by Aaron Crash
Too bad the dark specter of Mulk’s treachery clouded their every move.
Chapter Nine
THAT NIGHT, EAST OF Denver, somewhere on the Great Plains, Steven sat meditating, leaning up against the Bronco. Sagebrush and weedy fields surrounded him. On his left was the dirt road that had brought them to the field. It was twilight.
The meditation was necessary to focus the Animus, to increase their spellcasting abilities. By now, the form was familiar to Steven: sit Indian-style, back straight, abdominal muscles engaged, with his hands resting on his lap, the back of the left hand resting on the palm of the right hand. Thumbs would always almost be touching but not quite. Aria said it was an ancient meditation pose that yogis in India had used for centuries. Yet she’d only lasted a few minutes before taking off.
Steven didn’t blame her. He, too, was having trouble keeping his mind focused.
He stood up and knocked the dust from the back of his pants. The day had been warm but now that the sun was setting, there was a definite chill in the air. The sagebrush and weeds threw long shadows behind them. That sage smelled so good, so wild. He took a minute to enjoy the scent before he marched away, little puffs of dust kicking up with each step.
Tessa sat cross-legged, still concentrating on her spell work. While he’d plopped down on the dirt, she had placed a blanket under her. It was one of the many blankets they’d taken from the Coffee Clutch’s loft, with Eduardo’s permission of course. They had a few pillows in the back of the Bronco as well as a Styrofoam cooler filled with provisions. They’d stopped at a King Soopers for food. Both Steven and Tessa had found some coupons.
Aria had a hard time understanding the whole idea of coupons. She didn’t see the point. What was an extra ten cents going to do to help them? Tessa and Steven, though, knew all about scrimping and saving. They’d lived off budgets their entire lives while Aria had lived off credit cards.
So far, they seemed to have escaped Denver without a hitch. When Aria got tired of driving, they’d pulled over to rest. They’d found a back road off of I-76 and took it until nothing but open country surrounded them. They stopped at a wide spot in the road. Steven had checked the nearest farmhouse and it was deserted, so he didn’t think they’d be bothered this far out in the boonies. And if some good ol’ boys did come around, looking for trouble? Well, he’d give it back to them in spades. If it was the police? Most likely they’d only issue a warning. Then Steven would collect his Escort into the Bronco and they’d drive all night. It would save them a night’s motel.
Aria had walked into a nearby copse of cottonwood trees standing over a creek. That was where Steven went to find her. He took long strides. No Macy’s fancy pants for him. He was wearing jeans from the local Walmart where they’d picked up clothes and toiletries. They price-checked every single thing they bought. This was the exact opposite of their shopping experience before, when Aria’s magic American Express card gave them complete freedom to buy anything they wanted.
Funny, but the Walmart trip felt far more comfortable to Steven. Worrying over pennies had been the norm his entire life, so it was easy to slip back into what he knew so well.
After topping off the Bronco, they were sitting on about three hundred and seventy-five dollars. It would have to last them. Until when? Steven had no idea. He wasn’t sure he had very much faith in Bud’s stock market shenanigans.
The scent of cinnamon spice filled the air. That was from Aria. He found her in her True Form, as scarlet as a piece of cinnamon candy, swooping through the cottonwood trees, fifteen feet long, with wide wings, a long, slender face, and bright green eyes. The tips of her wings would barely scrape a limb of buds, enough to shake it, but not enough to break even a single stick.
She whirled, racing around and around a thick trunk until she broke from the top of the trees. Steven knew she had triggered her limited shield spell to keep herself hidden from any human eyes that might be around. However unlikely that was.
Defying physics, Aria filled her wings with air to hover. Her green eyes turned white as electricity arced around her, from the tip of her tail, along her spines, to her snout. She opened her fanged mouth and exhaled a single bolt of electric blue-white lightning. It fizzled before it could hit a dead branch on a cottonwood, where she’d obviously been aiming.
She roared in obvious frustration and went swooping over the fields.
For a minute, Steven was dazed by what he was seeing: a dragon flying across the sagebrush of Colorado’s Great Plains in the twilight sky.
