by Bonnie Vanak
“He’s dangerous. And you allowed him in here?” Parker pulled her hand, yanking her away from Justin. “Stay away from him. Before you get burned.”
But I know how to create as well. I’m not totally destructive. Summoning all his power, Justin aimed magick at the scorched area and the blades of grass sprouted up. Everything was the same.
Except it was not.
Justin turned to the other Mages. “No harm done. Sorry.”
The father with the baby glared at him. “You need to leave here. Now.”
Awkward. He knew where he was not wanted.
People pointed and whispered. The father handed his daughter to a petite, scared-looking woman. Then he swaggered up to Justin. Big guy, barrel chest.
“We don’t want your kind here. You’re dangerous. Violent-tempered.” The Mage’s gaze hardened. “I have a wife and child to protect and if you get near them…”
Same as ever. Men with families, especially young ones, didn’t like him living in the same vicinity. They feared his temper, the aura of darkness and violence clinging to him like skin.
“I’ll go soon,” he said quietly, not glancing at Ariel.
“You’ll leave now,” the Mage blustered.
“Ralph, cut him some slack,” the petite woman chided.
Ralph joined his wife, stroked her hair with a loving gesture. But his gaze remained iron hard as he looked at Justin.
“Go, before we kick you out,” he said.
Parker smirked again. “You see, dragon? You’re not wanted here.”
But as he turned to Ariel, Ralph eyed her.
“You told Vern that this Justin would give us the secrets of the dragons. Not cause destruction.”
Justin felt as if someone had punched him in the gut. Now he did turn to look at Ariel. “What secret? Ariel, what did you promise them?”
No answer. He raised his voice. “Ariel, damnit, what the hell did you tell them?”
She didn’t look at him. Parker slid an arm around her shoulders. “Leave her alone.”
And then it all fell into place. Damnit, what a sheer fool he’d been.
“You took me here because you wanted to reveal the secret of the dragon cave. You used me, same as you did last year when you stopped me on the road and your father captured me.”
Ariel shook her head. “No, Justin, it’s not the same! He’s wrong.’
“It is the same.” He felt betrayed all over again. By the same woman, who had captured his heart. Justin could barely breathe. He clenched his fists and tried to control his temper.
“I should have known not to trust you. Guess deception runs in the family.”
“Don’t go. At least let me explain, Justin. I didn’t deceive you. I was waiting for the right time to tell you.” She tugged at his arm, the plea in her eyes breaking him. Damn he was such a dick. But he couldn’t stay here. Not with her, or these people.
He didn’t belong to either. Or anyone.
Freedom of the open beckoned to him. No ties, no one to mock him or stare or back away in fear. Because eventually Ariel would discover his real nature. Maybe he hadn’t killed the lumina creatures in the lake, but the darkness lurking inside him couldn’t be defeated. It lingered there, a disease he had accepted long ago. It was part of his soul.
A dragon can’t change his wings and I can’t change who and what I am.
Justin shrugged off her hand. The only way to get rid of Ariel for good was to hurt her and make her see reason.
“What makes you think I want a life with you? You’re a Mage. No real magick. Only cheap parlor tricks.
The hurt stamped upon her face assured him he’d driven her away for good.
Justin stretched out his arms and called upon his dragon magick. He shifted into a dragon. They hated him, so let them fear him as well. Fear was better than scorn. Screams and cries followed.
As he flapped his wings and rose into the air, he felt his heart harden into stone once more. Justin looked down, watching Ariel become smaller and smaller until she was a tiny dot. Then he flew away, and looked no more.
16
Never did he imagine the world could be such a cold, dreary place.
A week after leaving Sedona, Justin parked the bike at a roadside rest stop in Tucson. He’d wanted to leave Arizona behind, hell, maybe fly to Europe for a few months, but found himself unable to cross the state line.
A tractor trailer rumbled into the parking lot, blowing dust into his face. Justin didn’t care. He pocketed his keys and went to a picnic table to sit. Sun warmed his body, but inside he was so damn cold.
