The Dragon King and I

by Adrianne Brooks

  “I don’t want your fruit.” I told them desperately, and screamed when one of them lashed out, claws raking across my face in a slap that left my cheek numb. Someone else kicked me, cloven feet gouging into my ankle and I flinched away. Something behind me pulled on my ponytail like a leash, while another goblin punched me in the ribs. I bent over with the pain, gasping for air and finding none when yet another goblin smeared a pomegranate, as red as blood, across my face from hairline to chin.

  I tried to keep moving through them, but they’d worked themselves into a frenzy. I felt mouths on me. Lapping eagerly at the blood on my thigh from my fall during the run. Something kissed my lips and began sucking the juices off my tongue, more hands grabbed for my hair, and I felt the world darkening as they swarmed over me and brought me down like a colony of ants going in for the kill.

  My screaming was lost beneath their roars and howls of triumph, and I lashed out violently, blindly, even as they forced me onto my back and the pixies beneath the ground took over. They began fisting tiny broken hands into my skin, clothes, and hair. There were millions of them beneath me, and they all held on for dear life, much stronger than they’d seemed when I’d first glimpsed them. Their voices were a rising cacophony, music in its purest, stealing all my senses and making me doubt there had ever been anything but this. That I had ever been anywhere but right there, trapped between nightmares and dreams with flavored nirvana drowning me from above while I lay in a bed of pixie blood and broken bones.

  I worked one hand free of the mob, stretched, fingers desperately seeking I don’t know what, and howled, my voice hoarse with desperation and the first, rising, tide of madness. One of the Goblins parted the others enough to upend his platter of goods over my head and I vowed, solemnly, and viciously, to never drink another cup of fruit juice in my life.

  The goblin pulled away cackling, and that hand I’d gotten free lashed out and wrapped around his ankle, tripping him up. He tried to scramble away as the goblins resurged around me, but something wild gripped me and I snarled, clawing my way up his body, ignoring the discordant notes of dying birds as pixie arms ripped away from delicate pixie bodies. We struggled for all of two seconds before I managed to rip the platter he’d used to carry the fruit out of his hands, gripped it with both of my own, and struck him across the face with it with every ounce of strength I had.

  I heard something crack as his head whipped to one side and his neck broke, and some of the savagery drained out of me as I straddled him and tried to learn how to breathe again without snarling with every exhale. It didn’t take long before I noticed it. The silence. Every note, every hidden scream, and slyly spoken invitation, was conspicuously absent. I looked over my shoulder to see the goblins crouched on all fours, yellow eyes blazing like sickly stars. I rose slowly from my victim, my hands clenching and releasing, clenching and releasing, around the heavy platter as I met each of their eyes in turn.

  I savored the silence, sucked it down like oxygen, and smiled. Not because I was happy, but because it seemed the only logical response to give in this broken world. Then, one of their ears twitched and that was all the warning I got before they came for me.

  * * * *

  I’d never fought for my life before, and I had no delusions about becoming a warrior woman now. If I stayed, I’d probably die, and if I ran, they’d catch me and I’d die anyway. So I ran. Whichever choice created the most work for them seemed like my best bet. The problem, however, was that my myriad of adventures had taken their toll. I was hobbling rather than running, both legs having taken their share of abuse from angry merchants. I was also lightheaded from loss of blood, not to mention that there was no space on my skin that didn’t throb with a deep, silent, agony.

  I took one step, then two, but my legs started to shake on the third. I should’ve dropped the platter by now, but it was my only weapon and I was strangely reluctant to let it go. A sob caught in my throat as I fought for just one more step, but I never made it. For what felt like the millionth time I thanked the heavens for that wicked speed that Sam seemed to be blessed with.

  I knew exactly when he arrived because the air sort of imploded on itself like a bomb as he forced his way past the barrier with all the grace of a rampaging bull. I turned my head with the rest of them, and watched, shocked, as he moved through the intervening space, crashing through stalls and leaving a burning trail of destruction in his wake. He bypassed the mob in seconds and stopped before me with only an inch to spare.

