by Riley Storm
“You’re joking.”
“Not right now,” he said, though this time his tone was a little lighter. “We call it Drakon Keep.”
“Keep?” she repeated slowly. “Like, castle? That sort of keep? Why would you call it that…” The words died on her lips as the trees ended and they emerged from the forest.
Ahead of her was a mile or more of gently undulating land, covered in perfect green grass that had yet to lose its luster with the fall. Beautiful as that sight was, however, Cheryl’s attention was focused on the building beyond.
“Oh. Well that’s an appropriate name,” she said with a laugh.
“I thought so once I was old enough to appreciate it,” Victor chuckled. “Welcome to my home. Welcome to Drakon Keep.”
“I feel like a noble from the medieval times,” she said. “Invited to the King’s castle.”
“I’m no King,” Victor muttered unhappily. “But you could play the part of a noble, I’m sure.”
“This is a long way from anywhere,” she observed as he took a fork in the road that led around the back of the massive building.
She watched it pass, all high-arching stained-glass windows set into a stone architecture. Various towers sprouted from the building without rhyme or reason, ending in tall pointed spires at the top. The exterior was blocky and solid-looking, and part of her was surprised to see no moat dug around the exterior, with a drawbridge leading inside.
“Nobody else is home?” she asked as he came to a halt at the end of the driveway. They were the only car.
“The parking is actually underground around the other side,” Victor said as they got out. “I brought us here because I want to get this over with, and I’m sure you do too.”
“Maybe,” she agreed, noting how he’d not said anything about anyone else being at home, but deciding not to push the subject. It seemed to be a touchy one, because that was twice now that he’d evaded answering.
“Do you feel uncomfortable?” Victor asked, walking onto the grass in what she figured served as the backyard, though it seemed like an inadequate term for such a large building.
The rear gardens, perhaps. Or the south lawn. She rolled her eyes at the terms. This wasn’t her world. It would never be her world. And yet…
“Somewhat,” she said slowly. “Which is surprising.”
“I think that is because you are stronger than you know,” Victor told her. “I have been impressed at that, if nothing else, since meeting you.”
Flattery? Was Victor being nice to her? What was going on here? She was so confused. Everything Cheryl had thought she’d known about Victor seemed to be coming tumbling down now they were back somewhere he was more comfortable.
So why was that also making her feel less anxious as well? How was it that her emotions were tied to his?
“Thank you,” she said, finally replying to his unexpected compliment. “But I’m not sure why I’m not as panicked. I should be, you know.”
“Perhaps,” Victor agreed, but he seemed distant. “Stay there.”
She frowned, looking down at the ground. It seemed like normal grass but she began to inspect it carefully. “Why? What’s so special about here?”
“Nothing.”
Her head snapped up at the sound of Victor’s voice. It had taken on a deeper octave, but also smoother, less rough.
“What the fuck,” she gasped as Victor changed before her very eyes.
The giant man grew larger, his body changing, all proportions lost. Cheryl gaped in stunned silence as his skin turned from a bronze tan to bright turquoise. Except it wasn’t skin at all, she realized, but scales. Bright blue-green scales the color of his eyes, shot through with bolts of a deep violet and navy blue, giving him a marbled pattern that was breath-stealingly beautiful.
His head sprouted a muzzle, giant teeth disappearing under what passed for lips on the magnificent lizard. Bulges on his back grew larger and then exploded upward, unfurling into wings. Here the turquoise coloring was more muted, and the violet shone through stronger, giving him an iridescent sort of sheen.
“D-d-d—”
“Dragon.”
“Eeep.” It could speak. “You can speak.”
“Yes,” the dragon-Victor said. It was his voice after all, there was no mistaking that, though it was different somehow.
“But. But. Hoo boy.” Cheryl’s knee’s gave way and she sank to the ground, reaching out with one hand to slow her descent, moving to a sitting position, head between her knees. “This isn’t real.”
“This is very real,” the deep, musical voice corrected. “You aren’t dreaming. You’re perfectly sane.”
There was a fluttering of air, and something rustled the grass nearby. Cheryl clamped her eyes shut, not wanting to see as the dragon snatched her up and ate her. She could do without seeing those pearly-white teeth coming down around her.
“Please, just make it quick,” she moaned when nothing happened, her head down between her knees still.
“Make what quick?” the same voice asked.
“You’re going to eat me. Just get it over with.”
A very un-human-like sound was emitted from the dragon. The dragon, holy shit, what is going on here? That’s not a sentence I ever expected to think!
“I don’t eat humans.” There was a pause. “They don’t taste very good.”
Cheryl yelped and looked up. “How do you know what we taste like?” she screamed, crawling backward over the grass, not caring about any stains she got on her clothes.
The big scaly beast shook its head, making loud chuffing-like noises. A moment later, she realized it was laughing.
“Was that a joke?” she shouted, immediately enraged, getting to her feet, hands planted on her hips. “Do you really think now is the time to make fun of something like that?”
“I’m sorry,” the dragon said, sounding properly apologetic. “Really, I am. I should have resisted.”
