Legacy of Dragons- Emergence

by T D Raufson

  “Don’t you think she was going to help us anyway?”

  “No. I don’t. I think she was saying goodbye and clearing her conscience at the same time.”

  Silas rubbed his chin as he looked at the quiet body of the woman who had voluntarily come to offer the truth. He shook his head, and hoped he had made the right decision. In his gut, he knew he needed more than information, and she was not going to volunteer what he needed.

  July 4 – 0735 EDT – Kennesaw, Georgia

  The house was beginning to close in on Adrian. It had been over two weeks since he had been outside, and it was the last summer before his senior year. It was the Fourth of July. He should have been out with his friends at the lake, not trapped in the house with his catatonic father. His mother should have come back. She was the one who abandoned him here exactly when he needed a parent.

  Both of his parents, absent as they were, should be proud of what he had accomplished. He was fed, clothed and the house was clean—considering. But this was not the senior summer he had hoped for.

  Stop feeling sorry for yourself!

  He mentally castigated himself for the descent into self-pity and stabilized his thoughts before they kicked him into an emotional spiral that would leave him drooling next to his father. Appropriately chastised, he turned his chair back around to face the computer monitor and remembered what had thrown him into the mental spiral in the first place. The fifteen forums he had up in multiple browser tabs were waiting for him to return. They still held no more useful information than they had a few minutes before. No one had anything new to add.

  He clicked back over to his new favorite online hangout, and his last hope, to wait for fallen1-87 to reply to the last post someone had just added.

  She, he assumed she had listed her sex correctly, had started this new thread about her problem since the solstice. The whole site had turned into a cauldron of swirling comments about how things had changed since the solstice, but this particular thread had Adrian’s attention because of the specifics. The young woman was terrified after changing into a horrifying creature in the middle of the Midsummer sabbat. Once Adrian had been able to find the definition of a sabbat on Wikipedia and had searched a few more pages to understand exactly what she had been doing, he understood why transforming into a scaled, lizard like creature in the middle of a neo-pagan rite might freak someone out.

  There among the circle, she had transformed without warning or even much sensation. The wave of terror that had sent her coven running from her had left her confused and alone. Once she could see herself, she was terrified too. Initially panic filled her mind and she found it very difficult not to run, anywhere, but the more logical part of her mind fought back. It had taken her a few days of internal struggle to convince herself that the change was mostly physical. Once she had overcome most of the confusion in her mind over what had suddenly happened and the insatiable hunger, she realized she was the same person she had always been. That was when she turned to her friends for help and realized the depth of her solitude. So far, even her requests for guidance from the goddess were going unheeded, and she was beginning to fear she would never be normal again.

  Adrian joined the moderated forum after several attempts to convince the gatekeeper he was really a Wiccan. Once he surrendered to the fact that he would not get past her pretending to be Wiccan, he told her he was a scale-covered, reptilian, human looking for help wherever he could find it. For some reason, that had worked.

  Over the next few days, several people had posted suggestions on spells for fallen1-87 to try. Adrian had laughed at some of them. Now he wondered if anyone on the forum might have a solution for her, but at least they were still open minded about things. Other on-line groups were convinced anyone who had transformed was possessed. He knew because he had checked the website for the church his mother attended. Not the most open minded bunch. From there he had moved on to the most hilarious site he had found. It was the blog of a long time Satanist who swore anyone transformed at the solstice was the puppet of archangels sent by God on a desperate mission to finally destroy Lucifer for his supposed rebellion. Adrian read that raving lunatic’s blog whenever he needed a heartfelt belly laugh.

  He couldn’t help thinking fallen1-87 was right that there was no solution and they would be trapped this way forever. Ironically, the world he had grown up in was supposed to accept differences in people. Apparently, these differences made him not human anymore. The sudden wave of negativity in her recent posts made him nervous. He was worried what she might do. The fear in her words was troubling, but underneath it all, he could hear the hunger gnawing at her. Adrian was convinced the hunger was what drove the others into frenzy. Had it not been for his mother’s hoarding tendencies he probably would have broken into a panic already.

  He checked fallen1-87’s status on the forum again. She had still not signed in, but he could wait a few minutes more. He wanted to know she had not surrendered to her hunger. She was alone. She needed someone to look out for her.

  “This is Lugh’s friend with the books. Call me. I have your answer.”

  Adrian smacked the desk surface and sent a couple of paper clips skittering into the abyss between it and the wall. The new message had popped into the stream driving his hopes up that she was online, but, as he read it, it crushed his hopes of talking with her. If she did sign in, this thread would go offline for the solution. His one possible path to help was shutting down and a part of him would miss her.

  After his flash of anger passed, he reminded himself he had work to do anyway and consigned fallen1-87 to the back of his mind. The breakfast exercise awaiting him had seemed slightly more futile than his web searching until that last post, now he only had the hopelessness of feeding his father to look forward to.

