Scales and Flames

by Catherine Banks

  Erik laughed.

  “For someone who seems so angry at the world all the time, you sure want to know a lot about me.”

  Mako stopped talking. She hadn’t meant to pepper him with questions. She just wanted to know more about dragons. And he was more likely to give her an answer than Akor was. She would not have asked anything if he had been human. Would she?

  “Don’t worry about it. I would have slept in the loft.”

  “The loft?” she couldn’t stop herself. “Where in all this building do you have space for a loft? The thing is only two stories high. Come on! What is wrong with this building?”

  Mako caught herself. She hadn’t meant to start on another tirade, but she couldn’t help it.

  Erik laughed at her again. “No wonder I like you. We are going to get along great.”

  Mako glared at the back of his head. “You are assuming a lot with that statement,” she growled at him.

  “I’m sure Akor has something planned for the two of us. I’ve been getting hints these last couple months. Mostly since those flyers went out for the pawn shop. He had something planned for both of us.”

  “Hang on. Are you saying he knew I was coming here? How in the world could he know?”

  “He told me that another dragon was coming and that she was going to be my mate.”

  “What!” Mako yelled.

  “He hasn’t confirmed that it is you. Chill out. He said a dragon was coming at first and then that my mate was coming to me. I assumed they were the same dragon.”

  “How would he even have put that together in his head?”

  “He’s a time dragon. I’m sorry he froze you. I didn’t know he would do that. You really shouldn’t have tried to attack him.”

  “A time dragon?” Mako actually stopped walking and stared at Erik. “There’s no such thing anymore.”

  Erik looked at her quizzically. “Well I don’t know what you would call it, but he can stop time and rewind it and all sorts of crazy stuff. Temporal physics dragon doesn’t sound right.”

  Mako was shaking her head at him.

  “No. No. They are not supposed to exist anymore.”

  “But he is… one…” Erik told her doubtfully.

  “No, you don’t understand. Surely, he’s told you there aren’t many dragons left. If he was actually a time dragon, he would have been asked to help keep us in power. It was said the Red Dragon council put the spell on us for human bodies because there weren’t enough time dragons left to fight a battle. They are a legend now. We are stronger than the humans who rule the planet. He could use his time abilities to take us back to a time when we were in charge. Or to stop the humans from moving forward. Or so many things.” Mako shook her head. She was only guessing at what time dragons could actually do. When the spell was cast for dragons to turn to human form for protection, the Red Dragon council blamed it on them. The time dragons were supposed to keep the humans from getting out of control in the first place. It made sense if she filled in the gaps. She wasn’t even sure how many kinds of dragons there were left.

  “I knew dragons were scarce. I didn’t know that they employed themselves to save their own race. Obviously, it didn’t work. Besides, if any other dragon wanted to recruit him, it’s not like he’s hiding very well. He’s got a few friends that I’m sure are purebloods. Any dragon can find this place. You were called here, you know, that right?”

  “No. I chose to come here. And I’m not going to be anyone’s mate. Can you even have a mate? You are a half-blood.”

  Erik sighed. “Akor can explain it to you better than I can.”

  Mako groaned in frustration. “If I hear Akor’s name one more time, I swear I’m going to have to beat someone up.”

  Erik laughed at her. “Alright, alright. Let’s go talk to him though before you do. Since you can’t leave here until he lets you anyway.”

  Mako raised her hands to pretend to strangle Erik as he walked away. Why would she be able to do something simple like walk out the front door? Whatever power Akor had over this place, it was one she couldn’t figure out. There had to be an explanation besides the alleged fact that he was a time dragon. And how dare he assume that she was anyone’s mate. She could pick who she wanted, and Erik was not a top candidate at the moment.

  Upstairs in the diner, Akor was leaning against the counter in the kitchen. Mako found it funny they could walk through the wall that used to be there.

  “Two questions. Where are my shoes? And what are you?” Mako blinked at him, stunned. Why had she said that? She meant to ask him when she could leave.

