by JJ Jones
When at last Marjorie began to slow to a halt, they were between two buildings, and it was about as close to safety as they were likely to get. She gave herself a brief shake and Clarissa clambered down from her back.
Marjorie transformed and pulled her phone out in one motion, and Clarissa dithered off to the side as she could just barely hear Abel picking up on the other end of the line, though she couldn’t actually hear what he was saying, and she could only just barely pick up on his tone. Marjorie’s words were sharp as she spoke.
“Corvin realized we’re up to something. He went after Clarissa in broad daylight—relax, you can start shouting later. She’s fine; I got her out of there. Now we need you to get your ass over here before something worse happens.”
She listed off the street and the buildings they were between, before she hung up without offering any sort of farewell. She shoved her phone back into her pocket and peered carefully in either direction, making sure that nothing was coming for them.
“How did you know I needed help, anyway?” Clarissa wondered, her voice still a slightly shell-shocked mumble. She leaned back against a wall, letting it take her weight for her. “I wasn’t even supposed to meet up with either of you today.”
Marjorie shrugged one shoulder. “Coincidence, mainly,” she replied. “I was in the right place to see Corvin’s shadow pass overhead, and I knew it wasn’t Abel, so I figured he probably wasn’t up to anything good and I followed him. Just in time, I guess.”
Clarissa laughed breathlessly and slid down the wall, so her forehead could thump down against her knees. She straightened up after only a moment, though, sitting up enough to let her head lean back against the wall behind her.
“Would anyone else have spotted any of that?” she wondered. “I mean, no one really seemed to notice anything when he was first talking to me.”
“He was hiding himself at first,” Marjorie confirmed. “That sort of went bust when I burst in, and I imagine everyone saw us leave and saw him just spontaneously appear in the street. We just didn’t stick around long enough for anyone to have time to freak out about it,” she finished wryly.
“Will there be trouble about that?” Clarissa asked quietly.
“I’m sure it will be a talking point,” Marjorie answered, though she didn’t sound particularly concerned about it, and she shrugged once again. “It’s not the end of the world. It’s not like none of us have ever been discovered before. We’ve handled it in the past and we’ll handle it in the future. It helps that no one knows who we are when we look like humans even if they saw us in our real forms.”
Clarissa nodded slowly in understanding, though she wasn’t sure if she felt particularly
comforted about it. Truth be told, there were a lot of things she no longer felt all that sure about. As good as it had initially sounded to live in Paris with Abel, the idea no longer seemed to have quite the same luster, and her thoughts churned as she wondered if maybe she should reconsider.
She didn’t have long to think about it, though, as Abel chose that moment to jog down the alley, looking harried and slightly frazzled. “Everyone in one piece?” he asked, looking between the two of them quickly.
“We’re fine,” Marjorie assured him, as Clarissa nodded along in agreement. “Just a little shocked he decided to do something so openly.”
“He killed Gaspard,” Clarissa mumbled towards her knees. “And he knows the others I helped you talk to aren’t gone through coincidence.”
Marjorie nodded slowly, her gaze falling to the ground. “I didn’t realize who it was when I showed up, but I know I saw a body there.”
Slowly, Abel heaved a sigh. “I suppose I should have seen something like that coming,” he acknowledged, his voice low. He didn’t dwell on it for long, though, his attention shifting to Clarissa again as he asked, “You’re sure you’re alright?”
She nodded slowly. “I’m okay,” she confirmed, though it was followed by, “Though I’m not sure if Paris is really the place for me, after all of this.”
For just a moment, Abel looked slightly panicked, and Clarissa almost felt bad about it. She very nearly took it back right then and there. But no, she couldn’t do that. She still needed to think about it more, but if it turned out, when everything was settled, if going back to the United States was what was best for her, then she needed to stay open to that possibility. She couldn’t just go along with everything Abel wanted to keep him happy, unless it was what she wanted, too.
He was going to argue. She could see it plain as day on his face. If he had the opportunity, he was going to argue and list as many reasons as he could think of why staying in Paris would be the best choice for everyone involved. He didn’t get the chance, though.
The ground rattled slightly as something landed in the street, and a familiar voice cooed, “There you are. I was beginning to think I’d lost you.” Words that should have been protective had never sounded so malevolent before, and Clarissa could feel herself shrinking as she pulled her arms and legs in tighter, as if the wall would have the decency to swallow her whole if she only made herself small enough. Alas, it was not to be.
Corvin peered around the edge of the mouth of the alley, and while it was true that he wouldn’t be able to fit into the alley, he also didn’t need to fit his entire girth in. He just needed to squeeze in just enough to stretch his neck out, seize Clarissa by the back of her shirt, and wrench her out to the street. She shrieked as she tumbled onto the ground once he released her, but before she could try to scramble away from him, he wrapped one forelimb around her torso, pinning her arms to her sides as he did. An instant later, he launched himself into the air, and Clarissa screamed until her voice began to go hoarse as he rose higher and higher, until she could swear she was getting lightheaded with the altitude. Her vision began to go spotty at the edges, but she could see Abel following behind Corvin, his wings pumping furiously as he tried to catch up to Corvin’s head start.
