AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“She is not welcome among ourkind.”
“I’m not here to bother anyone,” I said. “And I’ll pay for the information. In money or tennis balls and pool noodles. Whatever excites peoplehere.”
The obsidian eyes regarded me without warmth. Mom frowned at me. I felt like the delinquent teenager who had been dragged home by thepolice.
“I thought,” Mom said to Greemaw, “that since you told me before that you’ve been here since the last volcanic eruption, you might be familiar with all the races that have come and gone in that timeperiod.”
“Hasn’t it been over a thousand years since the volcano erupted?” I waved in the direction of the lakes and PaulinaPeak.
Mom nodded. “Golems are long-lived, she tellsme.”
“It is true,” Greemaw said. “I was alone then and for many centuries afterward, except when travelers passed through. Now, the village is full of life. It is very busy to one such as myself, but I cannot turn away refugees.” Her gaze fell on me again. “There are so few safe places for them in thisworld.”
Because this isn’t their world, I kept myself from saying. Instead, I pulled out the vial and warily approached the golem. Even sitting, Greemaw towered over me, with shoulders four times wider than mine. She had to weigh thousands of pounds. But she didn’t make any suddenmovements.
“Will you look at the sigil on the bottom of this and let me know if you recognize it?” I waved the vial. “I’ll pay,” I repeated, though I didn’t know if money was useful to these people. It wasn’t as if a golem could walk into a 7-11.
“Did you slay the werewolf protectors?” she asked. “Or did thedragon?”
Uh. They had called themselves protectors, and she called them that too. I’d hoped they hadn’t been allied. If I told her the truth, she probably wouldn’t help me. More than that, she might order everybody here to attackme.
The children, I noticed, had disappeared, and only adults were present now. More than fifty of them watched our exchange, some with clubs, short swords, or bows. A couple of flinty-faced dwarves hadguns.
Though I was tempted to foist the deaths of the werewolves off on Zav, it was possible the golem could communicate with him and that I would be caught lying. I didn’t like lying anyway. I didn’t think I had been at fault when it came to the werewolves, but if I’d made a mistake, I preferred to own up to it. The only thing that made me pause was all the baleful looks—and the weapons—aimed in mydirection.
“They attacked me,” I said, “and I defended myself. I asked if they would let us turn back without a fight, but they said no. So, yes, I killed several of them. Five, I believe, between myself and Sindari. I’m not sure how many the dragon killed, if any. He captured one and lit a couple others on fire. They may havesurvived.”
The golem listened to my tale, then looked to one of the side walls in her cave. It was more of an alcove, and I didn’t sense or feel anything magical in the stone itself, but she spoke to thewall.
“Is thatcorrect?”
The rock wall shimmered, and a surge of magical awareness flooded me even before Zav walked out in human form to stand next to the golem and face me. Physically, he appeared small next to Greemaw, but magically, he was like the sun compared to a distantstar.
I couldn’t read the haughty expression he leveled at me, but I made myself stare back at him with determination. I didn’t care if he radiated the power of a supernova. This was my world, not his, and he didn’t have any right to judge me or tell me what I could dohere.
“It’s correct,” he said, still looking at me, though he replied to Greemaw. “I let the werewolves who fled live, though theyshouldhave been punished. They were arrogant and did not properly defer to adragon.”
“Yeah, I had the same problem with them.” It probably wasn’t the time for lippiness—the dark frown my mom sent me assured that—so I resolved to keep my mouth shut, unless it was about thevial.
“It is no surprise that a werewolf would not defer to ahuman.” Zav’s violet eyes closed to slits but remained locked on me. “Even a mongrel with the blood of an elf who lowered himself to rut with ahuman.”
Mom turned her frown on Zav, and indignation burned in her eyes. Probably more at the insult to her former lover than for me or herself. But Rocket slunk back to hide behind a hut, and she must have remembered how dangerous this guy was—those casually incinerated bullets had to be prominent in her mind—for she didn’t sayanything.
“You have earned the hatred of all the magical beings in this part of this world.” Zav walked toward me, his hands clasped behind his back, and then circled me, eyeing me up and down. It wasn’t sexual—if he’d been affronted by the idea of an elf and a human mating, he’d wither up and die in horror at a dragon having relations with a human. It was more like that of an undefeated boxer sizing up a scrawny newcomer to the arena. “I can understand why, of course,” he continued, “since you stomped into my way and killed the wyvern I was in the middle ofarresting.”
Why did I have a feeling this guy was making me his special project? Was it truly coincidence that he’d found criminals right next to me on two separate occasions, or was he stalking me for some reason? Running into each other at the seaside cave over the wyvern could have been chance, but what were the odds that his second arrest would bring him halfway across the state to the same mountainside where Iwas?
“The wyvern that killed humans and that I was charged by my authorities to kill,” I stated. “I was on the case first, as I said. You weren’t around when I executed the first two, and it’s not my fault you came late to the thirdone.”
“If there were others, they were not my concern. And you werenottherefirst.”
“I was already there when you walked in,asshole.”
“Oh?”
Hell, hadn’t he realized that? If not, I was an idiot for hinting at one of my advantages. If I had to fight him again, the cloaking charm might be the only thing that would save mylife.
Zav stopped his circling at my side, his chest a hair’s breadth from brushing my shoulder. He lifted a hand—I almost expected to see claws at the ends of his fingers, but he had normal, well-trimmed nails. As I watched that hand come closer, it was all I could do not to spring back and drawChopper.
