Vixen

by Finley Aaron

  Another thing is that this woman used to be a dragon, but she made a serum that could change a dragon into only human, and then my mom turned her own serum against her and made her only human.

  That’s why her eyes are weird-colored, but not jewel toned like dragon eyes.

  And that’s the most reassuring thing I realize—that this woman, who was a dragon turned only human, has human-looking eyes. But my eyes still look like dragon eyes, so even though I still haven’t managed to do any dragon things, I must still, on some level, be a dragon.

  That’s the only reassuring thing. The other thing I realize is both confusing and frightening all at once. And that is: they’ve brought her back with them. The white witch, the evil mad scientist, the bogeyman of my childhood, the greatest enemy I’ve ever known we had.

  They brought her here on my brother’s back, and now she’s standing on my parents’ balcony.

  It’s Eudora.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  As I’m standing there, realizing all these things at once, I hear footsteps behind me. My mom must have seen the dragons arriving, as well, because she hurries through the door, stops short, and backs up a couple of paces, ducking inside the door frame.

  I’m tempted to do the same.

  Eudora doesn’t even look like she’s in shackles. Of course, since she’s no longer technically a dragon, I suppose she wouldn’t need shackles, maybe just handcuffs or something simple. But it doesn’t appear they’re using any sort of restraint on her at all.

  It’s like she’s not here as our prisoner, but as our guest.

  Eudora unties a scarf from her head, letting her long hair fall free. “I could use a good, stiff drink.” She announces, her voice accented and gravelly, like that of someone who’s smoked their whole life, which technically, if you count blowing fire, I guess she rather has. I recognize her voice from two weeks ago when Ion carried me into her presence. Now as then, fear pulses through my veins.

  Dad crosses the balcony toward Mom, but otherwise, nobody makes a move.

  “Oh, I know you all don’t drink, but surely you can find me some alcohol somewhere? I’d love some wine. Perhaps a nice burgundy?” Between the gravelly timbre and her accent, Eudora’s voice reminds me of Eva Gabor’s. Come to think of it, with her blond hair and beauty, and the echo of an old-world attitude about her, she reminds me a lot of the silver screen actress.

  Except, you know, terrifying.

  “I’ll see what I can find.” Rilla is the first to respond. She darts past me into the house. I’m nearly certain we don’t have any burgundy wine or any other potable alcohol inside, since dragons can’t drink alcoholic beverages. Seriously. Alcohol is dangerously flammable, and since dragons breathe fire, drinking is a major explosion hazard. Fumes and flames don’t mix.

  But since Eudora’s not a dragon anymore, I suppose she can drink all she wants.

  “Allow me to make proper introductions.” Ion steps forward like a gentleman, even though he’s only wearing boxer shorts, and his scars are gleaming in the morning sunlight. This isn’t his home, but I guess it’s fitting for him to take on a hosting role, considering he’s the only one on anything remotely like friendly terms with everyone here, and he’s also the only person who doesn’t look petrified. “Eudora, this is—”

  “I’ve met everyone here.” Eudora cuts him off and strides toward me while pointing to my mom. “Ilsa, who mortalized me. And this one,” she grabs my wrist, lifts my arm up high, and runs a finger down the length of my yagi scar.

  Her fingers are cold. Her touch spears a reminder of pain down every nerve cell that branches from the scar.

  “This one belongs to me. What is your name, Child?”

  I can’t talk. Eudora thinks I belong to her? It’s that life for life thing again, isn’t it? The ten days are up and she’s here to claim me? So, instead of fighting her and destroying her yagi, my family members brought her here to get me? I’m so confused.

  “Her name is Zilpha,” Ion says once it’s clear I’m not going to answer.

  “Is she mute?” Eudora asks. “I wasn’t expecting damaged goods.”

  “She can speak. And she’s not yours,” Ion corrects her. “Remember our deal?”

  “So many deals.” Eudora sighs as though the thought of them is exhausting. “She will be mine. You will fail, and she will be mine. Oh, but it is worth the wait. This shall be amusing.” She drops my arm.