He checked his skill tree and saw that not only had he unlocked the Magica Cura ability, but he also had access to the Inferno Exhalant. Aria must’ve leveled up because she had definitely almost breathed lightning. That was the ElectroArc ability off the Exhalant branch of the skill tree.
Steven transformed into his own True Form. Unlike Aria, he was jet-black and twice her size, with the beginnings of a beard hanging off his scaled chin. His dragon scent, orange blossoms burning on a bonfire, filled the air.
He took three lumbering steps and launched himself off the Earth. The twilight breezes caught his wings, and he felt the wind thicken around him, keeping him aloft. Out of habit, he growled, “Magica Defensio” so he, too, would be hidden from human eyes. Not from Aria’s, though. He’d lost track of her. She was probably cruising her way through the cottonwoods, working on her flying skills and aerial dexterity. Aria wasn’t drawn to magic, but she loved her Dragonsoul abilities.
Steven pumped his great wings, climbing as high as he could—up, up, up into the darkening sky. He saw the lights of I-70 far in the distance along with the skyscrapers of Denver, now looking like toys nestled up against the snowcapped peaks of the Rocky Mountains painted red by the sunset. Lights were winking on in the toy city.
Steven flew over Tessa, who was far below, still sitting on the ground next to the Bronco. Dirt roads spiderwebbed through the sagebrush, most ending in ditches or fences, but some led to houses—a few lit up with life, others dead and decaying, like the gray-wooded home on the property where they’d stopped to rest and train.
Steven collapsed his wings in along the sides of his body and let himself drop, enjoying gravity’s inevitable pull. It was a maneuver he’d been trying to perfect, but this was the first time Tessa wasn’t there with a shield spell to help break his fall in case he couldn’t get his wings unfurled before he smacked back into the Earth.
Faster, faster, faster, the wind shrieked in his ears and beat against his scaly face, promising certain death if he fucked up. He hit terminal velocity a moment later. The forces at work were as amazing as they were thrilling. And he was experiencing them firsthand, flying like an eagle. Only a fraction of the people ever born could say they knew what it was like to fly. To really fly.
He wasn’t going to take any unnecessary chances, so he opened his wings early, giving himself at least a thousand feet to stop his plummet. The muscles of his back protested. The wind thudded into the membranes of his wings, threatening to shred them. He focused on keeping them open, but not too open. It was a slow process, using the air to stop himself, even as the unforgiving ground came closer and closer.
The claws on his feet shredded a thick patch of sagebrush. Then he was the very essence of speed as he raced across the ground. In an open field, he saw an old car, rusting away—the perfect target for his Inferno Exhalant. It lay in a clearing devoid of plant life. He did not want to start a grass fire.
Focusing on flight even as he focused on the skill tree, he accessed the Inferno Exhalant. He opened his jaws. The warmth of the Animus rose up his chest. He inhaled deeply and then did his best to breathe a column of raw dragon’s fire on the jalopy.
Smoke coughed from his fanged maw, his chest screamed in protest, and it felt like the worst heartburn of his life. Pain seared his tongue, his gums, the top of his mouth. It all struck him at once—his failure, the pain—and then a gust of air hit his wing wrong. The right side of him dipped, the left side r
ose, and before he knew it he was bouncing off the ground and ripping through sagebrush, creating a cloud of dust. He flopped across the earth, wings and claws, neck and tail, cartwheeling manically until he did one final roll and lay still.
Holy crap, but all that shit hurt like a motherfucker.
He lay there, coughing, burned, his chest on fire.
Aria slammed down on the ground next to him, still a scarlet-colored dragon, sleek and deadly. She chuckled in a loud, powerful voice. “And that is my Steven—trying to breathe fire while trying to improve his flying skills. One thing at a time, my Prime. One thing at a time.”
Steven grumbled, but didn’t change back to his human form. With a heave, he crawled to his feet, his tail curled back from his body. “Yeah, Aria, you’re right. Too much, too soon. I tried to breathe fire, but all I did was cook the inside of my mouth. Any suggestions?”
“Did you ever smoke cigarettes?” Aria asked.
