The Unexpected War

by Jean-pierre Breton

  She held on to her stomach, groaning occasionally.

  “Cramps?” I asked. She nodded. “I’m sorry for making you breakfast. I thought it would help you feel better,” I told her.

  “Don’t be sorry. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that. I just lost control for a second, that’s all.” She stared at my plate of eggs. We shared it, as her mood swings began to change again. “I love you so much,” Lara whispered, placing my hand against her chest. “Wouldn’t you like to have little Lances and Laras with me one day?” she asked me with a hiccup, smiling happily as she wiped away a tear from her beautiful face.

  I just nodded, agreeing with her, nervously hoping the conversation would pass—I had no other choice. I needed a way out, and to my relief, it came. Lara began to vomit, so I quickly rushed out of the bathroom to the kitchen, getting her another rag to clean up the floor.

  “Are there, like, pills for tricnoses or something that you can get?” I asked her as I cleaned up the mess.

  “It costs three hundred crome per pill, and from what I’ve heard from friends who have tried them, you can still feel the pain during your tricnoses; it’s just dulled down, making you a bit less moody, with a guarantee that you won’t accidently transform.” She held onto her stomach as another cramp subsided.

  “I wish I could help you in some way,” I told her as she stared at the floor.

  “You’re doing a great job already,” she said, looking up at me with a half-hearted smile. She motioned for me to sit back down with her. “Can you massage my back?” she asked, propping herself in between my legs.

  I did so, obediently; it was pretty awkward. It felt like there was something bouncing around inside of her. At times, her skin would turn clammy and scaly, making my hands fly away, but she would reassure me she wasn’t going to change, and I would continue to massage her. Weird noises periodically erupted from her belly.

  She would turn around, giggling at my reactions to the sounds. A couple hours later, Lara asked me to bring her in a bottle of rum. She poured a glass for herself, and I took a tiny sip from it. “If I do change, don’t let me bite you,” she warned me. “During tricnoses, I crave human blood, so if I even smell it, I lose control. I won’t be able to stop myself from attacking you, okay?”

  “That’s a good piece of information to know,” I told her with an uneasy smile.

  She laughed. As the day progressed and it got late, Lara had less pain, so I figured that it was almost the end of her tricnoses. But then, my worst fear became a reality.

  Chapter 7

  Clumsily, I got up to go to the kitchen. I lost my balance and slammed back down to the floor. My hand slid across the heating vent, causing a deep cut across my palm. I cried out in pain as blood instantly seeped from the wound and trickled onto the floor.

  Lara turned to see what had happened, and I tried to stop the bleeding out of her sight. “What’s wronnnn …” She stared at my bloody hand. Her eyes slit into a star shape and locked onto my palm. She seemed to be in a trance, staring at the blood on my hand while licking her lips. She gasped, and her muscles began to contract, causing her skin to stretch as if it was about to rip apart. “Run!” she gasped frantically, crawling away from me into the corner of the bathroom. She let out an anguished, non-human growl, staring at me as I sat frozen in fear.

  Her skin began fading away, making way for scaly, dark, fiend skin, with blackish fur sprouting all over her body. Claws similar to a curved dagger burst from her fingers as she screamed uncontrollably in pain, trying to fight the transformation. I got up as fast as I could, stumbling into the living room, but it was too late.

  A thunderous roar erupted from behind me, followed by the door smashing into pieces. I was blasted with the debris and was tossed against the wall like a rag doll. I saw the fiend emerge through the rubble. It had bear-like paws, a saber-toothed tiger-like face, with wings, and a long, bladed tail.

  Its skin looked as hard as a bulletproof vest, and there was black fur all across its body, with patches of white fur. If I hadn’t been scared shitless, I actually would have found it a beautiful creature. Lara snarled at me, batting me to the ground as I tried to run.

  I got up and tried to run in the other direction, but she batted me back down to the ground again with ease. I realized she was playing with me, as a cat would do with a mouse before it finishes it off. Grabbing a piece of wood from the broken bookshelf, I swung with all my might and connected with the side of her head.

