The Fire Eater and Her Dragon: A Dragon Rider Urban Fantasy Novel (Setting Fires with Dragons Book 3)

by S. W. Clarke

  I could just be this man’s goddess. He could be my sin.

  At some point, Erik slid me off the counter and backed me down the center aisle of the bus. We fell into one of the bunk beds and he drew the curtain shut. And as everyone else slept—well, except for Nikolaj, but I hoped he was far enough away—we did exactly what I’d imagined more times than I could count since I’d met him.

  Yes, I had imagined it—lots. Every time he was near enough to smell or touch. Every time he stared at me for more than a second.

  How often is reality better than what you imagined? In my case, almost never.

  But this time …

  This time, it wasn’t just better. It was good enough we did it twice.

  And the second time, his lips over my eyelid, I could have sworn I heard Erik say a word I rarely heard, even from myself.

  It was my name. Patience.

  ↔

  Afterward, we lay entwined in the bunk and tried not to notice the others moving around the bus. Everyone definitely knew what we had done, and I … didn’t care. I just wanted a little piece of solitude, even if that meant pretending our curtain was a wall.

  It was too narrow to roll over in the bunk, and I was surprised by how much I preferred to keep my head on his shoulder. We didn’t speak for a time, and that was all right by me. His presence was enough.

  After a while, Erik lifted the whistle around my neck, rolling it between his fingers. “So this can call a dragon.”

  I sighed. “Only one dragon.”

  His free arm tightened around my shoulders. I’m here, he said without speaking. We’ll get through this.

  It was amazing how much he conveyed with touch.

  He brought the whistle to his lips. “May I?”

  “You can, but it’s broken.”

  He set it between his lips anyway, pressed air through the whistle. It let out a reedy sound, which wasn’t supposed to happen. “Huh.” He held it aloft again, inspecting it in the dim light. “I might be able to fix it. What’s it made out of?”

  “Percy’s eggshell.”

  I could practically feel his eyebrows go up. “Did you make this, Tara?”

  I snorted. “The only things I’m precise with are Thelma, Louise and that move I did with my tongue. I could never craft something like that whistle.”

  He laughed. “So who made it?”

  “Ferris.”

  “Your gnome manager, right?”

  I half-lifted my head. “Did I tell you that?”

  He met my eyes in the semidarkness, apology written on his face.

  “Oh,” I said. “Thanks to the World Army, you probably know more about me than I know about me.”

  “I had to know who I was dealing with,” he said. “It’s protocol.”

  I propped myself up on an elbow. “And do you know who you’re dealing with, Corporal?”

  His hand didn’t leave my back. Instead, his fingers began a soft stroking I didn’t want to end. “Tara Drake. Patience Schweinsteiger. A woman with unbreakable ovaries.”

  The compliment settled over me like a warm blanket—and then it was pierced through by one dagger of a thought.

  I ran away. I abandoned my sister.

  He doesn’t know.

  I tensed up, staring down at him. How quickly contentedness could be overrun by shame. It crashed into me and dragged away all my good feelings with it.

  All at once, this bunk felt like a coffin. I could hardly breathe.

  “Tara?” he said as I began scrambling to pull the curtain aside. “Where are you going?”

  “Don’t want to get a UTI,” I said automatically, grabbing at bits of my clothing as I slid out into the aisle. My bare feet touched the wood, and I felt the bus humming beneath me. Out here it was cold. Out here the lights were harsh.

  I sifted through my clothes and pulled on my panties and shirt. Before Erik could say anything else, I booked it for the bathroom. When I got inside, I pressed the door shut behind me and locked it.

  This was the first time I’d slept with anyone since I’d learned the truth about what happened to my sister. And I didn’t think I would feel so … ashamed. So vulnerable.

  I had resolved to be better. To do what was right for Percy.

  But I felt like the worn-out toy that Frank had described, trying to pretend she was functional. All this time I’d thought I was avenging three murders, and now that the killer was dead and the truth had come out …

  Everything was confusing. Problematic. Complicated.

