by Shea Berkley
I try to not think of the one fact that never changes. Even with my good intentions, my life always ends up on the wrong side of the tracks.
Always.
Scorched Black
It’s late afternoon. I wish I could say I’ve been able to suppress the firebug, but I haven’t. It rears its head at weird times, like when I go to get a snack out of the kitchen. No one is around and the urge strikes, and fire pops to life at the end of my fingertip. I quickly snuff it when someone comes near. I think Kera knows.
Grandma comes into the den, muttering about the smell of something burning in the bathroom. I shy away from her probing stare and decide right then and there I’d spend the rest of the day with Kera, working on being normal.
Her by my side, sitting on the couch watching Cartoon Network...how normal is that? I slant a quick glance at her and end up staring.
Nothing is normal about Kera. Not that she’s weird. She isn’t. Just the opposite. She’s amazing—in a girl-from-another-realm kind of way, sitting there in faded jeans and a fitted T-shirt, looking like every guy’s fantasy come to life.
Kera suddenly leans forward, her violet eyes bright and her mouth softly pursed. The commercial flashes a promise. No more teenage acne. Her head pivots toward mine, spilling her long, unbound dark hair against her knees. Her fingers probe her face. “That girl says I need Forever Clear.”
I lift my right eyebrow and shake my head. “You don’t have acne.”
“Blackheads?”
“Nope.”
She leans closer for my inspection. “Big pores? The girl in the rectangle says they are unsightly. I need her mud to make me beautiful.”
I make a show of really looking, then pull sharply away. “None.”
“Oh.” She turns back to the TV, a pout of disappointment shaping her lips.
Though I try not to, laughter rolls out. “What’s wrong? You should be happy about not having to slap a bunch of mud on your face.”
“But I want to put mud on my face. I want to erase my flaws,” she says and points to the TV, “like that girl does and all the other girls in this realm.”
“You want to be human?”
“I am human, at least part of me is, and I want to know that part.”
I get it now…like I wanted to know the first part of me. While I inherited a whole lot of trouble when my first half emerged, Kera’s human side is destined to be just as disappointed, although in a less heart-thumping manner. It ain’t all that great once the novelty of all our electronic gadgets and gizmos wears off.
I pop a kiss on her perfect nose. “Sorry, babe. You don’t have any flaws.” Well, maybe one. She refuses to take off the incordium dagger her friend gave her. Something about a promise she can’t break. At least I’ve got her tucking it out of sight.
She pushes against my arm and throws me an irritated glare before she turns back to the TV. She thinks I’m teasing, but I’m serious. She’s perfect.
“Everyone has flaws. I know this as fact.” Her voice takes on a mischievous tone. “I know your flaws.”
A small grunt escapes me. “You’re supposed to say I don’t have any, either.”
“That’s right,” she says with a smile. “I can speak all manner of untruths here and not get into trouble.”
I flash her a playful glance. Oh, she’s going down for that one.
Fast as a snap, I wrestle her into the far corner of the couch. With my body draped over hers, my fingers run up and down her sides, eliciting breathless giggles until she lets out a sharp scream. I cover her mouth with mine, muffling her laughter. All too quickly, the giggles subside, and the touch of our lips becomes a far more exciting kiss. I’ve never been able to resist kissing her, and now that we’re living in the same house, I’m finding it really hard to keep my hands and lips to myself.
“Dylan,” Grandma’s voice calls from the kitchen. “Get off that poor girl this minute and behave yourself.”
Can the woman see through walls?
I pull away, but not before I nibble and kiss Kera from ear to collarbone.
She pushes against my chest and rises, but I don’t let go of her arm even though she tries to pull away. Another tug and she looks pleadingly down at me. “Dylan, I should help your grandmother.”
Why is it so hard to let her go? She’s been in my head, in my dreams, for so long, I feel incomplete when she’s not nearby. My hand instinctively jerks her forward until she collapses onto my lap. She’s about to scold me when I deliver a sweet kiss, the kind that makes her smile and not want to leave. As she melts against me, her fingers weave into my hair, but I quickly pull her hands away and set her back on her feet. I wink at her confusion and say in an overly loud voice, “Stop it, Kera! Geesh! Keep your hands to yourself.”
