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

by S. W. Clarke

  I knew exactly what Frank was doing. He was trying to give me hope, to give me purpose. And even though I knew what he was up to, I was damned grateful.

  “OK,” I said, swiping one hand over my eyes. “That’s a good idea.”

  “Hey Nikolaj,” Frank called up front. “Will you pull off here?”

  “Pull off where?” Nikolaj called back.

  “At the teapot. The roadside attraction coming up.”

  “The teapot?” Nikolaj repeated, more expression than I’d ever heard in his voice. “What for?”

  “We’re going to take a picture of it,” Frank said. “And it’ll give us a chance to stretch our legs.”

  “What about New York?” Nikolaj said. “Tara?”

  He was asking me because I’d been so hellbent on getting to NYC as fast as this bus would take us. And while some part of me was as hellbent as ever, another part of me recognized Frank’s wisdom.

  We needed this. I needed this.

  “It won’t take long,” I called up to the front. “Just a brief layover.”

  “All right,” Nikolaj said, doubt streaked through his voice. The bus decelerated as we took the exit and drove into Chester, West Virginia. We followed signs to a cluster of kitschy shops all centered around a sign advertising The World’s Biggest Teapot.

  And there was something else, too.

  “Oh Frank.” I swiped my hands together. “Oh Frankie boy, you’re in for a treat.”

  He eyed me. “A big teapot?”

  I pointed through the window as we came into the parking lot, sudden delight in my face. Outside, a neon OPEN sign glittered in a picture window, surrounded by promises of cappuccinos, espressos and lattes. If sex wasn’t the antidote to the confusion inside my head, surely caffeine would do it. “Even better. Happy Mug.”

  “Happy Mug?” Frank repeated.

  “I don’t care what kind of luxury grounds Valdis may have stored away on this bus,” I said as I touched the glass with my finger. “Nothing beats Happy Mug.”

  ↔

  Despite all my hype, only Frank and I wanted Happy Mug. Grunt and Nikolaj opted for the nearby diner, outside which we planned to reconvene in thirty minutes.

  The two of us came in, the door jingling, to a single teenage barista texting with his elbows on the counter and a wall-mounted TV broadcasting a talk show to an audience of zero.

  “Happy Mug, huh?” Frank said, setting his fingers on one of the two empty tables. His eyes fell on the old, printed menu on the wall behind the bar. I knew he could smell the burnt grounds.

  I shrugged. “I think it’s supposed to be tongue in cheek.”

  “It’s not,” the barista said without looking up from his phone.

  I gestured at the barista as though to say, Well, he’s the one who’d know. “Anyway, this place was around when I was a kid. One of a kind.”

  “We’re a chain,” the barista said. “All over the South.”

  I cleared my throat, leading Frank up to the counter. “Wait until you try their coffee. I’d absolutely try the Texas pecan.”

  The barista finally lowered his phone. Dead eyes met mine. “We’re out of Texas pecan.”

  I would not become the victim of this disaffected high school sophomore. This was Happy Mug, GoneGodDamn it. I set an obvious finger to my chin as I studied the menu. “How about praline?”

  “We’re brewing a batch right now.”

  “But you don’t have any ready.”

  He just looked at me as though the question didn’t need asking.

  I kept my performer’s unflappable face on. “And how long will that take?”

  The barista leaned back, glancing toward the back room as though he could divine the answer by looking at the closed door. “About forty-five minutes.”

  All right, kid. Way to absolutely undo all my Texas street cred. I lowered my chin, dropping my elbows onto the counter.

  It was sticky.

  I straightened, wiping at my jacket’s arms. “What do you have ready, then?”

  “Dark brew.”

  I glanced at Frank. “Want dark brew?”

  He half-smiled at me. “Do I have a choice?”

  “I don’t think you do.”

  “Regular dark brew,” I said to the barista, who looked partially aggrieved, repositioned his hat on his head and got to work.

  I leaned over to whisper to Frank about Texan congeniality. Before I started in, a new voice came over the TV behind us.

