J.R. Rains Vampire for Hire World_Dragon Lessons

by Eve Paludan

  “Could you?” she asked.

  “I can throw a football accurately. This? Not so much.”

  “What if you put a hole in one of those pterodactyl-looking wings with this silver cross and knock his ass out of the sky? That might be much, much easier.”

  “Says you. I’ll try, but you’re one crazy girl, Tammy Moon.”

  “Welcome to mi vida loca. My crazy life.” She chewed her lip. “How far can you throw that?”

  “I can throw a football seventy yards, but that’s a secret, okay?”

  “Nice, but how far can you throw this?”

  “Not as far as my dad’s slingshot.” I took it out of my jacket. “It’s a family heirloom. Dad made it when he was a farm kid and used it to kill rats in their barn.”

  “That’s pretty scary-looking,” she said. “Ever used it?”

  “Plenty of times. We’ve got rats in the city, too. In our apartment. My current scorecard is Nick, 25, rats, 3.”

  “Nick, that’s so gross,” Tammy said. “You should move!”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” I said. “Right now, we’ve got company!”

  Tammy crouched low to the ground as the three dragons passed directly overhead, battling in the air. The gray devil dragon tried to blast us with his lime-green flames. I tackled Tammy and quickly rolled her out of harm’s way, covering her body with mine.

  Kingsley the werewolf ran to stand over us, cringing a bit as his fur got singed from the gray dragon’s blasted breath.

  Tammy jumped up from under me and started beating the werewolf’s fur with her bare hands, putting out some glowing sparks. I helped her and got my own minor skin burns. Choking smoke rose from his singed fur.

  He snarled at us for patting him and I yanked my hands off his fur.

  “You can thank us later. You were catching on fire, Kingsley!” Tammy explained.

  I looked up as the battle in the sky got even more vicious. Ms. Moon and Thorn were taking a horrific beating and scorching, despite Anthony’s increasing accuracy with his flame-throwing arms at the enemy. And despite their own flame-shooting efforts.

  I finally loaded my homemade crude weapon with the silver cross and nodded.

  “I’m ready,” he told us. “But the further this ‘dart’ has to go, the less powerful the impact. Close range would be a lot better.”

  “Call him over here, Kingsley. Now! Get him down low,” Tammy ordered.

  Kingsley roared as loud as I had ever heard any animal roar, even a lion at a zoo. And he apparently issued a challenge, one that blew leaves off the nearby trees.

  “What’s Kingsley saying?” I asked Tam as we took shelter behind a tree.

  “Something like, ‘Come and get a piece of me! I dare you, devil!’”

  After a few seconds, the gray dragon turned and banked and belched flames. Pterodactyl-like screeches pierced the air as—furiously tailed by Sam and Thorn—the gray dragon drew a bead on Kingsley with his bright-orange eyes.

  “Look out, Kingsley. He’s coming!” I shouted.

  “Heads’ up!” Tammy added as the massive gray dragon got bigger and bigger in our field of view until he was blotting out the sky.

  Chapter 26

  SAMANTHA MOON

  As the devil dragon turned his attentions from Thorn and me to Kingsley and my kids on the ground, a sharp pain exploded in my head. A pain that I realized was Tammy, trying to get my attention through her mind-reading channels.

  This is a bad time for mind reading, I thought to her.

  Mom, it’s the perfect time, so just listen. Nick’s going to try to get that thing knocked out of the sky and then you and Thorn and the rest of us can gang up on it and kill it on the ground.

  I shot her my thought: No, you stay out of the line of fire. I mean it!

  I also glanced at my daughter for a moment, noticing she had a bloody nose from the effort of blocking the evil one out of her mind so she could mind-link with me in privacy.

  If Thorn wasn’t here, I’d already be dead. Yes, I was a powerful dragon, but I was like an annoying mosquito in comparison to this massive gray dragon. And so was Thorn. We were tag-teaming the devil dragon, but running out of steam. Literally. Apparently, there were a limited amount of flames that we had available in a single night, which I’d never known before tonight’s battle.