Had been, since last he saw Ariel.
After taking out his phone, he scrolled through the photos until finding one special shot.
“I miss you so much,” he whispered to the selfie he’d snapped with her. “How can I go on anymore without you? You’re my heart.”
Justin touched the phone, his chest hollow. “I can’t cry anymore. I have no more tears left.”
The sun rose and set each day. Time passed and he’d grow older. When his parents died, others advised the pain would pass with time, ease the grief. It had.
This time, he didn’t want the hurt to ease. He wanted it fresh and raw and sharp as it was now, because the sorrow was his last connection to Ariel. When that passed, he’d forget. A dragon’s time on earth was measured in decades, even centuries.
Not the hours passing so slowly since he’d left Ariel.
“How can I forget you?”
What a damn fool he’d been to fly off the handle like an impatient young dragon. He had enough years on him to be more prudent. Not around Ariel. She’d made his blood hum, his heart beat faster and filled him with a joy he hadn’t experienced in years.
Yeah, he’d done it all right. He’d fallen horns over heels in love.
No reason to return. He’d mourn, as he’d mourned his parents, and not look back. Yet a nagging sense kept nudging him to stay. Something was missing, and it wasn’t only Ariel.
Justin traced an outline of a dragon on the picnic table. “I miss you,” he muttered.
A flash of cobalt blue smoke and suddenly he wasn’t alone. Drust, the Coldfire Wizard, sat next to him.
“I missed you too, dear.” The wizard gave him a pointed look. “Justin, why are you running away? I gave you a task to perform.”
His brow wrinkled. “What task? I kept to my bargain. Didn’t hurt Ariel’s father. Didn’t claim my revenge.”
Drust waited.
And then it hit him. Justin groaned. “The baby dragons. The amber crystal.”
Drust waited.
“I didn’t check it out. And the key, ah damn. It’s back at Ariel’s house.”
The powerful wizard raised his eyebrows. “That key was your responsibility, Justin. It’s not as if you can go to a locksmith and have another made. In the wrong hands, it will have dreadful consequences, and you will be held accountable.”
“I’ll get it and return it to you.”
“After you access the cavern.”
Justin nodded, his chest tight. No use arguing with Drust, for he knew he’d screwed up royally. “After I access the cavern.”
“Do it.” Drust waved a hand and vanished.
For a long time he stared into the distance. Now he had to return. But Justin knew it was the right thing to do, regardless of Drust’s dictate. He needed Ariel. Needed the key to access the cave, but his heart needed her more. After his anger died, he realized what a true fool he’d been in flying away.
For too long, his answer to problems was leaving. No more.
Her father had returned from Seattle, and like Parker, he kept nagging her to set a wedding date.
A week after Justin’s departure, Ariel felt lost, unable to leave the house. Leo cut his trip short by a week to come home and try to convince her to cheer up.
Nothing worked.
Today over breakfast, he talked cheerfully, insisting on making her pancakes, her favorite. She w
atched with dull eyes as he bustled around the kitchen, pretending to make mistakes, tossing flour into the air and calling out, “Voila!”
She knew what he was doing. He did this every time this day arrived. It was Leo’s way of coping with the pain of their loss.
Today she had no interest in celebrating her mother’s life. Too many questions swirled in her mind.
“Father, what really happened to Mama?”
Her query made him pause in flipping the pancakes at the grill. “Why do you ask now?”
Ariel glanced at the calendar. “Seemed like it was time. Today is a good day.”
Father turned the heat down from under the pancakes and joined her at the table. He reached for her hand, his gaze filled with sorrow. “It’s a special day, honey. I thought we could have a day together, as we’ve always had in the past. Just the two of us. No bad memories.’
Any memory of her mother couldn’t be a bad one, except of her last day on earth. “What happened in the accident? I have no memory.”