  I paused with my hand on his shoulder. My fingers gripped harder, and he and I met eyes for a second before we both turned around to stare at the TV. Not quickly … slowly. With reluctance.

  I sucked in air as her voice syruped into the air around us, that beautiful brunette face moving in high-definition above us.

  Lust.

  "We deadly sins have a bad rap,” she purred, one flawless leg crossing over the other beneath her floral dress. At least she’d worn clothes. "I want to give mortals and Others alike a gift. In an age that's largely filled with misery, I want the world to have a little smile on their face.”

  I pointed at the TV. “What show is that?” I said to the barista.

  “It’s Good Morning GoneGod World,” Frank said. “Must be a rerun, since it’s not morning.”

  Which meant she’d been on the show much earlier today. How had she already gotten onto a TV show? She’d just flown away on Percy’s back twelve hours ago, for GoneGods’ sake.

  “Where do they record this?” I asked Frank.

  He pulled out his phone. “I’ll look.”

  “New York,” the barista said with keen disinterest from behind us.

  So she had already gotten as far as New York. Had she flown Percy all that way? Vicious anger flared in me at the thought of her flying Percy that hard and fast.

  Out of curiosity, I leaned over the counter toward the barista. “Hey, do you recognize that woman on TV?”

  The barista readjusted his cap again as his eyes swiveled up to the television, Lust’s voice still oozing out of it. As he did, his eyes widened. He held the half-full cup of joe in one hand as his lips parted.

  I waited, but he didn’t answer. Finally I waved my hand in front of his face. “Hey, kid.”

  He blinked back to the present, gaze lowering to me with renewed disappointment over my presence in the coffee shop. “What?”

  So it was as I thought.

  This was bad.

  Lust’s power wasn’t just in-person. Just the sight of her through a screen had rendered one teenage boy a living statue.

  He stood, rapt, as Lust giggled at something the host said. And then, just like that, the interview was over.

  “Keep an eye out for me,” Lust said as her farewell. “I’ve got a big surprise coming real soon.”

  Chapter 29

  Frank and I carried our coffees out into the parking lot, headed toward the entrance to the teapot exhibit.

  Lust’s voice still purred in my brain. I hated the thought that Percy was with her. I hated not knowing how she was treating him, whether he was safe.

  Lust was preparing something to make us smile.

  Something to make us smile. A gift.

  What was she up to?

  As I tried to puzzle it together, Mariana’s voice echoed through my head. “Remember what she said last night?”

  I scowled. “Who said you could talk to me when I’m busy thinking?”

  “I did,” Mariana said without any terseness. “Because I’m you.”

  “You’re not me,” I shot back. “You’re a past incarnation of me with a whole different set of experiences and bad choices. And I consider it a point in my favor that I haven’t yet married—or been tempted to marry—a mass murderer.”

  Mariana sighed. “Lust said, ‘You will see Ariadne again when the orb falls from the sky and the world looks on. And you will smile.’ ”

  Actually, I had completely forgotten about that. Chalk it up to a heady mixture of agony and grief
.

  “What does that mean?” I asked her.

  “I wish I knew,” was her only reply.

  Great. Even when there were two of me, I still couldn’t figure out what one mortal sin was up to.

  Whatever it was, it was big. And I’d seen the effect she’d had on the barista—he’d been transfixed by her voice. And that was just the airwave transmission of her voice.

  I thought about calling Erik to tell him what I’d heard on the radio, but I didn’t think he’d be too happy about me calling him on the number he’d given me in case of an emergency. If Lust was a major player on the World Army’s board, then he probably already knew.

  As we walked, Frank gripped his cardboard cup so hard it was practically buckling under his fingers. He stared straight ahead, no doubt thinking of Seleema.

  In this moment, he was as helpless as I was to rescue anyone. And I suspected he wasn’t keen to dissect Lust’s intent, because he wasn’t already doing it outloud.

  So I would wait until we were back on the bus. Until after we’d seen the teapot.

  “Hey, Frank.” I nudged his arm. “You gonna take a sip before it gets cold?”

  “Oh. Yeah, I just … couldn’t stop thinking of her.”

