The Eve of the Dragon

by Michael Dunn

  “I don’t care who you are or what you want from me,” John pleaded. “But right now I would sell my soul for an aspirin or a saline drip.”

  “Oh my God,” Steven cried. “Please kill me. This is like… a hundred ice cream headaches happening all at once. Oh Jesus! I have forgotten how bad a hangover this intense feels. I’m like a teenager who did not learn his lesson.”

  Dan was crying, “Please, put the bullet in my skull, because I am now living in Hell. Why did I have so many Jaeger bombs?”

  The Italians, who had kidnapped Dan the day before, were perplexed as to why these doctors were in agony. They did not need roughing up nor torture, because they were already suffering by their own hands.

  Sergio spoke to Tex on speakerphone over his cell phone. “They asked we kill them before we even tried to torture them. They drank so much all day and are already torturing themselves. What should we do?”

  Tex answered, “Ask them questions. Focus on getting the answers.”

  The hungover doctors moaned like damned souls in hell.

  Sergio asked Dan, “What did you do with the Orb of Genoa?”

  Hearing him, Dan switched from almost crying to laughing. “Oh, my God, you sound like Bela Lugosi trying to learn English.” Dan continued to laugh, which made the other doctors laugh too. It helped ease some pain, but only for a moment. Their hangovers still throbbed.

  “We don’t have it,” Dan said.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I am seeing a pointless pattern here, aren’t you?” Dan asked.

  “Maybe a fat guy called the Professor has it?” Steven shouted. “I’ll tell you anything I know for a glass of water. I’d tell you state secrets, if I knew any, for a glass of cold, fresh water.”

  “What do you know about this…, um, Professor?” Tex asked from the phone.

  John answered, “Tall, obese guy, finicky and effeminate. Super rich, really smart, vain, likes flowers, has a beautiful garden for a front yard, oh, and he really, really, really wanted that orb thingy, the one you think Dan has. I’ll also give up all the secrets I have for a glass of water.”

  “No, you won’t, John!” Steven shouted. “That glass of water is mine.”

  “I have information too, Steven! That water needs my body! I mean, my body needs that water.”

  “Quiet, you two!” shouted Sergio. “You will have plenty of time to tell me everything.”

  Tex said over the speaker, “Sergio, ask our guests how they know the Professor and reward our dehydrated guests with a tall glass of cold water… also add a drop of vitamins to help them ease through their transition.”

  “Yes, boss,” Sergio said.

  Dan laughed and said, “Sergio… now you sound like Chico Marx from the Marx Brothers movies.”

  Dan stopped laughing when he saw his friends glaring at him.

  “What? I spent some of the best moments of my childhood watching old movies and TV with my namesake grandfather. I thank you not to judge me.”

  Tex told them, “Gentlemen, please. Let’s get back to the matter at hand and tell me how you know this man called the Professor. The first one to answer gets the water first.”

  Steven shouted, “He had a man stalking us, I mean Dan, the first night we got here to Italy.”

  John shouted over him, “He was a little guy sent to take pictures of Dan and report back to the Professor. The little guy tried to choke Dan last night.”

  Tex said, “I can’t imagine why. Yeah, that guy is the Professor’s legs and shoes and his personal GoPro camera. His name is Emilio something. He’s nothing. What happened next?”

  Steven shouted, “After you took Dan, Emilio came by, told us you kidnapped Dan and he showed us pictures of Dan partying with an alleged prostitute…”

  Dan shouted, “Alleged nothing! She was definitely a whore!”

  “And the little guy pulled a gun on us and drove us to meet the Professor!” John shouted, wanting to beat Steven to the bottle of water. “We met the Professor who told us about the Orb of Genoa he was searching for. We told him we didn’t have it. He fed us a nice dinner.”

  “And he introduced us to his researcher, Dr. Sallie DuBois,” Steven shouted and wished he had not.