  His face was flushed, not from his run, but as if he were feverish. There was a fine sheen of sweat coating his skin and a few locks of hair had escaped their braid to stick to his cheeks and neck. He surveyed me from head to toe, and the blue in his eyes disappeared under the black. Something yelped hungrily from behind him, and he spared the goblins a brief glance over his shoulder before he scooped me up, and took off again.

  Sam was turning out to be really useful for fast getaways.

  It was like being the kept woman of the Tasmanian Devil or Flash Gordon. Or maybe even the Road Runner.

  Hm.

  I realized with a start that all the males that I viewed in a positive or romantic light were fictional. Excluding the cartoon characters, I’d so far compared Sam to a Spartan, Iron Man, and at least three other superheroes, not to mention he’d done a cameo in a number of my innermost fantasies wearing nothing but a mask and a speedo of questionable strength. Was something wrong with me that I had to compare a good man to Marvel or X-men characters? Was I a nerd or simply a product of my times?

  Mentally, I gasped. What if I wasn’t looking for a Knight in Shining Armor at all? Maybe I was searching for a raunchy Hero in latex. No wonder Conric and I didn’t get along. We weren’t just on different levels. We were on different genres entirely.

  My, admittedly, nonsensical thoughts were pushed aside when Sam came to a halt beside the tree line. The bars of the birdcage. I glanced over his shoulder to see that the mob had grown to overwhelming proportions. If there had been hundreds of them before, there were thousands of them now, and my arms tightened around Sam’s neck in a grip that must have been painful.

  “Alex?”

  It was hard to pull my eyes away from them. They came for us so steadily, so relentlessly, as if they could chase us forever. I looked at Sam and he noted the worry in me, the fear, and that madly thrashing beast deep down that refused to be taken again. His thumb brushed my cheekbone where the first merchant had cut me, and I felt myself sink into him by increments. My eyes closed, and he kissed me. Soft. Slow. Then gone like smoke.

  I opened my eyes again as he set me on my feet and pushed me towards the tree line, beyond which was nothing but darkness. How could it still be so dark beyond the trees? We were so close. Shouldn’t we have been able to see something? The pixies laughed beneath my feet as if mocking my thoughts, and I took mad delight in grinding the heel of my sandal down upon them and listening to the discordant music of their screams.

  “You have to go.” Sam said, and I shook my head.

  “You mean leave you?”

  He nodded, and looked over his shoulder. His eyes were still black from the rage that still rode him, and now they began to smolder. Live coals burning behind the mask of his face.

  “The veil will close soon, but they’ll follow us across unless there’s something here to distract them.”

  “Something like you.” My voice was flat. Dead. He must have seen the denial hardening my features, the unvoiced ‘no’ that tightened my shoulders and left my eye twitching madly. He saw that I wouldn’t be going anywhere without him, and rather than argue the point, he simply pressed a single finger against my breastbone, and pushed.

  I was weak enough that it pushed me over the threshold. I stumbled past the line of trees and fell into oblivion. Now I knew why I hadn’t been able to see anything. It was because, past the market and beyond the cage, there was nothing at all but darkness and my own terrified screaming.

  Chapt
er Eight

  “Some parts of the fairy tales are all too real, all too true.

  There might not be a Red Riding Hood, but there is a Big Bad Wolf.

  No Snow White, but definitely an Evil Queen.

  No obnoxiously cute blond tots, but a child-eating witch… yeah. Oh yeah.”

  - Rob Thurman, Nightlife

  “Alexandria? Shh, it’s all right now. They’re gone. You’re safe now. I’m here.”

  The words were meant to be soothing, and for a while they were. I let them bring me down, let them lead me along, and relaxed deeper and deeper into the mattress beneath me. Something soft and light brushed across my lips, and after what felt like an eternity, I opened my eyes. I was in my apartment, in my bed, lying across the comforter with my hands folded neatly across my abdomen. As if someone had posed me for the grave.