  Way to cap off a great time, girl.

  My face lowered until I spotted myself in the mirror. The bus jostled just as I did, and I caught a glimpse of myself without a stitch of makeup, my hair wild around my head.

  “Get it together, Tara,” I said to my reflection, sectioning my hair into thirds. This was how my mother had always done my hair—in a tight braid, perfect for circus work. I worked slowly, taking much longer than normal.

  In the fifteen minutes I spent in the bathroom, I shoved back the shame. The self-pity. The rumination. I didn’t have time for self-pity and reflection. I didn’t have time to figure out if I was a good seed or a bad one.

  Right now, I had a job to do. And I wouldn’t stop until it was done.

  I was going to protect that dragon.

  As I finished my braid, a soft knock came at the door. “Tara?”

  Erik.

  I lowered my hands. “Yeah?”

  “Can we talk?”

  Those three words never meant anything good. But if he wasn’t even waiting until I’d gotten out of the bathroom, that was worse.

  So I stalled. “I’m about to take a shower.”

  “It won’t take long.”

  When I opened the door, Erik had one hand pressed to the frame and his face angled down. He clutched that damned cellphone in his other hand. His eyes lifted, and I could see it all written there.

  Erik gave a sigh. “I’m sorry, Tara.”

  A sudden brittleness gripped me. “Don’t apologize to me.”

  He glanced up. “Why?”

  “You’re getting ready to tell me something bad. Just say it.” Then, before he could actually say it, “You’re going.”

  His eyes widened a degree. “Yes, but it has nothing to do with you.”

  I knew it. I glanced down at the phone. “Do I get a chance to offer a rebuttal?”

  “I’ve already asked Nikolaj to drop me off at the next exit.”

  I swallowed. I could do this a lot of ways, seeing as how he was, as they say, hitting it and quitting it.

  I could be angry. I could grovel. I could refuse to talk.

  But none of those ways felt right, because I knew Erik wasn’t lying when he said this had nothing to do with me. It wasn’t about me—it was about his job and Landon Falls. And somehow that made it worse.

  Because we’d been great together, and now he was going for reasons that had nothing to do with our chemistry or my personal problems. Well, maybe a little bit to do with me, I thought with a tiny cringe at the way I’d talked to his commanding officer on the phone.

  Erik’s hand came to my cheek. “I have to go. This isn’t like playing hooky on a nine-to-five job—they’ll hunt me down and put me in jail.”

  I lifted my eyes. “I didn’t argue.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  I guess I had … with my body. The expression on my face. The Don’t do it vibe I sent out with all my two-souled body.

  I sighed. “You could do worse than sticking with us.”

  I wasn’t exactly groveling, but this was about as close as I’d ever gotten. The inexplicable nature of Tara Drake: first you run to the bathroom to get away from your lover, and then you’re asking for him to stay.

  “You’re right,” Erik said. “I’d like nothing more than to disappear into that hunt with you for a while. But I’ve been on search-and-retrieve missions, Tara, and people in my position who go AWOL … only one in three of us actually get to see
the inside of a cell.”

  My eyebrow rose. He was kind of a hotshot, then.

  “Given my proximity to Valdis and Lust,” he went on, “if I don’t go in, they’ll think I’ve been turned.”

  So that was it. Argument delivered, signed and sealed. What else could I say? This was life, and Erik had a job. He had responsibilities. He had priorities.

  “Well”—I swiped a hand down my body—“I’ll at least put on pants to see you off.”

  Chapter 27

  Nikolaj stopped the bus at a nondescript town in the middle of Tennessee. When Erik and I climbed off, we were standing in the middle of a McD’s parking lot.

  I squinted at the golden arches. “This is the army pickup point, huh?”

  Erik had a duffel bag over his shoulder. “Anywhere’s an army pickup point.”

  For a guy like you, I suppose. Then, When did I get so starstruck?

  “Well, Corporal …” I began.

