by Milana Jacks
“It’s all right. I understand. Believe me, I understand.”
We stood there in awkward silence. Belle hooked a thumb behind her shoulder. “I’ll be going, then.”
I put a hand on her elbow. “Hey, you can pet him anytime. I didn’t mean it. And thank you for the jacket. I feel terrible.”
She smiled. If she was upset with me, I couldn’t tell.
I smiled in turn.
She said, “Are you giving me permission to pet him?”
My eyes widened. “Noooo,” I said horrified. “I’m just gonna shut up now.”
Belle winked at me and left us.
I stood there thinking I’d made an ass of myself. Those blue dragon eyes kept staring at me, probably wanting me to say something smart. The weather? When in doubt, talk about the weather. “It’s a beautiful day today,” I stated. Yup.
The dragon huffed.
The tail went up and wagged again.
Thump, thump, thump on the floor. It made my body bounce.
He nudged my side with his muzzle. This time, I understood. I climbed over his nose, over the length of his muzzle, and up to the horn, where I spun around and sat with my back against the horn. It was a strange little place to sit. A dent with raised sides as if a person should be able to fit there. Even one with an ass the size of mine.
The dragon stood.
“Wooo,” I whispered, nerves getting the best of me when presented with the view of the clear sky and the sea. No ground for miles and miles. He walked to the edge of the platform, dipped his head, and leapt. I screamed at the top of my lungs, then laughed hysterically as his wings shuffled when they spread out. He beat them with fury, but his head stayed steady so I didn’t move or feel like I’d fall out. Still, I dug my fingers into his skin.
It was so cold, so very cold up here. The wind beat against my cheeks, the sun nowhere near warm enough to heat me up. But I didn’t care one iota about the cold when the dragon lowered his body to nearly touch the sea. We cruised at God knows what speed, low and right above the sea. The fish seemed to follow him, big, small, red, green, yellow schools of fish raced with him. Then we slowed down, and the dragon settled on the water with a splash. He didn’t sink.
Instead, I turned around to see his wings fold and his body shudder, probably from the cold of the water. Out here, there wasn’t so much ice, I noticed. And sea life thrived, which was probably why he ate fish. I’d presumed dragons ate red meat, but meat was scarce unless one got some artificial beef from the several families who produced such things. “You know, some warm summer day, if I’m still around, you can take me out like this. I’d kick up my feet and tan.”
The dragon huffed.
“What? You’re not into tanning? Then you’re not from California. We work on our tans all year round.”
Schools of fish flopped around us. So strange to see the prey near the predator. Sure enough, the dragon opened his mouth and ate. These fish must be stupid. Why would they hop into his mouth?
Despite the warmth coming from his body, today’s winds whipped my skin. My teeth chattered, and I struggled to keep my jaw locked so he wouldn’t hear how the cold affected me.
But he had heard. I bet he had, because after a few seconds, he took to the sky again, our little outing over.
The dragon dropped me off on the tower’s top and disappeared into the horizon. I went inside and looked for Belle, finding her in the laundry room where I helped her fold piles and piles of clothes. We’d be here all morning.
Or so I thought.
An hour into our work, a man came through the door, tall, broad shouldered, handsome, and naked as the day he was born. I stepped back from him and glanced at Belle. She simply handed him black sweatpants and a gray shirt. “Sweater?” she asked.
“I’m good.” His gaze stayed on me. “I apologize. I didn’t know you were here.”
“Do you walk around naked all the time?” I asked.
His lips tipped up. Boy, he was a looker, this one. Belle clearly thought so too. She watched him like he hung the moon. I knew that look. She had it bad for this guy…Jake. Yeah, Jake. I remembered him. Jake, the man who’d gotten into a bit of a scuffle with Lance yesterday.
Jake dressed. “You might see nude men around here. We are…a nudist colony. Kind of.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, your kink is not my kink, but your kink is okay with me.”
