by Eve Paludan
“Ride me? In what manner do you mean this?” His eyes twinkled.
“Very funny. You know what I mean… ride you as a passenger! Like we have before.”
He laughed and his face flushed. “I am listening. You have my complete… attention.”
“Oh, you. You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” I teased.
“I cannot deny this.”
I put my hands on his cheeks. “Stop kidding around. Whatever happens on the ride, we’ll have one more special night together, a night to remember forever.”
“Lady Tam. Why this request to ride me into nightfall again?”
“Thorn, I want to know everything about you, good or bad, scary or nice. I want to see what you see as a dragon, read your mind and feel what you feel. I want formal… dragon lessons.”
“Dragon lessons?”
“Yes, Thorn, can you even make me into a dragon? I mean, if I decided I liked it and chose it?”
He put his hand over his heart. “You know not what you ask of me. Dear heart, I should not do that to you!”
“But you could?” I asked hopefully.
“If it was right to do it, I could. But you are so innocent. To bring you into my world as a dragon would take you away from all whom you love, all you know. Are you ready for such a life to fly by my side and fight evil at its very core?”
I huffed out a breath. “Wait a minute. I’d have to actually fight? Like with my body?”
“Verily! The battle between good and evil is constant. Repetitious. And harrowing. I do not know if you could bear life as a dragon. And there would be no return, once transformed. Like me, you would walk on your two legs during the day and fly by night. You would be scorned and maligned by the prejudice of those many who believe dragons are a scourge upon the Earth. I don’t want to do that to you, Lady Tam. It would be selfish of me to transform you into a dragon-woman. You would have no choice at sunset than to change and fly and feed.”
“Feed?”
“Dragons must have meat. Raw meat that we roast with our own breath.”
“So, you really kill things and eat them?” This gave me pause.
“I do.”
“Humans?”
“I never have, but I cannot tell a lie. If there was a scoundrel who was so evil that he deserved the fate of being roasted alive and eaten from the bottom while still screaming from the top, I would not hesitate. No more than your mother hesitated when she smacked evil people off the face of the earth and they met their demise at her fangs.”
“She doesn’t have fangs, just regular teeth. Anyway, yeah, I happen to know one of the people she killed was a man who… I can hardly say it… he did horrible things to… children.”
Thorn held up his hand. “Say no more. I would do likewise to that ilk. She was right to remove that scourge from breathing humanity.”
I let out a big breath. “Okay, then. That dragon diet of nightly killing, roasting and eating sounds like a whole lot of nope for me. But please, Thorn. Just take me with you tonight. Up in the air again. I want to know what your life is like in your dragon form! Because I want to know you, to the core. Even if you are crunching up rabbits.”
“Rabbits? Is that the quarry I seek? It would take dozens of them to sate me. I would be hunting constantly until dawn for tiny morsels of flesh each time.”
“Well, there are cows and sheep outside the city, but the livestock doesn’t belong to you.”
“I see. And who owns the stags?”
“Nobody, as far as I know.”
“Your king does not claim large game as his own?”
“We have no king. I told you, we defeated the British in the year 1776. We’re allies with them now, though.”
“Who now governs this place where we stand?”
“Our country has a president who is elected.” I paused. “Hey, wait, because we’re getting off-track. I just thought of something. There’s always road kill.”
“Pray tell, what is that?”
“Deer hit on the highway by vehicles. Just lying there waiting for the county clean-up crew to scrape them off the asphalt and take them to the dump.”
“I must feast on carrion in this world?” he asked with a disgusted curl in his lip.
“It seems like the least evil way. Until we figure out how to keep you fed without stealing standing livestock.”
“There is that.” I could tell he was considering it, but hesitant, so I poured on a little whine. “Please, please let me come with you tonight.” I looked at the sky. “The sun is sinking toward the horizon. Let me be with you, Thorn, in your dragon flight. Just one night. And I won’t ask for anything else you don’t want to give me.”
“Turnabout is fair play. You think you might want to be a dragon. What if I said I think I might want your heart?” Thorn asked.
“To roast it and eat it, or just to love it?”
Thorn roared with laughter, just as the sun set. And then, he fell to the ground and writhed on it and began to transform into a beautiful creature. His clothes that he was wearing, even his sword, disappeared into the dragon body, which was different from my mom’s transformation. She had to get naked or burst her clothing when she transformed.
I knew it might be the last thing I ever saw in this world, but when Thorn had changed to his winged, four-footed form that was covered with coppery scales, and violet smoke came out of his nose that smelled like incense, I threw my arms around his huge neck and said, “Show me your world. Show me, Thorn, and teach me everything about being a dragon, so that if something horrible happens to you, I will look for the Cup of Forgiveness myself and take it away from the bad guys to make sure that the world doesn’t end.”
“You would do that?” I could hear his thoughts in my head, though he did not vocalize these words.
“Of course. I know what it means to have evil lurking around, just waiting for a chance to take over. Within my power, I won’t let it win.”
“I truly believe you would try to save the world if I could not.” I heard his thoughts in my head, in a different voice, which was drawing down to a deeper, more majestic one than his human voice. “You are brave and good, Lady Tam.”