  “I know what you mean. He’s always on my mind, too.”

  Of course, we both knew who the other meant.

  I waited for Frank to drink, watching him with keen eyes. When he finally did, he just lowered the cup and kept walking.

  “Well?” I said. “I’ve gotta know.”

  “Tara, come on.” He held out the coffee cup, gesturing to it like it spoke for itself. “I’m a New Yorker.”

  “That bad, huh?” I took a sip myself. The brew was lukewarm and so acidic even my tastebuds puckered. “Blech. More like Nasty Mug.”

  We approached the booth where we could buy tickets to see the teapot. The sign above the window read: $10 per adult. Cash only.

  “Ten dollars?” I laughed, shaking my head. “No. This is highway robbery—literally.” I indicated the busy interstate behind us.

  Frank pulled out his wallet, rifled through it. “I’ve only got a five.” He glanced up at the window, where a teenage girl stood surveying us from under mostly lidded eyes. What was it with the kids around here? “You don’t take credit cards?”

  She pointed up at the sign; even her finger didn’t have the willpower to straighten fully. “Cash.”

  A strange feeling had entered me. Where a few seconds before I’d wanted to turn around on principle, the thought of taking a photo of this teapot began to feel inextricably linked with seeing Percy again.

  As though if I never took the photo to show him, I wouldn’t find him.

  Or maybe it was the knowledge that I’d have the photo waiting for him. I needed to see him, to show him I hadn’t broken my promise.

  Once I had the photo of the teapot, I’d have taken another step closer to deserving him.

  “I don’t carry cash …” I began, but stopped. I slowly reached into the interior breast pocket of my jacket and unzipped it. Inside, I found the twenty the old woman in the houri massage parlor had told me to keep.

  As I lifted it out, I remembered what she’d said. One day, I would need this money.

  $10 per adult. Two tickets. Talk about mathematical precision.

  Had she really meant it for this, though? To see a giant teapot?

  “To hell with it,” I said, and passed the cash through the slot. “Two adult tickets.”

  Frank and I received our tickets—two serrated postage-stamp-sized tickets you’d find at a carnival—and followed the girl’s instructions to head down the path behind the booth, into a copse of trees.

  I flicked my ticket as we passed down the dirt path. “Must be a GoneGodDamned big pot.”

  “Or maybe,” Frank said, “you’ll think the pot’s impressive because the ticket price is so high.”

  I smirked.

  As we came to the end of the path and entered the otherwise empty clearing, Frank and I both stopped hard. We stared, jaws open, at the red-and-white colossus.

  It was a monolith. A juggernaut. The teapot other teapots prophesied would unveil itself at the end of days.

  “OK,” I said. “It’s big.”

  Frank nodded. “How are you going to fit it all in the picture?”

  I pulled out my phone, winking. “Portrait orientation, Frank.” I passed it to him. “Will you take the picture of me standing under it?”

  “Sure. Go on, then.”

  I crossed toward the teapot, coming to stand right at the base. When I turned back around, Frank had the phone lifted to his face.

  “Oh, this is cute,” he said, staring at it. “You’re probably the first person with a picture of a dragon as your phone background who actually rides a dragon.”

  I half-smiled. “That picture’s a few years old now. He was all teeth and spines then.”

  Frank pointed the phone at me, his finger hovering over the button. “Say ‘This one’s for Percy!’ "

  “This one’s—” I began, but I was cut off by an immense BANG!

  Behind me, the teapot hadn’t just cracked. It had shattered.

  I spun as a figure came crashing through the center of it, and red-and-white shards fell all around me as he landed in a crouch between me and Frank.

  I thought I caught a glimpse of him as he flew by, but the suddenness of its destruction kicked up a plume of dust from the remnants of the teapot. As I coughed, covering my mouth and waiting for the air to clear, I tried to convince myself I hadn’t seen what I thought I’d seen.

  But I was wrong.

  As the mayhem settled, the figure straightened, and a pair of angel’s wings glinted under the sunlight.

  What was an angel doing here?