  Akor was grinning. “You will get your shoes back when I know you won’t try and run. You won’t need them where you are going anyway.”

  “And where exactly do you think I am going?” Mako glared at him, crossing her arms across her chest.

  “With Erik. He’ll show you the way.”

  Now it was Erik’s turn to stare at him dumbfounded.

  “Where do I need to take her?” he said, clearing his throat.

  “You will know. It’s in the other building.”

  Mako willed Erik to protest. Erik wasn’t taking the hint and Mako fought the urge to scream at him. Erik wasn’t going to get out of here either if he didn’t learn to stand up to Mr. Sweeny Todd wannabe. Maybe he was a prisoner as much as she was.

  “How do I get this necklace thing off?” She finally interjected when she realized that he wasn’t going to stand up for himself.

  “You can’t.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You can’t. He can.”

  “We tried that,” she deadpanned.

  “Not the right way you did not.”

  He handed Erik a shot glass with bright blue liquid inside. Mako shook her head and put her hand up to refuse. She wasn’t about to drink something he handed her after all this. Erik drained his on the spot.

  “Really, you are going to drink it?” she accused.

  “Why not? It hasn’t killed me yet.”

  “What is it?” she asked Akor.

  “Just drink it. I left you something over there,” he said motioning towards the greenhouse. “Leave me alone till you figure it out.”

  Erik turned to walk away and Mako was torn. She wanted to hit the older dragon, but she also didn’t want to get frozen again. She wanted to yell at him, but that would do no good. Nothing ruffled his calm.

  “You still have to drink it,” he ordered.

  Mako laughed at him and turned to walk away. She decided to follow Erik. Maybe he had more answers on why Akor was being so cryptic. She took all of three steps when she realized she was holding an empty shot glass in her left hand. She swallowed hard and tried to figure out if she remembered drinking the content of it. She had definitely swallowed some of it. It didn’t taste like liquor, but the flavor was not something she could place. She whirled around.

  “How did you do that?” she asked.

  Akor laughed and shooed her towards the greenhouse. Mako was starting to agree with Erik and his not arguing with Akor. Erik had to know what it was. He said it hadn’t killed him yet. She didn’t want to be around Akor if she could help it.

  Six

  “What is wrong with you?” she demanded as they rounded the corner of the building to go back in the greenhouse. She didn’t feel very intimidating in her thigh socks and fuzzy blue bunny slippers.

  “Me? You are the one with the necklace on who tried to attack him. He’s mad at you and he’s taking it out on both of us.”

  “Now you choose to have a backbone.”

  “I want to get that thing off your neck as much as you do, Mako. He’s an old dragon. I’ve learned that if you argue with Akor, you better be in for the long haul. He doesn’t back down easily and I would rather waste my energy trying to get you where you need to go than forcing him to tell us something.”

  “What did we drink?”

  “It’s an elixir he makes.”

  Mako threw her hands up in t
he air. He did have an apothecary down in that basement of everything.

  “What does it do?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “What do you suggest?” Mako asked, defeated. She wasn’t going to win an argument with either one of them. They were back in the greenhouse now and she felt something was off. She was so awed with this place the first time, though that it was possible she missed the feeling.

  “I have lived with him for a few decades, trust me on this. If he wants us to figure this out together, it’s best to do it together. The more you fight him the worse it can get.”

  Right inside the door to the greenhouse, there was a wooden porch swing. Erik stopped and stared at it.

  “What’s with the swing?” Mako finally had to ask.

  Erik shook his head. “It’s new. I didn’t put it in here. Get on.”

  Mako grumbled to herself as she sat down with Erik on the swing. What did she have to lose now? He was excited about something. She could feel it coming off him in waves. The effect it had on her was intoxicating. She couldn’t help but be excited with him.

  “What are we doing?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Mako sat next to him quietly for a moment before she started looking around. The elixir was drugged, or she really was losing it. The green of the garden was starting to fade together.

  “Erik is this supposed to happen?” she asked him, rubbing her eyes.

