The Walls of Jericho

Girl Talk

“I found the dragon.”

Rebecca’s icy-blue eyes go wide in a mix of stunned surprise and horror. “Oh God,” she breathes. Releasing my shoulders, she shuffles to my side, then lifts one of my arms around her shoulders. “You can’t stay here on the floor. Come on.”

More by her strength than mine, I find myself on my feet. Holding my wrist to keep my arm over her shoulder, she wraps her other arm around my waist to support me. Outside Tassler house’s gorgeous windows, the sky’s going dark as a storm rolls in. It’s a fitting setting, given what I’ve done.

“Can you push the button for the second floor?” she asks, stopping us in front of the elevator. When I nod, she turns to Adriani. “You. Pick up her stuff. Now. Bring it all to my room.”

I watch through the elevator’s closing doors as Mr. Adriani collects my meager belongings near the door. The elevator lifts to the second floor stupidly slow. I begin to feel the strain on the muscles in my arm where Rebecca holds it over her taller shoulder. Not that I’d complain in either case. The elevator may be slow, but it’s remarkably quiet, and this is the nicest thing she’s ever done for me.

Adriani is standing at Rebecca’s bedroom door when the elevator arrives, clutching my belongings and Rebecca’s shoes in his hands—she must have abandoned them at the top of the stairs when she ran down to me. He darts into her room quickly, only as far as he needs to empty his hands on the first available level surface, then backs out fast.

“Thank you,” she tells him. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever heard those two words come out of her mouth. Maybe that’s what makes them sound so much more genuine and heart-felt than I thought she was capable of.

She gets a tight little nod in return. My muscles protest as she lowers me to sit on the edge of her neatly made bed. Muscles that I didn’t know I had groan and ache, and every time I move, I’m reminded of the hours I spent with Drake just before I got home.

From the door, Adriani points to our collected belongings in their little pile. “That can’t stay.” He shakes his head. “It smells.”

Her icy blue eyes lock on him fast. Watchful, lest she consider threatening or even hurting him, I look too, but the only thing that moves are her lips.

“What smells?”

“The book.”

“Okay. Go watch television. I think Batman’s on,” she tells him. “We’ll have pizza for lunch in a little while.”

He nods eagerly with a little smile and I hear his constantly bare feet—slap-slapping—on the tile towards the stairs. Rebecca, slips my shoes off my heels, then gets up and retrieves the book.

“What is this? Where did it come from?” Then she surprises the living hell out of me when she opens to a random page and sticks her nose in, inhaling deeply. Her ice-cold eyes go glassy and a slight shiver runs over her.

“The KDS building. There’s a combo coffee shop bookstore there.”

“He handled it,” she says flatly.

I realize suddenly what I knew all along. Rebecca is a wolf. I’ve always had the impression, both from her and from what Channing has said of her, that she doesn’t like acknowledging that part of her. Clearly, she knows how to use the skills she’s gifted though. Her wolf nose is sensitive to scents, and the book must smell of Drake. I wonder what his crackling fire with sweet smoke odor smells like to her, but something about her look tells me not to ask.

“He bought it for me. He wanted me to have it. He said it’s about where he’s from.”

Closing it with a snap, she stares at the cover. I wish I knew what went on behind those stone-cold eyes of hers, but she’s the most difficult person to read that I’ve ever met.

“This has to go.” Her gaze shifts to me and her voice drops to a whisper. “Channing will be able to smell it. What else did he touch?”

The thought nauseates me and my eyes close as new tears threaten. “Just me.”

The book falls from her hands, with a loud slam that makes me jump, then she’s kneeling on the floor before me again. She slaps my cheeks lightly.

“No more of that, Jericho. There’s no time for self-pity. You have to be smart. Your life depends on it,” she says firmly. “Tell me what happened. Everything. Right from the start.”

I shake my head. There’s no way I want to have a confessional, right here right now. Especially not with Rebecca. She already disapproves of absolutely everything about me. She also envies my relationship with Channing. I don’t want to hazard a guess how fast she’d be in spilling my dirty secrets to him if she thought it would ruin our relationship. “You don’t want to know.”

She grips my knees, so hard it hurts, but I welcome the pain. I deserve it.

“Jericho, I’m not kidding. If Channing thinks—if Avernus thinks you’re compromised to the dragon, they won’t hesitate to kill you.” Her grip on my knees loosens and she takes my hands in her really warm ones. “I’m the only one who can and will help you. I will. I’m here for you. Tell me what happened.”

“After what I’ve done, I deserve to die.”

