by Lucy Lyons
“All the cases?” said Mrs. Parks with an arched eyebrow.
“I majored in exopsychology, with a minor in draconology.”
“Oh?” said Mrs. Parks with obvious disapproval, as if Astrid’s particular choice of university degree was an affliction.
“Well, when I started there was that big kerfuffle about possible alien contact, remember? And there was a big push to train exoscientists and that got me a full scholarship. Only that whole thing turned out to be a big fat dud, so I minored in the one non-human sentient species we have on the planet. Otherwise, I would have lost my funding.”
“Oh, right then,” said Mrs. Parks grudgingly.
“And as you know, there aren’t many jobs for someone with my qualifications.” Astrid said this last a bit of hauteur in her voice, but Mrs. Parks was seriously annoying her. If the government thought her studies were worthy enough to fund the four years she took to get her degree, then a prison matron had no business questioning it.
Mrs. Parks snorted. “Well, I’m so glad you deigned to join our ranks, Ms. Davis,” she said scornfully. “We don’t always get someone with your, er… qualifications. I do hope you don’t find it beneath your education to work with dragons.”
Actually, Astrid was thrilled. Since she was a little girl and her grandmother had told her stories about dragons, she was fascinated with them. And her love for the tales grew beyond what her grandmother told her. Astrid loved any story, real or myth, about them. It was sad that they were so often painted as demons or murderers. To Astrid these last stories seemed concocted, the product of human fear, despite there being few instances of dragon criminals.
“No, of course not,” said Astrid. “I’m happy to take any work that fulfills my obligation to the government for funding my education.”
“Uh, huh,” said Mrs. Parks with a doubtful tone. “Well, the executed shifter was the one who used the name Austin Drake.”
“Oh,” said Astrid. Sick disappointment filled her. Austin, before he was arrested, had a distinguished military career. He did, that was, until a records match found another Austin Drake who served in the First World War. That was soon after the Reveal, when a prominent London newspaper reported the news that dragons lived among humans. Any piece of evidence that pointed suspicion that a person was a dragon resulted in witch hunt. Austin’s crime was treason, which carried a death sentence until Parliament stayed all of them. But now that had changed. And a beautiful golden dragon was no more.
Astrid felt her eyes mist and she reached under her goggles to quickly wipe away the evidence of her treasonous heart. It was not politically correct to have an appreciation for the only other sentient species that shared the Earth with humans.
“Something wrong, Ms. Davis?” asked Mrs. Parks.
“Dry eye. Forgot my drops this morning.”
“Unfortunate. Take care that you don’t forget critical job duties. That could cost all of us.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Astrid dutifully.
“But the one you should especially watch out for is Templeton Rawlins.”
“Oh, he’s the one that murdered Prime Minister Pearce,” piped up Jane. “I read about that in history class.”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Mrs. Park. “He’s been here for twenty-four years, and a nasty bit he is. He’s caused at least three guards to quit in fright. One had a heart attack shortly after he quit his employ.” The matron leaned in and spoke with a conspiratorial tone. “We suspect Rawlins used magic on him for that, but since we didn’t find any breaks in his ironwork, he must have had a confederate do it for him. In any case, the Prime Minister decided he is too dangerous to keep, and the execution order will be coming any day.”
Astrid bit her lip to keep her protests from spilling on her lips. Rawlings lived quietly prior to his arrest, managing his family estate and in general keeping out of the public eye. Aside from the one instance of criminality, he’d never harmed a single soul. Though there was a rogue element in every society, she had a difficult time fitting the crime to the dragon, even if the evidence was incontrovertible.
Mrs. Parks used her key card to unlock the outer and then the inner doors to the inmates’ quarters. There was a row of heavy duty tempered glass doors lining the hallway on either side of granite walls. Hawthorne was a medieval castle converted for use as this facility and a considerable sum had been spent in upgrades to make it suitable to house the strongest and most devious dragons.
