The Dragon King and I (19 page)

So that’s what I did.

I came to my feet, and rushed forward. Going either left or right would have me just as deep within the fire zone. It stretched as wide as a football field. My best bet was getting in up close, where he couldn’t get to me unless he took to the air again. Then I’d see what I could do about convincing Samuel no-last-name that I was anything but an enemy.

But first I had to get close enough, which turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. The force of the dragon fire simply got stronger and stronger the closer I came to the source until I was literally leaning forward just to keep from being thrown away like a leaf on a particularly flammable gust of wind. I had a wild, panicked moment of wondering if he ever had to stop to take a breath or if he could just keep blowing flame indefinitely.

Each step became a struggle, and the closer I got the hotter it was. I was drowning in heat, sucking it down into my lungs and letting it boil my blood. I bathed in flame, and the platter in my hands began to shudder and scream, the surface becoming first red, and then white as the flames punished its magic and swallowed it down. The noise was deafening, and my arms began to shake beneath the strain of holding the Goblin platter before me for just a little bit longer.

That’s what I kept telling myself.

Just a little longer.

My hands blistered, skin melting into the steel, feet digging madly into the earth, as I tried to take just.

      One.

            More.

                 Step.

Until suddenly, I was through. The opposing energy disappeared so abruptly that I fell flat on my face, rolling just as the dragon’s foreleg came crashing down where my head would have been. I rolled again, and again, trapped between the earth and the massive chest of the creature, its bronzed armor reflecting my own terrified face back at me a thousand times over.

I crawled, trying desperately to stay beneath the animal, but it was all I could do to keep up with its movements. At one point I almost lost an arm because I didn’t move it out of the way of its foot in time.

Then I heard it. A great rolling sound, like thunder. The air shifted, the bones that I could see from beneath the dragon’s shadow flying away like so much debris as its wings began to move. This was it; he was going to take to the air. And when that happened he was going to cook me, because there would be nowhere else to hide.

Its body shifted, upper torso rising, and legs tensing as it prepared to launch itself into the air, and that’s when I saw my opening, that space in its armor where the chest plate met up with the metal protecting its elongated neck. Common sense screamed at me not to be stupid, but the same thing that had made me lift the platter up in the first place had me scrambling to my feet to run, crouched and awkward, towards the opening. I didn’t know what I was going to do until I felt Sam about to take off, and then I leapt. Fingers clawing into the metal, blistered skin popping and oozing, as I gritted my teeth and forced myself up, and in.

My first thought when I’d seen what made up the core of the Dragon was that it would be hot in here. That wasn’t the case at all. I felt instead as if I stood at the edge of an ocean, spray licking my skin and cooling burns that I hadn’t had the strength to deal with just yet.

And the sights…

It was…blinding.

I’d heard stories of people who’ve had near death experiences. Some of them talk of a tunnel leading up to heaven, and sometimes in my darker moments I allow myself to dream of what that tunnel may look like.

I’d often imagined it like this.

A vortex of color.

A star given life and intelligence.

Alice’s rabbit hole, painted blinding white.

And coalescing it all, holding all that chaotic magic together into some loose semblance of a sentient being, was the heart. Beating, beating, redder than any jewel and floating there above it all in a spider’s web made of fire.

I’ve always been that kid that wanted to touch things.

You show me something pretty and my fingers will itch, my mouth will water, and every thought in my head will desert me faster than I can say my own name. Sometimes I like to lie to myself, say I outgrew such childish urges, but that isn’t true.

You show me something beautiful, and my first instinct is to touch. To take.

I wasn’t the classmate who ate glue. I was the one who stole your stuff.

I saw the dragon’s heart, Sam’s heart, and without thought, without reason, or care for the consequences, I reached out, and touched it.

Just the tiniest brush of my finger across the cool hard, surface of it.

It pulsed like a beacon. Like a bomb.

I was suddenly reminded that I was
inside
the body of a mythical creature as the world as I’d come to know it shuddered. There was a groaning sound, like breaking metal, and then the armor I’d been standing on collapsed beneath me, disappearing into the abyss like sands through an hourglass.

A sigh, and then everything,
everything
, simply fell apart.

* * * *

I’d been alive once.

There used to be something other than darkness, other than cold. I remembered it. But the memory was hazy. Surreal.

Once, I’d been alive.

Now I simply floated on a bed of stars and hungered.

I hungered for life. I hungered for warmth, I hungered for something, anything at all, that would make me
feel.

But the beat slowed down, and the sky grew dark, and all the things I’d wanted up until that point didn’t seem nearly as significant as closing my eyes and giving up the fight.

Then he came. The dragon man. All hot hands and soft lips, all corded muscle straining beneath bronzed flesh. He looked down at me in the darkness and his eyes were so blue they burned with their own icy fire. His fingers brushed across my chest, his nails dug past my shirt to mark my skin, and then he sent an inferno into my ribcage.

My mouth opened and I tried to scream but no sound came out. The flames forced their way through muscle and bone, past veins and skin, and surrounded my heart like a cage. I fought against it, clawed at my own chest, tried to make it stop, but it just kept coming. Then my heart gave a single, sluggish, beat and my back arched, mouth opening on a gasp as lava traveled through my veins to replace the ice.

