Page 74 of Nexus
“Do you promise?” she asked, looking at me beseechingly.
“I promise.” I’d never had anyone relying on me like this before. It would be hard for her to adjust to living in our world. I’d help her out until she got settled. It would be cruel to abandon her when she needed a friend so badly.
My vow finally had her unclenching my hand and her trembling stopped. Drake spun his chair back around after he ended his phone call. He took in Aurora’s new relaxed state and I knew he’d heard our conversation. “Food and drinks will be brought up shortly,” he said. “Why don’t you begin telling me about your mission? Did you meet with the overlord?”
“Yep,” I replied. “He’s dead, by the way.”
“You killed him?” he asked, voice rising in shock.
“I tried to off him after he started chewing his way through my boob and gut, but a giant stepped in and tore his head off for me.”
Lord Gilden stared at me with his mouth open, unsure whether to believe me or not. He looked at Ruen and the vampire nodded. “We were lucky the giant woke up when he did. None of us would have made it out of that cave alive if he’d remained in his sex coma.”
Drake put one hand over his face and held the other one up to silence us. We didn’t dare move until he heard the elevator door open. He gestured at his lackey to wheel a trolley laden with food over to us. “I need to make a phone call,” he said when the servant was gone. “I’ll be back shortly.”
Ruen barely waited for his boss to stand up before he snatched a thermos from the tray. Taking the lid off it, he inhaled the smell of blood. His fangs clanked against the metal when he put it to his lips and began to drink.
“Are we in trouble?” Aurora asked once the dragon lord had stepped through a door over to the left.
“Probably,” I said with a shrug, then picked up a plate full of sandwiches. “I don’t think he was happy to hear the overlord is dead.”
“It wasn’t our fault,” she said, taking the second plate from me when I handed it to her. “We were just defending ourselves.”
“This will probably cause some kind of diplomatic kerfuffle,” I figured. “They know someone came from our world to theirs. It’s possible they’ll think we deliberately assassinated their ruler.”
“I highly doubt that,” Ruen said, using a napkin to delicately wipe the blood from his lips. He’d chugged down the entire thermos in seconds. “Even the stupidest idiot could figure out what happened in that cave,” he went on. “They’ll be able to tell the giant was responsible for the overlord’s demise. Lord Gilden will come up with a plausible story to cover the reason why we were there.”
“We’re trade envoys,” I said ruefully around the sandwich I’d stuffed into my mouth.
Aurora tentatively took a bite of her food, then scarfed it down. “Everything tastes so good here,” she said when she’d finished her first sandwich.
“Wait until you try coffee,” I told her, then poured us both a cup. Adding cream and sugar, I handed her one of the cups.
Smelling it first, she took a cautious sip, then grinned. “I love this world. I never want to leave it.”
Now that I’d seen what life was like in the underworld, I appreciated my own dimension far more. I’d never take toilets for granted again. “Me neither,” I agreed, but suspected I wasn’t going to have a choice about that. Fate had picked me to be her champion and my job had only just begun.
Ruen drank the second thermos of blood at a more sedate pace. We finished our food and beverages, then quietly chatted until Drake returned. His expression was grim, but he didn’t tell us who he’d called. He took a seat behind his desk, then tented his hands together. “Tell me everything that happened,” he ordered.
I did most of the talking, with Ruen clarifying some details when it was necessary. Lord Gilden alternated from disbelief, to amusement and every emotion in between. He didn’t interrupt us or ask any questions. He just took it all in, sipping a glass of whiskey from time to time.
I toyed with the whiskey he’d poured for me, only taking small sips every now and then. It took a couple of hours to fill him in completely. “As we already said, the giant that was guarding the fragment killed the overlord, then Aurora knocked the giant out with another cosmic orgasm,” I said. “We ran for our lives and headed back to the gate. I pretended to be a dumb, hungry monster on my way back through the city. The soldiers let me take all the food I could carry in exchange for me not eating them.”
Drake’s lips twitched and he almost smiled, then indicated for me to go on.
“It took two nights of walking and four nights of sprinting before we reached the gate. A few guards were standing in my way, but I barged through them. We jumped through the gate and made it back here intact.”
Heaving a small, enigmatic sigh, the dragon leaned forward. “May I have the scroll?” he asked.
“Sure. You can have your letter back, too, since we didn’t end up using it,” I replied and fished around inside my backpack.
Drake gingerly reached for the rolled-up sheet of parchment that glowed faintly. It was almost like he expected it to explode in his hands. The glow intensified when he touched it, then died down again. Aurora stiffened slightly and glanced at me as if she wanted to say something. I shook my head warningly. Whatever she had to say could wait until we were alone.
“Can you read it, Lord Gilden?” Ruen asked when Drake’s eyes moved across the red ink.
“Of course,” he replied. “I’m a dragon, after all.”
“So?” I asked in confusion as I placed the unopened letter on his desk.