The Dragon King

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Granted, that was where the disguise stopped. He couldn’t be a woman. Well, not without surgery anyway.

  His powers ran along the same lines as his chameleon abilities. They were extensive and unpredictable. Not even Eva knew where they started or stopped, though he was reputed to be able to do a few things that terrified her. She only knew for certain that he’d once used his power to end everything she’d held dear.

  He turned back and smiled at Eva with those fake brown eyes. Eva tried not to allow any of her emotion to show on her face, but she was one of the few beings in any realm who knew what he really looked like – in his true human form. When he wasn’t busy pretending to be something else, when the shit hit the fan, when it came down to live or die, he was Korridum. And she’d seen Korridum up close and personal in all of his ash dark glory that would blow this human façade to smithereens.

  She’d witnessed the coal black hair with its streak of white, the eyes that were the crackling hue of colorless fire – until he was angry. She’d beheld the visage of confident, radiant power that smiled a smile of fangs and dark secrets. She’d seen him. She’d been so young, but oh, she knew. And it was fucking killing her.

  As Eva saw it, she had two choices. She could either confront the son of a bitch here and now and the world around them would most likely perish in a brilliant blaze… or, she could wait it out. Get her thoughts together. Figure out what the hell she was going to do.

  Her fight or flight instincts were sparking like frayed wires in the rain. But Mimi was standing right there, smiling and young and innocent, and San Francisco buzzed around her with equal, mortal innocence. The mall churned, this great big beast of commerce with veins of people who were like blood cells; the red cells the shoppers, the white cells the mall rats there to people-watch. There were so many of them. And cameras too.

  So she pushed her instincts back down her throat just as she had her emotions, and pulled strength from her core, where it was stoutest. Slowly, so as not to arouse suspicion, she removed her hand from his. As she did, Mimi stepped between them and turned to look beseechingly up at her.

  The distance the child placed between her and the king was welcomed. And strangely enough, it also wasn’t.

  “Let’s take a cable car and walk down to the Pier!” Mimi said, bouncing on her tiptoes. The yogurt was giving her a sugar high.

  The Pier she was referring to was most likely Pier 39. Mimi hadn’t spent as much time in San Francisco as Eva had, and no doubt she wanted to soak it all in. But it was sure to be packed. It was June, and summer was the busy season for San Francisco. The temps in the Bay area remained more or less temperate, settling in at the mid-sixties to low-seventies, which welcomed anyone who abhorred heat. It used to be cooler. Eva remembered. She recalled high fifties to mid-sixties at most. But even at its warmer-than-usual state, it was preferable to the hundred degree scorch much of the rest of the country was experiencing.

  Eva glanced at the Dragon King. “Pier, huh?” she asked softly. Yes, let’s do that, she thought with acid. Then I can shove your new friend in front of the car and hope he gets run over so I don’t have to kill him myself. But what she said was, “Are your peeps okay with you traipsing around San Francisco today?” She looked back at Mimi.

  “They know I’m with Cal,” Mimi said with a look like Eva had just dropped several dozen points of IQ. “Of course they’re okay with it.”

  Of course, thought Eva. He was the Dragon King. No doubt, they were just pleased as punch that their little Mimi was up close and personal with royalty. They had no clue that he was a murdering psychopath who had destroyed her entire existence when she was basically a baby.

  Calidum hadn’t stopped watching her. In fact, the expression on his face was one of keen and calculated interest. The corner of his mouth was upturned slightly as if he could read her mind and found what she was thinking slightly amusing.

  Eva didn’t know the scope of the Great Gray’s powers, so just in case that was what he was actually doing, she turned slightly away so Mimi couldn’t see her, and she narrowed her gaze at the man. You have her fooled, Korridum, she thought loudly at him. You have them all fooled. But I know who you are. I know what you did.

  The corner of his handsome mouth turned up just a smidgeon more – and white fire flashed in his gaze. It was so fast, no one else would have noticed it. But she sure as hell did.

