“Yes, because it was you, Abbie,” Fianna said in that oh-so-gentle voice. “You caused the damage when you were in your other form.”
The words electrified her. “Other form?” Abbie trembled, tried to hold onto her anger and failed, tried not to be terrified and failed there, too.
Fianna reached out and Abbie let herself fall into her warm, strong arms. Soothing, healing strength flowed from Fianna’s embrace, and the smoky-sweet huff of her breath wafted on Abbie’s cheeks. Fianna made the soft clucking noises Abbie remembered. From when…from when she was… big. Very, very Big. She choked and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Look,” said a strange inner voice. Behind her eyelids, a dream universe bloomed in a familiar wash of azure skies and endless green trees. The truth of her experience flooded in.
“Oh, God, I remember.” Abbie buried her face on Fianna’s shoulder. “It really was me,” she said in a muffled voice. “I’m the one that wrecked the cabin.” She collapsed in shock to the ground with Fianna’s arms still around her. Guin and Orla followed with a bracing group hug. Collectively, they gave her the strength to face what shouldn’t, and couldn’t, be true.
“Tell me. Is it true?”
“Yes,” Fianna said. “You changed your body. You shifted.”
Shifted meant…“Wings?”
“Yes,” Fianna said in a very soft voice.
“Dragon?” Holy fuck.
“You are more than dragon. You are Draca. We are Draca. Shape-shifters.”
“Draca?”
“The name of our race.”
Our race? Abbie’s fractured spirit soaked up the group’s offered comfort and reassurance as if it were the cure for everything that ever ailed her. She hadn’t needed psychedelics. She’d just needed the incredible truth.
“Does this mean my mother…?” Whoa. That would explain a lot. She tried the taste of the word Draca on her tongue and found it exotic, and loaded with unsorted emotions.
“No, the DNA is not necessarily from your mother,” said Fianna. “The blood line can come from either parent. However, the gene is usually dormant. We have no answers as to why we’re suddenly finding others like you—here in Portland, of all places.”
Others like her? Wait, she wasn’t the only dragon in Portland? Abbie reeled again, although she guessed it made sense for Portland to be the magical repository of special humans. “Keep Portland weird,” was practically the city motto. Questions flooded in with a dizzying force.
“How do you know where to find these…these other people?”
Guin and Orla looked at Fianna expectantly.
“Well, the simple explanation is, the DNA lineage of shape-shifters are always connected to a living line among the Draca. You, for instance, are connected to the blood line of the Council Leader, Marcus of Diamond House. Anyone from his direct lineage, or House, as we call it, could, with the right powers, locate a living hybrid from the same bloodline. He’s the one that first sensed you coming into your powers. Even from Dracan, blood speaks to blood.”
“Does that mean I’m part of his family?”
“You must be, at least partly.”
“Partly?”
Fianna’s emerald eyes hooded, and she nodded her head. “Marcus is the Elder of the House of Diamond, which is an ancient, very powerful line and one of the reasons he also runs the Council. There are five Great Houses, from which all others flow. The most powerful is the Great House. It’s the royal House of Queen Nareen and her immediate family. Many centuries ago, Nareen made a deal with the gods of Draca, and using ancient, powerful shape-shifter magic, she created the Dracan world—an alternate reality sanctuary. She saved us from the humans, and, ultimately, saved us as a species.”
“Which House do you belong to?”
“I’m from the House of Gold.” Fianna silenced Abbie’s next question with the touch of a fingertip to her lips. “I know you must have so many questions. Can it wait?”
Fianna’s finger brushed over Abbie’s mouth and caused a riot of sensation in Abbie’s lower parts. “I guess,” Abbie said, distracted by the silkiness of Fianna’s fingertip.
Abbie struggled to take it all in. She had another family, a magical, shape-changing family—starting with these otherworldly, gorgeous women. Her mind raced, putting events and circumstances in her life in a fantastical new perspective. Another bizarre memory suddenly surfaced. “Hold on a minute. I think this happened before!”
