“I don’t give a shit about my wing.” Nix went to close the door, but his brother stopped it with his foot.
“Whoa, there. What the hell’s happened? Did someone see you?”
“Yeah, someone saw me all right… no, actually, she didn’t see me.”
“She? Who? You’re not making any sense.”
He gave up trying to shut the door and traipsed into his lounge. “Katarina.”
Egan followed, flicking on the light switch as he entered the room. “What? You’ve seen her?”
Nix blinked in the bright light. It was definitely his head thumping now. “It doesn’t matter. She didn’t recognise me.” He scrubbed his jaw. “I can’t cope with this damn curse anymore.”
He’d spent centuries searching for her, travelling the globe, hoping they would find each other, and she would recognise him, but after today’s encounter, he wasn’t sure if he had the strength to go through it all again.
He remembered the sorceress’s curse as though it was yesterday. He’d once shown the witch a smidge of interest, and they’d had a brief fling, a lack of judgement he’d rather forget. But then he’d found his soulmate, Katarina, and his life was complete.
Until the sorceress learned, they were the last full-blood dragons in existence.
He hadn’t known she was a powerful sorceress at the time, not until the day she broke his heart in two. The day she cursed him to a life of loneliness, a life where he remembered Katarina and the magical bond they shared.
Nix gazed at the aged picture on the wall; Katarina and him, taken in the swinging 20s, the last time he saw her. What fun they’d had at that flapper party—but it had been just that for her—fun. She’d called herself Katherine in that life, and if he was honest with himself, she hadn’t recognised him. He’d hoped getting close to her would somehow jog her memory, and he’d tried everything he could to make her fall in love with him all over again, but the sorceress had done a number on her, too.
The jealous bitch hadn’t been content with cursing him; she’d cursed Katarina to remember nothing of who she was—an eternity of torment, reincarnated time and time again, never knowing she was a dragon. The most magnificent dragon of all.
“I wish I could forget it all, Egan.”
“You don’t mean that.”
He tore his gaze away. No, he didn’t. At least he had his memories of their life together.
“If I ever see that sorceress again, I swear I’ll incinerate her.”
“Why on earth are you even thinking of her? Tell me where you saw Katarina.”
Nix focused. There was no point going over something he couldn’t change. “When I was walking home. She was lost in the woods. Her dog ran off, apparently.”
Egan slapped a clown-sized grin on his face. “That’s brilliant, Nix!”
“I fail to see how meeting her by chance—while I was in the buff, I might add—is going to do anything to help break the curse.”
To add to Nix’s annoyance, Egan laughed. “Wow, you were naked, and she didn’t jump your bones and get down and dirty with you right there on the forest floor?”
“No, she did not.” A vision of her doing just that flooded his thoughts. He seemed to recall he’d rolled onto a patch of stinging nettles the last time, but it had been so worth it. Nix shook his head. “Forget it. I probably looked like a flasher. No wonder she grabbed her dog and ran.”
“Nobody uses the word ‘flasher’ anymore,” Egan pointed out. “Anyway, it’s fate, kismet, whatever. Something hit you mid-flight, and you crash-landed right where you could see her again. Screw the sorceress; get out there and find your dragon girl.”
“She’ll be long gone by now.”
“I could thump you sometimes. Why do you have to be Mr. Doom and Bloody Gloom all the time? If she was lost in the woods, it must mean she lives somewhere close by, maybe in town. I wouldn’t have thought she would walk her dog somewhere that wasn’t local to her.”
His half-brother had a point. A flicker of hope warmed his heart. “But how am I going to find her? I don’t even know what name she’s using this time.”
With a despairing grunt, Egan manhandled him towards the front door. “Get out there and track her, you doofus.”
Nix’s limp wing knocked over a side table. “You’re right, Egan—of course, I can track her. Why didn’t I think of that before?”
“Because you were too busy feeling sorry for yourself. Show some positivity, mate.” He opened the door. “If nothing else, aren’t you missing the sex? I don’t know how you’ve managed for so long without it. I know I couldn’t—must be the dragon half of my genes, pumping that hot blood through my veins.”
Nix laughed. Yes, he recalled the sex, mind-blowing sex, but making love to Katarina had been so much more than physical gratification; their souls were joined. Like yin and yang, they fitted together. Dragons of fire and ice—when they got together, everything sizzled. “I’m a fire dragon, Egan, not a monk; think what it’s like for me. It’s not as if I’ve been celibate for centuries. There have been other women; one-night stands mostly, no strings attached, but none of them were like my Katarina.”
Egan’s phone tinged in his pocket. “Lucky her.” He grinned. “So, are we going to find her, or what?”
Nix stepped outside and sniffed the night air, ready to retrace his steps back to where he’d seen her. “You’d better believe it. Thanks for talking some sense into me.”
“Anytime.” His brother ignored his phone and walked into the woods.
“Wait, let me try something first.” Despite there being little chance of being seen in the dark, he still hadn’t fully completed the shift to human form. He wasn’t sure how much whiskey he’d downed, but it was enough to dull the pain in his shoulder. Hopefully, the swelling had gone down enough by now that his wing would respond to his command. He concentrated the best he could with his alcohol-infused brain and forced it to retract. It worked; he was back to his human form. “That’s better.” He overtook Egan. “It’s this way. Come on.”
