The Fly House (The UtopYA Collection) (21 page)

"What's really going on?"

"I need to talk to Gra.  Where is she?"

"In the House."

"You keep everyone dancing, alright?"

"Where?" Karma laughed.  "You parked your dragon on the entire party!"

They both knew it was the only place to land comfortably, but it was still funny.  Especially seeing the Breed House men grumbling in the shadows.

"I'm only going to be here a minute.  I've got to take Breathe with me for a bit.  Just keep everyone busy, alright?  I don't need any wanderers tonight.  And ask Eon to put two guide reins on Forge for me."

"I'll let Eon know," she said and she danced off as Diem shot up the steps of the House.  Inside, he called out for his Gra and Breathe came from the back, wiping her hands together.

"Good to see you made it," she said, but with one glance at his cut hands, her brows hiked.  "You didn't get those cuts from dancing, did you?"

"No.  I've found something I need you to see."

"Alright," Breathe said.  There was no hesitation. "Well, let's go then.  Lead the way."

They went down the front steps to Forge.  The crowd of guests and House members both streamed out of the way. A woman tried to catch Diem's arm in passing.

"Where you two going?"  

"I have work to do," Breathe said.  She kicked up a heel playfully.  "If you want to be Diem's Link, girls, you can't just look pretty.  You've got to know how to work hard."

The woman let her hand drop.  Diem led Breathe to the dragon.  Alread
y fitted with the guide reins, Diem waited until Breathe was seated to the dragon's neck, before he climbed on behind her.

"Ready, Gra?" he called. 

"Always," she answered.  Diem gave a sharp whistle and Forge shot into the sky. 

***

Maeve startled awake as the door of Diem's cabin wafted open.  Groggy and unfamiliar with her surroundings, she tried to jump to her feet, but the guide rein shackling her wrist jerked her back onto the bed.  Wide-eyed, Maeve stared at Diem as he walked in.  His shoulders filled the door frame and brought it all back to her, this ongoing nightmare of this fantasy world.

He crossed the room as an old woman stepped into the shack behind him.  Catching sight of Maeve, the woman froze.  Maeve studied the woman in return.  She had to be in her early sixties, with a pouf of gray, kinky hair that rimmed her head like a halo, wide blue eyes, and smooth skin that reminded Maeve of a soft, honey-drizzled piece of baklava. 

The old woman's mouth dropped open.  Still standing in the place she'd frozen, her voice drifted with disbelief. 

"Maeve?  Maeve Aypotu?" the old woman said.  "I can't believe it.  Is that really you?"

Diem's gaze snapped to Maeve just as her own jaw dropped.  "You know her, Gra?"

"Yes," the old woman said. 

Tears flooded Maeve's vision for no other reason than someone knew her.  In this world, where she didn't seem to have a place, someone knowing her and calling her by name felt like reaching the front door of home.  

Maeve studied the old woman's face anew, but couldn't find a trace of anyone familiar.  She looked to Diem, but he was of no help.  Maeve's gaze met the old woman's again. 

"Do I know you?" she asked. 

"My name was Olivia," the old woman said.  She rushed forward and untied Maeve's wrist, despite Diem's protests. 

"Was?" Maeve said. 

Diem interjected, "Olivia, Gra?  And you think you know her?  How?"

"Shush now, Diem," the old woman said.  "Olivia was my archaic name, I told you that before.  But how in the world are you here, Maeve Aypotu?  Is this a dream?  Please tell me, how are you here?"

"The Archive..." Maeve began.  Olivia sucked in a quick breath.

"My aunt worked at the Archive," she whispered.  Tears of relief and validation mixed together to clog Maeve's throat, but there was no way in hell she was letting it all out in front of Diem.  Not when he'd tied her to his wall like a damn fraud.  She rubbed at her wrists as the old woman put her hand on Maeve's leg.  "You couldn't have been in the old Archive this whole time?  They bulldozed the facility decades before the Scorching."

Maeve stopped rubbing her wrists.  "Bulldozed?"

"Yes, the company went bankrupt.  Lost everything.  The building went vacant and it was eventually condemned.  They ripped it down and bulldozed the lot, but no one ever built on the land again.  It sat there forever.  There wasn't money for building and the amount of pollution that would've come from a bulldozer was against the law by then..."

