The Dragon's Betrayal

by Martha Woods

  I'd had to walk away in the middle of his horrible conversation with Mordeos that night. Unable to listen anymore. Unable to remain a party to it– as though I could be anything but a party to it while I still remained a Dark One, while I still remained Mordeos's mate. Like Pontius Pilate, washing his hands of Christ's death, pretending that he had no involvement despite allowing it to go on anyway...

  That night, I thought, should have settled it. There was nothing there between this strange newcomer and myself, and that was that.

  But then, of course, that hadn't been the end of things, as obviously as it should have been...

  It kept on going. For the next two weeks, Iammarth remained among us. Unshackled after that first night, during which he had as good as proven his loyalty to the Dark Ones. He and Mordeos, along with a number of other Dark Ones, had commenced planning the attack against the Alda Academy, detailing all the specifics, planning for every contingency. Scheming as to how they might inflict the worst possible damage to the Protectors– aside from, you know, slaughtering their children. And Iammarth, proving with each vile word that escaped his lips that he was every bit the monster as Mordeos himself, if not more so– for Iammarth was, above all, the one responsible, for providing Mordeos the means to achieve his goals. For giving life to plans that would have otherwise been little more than Mordeos's insane and vengeful ramblings.

  And yet, I found, no matter how hard I tried, as much as I knew that I should, I could not seem to make myself hate Iammarth. I could not seem to make myself believe that the bastard he presented himself as could really be the true version of him. It was as if my heart knew something that my mind couldn't see, and for the life of me I could not seem to reconcile the true Iammarth– whichever version of him that might happen to be– with my inane, girlish fantasy of him.

  In my heart, I still saw him as I had seen him on that very first night. When he'd been down there on the ground. Human and vulnerable. Facing certain death, as Mordeos and his men circled around him overhead, preparing to end him.

  That, I knew, was the true Iammarth, whatever the conspiracy of reality might otherwise attempt to suggest. And from time to time, I still encountered that version of him. In passing, whenever our eyes would meet. He would smirk flirtatiously at me. Or give me an imploring look, as though secretly begging me to understand him. To forgive him. And sure, he may have simply been attempting to manipulate me. But then there were the looks I sometimes saw when he didn't think I was watching. While he was with Mordeos and the others, planning, for instance. The expressions of guilt, and of fear, that might occasionally flicker across his features, however briefly, before dissolving again. Preserving the illusion of a self that I knew couldn't possibly be his true self.

  Or was I only just grasping at straws?

  I didn't know. I didn't really know anything anymore. What I was doing. How far I planned to allow any of this to go. Whether it was already too late for me to begin asking such questions...

  All I really knew was that, for whatever reason, I was obsessed with this man. I couldn't get him off of my mind, day or night. And the closer it seemed I was getting to figuring him out, the further and further he away he seemed to gravitate away.

  I found myself awake, presently, at three in the morning. Blanketed by the thorough darkness, the forest pitch black despite the massive opal of the full moon shining overhead. It was a cool night, but my body was soaked with sweat, my head throbbing.

  I'd given up the prospect of sleep hours ago. Instead, I'd taken to traipsing along our campsite, running over and over the same old ground in my head. Thinking about Iammarth. His and Mordeos' horrible plan. How far I was going to let it go on before I decided enough was enough...

  More and more my faith was being tested these days. I agreed, broadly, with the Dark Ones' beliefs. I knew from experience that the human race was an evil and treacherous one. That trying to negotiate with them, as the Protectors so naively sought to do, would inevitably lead to our downfall.

  But all this killing? The killing of our own people? Of children?

  That had never been what I'd signed up for. Or at least, it wasn't what I thought I'd signed up for... In my mind, it was this very extremism that the ideology of the Dark Ones was supposed to counteract.

  I didn't know anymore. I just didn't know.

  I felt like crying. Like breaking down. Surrendering to my helplessness. Running away, leaving it all behind...