  He turned, and my breath caught.

  He was the hobbled angel. The one the Soul Hunter had injured. Lust’s bodyguard.

  “You,” the angel said to me, drawing his sword from his sheath and starting forward, “will submit to me.”

  ↔

  How the hell did he find us?

  I picked myself up from the wreckage, brushing dust off my jacket and out of my hair. That was when I realized the teapot wasn’t actually made of porcelain or glass—it seemed to be constructed of some sort of papier mâché with plaster stuck over it.

  What a gyp.

  “Hey,” I called out to the angel, who was still on the approach. “How the hell did you find us?”

  I could have sworn he sighed under that platemail. “Do you really want those to be your last words, human?”

  No. Not by a long shot.

  I’d envisioned lots of last words on Earth—what I wanted the epitaph on my gravestone to read—and I’d decided long ago. What did that say about me, a nineteen-year-old with her headstone already engraved?

  I unholstered Thelma and Louise, taking one uneasy step back, then another. With each one, I had to find my footing amidst the disassembled teapot. “No, but I’m sure the answer is something you’re mighty proud of. Don’t pretend like it wouldn’t boost your ego to tell me. I’m dead anyway, right?”

  The angel didn’t stop walking toward me, but he also wasn’t making any sudden moves. Not yet. I could see the glint of pleasure in his eyes, and I knew why he was one of Lust’s bodyguards.

  He was completely susceptible to the sin. Which meant he probably thought highly of himself, just like her. He wanted adoration, admiration.

  “Tara!” Frank yelled from behind the angel. “Are you all right?”

  I took another step back, the whips dragging in front of me. “Yeah, Frank. Don’t suppose you’ve got a frying pan on you, do you?”

  Footsteps came charging down the path—finally, they’re here!—but was dismayed to hear two people screaming like children. I caught a glimpse of an old man and woman.

  The woman’s hands were to her face. “GoneGods, the teapot!” she wailed. “Not the teapot.”

  The man looked e
qually horrified, his face haggard with shock. “What in the …” His eyes alighted on the angel. “Did you do this?”

  They must have been the owners of this decimated roadside attraction. I almost felt bad for them, then I remembered I’d paid $20 for Frank and me to view a teapot that wasn’t even the real thing.

  “I’m calling the police,” Frank said to the couple. “Don’t hurt her, please,” he begged the angel.

  The police. What were the local police in Chester, West Virginia going to do against an angel? Even a hobbled one. Frank may have been dating a houri, but he didn’t understand the GoneGod World. Not quite.

  But I knew two people who did.

  The angel didn’t even acknowledge Frank or the couple had spoken. “I tracked your cape, dirt-sifter,” he said with a curled lip. “The one the dead ghoul wore.”

  I racked my brain. Finally, “The tarnkappe?”

  The angel dashed his hand in a flippant way. “Humans call it that. It is an item of great magic, and when I have rent your head from your body, I shall board your vessel and reclaim it for my mistress.”

  “What, you’ve got a special power that lets you sniff out really old clothes?”

  “Magical items, earth-licker,” he spat.

  Wow, so I wasn’t far off.

  I’d heard once that every angel had a “thing”—a kind of magical power. It differed for each angel, but it seemed this one had the ability to sense items like the tarnkappe. I guessed because he’d come in contact with the cloak, he knew its “scent.”

  “Speaking of your mistress,” I stalled, “I don’t think she wants me dead. Because if I’m dead, you know, the dragon won’t follow her. She likes the dragon, I’ll bet.”

  “No,” he said, “but I want you dead. Because of the ghoul I will never fly again. Do you know what kind of life I am condemned to?”

  “A life of sneakers and sidewalks?”

  The angel growled. Like a lion. Or a dinosaur. Yeah, definitely a dinosaur.

  I lifted my hands, whips dangling. “Hey, I didn’t hobble you.”

  “Didn’t you? Was the ghoul not your ally?”

  I could lie. I could tell him I had no love for the Soul Hunter, or even any loyalty to him. But that wasn’t true—not after what he’d sacrificed. He had given everything.