  Adrian turned his attention to his dying father. He had not eaten since the night of the transformation. If he moved at all, it was because Adrian moved him. While he carried him from room to room, Adrian talked to his father. He told him everything was okay, that it would all be back to normal soon, that they would find a solution to their problem, but nothing seemed to be getting through. His father just stared at him as if he was the television droning on at the nursing home where his grandfather had died last summer.

  His father’s green and blue scales were dull in the morning light. Coated in a thin waxy film that flaked off when Adrian brushed against him, they looked altogether unhealthy. When Adrian had moved him into the living room that morning so he could watch the news, two scales had fallen off. He would not last many more days without eating or drinking.

  Two days before, Adrian had broken down about his father’s apathy and cried alone in the living room. That was the first time he realized that he could turn into his father. The icy fingers of catatonic panic had tickled his consciousness and threatened to pull him down into the pit with his father. To surrender would mean peace of a sort, but Adrian could not give up. His response had almost sent him scurrying out into the street where someone could see him, and he had to rein in that side as well. Some combination of his mother’s flight response and his father’s apathy kept Adrian in the middle of the emotional river. Overall, he was very unhappy with both of his parents, and he was not sure he would forgive either of them for surrendering to their base emotions.

  Again, Adrian kicked himself mentally to get the day started. He would make a meal for both of them. After his father stared at the plate long enough, Adrian would eat his portion as well. Today, when breakfast was done, Adrian would make the decision he had been delaying. His mother had been a hoarder when it came to food, but even though his father refused to eat Adrian could not resist the incessant hunger he felt. He had eaten more in the last two weeks than he ever had before, and the pantry was getting low. It was time to do something about that and leaving the house was going to be difficult with the gargoyle across the street watching.

  There was no way Miss Stonewise had missed the events of the twenty fir
st, and she would be waiting for the reprise. Sitting next to her on her porch pedestal would be her direct line to the Cobb County Sheriff’s department and her father’s double-barrel, but Adrian had to go to the market.

  He shook his head and spun around in the chair to refocus his thoughts. The house was not as clean as his mother kept it, but he had done his best. Although he had fought with feelings of doubt and confusion after the transformation, his need to take care of the house and his father had carried him through what some online sights were calling “the madness”. He didn’t think the description was all that accurate. He was not mad.

  Jumping from the chair he walked back to his room. The door was now standing in the far corner at a broken angle. In his college footlocker there was a small collection of rings and necklaces from his mother’s jewelry box. The compulsion to collect the little things disturbed him a little but he was still unable to resist picking up anything shiny and putting it into the box. As the collection had grown, so had his need to make sure it was still there. Later he would bury it in the back yard. Turning his back on his lair, he grinned and walked to the living room where his father was still sitting staring at the dark screen of the television.

  “Morning, Dad. How’d you sleep?” He looked at the stationary form in the recliner. It didn’t move. The eyes blinked but stared at the screen. Although he had moved him into the room earlier, the ritual didn’t start until after he had checked the mail and surfed his forums. “You didn’t, did you? You hungry?”

  Adrian picked up the remote and turned on the morning news. Thankfully the number of stories about angry, possessed lizard people had died down. The meaningless droning of the morning show host followed him into the kitchen where he stared at the last of the canned meats he had brought up from the basement. The phone on the end table in the living room rang, drowning out the weatherman.

  His father had kept the phone in the house even though everyone carried a cell phone and it was redundant. It had become the number they gave to relatives and companies they owed money. When it did ring, hardly anyone answered it, so Adrian let the answering machine take the call. His father’s calm voice told them to leave a message.

  “Uncle James, are you there? Pick up.” The voice of Adrian’s cousin, Karen, filled the room. “If you’re there I need to talk to you. It’s important. Adrian? Are you there? Anyone, pick up. Please be there. I know things are strange but pick up.”

  Adrian forgot about the food for a moment as a voice he recognized reached out to him. He crossed the living room quickly, upsetting a vase on the coffee table, and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello.” His voice rang out of the answering machine in a strange stereo effect, and he punched the button to turn off the recorder.

  “Adrian?” Karen asked.

  Adrian had not thought to call his Uncle Mike. He had not thought to call anyone in his family after the mess of the first night. He had just fallen into a kind of survival mode so the voice of a friendly relative was a little foreign to him.

  “Adrian?” she asked again.

  “Yeah, what’s wrong?” He didn’t know what else to say. Family calls had always meant something was wrong.

  “You know what’s wrong. You’re part of this side of the family.”

  Her answer jarred him again. Adrian thought about it for a moment before answering. Karen was his cousin on his dad’s side. Until that moment he had not considered that it might be hereditary. “You too, and Uncle Mike?” The sudden feeling that he had a real person to share his situation with overcame how odd the conversation was.

  “Yeah, all of us. Both sides here, even Mom.”

  “So, why’d you call now? Mom’s gone. Dad’s catatonic. He tried to put a bullet in his skull.”

  “Ooh. How is he?”

