Page 305 of Dragon Slayer

57

ADMIRABLE

Dr. Edwin Talbot’s upstairs office – the showpiece, some of the others called it – was above reproach in all manners. But in his downstairs office, the same office across which Major Treadwell had been thrown a few weeks before, he tended to let his packrat tendencies overtake his sense of decorum. Files sat stacked and precarious; at least two dirty dinner dishes had been set aside on the tops of file cabinets. A few cobwebs swayed in the high corners. He hadn’t let the cleaning staff in here in two weeks, afraid they’d accidently trash something critical.

He knew where everything was, though, including the half-full bottle of Crown Royal in the bottom left cabinet. Liam regarded him with an intense amount of judgement when he pulled it and two mostly clean glasses out and thumped them onto his blotter.

“You aren’t a teetotaler, are you, Mr. Price?”

“Obviously not.” He sat like every elegant, martini-drinking British villain that had ever graced a movie screen. “But…Crown Royal? Really?”

“You are most welcome to go upstairs and find something more to your liking.” Earlier, even this morning, Edwin might have offered to go get it for him. He’d overhead two of his technicians saying that he was a suck-up, and he couldn’t really argue that he wasn’t. But right now, he was tired in every sense of the word.

Liam sighed, but accepted the glass that was slid toward him. “Fine. But if you offer me a cola to mix it with…” He shuddered and took a delicate sip – and then shuddered again.

Edwin downed his all in one go and refilled it.

A good thing, too, because Liam said, “Alright, Doctor.”

He threw down the second for good measure.

“Things are, apparently, a mad house around here, and you’ve managed to avoid me on this so far. We need to discuss my daughter.”

Edwin really, really didn’t want to do that. “The story hasn’t changed since I told it to you last,” he said wearily. “Though we’d put precautions in place, we were unprepared for the outside interference of–”

Liam sliced a hand through the air, cutting him off. “How could you have been anythingbutprepared? Doctor, when you called to tell me that she’d been taken into custody, you assured me that Major Treadwell and his team had neutralized her – herbodyguard.” The word obviously left a sour taste in his mouth. Edwin imagined it was much like the taste in his own when he was forced to acknowledge that Mia and Prince Valerian werefriends. “And yet the man was alive, and somehow managed to befriend Robin of Locksley.”

“An unanticipated development, I assure you.”

“It was unanticipated that your little toy soldier wouldn’t follow orders?”

He poured a third round, resolving not to drink it – yet. At this moment, he longed for Vlad Dracula’s blunt approach to conversation. The prince might have a reputation for brutality, but when it came to dueling with words, Liam Price was by far the more dangerous party.

“Major Treadwell is a decorated soldier. He jumped at the chance to resume an active duty position. He’s the sort of man who comes to the military for a career, Liam. I had no way of knowing his emotions would compromise the mission. How could I?”

“Hmm.” Liam settled deeper into his chair, elbows propped on its arms, hands steepled together. It should have been a cliché pose, but he lent it a particular gravitas. “She manipulated him? Magically, I mean.”

“Not that I’m aware. But by the time she was here, she’d been contained by the cuffs, and we hadn’t had a chance to fully test her capabilities. Is that something you can do yourself?”

Liam gave one of his enigmatic, infuriating little close-lipped smiles. “A mage can do all sorts of things.”

Edwin wanted to bury his face in his hands. He said, “Not to sound callous, but thereareother children. One of the boys – part of the same batch as the Russell girl – is showing great promise. The New York team thinks he’s ready to send here for training.”

“Excellent,” Liam said, toneless. For a second, the lamplight caught his eyes so they seemed to glow. These damn immortals. “Though I’m troubled by the fact that you seem to think I care only for them as weapons. They are my children, after all.”

“Yes. I know.”

Liam cocked his head. “Do you doubt that I love them?”

“I…” Yes, he did. But how could he admit that considering the father he’d been himself? Deep down, he liked to think that, though he’d been absentee, he at least hadn’t grown a whole hoard of children in a lab and entrusted them to the care of others. He’d made use of those lab-grown children, yes, but…that was only science.

If only Mia couldsee that…

Liam chuckled. “Doctor Talbot, you might be wise, but I’ve been alive for avery longtime. I’m immortal, and so are my children. If I miss their first few years, that doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things.”

“Of course.” But Kate had shoved more than one parenting book under his nose during Mia’s early days, wanting him to bepresent. Mia hadn’t needed his attention then, he’d said, when she’d been drooling and learning basic words. Resentment, though, was something he’d since learned could last well into adulthood.

“I suspect you don’t believe me. I would say that you will understand one day, but I suspect you won’t live that long.”

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