Memoirs of a Dragon Hunter

  “Informant,” he said slowly.

  “Falafel, do you think?” I asked, puzzling that out.

  “I doubt it. Your sister was an experienced dragon hunter—she would be able to recognize a demon when she saw one. I think it’s far more likely that one of the Witnesses told her about me, although how they knew I was in the area is beyond me. Unless Adam told someone what happened.”

  “That could be,” I agreed. “She didn’t say much about her dad, though. I think it’s far more likely that the person who punched the hole in her middle took her soul thingie and told her that you were a baddy in an attempt to have her find the esprits before anyone else—namely you—could locate them.”

  “No,” he said, and shook his head, just like that was that.

  And with that one word, I knew my plan to let him tell me the truth in his own time had shriveled to dust. I could no longer pretend he might be hinting at something. I had to know the truth.

  “Dammit, you do know who killed Helen, don’t you?” I stood up to confront him, my emotions in such a turmoil, I couldn’t begin to untangle them. Except one: sorrow. “Ian, I’ve tried to be patient, but I can’t any longer. It’s too much. You have to tell me.”

  “I don’t have to, you know,” he said pleasantly.

  I slapped my hands on my legs. “You do!”

  “Why?”

  “Common decency?” I asked, grinding my teeth a little.

  He considered this for a minute. “I agree that it would seem that way, but the reality is that you would be more distressed knowing the situation concerning your sister than you are being angry at me for not giving you that information.”

  “Oh, you arrogant bastard!” I said, frustrated. “How about this: you should tell me because I’m your girlfriend.”

  “Falafel is dead. There’s no reason you need to maintain a pretense regarding that role any longer,” he said with maddening calm.

  A sharp stab of pain followed his words. Was that all I was to him, just a convenient excuse who was no longer needed? For a moment, tears pricked the backs of my eyes, but my anger quickly dried them up with what I was coming to realize was my own dragon fire.

  “How’s this for another reason, then,” I snarled, marching over to the door in frustration before marching back to face him. “I’m in love with you, okay? So now I’m your real girlfriend, and Helen was my sister, and you have to tell me what you know about her death.”

  He froze for a moment, then smiled a long, slow smile. “I wondered if you’d realize that.”

  I fought the urge to deliberately misunderstand him, saying instead, “You don’t have to look so damned happy about it. Since you just said I didn’t need to bother to pretend we have a relationship, I assume that means you are completely indifferent to me, unable to trust, or love, or commit to me.”

  “I never said any of that—”

  “Then who killed my sister?” I yelled the question at him, no longer concerned if the others heard me. “Tell me, please, Ian. I need to know this. It’s important.”

  He was silent a moment, then stood, taking my upper arms in his hands. “I will tell you if you insist, and despite your belief that I’m a cold-hearted bastard who only values you for sexual favors, but I do so under protest. You will not like what you hear.”

  “I can take it,” I said, mentally bracing myself. “I’d rather have the truth than be protected because you think it’s best for my happiness.”

  “So be it.” He was silent for a moment before he added, “Sasha blasted that hole through your sister’s torso.”

  “What?” My shriek must have been heard a good five miles away. Rage filled me, rage and the red-hot burning desire for revenge. My skin prickled with heat that I was only now coming to understand was my dragon fire manifesting itself. “What the hell? Why would she do that? Why? Oh, when I think of her being all cute and quirky and anime adorable, and all the time she murdered my sister—”

  I struggled to get out of his grip so that I could go confront her.

  “Veronica, stop fighting me.”

  “I will if you let me go,” I said, still struggling. “And don’t you dare give me that look that says it’s totally wrong to go out and demand Sasha tell me why she would do something so heinous, and then smite her on the spot.”

  “Now you are allowing your emotions to dominate your common sense,” he said with that same maddening calmness. “You said you were a pacifist. Despite the beheading of Falafel, and the Witness’s arm removal, I believe you truly do abhor violence.”

