The Dragon King and I (8 page)

“You know the evil stepmothers in your human stories? They’re called Black Widows in my world. They’re beautiful, smart, charming, and they will literally suck a man’s spine out through his mouth.”

“Oh.” my voice was less cocky this time around. “Why did they kill the Fairies?”

“Like the witches, the Fairies were constantly interfering with their schemes. They grew tired of it and mixed a potion that when released, worked like a plague.”

“Wiping out all the fairies.” I finished for him quietly and he nodded, eyes sad.

“The Widows were banished from our realm, but by then the damage had been done.” his lips pulled back from his teeth and for an instant his gaze turned feral and hard, “They would have been dead had it been up to me, but no one listens to warriors during times of war. No, that’s more a diplomat’s game.”

Flustered, I cleared my throat. Relieved when the sound forced him back to the here and now. “At least one fairy must have survived the plague though.” He blinked, slowly and without expression, and the squirming worm of suspicion began to work its way through my gut. “How else,” my voice began to rise, “were you planning on getting the first ingredient?”

Nervous now at my obvious upset, his eyes darted first one way and then the other. He squirmed in his seat before nerves had him poising on the ottoman like a Superhero preparing for launch.

I stared at him, glaring holes into the side of his head, before with a visible effort, he met my eyes and shrugged helplessly.

“I’ll do all the digging.”

“No.”

“It’ll take half an hour, tops.”

I shuddered at the thought of grave robbing. Fairy grave robbing. God. “No!”

“I hate to break this to you my lovely, little Siren,” his voice deepened on a growl and startled, I looked at him to see a hardness to his features that hadn’t been there before. “But you don’t exactly have much of a choice.”

He had a point.

On a more personal note:

Did he just call me ‘lovely’?

Speaking of which, none of that overabundance of information addressed my original concern.

“I asked you about my curse because—”

“I know why you asked.” his voice was still hard. Face still dangerous. But he continued without further prompting from me. “Your curse won’t affect me, little Siren. You’re safe as far as I’m concerned.” his tone held a trace of self-mockery, but I neither knew what prompted it nor how to address it. So instead I hesitated before giving a decisive little nod and getting to my feet.

“Good.”

If I’d been less intrigued by the danger his change in demeanor promised I would have stayed and asked him what made him immune. That question would have led to others however, and I needed a break from him. Because dangerous Sam intrigued me about as much as awkward Sam charmed me. I’d never thought I’d meet an honest bad boy, but the combination was devastating.

“Where are you going?” he asked, as I began to make my way out of the living room, straightening my robe nervously as I went.

“To get ready.” I answered, “I’d like to squeeze in a shower before we start digging up Fairies.”

“Good idea.” I may have imagined the genuine relief I heard in his voice, but considering his personality, and the length of time I’d gone without a bath, I couldn’t be completely sure.

* * * *

It didn’t take long to finish my shower. After I’d climbed out from beneath the showerhead, skin tingling pleasantly still from the effects of the hot water, I wandered over to sink and stood staring at the steam shrouded mirror above it for a long time. I’d avoided the sight of my own face for so long that when I finally got up the nerve to wipe the glass clean, I found myself looking into the eyes of a stranger.

Large eyes, long lashes, and a small, round sort of mouth. An oval face framed by curly brown hair, cut longer on one side than on the other in an asymmetrical style I’d thought dashing at the time. Don’t get me wrong, it still looked pretty damn cute, I just wasn’t as into my looks as I was a few months ago when the curse was still a secret shame of mine that while scary at times, was till manageable for the most part.

It had made dating in high school and college tricky at best and I’d had my fair share of close calls growing up. In fact, my last date had been right around the time things were starting to take a turn for the worst. When Kendrick had started to kiss me and didn’t look as if he wanted to stop I’d found myself crying and pushing at his shoulders while I whimpered,

“Please don’t make me. I don’t want to. Please, please, don’t.”

I hadn’t screamed or tried to fight him off. I’d been too scared that those who attempted to help me might be of the same frame of mind. Besides, I’d felt like his loss of control had been my fault. Like things never would have gotten so out of hand if my magic hadn’t…

I watched, face expressionless, as my gray eyes darkened. Taking a deep, shaky, breath I wiped my hands over my face and tried to find calm. Rachel thought I’d stopped going to work around the time that man had gotten hit but that wasn’t entirely true. I’d stopped working long before that, surviving instead off of the allowance my mother sent me each month. I hadn’t been proud of my weakness, which was why I tried to force myself to at least keep attending classes every day. But when I really think about it, I suppose that my choice to become a shut-in hadn’t exactly been a choice.

My mother used to tell me, “You can’t trust anyone, ever.”

I guess she was right after all.

I smiled at my reflection, just to prove that I could, before turning away in disgust. I’d been thinking about putting on some make-up, but Sam was here on an official basis. He wasn’t some blind date Rachel had set up for me. Besides, he looked like the kind of guy who fell for the more glamorous types.

Like Seraphim maybe.

Seraphim the sex goddess with a temper, and Sam the occasionally bashful warrior; the mental pairing brought me up short.

Then I burst out laughing.

