Creation Mage 6 by Dante King (detective books to read txt) 📕

Chapter 18

The Amber Dragon touched down with surprising grace on the main lawn in front of the Chaosbane Clan Ranch. The sail-like wings snapped open with a deep boom, arresting our forward motion and jerking us only a little where we sat. The massive shoulder muscles acted as shock absorbers as the clawed feet sunk into the snowy lawn.

We slid off the Amber Dragon’s back and waited for the welcome committee to show up. What we got, though, when the huge ranch door was booted open, was Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock stumping out onto the front porch. The old boy was limping a little, as he was once again carrying his walking stick vector like a Remington 870.

When he saw that it was one of his kin who had parked a fully grown, airplane-sized dragon on his lawn, he lowered his stick and leaned on it.

“It’s about fucking time, whippersnappers!” he yelled. “Get that thing out of sight and get inside. You’re just in time.”

With this jovial greeting, he turned around and crabbed off back into the warmth.

I snorted. I loved how the old boy simply told us to get the dragon out of sight, like it was a stolen Camaro or something.

Leah tossed me an object, and I caught it instinctively. It was the capture orb.

“Thought you might need this,” she said casually, putting her arm around the still weak Mallory. “I was going to leave it behind because, honestly, what girl hasn’t always wanted a dragon as a pet, but I didn’t think that Great Granddaddy Gorlbadock had the barn space to accommodate Kazrith.”

“Kazrith?” I asked.

“The Amber Dragon,” Leah said reproachfully. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask him what his name was, sweet-tip.”

“I’d rather mine wasn’t sweet-tip,” I said to her.

Mallory laughed.

I focused my will on the dragon, thanking the ancient being for, basically, saving the day. I tried to instill in its mind just how grateful I was to be able to be standing in front of it, instead of floating on the wind in a zillion separate particles.

The dragon cast one rheumy amber eye at me and growled deep in its throat.

“Well, you’ve earned some R&R,” I said. “As soon as I’m able, and if you’re interested, I’ll have you out of this orb and you can chill out by our pool back home or something.”

The dragon made another rumbling growl, and I heard it speak inside my head.

“The orb is plenty spacious enough for me, Earthling,” it said, its powerful, primordial voice echoing through my head like a rockslide in a subterranean ravine.

I’d heard him speak before, but that had been when he was trying to kill me. This time, his tone had a different quality, something that might have almost been approaching goodwill.

“When a dragon is contained in its spiritual form, space means little,” Kazrith continued. “In that pure, elemental form, we are as capable of filling the sky just as we are capable of filling an oyster shell.”

Sounded like some hippy shit to me, but Kazrith was pretty old—he probably knew what the hell he was talking about.

I held the capture orb out and, this time, instead of willing the dragon inside, I invited him.

Kazrith’s slightly cloudy eye widened at this unexpected, and probably quite unfamiliar, show of respect. Its great head bowed, and the dragon vanished into the wooden orb in my hand.

“Manners,” I muttered. “They’ll get you far.”

I caught up with Leah and Mallory just as they reached the steps to the ranch. Mallory had shrugged off Leah’s help and was walking determinedly under her own steam. She still looked a little exhausted, but the warm orange glow emanating from the ranch windows and the smell of cooking that permeated the air seemed to be restoring her.

“You going to tell me how you got the rest of your scars?” I asked Leah from behind her as we mounted the wooden steps. I was looking at the small patch of blood on the shoulder of her baby blue sweater. The crimson had long faded to a dull brown. “Or am I going to have to guess?”

Leah turned and cocked her head to one side. She smiled lazily. “You want to know how I got these scars?” she asked, reaching a long arm behind her and touching her back.

“If you want to tell me,” I said.

“My father,” Leah said, “was a drinker, and a fiend. One night he goes off crazier than usual—”

I waved my hands in front of my face. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, are you fucking kidding me? Have you been to Earth or haven’t you?”

Leah’s smile widened mischievously. “What makes you think that?”

“I mean you’re quoting one of the all-time best villain monologues,” I said. “That shit can’t be coincidence.”

Leah shrugged her skinny, slightly gangly shoulders.

Once again, I was struck how she could have made a killing on Earth as a model—and not one of those lame Instagram ‘models’ that any egomaniacal, delusional woman who pulls her swimsuit up her ass and poses on a beach seems to like to label themselves. Leah could have been a proper, cigarette smoking, Rockstar-dating, Kate Moss, I-don’t-give-a-fuck models. One of those models who could swap clothes with a homeless person and make filthy threads look like she had just brought them from a Tom Ford store.

“Everyone should have a few scars,” she told me, in a voice that was simultaneously dreamy and prosaic, “just like everyone should have a few enemies. They help weld you and meld you. They show that you raised some hell and ruffled some feathers. They show that, at some time, you just didn’t give a shit, honey-bunny. That’s becoming a rarer and rarer quality in this world.”

We walked into the