Dragons and Mayhem

by Blair Babylon

  The red sea serpent spasmed, its eyes bulging slightly from its scaly head.

  “Arawn?” Willow pressed herself against the black dragon’s warm, dry skin, terrified that this was her last second on earth and she was about to be burned alive. Her fingers flexed, holding onto the dragon’s skin that felt like thousands of tiny crystal beads sewn onto black silk. When she pressed her cheek against him, a faint, dry scent like the sting of hot metal and wood smoke filled her nose.

  Above her, Arawn lowered his wing, closing the gap and shielding her with his leathery skin. Black, metallic bumps shone in the sunlight like chain mail. The black dragon bellowed again, a warning blast.

  When the dragon’s roar subsided, she heard honking and snorting from farther away.

  The hacking sounded like a cat—a truly enormous cat like a prehistoric saber-toothed tiger—horking up a hairball.

  Instead of the roar of dragonfire, a belch of warm air and a moist splat flopped against the dragon’s wing and onto the ground all around her.

  The stench of half-digested vegetation hung in the air.

  Green slime dripped off the edge of the black dragon’s wing. The pebbled skin on Arawn’s wing bowed under the weight.

  Oh, jeez.

  The dragon wing lifted away from her slightly, tipping it forward.

  Clumps of wet green stuff and bile slid off the dragon’s skin and plopped on the cement.

  She looked up at Arawn’s dragon towering over her. Even though his slim, dark face was reptilian and did not convey emotion like a human face, the horror evident in its sapphire blue eyes and slightly peeled-back lips conveyed the stunned dragon’s disgust.

  Willow yanked her legs underneath her and ran sideways and backward, through the part of the ground that was the least splattered with fetid sea monster barf.

  The black dragon watched her go, staring as hurl dripped off his regal nose and slid down his neck.

  Its lip lifted farther, revealing bright white fangs, and it snarled an angry and aggressive growl at Willow.

  She scrambled backward, standing and hopping to try to keep from stepping in the green barf clumps with her one pair of decent shoes, her sparkly blue witch boots.

  The black dragon roared at the serpents again, a long and sustained thunder of rage.

  The sea serpents flinched and slunk under the water, still snarling but cowed.

  Willow had run a few paces away while watching. She slowed.

  The black dragon curled its long, snaky neck around and glared at her again.

  Wow, Arawn’s dragon had an attitude problem.

  She ran faster.

  When Willow was far enough away, the dragon lifted his dark wings into the air, half-blotting out the sky.

  Oh, Lords of Magic. If he shook the barf off like a dog, that nasty slime would spray all over the courtyard and all over her. She ran harder, looking back over her shoulder.

  The dragon watched her retreat, his bright blue eyes staring balefully down his dark, slender nose as she ran.

  When Willow had run a third of the way back to the casino, Arawn’s dragon lifted his head like a ribbon pulled through the air.

  She slowed, watching him.

  He sniffed the breeze at the altitude far above the silent fountain and spread his wings.

  More glops of green, fibrous serpent barf splatted on the cement.

  A light breeze had sprung up and tickled the clothes on Willow’s back. Even though the wind was blowing toward the vomit-covered dragon, the stench of fermenting, decomposing spew that smelled like a dirty barnyard reached Willow’s nose. She covered her nose and mouth with her elbow.

  The dragon gulped in a huge draft of air, expanding its throat and belly. He leaned over, angling his head toward his wing and released a ragged laser beam of dragonfire from his mouth, directed at his wing.

  Shockingly blue dragonfire.

  A hot wave of air washed over Willow’s face, blowing back the cooling breeze.

  Willow stopped running, mesmerized. She’d never heard of a dragon breathing blue fire before, not in any of her classes, not in any of the magical herpetology books she’d read. She fumbled for her cell phone to take a picture, but it clattered to the cement beside her foot, and then she couldn’t look away.

  The sapphire blue of the flames matched the dragon’s azure eyes.

  And Arawn’s bright blue eyes, too.