Nix weaved through the darkened forest, the moon offering barely enough light, but he called on his dragon vision to help him.
Egan, with only the wings of a dragon and the odd attempt to add fire to his breath, wasn’t so blessed. He fished his mobile phone from his pocket and switched on a light.
“They come with a torch, too?” he asked.
“Yes, they come with a torch—among other useful things. You need to move with the times, Nix. I can set you up with a mobile if you want?”
“No thanks. Confounding things, if you ask me. All everyone seems to do these days is have their heads buried in their phones, playing mind-numbing games or taking pictures of what they had for dinner and putting them on those awful social media website things.”
Egan’s phone tinged again.
“See what I mean?” He reached the place where he’d met Katarina. “Why does it keep bleeping?”
“There’s no hope for you, you old relic.” Egan chuckled. “It bleeps to let me know I have a message, a notification, or an email.”
Nix had never understood emails either. What was wrong with writing a letter? “Shouldn’t you answer it then?” He dropped to his haunches and examined the ground, searching for Katarina’s footprints, or even her dog’s pawprints, in the mud.
Nothing.
“It can wait. Have you picked up her tracks?”
His shoulders sank. “No. The rain’s washed away the trail. I know she went that way, towards the road, but without her tracks, I can’t even pick up her scent.”
“Maybe we could search again in the morning?” Egan suggested amidst another annoying ting of his phone.
The flicker of hope snuffed out. “It won’t make any difference. I should have followed her sooner.”
“Hey, don’t give up yet.”
His brother was only trying to help, but Nix’s heart ached with the truth. His stupidity might have lost him his one chance at finding
her. He stood, then stormed along the pathway back to his cottage. “Leave it, Egan. It’s a waste of time.” There was always her next reincarnated life. “And stop the damn bleeping on that thing.”
Egan followed at a snail’s pace, fiddling with his phone.
Nix didn’t wait for him, trying to focus on anything other than how he’d let her slip through his fingers. Flames flicked at the back of his throat. His dragon beckoned, urging him to shift and take to the skies once more. It took everything he had not to give in to the beast, but with his weakened wing, he couldn’t risk it.
More alcohol, that’s what he needed.
Halfway back home, his brother caught up with him. “Phoenix, wait!”
“Leave me alone, Egan. I don’t need a babysitter; I’m fine.”
“You’re clearly not fine if the scorched trail in your wake is anything to go by.”
So what if he’d vented his frustration on a few twigs and tree trunks? It’s not like he burnt the whole forest down. “I said, leave me alone. I’m not in the mood for company tonight.”
“You might be when I show you this.” Egan thrust his phone in Nix’s face.
There on the tiny screen was a picture of his Katarina holding her Westie; Toby, she called him. She smiled back at him. The beautiful smile he had etched in his memories. “What the hell…? Why do you have a picture of Katarina on that thing?”
“I don’t. It’s on a website. I just zoomed in on the image. I wasn’t certain at first, but it’s definitely her.”
Phoenix snatched the phone off his brother. The screen went black.
“You idiot, you’ve turned it off.” He grabbed it back.
“Explain, Egan, before I set your hair alight.”
“I was going to if you’d given me a chance.” His brother pressed something on his phone, and the picture of Katarina appeared again. “It looks like the love of your life has joined Love Bites.”
“What the hell is Love Bites?”
“It’s an online dating agency.”
“Am I supposed to know what that means?”
“Like Tinder, but specifically for us supernaturals.”
He glanced at Egan’s phone screen again, but her image was gone. “Sorry, you’ve lost me.”
Egan raised his eyes to the night sky. “May the stars and moon give me strength. It’s the twenty-first century, and my brother is living in the Dark Ages.” He returned his gaze to Nix. “Okay, I’ll try to explain,” he said in a tone like an ever-patient teacher. “Any magical being can sign up to the website if they’re looking for a date.”
“What’s wrong with meeting someone in a pub?”
“Nothing, but this website makes it easier to find those who know about the supernatural world. ‘Find the magic in love,’ it says in their slogan.”
“That’s quite possibly the corniest thing I’ve heard in centuries. And you’ve joined this website, presumably?”
“Yeah, what’s wrong with that?”
“What’s right with it?” His head throbbed. “Forget it, I don’t care. All I want to know is why Katarina is on there.”
“I’ll tell you if you promise not to burn my hair.”
“Don’t tell me, and it won’t be just your hair I’ll set alight.” He wouldn’t, of course.
“Great options.” Egan offered a half-smile. “She messaged me and wants to go on a date.”
Anger sizzled in his belly. “She what? Why on earth would she want to date you?”
“Thanks very much. I’m a good-looking guy; I have plenty of women who want to go out with me.”
“Apparently not that many, if you have to find them on a dating thingy.”
His brother flicked his wrist. “Whatever.”
“Well, perhaps you should go out with one of them then because there’s not a chance in hell I’ll let you date my Katarina.” He readied the flames at the back of his throat. Black smoke seeped from his nostrils.
