Honeyed Words (20 page)

The girl shrugged. “Gram taught me enough about them. I’ll call her and we’ll clean up. Glad you didn’t try this on the weekend. We’ll be closed a day or two as it is just to get the cleanup done.”

“I’ll send over some fireweed to help keep the fire under control,” Anezka said, not taking her eyes off me. “He’ll fade in an hour or so. Tell your gram I owe her.”

The girl shrugged. “Gram says you and she go way back, Seið-kona.”

I looked back at Anezka … Didn’t
Seið-kona
mean witch—like Qindra? I guess it was possible.

“Not quite,” Anezka said with a chuckle. “Tell her to come out for tea.”

“She’ll like that.” Kelly turned to the busted pie case. “All my morning baking gone to waste.” She waved the rag over the top of her head and went back into the restaurant proper, stepping over the body of the kobold.

It had begun to deflate, like a sagging beach ball. What the hell was going on?

“I’ll tell you what,” Anezka said. “Why don’t we get a drink, something strong, and I’ll fill you in on all the details.”

Fuck that. I slammed the fire extinguisher on the stair beside me and stalked up the stairs. If she was there when I got there, I was going through her.

She backed up, letting me have access to the door and watched as I stormed off. She didn’t stop me, just let me get all the way to my car.

“I had to see if you could handle yourself,” she called after me.

I stopped with my hand on the door of the Taurus and flipped her off, got in my car, and pulled out, slinging gravel as my tires spun. I’d made it around to the back of the big hotel complex when I thought of Frank and Julie.

Frank trusted her, but said she was strange, had strange ideas. Julie needed the help.

And what had she said about fireweed keeping the fire under control in the burger place? Damn it. I hated needing answers.

I drove around the block. When I got back, she was sitting on a small dirt bike, helmet on, and waiting. She nodded at me and pulled out onto the main road. I shook my head and followed her, swearing under my breath. I must be out of my mind.

Twenty-seven

I sat in Anezka’s living room, nursing a cold beer and scowling.

“My father was a blacksmith from the old country,” she said. “He met my mother when he fled the Nazis during World War Two.”

“Must be pretty old,” I said.

“They were seven when they met,” she said. “My mother had been visiting Italy with her parents, and they took my father with them when they left the country. He didn’t know where his parents were, but he had the family seal.” She pointed to a disk covered in runes and other markings suspended from a chain hanging in a shadow box above her fireplace.

“He’d been an apprentice at his father’s forge before the Nazis came. His father pressed that amulet in his hands and bade him flee. The Nazis were looking for artifacts, any item of power to get their hands on.”

“So they worked for the dragons then?”

Anezka laughed. “On the contrary. There had been no dragons in Czechoslovakia for generations. Most of the region had been unclaimed by any of the drakes for centuries. That was one of the reasons for the Hundred Years War.”

I wasn’t a history major. Europe was always in one war or another.

“Anyway,” she said, waving her hand, “when I came of age, I became an apprentice in my father’s shop, learning the intricacies of flame and steel. It wasn’t until I was eleven that I took the amulet down from the mantel and found our family’s secret.”

She walked to the fireplace and opened the shadow box carefully, taking out the amulet. “This is ancient,” she said. “Passed down from smith to smith, for longer than memory.”

I watched her—her face was reverent. There was no greed, no hunger in that look.

She turned to me and held out the amulet.

I didn’t even hesitate. My hand was out before my mind acknowledged it. There was something at my core that recognized that amulet.

The metal was heavier than it looked. The chain was an alloy, much younger, and hadn’t tarnished. I recognized two of the runes: Othala and Kenaz. The first meant ancient obligation and protection. The second meant fire, passion, creativity, knowledge. Kenaz was imprinted on my left calf and on my sword.

“And this lets you call the kobolds?” I asked, letting its weight settle into my palm.

“Just one, and I don’t call him. He just shows up whether I like it or not.”

She sat on the chair opposite me and picked up her beer, taking a long draft.

“Sucks,” I said. “Sorry I killed him.”

She laughed. “He’s not from here. He’ll re-form in a few hours. This has happened before, although never quite as flamboyantly.”

“The way he ate,” I said, shuddering. “And all those teeth. He’d have had me for dessert.”

“Not beyond possibility,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “Although the plan was to see how you handled yourself.”

“Nice,” I said, feeling the heat return. Anger is fire, no two ways about it. The amulet in my hand began to glow slightly as my anger surged.

Interesting.

“He can be pretty helpful,” she said. “If I thought things were going to get out of hand, I wouldn’t have sent you to Kelly’s place.” She looked up at me, a half smile on her face. “Didn’t figure on him getting so aggressive.”

“He wanted to kill me,” I said flatly.

She studied her beer a moment longer, scratching a fingernail through the label. “Perhaps.” There was a far-off look in her eyes, as if she were remembering other incidents, other tests.

“It is not beyond his capacity,” she said finally. “He also protects the forge. He has claimed it as his territory, his and mine.”

“But would he really have killed me?” I asked, sitting up straighter in my seat.

She thought a long moment. “I’ll ask him when he gets back. But you have to understand. He’s old. Like a couple of centuries old, and there has been no dragon slayer as far back as I’ve ever heard. Kobolds are kindred to dragons, brothers of the scale, or so he claims.”

Makes a sort of twisted sense, I guess. Scales, flame. I could see the connection.

“But when I killed Jean-Paul he didn’t just melt away like your little buddy.”

“No, true,” she said. She walked across the room, her bare feet whispering across the carpet. Once she’d retrieved another pair of beers, she returned, handing me a fresh one.