  It stunned the fiend, who buckled for a second from the force of the blow. That gave me enough time to race back into the bathroom. A moment later, Lara regained her senses and let out a gut-wrenching roar before charging in after me, sending what was left of the door into splinters. Her fiend body burst through in a path of destruction, slamming me into the bathtub. I smashed my head against it, crumpling to the ground in defeat.

  I was fighting to stay conscious. She opened her enormous jaw, growling at me viciously. I could see the two rows of teeth along her upper and lower jaws grinding dangerously as she prepared to finish me off. “Lara, it’s me,” I pleaded in a last-ditch effort to save myself.

  She heard my plea. Her ears perked up as she approached me. She stopped in her tracks, tilting her head to look at me for a second. Her bloodshot eyes seemed to clear and return to normal as she stared at me, nudging me softly with her paw. And then, as if hit by a Taser, she fell to the ground and started to convulse.

  Her fur began to retreat into her skin, followed by everything else. She took on human form, leaving her lying naked on the floor beside me, panting uncontrollably. She stared at her hands in shock and then over at me. Her face instantly filled with concern as she realized what she had done. She crawled toward me, but that’s the last thing I remember—the world around me began to spin, and I blacked out.

  I woke up the next morning with a warm towel lying across my forehead. Lara came over to my bedside almost immediately. She had soup for me, and she helped me sit up against the backboard. “How are you feeling, cutie?” she asked, softly kissing my forehead.

  “Like I just got hit by a pickup truck,” I joked, gingerly touching my puffed-up face.

  “I’m sorry … I’m so sorry,” she whispered apologetically. A tear began trickling down her face.

  I quickly wiped it away, soothing her. “It’s okay,” I reassured her.

  She smiled, perking up a little now that I had forgiven her. “I know you don’t care much for my cooking, so I went down to the cafeteria and bought you this.” She offered me a spoonful of soup. I accepted it gratefully, and she fed me the rest of it. “I don’t think we handled last night very well,” she said, “so I installed a metal door on the closet. If things get out of hand that way again, you can sit in there until things settle down.”

  “We would have been fine if it wasn’t for that damn slippery floor,” I told her.

  She smiled, seeing that I was trying to take the blame off her. She ruffled my hair affectionately, letting out a sigh. “We had no backup plan, but now we know what to do for next time.” Every bone in my body ached. I could feel swollen areas around my face as well, and there was a throbbing pain in my forehead, which lead me to believe I had a concussion. I tried to get up, but Lara put her hand on my chest, pushing me gently back against my pillow. “Whoa, whoa, whoa—what do you think you’re doing, champ?”

  “I was going to help you with the dishes,” I told her, looking at the empty soup bowl and her plate of food on the kitchen table.

  “You have to stay in bed; you have a concussion,” she said, fluffing up my pillow and kissing me on the forehead. I could tell that she was feeling guilty, so I decided not to argue with her. She beamed down at me, sliding her hand along my chest, casting a spell that absorbed into my skin and made me feel groggy immediately. “Don’t worry; it will make you feel
better. I promise,” she told me tenderly. She held my hand reassuringly as I mumbled something incomprehensible and drifted off to sleep.

  I awoke to the sounds of birds chirping outside the next morning. I got up briefly, sneaking to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Lara instantly noticed my absence and banged on the bathroom door as soon as I turned on the tap.

  “Hold on!” I called out to her, putting a silence to the panicked banging.

  Her concerned voice came through the door. “Are you all right, Lance?”

  “Yes, I just had to go to the bathroom,” I replied calmly.

  “Okay, go back to bed once you’re done. I’ll serve you breakfast.”

  Once I was back in bed, she appeared at the doorway with a bowl of fruit. “I think it’s time to try some solid food,” she told me, offering me a piece of watermelon and taking one out for herself.

  “Mmmmmm,” I grunted in satisfaction, eating my piece.

