by Milana Jacks
Clementine escaped the gust of wind and plummeted down. I glanced at her path, stunned at what I was seeing. I batted my wings in order to stay in place and fight the gravity that drew me down after her into a meadow. A green grass meadow with spring flowers and a foot-high orchid plant in bloom right outside Pittsburg in the middle of winter. I hadn’t seen flowers growing out in the open in…fuck, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a…a garden. The ground should be frozen. What the fuck?
Clementine descended, deciding it was a grand idea to shift into her human form for a touchdown, and landed on her ass. I shook my head as she rubbed her ass, then her arms. Yeah, standing naked outside in below zero would freeze even a Creature of Earth. Gah, what was wrong with this bird?
A growl ripped from my chest. I snapped my mouth closed so I didn’t roar.
Clementine walked across the meadow and rounded a bench. She bent and got a backpack from under it, threw on clothes and boots, then sat down. She waited for something or someone, probably Arthur. So I waited too, a smirk on my face. This must be their secret meeting place.
The longer I hovered in wait, the more time I had to admire her human form, something I’d actively avoided doing from the moment I met her, though I’d seen her two million times. Clementine was no Clare, the girls as different in character as they were the same in appearance, with Clementine being less concerned with following the rules. Her twin would have slept in my bed and done what I asked her to do.
Against the greenery and the colorful flowers, Clementine looked like someone out of a fairy tale. She had white hair, white brows, blue-gray eyes, reminding me of a porcelain doll. Fragile and lovable. Probably why Arthur spoiled her and her late twin. He allowed Clementine to live out here in my territory instead of taking her with him into Ohio. Wait a second.
I froze, my wings not flapping, wind keeping me in the air, moving my body away.
A meadow.
Flowers in winter.
Nature against nature. The only way flowers could grow out of frozen ground was if someone nurtured the ground. The ground was earth, Arthur’s element. This meant Arthur had found his spirit. Right?
Lilies spurted out of the ground.
I recovered from my shock and batted my wings against the wind and back up. It was like hitting a wall as gust after gust hit my body, leaving my skin battered and raw.
Clementine clapped her hands, picked up the flowers, and left. Right before my eyes, the grass wilted, the orchid plant died, and everything went dead as if nothing had happened. I stared at the bench and questioned my sanity.
3
Clementine
Pittsburg habitat. One of only two habitats in the state of Pennsylvania. Population estimated about thirty thousand, only about ten thousand cyborgs, the rest humans, most of us living on the ground level. This winter, with everyone and their mother migrating into the habitat for shelter against the brutal weather, our population had nearly doubled. Last night, after I’d escaped the dragon’s clutches, the wind blew so strong that I couldn’t even make it home.
Luckily, Arthur kept a secret place just outside the habitat and allowed me to pick, then sell his flowers as long as I left a single rose at some girl’s window before I went to work. So this morning, before I went to work, I’d flown up to the high-rise in the habitat and dropped a rose on the window, on top of all the other roses I’d left there in the past few days. The girl who lived here used to pick them up, but for the past few days, she’d left them to pile up. The older roses had wilted, and I wondered if the girl would leave this fresh one or pick it up and take it inside.
Since I treated Arthur as my boss, I never asked about him delivering roses inside the habitat. I simply accepted it as my job, a kind of message for whoever the girl might be.
I’d lingered on the windowsill for a bit, hoping the girl would show, but she hadn’t, so I flew back home and got ready for my workday. By eight o’clock, I’d sold the lilies I’d picked last night, and by lunchtime, I’d sold all my stock from the day before. Life was good. At this rate, my older sister and I could move up one habitat level, and I could afford to keep my own garden. I’d already spoken with Arthur about this, and he promised he’d help me out for as long as I kept delivering flowers.
My stomach growled.
Next to me, my older sister, Seven, nudged me with her elbow. “We both know who’s buying lunch today.”
She meant me. “I bought lunch yesterday.”