I was flesh. I was blood. I was life.

And I hurt like nobody’s business.

The Dragon man closed his eyes and his hair fell forward to shield one side of his face. He was momentarily cast in starlight, his face flickering eerily from the dance of the flames that surrounded his hands. He forced life into me until the beat picked up and the darkness fell apart. He only let up when I could finally breathe without consciously forcing myself to do so. My heart hammered away in my ears. Beating steady and strong like a drummer’s beat. Then, still hovering above me the Dragon man grabbed my hand. His wings burst free with such violence that the air around us shuddered and cringed back. The great, black, silken sails of them consumed the sky before, without so much as a warning, they flexed and we were airborne.

Chapter Ten

And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.

- Isaiah ch. 34, v. 13

I opened my eyes to the night sky. Or, the city’s version of the night sky. There were some stars that tried to peek through, but mostly it was all tall buildings, streetlamps, and the occasional brights from a passing car. My entire body ached, and I groaned as I sat up, fighting off a wave of dizziness as I worked to place where I was. A few feet away Sam lay curled up on his side, his breathing deep and even. He looked peaceful but chilly. Which made sense considering the fact that he didn’t have on a stitch of clothing.

I suppose shape-shifting into a dragon gets to be hell on a wardrobe.

I hadn’t seen him with a suitcase though he’d been wearing a change of clothes the morning we went to market. It made me wonder if Maleficent had to keep him dressed the same way she had to do with me of late. Groggy and limping like my grandmother, I struggled to my feet and glanced around. I was on a rooftop, and if my surroundings were any indication, I was on the rooftop of my very own apartment building.

Excellent.

Now all I had to do was make it down to the fifth floor without being seen and I was golden. Considering our disreputable state, I expected the task to be a lot harder than it was. But once I convinced a sleepy-eyed Sam to shuffle in my wake, I got us through the rooftop fire exit and to the nearest elevator in almost no time.

From there it was just a waiting game. I told myself that I was too tired, too hurt, to appreciate the site of all that male goodness standing so close to me, but it was really hard not to note, in a distant sort of way, that Sam was as dangerously beautiful as a man as he had been as a dragon.

I wanted to touch him.

The elevator dinged, announcing our arrival and I jumped guiltily as the doors slid open. It was right around then that I realized that it must be at least 5:00 in the morning. I figured that out not through any inner sense of time, but because Mrs. Pearson always took her Pomeranian out to tinkle around this time before she started watching her early morning programs.

The way her eyes bugged and her mouth dropped you would have thought the old girl had never seen a naked man before.

“Hello, Mrs. Pearson.” I said cheerfully as I angled around her on my way out of the elevator. Sam was dozing off against one wall and I had to clap my hands sharply to get him to come back to the land of the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

“Hello, dear.” Mrs. Pearson answered absently, her eyes narrowed as she surveyed him slowly from the top of his sleep tousled head, to the bottom of his wiggling toes. I pulled him behind me and started walking backwards as she and I continued to exchange pleasantries to try and protect his virtue.

Sam yawned but came along obediently enough.

“It’s good to see you Alex, it’s been awhile. We were all worried for a while that you might be,” Mrs. Pearson glanced from side to side and lowered her voice to a whisper. “dead.”

My brows shot up and I almost stopped walking, but her attention sharpened so abruptly I almost saw her ears perk up. I looked behind me to see that Sam had fallen asleep with his forehead against my apartment door the only thing holding him up. This, of course, left his finely chiseled man cheeks on display for all to see.

Or rather, for Mrs. Pearson to see. I stepped smoothly into her line of sight and tried not to laugh at the way her lips pursed in disappointment.

“I hardly think I was gone long enough to be declared dead, Mrs. P.”

She sniffed, eyeing me unhappily as she cuddled her squirming dog. “A year is a year, dear. You’re lucky the landlord was willing to let your friend hold the apartment for you, otherwise you would have been evicted after the first month.” She shook her head. “I still can’t believe that you just up and left without a word.”

I could only stare at her. There was a ringing in my ears. A rushing. I couldn’t seem to breathe.

“A year.” My voice was dull and Mrs. Pearson paused mid-diatribe to pat my arm with her free hand.

“I’m sure you did what you felt you had to. Besides, it doesn’t matter now. You’re home. Now why don’t you go get some rest? You look awful. We’ll just have to catch up a little later.” On impulse, she hugged me, pressing her powdered, wrinkled, cheek against my own in an open show of affection.

“I’m glad you’re back, Alex. I missed the company.”

Numb, I nodded, and watched her get on the elevator. By the time the doors had closed behind her, the rushing in my ears had faded but I still felt decidedly sick to my stomach.

A
year.

I’d lost a full year of my life. God. Forget about my neighbors, my mother must be worried sick, not to mention what must have gone through Rachel’s mind. I needed to call them, I needed to explain…

What?