  “I do, but what’s the good in being a dragon hunter if you can’t cover people in dragon fire and roast them alive?”

  “There is much wrong with that image, but that aside, you don’t know the situation. It’s certainly not what you are currently thinking it is,” he said, trying to keep me still. I gritted my teeth and managed to drag us a few feet toward the door before he dug in his heels.

  “Of course it’s what I think,” I said between gritted teeth. “Sasha killed Helen. There’s no other way to look at that fact except facing the truth that your precious little apprentice killed my sister. Goddess, you were in on it, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said slowly. “But not in the way you think—stop fighting me, and let me explain.”

  “No,” I yelled, and managed to wrest my arms from his grasp. Despite the need to go out and confront Sasha, I had to face the betrayal that Ian had just dealt me. “How could you? How could you do that to my sister and then kiss me? Make me believe in you? Make me fall in love with you and never say a word about the truth?”

  “Helen asked Sasha to kill her!” Ian shouted over my rant.

  “How could you—” I stopped and stared at him in utter disbelief. “She what?”

  He took a deep breath, his eyes filled with a plea. “She begged Sasha to end her life. You have to understand the situation she was in…She was literally faced with the same dilemma as her father—end her life, or become the servant of a demon lord, with no will of her own, a puppet of pure evil unleashed upon the mortal world. Her esprit was gone. Her father was dead, most likely killed by Falafel. There was no protection for Helen with her own esprit missing, and no one to turn to. I took Adam Larson’s bondage onto myself, but I couldn’t save his daughter. Sasha did what I could not do.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t seem to wrap my brain around the idea. “But you didn’t punch a hole in my stepdad.”

  “No, I did not.” For a moment, his face was filled with regret, so deep it physically hurt. “Helen Larson hadn’t yet been taken to Anzo by Falafel when Sasha found her.”

  I swallowed back a painful lump of tears, my throat aching with the effort. Part of me wanted to cry for my stepfather and Helen, the other for Ian’s sacrifice. My voice was choked when I managed to ask, “Even if I believed that Helen wanted to kill herself, how was punching a hole through her middle saving her?”

  “It gave her time to call you,” he said calmly. I felt like screaming at a world gone suddenly mad, and yet Ian stood there like nothing was wrong. “It gave her the time she needed. She could recruit you, talk to you one last time, and arrange for her charges to have the protector she wanted. Sasha didn’t tell me any of this right away, of course—she waited until you had taken your sister’s place, then told me simply that she had saved Helen from a fate that would have given her endless torment.”

  I closed my eyes for a few seconds, remembering that night, remembering Helen’s strange calmness and acceptance of her imminent death. No wonder she wasn’t at all distraught by the horrible situation—it was the end she had chosen for herself. And she had picked me to pass along her legacy to, one she knew I would have to honor. That didn’t dispute a fact that hurt me almost as much as her death…“You were there when she died. You lied to me.”

  “I have never lied to you, and I have no desire to start now. I know what happened to Helen Larson, but I wasn’t there,” he said, taking my h
and. I pulled it back. He took it again, his fingers tight around mine, but his thumb was making gentle little strokes across my knuckles. “Sasha was trying to help me locate the esprits and found Helen in a bad way.”

  “She couldn’t have been that bad if her torso was whole,” I said, suddenly feeling so weary I wanted nothing more than to curl up in Ian’s bed and hide from the world. “Why didn’t Sasha tell you where Indigo and her girls were if she was right there with my sister?”

  “She didn’t know their location. Helen didn’t tell her. I gather they were en route at that time. That’s one thing that’s puzzled me, as well. I assumed she told you where to find them.”

  “She didn’t, but things were…chaotic.” I thought for another minute. “What did Helen do that allowed Falafel to grab her like that?”

  “I don’t know that, either. Sasha didn’t say other than Helen was afraid of what would happen should she lose her will.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.” I rubbed my temples, trying to fit the puzzle pieces together. “You’re bound to a demon lord, and you have all your abilities. You don’t have to do what the demon lord says. You’ve already said that you aren’t handing over Indigo or the little girls to her. What’s the deal?”