"They left us in the chambers and just covered it up?" Maeve said.  Olivia blinked, her eyes wide and remorseful.

"You were truly down there this whole time?  I always assumed the Archive woke their clientele once the business went under."

"They didn't."

"Good lord," Olivia said.  "How many of you are there?  And how did you get up here?"

Maeve closed her mouth on the answer.  Her instincts were to trust this kindly woman, but those kind of instincts had rewired inside her long ago.  Now, the thought of trusting someone set off warning bells and raised Maeve's nerves.  She'd trusted her parents, her caregivers, even a couple of men once or twice.  The result of trusting was always the same and never good. 

Everyone and everything had a price tag, a value.  Maeve knew that whether or not someone broke her trust depended less on her sparkling personality and more upon what her worth was to them.

And right now, Maeve didn't have one cent of worth to Olivia and Diem. She was a novelty at best, a freak accident of survival.  There was zero reason for them to help her or anyone else in the Archive.  The world was, literally, a different place than the one she'd left and it was operating with an entirely new set of rules.  Maeve had no idea what to expect from these humans or this Earth and, for all she knew, they could be friendly cannibals, working to lure her in.  They could capture the Archivers and do scientific experiments on them.  Who the hell knew what they really wanted?   

Maeve decided to do what she usually did.  She corked her instincts and followed what she'd learned about people instead.  There was no way she was going to reveal the others in the Archive unless she knew no one would be eaten.  She smirked to herself.  Casper would be delighted.  Coming to the surface might end with her as an experiment after all.

"The Archive woke everyone else and forgot me," she said.  "When I woke up, I was all alone in a room full of empty chambers.  I came up in the forest and walked for days and days.  Then I found the hollow tree and thought I'd go to sleep there...until his dragon found me."

"You walked for days and days?" Diem asked with a wince, but the old woman shushed him as they exchanged a look.  Maeve had screwed something up.  Obvs.  Maybe there wasn't days and days of walking from the shack?  But how could that be?  Had the world been charred into an apple core?

Instead of answers, Olivia reached into her pocket and pulled out a fragile, yellow piece of paper.  The old woman used the tip of her nail to separate the corners.  She opened the paper as if it were a lost letter from God.

"You, Maeve Aypotu," the old woman said thickly, "were my hero.  Tattooed and pierced, you were the hellion, the take-no-garbage daughter of one of the richest men in the United States.  You were Maeve Aypotu, the girl that did things on her own terms.  It was never reported that you went into the Archive.  The magazines only said you went missing.  You were the great mystery in those years.  They even put your story on the Unsolved Mysteries channel.  My aunt told me you'd come to the Archive when she gave me this note, but she never said you were there as a client, to be chambered.  There were confidentiality agreements she had to sign to work there, though.  She might not have even known your real business there; she was just a receptionist, after all.  But she knew you were my hero and she got this for me.  I've always treasured it.  It has been my talisman since the day I received it and it made me feel like I was carrying some of your strength with me when I came up short."

The woman's old hands quivered a bit as she handed the paper to Maeve.  The faded letterhead at the top of the page was familiar.  The letterhead was the Archive logo.  Maeve took the paper delicately, balancing it on the pads of her fingertips to read.  Beneath the Archive's stamp was Maeve's own handwriting, floating in the middle of the page like an old inked ghost: 

Dear Olivia, Stay strong and stay true, stay you whatever you do.  Love, Maeve Aypotu.

"I remember," Maeve whispered.  "The receptionist said this was for her niece.  A little kid
—so I tried to make a rhyme.  The woman thought I ripped off Dr. Seuss."

"I was nine then and my name was Olivia.  Now my people know me only as Breathe.  We chose new names, names of life, after we survived the Scorching.  You can call me Breathe too." Breathe smiled.

"The Scorching?" Maeve said. 

"The Plutians burnt the Earth...removed our civilization and rebuilt it to suit their dragon trade.  We have all been through a great deal, haven't we?  Our tenacious race.  I am glad you made it and as you can see, your note made quite an impression on me.  It's how I made it too."

"I was 22 years old the day I wrote that," Maeve said numbly.  "How old are you now, Breathe?"

"Eighty-seven," the woman said.  Maeve could hardly grasp it.  The old woman had to be lying and Maeve decided to call her on it.