  The dragon blasted his own wing, vaporizing the serpent’s sick as soon as the fire touched it and reducing it to the smallest dusting of gray ash. His skin didn’t seem affected at all by being washed with fire, which made sense. Dragons shouldn’t be flammable.

  He seared the vegetation off both his wings and swiveled his long neck to send a river of blue fire cascading down his back. Finally, he held his wing in front of his face and reflected a blast of dragonfire directly over his nose and forehead, moving the reflecting wing around to his cheeks and neck, looking like a cat washing its face with its paw.

  When he was done, the great dragon shook himself hard. Gray ash puffed into the air and floated away on the mild breeze like tiny dandelion seeds.

  Willow stared at the magnificent creature, almost unable to breathe.

  The dragon shot a wider, more diffuse jet of blue flame at the cement, burning away the largest clumps of the sea serpent’s vomit. That ash scattered in the wind, too.

  The black dragon paced around the lip of the fountain, growling and slapping the edge with his front feet.

  The talons on his front feet shone in the bright sun like polished titanium, the glare almost burning Willow’s eyes. His obsidian skin sucked in the sunlight. He paced a quarter of the way around the pool, glaring at the water.

  The surface of the pool was still, like the sea serpents knew better than to challenge the aggressive, black dragon.

  Willow took a step toward him but stopped. He was so big, so intimidating, but she wanted to press her hand against his soft, beaded skin again.

  The black dragon wove his long neck, peering into the pond and inhaling like he was looking for an opponent to fight. His eyes were full of blue fire.

  “Arawn?” she asked aloud.

  The dragon whipped its head around to look at her, glaring and pulling its lips back from its sharp, white teeth.

  Uh-oh.

  His neck bowed, lifting his enormous head the size of a truck into the air, and he lunged toward her, his teeth the size of swords glinted in the sunlight.

  This isn’t Arawn, she realized too late. Arawn was the man who had said he loved her, but this dragon was another soul that resided in his body. She didn’t know this dragon at all.

  She didn’t know anything about shifter magic in general or dragons in particular. The soul that was Arawn might not be conscious when he metamorphosed into his dragon. She thought dragons were intelligent, but she wasn’t sure. He’d snarled at her, but he had been telling her to back off so he could clean himself, right?

  Probably.

  The dragon was working himself into a territorial rage around the pool, and Arawn might sink deeper into the dragon’s mind. He might be gone.

  She didn’t know whether the dragon would kill her out of malice or pure instinct.

  Willow sprinted toward the casino. Her boots squished on dragon barf. Yuck.

  As she ran, the hissing growl behind her subsided, and a cool breeze feathered her face. “Willow, wait!”

  That was Arawn’s voice.

  Willow jogged to a stop and turned, looking back at the fountain.

  Arawn stood beside the fountain, a towel wrapped tightly around his slim waist. Hard ripples ran up his stomach to his round pectorals and broad shoulders.

  He’d always looked amazing, but he’d evidently had more time than usual for the gym since they’d broken up six months ago.

  He saw her looking at him and reached into the duffel bag he’d brought. He dragged a different white tee shirt over his head, pulling it down over his broad chest and flexing
abdomen. His blond hair was mussed, curling slightly over his forehead and ears. “Willow, it’s gone. My dragon’s gone. It’s okay now.”

  “Was he mad?” she asked, walking back toward him, even though that might not be advisable.

  “It really didn’t like those sea serpents,” he chuckled, dragging his hand through his hair. If anything, that made it worse, separating the strands into curls. His hair had a bit of wave, she remembered from waking up beside him, before he showered and blew it dry to be exactly how he wanted it. Arawn continued, “That dragon of mine wanted to hunt those serpents down and rip them apart. It just doesn’t like to swim.”

  Willow’s heart thumped in her chest. “Did he want to hunt me down and kill me?”

  Arawn’s lips thinned, and he smoothed the tee shirt over his muscled chest and abs. He took his flip-flops back out of the bag and dropped them on the ground.