“Exactly like that.” He glanced at Belle, then his eyes narrowed. He stepped near her. She stepped back. He stepped closer still, but she had nowhere else to go. He’d pinned her, and Belle kept her eyes on the floor. Okay, okay, this was weird. I didn’t know what to do. The whole thing made me uncomfortable. I stayed there if only to offer her support in case she needed it.
Jake hooked a finger under the seam of her shirt and pulled to expose her shoulder. “What happened here?”
Here where? I stepped closer and rose on my toes. There was a bruise on her shoulder. I glanced from her to him and back. I knew I was intruding, but I didn’t care. I didn’t know who’d given her that thing.
Belle shrugged. “Got into a fight.”
Huh? Belle got into fights?
“With whom?” he asked.
“Alberta.”
“Again.”
Belle nodded. “Please don’t chastise her for it. You’ll only make it worse.”
“I’m going to move you.”
Belle looked up for the first time. “Where?”
“To my brother’s pack.”
Belle balled her hands into fists. “Fuck you, Jake. Fuck you ten times over.”
My eyebrows shot up.
Jake spun around and left, leaving the door open. Cold rushed inside and replaced the heat he’d brought in. I closed the door and leaned against it. Belle continued folding. She sniffed, and I knew she wanted to cry. “Do you want to talk about it, or should I leave you alone?”
“Do you mind if I stay here?” she asked.
“No, but I want you to know I’m a really good listener. And there’s a lot of whiskey in the library. Good stuff. I could probably get us a bottle to share.”
A smile tugged her lips. “Thank you.”
With much hesitation, I left Belle alone. I didn’t know her well enough to pry into her business, but I wasn’t stupid either. Jake was hot. On a scale of one to Lance, he was just below Lance, sharing the place with the other dragon who appeared to have left the castle for the day. Belle wanted Jake. Jake had other plans. I felt bad for her, as it could happen to me too. Lance could come in one day while I folded laundry and say he was moving me someplace else, and there’d be nothing I could do about it. And, in all honesty, as long as it wasn’t to a habitat, I’d be okay with the move. Or so I told myself.
Outside, I searched for things to do on the island. I wanted to help out where I could, but people seemed to have it all under control. This place ran like a well-oiled cyborg, with no screeching parts. Speaking of cyborgs, a group of them inside the circular military pods popped up. They must’ve flown from the back of the castle and now they hovered near the shore.
What the hell?
I looked around, but saw no one. Shouldn’t someone greet them? Suddenly, Jake burst out of the castle, followed by a group of males. He stopped at the shore and spread his arms. “Land on the island, and you’ll lose your parts. We’ll leave the human parts for the dragon. He’s overdue for some red meat.”
His men laughed.
One pod crept closer but didn’t land. I walked a few more steps and…recognized the dark-haired driver. Diego. “What are you doing here?” I shouted so he could hear me.
He reached up with his mechatronic hand and flipped something. His voice carried over the wind. “Selena. Thank God. I’d searched everywhere for you, then they delivered your car, and I thought the worst. Baby, what are you doing here?”
Jake spun around, gray eyes furious. I froze in place.
“Selena?” Diego said.
“Yes, um. I left t
he habitat.”
“Why?”
I said nothing, didn’t want to air my dirty laundry in public.
“Talk to me!” he shouted.
Fine! “I’m not gonna marry you, Diego.”
His eyes widened, and he flipped another switch. The window slid open, and the pod lowered, now almost landing on the shore.
Jake stepped in front of me. “Fuck off about half a mile to that iceberg before I rip out your parts.”
Diego looked him up and down. He ignored him and smirked, probably thinking a human guy even as big as Jake couldn’t possibly tear out his parts. Which was true. Cyborgs were incredibly strong, much stronger than human men. “Baby, you’re having cold feet,” Diego said. “Come back. It’s gonna be fine. I promise.”
“Don’t baby me, Diego. You know you shouldn’t.”
Something dark passed over his eyes. “You little whore,” he hissed. “Did you really think you could escape someplace I couldn’t find you, hm?”