  Erik turned to me. “Will you let me borrow your whistle?”

  My hand went automatically to the chain at my neck. “Have you got a dragon I don’t know about?”

  “I can fix it.”

  I tilted my head. “You may be good at many things, but this whistle is made out of a dragon’s eggshell. I don’t see how.”

  His hand lifted, palm open to the air. “Do you trust me?”

  Did I trust him? That wasn’t a question I’d ever really asked myself—not directly.

  I hardly knew him. Was his real name even Erik? Did he have a wife and kids he hadn’t told me about? All I really knew was he was born in Cincinnati—according to him.

  And I knew he’d saved me—twice. The first time, up on that roof in New York City. The second time, he’d taken dragonfire burns for me.

  My father used to say words are pretty, and actions are real.

  I shrugged a shoulder like it was an offhand question, even though it wasn’t. Not at all. “Sure.”

  And that decided it. I reached into my shirt, pulled out the broken whistle and lifted it up over my head. When I set both whistle and chain into his palm, his fingers closed over it.

  “If you lose that, I’ll have to come and find you,” I said in a low, lethal way. “You probably won’t see the inside of a cell.”

  He half-smiled. “I won’t lose it.”

  “How will you get it back to me, anyway? Does the World Army do a courier service?”

  “I can get it to you,” was all he said.

  I glanced around us, as though this McD’s encompassed the largeness and obscurity of the country. “You don’t even know where I’m going to be. I don’t even know where I’m going to be.”

  “I’ll get it to you,” he said, folding the whistle into his jacket pocket. “I can’t tell you how—that’s an army secret. Just make sure you have my watch on you.”

  I lifted my wrist, extending it outside the jacket until the World Army watch came visible. “You mean your tracking device. And what if I need to get in touch with you?”

  He set gentle fingers on my wrist, angling the watch face toward him. I waited as he manipulated it. “I’ve given you a number. You have a problem, you dial it.”

  I turned the watch toward me. “Erik, this is literally 0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 and then the pound sign—twice. This is the kind of number an idiot would dial.”

  “I’ll be on the receiving end,” he said. “If you call it, I’ll help you.”

  I made a face at him. “A child could accidentally call this number.”

  “We’ve done studies on this, and no one accidentally dials this number. The statistical chance is 1 in 500 million.”

  “Box of frogs,” I sighed. “I never thought I would fall for a nerd. Especially a Norwegian one.”

  He snorted. Then he stepped closer, until his body touched mine. “Do you know what your file says, Tara? I read it before I ever met you.”

  I was surprised by his closeness. I didn’t step away. “That I’m an ENTJ?”

  “It says you’re a ‘vigilante,’ ” he said. “And I didn’t believe it. Not really. Maybe you were a solo actor, sure, and a wannabe vigilante, but a woman with a pair of whips and a dragon a ‘vigiliante?’ No.”

  Unexpected embarrassment flickered through me, and my eyelids fluttered as I forced myself to meet his eyes. “So you thought I was a joke.”

  He gave a little laugh. “Once, maybe. Now I know you’re the real thing.” He stepped closer. “Listen to me, Tara.”

  The haze of my self-consciousness cleared, and I focused on him. “I’m listening.”

  “You don’t need a dragon.”

  “What?”

  “You think you need that dragon to face the world. You don’t. You’ve got everything to hold your own, right here.”

  When his hand fell over my breastbone, I sucked in air. Of all we’d shared this morning, that felt like the most intimate gesture of all.

  And then he was kissing me, and the moment lasted both longer and a much, much shorter time than I could have anticipated. Because by the time our lips separated, a dark-green Hummer had already pulled into the parking lot.

  Erik adjusted the strap of his duffel—a universal sign of departure. “That’s me.”

  And I …

  I was rooted to the spot.

  As he turned, began walking away, I called out, “Tell me something about you.”

  He glanced over his shoulder, his face partially obscured by the duffel. I could only see one of his eyes. “I’m terrified of heights.”