“Thorn, I told you. I’m not royalty. I’m just an ordinary person. My name is just Tammy.”
“Just Tammy, you could never, never be ordinary,” were his words in my head. “Climb on my neck and up to my head.”
I did, and I held onto the quills that were on his head and used them like reins to hold on as he let loose a roar followed by some flames that he bellowed. We rose up into the night sky over Fullerton and headed for the stars, and I realized that I was warm, very warm. Sitting atop the business end of this beautiful man-dragon was like sitting on a fireplace hearth by a roaring fire.
“I am hotter than fire,” he told me. “I am nearly as hot as the core of the earth, where I was born. But I am holding some heat back so as not to burn you.”
“Thanks for that.”
I was so freaking excited about being on a hot dragon’s head rising up into the sky, but my thought slipped out as words before I could stop it: “This night is from a dream I had of you. Seeing Fullerton at night, with you. This is everything, Thorn. Everything.”
And in my head, I heard him say, “I have never said this to another young woman, but verily, I love you. And I love who you are.”
A thrill went through me. No one had ever said they loved me before, not outside my own family.
I kissed the top of his head, and he shuddered in pleasure. “No one has ever kissed my scaly dragon form before, not even my mother.”
I kissed it again. “Get used to it, handsome.”
He paused and answered in my head, “Very well. You shall have your dragon lessons now. Hold tight, dear-hearted Tammy, for I’m going to bank and get the lay of the land in a dragon’s eye view.”
And then, just like in my dream where we had first met, I screamed, cried, and laughed—like I was on a roller coaster
in the sky—but I held on for dear life and just enjoyed the most thrilling ride of my entire life.
We came back at dawn and there was Mom in the backyard, looking pretty annoyed with me. Ugh!
Chapter 29
SAMANTHA MOON
After I scolded Tammy for not knowing where she was last night, Tammy and Thorn now sat at the kitchen table with me. Her face was in a pout. His was serene. Anthony was out front, planting a new shrub after the old one got destroyed by a hit-and-run driver in the neighborhood. I tried not to sweat the small stuff. After all, at least it wasn’t the house that got wrecked.
I said, “I have something to tell you, Thorn. And I don’t want you to get upset.”
He nodded, and Tammy’s eyebrows shot up as, no doubt, she was reading my mind. I knew she was because she chewed her lips, knowing what I was about to say.
“Thorn, there’s no pleasant way to say this, I’m afraid. Beowulf is dead.”
“Dead?” Thorn put his head in his hands and rocked back and forth a few times. Tammy put her hand on his back and rubbed it. He looked up at me, his eyes wet.
“How shall I proceed now on my quest, Lady Moon?”
“Just because Beowulf is dead, that doesn’t mean the Grail is lost. We are close. Really close to finding it. Someone who was in his proximity took it.”
“So, he had it?” Tammy asked.
“He did. I’ve reviewed the security tapes. It rolled out of his tangled beard during a struggle in which he was restrained by staff. A janitor picked it up off the floor and put it in his mop bucket and took it out of the room. Later, the janitor was found dead, burned to a crisp from spontaneous combustion. But the Cup was gone when the police got there.”
“Someone took it, drank from it, and died,” Tammy said.
“That’s what happened.”
“What killed Beowulf?” Thorn asked. “Did he drink from the Cup?”
“No. The coroner thinks it was broken-heart syndrome, or takotsubo cardiomyopathy.”
“What is that, Mom?” Tammy asked.
“An emotional shock brings on a dangerous ballooning of the heart, and it can be survivable, but Beowulf’s heart just stopped.”
Thorn said, “He lost the Cup, which he had stolen from me and carried around for fifty years, and when it was gone, he couldn’t bear it, even though he never once drank from the Cup himself. His heart must have truly broken over it, even more than mine has.”
I said, “Dragons have strong hearts, Thorn. Yours won’t break because you’ll find the Cup.”
He looked at Tammy. “I have two hearts. One dragon. One man. My dragon heart can survive the loss of the Cup, but my man heart, I do not know if it can survive the loss of… what Tammy and your entire Moon family means to me. Anthony is the brother I never had. You, Lady Moon, are a mother of great wisdom and mercy and my anchor in a foreign land. And Tammy, my… beloved.”
Tammy was holding back tears, and I couldn’t look at her right now.
He paused. “I, too, have news, Samantha Moon. As much as you want to believe in a great victory, we did not kill the devil in his dragon form.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Because evil still exists in the world. I can feel it. And if the devil was dead, evil would be dead, too. We killed a demon. And, just as there are Cups that are false, so there are devils that are false as well.” He paused. “Listen to the people of this city.”
I listened to the dawning day and heard a gunshot in the distance and people slinging cuss words at each other. I sighed.
“Okay, then, how many of these false devil suckers do we have to fight until we get to face the real devil in a battle to the death?” I asked, frustrated.
Thorn’s eyebrows worked for a moment. “Samantha Moon, I pray with all my heart that you will never ask aloud for this number to truly manifest. Do not invite such battles, for your pleas could rise up more and more of his minions to do his evil battles until you are exhausted and then, the devil himself will be able to kill you with a mere flick of his fingernail.”