  I kind of want to punch her, but I restrain myself. Partly it’s because I am not the kind of person who goes around punching people. I’m civilized, right? She’s the evil one. And also, I’m curious about what she’s talking about, and she’s more likely to explain further if I don’t give her a fat lip first.

  Or, you know, knock her unconscious.

  My mom’s been whispering a flurry of questions to my dad, behind me. Now Dad steps forward and says, “Eudora has graciously agreed to come here and explain to all of us the situation with the yagi mechanizations, which are far more complicated than we first imagined. But for now, we’re all tired and hungry and could use a few moments to freshen up. Please, everyone, come inside.”

  While Dad’s explanation eases a few of my fears, it also makes me dreadfully curious. I hold tight to Ion’s hand and we duck into a corner while everyone else sorts themselves out. Even though we’re technically royalty, we don’t have servants around the house because we believe in equality and self-sufficiency and all that, so Mom and Dad hold a quick conversation about what we’re supposed to feed all these people.

  Meanwhile, I’m looking Ion over and trying to determine if he’s been injured, or if he’s just tired. Before I can ask him about it, he leans close to my ear.

  “Don’t worry about what Eudora said. She believes what she wants to believe. We need her intel on the yagi.”

  “So, she’s going to tell you where they are and how to destroy them?” I may be jumping to conclusions, but it’s the most rational explanation I can imagine. “Why not just stay in Siberia?”

  “The yagi operation is not in Siberia. It’s at her ex-husband’s place in Switzerland.”

  I might have sort of staggered backward in something like shock, but no more has Ion spoken than my mom, who’s finished talking to my dad about food, takes my arm and says something about how we need to prepare a meal. She pulls me away from Ion and I go, because I get the feeling none of this is going to make any sense until Eudora explains it properly, and that’s not going to happen until we have food.

  Mom and I are halfway to the door when Rilla returns with a bottle of wine and four members of the security force—pretty much the same guys who guarded Ion before.

  But this time, she leads them over to Eudora and explains that they’re personal valets who are going to escort her to her room and see to her needs.

  Rilla is a smart one. She’s super quiet and studious and most the time you don’t even notice her, but sometimes, like right now, she does things that make you realize she’s absolutely brilliant. She probably paged the guards and told them to bring a bottle of wine from a shop in the village.

  So while the guards lead Eudora happily away with her wine, Mom puts Felix in charge of taking Ion to the guest room to freshen up (like a real guest and not an enemy—the distinction is not lost on me), and while Rilla goes to see to her own freshening up, Mom and I head to the kitchen.

  Well, technically we go through the kitchen to the pasture behind the kitchen garden. On our way there, we discuss what we should serve. We both agree that, after flying all the way to Siberia and back, everybody’s probably plenty hungry, so we decide to go ahead and roast a few cattle.

  There’s just the little problem that I can’t breathe fire or, you know, change into a dragon and pluck up a steer while simultaneously slitting its throat with my talons like we usually do. So, pretty much I can’t do the things my mother asked me to come along with her to do.

  And she’s going to notice.

  “Do you want to
round up the animals or start the fire?” Mom asks.

  “I’ll work on the fire,” I answer, thinking I’ve got a better chance of getting some flames going by rubbing two sticks together, than I do of carrying a bunch of heavy cattle around while in human form (not that I couldn’t maybe lift a small cow—my brother-in-law Ed carries heavy bulls around—but my mother would certainly wonder why I wasn’t doing things the easy way).

  So while she goes to get the meat, I get the wood ready in the fire pits and set up the spits, and look around frantically for something to light the fire. We don’t keep matches on hand because we’re dragons. And the weather’s been mild so we don’t have any fires going inside the house. We have candles, but they aren’t lit.

  Mom’s already dropped off two carcasses by the time I remember—the cooktop in the kitchen has an electric start, or something like that. It’s got a gas flame, anyway, and it lights itself when you turn the knob in the correct position (although frankly, half the time we just crank on the gas and breathe fire on it to get it going, but don’t share that little fact around because there’s a good chance it voids the warranty).