Egan put up his hands. “Whoa, there, fire-starter. You’re missing the bigger picture here. We’ve found her, or I did—don’t forget that—and now you have a way to see her again. I’ve arranged a date with her, but you’re going in my place.”
He snuffed out the flames in his throat. His smoke dissipated into the cool night air. “You did what…? You… you’re…” Words failed him.
“The best brother in the world?” Egan finished for him.
He grinned. Right then, he was the best brother he could ever have hoped for. “Half-brother,” he pointed out. It wouldn’t do for Egan to get too big-headed.
“A thanks wouldn’t go amiss.”
“Thanks.” He grabbed Egan in a headlock and ruffled his hair like he used to do when he was a kid. “Maybe I won’t set your mop alight after all.”
“Glad we got that sorted.”
He let go. “I think this calls for a drink, don’t you?”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
They headed back to Nix’s cottage.
“So, when is this date?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Okay, that should give me time to work out a plausible story as to why I’m there and not you.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I’ll think of something. I could say I came to tell her you were ill, but I can’t let on that you’re my brother—”
“I thought I was only your half-brother?” he interrupted.
Nix laughed. “You know what I mean. Does she know you’re a half-dragon?”
“Yes, it’s on my profile.”
“What does it say on her profile?”
“She left that part blank, so she obviously doesn’t know what she is yet.”
“Okay.” He thought for a moment. “I’ll have to tell her we’re friends. I can’t risk her finding out I’m a dragon.”
No matter how he’d played it in the past, it always came down to the damn sorceress’s curse.
“You’ll have to think of another name, too. If you tell her it’s Phoenix, she might make the connection before she’s ready to learn the truth.”
His brother was right. “Yes, I need something close, but not too obvious.”
Fire lit inside his belly, but not the flames of fury. No, this fire fuelled his soul, gave him hope.
He had to make her fall in love with him all over again—without her knowing they were dragons—to have any chance of breaking the curse.
Chapter Five
“Dragons!” Kat announced. “Give me everything you’ve got on dragons.”
“Let me guess,” said the bookshop owner, a balding man with half-moon spectacles balanced on the end of his nose. “Game of Thrones fan?”
“Yes and no,” she answered.
She’d done an internet search after her shift last night at Selene’s bar, but other than myths and legends, nothing concrete came up. Clearly, the magic veil had its limitations on what she could look up on a search engine made by humans.
But the unusual bookshop/library might have something. She’d stumbled on the place by chance some months back after her car broke down in a dodgy part of town, but she loved its old-fashioned quaintness and its treasure trove of magical books and grimoires.
Kat had warmed to Jim, the owner, straight away—it turned out he was a gargoyle, and his assistant, Kelsey, a pretty woman with tortoise-shell glasses, was a werewolf. They’d been so helpful from day one, and she’d become a regular visitor, hoping to find clues to her true identity.
“Do you think you might be a dragon then?” Jim asked.
“Not unless dragons get reincarnated, Jim,” she said. “I have a date with a dragon. Well, half-dragon actually, but I want to make sure I don’t get him hot under the collar if you know what I mean? I don’t fancy being burnt to a crisp on our first date.”
Jim chuckled. “I have just the book.” He climbed a ladder to his left and fetched a leather-bound book. “You might find some pointers in here. No one’s seen or heard of the full-blood dra
gons for centuries, but there’s some interesting stuff on the curse that doomed them. Most people believe the dragons died long ago, alone, never finding their soulmate again.”
Kat took the book, her interest already piqued. “That’s such a sad story. Thanks for the book, though.”
She carried the book to a reading nook tucked away at the back of the shop where she’d whiled away many hours learning of all the magical beings. Kat opened the book, breathing in the dusty scent of age-old parchment and worn leather. She smiled; she never tired of that smell.
After reading through several pages, she stopped on a sketch of a cloaked and hooded sorceress. Above her, two magnificent dragons circled in a sky swirling with greenish-black clouds.
According to legend, the dragons—the last two remaining full-bloods, one of fire and one of ice—were too powerful for the evil sorceress to rid the world of, so she’d cursed them instead. Consumed with jealousy, so the story went, she doomed the fire dragon to live alone for all eternity, remembering his soulmate and everything she meant to him.
The sorceress created a life of reincarnation and emptiness for the ice dragon, never to learn what she truly was or about her life with the fire dragon.
Goosebumps raised the hairs on the back of Kat’s neck as she read on.
The story claimed the only way to break the curse was for the dragons to find each other and fall in love again—before the ice dragon learned her true identity. Only then would they prove their souls were truly bound by destiny.
A lump formed in her throat at the poetic but tragic story. Reincarnation? What if…? She quelled the thought before it took form. It was just a myth, a romantic fantasy.
The story went on to say the sorceress disappeared after she’d cursed them, never to be seen again.
Kat closed the book with a dull thud. She hadn’t found out anything on how to deal with a half-dragon for her date tonight, but she couldn’t shake the feeling she’d stumbled on something important, no matter how ridiculous the notion.
Maybe she was crazy after all.
Dating a Dragon Page 3