“I feel you and Lara have developed something very special, which proves to me that there can be peace between humans and fiends.” He paused to scan the crowd. “You, Lance Andrew Burns, are to stay in Miss Lara Sara Maurinie’s residence for the remainder of your twenty-year sentence,” he told me firmly. The crowd groaned unhappily as the judge delivered his sentence. I realized joyfully that I wasn’t going to be sentenced to another execution. “I would like you two to keep in mind that there is a city being rebuilt for special cases, such as yourselves. I’d advise you both to look into it on your spare time. Maybe you kids would like to apply for a dorm there, in which you have my written permission to live out the rest of your sentence, Lance. I would also like you to keep a mental note of any problems, concerns, or feelings related to the stuff you and Lara do together. This will be monitored by a guidance counselor, to whom you both will be sent to for mandatory periodic checkups,” he told us. “You’re both free to go now.”
The judge slammed down his wooden hammer, and just like that, the trial was over.
“That will be all for today,” a dignitary called from beside him. Everyone stood up, and the judge left the courtroom.
I was uncuffed and handed over to Lara’s custody. She nodded to them and then happily grabbed my hand and led me out into the warm summer breeze.
I glanced to my left, where noises were coming from. Four PLF soldiers were clearly not as lucky as I was—they were lined up against a wall. “Don’t look, Lance,” Lara whispered, turning my head away gently with her hand.
“Go to hell, you monsters!” one of them yelled defiantly.
A shout rang out—“Fire!”—followed by four shots simultaneously shattering the afternoon’s tranquility.
A group of fiends who had gathered to watch started laughing as the guards dragged the dead PLF soldiers away. I glanced back at the red patch of grass in disgust, just as Lara forcefully led me inside the base. “Executing humans is like your guys’ national sport, huh?” I said bitterly, once we were in the privacy of her dorm.
“We don’t know what they did, Lance,” she told me, trying to justify the killings.
We sat there in silence for a moment. Lara fiddled around with her hair. “I think the judge was pretty fair today,” she said.
I nodded unhappily. “Apparently he wasn’t as fair before me, though.” I couldn’t let go of what had just happened outside.
She folded her arms and leaned against the wall, staring at me for a second in silence.
“Don’t bother,” I muttered, waving my hand for her to forget about it. “So what’s the city called that the judge was talking about?”
“Monatello,” Lara snapped, still staring off in the distance.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Nothing. I think it’s time that you get used to my fiend side, Lance.” She stepped away, stripping down to nothing and opening the back door to her dorm.
“No, I don’t want to,” I told her, hastily backing away.
“This will be good for us. I’m going to do something to you that will hurt, but don’t be afraid.” She rested her hand on my shoulder consolingly.
I watched her muscles bulge from her arms as she dropped down to all fours. I backed away in fear, accidently knocking over a glass cup and stepping on the shattered pieces. Within a couple seconds, Lara had fully transformed into her fiend form.
Her elegant wings extended as she shook her fur, fluffing it up. Her eyes flashed green, causing the broken glass to fix itself. It floated back up to the table as if it had a mind of its own. Her eyes flashed green again, and my foot healed instantly, relieving the pain.
I cautiously took a step toward her as she bowed to me, lying down on her front paws. I noticed her eyes were bluish, unlike her bloodshot eyes when she had attacked me last week. She was about nine feet tall when she stood up on her hind legs, with about a six-foot wingspan on either side.
She folded her wings up, purring as she came over to me. She rubbed her head against my hip in a friendly way. She gently pinned me to the ground, taking one of her claws and cutting deep into my skin, forming the shape of a fiend on the right side of my chest. I whimpered in pain, but she purred softly and licked the blood off my chest.
Her saliva seemed to heal the wound—the bleeding stopped, and the fiend-shaped symbol turned black, like a tattoo, leaving the imprint of Lara’s fiend shape there. She purred again, got off me, and nudged me up with her nose. I patted her back and ran my hand along her soft black fur.
She rolled over like a dog, and I obediently patted her stomach. She purred contentedly, looking lovingly into my eyes. After ten minutes or so, she rolled back over onto her paws and motioned with her head for me to get on her back. “No, thank you!” I exclaimed, holding my hands out in an attempt to push her away. She nudged her body closer and closer to me, pushing me up against a wall, so I had no choice but to go over her.
She growled playfully, finally forcing me onto her back. I could feel her powerful muscles working as she climbed through the open door and into a field, where she began to walk around in circles in an attempt to get me used to her moving. Once I was comfortable with that, she moved onto jogging and eventually developed into a light run.
I held on tightly, wrapping my arms around her neck and trying to get her to stop as she galloped around in the field. I noticed fiends gathering at the windows of the building, looking out at us, pointing and laughing. Lara began to jump while she ran. I realized that she was about to fly.
“No! Bad, Lara!” I yelled at her like I would to a pet. She let out a roar and launched herself into the air. “Let me down!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, which she did obediently, smashing into the ground and sending me rocketing off her back. I slid along the ground fifteen or twenty feet before coming to a rest on something soft.
