Dragons and Mayhem

by Blair Babylon

  Willow nodded, still chewing on her lip. “If that happens, then we know. At least we tried.”

  “Yes,” he said, again wishing he could be exorcized of his demon dragon. “At least we tried.”

  “I’m more worried about poisoning you.”

  “I have a dragon’s constitution, and if I die, I die.”

  Willow reached into her pocket and then set a small, black vial on the table. “I was able to buy a Universal Potion Antidote. If it does do something bad, this might help. Maybe. Sometimes.”

  She slid it across the table to sit beside his plate.

  “Good to know.” He threw the potion down his throat in one gulp and swallowed hard. The scent of flowers billowed up his nose, but the oily liquid tasted like apples in his mouth. “It tasted okay.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Willow said. “But you have to look at me.”

  Arawn was looking at her. He stared at the adorable pink streaks in her baby blond hair, at the sweetness of her mouth, at her soft and silken skin, and into the green of her eyes. He loved everything about her, and yet that elemental stirring deep in his magic remained missing. “How long should we do this?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her green eyes locked with his, though her breathing was shallow.

  His skin prickled.

  Maybe this was it.

  He leaned forward, watching her face and her throat and her eyes, afraid to breathe lest he disrupt it.

  A million razor blades sliced his skin.

  He didn’t look away from her widening stare. He watched her as if his life depended on it.

  Something white encroached on his vision from below, and his mouth felt—beaky.

  Willow stood in her chair. “Arawn, take the antidote. Arawn take the antidote!”

  He scrambled for the black vial, but his white, feathered wing knocked it off the table.

  Wait, wing?

  He looked down. White feathers were sprouting all over his skin, even sticking out from under his shirt sleeves.

  Arawn squawked.

  He flapped his wings which were incomprehensibly on his arms instead of branching from his back.

  His head was grabbed and wrenched back.

  Above and behind him, Willow’s determined face said, “Open your beak, Chicken Little.”

  His jaw was wrenched open, and a vile, viscous draught hit his tongue and the back of this throat.

  He gagged, but Willow stroked his throat, saying, “Swallow it. Swallow it all.”

  Arawn managed to choke it down. He gagged, but she stroked his throat and his back so he kept it in his stomach.

  Willow held his head against her shoulder and hugged him through the pain as the feathers were pushed out of his skin through the open wounds. Every micron of his skin was glass-sliced, everywhere, even his butt and his dick and the soles of his feet and his entire back.

  He closed his eyes, breathing in her scent, and tried to feel her against the side of his face just in case he was breathing his last.

  Instead, he continued breathing.

  “There, there,” Willow said, stroking him. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

  Arawn opened his eyes. He was clutching her slim waist and the swells of her hips. “Willow?” he croaked.

  She descended in his arms and examined him, turning his arms up to look at the slices in his flesh that the feathers had made. His skin sealed the incisions as they watched. White feathers drifted to the dark blue carpeting.

  Willow asked, “Does it hurt?”

  He was frowning at his healed arm, and he wiped drops of blood off of his unmarked skin with his other hand. His white shirt looked like it had thousands of scarlet polka dots all over it. “Not anymore. I’m fine.”

  “I’m so sorry.” She backed up, her eyes widening in horror. “I’m so sorry that I screwed it up. I won’t ever do it again. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “Whoa, whoa!” He stood and grabbed her elbows, forcing her to face him. “Willow, you’re fine. It was an accident. You did your best. I drank the potion of my volition. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault, and even if it was, nothing should ever happen to you that makes you this afraid.”

  She shook her head but still didn’t look up, and a lock of her blond and pink hair fell beside her cheek.

  He said, “While we were living together, every time you did this, you wouldn’t tell me why. I need to know why you do this.”

  “I don’t want to—”

  He ducked his head, trying to get in line with her gaze. “Willow, it tears me up when you do this.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I want to know why. I want to grab whatever is making you so afraid and destroy it.” His voice had lowered octaves and turned gravelly.

  His teeth sharpened in his mouth.

  His hands began to curve, and his fingernails took on the black-silver sheen of dragon claws.

  No, Dark Other. Go back into your cave. I will not allow you to take over.

  Willow looked up at him. “Your eyes.”

  He straightened, blinking. Had the potion worked? “What? What do you see?”

  She stared at him, looking back at forth between his eyes, but her shoulders drooped. “Nothing. It’s gone now.”

  He nodded. His hands were back to normal, too, and his tongue ran around the flat molars of an omnivore in his mouth.

  Willow was better, though. Her breathing was back to normal.

  Arawn said, “I want you to tell me who made you so scared of making any mistake that you fall apart when something goes wrong. Or actually, after something goes wrong. You realize that, don’t you? When the potion went wrong, you didn’t fall apart. You grabbed me and poured the antidote down my throat and held me until it was over, making sure I didn’t hurt myself or throw up the potion. You got upset only afterward.”

  She blinked and drew back, thinking about that.

  “You’re more competent than you give yourself credit for.”

  Her eyebrows twitched downward, and she shook her head.

  Arawn told her, “You’re better at everything than you give yourself credit for.”