“You’ll notice their ironwork,” Mrs. Parks said coolly. “The locks to the shackles on their wrists, neck and ankles are electronic, controlled by codes in the security booth. Our technicians rotate the codes on a daily basis and they, along with the shift supervisors, are the only ones that have them. Special permission is needed to key the codes in the locks, which must come from my day mode counterpart, Mr. Roache, or me. The chains retract into the wall to pull the inmate against it when we need to enter their compartments. It’s best to try to secure their co-operation for this, as they can seriously hurt their human bodies by fouling the operations of their chains with their bodies.”
“They would do that?” said Jane.
“Oh yes. It’s happened. They don’t like being restrained that way and will do anything to avoid it.”
Astrid puckered her lips. She thought she’d hate being restrained by shackles on all extremities; the neck would be hateful enough. It was one thing to read about it in the schoolbooks and another completely to see it in the flesh.
“This one is Evan Waters.”
“He’s the American dragon, isn’t he?” said Jane.
Mrs. Parks nodded. “Yes, as you know, he was arrested when a DNA scan at the airport picked up his dragon heritage.”
Astrid worked hard to keep the daggers from her eyes. Evan was only fifty percent dragon, a hybrid, and by all accounts couldn’t even shift. But he was detained anyway on immigration charges since he lied about his heritage on his visa to gain entrance to the country. As far as she knew, he hadn’t even been to court.
“Hello, Waters,” said Mrs. Parks nastily. “These ladies are your new guards, Ms. Davis and Ms. Hellstrom. They’ve brought your dinner.”
“Go fuck yourself,” appeared on the electronic screen above the door. Astrid remembered Mrs. Parks explaining this. However, Hawthorne’s newest matron was shocked that the speech-to-text software so literally displayed the dragon’s crude words.
“Eloquent, as always,” said Mrs. Parks. She shoved the covered dinner plate in a special glass box in the door that only opened inside the cell when the slot on the outside closed.
Waters lifted the lid, and cursed. He picked up the plate and flung it against the glass. Ground raw meat slid down the glass as the metal plate clattered on the flagstone floor.
“You know I don’t eat that shit,” danced the words on the screen.
“It’s a dragon’s dinner, Waters,” said Mrs. Parks, “and that’s what you get. If you don’t want to eat it, that’s fine.”
CHAPTER TWO
Tem
Tem was deep into his meditation when the disturbance roused him from his thoughts. It was a nice meditation, filled with the slow tearing of flesh from the live body of his enemy, strip by strip with Tem’s own claws. In his head he heard his victim’s eternal screams, because the man he was shredding wasn’t a man at all, but one of his own. A dragon filled with lust for power, willing to betray his own people to obtain it. But mid-way through his fantasy, the low thrumming that comprised dragon speech vibrated through the granite and Tem heard Evan’s distress. Evan didn’t know the dragon tongue when he arrived, but he was an apt student and picked it up quickly.
“They gave us women as guards,” said an angered Evan. “As if that would stop us.”
“Women? That’s a first,” replied Tem neutrally. Tem had other bones to grind and the fleeting appearances of different guards didn’t perturb him in the least. Humans were so short lived that he barely paid attention to them
anymore.
“They gave me raw meat again,” groused Evan.
“That’s a shame.” Raised as a human, Evan had never developed the natural tastes of dragons. Most of the cooks understood this about Evan and sent him human food, but someone was on tear to punish the dragons after that guard died. Of course, they blamed the dragons, but the fact was the man had a weak heart that was due to give out. Tem could sense the aneurism as it grew, but the guard thought that Tem was playing mind games with him and refused to listen.
Tem roused from his pose on the floor to peek out the glass to watch the conversations on the screens. With his dragon hearing, he could hear the women’s voices clearly, though the dragons’ voices when speaking as humans were muted through the thick glass of their cells and his.
Mrs. Parks stood in the center with the usual nasty expression on her face. She was a piece of work that deserved a good scorching. Tem felt his stomach rumble with the desire to eat some brimstone and give the woman what she so desperately needed, but that option wasn’t available. It only ended in heartburn, especially with the improperly prepared raw food diet the “experts” decided that dragons should have.