“It was great. Thank you.”
Seven and I shared a large stall in the market. Since our business had taken off, we’d expanded and added a tent over the stall. It almost looked like a real shop. I kept pots of flowers inside, but I didn’t sell those. Those were for decoration and served as my backup stash. My sister sold corsets, purses, and homemade leather jewelry. If she gauged the client worthy, she’d open up her chest of adult toys. She made most of her rent selling the toys. One handcrafted and personalized flogger could pay our rent and bills for the month. Times were tough, but we got by fine, better than most down here on ground level, where everything besides our tent smelled of sweat and desperation as workers in cyborg factories rushed to fill their labor quota for the day. The hourly wage was dismal, the labor physically demanding, and the future didn’t shine brightly. All the more reason for me to keep my job and take the dove as a side gig.
Standing, I winced at the pain in my ankle. I’d sprained my ankle trying to land in the meadow and hadn’t spent enough time in my dove form so I could heal it faster. I limped to the door and peeked outside, trying to scope out the nearest food vendor. And thank God for that, because I saw him before he saw me.
Knight strode down the street as if he owned it, with seven males at his back. People sidestepped him, huddled against the buildings so he could walk like a king in the middle of the street, his gaze ahead and nonchalant, but I knew Knight saw everything within a mile radius. Abruptly, he stopped and approached Sandy, one of the food vendors. Sandy had had a rough life, didn’t smile often, but, boy, she grinned as wide as the Ohio River when Knight pulled out his wallet. He handed her a wad of roges, and, after a while, Sandy passed him a big basket of goods. She pointed my way.
I scampered inside the shop and hit the table with my hip. Ouch. That’d leave a bruise. “Oh my God, he’s here!”
Seven stood, brown eyes wide, thick brown ponytail sliding over her shoulder. “Who?”
“Knight. He’s here.”
“Knight who?”
“The dragon Knight.”
Seven gaped. “No way.”
“Yes way.”
“How’s my makeup?” Seven grabbed a mirror and lip gloss we’d traded for with a cyborg this very morning. She applied the red gloss, smacked her lips, then fixed her corset to deliver maximum cleavage. “How do I look?”
“If you try to run, you won’t make it. Your breasts will slip out and slap you unconscious.”
“That good, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent.”
My instincts kicked in. I was a dove, so no, I didn’t want to confront the dragon. Flight! I searched for a place to hide. Knight was gonna strangle the life out of me for escaping. I’d hoped I wouldn’t see him for a while as he searched for Arthur. Seeing as Arthur avoided Knight, he’d have a hard time finding him, so I thought I was in the clear for another two weeks. Why did Knight have to come here? Shit! Nowhere to hide.
I sat down next to Seven and gulped, watching the tent’s entrance.
In a second, Knight filled it, his broad shoulders nearly touching the wide gap. Knight strode over on his long, strong legs and put the basket on the table. Steam rose from the fresh rolls of bread in the basket and, I bet, several hot dogs.
Seven peeked inside the basket. “Looky here. Big bad dragon and a pack of wolves brought us dogs. We don’t have a Grandma you’d want to eat, but Clementine’s got a sister who’s always hungry. I’m that sister.” Seven got a hot dog, pu
t mustard on it, and bit. “Mmmm.”
“Clementine,” Knight said by way of greeting.
“Knight.” I swore his eyes were black today, when I knew they were brown. Dark brown, but not black.
“Hi,” Seven said and wiped her mouth. Under the table, she took my hand and squeezed. “It’s so nice to finally meet you. How can we help you, Mr. Knight?”
Knight glanced to his right and tilted his head, then reached for a set of leather cuffs. I groaned. Seven believed that when a customer reached for cuffs instead of the pretty leather bracelets hanging all over the wall, it was a clear sign that customer was interested in something a bit more serious. Meaning, something inside the chest we were using as a bench right now.