“Once or twice.” Steven pushed away the pain of his botched landing. “But in the end, cigarettes were too much money, and I didn’t want to pay for cancer. What are you getting at?”
“When you smoke, you inhale the smoke into your lungs. When you use an Exhalant, you are adding raw Animus to your breath while exhaling. I always thought that smoking and breathing fire were similar.” Aria let her jaws fall open. Her gigantic fangs were exposed along with the slender pink tongue resting at the bottom of her mouth. She arched her neck and unleashed a gout of pure flame, which enveloped the rusted car. The metal heated up, and in some spots, melted completely into a puddle to collect in the sand. The smell of the superheated slag filled the air. “Now, you try.”
Steven rose up on his hind feet and took in as much breath as he could. His lungs expanded, his chest heated up, and he could feel the Animus burning in his center like a bonfire. Shifting his focus, he again hit the Inferno Exhalant option on the left wing of the dragon-shaped skill tree.
He coughed, he choked, and smoke leaked out of his mouth like an old chimney. Again, he burned the inside of his mouth ... that damn smoke, it was like he’d eaten a smoker and was trying to barf it up. Tears leaked from his eyes.
Aria pounded him on his back, careful not to hit the obsidian spikes along his vertebrae. “Exhalants are tricky. I’m sure with your one or two cigarettes, you also did a great deal of coughing. You’ll learn. I have faith in you.”
She nuzzled up to him, and he found himself enjoying her long body against his. He felt ashamed he’d not been able to master the Inferno Exhalant right away. He wasn’t sure what he was doing wrong, but like Aria had said, he would learn. He was just glad he could cast healing spells at this point; it proved he was getting more powerful, and he needed every edge he could get.
Steven trotted off away from the still-sizzling car and pushed through the cottonwood trees. He went to the river and washed out his mouth. The rancid smoke clung to the burned skin of his mouth, but after a number of huge gulps, he was able to rid himself of the ashy, charbroiled taste. Plus, the cold water felt good on his mouth. Like heaven, really.
He realized the air had gotten downright chilly, and yet he wasn’t cold.
Aria flew up and over the copse of trees. She banked around and came soaring between the trunks from the other side. She landed next to him. Her eyes twinkled in the gathering gloom, and her long scarlet body looked black.
“Hey, Aria, I’m not cold at all,” he said.
“When we are in our dragon forms, we are a hearty folk,” Aria replied. “Feel free to drink the water from the creek. You won’t get sick. We burn up any bacteria in our bellies, and that is the fire that also heats us. If we didn’t have to worry about being seen by humans, we could sleep out here in the sagebrush, entwined in our True Forms.”
Steven liked the idea of that. He wanted to spend more time as a dragon, but there was Tessa to consider. “Let’s get back to Tessa. We should probably figure out where we’re sleeping tonight.”
Both flew from the trees and quickly found Tessa by the Bronco in the field, about to start a campfire. She’d cleared a spot, stacked rocks to create a ring, and had collected some old sagebrush sticks as well as the remnants of a pallet.
Tessa grinned up at the pair. They were huge compared to her. “Wow. I saw the fire in the distance and got cold. Did Steven breathe fire for the first time?”
“He tried,” Aria responded.
“Performance issues again,” Steven said.
Tessa giggled. “It happens to all guys every now and then. We understand.”
Steven didn’t. He transformed back into his human shape, very naked, and a bit cold. He wasn’t chilly for long, however. Aria exhaled through the nostrils on the tip of her serpentine nose. Twin flames washed over the wood that Tessa had collected, and in no time they had a nice blaze going.
Aria shifted to her human form. She retrieved her clothes from the back of the Bronco and then let out a gasp. “Tessa, you made a bed for us in the back of this car. Do you mean for us to sleep out here?”
“Uh, yeah,” Tessa said. “We could afford a motel, I guess, but we should probably save on money. It’s already late, and we’re out here. I was going to cook a hot dog over the fire and then crash inside the Bronco. We have plenty of blankets and pillows. It’ll be comfy. I promise.”
Aria let her red dress fall across her dark skin. “This is not something I have ever done. Live in a car? It is what the poorer people do.”