Who would kill whom first was anyone’s guess.

Still chuckling, I wandered into my bedroom and noticed the blinking light on my cell phone. When I checked it, I saw that I had four missed calls. Three were from Rachel. The last was from my mother. She’d left a voicemail.

“Darling, you’re being silly. I don’t like you cooped up in that stuffy old apartment all the time.”

My apartment was brand spanking new and quite well ventilated, thank you Mother. And when was not wanting to be responsible for another death the definition of ‘being silly’?

“Now I’ve spoken with your little friend.” Rachel. “And I have to admit that I’m not at all pleased with her.” her voice lowered and I heard the deep rumble of male voices in the background. “I thought you knew better than to befriend an oath breaker?” the voices in the background grew louder and Isabelle Greyson grew brisk. “I have to go now dear, but I expect you to call me back as soon as you get this. We have a lot to discuss, you and I.”

I took an almost savage delight in deleting the message.

Call her back?

Hah!

I had graves to desecrate.

Chapter Four

“The tooth fairy teaches children that they can sell body parts for money.”

- David Richerby

“What is this?”

“It’s a Harley.”

I looked at him from the corner of my eye before turning my silent censure back onto his bike.

“I was implying that you should take me to your big boy mode of transportation instead.”

He nodded, and grew thoughtful. “You know,” he said conversationally, “I suddenly find you much less endearing than I did about a half hour ago.”

My lips twitched, “Imagine that.”

“Come on.” He grabbed my arm and steered me to the side of the motorcycle, where he then slammed a black helmet over my carefully styled hair.

So I’d forgone the make-up.

Didn’t mean I was completely without sense.

Not that it mattered much now.

“You have no respect for art.” I lamented, even more heartbroken when he ignored my original heartbreak over my hair. Instead of flattering my nonsense with a response he picked me up, and settled me onto the back of his bike with absolutely no assistance from yours truly.

Then, without another word, and without donning a helmet of his own, he got on in front of me and suddenly, we were off. I’m not saying I was a heavyweight or anything, but I could stand to lose a couple of pounds. With all these supernatural’s moving me around like I was their favorite piece in Monopoly, it was almost enough to make a girl feel underweight.

When Seraphim did it, I was a little freaked out.

When Sam did it, I was a lot turned on.

I never got to appreciate a guy like this. Usually I was trying to avoid them or figure out what motivated them into showing interest in me in the first place. Since Sam was immune to my charms, it gave me carte blanche to appreciate all of his. So for the first time in 24 years, I found myself fantasizing about all the things a guy with his type of muscle mass could do to me in the bedroom.

Or in the kitchen.

Or on a motorcycle.

I blushed and buried my face against the middle of his back, my arms tightening around his waist as we weaved through midmorning traffic.

Strapping young man indeed.

* * * *

The cemetery on Madison had never seemed all that special to me. I’d certainly never imagined that Fairies had been buried there. It was pretty and everything, but there was nothing that particularly stood out about it as the final resting place of magical beings.

It was just a cemetery.

Like any other it was just a stretch of land, uninterrupted by much except for a few trees here and there and a rolling hill or two. There weren’t any monuments of weeping angels or family crypts that had stood for decades or anything romantic like that. Mostly it was just a healthy mix of headstones and artificial flowers to mark the place where a loved one was busy resting.

The main thing in its favor was that it was off of the main road. You had to drive a ways before you could get to it and once you arrived, the apartment buildings and office spaces that were a way of city life were obscured by a mile or so’s worth of woods.

The quiet I was fond of was shattered as soon as Sam and I rolled up. I convinced him to at least part the bike against the caretaker’s shed instead of leaving it on top of a grave which I took as a personal victory. He hadn’t understood why I’d wanted him to park in the parking lot, and any arguments I’d made concerning ‘disturbing the dead’ were pushed aside under his belief that the bike needed to stay close by.

“In case we need to leave in a hurry.”

I didn’t like to think about what in a graveyard would force us to leave ‘in a hurry’. Instead, I stayed close as he began inspecting headstones and plaques.

“What are we looking for?” I asked, hoping that if I could help, we could speed this up a little.

“Greyson.”

“Yes?”

“No. That’s what we’re looking for.” he glanced at me and then moved on to the grave.

My throat went dry. “Why would we be looking for my father’s grave?”

I would not be digging up my dad. Seraphim and her whole Quest nonsense could go to hell if that were the case.

“It’s not what you think.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really. Usually, when a Fairy Godmother dies, she tries to be buried with her charge. Since you have Seraphim, it only stands to reason that someone else in your ancestry must have had a Godmother as well; otherwise you never would have been assigned one. Plus, it wouldn’t be your father we’d be searching for. The fairies died a few millennia ago, so maybe a great, great something or other. I’m still iffy on human lifespans so I’m not sure how many ‘greats’ that adds up to.”

“But why are we only looking for graves on my father’s side?”

Sam paused, opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, and then looked at me nervously from beneath his lashes.

“Seraphim says she’s descended along the Greyson line.” his face was a mask of guilt and I opened my mouth to call him on it but he turned, and hurried away.

