Acne, Asthma, And Other Signs You Might Be Half Dragon

by Rena Rocford

  The boat came into view, and I dipped lower in the water. With only my eyes and nostrils above the surface, I crept alongside the boat.

  The tugboat sat low in the water with Bob at the helm. My father and John stood in front of Beth and Dr. Targyne. Beth’s hands were cuffed behind her back in thick metal manacles. John stood stoically, but he shot covert glances at Beth.

  John leaned over and shook something. With a groan, Felix stood up, his hands also bound behind his back. He launched himself at my father, trying to bash him with a head or a shoulder, but my father dodged aside easily, a well-trained martial artist. When Felix missed, he fell to the deck.

  Looking down, my father tsked. “Honestly, must we act so human?”

  “Where’s my sister? Where’s my mother?” Felix asked through gritted teeth. He collected himself and stood again. His face burned red, muscles tight and eyes blazing. “Why didn’t you come back? We needed your help.”

  My father’s face froze, and he blinked. He took a breath, closing his eyes. Pain pinched his features, but then something else stole across his face. The snide mask of indifference swept over his features. “That was a long time ago. Perhaps I could arrange a meeting with your mother. Would you like that?”

  “Where is she?”

  “You’ll join her soon enough.”

  Dr. Targyne stepped forward, drawing my father’s attention. “What are you doing here, David? What happened to your crusade?”

  At the unicorn’s words, my father looked out over the water–the opposite side of the boat from me. “Things change, Aaron.” He watched the water for a moment and nodded to himself. “But some things stay the same.”

  “Did you ever even love her? You goddamned hypocrite,” Dr. Targyne said, but my father ignored him.

  It felt like something dark swam through the air and changed him. My father turned to John and pulled out a gun. It flashed silver, and he held the gun up to John’s head. “I do believe you’ve lost faith.”

  “I–I don’t know what you’re talking about,” John stammered. “I followed orders and everything.”

  “But you’ve been thinking, causing too much trouble. I can’t have that in my operation.” He turned to Beth. “We’re expanding, you know, but I simply cannot stand disloyalty.”

  The gun barked in his hand three times, and John staggered. My father pushed him over the edge of the boat with a lazy hand. John’s rigid body did a half flip over the far edge of the boat, belly flopping into the bay with a splash.

  “And you think a gunshot wound will hurt him?” Beth smirked.

  “No. But drowning certainly will. Full blooded trolls don’t float, and they still need air like the rest of us.” He narrowed his eyes at Beth. “Do you think he can tread water with three holes in his lungs?”

  The color drained from Beth’s face. She went to the railing, but my father held a gun to Felix’s head. “He doesn’t regenerate so easily, does he?”

  Beth froze, but I slipped beneath the surface.

  John sank through the murky water like a brick. I grabbed him around the waist in my clawed hand, swimming as far as away from the boat as I could before breaking the surface. John gasped for air, blood running down his face in rivulets. Sprinting through the sea, I headed for a spear of rocks just up ahead. The precarious heap sat near the base of a bridge. Keeping low in the water, I swam for the shore, hoping no one on the boat would hear us. I kept one eye over my shoulder, watching the boat, but the fog swallowed it.

  I threw John onto the shore. “Do you know where they’re going?”

  He coughed, gurgling water. I dragged my attention away from the sea. He nodded, still coughing. Water drained off John in a pink pool of blood and muck. He bent over coughing, and soon, the whole beach was covered in troll blood.

  Apparently trolls had rather a lot of blood to bleed before they died. He spit up a bullet, caught it and set it down on a nearby boulder. Waves smashed against the rocks, dripping more salty water into the mix and washing blood from the beach. Mist rose from the rocks and the soaking troll, and I waited.

  “Well?” I said.

  “You can eat me”–he coughed and hacked up more blood–“if you’d like, but I–I was only trying to help.”

  “How is kidnapping her helping?”

  He spit another bullet onto the rocky shore. “You still mad about that?”

  “Surprisingly, I stay moody about felonies for weeks on end.”

