The Dragon's Secret Baby

by Jasmine Wylder

  Thirty minutes later, Justin ventured in. He glanced up at the framed photo on the wall, that of Savannah’s parents standing in front of the newly-renovated restaurant with the name above the door. “’The Goode Soul Café?’” He pointed to the sign in the picture. “You do realize the word ‘good’ is misspelled, right?”

  Savannah snorted. “It’s our last name, fool. ‘Goode is the name, and Food for the Soul is our game,’ as Daddy used to say.” She finished washing a bunch of carrots and celery and gave them a brisk shake. “Hence the name, ‘Goode Soul.’”

  “Gotcha.” Justin sniffed the air. “Damn, something smells fantastic.” He wandered over to the stove and peered into the stock pot simmering on one of the burners. “Mmm…minestrone?”

  “My grandfather’s recipe.” Savannah glanced up from chopping vegetables and gave him a brief appraisal. “I see I was right,” she said, smiling. “Daddy’s clothes fit you just fine.”

  “Well, I did have to roll up the cuffs on the jeans,” Justin said. He had his boots on again, but it looked like he had cleaned them up a bit. “It feels good to be showered and shaved, though.” He ruffled his still-damp hair, leaving it in a disarray, and then rubbed his now-smooth jaw. “Thank you, again.”

  “You’re welcome.” Savannah scooped up the sliced carrots, celery and onion and dumped them into another pot filled with chicken stock. He cleans up nice, she thought. “You know how to cook?” she asked, as gave the soup a stir.

  “Not really,” he replied. “We always had people who did that.”

  Savannah looked at him. “’People,’” she echoed. She found a lid and covered the pot. “You mean ‘servants?’”

  “Uh, yeah,” he said, then added a hasty, “but they weren’t black.”

  “Oh?” Savannah raised an eyebrow at him. “Your dad not an equal-opportunity employer?”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just…” He huffed out a sigh. “When I said we had servants, I didn’t want you to think that we’re, you know, racist.”

  She chuckled. “Relax, Wolf-Man. I’m just messing with you.” She turned to begin working on her baked goods. “So, you said your daddy was the Alpha – I’m guessing that’s like royalty among your kind, right?”

  “Sort of,” Justin replied. He leaned back against one of the counters, his hands hitched on the edge on either side of his hips. “You ever heard the story about how Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, turned the Welsh king Vereticus into a werewolf for not wanting to convert to Christianity?”

  “I’ve heard about him chasing the snakes out of Ireland,” Savannah said. She pulled out a bag of apples and started to core and peel them. “But I don’t remember any stories about him turning people into werewolves.”

  “Yeah, well, according to my ancestors, the guy was the furthest thing from a saint.” Justin smirked. “He was a witch – a Christian witch. I’m sure that’s hard to believe, since everyone thinks Christianity and witchcraft are diametrically opposed.”

  “Not necessarily,” Savannah said. “My grandmother was Strega – an Italian witch – but she was also Catholic.” She sliced up the apples and put them into a big mixing bowl along with sugar, cinnamon, and some corn starch. “As a child, she told me that a lot of Catholic iconography was just Witchcraft in disguise, that when the Church of Rome first came into power there were witches hiding among the clergy, and they helped to shape Catholicism by layering the religion over the top of the ancient rituals. All the candles, the incense, the incantations…the holidays themselves were set over sacred Pagan celebrations. They even put a crown of flowers on statutes of the Virgin Mary on the first day of May, which is Beltane – what many Pagans consider to be the wedding day of the Lord and Lady.” She set the apples aside and started to prepare the dough for the pie crust. “So it doesn’t surprise me that Patrick was a witch. That’s pretty interesting about him creating werewolves, though.”

  “Well, that’s our origin story,” Justin said with a shrug. “It’s what I was always told. Vereticus was the first but Patrick turned others into werewolves, too. That’s why our Clan motto is Welsh.”

