Through the End Read online

  “She will allow it,” Dinah announces finally.

  “That’s nice to know now,” I say. It would have been a real leadership moment to have made the decision only for the dragon to refuse.

  Except I’m not a leader anymore, am I? I’m a mutineer.

  Suddenly I’m shaky. Dinah catches my eye. “Our biggest hand yet, partner,” she says. “Ready?”

  We’ve elected to use a simple blanket behind Mouse’s neck, to protect our behinds from her scales. Dinah leaps up nimbly and then reaches down for my hand.

  We sit, prepared to let Mouse get accustomed to our weight, stroll around – but she lifts her wings as soon as she’s clear of the campsite, her legs bunch and we’re aloft.

  I let out a very un-riderlike squeak and tighten my arms around Dinah’s waist in a hurry.

  “You are a fucking wonder,” shouts Dinah into the wind, leaning forward to pat Mouse’s cheek with her gloved hand.

  Just because Mouse is large and strong and thinks she can, doesn’t mean she can go far with passengers. We have barely a moment to appreciate the starlit desert below us, and she has to land, clearly fatigued.

  She rests her head on the cool sand while we confer.

  “It does no good to protect her from the guild if we kill her in the process,” I say. Flying all the way to the volcano is out of the question, even in stages. “Can we lay low long enough to let her grow stronger?”

  We all look at each other.

  “Wouldn’t an oasis be best?” offers Thea.

  “Also a better chance of being discovered, even out here,” I say.

  “The tunnels, where we found the machinery,” says Dinah. “Mousie can dig herself a shelter inside. Plenty of beasties for her breakfast. Char said there was water.”

  I nod. Also skeletons.

  But the “tunnels” aren’t far, and we can pick up the fourth raptor on the way.

  “And,” says Thea, “when I give them the gems and relics you brought back from there, I’ll give them coordinates that lead them instead smack-dab into a hellhole tar pit.”

  “Well, aren’t you the wicked little guild mutineer,” says Dinah, and Lucy laughs harder than all of us.

  So it turns an impossible idea into something doable, and soon Thea and Lucy are off rehearsing, as they call it, how they are going to ride into Sand City with two empty raptors on auto, and no cargo, and stay out of real trouble long enough to connect with Maura and any other guildmates willing to help a wayward dragon.

  “She’ll be able to take just one passenger easily soon,” Dinah says. She’s crooning to Mouse again. They’re developing quite the bond.

  Then I kick myself for being jealous of a fucking dragon.

  Mouse regards the toad with obvious interest. Her eyelids change in ways I haven’t quite figured out yet, and she may have three or more of those anyway. But her gaze is piercing as she watches the squat venom monster, big as a boulder.

  She puffs, experimentally.

  Thea starts forward, alarmed.

  “It’s a dragon. You can’t protect her forever,” Dinah says.

  I hold up my hand. “We can be careful.”

  The toad, this time, chooses wisdom and lets us proceed instead of risking being singed by a half-grown dragon. It hops away from the campsite we’ve chosen, just a four-hour walk from the ruins, and the dragon obeys Thea’s command to “leave it.”

  “We won’t be in touch for a while.” I can’t decide if I’m speaking as mission leader, or just telling a couple of buddies I’ll take good care of their floppy fire-breathing pet. “You know we’ll take good care of her. We’ll make the best choices we can.”

  “I don’t think she should eat toad venom,” Thea says.

  Thea is willing to die on this hill. Her eyes blazing, her waves of blonde hair almost white in the solars, she’s as imposing a rider as I’ve ever seen.

  Well, except Dinah.

  “On my honor,” I say, “I will do my best to prevent her from eating toads.”

  “A lot of fungus is dangerous too.”

  “Got it.”

  Dinah looks both amused and scornful.

  “Try to keep the guild off our butts as long as you can.”

  “On my honor,” echoes Thea, and she grins suddenly. “Try not to die.”

  She’s nice, for a council mutineer.

  And then we’re alone.

  We hike into the ruined city and find a relatively safe corridor for our initial shelter.

  “What are we going to do to keep her amused?” Dinah says. The dragon is pulling apart an adjacent room, flushing out centipedes to chow down on, which will be good for an hour at most.

  “What are we going to do to keep you amused?” I mean something like “because you’re the type to jump off towers as a lark,” but I instantly realize my remark can be interpreted more – personally.

