bar in a fantasy novel.”
“It does, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”
“I know.”
“And so when you appeared in here, almost like you can walk through walls, every idea within reach in my mind vanished.”
He flinched. I knew it bothered him at that point.
“Ah, well, look, Dred, don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“It’s always a sex joke with you, Hank, isn’t it?” I was annoyed, and he knew it, and I knew it, and the only way out was to let it go and make it funny.
“Hmmm, yes, well, you know. There’s nothing funnier than sex. Perspective, Dred. Things are pretty good so far. The kid is safe. She’s got a way to get around with the moped, so you’re not tied down.”
“Whoa. Wait.” My hand shot up as though to stop him. “Are you doing some kind of sexist thing with me? Because I’m a woman, she’s my responsibility?”
“Not at all,” he shifted in his seat. “Did you want her to come stay at my house?”
“Not just no: hell no.”
“Wow, I’m—I think I’m offended by that response, Dred.” He ran his fingers through his hair.
“Look, it just doesn’t look right. If she was a boy, fine. But she’s not even legal yet and the last thing I want is for her to get a crush on you and start batting her long eyelashes at you.”
“You think she’d get a crush on me?” Hank smiled, faintly.
I pressed my back into my chair and shook my head, too shocked to be appalled. “Don’t be disgusting.”
“I’m not. I’m flattered. I’m honored. Honored to be crush-worthy.”
I sighed. This was going off the rails. “I one hundred percent did not say you’re crush-worthy.”
“But I am. Right?” He leaned back in his seat and stretched his arms above his head like he was settling in. “Isn’t that the implication?”
“Less that and more that teen girls are kind of silly. Kind of dumb. They’ll get crushes on anything. Especially a grown man who treats them with kindness.”
“Interesting. These teen girls you’re talking about sound a lot like teen boys.”
“They are. Only teen boys somehow take their stupidity to heights unattainable by teen girls. In any case. Hank, back on topic. Get to the point.” I gestured at him. “Your point. What was your point before we got off on this tangent?”
He sat forward in his chair and braced his elbows on the table, furrowing his brow at the open books scattered across it. “Ah, yes, I was saying. I feel like we got this thing wrapped up. The dragon is safe. The girl is too.”
“But what about the demon?”
“It vanished. Things should be fine.”
“That’s the problem: it vanished. There’s still the Fabric to consider. I’m supposed to be doing something with it. Protecting it. I don’t know. Something like that.”
“Fabric, shmabric.” He waved a hand and took off his sunglasses.
His eyes in the yellow hued sconce-lighting of the library looked particularly inviting. We stared at each other. I noticed, just then, that he had this stupidly alluring thing about his eyes—I guess some people would say he had bedroom eyes. My mom, for example, or Harlequin romances from the 80s, where the love-interest’s eyelids were always at half-mast. The shadows hit Hank’s bourbon eyes, and for once, I realized I should be grateful he insisted on wearing his aviators all the time.
Because his eyes were doing me in and I was helpless.
I turned to the book I’d been studying and cleared my throat.
“We need to work on your attitude about the Fabric, Hank. It’s going to get us in trouble.”
“Trouble’s my middle name. And ‘we need to’ makes it sound
like you’re my teacher and I’m in trouble. But we both know I’m the expert in trouble, here.”
“That attitude is also going to get us in trouble.” I turned a page in the book to pretend like I was reading. I was having trouble concentrating.
“Look Dred, I can’t take the same things serious that you seem to think are serious and imperative.”
He was trying to make me look like the uptight one, when we both knew that his being from New York automatically made him the uptight one. As a Westerner, I was chill. I could almost live on a beach and surf all day, that’s how chill I was.
“The Fabric isn’t my invention. And it’s not my job to dismiss it as unimportant. I saw it. It was there. And the Fates gave me a task. I already had suspicious about it and about how our actions influenced it. And now, my job is to help uphold it, otherwise all hell breaks loose.”
I looked at him again.
We both stared at each other. I could hear what I’d just said echoing around the room.
“The Fabric is tied to hell?” He finally asked.
“I didn’t mean it literally.”
“But… is it?”
“It might be.”
“Do you think there could be a connection?”
“Between what?” After I said it, I saw what he meant. Could the shit going on with the demon and the dragon be related to hell in some way?
“Dred, we don’t know who that guy was. The Hawaiian shirt guy.”
“Not yet, no, but we will. I’m working on it.” Did I hear him right? “Hold up, Hank, are you saying you don’t think things are all cool now?”
“I think they are,” he said, sounding flippant, but then he got serious. “But I think we should look into some of these ideas. The kid is safe. The dragon. The demon? Who knows. But we’ve got time to sort through this. Nothing’s gotten worse, so far. I think we’re in the clear.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe I needed to chill a bit and cut loose. Things had been so tense for a few days. The problem was that I wasn’t sure I remembered how to relax.
Flames to Free (Dred Dixon Chronicles Book 1) Page 16