  Absently, Ian scratched at one of the tattoos on his arm. “I can resist the compulsions Anzo lays upon me because my élan vital is whole and intact. Adam Larson had none. Helen’s was missing. It’s only by the strength of the esprit in my sword that I have retained some autonomy.”

  “Helen was vulnerable without her esprit…” I had a vision in my mind of a superhero turned evil, and thought I could understand a little why Helen had made such a desperate choice. “Oh, Ian, why didn’t she tell me?”

  “I can’t answer that. How long were you with her?”

  “Not long enough,” I admitted. “She said we had to hurry, so she probably left out all the explanations.”

  “It is quite a lot to take in, especially if you haven’t been born into this world,” he agreed, then asked, when I started toward the door, “Where are you going?”

  “To talk to Sasha. I have to find out what happened that made the esprit leave Helen, and I just bet you Miss Hole Puncher of the Year knows.”

  “I don’t think you want to—”

  Ian had followed me out into the living room, but he stopped when I did, staring at the deflated blanket fort, now nothing but a wad of blankets on the floor, with several cushions scattered about. All the animals had been released from their cages and were milling about in a confusion of mostly small furry things.

  “Christos, what…Sasha!” He ran for the kitchen, then to the bathroom, calling for her.

  I went to the other bedroom, but it was as empty as the living room. “Indigo is gone, too,” I said, scooping up a couple of guinea pigs and hurriedly stuffing them in their home. Ian was doing the same with the hamsters, bunnies, birds, and kittens. “Do you think they went somewhere? To Teresita? I’ll check.”

  He said something when I dashed out of the door, but I didn’t wait to hear what, instead running upstairs to bang on Teresita’s door, counting the seconds impatiently until she opened it up. “Dude, what is your— Oh, it’s you.”

  “Are Sasha and the girls here?” I interrupted.

  “No.” She looked taken aback. “Why, did they do a runner?”

  I swore to myself. “I don’t know. They aren’t at the apartment.”

  She frowned. “But you were there, right? Didn’t you see them leave?”

  “No, we were…busy.”

  “Doing what? Oh, man, really? In the middle of the day?” Teresita looked strangely pleased, but I didn’t have time to discuss a burgeoning relationship—if Ian and I had such a thing—and instead ran back down the stairs.

  “Should I come with?” Teresita called after me.

  I paused long enough to say, “No, you stay here in case they come back. Call me if you hear anything,” before continuing on. I caught sight of Ian on the stairs going to the parking lot and followed him down the second flight, catching up to him as he ran down the length of parked cars, clearly searching.

  “Nothing?” I asked, panting slightly as I ran after him. I made a mental note that if my anxious animal would let me, a membership to a gym might not be out of place. “Is my car…Oh, it is here. I wondered if they might not have taken it for some reason.”

  “Sasha would never take the esprits away without telling me,” Ian said, whirling around and glaring down the street as if he expected to see them. His eyes narrowed; then he spat out, “The Witness!”

  I was really puffing by the time we ran back inside and up the three flights of stairs to my apartment. I got the door open and burst in, expecting to find the apartment devoid of life, but Aspen was still there.

  Gagged and tied to a chair, her arms stacked tidily in front of her on a mound of clothing that she’d evidently kicked from my bedroom.

  “What in the name of Mr. Clean is going on here?” I asked, looking around the room. Although Aspen had evidently spent her time in my apartment by kicking the detritus of the destruction into tidy stacks, my happy yellow-and-peach-colored walls were stained with strange black marks, spray-painted without the least bit of care or artistic skill. “Well, isn’t this lovely. As if having all my possessions destroyed isn’t enough, now someone came in and graffitied me.”