  She smiled in agreement. “These are delicious! I’ve never tasted something natural like this that is so good. What is the name of this?”

  “It’s called watermelon.”

  “Watermelon, hey?” she repeated, staring at the fruit.

  “Kate use to take me and Tina blueberry hunting all the time when we were younger,” I told her, smiling to myself as the memories of the three of us flooded through me.

  Lara stared at me for a moment. I let out a disappointed laugh, realizing those days were long gone. “I’m sorry that you’re separated from them,” Lara said, staring guiltily at the floor.

  “It’s not your fault,” I told her, rubbing her shoulder comfortingly.

  She nodded, handing me another piece of watermelon. “Would you like to watch a movie?” she suggested, turning on the television. The lights flashed on, presenting the holographic images of a crucified human nailed to the wooden door of a barn somewhere in Dublin. Fiend soldiers posed triumphantly around him.

  “Oh gosh,” she muttered, glancing at me as she quickly flipped the channel.

  I shook away the image of the dead body, and she flicked on a movie that she had picked out. The movie was fairly good; it was about two fiends who fell in love but were separated by the war. When it was all over—of course ending in the fiends’ victory over the humans—they found each other at a spot where they’d first met as children, and they lived happily ever after.

  The movie was in Jural, but Lara sat beside me, translating what was going on as the movie played. When it finished, she cast the same spell that she had the previous day, kissing my forehead as I drowsily drifted away. The next morning, I woke up to the sounds of Lara and another female fiend, chatting in the kitchen to one another in Jural.

  I pretended to be asleep, eavesdropping on them as they continued talking, trying to pick up bits and pieces of their conversation. They both looked zoned out, sort of like when Lara had seen my bloody finger. I noticed a couple of empty bottles of rum and realized that they were wasted.

  “You should drink his blood instead of this stale crap,” Lara’s friend urged her excitedly in broken English.

  I noticed that their rum was mixed with something red, and I pieced together that it must be a mixture of rum and bagged blood. “Danre de contal Lance I reprudre tamar relation,” Lara muttered in Jural, pausing to take a sip of her drink.

  “Besides I love him, and I wouldn’t ever want it, unless he gave it to me,” she continued in English, wiping the blood from around her mouth.

  They continued to talk for a while, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying anymore, until Lara’s friend brought up marriage in English. “The laws of Dracona state that the male has to propose in order for you to get married. Until then, you will never have a full connection with him. You’re never going to see him do that. Men have a hard enough time committing to a normal relationship, let alone a relationship where his wife could kill him just for having her tricnoses,” Lara’s friend explained to her with a laugh.

  “We respect each other enough to talk to each other about our feelings,” Lara argued with her.

  “Why is he lying in bed with a concussion then? That seems like a real open relationship,” her friend replied, provoking a fight.

  “I made a mistake, okay? My fiend body didn’t recognize him, and I accidently attacked him. There’s no law against fiends and humans being together, so if you don’t like it, get the hell out of my dorm!” Lara shot back angrily.

  I heard the clinking of bottles as they rattled around on the table, some rolling off, smashing on the floor. “You’re a disgrace to the pure-blood line, Lara,” her friend snarled.

  “I’ve banged him, too!” Lara’s voice shouted.

  “You have issues, girl, for real. You need your head checked out.” The insult came flying back, followed by the slamming of the front door.

  Lara let out an angry yell, slamming her hand against the table and chucking an empty bottle at the door, which shattered into a million pieces on the floor. She glanced over at me, embarrassed, realizing that I was awake. “I’m sorry that you had to hear that, Lance,” she said, approaching the bed. She gave me a hug and climbed under the sheets with me, getting undressed.

  “You’re drunk,” I whispered to her.

  She giggled and put her finger across my lips. “You’re cute,” she replied with an affectionate twinkle in her eyes.

  We silently had sex until she passed out from the mixed blood/rum brew they had been drinking. When I woke up that night, Lara was in the kitchen, cooking. I felt brand new. I no longer had a headache, and the swelling in my eye had gone down, so I decided to get up. “Hey, sexy, I had a good time,” I told her, wrapping my hands around her waist and kissing the back of her neck as I came up behind her.

