Minerva Wakes Read online

  Minerva-Wakes-Smashwords-Version

  Table of Contents

  Published by OneMoreWord Books

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  Acknowledgements & Dedications

  2016 Afterword

  About the Author

  Want Free Fiction?

  More by Holly Lisle

  Published by OneMoreWord Books

  Smashwords Version

  ISBN: 978-1-62456-023-1

  First OneMoreWord Books Reprint: November 2016

  Editor: K.V. Moffet

  Cover Design: Holly Lisle

  Book Design: Holly Lisle

  Cover Art: Minerva Wakes © Clyde Caldwell. Used by generous permission of the artist, with my thanks.

  Copyright © 1994, 2016 by Holly Lisle. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  This book was first published by Baen Books, Riverdale, NY. First Baen printing, January 1994

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, and incidents in this novel are either products of the imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, either living or dead, to events, businesses, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  But just in case, be careful if you’re buying your wedding rings at a flea market from a stranger with an unusual smile.

  CHAPTER 1

  “No! Please don’t shoot!” The hospital’s data processing director groveled in the aisle. “I’ll never do it again, I promise! Just let me live!” Mrs. Mindley was on her knees, begging and sobbing. Minerva had waited a long time to see her like that.

  “Too late, you inconsiderate cow — you’ve blocked the aisle one time too many. Now you die!” The machine gun in Minerva’s hands jumped and snarled, and Minerva gleefully splattered bits of Mrs. Mindley over the entire soup section.

  Minerva Kiakra’s lips curled into a tight smile as she imagined that scene. It beat reality. Reality was that Mrs. Mindley’s shopping cart angled across most of the Soup/Sauce/Pasta aisle, allowing no passage, while Mrs. Mindley’s wide-load rear end blocked the rest. The woman bent over the display of Tomato and Rice soup, carefully choosing cans — Minerva was unable to determine the method the other woman was using to establish can ripeness, but three out of every four of the little suckers were obviously failing some sort of test.

  The Chicken and Noodle soup was tantalizingly within view, and completely out of reach.

  “***Chicken and Noodle soup — 6 cans!!!” Darryl had marked on the shopping list.

  Minerva stared at the list, and gritted her teeth, and waited.

  But patience wasn’t going to work. Minerva suspected malice in Mrs. Mindley’s glacial slowness. She was going to have to be direct. Toughness was what the situation called for, she decided.

  She cleared her throat. “Excuse me, Mrs. Mindley, but I’m in a hurry.”

  The woman didn’t even look up. She just waved her hand in one of those dismissive wait a minute gestures that meant she’d move when she was damned good and ready, and not before.

  Minerva raised her voice a notch. “Mrs. Mindley, I need to get past you.”

  Her voice sounded contemptible and pleading in her own ears. She could imagine how it sounded to Mrs. Mindley — and sure enough, the woman continued to ignore her.

  Minerva watched her knuckles whiten on the cart handle. “My baby-sitter needs to get home, and she can’t leave until I get there.”

  The other woman glared up at her and, with a vicious snort, moved her cart just enough that Minerva could squeeze by if she dragged her left shoulder along the shelves on the opposite side. Naturally, doing that meant all the boxes of macaroni and spaghetti stacked on those shelves toppled to the floor. They rattled loudly behind her, and Minerva cringed — but the baby-sitter really was in a hurry, and the weather was building toward a North Carolina ice storm that was going to lock everyone in for a week or better. She was miserably short of time. So, feeling guilty, she left the boxes on the floor, and, as she’d expected, she heard the old bat snort again.

  “The nerve of some people.”

  Minerva’s imagination created a fantasy shopping cart for her that featured twin-mounted submachine guns on the front end and a flamethrower at ankle height, and pleased herself by mentally frying Mrs. Mindley to a cinder after gunning her down. That would teach the old harridan to block the aisle. Or to drop a stack of reports on Minerva’s desk and demand that she handle them because they dealt with data problems in the Administrative, not Data Processing, Department.

  Feeling better, Minerva returned to shopping. “Six cans of Chicken Noodle, some Chicken and Stars for the kids, and some asparagus soup for me...” she muttered. Then she checked the price on the asparagus soup and put it back. It was a luxury that would have to wait until another time. She’d have Chicken and Stars with the kids.

  She snarled and grumbled her way down the aisles, checking off Darryl’s special items with an extra dash of venom; Darryl was going on his biennial health kick, which Minerva knew from experience would last exactly five days and would drive the rest of the family nuts in the process. She also knew from experience that it was easier to give in to his nonsensical demands than to fight them.

  “Wheat germ. Ri-i-i-i-ight. He’s going to sprinkle it on a huge serving of ice cream and claim it’s a health treat. And I’ll end up sneaking it into casseroles and homemade cookies for a year to get rid of it.” Nevertheless, she did find some wheat germ and tossed it into the cart.

  “Sunflower seeds.” She just rolled her eyes and sighed.