“Oh shit!” I gasped, looking up into the saber-toothed face of another fiend.
It nudged me with its bear-like paw and bit into the back of my T-shirt to lift me off the ground. It placed me back on top of Lara. “Eat me! Don’t let her take me back up there!” I pleaded to the fiend.
Lara and the other fiend both started to make lion-like sounds to each other—talking, I assumed. The fiend bounced into the air, did a circle in the sky, and then landed back down beside Lara, nodding its head toward me. “You’re teaching me how to land?” I asked.
They both nodded, and then Lara launched herself back into the air. When she landed, the same thing happened, causing me to skid along the grass another fifteen feet on my back. Lara sauntered over to me, licking my knee, which was bloodied by the fall, and then I got back on, a bit more confidently. I wrapped my hands around her neck as she purred affectionately.
Racing through the air felt sort of like being on the hood of a car. As Lara went to land, I jumped off a foot before she touched the ground. I stumbled a few steps but finally regained my balance and came to a stop. Lara galloped over to me, and I launched myself back up on to her back, excitedly.
She let out a happy roar, rocketing into the air, higher than the last time. We were flying so fast that everything was blurry flashes. I held on tight as she flew around for a few more minutes before plunging, without warning, straight into a lake.
I quickly swam to the surface, gasping for air. Lara broke through the surface a moment later, beside me in her human form. She burst out laughing. I joined in her laughter and splashed her playfully. We swam to the edge of the lake, where we rested on the shore.
“That was fun, eh?” she asked. I nodded enthusiastically. “Do you know what this means?” she asked, poking the black tattoo imbedded in my chest.
“Something good, I assume,” I said as she stared at my chest. The warm water gently lapped across our bodies.
She smiled, rubbing her hand along the tattoo. “It’s h
ard to explain in English, but it’s basically a form of protection and love, saying we’re united as one.” She pointed to symbols on the bottom of it. “This is my name. This tattoo represents that we are together. Fiends won’t attack you now, since they know they will have to deal with me if they do.”
“Fiends are afraid of you?” I asked.
She smiled mysteriously but ignored my question. She glanced up at the darkening sky—the sun was beginning to set behind the trees. “This tattoo will prevent me from harming you during my tricnoses as well, so you will be safe to live with me now.” A claw protruded from her finger, forming into a dagger, and she cringed as she engraved a tattoo on herself, next to her breast—it was of me with a heart around it, along with a few symbols at the bottom. She healed it, smiling warmly as she kissed me. “We are officially in a relationship now, under the laws of Dracona,” she whispered, beginning to make out with me.
“Well, I should warn you that, unlike those other fiends, I’m not scared of you,” I said, hitting her chin gently with my fist.
“You should be,” she giggled, snuggling closer to me in the shallows of the lake.
“So today when you transformed and gave me this, how come when you licked the blood off, it didn’t like trigger you to attack me?”
“Blood only incites my fiend’s wild side during tricnoses,” she told me with a laugh. “You still have a lot to learn, my friend.” She leaned forward and gave me a peck on my neck.
“Is there a book or something?” I asked her with a playful smirk.
“Why settle for a book when you can have the real thing?” she asked, affectionately starting to cuddle with me.
I chuckled and wrapped my arm around her, affectionately giving her a peck on her cheek. “There’s something I think that you should know about me, Lara,” I said, becoming a bit nervous as we stared up at the stars.
“What is that?” she asked.
“You’ve got to promise me you’re not going to get mad,” I told her.
“I won’t, but you’re starting to freak me out, so tell me what’s on your mind.”
“Well, remember a couple of weeks ago when you asked me if I had a girlfriend, and I said no?” I asked her. She nodded, her smile slowly fading. “Well, I lied to you, in a way.” I paused nervously as her expression darkened. “I had a girlfriend in the resistance for about two years.” I felt her muscles tighten up a bit as she glared at me, grinding her teeth angrily.
“You broke up with this girl, though, right?” she asked.
“She was killed in a raid that the fiends did on our base,” I said quietly.
“Did you love her?” Lara asked, clearly trying to control her anger.
“Yes,” I said truthfully. “But I love you,” I said, brushing her hair off her face affectionately.
She stared at me for a moment. I couldn’t tell if she was angry with me but she eventually just nodded her head understandingly. “What was this girl’s name?”
“Rachel,” I answered.
“That’s a pretty name.” I nodded in agreement, pausing as she fiddled with her hair thoughtfully. “It’s fine, I guess. I haven’t always been a hundred percent honest with you, either, Lance,” she confessed nervously.
“When we first met, you weren’t being nice to me out of the goodness of your heart, were you?” I asked her, already knowing the answer.
“No, Domelski ordered me to put on that little scene in front of you to try to extract information by being the nice guy,” she said honestly. I sighed unhappily as she confirmed the suspicions I’d had so long ago. She gently squeezed my hand and whispered, “It started out as an act, Lance, but it turned into something real.”