  I snorted, amusement flooding through me in the manic, adrenalized way it tended to do in moments like these, when people you wanted to stay were leaving and you didn’t know when you would see them again.

  Erik was afraid of heights.

  It seemed so ridiculous.

  It seemed so real.

  And here I was, a dragonrider.

  “Be safe, Tara Drake,” he said as he pulled open the door of the Hummer. Inside, a man in sunglasses and a buzzcut scrutinized me.

  I was the vigilante. I was the gal with two whips and a dragon.

  I raised a hand, taking one step back, then another. “You know me,” I called out. “I aim for safety first.”

  And I watched the door close. I stood beside the bus while the Hummer pulled out of the parking lot and disappeared down the road. I did all these things knowing how I looked, and not minding.

  I knew, even as I stood there, Erik had doomed me just like Seleema had done to Frank. I’d become one of those lovers who stood and watched, even when they couldn’t see the other person anymore.

  Chapter 28

  Erik was gone.

  You wouldn’t expect Tara Drake to be sitting at the kitchen table, staring out the window, tracing one idle finger over the wooden tabletop in the bus as we passed through West Virginia.

  You’d be wrong.

  “Erik’s an attentive lover,” Mariana murmured in my head, jolting me out of my reverie.

  “Really?” I shot back. “You’re worse than a peeping Tom. You’re a …”

  “Gawking Gloria?” Mariana offered.

  I almost laughed, but stifled it back. Mariana’s not funny, GoneGodDamn it. If she was funny, then I’d start liking her. And I didn’t want to start liking her, for obvious reasons.

  Then, because I appreciated talking about Erik with someone, “He is an Army guy, after all.”

  I sensed her smile. She was about to respond when Frank slid into the booth across from me.

  “What’s that symbol?” he asked.

  I jerked my head around, lifting my chin from my forlorn hand. “What symbol?”

  He traced over the tabletop, imitating me. “This.”

  “Oh.” I removed my hand, set it in my lap. “I don’t know. I wasn’t doing it consciously.”

  “Looked like a heart to me.”

  I fixed him with my most severe look. “I do not trace hearts, Franklin.”

  He raised both palms. “My bad.”
/>
  I slumped back, all the air sighing out of my lungs as I did. “Sorry. I’m just worried about Percy.”

  “Believe me, I get it.” He went silent, and we both stared out the window into the green alongside the highway. “Is there anything I can do?”

  I wasn’t used to guys like Frank, asking me how to make things better. No wonder he could make a long-term relationship work.

  So his question caught me off guard, and I just shrugged.

  And instead of leaving, Frank and I just sat in silence and kept staring out the window together. Even though he didn’t know it, he was actually doing something for me.

  He was there, not pushing me. Just being. Sometimes that was what you needed.

  “Hey,” I said after a while. My finger rose to the window, touching it. “Did you see that sign?”

  “Which one?”

  “For the largest teapot in the world.”

  “Sure, I saw it.”

  I stared out, remembering something Percy had said to me long ago. As his words came back, I had to hold in my emotion.

  Frank leaned forward, catching on at once. “What is it?”

  I kept looking out the window, anticipation growing in me as we neared the turnoff. “Once, when Percy and I were talking about our dreams, he said he wanted to see the world’s largest teapot. He had one of those books listing weird roadside attractions, and he read it from cover-to-cover as kids do, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Frank said. “I know.”

  “And I promised …” I broke off. I couldn’t finish the sentence; I hadn’t ever taken him to see the teapot, or any of the other places he’d told me he wanted to see.

  I’d kept promising and promising, and they were all hollow.

  All along, I’d just dragged him on my stupid quest for justice. We’d gone from place to place, and it had always been about the Scarred. About Valdis.

  About me.

  How had I never realized how selfish I’d been?

  “Tara,” Frank said softly. “Do you want to stop at the teapot?”

  I refocused on him. “What?”

  He leaned forward another degree. “We can stop. You can take a picture and show it to Percy when we see him.”