  She brushed her bangs out of her face and surveyed the list critically. Thank God she was almost done. The cart would give a junk-food junkie nightmares — it was full of whole-wheat crackers and bean sprouts, exotic vegetables and strange fruits, and chicken and fish and expensive lean ground beef. And this mess, most of which she and the kids would eat after Darryl got bored playing fitness expert, was going to cost twice the usual weekly amount.

  She cruised into the cereal aisle in a foul temper.

  ***WHEATIES!!! — BIG BOX!!! the list demanded.

  That was the last of her beloved spouse’s special items.

  Wheaties, for chrissakes, she thought. Ugh! Not even I like them.

  She marched the entire length of the aisle, looking for Wheaties. There weren’t any.

  “Oh, damn,” she muttered. Darryl would throw a royal tantrum. She turned around and looked back the way she had come. There, at the very opposite end of the row, on the very top shelf, a single box of Wheaties sat in lonely splendor.

  She sighed and backtracked, carefully not looking at the box. If she looked at it, some other shopper was sure to notice the direction of her glance and decide to beat her to it. Grocery shopping was a vicious, competitive event even in good weather. Right before an ice storm, when “Snowbound Panic” took over, it became truly bloodthirsty.

  However, this time her strategy worked. The box was still there when she shoved her cart in front of it and reached up.

  Her reflexes were a little off. It had been an awful day, which was segueing into an awful evening. Edgy as she was, her r
each for the Wheaties was more of a desperate grab. The box was hers — until she fumbled it away with one clumsy move... and saw it grabbed in midair by another shopper.

  Like a wild thing, she faced the devious thief, teeth bared, warning growl readied in the back of her throat—

  The growl stopped, strangled, halfway to delivery.

  A dragon stared back at her out of serene amber eyes.

  It looks real, Minerva thought. What sort of promotion is the supermarket having that uses a dragon? Dragon Days? They’re going to give some old lady a heart attack, with that thing. Or me. They may give me a heart attack.

  The vertical slits in the dragon’s amber eyes dilated, and it cocked its head to one side, staring at her as if it found her as peculiar-looking as she found it.

  It had a bony, oversized snout full of curved ivory teeth the size of ten-penny nails. Its delicately scaled blue hide shimmered with rainbow iridescence. The pale, glossy wings of flesh around its face and down its neck flexed and spread with a slow, steady rhythm; its long, thick tail trailed around the corner, while two membranous pale blue wings unfurled slightly as she glared at it.

  That’s real, she thought with growing wonder. No one makes costumes that perfect.

  Other shoppers hurried past. They pushed their carts by without paying attention to either the dragon or Minerva, but Minerva noticed that they detoured around the space the dragon occupied and kept their eyes averted.

  There is something standing there. It isn’t just a figment of my imagination. Could it, perhaps, be a woman — and I’m just seeing a dragon?

  That’s it. I’m hallucinating. I’ve cracked up. I’m about to get into a fight with Mrs. Mindley over Darryl’s fucking Wheaties, and my mind has turned her into a dragon.

  The dragon clutched the box against its belly scales with one wickedly taloned hand and grinned at Minerva, exposing even more teeth. It definitely had a Mrs. Mindley-ish smile. Then the dragon dropped the box into its own shopping cart.

  A vision of Darryl deprived of Wheaties danced in front of Minerva’s eyes. Darryl’s voice, whining, “Is it such a problem for you if I ask you to get me a few simple things? Can’t you even take the time to do a little favor for me, when you know I’m trying to take care of myself?” droned through her memory.

  “NO!” Minerva yelled, willing to face down a woman who made her job hell, or even a real dragon, to avoid that self-pitying whine. She grabbed at the cereal box.

  Opalescent blue-green fingers gripped viselike around her wrist, and a sub-bass voice rumbled in her ear, “MINE.”

  As abruptly as that, she found herself sitting on a bruised rump on the cold tile floor, staring up at the dragon’s receding sapphire-blue back as it strolled casually down the aisle.

  That, lady, is one hell of a muscular hallucination, she told herself.

  The dragon and its shopping cart made two stops. It’s getting Pop Tarts and Instant Breakfast, Minerva noted, bemused. Then it turned the corner, and disappeared.

  Taking the Wheaties with it.

  “Darryl, there was this dragon in the supermarket today, and it snatched the only box of Wheaties out of my hand, and wouldn’t give it back,” Minerva imagined herself saying. Right. Darryl will love that. I could save myself a lot of time by going to the Emergency Room and telling them the same thing. They could check me into a padded room in a hurry.

  A padded room seemed like a nice idea. It would be a quiet room, with people to take care of her, round-the-clock tranquilizers, no responsibilities, no hassles, no chores. It was obviously something she needed, something she’d been building up for.

  Well, fighting with a dragon in the supermarket over a box of cereal no one in my house likes is definitely stupid. And probably crazy. So is sitting in the aisle, waiting to get run over by a crazed shopper.

  She got up, dusted off the back of her slacks, and began shoving the cart toward the dairy section.

  But, delightful as a stay in a sanitarium would probably be... we don’t have the time or the money for me to lose my mind this month.