I nodded. I was glad that she wasn’t mad and that we had these secrets out in the open. “So what size is the tattoo for marriage?” I asked her, breaking the tension.
“You will find out eventually, I hope.” She giggled happily, resting her head against mine.
“I hope so too,” I replied sincerely. I gave her a kiss, which seemed to shock her, as I had never really been the first one to show affection in the relationship.
She ran a hand across her body, and tattoos appeared all over her. I guess it was her way to try to open up to me by revealing some of her secrets. “In my culture, every tattoo tells a part of your life. For instance, you get this one when you turn from a child to a teenager,” she explained, bringing my hand just below her stomach and giggling affectionately.
She calmly rolled over on her back in the shallows, allowing me to examine her scars and tattoos. I would occasionally ask her what one of them meant, and she would explain it to me. When I was done, she ran her hand across her body, and they all vanished, except the one of me she had recently carved into her skin.
“Why does mine stay?” I asked.
“There is a permanent connection between you and me,” she replied simply.
“What do you mean?”
“I can locate you and talk to you now, through my thoughts,” she said. “Like this.” I recoiled in shock as her voice sounded in my head. She giggled at my reaction.
“Hi?” I thought.
Her voice echoed back inside my head. “Hey, sexy.”
“So you can read my thoughts?” I asked her, not liking the sound of that.
“No. When you or I talk in our heads, the connection opens between us so that the other can talk, but we can only be a certain distance from one another, or we won’t be able to hear each other anymore.”
“Anything else I should know?” I asked.
“Well, there are other things that I gain out of it, which you can’t feel because you’re human. But one thing that you can feel is if one of us has a strong emotion run through us—the other can feel it.”
“All right,” I muttered, going quiet as I stared down at my own scar.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I’ll never be able to return to the resistance now. I’m a traitor to my own country,” I replied. The realization of my actions just dawned on me.
“No, you’re not,” she comforted me softly. “You’re just willing to look past this silly war and accept peace. As far as I’m concerned, you’re still a PLF.” She smiled, running her hand along my back where the letters were seared into my skin.
“Thanks … I guess. You always know the right thing to say.”
She glanced down at her own scar of me. “I know how you feel, buddy,” she said softly, placing her hand on my shoulder. “You think people like seeing me walking around with you. But you know what? I don’t care, because I know what I’m doing is right.”
“Same here,” I muttered with a defeated sigh.
“Besides, why would you want to go back to your base, wherever that is, and most likely be killed within a couple months?” she asked, glancing across the lake at the reflection of the moon dancing off the smooth surface of the calm water.
“I don’t know. I guess for pride and honor.” I shrugged and stared up at the full moon. “I guess we will always be enemies in a way. This war will never end until one species totally dominates the other.”
She didn’t say anything but rested her hand on top of mine. We lay in the shallows for another hour, watching the stars dancing overhead.
“We should probably go back, or I’ll be charged for being AWOL,” Lara whispered.
“Sounds good.” I felt her human hand change and sprout fur. She left me in the water and took a few paces back.
A moment later, she had transformed, and I crawled up onto her furry back. She let out a gut-wrenching roar and reared up on her hind legs, much like a horse would, and then we soared off into the moonlit sky.
Chapter 9
“Welcome, Lance. Thank you for taking the time to see me.” My guidance counselor greeted m
e the next day as I walked into her office.
It was a small room up on the third floor, with a beautiful view of the surroundings. She flicked off the red light illuminating the room and opened a curtain, allowing the light to flood in.
“Thank you,” I muttered gratefully.
She smiled, motioning toward a chair. I sat down obediently while she poured me a glass of water and set it in front of me. She was a pretty fiend in her mid-twenties. She had an athletic build with light green eyes and pale skin.
I could tell just by looking at her that she was very confident about herself. “So how have things been going between you and Lara?” she asked.
“Not bad,” I replied. This was the first time I had met with her, so I was kind of hesitant to say anything.
She extended her hand, offering a friendly smile. “My name’s Dasha, by the way.” I shook her hand with a half-hearted smile. “So how long have you two been together?” Dasha asked, sitting back in her chair.
“About two or three months now.”
“What do you and Lara do for fun?” she asked, taking out a notebook and clicking her pen to write something down.
“Shop, talk, go out for walks, or a swim once a week. We sometimes watch a little bit of TV or a movie. Just basic stuff like that.” I paused to think about what else to tell her. “I’ve been teaching her how to play card games, and she collects books, so she’s been reading me some of them.”
Dasha jotted something down, smiling faintly over her notebook to me, as I waited for her to finish. “So she hasn’t hit you or abused you in any way, has she?” Dasha asked.
“No,” I replied firmly.
“When I first heard about you two, I was quite surprised to see that you guys had made it this far, so that’s why I called you in today for this meeting. To be honest, I thought she would have killed you by now,” Dasha told me with a laugh. “So how do you survive during Lara’s tricnoses?”
The Unexpected War Page 8