by Jadyn Chase
I uncovered Logan and flung the last attackers clear. He staggered to his feet and we swiveled back to back to confront them. The Furies measured us for a minute. Then some of them happened to glance behind them at their massive leader lying headless and very dead among the flames.
That’s right, assholes. Take a good, long look, ‘cuz that’s what I have in mind for all of you. My rage and triumph exploded out of me in a torrent. I roared at them and sprayed fire in a sweeping circle to blast in their faces.
They retreated before the onslaught and a few took wing. I got my fury under control with an effort and glared at those that remained. I dared any of them to take me on. Logan shrieked, too, and the circle widened a little more. The Furies pulled away one step at a time and left us standing there together.
A few more withdrew until only five or six stragglers threatened us. Logan and I shifted our feet to keep them in sight, but they didn’t attack. Of course they didn’t. They couldn’t hope to win with so few. At last, they launched and flew away.
I peered into the starry sky where they disappeared. Just then, a thump made me turn around. I jumped when I found Logan collapsed on his side. His ribs heaved and his eyes drifted half-closed.
I shifted in a flash and crouched over him. One leg bent at the wrong angle and innumerable gashes oozed blood from his sides and face. What a fighter. He held up under all that and gave me the opening I needed to defeat The Furies’ leader.
I touched his cheek and he changed under my hand. The spikes receded on his back and his scales vanished to become pink skin. A scattering of black hair fell over his eyes. “You gotta…. you gotta help me, Eli,” he rasped.
“Don’t worry about a thing, little brother,” I murmured. “You’re gonna be just fine. You’ll see.”
“Take me home, Eli,” he croaked. “Don’t leave me here.”
“Okay, brother,” I whispered. “Okay. I ain’t gonna leave you. You saved my bacon. I couldn’t leave you behind.”
He swallowed hard and closed his eyes. That leg really must have hurt. I thought fast. Ruby and Christopher would be waiting for me at the train station. I had to go get them, but Logan needed me more.
I scooped my arms under him and thought fast. I couldn’t walk him to the hospital, not like this, and I was too far away to take him anywhere else. I didn’t have a bike to drive him on, either.
Never mind. He deserved whatever I could do for him. I squared my shoulders and shifted into my dragon form again. I hugged his frail body against my chest and took wing into the night.
I flapped across town and located the hospital. With any luck, I would find the parking lot and the waiting room as deserted as the first time I brought him in. I landed in some empty parking spaces. I set Logan on the ground while I shifted into a form that wouldn’t give the receptionist a coronary. Then I lifted him into my arms.
He moaned every time I moved him, and he didn’t open his eyes. Just a few more steps and he would be safe. I didn’t give a fuck what the nurses or doctors thought about me bringing him back injured within hours of them releasing him for a gunshot wound.
I marched in and surveyed the waiting room. One of those wheeled gurneys sat parked against the wall. I lowered Logan onto it and approached the desk. A grey-haired lady examined me over her wire-rimmed spectacles. “Can I help you?”
I nodded toward Logan. He curled in the fetal position with his eyes still closed. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead. “My friend—he’s got a broken leg and a few nasty cuts.”
She compressed her thin lips and sneered at my patches. “How did he break his leg?”
“He got in a fight.” Stupid bitch. If she thought she could intimidate me with her judgmental attitude, she could go bark up another tree. It put up with enough shit for one night. I sure as shootin’ wouldn’t take it from the likes of her.
She made another face. I just did not give a flying fuck about anything as long as she checked him in.
She handed me a clipboard and I filled it in exactly the way I did last time. She made a call on her phone. “The triage nurse will be down in a minute, and then they’ll take him to X-ray.”
Fine. Whatever. I drifted back to Logan’s side. I pushed his hair back. He felt cold so I draped a blanket over him. His leg looked fucking awful. I couldn’t look at it without feeling sick to my stomach.
He squinted one eye open and caught me studying him. “The triage nurse will be out in a second, brother,” I told him. “She’ll take you to X-ray, and they’ll get you fixed up.”
He swallowed hard. “Go, dude. Just go.”
I jolted upright. “I told you I ain’t leaving you.”
“I know you want to go find them.” He lifted his head and locked his eyes on me. “Go, Eli. Go to them. They need you more than I do right now.”
I cocked my head, hardly daring to believe what I just heard. “Are you sure?”
He clasped my hand. “Go. Just go. Go now.”
I held back the urge to whoop with relief. Instead, I bent down and kissed his blood-stained cheek. “Thank you, brother. I won’t forget this.”
I bolted out of the hospital and launched flying faster than thought. I burned out of town and got my bike. Then I hit the throttle and thundered right back to the train station.
The security guard was talking into his shoulder radio when I pulled up at the curb. Ruby rushed me and hurled her arms around me. She covered my cheek with kisses. “Oh, thank God you’re all right. We saw the explosions.”
I pushed her back so I could get a look at her face. “Are you all right—both of you?”
Christopher fidgeted a few steps back. He hesitated to come too close. I didn’t blame him after what he saw that night.