I took it. It was only three in the afternoon, but it was one of those days.

“Anyway,” she continued, sitting back in her large cushy chair and slipping her feet under her bum, “he’s from the land of fire. As far as I can tell it’s another dimension. Dragons are born here, in our world.”

The beer cap dug into my palm as I twisted it off. I took a long pull, letting the rich flavor of chocolate and hops hit the back of my throat. I usually preferred something lighter, but the porter she offered definitely had a kick.

“Okay, so you have this kobold, like a familiar, that helps out around here?”

She nodded. “He sleeps in the brick forge.”

Of course he did. How silly of me to not make the connection earlier. “So what now? I proved I could kill him with condiments and foam. Where’s that leave us?”

She took a long draw on her beer and belched loudly, not unlike her kobold friend. “I say we call some of the farms and set up some time to work them. Line up farms for the whole week.”

I had to think about it for a minute. Was I comfortable around her? It all came back to Julie in the end. I needed to keep her safe, keep her customers happy for when she got back on her feet.

“Okay,” I said. “Excellent.” I got up, set my beer down on the glass and worked-iron coffee table, and fished my keys out of my jeans. “I’ll get my pack from the car.”

“Good, bathroom break,” she said, hopping up from the chair.

I made it to the door when I realized I had the amulet in my hand. It had taken on my body temperature and somehow I’d forgotten I held it. The glow had mellowed out now that I wasn’t angry, but it had a distinct strobing pulse that matched my heartbeat. Creepy.

I turned and Anezka was just closing the bathroom door. I looked down at the amulet in my hand. No way I was taking that out of the house. I crossed to the fireplace and opened the shadow box. The glass front opened with a touch and I looped the chain back over the peg. Once the door was closed again with a quiet snick, the amulet stopped pulsing.

Besides, it was obviously another test.

The disk’s markings showed in the palm of my hand. As I watched, they began to fade. Nothing permanent, thank goodness, but I had the sickening feeling it wanted to meld into my body.

By the time I was back in with my laptop, Anezka had changed into a pair of shorts and an oversized T-shirt advertising some biker bar in California.

While my computer booted, I sat back in the chair I’d been using and drank more of my beer.

I glanced over at the helmet she had sitting on her bookcase. “How do you like riding a motorcycle?” I asked.

“Not much of one,” she said with a snort. “I think my blender has more horsepower than that little rice burner.”

“Dirt bike?”

“Yeah. Good enough to get me back and forth to town. I don’t need to go far.”

“I haven’t ridden one since I was a kid,” I said. Back in … what? The early nineties? “My cousins had dirt bikes. I got to ride them one weekend while my folks were off to some couples’ encounter group.”

She took a sip of her beer and watched me.

“My Da flipped out. Not proper for a girl, or so he said.”

There was something in her eyes, at that. Some mischief or other I couldn’t peg. “How you like that Taurus?” she asked finally.

“Hate it, but it’s temporary, until I can afford something better. My car was smashed the night I fought the dragon.”

“Heard rumors,” she said, watching my face. “Read between the lines and such. Not much got out, but we knew. Those of us who care about such things.”

She wanted me to confirm details, answer questions. I wasn’t ready for that, not with her. Killing Jean-Paul was not news to her, but details—who was involved, how had it gone down, et cetera … that I was not ready to dig into.

“Did someone else work here?” I asked, changing the subject. “I noticed the forge had once been set up for a second smith.” Not too worried about rudeness at this point, and the beer had loosened up my internal editor.

“Different story,” she said with a deep sigh. “I don’t know you well, but considering how today has gone…” She shrugged. “My last lover decided to go back to his wife.”

There were no tears in her eyes, not that it surprised me.

“Oh, I knew about her, if that’s what you were wondering. Hell, she and I were lovers.” She watched me for a reaction.

I just sipped my beer and waited. I read enough articles in
The Stranger
to know about alternative lifestyles.

A smile flirted with the right side of her mouth, and she pressed onward. “Polyamory is a difficult arrangement. We’d met at Burning Man a few years ago, hit it off, and formed a triad.”

“Sounds like work to me.”

“Not really work so much as scheduling. It suited us for the first two years. I loved them both, but Flora didn’t like living here. Claimed the mountains and the rain kept her depressed. She wanted to go back to the desert. Justin hung out another six months, but in the end he was only interested in learning smithing skills.”

“So, he was the second smith?”

“Yep.”

“How’d your kobold buddy like him?”

“Hated him, frankly.” She rose from her chair and crossed over to the credenza. After rifling through a pile of papers, she pulled out a picture and walked over to me, dropping it onto my keyboard. The three of them were lounging, totally naked, under what looked like Stonehenge.

“Nice,” I said, handing the picture back. “Naked in England.”

“Oregon, actually. There’s a replica there.”

Flora and Justin were in their thirties, maybe. About a decade younger than Anezka seemed to be.

“I fell in love with Flora first,” she said, staring at the picture. “She was doing crazy chainsaw carving in nothing but a thong, a leather apron, and leather work gloves.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

Anezka smiled. “Wicked, more like it. Girl rocked my world. But Justin, oh my. He was smoking. Had a power to him that just made your panties fall off.”

I didn’t get the feeling it would take that much with Anezka.

“They were into some bizarre shit,” she went on. “He’d done taxidermy at one point, and their trailer was full of stuffed animals. Weird stuff. After a while, it started to creep Flora right out. When they moved up here, he started getting even darker, and she took to carving all the exposed beams and such with the scenes from her nightmares.”

There was a look there, in her eyes. A yearning and, maybe, a hint of fear.

“So, Justin was a creep?”