Everyone heard him. “You should leave,” I said.
Diego closed the window. He flipped some things on the roof, and the four pods behind him aligned with his pod. Weapons spurted out of the sides, one laser gun above each door.
Everything happened in seconds. Jake crouched and turned into a black dog with piercing gray eyes. A man had just turned into an animal.
More men turned into dogs and began howling. Okay, so these weren’t dogs, but the feral animals known as wolves. Huge wolves, their shoulders above my hips.
“The pack. It’s a wolf pack.” A whine escaped my throat. I feared for their lives. I’d seen those laser blasts burn holes into buildings; they could kill five men in one blast. I was lifting my hands to try to say something and prevent a massacre when I heard a dragon screech.
My ears rang.
The dragon flew above me and straight into the pods. They fired but didn’t get him. Instead, his big body crashed into two pods, ripping them into pieces. Circling, the dragon screeched again. When the three pods spun around and flew toward the habitat, he chased them, knocking two pods out of the air. The last pod made it behind the plasma, and I watched in horror as the dragon flew straight through the barrier.
Waves formed around the castle and crashed into the shore here and against the icebergs. As if they were living things, the waves joined and formed one big one that grew and grew as it picked up speed until it smashed against the habitat’s shore. Water splashed over the plasma barrier while the dragon in the sky shrieked and shrieked as if mad with anger.
Cy ships descended from the sky, and the dragon flew toward them.
“Oh no, come back. Come back!” I shouted.
It must have been my imagination, because there was no way he could’ve heard me, but the dragon snapped his head around and batted his wings back to the castle.
He landed as a man.
A human man with blond hair and blue eyes.
Water played havoc over his nude body.
He didn’t walk to me. He prowled, with heat in his eyes, stepping so close that he nearly knocked me over. Unable to form words, I just ran my hand over his smooth skin.
Dragon scales first appeared on his foot. They crawled up his body and covered him, changing his appearance completely. I stepped back so I could see all of him. The sun reflected off the indigo-blue scales covering the muscular male. The scales on his belly looked hard, smooth, and yellow. Three-inch long horns, or maybe spikes, stuck out from each of his shoulders. He was bald, his eyes blue with yellow surrounding vertically slitted pupils, and in place of eyebrows, flat bones framed his eyes and flared out. His nose was human, though boney and smaller. His black lips parted, and his clawed fingers touched his face.
The people around us went about their business. They’d seen him before, so his appearance was nothing shocking around here. I didn’t want to seem as if I was staring at him, but I couldn’t stop staring either. My legs carried me closer. Something warm took up residence in my chest as I approached this strange creature. Inside, Lance held on to his humanity, but on the outside, he was all dragon on two legs. I ran my hand over his shoulder and down his arm. He stepped away.
I snatched back my hand and put it in my pocket. “I’m sorry.”
“You want me to protect you. I raise the seas.” He spread his arms out. “I raise the seas!”
Water stirred, and a wave the size of a castle formed right before my eyes, hovering as if waiting for this man to command it. It was…unbelievable. Wolves howled, people cheered.
“W…what?” I felt nauseated, a little weak at the knees.
A small hand touched my elbow, and Belle appeared beside me. “Do you want to go upstairs?” she asked.
“Yes. Definitely.”
12
Lance
Mother Nature had asked the four of us to restore the Earth to her natural state by combining our power with that of a spirit. None of us had a clue what it meant. We pored over any literature we could find on witchcraft, astrology, or similar nonsense. I called it nonsense because not a single one described this spirit thing other than to admit they had no clue what spirit was and yet they found it worth writing about. A uniting fifth element, they’d write, ether that made the heavens, present everywhere and nowhere, found in your heart and mind, somewhere in the universe. A quintessence.
Now that I could control water, I believed I’d found the spirit, my spirit. Or, actually, the spirit had found me. It was Selena. I was certain, because when I’d been flying, I’d clearly registered her command to return. It echoed in my mind in the same way I heard Nentres and the other dragons. Selena could communicate with my beast.
