Page 21 of Riding My Dragons

”Okay,” I said, squeezing her arm a little bit.“Now you’ve got someone.You’ve got me.And Byron.”

”And Cade,” said Byron.

”Right, and Cade,” I said.“And listen, you trusted me enough to let me be your first time.And you trusted Byron and Cade because they’re my friends and you trust me.Jenna, we’d never give you up, and we’d never let anything happen to you.”

”Never,” Byron agreed.

”You’re not alone in this,” I promised her.“You’ve still got your Uncle Neal keeping in touch with you, right?And he’s got his friends in the Intercross.And now you’ve got us.”I flashed a little smile at her.“And now we’ve got you.”

“And since you’ve got us,” Byron said thoughtfully, “and you’re not likely to find out anything more about your fathertonight, maybe we can do something to help you take your mind off things—temporarily.”

”I think you’ve been doing plenty of that already,” she said, her mood seeming at least a little bit lighter.

Byron chuckled slightly and rubbed at his chin with his thumb.“Yes,” he said, “we have, haven’t we?But maybe there’s even something a little bit more.”

Jenna looked curiously from Byron to me and back again.

”What are you thinking about?” I asked him.

“Something I think we’ll all like,” Byron said, smiling and nodding.“Besides that.Yes, perhaps that’s just the thing.”

Jenna and I listened closely to Byron’s new idea.

CHAPTER 9

Cade

I opened the door to the Taisce pub, a few blocks away from Fafnir Park, to the sounds of singing and music and general partying.Yes, it was Reconciliation Week at my family’s place of business, and it would be this way for the next few days.This was one week in the year when we did some of our best business.Or I should say, our best public business.

Coming through the front door and going down the stairs into the main bar, I moved my eyes across the kind of scene that was to be expected at the pub at the beginning of this week when humans and Scalers celebrated the times, way before anyone was born, when one-bodied people and two-bodied people decided to stop trying to kill each other off and take the world for themselves, and be friends instead.We’d all lived a good life since then.To mark the occasion, the pub and so many other places all over the world were now full of music and laughter and good will.

Moving into the bar with all the merry-makers, all I could think about was how my reason for being here probably had nothing to do with any of it.

At every table, and left and right at the bar, were patrons with glasses and pitchers, some just humans, some Scalers in human shape, some of us in dragon form, sitting around, eating, drinking, joking, telling stories, singing.Sporting events and shows played on monitors on the walls.At the dart boards, Scalers competed with their human friends, and predictably some of the dragon folks in their reptile bodies had to show off by pitching darts with their tails.Some of them had adamn good aim.Waiting staff weaved here and there among the tables and past me.They recognized and greeted me; I greeted them back.Other people who knew me at tables or at the bar called to me, inviting me to have a drink.Waving at them, I shouted over the party noise that I had to meet someone and couldn’t stop.I was headed to a certain place at the back, and looking for a certain person.

I looked to the door in the rear brick wall of the bar, where there was a little corridor with a restroom between the bar and the back game room, and there he was, standing like a guard.My cousin Ross Taisce was a big man, goateed, slightly husky, not yet forty but getting there, with his arms folded and a commanding look.He’d been in charge of the pub since I was in my teens.He had a way of watching over it like a king surveying his domain.Ross smiled a close-mouthed smile at me and nodded, calling me over to him.I smiled at some women, some of them in dragon shape, giving me an inviting look, one of them curling her tail at me and gesturing at the pitcher on their table.They reminded me of what I’d left back at Byron’s place, and once again I cursed the luck that Ross would call me here now of all times.I gave the ladies a little wave—little did they know where I wished I still was and what I wished I was still doing—and went to join Ross.

Without a word, my cousin opened the cellar door and motioned for me to step through it.He followed me, shutting and locking the door behind him and muting the party sounds behind us.“Evening, Cade,” Ross finally said as we started down the stairs in the dimness to the cellar, which was lighted.“I won’t keep you long; I know it must be some little human female you and your buddies are playing with.You can get right back to that right after we’ve gone over some things.”

Ross knew all about how Elliot, Byron, and I liked to pick up human females; he’d seen us leave the pub with themenough times.He sounded only as sympathetic about what he’d interrupted as he absolutely had to be.To myself, I hoped he really would make this quick.

In the cellar were racks of wine and liquors, and barrels of more liquors, and a long wooden table with chairs.Ross had me sit down opposite him at the table, and I asked, respectfully, “Okay, cousin, what have you got for me?”

”An important job,” said Ross.

“How important?”

”Important enough that it’ll be like a promotion in the family business.You’ll be moving up, Cade.The grands and the uncles have all been saying it’s time for you to start taking on more responsibility.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.I hardly ever saw the elders of the family.They lived in the family compound in the mountains, handing down orders to the rest of us like some old gods.It made me miss my father.I was still in my teens when he got his death sentence:scale cancer.It’s a hellish disease that strikes Scalers, as bad as the worst human diseases if not worse.It eats up the skin of a Scaler’s dragon body, covers it with sores and tumors so that it hurts too much to use that form.You end up unable to use one of your bodies, feeling like you’re only half a person, and living in constant pain.But the disease doesn’t let go from there.It creeps into the human body next.There’s no stopping the damn thing.Our doctors, with our so-called advanced post-Ambience medicine, have never found a cure for it.We had to watch my father wither away in agony and die.It’s left me with an ache inside that never leaves me.

Since losing Dad, I’d been mostly on my own, getting work from the rest of the family and from gambling.It wasn’t a perfect way to live.But now I was afraid it was about to get a lot more complicated.

Feeling very wary now, I asked, “What kind of responsibility?”

“A bigger job than you’ve been doing ‘til now,” said Ross.“The family has a new client.There’s something they need us to acquire for them.We want you to get it and bring it, so we can deliver it to the client.It has to happen tomorrow night.”

”It’s a thing?” I said.“It’s not money?What is it, a new gambling machine?A new gaming system?What?”

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