  He coughed again, but this time it sounded much clearer. “Look, I only grabbed her to keep her from letting the unicorns know she was there. How was I supposed to know she’d react like that? I didn’t mean to make her mad. I love her.”

  The word pulsed through me. Love. He loved her. He’d met her three times and he loved Beth? “How do you know? Everyone says teenagers are idiots. How do you know you’re in love?”

  “The first time I saw her. I looked at her, and the world snapped into focus. I’d seen my other half, and it broke every spell they put on me.”

  My tail slapped the water in a nervous twitch. “Tell me about this spell.”

  “It’s simple, the dragon controls the magic, and Mr. Stein controls the dragon.”

  My heart pounded against my chest. Power over her kind. Joe had said as much. My father had said it, too, but I hadn’t wanted to believe it.

  “What do you mean, control?”

  “I don’t know how, but whenever they meet, Mr. Stein kisses Takata’s forehead, whether he’s in his dragon form or not. The dragon said it renewed the bond.” John squinted at me. “You look a lot like him. I thought all the dragon families were different.”

  I ignored him. “So, you got sight of your true love and it broke the spell? What kind of spell is it then?”

  “I was invested with dragon blood, it helps with, well, you know.” He pointed at his head and smiled. “The others, like me, were imbued with other tributes, loyalty from the gryphons, and well, other stuff from the unicorns.”

  “So they just want all these people to make blood?”

  John shook his head. “No, the magic needs something of life. The investments are just an aside. The real spell binds us to obedience. Mr. Stein runs it, but it doesn’t work without life.”

  “What about Takata?”

  “He does everything Mr. Stein tells him to.”

  The letter made more sense with each passing second. My father would rather die than be controlled.

  “How do I break the spell on the dragon, true love?”

  “No, there’s something different with the dragon. Trolls break loose all the time, but none of the dragons do.” John watched the surf. “The dragon’s spell sustains Mr. Stein. I heard them talking about it, and that’s why they need so many people. One dragon can only give Stein so many years, but all the dragons he has working for him know magic.”

  “How many?”

  “You hear talk, but we have transfers from Montreal, Miami, Seattle, and I met a troll from London.”

  “You’re just full of good news.”

  He shrugged. “Would you rather I lied?”

  “Where are they headed?”

  “There’s a bunch of ships moored in the bay near Vallejo. They call it the Ghost Fleet.”

  “How far?”

  John took his bearings, spotting the bridges. “An hour, even when Takata uses his magic to make the boat go faster.”

  I closed my eyes. “Right. How do I free Takata from Mr. Stein?”

  John scowled at me suspiciously, like a school kid when they knew the answer, but thought the teacher might be tricking them. His eyebrows pinched together. “You kill him.”

  y stomach heaved.

  I’m gonna puke right here.

  Then ice cold water pumped through my veins. His words bored through me. Kill him? There had to be some other way. Kill him? The Kornus Blade cut into my hand as I squeezed. Kill him? What the hell kind of answer was that?

  Only the one he wrote about in th
e letter, idiot.

  Oh God, I can’t do this.

  I sagged onto the rocks. No father-daughter dances, no letters, no secret inheritance, just the Kornus Blade and a journal. You kill him.

  “You okay?” John asked.

  “No.” I never told people the truth when they asked that question. I always said fine. I’m fine. I’m always fine. My stomach heaved again, and I wondered if I could puke as a dragon.

  John grabbed my face by the whiskers and pulled me around so I had to look in his eyes. They pierced me with the wild intensity of a man gone half mad. “Look, I don’t have time for you to have some moral crisis on Angel Rock. We need to get to Beth. Stein always shows up when there’s a big delivery, and this shipment is huge. Not all of us can just break free of the controls, and Stein could have her forever.”

  “What’s the deal with Stein?”

  “He’s the head honcho, and he’s smart. He has bases all over the country. If you take out one, his whole power base isn’t interrupted, just weakened. And if he enthralls Beth, she’ll be locked in. For. Eh. Ver.”

  “What about you? Could you be enthralled again?”

