The Lost Dragon Princess

Chapter 22

More twangs sounded. This time, I glanced back quickly enough to see tiny metal darts shoot out of the bear’s fish as the statue rotated back and forth, like a gardener spraying down a bed. Several darts pierced the glass windows of the cars with the power and authority of bullets. Others slammed into the tires. The hissing of air grew louder as it escaped through dozens of holes.

The roar of an engine sounded over the rush of the nearby river. The orange camper van, somehow spared the fate of the cars, spat gravel as it raced around them and turned toward the street. It paused, and Diavan stuck his head out the window, peering into the yard.

Looking for me. I leaped up and checked to make sure Mom and Boogie had made it inside. They had, and she was peering out through the open front window.

“Stay safe!” I called in Elvish, one of only three phrases I remembered that she’d taught me.

I wanted to add for her to run out the back door and stay at a friend’s house, at least until I was out of the state, but I couldn’t say all that in Elvish. I had to trust that she would be able to take care of herself.

She disappeared from the window as I raced toward Diavan. One of the agents dropped to his knees behind his vehicle—three out of four tires were deflated, still hissing weakly—and aimed his g*n at the back of the van. His buddy grabbed his arm and said, “No shooting civilians.”

“But she’ll get away.”

“She’s not in the van. I think she went that way.” He pointed toward the trees and the river.

Yes, keep thinking that…

I ran as soundlessly as I could, not stepping onto the gravel until the last minute. As the agents darted off into the trees to look for me, I opened the passenger-side door and pulled myself in.

“Go,” I whispered, closing it as quietly as I could.

“That’s creepy.”

“What?”

“The door opening and closing by itself. I can’t see you. It’s straight out of Ghostbusters.”

Diavan peeled out. It was not quiet.

“You’re too young to know that movie.”

“They rebooted it.”

“Without any guys in it. I didn’t think anybody male watched the reboot.”

“I’m not your typical male.”

“Because of your dwarf blood?”

“Not exactly.” Diavan glanced in the side mirror as we rounded a bend and almost knocked over a garbage can.

“Well, you’re helping me, so you can be as typical or atypical as you want. I don’t care.”

“Glad you’re open-minded.”

“That’s me. Embracing diversity in all its shapes and forms.” I grabbed the oh-s**t handle as he roared around another curve fast enough to make the mailboxes cower. “Slow down, eh, Mario? You flattened all of their tires. They won’t be after us. But the police might if we shoot through town doing eighty.”

“Right.” He slowed down as he drove toward the highway. “Where are we going now?”

“How far are you willing to go?”

“Depends on your destination. I’d have a hard time getting excited over Burns or Hood River. Also, I have to get gas if we’re going more than fifty miles.”

“I need to get to Seattle.” I didn’t expect him to drive me six hours to get there and was about to say so, but he smiled over at me—at my collarbone actually, reminding me that he couldn’t see me.

“I love Seattle. Good club scene.”

“I didn’t know yard-art creators were big into clubbing.”

“I’m only twenty-five. If you pay for gas, I’ll drive.”

I glanced at my side mirror, half expecting to find police barreling after us. Nothing but the city’s ubiquitous SUVs were on the road behind us. Dare I hope we could make it all the way to Seattle without being pulled over?

“I suppose they saw your license plate,” I murmured.

“Nah. The plumber statue by the mailbox squirted black oil all over it. It’ll bleed off soon enough, but it should have kept them from getting the plate number if they didn’t think to record it earlier.” He grinned at me. “What do you think of my yard art? I admit when I was making it, I wasn’t imagining a scenario quite so interesting. I just thought your mom might appreciate help defending against hoodlums.”

“The hoodlums of Bend?”

“Yeah, they live in the seedy part of downtown.”

“Where is that exactly? Between the yoga studio and the furniture store that sells ten-thousand-dollar couches?”

“No, two blocks south of that. And I think the couches there are twenty thousand dollars. The owner of that store turned her nose up at me when I tried to get them to carry my art.”

“I’ll bet.”

I checked the mirror again, hoping my mom and Boogie would be all right. And hoping I could get to Seattle and find a cure for Pariah before the government caught up to me.

Twilight was falling by the time we neared Puget Sound, the city lights of Olympia off to the side. It was late enough that the traffic wasn’t too bad. Soon, assuming the police didn’t catch up to us in this last stretch, we would reach Seattle. I wished I had a better idea of where to go. I hoped Nin had more local magical contacts than I did and that she could point me to an alchemist—or someone who knew all the alchemists in the city.

Since Diavan was still driving—I’d offered to take over, but he said he didn’t let strange women hold his steering wheel—I pulled out my phone. I’d tried calling Pariah earlier but had been shunted off to voice mail. This time, I texted her, asking if she’d heard anything about dark elves in Seattle.

After that, I called Mom’s house again. Even though I doubted the government would harass her because of my actions, I couldn’t help but worry. She was the kind of person who could wander off into the woods in one state and reappear three months later in another state, without having suffered any adversity along the way, but she was also law-abiding enough to hang out and wait to be questioned. And she would have felt obligated to watch Lily. A burden I had imposed upon her. I grimaced.