  He turned to Mimi and grinned good-naturedly. “I think our friend’s onboard,” he told her casually. “So let’s blow this yogurt stand.” He gestured politely for the young dragon to lead the way out of the mall. Mimi turned and nearly skipped ahead of them in her excitement.

  But Eva couldn’t move. She was suddenly mired to the spot in indecision and memories. They were like quicksand around her, and the more she fought them, the more they threatened to pull her under.

  Up ahead, the very handsome man who called himself Calidum stopped and slowly turned back to face her. The distance between them seemed to shorten. The mall and its inhabitants flew to the outer perimeters of her consciousness. All there was now was Calidum and Evangeline.

  “Are you coming, Eva?” he asked softly. So softly. It was almost no more than a whisper. And yet she heard him down that busy, crowded hall.

  Eva was in pain. She was confused. But above all, she was stubborn as hell, and it seemed nothing would change that.

  Her gaze narrowed on him. “I’m right behind you.”

  Chapter Three

  She was right. It was busy, especially at every stop considered popular by tourists.

  The wait for the cable car had been just long enough – pushing every last one of her buttons at forty-five minutes – for Eva to consider using magic to speed it along. There were a number of things she could have done to shorten the line, all of them with the same outcome. The people in line in front of her would have left, thus allowing her group to cut to the front.

  But everyone in the line deserved their ride on the cable car. Some had traveled thousands of miles. Many were hungry and tired and overheated. She was also right about the temperature being higher than it had once been, and the 77 degrees they were experiencing now was hotter than the sweater and jeans-wearers had been told to plan for. They deserved their ride. Fair and square.

  That’s probably what her mother would have told her, too: “They have as much right to be here as you do, Eva,” Katrielle would have told her young daughter. “You can’t know a person’s life simply by looking at them. Their histories are very rarely written on their faces. You don’t know how much someone has suffered, or what they may be suffering even now, at this very moment. Remember that always, especially when you feel like taking matters into your own hasty hands.”

  Yep. That’s what she would have said. And somehow that knowledge was like a needle gently but annoyingly pricking Eva’s conscience. Evangeline wanted to do the right thing. Even if she wasn’t sure whether that desire stemmed from her mom, or from some inherent goodness inside herself, either way, it was a means to the same end.

  So she steadfastly kept her patience in check and waited it out with the rest of the fidgety, increasingly impatient schmucks in line.

  Katrielle, she thought as the line moved forward a bit more and they neared the front at last. Katrielle was what Lalura Chantelle’s name had been when she’d given Evangeline life. Katrielle was the name Eva knew. It was the name she thought of as her mother’s name. Not Valeria, or Leiah, or Marianne, or Calliope, or any of the dozens of others. Not Lalura Chantelle. Chantelle was only the latest in a long line of identities her mother had taken… Katrielle was Evangeline’s mata.

  This thought floated through Eva’s mind like a butterfly in a breeze, and she watched it go, because the winsome was more pleasant than the reality. The winsome was wondering where and who her mom was right now. The reality was that her father’s killer was finally boarding a cable car in front of her in a busy San Francisco street.

  Mimi went next, Calid
um offering her a hand up. The young dragon immediately moved right to the outside of the car again, taking a seat in the open area and placing her hand beside her to “save” the space for Eva and Cal.

  Eva pointedly ignored Cal’s offered hand when he turned back to her, and was reaching for the pole to climb aboard, when the pain struck. It was so sharp and so sudden, it paralyzed her, and her fingers missed the pole. Her eyes widened as she began to topple outward. A firm hand around her wrist grasped her tightly, yanking her up onto the car and to safety.

  His lips were at her ear as she tried to catch her breath, her vision spotting out with the pain. “Where is it?” the Dragon King asked.

  Where is it? she wondered half-mindedly. She couldn’t focus on his question. The pain was ebbing a little from sharp to throbbing, but when she slapped her hand down over the place where there should have been a scar on her abdomen, her palm felt wetness.