  “Did he?” she asked again.

  He inserted his feet into the thongs. “That’s a difficult question.”

  “Either he wanted to kill me, or he didn’t.”

  Arawn picked up the empty duffel bag. A torn piece of cloth blew past him in the warm breeze, and he snagged it with his fingertips and tossed it into the bag. “It was angry that the serpents were in its territory. It was nearly in a rage. My dragon is more tempestuous than most.”

  “Really?” Willow gaped at him. “But you’re so . . . not-tempestuous.”

  Arawn’s dark glance startled her. She wasn’t sure if the sultry look from under his eyelashes was reminding her that sometimes he certainly could be impulsive and dominating when he wanted to be or just that she had never met his dragon before and didn’t know that side of him.

  And she didn’t know that side of him at all, just like he didn’t know that she was a total screw-up of a witch. “I mean—I suppose I don’t know that part of you.”

  He shrugged. “It’s odd. You were everything to me, and I had to hide half of my life from you.”

  “Same.”

  He looked at her. “Do you observe the witching holidays?”

  She nodded. “How do you know about those?”

  “My mother was a witch.”

  “Which coven? Oh, wait. Was?” She neared him. She’d managed to run a long way.

  “My parents died well over two years ago, nearly three now. My mother got sick, which is unusual in a dragonmate. Dragons and their mates have exceedingly low rates of cancer and heart disease, but she had a stroke. It was quite a scandal at the time. People were saying that it was evidence that dragon magic was waning because my father’s magic hadn’t been able to protect her.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Willow reached his side. She hadn’t known. They’d never discussed his parents, and she sure as heck hadn’t discussed her childhood home life with incantations, witching sabbaths, and sparking potions.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of serious a lot of the time.”

  “Oh. Really?” Willow nodded, keeping her eyes wide, because friends do that for each other.

  “She made me laugh.” He smiled, remembering. “She made me laugh a lot. I didn’t realize how much until she was gone.”

  Willow’s heart ached, and she almost reached out to him. “I’m so sorry.”

  He nodded. “It couldn’t be helped.”

  “And your father, too?”

  Arawn adjusted the strap of his duffel bag on his shoulder and stared out over the calm water sparkling in the sunlight. “He died soon after.”

  “Were we dating at the time?” Because he had been so secretive about his family, he might not have told her even that. A high wall had blocked off such a significant section of his life.

  Arawn said, “They died the semester before we met, so I was already accustomed to it.”

  He was still gazing at the water in the fountain’s pool, now covered with wavelets from the diving sea serpents and sparkling in the breeze and sunlight.

  “I’m still sorry. I’m sorry that I didn’t know.”

  “It wasn’t something that needed to be discussed. By the time we moved in together, they’d been gone for over a year.”

  “I’m sorry that they died so soon after one another. That must have been rough on you.”

  “It’s quite expected. If a dragonmate dies, their dragon usually follows within a few days, sometimes within hours. It often works the other way, but not all the time. Sometimes if a dragon dies, their dragonmate survives, but it’s rare. It usually happens when the dragonmate is the female and they have a child or children to raise. Sometimes, then, they can push past it. Sometimes.”

  “So a lot of dragons and their mates die young?”

  “My parents died tragically young by dragon standards. They were only in their seventies.”

  “It’s always sad when a parent or loved one passes away. My dad died when he was thirty-one.”

  Arawn’s glance at her was sharp. “I’m sorry.”

  Willow flipped her fingers in the air, brushing it off. “I was nine. It was a long time ago.”

  Arawn stepped toward her, one hand lifting, but he stopped and dropped his hand. “I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, we never talked about our families much.”

  “Thirty-one. That’s shockingly young. I can’t even imagine it. I’m forty-two.”

  Willow rocked backward. “You’re what?”

  “Dragons live longer than most supernaturals, and we appear young for the first half or so of the life span. Unmated dragons live to be a hundred or a hundred and twenty. Mated dragons often live to two hundred years old.”