To her horror, though, she could see Abel falling behind as Corvin tucked his wings in close and began to dive through the air like a missile, the wind ripping past Clarissa’s face and screaming in her ears until she swore she might go deaf if it didn’t stop. She didn’t need to worry about the discomfort for long, though.
As Abel was turning into a speck in the distance, Corvin began to rise through the air again, and as the air thinned and everything took on a loose and floaty feel to it, Clarissa’s vision began to speckle at the edges again as she gasped for air that simply wasn’t there, or at least not to the extent that she needed it to be.
Her vision began to tunnel inwards, like a train rushing along its tracks. She didn’t remember the exact moment she blacked out.
*
When Clarissa woke up again, the world seemed gray and grainy around the edges. She didn’t know how long she had been unconscious, but she had to assume it hadn’t been for too long, as Corvin was still carrying her and the ground was still too far down to make out any details other than great swathes of green. She didn’t know how far out of the city they were, or how far
Corvin planned on carrying her. For all she knew, he was just looking for a place to drop her where it would take some time for anyone to find the messy smear where she might have landed.
She supposed she could have asked, but with the way the wind was still ripping past, she wasn’t even sure if Corvin would hear her. And even if he did, it wasn’t as if he would feel particularly obliged to give her a straight or honest answer. He could start speaking in tongues and Clarissa would be able to do nothing about it.
For the moment, at least, all she could do was stay calm and wait until she had some idea of what she was in for, even if part of her mind kept screaming that what she was in for was a very long drop and a splat at the end.
At least that was what she assumed, until Corvin began heading for the ground, quickly enough that Clarissa felt like her head was getting compressed and nothing at all like Abel’s gentle
descent when she was on his back. She was convinced she was going to black out again, until Corvin abruptly pulled up and dropped the last few yards through the air to land on the ground on his hind legs with a thump that rattled through Clarissa’s bones.
Finally, he set her down and settled onto all four legs, looking down at her in a manner that was mostly reminiscent of the way a child with a magnifying glass might look at an ant hill.
She cast about wildly, but she saw nothing that would help her. Trees to one side, hills to the
other, and there wasn’t a road or even farmland in sight. From the looks of it, she could have run for hours without running into anyone or spotting more than the vaguest signs of civilization. She could have tried to run—there was more than enough space to do so—but even if she managed to get out of arm’s reach of Corvin, she knew he would catch her before she could take more than a few steps, and it would probably just make everything even worse for her. For all intents and purposes, there was nowhere to go and nothing to hide behind, and she was stranded, alone in the middle of nowhere with a creature who wanted to kill her.
That thought brought a sudden, horrible burst of clarity to mind, as she realized why he hadn’t simply dropped her. She would have died on impact. And just based on what he had done to the gryphons, Clarissa was willing to bet that wouldn’t be good enough for him; he wanted it to hurt.
He was going to cook her alive, probably. Or something equally unpleasant. She had no doubts that he was a creative sort when he wanted to be.
For a brief, slightly hysterical moment, she thought that none of it would have happened—or at least none of it would have involved her—if she simply said no to that first date or if she had just stayed home, and she had to fight down a bubble of laughter. It wasn’t a good moment to have a breakdown, after all. Either she would find a way out of the mess and she could have a breakdown later, or she wouldn’t, and she didn’t want her last act to be so irrational.
Though that still left the question of what she was going to do when her options were so limited.
CHAPTER TEN
Clarissa had always been good at connecting with people. It was why she handled most of the magazine’s more important interviews. It was where she excelled.
If she was going to get out of this mess, she was going to need Abel. But in order for her to have his help, she was going to need to buy herself some time. She was going to need to keep Corvin busy. So, she went with what she was good at.
She stared up at him as he looked around carefully, just to make sure the coast was clear, and once he looked back down at her, she wondered, “What is your plan from here, anyway? Not for me—I can guess what your plan for me is—but after this.”
Corvin snorted, hot air washing over Clarissa’s face as he did. “Why should I bother explaining it?”
“Because I want to know what I’m dying for,” Clarissa replied, voice hardening slightly. “And if I’ve managed to annoy you enough for you to bother making personal time for me, then you owe me an explanation, at the very least.”
He tipped his head to one side, contemplating her logic for a moment, before he sighed,
Clarissa’s hair was blowing out of her face as he did.
