Dragon Dreams

by Chris A. Jackson

  "I'm worried about you, that's all. You're sick for five days and come out of it…like this. I'm just wondering what happened to you."

  "I don't know, but I feel different. Like the world makes sense finally." She turned and spread her arms with her hands in her coat pockets, flying into the teeth of the wind. "Maybe the fever knocked my brain into gear or something."

  "God! Aren't you freezing?"

  "Nope! It feels great. Like I could fly."

  "See, that's what I mean. A week ago, you would have never done that, or said that, especially to me." He took her arm and steered her toward the doorway, lowering his voice. "Are you on something?"

  She tensed at his grip and planted her feet. He looked at her and she was staring down at his hand on her arm, steam rolling from clenched teeth in billowing clouds. Through the sleeve of her coat, a sweater, and the shirt beneath, he could feel her trembling.

  "Aleksi! You're shaking!"

  "What?" Her eyes snapped up to his and the trembling stopped like a switch had been thrown. "Just a shiver, I guess. And no, I'm not on anything but a bottle of wine and the first night of my life that I felt like I could actually talk to someone." She laughed. "A far cry from that dinner with Persephone, wasn't it?"

  "That's just it, Aleksi. What's happened to you?"

  She shrugged. "No idea, but I'm not complaining." She turned and unlocked the door, then turned back to him, her eyes once again fixed on his. "Why don't you come up and have something warm?"

  "What?" There was no doubt in his mind what she meant. "What brought that on?"

  "Something your ex said to me while you and Bob were in the bathroom."

  He felt a knot in his gut. Damn you Persephone. "Listen Aleksi, she told me about that, and I'm sorry. She can be—"

  "She asked if we were fucking."

  He swallowed hard. "I know. Listen, she likes to shock people by—"

  "When I said that we weren't, she said that was a shame." Aleksi took a step toward him, her coat flapping open again. "She told me that I was desperately in need of a good fuck."

  Hutch stared at her in shock. "Aleksi, this is not a conversation we should be having."

  "Why not?"

  "Because you're acting strangely, we've both had too much to drink, and I'm your advisor. It wouldn't be fair to—"

  "Fair?" Her teeth flashed white in the streetlight. "It'd be way better than fair, I think."

  "That's what I'm talking about, Aleksi. Think back and ask yourself if you would have said that to me a week ago."

  "No, you're right." She shook her head. "I wouldn't have, and I don't know what's gotten into me the last few days, but I don't think it's a bad thing. For the first time in my life, I feel like it's okay to do something for myself, something that might not be the right thing to do, but the thing I want to do. Come up, and I'll make you a cup of coffee."

  "Aleksi." Hutch felt his resolve crumbling, then he stepped back, his teeth clenching and his hands balled into fists in his pockets. "It would be the wrong thing to do. I'm your advisor."

  "So come upstairs, have a cup of coffee, and advise me." She stepped forward, one hand raising to brush his icy cheek. Her touch felt like fire against his skin. "What do you have to go home to, Hutch? A cold apartment, a cold bed, and a cold floor in the morning."

  This isn't Aleksi. I don't know who it is, but this is not her. "Aleksi, I can't. We would both regret it, and you know it."

  "Oh, okay. Have it your way." She whirled away, pausing in the door to look back. "But you know where I live if you change your mind."

  "Goodnight, Aleksi." He took another step back, and the loss of the moment, the vanishing opportunity, felt like something had been ripped out of him. One thought gave him solace: It was the right thing to do.

  "Goodnight." She closed the door and was gone.

  Hutch turned away and got into the cab. He told the driver the address of his cold apartment, his cold bed, and his cold floor that would be waiting for him in the morning.

  On a whim, Aleksi dashed up the three flights to her apartment, unlocked the door, and slipped quietly inside. She hurried to the window, not even breathing hard from the climb. Looking down, she watched Hutch get into the cab, his breath in the icy air, the tiny snowflakes melting in his hair, the spot on his cheek she'd touched.

  Aleksi brought her hand to her lips, inhaling, and licking her fingertips. Hutch…the scent/taste said in her mind. The cab door closed and the car pulled slowly away down the icy street. She watched him until it turned around the corner, fantasizing about what might have happened if he had come up for coffee.

