Battle Bond: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #2) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,111
in the ass.
“It’s Willard,” came the muffled call when I didn’t get up to open the door.
Thus ended my afternoon of deep reflection, also known as brooding.
“Come in.”
Willard walked in and peered around before spotting me on the floor. “Are you injured? You didn’t mention being hurt last night when you were asking for a corpse removal team to come out to Bothell with a very large stretcher.” Judging from the twitch of her eyebrows, that hadn’t been the proper way to inform the office that they had to figure out how to bag and tag the massive dragon clogging up the Sammamish River.
“My injuries are minor. They’re healing.”
Maybe not minor, but they were healing. In a couple of days, I shouldn’t have even a bruise. Someday, I would figure out why my half-elven blood could tackle broken bones, bullet wounds, and claw slashes, but not elevated inflammatory markers. Something didn’t seem right there.
“So,” Willard said, “you’re just lying on the floor because it’s comfortable?”
“This happened to be where I was when I got tired of cleaning and was overcome with weariness and ennui. The couch was too far away.” I waved at the three-seater all the way on the other side of the coffee table.
“Ennui? Shit, did you call your therapist?”
“I will on Monday. She may give up on me. I almost got her favorite yoga studio blown up.”
“The almost in that sentence gives it a significantly different meaning than if the word hadn’t been there.”
“And yet she sent me a link to some online yoga videos and suggested that might be better for me. Or those around me.”
Willard closed the door and sat on the couch. She was in her army uniform, her hat in hand, her wiry gray-shot hair recently cut. She had gained a couple of pounds since leaving the hospital but didn’t yet look like her usual tough-as-nails self.
“Some people stand up and salute me when I walk into a room,” she pointed out, waving an envelope.
“Yes, Colonel. Right away, Colonel.” I waved two fingers at my temple.
“Every time we work together, I’m amazed you made it ten years in the army.”
“It was nine, and I got assigned extra duties a lot.”
“I’m shocked.”
The roar of rush-hour traffic and honking of horns penetrated my windows, meaning I’d spent more time on the floor with my ennui than I’d realized. “You on the way home for the day?”
“Yup. I’ve got a long drive back to Fort Lewis, and I thought I’d wait for the traffic to die down. And come pay you. I think that’s the quickest you’ve closed an impossible assignment.”
I couldn’t manage a smile. I hadn’t even been trying to kill Dob, just help Nin.
It occurred to me that I should be a decent hostess and get up and offer Willard something from the fridge. My dark-elf intruder hadn’t molested the bottles of hard cider or cans of La Croix.
Instead of moving, I announced, “I hate dragons.”
“All of them? You’ve only met two.”
“All of them.”
“Even the one that makes you tingle?”
I shot her a dirty look. “Yes.”
The memory of the heated kiss-and-rub session in the water-treatment plant crashed into my mind, and my cheeks flushed red. That hadn’t been Zav’s fault, but…
“I hate anyone with that much power over me.”
“Most people,” Willard said, “who don’t have magical swords and magical elven blood have to deal every day with people having power over them. That’s life. The problem is when that power is misused.”
“Yeah, yeah. But it’s always misused. Even if it’s not, there’s your perception and knowledge that it could be at any time. That’s why it’s better to work for yourself and learn how to effectively knee people in the balls. Or boobs, should your tormentor be female.”
“Of course. We should all solve the problems that arise from the inequalities between people by adopting isolationist tendencies interspersed with brute force.”
“Did I invite you here to be reasonable and wise?”
“You didn’t invite me at all.”
“I knew it. I shouldn’t have let you in.”
“I came to pay you.”
“Never mind. Help yourself to anything in the fridge. Just watch out for the stuff on the floor. I haven’t cleaned in there yet.”
Willard tossed the envelope onto the rug next to me and picked her way into the kitchen. “You didn’t mention that your apartment had been ransacked again.”
“Didn’t I? I think it was a dark elf looking for a notebook I took when I was in their complex.”
“Dark elves?” Willard took two berry-flavored cans of sparkling water