by Ward Parker
Sure enough, there was movement far in the background behind Marvin’s face. He turned the camera to face whatever moved. After the camera adjusted to the moonlight, it focused on a man walking.
Marvin zoomed in. Yes, it definitely was a man. And he was naked.
Oh no, Missy thought. Is this going to be yet another drunk, naked Florida Man story?
“See how tall the man is?” Marvin whispered excitedly. “He has a good probability of being a Reptilian. Not just the height, but the fact he is naked. He has shed his humanoid clothing.”
The camera jerked but remained on the naked man.
“I have to be careful to remain unseen. I don’t want to be eaten by the Reptilian.”
Missy didn’t want to see him confronted by a drunk, naked Florida Man.
But then, the impossible happened.
The man shape-shifted.
It happened so quickly and smoothly that it seemed perfectly natural. The walking man transformed into a giant dragon.
Yes, a dragon walking on four legs with a lengthy tail, folded wings on its back, and spikes on its sinuous neck.
The dragon turned its head and saw Marvin.
“Oh boy, oh boy, he’s seen me. He’s going to kill me. I need to do something.”
Actually, the dragon looked more curious than ready to attack. It was probably just as surprised to see Marvin as Marvin was seeing him.
With the camera still trained on the dragon, Marvin’s other hand appeared in the frame. It was holding a handgun.
Oh, my, Missy thought. That’s not a good idea.
Two loud bangs with the camera jerking. Muzzle flashes from the gun.
The dragon flinched as it was hit.
By all rights, Marvin should be done for. He never should have survived to meet his demise in a sun lounger on his balcony. The dragon should have torched him with its fiery breath or chomped him in half with its giant jaws right then and there.
But instead, the dragon unfolded huge, sail-like wings that flapped mighty strokes and lifted it into the air. Marvin took another shot at it as it disappeared into the night sky.
“I did it! I finally did it!” Marvin screamed into the camera, which was way too close to his fat face. “I got proof they exist! Reptilians exist!”
It hadn’t convinced Missy. What was caught on video wasn’t a Reptilian from outer space. It was just a dragon. Missy had seen her share of dragons before. She hadn’t known they could shape-shift, but that was clearly the case.
But what freaked her out was the dragon looked familiar. Even in the bad lighting, she recognized its distinct brown-green coloring, the shape of its head, the missing tip of one of its head horns.
She knew this dragon. It was Ronnie, whom she had found in the Everglades, when he was an injured juvenile, and nursed back to health.
Ronnie had learned he was destined to be a king of the dragons. And Marvin had shot him.
Maybe it wasn’t the sunlight that had incinerated Marvin on his balcony after all.
2
Welcome to My Conspiracy Theory
Obviously, Marvin survived his foolhardy shooting of Ronnie. Initially. He was alive to post the video, and his immolated body was found a week after the posting date.
Missy was surprised at Ronnie's restraint. Dragons aren't known as easy-come, easy-go creatures. By all rights, Marvin should have been incinerated. Or, perhaps, torn to pieces and then incinerated.
But did Ronnie track Marvin down and finish the job a week later? Missy hadn't seen any peripheral burn marks on the balcony, but she didn't know how pinpointed a dragon's fiery breath could be.
She needed to contact Ronnie, partly to find out if he was the culprit. That would save any residents of Squid Tower from being falsely accused of Marvin's murder.
Also, she wanted to make sure Ronnie was okay after being shot. She’d grown fond of the talking dragon since she first found him years ago.
The only way she knew to call Ronnie was to communicate telepathically with him. She didn’t have the ability, but he did, and they had communicated this way before.
Ronnie, this is Missy. Can you hear me? she asked in her head.
After repeating the line several times, she tried saying it aloud. Again, and again.
Soon, her two gray tabby cats gathered around and stared at her quizzically.
“No, I’m not crazy. I’m just trying to contact a dragon. Which sounds insane in its own right.”
Eventually, she gave up. The best she could hope for was that Ronnie’s consciousness had been tickled by her thoughts.
She made the decision to tell only Agnes about Marvin’s dragon video. All supernatural creatures need to keep their existence secret from humans as best they can, which was especially the case for dragons. After all, they had nearly been wiped off the face of the earth by humans centuries ago. Obviously, dragons couldn’t fit anonymously into society like vampires and werewolves. Ronnie's shape-shifting was the only example she knew of dragons having the ability to do that.
Otherwise, the giant beasts had to hide in the Everglades or in the vast impenetrable forests that remained in the world. Most dragons regularly travelled to the alternate plane of existence called the In Between to find sanctuary.
“He shot the dragon?” Agnes asked in disbelief.
Missy nodded. “You want to see the video?”
“I suppose I must.”
Missy played it for the 1,500-year-old vampire on her laptop in the card room where residents played canasta and bridge three days a week.
After Marvin's shots rang out, Agnes shook her head.
“What kind of idiot would shoot at a dragon?” she asked. “Do you suppose the dragon found him on his balcony?”
“Possibly. But I would have expected to see more burn damage to the balcony and the other furniture. And it doesn’t explain why the door was locked from the inside.”
