Forged in Fire (17 page)

Stuart groused, mumbling something foul under his breath, and generally caved. “Fine,” he said. “Just like no two people are exactly the same, I’ll grant you that maybe the dragons are not cut from the same cloth, but you cannot sit here and tell me you think they’re harmless.”

I covered my immediate reaction by sipping my drink. I knew better, at least with Nidhogg. She’d killed some of her own household in a rage. I wasn’t sure if it was Alzheimer’s, or some other form of dementia, but she seemed very lucid when I spoke with her. If anything, she seemed to crave some intellectual conversation and the company of someone who did not quake when she twitched.

“I’d go as far as to say that they are not all crazed sadists like Jean-Paul was, but I am under no illusions that they are benevolent rulers. They are manipulative and self-serving.”

“There you go.” He wasn’t rubbing it in, because he knew we weren’t keeping score.

“But, can you tell me a politician in the world, or any significant leader, even a CEO of a company, that isn’t arrogant and self-serving at some level?”

“Touché,” he said. “And I don’t care much for the lot of ’em.”

“Aye, but you aren’t advocating we hunt any of them down and kill them, either.”

He growled at me, but his shoulders sagged a bit. The fight was leaving him for now. The episodes of anger and rage were diminishing, but he would not be forgiving the breed for the loss they’d dealt us.

“What about her?” he asked, pointing out to Anezka. “And her little demon buddy?”

“I think she’s desperate for companionship and Gunther fits the bill.”

“He’s breathing, you mean?”

Nice. “No, I mean he’s been kind to her and that isn’t something she’s used to.”

“And her old lover, the lunatic that’s killing girls and animals in two countries just to find you?”

“Oh, she hates him,” I assured him. “Whatever he did to her was not pretty. I’m not even sure if he doesn’t have some long-term, deep-seated tether on her somehow. She’s definitely a few crayons shy of a full box.”

“And Bub?”

I looked for the little pisher. He was mostly sharing the company of Trisha and the twins: Frick and Frack. “He has a good heart,” I said, meaning it. “He’s not like us, that’s for sure, but he loves Anezka like a daughter or something.”

Stuart looked over at me, perplexed. “I’d say he’s in love with her, but he watched her grow up. More of a protective figure at this point.”

“Wasn’t he more violent when you first met him?”

I reached up to touch the amulet under my shirt. His shift had begun the second I touched it. “He’s aligned to me as well, through the amulet,” I told him. “He was tuned only to the CRAZY.FM that Anezka was broadcasting on all channels. Once he switched to me, he began to settle down, to become more reasonable, tame.”

Stuart choked, coughing and laughing at the same time. “Nothing personal, Beauhall, but you are not the pinnacle of calm and collected.”

“I know, right?” I was as stunned as he was. “It’s like out at Mary’s place. I was the only one who couldn’t see the pain writing. I assumed I was carrying buckets of it around, and it turns out I’m the only one on the farm who was pain-free.”

He smiled at me. “Maybe you just have a better set of shields.”

Maybe. I didn’t argue with him, but ever since deciding to move in with Katie, a level of low-grade angst had vaporized.

“Of course, I’m still carrying a trunk full of psychosis about my family.”

He chuckled. “That’s just normal living. Hell, if I let all that get to me, my marriage would’ve killed me.”

Whoa … Stuart had been … “When were you married?”

He glanced at me sideways, squinting. I guess he was seeing if I was busting his chops. “I was a young pup. Got married to my high school sweetheart before shipping out to Iraq in the first war. Didn’t do much other than chew sand and live in boredom. But, when I got back, she’d hooked up with a few of my other friends.”

“A few?”

He waved his hands to clear the air. “We got married too young. She needed to sow her wild oats. Just didn’t figure I’d come home from serving my country to find my wife knocked up by some guy I counted as a friend.”

He looked down, studying the cocoa in his cup. I didn’t press the situation, but I could tell it still bothered him.

“And look at them,” he pointed out to the yard. “Gunther and I’ve been thick as thieves since elementary school. I trust him with my life.” He took a long draw on his mug, draining the last of the chocolate. “If he wants to fall in love with a wacked-out blacksmith, I’m all for it. As long as it doesn’t interfere with our sparring and the occasional drinking binge.”

He winked at me and grinned.

“Gotta tell ya,” I said, laughing, “I’ve seen Anezka drink. She’d give you a run for your money.”

He turned back to the yard and watched them. “Is that so? Maybe she’s gone up a notch in my book.”

“She’s a damned fine blacksmith as well,” I assured him. “She just needs to find her way.”

“Aye, don’t we all?”

I finished my chocolate and stood, picking up the mugs. “Refill?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said. “I’ve had enough sweet for one day.” He gestured out across the lawn to where Gunther and Anezka were standing, hand in hand. “If I need anymore, I’ll just watch them.”

I laughed and took the mugs back inside. Deidre was napping on the couch and the house was quiet. Jimmy must have been down in the basement, working.

The house had a different vibe when I was here without Katie. I felt more like I was visiting my grandparents’ place or something.

Not that I’d ever visited my grandparents. Both Ma and Da had distanced themselves from any family they may or may not have had. I wasn’t even sure if either of them had brothers or sisters. I could have a whole passel of cousins and I’d never know it.

Stuart came back inside, making sure the door did not bang in the frame and wake up Deidre. He watched me, smiling. “Place feels funny without Katie, huh?”

I nodded. “I was just thinking that.”

He glanced around, shrugging. “Been coming here a lot of years, but every now and again, it reminds me of my grandmother’s place up in Blaine.”

“That’s what I was thinking, only I don’t know any of my extended family. Not like Da was open about much.”

The spark was back in his eye. I could just feel a lecture coming. “You know, Beauhall, for a dragon slayer, you sure have a lot of fear around your old man. He beat you?” He stopped, like he’d gone too far. “Sorry, none of my business.”

