'Til Dragons Do Us Part (Never Deal with Dragons) Read online

  So much for stealth. My hope that the guards might mistake me for Leneth on a quest for dinner was gone. Instead, the human members of Oyen’s staff had pulled their guns and were already firing in my direction. Well, they were until Oyen caught them at it.

  “No! Stop shooting! You’ll damage the statue.”

  She was right. The statue was the only thing that would be damaged by bullets. Sure, they didn’t feel great when they hit me, but while I was in my dragon form, they couldn’t cause serious injury. But it wasn’t the human guards I was particularly concerned about.

  No, my attention was focused on the two dragons poised on the top of the tower’s landing deck. One of them I felt comfortable dismissing as probably harmless. At half my size, odds were good I could give her a well-timed nudge into a nearby building or something, unless of course she had the ability to spit poison. That might make things a bit dicey. But I was more worried about her male partner. He was bigger, much bigger, and even from here I could tell he had a set of huge talons on his hind feet.

  You know what they say about dragons with big talons? Big talons, big damage to my lungs if he managed to stab one of them between the bones of my ribcage. I needed to stay out of his reach, and with a Greek goddess strapped to my shoulders, that was going be a little hard to pull off.

  I banked hard left as the dragons pushed off from the roof in pursuit, praying I could make it past Oyen’s vineyards and into the forested area before they caught up. The air whistled audibly against Nike’s wings as I turned, and once again I cursed the broken harness that left the statue’s base hanging in all its pearly splendor beneath my belly, the pale color a beacon on my otherwise perfectly camouflaged body.

  I looked back. The dragons were gaining on me, and my wings were burning under the stress of the extra weight. As I hit the forest, I pushed through the pain and forced my body to rise, until Nike’s base was skimming the top of the tree line.

  Ugh, this statue was far too heavy. Cursing myself—and Simon, of course—for not taking a problem like this into account, I tried to think about anything other than the fact that I was quickly becoming exhausted. I’d barely broken into the boundary of the area Simon had nicknamed “the playground.”

  I counted to three and then let myself fall through the break in the trees, straight down toward the tiny pond surrounded by weeds and covered in scum. Then, when I was maybe ten feet from meeting its murky depths, I snapped out my wings and pushed, the effort making me groan. A sharp pain on my left side told me I’d pulled a muscle, and I hissed. But I couldn’t stop now. Staying low to the ground, I smiled when I reached an ancient oak marked with a small green X.

  Playground perimeter reached.

  “Please work, please work...” Nike rattled a bit in my harness as I tried my best to stay airborne and dodge trees simultaneously.

  I couldn’t afford to look back to see how close Oyen’s guards were, but I was starting to worry. I wouldn’t be able to keep up this pace for much longer. My right wing was practically numb, and what little I could feel burned like someone had shoved a hot poker through my upper back. Forget keeping up the pace; there was a good chance that soon I wouldn’t be able to fly at all. And then I heard it. The unmistakable pop, pop, pop of trees breaking, followed by a hard thud and cursing as the net Simon and I had installed popped up to tangle with one or both of my pursuers.

  My hope that the net managed to stop both of them was short lived; there was a flash of pink just before I felt a sharp claw puncture the hide that covered my tail. Nope. The smaller dragon was most definitely not in the net. And she’d managed to catch up to me far too fast for my comfort. There was no way I could out-fly her and dodge trees at the same time.

  I tapped the com button with my chin.

  “Simon. Got a question for ya.” I was breathing so hard I wasn’t sure he’d be able to understand me.

  “Shoot.” His voice was all business, which told me I sounded bad enough that he was concerned. Simon was almost never serious.

  “On a scale of one to ten,” I paused for a minute to heave myself into a mid-air body roll to keep the Nike from coming into contact with an outstretched branch. “How would you rate my fighting skills?”

  “In dragon form or human?”

  I yanked my tail out of the way just as the guard reached for it with her sharp teeth. “Dragon.”

  “I don’t know, seven to eight. A nine if you’re really pissed.”