“Oh, yeah? Just how big is the devil anyway?” I put my hands on my hips.
“I have seen him in a dream and as you know, dragon dreams are often prophetic. And sometimes, real.”
I nodded.
Thorn went on. “Were he to rise up from the lake of fire to his full height, you would be as a fly speck to him. That gray dragon that we killed, he was an ant in comparison.”
I took in a breath and didn’t let it out. Truth to tell, I rarely used my lungs, except for effect, like now. “That’s more than daunting. So, I’m guessing we’re down to one way to slay him.”
“You speak truth! Now, more than ever, I need to find the Cup of Forgiveness.”
“Who created it? The Cup?” I asked.
Thorn looked into the billowing clouds of orange and red as the sun rose higher over Fullerton. “The Creator, of course.”
“Are you going to drink from it?” I asked, very curious.
“I do not yet know. I await direction from a trusted source.”
“Who would that be?”
“I do not yet know.”
“But what happens if you drink from it and you aren’t worthy?” I asked.
“Death of my corporeal form and utter spiritual torment, forever and a day. Same as the man who drank from the Cup.”
I grimaced. “Okay, then. You’re sure about all this?”
His eyes turned to me. “I have to tell you something, but I pray you will first promise not to slay me where I stand.”
I was shocked. “What could be so horrible that I would even consider that?”
“I am in love with your daughter. Hopelessly, irretrievably, in love with Tammy. And I can do naught about it because of the Cup. I am tormented and yet, I am happy.”
I pushed down my first instinct, which was to, as a protective mother, indeed, slay him where he stood or even just put a major hurt on him, but I carefully chose my words. “Thorn, I think you are one of the finest supernatural creatures I have ever met, but I know her and that’s not a workable situation for her. As wonderful as you are, she’s too young for all of this with you. The relationship is doomed if you proceed with it and will only bring heartbreak. Also, what if the devil is using Tammy to distract you from your quest of finding the Cup of Forgiveness?”
Pain crossed his rugged, handsome features. “I also thought of that. ’Tis a very real danger that she is being put in my path to distract me from the ultimate goals of my existence.”
“Has she asked you to turn her?” I asked.
“Mother!”
I showed Tammy my hand. “I’m asking him.”
“Yes. Tammy has a desire to turn dragon shifter, just to be with me. I have declined. And then I changed my mind and asked her, and she declined. We have gone back and forth, but in the end, she loves her humanity, and I would never take it from her.”
“Whew,” I said. “That’s a relief.”
Thorn and Tammy were holding hands now, right on top of the kitchen table.
“Spill your guts, Thorn. I know you want to,” I said.
He nodded. “There are places I must go, alone. And things I must do on my own, without her. Not that her company would be unwelcome, quite the opposite, but I will not put her in immortal danger. Trust me, as much as I have thought it over, to be with her, eternally, it is obvious to me that it is a selfish desire, and not in a way that would be approved of by a canon of dragons. As you may know, we are few in the world and carefully chosen through group agreements.”
“I didn’t really know how I became one.”
“The Creator wanted it, Lady Moon. And others concurred. Did you not one day just manifest as a dragon and no one changed you to a dragon through physical intervention, such as a bite?”
I nodded.
Thorn continued, “I do see things in Lady Tam that she may become a dragon on her own, someday, regardless, when she reaches the age of ma
jority.”
“When is that for dragons?” I wondered.
“It is not measured in years. It happens when her relentless quest for the greater good far outweighs her own desires.”
“Is that what happened to me? Why I became a dragon?” I asked.
He bowed his head for a moment. “Dragon-shifting is a lower form of ascension, while still being tied to life on Earth. You are a higher being now. But you are living in the world for a purpose.”
“I see. Why are you telling me all this, Thorn?”
“I am only telling you what is in my heart because Tammy is going to need a mother’s love when I depart from this plane of existence and go on to… either my fiery end if I have overstated my own self-worth—or a new beginning, if I am deemed worthy.”
Tammy’s lips moved, and I could tell she was talking to Thorn in his head, reassuring him.
“One way or another, Lady Moon, no matter how hard my heart fights my head, I cannot see any hope that I will be able to stay and share a life with your beautiful daughter. And I would not rip her from your bosom and take her to some far land to hide from the evil in the world, which I could, since I know places where evil cannot go. It would just be selfish of me to do so.”
“You speak so candidly.” I was impressed.
“As some dragons are helpless to speak anything but truth, I am one of them. I cannot lie. As you, Samantha Moon, cannot lie, except to protect another.” Thorn paused. “So, please, when I am gone and she mourns my loss, love her and love her hard. Love her as you have never loved her before. Or she will be broken in spirit. Alive in body, but a shell of a young woman inside.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
Thorn choked out, “I want her to be able to love again. Not wait for me forever to return. For I will not be able to return. My destiny awaits, and I have delayed long enough because… of her. If I wait any longer, it might be too late for everyone on this world.”
Tears sprang to my eyes, for Tammy… and for Thorn, too. “I will love her hard, Thorn. I promise, I will.”