  She clears her throat and looks around the cavernous space. “It’s probably about this cool in here all the time. We’ll still need tents, though.”

  I nod, and she jumps right into prepping the room as a shelter.

  She’s not looking at me at all, and I’m stung by a pang of disappointment.

  Surely, now that we’re alone, this is the time for us to, well, finish what we started. What we’ve started twice.

  But she is pulling two single tents out of the pack, and it’s clear – well, nothing is clear.

  Mouse gives a triumphant shriek, just out of sight. She better not pull the whole roof down on us.

  Best friends is fine. Best friends has been awesome forever. I take a deep breath and go to help Dinah anchor the tents.

  Centipedes fleeing Mouse have crowded around one of our duffels. “I’ve got a flamethrower,” Dinah says, but when she catches my eye, her look doesn’t match her enthusiastic tone; it’s that new hesitancy of hers.

  She is brave, but not about everything.

  I can think of reasons to shut up and help set up tents and say nothing. Don’t say anything, Charlie.

  But I know Dinah, and I know she’s brave, foolhardy, ridiculously so.

  Thea is wrong. Dinah is not afraid to say anything.

  We finish clearing the space of crawlies and set up the pallets.

  “What?” Dinah says, and I realize I’ve been staring at her for a long minute. “Do I have poison on my ass?”

  “I am 100 percent sure of that, yes,” I say, with a laugh. Yeah, Dinah’s not afraid to say anything.

  And yet. There’s still that wariness.

  “I think I won that one,” I say.

  “What, your quick repartee?”

  “That kiss. We’re tied.” My heart is pounding like I’ve been bitten. I tell myself that if I’m wrong, we have time to fix it – repair a misunderstanding, set the rules. But I’m still terrified that Dinah will get careful and say something like, oh, we’re done with kissing each other, thanks.

  She stares at me, mouth half open.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I continue. “You won the first one.”

  Now that I’ve taken the smallest possible leap, I’m desperate for an answer, any answer. Let it be fuck you get out of my cavern and your little dragon too. This waiting has lasted years too long.

  “You are ahead, actually,” Dinah whispers. “You win every time.”

  We ignore the sounds of Mouse tearing apart an air duct or whatever the hell she’s up to.

  I bite back a dozen bantery retorts. We’re on the precipice of something.

  When Dinah finally moves, she moves away from me. I feel the worst pain I’ve felt in my life.

  But she’s rummaging in her pack, and she pulls out a small green logbook I’ve never seen before. She shrugs at my look. “What? I have private things I track, too.” She flips unerringly to an early page and flashes it at me. “That’s the first one.” The day is circled. She turns to a recent page, and there’s another circle. And then the third, from the tent.

  “That doesn’t prove an
ything.”

  “O for loss, Char.”

  My pulse is racing. “Actually, those look like hearts.”

  “They are not hearts. I do not make hearts.”

  “Come here.”

  Dinah flies into my arms, like gravity, like falling. The way my dowsing crystal flies at a node of spessartine. “They’re not hearts.”

  “I’m sensing hearts.” I kiss her forehead.

  “If we’re using mage powers – ”

  “Hearts.” I kiss behind her ear.

  “I’m a superhero, not a sap.”

  I laugh. “Maybe both.” I put my finger over her lips and she seizes it with her teeth. “Try to beat me this time?”

  The last speck of uncertainty is gone from her expression. “Are we going for – what, speed? Endurance?”

  “I can’t believe you still have your fucking shirt on. You never have your shirt on.”

  “I thought you should go first,” she says. My knees go wobbly. “I never mind giving a head start.” She tugs at my shirt’s hem and twists it off as if it were her own.

  My nipples crinkle hard and Dinah exhales in satisfaction. “You. You are – ” She buries her face in my breasts without finishing her thought. “I can’t believe it’s really happening.”

  This maddening rider, who faces vipers and hellholes and mutinies like they are summer daisies, looks up into my eyes, her face open and awestruck. “It’s really happening?”

  “Your hands are on my nipples,” I say. “I would say it’s happening.”

  It’s possible that Dinah’s magic includes a little bit of mindreading. She touches me just where I’m begging to be touched – one finger along the side of one breast, down the sensitive skin along my ribs, the hollow of my hip. She suckles on one breast and then the other, until I’m mad with the longing of it, and then nibbles the soft flesh of my belly.