“No shit!” she shouted, shaking her fist as she walked closer to the dragon to give it a piece of her mind. “That was not funny. At all.”
“It stopped you from panicking and running away,” the dragon, no, Victor, pointed out.
Cheryl stopped in her tracks, suddenly coming to terms with the fact she’d just been walking toward the dragon, instead of running away.
“Well shit,” she muttered. “You got me there.”
“I told you that you were stronger than you thought,” the big creature—suddenly it was a creature, not a monster—said softly, lowering its head to ground level so she could look into one of its yellow eyes. “You are capable of accepting that this is real, that you are still sane.”
“You want me to believe in dragons,” she said, laughing to herself. “Right.”
“Here.” The dragon moved, and once again extended a wingtip toward her. “Touch it. Feel it. I am real. No illusion, no prop. This is who I am, Cheryl. My name is Victor Drakon, and I am a water dragon.”
Her hand was halfway toward the tip of the wing, but she froze when he said that last part. “A water dragon?”
The big snout opened abruptly and a blast of water as thick as she was tall streamed from the dragon’s mouth, splashing across the grass a hundred feet or more distant.
“I…oh. You don’t breathe fire?”
“Aaric is the fire dragon,” Victor said, shaking his giant scaled head. “Everyone always wants the fire dragon.”
She laughed. “Sorry, stereotypes and all. But being a water dragon is pretty cool too. Lots of practical uses. You could be a firefighter. They could use talents like that fighting forest fires and such.”
The dragon head drooped, and Cheryl got the impression of sadness overcoming the great animal.
“I can’t,” he said quietly. “Humanity must never know about our secret.”
Biting her lip, Cheryl nodded, feeling stupid. “Of course,” she said slowly, realization dawning. “They wouldn’t accept you.”
The lips pulled b
ack in what she hoped was a dragon smile, and not preparation of having her for lunch.
“They would cast us out,” Victor said, the voice having lost much of its music. “Hunt us down, label us as evil. It’s happened before. Just look at your legends. Few dragons are seen as good.” The big creature shuddered, tucking its wings back in at its side. “And then there’s the government. They would try to capture us. To experiment on us.”
Cheryl looked down at the ground without response. She knew the truth of that statement. Nobody would be able to appreciate they were just people who wanted to live a normal life, even if they could change form. The government would put them into secret labs and try to learn the secret so that they could create more. Turn them into weapons.
“Now I know why you said I wouldn’t be able to leave if I couldn’t handle it,” she said, chilled by the knowledge of how hard it must be to protect a secret like this in the digital age.
A secret that he had just entrusted her with. That scared Cheryl, a dawning realization that she was now on the inside of something that nobody knew about.
“Are you okay?” Victor asked, the giant dragon head tilting slightly.
“Why me?” she asked in a hoarse whisper, terrified of the answer.
20
The dragon was silent for a long time. She watched with mild horrified fascination as multiple sets of eyelids slid across the giant yellow-orange orbs, obscuring their catlike pupils from her gaze for a moment before retracting again.
“Why show me, Victor? Why me of all people? We don’t like each other. We’re on the opposite sides of this, and honestly, we haven’t treated each other very nicely. Maybe you started it, but I certainly have hit back. But I don’t understand why you would decide to trust me, now, after all that? It doesn’t make any sense!” She chewed on her lower lip for a moment. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“I’ve told you everything I’m certain about,” the dragon said at last.
“You know I don’t believe that, right?”
There was more of that odd deep chuffing she’d recognized as laughter.
“I didn’t say I’d told you everything. There are things I just don’t know. Things that I’m uncertain of, and simply don’t have answers to.”
“You’re avoiding my question,” she pointed out. “I’ve walked into the middle of something here. We kissed back there, in case you forgot.”
“I most surely have not,” the dragon protested hotly. “After all, I was the one who kissed you. I think I could remember that.”
Somehow, the big scaly body managed to shake and settle back into place with something resembling human-style indignation.
“Why, Victor? Why did you decide to show me?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, looking away briefly. “I don’t have a proper answer. I needed to do something after you walked in on Aaric and me. He told me to handle it. So, I came to you and…and, I just did what felt right,” he said at last.
“It felt right to reveal a secret this size to someone who hates you? How does that make any sense?”
The great creature levelled one of its eyes at her with a gravity that made Cheryl shrink under its gaze.
“Do you truly hate me, Cheryl? Do you?” Victor asked.
“I…” she faltered. The sentence was clear as day in her head. Yes, I do hate you! You’ve destroyed a huge boon for Plymouth Falls, but more importantly, you’ve proven to my parents that they were right, that if I stayed here, I would have nothing but failure!
She wanted to shout that at him. To scream it. But the words simply did not come to her. They couldn’t make the translation from thought to word. Something was blocking them.
“I don’t know,” she said at last, sagging from the effort. “I don’t know much anymore.”
The dragon laughed. “Welcome to my world. At least we’re in it together.”
Together.