  The cable car jumped to grinding life and the driver began joking with the passengers. That was how they were on these cars. Big strong men worked the controls, which required raw muscle power to lock into place. Those men flirted, cracked jokes, and sometimes laid down the law of the cable car, going so far as to kick people off if they caused strife. It was a big city with a lot of people, so this wasn’t a rare thing. But for the most part, they were usually smiling.

  Banter went on good-naturedly around Eva as she closed her eyes and steadied her breathing. In and out, in and out. She opened her eyes and glanced down at her hand. Blood, and not a small amount.

  Fortunately she was wearing a black shirt. But it wouldn’t hide the wetness for long.

  “So that’s where he did it,” the Dragon King said.

  Eva looked back up. Calidum – Korridum, her spinning mind corrected – was staring down at the wet spot spreading across her shirt. He met her gaze and the fire was back in his eyes. “The Entity made his mark on you, didn’t he?” he asked softly. There was a hiss to his voice, a note of anger, but for the life of her she couldn’t tell who he was angry with. Or why he would believe he had the right to be angry with anyone – for anything.

  A world of words spun in Evangeline’s mind. Too many of them, too fast. She couldn’t pluck the right ones from the tornado of letters, much less form them on her tongue and push them through her teeth. So she said nothing instead.

  Mimi called out to them, pointing at something in the distance. It took a second for Eva to realize she was exuberantly attempting to draw everyone’s attention to Alcatraz, which the cable car riders could see from the top of the hill. San Francisco’s streets were often on steep slopes, affording breathtaking views of the bay and the city around it.

  Eva desperately wanted to get herself together. She desperately did not want to ruin this for her young friend. She wanted everything to be normal. She wanted everything to be okay. But everything was not normal. And most definitely not okay.

  She was riding a cable car with the man who’d killed her father, and she was bleeding from a strangely fresh wound that her bitter enemy and former employee had carved into her stomach. What did it mean? What the hell did she do now?

  Suddenly, the Dragon King was placing his hand over her wound. It hurt, but it was more surprising than anything. “I’m guessing you can’t heal yourself,” he said as she tried to pull back, but his other arm slid around her waist, holding her fast. She forced herself not to pull away again; she didn’t want to make a scene. But emotions were ricocheting off the walls of her consciousness so hard and fast, she was getting internally bruised.

  “Let me help,” he said next. He closed his gray fire eyes and warmth followed his words, sinking from his hand into her wound. That was followed by a cool blast that chased the warmth like ice. Once more, it switched to heat. Then to ice again. She was torn between the two, like a twilight teetering on the verge of night and day.

  But it felt good. And somehow, she knew he was healing her.

  So that’s one power down, she thought. He shared that ability with her, it would seem. But he was right; the irony of having the ability to heal often meant the one who could heal was not able to heal themselves. It was considered by some to be fate’s way of evening things out a bit. But Eva had always wondered what exactly it was trying to even out. Was it a person’s desire to help another? To do good in the world? Why exactly did they need punishment for that? Why exactly did that have to be “evened out?”

  I’m mentally blabbering, she thought, snapping herself back into severe focus. The Dragon King had his hand to her stomach… and it felt good. And that was bad.

  “Okay, that’s good enough,” she choked out, swallowing hard as his eyes flew open, and his fire engulfed her.

  “It won’t heal completely,” he told her shortly. “He still has your blood, and as long as he does, the wound will remain.” He dropped his hand, and Eva noticed there was no blood on it. She looked down to find her shirt dried, and could even tell through the black that it was unstained, as was her hand. “You were foolish to make a deal with him.”

  Eva’s head snapped back up. Her gaze narrowed. “I did what I thought was the right thing to do at the time,” she said defensively. Blood was pounding in her ears, and it was laced with more adrenaline that she’d be able to handle for long.

  The Dragon King’s eyes flashed again, and this time the fire contained flickers of red. The world receded, and he leaned in, grasping the pole above her head as he came in close. “I want you to remember that you said that, Evangeline.” He waited for his words to sink in, and Eva began to feel dizzy. “Because I certainly will.”

