Burn(74)

“Would you?”

Her father looked unsurprised. “No, I don’t suppose I would.”

“Was he a liar, Daddy?” Grace asked when they were back in the car.

“That’s too strong a word, Gracie. You shouldn’t call people liars. Say ‘economical with the truth’ or ‘teller of tales.’”

“Was he a teller of tales?”

Her father thought for a moment as he pulled from the main paved road onto a gravel one that seemed to head into woods. “I suspect he might be most of the time, but this time . . .”

“We saw a dragon, too.”

“Yes, we did.”

“We didn’t see the sassinam, though.”

“Assassin. No, we didn’t.”

“What’s an assassin?”

“Someone not very nice at all, sweetheart.”

She could see how serious he was when he said it, so she stayed quiet and let him think. She didn’t ask if they were going to her grandmother’s, thinking that if she didn’t bring it up, he might just keep bringing her along. There was a dragon somewhere, after all. Wouldn’t he want her by his side where she would be safest?

He’d said he needed to talk to the strangers out at the farm the sheriff had mentioned, so she assumed that was where they were going. The roads were empty, though. Forested, like Pinedale was, with farms in clearings. There was still snow everywhere, so she was surprised to see a young man walking by the side of the road going the other way, holding out his thumb.

“Daddy, that boy needs a ride,” she said, as they passed him.

“We’re not going the right direction, Grace,” her father said, barely listening.

“He looked . . .” She glanced back at the boy now rapidly disappearing up the road. His clothes were a little odd, like from a slightly different period in history. And the way he walked had a . . . she brought up the word “thoughtfulness” and was proud of it, not just for its length but for its accuracy. “He looked different, Daddy.”

“Different how?” Her father’s attention suddenly snapped to the rearview mirror.

“He walked with thoughtfulness.”

He stopped the car so suddenly, she felt a little afraid. “What do you mean by that?”

She felt even more afraid of his urgency. “He walked like he was older than he was.”

Her father looked in the rearview mirror again, then swung the car around in a U-turn, but when they got back to where the boy had been waiting, he was nowhere to be seen. “Your eyes, sweetie,” her dad said. “I should have them insured, they see so much.”

Malcolm didn’t believe what he’d seen, mainly because he had been watching the little girl who’d kept her eyes on him much longer than seemed normal for a casual glance. She’d watched him as the car approached, watched him as they passed by, watched him as his stomach turned flips when he saw who was driving.

As soon as the car was out of sight, he made for the woods. He hid behind a tree, just like he’d done on the very first day of this journey, what seemed like lifetimes ago, on the day the dragon the Mitera Thea had somehow convinced to help had dropped him, literally, from the sky to start this journey and returned to kill the two men who were threatening him. Two men who maybe had families, maybe little girls. The journey had started in death, and it had just kept going.

Those two men hadn’t deserved it. Neither did the Mountie. Or Sarah’s father or the sheriff who’d arrived or the Jason in the other world.

Neither did the man Malcolm had seen behind the wheel of the car he now heard rocketing back up the road behind him, no doubt to look for him. He had watched that man die. Had watched as the woman that man thought was his partner shot him down.

“I’m lost,” he whispered out loud. “I’m lost and I don’t know where to go.”

It was a prayer, but he had no one to pray it to. He prayed to no one that the man and the little girl wouldn’t meet the fate of the first two men. He prayed he would find who he was looking for so he could return, and he prayed that on his return, he would find a way to defeat the Mitera Thea herself. So that there would be no more killing.

He would never wash the stain of it from him, and he didn’t want to. There was no atonement left for him.

But there might be for others.

He waited until the man gave up and drove away again. Then he hurried on his journey.

Her stomach rumbled, though she didn’t feel hungry, despite the vomiting. In the crater of this other mountain—one she could smell was more turbulent than the first, this one would blow in the years to come—she groaned, and the rumbling moved deeper down.

The clutch of eggs was ready.

How? She knew she was close, but she had only become pregnant the day before. Still, they were ready, she was ready, they only needed a place for laying.

Well, what better place than a turbulent volcano?

She dug, even as the contractions hit her. She dug under the snow and ice, into the rock, making a cave-like hollow. They couldn’t be exposed. The weather wouldn’t harm them—there was very little in existence hardier than a dragon’s egg—but humans might. Even here, this high, she wouldn’t risk it.

The contractions grew painful, then overwhelming. She felt as if she left her body for a time, and when she returned, a dozen steaming eggs, each taller than a man, lay in the cave she’d made.