I sat down on the barstool at the big island in the kitchen and dropped my hands on my knees. “No, it’s a fair question.” How to begin with him?

“He was a kind man. Amazing, really, all the way until I could start asking questions like why we moved every year until I went to high school. He was always moving from job to job, and we didn’t have a lot. Ma kept the house together, but when Megan came and I was pushing things too far, we got to fighting.”

He sat and listened. I’d never really shared any of this with him, but it seemed like the right time.

“There was something he was running from,” I said, feeling it out as I went along. “I can see that now. Sometimes the phone would ring late at night, and the next day Ma would take me out of school and we’d be moving right then.”

“Hard on a little girl.”

“Yeah, but I had a few special things, an emergency pack in my room that I could grab and run. I kept a stuffed rabbit as well, carried it around so long I’d worn the fur off its arms.”

He smiled.

“But when Megan was born we had a pretty rough time. Da woke me in the middle of the night, and we disappeared. Ma was still in the hospital with Megan, and we didn’t go for them. We spent three weeks living in our car, moving from wooded lot to abandoned farmhouse. Anytime he heard the slightest noise, he’d grab everything and we’d run for it. I thought we were gonna die.”

I stood up and paced over to the cabinet and grabbed a glass. Then I went and got water from the fridge.

“I cried a lot. I really wanted a sister. Never could keep friends long, so I figured if I had a sister, I’d at least have someone to be friends with, even if she was a crying poop machine for the first year.”

Stuart chuckled at that.

“Around midnight one night, it was cold and blowing, snow and ice beating down on the roof of the car. I lay awake in the front seat, freezing and exhausted. Neither of us was sleeping much, but I knew he was keeping me safe. I’d stopped asking about Ma and Megan. He only got angrier every time I asked, so I clammed up.”

“Harsh.”

“Yeah. I was lying there, thinking that some hit men or something were after us, when I started my period.”

“Oh, crap. That’s not good.”

“No, not at all. I was only twelve, and, while I knew it was going to happen soon, I had no idea it would be while my dad was sacked out in the back of our station wagon. I started crying. We didn’t have any sanitary napkins or anything, and I was so damn embarrassed.

“I finally woke him up, begged him to take me to a gas station so I could try and get cleaned up, but he lost it. First time I ever saw him cry, to tell the truth. He just sat there in his sweatpants and a wife beater, unshaven and unbathed. We were both a little too ripe, in my opinion, and for the last three days we’d been eating cold beans out of cans.

“I think he’d been so sick with worry for Ma and Megan and so equally scared that we were going to get caught by whomever he was running from that the little detail like his daughter getting her first period was too much for him. He hugged me, told me how sorry he was, and drove straight to an all-night truck stop. We went in, and he went with me to pick out the product I needed. I was horrified, and I think he was, too, but he stuck with me until I had what I thought was the right thing.

“He ordered coffee while I went into the restroom and got cleaned up. I changed into my only other set of clothes from my emergency pack and went back out to meet him. He got his coffee to go and we drove straight home. Mom had returned to the place we were staying when she left the hospital. I found out we’d run to keep me safe. Not sure what that was about, but Ma wasn’t in any danger, he told me.”

“So, he didn’t hit you?” Stuart asked.

“No, he never hit me,” I admitted. “But he kept secrets and didn’t like questions. It was not too long after that time that I gave up believing in him.”

I sat back down, letting the nervous energy bleed from me. “I told him I wanted a real life, wanted someplace where I could have friends. Someplace where we didn’t have to leave Ma and Megan behind ever again. I told him if we didn’t find someplace to call home, I was running away.”

“Oy, I bet that went over well.”

“I’d read Vonnegut and a bunch of other authors he didn’t know about. I’d squirreled away maps and tour guides whenever I could find them. I told him I was going to run away to Seattle because it was so green. We were living in Kansas at the time, and I was sick of the flat lands. I wanted trees and mountains and the ocean. I’d never seen the ocean, but I was only twelve.”

Stuart watched me, let me work my way through it.

“We moved out here, first to Bellingham for a couple years, then out to Crescent Ridge. Something about being in the shadow of Rainier calmed him down. Never figured out why, but we’d pretty much stopped talking to one another by then.”

“Running from somebody seems fishy, sure, but it sounds like he was trying to protect you from something.”

I rolled my head, trying to relieve the tension in my neck and shoulders. “You see, that was the problem. He was protecting me from everything. Everything terrified him when it came to me. Up until that year, he’d been the best dad, always hugging me, reading me stories, even helping out with whatever Girl Scout troop I landed in at the new house. But something changed on that trip. Something scared him so bad he was willing to abandon Ma and Megan, even for a little while, to protect me.”

“Sounds like he loved you.”

And he was right, of course. “Loved me with his heart and soul. And smothered me to the point I couldn’t breathe. He picked the books I could read, chose my friends, even went so far as to homeschool me in case I learned something he didn’t want me knowing.”

“When did he find out about you liking girls?”

I looked up and shrugged. “Don’t think he knows, honestly. Didn’t need to say anything to him to know how he’d react. He was clear on his beliefs. Heard it from the pulpit two or three times a week. Heard it from his own lips more than I care to recall.” I rubbed my temples. “I love him, never claimed different, I just can’t stand the man he became.”

Whatever Stuart was going to say disappeared when Anezka walked into the kitchen. She’d been sleeping. For a moment she didn’t have her shields up, and she looked happy for the first time in a long while. When she saw us, however, she let the mask fall back into place—cold, aloof, and protected.

“Hey,” I said, smiling. “Did you and Gunther have a good walk?”

She shrugged. “Fair enough.”

Stuart winked at me. “At least the company was good.”