  She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

  You’re going to have to be okay, Minerva, she told herself. You don’t have any choice.

  The checkout lines stretched endlessly. The weather service was calling for four inches of snow and freezing rain by morning. They might be wrong; they were often enough, after all. But everyone in town was stocking up on staples, just in case. Checkout line camaraderie was high. Neighbors and strangers alike chatted about the impending storm, about their snow tires or newly bought tire chains, about their kids and their kids’ sleds that would probably only get one use this winter. Minerva submerged herself in the chatter and felt better.

  Outside, pushing the cart across the parking lot, freezing as the wet, cold wind bit through her ski jacket and gabardine slacks, Minerva managed to put the dragon incident out of her mind

  Jamie is having a spelling test tomorrow — fifty words. Did we have fifty words at a time in fourth grade? I can’t remember.

  She shoved paper bags into the back of the station wagon, wedging them in against each other so they wouldn’t tip and dump groceries all over the car.

  And work is going to be hell tomorrow. The visit by the Joint Commission means a ton of extra paperwork. God, but I hate JCAH visits. I’ll have to start on revisions of the organization charts and Mr. Asher’s presentation for the trustees first thing in the morning, or I’ll be buried in paper by next week.

  She slammed down the hatch, and pulled her keys out of her ski jacket. There was a shrill squeal of tires on cold pavement from across the parking lot, and she glanced over.

  A red sports car. Mazda Miata? Yeah, a Miata. Even owning one of those things, and red at that, is begging for killer insurance premiums — and then to drive the way that idiot is driving— She shook her head, bewildered.

  There had been a time in her life when she’d dreamt of red sports cars. It was hard to remember what that was like, wanting a racy, sexy little convertible two-seater to show off in — and to hell with the practicality. Remembering that was almost like trying to remember fourth grade. She’d been a different person both times.

  She stared at her white LTD wagon with loathing. For just a second, she could almost reach into her past to touch the Minerva who’d wanted that red two-seater — but reality reminded her that a cute little car wouldn’t carry her own three kids and several of their closest friends, or all the groceries, or half the PTA moms. A Mazda Miata was not a mommy car.

  Reality reminded Minerva that she was a mommy.

  She backed out of her parking space, wormed her way into the solid block of cars trying to get out of the lot, and inched forward.

  There was another screech of tires, and the sleek red Miata skidded over the grass to the right of the drive, and nosed back in, right in front of her.

  She stared at the license plate, which read FLAMER.

  I’ll remember that all right, she thought.

  The bumper-sticker was even worse. I ♥ VIRGINS, it declared. The most obnoxious thing about the little red car was the yellow diamond stuck to the darkly tinted rear window, though. That told the world, Living Legend On Board.

  “What an asshole,” she muttered.

  As if the little convertible’s driver had heard her, the dark-tinted window on its driver’s side rolled down.

  The blue dragon leaned its head out of the window and grinned its cocky grin at her. Then, as the line of traffic surged forward, the dragon gunned the engine and roared out into the river of cars.

  Minerva floored her own gas pedal and shot after it in desperate pursuit.

  Thirty-five miles per hour through here, Minerva, her reality-based self growled. A ticket will raise your insurance.

  Goddamned dragon driving a goddamned Mazda Miata at fifty, and I’m going to catch it and find out why! the rest of her growled back. Or die trying.

  There were, surprisingly, no police cars in s
ight. She and the dragon made it through the center of town without injury, and headed toward suburban streets, and her house. The dragon kept to the main highway. Minerva stuck to the dragon. The LTD’s speedometer crept to the eighty-miles-per-hour mark, and then past it. Minerva didn’t care.

  One street from her house, the dragon slowed enough to hang a rubber-burning right. Minerva followed suit, then gunned after it, accelerating into the curve and giving the car a little extra gas to cut down the fishtailing as she pulled the car straight and closed on her target.

  The dragon dove into another right, with Minerva moving in fast.

  Then the Miata slowed way down and turned right again onto an incredibly overgrown dirt road in the middle of what Minerva would have sworn was a vacant lot the last time she looked. She stopped. The little sports car’s red taillights flickered down the tunnel-like gloom. She watched them dim, then vanish.

  She started to swing her car onto the side road — the compulsion to follow that dragon was overwhelming.

  But—

  But the ice cream in the back of the car would melt, and Carol needed her costume started. But the baby-sitter needed to get home, and Jamie had a test he would need help studying for. But a storm was coming, and it was time for supper, and—

  As if to add emphasis to the real world, the first light flakes of snow drifted through the beams of her headlights and across her windshield. Feeling that adventure was passing her by, she nosed the station wagon onto the dirt road and executed a neat three-point turn.

  Home, she told herself. Go home right this minute like the responsible adult you are, and no more dragons in Mazdas. No matter what it might have meant.

  Minerva had second thoughts the whole last block and a half to home.

  Barney met her at the door, full of four-year-old angst.

  “They won’t let me play,” he wailed. “They said I’m a little boy. I’m not. I’m a big boy, and I can play, too!”