  Working the dough with her hands, Savannah gave him a side-eye and a smile. “So I guess you’re telling me you’re descended from royalty; is that it?”

  “Kind of,” he said, “but not from Vereticus. I am part of a bloodline that goes back several hundred years. That’s why, as the first-born son, I’m supposed to be the next Alpha. No matter what I’ve done in the past, it’s my birthright.” He grimaced and looked away. “Well…it was.”

  “Until they said you killed your dad?” Savannah supplied.

  “Before that, actually.” Savannah looked at him and he sighed. “My dad had just got done busting me down to the lowest rank in the Pack the night he wound up dead. We had a few words over it, someone overheard us fighting and that’s one of the reasons they think I killed him.”

  “Just because they heard you fighting with your dad?” Savannah snorted and shook her head. “That sounds like a real weak reason.”

  “Well…they also had surveillance video,” Justin admitted. “It looked like me, but I don’t remember anything. One minute, I was drinking in my room – a few hours later, someone’s pounding on my door, I’m covered in blood, and they’re telling me I did it.”

  Savannah let out a whistle. “Yeah, I can see where they might think you’re guilty.”

  “Oh, thanks,” he snapped irritably. He pushed away from the counter and paced over to the sink. “This is the kind of shit that I’ve been dealing with all my life – anytime something goes wrong, I get blamed.” He reached out to grab the hose and squeeze the trigger, spraying water into the basin. “I was a disappointment from the day I was born – to my parents…to the rest of the Clan…” He released the hose and clutched at the edge of the sink with both hands, head down. “I went from being invisible to living under a microscope, judged for every little thing I did…and nothing I did was ever right.” He turned around and faced Savannah. “I’ve done a lot of stupid shit over the years, but no matter what anyone thought or still thinks about me, I am not a killer.”

  Savannah regarded him thoughtfully. “I believe you,” she said at last.

  He blinked in surprise. “Y-you do?”

  She nodded. “Mm-hm.” She turned her attention back to rolling out the dough. “Back when I was in high school, there was this boy named Kevin who would make my skin crawl every time he walked past me. I didn’t know why – he didn’t dress or look or act in any way that would raise suspicions. But he just left me cold.” She moved the flattened sheet of dough to a pie pan. “Then one day, he stabbed one of the teachers. When the police tried to contact his family, they found his mother, aunt, and two little brothers dead. He had killed them all before he came to school that day.” She spooned the apples into the pie shell. “When they asked him why he did it, he said ‘I just wanted to know what it would be like.’”

  “I remember hearing about that,” Justin said. “He was just a kid.”

  “He was a psychopath,” Savannah said. “That’s what they call a ‘natural-born killer.’ Someone who can take a life without remorse.”

  “I didn’t kill my dad and yet I still feel remorse,” Justin muttered. “They took me to see his body, right where they said I’d left it…God, I’m never going to get that image of my head…it was brutal.” He ran his hands down his face. “I can barely walk when I’m drunk – there’s no way I could have snuck up on him and ripped his throat out while he just sat there. He would have heard me coming, and knowing Dad he would have knocked my ass across the room the moment he smelled the booze.”

  “If that’s the case, then you’re probably right about what you said, earlier: someone set you up.” She created a latticework top to the pie and wrapped aluminum foil around the edge of the crust to keep it from burning during the initial baking time. “But you also have to bear in mind that whoever did this wanted to see your father dead. They knew it
would be easy to use you as a patsy and make you take the fall.” She slipped the pie into the oven. Closing the door, she straightened and turned to Justin. “So maybe instead of asking ‘who would want to frame me?’ you should be asking ‘who would want to kill the Alpha?’”

  He made a sour face. “Apparently, everyone seems to think I would.”

  “No,” she said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Get off that train of thought because it just keeps taking you in circles. Start thinking about your father’s enemies. He had to have some – every leader does. Are there other packs of werewolves out there, maybe some rival of your own, that might have had some feud going on with him? Or maybe it was an inside job, someone who didn’t like him.”