  “Okay then. Let’s hope I’m really pissed. See you in thirty minutes.”

  I almost sighed in relief when I relaxed my wings and glided toward the ground. I didn’t have too far to go. Despite my earlier efforts to gain elevation, I’d only managed to get twenty feet in the air.

  Definitely time to stop flying.

  I made short work of the harness, cutting through the straps just as soon as my hind feet hit the ground. By the time the guard touched dirt, I was standing with my back facing the Nike and my eyes sizing up my competition.

  On the bright side, she looked totally confused by my swift landing, which meant she was relatively green in terms of open-land scuffles. Her eyes kept darting every which way, likely trying to figure out from where the threat would emerge.

  Simon’s traps tended to have that effect.

  Unfortunately for me, I was the only threat left.

  It didn’t take long before she came to the same conclusion, and when she did, a slow smile stretched across her snout, giving me a glimpse of the teeth that would soon be attempting to tear into my intestines.

  “You are giving up?”

  She sounded almost disappointed, and I suddenly noticed that while I was sucking oxygen into my lungs like a freight train, she showed no signs of our three-mile race across the sky. Her wings were tucked neatly away, and she leaned back on her hind feet as if she’d just finished a large meal and was considering whether she wanted a nap.

  In other words, I was standing there with a wing dragging drunkenly along the ground, a bleeding hole in my tail, and harness-induced dirt streaks across my middle while she looked...bored.

  I hated her already.

  “Am I giving up? No.” I did my best to get my breathing under control. “I just thought I’d take a little break before I convinced you to go home and forget I ever existed. Any chance you can do that without me kicking your ass first?”

  She rose from her relaxed pose and flexed her front claws. “Afraid not.”

  I sighed. “That’s too bad.”

  I took another couple of steps away from the Nike and flexed my own claws. While this wasn’t my favorite part of the job, I liked to think I could hold my own.

  * * *

  “Well. Don’t you look nice?” Simon tipped up the brim of his well-worn trucker hat and gave me a wink.

  I eyed the man who was the closest thing I had to a brother and held back a snarl. The sound wouldn’t have done me any good; Simon and I had practically grown up together, and he’d long since developed an immunity to my animalistic expressions of frustration.

  It was days like today that had me bemoaning my choice of joining the “family business.” Anyone else would have the decency to recoil in fear when I roared at them, but not Simon. He’d been there the first time I’d ever morphed, and frankly, he’d handled it far better than I had. Though I still maintain that, as a teenage girl, I was predisposed to have larger than average reactions to changes in my body.

  “Just out of curiosity, what would your answer have been if I’d told you I was planning to fight in human form?”

  “You’re a scrawny little nothing in human form. I would have told you to run.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Thanks a lot for the vote of confidence.”

  “You’re late.” His words were light, but I could feel his relief at finding me alive and in one piece. And also his disgruntlement at having been left out of the loop as to my whereabouts for the last hour or so.

  “Bite me.” I moved toward the back
of the eighteen-wheeler so he could get out and help me load Nike into the trailer.

  “Honey, I hate to tell you this, but it looks like someone already did. Multiple times.” He tsked as he hopped onto the trailer so he’d be tall enough to help me untie the knots I’d made in the harness straps.

  After much grunting and groaning, we managed to get both statue and harness situated gently within the padded crate built exclusively for that purpose. But instead of inspecting the merchandise for any dings or chips I’d given it en route, he ran his gaze up and down my pummeled form.

  There wasn’t an inch of my body that didn’t hurt like the devil. Oyen’s guard hadn’t just been in good shape, she’d also been taught how to fight. There’d been several moments that I’d thought this job would be my last, but I’d managed to back her up against a massive tree before executing my signature move—running full tilt and letting my weight break as many bones as possible. Simple and direct. It had worked, too.

  By the third time I introduced her body to the tree, she had a wing bent at the same awkward angle as my own, and a broken front leg to boot.