Knight shook off his leather jacket and folded it across his arm.
“Let me get that for you.” I took his jacket and went in the back, then peeked around the edge of the curtain.
Knight put the handcuffs on the table. “I’ll take those.” He walked around the store, sniffing my flowerpots while I wanted to change into a dove and flee. For an air elemental who couldn’t yet control his element, he sure knew how to suck the air out of me.
The chest under Seven’s bottom scraped the floor as she got up and began dragging it. Oh no, not the chest! The only reason Knight had grabbed the cuffs was because of a sapphire stone imbedded inside the leather. Jewel hoarding was a dragon thing. Eeeeek.
I came out of the back and paused at the table, wondering what to do. I cleared my throat. Once, twice. Seven paid me no mind. She dragged the chest, and Robert, East wolf pack alpha, came over to lend her a hand. In the middle of the tent, Seven, the wolves, and Knight gathered around the chest. The thing about having a big sister? She stuck up for me. She’d distract them with her adult toy collection while I made a quiet escape.
I waited for Knight to reach into the chest, and when he did, I turned slowly, rose on my toes, and tiptoed away.
“Sit.”
Ugh. “I was just going to see if we had more…” I trailed off because I couldn’t speak. And I couldn’t speak because Knight stood there with a flogger in his hand. The sleeves of his sweater were pulled up a bit so I could see the tribal tattoos and the corded forearm muscle straining as he gripped the flogger. It was one of the sexiest things I’d ever seen with my vanilla eyes. Seven had tried to get me to experiment more with various toys, but I couldn’t care less about them. And yet, I was very much interested in this black flogger.
Knight swung the end of it on his thigh. “I’m not used to having to repeat myself. And you know I didn’t come here for the merchandise. So sit, Clementine, or I swear I’ll try this flogger on your ass.”
Oh God. Heat spread all over my face, and when I blushed, it came in patches and there was no way to hide it.
Leave it to Knight to point it out. “You are blushing. Is it something I said?” He looked down at the flogger, then back at me, and a smile I’d always known he could show the world spread on his face. I smiled in turn. Not only did Knight take away the air when he walked into the room, he also commanded attention, all my attention. Today, he made me feel like we were the only people in the room. I was so stupid for this dragon.
Knight approached, grin still splitting his face.
I stepped closer as if drawn by a magnet.
He turned, walked a few steps, and slammed the flogger on the table.
I jumped.
Immediately, he narrowed his eyes and the smile vanished from his face. “How much for the flogger?”
“Five hundred,” Seven said and sat on the table right beside him.
His eyebrows shot up. “Is it made of gold?”
“It’s made with my golden hands.” Seven gripped his jaw—holy crap!—and brought his face within inches from hers. “Let me tell you somethin’, dragon boy. If you hurt my sister, I will take a nine-inch dildo and shove it up your ass, then make you chant sorry seventy-seven times. You hear me?”
Silence.
Nobody moved.
The wolves shuffled, unsure what to do. My human sister had just threatened their dragon lord.
Knight gripped Seven’s wrist and moved it away. He smirked. “Promise?”
Seven threw back her head and laughed.
Ha! Knight could joke. Who knew?
Unfortunately, he hadn’t come here to joke with me. After he bought the not-golden flogger for which he didn’t barter, Seven warmed up to him. She took the pack of wolves out for a stroll in the market as Knight had asked her. This left the two of us alone.
I gulped when he closed the tent’s flap. He straddled the chest in the middle of the room and patted the opposite side. “Sit.”
I straddled the chest too. “You need a dog.”
“I have wolves.”
“Is that how you order them around?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m not a wolf.”
“I know. You are a fledgling bird, and I see nobody has made an effort to train you. This is fine, because I will train you. Lesson number one.” Knight rested his fists on the chest and leaned in. I leaned back. “You do not fly in freezing weather in the middle of the night. Lesson number two. When landing, you slow down, pivot, and extend your legs. You do not fly like a hawk or another bird of prey, you look behind you and all around you so that you are aware of predators. You are a dove creature, not a bird of prey. I weigh over two tons, and I am a white motherfucking dragon. At night, I stand out like a sore thumb, which is why I prefer hunting or stalking during the day.”