"You're not 87.  You look like you're in your sixties, tops."

"Perfect nutrition does that to a body," the woman said with a smile.

"She thinks you're lying, Gra," Diem cut in.  As much as Maeve didn't appreciate it, she was a little amazed that he could decipher her thoughts so easily.

"Why does he call you that?"  Maeve asked, to displace the insult.  Diem groaned.

"I'm not a death spirit, you know," he said.  "You can talk to me.  I'm standing right here."

The old woman smiled conspiratorially at Maeve.  "He calls me Gra because I am his grandmother."

Grandmother.  Holy shit.  Maeve gave Diem a good long look and looked away.  She was attracted to him, but now it was all too bizarre.  He was a million years younger than her.  He was the grandson of a nine-year-old fan.  It was creepy beyond belief, until she looked at Diem again. 

The tabloids would've framed him on their cover twice each month.  They would have hidden in his bushes and followed him to the dentist.  He had the body
—God, did he have it—shoulders wide enough to carry the trunks of Sequoias.  He had the face too, one that mixed blockbuster movie star with badass brawler, and he had a calm about him that could probably make the air bow down to his dominance.  

Staring at Diem, Maeve was suddenly cool with being a 104-year-old cougar.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Hot Season Six

Diem had no idea what he was going to do, now that Gra Breathe was sitting on his bed beside Maeve and the two of them were chattering like a couple of little girls about what it was like during the archaic times.  He went to his shelves, pulling down a container of salve to slap on his wounds. 

The slices on his hands and arms were nothing much and should be healed in a day, but the problems that could occur by Maeve showing up
—he wasn't sure that they would be so easy to fix.  Sooner or later, someone from his House would find her on the Fly House lot and then what would he do?  Use her or report her to the other Houses as a missing woman?  He had no idea how to explain her existence. 

He couldn't just walk her into the Fly House.  Aside from the mystery surrou
nding her, there were the Housemen to contend with.  The thought of them looking at her made him itch from head to toe.  It was the same sort of fury as when he caught men looking at Karma, but with Maeve, there was something more.  A twisting in his gut that they might succeed with her, instead of him.

He scrubbed his arms roughly in the sink.  He was a Rha for goodness sake.  To feel this way about a woman, to be controlled by jealous thoughts of her, was hazardous and young.  He pitched around for something argumentative, something opposite of amorous to think about her, but he came back to the things like the tendrils of her hair.  He could probably slip his finger into one of those curls and lift it like a ring around his finger.  Or her eyes.  The color of them was not the entire beauty
—it was the way they looked at him, eclipsed him.  She was not an easy woman.  Knowing that made each look she gave him feel like something he had won.  Something he wanted to secret away and protect with his life.

What a dangerous thing.   

"Even if she did just walk up out of the ground," he said with a sudden spurt of annoyance, "what are we supposed to do with her now?"

Breathe glanced at her grandson with surprise.  Then she turned and gave Maeve a small sigh of apology.  "Well, that is a bit of a problem, isn't it?  How do we explain you, Maeve?"

"I'm a distant relative?  Visiting from out of town?" Maeve suggested.  The wrinkles at the corners of Breathe's eyes bunched up like a surfed rug. 

"That would be lovely, except that there are no distant relatives and no 'out of towns' here.  Our worlds are small, encapsulated by five Houses and controlled by the Plutians, Maeve.  Pluto.  They said it wasn't even a planet back in the day." Breathe smiled as if it were a funny joke.  "Humans harvest dragons for Pluto now.  Who would've believed it?  Who would've believed Plutians would destroy our atmosphere to suit their business?"

And then, they were off again, discussing everything but how they were going to ever explain Maeve.

"Did you notice the trees?"  Breathe asked.  "They're called
spindlings.  Fireproof, so the dragons can't burn them down—well, except for the leaves.  They shrivel like Shrinky Dinks, remember those?  But the leaves grow back in just a day or two.  None of our old Earthly plants are here anymore."

"You said there are five Houses?"  Maeve asked.  Diem tried not to blink, just so he wouldn't miss a movement of her lips as she spoke, but when she turned eyes on him, he busied himself with wrapping the wounds on his hand.

