31
ROLAND
We didn't have to torture him. Which was good, because I didn't have it in me anymore. Whatever anger I'd felt before was gone, buried deep inside my chest along with my gryphon. While Harriet recorded the entire thing with my phone, I crouched next to the dragon and asked him one question at a time.
He answered my questions, and seemed almost gloating as he did. Like we were fools to not know what he knew. Children learning about the world for the first time. The dragon held nothing back as he responded to my queries.
The dragon told us everything.
Harriet took it pretty well, though she was probably in shock. I'd need to keep a careful watch over her to make sure she was okay. Now that the dragon was defeated, that was my primary goal: keeping my mate safe. It was the only thing that mattered, because as the keeper of the ruby totem she was keeping me safe.
And even though the ruby was cracked, all was not yet lost.
With our combined strength Chidi, Arnold, and I were able to flip the jeep back over. The engine started, thank goodness, and nothing else seemed to be leaking. We found some rope to bind the dragon's hands and feet, and since there wasn't enough room in the jeep we tied him to the roof like a piece of luggage. He screamed obscenities at us for the first 30 minutes of the drive, but eventually grew exhausted.
Harriet and I convinced them the dragon they'd seen was actually a large military drone piloted by the man tied to our roof, and in their mental state they accepted it without question. It sure as hell made more sense than the truth.
Tete was the first town we came across, a sprawling city with a population of 300,000 straddling the Zambezi River. The Mozambique Army had erected a checkpoint on the highway to search vehicles; the plane crashes in the area were suspected to be the work of pro-colonial separatist terrorists.
Which was convenient, since we had the perfect suspect to give them, and four eye-witness accounts of what he'd done. The dragon's lack of passport or visa records were just the icing on the metaphorical cake.
Once we were back in a city with a modicum of civilization, Doctor Arnold Cardiff began apologizing profusely to Harriet as if it were all his fault. We tried to protest and insist the events were outside our control, but he remained convinced he was to blame. We gave up and allowed him to book us rooms in a hotel--three rooms, not just two--and then he disappeared into his as if hiding from the world.
Harriet and I walked three blocks to a place called Raster's Bar and found a secluded table in the corner.
"Two whiskies," Harriet ordered, and when the waitress left she turned to me with an innocent look on her face. "Oh, did you want something?"
"You think you're funny."
"What," she said with a fake-confused look on her face, "is it rude to order two drinks for yourself without letting your date get something?"
I snorted. "I would hope, that after all we've been through, that you finally understand why I was acting the way I was."
She scraped her chair around to join my side of the table, then put her head on my shoulder. "I was just teasing."
"I know. So was I."
We sat there in silence until the waitress brought us our drinks, gave a silent toast and knocked them back, then ordered two more.
"Is what the dragon said true?"
I stared at a point on the wall across from us. I could feel the totem pulsing in her pocket, brushing against my own hip. It was a third heartbeat joining ours together.
"All of it," I said. "All of it was true."
"Okay."
I turned to face her. "That's it? Okay?"
"I guess." She shook her head. "I just got here. And now I have to leave. Did you know what my week was like? I don't think I ever told you."
She explained that she'd been invited on the trip at the last minute, and crammed an entire semester's worth of classwork into a single week in order to go. So now she had three free months with nothing to do.
"Who says you can't complete your research?" I asked.
"Nobody says so. Logic says so. Arnold looks like he's never going to leave the Harvard library again. All of our equipment was destroyed in a plane crash. You remember that part?"
"I do seem to remember a plane crash, aye." I put a hand under her chin and twisted her to face me. "But who says we can't buy more?"
"I..." she paused. "I wouldn't know where to get it."
"We can find out."
"And even if I had the money..."
"You don't need to worry about that," I said. "You've got a new scientific sponsor. And he just so happens to be interested in..." I struggled for the words. "Elephants eating bee honey? Wait, no..."
"The effect of bees on elephant migratory patterns," she said, narrowing her eyes. "I knew you weren't listening when I explained it."
"Oh, I was listening. I just had no idea what you were talkin' about."
"We MIT elites like to talk down to the common folk."
She smiled, and I smiled with her.
"But I'm serious," I insisted. "What's stopping you from staying and doing the research on your own?"
In the end, nothing was.