Chapter Three
“You’re seriously kidding me.” The anger was clear in Wyatt’s eyes.
“Why am I kidding you?” Betsy didn’t feel like having this argument.
“It’s fucking midnight!”
She pulled the jacket on anyway. “I’m going out, Wyatt. I’m going out and you’re not going to stop me.”
“It’s—”
She spun back to him. “We’re in Buttfuck, USA. There’s nothing out there. I’ll be fine, and I know your concern isn’t really for my safety but for your little scapegoat. So shut up and let me go out. I’m taking the car. I’ll be gone about two hours.”
Wyatt grunted and threw the keys at her head. “You’re stupid.”
Betsy got right up in his face. “I’m the only reason you haven’t been caught. And the only reason you don’t have blue balls. So fuck off.”
She walked out the door.
Another fucking argument. Always another argument. It was days like these when she really wondered why she stayed with him, followed him like a little lost puppy, hanging on his words and ideas.
She drove the car out of the complex and north, to where she had seen another road that led away. She wanted to speed, but Betsy had nothing left in her. She just needed to get away from his negative energy. The intersection appeared and there was a road there she didn’t remember seeing.
Perfect.
Turning the stolen sedan down the road, the streetlights were gone immediately. She turned on the high beams and scared away two deer in the road. Betsy didn’t want to hurt anything, so she slowed even further. The road, merely a strip of asphalt in the dark, led her away from the little town and into the dark night of the forest. There were two bridges along her way, rumbling over wooden planks and scaring her with their noise.
The parking lot the road dumped her into had no lines to tell her where to park. She made something up. She’d hoped the road would never end, but the dark expanse under the waxing gibbous moon still worked well.
Betsy stared out the front window. The trees were losing their leaves and through the bare trunks she could see the light glinting off a pond or lake in the distance.
There were cabins on the right as she walked along the edge of the asphalt, hands tucked deep into her coat pockets. The lot led back to the stream she had crossed with the car, and there were several stepping stones she jumped across to get to the other bank. She danced across the running water and headed again for the pond on a small, well-worn trail
It was eerily quiet out. There were no crickets or frogs, and even the sound of the brook was muted. But there was the path she could follow, and it seemed to lead exactly where she was heading.
It felt good to get away from Wyatt. Even though she plotted and planned with him, and followed him through the country, there were times when he was just simply too much for her.
Okay, the sex was awesome. They’d had at least three rounds that day until she got pissed at him for his ‘make me a sandwich’ attitude. And then it went downhill fast and hard. Their fights had started once a month and were now better than once a week. They were getting more vicious, and she was having to learn when it was wise for her to walk out of their apartment and get some fresh air. The ‘this place is a mess’ comment was the end of it. They had been in the apartment a day, one day, and he’d strewn his clothes all over the fucking floor and left them. Because he couldn’t find his lucky lighter.
He didn’t even smoke.
For him to think it was her job to clean up his fucking mess was insanity. She’d dropped more f-bombs in twenty minutes than she had in a week. And then he tried to have sex with her, while she was still raging. Angry sex didn’t happen with her. No way.
That was when the jacket went on and she went out the door. And now she found herself staring at the cold, dark waters of this lake in front of her. She’d have to ask the grocery clerk what the locals called this place.
It was calm and gorgeous. Her soul settled, taking in the tranquility.
What happened? What the hell had brought her to this point?
She’d had a family once. She’d even had a future. Bright and hopeful, she remembered looking at college catalogs with her mother, arguing over the length of her skirt and the depth of her eyeliner.
She knew what she and Wyatt did was wrong. In her heart, every time she slipped a candy bar or a pair of earrings or a couple of bills from a wallet into her pocket she was equally terrified and thrilled.
But they kept on. She kept following him. At some point in the past year, she realized Wyatt didn’t realize what he was doing was wrong. He had no concept that pocketing someone’s pocket watch was an actual crime.
The time was coming. Betsy knew she wouldn’t have the stomach or guts to do this anymore. There was a time, maybe three or four towns down the road that she was going to lose interest, or mess up—maybe even on purpose—and get caught. There would be a little stain on her record for a petty theft.
And in a few more towns, she knew Wyatt was going to get bored with their small time pinching and want something bigger. Maybe dangerously big.
How much longer could she live like this?
How much longer did she want to?
Betsy lowered herself to sit on the rock at the water’s edge. She stared out at the barely disturbed water. There wasn’t much wind, so the moon was bright and calm. Not many clouds that night either.
The truth was, she didn’t want to live like this at all. She didn’t want to steal things, rip off people. She’d wanted to be a veterinarian, with a small friendly practice, a husband, a few kids, and a few acres of land. She didn’t love Wyatt—she only just liked him and enjoyed the sex. He was never going to change, and she needed to. She needed to rediscover who she was before all this started.
The water shimmered.
Betsy threw herself backward from the rock, yanked out of her thoughts by the sparkle. It wasn’t an illusion. It had been too bright, too blue, for her to have imagined that.
Oh my God.
She stared at the water again, skimming the surface in front of her with a terrified feeling in the pit of her stomach.
Off to the right, another shimmer. Instinctively, she knew it was the same creature that made that first one.
Was this the water from her dream? The lake she gave herself to?
Walking slowly back to the water’s edge, she peered into the depths and noted all the things not consistent with her dream. The moon wasn’t full, there was no ice on the water, there were still leaves on the trees.
She wasn’t naked.
That was a big clue.
Betsy knelt on the rock and placed her hand in the water. It was cold, but not icy. The water felt like it was alive, humming with energy. Not an unpleasant sensation, she submerged her whole arm to the elbow.
The shimmer was right there—just a few yards from her. It was a long, bluish haze just barely breaking the surface, trailing through the water. There were diamond scales that created the shine, and she thought she saw legs. The tail whipped by, and the whole…thing was about thirty feet long.
Goddamn, their own personal Nessie!
The water thrummed with energy now and it felt oddly comforting, strangely familiar. The dream tried to interpose on her conscious. But it wasn’t time yet.
Not yet.
The head of the beast rose out of the water just feet from where she knelt.
Holy shit.
A dragon.