Free The Dragon King and I by Adrianne Brooks Page A

discuss, you and I.”
    I took an almost savage delight in deleting the message.
    Call her back?
    Hah!
    I had graves to desecrate.

 
     
    Chapter Four
     
     
    “The tooth fairy teaches children that they can sell body parts for money.”
    - David Richerby
     
    “What is this?”
    “It’s a Harley.”
    I looked at him from the corner of my eye before turning my silent censure back onto his bike.
    “I was implying that you should take me to your big boy mode of transportation instead.”
    He nodded, and grew thoughtful. “You know,” he said conversationally, “I suddenly find you much less endearing than I did about a half hour ago.”
    My lips twitched, “Imagine that.”
    “Come on.” He grabbed my arm and steered me to the side of the motorcycle, where he then slammed a black helmet over my carefully styled hair.
    So I’d forgone the make-up.
    Didn’t mean I was completely without sense.
    Not that it mattered much now.
    “You have no respect for art.” I lamented, even more heartbroken when he ignored my original heartbreak over my hair. Instead of flattering my nonsense with a response he picked me up, and settled me onto the back of his bike with absolutely no assistance from yours truly.
    Then, without another word, and without donning a helmet of his own, he got on in front of me and suddenly, we were off. I’m not saying I was a heavyweight or anything, but I could stand to lose a couple of pounds. With all these supernatural’s moving me around like I was their favorite piece in Monopoly, it was almost enough to make a girl feel underweight.
    When Seraphim did it, I was a little freaked out.
    When Sam did it, I was a lot turned on.
    I never got to appreciate a guy like this. Usually I was trying to avoid them or figure out what motivated them into showing interest in me in the first place. Since Sam was immune to my charms, it gave me carte blanche to appreciate all of his. So for the first time in 24 years, I found myself fantasizing about all the things a guy with his type of muscle mass could do to me in the bedroom.
    Or in the kitchen.
    Or on a motorcycle.
    I blushed and buried my face against the middle of his back, my arms tightening around his waist as we weaved through midmorning traffic.
    Strapping young man indeed.
    * * * *
    The cemetery on Madison had never seemed all that special to me. I’d certainly never imagined that Fairies had been buried there. It was pretty and everything, but there was nothing that particularly stood out about it as the final resting place of magical beings.
    It was just a cemetery.
    Like any other it was just a stretch of land, uninterrupted by much except for a few trees here and there and a rolling hill or two. There weren’t any monuments of weeping angels or family crypts that had stood for decades or anything romantic like that. Mostly it was just a healthy mix of headstones and artificial flowers to mark the place where a loved one was busy resting.
    The main thing in its favor was that it was off of the main road. You had to drive a ways before you could get to it and once you arrived, the apartment buildings and office spaces that were a way of city life were obscured by a mile or so’s worth of woods.
    The quiet I was fond of was shattered as soon as Sam and I rolled up. I convinced him to at least part the bike against the caretaker’s shed instead of leaving it on top of a grave which I took as a personal victory. He hadn’t understood why I’d wanted him to park in the parking lot, and any arguments I’d made concerning ‘disturbing the dead’ were pushed aside under his belief that the bike needed to stay close by.
    “In case we need to leave in a hurry.”
    I didn’t like to think about what in a graveyard would force us to leave ‘in a hurry’. Instead, I stayed close as he began inspecting headstones and plaques.
    “What are we looking for?” I asked, hoping that if I could help, we could speed this up a