Dogs and Goddesses Read online

  Wolfie put his paws on her chest and touched her nose with his. “Don’t drink. It’s bad.”

  “It’s gone.” She turned her glass upside down, drowsy now. “See?” His brown eyes were so anxious and his little face was so tense that she stroked his head and added sleepily, “It’s okay, Wolf. I won’t drink any more.”

  Wolfie relaxed and licked her cheek. “Good girl. Sweet baby. Love you forever.”

  “Love you forever, too.” Shar turned out the light and snuggled down under the covers, her head spinning as Wolfie burrowed under the duvet to curl up beside her. She slipped into sleep, images racing by in fast forward: pale, thin Abby gathering up huge, sweet Bowser in her arms; organized Daisy spinning with frantic Bailey; fierce little Wolfie, pacing back and forth on the bed like a black-and-gray lion, muttering, “Bad, bad”; Kammani, raising her arms at the altar, Bikka and Umma dancing by her side …

  “Wake up!” Wolfie barked.

  “’s okay,” she murmured to him in her dreams.

  “No, it’s bad.”

  She tossed her head and was back in her bedroom again, but now the half-forgotten patterns painted on her ceiling and walls glowed, the big symbol carved into the wall opposite the bed hummed, and the room began to shake.

  Wolfie whined.

  “Shhhh,” she told him, “it’s a dream.” She reached for the flashlight next to the bed and found the Taser box instead. Why don’t they make Tasers with flashlights? she thought through the fog and rumble of the dream as she fumbled the box open. Then you could see who you were disabling. And maybe a bottle opener—

  A blinding light whooshed up in front of her and she screamed.

  A man was standing at the foot of her bed, huge and translucent, glowing silver as he stretched out his arms.

  “Run,” Wolfie yelped, shooting out from under the covers and hitting the floor with a splat, but Shar caught her breath, looking at the man, broad and bare-chested, his eyes closed, towering above her bed as Wolfie howled, “Get out; get out!” from the hall.

  The man opened his eyes and his form grew less transparent as he spoke in an ancient language, and Shar thought, Oh, hell, more damn Mesopotamia, and lunged forward and Tasered him, sending silver sparks everywhere.

  FIVE

  The man collapsed, and Shar looked over the foot of the bed at his glowing, unconscious body, now almost solid and covering a lot of her floor.

  “Sorry,” she said to him, “but I spend all my waking hours on Mesopotamia; I’m not going to dream about it, too.”

  “Get out!” Wolfie yelped.

  “It’s okay, honey,” she called out. “I got him.”

  The man looked very real lying there almost naked as the glow around him faded. He looked good, too, broad and well-muscled. Strong. Lots of stamina.

  “I’ve been looking for an interesting man with a little age on him,” she said to his beautiful, unconscious face. “But thousands of years? No.” She looked around for her significant other. “Wolfie?”

  Wolfie slunk back in. “I peed.”

  “It’s okay, honey; it’s only a dream.”

  “On the rug.” He pawed at the gray rag rug by her bed.

  “It’s a dream rug.” She picked up the rug and went around the end of the bed, stepping over the man to get to the door that led out onto the wide deck, dropped the rug out there, and then came back and looked at the man again.

  Hooded eyes, strong nose, thick curly black hair that crossed his forehead like little commas … She reached down to smooth the curls and then realized who he was. “I’m dreaming about the bas-relief,” she told Wolfie, whose tail was lashing now as he stood back from the god, growling. “I’m having erotic dreams about a stone wall hanging.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “You’re right. This hardly qualifies as erotic. Maybe I shouldn’t have Tasered him. It might have gotten interesting.”

  That was just bluff and she knew it—she wasn’t a woman who would sleep with a guy who just showed up in her bedroom, even in a dream—so she picked Wolfie up and put him on the bed and climbed in beside him. “Tomorrow when we wake up, we’ll paint the kitchen.”

  ”No, he’s here; we should go.” Wolfie went down to the foot of the bed to look at the god on the floor.

  “Leave him alone, Wolfie,” she said, settling back, “he’s just a dream,” and as she drifted off, she heard Wolfie growling at the god.

  It sounded like, “Bite you, bite you.”

  “No biting,” she said, and then she fell asleep.

  Someone was licking Abby’s feet, and it tickled. Normally she didn’t like to be to be tickled, but she’d been up till 3:00 A.M. going through the wondrous contents of Granny B’s boxes. She’d managed a last-minute shower and fallen into bed stark naked, ending up blessed with the most amazingly erotic dreams of her entire life, and the thought of someone licking her was perfectly acceptable.

  “Wakey, wakey,” a familiar/unfamiliar voice said from the end of her air bed. She sat bolt upright, half-expecting to be staring into Christopher Mackenzie’s deep blue eyes.

  Instead she saw Bowser, his tongue hanging out, looking expectant.

  She moaned, flopping back on the leaking air mattress. It was just after six in the morning, she was exhausted, and if she had to spend another day hallucinating while trying to bake enough goodies to feed hungry mathematicians—and, she hoped, a room full of paying customers—she couldn’t afford to stay in bed. She looked at Bowser. “You’re not going to be talking to me today, are you?”

  He didn’t say anything. Of course he didn’t; it had all been her imagination. She sat up again, yanking the loose sheet around her body, and rolled out of bed. She reached for her jeans, then hesitated. She needed to do a load of laundry, and Granny B’s colorful clothes looked like they’d be about her size. She pulled out a turquoise skirt and a chartreuse tank top and dressed quickly, not bothering with underwear, and went to the window overlooking the narrow street. It was going to be a lovely day, with the nighttime mist just beginning to burn off in the early sun. Not a soul was moving around, except some insane jock running….

  Bowser had pushed his nose against the window, leaving a big wet slobber smudge. “He’s back,” he woofed.

  Abby didn’t know what annoyed her more, the fact that Bowser was still talking to her or that he was right. “Who says he’s back? He’s just going to run right by… .”

  Christopher Mackenzie had paused outside the front door of the coffeehouse beneath her.

  “Go away,” she said under her breath.

  “Me?” Bowser said, clearly offended.

  “I wasn’t talking to you. And I’m not going to talk to you—you’re a figment of my imagination.”

  Bowser pushed his nose against the window again.

  “He hasn’t even—” The doorbell interrupted her. She threw Bowser an annoyed glance, wondering if she dared dive back into bed and ignore her unwanted visitor.

  “Coward,” Bowser said.

  “Dogs should be seen and not heard.”

  She pushed open the window and leaned out. “What do you want? It was six-thirty tonight, not this morning.”

  Christopher … Professor Mackenzie looked up at her, and she suddenly remembered she wasn’t wearing a bra. She smashed a restraining arm against her boobs and tried to look nonchalant.

  “Come down,” he said. “I’m not going to hold a conversation at the top of my lungs.”

  “I’m not going to hold a conversation at all. Go away.” She shivered in the cool morning air.

  “I have to talk to you.”

  “Can’t it wait till later?”

  “You’re awake; I’m here. Why wait?”

  “Ah, logic,” she said. “I’ll be right down.”

  She didn’t hurry, half-hoping he would have given up by the time she made her way down the back stairs to the kitchen and through the front coffeehouse, but he was still looming over the glass door, the rising sun