“Oh God.” She slumps to the floor. “Did he force you?” she whispers. Her eyes are still ice-cold, but surprisingly, there’s a burning compassion there. Compassion, and fear.

I shake my head, lowering my eyes and answer her whisper with my own. “No. No, he didn’t. He wouldn’t. He’s not—he’s not like what you’ve been told. At least not entirely. I submitted. I wanted him. I even told him I did.”

A lagging silence fills in around us. From somewhere outside, I hear the rhythmic drone of a lawnmower and wonder if it’s big enough to kill me if I make it run me over.

“Did he mesmerize you?”

I look up, and curiously, she’s watching me closely, almost eagerly. Then I understand. Of course, she’s keen. She’s a paleontologist and I have first-hand experience with her current object of study. Inhaling deeply, I let my breath out slowly. If I’m going to die anyway, then the least I can do is set the record straight. It’s the one thing I owe to Drake, as the last surviving dragon.

For whatever brief time he has left.

“No, he didn’t.” I reply. “I thought that too. I accused him of it. He said he did, but only after—after it had already gone too far. Just to ease my guilt. But I don’t think he can mesmerize me.” I shrug. “He doesn’t have to anyway. He has this—presence. He’s larger than life, and he’s—really beautiful.”

“Tell me what happened.” There’s a quiver in her voice as she says it.

“I had an interview. At KDS. He was showing me around. We were in this—,” I don’t want to tell her exactly where to find Drake, so I opt to keep some of the details to myself, “—this sort of secluded part of the building. Just us. We were just talking, but there’s been this undercurrent of attraction between us from the moment we met.”

“So he works for KDS. Where did you meet?”

I consider whether I want to answer that, then remember that I’ve put Drake in the hospital. After what I’ve done to him, he’s going to be there for a while, so even if she knows where we met, she won’t find him there.

“On the beach. A couple weeks ago. The morning of that big storm.” As if to confirm it, a flash of lightning splits the sky and ten or so seconds later, the low angry rumble of its voice reaches us. “I didn’t know he was the dragon at the time.”

“And you learned he worked for KDS?”

“I did.” I nod. “I thought if I could leverage his position as an insider, I could get myself a job and get access to Heritage. Then—.”

“Then we might have found the people we were looking for, including him.”

“Yes.”

“If you had an interview, obviously your strategy worked.” Her tone is a begrudging compliment. It’s definitely a surprise, but nothing by comparison to her next question. “What’s he like?”

“He’s smart. Charming. Achingly beautiful to look at. Like a wolf, but more.”

“Define ‘more’.”

There’s no stopping the reverence that creeps in, saturating my voice as I speak of Drake. It never even occurs to me to wonder why she asked. “He’s taller. Not much, but a little. Broader. Well-built and beautifully proportioned. Charismatic and seductive. God-like. Like Sobek, in a fully human avatar. He’s irresistible. You want to surrender. The instant he touches you, you burn for him. He can’t give you enough, but he tries. It’s like serving you is his highest calling.”

“You enjoyed it? Being with him?”

I bite my bottom lip, terrified to admit the truth, but there’s no condemnation in Rebecca’s eyes. “I did. I could barely think of anything else but him and how overwhelmingly good he was making me feel. I’d already been rationalizing it in my head. Our texts, our calls, and what we’d said to each other. Stuff I never should have said. Stuff that encouraged him when I shouldn’t have. But the very first second he was inside me all I could think was how can I keep him and have Channing too.”

“Why?”

“Because being with him is—well, it’s incredible. It’s every pleasure you could ever wish for and more than you’ve ever imagined. He knows exactly, instinctively, what you need and how to give it to you.” I swallow hard. “But he’s not enough alone. Not for me. Because I’m in love with Channing.”

I hang my head as the silence between us fills with the sound of pouring rain and the distant rumbles of thunder.

Rebecca lays her hand over mine, gives it a tiny squeeze. “You could have been happy with him? With the dragon?”

“If things had been different, yes. If I could’ve loved him with my whole heart, yes.”

“But he let you go.”

I shake my head. Despite how astonishingly sympathetic Rebecca’s been, I can’t tell her all that happened. I can’t tell her that he revealed me for what I am—part mage, part wolf, part dragon. “No. He wanted me to stay. To choose him. That request, his adoration, it was all I thought I ever wanted. But he’s not enough for me. I told him no, and we argued. I drained him to escape.”

The sharp intake of her breath and the horrified look in her eyes is all I need to know how horrible I am.

“Drained? You killed him?”

“He lives. You have no idea how strong he is. How powerful. I sapped his energy. Left him so exhausted that he was too weak to move. Too weak to fight me.”