  And then, suddenly, I heard a sound– the sound of a twig snapping– and with a shock, I realized that someone among the camp was doing the exact thing I'd just been fantasizing about.

  I hesitated, unsure of what to do. I knew exactly who it was, without having to see him. Without needing any further sensory information about him than the sound of his footsteps, hurried but as muffled as he could make them be, as they quickly receded from the clearing.

  My mind seemed to race, and yet to freeze up completely, all at once.

  His steps continued to grow fainter and fainter as I struggled with what to do. My window of opportunity to act, one way or another, was rapidly closing.

  And then at last, without thinking, wholly unable to think, I did act. I raced after him. Heart thundering. The night seeming to close in around me. My head spinning, as I wondered what the hell I was doing.

  “Shit, shit, shit, shit,” I muttered under my breath, then shut the hell up, listening. I stopped altogether, and the night was silent around me.

  My stomach plunged.

  I'd lost him, I was certain. He'd gotten too far away, leaving me with no hope of catching up to him...

  And then I heard a crackle, off in the distance. I lit up. I was heading in the right direction, he'd simply had too much of a head start, leaving me to think I'd lost him.

  I raced forward to close the gap between us, scraped by the branches and brambles, starting whenever some small woodland creature would race out in front of me, catching me off guard, nearly knocking me off balance.

  Soon I came near enough to the renegade Dark One that I could see his silhouette in the distance. Broad shouldered. Powerfully built. Pushing his way through the undergrowth with ease, and leaving me to struggle behind in his wake.

  I must have followed him for hours. It felt like days, really, in the pitch darkness, with no landmarks by which I might mark my progress, or otherwise make any sense of the path along which the two of us were heading.

  The truly stressful part of the whole thing was the balancing act. Trying to keep close enough to the moving figure ahead of me not to lose track of where he was heading, yet far enough back that he remained none the wiser to my presence behind him. At one point I did hang a little bit too far back, and ended up losing him for about five minutes. I was certain, then, that that would be the end of the chase. That there was no catching up to him from there, that I would never figure out what he was up to– hell, I would be lucky if I even managed to find my way home again from the place where I now found himself.

  Fortunately, by sheer happy accident more than anything, I managed to stumble back onto the path he was taking– actually, I must have somehow lapped him at some point, and it was only by hurrying back out of the clearing at his approach that I managed to avoid colliding with him in the dark.

  It had begun to grow light out by the time I'd followed him all the way to his destination. The sky was a dim gradient, bleeding from orange to deep violet, with neither the sun nor the moon anywhere around to be seen any longer.

  We'd reached the forest's edge, and for the first time I saw Iammarth clearly, stepping out onto what appeared to be the very outskirts of a human city. His brown hair flickered slightly in the wind, and his bearded jaw appeared set with determination. His dark eyes flicked about across his surroundings, seeming to want to ensure he'd not been followed.

  I decided it best to continue to lie low, remaining behind the tree line for as long as possible, praying that he didn't see me.

  He was he
aded for a phone booth. A phone booth, of all things.

  I'd spent my entire life isolated from human society, and even I knew what an anomaly such a sight was to behold in this day and age. It was an old, dilapidated thing, and I watched through the glass as he set a fistful of change on top of the phone, then inserted the correct amount into the coin slot. He dialed a number on the keypad, and drew his head around as he'd done before as the call went through, ringing, ringing.

  Then he turned, the party on the other line evidently picking up, his lips beginning to move.

  Again, I hesitated.

  I wanted to know what I was saying. Who it was he was contacting, and why? Getting closer, however, meant risking my exposure– both to him, and to the human world around, asleep though they may be, though surely inclined to sit up and take notice whenever an attractive, naked young woman, who just happened to be a dragon, suddenly crept up out of the surrounding woods.

  In the end, though, my curiosity got the better of me.