  Nevertheless, Thorn and I kept up our two-pronged attack and when the gray dragon tried to split us up to divide and conquer, the one of us in the back threw flames up the devil dragon’s butt or on his underbelly, and Anthony got him, too, from the ground. And when the dangerous dragon got too close, Kingsley, in his werewolf form, leapt into the air to snap his jaws closed on whatever piece of meat he could tear from the devil dragon. The click of his jaws echoed across the night in a way that made me glad he was my lover and not my enemy.

  I tried to focus on playing keep-away with the devil dragon, but at the same time, was aware that Tammy and Nick were doing something on the ground. I saw Nick stand as if he were aiming a gun at the big gray dragon and I swooped out of the way and Thorn did, too. As we split up, the gray dragon hesitated about which one of us to chase and actually hovered, which I didn’t know dragons could do!

  And that was the devil dragon’s mistake: Hesitation.

  While he hovered, I heard a ping sound as Nick apparently fired something that tore a hole right through the pterodactyl-type wing of our foe, and he started to tumble out of the sky, shrieking and roaring his rage and pain as his wing tore and tore until the skin of it was flapping off his body.

  The devil dragon landed with a thud just down the street from us, in a dry ditch. Thorn and I zoomed down to help finish him off with flames and Anthony ran over and helped. The devil dragon was flopping on the ground now like a giant pelican with teeth when Kingsley, with a roar, leapt on top of him, right in the flames, that crazy werewolf. And Kingsley tore both wings off! Black blood was everywhere, but it smelled bad, so bad that even the vampire in me was appalled. I guessed that evil tainted this devil dragon and his flesh was rotten before he was even dead, as if he had been flying carrion.

  I saw Tammy run toward the scene and was upset about that, but after she retrieved her silver cross, she stood back and let the supernaturals, me included, finish off the Beast.

  Nick hung back, as pale as a vampire, and it wasn’t a moment later when he puked his guts out all over the murder scene of our infernal enemy.

  Chapter 27

  TAMMY MOON

  Thorn wanted to go and find a body of water to rinse off the evil that had gotten on him, but he promised to come back soon. Holding my phone next to one of his topaz-color reptilian eyes, I showed him on my Google Earth where there was a nearby golf course lake he could use for a dragon bath. He took off to find it.

  I forgot how Kingsley, in his four-legged form, had this nasty obsession of eating carrion. I knew from reading his mind that in the past, he had dug up graves in order to fill his need for it. But tonight, he had a meal free of guilt. It was triumph of good over evil, and I didn’t gag at all when Kingsley effortlessly dragged off the massive dragon carcass to a nearby weedy, vacant lot to consume it. We could hear the crunching sounds of bones from half a block away. I hoped none of the neighbors would call the cops.

  Poor Nick. He was washing off his shirt and pants with the garden hose after he’d puked all over himself.

  “Good going with your dad’s slingshot,” I told him.

  “You’re welcome,” he said and held the hose out so I could wash off the silver cross that had brought the devil dragon right down out of the sky. I mentally dusted off my hands for a job well done.

  Mom and Anthony changed back to their human-looking forms and went in the house, and I said goodbye and thank you to Nick.

  Nick said, “You’re welcome. Bye, Tam. Tell your mom I’ll get her another hydrangea bush and plant it in the front yard.”

  “What’d you do to it?” I asked.

  “Ran over it with
the Mustang. There were no parking spots left and there’s no on-street parking allowed, so I just used your front yard. It was an emergency, obviously.”

  “I’ll tell Anthony. He takes care of the yard.”

  “You mean, you’re not going to tell your mom I did it?”

  “That’s what I mean. She doesn’t need to know everything. Anthony and I are actually partners in crime from time to time. He wouldn’t throw you under the bus either.”

  Nick sighed in relief. “We still have to work on our Beowulf assignments.”

  I did a face-palm. “Oh, my gosh, Nick. I’m so sorry. This week for sure.”

  “Call me when the dust settles at your house.”

  “Literally,” I said and laughed.