  While Mom flies off to get another cow, I dart inside, grab a candle from the dining room, light it at the stove, turn the stove off, and hold my hand to protect the flame as I head back outside as quickly as I dare.

  I light the fires, hide the candle, and am innocently skinning a steer by the time my mom returns with the third animal. The fires are only just getting going, and to be honest, they look rather pathetic.

  That was close. Too close.

  I’m not going to be able to keep this secret forever. In fact, I half expect Mom to ask me why my fires are so pitiful, but she’s mega-focused on the work ahead of us and doesn’t say a thing.

  Between the two of us, Mom and I get the beef roasted. By then Felix and Ion have joined us, and they help carry the meat inside to the dining room.

  Eudora and her guards are just arriving. She’s got a wine glass in one hand and the bottle in the other. The guards each have a glass, as well. It looks like she’s been sharing. At least, I hope she has, because half the bottle is gone and if she consumed it all herself, that might impact her ability to give us accurate information.

  Rilla and Dad have arrived, too, and set the table with our nicest dishes and linen napkins. They’ve pulled out various relish items as side dishes—I think mostly to give themselves something to do to feel useful, and so the table will look festive, not because dragons typically eat much more than meat.

  Dad directs Eudora to a seat at the foot of the table. I overhear him call it a seat for honored guests, or something. Anyway, Eudora looks pleased, but that may have more to do with the bottle in her hands than my dad’s words.

  She brushes past me, still wearing the gold and ivory brocade cassock coat she had on when she climbed off my brother’s back earlier. She’s got some wide-legged pants under it. It’s a unique style, kind of old-fashioned, though if she’s as many hundreds of years old as people claim she is, the outfit is pretty progressive for her.

  With two beef carcasses in roasting pans keeping warm over the cooktop on low, Felix places a roast steer in the middle of the table. Everyone finds a seat while my dad carves up the animal and serves out enormous hunks of meat. Thankfully, by the time he’s done serving, the mammoth beast has been reduced in size to the point that I can actually see my brother and sister across the table.

  Ion is beside me, my mom on my other side, and the guards are seated near Eudora, which is handy, I guess, since they’re the only ones sharing her wine.

  “Well, Ram?” Eudora eyes my dad from the opposite end of the table. “I suppose the telling of the tale should begin with you and Ion.”

  Dad and Ion exchange looks. It’s funny. A few days ago they were ready to kill each other. I still wouldn’t say they like or trust each other, but they’ve learned to work together.

  They’re communicating, if only with steely glances.

  It’s something.

  Dad clears his throat and begins in a solemn voice. “Ion and I went to Siberia with the intention of destroying the means of making the yagi. However, neither of us knew where this operation was housed or how to find it. Given all the variables—our lack of information, the fact that Ion has never found a clue to its whereabouts in all the years he’s lived there, the sheer number of yagi we might encounter while trying to locate it—we decided the most expedient option was to ask Eudora where it was. And so we did.” Dad stuffs a large bite of beef into his mouth, while giving Eudora a look that seems to indicate she’s to take the story up at this point.

  Eudora is sipping her wine and watching my father, and not talking.

  Ion swallows the bite in his mouth and picks up the tale. “We went to Eudora. She was expecting me to arrive at any time, though she assumed I’d bring her Zilpha, not Ram.”

  “And I wasn’t amused by the switch, either.” Eudora cackles. It’s a gravelly cackle. “Zilpha is much more useful for the project I had in mind.”

  Ion had opened his mouth as though to continue talking, but Eudora’s words clearly catch him off guard. After a moment of palpable tension, Ion asks, “What did you have in mind?”

  I’m curious about her answer, too—mostly so I can avoid whatever it is, especially since the phrase life for life makes it sound like I won’t survive. I suppress a shudder as Eudora cackles again, this time far too gleefully.

  “My plan is not so different from your plan.” Eudora presses the rim of her wine glass to her lips, but does not tip it back or drink. She may be trying to draw attention to her lips, which are seriously cushy-looking and full, and no doubt garnered her a lot of male interest in her lifetime. “Do you know why I created the water yagi?”