  “As far as I know, everyone loved him,” Justin said. “I never heard anyone say anything bad about him.”

  “That would make sense,” she said. She cleaned up her work space in preparation to make a chocolate cake. “No one’s going to talk down the Alpha in front of his son, even if the relationship was strained. I never had a great relationship with my sisters but if I had heard anyone talking smack about them, I would have been up in some faces.”

  That got a smile and a bemused grunt out of Justin. “Same, here,” he said. He looked around, sniffing the air. “Damn, the smell of that coffee is driving me crazy…”

  Savannah chuckled. “The first thing I do every day when I come down here is to start brewing coffee.” She motioned. “It’s out front, behind the counter. Help yourself. Decaf’s on the left.”

  He started to go only to stop and favor her with a strange look. “How did you know I’d want decaf?” he asked. “Are you one of those witches who can read minds?”

  “No,” she said. “But I do know that dogs can’t have caffeine in any form, like coffee or chocolate. And since dogs are just wolf-descendants…” She swiped a finger along the rim of the bowl and came up with some of the cake batter. “You won’t be able to have any of this, either.” She licked her finger clean.

  “I’m okay with that,” he said. He headed out of the kitchen. “You want some?” he called out.

  “Sure,” she replied. “Cream and one sugar, please.”

  “You got it.” He returned a few minutes later carrying two heavy stoneware mugs; he set one down on the counter near her work station. “Hope I got it right.”

  Savannah paused to take a sip. She nodded and gave a thumb’s up with her free hand. “Mm. Perfect.” She glanced up at him and smiled. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He leaned against the counter again, his own cup cradled in his fist. “So. I told you a little about me. What about you?”

  She shook her head in amusement as she sprayed and floured two cake pans. “What do you want to know?” she asked.

  “Well, for starters…where did you get those green eyes?”

  “I was born with them,” Savannah responded smoothly.

  Justin threw back his head and let out a mock laugh. “Ha! Funny.” He looked her over again. “Seriously, though…”

  “Yeah, I know,” Savannah said. “People are always confused when they see me because I look black, but then they see the green eyes and it throws them.” She slid the cake pans onto another rack inside the large oven. “But to answer your question: my mother was white, second generation Italian-American. All the women in her family have green eyes, probably because they came from a region not far from the border of Slovenia. So I got that from her.” She used one hand to make a graceful, sweeping motion around her face. “This gorgeous cocoa brown skin, the naturally curly hair, and these luscious full lips are all gifts from my African-American father.” She gestured to the rest of her body. “The big tits and full, child-bearing hips come from both sides.”

  The tinkling of bells from out in the dining area caught her attention. Savannah checked the clock on the wall. “And here comes the post-church lunch crowd, right on time.”

  “What should I do?” Justin asked, as she moved around him.

  “Stay out of the way,” she said, and went out to greet her customers. Within the hour, most of the tables had filled in addition to the stools at the counter, all with the Sunday regulars. Savannah called them by name, asked about their families and jobs, and engaged in discussion about today’s sermon while filling orders. Justin did his best to give her a wide berth. At one point, she called on him for assistance. “I need your help getting these plates out,” she said. “The Wrights have family visiting from Gary, Indiana. I’ll serve; I just need you to carry.” She smiled. “I know you’re a wolf, but right now I need you to be a mule.”

  “Did you just call me an ass?”

  “No, a donkey is an ass,” she explained, handing him a tray loaded with plates. “A mule is the offspring of a donkey and a horse.” She shook her head. “Don’t they teach that kind of stuff in Werewolf School?”

  “My people still have an arcane caste system and practice barbaric methods of justice,” he replied sardonically. “But I guess they draw the line when it comes to telling a donkey from a mule.”