There’s a hunger in her eyes for more information, more knowledge, but Rebecca doesn’t ask me anything else. Instead, she climbs to her feet. On bare feet, she pads into the bathroom, opens the shower door and starts the water running. She bends then, rooting in the cupboard beneath her sink.

When she comes back, she extends what she was searching for to me. “Strip. And shower. Wash every part of you thoroughly, with soap. And use this. To clean—inside,” she says, a little uncomfortably. “I’ll order an emergency contraceptive and get rid of your clothes and—.”

“Don’t—I want—I want the book,” I sputter. I don’t know how to explain to her why, but mercifully, she doesn’t ask.

“It’ll be in my library. In the garage. That car smell—it’ll hide it until his scent fades.” She takes my free hand, pulling me to my feet.

I grimace, but don’t complain, even though I do feel every inch of my stretched muscles and my bent and contorted frame that Drake manhandled so spectacularly a few hours ago. As if she senses the slow creep of my exhaustion, Rebecca helps me take my clothes off with a business-like efficiency I hadn’t expected of her either.

She stares at my skin and her eyes turn hard. “There’s not a mark on you. Did you lie to me?”

I meet her hard glare with a bitter one. “You’re the one who smells him on me. I heal fast. I have ever since Channing and I—.”

“Imprinted,” she says for me, and something new and unreadable flashes across her features, vanishing before I have a chance to process it.

“Yeah. I hurt. Believe me. He rearranged my insides for more than an hour. Pretty sure he pushed them all entirely out of my ears.”

Rebecca snorts a tiny laugh and the slightest smile curves one side of her mouth. I get the distinct impression she’d be spectacularly beautiful if she smiled more. “I guess that explains why there’s nothing in your head.”

I can’t help but smile in return. “According to you, my head was empty before, but I can assure you it is now. I don’t have a damn clue where his mate is, but whoever she is, she’s going to be a happy woman.”

Stooping, Rebecca gathers up my clothes, then the book and heads for the door. “I’ll be back shortly. Use that,” she nods to the feminine douche in my hand, “and wash head to toe, thoroughly.”

The shower door is steamed opaque when I pad to it quietly. The plastic wrapper crinkles loudly as I remove and toss it in the trash. The plug that seals the mildly vinegary smelling liquid inside follows the wrapper and I read the brief instructions on the clear flexible bottle as I replace the phallic shaped dispensing cap.

The warm pulsing of the shower on my tired muscles feels fantastic. Slowly, it erases the subtle tingling memory of Drake’s touch on my body as I let the water massage me.

I’ve never used a douche before, but I assume from several experiences with Channing that if you put an overabundance of fluid into that sensitive female chamber, it will, of necessity, have to come back out. So I lay down on the bottom of the shower with my bottom near the drain.

I twist the irrigating cap to open, then insert the narrow tip inside me. The flushing liquid rinsing out my female core when I squeeze the compressible bottle is cold, but it’s also soothing. Like I expected, the cleansing solution floods out immediately after. It takes barely a minute before the irrigating jet of liquid is gone, and I remove and set the emptied bottle near the shower door to throw away.

More of the vinegary liquid trickles out of me when I get to my feet, so I wash there first, several times, using soap as Rebecca directed. By the time I’ve washed my entire body including my hair a few times thoroughly, I’m feeling more like myself, and I’m kind of grateful to Rebecca.

She’s still not my friend, obviously, but she does have a heart, even if she doesn’t reveal it to people very often.

There’s a fresh towel on the counter waiting for me when I open the door, and in a separate pile, she’s placed a pair of yoga pants and a light sweatshirt for me to dress in. She’s waiting on the bed when I emerge from her bathroom, and she’s changed into fresh clothes too, I presume to eliminate any lingering scent of Drake. A comb and a brush rest beside her.

“Come here,” she directs, and has me sit down in front of her. Then she gently combs the tangles from my hair. “Channing still isn’t awake, but I expect he will be sometime soon. I wiped down every surface that you’ve touched and got rid of both our clothes. It’s letting up now, but the rain outside will wash away any scent you might have tracked with you on your way in. There’s pizza in the kitchen downstairs. You need to eat, as much as you can, then find someplace comfortable and sleep. You’ll feel better when you wake up.”

“Thanks, Rebecca.” I turn so I can see her. “For everything.”

“I’ll never tell him the truth,” she assures me. “No matter how he assails me. I’ll take your secret to my grave. I suggest you take it to yours too.”

I nod. Then all my bottled-up emotions overwhelm me and I throw my arms around her in a tight hug. She hugs me back, reservedly, then pushes me away. “Go eat. Get some rest. I’ll take care of everything else.”