  John added, “And then Dan called us, telling us he had escaped and we needed to come to get him. And, uh, the Professor’s men drove us to get Dan. Dan told his story about your kidnapping him and forcing him to perform surgery on drug mules and the Professor let us go.”

  “He let you go?” Asked Tex over the phone.

  All three American doctors screamed, “YES!”

  “I see,” Tex said. “Sergio, give each of our guests bottles of water. They have earned it.”

  “Yes, boss,” Sergio said and shouted to his men down the hall and stepped into what the doctors imagined was another room.

  There was a light in the other, unseen room, which someone had knocked to the floor because it gave the men huge shadows on the walls. The doctors counted at least two men back there, but there might have been more. The shadows kept moving.

  A minute later, Sergio handed a bottle of water to each of the American doctors. They guzzled the water, draining the bottles within seconds.

  “Are the doctors all right?” Tex asked.

  They nodded almost in unison. Steven asked, “You don’t happen to have any aspirin back there, do you?”

  Sergio shook his head and said, “No, sorry.”

  “What about more water?” John asked.

  “Yes, more water would be fine,” Sergio said, and spoke to his men in Italian.

  One of his men brought out three more bottles of water and distributed them to the dehydrated doctors. These bottles were still closed and unmolested. A minute later, John noticed it was getting harder to concentrate.

  “What did you give us?” Steven asked.

  “What do you mean?” Tex asked.

  “I mean… what was in the first bottle of water you gave us?”

  “You can tell them, Sergio,” Tex said. “It will not matter in a minute or two. They are not going anywhere for a few hours.”

  Sergio’s smile was like that of a shark. “We gave each of you a drop of common lysergic acid.”

  “LSD,” Steven whispered.

  Tex asked, “Who has the Orb of Genoa?”

  “The Professor does,” John said, and he felt as though he could not stop himself from confessing.

  “How do you know the Professor has it?”

  “We saw him with it,” John said. “Why do you want it so badly?”

  “Our client wants it.”

  “Your client?”

  “Yes, sometimes we take outside clients and we can’t appear weak or incompetent by not delivering on our promises, can we? Now, you witnessed the Professor with the orb?”

  “Yes, we did,” John said.

  “Did he have it in a ring?”

  “No, he was playing with it… like a child with a new toy.”

  “How did the Professor get the orb?”

  “Dan sold it to him,” Steven confessed and immediately wished he had not.

  “Steven, you asshole!” Dan shouted.

  “I KNEW IT!” Tex screamed over the phone. “I just fucking knew it! Sergio, kill Dr. Carter!”

  “Gladly,” Sergio said.

  As Sergio was about to snap Dan’s neck, they heard a commotion in the other room. John smelled a scent he recognized. He got a better whiff and realized it was perfume, but whose, Dr. DuBois?

  In the back room, the doctors heard the men screaming in Italian. From the towering shadows in the other room, the three doctors believed they saw someone morph into a dragon.

  “Oh my God, is that a dragon?” Steven screamed. “Or is it the drugs? Please, John, say it is the drugs and I’ll believe you!”

  “I see the dragon too! There is a dragon back there!”

  Sergio stepped away from Dan and
walked to the back room. He, too, saw the shadow of an enormous dragon on the wall.

  John screamed and confessed, “Oh my God, this is exactly like my dreams! I saw a dragon! I saw a dragon in my dreams on the plane right before we killed Dan!”

  “Wait? What? You assholes killed me? Oh my God, am I really dead?”

  They watched as the shadow dragon attacked and killed the Sabella gangsters in the back room. The men in the back room screamed.

  Sergio ran to the back room to help his comrades. He screamed and was suddenly silenced. The doctors saw his blood splatter on the walls and screamed.

  “What is going on there?” Tex shouted. “I demand to know what is happening there!”

  “A dragon killed and ate your henchmen,” John screamed, horrified and incredulous.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Tex asked. “Oh, right, the drugs. Shit. Where the hell is Sergio?”