  Think back and ask yourself if you would have said that to me a week ago.

  No, I wouldn't have. What's happened to me? Aleksi looked at her hand, at the tiny hairs on the back of her fingers. "Who am I?" she whispered, and she realized she didn't really know.

  All the memories of being Aleksi, all the feelings of inadequacy, shame, and guilt still lurked deep inside, a cold ball of self-loathing. Two decades of Aleksi stared back at her like a stranger, but the stranger was still her.

  Iggy rattled his cage, and she met his reptilian stare in the dark. The tiny scales around his eyes moved as he breathed, his pupils wide, drinking in the sparse light from the street. He looked at her, and she wondered if the same questions might be going through his mind. Who is this person?

  "I'm me." The answer was so simple, but that wasn't all. "I'm just…" She had no way to finish that, and Iggy didn't answer, except to lick his scaly lips.

  Mom equals food. The thought almost made Aleksi laugh.

  "Not tonight, buddy. Mom's had too much to drink and needs to sleep. I'll feed you in the morning."

  She picked up her things and locked the front door on her way to her bedroom. Boots, sweater, jeans, socks, thermals, bra, and she reached for her flannel pajamas, but stopped. The air felt good against her skin. Goosebumps rose. She could feel them under her fingertips, like braille telling her the same thing Persephone had said.

  You, my dear, are in desperate need of a good fuck.

  "She was right." Something cold slid down her cheek, and she reached up to touch the tear. "But I'm still Aleksi."

  She crawled into bed without the pajamas, the sheets cool against her skin. She lay there thinking about what she'd said to Hutch, wondering if she'd just ruined everything.

  Hutch runs from her, his heartbeat loud in her ears as she closes in for the kill. Her long coat flaps like wings in the icy wind. There are snowflakes in his hair, each beautiful crystal distinct. She can smell his scent. A surge of desire mixed with hunger sings in her veins. He looks back at her, terror in his eyes.

  "Don't kill me!" he cries as her hands close on his shoulders and she bears him down to the snowy ground. They land as if the snow is a bed of pillows, soft and welcoming.

  "What?" She can feel his body against her, and the urge to kill, to feed, vanishes in a heady swirl of desire.

  "Don't kill me, Aleksi! Please. I won't hurt you! I promise!"

  She breathes in his scent, feels his warmth. "I know you won't hurt me." She revels in the sensation of his skin against hers. His mouth tastes like his scent, and their tongues twine and play with one another. His hands are cool on her skin, guiding her. Gentle. Safe.

  "Yes…" He fills her. Sensation spreads through her in a wave…

  Aleksi woke in a sweat, heart hammering in her ears, fighting her sheets with the all too vivid dream alive in her mind. For a moment she felt as if she was actually making love to him, as if he still filled her, moving in that delicious undulation that sent waves of pleasure surging through her.

  "Holy shit!" She threw off the covers and climbed out of bed. The sheets were damp with sweat, and her underwear was soaked through. "What the…?"

  The dream came flooding back, fresh in her mind, and she felt a surge of the same sensation. She'd never felt anything so intense in her life, awake or asleep, and had certainly never had a dream so vivid
, so tactile, as if she was actually being touched. Her knees were trembling, and sweat rolled down her torso.

  "God, please don't let that damn fever be coming back!" Aleksi stumbled to the bathroom and fumbled out the thermometer. She put it under her tongue while she went to the toilet. A shower sounded good, but she knew it would wake Julie. Instead, she toweled off and brushing her sweat-damped hair.

  The thermometer beeped, and she looked at it. The display flashed 105.2 in the dark.

  "Oh bullshit!" There was no way she was running that high a fever. She tossed the thermometer in the trash and made a mental note to buy a new one.

  After downing two big glasses of water, she padded back to her bedroom and donned a clean tee shirt and underwear. The sheets weren't that damp, and she felt cool enough now, so she crawled into bed and tried to get back to sleep. The dream, however, would not leave her mind.

  Note to self: don't drink a bottle of wine all by yourself.