She gasps, and Grandma pops into the doorway with a spoon gripped in her fist. She points it at me; her eyes narrow. “Don’t think for a second I’m falling for that, young man. Leave her be, or I’ll send you out to sleep in the barn.”
My grandma isn’t one of those plump, sweet grandmas you see in movies. Nope, Grandma is a youthful terror who knows how to accurately wield a spoon for maximum damage. I know when to back off.
“Yes, ma’am.” My manner is contrite, but my heart isn’t, and Grandma knows it.
She fusses over Kera as they return to the kitchen. “Don’t let him manhandle you like that, sweetheart.”
“Oh, I do not mind,” comes Kera’s soft, innocent admission.
Hearing that causes a huge grin to attack my face, and my heart gives a little jump.
Grandma’s censor finds me before nudging Kera out of sight. “You should. He’s a wicked boy, our Dylan, and it’s up to us to teach him some self-control.”
“I will try.”
I heave a sigh. Kera loves Grandma and will do anything she tells her to do. I’ll be starved for affection in no time if Grandma has her way. I can just imagine Kera spiraling into a moody teenage girl if I don’t kiss her. Has Grandma thought of that? I don’t think so.
From in the kitchen I hear Grandma talking. “Since you and Dylan arrived, the vegetables in the greenhouse have blossomed. Whatever it is you two are doing, I can’t say I’m upset about it. Unless I should be upset.” She pauses. “What are you two doing in there? Should I be upset?” Scooter, Grandpa’s maniac of a dog, starts barking. There’s an awkward pause in their conversation. “Kera?” Grandma asks. “What’s wrong?”
The kitchen door booms open and slams shut. I hear footsteps race down the porch and into the yard.
I ditch the TV and go into the kitchen, and see only Grandma. “Where’d Kera go?”
“I don’t know,” Grandma says with a shrug. “One minute she’s snapping green beans and the next she hotfooted it out of here like a dog after a squirrel. You don’t think she saw another…monster?” She whispers the last word as if saying it aloud will make one materialize.
“No,” I say with confidence. The special connection Kera and I share isn’t sending out any alarms.
I don’t like her suddenly running off. It’s becoming a habit. She seemed so happy a few minutes ago. So relaxed. I peer through the window. I don’t see her or anything that would make her leave. “I’ll go check on her.”
“I hope I didn’t say anything to upset her. Maybe she doesn’t like green bean casserole.”
I plant a kiss on Grandma’s forehead, something I’ve never done before, and her cheeks flush with pleasure. “That’s just crazy,” I say. “Everybody likes green bean casserole.”
I duck out of the house and make my way past the back gate. No sign of Kera anywhere. The forest takes a deep breath and quivers with anticipation as I enter. I touch the trees. Feel the bark skitter under my hands. There are advantages to being a first. Nature and I are one. Whatever I want, happens. I can make trees uproot and replant. I can make flowers bloom in winter. Fruit ripen in the spring. Send vines climbing until they reach the stars. I can make it rain or shine. The wind howl.
The earth rise or fall.
The disadvantages to my power aren’t small, though. Since my death and resurrection, I’ve become a walking emoticon. The first part of me wants to take over, but I fight to keep the new me suppressed. Sometimes I’m good at it, a lot of the time I’m not.
What’s really disturbing me is my sudden taste for fire. As I make my way around the trees, I call it forward and watch it dance in my palm. Last night, I sat in my bed, watching it tumble over my hands. I could’ve set the house on fire, but when I’m in the mood, the danger I’m in doesn’t seem to matter. I have to play with the flames.
Grandpa claims I lack discipline. I’ve never had much need for it before. I’ve always been that guy who gets into harmless trouble and can easily talk my way out of it. I don’t have any experience with being a jerk with a sudden pyro obsession. I snuff the fire out and feel my jaw tighten.
