Days of High Adventure (16 page)

The dragon’s answer came almost with a yawn. “I have no petty desire for conquest and pillage. Humans make for paltry meals. After all this time, I must tend to matters far from here of no concern to mortals.”

“So you send Amanda home and that’s it?” Eric asked. “It’s all done?”

“
’Send Amanda home?’
” Amanda blinked. “What about you?”

Eric didn’t answer right away. A pained look crossed his face. “I can’t go, Amanda,” he said. “I can’t leave Fallon.”

It was only then that the barbarian woman lowered the sword she’d held at the ready between her companions and the dragon. She turned to Eric, laying a hand on his chest. “You would remain here?” she asked him. “For me?” He nodded slowly. “You have family there. Friends. For all your wits and newfound strength, you are painfully out of place in this world. Yet you would remain with me?”

“Fallon,” he said, “I’m never going to find someone else like you where I’m from. They don’t make ‘em like you out there. I miss my home, yeah, but...I want
you
.”

She paused and turned to the dragon. “You will send me with them.”

“I am in your debt as well, Northerner,” the dragon agreed. “It will be as you wish.”

“Fallon, are you sure?” Eric asked. “It’s so different there. I can’t even begin to tell you.”

“Good,” Fallon grunted. “It will be an adventure.”

“Stuff like all this doesn’t really happen where we’re from, you know,” Amanda warned. “You might get bored
before long.”

“I will surely find ways to amuse myself,” Fallon shrugged. Eric and Amanda shared an uneasy glance; they weren’t sure whether to take that as a reassurance or a threat.

“What if we…” Eric fumbled, trying to find a tactful way to ask. “What if you and I don’t work out? Then you’re stuck there.”

“You offer to take the same risk for me,” countered Fallon. “I somehow think I will adjust to your world more readily than you will adjust to mine
. I do not fear whatever the future may hold for you and I.”

“Are we agreed?” the dragon asked.

Amanda nodded, stepping forward with the staff. Eric suddenly threw out one hand to stop her. “Wait!” he snapped.

The dragon rumbled. Amanda and Fallon looked at him quizzically. Eric turned to face the monstrous creature before them. “You said you’ll send us home to repay us for getting rid of Bel-Danab.”

“Yes,” the dragon confirmed.

“But what about the staff itself?” he asked. “Isn’t that a separate favor?
The staff reaches across time and space, right? What’s that worth to a dragon?”

Another rumble came from the dragon’s long throat. “Much,”
it admitted in mild annoyance.

* * *

“Ugh. What is that smell?” Fallon grunted with disgust.

The green clouds faded almost as quickly as they’d closed in around the trio, leaving them standing together, hands clenched in a small circle, in a largely darkened room. One soft source of flickering blue light off to Fallon’s side offered some illumination, though she didn’t look to it at first. What caught her attention right away was the stench in the air that didn’t match the dragon’s sorcery, and then the solid whiteness all over the walls around them.

She saw pictures. A window with horizontal blinds half-turned so as to obscure the view of the night outside. A chair a glass table littered with plates and a box that seemed made of some kind of paper, empty cups and small trays filled with ashes.

On a plush couch sat a young woman—at least, Fallon thought she was a woman—in a black tunic that didn’t reach past her hips and white, fuzzy pants decorated with little smiling yellow faces. The girl had numerous metal piercings in her face, bloodshot eyes and a slack-jawed expression as she stared at the three people who’d suddenly appeared before her. Smoke drifted from a tiny white object hanging from her mouth.

A skinny boy lay on the couch beside her, curled up with his head in her lap, but he did not stir despite the disturbance.

“We’re home
,” Eric said aloud. “We’re actually home.” He hugged Amanda tightly, laughing with relief.

“Amanda?” croaked the girl on the couch.

Fallon tugged on Eric’s hand and then gestured to the girl. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Poor life choices,” Amanda murmured, then turned to her dorm mate. “Kimberly,” she said, “what day is it? What’s the date?”

“Huh?”

“The date, Kimberly,” Amanda pressed. “What’s the date?”

“I dunno, Tuesday? You disappeared, like, months ago. They gave your room to a new chick. Fall semester started last week.” She sniffed thoughtfully. “You guys run off to a Renaissance faire or something?”

“What language does she speak?” Fallon asked Eric in her native tongue. “Is that one of the Westerling languages?”

“Oh, yeah,” Eric thought aloud, “that’s English. You’re gonna have to learn...” His voice drifted off as the implications caught up to him. “Holy shit.”

“What?” Fallon asked.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he looked to the television opposite them in the common room, then glanced down at the table and found the remote. He snatched the remote up in his hand, turned to the television and promptly began dialing in new numbers.

Fallon watched with awe as the moving picture in the glass screen changed from one image to the next. “What sorcery is this?” she breathed. She looked to Amanda for an answer, but found her other companion’s eyes closed and her lips moving in time to some sort of incantation.

“It’s not sorcery, it’s technology,” Eric murmured, watching the screen. Fallon looked to it as well, and nearly jumped as it began to give off music and a rapid patter of words she did not understand. Eric’s eyes went wide. “It’s technology, and
that
is Korean,” he said, waving the remote at the screen, “and I can understand it!”

“Is that odd?” Fallon blinked. She couldn’t understand a word of it.

Eric put in new numbers and the screen shifted again. Fallon then saw people of a very different ethnicity and style of dress gathered on what looked like a stage. “And Spanish,” Eric said after a moment. “I can understand Spanish.”

He turned to look at Fallon, his eyes wide with wonder. “I’ve got a marketable skill,” he declared in awe.

“You didn’t before?” asked Fallon.

Eric shook his head and looked to his other companion. “Amanda,” he began, but then stopped short.