  She felt herself slipping into a light sleep and the warm sensation of skin against skin returned. Before the dream took her, Aleksi wondered why Hutch would beg her not to kill him as they were making love.

  18

  Monday afternoon Aleksi finally got a call from Bob about the DNA sequences. The cloning had gone without a hitch, and he'd isolated two different sequences from the first sample.

  "I think it's contamination." He sounded tired over the phone. "One of the strands gave me a match to human DNA from a blast scan on Genbank. Whoever dug this thing up must have fouled the sample somehow."

  "So, what was the other sequence?" Contamination would be hard to deal with, but not impossible.

  "That's the weird part. I don't get any reasonable matches." He sounded frustrated. "I've got five other clones cooking, so I'll have more results by the middle of the week. I don't want to bother Hutch with it until I have more than one data point."

  "I agree." She hadn't spoken with Hutch since their ride home in the cab. She knew he'd been right to refuse her proposition, and hoped it hadn't ruined their professional relationship, though she still couldn't make herself stop wondering what would have happened if he'd come up for coffee. "We can take another sample, some of the deep interior residue that would have less of a chance of contamination. But maybe you'll get a match on one of the others."

  "That's what I thought. We can also look for more commonly mapped areas. Now that we know we have DNA, we can look for actual genes. Though if we don't get a match, we might never figure out what this beastie was."

  "Don't be so pessimistic! If we don't get a match, maybe we've got some new species, or at least something that hasn't been uploaded into Genbank." She changed tacks. "You sound tired, Bob. Maybe you should knock off early, get some fresh air."

  "It's fifteen degrees out, Aleksi. I don't like my air that fresh."

  "Go catch a movie or something, then. Take a little brain vacation."

  "You wanna go?"

  "I'm up to my elbows in these bear samples, but I happen to know that Julie has Monday afternoons off." She had badgered Julie all weekend to let her mention something to Bob.

  "Julie, your roommate, Julie? I don't know, Aleksi. She's…"

  "She's been asking me about you, actually." She grinned into the phone.

  "She…has?" There was a hopeful if somewhat terrified lilt in his voice.

  "Sure! And I also happen to know she's a sucker for chick flicks and popcorn. She's fun, Bob. You should ask her out."

  "You promise you're not setting me up to get slammed? She just seems so…I don't know. Out of my league, I guess."

  "Oh, Julie dates all kinds of men, and she thought you were nice. That's more of an accolade than she usually gives." She paused to let that sink in. "Ask her, Bob. She could use someone nice for a change, and you could use someone fun." Someone not me. "It'll be good for both of you."

  "Well…and you said she's off Monday afternoons?"

  "Yep. She usually works out at home when it's cold like this, then just reads. You want her number?"

  "Yeah, I…I do." There was a pause, and she could almost smell his apprehension over the phone. "You're sure about this, Aleksi?"

  "I'm positive. Call her." She gave him Julie's number.

  "All right, I will." There was that hopeful lilt again. It made her smile. "Thanks, Aleksi."

  "Don't thank me, Bob, just call her."

  When she arrived home for dinner with a pound of roast beef tucked under her arm, she found the apartment empty and a note on the refrigerator door.

  Bob called. Movie, and maybe dinner. Thanks! Don't wait up! J.

  "Good!" She retrieved a jar of mustard and some greens for Iggy from the refrigerator and brewed a pot of coffee. She spent the evening munching roast beef, playing with Iggy, catching up on her class work and reading.

  At eleven thirty, she heard a car stop in front of the building and doors slamming, then a voice she knew. From the window she looked down at Bob's old Nissan idling at the curb, steam pouring out of the exhaust, Julie and Bob stood at on the sidewalk, talking with their hands in their pockets.

  "I had a good time," Julie said. "I'd like to do it again sometime."

  "So would I." There was an awkward pause, then, "Maybe next Monday?"

  "Thursdays are good for me, too. Or we could do a matinee on Saturday; tickets are half price."

  "Sounds like fun." Another short pause. "Thanks for coming out with me, Julie. I had fun."

  "Kiss her, idiot!" Aleksi whispered, unaware that she shouldn't be able to hear their conversation from three floors up through a double-paned window.