Honestly, I don’t like this new me. Whatever Grandpa’s plan is, I hope it works. Since I don’t trust myself, I’ve got to trust someone.
My search for Kera turns up crickets and june bugs. It’s just my luck the rain from earlier dampened the air and everything smells like seared wood and wet ash. Eventually I find myself standing in the area where Faldon, Teag’s sage, attacked me. There’s a tree, standing in the middle of a patch of ground where it’s charred black and brown, with a ragged scar running from mid-trunk on up. It’s the tree where I entombed Faldon. I killed him. It doesn’t matter that the only way to save others was for him to die. I lie awake and torture myself with scenarios where no one dies and everyone lives happily ever after.
I tried to burn the tree, because when you sink to the depths of bad where Faldon had gone, you’ve got to make sure he’s not coming back, but the people who managed to rescue my mangled and bruised body put the fire out. Now the top portion of the tree is scraggly and the bottom part is a charred mess.
I place my hand on the trunk. The scarred and burned bark crackles under my fingers. Did he know I only entombed him because he would’ve killed Grandma and Leo? I had to protect them.
“I wish things had turned out differently,” I say to the tree, and then feel stupid for saying anything at all.
The burned crust shifts and a face appears in woodsy dips and grooves. I jump back, marveling at what I’m seeing. The lips split and a raspy voice says, “Dylan.”
By now, I should be used to crazy stuff happening around me. I’m not. I can feel my heart jumping around like a hamster with hiccups. “Faldon?”
The voice scrapes out of the wood like sticks rubbing together. “If you’ll allow me, I will help you.”
The tree is talking to me. If anyone else said they’d gone into the forest and talked to a tree, I would’ve been the first to point out the nearest therapist, but it’s happening to me. In my recent experience, there’s nothing odd about talking trees, except…
“No offense, but you’re dead. You do know that, right?”
“I am aware of my limitations. You do remember that before you trapped my spirit in this tree, I was a sage? I am also your grandfather.”
Nice of him to remind me, but apparently he needs a refresher course in reality. “Yeah, and you tried to kill me. You brought a whole new slant to my dysfunctional family I could’ve done without.”
“I was following an order I could not break.”
“Whatever gets you through the night.” If he wants to cling to that lame excuse, who am I to stop him?
“Dylan, you are still in danger.”
“I know.” A monster showing up in my backyard pretty much tipped me off to that fact. The firsts aren’t a live-and-let-live kind of people. I can only hope I didn’t pick up that genetic code from my dad.
“You know less than you think. You and Kera have absorbed Navar’s power. It’s big and raw and a hundred times more powerful than any other firsts. I still have little understanding of how he achieved that strength. What I do know is that you cannot accept that kind of power and not have it change you.”
My gut churns, but I don’t let my worry show. “So there might be a jealous first out for my head? Got it covered.”
“Meaning?”
“A plan is in place,” I lie. We’re living one moment to the next, just praying we can deal with whatever else pops out of the woods. I wish that was our only problem. I move away, pacing my nerves down, trying not to think about what I’ve become, because when I do, a strange excitement mixed with dread overwhelms me.
The face in the tree crumples, shifts, and protrudes once again, keeping its wooden eyes on me. “Have you noticed anything peculiar about Kera?”
“She’s fine.”
“Although she is half first, she was always more human. Far more human than you. Infusing her with a power like Navar’s will change her.”
Isn’t that what Kera said earlier? That she felt like she was changing? It’s stupid. We are who we are, and Kera is the most amazing person I’ve ever met. “She’s fine,” I repeat. “Perfectly the same.”
I’m the one changing, being led like a blind dog along a cliff edge.
“Kera may look like she’s handling it, but don’t be so sure. She was always one to break the rules. Now that she has the power of the firsts in her, there’s no telling what she will do.”
“She’s. Fine,” I snap. I don’t need him piling more imaginary trouble on my back.
“You are as headstrong as ever and easily led into trouble from which you cannot retreat. Don’t you think you’ve caused enough problems lately?”