"Yes.  Each handle a different stage of the dragon harvest.  The Ice House receives eggs and preserves them until we can incubate them.  Hot House does the incubation.  Then, most of the opened eggs go to Breed House.  They breed the young dragons and start the process again.  The promising dragons, the ones that are suitable for training come here, to the Fly House.  Diem trains the dragons how to fly with riders on their backs, how to follow direction.  He's the best trainer in the universe," Breathe beamed.  "Any surpluses from all the Houses goes to Hold House.  They hold the dragons until the shipments are due."

"This is so bizarre," Maeve said.  Diem wanted to watch her say it again.

"We all have our own lot of land within the dividing wall," Breathe giggled as she saw the confusion on Maeve's face.  "The wall is a giant, skyscraper of a thing that separates all our lots.  Twists between them like a snake.  There are only 300 or so occupants in each House, except for Ice House.  They have always been the largest House.  Journey and I have always said it's the cold—they preserve the surplus eggs that way—that makes them cuddle more."

"Why don't the Houses just all come together?  You know, safety in numbers?  Everyone under one roof?"  Maeve asked.  Diem chuckled at the thought of him and Span living under one roof.  Without the roof blowing off. 

"I believe the Plutians like to keep us divided, competitive.  But we mingle at House parties, like the one going on at our House, the Fly House, tonight.  The trouble is, we have a very intimate race now and although it is slowly growing, it's still small enough that we all know one another too well to be able explain you."

"I see," Maeve said tightly.  Diem thought that maybe she could see why he was worried now.  "If these Plutians find me here, what will happen?"

"They won't find you, not here," Diem said.  His voice was as sure as the foot he planted on the floor.  "Our overseer is frightened of my dragon.  I will give her the command to guard the shack, so he cannot come near it."

"But, if the Plutians do find me," Maeve pondered out loud as Diem's brow bolted down over his eyes and his lips hardened in an unamused line.  He'd done it to staunch the idea, but it seemed there was no staunching anything this woman decided to do or speak of.  "What is the worst that could happen?"

"If they couldn't place you, they'd assume you were a spy from another planetary system and kill you," Breathe said gently.  "That would be the worst and possibly the only outcome to it."

Diem saw how the walls seemed to get a little closer for Maeve.  She froze, but there was no fooling him.  He watched her struggled to keep her cool and breathe at the same time. 

"So I'm supposed to sit out here forever?" she said.  Her tone climbed faster than Forge sailing into the sky.

"It sounds dismal, doesn't it?" Breathe said.  Then to Diem, "She shouldn't be left out here alone.  We could each take our turns coming to stay with her."

Great, babysitting.  This was too far.  Diem had a million things to tend to and he really didn't want anyone else at his shack—or maybe it was really that he didn't want anyone else at his shack with her—besides him.

"And," the old woman went on, as she crooked an eyebrow at her grandson, "you could probably use some help with that new hoarde
Forge is fostering, couldn't you?"

Diem groaned.  "I don't want you involved in this, Breathe.  Not any of you."

"Well, that's not the way it's working out, now is it?" she said.  She smiled at him.  "So let's think up a schedule that will work.  You can teach Maeve to handle the dragons, Diem.  She has the metal for it.  She would be a wonderful fit, I think."

Diem grinned dryly at his Gra's archaic, but the old word sounded tough and bright and those things definitely seemed to describe Maeve.  But then, a lot of things seemed accurate of Maeve. 

The colors in Maeve's hair made her more fitting of a dragon analogy to him; the highlights that danced like flames in the light of the cabin.  Yes, she was a fiery woman, but he was a dragon handler.  It made his cock jump, thinking of what it would be like to handle Maeve, to tame her and train her and make her his.  He wondered if Maeve's guarded nature could be broken, the way he had once broke Forge, the most unruly of all dragons and now the most loyal to him.  It would take all the patience and determination he had.

Catching up with his mind, Diem took a step backward in surprise.  He didn't need to be thinking of a woman this way.   He was a Rha, with an entire House relying on him to provide and protect.  He couldn't be so focused in on the
needs of one person, even if the needs were his own.  He had to think clearly and he was already getting muddled with vicious thoughts of her wanting for anything, of her being taken by some other Houseman. 