  “I don’t know. The bullet bounced off but I’m not sure he didn’t hurt himself. I’m a little stretched here Karen. It’s getting desperate.”

  “I found a solution. We’re back to normal—well as normal as looking human is.”

  “Where? How? I’ve been searching. I can’t find anything.”

  “You never could Google, could you? It’s some group called the Partials’ Liberation Army.”

  “The what?”

  “I can’t explain it, Adrian, not over the phone. Their site says they can help us fix things. They said we need their help to survive. If the humans find out we’re here, they’ll kill us.”

  Adrian felt a sudden panic in his gut. In his mind he believed what she said, but it didn’t make sense. “What are you talking about? We’re human.”

  “Partly, that’s why they call us partials. We’re part human, part dragon. You haven’t left the house because you’re afraid they’ll see you. You don’t have to stay inside, but you don’t want them to know. Ask yourself why.”

  “I don’t know why, but no one is out to kill me.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “No—I guess I don’t.” He thought about Miss Stonewise and realized she was right. Part of the panic he had felt was fear of what would happen if she saw him. He never thought of himself as anything other than human. He never considered that his own kind would hurt him. He suddenly realized why his father had wanted to kill himself and felt those icy fingers at the back of his eyes. Adrian still thought of himself as human, but his father had seen his wife react to him as if he was a monster. He looked at his father sitting across the room staring at the television screen and rotting into his chair no matter what Adrian tried. His cousin let him settle into his realization without speaking.

  “Okay, so what do I have to do?”

  “I’m e-mailing the link. I wanted to talk to you before I sent it though. There’s a video of this awesome dragon that’s helping us out. He explains how to transform. You have to join up to get permission to watch the video but it’s a free registration, and they’re quick.”

  Adrian stretched the phone cord over to the desk and sat down at the computer again. He punched a few keys to get back to his e-mail where the new message was waiting with the link to the site. With excited fingers he clicked on the link and ground his teeth as he waited for the site to load. It didn’t take long, but he suddenly felt his mother’s agitation and impatience eat at him. He wanted to get started on the required registration.

  “Look, Adrian. We’re leaving tonight to meet the others. If you figure out how to transform, you can come with us. We have to come right through there, well kinda.”

  “What do you mean, if?”

  “I mean some people can’t do it. They can’t get it into their heads. Mostly older people. Mom can’t do it.”

  Adrian cringed at her new information. If Aunt June couldn’t do it his dad would never be able to. He looked up at his dad again. He wasn’t able to feed himself, how could he hope to transform?

  “So you’re just leaving her? What about dad?” Adrian keyed in the required information to register while he listened to his cousin’s answer.

  “I’ll bring mom over with me. They can live there together. Maybe she can help him. We can send supplies back. Dad and I were planning it all out before I called you. We weren’t sure what to do about mom, but this works out.”

  A new e-mail popped up from the PLA site, and he clicked through it to gain access to the member only section. Adrian thought about Karen’s plan for a minute and then made a decision. He had to do it. He had to get out of there. There had to be an answer to why they were this way. Maybe it did have something to do with the humans.

  “Okay, but where are we going if we leave here? How will we survive?”

  “Read their site. We’re heading your way. There’s a place in Virginia where they’re training us. They can explain why this happened, and they have food.” He could hear the same hunger in her voice that he felt. “There are others like us out there making a living. If we stay mixed in with the humans, someone will find out. We’re not safe. We’ll be there in about six hours. Be rea
dy to leave.”

  Adrian nodded to what she was saying. It made sense. “Okay, I’m in.” A sudden surge of relief filled him as one of his concerns about the future disappeared only to be replaced immediately by the specter of his father. He looked over at the catatonic form and frowned. Could he leave him behind? Anger bit at his indecision and, for a brief moment, his mother and father fought in his head. He turned back to the screen to watch the video he had queued up.

  “See you in a few hours. Pack light.”

  He nodded again and grumbled an unintelligible response into the phone as the video started. A young man, probably five or six years older than him, was standing in a barnyard talking to an older man in coveralls. The old man was obviously nervous about the way he looked. Adrian listened as the young man coached him on how to transform.

  “He’s watching the video,” Karen’s voice said off in the distance on the phone. “Good luck, Adrian. See you in a little while.”

  The line clicked dead while he watched the video again and focused on his own human form. His tail was the first thing that disappeared. The scales on his arm vanished next, and he was suddenly very human. He looked at his hands and then turned to look at his father. He was staring at the screen, but his head was tilted a little to the left. Had he moved? Adrian couldn’t remember. He reached over, started the video again, and then turned his father’s chair to face the computer monitor. With his father positioned, Adrian went to gather his hoard and bury it before his cousin got there. Something told him more than fireworks were coming at the end of this Fourth of July. Between now and when they arrived, he needed to have made his best effort to get his father to transform. If he couldn’t make it, Adrian was going to have to cut the cord and stand up on his own. His father would get him killed, and it was about survival now. That was what the site said. Now that he could transform, he could survive.