  Lucky for me, she hadn’t been taught how to fight through that much pain. Either that, or Oyen didn’t pay her dragons any better than she did her humans. The guard had simply slumped down to the ground and watched with a grimace as I limped over to the Nike and sloppily reconnected the harness.

  Simon was right though. I was late. Really late. I’d been stupid enough to leave my com pack dangling around my neck instead of with the statue, and it had been the first thing damaged in the scuffle. After I’d taken care of Oyen’s guard, I’d been forced to walk the last mile to the truck, limping and waddling like a gangsta pregnant lady to keep my balance with the statue strapped to my tummy.

  It hadn’t been my best moment.

  I was dirty, exhausted, and wanted nothing more than to curl up and sleep for a day and a half. I eyed the empty section of the trailer—the part Simon was currently disguising with a particularly creative set of wooden crates. If someone opened the trailer, these boxes would make it appear as if we were carrying a full load of cargo.

  “Nope. Sorry, Vanni, but I need you in human form for the trip back. Remember? We didn’t tweak the axles to handle more than three tons of weight.”

  I gaped at him. “How much do you think I weigh, exactly?” I was considerably heavier than my usual one hundred and thirty pounds while in dragon form, but three tons was pushing it. There was no way I was over two, tops.

  Simon, smart man, didn’t answer my question. He sighed. “Vanni—”

  “I know, I know. We get stopped, you don’t want a dragon that looks just like the one reported to have just robbed Lady Oyen hiding out in the truck. Especially while we’re still in Basque Country.”

  It was stupid, but shifting was kinda painful, and I just wasn’t in the mood to put myself through it again. And try as I might, no matter how many times we’d been in situations just like this, I was really uncomfortable being naked in the woods.

  It wasn’t the nakedness, per se. Simon was always good about sussing out impenetrable bushes and such that would allow me to maintain my modesty. No, it wasn’t the bare skin that bothered me. It was the bugs. It was the poison ivy. And more than anything, it was an unreasonable fear of snakes.

  Yes. Snakes. I want to die of embarrassment when I think about it, but the truth is, I’m totally freaked out by my cousins. No matter how many times I’ve told myself that there’s a very good chance my DNA contained traces of snake genetics, I just can’t be near them without succumbing to a severe case of the heebie-jeebies. In glass-walled aquariums, they’re totally mesmerizing in a horror-filled kind of way, but out there, in the wild, where they can pop out from under a random leaf or log any time they feel like it, their creepy little tongues and boneless bodies totally give me nightmares.

  But Simon was right. We’d be less noticeable if we looked more like a couple of trucking company employees, and less like a human-dragon team of high-end art thieves. Snakes or not, I needed to morph.

  He patted me affectionately on my scaled rump and pointed his chin toward a pile of folded clothes. “There’s your wardrobe. I’ll wait for you in the cab.”

  I handed Simon the satchel holding my starched dress so he could stow it in the truck, grabbed the much more comfortable shorts and tee, and then quickly glanced around to find myself an appropriate hiding place. Choosing a particularly large copse of trees, I lumbered my way over, and once there, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It was always easier to morph when I was calm and relaxed.

  In the woods. With the snakes.

  “Why can’t we ever steal from a dragon that lives in the city?” I muttered to myself as I hooked my shorts onto a low-hanging branch. I would definitely stay calm in the city, where the creepy-crawlies didn’t have home court advantage and unlimited places to hide.

  I tried not to wince at the ache in my shoulder.

  On a good day, morphing didn’t feel great. But fear or injuries seemed to somehow slow the process. And the slower the morphing process, the more uncomfortable it became. The pain I was experiencing from the job pretty much guaranteed this transformation was going to take a while.

  It took me a couple of minutes of intense personal coaching, along with mental pictures of chocolate, but soon I relaxed enough to start, and it wasn’t long until I felt the familiar burning tingle along the back of my neck, the big toe on my right foot, and the spot just to the left of my bellybutton.

  In general, the bigger the change in mass of a particular body part, the worse it hurt. So by the time the transformation had reached my wings/shoulder blades, I was groaning in pain.