Amanda looked to him with one hand raised. A small spiral of light rose from her hand while a tear fell from her eyes. “It still works, Eric,” she said, her voice cracking. “I can still do magic. It still works!”

“Hey,” croaked the seated girl. She leaned forward to offer up her joint to Fallon, who could not understand a word out of her mouth. “Cool cosplay.”

Fallon made a face at the smell of Kimberly’s hospitality. “Ugh.”

***

Mark Hoffman found himself sitting at the reception desk once again, overcome with irritation. He didn’t always have to do this. The old receptionist didn’t bitch about her scheduled breaks, let alone pull out the company HR manual on him to win arguments. Come to think of it, the old receptionist didn’t argue with him at all. She just did her job. Handled the phones. Cleaned up the conference rooms and set out the coffee. Took care of the mail. Took care of clients when they showed up.

It dawned on him that mid-September morning that he missed being able to let reception run itself.

He slouched at the front desk, clicking idly away at the stats on his fantasy football league to while away the time. Fifteen minutes. Twice a day, every day. So annoying.

The elevator chime hit. Figuring it was either FedEx or the regular mail, Mark absently glanced up in greeting. Then his mind screeched to a halt.

She was tall, majestically shaped and dressed to show it off. She wore a red silk halter top that left her shoulders, her midriff and the tops of those magnificent breasts all on display. Her simple black skirt hung low and tight from shapely hips. That face was absolutely to die for, too, staring at him with confident, familiar eyes...

“Amanda?” he blinked.

“Hello, Mark.”

“Where’ve you been?”

“Summer vacation,” Amanda shrugged. “I guess I misfired the email with my resignation. Sorry about that.”

“Um. Okay?”

“Two things. I left a few personal belongings in the bottom left drawer of the desk. Are they still here?”

Mark had to shake himself. He opened the drawer without thinking, looking down to see a Hello Kitty coffee mug, a couple of My Little Ponies, a comb and some dice. “Yes?” he blinked again.

“Good. I’ll take those. Also, I need to talk to someone about liquidating several hundred pounds of gold coins and how best to invest the profits.”

He looked up at her in shock.

“Discreetly,” she said with a bit of a whisper.

The door to the main office opened. Linda and Karen walked out, laughing as usual, but then stopped in their tracks. Amanda looked back at them, looked them up and down, and then turned back to Mark.

“Not those bitches.”

***

The dartboard
swung from the sudden, rapid impact of tiny missiles that crowded the bullseye. An awed silence followed, eventually broken by the loud, chagrinned groans of many men. “Holy shit!” one cried out. “Is she for real?” demanded another.

Fallon merely turned to look at Eric and ask in
her barbarian tongue, “Are they saying what I think they’re saying?” Her cut-off jeans and sleeveless, low-cut top struck a sharp contrast to the dozen businessmen in rolled-up shirtsleeves and loosened ties that filled the bar.

“Probably,” he said, accepting several twenty-dollar bills from gentlemen who’d made unwise bets. He hadn’t thought that the lunchtime crowd would have gotten so rowdy, but then, Seattle wasn’t normally this sunny this far into September. Apparently many people in downtown had decided to call it a half-day Friday and grab a few beers. “You want something else to drink?”

“Yes,” Fallon smiled. “Something stronger than this watered-down piss,” she added with amusement, gesturing to the empty glass at their table nearby.

“On it.”

“Thank you, love.”

“Hey, what’s that language you’re speakin’, anyway?” asked one of the many men around her. Eric left her to it, knowing she could handle herself. Like many others, the man didn’t do much to cover his leering at Fallon’s figure.

Fallon turned her sweet smile to the man and said, “You smell of grease and lechery.”

“Man, I’ve never heard that language before. What’s your name?”

She tilted her head curiously, recognizing those last three words. It would take a good long while to master English, but she had a talent for learning new languages. She stuck out her hand as seemed to be the custom here. “I am Fallon,” she said in English.

“Fallon,” the guy grinned. He spoke in loud, clear, slow words. “That’s nice. I’m Dave. Hi. Wow, that’s quite a grip you’ve got.”

“Your hands are as soft as a newborn’s,” Fallon replied in her native tongue, smiling widely, “and almost as strong!”

Pulling his hand back, Dave glanced over Fallon’s shoulder to note that he had a moment before her boyfriend returned. “I am here every Friday...if you ever get tired of your friend,” he added, dropping his voice somewhat.

Fallon nodded in understanding. Her smile remained undiminished. She managed to string together a proper response in English. “You are barely a man. Go home to your wife and her weak breasts.”

Eric
returned with two pints of Guinness. Fallon took hers, pounded it, and then took the other from Eric’s hand. She caught herself before she drank. “Oh, love, is this one yours?”

Dave blinked. He slapped Eric on the arm. “Good luck with that,” he muttered before moving away.

“You made a new friend?” Eric asked her.

“I think that man offered to buy me,” she said casually
, reverting to her native language again. “I would have broken his neck, but I know you do not want trouble in your city.”

“Yeah,” Eric nodded, grinning in spite of how serious he knew she was. “No neck breaking. That’s considered very rude here.”

“Hey, you two,” came Amanda’s cheerful voice. They turned to see their companion striding forth with a small bag and several folders in her hand. “I see you kept yourselves occupied?”

“I have unmanned all of these men at a game of darts,” Fallon nodded, throwing an arm around Amanda’s shoulders. “And you? How did it go with your former employers? Have they use for our gold?”

“Oh, they’ve got uses,” Amanda grinned. “About sixteen million uses.”

Eric’s eyes bulged. “How are they gonna keep that quiet?”

Amanda just waved a dismissive hand at his concerns. “Same way we’re handling the missing persons reports. Same way we’ll deal with Fallon’s citizenship. Money and magic.”