That I’d been trapped in a Goblin wasteland for all this time? That I hadn’t called because I’d been too busy acid tripping inside of a dragon. Who just happened to be the poor, albeit sexy, young man currently drooling against my door.

Which reminded me. Who had Mrs. Pearson meant when she’d mentioned ‘my friend’? Calmer now that the initial shock had passed, I checked the top of the doorframe for my emergency key, relieved when I found that it was still there. Then trying very hard not to touch or look at Sam, I reached around him and unlocked the door.

I expected cobwebs, rats, and mold. Something drastic to show that I’d actually been gone for a full 365 days, but there was nothing of the sort. My apartment was exactly as I’d left it the day I’d gone to get Sam. In fact, it was even cleaner.

I was still wary until I made my way into the kitchen and saw the mirror, and the note, waiting for me on the counter.

The mirror was about the size of my arm and oddly shaped around the edges. Almost as if it had been melted down. On the back of the reflective surface were two handprints.

My
handprints.

I picked up the note and it fluttered with the force of my shaking.

Forgot something? You can thank me later. I kept the place up while you were away. Your rent cleaned me out on tips. You need a cheaper place. Hope you don’t mind but I updated your underwear drawer. You’re a grown woman, but apparently your panties didn’t realize it. The shock killed off the last of your boy shorts. Try and replace them and I’ll disown you. Also, don’t bother calling me to kiss your boo boos and make them better. Your dragon boy should start working for his room and board ;)

H’s and K’s,

M

(p.s. You did good.)

(p.p.s. They impounded Samuel’s bike. I hope you like flying)

I looked up from the letter only to realize that I’d started crying. I stood there, body trembling weakly, and buried my face against the soft parchment of Maleficent’s letter. I could smell her perfume on it. Some heady mix between butterscotch and caramel. I held on to the note until it dissolved into sparkling dust in my hands and disappeared. Then I sighed, and looked at Sam, who’d followed me into the kitchen after locking up instead of heading directly to bed as I’d expected him to.

He looked down at me and his lips quirked.

“She’s right you know.”

I sniffed.

“About?”

“How I need to start earning my keep.” His face darkened and if I didn’t know any better I could have sworn he was blushing. “I don’t like what that winky face was implying though. Makes me feel dirty.”

I laughed, and a good deal of the tension eased away with the sound. “Mal—” I sniffed again and grinned at my almost slip. “That’s probably the reaction she was going for.”

He nodded, and linked us together arm in arm.

“Probably.”

“Hey. Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Not that I mind but-”

He chuckled, “I left some clothes in the guest bedroom before we left. Meet me in the living room with the jar and we’ll get you fixed up.”

* * * *

The funny thing about dragon burns is that they don’t leave behind anything as ugly and garish as scars. Like the platter, the make-up of my skin had changed in some places. The palms of my hands, along with a few random places on my arms and legs were now silver rather than flesh and blood. They moved like skin, but I couldn’t feel anything through them. At least not the way I had before. I noticed while I was in the bathroom that the silvered flesh began to jump and spasm when I grabbed the jar. In fact, I nearly dropped it because the sensation traveling from it, through my hands, and up my arms was so intense that it bordered on sensual.

In the end I simply wrapped the jar in a towel and brought it out into the living room at arm’s length. As if holding it further away would negate what I’d felt. Not long afterwards, Sam came from out of the guest room, clothed in a simple pair of jeans and a ratty t-shirt that had seen better days.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.

Not because I liked the way he looked. I mean I did. But what had me silent and staring as he sunk to his knees in front of me and began cleaning my various wounds with a warm rag, was,

“I have to take your heart.”

The pause as he dipped a finger into the ointment inside the jar was telling. Seraphim had been right. The magic changed as needed, though Sam had explained before we’d started that I’d have to keep hold of it so that it wouldn’t sense him and act up like last time.

This had confused me.

Why would the jar react to Sam at all when he hadn’t been injured?

Clearing his throat, the man in question wrapped a large, callused, hand around my ankle and began spreading the cooling salve across my skin. I groaned and my eyes fluttered from the relief of it, but I didn’t let up.

“You knew. This whole time, you knew how things were supposed to end.”

“Alex-” his voice was soothing but I wasn’t in the mood to be soothed. I wanted to hit something.

“Is that why she sent you here? So I could kill you?”

His eyes flew to my face and his jaw clenched, muscle in his temple throbbing as he ground his teeth. He’d finished one leg and had moved on to the next and I could feel his fingers flexing around my calf. His hold never grew painful but I could feel the restrained strength in it, the willingness for violence swimming just beneath the surface, and something hot flared to life in my gut.

“I don’t want a cure if it means you have to die.” I told him, my voice strained. “I started this whole thing so that I could
stop
ruining lives. So that maybe, just maybe, I could have one of my own.”

My breathing hitched and I blinked rapidly as my vision blurred.

Silence for a heartbeat, and then his hands were cupping my face, his breath was warm on my cheeks. He hovered there, so close, and yet not nearly close enough, for what felt like an eternity. I didn’t realize I was trembling like a leaf in his hands until the movement sent a single tear trailing down my face. It gathered at the corner of my mouth, and Sam kissed it away.