“Fair enough,” he decided, sitting back on his haunches as he did, his wings folding tight to his back. “Once I get Abel out of the way, the magical creatures of Paris will follow me. With that influence, I can gain leadership over the whole of France.” He didn’t bother to specify that he would only have control over the magical creatures of France, as if they were the only ones who actually mattered; as if everyone else was just an inconsequential presence, to be brushed aside until they became inconvenient.
“Control for what?” Clarissa asked, eyebrows rising. “I figured most magical creatures just wanted to go about their daily lives.”
Corvin scoffed. “They don’t even know what their daily lives should be,” he groused, and his tail lashed back and forth behind him in irritation. “They’ve spent so long blending in with humans they’ve forgotten what it means to be anything else.”
“And you can remind them?” Clarissa coaxed. “Each and every single one of them, regardless of their actual species?”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re getting at something,” he stated flatly, his tail sweeping over the grass. “Just spit it out.”
“You’re a dragon. You know how to be a dragon. How do you plan on teaching every other creature how to be what they are?” she asked, keeping her tone as mild as she could.
He huffed out a slow sigh, like a teacher trying to deal with a particularly dim student. “Remove them from human influence, and their instincts will get a chance to kick in without any danger of being discovered,” he explained slowly, like he was picking his words very carefully. “I just need to offer a guiding hand.”
To say that Clarissa remained skeptical was an understatement, but she couldn’t risk lingering on one topic for too long and annoying him, lest he decide he was done humoring her and simply cook her right then and there. She told herself she just needed to keep him busy for a few minutes longer, and whether that was true at that specific moment seemed inconsequential; if she just repeated it to herself often enough, eventually it would be true.
“But what are you going to do?” she asked, leaning her head back to look at his face properly. “I’m pretty sure humans outnumber magical creatures no matter where you go. So how are you going to deal with all of them?”
“We don’t need to deal with all of them,” he snorted. “Just enough of them. Enough that they realize their place, and we can go about our business.”
He didn’t actually explain where a human’s place was, but Clarissa could read between the lines well enough to know that as far as he was concerned, a human’s place was probably at the very bottom of the totem pole, and probably the bottom of the food chain as well.
“I see,” she mumbled, her hands tightening into fists against the grass. Everything he was saying sort of made her feel sick to her stomach and like she wanted to crawl out of her skin, but she needed to keep him talking. Just a few more minutes. “What will you do once you manage that?”
To her surprise, he actually laughed, short and sharp though it was. “What do you think?” he
demanded shortly. “We’ll all start to rebuild the world as it should be, in our own images. One more great push and we can take our rightful place. Face it; the fact that humans have been on top of everything for as long as they have been is an elaborate accident, and it’s one I look forward to fixing. And after that, when everything returns to its natural order, we can just relax.”
He sighed almost wistfully after that, as he contemplated a world where he could run roughshod over anyone he wanted to. He didn’t even bother to address the subject of magical creatures that didn’t want to fight, as if he had forgotten that many of them had likely befriended more than a few humans.
He paused for a moment, seeming lost in his thoughts in a manner reminiscent to the way one might get lost in a daydream. After a moment, he shook his head briefly and returned to the
moment, looking down at her with a look heavy with meaning.
Corvin stated calmly, “Eventually we’ll have actual peace,” and he finished with an assured, “The issue of humans just needs to be handled,” and he sounded so very satisfied as he said that. Clarissa didn’t have time to feel disturbed by that, though, as she noticed a sudden detail that seemed far more important than Corvin’s homicidal tendencies.
When she saw a speck approaching in the sky, she felt as if the clouds had parted and a heavenly choir had begun spilling forth in a shaft of golden light. Despite that, she tried as hard as she could to keep her expression blank and not to look too hard in that direction, lest Corvin catch on that she had spotted something.
Instead, she stayed focused on his face and wondered flatly, “Why is that so important to you?”
She hadn’t be
en certain if dragons could roll their eyes—truth be told, she had never actually wondered about it at all up until that moment—but she learned then that yes, in fact, they could.
“We are better than you,” he stated, and that, for a change, did not sound entirely malevolent. Rather, it sounded more like he was simply stating what he thought to be a fact. The sky was blue, grass was green, rain consisted of drops of water, magical creatures were better than
humans. “We have been here for far longer, we’re more powerful, and odds are we’ll be here long after you lot run yourselves into the ground.”
“But the biggest threat to you is humans,” she pointed out as casually as she could.
“You have numbers on your side,” he snapped, and his tail lashed back and forth behind him in irritation. “You have always had numbers on your side, be it an entire town burning someone at the stake or half an army hunting a single dragon. You’re not a threat because you’re better; you’re a threat because you swarm. Like wasps.”
That was a very elaborate way to say that he thought of humans as insects, but Clarissa couldn’t even bring herself to feel insulted. It was like a toddler pushing someone down for stealing their dessert; no one was right, and no one was happy, but at least the pusher felt a little bit vindicated by it.