  “I don’t know if I should find that funny or pathetic,” Savannah said. Picking up a few extra plates of food, she jerked her head. “Follow me.” Justin trailed her out to the dining area and stood by as she began to distribute the meals.

  “Hey, Savannah!” one of her guests called out. “You’ve finally got someone to help you out!”

  “Yeah, I’m giving him a test drive,” she said, glancing up at Justin. Outside on the street, a car with a shoddy muffler suddenly roared past the restaurant and Justin gave a violent start, almost dropping the last plate on his tray. Thankfully, only Savannah noticed, and did not call attention to it. “Let me know if you need anything else,” she told her guests. Taking Justin’s elbow, she steered him back toward the kitchen. “I told you, you’re under my protection. Nobody is going to find you, here. Relax.”

  “I’m trying.” He sighed. “Maybe I should just…stay back here, out of sight. Just to be on the safe side.”

  Savannah had enough confidence in her abilities that she didn’t take offense over Justin’s lack of faith. It was probably his animal instinct making him nervous. She could see where being hunted would put him on edge. Be patient, she told herself. “Okay, you stay here. I’ve got to get back out there and check on everyone.”

  She made another circuit of the dining room, refilling coffee cups and water glasses. She smiled when she came upon a long-time customer and her first grade teacher, now retired. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Russell,” Savannah said with a warm smile. “What can I get for you, today? I’ve got some chicken and dumplings made up, if you’re interested.”

  “Actually, I think I’ll just have something sweet,” the elderly woman said.

  “Well, I’ve got an apple pie that came out of the oven just thirty minutes ago. It should still be warm. How about a slice of that?”

  “That would be wonderful.”

  “You want that a la mode?”

  “French vanilla, if you have it.”

  “I believe I do.” Savannah grinned. “I’ll get that right out to you.”

  “Thank you, honey.”

  Returning to the kitchen, Savannah stopped short when she found Justin sitting on the counter. In one hand, he held the half-eaten apple pie, scooping up gooey chunks of apple and golden crust with his fingers and stuffing it into his face. As she stood there, staring at him in disbelief, Justin looked up. “What?” he demanded around a mouthful. He chewed and swallowed. “I told you I was hungry.”

  Savannah sighed in exasperation. “If you had just waited another five minutes, I would have made something for you to eat.” Storming over, she snatched the plate away. While he had left a large portion untouched, she knew health codes would not allow her to serve the rest. “And get your nasty wolf ass off my counter,” she snapped at him. “I still have to prepare food, there.” She shook her head in dismay as she made her way to the cooler. “Good thing I made a coconu
t cream pie last night before I closed up...you’re lucky Mrs. Russell likes that flavor, too.” She cut out a slice and placed it on a chilled plate. “I don’t like having to disappoint my longtime customers.”

  Justin had the decency to look chastised. “Sorry,” he muttered, licking his fingers clean as he hopped down off the counter.

  “It’s okay.” Savannah gave him a warning look and pointed at him. “But keep your paws off the cake,” she said, before taking the pie out to Mrs. Russell.

  “I told you, I can’t have chocolate!” Justin called after her.

  “Just don’t touch anything!” Spirits, Savannah thought, give me strength.

  Chapter Ten

  The flow of customers fluctuated through the day, thinning out shortly after lunch before picking back up again close to the supper hour. Savannah had honored her word and during the lull she had ordered Justin to sit down out in the dining room before presenting him with a plate loaded with fried eggs, biscuits and gravy, and a thick-cut steak. While the pie had been a good start, Justin had attacked that meal like he hadn’t eaten in days. He devoured every bite, and sucked down a large glass of milk she had also provided.

  As he ate, Justin had watched Savannah work. How does she do all of this by herself? he wondered. Did she give everyone else the day off because it’s Sunday?

  He decided to help by bussing his own dishes. He found Savannah back in the kitchen, firing up another order. “Hey,” he said, putting his plate in the sink. “Thanks for the food. Everything was delicious but that steak? It was perfect.”