“Now, this one is Calvin Porter. Mr. Porter, how are you today?”
Calvin didn’t answer. He never did. Out of all of them he did the most poorly in this environment and had withdrawn within himself. He wasn’t eating or drinking. Dragons could exist for ungodly amounts of time without either, but eventually even the sturdy dragon physiology would fail.
“Come on, mate,” Tem thrummed. “Wake up. Give the old woman a taste of her medicine.”
Tem saw the thrust of the meal into the exchange box, and shook his head when Calvin refused to respond.
“He doesn’t eat?” said the red head. Now there was a tender bit. He wouldn’t mind getting a few licks of that.
“We can’t make them, can we?” said Mrs. Parks without sympathy. If Tem didn’t know better, he’d think she was part dragon herself. But nope. Not a bit of dragon resided in the woman’s withered frame. Good thing too. Tem wouldn’t want to claim her as one of his species.
The smaller female shrank behind the redhead. “You feed him, Astrid,” she said as if Tem was a rabid dog. He deliberately gave her a predatory smile, which made her shrink even further until she was behind the elder matron. Mrs. Parks must have filled the little one’s pretty little head with stories about the appetites of dragons. He smiled sardonically. Tem didn’t intend to disappoint.
Astrid’s face puckered, rousing a pleasant prickling along Tem’s spine, which he hadn’t felt for a long time. But it didn’t deter him from his campaign of terror. As the woman strode forth with his covered plate, he rushed the glass. He couldn’t actually hit the glass. The shackles on his neck, hands and feet prevented him from reaching that far. But just the sight of him flinging his body recklessly forward and screaming was enough to make most guards jump back and swear.
Astrid didn’t flinch. Instead, infuriatingly, she cocked an eyebrow at him.
“I take it you object to the menu, too.”
Confident. Self-assured. A man could like that. But right now, the dragon in him was annoyed.
“What would you know, newbie?”
She didn’t take the bait.
“Is there something else you’d prefer?”
“Oh, are we a five-star hotel now?”
She looked at the words above her head and smiled. It was a pretty smile and that thought disturbed him. Humans were the enemy. At least, one of his enemies.
“Obviously not,” she said. “I’m just asking in case I can work things out for you.”
“How noble. A considerate human. Well, a live goat would be nice. I’m so tired of the rats that haunt this place.”
Incredibly, she chuckled.
“I admit. Rats are not the finest cuisine.”
Good Lord. She was trying to joke with him. Tem was intrigued and appalled at the same time. It sparked the anger that roiled in his gut each of his waking moments.
“Do you think to mock me?” he roared. He flung his arms up in parody of the wings that should be unfolding there. Tem shook his arms in frustration at the vicious iron that melded his body to this three-dimensional world. How he wanted to pull his dragon body from the other dimension that held its great bulk and form, to break free of this hell, and fly far away from the prejudices of short-sighted and fearful humans. How he wanted to go home.
After he killed the man that put him here.
But what the woman did next shocked him.
“I’m sorry,” she mouthed. Astrid did this with her back to her companions, and didn’t speak the words aloud so they could hear them. But the movements of her mouth were unmistakable.
Tem was so shocked he was struck speechless.
Astrid opened the slot and slid forward the meal. Her scent clung to the metal dishware, and Tem involuntarily breathed deeply, taking in the sweet fragrance. His intimate parts stirred with memories of what it felt to hold a woman.
Tem, old man, he told himself. You’ve spent too much time in captivity. The first girl that smiles at you and you’re gone. He wasn’t a young dragon and thought himself beyond the lusts of youth.
“I’ll work on that goat for you,” she said sweetly. “Until then you’ll just have to content yourself with the steak tartar. Next time, I’ll make sure there is a raw egg on it.”
She smiled at him, again a gesture that her companions could not see, and her grin filled Tem with questions. Had someone managed to sneak in a confederate past the sympathizer tests? Had some of his old cadre regrouped and sought a way to release him?