  Nick headed out and I didn’t have to wait long before Thorn flew back to the yard. Now, he was shiny and clean and coppery.

  I walked up to my brave dragon and asked him if he was hurt.

  “Not much,” he told me in my mind. “I heal up fast.”

  “I’m glad. Time for another flight?” I said to Thorn in his mind.

  “Right now?”

  I nodded. “We won’t get many more chances to slip away.”

  “Climb on, Lady Tam,” he said.

  And just like that, we were over Fullerton, and it was a magnificent night, full of stars and city lights and even the moon. We talked of many things in our minds. We ended up at the beach between Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica, where by the far-away light of the solar-powered Ferris wheel at the Santa Monica Pier, I sang for him, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” my favorite song from my childhood. Much to his utter delight. And after I sang all the verses, we frolicked in the cold waves, dragon and teenage girl, until my teeth were chattering. Then he warmed me with his breath and dried my clothes with indirect flames before he flew me toward home.

  In my mind, he said, “If only we could go to Honnah Lee, that place in the song, together, both as dragons.”

  I put my hand on his huge jaw. “It’s not a real place, Thorn, not that I know of. It’s just a song that tells a story. It’s called a ballad.”

  “A beautiful song, sung by the sea, by the most beautiful and kindest young lady I have known.”

  I hugged his neck, hard. “But remember, in the end of the song, the dragon lives forever, but not so, the little boy.”

  “Just so. It is then a plan for us to reap our joy and love as we can. Before mortal and immortal must go their separate paths.”

  “I agree.” I was nearly crying, but we both knew that he would probably live forever, and I would not.

  It was the perfect night in which we talked of many things, even whether I wanted to become a dragon, which he was now willing to do. He was willing to take me with him when he found the Cup of Forgiveness, into the next fantastic journey, if I were a dragon. I was torn, so torn, but I declined with as much gentleness and love as I could.

  “I like being human, Thorn. I want to help people, children especially, and they won’t identify with me if I am not human. I see my mother struggling as a vampire, especially. She loses more and more of her humanity all the time and she has a hard time connecting with anyone who isn’t either a supernatural being, or her police friends.”

  “Does she enjoy being a dragon?”

  “Yes, more than she does a vampire. I’ve read her mind. But she has a lot of loneliness, too, because she is different from others whom she loves.”

  “I see. I respect your decision and will not ask you again to come with me into the ‘autumn mist’ where only dragons can go.”

  I sighed. “I was thinking, you know, what you said about ascending the dragons and I hope the vampire side of my mother won’t someday hold her back from the glorious place you’ll be going.”

  “You believe in it, then?” he asked in my mind.

  “It’s pretty remarkable all the things that I believe. I have this gift of mind-reading and I count my humanity as a gift, too, even though I have a finite life. I’ll make the most of every day, at least, that’s my goal.”

  “’Tis getting late. Your mother will be worried and at dawn, I helplessly transform. T’would be a long walk home if we were caught this far from your family manse.”

  I nodded and pressed my face into his neck as he took off from the sand and aimed us for Fullerton.

  Thorn and I returned to the backyard just before dawn. I noticed Kingsley’s black SUV was gone, so he must have gotten his fill of evil dead dragon carrion.

  I was both exhilarated and exhausted from the night’s events. And, I had a pretty good taste of what being a dragon would be like. And, of course, I had mixed feelings about becoming one. I slid off my dear dragon’s back and collapsed into the grass with a smile on my face. He lay next to me in the pre-dawn, his dragon head on the ground, listening to me just breathe as we watched the stars wink out and the light in the sky increase.

  When dawn came, and Thorn once again was a man with a sword on his hip, we went into the house and tiptoed to my room. I knew Mom could hear us, because, hey, you can’t really sneak up on vampires, but I thought she would leave us alone for a little while. It wasn’t time for her to get up yet and fix breakfast. And forget Anthony. He loved to sleep in. Next to eating and thinking about girls in plaid miniskirts while in the bathroom with the door locked, sleeping was his third-favorite thing.