And even as he was providing for her now, she was still lying.  She'd lied about having walked for days to get to his private grounds.  The shack was out in the back corner, the Fly House lot being egg shaped, with the Fly House nearly in the middle and the grounds with the shack at the top point of the oval.  The regular training grounds were in the lower, thicker part of the egg-shaped lot.  Maeve could not have possibly passed by the Fly House without being noticed and there was no other way to the shack.  Even walking the perimeter, she would've run into the wall guards on either side and neither direction was more than three hours of walking to reach the Fly House.  She came from somewhere she wasn't willing to disclose.

Yes, she was a liar.

Yes, he knew it.

And yes, despite everything, he still wanted her all to himself, to see what kind of heat she was capable of throwing at him.

***

It seemed crazy to Maeve that she couldn't just blend in easily with her own race.  It didn't seem unreasonable to her at all to be able to return with them to this Fly House place and hang out there with the other humans.  She thought of the streets of New York, or any city she'd known, where most people were anonymous faces passing one another on the street.  But then again, she'd never been one of those people either.  She'd been on magazine covers, TV, she was hounded by the photogs.  It was ironic that she'd escaped a whole lifetime, yet she was still a celebrity of sorts.  A face that would never blend.

It angered her in an odd way.  What was so hard about asking the people Breathe and Diem lived with and ruled, or whatever they called it, to accept her and hide her identity from the Plutians?  How hard could it be to ask them to have Maeve's back against the aliens who were obvious enemies?  

But, then again, when had anyone in her own race ever had her back? 

The thought rattled up the sharp memory of Popi with a pointed tang.  The sweet old man had ran the ancient hardware store next door to the tattoo shop where Maeve had worked.  Popi had brought Maeve coffee on Mondays and called her Sunshine and treated her like she was anyone, instead of someone with a private life he could read about.  Maeve adored him.

Popi was an angel of an old man and he was also the one who sold a story about her to the tabloids.  It was the worst ever, a complete fabrication of their relationship, claiming that they were having a sordid love affair.  Popi provided the mag with candid selfies he'd shot with Maeve after bringing her coffee, along with crude details of acts between he and Maeve that she couldn't have dreamed up even if she'd been a subscriber to a hard core porn channel.  And Popi did it all for a couple hundred bucks. 

He had had her ba
ck, alright.  He'd had a hold of it as he stabbed through it with a few dozen knives, at least.

No, Maeve would keep the Archivers her secret for now. 

"Sounds like babysitting and I'm not a baby, so, no thanks," Maeve said.  The two seemed to have forgotten she was sitting there, as they worked out her daycare schedule.  Diem glanced up with a bit of a scowl.  God, he couldn't stand having her around, could he.

"It's the only way to keep you protected," he said through his teeth.  Such a handsome man and all she was to him was a burden.  Fuck no.  She wasn't about to have any man thinking he had to do a damn thing for her, much less that she'd want him to.

"Oh yeah?  Well I can protect myself, junior.  I've gotten this far on my own and I think I can get the rest of the way without you just fine," Maeve shot back at him. 

"What does this junior mean?" Diem snarled at Breathe.  "What kind of insult is it?  I am the Rha and a man and I will not have a woman disrespect me!"

Maeve stomped across the room to him, meeting him with her face almost flush to his shoulder.  She tipped up her chin and let him have it with both barrels.

"I am a woman," Maeve blazed in his face as she struck his chest with her index finger, "and you are only a man.  You have to earn my respect, Junior!  You can get started by blowing that big fat attitude of yours right out of your ass!"

The shock on Diem's face would've made Maeve laugh, if she wasn't so furious.  But Breathe did it for her.

"Yes, that's the real Maeve Aypotu," the old woman said.  "She's a feisty one, Diem.  She's right.  We need to do better by her than steal her independence."

"You're going to agree with her?" he roared "We are supposed to jeopardize our safety for her independence?"

"I am agreeing with both of you," Breathe said.  She was the only one in the room who was still calm, tapping her finger on her lip in thought.  She held up the finger.  "Hold House may be willing to help us.  They might consider vouching for Maeve as a sister or a cousin from their group.  Their House is certainly the most reclusive and they have never brought everyone to House Parties to socialize.  They would be the most likely House to have some faces that haven't been met."

"Yes, but why would they bother to get involved?" Diem said.  Maeve was still butted up under his chin, but he ignored her as he looked at his grandma.  "They keep to themselves; they don't even deal in the Hope Market."