  “Shush. Listen,” he told her. “Can’t you hear it?”

  Mako shook her head.

  “No, I can’t. I feel dizzy though.”

  “Don’t concentrate on the garden. Concentrate beyond the garden. You will be less dizzy that way.”

  “Beyond the garden,” Mako reiterated slowly. They were both crazy. She didn’t feel drunk or drugged. It was only her vision that was blurred.

  “Mostly,” Erik said. He was so distracted and Mako didn’t feel like repeating herself.

  The green was starting to blur together. Mako sat still on the swing with Erik. She tried crossing her eyes. She tried staring at one spot until it became focused and then blurry again. She didn’t understand what he meant by look beyond the garden.

  “There it is!” Erik exclaimed.

  “What is?”

  “Look at the base of the tree. It’s the stone sundial.”

  There was no skylights or windows. Why would there be a sundial in this garden?

  Before she could voice her question, Erik answered for her. “That’s supposed to be in the shop. It’s never been here before.”

  “We can’t exactly tell time with all the sunlight that doesn’t come in here. And sundials don’t move, Erik, unless someone moves them. I still can’t see a sundial,” Mako said.

  Erik took her hand and walked her up to the tree. The closer they got, the clearer the tree looked. There was something odd about it. Directly underneath she really could see a beam of sunlight. She blinked up at the roof. There was no skylight. So how was there sun?

  Erik walked all the way around the sundial. Mako stood where they had entered the makeshift clearing. In fact, it looked like whoever had placed this here, had cut out a perfect circle in the grass around the tree, and cleaned up their mess. Erik didn’t seem to notice that someone had messed with his garden. Yes, he saw the sundial, but he was not taking in his surroundings. Mako had the disturbing thought that she was the one hallucinating. She was going to pay attention to it for him, to make sure. Erik may be young, and a half-blood, but he had been nice to her. She was finding herself liking him more by the hour. Still, her brain was screaming at her to get out while she still could.

  Mako watched Erik place his hand on the stone sundial. As soon as he did, the ground vibrate.

  “Erik?”

  He didn’t seem to hear her.

  “Erik take your hand off that now!” Mako yelled at him.

  Again, he didn’t seem to hear her. Mako didn’t want to go into the perfect circle of grass. The ground was still vibrating, but only inside the circle. Erik wasn’t responding to her. It was like he couldn’t even hear her. Maybe he couldn’t? The thought occurred to her on the back of another revelation. She was going to have to go get him. She was standing on perfectly level ground. He was standing in what was about to be an earthquake inside the circle, and he wasn’t panicking.

  Mako desperately wanted a good reason to go in and drag him out. This necklace was not enough for her to risk her life to save him. She’d leave it on for the rest of her life instead of choosing death.

  “Mako where are you?” Erik asked.

  “Right here Erik,” she said. Why couldn’t he see her? Even as she asked herself, she knew it was because she wasn’t in the circle.

  “I can’t believe I’m about to do this for someone I just met,” Mako said to herself.

  She stepped one blue bunny slipper in the circle and she felt the ground shift beneath her. She could tell the air was vibrating now, not the ground. It was like the circle had been cut apart from the rest of the garden. She had only ever heard stories about anything like this. Akor must have done it. He displaced an entire area of time. This was definitely not the garden or even the greenhouse. They were somewhere else.

  Instead of grass beneath her feet, there was a sandy stone altar. Atop the altar, there was the sundial. Erik stood next to it with his hand on the dial.

  “I’ve never seen him bring over something this big before,” Erik mused. “Normally, Akor shifts little stuff from place to place to mess with me. It’s never taken me anywhere else.”

  “Maybe Akor didn’t do this?” Mako suggested.

  Erik shook his head. “He’s been hinting at something big for a while now. He had a hand in this.”

  Mako swallowed the lump in her throat. She thought she knew what they had ended up in. She recognized the base of the structures and columns set up she had seen many times before. She wasn’t sure which temple they had ended up in. She knew that a dragon had definitely lived here. Yet, that was impossible. They were back in one of the dragon temples. You would have to rework the fabric of time itself. The temples were long gone.