“Like today,” I barely whispered. Knight smelled really good. Was he wearing cologne? He must be. I sniffed. He smelled of eucalyptus and cinnamon, strong and serious. It complemented his personality.
“The point is, I followed you, and you didn’t see me. How could you not see me?” He lifted both eyebrows. “Your creature comes with animal instincts. Did you not feel threatened or chased or alarmed at all?”
Our noses almost touched, and his scent was amazing. I angled my head, then, before I did something utterly stupid, I said, “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”
Knight leaned back, totally unaffected by our proximity. Even our knees touched! “You’re not listening.”
“I have a lot on my mind.”
He got up and brought me the basket. “I wasn’t sure what you liked for lunch, so I bought everything.”
I peeked inside and got a cinnamon roll. He got a hot dog and sat back down. He devoured the dog in three bites. Knight had a big mouth. Sexy big mouth. I ate my roll like a lady even though I was starving and felt like I could also eat the donut in three bites.
Once finished, he got us napkins and said, “Where is Arthur?”
“Around, I’m sure.”
“He sent you out with a message for me in the middle of the night.” Knight’s jaw worked. “Where did you meet him?”
I hadn’t seen Arthur since last week when he’d given me the message. It didn’t seem urgent, and he stocked me up with flowers in the meadow for a week. I couldn’t tell Knight about the meadow. Arthur asked me not to. I couldn’t betray him. I might not be the best bird in the world, but I wasn’t a traitor, and I couldn’t bite the hand that fed me. Arthur fed me. But if I lied to Knight any more than I already had, he’d only ask more questions. “You’re gonna be upset,” I said.
“Why?” Knight made a sour face, anticipating my answer.
“I haven’t seen Arthur in a week.”
“I thought you saw him last night or at least yesterday.”
I shook my head. “I had some work to do and decided it was okay to give you the message a week later.”
Knight’s jaw ticked. “You do not make these decisions. We dragons make these decisions. If Arthur wanted you to delay the message, he’d have told you.”
“Right.”
“I’m not upset with you. I’m upset with him for not training you.”
“He did train me, but, as you know, I’m not his bird. My twin w
as his bird.” I found something to look at on the floor. Talking about Clare made the pressure in my chest grow as if this creature mourned her former owner as well. At least that was how I understood the creature thing. We hold these creatures inside us, so they are us, but they are also their own…souls in a way.
“I’m sorry about your sister. I couldn’t imagine losing mine.”
I looked up. “You have a sister?”
“Clementine.” He cupped my face. “I’m sure you don’t understand the gravity of the situation.”
I leaned into his hand. “I’m starting to think maybe you’re right.”
He sniffed my hair and my neck. Robert, Knight’s wolf, had done this once, so I didn’t find it odd behavior for Creatures of Earth. Still, when Robert sniffed, I giggled because his nose tickled. When Knight sniffed, I shivered and dampened my panties.
He leaned back. “Some animals are known for being able to detect an earthquake. I watch for signs of change in their behavior. Birds are restless. Insects are too. My bird, Theresa, reports the cyborg tech has detected a small earthquake four days ago.”
“Where?”
“Here. The epicenter is in the habitat.”
“I didn’t feel anything.”
“You wouldn’t. Humans can’t tell subtle changes the way animals or creatures do.”
“I’m a creature.”
“You are not in sync with your bird.” He dropped his hand.
“Ouch.”
“Yet. With time, you will be.”
“I’m trying.”
“It’s just a gig to you. It’s life for the rest of us. You have to accept it and treat it as a priority, not as a side job.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m the breadwinner, Knight. It’s me and Seven, and we need to make money.”