“I hope this video doesn’t get around. We have too many hotheads living here who could cause trouble.”
“The video has only had a few dozen views,” Missy said. “Let’s hope it stays undiscovered.”
Bill, Oleg, and Sol burst into the room.
“Have you seen Marvin’s video?” Bill asked excitedly. “He shot a shape-shifting Reptilian!”
Missy groaned inwardly.
“It looked like a dragon to me,” Sol said.
“What’s the difference? It’s a Reptilian.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in that nonsense,” Oleg said in his Russian accent.
“I do now. You saw the video. Don’t you believe?”
“It was a dragon,” Sol said.
“A reptile is a reptile is a Reptilian, here to take over the world through mind control. We have to fight back.”
“Why?” Missy asked.
“It’s obvious the Reptilian killed Marvin,” Bill said. “It was wounded and enraged. It tracked him down while in dragon form and burned him to death with its fiery breath.”
“Let me put this to rest,” Missy said. “I recognize that dragon. I nursed him back to health when he was young and had a broken wing. His name is Ronnie, and he was prophesied to one day be the king of all the dragons. Apparently, when he matured, he developed the ability to shape-shift. So, he’s not some Reptilian from outer space. He’s Ronnie from Gainesville, Florida. And he was a nice guy, for a dragon.”
“He murdered our friend Marvin,” Bill said.
“First of all, we don’t know he murdered Marvin. Second, Marvin wasn’t your friend. You complained about him all the time.”
“As a fellow vampire, I’m on his side against the Reptilian invaders.”
“It sounds unlikely that a dragon torched Marvin on his balcony,” Agnes said. “Surely, someone would have seen a dragon hovering outside our building. And how would the dragon have known which condo was Marvin’s and that he would be out on his balcony at that time?”
Bill looked at her as if she were a child. “M
ind control. If you did all the research I did, you would understand.”
“When did you do all this ‘research’? You never mentioned before about believing in this conspiracy.”
“I did it after we found Marvin dead.”
“That was yesterday. How much research could you have done?”
“I watched fifteen hours of videos. And I’ve just begun to scratch the surface. If you only knew what I know.”
“If a dragon did it, why would the balcony door be locked from the inside?” Missy asked.
“It’s a well-known fact Reptilians have telekinetic powers.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m sure it’s on the internet somewhere,” Bill said. “I’ll find it and show you.”
Agnes sighed. “If Marvin was murdered by a resident of our community, we need to find out and punish that vampire. Chasing after conspiracy theories doesn’t help deliver justice.”
“It’s not a theory,” Bill said. “It’s the truth. The three of us are going to begin armed reconnaissance missions in the Everglades where Marvin shot that video.”
“We are?” Sol asked.
“And we’re going to recruit more members. The Reptilians picked the wrong vampires to mess with. We’re going to end this invasion once and for all. Humans haven’t been able to stop them. But we vampires, the masters of the night, will.”
“You’re nuts,” Agnes said. “You do realize that, right?”
Bill tapped his pasty white forehead and smirked. “If you only knew what I know.”
The three male vampires left the room, arguing about how much ammunition they should bring with them to the Everglades.
“This is quickly escalating out of control,” Agnes said to Missy.
“I agree. I had hoped that there was a simple explanation for poor Marvin’s sun-torching. It was just an innocent accident that he got locked out there, something faulty about the lock. But now it’s turning into a circus. It couldn’t get any more problematic.”
“Good evening, ladies.”
Missy jerked her head around to find Detective Fred Affird standing in the doorway of the card room. He was the nemesis of the vampires in Squid Tower, the werewolves in Seaweed Manor next door, and all supernatural creatures living in Jellyfish Beach. He had been on forced desk duty after recklessly discharging his firearm at a little old lady he believed to be a werewolf (she was). But apparently, he was back on active duty.
Missy had been wrong. Things could be more problematic.
“How can we help you, detective?” Agnes asked in a syrupy, sweet tone.
“Has there been a suspicious death of a resident here?”
“Why would you ask that?”
His lips tightened on his expressionless face. As usual, he wore sunglasses even at night and even when he was inside. He was tall, thin, and known to summarily execute supernaturals.
“I’m asking because I want to know.”
“One of our dear residents recently passed away,” Agnes said.
“Interesting,” Affird said. “I did a database search and saw no record of a death. In fact, there aren’t any records of deaths occurring here, ever.”
“We’re a healthy bunch of seniors,” Agnes said.
“The residents who have passed away did so in the hospital or in hospice,” Missy lied. Of course, Affird was correct. Everyone in Squid Tower was immortal.
“How did the deceased die?” the detective asked. “Natural causes or something suspicious?”
“Natural causes,” Agnes and Missy said at the same time.
Affird’s black eyebrows arched above his sunglass frames.
“And what was the cause?”
“Heart attack,” Agnes said.
“Spontaneous combustion,” Missy said.
Affird and Agnes looked at her with surprise. But Missy knew Squid Tower needed to explain why there was no corpse. They couldn’t claim Marvin had been cremated, because Affird would check the records of the crematoriums.