  As I asked the question, Joe’s words slipped through my mind again. Dragons don’t come back. Could he take me?

  Too late now, everyone was already too far in to back out now.

  John nodded. “It was the shock of seeing Beth that broke me out of it, but if he put it back on me, I’d be a slave again.”

  I didn’t have to kill my father. I had to kill Stein. Cut off the head, and the rest of the machine would fall apart. Maybe I could break my father free. Maybe seeing me would do it for him. Rescue Beth, kill Stein, that was a plan I could get behind; way better than the kill-the-father-you’ve-never-met plan.

  “Get on,” I said.

  John swung himself up behind my head and sat on my neck. The water splashed around me as I dove back in, careful to keep John from slipping off. I passed under the double-decker bridge and made my way through the bay. Even through the fog, John knew the way, pointing me around corners and through bridges. We passed an oil refinery on a hill, covered in pipes and flaming towers. Through the fog, the flames diffused to eerie, flickering ghosts, a fitting landmark for a ghost fleet. When we came to three bridges in a row, John tugged on my eyebrows, which, as a dragon, were big enough to be the handlebars on a gryphon’s bike.

  “That’s it, there.” He pointed. Looming up out of the ocean, rows of steel grey ships sat in the bay. “It’s the Ghost Fleet. Derelict boats from World War II, just sitting there.”

  “And no one goes on them?”

  “No one but us, that’s how they keep the people hidden. And, if push comes to shove, Takata can take off with the boat, and move the whole operation.”

  The smell of magic, like ozone and loam, wafted from a boat in the middle. Even through the fog, my father’s scent lingered on the water.

  John leaned forward to whisper. “Just get me next to the boat, and I’ll do the rest.”

  “No. I’m coming too.”

  Rust stains ran down from the portholes. These ships hadn’t seen a new coat of paint in over fifty years. A patrol boat cruised by, motoring right past us. I waited until I couldn’t hear the engine before I continued on to the fleet.

  We approached, following the wisps of magic undulating like ribbons in the breeze. Our target loomed out of the water, larger than the others, with great cannons pointed over the bow. The cold metal slipped beneath my claws as rusted chips of paint sloughed away. The rotting paint covered something else, something darker. Slime and foulness poured through my soul. Evil, if such a thing existed, lurked here.

  The rusted metal curled in my claws, and a piece of the ship broke away. I swapped it into the claw still carrying the Kornus Blade before climbing to the deck. I crept over the edge, setting the broken bit down. John hopped off, hitting the deck with bent knees that swallowed sound. Quiet, strong, nearly indestructible–trolls were definitely not how the Grimm boys described. We scurried across the deck, staying low, in case a military patrol came by.

  John led the way to a door with a wheel instead of a knob. “I don’t think you’ll fit,” he whispered.

  I nodded and dredged up my most human moment ever, standing on the edge of a cliff naked. My blue scales receded, and the brief moment of magic blocked out the putrid feel of darkness around me. It was like stepping through a waterfall only to wallow in a gritty mud bath on the other side. Shivering, I stood on the deck. John raised an eyebrow at me and moved to take off his jacket. It was soaked through as well, so I shook my head. At least this time I still had on my shirt and pants.

  Without so much as a scrape, the wheel on the door spun open. The floor beyond the door was polished marble, and varnished panels of oaks lined the walls. I gulped, suddenly very conscious of my soggy stature, but John went in. Clutching the Kornus Blade in its useless state, I tiptoed down the hall behind John. He led me to the belly of the ship.

  At the bottom of an immaculate staircase, a door opened onto an enormous room. Beams overhead stretched across the expanse. The curved walls matched the shape of the boat. This was the hold, and only a sheet of metal separated this warehouse from the water.

  Open space stretched out to the left, but cubicles filled the area to the right of the door. The partitions made a labyrinth, but instead of desks, each cubicle held a bed. I did a quick count of the cubicles. If they were all filled, there were over a hundred people lying in hospital beds.