  Her hands slid around the waistband of his pants, drifting over his waist. “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. You graduated summa in chemistry.”

  “Half the time, I accidentally made potions that did weird things. One time, I made a Magic Tea for the Ivy Moon, which smells like almonds, and everyone ran out of the lab thinking someone had released cyanide gas. ‘If you can smell the almonds, it’s too late.’”

  Arawn laughed. “That must have been funny.”

  “The lab TA’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his face.” But she grinned a little.

  Arawn kept smiling. “So, it turned me into a bird?”

  Willow nodded, but she kept smiling. “It looked like a chicken, a giant, white, two-hundred-pound chicken. Oh, yeah,” Willow said, her eyes drifting up as she nodded. “The millet. I guess it had some birdseed in it.”

  He drew a deep breath in, the pain completely gone. “I guess I’m one of the few supernaturals on Earth who can claim to have shifted into both a dragon and a chicken.”

  She stared at him and then started to giggle.

  “Bock, bock, bock,” he said, tickling her.

  Willow danced under his fingers, and his hand slipped under her blouse to her back.

  She stopped trying to get away from him, stepping closer, and his need for her zinged through him. He caught her cheek in his hand and slipped one arm around her waist, drawing her against his chest.

  A white feather drifted out of the top of his shirt and lit on her nose.

  “Aren’t those bugging you?” she asked.

  “Now that I’m thinking about it, they’re starting to itch. Oh, jeez.” A thousand feather stems were poking him like needles between the millions of feathers that were sticking to his skin.


  He stripped off his clothes and tried to brush them off, but they clung. He batted at them, making sure to laugh while he was doing it.

  Willow’s eyes were wide, but she helped him brush them off and laughed a little, tentatively, before his laughter made her laugh harder. “Oh, my gods. You’re molting!”

  Handfuls of feathers, like someone was shaking a slashed pillow, filled the air.

  “How many are there?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. It seems like a lot.”

  “I must have looked like I was padded!”

  She grinned. “A little. I can’t believe this potion went so very wrong.”

  He shook out his shoes, adding to the knee-high pile. “It’s almost like this was the purpose of it.”

  “Oh.” Willow looked guilty, but her mouth still smiled a little. “It had over two hundred reviews, though, and almost a five-star rating.”

  “What?”

  “Well, it was off a sub-forum on Witchit. It might have been a troll potion.”

  “Wait, you got the recipe for a magic potion off the internet?”

  “A friend of mine said that she goes there all the time and that the recipes are usually good, but she did mention that sometimes trolls post evil recipes to watch the chaos.”

  He unzipped his pants, and feathers burst out. “Holy cow. Okay. Next time, no internet potion recipes.”

  “Oh, I would never trust—wait. You can’t be serious!”

  Arawn whipped off his boxer-briefs and brushed white feathers off his butt and from around his nuts. “Of course. Next time, get a grimoire from someone you trust, not an internet recipe.”

  “Arawn! I turned you into a chicken! You can’t want to try this again!”

  “Yep. Absolutely. This was one little accident, one little setback. Next time, we’ll find a love potion that works.” He grabbed her up in his arms. Her clothes were silky against his bare skin, and he slipped his hands under her top in back and grabbed her ass under her skirt. “Start working on it tomorrow. It only needs to work once. Then we can be together forever.”

  Or for however long his old, dying dragon magic could keep them alive.

  He didn’t allow that thought to stay in his head.

  He was, however, already naked, which meant that it was only a few seconds before Willow was, too, and then he showed her just how much he wanted to be with her, to stay with her—

  —To be the dragon who devoured her every night.

  Feathers

  EMBER stopped as she followed Willow into the penthouse. She’d been prepared to wolf-whistle at the hotel suite and chide Willow for holding out on them, but her legs stopped working.

  An enormous pile of white feathers was mounded in the middle of the blue and silver living room.

  Oh, jeez. The sub-Witchit potion. “Oh, my Ladies. I’m so sorry.”

  Bethany was right behind the two of them. “Willow, why is your ex of the ex-sex who wanted a forbidden potion living in the Dragon’s Den Casino? Anyway, I haven’t been in this one since I cleaned it last month. Is this where—what in the goddess’s many names and faces is that?”

  Willow turned to them both. “Bethany, remember when I made that Aerosol of Clumping for your glitterbomb?”

  Bethany nodded, but her dark, glowing eyes were wide and frightened.

  “And, Ember.” Willow turned, her face serious. “Remember when your water elemental ripped through Bryce LeFlave’s car because you thought a little too hard about what he would look like soaking wet, and I totally covered for you and sprayed the Draught of Draughts in there to blow-dry his upholstery?”

  Yeah, that had been mortifying. “Um, yeah?”

  Willow turned and faced the white mountain that reached nearly to the ceiling. “I need help disposing of some feathers.”

  “What the hell happened?” Ember asked her.

  Willow glared at her. “Your sub-Witchit has a troll, a rather large, under-bridge-dwelling troll. That potion turned him into a chicken.”

  “Potions are weird,” Bethany said. “I’m glad I just have furry helpers.”

  “Call them up,” Willow said.