“You’ve surely heard of spontaneous combustion,” Missy said. “There have been several documented cases of people found burned to ashes with no external cause of the fire.”
“In all my years on the force, I’ve never come across one,” Affird said.
“You have now.”
“Do you have any evidence of this?”
“The sun lounger he was found in has burn damage.”
“Can I see it?”
Missy and Agnes exchanged worried glances.
“Yes,” Agnes said. “Come with me.”
The three rode the elevator to the fourth floor without talking. Affird allowed Missy to come, probably because he knew she was the community’s home health nurse, and she was behaving like she knew exactly what happened.
Agnes unlocked the door to the condo with an extra set of keys Marvin had left with the management office. On this second visit to the unit, Missy noticed the desktop computer on the dining room table with a giant monitor and post-it notes affixed everywhere. A map of Florida was tacked to the wall with pushpins stuck in various locations. Paperback books about assorted conspiracy theories rose in stacks on the floor, on tables, on the kitchen counter.
Affird took it all in and wrote something on a notepad.
They went out onto the balcony. Agnes switched on the outside light.
“See?” Missy pointed to the sun lounger with the burned cushion.
Affird grunted.
“Marvin never smoked,” Agnes said. “You can rule that out as a cause of the fire.”
Missy wished she hadn’t said that. The spontaneous combustion theory was already a stretch.
“Where are the remains?” Affird asked.
“Remains? There weren’t any,” Agnes said.
“The ashes.”
“A wind gust from the northeast took them away,” Missy said.
“Surely not all of them,” Affird said.
“I believe one of his neighbors swept up a small amount into a freezer bag,” Agnes said. “Mrs. Kinkuddy.”
“Tell her I'm going to come by at a later date to get them for forensic testing.”
Missy grew nervous. Was there a way a test could tell Marvin was a vampire? She hoped not.
“There were no other remains besides the ashes?” Affird asked.
“No,” Agnes said.
“Hmm, the little I know about spontaneous human combustion—if it’s even real—would suggest that the victim’s feet or parts of his lower leg would have remained unburned.”
“Nope. Marvin was one hundred percent consumed,” Missy said.
“I see,” Affird muttered as he scrawled more notes on his pad. Then he looked up at Agnes with a smug, knowing expression. “I’ll be back to chat with you soon. I haven’t visited your lovely community in a while. There are so many things I’d love to learn about the place. Who knows, when I can afford to stop working, maybe I’ll retire here myself.”
“You never said how you knew there was a death here,” Agnes said.
“I’m a detective. I have sources everywhere.”
On his way out, Affird did a once-over of the condo, probably looking for any signs of a struggle. Just as he was about to reach the front door to leave, he veered sharply into the kitchen. He yanked open the refrigerator. It was empty, except for bottled water and two pint bags labeled type O-positive whole blood.
Missy’s stomach froze.
“Now, why would Mr. Nutley have blood in here?” Affird asked.
“He loves to donate it,” Agnes said.
“A science experiment,” Missy said over her at the same time.
“Which is it?” Affird asked. “Either answer sounds pretty far-fetched.”
“To feed his pet vampire bat,” Missy said. “Now, I remember. His beloved bat Fifi. She’s already been adopted into a new forever home.”
Affird chuckled. “Good one.”
He opened the pantry and found it bare.
“Mr. N
utley didn’t eat much,” he said.
“We donated all his food to a food pantry,” Agnes said.
“I see. How generous of you,” Affird said, closing the pantry door. “Thank you for showing me around. I’ll be in touch.”
After he left, Missy and Agnes both let out huge sighs.
“Pet vampire bat?” Agnes asked.
“Well, it was more believable than him drawing pints of his own blood in his condo to donate.”
“What matters is that awful detective is going to be a millstone around our necks again.”
“How did he hear of Marvin’s death?” Missy asked.
“That worries me. Is there an informer among us? I wish he’d just leave us alone. But he’s not going to stop poking around until he has proof we’re vampires. How old do you think he is?”
“Late-forties, early fifties. Why?”
“We’re a fifty-five-plus community,” Agnes said. “Maybe I should take him up on his comment about retiring here.”
“But wouldn’t he need to be a vampire?”
Agnes gave an evil smile.
“That would save us all a bunch of trouble,” Missy said.
3
Dragons Keep Grudges
Oleg walked down the dirt road in the utter darkness of the moonless night. Being a vampire, he could see perfectly well, of course. Sol and Bill trudged ahead of him, weighed down by their body armor, semi-automatic rifles, pistols, grenades, and all the other gear Bill had hoarded as part of his hobby of pretending he was a one-man army.
Oleg had been in the military, while Bill and Sol hadn’t. Bill behaved with the false bravado of a man who’d never put his life in danger on the battlefield. Oleg served over 230 years ago, leading a regiment of cavalry for Catherine the Great. Back then, honor and courage were what made a man, not how many weapons he collected. Tonight, Oleg carried only his old saber and a light rifle he borrowed from Bill.
He believed human weapons were unnecessary, given his lethal powers as a vampire, but he went along and armed himself, not knowing what beasts they might face.