  On the opposite side, the new victims were laid out on stretchers in a neat row. My father and two trolls stood across from Beth, Felix, and Dr. Targyne. Extra trolls stood around, some wandering up and down the cubicle maze, but many stood with Takata, guarding my friends. John and I slipped into a cubicle as a troll wandered down the hall.

  “Now what?” He hissed under his breath.

  More than a hundred people laid on beds in the belly of this ship, all of them Kin, and all of them nothing more than batteries for a spell. How the hell could I save two hundred people from my father?

  John’s words echoed through me. You kill him.

  No, I kill Stein.

  The Kornus Blade seemed to sense my thoughts and pulsed. I just needed a unicorn. My aunt was supposed to use the blasted thing, but if I had an opportunity to kill Stein, that was my primary target.

  “I need a unicorn and a distraction.”

  John pointed. “There’s a whole row. I can wake one up. What do you need?”

  “The horn.”

  John nodded. “There’s a station at the center of each row. Inside, you’ll find a sort of toolbox of drawers. The purple mixture wakes them up. Just push it into the thing here.” He pointed at the tubing running into the arm of the person right in front of us. “We keep a bunch in case of emergencies. I’ve got your distraction.”

  I made a grab for him, but he slipped past and walked into the main area as though on a stroll after lunch.

  I dove back behind the cubicle barrier, peeking around the corner.

  My father focused on John, and I ran for the row he’d pointed out.

  A giant toolbox on wheels sat in the middle of the corridor, and I searched the drawers between frantic checks for other trolls. Nothing was labeled. I scrambled through the drawers until I found one holding eight needles filled with a purple liquid.

  “John!” Beth cried out. I peeked over the top of the cubicles. John strode toward Beth, Felix, and my Father.

  My father’s eyes narrowed, watching John before sparks of magic flew from his fingers to the troll. “How did you get here?” he asked.

  John’s step faltered, and he fell to his knees, shaking.

  “Answer me.” My father’s eyes widened. A deluge of bright orange magic flooded John, and he gasped.

  “It was a dragon.” He gasped, struggling for air. “She fished me out of the water.”

  A deathly silence stole through the ship, as he froze. “She?”

 
I dropped below the cubicle wall, but if my father could smell me half as easily as I could smell him, the gig was up. Crap, where is Stein? I had to have him to break my father free.

  I shook as I slipped into the nearest cubicle. A woman with platinum blonde hair lay there, unconscious. I fumbled with the IV line, pushing the concoction.

  “Find the dragon!” My father yelled. “Hurry, before Mr. Stein–”

  He was cut off, and the sound of a scuffle came from across the room. I focused on pushing the purple liquid into the IV line. How long would it take for her to wake up and manifest? The seconds stretched into an eternity, and a gun fired twice.

  “Come on, come on,” I whispered.

  Then the woman sat bolt upright and screamed. The blood-churning wail echoed off the sides of the ship.

  So much for stealth.

  I bolted from the cubby and dashed down the aisle. Ducking into the first cubby in the next row over, I hid. Trolls ran past me to get to the screaming unicorn, and I waited. Checking the corridor first, I ran in the other direction, listening for other trolls in this rat maze.

  “I don’t need another victim,” Takata said. I peeked over the wall, and watched as my father shot Dr. Targyne in the gut. Beth shouted and rammed my father with her head. He stumbled back, and Felix rushed him, hands still tied together. Beth broke her manacles with a roar. The gun bounced away from Takata, and Beth grabbed it. She turned and emptied the clip into him.

  My breath caught in my throat as Beth pulled the trigger.

  My father shifted into his dragon form, ignoring the bullets as he changed. He grew, magic wrapping around him as midnight blue scales rippled over his skin. His tail and body moved like kelp in the tide. His short, powerful legs were separated by thirty feet of a slender, powerful body. His head was the size of two school buses stacked on top of each other, and his hind legs had talons like a rooster–a rooster the size of a T-Rex. Right in the center of his forehead sat a giant sapphire, his sokra.

  He stood over Beth and chuckled. His voice rumbled through the hull. “Only one thing can stop me, child.” He loomed over her as if deciding something, then fast as lightning, his head shot down and he took her into his mouth in one bite.