  “The dragon ate him!” John shouted. “Why did you send a dragon?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Dr. John Miller!” John screamed.

  After John screamed his name, the dragon stopped.

  The shadows seemed to transform into a woman, and the three doctors could hear the steps of her heels echoing through the basement and coming closer. The terrified the doctors witnessed this woman morphed into a dragon again and kill them as she had killed the gangsters.

  The woman stepped into the light and John gasped. It was Teresa, who smiled when she saw him. She grabbed his chin and said, “Il mio bel uomo.” Which meant, ‘My handsome man.’ She kissed him on the lips.

  “Tell me what is going on?” Tex said over the phone. “Who is there? Who is speaking?”

  Teresa picked up the phone and said, “This is the Contessa di Vincenzo. I do not approve of your methods nor your results. I am very disappointed and displeased. Your superiors will hear about this. You have failed us and you shall pay. Ciao.”

  Before Tex could plead his case, Teresa ended the call.

  Behind Teresa was her primary bodyguard, Bernardo, an immense, six-foot-nine-inch brute with dead eyes, and an ugly misshapen face.

  “Holy shit!” Dan cried out. “It’s the fucking Frankenstein monster!”

  Teresa told her bodyguard and her other henchmen, who were also misshaped brutes, “Bring these young men to the car. Do not harm them. They will be our guests.”

  She wrapped her arms around John and said, “This one sits next to me in my car.”

  They nodded without question and hoisted the drugged and scared doctors off their chairs.

  “Hey, Dan?” Steven asked.

  “What?”

  “Are we really being saved by a dragon lady who has the Frankenstein monster as a pet?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “Is it because of the LSD?”

  “Probably.”

  The bodyguards led Dan and Steven by the arm into the back of a stretch Hummer. The other hulking bodyguards sat next to Steven and Dan.

  “Is it okay, if I take a nap?” Dan asked.

  The lead bodyguard nodded.

  Dan smiled, said, “Thanks,” and he nodded off. Steven did the same and it was a more than an hour’s drive to back to Teresa’s castle.

  *

  In the lead stretch Hummer, John sat in the back alone with Teresa.

  “Are you hurt?” Teresa asked. Her hand was on John’s leg.

  “No, but they drugged us.”

  “They did? Oh, you poor baby. What did those monsters give you?”

  “They said it was LSD so we would answer their questions.”

  “Did you answer them?”

  “Yes, we did.”

  “What did that bad man ask you about?”

  “He asked me about the Orb of Genoa.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That Dan stole it because he thought a man named Tex would kill him and it was his only bargaining chip. A man called the Professor took me and my other friend to his house and held us captive until Dan called and he told us to rescue him. Dan sold the Orb of Genoa to the Professor who brought us back to the hotel.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  John nodded hard as a child would.

  “Can I ask you a question?” John asked.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Did you really change into a dragon and kill those men?”

  Teresa giggled and touched his face gently. “My beautiful boy, you are on a heavy narcotic. Which do you think is the truth?”

  John laughed, and Teresa laughed too. “It was the drugs.”

  “You’re cute when you’re… oh, you’re just cute. But you should sleep now.”

  On her suggestion, John drifted to sleep and she held both of her hands on the sides of his head. John slept for the rest of the trip back to her castle.

  Chapter Fifteen: The Castle of the Count and Contessa

  The doctors awoke when they arrived at the castle. When the stretch Hummers stopped, everyone piled out and Teresa gave orders.

  “Take them to guest rooms in the east wing. Carry this one to my bedroom.”

  Her large, lumbering minions did not question her demands nor question why she wanted a young, handsome American doctor take to her bedroom. They obeyed.

  Bernardo brought John to her room, while the other robust servants brought Dan and Steven to one of the guest bedrooms.

  Teresa removed John’s clothes before she disrobed and climbed into bed with him.

