Page 21 of Dragon's Flame
“Yeah,” she whispered back. If this was it—if he was really going—then maybe she could at least give him that. “I’m here, Tarian.”
“At last,” he said, and then relaxed. She felt his chest settle beneath her hand...and it didn’t rise again.
Kenna sat there,feeling . . .sad.
It was inexplicable. Surely they hadn’t been together long enough for hostage attachment to set in.
But he was still a person, albeit a crazy one, and he had died, and she knew enough about death already.
“I’m sorry,” she said, leaning forward, to set a hand on Tarian’s cheek, leaving a handprint of his blood behind.
At least things didn’t feel creepy—which was pretty astounding, seeing as she was off the map in a haunted-looking lobby with a dead person. She stood, hugged herself, and smudged what might’ve been the beginning of a tear off her cheek.
“Fuck,” she muttered, then looked at the dog. “Okay, this time you’re coming with me, yeah? ’Cause if you stay out here, you’ll get eaten by mountain lions.”
The dog’s head hung, and he followed her out of the lodge lobby with a wilted tail, all the way back to the van, which he dutifully got inside. She blew air through pursed lips, and wentto put the keys into the ignition—before realizing they weren’t the right ones.
They—none of them—fit.
How the fuck had he been driving it?
Had he really pitched his own set into the woods, to stop her from escaping, when he realized death was near?
If so, he was evenmoreof an asshole than she thought he was. She threw the keys into the other seat and pounded the steering wheel, while the dog barked beside her.
She yanked the door open again, and the light inside the car came on, which she used to go through the glove box, discovering a flashlight, a window scraper, and that the car’s registration was for someone from Idaho.
Tarian did not seem like he was from Idaho.
And—it didn’t say Tarian on the reg paper.
She lifted the paper, turning it toward the overhead light—when her own reflection caught her eye in the rearview mirror. She was streaked with green. There was a stripe of it beneath one eye, like she’d been interrupted before going to play football.
Then she realized she’d left green fingerprints all over the paper she was holding—and the only reason that could be, was because it was the color of the non-Idahoan-man-inside-the-lobby’s blood.
“What the fuck.” It was a statement, not a question. Then she looked over to the dog—and back to the lobby—and grabbed the flashlight.
She crept back inside.Her fears about the body moving? No longer unfounded.
But when she spotted Tarian by the flashlight’s beam, he still appeared deceased, and he was absolutelycoveredin green.
She walked forward slowly, kneeling down to inspect his chest—and was surprised to find that the skin she’d seen slicked with green blood earlier was now absolutely covered in old scars, a crazed assortment of slash marks and pits, like something had trapped him in its mouth and bitten him repeatedly.
It was so bad she couldn’t even make out the hole he’d been bleeding from anymore—and there was so much blood—just how long had he been bleeding?
“What are you?” she whispered to herself—and heard him take a breath.
She squeaked and crawled backwards at once, the flashlight’s beam spiraling out on the carpeting as she accidentally kicked it. She scrambled to reach it, and then pointed the light at him again.
He was still.
That—had to be some weird post-mortem reflex. Right?
Some doctor she was—but then she saw him breathe this time, and she shrieked.
“Seris?” he said, sitting up, his voice low and disoriented, his face caught in the trembling circle of her flashlight. His expression was glazed, until he saw her—then it sharpened. “Not Seris,” he said to himself before rocking back to lie on the floor again, this time staring at the ceiling. Kenna watched him take several deep breaths, her disbelief rising with each one, until he finally asked, “What is your name?”
Finally, an acknowledgement that she was her own person. “Kenna,” she said quietly.