“I’ve had friends who’ve lived in their cars,” Steven said, shrugging one shoulder. “They said it was loud and they got dirty. Mom and I were able to keep our house, so we never had to live on the street, but it was a near thing more than once.”
“I lived in my car when I was seventeen,” Tessa said. “I got in this huge fight with my mom, and I was totally going to run away. I lasted a week. It is loud, but not out here. And we can find some cheap motel tomorrow night.”
Aria gulped and looked frightened. “A cheap motel? Oh, I’m not sure I can. I’ve heard stories.” She winced. “Sometimes they aren’t very clean,” she said in a whisper, as though confiding some great, previously unknown secret.
Steven and Tessa laughed. “We’ll be fine.”
Tessa found three wire coat hangers under the seat in the back of the Bronco. They were probably from Aria and her trips to the drycleaner. The barista untwisted the coat hangers, and they used them to roast hot dogs over the fire. For dessert, they cut up apples and ate them with raisins and some off-brand chocolate cookies.
That night, Steven found himself exhausted, crammed into the back of the Bronco with Tessa on one side and Aria on the other. Steven hardly slept a wink. Aria shifted constantly, rolling about, shaking the vehicle. The poor girl was trying to get comfortable. At one point, she crawled on top of him. Yeah, she finally fell asleep, but then Steven had to lie there with her dead weight on his chest.
He watched clouds drifting through the cold night sky, eclipsing the stars as they flowed across the heavens. Between the cottony wisps, he found the Big Dipper, and underneath it, the Draco constellation—like a necklace of glimmering diamonds against a velvet backdrop. Seeing the line of stars put him at ease. His father wasn’t alive anymore, but Stephen Drokharis was still watching over his son. Steven could feel it in his bones. In his soul.
Their body heat warmed the Bronco, so though it was near freezing temperatures outside, in their nest they were safe and comfortable.
He wanted Aria to get a little sleep, so he held off for as long as he could, an hour maybe, and then he gently rolled her off his chest and onto her side. She returned to wrestling alligators.
Tessa, on the other hand, slept the whole night through. She woke refreshed and smiling.
Aria hissed, “We will not be sleeping in this tin can again. If I have to rob a bank, I will, but we are finding money today, and we are staying in a motel.”
Steven couldn’t help but grin.
Chapter Ten
THEY
STILL HADN’T HEARD from Mouse—which was deeply troubling—but they kept on heading north. Tessa drove since she had slept the best. Actually, she insisted she hadn’t slept that well in a long, long time.
When both Steven and Aria gave her a long, withering look, Tessa shrugged. “Look, I like sleeping close to people. So this was perfect for me. I love you guys. And I have to admit, I was afraid I’d obsess about Rhaegen Mulk finding us and killing us. Nope. Didn’t happen. I felt safe. I was with you both.” She shot the two of them a brilliant, thousand-watt smile.
That melted Steven a little. Aria leaned up from the back seat and kissed Tessa on the cheek. Then she promptly leaned back and fell asleep.
Tessa chuckled. “I know you guys are wimps, so you don’t wanna do another night in the Orange Crush, and I have a plan.”
“So we’re calling the Bronco the Orange Crush now?” Steven asked.
Tessa shot him a finger gun. “Heck, yeah. Go Broncos!”
He didn’t ask about her plan but leaned back and enjoyed the thrum of the highway, the perfect blue sky, and the coffee Tessa had brewed on the fire that morning in a little single-shot pot she’d scored from the loft of the Coffee Clutch.
They stopped outside of Fort Morgan, in a little dive bar called the Torchlight. It looked like a place the health board should’ve torched. A few Harleys sat parked next to the Budweiser sign.
Steven woke Aria.
Tessa launched into her plan. When she was finished, Aria didn’t look amused. “You know, it’s kind of racist.”
“Just play it like I tell you,” Tessa said.
“And if the con turns to hell?” Steven asked.
“It won’t,” the barista turned Magician insisted. “If things get dicey, we can always do a little Mind Wipe.”
“Why don’t we steal the money from the register and then cast the memory spell?” Aria asked.