“What happened before? You mean before the camping trip?”
“The change thing—what do you call it?”
“You mean shifting? You shifted before? Tell us,” Fianna said.
“But first, am I supposed to have voices in my head?”
“Yes, little dragon,” said Fianna. She cradled Abbie’s anxious face between her warm hands for a few bracing seconds. “It’s your sister-self, connecting with you. We’ve been worried. I’m glad you’re starting to hear her.”
“What do you mean?”
“We sensed your nature and the disconnect between you and your dragon self. We’ve been trying to ease you together, a little at a time.” She gave a rueful smile. “Didn’t work quite like I’d hoped. You have a dual nature coming into full power, in a…rather unique way.”
Abbie thought about that. She had a dual nature. And power? So, the voice in her head wasn’t her going psycho. In fact…
“She might be trying to tell me something, then. I mean, if what you say is true. About her, you know, talking to me.”
“What is she telling you?”
“I’m getting flashes about the park incident, which I forgot about. Well, kind of forgot. I stashed it in my Weird Box.”
Orla and Guin’s faces mirrored Fianna’s concern. Abbie pulled the quilt tighter around her and wished she had clothes on. Everyone watched her, waiting. She thought fast. She needed better access to her fuzzy memories, and then she had an idea. “What happened?” she dared to ask in her head, to that other self who was supposedly in there. “When I went jogging in Forest Park a few months ago?”
To her immense surprise, the events of that fateful day rolled to light like a movie reel freed from Abbie’s hidden memories.
“I usually jog on one of the more remote trails in Forest Park in Portland,” she began to recount the story to the Draca, who arranged themselves around her in a clearing near the wreckage.
“What do you mean jog?” Orla asked.
“I was running. You know what that is, right?”
Guin snorted. “She means run for fun, Orla. Imagine.”
“For fun?” Orla’s face crinkled.
“We’re getting sidetracked,” Fianna said. “Keep talking, Abbie.”
Abbie described the city’s forested treasure, a protected wildlife area where pine, spruce, and fir trees covered hundreds of green miles surrounded by an urban boundary. “On that day, I took a back trail, which is always empty during the week. I started with an easy jog and after a while, I noticed my feet seemed unusually light, as if I weighed nothing, so I started running faster, and then faster, until I was on a full tilt sprint, just flying down the path. I felt really happy, and I remember that because it was kind of weird.”
“What was weird?” Guin asked.
“Being happy, because I almost never am. Happy that way, I mean.”
The Draca looked perplexed at what was clearly a new concept for them.
“I kept running.” Abbie continued to narrate as the pictures flipped in order through her head. It was like reading subtitles out loud. “I’m not sure for how long, and then suddenly, I had a horrible pain, right in the middle of my chest. My knees got really heavy and then I tripped and fell flat on my face. I thought I was having a heart attack, but my back felt like it was on fire, as if my spine was being ripped out.” The memories surged with shocking intensity. “I screamed and screamed and then…then I thought I saw massive wings sticking out of me, and my skin was covered in blue scales. I remember hearing a roar�
�I don’t know if that was me or something else—and then I blacked out. It was like what happened to me the other night, but I think the shift couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds. I definitely didn’t get into the sky or anything.”
Everyone groaned in sympathy.
“Oh, no!” Guin said. “You poor thing. No wonder you keep fainting. All that rapid shifting this way and that.” She shuddered. “Not an easy trick for anyone, except the Elders, let alone a dracling.”
Even Orla seemed worried. “Accidental shifting. Gotta be a big shock.”
Fianna looked sick.
“The next thing I knew,” Abbie said, “I woke up on the ground in my normal body, but my clothes were in shreds all over the path. I could hardly move, but in the nick of time, I saw a woman with her cell phone out, she was yelling something but there was so much noise in my head, I couldn’t hear the words.”
Gasps sounded from all the women. “Did she get a photo?” Fianna asked.
“Maybe worse, a video.”
Orla fell back onto the ground, groaning. “Technology. Anything but that.”