  “Oh really? So everything was to my man’s satisfaction?” she asked, trying to sound sexy.

  “A-plus,” I replied, sliding my hand across her waist and down her hips.

  She bobbed side to side to the music playing in the background. “Well, I’m glad to hear that.” She giggled, turning to hug me, and then leaned back to look up at me.

  “Would you like me to give you a hand with that?” I asked, nodding toward the food cooking on the stove.

  “Nah, I’ve got it under control, but thank you.” She gave me an affectionate kiss. “You shouldn’t be up anyway. You haven’t fully recovered yet.” She grabbed my hand and a bowl of soup and bustled me back over to our bed, tucking me in like a little kid.

  “So what was that whole fight about yesterday?” I asked her casually, trying not to come off as nosey.

  “Oh, it was nothing. She just doesn’t understand that what we have is something special between us.”

  “What was that thing about a pure-blood line?” I asked her nervously. This question was either going to pay off very well or blow up in my face.

  She paused for a moment, deciding, I think, what to tell me and what to keep to herself. “I’m a pure-blood, Lance, so I’m different from a lot of the other normal fiends. Pure-bloods are rare; we are the blood line of Lord Dracona. We have powers that are much stronger than any normal fiend. We have the ability to heal wounds, and unlike fiends, we are immortal.”

  “So you’re never going to die?” I asked, confused.

  She smiled with a sigh, patiently playing with my hair. “I age just like you, but when I die, my body will turn to ash, and I will be reborn out of the ashes, with all my memories still intact, except that physically, I’ll be a baby.”

  “So how old are you, really, right now?” I asked, still confused.

  “Two hundred forty-five, but you’re over-thinking this. I’m technically nineteen. I just have memories from my previous life, that’s all.”

  “So—” I began.

  She cut me off, saying, “That’s enough questions for t
onight. You need your rest.”

  “I’m fine, though!” I objected.

  She retrieved the bowl of soup she had set aside and sat down on the edge of the bed. “You can get up tomorrow; I promise,” Lara told me. She brought the spoon to my mouth to feed it to me. The soup was pretty bitter, but it was really good compared to the stuff that she usually made. “Do you like it? I’ve been spending the day trying to learn how to cook your human food better.”

  “Are you kidding me? I love it,” I told her.

  She smiled happily and continued to feed me, humming to herself. But there was a worrying thought that I just couldn’t get off my mind—behind that beautiful smile of hers, which I had fallen in love with, wasn’t a fiend. It was a pure-blood.

  Chapter 8

  Three days later was my court date. I sat anxiously, wearing the suit Lara had brought me. She comforted me as we waited for my escort to arrive. Soon, there was bang on the door, and Lara sprang to her feet to answer it.

  “Don’t worry; you’ll be fine,” she promised me while opening the door.

  Two guards entered, nodding to Lara and exchanging a few friendly words with her. She laughed and nodded toward me. Their attention shifted to me. One kept an eye on me while the other shackled my hands and feet. “Let’s go,” one of them ordered, nodding toward the door.

  Lara was close to my side as we walked down the hall. We exited the base and headed down a dirt path toward the courthouse. The courtroom went silent as I was led inside. “Hang him!” someone called from the bleachers behind us, and a wave of cheers erupted around the courthouse.

  I gulped in fear, but Lara gave me a comforting wink. The two guards who had escorted me chained my feet and hands to my surroundings. The courtroom was packed, with about forty fiends watching from the bleachers and five armed guards. The entire thing was spoken in Jural, so I had no clue what was going on.

  Lara showed the judge my certificate from the peace class I had attended, followed by a document with some notes that I recognized from her interrogations. When that didn’t seem to have much of an effect on him, she began showing him photos of her and me together. Then she turned toward the crowd and gave what appeared to be an emotional speech in Jural. After an hour or so, the judge finally looked content and gave me his verdict in English.