Battle Bond: An Urban Fantasy Dragon Series (Death Before Dragons #2) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,79
Zav’s face, not sure if it was for the bumpy ride, the delay, the company, or the overall indignity of sitting in a human vehicle. “You can go ahead on your own if you want. I won’t be offended if you’re not here at my side, regaling me with your sublime company.”
Zav gave me a considering look, then focused on the route ahead again. “No. If he is there and sees you by yourself, he may attempt to circumvent me and come get you. Since he has this ability to hide his aura from me, it’s a real possibility.”
“Why would he want me?”
“To irritate me. Everything he has done here has been to vex me.”
I would call Zav full of himself, except it had seemed true when I spoke with Dob at the windmill. The only reason he hadn’t killed me then had been because he sensed Zav’s aura on me. That pesky aura that I never seemed to be able to scrub off.
“Why though? Why would he follow you through a portal to Earth?”
“Because this place is lawless. I am the only representative of the Dragon Justice Court. If he kills me here, there would be no witnesses who could go back and tell my family, so there would be no repercussions for him.”
“Why does he want to kill you?” I gunned the engine to climb up a hill that couldn’t possibly be an acceptable grade for a logging truck. I wondered if there was a map anywhere that covered the snarl of old roads and trails back here.
“Because I support my mother.”
“And she’s important on your Justice Court?”
“Yes.” Zav didn’t sound like he wanted to speak of this further, not with some nosy half-elf, but there was definitely more to the story than he was telling me.
Maybe he and Dob had personal history that went way back. Didn’t dragons live hundreds or even thousands of years? That was a long time during which to accumulate enemies. I knew. I’d accumulated plenty in the twenty years I’d been doing my job.
The road flattened out, and we plowed into a surprise pond-sized puddle at the top. Mud sucked at the tires, and the water lapped at the side rails under the doors. The Jeep sturdily maneuvered through without much trouble, and I was glad Willard had arranged a loaner almost identical to my old rig.
“Just in case you’re curious to know,” I said, “I owe eighteen thousand dollars on the Jeep that you threw up in the trees and that was too wrecked to repair. The insurance company refused to pay it off because dragons aren’t considered an act of God.”
“Why do you tell me this?” Zav didn’t look at me. He was peering at a hint of black asphalt ahead.
We were coming to the road that led into the water-treatment facility, and nervous flutters started up in my stomach.
“In case you feel guilty now that we’re allies, and you want to pay off the loan for me.” And because I would rather talk than think about the dead goblins we might find on the floor of this place. Even though I’d just met the pack of goblins living out here, I felt protective of them after witnessing those poachers trying to kill them.
“I do not have money.”
“No money? No piles of gold in a cave somewhere? Our stories talk about how dragons hoard treasure. All kinds of knights went on quests to try to slay dragons and take their hoards.”
“That is ridiculous. Money is of no value to us. We value strength and power and take what we need from nature.”
“I guess that means you’re not going to chip in for gas money then.”
This time he looked at me, but the look suggested he didn’t know what I was talking about.
“I’m afraid, good Zav, that you’ll never star in a romance novel. In those, the women are always falling for the hunky billionaire who somehow manages to develop six-pack abs while working eighty hours a week to build his software company.”
I drove us out of the mud and onto the nicely paved road, looking left and right. To the far left, I could make out the bend I remembered that would lead down to a gate and the main road. To the right, the water-treatment plant wasn’t in view yet, but I knew it was that way and turned in that direction.
“Human women desire males with money,” Zav parsed this.
“Not always, but it’s definitely a trend in romance novels.”