The Dragon King and I (9 page)

“Who are you?”

Her eyes filled with tears and I had to work hard not to break down completely at the hurt my question caused her. It was like I was drowning on something. Like the real Alex was trapped beneath miles and miles of tar and choking on the stuff, while this girl fed me the emotions she wanted me to have.

But just because I realized what was happening didn’t mean I could stop it.

“Don’t you know me?”

To my shame, I was forced to shake my head.

“I’m your Godmother, Seraphim.” she patted the side of my face and smiled. Some part of me, the part buried deep beneath her spell began to scream as the skin along her cheeks began to peel away, tearing like wet tissue to reveal bone and teeth, muscle and sinew.

“I’ve come to grant your wish.”

“What wish?” I whispered, some of my terror leaking into my dreamy monotone.

She laughed and one of her pretty blue eyes began to slough to one side as if her face was wax and someone had just brought a flame too close. “Your wish for peace, silly girl.”

Quick as a snake, the hand on my face tangled in my hair. She released me from her glamour at the same time she jerked my head back at an angle that made things in my neck pop ominously. I tried pushing her away but she slapped my hands away with the ease of batting away an insect. Because of how far my head was angled back, I couldn’t even scream when, with a sound like popping corn, her jaw unhinged. Not unhinged as in fell off, unhinged as in she was the boa constrictor and I was her chosen meal for the day. I could only stare, wide-eyed, and whimpering as she came at me, mouth widening like a flesh and blood version of hell and a roar just shy of demonic singing her triumph to the sky.

Then she bit me.

The world sort of…dissolved, and when I woke up I was sitting on my back patio. Mrs. Pearson wasn’t anywhere in sight, but I had the distinct feeling that I was waiting for someone. It was midmorning and the traffic outside was light enough that I could hear the birds singing.

It was nice.

I had a blanket wrapped around my shoulders and was just thinking about how I was too comfortable to move, even though I was starving, when warm hands slid along my shoulders. I sighed, and my head fell back of its own accord.

There.

A man’s chuckle.

I closed my eyes.

Lips, hot and firm, working patiently against my own. When my own lips finally parted, I tasted coffee on his tongue.

He tasted like something darkly sweet. Like Hazelnut or baked vanilla.

He tasted like home and I would have sunken completely into him, let the feel of his hands and mouth carry me away, had he not shouted my name.

“Alex!”

My eyes snapped open, and I realized with an icy stab of panic that a little girl was chewing a hole in my collarbone. She’d only taken away surface chunks, but with the vigor with which she was ripping into my skin, it wouldn’t be long before she met bone, and snapped right through it.

A high pitched shrill ripped through the air, bringing the child up short, and she pulled back from me, snarling in abated hunger. Saliva and blood dripped from her canines and her eyes were slits in her once-lovely face. More skin was beginning to fall from her bones and she looked down at me desperately, her face already growing slack and dead once more with the need to feed.

She was lunging forward again, when a black blur streaked across the air over my head, and ripped her away from me. The force of the collision was enough to send all three of us rolling, though the other two traveled much further than I did as their struggle intensified.

“Sam.” somehow, I knew that mad explosion of muscle and rage had to be him. The gathering darkness and the blow to the head were making it hard for me to understand what I was seeing. I just knew that the black blur had to defeat the white blur if either one of us were going to make it out of the cemetery alive.

I saw the child swipe at him and there was a terrible noise, like the sound of a dying animal, and I swore that I could smell blood on the air.

Mine or his I didn’t know.

“Sam!” I screamed it, trying to get to my feet, to help, but down I went again. I looked up in time to see him pause. He turned his head, to look for me I suppose, and in that moment of inattention the little girl moved. She ripped a headstone from the ground, swung it, and struck him across the head with such force that it spun him around. I screamed again, and this time when I struggled to my feet, I stayed there. Then I started to run. In my heart I knew I wouldn’t get there in time. She was standing over him, headstone raised high, her laughter infectious, even now when she was about to bring that heavy weight down onto his skull.

Then that noise came again. A high pitched whistle, and just as Sam had done when he’d heard me scream his name, the girl hesitated and looked toward the sound, her face a mask of irritation.

I didn’t exactly see what happened next. One second Sam was a goner and the next the girl was falling to the ground like a puppet with her strings cut. He stood over her limp body as it began to dissolve like acid into the grass, and there was something very strange about his eyes…

His skin looked different too.

What was wrong with him?

As I got closer I determined that it must have been a trick of the light, because he seemed normal enough. Just exhausted. His face was pale and there was dirt and blood smeared down the side of his neck.

“Jesus. Are you all right?” My hands were on him before I could think things through and I found myself checking him over for scrapes and cuts much the same way my mother used to do when I was little and life had knocked me flat on my ass. There was a gash along one leg and a few scrapes along his knuckles. The worst damage had to be a wound across his abdomen where the girl had tried to slice him open.

