Page 2 of Dragon Unleashed
“Paige. Great name.” She grins, but after so many years of jokes, the humor doesn’t hit me in the same way anymore.
“Thanks, it’s fitting, I suppose.”
“Very. Have a great day!” She waves and turns. Normally, supernaturals are escorted through the more volatile sections of the library. The ones who need keeper or intern status to enter. For what Serenity is looking for, though, she shouldn’t run into any issues.
Unless, of course, she tries to break into the restricted areas. But, as far as I know, that’s never happened. The library’s magic is too strong for that. It sees everything.
I continue my perusal, re-shelving books as needed and checking through the areas to make sure no one has wandered where they shouldn’t be, and by the time I surface again, I realize that the entire morning has passed without much incident.
Winning!My stomach growls, and I become aware I’ve very nearly missed lunch, thanks to my audiobook as a pleasant distraction. The story is about a human woman who crash-lands on an alien planet only to be saved by a large, muscled creature with two dicks.Two!Her dream come true.
If only.
I snort, enjoying the spicy scenes and the fiction of it all. Humans write the best fairy tales. This place? It’s full of stories that are much too real to be enjoyed.
On my way back to the break room, I reach the witch section. There’s a title called Midnight Falls something-or-other, and my fingers brush over the spine as I try to imagine what a place like that would look like. The spine moves beneath my hands, and I jerk away again, scowling at how unsettled it leaves me.
A noise ahead snags my attention. Grunting. And then a heave of breath and acrack!
The sound of a weapon wielded has me running toward it.
Rounding the corner, I pull up short. Blossom, a female keeper not much older than me with stark white hair is standing over a body that’s currently oozing blackened blood into the carpets. Blossom has a severed troll head clutched in one hand and a blood-tipped axe in the other.
She looks up at me, her sharp gaze mildly annoyed at seeing me here. “He a friend of yours?”
“What happened?” I ask, eyes wide.
“This asshole was shelved incorrectly.” Her glare turns accusatory, and I jolt, realizing her meaning.
Interns are the only ones who shelve books. And I’m the only intern. Which makes that exclusively my problem.Shit.
“Does Hoc know?” I ask, keeping my voice a near whisper.
Before she can answer, a harsh blaring sounds overhead, and dread spears through me. Double shit.
Blossom gives me an apologetic look. “He does now.”
Then she returns her attention to the decapitated troll and mutters a string of words in a language I’ve yet to learn. The language of the keepers. Magic sparks, engulfing the troll until its body and corresponding head are sucked into the open volume lying at her feet.
Blossom grabs the book and slams it shut with a muttered, “Clauseruntque,” to cap it off.
The pages stick.
She hands the book to me.
“At least it wasn’t the main character. Come find me when he’s done yelling at you,” she says, and I know she means Hoc. “You owe me a drink for that one. I got troll-blood on my new shoes.”
I look down. Sure enough, bright blue troll blood coats her normally shiny Doc Martens. Great. “Add it to my tab.”
* * *
Ten minutes later,I sit with my legs crossed and painted green nails tucked beneath my thighs. It’s a childhood posture; a guilty one at that. My unruly blonde hair has fallen into my face, and I make no move to tuck it back again. From the other side of his massive desk, Hoc’s deep baritone voice washes over me as he goes on with his lecture, the very sound of his disappointment transporting me back to any one of a million similar lectures I received here as a kid.
At seven years old, it was probably something about not making houses for my Barbies with castles I’d extracted from books. At twelve, I remember being taken to task over talking the gnomes into giving me a flail to train with; a weapon that led to pretty much the full destruction of my bedroom when I tried practicing on my own. To be fair, the gnomes are easily talked into most anything, really. And if they cannot be talked into it, Sour Patch Watermelon candy will do the trick.
At sixteen, Hoc found me trying to flirt with one of the male interns—a wyvern who would have just as soon eaten me as, well,eatenme. After that, Hoc had immediately dragged me in for a safe sex talk that thoroughly embarrassed us both.
Today, thedéjà vubrought on by my current offense is almost comical. Even at twenty-five, I still feel like a kid when Hoc sits me in this chair and takes this particular tone.
