Up in Smoke - Katie MacAlister [70]
“This’ll do,” I said, buttoning the shirt all the way down. The tails reached to my knees, and I had to roll the sleeves up several inches, but at least it was a covering. “I hate to think what we’re going to tell your mother, though. She’s going to know just exactly what we were doing.”
“I think everyone within a hundred-mile radius knew what we were doing,” he answered, amusement in his beautiful eyes. “You yelled your pleasure loud enough to wake the sleeping animals.”
I made a face at him.
He pulled me to him, kissing the tip of my nose. “It pleased me to know you were so affected.”
I rubbed my cheek against his chest, saying nothing, troubled by the remembered feelings that had possessed me. I didn’t want to be slowly taken over by a dragon essence so potent it could change me into something alien. I was happy being myself, troubles and all.
The question was, did I have a choice in the matter?
Chapter Twelve
“We should get moving. My mother will no doubt know we are near and come looking for us if we do not arrive in a reasonable time.”
“Does she know you’re here because she’s your mother, a dragon expert, or a shaman?” I asked a few minutes later as we were once again bouncing our way across the arid near desert of the region.
“The answer is probably all of them. As a shaman, she knows who enters the area. She senses their beings and keeps track of those who belong to her. But she’s also my mother, and I have no doubt that word reached her of our arrival in Lajamanu.”
I thought about that for a few minutes, arguing with myself about whether or not I should ask the question that was uppermost. I decided that it was better to ask now, before I met Gabriel’s mother. “You mentioned your father to me once but haven’t said anything about him since. He’s not dead, is he?”
“Dead?” Gabriel looked surprised. “What gave you that idea?”
“Well, you’ve talked a lot about your mother, but not so much about your father. I just figured they wouldn’t be separated unless one of them was . . . well, dead.”
“He’s not dead.”
“Oh. Good. He’s here with your mother, then?”
“No.” Gabriel kept his eyes on the nonexistent road, avoiding breaking the axle on rocks and bits of dead vegetation, driving carefully through the deepening light, occasional flashes of animals in the headlights making me jump. “You know of the curse, Mayling. You know that no mate is born to a silver dragon. That includes my parents.”
“I know about it. I just thought . . .” I made a vague gesture. “I just assumed they must be mated in everything but name.”
“They aren’t. My father lives in Tanzania. The only thing he shares with my mother, my sisters and me excluded, is a passion for animals. That’s how they met. My father came to Australia a few centuries before the white settlers, wanting to see for himself the wildlife that was so abundant here. My mother was shaman for one of the aboriginal tribes and healed him when he got himself into trouble with a tiger snake. He stayed for about ten years, but eventually they went their separate ways.”
“That’s rather sad.” I mused on how I’d feel if one of the other wyverns attempted to steal my shard-infested self from Gabriel. “I take it your mother is immortal, then? How can she be that if she’s not his mate?”
“She’s a shaman.”
“And shamans are immortal?” That puzzled me. I’d never heard of shamans being anything but mortal.
“Not technically. Shamans can walk in the Dreaming, though. My mother simply sends her spirit there when her mortal body wears out, and returns to the mortal world when she’s reborn.”
“Ahhh. Very smart. How many times has she come back?”
“Too many to count. That should be her camp up there.” His eyes glittered in the darkness of the car as the headlights picked out a small cluster of ratty tents. As the noise of the car reached it, a couple of people stood up from where they’d been sitting around