  “You poor, poor thing,” she said caressing his cheek. “I had no idea someone involved you with those stupid and evil men. If I had known, I would have come sooner.” She kissed John’s stubbly cheek and held him. “There was no need for someone as precious as you suffer at their hands,” Teresa said and swore in Italian.

  “My husband… he did not… he is so desperate to hold onto whatever small power he assumes he has, but it is true, it is slipping through his fingers. He has become a sad, pathetic man, who has to lower himself by hiring criminals to do his dirty work. I warned him not to hire such men of low repute. I told him there would be consequences, but he did not listen. Now, these evil men killed that little shop girl for a necklace given to her by her boyfriend. They would never miss the money necessary to buy it from the shop girl; more than she would earn during her lifetime. Those awful men killed her for it. I do not feel sorry for their deaths.”

  “I brought your friends,” she said. “Even the one who stole the emerald from us. He assumed he was stealing from that horrible, little toad of a man and not us. He supposed he was helping you. That is why your friend still lives. He is rather resourceful and cunning. Stealing the orb and escaping only to sell it to our competitor to stay alive for the moment showed some ingenuity.”

  In his sleep, John whispered, “Dan is a lunatic,” and John snored.

  Teresa laughed, as John slept. “That may be true,” She whispered and ran her fingers through his cropped, blond hair. “I could do this for eternity,” she whispered in his ear. John smiled in his sleep.

  “Oh, what the hell,” Teresa said and shrugged. She waved a hand in front of John’s face and waved her hands a few inches above John’s body, but never touching and whispered in a combination of Greek and Latin. A few seconds later, John blinked rapidly and then his eyes opened and stayed open. His eyes adjusted and he was shocked to learn he was naked in bed with Teresa again.

  He said, “I never dreamed I would see you again.”

  Teresa smiled too and kissed him.

  “How do you feel, my boy?”

  “You cured my headache, but my tongue feels like a cat’s.”

  “Well, we can fix that.”

  She handed him a glass of water.

  “Perhaps I can get you some coffee and something to eat. You need to your rebuild your strength. There is much to discuss before dawn.”

  John yawned and asked, “What happens at dawn?”

  “My husband and I are leaving for some e
arly morning business but we will return in the evening. Tomorrow, you and your friends will need to rest up and regain your strength. It will be a long night for all of us.”

  “Why? What happens tomorrow night?”

  “Tomorrow is the la vigilia del drago, the eve of the dragon, when the stars are aligned in the right places for the first time in seventy years and we cannot miss it again.”

  “Again?”

  “Yes, we missed a smaller one over twenty years ago, much to the dismay of my husband and myself.”

  “How old are you?”

  Teresa giggled and wagged a finger. “Oh, no, a woman never reveals her age.”

  John smiled and then asked, “What do we do on the la vigilia del drago?”

  “It is a sacred night when people like myself, my husband, the Professor, and a few others partake in a rather… old ritual in which we show our appreciation for… all the riches we enjoy on this plane of existence.”

  “I understand,” he lied. He had no idea what to expect.

  “First, I need you to get ready for this evening.”

  “What about my friends?”

  “They are sound asleep in a guest bedroom. Those beastly men drugged and tortured you and your friends to get answers they already knew before I could get to you.”

  “Oh, did you notice the dragon that was there?”

  She giggled. “No, I noticed no dragon. Let’s get you up and into the shower and feed you. My servants are preparing a special meal for you.”

  “If you insist,” John smiled playfully.

  She stepped out of bed, took him by the hand, and led him to the large marble and glass octagonal shower in the master bedroom. Under the hot water, they made love again for several minutes. Afterwards, they dried themselves, dressed, and headed to the kitchen where a setting for one of chicken, red potatoes, and vegetables was for John.

  “Please eat. You have spent a lot of energy, sexual energy, and you need to regain your strength.”

  “Aren’t you going to…?”

  “No, I dined this evening while you were asleep.”