Four on the Floor: Part Eighteen
Part Eighteen
I have to wonder how much of all this that Pumpkin knew before. Fae? Dragons? Another necromancer? Then again, I’d have to ask myself if I would have believed him. He’s likely bored off his… Well, bored. I don’t even know what time it is since my phone’s likely being combed over by the police now.
Tasha at least won’t get pulled into this, since the phone’s not tied to her apartment, and the last thing I want is for the police to go knocking on her door with questions about a murder. The City’s not that bad, but there’s always some prick of a cop who, when asked if he’s ever shot anyone, will get that sparkle in his eye when he answers, “Not yet.” Also, even if they didn’t give her a hard time, I’d be homeless with Pumpkin on the curb or in the trash.
So I need to take the wins where I can find them.
Val was pissed, but he’s not bound to me anymore. He’ll get over it, and he got a sword in the deal, and apparently got to be the one to name me the Shadow Dancer. That’s probably a big deal, given the fanfare when it happened.
“Ajay?”
“A.J. Two letters.”
And then there’s the dragon, who is currently in the form of a quite aesthetically pleasing black man. I won’t take him back to Tasha’s because he’s exactly her type: tall, bass in the voice, head shorn of hair, dressed well, athletic build, and intelligent. I’m not sexually attracted to him, but I can definitely understand the appeal.
“Yes, of course.” We left the shell of the building a few minutes ago, and given all of the damage done to it, eventually someone’s going to come and investigate. They might not think “dragon”, and the Benedict isn’t a high-priority area for police, except that there were two squad cars outside of the building where the body was, and Shan probably sounded like a low-flying plane.
It’d only take a little curiosity to nudge an officer to come check it out. So, we both left the scene.
“So how does this work? You being a dragon, me being a sorcerer, all of that.”
“Specifically regarding?”
“Why didn’t you kill me? What I did was stupid. I walked into your path and didn’t do anything other than tell you to stop and land. I yanked your head down by the nose. I should be dead.”
I catch him smirking. “Yes. Yes, you should.” He doesn’t stop walking, but he looks to me as we cross a vacant lot. I don’t even know the cross-streets anymore. “But dragons are often forbidden from taking the life of a sorcerer. This is nothing new. There is always a new Ra’keth-“
“Wait, a what?”
He sighs. “Sorcerer king.”
“What are sorcerer queens called?”
Another sigh. “Ra’keth. You all tend to abuse your station no matter your gender. May I continue? Uninterrupted?”
“You’re not used to someone interrupting, huh?”
He turns his head in another direction, and spits at a knocked over, rusted, steel barrel. It melts away in seconds. “Not often, no.” He then smirks again, pointedly, at me.
I blink, unimpressed, and deadpan, “You still owe me a shoe, by the way.” Thank god for high school drama club, because holy shit, he doesn’t need to be a dragon to do that?
Also, my gait is still off, one Doc Marten, one socked foot.
The dragon doesn’t respond, he continues to walk, unimpeded. “There are always sorcerers who seek to use us for…” He stops, and glances at me. “Petty whims.”
“I’m investigating a murder.”
“And?”
“That’s not petty.”
“Hopefully not of the woman in the building I passed over?” Shan doesn’t wait for me to respond, he continues forward, instead. “It would seem the police, the human police at that, already have the matter well in hand. What can you offer that they cannot?”
“She was murdered. Likely by a sorcerer. The same one that sent you after me. There was some Sigil under the body.”
“Ah,” he says, nodding. “So this is a rivalry?”
“You’re asking the wrong question, Shan.”
“And the right one would be?” He raises a hand to preemptively wave me off. “Do not attempt to explain that this is all for some altruistic reason. No Keth is truly selfless. All of you think you know better.”
I stop walking. “Hey.”
Another sigh, and then after a few steps he turns to face me. “Yes?”
“Her spirit was bound in her body, she had been in so much agony that it drove her almost completely insane. In order to free her and send her on without her hurting anyone, I promised to find her killer. I’m just trying to keep that promise. I try to help the dead, the dead that can’t move on or can’t remember that they want to. Before this, I just talked to zombies and tried to help them, and now I’m doing stuff that’s powerful and I’m scared, okay, Shan?
I’m terrified. I’ve had a gun at my head, a sword pointed at my throat, and a dragon spitting acid at me, and this is just in the last twenty-four hours. I know I look like I’m keeping it together, but I’m just barely hanging on, okay? All I want to do is find the guy who killed her, and for that I’ll need your help because I can’t do this alone.”
The dragon closes the distance between us. “Dry your eyes, sorcerer. A Keth shows no fear. I’m not a fool, I could hear your heartbeat, scent your emotion. Humans cannot hide that. The one you seek? He wants you to be afraid.” He looks over my shoulder, only a foot between us.
I wipe under my eyes with a finger, find it wet. Shit, I was crying a little, there. “Sorry. I guess dragons are uncomfortable around a crying-“
In a blink, I’m in his arms, embraced almost painfully tight. He turns both of us around quickly, and I’m about to ask him what the Hell he’s thinking grabbing me like this when…
When it suddenly gets very, very hot. I clench my eyes shut, it’s starting to hurt from the heat. After a few seconds it passes, and I feel myself lifted, carried in fireman style. I open my eyes to see a long scorch mark, along with a building fire in the dead and dry plantlife. In the sky, flying, coming around for another pass, is another dragon.
Shan puts me down next to a short brick wall, the perimeter of what was once a factory property before everything left the Benedict or just died out. “Stay here, he’s not old enough to melt brick. I’ll keep him distracted, unless you...?”
“Who the fuck is that, Shan?”
“I disobeyed a Keth by not killing you. Your rival found someone else who would not.” He points toward the silver-scaled creature in the skies. “Am I to kill him, or drive him away?”
I’m still trying to process the fact that I’m not actually on fire.
“Sorcerer! I need an answer!”
Oh fuck. What do I do?
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://vaughndemont.com/2018/06/08/four-on-the-floor-part-eighteen/