  The room has gone oddly silent. I’m looking around at my siblings, but Wren and Ed, who know the most about the water yagi, aren’t here. They’re in Scotland.

  Felix answers, “To kill dragons?”

  Eudora raises an eyebrow. She has extremely pointy eyebrows that arch up, then turn sharply back down again, like a couple of up-side-down Vs on her face. And unlike the hair on her head, which is blonde, her eyebrows are more of a medium brown, in stark contrast to her pale face. “I created the water yagi to kill a particular dragon, which is why I put so many of them in the Black Sea, near his seaside summer home. The rest of you, I was willing to risk as collateral damage, but in the end, it didn’t matter, because I didn’t hit my target.”

  “Who?” Mom asks.

  “My ex-husband. Though I suppose the term ex-husband implies there was a proper divorce, which there never was. My estranged husband, then.”

  “What’s his name?” Dad asks.

  “He’s gone by many names over the centuries. He’s a chameleon. He becomes whatever is most profitable in every age. He has worked with many factions, he has taken many sides, but he has only ever been on his own side, working for his own profit. He has deceived and betrayed many, including his own kind. Especially his own kind. Currently, he goes by the name Hans Wexler. It sounds so innocent, doesn’t it?”

  We’re quiet again. It’s an uncomfortable silence, fed, in great part, by the seething anger that simmers just under Eudora’s words. I half expect her to leap to her feet and smash the wine glass against the wall at any moment. But no, she’s much too self-controlled for that.

  To break the silence, I ask softly, “He’s a dragon?”

  “Yes. A dragon,” Eudora moves the stem of the wine glass between her fingers so that the glass swirls, spinning a whirlpool with the remaining wine. “A beautiful, cadet-blue dragon. He looks so trustworthy. So pure. He is anything but. Neutrality. That is what the Swiss call it. To hear them say the word, you would think it a synonym for peace. But for Hans, neutrality means not having to pick sides. No allegiance means staying true only to himself. In every war, he has profited from both sides, gouging prices during the wars, looting afterward, and always, charging interest.”<
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  Eudora sets her glass down. We’ve all been eating in nervous silence while she speaks. There’s a fat slab of nearly raw meat on her plate—she asked for it specifically when by father carved the beef. Now she uses her fork and knife to cut off a tiny, bleeding bite.

  Once she’s eaten the morsel, she dabs at her lips with the linen napkin, then continues. “Hans was attracted to me, not just because I am a dragon, not just because I am beautiful, but because my color is similar to gold. But even that, I do not believe to be the real reason. He loved me for my mind—or for what my mind could do. Together, we created the yagi. Do you know their true purpose? To track dragons. To find dragons. I never intended them to kill dragons. It’s because of that unfortunate tendency that, for all their usefulness, I have decided I want them gone.”

  “You want to destroy the yagi?” I’m surprised by the sound of my own voice. The question was burning inside me, and must have overcome the fear that’s been keeping my mouth (and everyone else’s) shut.

  Eudora regards the last of the wine in her glass. She’s making a pouting face which I again suspect is an old habit formed to emphasis her lips. “I hate to see them go. They have their uses. I was so proud of them once. So hopeful. But the more centuries you spend on this earth, the more you realize—change must come. The old must die for the new to rise. It is time. Find the yagi factory and destroy it.”

  While Eudora throws back the last of her wine, Ion says in a determined voice, “tell me where to find it, and I will go. I will destroy it.”

  Before he’s even quite done speaking, Eudora starts choking on her wine. For a couple of frantic seconds I’m afraid maybe Rilla poisoned it or something. But no, I think it was just her surprise at Ion’s words that sent some wine down the wrong pipe.

  “No, Ion, no.” Eudora gasps and clutches the table as though Ion’s suggestion is just too much. “You wouldn’t get anywhere with Hans. For one thing, I’ve gone to great lengths to convince him you’re dead. If he sees you alive, all my efforts will be for nothing. Besides, you’re a male. You won’t get anywhere with Hans.