Leo’s jaw tightened. For the first time, she noticed the lines of strain bracketing his mouth, the new gray silvering his hair. Her father had aged.
“I erased your memory with a potion, Ariel. I could not bear your grief. Mine… was enough for both of us.”
She sucked down a startled breath. “You had no right.”
“I am your father. I did what was best for you. You were only a child.”
“Now I’m not, so tell me what happened!”
Leo turned away. “Do you really want to know?”
“I must. Was it truly an accident?” Emotions balled tight in her chest. Ariel pulled her hand away. “Did… was it my fault?”
He threw her a quick, startled look. “Of course not!”
“Then what happened?”
A small sigh. “You were fourteen and going to a birthday party that afternoon. You kept clamoring for a new dress to wear to show up your best friend. It was a dress you’d seen while at the mall with Bethany. I was busy with work. So Marian took you in the car to the mall.”
A memory flickered. The excitement of shopping with her mother and the smugness she felt at having a dress her friend coveted.
“The white dress with little blue cornflowers and a blue sash,” she mused. “I remember now. But Mama was a careful driver, especially when I was in the car. How could she have driven into a tree and made it fall on the car?”
Their old Lincoln had been built like a tank. Leo always joked Mama drove it so slow it was a miracle she got anywhere.
Leo went to the stove and picked up the spatula, turning it over in his hands. “It was a black dragon, honey. A black dragon caused the accident.”
If he had slapped her suddenly, she couldn’t have felt more shocked. “Are you sure? Why would a dragon want to hurt her? She was kind and gentle and wouldn’t hurt anyone!”
“Because dragons are dangerous!” Now Leo shouted, banging his fist against the bowl filled with batter, tipping it. Yellow liquid oozed out and dripped onto the floor.
The sound jerked her back to the past. Drip, drip… the sound of her mother’s blood splashing against the console.
Mama!
“Black dragons, like Justin,” she whispered. “Is that why you captured and tortured him?”
Guilt flickered over Leo’s face. He paused in mopping up the spilled batter. “I regret the pain I caused that young dragon, but not the reasons why I did it. I experimented with him and took his magick to protect you.”
More confusion. “Protect me? From what?”
Leo pitched the messy paper towel into the trash. “There are things in this world that would harm you, Ariel, Powerful things. I only wanted Justin’s magick to give you a defense against them.”
But when she pressed him for answers, he refused to say.
Appetite gone, Ariel trudged upstairs. After she’d skipped work for three days, she’d lost her job. And the new job with Vern, well, she had emailed him and told him she was no longer available. After the fiasco of Mystic Shores, she hadn’t the heart to return to the Mage community.
It didn’t matter. In a few weeks, she’d probably be married, and had no reason to worry about work. She’d told Parker she’d give him a date, as long as he arranged for them to live anyplace other than Mystic Shores. Jubilant, he’d agreed to sell the house he’d recently purchased there.
Soon, she’d tell him the truth about no longer being a virgin. And if he refused to marry her because of it, that was fine as well. She could find a job, a place to stay.
Justin hadn’t demanded rent, so Leo was safe to stay in the house until he found another place to live. They still had the money from the sale.
Today, for the first time since Justin left, she had something else to take her mind off her beautiful beast who’d captured her heart and then refused to listen to her.
Why would Leo be so concerned about protecting her? And from what?
17
That afternoon, as Leo vanished into his study to work, Ariel set out on an errand. She had baked and the results of her effort now sat in a plastic container on the seat next to her.
Today was a special day and nothing, not even the constant naggings by Parker Covington to set a wedding date, would deter her from this.
Her phone buzzed. She ignored it until she parked, and then glanced at the screen. The text message from Vern made her blood freeze.
He’s back, Ariel. The black dragon. He came here asking about you. Be careful.
For a few minutes, she sat, staring at her phone. Screw it. She would not spend her life worrying. After Leo’s revelation, she was tired of being afraid of what life brought.