  It took me a good ten minutes to be back in full human form, and another five before I could force my clammy, exhausted body to put on the shorts and a T-shirt Simon had picked out and head back to the truck.

  Simon was flipping through a magazine when I got back, one of those ones filled with page after page of beautiful people dressed in beautiful clothes.

  “Who are you, and what have you done with Simon?”

  He glanced up at me in confusion, until I gestured toward the magazine. A gorgeous dark-skinned woman smiled up at me, dressed in a bejeweled sari the color of a sunset. Small lettering in the corner discreetly advertised designer and pricing. Not exactly Simon’s usual reading material.

  “Oh, this. The Indian dragon lord is sponsoring an exhibition at the PAC center later this month, on Indian culture. Jeanie’s been bugging me about taking her and Emma to the fashion show portion of it. She’s been dying to go ever since she heard the designer is a favorite of the magazine’s editor.”

  “PAC center? Where’s that?”

  “Tulsa.”

  “You guys are planning a trip to see the grandparents?”

  Jeanie’s mom and dad lived in Tulsa, and they insisted on regular visits from their only granddaughter. Simon was only too happy to oblige, as he and his father-in-law shared a love of tinkering on random blocks of machinery in the garage.

  “We’ll probably spend some time at their house, but Jeanie’s scouting for a place of our own.”

  I perked up a bit. “You found us another gig? In the city?”

  Simon’s wife served as our unofficial advance team. When Simon and I signed on for a job, he’d give her the initial specs, and she’d go on the hunt for rental property that would suit our needs. But in addition to finding apartments, workshops, or warehouses, she almost always lined up fun weekend excursions for herself and Emma. She said it helped her keep worry in check if she was busy doing something else while we were out on assignment.

  Jeanie had a rule. At least one of Emma’s parents had to stay home for every assignment, just in case something went wrong. Since marrying Simon, Jeanie had become the de facto glue in our little team, handling all the things that Simon was too impatient—and I was too incompetent—to manage. She handled the finances, a good portion of our word-of-mou
th promotion, and virtually all non-mechanical prep work. In short, without Jeanie, our business would flounder.

  So in general, what Jeanie wanted, Jeanie got.

  And in this case, I think she had a point. It was one thing to be a bit late coming home from date night to relieve the babysitter, quite another to end up incarcerated for grand larceny. And since she knew Simon lived for the adrenaline thrill of the on-site stuff, more often than not, Jeanie was perfectly content doing fun kid stuff while Simon came with me.

  We’d been in Northern Spain for the last several weeks, so if Jeanie was planning on attending a fashion show in Tulsa, odds were good Simon had something lined up for our next adventure. And since his wife was making plans before this job was even finished, it had to be a good one. Something we simply couldn’t pass up.

  “Well? Simon, you didn’t answer my question.”

  He gave me a deliberately blank stare. “I didn’t?”

  “Fine. I’ll weasel it out of Jeanie when we get back. I guess you called her? Let her know what time she should expect us?” I settled into my chair and buckled my seat belt, wincing only a little as the movement jostled my bruised ribs. The one good thing about morphing was that certain injuries seemed to heal a bit quicker when I shifted, but I’d still be feeling the effects of my flight for a couple more days.

  “Yep. She said to tell you that you’re staying the night, and that I’m supposed to remind you not to argue because you owe Emma for taking her daddy away on a business trip.”

  “Have I ever mentioned your wife is the queen of Guiltlandia?”

  He turned the key and put the truck into gear. “I live with the woman. Don’t you think I’m aware?” But his tone was fond as he spoke of Jeanie. He gestured to the hammock bed in the back of the cab. “Get some sleep. You look like hell.”

  “Such a charmer.” But I did as he said, crawling back into the cushioned bunk and closing my eyes. It wasn’t long before the smooth rumble of the rig lulled me to sleep.

  Chapter Three

  “Hey kiddo, how’s it going?” I leaned down to give Simon’s daughter, Emma, a smile as I tousled her silky-fine hair. “You’ve grown so much since last Friday, it’s a wonder you’re not taller than me.”