  “Do you not know this place?” she asked tentatively.

  Erik shook his head. His face lit up like a kid at Christmas. “Do you?” he asked excitedly.

  Mako nodded. “A long time ago, before we had to have human forms there were temples for each dragon family. I was born in one in South America. Then the temples were sacked and burned. I was actually raised in a small village after that by humans who worshipped me.”

  “What’s the purpose of the temples?” Erik asked.

  “I assumed we were supposed to live in them, but I didn’t get the chance. I’m sure most held treasures and possessions of the dragons they were supposed to house. They weren’t just for sleeping. If there were enough time dragons we could go back to living in one of these.” Mako wanted to reach her hand out and touch the wall. She was hallucinating, right? She wouldn’t be able to actually touch one of the columns next to them.

  “Why would you want to live in one of these? It sounds boring.”

  Mako’s hand touched cool stone and a chill crept up her spine. There was something else in here with them.

  “We have to get out of here,” she whispered.

  “No, we have to explore this place. There’s something in here to help you-” Mako dove to where Erik was and put a hand over his mouth cutting him off.

  “Be quiet,” she hissed in his ear. “If Akor really is a time dragon we could actually be in someone else’s temple. I know I’m a dragon and you are a half dragon. Do you really want to wake up a dragon of the past who thinks he’s a god?”

  Erik shook his head as well as he could beneath her hold, and she let go.

  “There still should be something in here for that,” he whispered, pointing at her necklace.

  Mako nodded. “We can look, but please. I don’t want to die.”

  Another thought occurred to Mako th
at froze her in her tracks. She hadn’t shifted into a dragon in a long time. When she did, she had gone into hiding. How effectively could she fight another dragon right now? She was out of practice.

  “Mako, what’s wrong?” Erik whispered.

  Mako didn’t know how to explain it to him without sounding stupid. “Can you shift into a dragon?” she asked him.

  Erik shook his head.

  “Crapbaskets. We are getting out of here. I’ll keep the stupid necklace. Does this thing take us back?” she asked glancing back at the sundial.

  “Probably not, Akor likes to make things extra difficult to figure out. I doubt he would give us an exit.”

  Mako sighed. “So, we have to find something to get this off, then don’t we?”

  Erik nodded.

  Mako looked around the pedestal. She realized the only thing that was giving off any light was her necklace. She tried to cover it with one hand, but it still glowed. The now pale-amber light showed high vaulted ceilings, tall enough that they couldn’t see the top. The only door they could discern was at the far left of the pedestal.

  “This way, and please let’s get this thing and leave.”

  Erik nodded and followed her lead out the door. The next room was lit slightly more. There were braziers on the walls at various intervals. All of them were burning.

  Someone must have been here recently, Mako thought. They were in trouble.

  “Look. It’s showing us the way,” Erik whispered to her so quietly that she almost didn’t catch it. She only knew he spoke because he reached over her shoulder to grab her necklace. Mako felt his power react to hers. Her dragon clawed its way to the surface, fast. Lightning arched from Erik’s body to hers.

  “Embrace it, Mako,” Erik said.

  He wasn’t whispering anymore. Was he crazy? His words were right. She was not human. She was a dragon. They were in a dragon’s temple.

  Mako knelt on the floor. The magic inhabiting her body radiated outward, protecting her from the pain she would have felt otherwise. Her clothes melded to her body. This was part of the spell. Shoving a dragon into a human’s body was no small feat. The Red Dragon council had made the transition as easy as possible. Light glowed all around her, blotting out her necklace. Her limbs were actually growing outward to become the size of her dragon body. New bronze scales erupted down her arms and back. Ridges ripped through her spinal cord. She wasn’t expecting it, but her tail knocked her off balance when it came out of nowhere. Her neck bent forward and then grew outward. She could feel the muscles stretching.