“We’re fine, thanks to you,” Ruby told me. “The guard was just trying to call a tow truck for us.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from grinning. She wouldn’t need a tow truck tonight.
I nodded to the man. “I’ll take it from here.”
He shrugged and went back to doing nothing. I turned my attention to Ruby. “Get on.”
She burst into a glorious smile and swung her leg over the back. She slipped her arms around my ribs like she belonged there. Man, she felt good back there. I never wanted to lose that feeling of her huddled against me.
Christopher didn’t come near me, though. He studied me with wary eyes. What did he really think of me? He probably thought I was a dangerous criminal, and he would be right about that. He saw me in dragon form, after all. I couldn’t hide that from him.
I took a deep breath. If we were going to do this father-son thing, we would have to take it slow. He would have to learn to trust me and rely on me, and that wouldn’t happen overnight.
I patted the seat in front of my crotch. “Come on, son. Climb on and I’ll take you home.”
He stole a peek at his mother hugging me from behind. “Come on, sweetheart,” she told him. “It’s all right.”
He relaxed his vigilance ever so slightly and took a step toward the bike. I guided him toward it, and he put his leg over the gas tank. I put my arms on the handlebars to close him in, and he settled the rest of the way into the seat.
A strange smell off from his hair and entered my nostrils. It resembled no other smell I could remember. It didn’t remind me of his mother. It didn’t remind me of anything. I guess I never let myself get close enough to kids to know what they smelled like.
I kicked the bike into gear and motored out of the parking lot. I drove across town to their house. The whole way there, I kept leaning forward to catch a whiff of that smell. I wanted to imprint his smell on my brain for all time. He was mine. He belonged to my flesh, to my Clan.
I never wanted that ride to end. I wanted to keep going with these two holding onto me for their lives. I wanted to be the one they held onto, the one they relied on to protect them from danger. I wanted to the big one, the one in the middle, the lynchpin holding all three of us t
ogether.
My heart sank when the house came into view. I parked and kicked down the stand. Both of them dismounted and left me cold and alone. That incredible feeling of belonging to them—it was bound to end sometime.
Christopher marched straight into the house without a backward glance. Ruby stopped on the sidewalk. She kept glancing between me and the front porch. Then she sighed. “Thank you, Eli. Thank you so much.”
“You don’t have to thank me, darling. It was nothing.”
“No.” She drew herself up. “It wasn’t nothing. It was something. It was something amazing. I’m grateful.”
“I meant,” I told her, “it was nothing for you. I would do a lot more for you—for both of you. You know that.”
She bowed her head. “I guess I do.” She looked back again. “Hey, do you want to come in for a minute?”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
She hurried ahead of me into the house. I entered the shadowy living room. “Make yourself at home,” she whispered. “I’ll just put Christopher to bed. Then I’ll be right back.”
14
Ruby
I sat down on Christopher’s bed. He lay with his back to me pretending to be asleep. I rested my hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right, sweetie?”
He didn’t answer, but I could tell from his breathing he wasn’t asleep. In fact, he held himself stiff and tense. Did the horrors he witnessed in that warehouse still haunt? Would he be traumatized for life?
I tried again. “I know you’re probably confused about what you saw out there tonight but….”
He whipped over so fast he startled me. “You lied to me, Mom. You said that man was dangerous, but he saved us tonight. You told me to stay away from him, and then you kissed him.”
The blood rushed to my cheeks. “I know. I did say those things, and I did kiss him.”
“Those dragons would have killed us if he hadn’t found us. Why did you lie?”
I braced myself for the ultimate confrontation. This conversation had to happen, so why not now? “He is a dragon, sweetheart.”
“I know that. I saw him with my own eyes, but you can’t tell me he’s dangerous—not to us, at least. He’s not like those other dragons. He’s different—him and his friend. He protected us while we got out of the building. He made sure we were safe and he stayed behind to fight them. What else are you not telling me about him?”
I cringed inwardly. Eli warned me this would happen, but I still hesitated to tell Christopher everything. “You’re right. Eli is a good man. He risked everything to save us because he cares about us.” I stared down at my hands. “I care about him, too.”
Christopher’s intense brown eyes bored into my soul. I never noticed until that moment how much he looked like Eli. They really were very similar in a lot of ways.
Eli was right. I made a mistake trying to keep them apart. Christopher needed something from Eli that I couldn’t give him. Christopher would find out sooner or later that he was a dragon, too. When that happened, he would need Eli. Could I handle that?
Christopher turned his gaze away and stared up at the ceiling. “They were amazing. Those dragons—they were incredible. It must be so awesome to fly around like that. I’d love to be able to do that.”
His face transformed in a dream of flight and possibility. What would he be like as a dragon on the wing? He would probably be as massive and awe-inspiring as Eli himself.
The image of him at the warehouse came back to me. His gleaming red sides radiated power and overwhelming majesty. His eyes glowed fire red and his wings thundered when he beat them.
I cringed again. Eli was a dragon. Now that dragon was out in my living room waiting for me to come back. I had to face him and deal with him. My stomach fluttered at the memory of…. of everything.
I kissed Christopher on the cheek. “Don’t stay up too late thinking about it. Get some sleep.”