  The thought should have given me the skeevies, but I was strangely…apathetic about the whole thing. I didn’t care about how I’d gotten home or where I’d been. I knew in my heart that I’d simply been here, sleeping, waiting for a forever, for someone to come save me.

  I turned my head and smiled at the man standing beside my bed, and he smiled back down at me, brown eyes warm, and inviting. His blond hair was a bit messed up, but it just added to his overall appeal.

  “I knew you’d come.” I said, voice dreamy with the first stirrings of love.

  His hand brushed down the length of my face and his smile turned tender and sad.

  “I’ve always been here. You just weren’t able to see it.”

  My eyes filled with tears and I trapped his hand against my cheek with my own, tugging on him so that he began to crawl into the bed with me. My hands ran along his body, and I arched my back, letting him capture my lips with his own while my fingers worked frantically at the buttons on his shirt.

  “How,” I demanded between kisses, “could I have been so blind?”

  He chuckled but didn’t answer, his kisses growing bolder, his hands rougher as he pushed me down into the mattress and began tugging the hem of my torn, bloody, dress. My vision sort of, fizzled.

  Wavered

  Flickered.

  Like two stations on the radio or television fighting for dominance.

  Why were my clothes so dirty? Why did I hurt? Where had all this blood come from? My eyes began to widen, my breathing quicken in something other than passion, and the man whispered soothing words into my hair.

  “Hush, my love.” the world flickered again and he was a tiny little woman with yellow eyes telling me how tasty I would be. Then the channel came back, and he was there again. Kissing his way down my throat. My head fell back with the pleasure of it, and when I felt his fingers brush the heat between my thighs I let my legs fall open still wider.

  ‘Alexandria Marie Greyson, I’m ashamed of you.’

  I went still. “Did you hear that?”

  “It was nothing.” just the sound of his voice was enough to ease my tension and I lay back again, voice forgotten as he began tearing at the bodice of my dress.

  ‘I am not nothing Goddaughter mine, and you know it don’t you? You realize that I’m more than just a figment of your imagination.’

  The channel jumped and I got a mental image of the severed, rotting head, of a child grinning at me from beneath my mattress. I sucked in a sharp breath, lips parting, but the voice came again almost immediately, ‘No dear. Don’t say anything. You wouldn’t want our itchy twitchy Piper to know I’m here.’

  I opened my eyes, my throat beginning to tighten with fear, but I did as I was told. I lay there like a rag doll, while the man, Conric bit his way down my chest. It hurt not only because his teeth were so sharp, but also because I was bruised and cut already. The knowledge of why and how was buried in the quicksand of my mind. I struggled to bring it to the forefront but it made my head swim.

  I felt at war with myself. On one hand something in me was fighting desperately to get free, while another, larger, part just wanted what was. I didn’t want to look beneath the surface of things. I just wanted to enjoy the feel of the man I loved making love to me for the first time.

  ‘Do you really love him?’

  The voice again. I wanted to cry.

  ‘If you really love him Alexandria Marie Greyson, then by all means have your fun. But riddle me this; How did you come to be here?’

  I don’t know. I’ve been asleep.

  ‘And yet you’re hurt. Bleeding.’

  Something must have happened.

  ‘As you slept?’

  No…before. Before I went to sleep, something must have happened.

  ‘How long have you slept?’

  For a Forever and Day.

  ‘Your wounds are fresh though, even now they stain the bedding. Your bruises would have faded away long ago. Certainly during the course of a Forever.’

  My bottom lip began to tremble and I cried out, more pain than passion as Conric lifted my hips and worked to tear my underwear away, his fingers biting deep into the gash on my thigh.

  Why am I even listening to you? You don’t know anything.

  ‘I know plenty Alexandria Marie Greyson. Much more than you do in fact. Here, let me show you Goddaughter mine.’

  My awareness of the room sort of melted away and I found myself sitting in an abandoned theatre. The room was cavernous and so dark that all I saw was empty rows of seats for as far as the eye could see. The walls and ceiling were lost to shadows and I shivered, chilled at the thought of being so completely alone.