  “Let me in?” Dinah says in a voice that I might not have recognized if she wasn’t looking right at me.

  Bravery isn’t just scaling dragons and diving into the pits of hell. It is shifting your hips a little so your best friend can see you, all of you, the secret parts of you. Letting her touch you with strong fingers, explore your depths, letting her find the spot that makes you clench your jaw and beg for more.

  Dinah pauses, and my eyes snap open in protest. I’m so close.

  “Char,” Dinah says. Her eyes are fire. She lowers her head and her mouth takes over for her fingers and I’m lost. I come hard against her tongue, while she makes a long moaning sound of affirmation and digs her fingers into my thigh muscles.

  Holy fuck.

  “Holy fuck,” I say. I’m still coming, ripples of orgasm, and again, Dinah seems to know that, pushing with her tongue just as each wave builds.

  She slides up my body and rests her head on my shoulder. She circles my breasts with a lazy finger until I can say more than “holy fuck”.

  “You’re a fucking miracle,” I say.

  Dinah kisses me fiercely and then pulls back to look at my face. “Okay. I’m going to need a number.”

  “What?”

  “A score. For the book.”

  “The game’s not over, I hope you realize that.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’re paralyzed for life.” She pinches one breast. “See.”

  That might be true. I stretch one leg and then the other. I feel deliciously swollen. “Nonsense,” I declare. “Why do you still have your clothes on?”

  “I’m still going to need that score, Char.” She taps the book.

  I roll over until I’m straddling her. “We’ll compare scores later. A lot of hands left.”

  EPILOGUE

  We wait, happily, for word from Thea or from Maura. Mouse grows quickly, and teaches Dinah dragon-riding while Dinah teaches her combat. Not that we expect to have to fight with the dragon. Surely the guild will be civilized.

  But we wouldn’t have thought the guild would sanction grinding up sentient creatures for its own gain, either. So we stay fit and ready.

  When Mouse is strong enough, we pack her up and she flies us to Monterrey basin. There is no ambush. At least that part of the plan has stayed secret.

  In fact, there’s a message. At first, we don’t see it, what with clearing the volcano of hostile biters, dowsing for a water supply, and getting a basecamp set up, but Mouse brings us a metal folio from her exploration of the caldera rim. It’s a hand-written note.

  To whom it may concern,

  This is an unofficial guild communique to Thea Sturtevant and Lucy Dafoe of the marsh riders, or Charlie Cawley and Dinah Straum of the desert riders. And Mouse. If you are not an intended recipient, kindly fuck off.

  I hope you are able to find and read this. We expect Mouse to alert on the scent. But maybe you will dowse it or map its ley signature.

  We don’t know yet which of you will have taken this part of the mission. But I have to get this packet out in a cargo now if it is to get to Monterrey Basin safely.

  Some of the guild hopes to find you one day and help you. There are about 30 of us, but we’re scattered and communication is hard. The rest of the guild will want to punish you, unless we can change some minds. Working on it.

  There is a package in a safe. We think you’ll know what to do. The code is Thea’s first name for Mouse. Do better with naming, okay?

  P.S. If you encounter anything Paragon, don’t assume the worst.

  We find the safe in a cunning cavern on the other side of the cone.

  “Mouse’s first name,” Dinah says.

  I think back to Lucy’s teasing of Thea. “Marigold?”

  At the spoken word, the safe’s door softly clicks open.

  Inside are two eggs, each as large as two fists together, tough as ceramic, and marked with a pearlescent sheen.

  “Not Bruce,” I say.

  “Of course not.” Dinah peers at the two eggs. “Bruce is taken.”

  Mouse flaps in the cave entrance and shrieks twice, jubilantly. “You look like a lunatic,” Dinah shouts to her. “Come in here and meet your siblings!”

  “Do we know anything about how dragons are with their young?” I ask. “I mean, maybe there’s cannibalism involved. We should proceed carefully, right?”

  Dinah turns and looks up at me. “Don’t eat your baby sisters,” she shouts to the dragon. “Happy now?”

  I kiss her nose. “Very.”

  END

  More from Parker Jaysen

  Through Fire

  Through Ice

  Through Death

  Through the End (you are here)

  Look for season two of Hellriders in early fall 2020.

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  Daisy Crown

  Lavender Inn

  Olivia Lark - Time Travel

  The Sum of Love

  The Product of Love (late 2020)

  The Power of Love (2021)

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