6. Chapter Six
“Dragon,” Linorra said. “Please don’t be afraid.” She could sense what he felt, for that was her greatest gift.
“I am not afraid of a sprite like you,” the dragon said.
“I am not a sprite,” Linorra said, giggling. “I’m just a girl, and I want to be your friend.”
Aaron’s cottage was well hidden. It was tucked between two fallen redwood logs, which, even lying sideways, rose above the roof. The logs were covered in several of those giant, fluffy ferns, which I had dubbed “spider ferns.”To my dismay, the roof of the cottage was equally covered in spider ferns, though I heard none of the telltale rustling. The back of the cottage butted up against a half dozen bushy evergreens. It was effectively invisible on three sides and the top, and the small front yard was surrounded by tall bushes. I would have walked right past if he hadn’t pointed it out.
The cottage was made of wood and gray cobblestone with two small windows on either side of the front door. Underneath one window were rounds waiting to be split for firewood, neatly stacked and organized by size. A few pieces of split firewood rested on top. A large metal basin was pushed up against the front of the cottage with several wicked-looking hooks protruding from the stone above. In the yard, there was a firepit, dug into the ground and edged with more stone.
Aaron dropped the dragon carcass next to the firepit and stopped to listen. We stood silently for an endless minute, then Aaron snapped his fingers at Rogue, motioning him forward. Rogue ghosted between the cottage and one of the giant logs, disappearing around the back, then appeared again on the other side. He trotted back up to Aaron and sat at his feet.
The big man peered down at the dog, then up at the cottage, finally stepping toward it. In his right hand, he gripped a knife with a wooden handle and a serrated blade about ten inches long. It looked small in his hand. He held it out in front of him as he walked toward the front door. I moved to follow him, but he waved me back, shaking his head.
I stood there, useless, wondering what fresh horror I was about to witness. Rogue stayed with me. I couldn’t imagine anyone finding this place, and I questioned, again, why Aaron helped me. He had dodged that inquiry earlier.
How did he know that I wouldn’t attack him while his back was turned, or that I wouldn’t report his location to someone? Based on the painstaking camouflage he’d arranged, he was clearly hiding. If there was such a thing as a murder cabin, this would be it. I worried I was making a huge mistake.
Aaron opened the front door. It wasn’t locked, but it also didn’t look like the doorknob had a keyhole. Perhaps it could only be barred from within. I looked behind me, unsure of which was more unsafe, the house or standing outside of it.
I scowled down at the dragon’s corpse. “We’re going to cook you, not the other way around,” I mumbled.
Rogue sniffed the dragon carcass. Psycho Snow White had also known my dog. She had been looking for him. What did that mean? Could she locate Rogue somehow? I considered telling Aaron that in case she followed us, but what if he was working with her?
I sighed. If I wanted to make it out of this mess and go home, I would need help, which meant I had to trust someone. Thus far, Aaron had kept me alive. In the absence of a viable alternative, I decided I could trust him a little longer.
Finally, Aaron’s deep voice called from inside the cottage, “Okay.” Rogue sneezed at one of the dragon’s feathers, then headed for the door. He passed Aaron, who walked out the front door toward me with rope in his hands. His eyes were trained on me, almost glowing with intensity.
My heart skipped a beat as I backed up, panicking. I didn’t think I could outrun Aaron from this proximity, but I certainly wouldn’t let him tie me up without a struggle.
“It’s not for you,” Aaron said, rolling his eyes. “It’s for the dragon. I have to hang it to butcher it. Rhoya, woman, get a hold of yourself. You’re all over the place. First you giggle like an underling, then you scream and cry. You’re worse than me.”
I stared at him, shaking, and feeling very foolish, especially given the “just trust him” speech I had given myself ten seconds earlier. I covered my face with my hands, trying to calm down. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just . . . I don’t know you. I still don’t understand why I’m here or why you’re helping me. Who are you? How did you even know I would be out there?”
I had been planning to deviously extract that information through charm and guile. Instead, I made the very sensible choice to just blurt out my questions. Hopefully he would still make me dinner.
“I told you my name,” he said.
“That’s not what I’m asking, and you know it.” I exhaled in frustration, then decided to try his brilliant tactic from earlier. “Please,” I said, softening my voice.
He didn’t answer. He just crouched down to tie the dragon’s hind legs together tightly, then he hauled it over to the front of the cottage. He attached the rope to one of the hooks, letting the creature dangle by its feet, head down, its meaty tail flopping over the top. The metal basin sat underneath to catch blood, or entrails—or whatever.
Ew.
Rogue had reappeared from inside the cottage and plopped down, right in the doorway. He watched Aaron work.