  I took off my shoes and my outdoor sweater and threw them in a pile in the corner of my room. Then, I sat on the bed and patted the space next to me.

  Just then, Mom was at my open bedroom door.

  “Tammy? Where the hell have you been all night? I mean, after we killed the devil dragon?”

  “With Thorn, of course. Flying. Learning all about dragons.”

  “You’re not a character from Dragonriders of Pern. You’ve got to quit flying around on a dragon’s back.”

  Thorn interceded for me. “She was perfectly safe and there was nothing untoward about it, if that is your highest concern.”

  Mom looked sharply at Thorn. “Here’s my greatest concern: You aren’t going to turn my daughter into a dragon, are you?”

  “No, Lady Moon. You have my word.”

  “Mom, we talked about it, but Thorn convinced me that he could not, in good conscience, take me away from my family and bring me into a supernatural state where I would be bound to the light and the dark like clockwork and have to kill something and eat it every day.”

  “It’s true, Lady Moon. I would not rob you of your treasure, your daughter, or your son, for that matter, as I have been robbed of my treasure.”

  Mom relaxed, and I could see she believed us.

  “Okay, I’ll ground you later, Tammy. For now, I have to go to the precinct and use the police department computer with Detective Sherbet. We’re trying to get a line on where the Grail is.”

  “You know where the Cup of Forgiveness is?” Thorn asked.

  “I know where it was, but it disappeared. I have to track it down using technology. Do you want to come with me, Thorn?”

  Torn between going with her or staying with me, he said, “In your absence, I will guard your manor house in case more foes arrive to harm your kin.”

  Against what I really wanted, I said, “Thorn, you should go with Mom and find the Cup. I’ll come, too.”

  I yawned unexpectedly. “Excuse me.”

  “Tammy, get some sleep.” Mom pointed her pointiest black vampire fingernail at Thorn. “You’ve got guard duty. And I want your word, as a dragon, that when I come home, my daughter will still be a virgin.”

  “Mom! I can’t believe you said that!” I threw a pillow at her, and she knocked it out of the way.

  “I’m your mother!”

  “And I’m dying of embarrassment here!”

  “Well, Thorn?” Mom said, looking at him.

  “You have my word, Lady Samantha Moon.”

  And then, Mom was gone from the house in the minivan.

  Anthony was snoring down the hall in
his room. And Thorn, wearing his sword, sat next to me on the bed. He pulled himself into the corner where two walls met and, sitting up, he opened his arms to me.

  “Come and sleep in my arms, and we will dream together.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “And in dreams, it doesn’t count if certain things might happen, right?” I asked Thorn.

  “Tammy! I gave your mother my word. My absolute word as a dragon.” He widened his arms. “Come and sleep the sleep of mortals, and I shall watch over your sleep. And I shall listen for anyone who might come to harm us, too.”

  “So, dragon-men are awake and can sleep at the same time?”

  “It is complicated, but my man form holds you in the physical sense, and the sleeping spirit of my dragon self then vouchsafes this house and all in it.”

  “I don’t totally understand, but I believe you. And I have never felt so safe in my life.”

  I went into his arms and put my head on his chest and listened to it. “You have two heartbeats.”

  He nodded. “I have two hearts. One dragon heart, one man heart.”

  “That must be why I feel so much emotion from you.”

  “I would not doubt it.” He stroked my hair, and I just melted into his arms and body, completely trusting him.

  “So, you truly do not want me to make you a dragon shifter?”

  I shook my head. “I have to be true to myself. You do you, Thorn. And I’ll do me. If we had never met, I wouldn’t want to be a dragon. If I asked you to transform me, I would only be doing it to be near you for eternity, but not because it was deep in my heart that I yearned to become a dragon shifter. Making me into one would not be as true as if it was my own idea from the time I was a little girl.”

  “You are wise far beyond your years.”

  “Yeah, I get that from reading people’s minds. I get all their thoughts and pick out the good stuff and keep it like a mental journal of things to aspire to, and take note of things to avoid.”

  I snuggled deeper into him, and he enfolded me in his muscular, thick arms.