  “You said you were twenty-five when we met!”

  He shrugged. “That’s the equivalent in natural years.”

  “There’s no way you’re forty-two years old. You still look around twenty-five. And barely that.”

  He shrugged. “Dragon metabolism.”

  “Seriously. I can’t believe you’re so old.”

  He laughed. “Indeed. I’m ancient. Have I mentioned that King Llewellyn turned a hundred and fifty last year?”

  “You guys are weird.”

  “Now you’re beginning to understand dragons.”

  “Speaking of understanding dragons, those sea serpents looked sick.”

  “Yeah,” he mused, sighing.

  “Didn’t you notice?”

  “I was a bit distracted by my dragon trying to kill them and eat them when they threatened you, but I noticed that they weren’t well this morning.”

  When they— Surely, he didn’t mean it like that. “I’ll bet they wouldn’t have tasted very good if your dragon had eaten them. First of all, I think they ate all the algae in the fountain, which means they’re out of food.”

  “Yep, we’ve got hungry sea serpents in the fountain directly between the Strip and the casino’s front doors where anyone could get chewed up and swallowed in full view of the thousands of people walking by.”

  Beyond the fountain, past the cement courtyard, throngs of people were hurrying by on the sidewalk next to the traffic whizzing by on the street. Other hotels crowded the other side of the street and down the block, tall towers of rooms behind crazy, flashing casinos. Even in the bright afternoon, the casinos sparkled more brightly than the overhead sun.

  Willow asked him, “Do I definitely have the job?”

  “If you accept it.”

  “I accept. Can I order them some fish right now?”

  “Certainly. I’ll show you the ordering system on the computer network inside.”

  “Can I get it delivered today?”

  “If we can find a vendor that can expedite delivery, yes. We are in the middle of the desert. Fish may be harder to find here than in someplace like California.”

  “Do you think the apparitional sea serpents will eat fish like normal ones?” she asked, just wanting some confirmation that she wasn’t being stupid.

  He shrugged but nodded. “I think it’s as good of a guess as any.”

 
“Do dragons eat fish?” she asked him.

  “In my human form, I’m your standard omnivore.” Yes, she remembered that from when they were dating, though even then she’d thought Arawn was a little more carnivorous than the average male. He ate a lot of beef jerky and chicken-breast sandwiches without the bun for snacks. He continued, “If I eat normally, my dragon doesn’t need to eat when it emerges, which is good. It’s a messy eater.”

  Willow wasn’t sure she wanted to hang around the dragon who fed messily, especially since he had shown a definite interest in her in a lunch kind of way. “It always seemed like we cooked large batches of food, but you work out. You run. You lift.”

  He nodded. “Dragons eat a lot.”

  “I want to take another look at those sea serpents before we go inside.”

  Arawn lifted the hem of his tee shirt, starting to take it off and revealing the stacked, flat bricks of his abdominals.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to transform into your dragon,” and possibly chew me up and eat me. “I can scry.”

  He stopped taking the shirt off but stared at her with his blue eyes over his bare, golden arm. “The serpents won’t care if you cry. They’ll eat you anyway. They might like the salt.”

  “No, sssssscry. With an S. I can peer into a bowl of water, or just lean over the fountain’s basin here, and remotely view them. Even if they’re under the water and on the other side of the pool, I’ll be able to see them.”

  “That could be useful.” He lowered his shirt, still watching her. His eyes had become a little colder. “Very useful.”

  He’d always been just a little too interested in the military applications of anything they were discussing.

  “Yeah, well, remember me telling you about the witch code, An’ it harm none, so we don’t do magic of any kind for the military or security agencies because of the karmic rebound. You can use your little drones and gadgets to do that kind of stuff.”

  Arawn bobbed his head, “Fair enough,” and smoothed his shirt over his flat stomach. The thin, white cotton clung to his heavy pecs.

  Willow gingerly approached the fountain, watching the smooth surface for a bulge in the water that meant a serpent was surfacing to eat her.