All Is Fair In Love And War

Chapter 11

 Archie pushed open the door to the apartment. He was shifted to look like the building owner to avoid suspicion. A tall and stocky man with graying hair and a sad beard. Not a form he'd choose regularly.

He cringed as the noxious smell of bleach hit his nose. He looked around, heart saddening at the cleaned out space. When he'd been here last, there had been so much life and personality to the apartment. But now, with Lily Howard dead, and her son presumed dead, all their personal items had been cleaned out.

Archie peeked into the halls, seeing that one of the rooms had been used to store everything temporarily. He marched toward it, pushing the bedroom door open the rest of the way. He looked at the list in his hand, scoping out the cluttered room for the things Carter had requested.

He saw the first thing almost immediately. A framed photo of a younger Carter and Lily Howard. Carter looked to be about six or seven in the picture, and was grinning, showing off his missing teeth. Lily herself was quite beautiful in her younger years. A fuller face and brighter eyes, freckles prominent and blonde hair long and healthy. Archie wondered how she could have gone from that to how sickly she'd been when he'd known her.

The dragon sighed to himself, picking up the photo and putting it in his bag. He turned, seeing the next item laying on top of a desk that had been shoved into the corner. It was small, and rather unremarkable upon first glance, but Carter had been very adamant about getting it back. It was a small, round bronze ball strung on a brown leather cord. Upon closer inspection, it had several runes etched into the bronze. It was definitely magic.

"Does he even know what this is?" Archie muttered to himself, but pocketed it anyway.

The last thing was a little harder to find. He had to dig through several boxes to find it. But when he did, he knew exactly why Carter had needed it back. It was a thick, worn, leather bound notebook with frayed pages. Upon opening it up, he smiled to himself. It was pages upon pages of engineering designs. Scribbled in the margins were notes that Archie could only barely make out, but they all seemed to be tweaks to the designs.

"Seems we have quite the clever demigod on our hands." He laughed softly and carefully put the notebook in his bag. "He's going to be a handful."

He stopped when he saw a page that had fallen out of the book. He bent down to pick it up, freezing in his spot when he saw what was on it.

A messy sketch of a wolf, bound in place by thick chains. Even from the drawing Archie could practically feel the animal's icy gaze boring into his soul. In the corner of the page, was Carter's messy handwriting. A single sentence that made Archie's skin crawl.

What do the dreams mean?

*~*

Archie flew into the open window, setting the bag down on the kitchen table. "Douxie? Carter?"

Carter came into the kitchen, followed closely by Douxie. They were both covered in dirt and sweat, and Douxie had a grass stain on his shirt.

Archie stared at them. "Do I even want to know?"

Carter grinned. "I kicked his ass."

Douxie rolled his eyes. "You cheated."

"I did not."

"You two bicker like five year olds." Archie griped. He pushed the bag towards Carter. "Here."

"Thank you." Carter said, rummaging through the bag. A small smile passed over his lips when he saw the photo.

Douxie smiled at his familiar. "You're awesome, Arch." He said through their telepathy link.

"I'm aware." Archie said, a grin in his voice.