“What did you do?” Fianna prompted.
“All I could think was to get the hell out of there, as fast as I could. I was totally freaked out and had no idea what had just happened. But I knew I was in big trouble somehow and I needed to run. I grabbed what I could find of the remains of my clothes and booked it out of there, full speed.”
“Did you get a good look at the woman?” Fianna asked.
“Only a quick one. She seemed very put together, maybe wearing a designer jogging suit. I got a glimpse of shoulder-length blonde hair, sports sunglasses, and that’s it. I hope I missed the park security cameras. Someone would have gotten an eyeful.” An eyeful of her naked butt, most likely. She had run the two miles back to her car, but not before having to dodge the Arboretum and skim the tourist parking lot, where she’d snatched a jacket out of someone’s front seat. With the grace of her “other” nature, as she now understood it, she’d snuck her way home and through the house to the relative safety of her bedroom and proceeded to sleep like the dead the rest of the day. Thank God Janet never heard her. The memory had been shoved into the Weird Box, yet, as hard as she tried, Abbie couldn’t shake off the strange feelings that trickled out.
“Security cameras, lovely. They go so nicely with live videos,” Orla said from the ground. “Fianna, you have to fix this.”
Fianna sighed. “Got it. Right after my call to the Council.”
Look-alike glum expressions crossed everyone’s faces and they sank into silence.
I’m causing more trouble, Abbie thought, dazed. Some things never changed. Am I going to be a screw-up even in a magical universe?
“Well, at least we have a clue about why those men tried to kidnap you,” Fianna said. “My instincts tell me the woman in the park may have tracked you down and sent them after you. I have no idea how, but at least we’ve got a place to start.”
“Security cameras,” Orla said. “I bet she used them. What did I say about technology? Don’t trust it.”
“This is bad,” said Guin.
“Yes. Very.” Fianna reached for Abbie’s hand and gave a comforting squeeze. Abbie squeezed back. She liked her hand enclosed in Fianna’s warmth, even though she needed to get used to not also being terrified. Fianna gave the impression she could handle anything, yet it was clear the news of Abbie’s additional surprise shift was distressing to her and the others.
Abbie’s sense of temporary calm shattered when she realized the time. “Shit! I was supposed to be home this morning!” She’d forgotten about real life. “If I don’t call someone, they’ll send out a search party. You don’t want law enforcement all over the area, do you?”
Fianna stood in an abrupt movement. “Goddess, no. Time to find the dracophone.”
“What’s a dracophone? Wait, you mean there is reception here?” Abbie asked.
“No. You’ll see.” Fianna nudged aside a small wooden table with her foot. “Where would a magical telephone hide?”
Magical phone? Thoughts of calling home sent Abbie crashing back to her usual, pathetic reality. A roommate she barely talked to, one superficial friend, and a job she’d been fired from. What the hell was she going to tell Janet and Sandy? I’m a dragon. I’m a dragon. The refrain repeated over and over in her head.
“We’re still going back to Portland, right?” Dread filled her at the thought. Odd how fast things changed. A few hours ago, she couldn’t wait to get out of here. A tiny hiss sounded in her mind, an echoed expression of anxiety. That other inside of her, the sister-self, was unhappy about leaving, too. Abbie took a second to be mind-blown over the thought.
“Hello?” she tried experimentally. The response was distinctly…grumpy? Figures. Probably what she deserved, with all her fuck-ups. Her sister-self had been trying to communicate all along, Abbie realized. She just hadn’t known how to listen.
Fianna and Guin started poking around in the house and pulled out items that could be salvaged. “It’s probably hidden away with the Fire Agate gem,” Fianna said.
Orla disappeared and reappeared a few minutes later. “Success!” she called out. “These two are crafty little magical items. I found them wrapped in bubble wrap inside Guin’s metal treasure box.”
Fianna held her hands out with an approving look. “Good job,” she murmured as she undid the plastic. She handed one round object to Guin, and waved the other, larger one. “They have powers built in, which protect them. There’s no other rational explanation for how these two ended up together, neatly wrapped in a fireproof box.” She smiled fondly at the package in her arms.