I expected her to flee upstairs, but Selena lingered, her brown eyes frightened and curious at the same time. I stepped closer to comfort her and tell her I’d explain everything, but she stepped back at the same time as Belle shook her head. I looked from one woman to the other and decided I’d better retreat while I still had balls left. Belle escorted Selena upstairs.
I walked into the water. It slithered up my body and danced. I picked a place near the iceberg, the same one I couldn’t raise before, and focused on it. My mouth opened to command it, and the voice that came out didn’t sound like it was mine. “Ripple,” I said in the same eerie voice in which I had said, “Mine,” two days ago inside my library. The water rose in a pinpoint and crashed down, making a twenty-foot-wide ripple. The water element was mine!
I spun around and ran into Jake, whose face was grim. “What?”
“They saw us shift into wolves.”
Jake the killjoy. “I know.” He followed me into the gatehouse tunnel. “It was only a matter of time.”
“What do you think they’ll do?”
“About what?” We strolled past the courtyard. Mandy ran up to me and handed me sweatpants and a hoodie. I kissed the old woman’s rosy cheeks. She glowed with excitement, as did I. The water element had come to me, the first step in a four-step process to return the Earth to her natural state and end the Ice Age. I could fucking see it in my mind. Springtime in Los Angles, green grass, roses growing in the gardens, landscapers trimming bushes, palm trees bending in the shallow wind.
Jake killed my vision when he said, “The cyborgs won’t stand for this. You went into their habitat.”
“They came here first. Eye for an eye.”
“Will make the world blind,” Jake said. “Gandhi quote.”
“They won’t do shit. Diego might get jailed for stepping into my territory and provoking me. The cyborgs and I have an unspoken agreement. They know how far they can come, and we’ve lived in peace ever since I claimed this island.”
“You seem sure of this.”
I stopped at the entrance to my library and opened the door for him. “After you.”
Jake eyed me as if I’d grown two heads.
I winked at him. “Ladies first.”
Both of us gathered around the whiskey bottle. S Class. I poured him a swift one. Dry.
We clinked our glasses and downed it in one gulp.
“Damn good whiskey,” Jake said.
“Selena’s whiskey. Her family makes this.” I pointed at the label, all proud of her.
Jake’s eyebrows rose. “So, she comes from good standing over there.”
“Mm-hm.” I sat in my chair. “Spit it out, Jake. You’re killing my joy.”
He took a seat next to me. “We need to send a bird inside.” He meant we needed to send a Creature bird inside, a human woman gifted with a dove animal.
“I agree.” They wouldn’t suspect a bird on the window, and, apart from dragons and wolves, they didn’t know about the other creatures. They wouldn’t even guess it. “Make it happen.”
Jake nodded. “What do we do about Selena?”
I cracked my neck. “We do nothing. I do what I want with her.”
He smiled. “She’s your mate.”
“I think she might be. When Mother Nature came to us, she mentioned that we each have a spirit. I have a working theory. I’m thinking there are women out there who are gifted with a…spirit. There’s a spirit for each dragon. All we have to do is find them.”
“And mate them,” Jake said.
“Mm-hm. Now the question is, how do we identify a spirit?”
Jake shrugged. “Can’t help you there.”
“I know mine, but Nentres will need help. Do wolves know their mate?”
“Not on sight, if that’s what you mean. We have to have sex to find a mate.”
“Ah,” I said. “Now I understand why you hold orgies.”
“Matings, dickhead. They’re called matings.”
I tipped my empty glass. “So what happens during the matings?”
“We fuck,” he said and gave me a bored look.
“I take it you’ve fucked your entire pack.”
“No comment.”
I smiled. “Tell me how you know you’ve found a mate, and I’ll stop.”
Jake put his elbows on his knees. “During sex, the male releases a scent that marks the female as his. The scent release is involuntary and happens whether you want it to or not.” He scrubbed the back of his neck. “The female is marked, and then other males can scent it so they stay away. The females can’t smell the mating mark.”