Robert Asprin's Dragons Run Read Online Free PDF Page A

anger to spirit her away with her?” Malcolm asked. “With every moment that passes, the trail grows colder.”
    “I know that!” Gris-gris leaned back in bed, looking up at the ceiling. It was a sign of how much pain he was in that he didn’t maintain his characteristically fierce eye contact with them. “No. That Mrs. Melinda left before Val did. She said . . . she said she had to go check on her daughter. Val sat with me for a while. I was pretty groggy. They dosed me up for the pain. I closed my eyes, and the next time I opened them, she was gone. That’s all I know. She didn’t leave me a note. I told Nurse Bossyboots out there to wake me up anytime Val came back, but she didn’t. Hasn’t even called.”
    “She hasn’t called me, either,” Griffen said. “And she’s not answering her phone.”
    “That’s bad. If she’s in trouble, I want to help.”
    “You will!” Griffen assured him. “But if you die trying, she’ll kill me.”
    Gris-gris’s narrow face split in a brilliant white smile. “That just mean she have two guardian angels.”
    “And what makes you think you’re going to heaven?” Griffen countered. Gris-gris laughed.
    Malcolm stepped back from the bedside.
    “That’s enough, Griffen. There are other people I need to speak to.”
    “I’ll be back,” Griffen promised Gris-gris. “Anything you need?
    “A one-way ticket out of here,” the thin man said with a grin. “But you could pick me up a decent burger next time you come. Maybe from Yo Mama’s. The food here’s nasty.”
    “I heard that!” Nurse Bossyboots called. “Don’t you dare!”
    •   •   •
    Griffen followed Malcolm out of the ward to the elevator. They emerged into the streaky sunshine forcing its way through iron gray clouds. The air was thick with humidity and the smell of mold. An ambulance, red roof light flashing, screamed past them into the emergency bay. At the door, medical personnel in anonymous green and white poured out to pull a folding gurney from the rear of the square vehicle. Griffen couldn’t tell much about the figure lying on it, only that it was limp and unconscious.
    Griffen worried that Val could be somewhere in the city, hooked up to life support, unable to let them know where she was. He could not allow himself to believe that he would never see her again. Their parents had disappeared when he was a boy. He and Val only had each other. He was more determined than ever to track her down and bring her home safely.
    “So we have to consider that there might be another agency besides Melinda involved in her disappearance.” Malcolm scowled. “That complicates matters.”
    Griffen studied him. “You don’t look surprised.”
    “Griffen,” Malcolm began, then paused. “I regret not having given you more time to absorb the truth about your heritage and to be available to answer questions. But it will have been brought home to you one way or another that an infant dragon of nearly pure blood, as Valerie’s will be, is an immensely important asset, either as ally—or pawn.”
    Griffen felt anger rising in him. “You had the chance to tell us to be more careful. You had
years
.”
    “I thought you had the common sense to monitor your own fertility.” Malcolm sighed. “But I am forgetting what it was like to be twenty. It has been a long time.”
    The way he said it made Griffen curious. He peered sideways at his uncle.
    “How old
are
you?”
    “Now, what kind of question is that?”
    Griffen was a little embarrassed but told the truth.
    “Well, I have been reading up on dragons. Some of the old ones are thousands of years old.”
    “
Reputed
to be thousands of years old,” Malcolm corrected him. “The truly ancient are . . . well, we must speak more deeply on the subject another time.”
    Griffen felt frustrated. He hated having people hold out on him. “I’ll remember that. In the meantime, I put in a call to a friend. She might be able to help us find Val,