  I made my way over to the phone booth, as close as I felt I could safely get– which happened to be closer, and closer, and closer with each passing second. And before long, I'd decided the hell with safety altogether, and found myself with my ear pressed up against the glass of the phone booth, listening intently, eager for any sign, any indication of what was being said.

  My eyes widened, as suddenly I began to pick up on the conversation with an unexpected clarity.

  “Yeah, next week. I don't know the exact day just yet. Yeah, you were right. They're being led by Mordeos the Powerful, this particular faction, anyway. There are about fifty or sixty of us– of them... Yeah. Yeah exactly. And you were right about another thing– this isn't the only group. Yeah, he said there were at least six or seven others, he doesn't even know the exact amount. It's system they've devised, the remaining Dark Ones. They split up into smaller groups and scattered, to try and make it harder to track them all down. And none of them in any one particular group knows exactly what's going on. It's the same principle, yeah. Keeping them in the dark, so no one party can spill too much information in the event that they end up infiltrated. Yeah, that's right.”

  I stood crouched there, listening. My heart hammering. Unable to decide whether I was relieved or horrified...

  “From the sound of things, Tyrius the Mighty is sort of their ring leader. He's the one trying to keep them all under control until he can get his real plans underway. No. No, I don't know. I don't think even Mordeos knows exactly what he's planning. He says he thinks he's looking for something. A weapon of some kind. Do you have any idea what– no, I don't either... I'll try to keep digging on that. But look, right now, the important thing is that right now Mordeos is getting frisky. He's tired of waiting around while Tyrius drags his feet. He wants some action. I've fed him enough information that I think he's taken the bait, starved for it as he is. If it works like I'm hoping it does, it should lead them all straight to you, and as long as you're ready for them, you shouldn't have any trouble getting them under control.

  “But listen, I don't know exactly when this attack is going to happen. It's risky for me to try and get to a phone– actually, I need to get off of here soon, the sun's coming up, and I need to hurry back to camp before I'm too badly missed. But there's a chance I might not be able to get in touch again before Mordeos decides to strike, depending on when he reaches his tipping point. It is absolutely imperative, therefore, that you close down the Alza Academy right away. Take out all the students, get them to somewhere safe until something happens, or until you hear otherwise from me. But make sure you have the guards stationed around the Academy like they would normally be. Have them change shifts at the normal times that they would, and everything like that. It needs to seem like the Academy is up and running like it would normally be. They cannot suspect that you know what's going to happen...”

  I listened with rapt attention. Hanging on his every word. Barely able to believe it, yet realizing that I'd been all but certain of it all along.

  Iammarth– wasn't a Dark One at all... He was a Wrecker! A Protector!

  He wasn't a murderer of children at all, but a saboteur... A double agent!

  And suddenly, rather than relieved, I discovered that my feelings upon this discovery were as confused as they had ever been. My contempt and admiration toward him remaining as they had been, but flipped. I had been right all along... I had known he was lying. I had known he was concealing his true self from me, hiding from me this entire time...

  The question, now, was how I intended to respond to this revelation?

  Just then, however, there was no longer any time for me to decide.

  I heard Iammarth ending the conversation– “Yeah. Yeah, I'll try to be in touch soon. Yeah. Yeah, I will.” Click. The steady jangle of his change being spat out by the machine.

  The creak of the phone booth door opening.

  My adrenaline raced, and I acted before I knew what I was doing. Before I knew with whom my loyalty now lay. Before I could even begin to guess what I hoped to accomplish by doing what I was about to do.

  I leapt up from the ground.

  I yanked open the pouch slung around my neck. I plunged my hand inside, and jerked out the Earthdragon handcuffs, which I'd been carrying with me as a precaution ever since Iammarth had first been unshackled from them.

  I rounded the corner of the phone booth just as Iammarth was stepping out, and he leapt back in alarm, startled by my sudden materialization from the void of the night.