“Aaron, I need to get home. I can’t do that without information. Please, I need your help.”
Aaron pulled out the serrated knife again. He made a shallow vertical slit from the dragon’s groin, continuing past the belly, and farther down to the neck where his crossbow bolt had killed the thing. He took a deep breath and said, “I knew someone would be there. I knew your name, that you would be from over there. I knew that a dog with your name on his collar would lead me to you. That is all.” He faced away from me as he worked and spoke, his voice quavering ever so slightly.
“How did you know all that?” I asked.
He continued butchering the dragon, his movements certain and efficient but jerky, as if he were taking his frustration out on the carcass. I waited in silence for him to answer, watching him slide his knife under the skin at the tail. He peeled the hide back a few inches on each side of the cut, then worked inch by inch to tug it away. When he finished, he murmured, “My mother told me before she disappeared. She’s . . . a seer, a precog.”
Rogue made a strange coughing noise. I barely registered it. “She’s a psychic?” I asked incredulously.
He rounded on me, his face red. He exuded that same What the hell? look I had seen earlier. I thought I had exclusive rights to that look, but he wore it like he’d invented it.
“Why can’t you understand simple things?” he demanded. “She’s a reservoir for the Precognition fragment.”
“Great, that clears things up. Thanks. Oh, by the way, what the hell is that?”
Aaron snorted derisively. “Precognition? Or fragments?” He asked the question as if the answer should be obvious and was intended to insult me.
I sighed. “Either one.” Jerk.
Aaron blinked, staring at me. Then, as if all my stupidity finally made sense to him, he whispered to himself, “Doesn’t know about fragments.”
I blew out a breath. “Of course, I do. Just stick a subject in that sentence and it’ll fix it right up.” Aaron gave me the look again. What can I say? Grammar humor isn’t for everyone. Or anyone, really.
He closed his eyes, shaking his head as he turned back to the dragon. He finished peeling the skin away from the incision, then he reached into the carcass and yanked open the sternum, producing a loud crack. The sound made me cringe, and a wave of nausea struck me. He reached inside the dragon, sliced out the windpipe, and tossed it in the basin.
“I’m gonna vomit,” I mumbled. That made me think about the dragon’s fire-vomit, and I giggled again. “Wow, you’re right. I am all over the place. What is wrong with me?”
“A perfectly constructed question,” he commented.
I narrowed my eyes. Is he using grammar humor against me? This man is more formidable than I thought. And more educated. He isn’t just some mountain man with a penchant for belted tunics.
“Huh,” I said.
He chuckled softly. “It’s my turn to ask a question.”
“Okay,” I said. “Shoot.”
“Earlier, when we were”—he paused for a moment—“eh, on the ground. Did you feel something? From me?”
I resisted the urge to make a sex joke. That might send the wrong message. “Yes. Heat, then—”
“So much grief,” he finished.
“Yes.”
He turned to face me, his hands dripping red and black fluid. “That was your fragment. Fragments are slivers of power. They are broken, fragmented, into different forms, just like light breaks into different colors. Together, they are the force that holds together our physical reality. At least, that’s what they teach in school.” Aaron raised his eyebrows and shrugged as if he weren’t convinced.
“In order to harness the power of a fragment, you must have a reservoir for that fragment, an internal container that lets you store the power. Everyone has a reservoir, though the depth and type vary. Most people have a lesser reservoir, too small to willfully exert any kind of physical effect, but on rare occasions, someone might have a greater reservoir. A greater reservoir is an unusually deep container that allows you to wield the fragment as power. It is said that people don’t just have reservoirs, but that we are them, like our minds and bodies are imbued with the quality of whatever fragment they contain, for better or worse.”
Aaron paused, thinking. This was the most he’d said since we’d met. I stared, entranced. His voice was like silk that I wanted to rub against my cheek. He was thoughtful and eloquent and used fancy words like “imbued.” Now that he was communicating and not looking at me like I was a complete idiot, he was positively captivating.
Uh oh. I tore my eyes away from him just as he looked at me with an intense stare that penetrated down into my soul.
“You are a greater reservoir for the Connection fragment,” he continued. “It lets you feel people’s emotions and communicate with them through touch. It’s one of the rarer ones, but not unheard of. There is at least one other greater connector in Neesee.” His face reddened again, then momentarily twisted into something like pure hatred, but he recovered quickly, relaxing back into a neutral expression.
I shook my head, clearing the trance he had just put me under, then tried to digest what he was actually saying. What kind of insane magical thinking was this? And yet, I had sensed him.