Cheryl was fairly certain that was the first time either of them had said anything about them being on the same side of, well, anything. They had always been against one another. Now they were suddenly starting to line up on the same side? How did that work?
Confusion reigned supreme in her mind.
“Victor,” she said. “I don’t hate you.”
The dragon went completely still as she spoke.
“I thought I did. I still don’t know why you did what you did,” she continued, watching as the dragon’s head drooped slightly at her last words. Shame? Guilt? She didn’t know. “But the truth was, it was your project, and we had no say over whether or not you could upsize or downsize it. I lashed out at you because of my own insecurities.”
“What are you talking about?”
She walked over to the dragon, reaching out to touch his snout, feeling the cool solidity of the tiny turquoise and violet scales that covered most of his body.
“You obviously wouldn’t know this, but I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder.”
The dragon made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a cough. Cheryl took a step back, eyebrows narrowing as she fixed him with a glare.
“You do?” Victor asked in a strangled voice, the dragon managing to mimic human action and emotion better than she would have thought possible.
“Very funny,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Yes, I do. I’ve long made it a driving focus of mine to help revitalize Plymouth Falls. I have fought for projects and helped develop things that I thought would bring prosperity back to us. We’ve been slowly declining for a century now.”
“A century,” Victor echoed, yellow eyes suddenly focused on something only he could see.
“Yes. It’s fairly obvious if you look at the records, that at the turn of the century we were a booming town. But in the first decades, something happened, and it was like a light went out. We’ve not gone away, but we were slowly shrinking. I wanted to reverse that.”
“A noble goal,” the dragon said respectfully.
“Thank you.” She hadn’t expected him to agree or to understand, but it seemed he did. “Unfortunately, not everyone agreed with me.”
There was a long pause. “Your family,” Victor said at last, only half-guessing, half-stating.
“Yes. Both my parents. They waited for me to be done with high school, but after that, they announced they were moving. That wherever I wanted to go to college, they would move.” She smiled wryly in memory. “Boy, were they surprised when I chose to stay here instead.”
“Teenage rebellion,” Victor said with a laugh, his wings spreading slightly as the giant lizard lounged on the grass.
How quickly I get used to the fact that he’s a dragon, and that I’m just out here on a fall day talking to a creature from myth.
“What do you mean?” she asked, recovering her composure.
“Your parents wanted to move. I assume that was no surprise to you,” Victor said, pausing to wait for her confirmation before continuing.
Cheryl shrugged and nodded. “Yeah, they made no secret of their desire to leave.”
“Exactly. Yet to you, this was the only home you ever knew. Your friends were here, everything. They tried to tell you it was a bad place. You disagreed. So you stayed. I get it now,” Victor said thoughtfully. “I assume they ended up leaving?”
“Yes. We had a huge fight, they packed up and moved the next week. We’ve barely spoken since. They seem to think they have to be ashamed of me for staying.”
The dragon snarled, a sudden terrifying sound that sent Cheryl scrambling backward as fast as she could.
“What? What is it?” she yelped, looking around. “Please don’t eat me now!”
But the dragon was already settling back into place. “I’m sorry,” he apologized in that musical tone that belied a power she couldn’t understand. “That was unexpected. It wasn’t directed at you.”
“What was that about?”
“Your parents,” the dragon said, lips peeling back to reveal huge teeth that could easily snap her in ha
lf. “The only thing they should be ashamed about is themselves. You have done nothing but excel, by all accounts. They should be proud of you, but instead they bring shame to themselves by being so shallow.”
“T-thank you?” she said slowly.
“It’s just the truth.”
“Right. Well anyway,” she said, wanting to continue. It felt good, to explain everything to him, to talk to him, tell him what was truly going on. Like a weight being lifted with every sentence she spoke. “This project was going to be the salvation that I so long sought. The money and jobs it would bring to our town would make us known around the region. I would be able to take this project and prove to my parents at last that they were wrong, and I was right.”
Cheryl hung her head. “Then you came along and blew that all up. I was pissed, but it was your right to do so. I just didn’t take it so well and decided to fight dirty. I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re probably mad at me and hate me for it.”
The dragon was silent, staring at her.
“I’ll go now,” she said, turning and heading back across the property, leaving the dragon behind.
This wasn’t how she’d seen things ending, but it seemed fittingly poetic that in the end she would be the one that screwed up, that was the bad guy. She’d lost sight of what was right and wrong in her quest to prove to her parents that she could fix the town. The project was never hers, never the town’s. It was the Drakon family’s, and if they chose to downsize or cancel it, that was their right. She’d crossed a line, and now she would have to pay the price.
“Wait. Cheryl.”
She paused as the dragon called after her.
21
“You’re wrong.”
Victor winced, hoping that didn’t come out as accusingly as it sounded. But the truth was, she was wrong. About him, at least.
“Wrong about what?” she asked, not turning around, forcing him to stare at the back of her head and that same silvery-white hair that had haunted his dreams for so long.
Dreams that he’d held against her.
“You’re not the only one holding something against someone for the wrong reasons,” he said heavily.