  “That isn’t graffiti; it’s a series of spells. That bit there is Latin and has to do with speaking the truth,” Ian said, pulling Aspen’s gag off so she could speak. The gag appeared to be a bit of torn bath towel. “What happened here, Witness?”

  “I’ll tell you what happened here, dragon hunter,” she said, spitting at him, which shocked me until I realized she was doing so to get bits of towel fluff out of her mouth. “You left me alone without a mage, and that rat bastard of a husband tracked me down and forced me to tell him where the sacrifices were. Me! His own wife, a priestess of the dark earth lord! I will never forget what he did to me. Never!”

  Ian cut her free of her bonds, and she stood up, stamping her feet, either from ire or to emphasize her point. I wasn’t sure which.

  “The Witnesses took them?” Ian’s eyes flashed fire. “Where?”

  Aspen sniffed and looked away. “I don’t know that I should tell you. You said you’d get a mage to put my arms back on, and yet there they are. Unattached.”

  “I will get you a mage,” Ian argued. “Just as soon as the esprits are safely away from your murderous crowd.”

  “Oh, no, I’m not falling for that. You’ll just stuff me up here again in this disaster zone of an apartment,” she said, giving me a disgusted glance. “I don’t know how you could live like this. An animal is tidier than you.”

  I just glared at her while Ian said, “I will not bargain with you. Did they take them to the church headquarters? Another location?”

  “I know where the church is,” I told him. “It’s about twenty minutes from here. We can pop over and check.”

  “We don’t have time to run all over town. We need to know now where they are.” He turned back to Aspen. “Tell me what I want to know, and I will arrange for the mage to come sooner rather than later.”

  “What guarantee do I have that you won’t just run off and leave me in this hell pit of filth?” she asked, suspicion written all over her face…which also bore a slight green tint and looked unpleasantly moist. I wondered if it was me personally that made her sick, or if it was something else.

  “You have my word,” Ian said, looking moderately affronted. I smiled at him, a sudden warmth in my belly warning that my desire for him hadn’t been dimmed despite the realization that he had kept the truth about Sasha’s involvement with Helen from me.

  “Ha! Like that’s worth anything.”

  The only excuses I can claim for my next actions are the fact that I was tired of her bitching, time was running out, and I very much wanted to get Ian back into bed where I could let him apologize proper
ly for not telling me everything. Without a word to either of them, I walked into my kitchen, stepping over stacks of papers and books, taking one of Aspen’s arms as I passed by. I stopped at the kitchen sink, turned on the water, and then put my hand on a wall switch, holding the arm just above the mouth of the drain. “Right. Do I turn on the garbage disposal, or do you tell Ian what he wants to know?”

  Aspen’s eyes opened so wide I thought her eyeballs might just roll out onto the floor, but she gave a horrified sort of gasping hiss and said through her teeth, “You wouldn’t dare! You are a dragon hunter.”

  “So?”

  “That means you cannot attack those who are unarmed or at a disadvantage!” She looked utterly outraged but kept sending little nervous glances over to her arm. “It’s a rule. For all I know, it’s an oath you take.”

  I tapped the switch with my fingernail. “I am not like most dragon hunters. Are you going to answer Ian’s question, or should I see what this does to your manicure?”

  “You unholy bit of cow dung!” she snarled, but when I raised one eyebrow and looked at the garbage disposal switch, she commenced speaking, her words running together. “Fine! All right! I’ll tell you, but I am so going to tell whoever heads up you hunters just what you’re doing, because it has to be against all sorts of laws and rules and codes of honor.”

  “One chewed up set of fingers it is,” I said, plunging the hand into the mouth of the drain.

  Aspen spat out a word that I won’t use here, because Mr. Manny doesn’t think profanity has a place in popular fiction, but before we could say anything, she added, “They are in the crypt.”

  “What crypt?” Ian asked just as I said, “You guys actually have a crypt?”

  “In the basement of the church, yes. Now give me back my arm.” She hovered protectively over her other arm, clearly intending on fighting me if I tried to take it from her.