Any deeper and parts of Sam would have been on the ground.

Just like poor Mr. Jenkins.

I looked up at him and was shocked to realize that his image was so blurry because my eyes were filled with tears. I couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else dying because of me, and there was a sense of near painful relief that Sam, at least, was all right.

“You kicked that little girl’s ass.”

This was my version of praise, and though he frowned over the sight of the tears, my words seemed to please him. Suspicious, he inspected me a moment longer to be sure I was really ok, and then allowed himself to grin.

“I didn’t. Not really. But I did take her head.”

Hold up.

“Say what now?”

Still grinning, he lifted his hand and I saw he held the child’s decapitated head by the ponytail.

I squeaked in pure, unadulterated, terror.

“Now we have the first ingredient and—”

But I was no longer listening. I was too busy staring at the way the skin was dripping from her skull. I may have been able to do some breathing exercises or something and work my way through it, but then the once sightless eyes turned to look at me, and the lipless mouth grinned in macabre delight.

“Alex? Alex, what’s wrong.”

Sam’s voice grew very distant, and the next thing I knew I was falling and the world went dark.

* * * *

Someone was talking.

Two someone’s actually. Both men, if the deep timbre of their voices was any indication. I would have opened my eyes to check and see, but I was too comfortable where I was to try. As I lay there, their voices became more distinct.

“—it’s a myth. It doesn’t actually work that way.”

“How would you know?”

“I’ve seen a number of idiots try and fail. Kisses can’t break spells.”

“Ah, but true love’s kiss—”

“Is just an excuse to molest an innocent woman while she can’t fight back or complain.”

There was movement and then a low, threatening, growl of a sound. “Get away from her.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

Sam’s voice was sardonic. “She’s unconscious, Prince Charming. Not trapped in an enchanted sleep. Now go sit over there before I hurt you in places you’re fond of.”

“Me-ow.”

I was tempted to pretend unconsciousness for a little bit longer, if only to hear more of this fascinating conversation, but my stomach gave me away.

“Alex?”

I opened my eyes to see Sam looking down at me in concern. Beyond his head I recognized the ceiling of my apartment. I also recognized the awesomeness that was my couch. Sam’s hair had come loose from its topknot and hung in a tangled mess nearly to his shoulders so that there was a corkscrew of inky, black, curls he had to contend with as he leaned over me. For a second we were cocooned by the fall of his hair, and my world was nothing but blue eyes and the comforting scent of hazelnut.

We locked gazes and there was a millisecond of knowledge, of shared relief that we were both all right, and then he was pulling away. Taking a step back both literally and figuratively.

I can’t exactly say that I wasn’t happy to see him go. Things were getting a bit confusing and I didn’t like this easy sense of camaraderie that had sprung up between the two of us. I noted he hadn’t taken the time to clean any of the blood and grime off from the cemetery. Either I hadn’t been out that long, which I doubted considering the circumstances, or he hadn’t trusted the stranger standing at his shoulder enough to leave me alone with him. Which I understood and approved of.

The man who’d been looking for an excuse to accost me was about an inch or two taller than Sam, though he lacked the other’s man’s sheer mass. He was leanly muscled. Like a runner or swimmer in comparison to a linebacker. His wheat blond hair was cropped short and spiked a little at the top. It went well with his warm brown eyes and dazzlingly white smile. The freckles across the bridge of his nose added to the sense of good ol’ boy charm. Despite my better judgment I found myself growing amused about the exchange I’d overheard earlier rather than taking it as a sign of his character as had been my original intent.

Unlike the two of us, there wasn’t a mark to be found on the newcomer. In fact he was almost annoyingly clean. However, despite his air of superiority, the pristinely pressed white button down, and hundred dollar jeans (hey, I come from money so I know), I found that I wasn’t automatically inclined to dislike him.

Distrust him?

Yes.

Dislike him?

No.

“She warned me that you’d be lovely, but I have to say,” he shook his head in wander and his eyes seemed to drink in the sight of me. “There was no way I could prepare myself for such beauty.”

I shot Sam a nervous look, but managed to smile graciously enough at the other man.

“I’m sorry. But do I know you?”

“Forgive me.” pushing past Sam, he came to the couch and dropped to one knee in front of me. When he grabbed my hand and kissed the back of it I had to fight off a wave of animal-like panic.

“My name is Conric.” he looked at me from beneath blond tipped lashes and smirked, “I believe you were looking for me.”

“You’re my Knight in shining armor?” my voice was flat, and I looked at Sam only to see him flushed with suppressed laughter.

Conric beamed beatifically, “Yes.” he kissed the back of my hand again and I shuddered in revulsion at the feel of his tongue on my skin, “And it would bring me untold happiness to fight these upcoming battles in your honor.”