  Chapter Four

  If the goddess Amunet was awakened, the hatred on the planet would find a home within her. Like Pandora’s box, it would be contained once more. Religious, racial, and sexual intolerance, war, terrorism, rape, random acts of insane violence… they would come to an eventual end. Amunet would act as an antenna for the negative emotions of an entire world, and she would refocus them. That’s what the Entity had told Arach. That’s what he’d told Evangeline. That’s what he’d told everyone he’d pulled into his grasp. Of course, he’d also promised Arach a queen. The Dragon Queen.

  But that was another matter.

  Apparently Entities couldn’t lie. If that were true – ironically – it meant everything the Entity had promised concerning an end to hatred and violence must come to fruition.

  So, what happened that afternoon was admittedly surprising. For everyone involved.

  It started with a vial of Evangeline’s blood. The Entity had one for every individual who had ever “worked” for him, willingly or not. None of them ever saw it coming, and magic prevented the Entity’s former employees from warning the newbies. It simply happened. The new recruit would agree to help the Entity – and then BAM! There was some open wound sliced into the new guy’s body, always at a random location. And it always hurt. And it never healed, not entirely.

  The Entity then kept the blood that was magically extracted from this wound. But Evangeline’s was special. She’d recently become a queen.

  None of them had foreseen this eventuality. None of them had known that the very same head-strong, violet-eyed woman who was sometimes doing her job under the Entity’s employ was none other than the next queen at the Table of the Thirteen. Fortunately, they’d just happened to unwittingly plan for it.

  It took the blood of a queen to awaken the sleeping goddess. Whether or not Evangeline had yet accepted her new position at the renowned Table was immaterial. She was a queen, born into the role, and seated on the throne by fate. Sooner or later, she would have to accept it.

  That was what mattered where Amunet was concerned.

  Evangeline’s blood shimmered in the crystal container the Entity held between his thumb and forefinger. He swirled it like one would swirl wine in a glass and held it up to the beams of sunlight streaming through the holes in the rafters overhead. It glittered like dark red goldstone.

  The building, or w
hat remained of it, had been abandoned for hundreds of years. Made of stone and history, it lay crumbling around them. At some point in the near past, someone had attempted to protect what was left of it from the elements, but it was a half-hearted attempt, and only the stone foundation and pillars remained. The wood was crumbling along with everything else.

  The smell of fog, of dew and mist, and of wayward vegetation filled the air, mixing with the salt from the nearby sea. They were in Northern California, somewhere between San Francisco and Portland. Arach realized there was a lot of space there. But the truth was, he had stopped trying to figure out exactly where the Entity teleported him. When he needed or wanted to leave, it was simply easier to back-track and go on from his previous location. The Entity’s magic was very powerful and very shielded. Tracking it or tracing it was draining.

  “You may wish to stand back, dragon,” said the Entity as the ancient evil approached the sarcophagus at the center of the weathered room. Arach took a step back. Then another. They were awakening a goddess, after all.

  The Entity was now dressed as a human. In fact, this was the most human-looking Arach had ever seen him. He had black hair, black eyes, and his skin was a touch pale. But his height, his build, and his movements were those of a handsome, graceful young man. For once, there was no strange, too-wide smile. His clothing was dark, as usual, but it was that of a wealthy man, finely bracked and expertly tailored. He was looking his best for his love, Arach supposed.

  The Entity came to stand directly beside the stone coffin, held the vial up in his right hand, and raised his left hand palm-down over the bas relief in the sarcophagus lid. A second passed before the lid slid slowly open, scraping noisily. Arach nearly jumped at the sound. He was on edge.

  Without glancing at him, the Entity smiled, obviously amused by Arach’s wariness. But it was clear the bulk of his attention was focused on the long-slumbered queen resting like Snow White before them. She wore a serene expression, and her long black hair cascaded over her shoulders in shining rivulets. Her lashes were thick, resting peacefully on her sculpted cheek bones. Despite her sleep, there was color in her pallor. Arach was struck with the impression that the goddess was merely napping. All it would take was a nudge or a loud noise and she would awaken.