  Bethany pulled out a sketch pad. Paint pots floated around her. “I want to do this right. No use summoning a bunch of little monsters who just want to jump in the feather pile.”

  Willow said, “Ember? Suck them up.”

  She meant wind elementals. Ember braced her arms and began the preparation for calling the elementals from beyond. They weren’t nearly as tame as Bethany’s little Snow White helpers. Ember had to be on the top of her game for this.

  Strangely, there in the Dragon’s Den Casino, she felt a little closer to sturdy.

  While Bethany was drawing, she asked Willow, “So, did you guys get naughty with the feathers?”

  “No,” Willow said.

  “You know what they say, that kinky is doing it with a feather, but freaky is using the whole bird.”

  Willow rounded on Ember and Bethany, her face furious. “Just to be absolutely clear because I don’t want to get any kind of a weirdo reputation, nobody screwed the chicken.”

  Mickey-Finning the Sea Monsters

  WILLOW held the tray of paper cups filled with the Tincture of Scale Support potion that she had whipped up the day before with Ember and Bethany. The liquid was still royal purple and clumpy instead of lavender and effervescent, but it had the correct fresh salmon scent that the sea serpents would like.

  As she had warned Arawn before, anything could go wrong with a potion, and the minor characteristics such as color, aroma, and consistency did not correlate with the magic contained therein. Tincture of Scale Support was a simple, elementary potion that she had learned the basics of in high school. It was every bit as easy as the other vitamin and vitality potions that she had been whipping up for the sea serpents all along.

  Surely, nothing would go wrong.

  Arawn walked along behind her, balancing another two-hundred-pound box of fish on his shoulder. The halibut had come in just that morning from the coast, and if they were any fresher, they would be flipping around in the box. The serpents were going to love them.

  Arawn thumped the box on the concrete and slapped the retaining wall of the fountain. “Here, Nessie, Nessie, Nessie.”

  Two sea serpents reared out of the water, balancing on their tails like performing dolphins. The black one lolled his tongue and slurped up the drool that threatened to drip from its jaw.

  Pavlovian response, interesting.

  Willow flipped the box open, grabbed a dead fish, and poured the first cupful of purple potion down its throat.

  When she passed the spiked fish to Arawn, he flung it into the air in a high arc toward the waiting dragons.

  The black and scarlet sea serpent snapped the halibut out of the air and chugged it down.

  She said, “Maybe we ought to wait for a few moments and make sure that I made the potion right. Even though they are looking a lot better, we don’t want six tons of dead, rotting sea serpent on the casino’s doorstep.”

  These six sea serpents were looking much better. Every time Willow fed them, which was every morning, their eyes looked brighter, their scales had a shinier gloss, and their enormous heads bobbed more happily.

  Just then, the other sea serpents arose from the fountain, and Willow suddenly had six very hungry sea monsters staring at her and waiting for their breakfast.

  Arawn laughed. “It’s fine. Your sea monster vitamin pills always turn out great. Look at how hungry they are. You don’t want to deny a dragon when he’s hungry.” The hunger in his eyes had little to do with food.

  “Okay, then. I’ll spike the fish. You throw them.”

  Working quickly together, Willow and Arawn fed the serpents all two hundred pounds of fish and eighteen cups of the potion. The potion may have been violet and lumpy, but the sea monsters weren’t complaining. By the end of it, the last serpent had flipped over, his tummy in the air and his head resting on the re
taining wall with his mouth open, begging for more halibut.

  Arawn shook his head. “Dragons are always hungry. It’s a dragon metabolism thing. Even though these guys don’t fly, they still have the appetite of a dragon who could fly from coast-to-coast on one meal.”

  “Well, at least that’s one potion that I made yesterday that went okay.”

  “Hey, for all we know, you may have made that chicken potion perfectly. It was probably a troll who posted a recipe on that sub-Witchit.”

  Willow heard a bubbling sound but didn’t pay attention to it. “I suppose that’s true. It just seems far more likely that I screwed up yet another potion, though.”

  “I think you’re a great witch. You need some more confidence, and then every potion will turn out perfectly.”

  The bubbling sound increased until it was a continuous burbling from the fountain.

  She said, “I have a history of not being that good of a witch. It’s really weird how my friends and I are, all three of us, real screw-ups as witches.”

  “Your friends? Have I met them?”

  The bubbling sound became water thrashing.

  Willow turned back to the sea serpents. “Arawn, did you turn on the fountain?”

  “No, why?”

  Behind them, the water in the basin of the fountain appeared to be at a rolling boil, with bubbles breaking the surface at a violent pace. Small jets of water streamed into the air and splashed down, splattering the sides of the fountain and the concrete around it.

  The sulfurous smell of rotten eggs hit them like a wall.

  Willow covered her nose and tried not to gag. “Oh, no.”

  Arawn wrapped his arm over his face. “What is happening?”

  The sea serpents jetted around the basin as if propelled by rockets where their sleek bodies met their tails. One smacked its head on the cement wall around the fountain and yiped.

  “Are they—” Arawn asked.

  Oh, no.

  The sea serpents were farting.

  They were farting so hard that their flatulence was shooting them around the pool helplessly like perforated blow-up dolls.