  Before me rose a stage, red curtains drawn tight. A jester stood before the curtains, the mask he wore blank of either paint or expression. He stared at me through the slits in the mask, eyes black and soulless and I huddled deeper into my seat.

  Then, as if an invisible painted had come and drawn it on with a flourish, the mask produced a smile, and the man behind it indicated the curtains at his back with all the flourish and flair of a circus performer. The curtains parted without a sound, and equally silent, the jester flipped and twirled to land in the middle of the stage where he came to land a table. He mimed reading a book as more performers appeared. They all wore masks, some elaborately painted, some as blank as a freshly painted wall. The men and women who wore them never said a word, preferring to tell their story instead through their actions. Every time the expression on their masks needed to change to better express what they were feeling, the invisible painter would go to work with a speed and skill that was as enviable as it was magical.

  I was both fascinated and terrified. But I watched.

  The man at the table stood up and collided with a passerby, spilling his cup of coffee. The two exchanged silent apologies, laughing and obviously flirting as they made one another’s acquaintance. Beneath her mask and costume I could tell that the female performer was black. She was tall, lithe, and her curly black hair fell artfully around her mask so that it didn’t really seem like a mask at all but something that was a part of her.

  The woman said her farewells to the man in question and hurried on down the street. The scene changed as she walked through what appeared to be a city. She walked until she came to a door, an all too familiar door, and knocked. The door opened and she went through to hug…me.

  I had a doppelganger on stage, and suddenly things began to make a horrible sort of sense. I watched myself hug the performer, who I’d surmised must be pretending to be Rachel. We talked for a bit, hugged again, and parted ways. The stage went dark and when the lights came back on again it was once again to highlight the first performer sitting at the table outside of some sort of café.

  He was pretending to read again, but this time when Rachel passed by him he noticed her almost immediately. He sniffed after her, dancing along the trail of her perfume in mindless adoration.

  And on it went. Everyday Rachel came by to see me and every time she met up with the man they would talk for a bit before leaving one another to their own devices. I watched in stiff-lipped agony as the perfo
rmers reenacted that fateful day on the street when that man had died. They showed Rachel and the mystery man having sex. Eventually they showed him following her. Sneaking behind her with exaggerated care as she came to visit me during my self-enforced seclusion.

  The actors showed the man giving Rachel a card, and Rachel, in turn, handing the card to me as we talked on my couch. It showed the man getting closer and closer to my door, until finally he began to knock. Then to scratch. Then to sniff.

  I watched myself trembling against the door in terror and slapped my hands across my eyes when the man turned on Mr. Jenkins and ripped him apart in a shower of silken, red, scarves.

  Then the unexpected happened.

  The man reached down, and plucked the mask right off the performer’s face and I found myself smothering sobs as I looked into the sightless eyes of what I knew to be the corpse of Marty Jenkins. The first actor dragged my attention away from Marty as he pulled off his own mask and tossed it aside.

  The ground seemed to drop out from under my feet, and I placed a hand on the seat in front of me to steady myself.

  “You.” I breathed.

  Doppelganger Conric met my eyes and very slowly, very deliberately, lifted Mr. Jenkins’ mask to his face, and flashed me a painted smile.

  * * * *

  Conric leaned forward to kiss me again and my teeth sank into his bottom lip with enough force to draw blood. He cursed, and suddenly my ears were ringing from the force of the blow he leveled across my face. I tried kicking out at him but he moved from between my legs to straddle me instead. I beat at his chest, bit at him, growing and bucking like a wild thing, but he overpowered me easily enough and all too soon I found myself panting beneath him with my hands trapped on either side of my head.

  Expressionless, he stared down at me, and sighed. “How’d you break the spell? Usually people can’t wake up from it unless I decide to let them.”

  I didn’t bother answering. Instead I spit at him and snarled, “I know what you did. I know what you are.”