I switched off the light. Now I had no choice but to go back to the living room. When I reached the threshold, Eli’s black silhouette stood out against the window. His leather jacket made his shoulders seem broader and squarer. He seethed possibility and unknown mystery.
A fiery thrill ran through me. I slept with this man, with a dragon. Did that make me something other than human? What did it mean for my life?
Before I could decide what to do or say, he strode up to me in the dark. The streetlight shone behind him and cast his face in shadow so I couldn’t make out his expression. He whispered low. “Listen, Ruby. I know you tried to protect Christopher from me because I was in Los Diablos, but I have to tell you right now. I won’t let you keep him from me anymore. Now that I know he’s my son, I have to be a part of his life. I’m sorry if that hurts you, but he needs me and I need him. I can’t go back to pretending he isn’t mine. I owe it to him to do whatever I can for him. I don’t want to fight you for him, but I will if that’s what it takes. I hope you’ll let me be a part of his life. I can help you. You don’t have to struggle doing it all yourself. I’m here to help you carry the weight. All you have to do is let me.”
My heart leaped at the chance, but something still held me back. “I know he needs you now. I realize that. I just…..” My voice cracked. I didn’t know this feeling would hurt so much breaking the surface.
“What?” he whispered. “What’s bothering you? Tell me. Is it me? Are you still worried I’ll bring violence into his life?”
“It’s not that.” I floundered putting my thoughts into words. “I’m scared, that’s all. I’m scared of…..of what he’ll become when he becomes a…..Oh, Christ! I can’t even think about him becoming one of those things.”
He took another step toward me. “I’m one of those things.”
“I know!” I heard myself crying, but I couldn’t hold it back anymore. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
“I’m the same man you kissed and held and slept with the other night,” he murmured. “I didn’t change.”
My hand flew to my mouth, but I couldn’t stem the tide of words rushing out in a torrent. “It’s not that. I know it’s you…. Oh, what am I saying? I’m just scared…. not of you. I’m scared…..Holy shit, I can’t be saying this! I’m afraid of my own son!”
A choking sob ripped out of my throat. What was happening to me? How could I say that? How could I even think it?
Eli closed in and took me in his arms. In that warm, protective embrace, he made everything okay. I laid my head on his chest and burst into tears. How could this happen? This horrible truth burned a hole in my being ever since Eli told me the truth. I was afraid of Christopher.
Eli steered me toward the couch. Without letting go of me, he pulled me down next to him and hugged me into his shoulder. I sobbed out my grief and fear and pain—all the agonizing strain and worry and stress of raising a child alone and never knowing what would happen to him.
Now I knew and it scared the living shit out of me. He couldn’t be one of those dragons. I couldn’t allow it, and yet I saw it clear as day in his eyes when he talked about flying. He already was one and I couldn’t prevent it.
Eli didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He was there. He would always be there as much as I needed him to be. I knew that beyond doubt. If I told him to leave, he would. He would never try to bother me again, but I couldn’t keep him away from Christopher.
What was the point of keeping Eli away from Christopher? Christopher would become a dragon, one of those fearsome monsters spitting fire and screeching to rattle the bones of human beings. He would become one even if I somehow managed to keep Eli away. Nothing could stop it.
I jerked out of his arms and ran my hand across my nose. “Forget it. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing and I won’t forget it,” he murmured. “You need to come to grips with this or it will destroy you and him together. You have a lot of years of raising him yet to come. If you don’t accept it, you’ll drive yourself insane.”
“I don’t want to
lose him,” I wailed. “I don’t want him to leave when he finds out.”
“The only way you could lose him,” he replied, “is if you try to stop it. If you try to stop him becoming what he is, he’ll break away and leave you behind. He has to do this. He has to find a way to become what he is and he’ll do it with you or without you. The best thing you can do for him is to help him become it.”
“I can’t.” I sniffed back my tears and hardened my heart to reality. “You’re the one who has to help him become it.”
A small smile touched his lips. “I can do that.”
My head shot up. “Promise me something, Eli. Give me your solemn word that you won’t tell him until he grows up. Let him have a normal childhood. Let him think he’s a normal boy with normal friends playing Little League and all that stuff. Don’t tell him until he gets older.”
The smile drained off his face. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Yes, I do!” I exclaimed. “You had a normal childhood. You had a girlfriend in high school before you found out. You did all the stuff ordinary children do. I want Christopher to have that. I want him to go through his childhood thinking he’s just like the other kids. There are no others of your kind around here that I know of. Don’t tell him. Please. Just let him grow up. I’m begging you.”
His big hand closed over mine. “All right. I promise I won’t tell him, but only if you promise to let me be a part of his life. Promise you won’t fight me to stop me from helping to raise him. Promise we won’t turn this into a battleground that poisons him and everything he does. Promise we’ll work together to give him the best life possible.”
I froze. Could I make that promise? Could I really let Eli back into my life after everything that happened?
Eli bowed his head. “I won’t try to get back together with you, but I won’t promise that I won’t keep wanting to. After tonight, I don’t think I’ll ever stop wanting to, but I promise I’ll keep my distance.”