But then again, she could be just some silly little girl with romantic notions about dragons. Hell, it was true that human females were attracted to dragon pheromones, which is where those nasty stories about dragons taking virgins came from. No. Dragons didn’t need to kidnap virgins or any woman. They came to them. Which was why human men hated dragons so much. Tem chuckled. All a dragon had to do was be within whiffing distance of a susceptible female and those women forgot about their human men for good.
Tem backed away to his bunk and sat down, staring thoughtfully at the retreating figure of the young guard called Astrid. She followed her companions so he got a clear view of her rear end. It was nicely shaped and swayed as she walked. Reflexively he licked his lips.
He had an idea, one that would annoy Matron Parks and maybe titillate the guard called Astrid, if they showed her the security tapes. He pushed down his prison issued sweats and gripped his thick shaft in his hands. He hadn’t done this in a while, mainly because the male guards were unimpressed with his antics. But now with the sweet face of Astrid in his mind and his hands on his member, it grew swiftly in his hands. Remembering the round globes of Astrid’s ass, precum leaked on his hands. Dragons tended to have more of that than human males, so his pole was good and lubricated as his hands stroked it. He imagined spreading Astrid’s legs and staring at the pink petals of her most intimate flesh and imagined the joys he would find inside. His next thought was breaching her soft entrance and filling her with his great dragon cock. Tem rode the tidal wave of sensation of the velvet silk of her inner walls. In his mind she was moaning, whipping her head side to side in rising pleasure.
“Come for me, Astrid,” he said, and his phantom lover screamed his name as her core convulsed around him. His hands were a poor substitute for that sensation, but he was fully into the fantasy now and he exploded in forceful streaks of pearly white cum on his chest
He lay back on his cot, thoroughly spent. Tem hadn’t allowed himself that release for many years, not since they put in the security cameras. But right now, he could imagine the look of horror on Mrs. Park’s face. And perhaps young Astrid would have a smile on her face as she watched his pleasure.
It was a protest of his incarceration. He may be jailed, restrained, shackled, but he was not a prisoner. His actions were a deliberate mind fuck, but resistance was not fu
tile. On the other hand, he was sure Astrid’s face would haunt his dreams this night.
Ah, Astrid, he thought. What are you doing to me?
CHAPTER THREE
Astrid
Mrs. Parks pursed her lips in disapproval.
“Disgusting,” she said as the three of them watched the security tapes of their interaction with the dragons.
They stood in the security office, which was ringed with monitor screens showing different locations throughout the facility. Mrs. Parks had the technician who watched the screen step out for a break as the three of them surveyed the action. It was a tiny room that must have been a storage room at one time. But there was simply not enough room for four people.
Mrs. Parks had thought it would be instructive to watch the tapes and she was free with her comments to both of the young women throughout. But when they reached the end of the video where Rawlins jerked himself off, Mrs. Parks became pensive.
She muttered a few words under her breath that sounded suspiciously like, “indecent, abominable, horrid.” Her fists were bunched at her hips but she did nothing to turn off Rawlin’s raw sex show.
“Can they really have no privacy?” asked Astrid. Mrs. Parks shot her a look that could peel paint off the walls.
“Of course not,” the matron replied. “They are dangerous creatures. You saw how they acted. Especially that Templeton Rawlins.”
Astrid wondered what Rawlins had done to the matron, other than his masturbation session, to make her remarks even more acidic than usual. But she turned her head away from Mrs. Parks sharp and critical gaze. They were sentient creatures, damn it, and deserved some dignity. No wonder the inmates were in full revolt. She would be too if she were treated like an animal.
“But you, Ms. Hellstrom,” said Mrs. Parks, “You showed fear in front of the prisoners and that will not do. Not at all.”
Mrs. Parks wielded her sharp tone with the precision of a surgical instrument. Jane paled, not just at the words, but the nasty tone of Mrs. Parks voice.