  "Well, I better go up before we both freeze. Goodnight, Bob." Julie leaned in, and Bob finally took the hint. They met halfway in a brief but hardly chaste smooch.

  "Goodnight, Julie."

  "Call me."

  "Count on it." Aleksi could hear the smile in Bob's voice.

  Aleksi watched Bob get in his car and drive away, and heard the front door of the building close with the clack of the lock. She went back to the couch and continued her reading. The door opened, and Julie slipped through. She peeked into the front room, and Aleksi looked up, trying for a mien of mild surprise.

  "Hey. How was it?"

  "Nice." Julie doffed her coat and shivered. "He's sweet. Thanks, Aleksi. I needed that."

  "My pleasure. Just don't break his heart, okay? He'll blame me."

  "No heart breaking, I promise." Julie hung her coat up and drifted off to her room.

  Aleksi settled back to read and felt a little tingle of warmth. Mission accomplished. The words on the screen blurred, and she blinked. It was nice to see them happy, even if she couldn't seem to manage it for herself.

  Wednesday brought more surprises; Derrick Penningly was absent from Aleksi's Comparative Zoology lab, which seemed a reprieve, and Bob called with more news about his cloning results. They weren't good; he'd gotten human DNA from three more of the samples, and the corresponding mystery sequences still didn't match anything in Genbank.

  "I think we need to talk to Hutch about this. Maybe rethink things."

  "Maybe we could hit happy hour at Grendel's and brainstorm." Her stomach growled like a ravenous beast at the thought of food. She'd been constantly hungry lately.

  "Sounds good. I'll ask him and get back to you."

  A text message came back in minutes. "Grendel's 5:30, for BS."

  She set a timer and got back to work.

  Grendel's was packed, as usual, but Aleksi got there early and snagged a corner table. A surly waitress told her she couldn't have a table for four all to herself, but she convinced her that she was expecting two more people and placated her by ordering a platter of chicken wings and an Irish coffee. Hutch and Bob arrived together, and she waved them over.

  "Sorry." She gestured to the half-devoured platter. "I had to order something or lose the table."

  "No problem!" Bob took a wing and munched as he took his seat. "I owe you one for that recommendation." H
e smiled and blushed, and she knew he meant Julie.

  "Glad I could help." She looked at Hutch, who hadn't even said hello. "So, did Bob tell you what he found?"

  "Yes, and it's got to be contamination." He flagged down a waitress, ordered coffee and some kind of vegie burger thing. Bob ordered a beer and another platter of wings. When the waitress left, Hutch continued. "I can't imagine how we could have gotten human DNA from inside the ash cast, unless we contaminated it ourselves."

  "Bob mentioned the possibility of two specimens jumbled together in the same cast, which might account for the bizarre CT scan." Aleksi watched Hutch, but he wouldn't look at her. "We know the tooth wasn't human, but what if whatever owned that tooth got caught in the ash fall with a human, and we're getting both."

  "Which brings up the question of why the sample doesn't have any bones. If the temperature wasn't high enough to cook the DNA, it shouldn't have been high enough to heat-fracture the skeletal structure." Bob nodded to Aleksi. "Aleksi suggested taking another sample, a deeper one, from inside the cast. Something that couldn't have been contaminated by the diggers."

  "Why there's no remaining skeletal structure is a mystery I don't know that we can solve. Taking a deeper sample is a good idea, but we'll have to okay it with Quinton first. If he gives the okay, I want you both to do it together. I can't break away, and we need to document that we're not making any mistakes. Video the sample collection. Now that we know we're getting DNA, let's look for something that everything uses, a functional gene, but highly conserved."

  "Cytochrome B?" Bob suggested.

  "Good idea. Whatever it is, it's got mitochondria. If we can get long enough segments of the DNA surrounding that gene, and still have two different sequences, we know we've got two discrete specimens." Their drinks and food arrived, and Hutch took a bite of his vegie-burger.

  "Tomorrow morning?" Aleksi asked Bob. She knew he would want to be free by evening. He had another movie date with Julie. "Assuming Quinton gives the okay."