All I got was the answering machine.

Shortly after I left another message, the phone rang. It was Pariah’s office number, not Mom’s.

I made the mistake of answering before I realized it was unlikely Pariah was in the office. “Hello?”

“Vida, where are you?” That sounded like Lieutenant Snotty. “Did you resist arrest? Your a*s is dead meat. If you don’t get back here and turn yourself in by dawn, I’ll have—”

I made a hissing sputtering sound, my best imitation of static. “Hello? Sorry, I’m—hiss—having trouble hearing you. Driving through—hiss—tunnel. Is this—hiss—pizza guy? Just leave it at the door. Long tunnel, about to lose you.” I hung up.

Diavan glanced over at me.

“Wrong number,” I told him.

“Darn, I was hoping for pizza.”

“They don’t chase you down to deliver it.”

“No? I hear delivery drones are coming. They ought to be able to find you on the freeway.” He braked in response to three lanes of brake lights ahead of us. We’d hit Tacoma. So much for the light traffic. “Especially when traffic is slow.”

I glanced at the phone. No response to my text yet.

“Where in Seattle am I going?” Diavan asked.

“Occidental Square.”

“Oh, Trinity is near there. They have a dress code though. And might sneer at Bessy.”

“Bessy?”

“Bessy.” He waved a hand toward the interior of the yellow-carpeted van, the back seats replaced with a bed and boxes of clothing and personal items. The galaxy-colored curtains on the side windows were pulled, and an alien-head bobble doll on a crate wobbled as we started and stopped in the traffic. “Bessy would fit in more on Capitol Hill.”

I doubted Bessy fit in anywhere. “I just need a few minutes to talk to a friend. She’s got a food truck she usually parks there.”

“She? That’s a sketchy neighborhood at night, isn’t it?”

“She sells a lot of her merchandise to the sketchy clientele.”

“And they refrain from mugging her afterward?”

“She can take care of herself. Trust me.”

Diavan shrugged.

“Thanks for driving me up here, by the way.” I should have said that five hours ago. “And helping me with the agents. I hope you won’t get in trouble for that. I was a little surprised that you helped, given that you barely let me on the premises yesterday.”

“They shoved their way in and were asking me questions before you got there. I asked them if they had a warrant to come into the house, and they got real pissy. Turned it into an interrogation. Like they already had me pegged as a criminal who’d broken probation.”

I eyed his scarred, buzzcut head, pockmarked face, and black metalhead T-shirt. Even in a tutu, he would have looked like some mafia dude’s bodyguard. All I said was, “Rude.”

“That’s what I told them. They found out I live in the van, not the house, and told me to go wait there and stay out of the way. I was tempted to knife their tires even before you and Sigrid showed up.”

“So you helped me to spite them, not because you warmed to me as a person and a human being?”

“I’m mostly hoping to see your dank tiger again.”

I assumed dank had evolved—or devolved—into slang, since Damas was far from damp and musty. “Gotcha.”

He looked hopefully over at me.

“I don’t usually bring him out to sit in traffic. His time here is limited, so I save him for battles and when I need someone to vent to. He charges less than a therapist.”

“Huh.”

My phone buzzed as we rolled into Seattle proper, city lights glittering next to the dark waters of the Sound.

Get out of town if you aren’t already, came in from Pariah’s number. There’s an investigation going on at the office, Mood has brought in MPs and some brass, and I’ve got a guard outside of my hospital door. I don’t know where they think I’m going while I’ve got all these monitors cabled to me, but there’s someone there day and night. And I know Mood is looking for you. And his car. What trouble are you getting yourself into, Vida?

I stared at the screen, worried by the mention of monitors and cables. Had she gotten worse? How much time did I have to figure this out? Or was it already too late? Whatever she’d been given, it couldn’t be some simple poison, not if it caused cancer.

I’m trying to figure out who dosed you and with what, I texted back, deciding there had to be a reason she hadn’t accepted the call. Either she was too sick to speak, or the walls were thin, and she worried about that guard overhearing her. You ever come across anything about dark elves? It looks like someone was in your apartment and spiked your coffee or something you drink regularly with a potion. There was a sigil on the bottom of the vial from the dark-elf alchemical language. It took me three tries to get alchemical out without AutoCorrect inserting something stupid, and I growled at the phone. Maybe my mom wasn’t missing anything by forgoing modern technology.

As I told you before, someone may have been in my apartment recently. By the way, is it true that the building burned?

Yes, sorry. I got your cat out. She’s staying with my mom in Bend.

North Bend?

No. Bend, Oregon. It was a long drive.

I’ll bet. Lily can be vocal in the car.

You’re a master of understatement, Colonel. FYI, she detests Damas.

I’m sure. As far as dark elves… they’re around. We’ve never sent you after them because they’re too discreet to get caught k********g anyone, but the city morgue always has a few bodies in it that have been mutilated in ritualistic fashion. It’s believed that a lot of the people who disappear in Seattle end up in their lair, but nobody’s ever lived to talk about it. They hide the entrances very well. The police have looked and never found them.

Where’s their lair? Do we know?

The Seattle Underground.