We moved in silence for a few minutes while I let him stew. I finally spoke, only when I couldn’t take the lack of conversation any longer.

“We won’t have to dig anyone up will we?”

He hesitated visibly.

“It depends.”

My eyes narrowed. “On what?”

“On what sort of fairy we’re dealing with.”

“Explain.” I stopped in my tracks, forcing him to do the same, and folded my arms beneath my breasts. One mini, fairy, body I could handle. The decomposing carcass of my great great something or other? No, sir. Not this day.

He sighed. “Magic follows certain paradigms. With any species, you’ll find that their denominations usually fall within the five elements. Earth, fire, wind, water, and spirit. This not only determines our strengths in life and magic, but also how our bodies are returned back to the ether. If the Fairy we find was particularly strong in earth magic, then we will have to do some digging in order to find her.”

“What if she was from the fire nation?”

“Then I hope you brought matches.”

* * * *

“Why are there so many dead people?” I didn’t mean to whine, but I couldn’t help it. We’d been at this for hours already, we’d even had time to stop for a late lunch, and now we were finally nearing the back end of the cemetery. I’d found my Great Aunt Josephine, gave the bird to my skeevy Uncle Peter, and said hello to three out of four of my mother’s ex-husbands. Three out of four. I hadn’t found Dad’s grave yet. In fact there hadn’t been a Greyson anywhere in sight.

“There are dozens of cemeteries in this city. How do you know they’re even buried here? They could be anywhere.”

“I Googled it.”

That actually made a lot of sense.

I threw myself back into the search with renewed vigor. I’d only been at it another five minutes or so, when I heard it.

Music.

Someone was playing a flute or something, and the delicate notes echoed eerily in the gathering twilight. I turned to ask Sam if he’d heard it, only to jump when I realized he stood less than a foot away. He wasn’t looking at me, instead staring over my head and off into the distance. His body was rigid with tension and as I watched his upper lip peeled back from his teeth in a silent snarl.

“Get to the bike.”

The fear came, sudden and sharp. “What’s wrong?”

“Go.” he barked, and grabbed my arm in a grip like iron, steering me around and pushing me in the direction we’d just come from.

Not wanting to just leave him there, I hesitated. When he realized I hadn’t moved he turned on me like wild thing. He walked into me, breaking into my personal space, with all the lethal grace of a leopard. Those dancing flecks of black had completely swallowed the blue of his eyes and he glared down at me with a gaze as hard as granite. When he spoke, I swore I could smell sulfur.

“Get. To. The bike.”

His words were measured, but his voice whispered a threat. It promised pain and destruction, and shivering more from his behavior than any unknown danger he may have been protecting me from, I stumbled away from him and ran.

I’d taken two steps, maybe three, before the ground beneath my feet began to tremble and sway. I tried to keep running but the ground was bucking like a bull in sight of cape and I fell, hitting a gravestone on my way down. As abruptly as the quake started, the land fell still once again.

The bump on my head had me swaying and I had to fight down an almost violent urge to throw up. I hadn’t eaten since…well, since the cheesecake with Flo and there was no satisfaction to be had in dry heaving.

I swayed on hands and knees until I felt steady enough to rise. Only, when I lifted my head all thoughts of standing just sort of…slipped away.

A little girl stood in front of me. She was trailing her hand back and forth across the top of one of the gravestones, and watching me with an unblinking intensity I would have found disturbing if I hadn’t known instinctively that she wouldn’t hurt me.

Her blond hair was pulled up into a high ponytail that bounced with even the slightest movement she made. She looked pale. Too pale. There were dark, circles beneath her blue eyes that spoke of sleepless nights and a grayish cast to her rosebud of a mouth that made her look sickly.

Dirt clung to the edges of her hair, and to the wispy white material that made up her dress. She wasn’t wearing any shoes, and the dress was short enough that I could see the way her toes curled into the soft dirt beneath her.

Someone was yelling behind me, but I ignored the voice in favor of the little girl. She was so, so pretty. And all I wanted to do was please her.

“Hello.”

She said, her voice strangely distant, and I smiled in relief as her words seemed to drag the pain in my head away.

“Hi.” I said happily.

“You woke me up.” she said, her bottom lip jutting out in a pout and I found myself crawling to her, instantly contrite and wanting to offer comfort.

“I’m sorry. It must have been the music. But Sam and I would never—”

The child cut me off by placing a finger against my lips. She was really, freakin cold. Also she smiled like soil and something rotting. My nose was beginning to wrinkle in distaste but then she grinned at me, and suddenly how she smelled and what she looked like didn’t matter anymore.

Nothing did.

“It’s all right Alexandria Marie Greyson. The ‘how’ of it doesn’t much matter now, does it? All that matters is that we can finally be together. Now I can take care of you the way you need. Wouldn’t you like that?”

I nodded and found myself relaxing into the palm she settled against my cheek.

“Wouldn’t it be grand if we could send that wicked old Maleficent away? That, dirty, rotten, witch doesn’t deserve you. She’s proved that, hasn’t she?”

I almost nodded in agreement, but something about her wording confused me. Maleficent? The hell? Last I checked I wasn’t exactly anyone’s version of a sleeping beauty.