Fianna cradled what appeared to be an old-fashioned rotary-dial desk phone, except it was three times the size of anything Abbie had ever seen. Solid black, it had five clear crystal knobs attached to the base. “This is our call-home phone,” Fianna said. “Powered by Dracan magic, it can function as a conduit to the Dracan sanctuary, as well as a cell phone here on Earth. Only for extreme emergencies.” She allowed a brief smile. “I think this qualifies.”
Abbie eyed the steampunk-looking artifact. It wasn’t plugged into anything. “Magic? You mean, there’s more beyond shape-shifting?”
Fianna nodded. “There’s another entire world, Abbie. Forces and powers you don’t know yet. It will take some time to learn and understand.”
“Like…Dracan. That’s the name, right? Where is it?”
“Big question. We can explain later, after my call.”
“But how—”
“You’ll see.”
“What about the cabin?” Abbie asked, with a pained wave at the debris.
“That’s one of the reasons we’re calling home.” Fianna seemed so calm about calling a magical land with a magical phone.
“Will someone snap their fingers and, zap, the house will magically repair itself?”
“Something like that,” Fianna said. “It’s complicated.”
“Everything is complicated,” Abbie said.
“You are so correct, baby dragon,” Orla said. “And you, dear one, are the most complicated of all.”
Chapter Six
Dragon Hunt
Miriam gazed out over the property surrounding her custom-built home in the southwest hills of Portland. The home was in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the city, tucked back off the street, surrounded by groves of trees, perfectly manicured lawns and Italian stone patios. She lived alone in her sprawling, three-story house and preferred it that way.
Nursing a gin and tonic on the upper-floor balcony, she sat admiring the blazing orange and yellow autumn foliage of the wooded hills of Forest Park below. She held up her left hand, turning it back and forth, catching the light in different ways. Her flesh was as smooth as her teenage skin had been.
Miriam pulled a small, round glass container out of her jacket pocket and stared at the blue, powdery substance inside. As terrified as she’d been that day, she
blessed the fact she’d had enough wit to search the grounds and find the blue-toned triangular scale hidden in the grass—much bigger than a snake or lizard scale, and pulsing with an inexplicable glow.
Now there was hardly anything left, just a faint dusting with only a hint of the glow it held a few months before. She hadn’t understood what she had at first, before the delicate scale dissolved into what she’d come to call fairy dust and revealed its full power.
She had picked up the scale to examine it more closely and one edge crumbled and smeared across the top of her hand. She felt instant tingling and then watched, incredulously, as the scar on her right thumb, the one she had since she was twelve, completely faded. A minute later, every mark time had placed on her hand disappeared. The mysterious powder actually rejuvenated her skin, with no apparent side effects. A clear, indisputable difference between the flesh on her left and right hands had been her only proof of the blue scale’s power. She’d stroked her skin in awe. This is worth millions.
What a godsend. After her last failed enterprise, she needed to recoup her lost millions, and this powder was her ticket to glory. Her hired thugs, or PIs as they referred to themselves, called the beast a dragon. She suspected as much herself from the wobbly seconds of video she’d managed to capture. Could the folktales be true? Could dragons really exist? Huge scaly things with massive wings, and able to blow fire? Everything checked off.
Whatever it was, she needed the creature. She knew where this Abigail Shaw, or Abbie, as her housemate called her, lived, and thanks to Janet, she’d be informed when the girl returned home. Her eyes closed in a second of gratitude for her presence of mind three months ago, when she had pulled out her phone and pressed record, because those idiot PIs hadn’t managed even a single snapshot.
Restless, Miriam started a fast walk around her property to plot her next moves. Before the disaster on Mt. Hood, Bill had at least managed to come up with security footage from the Arboretum parking lot of a semi-nude girl clutching a jacket and running across the asphalt. Her car registration was listed under the name Abigail Shaw, which had led them to her current address and a duplicitous roommate only too happy to act as a spy.
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