Ariel climbed out of the truck, and took the plastic container with her, careful not to jostle it.
Rows and rows of white stones, some faded with time and age, greeted her. She walked along the pristine, trimmed path until reaching a stone shaded by a tall juniper tree.
Ariel carried the pink-frosted cupcake over to the shady grass and sat. Using the high heel shaped lighter dug out of her jeans pocket, she ignited the rose candle. Then she placed the candle atop the gravestone.
“Happy birthday, Mama.”
The stone felt cold and rough beneath her trembling fingers as she traced the letters. Marian Rose Harrington. Aged 44.
Words failed to describe the lilt of her mother’s gurgling laughter. Or how Mama had purchased the lighter on a whim while they shopped at yard sales. Or how roses were her favorite flower and her green eyes sparkled when Leo brought home a dozen of them, red as blood and smelling like spring and love.
Wind caught the candle flame, making it flicker. Ariel’s throat tightened. She did not fight it and try to summon cheerful thoughts to hide her emotions. Here in this verdant place amongst the dead and the silent, she could surrender to grief. Salt water filled her eyes. Ariel let the tears flow, let them drop down to the green grass.
“Why? Why did you have to die? Every day I look at your empty chair and I think of you there, laughing and smiling. I miss you so much. I miss you singing to me and confusing the lyrics. I miss us baking cookies and how you let me lick the batter. I miss our long walks on the mountain and racing down the trail with you. I miss talking to you and getting your advice.”
She touched the faded engraving on the cold stone. “Father misses you. He keeps everything the way it was the day you left us. He hasn’t been the same since you died. Before you died, everything in our house was filled with love and now he feels nothing but hatred. Why you, Mama? I’ve tried to make sense of it. There’s an empty hole where my heart is, and nothing can fill it.
“I wrote a promise to you and put it in your coffin, Mama. I promised I wouldn’t be like Father, angry and filled with bitterness and hatred of dragons. I promise you I will do something good with my life so your memory lives on. So you didn’t have to die in vain. I wish I didn’t feel so lost and alone.”
Sounds of flapping wings came from overhe
ad. Recognizing a familiar scent, Ariel stiffened. Don’t look up. She sensed Justin hovered over her, quiet and solid as the stones scattered in the graveyard.
He’d returned. It didn’t matter. She didn’t care. Today was all about her mother.
“She would always let me lick the icing on the candles,” she murmured more to herself than Justin. “When I told her the flowered candles were too pretty for my birthday cake, Mama told me never save them. We must live in the moment because we don’t know what tomorrow brings.”
Justin touched the dying flame and it burst into life. Dragon magick.
Dragon magick was dark and dangerous. Leo told her it killed her mother, caused their car to crash into the tree. She couldn’t look at Justin.
“It’s my fault. I insisted on going to the mall to buy a new dress. Bethany, my best friend, had a birthday party that afternoon and I wanted to show off. My vanity killed my mama.”
Ariel stuck out her prosthetic foot. “And this is the price I paid for it. I haven’t worn dresses since.”
He sat on the grass, ran a hand over the stone. “It’s nice you have a place to come talk to her. My parents don’t have gravesites.”
Heart giving a little jump, she clenched her fists. Justin didn’t deserve sympathy. “This isn’t about you. It’s my mama’s birthday. Please go.”
He made no move to leave.
“Sometimes dragons are given back to the earth. In the case of my parents, they were burned and their ashes scattered to the four winds. I have nothing left of theirs to remember them.” His hand dropped down from the gravestone.
Despite her resolve, pity filled her. At least here she had a place to reflect, remember and bring her mother cupcakes on her birthday. Justin had lost both parents, and had no memorials.
With the pad of his thumb, he traced a tear down her cheek and then gently wiped it away. “Crying is good. Keeping all your emotions crammed inside you turns you into a boiling explosive of rage. Even if anger feels better than grief, eventually, it will turn on you. I wish I had cried when their ashes were released.”