  “Jesus Christ!” he gasped, his palm opening, and the change he'd been carrying for the payphone spilling to the floor.

  I didn't think. I simply acted.

  I slammed one of the cuffs onto his wrist, locking it tight around him. Then I drew the other one down after it, straining to link it to his other arm, but he jerked it away before I could get near.

  “Keya, what the hell?!” he asked, as though genuinely confused as to what was happening, and why it was happening. And then he froze. His thoughts seemed to catch up with him. His eyes widened.

  “How much did you hear?” he asked, seeming by his tone to dread the answer.

  “Everything,” I said, eyes narrowed, nostrils flaring. “I heard everything. I know everything. You aren't who you said you were. You're not. You never were...”

  I waited for him to refute this. But he never did. He stared fixedly at me, trying to read me, my intentions, of which even I wasn't entirely sure at that moment.

  And then he said, catching me completely off guard, “You aren't who you pretend to be either... Are you?”

  The question floored me.

  My lip trembled. I tried to answer, but only dull sound came out. Squeaks. Groans.

  “That's– you don't– I... I don't know...”

  I hated this. I hated the feeling, that suddenly I'd given him the upper hand over me. He stood there with a smug knowing look on his face. Staring down at me from his considerable height. The light of the streetlamp overhead giving his entire person a kind of ominous, celestial glow.

  “You're like me. Aren't you, Keya? A pretender. A pretender, and you don't know why...” I neither confirmed nor deny this. I simply held his gaze, not willing to let him have the upper hand. Not willing to let him get the better of me. “What do you intend to do with me?” he asked, so earnestly, so simply, that I almost couldn't stand it.

  “I– I don't know!” I said, shaking my head, trying to think. “I–I just– I need to think right now, okay?! I need time to decide!”

  And here again, I lunged at him, trying to get the other cuff on his opposite hand. He pulled away hard, jerking the first arm back. I shrieked, stumbling off balance into his chest, and the handcuffs slipped free of my grip.

  I jolt of panic ran through me– I could not let him get that opposite cuff around my wrist.

  There was no point now in trying to overpower him to get the cuffs back– he was at least twice my size, and could shoo me away like an
insect, even in his human form.

  Desperate to at least put some space between us before he could cuff me, trapping me in my human form, I leapt backward, bounding upward into the air. I transformed, my pale skin erupting in a sheath of jet-black scales, my blue eyes turning neon red, my huge black wings beating against the air, pushing me upward from the ground.

  I'd made it, I thought– except, all at once I knew, I hadn't...

  Before I'd escaped his reach, Iammarth lunged at me. The instant before I would have made it completely out of his reach, he slammed the open handcuff around the very tip of my tail, which was just narrow enough for the wood to close around.

  It was a strange sensation.

  Instantly, I felt my powers draining away. My body shrank, as though pulled violently into itself, and I screamed, plummeting down toward the ground. Iammarth, a gentleman even with all his flaws, threw his arms out and grabbed me before I hit the ground. It was, in an instant, arousing as he pulled me to his hot, beating chest, my flesh pressed against his, his powerful arms wrapped around me.

  I might have almost mistaken the gesture for romantic– had it not been for a moment later, when he thrust the open handcuff toward my wrist and slammed it shut around me, locking us together, and preventing either of us transforming.

  “What the hell?! You dick!” I shrieked at him.

  “What?! You did it to me!” he countered, and he had a point.

  My eyes fell to the medicine pouch lying on the ground, which had fallen from my neck during the act of transformation, and which contained the key to the handcuffs inside.

  Acting yet again without thinking– a bad habit that I was getting far too accustomed to at this point– I threw myself at the ground, knowing as I did so that Iammarth would immediately follow my lead.

  And he did.

  We all but tackled each other to the sidewalk, rolling around like madmen as we struggled for the pouch, our naked bodies rubbing excessively up against one another, in a way that, even under the circumstances, I couldn't help but perceive as being more than a little bit erotic...