“Have you ever experienced anything like that before?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No. I’ve always been sensitive to people’s emotions, I guess, but nothing like that. It shocked the hell out of me.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I remember my first time. It was disturbing. Of course, I was fifteen when it happened.”
“You have this ability too?” I asked.
“No, mine is different,” he said, then he turned back to his work again without elaborating. Another touchy subject, I presumed. He had a lot of those.
Rogue rolled over in the doorway and whined a little.
“Okay, my turn,” I said. Aaron didn’t answer, but he didn’t argue either. He just pulled open the dragon’s stomach cavity as he had the sternum and tugged out organs and intestines. He didn’t use his knife for this part. I supposed that it might be bad to poke a hole in the poop shoot.
The intestines slid down into the basin and then hung, caught at one end inside the carcass. Aaron cut the end free from the outside, carving a hole in the creature’s butt, and the intestines fell with a splat.
Aaron sniffed and then turned back to me. “Ask your question,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. I wanted to look away, but I just couldn’t. Blood dripped freely into the basin, and it occurred to me that Spirit might have a point with the whole vegan thing. “Why would your mother have a vision about me?”
He shrugged. “Not a vision. It’s more like a very accurate prediction. The future is always mutable.” He sounded like he was quoting a textbook. Maybe he was.
“What does that have to do with me?” I asked, my frustration bubbling up again.
“I don’t know,” he said, grabbing a rag that had been hanging from another hook and wiping his hands. He retrieved the split firewood and stacked it in the firepit, presumably to make a cooking fire.
I wondered if he would start rubbing sticks together. He finished stacking the wood, then he stood, staring at his work, as if trying to decide something.
He raised narrowed eyes to me, then said, “Why don’t you go get cleaned up. There is a bath in the back of the cottage with a privacy screen. I won’t disturb you. You can wear one of my shirts while we wash your . . . uh . . .” He looked at my blue pants but didn’t finish the sentence. Either he changed his mind about promising to save my clothes or he didn’t know what pants were.
“There is a water spigot over the tub. Try not to waste it. The rains won’t come for a few more weeks.”
I nodded. “Okay, thanks.” That did sound like a good idea, although I doubted the water would be warm. Beggars can’t be choosers, though, and I definitely fit that description. I turned to go, but then curiosity got the better of me. “How are you going to light the fire?” I asked.
He snorted. “You can’t let anything go, can you?”
“Endearing, isn’t it?” I answered, grinning. “It’s my best feature.”
“I doubt it.” He sighed. “Come, I might as well show you.”
He might have been complimenting me, but it just as easily could’ve been an insult. I decided to assume the former and walked up to stand beside him. He crouched close to the firepit, and I did the same.
I noticed for the first time, squatting there next to him, that he smelled amazing. It wasn’t cologne, but a sort of non-BO man smell. A little musky, a little sweet, a little sweaty, but not in a gross way. It was that, mixed with spearmint and a hint of blood. Even the blood smell didn’t bother me. It only added a strangely seductive tanginess.
Jesus. What is wrong with me? Now I’m turned on by the smell of blood? I need a psychiatrist. Any minute now I’m going to wake up in a straitjacket.
I wanted to ask him how he managed that amazing scent when I was such a disaster, but I reminded myself not to get sidetracked by sniffing the man I’d believed would kill me only three minutes ago.
Aaron stuffed one large log underneath the firewood in a way that would smother any attempt to start a fire. He reached out and touched the edge of that log, then took a deep breath in and out. For a split second, a flash of bright vermilion light streaked through his hand, beginning at his wrist and moving down through his fingers. It was so fast that if I’d blinked, I would have missed it. When the glow reached the log, it burst into flames. It startled me, and I fell back on my butt with a little yelp. I stared at the fire, then at Aaron. His lips quirked up at the corners.
“That’s your fragment,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Evocation.”
“God . . . that is so much cooler than mine.”
He gave me the look again.
“For god’s sake, what is it this time?” I asked, throwing my hands up.
“Your words make no sense. Who is this deity you keep talking about?”
I laughed. “You don’t know who I mean when I say the word ‘god’? That’s . . . okay, no, that’s a long conversation. We should handle that another time. I need to go burn these clothes.” I was rambling, but my proximity to him made me nervous.
“The fire didn’t frighten you?” Aaron asked the question quietly, in a way that made me think the answer was important.
“Should it?” I asked.
He stared into the fire, frowning again, and shrugged.
So much grief, I thought.
I let the silence just be for a minute. I suspected he needed that space. After another minute, I asked, “Why are you out here, Aaron?”
He smiled a little. “That’s a long conversation. We should handle that another time.”
I laughed. “Touché. Well then, I guess I have some scrubbing to do. Hey, can you heat up water?”