What is he implying? That I could have stopped the council from branding me for death? That I should have let Navar continue to control and exterminate whomever he chose? That I could’ve controlled the power rushing through me that ended up burning a hole in the forest and killing God knows how many? Does he think I don’t have a conscience? That I easily sleep at night? I wasn’t raised with this power. It was dumped on me, and I was left alone to figure it out. If he wanted to get me pissed off, he’s done it.
My jaw clenches. “You want to help me? Fine. How ’bout you take away my nightmares?” I step forward. “Or tell me what’s with this?” I hold out my hand and fire bursts in the middle of my palm. The flame whips back and forth, bending toward the tree as if it were a dog sniffing after a treat. My fingers close, snuffing it out, and I regard the man in the tree. “How’d I get it? How do I get rid of it?”
“The fire is from me. When you ended my life, you absorbed my powers. As the son of the true king of Teag, that is your privilege. It’s what makes our ruler the most powerful of all.”
“So to get more power, I have to kill someone?” He’s got to be kidding. I always thought the firsts were a little shy of normal, but this is beyond messed up.
The lips dip in a deep frown. “No. Someone can give you their power temporarily for the purpose of protecting our people.”
“I’m done with Teag and our people.”
“They need you, Dylan.”
I eye him suspiciously. He’s saying they need me now? Apparently, getting entombed in a tree really has a way of changing a man. “Last time we met, you thought me being dead was a great solution to my sudden appearance.”
“I never thought that. I saw the potential for danger you possessed, the chaos you would bring, but Kera saw what I couldn’t. She saw your heart and the goodness that lies within it. Is she right?”
“It doesn’t matter if she’s right or wrong. They definitely want me, but it’s not how you think. They want me dead.”
The bark splits more and the face protrudes, stretching the boundary of his prison. “You are the heir to the kingdom. You are their prince. Give them a chance. They don’t know you.”
I’ve gone back and forth about going back to Teag all week. I need to retrieve Jason’s body. It’s something I should do, and I know it, but hearing Faldon, the man who tried to kill me, tell me what to do makes me want to do the exact opposite.
I shake my head, all manne
r of vile accusations pounding through my mind. “If you think you can guilt me into going back, then you don’t know me, either.”
I will go back, but in my own time and for my own reasons. Giving Faldon one more long, hard look, I turn my back on the burned-out tree and the spirit of the grandfather Faldon never was, and walk away.
Breath of Fire
Kera ran past the shed and into the woods, following Dylan’s grandparents’ dog. She’d recognized the face peering out from the woods—and he should not be here. She stopped and examined the charred spot along the ground, smelled the distinct sulfurous smell of dragon spit. “Blaze?”
Her eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on her. Just like the monster, Faldon’s pet dragon had somehow entered the human realm. She had to find that dragon before he caused more damage. Luckily, the ground was wet from the afternoon showers and what damage he may cause would be minimal...she hoped.
“Blaze,” she hissed. “Blaze!”
A sudden yelp sounded, and Scooter raced past her, leaving the scent of burning fur in his wake. A rumbling purr sounded ahead. Stooping, she peered into the underbrush and saw two glowing amber eyes. She slowly moved forward, her voice like silk as she talked. “There’s my sweet boy. Are you scared? What are you doing here?”
Though he was tiny, Blaze was a flying demolition expert. A dragon in the human realm was the last thing she needed to worry about right now. She needed to focus on Dylan.
If her suspicions were correct, Dylan had the ability to collect power, just like the Lost King, and that was bad. It was rumored that particular ability could push someone over the edge of sanity. She couldn’t allow Dylan to risk that. As long as she kept Dylan in the human world, everything should be fine. Which meant catching Blaze and sending him back to Teag was her problem to deal with.
She slowly raised her hand, stretching it toward the tiny dragon. The bushes rustled and Blaze shot away. Kera took off after him. It was like chasing shadows. He was too quick, darting from tree to bush to ground. Any thoughts of a speedy capture disappeared.