Battle Bond: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #2) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,68

Yes.”

“Oh.”

“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, but maybe you could call them first, instead of unexpectedly showing up.”

“Yeah.” But Thad never called me, and it was hard for me to imagine calling him first out of the blue. Of course, I’d told him not to call me unless it was an emergency, but I’d expected… I didn’t know. I’d thought he might reach out occasionally over the years. He hadn’t.

Why was it easier to face killer dark elves, vampires, and werewolves than to call my own family?

Because I didn’t care how those other guys reacted to me, I answered my own question. More than that, I expected them to be hostile. I could deal with hostility from strangers. Hostility, or even indifference, from people I should have had a relationship with… That was different.

“Or email,” Mary offered. “Couldn’t you email them without people realizing you have a connection?”

“So long as none of the magical people who want me dead are hackers or get ahold of my computer or phone, yes.”

“Is that likely?”

“It’s not an impossibility. My apartment gets broken into often. Someday, I’m going to hunt down a trinket that can keep everyone out of there.” I sighed with longing, having heard that artifacts like that weren’t uncommon in other worlds. Dimitri’s cactus home-security doodad wasn’t quite in the same league. Maybe with a little encouragement, he could learn to create something more useful.

“Get in touch with your family.” Mary put a hand on my shoulder. “Whatever reception you fear is probably the worst possible iteration of what will really happen. Even if they reject you, at least you’ll know. That would be easier than living with the uncertainty.”

I wasn’t sure about that. As long as things were nebulous, there was still hope. Hope of them forgiving me for the long silence, for walking out all those years ago.

“I’ll think about it. Thanks.”

As I headed for the door, Mary repeated, “Don’t randomly show up on their vacation like a stalker, please.”

She must have decided her previous, more circumspect wording of that hadn’t been sufficient.

“I won’t. I’m not a dragon.”

Her brow furrowed in confusion. I definitely wasn’t a normal patient.

19

When I pulled into the Moss Lake Trailhead parking lot, a place that could get me back into the forest where Greemaw had marked the caves, there weren’t any other cars there. I didn’t know whether to take that as a good sign—there wouldn’t be anyone to see me illegally let myself through the locked gate—or an ominous one. The hiking spot was out of the way and not that well known, but there were usually a few other people here.

I left the Jeep running and walked up to the gate, reaching for the magical charm that unlocked secure doors and gates. But I paused, my hand dangling. Someone had shot off the padlock securing the metal gate that kept people from driving back onto the old logging-road-turned-trail. Fresh tire marks had disturbed the grass and mud. The bar creaked as I pushed it up.

I trotted up to the bend and peered around it to make sure there wasn’t a bevy of park-ranger trucks waiting. The wide trail stretched back into the trees, straight and empty for as far as I could see, but the fresh tire marks were visible all along the way.

“Maybe someone else is hunting dragons,” I muttered and thought about calling Sindari.

But I needed to save him. If I ran into Dob back here… Well, I hoped I wouldn’t. Not yet. I wasn’t ready to run into him. I had Willard’s transmitters—there were three of them, and they’d been built into custom cartridges I could fire with Fezzik—but I was skeptical those rounds would pierce dragon hide. The memory of Zav incinerating bullets before they touched him came to mind.

All I wanted today was to find Dob’s lair. If I could slip in and out and leave one of the transmitters tucked behind a rock, maybe Willard’s pilot buddies could bomb the cave one night while he was snoozing.

Rain drizzled from the gray sky as I drove onto an old dirt road that had been allowed to narrow to something more suitable to hikers than automobiles. High grasses, trees, ferns, and other dense foliage I couldn’t name made it claustrophobic. Long beards of green moss dangled from the evergreen branches and carpeted their trunks.

Some of those branches reached out over the trail, clawing at the roof of the Jeep and reminding me of when Zav tore off